Theory/Pra dice 'Human Power is its own end'—Marx

Vol. 45 — No. 1 JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2000 5(ty Struggles Seattle anti-WTO demonstrations make history come alive pose a future without capitalism by S. Earner by Ron Brokmeyer You can really see what capitalism is all about when Tremors from the dramatic showdown in you are in the factory. It is anti-human. Karl Marx Seattle against the World Trade Organization in wrote that in production "the machine dominates man, November continue two months later. While com­ not man the machine." That is true. I relate that to our mentators of every ideological stripe weigh in, work force at the Delta Pride Catfish processing factory anti-WTO participants, having returned to home in Indianola, Miss. It is owned by 178 white farmers. towns here and abroad, report the incredible They dominated the workers totally, practically owned events. Enthusiastic audiences debate the mean­ the people, for the first five years of that plant. ing of what is reported. When we first started there, they worked us from Local demonstrations inveigh against the sunup to sundown. In 1986 we stood up as Black women Gap's use of virtually enslaved labor in poor and challenged them. After we voted for a union, they Asian countries. Protests around the world wanted to figure out a way to dominate us even though we extend solidarity to the other America as the one had a contract. They paid over a million dollars for these Dec. 12 in Mexico City, demanding the release of automation machines to replace many workers, especially protesters arrested at the WTO talks in Seattle on the kill line. They downstaffed and said there wasn't and the release of Mumia Abu- Jamal, the U.S. room for all the workers due to this machinery. Black revolutionary journalist on Death Row. And They ran those machines for so long and, after run­ anti-capitalist activists plan to write a second ning them like that, they wouldn't work. So in the end chapter to the Seattle episode with meetings and protests in Chicago on May Day. they had to throw the machines out. But they never stop Protesters converge on Seattle Nov. 29 to challenge the World The epicenter,of these tremors was the youth­ trying to get faster and faster machines to do the work Trade Organization's deliberations to exploit labor and plunder of workers. They put those machines in to dominate us, ful crowd of tens of thousands, fighting for keep us down and stop us from progressing. human rights and the environment, and 30,000 the environment. trade unionists who converged oh Seattle to TREATED LIKE A MACHINE protest the WTO's Nov. 30 conference opening. They trade agreements, environmental, trade union and human rights regulations. Marx also wrote that "the capitalist mode of produc­ put globalized capitalism on trial—and the whole world was watching. The demonstrations succeeded tion produces, thus, with the extension of the working THE BATTLE FOR SEATTLE day, not only the deterioration of human labor power, in throwing light on a thoroughly undemocratic, but also the premature exhaustion and death of this secretive organization that overrules, in the name of The youth actually stopped the opening WTO cere­ labor power itself." When a machine runs so long, you mony at the Paramount Theater. The day-long non-vio­ are going to have to add new bolts and screws. It will lent resistance of hundreds of autonomous affinity produce for a while, but eventually it will break down. If groups of the Direct Action Network were successful in you are a person and you don't get the proper care, you dominating the area of Seattle around the conference Revolutionary Ecuador center and, in turn,; shutting down the whole confer­ (Continued on page 3) ence. What was so hard for the capitalist media to grasp is how such a large mass of people with no cen­ tralized direction could exhibit such discipline and, in Black World turn, the power of coordinated collective action. (Continued on page 10), Campaign 2000- ON THE INSIDE 6 degrees of FROM THE MARXIST-HUMANIST ARCHIVES: THE WRITINGS OF RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA • Reconsidering danger 'Black Power/ Race and Class Page 4 ESSAY • 50 years after first strike against Indians sit down in the streets of Quito blocking the automation—What kind of labor should humanity By Lou Turner traffic, joining other sectors of Ecuadoran society do? Page 5 to protest against Jamil Mahuad's government Jan. EDITORIAL • A new unifying principle for the The U.S. media tell us, despite their interminable 20. See eyewitness report page 9. Pa e coverage, that the American public has not yet waked 21st century • 9 *° up to this year's presidential primary races. This is the first degree of danger we face in arguably one of the most scary political years of the last century. The dan­ ger lies in the media's attempt to convince us that FORCED TO MOVE...AN EMERGENCY APPEAL there's nothing to stay awake for, so accustomed have they become to the stench of neofascism in the air. Ever since our founding in 1955, our readers have the battle for the mind of humanity that was integral to While the corporate media help the current crop of far helped us to keep going every time we have faced an the war itself (page 2). In the year ahead we are plan­ Right Republican candidates create a political smoke­ emergency. We want to thank all those who respond­ ning to bring out a new pamphlet of writings by Felix screen with such seemingly innocuous issues as tax ed generously as soon as they learned from our Martin, the worker-thinker who served as our Labor cuts, campaign financing, health care, and Social December issue that News & Letters was being forced Editor until his death last year—as well as pamphlets on Security, a neofascist politics has been articulated with to move from the building which had been our home in such needed areas as queer theory, value theory, and a impunity around such social issues as women's repro­ Chicago for 15 years to make room for the conversion of Marxist-Humanist statement on the Black dimension. ductive freedom, lesbian and gay rights, militarism, the building into higher rent condominiums. Because None of this unique and urgent work can be achieved affirmative action, and criminal justice policy. this kind! of "condo-ization" has been sweeping without your help in getting us through the emergency Chicago, it has sent rents sky-high and forced countless Christian fundamentalist Gary Bauer of the reac­ we faced when we were forced to move. PLEASE, SEND small offices like ours into competition for whatever tionary Family Research Council has led the way, with WHATEVER YOU CAN TO HELP US CONTINUE! the rest of the Republican field in tow, in making his affordable office space remains. rabid anti-abortion position the litmus test for choosing We were able to find a new office and with your help a vice-presidential running mate and nominees to the moved into it before the new year began—but the extra expenses for the move and for meeting our new office Supreme Court. With Bauer, the other panderer for the • Enclosed is my contribution of $ to help keep rent are formidable. We need your help urgently to overly inflated Christian Right vote, Alan Keyes (who N&L going." hates being referred to as a "Black" candidate), has meet those bills and continue our work. articulated the most neofascistic position, calling for the As is clear from the pages of this January-February I am enclosing $_ for gift subscriptions to intro­ abolition of all human rights protections for lesbians 2000 issue, we have not allowed this emergency to duce others to N&L (addresses enclosed). and gays. divert us from our work with all the forces of revolt—or from our principle of never separating the voices from Arizona Senator John McCain epitomizes the so- NAME called "character issue" and the "politics of biography" below from the articulation of a philosophy of revolu­ that the media christened in the aftermath of Bill tion for our age. In this issue we are proud to present Clinton's impeachment scandal. At every opportunity one of the most crucial writings of the founder of ADDRESS McCain trades on his experience as a Vietnam War era Marxist-Humanism, Raya Dunayevskaya, on "Race and prisoner of war to further the historical revisionism con­ Class" as a special celebration of Black History Month. cerning the U.S. imperialist war in Vietnam that We are proud as well to greet the new year with two CITY. STATE .ZIP- Republicans and Democrats foster to pursue their doc­ brand new pamphlets. One consists of selected corre­ trine of permanent war. spondence from revolutionary prisoners speaking for Send with your check or money order to: Meanwhile, the Democratic Party campaigns of Vice- themselves about what is going on behind the walls of NEWS & LETTERS President Al Gore and former New Jersey Senator Bill America's prison-industrial complex (page 10). The other 36 S. Wabash, Room 1440 Bradley have taken the art of taking the Black vote for consists of selections from our writings on Kosova and Chicago, IL 60603 (Continued on page 8) Page 2 NEWS & LETTERS JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2000 Is development possible Women indentured in U.S. | Berkeley, Cal.—If it.was not for the efforts of Berkeley High School students Megan Greenwell and without the ravages of capital? Iliana Monifcauk, the death of a' young Indian girl of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty heater, and by Maya Jhansi the interests of the country." Throughout the book, Roy the near death of her sister would have been passed urges her readers to break their faith in the Indian state. over as just another tragic accident. The Berkeley The recent Seattle protests were not the first time that "Big Dams," she concludes, "are to a nation's 'devel­ youth, howbver, asked why the 2 young women were "globalized" capitalism has felt the prongs of a freedom opment' what nuclear bombs are to its military arsenal. never in school. movement unwilling to sacrifice human life for capitalist They're both weapons of mass destruction. They're both They asked their Indian classmates and interviewed development. For more than a decade, people in northern weapons governments use to control their own people. people in the community. On December 10 they pub­ India have been battling a large dam building project along Both twentieth-century emblems that mark a point in lished a story in the high school paper, The Jacket enti­ the Narmada River that threatens to displace hundreds of time when human intelligence has outstripped its own tled "Young Indian Immigrant Dies in Berkeley thousands of people. This movement, led by women, instinct for survival" (p. 80). Apartment; South Asian Community says 'Indentured accomplished an incredible feat: it forced the World Bank This is where much of the controversy arises. In an Servitude*jiilay Be to Blame." for the first time to pull out of a project it was funding. open letter to Roy published in a prominent Indian Over a month later, the owner of the apartment build­ At the end of November, I saw the leader of the Save the newspaper, Gail Omvedt, a noted feminist and activist, ing, who alio owns a lot of other property in Berkeley, a Narmada Valley Movement (NBA), Medha Patker, speak takes Roy to task for equating big dams with big bombs, construction business and a restaurant, Lakireddy Bali in Chicago on her way to the anti-World Trade arguing that the path of industrialization is a form of Reddy, was arrested for buying young women in India Organization protests in Seattle. She spoke powerfully progress supported by oppressed people in India: and bringing them to Berkeley to serve as janitors, about "backlash of development" on.peasants, lower "Development to so many people in India means getting restaurant help, construction workers and his personal castes, and women, using the Narmada Valley situation to out of traditional traps of caste hierarchy and of being sex slaves with little or no pay. I work in Berkeley, and dismantle the logic of neo-liberalism. held in a birth-determined play." It seems that Omvedt have observed young women in saris doing heavy lifting The dam project along the Narmada is a proposal to has fallen into a modernist trap, assuming that the only in buildings that were being renovated, or climbing scaf­ build 3,200 dams, including the megadam, the Sardar way to break the oppressive ties of tradition is through foldings to paint the outside of buildings, while men Sarovar, in order to harness a mighty destructive, technological develop­ stood and watched them. I had no idea they might have river that flows through three states ment. been indentured servants. into the Arabian Sea. The struggle Woman as Reason Many have responded to Coming after the anti-WTO protests in Seattle, against the project has sparked an Omvedt's unprincipled attack on where we heard of sweatshop and forced labor condi­ intense national debate about capitalism, the environ­ the NBA and on Medha Patker at such a crucial tions all over the world, it was a shock to find it hap­ ment, democracy and the future of India. moment. However, larger philosophic issues are at pening right here in Berkeley. A number of women's It is no wonder then that this epic battle on the stake here as well. Although both take up industrializa­ groups are calling for demonstrations to denounce the banks of the Narmada attracted the attention of India's tion and "development," neither mentions the bad word: practice, to stop rape and to protect the young women most prominent woman writer, Arundhati Roy, author capitalism. In Omvedt's case, there seems to be a mis­ forced to work here. of the Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small placed faith in technological progress that Roy chal­ —Urszula Wislanka Tilings. In addition to joining the movement as an lenges us to break. Omvedt assumes that the various activist (she was arrested on Jan. 11 for demonstrating "development" projects are actually undertaken in the against one of the large dams), she has written inci­ world of globalized capitalism for the betterment of peo­ Ehrenreich's class ceiling sively about the struggle in a controversial essay called ple's lives. "The Greater Common Good," recently published along On the other hand, in Roy's championing of the god of "Class ceiling—can feminism survive'" by Barbara with another essay on India's nuclear bomb in her new small things, the specific wars and battles that will bring Ehrenreich, originally published in In These Times, book, The Cost of Living (Modern Library, 1999). down "big bombs, big dams, big ideologies, big contradic­ was recently reprinted in Detroit's left, cultural week­ What is particularly gripping about "The Greater tions, big countries, big mistakes," there seems to be a ly, the Metro Times. Ehrenreich rightly bewails the Common Good" is the way Roy analyzes the Narmada note of resignation, perhaps one inherited from the failure class polarization within feminism which has project from the vantage point of those most affected. She of socialism in the twentieth century. Roy calls the 21st increased oyer the past 30 years. She points out the shows the uselessness of cash compensation to the dis­ century the Century of the Small. How does one explain failure of the feminist movement to oppose the 1996 then that the small, specific struggle in' Narmada has welfare reform act; feminism has not impacted status placed and exposes the lie of resettlement. She brings out or pay in the traditional "women's occupations; and shocking statistics, that of the estimated 200,000 to be raised the Biggest and most universal questions facing humanity? It seems to me that we can't simply trade in poor womein still get second-class health care, when uprooted, 117,000 are Adivasis or tribals (India's indige­ they get any* at all." nous peoples). Fully 60% of those being displaced in the the Big for the Small. The movement itself won't let us. name of progress are Dalits and Adivasis. This "ethnic Part of the problem is the continued but false associ­ Ehrenreich's conclusion is subtitled "back to the otherness of their victims," Roy writes, "takes some of the ation of the socialist idea with the centralized State and roots," but her solutions are very superficial. She pressure off the nation builders" (p. 9). with nationalized property. What the Narmada move­ recalls "the original radical and yes, Utopian feminist She situates Narmada in the context of other "develop­ ment is fighting for is decentralized power. It is fighting vision was of a society without hierarchies of any ment" projects in India, exposing the unbelievable fact that the power of the Indian state to lay claim on any land it kind...the abolition of class...let's put that outrageous chooses in the name of "national development." It seems aim back pn the long range feminist agenda..." No 50 million people have been displaced in India because of argument there. But how'? "The burden necessarily "development" projects, 40 million by large dams alone. to me that the movement is raising the question of whether we can achieves more human, socialist society falls on the more privileged among us—to support Underlying her analysis is a deconstruction of the working class women's struggles, to advocate for... myth that the Indian state has its people's best interest at without going through capitalist devastation, without a centralized state, without destroying unique communi­ healthcare and childcare for all women, to push for heart. The epigraph to the essay is a quote by Jawaharlal greater educational access." Nehru from a speech given to villagers to be displaced by ties and their intricate ties to the ecosystem. These are a dam in 1948: "If you are to suffer, you should suffer in big questions that deserve the whole world's attention. Ehrenreich has forgotten that the feminist move­ ment had the opportunity to choose all this at its incep­ tion, but liot by the elite leading the masses. In the development of feminist theory, the experiences and Flora Brovina confronts Serbian state ideas of working class women were shut out. It was Editor's Note: Noted Kosovarpoet and women's rights knew our problems best, and they have presented our workingclajss women who objected to the abstract lan­ activist, Flora Brovina, was sentenced to 12 years in problems best. The Albanian women of Kosova should guage of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. They prison for "terrorism" by a Serbian court, Dec. 9. A pedi­ never forget this. knew that such an amendment would be used to take atrician, she founded and headed the League of Albanian I am very sorry that the court underestimates the away hardwon workplace protective legislation for Women in Kosova and ran a clinic for women and chil­ role of women in the world. I will never renounce the women. They challenged feminism to write an amend­ dren. Below we print right to fight for the ment that! would not only protect women, but limit Flora Brovina's final rights of women. harsh working conditions for men, too. When the U.S. words before the court To what the court Supreme Court took the women's movement "off the in Nis, December 9, New! has accused me of hav­ hook" in struggling for abortion rights, the movement 1999: ing fought for, the had already brushed aside concerns of minority and secession of Kosova poor women. Today abortion is virtually inaccessible for I dedicated my KOSOVA "The war and the annexation of poor women. whole life to children Albania, I repeat: my As it did in the 1970s the women's movement needs and children do not clouds have country is where my to overcomie class divisions, but not by framing the the­ choose their ethnicity. Writings from now cleared friends are and where oretical direction of struggle as something to give With my patients, I News & Letters, 1998-1999 my poems are read. My wqrkingclftss women. Working class African-American have never divided from Kosova, poems are read in women in the South have organized their workplaces them according to Switzerland, India, when none thought it was possible. Ehrenreich could their ethnicity, accord­ but not the Brazil, Poland; in each start by asking what she could learn from these ing to religion or the battle for the of these countries it is women and their concerns and working out a theory ideological choice of as if I am in their own with—not for—them. their parents. mind of house. My poems have —Susan Van Gelder I am one of the per­ humanity been published in the sons most involved in Encyclopedia of Poets humanitarian work in which was of Yugoslavia (ex- Kosova; I have sacri­ Yugoslavia), and it is Women Worldwide Integral to the something very impor­ ficed my health in by Mary Jo Grey order to help women war Itself." tant for Albanian and children. If I were Published by News and Letters Committees women. The Kenyan Women's Political Caucus is calling for a free, I would help The Albanian com­ new constitution for the country drawn up with input those that are suffer­ munity has never from the people and specifically addressing women's ing more now. Now it $3.50 plus $1 postage behaved in this man­ human rights. Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi is not Albanians that ner with their neigh­ argues that the country's parliament should draft the are suffering the Order from News and Letters, 36 S. Wabash, Room 1440, Chicago, IL 60603 bors, women, and chil­ new constitution. Only 3% of the 222 legislators in the most; it is others. dren. Right now in parliament are women. Joseph Kanotho, secretary gen­ My duty has been to Kosova, they have eral of the! ruling Kenyan African National Union, said dedicate myself also as a woman, as a doctor, as a poet to gone back to revenge at the end of the 20th century. I they wanted to remove "amorphous" groups, like the emancipation of the Albanian woman, to her con­ am very sorry for not being free, for being in jail, for not women's organizations, from the constitutional reform sciousness, to women's human rights, to help them fight being able to influence more what is happening now in process. * • * * for their freedom, to understand that without indepen­ Kosova, for not being able to do more to lend a hand, to dence, economics cannot succeed, nor can freedom. In The number of abortions in the United States has help those that are expelled, displaced. I believe that reached its lowest level since 1978, according to the the League for Albanian Women, I have created bridges they will do it as if I were with them; I hope that they of friendship in the country and in the whole world. We Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. will do it because they are women. I hope that they Unfortunately, factors cited as contributing to the have cooperated the most with Serbian women. Serbian behave in a just manner. I would do anything so that women have given the strongest support, perhaps they decline were not just better contraceptive services, but the Serbian community and the Albanians reconcile. reduced access to abortion. JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2000 NEWS & LETTERS Page 3 Teamsters continue Overnite strike | Detroit Sunday Journal I Memphis, Tenn.—We're not striking against Detroit—The Detroit Sunday Journal, published by Overnite over money. We have been on strike nationwide striking/locked-out Detroit newspaper workers, ceased for over three months over unfair labor practices. Union publication after four years with its Oct. 21 edition. Pacific owns Overnite. They've got so much money and The paper was launched in October 1995, after the clout that they don't care nothing about NLRB rulings. strike against the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press I have six children. I'm suffering. It hurts being on started that July. No one at that time thought that the this picket line, but I'm not willing to go back until we Journal would publish every Sunday for four years. For get some kind of agreement from the company. I had my that matter, no one thought that this strike would last twelve-year-old boy here walking the picket line with even longer. me. My five-year-old wants to come to the picket line Starting out with 42 pages and a press run of too. He's going to walk the picket line, so is my wife. 300,000, the Journal covered the strike and other labor They understand we all have to do this together. UPS issues, as well as general news and sports. An award- workers and other workers have come to walk the pick­ winning paper with a lot of heart, the Journal was not et line with us too. afraid to cover controversial issues. It did so with hon­ Overnite tries to brainwash people. Once the est, well-researched and .well-written reporting. The Teamsters got a foot in the door, they started giving strikers who worked to get it out every week were a tal­ really good benefits and wages, trying to bribe people. If ented and dedicated bunch. they were to be able to get rid of the union, and those of As this long strike wore on, the circulation gradually us on strike didn't go back to work, in six months what dropped. After the union made an unconditional offer to do you think they would be doing to people? return to work in February 1997, the strike turned into We're still strong in Memphis. We have over 200 peo­ a lockout. People began to be called back to work so the ple out. We ain't going back without a contract. I'd On the picket line at Overnight in Memphis, Tenn. company could give the impression that they were com­ rather see them shut the doors than keep operating like plying with the law. they are now. I'd rather lose 19 years seniority. It's that As more strikers were called back, especially the bad. You're here today, gone tomorrow. UPS shirks blame for pain Guild and Teamsters, it affected our ability to write and In the last seven years I bet you I have seen at least Chicago—I recently got a permanent part-time job distribute our paper. People were doing two and three 100 people terminated just for being affiliated with the with UPS, unloading trucks on the sunrise sort which is jobs, which resulted in a lot of stress. There was also union. They had a hit list, all the guys that were partic­ generally from around 4:00 am to 8:00 am. You lose internal discussion and dissension on whether the ipating in the union with top seniority. They wanted weight and remember muscles you had probably forgot­ paper should be more labor oriented or remain a gener­ them terminated. ten about. At the same time your limbs can get covered al interest paper. It had also been losing money for the Fve learned a lot on this strike. You've got to stand for in cuts and bruises, your back gets sore, and you are at last six months or so. something or you'll fall for anything. Working a part-time risk for all kinds of injuries. It was a great paper that was the voice of this long, job somewhere else is a totally different world. They treat­ Last Friday night the metal latch of a truck door bitter newspaper strike, something that all the strikers ed me like a human being. There's life after Overnite. whipped around as I closed it and caught my knee. rallied around. We would have liked to keep publishing —Overnite strikers There hadn't been any warning about this hazard, and it the Journal until this strike/lockout was completely hurt to the point where I was actually rolling around the over, but many workers are still locked out and other unloading dock in pain, with my supervisor standing legal and union contractual issues remain unresolved. about five feet away. After he saw I could manage to In the end, we can be proud that we published a bea­ walk, he sent me back to work for the last 20 minutes of con of truth in a sea of lousy, slanted, bumbled journal­ the shift. By the time we clocked out, the knee was ism printed by the scab Detroit News and Free Press. (Continued from page 1) swelling and it was getting hard to walk. —Armand Nevers are going to break down even faster. After a weekend of ice packs and painkillers, I Detroit Typographical Union #18, CWA Once your hands wear out with carpal tunnel syn­ decided to come in and see if the company would drome and you break down, they are going to replace send me to a doctor. But even before the shift you. It's all about making money, an easier way and a began, the supervisor took our whole crew aside Prison labor link to unions faster way to make money. We as human beings didn't and gave a hard-ass lecture on safety, the gist of Florence, Colo. —A first priority of a strong prison­ matter to Delta. It was just producing catfish, making which was: "If you get hurt it is your own fault, it ers' movement is establishing community outreach on a money, paying us a low wage and mistreating us. is not the company's fault. If you need to take a national level. As a major step in that, a meaningful So I began to understand, and many other workers at few days off (without pay) then you do it." relationship must be established between prisoners and Delta Pride began to understand, that the way the com­ Then I got to celebrate Dr. King's birthday at UPS by labor unions. Labor unions have never been allies in the pany organized production was anti-human. They didn't unloading trucks all night with a painful knee that was majority of prisoner struggles, and now that prisons care about our development or our dignity. They disre­ hard to bend or put any weight on, all the while being crit­ throughout the country are becoming profitable for the spected us as Black women when we took breaks to go icized for not working fast enough. They were working corporate sector a meaningful relationship between to the bathroom. They didn't care about our lives. everyone like dogs. What made it worse was that at the prisoners and labor unions that represent the working We organized a union together, we went on strike end of the shift the supervisor again called us all togeth­ class interests can be placed on the agenda. together, we fought the company together. A lot of what er, for another lecture, this time in the cold parking lot. Prisoner-labor union alliances can assist in ensuring we learned about a philosophy of liberation we learned He said, "I want to explain to you all why you didn't get that living wages and benefits remain a reality for the because we went through the fire of experience. But not a break tonight. It's because some people weren't working working class. Prisoners can struggle to prevent their every worker has this kind of experience. I was fortu­ fast enough. They weren't pulling their weight. And it's labor power from being used to erode the wages and ben­ nate to have it. That is why it is so important for all because some people didnt show up for work." This was efits of the whole working class. Prisoners can achieve a Black workers to know their own history. the three of our crew who took the holiday off. He then high level of political education when they realize their When I was in high school, we had Black History said, "It's up to you all to get down on those people." economic power is being used to impoverish their own Month. They would usually give us sheets of paper, like I don't know if this is technically the team con­ kind. A sociopolitical relationship between prisoners and information on Dr. King or Rosa Parks, a little history cept, or just how-stupid-do-you-think-we-are, or if the labor movement can blossom into a general working about them, or they would let us go to the encyclopedia there is much difference there at first. People class movement for socialism and unconditional free­ and pick our favorite Black person. What Dr. King said scoffed at it anyway, which felt really good. But it doms in a new society free of exploitation. and did, especially in Memphis, was important to me, was clearly somebody's effort to pit people against but I never hooked it up to unions. Prisoner involvement in the labor movement is at pre­ each other in a most disgusting way—on Martin sent virtually non-existent. A goal must be created When I started working at Delta Pride Catfish, I got Luther King's nationally celebrated birthday. And aimed at establishing a prisoner labor union association the concepts Dr. King and Fannie ix>u Hamer, Harriet on this, of all days, they encourage us to put the that can increase communication and solidarity among Tubman and Sojourner Truth talked about, and they overseer's whip to our fellow workers. unions and other labor organizations, broaden the scope helped me to know how to defeat a company like Delta. As we were all leaving, UPS was handing out corpo­ of working class activism within prisons, and strengthen Before then it never dawned on us that a union was the rate T-shirts with a picture of Dr. King on them. I said ties between prisoners and progressive labor unions. key to making a difference. All we knew was that if you to my co-workers that a picture of Jefferson Davis might While prisoner issues rank low on the agenda of labor spoke out like Dr. King, if you spoke out like Fannie Lou be more appropriate for UPS, or at least Bull Connor unions, such a situation has to change if the struggles for Hamer, you were just a fired turkey—or killed. and his police dogs. It felt good to be able to laugh about living wages and benefits is to remain a viable strategy. After I met News and Letters Committees, I began that, together. A step in this direction would be to focus on the estab­ reading Black history a different way. I read American Thank you, Dr. King. For seal. lishment of prisoner-labor union contact at local levels Civilization on Trial and learned about how you can —New hire with expectations of seeing the relationship blossom to trace a philosophy of liberation in Black people from the national levels. Those workers politically conscious of then- earliest times of America all the way up to the present. own working existence can encourage the involvement of SHARING FREEDOM all labor unions. Labor unions must become allies if pris­ oners' struggles are to unite philosophy and revolution. I liked it from the subtitle: "Black masses as van­ -Fred Bustillo guard." It made me think that what we did at Delta Pride was the kind of thing that could begin to make a change for this country. This pamphlet says right on the first page that "at each historic turning point of devel­ Do NOT opment in the U.S., it was the Black masses in motion who proved to be the vanguard." To me this means that we have to understand, really Buy Sears and fully understand, what we did in the 1990 Delta Pride strike, the biggest victory Black workers have Brand Name ever experienced in the Mississippi Delta. If we under­ stood that, we would really-begin to know the philoso­ phy of liberation within ourselves, and we would be able Products!! to share it with other workers to bring about a turning point in the South. Sears Distribution workers There is so much we have to learn from American need your support! Civilization on Trial, because our history and philoso­ On March 24, 1999, Sears Distribution workers in phy have been taken from us. I learned about a million Olive Branch, Miss., voted to join a union so they could "forgotten Negro Populists" and how white populists let have a voice in their workplace. That union was the racism destroy their movement. I learned about how IUE. After numerous bargaining sessions between rep­ Karl Marx said that Black soldiers in the Civil War resentatives of Sears and the Union, Sears has strongly would be the end of the Confederacy. I learned about — Charles Denby, rejected every reasonable effort to reach a fair and rea­ how the CIO was built by Black workers joining whites Founding Editor, News & Letters sonable contract. We ask that you not buy products in sit-down strikes. that bear the Sears label. For further information, call We never learned any of this Black history in school, 1 -800-800-8860 or (901) 396-4044. and we need it to develop the Idea of Freedom. Page 4 NEWS & LETTERS JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2000

From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskava MARXIST-HUMANIST ARCHIVES Revisiting 'Black Power,' Race and Class It was no accident that the Negro runaway slaves, the one who has made a great contribution to the true histo­ Editor's Note white Abolitionists and Negro freedmen gathered ry of Black Reconstruction. Unfortunately, however, With the many debates today over the nature of together, determined to resolve the problem of slavery, his class (petty-bourgeois) character always showed. the relationship of race to class in U.S. society, we not by founding a colony abroad, but right here at home. This was so when he organized an all-black reprint "Black Power,' Race and Class," an excerpt And it was neither accidental nor a mean achievement movement, and retreated. It was so when the West from the Marxist-Humanist Perspectives Thesis that that these males had a different view of voteless women Indian, Marcus Garvey, organized an all-Black Raya Dunayevskaya presented to the September than that which was then prevalent, and the suffragette mass movement, and DuBois attacked him. It was 1966 Convention of News and Letters Committees movement also arose out of this most remarkable orga­ so when DuBois fought against the Marxists. And (The Raya Dunayevskaya Collection, 4040). It was nization of uncompromising freedom fighters that pre­ it remained true when, in his old age, he joined the originally published in News & Letters, January dated the origin of Bolshevism by 80 years. Communist Party and followed their African line. 1967, at the time when the debate over Black Power Nor was it "an overnight affair." It lasted for The point here is that, just as DuBois showed his was about to assume a most concrete form as Black three long decades, until they impelled the. Civil class character in this country, so did he show it on the mass revolt erupted in Newark, N.J., the summer of War, and during all those 30 years, in slave-ridden world scene; especially in Africa. For, while he appealed 1967, followed by the Detroit rebellion in which some America, these remarkable individuals practiced to still another white power structure—the United segments of the white working class joined in. In these human relations that they espoused for the Nations—to give Africa limited freedom, the African commemoration of the first African-American country as a whole. So that when, finally, the masses arose spontaneously and changed the whole paths of the Abolitionists and Karl Marx crossed, map of the world in less than a decade. History Month of the 21st century, we print this the affinity of his ideas and theirs should have important battle of ideas, and encourage our readers The point is that DuBois moved to Ghana after it revealed how indigenous, how deep were the became independent, that is to say, only when state to join in by writing and emailing us their responses American roots of Marxism. ([email protected]). The footnotes are the editor's. power was won. The point is that, as with all intelli­ It is peculiar, indeed, that this page of history, so care­ gentsia, so with the Negro, there has always been a sep­ fully hidden from all standard white textbooks which, at aration between the elite and the mass. by Raya Dunayevskaya best, treat the Abolitionists as a tiny group of "fanatics" with no influence on the course of American history, NEGRO AND WHITE UNITY- 1930S AND NOW t the present crucial moment of world history, should also have been skipped