Avanti!

At least some things are progressing. I am remodelling some of my links, if I have missed something (or someone!) or if you absolutely would not like to be listed, please let me know.

History repeats itself.

"In he tarpaper morgue at Chalons-sur-Marne in the reek of chloride of
lime and the dead, they picked out the pine box that held all that was left of...
...John Doe...
..the scraps of dried viscera and skin bundled in khaki
they took to Chalons-sur-Marne
and laid it out neat in a pine coffin
and took it home to God's Country on a battleship
and buried it in a sarcophagus in the Memorial Amphitheatre in the
Arlington National Cemetary
and draped the Old Glory over it
and the bugler played taps
and Mr Harding prayed to God and the diplomats and the generals and
the admirals and the brass hats and the politicians and the handsomely dressed
ladies out of the society column of the Washington Post stood up solemn
and thought how beautiful sad Old Glory God's Country it was to have
the bugler play taps and the three volleys made their ears ring.
Where his chest ought to have been they pinned the Congressional Medal...

- John des Passos, 1919

The American proletariat, divided, persecuted, assaulted, tormented and loathed have been sent off to die in wars time and time again. This only to build a national identity where the enemy is not the upper class that causes them to die in their hundreds and thousands, and to make sure that profits and power is retained by the same. What des Passos wrote in the beginning of the 20th century is as true as it is today. Some people labour so that others can get profits, some people die so others can have power.

Några länktips.

Klockan är ca. 3 på natten och jag kan inte riktigt sova. Om det är någon där ute som av en händelse (stor uttråkan förmodligen) skulle titta in här för att se efter uppdateringar de senaste fem minuterna har jag här en lista på lite bloggar som ni borde besöka. Ofta.

Linus Gustafsson: sitter i förbundsstyrelsen för Vänsterns Studentförbund. Skarp och koncis.

Josefin Brink: Vänsterpartistisk riksdagsledamot. Radikalism dör inte bara för att man sitter i ett parlament. Fantastisk.

Erik Svensson: skriver långt och bra, ofta om utrikespolitik, anti-imperialism och liberal propagandisering.

Lenin's Tomb: bra engelsk blog, ofta om utrikespolitik, världsläget och annat bra. Tidvis av akademiskt intresse.


Slutligen så hittade jag nyss en till blog av rent misstag. Skulle titta in på bloggtoppen.se, men skrev med bara ett g. Jag är väldigt osäker på om följande blog är ett skämt. Jag vågar inte titta närmare. I alla fall, här kommer.... Fria Västvärlden!

Reform to the revolution?

Today I was at the Left Student Union, as per usual, and listened to a talk about Venezuela. While the discussion was at times erratic, one thing caught my eye. What makes someone, or something (a Party, a state, a movement) revolutionary or reformist? I once met a Syndicalist who claimed that SUF was reformist, because most of their actions consisted in defending or advancing the working class movement through reforms (an odd remark for someone knowing their rhetoric and extraparliamentary methods). While this might be true, it is an odd way in which to state the matter. Aren't reforms something bound to the parliaments and the trade unions?

To go further; what makes someone a revolutionary or a reformist? Are these categories at all useful anymore? Is Venezuela and Hugo Chavez reformist? Many Communist parties are as reformist as the Social Democratic parties that can still, in some way, be called socialist. Things get even more difficult when you consider a subjective factor and an objective one: was Lenin a reformist until the moment when the Bolshevik Party stormed the Winter Palace? Was he a reformist until he illegally returned to Russia from the exile? Was Stalin a revolutionary until he became a bureaucratic-counterrevolutionary? Was he a latent counterrevolutionary? Were the radical Social Democrats in Sweden revolutionaries through revolutionary reforms, or were the reforms of the Cultural Revolution, well, revolutionary?

In short: are these terms so hopelessly bungled that they are useless? Well, yes. And no. There is a subjective factor that is often forgotten. To put it in Lenin's words (albeit paraphrased): sometimes the entire state of the labour movement, for decades to come, rests on a single sentence in a party program.

The wish to overthrow the existing order must be partly made through reforms, until a radical break at least. To call yourself a revolutionary is pointless in itself, but not pointless in context. When the Communist Parties split the international labour movement with the reformist Social Democrats it had a distinctive meaning: much in the same manner that other splits, battles, etc. had in other times. What seems from the outside petty squabbling over trivialities can hide immense conflicts, only articulated through certain gestures. This is as much true of movements and Parties as it is over intrapersonal conflicts: a man leaving his socks on the floor day after day despite appeals from his wife can make no sense of her infuriated protests, but to her it probably contains a far greater meaning in a gender role conflict (for example).

