Rally mourns invasion, calls to change the date

Shaine Stephen writes that Rally mourns invasion, calls to change the date.

Several hundred Aboriginal community members and their supporters gathered on Hobart parliament house lawns to mark Invasion Day on January 26. There was a one minute silence observed whilst a wreath was slowly walked down two rows of those who gathered and placed on the steps to parliament house.

People were welcomed to country and reminded that the Aboriginal people do not recognise today as Australia Day, that they do not celebrate this day, and that their land was stolen, that they will never give up and will never go away.

Aboriginal leader Michael Mansell spoke about how Australia is the only country that celebrates a day when a country was invaded. He asked how immigrants can feel part of a nation when the day marks the coming of one race displacing another — it is not a basis for unity, it is a basis for division. He said the day is "race based and based on a white Australia policy".

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A settler society, such as Australia, cannot readily let go of the myth that the indigenous people do not matter. The logic of settlement cannot admit to the rights of the original inhabitants, nor to the crimes that were committed during the invasion.

Yet, other settler societies, such as Canada, have recognised the original inhabitants in treaty and in law. Will Australia have the same maturity as Canada to do the same?

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Grandmothers Against Removals call for support

Grandmothers Against Removals call for support.

Activists from the national movement Grandmothers Against Removals joined the Aboriginal protest convergence in Canberra over the Invasion Day long weekend, including the march on Parliament House.

Many of the Aboriginal families attending the convergence were suffering from the impact of the continuing forced removal of children by welfare agencies across the country. More than 14,000 Aboriginal children are now in “out of home care”, more than at any time in Australia's history, including at the height of the Stolen Generations of the 20th century.

Several of the grandmothers remain camped at the Aboriginal tent embassy and have vowed to maintain their protest camp until a big demonstration in Canberra planned for February 13, the anniversary of Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations.

While at the camp, they will continue their work of providing support and case advocacy for families struggling to have their children returned, along with making preparations for the upcoming demonstration.

The grandmothers are calling on supporters to join them at the embassy, to help with preparations for February 13.

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This is the result of the racism needed to sustain a settler society—the indigenous people are not human beings. The governments throughout Australia fervently believe that the Aboriginal children have to be removed for their own safety.

To deny the right of children to grow up in their own family and culture is a form of genocide.

It also shows that Kevin Rudd's apology was just words—there was no cessation of removal; and certainly no compensation of the victims of the Stolen Generation.

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Why SYRIZA is Greek for hope

Stuart Munckton explains Why SYRIZA is Greek for hope.

The victory comes on the back of ongoing social struggles by millions of Greek working people. They include the “movement of the squares” (the Greek version of Occupy), dozens of general strikes and many battles by working people and others for their rights, against state repression and against the (still-present) threat of fascism.

…

By the end of the year, SYRIZA could be joined by Podemos in Spain — a new anti-austerity party that emerged out of Spain's mass movement that is ahead in the polls.

Since the global economic crisis broke out in 2008, the capitalists and their government representatives have sought to make working people bear the brunt of the crisis. The Greek people, in particular, have been made to suffer.

As a result of austerity measures, unemployment has risen to 31% (about 50% for youth), and 20% of those who have jobs still live under the poverty line. Suicides have risen dramatically.

The victory for SYRIZA is the first big breakthrough in the popular resistance to what is, in reality, a brutal form of class war.

We know the struggle has only just begun. Unsurprisingly, the rich and powerful are far from impressed at losing control of the Greek government.

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Renegotiating Greece's debt is crucial to reversing the human catastrophe caused by austerity. Every victory in Greece against austerity sends a powerful message to victims of capitalist austerity everywhere — we don't have to accept this, there is an alternative.

We know this is not simply a struggle of Greece's people. It is the struggle for all the victims of austerity — who are being made to pay for the capitalist system's crisis — across Europe. Beyond that, it is a struggle against the deeply unjust global system.

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The Occupy Movement is beginning to bear fruit. There is an ebb and flow in the affairs of humankind, but one has to know whether the tide is coming in or going out.

We have a convergence of several crises: enviromental, political, economic.

The last quarter of a century has seen Capitalism's great victory in the Cold War turn to dust—literally in the deserts of the Middle, and figuratively elsewhere.

