December,20 2010
Democratic Party vis-a-vis Labor Party:
No Compromise is Possible
by Lil Joe
The objective of this Article is to argue by documentation and
analysis that the Democratic Party, the same as the Republican Party,
is a political representative of factions of the capitalist class. This is
documented in the legislation and votes by Democrats in the House and
Senate on class issues.
Every class struggle is a political struggle. Political parties
represent classes whose economic political interests are
irreconcilable and positions mutually exclusive. Factions
are of the same class. The Democratic Party and the
Republican Party represent factions of the capitalist ruling
classes.
Between the capitalistic appropriating classes and the working
class however there is no 'middle ground' and no 'compromise'
is possible. It is not possible that a political party can serve
fundamentally opposing interests - a party cannot represent
capitalists interests and labor interests at the same time.
Capitalist and proletarians interests are opposed to one another and
are mutually exclusive. What has been demonstrated and documented by the recent
bailout of General Motors by the Democratic Party dominated Congress and
Presidency is that the deal resulted in the maximization of profits for
capitalists, but, wages cut in half, benefits slashed, hours increased, increasing
exploitation for workers.
Richard Trumka Statement on Tax Cut Deal
by Lil Joe
December 8, 2010
The Democratic Party is just as much responsible for the 'Bush tax cuts to the wealthy', which President Obama wants to continue, and turning over hundreds of billions of dollars of tax paying workers money over to finance and industrial capitalists while forcing e.g. UAW workers to take wage and benefits cuts. It was in the Democratic majority led Senate and House of representatives, subsequently that the the union's supported Card Check legislation was rejected and single payer health care, public option, competitive prescription drugs legislation was defeated. Just this week a pay freeze was imposed on federal employees, and social Security on one hand, and on the other proposed increases in military spending to the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, spending to financeimperialist policies of buying quislings and lackeys, arming and funding the Israeli mass murder campaigns and arms and funds for Pakistan and Egypt as well.
continue...Deconstructing Working Class Illusions About the Democratic Party:
Which Class Actually Creates All Value
by Lil Joe
December 7, 2010
Politics in the United States is between the two capitalist class
parties. The Republican Party that is directly based in finance and
transnational capital, and the Democratic Party, which is based on
the finances and interests of the industrial and domestic capitalist
factions.
The patriotic culture of American capitalism, enables the politicians
in both Parties to circumvent their economic ties to capitalist
factions, to instead masquerade as representing geographical
'constituencies' rather than economic class interests.
The concept of economic classes, based in the reality of mutually
exclusive interests on the basis of economic relations of production's
modes of appropriation- the capitalist class are owners of means of social
production and employers of wage labour, and the working class that
having no means of production must sell its labour power to capitalists
in order to purchase means of subsistence from capitalists.
This recognition of class consciousness exists for capitalists and the
politicians that represent them in government; but, the American
working classes lack such recognition of their class interests that are
mutually exclusive to the class interests of capitalists. The Democratic
Party pretends to represent the interests of the American 'average man'
and 'ordinary working people', providing 'bread and circus'.
continue...
2010 Electoral Defeat of the Democrats and Rise of the Tea Party:
The Case for an Independent Labor Party Now!
November 2010
by Lil Joe
=======================
=======================
The 'American people', as American workers think of themselves by
assimilation into this patriotic bourgeois culture call themselves,
believe that "America" is a "classless democracy" and "pragmatic" as
opposed to "ideological". They have internalized the cultural fantasy
opinion that America is the center of world history, the 'envy of the
world', 'the world's first democracy', a 'city on a hill', and other
nationalist delusions of grandeur.
It simply just isn't so. My concern here is the American working class
freeing themselves from these patriotic delusions of grandeur by
promoting class conscious politics. It isn't easy. The American
workers are the most ignorant, racialist, religiously bigoted and the
most delusional patriotic and intellectually backward workers in the
world. It is only in that sense that it can be said of 'American
exceptionalism' that it exists. They are anti-communist Democrats and
Republican and regard themselves as first and foremost "Americans",
compared to workers in Europe and Asia who first and foremost regard
themselves as workers and socialists or communists.
The American workers don't even know they are a working class with
material interests separate and apart from and opposed to capitalists.
They are culturally anti-socialists and pro-capitalist exploitation of
themselves. Those suckers who voted e.g. for Rand Paul agree with what
he said in effect - 'can't we all just get along' - because "We all either
work for rich people or we sell stuff to rich people."
Rand Paul, as the de facto spokesperson and 'theoretician' of the "Tea
Party" faction of the Republic Party as he is the one in the Senate,
by the vote of the majority of the workers who voted in Kentucky,
articulated the myth of Americana following his victory, when
asked about the continuation of what the Democrats call "tax cuts for
the rich", said:
2010 Electoral Defeat of the Democrats and Rise of the Tea Party:
The Case for an Independent Labor Party Now!
