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NEWS & LETTERS, MAY 2003
Readers' ViewsPHILOSOPHY, FREEDOM IN MARX'S MARXISM [caption: Black regiments storm Ft. Wagner, 1863.] In her Archives column in the March issue, Raya
Dunayevskaya takes up the indigenousness of Marxism to American soil. When some
of Marx's followers said the Civil War was a bourgeois war and they were above
the fray, Marx took a side on the question. He picked the side of the North
because emancipation was absolutely essential as a first step to a proletarian
movement. In this piece, I see Dunayevskaya giving a working
definition of humanism, not of some unspecified humanness. Some say Marx matured
and went beyond humanism. But in CAPITAL he is still talking about it. He is
talking about the emancipation of labor, Black and white. CAPITAL is all about
humanism. David, Oakland The unity of theory and expression is often
misunderstood as expressing opinions. For some people, the notion of the
self-determination of an idea sticks in the craw. The idea moves, has its own
logic. There is a difference between opinion and an idea. We can test the
consequences of an idea only in the context of real collectivity. It's not just
sharing opinions, but a collective process of working out ideas. Teacher, New York Marx's position on the U.S. Civil War was unprecedented.
At the time, Europe was the "center" of the industrial world, yet Marx
saw the failed attack on Harper's Ferry as a world-historic event. He was fixed
on the idea of liberation as the determinant for the future. Marx's debt to the
Hegelian dialectic is there in the dialectic of CAPITAL. Analyst, California Logic is a very human activity. Musician, New York THE WAR ON IRAQ AND WHAT COMES AFTER? The U.S. army's laissez-faire attitude to today's chaos
in Iraq is in stark contrast to 1991, when mass uprisings foreshadowed an actual
revolution. Then Bush Sr. was quick to give Saddam Hussein the green light to
massacre the revolts. The difference is that the U.S. is confident that its
actions in 1991, followed by 12 years of sanctions, have driven home the message
that its armed might will allow only one kind of
"liberation"--subordination to Bush's imperial power. What needs to be
remembered is that revolution has in the past surprised and toppled many rulers
confident in their invincibility. Observer, Memphis What is going on in the world today is more than the war
in Iraq. There is a world-wide movement the likes of which I have never seen.
Millions of people have been coming out against the U.S. Bush has upset the
relations between U.S. and Europe and has killed the UN. If he wants to use a
country's having weapons of mass destruction as an excuse to go to war he can
find it in lots of places. Is he going to be reorganizing Europe? What is our
future going to be? Octogenarian, Bay Area The Philosophic Dialogue by Kevin Anderson in the March
issue on "Reflections on Bush's drive for war" addressed a question I
had on why Iraq, and why now. Anderson answers the question by showing that the
U.S. is a superpower but is still driving toward world domination. I liked how
he lays out U.S. global dominance and internal contradictions and challenges
revolutionaries to come up with a philosophy of liberation. The war had nothing
to do with liberation. Iranian exile, San Francisco In an effort to further discredit the pro-peace movement
both in the U.S. and internationally, the Right characterizes peace activists as
"anti-Bush," "anti-troops," and "pro-Saddam." They
see every situation in terms of its rigid dualisms. As the war ends and the
effort to "rebuild" Iraq begins, the ground we take against both Bush
and Saddam has to be our vision of total freedom. Amy Garrison, Tennessee The protests here held up well after the outbreak of
war. There continues, however, to be a problem of ideas and political direction
in the movement. The official slogans were "Stop the War" and
"Freedom for Palestine," both excellent aims, but while they were
displayed on hundreds of placards and chanted over and over again, there was
little or nothing about freedom for Iraqis or Kurds. While Blair cited human
rights and democracy in Iraq as a justification for the war, the main currents
in the peace movement avoided the issue. It leaves us with an apparent choice
between evils: war or the continuation of Hussein's totalitarian rule. To take a
higher ground the peace movement has to address the more complex issues of
freedom and justice for the peoples of Iraq. Richard Bunting, Oxford, England Anti-war marches got much smaller here after the war
began, but I can attest that widespread opposition both to the crimes of Saddam
Hussein and the war are discussed vigorously in the Black community. One Black
co-worker told me he had stayed up half the night after they bombed the house
where Saddam and his sons were thought to be. He was appalled that "such a
huge bomb was used just to kill one guy, even though he deserved it." He
said he was watching for reports to see how many others were killed by that bomb
"but never did hear a mention of other casualties." City resident, Detroit FIGHTING RACISM There was very little national media reporting on the
April 1 march on the U.S. Supreme Court to support the University of Michigan's
use of race as a factor in admitting students. But Detroit sent such a large
contingent that the media could not ignore them: hundreds of city high school
students, a large number from the NAACP, churches, and of course the University
of Michigan, only 40 miles away in Ann Arbor. The Detroit City Council sponsored
a bus so the Council members' young staffers could experience their history
first-hand. The local news and Black-oriented radio stations interviewed numbers
of people, young and old, who said the march and the numerous briefs filed by
even the U.S. military in favor of affirmative action made this case the signal
for the birth of a new civil rights movement. Supporter, Detroit LIBRARIANS The USA PATRIOT Act has alarmed so many people that no
less than 73 widely diverse communities across the country have passed
resolutions opposing all or part of the act that was rushed through Congress
right after 9/11 granting sweeping police powers to supposedly fight terrorism.