This is, of course, not to say that there is no way in which we cannot step back and observe certain specifics in a more sober manner. Often, it is precisely what we need. However, the explosive potential in words, actions and gestures in a given situation (context) should never be underestimated.

To summarize this in some way, I would like to make the point that I believe there to be genuinely revolutionary reforms. These are characterised by a shift in hegemony and power: such as what is happening in many parts of Venezuela. Reformists often pride themselves on practical work for the bettering of ordinary people's everyday situation. This is something to learn from, but above all, to also remember that revolutionary action must focus on the ultimate break from capitalist society (as much an action of subjective realization of power: the knowledge for-itself that the working class occupies a specific place in the social totality, and that it must/is breaking it's bonds and becoming free through the overthrow of the burgeoise). A last, and most important, component in revolutionary reforms (on a larger scale with many components) must be the transferral of power to the working class, a movement from below upwards. The debate over if socialism can be given through reforms is a huge one, but even if it can, it must completely involve the very people it seeks to represent.

As a last point to make is simply this: in the long, bloody history of the modern class struggle there have been many, many mistakes. Many have been horrific, some unforgiveable. But to believe that the world can be absolved through no faults, no mistakes and no errors by the millions (billions!) hurled into the class struggle, in a melee obscured by ideology and propaganda, assaulted violently by lackeys of the upper classes and hung out in imperialist press is a grave, grave mistake. There are no perfect revolutions, no Party that offers a program magnificiently balanced and no leaders without blemishes. To criticise your neighbour for not building a fence right and not giving a helping hand is arrogant: to watch your own apartment bloc burn to the ground and complain over the way the fire is fought is dazzlingly stupid. Our liberation must be our own.

Intellectuals in the Struggle

Something that I came across by chance. Mayakovsky's poem is a reminder of many things: the role of the intellectual in the class struggle, about the many things that the Left has forgotten, but above all perhaps for the future. Slowly, but certainly, we are reforming our ranks. The neoconservative "End of History" is long gone, philosophy abolished by the harsh reality of popular resistance. The neoliberals are forced back. Perhaps the tide is turning. The need to build a broad, militant Left movement with strong organizations to organize and maintain the struggle is as always important, but perhaps for the first time in quite a while, feasible.

At the Top of My voice

My most respected

comrades of posterity!
Rummaging among
these days’
petrified crap,
exploring the twilight of our times,
you,
possibly,
will inquire about me too.

And, possibly, your scholars
will declare,
with their erudition overwhelming
a swarm of problems;
once there lived
a certain champion of boiled water,
and inveterate enemy of raw water.

Professor,
take off your bicycle glasses!
I myself will expound
those times
and myself.

I, a latrine cleaner
and water carrier,
by the revolution
mobilized and drafted,
went off to the front
from the aristocratic gardens
of poetry -
the capricious wench
She planted a delicious garden,
the daughter,
cottage,
pond
and meadow.

Myself a garden I did plant,
myself with water sprinkled it.
some pour their verse from water cans;
others spit water
from their mouth -
the curly Macks,
the clever jacks -
but what the hell’s it all about!
There’s no damming al this up -
beneath the walls they mandoline:
“Tara-tina, tara-tine,
tw-a-n-g...”
It’s no great honor, then,
for my monuments
to rise from such roses
above the public squares,
where consumption coughs,
where whores, hooligans and syphilis
walk.

Agitprop
sticks
in my teeth too,
and I’d rather
compose
romances for you -
more profit in it
and more charm.

But I
subdued
myself,
setting my heel
on the throat
of my own song.
Listen,
comrades of posterity,
to the agitator
the rabble-rouser.

Stifling
the torrents of poetry,
I’ll skip
the volumes of lyrics;
as one alive,
I’ll address the living.
I’ll join you
in the far communist future,
I who am
no Esenin super-hero.

My verse will reach you
across the peaks of ages,
over the heads
of governments and poets.

My verse
will reach you
not as an arrow
in a cupid-lyred chase,
not as worn penny
Reaches a numismatist,
not as the light of dead stars reaches you.

My verse
by labor
will break the mountain chain of years,
and will present itself
ponderous,
crude,
tangible,
as an aqueduct,
by slaves of Rome
constructed,
enters into our days.

When in mounds of books,
where verse lies buried,
you discover by chance the iron filings of lines,
touch them
with respect,
as you would
some antique
yet awesome weapon.

It’s no habit of mine
to caress
the ear
with words;
a maiden’s ear
curly-ringed
will not crimson
when flicked by smut.

In parade deploying
the armies of my pages,
I shall inspect
the regiments in line.

Heavy as lead,
my verses at attention stand,
ready for death
and for immortal fame.

The poems are rigid,
pressing muzzle
to muzzle their gaping
pointed titles.