over by Carmichael This wals so not only as they organized themselves in when the Third World of underdeveloped coun­ because it doesn't fit into his conception that all whites nationalist movements, but when they organized them­ A tries has become the bone of contention, not have the same "psyche." This does no harm to history selves, with white labor, to reorganize the whole indus­ only between "East" and "West," but also within the so- because it has been lived. trial face of the nation through the CIO [Congress of called East, the Sino-Soviet orbit, it is imperative that It does a great deal of harm, however, to the SNCC phi­ Industrial Organizations]. Considering George S. the Negro maintain his independence from any state losophy which has thereby deprived itself of the awareness Schuyler's2 present reactionary stance, it is important to power, and its ideas. Presently, many of these have of the duality of historic development, of the dialectic see how differently he spoke under the impact of the CIO, jumped on the bandwagon of the "Black Power" slogan. methodology which is born out of these contradictions, and as he lashed out against the established Negro leaders in It therefore must be closely examined. which had led Marx to see 1937: "Nowhere were the 'edu­ The SNCC [Student Non-Violent Coordinating men's development as the cated' classes cooperating with Committee] statement, which evidently SNCC had been development of various stages the unions to aid the work of discussing for months before its publication by others, is of freedom. This is the method­ organization, save in a few not outside of a certain philosophic framework, certain ology which enabled Marx to notable instances and there principled tenets. In turning to these, we, of course, take make pivotal to his philosophy only by one or two individu­ the statement at its face value when it declares: "These the vision that, just as man als... Their desertion of the views should not be equated with outside influence or develops through contradic-. struggling Negro workers in outside agitation but should be viewed as the natural tion, so his "quest for univer­ this crisis constitutes one of the process of growth and development within a movement; sality" is most intense when most shameful chapters in our so that the move by the Black militants and SNCC in this people are most degraded. recent history. The new posi­ direction should be viewed as a turn toward self-determi­ Either SNCC has not the tion Negro labor has won in the nation" (New York Times, Aug. 5,1966). slightest conception of this past year has been gained in At the same time, however, we know that ideas have a world view of history. Or they spite of the old leadership. It history of their own, and a logic of their own, and we must deliberately disregarded it, to has been won with new leader­ follow each to its logical, bitter end, including all its his­ continue with the logic of ship; militant young men and toric ramifications, not the least of which, both for past and their first false premise, that Black youth being attacked by police at the battle of women from the ranks of labor present, is the interrelationship between class and race. "all whites" have one "psy­ Birmingham, 1963. and grizzled Black veterans of che" and "all Blacks" another, and if ever the twain and the blast furnace" (Crisis, RACE AND CLASS the pick and shovel meet, it is always to the end that the whites interfere November 1937). There is no such suprahistorical abstraction as with or pervert the Negro's self-organization. You cannot reverse history. This integration into racism. In each historical period it was something dif­ labor having been achieved, the ones who will save the ferent. It was one thing during slavery, another during PERVERTED PHILOSOPHY PERVERTS CIO from its degeneration, as we can see by the new for­ Reconstruction, and quite something else today. MOVEMENT mation of Black caucuses for upgrading, for the end of To maintain, as the new SNCC statement and its new lily-white departments, against the bureaucracy in gen­ 1 It is to that end that Stokely Carmichael, instead, sin­ chairman, Stokely Carmichael, do, that there is some­ gled out the organization of the Niagara Movement, which eral, are the workers. It will not be achieved by those thing called a "white psyche" and that this "white psyche" he says was all Black and great, until it was "perverted" by who disregard the integration, and themselves use col­ is part of the white fear-guilt complex resulting from the whites and merged into the then new NAACP. Whatever lege-type vocabulary, completely devoid of any sense of slave revolts," is but the reverse side of the same coin the white liberal did in changing the direction of the class struggle. The great German philosopher, G.W.F. which standard bourgeois white textbooks maintain: that Niagara Movement as it became the NAACP, this was not Hegel, had a phrase for this type of thinking. He called it is not the exploitative class that is keeping the Negro grounded in either their whiteness or their liberalism. it "self-determination applied externally." That is, from down, but that it is due to some sort of "stigma of slavery." Rather, it had its origin in the thesis of DuBois above, not as it emerged from internal self-development. That, naturally, was not the intent of the SNCC state­ himself, in his concept that each nation, each race has The Negro Revolution of the 1960s that emerged ment, but ideas have a logic of their own. its own "talented tenth," and that this elite "brings" from below was for integration, not because of To farther insist that "whatever their political freedom to the mass. With such an underlying philoso­ interference by the. whites, but because it arose persuasion," "all whites" are "part of the collec­ phy, the Niagara Movement couldn't possibly get a mass spontaneously from Black youth who wanted it. tive white America" so that the U.S. has "180 mil­ following, no matter how militant it was in its demands The Muslims were completely external to this lion racists" is to blur the class line which cuts for full equality as against Booker T. Washington's phi­ movement, outside of it. Indeed, to get back into across the race divisions as well as to muffle the losophy of "Cast down your bucket wherever you are." the mainstream of the Black revolution, Malcolm philosophy of total freedom which has created a It is true that by then (the turn of the century) racism X found he had to break from Elijah Muhammad. second America. In this, the Negro has played a had become rampant, North and South, for, with The development of SNCC to greater militancy, of vanguard role and it is this role we must save America's plunge into imperialism in 1898, the other necessity had to involve a break from white liberals—a from the SNCC statement which means to sepa­ great pages in American history of Black and white sol­ break both from their money and their policies, it is rate "all Blacks" from "all whites"—and thus ends idarity, including the greatest page within the South's true. But the emphasis, if this is what SNCC meant to up by flying in the face of how the Negro shaped development—Populism—were fully expunged. It is do, should have been on the "liberalism" they opposed. the course of the second America. true, also, that the only rational voice came from the Instead the emphasis was put on "all whites," as a gen­ The truth is this. Despite the ruling Bourbon South's Negro. It isn't true, however, that the failure of these eralization, including even those who had given their economic power with its Simon Legrees, despite its movements to become mass movements was due to the very lives for the movement. political power in the halls of Congress ruling the North, whites "taking over" the NAACP. And the trouble with generalizations is that they very despite their "fear complex" (I know nothing of any As against Carmichael's rewrite, here is how one of often sow only confusion, because each one reads into it "guilt complex"; none of them had sufficient of that to do the leaders of the Niagara Movement summed up this his specific interpretation, which may not be what you anything about it—but regarding their fear of Negro failure: "...their cause was just, their motives pure, intended at all. There is no way to avoid confusion revolt they did plenty in the South, in the North, in their goals noble and practical; but they were perhaps except by being specific instead of general. Congress, and in the Supreme Court)—despite ALL too far removed from the masses to inspire them to these powers, the Bourbon South not only failed to action—too conscious of their own privileged position as brainwash all the people, but a very important section 2. George S. Schuyler was a radical journalist for the Black a Black elite... " (Henry Lee Moon, Balance of Power: Pittsburgh Courier in the 1930s before he became politically was inspired by the slave revolts, just those slave The Negro Vote [1948], p. 100). * revolts which SNCC thinks all feared, to organize conservative in the period just preceding the Civil Rights the most remarkable organization this country had ever Now, despite the fact that the word, Black, and not Movement. seen. I am referring, of course, to the Abolitionists. the word, white, precedes the word, elite, this is a class concept, a thoroughly bourgeois class concept, and it NEWS & LETTERS NEGRO AND WHITE UNITY-1830-65 led to the isolation, self-imposed isolation of the Black Vol. 45, No. 1 January - February 2000 intellectual, from the Negro masses, and therefore from News & Letters (ISSN 0028-8969) is published 10 times a year, monthly, It was no coincidence that in 1831, the year of the their self-organization. except bimonthly January-February and August-September for $5.00 a greatest slave revolt, Nat Turner's, a white New year (bulk order or 5 or more, 25c each) by News & Letters, 36 S. England Abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, founded HOW CLASS SHOWS THROUGH Wabash, Room 1440, Chicago, IL 60603. Telephone (312) 236-0799. Fax the Liberator. The only time this wasn't true, and Negroes by the (312) 236-0725. Second Class postage paid at Chicago, Illinois. POST­ MASTER: Send address changes to News & Letters, 36 S. Wabash, millions organized themselves and put an end to the Room 1440, Chicago, IL 60603. Articles may be reprinted verbatim if 1. Stokely Carmichael was the chairman of SNCC from May myth that the Negro couldn't be organized (and this was credited to "News & Letters." 1966 to June 1967, and is credited with popularizing the slogan 1920, not 1966) to fight for his freedom in an all-Black Raya Dunayevskaya- "Black Power." With Charles V. Hamilton, Carmichael wrote organization, was the Garvey Movement. The interfer­ Chairwoman, National Editorial Board (1955-1987) Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (1967) in an ence it ran into was from the black "talented tenth." The Charles Denby effort to give theoretical expression to the new stage of Black most prominent of these, and the one who appealed to Editor (1955-1983) militancy. Carmichael later went into exile in Africa, after his the white power structure, particularly the Justice Olga Domanski, Peter Wermuth, Co-National Organizers, News and involvement with the Black Panther Party, and took the name Letters Committees. Lou Turner, Managing Editor. Felix Martin, Kwame Ture. He died of cancer November 1998; see the in Department, to deport Garvey was—DuBois! Labor Editor (1983-1999). Now DuBois was a great historian, one of the greatest memoriam by Michael Flug in the January-February 1999 News & Letters is printed in a union shop. •759-C issue of News & Letters. this country has ever had, white or Negro, and the only JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2000 NEWS & LETTERS Page 5 Essay Article 50 years after first strike against automation— 'What kind of labor should humanity do?' by Olga Domanski At the same time, she had been studying Lenin's demand looking again here at the difference between Philosophic Notebooks on Hegel from 1914-15, together the direction James took in his Notes and the direction While the passage of 1999 to 2000 invoked all kinds of with the two other leaders of the JFT—C.L.R. James Dunayevskaya headed out of the '49-'50 experience. retrospectives on the passing century and millennium, (who used the name of Johnson) and Grace Lee. As it In his Notes James does remind himself of the task what received virtually no attention was that it marked happened, only a few months before the miners' strike his study was supposed to be undertaking: "We have to the 50th anniversary of a critical moment both in began, Dunayevskaya completed a translation of these get hold of the Notion, of the Absolute Idea, before we American labor history and in revolutionary thought. Notebooks for James and Lee and had begun a three- can see this relation between organization and spon­ What brought these together as one was the U.S. Miners' way correspondence with them about it. As the new fea­ taneity in its concrete truth" (Notes, p. 119). The General Strike of 1949-50, the first-ever strike against tures of the strike developed, "what had been a dis­ "relation" he is referring to is what he had sin­ automation. What demands a retrospective/perspective cussion of ideas assumed, to me, concreteness and gled out and italicized for emphasis a few examination of that moment today is that the question urgency," she wrote as she looked back later pages earlier in his section on "Marxism the miners raised during the strike—"What kind of labor (MGS, p. 34). Today" (Notes, p.115): "Organization. You should a human being do?"—remains the crucial ques­ This interaction of ideas and concrete know nothing about organization tion humanity is still seeking to answer 50 years later. objective events can be seen in two -v.- unless at every step you relate it Nothing shows this more than the events in Seattle very different events that hap to its opposite, spontaneity." that erupted at the end of 1999 against the globalization pened to occur within a day of Nearly 40 years later at the end of capital. (See lead article, p, 1.) Whether or not Seattle each other. One was the way of her life—as Dunayevskaya marks a new stage of revolt that can move us forward, Dunayevskaya's suggestion for was working out a new book she however, depends on whether a new stage of cognition a worker-to-worker relief com­ had tentatively called "Dialectics arises out of it. mittee was put into action by of Organization and Philosophy" the miners and became a turn­ I. WHAT WAS NEW IN THE 1949-50 STRIKE? ,—she reread James' Notes and cir­ ing point in their strike. The cled that sentence, writing: "A key to The coal miners were long considered the "shock second was the way it was decid­ 'dialectics of organization'—the wrong troops" of American labor. They had even gone out on ed, to invite a worker (John key—is when the opposite stops at spon­ strike during World War II, telling the government to Zupan) to participate with the three taneity and omits philosophy." It is not, she "let the soldiers dig coal with their bayonets." And after JFT theoreticians in their next meeting to dis­ stressed, that organization and spontaneity are not the war the militancy of all of labor brought the country cuss the book on Marxism. "The struggle of the min- opposites, but that they are not absolute opposites. closer to a general strike than it had ever been or has ers...gave me the impulse to go into the essential dialec­ James' Notes and his practice thereafter show that he been since. What made the 1949-50 strike historic, how­ tical development of Marx himself," as Dunayevskaya had reduced the Absolute Idea to an absolute opposi­ ever, was not the miners' militancy, but the new ques­ put it when the meeting began. The worker's contribu­ tion between spontaneity and organization. tion they raised in the face of automation—"What kind tion was not confined to "class questions" but illuminat­ ed the whole discussion of dialectical philosophy. One of the many recent books on James, Anthony of labor should a human being do?" Bogues' Caliban's Freedom (Pluto Press, 1997), has The word "automation" had not yet been coined in The strike activity and the simultaneous philosophic attempted to look seriously at James' Notes. Although 1949; what the miners confronted was called the "con­ activity led Dunayevskaya to decide on two critical new Bogues does not critique James for reducing Hegel's tinuous miner." They understood the disastrous unem­ vantage points for the book on Marxism: one was the Absolute Idea to an absolute opposition between spontane­ ployment it would bring as soon as they learned it would American proletariat; the second was Lenin's study of ity and organization, what does come through loud and require only one-third as many miners. But that was Hegel's Science of Logic. The book, which up to then had clear is that James' work is really a political study of not the greatest disaster they faced. The continuous been called "State-Capitalism and Marxism," eventual­ Leninism and that his concern throughout is with the miner ripped coal from the face without stopping for a ly became Marxism and Freedom. That work laid the question of "the Party." He quotes James: "If the party is moment's break, while the intolerable heat and deadly ground for a totally new Marxist-Humanist organiza­ the knowing of the proletariat, then the coming of age of dust generated by it could set off an explosion at any tion—but it took a break between Dunayevskaya and 1 the proletariat means the abolition of the party. That is our moment. It was for good reasons called the "man-killer." James before that could become real. new universal" (Bogues, p. 175). What is important for us During this period, the government and the coal oper­ What is important for our story here is that, although to see is that James' politicized reduction of the Absolute ators were working together for laws to curb the mili­ that break did not take place until 1955, their diver­ Idea means that he never poses a three-way relationship tancy and power of organized labor, while United Mine gence emerged unmistakably as early as 1951 and came between spontaneity, organization and philosophy. Workers union President John L. Lewis was forced to out directly in relation to the very different attitudes of Martin Glaberman's new book, Marxism for our spar with them as he tried to work out a strategy for a Dunayevskaya and James to the miners, to philosophy, Times (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1999), illuminates the new contract. It soon became clear .that the miners had and to organization. question even more by revealing James' concept of more than better wages arid fringe benefits on their The three-way correspondence ended as the JFT Organization in James' own words. As he looks back in minds. For months Lewis had been calling the miners submitted their document, State-Capitalism and his 1962-63 letters to "Marty," James regrets, some­ out and then sending them back to work three days a World Revolution, to the Socialist Workers Party in times with bitterness, that his attempts to build a viable week as a way to deplete the coal supply while steering August 1950, left Trotskyism the next year, and organization had been a "complete failure" (Glaberman, clear of the government's anti-labor laws. Finally, on attempted an independent existence that aimed to p. 72). In light of the 1949-50 Miners' Strike, it is star­ Sept. 19, 1949, the miners in northern West Virginia publish a workers' paper, later called Correspondence. tling to see that what he critiques most bitterly is what refused to follow Lewis' orders; his word had been