NEWS & LETTERS Theory/Practice 'Human Power is its own end'—Marx

Vol. 37 - No. 5 JUNE, 1992 250 Editorial Article: American Civilization on Trial What is the meaning of the Los Angeles rebellion? by Lou Turner Despite its every attempt to go on with "business as usual," America has changed. The rage, April 29 to May 1, brought on by the outrageous acquittal of four Los Angeles policemen for the videotaped beating of Rodney King the night of March 3, 1991, leaped like a Califor­ nia brush fire igniting the social dry tinder of other ur­ ban areas throughout the nation. Within 24 hours of the verdict some 1,000 structural fires were reported in L.A. County. So widespread was the rebellion that by dusk of the first day Police Com­ mission President Stanley Sheinbaum conceded that the National Guard wouldn't be enough to quell the unrest. "The problem is widening, intensifying. You have a whole social upheaval," anguished Sheinbaum. Although the corner of Florence and Normandy was the South Central Los Angeles (SCLA) flashpoint, the rebellion spread like a brush fire throughout Los An­ geles County. In fact, though the focus of the media was Black youth take to the streets early in the rebellion. Special section on the Los Angeles multiracial "looting" of fashionable commercial sections greatest number of blows to a prostrate Rodney King, reheBioa* pgs. 5,6,7 of San Francisco; and Las Vegas, which continues to be and the one heard on police transmissions laughing af­ in a state of sporadic revolt three weeks after the L.A. terward and making racial slurs—is to be retried in Los rebellion. Angeles County, according to the May 22 ruling of invariably Black people, the images flashing across the Before the smoke had cleared in LA., it was estimat­ television screen were of a broad multicultural "social Judge Stanley Weisberg, the judge who originally shift- ed that the rebellion had been the largest U.S. urban continued on page 5) upheaval" involving Latinos as well as white youth, upheaval of this century. The death toll stands at 60, stretching from Long Beach in the south and Venice in the number injured 2,283, the total arrests as of May 19 the west, to Pomona in the east and right to the out­ are more than 10,000. skirts of Simi Valley in the north. From the Writings of Raya For George Bush, the national scope of the outrage NEW STAGE OF U.S. AUTHORITARIANISM Dunayevskaya—Spontaneity, and rebellion in response to the Rodney King verdict Organization, Dialectics .p. 4 raised the spectre of spontaneous national insurrection. Los Angeles' "recovery" from its second major rebel­ The deployment of 7,000 National Guard troops by Cali­ lion in three decades is sure to leave the rest of SCLA as Essay—From Alienation to Free­ fornia Governor Pete Wilson, and the dispatching of desolate as Watts is today, 27 years after its mass revolt 1,000 federal marshals and Border Patrol Officers, signalled a new "Black Power" stage of Black social dom in Marx's 1844 Manuscripts along with 4,000 federal troops from Ft. Ord and Ft. struggle. Now, the same criminal justice system that .p. 10 Pendleton by Bush and Gen. Colin Powell, gave the three days of mass revolt found guilty of flagrant social green light to local governments across the nation to injustice in the Rodney King trial is once again the impose state of emergency measures and curfews. stage of a new round of high profile trials. Hardest hit were: Atlanta, where students from At­ Laurence Powell—the officer accused of delivering the On the Inside lanta University and inner city residents battled police for several days; San Francisco Bay Area, where a state of emergency was called by Mayor Frank Jordan in re­ sponse to spontaneous revolts, marches and protests Deaths in Guadalajara: capitalism's true face that tied up traffic on the Bay Bridge and led to the Mexico City, Mexico—Wednesday, April 22, financial centers. Nevertheless, Pemex makes invest­ death emerged from the depths of the earth in the sec­ ments—not in maintenance but only for exploration ond biggest city in Mexico, Guadalajara. A series of ex­ and drilling of new oil wells, that is to say, investments Women fight plosions carved an impressive trench eight kilometers in accord with U.S. interests. (five miles) long; a total of ten explosions destroyed an ANTI-DEMOCRACY, AUTHORITARIANISM, entire neighborhood in the city's center. Officially, 200 PERVASIVE CORRUPTION capitalism's deaths are spoken of, but everyone in Mexico knows that the official figures always hide the magnitude of The other reasons for the disasters and tragedies in the tragedies; the people speak of more than 500 dead Mexico are basically anti-democracy, authoritarianism and thousands wounded. and pervasive corruption. Anti-democracy because there limitations is no citizen control over the politics and actions of the by B. Ann Lastelle PEMEX RESPONSIBILITY government—and Pemex is part of the state apparatus. The lot of working women in this recessionary, racist Worst of all is that this is not the first time and, un­ Congress controls nothing but is completely dominated and sexist economy continues to deteriorate: A fire at fortunately, everything seems to indicate that it will not by deputies and senators of the official party (PRI), who the Imperial Foods chicken processing plant in Hamlet, be the last. This time the main culprit for the death rubber-stamp all the government's initiatives and poli­ N.C., in September 1991 killed 25 workers, 18 of whom and destruction is Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the tics. The presence of the opposition in the legislature is were women; 12 were Black. One hundred forty work­ quasigovernmental enterprise that controls the various merely symbolic. ers, 80% of whom are women, many Black or Latina, sectors of the oil industry. It was also responsible for Authoritarianism is an essential element of political struck Rainfair, Inc., in Racine, Wise, for over five 456 deaths—according to official data, or much more ac­ life in Mexico. All those who have power (from the pres­ months. The settlement has both strikers and strike re­ cording to the people—Nov. 19, 1984, when its gas res­ ident down to the lowest policeman) enjoy total impuni­ placements working in the plant, but after six months ervoir exploded in San Juanico, a poor neighborhood of ty and the ordinary citizen is completely helpless the company will decide, on the basis of productivity, Mexico City. against them. One can't count the judiciary because it is not seniority, who works and who gets laid off. The most serious thing is that Pemex has installa­ subordinate to the central power structure, which is Women are almost twice as likely as men to work at tions, stores of combustibles, refineries, etc., the vertical. minimum wage jobs. The median weekly earnings for length and breadth of the country, and absolutely Corruption is another universal, everyday element in Black women in 1991 were $323, compared to $374 for all these installations, pipelines, etc., are time Mexico. Sheltered by power, the functionaries do all Black men and white women, and $509 for white men. bombs that could blow up at any moment. Mexico is kinds of illicit business and profit permanently from Twice as many women as men age 45 to 64 have no a giant mine field in which there is no safety for hu­ their positions. They subordinate everything to their ra­ health insurance. Roughly 40% of working women com­ man existence (not to speak of the systematic de­ pacious private interest because they know no one over­ plain of sexual harrassment on the job. struction of nature). sees or controls them and they enjoy total impunity. Yet despite the deep recession, the sexism and the There are various reasons this situation persists; in Such is Mexico at the end of the century. And all racism, working women are doing more than just strug­ the case of San Juanico and Guadalajara, where Pemex the reasons discussed here can Be reduced to one: gling to survive. They are thinking, saying and acting is the direct and principal culprit, the main cause is the we live in a capitalist world where money—and on what a Black woman Delta Pride Catfish worker, lack of maintenance of installations and pipelines. For more specifically profit, accumulation of surplus who helped to organize a union in the largely unorgan­ ten years they haven't invested a single peso in main­ value—molds all social relations, the whole struc­ ized South, said in a recent interview: "We're human tenance; accidents happen every day but don't affect ture of society. And to speak of capitalism today is beings and you can't treat us like this." public opinion since they are hidden by the government to speak of a capitalist world market, with centers (and can be hidden because they don't cause hundreds LIFE OUTSIDE WORK and peripheries. of deaths but "only" one or two or several serious injur­ Mexico is part of the capitalist periphery, and in the That striving to become full human beings comes out ies). periphery one often observes with greater clarity the in so many ways. While I was working in a meatpacking Pemex's lack of investment in maintenance is mainly barbarity implied by the dominion of capital and its de­ plant in Chicago, the company offered to open contract due to the government's adoption since 1982 of a politi­ velopment (the accumulation of capital) over human be­ negotiations early in order to upgrade our medical and cal economy dictated by the International Monetary ings, and, in general, over life. That is to say, capital pension benefits. The only other point on which they Fund and the World Bank. This political economy origi­ systematically destroys or pillages humanity as much as were willing to negotiate was wages. nally consisted of austerity plans to fight infla­ nature, and that is seen with total clarity in the capital­ For the whole year before workers had been talking, tion—supposedly. Actually, the political economy hasn't ist periphery. Such is the case of Mexico. Here capital not about wages and benefits, but about the conditions changed, it is of a neoliberal style, much to the taste of shows its true face: death and destruction. (continued on page 3) the White House in Washington and the international —Student Page2 NEWS & LETTERS JUNE, 1992 Conference: 'Women Tell the Truth' by Laurie Cashdan as a form of abuse of power," in relation to "economic Women- So many women responded to the announcement of coercion" and forms of oppression which play on feel­ the April 25 daylong conference, "Women Tell the ings of vulnerability, like rape and incest. Worldwide Truth: A Conference on Parity, Power and Sexual Ha­ I was excited when Hill said she finds inspiration in rassment," with Anita Hill as the keynote speaker, that slave narratives, in the determination of women who the organizing coalition turned down over 2,000 "rose above pain to educate the world about atrocities byJWary Jo Grey of slavery." She insisted law itself should not be sep­ preregistrations. The 2,000 women who managed to reg­ In Pakistan, Women Against Rape is waging a war ister early enough for what many called "the Anita Hill arated from women's experiences and narratives. Unfortunately, the full significance of Hill invoking against the increase in the use of sexual violence against conference" started pouring into Hunter College's audi­ women as a tool of political repression, by police and the torium at 7:30 a.m. By the time Professor Hill began to the spirit of slave narratives was submerged by the way the conference organizers defined their "parity, power military. Veena Hayat, a friend of opposition leader and speak at 9:30, after an introduction by Gloria Steinem, former President Benazir Bhutto, was savagely beaten an electrifying feeling of anticipation had filled the room and sexual harassment" theme. All day petitions circu­ lated for the National Parity Campaign, demanding that and assaulted by five masked men who broke into her and Hill was greeted with a long standing ovation. home. Kursheed Begum was grabbed by police, beaten This feeling of anticipation, the sense that a new major parties support women candidates, and the Free­ dom of Choice Act. and raped. Her 16-year-old son was arrested, shackled stage of militancy is unfolding among women sick and tortured—yet never charged. The police are trying and tired of how we are degraded in this society, But we want more than that. That was clear at a coa­ to force her to drop charges against them in exchange prevailed throughout the day. Over 150 women's or­ lition building session, where each woman said why she for her son. Both women refuse to compromise. ganizations co-sponsored the event, and about 75 set had come. A Black Medicaid manager was furious about Medicaid cuts and the problems of immigrant women Information: Women Living Under Muslim Laws up information tables. Hundreds of white, Black, * * * Asian and Latina women new to feminist events who get no pre-natal or neo-natal care, whose babies die. Her daughter, a neo-natal care provider, was organ­ A woman petty officer is fighting a written warning of signed up on every mailing list they saw. Everyone "misconduct" from her boss, the U.S. Navy, issued af­ felt they were present at a historic event. izing nurses pushed out of full-time jobs into per diem work. A third woman had come "to support Anita Hill ter she was beaten by an ex-boyfriend who broke into Anita Hill's speech contained a new aspect. Hill called her home. In a classic case of "blame the victim," the her talk "Unfinished Works," and described it as her and because I want to make as many connections with other African American women as I can." Navy warned her that "any further deficiencies" in her thoughts since the hearings and the calls, cards and let­ conduct could result in discharge. At the time of the ters she had received from across the U.S. She said that Their thoughts about economic and social crises in the U.S. went beyond sexual harassment. They beating she was refused counseling at the naval base's she had come to talk about society, not herself; the gen­ Family Advocacy Center because it was only for spouses eral, not the specific. Hill analyzed "sexual harassment saw women like ourselves, not politicians, as the source of transformation. But speakers from the Na­ of Navy personnel. tional Organization for Women and the Commission on the Status of Women lectured for so long about Warriors fight violence 200th Anniversary of: building single-issue coalitions that they allowed no time for audience discussion. Chicago, 111.—College women are so fed up with The one session where coalitions were not taken for violence against women that a group of women from granted was called "Race, Sexual Orientation, Social seven colleges created Campuses Organized Against A Vindication of the Class and Sexual Harassment." Over 200 attended, in­ Rape (COAR). On May 16 COAR sponsored a Take Back cluding Black women who critiqued both virulent sex­ The Night march and speakout that brought out about ism among Black nationalists and racism among white 200 angry women and many men—Black, Latino/a, and Rights of Woman feminists. This critique, raised repeatedly, was ex­ Asian, but mostly white, with a strong lesbian and gay pressed by a woman who exclaimed, "This is supposed presence. to be an action day. Why is this the only workshop on At the rally a white woman declared, "Pro-choice race?" Another woman insisted, "If white women keep means women deciding what to do with our bodies dealing with sexism and abortion in a single issue kind and lives, including who we will have sex with!" She of way, they won't get what they want." asked us to imagine life if rape didn't exist—half of This conference showed the passion and rage we have our lives would be different, the half that exists at been hearing from women since the Thomas hearings. night. She Said women could take night classes, ride We are already shaking up politics. But slave narratives the subway, and do whatever we wanted without went beyond politics to test the concept of freedom, in­ living in fear. cluding the sham nature of American democracy. Simi­ Women at the speakout echoed this desire for a differ­ larly, anger heard at the conference could shake up not ent way of life. One woman said she is tired of clutching only politics but feminist organizations which try to her mace and having her heart speed up every time she channel our passion for a new society into the frame­ steps outside at night alone. Another woman asked why work of the order we need to uproot. a woman's word isn't enough and talked about Anita Hill. Women spoke about how they have been threat­ ened with having their scholarships taken away at De Paul University for organizing against rape—just as vo­ Palestinian feminism cal feminists from Northwestern University have been investigated and intimidated by the FBL They demand Chicago, Ill.