Bulletin N° 643
Subject: ON CLASS-IN-ITSELF
AND CLASS-FOR-ITSELF, AND THE
CHANGING GESTALT OF SOCIAL CLASS REALTIONSHIPS TODAY.
31 January 2015
Grenoble, France
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
Many
if not most American citizens today conclude that political leadership has
betrayed their trust. [Approximately half of the population qualified to vote
in the US do not vote.] But how could it be otherwise? The solution is not to
choose new and better Representatives; the solution is to organize new
political structures at the local level which encourage dialogue and allow
competence to manifest itself publically, in place of backroom agreements. Such
local organizations would soon connect with already existing networks, dealing
with regional, national and global issues, in the form of open-ended dialogues
and debates between ordinary people, rather than sound bites and cynical manipulations
on the part of our ‘representatives’. [For more on direct democracy and participatory
economics, see Michael Albert,
whose indefatigable efforts over the past years include a presentation at the CEIMSA
conference on the Nanterre campus in 2012, where we discussed ‘community
organizing’.
First, material cause is determined by the material constitution of the object/event under study. In this case, human needs–food, clothing, shelter, etc… must be satisfied under existing conditions of inequality and relative scarcity.
Next, formal cause consists of the influence of the shape or appearance of the object under study. The human capacity for creativity and social co-operation is a quality that is recognized in the thing under examination.
Aristotle’s third type of cause, efficient cause, is the interaction with a foreign agency, which exists outside the thing/event being changed or moved. Here we have the employer (the non-producing owner of capital) – an agency whose only claim to legitimacy is the tautological argument that he ‘owns’ the means of production. This agency recognizes that the workers’ material conditions and human qualities are sufficient to successfully organize production by transforming material inequalities into opportunities and the human capacities for creativity and social co-operation into acceptance and obedience; he thereby gains control of the conditions of labor (for better or for worse) and shapes the mental and physical state of his employees, whom he recognizes as being predictably ready to subject themselves to exploitation in order to obtain the material necessities of life, provided that they can find no other means to satisfy these needs.
Aristotle’s last category, final cause, is the end towards which the movement directs itself, that for which it was brought into existence. In the case of labor exploitation, the extraction of surplus value –separated into private profits and further investments—is the final end. This requires the ready submission of men, women and children to accept only a portion of the value they create, forfeiting the remainder to the ‘owners’.
The goal of providing necessary goods and services for society is of lesser importance in this system of labor exploitation, as can be attested everyday by the high levels of poverty, homelessness, unemployment, etc…, not to mention the wasteful wars which nevertheless produce immediate profits to capitalist investors and an immense accumulation of capital in the hands of a few. The very real needs of society continue to go unmet, as labor exploitation intensifies and new authoritarian labor management relations are created to prepare the labor force to produce higher profits for the owners of capital at the cost of human dignity and the degradation of work, itself.
We conclude this CEIMSA Bulletin with the announcement of a new
collection of articles by our long-time friend and colleague, Richard D. Wolff, which was recently published by Democracy at Work:
Capitalism's Crisis
Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown, 2010-2014
[The crisis that erupted in 2007 continues to
inflict immense and uneven costs on modern society. "Recovery"
becomes yet another luxury that bypasses the vast majorities in capitalist
nations. The articles and essays gathered in Capitalism’s
Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown 2010-2014 explore
the specifics of the deepening crisis as they became clear, caught the public’s
attention, or defined a particular historic moment. The organization of the
essays, at once topical but also chronological, seeks to enable readers to
grasp the crisis as a moving, evolving stage in capitalism’s history.]
The
9 items below will expose CEIMSA readers to several violent
contradictions in our contemporary world and the yeoman efforts of some public
intellectuals to begin to resolve them and to inspire strategies for improvements.
Item A., from Professor
Edward S. Herman, is an article fist published by Z Magazine on “Speaking Truth to Power, or to the
Powerless?”
Item
B.,
from US Congressman Rep. Alan Grayson, is a call for
support against the "Trade Promotion Authority", the "Fast
Track" to Hell !
