On Thu, 5 Jun 2003 17:01:30 -0400, Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> wrote:
You read too much of this kind of agit-prop, Author:Davidow, Mike. Title:Cities without crisis / Mike Davidow. Publ/date New York : International Publishers, c1976. Descript 240 p. ; 21 cm. Subject Cities and towns -- Soviet Union. Soviet Union -- Social conditions -- 1970-1991.
Instead of say, on the GDR, The Changing Party Elite In East Germany / [By] Peter C. Ludz. : The changing party elite in East Germany [by] Peter C. Ludz. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press [1972]
On women under your type of socialism, I suspect most of these marxist- feminist readings are less positive, http://www40.homepage.villanova.edu/sally.scholz/mfem_bibliography.htm
>...anti-racist laws
Ah yes, the old, "No free speech for fascists!, " line...that was so
effective that after the fall of the GDR, there were thousands of
disaffected neo-nazi skinheads. See Paul Hockenos, "Free to Hate, " and
Martin A. Lee, "The Beast Reawakens." (The latter has much on Stalinist and
post WWII Nazi collaboration via network of Francis Parker Yockey and Otto
Remer, with more than acquaitance with "national liberation" movements like
the PFLP, PFLP-GC and PLO in the
70's.]>...http://www.viper69.freeserve.co.uk/blackstar/rev-0047.html
> ...It wasn’t just Americans who adopted hard-line Nazis to their cause,
> the Soviets were just as assiduous in employing Nazi war criminals.
> Within the post-war Nazi scene groups such as Otto Remer’s ‘Socialist
> Reich Party’ – the successor to Hitler’s NSDAP – adopted a ‘neutralist’
> foreign policy which opposed American domination of West Germany. This
> avowedly neo-Nazi party was soon being funded by Moscow, who had actually
> reduced funding to the German Communist Party because the fascist SRP was
> so much effective....
> ...most rapid industrialization in the history of modern industrial
> civilization...
Sure, helps when you have atomized the working class and peasantry, destroyed the Left, Right and Workers Oppositions, killed all those that joined that Party in 1905 (see Robert Daniels, "The Consciounce of the Revolution, " or any bio of Kollantai), SR's and Mensheviks, starved to death millions of Ukranians and let a paranoid despot displace what potential existed either under Bukharin or Trotsky, for a industrialization and polity less terroristic.
>..Rapid modernization in China...
Three cheers for backyard steel furnices in the Great Leap Forward! How many die in GLP and GPCR? Tens of millions. A Chinese General, I'm blanking of his name (Peng Shui?) brought up to Mao, the masses starving in '58. Away to laogai, for the General, who most likely was a veteran of the Great March.
Cuba's healthcare, education...
Just returned to the library Susan Eckstein book on the Cuban Revolution
from Prineton Univ. Press, sympathetic to the Revo but, in her footnotes
she casts doubt on Cuban gov't. stats, esp. in the Special Period after the
Ochoa Affair. For more left academic work, though, see Cuban Political
Economy : Controversies In Cubanology / edited By Andrew Zimbalist. Boulder
: Westview Press, 1988.
> ...committees for the defense of the rev...
Been believing that Marta Harnecker stuff again? Cuba, dictadura o democracia? English. Cuba, dictatorship or democracy? : Edition includes account of national experience of people's power / edited, and with an introd., by Marta Harnecker ; translation into English by Patrick Greanville. Publ/date Westport, Conn. : L. Hill, c1980.
Read this instead, Bengelsdorf, Carollee. Title The problem of democracy in Cuba : between vision and reality / Carollee Bengelsdorf. Publ/date New York : Oxford University Press, 1994.
> Do you consider yourself a Marxist and a communist ?
On Thu, 5 Jun 2003 17:01:30 -0400, Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> wrote:
> ...Do you consider yourself a Marxist and a communist ?
A marxist in the vein of say Alvin Gouldner, author of, "The Two Marxisms, " http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/Marx/app2.htm SURE! But, when even the best neo-marxism as found at say, MR, NLR, RRPE (too much technical math for me these days, back in the late 70's it was understandable for those of us not inducted into the dismal science guild), or Science and Society...there is always pomo Rethinking Marxism, with a dollop of Weber, Merton and Randall Collins to go. (Randall Collins, 1988: The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.)
communism, as an end goal, realistically, centuries in the future, as a marketless, moneyless economy...read Stanley Moore who has written a few books and articles for MR over the decades. http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-00865-2.html Marx versus Markets Stanley Moore Stanley Moore, who taught at the UCSD Philosophy Department from 1965 until his retirement in 1974, died on December 5, 1997 in Santa Barbara at the age of 83. Stanley was a distinguished social and political philosopher, whose specialty was the work of Karl Marx. He was the author of numerous papers and four books--The Critique of Capitalist Democracy (1957), Three Tactics (1963), Marx and the Choice Between Socialism and Communism (1980), and Marx Versus Markets (1993).