-On May 22-25, the Union of Pales­ that this unfreedom we all live under stop. tinian Women's Associations held its seventh annual convention here. A special feature of this conference One woman introduced herself as "a strong, proud was a keynote panel which included international speak­ Black lesbian warrior!" and said that we must all be­ ers and was attended by over 200 women and men of come warriors to fight against violence at its different races and nationalities. roots—oppression. She said as long as a Black man, like Rodney King, can be beaten and then find no justice; as Robin Morgan, feminist writer, poet and editor of Ms. long as lesbians and gays can be attacked; women, Jews, magazine spoke about her recent trip to Palestine/Israel Latinos, Asians, all of us will burn by the fire of vio­ and the "omnipresent open feminism" among women lence. there who face the attacks of the Israeli government as One Black man and one white spoke about how Chi­ Mary Wollstonecraft's portrait. Her hat is si­ well as the horrors of Islamic and Jewish fundamental­ cago is the same as apartheid South Africa and said that milar to those worn by French revolutionary ism. Morgan reported on the new organizing among Pal­ COAR needs to break down the economic and social bar­ women. estinian women against polygamy and "honor murders" riers that divide us by marching on the South Side of which allow a man to kill any female member of his Chicago. Another white man designated the conditions family if he suspects that she is involved with a man. This year, 1992, is the 200th anniversary of the women live under as "sexist martial law" and talked publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's phenomenal about howi under the guise of chivalry, men feel power­ Cheryl Harris, an African American woman law pro­ ful when they walk a woman home at night. He said book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. In fessor and Chrystos, a Native American woman activist 1792 this partisan of the French Revolution wrote men should keep the kindness, but get rid of the power from the Menominee Nation, spoke about the genocide trip. —Sonia passionately of women's rights and so shook up that has characterized the 500 years since Columbus England that she was denounced as a "philosophiz­ "discovered" the New World, and the ongoing genocide ing serpent" and "the hyena in petticoats." Her that is killing Black and Native American people in the love of freedom is seen in how she did not separate U.S. Harris reported the shocking fact that for every her demand for liberty for the French masses from Black woman born in the U.S., one is dying. She con­ her insistence for what was totally unique with cluded: "I heard in Los Angeles, the voice of rebellion, The Marxist-Humanist Theory her—freedom for women. the voice of the voiceless. That is why the Palestinian In her writings on the French Revolution, she women's struggle is not an abstraction to us." of State-Capitalism: Selected echoed what Marx was to say 52 years later. In 1790 Wollstonecraft challenged class-ridden society: The last two speakers, Simon Sharoni, an Israeli Writings by Raya Dunayevskaya "Though the enemies of the French Revolution de­ member of "Women's Organization for Political Prison­ spise the idea of the rights of men, yet they are very ers," and Eileen Kuttab, a Palestinian sociology profes­ sor from Birzeit University, pointed to the deep contra­ "It is true that the beginning of the end of strenuous to support the rights of nobility; it is Trotskyism did not burst forth openly until therefore evident that they suppose some men to dictions within the Middle East and how they have af­ fected women. Sharoni told a horrible story about an Is­ the Hitler-Stalin Pact failed to deter Trots- have rights, though not all! The few are entitled to ky from continuing to consider Russia 'a everything, the many, alas! to nothing!" In 1842 raeli soldier who killed a Palestinian woman in the West Bank and later killed his Jewish girlfriend. This re­ workers' state though degenerate' and to Marx expressed this as a generalization and extend­ call for its defense. Nevertheless, the ten­ ed "rights" to freedom: "Freedom is so much the vealed to her how both Palestinian and Israeli women are treated as "occupied territories." sions began in the mid-1980s before the ac­ essence of man that even its opponents realize it.... tual split in 1940. Some of us dissented No man fights freedom; he fights at most the free­ It was Eileen Kuttab's words which expressed the dom of others. Every kind of freedom has therefore strongest challenge. She spoke of the "widening gap be­ when we saw the Spanish Revolution always existed, only at one time as a special privi­ tween leaders and masses" within the Palestinian move­ crushed and asked, *My heavens, if Stalin's lege, at another time as a universal right." ment and criticized the ways in which "the nationalist murder of Trotskyists is not merely "frac­ issue has been imposed over social liberation" within tional," doesn't it mean that Stalin is actu­ When it came to women, Wollstonecraft was de­ women's organizations. She spoke with great concern ally preparing to participate in a fully im­ termined to make freedom a "universal right" and about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. She conclud­ perialist war in a global context?' That was "to show the wrongs of different classes of women, ed: "The Intifada is a starting point. But the liberation really the beginning of the end of Trotsky­ equally oppressive, though, from the difference of of women in a liberation struggle is more complicated ism." education, necessarily various." She railed against than it appears." "the peculiar Wrongs of Woman, because they de­ To order your copy of The Marxist-Humanist grade the mind" as well as the body. Her voice This panel raised many important questions about Theory of State-Capitalism: Selected Writings by rings out as clear today as it did 200 years ago and the depth of the contradictions that face women's liber­ Raya Dunayevskaya, send $9.55 ($8.50 + $1.05 we, like her, are determined to make freedom real ation struggles worldwide. But it also showed women's postage) per book to News & Letters, 59 E. Van Bu- and total. —Terry Moon resistance and hunger for dialogue about freedom. ren, Room 707, Chicago, IL 60605. —Participant 3fi JUNE, 1992 NEWS & LETTERS Page 3 Economic fight or struggle for humanity? Baloney from Oscar Mayer Editor'*- note- The Oscar Mayer meatpacking plant m Oakland, Cal.—"American Dream," as Felix Mar­ cal labor battles against automation. (See "From IBP to Chicago announced its permanent closure as of thi* tin pointed out (News & Letters, May 1992), sees work­ Hormel: meatpackers fight companies, union bureau­ coming December. Below we print the comment* of one ers more as force than reason. Oddly, intellectuals like crats," N&L, April 10,1987.) long-time Oscar Mayer worker. the director, Barbara Kopple, gravitate to the economic To contrast, as Felix Martin does, Marx's recording the Paris Commune to Kopple's recording the Hormel Chicago, III—Vie knew this could happen, but no fight without catching that a struggle for full humanity one thought it would be this soon. We were frthvduled (u is on the line. The awakening of that corner of labor in strike becomes still sharper after we see the camera's eye trained so long on the "consultant" Ray Rogers. Is work <»\er Memorial Day weekend, but they lancellod it, Austin, Minn., gets reduced to losing a fair wage, losing saying i*t> needed a stress day off after receiving thi-. the "American dream." But every worker could under­ the best contribution of the intellectual, allied with the rank and file and ready to charge into the teeth of Rea- news stand what Local P-9 faced, and many threw their sup­ Ovor the last teveral years Oscar Mayer has bi.cn port behind P-9. ganism, merely one of tactical genius? Is that role, even in solidarity, merely to exercise a talent for the practi­ opening thet-e focus, plants, which are all non-union Curiously, Kopple left out the crippling injur­ paym« worker* only $5-$6 an hour Thev took our job? ies—severed human flesh and carpal tunnel syn­ cal? True genius—by intellectuals and workers alike—can only emerge in this age of engaged in actual out of the plant—the hot dog line, the bai-on line—and drome—that plagued all of meatpacking as it speeded up tent xhntti to the focus plants small plant* where majb-. production everywhere, nowhere more than at Hormel's and philosophic uprooting of capitalism. Kopple deserves credit for finding and filming this 200 workers work on one product. Because ot this pro­ plants. Talk of horrid working conditions were on the test, we hdY* gone from 800 to 900 workers at the Chi­ lips of every worker in meatpacking. Played down by story (and "Harlan County USA" earlier). But there's a lesson in the P-9 leadership discarding the industry pat­ cago plant to now having just over 300 We told the Kopple were the solidarity strikes, notably at Hormel's UFPW * United Food and Commercial Workers union; Ottumwa plant where workers walked out, not because tern contract and trying to negotiate a meaningful one for the Austin Hormel local. Here Kopple managed to ic organize the plants, and they didn't do anything they saw P-9 picket lines one morning, but because All we ore left with is negotiating to make wire we their own conditions demanded it; catch the UFCW (United Food and Commercial Work­ ers) bureaucrat in charge of killing that strike, Lewie hn tfur pentmn* and whatever be\erancv pay we tan It's hard to describe the enthusiasm at a rally at Ford get Then- are no transfer rights to other plants The Local 600 in Detroit when P-9 members visited during Anderson, uttering the truth: the workers don't need the bureaucrats. A movie premised on workers not let­ contract M not over until February. What are they soms the strike. The many workers there understood this to do with thone couple of months of our contiaci when strike couldn't succeed without rank-and-file to rank- ting anyone do their thinking for them any longer could make history, not just record it. —Jim Mills thorp ait' to be no strikes on the part ot the union, but and-file solidarity. And internationally, dockworkers in no loikoms on the part oi the company' Spain printed Mike Connolly's News & Letters article Wo are organizing ourselves, and not ju*t for the ne­ on the P-9 strike, struggles in meatpacking and histori- gotiations oi ar pension and severance pay We t>ay that if Oscar Mayer ID taking 900-900 jobs out of Chicago, why should we buy their product? Let them take their Workshop Talks meat*, to tho cities wheie they make it Wc are thinking; ni gi'ing to supermarket)) and asking people not to buy (continued from page 1) O-cii Maver pioducts If they don't Saw am- lob-s tor ut n Chicago we don't need thi lr products hen- of labor that impinged on our daily lives: the attendance —Long-time Oscar Mayer worker policy which began penalizing us after only three days absent and made no provisions for taking sick children to the doctor or for emergencies; the company's ability to change our hours and shifts with no notice and no 'Escaping' to Mexico time to make child care arrangements; and no limita­ tions on mandatory overtime, also imposed without no­ New York, N.Y.—As the rebellion was taking tice. place in Los Angeles, I came upon Business Week Those were the things that were tearing people's lives (March 16) with its article, "Detroit South." It reports and relationships apart. Those were the questions the U.S. and European auto makers have been "escaping" women spoke about at the union meeting and the rea­ (my word) to Mexico for five years now for the highly sons why we voted unanimously to turn down the com­ "qualified" work force that uses quality teams and pro­ pany's offer and wait to fight for a better contract. One duces "quality" made cars, and, since labor is so cheap, young, Black woman put it succinctly: "We have a life U.S. companies will "cut capital costs" by using fewer outside this plant." Members of United Steelworkers Local 5668 robots! It is called the "manufacturer's revolution," Another young, Black woman who works on my line were locked out of Ravenswood Aluminum which they want to bring home to U.S. workers. I call it at Helene Curtis decided that she had been a high-speed Corp. in W. Va. over 18 months ago after the home grown retrogression. packer long enough and wanted to be a stock worker, company declared contract talks stalemated. They are investing in a Third World country in the which involves some heavy lifting. When she announced Despite the hiring of scabs, only 17 of the name of competition with Japan, but in reality to bring her intentions, she faced the ridicule of our supervisor. original 1,700 workers crossed the picket line. down the wages and living standards of U.S. workers. Men and women co-workers started talking about how The company has dismissed its chief execu­ According to the writers, the U.S. auto worker makes bad lifting is for a woman's "internal organs." tive and called for new negotiations. $16 an hour; the Mexican, $10 to $20 a day. U.S. auto supply workers make $6 to $7 an hour compared ton I won't speculate on the men's motivations, but I their Mexican counterparts, who make $1 an hour. know what frightened the women: if one woman proves she can do it, maybe we'll all have to do it, and we don't The article describes one young Mexican auto worker want to. That concern is magnified by the company's What kinds of deals? who lives 40 miles from the plant, takes a one-hour bus ride to and from work, and lives in a hut with no run­ stated intention to impose the team concept on our line Chicago, 111.—Labor was dealt another blow in and have "everybody learn everything." But do the oth­ ning water or electricity. He is happy to be making a April when the United Auto Workers (UAW) gave in to "living." It made me think of the speed-up and working er women's fears mean that one woman shouldn't try if Caterpillar and directed its members back to work after she wants to? conditions in U.S. auto plants that did not allow the a six-month-long strike in which the rank and file were production of quality cars, safe working conditions and CHOICE AND SELF-DEVELOPMENT again the big losers. What exactly went on between Cat­ certainly not job security. The desire of a Mexican work­ erpillar and the UAW "representatives"? What kinds of er to make contact with U.S. workers becomes extreme­ It is on questions like these, questions of individual deals were made? choice and self-development, that I feel most acutely the ly important. (See "What is Mexico's future in face of I was a "part of negotiations in the meatpacking in­ new world order?" News & Letters, April 1992.) need for philosophy—not just any "philosophy," but dustry several years ago, and I still didn't know exactly Marx's Marxism. Karl Marx, in his 1844 Humanist Es­ what kinds of deals were made between company reps The attempt to push the U.S. workers back, to negate says, singled out the Man/Woman relationship as inte­ and their union counterparts. Why? Even though we all their struggles, will not forever go unchallenged. All gral to alienation and revolution. There he also wrote were in a room with a table, one side faced the other these fools talking as if they know what is going on in that: "We should especially avoid re-establishing society, and the proposals were addressed, there were individual L.A. had better watch out when race and class, Black as an abstraction, opposed to the individual. The indi­ trips to the washroom or "I need some air"—not by the and white, North and South explode and (as James vidual is the social entity." rank-and-file negotiating committee, but by the reps of Baldwin so eloquently spoke) the fire next time. Capitalism does exactly what Marx opposed. It estab­ both the company and the union. —Angela Terrano lishes itself and its drive for ever more production in to­ As I sat and watched all our major proposals go out tal opposition to the individual. Each person must be the window, I wondered if the negotiations had already subordinated to that drive, whether that means aban­ been settled in the washroom. Perhaps this was the way NX union busting doning your children or abandoning your ideas, aspira­ Caterpillar and the UAW reps did it while the rank and tions and emotions. For Marx, on the other hand, the file were out on the picket line or at home trying to fig­ New York, N.Y.