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Revolution #135, July 13, 2008
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Alexandra, Mamelodi, Atteridgeville, Thokoza, and Tembisa. These names were scorched into world history back in the 1980s. On the dusty streets of these segregated South African townships, and dozens more like them, millions of black South Africans fought out the decade of rebellion that played a decisive role in bringing down the hated, racist apartheid regime.
Today these same names have surfaced again in world headlines. Only this time, for a very bad reason. On May 11, a horrific pogrom of ethnic cleansing aimed at immigrants from other African countries exploded on the streets of Alexandra. Anti-immigrant riots broke out in other townships and squatter camps throughout Gauteng Province, especially in the areas around Johannesburg, the economic and industrial heart of the country. And within a week they spread to townships and squatter camps around Durban in KwaZulu-Natal and in the western Cape province, especially around Cape Town. Mobs of South Africans attacked, beat and sometimes murdered any and all immigrants they could find—no matter whether they were neighbors or street corner vendors. Children and pregnant women were beaten and terrorized, their homes looted and destroyed. Some men were set afire in the street while South Africans watched and sometimes cheered.
It has been reported that by the end of the month 62 African immigrants had been killed, 670 wounded and tens of thousands displaced throughout the country. Non-government organizations in the townships say the figure is closer to 100,000. The vast majority of the immigrants were from Zimbabwe and Mozambique but also included people from Burundi, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, and Malawi. Thousands of immigrants driven from their homes sought shelter in and around police stations. The government eventually set up refugee camps to accommodate 70,000 people. Tens of thousands of other immigrants fled to their home countries or some other nearby country. More than 1,400 South Africans were arrested for participating in the pogroms.
Many who had been inspired by the brave youth and others who waged relentless struggle against apartheid in the 1980s and ’90s, are heartsick at what is now happening in the townships. People ask, how is it that the very places that were once centers of revolutionary hope and struggle have now become areas where such awful violence is taking place among the people?
In order to answer this question we have to step back and look at the tremendous struggle against apartheid. We have to look at what it meant—and didn’t mean—when apartheid was ended in 1994. And we have to look at the nature of the African National Congress, which has been in power since then.
Apartheid Rule
I had walked down the streets of these townships during two visits I made to South Africa in the midst of the rebellions of the 1980s and early 1990s. I shared Castle beer and revolutionary music in the illicit bars called shebeens, slept in the corrugated tin shacks and shared many a meal of pap and steak (more gristle than meat) with young Azanian revolutionaries (South African revolutionaries called the country Azania instead of South Africa). I heard many stories of what it was like to live under apartheid.
The apartheid system, which began in 1948, was one of the most savage settler-colonial regimes in modern history. Apartheid (which means separateness in Afrikaans, a language of the white settlers) legalized racial segregation throughout society.
The South African system of apartheid was totally bound up with and subordinate to global imperialism, ensuring the highest profits for capitalist exploiters. And the U.S. and other western imperialist powers politically and militarily supported the apartheid regime as a bulwark against national liberation struggles and against the Soviet Union, which by that time was imperialist and was making inroads into those struggles to serve its own interests.*
Under apartheid the white settler colonialists, who made up 10% of the population, owned and controlled everything. Black Africans were systematically deprived of all rights, denied citizenship in South Africa and forced to live either in segregated townships outside the cities or in rural Bantustans which functioned as impoverished holding pens for African migrant laborers who were allowed into “white areas” only to work in the mines, factories and farms. Africans worked these jobs for pennies an hour, often 10 and 12 hours a day. White settlers owned 87% of the land, including the most fertile agricultural land, while more than 33 million black people were confined to the 13% of the land that made up the Bantustans. Pass Laws required black Africans to carry identity documents whenever they were outside of the Bantustans.
The economy was organized for export of gold, diamonds, and other precious metals and strategic minerals. This was the heart of the economy. Other manufacturing included automobile manufacturing for both domestic use and export. Large-scale commercial farming was mainly for domestic purposes but included export crops.
While the white settlers enjoyed a standard of living equivalent to Europe, black people lived on a par with the poorest nations of the world. Housing in the segregated townships was frequently nothing more than cinderblocks and corrugated tin roofing. Most people had no running water, sanitation was terrible, and electricity was minimal if it even existed. There was little health care and disease was rampant.
Companies hired laborers who lived hundreds of miles away and migrated to work in the townships, living in worker hostels in the townships that resembled Nazi concentration camp barracks. Massive squatter camps grew up around all of the major urban areas. And all Africans in the “white areas” had to carry papers—passbooks—proving that they had permission to be in those areas. Africans who did not have these papers were subject to arrest and deportation to the Bantustans. All this served the smooth profiteering of the imperialists. And this whole racist apartheid system was enforced by the most brutal terror unleashed against the African people by the police and military.
Upsurge from Below,
Betrayal at the Top
The Azanian people, especially the youth, ached for liberation. We spent many a slow afternoon and long night talking revolution and sharing dreams of what a free South Africa/Azania would be. People were filled with hope, daring, and incredible optimism about bringing down a regime that had the backing of major imperialist powers in the world and seemed almost invulnerable. And they knew that their struggle provided inspiration to oppressed and exploited people and many others around the globe. But heroic as this movement was, it didn’t bring forward a genuine communist party—the kind of leadership necessary to wage a struggle for real liberation. And because of this, the masses paid dearly.
By the early 1990s these rebellions had rocked apartheid and imperialist rule in South Africa to its foundations. The country teetered on the brink of political collapse and was no longer considered a safe and stable place for imperialist investors and strategic planners. The mass uprisings that grew out of a few hundred youth throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails in the Johannesburg townships in 1983 exposed the ugly apartheid regime to people around the world. Internationally many people supported and joined the anti-apartheid struggle in different ways. And it became an untenable political liability for the U.S. and other western imperialists to continue to support the hated white minority regime and its apartheid system. This, together with other major developments in the world at that time, especially the collapse of the Soviet imperialist empire, created a situation where the imperialists and their white South African caretakers were both forced to and had the freedom to adjust the form of their domination in South Africa and ditch the formal apartheid system.
The unstoppable waves of struggle against the hated apartheid regime had presented the South African rulers and the imperialists with a political crisis and they had to stop the rebellions. To do this, the South African regime moved to suppress the uprisings through the brute force of the military and police. But this alone was not sufficient to get past this crisis. The South African rulers also needed to find a partner among the opponents of apartheid who could be drawn into negotiations that would lead to a “new South Africa,” that would supposedly have economic justice and racial equality for all. The solution they went for was to bring black Africans into some top political posts as well as incorporate a section of the Black national movement into South African colonial rule in almost every sphere of society.
The African National Congress (ANC) and its leader, Nelson Mandela, became a very willing and crucial partner in carrying out this imperialist program. By the early 1990s the apartheid regime had released Mandela from prison and begun negotiations with him and the ANC. In the 1994 elections—the first time ever that black people were allowed to vote in South Africa—Mandela was elected president and the ANC became the ruling party in the country.
The press called the 1994 elections the “most profound and promising transformation to democracy in modern times.” But in fact, what this election actually represented was the consolidation of the imperialist-backed South African neocolonial state—in a new form and with a new “democratic” look. It was an organized transfer of the presidency and parliament to the ANC, in a joint administration with representatives of the old white ruling National Party.
The struggle of the people was consciously diverted by the ANC into what became known as the “negotiations” process. Preaching harmony and national reconciliation, the ANC’s message in effect liquidated the difference between oppressed and oppressor and provided the ruling class with an opportunity to preserve and reinforce the political and economic system that had underlain apartheid, while getting rid of some of the open barbaric features of white-only rule. And this election was an important political success for imperialism internationally—providing an example of how to successfully defuse national liberation struggles and divert the anger of the masses into a “safe” process of working within the system.
No Fundamental Change
The system of apartheid was formally ended. But in reality, the form of imperialist domination was retooled and refined in order to create more favorable conditions for this domination to not only continue but to intensify and expand. And this was orchestrated and financed to a great extent by the imperialists, especially the United States. The new government still represented the same ruling class interests and the country remained subordinate to and oppressed by imperialism. And the deep inequalities and severe impoverishment of the masses engendered by apartheid remain in place and are growing worse.
The ANC government has succeeded in creating a relatively small black middle class and even a handful of black tycoons, but the severe gap between the rich and poor has grown even wider than in the days of apartheid. Between 1995 and 2000 the average black household income shrank by 19%, while that of whites and the black middle class grew by 15%. The poorest 10% of South Africans now have the same share of the national income as they did in 1993, the year before the official end of apartheid. And in 1996 there were 1.9 million people in South Africa living on less than a dollar a day; in 2006 that number rose to 4.2 million. The official unemployment rate is said to be 23% but most analysts put it closer to 40% nationwide and 50% in the townships (and slightly higher for township youth). Only 50% of African families get their main income from a job.
In terms of land reform, very little has changed since the days of apartheid. Under apartheid the white settlers, who made up only 10% of the population, owned 87% the land and just about all of the fertile agricultural land. By 2007 only 5% of the white-owned land had been redistributed to black South Africans. At this incredibly slow pace the ANC won’t even be able to meet its stated goal of putting 30% of this land under black ownership by 2014. And even this goal is a far cry from what is really needed—which is mass land redistribution carried out by mobilizing the rural population to take back the land as part and parcel of uprooting the semi-feudal and imperialist relations in the countryside.
This brings me back to where I began... As the conditions for the masses of black South Africans have (rather than improving) grown increasingly desperate in the wake of the ANC coming to power, there has also been a dramatic growth in the numbers of immigrants coming in to South Africa. There is a push and a pull here. People who are unable to survive in their own countries, as well as hundreds of thousands of war refugees, are migrating to South Africa. And the South African economy depends on their labor to thrive and expand. (See box for more.)
Two Paths, Two Futures
Part of the “conventional wisdom” behind the ANC program—and similar programs in the world today like that of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela—is the view that because imperialism is so powerful and so highly integrated on a world scale, it is impossible for any country to “de-link” from this. The argument is that it’s “unrealistic” to think an oppressed country could liberate itself from imperialism and develop a genuine socialist economy and social structure. But these questions need to be asked: How realistic is it to think that anything good for the people can come from continued imperialist domination? How realistic is it to think that the deep economic, social, and political problems South Africa faces can be addressed without overthrowing the ruling class that maintains and enforces a whole system of capitalist exploitation and uprooting all the economic, political, and social relations of capitalist exploitation?