I am happy to say Evanston, Ill. is one of many municipalities now also taking
up such a resolution. Bookstores and libraries have been especially troubled by
the way the act allows authorities to secretly monitor what people read and the
Internet sites they visit. Some librarians have posted signs warning users about
the monitoring and explaining how they are taking measures to shred paper
records and delete them from the computers at the end of each day. I applaud
them. Library patron, Evanston DEMONIZING PROTESTERS I was glad to see a piece by Michael Moore in the LOS
ANGELES TIMES a few days after he won an Academy Award for "Bowling for
Columbine." He said his Oscar Day mistake had been to go to Mass that
Sunday because it had reminded him that the pope said the war in Iraq was not a
just war. Moore described the booing that began as soon as he made his remarks
about the "fictitious times" we live in and said he never got to get
out his last line before the orchestra struck up its tune to end the melee. His
last line was supposed to have been: "Any time you've got both the pope and
the Dixie Chicks against you, you're not long for the White House." There
are a lot of folks who wish that were so. But as true as it is that we have a
president who was elected with fictitious results and conducted the war for
fictitious reasons Bush is soaring in the polls and we have a lot of work to do
to effect the "regime change" we need here. Moviegoer, California Why are the millions of people worldwide who marched and
rallied before the war to try to prevent that carnage in Iraq now being
demonized as "traitors"? Is the war any less wrong now than it was before it
bombed the hell out of the country and killed and maimed so many Iraqis that
even the International Red Cross can't get an accurate count? Public anti-war
figures like Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore, Martin Sheen and even the Dixie
Chicks are facing vicious attacks--from losing jobs to death threats--for
disagreeing with Bush and Company. I shudder to think how many might agree with
Rush Limbaugh's vitriol against Tim Robbins: "How is it that Tim Robbins is
still walking free? How in the world is this guy still able to say whatever he
wants to say?" Homeland Security may, indeed, have the First Amendment in
sights. Will a blacklist be next? Mary Jo Grey, Chicago It was sobering to see Peter Jennings end his nightly
news report recently with a short report on the current attacks on the anti-war
celebrities. He closed it with a shot of the infamous McCarthy hearings. No
analysis was needed. It said it all. Jennings fan, Chicago SAVING HEALTH CARE About 37,000 health care workers from across New York
State jammed into Albany to oppose Pataki's proposed $2 billion Medicaid cuts.
This massive protest organized by the Service Employees International
Union/Local 1199 awed and shocked several lawmakers at the rally. Many who addressed the rallies spoke about their
patients. A home care aide from Queens said she didn't know how to talk about it
to her 89-year-old client. She concluded, "Tomorrow, I can tell her that
40,000 people from across the state were here to save health care for people
like her." Marchers shared their bitterness against Pataki's betrayal after
their leader Dennis Rivera supported his re-election bid a few months ago. They
lambasted Pataki at every turn while union officials and hospital executives
were cautious not to attack the governor. "Many of our bosses are here with us today to fight
these Medicaid cuts; in the end, we will have to fight these same bosses in the
workplace," said one marcher. "While we're protesting here, the war in
Iraq is going on. How can the U.S. government claim to be a superpower when it
can't even meet the needs of its own people?" asked another. "We need
to put pressure on the governor indefinitely. The fight goes on." Health Care Worker, New York, N.Y WHY READ N&L? Thank you for your work. NEWS & LETTERS continues to
be a voice of sanity. Adrienne Rich, California DISILLUSION AND YOUTH Brown Douglas' article in the April issue on disillusion
driving young people into the army reminded me of something a friend once told
me about his father. As an adolescent my friend's father was living in a country
that was recovering from a devastating war, where economic opportunities for
young people were severely limited and where there was movement toward
authoritarianism. My friend's father was allowed to join an exciting new youth
organization. This meant he was freed from having to go to school, received
military training, went on a number of fun-filled camping trips and was imbued
with a strong sense of patriotism and superiority. My friend said that, although
his father has since rejected the ideology of this experience, it has
permanently affected his personality and character. The name of the young
people's organization in question was the "Hitler Youth." N&L Supporter, New Jersey WOMEN'S LIBERATION IN TROUBLE I'd like to hear more from Maya Jhansi about how the
women's movement has gone toward pragmatism, which she took up in her April
"Woman as Reason" column. I agree the women's movement has just been
focusing on abortion rights and not thinking about how to counter what the Right
is saying. The Right has disarmed the freedom movements. They now have some
naive feminists thinking they are being more radical by saying we must defend
all life. Artemis, Memphis Maya Jhansi is right. We're never going to get anywhere
if we continue to get caught up in debates about whether or not fetuses are
babies. It's why the early women's liberation movement talked about abortion
always in the context of women having control over their own bodies and lives.
Winning the right to abortion was part of a whole movement for freedom We are
losing that fight because the movement has narrowed itself to fighting on the
grounds of the anti-woman Right. Women's liberationist, Tennessee JULIUS JACOBSON, 1922-2003 We learned with sorrow of the death of Julius Jacobson,
who became a socialist in his early teens and whose lifelong commitment to
Marxism had made him a determined activist for radical, democratic, socialist
ideas. In 1961 he co-founded the journal, NEW POLITICS, with his wife, Phyllis, and served as its editor from that founding to his death. He had earlier been active in the Workers Party and its successor, the Independent Socialist League, writing numerous articles for publications such as ANVIL and STUDENT PARTISAN, LABOR ACTION and THE NEW INTERNATIONAL. He was an associate author of THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY: A CRITICAL HISTORY (1957) with Irving Howe and Lewis Coser and contributed to three other books: THE NEGRO AND THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT (1968), SOVIET COMMUNISM AND THE SOCIALIST VISION (1972), and SOCIALLIST PERSPECTIVES (1983). We mourn his death and honor his memory. |
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