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The return of WorkChoices? Productivity Commission’s attack on workers’ rights

John Rainford fears The return of WorkChoices? Productivity Commission’s attack on workers’ rights.

Employer representatives and Abbott government ministers see the virtue of the inquiry as identifying impediments to jobs growth.

What this can only lead to is either a watering down of present minimum rates and conditions or their complete abolition in the name of creating jobs.

The idea that cutting the minimum wage and penalty rates will create jobs is a myth born of voodoo economics in the US, where the evidence is that higher minimum wages actually raise employment.

The only result of a lower minimum wage would be to cut employment opportunities and increase the number of working poor. It is nevertheless regularly rolled out as a favoured policy prescription by conservatives trapped in a time-warp of hatred for unions and the workers they represent.

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The laws of motion for Capitalism require the Capitalists to continually attack the wages and conditions of workers. It is only through the expropiation of the surplus value created by labour that the Capitalists are able to realise profit.

This increasing profit leads to the periodic crises in Capitalism in which the workers do not have enough money to buy all of the goods that their labour produce. This is the classic crisis of overproduction.

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Workers occupy factory in Dandenong

Chris Peterson writes that Workers occupy factory in Dandenong.

Workers at International Flavours & Fragrances (IFF) began occupying the Dandenong factory on January 27 after negotiations for a new workplace agreement stalled. Negotiations have been ongoing since June, after contention arose over management’s proposal for a $0.55 an hour wage rise if workers forfeited one of their two paid 10 minute breaks.

…

The occupying workers say they are not just defending their own conditions, but also those that unionists fought hard to win in the past and will fight to win in the future.

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These workers have seen beyond their own economic circumstances to the plight of workers generally. This is the beginning of class consciousness amongst the workers. But it is only the first step.

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Gov't disability crackdown shows brutal austerity

Angus McAllen writes that Gov't disability crackdown shows brutal austerity.

The policy of using government testing to judge people “fit to work” has been used with devastating impact in Britain. In 2012, the Daily Mirror reported that thousands of people had died because they had been deemed “fit to work” and taken off welfare entirely.

Under this vicious policy, more than half of the 300,000 applicants were rejected. Thousands of people also perished while they waited, on lower rates of welfare payments, to be assessed by the government.

The policy Australia now seeks to implement has led to the deaths of thousands of people with disability or illness in Britain and is likely to do the same here.

This shows the brutal logic of austerity. To face down a global crisis of accumulation, government is seeking to off-load social services and social reproduction onto ordinary people, with no regard for the cost.

The human results are all too obvious. What is also obvious is that this inhumane policy and policies like it, which target the young and the disabled, are the logical conclusion of a society that puts profits before people.

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At least, the disabled are not being euthanised. Yet.

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Rich are scared — let's make their fears come true

Stuart Munckton writes that the Rich are scared — let's make their fears come true.

These are certainly interesting times — where growing inequality, ongoing injustice and the threat of climate disaster make a potent brew of deep uncertainty.

Just ask our rulers. A January 23 article in The Guardian titled “As inequality soars, the nervous super rich are already planning their escapes” said: “With growing inequality and the civil unrest from Ferguson and the Occupy protests fresh in people’s mind, the world’s super rich are already preparing for the consequences.

“At a packed session in Davos, former hedge fund director Robert Johnson revealed that worried hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes. 'I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway,' he said.”

But it seems more than just the fear of being targeted by riotous mobs that is keeping the super-rich up at night. In Greece, five years of crippling austerity — imposed to protect the interests of the big banks — led to radical left party SYRIZA sweeping the January 25 elections. Panicked markets started to tumble.

Before the year is out, SYRIZA could be joined in Spain by fellow anti-austerity party Podemos — a new group that emerged out of the mass indignado movement, Spain's equivalent of Occupy, except on a much larger scale.

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Inequality makes the Capitalists do stupid things. Instead of trying to placate the masses, they plan to escape instead.

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What do you want?

Seth Godin asks What do you want?.

The industrialist and the one in power would like you to choose from a list, multiple choice. To interview with the companies that come to the placement office, to select from what's on offer, to ask, 'what do you have?'

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This also applies to the political sphere. The choices are neo-liberalism by the Liberal Party, or neo-liberalism by the Australian Labour Party. Choice is what democracy is all about. And if the Capitalists can limit the number of choices, they can keep democracy under control.

