Being a communist in 2012 is not a political choice, but rather an existential matter, writes Santiago Zabala. | Al Jazeera

“[T]he [magazine] does not pay its interns but instead offers them academic credit, a practice that is widespread among publishing companies and in other competitive industries. … Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, a company may legally offer unpaid internships so long as they are educational and benefit the intern and not necessarily the employer, according to information published on the Department of Labor’s website.”

with David Harvey

Slavoj Žižek | London Review of Books |”The possibility of the privatisation of the general intellect was something Marx never envisaged in his writings about capitalism (largely because he overlooked its social dimension). Yet this is at the core of today’s struggles over intellectual property: as the role of the general intellect – based on collective knowledge and social co-operation – has increased in post-industrial capitalism, so wealth accumulates out of all proportion to the labour expended in its production. The result is not, as Marx seems to have expected, the self-dissolution of capitalism, but the gradual transformation of the profit generated by the exploitation of labour into rent appropriated through the privatisation of knowledge.”

History versus Theory: a Commentary on Marx’s Method of Capital

The 2010 Deutscher Memorial Prize was awarded to David Harvey for his book The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism. Moderated by Alex Callinicos.

A lecture form Marxism 2011.

Public Dialogue
Situations: The Left’s Responses to the Crisis in Europe & North America

Leo Panitch, Stephanie Ross, Albert Scharenberg, Bill Fletcher

December 1, 7 PM
Wilson Hall, Room 1016

New College, University of Toronto
40 Willcocks Street, at the corner of Spadina.
Free admission

For info: northatlanticld@gmail.com
Left Dialogue Blog

Sponored by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, the Centre for Social Justice, and the Socialist Project.

Written by Lal Khan | IMT | After overtaking Japan, this year China became the second largest economy in the world. Some experts have even predicted that by the end of this decade China may become the largest economy bypassing the United States. However, that is based on a mechanical, empirical approach that sees China maintaining its present levels of growth uninterruptedly for years to come. In the past Japan was also supposed to keep on growing, but then its apparent meteoric rise was cut across by a long period of stagnation.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos | MR Zine | What is the significance of this reappearance of the general strike? While it is true that history does not repeat itself, what parallels can be drawn with the conditions and social struggles of the past?

“In parts of the Marxist and generally radical tradition there has been a reservation against both the notion of the ‘people’ and ‘popular sovereignty’ because of their association with forms of bourgeois mystification of social antagonism and political domination, as exemplified in the image of the people inscribed in the European constitutional tradition that mystifies class division, struggle and exploitation. But we have to reclaim it and transform it.” | By Panagiotis Sotiris | Greek Left Review

“Quite apart from the analysis so far given, it was in general a mistake to make a fuss about so-called distribution and put the principal stress on it. Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself… Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After the real relation has long been made clear, why retrogress again?”

-I thought readers would find it refreshing to read something other than utopian promises of redistribution from the ‘left’ wing of capitalist preservation. Capitalism requires poverty and inequality to condition its labour market. We cannot make poverty history through progressive taxation imposed by the bourgeois state. No matter how many new articles the social-democrats of Rabble write and how many times Leftnews.org reposts them, the arguments haven’t progressed an inch since Marx critiqued them.

Op-ed by Emir Sader | “Did you notice that there are people who say they are of the Left but who seem to only criticize people of the Left? Never against the Right, whatever it does. They specialize in pouring gasoline on any little fire within the Left.”

Samir Amin | Monthly Review | The propositions put forward here—and many other possible ones—have no place in the dominant discourse about “civil society.” Rather, they run counter to that discourse which—rather like “postmodernist” ravings à la Negri—is the direct heir of the U.S. “consensus” ideological tradition. A discourse promoted, uncritically repeated, by tens of thousands of NGOs and by their requisite representatives at all the Social Forums. We’re dealing with an ideology that accepts the existing regime (i.e. monopoly capitalism) in all its essentials. It thus has a useful role to play on behalf of capitalist power. It keeps its gears provided with oil. It pretends to “change the world” while promoting a sort of “opposition” with no power to change anything.