— Members of the Newspaper and self-development of the individual is the measure of ure out how to make ends meet on their strike benefits. Mail Deliverers' Union went on strike on May 7 against freedom in a new society which only the total uprooting It just burns me up when I think about it. The bu­ The New York Times and the new owner of two of the of all of the old relationships can bring about. Working reaucrats don't lose even if the rank and file does. Times' distribution companies. In spite of two court women are reaching for that future. Aren't they drawing a salary no matter what happens hearings and an injunction, the strike has disrupted the during a strike? While they are negotiating away our delivery of The New York Times to homes and news­ News & Letters health benefits, wages and lives, what are they risking? stands in the metropolitan area and parts of the city. What is the UAW anyway? A representative of the Trucks have been firebombed, hyacked or forced into Vol. 36 No. 5 JUNE 1992 workers. What kind of representative sells its people accidents, while the union has faced very severe fines short? What kind of union allows its workers to build over the disruption of the Times' delivery systems. News & Letters (ISSN 0028-8969) is published 10 times up an inventory that will only hinder it if a strike is The strike started when the new owner, Arthur E. a year, monthly, except bi-monthly January-February and okayed? Only the kind of union that plays the capitalist Imperatore, locked the drivers out following the rejec­ August-September for $2.50 a year (bulk order of five or game on the capitalists' terms. The capitalists cannot tion of his first and only contract offer. Mr. Imperatore, more — 150) by News & Letters, 59 East Van Buren, be beaten at their own game. in close consort with the Times, is performing their Rm. 707, Chicago, IL 60605. Telephone (312) 663-0839. We are working for our survival, but capital's survival union busting for them. Using a little known ruling Second Class postage paid at Chicago, Illinois. POST­ from the U.S. Supreme Court, Mr. Imperatore bought MASTER: Send address changes to News & Letters, 59 is dependent on us. Just imagine if all workers decided East Van Buren, Rm. 707, Chicago, IL 60605. one day that we are not going to work anymore until we the two distribution companies from The New York control our lives. Where would capital be then? Times, but not the contracts with the union. Raya Dunayevskaya, Chairwoman, We the workers, the rank and file, must take control Had the drivers accepted the offer, their salaries National Editorial Board (1955-1987) of our lives and our labor ourselves and not allow these would have been slashed by 50% or more. It would Charles Denby, Editor (1955-1983) union bureaucrats to burn us any longer. We must have have, as well, handed Mr. Imperatore total control of fresh ideas and a new way of thought before we can the workplace. Instead the drivers rejected the contract, Olga Domanski, Peter Wermuth, Co-National take on capital—not on their terms, but on ours. and the owner hired scabs at one-third pay. Organizers, News and Letters Committees —Martin Almora The whole scenario is seen as a smoke screen to keep Eugene Walker, Managing Editor the Times' name out of the battle over workplace am­ Mike Connolly, Marxist-Humanist Archivist issions and accusations of union busting, although ev­ Felix Martin, Labor Editor Subscribe to N&L eryone knows their goal is to lessen labor costs before News & Letters $2.50 a year opening a new $450 million state-of-the-art printing is printed in plant in New Jersey. After 12 days of delivery disrup­ a union shop. See lit. ad page 9 tion, the Times agreed to meet the union to work out a settlement. —Observer Page4 NEWS & LETTERS JUNE, 1992

From the writings of Raya Dunayevskaya Facing a new stage in world events I Marxist-Humanist Archives Spontaneity, organization, dialectics by Raya Dunayevskaya "the varying existing opposition parties"? Put differently, what Marx was aiming at in the Cri­ Founder of Marxist-Humanism In a word, why don't we remember the battle of ideas tique was to tell Marxists they must not forget the Uni­ in all periods?... versal of freedom as what happens after overthrow, in Editor's note: The following document reflects Raya III. their preoccupation with immediate activity, activity, Dunayevskaya's response to a new stage in world poli­ IT IS HIGH TIME to detail Marxist-Humanism's activity. It is true that those last three words were from tics brought on by Reagan's bombing of Libya in 1986, development because what becomes imperative in this the 1960s, not from 1875. But the essence of what Marx at the time News and Letters Committees were in the crisis-ridden capitalistic-imperialistic world—and that of was aiming for was expressed in that simple word that midst of a series of classes on "Current World Events course includes both nuclear Behemoths—is Marx's everyone "took for granted" they understood—labor. and the Dialectic Method." Dunayevskaya gave the multilinear concept of human development, be it of the There Marx "repeated" at the very time he completed sixth and final lecture titled "The Trail to the 1980s industrialized world or what he called the pre-capitalist the French edition of Capital what he had been saying from the 1880s: Marx's New Moments and Those in world, and we know as the Third World, as well as the on labor siflce 1844: that labor must not remain alienat­ Our Age." Below we are publishing excerpts from part I whole concept of organization for that final battle, that ed, that it must become a total human activity, never and the concluding part III. The complete text is avail­ would be inseparable from Marx's philosophy of revolu­ separating theory from practice.* able in The Raya Dimayevskaya Collection, microfilm tion. This of course is what we point to when we say #11522. The world in which we live now confronts us with all that Marx's new moments make it clear that the 1880s its counter-revolutionary actions, with the Reagan With this bombing of Libya, Reagan Retrogressionism are the trail to the 1980s. But this requires concretiza- Retrogressionism on all fronts, including the U.S. itself has reached such an abyss that the whole of today's talk tion by this new generation. First we broke with all and its "ideology," which we must never forget that is entitled: Which new beginnings will determine the post-Marx Marxists and worked this out explicitly in Marx designated as false consciousness. The putrefac­ end—the new developing revolutions or the Reagan Chapter 12 of Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, tion of thought that the Reagan administration is exud­ counter-revolution and its putrefaction of thought? and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution. The turning ing is polluting the air for all. There are two opposing worlds in each country—the point in the global struggle for freedom was the recogni­ That makes it all the more imperative to grasp what rulers and the masses. The Reagan degenerate chauvin­ tion that the Absolute Method is the philosophic ground has happened in this post-World War II period since the istic super-patriotism pollutes our air. Long ago, Samuel for the present world struggle for freedom. movement from practice was so creative as to be a form Johnson had the right description of such patriotism In a word, we must face what we consider the burn­ of theory itself. Let us not forget that a form of theory when he said, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoun­ ing question of today-ORGANIZATION AS INSEPA­ is not yet philosophy. Rather, it is a challenge to the drel." RABLE FROM THE IDEA, i.e., MARX'S PHILOSO­ theoreticians to end the one-sidedness of theory, as Just look at the concrete disgusting rationale with PHY OF REVOLUTION, vs. THE VISAGE OF HIT­ practice is challenged to end its one-sidedness, so that which Reagan followed the attack in the Gulf of Sidra LER AND THE ONGOING REALITY OF REAGAN- theory and practice can create a new unity, the new re­ with an actual attack on Kadafi's living quarters, killing ISM... his 15-month-old infant and severely wounding two oth­ The relationship between the battle of ers of his children, three and four years old. Eighteen ideas and our actions against the reac­ bombers flew from England to drop the bombs. If any­ tionary age we are living in may not one can be lower as a terrorist than Kadafi, then Ram- seem to be connected with what sounds bo-on-the-loose, Ronald Reagan, is the one. like such a mystical abstraction as Abso­ It is this type of pull from the gutter imperialist poli­ lute Method. The truth is that 1953, tics of nuclearly-armed capitalism that makes it impor­ when the world witnessed the very first tant to struggle against all rulers. And it is the enemy ever revolt against totalitarian Commu­ at home that Marxist-Humanism must struggle against, nism, was the very period when I broke not only by being active in all mass movements and by through on the Absolute Idea. I said solidarizing with international movements, but by the that signified that there was a move­ specificity of a totally opposite philosophy of revolution. ment from practice as well as from theo­ The philosophy of classless new human relations is also ry, and this involved the whole struggle a force to be projected in our daily lives journalistically for total freedom in the specific post- as well as philosophically. World War II period. That is exactly As a beginning toward that end, we projected the why, in a similar period of Prussian re­ transformation of News & Letters into a bi-weekly. In action more than a century ago, Marx order to become fully practiced in responding quickly to called his ideas "a new Humanism." All current events as they happen, we outlined a series of this we spelled out in our first major Workshop/Classes called "Current World Events and theoretic work, Marxism and Freedom, the Dialectic Method." which worked out the continuity with I. Marx's Marxism and the discontinuity LET'S DIG INTO the Dialectics of the three which was an actual concretization for Marx principles in the context of the new global our age's battle for freedom. Indeed, the concrete of these past three months... very first chapter ended with a section 1.) Marx's concept of history in the making. That is called "Hegel's Absolutes and Our Age to say, recording an event both as the masses in motion of Absolutes." In a word, Absolute are shaping and reshaping history and as the Marxist Method, far from being any metaphysi­ philosophy of revolution practices the Idea as a force, cal abstraction, is actually the process even as action itself is force. First, then, is history in of concrete dialectical development in the making. each age. lationship of practice to theory in order finally to reach 2.) Inseparable from it is Dialectics. It is not some­ The ceaseless movement of human development, the realization of philosophy. This is what Marx was thing restricted to any one historic period. The Dialectic through ever reappearing contradictions, signifies that working out in his last decade, after the defeat of the Method examines every event in the context of both his­ an end is really the ground for new beginnings. And revolutions in his period, and the fact that the 1875 at­ toric continuity and discontinuity, as well as the per­ new beginnings determine the end. tempts at organization put a priority on the unity rath­ spective for tomorrow. When the turbulent 1960s ended with an aborted rev­ er than the principles which they supposedly "took for To put it another way, while there is no substitute for olution, it became clear that Youth activity alone, with granted." action, action like theory is in itself one-sided. The unity its disregard for theory as if it could be "picked up en What is an imperative for our age is never to "take of action and thought is what motivated Marx from the route," would only end in more and more aborted revo­ for granted" the Marx principles, Marx's Universak, the very start when Marx designated his philosophy "a new lutions. We concretized this in Philosophy and Revolu­ philosophy of revolution, as the age grapples with its Humanism" and unfurled a banner not only for the tion: from Hegel to Sartre and from Marx to Mao. immediates. overthrow of capitalism but for the creation of totally To this day, neither post-Marx Marxists nor activist New forms of theory that have arisen from the spon­ new human relations. pragmatists have wrestled with the Dialectics of Or­ taneous mass revolts, with their challenge to the theore­ Whether an event happened in Marx's lifetime, ganization: Philosophy, the "Party," and Opposite ticians, are exactly where Marxist-Humanism started specifically, his founding of a new continent of thought Forms of Organization Born Out of Spontaneity. when working out a new newspaper where the produc­ and revolution in 1844; or whether the event happened That is the topic of my next book. Unfortunately it will tion worker became the editor. in Lenin's time, 1914, and he issued the call for the take another two years to complete. All I can do here is News and Letters Committees at the same time as­ transformation of an imperialist war into a civil touch on where I begin—with Marx's Critique of the signed the completion of the first major theoretical war—what all Marxists singled out from Hegel was the Gotha Program, written in that last decade of his life work, Marxism and Freedom, and that it be done by "materialistic" statement that wherever there is life, when he experienced all those "new moments." submitting the draft for discussion with workers and there is movement, there is the Dialectic. No Marxists understood fully this critique as it relates Youth. (See especially Chapter 16, "Automation and the Marx's transformation of the Hegelian Dialectic from to organization, not even Lenin, who achieved the great­ New Humanism," as well as the Introduction.) In a a revolution in philosophy into a philosophy of revolu­ est leap on concretizing Marx's analysis of the need to word, the combination of worker and intellectual was tion led him, when the 1848 Revolutions were defeated, destroy the bourgeois state in his State and Revolu­ not limited to the journalistic form, but was for all our to call for "revolution in permanence." The second prin­ tion, which unfurled the banner for the actual Novem­ major theoretical works in process. ciple, then, is Dialectics. ber 1917 Russian Revolution. But insofar as the Party The point is that objectively the new passions and 3.) The third principle is the relationship of objective was concerned, he omitted entirely that question of Or­ new forces of revolution—whether they be rank-and-file to subjective, neither as mere generalization nor some­ ganization, leaving himself confined within his 1903 labor, Black, Youth, women's liberation, peasant—are thing that stops at the first negation—that is, the over­ concept of the vanguard Party, notwithstanding the present both as force and as Reason, all aiming to see throw of private capitalism-imperialism, the uprooting changes he introduced in 1905 and 1917, and hailing that the new revolutions are not aborted but create the of capitalism, private or state. Rather, it analyzes the the spontaneous new forms of organization, like the So­ ground for new human relations. concrete events inseparable from a vision of the future. viets in 1917. This is exactly what we are aiming at