After Paris attacks: Less freedom, more war?

Liam Flenady writes that After Paris attacks: Less freedom, more war?.

Much of the Left inside France have been reluctant to criticise Charlie Hebdo itself, and have not sought to challenge the “Je suis Charlie” slogan.

The magazine is politically mixed and represents different things to different people. It has often been hyper-criticalof the far right, anti-immigrant National Front, but at the same time its “provocative” portrayals of Muslims and of the prophet Mohammed clearly draw upon racist tropes and seems intent on tapping into a general Islamophobic cultural milieu.

The view that Charlie Hebdo is not racist since it also satirises Christianity and French politicians fails to recognise the objective power structures that exist in our societies, which fundamentally determine how the cartoons are viewed.

The front cover of the first edition of Charlie Hebdo since the attack, released on January 14, continues the publication’s poor record, depicting a racially stereotypical image of the prophet Mohammed holding up a “Je suis Charlie” sign, with the headline reading “All is forgiven.”

Guardian journalist Joseph Harker remarked: “In depicting the prophet Muhammad it is deliberately offending the vast majority of muslims around the world.”

In the aftermath of the bloodshed, however, critiquing Charlie Hebdo is not the main task of the day. It can become a distraction from the real issue of how to respond to the attacks.

Instead, in a time when anti-war and anti-imperialist movements in the West are struggling to reassert, the response of the international left to the attacks should be to challenge the mainstream narrative of mere “tolerance” and “Western values”.

Instead, the left should point out that the ongoing imperialist wars and interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere, as well as structural injustices within Western societies, are largely to blame for the rise of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

This must be combined with a defence of freedom of speech and democracy that both condemns the killers and Western government attempts to exploit the violence to push its own undemocratic agenda.

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Freedom of speech is a vital, political necessity for the oppressed minorities. Their voices must be heard. Their needs must be addressed.

However, freedom of speech for the oppressors is a tool of subjudgation.

This is the inherent contradiction in the ideal of freedom of speech.

Historically, freedom of speech was a privilege granted by the rulers.

In ancient Rome, the plebian tribunes had this freedom granted after bitter civil strife. Yet, this freedom was not absolute as the rulers would murder outspoken tribunes with immunity when the tribunes went too far.

At the dawn of Capitalism, this freedom became a right because the nascent capitalist class needed to draw the workers and peasants into the fight against the feudal overlords. Even then, this right was negated by murder and execution as in the fate of Camille Desmoulins, the editor and publisher of Le Vieux Cordelier.

With the victory of the capitalist class, this right was withdrawn from the workers and peasants through legal restrictions and monetary constraints. The legal attack started with the libel laws, then with the sedition laws, and finally with the ant-terrorism laws. The monetary restrictions concern the capital needed to run a press, and to maintain journalists.

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Charlie Hebdo & French ‘Secularism’: Does it really just privilege White Christians?

Mayanthi Fernando reflects on Charlie Hebdo & French ‘Secularism’: Does it really just privilege White Christians?.

Rather than stemming from Muslims’ rejection of Frenchness, then, the supposed impossibility of being a Muslim and being a French citizen is largely generated by the contradictions of French secularism and French citizenship and by the majority’s inability to conceive of Muslims as French.

We should not deny the horror of January 6. But, in its aftermath, rather than uncritically reaffirm French national identity and wring our hands about Muslims’ refusal to integrate, we should use this moment of reflection to understand the various ways in which Muslims are consistently excluded from the nation, and to reassess the narrow bases of what it means to be French.

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White privilege is invisible to white people. They cannot see that their lives are based on racism. They would rather think that their position in society is based on some other atrribute: hard work, intellectual superiority, innate goodness.

Yet these other attributes reinforce racial stereotypes. They encourage to think of other races as being lazy, intellectual inferior, or innately bad. This reasoning follows from the obvious reality that white people have the good things of life while the non-whites do not.

Since white people believe that the system is fair, the fact that non-whites do not have the good things of life means that the non-whites do not deserve them.

Yet the non-white people see the system as unfair because they do work hard, study hard, and be on extremely good behaviour. And still they are denied the good things of life. They see the lies of the white people's system every day.

How, then, to get white people to see that they do live a life of privilege based on their skin colour? There is no immediate material benefit to doing so because many white people will lose out in a completely fair system.

The best solution would be for white people to voluntarily give up their privileges in the spirit of justice. But this will take an enormous amount of spiritual growth for a lot of people.

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Finance & the left

Chris Dillow writes on Finance & the left.

First, financial markets right now are corroborating two big leftist positions. Long-term real interest rates are negative and, given the shape of the yield curve, are expected to stay so for some time.