In countries like South Africa (and most of the rest of the world), the task of national liberation from imperialism is the pressing task. A new democratic revolution, as the first stage of a socialist revolution, is the first, essential step. This is a revolution that unites and represents the interests of all who can be united to overthrow feudalism and semi-feudalism, the bureaucrat-capitalist class and state system dependent on and serving imperialism.
But the ANC had a very different program. The ANC never fought for genuine liberation of the people. The ANC has never been about overthrowing and uprooting the economic, political, and social relations of capitalism that exploit and oppress the masses of Azanian people. The ANC has never been about kicking imperialism out of the country. It has never been about ending the situation where the country is dominated by and subordinate to global imperialism. The ANC came to power with a whole program built around the idea that working within the system of capitalism and imperialism is what is not only the best that can be done in the world today, but what is desirable. They came to power with a program based on the view that the solution to South Africa’s problems was opening the country up to the global capitalist economy even more. And at the heart of that is the continuation, intensification, and extension of all the production, class and social relations and ideas that go along with that. The African proletarians will be guaranteed super-exploitation while the imperialists are guaranteed the protection of their private property and their right to super-exploit the Azanian people. The ANC program represented the class interests of the comprador bourgeoisie—a class whose interests lie in allying itself with and becoming the “brokers” for imperialism and a class which is, in turn, backed up and propped up by imperialism.
For example, mining—and all of the production and social relations associated with it—was not only preserved but developed further as the backbone of the economy. And today most of the miners doing the difficult and dangerous work in the mines are black while the vast majority of the management staff remains white. And most of the mining corporations are based in the European Union countries or the U.S. Many of the corporations that formed the economic backbone of the apartheid economy occupy the same position in the economy today, except that they are now based in the UK instead of South Africa, a distinction that offers them more flexibility and privileges than they would have as a South African-based corporation. Manufacturing, especially the auto industry, is another important element of the economy and the imperialist corporations involved are familiar to all—Ford, GM, Chrysler, Volkswagen, Nissan, Toyota, Bavarian Motors, and Daimler.
*****
People used to talk about how the apartheid regime had created a tinderbox waiting to be set afire in the black townships. Today the ANC regime has built its very own tinderbox based on unfulfilled promises and high expectations running up against the reality of continued imperialist rule in South Africa.
The situation in South Africa today really drives home the terrible situation the masses of people will be condemned to if compromise and conciliation with imperialism is taken up as a solution to imperialist oppression. And at the same time, it is a strong testimony to the real difference that a genuinely revolutionary government and leadership could and can make in liberating countries and bringing into being a new and truly emancipating socialist society.
Immigration and Capitalist Dynamics
Immigration and immigrant labor in South Africa has a long history and one that is deeply rooted in the workings of imperialism in South Africa and Southern Africa in general. The Berlin Conference (1884-1885), where the European imperialist powers divided up Africa along arbitrarily drawn borderlines, created a situation where cross-border cultural, family, and tribal ties were commonplace. Since then there have been more Tswanas in South Africa than in Botswana, more Swazis than in Swaziland, and more Basothos than in Lesotho.
The discovery of diamonds in the 1860s and gold in 1886 gave birth to the migrant contract labor system which in turn helped spark massive population migrations into South Africa. The countries surrounding South Africa became labor reserves, feeding desperately poor and cheap labor to be superexploited in the mines surrounding Johannesburg and Kimberly. In turn, the economies of many of these same countries became dependent on this migrant contract labor system for foreign exchange and their own economic survival.
All of this has been brought to new heights of savage exploitation and oppression as imperialism continues to dominate and devastate all of Africa in different ways. The workings of imperialism throughout Africa today—from utter neglect to ruthless exploitation and even corporate sponsored “native” armies waging terrible civil wars over resources and wealth—has dramatically increased the migrant refugee population. People desperately trying to escape genocidal wars in the Congo or Sudan join people fleeing the drought and starvation of other parts of Africa. And they join Zimbabweans fleeing the repression of the Mugabe government and a completely collapsed economy. They all head to South Africa, which has the biggest economy on the continent and a political reputation for being more open to accepting refugees and immigrants.
There are anywhere from three to five million immigrants in South Africa today—many if not most are undocumented and considered to be “illegal.” The vast majority of undocumented immigrants are from Zimbabwe—estimates range from just over one million to three million—and much of the Zimbabwean economy depends on the money and commodities it receives from this migrant labor. The overall immigrant population in South Africa is growing at an incredible rate. While the native South African population growth is estimated at 2.4%, the foreign born growth rate has been as high as 19% in the past 12 months.
Similar to the situation facing undocumented immigrants inside the U.S., the South African economy needs the profit it reaps from these immigrants. As part of creating a situation where immigrants are forced to live in the shadows, terrorized and willing to work for whatever wage offered, the South African regime has unleashed a campaign of raids, arrests, and deportations of “illegals.” According to the International Organization for Migration, the South African government deported 102,413 undocumented immigrants to Zimbabwe between January and June of 2007 alone, a monthly average of 17,000 people. Living in this kind of terror, the undocumented immigrants are preyed on by the mines, factories, and farms of South Africa. In fact, this rapid growth in undocumented immigrants has corresponded to a shrinking of the “legal” contract laborers brought into the mines from other countries.
As native South Africans and immigrants are forced to compete with each other to survive, tension is created and in this context it doesn’t take much to set off a terrible situation when two very desperate groups of people are set off against each another. Each one blames the other for their suffering. And the lack of a revolutionary leadership ensures that each group will remain blind to its real interests and be played by the imperialist system. This is what is so horribly on display now with the anti-immigrant riots.
Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/135/s_africa_dynamics-en.html
Revolution #135, July 13, 2008
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Immigration and immigrant labor in South Africa has a long history and one that is deeply rooted in the workings of imperialism in South Africa and Southern Africa in general. The Berlin Conference (1884-1885), where the European imperialist powers divided up Africa along arbitrarily drawn borderlines, created a situation where cross-border cultural, family, and tribal ties were commonplace. Since then there have been more Tswanas in South Africa than in Botswana, more Swazis than in Swaziland, and more Basothos than in Lesotho.
The discovery of diamonds in the 1860s and gold in 1886 gave birth to the migrant contract labor system which in turn helped spark massive population migrations into South Africa. The countries surrounding South Africa became labor reserves, feeding desperately poor and cheap labor to be superexploited in the mines surrounding Johannesburg and Kimberly. In turn, the economies of many of these same countries became dependent on this migrant contract labor system for foreign exchange and their own economic survival.
All of this has been brought to new heights of savage exploitation and oppression as imperialism continues to dominate and devastate all of Africa in different ways. The workings of imperialism throughout Africa today—from utter neglect to ruthless exploitation and even corporate sponsored “native” armies waging terrible civil wars over resources and wealth—has dramatically increased the migrant refugee population. People desperately trying to escape genocidal wars in the Congo or Sudan join people fleeing the drought and starvation of other parts of Africa. And they join Zimbabweans fleeing the repression of the Mugabe government and a completely collapsed economy. They all head to South Africa, which has the biggest economy on the continent and a political reputation for being more open to accepting refugees and immigrants.
There are anywhere from three to five million immigrants in South Africa today—many if not most are undocumented and considered to be “illegal.” The vast majority of undocumented immigrants are from Zimbabwe—estimates range from just over one million to three million—and much of the Zimbabwean economy depends on the money and commodities it receives from this migrant labor. The overall immigrant population in South Africa is growing at an incredible rate. While the native South African population growth is estimated at 2.4%, the foreign born growth rate has been as high as 19% in the past 12 months.
Similar to the situation facing undocumented immigrants inside the U.S., the South African economy needs the profit it reaps from these immigrants. As part of creating a situation where immigrants are forced to live in the shadows, terrorized and willing to work for whatever wage offered, the South African regime has unleashed a campaign of raids, arrests, and deportations of “illegals.” According to the International Organization for Migration, the South African government deported 102,413 undocumented immigrants to Zimbabwe between January and June of 2007 alone, a monthly average of 17,000 people. Living in this kind of terror, the undocumented immigrants are preyed on by the mines, factories, and farms of South Africa. In fact, this rapid growth in undocumented immigrants has corresponded to a shrinking of the “legal” contract laborers brought into the mines from other countries.
As native South Africans and immigrants are forced to compete with each other to survive, tension is created and in this context it doesn’t take much to set off a terrible situation when two very desperate groups of people are set off against each another. Each one blames the other for their suffering. And the lack of a revolutionary leadership ensures that each group will remain blind to its real interests and be played by the imperialist system. This is what is so horribly on display now with the anti-immigrant riots.
Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/135/Iran_from_the_editors-en.html
Revolution #135, July 13, 2008
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This issue of Revolution includes an edited version of an article from the June 30 edition of A World To Win News Service, “U.S. Journalist Exposes Further American Moves Against Iran”, as well as coverage of the struggle in Iran against the persecution of women by the Islamic fundamentalist regime there.
The article on further U.S. moves against Iran notes the alarm sounded by U.S. journalist Seymour Hersh in an article “Preparing the Battlefield” in the July 7 issue of the New Yorker magazine. Hersh reports on the fact that there has been a major escalation of covert U.S. military operations inside Iran, including kidnapping of government officials, attacks on various sites, and backing of armed anti-government forces. Hersh talked with U.S. government and military officials who made clear that the Bush regime is definitely on a trajectory to provoke an incident which will give them “casus belli” (a Latin language term for justification for acts of war) for a military attack against Iran. Hersh and others have reported on significant elements of the U.S. military command structure who have expressed reservations or opposition to the Bush regime’s trajectory towards Iran (for example, Admiral William Fallon, who was forced out of his post in March of this year as overall commander of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan because of his opposition to the Bush regime’s trajectory). The present escalation of covert military actions by the U.S. inside Iran detailed by Hersh makes the danger of a larger military clash greater; these actions may be an effort by the U.S. to weaken the internal situation in Iran in advance of a larger military assault, as well as acting as a possible tripwire for “justifying” an attack on Iran.
Hersh’s article shows that U.S. offers to negotiate with Iran’s rulers start with terms the Iranian regime cannot accept, a tactic designed to set up the Iranians as the ones “rejecting diplomacy.” These offers are part of a calculated public relations campaign to develop support for a military attack on Iran.
In his article, Hersh notes that the escalation of covert military operations was made known to the Democratic Party leadership in Congress. They could have challenged these operations, but instead they have not sounded an alarm about them, and authorized $400 million in funding for the program.