November 4, 2010
A Polemical Response:
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Capitalist Wealth And Surplus Population:
The Hidden But Real Connection Between Those That Don't Work And Those That Can't
November 2010
By Lil Joe
During the Christmas season American workers are focused to the example and
teachings of Jesus' genuine altruism and giving for the sake of life,
and these working class families watch Dickins' A Christmas Carol' and
regard Scrooge with contempt. That the alternatives to supplying the
unemployed living in poverty and squalor with decent means of
subsistence is also the Spirit of Christmases Future warned it is
in their interests to prevent the poor folk alternative of crime, prison,
death. But, after this altruistic season, these Americans return to their
Scrooge attitute once again: 'let them die, and decrease the surplus population'.
In US election season the Republican Party politicians as
personifications of the interests of capitalists regurgitate the
Scroog ideology: I will not give to the surplus population! Are there
no work houses, are there no prisons - I pay taxes to support them in
these institutions! That the poor are dying in squalor, filth,
desease, ignorance and starvation is not bad but good: 'let them die,
and decrease the surplus population!'
On the other hand, the two 'portly gentlemen who ask their fellow
capitalist, Scrooge, to contribute to charity, represent the image of the
bleeding heart liberal bourgeoisie, represented in America by the
Democrats - excluding the Republican 'Blue Dog' Democrats', of course.
It is in the interests of capitalists to supply the surplus population
with means of subsistence or be devoured by them in bloody revolutionary
expropriations, as the Spirit of Christmas Future show Scroog.
What is happening in the permanent economic 'Great Recession' is that the
capitalist engaged in production have been experiencing declining
rates of profits in consequence of displacing value engendering living
labour (variable capital) by machines (constant capital).
On Tea Bagger Finance, Ideology and Behavior
by Lil Joe
October, 2010
There has been two national protest rallies held in Washington, DC thus far this year: the Teabagger's protest rally that was financed and provided for by capitalists and represent a political turn of capitalists to fascist 'final solutions' in opposition to unions, socialists and 'illegal aliens', and the trade union based rally that was financed and provided for by unions and pro-union organizations. In other words, it is who sponsored these rallies and the objectives each in turn articulated that determine their respective political character.
Much has been discussed concerning the numbers of attendees, and which protests were representative of good ole American 'grass root' opposition to 'the government'.
Grass root vs AstroTurf are not political categories, and explain nothing as far as political characterisation of the protests are concerned. What is relevant and determinate is the objectives of the majority of the participants at both these rallies that distinguishes them: the fascistic racist 'Tea Party' anti-union rally, paid for and organized by capitalist front groups and the other organized by labor union and minority civil rights bourgeois organizations.
The character of these rallies are not determined by the numbers of the attendees, each of which claim to be representative of 'the grassroots, but by the objectives of their respective participants. The majority of participants in the Tea Party protest, just as much as those in the labor protest were working class - i.e. the majority in both camps live off wage labor or Social Security. But, whereas Tea Party protests and rallies regurgitated fascist anti-labor, anti-communist, anti-abortion, and anti-minority themes, the labor rallies were to the contrary pro-labor, and unions, socialists, feminists and minorities interests were present in this protest.
continue...
March-April 2010
European Organization for Nuclear Research and the Texas Board of Education
by Lil Joe
***
One might wonder what these two seemingly disparate human events could have in common - one occurring in a meeting room in good ole Texas, USA and the other occurring in a laboratory in Europe: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 meters underground. It is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles - the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionise our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe. On the other hand the Texas Board of Education's majority of elected "Conservative Christian" politicians want not only to stop scientific progress as far as revolutionizing human understandings of the universe is concerned, but to in fact return to the 19th/early 20th century WASP American Christian Fundamentalist Bible based belief system, or rather the pre-Renaissance Europe's understanding of it as was fought out by attorneys in the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial.
***
continue...
November, 2009
Imperialism and Ideological Bigotry
by Lil Joe
LilJoe.Radical@ Gmail.com
The ruling classes are the dominate economic classes of a kingdom or nation and empire whose members are in possession of the Society's productive forces. According to the level of development of those productive forces are a given division of labor that constitute relations of production constituent of the dominate mode of production and form of appropriation of the labor of the direct non-possessing toiling classes.
But, it is not possible for these ruling classes, which are the minority of property owning classes, to exploit the propertyless toiling classes without backing by bureaucratic-military States. The most powerful, economically dominate class is the most powerful, politically dominate class. The bureaucratic military State is an instrument of political domination by special bodies of armed men, with prisons, &c., at their disposal.