And then SYRIZA happens!

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Inequality, non-linearities & growth

Chris Dillow ponders Inequality, non-linearities & growth.

One possibility is that inequality depresses growth by generating a culture hostile to prosperity. For example, it might lead to mutual distrust (pdf) which is bad for growth, or to learned helplessness among the poor which saps their energy — say, to stay on in education or to take more initiative at work. It requires a big change in inequality to remove these cultural obstacles to growth. A change in the Gini coefficient of one or two percentage points doesn't much change culture.

A second possibility is that inequality is bad for growth because it imposes credit constraints upon workers which prevents them from forming worker coops even though it might be efficient to do so. A small reduction in inequality might not be sufficient to overcome these constraints.   

Thirdly, whilst modest redistribution might have some benefits — for example in shifting incomes from those with a low propensity to consume to those with a higher — it can also have an adverse effect. If it leads to expectations of further redistribution, it could depress investment as capitalists anticipate low post-tax returns. However, a big redistribution might not have such ill-effects if it reduces the risk of future further tax rises by, in effect, buying off discontent. This is what James Buchanan had in mind when he wrote:

The rich man, who may sense the vulnerability of his nominal claims in the existing state of affairs and who may, at the same time, desire that the range of collective or state action be restricted, can potentially agree on a once-and-for-all or quasi-permanent transfer of wealth to the poor man, a transfer made in exchange for the latter's agreement to a genuinely new constitution that will overtly limit governmentally directed fiscal transfers. (The Limits of Liberty, 7.10.40)

He wrote that in the mid-70s — a time when the threat of redistribution might well have been depressing investment and growth.

Now, I'm not saying all this to say that radical redistribution is definitely a good thing; that requires a lot more arguing. I do so instead to challenge a common prior among social democrats — which might well arise from a presumption that the economy is a simple linear system — that mild reformism and "moderation" is sensible and "realistic" whereas radicalism is economically unsound. It ain't necessarily so.

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The problem with a redistribution of wealth, big or small, is that it does not affect the long-term result of inequality. Inequality is the outcome of the Capitalist system. The only way to change this result is to change the system.

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Another image of labor’s broken back: $48,887 in profit per employee!

Daniel Becker writes about Another image of labor’s broken back: $48,887 in profit per employee!.

Over the past five years, total profits of the current Dow 30 members surged by more than 42% through the end of 2014, to nearly $320 billion. This has driven the average annual profit per employee up by more than 34% since 2009, to $48,887.

According to this CNN article from August, the median household income is $53,891. That means these 30 companies are pocketing 90% of what an household earns. That’s out the door, cash in the pocket 90% of what a household works all year to earn. Now, I’m not sure, but I think that household income is pretax and I doubt they get to hid that $53,891 in some account out of reach of the tax man. In fact, I’ll bet that household needs every bit of that money just to get through the year.

Well, the 30 are not hiding all of it:

Dividends paid by the Dow 30 are up better than 30% the past five years, according to FactSet.

Emphasis in Original

It is at the distribution between wages and profit that the class war is fought. Currently, the bourgeoisie are winning!

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I’m in my 20s but had to spend four months in aged care because there was 'nowhere else to go'

Kirrilly Hayward writes I’m in my 20s but had to spend four months in aged care because there was 'nowhere else to go'.

People with a disability or a mental illness and their families have not had sufficient access to the services, programs and funding necessary for fully independent inclusion in society.

For a person with a disability to participate in the community, in many circumstances, equipment and organisational assistance is needed.

There are many aspects to the inclusion of people with a disability in society and their ability to have a full and meaningful life: social engagement, meaningful participation, education, employment and general activities of one's life and the availability and funding for necessary specialised health care.

The most important aspect is the right to have choice and control over one's life. An issue I am particularly passionate about is the right to appropriate living standards and housing.

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The problem with austerity is that it is prejudiced against people with disabilities. They need the greatest assistance, but have the least voice. They are the pariahs of society.

As times get tougher, people lose their empathy as they concentrate on their own problems.

And the ideological basis of Capitalism, individualism, precludes the disabled because they need support from society in order to participate in it. In other words, individual self-expression requires a society.

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The best laid plans

Seth Godin writes about The best laid plans.

As your plans get more detailed, it's also more and more likely that they won't work exactly as you described them.

