Beijing’s reach isn’t big enough to stop local governments from abusing the rights of ordinary citizens.
What? Is Fukuyama going to exempt China from the end of history?
His analysis seems suspicious, another neoliberal sleight of hand. China needs democracy, period.
Comment from left on Tibet.
Thanks for the feedback, but, speaking from the left, what is the connection of China with the left at this point?
Let me suggest the ultimate insult/slap in the face to the left: Tibet might have fared better under the British empire system (cf. The Youngsblood expedition period….). They would probably have emerged relatively intact, with their independence, and without the attempt to destroy Buddhism.
Speaking from the left that’s a ‘helluva’ statement. And I hold no brief whatever for the British empire, of course, save that, if we look at India, the British, at least, whatever their other depradations, didn’t try to exterminate Indian religion.
The destruction of Tibetan Buddhism will end up as still another black mark on the left, and perhaps the final nail in its coffin.
Whatever the case, we have to move on and reinvent what we mean by the left.
Zizek on China/Tiber in LRB.
Zizek is a puzzling leftist, or else I am out of touch with the holy remnant of die-hard Stalinists (Is that fair?). His overheating on Tibet based on Parenti-style moral indignation over Tibetan feudalism is a re-hash that is getting tiresome from the left. Read the rest of this entry »
The Hypocrisy and Danger of Anti-China Demonstrations.
Accusing critics of China on Tibet of hypocrisy is a bit much. The real charge is the hypocrisy of the left which is so involved in the challenge to capitalist imperialism that it can’t see the reality of the Chinese Leninism, and Leninism in general.
The left is obviously unable to face the hard reality of the total failure of the greater left itself, as the heritage of Marx turns into its own case of imperialism aggression and economic exploitation.
Will the Constitution Be Altered to Eliminate Key Liberties?
By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted April 14, 2008.
We’re already dangerously close to that reality.
The Case for a New Progressive Creed
Saving the American Left
By BERNARD CHAZELLE
The American left is in the throes of an existential crisis. Some say it’s a failure of nerve, others a loss of belief. It is the latter. Neoliberalism has sucked the oxygen out of the left by deflating the political sphere to the economic one. The left must articulate a new creed around three principles: empowerment (the economic is ancillary to the political); social justice (the disadvantaged have an unconditional claim upon the collectivity); and decency (the state may not humiliate anyone). To make its case, the left must redefine that most exalted form of self-interest, patriotism, as pride in a society that grants all of its members the means to belong.
Leon Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution
By AMY MULDOON
Trotsky’s history is undoubtedly a classic, but that’s about all it is. Leftists need to stop feeding themselves fantasies and read a full spectrum of histories of the Russian revolution. There’s no other hope for the left. Trotsky might look good compared to Stalin, but in the final analysis he was a brutally violent member of the Bolshevik fiasco, whose other notable accomplishment was the extermination of the real socialist left to the point where to this day Lenists dunderheads claim the mantle of the left, socialism, and the nature of reality.
Lenin et al. did NOT spearhead the entry of the masses into the realm of their own destiny. These people, Trotsky included, completely sold out the working class.
Tibet is caught in an acute difficulty, a theatre of rightist and leftist collision. The previous post cites a leftist expose routine, but its point is nonetheless essential to consider: Behind the anti-anti-China Olympics campaign. The left, witness the action of the Marxist cadres, a truly braindead faction of, yes, the bourgeoisie at its most sadistic, is clearly at a dead end, culturally if not politically.
But the real threat from the right springs from lamaism itself whose history is ambiguous, and almost unknown, and never properly told (almost impossible to do). Read the rest of this entry »
PHIL GASPER argues that Marx’s theory of history is vital for understanding social change, but it doesn’t claim that socialism is inevitable
While one can welcome attempts to clarify distortions of Marx the attempt to evade the determinism question is too little too late, and not really fair to the historical record which shows the dominance of ’scientific Marxism’ throughout the Second Internationale. To say that Marx has been misunderstood here requires explaining the fact that virtually the entire Marxist movement was wrong throughout. That tokens an extraordinary misunderstanding of Marx. Perhaps Marx wasn’t able to clarify his own ‘theory’. Popper and Berlin’s critiques of ‘historicism’ and ‘historical inevitability’ attempted to expose the contradiction in the thinking of the revolutionary left. Fair or not, the era Engels to Lenin was clearly in hopeless confusion as to the relationship of activism and historical laws.
