Renegade Eye

Open Thread

2009-07-13T01:59:00.005-05:00

What do you want to say?

RENEGADE EYE

An interview with an Iranian socialist: “Electoral Fraud” and the movement in Iran today

2009-07-09T16:44:00.003-05:00

Written by Ted Sprague
Thursday, 09 July 2009

Millions of Iranians have come out on the streets demanding a change in regime. The movement that was first sparked off by “electoral fraud” has become a movement to demand complete democratic rights and against the dictatorship of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is an interview (conducted on July 2nd 2009) with Arash Azizi, an Iranian socialist, which was originally made to explain the situation in Iran to an Indonesian audience.

Ted Sprague: Can you explain to our readers about the electoral fraud in Iran and the movement that has emerged out of it?

Arash Azizi: Well, politics works in mysterious ways! If you want to take things at face value you have to believe millions of people have come onto the streets, in a direct clash with the deadly forces of an oppressive regime just because of some “electoral fraud” between candidates that didn’t really have a difference in platform! But that is not the case. You can’t analyze events without seeing them in the context and their background.

The truth is that people participated in the elections and massively voted for Mousavi for a reason which wasn’t his platform or anything like that. People had seen the obvious splits in the ruling clique of the Islamic Republic and they wanted to use these splits. They wanted to play off one wing of the regime against the other to get rid of them all eventually. The Mousavi wing advocated lifting somewhat the repressive measures of the regime to prevent or delay the people’s uprising against the whole regime. But the Khamenei and Ahmadinejad wing couldn’t really allow that. They knew that if they concede a little bit of freedom, people will want more and eventually would not stop short of overthrowing the whole regime. That’s why they staged a “coup”, a velvet coup d’etat, if you wish. They declared Ahmadinejad the winner with a ridiculously high margin of 16 million votes. But they hadn’t expected that the people would not just go home and accept that Khamenei can just do this with impunity. They came out massively and we witnessed the largest demonstrations of the past 30 years. This wasn’t and isn’t about Mousavi anymore. Even voting for Mousavi wasn’t about Mousavi! It is about a huge population that hates life in the Islamic Republic and is willing to fight it step by step. What we now have is no longer a movement against “electoral fraud”, but a massive revolutionary movement against the Islamic Republic in its entirety. This is also revealed in people’s slogans. They started with “Give me back my Vote” but then moved on to shouting: “Down with the Dictator!” and “Down with Khamenei!” and, although to a lesser extent, “We don’t want a theocracy!”

TS: It has been three weeks since the start of the protest; can you give an update as to how this movement has developed? And who is leading it?

AA: I think I hinted at this in my previous answer. The movement started spontaneously, which is normal, even though its scope was unprecedented and extraordinary. You suddenly had more than 5 million demonstrating all over Iran! Immediately after the election, the people’s demand was of course for the repealing of the vote and giving power to Mousavi and so they perceived him as their leader. They called on him (and Karoubi, another “Reformist” candidate) to “get back their votes”. But of course Mr. Mousavi and Karoubi are much more afraid of millions of people on the streets than they are of the Khamenei and Ahmadinejad gangs.

So they decided ‑ and did their best actually to achieve this ‑ to send the people home. In the first week we had a pattern of Mousavi calling for “no demonstrations” to “save people’s lives” but then the people showed up and he had to go there and speak. He was being psuhed by the events.

Giving a concise and concrete answer to your question is hard because this “movement” is not a homogenous one and changes every movement. What is definite is that it has shown great courage, which means it is ready to fight the Islamic Republic. What is also evident is that it lacks a leadership that could lead it to the results it desires. Mousavi and Karoubi are part and parcel of this regime and they would never willingly lead an opposition movement against the regime. The people’s aim is really an end to the Islamic Republic. But they lack an effective leadership to lead them to this.

TS: The Ahmadinejad government has claimed that this movement was organized by the imperialist powers (the CIA in particular) in order to topple the regime. Is this true?

AA: Well, anybody who has lived in Iran for a while knows that for them everything is organized by Israel and the CIA. Independent intellectuals, writers, poets, journalists, even youth who just want to have fun are usually attacked in this manner. This is because oppressive regimes never want to concede that people are actually against them!

Of course this is ridiculous. This is a genuine mass movement with millions on the streets.

TS: Quite a number of people in the left support Ahmadinejad, including Chavez. What do you have to say about this?

