Politicians and the Anzac Tradition

A Story of Manipulation and Mythology

by Binoy Kampmark / April 26th, 2023

While the mass slaughtering of, and slaughter by, soldiers, is always a touchy subject of commemoration, a tension has existed between those who did the fighting, and those who ordered it. Comfortably secure in furnished rooms and battle props, planners would, as they still do, draw up the blueprints, concoct the strategy, and give the orders.

In Australia, politicians should have every reason to stay out of the grief and suffering they contributed to by sending their citizenry (wait, subjects – for the State remains a constitutional monarchy) to countries they could barely spell. But the bosom and milk of British empire was, like US hegemony now, too powerful to resist. Enthusiastic, young volunteers were sent to be cut down in the fields of Flanders and the beaches of Gallipoli.

Things have not improved much since. Apart from the Second World War, which saw Australia’s own coastline threatened by the forces of Imperial Japan, Canberra has fallen into a nasty habit of sending troops to fight other people’s wars. The tendency has begun to resemble that of coke-addiction. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq stand out as mercenary missions of invasion and predation rather than defence ventures, the crude calculations of fleshy armchair strategists hankering for security and approval from foreign masters.

The military and political tradition going back to Gallipoli in 1915 is not an enviable one; talk about being slain in the name of freedom is hollow when it comes from the invaders. In a perverse, and glorious twist of public relations, modern Türkiye’s creator Kemal Atatürk knew how to turn the bad behaviour of the invasion into the good grace of forgiveness. You, soldiers of Anzac, invaded us; having died on our soil, you became our sons.

Such skilful marketing is conspicuously ignored every April 25, but remains most profitable for local vendors in Türkiye. It should also be said that, in racial and cultural terms, it clearly ignores the Armenians and those caught in the Turkification project Atatürk pursued with sanguinary tenacity. They died gruesomely, aliens in their own land.

Around these engagements, the politician as demagogic promoter of ANZAC – the name given to both the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and the cult surrounding it – has come to the fore. It is common, and convenient, to link the sacral elevation of the Anzac tradition – muscular, masculine sacrifice by sturdy blokes keen on freedom and the “fair go” – to Prime Minister John Howard. The process of burnishing the legend and reviving it for more contemporary consumption actually began with the Australian Labor Party, and Australia’s longest serving Labor Prime Minister, Bob Hawke.

It was his visit to Gallipoli on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings that made things turn. The meaning of the Anzac tradition, Hawke told those gathered, “forged in the fires of Gallipoli, must be learned anew, from generation to generation.”

As wise political chief, and one who could shed a tear or two, he suggested that the meaning of the tradition “can endure only as long as each new generation of Australians finds the will to reinterpret it to breathe, as it were, new life into the old story: and, in separating the truth from the legend, realise its relevance to a nation and a people, experiencing immense change over the past three-quarters of a century.”

Contrary to Hawke’s hope, the truth from the legend has never been separated, as they never are in the context of any religion. Faith, and denial, papers over any disparity.

What Hawke left in brick, Howard turned into marble and sinister mythology. Anzac returned to the cult of mateship indebted to country, and it was to be exploited. Little mention would be made about political responsibility for war: the politician would extol the creed; the rest would follow. Australians gathered on April 25, he remarked on Anzac Day in 2001, were drawn by “a great silent summons to repay a debt to the past. Each year the numbers of us grow. Each year, more and more young Australians hear the call, though far removed, in time and circumstance, from those they seek to honour.”

Since then, Anzac has become a militaristic prop, a promotions exercise for arms manufacturers and the publicity for war. This was best exemplified by the decision to spend almost A$500 million over nine years to redevelop the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. The primary reason for this profligate spending: to create more room for advertising space for military hardware: jet fighters, Chinook helicopters, and the like. Disgracefully, there were arguments that making former and current service personnel see such weapons and platforms of war would supply therapy rather than despair. Suffice to say, such PR is not intended to include the victims of such weapons.

The tradition of Anzac has also done nothing to offer lessons to Australian leaders to be cautious, reflective, and wise in sending troops to foreign theatres. Hawke was hardly going to buck the trend of an automatic deployment of Australian personnel to wars waged by the US. He had, after all, been one of the keenest converts to its messages, spiked by Freedom Land’s convictions. Despite having received no request from Washington to send a military contingent, Hawke, on August 10, 1990, proudly committed three frigates to US Operation Desert Shield.

When Howard’s conservative coalition won office in 1996, the salient lessons of needless death and foolish deployment showed the extent that Anzac was to be commemorated: as a hat doffing ceremony to war’s necessity rather than its avoidable dangers. On Australia’s Vietnam fiasco, he “accepted the government’s position that the involvement was justified. I accepted then, and I see no reason to have changed my mind.” Students of his record should have found his instinctive throwing of Australian personnel into the US-led attacks on Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 as fairly consistent. He was never a man to learn much, and errors could never be put down to stupidity or ignorance.

Unfortunately, the current Labor government has also suffered the same condition; Anzac’s lessons of woe and suffering have also failed to filter through the current adjutants of the US empire in Canberra. When the AUKUS security pact was broached to the opposition leader Anthony Albanese by the previous Morrison government in 2021, he made the decision to approve it within twenty-four hours. He was even “proud” of the decision, noting “that the United States’s position was that a precondition of their support for AUKUS and these arrangements certainly was a bipartisan commitment.” The arrangements, including the acquisition of nuclear-propelled submarines, were preparations for war with China.

Beware, then, the warmongering jingoes perfumed in freedom-loving garb. They are bound to be the ones leading the country to a blood-soaked demise. And the Anzac legend has become the ideal, incubating vehicle for doing so, built upon the fiction of sacrificial debt rather than colossal, even criminal blunders.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

Blood, Golf, and Saudi Arabia

The LIV Tournament in Adelaide

by Binoy Kampmark / April 24th, 2023

The recently concluded LIV Tournament in Adelaide was a matter of bread, circuses and golf. It was something of a triumph for the chief sponsor: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and, more notably, the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Critics, and criticism about the regime and the blood spattered House of Saud, were generally forgotten.