The favorite
of all the armed forces
the cavalry of witticisms
ready
to launch a wild hallooing charge,
reins its chargers still,
raising
the pointed lances of the rhymes.
and all
these troops armed to the teeth,
which have flashed by
victoriously for twenty years,
all these,
to their very last page,
I present to you,
the planet’s proletarian.

The enemy
of the massed working class
is my enemy too
inveterate and of long standing.

Years of trial
and days of hunger
ordered us
to march
under the red flag.

We opened
each volume
of Marx
as we would open
the shutters
in our own house;
but we did not have to read
to make up our minds
which side to join,
which side to fight on.

Our dialectics
were not learned
from Hegel.
In the roar of battle
it erupted into verse,
when,
under fire,
the bourgeois decamped
as once we ourselves
had fled
from them.
Let fame
trudge
after genius
like an inconsolable widow
to a funeral march -
die then, my verse,
die like a common soldier,
like our men
who nameless died attacking!
I don’t care a spit
for tons of bronze;
I don’t care a spit
for slimy marble.
We’re men of kind,
we’ll come to terms about our fame;
let our
common monument be
socialism
built
in battle.
Men of posterity
examine the flotsam of dictionaries:
out of Lethe
will bob up
the debris of such words
as “prostitution,”
“tuberculosis,”
“blockade.”
For you,
who are now
healthy and agile,
the poet
with the rough tongue
of his posters,
has licked away consumptives’ spittle.
With the tail of my years behind me,
I begin to resemble
those monsters,
excavated dinosaurs.
Comrade life,
let us
march faster,
march
faster through what’s left
of the five-year plan.
My verse
has brought me
no rubles to spare:
no craftsmen have made
mahogany chairs for my house.
In all conscience,
I need nothing
except
a freshly laundered shirt.
When I appear
before the CCC
of the coming
bright years,
by way of my Bolshevik party card,
I’ll raise
above the heads
of a gang of self-seeking
poets and rogues,
all the hundred volumes
of my
communist-committed books.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As a final note, I would like to republish something that I hope is possible of my own writings. In Swedish, I fear, but it has been a while since I last posted in that language.

150.000.000 är författare till dessa rader.
Rimmen - en löpeld från kvarter till kvarter.
Rytmen - maskingevärsknatter.
150.000.000 vräker genom mina läppar
fram dessa ordkaskader
Detta verk är tryckt på gatstenspapper
av en rotationspress av tusen fötter
- 150.000.000, Majakovskij.


Read more Mayakovsky here.

The individual in a collective science and politics.

I only recently understood once more one of the objections that I had just as I began to read Marx and marxists. A score of attacks were aimed at the marxist interest in history, structures and classes. Where, in all this, is there place in the individual? Is Marxism not determinist, relying on a material understanding of everything?

Well, no. What I am not going to say now is that some marxists have gotten it wrong and that they have oversimplified the science and turned it into a dogma. I am sure that there have been those, but to be honest, I have never read one. So what I am going to say is, instead, that liberal critics have misunderstood things.

First of all, there is probably a strain of the Soviet Union in here. Oppression of dissidents and personal freedoms, all that. The only thing I am going to say there is that the Soviet Union never attained socialism. Perhaps Trotsky would not have solved matters, however that may be, I believe in soviets proper, not the Soviet Union.

Second of all, if we are totalities of the social relations of our times: are we then individuals? Does our existance change anything? What are the (ethico-)political implications of that? It is absurd and incredibly stupid and ideological to deny that culture, class, ethnicity and gender does not affect us. We are to an incredibly large extent the products of our society. But society is not a static totality; that is a basic marxist insight. Individuals are the stepping stones of the collective, but a group can not simply be reduced to each individual in turn. There is something more. I would like to say that it is to a large extent praxis. In a human being there are certain ideologies, a language, an understanding of morality and many more things. These are prerequisites for being able to interact. As the hermeneutics understand it: we have certain given understandings of the world that filter it, and as we learn more, our understandings become more and more precise, some are even radically changed (note in this how it ties in with Thomas Kuhn and Louis Althusser's understanding of terms and revolutions in science).

To understand an individual, it is necessary for us to have a certain range of history, past relations and background such as where they came from, where they have gone to school, which social class they come from and so on. They, in turn, cannot be reduced to merely that. It is such a banal, ridiculous truth that I am ashamed to say it, but an individual is also something else than mere socio-economical totalities (that are often, consciously or unconsciously, in conflict with each other!).

Marxism and Morality

A couple of days ago I finished Willis H. Truitt's book, "Marxist Ethics". While it was an interesting read, and while it sketched out a couple of important principles, I cannot say that it was very illuminating as a whole. Of course, marxist ethics are a subject matter for an entire library and not just a simple blog post. But there are a few important things that I believe can be taken up to start off the topic.

