ALB
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As Mattick was saying:
“an embarrassing, scatterbrained hodge-podge of philosophical, economic and political ideas that defy description and serious criticism.”
This passage from Paul Mattick’s review of one of her books would seem to have some application here too:
”And although Dunayevskaya’s interpretation of Marxian doctrine is occasionally true and eloquent, the book as a whole is an embarrassing, scatterbrained hodge-podge of philosophical, economic and political ideas that defy description and serious criticism.”
Put off by the title “Covid-19. More evidence that capitalism has become a danger to humanity”, I started to read this article thinking it was going to be more ICC millenarianist nonsense about capitalism bringing about the literal “decomposition” of society, but, actually, apart from the tendentious title and a few references to “decomposition”, it’s not all that bad and makes a few good points:
https://en.internationalism.org/content/16810/more-evidence-capitalism-has-become-danger-humanity
Interesting historical article here on how Turkey acquired a strategic region which would have been part of Syria, still a bone of contention between the two states and which could become significant if the war between them becomes “official”
The recent deaths among the Turkish armed forces that have invaded Syria has heightened tensions in the area between Turkey and Russia as each pursues its strategic interests in the East Mediterranean area. Russia to protect its naval base at Tartus in Syria and Turkey its search for offshore oil and territorial expansion to protect its southern border.
Meanwhile, as usual in wars, it is the innocent inhabitants of the area that suffer as they seek to escape the combat zone.
It’s chapter 3 of this book.
Mind you, Morris was a case of a Socialist putting the case for not contesting elections, at least up until the 1890s.
Thanks. That’s good, but I think a more appropriate place to have moved the posts to would have been
Non-serious discussion, joke sharing and anything else.Which is more “academic” and for academics: discussing unproductive labour or discussing whether reality is real? At least they discuss the first down the pub from time to time while Dr Johnson settled the other one 250 years ago by kicking a stone.
“Usually they give us a choice of bad and worse, so we chose bad to avoid worse. This time it was just the worst, so why bother?” Rouhollah, an unemployed engineering graduate from Teheran, said.
Shahram, a conscript on military service, said that all military personnel had been forced to vote, but he had spoilt his ballot.
–from today’s Times.
Not much different from here, then.
By accident we seem to be carrying out an interesting experiment on libcom in the thread on those 1911 articles from the Socialist Standard on anarchism, with you as Mr Nice and me as Mr Nasty, you as the good cop me as the bad cop, which has gone on for more than 60 posts. But the response from dyed-in-the wool anarchists has been the same: hostility. I get accused of being a dogmatic Marxist while you get accused on opportunism.
It makes me wonder if anarchists really are our “fellow travellers” as in the Conference resolution passed last year. Personally, I never thought they were but then we are not expecting to win over dyed-in-the wool anarchists but only those who consider themselves vaguely anarchist and anti-capitalist. There are also those following the debate as by-standers.
In any event, at the present stage of the revolutionary movement, I think it best that each group keeps its independence and puts its own views before other workers.
Well, well, another of the mighty falls but at least he recognises the need for some form of political action, so perhaps he is a better anarchist than them.
There is a passage in Kohn’s articles saying that in France anarchists also sometimes voted :
“They condemn political action but vote for politicians who promise Government subsidies for union premises !”
Unfortunately he doesn’t give a source, but I am sure it will have happened.
This is a good read :
https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1884/useful.htm
Great title too.
This classic criticism of classical anarchism, from 1911, has just been added to the Study Guides in the Education section of this site. Stirner, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Jean Grave, they are all dealt with.
Why Socialists Oppose Anarchism. Its Fallacies and Dangers Exposed
Actually, in Britain at least, it is a sociological fact that people do in effect make a distinction between “productive” and “unproductive” workers — and get it wrong.
The most common usage of the term “working class” is those who work with their hands, ie produce something material, while “pen pusher” is a common term of abuse of those who work in offices, ie just shuffle paper. And we have seen “workerist” attitudes and antipathy to theory and “academics” expressed here, In the US too, I think, a distinction is made between “blue collar” and “white collar” workers.
Maybe people aren’t interested in the issue as an aspect of economics but you can’t say that people are not interested in the type of job people do. In fact, people widely judge and judge themselves on the basis of it.
Of course we are all agreed here the Marxian distinction is not a value judgement on people for the job they do. The working class is made up of all those obliged by economic necessity to go out on to the labour market and find an employer to pay them a wage (or salary!), irrespective of what job they do. For those of us who accept the Marxian distinction, it is only a tool for analysing how capitalism works.
