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Lumpenproletariat

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Lumpenproletariat

Tag Archives: Marxism

Jacobin | Why You Should Be a Marxist

14 Fri Aug 2020

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, Anti-Fascism, Anti-Racism

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Dr. Paul Heideman, Jacobin, Marxism

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—[14 AUG 2020]  Perhaps, you’ve noticed how most working class people never quite have enough of the daily necessaries of life. There’s never quite enough money for the bills. There’s always this nagging stress and strain of making ends meet. And, if you’re getting sick of it, then this talk is for you. Let’s tune in and discuss. Shall we?

@LumpenProles

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“Why You Should Be a Marxist” by Jacobin, 14 AUG 2020.

Tonight we're joined by Paul Heideman, editor of Class Struggle and the Color Line, and frequent Jacobin contributor to explain what being a Marxist means and how it gives us a framework to understand the world that informs socialist politics.

Transcript excerpts by Lumpen Proles…

(c. 46:29) “And, here, I would argue that Marxism is absolutely necessary for, you know—again, just taking the example of racism in the United States, today—Marxism is absolutely necessary for an understanding of what will be necessary to win racial justice in the United States. Because, in the US, today, racial injustice is intertwined with capitalist power, and is reproduced by capitalists exercising their power. Right? When the banks went out and pushed subprime loans in black neighborhoods, they did that because they thought they could turn a profit. They wouldn’t have done that, if they didn’t think they could turn a profit. That’s capitalists exercising their power. And, if we want to stop that kind of plunder, we need to stop capitalists from having that kind of power. Right? If we want to stop environmental racism, we need to limit the ability of capitalists to choose that their gonna dump, you know—like in North Carolina, it’s a huge issue of agricultural capitalists dumping farm pollution into lagoons next to black-owned farms, and things like that. That’s a non-class form of oppression. The people, who are suffering that are disproportionately black. And the capitalists are looking for black neighborhoods, that might be disempowered, as an easy target for this. And we wanna stop it. We have to put fetters on capitalism. We have to enchain capital, and stop capital from having the power to be able to do that.” (c. 47:55)

***

[22 FEB 2021]

[Last modified on 22 FEB 2021 at 19:07 PST]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0

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Dr. Harriet Fraad on Family Life Under the Capitalist Mode of Production

27 Fri Nov 2015

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, Feminism, Microeconomic Analysis, Mindfulness, Social Theory, Sociology

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Angry White Men, Dr. Harriet Fraad, Economic Update, feminism, KPFA, Marxism, Michael Kimmel, Nation Books, Pacifica Radio, The Indypendent, transcript

Economic UpdateLUMPENPROLETARIAT—Dr. Richard Wolff has interviewed Dr. Harriet Fraad, a recurring guest on Economic Update, in the wake of a new study by two noted economists.  As broader socioeconomic changes restructure gender politics within the capitalist mode of production, many men, particularly middle-aged white males, are facing depression and worsening mortality rates, as they struggle to adapt to demoted positions in society and in the home. [1]

Dr. Fraad, as a mental health counsellor, asks the dominant culture to reconceptualise male gender roles, so that men may learn to take pride in home-making and contributing to the domestic work load, which has often been degraded by our hitherto patriarchal society.  Dr. Fraad and Dr. Wolff also help us understand the structural or societal aspects of many socioeconomic challenges, which millions of individuals often internalise as personal failure.  This is a timely and important discussion.  This type of informed discussion helps individuals, families, and communities find common ground across gender, ethnicity, and other socioeconomic markers toward healthier outcomes for all.  Please listen (or download) here. [2]

Messina

***

ECONOMIC UPDATE—Welcome back to the second half of Economic Update for this Thanksgiving Day Weekend 2015.  I’m very proud to have with me, again, and, partly, by the way, because so many of you have written in asking me to bring back Dr. Harriet Fraad, who is a mental health counsellor and a hypnotherapist with a private practice in New York City.  And she also writes prolifically in a variety of places on politics and economics and how they intersect and interact with personal life.  And that’s, indeed, why I wanted her to join with us today because, as she will explain, there’s been some recent research, that has really touched precisely on the interaction of economics and personal life.  And, so, this is a perfect opportunity to explore that.  Thank you very much, Dr. Fraad, for joining us.”

DR. HARRIET FRAAD:  “I’m glad to be here.”

DR. RICHARD WOLFF:  “So, tell us, if you will, in a few words, what is this new research, who performed it, and what, basically, does it tell us.”

DR. HARRIET FRAAD:  “Well, it’s a very recent study by […]”  [expanded transcript pending]

Learn more at ECONOMIC UPDATE.

***

[The following is an excerpt of a book review originally published by Dr. Harriet Fraad on 25 FEB 2014 at THE INDYPENDENT.  The book reviewed is Angry White Men written by Michael Kimmel and published in 2013 by Nation Books.]