But this is not sufficient. The masses of the working and toiling classes of these societies must believe the existing mode of production and appropriation is natural and that the State which dominates them is legitimate: they must accept the authority of the class that own the productive forces and the State which protect and serve these appropriating classes have the right to do so. This is where the ideologists of the ruling classes come in.
continue...
August, 2009
Revolutionary Posturing, Rhetoric and Actuality of Reactionary Policy,
Critical Commentary on Malcolm X' 1963 "Message to the Grassroots",
by Lil Joe
LilJoe.Radical@ Gmail.com
In the 1963 "Message to Grassroots" Speech at a Detroit Church, The Shrine of the Black Madonna, Malcolm X presented his concept of 'revolution' and of 'Black revolution', which he contrasted to civil rights, civil goals and political methods of civil disobedience and alliance with organized labor. This speech, and Malcolm X's delivery of it against the civil rights movement - its objectives and methods of achieving them through the politics of civil disobedience has become the defining moment of and for what has come to be the ideology and advocates of black nationalism qua 'revolutionary nationalism'.
The way in which Malcolm X achieved this was by demagogy of analogy, fallacies. The fallacy is based upon the false premise that slavery is a biological rather than an economic category, there were black slaves in Muslim Africa -Mali, Songhai - but also 'white' slaves in Greece and Rome, as well as native American slaves in the Aztec, Tolteca, and Inca empires, Asian slaves in Mesopotamia, Assyria, Persia, India, China, Japan &c. Slaves as a class has always been integrated!
In America the indentured servants originally were an integrated class, which, in consequence of the world-market engendered capitalist terms of trade and comparative advantage, the triangular trade favored the African slave trade thus Africans displaced all others to become this economic class.
continue...
July 5, 2009
On Iran
Lil Joe
Rep. Jim Moran: "Iran won the the war in Iraq" (30 June 2000)
Lackey Reese Erlich: The leftist critics must answer the question: Whose side are you on?
"We take the side of the Iranian people to have human rights, to have the freedom that we deem universal." McCain, who holds a warmongering line on Iran, also took one further bold step in questioning the legitimacy of the Iranian government. "The fact is that the Iranian government is now illegitimate."
"When I returned from covering the Iranian elections recently, I was surprised to find my email box filled with progressive authors, academics and bloggers bending themselves into knots about the current crisis in Iran. They cite the long history of U.S. interference in Iran and conclude that the current unrest there must be sponsored or manipulated by the Empire. ... This is no academic debate or simply fodder for bored bloggers. Real lives are at stake. A repressive government has killed at least 17 Iranians and injured hundreds. The mass movement may not be strong enough to topple the system today but is sowing the seeds for future struggles." -- Erlich
"We want the Iranian people to be able to stay one step ahead of the Iranian regime, getting access to information and safely exercising freedom of speech and freedom of assembly online," said [Senator Joe] Lieberman, who is among the US Senate's fiercest hawks.
These statements of urgency from McCain, Lieberman and Erlich are but demagogic manipulation of the unfolding political conflicts taking place in Iran.
American demagogues play the humanitarian card by means of which under the rubric of "the people" America's political and ideological representatives of US capitalist ruling classes and their economic imperialist campaigns are presented through flowery rhetoric, buzz words and loaded terms and phrases that manipulate the ignorant, the gullible and the naive to believe US imperialism is good, that it is benevolent and the motives of its government in international affairs are altruistic in the promotion of what it calls implimentation of its 'democratic values' - and promotion of 'human rights' and 'freedoms'.
US imperialist's politicians, the print and electronic media propaganda and NGOs present America as "unique", as a nation founded upon ideas and ideals: human political equality, endowing every man with 'rights' to 'life, liberty and pursuit of happiness' and 'government by the consent of the governed': ignore the empirical data -
continue...
Sunday, June 21, 2009 10:51 AM
Fake Leftists and Lessons on The Matter of a Free Palestine
By Lil Joe
***
During its campaign to win executive office, the Democratic Party and its candidate, Barack Obama, claimed that were Obama to win, it would deliver to 'the American people' prizes: from peace to universal health care to an economy that puts Main Street before Wall Street. This being echoed by the CPUSA above.
"If Obama's candidacy represented nothing more than the spark for this profound initiative to unite the working class and defeat the pernicious influence of racism, it would be a transformative candidacy that would advance progressive politics for the long term. The struggle to defeat the ultra-right and turn our country on a positive path will not end with Obama's election. But that step will shift the ground for successful struggles going forward. One thing is clear. None of the people's struggles from peace to universal health care to an economy that puts Main Street before Wall Street will advance if McCain wins in November."
This was the demogogic basis that West, Baraka, Chomsky, Zinn, and others reduced class politics to individual personality contests and a fake distinction of "progressive" vis-a-vis verses "ultra-right".