with what we This isn't something Marx said only in 1844 or 1848. It Rosa Luxemburg, who had made a category of sponta­ call organizational responsibility for Marxist-Human­ is something Marx experienced; he lived it. The "new neity, likewise remained "orthodox" on the question of ism. The doors are open, wide open. moments" in the very last decade of his life, with his di­ the Party and criticized Lenin only on the point of cen­ April 22,1986 (Lenin's birthday) alectical attitude to the so-called new science of anthro­ tralization and decentralization. Who, then, took orga­ pology—i.e., his new appreciation of pre-capitalist socie­ nizational responsibility for Marx's philosophy, not just * A conversation with Herbert Marcuse in the late 1970s in a way re­ ty, what we now call the Third World—are proof of this. vealed the whale relevance of that for our age, when he asked me what of revolution "in general," but specifically the question did I think of that specific paragraph in the Critique of the Gotha We all know what the Communist Manifesto pro­ of what happens after the overthrow of capitalism? Program. jected as the world outlook of the newly named Commu­ What Marx was pointing to concretely was that both nist League: "Let the ruling classes tremble at a Com­ those who called themselves Marxists (Eisenachists) and munist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to those who were Lassalleans considered that what was of lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORK­ the essence was unity, putting off or "taking for grant­ ING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!" Why, then, ed" the philosophic ground. don't we remember as well that the Communist Mani­ In actuality, what "taking for granted" achieved was festo was practicing Marx's 1844 proclamation of "rev­ to make a principle of the specifically German General olutionary, critical-practical activity" not only against Workers Association that was nationalistic, as against the ruling state-party, but by separating himself from the First International Marx headed. JUNE, 1992 NEWS & LETTERS Page What is the meaning of the Los Angeles rebellion? (continued from page 1) Rodney King riots, African American newspaper colum­ Martin Luther King Blvd. who said that the Rod] ed the venue in the first trial to largely white Simi Val­ nists and activists speak of 'black rage.' But in the Los King verdict is "a message that will go all around ley. Four Black men alleged to have participated in the Angeles of 1992 it is crucial to remember that the ma­ world: if you're a Black man or Black woman in L videotaped beating of a white truck driver, Reginald jority of looters who were arrested have turned out to don't expect justice," or the anonymous Black man i Denny, on April 29, were arraigned the day before. be Hispanic. The Rodney King riots were appropriately South Pasadena cafe who upon hearing the ven With the cynical sense of history and social justice multiracial in this multicultural capital of America." threw a table through the window and shouted "1 with which Reagan and Bush sought for 12 years to Nevertheless, he adds that "My fear is that party's over!" the response of the Black masses is in equate affirmative action with "reverse discrimination" multiculturalism is going to trivialize further the dis­ altogether different world than the Black leadership. against white males, the media replayed the beating of tinct predicament of black Americans—most especially The divergence however is not an anomaly, it is ' Denny ad nauseum until they believed they had cre­ the plight of the young black male. It is my belief that inevitable consequence of nearly three decades of shi ated the perfect counterpoint to the Los Angeles Police there are two stories in American history that are sin­ disparity between leaders and masses. In fact, it was i Department (LAPD) beating of Rodney King. The beat­ gular and of such extraordinary magnitude that they 1965 Watts rebellion that first signalled the gulf tl ing of Denny became the media-driven symbol of Black should never be casually compared to the experiences of had opened between Black masses and all Black leade "savagery" and urban violence in the American white other Americans. One is the story of the American Indi­ including militants like Stokely Carmichael who cal mind. an; the other is the story of the black slave" (Chicago for "Black Power" in the wake of Watts. It was not until you came down from the police Tribune, 5-20-92). The wish to "humanize" the economic underdeveli helicopter vantage point of the "big eye in the sky," ment of the Black community with so-called "free ent down to the grassroots level of the Black and Latino prise zones" or self-managing housing projects, both ] communities, that you heard the rush of indict­ schemes of HUD secretary Jack Kemp, is the limit ; ments of "American civilization" which cancel out yond which the Black bourgeoisie cannot afford to st the brutal symmetry of media "justice" the repeated Traditional civil rights leaders and nationalists, whetl replaying of the Denny beating was supposed to em­ the Urban League or Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, a bed in our minds. You heard of 15-year-old Latasha their conservative counterparts, faithfully believe tl Harlins, shot in the back of the head last year by a capitalist development of the Black community can Korean store owner who was given five years proba­ shorn of its exploitative nature. It is a "faith" wh tion for involuntary manslaughter. You heard per­ threatens to translate Black self-determination into t sonal accounts of police abuse and harassment of "fatal vicissitudes" of capitalism. Blacks and Latinos that were universal in scope. SPONTANEITY & THE THEORETICAL You heard historical recollections of state sanc­ tioned violence against African Americans, names LIMITS OF THE PRESENT MOMENT like Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Fred Hampton, Mi­ However, along with the "established" Black lead chael Stewart, Eleanor Bumpurs, Arthur McDuffie, ship's "incapacity...to rationalize popular action, that Latasha Harlins. to say their incapacity to see into the reasons for tl And while Black historical recollection stretched even action," as Frantz Fanon observed, the Left too I further back to the infamous moment when Chief Jus­ been unable to comprehend the revolutionary meani tice Taney, ruling in the Dred Scott Decision, articulat­ of mass spontaneity. "The truth is," wrote Ra ed the unabashed principle of "American civilization's" Dunayevskaya in American Civilization on Trial, "< attitude towards Black rights—"A black man has no radicals are forever blind to the positive, the subj« rights that a white man is bound to respect"—the fatal tive new dimensions of any spontaneous struggle" immediacy of 1992 carried its own confirmation of his­ 31). This is because "they too are products of the boi tory, recollected or in the making: 60 people lay dead, geois society in which they live and thus do not see most of them Black, most killed by the LAPD or Nation­ full the contradictory foundation of American Civilb al Guard. In the Black mind there is no such contrived tion; its Achilles heel is enclosed not in the 'gener media symmetry for 400 years of social injustice. class struggle, but in the specifics of the 'additive' As the defining moment in the life of American race- color in these class struggles. Precisely because of tl class relations in the post-Civil Rights era, the LA re­ the theory of liberation must be as comprehensive bellion, like every popular protest and rebellion marking when Marx first unfurled the banner of Marxism" < a new phase of social struggle in this country, also dis­ 26). closes the authoritarian nature of "American democra­ Because of the integrality of race and class o cy." The protest and rebellion of April 29-May 1, in pression, the African American, at each turnii compelling local authorities to transfer their powers to point in American history, anticipates the ne the Federal government, exposed the true instrument of 1st Marine Battalion part of LA occupying force. stage of development in capital-labor relatioi authoritarian rule that the U.S. military is. Indeed, if Thus, far from capitalist economic development ha Bush and Colin Powell demonstrated anything it is that BLACK MASSES—TOUCHSTONE OF ing brought the Black masses alongside white Ame the military occupation of American cities is more or 'AMERICAN CIVILIZATION' ica in areas of income and education, or dissolve less the same as that of a foreign country. It was in slave revolts, however, that the African Black struggles for elementary democratic rigfa Which is why the Third World conditions from which American "was decisive in the course American develop­ into the general class struggle, the LA rebellion the LA rebellion arose mark both a discontinuity with ment followed" (American Civilization on Trial: luminates how deep, permanent and insoluble the exclusively Black Watts rebellion of 1965 and a par­ Black Masses as Vanguard p. 8). For the African America's social crises. It also illuminates how pj allelism with the phenomenon of recent Third World ur­ American could always expose the fact that it is in the rhic George Bush's Desert Storm finale to the Co ban revolts that have erupted in Venezuela, Trinidad, very artifice of American society, its "civilization," that War actually is. Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Brazil and its racist character lay. Which is why that supreme arti­ However, Left theoretical and programmatic r throughout Africa. Such a Third World context suggests ficer Ronald Reagan took as his "civilizing mission" the sponses to the question raised by the LA rebellion, i.< that the LA rebellion may be as much an extension rolling back of two decades of civil rights gains, a half which way out?, remain as constrained within the cu into the technologically developed West of a Third century of rights won by labor and the launching of a rent ideological confines of bourgeois democracy and tl World phenomenon as the beginning of a new phase of "legal" assault on women's reproductive rights, seeking framework of "free market" capitalism as Reagani social struggle in the U.S. thereby to redefine the course of American development conservatives. Harvard Left sociologist Theda Skocp in which Black freedom struggles had been the decisive believes that "What's missing is the coalition to put tl LATINO DIMENSION OF THE REVOLT vanguard. La migra patrols the streets of Latino neighborhoods ideas together" for an urban agenda (NYT, 5-17-95 rounding up thousands of "illegals" in curfew sweeps That was symbolized by the display he made of oppos­ University of Chicago sociologist and "democratic socis and raids. LAPD-INS (Immigration and Naturalization ing the decision to make Martin Luther King's birthday ist" William Julius Wilson seems all too willing, wn Service) collaboration, once banned, is in full force. As a national holiday. Nor was it lost on the anti-imperial­ his policy recommendations, to rationalize the racism i of May 19, 829 undocumented people have been deport­ ist sentiment of the Black community that Bush chose American society: "It is critical that any economic en ed to Mexico and Central America. the Jan. 15 date of the King holiday to launch his impe­ powerment program for black youth be embedded i rialist war in the Persian Gulf. In the mind of Black broader 'race neutral* policies that draw the support | To date, more than 2,000 felony cases have been America, the "civilizing mission" of American imperial­ brought against people arrested during the rebellion. all segments of the population, not just minorities' ism in the Third World has always come home to roost (LA Times, 5-6-92). Stories of police brutality during the search of homes on its native racist ground. and arrests of people have been rampant. One tells of a And even when the analysis of such intellectua Black Compton family subjected to the full brunt of In response to the widespread condemnation of the comes close to the mark, they shy away from drawn LAPD, SWAT and National Guard armed force when social policies of the Reagan-Bush years, which have the revolutionary conclusions that flow from it. Thu more than 225 rounds were fired into their home. been the ideological incubator of urban dislocations and Jacqueline Jones, history professor at Brandeis and ai Meanwhile, teachers extract information from students Black frustration of the last decade, the Bush Adminis­ thor of the recently published The Dispossess© and report them to the authorities. tration has desperately counter-attacked that the America's Underclass From the Civil War to tl Just as the aerial videotaping of demonstrators "cause" of the LA rebellion lies in the politics and so­ Present, writes that "In the last decade, Indiana's ste made them into telescopic objects of police and me­ cial policies of the 1960s. industry has used technology to upgrade quality and e dia commentators bent on conveying the impersonal Clearly, the events of April 29-May 1 have chal­ ficiency, in the process cutting its workforce by 50 pe image of a "marauding horde," so the press has lenged the very social categories of "American civili­ cent. North Carolina's textile industry, under siege froi made the thousands of detainees into a faceless zation" as being any kind of "democracy" the rest of foreign competitors, has also consolidated and mechai mass and essentially tried their cases in the newspa­ the world would follow in Bush's "new world order." ized. Between 1980 and 1988 1,250 textile and appar pers. The words "alleged" and "suspected" have vir­ Which is why to keep up the hypocrisy that the LA. plants closed... For displaced workers and their famili< tually disappeared from LA Times coverage of judi­ rebellion was not political but criminal, while pointing in Indiana's steel belt and the North Carolina Piedmoi cial proceedings. to the political malfeasance of the last 12 years of Rea­ region, our economic system produces poverty i Such media accounts are part of the relentless reduc­ gan-Bush retrogression that helped create the social naturally as prosperity" (NYT, 5-5-92 my emphasis). tion of Blacks and Latinos to the administrative objects conditions of the inner cities, is itself a political attack of a capitalist system that already marginalizes them in on the Black community. This is the position of Black Stopping short at this paraphrase of what Marx calk such enclaves as SCIA an increasingly Latino urban and liberal leaders who assume the Utopian attitude the "absolute general law of capitalist accumulation, foco in LA County that subsists on shortages of every­ that the crisis of the inner cities can be resolved within Prof. Jones' denigration of the LA rebellion as tl thing—grocery stores, banks, health facilities, pubhc the capitalist system. work of "a lawless inner-city minority (sic)" reveals ju: transportation, affordable housing, jobs. The obsequious comments of John Mack, president of how sharply she wants to diverge from the inescapab conclusion Marx drew from his analysis of the inexora Ethnic and class lines often overlap the violent the LA Urban League, and a frequent commentator on television coverage of the rebellion and its aftermath, ble law of motion of "our economic system (which) pr< frontline of the police occupation of SCIA They in­ duces poverty as naturally as prosperity." Following Hi tertwine those of the criminal justice system to form expresses how out of touch Black leadership is with Black reality. Mack's fear of losing "everything we've gel's dialectical principle, Marx articulated the conch one big knot of injustice in the mind of the Black sion flowing from the absolute general law, its "histor community. It was that knot which welled-up from worked toward...if people let their basest instincts take over" reveals both the illusory world of "American civi­ cal tendency," as the negation of the negation, i.e., tih the chest into the throat of Black America and re­ expropriators are expropriated by the "gravediggers" < leased into a national cry of outrage at the Rodney lization" the Black bourgeoisie covets and the class chauvinism underlying its rainbow illusions. Indeed, "our economic system," the army of the