Nader blames YOU!

Ralph Nader, in a recent public meeting in Washington D.C, including, among his audience, a surprising number of very similar-to-himself past agitators, started his contribution with a liberal criticism of the current American political and corporate systems, basically from the standpoint of the US Constitution, and the Rights with which it had "endowed The People", and, by means of which, only a tiny fraction of the population could (and, indeed, in the past did) right the wrongs, first by concerted agitation, and, thereafter, via the usual legal systems of democracy, to get laws changed to complete the job.

It was an echo from the past, and an inaccurate one too! For, it effectively gave all the credit to small groups of people, like himself, who stood up and fought politically for Justice. But, that wasn't the full story at all!

He never mentioned the Socialist and Communist parties, who, along with the vastly growing Trade Unions, had forced Roosevelt to concede to their demands "OR ELSE!"in the depth of the 1930s Depression. That alone set the tone in which the small groups of liberal "do gooders" could then, for a time, effectively "act for the people". It had never before been the case, before that near-revolution, nor was it the case since that justified "Fear-of-the-People" had subsided, following the Second World War, and the gradual re-establishment of the total dominance of Corporate Capitalism.

Nader didn't mention Capitalism once!

No, it was never liberals like Nader who re-established our rights, but the Working Class in conscious political action, and with a Socialist leadership who knew what they had to do and why! And, it was that leadership that had been attacked and destroyed in the McCarthyite Witch-Hunts that had deprived the Working Class of that vital guidance, and which instead allowed the re-establishment of their own dominance, as of old.

So, Nader's admonishment of the Middle Class liberals for their reticence in fighting injustices was a sure revelation that he would never fight the real enemy and cause of both inequality and environmental destruction - The Capitalist System - in its unavoidable lunge to the Right in response to the major and still unresolved recession of 2008.

Once again it could only be addressed by a dedicated Socialist and genuinely anti-Capitalist leadership of an increasingly rebellious Working Class.

Orwellian Junk Economics

Welcome to Neo-Feudalism?

An Apologist for Liberal Capitalism

Joe Jervis’s article Is Marxism Dead?, as published on e-International Relations on 26th October 2011, is a remarkably biased, complacent and finally ignorant document.

And, because of this, it isn’t evident exactly who his intended audience is supposed to be! It is neither addressed to those who might “misguidedly” consider that Marxism may be the place to look to guide their own political activity, nor, absolutely certainly, to those who want to participate in the further development of that philosophical standpoint.

It is clearly a criticism from without, that is, from an a priori and clearly opposing position. For, when you do that you never attempt to explain anything. You already know “the Truth”, and hence cherry-pick your arguments to prove it.

Indeed, it was much more like a speech at a Party Political Conference – an applaud-able prejudice against the agreed enemy: an unlikely obituary by the graveside, hardly able to hide the broadest grin.

He catalogues the myths that were Marxism, and the unavoidable triumph of what he chooses to cal Liberal Capitalism. And he writes this in 2010, without a syllable on the World Capitalist Crisis, which commenced two years earlier, was deepening again at the time of writing, and has continued unabated, to be accompanied by the Arab Spring long before he actually published at e-International Relations. He clearly lives in his own tiny world, where none of these events are in the least significant.

He speaks of ideology and politics at length, and only once mentions philosophy in the same sentence as Marxism (and then entirely incorrectly).

It is clearly all about alternative Belief Systems to him, and that people arrive at their chosen position by listening to people like him, who can prove historically that Marxism was always mistaken, and could give you Chapter and Verse as to its total lack of validity with ordinary people “like us”. Some observers of the political landscape arrive at a particular ideology, more in hope than by good judgement, while others by careful consideration can, and do, approach “the real truth”. A major group of the former type he identifies as the Revolutionary Left, and “demonstrates” that they are chock-full of self-kid, and no real understanding of the World.

And he does this while identifying the very least revolutionary organisations as examples, such as the various Communist Parties, and even says that the McCarthyite Witch-hunt of the USA were understandable due to the intention of these lily-livered organisations to first foment, and then lead actual Revolutions (in the USA?).

He ranges over recent history picking out the salient features, and in conclusion pronounced Marxism as finally and permanently Dead!

What does he think Marxism is?

Clearly, he considers it an inverted myth, meant to guide political action: a programme for activists only, which he believes, he has proved to have failed entirely.

But, to write about Marxism without a single word on any of its historical origins in academic Philosophy, reveals that he had exactly what he wanted long before he did any research.

He does not mention Hegel, and the revolutionary nature of his contributions to Philosophy, nor the inversion of his idealist standpoint to Materialism by the very best of his disciples – the Young Hegelians, led by Marx and Engels, nor of the fact that Marx for many years wrote on European history and politics for a leading newspaper in the USA. He finds it irrelevant that these philosophers also integrated the brilliant contributions of Michelet in his Materialist conception of History, or of the great British contributions the Political Economy that were also a cornerstone of Marx’s developed position. To read this ignorant account, you would think that Marx was an uneducated dreamer.

Indeed, the width and depth of the contributions of the major figures in these developments get the briefest and most misleading of mentions. and only then when he thinks that such things could be made to fit his own damning analysis.

The First, Second, Third and Fourth International Workers Associations don’t get a single word, and without any proof at all he makes Stalin the natural consequence of this “ideology”

Revolutions he ignorantly thinks were the intentions of these Marxists, as if anyone at any time could merely decide to have one.

Clearly, this commentator is totally ignorant of what a Social Revolution is, how it happens, and what it actually achieves. The past revolutionary phase with Cromwell following the English Revolution, Napoleon following the French Revolution, Stalin following the Russian Revolution and Mao following the Chinese Revolution, he makes no comments upon.

But the first two mentioned established Capitalism!

He is clearly an ill-informed apologist for Liberal Capitalism, and his analysis of the decline of “communism” as an ideology, rather than of Marxism as a philosophy, does nothing to re-arm the Working Class during this extended Recession.

He is certainly NOT on our side!