Certainly, it's worth visualizing the thing you're working to build. When it works, what's it going to be like?

Even more important, though, is being able to describe what you're going to do when the plan doesn't work. Because it won't. Not the way you expect, certainly.

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This is especially true during revolutions. There are both unexpected obstacles and unexpected opportunities. But the important thing is to keep the objective in mind.

SYRIZA has been criticised for allying with a right-wing party after the Greek election. This alliance is necessary for the immediate objective of solving the Greek debt problem without destroying Greek society and economy. And this objective is part of the path SYRIZA sees as the way to Socialism.

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Fear of public speaking

Seth Godin discusses Fear of public speaking.

I think we define public speaking as any group large enough or important enough or fraught enough that we're afraid of it.

And that makes the solution straightforward (but not easy). Instead of plunging into these situations under duress, once a year or once a decade, gently stretch your way there.

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For me, public and private speaking is a nightmare because of my stutter. And it gets very bad whenever I get into stressful situations like discussing revolutionary politics and ideas.

For other people in the party, public speaking involves four (4) main areas:

1. Branch meetings where policy and action are debated
2. Classes where socialist ideas are taught
3. Stalls where discussions and arguments are to had with all and sundry
4. Rallies and demontrations where crowds are exhorted to action

Revolutionary politics involves a lot of speaking. And if the party is to grow, this speaking has to be done with strangers who need to be persuaded to make a life-changing decision. My stuttering only distracts from the message.

As a very poor subsitute, I have to blog in order to express my ideas, and develop my thoughts.

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Venezuela: Thousands mark uprising, protest economic war

Lucas Koerner writes that Thousands mark uprising, protest economic war in Venezuela.

The 23rd of January is an historic date in which Venezuelans annually take to the streets to honor those fallen in the struggle against the Péres Jiménez dictatorship.

However, for the thousands assembled in El Calvario on January 23, the 23rd of January is also a date which commemorates the more than 5000 revolutionaries assassinated by the governments that succeeded Pérez Jiménez during Venezuela’s 40-year long era of “pacted democracy,” known as the Fourth Republic. This era came to a close with late president Hugo Chávez’s election in 1998.

A significant proportion of these political killings occurred during the 1989 rebellion by the popular classes against neoliberal austerity measures, known as the Caracazo, in which as many as 3000 people were gunned down by the Venezuelan army.

Nonetheless, for those attending the march, this commemoration is anything but merely historical, but, on the contrary, has real implications for the present conjuncture.

For Antonia Díaz, 40, the stakes are high: “If we allow this revolution to be lost, the same people [in power] during those years [of dictatorship] will come after us, the people, of Chávez … We will defend this process to the death.”

According to PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) youth leader Brian Mirandés, 21, the danger of returning to this not-so-distant past of brutal state repression is hardly abstract: “In the past, many comrades died as a consequence of the repression of the Fourth Republic, comrades disappeared, one of the closest [fallen comrades], that we have now is Robert Serra, with whom I had the opportunity to work alongside, who was assassinated by the Right, by Imperialism.”

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The Venezuelan army used to be an agent of repression, but now it is a defender of the Boliveran Revolution. This change came about through its officers' training courses wherein the students and faculty reflected upon Venezuela's revolutionary ideals during the war of national liberation. It was there in the military academy that Hugo Chávez began his radical career.

A similar thing happened during the February Revolution in Russia. There the Cossacks, who were the reliable agents of repression, suddenly become passive in the face of the popular protests. They refused to shoot or run down the protestors. Leon Trotsky tried to understand why this happened, but could only guess that it was something to do with what was happening back in the steppes. The Cossacks did turn against the Russian Revolution at a later stage, but they were passive long enough for the workers to seize power and overthrow the monarchy.

Now, we will see what the Greek military will do in the face of SYRIZA's victory. It is possible that the alliance with Anel, who have a strongly nationalist agenda, will quell any thoughts by the military about a coup. This coalition puts a nationalist cloak on SYRIZA's radical agenda, and the military cannot be seen to be acting in the interests of foreign powers, especially Germany.

The problem will come later when SYRIZA takes on the Greek oligarchy. As the real rulers of Greece, they will not cede power easily. They will portray themselves as the embodiment of Greece, and therefore any attack on their interests is an attack on Greece itself. And they would probably call upon the Greece military to do its job and defend Greece (that is, the oligarchy) from attack.

