This issue of Immigration News Briefs [Vol. 11, No. 28 – November 22, 2008] is posted here.
Immigration News Briefs is a weekly supplement to Weekly News Update on the Americas, published by Nicaragua Solidarity Network. It is also distributed free via email; contact immigrationnewsbriefs@gmail.com to subscribe or unsubscribe.
*1. CHINESE RESTAURANTS RAIDED IN IOWA
On Nov. 18, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested
four workers in raids on Peony Chinese Restaurants in Vinton and
Toledo, Iowa. The same family owns both restaurants. Two men from
Mexico were arrested at the Toledo restaurant; one man from Mexico and
one from China were arrested at the Vinton restaurant. All four face
administrative immigration violations for being in the country
illegally, said ICE spokesperson Tim Counts from the ICE office in
Minneapolis.. A hearing has not yet been scheduled before a federal
immigration judge to determine whether the men will be deported.
Counts said the enforcement actions were part of an ongoing
investigation. “A ‘raid’ denotes something random or chaotic — this is
neither,” said Counts.
Is revolution possible? How can the people deepen revolutionary change after seizing power? To answer those questions, it is valuable to study Mao’s revolution in China, and especially the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
Kasama would like to share “Evaluating the Cultural Revolution in China and its Legacy for the Future.” It was written by the by the MLM Revolutionary Study Group in the U.S. This comprehensive paper describes the course of the Cultural Revolution (CR) from 1966-1976, its achievements and shortcomings, and why future movements for revolution, socialism and communism must stand on its shoulders.”
Part 1 and part 2 are available on Kasama. The other parts will soon follow.
Evaluating the Cultural Revolution (3):
Theoretical Underpinnings of the Cultural Revolution
The persistence of class struggle and the emergence of a new bourgeoisie under socialism In the middle of the 20th century, the prevailing thinking in the international communist movement was that a capitalist class had to be anchored in the private ownership of the means of production. While Stalin claimed that by 1936—with the nationalization of industry and collectivization of agriculture—no exploiting classes existed in the Soviet Union,[1] Mao recognized that class struggle would persist and intensify at key points in socialist society. As he pointed out in 1957 in On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People:
In China, although in the main socialist transformation has been completed with respect to the system of ownership…there are still remnants of the overthrown landlord and comprador classes, there is still a bourgeoisie, and the remolding of the petty bourgeoisie has only just started. The class struggle is by no means over. The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the class struggle between the different political forces, and the class struggle in the ideological fields between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie will continue to be long and tortuous and at times will even become very acute. The proletariat seeks to transform the world according to its own world outlook and so does the bourgeoisie. In this respect, the question of which will win out, socialism or capitalism, is still not really settled.[2]
Explicitly political American metal bandLamb of God from Richmond, VA. This is a single off there album As the Palaces Burn. Released in 2003 it’s about a American war vet with a drinking problem.
LOG have made it clear that there music exists with the paradigm of bands such as Rage Against the Machine, the Dead Kennedys and 80s political punk and hardcore that emerged against Reaganism. And while not as explicitly anti-war as songs such as 2005’s B.O.M.B. (Bring Your Own Bombs) by System of a Down, its narrative is pretty powerful.
Rather be dead than alive by your oppression
Rather be dead than alive by your design
Zack wrote: This band was around from 1991–1998, from Sweden and sang of revolution and a better world after the destruction of capitalism and the status quo.
I don’t share Rick’s view of how to conceive (or explain) socialism. But i do think that he is right that there is an opening here for a broad discussion of socialism in society — the explosion of capitalism’s ugly crisis (and its devastation of millions of people) opens the door for a “second look” at alternative societies. We need to dig into to develop our own way to expose ow capitalism is outmoded and reactionary, and that an alternative socialist society is both possible and radically better for the people.
The US left today confronts a remarkable opportunity. George Bush and Sarah Palin effectively reopened the explicit debate over capitalism versus socialism. More than that, their interventions, combined with the current crisis of capitalism, disrupt the conventional, classic definitions of both isms. Thus, the debate over them is now transformed in advantageous ways for the US left.