This vulgar display of denial and indulgence was typified by the face of Australian golf, Greg Norman. After three days of competition at The Grange, The Advertiser ran with the painful headline: “LIV-ing the dream: Golf’s boom weekend for SA.” The South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas, who scandalously threw his state’s money into a mix also funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (his government refuses to say how much), was also glowing. “To everyone who turned up and showed what Australia is about – thank you.”

When questioned about the Riyadh connection and its blotchy human rights record, the insufferable South Australian Tourism Minister, Zoe Bettison, proved to be a well of useless information. “I’m aware of the issues that people have raised,” she stated. “But each and every one of us here uses equipment [and] different businesses every day that the Saudis are invested in.” Presumably she does not mean hacksaws, which, in Saudi hands, have a habit of finding their way onto the necks of critical journalists.

Golfing professionals such as the unprincipled Mammon follower Dustin Johnson also expressed delight at the way the tournament had gone. “The support we’ve had from the fans and the city … awesome. Obviously, the crowds were unbelievable this week, so it was a lot of fun.”

Peter Uihlein dreamily speculated about future numbers, burgeoning in their promise: 90,000 attendees over three days in the 12th event would surely mean even greater numbers by the 40th or 50th? “People lose sight of that a little bit. This is literally the 12th event. The sky is the limit.”

There were efforts made by the organisers to mimic their PGA Tour rivals, who, to be fair, are also corrupt, but not in the capital punishment-killing journalists sense of the term. A ticket to the “Cellar Door” Marquee back of the 12th green, Guardian Australia reports, was called the “Watering Hole”; the PGA equivalent would have been the “Party Hole” in Arizona. The price of admission: $1200. For that price, those attending the sports wash session could also be bored by Norman, Premier Malinauskas, and former Australian Treasurer and US ambassador Joe Hockey, talk about golf as “a force for good”.

The Kingdom has made no secret of its use of sport in softening a cruel, barbaric image, rinsing it in the progressive tones of sporting improvement. Obscene amounts of cash have and are being put into sporting tournaments by Riyadh’s Public Investment Fund. And they have such charming ignoramuses as Norman to play the role of useful, distracting dolt, able to bring on board other dolts bedazzled by the dosh.

In the first season of LIV Golf events, each regular-season event’s total value was counted at $25 million, split between $20 million for the individual event, and $5 million for the team competition. The winner’s earnings came in at $4 million, with the last-placed participant getting $120,000.

There have also been the individual mercenaries, the condottieri of the golf circuit. They have taken the manna from Norman, and encouraged to forget the bloodthirsty, vicious tendencies of the medieval House of Saud; focus, instead, on a more tangible hatred golfers can understand: the PGA tour organisers. It is those stuffed shirts Norman has never forgiven in undermining his previous efforts to run a tournament, and it is an animosity that he has bred from.

In Adelaide, when asked about what the PGA boss Jay Monaghan might feel about the tournament, Johnson was instant in his reaction. “We don’t give a damn how he feels. We know how he feels about us, so it’s mutual.”

Others, like Bruce Koepka, focused on the golf-as-golf theme: players on the LIV circuit and the PGA tour were playing the same game. At the recent Masters, he could “run into 15 (PGA) Tour guys if [he] wanted to in a day and nobody really had any negative feedback, any negative thing to say – and that would be the time to say it.”

One can never accuse professional golfers of shaking the tree of knowledge, and 2020 US Open Winner and LIV participant Bryson DeChambeau proved that point. “We talked about that [Saudi sportswashing] last year, and we already kind of kicked that to the kerb. It’s something that I truthfully believe is inaccurate.”

When asked last week if he had ever had a conversation with bin Salman, the man US intelligence agencies are certain ordered the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, nothing was forthcoming. “No, I have not,” he replied.

As to why such a meeting had never happened, the answer was childish, though far from endearingly so. “Because I’m the chairman and CEO of LIV Golf Investments, and that’s where I focus. I focus on golf. I’ve been involved with golf … as a player, as well as golf course design. I’ve built golf courses in third-world countries. I’ve built golf courses in Communist countries.” Here we have the Albert Speer of golf, dedicated to the building enterprises, riding high, and without fear. Speer, at the very least, faced a tribunal and received due punishment.

There have been a few indignant spoilsports. Human Rights Watch researcher Joey Shea made a few ripples in the ABC for noting that, “Saudi Arabia has experienced some of its worst periods for human rights in its modern history.” In March 2022, she reminds us, 81 people were executed in one day.

Strangely enough for a state Liberal opposition leader, David Speirs had also detected some principle in the tangle of sporting sponsorship. Why take “dirty money” from a “despotic”, fundamentalist government while condemning Russia?

Malinauskas had a reply for his sparring opponent: Speirs had supported the Harvest Rock Festival, run by Live Nation, yet another Public Investment Fund recipient. No matter, retorted Speirs. “We’re paying for print advertising, social media advertising … we’re normalising the Saudi regime.” That normalisation, at least at the State level in Australia, is nigh completeFacebookTwittRedditEmail

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

Aggression, Guns, and Marcuse

by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin / April 25th, 2023

Better not knock on the wrong door or drive into the wrong driveway, you may get shot. Kids are afraid to go to school for fear of getting killed, as the body count from mass shootings climbs every day. Hate crimes are increasing, and just driving to work is potentially dangerous. Think of tailgaters honking their horns and flipping you the bird as they speed past. Politicians address these issues by calling for gun safety legislation, increasing the number of police, and so on. But these policy responses accept the existence of aggressive behavior as a given and only treat the symptoms. The jugular question focuses on why people are becoming increasingly more violent and aggressive in the first place. We think Herbert Marcuse’s analysis of the relationship between late capitalism and the human psyche provides a good tool to answer this question.