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Kurdistan: Why Kobanî did not fal

Dilar Dirik explains Why Kobanî did not fall.

Rojava is an alternative for the region, torn by ethnic and religious hatred, unjust wars and economic exploitation. It does not aim to build a new state, but to create an alternative system to the global capitalist, male-dominated nation-state paradigm, by advocating regional autonomy through women’s liberation and in cooperation with all peoples of the region, termed as “Democratic Confederalism” by Öcalan.

The refusal to accept the parameters of the global system is what has mobilised the population in such a devastated region, in between war and embargo, and this is precisely the reason why Kobanî will never fall. In the midst of war, Rojava’s cantons have managed to establish an incredibly empowering women’s movement, a self-governance system that operates through local councils in a bottom-up grassroots fashion, and a society in which all ethnic and religious components of the region work hand in hand to create a brighter future.

This is in radical contrast to the monopolist “one religion, one language, one nation, one state, one flag” policies, the dictatorships, monarchies, sectarian tyrannies and patriarchal violence in the region. And the anticipation of such a free life is the main motor of the Kobanî resistance. The dominant system makes us believe that principles and ideals are dead, which is why a collective mobilisation and sacrificial resistance such as the one in Kobanî seems so unbelievable to most people. But the fact that the second-largest city of Iraq, Mosul, fell into ISIS’s hands within days, even though the US had put billions of dollars into training the Iraqi army, while the small city of Kobanî, where elderly women created their autonomous battalions, has become a fortress of resistance for people across the globe, shows us that the possibility of a different future is well alive!

You cannot separate the political mobilisation of the people in Rojava from their victories against ISIS. That is why the least we can do to honour the fighters of Kobanî is to respect and support their political aims! The recognition of the Rojava cantons is long overdue. But even if the world does not recognise Rojava, it will still insist on being, because it has proven that it does not need anyone’s approval to exist. It is exactly this resistance and self-reliant struggle, this refusal to subscribe to the Stockholm-Syndrome-like state in which the Middle East finds itself, so much so that it is forced to be happy over “democracy” that comes in the form of breadcrumbs, that has not allowed Kobanî to fall.

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A superior economic and political system can defeat an inferior one because the superior one mobilises more resources and used them mor wisely.

This is achieved by having a more thorough-going democracy. It is not a democracy that only exists once every few years; but it is a democracy that lives and thrives on a daily basis.

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France jails people for irony

Ali Abunimah writes France jails people for irony.

This incident sums up the sheer hypocrisy of France’s national mood. Anything mocking and denigrating Islam and Muslims is venerated as courageous free speech, while anything mocking those who engage in such denigration — even using the same techniques — can get you locked up.

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It may seem surprising that French authorities can charge and jail people so quickly. These summary trials and long custodial terms are the result of a change in the law in November in which the charge of “defending terrorism” became a criminal offence subject to fast-track trials.

France’s Human Rights League recently said that when the change in the law was being debated, it had “demonstrated that it would be ineffective for security, dangerous for liberties and damaging to the credibility of the justice system”.

The group said that the slew of summary convictions of “drunks and fools” vindicated its warnings. Many of these people are now likely to end up on the state’s planned “anti-terrorist register.”

Musician and author charged

Prosecutions for expression do not take place only under the “defending terrorism” law. This week the rapper Saidou of the band Z.E.P. and the sociologist Said Bouamama will be indicted in Lille for “public insult” and “incitement to discrimination, hate, or violence”.

The prosecution was brought by a right-wing nationalist group, as MR Zine reports, because of Said’s book Fuck France and a Z.E.P. song with the same title.

The song’s refrain states: “Fuck France and its colonialist past, its paternalist smells, stenches, and reflexes. Fuck France and its imperialist history, its capitalist walls, fortresses and delusions.”

Z.E.P., ironically, stands for “Zone d’expression populaire” — Popular Expression Zone.

It is only a matter of time before these laws are used with renewed vigour against a whole range of speech that might upset the French state, especially those who advocate for Palestinian rights and for the boycott of Israel.

Emphasis Mine

So, free speech is part of white privilege.

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Israel ‘systematically mistreats’ Palestinian children in custody

Juan Cole reports that Israel ‘systematically mistreats’ Palestinian children in custody.