This tells us two things. One is that markets don't give a toss about government borrowing. Negative interest rates are a strong argument against austerity. The other is that low rates reflect low growth expectations - secular stagnation (pdf) if you will. This is consistent with the Marxian claim that capitalism has run out of oomph, that the relations of production have become fetters on the economy, perhaps because inequality holds back growth.

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Even though there are great unmet human needs like renewable energy, feeding the world, increased mass transport, affordable housin, etc., Capitalism is unable to meet these needs because it is not profitable to do so.

This is truly a great failing of Capitalism. Despite the myth of the invisible hand of the market, human life is not getting better despite the largest accumulation of Capital in history.

The laws of motion for Capitalism prevent it being invested in areas of greatest human need.

We need to change the laws of motion for the financial so that these needs are met.

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Explorations in plain Marxism: revolutionary theory, practical action

Paul Le Blanc writes about Explorations in plain Marxism: revolutionary theory, practical action.

It could be argued that a more useful definition of capitalism (perhaps more consistent, also, with the perspectives of Marx and Engels) might posit four fundamental elements in the capitalist economy, three of which are relatively simple: the economy (means of production combined with labour) is privately owned, more or less controlled by the owners (in the sense that they make decisions regarding economic policy), and the guiding principle of economic decision-making involves maximizing profits of the owners. The fourth element is far more complex: the economy involves generalized commodity production — a buying-and-selling economy, or market economy. Generalized commodity production means that more and more and more aspects of human needs and human life are drawn into commodity production, into the production of goods and services that are created for the purpose of selling them, in order to maximize the profits of the capitalists over and over and over again. Capitalists are driven to develop technology and the production process to create more and more profits. And more and more people in society are forced to turn their ability to work (their life-energy, their strength, their intelligence, their abilities and skills) into a commodity, selling their labour-power in order to “make a living” (to be able to buy commodities they need in order to live, and additional commodities that they want in order to make life more tolerable). This more “open” way of defining capitalism allows for considerably more diversity in the form that capitalism takes, and it captures the incredibly fluid, dynamic “all that is solid melts into air” quality of capitalism referred to in the Communist Manifesto.

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This is a much more complex definition of Capitalism to what I have been using. But as LeBlanc writes, this definition allows us to see the early development of Capitalism from the Eighteenth Century onwards. The definition I have been using reflects a mature Capitalist economy.

All of this is in contrast to the simple, more “open” definition offered by Frederick Engels in an 1888 footnote to the Communist Manifesto: “By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour. By proletariat, the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live.”

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Instead of restricting the proletariat to workers of Department II, this wider definition allows for a greater participation in the revolutionary movement. This is necessary given the shrinkage in the labour force of Department II due to automation throughout the world.

If we stuck to the traditional definition of the proletariat, a socialist revolution would have become impossible, in theory, with the disappearance of the workers in Department II through complete automation.

Yet the working class reality must be understood not simply as an abstract category but as a process, associated with the ongoing dynamics of capitalism, through which the class is formed and re-formed from a massive body of people who are shaped by a variety of identities, subject to a variety of cultural and historical influences, involving a complex network of relationships and varying elements of consciousness related to these dynamic realities. We are shaped by the simultaneous influences of race, class, gender, sexuality, and more — many of which involve, in our historical context, various distinct and intense forms of oppression. Some activist-theorists have called this complex reality “simultaneity” or “intersectionality.”

In terms of practical revolutionary strategy, the central category of working class must be understood in all of its vibrant intersectional diversity, with each struggle by its various component parts being understood as a vital and necessary element of the overall class struggle.

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This is why the party is involved in multiple struggles against racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and other forms of discrimination. The primary reason is to make contact with people as they struggle against oppression. A secondary is pedagogical—someone who is oppressed in one struggle can be an oppressor in another struggle. An example would be a gay who is sexist. By being invovled in multiple struggles, one can confront and start to correct one's own prejudices.

This strategic orientation — an uncompromising struggle for thoroughgoing democracy flowing into an unstoppable upsurge toward socialist revolution — becomes effective only when it animates substantial sectors of our class, and this will not happen automatically. Those of us who share this vision must organize ourselves, and join with other like-minded forces to organize struggles through which such revolutionary class consciousness can assume mass proportions. As enough people in the diverse and multifaceted working-class majority become “conscious” workers, organized as a political force capable of bringing about a revolutionary power-shift, possibilities will open up for the flowering of a society of the free and the equal.

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This is the idea behind the Leninist model of a revolutionary party.

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How do we rule? Direct and representative democracy and revolutionary power

Doug Enaa Greene poses the question: How do we rule? Direct and representative democracy and revolutionary power.

Revolutionary change does not just happen at the factory level, but throughout all of society. If we don't have a process or a way to mediate that change, we may as well give up on communism.