law When Dunayevskaya proposed that its first issue be went on in the "years that preceded our downfall. A lot until that moment. They sent roving pickets out to shut devoted to Hie new miners' seniority strike that had of babbling about automation, speculations as to the down every mine in the area, even including the non­ erupted—and to "the miners talking of their problems - condition of the working class, a quite hopeless treat­ union mines. The strike spread quickly throughout all of in their own words"—James objected. "If a mighty bub- ment of what should have been the very essence of our Appalachia with the rank-and-file miners in control. ble broke out," he wrote, "with 500,000 miners vs. John Marxist approach" (Ibid., p. 74). L. Lewis and shook the minefields, I would not budge an When you read the detailed story of the strike in The 2 As he looks at the "personnel" he had, he takes up Coal Miners' General Strike of 1949-50 and the Birth of inch from our program." Dunayevskaya first, charging that her "personal disas­ Marxist-Humanism in the U.S. (MGS) you see that The question we have to ask is, what could explain ter" took "the form of developing the ideas of Marxism, what the miners did truly signal a new way of thinking such a divergence of attitude, such a failure by James to an absolutely valueless concern with theory, running in refusing to limit the question to one of wages and grasp the importance of what the miners were saying around and babbling about (what) has been picked up in benefits and asking instead, "What kind of labor should and doing? books which the general public does not read." He con­ a human being do?" tinues to rage against such conduct: "Over and over It brought forth a new form of mass meetings where III. DIVERGENCE OF JAMES AND again through the years that I worked with them I had the miners made their own decisions about the way the DUNAYEVSKAYA to tell Grace and Rae, 'you both will spend hours, days strike was to be conducted. It even brought forth a new It demands looking more carefully at where, with hind­ and weeks on a section of Hegel or a chapter of Marx, kind of worker-to-worker relief committee when miners sight, Dunayevskaya recognized that she had first spotted but I can never get you to pay the same attention to the traveled around the country to get food and clothing and the philosophic divergence in her letters accompanying problems of organization, as an organization.'" He begin correspondence with workers in other industries. her translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks. She kept demands, "It is that we have to break" (Ibid., p. 86). It enabled them to hold out until the operators finally contrasting Lenin's emphasis to what James had concen­ James gives the clearest expression of his concept of, capitulated. trated on in his own attempt to study Hegel's Science of organization when he writes: "It is absolutely clear to It is true that what Lewis settled for was not what the Logic in the 1948 manuscript he called "Notes on me now, the socialism that exists in the population, the miners wanted. Their fears came true in the unemploy-. Dialectics."3 Most crucial was James' concentration on the resentment, the desire to overturn and get rid of the ment and economic devastation that describes Law of Contradiction in the Logic's Doctrine of Essence as tremendous burdens by which capitalism is crushing Appalachia now. But the strike still has many lessons against Lenin's concentration on Hegel's section on the the people. That is what the Marxist movement has to for today. Idea in the more highly developed Doctrine of the Notion. learn... The masses don't need any education at all, While Dunayevskaya's critique of James' Notes on absolutely none. The Marxist organization and the rest n. THEORY AND PRACTICE Dialectics deepened as soon as she plunged into Hegel of them have to educate themselves" (Ibid., p. 169). The history of the 1949-50 events is interwoven with for herself, she never denied that she had considered This may explain James' startling attitude when the how the miners' questions were heard by Raya them "great" when she read them in 1948. Whatever miners were on strike and why he fought Dunayevskaya's Dunayevskaya, who later founded the body of ideas of has been critiqued in subsequent years, they served as suggestion to come out with a special issue on the miners. Marxist-Humanism. She saw the miners as demanding the stimulus for the Tendency to get down seriously to That story has perplexed many, knowing James' love, for nothing less than the reuniting of mental and manual the task of digging into the meaning of Hegel's Absolute "spontaneity." We can see that James didn't "hear" any­ labor, which is precisely what Marx said is needed to . Idea for our age. That work by a tiny group of revo­ thing new in the miners' attitude to automation because achieve a new, truly human society. lutionaries represented the highest point that he didn't see any need to work out a new stage of cognition She saw this not because the miners used any such had been reached up to that moment in the search to get to the new society. Socialism was all there in mass words, but because she had been working for several for a philosophy of revolution for our age. James' struggles and had only to be "recorded." years on a book on Marxism for the Johnson-Forest Notes was the first of three crucial steps in that search. Dunayevskaya heard what was embedded in the Tendency (JFT), of which she was the co-founder. The second was when Dunayevskaya got down to a writ­ 1949-50 strike and made it her point of departure to the (Forest was her pseudonym in the Trotskyist move­ ten translation of Lenin's Philosophic Notebooks; the future because she sensed that a relationship needs to ment.) The Johnson-Forest Tendency was a unique third was the three-way correspondence as the Miners' be worked out between spontaneity, organization and minority grouping in the Trotskyist movement which General Strike was underway. philosophy. Although it cannot be further discussed was known for its analysis of Russia as a state-capital­ Although it would be important to look at the full his­ here, the path that she subsequently took in developing ist society. It analyzed state-capitalism as the new stage tory of the JFT at another time, it is not that "history" Marxist-Humanism can be seen in embryo in the invi­ of world capitalism, and its economic analysis was never but the new questions we are confronting today that tation to a worker to participate in working out what, separated from new forms of revolt. after the break, became Marxism and Freedom. This Dunayevskaya had moved to Pittsburgh in 1948 to year marks the 50th anniversary of that historic meet­ work both with steel workers and with miners in West 1. For the full story of the Johnson-Forest Tfendency, consult ing on Feb. 15,1950. Virginia. She was studying how Marx had developed the The Raya Dunayevskaya Collection (RDC). 2. See the RDC, 9313-15. The three-way relationship between spontaneity, ideas of his greatest work, Capital, and as the strike 3. Published in 1980 as Notes on Dialectics: Hegel, Marx, Lenin organization and philosophy is what is needed now to developed she felt that what the workers were doing (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill); hereafter references will be hear the new questions being raised and to work out the and thinking brought to life many of its categories. to "Notes" with page citations in the text. "Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy." Page 6 NEWS & LETTERS [ANUARY - FEBRUARY 2000 DIALOGUE OF IDEAS OVER THE BATTLE IN SEATTLE Readers' Views As a 20-year-old student, I was really "The World is Not Enough" is the title taken with the protest against the World of the latest James Bond film. This could Trade Organization in Seattle. My gen­ ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM denouncing the death penalty, signs have been the motto of Madame equating the anti-abortion position to eration has been told that the battle to Barshefsky (the chief negotiator of the Last month Carter Gray from the overcome capitalism is at an end. My being anti-death penalty were dis­ U.S. corporations) for the opening of the Memphis Health Dept. was quoted say­ played." generation is the first one raised on the Millennium Round of the WTO's negotia­ ing that in four years the tighter stan­ The signs were in no way an aban­ idea that no matter what we think or feel tions in Seattle, which ended in a com­ dard for sulfur in gasoline will be like donment of women's issues by the pro­ capitalism is here to stay, since all previ­ plete fiasco. The U.S. and multinational taking 2,000 cars off the Memphis testers. The intent was to point out the ous efforts to transcend it ended in fail­ corporations are totally blinded by their streets. But next year we're projected hypocrisy of the pro-lifer who supports ure. The protest in Seattle was the first goal of completely subjugating the whole to get 350,000 more vehicles through capital punishment. The signs were to time I saw a crack in this claim of capi­ world as their economic playground. here and the year after that 500,000. point out that if a person opposed abor­ talism's invincibility. It's not that the They ignore the fact that there are six We'll have a million and a half more tion on the grounds that it is the taking system itself was weakened by the billion other human beings on this plan­ cars coming through before they take of a life, they should oppose the death protest, it's that it gave us a sense that et who are finding incompatible these any sulfur out of the gas. The city of penalty on the same grounds. the battle against capitalism is not over. goals with the very survival of humanity. Memphis is in trouble with the Clean In fact, the real battle may only now Air Act. Memphis had the highest num­ Lee Ragsdale Special praise is due to the wonderful Chicago have first begun. Stanley A. organization of the anti-WTO protests ber of folks hospitalized this year from DeKalb, 111. and events. The seminars, workshops, smog problems. printed materials, etc., the preparation Activist HEGEL'S for the police brutality and violence all It should be kept in mind that what Memphis IDEAS contributed to the success. Perhaps his­ allowed the protests in Seattle to be suc­ torians will equate one day the recent TODAY cessful is that we put aside our theoreti­ events in Seattle with the gunshot of the I saw an article in the paper about the cal and political differences and worked There is so much Aurora battleship in St. Petersburg, smog in the Memphis area. We are the on a common issue—confronting the nuance in Hegel's which heralded the beginning of the second worst city. The only way to stay WTO. No views were suppressed; we thinking. It feels as Russian Revolution. healthy is not to breathe! Government said everyone can come with whatever if a worldview, Giorgio and industry tie everything into econom­ building on familiar ideas synthesized agenda and slogans they want, and we ics so people get sold on the idea that we weren't going to stifle anyone. But we Vancouver, Canada in an entirely new way, were trying to have to have pollution to have a job. In break into my mind. It's becoming diffi­ kept away from making any kind of guid­ that situation you destroy so much more. ing or unifying mission statement cult to think about things in isolation. I In Rosa Luxemburg, Women's I don't know what we can expect from the now see why N&L discusses the Subject beforehand, because it would have got­ Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of future generation, considering what we're trying to relate him or herself to ten us bogged down in a lot of fruitless Revolution Raya Dunayevskaya quoted perpetrating on them. K.B. Otherness in a dialectical process. That theoretical debate. Activist from Rosa Luxemburg's speech at the Tennessee exposure is helping me make sense of Chicago 1907 Congress of Russian Marxists: "The Hegel's ideas. Eric Russian Revolution [of 1905] is not just Chicago The protest was the greatest thing I've the last act in a series of bourgeois revo­ THE REALITY * * * been involved in. Who can say that labor lutions of the 19th century, but rather the OF WELFARE forerunner of a new series of future pro­ Philosophy, Hegel once said, "is the struggles and environmentalists are at 'REFORM' thinking study of things." Those who odds after this? Who can say that only cap­ letarian revolutions." Luxemburg was italism is global? We're seeing a new glob­ proven right a decade later, when the The article in think they have no need of philosophy al movement against corporate capital. greatest revolution ever occurred in N&L on welfare are really evading their responsibility to Russia in 1917. To me this has something (December 1999) be serious thinkers. By virtue of our AnnaB. capacity to think, we are "born meta­ Wisconsin to say about the protest in Seattle. I'm by Anne Jaclard not saving it was on the level of the 1905 was great. You cov­ physicians"—the challenge is to take on Revolution. But the Seattle protest has to ered all the bases. the responsibility to develop that poten­ Seeing labor bureaucrats like John be seen not as the last act in a series of I'm so glad that tial which is in us all. Sweeny literally running to catch up 20th century efforts to reform capitalism, N&L gave the arti­ Old radical with the workers taking part in the but as the forerunner of a new series of • cle such prominence. Maybe 111 revise New York marches was one of the most moving movements that will seek the total aboli­ my skepticism about the human rights things I ever witnessed. There were also tion of capitalism in this century. strategy if it keeps appealing to people. contradictions. I heard someone report Maya Jhansi Betty Reid Mandell FIGHTING'ZERO that he was marching with some Chicago Massachusetts TOLERANCE' Teamsters and UAW members when * * # they spotted Pat Buchanan. He said the In the article in the December N&L on workers showed neither friendship nor LABOR New York City workfare (WEP) still the Decatur protests, I liked how it made hostility toward him. Some issues appar­ MOVING imposes slave labor conditions on recip­ the point that students are segregated ently still' need to be sorted out. FORWARD ients. On Nov. 24, a group of WEP work­ into second-class status. Almost all of the Labor activist OR BACK? ers got a bus and went to various work guys I work with who are in the juvenile California sites in Brooklyn to confront abusive justice system have dropped out of school At the retail store supervisors. Some supervisors yell at us by the 11th grade. where I work the man­ and treat us like animals; there are Probation officer Every practical movement raises new agers were talking good and bad ones throughout the sys­ Memphis theoretical questions, and the Seattle about a previous manag­ tem. That day we chanted and demand­ protests are no exception. One question ed they speak with us and that they er who had just died of a One problem with the zero tolerance in concerns the alternative to global capital­ heart attack. From the sign a pledge to treat us fairly. Our ism. Many rightly feel that the WTO, like demonstration was successful. Within the Tennessee and Mississippi schools is way they were talking, I thought this that they have the option of how they the entire global economic system, has was a guy in his fifties. I was surprised 45 minutes of our visit, one WEP coor­ dinator, Frank C, was out and his want to enforce it. They can be as severe or escaped democratic accountability and to hear the fellow was only 28! He had control. But can capital ever be made replacement was chosen. as lenient as they want to be. Our school worked himself to death. Only a few system has 14,000 students and only 26% democratically accountable? Can capital hours later my current manager tried On WEP, you have no vacations, no ever become amenable to meeting human have good passing grades. The superin­ to push a speed-up on himself and on sick leave, no seniority, no compensation tendent was congratulated last year needs? Can capital be controlled, through and no real training. You are then sup­ public pressure, legislation, or govern­ us. It seemed very ironic that on the because the dropout rate fell from 30% to same day that he hears about someone posed to get a job and get off welfare, but 28%. This doesn't count those who were ment action? For those who understand WEP leaves you with a big hole in your . that the answer to all these questions is younger than himself dying, he tries to expelled. The children get so frustrated push all of us. Not very self-reflective resume. I worked with the WEP and feel that no one cares about them and "No!" there is only one alternative—to Workers Organizing Committee for develop a movement that projects the there. Of course, at that point, all of us they give up or go join a gang which does­ slowed down our pace. A few pennies three years and we were not able to n't care about them either. I don't know abolition of the capital-relation as a meet our goals. Many people have whole. And that isn't possible without profit for a multinational chain store who got hurt in the fight in Decatur, but isn't worth a life. dropped away from the effort. Others the punishment seems so severe, even doing a lot of hard theoretical work. are still organizing and fighting. I like to David L. Anderson though I don't condone what they did. But Peter Wermuth think that nobody can stand on your they were treated differently. Chicago Oakland, Cal. neck if you are standing up. Civil rights activist * * * * * * Skip New York Mississippi In Nashville we had 45 people turn I went to the Overnite strike picket out for the "No to WTO" protest on Nov. line one afternoon with a small stack of 30 in front of the Gore campaign offices. N&L and some firewood. Folks are hold­ ing up well, and supporters are joining in The government started a dialogue ELIAN AND DEMAGOGUERY There's a rumor that Gore called the where they got the workers involved local union, head and told him to call us on the picket lines. Both gates had three The right-wing pretense over Elian picketers. They could always .use fire­ with thinking that welfare was hurt­ off. What was most wonderful about the ing them, and they tried to set them Gonzalez is not fooling us worker-immi­ wood and are also accepting donations to grants who fled political tyranny. While experience was having a sense of solidar­ against the welfare recipients. That's ity and coming together of some of the support those on strike. Some striking they use the little boy as a mascot for Overnite workers have found temporary why they were able to gut welfare; their demagoguery, they condone mil­ activists in Nashville to rally on an issue they made it us against them. That's which we care deeply about. " work, but there are a few who have not. lions of children going hungry, home­ Young activist how they can get stuff through without less and parentless in the U.S. and all- Chris Lugo an uprising from the public. Nashville, Tenn. Memphis over the world. Thousands of Haitians Black worker and other Cuban refugees are sent back Mississippi or condemned to detention centers for I feel that Seattle has the same poten­ After having to unload 40 boxes a years. Thousands of Mexicans seeking tial as a spark of change and revolt as did minute, work like a dog on an assembly work are deported, and Chinese the Los Angeles rebellion of 1992. There line, and have the company tell me that TAKING A STAND FOR refugees stowed away by human traf­ are many different possibilities for hope- coming into work late even once can be ABORTION RIGHTS fickers in cargo containers are dead or labor, the environment, Mumia, etc. We grounds for dismissal, I have to ask— almost dead on arrival. We workers must study what has been provided to us what ever happened to that great victory I am writing in response to Terry know why poor people .risk their lives to by Seattle and adapt it to our philosophy in the UPS strike? It sure didn't affect Moon's November N&L article about seek refuge elsewhere. It is to escape as we did with the events in Kosova. working conditions. the issue of abortion. In it she states capitalism's cruel politics. Dan P. New hire at UPS "further examples of the Left's abandon­ Htun Lin Detroit Chicago ment of women's issues are seen right California here in Memphis. At demonstrations JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2000 NEWS & LETTERS Page 7

