#he is almost the polar opposite of a marx

[ntrlily]

Standing up and saying sometimes changing names in translation is good actually. For example, this man is not named MARX!

#he is almost the polar opposite of a marx #the only way he could be less of a marx is if he was a teen instead of a 20 something

[hogtown-socialist-alternative]

France 1968 and the Historic Role of the Working Class

By Patrick Ayers -October 27, 2018

Because of the continuing significance of the events in France in 1968, Socialist Alternative is republishing the pamphlet France 1968: Month of Revolution written by Clare Doyle of the Committee for a Workers International with which we are in political solidarity. First published by the Militant Tendency in 1988 for workers in Britain, we believe the lessons drawn out by the pamphlet will be of enormous interest to radicalizing youth and workers who are asking questions about how society can be changed. Below is an extensive new introduction to the pamphlet which connects these world historic events to debates on the left today.

The greatest general strike in history happened in France in 1968. Over ten million French workers went on indefinite strike for several weeks between May and June. At the height of the movement, President Charles de Gaulle, who had built his image as a strong authoritarian leader, fled the country in despair over his failure to bring the movement to heel.

The legacy of these events is still important for a new generation. Earlier in 2018, France was once again gripped with mass strikes in opposition to French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposals for neoliberal workplace reforms. Almost immediately, memories of the events in 1968 were evoked. In the U.S., a new generation has become politically awakened by the crisis of capitalism and they too will look to the history of 1968 for inspiration in the struggles ahead.

“In the last week of May 1968,” writes Doyle, “a rallying call to the working class to take political power into their hands would have tolled the death knell of capitalism on a world scale.”

While there had been many revolutions and upheavals in neo-colonial and developing countries in the post World War II period, most left-wing thinkers, both today and in 1968, have serious doubts that revolution led by the working class is possible in advanced capitalist countries.

But in France in 1968, the working class was looking to what would have been a revolutionary solution – i.e. a “people’s government” – and they had the support of a decisive majority of society. It was one of the most favorable situations ever for the working class to take power away from the corrupt capitalist class and reorganize society.

“The only ‘force’ needed in these circumstances was that of forceps applied at the correct moment,” argues Doyle. “The general strike of ten million workers had done the lion’s share of the job of transferring power from one class to another.”

Why didn’t the transfer of power to the working class happen? Doyle explains that it was the lack of a leadership prepared to carry through the struggle to the end which held back the working class from going the whole way.

What Was Possible

What is unique about the CWI’s pamphlet is that it provides an explanation for what a revolutionary leadership could have done. This is important because as the crisis of capitalism deepens today, many of the questions from 1968 will arise anew. In fact, with the socialist movement growing today in the U.S., the age old questions of reform and revolution have come to the surface again.

Naturally we are not comparing the situation in the U.S. today directly to that in France in 1968. However, we are now in the midst of a huge social and political crisis flowing from the massive growth of inequality and decades of neo-liberal attacks on the living standards of working people and social services. Confidence in capitalist institutions has been profoundly undermined leading to unprecedented political polarization, waves of protest and the growth of both left and right populism. We now see a clear potential for the re-emergence of class struggle. The next historical period in the U.S. and internationally clearly points to new revolutionary crises like 1968.

In the Spring 2018 issue of the left-wing journal Jacobin, Jonah Birch contributes a lively and well-written piece on the events of France 1968. He writes “nowhere else in the Western world over the past century was such a threat to capitalism posed.”

Yet he concludes: “However, that does not mean that revolution was on the agenda.” Indeed, capitalism was not overthrown in France but that hardly exhausts the question.

He quotes former leaders of the self-described French Trotskyist group, the Revolutionary Communist League, Alain Krivine and Daniel Bensaid: “The strikers in their mass wanted to settle a social problem, shake the yoke of an authoritarian regime. From there to revolution there was still a long way to go.”

It needs to be noted that this quote is taken out of context. Krivine and Bensaid were making a bigger point in the same text that there was no revolutionary party in France 1968 and the forces of the LCR were too small. Doyle deals with the role of the LCR in Month of Revolution, but what matters here is Birch’s choice to use this quote. Because, in fact, the leaders of the French Communist Party (PCF) said a similar thing on June 8, 1968 in their newspaper:

“It is not enough that the main forces of the nation should be in movement – which was the case – it is also necessary for them to be won to the ideas of a socialist revolution. But this was not the case for all the ten million workers on strike – even less so for the middle sections particularly the peasants.”

The question is: What more was needed to win French workers to the idea of socialist revolution? Ten million workers were on indefinite strike and demanding a “people’s government”!

Certainly if any party was in a position to lead the working class toward revolution in France in 1968 it was the French Communist Party. It was one of the largest workers parties in Europe and it grew rapidly during the general strike. Birch criticizes the PCF leaders but, by echoing their arguments, he lets them off the hook for failing to seize a historic opportunity.

While revolution was ruled out, “that doesn’t mean a better outcome was impossible,” says Birch. “What that might have looked like is up for debate.” Birch doesn’t offer answers himself to the question of how the policy of the leaders of the movement in France could have been better. He speculates that maybe more reforms could have been won.

In fact, workers did win significant gains in 1968 because the ruling class was petrified of revolution. Arguably, they could have won even more, short of revolution. But if we are talking about more profound change that would encroach on the capitalists’ control of the economy this would have required the working class taking power.

Birch and many others on the left implicitly or explicitly do not believe in the ability of the working class to reorganize society along socialist lines. Rather they believe in radical reforms – won at least in part through working class mobilization. But unless capitalism is actually overturned, reforms can be clawed back later – which is precisely what happened internationally in the neo-liberal era. This is even more true today than in 1968 during the later stages of the postwar economic upswing when there was more room for the capitalists to make concessions such as expanding social services and the “welfare state.”

To root out the power of the billionaire class today, we call for taking the top 500 corporations into public ownership and developing a democratically planned economy organized to meet the needs of people not profit. We point out that such a development is only possible by the working class coming to power and replacing the existing capitalist state with a workers state that radically expands democracy, including into the workplace. This contrasts with the vision outlined by Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara in an article in  the New York Times last year on the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. He essentially explains that socialism would entail a radical overhaul of capitalism without ending capitalism per se: “Worker-owned cooperatives, still competing in a regulated market; government services coordinated with the aid of citizen planning; and the provision of the basics necessary to live a good life (education, housing and health care) guaranteed as social rights. In other words, a world where people have the freedom to reach their potentials, whatever the circumstances of their birth,” (“Socialism’s Future May Be It’s Past,” NY Times, 6/26/2017).

As we pointed out in replying to Sunkara’s piece:

“Without a doubt, such changes would represent a significant step forward despite being under threat of attack every time capitalism entered into one of its periodic crises. But this is not the same as the goal of socialism: a global, classless society which does away with capitalism’s organized apparatus of repression and replaces it with a new political order based on mass democratic organs of working people and the oppressed. This has always been the destination called for by the socialist and Marxist movement. Many today, even on the left, may see this vision as hopelessly utopian. But as Marx argued, it is the massive development of human productivity under capitalism which has laid the material basis to eradicate class division and oppression rooted in scarcity,” (SocialistAlternative.org, 9/30/2017).

The Role of Leadership

The question of the aim and program of the workers movement and working-class parties is a decisive question. This was shown in France ‘68. As Doyle points out, the PCF, in reality, was led by a reformist leadership who had no intention of preparing the mass of the French working class for what would be necessary to carry out a socialist transformation of society. The French workers were far more interested in carrying through a decisive struggle against the regime than the leaders of the PCF. An agreement negotiated by union leaders with close ties to the PCF was overwhelmingly rejected by workers at the end of May. The PCF leaders later disappeared from view and their absence paralyzed the movement. The government was able to then reassert itself and the PCF helped direct the movement off the streets and toward elections in which they lost more than 600,000 votes due to workers’ disappointment.

However, it’s utter nonsense to say, as the PCF did, that revolution was not possible because “all the ten million workers on strike” had not been “won to the ideas of a socialist revolution.” Leon Trotsky answered such arguments in his classic article “The Class, The Party, and the Leadership” written after the defeat of the the revolutionary movement in the Spanish state in 1936-1937:

“The historical falsification consists in this, that the responsibility for the defeat of the Spanish masses is unloaded on the working masses and not those parties which paralyzed or simply crushed the revolutionary movement of the masses.”

Trotsky wrote extensively about the role of leadership in the Russian Revolution, to date the only successful workers revolution in modern history. In the introduction to his History of the Russian Revolution, he writes: “The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old régime. Only the guiding layers of a class have a political program, and even this still requires the test of events, and the approval of the masses.”

But Trotsky was also at pains to stress that the central role of a tested revolutionary leadership in no way changes the fact that working class is the key force in its own liberation: “[leaders and parties] constitute not an independent, but nevertheless a very important, element in the process. Without a guiding organization, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston-box. But nevertheless what moves things is not the piston or the box, but the steam.” In fact, at key points in 1917, the masses were ahead of the ranks of the Bolsheviks who in turn were ahead of the majority of the party’s leadership.

Doyle writes about France 1968: “The French workers in their great mass wanted better conditions, big increases in wages, the eradication of slums, a decent education for their children, a massive boost in spending on social services, etc. At the same time they had instinctively understood that no matter what short term concessions were extracted from the capitalists, these would be snatched back unless a fundamental transformation of the situation was carried through.”

Later she continues, “The chief role of a revolutionary party in this situation is to imbue the masses with a sense of their own power, to make conscious what was already unconsciously at work in the minds of the masses. Unless a systematic and unswerving plan for the conquest of power is prepared and carried out in good season, an ebb will set in. The masses lose faith, begin to fall into indifference, and the forces of the counter-revolution begin to raise their heads.”

While there are obviously no guarantees that France ‘68 would have resulted in a successful revolution with a better and more determined leadership, the point is that the objective situation was not the key limitation. At the height of the movement, the working class was well organized and prepared to struggle; it had the vast majority of people on its side and the ruling class was split and unable to contain the crisis. The missing element was a revolutionary leadership with real roots in the working class. This lesson is crucial to draw out for the new generation attracted to socialist ideas today.

Skepticism Then And Now

As Clare Doyle points out, before the French general strike there was widespread skepticism about the possibility of working-class action on this scale, at least in the West. This flowed from the popular idea on the radical left in the 1960s that the working class had been “bought off” and revolutionary working-class movements in the West were ruled out for the foreseeable future. Just months before the outbreak of the movement in France, both Ralph Miliband’s Socialist Register – which in many ways is the forerunner of Jacobin – and leaders of the Fourth International, of which the LCR in France was part, made comments to the effect that such events were off the agenda.

Instead, many on the left in the 1960s looked to other forces including students and peasant-centered struggles in the neo-colonial world as the decisive force to challenge capitalism. This, in effect, meant that much of the “revolutionary left” had turned away from seeing the working class as the key force for changing society. The Marxists who founded the CWI and later Socialist Alternative in the U.S. left the Fourth International in 1964. They set out to build a new international organization of Marxists rooted in the working-class movement and defending the central role of the working class in the struggle for revolutionary change.

As Marxists, we believe the capitalist system in its early development represented an enormous step forward in the development of productive forces despite the enormous brutality entailed in early capital accumulation. However, capitalism now represents an absolute barrier in the development of human economy and society. Capitalism also creates the modern working class, the social force which can end savage exploitation and class oppression, or as Marx put it, capitalism’s “gravediggers.”

Through its ability to shut down the economy and to organize and implement a program for transforming society, it is the historical task of the working class to unite all those oppressed by this system, in reality the overwhelming majority of society, around a program for fundamental change.

This was posed in France. The heavy battalions of workers shut down the key industries of French capitalism and demonstrated how the organized working class was a powerful backbone for a revolutionary transformation of society.

The Working Class Today

Similarly to 1968, many on the left today have doubts about the revolutionary potential of the working class in the U.S. in 2018. This is understandable given the role of conservative trade union leaders in the past decades that have contributed to defeats for working people and a massive retreat of the labor movement. Some people question whether the working class is a key force for change at all given changes in the workplace. Manufacturing makes up a far smaller percentage of the workforce today than it did in the 1960s.

But contrary to those who say that globalization or automation have eliminated the American working class, it remains, without doubt, the majority of society. While the capitalist media is at pains to obscure this, just-in-time production, logistics hubs, and other large concentrations of workers, like in airports, show that the big corporations are vulnerable to collective action. Kim Moody’s 2017 book On New Terrain, points to the massive, continuing power of the U.S. working class, particularly in the logistics sector.

The biggest change in the U.S. working class in recent decades has actually been the massive growth of women and people of color in the workforce. This highlights how the struggle against racism and sexism are not separate from the struggle to build a united working-class movement against capitalism, but an integral part of it. Indeed it is is heavily female workforces, including nurses, teachers, fast-food workers, and now hotel workers who have been in the vanguard of recent struggles.

But the key issue is whether the working class moves from being an objective reality, a “class in itself” to being a force that sees its interests as counterposed to those of the capitalists and organizes to challenge their power. Since the Great Recession, working people in the U.S. have become keenly aware that the top 1% and even the top .01% have gained disproportionately while the bottom 99% and especially the bottom 50% are sliding backward.

There is massive anger at social inequality and the social crisis which faces large sections of the working class. There is a loss of faith in institutions and especially in the political establishment. There is a growing awareness that the future under capitalism promises endless inequality, automation replacing good jobs, and a developing climate catastrophe. In poor countries, wars, famines, and massive displacement of people are likely to intensify. Capitalism no longer pretends to offer a vision of a more abundant future for ordinary people.

The growing anger of working people and young people was reflected in the 2016 campaign of Bernie Sanders who called for a “political revolution against the billionaire class.” It is also reflected in the massive interest in socialism, especially among young people. This is continuing with the wave of “democratic socialist” candidates including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But in the absence of a political force that clearly represents the interests of the working class, the door was opened to the right populism of Donald Trump who also attacked “free trade” deals and proclaimed himself a champion of the working class. This has led to a dangerously reactionary regime which threatens to destroy any remaining gains made through past struggles by workers, women, and African Americans.

But until recently, working-class revolt was only expressed in a partial way and largely on the electoral plane. The retreat of organized labor continued – now down to less than 7% of private sector workers.

This is why the revolt of teachers in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, and North Carolina is so important. There are important organizing drives among airport workers. In Missouri, voters defeated an anti-labor “right-to-work” law brought in by the Republicans by a two-to-one margin. In Europe, Amazon warehouse workers in three countries went on strike in July which could inspire workers in logistics here. McDonald’s workers went on strike against sexual harassment and now hotel workers have gone on strike in several cities. These are clear signs of a desire to fight. What is desperately needed is leadership and a new direction away from the failed approach of labor leaders of the past 30 years – their refusal to use militant tactics or to assert labor’s independent political interests. This also points to the need for a new political party based on the interests of working people. The next period will see real opportunities to take this critical step forward toward class independence.

The American working class has a rich tradition of struggle over the past 150 years. In the 1930s and ‘40s, powerful multiracial industrial unions were built using bold tactics including local general strikes and workplace occupations (“sit-down” strikes). Black workers were the driving force of the civil rights movement which brought down Jim Crow in the South in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Working-class women were the driving force in changing chauvinist attitudes in the ‘60s and ‘70s as part of massive rank-and-file labor upsurge.