Item
C.,
from Information Clearing House,
is an article by Pepe Escobar on the immanent destruction of the House of
Saud once their usefulness to US policy expires.
|
Item D., from The Real News Network,
is an interview with middle-east specialist Ali Al-Ahmed discussing Saudi Arabia's strategy in the Middle
East |
Item
E.,
from Information Clearing House,
is a report on ISIS receiving funding from the United States.
Item
F.,
from Democracy Now!, is a report on the
recent attempt by CodePink to
arrest Henry Kissinger for War Crimes, while
he spoke in the US capitol.
Item
G.,
from Information Clearing House,
is a series of reports from the war in Ukraine.I
Item
H.,
from Information Clearing House,is a review by Finian Cunningham of the new film ‘The
American Sniper’.
Item
I.,
from TruthOut, is a statement by Noam Chomsky on the corporate newspaper coverage of the film,
“American Sniper” and its political significance.
Item
J.,
from New
York Times, is a warning by Joseph
E. Stiglitz that the TPP is about to conclude an
agreement that will endanger health care worldwide.
And
finally, we invite CEIMSA readers to watch the discussion of the new
documentary film by award-winning director Stanley
Nelson, covering the origins of the Black Panther Party :
"Vanguard of the Revolution": New Film
Chronicles Rise of Black Panthers & FBI’s War Against
Them
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/30/vanguard_of_the_revolution_new_film
Sincerely,
Francis
Feeley
Professor
of American Studies
University
of Grenoble-3
Director
of Research
University
of Paris-Nanterre
Center
for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and Social Movements
The
University of California-San Diego
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/
__________________
A.
From Edward S, Herman :
Date: 25 January 2015
Subject: Nuggests from a Nuthouse, Z Magazine Feb. 2015 .
Nuggets from the Nuthouse
by Edward S. Herman
Speaking Truth to Power, or to the
Powerless?
One of the clichés repeated often by liberals and leftists, and
which always rubs me the wrong way, is that we
must “speak truth to power.” But those with power usually already know the
truth, but avoid it because it’s contrary to their interests, or they don’t
want to know it or hear about it, for the same reason. Informing the powerless
is far more useful as they may not know the truth or may be confused about it,
which helps make them inactive and unable to pursue their own interests. After
all, it is an important function of the mainstream media to obfuscate the truth
in their service to the elite interests that dominate them—to manufacture
consent to programs that serve those elite interests. The powerless need facts
and frameworks of analysis that will allow them to understand and evaluate
outsourcing, tax evasion, privatization, union busting, and free market
principles that helps sustain these policies and ideologies.. The powerful
don’t need such intellectual resources and the dominant media don’t provide
them. In short, we need more truth to the powerless, not the powerful, and we
need to empower the powerless to speak for themselves.
Who Are We?
This question has been posed often by political leaders and
mainstream pundits, who regularly claim that
“we” don’t torture, and if some of us have engaged in it this was an
aberration. But it wasn’t an aberration. It is another one of those things,
like aggression, that is as American as apple pie. Our government and many of
its agents, including prison-keepers as well as military personnel, have
engaged in torture and taught it to others for many decades. In Noam Chomsky’s
and my 1979 book The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism
(Haymarket Books, 2nd ed., 2014), we provided a Frontispiece entitled “The Sun
and Its Planets: Countries Using Torture on an Administrative Basis in the
1970s, With Their Parent-Client Affiliations.” This chart has 26 lines running
from the Sun (the United States) to its
torture-employing clients, showing for each the dollar figures on military aid
and numbers of security personnel trained by the U.S. It is noted also that only
eight other countries in the world were large-scale torturers in that era.
This was the period when the United States sponsored and supported
a string of National Security States in Latin America, rightwing
military regimes that were notorious for death squads, murder and torture,
often carried out in numerous torture centers (at one point there were 60 in
Argentina and 33 in Colombia) . In its 1975 Report on Torture, Amnesty
International noted that torture, “which for the last two hundred or three
hundred years has been no more than a historical curiosity has suddenly
developed a life of its own and become a social cancer.” Ironically, AI also
noted that this was largely a Free World phenomenon,
with 80 percent of the “urgent” torture reports now coming from Latin
America, while torture in the Soviet Union and its clients had declined since
the death of Stalin.