Some 700 Palestinian children per year are arrested and face “ill-treatment” by Israeli forces, according to a new report by a children’s rights group.

In the report, Child Rights International Network said that “during 2014, an average of 197 children were held in military detention every month, 13 per cent of whom are under the age of 16.”

“Arrested children are commonly taken into custody by heavily armed soldiers, blindfolded with their wrists tied behind their backs before being transported to an interrogation centre,” the CRIN report said.

“Children questioned about their experience frequently report verbal and physical abuse during the arrest.”

According to research conducted by Defense for Children International — Palestine cited by the report, some 56 percent of children report having experienced “coercive” interrogation techniques during their time in Israeli custody.

Some 42 percent say they signed documents in Hebrew, despite the fact that most Palestinian children do not speak or understand the language.

Additionally, 22 percent of detained children say they underwent up to 24 hours of solitary confinement, in violation of international standards.

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Can you imagine the sheer depth of racism that must pervade Israeli society for this type of child abuse to be unremarkable? And for the Western media to gloss over such a report?

Here, in Australia, the systemic abuse of children in churches, schools, youth organisations, etc is currently the subject of an ongoing royal commission. Daily, the media has reports about the latest scandal to emerge from this inquiry.

Yet, on the subject of the pervasive child abuse by the IDF, the Australian media is silent.

Racism blinds one to such horrors.

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Your mood vs. your reality

Seth Godin discusses Your mood vs. your reality.

And industrialists have built an economic system in which compliance to a boss's instructions is seen as the only way to avoid the unhappiness that comes from being penalized at work. And so fear becomes a dominant paradigm of our profession.

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Violence through starvation is built into the Capitalist system.

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Mexico: Missing student struggle reflects deeper issues

David T. Rowlands writes that Missing student struggle reflects deeper issues in Mexico.

Post-NAFTA Mexico is an increasingly apocalyptic wasteland of crony capitalism and violent state-directed political repression. The embattled, chronically under-funded network of rural teacher training colleges, to which thes abducted students belonged, represents one of the last remaining bastions of the progressive ideals of the 1910-20 Mexican Revolution.

Addressing the problem of structural, ethnically-based inequality, a problem common to all Latin American societies, was one of the key aims of the revolution.

At the core of the revolution, which started in 1910 as an armed revolt against an autocratic ruler, was a strong vein of democratic aspirations and social reform.

Many of leading activists recognised that building a strong public education system was one of the essential keys to bringing the impoverished and largely indigenous masses into the fold of a new and fairer nation. Close to 50 normal rurals were established in the 1920s to train the children of illiterate farmers from small communities to become teachers.

After graduating, these normalistas — often the first members of their family to receive any sort of education — returned to their villages and towns to helping to educate the next generation.

Politically, these colleges have always been associated with left-wing political views. The students see themselves as the vanguard of a revolutionary wave that would undo the indigenous dispossession that was the founding sin of modern Mexico and Latin America in general.

When a student is selected to attend one of these colleges, they are inculcated with the idea that a public educator is by their very nature a social activist, dedicated to the improvement of the lives of others.

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This is why Capitalist fear free, public education: it creates people who want to change the system, instead of compliant workers and consumers.

But therein lies the contradiction in the current Capitalist economy—the jobs that compliant, unthinking workers can do are disappearing as the jobs are being automated or sent off-shore. The well-paying jobs that remain require a highly educated workers who are creative and flexible thinkers. The problem for the Capitalists is how to control these workers?

As always, when the state runs out of incentives to maintain control, it reverts to naked force.

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All Lives Matter: from Ferguson to Palestine

Heike Schotten argues that All Lives Matter: from Ferguson to Palestine.

Each of these “arguments” purports to justify state violence. In the first, Palestinians and African Americans deserve death because of their terrorist and/or criminal natures. Killing happens because the nature of the murdered invites it. In the second, Palestinians and African Americans are actually the ones doing the killing, not cops or Israel, so there’s not really a problem with state violence at all. Killing happens because the murdered are killing themselves.

It doesn’t matter that these arguments are inconsistent with one another, much less which one of them is, uh, “true.” Like a racist shell game, the only thing that matters is the one thing that is consistent between them: the reversal whereby the victim is portrayed as the aggressor and the aggressor, the victim.