First of all, as Truitt so aptly puts it, both marxists and anti-marxists have boldly claimed that marxism is non-moral. A statement like that is completely meaningless unless we might understood what it would be like to be moral, and to then be non or un-moral. Trotsky writes in his famous, and still rather paradigmatic, text "Their Morality and Ours" that morality more than anything else has a class character, but also that:

When we say that the end justifies the means, then for us the conclusion follows that the great revolutionary end spurns those base means and ways which set one part of the working class against other parts, or attempt to make the masses happy without their participation; or lower the faith of the masses in themselves and their organization, replacing it by worship for the “leaders”. Primarily and irreconcilably, revolutionary morality rejects servility in relation to the bourgeoisie and haughtiness in relation to the toilers, that is, those characteristics in which petty bourgeois pedants and moralists are thoroughly steeped.

While this is a breathtaking statement that has many loose ends that demands further investigation, we will leave it more or less at that. The text is quite worthwhile in it's whole and has many good, and some bad, points. But it appears to us, then, that marxism must in some sense be non-cognitivist, that is to say, that at least part of morality must rely on some form of non-cognitive function, perhaps as part of certain passions, interests, feelings, virtues, natural attributes, etc.

Human interaction is formed around moral concepts, concepts that have changed to at least some extent during various epochs. Many forms of morality were entirely ideologically programmed for the upper class of that time. But just as there is one way of living in the manor, and one in the hut, so there has been the morality of the plebian, or the serf, or the proletarian as well as the morality of the patrician, lord and capitalist. I do not now mean to say that the former has always been 'better' than the other. Burgeoise development has given us the strongest and perhaps most succesful moral schools: kantianism and utilitarianism, that indeed say many true things. However, in not understanding the actual relation in the social world, being reified, they miss out many things. They are also, of course, ideological tools and have been used as such to a great extent.

So there is one important point, then, an adequate sociological and historical view of man. Humans understand themselves to a great extent by morality and ethics, and most political language is coached in those terms as well. The other thing we must avoid is to assume that because we do not believe in an abstract Rechts or whatever it might be, that we understand humans to be what the neoliberals imagine: atomized individuals only interested in themselves.

To continue, there is the other danger as well: that what we are doing is in some way trying to be extra nice to people, that that is what socialism is about. Revolutionary socialism is not about liking animals and children a little extra. It is about the overthrowing of one class at the hands of the other.

But as Trotsky reminds us, and as Zizek continues to put it, there is something that is more ethical in the conspiration to organize a class and usurp another than there is to offer a few pennies to a charity. Singer puts it the most aptly: it is a duty to murder a tyrant. To relinquish an opportunity like that is to be an accomplice to those he murders. Tactics, strategies and ethics are bound far more tightly together than anyone realized before.

There are other components, too, lessons learned from old Greece that must be remembered and understood in a more complete manner than what Aristotle, Plato and others were capable of. Ethics and politics are the same thing. Man is a political animal: his ethical stance is decided and understood, and compared in the political life, that is, the social life among other humans. It is as much political to not be in a party, as it is to be in one. It is as much political to protest a racist comment from a friend as it is to cast a vote. It is of an ethical nature to take one stance or the other. Man can only be understood in the relations of his kind. The concept of virtue, as in modern virtue ethics, that was once started in Greece by Aristotle contains a very important seed for a morality that avoids the tribal taboos of a desert tribe and instead situates man with his fellow man.

Here we find the idea of praxis, that is, of the melding and continuation of thought and action in one that dissolves so many irreparable, reified categories of burgeoise philosophy. Political praxis is ethical, and the other way around. Praxis is what we do, melded with the way we understand the world and situate ourselves in it.

Lastly, I would like to add the existential sentiment that might be traced in what I said about Aristotle. While Sartre writes about petit burgeoise alienation at worst, and 'merely' alienation at best, the existentialist school has important things for us to collect from it. Not the least, a kantian strain that can be traced in philosophers such as R. M. Hare from the analytical school to, indeed, Sartre himself. Humans, in their understandings of themselves and their kind, are involved with existentialist preoccupations. While I believe the "meaning of life" question to be unintelligible, I believe that the longing for freedom and development cannot simply be ignored unless one is to have a system of morality as colourless and dull as most substantial morality in the analytical school. That is, the subjective, internal view is important.

There are many, many more things to say than these. But this is a beginning sketch, an outline. Perhaps we can see some vague contours soon, rather than the hazy, murky outline of a far-off continent that we can just hint at at this moment.

End the occupation!