After September 11, 2001, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and imposed a reactionary regime of Islamic fundamentalists and warlords, backed by a brutal occupation that continues today. The U.S. invaded and occupies Iraq resulting in a million deaths and four million more displaced—this to a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. Today, the same kinds of pretexts used to justify the invasion of Iraq, including invoking “weapons of mass destruction,” are being used to justify U.S. pressure on Iran’s rulers and possible military attacks.
What are the real interests of U.S. imperialism in the region? To control the region’s oil as a source of superprofits, and to use its domination of the region as a strategic weapon to enforce the status of the U.S. as the world’s only superpower. Flowing from that, the U.S. imperialists need—from their interests and their point of view—to dominate and determine the politics of the region. For decades, this has led to rivers of oil flowing out of the Middle East—and rivers of blood flowing through it. The so-called “war on terror” was launched to further protect those interests—and specifically to recast the political and social terrain of the region in order to defeat challenges coming from both Islamic fundamentalist political trends and the U.S.’s imperialist rivals to those interests. These are not the fundamental interests of the majority of American people, let alone the interests of the people of the world—but they ARE the interests of the ruling imperialists who sit atop this system, and they are at the heart of the whole “American way of life.”
Any U.S. attack on Iran—no matter the scale and scope, no matter the pretext—would be criminal aggression and a war crime. The potential consequences for the people of Iran and the whole region are horrific. It’s urgent that there be massive resistance, especially inside the U.S. imperialist belly of the beast, to condemn and protest these threats and war preparations—now!
Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/135/Hersh_Iran-en.html
Revolution #135, July 13, 2008
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From A World to Win News Service
June 30, 2008. A World to Win News Service. The American journalist Seymour Hersh has sounded the alarm about “a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence and congressional sources.” Writing in the current issue of The New Yorker (July 7), this well-known antiwar journalist with long-standing high level sources in the U.S. government and especially the military revealed two main points about these new moves:
U.S.-Sponsored Kidnapping, Bombings and Assassinations
Congressional leaders agreed to fund this covert escalation, Hersh says, after they were shown a highly classified document called a Presidential Finding signed by President George W. Bush, legally necessary to authorize a covert CIA program. Bush claims that unlike the CIA, the U.S. military’s Special Ops activities are not legally subject to Congressional oversight, so that it can be presumed that a major purpose of the Finding is to broaden CIA work with organizations and individuals within Iran. According to Hersh’s sources, “the overall authority includes killing.”
Hersh says that the U.S. is now going further than ever in fostering attacks on the Shia Islamic Iranian regime by minority groups in Iran, including Iranian Kurdish forces, Iranian Arabs and the most emphasized movement in this report, the Baluchi Sunni Islamist fundamentalist group Jundallah.
On June 20, the Jundallah said it had executed two Iranian police and kidnapped 14 others, taking them to the Baluchi region in Pakistan, on the other side of the Iranian border. Last year the U.S. television chain ABC “quoted U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials as saying that Jundallah members have been ‘encouraged and advised’ by American officials since 2005.” (Washington Post, June 20)
Other recent armed attacks linked to U.S. support have taken place in Iranian Kurdistan, and the Iranian city of Shiraz, where a culture center was bombed. Hersh quotes a covert intelligence operative on the Pentagon’s successful use in Pakistan and Afghanistan of “false flag” operations—CIA work carried out through groups that may not even be aware that they are being manipulated by the U.S. The source argues that such operations won’t work in Iran, and may backfire. (Although he doesn’t discuss them, among other results, they could further destabilize the Pakistan regime, which has been a key American regional ally.) He explains, “There is huge opposition within the intelligence community to the [White House] idea of waging a covert war inside Iran and using Baluchis and Ahwazis [Iranian Arabs] as surrogates.”
Consensus and Contention in the U.S. Ruling Class
The New Yorker article emphasizes opposition from within the U.S. military to a “preemptive” strike on Iran in the next few months, which, according to other reports, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney advocates. Following publication of the Hersh piece, ABC News (June 30) quoted “a senior [U.S.] defense official” as saying that Israel is anxious to attack before Iran sets up the advanced air defense system it is buying from Russia, which would make an aerial strike more difficult. The ABC source worries that unleashing Israel to do the U.S.’s dirty work might “cause major problems in the region and beyond,” while doing little damage to the Iranian regime.
Hersh interviewed Admiral William Fallon, who under White House pressure, recently resigned from heading the U.S. Central Command in charge of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and potentially Iran. His disagreements with the Bush circle were twofold, involving presidential interference in the military chain of command, and, related to that, whether an immediate U.S. attack on Iran would be able to achieve its goals or, instead, would be a disaster. The U.S. current military chiefs are against such an action, Hersh’s sources told him.
At the same time, the Congressional leadership’s agreement for the Finding, and the as much as $400 million funding for these moves that went with it, shows a great deal about a certain consensus operating within the U.S. ruling class, in terms of what all leading politicians call “keeping all options on the table,” in other words, mounting military as well as other sorts of pressure on the Iranian regime and attacking it if necessary to achieve U.S. regional and global aims. Similarly, despite some ambiguous promises of an early end to the Iraq war by Democratic candidate Obama, last week the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate voted to approve the Bush administration’s requested funding to continue that war as well, along with the one in Afghanistan.
Like earlier Hersh scoops, Hersh obtained his information from within the high ranks of the military itself. Congressional forces, both Republicans and Democrats, seem better than the military at keeping these moves secret. The Congressional consensus on the need to keep the masses of people in the U.S. out of the political picture is, like the military’s hesitations about the chances of battlefield success, another indication of the potentially dangerous consequences of a U.S. attack on Iran for the American rulers themselves.
A World to Win News Service is put out by A World to Win magazine (aworldtowin.org), a political and theoretical review inspired by the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the embryonic center of the world’s Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations.
Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/135/Iran_Zanjan_University-en.html
Revolution #135, July 13, 2008
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From A World to Win News Service
June 30, 2008. A World to Win News Service. Events at Iran’s Zanjan University two weeks ago shocked the whole country. Not because people were unaware of the kind of corruption and the abuses going on behind the Islamic codes imposed by the regime, but because this incident concentrated the Islamic Republic’s essence. The subsequent developments were also shocking and beyond what the people of Iran, who are well familiar with the logic of the Islamic regime, could believe.
A woman student was brave enough to go up against all the threats of the so-called disciplinary committee and university authorities. She refused to give in to their demands and instead helped gather evidence to prove the corruption and abusive action of university vice-chancellor Hassan Madadi. An audio recording of his demanding sex from her was circulated. Tens of thousands of people saw the mobile phone video posted on YouTube showing students seizing him, turning him over to the authorities and demanding that he be charged. (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=01NPJ5McQW4) People informed each other by SMS and phone. Again not because people were surprised—many are aware of the dimension of this sort of corruption in this regime—but because they were glad to see that this time this criminal was caught red-handed and he and the government could not get away with it.
This news outraged students and 3,000 took part in protests. A flood of solidarity and support came from other university students. The university authorities, who were in a weak position, tried to end these demonstrations by giving false promises to meet the students’ demand. Finally, members of the student Islamic Association associated with “reformers” such as ex-president Muhammad Khatami were determined to use these events to their advantage in their factional fight within the state, compromised to keep the student movement from getting out of their hands and to advance their own factional programme within the government.
But what shocked the people even more came later after the demonstrations ended, as Science and Higher Educational Minister Ali Zahedi claimed that the video didn’t prove anything, and the Zanjan prosecutor announced that exposing a “sin” is worse than the sin itself. Hardly anyone could miss what they were up to. It did not take long before the woman student who dared expose this abusive official was herself arrested and accused of having an unlawful affair!
Islamic law requires two adult men witnesses to testify against such abuses—a requirement so impractical that such abuses can never be proved. Islamic logic is clear: women are guilty and they are the source of sin, so that whatever the sin, it is the woman who must be at fault. The fact that the sin occurred and she is a woman is enough evidence to arrest her. Thus the positions of criminal and victim are reversed.
This event shows that the Islamic regime is determined to go ahead with its anti-woman policies, even in the face of a scandal with such solid and undeniable evidence. It also shows that the most brutal oppression of women is a main pillar of the Islamic Republic of Iran. That is why we say that this incident, in a concentrated way, brings out the essence of the Islamic regime.
Women students, who constitute a majority in Iranian universities, are regularly subjected to harassment and threats by the disciplinary committees and the Harasat (Guardian) office of the universities. The Harasat is a unit in each university that acts as an intelligence and security apparatus, since supposedly the regular security forces aren’t allowed on campus. They regularly monitor the behavior and activities of students and even teachers on campus and in the classrooms. They have created a repressive and fascistic atmosphere in the universities and are very much hated by the students.
The irony is that while the authorities of the Science and Higher Education Ministry and the universities never tire of using all their creativity to issue all sorts of strange and highly detailed rules and regulations to control clothing and makeup and the relations between women and men students, and summon students before disciplinary committees and even expel them for violating the Islamic codes of cover or un-Islamic behavior, at the same time a wide range of university officials and authorities, and in particular Harasat officials, use their power to sexually abuse female students. These two aspects might look contradictory but the origin of both behaviors is the same: a desire to control and oppress women. The government does its best to protect these criminals not only to defend its own thugs, but most importantly because the oppression of women is a main pillar of the whole system. To take another example, this is how the armed Islamic groups in Afghanistan put pressure on women. They kidnap teenage girls and rape them for the “sin” of going to school or not implementing the Islamic code of cover.
In Iran many of these officials are newly appointed ex-members of the Pasdaran and Basij (the Islamic regime’s particular military, the Revolutionary Guards and militia). After the Iran-Iraq war they were awarded university degrees not because they went to classes but as a reward for their service in the war and to the Islamic “revolution,” or because they were members of one of the gangs that formed the Islamic Republic of Iran. All the progressive lecturers were purged during the so-called cultural revolution in the early 1980s. In the last few years, a whole new crop of academics not considered Islamic enough has been purged once again. As a result the universities have fallen into the hands of more fundamentalists and Islamic-committed officials and lecturers who have been abusing their power over students in many different ways, including demanding sex from them.
This Islamisation of the universities has put even more pressure on students and in particular increased the oppression of women students. In turn, women have increasingly taken part in various kinds of rebellious, defiant behavior and often political action against the state and state-designated officials. They have become an important component of all the student movements, despite the unfavorable conditions and restrictions and limitations on their participation.
