Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Capitalism
Is Upside
Down Overturn
It!
Syrian Revolution
PM Key Resigns
Marx & Science
Abolish Prisons
Climate Crash
Dump Trump!
Revolutionary
Party
Summer 2016-2017
Summer 2016-2017
liberal turn in 1984. He was uniquely suited to that
task as no other National Party leader had his
background in international finance. This is why some
of the conspiratorial Left has seen him as an agent of
Wall St, and this may well be behind Winston Peters
response to Keys resignation that he jumped ship
before the ship hit the fan. Key represents
international capital and knows that NZ is not a
healthy, Rockstar, capitalist economy facing a global
economy about to crash. NZ is a fragile, dependent
economy for which Terminal Crisis will pose a new
set of tasks, complementary to those of Trump, of
making NZ neo-colonial workers and working farmers
pay for the crisis with their livelihoods and lives.
Abolish Prisons!
The NZ state announces another $1billion to be spent building another 1800 prison
beds. Under capitalism prisons are part of a justice system which criminalises
workers by locking them up for petty crimes against property and persons while
white collar criminals if charged often get name suppression and home detention.
While some other countries are getting over the war on drugs and punitive
imprisonment, NZ is getting more draconian applying the 3 strikes and youre
out viciousness of Senseless Sentencing. We say: organise workers power to
stop the war on drugs, make jobs or all, pay a living wage, and abolish prisons!
Police and prisons and the (in)justice system all
exists to protect the ruling class, to defend their
property; private property (capitalist property).
The overall function of their laws clearly results in
the imprisonment of the working class (including
unemployed) disproportionately, with youth and
Maori particularly over-represented = harshly
oppressed.
The history of colonisation was the introduction of
capitalism in NZ. This included the theft by force
from Maori (land
wars and colonial
laws,
including
confiscations) of
Maori land (part
of the means of
production in an
agricultural
settler economy).
The effect of
losing
lands
(means
of
production) was
also to turn Maori
into a working
class: reliant on
1
waged slavery to
survive.
The ruling class (capitalists) legal system was wholly
to defend the ruling class: including their
entitlement to lands.
Now a few Maori under Waitangi treaty settlements,
are bought out with deals, and so have transformed
into capitalists. The promise of tribal trickle-down $
to ordinary iwi members is not to be seen.
Summer 2016-2017
production. CWG reviewed our position on drug laws
and decided that drug (laws) should be under the
control of the working class; not the capitalist class
through
their
laws.
See
http://redrave.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/a-marxistreview-of-capitalism-and-drug.html
We have no confidence in capitalist laws being
anything but a means for the capitalist class to
oppress and control the working class. The
criminalisation of people, forces many into unskilled
jobs, poor wages (or subsistence wages with on-call
work, casualization, the precariat). Few skilled
jobs will accept anyone with a criminal conviction.
This of course makes the easier money of criminal
activities are more attractive earning options, which
can perpetuate re-offending.
Socialist solutions
A goal of socialism would be to abolish prisons.
There may be some offenders so damaged by abuse
in their personal histories that they need a highly
structured environment
like prison. However, they
would be an exception
rather than the norm.
Most crime is property
related, and if real work
(socially necessary) is
justly rewarded then
much of the motivators of
crime will be diminished.
Other crime is complex
however social inequality
and real relationships
between people are more
likely
to
rehabilitate
faulty
beliefs:
than
systems of punishment
and vindictiveness. There
may be a few capitalists,
who dont want to share their ill-gotten gains, that
may need to be detained. However, a programme of
real work and participation in socially necessary work
programmes for the good of all people may be able
to rehabilitate either of these groups of antisocialists.
Aleppo in Ruins
surplus capital.
The bombing of civilian populations by Assad and
Russia with no real opposition from the west is aimed
not at ISIS or Al Qaeda but at the civilians who are
organizing their own self-defense, including their
own self administration.
Radicals roused
Radicals reject both the neo-con market rule mantra
and the liberal delusion that social harmony and
equality can by created by state reforms. The more
market dementia of neo-cons and the cognitive
dissonance of liberals
cannot be solved unless
the deeper cause is
challenged
class
struggle.
Once
the
power of the classes is
equalised then wealth
can be equalised and
capitalism is turned
right side up and begins
to work.