So the day after my self-avowed journey into philosophy I am going to make a post about contemporary politics again. This weekend marks the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq: a war that was opposed globally and nationally in the united states. Back then, liberal columnists raved and ranted in favour of the invasion together with the current minister of the exterior in Sweden, Carl Bildt. Now, four years later, there is even less democracy than it was when Saddam was at the helm. 650 000 people have died and that number is rising daily. Of the occupants there are about 2500 American troops and a few hundred of the 'coalition of the willing'. The imperialist debacle has spread across the world, rising Orwellian laws in it's wake.

It is time to end the occupation: there can only be democracy, freedom and justice in Iraq if the Iraqi people do it themselves: from the grassroots. The US out of Iraq, end the occupation! Demonstrate in Malmö at 11.00 or wherever the closest demo might be held.

Marxism and Philosophy.

After thinking about some of these issues for a while I have realized that there are numerous blogs out there that are far better at writing about contemporary issues in the manner which I do and that it is time that I begin to live up to the name of the blog. While I will not entirely cease to write about them, my main focus will be marxist philosophy.

To start, then, philosophy as a discipline is probably unlike any other, and yet it shares similarities and connections with all of them. Many do not understand what philosophy is, confusing it with just existentialist "what is the meaning of life?" type questions, others turn it into an oracle of some kind that can give us answers to everything and anything.

Though trying to give a simple explanation of what philosophy is does not work, there is no single definition, it can be characterized by certain traits and methods. Philosophy is not concerned with data in the first hand, they are interested in what data might be meant to mean. Philosophy is also interested in logic: formal and that which relates different systems to one another (from formal, modal, axiological, hegelian, etc). The creation of particular terms and structures is what Althusser upheld as so vitally important in the late Marx writing's. He did not simply take the English economists, French socialists and German philosophers and put them together. Marx entered a new term into the equation: the class struggle, opening up the "continent of history" which changed the entire theoretical structure and gave us a completely new way to understand the world.

With these, all too brief, remarks, I will move on to the question posed not from the beginner but by the communist. What good is philosophy, anyway? Class struggle is won by action, not navel-gazing. In many cases, I must say - I agree! The entire labour movement should not sit down and start reading Hegel's Logic. Nor, of course, should some ivory tower elite be doing the philosophising, sending it's messages down to the masses below with a messenger pigeon. Philosophy is as much a birth of a class as it is the development of a school of philosophers. The two must have an organic relation in the manner of what Gramsci spoke of.

As ever, a choice not to do something is a political choice to side with the hegemone. If I do not vote, I vote for the burgeoise. If I am not in a trade union, I am in the trade union of the burgeoise. So it is with philosophy, too, as all human actions are similar and political. Philosophers can either step away from the class struggle, thus leaving aside all pretentions for ever penetrating ideology, and side with the burgeoise in it's analytical or contintental forms.

Marxist philosophy is the basic theoretical tool and defence for marxism and against the ideology of the upper classes. It is a weapon in the class struggle, a means to abolish ideology and a methodology to underline and systemize marxist theory in large, between sociology, economy and politics. It can aid us in the "ruthless critique of all that exists": against the atomism of liberals, the hidden idealism of postmodernists and to make us understand how aesthetics, religion and democracy might all be understood (or not) in specific ways and through specific structures. It may illuminate an understanding of history as hegemonic, as deterministic vulgar marxist or similar. It is the tool against deviations and the manner in which we systemize what we understand and what we criticise. It is important for all these reasons and many more.

These are then the opening remarks of a systematic attempt to somehow develop and apply marxist philosophy in all it's varied guises. To conclude:

The philosophers have only described the world, the point, however, is to change it!

To Vanessa and other comic fans/writers.

The discussion of the ideological is something that keep popping up here. Lenin writes in the Tomb about the new movie - the 300. Though perhaps a little too radical for me, I think there is a lot to remember and take heed to in it.

To my mind, Snyder's 300 drinks deeply at the cauldron of rage that is still boiling over in the United States six years after that bloody Tuesday. Two invasions, a trillion dollars in smoke and three thousand dead Americans have not sated the Achellian anger in a remote part of the American psyche. The movie 300 unleashes that abiding desire to curse, brag and rave at "endless Asian hordes." Bring'em on you barbarian slaves, you, you..., black, gay, effeminate, depraved cowards. Your friends are hunchbacks, deformed giants, midgets, magicians, eunuchs, perverts, lesbians and executioners. To hell with you all and your "mysticism and tyranny!"

Read the post, then comment on what he says about Frank Miller, comic book ideology and so on. You know far more about this than I do.

The Open Society and It's Enemies

A long time ago I wrote a review of Karl Poppers liberal manifesto, the Open Society and It's Enemies. Though I am now convinced that Popper was wrong about communism and marxism I believe that he was more or less right about the Soviet Union (in that respect, I suppose that I must align myself with the Trotskyists).