found that the pattern of excessive force pop corks and fireworks, the chief rab­ MAKING SENSE OF THE WARS IN KOSOVA in Texas prisons violated contemporary binate in Israel (ultra-Orthodox affili­ standards of decency. For more informa­ ated) announced that any hotel that situation, it seems to me quite possible The December N&L article, tion contact Prison Legal News, 2400 NW held a party would lose its kashrut cer­ that some time down the road the U.S. "Chomsky Ignores Lessons of Wars in 80th St., Seattle WA 98117. tificate—a loss that could significantly will find it expedient to allow indepen­ Kosova," infers, but does not explicitly hurt future business. In addition, none dence once it is certain that it has Roger Hummell state, that Chomsky falls into the of the major politicians dared alienate molded the power structure in Kosova Gatesville, Tex. trap of dualistic thinking—or the religious by celebration talk, risk­ Manicheanism, which Frantz Fanon to its liking, be that headed by Hashim Thaqi or somebody else. F.R. ing a loss of political endorsement by said must be overcome if any move­ The page 12 photo and article in the the rabbis at next election time. Why ment is'to be successful. New York October N&L entitled "Chiapas were the rabbis so anti-celebration? It is my opinion that the lack of the Solidarity" could just as easily have been First, because the millennium is a Hegelian dialectical method is the rea­ titled "Preview of Coming Attractions." reflection of the Christian calendar, son he falls into the trap of dualistic I used to think that N&L's stress on The picture shows an indigenous village, and second, because New Year's came thinking—specifically, that since the connecting philosophy to political events was idealistic and unnecessary. But after Amador Hernandez, surrounded by on a Sabbath (Friday night) this year. U.S./NATO bombing and occupation of razor wire. Truly, if ever a picture was the war in Kosova I've come to see your Gila Svirsky Serbia is an evil act of war, that worth a thousand words, this is it. point. Something is very wrong with the Jerusalem Milosevic and the Serbian military—as Mexico, a NAFTA country, is a police victims of the bombing—are the "good way leftists are approaching politics when genocide is ignored in the name of, state and has been for 100 years. The guys." Chomsky does this by omission, plutocrats and their murderous by not writing of Milosevic's evil mili­ "opposing U.S. imperialism." NEW MOVEMENT IN IRAN Teacher enforcers don't waste money on prisons tary "ethnic cleansing" of the Bosnian when, as the picture proves, they just Illinois Ali Reza Ardebili's article, and Kosovan civilians prior to the make a whole town into one big prison. "Democracy and Revolution in Iran" U.S./NATO bombing. The people all over the U.S. will get the (December 1999 N&L), beautifully Basho message when they see razor wire sur­ VOICES OF THE illuminated the question of the peo­ Los Angeles rounding their communities and towns— # * * IMPRISONED but by then it will be too late. ple's "loss of illusions" from the recent events in Iran. He is seeing that this Just wanted to tell you how much I Robert Zani struggle is going to take a different appreciate the article on Chomsky in the Texas direction because of the recognition December N&L. This is the only leftist pub­ that no president is going to make the lication I know that's done a good critique of difference; you have to do it for your­ Chomsky's appalling position on Kosova. RELEASE 2000 selves. You see that loss of illusions in University of Memphis professor On June 24, 2000, the nation's youth other places. Terry Moon '.-•_, Tennessee Memphis The supermax prison concept is will come together to raise awareness of nothing new in this country. All one political and wrongly convicted prisoners. I must admit that I did not agree at needs to do is to go back to the history The event "Release 2000: The Fight for all with supporting independence for of the old Eastern Penitentiary in Freedom" is a worldwide rave/club bene­ GERMANY'S NEW CRISES fit to raise funds for the defense of pris­ Kosova or critical support to the KLA. Pennsylvania. Every foreign visitor to In Germany there is growing disap­ I can understand why N&L could not this country, from Tocqueville and oth­ oners who don't receive a fair trial. Funds will be given to organizations such as pointment in the Schroder administra­ march together with the Workers ers—even when their systems were tion. The right-wing Social-Democratic World Party, but to me the question is relatively brutal—were appalled at Amnesty International, a human rights organization, and the ABC Federation, a administration, mixed with some more complex than simply being a the conditions in American prisons. Greens, has problems with high unem­ question of self-determination for the support group which assists political Prisoner ployment. They promised reduction of Albanian minority in Yugoslavia. I am Wisconsin prisoners. These organizations will then nuclear energy, but they now hesitate. sure you would agree in principle that distribute partial proceeds to the defense Further, this administration was the a democratic workers' government in funds of verified prisoners. Information first since Hitler to enter a war (in the Yugoslavia including Kosova would be U.S. District Judge William Wayne about this event is available at: Balkans). Lesson: Don't trust the state, the most desirable, but at present the Justice last year found that Texas prisons http://www.release2000.com. don't trust political parties. KLA security force in Kosova does hot are unconstitutional and that Texas pris­ Tito David Valdez inspire me with much confidence. oners live in fear of being raped, beaten, San Luis Obispo, Cal. There is also at the moment the so- owned and sold. He reported that Allan Mui called Sloterdyk debate. Sloterdyk is a inmates who refuse to join race-based Oklahoma philosopher in the tradition of Nietszche. gangs may be physically or sexually ISRAEL'S FUNDAMENTALISM He has ideas about "cultivating the peo­ assaulted. He also found that there were ple," a kind of "selection" of "better" or I'm not convinced that independence many instances in which Texas prison Israel-the-democracy contains within "more sane" people. Dangerous ideas in a for Kosova is necessarily incompatible guards used force not for restoring order it Israel-the-theocracy, and this was time of a united and more aggressive with U.S. goals. While I do not dis­ but maliciously for the purpose of causing nowhere more evident than on Dec. 31. Germany. K.L. agree with your analysis of the current harm, significant pain, and injury. He When the entire world was planning to Germany

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Includes "A 1980s Name ; - View of the Two-Way Road Between the U.S. and Africa" by • Dos ensayos por Raya Dunayevskaya $2 Address ; ' Raya Dunayevskaya, and "Black Caucuses in the Unions" by • News and Letters Committees Constitution Charles Denby $2 33¢ postage City . State Zip Page 8 NEWS & LETTERS JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2000 Black/Red View New century: golden age? Racist airport economics Memphis, Tenn.—l live near the Memphis by John Alan social relations between the races in this country. As Ira International Airport. About 1985 the airport decided to Berlin contended in 1 "The stench from slavery's moral expand. They went to the newspapers saying they were A host of politicians, including President Clinton, rot cannot mask the design of American captivity: the journalists, economists and high-tech wizards have going to buy all the houses near the airport. This left the extraction of labor that allowed a small group to domi­ community thinking they had nothing to worry about. proclaimed, since the beginning of this new century, nate all. In short, if slavery made race, its larger pur­ that the nation is on the verge of entering into a golden The airport didn't buy all those homes. They destroyed pose was to make class, and the fact that the two were the neighborhood. age. A unified market will cre­ made simultaneously by the ate an unlimited amount of When they put this ad in the paper, that was letting same process has mystified the folks know to get out. Where I live was 95% wealth through scientific both" (5). Every great leap in development. Caucasian at that time. By 1997 we had fewer than 1,000 the struggle to emancipate Caucasians in that area. The airport settled a lawsuit Clearly these soothsayers labor has had to tear down and gave those who had been in the community since are disregarding the fact that a that veil of mystification. 1973 so much money and lowered the amount by $1,000 mere movement in time—from Mass activity in the U.S. in or $2,000 for those who had been there a shorter time. one century to the next—has the 20th century did break That meant all these African-American folks who had not changed capitalism's need down political and social barri­ moved in here and put their life savingsr in these homes. to exploit living labor in order ers and restrictions imposed Memphis International is the largest cargo airport in to accumulate an ever increas­ upon African Americans and the world, the only airport that allows freight planes to ing amount of capital. Thus, women. Workers won the right fly all night. Cargo mostly goes out at night. Every time this new century has inherited to collective bargaining. those planes come in they dump fuel. We have the high­ all of capitalism's antagonistic However, the fundamental est noise level in our neighborhood. Memphis has the social problems: poverty, the task for this century is to dis­ cheapest landing fees of any airport; for FedEx to make abuse of nature, labor unrest cover why struggles for free­ more money, they lowered the landing fees. FedEx and a new generation of Black dom have ended in some forms earned $13 billion last year. At the expense of whom? and white alienated youth. Nearly 50,000 people rallied in Columbia, S.C. on of retrogression or in outright There are 10 or 12 schools near the airport. There is In the 20th century mass Martin Luther King Jr. Day against the frying of the counter-revolution. not going to be any tomorrow for those students who can't movements organized by Confederate flag above the statehouse. African Americans, women sleep at night and are exposed to the chemicals and noise, African Americans and labor and labor have depended on because they won't do well in school. We have high youth fought to compel capitalism and its government to make the political intervention of the state to help them in problems in our neighborhood. They are going to build many reforms regarding civil liberties, hours of labor, their freedom struggles. This has proven to be an three more schools in the airport area. None of these wages and the conditions of labor. African Americans in abstract, partial form of freedom which also stands in schools have had any environmental impact studies done. the' 1950s and '60s created a mass Civil Eights danger of being taken away. The 21st century has the I'm from the country; I was a farmer. For a barn or Movement to regain the rights they had lost during the task to go beyond a century of incomplete revolutions to stable we would pick a place where, when the wind counter-revolution of the post-Reconstruction era. real human freedom, where people and society are the blew, the smell wouldn't come toward the house. But same expression of being. they don't care which way the wind blows when they VICTORIES NULLIFIED select a place for our children. This is racism. The air­ When these movements were at their peak, none of REASON OF CENTURY OF STRUGGLE port is supposed to be there for the city, but Black peo­ the leaders would consider the possibility that their vic­ The starting point of this philosophic task is to reveal ple pay more than anyone; and we are the ones least tories would be cut back or nullified by another retro­ that the underlying reason of a century of mass struggles able to fly out of that airport. We pay with our homes, gressive political period. The unthinkable did happen, was to create a new, non-alienated society. A society found­ our health and our children's education. They put eco­ and the 21st century also has inherited racism, a violent ed upon capitalist production can never be made into a nomics over the human being. — Edmond Lindsey social division dating back to the origins of this nation. society where people are not debased, enslaved, neglected Racism, in spite of all the passion and violence in its and treated as contemptible beings. Yet a host of theoret­ practice and the spurious concepts of race separation ical concepts that separate people from" their essence jeop­ Free Mumia Abu-Jama I! used to justify it, has its objective roots in the capital­ ardizes the struggles for freedom in the 21st century. ist mode of production. More than 300 years ago the A group of prominent African Americans are vigorous­ Los Angeles—Mumia Abu-Jamal has been locked ancestors of African Americans were brought to this ly" projecting the concept that the road to African- down since 1981 on Death Row in Pennsylvania's SCI country and were forced to work in that type of alien­ American economic security is through corporate capi­ Green Prison for a crime he did not commit, the murder ating production. talism. They have reached back in history to a concept of a Philadelphia police officer. Mumia's only crime is his critical, revolutionary ideas, reflected in political Karl Marx saw it this way: "Direct slavery is the pivot projected by Booker T. Washington during another retro­ gressive period in American history. In no way can free­ action as an organizer for the Black Panther Party and of our industrialization today as much as machinery, a MOVE supporter. credit, etc. Without slavery, you have no cotton, without dom and economic security be found in capitalist pro­ cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that duction and the new world market it is reorganizing. The His radio show in Philadelphia was characterized as the has given value to the colonies; it was the colonies that youth in Seattle understood that. "voice of the voiceless." Mumia laid the ground through his created world trade; it is world trade that is the neces­ The new struggle for African-American freedom will broadcasts for the poor, the powerless, the wretched and sary condition for large-scale machinery." emerge out of the Black masses. Its success will depend on the downcast to be heard. He rocked the boat through his whether or not we understand its underlying philosophy. award-winning journalistic ability. Consequently Mumia This kind of alienated production structured the became a marked man. Mumia Abu-Jamal's first book is titled Live from Campaign 2000-6 degrees of dangerDeath Row; his second book is Death Blossoms. He is Black World using the written word as a weapon against the state (Continued from page 1) "believed in without discussion." machine. The written word will give him life after granted to a whole new height. Bradley's sports celebri­ W.'s campaign, the richest in the history of the death, if it comes to that. The blossoms are the fruit of ty status, as a former forward for the New York Knicks, nation, personifies just this kind, of politics for the his thought, words being planted within the mind of a is the substance of his politics of personal biography Republican faithful. His oxymoronic "compassionate living, breathing humanity, that next generation. and has garnered him a "dream team" of Black sports conservatism" is a case of what Marx called religion as This capitalist system shakes at the concept of celebrities—Old School. Gore has matched Bradley with such: the fetish of secular faith is believed in without thought transmitted through the ages. Freedom ideas an all-star cast of Black celebrity support that includes discussion. According to such politics of immediate cannot be buried; only people die. The signing of Mumia Bill Cosby, Aretha Franklin, Coretta Scott King, faith, it could be claimed that racism and poverty are no Abu-Jamal's death warrant by Governor Ridge of Shaquille O'Neal, and Carl Lewis. longer of any great significance, due supposedly to the Pennsylvania is not just to inflict Mumia's death, but There was a curious moment in the politics of Black "booming" economy. As ah article of faith of the religion death to the movement, the death in spirit of all of us celebrity recently when Gore's campaign manager (a of "compassionate conservatism," the American people who have a vision of a new humanity beyond the con­ Black woman) told a reporter that the Gen. Colin are then expected to believe in this catechism without fines of capitalism. Mumia's death warrant is an Powell .and the right-wing Congressman from discussion (shades of Ronald Reagan). And, naturally, attempt to silence us all! Oklahoma, J.C. Watts, were nothing more than tokens the clueless amen corner called the media can be New social movements will have to not just free those that the Republican Party exploits to try convince Black depended upon to do just that. like Mumia or Geronimo Pratt who are considered politi­ Americans they are taken seriously. Bush is the only candidate in power who has car­ cal prisoners, but abolish the whole prison system with More revealing still was the one discordant note in ried out the authoritarian social policies that his its racial and class prejudice, where rehabilitation has the reactionary chorus of Republican candidates sound­ scary wannabe fellow travelers froth at the mouth been abandoned for old-fashioned punishment and forced ed by McCain's so-called "anti-candidate" opposition to about carrying out. As governor, George W. Bush labor. The everyday "citizen" cannot turn a blind eye to the current corrupt state of campaign financing by spe­ presides over a state that leads the country, if not what goes on behind prison walls. People allowed this cial interests. the world, in executions (115 during his tenure) and inhuman abuse to happen with their endorsement for the Suddenly, the whole money trail of right-wing fund­ boasts the country's largest prison-industrial com­ war on crime, which has racist roots. ing for everything, from the National Right to Life plex and most ruthless welfare policy. The American corporate propaganda machine took* Committee to the Christian Coalition to pork-barrel On the far side of the political lunar-scape is Ross events like the Los Angeles Rebellion in 1992 to pour spending to foreign contributions, was exposed. Perot's Reform Party that has become a snake oil road fuel on the fire, helping to ignite white middle-class fear Through its access to wealthy right-wing contributors show featuring sideshow performers like billionaire of Black and Brown inner city poverty. So instead of the the political and religious Right has exerted its hege­ eccentric Donald