11
The fear and loathing of the triumph of Trump has called forth the usual load of
garbage trying to fathom the causes and consequences. Was it endemic white racism?
(Is there any other kind?) Was it the criminal Clintons? No, its not about race, or the
Clintons, its 'about the economy stupid'. The low turnout, the refusal of progressive
Bernie-ites to get in behind Clinton, the switch of the rustbelt deplorables from nonvoting to Trump, created the perfect storm for the Stormtrooper.
But these 'facts' cannot be understood unless the
deeper causes of the crisis of US capitalism are made
clear. These explain why Trump is no more than an
evil clown in the circus that is electoral politics, and
that he cannot solve the problems of US capitalism
dying on its feet. Trumped means Stumped. As Marx
pointed out more than a century ago bourgeois
elections every four years allow the subject citizens
the right to vote for one or other faction of capitalist
to rule over them until the next election. The very
nature of the bourgeois state is that it is founded on
a constitution that defends private property, the
essence of capitalism. Because of its ownership of
private property capitalists can force workers to
work for them and create the surplus-value that
becomes their profits. Enforcing that class
exploitation is the state's mission.
Therefore, whoever is periodically elected to
government rules in the spirit if not name of private
property. This charade will repeat until the subject
citizens form a class conscious majority and
overthrow the capitalist state itself. And the
essential aspect to that class consciousness is seeing
13
Caught in a Contradiction
Trump cannot break with the 'establishment' any
more than the Clinton new Democrats could. The
reason is that
the US state is
not under the
control
of
politicians,
even
those
who do the
rounds
from
Wall
Street
and
the
corporate
headquarters
to Washington,
but by the
ruling class of
finance
capital.
That
ruling
class has already proven that it will not reinvest in US
manufacturing unless it can cut wages to a China
Wage or raise the rate of exploitation by employing
robots. Neither can meet the needs of full
employment at a living wage of the abandoned
"middle class." Therefor the ruling class committed
to globalization to survive will force Trump to break
the promises to his constituency. And this is where
the racist, sexist rhetoric comes in.
When it becomes clear that Trump cannot return
America to the golden age because his policies
cannot restore jobs or profits, this will exacerbate
the class struggle greatly. The radical left that is
already mobilizing against Trump will be forced to
mobilize also against the Democrats who back
Trump. These young, multiracial students and
workers have already started, and pose a challenge
to the state at all levels, on the streets, campuses
and in employment. To divert attention away from
his economic failures Trump will use the racist,
The disinterring of Marx today is now common, even if the body dug up is usually not
that of Marx but imposters like Zizek who claim to be Marxists but are really
academics who never organise the workers struggle. Marx had to suffer many attacks
in his own lifetime and further indignities in death as Marxism was plagued by a
constant stream of caricatures and misrepresentations, the most important being
that Marxism was never a science and has no relevance today. Some even attack
Marxism as a utopia that diverts us from making meaningful, incremental,
progressive change.
Danylmc writing in the Dimpost blog decides after a
quick skimming of Marxism that it never was
scientific and moreover is counter-revolutionary
because it calls for smashing capitalism rather
than evolving through many iterations into a new,
better societyor not. For some reason Danylmc
does not include the labour theory of value (LTV)
as one of Marxs utopian ideas gone wrong. Maybe
because Marx did not originate this theory as it was
a fundamental plank of the political economy of his
day. Either Danylmc understands the LTV as Marx
does, or not. Either way by accepting it he fails to
see that it makes a mockery of his argument. [i]
So lets see what Marx means by science. Was he
copying 19th century chemistry and reducing social
revolution to a law, like water turning into steam at
the right heat as Danylmc claims? No, social science
has to account for the interaction of conscious
subjects and their material environment. For
example, humans learn over millennia how to boil
water more efficiently (that is conserving labour
time) a reality that the young Marx observed when
18
Summer 2016-17
Defend Marxism
While the economic conditions for socialism exist
today, standing between the working class and
socialism are political, social and cultural barriers.
They are the capitalist state and bourgeois ideology
and its agents. These agents claim that Marxism is
dead and capitalism need not be exploitative. We say
that Marxism is a living science that explains both
capitalisms continued exploitation and its attempts
to hide class exploitation behind the appearance of
19
Summer 2016-17