surplus popuh King verdict. tion of the unemployed. However, essayist Richard Rodriguez is surely right their class instincts are the measure of the ideological when he points to the fact that "In the aftermath of the distance between them and the masses of Black people. Whether it is the Black observer of the rebellion along (continued from page 6) age6 NEWS & LETTERS JUNE, 1992 Voices from the LA. rebellion.... Clearing our heads to determine what to build by Gene Ford Black community over the curfew being put in place break from the state's mentality of white racist law and from dusk to dawn and the fact that the National. order. There is a big gap between the Black youth, the "To serve, protect, and break a n—'s neck," is the Guard and Marines were brought in to help the LAPD "baby Iocs" on thai streets, and this system of "law and s of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in thugs to restore "order": 13,000 law enforcers in all. order." WL This was seen worldwide in the videotape of the xiney King beating. This beating has been confirmed JUSTICE FROM GRASSROOTS (continued on page 7) "law" by the "Not Guilty" verdict given by the all For many during this revolt there was a sense of true rtiite" Simi Valley jury to the four white police offi- justice from the grassroots. One brother said: "Today rs, as if they were just doing their job. people are friendly and open, people I have never seen The reality is as the Black film director Spike Lee before talk to you like they have known you all their Meaning of LA rebellion ited: "The day after the Rodney King verdict, a white lives. A cloud has been lifted from our heads, a weight (continued from page 5) p in South Africa was sentenced to hang for killing of burden off our shoulders. Now we feel respect and a acks.... I never thought I'd see the day when South sense of power/freedom." The LA. rebellion broke onto an ideological landscape of rank retrogressionism this U.S. election year, evoking rica was ahead of the United States as far as human These old buck-shaking politicians and preachers, jilts was concerned." its own symbolism, speaking its own language in the vo­ they don't speak for the youth that sparked this revolt. cabulary of what Marx called "new passions and new The Rodney King trial, which sparked the revolt in The youth aren't apologizing. They call it a war on the forces for the reconstruction of society." The revolution­ A., cannot be separated from the Latasha Harlins case police, "187," the number in the state penal code for ary reason it has elicited from the masses haunts the lere Korean merchant toon Ja Du was given proba- homicide. "Why should we apologize for this looting and powers that be as much as the spectre of new rebellions. >n for the murder of 15-year-old Harlins by Judge burning? We have been robbed, this is our 40 acres and Yet, as Johnnie Tillman-Blackston, a Black laundry a-lin in Compton. We saw Korean merchants singled a mule; it's mine." worker in Watts, said, "They (politicians) come to the it for attack in the revolt because of the type of insen- One Black youth, a member of the Crips gang, wartorn area, they claim to see what can be done and avity they showed in their stores towards Blacks, un- stated on ABC-TVs "Nightline" show that "Rodney nothin's changed since 1965. It's all based on a lot of sr this alienated capitalist system. This system induces King was the spark that lit the fire but this ain't lies and what looks good on TV and what looks good ese two violent acts of murder and attempted murder about Rodney King. The gangs are not the main when you read it in the newspaper. Nobody really takes ;ainst the Black community. ones looting. It's families, women and children. We a good look at what happened and why it happened.... I Now four Black youth have been arrested for the have been taken advantage of by the police, beaten think the riots sent out the right message, but I don't iating of a white truck driver, Reginald Denny, and and slapped around for years. Now it's our time to think the folks are comprehending the message....Those ese youth have been charged with attempted murder, get even with the pigs, that's who we want. That's are the people who are in power. I don't think they're bbery, kidnapping, torture, and a federal charge of in- what this is about." quite ready yet" (LA. Times, 5-13-92). rfering with interstate commerce. They face life im- While the established Black leadership is afraid of this isonment. type of talk, the main reason is because these elected WHICH WAY OUT? IN PHILOSOPHY AND IN PRACTICE W© SEPARATE REALITIES politicians are not going to break from this system. White America, with lily-white law-and-order commu- They will never condemn the police system that is being Black political leaders, traditional and Left, lack poli­ ties such as Simi Valley, lives in a separate reality imposed by the state which they really represent, or tical understanding of the rebellion and its causes be­ om Black America's South Central L.A., where the re- cause they lack philosophic understanding of its inher­ ilt began. Two separate realities, worlds apart. How ent dialectic of liberation. The problem of political direc­ se could this jury in the King trial, or this judge in the tion will only be overcome if the LA. rebellion has also arlins case, come back with verdicts that shocked the liberated the theoretical perspectives and categories of orld, that sparked such outrage? revolutionaries genuinely seeking to comprehend the These verdicts reflect a segregationist white mentality nature of the social crisis and the praxis necessary to transform it. Otherwise, today's Black politics threaten the 1990s that is entrenched in the system. That is to deceive the social consciousness and insights of the hat is under attack in these many revolts and fires Black masses, exhausting them in a state of permanent iat have taken place, and which have brought Blacks, rebellion, rather than providing the philosophic ground atinos, whites, and some Asians into the streets in pro­ to become a state of revolution in permanence. fit against this mentality of injustice. As Black socialist feminist Barbara Smith contends, "It is as if time slowed down," stated a Black "Above all, the events in Los Angeles have made it per­ orker about the revolt, "as if the day would never fectly obvious why we need a revolution in this country. id. It's what they say about time changes during Nothing short of a revolution will work" (The Guard­ evolution. I am glad a lot of these businesses were ian, 5-13-92). She also underscores the "responsibility nrned out. It was like a noose around our necks, of Black activists, radicals and socialists to create vi­ te way some of these merchants treated us in the brant new leadership that offers a real alternative to the lack community. And I ain't about to help them tirnd civil rights establishment." ean up their mess. They should pay us to clean it Seventeen-year-old Manual Arts H.S. student Oc- The forms of organization which emerge from sponta­ B." tavio Sandoval: "I got bunk beds for my little neity and suited to our times may not yet have ap­ [Another Black man shouted at the National Guard to brother and sister, and a bed for myself because I peared. However, there is no doubt that the organiza­ Set out of our community; you and the police have de- sleep on the floor. I felt I was doing something tion of thought, of a new social consciousness, is in the royed the Black community, you created this looting good for my family." process of formation. The LA. rebellion is a manifesta­ id burning, not the gangs." There was outrage in the tion of that, and proof that the consciousness of the Black and Latino masses is no longer to be found where arargTsTrrirrinryoTrffYrrr^^ the Black and Latino leadership thought it was. Their The Black dimension as revolutionary and ongoing consciousness has led them, if not yet to the creation of a new social existence for themselves, then surely to be­ gin the uprooting of the old one which oppresses them. American Civilization On Trial The problem ia that the new social consciousness re­ flected in the historic mass activity of the LA. rebellion Black Masses as Vanguard and its national ramifications risks expending itself at the stage of first! negation, i.e., striking out at the op­ Published first in May, 1963, and in new editions with new introductions in August, 1963, 1970 pression of existing society, without a vision of the new and 1983, this pamphlet is essential for understanding past history and history-in-the-making. social reality with which to replace it, i.e., the positive motion of the second negation. This leads to the diver­ sion of social movements into the self-limiting channels • The two-way road between the U.S. and • The Negro as touchstone of history' of old political parties, personalities and programs that Africa "Rip Van Winkle awoke after twenty years; the old have assumed new forms of existence under the incubus "...what was won through the last two decades was radicals sleep on 100 years after the Emancipation of Reaganism. inseparable from the intense new forms of revolt. Proclamation, as they did at the outbreak of the The inherent humanism of social rebellion makes it The turbulent 1960s witnessed the birth of a whole Civil War when Marx considered their high-sound­ imperative that there "be an idea of man and the future Third World, central to which was the Black Revo­ ing 'Marxist' opposition to wage slavery 'as well as' of humanity," as Fanon wrote, otherwise rebellion leads lution both in the U.S. and Africa. Secondly, insepa­ chattel slavery as no more than escapism from real­ up a blind alley. Which is why the crucial question be­ rable from and simultaneous with that, was the ity....In a word, they too are products of the bour­ fore the Left is how does the dialectic of Marx's philoso­ Marxist-Humanist banner that American Civiliza­ geois society in which they tive and thus do not see phy of revolution., at the present historic moment, de­ tion on Trial raised in the context of the whole in full the contradictory foundation of American termine a very different theoretical and organizational 200-year history of the U.S., whose civilization had Civilization; its Achilles heel is enclosed not in the life for itself than the one that has collapsed or other­ been put on trial and found guilty. In a word, to 'general' class struggle, but in the specifics of the wise been discredited in our epoch. Indeed, can the separate a philosophy of liberation from the strug­ 'additive' of color in these class struggles. Precisely working out of the absolute opposite of this exploitative gle for freedom is to doom us to yet one more un­ because of this the theory of liberation must be as society, which Marxist-Humanism contends is revolu­ finished revolution such as has characterized the comprehensive as when Marx first unfurled the tionary, Black and ongoing, succeed without there being U.S. from its birth...." banner of Humanism." ah "idea of the future of humanity" which only a phi­ losophy of human liberation can articulate and make • • Abolitionism: a new dimension of Ameri­ •The Reason of the Freedom Now move­ practicable? can character ment Today, the crisis and breakdown of American capital­ "The vanguard role of the Negro in the struggle for "...the Freedom NOW movement compelled the ism has again brought the Black masses to the point of freedom helped bring onto the historic stage the Kennedy Administration to admit a 'rising tide social rebellion, outside the confines of any political par­ most extraordinary of all phenomena of American of discontent' and execute an about-face with the ties or personalities. Lest the Left once again shift the Civilization: New England Abolitionism....These introduction of a civil rights bill....This has theoretical burden of working out a philosophy of revo­ New England Abolitionists added a new dimension brought the movement to the crossroads. lution onto the backs of the masses, confronting the to the word, intellectual, for these were intellectu­ Though it is impossible to stop the momentum question, which way out from under American authori­ als, whose intellectual, social and political creativity of the Negro struggle, its forward development tarian capitalism, remains the urgent philosophic task was the expression of precise social forces. They glo­ can be impeded if the underlying philosophy for history has assigned us. ried in being 'the means' by which a direct social total freedom is in any way compromised." That presently there has been but the barest opposi­ movement expressed itself, the movement of slaves tion to the authoritarian rule of George Bush in the af­ and free Negroes for total freedom." termath of the LA. rebellion must set the first and im­ mediate task before the movement. Which is why the To order American Civilization on Trial present moment calls on us to defend in the press, at send $2 plus 850 postage to public meetings land in all political forums the ground News & Letters, 59 East Van Buren, Room 707, Chicago, IL 60605 ^ that can, for now, no longer be held in the streets. May 25,1992 IE, 1992 NEWS & LETTERS Page 7 Los Angeles Voices... Black/Red view I What's next in thought? (continued from page 6) A Black worker stated that, "We must continue this ry for only in their unity "can all man's innate talents discussion on what happened, to make sure that what­ by John Alan ever comes out of this revolt not be lost, and that this Le spontaneous rebellion in South Central Los An- first develop and gain a new dimension that puts an end once and for all to his pre-history in class societies." movement continues in some kind of organizational . a month ago, caused by the infamous, racist Rod- form." King verdict, has now been shifted to a politi- UNITING THEORY AND PRACTICE leological battle as conservatives and liberals ma- Something was in the air, even before the revolt. A The challenge coming out of South Central Los An­ day before the King verdict, peace was declared among er to influence the national consciousness. The Re- geles is to forge a new unity of theory and practice, a icans blame the revolt on lack of "law and order" the gangs in Watts. The Crips and Bloods, who had unity which can only happen when the movement from been at war for 20 years, were now hugging each other "family values." The Democrats are less abstract theory to practice joins the movement from practice to would ward off revolts by the African-American and and crying because of the years that had passed and for theory. Dunayevskaya saw this as a process in which the dead homies lost. Brothers that knew each other d World immigrants by reviving President John- the theorist was directly involved. She often called this s "great society" social programs. from school growing up, but were unable to visit each the "organization of thought." other as friends because of the division of a street or UING THE ABSOLUTE CHALLENGE The crucialness of the organization of thought was railroad track that divides these "hoods," now were at what Dunayevskaya was emphasizing in her N&L col­ peace so the youth, the "baby Iocs," can live, or their iither of these political "solutions" contain the umn in the wake of the 1965 Watts revolt. There she est movement toward the elimination of racism and children can live past the age of 15. wrote: "The point at issue now is not so much: what is The police are attempting to destroy this peace be­ :ism in any fundamental way, which is the real next in activity, but what is next in thought. Without dation of American civilization. Instead, they de- cause they see it as a threat to their power. To destroy being able to make what philosophers call a catego­ the division among Black youth, you can call it peace, that foundation in their own way. ry out of their experience, that is to say, to be able it the revolt in South Central Los Angeles has is- but power is what it adds up to and that is the only way to conclude that it is not just an experience, but a to have peace: through power. And there are many who L an absolute challenge to the foundation of stage in cognition, in ideas, the experience itself will :rican civilization. will attempt to control and manipulate this power or not become part of the emerging