What outraged people more than anything else about the Zanjan University incident is that such incidents are not uncommon. As the March 8 organization leaflet says [see excerpts on page 4], similar cases have come to light in other universities, such as Sahand University in Tabriz and Razi University in Kermanshah and elsewhere. What made this case different is that the students gathered undeniable proof and exposed it to the people before the regime could control the spread of the news.
But at the same time there have been numerous cases that have not been exposed. The fear of social stigma and most importantly the fear of being accused as the perpetrator of sin and charged with unlawful sexual relations have prevented victims from even talking about it to their closest friends or relatives. Shadi Sadr, an Iranian woman lawyer and activist in such cases, wrote in an article, “I have frequently come across case files describing women who have been victims of threats, sexual abuse and even rape. After making a complaint about rape, they are raped once again by a long and difficult legal process that brings them more suffering. Not only do they find themselves unable to prove the sexual abuse or the rape, but ultimately they themselves are charged and punished by the law because they are said to have confessed to sexual relations outside marriage, a fate that unfortunately might await the woman student in Zanjan.” (Amir Kabir Technical University Farsi Web newsletter, June 20)
What is unfortunate is that abuses, threats and harassment inflicted by the security forces and officials, especially in universities, have led many students to commit suicide. According to a report from the Farsi section of the Deutsche welle (Voice of Germany, June 23), the head office of the Harasat of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education said that out of 28 university student suicides since the Iranian new year began on March 21, 21 were women. The same source reports that “On April 16 this year a Ph.D. student studying Chemistry at Shahid Beheshti University committed suicide with cyanide, four days later a Hamadan student committed suicide; and the next month a female medicine student in Isfahan committed suicide two days after being detained and accused of violating the Islamic codes of cover. Another woman student earlier in the year at the university of Damghan in the northeast of country hanged herself in the dormitory. On June 11 this year a female student in Malayer, a city 200 miles west of Tehran, killed herself. The university disciplinary committee had suspended her for one term for unlawful sexual relations.” According to the same source, another woman student in the eastern province of Sistan and Balouchestan also committed suicide by taking tablets.
People’s outrage at the news from Zanjan University was still boiling when a photo began circulating showing the battered body of a student at Lahijan University in northwest Iran who threw herself from the fourth floor of the engineering faculty where the Harasat office is located. It broke the heart of millions of people who saw it posted on several Web sites, including autnews.eu/archives/1387,04,00010088. It was even more painful when a second female student in Sistan and Balouchestan University also committed suicide. And we know that they were neither the first nor the last.
But fortunately this is not what the harassed and threatened woman student at Zanjan University did. Her courageous actions were able to expose the anti-woman criminal officials and the system that backs them, and gave rise to a remarkable student movement.
A World to Win News Service is put out by A World to Win magazine (aworldtowin.org), a political and theoretical review inspired by the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the embryonic center of the world’s Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations.
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Revolution #135, July 13, 2008
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June 30, 2008. A World to Win News Service. Following are excerpts from a leaflet put out by the March 8 Women’s Organization (Iran-Afghanistan) on June 28. It was entitled, “Students around the world: support the protests of Iranian women students against sexual abuse by university-government authorities.”
On June 15, the courageous act of a female student provoked a powerful student protest in the University of Zanjan (320 kilometers northwest of Tehran) against this anti-woman current. The university vice-chancellor had asked her for sexual favors in return for ignoring her negative “morality records” with the Guardian Office of the University and the Disciplinary Committee. Being in a position of authority, a henchman of the Islamic regime officially certified as “faithful of the system,” as the corrupt cronies of the power structure in Iran are called, he was too sure he would never be exposed.
But this time the “man of the system” was caught red-handed right in his “holy” office by students who videoed his not so “holy” sexual advance. The students immediately informed others in the campus and the protests began. Some 3,000 out of the 7,000 students at this university mounted various actions for several days, ending in a sit-in. Government officials quickly travelled to the city to keep the protests from spilling over to other campuses. The students demanded the immediate firing of this vice-chancellor and the university’s president (both cronies of [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad). The students also demanded immunity for the courageous female student who took a great risk to expose this scoundrel. Officials negotiating with the students agreed to all demands in return for an end to the protest. Hundreds of vigilant and alert students warned against ending the protest, but students supporting the so-called “reform faction” of the regime helped trick the protesters into accepting the deal. Immediately after the students ended the strike, the police arrested the woman! The Zanjan prosecutor declared, “Exposing a sin is worse than committing it.”
A year ago, at Razi University in Kermanshah (a Kurdish city in the west), the head of the Guardian Office was exposed for sexual abuse of a woman student. He was arrested and detained for three days, but she is still in prison for “investigation.” Several months ago three female students at Sahand University in the city of Tabriz (the capital of the northern Azerbaijan province) exposed that various university officials, Guardian Office scoundrels and one of the university rectors had pressured them to become their sex slaves. The students of this university staged a successful strike that echoed around the country, forcing the equally scoundrel authorities to promise an “investigation.” But nothing happened.
In the Islamic Republic of Iran the imposition of religious moral codes through suppressing women is used as “national security” policy for “ensuring social coherence.” This leads the police to arrest and abuse thousands of women every year. Several months ago a scandal in Tehran brought out the true face of the Islamic morality police: the head of the capital police force, who had launched a hunt against what he called “scoundrel youth” and “immoral women with incomplete hijab” (hair covering), was caught in his house with six naked women whom he was keeping as sex slaves. This scandal came in the wake of intense rivalry among different factions of the ruling structures. He was one of the pious men of Ahmadinejad and the “Leader” [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei].
This situation has sparked student protests in a number of Iranian universities, which will spread further. The students demand the dissolution of the Guardian Offices and the firing of government-imposed university officials. They also demand the freedom of the courageous Zanjan University woman student who instead of being driven to commit suicide burst open the accumulated bitterness of all female students. The students demand complete liberty for all victims of sexual abuse in campuses to come to the fore and talk bitterness.
The Islamic Republic is only one among all the other reactionary woman-hating states in a world dominated by imperialism and capitalism. This regime runs Iran through an Islamic theocracy and rampant capitalist globalization—at the heart of both lies the extreme oppression of women. Oppression breaks and stunts the women of Iran, but it also turns them into formidable rebels. We call upon students at campuses around the world to stand with rebelling women students in Iran. Their rebellion represents a great hope for the people of Iran and the women’s movement in Iran. We must not let this flower be killed in the bud!
(For more information click on “other languages” on the home page www.8mars.com. Contact: zan_dem_iran@hotmail.com )
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Revolution #135, July 13, 2008
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Editors’ note: Earlier this year we posted on our website a polemic titled: “Stuck in the ‘Awful Capitalist Present’ or Forging a Path to the Communist Future?” written by a writing group of the RCP in response to “Mike Ely’s Nine Letters: Getting Beyond Avakian’s New Synthesis.” The following opening paragraphs of the polemic give a good sense of the main issues focused up in it:
Recently we received some observations on our polemic, which were posted on our website as well. These observations were sent by a reader of Revolution who is familiar with the history of the RCP, USA and the international movement more broadly. They help to highlight the main points in the polemic and, for the benefit of our readers, we are now publishing them in our print edition. Footnotes have been added by Revolution newspaper. (The observations make reference to points that are discussed in Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity Part 1 and Part 2 by Bob Avakian, and the response to Mike Ely and the Nine Letters, “Stuck in the ‘Awful Capitalist Present’ or Forging a Path to the Communist Future,” both of which are available on revcom.us.) |
First of all, this is truly another round with Menshevism1 —outraging capitulation and reactionary rebellion against an even more thoroughly revolutionary communist line, vision, and leadership than 30 years ago, at a time when the horrors of this system and the need to get rid of it are being manifested and felt in even more bloody and devastating ways than then (e.g., the “food crisis” and growing famine in many countries, which is in the headlines now) and when crucial advances in the theory for communist revolution, for breaking through toward a whole new world, are there to be taken up (and further developed) and the fight to arm the masses and lead them to transform this into a material force is underway—and some initial new breakthroughs (even if still far from what is needed) are being made. Your response is really a crucial new weapon in this life-and-death struggle. It is very true that he [Mike Ely] (and his cohorts) are and will continue to be compelled to keep attacking and do all they can to destroy the RCP, to try to “knock down” and discredit Bob Avakian and drive a wedge between him and the masses, because their whole project depends on there not being any communist line and force in the field, forging a really revolutionary way forward. This is Mike Ely’s whole purpose. This is nothing new, but an attempt to be more “sophisticated,” more able to disguise the essence of their line and road (at least for a time) with eclectics2 and playing on anti-communist prejudices, post-modern relativism, bourgeois democratic illusions, and dressing up capitulation as a “revolutionary alternative” that can “work.”
Your response is excellent for exposing and defeating this call to turn and run into the marsh, and for carrying through further ruptures with economism3 and eclecticism (which is revisionism) in our ranks, forging more clarity and unity around the new synthesis of communist theory and methodology (including potentially, with a lot of struggle and learning to wield the science better, among new forces who are so sorely needed). It is very important that you have written it—it contributes a lot to further arguing out many of the key points in Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity, and doing this straight up against Mike Ely’s formulations in fact sharpens and deepens the rupture with economism (and eclecticism) which is an on-going struggle for the whole communist movement in the world today, as well as for those new advanced forces who need to be brought into it.
For instance, the response shows the reformism of his formulation: “A revolutionary organization has to be integrated into the struggles of the people—directly in its own name while connecting with (or initiating) a variety of other organizations. And it has to draw the thinking activity of people toward creatively-conceived communist solutions to this awful capitalist present....” It isn’t immediately obvious, just reading the formulation, that this is talking about “solutions” short of revolution, within this system, rather than starting by overthrowing it. And you cut through the eclectics to lay bare this is the essence, and how and why this is exactly the opposite of leading the masses to make communist revolution.
The same with the formulation about “communists need a culture of organizing people to wage sharp struggle over major questions of society. And we need a deeply creative new sense of how to bring revolutionary understandings to those who want to change the world.” You summarize the essence, that at best it means communists being “generators and leaders of mass struggles—with communist and revolutionary principles and goals unfolded out of that” (which is a conception that still influences many people). Then you pose the two lines on how to determine what the “major struggles” are: a scientific assessment of what things concentrate the nature of the system and “an analysis of how this all fits into a strategy of repolarizing society for revolution”; or by seeing whatever struggles are attracting the biggest mass following at a particular time.
