ALB
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If Malcolm X had that would have been unfair as none of Obama’s ancestors had been slaves working on a plantations in the US.
Recent podcast on the Bund in Poland in the inter world war years of the last century which explains the rationale of their opposition to the Zionist project of setting up a “Jewish Homeland” in Palestine. Their view was that Jewish people should stay were they were and work to better conditions there — that was their homeland — in theory through socialism but in practice through pro-worker reforms within capitalism.
There is a transcript there too.
Interesting but I wonder why those who edited and collated the results of their experiment left in the mistake that robot was the Greek word for slave though they did question it. Perhaps to show that robots can make mistakes?
According to this, the word robot was thought up in 1920 by someone speaking Czech (did someone mishear Greek for Czech?);
https://www.npr.org/2011/04/22/135634400/science-diction-the-origin-of-the-word-robot
I was at a meeting on Zoom yesterday evening organised by the local Humanists addressed by a speaker from the Black NonBelievers (speaking from Atlanta). It was an interesting talk in itself. She referred to the “Black” community and to only “women of colour”. I see from Wikipedia that this is a feminist thing, probably to get round the “latino/latina” problem. But the Wiki entry also says that it covers other “NonWhites” (to use terminology of apartheid era South Africa) and not just “Blacks”.
This reminded me of this statement quoted by Wiki from a Labour Party Black Section from in the 1980s (the heyday if the Looney Left) to justify counting people from Cyprus as black;
”Black” is a political concept. It is used to include all racially oppressed minorities. Each geographical area, therefore, is likely to reflect its own “black” communities. In most areas this will inevitably mean people of Afro-Caribbean or Asian descent. However, in Haringey, forexample, Cypriots have chosen to be, and are, involved in local Black Sections.
Labour Party Black Sections, 1985
That’s not a good term. Personally, I don’t like it at all as it’s so obviously artificial and right on. At one time the word used in the US by everybody was “Negro”, then it was “Colored” (also in respectable use on Britain till the 1970s) as still in NAACP, now it’s “Black” or “Afro-American” . If you want to be pedantic neither is strictly accurate but they are not so artificial and pretentious as “people of colour”. Incidentally, to complicate things quite a few of those called “Latinos” would otherwise be categorised as “Black”.
As Marcos has pointed out, all this “racial” classification is a mess and absurd. Everybody is “mixed race” insofar as in prehistoric times there were separate “races” of humans, including “Europeans” (mixed even in historical times with people from Central Asia or from the African side of the Mediterranean).
The best term for all of us is “human being”.
Where the view that “men in general oppress women in general” can lead:
[From the part behind the paywall] “Feminists often treat misandry as a joke. I found it interesting to explain that we have good reason to reach that point,” she said. In the book, she notes that “allegations of misandry are a … way of silencing the sometimes violent and always legitimate anger of the oppressed towards their oppressors.”After all, wouldn’t you hate those who you thought were oppressing you?I wonder if Daniel De Leon spoke Papiamento since he came from an island where it’s spoken. But it sounds as if it might be at least in part a Latin language?
I see it is not politically correct to talk about “Latinos” any more. You have to say “Latinxs” (but how do you pronounce it?). One way round the problem that in Spanish a “Latino” would be a man. I am not sure that “Latinx” will catch on though. President De Gaulle used to get round the problem by beginning his speeches: Français, Françaises.
I can see, though, that it must be odd for a Spanish-speaking woman to have to refer to herself in English as a “Latino”. If you want to invent a new word to get round the problem I would have thought that a “Latin” plural “Latins” would be more natural than “Latinx”.
Another cross we have to bear. According to an editorial in today’s Times:
”Extinction Rebellion has allowed a hard core of ideologues and Marxists infiltrators to dictate its agenda.”
and
”It has, like many idealist causes, attracted cynical and opportunist manipulators, the Young Communist League, the Socialist Workers Party and those seeking to infiltrate any movement with anti-capitalist and anti-establishment potential. Their banners outside the printing works on Friday urged ‘Socialism not Extinction’.“
I don’t know to what extent this is true — but presumably there is photographic and video evidence for that banner — but we know from experience that this is a tactic that vanguardists like SWP employ all the time. So it is at least plausible but I doubt that they have taken over XR. I imagine in fact that XR leaders and followers welcome their presence on their demonstrations as much as strikers do on their picket lines.
XR’s leaders have shown that they are quite capable of deciding such rash and counter-productive actions on their own, motivated by naive and vague spiritual values.
The Times also reports that XR is split on the issue “as the storm on Twitter shows”. Anybody know anything about this?