via marxmail:
http://www.marxmail.org/msg38897.html
available at: http://www.critiquejournal.net/cr41.html
One of the liabilities of Marxism is the hopeless confusion over German Classical Philosophy. The best strategry confronted with this philosophic quagmire is to shovel dirt over the whole subject and move on to something else, something practical. If the founders of the American Republic had ever tried to do democracy using Hegel (or Kant) we would still be without a system of government. There are two problems with Hegel: 1. intrinsic objections, philosophical 2. the obscurity of his work resulting in the near universal failure to understand him. The latter problem is non-trivial. If you examine the balderdash produced by Marxists here you can see the fatal confusions, topped off finally by Lenin’s pastiche in his attack in empirio-criticism. Read the rest of this entry »
Here are five links from marxmail on Tibet: not without interest but the built-in bias is obvious (more links are available from other sources!). I have no problem with a critical stance here as such, nor with attempts to produce a marxist analysis of Tibetan feudalism. But the limits of such analyses are not clear to most marxists, and the destruction of Tibetan culture in the name of the left is still another Leninist horror that stands as a major crime against humanity. And what do we see now? Cowboys and Indian games, and no doubt reservations on the way, with the Tibetan people cheated of their history and culture by the invation of a ‘marxist’ bourgeoisie. Looks like marxist ideology scored a nice bourgeois coup here.
Beyond that a total incomprehension of the nature of Tibetan Buddhism, Buddhism in general, religion in general, and a completely stupid Feuerbachian one-dimensionality used for Leninist extermination.
As a matter of fact, I am critical of Tibetan Buddhism (if you have followed this blog a ways back), but the basis for that is something different from this leftist pastiche, the one-size fits all marxism applied mechanically to the complexities of Tibetan Buddhism.
Parenti complains of Buddhist violence, points well taken. From the left that is sheer hypocrisy. Links:
Read the rest of this entry »
Has Science Found a Way to End All Wars?
Given adequate food, fuel, and gender equality, mass conflict just might disappear.
by John Horgan
It might help to reach the end of Darwinian selectionism with it false suggestion that conflict is the driver of evolution.
_The Paris Commune told in pictures_
(http://www.katardat.org/marxuniv/2002-COMPARIS/comparis-text/comparis-strip.html)
“March 18, anniversary of the Paris Commune, is one of the milestones of the
advancing working class. Since 1871, it has been a day of celebration and
re-dedication of the workers in every country.”
via marxmail
Reading: Why We’re Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America (Hardcover)
by Eric Alterman
and the Times review.
This is a companion to Klein’s The Shock Doctrine and cogently blasts through the near fascist nosedive of the last seven years.
The title is right: the attempted destruction of the term ‘liberal’ by the right-wing commentariat and think-tank battalions has succeeded, only to fail, because ‘we are all liberals’. The point requires an historical argument, to see that conservatives were born confused, always were confused and have failed in their attempt to make this confusion the dominant paradigm.
The reviewer expected perhaps a more theoretical approach, but at this point, a low-key slog through the almost mind-boggling malarkey of the Bush years.
More from the review:
He cites a recent poll showing the incredible transformation in public opinion when a candidate switched from the label “liberal” to “progressive” — from a score of negative 19 points to one of positive 17 points.
That seems a pretty strong argument for ignoring political brand identity long enough to ponder a different sort of problem. Immanuel Kant (a liberal) said the three questions facing philosophy were “What can I know?” “What ought I to do?” and “What can I hope for?” Politics is philosophy continued by other means, so these puzzlers still apply.
Well, we know, from the polling data, that the right wing’s claim to speak for the majority of American opinion is untrue. But Alterman never really addresses what liberals (or progressives, or whatever) ought to do. Nor, subtitle notwithstanding, does he ever address what one might reasonably hope for in the post-Bush world.
The question of the history of liberalism is important, and the citation from the ur-liberal Kant is significant. In the era of Kant we see the inchoate (and still problematical) birth of the liberal world view in a form still uncorrupted by the later accretions of ideological capitalist, Darwinist, Social Darwinist, pragmatist overlays.
Liberalism next to the Enlightenment is the first born of the Protestant Reformation and needs to be recast in terms of a broader sense of history(’an idea for a universal history’, as with the study of the eonic effect) that is postdarwinian and not entangled in scientism, informed by the socialist left and able to break out of the retarded state of American democracy that long since fell behind the European social democracies.
From left to right: on the mid-life political conversionsA celebrated playwright turns his back on liberalism and the chattering classes are aghast. Yet the tradition of former firebrands abandoning their youthful radicalism in later life is a long and intriguing one. Andy McSmith reports
The writer David Mamet shocked his liberal fans by embracing conservatism
Mamet’s new work: Why I am no longer a brain-dead liberal
David Mamet
The American playwright and director has appalled many of his liberal admirers by publishing an essay in New York’s leftish newspaper Village Voice with the self-explanatory title “Why I am No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal”. Mamet, above, claims that “for many decades” he subscribed to a “liberal” world view that “everything is always wrong” and yet at the same time “people are good”. Now he has decided that people are basically out to look after themselves – but also that life in the US is not at all bad. Mamet also provocatively suggested that George Bush is no worse than John F Kennedy.