It is a deep thing that people still celebrate the survival of the early colonists at Plymouth — by giving thanks to the Christian God who supposedly protected and championed the European invasion. The real meaning of all that, then and now, needs to be continually excavated. The myths and lies that surround the past are constantly draped over the horrors and tortures of our present.
I originally wrote this article a decade ago, and it has showed up in different places and publications usually around the holiday. Pass it on.
Every schoolchild in the U.S. has been taught that the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony invited the local Indians to a major harvest feast after surviving their first bitter year in New England. But the real history of Thanksgiving is a story of the murder of indigenous people and the theft of their land by European colonialists–and of the ruthless ways of capitalism.
This is the third and concluding part of a three-part essay written for Kasama. Part 1 is here and part 2 is here.
by Eddy Laing
Capital roams the planet seeking out markets to acquire and human labor to exploit. Success is the ability to yield super-profits. This neo-liberal dystopia comes to defineevery aspect of ‘developing world’ economies. The methods and scale of exploitation engineered in Central America by US and other capitals is typical of imperial socio-economic relationships established throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America.
At the same time that Guatemala provides sweatshops to the global textile sector, it provides a market for US agribusiness which — thanks to free trade agreements — can now export cotton, wheat, beef and processed foods into Guatemala and all of Central America. This trade will further ruin the already-stunted local agricultural sectors which cannot compete with large-scale industrial agri-business. This same dynamic also increasespressure on Guatemalan agriculture toward growing cash-crops, such as sugar cane for ethanol production in the US, rather than grains, vegetables or fruits for local consumption.
Just before the current financial crisis erupted, some of the biggest US and European banks were embroiled in what one observer called “a battle over the best assets in Latin America’s last big banking opportunity,” (32) a mad dash to acquire stakes in the financial sectors throughout Central and South America. During the last half of 2006, HSBC bought up Grupo Banistmo (Panama) and Citigroup acquired both Grupo Financiero Uno (multi-national) and Grupo Cuscatln (El Salvador), while Scotiabank bought Banco Interfin (Costa Rica) and GE Money (division of General Electric Co.) bought 49.9% of BAC International Bank (Panama). Read the rest of this entry »
Kalash writes: “this is the title track from their first album. interestingly, the original lyrics in the first verse were ‘like lenin, marx, and mao tse-tung, and freedom from a loaded gun,’ but were changed in this live video to ‘like malcolm x and mao tse-tung…’ note: the choppy quality of these videos are due to their being ‘anti-videos’ (DIY/independent) made by the band to promote their first album.”
Rubber and Glue has appeared in five parts. This is the fifth and final section.
Elements of Exhaustion, or, Rubber and Glue (Kasama Post #3)
Part 5: Needing Enemies More Than Friends
by Bill Martin
“If you find yourself in a place where you are treating a lot of people, former friends and comrades, in a very ugly way (which may just be the endpoint of having an underlying instrumental perspective on people in the first place), then maybe it is time to look in the mirror and ask if it is really all of those other people who are the counter-revolutionaries.”
* * * * *
The third element of exhaustion has a somewhat different character. It is the point in the arc of an organization when it appears to need enemies more than friends.
Obviously this is a very ugly moment, as evidenced by footnote 17 of the “Manifesto” and various articles in Revolution newspaper, and most of all by the “Glossary: What is Counter-Revolution?” article.
Again we see a basic separation from the world, where BA and what remains of the RCP seem completely unable to see themselves through the eyes of others.
For myself, I want to speak to the other side of the coin, too, which is that, when I do my work, I feel a certain responsibility to philosophy itself. That the RCP is now willing to put itself in a place where this can mean nothing (or nothing good) to it is also evidence of a trend that has run its course.
Kasama received the following document written by Collision Course Media.