Undoubtedly, the recent resurgence of labor struggle is inspiring a new generation to look to organizing workers as a key part of fighting for a different future. The key question for socialists is whether capitalism can be reformed and the working-class movement should restrict itself to mobilizing as an auxiliary to gradual transformation carried out by socialist politicians from above, or whether a working-class movement will need to be built on a perspective of revolutionary change from below. This isn’t just a question just for the future but informs what we do today.

In this regard, the debate over the meaning of France ‘68 foreshadows important debates to come about the future of the socialist and working class movement. Month of Revolution is an important contribution to those debates today and should be read by all socialists in the U.S.

[phooll123]

New top story from Time: Protests Are Being Held in Small Cities and Towns Across the U.S.—And Young People Are Leading the Charge

Jamel Burney—born and raised in Olean, N.Y.—knows you don’t need to live in a major metropolitan area to be heard.

As protests decrying the killing of George Floyd have raged across the country, Burney wanted to show solidarity. He expected just a handful of people to show up to a protest he helped put together on Sunday near Olean’s major intersection. But Burney was shocked to see at least 300 people turn up in the small city, which is located more than five hours northwest of New York City and has a population of nearly 14,000, 90% of whom are white. Hundreds more people showed up to another protest on Wednesday evening.

“This is a new thing,” Burney, 23, tells TIME. “It was the first time we all came together for something like this. It’s important because we live in a small city. We have a right that we get to exercise.”

Courtesy of Jamel Burney

Protests have grown widespread across the country—and, like in Olean, prompted a huge turnout in smaller cities and rural communities throughout the U.S. Demonstrations in support of Black Lives Matter and calling for an end to police brutality have been held in all 50 states, from the boroughs of Pennsylvania to rural Texas. More than 580 cities or towns have held protests, according to a tally from USA Today.

Many demonstrations—like a protest held Saturday in Bend, Ore., or ongoing protests in Elmira, N.Y.—have been organized or driven by young people of color living in those areas who want to show their communities they won’t stand for racism or police violence. In sparsely populated—and mostly white—places, people coming out in large crowds is significant, according to Lara Putnam, a historian at the University of Pittsburgh who studies grassroots organizing.

“What’s striking is both communities of color are stepping forward in outrage and saying we can’t let this keep happening,” Putnam says. “But also, there’s a young generation of white people who see that vision and are being mobilized to no longer just treat this as somebody else’s problem.”

This show of solidarity tracks with a general shift toward acknowledging that police officers are more likely to use more force on black people than white people. A June 2 Monmouth University poll found that 49% of white Americans say police will use excessive force against a black suspect, a jump from the 25% who gave the same answer in 2016.

These protests in small cities and suburban towns are thanks to the quick organizing work of many individuals, who have flooded social media directing people to the next demonstration and held ongoing conversations about how to take action. Jessie Selph, 23, who organized the Olean demonstration with Burney, says a lot of the planning occurred on Facebook, where she was surprised to see an enthusiastic response. As with many organizers behind other protests, Selph, says she was focused on keeping peace during the protests so as not to take away from their central message.

“Smaller communities can lead by example,” Selph says. “It’s beautiful to see everyone come together in unity. Everyone feels alone, and you’re not alone in these situations anymore.”

‘This is in our own backyard’

Courtesy of Lisa Roberts

The widespread demonstrations also call attention to the racism and police misconduct that exists in smaller towns.

“We need to realize this is in our own backyard,” says Lisa Roberts, a biracial resident of Greensburg, Pa., a small city outside of Pittsburgh with a population of about 14,000, about 89% of whom are white, with just over 6% black people. Roberts cites a recent racist incident: in May, a councilman from Southwest Greensburg called another man the N-word during an investigation over a dog fight, an altercation cited in a police report and covered in local media. “It’s not just in big cities.”

Roberts collaborated with a teenager in the area to put together a protest last Sunday after she explained how Floyd died to her 13-year-old son, who is black and autistic. “He sat there thinking about it and he said, ‘What if I’m next?’ I didn’t have an answer for him,” she says. “

Hundreds of people marched together in Greensburg and then laid face down on the ground with their hands clasped behind their backs for about nine minutes—to mark the amount of time Chauvin held Floyd down before he died. “Just laying there was tough to do. I didn’t have a knee in my neck, my hands weren’t cuffed. But it makes you realize what [Floyd] went through and what so many others go through,” Roberts says. “I know we’re just Greensburg and 200, 300 people is nothing. But for this area? It’s big.”

In central-eastern Pennsylvania, where counties that vote blue are often sandwiched between heavily Republican territories, police brutality and racism are nothing new. Ashleigh Strange, regional organizer with Lehigh Valley Stands Up, a grassroots group based in Allentown, Pa., says people have repeatedly come out to protest because they’re tired of officers killing and hurting their community members.

“This is happening in all of our cities. Just because somebody doesn’t become a hashtag doesn’t mean it’s not happening,” Strange says. She notes several incidents from recent years in Allentown and surrounding areas where police officers have fatally shot and tased citizens. “We’re out here because of what happened to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade—not just for them but because we’ve seen it here.”

‘They were telling us to go back home’

These protests—largely peaceful demonstrations—have received less national attention than some of the larger gatherings, where violence has broken out. Still, smaller town protests are frequently fraught, with members of the community opposing demonstrations and some local police departments using violence with protestors.

For Adriana Aquarius, whose voice has gone hoarse from protesting every day since Saturday throughout central Oregon, demonstrating means showing up in areas where black people and people of color are often in the minority and don’t feel supported. After organizing a protest in Bend on Saturday, Aquarius, 21, was moved the next day to bring people to the nearby town of Prineville—a more conservative area of the state—where a local organizer was trying to put together a small protest despite receiving multiple death threats.

Aquarius says a group opposing the protests showed up armed in Prineville, shouting racist slurs at the nearly 200 people who showed up—reminding her of what it was like to grow up in the region, as one of the only black kids in school.

“They were telling us to go back home. Telling us we were thugs,” she says. “I live in central Oregon. There aren’t many people of color here. My allies were white, Mexican and Native American—we were all races. But they still decided to attack black people.”

At the protests, Aquarius has made an effort to have conversations with the people who don’t want her on the streets, to varying degrees of success in getting them to understand why it’s important to call attention to the continued effects of racism in the U.S.

“I am just sick of seeing all this violence and all this pain go on,” she says. “Why is this necessary? I’m listening to my community and I’m projecting their voice.”

‘That hits a different way’

That people are banding together against racism in rural areas and small cities—particularly in places where black people and people of color often live in isolation—signals a willingness among a new generation of white people to fight for everyone, according to Putnam. While many of the protests have been organized by young black activists and people of color, the gatherings springing up in smaller communities typically reflect the majority white demographics of the 18-to 22-year-olds in those areas, she says. In communities where people tend to be more tight-knit, the impact of protestors can go far, Putnam says.

Beautiful night in Round Hill, VA, attended by a few hundred neighbors, to ‘Shine a Light on Racism’ including 8 min 46 sec of silence, and words shared by all ages and races. #blacklivesmatter pic.twitter.com/dVXtcCtaxC

— Melissa Laverty (@MelissaLaverty) June 4, 2020

“If you only see protests through the lens of Fox News or whatever sensationalized broadcast, maybe you’re only going to see mayhem and violence,” she says. “But when it’s kids from down the block who are standing out alongside other kids in your community, that hits a different way. Having someone local say Black Lives Matter … that’s powerful because it keeps the most polarizing effects from kicking in.”

Seeing white demonstrators help out the movement gives Aquarius some hope. And when an opposition forms at demonstrations, it helps to have white allies around to protect black protestors.

“If my voice isn’t loud enough, a white person’s voice is going to be because it has been for the past 400 years,” Aquarius says. “I almost expected people to say we should chill out, because that’s how it’s always been, but instead they were hyping us up.”

Danielle Michel, 33, an Olean resident who attended Sunday’s protest, says white people need to show up, especially those in less populated areas.

“We’re doing this as an act of solidarity,” she says. “And in a rural community where people are going to live — that lie that racism doesn’t happen here — it’s important that other white people are holding the citizens of that community accountable.”

‘We have to fight this every single day’

Hundreds, many wearing masks, are in Petal, Mississippi protesting against racism and for Mayor Hal Marx to step down because of his comments about George Floyd (“If you can talk, you can breathe.”)

Peaceful, but there are many police officers here, some from other counties. pic.twitter.com/Um4npiZs5j

— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman) May 29, 2020

Protests are continuing in cities everywhere. More than 10,000 people have been arrested in demonstrations, according to the Associated Press. Teenagers and young adults, particularly queer people and people of color, organizing protests are doing so to right the wrongs they have seen or experienced for years, according to Strange, who has helped various college students in the Lehigh Valley region channel their anger and pain into action. Young activists, she says, are tired of everything: the violence, yes, but also having their demands about reducing the power of police ignored by politicians for years. They want to continue the fight on the streets, Strange says, rather than become hampered in discussions and debate over what’s right.

“For people of color, it’s just Groundhog Day. We have to live this, we have to fight this every single day,” Strange says. “Something’s gotta give. These kids, if they hear someone shouting in the street, they run out. They’re being heard.”

Aquarius is moving ahead at full speed, helping to organize protests in other parts of Oregon for the coming weekend. She wants people who oppose the protests to think about what they would want for their children, to consider how her parents might feel about having a black child out in the world and to take a step back from being the center of attention. She has two younger sisters and nieces and nephews who are children—the time to stand up for their futures has come.

“Now is our moment,” she says. “Let us use our voice.”

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[everything4everyone]

Seeing the world anew – seeing new worlds

‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle’ – Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto.

‘Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?’ – Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage – and frequently quoted by Frederick Douglass

‘We are not to be saved by the captain… but by the crew’ – Frederick Douglass

‘It is more difficult to honour the memory of the anonymous than it is to honour the memory of the famous’ – Walter Benjamin

In 1964, Mario Tronti famously performed a ‘Copernican inversion’ of orthodox Marxist theory:

We too have worked with a concept that puts capitalist development first, and workers second. This is a mistake. And now we have to turn the problem on its head, reverse the polarity, and start again from the beginning: and the beginning is the class struggle of the working class. At the level of socially developed capital, capitalist development becomes subordinated to working class struggles; it follows behind them, and they set the pace to which the political mechanisms of capital’s own reproduction must be tuned.

Describing this as an ‘inversion of the class perspective’, Harry Cleaver explains. Workers struggle; human beings resist domination. And it is these struggles, this resistance, that forces capital – and its managers – to develop more sophisticated modes of subordinating people to its logics. Without our struggle, there would be no development.

A good example of this – that Cleaver unpacks – is the movement from capital’s strategy of ‘absolute surplus value’ to ‘relative surplus value’ production, which Marx explores in parts III, IV and V of the first volume of Capital. Absolute surplus value – sometimes described as ‘extensive exploitation’ – is generated by extending the length of the working day, making workers work longer: more hours per day, more days per year. Relative surplus value – ‘intensive exploitation’ – is produced when workers work more intensively, producing more commodities, in a given number of hours. This is nearly always achieved by the introduction of new machinery, which increases productivity. Of course, capitalists invest in productivity-enhancing machines because they believe this will be profitable. This is obvious. Cleaver’s point – and Tronti’s – is that capitalists make such investments in so-called fixed capital because they really have little choice but to do so. They are responding to workers’ struggles to limit the length of the working day and to a much more generalised refusal of work. Machines don’t get tired, they don’t soldier, they don’t go on strike. New machinery that increases productivity and output is one important aspect of capitalist development. But it doesn’t stop there. Complex machines require more skilled, more reliable workers to operate them – because more complex machines are typically more vulnerable to sabotage. And so on.

Tronti’s ‘workerism’ was focused on male factory workers struggling in and against Italy’s rapid post-WWII industrialisation. But the insight that capitalist development is driven by struggle and resistance has also been advanced by feminists studying women’s struggles, post-colonial scholars recovering the history of slave revolts and other resistance by colonial subjects, and ‘from-below’ historians and anthropologists uncovering the practices of peasants, campesinos and commoners. It’s the perspective captured in Larkin’s maxim that his friend and comrade James Connolly put on the masthead of the Workers’ Republic, the paper he founded in 1898: ‘The great only appear great because we are on our knees. Let us rise!’ It’s the perspective that W.E.B. Du Bois channels in his ‘general strike’ thesis. Du Bois’s argument is that slaves’ class consciousness and their massive and multi-faceted revolt changed the nature of the United States’ civil war, from a war to save the Union into a war to end slavery – a thus a war that forced capitalism onto a new trajectory.

There are two points to make about this perspective. First, it goes against everything we have been taught, almost everything we are exposed to, day in day out. In Stephen Spielberg’s film Lincoln, for example, Abraham Lincoln is shown as the driving moral force responsible for ending slavery – reinforcing both the popular reputation of the 16th president of the United States and the ‘great man of history’ understanding of social change. We celebrate the accomplishments and inventions of other great men – James Watt, James Hargreaves, Charles Babbage – but forget the context in which they were working and struggling. We are rarely taught that the problems they set out to solve were as much social as ‘technical’. Marx: ‘It would be possible to write a whole history of the inventions made since 1830 for the sole purpose of providing capital with weapons against working class revolt.’ (The best such history of these inventions is this one – but it’s not part of any national curriculum that I’m aware of.) When commoners or proletarians appear in these stories, they are usually passive and they are usually victims – people we might pity.

But consider Silvia Federici’s accounts of witches and witch-hunting. Reading her work, we can never forget that those thousands of women, and a smaller number of men, who were persecuted as ‘witches’ were victims – as were countless others who were thereby intimidated and pacified. They were victims because of their persecution as ‘witches’ and, more broadly, because it was women, especially older women, who were typically more impoverished and socially excluded by the brutal dislocations caused by the development of capitalism. But what distinguishes Federici’s work from other histories of ‘witchcraft’ and witch-hunts is that she points out that for these women to have been so victimised and so persecuted, they must first have inspired fear amongst social elites – clergy, landlords and well-to-do peasants who gained economically from the processes of enclosure that were dispossessing the majority. These women were a threat! Victims, yes, but not passive; they were also active subjects of history. Silvia Federici opens up the possibility that witch-hunting was widespread – in North America and Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in parts of Africa and Asia today – not because women were weak, but because they were, and are, powerful.

Second, when we are first exposed to this perspective it can be quite jolting. Not only does it stand in such contrast to the ‘great man’ histories and to the dominant narrative of most oppositional thought. This way of seeing the world, this mode of thinking – both as methodology and as ontology – opens up a possibility that is initially troubling. Perhaps we are to blame. For the ‘productivity slowdown’ of the 1970s. For the rise in mechanisation and automation – think ‘jobless recovery’ – and the ‘outsourcing’ of jobs. For the expansion of lethal nuclear power plants. For the ‘destruction of the family’, fast food and the TV dinner. For the return of low-waged domestic labour. For the catastrophically unsustainable burning of fossil fuels. Perhaps we have brought these misfortunes on ourselves – just as the misogynist blames the assaulted woman for dressing or behaving ‘provocatively’.

In a sense, this is true. Take George Caffentzis’s extensive scholarship into the political economy of energy – probably the second most important commodity or set of commodities – after that ‘special commodity’, labour-power itself. (George’s work directly updates Marx’s own writing on the introduction of machines in Capital.) In one strikingly simple yet illuminating paper, he estimates the thermodynamic energy produced annually by the burning of oil vis-à-vis the energy that, hypothetically, could be produced in a year by human labourers – creating what we might think of as an estimate of the ‘calorific composition of capital’. His argument here is that the astonishing growth in the work done by fossil fuels – first coal and then oil – over the past few centuries should be understood as capital’s response to workers’ refusal of work.