For Giuliani, David Brooks, Darren Wilson, and the likes of FOX News, it is white people in general and white police officers in particular who are the victims of demonic, terrifying, criminal black people. For Netanyahu, Charles Krauthammer, and the rest of the Zionist lineup, it is Israel who is the victim of evil, terroristic, life-denying, Muslim/Arab Palestinians.

In another place, I have described arguments like these as a form of slave morality. They are reactionary attempts to portray oneself as a victim of forces beyond one's control and a moralizing justification of extracting compensatory revenge against them.

The thing is, when it comes to American cops and Israeli soldiers, they are not the weaker power. They are avatars of the state — two of the most powerful and heavily armed states in the world at that. Their victims are the subordinated, segregated, and formerly enslaved, on the one hand, and dispossessed, indigenous refugees on the other. To drop the white hankie and play victim is fundamentally to obscure the unequal relations of power that characterize white supremacy in America and Zionist supremacy in Palestine.

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Here we have the ideological superstructure of the mass media and opinion disguising the horrific violence that is daily perpetrated against the oppressed throughout the world. Racism is blatantly being used to justify this state violence, and to divide the working class against itself.

By having white people separate themselves from the non-whites, the state is able to demonstrate violence without fear of a backlash from the whites. This lack of solidarity also sows mistrust between whites and non-whites thereby sabotaging any chance of unified action.

White privilege includes relative safety from state violence.

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The mode of production as society's structure

Dan Little supports Marx's view on The mode of production as society's structure.

The template of historical materialism as a "Gray's Anatomy" for modern capitalism has often been criticized as being mechanistic, over-simplified, and even fictional. But in its heart the scheme is a perfectly intelligible hypothesis about how several aspects of contemporary society fit together. Property relations define individual interests, and the system of wage labor defines the opportunities available to working people. Legislative and governmental policies have effects on the property system, and the class that owns the bulk of this property is perfectly capable of recognizing the consequences of this policy or that. Having the means to influence government, the owning class is able to shape government policy and personnel in ways that are compatible with its interests. Likewise, owners of property are able to recognize the advantage of being in a position to influence public consciousness and the terms of public debate. So the components of the "ideological apparatus" — think tanks, newspapers, publishing houses, television networks — are intensely contested, and the power of the owning class to influence the content of these outlets is great. Here again we have a fairly simple empirical argument for the conformance of the organs of social consciousness to the needs of the propertied class. And if it seems far fetched to hold that the owners of wealth are very willing to exert their power in these ways, just look at the recent announcement of the 2016 election-year budget of the political network funded by the Koch brothers — $889,000,000 (link)!

It is no longer common in sociology to find value in Marx's theory of capitalist society. But really, the structuralist view he arrived at in the 1850s and 1860s seems pretty prosaic today in the context of an economic system that systematically creates astronomical wealth for the one percent and stagnant poverty for the majority of society. Median household income in 2012 in the United States was $51,371, and almost all states showed a decline in median household income between 2000 and 2012 (link). And it is almost tautological to say that the property system explains both facts — the explosion of the wealth and income of the one percent and the stagnant or declining incomes of the majority of the population.

Or as Marx concludes Chapter Six of Volume I of Capital:

On leaving this sphere of simple circulation or of exchange of commodities, which furnishes the “Free-trader Vulgaris” with his views and ideas, and with the standard by which he judges a society based on capital and wages, we think we can perceive a change in the physiognomy of our dramatis personae. He, who before was the money-owner, now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of labour-power follows as his labourer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other, timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but — a hiding.

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In essence, the mode of production defines how a society operates, and what is considered property. In a slave society, property includes slaves, land, and money. In a feudal society, property includes serfs, land, castles, and armed retainers. In a capitalist society, property includes land, factories, machines, patents, financial instruments, and money.

Property ownership defines the composition of the ruling class. Those who owned slaves were the rulers in a slave society, Those who had serfs, castles, and armed retainers were the feudal lords and ladies in a feudal society. And so on.

And the state exists to defend and extend those property rights. This defense is ideological, legal, and physical.

The ideological defense of any society has been that it is natural. This was true of slave and feudal societies as well as capitalist ones. Each of these societies was argued to be the best fitted to human nature. The problem is that our understanding of what human nature is develops over time in response to material improvements in society.