One of the main things that I have come to believe is that analytical philosophy is as much propagandist as it is a school searching for truth. Popper was, as Feyerabend so well remarked, more ideologue than philosopher. The same holds in general true of Russell, Ayer and Nozick. The ideology is distributed through a series of biting, if usually sarcastic, remarks concerning whatever opponent of the school of analytical philosophy that is targeted. Christians, continental philosophers, sociologists and marxists are typically assaulted in this fashion. Absurd connections are made between Nazism and Communism, stale dogmas of philosophers past are regurgitated and comments and remarks that have little in common with the text as a whole are thrown in for best effect. Contempt for different schools thought is distributed in textbook after textbook and article after article.

I believe this might have been more or less a refreshing, even revolutionary tactic that helped to clear out the philosophical rubbish - once upon a time, anyway. Witness Russell's battles against Christianity and British Hegelians. Through a sharp mind, formal logic and a lot of wit he managed to win the day. Popper did much the same, but with a lot less British sarcasm and a lot more fire and brimstone. In many ways, Popper lay the foundations of many liberal critiques: the idea of a utopia creates fanatics, a closed society that controls everything through a powerful state essentially hampers and hamstrings democracy, etc.

But what has happened to that legacy, that still had at least a little intellectual integrity? It has become not just an empty dogma, repeated endlessly and idiotically by entire cores of journalists, teachers and petty philosophers. It has, by the irony of history (that Popper himself hated so much) become the problem of the liberal states today. What is happening with the much-lauded open society? Walls around Europe, in America, in Israel. Anti-terror laws are used against political and cultural dissidents in Denmark. The "war on terrorism" has killed more people than the terrorists ever could, and in the process it has unleashed a reactionary-fascist wave across the world. Where are the liberals when the basic rights of freedom and privacy are being threatened?

Perhaps there should be a part three to the Open Society and It's Enemies: Capitalism. Much like the corporativism that was practiced in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and various collaborator states, massive corporations and a political-economical elite is leading the onslaught against what Rawls calls the freedom of the peoples.

It's time to remember Immanuel Wallersteins book: the Death of Liberalism. Capitalist corporations always struggle for a monopoly, which wrecks the entire concept of the 'free' market. Where are the liberals of today? At the barricades, defending national sovereignity, freedom of speech and tolerance? Hardly. The liberal legions are either as much hypocrits as John Stuart Mill was and locked into a battle with an enemy that doesn't exist ("Islamofascism" indeed) or they are defeated and made passive. Neolibs and other market fundamentalists seem to have long since won the day.

No, there is but one resistance in the battle for the open society. Then, as now, socialists are forced - not by our kind hearts, but because our commitment to the working class - to defend liberal principles of the state.

Universal health care? God no!

The Onion supplies us with their usual keen journalism.

So why the constant desire to guarantee basic yearly screenings and vital operations for all, thus creating some kind of ridiculous, unrealistic safety net? How will people fully appreciate the excellence of the American health care system without the constant threat of it being yanked away at any moment?

What else needs to be said?

Borgerlig ideologi i ekonomi och överbyggnad.

Linus skriver på ett träffande sätt om någonting som jag läste om igår. Väl värt att titta på.

Ekonomer i dagens samhälle försöker sluta vara samhällsvetare och börja vara naturvetare. Igenom en mängd faktorer som man matar in i olika diagram försöker man få fram en adekvat bild av verkligheten, nästan helt skiljd från all empiri. Man lutar sig i grunden på de mest imbicilla ideologiska föreställningar: människans atomism, renad från kön, kultur, klass och allt annat som skulle kunna störa de fina uträkningarna. Ibland slänger man in en liten dos efterbliven utilitarism när man säger att människor får det de vill ha på marknaden och att det föreligger någonting moraliskt hos kapitalismen igenom preferenstillfredsställelse.

Nog föreligger det något moraliskt, men det är knappast någonting gott i någon meningsfull betydelse av termen. Att en vetenskap till den mildra grad kan degenerera är oerhört. Visst finns det hoppfulla nya rörelser, även borgerliga sådana, men de är marginaliserade och relativt få.

För att lägga till det historiska perspektiv som ekonomer (eller ekonomins ideologer: analytiska filosofer) klarar av så måste det sägas att de grundantaganden som spökar i borgerlig-liberal ideologi, och igenom den till den neoklassiska skolan och vidare var revolutionerande paroller en gång i tiden. Det är ingenting någon marxist kan eller bör förneka. Bentham och Mill, även räknat deras hyckleri och falskhet, skapade ett uttrymme igenom utilitarismen för att slita ner den gamla världen och den gamla adelsklassen. Borta var värden i det statiska samhället, i kyrkan och i dogmatism. Nu kunde man äntligen göra politik och kultur efter vad som gjorde varje människa lycklig.