Then you get into the two lines on what “revolutionary understandings” are to be brought, and from there show how this is classic economism—building struggles to attract forces, cutting this off from revolution and communism, it becomes an end in itself, and the only criterion is the number of forces attracted, and ultimately it becomes “the movement is everything, the final aim nothing.” You make very clear what the real difference is, and is not: it is not whether or not communists need to lead movements and struggles around key questions—but whether this is to be done as an end in itself (and only to the degree large numbers are already moving around particular questions) or “to lead those movements with ideological and political work that contributes to communist revolution...and with methods of leadership that rely on and unleash the masses.” The point you make about the need to “combat the spontaneous striving of the masses to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie,” and the example from the anti-war movement about “support the troops” is very good. Then, the more overall demarcation: approaching all this from the standpoint of serving the struggle for revolution and communism vs. subordinating and burying these goals beneath the particular struggles, or promoting the illusion that they will be brought forth spontaneously—or somehow emerge organically—out of such struggles...“the essence of an economist revisionist line.”
The further argumentation from several angles of how and why the leap to communist consciousness cannot be spontaneous is very good: the one-sided insistence that people become conscious in the course of political struggle is false (Mike Ely’s distortion of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution [GPCR], liquidating the role of line and leadership of a communist vanguard); how a scientific understanding of the fundamental contradiction, the nature of the state, breaking out of the bourgeois democratic framework, and the need for revolution and communism, cannot come about spontaneously, and represents a radical rupture in relation to mass struggles. Then you show how Mike Ely gives the wrong answer to grappling with the problems involved in attracting people to a revolutionary communist pole today (he opposes going deeply into the questions and lessons of the first wave of communist revolutions), how the supposed “linear approach” of the RCP is an invention of his and not the RCP’s, and that in fact it is his view of the relationship between struggle and consciousness that is linear and extremely simplistic. The analysis of the role of the objective and subjective in the ripening of a revolutionary people is very important, and the analysis of what happened in the ‘60s to illustrate that “strands of opposition and revolutionary sentiments” didn’t (and never do) “go over to communist consciousness” spontaneously (a point that needs to be grappled with, understood, and applied much more correctly and consciously in our movement generally). In the criticism of Mike Ely’s negation of ideology, opposition to waging ideological struggle with the masses, and to the greater emphasis “Enriched What is to Be Done-ism” gives to involving the masses in working with ideas, discussion, and controversies in art, science, philosophy, culture, etc. and in grappling with the big ideological and political questions of communism, dictatorship of the proletariat, and revolution, the document makes clear in a very concentrated way why this is so crucial, why there can be no proletarian revolution without this, and the crucial role of an advanced force, a core with the vision of emancipating humanity, which must fight to lead and set different terms in a revolutionary situation (up against a petty bourgeois wave), divert the struggle toward the seizure of power, and make the new power actually communist in character, and to change the terrain to the greatest degree possible now. Grasping and acting on this necessity is attacked and dismissed as “idealism” [by Mike Ely]. This whole criticism does a lot to make it clear that there is no revolution or communism on the agenda with this line.
The two-line struggle around religion is very sharp and very important. This is a fierce struggle with the masses, and exactly related to that there is often vacillation within the core about taking this up and out boldly and really breaking open the debate (and/or confusion about how to do this). In this response, Mike Ely’s eclecticism is revealed and demolished theoretically with very good argumentation, and this has larger importance and application: it’s the “heart of a heartless world” vs. it is a huge obstacle to getting rid of this heartless world; (the two key ways religion shackles people is a very good concentrated explanation); the “need for ecstatic relief and mutual consolation in a horrific world” vs. these beliefs are principally a shackle and weight on the masses; the Bible belt isn’t the lynching belt, because it includes the African American churches vs. the Christian Bible has been a cornerstone of white supremacy that produced the lynchings, and the fact that many of the victims were/are tied to the same reactionary system of beliefs only makes it worse; supposedly “respect” people by “understanding” their beliefs and why they believe vs. really respect people by challenging them with the truth, and having strategic confidence that they can embrace and wield it to emancipate humanity, expecting them to rise to what they’re capable of. The way Mike Ely “understands” the need people feel for religion is practically an “ode” to the benefits of the “salve,” almost to the point of proclaiming this is really something that is good for the people, a real necessity (like Karen Armstrong argues). And it is dripping with contempt, while also prettifying religion to the point of making it sound like these beliefs (at least among the oppressed) do more good than bad in the world.
About “Living in the House of Tony Soprano,”4 I agree this is nauseating imperialist chauvinism, and again, it shows contempt for people, what they can and must rise to become, and tries to justify tailing after where they are at spontaneously, and joining them under the wing of the bourgeoisie, all in the name of “not blaming the masses.” You point to the horrible consequences of this in imperialist countries historically and the revisionist determinism that attempts to justify this (what’s desirable is what’s possible...is what’s already going on).
The philosophical and epistemological criticism is really, really good. Here it seems to me you develop more the points about the real dialectical relationship between theory and practice. It shows how Marx, Lenin, and Mao developed the science, learning from very broad and sweeping human practice, developed theory that “runs ahead” of practice, and how this must be done in order to lead revolutionary practice to make new breakthroughs, or the communist revolution cannot advance. And the final point that “leading the masses in making revolution relies on a complex dialectic of the ‘push’ of the horrors of this society and the ‘pull’ of a radically different world that is visionary and viable” is crucial to grasp. And this understanding is what girds “enriched What is to be Done-ism,” the “two mainstays,” and the other aspects of this.5
The eclectic views on relative truth that deny the principal aspect, that this is (generally) truth, are a very good teacher by negative example, and this is argued out very well. On one level, Mike Ely is really grossly misrepresenting what Avakian says about this, and to anyone who reads Avakian, it’s pretty obvious that to claim he absolutizes relative truth and denies the contradiction between acting on (and leading masses to act on) what we understand to be true at a given time, while being open to that we may be wrong in part or even overall on a given question, is really preposterous. But because this is a real contradiction, and because overall relativism is so predominant in the culture on an international scale these days, this is a very important part of the polemic. I really enjoyed the irony you point out, of claiming Bob Avakian absolutizes relative truth while at the same time criticizing him for breaking with inherited “truths” which can be seen to be erroneous—including “class truth.”
On the question of Bob Avakian’s epistemological rupture, Mike Ely first claims that this isn’t saying anything new that all kinds of scientists don’t already know, and then he opposes it through upholding the concept of “class truth,” that “truth has a class character” and the Lenin quote about opposing our truth to bourgeois “truth.” I think the explanation that the struggle over getting at truth and what is accepted as truth does not imply that truth itself has a class character, that it is not the same thing, and the idea that it “constitutes an inverse and incorrect logical leap” is very good. And the argumentation of how truth is objective, that it’s true for all and doesn’t depend on what class is served by it, and the example that is given of the class struggle under socialism helps to clarify this question. And that distortions of reality are objectively not truths, (rather than being “bourgeois” truths, for instance). I think that’s why Lenin puts “truth” in quotes in this passage, but still it is not correct, not a formulation that should be upheld, and especially not in opposition to Avakian’s synthesis on this problem.
It’s very true that Mike Ely tries to discredit the new synthesis6 without even dealing with its content—just trying to “rule out of order” any discussion of strategic goals, and attempting to justify this on the basis of empiricism—as you say, “there is no practice to verify it.” The points made about aspects of it that can be tested and validated (or not) and on what basis are very true. His total disdain for the theoretical breakthroughs in regards to communism, ruling this out of order and pitting it against a (totally invented) “poverty” of theoretical work on other questions is very revealing, and your response about the crucial importance of deeply addressing questions about the first wave, developing the theory that will guide the future society and that this has everything to do with what we do now, is very brief but very cogent. And the partial list of theoretical work by Avakian on the core problems of “our specific” revolution hits home and embodies a different outlook on what some of the “core problems” in fact are.
On the Culture of Appreciation, Promotion, and Popularization of the body of work and method and approach of Bob Avakian: what stands out is the opportunism of Mike Ely not even attempting any kind of coherent refutation of the content of Bob Avakian’s work and in particular the new synthesis. I would add, he even opportunistically claims to uphold some things, and criticize the RCP for not giving them due attention: specifically Advancing the World Revolutionary Movement, Questions of Strategic Orientation, and the polemic vs. K. Venu—while of course also promoting and trying to make use of other forces whose present line and course represent something completely opposed to this, and then his proceeding to attribute a stupid and wrong argument to the Party and to refute that, is exactly to the point. Here he is pandering to all the anti-leadership, anti-communist, bourgeois democratic pluralist and anarchist views that abound these days, and spreading lies about the Party to try to get over. As I understand his “argument,” he tries to pretend that the line of the Leadership Resolutions7 (though he doesn’t mention them directly) is qualitatively different and opposed to the line now and the “mainstay” of Culture of Appreciation, Promotion and Popularization (as explained in Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity), which is ridiculous. And the attempt to equate Culture of Appreciation, Promotion and Popularization (and the overall line on communist leadership) of the RCP with “jefatura” is stupid and outrageous. The response refuting all of this is very sharp and good, including that attributing the “genius theory” to the RCP is an invention of Mike Ely, and then bringing forward very clearly what, in fact, is the understanding of Bob Avakian and the Party on these questions. It argues out how in fact the unity between the two aspects is principal, and how Avakian grapples with this contradiction between leadership and led, between encouraging the greatest initiative, criticism, and creativity among communists and more broadly, and at the same time the greatest unity of will and action of the Party. Here the “opening up” of wrangling with these questions (and other cardinal questions) to the “public at large” is such an important part of how Avakian leads, and this is brought out in the document. The document sharply and correctly contrasts the two lines on this: “proceeding from the understanding that the principal aspect is the unity, the fact that the more leaders can enable others in the party, as well as the masses, to understand the world, the better able the party and the masses will be to step forward and play their role, and indeed that such leadership should be cherished and defended, on the basis of a deep appreciation” vs. the “flat and one-dimensional terms, seeing only the secondary aspect of the contradictions, the fact that promotion of individual leaders can give rise to slavishness and passivity and thus liquidate the very vital role that revolutionary leadership can and has to play in the whole process of revolution.” The quote from Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity on “team of scientists,” and how this is reflected in epistemology and method—opening up the big questions of revolutionary theory, and learning from others inside and outside the Party, and how all of this is exactly the opposite of promoting slavishness or blind obedience. I especially thought the point which sums it all up: “that Avakian has provided a new framework in which that search for truth can go on in a qualitatively more fruitful way—and it is a framework that builds upon the foundation and further develops the science of Marxism. With the new synthesis, every communist has to really confront—and bring the masses in on—the vexing problems of the revolution, the transition to communism, etc.—including the truths that make us cringe. Without doing that, where are you going?” Then it goes on to show how and why this is precisely “the rub”—how economism and revisionism clash with the new synthesis, and how the living vibrant communism and revolution concentrated in it “is enormously inconvenient for his economism, and this is the essence of the Nine Letters.”