Marcuse claims that the United States is a sick society, sick because its basic institutions and structures “do not permit the use of available material and intellectual resources for the optimal development and satisfaction of individual needs.” In other words, Marcuse saw that late capitalism possessed the material potential for people to enjoy much more freedom from want and work than they realized, but capitalism would never permit the fulfillment of this freedom because it would threaten the privilege and power of its ruling class. He calls this disparity between the potential for free human development and the constrained conditions of society “surplus repression.” In late capitalist society surplus repression is so strong and prevalent that social stability necessitates the opening of the human psyche for manipulation and control, thus creating human automatons, one-dimensional beings incapable of critical thought. This invasion of the mind, he argues, is not a conspiracy. It’s rooted in the very structure of power in an advanced consumer capitalist society.

The objective of late capitalism to negate consciousness of the rupture between the individual and the societal imposed mode of existence has implications for the human psyche. Marcuse assumes the validity of Freud’s concepts of Eros – the life instinct – and Thanatos – the death instinct – to explain how the structures of late capitalism breed aggressive behaviors. In arresting the development of human potential, late capitalism stifles Eros and fortifies Thanatos, he claims. This dynamic, he argues, creates destructive energy that is socially useful not only to maintain but to reproduce the dominant system of economic, political, and technological power. In short, the ascendancy of Thanatos creates the aggressive psyches necessary for the stability of late capitalism. The abundance of goods and services available provides almost unlimited opportunities for consumers to buy goods that reproduce the system of domination and create an endless supply of aggressive human beings. In other words, in a supposed exercise of freedom., individuals embrace a consumerism that ultimately increases their subordination to the structures of late capitalism.

Ignoring the fact that the exercise of liberty is a social act (my freedom to throw a punch stops at the end of your nose), individuals frequently equate freedom as the absence of restraints. Every day the media report on clashes, sometimes violent, between self-styled “freedom fighters” and those whose views they oppose: masks, abortion rights, election results, guns, you name it. Rational societies resolve these conflicts through an appeal to a larger communal interest. But fueled by a right-wing media and demagogic politicians unconstrained by facts, these psychically compromised individuals reject the notion of the common good as just another attack on their liberty.

As surplus repression increases, so does human aggression, and even uglier manifestations of liberty become acceptable to many, what Orlando Patterson describes as “the power to restrict the freedom of others.” Put more bluntly, this notion of liberty calls for the use of power over others. So, when members of the far-right call for freedom of religion, for example, they’re calling for suppression of those who don’t share their religion. The Second Amendment morphs not only into the right to own AR-15s and other weapons of mass slaughter, but to use them at will, and the First Amendment functions to justify their attacks on civil liberties.

A political theory is only as good as its ability to help us understand the society we live in. Marcuse’s analysis marries the conceptual framework of Marxism with the categories of Freud. Marcuse recognizes that Eros and Thanatos aren’t empirically verifiable categories, but as assumptions they function as guides to understanding the human condition in contemporary America. But as Marx wrote, understanding a problem is not enough. The real issue is changing the conditions that created the problems in the first place. But how do you change the existing system of late capitalism when the automatons are unaware of their slavery and are free to express their liberty by firing AR-15s into a crowd?TwitteRedditEmail

Sidney Plotkin is a Professor of Political Science, Margaret Stiles Halleck Chair of Social Science, at Vassar College. He is the author of many articles and several books, including Veblen's America: The Conspicuous Case of Donald J. Trump (Anthem Press, 2018). William E. Scheuerman is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at SUNY Oswego. He is the retired President of the National Labor College and past President of United University Professions, the nation's largest higher ed union. A long-time labor activist, Scheuerman has written several books and numerous articles in both scholarly and popular journals. His most recent book is A New American Labor Movement: The Decline of Collective Bargaining and the Rise of Direct Action (SUNY Press, 2021). Read other articles by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin.

The Magickal Enchantment of Materialism

Why Marxists Need Neopaganism

by Bruce Lerro / April 25th, 2023

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people…”

“Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.” — Karl Marx

Cynical Attacks by Marxists About Neopaganism

“Neopagan Marxists? What are you talking about? We Marxists are atheist materialists. We don’t believe in any gods. Do you remember what Marx said about religion? It is the opium of the people. Why are you bringing superstition back in? Neopaganism is just more decadent 1970s hippie romanticism calling for the return to a preindustrial age. All this Goddess crap is just the lunatic fringe of the women’s movement trying to bring religion back in. Real socialist feminists are atheists. If anything, Christianity was a moral advance over the barbaric paganism of the Bronze and Iron Ages.” Serious charges indeed to be answered throughout this article.

Demanding Workers be Atheists Alienates Marxists from their Base

One of many problems for Marxists in the West is that most people in the working class believe in God, whether they are Protestants, Catholics, Jews or Muslims. Furthermore, whether Marxists like it or not, most people around the world find religious rituals enjoyable, comforting and meaningful. If people treat rituals in a mindless, reified way, that does not mean rituals can be dismissed. In addition, rituals have power not just in religion, but in nationalism and sports which have drawn from religion. Typically, Marxists dismiss religion, nationalism and sports as deriving from false consciousness, simplistic reasoning of the workers or evil machinations of priests or rulers. But this has not stopped working-class people from continuing to be faithful to their religion, country and sports teams. Do you Marxists really want to continue to throw stones at the buildings of churches, stadiums or the bronze cast statues of famous nationalistic generals?

The Structure and Superstructure of Societies

Using a Marxist delineation of social structures, both capitalist and socialist societies have an infrastructure and superstructure. The infrastructure includes the economy technology, methods of harnessing energy and work patterns. The superstructure of society includes the knowledge systems including politics, law, philosophy, art, religion and recreational patterns.  Broadly speaking, superstructural institutions supportthe existing order for better or worse. More specifically, under capitalism these include religious monotheism, nationalism and professional sports.