I say fake distinction between Obama's policies and McCains, and between "progressive" vis-a-vis verses "ultra-right", because once in office Obama and the Democrats have followed the exact policies of what they said were those of the Republicans and McCain of putting "Wall Street before Main Street", lack of health care universal programs, and expanding the war. The Obama administration and the Democratic Party, if these policies constitute the "ultra-right", are behind their claim of being "progressive" actually themselves ultra-right by dolling out trillions of dollars to banks while workers houses are being confiscated by foreclosures, and hundreds of billions to industrial Auto-capitalists, as workers are being fired, and plants closed while government approves bankruptcies to end previously agreed upon union contracts. Universal health care (single payer health insurance) has been deleted into trash the bin. Tens of thousands more troops are being sent to kill and be killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and instead of peace the war is expanded into Pakistan.
continue...
March, 2009
A Critique of Pat Buchanan
by Lil Joe
Pat Buchanan in his Commentary below is engaging in his usual, racist demagogy, concerning the economy and politicians in America, to "explain" the present economic crisis. The article is titled "systemic failure". One would expect an objective analysis of capitalist commodity production and appropriation, that is, the breakdown in the circulation of commodities by money: the failure of that system.
Instead, although Buchanan begins stating the obvious economic facts it is laced in mysticism and ideological demagogic individualism and guilt/blame. He wrote:
"As the U.S. financial crisis broadens and deepens, wiping out the wealth and savings of tens of millions, destroying hopes and dreams, it is hard not to see in all of this history's verdict upon this generation. We have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. For how did this befall us, save through decisions that brushed aside lessons that history and experience had taught our fathers?"
The obvious economic fact is that there is a financial crisis in the United States that, as it broadens and deepens, is wiping out monetary "wealth and savings of tens of millions". What does that mean? We must begin with objective, i.e., universal definitions:
continue...
October, 2008
The Election's Rhetoric of American Anti-Communism
by Lil Joe
In this article I will explain Marx, Marxism, Sweden, Socialism, Communism, Keynesian economic theory and practices contrasted to Monetarism in theory and practice, taxes, redistribution and other words and concepts distorted by McCain and Palin, FOX News, the Republicans and others daily on television. They are playing to the ignorance and nationalist delusions of American workers, and it is that ignorance and those delusions that I address. I am not defending the Keynesian policies of the democrats or Obama's representation of it and that Party. Communism is opposed and Marx distorted and attacked by both the capitalist's Democratic Party as well as Republican Party. I am defending Communism and presenting Marx and Engels' actual positions and writings.
The Republicans have called the Keynesian economic theory and policies, as represented by the Swedish economy, "socialist". This is of course ridiculous, because the Swedish economy is capitalist commodity production by wage workers, the exploitation of wage labor by capital. I have posted an article on the history of the Swedish economy, one on the Social-Democratic Labor Party's government instituting a social wage and raising the Swedish workers standard of living to one of the highest of all capitalist countries, much higher and more secure than the ignorantly anti-socialist American workers, and Malcolm X's comment on Martin Luther King's praise of Sweden ending poverty, homelessness, and violence in the country.
continue...June, 2008
Preface to "Strategy for a Working Class Electoral Agenda"
By Lil Joe
LilJoe.Radical@Gmail.Com
The article following this Preface was written in 2005 following the 2004 election. In this article, which was initially written as a commentary on the lessons of Bernie Sanders, a socialist winning a seat in the US Senate (after several terms in the House of Representatives) was the context in which this article was written.
This article is the result of 40 years of direct participation in the Black liberation and socialist revolutionary movement, and study. Malcolm X said to Black revolutionaries that of all our researches, history rewards best. In the 60s and 70s, Black liberationists and socialist and communist revolutionaries studied and integrated the national liberation movement's strategies and tactics - especially the combined national liberation and socialist revolutionary wars led by Mao in China, to integrate it into strategies to take power in the US.
The assumptions of this article is that America, in the 20th -21st century, is one of the world's most technologically advanced industrial capitalist democracies on Earth, based completely on wage labor, unlike rural, peasant based less developed China in the 1920s -40s when the People's Liberation Army fought imperialist and Kuomintang nationalist lackeys of imperialism. In America, the revolution will take place in the cities, in connection with a national strategy for winning State Power. Thus, I spent a couple of decades doing serious studies of urban revolutions in Europe.
continue...
June 2008
Barack Obama And Fatherhood
This is the first part to which I was responding, the rest is below my polemic:
Lil Joe
---
Adey wrote - or was he quoting his handlers?
> Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives, we are reminded today that
> family is the most important. And we are called to recognize and honor how
> critical every father is to that foundation. They are teachers and coaches.
> They are mentors and role models. They are examples of success and the men
> who constantly push us toward it.