So to conclude, Mike Ely’s basic orientation of “this hasn’t worked and won’t work,” and casting about for whatever he thinks could get a bigger mass base more quickly (never mind that it won’t be for communist revolution) is really crass pragmatism and economism. He puts it out there pretty clearly that numbers really are the only criteria.
Footnotes
1. Editors' Note: This is a reference to a faction that split from the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) in 1978 based on their support for the revisionist forces in China who seized power after the death of Mao Tsetung and a whole economist political line. They were called Mensheviks because their political and ideological line echoed that of a grouping in Russia many years before who called themselves communists but who fought for a whole set of philosophical, ideological, political, and organizational positions in opposition to the work being done by Lenin to prepare for socialist revolution.[back]
2. Editors' Note: Stuck in the “Awful Capitalist Present” Or Forging a Path to the Communist Future? A Response to Mike Ely’s Nine Letters cites a quote from Lenin, in The State and Revolution, as particularly illuminating on eclectics: “Dialectics are replaced by eclecticism—this is the most usual, the most widespread practice to be met within present-day official Social-Democratic literature in relation to Marxism. This sort of substitution is, of course, nothing new: it was observed even in the history of Greek philosophy. In falsifying Marxism in opportunist fashion, the substitution of eclecticism for dialectics is the easiest way of deceiving people. It gives an illusory satisfaction; it seems to take into account all sides of the process, all trends of development, all the conflicting influences, and so forth, whereas in reality it provides no integral and revolutionary conception of the process of social development at all.” [Emphasis added].[back]
3. Editors' Note: Stuck in the “Awful Capitalist Present” Or Forging a Path to the Communist Future? explains that “Opposed most notably by Lenin in What Is To Be Done?, economism is a trend that directs communists to focus their attention, and the attention of the masses, on immediate struggles (often in the economic realm), viewing this as a special stage which enables communists to get a mass following; only then, it is held, can communists bring in larger issues. In actual fact, there is nothing new about this notion—it has been tried many times, and in every case it has led to the desertion and finally betrayal of the goals of revolution and communism—and this has been especially sharp when it has been applied in imperialist countries. Politically this line and trend, first refuted by Lenin conclusively and incontrovertibly in What Is To Be Done?, and now championed by Mike Ely, charts a path to capitulation to imperialism, becoming yet another weight on the masses of people.”[back]
4. Editors' Note: From Stuck in the “Awful Capitalist Present” Or Forging a Path to the Communist Future?: “[RCP Chairman Bob] Avakian uses the example of ‘Living in the House of Tony Soprano’ to make the point that most people in the U.S. have overall conditions of life significantly better than most of the rest of the world, and are somewhat aware of the fact that this standard of living has a lot to do with the crimes of the rulers around the world and the extreme parasitism of imperialism, an international food-chain, which the U.S. sits atop. But like Tony Soprano’s family, people within the U.S. don’t want to look too closely at this or confront this reality and act on that responsibility, because that would make their “way of life” very uncomfortable. And beyond this, Avakian talks about people who are consciously opposed to the U.S. war crimes, but who at a certain point in the struggle against the ‘War on Terrorism’ gave up because it was proving too difficult and perhaps too dangerous. While appreciating the importance of the struggle that has been waged, and the real difficulties that it ran up against, Avakian nonetheless makes the point, in relation to all this, that ‘Refusal to Resist Crimes Against Humanity Is Itself a Crime.’”[back]
5. Editors' Note: Bob Avakian’s talk Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity, discusses the importance of Revolution newspaper and a culture of appreciation, popularization, and promotion around Bob Avakian as the two mainstays in the work of the RCP, along with a whole ensemble of communist work which is necessary to the bringing forward of a revolutionary people—including building “massive political resistance to the main ways in which, at any given time, the exploitative and oppressive nature of this system is concentrated in the policies and actions of the ruling class and its institutions and agencies” and solving the problems of how to involve the masses in “meaningful revolutionary work.”[back]
6. Editors’ Note: Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity includes this concentrated explanation of the new synthesis: “This new synthesis involves a recasting and recombining of the positive aspects of the experience so far of the communist movement and of socialist society, while learning from the negative aspects of this experience, in the philosophical and ideological as well as the political dimensions, so as to have a more deeply and firmly rooted scientific orientation, method and approach with regard not only to making revolution and seizing power but then, yes, to meeting the material requirements of society and the needs of the masses of people, in an increasingly expanding way, in socialist society—overcoming the deep scars of the past and continuing the revolutionary transformation of society, while at the same time actively supporting the world revolutionary struggle and acting on the recognition that the world arena and the world struggle are most fundamental and important, in an overall sense—together with opening up qualitatively more space to give expression to the intellectual and cultural needs of the people, broadly understood, and enabling a more diverse and rich process of exploration and experimentation in the realms of science, art and culture, and intellectual life overall, with increasing scope for the contention of different ideas and schools of thought and for individual initiative and creativity and protection of individual rights, including space for individuals to interact in ‘civil society’ independently of the state—all within an overall cooperative and collective framework and at the same time as state power is maintained and further developed as a revolutionary state power serving the interests of the proletarian revolution, in the particular country and worldwide, with this state being the leading and central element in the economy and in the overall direction of society, while the state itself is being continually transformed into something radically different from all previous states, as a crucial part of the advance toward the eventual abolition of the state with the achievement of communism on a world scale.”[back]
7. Editors' Note: Parts 1 and 2 of the “1995 Leadership Resolutions on Leaders and Leadership” are available at revcom.us.[back]
Permalink: http://revcom.us/i/135/135-Constitution-en.pdf
Revolution #135, July 13, 2008
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Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/135/Lotta_Coming_Article-en.html
Revolution #135, July 13, 2008
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NEXT WEEK: A SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT TO REVOLUTION
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-91 brought about an unprecedented situation for the United States. Never before had an imperialist power enjoyed such singular military dominance. The end of the “cold war” also ushered in a massive new wave of globalization—with U.S. imperialism its main architect and beneficiary.
But the world imperialist system has not stood still over the last 15 years. Major shifts have taken place in the distribution of global economic power. New geoeconomic blocs of countries are emerging. It is now the case that U.S. imperialism is not only facing heightened economic pressures but growing strategic challenges as well.
In this special supplement, Raymond Lotta explores trends in the world economy and some of their larger geopolitical implications. He also looks at some of the new and unexpected features of what is taking shape.
Anyone curious about the larger forces influencing world events will find much to dig into and debate in this thought-provoking research essay.
Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/135/ivaw_testimony-en.html
Revolution #135, July 13, 2008
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Testimony from Veterans - Winter Soldier Investigation:
March 13-16, Winter Soldier Investigation: Iraq and Afghanistan was held in Washington, D.C. At these hearings, organized by the Iraq Veterans Against the War, almost 50 American veterans testified about what they had done to the people and land of Iraq and Afghanistan. The audience, about 350 people at any time, were mostly American veterans, military families, and parents whose children were killed in the war. The four-day event brought together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan—and present video and photographic evidence. In addition, panels of scholars, veterans, journalists, and other specialists gave context to the testimony. These panels covered everything from the history of the GI resistance movement to the fight for veterans’ health benefits and support. The following excerpts are from the testimony of Hart Vigas, one of the veterans who spoke at the first panel on “Rules of Engagement.” Excerpts from veterans who testified at the second “Rules of Engagement” panel appeared in Revolution #126 and #134, and a correspondence from a Vietnam vet on the hearings appeared in issue #125. Readers can listen to the testimonies from the hearings at ivaw.org/wintersoldier/testimony. |
My name is Hart Vigas. I had joined the army right after September 11th and asked for airborne, asked for infantry, and ended up with 82nd Airborne Division, first 325 HAC Battalion Mortars, “hunters of the sky,” “death from above.” I went in November 2001 and left the army in December 2004. I was deployed to Kuwait in February 2003 and subsequently was part of the invasion in March. Originally we were going to jump inside Baghdad Airport but 3rd ID was ahead of schedule so we drove in and secured this town that was hitting a supply line, this town called Al-Samawa. This was my first experience with the job that I was trained to do. I was a mortar man, 81 millimeter mortar. We were set up outside the town of Al-Samawa in basically a dump; flies were so heavy you couldn’t eat. When the sun was up you’d eat a mouthful of flies with your MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) pudding.
What I saw there, more so even what I participated in—hearing the radio calls for the line companies that were in trouble or they spot some people going into a building. So we get that fire mission and we destroy the building with our mortars. I set the timers, I set the rounds, the chargers for the mortars. I was part of that team that sent those rounds down range. And this isn’t army-to-army you know, people live in towns. It’s beyond imagination to think that normal people, civilians, don’t live in towns, this is upside down thinking. So, I never really saw the effects of my mortar rounds in the towns. So that just leaves my imagination open to countless deaths that I don’t know, how many civilians, innocents I killed, help kill.
Another big piece of weaponry that they used on this little town of Al-Samawa was called a Spectre gunship. It’s a C-130 (plane) with belt-fed howitzer cannons, two of those and some super Gatling (machine) guns. I wouldn’t know the proper nomenclature for that. And they would sweep around Al-Samawa, just pounding the city, and this is definitely a sight to be seen. This airplane, it’s almost, even though the rounds are coming from up in the sky, it’s almost like the ground is shaking. And again, over the city, over neighborhoods, Kiowa attack helicopters with their Hellfire missiles, F-18s dropping bombs, shake you to the bone—all the while laying down mortar fire on this town full of people. The radio was always a, never a good thing came over the radio. One time they said to fire on all taxi cabs ’cause the enemy was using them for transportation, and in Iraq any car can be a taxi cab, you just paint it white and orange and there you have it. And one of the snipers across the radio replied back, “Excuse me, did I hear that right, fire on all taxi cabs?” and the Lieutenant Colonel replied back, “You heard me trooper, fire on all taxi cabs.” And once that conversation ended, the town pretty much lit up, all the units that were in there fired on numerous cars. Again, you know, people. Where’s the real proof? This was my first experience with war. That really kind of set the tone for the rest of the deployment.