AA: First you have to differentiate Chavez from other “Leftists”. Chavez is a head of state and he has to carry out some formalities which are acceptable as long as it is about getting trade agreements and similar questions (which are vital for Venezuela). But he is making serious mistakes in his position toward Ahmadinejad. He does not understand that the real friends of the Venezuelan Revolution are the masses of the world, including Iran. His support for the hated Ahmadinejad has unfortunately led to a feeling of hatred on the part of many Iranians towards him and the Bolivarian Revolution. I was in a solidarity demonstration recently and I heard some people claiming that Venezuela is sending police forces to crush the protesters in Tehran! While this is probably just a rumour, it shows to what degree people have feelings against him that they are circulating these rumours.

He actually has some leverage with the Iranian government and should have at least voiced some concern. Even if he wants to only think about the immediate benefits at this stage, I should tell him that this government of the Islamic Republic will not be in a power for long! And he had better wait for the new government to have good relations with! I am confident that he will eventually change his position, especially as many parts of the Bolivarian movement are voicing their concern over this. I, for example, read a statement by the Venezuelan Marxists (Revolutionary Marxist Current, CMR) that disagreed with Chavez over this question.

As I said, while Chavez is a head of state that has taken a lot of progressive measures, but who is making some lamentable mistakes about Iran, other leftists are just showing how disconnected they are from reality.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read on wsws.org, the website of the “International Committee of the Fourth International”, that they are connecting the protests to foreign intervention. This website is actually quite popular among some Iranian leftists… or was popular I should say, as of now! I haven’t read anything from the International Socialist Tendency yet. But they have to do something about their support for the Islamic Republic over the years. Anybody on the left who has supported this regime even for a day will be seen as being so guilty when we succeed in getting rid of the Islamic Republic and establishing a workers’ state in our country. They then will have to come and kneel before the Iranian workers and socialists to be forgiven! We will forgive them then, but we will never forget how, when this regime was killing us in our thousands, they supported it.

TS: Mousavi has been portrayed as a reformist by the media, the face of democratic change in Iran. What is the feeling of ordinary Iranians towards him?

AA: Let me get this straight first: the “Reformists” are a wing of the Islamic Republic that has played a huge part in murdering tens of thousands and oppressing society. They are a fierce defender of the vicious Islamic regime and its founder, Khomeini. Actually their main platform has always been for a “Return to Khomeini”! This is the kind of reform they want! They remind me of a song by Phil Ochis, an American radical artist, who mockingly talks about how the Democrats and the Republicans in the US are really no different and they are all united against the people and the workers. It is the same with the “reformists” in Iran.

But how the average Iranian feels about Mousavi differs every week, if not every day. I think Iranians understand that he is part of the regime and that they don’t really want him but they are also very practical and say to themselves “he is much better than Ahmadinejad, so let’s get him for now”. He will be looked on as the leader for now, but people will soon realize he is not there to lead them to power and will pass beyond him.

TS: Now, many commentators have compared this movement to the one in 1979, the so-called Islamic Revolution, is this assessment correct?

AA: What is definitely incorrect is to call our Great Revolution of 1979 an “Islamic Revolution”. It was not. It was a popular revolution against the monarchy and for Freedom and Equality which was hijacked, with the help of the western governments, by the reactionary Khomeini and mullahs. You have to remember that Political Islam would have had no real chance to take power in Iran if it had not been for the aid of western governments. They found this dead corpse in the dustbin of history and brought it back to life because they realised its anti-left and oppressive potential. That needs a longer discussion…

As to the relation of the current movement to that revolution…well, if you ask me I’d like to say that I hope the current revolutionary movement will fulfil the goals that the 1979 revolution failed to achieve because of its defeat by counter-revolutionary mullahs. I also believe that the 1979 revolution, even though it was brutally defeated, provides important lessons to Iranian society and workers. Workers can remember how powerful they can be when they come onto the scene of history. The real commemoration of the memory of the 1979 revolution would be a revolutionary overthrowing of the counter-revolutionary Islamic regime which had hijacked that revolution and going toward the real goals, that are Freedom, Equality and the Well-being of the people, which by the way, are only possible under Socialism.

TS: How is this movement going to affect the political landscape in the Middle East?

AA: It has already affected the whole world, not only the Middle East. The people of the world have been inspired by the extraordinary courage that their Iranian brothers and sisters have shown. Once more they have come onto streets to fight a vicious regime. In a period of 30 years, this people have fought two of the most brutal dictatorships in human history. I think anybody who has fought even for one day against oppression and tyranny will be inspired by this people.