So “we” have long been in the torture business, and will surely
continue to revive it when national security crises appear and pose their usual
allegedly dire threats. And we can see that even when torture so clearly
violates both international and domestic law, as it has in the last 13 years,
those responsible are not punished, which tells us, and tells potential and
future torturers, that torturers will always be above the law. In fact, while
Obama and company declare that “we” are not torturers, Obama not only refuses
to prosecute them in violation of his constitutional oath to enforce the law,
he has not ended the “rendition” of prisoners to
allies and clients who will torture them. So hypocrisy and possibly
self-deception help protect the torture regime.
It should be noted that “we” is a deceptive word, regularly used
by the powerful and their agents to pretend that what the government does is
what the general population wants done. But in a failing democracy like ours, the distinction between the elite and
commoners, between the 1 percent and 99 percent, is important. Polls have
regularly shown that the U.S. majority want a
smaller military budget and more resources for education and other civil
society functions. Right now they oppose more aggressive
actions in the Middle East that leaders and pundits of the
Permanent War parties are pushing. Polls on the public’s view of torture are
variable and uncertain, but they are greatly
affected by the modes of questions, which often make the issue simply one of
whether torture “works,” rather than the legal and moral aspects of the issue.
It is of interest that the torture-supporting elite struggles valiantly to keep
the details of torture secret, suggesting their own doubts about public
support. But it is evident that the managers and clear supporters of torture
are a minority, and probably a small minority. It is also true, however, that
the public does not make an issue of torture,
and the recent disclosures have not created a groundswell of demand for
prosecution of torturers in accord with the law.
Paul Krugman in Descent
Paul Krugman has produced hundreds of
very good columns in the New York Times, but he has run out of steam,
becoming a bit repetitive, but more regrettably branching into foreign policy
issues concerning which he lacks expertise. It is notable that in his
three recent columns that deal with Russia, Putin and the threat of war he
cannot escape the mainstream party line, which is followed by the New York
Times editors and journalists, and which make him look foolish. In his initial foray. “Why We Fight Wars” (Aug. 17, 2014),
he argued that wars are almost always not worth the cost, but he failed to note
that while the society as a whole may suffer losses particular groups like the
very large and powerful military-industrial complex may do exceedingly well.
This was a surprising failure to break down “We,”
especially as Krugman had come to recognize the
importance of class and class war in economic policy.
He did trace the Ukraine crisis to internal Russian factors —“the
roots of the Ukraine crisis may lie in the faltering performance of the Russian
economy…Russian growth has been sputtering—and you could argue that the Putin
regime needed a distraction…” He makes the same point in his followup piece on “Conquest Is for Losers” (Dec. 22, 2014),
although he also seems to relate it there to Putin being an ex-KGB officer and thus.a “professional thug” for whom “violence and
threats of violence …are what he knows.” But although the “thug’s” “aggression”
in the Crimea cost no lives, while the invasion of Iraq cost a million lives,
there are no negative adjectives applied to the leaders responsible for
so many death by the loyal Krugman. And for Krugman it was not internal factors that drove the United
States into Iraq (and Krugman does not mention
Afghanistan, or the numerous other countries bombed by his country on a daily
basis), Iraq was a “war of choice” designed to “demonstrate
U.S. power,” and resting on neo-con ideology. No
military-industrial complex here nor vested interests in war; no pro-Israel
lobby. No mention of the viciousness and illegality
of killing vast numbers to “demonstrate power.” No thugs
sponsored either this “war of choice” or the associated torture regime.