On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 6:00 PM, Lil Joe
wrote:
This is ridiculous, you cannot base an argument
concerning empirical matters, or social phenomena on
analogies. The premise to an argument has to be
phenomenological. Peoples lives are not based on rocks, but
on food, clothing and shelter. Food, clothing and shelter is
the basis of every family - food and shelter are empirical
universals, and the various family formations - matrileneal
matriarchies as well as patrileneal patriarchies, are based
on these empirical foundations.
Family formations are the result of the levels of development of a community's
productive technological powers. Paleolithic and Mesolithic percussion and
pressure flake technologies provide the means to scavengers - gatherers, and
then as hunters -gatherers. Scavenging didn't require and economic division
of labor, anymore than there are divisions of labor between flies or vultures. It
wasn't until humans produced the means of making microliths and thereby
spears, then composite tools like bows and arrows, that they begin to hunt.
From this economic activity that there arose a natural division of labor between
women and men.
continue...
June, 2008
Sharpening Our Swords of Words into Concepts and Class Struggle
Moving from a racialist social analysis to understanding class dynamics in the American capitalist society
By - Adoama, Lil Joe
INTRODUCTION
Dear Netters: This is my response to exchange that took place on one of the Yahoo lists in 2008 between Lil Joe and Topcrestt. It contrasts sectarianism and global citizenry.
Within this piece is a link which leads to a polemic on race vs class in 2005, which demonstrates the growth of a worker from a racialist paradigm to a worker that began to understand the dynamics of class dynamics in an the American capitalist society.
Though a great many survivors of the Katrina storm were African American, many were not. What all the survivors of the flood had in common was their inability to escape because of their dire poverty.
I want to thank Lil Joe for the exchange and for David bringing it to LaborPartyPraxis.org.
Adaoma
==============================================
Hi Topcrestt,
Adaoma here.
So..., African Americans should focus on the "innercity problems facing black america"? And, you should focus on your village, right?
No! That type of thinking is what I call a "tribalist paradigm". This is the digital age. We live in a global community and the globe should be all our concern...especially those who live in America. Barack Obama is campaigning to be CEO of the America, who will make decisions that impacts the entire globe. It behooves all critical thinking people to know what's going on in the world, not just in your "hood" or your "village". You are a global citizen whether you realize it or not, Joe.
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May, 2008
Don't Be Nobody's Fool
By Lil Joe
I do not play political ploys and games, certainly not American politics of skin color games and/or gender. I do however recognize game when I see it: the con games of pimps, preachers and politicians - pimps have their "stables", preachers their "flocks" and politicians their "constituency". As pimps turn their women as prostitutes to Johns and tricks, it is in this same way that preachers turn over their flocks into constituent voting blocs to this or that politician and political party.
Racialism in American politics is also a political hustle -
whether it be Dixiecrats or "conservative Republicans" who
appeal to the culture of white racism into which so-called
"White" workers were assimilated as the results of deliberate
economic relations of production and political policies these
individuals internalized the cultural myth of race, and of
"white supremacy", or be the political hustle of Democrats,
masquerading as defenders of "Blacks", and their protectors
from Republican "racists" and "fascists", in both cases
"race" and "racism are political ploys to tie American workers
to the Republican Party or to the Democratic Party.
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August 5th, 2006
by David Moros
dmoros2000@yahoo.com
Who is this "International Community"?
Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance.
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engles - A Critique of The German Ideology - 1845-46
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm
---
Something about the power of words.
Who is this "International Community"?
-----
The term "international community" is a phrase that can refer to either:
* All the lands represented in United Nations.
* The people of the lands all over the world.
* Shared values and principles among actors within an international system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_community
-----
Not that wikipedia.org has definitive truth on all things but:
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August 5, 2006
U.S. Policy in the Middle East
by Gale Daggs
gdaggs5@charter.net
Li'l Joe
Joe_radical@earthlink.net
-----
The present violence and destruction spreading through the "Middle East" -- particularly American armed and financed war by it's Israeli State on the peoples of Gaza and West Bank on the one hand, and the fresh invasion of Lebanon on the other, is part and parcel of the American armed and financed wars waged by American proxy regimes in Afganistan, Iraq, Sudan and Somalia. Its one war, waged by the United States and American Quisling regimes.
The American variation of state-mititary-capitalism has "sustained" America's capitalism by a permanent arms economy .The US "warfare state" maintaining a constant demand for production of means of destruction: the "military -industrial complex" means the constant feeding of a permant arms economy. This required a bogeyman that is declared 'evil', and thus a permanent enemy -the Soviet Union in the 1940s to its collapse. The implosion of the state capitalist commodity production into private networks accompainied the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A 'new' permanent war is needed to justify military spending and aid to Israel: the new bogeyman is the so-called "Arab world". Yet, the "Arab world" is more myth then reality; it is not one monolithic, idealogical _expression or ethnicity, for instance, Syrians, and Somalians are different enthnicities and encompass different expressions of Islam well as various other religions.