The conclusion of this movement has of course much more important implications in the region and internationally. The overthrowing of the Islamic Republic, in my idea, will lead to an end of Political Islam as an international movement because this movement will lose its main head. The resources for the Islamists in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria will dry up and this is only good news for the people of those countries! As I said, it will also prove to everybody that no regime is indestructible and one has to fight against dictatorships and once the collective power of the workers and people is on the scene, any regime will be brought down.

I, of course have much higher hopes for the new Iranian Revolution. I am hoping, and I will fight for, a socialist revolution that would establish a socialist republic in Iran and if that happens, if a country of 70 million people becomes socialist, an international battle will begin that will only end with the end of capitalism and will open up a new page in human history.

TS: What about the labour movement in Iran?

AA: the labour movement has its weaknesses and strengths. It lacks traditional mass organizations (like Trade Unions which are almost non-existent) but on the other hand it has great revolutionary traditions like the workers’ councils which were formed in the 1979 revolution. It also has a lot of potential militancy and has so far shown no illusions in any wing of the regime, which is extraordinary. But it is yet to decisively enter the struggle and when that happens, the fate of the Iranian revolution will be sealed.

TS: Where do you think this movement will lead? It has been 3 weeks of constant demos, how do you think it will end?

AA: I have never been a sole “predictor” of the event and I like to think myself as part of the movement that tries to move it to the left. This revolution will be stopped by a lot people at different “stations”, if you will. They will try to tell us when is the time for what, and that the time for what hasn’t come YET. The task is for a revolutionary leadership to emerge that would be accepted by the people and would lead their revolution all the way to victory, which means overthrowing the Islamic Republic and laying the foundations of a new society. My wish is for Iran to go socialist and I know this is not possible without a mass revolutionary party that would lead the workers and the people.

But apart from what I wish, one thing is for sure: Iran will never be the same again. The beginning of the end for the Islamic Republic has started and in the aftermath of the destruction of this regime, the people will have a real chance to found a humane society that would be a beacon of hope for the oppressed people all over the world.

RENEGADE EYE

Honduras: One week after the coup – mass mobilisation continues – Army prevents Zelaya’s come back

2009-07-06T13:33:00.006-05:00

By Jorge Martín
Monday, 06 July 2009

All kinds of manoeuvres are taking place after the coup in Honduras. The coup organisers want to hold on, but pressure is being brought to bear for some kind of compromise solution, which however cannot satisfy the masses. The only real answer lies in the full mobilisation of the Honduran workers and peasants.

Hundreds of thousands had marched to the Toncontin airport and broken through police lines to make sure Zelaya's plane could land.On Sunday, July 5, a week after having been removed by a military coup, Honduran president Mel Zelaya boarded a Venezuelan plane in Washington with the aim of going back to his country. Hundreds of thousands had marched to the Toncontin airport and broken through police lines to make sure his plane could land. However, the army opened fire on the unarmed demonstrators, injuring scores and killing at least one. Zelaya’s plane was prevented from landing by the Army which positioned vehicles on the landing strip. The government of Micheletti ‑ imposed by a coup ‑ has closed down all of the country’s airports.

Men, women, children, workers, peasants, the poor, had gathered from early in the morning to march to the airport to receive their president. A report from Radio Globo put the figure at half a million, others put the number at 200,000 people. The live broadcast from Telesur showed a huge crowd of hundreds of thousands, far bigger than the 65,000 that had marched against the coup the day before in Tegucigalpa. Speaking from Honduras to In Defence of Marxism, Democratic Unity (UD) party MP Tomás Andino said: “This demonstration was unprecedented, probably the largest in the history of Honduras”. We have to take into account that the population of the country as a whole is only 7.5 million people. This demonstration was the biggest so far against the coup and dwarfed any of the demonstrations organised by the coup plotters during the week.

This massive movement of the people of Honduras has taken place despite the fact that the new regime has imposed a curfew (which has not been extended and is in place between 6pm and 6am every night), has arrested dozens of known trade union and popular movement activists and leaders, has killed a number of them (the correspondent from El Pais has reported that people have been taken to hospital by the police with bullet wounds every single night), has suspended constitutional guarantees (a de facto state of emergency situation) and put in place a media blockade (a number of radio and TV stations have been closed down). According to police officials 651 people were arrested on Saturday and Sunday alone. None of this has stopped the movement and the strikes which have paralysed mainly the education system and the telecommunications and electricity companies. Peasant and indigenous organisations are maintaining road blocks in many of the districts in the interior of the country.