DR. HARRIET FRAAD—It’s been a tough 40 years for working and middle-class white men in America. Accustomed to an exalted place in the social hierarchy, they have seen their wages stagnate and decline since the early 1970s. At the same time, women have gained unprecedented new freedoms and our society became more racially and culturally diverse.

Rather than adapt and change, many of these men cling to male dominance. Michael Kimmel, a professor of sociology and gender studies at Stony Brook University in New York, journeys deep into the worlds of his white male aggrieved subjects.

Kimmel has produced a masterful account of white men’s rage. He focuses on the sons of successful skilled craftsmen, small businessmen and small farmers disenfranchised by the corporatizing of America, mass production, outsourced work, mega-stores like Walmart and Home Depot and restaurant chains like McDonalds and Applebees.

Learn more at DR. HARRIET FRAAD.

***

[1]  The term capitalist mode of production is used by many within the discipline of economics, primarily within the subset known as heterodox economics, to denote capitalism.  In my training, and having graduated with honours with a degree in Economics from the heterodox economics department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, I have come to view the term as the most appropriate way to denote capitalism.  (One of my economics professors, Dr. Erik Olsen, actually had Dr. Richard Wolff as one of his professors and dissertation advisers.)  To simply refer to our current economic system as capitalism runs the risk of perpetuating the myth that our current mode of production and social organisation is somehow natural, necessary, or inevitable.  This, of course, is not true.  In the past, other forms of social organisation have existed and endured for long periods of recorded human history, such as feudalism, slavery, and other tribal forms of organisation not based on the extraction and accumulation of capital.  I know the term is a mouthful, as many of my non-economist friends have complained.  But it’s an important distinction we may overlook only at our own peril.

[2]  Dr. Richard Wolff’s interview with Dr. Harriet Fraad begins at minute 29:00 of the Economic Update broadcast.

***

[3 DEC 2015]

[Last modified  3 DEC 2015  10:38 PDT]

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Daniel Guérin: A Synthesis of Marxism and Anarchism

04 Wed Nov 2015

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Capitalism, Anti-Fascism, Critical Theory, History, Marxian Theory (Marxism), Philosophy, Political Economy

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Against the Grain, anarchism, Bolsheviks, Bolshevism, class struggle, communism, Daniel Guérin, David Berry, Herbert Marcuse, Joseph Stalin, KPFA, Leon Trotsky, libertarian socialism, Marxism, Max Stirner, Pacifica Radio, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Sasha Lilley, socialism, transcript, Trotskyism

quote-in-the-hands-of-a-people-whose-education-has-been-willfully-neglected-the-ballot-is-daniel-guerin-70-22-58 LUMPENPROLETARIAT    Today on free speech radio, anarchist scholar David Berry, a co-editor of the 2012 Palgrave volume entitled Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red, discussed the French libertarian communism of Daniel Guérin.  Listen (or download) here.

Messina

***

kpfa-free-speech-take-it-back-logo-121199

AGAINST THE GRAIN—[4 NOV 2015] Marxists and anarchists have frequently been at odds, at least since the split between [Karl] Marx and [Mikhail] Bakunin in the First International, through the Bolshevik repression of sailors in Kronstadt, to the communist attacks on anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, and beyond.

“But do the two traditions have more in common than traditional history would indicate?  An affirmation of that sentiment informed the work of French writer and activist, Daniel Guérin, who was a Marxist in his early years, later becoming an anarchist, and then, finally, creating a synthesis of the two.

“The avowedly anti-sectarian Guérin, who was born in 1904 and died in 1988, wrote many works of history and analysis, including Class Struggle and the First Republic and Anarchism: From Theory to Practice.  He was also a pioneer of French gay liberation.

“Anarchist scholar Dave Berry has written extensively about Guérin.  He is co-editor of the volume, Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red.  And he teaches in the Department of Politics, History, and International Relations at Loughborough University in the UK, where he joins me now.

“Dave Berry, I wonder if you could give us a sense of Guérin’s origins.”  (c. 7:03)

DAVID BERRY:  “Well, Guérin, perhaps surprisingly, came from a very, very wealthy background.  I don’t know how many people in your audience will have heard of Hachette [1], which is one of the biggest publishing houses in France.  You go in any railway station, any airports in France and there will be an Hachette shop.  And Guérin is, actually, the heir to the Hachette empire.  So, he came from this very, very wealthy family from the [] bourgeoisie, the haute bourgeoisie in Paris, which sort of made its money in the sort of last decades of the 19th century and the start of the 20th.  And, so, he actually came from a very, very privileged family.  And some branches of his family were clearly very reactionary; but, actually, his branch of the family, certainly his parents and some of his closer relatives, were also very liberal, very cultured, for their class in some respects quite progressive.  His parents had been very much, at the time of the Dreyfus Affair in the 1890s, his branch of the family had been very much pro-Dreyfus.”  [c. 8:40]

‘Then, Daniel Guérin moved away from Trotskyism to a non-orthodox Marxism [] to try and separate Marxism from Bolshevism. []