Precis på samma sätt är det med individen som en frisvävande atom. Det var också en ideologisk komponent hos borgarklassen som hade kraft nog att spränga medeltidens bojor. Alla de gamla reglerna slutade gälla om de inte höll för förnuftet. Frihet, jämlikhet, broderskap, som ni kanske minns. Givetvis var det frihet, jämlikhet och broderskap för borgerliga män - men det gav oss uttrymme för att fortsätta kampen. En man, en röst, allmän rösträtt och kvinnors rösträtt. Utvidgandet av demokratin skedde igenom bräschen som den borgerliga ideologin öppnade för världen. Det var oerhörda saker på sin tid, och om man läser de stora ideologerna så känner man även historiens vingslag och kraften i den uppåtstigande borgerligheten.

Men, för att komma till poängen, det var länge sedan. Det är helt okay att tycka att individen är viktig, det tycker jag också, men att bygga vetenskaper eller ideologier (i en mer 'mainstream' tolkning av ordet) på dem är vansinnigt och nästan kriminellt efterblivet. Sociologiska, psykologiska, historiska, etc. studier ger oss alla en annan bild av människan och hennes interaktion med sociala storheter och andra grupper än den som förmedlas av några reaktionära propagandister.

Nej, sanningen ska göra oss fria som det heter. Marknaden är ett komplex av kollektiva mänskliga handlingar igenomsyrat av maktaspekter. Den är inte evig, och den är inte oföränderlig. Dess gränser, objekt och agenter kan ta sig helt olika form. Industri och ekonomi är vad man gör med det: om vi inte vill att direktörer ska ha löner som är 20, 30 eller 100 gånger mer än en vanlig knegare så är det någonting vi kan ändra på. Syftet med rapporter som säger någonting annat är att föra den ekonomiska sektorn längre och längre bort från demokratisk kontroll och insyn.

Somalia ner i kaos igen.

Jag skrev om Somalia när det först begav sig med etiopiska styrkor stödda av amerikanska bombflygplan. Nu har situationen utvecklat sig på det sätt som man kunde vänta sig. Krigsherrarna är tillbaka, statsmakten bryter ihopa. Kaos, våld, fattigdom. Känner ni igen situationen? Det är samma gamla imperialism.

Eight of March: International Women's Day.

Today we celebrate the international women's day, once formed in what was Ungdomshuset in Denmark at the socialist women's conference 1910. Interestingly enough, this holiday also has roots in the American proletariat, much like the first of May.

Even today women are ranked as second class citizens, ascribed essential, weak properties and marginalized in society. Feminism, as everyone should know, is a prerequisite for socialism and a cornerstone in radical politics. Every step forward for feminism is a step forward for the progressive forces in the world.

Find a demonstration where you live, where there is one. If you happen to be in Lund, come to Stortorget at 17:00 for the demo.

Inte ett öre, inte en man åt imperialismen!

För den som läser min blog någorlunda ofta vet de att temat anti-imperialism dyker upp gång på gång. Alla har vi våra hjärtefrågor: en av mina är imperialism. Det absurda efter valförlusten är hur det har skett en viss upptiningseffekt bland den svenska vänstern, från syndikalister till socialdemokrater. Nästan som att vi har kunnat räta våra ryggar, få tillbaka någon form av moralisk ryggrad (efter skammen av att vara med i Perssons katastrofala nyliberala galenskaper). Nu har också äntligen någonting skett, passande till årsdagen av irakkriget, i och med Sveriges inblandning i det imperialistiska spektaklet i Afghanistan.

Jag läser en bra och intelligent analys på Biology and Politics om det hela (för övrigt en blog som jag gillar mycket överhuvudtaget). Kom ihåg! Det här är en viktig fråga. Varje svensk soldat i Afghanistan är en amerikan som är fri att placeras i en stridssituation. USA kan aldrig skapa en stabil, demokratisk stat. Det kan bara det inhemska folket göra. USA måste lämna Irak, Afghanistan (och Fillipinerna, och...). Kapitalismen driver fram ett behov av kontroll av olja och hegemoni i världen och i processen mördas hundratusentals. Det är inte första gången, ej heller sista.

Jag läser Slavoj Zizek just nu, på tal om det här. I "The borrowed kettle" säger han många sanna saker, och flera falska. En viktig iaktagelse är vad kriget gör med oss. Vår strid handlar inte om att vi är speciellt snälla människor, utan det handlar om att vad som sker i hela världen angår även oss i väst - ja, faktiskt, oss alla. Det är samma strid här som där! Det är olika villkor, olika tempo och olika situationer. Men när vi i Europa tvingas ge upp våra fri- och rättigheter, när våra medborgare kan kidnappas, torteras och förnedras har kriget nått ända in i våra länder också. När rasism florerar och man kan ställa folk mot folk och dölja de riktiga motsättningarna har bomberna i Jerusalem, Baghdad och Kabul fått sin efterverkning här också.

