ZJW
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CJ Hopkins: ‘Beware the Trumpenleft!’ :
It is exactly as ALB says.And here is a letter from Nicholas Williams touching on the matter: http://www.cornwall24.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=3896 (Second item on that page.)Who is Nicholas Williams? A Celtic linguist and one the main factional leaders in the extremely acrimonious Cornish Revival movement. For our purposes here, the main point of his letter is to show how independence, and also Roman Catholicism, has ill-served Irish Gaelic (and that an independent Cornwall would be of no benefit to the Cornish language but more likely the opposite; though, one might point out, Bretagne in a centralised Fance has done Breton no favors either. Breton is in much worse repair than Irish Gaelic, with a good number of neo-speakers using a form of the language phonologically, lexically, and syntactically incomprehensible to a small body of dying native speakers. This is similar to, but even more severe than, the problem of what’s sometimes called in Ireland ‘urban Irish’ vs native Irish; about which: http://www.gaelport.com/default.aspx?treeid=37&NewsItemID=3726 ; and pp 260~269 of https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/opus4-ubp/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/691/file/celtic_languages_in_contact.pdfAs for the non-nationalist, seminally Protestant role in the Gaelic language revival, watch this excellent documentary from 2003. In Irish Gaelic with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCDyCiikEjc&feature=youtu.be&t=22 . (Of course the word ‘Gaeilge’ (‘Gaelic’) is consistently translated in the subs as ‘Irish’!)
‘Gaelic’? ‘Irish’? Irish nationalism has come to stigmatise the word ‘Gaelic’ in one specific context: You must never refer to the ‘Irish language’ as ‘Gaelic’ or ‘Irish Gaelic’, either. (Though for American etc audiences concessions may be made.) You can speak of ‘Gaelic football’, ‘Gaelic’ this and ‘Gaelic’ that, and (absurdly) even ‘Scottish Gaelic’ but never ‘ [Irish] Gaelic’. Such use is deemed ‘condescending’, ‘pejorative etc. And here from no less than the ‘Communist’ Party of Ireland: ‘The connotations attached to names derive from the way in which they are used, and by whom. To Irish minds, “Gaelic” is what foreigners call Irish, often with negative attitudes, and this gives it a connotation in Ireland that is completely negative.’ No doubt the real motor behind the attributions of bad connotation is this idea: ‘We are the Irish Nation; our language is thus called “Irish”, and nothing else.’Now *in* Gaelic what is the language called? (1) There exist no such words in Gaelic as ‘Éireannais’, ‘Éirinnis’, or ‘Éiris’ (which, if they existed, would translate to ‘Irish [language]’. (2) *in* Gaelic the language is called — from Munster, to Connacht, to Ulster, to Scotland — the very same thing, variously pronounced (as the anglophonic ear will hear it) as GALE-in, GALE-guh, GALE-ik, and GAL-ik (spelled ‘Gaelainn’, ‘Gaeilge’, ‘Gaeilic (Gaedhilg)’, and ‘Gàidhlig’ .(Of which, all the forms used in Ireland formerly contained the silent ‘dh’ before being eliminated in the spelling reform after WW2 — and thus doing harm to the orthographically clear etymological commonality between the language on the two sides of the Moyle Straits ) .But Pan-Gaelicists in Ireland are happy to use the word ‘Gaelic’. For example, Ciarán Ó Duibhín: http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/~oduibhin/alba/ouch.htm .Those with interest in the history of thwarted Pan-Gaelicism may read with profit ‘Linguistic Pan-Gaelicism: A Dog that Wouldn’t Hunt’ atAnd by Michael Roberts there is this:
I don’t know what happened to the spaces between lines that should be there. Tried editing it. No good. Makes the thing very confusing to read.