Then I went to Fallujah for a couple of weeks and our Charlie Company picked a fight there and so we had to skip out. My Fallujah story is not like other Fallujah stories, I was out in this resort area that got stripped up, that we took over and I had my weapon 30 meters away from me, working on my tan in a man-made lake. But hearing the stories come back from inside town. Then we went to Baghdad and pretty much ran that town into the ground. You know there was no real structure there, no police, no authority except for us and we took full advantage of that in the treatment of the people and just overall viewpoints. I mean myself, I never really considered myself a racist person but everything was haji this, haji that, haji smokes, haji burger, haji house, haji clothes, haji rag. Haji’s the same as honky. It’s the same thing, I catch myself.
And then with raids, we never went on a raid where we got the right house, much less the right person, not once. We were outside of Baghdad, this water treatment plant and it seemed like a pretty nice area, you know, trees, green. But then as we were leaving two men with RPGs (Rocket Propelled Grenades) run out in front of us in the road and there’s a lot of yelling and screaming and they huddled themselves with women and children that were there and we’re all screaming “drop your weapon, drop your weapon.” They all had RPGs slung on their backs, and I was watching my sector on the left, they were on the right. You know I was very adamant about watching my sector over there, but I just couldn’t take it any more. And I swung my rifle around and I had my sight on the dude in the doorway, RPG on his back, had my sight on his chest, this is what I’m trained to do. But when I looked at his face, he wasn’t a boogeyman, he wasn’t the enemy, he was scared and confused, probably the same expression I had on my face during the same time. He was probably fed the same BS I was fed to put myself in that situation. But seeing his face took me back and I didn’t pull the trigger. He got away.
We get backup with Apache helicopters, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and we go back into this nice little village asking questions. And it’s a pretty good history in Iraq, you know, if you got a beef with your neighbor back in Saddam’s day you just say “hey, police, they said something bad about Saddam, why don’t you go get him” and they take him and they torture him. Well now here with the U.S. we’re asking who are the troublemakers and we hear from the people in the village that “these people” are the troublemakers “over here.” So we go and myself and another soldier steps off and we toss the hut. Well the only thing I find is a little 22 pistol, not AK-47s, not RPGs, not pictures of Saddam, not large caches of money, but we end up taking the two young men, regardless. And I looked at my sergeant and I was like, “Sergeant, these aren’t the men that we’re looking for.” And he told me, “Don’t worry, I’m sure they would have done something anyway.”
And this mother all the while is crying in my face, trying to kiss my feet, and you know, I can’t speak Arabic. I can speak human. She was saying, “Please, why are you taking my sons, they have done nothing wrong,” and that made me feel very powerless. You know I was 82nd Airborne infantry with Apache helicopters, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and armor and my M4 and I was powerless, I was powerless to help her. And I was very naïve back then. I thought that they would just take ’em and find out “yeah, they don’t know anything.” But later I found out people who are detained are being detained for years. Parents don’t even know where their children are. And the lack of humanity in war. The place where you put yourself, is when you look back at it and it’s almost alien.
We were driving down Baghdad one day and we found a dead body on the side of the road. So we all pulled over to secure it and wait for MPs or whatever authorities would come and take care of this dead man here who was clearly murdered. And my friends jumped off and started taking pictures with him with big old smiles on their faces, and they said, “Hey Vigas, you want a picture with this guy?” And I said “no,” but “no” not in the context of, “that’s really messed up because it’s just wrong on an ethical basis.” But I said no because it wasn’t my kill. You shouldn’t take trophies for things you didn’t kill. I mean that’s what my mindset is, was, back then, because I wasn’t even upset that this man was really dead, they shouldn’t have been taking credit for something they didn’t do. But then, that’s war y’all, that’s war. But instead of a soldier, I’m a soulja now, you know, I’ve switched it around, I’d like to just give you this little poem here now.
A soulja has put down their rifles and has picked up their souls.
Instead of bullets, a soulja has their words.
Instead of dogma, a soulja listens to their heart.
Instead of secret codes, a soulja reflects their feelings and their thoughts.
Instead of stealing land, a soulja expands intellect.
Instead of taking aim, a soulja takes reason.
Instead of building fortifications that divide, a soulja grows with unity for all human kind.
And that’s what I feel we’re doing now. Thank y’all for listening.
Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/135/Chicago_Police-en.html
Revolution #135, July 13, 2008
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Stop the Murderous Rampage of the Chicago Police!
We received this statement from the Revolutionary Communist Party, Chicago Branch:
Jonathan Pinkerton, 16, shot in back and paralyzed from waist down • Devon Young, 25, shot in the back and killed • Steven Suber, 28, shot in the back • Reginald Knight, 24, shot 8 times in the back and killed • M. Barlow, 27, shot in the leg • Shapell Terrell, 39, shot in the back and killed • Darius Nicholson, 49, shot and killed • Luis Colon, 18, shot and killed • two “unidentified men” shot • Robin Johnson, 45, shot
WHAT KIND OF SYSTEM has its armed enforcers shoot down 11 PEOPLE in a cold-blooded rampage in three weeks?! WHAT KIND OF SYSTEM shoots down our young people—OVER AND OVER AGAIN?
PEOPLE: This is a CAPITALIST-IMPERIALIST SYSTEM that controls the wealth created by billions of exploited and oppressed people here and around the world. The power of these capitalist-imperialists is enforced by armies of police in the U.S. and armies of soldiers waging unending war and terror for empire across the globe.
This system is enforced with torturers from the Chicago jails to Abu Ghraib. This system is enforced with one in nine young Black men in prison in the U.S. on any given day, and this system is enforced by the U.S. putting far more people in prison than any country in the world.
This system is enforced with thousands of mostly Black and Latino young people killed by the police in the U.S. in the 1990s and since. And thousands lost to police bullets for generations and to night-rider nooses before that.
People are right to be agonizing about the oppressed shooting each other down. BUT IT IS THE SAME SYSTEM that sends its armed enforcers to shoot us down that also creates the conditions that set people against each other, and people are responding to those conditions in negative and harmful ways. PEOPLE: You are getting played if you buy into the lies that we are at fault. AND you're getting played if you fight each other, instead of fighting the power.
FIGHT THE POWER, AND TRANSFORM THE PEOPLE, FOR REVOLUTION!
WE NEED A REVOLUTION, a communist revolution, to get rid of this brutal system that is long past its time. A revolution that would put state power in the hands of the people, and that power would be about getting rid of all kinds of oppression and exploitation, like racism and national oppression in all its forms, men dominating women, and one country dominating the whole world. Where the people of all nationalities, young and old, men and women, would debate and struggle with each other over how to advance society to get rid of all these outmoded relations and ideas and contribute to emancipating all of humanity. And the people's security forces would back the people up in doing this, not suppress and murder them the way cops do in the capitalist-imperialist system we have now.
In a country like the U.S., this kind of revolution could only occur once this society as a whole is in a profound crisis, and when a revolutionary people, numbering in the millions, has emerged, conscious of the need for revolutionary change and determined to fight for it.
PEOPLE: The time is now to get with the revolutionary movement and prepare politically to bring this kind of revolution about.
Revolutionary Communist Party, Chicago Branch
CALLING FOR AN OUTPOURING OF OUTRAGE: All this must stop – a line must be drawn right here, right now. This police rampage cannot be allowed to go down without being met with powerful mass resistance. People of all ages, backgrounds and nationalities must act with conscience. It matters what we do in the face of these outrages. Powerful resistance can change the equation in a society where too many accept the unacceptable. It can give heart to those put under a constant death sentence and it can call forth many more people to join in taking this on. |
Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/135/LA_Immigration_Raid-en.html
Revolution #135, July 13, 2008
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L.A. Immigration Raid
It’s 4:00 a.m. on a hot summer night, June 25, 2008. The streets leading into a small four to six block Mexican immigrant neighborhood are blocked off, and more than 500 agents, including ten SWAT teams, carry out what the U.S. Attorney describes as “the largest gang take-down in recent L.A. history.” Twenty-eight people are arrested.
An elderly woman angrily described to Revolución what happened with her family. The police started breaking down the door in her apartment. Her daughter opened the door before they broke it. They pointed guns at everyone’s heads and made them put their arms in the air. This woman has high blood pressure and couldn’t raise her arms so they pointed the gun at her forehead. The police made everybody go outside and they ransacked the house. They made everybody hold numbers and then took pictures of them. They arrested her grandson and a homeless man who lived nearby. Other residents talked about hearing explosions as doors in the neighborhood were busted open.
Eighteen agencies, including the Los Angeles Police Department, DEA, Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, ICE, FBI, IRS, and the Glendale Police Department took part in a ten-month investigation that led to the raid. The Los Angeles Times reported that the reason for the raid was to “break the gang’s [Drew Street clique’s] grip on the low-income neighborhood.” The gang had gained some notoriety recently after a shoot-out with a rival gang and with the police in February. But the other fact noted by the LA Times is that the neighborhood is heavily Latino, includes many undocumented immigrants, and there is a “fierce solidarity and loathing for the police” among the people who live there, many of whom come from the same Mexican state of Guerrero.
This raid is taking place in an atmosphere where undocumented immigrants are being painted with a criminal brush and where more politicians, even so-called liberal ones, are calling for the arrest and deportation of “criminal aliens.”
The elderly woman looks at the photographs in Revolución of the U.S. occupation of Iraq and says, “They treated us just like the soldiers treat the people in Iraq.”
Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/135/Persepolis_DVD-en.html
Revolution #135, July 13, 2008
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Check It Out:
“If people come to the film and say these people are humans like us, the film is successful.”
Marjane Satrapi, about her film Persepolis
I wanted to alert the readers of Revolution to the recent release of the DVD version of the film Persepolis, which originally came out in 2007, played to great critical acclaim in movie theaters in many countries, and was nominated for the Best Animated Feature Film at the Oscars this February. The DVD of this animated film is now available to rent or buy at various outlets.
Persepolis is based on Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical novel, done in black-and-white comic-strip images, of the same title. Satrapi, who grew up in Iran and now lives in France, co-directed and co-wrote the movie with Vincent Paronnaud (aka Winshluss), a French comics artist and filmmaker. It tells the story of contemporary Iran through the eyes of a rebellious girl/young woman with a rich imagination and a passion for, among other things, Bruce Lee and the British metal band Iron Maiden. They’ve created a unique work that’s at once magical and very real, funny, and profoundly moving.