The Superstructural Mainstream Institutions of Religion, Nationalism and Sports and their Commonalities

Religious monotheism, with all its material configurations (churches, altars, pews) is comprised of social-psychological techniques (sin, confession, guilt) and paraphernalia (rosary beads, crosses on necks) was also used by nationalists to get people to  bind themselves to the state politically. Sports helped to organize people’s loyalty in their leisure time to a sports team. Religion, nationalism and sports all have many commonalties:

• A mythology of origins and destiny
• A founder
• A set of rites the community engages in
• Special holy days and holidays throughout the year
• A place to go for pilgrimages
• A set of buildings – temple, stadium to enact these rituals
• A set of holy objects
• A cultivated songbook of inspiring music
• Very specific set of rules to follow
• A holy book
• A definite attitude to other groups
• Emotional expectations
• Heretics
• Scapegoats
• Specialized language
• Sacred arts
• Methods of altering states of consciousness
• Attitudes towards the senses
• Collective memories – what you remember; what you forget

Monotheism, nationalism and sports are mainstream superstructural institutions of capitalism that are directed mostly atthe working-class. These institutions both alienate them from their social needs while providing them with inspiration, comfort, solace and hope. At the same time, there are superstructural capitalist movements which offer hope not only to working class people but to middle class and upper middle class people.

The Social and Psychological Aims of Capitalism vs the Hopes and Desires of the People

In order to derive maximal profit, the capitalist structure must pulverize social life so that every social and psychological need and desire is for sale. It must also create a consumer individuality so that the person is preoccupied with building and sustaining their individuality through consuming capitalist products. Naturally enough, many people who live in a capitalist society want to get away from this. Some of them flee into the capitalist superstructural institutions such as monotheism, nationalism or sports as a way to:

• Creating an ideal community
• Experience altered state of consciousness
• Develop an individuality that is larger, wider and deeper than what consumer individuality has to offer

Superstructural Movements: Human Potential, New Age and Neopaganism

But the working class is not the only class which seeks another way of life from what capitalism has to offer. The Human Potential movement in the 1970s was an attempt by mostly middle-class people to create alternative communities, to experience altered states of consciousness and cultivate a new individualist identity. So too, in the late 1970s the New Age movement wished to the same thing for the upper middle classes. These included spiritual, political and psychological cults, the paranormal movement (interest in ESP, telepathy, extraterrestrial civilizations) and Eastern mysticism (mediation, yoga) Lastly, also in the late 1970s Neopaganism exploded in both the United States and England.

Unlike monotheism, nationalism, sports and interest in cults, the New Age and Neopaganism are attempts to break awayfrom what seems to be to be the collapse of western religious institutions. What these movements promise the individual is to be swept away from everyday life to an alternative community, radically altered states and an individuality which is not submissive to a god, state or sports team but something higher, deeper and richer. To summarize, there are two components in the capitalist superstructure:

• Mainstream institutions: religion, nationalism and sports – which support capitalism
• Movements: the Human Potential Movement, the New Age movement and Neopaganism which seek to break away from capitalism or at least its corporate version

What both superstructural institutions and movements all seek to create is:

• An ideal community
• Experiencing altered state of consciousness
• Developing an individuality that is larger, far more so than what consumer individuality has to offer

Socialist Infrastructure and Socialist Superstructure

At its best, the socialist infrastructure has an economy that is communist, with workers’ councils deciding what and how much to produce at the local level, federated at the regional level and centralized at the state level. There is advanced technology. The socialist superstructure consists of a materialist philosophy, is pro-science and pro-technology and practices political direct democracy. There is also socialist art and there is atheism.

Socialist Rejection of Capitalist Superstructure

Good reasons for rejection

There are the atheists, socialists, communists and anarchists who think that religion, nationalism and sports are intentional distractions concocted by the ruling class to keep the working class from collectively changing life on earth. Further, the search for paranormal or mystical experience will be understood by Marxists as an attempted withdrawal from capitalist institutions in a fruitless search of meaningful experience. Socialists argue that paranormal experience has never been proven by scientists to be repeatable experimentally, while mystical experience is private escape and rarely produces revolutionaries. “Who needs spiritual a superstructure?” Marxists may say. “We see what happens when superstructural institutions are introduced into the capitalist superstructure by way of monotheism, nationalism, sports. People reify their gods, national heroes and sports figures. They engage them superstitiously and religious participants, citizens or sports fans behave submissively or mindlessly and use these institutions as escapes.

Furthermore, the impact of superstructural movements can also be engaged superstitiously and its leaders reified. The eruption of cults, psychic research and meditation centers produces its share of gurus, groupies and escapism. “Who needs that?” say the Marxists. The problem is that these capitalist superstructural institutions and movements contain 80% of the population (40% working class, 30% middle class and 10% upper middle class).

Bad reasons for rejecting

However, atheistic socialists and communists do not understand that what people who engage in institutions, movements and personal quests also want is not just about what they believe, but what they experience in a ritual-altered state. Arguing with people that science shows the earth is actually a lot older than the bible says is not going to change any fundamentalist’s minds and the evangelical atheists are foolish to try. Attempting to convince nationalists that their country’s crimes are greater than their heroic deeds is like spitting in the wind. Making an effort to convince sports fans that they shouldn’t root for their home team because neither the players nor the owners are loyal to their city will never work. The great weakness of all atheist socialists is that what people believe and the vehicles they use to support their beliefs can’t be argued with because these things all give comfort, hope and community. Communists throw rocks at the churches and stadiums but they are really afraid to go in. What socialists need to do is:

• Understand what people believe and how the rituals work that supports beliefs
• Recreate our own version of the 19 elements I earlier named that religion, nationalism and sports all share

Marxists do not have to Reinvent the Wheel:

The Neopagan Movement can Provide Marxists with a Missing Sacred Superstructure

Enter Neopaganism. At its very best, Neopaganism provides a far more convincing story about the cosmic evolution. It also offers a way to live in a world of conflict without losing heart or enthusiasm. Neopaganism also uses some of the same methodologies as monotheism, nationalism and sports to create altered states of consciousness. It does so relatively successfully and it does not require dogma to do it.

The Neopagan movement can bring life of the sacred into the socialist superstructure in ways that, at their best, are not superstitious, not reified, anti-hierarchical and not escapist. Joining with Neopagans will enable socialist to recruit the population currently embedded in the capitalist superstructure and lure them into a neopagan superstructure that will be in the service of socialism in our fight against capitalism.