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Sat, 27 May 2006 18:12:57 -0700
On the Rule of Law, Human Rights, &t.
by Li'l Joe
Joe_radical@earthlink.net mailto:Joe_radical@earthlink.net
The so-called rule of law is nothing but rules put in place by the dominant class' political representatives.
The dominant classes in society are the ones in possession of the major productive forces. Predicated upon this are the economic foundations upon which political, religious and other social institutions are based, and cultures expressed.
With the triumph of capitalist commodity production there is an extended diversification of production, thus manifold divisions of labor. Capitalist's compete, both economically, within each division of labor and between
them, and politically for control of the State. Correspondingly, politics is competitive. Democracy is therefore the mediation by which this political conflict is regulated. Democracy is the means that determine which faction of capitalists will win political control of government, and thereby management of the state, and for how long. Thus, bourgeois politicians inevitably create Constitutional governments that state general rules governing political factions. Conditions of production and appropriation engender democracy as the means by which capitalists compete for political control of the state, and management of society. Capitalist domination of government is inevitably corrupt.
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February, 2006
Comments on President Bush's Speech To the British Ruling Classes
By Lil Joe
I address below in the form of ``Critical Comments'' the historical and theoretical aspects of the Speech by President Bush (London, 19, November 2003) at Buckingham Palace to the British ruling classes and politicians.
The "Comments" on his Speech expose his ignorance or/and deception regarding history and the logical fallacies and theoretical premises in the first part of his Speech. I think that this is sufficient to get the reader into a critical mode.
President Bush: Thank you all. Thank you very much. Secretary Straw and Secretary Hoon, Admiral Cobbold, and Dr. Shipman, distinguished guests, I want to thank you for your very kind welcome that you've given to me and to Laura. I also thank the groups hosting this event, the Royal United Services Institute and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Lil Joe: This "kind welcome" by the representatives of the British ruling classes and Labour Party's government elites are in sharp contrast to the hostility of the millions of British rank and file trade unionists, workers and political activists represented by hundreds of thousands in opposition.
Here is what the Guardian Unlimited Press reports:
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October, 2005
Social Revolutions and Winning the Battle of Democracy
By Lil Joe
I - Bourgeois Democratic Revolutions
Social revolutions are historical processes of socio-economic transformation. Such transformations are not the result of ideas of great thinkers or revolutionary theorists, but arise from quantitative changes in socio-economic technologies resulting in qualitative contradictions in an existing mode of production, new forces and new passions emerge from these changes, challenging the world-order within whose wombs these fertilized eggs of the new changes grew, and developed lives with passions and wills of their own.
Yet, social revolutions are not the product of will and idea, but will and idea the result of the development of the rising new class, it's self-consciousness is the result of development of the new social organism in its mother organism's womb struggling for self-affirmation. The fetus and the mother are initially identical, the same. The mother's womb is its natural union, its home, its nurture and defense.
Self-affirmation of the specificity of the new organism, social or biological, begins in the womb, as is the case of an unborn organism it develops biologically, including its cranial capacity; its self-affirmation comes to differentiate itself, in its natural environment and from that natural environment. It's emerging cranial capacity, however is at the same time negation and affirmation both of its self-cumulative past, and against the conditions under which this past self cumulated to this point. From being an unconscious organism in self into a consciousness of self, its self-consciousness develops being for self as it confronts and overthrows the limits within which it had till this point been nurtured.
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09/11/05
INTRODUCTION
Allowing myself to be swept along in the frenzy of the emotional declarations which constituted the discourse on the cause of the tragedy in New Orleans I offered in fora "incontrovertible" evidence of the racist motivations of the US government in occasioning the horrific destruction of New Orleans and in compounding the suffering of the inhabitants of the "Big Easy" in the wake of the storm. Said "incontrovertible" evidence took the form of a picture of a slate-black reptile lying dead on the grounds of a hurricane ravaged compound. In the spirit of the prevailing discourse, and in the stark and telling absence of a white reptile in said photo or any other photo that has come to my attention, I have become convinced, unshakeably so, that the neglect and the hardships occasioned thereby was the consequence of racist contempt for black skin. I present the evidence for my conviction here, once again, for all to consider :http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050908/480/msdp13209082300
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May 31, 2005
A Red-Green Electoral Alliance:
A Working Class Strategy To Win The Battle of Democracy
Snip: "That support is evident at the Old Labor Hall in Barre. "He is as good as they come," says Sue Lucas, a nurse in Morrisville. "He is about everything we believe in."
"He is not afraid to stand up to either party," said Jim Genovesi, a worker for an electric utility in Rutland. "He doesn't seem to be affected by political pressure or lobbyist pressure. He stands his ground."