The scope of the movement against the coup and growing the international pressure is already opening up rifts within the camp of the coup organisers. According to some reports, businessmen Ricardo Maduro, Rafael Ferrari and Carlos Flores Facussémet met with representatives of the coup organisers until early in the morning trying to get them to reach an agreement. But the coup plotters, led by Micheletti, are particularly obtuse representatives of the Honduran oligarchy, and having taken the step of organising the coup, are now in no mood to make any concessions. In a farcical press conference Micheletti alleged that Nicaraguan troops were massing at the border in preparation for an invasion of Honduras. When pressed by the journalists to give more details, he changed his tune and said that it was just a “psychological invasion”!

On Saturday, July 4, Micheletti’s junta also rebuffed OAS general secretary Insulza, who had gone to Honduras in a last minute attempt to reach a compromise. It is clear that this coup is highly embarrassing for the current US administration and that pressure is being put on the coup plotters to at least make some concessions which could allow for a negotiated settlement, probably including some guarantees on Zelaya’s part that he would not seek to call a referendum on a Constituent Assembly.

The role of the United States in the coup

There has been a lot of speculation about whether the Obama administration was involved in this coup or not. On this question, Andino was very clear: “We think it is impossible for the Honduran Army to have acted without at least tacit approval on the part of US intelligence”.

All the information that has come out over the last week confirms what we said just after the coup:

“It is clear and public knowledge that the US knew that a coup was being organised. They had had conversations with the leaders of Congress in which the coup had been discussed. The advice from the US had been against taking the step of arresting Zelaya. Probably the US administration, faced with the mass mobilisation on Friday and having learnt some lessons from Venezuela, was not very confident in taking what might be seen as an illegal step and were more in favour of continuing with the script of the “constitutional coup”, leaving the removal of Zelaya for another, more favourable, moment.” (Defeat the reactionary military coup in Honduras – Mass mobilisation in the streets and general strike!)

US ambassador Hugo Llorens had stated on a number of occasions that he was against the consultation being proposed by Zelaya on the possibility of a referendum on a constituent assembly, but he phrased his opposition in typical diplomatic language: “one cannot violate the Constitution in order to create a Constitution”, he said (La Prensa, June 4). This was precisely the argument used by the oligarchy to block Zelaya’s proposed consultation.

Llorens stressed that: “whatever is finally done, it should be done within the law, within the Constitution”. On June 17, he echoed the arguments of the Honduran capitalists: “The political situation in the country does not help to create an investment friendly climate. Uncertainty in a country does not help investment” (La Prensa). And he added that the dispute about the consultation should be resolved by Congress. What he was saying, loud and clear, was that the US were in favour of a “democratic constitutional coup”.

Right up to the eve of the coup, US ambassador Llorens was talking to the coup plotters. On June 21, there was a meeting in the US embassy with the presence of president Zelaya, as well as all the coup plotters: Congress president Micheletti, Liberal and National Party presidential candidates Santos and Lobo, and the head of the Armed Forces, Romeo Vásquez. According to the report in the Honduran La Prensa, Zelaya was told that “the best way out of the crisis” would be for him to “cancel the consultation and carry out an opinion poll instead”. (La Prensa, June 22). The very fact that the US ambassador is meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign country in this manner is a clear indication of the status of Honduras as a “banana republic” dominated by US imperialism. The message to Zelaya was clear: cancel the referendum or else.

It would be extremely naïve to think that Llorens did not know of the plans for a coup ‑ in fact this was being openly discussed in the Honduran media in the days leading up to it ‑ and even more naïve to think that he had not reported to Washington. Llorens is not a newcomer, he was nominated as US ambassador to Honduras by the Bush administration and had been Head of Andean Affairs at the National Security Council in 2002 and 2003. This position made him Bush’s main advisor on matters related to Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. He therefore was well aware of the failure of the 2002 coup in Venezuela.

The policy of the new Obama administration regarding Latin America has been one of hiding the stick and mainly waving the carrot. The aims are the same, but after the fiasco of Bush’s bullish policy in the region, Obama is keen to push back the revolutionary wave sweeping the continent by leaning on the “reasonable left” governments in the region. He cannot, therefore, afford the embarrassment of a military coup. Certainly the US administration wanted to remove Zelaya, who had become a thorn in their side, by joining ALBA, siding with Chavez, refusing for months to accept the new US ambassador, Llorens, as a gesture of solidarity with Bolivia (where the US were involved in another attempted coup in September last year) and by generally contributing to a sharpening of the class struggle (“polarisation”) in Honduras with his “irresponsible” statements about the rich and poor, and “freeing the country from imperialism”. They merely preferred to do so by constitutional means.