Marx’s Criticism of Religion was too Sweeping

Marx rightfully criticized the Catholic and Protestant monotheism as it was practiced by the ruling classes of Europe, but his criticism of monotheism does not cover the polytheism or animism of pagans. In the case of the animism of hunter-gatherers who occupied most of human history, there are a lot of problems with characterizing animism the way Marxism criticized religion in my opening quote. The first animists were politically egalitarian, economically practiced what anthropologist Marshall Sahlins called “generalized reciprocity” and they had no private property. There were no gods and goddesses, just earth spirits, totems and sometimes ancestor spirits. There were no spiritual hierarchies. These earth spirits were treated as humanity’s brothers and sisters. There was no adoration, worship, begging and pleading or faith necessary. The sacred life of hunter-gatherers was no vale of tears, the heart of a heartless world, the soul of a soulless word. The type of magick they practiced was hardly the opium of the people. I am not suggesting socialists return to hunting and gathering times and practice animism. However, the animistic beliefs and practices can be used as a sacred model on which to build a communist future.

Neopagans are Hardly Washed-up Left-over Hippies

According to Margot Alder, in her book Drawing Down the Moon, Neopagans as a group are intelligent, interested in science, creative, imaginative and growing in both the United States and England. They have made inroads into mainstream religious conferences and they have yearly conferences of their own as well as regional celebrations throughout the United States. In fact, in the United States, Neopaganism is the fastest growing “religion”. We Marxists would be very lucky to have them join our ranks.

There is no Contradiction Between Dialectical Materialism and Most Neopagans

Ontologically, I identify as a Neopagan, but this in no way requires me to challenge a materialistic framework. Though some pagans are god and goddess theists, there is a vital community of Atheopagans who are materialists and believe in no gods. While I have a couple of disagreements with Mark Green (author of Atheopaganism: an Earth-honoring path rooted in science), we have enough in common to say that Atheopaganism will answer in a scientific way most, if not all the reservations of Marxists. There are other Neopagans whose goddesses and gods are admitted as psychologicalprojections and have no real independence. This is no threat to dialectical materialism. My criticism of Marxism is an immanentcriticism. It’s that materialism needs to incorporate collective and individual imagination without becoming a vitalist or a pantheist.

Characteristics of Neopaganism

There are at least fourteen characteristics of Neopaganism which have literary roots going back to mid 19^thcentury Europe. These characteristics would work very well with Marxism.

• Perception of divinity as immanent (as opposed to transcendent)
• A multiplicity of deities (polytheism) while for a few there is one deity, a single goddess (this is opposed to patriarchal monotheism)
• The deities are female as well as male
• A commitment to ecological responsibility as the most practical way to engage nature
• Appreciation of science, science fiction and technology (as opposed to superstition and luddism
• Creative approach to ritual with singing, dancing, music, drawing, and mask-making
• Emphasis on imagination in guided visualization as essential in creating altered states of consciousness
• Orientated to the tides of nature and circle of the seasons and the four directions
• Devotion to hedonism or the sanctification of pleasure
• A focus on the local places (as opposed to large spaces or beyond space)
• No concept of sin or salvation
• No need of proselytizing
• Sacralization of psychology through Jungian psychology or the sacred psychology of Jean Houston
• Living in the here and now, not seeking escape in heaven or nirvana

The Neopagan movement in Yankeedom largely came out of the feminist sacred movement, which was also political. Some Neopagans are liberal, but many are radicals. Generally, thanks to Starhawk and Z Budapest, many witches integrate their magickal rituals with political activity. As for Marxism, there might be a smattering of Marxists who were pagans. But for the most part, they were isolated and didn’t constitute any identifiable subgroup within Neopaganism. Then, at the turn of the century, feminist Silvia Federici wrote Caliban and the Witch that brought a feminist understanding to the witch hunts. More recently, about seven years ago, a practicing Marxist Neopagan named Rhyd Wildermuth began a small publishing house called Gods and Radicals. One of his books was All That is Sacred is Profane: A Pagan Guide to Marxism. In this work, Wildermuth tried to make a Marxian understanding of capitalism understandable to pagans. However, he did not try to make Neopaganism attractive to Marxists. That’s what my book is about – The Magickal Enchantment of Materialism.

What is Sociohistorical Paganism?

Sociohistorical Neopaganism has no inconsistency with the tradition of dialectical materialism. It understands that both nature and society are products of the dialectical forces of Darwinian natural selection, combined with chance and – with the emergence of the human species – teleonomy (the internal planning of the human species). It also understands human society as an evolving process riddled with class contradiction tensions between the structure and superstructure of society which result in qualitative leaps in political organization and economic systems. It accepts uncertainty as a way of life. Opposites are understood as polar. Because of the conflict between opposites, a new higher emergent synthesis comes about historically, socially and psychologically

Sociohistorical Neopaganism is inclusive of all socialist groups, and welcomes dialogue with Atheopagans, soft and hard polytheists, as well as Evangelical atheists (of which hardline Marxists are one type). The similarities and differences between evangelical atheists, Atheopagans, soft and hard polytheists is the subject of the first chapter of my book.

We respect the process philosophy of Whitehead, Hartshorne, and David Ray Griffin in their attempt to argue that there is an internality in nature all the way down. This does not make us panpsychists since we believe there is an internality (what Whitehead called prehensions) long before there was any consciousness in nature. We believe with Engels that there is a dialectic in nature that goes all the way back to subatomic particles, and that evolution must be understood as a spiral with ever-new emergent properties emerging from conflict. Western humanity’s conception of heaven and hell are sociological projection of alienated humanity. When and if socialism becomes predominant in the world, it will approximate heaven on earth. This will go a long way towards dissolving infantile notions of heaven as a place to be taken care of or a hell as a place to suffer.

Unlike all other groups, sociohistorical pagans are committed to discovering a fifth stage of cognitive development beyond Piaget’s formal operations. Originally called “dialectical operations” by Klaus F. Riegal, preliminary work has been done by Michael Basseches Dialectical Thinking in Adult Development and Otto Laske Dialectical Thinking for Integral Leaders. A fifth stage of cognitive development will be necessary to synthesize Marxism and Neopaganism in creating a socialist future.

