Dan Little: Marx on peasant consciousness

Dan Little writes about Marx on peasant consciousness.

From this description we can draw several positive ideas about the foundations of collective solidarity. Here are the elements that Marx takes to be crucial in the formation of collective consciousness in this passage:

1. The group needs to possess "manifold relations" to each other.
2. There needs to be effective communication and transportation across space, not just local interaction.
3. There needs to be a degree of economic interdependence.
4. There need to be shared material conditions in the system of production.
5. There needs to be an astute appreciation of the social and economic environment.
6. There needs to be organization and leadership to help articulate a shared political consciousness and agenda.

And Marx seems to have something like a necessary and sufficient relation in mind between these conditions and the emergence of collective consciousness: these conditions are jointly sufficient and individually necessary for collective consciousness in an extended group.

There are several crucial ideas here that survive into current thinking about solidarity and mobilization. So Marx's thinking about collective consciousness was prescient. It is interesting to consider where his thoughts about collective solidarity came from. How did he come to have insightful ideas about the social psychology of mobilization and solidarity in the first place? This isn't a topic that had a history of advanced theory and thinking in 1851.

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The problem is why only the Bolshevik Revolution was led by workers while other revolutions were led by peasants. (Little is mistaken in characterising the October Revolution as a peasant one.)

In a way, the Chinese Revolution was led by the remnant of the Shanghai working class that survived the Long March. The Vietnamese and Korean revolutions started in the more industrialised parts of the country.

I would have to disagree with Little's assertion that all of the revolutions in the 20th Century were peasant ones. The peasant were integral parts of those revolutions, but the conditions described by Marx prevented them from developing their revolutionary consciousness by themselves. They needed the political leadership of the revolutionary workers.

So, why don't workers in the advanced industrialised countries develop their own revolutionary consciousness? That is a question that baffles Socialist parties in the West.

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Chris Dillow: Comfortable?

Chris Dillow asks if Corbyn's supporters are Comfortable?.

In this sense, I fear that, like most political journalists in the Westminster Bubble, Janan is underplaying the fact that many people are not at all comfortable. This discomfort is both important and ameliorable. Yes, Janan is right to say that many Corbynistas are well-off middle-class types. But even so, there are real grievances and hardships out there. And Corbyn, despite his many faults, recognises this.

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Revolutions start when those in the middle of the class hierarchy see their interests align with the truly oppressed.

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Ted Rall: Carly Fiorina, Identity Politics and the Death of Feminism

Ted Rall writes about Carly Fiorina, Identity Politics and the Death of Feminism.

In the crucible of the 1970s, identity politics had its place. Where would feminism have been without the identifier of Ms. Magazine? Trans people, the latest to step out of the shadows of historical marginalization and oppression, have gotten where they are today via an identity politics that, first things first, made it OK to be proud of who and what you are.

But that was then and this is now. Now identity politics is all identity, no politics, all image, no substance.

…

But lesser evilism, that bastard cousin of identity politics, is the first express stop on the road to ideological ruin. Bernie Sanders — old and white and male — is 50 times the feminist that Hillary Clinton will ever be. I know because I’ve read his platform, which would do a lot more than Hillary, and a zillion times more than Carly Fiorina, to help women.

And that’s leaving out the world where feminism should inhabit: the perfect ideal of total gender equality. We’re not going to get to equality under this variety of capitalism, or any other kind of capitalism. How can an identity politics that distracts real live feminists with the likes of a corporate monster like Carly Fiorina start to destroy and replace the entire system?

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The real identity politics is based upon our identity as workers. This has to be frontmost in our minds. The politics is then derived from our exploitation by the Capitalists and alienation from the fruits of our labour.

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Barry Ritholtz: Hurting the Rich Won't Help the Poor

Barry Ritholz writes that Hurting the Rich Won't Help the Poor.

The bottom line is simply this: There are enormous problems facing the nation, and as long as we keep electing the same people, and allowing the same influencers to fund their campaigns, there is unlikely to be any significant change from the status quo anytime soon. This paralysis seems to have made some billionaires very nervous. But the last thing we should do is delude ourselves into thinking that making the rich less rich does a lot for the poor in the absence of better government. 

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Socialism is not about taking wealth from the rich—it is about taking control of the generation of wealth away from the Capitalists and giving it to the workers.

Let those who sweat earn the wealth!

Ritholtz is correct in that the transfer of wealth solves nothing. He is wrong in that changing the complexion of the political system can fix things.

The State exists to protect the ruling class and their interests. The structure of the economy determines who comprises the ruling class. In a Capitalist economy, it is the Capitalists. In a Socialist economy, it is the workers.

However, transferring control directly to the workers will result in failure because the workers have not developed themselves sufficiently politically and ideologically. Workers have to work through Marxism to understand how Capitalism works, and they have to work through Leninism to understand how political change comes about.

And they have to review history to understand the mistakes of the past.

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Mike Shedlock's Question to Millennials: Why Are You Not Mad as Hell Yet?