On the November Elections and the next steps in building the anti-imperialist movement in the US
(Nov. 25, 2008)
On November 4, 2008, millions of new voters stepped into political life with the hope that the traditional (as many put it) rich-white-male-Christian cultural monopoly on political power would no longer determine the conditions of life in the United States. These millions who stepped forward to be counted — young, poor, women, people of color, the wronged and abused, the falsely accused, sick and disabled, atheists, Moslems, Buddhists, and progressive Christians, displaced, evicted, and laid-off, and other “outcasts” and have-nots — were repelled by that de facto oligarchy, which had, they felt, excluded them. The Bush regime had arrogantly and unsuccessfully led that traditional elite for 8 years of widening wars and monstrous economic crises, which drew widespread domestic and global anger and condemnation. With high hopes, the millions of new voters were joined by millions of others who were trying to find a way out of the mess that this system has been making of their lives and of the world. Black people, Latinos, other people of color, workers, and youth stepped out of the shadows of solitude and “making do” and into political life, albeit within the confines of a presidential election.
By and large, these millions are responding to the promise of access, of open doors. They bring with them the worries and concerns and angers of their lives—of the wars being waged on false pretenses, of the worsening conditions of life. These are the issues they bring with them, though solutions to these issues were not on the electoral table.
Rubber and Glue has appeared in five parts. This is the fourth section.
Elements of Exhaustion, or, Rubber and Glue (Kasama Post #3)
Part 4: Dead-Ends in Science and the Science of Dead-Ends
by Bill Martin
“‘Impossibility’ as ‘you can’t get there from here’ does not mean that ‘here’ was always a bad place to be.”
“…those who take the experience of the twentieth century as some sort of unsolvability theorem for any future prospects of communism have to be refuted, but the refutation is not simply empirical, and neither can it simply depend on reconstructing continuities with the previous experience of revolution and socialism.”
” I suppose I part company with those who think elevating any leader is a problem. Even with actual religious organizations that have extreme vertical, top-down, integration, I don’t find ‘cult’ talk very helpful, it just doesn’t explain enough.”
“In my first Kasama post I mentioned the idea that new stages in Marxism have also featured new forms of organization. I won’t go further with this question here, except again to say two things. First, the economistic mass “revolutionary” organization is not the solution. Second, we need leaps in understanding on the new way the world is working these days and the new Marxism we need to confront it.”
“Having said this, let me underline again this particular element of exhaustion: substitution of the person for the event, or forcing an understanding of the person as the event.”
Expressions of hope are only as truly hopeful as the honesty of the assessment of reality from which they emerge. Conjuring up hope rooted in a denial of reality can only deepen despair in the long run.
That’s why much of the political rhetoric of the past two years may prove not only illusory but counterproductive. So, with much talk of change and hope in the air, now is the time to articulate an authentic sense of hope, one that is realistic. If there is to be a decent future for humanity — indeed, any future at all — we must face painful realities with intellectual honesty and moral strength. We can celebrate the victories we achieve along the way but it’s just as crucial that we stay focused on what remains to be understood and accomplished.
In that hopeful spirit I offer these observations with the goal of generating productive discussion among organizers and activists who oppose the hierarchy and injustice inherent in patriarchy, white supremacy, imperial nationalism, and an increasingly predatory capitalism, and who are concerned about the fragile state of an ecosystem that has been seriously compromised by human action.
We are runninga new series by Bill (his third on Kasama). Rubber and Glue is appearing in four parts. This is the third part.
Elements of Exhaustion, or, Rubber and Glue (Kasama Post #3)
Part 3: The Symptoms of Exhaustion
“…let me emphasize the difficulty of recognizing the moment when a paradigm is exhausted. When this moment is passed and the previous paradigm is held onto doggedly, the dynamic becomes something like just digging deeper and deeper into a hole. It then becomes harder and harder to dig out, especially as what is also reinforced is largely training in only digging that particular hole.”
“If BA and the RCP had done their work better, in terms of both form and content, they might have arrived at a better sense of the cul-de-sac and what it might take to get out of it. If they had done their work better, they wouldn’t be able to get over with a part of their membership… with this … half-baked new synthesis, a less than half-baked critique of religion, and a level of emphasis on a ‘special, unique, precious, and irreplaceable individual’ that cannot help but be a form of messianism.”