Sociohistorical Neopagans have big plans for rituals. Following the lead of Starhawk and Z Budapest, sociohistorical paganism wishes to incorporate ritual, not only into specific protests and strikes, but also into an ongoing political practice. In addition, we attempt to do once again what the French revolutionaries did: change calendars and populate them with socialist holidays, socialist birthdays, pilgrimages, and rites of passage. We want to bring theatrical practice and collective imagination to socialism.

Unlike so many hardline Marxists, we want to live completely in the present. We believe that the choice for anyone joining us is not made as a result of guilt or morality, but simply that as people we are irresistible. People want to be like us and want to be part of what we are cooking up. For us, altered states of consciousness in a magical ritual is not some kind of monolithic experience of all members. Different social classes will have different altered states because of their class position. Rituals producing altered states will be opportunities to work through some of the class conflicts between working class, middle class, and upper middle class participants.

Unlike any other Neopagan group, our perception of reality will depend on the kind of society we come from and the point in history we which we live. As I have said in a previous book, From Earthspirits to Sky Gods the primitive magic-mythology in tribal societies will be very different from the secondary magic of agricultural states. The difference between the high magic of Renaissance Italy is very different from the low magic of witchcraft, as you will see in Chapter 21 of my book.

Neopagan Marxists work with other pagans’ gods and goddesses psychologically and sociologically, even though for us, these gods and goddesses are not ontologically real. Ghosts, ancestor spirits, and earth spirits can be claimed by Atheopagans and Jungians to be psychological projections. For us they are also sociological and historical projections of human social life and the differences between classes. The characteristics of gods and goddesses – that they all have strengths and weaknesses – are projections that are worth working with but with the understanding that there is a danger of reification. Humanity can have gods, but the gods cannot have us. The characteristics of the gods and goddesses, their identification as departments of life, should be worked in as part of our socialist plans. For example, rituals to the god Hermes could accompany socialist transportation meeting plans. Rituals to Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, accompany the meetings of socialist farmers.

We agree with hardline Marxists that consciousness cannot be reduced to the brain, but we disagree with some other pagans that consciousness is rooted in nature or in a spiritual world. After the existence of the brain and a central nervous system, consciousness arises (as in bonobos and chimps) as the result of toolmaking, social life, and culture that is the inheritance of social animals. However, self-reflective consciousness is the result of the development of a sociohistorical envelope wrapped around the Earth over the biosphere, which Vernadsky and Chardin called the noosphere. Self-reflective consciousness is rooted in sociohistorical activity in creating and sustaining the noosphere.

Lastly, historical sacred oppression is very important to us. Like Neopagan feminist witches, we don’t forget nor forgive what Christianity did during the witch hunts. Neither do we forget nor forgive what the Christians did to the Alexandrian library and how the Church terrorized the likes of Bruno, Galileo and Spinoza. We reject any reconciliation with Protestants, Catholics, Jews and the whole patriarchal 5000-year albatross. Neither are we seduced by Eastern mysticism, whether it be Hindu or Buddhist, cousins of the Western patriarchal family. As a feminist titled one of her plays many years ago, Your 5000 Years Are Up. As sociohistorical Neopagans, we neither forgive nor forget. We will treat the rulers of patriarchy with the same sacred hatred that we treat the capitalists in the secular world. Far from being an advance in sacred life, as many traditional Marxists think, Christianity is a slave religion, a degeneration of a once vital pagan love of life.

What is Magick and What’s With the “k”?

The word “magic” means many things to many people. The technical breakdown of the word is to shape or make vigorous. In this book magic is not a) a secular art of creating perceptual illusions as in stage magic. Neither is it a literal individual and group technique that can directly impact physical reality. What I am calling magickal is a socio-psychological technique for altering individual and group consciousness through ritual by saturating the senses through the arts of singing, dancing, and the use of guided visualization. At its best there is nothing superstitious, reified or escapist in this. As I describe in my book, The Magickal Enchantment of Materialism it can be a guide towards group and individual evolution.

Genesis of this Book

This book really snuck up on me. Over the last five years I have been writing articles for our website, Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism. In some of these articles I pointed out how religion, nationalism and sports were very big for working class people, but that Marxists had failed miserably to understand what the appeal was, let alone what socialists could do about it. In later articles, I identified rituals, the non-superstitious use of symbols and making of talismans as tools for creating, socialist altered states of consciousness. It wasn’t until the past 15 months that I realized I had written enough articles that I could turn them  into a book. Furthermore, I realized that I could add four chapters about magick from my previous books. One chapter is on the place and misplace of goddesses in the Stone and Metal ages. Another chapter is on the differences between primitive magic, secondary magic and religion that was also part of my book Power in Eden. Finally, I included a discussion of high magic in early modern Europe. One chapter was on Renaissance magick as seen through the eyes of Jungian James Hillman. The other chapter was how the Protestant religion, mechanistic science and commercial capitalism teamed up against the high magick of Paracelsus, Bruno, John Dee and the low magick of witchcraft. Both these chapters came out of my book Forging Promethean Psychology.

My Literary Sources

In this section I only want to draw from the books that have most influenced my thinking about this subject. The first is Starhawk’s book The Spiral Dance which I read in the early 1980s. Next was  Margot Adler’s great book Drawing Down the Moon which gave me a historical window into the enchanting world of Neopaganism. Throughout the 1980s I read books by Israel Regardie which were excellent in combining magickal work on the Tree of Life with psychology. He saw magick as applied psychology with nothing supernatural about it. Around 1990 I met Madonna Sophia Compton and read her book Archetypes on the Tree of Life. She taught me how to apply the Tree of Life to actual daily practice to the work on psychological problems. I had my own solitary practice for some time. Since the middle of the 1990s, until about two years ago I turned to other projects. But in 2020, my partner Barbara and I joined the Seattle Atheist Church. One of the board members really wanted to get more ritual into our group. We wound collaborating on a Fall ritual by changing the liturgy and making it more magickal. For me this meant introducing Neopaganism into the Church. This led me to start an Atheopagan book club in which we read Atheopaganism by Mark Green; Godless Paganism, edited by John Halstead and Wakeful World by Emma Restall Orr.