To attack the resistant power of workers, capital creates whole universes that are valueless in themselves. The 360 billion human work-years of energy derived from oil are directed at exploiting substantially less than 6 billion work-years of energy embedded in resistant human labor!

Another kaleidoscopic side of this history are the myriad struggles of energy workers themselves – over wages, working conditions and the uses to which the product of their labour is put – along with those of ‘environmentalists’ – from campaigners against ‘smog’, to anti-nuke protesters, to ‘keep it in the ground’ activists. Taken together, these struggles have shaped profoundly capitalism and world we now inhabit.

‘Blame’ is not quite the right word here. But we should nevertheless recognise – and embrace – our responsibility. For our responsibility – overawing as it might be at times – is our power and our liberation. In the appalling fucked-up-ness of a world in which violence against women – as well as against LGBT people – is so widespread, a kernel that should give us succour is that a woman’s – or a gender-queer person’s – power to provoke is exactly that – a power, a power that is indicative of these subjects’ potential to transform gender relations, sexual relations and – more broadly – social relations. In the appalling fucked-up-ness of a world full of so many horrors and so many crises, we must take succour in the knowledge that we created this world – and we created its crises.

We are the crisis of capital and proud of it. Enough of saying that the capitalists are to blame for the crisis! The very notion is not only absurd but dangerous. It constitutes us as victims.

This is why human history is a drama and not a tragedy. We should never forget Marx’s famous observation in The Eighteenth Brumaire: ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.’ But, in fact, we should reverse it in order to invert its emphasis: we rarely do so in circumstances of our own choosing, but nevertheless we make our own history.

This is not really a new way of seeing. But this lens – the lens through which we see change coming from below, the lens through which we can both see the world anew and see new worlds – must constantly be polished and refined. It keeps getting fogged up by the hot air of dominant narratives, dominant histories – not only perpetuated by politicians and the BBC, but by most Marxists, social movement activists and self-styled alternative and radical media. Each political generation must learn to use it, to see in this way.

Take the furore over Britain’s imminent exit from the EU. I see Leftists dolefully sharing predictions of the likely damage to trade and ‘the economy’ following Brexit – just as some of those Leftists approvingly shared reports in which establishment economists or the International Monetary Fund have made approving noises about the prospects for growth and ‘the economy’ under a Corbyn-and-McDonnell-led Labour government. Only two decades ago there was a hundreds-of-thousands-strong movement against free trade. This movement was more-or-less successful – in its immediate objectives at least: we forced the abandonment of every ambitious free-trade treaty and discredited the World Trade Organisation, along with the IMF and the World Bank. A shocking victory. It’s true we failed to foment wider social revolution – and it’s possible these successes of the counter-globalisation movement helped pave the way for the likes of Trump and rising xenophobia more generally. But we should nevertheless remember – and celebrate – these victories, even as we grieve for their lost potential. These victories are expressions of our power. We – and not Trump or anyone else – buried the ‘liberal international order’!

I haven’t been able to trace the source of the final quote. I found it jotted down in a notebook, maybe from years ago. It sounds like Subcommandante Marcos, one of the most important critical thinkers of the 20th century and beyond. But it could be Franz Fanon, John Holloway or Ursula LeGuin (‘maybe the Odonian manifesto in The Dispossessed?’). But it’s appropriate that no one seems sure. As one comrade commented: ‘it’s the core of all magic’ and, most importantly, ‘it’s from everywhere!’

‘We make this world. We can unmake it and make others.’

[artsychica2012]

(via Social Issues in Speculative Fiction)

Speculative fiction writers often tackle social issues. The Hunger Games tackled the social class system. And so did the Divergent series. Both series were about the haves and have-nots. They were also about dictatorial governments in a world where one person had all the power to decide life and death.

My series, Across the Realm, is no different. I simply chose different issues to concentrate on. And that is because it is my strong belief that the past mirrors the future.

Once, my grandfather told me that human beings did not change. He said the buildings, the times and technology changed, but the way we thought and the way we treated each other did not. Although I still do not believe him, I wanted to project that perspective in my series.

Earth in the 26th Century

I based my scifi/fantasy series, Across the Realm, on earth in the 26thcentury. The 26th century is an amazing time for humans. They have reached the pinnacle of development and are still going strong. Crime is almost zero and all-social issues such as discrimination, racism, prejudice towards the LGBT community and others are moot.

That is because human beings have finally made decisions they are happy with and Mother Nature aided and abetted in this newfound wisdom. Earth’s tectonic plates moved in the late 21st century and continents became a thing of the past. Basically, the movement left two huge landmasses, one to the North and one to the South.

The ocean temperatures went up to boiling level and the South was more affected by the hot waters in comparison to the North. In the North, people can still go to the beach, as long as they keep a safe distance. That is not the case with the South. The Southerners are completely allergic to water.

The North

Two civilizations have emerged in the North and the South and they are polar opposites in the same way as East and West. The North is a segregationist society where all races opted to live separate lives from other races. They believe in segregation and have reaped great benefits from it. They do cooperate in many things such as the military, but each race is autonomous of the other. They never mix. They most certainly do not have interracial relationships, nor can they fathom such a thing. They believe in purity, as Hitler believed. They are happy.

Their way of life has led to great development for the North and science is the cornerstone of their civilization.

The South

The South is a society that is deeply spiritual and lives as a collective. They are interracially mixed and bound together by their history and experiences. They have biologically evolved to survive the hostile territory of Southern earth and in many ways are completely different from the 21st century human. They emphasize love, togetherness and devotion and they all have one MOTHER. She is their deity who has a very active and present role in their lives.

They live together, eat together and love together. They depend on one another in everything; even basic survival and they are thriving. They are each others brother’s keeper.

Belief Systems Are Still the Same

In our 21st century way of thinking, one can say that the North practices the perfect segregation as our social scientists penned it way back when. The South, meanwhile, practices extreme socialism at its finest, as Karl Marx would have wanted.

It might be the 26th century, but the belief systems of the past are still the same and going strong. Only, in the 26th century, they have reached the pinnacle of success in the function.

....

Further Discussion

What ideologies are over-represented in speculative fiction? What ideologies are underrepresented?

Have you depicted any ideologies in your own writing? Was the portrayal positive, negative, or neutral?

Any recommendations for works of fantasy that deal directly with political ideologies?

About the Author:

Isobel Mitton is an award winning Canadian scifi/fantasy author. Her latest work, Across the Realm Book 2: When Two Tribes Go to War, is now on sale at Amazon. You can learn more about the author and the Across the Realm series at acrosstherealm.com.

#amWriting #writing speculative fiction #what I write when I'm not writing Olitz fic

[tsunderrorism]

Third Worldist quotes

These are not in any order nor are the quoted necessarily [proto] third worldists. But all these quotes support the TWist position: that white workers in the imperialist countries are a reactionary class. 

"And finally, let us say that we are sick of the canting talk of those who tell us that we must not blame the British people for the crimes of their rulers against Ireland. We do blame them. In so far as they support the system of society which makes it profitable for one nation to connive at the subjection of another nation they are responsible for every crime committed to maintain that subjection. If there is any section of the British people who believe that Ireland would be justified in ending the British Empire if she could, in order to escape from thraldom to it, then that section may hold itself guiltless of any crime against Ireland. But if there is any such section, how small and utterly insignificant it is, since it nowhere gives public proof of its existence."-James Connolly, "The Slackers"

"This liberal intellectual polarity that “race issues” and “class issues” are opposites, are completely separate from each other, and that one or the must be the main thing, is utterly useless! We have to really get it that race issues aren’t the opposite of class issues. That race is always so electrically charged, so filled with mass power, precisely because it’s about raw class. That’s why revolutionaries and demagogues can both potentially tap into so much power using it. Or get burned. You can’t steer yourself in real politics, not in amerikkka and not in this global imperialism, without understanding race. “Class” without race in North America is an abstraction. And vice-versa. Those who do not get this are always just led around by the nose, the manipulated without a clue — and it is true that many don’t want any more from life than this. But wising up on race only means seeing all the class issues that define race and charge it with meaning. Why should it be so hard to understand that capitalism, which practically wants to barcode our assholes, has always found it convenient to color-code its classes?"-J Sakai

"The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable.”-Engels to Marx, October 7th 1858

"Fifthly, the exploitation of oppressed nations—which is inseparably connected with annexations—and especially the exploitation of colonies by a handful of “Great” Powers, increasingly transforms the “civilised” world into a parasite on the body of hundreds of millions in the uncivilised nations. The   Roman proletarian lived at the expense of society. Modern society lives at the expense of the modern proletarian. Marx specially stressed this profound observation of Sismondi. Imperialism somewhat changes the situation. A privileged upper stratum of the proletariat in the imperialist countries lives partly at the expense of hundreds of millions in the uncivilised nations...By means of the silly word “fatally” and a certain sleight-of-hand, the fact is evaded that certain groups of   workers have already drifted away to opportunism and to the imperialist bourgeoisie!...Secondly, why does England’s monopoly explain the (temporary) victory of opportunism in England? Because monopoly yields superprofits, i.e., a surplus of profits over and above the capitalist profits that are normal and customary all over the world. The capitalists can devote a part (and not a small one, at that!) of these superprofits to bribe their own workers, to create something like an alliance (recall the celebrated “alliances” described by the Webbs of English trade unions and employers) between the workers of the given nation and their capitalists against the other countries." -Lenin, Imperialism and the Split in Socialism

"Yet the paradox is easily explained: The white workingman has been asked to share the spoil of exploiting 'chinks and niggers.' It is no longer simply the merchant prince, or the aristocratic monopoly, or even the employing class, that is exploiting the world: it is the nation; a new democratic nation composed of united capital and labor. The laborers are not yet getting, to be sure, as large a share as they want or will get, and there are still at the bottom large and restless excluded classes. But the laborer's equity is recognized, and his just share is a matter of time, intelligence, and skillful negotiation."-W.E.B. Dubois, The African Roots Of War

"Taking the entire globe, if North America and Western Europe can be called “the cities of the world”, then Asia, Africa and Latin America constitute “the rural areas of the world”. Since World War II, the proletarian revolutionary movement has for various reasons been temporarily held back in the North American and West European capitalist countries, while the people’s revolutionary movement in Asia, Africa and Latin America has been growing vigorously. In a sense, the contemporary world revolution also presents a picture of the encirclement of cities by the rural areas. In the final analysis, the whole cause of world revolution hinges on the revolutionary struggles of the Asian, African and Latin American peoples who make up the overwhelming majority of the world’s population. The socialist countries should regard it as their internationalist duty to support the people’s revolutionary struggles in Asia, Africa and Latin America."-Lin Biao, "Long Live The Victory Of People's War!"

"Parasitic capitalism provides the material basis for the white nationalism and “racism” of the white working class which enthusiastically upholds and carries out U.S. colonial policy. It is also the material basis for the opportunism of the white left, which has historically sold out and betrayed the African anticolonial struggle repeatedly throughout history the white left, itself a product of the oppressor nation, is equally white nationalist, parasitic and opportunist as the white working class population in general. In many instances it has been more vicious and destructive to the Black Liberation movement than overt white nationalist attacks."-Platform of the INPDUM

[On right wing, anti-government violence in Amerikkka]

"This isn't something that capitalism can change by simply

pushing a button. Any more than they can just order capitalistic

men with AK-47s to stop slaughtering to set up their cherished

tribal nations in Cambodia or Croatia or Liberia. Because capitalism

in its struggle to control the entire world set armies in motion. And

these armies, which take the form of entire nations and races and

genders, are still out on a mission from colonial days. Just as

capitalism created white patriarchal society to be its settler garrison

over North Amerika, and after 400 years this has a historic

momentum and a stubborn life of its own. Clinton or Rockefeller

can't just make a phone call and get 200 millions of white men and

their women to roll over and pull the plug, to stop being parasites.

All over the world armies long set in motion refuse to be recalled."

-Butch Lee and Red Rover, "Night Vision: Illuminating War and Class in the Neocolonial Terrain"

"Any white fortune seeker, no matter what part of the world he came from, could aspire to own and share in the mineral wealth of South Africa; but not an indigenous black. The emergent capitalist class was thus defined as white, and this fact was underwritten by law...One could add to these a third variant, deriving from the history of the United States. For lack of a better term, I shall characterise this as the settler-revolutionary path. In the United States, the white settler commercial farmers of the north, in alliance with the slave-owners of the south, rose against British domination (1776) and established an independent white settler republic. Owing to the peculiarities of this alliance, the new state accommodated itself to a capitalist and pre- capitalist mode of production. After almost a century of uneasy co- existence, the capitalist mode of production (in the north) was compelled to impose a revolution from without and from above on the slave-owning south in the shape of the Civil War ( 1860-65) and abolish slavery. The United States thus became economically unified though a thorough-going bourgeois-democratic reformation was delayed tor another 100 years because of the stubborn resistance of the whites in the former slave state."-Resolution of the African National Congress

"In the colonies the economic infrastructure is also the superstructure. The cause is effect: You are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich. This is why a Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched when it comes to addressing the colonial issue. It is not just the concept of the pre-capitalist society, so effectively studied by Marx, which needs to be reexamined here. The serf is essentially different from the Knight, but a reference to divine right is needed to justify this difference in status. In the colonies the foreigner imposed himself using his cannons and machines. Despite the success of his pacification, in spite of his appropriation, the colonist always remains a foreigner. It is not the factories, the estates, or the bank account which primarily characterize the "ruling class." The ruling species is first and foremost the outsider from elsewhere, different from the indigenous population, "the others.""

-Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth

"The colonial agricultural sub-proletariat cannot even count on an alliance with the least-favored Europeans, for everyone lives off them, even the 'small colonizers,' whom the big proprietors exploit, but who are privileged compared to the Algerians, the average income of the Algerian Frenchman being ten times that of the Algerian Muslim."

--Jean-Paul Sartre, introduction to "The Colonizer and the Colonized" by Albert Memmi

"Specifically, the “labour aristocracy” refers to those more well-to-dolayers of the working class, people who no longer have any material incentive to engage in the dangerous, grueling task of carrying out a revolution against capitalism. Lenin had argued that the labour aristocracy was a product of imperialism, as the profits earned from [super-exploitation of] the developing countries were used to pay for the elevated position of certain sections of the working class in the metropole. This concept has been accepted by almost all strains of the Marxist–Leninist tradition, though often accorded little actual importance in practice. To the first wave of the RAF, however, the question of the labour aristocracy had by this point become central. The labour aristocracy was not seen simply as a section of the West German working class, but as the dominant section, almost to the exclusion of any classical proletariat."

-Projectiles for the People: A history of the Red Army Faction

"I was in the East End of London (a working-class quarter) yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for 'bread! bread!' and on my way home I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism....

My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e., in order to save the 40,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and mines. The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists."

-Cecil Rhodes (colonizer of Zimbabwe, formerly known as 'Rhodesia')

"But, you will say, we live in the mother country, and we disapprove of her excesses. It is true, you are not settlers, but you are no better. For the pioneers belonged to you; you sent them overseas, and it was you they enriched. You warned them that if they shed too much blood you would disown them, or say you did, in something of the same way as any state maintains abroad a mob of agitators, agents provocateurs and spies whom it disowns when they are caught. You, who are so liberal and so humane, who have such an exaggerated adoration of culture that it verges on affectation, you pretend to forget that you own colonies and that in them men are massacred in your name. Fanon reveals to his comrades above all to some of them who are rather too Westernized — the solidarity of the people of the mother country and of their representatives in the colonies. Have the courage to read this book, for in the first place it will make you ashamed, and shame, as Marx said, is a revolutionary sentiment...