Mike Shedlock's Question to Millennials: Why Are You Not Mad as Hell Yet?.

Millennials, why are you not angry about …

1. Having to pay Social Security when it won't be there for you.
2. Paying exorbitant taxes for public pension handouts and boomer retirements at age 50 for which you receive negative benefits.
3. Obamacare for which you overpay to support the obese and the nicotine addicts.
4. Enormous student debt burdens for which you received little benefit.

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Shedlock is under the impression that economic hardship leads directly to political action. He forgets that the dominant ideology of Capitalism controls how people see the world.

Most people can express themselves in terms that are taught to them. In that lexicon, there is no alternative to Capitalism. Any failure is due to the individual, not to the system.

Shedlock also forgets the Occupy Movement, the Anti-Globalisation protests at the beginning of the century, the Anti-Racism marches of BlackLivesMatter, the Anti-War marches of 2003, and the Gay Marriage Movement. Young people are mobilising themselves, but in the ways expected by Libertarians like Shedlock.

Young people need to reflect upon their experiences in these historic movements both by themselves and with others. They need to understand how Capitalism works, and what alternatives there are.

A study of Marxism and allying with a Socialist Party can help with this reflection.

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GLW: Greece: SYRIZA's scores clear win amid high abstention, more austerity

Dick Nichols writes that Greece: SYRIZA's scores clear win amid high abstention, more austerity.

There are three basic reasons why. Firstly, the government's six-month-long struggle to win an acceptable deal was seen by many as the best that could have been achieved in the face of the blackmail of the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund (the “Troika”).

The argument that an alternative course was possible without sooner or later ending in “Grexit” seems not to have convinced many, if the vote won by PU and the KKE is an accurate indicator.

Secondly, the SYRIZA-led government at least started to implement some aspects of the “Salonika Program” on which it was elected.

These measures included free electricity for more than 200,000, food vouchers for 350,000, an accommodation program with rent subsidy for 30,000 families and cuts to various health care and hospital payments.

The government also provided tax and social security contribution relief for 750,000 individuals and small businesses, reopened public radio and television, and started to go after the big tax evaders.

According to Leo Panitch, co-editor of the Socialist Register and a close observer of Greece: “The humanitarian stuff they introduced immediately in February, right after they were elected, has not been pulled back, and it's had an enormous impact on the people who are suffering the most.”

Thirdly, the SYRIZA government is still regarded as the first honest administration in contemporary Greek history. Despite its defeat in the battle with “Brussels”, SYRIZA is still viewed as a break with traditionally corrupt Greek politics as represented by ND and PASOK.

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The failure of the Capitalist elite to destroy SYRIZA is amazing. They had hoped that by forcing SYRIZA to accept the utterly humiliating third memorandum, SYRIZA would have been so thoroughly discredited that SYRIZA would have been annihlated in any subsequent election.

As Nichols writes, SYRIZA survived by being honest, open, and committed to its programme.

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Tomgram: Greg Grandin, Henry of Arabia

Tomgram: Greg Grandin, Henry of Arabia.

Few serious scholars now believe that the Soviet Union would have proved any more durable had it not invaded Afghanistan. Nor did the allegiance of Afghanistan — whether it tilted toward Washington, Moscow, or Tehran — make any difference to the outcome of the Cold War, any more than did, say, that of Cuba, Iraq, Angola, or Vietnam.

For all of the celebration of him as a “grand strategist,” as someone who constantly advises presidents to think of the future, to base their actions today on where they want the country to be in five or 10 years’ time, Kissinger was absolutely blind to the fundamental feebleness and inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union. None of it was necessary; none of the lives Kissinger sacrificed in Cambodia, Laos, Angola, Mozambique, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, East Timor, and Bangladesh made one bit of difference in the outcome of the Cold War.

Similarly, each of Kissinger’s Middle East initiatives has been disastrous in the long run. Just think about them from the vantage point of 2015: banking on despots, inflating the Shah, providing massive amounts of aid to security forces that tortured and terrorized democrats, pumping up the U.S. defense industry with recycled petrodollars and so spurring a Middle East arms race financed by high gas prices, emboldening Pakistan’s intelligence service, nurturing Islamic fundamentalism, playing Iran and the Kurds off against Iraq, and then Iraq and Iran off against the Kurds, and committing Washington to defending Israel’s occupation of Arab lands.

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Grandin thinks that Kissinger's policies have been disasterous, but for whom? Certainly, for the poor, the world is a much more brutal place. But, for the millionaires and billionaires, the world is a much more wonderful place. Their wealth is unseen in the history of the world.

The USA is still number one. The only thing that can stop the USA is collapse from within. The cancers of racism, millitarism, fascism, sexism, and homophobia are eroding the strengths that the USA may have had if it truly lived up to its ideals.

But those ideals are fantasies in a Capitalist world in which money is everything. There is no place for honour, duty, or love in such a world. Yet, Capitalism is supposed to the final phase of human development.

It is now your choice: what type of world do you want?

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