revolution either unity as Black people. is imperative, at this moment, that this absolute in fact or thought." lenge by the people of South Central Los Angeles What we have to recognize is that we "destroyed" Of course the South Central ghetto/barrio revolt is in some form what we were against, incompletely of be muted in the darkness of conservative abstrac- not 1965 Watts replayed. But making a category of this 5 about "law and order" or by the false hope of so- course, but our voice was heard, although not un­ experience is just as crucial today. American Civilization derstood. Now we must clear our heads to deter­ programs. has been newly placed on trial. le South Central revolt is not an isolated incident; mine what to build to replace what we are against. as historical roots and is integral to an ongoing This is not so clear, and is yet to be worked out. In ement to finish the unfinished American revolution. other words, the time is now to confront these ques­ 1963, when hundreds of thousands of people were tions, before the revolution. Revolution cannot be onstrating for Black civil rights, the editorial board planned from above or built on conspiracy from below, fews & Letters published American Civilization but is integral to the movement of the Idea of Freedom IVial (ACOT), a history of the Black struggle in to reach Freedom in life. srica from before the Civil War to the early 1960s, • principal author was Raya Dunayevskaya, Chair- tan of the National Editorial Board, who wrote a They still don't get it mary of ACOT, for N&L (May, 1963). The building that houses my mother's real estate er analysis there illuminates the dialectic of libera- business was burnt on Thursday. But it seems to me inherent in today's South Central uprisings. What that certain businesses were singled out for the burn­ emphasized was the fact that ACOT was a "radical ing, mainly those that are part of the corporate struc­ irture" from all other studies—bourgeois or radi- ture. In the Crenshaw/Leimert area, businesses marked - because it revealed that Black Americans were sub- "Black owned" were mostly untouched. People knew :, not objects, in the mainstream of American histo- what they were doing. I never thought I'd hear on TV the "touchstone of American civilization," exposing all the loaded racial language they were using; they used "class-ridden, color conscious, defaced civilization every word but "n—-." My dad asked me if I was going :h has an ever expanding frontier but no unifying to go help in the cleanup. I said I wanted to try and find Dsophy." a demonstration. tiis analysis of America's Black dimension goes be- I went out after the curfew. It was my way of saying, I exposing the lie of American democracy. The Black "You're not going to make me change my lifestyle." ension is shown as the creative force with a dialecti- There were tanks on the Harbor Freeway. I've tried to relationship to struggles of Third World people and discuss this with my children; ever since they were in J.S. and world labor. Every "new period of their re- kindergarten I've told them that the policeman was not s is a period of great clarification in thought." their friend. In four years my oldest son will be driving unayevskaya concluded by stating that ACOT was a car and could become a Rodney King. This is not the a "finished work," but a contribution to a dialogue kind of world I want to bring my kids up in. It was not l other freedom fighters—a dialogue which refuses Berkeley High School students walked out in af­ just Blacks or gangs looting, but people out of despera­ eparate theory from practice and practice from theo- termath of Rodney King verdict. tion. But the upper classes still don't get it. —Angela Protests from across the continent... caused by hooligans" was in reality an expression of the those things that a store like Saks represents. Toronto slogan: "No justice, no peace!" Participants in the rally There is a depth in discussions about searching for so­ reporter, who happened to be with 25 police officers and march and rebellion on Yonge Street were of all lutions to the situation we are in that I did not feel was n the news came of the acquittal of the four cops ages and races, and were united by a common passion to present during the war in the Persian Gulf. I have beat Rodney King, writes that there were spontane- end the racism that is endemic in the criminal justice heard callers on our public and community radio sta­ cheers and applause. The scene was not Los An- system and to oppose governments' self-defeating eco­ tions talking about the racist system we live in and the s, however, it was Toronto, Ontario in Canada, nomic policies that are pauperizing Blacks, youth and responsibility of the government, and yes, even capital­ oronto Blacks have every reason to understand the other entire segments of the population. Even when its ism, for bringing about the current crisis. ning of the Ventura County verdict. Police harass- anger boiled over into the smashing of store windows, Rallies have also taken place in St. Cloud and Duluth. it here is an everyday reality. Both the Mayor of the the demonstration maintained a discipline and political I only hope that the power in so many people coming to­ of Toronto and the Chairman of Metropolitan To- purpose. gether who hunger for change, that was represented by ;o have expressed their racist belief that Black youth In the wake of May 4 all levels of government have this march, can be turned into something more than a dangerous and need to be handled differently. Metro reacted with studies, investigations and promises of new trip to the voting booth. We need to seize this opportu­ anto police have shot nine unarmed Blacks in the programs to address "the underlying causes" (the same nity to figure out our real solutions to racism and pov­ ; four years resulting in serious injury and three governments that refuse to characterize the rebellion as erty. —Marge ;hs. All cases have resulted in dropped charges or ac- anything more that a criminal riot). Such efforts, be­ tal of the police. cause they do not recognize the need to humanize the was therefore logical for the Black Action Defense entire racist/sexist/capitalist structure of Canadian soci­ imittee to plan a protest of the L.A. acquittals in ety, are doomed from the start. —Participant San Francisco it of the U.S. Consulate for May 4. In the early • ning hours of Saturday, May 2, a Toronto undercov- On May 1, I was arrested and detained for 38 hours jfficer shot and killed 22-year-old Raymond Law- along with over 650 others under San Francisco Mayor ;e, a recent immigrant from Jamaica. Police claimed Minneapolis Frank Jordan's suspension of the right to assemble. A ; Lawrence was dealing drugs and armed with a Some 6,000 people rallied at the Government Center rally had been called for 7:00 p.m. at 24th and Mission le, but few are left in the Black community who give in downtown Minneapolis, Minn, following a march Streets. At 6:45, the police announced that the demon­ lence to police excuses for shooting and killing their from Urban League headquarters. The crowd was ex­ stration (which was just a bunch of people standing dren. tremely diverse with a significant presence of Southeast around) had been declared an unlawful assembly. They Asians, Indians, gays and lesbians and disabled people. told people to cross the street to the other corner. A few gainst this background, the rally in front of the The Southeast Asian community here has experienced minutes later they announced that the corner was an isulate on May 4 drew more than a thousand an- numerous instances of police brutality. Speakers at the unlawful assembly and the police sealed both ends of but peaceful demonstrators, where speakers de- rally were very clear in pointing out how abuse of power the block and arrested everyone on the block. They re­ mced the racist state violence against Blacks by the police doesn't only happen in L.A. It's a part of peated this action block by block for the rest of the m L.A. to Toronto. At the close of the rally the life for people of color in this community as well. night. wd spontaneously marched to the city's major in­ People were vocal on the march, expressing their out­ Many of the people arrested were Mexicans and Cen­ jection where it "sat in" for another round of an- rage and demands for peace and justice. Signs read, "No tral Americans who live in the neighborhood who had speeches. They then marched to Toronto City justice, just us," and "The rich have been looting Amer­ just stepped out of a restaurant to see what was hap­ 11 where the City Council was supposed to be in ica for years." March organizers refused police "protec­ pening, and some who were just waiting for a bus. Some sion. The march arrived there to find the Council tion" and instead called on gang members to do securi­ were shipped off to the Immigration and Naturalization ay at its dinner break and the building complete- ty. Service, perhaps to be deported or harassed. sealed off and defended by mounted police offi- Though this march was a tremendous expression of These martial law police sweeps continued. The next s. Some of the demonstrators then began to solidarity with others around the country calling for an week a rally was held to protest the mayor's and police ow objects at the police and City Hall windows at end to racism, some local media chose to focus on the actions. Over 150 protesters were rounded up there. ich time the mounted police forced the rally to few instances of looting that occurred as the march en­ There's a lot of talk about this suspension of the Consti­ band. However, instead of disbanding, the march tered downtown and passed stores like Saks Fifth Ave­ tution. The outrage has become so great that the San ided toward Yonge Street where anger erupted nue. This is just another example of how the media per­ Francisco Board of Supervisors fired the Chief of Police a wholesale destruction of store windows along petuates racism. My response was, why not loot Saks? with hardly a whimper from the mayor when the two •onto's main commercial drag. Looting is a natural response of people who could never were like Batman and Robin the week before. Vhat media and J>pllti

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by Maya Morrison he battles the classical political economists. He shows This is a point that can be interpreted in many ways. So widespread is the ideological pollution imbuing the the alienation and reification inherent in their proposed For example, though Georg Lukacs held that 1844 was air today that while the media rings the death-knell of methods of transcendence, namely nationalization of the birth of historical materialism, to him, Marx's dia­ Marxism, the intellectuals are busy committing Marx's private property. These vulgar communists remain on lectic distinguished itself from Hegel only in opposition philosophy of freedom to the dusty vaults of academia. the level of private property, and though some (Prou- to Hegel's idealism. Lukacs writes in The Young Hegel In both cases, Marx's philosophy is seen as being dead dhon) may see labor as essence, they do not see labor as that Marx agreed with Feuerbach on the question of the to the real world. Marx has become a reified cultural Subject: negation of the negation: "[Marx] admired Feuerbach's icon—a genius of his time to be admired and respected, "According to this theory, the community is only a advance to true materialism...and thought Feuerbach but not to be taken too seriously. What is missing in community of labor and the equality of wages which the was right, 'opposing to the negation of the this picture? Precisely that which the rulers are trying communal capital, or the community as the universal negation...the self-supportive positive...'" Though he to get rid of—Marx's radical vision of freedom and thus capitalist, pays out. Both sides of the relationship be­ does acknowledge Marx's qualification of Feuerbach's his philosophy of revolution. tween capital and labor are elevated into a sham univer- argument, it is only to concede that Marx thought the saHty.'* (p.292) negation of the negation was the movement of pre-his- When we ask, in these retrogressive times, whether tory. we can be free at all, we are searching for a total an­ This approach to transcendence is simply a reaffirm­ swer. It is this search for an absolute way out that com­ ation of alienation. It is the focus on the objects of la­ The difference between Dunayevskaya and Lukacs lies pels us to turn to Marx, not as an economic critic of bor instead of the objectivity of the activity of labor, in the fact that Lukacs holds Marx's critique of capitalism (important as that is), not as a philosopher of and on private property instead of the alienated labor Feuerbach and Hegel to be a simple counterposition of alienation as many view him—but as the philosophy that created it that reveals the reification against which idealism and materialism. To say simply, as Lukacs that spells out the possibility of the total liberation of Marx fought. Thus, Marx points out humanity. To grasp the todayness of Marx's concept of how capitalism has perverted human ex­ freedom, we need to explore the dimension of his istence from a "to be" to a "to have." thought that is all too often ignored—his concept of the Human relationships become commodi­ transcendence of alienation. ty relationships, especially in the most fundamental human relationship be­ Let's here re-examine Marx's momentous 1844 Eco­ tween men and women. And, in nomic-Philosophic Manuscripts, where he not only critiquing vulgar communists, out of j broke with classical political economy but with Hegel as which is borne Marx's concept of the well as Feuerbach, and in the process, set the ground­ Man/Woman relationship, Marx reveals work for the development of his philosophy as a "New that they have not transcended the logic Humanism." The three main essays of the Manu­ of private property. scripts, "Alienated Labor," "Private Property and Communism" and "The Critique of the Hegelian Dia­ In opposition to "vulgar and unthink­ lectic," bring to light the alienation inherent in the capi­ ing communism," Marx proposes the talist mode of production, and also deal explicitly with following: the transcendence of this alienation. As Raya "Communism, as the positive aboli­ Dunayevskaya put it, "Marx never talked about alien­ tion of private property, which is human ation without also talking about transcendence." A close self-alienation, and therefore, as the ac­ study of "The Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic" in tual appropriation of human essence conjunction with the other two manuscripts is crucial to by man and for man, is the return of\ understanding these concepts of alienation and tran­ man to himself as a social, scendence — not as philosophic abstraction but as philos­ i.e., human man, complete, conscious ophy of revolution. and matured within by the entire wealth of developments to date. Just as MARX'S CONCEPT OF ALIENATED LABOR completed humanism is naturalism, so this communism, as completed natural­ To Marx, alienated labor is not something that arises ism, is humanism." (M&Fp. 307) '&&*? ••*$i'$ from within the human being: "What constitutes the alienation of labor? First, that When Marx equates communism with the work is external to the worker, that it is not part of humanism and naturalism, we can see his nature; and that, consequently, he... does not devel­ that Marx's concept of labor as Subject op freely his mental and physical energies but is physi­ inheres in his concept of transcendence. cally exhausted and mentally debased...Finally the ex­ Marx subverts a confirmation of alien­ ternal character of work for the worker is shown by the ation by holding real, live human beings fact that it is not his own work, but work for someone as subjects: "Both the material of labor and man as sub­ does, that Marx was anti-idealist is a vulgarization in else, that in work he does not belong to himself but to ject are equally the result and the starting point of the the worst sense especially in light of the fact that it is another person." (pp. 98r99)x movement." (M&F p. 295) There is a debate, however, right in these manuscripts that Marx writes of his phi­ It is important to note that