By Justin Podur | Rabble.ca

By Steve Ellner | venezuelanalysis.com | “The brand of socialism that has emerged in Venezuela under the presidency of Hugo Chávez differs in fundamental ways from orthodox Marxism and past socialist experiences in large part because of its emphasis on social as opposed to economic objectives.”

Alan Woods speaking on the prospects for the world revolution at the recent World School of the IMT. | In Defence of Marxism

Abstract:
The dominant, nationalist tradition of left-wing political economy in Canada has always stood as an obstacle to the articulation of a Marxist political economy of Canada capable of contributing to the development of a class struggle, socialist politics. The evolution of the “New Canadian Political Economy” that emerged in the 1960s is traced and its main schools of thought are delineated. Against the nationalist preoccupations of the NCPE, the argument is made that the economic troubles of Canada in the past quarter century are attributable to the “normal” crisis tendencies of an advanced capitalist economy (as analyzed by Marx) and should not be seen as the product of “foreign domination” of the Canadian economy.

“Those intent on “Saving the System”—the headline of the 11 October issue of The Economist—insist that there is “no alternative” to global capitalism, and are already seeking to convince the chief victims of the economic crisis—working people and the poor—that they must make major sacrifices to help restore the system’s health. The ideological guardians of the status quo are already putting forward various accounts that absolve the capitalist system itself of responsibility. Some focus on the greed and short-sightedness of the Wall Street financial elite and the failure of various government agencies to adequately regulate the markets. More sophisticated apologists for capitalism are blaming the excesses of “neoliberal ideology” and urging a retreat from “free market fundamentalism.” Some go so far as to advocate a social-democratic “mixed economy” with a significantly expanded public sector.” [...]
“In short, it’s hard to see where the U.S. and the other advanced capitalist economies will find the means for renewed profitable growth. The depth of the crisis and massive existing government debt make a “Keynesian fix” highly improbable. The last time there was a crisis of this magnitude the profit system was only returned to “health” through the combined effects of a massive devaluation of assets (the Great Depression) and the physical destruction of capital stock during the Second World War. Contrary to liberal opinion, it was the cataclysm of global war, not FDR’s “New Deal,” that pulled America out of the 1930s depression and created the conditions for the robust capital accumulation of the post-war era.”

A status update on the Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly.

By Simon Tremblay-Pepin | Rabble.ca | In the first of a three-part series, Simon Tremblay-Pepin discusses the NDP wave in Quebec and a rise of support for left-wing ideas.

“In reality, the worker-Communist should say to the fascist worker: of course, 95 percent of the population, if not 98 percent is exploited by finance capital. But this exploitation is organized hierarchically: there are exploiters, there are subexploiters, sub-subexploiters, etc. Only thanks to this hierarchy do the superexploiters keep in subjection the majority of the nation. In order that the nation should indeed be able to reconstruct itself around a new class core, it must be reconstructed ideologically and this can be achieved only if the proletariat does not dissolve itself into the “people,” into the “nation,” but on the contrary develops a program of its proletarian revolution and compels the petty bourgeoisie to choose between two regimes. The slogan of the people’s revolution lulls the petty bourgeoisie as well as the broad masses of the workers, reconciles them to the bourgeois-hierarchical structure of the “people” and retards their liberation.”
-Trotsky’s writings on Fascism are indispensable for preparing for the defense of workers’ organizations during a period of economic crisis and reaction. See also, Fascism: What it is and how to fight it. In this essay, LT looks at the mistakes of the KPD during the Comintern’s “Third Period” that shortened Hitler’s road to power, and how the SPD that paved that road. Specifically examined is the Nazi Prussian Referendum, called the “Red Referendum” by the adventurist leadership of the KPD.