Empire on the Brink
Republicans and “Free Market” Zealots Bring Disaster to America
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
March 12. Crude oil for April delivery hit $110 per barrel. The US dollar fell to a new low against the Euro. It now takes $1.55 to purchase one Euro.
Read the rest of this entry »
More on the question of Lenin, after this from a few days ago, The Leninism merry-go-round
I am certainl all in favor of a second opinion on Lenin’s What is to be done? (see links below to pick up discussion). But who cares, really, the Lenin case is hopeless at this point. This ‘rescue’ jobs attempting to critique the literature would have us believe all the conventional histories are wrong, that the observers on the scene in those times were wrong, even other leftists. The testimony of leftists isn’t believable anymore, and you would have to redo all this research on your own, a big job. And that’s the point: it’s a propaganda game.
Read the rest of this entry »
Signing Statements and the Rollback of American Law
The Unilateral Presidency
By ANTHONY DiMAGGIO
In a refreshing investigative series in the Boston Globe from 2006, journalist Charlie Savage dropped a bombshell on the Bush administration. Reporting on Bush’s use of “signing statements,” Savage highlighted the president’s long-standing contempt for Legislative authority. Since then, the story has generally been overlooked although it recently resurfaced when Bush issued another statement that he would disregard Congress’s prohibition of permanent military bases in Iraq. The President’s issuance of this signing statement is just one of hundreds of challenges he’s made to national laws.
Read the rest of this entry »
Could Our Democracy Withstand Another 9/11?
By David T. Z. Mindich, AlterNet. Posted February 29, 2008.
The Reichstag fire helped transform Germany from a democracy to a dictatorship. What can we do to avoid a similar outcome? Read the rest of this entry »
Darwinism: The Imperialism of Biology?
By Ben Stein
Conservatizing Darwin critique can backfire: Marx envious of his richer relatives? C’mon. He could have been a rich man with ease and voluntarily chose a different live.
The idea of the imperialism of Darwinism is a good one, but it might be relevant to consider that this theory is a good example of the ‘ruling ideas of the bourgeoisie’, and precisely the kind of ideology Marx attempted to expose.
Revolutionary States
Ronald Grigor Suny
The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd
by Alexander Rabinowitch
Review
I have recently been reading a whole series of books on the Russian revolution (from a too small country library). I even glanced through Alan Morehead’s (1958) work (?), the last unread tome on the Russian rev shelf (I must be getting addicted). I will certainly make a point of getting a hold of Rabinowitch’s book (and checking the stacks of a decent library in the Big City).
Read the rest of this entry »
Zinn asks a troubling question, cf. previous post: America’s blinders
Now that most Americans no longer believe in the war, now that they no
longer trust Bush and his Administration, now that the evidence of deception
has become overwhelming (so overwhelming that even the major media, always
late, have begun to register indignation), we might ask: How come so many
people were so easily fooled?
I should add to the previous post, Loopholes, some remarks on one of the basic confusions of the left (or Marxist version, I wouldn’t bother to criticize if it didn’t still have something relevant to say). This confusion (the Oedipus paradox of theories) is most visible in Darwinism, but arises in any attempt to apply theory to action. It is not unrelated to Kant’s distinction of theoretical and practical reason (in and of itself, before the ethical implications of that distinction).
There is a lot of material on this from history-and-evolution.com: Oedipus effects.
Compare (with issues of ideology) the founders of the American Republic with the Marxist left at the turn of the twentieth century.
The former group used ‘practical reason’ to construct a definite program according to a set of intuitively palpable principles. The latter had a theory of history claiming to be science (but with latent considerations of Hegelian dialectic to further confuse the issue) to be applied to the future, in a hopeless confusion of causal and teleological implications.
Does the glaring difference not suddenly stand out?
The application of theories to projects of future action results in multiple Oedipus effects in both Marxism and Darwinism (with its Social Darwinist curse).
It is certainly possible to differentiate Leninism from Stalinism (or both from Marxism), but diehards on the left might consider the American Revolution, the rare and almost unique successful revolution, and its constellation of creators: their concern was not just the formation of a set of principles, but a really acute effort to prevent future abuse in the loopholes possible in generalized constitutional axioms.
With his visceral contempt and almost pathological hatred of such bourgeois concerns, Lenin left a matrix with a quite a few loopholes! Stalin was not Lenin, but he availed himself of those loopholes.
Read the rest of this entry »