Marx talks about alienat­ about what Marx meant by the "positive abolition of losophy as a "thorough-going Naturalism or Humanism, ed labor as something external. To me this shows that private properly and the "positive transcendence of pri­ [which] distinguishes itself both from Idealism and Ma­ alienation does not pervert the essential nature of hu­ vate property." In order to understand this, it is crucial terialism, and is, at the same time, the truth uniting manity, but rather prevents human beings from realiz­ to dig into the "The Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic." both." Marx's relationship to Hegel is more complicated ing their essential mental and manual potentials. That MARX'S CONCEPT OF TRANSCENDENCE than Lukacs' view. is why in "Alienated Labor" Marx talks about Nature Marx's critique of Hegel's Phenomenology reveals a as humanity's "inorganic body." Nature is not some­ Raya Dunayevskaya has pointed out in Philosophy two-fold error in Hegel. He develops this in the critique thing external to humanity because nature is human and Revolution that it is here, in "The Critique" that when he moves to the last chapter of the Phenomenol­ nature, and the "universality" of the human being is Marx gave birth to historical materialism by transform­ ogy, Absolute Knowledge. First, because Hegel abstracts contrasted with the limitations of animals precisely on ing the Hegelian dialectic into the dialectic of revolu­ consciousness from the human subject, actual alien­ the point of production. Humans produce beyond need tion. Marx's relationship to Hegel is not characterized ation, alienation in real life, is only the appearance of and only truly produce in freedom thereof; animals pro­ by a rejection of Hegel's idealism, but a rejection of the the alienation of consciousness. For Hegel, alienation is duce only to fulfill a need. The human being does not dehumanization of the dialectic. Thus Marx puts the di­ not "human essence materializing itself in an inhuman only live in the world, she/he appropriates and trans­ alectic "through a profound change" by taking Hegel's manner, in opposition to itself," but rather "material­ forms it. Thus, the objectivity of human labor is some­ categories and putting in the human Subject. izing itself from, and in opposition to abstract think­ thing that can confront the worker because he/she is a Marx begins the main part of his critique with an ing." Objectivity in Hegel is simply externalized human conscious being, and under class society, this objectivity evaluation of Feuerbach. He praises Feuerbach on sev­ essence, i.e., self-consciousness. Thus, objectivity equals becomes alienation. This does not mean, however, that eral counts, and even credits him with transcending externalization equals alienation. As Marx put it: objectivity equals alienation, only that objectification of "old philosophy." Feuerbach, Marx writes, proves that "Since it is not actual man, and likewise not Nature labor under class society is alienated.2 After all, Marx philosophy is nothing but religion, and through the as such—man is human nature—which is made the sub­ did see sensuous, human activity as objective, and it is negation of the negation, simply affirms Theology after ject, but only the abstraction of man, namely, self-con­ not the objectivity of labor that needs to be transcended it had denied it. Thus Feuerbach thinks that the posi­ sciousness, thingness can only be externalized self-con­ but only the determinate character of this objectivity tive that inheres in the double negation is "not yet cer­ sciousness." (p. 312) in class society that must be abolished. Thus, at the end tain of itself," to which he counterposes sense-certainty Consequently, the reappropriation of this objective es­ of "Alienated Labor" Marx writes: and arrives at, "positive affirmation which is based on sence is not transcendence of alienation but a transcen­ itself." Though it seems that Marx is still praising dence of objectivity. Marx shows that the negation of "It should be noted that everything which appears to Feuerbach, there is in fact a qualification on Marx's the worker as an activity of alienation, appears to the the negation, for Hegel, is not the confirmation of "true part when he says: essence...but confirmation of apparent essence." Actual non-worker as a condition of alienation. Secondly the "But inasmuch as Hegel comprehends the negation ol real, practical attitude of the worker in production to essence is hidden. It appears only in thought. Transcen­ the negation in accordance with the positive relation, dence, to Hegel happens only in thought and as such the product (as a state of mind) appears to the non- which is imminent in it, as the only truly positive, and worker who confronts him as a theoretical attitude." Hegelian transcendence is simply a confirmation of al­ in accordance with the negative relation which is immi­ ienation. (p. 100) nent in it, as the only true act of self-manifestation ol Seeing labor as Subject prevents Marx from studying Thus, when Marx turns to the positive in Hegel's phi­ all being, to that extent he has discovered only the ab­ losophy, he does so with the recognition that it is within the workers as objects of inquiry as do those who ques­ stract, logical and speculative expression for the move­ tion the possibility of class consciousness. the limits of the category of alienation. Nonetheless, he ment of history." (M&F p. 305) says that the greatness of Hegel's dialectic of negativity, In "Private Property and Communism," Marx battles Though Marx agrees with Feuerbach to a certain ex­ which Marx called the "moving and creating principle of the vulgar communists in much the same manner that tent, there is a fundamental break between the two on history" lies "lb the circumstances that Hegel...grasps the question of the negation of the negation. To Marx, the essence of labor...the true active relating of man to 1. I am using Eric Fromm's translation of "Alienated Labor" from bis the negation of the negation characterizes the move­ himself...as human essence is only possible...through the book Marx's Concept of Man, (Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, ment of history though still in an abstract form. He sees collective action of man, only as a result of history." (p. New York), 1961. the worker as subject immanent in Alienation as the 309) Notke that here Marx's use of the word essence is 2. In his 1932 essay "The Foundations of Historical-Materialism," Her­ bert Marcuse ties the concepts of objectivity in with Marx's concept of positive immanent in the process of history. Marx gave different from the typical use—as something fixed and Nature as well as human nature: "It is only now, after the totality of birth to historical materialism by putting the human overdeterxnining. Essence is historically defined by hu­ the human essence as the unity of man and nature has been made con­ subject back into the Hegelian dialectic. Thus, man beings. In fact, in The German Ideology, Marx crete by the practical-social-historical process of objectiGcation, that we Dunayevskaya writes, it is not the concepts of alienation actually critiques the Left Hegelians for their talk about can understand the definition of man as a 'universal' and 'ft x' species being." See also Peter Wermuth's essay, "Towards Philosophic New Be­ and reification that prove the philosophic continuity of the essence or the man. ginnings in Marxist-Humanism," News and Letters, June, 1988. In Marxism, it is precisely the birth of historical-material­ Thus, by putting the human subject back into the He­ tins essay Wermuth explicates the importance of Marx's concept of na­ ism in the 1844 Manuscripts and its development gelian dialectic, Marx praises Hegel's concept of tran­ ture as not only human nature, but as History as well, to Marxist-Hu­ throughout Marx's lifetime that proves that Marx did manism. Dunayevskaya, traces the movement of transcendence from scendence as "objective movement." He says that this Logic to Nature to Mind—which she translates as the new society. As not metamorphosize from an "idealist" to a "scientific insight contains, though in an alienated form, an ex­ she points out in a manuscript called "Why Phenomenology? Why economist." pression of the appropriation of objective essence Now?" (April S, 1987): "Nature., is true essence because you can't sepa­ through the transcendence of alienation. It is the "al­ rate Nature from Human Nature. And that is why be [Marx] uses, not 3. I am using Raya Dunayevskaya'a translation of "Private Property ienated insight into the actual objectification of man, as a naturalist, thoroughgoing Naturalism or Humanism' which would and Communism" and "Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic," as found in 'first akme grasp the act of world history." the appendix to the 1958 edition of her Marxism and Freedom, (continued on page 11) JUNE, 1992 NEWS & LETTERS Page 11 • Sit-in at U. of Illinois Capitalizing on biotechnology Chicago, 111.—On May 6, over 150 Latino, Black, Asian American, Native American and white students by Franklin Dmitryev ed out by the few owned by seed-producing multination­ occupied the administration building of the University als. And now with genetic engineering, a single genetic of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. Their sit-in followed In May, the Food and Drug Administration gave its scheme may replace even the diversity within a strain. two weeks of protests inspired by the Latino students' blessing to genetically engineered foods—artificial or­ struggle for greater autonomy and financial support for ganisms whose effects on human health are totally un­ The result is an exacerbation of monoculture, which makes the food supply more precarious than ever: the their cultural center, La Casa Cultural Latina. Their list known. Most such foods will not have to be tested for of demands ranged from the creation of a Latino Stud­ safety or even labeled. This is just one part of Bush's same crop grown in the same huge field year after year exhausts the soil and becomes extremely vulnerable to ies program to the elimination of the racist stereotype of policy of ensuring that there is virtually no special regu­ Native Americans embodied in the school's mascot, lation of biotechnology products. diseases, pest infestations and climatic variations. While needing less labor, the farmer becomes even more de­ Chief Illiniwek. Hosannas immediately rang forth from industry for pendent on chemicals and energy. In the Third World, This action stopped university business for the rest of the unchaining of this new scientific "magic." The local food producers are drawn into dependence on the the afternoon. The students refused to leave until they bourgeois press, too, got caught up in the excitement, world market. were forcefully evicted by riot cops called in by the Ad­ forgetting a cardinal rule of the nuclear age: when in­ ministration from four separate police departments. dustry and government trot out experts to testify to the SUSTAINABILrrY VS. CAPITALISM Three Latinos who were roughed up by the cops were complete safety and wondrous benefits of some new To fight their image as shameless polluters, the chem­ arrested for "resisting arrest." technology—run for the hills. ical companies have appropriated from environmental­ A local activist described the events as especially im­ Even if we leave aside the question of unforeseen di­ ists the term "sustainable agriculture"—but to them it portant because there hadn't been such strong multi-ra­ sasters that may result from the engineered organisms means sustaining the existing exploitative production cial solidarity on the campus in recent memory, and the directly, we must ask what social effects the projected relations. What else could it mean in a system where movement was "much broader than the immediate reshaping of agriculture could have. people exist to fulfill the needs of production, rather grievances." TURNING GENES INTO CAPITAL than the other way around? The movement kicked into high gear when, coinci- One of the major areas of current genetic engineering The opposite is the poet and environmentalist Wen­ dentally, 15 Latinos sat in at La Casa Cultural La­ efforts is herbicide-tolerant plants. What chemical com­ dell Berry's definition: "Sustainable agriculture is agri­ tina to protest its poor funding on the same day as panies are doing, instead of trying to grow crops with­ culture that does not deplete soils or people." the Rodney King verdict was announced in LA. The out adding chemicals that poison the environment, Long before there was such a thing as an environ­ police evicted these students, sparking two mass workers and consumers, is developing soybeans and ca- mental movement, Marx discussed the non- protests, the second of which resulted in the mass nola able to withstand massive doses of herbicides. sustainability of capitalist production, and he concluded: occupation of the administration building. This is a way to make agriculture more capital-in­ "Moreover, all progress in increasing the fertility Lisa Saunders, an African-American economics pro­ tensive, more chemical-intensive, more dependent of the soil for a given time, is a progress towards fessor, joined the protest "because I was thinking about on the multinational corporations that provide the ruining the lasting sources of that fertility.... Capi­ Rodney King. I was thinking about a class on race and chemicals and seeds. It is a continuation and inten­ talist production, therefore, develops technology, gender discrimination that I teach. This week I felt I sification of modern trends of capitalist agriculture, and the combining together of various processes had to do something about it, not just talk about it." following what Marx spelled out as the concentra­ into a social whole, only by sapping the original Despite the administration's promise to increase tion and centralization of capital. sources of all wealth—the soil and the laborer." funding for La Casa Cultural Latina, students were not It is not only that the ever higher amounts of capital What the ceaseless destructiveness of capitalist agri­ satisfied. One student said, "Most of the students felt needed to compete keep driving small farmers out of culture points to is the need to uproot capitalism, which the administration wasn't even listening." Protesters business. It is the continual transformation of the con­ is not only an "economic" demand, but, as Marx wrote, were angry that U of I Chancellor Morton Weir was ditions of production into capital: fertilizer and pesti­ calls for the "restoration" of the "circulation of matter" only following the advice of a special advisory committee cides substitute for the natural fertiUty of the soil and between humanity and soil "as a system, as a regulating he himself appointed without a single student member the regulating power of ecological diversity; seeds are law of social production, and under a form appropriate and that he ignored their demand that he drop the purchased from multinationals because the crop strains to the full development of the human race...." charges against the arrested students. —Jim Guthrie used cannot reproduce; now the genes themselves are to be turned into a form of capital, and monopolized by a handful of corporations. ADAPT demonstrations stop Chicago! Far from ending hunger or enriching humanity, high- tech agriculture has impoverished the gene pool. Native trance. So Sullivan made it out the front entrance. crops around the world are replaced by the few favored Of course he did not take a nice little stroll—he species, such as soybeans, wheat and corn. The vast ma­ ran! A car arrived at 45 mph and came to a screech­ jority of natural strains of even those plants are crowd- ing halt. Sullivan and 50 or So secret service agents made a mad dash for the limousine. Then the limou­ sine peeled out, knocking over a police barricade, and charged off into the distance. So we do know we had his attention. | Essay Article May 11—Dr. Louis Sullivan delivered a resounding "No" to the protesters of ADAPT. Our request is to (continued from page 10) meet with him to discuss diverting 25% of the money into the actual appropriation of his objective essence now dedicated to nursing homes to attendant services in through the destruction of the alienated determination the community. of the objective world." Thus Marx immediately adds Today ADAPT protesters marched on the regional that "Communism is humanism mediated by the tran­ Health and Human Services building in downtown Chi­ scendence of private property. Only by the transcen­ cago. Protesters blocked all exits and 40 protesters took dence of this mediation, which is nevertheless a neces­ up stations inside the building. During the afternoon sary presupposition, does there arise positive humanism not only was the building shut down, but traffic was beginning from itself."