...The Left at home is embarrassed; they know the true situation of the natives, the merciless oppression they are submitted to; they do not condemn their revolt, knowing full well that we have done everything to provoke it. But, all the same, they think to themselves, there are limits; these guerrillas should be bent on showing that they are chivalrous; that would be the best way of showing they are men. Sometimes the Left scolds them ... ‘you’re going too far; we won’t support you any more.’ The natives don’t give a damn about their support; for all the good it does them they might as well stuff it up their backsides....

..You know well enough that we are exploiters. You know too that we have laid hands on first the gold and metals, then the petroleum of the ‘new continents’, and that we have brought them back to the old countries. This was not without excellent results, as witness our palaces, our cathedrals and our great industrial cities; and then when there was the threat of a slump, the colonial markets were there to soften the blow or to divert it. Crammed with riches, Europe accorded the human status de jure to its inhabitants. With us, to be a man is to be an accomplice of colonialism, since all of us without exception have profited by colonial exploitation."

-Jean-Paul Sartre, introduction to The Wretched Of The Earth

"You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general: the same as the bourgeois think. There is no workers’ party here, you see, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the world market and the colonies."-Engels to Kautsky, 9/12/1885

"Economically, the difference [between workers of different nations] is that sections of the working class in the oppressor nations receive crumbs from the superprofits the bourgeoisie of these nations obtains by extra exploitation of the workers of the oppressed nations. Besides, economic statistics show that here a larger percentage of the workers become “straw bosses” than is the case in the oppressed nations, a larger percentage rise to the labour aristocracy. That is a fact. To a certain degree the workers of the oppressor nations are partners of their own bourgeoisie in plundering the workers (and the mass of the population) of the oppressed nations." Lenin, A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism

“The white [amerikan] workers literally demanded their traditional settler right to be petit-bourgeois - “little bourgeois,” petty imitators who would annex their small, individual plots each time the real bourgeoisie annexed another oppressed nation. It should be clear that the backwardness of white labor is not a matter of “racism,” of “mistaken ideas,” of “being tricked by the capitalists” (all idealistic instead of materialist formulations); rather, it is a class question and a national question.

This stratum came into being with its feet on top of the proletariat and its head straining up into the petit-bourgeoisie. It’s startling how narrow and petty its concerns were in an age when the destiny of peoples and nations was being decided, when the settler Empire was trying to take into its hands the power to decree death to whole nations.”

-J Sakai, Settlers: The Mythology Of The White Proletariat

"America and Canada are European settler colonies but they are harder to distinguish than the others. They're harder to distinguish simply because America and Canada come closest to being successful settler colonies. They come closest to being successful settler colonies.

In order to be a successful settler colony, one must commit genocide against the original owners of the land. America did this. America did this. In order to be a successful settler colony, one must commit genocide against the original owners of the land. They did this and then they changed the name, and it sounds as if they belong here.

They wiped out an entire nation to take the land. Changed the name and call themselves Americans. When you call them an American, you obliviate the correct history. They are not Americans. They are European settlers, that's all that they are. If they're not European settlers, they're certainly the sons and daughters of European settlers. They're not Americans. You should not call them Americans. To do that, you misrepresent the red man who owns this land. They are Europeans."

-Stokely Carmicheal

""The income which we derive each year from commissions and services rendered to foreign countries is over £65 million. In addition, we have a steady revenue from foreign investments of close on £300 million a year... That is the explanation of the source from which we are able to defray social services at a level incomparably higher than that of any european country or any country" - Winston Churchill

“In leading capitalist nations, workers tend to become participants in foreign exploitation. The backward peoples are the real exploited and exploitable proletariat of the system.

The working class in a leading nation has sufficient reason to walk arm in arm with its oligarchy against the world. On imperialistic questions, we should ordinarily expect this class to be nationalistic, because a threat to the imperial position of the nation tends to become a threat to its own welfare. The class struggle thus goes on at home for a larger share of the national income. But it is a struggle that tends to stop at the water’s edge where antagonisms with rival imperialists and exploited backward peoples begin. The working people of a leading capitalist nation are likely to rise up in wrath against those of their fellows who disclaim the imperialist actions of the government, regarding them as traitors.” (Oliver C. Cox, "Capitalism as a System", 1964)

The amount of poverty and suffering required for a Rockefeller to emerge, and the amount of depravity entailed in the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible for the popular forces to expose this clearly. (A discussion of how the workers in the imperialist countries gradually lose the spirit of working-class internationalism due to a certain degree of complicity in the exploitation of the dependent countries, and how this at the same time weakens the combativity of the masses in the imperialist countries, would be appropriate here, but that is a theme that goes beyond the scope of these notes.)"

- Che Guevara, MAN AND SOCIALISM IN CUBA

"America’s proletariat in general is far behind that of European countries as a factor of the coming social revolution; especially so long as it is led by yellow leaders, like Sam Gompers and Co. In fact American proletarians are opportunistic, as are most of their leaders. It is the least class conscious proletariat in the world in the revolutionary meaning of the word. This is true not only of the trades union movement, but also of the political movement, including the socialist and even the Communist movements. American opportunism is largely due to its historical condition and training. ... This is the very reason why our Communist movement in America has been so slow in spite of so many Russian comrades working for the cause and in spite of so many books on Bolshevism and its activities having been published and spread (especially it has been the fact since the movement became illegal.) The membership fell down, after the big raid of January 1920, to an insignificant quantity. What was left in the Party were mostly foreigners, who have been trained in the underground party work in their own country. The American proletarians are mostly opportunistic in their temperament and thought: they don’t care a cent for the theory of Communism, they are satisfied with high wages and with the rule of Sam Gompers and Co!"

Sen Katayama, Japanese Communist Party co-Founder, 'Japan’s Position in the Coming World Social Revolution', 1922.

“If a revolution succeeds in England, the proletariat will continue oppressing the colonies and pursuing the policy of the existing bourgeois government; for it is interested in the exploitation of these colonies. In order to prevent the oppression of the toiler of the East we must unite the Muslim masses in a communist movement that will be our own and autonomous.”

M. Sultan-Galiev, 9th Conference of the Tatar Obkom, 1923.

"Relations between foreign forced workers and German industrial workers was not much better [than between German settlers and their Polish and Russian farm workers who were effectively their slaves]. This was especially the case where the presence of large numbers of foreign workers enabled Germans to move into supervisory positions and thus enjoy a degree of ocucpational and social mobility which their own modest talents would otherwise have denied them. Even the most incompetent dullard could lord it over the Poles and Russians. Apart from the nation's foremen, and cases of brutality by, for example, miners in the Ruhr towards the Russian sub-class below them, most German workers seem to have been largely indifferent to the fact that they were working alongside an undernourished army which emerged spectrally from freezing camps but was excluded from public air-raid shelters and swimming baths, and which could be strung up [literally] for doing things which the rest of the population took for granted. Informed commentators such as Ulrich Herbert have noted that the principal reason for this response was that Nazi racial policy towards foreign workers interacted with the arrogant self-regard, chauvinism, and racism of some sections of the German working class. This suggests that the Nazis' novel efforts to replace class with racial society found a ready response in significant sections of the population. Judging by studies of how many 'German workers' treat their Turkish colleagues in present-day factories or service industries, these attitudes seem to have survived the Nazi period, which for some workers, marginalised by the 'elbow society' of the Federal Republic and atracted to the extreme Republican party, has become an object of nostalgia as a time of strong and successful government. Working class racism is, of course, not exclusively confined to Germany."- Burleigh and Wippermann, The Racial State

#third worldism #first worldism #communism

[81scorp]

My Little thoughts on Slice of Life

(Originally posted as an editorial on Deviantart July 30, 2015. It has not been changed from how I originally wrote it.)

In 2010 Hasbro hired animator, writer and director Lauren Faust to breathe some new life into the My Little Pony franchise which, unlike fine wine had not aged well with time. Faust, a fan of the original show put together a team and based her version on the first generation of My Little Pony but put more emphasis on humor and gave the characters more in-depth personalities. The show was successful. So successful that it became popular outside of it`s target demographic and gained a following of young and middleaged men and women who call themselves "Bronies" and "Pegasisters". Aware of their unconventinal fans, the creators of the show sometimes put in a few nods to the older audience now and then. A while ago the show turned 100 episodes. That isn`t bad, it`s a good milestone for a show. At the hundredth episode the creators usually do something extra to celebrate that the show has lasted that long. Like: have a famous guest star, have two people who have been in love witch eachother for a long time finally get married or some other big thing. The 100th episode of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic gave us a fight between the main characters and a giant "Bugbear" (a cross between a bear and a bee) and a wedding between two donkey characters, helped by several ponies that usually just stay in the background. And of these two stories the episode focused on the latter. If what the creators did earlier was nods then the things they put in this episode counts as headbanging. Wether you like or dislike this episode I feel it`s worth talking about. So here are some of my little thoughts on the 100th episode: "Slice of Life". SPOILERS are magic

Derpy

I became aware of MLP FiM relatively late so I first found out about this crosseyed mare on fan art before I saw her in the show. I thought the idea of a silly, clumsy and ditzy pony sounded fun.When I saw Derpy in "The last roundup" I felt that it wasn`t bad... but it could have been better. Even if "I just don`t know what went wrong" is a cute catchphrase I felt like they may have relied a bit too much on the whole clueless and oblivious angle. Her voice almost sounded like she was supposed to be actually mentally challenged, combine that with her being oblivious to the disaster she creates and it makes her (to me at least) feel almost Jar Jar Binksian. I do like the later part of that scene though. Like when Rainbow Dash says to Derpy: "In the name of Celestia, just sit there and do nothing!" And Derpy does so and bad things still happen. That wasn`t her fault, just crappy wood. When people called Derpy a "controversial character" and wanted to get rid of her I remember the Simpsons episode where homer voiced the new character Poochie. There wasn`t anything wrong with Poochie per se (they could have toned down his EXTREME-ness a bit). In my constructive criticism of Phantom Menace I mentioned that unlike many others I didn`t feel that Jar Jar should be removed completely, but instead have the goofiness turned down a bit. Make him more competent but still kinda fun. "But hasn`t Derpy been portrayed like she was in `The Last Roundup` in fan comics?" Yes, but her being completely oblivious works better in non-official, non-canon standalone gags. Besides, not all ideas from the fandom are great ideas. Now, about Derpy in "Slice of Life". I liked it. This is a much better and more nuanced version of her personality. Smart enough to be aware of her surroundings but still keeping her silliness, clumsiness and childish side. In "The Last Roundup" Derpy sounded the way she did because Tabitha St Germain, her voice actress, thought that Derpy was a little boy. She voices Derpy again in this episode and her voice matches her personality perfectly. She`s like most Ponies, just a little ditzy. If Derpy was a bit "I am Sam" in "The Last Roundup" then "Slice of Life" makes her more of a "Forrest Gump". And yes, I know that her name in the credits was "Muffins". I`m not calling her Derpy because of some stubborn, fact-denying, fanboy refusal. But because I`m so used to calling her by that name. But I understand why the creators officially don`t call her by that name. I`m just glad they gave the character a second chance. Doctor Whooves

I like this character, but I have to admit it`s because how he`s portrayed in the fandom. I also have to admit it was fun that they made him as close to the Doctor as they could without infringing on copyright. Turns out he was inspired to become a scientist because of a childhood trauma. Not something I was expecting but I don`t mind a little backstory. Secret agent Sweetie drops

At first this felt odd because, to me, the world of Equestria feels like a simple world that doesn`t have all that secrecy and spy stuff like in Captain America: Winter Soldier. Personally I wouldn`t have made her a secret agent but instead just an ordinary pony who had lived in a different town a few years ago, a town that had been destroyed by the Bugbear. And since that day she had been searching for the Bugbear to get revenge. But I guess I can understand why they made her a secret agent. It allowed them to call her Bonbon, the name that the fans call her, while still calling her Sweetie drops, her official name. But now that I think about it, secret agents and spy stuff doesn`t seem that farfetched. In "MMMystery on the Friendship Express" Pinkie thought that Donut Joe was a secret agent. Technically it was just her imagination, but it shows that the concept of spies and secret organisations is not as alien to the world of MLP FiM as I first thought. Let`s not forget other stuff that feels closer to our world than a kind, friendly, fantasy-esque world with talking, singing ponies. Like video games (Hearts and Hooves Day) and cities with names like Fillydelphia and Manehattan. Manehattan feels different from the rest of the world of MLP FiM and closer to our own with it`s name, modern architecture, ponies in suits wearing earpieces and New Yorkish inhabitans. So technically, it`s not the existence of secret agents in Equestria that I find odd, but rather these two things:1: Bonbon being a secret agent. 2:This line: "Every last shred of evidence of the organization's existence was destroyed. Celestia demanded complete deniability." Princess Celestia, the wise, benevolent ruler of Equestria having a Nick Fury-ish side that hides big secrets from her subjects? You`d expect something like this from something like DCAU or Avengers: Earth`s Mightest Heroes, but in a show about magic, talking ponies? It feels like someting from a fan-parody. Hard to swallow, but at least it`s funny. From what I`ve heard, Bonbon being a secret agent was based on a fan theory, that I wasn`t aware of before watching this episode, that tries to explain why her voice sounds different in some episodes.When it comes to ponies with inconsistent voices in the show, my own theories are less dramatic. I just assume that they caught a cold the other day and... they`re just a little hoarse.

*Ba-dum-tish!* Vinyl and Octavia

These two ponies are a perfect example of the Odd Couple trope. One is calm, sophisticated and into classical music and the other one is more into modern, technological, rythm-based music. In many ways polar opposites but still willing to meet eachother halfway. Am I Okay with Vinyl being mute? Yes. It kinda makes her a Harpo Marx character, and characters who speaks little to not at all can be a lot of fun. Like: Harpo Marx, Wall-E, Mr Bean and Silent Bob. Would I have been OK if Vinyl talked and wasn`t voiced by Nowhacking? Yes I would. Even if it is fun that the fandom sometimes influences the show it`s not like they control it with an iron hand.

Gummy being deep

This part... this part... While it may change our view of this gator as an empty headed reptile it technically does not go against continuity. In this episode he sat with a vacant stare like he always does, the difference is that this time we got to hear his thoughts while he was doing it. But still... this part... this part... I don`t know what is real anymore. The changeling and Steven Magnet

From what I understand Steven Magnet`s name was based on something from the fandom. Before I watched this I wasn`t aware of that and just saw it as a callback to the first episode. I felt the changeling was also a callback, sort of a way for the writer to say "You remember these episodes? I just wanted to show you that I remember them too." I liked the part when Steven cut of a piece of his moustache to give to Cranky. Besides being a callback it also showed that he had grown as a person, putting his friends happiness over his own looks. But what was the deal with the changeling? Hello? A member of a race that tried to take over your world a while ago is just sitting there in broad daylight! Sure, he`s not harming anyone, just minding his own business. But still! Celestia and Luna From what I understand this is how they have been portrayed in fanfics and fancomics. But you don`t have to have seen any of those to enjoy it. Celestia and Luna have, up to this episode, always been portrayed as royal and nigh flawless (with a few exceptions) and we`ve never seen them interact with eachother in a more natural, sisterly way. So the humor in this scene works.