Krugman’s title, “Conquest Is for Losers,” runs into the fact that the
United States has been fighting wars continuously for decades. Are we
“losers”? He dodges the question, hiding behind his assault on
Putin, but also satisfying himself with pointing out that although something
like the Iraq War is enormously expensive, and has weakened the United States,
“America is a true superpower, so we can handle such losses”—but Krugman “shudders to think of what might have happened if ‘the real men’ had been given a chance to move on
to other targets.” This is blatant apologetics. We can possibly afford such
losses, but how about the million dead Iraqis and their destroyed society?
Imagine what Krugman would say if the “thug” Putin
had killed a million people and some apologist for him said, “we can
afford these losses but imagine what would have happened if a Stalin was in
power.”
Krugman’s analysis of the
Ukraine crisis and Putin’s and the U.S.’s. role there
is dishonest and incompetent party line propaganda. He calls the takeover of
Crimea “Russian adventurism.” Again the word
usage is instructive—for his own country Iraq was
a “war of choice,” not adventurism. He also ignores the adventuresome U.S.
involvement in the regime change in Ukraine that removed the elected president
and replaced him with an amenable client government. He also ignores the deeper and essential context of NATO’s and the U.S.’s
gradual and threatening encirclement of Russia and placement of
missile-launchers within miles of the Russian borders. In an article in the
establishment journal Foreign Affairs, John Mearsheimer
writes: “The
taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger
strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West….
Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement,
and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while
their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion. For
Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and
pro-Russian president
-- which he rightly labeled a ‘coup’-- was the final straw. He responded by
taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working
to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West.” (“Why the Ukrainian Crisis Is the West’s Fault,” Foreign Affairs,
Sept.-Oct. 2014). Krugman misses this crucial
line of analysis, in parallel with the fact that authors that advance it are
excluded from reporting or commenting with this
alternative perspective in his paper. So Krugman
offers instead a patriotic mythical history that would be easily refuted by any
competent high school student.
It is
interesting to note how Krugman tries to exonerate
and even vindicate Obama in this story of villainy and war. He blames the
neo-cons for the Iraq war, but even they are
never designated thugs or criminals—they just made a badly mistaken, not
criminal “war of choice” that cost a lot of U.S. resources. He ignores the fact
that Obama continued the Iraq war for years, escalated the Afghan war, greatly
enlarged drone assassination attacks in half a dozen different countries, and
carried out a war against Libya. While trying to distance Obama from the
neo-cons he ignores the fact that the State Department’s Victoria Nuland, who had been on the scene in engineering the
February 2014 coup in Ukraine, is a neo-con, and
his team of Susan Rice, Samantha Power and Hillary Clinton are de facto
neo-cons and war-mongers. There is overlap and continuity between the Bush and
Obama regimes.
In
his recent “Tidings of Comfort” ( Dec. 26, 2014), Krugman
closes with a homage to Obama’s foreign policy, saying that its attempt
“to contain threats like Vladimir Putin’s Russia or the Islamic State rather
than rushing into military confrontation, is looking pretty good.” That
Russia’s was a defensive move against the expanding NATO and aggressive U.S.,
and that it is NATO and the U.S. that need containing, is outside Krugman’s and his paper’s chauvinistic and ideological
framework. That the Islamic State arose out of the debris created by U.S.
violence is also in a non-Krugman realm, as is
recognition that Obama was trying hard to go to war with Syria not long ago,
only to be driven back by public opinion and
Putin’s diplomatic intervention. Obama has been aiding his Kiev client to
pacify Eastern Ukraine and avoid a peaceful settlement of that conflict; he has
been fighting an economic war against Russia and mobilizing NATO for greater
violence; and he has contributed to war hysteria in his own country. He hasn’t
“rushed into military confrontation,” he is moving that way more moderately,
like the moderate Warrior President that he is.
__________________
B.
From Rep. Alan Grayson :
Date: 25 January 2015
Subject: The Fast
Track to Hell.
|
__________________
C.
From Information Clearing House
:
Date: 29 January 1915
Subject: Turning
wheels within wheels to achieve what?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
The
real ‘Masters of the Universe’ who run the ‘Empire of Chaos’ want the House of
Saud to do most of their dirty work against Russia; and in a later stage they
will take care of the “towel heads” .