Why I Wrote this Book

The purpose of this book is not to convince Neopagans that Marxism is a worthy enterprise. Neither is it to convince Marxists to become Neopagans and leave Marxism behind. Rather it is to convince Marxists that Neopagan practice might breathe charm, heart, play and inspiration into the political practice of Marxism, by bringing in ritual and the arts.

Usually, Marxists naively lump animism and polytheism with Marx’s criticism of religion. The purpose of this book has been to show why this is a mistake. In my three chapters on socialism and my chapter on The Power of Magic I show how Neopagan rituals can be worked into a Marxist political practice. These changes in ritual are far more likely to bring back working-class people to socialism who have stayed away up until now because Marxism in the United States has no heart or soul.

So long as Marxists dismiss religion, nationalism and sports as merely false consciousness, simplistic reasoning or blind superstition we are left out in the cold. Dismissal has not worked before and it will not work now or in the future. Marxists will continue to be alienated from working class people who are religious and at least somewhat patriotic and enthusiastic about professional sports. Neither will the middle and upper middle class explorers of cults, parapsychology or New Age mysticism be drawn to Marxism.

Red Emma was Right: If I can’t Dance, I don’t Want to be Part of Your Revolution

Marxists need to sing, spiral-dance and celebrate socialism on a weekly, monthly, seasonal and yearly basis. On a regular, weekly basis we could have a  “socialist mass” that must answer the same big questions religion asks and answers:

• What are we?
• Where have we been?
• Where are we going?

During these large-scale and small-scale events, we must play and sing to socialist songs from around the world, not just IWW songs. Just as religion has its patron saints, nationalism has its revolutionary heroes and sports has its Hall of Fame. So socialists could regularly commemorate the lives of great socialist leaders, great socialist strikes and revolutionary takeovers of states. Just as religion has its temples, sports has its stadiums and nationalism has its presidential memorials, so Marxists need their own buildings to commemorate, mourn and celebrate the past and anticipate future days of triumph.

The socialist movement is not a night in which all cows are black. Socialism consists of individuals of different classes who have unique lives. Some are red diaper babies and some are new to the movement. In true socialist form, we celebrate the commonalities that all socialists go through from birthdays, coming of age ceremonies to marriages and funerals. During a portion of most socialist rituals, we should acknowledge rites of passage and support people in the milestones of their lives.

To those Marxists who remain cynical I want to remind them that the labor organization of the Knights of Labor in the 19^th century had many rituals celebrating the events of the individual life cycle. My article The Mythology, Ritual and Art of Romantic Socialism discusses all this. The image at the heading of this article comes from the social graphic artist Walter Crane who did much work for the Knights of Labor. In addition, the Communist Party in the United States had many cultural institutions such as book clubs, dances and plays that speak to the ritual-like needs of human beings.  We have a great deal we could learn from them.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Bruce Lerro has taught for 25 years as an adjunct college professor of psychology at Golden Gate University, Dominican University and Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has applied a Vygotskian socio-historical perspective to his three books found on Amazon. He is a co-founder, organizer and writer for Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism. Read other articles by Bruce, or visit Bruce's website.

Lula Goes to China: Three Takeaways

by Ted Snider Posted onApril 24, 2023

On April 14, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva arrived in Beijing for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Since their meeting, Lula, who is the leader of the largest economy and most powerful country in Latin America, has made statements, both with XI and alone, that have surprised and angered the US. Though they may anger the US, they should not surprise them. Lula foreshadowed every one of them during his first two terms as president and during his campaign for his third term.

Lula’s meeting with XI produced three outcomes that threaten US hegemony in a unipolar world. The first is his direct challenge by his support for a multipolar world and multipolar organizations. The second is his advocacy of liberating the world from the controlling role of the US dollar. The third is his support for China’s role as a negotiator for peace in Ukraine.

In his first two terms as president, Lula was a leader of Latin American defiance of US hegemony in America’s backyard. But he was also an important leader of global defiance of US hegemony. Lula was a founding member of BRICS, an international organization made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa whose goal is to balance US hegemony and create a multipolar world.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone, then, that Lula and XI agreed to foster a multipolar world and to further build BRICS. XI said that "China and Brazil are resolved to . . . practice true multilateralism [and to] work for a more just and equitable international governance system." Lula echoed that resolution, saying that "Brazil is committed to building closer relations with China from the strategic perspective of shaping a just and equitable international order." He then clearly stated that "[t]he two sides both uphold multilateralism" before promising that "Brazil stands ready to work with China to strengthen strategic coordination in . . . BRICS and other multilateral institutions."

One of the mechanisms of multipolarity is weakening the hegemony of the US by weakening the hegemony of the US dollar. Most international trade is conducted in dollars, and most foreign exchange reserves are held in dollars. That privileged position of the dollar allows it to be very powerfully and quickly weaponized, making the US perhaps the only country in the world that can coerce other countries through the threat of sanctions.

Lula has proposed addressing that threat before. While campaigning in May, Lula pointed out that "We don’t have to depend on the dollar" before advancing the solution that "we will create a Latin American currency."

While in China, Lula addressed that threat again. "Why should every country have to be tied to the dollar for trade?" he asked. "Who decided the dollar would be the [world’s] currency?" And once again, Lula has advanced a solution. In March, Brazil and China each assigned one of their banks to conduct their bilateral trade in the Brazilian real and the Chinese yuan, escaping the US dollar.

But Lula went beyond bilateral trade and suggested a multipolar solution. “Why can’t a bank like the BRICS bank have a currency to finance trade between Brazil and China, between Brazil and other BRICS countries?" he asked. "Today, countries have to chase after dollars to export, when they could be exporting in their own currencies.”

The BRICS bank, or The New Development Bank, "is the product of a partnership among BRICS countries with a view to creating a world with less poverty, less inequality and more sustainability,” Lula has explained. Lula has been critical of the International Monetary Fund, accusing it of "asphyxiating countries’ economies." The BRICS bank offers an alternative to the IMF. It has reportedly "approved 99 loan projects totaling more than $34 billion, mainly for infrastructure projects, according to China’s Foreign Ministry."