General recommendations for uncles:First, never, never give a 12-year old, a 120-year old, or anyone in between, the terrible book by Le Guin. An economy of scarcity or near scracity (Environmentally-determined? Not clear ) coupled with stifling social conformism, quasi-religion, and un-explained bureaucratism. If the White House Announcement on ‘Socialism’ for some reason had dealt with real socialism they probably would have quoted from this book to prove how awful ‘real socialism’ would be.Here are some good choices that come to mind:Pieter Lawrence: The Last ConflictHogan: Voyage from YesteryearRichard Montague: Within the SystemRichard Montague: Frank Faces of the DeadSOLFED: Fighting for Ourselves: Anarcho-Syndicalism and the Class Struggle.The Lawrence book is simply excellent.I have never set eyes on the books by Montegue, can’t get them. But someone on this forum must have read them. Well? All I know is that his non-fiction is certainly great, so perhaps his fiction as well. (Like P Lawrence.)Hogan’s book, although unintentionally so, is socialist-communist to the core. A communist and leaderless society of abundance. And a very good story, after a boring start. The only problem is that near the beginning I recall there are sexual references or innuendo that might not be suitable for a 12-year-old. (But I have no idea what 12-year-olds are like nowadays, especially in an exotic land like the UK, if that is where the hypothetical niece or nephew is so domiciled.)The book by Solfed is not a joke. These A-Sers are, need I mention?, communists, not collectivists. It is very well written (perhaps by J Kay of libcom??), and after reading could well serve as basis for discussion with niece or nephew of What is Not to be Done. (I am surprised to see that the book was never reviewed in the SS.)Introduction
1. The mainstream workers’ movement
2. Radical currents in the workers’ movement
3. Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th century
4. Capitalism and class struggle since World War II
5. Anarcho-syndicalism in the 21st-century
EndnotesIf I am up to the arduous challenge I will try to make coherent and detailed remarks on both the Walt Auerbach piece in the CWO-allied publication and on the Party’s pamphlet ( which latter I am just starting). In my impatience, a question for Marcos: You said that the Party’s pamphlet ‘takes a much better stand [than] Marx, Engels, and Rosa Luxembourg on the Jewish Question ‘. Please explain: What do you find wrong with their stand
? I would like to consider your reply as I read the pamphlet.I hope that the one on zionism/anti-semitism will be considerably better than this semi- potboiler that the CWO thinks highly of —
https://intransigence.org/2018/07/09/zionism-and-marxism/
— and that it will not contain favorable references to the useless historical-idealists Postone/Frankfurt School.
Hopefully it is written by Stefan or has considerable input from him.
Last but not least, it is to hoped that it is put on line, soon.
CWO translation of short Nuevo Curso article ‘Bolsonaro and the Crisis in Brazil’:
https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2018-10-09/bolsonaro-and-the-crisis-in-brazil
(edit: For the following, I typed the url, just as for the link above, but it has turned into an an (advert-looking) image file? Why? How is this to be avoided?)
Original Spanish at:
https://nuevocurso.org/por-que-gano-bolsonaro-en-brasil/jondwhite wrote:https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/27/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-who-is-she-democrats-new-york-life-career-policiesIn the event anyone wishes to discuss so-called 'socialist' Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she is a member of the DSA and has won the nomination for the Democrats party (Sanders, Clinton, Obama etc.) so I guess she is dual carding (member of more than one political party).The WSWS has an alright article about her: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/06/28/pers-j28.html?view=article_mobile . The 'International Committee of the Fourth International' (or less grandiosely, Northism, after its leader's name) is trotskyist but heterodox in that they oppose all forms of communalism (for want of a better term off hand) — nationalism, genderism, IdPolism etc — and unlike normal leftists they don't take sides in inter-state fights. That being so, I consult their site daily, and there is often an item of some value. Of course anything touching upon the USSR has to be avoided; and most any article on any (political) subject at all will sooner or latter begin singing the lenino-trotskyist liturgy. If you would like to protect your eyes and your psyche from gazing upon icons of Saint Leon, you can access their site this way: http://www.wsws.org/en/?view=mobilehome . No images! One good article they ran was this review against the cretinous and wholly objectionable blockbuster 'Wonder Woman'. http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/02/22/pant-f22.html?view=article_mobile . Among other things they point out its anti-German theme. Content aside, for those with the right sense of humor, the frenetic, outraged, or even hysterical tone in which they often write can be very diverting. (Would someone please tell me how to make paragraph breaks?)