"Sanders' booming voice fills the hall as he nears the end of his speech. "We know that our opponents have hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that they put into the political process. We know they control much of the media. We know they have an attack machine that goes from Fox to Rush Limbaugh, the Drudge Report and all over the place.
"We know that is what THEY have," his voice thunders.
"But there is one thing they do not have. They do not have ordinary people prepared to knock on doors and organize all over America. "That is what WE have.
"They have the money. We have the people.
"And when push comes to shove, the people are going to defeat the money."
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Lil Joe Comment: Of course, 'ordinary people' versus the rich folk is not a clear statement of partisan working class socialist politics. It is populism bordering on demagogy, but in America, for a successful populist running as an open 'socialist' in independent campaign races, beating Democrats as well as Republicans, is very significant. Sanders successes in House races, which aren't as expensive as Senate races, shows to the Green Party, Peace and Freedom Party and Labor Party activists that it can be done. Rather than spreading money and resources running candidates for President, Governors, the US and State Senate, with no chance of winning those races, it is demonstrated by this maverick Congressman that we can in fact win seats to the House of Representatives.
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July 12, 2004
Analysis of Fahrenheit 9/11
By Lil Joe
joeradical@earthlink.net
Fahrenheit 9/11 is an editorializing documentary by Michael Moore, ostensibly dealing with the assaults of 9/11 and the subsequent invasion and occupation of Iraq. This anecdotal documentary, both the movie and the audience reactions, shows the world the pitfalls of American political thinking. American politics reduce every political issue to psychoanalysis of individual motives, the politics of the individual, and sociological discussions of racism.
This is evident in the setting up of the message of the documentary: the invasion of Iraq by the "Bush administration" was motivated by Bush's personal proclivities, such as revenge for Saddam's attempt to kill his "father" (i.e. former president Bush). The documentary goes on to show links between the Bush family and the evil Saudis, in particular family connections between the Bushes and Bin Ladins. In doing this, Moore is in continuity with blaming 9/11 on bad individuals, intimating that for personal reasons Bush went after the wrong individuals. Democratic Party balderdash!
Moore's film begins by blaming racism in Florida, and in the
Senate, for Bush becoming President. However, Moore did not quote
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia saying that the U.S. is not a
Democracy, but on the contrary is a "Constitutional republic". In
fact, Scalia is right. In the Federalist Paper No. 10, November 23,
1787, James Madison, the 4th President of the United States, wrote:
"Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and
contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal
security, or the rights of property".
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July 3, 2004
Identity Politics, the Green Party, and the Necessity in the U.S. for a Working Class Party
by Li'l Joe
Joe_radical@earthlink.net
=======================================
Snip: " WOODRUFF: But aren't you really saying, David Cobb, that you're going to tread lightly when it comes to seriously challenging John Kerry? "
" COBB: Well, Greens tell the truth. And the truth of the matter is, that John Kerry voted for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. John Kerry voted for the Patriot Act. John Kerry voted for NAFTA. John Kerry opposes single payer universal health care. John Kerry opposes raising the minimum wage to a living wage… At the same time, I'm going to acknowledge the truth of the matter that as bad as John Kerry is on all these issues, George W. Bush is qualitatively worse. The difference between John Kerry and George W. Bush may be nearly incremental, but it is not inconsequential. "
=======================================
David Cobb is the Green Party Presidential Candidate.
The Green Party is based in the petty-bourgeois professionals. Yet, taking a page from Bob Dole and Dennis Kucinich -- the Jesse Jackson "son of a share-cropper" line, David Cobb boasts:
"I grew up in grinding poverty in San Leon, Texas. I've washed dishes. I've been a construction worker. I'm a genuine working class person who lived the American dream. You know, Greens are ordinary people trying to do something extraordinary which is to build a genuine movement that will take our country back from the corporate hooligans who have literally hijacked it."
The Green Party is financially and socially based in the
petty-bourgeoisie and white-collar professionals. They are not
based in big Capital, and certainly not in the trade unions. The
petty bourgeoisie feel squeezed by the big or "corporate"
bourgeoisie on the one side, and by "big labor" on the other.
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June 21, 2004
The Economic Basis of Racism and How to Eliminate It
by Li'l Joe
Joe_radical@earthlink.net
NOTE: Tim Wise has written a good sociological treatise on
Reagan's Racism, and White Racism in America - as far as sociology
goes. (See article below) Perhaps I should say, as far as bourgeois
liberal sociological writing goes. I say this because the article
is completely without economic content, and avoids the economical
analysis that racism is a product of the capitalist mode of
appropriation, the product of the capitalist mode of production --
that is, competitive commodity production on the basis of
competitive wage labor.