The first of these works is more expository than critical. The latter three relentlessly explore a deceptively simple question: Why does Karl Marx call for the elimination not only of the inequalities he associated with capitalist private ownership but also the institution of market exchange? In other words, why does Marx envisage the ideal of humane and decent social order in the form of communist society? The issue goes to the core of Marx's intellectual legacy. Stanley Moore's writings analyze the issue with scrupulous scholarly care in the interpretation of Marx's text, a generous sympathy with the values of solidarity and emancipation he discerned in these texts, and a rigorous intelligence directed to the exposure of Marx's mistakes and evasions that have a bearing on his historical prophecies and revolutionary urgings. Moore's conclusion is that Marx has no good arguments that should persuade us to follow him beyond the condemnation of exploitation to the rejection of markets and exchange. For many years after his formal retirement, Moore continued his sensible and nuanced reflections as to how to extract the rational kernel of Marx's radicalism from the romantic and utopian shell in which it seemed to be encased. In his last writings he proposed a pairing of Rousseau's emphasis on economic transformation. All of Stanley Moore's writings felicitously combine the qualities of a rigorous scholar and staunch social critic.
During the nine years of his stay at UC San Diego Stanley was an invaluable colleague and a sane, steadying influence in the affairs of the Department of Philosophy. He was a man of excellent judgment, realistic, unsentimental, and concerned above all for academic and humanistic values. He was also that rare thing--a gentleman in the best sense of that much abused term--and as such he contributed to the broader education of his students as he did to their progress in philosophical studies. He was a very effective teacher at both the undergraduate and the graduate levels, blessed with an extraordinary memory for the literal wording of texts; and the directness and clarity of both his thought and his manner were great assets to him as a teacher. He was also a most congenial companion with a fine sense of humor and a strong allergy to cant of all varieties. Altogether, he combined the qualities of a scholar and a humane commentator on the life of his time in a wholly admirable way.
Stanley was a person of principle--fearless, and fair-minded. He became nationally famous in the profession because of his courageous stand against the encroachments of McCarthyism on academic freedom. In 1954 he lost his tenure position as Professor of Philosophy at Reed College when he refused to answer questions about his political affiliations before the House Un- American Activities Committee. In characteristically witty fashion Stanley remarked at the end of the hearings, "When this investigation started, I predicted that I would win the argument and lose the job. My prediction . . . has now been confirmed."
Stanley was right. He won the argument. In 1996, the Oregon Historical Quarterly published an 80-page article by Michael Munk entitled "Oregon Tests Academic Freedom in (Cold) Wartime: The Reed College Trustees versus Stanley Moore," that meticulously described the events that resulted in Moore's dismissal. In this essay, Munk reproduces a statement of "regret" by the Board of Trustees and the Reed administration, that was published in 1981. This statement formally revised the judgment of the 1954 trustees. In 1993, the president of Reed invited Stanley to visit the College, and in 1995 the last surviving member of the Board that fired Stanley expressed his regret and apologized to him.
As Munk reports, Moore waited 24 years to surprise both sides by telling the Oregonian in 1978 that he had been a member of the Communist party when he came to Reed but that he had left it before the HUAC hearings began. While still describing himself as a Marxist (albeit a "more critical one") he said he quit the party 18 months before the HUAC hearings because, "I couldn't stomach the American organization's kowtowing to Moscow on the so- called 'doctor's plot,' which had been announced in January 1953 and was declared a 'fabrication' shortly after Stalin's death just two months later."
Thus, had Moore been willing to accept the authority of his interrogators, he could have passed the trustees' political test. That is, he could have told them, truthfully, that he was not now a Communist. But as he stated at the time, he had decided not to do so in order to help Reed defend its historical attachment to academic freedom "against the fickle tides" of public opinion. As Michael Munk writes at the end of his essay, "Those who chose to play the historical moment of McCarthyism, and therefore dishonored Reed's proud distinction, still have Moore's challenging question echoing against their reputations: "If the careful deliberate judgment of the academic community is reversed in order to placate influential demagogues, who--more than forty years later--stands condemned?"
Having been fired under these conditions, Stanley was unable to find a permanent teaching post for another decade, even though he was widely regarded as one of the most knowledgeable philosophical historians in America. He did teach during the period of 1955-1965 on a part-time basis at Barnard College. During this hiatus most of his time was spent researching and writing. In 1964, the new UCSD philosophy department, chaired by Richard Popkin and whose other members were Jason Saunders and Avrum Stroll, proposed a symposium on the topic "Marx Today." With financial support from Chancellor Herbert York and Dean Keith Brueckner, the department arranged for a three-day conference that was held in Sumner Auditorium. The main speakers were Stanley Moore, Herbert Marcuse, Lewis Feuer, and the moderator was Joseph Tussman of UC Berkeley. This conference caused a sensation on campus. It had virtually one hundred percent attendance from the scientific community. Its stars were Moore and Marcuse, and with the enthusiastic support of York and Brueckner, and such faculty members as S. J. Singer and James Arnold, we managed to hire both of them. It began an auspicious period that gave international visibility to the department. Those of us fortunate enough to have known Stanley will sorely miss him. Richard J. Arneson Frederick A. Olafson Avrum Stroll Georgios H. Anagnostopoulos