I think this is a divisive episode. Some people will hate it for the same reasons that others love it. Wether you love it or hate it I think that both sides can agree that it`s full of pandering. I can see how fun it is when the show takes ideas from the fandom (and I`m not just talking about MLP here, though MLP is where we see most of it), it makes the fans feel like they`re being listened to. Personally it`s not THAT important to me that a show or comic borrows heavily from the fans, only that they sometimes listen to constructive criticism. From what I`ve learned there`s at least two versions of a beloved show or comic. There`s the official canon by the creators and the fan-canon. I can use Ranma 1/2 by Rumiko Takahashi as an example. In the manga there`s a character named Ryoga Hibiki who has no sense of direction, he always gets lost on his travels. Before I read the manga I read a lot of fanfics where the writers exaggerated his "lostness" to the point of teleportation. (If he was in Japan in one minute he could end up Mexico the next, with no idea of how he got there.) Should Rumiko Takahashi have put this in her manga to lessen the difference between fan-canon and the official manga? No. The manga is fine as it is, and sometimes the fanfics tended to flanderize the characters, like I said: not all ideas from the fandom are great ideas. Not that taking ideas from the fandom is inherently wrong, or inherently right. When it comes to MLP FiM the close relationship between the creators and the fans has worked relatively well so far. A thought I have about the episode is that the ponies have a bit skewed priorities. A giant monster attacks their town and the most important thing is a wedding? I can understand Cranky and Matilda`s logic, a sort of "do something important that you`ve procrastinated long enough now that the town is being destroyed" kind of thing. But the other ponies? Oh well I guess it`s kind of a double meaning of the title: monster attacks has happened so often that they`re used to it. For them, it`s tuesday. Probably also explains why they didn`t panic over the changeling. Another thing that justifies the ponies priorities: there was very little to no destruction of buildings (sure, this is a kid`s show, but still). I guess the mane six (in some scenes at least) managed to direct the fight away from populated areas. Take notes, Goyer and Snyder, you might actually learn someting. This episode was built on a lot of ideas from the fandom. If you`re a fan who don`t keep up with the latest MLP fan-theories, memes and jokes, can you still enjoy it? I`d like to think so. It`s almost like that episode of The Simpsons when all the minor characters got a chance to be in the spotlight (except Professor Frink). Even if you don`t know about the characters and how they are usually portrayed in the fandom you can still enjoy the comedy of this episode. What did I think? Was this a great episode? I dunno. The pandering kinda works as a double edged sword. I still kinda like how it is aware of what it`s doing with that shark-jumping scene. In my opinion the greatest episode is still "Twilights Kingdom". Not just because of the Dragonball Z action but also because of the high stakes, Discord`s character development, Celestia, Luna and Cadence making themselves vulnerable by giving their magic to Twilight who later grows into her role as a princess. Plus: We got a scene where all the three princesses together sang a song to Twilight about how one day she`d get her chance to shine. Was Slice of Life good? Objectively? It feels more funny than good, at least it has humor for the casual viewers who aren`t familiar with the world. Since it is hard for me to be completely objective I can`t really say if this episode is objectively good or not. The only thing I can say with complete certainty and honesty is if I liked it or not. So, did I like "Slice of life"? Yes. Vinyl and Octavia`s musical collaboration was pretty sweet, and sorry for sounding like a Derpy fanboy, but some of my favourite parts were the ones with Dr Whooves and Derpy. I liked that they gave a second chance to a pony that got of to a rocky start. I`d be lying if I said that I didn`t squee on the inside when she hugged Dr Whooves. Keep calm and trot on.

#mlp #fim #my little pony #friendship is magic #editorial #81scorp

[sonic-awareness]

[...] And, finally, even without imputing objective intentions to the art-work, there remains the inescapable truth about perception: the positivity of all experience at every moment of it. As John Cage has insisted, "there is no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound." (Cage has described how, even in a soundless chamber, he still heard at least two things: his heartbeat and the coursing of the blood in his head). Similarly, there is no such thing as empty space. As long as a human eye is looking there is always something to see. To look at something that's "empty" is still to be looking, still to be seeing something — if only the ghosts of one's own expectations. In order to perceive fullness, one must retain an acute sense of the emptiness which marks it off; conversely, in order to perceive emptiness, one must apprehend other zones of the world as full. (In Through the Looking Glass, Alice comes upon a shop "that seemed to be full of all manner of curious things — but the oddest part of it all was that whenever she looked hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what it had on it, that particular shelf was always quite empty, though the others round it were crowded full as they could hold.")

"Silence" never ceases to imply its opposite and to demand on its presence. Just as there can't be "up" without "down" or "left" without "right," so one must acknowledge a surrounding environment of sound or language in order to recognize silence. Not only does silence exist in a world full of speech and other sounds, but any given silence takes its identity as a stretch of time being perforated by sound. (Thus, much of the beauty of Harpo Marx's muteness derives from his being surrounded by manic talkers.)

A genuine emptiness, a pure silence, are not feasible — either conceptually or in fact. If only because the art-work exists in a world furnished with many other things, the artist who creates silence or emptiness must produce something dialectical: a full void, an enriching emptiness, a resonating or eloquent silence. Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech (in many instances, of complaint or indictment) and an element in a dialogue.

[...]

Language seems a privileged metaphor for expressing the mediated character of art-making and the art-work. On the one hand, speech is both an immaterial medium (compared with, say, images) and a human activity with an apparently essential stake in the project of transcendence, of moving beyond the singular and contingent (all words being abstractions, only roughly based on or making reference to concrete particulars). But, on the other hand, language is the most impure, the most contaminated, the most exhausted of all the materials out of which art is made.

This dual character of language — its, abstractness, and its "fallenness" in history — can serve as a microcosm of the unhappy character of the arts today. Art is so far along the labyrinthine pathways of the project of transcendence that it's hard to conceive of it turning back, short of the most drastic and punitive "cultural revolution." Yet at the same time, art is foundering in the debilitating tide of what once seemed the crowning achievement of European thought: secular historical consciousness. In little more than two centuries, the consciousness of history has transformed itself from a liberation, an opening of doors, blessed enlightenment, into an almost insupportable burden of self-consciousness. It's impossible for the artist to write a word (or render an image or make a gesture) that doesn't remind him of something. Up to a point, the community and historicity of the artist's means are implicit in the very fact of intersubjectivity: each person is a being-in-a-world. But this normal state of affairs is felt today (particularly in the arts using language) as an extraordinary, wearying problem.

As Nietzsche said: "Our pre-eminence: we live in the age of comparison, we can verify as has never been verified before." Therefore, "we enjoy differently, we suffer differently: our instinctive activity is to compare an unheard number of things."

Language is experienced not merely as something shared but something corrupted, weighed down by historical accumulation. Thus, for each conscious artist, the creation of a work means dealing with two potentially antagonistic domains of meaning and their relationships. One is his own meaning (or lack of it); the other is the set of second-order meanings which both extend his own language and also encumber, compromise, and adulterate it. The artist ends by choosing between two inherently limiting alternatives. He is forced to take a position that's either servile or insolent: either he flatters or appeases his audience, giving them what they already know, or he commits an aggression against his audience, giving them what they don't want.

Modern art thus transmits in full the alienation produced by historical consciousness. Whatever the artist does is in (usually conscious) alignment with something else already done, producing a compulsion to be continually rechecking his situation. His own stance with those of his predecessors and contemporaries. Compensating for this ignominious enslavement to history, the artist exalts himself with the dream of a wholly ahistorical, and therefore unalienated, art.

[...]

"No one can have an idea once he starts really listening." - Cage

[...]

Another use of speech, if anything more common than that of provoking actions: speech provokes further speech. But speech can silence, too. This indeed is how it must be; without the polarity of silence, the whole system of language would fail. And beyond its generic function as the dialectical opposite of speech, silence — like speech — has its more specific, less inevitable uses, too.

One use for silence: certifying the absence or renunciation of thought. This use of silence is often employed as a magical or mimetic procedure in repressive social relationships. as in the regulations about speaking to superiors in the Jesuit order and in the disciplining of children. (It should not be confused with the practice of certain monastic disciplines, such as the Trappist order, in which silence is both an ascetic act and a bearing witness to the condition of being perfectly "full.")

Another, apparently opposed, use for silence: certifying the completion of thought. (Karl Jaspers: "He who has the final answers can no longer speak to the other, as he breaks off genuine communication for the sake of what he believes in.")

Still another use for silence: providing time for the continuing or exploring of thought. Notably, speech closes off thought. (Cf., the enterprise of criticism, in which there seems no way for a critic not to assert that a given artist is this, he's that, etc.) But if one decides an issue isn't closed, it's not. This is presumably the rationale behind the voluntary experiments in silence that some contemporary spiritual athletes, lIke Buckminister Fuller, have undertaken, and the element of wisdom in the otherwise mainly authoritarian, philistine silence of the orthodox Freudian psychoanalyst. Silence keeps things "open."

Still another use for silence: furnishing or aiding speech to attain its maximum integrity or seriousness. Everyone has experienced how, when punctuated by long silences, words weigh more; they become almost palpable. Or how, when one talks less, one starts feeling more fully one's physical presence in a given space. Silence undermines "bad speech," by which I mean dissociated speech — speech dissociated from the body (and, therefore, from feeling), speech not organically informed by the sensuous presence and concrete particularity of the speaker and of the individual occasion for using language. Unmoored from the body, speech deteriorates. It becomes false, inane, ignoble, weightless. Silence can inhibit or counteract this tendency, providing a kind of ballast, monitoring and even correcting language when it becomes inauthentic.

[...]

in an overpopulated world being connected by global electronic communication and jet travel at a pace too rapid and violent for an organically sound person to assimilate without shock, people are also suffering from a revulsion at any further proliferation of speech and images. Such different factors as the unlimited "technological reproduction" and near-universal diffusion of both printed language and speech as well as images (from "news" to "art objects"), and the degenerations of public language within the realms of politics and advertising and entertainment, have produced, especially among the better educated inhabitants of what sociologists call "modern mass society," a devaluation of language. (I should argue, contrary to McLuhan, that a devaluation of the power and credibility of images has taken place that's no less profound than. and essentially similar to, that afflicting language.) And, as the prestige of language falls, that of silence rises.

[...]

If anything, the volume of discontent has been turned up since the arts inherited the problem of language from religious discourse. It's not just that words, ultimately, won't do for the highest aims of consciousness; or even that they get in the way. Art expresses a double discontent. We lack words, and we have too many of them. It reflects a double complaint. Words are crude, and they're also too busy — inviting a hyperactivity of consciousness which is not only dysfunctional, in terms of human capacities of feeling and acting, but which actively deadens the mind and blunts the senses.

Language is demoted to the status of an event. Something takes place in time, a voice speaking which points to the "before" and to what comes "after" an utterance: silence. Silence, then, is both the precondition of speech, and the result or aim of properly directed speech. On this model, the artist's activity is the creating or establishing of silence; the efficacious art work leaves silence in its wake. Silence, administered by the artist, is part of a program of perceptual and cultural therapy, often on the model of shock therapy rather than persuasion. Even if the artist's medium is words, he can share in this task: language can be employed to check language, to express muteness. Mallarmé thought it was precisely the job of poetry. using words, to clean up our word-clogged reality — by creating silences around things. Art must mount a full-scale attack on language itself, by means of language and its surrogates, on behalf of the standard of silence.

[...]

This tenacious concept of art as "expression" is what gives rise to one common, but dubious, version of the notion of silence, which invokes the idea of "the ineffable." The theory supposes that the province of art is "the beautiful," which implies effects of unspeakableness, indescribability, ineffability. Indeed, the search to express the inexpressible is taken as the very criterion of art; and sometimes, for instance, in several essays of Valery, becomes the occasion for a strict — and to my mind untenable — distinction between prose literature and poetry. It is from this basis that Valery advanced his famous argument (repeated in a quite different context by Sartre) that the novel is not, strictly speaking, an art form at all. His reason is that since the aim of prose is to communicate, the use of language in prose is perfectly straightforward. Poetry, being an art, should have quite different aims: to express an experience which is essentially ineffable; using language to express muteness. In contrast to prose writers, poets are engaged in subverting their own instrument: and seeking to pass beyond it.

#susan sontag #silence #speech #poetry

[rideretremando]

Inequality

American stories trace the sweep of history, but their details are definingly particular. In the summer of 1979, Elizabeth Anderson, then a rising junior at Swarthmore College, got a job as a bookkeeper at a bank in Harvard Square. Every morning, she and the other bookkeepers would process a large stack of bounced checks. Businesses usually had two accounts, one for payroll and the other for costs and supplies. When companies were short of funds, Anderson noticed, they would always bounce their payroll checks. It made a cynical kind of sense: a worker who was owed money wouldn’t go anywhere, or could be replaced, while an unpaid supplier would stop supplying. Still, Anderson found it disturbing that businesses would write employees phony checks, burdening them with bounce fees. It appeared to happen all the time.

Midway through summer, the bank changed its office plan. When Anderson had started, the bookkeepers worked in rows of desks. Coördination was easy—a check that fell under someone else’s purview could be handed down the line—and there was conversation throughout the day. Then cubicles were added. That transformation interrupted the workflow, the conversational flow, and most other things about the bookkeepers’ days. Their capacities as workers were affected, yet the change had come down from on high.

These problems nagged at Anderson that summer and beyond. She had arrived at college as a libertarian who wanted to study economics. In the spirit of liberal-arts exploration, though, she enrolled in an introductory philosophy course whose reading list included Karl Marx’s 1844 manuscripts concerning worker alienation. Anderson thought that Marx’s economic arguments about the declining rate of profit and the labor theory of value fell apart under scrutiny. But she was stirred by his observational writings about the experience of work. Her summer at the bank drove home the fact that systemic behavior inside the workplace was part of the socioeconomic fabric, too: it mattered whether you were the person who got a clear check or a bounced check, whether a hierarchy made it easier or harder for you to excel and advance. Yet economists had no way of factoring those influences into their thinking. As far as they were concerned, a job was a contract—an exchange of labor for money—and if you were unhappy you left. The nature of the workplace, where most people spent half their lives, was a black box.

Anderson grew intellectually restless. Other ideas that were presented as cornerstones of economics, such as rational-choice theory, didn’t match the range of human behaviors that she was seeing in the wild. She liked how philosophy approached big problems that cut across various fields, but she was most excited by methods that she encountered in the history and the philosophy of science. Like philosophers, scientists chased Truth, but their theories were understood to be provisional—tools for resolving problems as they appeared, models valuable only to the extent that they explained and predicted what showed in experiments. A Newtonian model of motion had worked beautifully for a long time, but then people noticed bits of unaccountable data, and relativity emerged as a stronger theory. Couldn’t disciplines like philosophy work that way, too?

The bank experience showed how you could be oppressed by hierarchy, working in an environment where you were neither free nor equal. But this implied that freedom and equality were bound together in some way beyond the basic state of being unenslaved, which was an unorthodox notion. Much social thought is rooted in the idea of a conflict between the two. If individuals exercise freedoms, conservatives like to say, some inequalities will naturally result. Those on the left basically agree—and thus allow constraints on personal freedom in order to reduce inequality. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin called the opposition between equality and freedom an “intrinsic, irremovable element in human life.” It is our fate as a society, he believed, to haggle toward a balance between them.

In this respect, it might seem odd that, through history, equality and freedom have arrived together as ideals. What if they weren’t opposed, Anderson wondered, but, like the sugar-phosphate chains in DNA, interlaced in a structure that we might not yet understand? What if the way most of us think about the relation between equality and freedom—the very basis for the polarized, intractable political division of this moment—is wrong?