Det är hög tid att vi återtar det politiska patos som finns för utlandet och mot imperialismen och drar oss ur det här. Slutar exporterar vapen, slutar skicka soldater och definitivt inte utökar trupp eller sänder ett enda plan till Afghanistan.

Ungdomshuset: It begins and it ends.

Ungdomshuset is being razed to the ground. It is a dark day for the progressives of Europe as one of the last houses of it's kind is being torn down. But yet, even in all this, there have been some amounts of hope. Thousands have been protesting in broad, popular movements. International solidarity actions have appeared everywhere, as far as Istanbul and New Zealand.

The tragedy is made a little deeper as the 8th of March, International Women's Day, approaches. The International Women's Conference 1910 that decided to hold it was held at Ungdomshuset, then Folkets Hus. Alexandra Kollontaj stayed there, as did Rosa Luxembourg and even Lenin. Now, a small Christian sect is destroying all of that.

But we will see. The activists have gained large amounts of valuable experience and have broad support in Denmark and Copenhagen. They also have some substantial monetary assets now. Perhaps there will be a new Ungdomshuset, somewhere at least. As a last note, I would like to briefly put your attention to the fact that 600 have been arrested, many in an incredibly arbitrary manner. Activists have been beaten, jailed and sent back to their home countries without anything more than suspicion from the Danish police. During the last demo, 20 police vans were posted around the peaceful demonstration, together with three military helicopters in the air. You can read more about this from Ungdomshuset site or from Motkraft.

Et, to, tre, fyr - Ungdomshuset är och blir!

Kristdemokrater och andra lydpartier.

Ett överhängande problem med att göra sig själva till "Nya" någonting är att man skjuter sig själva i foten till det som skall komma efter. Vad ska Moderaterna göra när nu de blivit avslöjade inför alla och harvandet i den svenska välfärdsstaten har börjat? Nya nya Moderaterna? Nya gamla Moderaterna? Gamla nya Moderaterna? Gamla gamla Moderaterna med dubbel negation? Ytterligare problem dyker upp när man bildar en allians på det här sättet med partier med så olika styrka. Kristdemokraterna, Centern och Folkpartiet trampar vatten i hoppet om att behålla väljare medan Moderaterna kör över dem i den nationella politiken gång på gång.

Ett par exempel är Mauds anfall på LAS som möttes av ett tvärt nej av Littorin. Andra är hur Kristdemokraterna faller ihopa framför ögonen på svenska väljare. Säga vad man vill om sådana här reaktionära förslag: att just Hägglund ska tvingas ut för att säga sådana här saker, säkerligen uppgjorda inom Alliansen på något sätt, visar hur de borgerliga partierna tynar bort. Kd måste gå rakt emot en av sina hjärtefrågor, Folkpartiet står inför fritt fall och Centern står utanför politikens stuga och försöker få allas vår uppmärksamhet på deras nyliberalism (nya nyliberalism?). De enda som egentligen syns är Moderaterna. Vem som egentligen är vinnaren på den här alliansen blir smärtsamt uppenbart.

Hur ska man kunna bedriva en politik för sitt parti när man tvingas ta avstånd från centrala delar av den? Politik handlar mycket om kompromisser, men kompromissar man bort sin själ finns det ingenting kvar. Varför skulle någon vilja rösta på C, Kd eller Fp när de inte driver sin egen politik? Möjligtvis kommer krisen bara förvärras om man inte lyckas återupprätta samma arbetsdelning som man hade inför valet (Som Esbati sa: "Folkpartiet jävlas med invandrare, Centern med ungdomar, Kristdemokraterna med kvinnor och Moderaterna med alla"). Men skulle det bli trovärdigt? Det finns en reell risk för att de andra partierna känner att de måste slå sig till mer utrymme och skapar kaos när de försöker skapa en bas att stå på. Kan det överhuvudtaget undvikas? På ren svenska tror jag det här kallas för att måla in sig i ett hörn.

Ungdomshuset is being evicted.

Ungdomshuset, the Danish collective is being assaulted by the police at last. It's been a long, hard struggle, and it is not over yet. Read more on their homepage and on the Danish Motkraft site. As I understand it, demonstrations are being organized and one is taking place right now with riots spreading. It is not over yet, Ungdomshuset blir!

The Onion delivers the Truth.

This is most likely the best analysis that we can see coming out of the US over the Iraq war in quite some time.