The legal and physical defense of property lies primarily with the criminal justice system which is backed up by the military.

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Kurdish journalist on Rojava's inspiring revolution

Dylan Murphy interviews Kurdish journalist on Rojava's inspiring revolution.

This revolution is developing cooperatives based on a social economy as its economic alternative. The communes will be a primary force within the people's assemblies.

The cooperatives that have been founded are being given enough space within the economic sphere to sustain themselves. There exists the strength in the three cantons to found an economy along a socialised principle in the agriculture, livestock, industry and service sectors.

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The Kurdish struggle is a mixture of national liberation, resistance to genocide from ISIS, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, as well as a socialist revolution.

The development of a socialist society and economy has enabled the development of a successful military resistance which has enabled the Kurds to survive. This is similar to what happened in Vietnam where a nationalist struggle against imperialism became a communist revolution.

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Interview with SYRIZA activist Sissy Vovou

Vivian Messimeris does an Interview with SYRIZA activist Sissy Vovou.

I am one of the militant cadre of SYRIZA and there are thousands of us. We see that we have some signs of reconciliations with the existing political system, which is a totally bourgeois political system. We can see that some signs are very worrying. We are fighting and we are winning some battles and losing others. Now that we will become the government, well we hope that we will become government; we will try very hard to implement the priorities that will assist the working class and the unemployed. As for socialism this is a road, this is not tomorrow but a process that we have to work through. I want to say to the people who make these criticisms; we should be working together to achieve these things. If not for socialism, then at least for a more humanitarian situation and for a fairer distribution of income between rich and poor and between men and women. We must be inside the game. I beg these people, make your criticisms that’s fine, but we need your solidarity and support.

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The path to Socialism is not a dogmatic recipe. As the Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Vietnamese, Venezuelan, and Eucadoran revolutions have shown, there are multiple paths to Socialism with many road-blocks, pit-falls, regressions and reactions along the way. Not all of these revolutions had a Bolshevik party. All of them have been under attack from Capitalism both from within and without.

Each country has to be cognizant of its history, culture, political and economic development. SYRIZA has grown along a trajectory that is particular to Greek history and politics. One has to remember that a Communist uprising was brutally suppressed in the Greek Civil War of 1946-49. The ossification of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) dates from this period. The repression due to the Greek military junta of 1967-74 has also an effect on the direction of Greek politics.

One could see in the rise of SYRIZA a national struggle against the economic oppression through austerity by Germany and France. This struggle has enabled SYRIZA to put forward a concrete programme of action that addresses the immediate needs of the Greek people along with a vision of what a future Greek society should look like. This programme is not explicitly socialist, but originates from socialist principles.

The Greek revolution may develop along a trajectory similar to Venezuela and Eucador in that there is a long period of dual power accompanied by intense political debate and civil strife aided by the USA. To secure SYRIZA's position, similar victories need to happen in Spain, Italy, Ireland, Scotland, and Portugal. These are the nations that have been devastated by the austerity programmes demanded by the troika (ECB, IMF, EC).

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Greece: Is SYRIZA radical enough?

Ed Rooksby asks Is SYRIZA radical enough?.

The very possibility of this dynamic however is rooted in the moderation of the initial demands—in the way in which these articulate the everyday concerns of the mass of the Greek population. What anti-capitalist forces operating within SYRIZA grasp is that revolutionary social change must emerge from ordinary people’s collective experience of the way in which modest, common sense measures to improve their lives and defend their dignity run up against the limits of what the current order will allow.

This experience thus reveals the system’s essential inhumanity—in a sense we might say its extremism—and demonstrates concretely, in a way that abstract declarations of "the need for socialism" simply do not, the imperative to push beyond capitalist limits in order to secure the very basic conditions for a decent and humane society.

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SYRIZA is definitely far more radical than the Capitalists are prepared to tolerate. SYRIZA is demanding that human beings be considered before Capital. That is heresy to the Capitalists.

Workers must find their own way to Socialism. We can suggest paths, but workers must reflect upon their own experiences and desires in order to work out a programme of action.

A communist party is the repository of past experience and theoretical knowledge that is available to the workers. But the workers must make their own conscious transformation and development to Socialism.

Austerity in Europe has awaken people to the objective cruelty in the Capitalist system in the interests of Capital are paramount. But is it enough for people to question the Capitalist system itself?

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