Trump, ex-wrestler and current rebellion creating a breathing space for these very visi­ monic hold on "American civilization." Minnesota Governor Jesse "The Body" Ventura, and in ble, unemployed and angry Black and Brown youth, the Republican power brokers are actually on point when a class all alone, the political marriage between the neo- system attempts to build walls stronger and taller to they attack McCain for being unstable and a loose can­ fascist Nixon speech writer Pat Buchanan and the confine more and more of them from sight. non. He is! Indeed, one has to wonder if McCain himself Lyndon LaRouchite Black politico Lenora Fulani. The The only line of defense becomes that thin blue line— wasn't the one who, in an effort to put the genie back in strange pseudo-left psychopolitics of Fulani's New the LiAPD, NYPD and so on—to put fear in the heart of the bottle, leaked information that he had intervened in Alliance Party are no stranger to red-brown alliances. the Black and Brown community, to "take back our a government regulatory agency on behalf of one of his Fulani was a staunch supporter of Louis Farrakhan in streets" for the law abiding people. That is why I think large corporate contributors. What the Republican cam­ the period of his most rabid anti-Semitic demagoguery. Mumia is so hard for middle-class Black Americans^ or paign reveals is the ongoing right-wing attempt to drive One warning of the dangers of this year's retrogres­ their petty bourgeois organizations to defend. He has American society further towards neofascism. sive political climate was actually evident in the past been condemned as a cop killer. The police are seen as the To make the fetishism of politics and money complete year's most radical moment—the Seattle WTO demon­ last line of defense to divide the haves from the have nots. there is nothing to add save religion. The politics of reli­ strations. The emerging anti-globalization politics that Mumia's Struggle for life is about racism and capital­ gion have given a certain halo to the politics of person­ were so full-blown in Seattle also form the ideological ism and the condemnation of both. The revolutionary al biography. What the delusional, professional capital­ ground of the Buchanan-Fulani alliance. And others on Left has not faced up to the ramifications of the Los ist Steve Forbes lacks in personal biography he thinks the Left, such as followers of Ralph Nader, environmen­ Angeles Rebellion, nor does it see the need to work out can be made up with his personal fortune and the most talists, and trade unionists have been attracted to its meaning, which has left the ground wide open for the reactionary pandering to the Christian Right. Buchanan's false populist attack on big-business, big- right wingjto take over the revolt by way of suppression Confessions of born-again Christian faith defy even government, and big two-party politics. and incarceration of masses of people. We should learn being put into words. When asked to account for his The emerging anti-globalization left politics after from Mumia's example; his mind remains active and new found faith, Texas Governor George W. (pro­ Seattle are only one of the forces of revolt who face this alive from Death Row. We must demand Mumia's free­ nounced: Dubya) Bush confessed, "If they don't know, danger. That is all the more reason why it's high time dom now! His condemnation is, in a sense, a reflection it's going to be hard to explain." Politics have been sup­ that we woke up to the neofascist dangers that lie ahead of our own lack of straggle. ON'A MOVE! planted by religion, which, as Tocqueville observed, is in this election year. —Gene Ford JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2000 NEWS & LETTERS Page 9 Editorial A new unifying principle for the 21st century On the first day of the new century, capitalists heaved passed the Black Plague's grim death count, and the of our epoch is a fact, palpable, overwhelming, and not a $3 trillion sigh of relief. Their global system of indus­ mud slides in slums surrounding Caracas, Venezuela to be controverted." His dialectical methodology begin­ tries, markets and services did not come crashing down. which entombed thousands in December. To say that ning with a "new Humanism" allowed him to see the Media everywhere trumpeted the successful and expen­ accidents will happen is, in capitalism, sacrificing the contradiction at the heart of commodity production, a sive fix for the "Y2K bug," a little software programming play of human inventiveness which can evade catastro­ fetish so powerful that we believe we are subject to oversight made three decades ago and reproduced ad phe. Indeed the wastage of human life has become the forces that appear not to be our making, even though infinitum in computer operating systems right through ethos of capitalist society. The consummate example is they are within our powers to control: how we work, the 1990s. At the heart of a global system lay a techno­ the prison-industrial complex where a whole generation love, procreate, communicate, and otherwise live. logical "brain" so limited that it loomed as a barrier to of youth has been sent to hide the social and economic While viewers of the British Broadcasting System elect­ progress itself, had the best engineering minds not been crises of the U.S. in 2000. ed Karl Marx the millennium's greatest thinker, Time put to work making the cyberworld "Y2K compliant" Scientific projects which promised to tell us some­ magazine's editors let their prejudices for technology and and ready for business in the 21st century. thing of who we are and eliminate disease, like the profits show when they named Albert Einstein their Man human genome project, remain mired in our jaded past. of the Century. Focusing on his scientific contributions, ETHOS OF HUMAN WASTAGE Pieces of the map of the body's genes have been patent­ they failed to acknowledge Einstein's own socialist view of The "Y2K bug," however, was far from the only con­ ed and heredity itself is headed toward the status of science. At mid-century he was adamant that "we should tradiction in technology developed and implemented intellectual property with price tag attached. Old elitist be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific first and foremost for the self-expansion of capital. Less and racist attitudes which stifled human diversity and methods when it is a question of human problems," publicized was the death of Hisashi Ouchi, 35, who suc­ potential now threaten to be given new life, breeding a adding, "We should not assume that experts are the only cumbed Dec. 21 to radiation poisoning from the Sept. 30 caste system which dictates who has the right genes and ones who have a right to express themselves on questions accident at the Tokai, Japan nuclear processing plant who doesn't, who lives and who suffers. • affecting the organization of society." where he worked. When safety rules were made sub­ The "unifying principle" that would make technology servient to production quotas, human life subordinate to MARX'S VIEW OF CAPITALISM and human society a single progression was the concern the bottom line, technology assumed the character of its More than wit or intuition gave Karl Marx the sense of Einstein at the birth of the 20th century when he creator, capitalism and its bloodthirsty quest for profits. to characterize capitalism in words that become truer wrote the Theory of Relativity in 1905, the same year Furthermore advances in medicine, epidemiology, across the changes of centuries: "This antagonism that the first Russian Revolution inaugurated a whole meteorology, seismology, and engineering have done lit­ between modern industry and science oh the one hand, century of new kinds of revolutions. Each revolution in tle to stem preventable human loss and misery from the and dissolution on the other hand; this antagonism its own way contained a search for a philosophy of rev­ likes of the AIDS epidemic in Africa which has sur­ between the productive powers and the social relations olution, from Russia to Africa and the Third World to industrially developed countries, so-called Communist and Western alike. The birth of industrial unionism in the U.S., the Women's Liberation Movement, the 1960s Left media's misleading analyses of Serbia Black "Freedom Now" struggles are children of the 20th At the Cold War's end, a fascist regime with the fourth non-Serbs (as well as anti-fascist Serbs) in Bosnia and century, each an unfinished revolution however. largest army in Europe emerged to carry out slaughter caused three million to become refugees, President Counter-revolutionary descents into barbarism— and destruction (albeit on a smaller scale) reminiscent of Clinton followed the Bush practice of indifference and Stalinism, Nazism, Pol Potism, and "ethnic cleansing"— Hitler's Third Reich. The authorities in Belgrade were occasional tough talk. The illegal arms embargo have shown how more profound and urgent that quest able to carry out their plan for "Greater Serbia" without (requested by Milosevic) which hurt only the victims for a philosophy of freedom has become for today. any meaningful interference from Western leaders. was maintained by the U.S. and the West. The belated Sadly, there was no unified, anti-fascist response from NATO military intervention of 1995 was not designed to NEW GENERATION'S SELF-DETERMINATION the Left. Moreover, there is denial and, at times, support stop ethnic cleansing or even the siege of Sarajevo, nor The shortcomings of "post-Marx Marxists" who were for what amounts to a modern fascist state. did it hurt the Serb ultranationalists in any meaningful not able to re-create Marx's philosophy of revolution in Covert Action Quarterly magazine, for example, has way. The intent and result of the Western military permanence have not relieved the 2000 generation of misled its readers since 1992, initially with an article action was to prevent the Bosnians from taking back the responsibility for making revolution real once more, by Sean Gervasi, which offers a creative version of and reintegrating their territory. After preventing the for finishing the unfinished revolutions. Marxist- recent Balkan history, blaming the U.S. and the West Bosnian rollback of Serb gains, Clinton further showed Humanism succeeded in articulating a unifying princi­ for the break-up of Yugoslavia. The article fails to men­ his disdain for the victims by inviting Milosevic to ple in the post-World War Two world. Raya tion the Serb genocidal campaign of "ethnic cleansing" Dayton to determine the future of the country he had Dunayevskaya called this epoch—when new revolutions in Bosnia which was several months underway, and just decimated. have vied with "ethnic cleansing" and nuclear mad­ that the Serbs had, through extreme violence, carved Three years of murder and expulsion of non-Serbs in ness—"our age of absolutes." out an ethnically pure statelet which covered nearly a Bosnia, combined with the Dayton Accords, set the At the birth of the 21st century, a new generation of third of Croatia in the previous year. Not even a word stage for ethnic partition of Kosova, which is currently young protesters in Seattle reasserted their determina­ concerning Serbian nationalism! the greatest threat to stability, fostering continued tion not to let the World Trade Organization's cabal of The current issue of Covert Action Quarterly attacks injustice in the region. capitalists control their future. Sweatshop labor condi­ the media for "demonizing the Serbs." Diana Johnstone, Sadly, Covert Action Quarterly and International tions and environmental pillage are human effects, and playing fast and lose with facts as usual, defends Action Center are probably not even cognizant that on humans can stop them, they declared. Milosevic as one trying to save socialism and this, issue they're in bed with more reactionaries and They also appropriated the internet "brain" of the Yugoslavia. According to her, his only mistake in Kosova hate groups than they can count. Just recently Van burgeoning so-called information revolution to use is not knowing how to keep it attached to Serbia. What Gosse, director of Peace Action, sent out an article to his email and web sites to organize a week of demonstra­ in fact demonizes the Serbs is the abominable acts members written by former contra lover, Phyllis tions. They extended Marx's "solution" to the limitations they've perpetrated over the last nine years. Schlafly. Typical of Holocaust deniers, she defends the of technology: "We know that to work well the newfan­ Competing with Covert Action Quarterly for most dis­ Serbs and denies any humanitarian crisis existed in gled forces of society, they only want to be mastered by information on the former Yugoslavia, is the web site of Kosova before the NATO campaign. newfangled men—and such are the working men"—and the International Action Center (IAC). It carries a num­ -Dede Fallen Chair, women, youth, Blacks and oppressed minorities, and ber of stories which attack those Albanians who took up Bosnia Support Committee gays and lesbians. The "science" of making a successful arms to defend themselves against apartheid-like Washington, D.C. revolution remains the new frontier in the 21st century. repression which has marked Kosova since 1989. The KLA is portrayed as a mercenary band of Albanian goons, funded by the U.S. and German governments and organized by the CIA like the Nicaraguan contras. Report from Ecuador—Mass upsurge and betrayal They overlook the fact that Serbia is a brutal colonizer The near revolution in Ecuador of Jan. 21, 2000, has through the cordon of police, and thousands were able to of Kosova. Attention to U.S. policy and administration deep roots in the history of the imperialist exploitation enter and take control of the Congress, where they were rhetoric would tell them that the U.S. has continually of an entire continent. That the driving force behind the soon joined by hundreds of other junior military officers refused to recognize Kosovar independence and referred temporary takeover of the three branches of govern­ and where they proceeded to operate as a People's to the KLA as terrorists. At Rambouillet, the adminis­ ment was a coalition of indigenous peoples and Parliament. tration twisted the arms of Albanian delegates to sur­ campesinos reflects both poetic justice as well as high­ This inspired uprisings across the country, and the render their right to self-determination as was done to lights the issue of racism (in that effects of the genocidal eventual takeover of the judiciary building in Quito and the Bosnian victims at Dayton. incursion into the Americas of the European "conquista- the surrounding of the Presidential Palace, which The IAC assigns no blame to the Serbs for their cam­ dores" continues as a reality to this day). President Mahuad had abandoned. When the Joint paign of "ethnic cleansing" Albanians, even after Kosova In the face of a banking crisis, massive inflation and Military Command announced its withdrawal of sup­ was virtually emptied of its Albanian population. IAC devaluation of the currency, unchecked government cor­ port for Mahuad, and when support for the rebellion claims the forced expulsions of Albanians were the ruption and mismanagement, and increasing levels of began to grow, one could smell revolution in the air. result of the NATO air war against Serbia, withholding poverty, hunger, unemployment and child labor, the gov­ A lengthy conference held at the Presidential the fact that just days before the first NATO bombs ernment's response was an attempt to implement the Palace between the rebels and the leaders of the dropped, 40,000 additional Serbian troops entered belt-tightening type of policies favored by the interna­ armed forces yielded a civilian/military popular junta Kosova. Has it ever occurred to IAC that the addition of tional banking community. that included CONAIE leader Vargas. This turned so many armed men, motivated by ethnic hatred, may Weeks of strikes, protest rallies, and demonstrations out to be a ploy by the senior military command to have had some link to the increased "ethnic cleansing?" culminated in the week of Jan. 15-21 when tens of thou­ defuse the protest, which was achieved when the mil­ Another "Left" perspective short on facts but big on sands of indigenous Ecuadorans and campesinos, under itary withdrew from the junta in favor of supporting attitude was aired the first day of the NATO war, on the the leadership of the Confederation of Indigenous the replacement of Mahuad with his vice president, Washington, DC. Pacifica radio station. Dorothy Healy Nations of Ecuador (CONAIE) and its president, Jose Gustavo Noboa, who promptly was affirmed by a opened her radio show by saying, "We take the pro-Serb Antonio Vargas, arrived in the capital city of Quito with thoroughly corrupt Congress the next morning while view., so does Women's Strike for Peace and the Workers the stated intention of changing the very structure of he in turn reaffirmed his predecessor's intended eco­ of the World (sic)...," insinuating that everyone on the government. They enjoyed the support of students, nomic policies. The confused and disillusioned pro­ Left supports the Serbs. organized labor, and a broad popular front of other testers were then easily dislodged from the govern­ U.S. Balkan policy deserves plenty of condemnation, social change organizations. ment buildings in Quito. but for the right reasons: Previously, a People's Parliament was formed that Behind all this, of course, was the shadow of the U.S. The Bush administration was fairly quiet when called for the removal of all three existing branches of State Department, whose Latin American coordinator, reports of Serbian atrocities in Croatia surfaced. Bush's government to be replaced with a "popular" governing Peter Romero, was on the air in Ecuador making national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, and Under structure. And despite major obstacles to travel put up threats of political and economic sanctions against a Secretary of State (later Secretary of State) Larry by the government, they arrived by the thousands in rebel government. The equally "unconstitutional" gov­ Eagleburger were members of Kissinger Associates who Quito with the intention of implementing the ernment of Noboa (because it results from a military had business dealings in Belgrade over the course of Parliament's dictum. overthrow of the existing president), however, seems to several years. In response to Croatia's vote for indepen­ On Thursday, Jan. 20, thousands of demonstrators be quite acceptable. dence in 1991, Bush's Secretary of State James Baker surrounded the ring of police and military that had Replacing Mahuad with his clone was not the end III flew to Belgrade assuring Milosevic, "We support the formed to "protect" the Congress building, and thereby result desired by the massive protests across Ecuador. territorial integrity of the Socialist Republic of took effective control. No one entered or left without The frustration of these passions through trickery has Yugoslavia"—a green light for Milosevic to engage in his their approval. On the morning of Saturday, Jan. 21, only bought time for the establishment, and the next campaign for "Greater Serbia." assisted by a small number of troops under the leader­ round of protest is already being planned. While ultranationalist Serbs murdered over 250,000 ship of Colonel Lucio Gutierrez, they successfully broke —Roger H. Page 10 NEWS & LETTERS JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2000 Seattle anti-WTO protests pose a future without capitalism (Continued from page 1) like the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York at the Buchanan who also