So what I am ultimately saying is that we will need leadership and representation after the revolution. It will need to be accountable, encourage mass debate, input and transparency to the extent possible, create a more democratic society than capitalism but be able to make decisions that can lead the whole of society on the road to communism.

However, this does not mean that the various forms of representation be considered set in stone, but are open to development and change in order to better serve the people.

None of this is meant to say that there isn't a danger of substitutionalism, usurpation and the many varied problems of representation in general. Those problems exist. Yet that is part of the danger and opportunity of power and communist politics. We cannot simply come up with a formal solution that overcomes this danger.

Direct democracy in and of itself is not the answer, since it can be manipulated and cannot make changes to a complex society as a whole. Societal transformation by its very nature is mediated. And we can only come up with solutions in the concrete, in the living moments of struggle, which are tried and tested. These are problems we cannot walk around, but we need to struggle through.

I believe that if we are willing to do so, we can build a revolution that lasts and leads to the flourishing of communism.

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We have a complex interplay between a Leninist party and the socialist government. Party members have the intellectual training, practical experience, and confidence to lead a socialist government at all levels.

However, the great majority of the people will still have a Capitalist mind-set after a revolution. Changing a mind-set takes time and effort. People want quick and easy solutions.

Unfortunately, the creation of a Communist society requires the re-orientation of people's thinking and actions. This takes time. There is no recipe for doing this, only general directions.

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Fundamentalism for Dummies: The Paris Terrorists’ Ignorance and Poverty

Akil N. Awan decries Fundamentalism for Dummies: The Paris Terrorists’ Ignorance and Poverty.

Cherif Kouachi’s lawyer described his client in 2005 as “a confused chameleon.” This is an apt description of the identity crisis commonly experienced by many jihadists, and can be explained through a process I call dual cultural alterity—essentially a double alienation from both minority (ethnic or parental) culture, and majority (mainstream or host society) culture, as a result of being unable or unwilling to fulfill either group’s normative expectations. This can lead to the cultural schizophrenia that Cherif’s lawyer describes, and is likely to inspire feelings of uprootedness and a lack of belonging.

Consequently, in the absence of an appealing cultural paradigm from either parents or mainstream society, religion becomes, by default, the principal anchor of identity. Religion provides an emphatic rejoinder to the identity offered by Western society, which these individuals feel has already rejected them anyway, and it is easy to understand why. In France, Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons reflected a broader palpable rise in anti-Muslim and anti-immigration sentiment. Leaving aside the lampooning of religious figures, many cartoons depicted ordinary French Muslims and other minority groups in a way that was at best, tasteless, and at worst, revelatory of an underlying French racism that is implicitly tolerated. The magazine once depicted French justice minister Christiane Taubira, who is black, as a monkey (although later claiming it was mocking her detractors).

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Capitalist society reduces workers to human resources who are hired and fired at will. Unless an individual fulfils a function within society, they do not exist. Unemployment is oblivion.

This is on top of the alienation that originates in the selling of labour power by the worker: the worker does not own what they create by their labour. Their identity and self-worth is sucked dry by the Capitalist production process. The worker cannot say, “I made this”. Thus even if one were to gain employment, one is spent by the continual demand to produce.

For those who are excluded by racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, disability, etc., the quest for identity through other means than work and cultural participation becomes paramount. They may create a sub-culture like bikies, Goths, Emos, Furries, etc. which satisfies the need for identity and belonging. Or, they may gravitate to crime, or to groups that resist the dominant culture.

Instead, the answer lies in changing the Capitalist society into another that is accepting of all people. People are accepted for being human—not because they are rich, white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied, employed, etc.. This means we have to eventually move away from workers selling their labour-power to something different.

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I am not Charlie Hebdo

I am not Charlie Hebdo.

For a western magazine, like Charlie Hebdo, to attack Islam through satire is to agree with the imperial project of the West. Islam is a minority religion in the West. None of the ruling elites within the West embrace Islam. Islam is not associated with political power within the West.

It is however associated with an oppressed minority within the West. These people are vilified in the press, insulted and attacked in the streets, and are subject to police harassment. They are oppressed by power in the West.

In Islamic countries, Islam is both a tool of oppression and a means of resistance. It is tool of oppression because religious law is used to crush dissent against the government. But it is a tool of resistance against the imperial powers by giving the people the language and will to resist the military incursions and invasions by the Western powers.

For me as an Australian to satirise Islam to give aid and comfort to the imperialist exploitation of Islamic countries. I am not being oppressed by an Islamic government, nor am I in any danger of being so.

I see oppression by a Capitalist government that uses Christianity, not Islam, to justify its actions. Thus, it is fit and proper to attack the Christians for allowing their religion to be used as a means of keeping power.

Press freedom is not an absolute right. It is a necessity for those resisting oppression. It is an abuse of privilege for those who support and enable oppression.

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