At fifty-nine, Anderson is the chair of the University of Michigan’s department of philosophy and a champion of the view that equality and freedom are mutually dependent, enmeshed in changing conditions through time. Working at the intersection of moral and political philosophy, social science, and economics, she has become a leading theorist of democracy and social justice. She has built a case, elaborated across decades, that equality is the basis for a free society. Her work, drawing on real-world problems and information, has helped to redefine the way contemporary philosophy is done, leading what might be called the Michigan school of thought. Because she brings together ideas from both the left and the right to battle increasing inequality, Anderson may be the philosopher best suited to this awkward moment in American life. She builds a democratic frame for a society in which people come from different places and are predisposed to disagree.

One recent autumn morning, Anderson flew from Ann Arbor, where she lives, to Columbus, to deliver a lecture at Ohio State University. With a bit of time before her talk, she sat in a high-backed chair and spoke with undergraduates about her work. “Almost everyone wants to be respected and esteemed by others, so how can you make that compatible with a society of equals?” she asked. The students, looking a touch wary, listened intently and stared.

People who meet Anderson in the world often find that she is more approachable than they imagined an august philosopher to be. She is, she’d be the first to say, a klutz. Most days, she wears a colorful cotton blouse, hiking sneakers, and hard-wearing khakis that could bear a carabiner full of keys. “Liz doesn’t put on airs,” her friend Rebecca Eisenberg, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, says. Dan Troyka, another friend, says, “She could be at a potluck as easily as at a philosophy symposium.” She talks on a dais the way she does to buddies over lunch—in a trumpety voice, flattened across mid-American vowels—and has only a nodding acquaintance with many decorums. A few friends felt unsettled when she was interviewed on cable news earlier this year; it was the first time they had ever seen her wearing makeup.

In Ohio, she wore a loose black dress, trimmed in hot pink, over billowing pants and black flats. (“Feminists work to overcome the internal obstacles to choice—self-abnegation, lack of confidence, and low self-esteem—that women often face from internalizing norms of femininity,” Anderson, who holds a joint professorship in women’s studies, has written.) She crossed her right leg over her left and blinked as students formulated questions. She takes great pleasure in arranging information in useful forms; if she weren’t a philosopher, she thinks, she’d like to be a mapmaker, or a curator of archeological displays in museums.

As the students listened, she sketched out the entry-level idea that one basic way to expand equality is by expanding the range of valued fields within a society. Unlike a hardscrabble peasant community of yore in which the only skill that anyone cared about might be agricultural prowess, a society with many valued arenas lets individuals who are good at art or storytelling or sports or making people laugh receive a bit of love.

“Is the idea that we expand the number of values so that everyone gets a piece of the scene?” a young woman asked. She was trying to understand how hierarchies of esteem could be compatible with equality. “Or is there some sort of respectable limit, so we’re, like, We’ve sort of found the things we value, and you’ve got to aim for one of them!”

Anderson replied with a bright cackle of delight: Hah-hah-hah! Friends have noted that her laughter, like the autumn weather, comes in warm and chilly forms. There’s a staccato laugh of encouraging good humor (Hah!). There is, more ominously, a rough, guttural chuckle of declining barometric pressure (Hhhh-aahr-aahr-aahr), with which she introduces ideas she considers comically, dangerously bad. Addressing the student’s question, she posited endless innovation within general values. “Like, every society has music, and great musical performers always get esteem,” she said, extending her forearms in a teddy-bear position of embrace.

In general, Anderson is outgoing when conversation turns to ideas and shy about other things. (“If you want to make her totally uncomfortable, tell her she has to go to a fancy function in a cocktail dress,” her husband says.) Now she cleared her throat noisily. “If you look back at the origins of liberalism, it starts first with a certain settlement about religious difference,” she said. “Catholics, Protestants—they’re killing each other! Finally, Germany, England, all these places say, We’re tired of these people killing each other, so we’re going to make a peace settlement: religious toleration, live and let live.”

She spread her hands wider. “Then something remarkable happens,” she said. “People now have the freedom to have crosscutting identities in different domains. At church, I’m one thing. At work, I’m something else. I’m something else at home, or with my friends. The ability not to have an identity that one carries from sphere to sphere but, rather, to be able to slip in and adopt whatever values and norms are appropriate while retaining one’s identities in other domains?” She paused. “That is what it is to be free.”

A few years after her summer at the bank, Anderson was back in Cambridge, as a Harvard graduate student, studying political and moral philosophy under the mentorship of John Rawls. At a dinner party one evening, she was introduced to a former philosophy undergraduate named David Jacobi. He was smart, winsomely geeky, and uncommonly kind, and he had a thing for brainy women. They began dating. Jacobi wound up in medical school. Anderson wound up teaching at Michigan. She was touched when he requested a hospital near her, in Detroit, for his internship. Sometime after that, they got married, though neither recalls exactly when. They looked for a place to live near Jacobi’s job, and their criteria were simple: price, neighborhood, and space.

As Anderson toured apartments, though, she noticed other forces in play. Greater Detroit was effectively segregated by race. Oak Park had middle-class white sections and middle-class black sections. In Southfield, a real-estate agent told her not to worry, because locals were “holding the line against blacks at 10 Mile Road.” Until then, Anderson had not thought seriously about race; she assumed that reasonable people treated it as undefining. Now she felt herself being swept, as a middle-class white woman, into a particular zone. To the extent that it constrained her options, it felt like an impingement on freedom. To the extent that it entrenched racial hierarchy, it seemed anti-egalitarian as well.

As a rule, it’s easy to complain about inequality, hard to settle on the type of equality we want. Do we want things to be equal where we start in life or where we land? When inequalities arise, what are the knobs that we adjust to get things back on track? Individually, people are unequal in countless ways, and together they join groups that resist blending. How do you build up a society that allows for such variety without, as in the greater-Detroit real-estate market, turning difference into a constraint? How do you move from a basic model of egalitarian variety, in which everybody gets a crack at being a star at something, to figuring out how to respond to a complex one, where people, with different allotments of talent and virtue, get unequal starts, and often meet with different constraints along the way?

In 1999, Anderson published an article in the journal Ethics, titled “What Is the Point of Equality?,” laying out the argument for which she is best known. “If much recent academic work defending equality had been secretly penned by conservatives,” she began, opening a grenade in the home trenches, “could the results be any more embarrassing for egalitarians?”

The problem, she proposed, was that contemporary egalitarian thinkers had grown fixated on distribution: moving resources from lucky-seeming people to unlucky-seeming people, as if trying to spread the luck around. This was a weird and nebulous endeavor. Is an heir who puts his assets into a house in a flood zone and loses it unlucky—or lucky and dumb? Or consider a woman who marries rich, has children, and stays at home to rear them (crucial work for which she gets no wages). If she leaves the marriage to escape domestic abuse and subsequently struggles to support her kids, is that bad luck or an accretion of bad choices? Egalitarians should agree about clear cases of blameless misfortune: the quadriplegic child, the cognitively impaired adult, the teen-ager born into poverty with junkie parents. But Anderson balked there, too. By categorizing people as lucky or unlucky, she argued, these egalitarians set up a moralizing hierarchy. In the article, she imagined some citizens getting a state check and a bureaucratic letter:

To the disabled: Your defective native endowments or current disabilities, alas, make your life less worth living than the lives of normal people. . . . To the stupid and untalented: Unfortunately, other people don’t value what little you have to offer in the system of production. . . . Because of the misfortune that you were born so poorly endowed with talents, we productive ones will make it up to you: we’ll let you share in the bounty of what we have produced with our vastly superior and highly valued abilities. . . . To the ugly and socially awkward: . . . Maybe you won’t be such a loser in love once potential dates see how rich you are.

By letting the lucky class go on reaping the market’s chancy rewards while asking others to concede inferior status in order to receive a drip-drip-drip of redistributive aid, these egalitarians were actually entrenching people’s status as superior or subordinate. Generations of bleeding-heart theorists had been doing the wolf’s work in shepherds’ dress.

In Anderson’s view, the way forward was to shift from distributive equality to what she called relational, or democratic, equality: meeting as equals, regardless of where you were coming from or going to. This was, at heart, an exercise of freedom. The trouble was that many people, picking up on libertarian misconceptions, thought of freedom only in the frame of their own actions. If one person’s supposed freedom results in someone else’s subjugation, that is not actually a free society in action. It’s hierarchy in disguise.

To be truly free, in Anderson’s assessment, members of a society had to be able to function as human beings (requiring food, shelter, medical care), to participate in production (education, fair-value pay, entrepreneurial opportunity), to execute their role as citizens (freedom to speak and to vote), and to move through civil society (parks, restaurants, workplaces, markets, and all the rest). Egalitarians should focus policy attention on areas where that order had broken down. Being homeless was an unfree condition by all counts; thus, it was incumbent on a free society to remedy that problem. A quadriplegic adult was blocked from civil society if buildings weren’t required to have ramps. Anderson’s democratic model shifted the remit of egalitarianism from the idea of equalizing wealth to the idea that people should be equally free, regardless of their differences. A society in which everyone had the same material benefits could still be unequal, in this crucial sense; democratic equality, being predicated on equal respect, wasn’t something you could simply tax into existence. “People, not nature, are responsible for turning the natural diversity of human beings into oppressive hierarchies,” Anderson wrote.

Anderson was born early, at three pounds six ounces, and stayed small through childhood, wearing toddler-size clothes into the second grade. “People tended to treat her as much younger than her real age and ability,” her mother, Eve, says. For years, she scarcely spoke; she had a lisp and seemed loath to reveal the imperfection. Eve recalls passing her bedroom and hearing her practicing her name repeatedly, E-liz-a-beth, trying to get it right. When she was three, her mother asked, “Why do you allow your brother to talk for you?”—why didn’t she speak for herself?

“Until now, it simply was not necessary,” Elizabeth said. It was the first full sentence that she had ever uttered.

Their household, in Manchester, Connecticut, was mixed and fluid. Eve, a freelance journalist, was Jewish; Anderson’s father, Olof, an aeronautical engineer, had been brought up Swedish Lutheran. They helped found a local Unitarian Universalist worship space. Eve volunteered at the local Democratic Party headquarters and had campaigned for Adlai Stevenson; in 1964, Olof was elected to a Democratic seat on the Manchester board of directors. “They were throwing fund-raising parties all the time,” Anderson recalls. She, in contrast, felt awkward and anxious. “Books were secure—this was something I could master and control.”

The reading led to other interests. “Everyone had something to teach her,” Laura Grande, a childhood friend, says. “She wasn’t interested in parties, or in social gatherings that weren’t enlightening.” Anderson dreamed of studying math and economics, because she loved the way they hung together in a tight system. At one point, Olof and Elizabeth read Plato’s Republic and Mill’s “On Liberty” together. The world outside seemed untidy; she found peace in the stability of shared ideas.

One Friday afternoon, Anderson sat with Kimberly Chuang, a soft-spoken twenty-nine-year-old who had just defended her dissertation, the final rite of passage before the Ph.D. Chuang had devised a model for “contributive justice,” determining what people owe society, rather than what society owes them: a frameshift with implications for taxation. At the defense, five professors prodded her with questions in the manner of a dental scaler scraping away plaque—an excavation that Chuang seemed to enjoy in proportion. They deliberated, then issued good news. “You’re a doctor!” Anderson said. Everybody stood up and applauded.

Anderson had invented a “Ph.D. to lecturer” program at Michigan, to give new doctors a grace year to teach and to apply for jobs, and Chuang was to be the inaugural fellow. Still, Chuang blanched as they discussed the scope of her new obligations. She had four classes to help teach, and was supposed to give talks at a slew of international conferences. How should she prepare these audition-like presentations?

“Don’t write up,” Anderson advised. “Just do PowerPoint slides.” Behind her, a PC was mounted on a treadmill desk; she tries to get in ten thousand steps a day. She went on, “Give the big picture, make points to motivate the idea, and punt all the objections to the Q. & A. What ensues is a very lively Q. & A.”

Chuang knitted her brow. An esteemed philosopher at Oxford reads his talks, she said.

“Yeah, horrible,” Anderson said. “So retro.” The issue was that people were afraid of questions, and tried to address them all preëmptively. She laughed darkly: Hhhh-aahr-aahr-aahr. “Philosophers are too risk averse, and this makes listening to philosophers tedious.”

Anderson landed at Michigan out of graduate school, in 1987, and never left, despite being courted by other universities, starting with an “out of the blue” tenure-track job offer from Princeton the following year. Michigan, despite its winters, seemed a warmer place. The school was huge, but Anderson liked the size. (“For any subject I’m interested in—and I’m interested in a zillion things—I know there will be an expert who can lead me to essential sources,” she says.) Still, there were challenges. On her first day, a senior colleague took her to lunch—a friendly welcome, she assumed, until he started telling her his thoughts on why she was the only woman in the department. Then he lighted into Martha Nussbaum, who had taught her Plato at Harvard, and Nussbaum’s recent book “The Fragility of Goodness,” which had made her a star. Many people have doubted that women are capable of doing good philosophy, he mused, and this book offered no counterevidence. Anderson remembers, “I was, like, Uh-oh.”

Until then, Anderson had never really considered the role of gender in her career. She later learned that there were fewer women in academic philosophy than in either math or astrophysics, and a sense of the way inequality was built into that pipeline propelled her interest in feminist philosophy. In 1993, she became the first woman in Michigan’s department to be tenured from within.

Her first book, “Value in Ethics and Economics,” appeared that year, announcing one of her major projects: reconciling value (an amorphous ascription of worth that is a keystone of ethics and economics) with pluralism (the fact that people seem to value things in different ways). Philosophers have often assumed that pluralistic value reflects human fuzziness—we’re loose, we’re confused, and we mix rational thought with sentimental responses. Anderson proposed that, actually, pluralism of value wasn’t the fuzz but the thing itself. She offered an “expressive” theory: in her view, each person’s values could be various because they were socially expressed, and thus shaped by the range of contexts and relationships at play in a life. Instead of positing value as a basic, abstract quality across society (the way “utility” functioned for economists), she saw value as something determined by the details of an individual’s history. Like her idea of relational equality, this model resisted the temptation to flatten human variety toward a unifying standard. In doing so, it helped expand the realm of free and reasoned economic choice.

Consider a couple who has worked for years to run a family restaurant and is offered a corporate buyout, worth more than they could earn by keeping it open. Traditional economists and many philosophers would say, Take the money! That would maximize value. Maybe you can use it to start a new restaurant. In Anderson’s expressive model, the couple might have a sound reason to refuse. “They did not work all those years to make millions for some brand-x corporation,” she wrote. “A concern for the narrative unity of their lives, for what meaning their present choices make of their past actions, could rationally motivate them to turn down the offer.” The value of that narrative unity was beyond the reach of the market: for that couple, no price was the right price.

In this sense, “Value in Ethics and Economics” was partly about reclaiming moral authority from the cold-eyed neoclassical economists who guided policy in the eighties and nineties. Anderson’s model unseated the premises of rational-choice theory, in which individuals invariably make utility-maximizing decisions, occasionally in heartless-seeming ways. It ran with, rather than against, moral intuition. Because values were plural, it was perfectly rational to choose to spend evenings with your family, say, and have guilt toward the people you left in the lurch at work.