I remember too. Also that he stood for President once or twice. Just checked with Wikipedia and it was four times:
”Nader made four bids to become President of the United States, running with the Green Partyin 1996 and 2000 and as an independent in 2004 and 2008. In each campaign, Nader said he sought to highlight under-reported issues and a perceived need for electoral reform. He received nearly 3 million votes during his 2000 candidacy, but also stirred controversy over allegations that his campaign helped Republican candidate George W. Bush win a close election against Democratic candidate Al Gore.”.
He does not seem to be saying Vote Green this time.
Marx and Engels had a different opinion on this at the beginning and at end of their political lives.
In 1845 in some private notes written to clarify their ideas (not published until well after the death of both of them in 1935 under the title The German Ideology) they wrote:
”Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.”
So Revolution precedes Ideas.They still held this view during the bourgeois revolutionary wave in Europe in 1848-9 expecting as the Communist Manifesto stated that the coming bourgeois revolution in Germany would rapidly be followed by a proletarian one, ie could be turned into one.
In what can be called his political testament, as one if his last writings published in 1895 the year he died, Engels wrote an Introduction to a collection of Marx’s articles from the period The Class Struggles in France 1848-1850. In it he noted that all previous revolutions had been minority revolutions and that after the victory the minority split into two, one satisfied with what had been achieved while the other wanted to go further. Marx and himself he wrote had expected this to be repeated in 1848:
“All revolutions of modern times, beginning with the great English Revolution of the seventeenth century, showed these features, which appeared inseparable from every revolutionary struggle. They appeared applicable, also, to the struggle of the proletariat for its emancipation; all the more applicable, since precisely in 1848 there were but a very few people who had any idea at all of the direction in which this emancipation was to be sought. The proletarian masses themselves, even in Paris, after the victory, were still absolutely in the dark as to the path to be taken. And yet the movement was there, instinctive, spontaneous, irrepressible. Was not this just the situation in which a revolution had to succeed, led, it is true, by a minority, though this time not in the interest of the minority, but in the finest interest of the majority? If, in all the longer revolutionary periods, it was so easy to win over the great masses of the people simply by the plausible false representations of the pressing minorities, why should they be less susceptible to ideas which were the truest reflection of their economic condition, which were none other than the clear, rational expression of their needs, of needs not yet understood but merely vaguely felt by them? To be sure, this revolutionary mood of the masses had almost always, and usually very speedily, given way to lassitude or even to a change to the opposite as soon as illusion evaporated and disappointment set in. But what was involved here were not false representations, but the implementation of the most vital interests of the great majority itself, interests which, it is true, were at that time by no means clear to this great majority, but which were bound to become clear to it as their practical implementation proceeded, by their convincing obviousness. And when, as Marx showed in his third article, in the spring of 1850, the development of the bourgeois republic that arose out of the “social” Revolution of 1848 had even concentrated real power in the hands of the big bourgeoisie — monarchistically inclined as it was into the bargain — and, on the other hand, had grouped all the other social classes, peasantry as well as petty bourgeoisie, around the proletariat, so that during and after the common victory, not they but the proletariat grown wise from experience had to become the decisive factor — was there not every prospect then of turning the revolution of the minority into a revolution of the majority?“
So, still Revolution precedes Ideas.
But here’s how Engels answered his question;
“History has proved us wrong, and all who thought like us.”
So, what did he conclude was now the right approach;
“The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of masses lacking consciousness is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in on it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are fighting for, body and soul. The history of the last fifty years has taught us that. But in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long, persistent work is required.”
In other words, Ideas (thrown up by capitalism of course) must precede Revolution. Just what we have always argued.
Now you’ve had a preview of one of the articles in the November Socialist Standard that will mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Engels. But it already existed as a ready-made answer to Johnny’s question.
True there is no free press. As Marx even before he became a socialist and was still a bourgeois democrat pointed out. the first condition for a free press is that the press should not be a money-making business. A condition that is certainly not met by any of the national newspapers ( not just the Murdoch group).
But a second condition must be that the neither the state nor anyone else tries to stop anyone expressing their opinion, however obnoxious or mistaken.
XR are arguing in effect that the situation is so dangerous that this condition should be suspended if only for a day.
Not an intelligent move but one that will further piss people off with them.
Incidentally there was a reference in that link to “the rapidly-heating planet”. Fortunately it’s only an incrementally-heating planet but of course even this is a move in the wrong direction and a matter for concern.
Here’s the video of the event yesterday evening:
Those in favour of rehabilitating Kautsky used the argument that he had had a great influence on Lenin. I am not sure that that is the best approach to take but, given the background of the panellists, was understandable. Some interesting and relevant points were made. Even the International Bolshevik had done some homework on Kautsky though he breathlessly defended the idea of an elite vanguard party (of course),
Anyway, judge for yourself.