DAVID BERRY:  ‘In postwar decades, the French Communist Party was completely dominant on the Left, intellectually.  It was in all the publications.  []  It was the biggest single political party in France.  []  Guérin wasn’t alone in this.  There were networks of people, some of who were critical Trotskyists, or ex-Trotskyists, who were involved in a number of journals, which linked many people []

‘A lot of these journals were focused on trying to rethink Marxism, or move beyond Marxism.  []  The intellectual circles were going through a period of questioning, what is anarchism, or what is socialism.  []  It manifested itself in the process of decolonisation, which was one of the most important aspects of the period.  []  And the Algerian War of Independence [] was incredibly important.  []  The Communist Party had been very equivocal in the position it had adopted on the war in Algeria.  []  And it’s at that point that these two currents established much more close links.  []  It accepted historical materialism, for example, and was much keener on [] without necessarily being a centralised type of Marxist organisation.  []  You can see his move away from Marxism toward Anarcho-Syndicalism.’

SASHA LILLEY:  ‘Workers setting up councils [] indication of the workers being able to organise themselves in any meaningful way.’

DAVID BERRY:  ‘It also coincided with Guérin’s discovery of the complete works of Bakunin.  []  The discovery of Bakunin was like a cataract operation []  Guérin had already had contacts with a number of other non-orthodox Marxists, like for example, Marcuse.  [] Proudhon, who was often referred to as the father of anarchism []

‘[c. 51:30]’

SASHA LILLEY:  “Well, that strong anti-sectarian tendency within Guérin’s writing and his practice, his attitude toward other activists throughout his life, really runs counter to so much of the history of anarchism and Marxism, where the divisions, at times, have even been violent, often with anarchists on the receiving end in the Soviet Union, during the Spanish Revolution.

“And I wonder if, in looking at Guérin and also in thinking about the places where Marxism and anarchism overlap that you and your co-authors and co-editors have considered in the book, Libertarian Socialism, is there, in fact, more overlap than we tend to think when we look at the history of the Left in the 20th century through that narrowly sectarian lens?”

DAVID BERRY:  “I think so.  I think, if you read the authors who contributed to that collection, Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red, and even, actually, probably if you compare the opinions of the four editors, we don’t all necessarily agree.  I mean, clearly, you mentioned the treatment of anarchists in Spain in ’37 and later, or in Russia from 1919 onwards or even earlier.  You know, there have been very real episodes where the differences in strategy, the differences in analysis of situations have led to some very, very real disagreements, which have had often tragic consequences.

“So, there’s no point trying to sweep some real disagreements, real differences under the carpet, as it were.  But I think it’s certainly true that there are more overlaps.  I think there’s much greater convergence between different kinds of socialists than is often assumed.  I should add, actually, in passing, really, having said that different kinds of socialism:  Guérin was adamant that anarchism was, for him, a kind of socialism.

“And I think the kind of thinking, which talks about anarchism in the singular and Marxism in the singular is fundamentally flawed, really.  There has never been one kind of anarchism.  There has never been only one kind of Marxism.  There have always been anarchisms.  There have always been Marxisms.  There have always been organisations, movements, tendencies, groups, who have explicitly or implicitly been inspired by, both, Marxism and anarchism.  But there has been, for some time now, a tendency to create essentialist, if you like, political identities with very clear boundaries between them.  And I think that’s a big mistake.  Theoretically, I think it’s a mistake.  And I also think, in practical terms, for any socialist, it’s a tactical or a strategic mistake as well.  It weakens the movement.”  [c. 55:17]

SASHA LILLEY:  “Well, important words for us to end on.  Dave Berry, thank you so much.”

DAVID BERRY:  “I’m honoured.”

SASHA LILLEY:  “I’ve been speaking with David Berry.  He is the author of a number of books, including A History of the French Anarchist Movement: 1917-1945.  He’s an editor of the journal Anarchist Studies and co-editor of the collection Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red published by Palgrave.  And that includes an essay by him on the French libertarian communist Daniel Guérin, who we have been discussing in this hour.

“You’ve been listening to Against the Grain.  I’m Sasha Lilley.  Thanks for listening.  And please tune in again next time.”

Learn more at AGAINST THE GRAIN (on KPFA).

[Transcript by Messina]

***

AGAINST THE GRAIN—[4 NOV 2015] A revolutionary socialist, fervent opponent of colonialism, staunch anti-sectarian, and maverick champion of gay liberation — the French writer and activist Daniel Guérin’s life spanned many of the key radical movements of the 20th century, with an unusual twist: he was in turn a Marxist, then an anarchist, and then synthesized the two traditions. Scholar Dave Berry reflects on Guérin’s life and legacy.

Learn more at AGAINST THE GRAIN.

***

[*]  Also see:  https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2007/08/marx-a24.html

[1]  Rhymes with ash-ette.

***

[This article is currently under construction.]

[Last modified 4 NOV 2015  14:39 PDT]

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