declared his "support" for workers It was just this, and not a handful who shattered a few beginning of this century, he described how 250 who engaged in a "peaceful," that is, non-consequential windows in big money chain stores like Nordstrom's and young peasant women were burned to death in a protest against the WTO. Starbucks, that drove Seattle Mayor Paul Schell and locked toy factory which caught fire in Shanghai. Seattle's huge protests did impact the outcome of the Governor Gary Locke to order a "state of emergency," The China of free trade is one where there is mass internal WTO negotiations. By itself the collapse of including a 7 p.m. curfew. (Much more looting and win­ unemployment and untold misery for the great those negotiations cannot be declared a victory for the dow smashing has been quietly forgotten in many cities majority. Trade union activism is totally repressed. movement, as some have, because rulers had their own after a home sports team won a ' Nevertheless he declared class reasons for turning to more nationalistic ideologies championship.) there has been a proliferation in order to help them stay in power. The world saw on TV that of marches and demonstra­ Nevertheless Seattle saw new international worker- night a brutal suppression of tions which have been met to-worker connections as well as a coalescence of human peaceful demonstrators and with heightened repression rights and environmental activists with workers. The many local bystanders with a and selective targeting of demonstrations in Seattle were billed as the revolt of massive use of tear gas, rubber organizers and leaders of an "civil society" against the globalized economy. Many bullets, concussion bombs and independent trade union youth who focused on capitalism's disregard for the envi­ pepper spray by phalanxes of movement. ronment are now reaching out to workers. The WTO what looked like Darth Vader Today's permanent re­ events demonstrated the beginnings of global worker sol­ clones. Reminiscent of any structuring on a global scale is idarity and social relations not between things—com­ totalitarian regime's police an outgrowth of the internal modities—and material relations between persons, but state, on the following day the authoritarian character of workers? own direct relations with each other. forces of order declared a 50- capitalist organizations in square block "no protest zone" China and elsewhere. This has reinforced by the National <*K28S£S82g. led to several incidents of Guard, state police, and neigh­ cross border solidarity Stateville lock-down boring police departments. described at the Global Trade Once considered the most notorious, corrupt slave In spite of this on Dec. 3, after Unionism panel such as a vic­ camp in Illinois, Stateville Maximum Security Prison most demonstrators left town, the tory for a more livable wage still has a corrupt staff that has prisoners under control local King County Labor Council * for the Chilean miners by stricter enforcement of numerous, insignificant sponsored a march where 5,000 4 achieved with the help of prison rules. Stateville's wardens under the direction of came out to violate the "no protest Canadian miners. On the George DeTella, deputy director of the Illinois zone" and demand the release of same panel Victor Thorpe, a Department of Corrections (IDOC), have terminated all trade union official from normal movement of prisoners and operated the prison The Seattle 600." Along with Brussels, appealed to his co- workers there were environmen­ under semi-lockdown conditions since 1996. This prison panelists to reject their desire has been on lockdown—prisoners locked in their cells 24 talists, lesbians and youth chant­ «^tj«ji> to reform WTO by being given ing: "This Is What Democracy ifpwir hours except for visits, writs or hospital passes—for a place at the table. "Free approximately 120 days as of the end of 1999. Looks Like!" trade," he said, "is an internal In contrast to the WTO's pri­ Skywalkers erect a giant assessment of WTO transfer from one part of the For all prisoners in Stateville, 1999 brought many vate deliberations, affecting the above Seattle. global system to another... major changes in staff, policies and enforcement of conditions of life and labor for Two-thirds of what is counted as trade is already in rules. The director of the IDOC and Stateville's two top hundreds of millions around the world, dozens of open the hands of the same megacompanies dominating the wardens were replaced. Other major changes included marches and forums took place in Seattle during the whole market. The other one-third is small suppliers increased lockdowns, confiscation of stingers (water week leading up to the Nov. 30 confrontation. Why are and vendors who service these companies." heaters), deleting over 75 commissary items, big price laws barring the import of shrimp which are caught by increases in commissary items, huge increases in drug methods that threaten to drive turtles to extinction shot The truth is that the global trading system is about testing and so on. down by the WTO as a restraint on trade? Why can't the right of capital to move freely in order to exploit Almost all prisoners, if they could, would seek Massachusetts refuse to do business with companies labor and the environment without restriction. Over transfers to another prison, any prison just as who conspire with the brutal military regime in Burma 150 years ago, Marx saw the emergence of a global cap­ long as it was not Stateville. to enslave Burmese laborers? Why can't we refuse to par­ italism, then based on cotton and slavery, and described Other things which happened throughout the year ticipate in a system that brings us goods made with it in a way that is so contemporary it has many taking include random urine drug testing, with fewer prisoners prison labor in China or by kids and women earning a another look at his philosophy. In the Communist testing positive each time. Officers also sent many pris­ dollar a day in Laps or Cambodia? Manifesto, Marx detailed not only the dizzying pace at oners to segregation for minor rule violations that a few It is not that these issues had not been talked about which capitalism revolutionized production but also its years before never were segregation walks. Prisoners for years. They certainly were. However it took the WTO narrow ideology: "In the place of the numberless inde­ often had to shower in cold water at least several times protests to bring them all into focus as aspects of the feasible chartered freedoms, [the bourgeoisie] has set up a month during cold and hot months. Stateville does not same globalized capitalism. Open democratic delibera­ that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade." (For provide adequate hygiene and clothing items mandated tion on such a total range of issues impelled participants a philosophic discussion of the relevance of Marx to by the Illinois Revised Statutes for prisoners. today's globalized capitalism, see "Celebrations of the to act, to express their solidarity with the broad range of 150th anniversary of The Communist Manifesto," avail­ To an outsider, it may be hard to have any sym­ humanity fighting this global system, beginning with an able from New & Letters.) pathy for prisoners. You are probably thinking, absolute certainty of the need to shut down the WTO. "Hej^ they deserve whatever they get. Deal with it." However, these same prisoners, over 90% of WORKERS AND ENVmONMENTALISTS ABROAD AT HOME them, will return to society, possibly being "mad The Nov. 30 demonstrations made the WTO the most Today's globally integrated commodity production as hell'' because they were treated like animals. visible manifestation of the totally undemocratic essence with its much touted U.S.-centered high-tech prosperity Contrary to all the negative occurrences at of capitalism. It was a crucial milestone that raised has as its foundation sweated labor both abroad and Stateville, some prisoners are using this time to many new questions about the meaning and future increasingly in this country's bottom tier economy— develop themselves spiritually, mentally, emotion­ direction of the movement. A whole new generation expe­ from chicken and fish farm processing to textiles and ally and physically. rienced the power of mass revolt as well as a new broad- call centers. It is based as well on criminalizing the poor Let this review of Stateville motivate you to get based coalescence with workers. As USWA (Steelworker) and homeless, with now over two million in prisons involved with prison issues that revolve around humane President George Becker put it at a Nov. 29 forum on where there is growing use of prison labor (See pages 3 conditions and treatment. These men in prison need Global Trade Unionism, "These kids want change, and and 10). your support to make it through the deplorable, desper­ they are not going to wait for us. We have to catch up." While Black participation in the Seattle protests ate and desolate prison conditions which will only wors­ However, the AFL-CIO leadership, seeing the power of was small, Black masses have repeatedly declared en. Stop the madness!!! genuine democracy in direct actions, decided to do every­ this system unviable and in need of tearing down. Tiberius Mays thing they could to divert the march of labor away from Like the response of many Black leaders to the 1992 P.O. Box 112 N92625 their planned destination at the convention site. Los Angeles Rebellion, Clinton and his friends in the Joliet, DL 60434-0112 Thousands of workers, especially Steelworkers and labor bureaucracy hope to confine the struggle to the Longshoremen of the ILWU, defied the AFL-CIO leaders electoral arena. But workers, at least the rank and and joined the youth braving the police assault. Many file, more often take their cue from the arena of pro­ workers, who had sat in rapt attention as labor and duction. "Every worker," one Seattle protester human rights activists from poor countries described their explained, "has an immediate face for the undemocra­ conditions of life and labor under multi-national corpora­ tic character of the WTO in the person of their boss." in in ''ill nil 11 tions, were not the same people at the end of the week. The labor bureaucracy's yearning for co-partnership In solidarity with the WTO protests, the West Coast with capitalists, asking for a place at the WTO's bar­ Longshoremen shut down the coastal ports for eight gaining table, is at odds with the notion of genuine hours. The ILWU has recently shown an international democracy of workers taking control of their own lives and social consciousness by refusing to cross picket lines and with the direct action of the youth and workers in in of support of dockworkers in Liverpool and striking in Seattle. Clinton and now Gore, who the AFL-CIO support Mumia Abu-Jamal. Some business journalists bureaucrats have adopted as their candidate, espouse i w v i pondered how the Longshoremen could bring the new and administer the "free trade" ideology of the WTO economy, based on just-in-time globally integrated pro­ and have done so ever since Clinton quickly forgot duction, to a virtual standstill in a matter of days. ILWU that he made human rights in China an issue in the Revolutionary International President Brian McWilliams, in his speech 1992 election. at the Seattle WTO protest rally, declared that far from As Marx once said, politicians bow to capital because Prisoners Speak: being against trade, "the interests of working people it is "an alienated social power which has gained an transcend national and local boundaries, and...labor sol­ autonomous position and confronts society as a thing, Selected Prisoner idarity truly means that when necessary we will engage and as the power that the capitalist has through this Correspondence, 1998-1999 in concrete action...Dont ever forget it—it is the labor of thing." On the one hand, the WTO protests questioned working people that produces all the wealth." whether to appeal, in a capitalist system, to state "sov­ ereignty," in other words, government-to-government INTERNATIONALIST FORUM relations based on regulating more or less the interna­ NOW AVAILABLE! The WTO meeting came on the heels of the Clinton tional flow of things, commodities and capital. administration's announcement that it had just com­ The labor bureaucracy, on the other hand, wants to Read what's going on behind the walls of pleted ah agreement to invite China to join the WTO. partner with Clinton and Gore and become a player in America's 'prison-industrial complex.' That made the testimony of Cai Chong Guo, a trade their arena of state-brokered agreements because, union leader in China at the time of the Tiananmen above all, they fear the workers confronting the "alien­ revolt, all the more important. He described the ated social power" of capital through their own self- Only $5 plus $W postage actual conditions for workers in China in graphic activity in the workplace. The appeal to U.S. "sover­ terms as sweated labor multiplied many fold as a eignty" also comes from liberals like Ralph Nader. This To order see literature ad on page 7 for new address. result of China's trade opening to the West. Much plays right into the hands of neo-fascists like Pat JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2000 NEWS & LETTERS Page 11 'War on youth' in California Struggle in Aceh intensifies Oakland, Col. —The insanity of this society is most recently reflected in ex-governor Pete Wilson's initiative New York—The mass movement for independence the administrators have fled Aceh, especially since the called "Gang Violence and Youth Crime Prevention." from Indonesia continues in Aceh, the province on the west­ attacks on police stations Dec. 4, the anniversary of the This initiative^ known as Proposition 21 will allow pros­ ern end of Sumatra. But in spite of the demonstration Nov. guerrilla movement's declaration of independence. ecutors to lock up youth as young as 14 in adult facilities 8 by half the population, the Indonesian government still Civilians are afraid of the police and military anyway, so for the "crime" of spraying graffiti. Proposition 21 will refuses to schedule a referendum on Aceh's future status. now people call on Black Cat for help instead. Its student make property damage of $400 a felony strike. Instead, it has sent more and more special military units to members investigate common crimes as well as political The youth organizing against this initiative rightly the province, who beat and kill civilian activists every day. threats, assaults and provocations. Recently, when hun­ call it a "War on Youth." They held a number of demon­ Some people think Jakarta will not dare to repeat its dreds of people in a refugee camp were poispned, Black strations, hip-hop benefits, educationals, petition drives September slaughter of Cat found the boy who and other events since the fall to warn people about its the East Timorese, espe­ did it and learned that he implications. There was a large contingent of youth cially after parliament was paid tir do so by against Proposition 21 at the San Francisco Martin began an investigation of someone connected to the Luther King, Jr., freedom parade on Jan. 17. A young military "abuses in Aceh, military. woman, for example, said "Youth were heavily involved but the repression is get­ In the areas where gov­ in the Civil Rights Movement. Proposition 21 would ting worse. It seems that ernment personnel, com­ lock us up before we have a chance to do anything." A Indonesia is instituting a posed of military hierar­ young Asian woman pointed out that California is num­ counter-revolution early, chies and police, have ber one in prison building and 41st in school spending. creating fear and confu­ fled, people are reaching A young Black man said: "You can get a job in prison, sion in the population and back into Aceh's history to but you can't get one on the outside. They pay you 15 the mass movement.. create self-governing vil­ cents an hour to make a chip, but when you get out, you Members of special units lages. These have leader­ think they'll pay you $22 an hour to do the same thing? of the army, disguised as ship composed of four No! Because now you have a record." the elite police mobile elders, one expert in each Many are concerned with the loosened criteria for brigade, are attack­ field religion, law, cus­ definition of a gang. You can be entered into the gang ing people, _ spreading toms, and the local eco­ database solely on suspicion and then convicted of a rumors and provoking vio­ nomic base. Decisions are felony by association. Gang member is a new code word lence as an excuse to made by meetings of the reimpose martial law. primarily for minority youth. Police confront youth at a recent pro-referendum demonstration. whole village. This proposition continues the anti-human spirit of The mass civilian movement that exploded last year (see The Indonesian government portrays the indepen­ the 3 Strikes law, which used racist images of violent December 1999 News & Letters) is led by student organi­ dence movement as comprised of Muslim fundamental­ offenders to give prosecutors vast powers and resulted zations, who are planning to hold a referendum on inde­ ists and guerrillas, when in fact it is a mass-based in the incarceration of millions of non-violent people pendence themselves in June or July in light of Jakarta's movement against military repression and for self- like drug addicts. Of the fastest growing segment of the refusal to do so. Student groups held a rally Jan. 3 in the determination. Jakarta has offered to hold a referen­ prison population, women, 80% are convicted of drug- capital of Banda Aceh to mark the first anniversary of the dum just on whether to have Islamic law apply in Aceh, related offenses. What no one is discussing is the impact massacre in Pusong. In that poor fishing village in north­ but the province already has that right. Last year, it of this proposition on young women, who don't even ern Aceh, the military killed six unarmed villagers and also won the right to keep a slightly larger share of the need to commit a crime" to be locked up. Currently they wounded many more. No one has been prosecuted for the wealth it produces. are locked up for status offenses, like truancy. massacre. At the recent demonstration, the "police" point­ Aceh is rich in natural gas and is highly industrial­ —Urszula Wislanka ed M-16 rifles at the demonstrators and were closing in, so ized, but most of what it produces does not benefit the the students ended the rally. Going back to the office of the impoverished population. Mobil Oil is partners with the student group Student Solidarity for the People, they were Indonesian company that owns the gas, and Mobil has Thoughts on nature and labor attacked by three truckloads of "special police." Three stu­ looked the other way while some 3,000 people have been dents were hospitalized after the soldiers finished kicking killed by the military over the last 11 years. There is The Seattle mass protest on Nov. 30,1999 saw youth them and beating them with fists and guns, all the time evidence Mobil even lent the military bulldozers to dig and labor united against the World Trade Organization. saying, "You can call for your f g human rights, there mass graves. The reality is that global capitalism is squeezing the life are no human rights in Aceh." The Student Coalition for Aceh was recently formed out of humanity. This is reflected in sweated labor being Some student groups recently formed a new organiza­ in New York, and invites the participation of students suffocated the world over through industrial pollution. tion called Black Cat to protect the movement from around the country and around the world who want to The new of labor and youth fighting on common attacks aiid provocateurs. Many of the police and 80% of publicize events in Aceh. — AnneJaclard ground is a unity being forged by nature, interpreted not just as wildlife preservation, but the connection between nature and humanity; human nature as Marx characterized it as being central to the full development Youth Activists resist Iraq embargo of the human being, i.e. freedom. That concept seems to run central to how the envi­ Memphis, Tenn.