When Persepolis played in U.S. theaters, it had French dialogue with English subtitles. The new DVD includes a version with English dialogue, along with the original French version. (There is an option for viewing with Spanish subtitles.) In the English version, three of the major characters are voiced by Sean Penn (Marjane’s father, Ebi), Iggy Pop (her Uncle Anoush), and Gena Rowlands (her grandmother). Chiara Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve—two of France’s most renowned women actors who played Marjane and her mother in the original—also lent their voices to the English version.
The DVD includes several “special features,” including a look “behind the scenes” at the making of Persepolis and selected scene commentaries, including Satrapi on the opening scene—one of only a few in the film done in color (she explains why).
If you did not catch Persepolis in the theaters, the DVD is a definite “must see.” If you were fortunate enough to have seen the original on the big screen, the English version gives a fresh perspective. Stephan Roche, the film’s editor, points out, “It’s really interesting to see how actors can bring to the movie their own personalities. The French version is one movie, and the English version for me is another one.”
I won’t get into the plot of the movie, which is fairly straightforward in one sense, but which also has different levels of complexity in the intertwining of people’s lives with big historical events and social issues—just as the film’s black-and-white hand-drawn animation is “minimalist” in certain ways but at the same time quite textured and deeply expressive. But here’s a comment from Gena Rowlands, which gives a sense of the film’s sweep: “Well, the story itself is compelling: Little girl growing up under the Shah’s regime, and then revolutionary things, the different changes of great magnitude in a country—she’s just a young woman still—that she experiences as a child, and up to the present day when there’s still a great deal of conflict.” And this from Satrapi: “Of course the movie is political too. But it’s not only that. The movie is much more about humans—it’s a coming-of-age story about how to be an adolescent, how to love. It’s not so much I’m so interested in politics. The problem is that politics is interested in me. And in you.”
Last October, A World to Win News Service ran a really good review, from the Iranian student publication Barz, that went into different aspects of the film. The review is available online at revcom.us/a/109/awtw-persepolis-en.html.
Permalink: http://revcom.us/revbooks/index.html
Revolution #135, July 13, 2008
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Hook Up With the Revolution:
Check the stores' websites for details and more events.
New York
212-691-3345
146 W. 26th Street, between 6th & 7th Ave
revbooksnyc@yahoo.com
revolutionbooksnyc.org
July 8, Tuesday, 7 pm
Discussion with Carl Dix on a Talk by Bob Avakian: “The NBA: Marketing the Minstrel Show and Serving the Big Gangsters” and Letter from a Revolution reader: “That Bleeping (NBA) Leagues is Bleeping Rigged”
July 13, Sunday, 7 pm
Screening and Discussion in Spanish: Excerpts from the DVD “REVOLUCION: Por Qué Es Necesario, Por Qué Posible, Qué Es” (una charla de Bob Avakian)
July 17, Thursday, 7 pm
Salon discussion: “OBAMA: The Best Hope OR A Deadly Illusion”
Chicago
1103 N. Ashland Avenue
773-489-0930
revbookschi@yahoo.com
http://chicagorevolutionbooks.blogspot.com/
July 9, Wednesday, 7 pm
“Re-envisioning Revolution and Communism: WHAT IS BOB AVAKIAN’S NEW SYNTHESIS?” Continuation of Part II: A Philosophy to Understand–and Change–The World. Avakian’s Radical Advance in Epistemology
July 11, Friday, 7 pm
Film Showing: Persepolis. 2008 Oscar nominee for Best Animated Feature Film, based on Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novels, Persepolis knits together the story of Marjane’s turbulent life and the turbulent history of Iran. 95 minutes.
July 13, Sunday, 1 pm
Secular Sunday discussion of Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World by Bob Avakian.
July 16, Wednesday, 7 pm
“Re-envisioning Revolution and Communism: WHAT IS BOB AVAKIAN’S NEW SYNTHESIS?” Part III: The New Synthesis: Political Implications—The International Dimension
Los Angeles
Libros Revolución
312 West 8th Street 213-488-1303
librosrevolucion.blog.com
Friday, July 11, 5 pm
Cinema Revolución: The movie Scarface has been a big hit among youth and others for decades. In the recent deluxe DVD release, prominent rappers once again celebrate how Tony Montana rose from poverty to become a drug kingpin in Miami. But all this celebration of Montana as a role model is harmful and tied up with the life that many of the youth are caught up in. Let’s check out the movie together and discuss and debate its message and the outlook it conveys.
Saturday, July 12, 3 pm
Seminar series on Bob Avakian’s new book, Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World. Part Four: “God Does Not Exist—We Need Liberation Without Gods,” p 155–end.
Sunday, July 13, 3 pm
Discussion of “Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity” by Bob Avakian, featured in the new Revolution pamphlet “Revolution and Communism: A Foundation and Strategic Orientation.” Discussion of the slogan, “Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution.”
Saturday, July 19, 2 pm
“Religion, Atheism and Black People” featuring the new book by Bob Avakian, Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World. A talk and discussion with Clyde Young, of the Revolutionary Communist Party, at the Lucy Florence Coffeehouse & Cultural Center, 3351 W. 43rd St., Los Angeles (across from Leimert Park), sponsored by Libros Revolución.
Berkeley
2425 Channing Way near Telegraph Ave
510-848-1196
www.revolutionbooks.org
July 8, Tuesday, 7 pm
The first in a series of weekly discussions based on the book Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World by Bob Avakian. This discussion will be based on Part One of the book: “Where Did God Come From…And Who Says We Need God?”
July 10, Thursday, 7 pm
Adam David Miller discusses his memoir Ticket to Exile. From a Publishers Weekly web-exclusive review: “Growing up in Depression-era South Carolina, African-American writer, poet and teacher Miller knew that white people could, if they wished, do anything to black people for any reason. This eloquent, melancholy memoir puts the truth to that sentiment.”
July 15, Tuesday, 7 pm
Discussion of Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World by Bob Avakian, Part Two: “Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—Rooted in the Past, Standing in the Way of the Future.”
Revolution Club meets Mondays, call for more info.
Honolulu
2626 South King Street
808-944-3106
Mondays, 6:15 pm
Revolution Books circle. Currently discussing “Re-envisioning Revolution and Communism: WHAT IS BOB AVAKIAN’S NEW SYNTHESIS?”
Cleveland
2804 Mayfield Rd (at Coventry)
Cleveland Heights 216-932-2543
revbookscle@hotmail.com
Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, 3-8 pm
Every Wednesday, 7 pm
Discussions of “Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity” by Bob Avakian. Everything We’re Doing Is About Revolution. July 9: Overcoming Obstacles—Mobilizing All Positive Factors
July 12 Sunday, 4 pm
Discussion of Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World by Bob Avakian. Part Two: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—Rooted In the Past, Standing in the Way of the Future
Seattle
1833 Nagle Place
206-325-7415
seattlerevolutionbooks.blogspot.com
July 20, Sunday, TBA
Continuing the Conversation on Bob Avakian’s New Synthesis.
(See anouncement at revcom.us for July 19 presentation: “Re-envisioning Revolution and Communism: WHAT IS BOB AVAKIAN’S NEW SYNTHESIS?”)
Revolution Books is Moving!
We’re moving out of our current location on the weekend of July 12-13 and will be moving into our new, expanded location in the fall. This summer, come browse our book table and engage in discussions of revolutionary theory and Revolution newspaper at Hidmo (Eritrean restaurant and community space), 2000 South Jackson St. Revolution Books will be there on Sunday, July 27 (4 pm-6 pm) and every Saturday in August (3 pm-6 pm)
Detroit
406 W.Willis
(between Cass &2nd, south of Forest)
313-204-2906
Tuesday, July 8, 6:30 pm
Discussion on “Re-envisioning Revolution and Communism: WHAT IS BOB AVAKIAN’S NEW SYNTHESIS?” Part I: “Humanity Needs Revolution and Communism.”
Boston/Cambridge
1158 Mass Ave, 2nd Floor, Cambridge
617-492-5443
revbooks@netzero.net
revolutionbookscamb.org
Mondays, 6:30 pm
Ongoing discussing of Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World by Bob Avakian. Call for details.
Atlanta
4 Corners Market of the Earth
1087 Euclid Avenue in Little 5 Points
404-577-4656 & 770-861-3339
rbo-atlanta.blogspot.com
Open Wednesdays & Fridays 4 pm - 7 pm,
Saturdays 2 pm - 7 pm
Sundays, 4-6 pm
Discussing “Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity” by Bob Avakian. Meet at bookstore at 3:30.
Tuesdays in July, 7-9 pm
AWAY WITH ALL GODS! Book Club @ Bound to be Read Books, Flat Shoals Road in East Atlanta Village. Join us to discuss Bob Avakian’s Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World. July 8: Part Two: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—Rooted in the Past, Standing in the Way of the Future, pages 61 through 95.
July 13, Sunday, 4-6 pm
“Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity,” final discussion at Revolution Books. “Heightened Parasitism and the ‘Two Outmodeds’” in Revolution #118 and “The Mess in Iraq, the Threat of War on Iran, and the Challenges This Poses” in Revolution #119.
REVOLUTION BOOKS IS MOVING
Into larger, quieter quarters next door. More space, more books, our own reading and meeting room! If you want to donate labor or money, give us a call or email.
Grand opening Saturday August 2.
Permalink: http://revcom.us/a/127/fund-drive-en.html
Revolution #133, June 22, 2008
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Revolution Newspaper's Expansion and $500,000 Fund Drive
At a moment when much of humanity finds itself in a living hell, when the horror of the U.S. occupation of Iraq threatens to escalate into a war against Iran, and when the future of the planet itself is threatened, Revolution newspaper must be out there much more boldly and much more broadly—exposing what is going on, revealing why, and pointing to a revolutionary solution in the interests of the vast majority of humanity.
from “Truth…in Preparation for Revolution!” (available at revcom.us)
Important things were accomplished in Revolution newspaper’s expansion and fund drive. People from all walks of life came forward and participated in raising funds for Revolution. Now, we are challenging people to donate “economic stimulus” tax rebate checks to something really worthwhile—the Revolution expansion and fund drive.
Much is at stake. If people are going to really understand what is going on, and if something good is to be pulled out of the current storms, a greatly expanded Revolution newspaper must be at the heart of that process.
Send checks or money orders to: RCP Publications, Box 3486 Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654 or donate online at revcom.us/fund_en.php