(pgs 319-320) backed up in the heart of downtown Chicago for ten f Marx here clarifies the meaning of the "positive aboli­ blocks. tion of private property." The term positive does not We did meet with the regional director of Health and mean that we must bring the positive aspects of private Human Services and the regional director of the Health property with us into the new society. Rather, because Care Finance Administration. It was done in front of private property is only the "form of appearance" of al­ much news media. One ADAPT member commented ienated labor, one cannot equate the abolition of private that the idea of ADAPT is not to meet with a bureau­ property with the transcendence of alienation, or free­ crat—it is to bring our petitions before the people of dom, which Marx calls "positive humanism beginning America and the world. from itself." May 12—Today ADAPT closed down the American Why does Marx spend so much time critiquing the Sit-in at AMA Medical Association (AMA) building for the afternoon. concepts of transcendence held by the "vulgar commu­ All exits and entrances of the AMA were blocked. When nists" and Hegel as well? Precisely because Marx's Editor's note: From May 10-14, 100 or more people people came out of the building, they had to pass by "new continent of thought" (so-called by with disabilities who are members of ADAPT (Ameri­ protesters chanting "AMA Kills!" Dunayevskaya) is also the birth of a philosophy of revo­ cans Disabled for Attendant Programs Today) came We began our march at about 10:43 a.m. and arrived lution. Marx is forging new pathways out of alienation. from all over the U.S. to Chicago, 111. to participate in at the AMA building about 11:10. Traffic has been In the process of singling out alienated labor as some­ militant demonstrations where many people threw stopped for several miles. At one point all four intersec­ thing external that confronts the worker, as well as sin­ themselves out of wheel chairs in order to block doors. tions surrounding the AMA building were blocked. gling out laborers as subjects, Marx has not only de­ They are demanding that 25% of Medicaid funds that —Bill Scarborough and Bob Gustwick scribed alienation in society, but has elucidated the very now go to warehouse people in nursing homes be reallo­ <»MWWWMWWVWMV^WWW^^W^^W*«** concept of transcendence—that is the very idea of free­ cated to in-home health care that would help people live HOW TO CONTACT NEWS & LETTERS dom. independently. ADAPT estimates this is $900 a month CHICAGO: 59 E. Van Buren, Rm. 707 Marx's vision of freedom is a radical assertion of the savings per person. Below we print reports from two participants made during the time the protests were Chicago, IL 60605 (312-663-0839) self-development of human beings in a new society. Call for meeting information Many people dismiss Marx's vision of a new society as taking place. DETROIT: P.O. Box 27205 Utopian, and indeed when abstracted from Marx's dia­ Sunday, May 10—Soon to speak at the commence­ Detroit, MI 48227 lectical methodology, it is just that. However, because ment of the University of Illinois at Chicago is Dr. Louis Thursdays, 7:00p.m.-Central Methodist Church, he always began with human beings who create them­ Sullivan, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Ser­ Woodward and Adams selves and the world around them, and recognized the vices. ADAPT protesters are stationed inside and out­ OAKLAND: P.O. Box 3345 relationship of human nature to Nature and to history, side the Pavilion and are passing out leaflets. At 10:13 Oakland, CA 94609 (415-658-1448) which is human natural determination, Marx's vision of a.m. ADAPT protesters inside the Pavilion are being ar­ Sundays, 6:00 p.m. a new society is not ahistorical and abstract. According­ rested. Bob Kafka had unfurled the ADAPT banner, 390 27th St., Oakland ly, Marx emphasized that: hanging it from a balcony. ADAPT has been trying to (between Telegraph & Broadway) "It is very difficult to dislodge from the consciousness meet with Dr. Sullivan and persuade him to concede LOS ANGELES: P.O. Box 29194 of the people the concept of creation. Because it contra­ ADAPT's position. Los Angeles, CA 90029 dicts all the obvious facts of life, it is inconceivable to At 10:49 a.m. there are 50 protesters chanting at the Sundays, 3:00 p.m. them that nature and man exist through themselves." main entrance of the Pavilion. A few of the protesters Echo Park United Methodist Church ( p.302) were banging on a trash can. At 10:54 police brought in 1226 N. Alvarado (north of Sunset) more barricades. The ADAPT banner was confiscated NEW YORK: P.O. Box 196 HegePs Absolute as and will likely never be seen by ADAPT again. Grand Central Station It's 2:46 p.m. At the main entrance people are hang­ New York, NY 10163 (212-663-3631) New Beginning Sundays, 6:30 p.m. ing out and protesting. At one point a young man with a Washington Square Church megaphone yelled: "Louis Sullivan, your car is parked 135 W. 4th St. (East door), Manhattan An essay by Raya Dunayevskaya in a handicapped parking zone! Your lights are on!" $1 (includes postage) From News & Letters While we were able to match the police barricades with FLINT: P.O. Box 3384 Flint, MI 48502 our protesters, we under-protested at the • main en­ L. '••IVMWWW^XXWMWWWA^WVW^'ii' Page 12 NEWS: & LETTERS JUNE, 1992 | Our Life and Times | Uprising rocks Thailand's dictatorship mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmammmmmmmmmmmmmir by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes that Thailand's leader be an elected official and that popular former general who held a hunger strike The mass protests in Thailand against military dicta­ Suchinda leave office. The Thai people were fed up not against Suchinda in the early stages of the protests. torship which began in April have succeeded in forcing only with the anti-democratic seizure of power, but were When the march turned towards Suchinda's office, po­ General Suchinda Kraprayoon to flee the country. As out to finally end over six decades of military interfer­ lice and soldiers attacked. we go to press, the protests are continuing as tens of ence and rule. The military had effectively controlled The following day, the army fired point blank at thousands of Thais are demanding that Suchinda and ithe state ever since it overthrew the monarchy as an ab­ demonstrators and began to arrest thousands dur­ his cohorts be punished for their bloody attacks on dem­ solutist power in the 1930s. ing a bloody crackdown, which had echoes of onstrators. The turning point came on Sunday night, May 17, Tiananmen Square in 1989. A schoolteacher said of Suchinda, a central engineer of the 1991 coup which when soldiers attacked a demonstration by tens of thou­ the military brutality, "The people want democracy. overturned 14 years of electoral government, had him­ sands who listened to Chamlong Srimuang, a largely They want to be able to control their lives. But the self "appointed" Prime Minister in March, 1992 by pro- soldiers, they just want power." military parties in the parliament. The press had called When military repression did not end the mass dem­ this "Suchinda's second coup." onstrations, the King of Thailand intervened, getting Student youth, both women and men, were in the both Suchinda and Chamlong to agree that the constitu­ forefront of the protests which drew in many dimen­ tion would be amended as soon as possible, requiring sions of society, from workers to the middle classes. the Prime Minister to be elected. He also issued an am­ It is the greatest mass uprising since 1973, when a nesty by royal decree which enraged those who wanted student revolt led to the overturn of an earlier mili­ Suchinda and all the military put on trial for murder. tary dictatorship. Rallies and marches were not lim­ There still is no accurate count of the number killed; at ited to Bangkok but erupted in 13 provinces. least 400 people are missing and thought to be dead. The central demand of the mass demonstrations was Neither Suchinda's flight nor the King's intervention have stopped the protests, although the rulers in and out of power are scrambling to bring it under their con­ Serbian massacres in trol. While the Western media described the events in Thailand as largely influenced by an emerging middle Bosnia-Herzegovina class, there is no doubt that the demonstrations involve As we go to press, at least 16 civilians were massacred the deepest layers of Thai society. For the moment, all and more than 100 injured by mortar shells in Sarajevo, are united against the military. capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, as people stood in line to buy food during a so-called cease-fire. In the past several months, over 1,300 people have Mass strikes in Germany died in the conflict in and around Sarajevo. Most have Students rally in Bangkok. In the biggest labor conflict in Western Europe in been civilians killed by Serbian irregulars or military many years, western Germany's 2.3 million-member forces. Since March, when the former Yugoslav province Union for Public Service (OTV) staged a ten-day series voted overwhelmingly for independence, fanatical Serbi­ Protests in China of strikes. Railroads, airports, garbage collection and an nationalists have created a murderous ethnic war in postal and telephone service were disrupted at various Bosnia-Herzegovina. As China's rulers take the national economy deeper points during the strike. Then on May 14, after the la­ Its population is composed of Croats and Muslim into the world state-capitalist market, workers have in­ bor bureaucracy and the government had finally agreed Slavs as well as Serbs, who form a minority. As in the tensified their resistance. The Far Eastern Economic to a compromise contract, rank-and-file workers voted it conflict in Croatia in 1991, the Serbian irregulars are Review recently reported that 200 workers held a spon­ down. It is unknown whether the labor bureaucracy will armed and abetted by the Serbian government and the taneous walkout from a Sino-Japanese joint venture en­ now impose the contract anyway, something it has a old Yugoslav military, now completely Serbian-con­ terprise in Dalian. right to do under German law. trolled. Elsewhere, troops were sent in to put down a work­ Throughout the strike, the OTV leadership tried In April, Serbian police fired upon thousands of ers' revolt at a watch factory in Tianjin. The state has to keep the strikes localized and scattered, never peace demonstrators from various ethnic groups as responded with a new trade union law aimed at curtail­ calling out a large number of workers at once. They they marched in Sarajevo. The gunmen were assist­ ing any workers' activity that could lead to formation of justified this tactic by arguing that this would put ed by low flying planes from the Yugoslav military. independent unions. less of an economic hardship on union members, es­ Today massive fighting is taking place on the streets Also, in the past few months, peasants have begun to pecially lower paid ones, but in reality they did not of Sarajevo. Their apparent goal is to split off a protest mass evictions from their land being carried out want to challenge the government directly. huge section of the country, including Sarajevo it­ under China's "free market" economic policies. Peas­ The strike began after rightist Chancellor Helmut self, by forcing non-Serbs out of their homes and ants are being driven off their land by capitalist entre­ Kohl refused to accept an arbitrator's ruling that work­ land. They intend to link this territory with Serbia. preneurs in order to set up factories, stores and other ers be given a 5.4% raise. OTV had been demanding This is what the Serbian nationalists did in 1991 in a large commercial enterprises. 9.5%, and Kohl had offered only an insulting 4.8%, even large part of Croatia. Once they had gained enough ter­ Peasants are not going along with this, especially below what the arbitrator had recommended. Kohl's in­ ritory, they grudgingly accepted a truce on their own since they are usually paid only a pittance for their con­ transigence and attempt to change in his favor the rules terms. But even under the truce in Croatia, Serbian fiscated land. In a village in southwestern Yunnan prov­ of union-employer conflict established since the 1950s commandos are engaged in yet another human rights ince, a land war broke out after 1,000 evicted peasants led large sectors of the middle class as well as the bour­ violation: expelling Croatian civilians from their villages fought people brought in to dig up their fields. The geois press to blame Kohl rather than the OTV for the and settling Serbs in their homes. On a smaller scale, peasants sent a delegation to Beijing. The delegation strike. Croatian commandos are doing the same thing. was ordered to return home empty handed, where they From the beginning of the strike, rank-and-file work­ Yugoslavia's unraveling holds the danger of creating were arrested. This led to more pitched battles, 47 ar­ ers took the initiative. Postal workers in Hamburg another Lebanon in the heart of Europe. The leaders of rests, and another delegation to Beijing. A similar con­ walked out on the first day, leaving 20,000 tons of mail the Croats are almost as narrowly nationalist as are the flict broke out in Ninghe County near Tianjin. These re­ untouched, despite the fact that the OTV had not called Serbs, and there is likely to be retaliation for the out­ volts show that it is a myth that the deep discontent them out on strike. In fact, during the entire ten days of rages of 1991-92. with the system is confined to urban areas. the strike, most postal facilities remained closed. On May 5, OTV workers shut down Frankfurt air­ port, the largest in Western Europe. One day later, the government was suddenly back at the negotiating table. WhoWeAreandl wt We Stand For They and OTV leaders soon agreed to the original 5.4% plus up to $650 per worker, especially low income work­ News and Letters Committees is an organization left us in her work from the 1940s to the 1980s are ers such as women who work in the food services at uni­ of Marxist-Humanists that stands for the abolition rooted in her rediscovery of Marx's Marxism in its versities. This paltry increase was apparently responsi­ of capitalism, whether in its private property form original form as a "new Humanism" and in her re­ ble for the workers voting down the contract. as in theU.S., at its state property form, as in Rus­ creation of that philosophy for our age as "Marxiet- sia or China, We stand for the development of new Huiuanisra." The development of the Marxist* human relations, what Marx first called a new Hu­ Humanism of Ihinayevskaya is recorded in the doc­ manism, uments on microfilm and open to all under the title I Forum on East Timor | The Bay* thmayevefcaya Collection-Marxist. News & tetters was founded in 1955, the-year of Humanism: A Half Cautery of lie World Devel­ New York, N.Y.— About 50 people gathered May the Detroit wildcat strikes against Automation and opment, on deposit at the Wayne State University 12 to hear eyewitness accounts of the massacre by the the Montgomery Bus Boycott against segrega- Archives of Labor and Urban Affaire in Detroit, Indonesian army of more than 150 demonstrators in tion—activitiBS which signaled a new movement Michigan, Dili, East Timor, last November. Several speakers, both frem practice that was ftaSf a term of Uteory, News Duneyevakaya's philosophic comprehension of from the panel and from the floor, emphasized that & Letter* was created so that the voice* of revolt though massacres have not been unusual since the 1975 fr