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May 2, 2004
American Journalism as Unchallenged Propaganda
by Lil Joe
joeradical@earthlink.net
Unlike other countries, e.g. England, where society is obviously
class based and the press is openly class based and politically
partisan, the United States claims a classless democracy -- class
realities are hidden in a culture of denial. American "journalism"
in the U.S. perpetuates as well as reflects this bourgeois
sociology: that America is a "democracy" without the "rigid class
divisions" characteristic of "old Europe".
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April 21, 2004
OPIN: America's Way of Propaganda and War in Middle Asia/North Africa.
By Lil Joe
joeradical@earthlink.net
Propaganda campaigns to demonize an enemy country's leadership,
as a tyrant, dictator, extremist, a madman and a monster has always
been the role of the U.S. politicians and its media. Before a war
is waged, the American people are brought on board in believing
that America or/and its allies are being victimized by Hitler-like
creatures who must be "stopped".
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November 11, 2000
The Race for the Presidency
by Connie White
connierw@earthlink.net
Recent events re elections 2000 have shown that the "race for
the Presidency" is not all that it is cracked up to be -- so to
speak. The recent elections -- and the disputes arising from these
elections -- have again brought to light that the American
"presidency" is not decided by popular vote, but by the Electoral
College, i.e., the votes cast by the each states' electors. In
other words, your vote at the polls is not what directly elects the
President of the United States.
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February 22, 2004
Reparations and Class Politics in America
by Lil Joe
Joe_radical@earthlink.net
The reparation movement is the Black bourgeois and professional
classes hoodwinking Black workers into a "movement" that is
pro-capitalist, and as such not in their class interests. The
American working-class is comprised of men and women of every race,
ethnicity, religion and lack thereof, and racial politics of any
kind is destructive to our principles of class unity. Racial
politics only helps the bourgeoisie.
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October, 2003
Nuclear Theatre in South East and Middle Asia
By Lil Joe
The United States, Britain, Russia, France and Israel are "alarmed" at the prospects of North Korea and Iran having the capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons. They hate the fact that China has nuclear weapons, but can't do a damn thing about it.
The United States emerged from World War II as a nuclear power--the sole nuclear power. The American political and military establishment wanted the U.S. to remain the only power with nuclear weapons at their disposal. As such, the U.S. would dominate the world, not just the Western Hemisphere. They would have had the capacity, derived from nuclear blackmail, to run over every nation in the world, the way they treat the countries of Latin America. They would be thereby not just a regional bully but a global bully. They would have been for the past six decades the sole rogue superpower, and behaved in the Middle East then the way the U.S. and Israel are behaving today, since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today the Palestinian, Syrian, Iraqi, and other Muslim and Arab states in Middle Asia are at the mercy of U.S. whims.
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Sunday, September 21,2003
PaxAmerica in Decline - U.S./E.U. Rivalry and Blix Bombshell
By Lil Joe
An Athens daily news paper (Sunday, September 21, 2003) carried an interview of Hans Blix, Europe's former UN chief weapons inspector. Hans Blix, in diplomatic jargon, denounced the United States and Britain for their "unnecessary" invasion and occupation of Iraq.
I say, "diplomatic jargon," because the wording, used by Blix, is vague enough for any number of "interpretations." Blix spoke of the "questionable honesty" of the governments of Britain and United States in presenting their "case" for the invasion and occupation of Iraq (actually re-occupation since Britain was there before). Blix's opposition to the invasion -- the same as Germany, Russia and France -- is that Iraq had no WMDs and thus that Iraq was posing no immediate threat.
This implicit criticism, by a prominent European operative, of the U.S. and Britain's foreign policy in Iraq must be analyzed, critically, in context of the economic competition between the United States and the European Union.
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Summer, 2003
Commemoration of the 1963
March on Washington
By Lil Joe
In itself the commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington and memories of Martin Luther King Jr. is galvanizing, appropriate and it is quite good to want to rekindle the ``spirit of the sixties." But what spirit? The spirit of reformist preachers, that resulted in making the ``leaders'' of the 60s becoming Democratic Party politicians and millionaires? These are the same politicians at the commemoration rally for whom rekindling the spirit of the 60s means no more than voter registration for next years presidential election. The Democratic Party's Negroes are showing their usefulness by using this commemoration to rally Blacks to vote for the Democrats in next year's election.
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Summer, 2003
Hypocrisy of America's Two-Party System & the Need for a True Workers Alliance
By Lil Joe
American (and European) workers often confuse the Democratic Party as the American version of the European Social-Democratic and Labour Parties. But this is not true. The American Democratic Party was originally the political party of the American slave-holders in the South, and their supporters in the North.
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During the 1930's unionised workers in the
U.S. used the sit-down strike, another powerful
weapon in the class struggle against industrial capital.