‘Empire of Chaos’ in the House
Is The House of Saud Starting To Have Second Thoughts
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40852.htm
by Pepe Escobar
__________________
D.
From The Real News Network :
Date: 3 October 1914
Subject: With Friends
like this Who Needs Enemies?
Ali
Al-Ahmed says IS is a key part of Saudi Arabia's
strategy in the Middle East.
|
Is the Islamic
State a Tool of the Saudis? http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12461 |
|
__________________
E.
From Information Clearing House
:
Date: 28 January 1915
Subject: The USA, its
own worst enemy, for corporate profit, of course….
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
Yousaf
al Salafi – allegedly the Pakistan commander of
Islamic State (IS) or Daish – has confessed during
investigations that he has been receiving funds through the United States.
Startling
Revelations: ISIS Operative Confesses To Getting Funds Via
US
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40840.htm
by Naveed Miraj
__________________
F.
From Democracy Now ! :
Date: 30 January 1915
Subject: The
Attempted Arrest of Henry Kissinger for War Crimes.
CodePink Attempts
to "Arrest" Henry Kissinger for War Crimes in Vietnam, Laos, Chile
and East Timor
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/30/codepink_attempts_to_arrest_henry_kissinger
__________________
G.
From Information Clearing House :
Date: 28 January 1915
Subject: Ukraine and
the US war machine.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
1) US military on the ground in Ukraine is a significant escalation, far beyond the previous deployment of additional US and NATO troops in neighboring Poland and the Baltics.
Foreign
Troops in Ukraine? You Bet!
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40837.htm
by Daniel McAdams
2) The worse the Junta's military defeats, the higher the risk of a major false flag.
War Is
Going Badly for Kiev. Which Makes It All the More Dangerous
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40836.htm
by The Saker
3) Ukraine's Armed Forces try to storm Donetsk Int. Airport and get annihilated by Novorossiya Armed Forces headed by Givi, Motorola, and others. Full, uncensored version [not for the faint of heart].
The Reality
And Horror Of War
Ukrainian POW's Face NAF Commander Givi and the Fury of Donetsk Residents
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40834.htm
Graphic Video
4) The project is currently overseen and under the responsibility…of the US ambassador to Ukraine.
"MUST
WATCH: Nov 2013 (pre-Maidan!):
Ukraine Deputy has proof of USA staging civil war in Ukraine".
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40832.htm
Video and Transcript
__________________
H.
From Information Clearing House :
Date: 28 January 1915
Subject: Review of
the film “American Sniper”.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
Every day, some 20 US military veterans
commit suicide, most of them wracked by mental breakdown.
American Sniper and US Doom
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40842.htm
by Finian Cunningham
__________________
I.
From Truth Out :
Date: 28 January 1915
Subject: Review of
the media coverage of the film “American Sniper”.
“Now, that [sniper] mentality helps explain why it’s
so easy to ignore what is most clearly the most extreme terrorist campaign of
modern history, if not ever — Obama’s global assassination campaign, the drone
campaign, which officially is aimed at murdering people who are suspected of
maybe someday planning to harm us.”
Chomsky recommends reading some of the transcripts
with drone operators, calling them "harrowing" in their dehumanizing
treatment of people who are targeted.
The implication is clear and chilling. Are we all,
at least tacitly, American snipers
Noam Chomsky Blasts "American
Sniper" and the Media That Glorify It
__________________
J.
From New York Times :
Date: 30 January 1915
Subject: The Health
Trade.
A secretive group met behind closed doors in New
York this week. What they decided may lead to higher drug prices for you and
hundreds of millions around the world.
Representatives from the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries
convened to decide the future of their trade relations in the so-called
Trans-Pacific Partnership (T.P.P.). Powerful companies appear to have been
given influence over the proceedings, even as full access is withheld from many
government officials from the partnership countries.
Don't
Trade Away Our Health
www.nytimes.com/2015/01/31/opinion/dont-trade-away-our-health.html
by Joseph E. Stiglitz