One of the manifestations of this emerging multipolarity is China’s growing role as broker of diplomatic talks. China "blindsided" the US, in the words of CIA Director William Burns, by brokering a region transforming agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Lula has infuriated the US with his criticism of US refusal to negotiate a peace in Ukraine and his support of China’s offer to negotiate a peace in Ukraine.

In a joint statement following their talks, Lula and XIinsisted that negotiations were "the only viable way out of the crisis" in Ukraine. Lula further irritated the US, who has rejected China’s efforts to help broker a peace, by supporting their efforts. Brazil says in the joint statement that they "positively received the Chinese proposal, which offers reflections conducive to the search for a peaceful way out of the crisis."

Lula has also proposed a joint effort, or a “peace club” that could include BRICS members China, India and Brazil and possibly Indonesia. Indonesia has been a leader in the nonaligned world and was recently welcomed as guests at the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting. In the joint statement, China said they "welcomed Brazil’s efforts toward peace." In an appeal to wider multipolarity, XI and Lula "appealed to more countries to play a constructive role for a political settlement of the Ukraine crisis."

Brazil has suggested before that Lula and BRICS could play an important role in negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine. They have said that negotiations must include the European Union and United State with the participation of China. Lula’s former foreign minister, Celso Amorim, has said that "Brazil can also be an important country, whose voice resonates in the developing world," adding that "The BRICS as a group could help."

But the comment of Lula’s that most infuriated the U S was his criticism that the US was encouraging the war instead of negotiating the peace. While in Beijing, Lula said that "The United States needs to stop encouraging war and start talking about peace." He later said that both Russia and Ukraine had decided to go to war. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby fired back at Lula, accusing that he "substantively and rhetorically approached this issue by suggesting that the United States and Europe are somehow not interested in peace or that we share responsibility for the war. In this case, Brazil is parroting Russian and Chinese propaganda without at all looking at the facts."

Once again, though Lula’s comments may anger Washington, they should not surprise them. Lula has always held both Russia and the US responsible. In a May 4 interview, while campaigning, Lula told Time that "Putin shouldn’t have invaded Ukraine." But he then added, "But it’s not just Putin who is guilty. The US and the E.U. are also guilty. What was the reason for the Ukraine invasion? NATO? Then the US and Europe should have said: ‘Ukraine won’t join NATO.’ That would have solved the problem."

He has also always criticized the Biden administration for "encouraging the war" instead of "talking about peace." In his May interview, Lula said, "I don’t think [Biden] has taken the right decision on the war between Russia and Ukraine. The US has a lot of political clout. And Biden could have avoided [the war], not incited it. He could have talked more, participated more. Biden could have taken a plane to Moscow to talk to Putin. This is the kind of attitude you expect from a leader. To intervene so that things don’t go off the rails. I don’t think he did that.”

Lula’s meeting with XI resulted in statements in support of a multipolar world, including escaping the monopoly of the US dollar and its great potential to be weaponized; in support of China, BRICS and other countries in a multipolar world negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine; and in criticism of the US for encouraging war instead of peace. All of these statements have, predictably, angered the US. But they should not have surprised them.

Ted Snider is a regular columnist on US foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets.

Learning Nothing from the Iraq War

20 Years Later, Basic Truths Remain Unspoken

by William J. Astore Posted onApril 24, 2023

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.

What has America learned from the colossal failure of the Iraq War? Not what it should have learned, notes historian (and retired U.S. Army colonel) Greg Daddis at War on the Rocks. Daddis recently attended a 20-year retrospective symposium on the Iraq War, where he heard two distinctive narratives. As he put it:

Most, if not all, veterans of “Iraqi Freedom” told an inward-facing story focusing on tactical and operational “lessons” largely devoid of political context. Meanwhile, Iraqi scholars and civilians shared a vastly different tale of political and social upheaval that concentrated far more on the costs of war than on the supposed benefits of US interventionism.

In short, the US view of the Iraq War remains insular and narcissistic. The focus is on what US troops may have gotten wrong, and how the military could perform better in the future. It’s about tactical and operational lessons. In this approach, Iraq and the Iraqi people remain a backdrop to American action on the grand stage. Put differently, the Iraqis are treated much like clay for Americans to mold or discard should they refuse to behave themselves under our hands.

So the “lessons” for America focus on how to become better, more skilled, manipulators of the “clay” at hand. Issues of right and wrong aren’t addressed. The morality or legality of war isn’t questioned. And Iraqis themselves, their suffering, their plight, even their say in determining their own futures within their country, is pretty much dismissed as irrelevant. And the same is largely true when considering the Vietnam War or the Afghan War; we matter, they don’t, even when we’re fighting in their country and spreading enormous destruction in undeclared and illegal wars.

As Mike Murry, a Vietnam veteran who comments frequently at this site, has said: you can’t do a wrong thing the right way. America’s Vietnam War was wrong; the Iraq War was wrong. There was no “right” way to do these wars. Yet, far too often, U.S. military officers and veterans, joined by far too many Americans who lack military experience, want to focus on how to wage a wrong war in a better, smarter, often more ruthless, way

Indeed, the narrative at times is reduced to “We lost because we weren’t ruthless enough, or we were about to win until the US military was betrayed.” I wrote about this back in 2007 after I heard Senator John McCain speak on PBS. Basically, his point was that if America lost the Iraq War (which we already had), it wouldn’t be the US military’s fault. It would be the fault of anyone who questioned the war. McCain, in other words, was spouting yet another exculpatory stab-in-the-back myth.

What can we learn from the Iraq War, then? Let’s start with these basic lessons: Don’t fight a war based on governmental lies and unfounded fears. Don’t fight illegal and immoral wars. Don’t fight undeclared wars. Don’t meddle in the societies of other people where you are seen as invaders and about which you are ignorant. Don’t wage war, period, unless the domestic security of the US is truly threatened.

Those seem like the right lessons to me, not lessons about how to recognize insurgencies or how to respond more quickly to asymmetries like IEDs and ambushes.

In sum, learn this lesson: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, were and are countries with rich pasts and proud peoples who were not about to submit to American invaders and agendas, no matter how well-intentioned those invaders believed or advertised themselves to be.

William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools. He writes at Bracing Views.