The theory also pointed out the limits on free-market ideologies, such as libertarianism. In ethics, it broke across old factional debates. The core idea “has been picked up on by people across quite a range of positions,” Peter Railton, one of Anderson’s longtime colleagues, says. “Kantians and consequentialists alike”—people who viewed morality in terms of duties and obligations, and those who measured the morality of actions by their effects in the world—“could look at it and see something important.”

“She has this way of challenging the dominant model and assumptions in multiple areas,” Sally Haslanger, a former colleague of Anderson’s who is now at M.I.T., says. “She has that ability to turn the lens so that people who thought they knew the way to proceed are now seeing very different things.”

Part of the novelty in Anderson’s approach came from a shift in how she practiced philosophy. Traditionally, the discipline is taught through a-priori thought—you start with basic principles and reason forward. Anderson, by contrast, sought to work empirically, using information gathered from the world, identifying problems to be solved not abstractly but through the experienced problems of real people.

Shortly after arriving at Michigan, she had been struck by the work of a law-school colleague, Don Herzog, which incorporated a turn-of-the-century school of American thought called pragmatism. To a pragmatist, “truth” is an instrumental and contingent state; a claim is true for now if, by all tests, it works for now. This approach, and the friendship that had borne it, enriched Anderson’s work. Herzog has offered notes on almost everything she has published in the past three decades.

In 2004, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy asked Anderson to compose its entry on the moral philosophy of John Dewey, who helped carry pragmatist methods into the social realm. Dewey had an idea of democracy as a system of good habits that began in civil life. He was an anti-ideologue with an eye for pluralism. Anderson was quickly smitten. In 2013, when she was elevated to Michigan’s highest professorship and got to name her chair—a kind of academic spirit animal—she styled herself the John Dewey Distinguished University Professor. “Dewey argued that the primary problems for ethics in the modern world concerned the ways society ought to be organized, rather than personal decisions of the individual,” Anderson wrote in her Stanford Encyclopedia entry. As she turned to problems in her work and her life, his thought became a crucial guide.

Anderson and her husband went to lunch at Zingerman’s, a deli restaurant in downtown Ann Arbor. It was a warm weekend, and Anderson, who had just come from a walk of a few thousand steps in the arboretum, ordered peaches with jalapeño dressing and a bowl of gazpacho. Jacobi, who had come from a four-mile jog, got a brisket sandwich, fruit salad, and a Dr. Brown’s black-cherry soda. “I should never come here after running,” he told the woman at the counter. (He often strikes up small, self-revealing conversations with people at registers.) Outside, they found a table in the shade. Anderson sat, and Jacobi put an arm around her.

“I’ve got my love puppy,” Anderson said.

He stiffened indignantly. “Your love dog,” he said.

[rolandfontana]

It’s Time to End the Supreme Court’s ‘Wizard of Oz’ Mystique

The consensus says that the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process and its narrow outcome pose a crisis of legitimacy for the Supreme Court.

And, within 24 hours of his swearing in, the newly minted justice acknowledged the clamor, and stepped forward to address the situation. He had hired his four law clerks, he announced, and all four are women.

In this way, he seemed to argue, he had expressed his devotion to gender equity. The whole controversy around that issue must have been a mistake.

Putting aside for now the riddle of why anyone might think that hiring female law clerks is a response to the industrialized trashing of a woman who accused you of sexual assault, we still face the question of how the hiring of junior federal employees became a vehicle for judicial self-expression.

And what exactly do these hires express?

Groucho Marx legendarily resigned from the Friars’ Club by writing to the membership committee, “I don’t care to belong to a club that would have someone like me as a member.”

Justice Kavanaugh embodies the polar opposite point of view—or way of life. We can’t ignore the fact that, in the end, membership is what this present moment is all about.

Kavanaugh’s career is a model of its kind—that is, of the kind associated with the distribution of ecclesiastical patronage in the more corrupt days of the Renaissance Church of Rome. Membership is its key.

Justice Kavanaugh wants, has always wanted, sought early, and apparently will pay almost any cost to retain, membership. Now, he is in a position to bestow its gaudy prizes.

He joined the Federalist Society and climbed on the escalator early.  He held the handrail, and the process carried him smoothly through legacy admission to feeder school, where he cultivated “feeder professors” who fed him to “feeder judges,”until he had ripened into a “feeder judge” himself.

The prestige of the Supreme Court has always had a certain manufactured Wizard of Oz quality to it.

All that the Court’s work really requires is office space and a library for nine judges and their staffs. Instead the building where this work now occurs is a grandiose marble temple, a venue suitable for the ceremonial opening of beasts and fowl and the priestly reading of their entrails—a setting intended to awe.

It is not only the Republican versus Democrat partisan divide that threatens the Supreme Court’s legitimacy in the aftermath of the Kavanaugh hearings; it is also the glaring contrast between the Court’s pretensions to Olympian detachment and the reality of its for-the-members, by-the-members, majority that the Kavanaugh confirmation process has stripped bare.

What matters—if membership is to be achieved—is dedication to the simple position that it is essential that “our” team wins.

Membership means inclusion, but it also means that someone has to be excluded. For “our” members to win in any satisfying way, someone has to lose.

Our legacy admissions must survive; their affirmative action must disappear. Our sexual activities must be immune; women’s reproductive rights must be curtailed.

Membership requires maintenance: secret handshakes, tokens of arrival.

Justice Kavanaugh’s life is an unbroken series of these gestures.

When Kavanaugh invoked the appointment of his law clerks for a second time (during his speech at his ceremonial swearing in) it was to defend himself against charges of misogyny.

But that speech crystallized the fact that the confirmation was not a victory for him alone; it was a victory for the membership—for the idea of membership—that was being celebrated. Yes, these clerks were women, but they had been fed to him, and by the authorized feeders, in a process that makes the Freemasons look transparent.

It is worth remembering that while this episode has a right-wing cast of characters, the mechanism was painstakingly constructed over decades in reaction to (even emulation of) what the right saw as a prevailing liberal version of the procedure, with the ACLU and ADA pulling the levers and throwing the switches.

Consider this modest proposal.

Supreme Court and Court of Appeals clerks will be chosen from a diverse pool of qualified applicants, many with clerkship experience, by an eclectic, experienced, rotating committee (or committees) maintained by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. The best young lawyers will be chosen as a class, and randomly assigned to individual justices and judges.

No “feeder” professors (such as Yale’s egregious “Tiger Mother,” Amy Chua, whose “look a certain way” advice to women aimed to make them delectable to Kavanaugh in his Circuit Court incarnation).

No “feeder” judges (such as the sex-addled Alex Kozinski, whose clerks were induced to accept without complaint his little porn seminars) or are involved in the process. No winks, no nods (for or against) from former clerks. No backs are scratched. No tactical silent acceptance of harassment to maintain one’s place is incentivized.

Throw out the whole corrupt, incestuous process, along with the sale of indulgences.

Throw out the whole corrupt, incestuous process, along with the sale of indulgences.

We might then get a diverse group: maybe, now and then, even someone from a state university! Maybe someone who didn’t know anyone they are supposed to know or exactly what suit to wear will get a clerkship.

I realize that this modest proposal of mine will be greeted as if it were Jonathan’s Swift’s modest proposal to use Irish babies as a food source during the Famine, but the howling will just show you how far things have gone. The protagonists no longer see anything odd about this process.

The professors will scream. Tough. There are law professors with bright students across the country. Distinguish yourself by your scholarship, not by your status as eminence gris.

Won’t the “magical” relationship of justice and clerk be undermined? Good. All of these people have actual families of their own, and the ersatz “family” of the judicial chambers is really a little icky, especially when financed by public funds, and it is saturated with power. These are public employers and public employees.

The clerk and the justice may not be ideological soulmates on their first date? Fine. A little friction might be a good thing. The justice is still the boss, the clerk still has to do the research, and maybe the two will learn from their dialogue. They can form their relationship while doing the work well, not through a grooming and matchmakers’ process preceding the hiring.

The justices will certainly be unhappy too: the incense-infused process of nominating and choosing clerks has become one of the expected perks of their job. An annual parade of interviews with fawning applicants provides a nice break.

They’ll live. There are other perks. Yes, it’s pleasurable. Why do we indulge them?

What I am proposing is not the end of the world. It is one very small step toward reclaiming the Supreme Court’s legitimacy by making it clear that it is a constitutional court that decides cases, not a royal or papal court that manages careers and distributes preferments.

The Court’s best strategy now (as Jennifer Rubin suggested in a recent column) is not to shout more loudly about its sacrosanct status but to take small—really very, very small—steps like this to strip away practices that have become normalized. (Giving up speeches to the members’ “feeder” organizations is another.)

Behave like a court in a democracy. Act as scholars and judges, not as courtiers.

James M. Doyle is a Boston defense lawyer and author, and a frequent contributor to The Crime Report. He welcomes readers’ comments.

It’s Time to End the Supreme Court’s ‘Wizard of Oz’ Mystique syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

[consciousowl]

What Karl Marx Got Right

If you are looking at the American political scene from outside, you can’t escape the feeling that the United States is now deeply schizophrenic. It continuously alternates ever more conservative and ever more progressive candidates. Who can forget the juxtapositions of George Bush, Sr. to Bill Clinton to George Bush, Jr. to Barack Obama to Donald Trump?

Clearly, the U.S. is deeply divided, as indicated by Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote, only to lose the electoral vote, a throwback from the States Rights’ compromise that made possible the consensus behind the U.S. Constitution. Are we committed to tackling climate change? How many Administrations did it take to get us to the Paris Summit, only to have Donald Trump walk out?

What few people would suspect is that a debunked economist, really a social critic, foresaw it all, even though most of his predictions failed to materialize. Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto is the second most popular book ever to be written, next to the Bible, itself. What? How so?​

Why a Resurgence of Interest in Karl Marx?

Capitalism as we know it today is not true capitalism, and socialism is no longer true socialism. We measure the difference primarily between free market and planned economies, and libertarian and totalitarian civil liberties. Americans who take a close look at how much better Sweden and France care for their citizens will be deeply distressed, as Bernie Sanders pointed out. However, youth in America, France and Sweden are equally disenchanted.

Globalization has spread the free market to almost every single country, with a boost for civil liberties to varying degrees. Along with it, the safety net has continuously eroded. Nothing can mitigate that less than 1% of the world’s population control the wealth of the bottom half. A Wall Street executive can earn 6,000 times the wages of his lowest employee.

The millennials have grown up a deeply compromised generation. They have to go back to living with mom and dad after finishing school until they can afford a house, or even an apartment that they can call their own. The workplace has moved from farm to factory to office. Now Starbuck’s provides office space for a new generation of contractors and would be entrepreneurs, using their laptops and tablets, with broadband courtesy of Google.​

Why Karl Marx’s Dialectic Has Never Been More Relevant

Karl Marx brilliantly encapsulated the logic of our lives in his formula of Thesis – Antithesis – Synthesis. We live in a world where every action produces an equal, but opposite reaction. We live in a world of polarity, of constant flow. There are no straight lines, only curves.

When you take a progressive view, you inspire others to take a conservative view. A conflict of some kind invariably ensues. Out of the contest of ideas and insights, a higher view emerges, containing parts of the previous positions, but with a unique twist. Thesis – Antithesis – Synthesis.

Think of father and mother begetting a daughter, let’s say “Sandy,” who is like each of her parents, and yet somehow different. Sandy is her own person. She mates and produces a son. That son is like both her husband and herself, and yet somehow different. So with people. So with ideas. An evolutionary progression, a gradual enfoldment… forever.​

We now find ourselves in an era of ever accelerating change, much as Ray Kurzweil observed with his vision of the Singularity. A generation of 20 years is now reduced to 18 months with high technology. Living in Silicon Valley for most of your life is for technology the equivalent of living for centuries in ordinary life. The only thing we can count on is change, itself. Thesis – Antithesis – Synthesis.​

Related article:  Is There an Upside To Setbacks?​

How Reductionism Ruined Marxism

Karl Marx grew up in an age where industrialization made a huge footprint on European and American society. The steam engine had been invented way back in 1790, but already in the early 1820’s, the world witnessed the first railroads and steamboats. By the time that Marx with Friedrich Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto as a young man in 1848, the movement from farm to factory was irreversible. Child labor was the norm, as were 12-hour days, six days a week. Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol wasn’t that much of an exaggeration.

As a consequence, Marx developed a masculine perspective, without being a sexist. He was preoccupied with the nexus of politics, economics and society. Could it all be explained in terms of power? The golden thread in this was economics. He saw that the rich and the powerful were not about to give up their privilege; hence the need for revolution.

The real problem with Marx was that he got so enthralled with using the dialectic from an economic standpoint that he minimalized everything else. Religion was the opiate of the people. The things that make life truly worthwhile, the divine, the creative and the intellectual, were simply distractions from getting on with material progress. Ironically, Marx, himself, seemed conscientious as a person, a very good father and husband. Perhaps he saw a higher truth in his private life.​

Don’t Thank Marx; Thank Socrates

Socrates, the father of philosophy, pioneered the dialectic for humanity, being influenced by Heraclites’s observation that you never step into the same river twice. Everything is in flux in the world of appearance. Socrates postulated that the truth could be found only in the world of pure forms or ideas. He focused on debunking his fellow Athenians of their conventional thinking. He ended up being accused of corrupting the youth and was given the choice of banishment or drinking hemlock. Socrates chose hemlock.

George Friedrich Hegel in the early 19th century picked up on Socrates concept of the dialectic, and developed it from a historical perspective. He saw civilization emerge from the creative tension of ideas that found their way into forms and everyday events. He looked at history from a multidimensional perspective. Living in the early romantic period, Hegel was not caught up in a realistic perspective of fighting exploitation in the big cities.

Karl Marx popularized the dialectic, but wedded it with his personal perspective, dialectic materialism. He rejoiced in standing Hegel on his head, moving from idealism to realism.​

In principle, the only things that really counted for Marx was bread and butter. The worker must take off his or her chains and own the means of production. Strangely, with quantum physics, the solid “real world” has become increasingly abstract, more like ideas than things. Marx would have been shocked.

How the Dialectic Informs the Big Picture

When Adam and Eve plucked the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden, it was sweet to the mouth and bitter to the stomach. They awoke from primal unity as food gatherers, to polarity, becoming hunters and ultimately famers. They realized that they would “certainly die” in the big world out there as they got increasingly caught up in the survival game.

As we look at social, economic and political development, we notice constant swings, as in conservative to liberal positions. In culture, we notice perpetual oscillations from classical to romantic and then back again. When we take a jet halfway across the world, we will likely to fly an arc over the poles, as that route is faster than a straight line on a 3D sphere, such as Planet Earth. Straight lines work on paper, not in nature. The only straight lines in geography are manmade. Follow any brook, stream or river and be convinced.​

Related article:  Dancing on the Edge of Uncertainty​

We can never really take things at face value. Nothing is as it appears. We live out a story within a great dream where we are both the dreamer and the characters. In order to have a good story, you must have suspense, sudden turns, reversals, and above all, surprises. The last thing we suppose about life is that it could be God having fun, that the entire universe is one gigantic celebration of pure being. The Hindus have a Sanskrit word for it, Lila, or divine play.​

How the Dialectic Plays Out in Our Private Lives

If you remember learning to walk, or ride the bike, you will notice that you move to one direction, and then to its opposite, and then back again. A jet plane and an oceanliner both are constantly adjusting their trajectories with gyroscopes to stay on course.

We go from infancy to elementary school to college to military service or career to mate to children to contribution and retirement. Each time we finish one phase, we have to start all over again, and learn it all on a higher level. If we are perceptive, we will notice a spiral, rather than a circle or a straight line.