—On Dec. 18, the one-year UNICEF, in their 1998 report on Iraq, states that 5,700 ronmental movement, with youth in the forefront, can anniversary of Operation Desert Fox—the U.S. bombing Iraqi children under the age of five die every month due link up with labor which sees jobs exported overseas to campaign against Iraq named after the infamous Nazi to the UN economic sanctions. a cheaper labor force. The call from labor has been to tank commander Erwin Rommel—the Humanitarian Hospitals lack basics; birth defects in Iraq since condemn those corporations who export jobs abroad. Action Collective and supporters assembled at the Operation Desert Storm have risen drastically as have The Third World standard of living should be equal to Crosstown Post Office here to protest eight years of a cancer rates due to the U.S. use of armor-piercing the laws that govern U.S. industry in order to give U.S. merciless U.S. foreign policy and to mail several hun­ depleted Uranium—which has also been cited as a workers an equal playing field. "Foreign" labor cannot dred pounds of medicine and textbooks. direct cause of Gulf War Syndrome. The economy, infra­ be exploited tenfold. In a sense, it is a call for workers of The demonstration was followed by a forum/panel at structure, and health of Iraqis are in absolute ruin. the world to unite. the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center which included Without water sanitation systems and the ability to The exhaustion of capitalist production is reflected in Angela Schindler, who recently went on a Voices in the make or import medicine, Iraqis, especially the young the ground soil, clear cutting and destruction of the Wilderness delegation to Iraq; Father Joe Kerrigan of and infirm suffer slow death by U.S. foreign policy. Brazilian rain forest. The exploitation of nature by man Immaculate Conception Catholic Church; and Mid- The Humanitarian Action Collective conducted a is not far removed from the exploitation of man by man. South Peace and Justice board member, Pete Gathje. medicine drive recently forthe people of Iraq. Hundreds With the capitalist exhaustion of lal>or comes the star­ The UN economic sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990 of bottles of medicine were collected and sent to Sister vation and hunger of humanity.' are devastating. The Oil For Food Program barely Anne Montgomery. Transporting these contraband If nature is not just the practical activity of humani­ meets the needs of the people, and importing even sim­ catheters and children's cough medicine, a delegation of ty, nature is the internal passion and hunger for libera­ ple medicine and sanitation equipment is impossible. Dominican nuns from New York City departs for an ille­ tion in action. "We do not, therefore see in Nature the coming-to-be gal humanitarian mission to Iraq in February. of the universal; that is, the universal side, of Nature Operation Desert Storm saw the end of weapons inspec­ How to contact has no history. The science, political constitutions, etc., NEWS & LETTERS COMMITTEES tions and the beginning of an unrelenting series of air on the other hand, have a history, for they are the uni­ strikes over the two "no-fly zones" in northern and south- versal in the sphere of Mind" (Hegel's Philosophy of CHICAGO MM1M V«%Bir ' em Iraq. Since our government gave the Iraqis bombs for n»w W VIKK Nature, p. 280). 36 S. Wabash, Room 1440 Christmas last year, the Humanitarian Action Collective New life for the future world, universal life to develop in Chicago, IL 60603 P.O. Box 196 wanted to make a gesture of peace toward the people of Phone 31Z 236-0799 which labor creates in harmony with nature is in the.hands Grand Central Station Iraq by demonstrating our resistance to the sanctions. of those that do the work. Reason is the key to action. Fax 312 236-0725 New York, NY 10163 MEETINGS —Lee Lawrence and Ceylon Mooney —Gene Ford Call for Information 212 663 3631 MEETINGS Sundays, 6:30 p.m. P.O. Box 27205 Washington Square Church Detroit Ml 48227 From the May 1960 News 133 W. 4th St. (Parish House MEETINGS Since inception of Civil Rights & Letters: "A Marxist- Tuesdays, 6 p.m. parlor), Manhattan Humanist looks at the free­ Central Methodist Church dom fighters of South U.S.A." Woodward and Adams PrO. Box 3345 Movement in Greensboro, N.C LOSANGELES Oakland, CA 94609 by Ray a Dunayevskaya P.O. Box 29194 510 658 1448 Los Angeles, CA 90029 MEETINGS The greatest achievement of the pre­ What the Freedom Fighters of South MEETINGS Sundays, 6:30 p.m. sent Freedom Fighters in South USA is USA show is that revolution is only the Sundays, 5:30 p.m. 2015 Center St. (atMilvia) its own working existence. The elemen­ evolution in the fullness of time and in Echo Park United Berkeley . tal outburst of Southern Negro college the elemental form called forth by the Methodist Church students took the form of sitting down at needs of the movement. The form any fur­ 1226N. Alvarado MIEIWIPHIS & segregated lunch counters, asking to be ther development of this movement will (North of Sunset, side door) served, and continuing to sit down after take no one can foretell, or dictate. What 1910 Madison Ave, PMB 59 service was refused. we can do is not to create new points of P.O. Box 3384, Hint, Ml 48502 Memphis, TN 38104 The spontaneous movement spread confusion in the thinking of the young from Greensboro, North Carolina, freedom fighters as their doing leads them INTERNET where it began on February 1, rill it now to grapple with the foundation of a new Kim«aff WORLDWIDE WEB covers the cnriie South, including society whose point of departure and [email protected] www.newsandletters.org Mississippi. In that notorious lynch point of return alike would center around INTERNATIONAL MARXIST-HUMANISTS state, however, the form of the move­ the relation of man to man—the relation ment is not that of the sit-down, but the of man to man sans exploitation and discrimination. BCM Box 3514, London, England WC1N 3XX more passive boycott... http://members.aol.com/THEHOBGOBL/index.html Page 12 NEWS & LETTERS JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2000 i Our Life and Times Crisis in Russia in wake of Chechen war by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes mid-January, strong Chechen counterattacks besieged of them support uncritically their current leadership several towns the Russians thought to have been behind which contains its share of Islamic fundamentalists, Boris Yeltsin's surprise Jan. 1 resignation, which the lines. These counterattacks are sure to continue corrupt politicians, and gangsters. allowed the former KGB man, Vladimir Putin, to even if the Russians succeed in taking Grozny. For their part, the Western powers, especially the assume the presidency, has deepened the drift toward Putin is discovering what Yeltsin learned in 1994-96: U.S., have shed crocodile tears, but done nothing to sup­ authoritarianism. Putin has not hesitated to form an Although Russia's technological superiority allows it to port Chechnya. They have ignored the fact that Russian alliance with the Stalinist Communist Party. His recent pound civilians with impunity, when its demoralized troop levels in the Caucasus now surpass the limits set and very relative popularity has rested on a single and often unpaid ground troops try to hold territory, by the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe. They issue, his appeal to the rankest Russian chauvinism they are no match for Chechens fighting for the inde­ have refused to slow or cut off their massive economic against national minorities as he has conducted a bru­ pendence of their country. aid which is financing the war. tal war against the tiny republic of Chechnya. Putin has Inside Russia, courageous human rights activists The Chechen independence struggle has a long histo­ also attempted to reassert Russian power with some such as Sergei Kovaliev and Yelena Bonner, widow of ry and will not be suppressed. In 1853, Karl Marx, a nuclear saber rattling, admitting for the first time that Andrei Sakharov, have been among the few to openly strong supporter of Chechnya, wrote that the failure of Russia would conduct a first strike "if necessary." condemn this imperialist war. However, even some of the West to support them in that period would "neither The new Chechen war, on the heels of the 1994-96 these activists, including Kovaliev, have opposed out-voice history nor silence the mountaineers, the one, has devastated Chechnya but done absolutely noth­ Bonner's open support for an independent Chechnya. clashing of whose arms proves to the world that the ing to stem the deteriorating conditions of life and labor The Chechen people clearly demand this, although few Caucasus does not...belong to Russia" (Marx-Engels of the Russian people. Since September, Russian forces Collected Works, Vol. 12, 406). have mercilessly bombed Chechnya's towns and vil­ Having suffered greatly under the Tsars, the Chechen lages, following that up with looting and murder. They people experienced even worse under Stalin, who in have driven hundreds of thousands from their homes 1944 deported this entire people (and others) en masse and have not hesitated to machine-gun refugees. Their to Central Asia. Hundreds of thousands died along the corrupt officers have also sold off military supplies, way. Inside Stalin's labor camps, the Chechens stood including thousands of arms to the Chechen resistance. out among other oppressed nationalities for their The tide of battle began to turn in late November, absolute refusal to accept Russian authority. That spir­ when Chechens began to ambush Russian patrols. By it, still alive today, is haunting Russia. Hijacking of Indian plane Socialist win in Chile In December, Islamic militants supporting the seces­ Ricardo Lagos narrowly won (by 2.5%) the presidential sion of Kashmir from India hijacked an Indian plane, forc­ election in Chile on Jan. 16 against the right-wing candi­ ing it to land in Afghanistan. In the end, the Indian gov­ date, Joaquin Lavin. Lagos is the first socialist president ernment agreed to free several Kashmiri militants, the since Salvador AUende was overthrown in a bloody mili­ hostages were released, and the hijackers melted away. tary coup in 1973 led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The hijacking was yet another chapter in the half-centu-. The closeness of the vote in part demonstrated how ry-old rivalry between mainly Hindu India and overwhelm­ both candidates attempted to distance themselves from ingly Muslim Pakistan, the latter a supporter of secession the events of 1973 and what they represent. Lavin, who for majority Muslim Kashmir. In 1998, the rulers of India once held a position in Pinochet's government and visited and then Pakistan each tested nuclear weapons openly. Chechen refugee wanders the streets near Grozny. him in London after Pinochet was arrested in 1998, cam­ The Indian government has publicly blamed Pakistan for paigned as a U.S.-style "compassionate conservative." the hijacking, heightening tensions once again. Lagos ran with the center-left Concertacion coalition, Last October, the Hindu chauvinist Atal Behari Panama gets canal mainly Christian Democrats and Socialists, who have Vajpayee government won a solid majority in elections in held the presidency in Chile since' 1990 when Pinochet's India. This same government began the nuclear tests in The Panama Canal was relinquished from U.S. con­ dictatorship ended. While Lagos had once been part of 1998. Also in October, Pakistan's unpopular and authori­ trol on Dec. 31, after nearly a century of U.S. occupation Allende's socialist government, he long since moved with tarian Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was overthrown by of the Canal Zone, under provisions of the 1978 treaty the social democratic tendency away from Marxism. the even more authoritarian General Pervez Musharraf, in brokered by then-President Jimmy Carter who led the Both candidates opposed Pinochet's extradition to a pattern of corruption and coups that has marked the his­ U.S. delegation at a ceremony held Dec. 14. No ranking . Spain to stand trial on charges of torture and murder, tory of that country since it broke away from India in 1947. members of the Clinton administration attended. and tried to keep the issue low key during the cam­ Reactionary U.S. pundits nostalgically extolled the paign. Now that the British government has ruled ! canal as the technological crown jewel of turn-of-the-cen- Pinochet medically unfit to be sent to Spain to stand ] tury imperialism, failing to credit the brutalization and trial, he may quickly return to Chile. This could be the Irish accords underway deaths of tens of thousands of Black, ladino and native first test of Lagos' presidency, since many of his sup­ The implementation of the April 1998 Northern Panamanian workers who built the canal under the rigid porters want Pinochet's self-conferred immunity over­ Ireland accords leading to political power sharing race-nationality system set up and maintained by the U.S. turned so that he can be prosecuted. Relatives of between Protestants and Catholics got.underway Dec. 2. Nearly half the population of Panama lives in poverty. Pinochet's victims have filed nearly 50 legal cases, to Two elements were central: pressure applied by Britain Newly-elected President Moscoso has insisted that the which Pinochet will have to respond. and the U.S., and support from the majority of Irish, canal be run for profit, but she has not indicated whether north and south, for an end to both paramilitary and the profits will go to improving social conditions, or how state supported violence. the government intends to replace the $350 million which The coalition government, headed by David Trimble of U.S. control generated. The ruling elite is making money looming next month... the majority Protestant Ulster Unionist Party and includ­ in real estate and development contracts in the former ing representatives of Sinn Fein, terminated rule by Canal Zone, which is also being "globalized" through for­ A special section introducing Britain which was imposed 25 years ago at the height of eign projects ranging from port facilities to luxury resorts. the Catholic minority struggle for civil rights. Over 15,000 On another front, Panamanian environmentalists are the recently-published Chinese British troops stiH remain. For the first time since parti­ warning against the increased degradation of the water­ tion, the Irish Republic has revoked claims on Ulster, and shed through erosion due to construction and the settle­ edition of Marxism and Freedom a few tentative cross border bodies have been set up. ment of poor communities, as each ship passing through by Raya Dunayevskaya, with a The current implementation, however, is still on shaky the locks uses 52 million gallons of fresh water. ground. Trimble and the Unionists have set a Feb. 12 dead­ December also marked the tenth anniversary of the new introduction. line for evidence that the IRA, which has observed a cease­ 1989 U.S. invasion that overthrew Noriega. The huge fire since July 1997, has begun turning in arms to a third U.S. Southern Command military headquarters has Don't miss it! party commission. If not, they will pull out of the coalition moved its operations from Panama to Miami, but under government, likely setting off a new round of mindless sec­ the 1978 treaty, the U.S. retains the right to intervene tarian killing to which the majority is so opposed. if it deems the canal is under threat. NEWS AND LETTERS COMMITTEES Who We Are And What We Stand For News and Letters Committees is an National Editorial Board and National what is, but to reveal and further Presentation on the Dialectics of Orga­ organization of Marxist-Humanists Chairwoman of the Committees from develop the revolutionary Humanist nization and Philosophy in The Philo­ that since its birth has stood for the its founding to 1987. Charles Denby future inherent in the present. The sophic Moment of Marxist-Human­ abolition of capitalism, both in its pri­ (1907-83), a Black production worker, new visions of the future which ism (1989), and donated new supple­ vate property form as in the U.S., and author of Indignant Heart: A Black Dunayevskaya left us in her work from mentary volumes to the Raya its state property form, as it has his­ Worker's Journal, became editor of the 1940s to the 1980s are rooted in her Dunayevskaya Collection. News and torically appeared in state-capitalist the paper from 1955 to 1983. discovery of Marx's Marxism in its orig­ Letters Committees aims at developing regimes calling themselves Communist Dunayevskaya's works, Marxism and inal form as a new Humanism and in and concretizing this body of ideas for as in Russia and China. We stand for Freedom, from 1776 until Today her re-creation of that philosophy for our time. the development of new human rela­ (1958), Philosophy and Revolution: our age as Marxist-Humanism. This is In opposing this capitalistic, racist, tions, what Marx first called a new From Hegel to Sartre and from recorded in the documents on microfilm sexist, heterosexist, class-ridden soci­ Humanism. Marx to Mao (1973), and Rosa Lux­ and open to all under the title The ety, we have organized ourselves into a News & Letters was founded in emburg, Women's Liberation, and Raya Dunayevskaya Collection— committee form of organization rather 1955, the year of the Detroit wildcat Marx's Philosophy of Revolution Marxist-Humanism: A Half-Century than any elitist party "to lead." We par­ strikes against Automation and the (1982) spell out the philosophic ground of Its World Development. ticipate in all class and freedom strug­ Montgomery Bus Boycott against seg- of Marx's Humanism internationally, as Dunayevskaya's philosophic compre­ gles, nationally and internationally. As regation-^activities which signaled a American Civilization on Trial con­ hension of her creation and develop­ our Constitution states: "It is our new movement from practice that was cretizes it on the American scene and ment of Marxist-Humanism, especially aim... to promote the firmest unity itself a form of theory. News & Let­ shows the two-way road between the as expressed in her 1980s writings, among workers, Blacks and other ters was created so that the voices of U.S. and Africa. presents the vantage point for re-creat­ minorities, women, youth and those revolt from below could be heard This body of ideas challenges all ing her ideas anew. Seeking to grasp intellectuals who have broken with the unseparated from the articulation of a those desiring freedom to transcend the that vantage point for ourselves and ruling bureaucracy of both capital and philosophy of liberation. limitations of post-Marx Marxism, make it available to all who struggle labor." We do hot separate mass activi­ Raya Dunayevskaya (1910-1987), beginning with Engels. In light of the for freedom, we have published ties from the activity of thinking. Send founder of the body of ideas of Marxist- crises of our nuclearly armed world, it Dunayevskaya's original 1953 philo­ for a copy of the Constitution of News Humanism, became Chairwoman of the becomes imperative not only to reject sophic breakthrough and her final 1987 and Letters Committees.