ALB wrote:ZJW wrote:And here, for those interested is a definition from an introduction to the Bauer book (not by Bauer but by some latter-day academic) of what Austro-Marxism's national autonomy meant. (As a reformist/bourgeois utopian notion, not an unattractive idea.)I agree that some sort of non-territorial cultural autonomy is a not unttractive idea. It can be imagined that this could be applied in socialism to language groups rather than to "nations" (of course), with people speaking the same language having autonomy when it comes to education and culural (theatre, films, publishing, etc) matters; particpation in the democratic decision-making would not be based on where people lived but on what language they spoke.Although, under capitalism, it would be a reformist measure, it is not that "utopian" in the sense of unrealisable. It is applied in the inner part of Greater Brussels where people choose which language "community" to be in (Dutch or French) and voted for its bodies that administer education and culture. So people in the same street can be voting for different bodies dealing with these matters. It is certainly better than ethnic cleansing and to what applies in other parts of Greater Brussels outside the centre which are also linguistically diverse and where the minority (in some communes even the majority) of French-speakers enjoy considerably less "facilities". That's because there things are based on territory and the French-speakers find themselves on Dutch-speaking territory.
I had no idea.I did read sometime ago a text whose url is not immediately to hand, advocating for some countries an elctoral system I recall like this:The centrifugal tendencies in 'consociational democracies' (power-sharing set-ups like in NI) can be tweeked 'centripetally' with the adoption of a Multiple Proportional Vote (MPV) system. What's MPV? The same as Part-List Proportional (PR-List), except that with PR-List, the voter votes once, while with MPV the voter votes as many times as the constitutional setup recognises separate-but-equal ethnic-or-religious groups. Let's say it's Northern Ireland, I identify as a member of the Catholic/Nationalist/Republican community. So I cast one vote for one of the C/N/R parties, but then I also cast a vote for one of the Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist parties. (What happens to Alliance, Greens, and the various Trots I don't know. There must be some provision for cross-community parties.) The first vote is my internal ballot; the second ballot is my external ballot. The point is that they don't 'weigh' the same. How much more is the internal worth than the external? 1 : 0.5? 1: 0:25? It was not clear to me. Anyway, the aim is: with this voting system, politicians of Group A will have some incentive to attract votes from — or at least not be utterly repugnant to — voters in Group B. (How do I make paragraph breaks?)
alanjjohnstone wrote:The Zionist Jews look at the fate of most of the Bundists – the death camps – and ascribe to it the failure of the Bundist ideas of fighting alongside their fellow-worker in the working class rather than fleeing. It was not a failure of principles, imho, but an unprecedented and unforeseen consequence of the war.Oh, you mean that. I see. Yes, indeed.By the way, and unrelated to the above, it seems to me that these two things are usefully treated separately:1) Showing the nonsensical nature of 'anti-zionism = anti-semitism' through historical citation of Jews who based on various ideologies (religious, bourgeois, socialist … ) have opposed the existence of a Jewish state. 2) Among avowed socialists, the various views on the Jewish Question in relation to the socialist movement: thus, assimilation-integrationism vs Bundisms vs left-zionism (= 'socialism' yes, but in a Jewish state in Palestine, and just for the Jews there).
And here, for those interested is a definition from an introduction to the Bauer book (not by Bauer but by some latter-day academic) of what Austro-Marxism's national autonomy meant. (As a reformist/bourgeois utopian notion, not an unattractive idea.)'In most conventional theories, national autonomy requires a territorial base for the autonomous national community, or at least the intention to build some kind of "autonomous homeland" that will serve as the territorial base. Bauer and Renner's theory, however, rests on the idea of "nonterritorial national autonomy." This means that autonomous communities are organized as sovereign collectives, whatever their residential locations within a multinational state. As in the millet system in the Ottoman Empire, peoples of different ethnic identities can coexist in the same territory without straining the principle of national autonomy. The crucial difference of Bauer and Renner's system from the millet system is, however, that the autonomous communities are organized democratically and are based on individual consent to belong and on internal democracy. The analogy used by Renner was that of religious communities. Much in the same way as Catholics, Protestants, and Jews could coexist in the same city, Renner argued, so members of different national communities could coexist with their own distinct institutions and national organizations, provided they did not claim territorial exclusivity.'