We don’t go straightforward without obstacles, and we don’t perpetually go around in circles. We go through this spiral where the bottom of one cycle is higher than the top of a previous cycle.

We celebrate a great breakthrough, such as finding the perfect mate, only to lose our job, to finding a new career, to finding more fulfillment from starting a business, and so on. If we are smart, we begin to realize that there is always something to learn, that this is all really a form of play. True, consequences are built in, but what game is worth playing without a clearly defined sense of rules.

The journey is always the reward.

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How the Dialectic Can Bring You Peace of Mind

On Karl Marx’s deathbed, he reminded his friends that he was NOT A MARXIST. Neither should we be. Yet we all owe him, his atheism not withstanding. Marx had the courage to challenge the established order and suggest there was another way. He gave us progressive taxation and the impetus for social progress around the world.

The dialectic is the game plan, but the story is up to you. You were put here as creator to create. You know this is ultimately a playground, and yet it is still precious to you. You realize that you are no longer “a spec of protoplasm on a dirt ball hurdling through space,” as Werner Erhard once put it. You are all of it. You can define your life as a progression of love and enlightenment, as opposed to an endless pursuit of more for the sake of more. You can then see how it is, indeed, more blessed to give than to receive.

May we together redefine our world, both in the private arena and in the public domain.​

What Karl Marx Got Right appeared first on http://consciousowl.com.

[silentcoder]

On property: The current land-debate in South Africa raises a lot of questions about property rights, both as a legal and a philosophical concept. So I thought I would summarize a bit of the history of the ideas underlying our current system, and what may be learned from that. There are, essentially, two key philosophies of property from which all others are derived. The first, and most influential, is John Locke's labour theory of value. Locke held that natural resources are, by default, unowned and not property. However when a human adds his labour to that resource, he creates value, and this value is property which is owned. The depth of influence of Locke's idea cannot be overstated. Adam Smith used it in "Wealth of Nations" (essentially the book that defined modern capitalism) as the fundamental justification for the capitalist system of ownership making it the basis of property law in most western countries. But Marx used the same theory to argue that, since value comes from labour, logically ownership must vest in those who provide the labour - and thus to argue that the workers must own the means of production. Two ideas about economics that are at polar opposites and which waged a global war for the better part of a century... and both are equally logical derivations from the same idea of what property actually is. Modern-day libertarians are often quite purist in their Locke citation. Rothbard for example has argued that "American settlers found unused land, settled and worked it, and thus that land became their property." Anarcho-socialists took it a step further and argued that property is a transitory right that only exists as long as the labour is being added - land that is no longer used, reverts to unowned and it should be the right of anybody who can use it to do so again. This is quite relevant to the debates in South Africa right now. The EFF has argued that the poor and homeless in urban areas should settle unused buildings to live in. This sounds very radical to the rest of the country, but it is entirely within the scope of what anarcho-socialism argued. More-over, it's also within the scope of what Rothbard argued - since, even though he conveniently forgot to mention it, the land that American settlers worked was not unowened - it belonged to the Native Americans, who were using it (just not for something Rothbard considered valuable). Ayn Rand expressed that idea more honestly, saying of Native Americans: "I do not believe they had a right to live on the land when they were living like savages". The racism in that statement is obvious, but it is no less present in the more covert version spoken by Rothbard. So, in fact, it seems that the EFF's proposal is entirely in line with the reading of Locke that led to those buildings existing in the first place. If you wish to argue against it on practical grounds then you can do so - you would have to show, not just asert, that the negative impact on the poor of whatever dire predictions you make will exceed the negatives of further homelessness - but you cannot make a moral argument against it without being hypocritical. Those buildings would never have been there if, some time ago, somebody hadn't done exactly the same thing (and some time isn't that long - this was still the norm for establishing property in South Africa until well into the 20th century. Then there is a second school of thought regarding property, what I call the legislative theory of value, it has been less influential but it permeates such ideas as nature conservation and industrial regulation (economic conservatives then, generally despise it). In light of this debate however, perhaps it's worthy of another look - since it may offer some interesting solutions. Benjamin Franklin was an adherent to this theory and expressed it as follows: “All the property that is necessary to a man for the conservation of the individual and his propagation of the species is his natural right, which none can justly deprive him of; but all property superfluous to such purposes is the property of the public, who by their laws have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the welfare of the public shall demand such disposition. He that does not like civil society on these terms, let him retire and live among savages.” Now lets ignore the racism in there, and look at the underlying idea. That property is not a natural right at all. It is created by the laws of society, for the benefit of society, who can revoke any particular property right whenever the existence there-off is no longer to the benefit of society at large. Franklin used this as the basis for a lot of his thinking - for example it forms the basis for the following quote - so relevant to the current inequality debate: "An enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and destructive to the common happiness of mankind, and, therefore, every free state hath a right by it's laws to discourage the possession of such property" There's no shortage of such democratic-socialist ideas expressed by Franklin, and all derived from his fundamental premise that property is created by the laws of society, exists for the benefit of the whole of society, and can be revoked when it no longer serves that purpose. At least once upon a time - this was a common belief among the American founding fathers. Sufficiently so that they refused to put copyright law into the US constitution - the most they did was to give congress the right to create one if they believed it needed to exist - and even then constrained it with the proviso that it must be done, only, for a limited time and for a very narrow purpose: "To promote the growth of science and the useful arts". In other words - the founding fathers thougth a book had no value unless it was in the public domain, and the only reason they granted permission for a copyright law at all was to encourage more books to be written that could go into the public domain. They would certainly argue that, should a better way be found to encourage that then copyright law must be scrapped. The trade-off is only valid as long as it serves the benefit of society at large. This is extremely relevant to the debate about land redistribution without compensation - and where that balance should lie, from the Franklin approach, that land is only a property because society made it so - and society can unmake it so in order to redistribute it if that serves the public good better. Then the debates shifts from "is it acceptable" (which, ironically, both schools of thought actually says it is) to "is it wise". That is a pragmatic debate about the benefits and disadvantages of this approach and of various implementations of this approach. The advantage of pragmatic rather than moralistic debates is that they can be settled by numbers. Moral debates hinge on what your personal conscience deems the greater evil - and two sides of one almost never succeed in convincing the other. But pragmatic debates can be answered, and the only dispute is about the veracity of the numbers used and the truthfullness of the axiom used for conclusions. Those are testable issues though. If we take it - as a simple fact of law, history and philosophy that I have shown, that the expopriation without compensation, and settlement of unused urban buildings are both fully acceptable under the exact same ideas that created those things in the first place - then we can debate the wisdom of doing so and the wisest way of doing so. A much more productive debate I believe.

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[phooll123]

Jamel Burney—born and raised in Olean, N.Y.—knows you don’t need to live in a major metropolitan area to be heard.

As protests decrying the killing of George Floyd have raged across the country, Burney wanted to show solidarity. He expected just a handful of people to show up to a protest he helped put together on Sunday near Olean’s major intersection. But Burney was shocked to see at least 300 people turn up in the small city, which is located more than five hours northwest of New York City and has a population of nearly 14,000, 90% of whom are white. Hundreds more people showed up to another protest on Wednesday evening.

“This is a new thing,” Burney, 23, tells TIME. “It was the first time we all came together for something like this. It’s important because we live in a small city. We have a right that we get to exercise.”

Courtesy of Jamel Burney

Protests have grown widespread across the country—and, like in Olean, prompted a huge turnout in smaller cities and rural communities throughout the U.S. Demonstrations in support of Black Lives Matter and calling for an end to police brutality have been held in all 50 states, from the boroughs of Pennsylvania to rural Texas. More than 580 cities or towns have held protests, according to a tally from USA Today.

Many demonstrations—like a protest held Saturday in Bend, Ore., or ongoing protests in Elmira, N.Y.—have been organized or driven by young people of color living in those areas who want to show their communities they won’t stand for racism or police violence. In sparsely populated—and mostly white—places, people coming out in large crowds is significant, according to Lara Putnam, a historian at the University of Pittsburgh who studies grassroots organizing.

“What’s striking is both communities of color are stepping forward in outrage and saying we can’t let this keep happening,” Putnam says. “But also, there’s a young generation of white people who see that vision and are being mobilized to no longer just treat this as somebody else’s problem.”

This show of solidarity tracks with a general shift toward acknowledging that police officers are more likely to use more force on black people than white people. A June 2 Monmouth University poll found that 49% of white Americans say police will use excessive force against a black suspect, a jump from the 25% who gave the same answer in 2016.

These protests in small cities and suburban towns are thanks to the quick organizing work of many individuals, who have flooded social media directing people to the next demonstration and held ongoing conversations about how to take action. Jessie Selph, 23, who organized the Olean demonstration with Burney, says a lot of the planning occurred on Facebook, where she was surprised to see an enthusiastic response. As with many organizers behind other protests, Selph, says she was focused on keeping peace during the protests so as not to take away from their central message.

“Smaller communities can lead by example,” Selph says. “It’s beautiful to see everyone come together in unity. Everyone feels alone, and you’re not alone in these situations anymore.”

‘This is in our own backyard’

Courtesy of Lisa Roberts

The widespread demonstrations also call attention to the racism and police misconduct that exists in smaller towns.

“We need to realize this is in our own backyard,” says Lisa Roberts, a biracial resident of Greensburg, Pa., a small city outside of Pittsburgh with a population of about 14,000, about 89% of whom are white, with just over 6% black people. Roberts cites a recent racist incident: in May, a councilman from Southwest Greensburg called another man the N-word during an investigation over a dog fight, an altercation cited in a police report and covered in local media. “It’s not just in big cities.”

Roberts collaborated with a teenager in the area to put together a protest last Sunday after she explained how Floyd died to her 13-year-old son, who is black and autistic. “He sat there thinking about it and he said, ‘What if I’m next?’ I didn’t have an answer for him,” she says. “

Hundreds of people marched together in Greensburg and then laid face down on the ground with their hands clasped behind their backs for about nine minutes—to mark the amount of time Chauvin held Floyd down before he died. “Just laying there was tough to do. I didn’t have a knee in my neck, my hands weren’t cuffed. But it makes you realize what [Floyd] went through and what so many others go through,” Roberts says. “I know we’re just Greensburg and 200, 300 people is nothing. But for this area? It’s big.”

In central-eastern Pennsylvania, where counties that vote blue are often sandwiched between heavily Republican territories, police brutality and racism are nothing new. Ashleigh Strange, regional organizer with Lehigh Valley Stands Up, a grassroots group based in Allentown, Pa., says people have repeatedly come out to protest because they’re tired of officers killing and hurting their community members.

“This is happening in all of our cities. Just because somebody doesn’t become a hashtag doesn’t mean it’s not happening,” Strange says. She notes several incidents from recent years in Allentown and surrounding areas where police officers have fatally shot and tased citizens. “We’re out here because of what happened to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade—not just for them but because we’ve seen it here.”

‘They were telling us to go back home’

These protests—largely peaceful demonstrations—have received less national attention than some of the larger gatherings, where violence has broken out. Still, smaller town protests are frequently fraught, with members of the community opposing demonstrations and some local police departments using violence with protestors.

For Adriana Aquarius, whose voice has gone hoarse from protesting every day since Saturday throughout central Oregon, demonstrating means showing up in areas where black people and people of color are often in the minority and don’t feel supported. After organizing a protest in Bend on Saturday, Aquarius, 21, was moved the next day to bring people to the nearby town of Prineville—a more conservative area of the state—where a local organizer was trying to put together a small protest despite receiving multiple death threats.

Aquarius says a group opposing the protests showed up armed in Prineville, shouting racist slurs at the nearly 200 people who showed up—reminding her of what it was like to grow up in the region, as one of the only black kids in school.

“They were telling us to go back home. Telling us we were thugs,” she says. “I live in central Oregon. There aren’t many people of color here. My allies were white, Mexican and Native American—we were all races. But they still decided to attack black people.”

At the protests, Aquarius has made an effort to have conversations with the people who don’t want her on the streets, to varying degrees of success in getting them to understand why it’s important to call attention to the continued effects of racism in the U.S.

“I am just sick of seeing all this violence and all this pain go on,” she says. “Why is this necessary? I’m listening to my community and I’m projecting their voice.”

‘That hits a different way’

That people are banding together against racism in rural areas and small cities—particularly in places where black people and people of color often live in isolation—signals a willingness among a new generation of white people to fight for everyone, according to Putnam. While many of the protests have been organized by young black activists and people of color, the gatherings springing up in smaller communities typically reflect the majority white demographics of the 18-to 22-year-olds in those areas, she says. In communities where people tend to be more tight-knit, the impact of protestors can go far, Putnam says.

Beautiful night in Round Hill, VA, attended by a few hundred neighbors, to ‘Shine a Light on Racism’ including 8 min 46 sec of silence, and words shared by all ages and races. #blacklivesmatter pic.twitter.com/dVXtcCtaxC

— Melissa Laverty (@MelissaLaverty) June 4, 2020

“If you only see protests through the lens of Fox News or whatever sensationalized broadcast, maybe you’re only going to see mayhem and violence,” she says. “But when it’s kids from down the block who are standing out alongside other kids in your community, that hits a different way. Having someone local say Black Lives Matter … that’s powerful because it keeps the most polarizing effects from kicking in.”

Seeing white demonstrators help out the movement gives Aquarius some hope. And when an opposition forms at demonstrations, it helps to have white allies around to protect black protestors.

“If my voice isn’t loud enough, a white person’s voice is going to be because it has been for the past 400 years,” Aquarius says. “I almost expected people to say we should chill out, because that’s how it’s always been, but instead they were hyping us up.”

Danielle Michel, 33, an Olean resident who attended Sunday’s protest, says white people need to show up, especially those in less populated areas.

“We’re doing this as an act of solidarity,” she says. “And in a rural community where people are going to live — that lie that racism doesn’t happen here — it’s important that other white people are holding the citizens of that community accountable.”

‘We have to fight this every single day’

Hundreds, many wearing masks, are in Petal, Mississippi protesting against racism and for Mayor Hal Marx to step down because of his comments about George Floyd ("If you can talk, you can breathe.")

Peaceful, but there are many police officers here, some from other counties. pic.twitter.com/Um4npiZs5j

— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman) May 29, 2020

Protests are continuing in cities everywhere. More than 10,000 people have been arrested in demonstrations, according to the Associated Press. Teenagers and young adults, particularly queer people and people of color, organizing protests are doing so to right the wrongs they have seen or experienced for years, according to Strange, who has helped various college students in the Lehigh Valley region channel their anger and pain into action. Young activists, she says, are tired of everything: the violence, yes, but also having their demands about reducing the power of police ignored by politicians for years. They want to continue the fight on the streets, Strange says, rather than become hampered in discussions and debate over what’s right.

“For people of color, it’s just Groundhog Day. We have to live this, we have to fight this every single day,” Strange says. “Something’s gotta give. These kids, if they hear someone shouting in the street, they run out. They’re being heard.”

Aquarius is moving ahead at full speed, helping to organize protests in other parts of Oregon for the coming weekend. She wants people who oppose the protests to think about what they would want for their children, to consider how her parents might feel about having a black child out in the world and to take a step back from being the center of attention. She has two younger sisters and nieces and nephews who are children—the time to stand up for their futures has come.

“Now is our moment,” she says. “Let us use our voice.”

#News Updates #New top story from Time: Protests Are Being Held in Small Cities and Towns Across the