“For myself, I am probably less hostile to messianism than most who are reading this, and I think the idea that an individual might be the gateway through which a true event (or, in Badiou’s terminology, a “truth-event”) might become manifest has to be taken seriously.”
“While things could be the other way around, and in retrospect there is always the temptation to say this, I still think the objective factors outweigh the subjective ones.”
By Netra Bikram Chand ‘Biplap’ (central committee member of CPN (Maoist).
We should say honestly that there is a difference of opinion on how to accomplish the Nepalese Revolution. Mainly, the difference of opinion is about the party line, political program and tactics in our party. This clearly justifies that a serious u-turn has occurred before the Nepalese Revolution. The responsibility of carrying the revolution ahead successfully has fallen upon the shoulders of the revolutionary communists of Nepal and the revolutionary communists of the world. We all should direct our attention to it.
1) The difference of opinion on political program:
The main bone of contention is whether the party should advance ahead for People’s Republic or stay in the stage of democratic republic. In our central committee meeting held from 4 to 6 October 2008, Party Chairman, Comrade Prachanda put forward a program to remain in the Democratic Republic. His spoken proposal pointed out the necessity of the tactics of democratic republic; there is no favorable situation to advance into the People’s Republic. On the contrary, he pointed out the need to synthesize the ideology based on the achievements gained up until democratic republic. After the proposal of Com. Prachanda, Com. Kiran disagreed with the program of democratic republic, and put forward a written proposal for a People’s Republic. Com. Kiran proposed that the appropriateness of the democratic republic is over and the party should advance ahead towards the People’s Republic.
Lightning Lane was one of the only Black foremen at the mine. And in the 1970s that was rare for the whole industry.
For decades there had been sharp divisions within those few mines that even hired Black men, like U.S Steel Gary Holler, Eastern Associated’s Keystone #1 or Consol’s Eckmann.
The Black workers made less money, and in a crudely racist fashion they were considered unfit for the skilled jobs or foremen’s positions. Black workers at my mine largely worked as motormen, running the long chains of coal cars out of the mine to the tipple, outside where the coal was dumped onto the railroad. And white workers largely worked at the face of the mine — deep in the tunnels where the coal was clawed out and loaded onto conveyor belts. And all the most privileged jobs — like setting up water pumps, or maintaining the air fans, or machining replacement parts for the worn equipment were the reserve of white workers who guarded their skills jealously.
And so it was, undoubtedly, the breaking of a barrier for Lightning Lane to make his foreman’s papers and be put in charge of a crew of men. And it was undoubtedly the breaking of a barrier for those white guys to take their orders from a Black man — especially who was not given to polite talk and deference. And in those days many such barriers were being broken, and such divisions were breaking down. And today, I guess, in the aftershock of Obama’s victory, we are all reminded how much the breaking of these barriers have meant to Black people in the long climb out of slavery.
But for all that, I have to add that Lightning Lane was a royal asshole. I mean really.
Rubber and Glue will appear in four parts. Here is Part 1.
Elements of Exhaustion, or, Rubber and Glue (Kasama Post #3)
Part 2: Drawing the Line on Economism
by Bill Martin
“There is a lesson to be drawn from the fact that most Marxists, of whatever stripe, tend to get themselves into the sorts of cul-de-sacs where they wouldn’t know a new synthesis if they saw it.”
“This ‘Maoism beyond Mao’ ought to remain in the encyclopedia of further, qualitative developments—but it is not enough to respond to the demands of the world…. Such a new synthesis would not just ‘be there for the taking,’ it would light up the sky.”
“It should come as no surprise that, when you need to go forward, but you can’t, then there is a falling back into dogmatism. Dogmatism runs not only to content, but to form as well, and this latter aspect seems as if it has to be related to what can be called ‘cul-de-sac thinking.’ These problems are connected, as well, with a simple unwillingness to do some homework and an unwillingness to be open to others who have pursued these issues.”
This issue of Immigration News Briefs [Vol. 11, No. 28 – November 22, 2008] is posted here. 
Kasama 