On June 25 the Honduran congress declared itself in “permanent session”. They were going to carry out the coup by declaring the disqualification of the president. The coup was averted at the last minute with the intervention of Llorens and even, according to some reports, of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself. But this only delayed the coup until Sunday 28, when the army took Zelaya in the middle of the night and put him on a plane to Costa Rica.

This was revealed in the lukewarm and belated statements of the Obama administration in the aftermath of the coup. The first official pronouncement of the White House was along the lines of an appeal to “all political and social players in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter”. That was an appeal for all players to respect democracy, when some of them had just carried out a coup! It was only after the strongly worded condemnation of the coup by the ALBA member countries, led by Venezuela, that the US was forced to utter the word “coup”, and threatened to curtail military aid to Honduras. However, ambassador Llorens was left in Honduras, in order to keep an open line “with all players”.

Even though Zelaya has been in Washington for a few days, neither Obama nor Clinton have thus far met with him, preferring to allow the OAS to deal with the matter. The Organisation of American States has been charged with trying to find a reasonable solution to this mess, one that would save face by bringing Zelaya back, but on the basis of neutralising him – and above all the masses who support him. After all, even if he came back, he does not have control of Congress, nor the Supreme Court, nor the Army, and there are elections scheduled in November in which he cannot legally participate. When Zelaya announced that he was going back to the country on Thursday, July 2nd, the OAS gave the regime a 72-hour ultimatum, thus delaying his return. Then Zelaya announced that he would go back on Saturday 4th, only for OAS general secretary Insulza to announce his own visit to Honduras on that day, delaying Zelaya by one more day.

But Insulza was met with derision on the part of the coup plotters who announced that, before anyone kicked the out, they would be leaving the OAS. There are certain elements in politics that are never completely under anyone's control. Here we saw the most obtuse representatives of the Honduran oligarchy biting the hand that was offering them a way out.

The Spanish El Pais, always reflecting faithfully the opinions of imperialism, put it quite bluntly last week: “It is urgent to find a way out within the agreed [OAS] deadline, in order to prevent Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, from filling the vacuum which might be left afterwards. If the OAS, with US support, does not reinstate Zelaya, the road would then be open for the insurrectionary solution that Chavez is suggesting. The US seems to be conscious of the fact that it is running more risks here than they could have ever imagined in a country like Honduras, and is attempting to be very careful in its moves, so that Zelaya can win but without a victory for what he represents. In other words, without a victory for Chavez and populism”. (El Pais, July 2nd, Ultimátum de la OEA a los golpistas)

El Pais, incidentally came out against the coup but supported the reasons for it, after having written a vitriolic denunciation of Zelaya the day before the coup, in an editorial which ridiculed Chavez’s warning that a coup was being prepared in Honduras. (Editorial: Crisis en Honduras, June 26th)

Negotiations and mass action

Nonetheless, in the next few days, more pressure will be exerted on the coup leaders to reach a settlement. This was confirmed today in an article in the Washington Post: “U.S. officials confirmed that Honduras's de facto government had sent a message to the OAS seeking to open negotiations, a move that one official described as positive. 'We think this could create the basis for continuing movement by the OAS on diplomatic initiatives,' one official said.”

Tomás Andino, the UD deputy, told us that Carlos Flores was in negotiations with Washington to find a negotiated way out of the current crisis. “They want to bring back Zelaya, but bound hand and foot”. He pointed out that the businessmen fear that if the current efforts do not force the coup plotters to step down they will be faced with an armed mass uprising of the people which would threaten the whole of the capitalist regime.

However, we must be clear on one point: no amount of diplomatic pressure can defeat the coup in Honduras unless the masses of workers and peasants fight for it on the streets as they have done in the last few days. It may even come to pass that Zelaya is returned to Honduras, only for Congress to start proceedings to remove him from the presidency before the end of his term in January.

Over the last week, the mass movement in Honduras has become broader, more confident and more radicalised. This is precisely what the coup plotters feared, and the reason why they organised the coup. The struggle of the hundreds of thousands of Honduran working people, who have come out on the streets over the last week braving repression, is not only for the reinstatement of the president, but also for the trial and punishment of the coup plotters. Even more than that, it is a fundamental struggle for jobs, bread, land, dignity, and national sovereignty. None of this will be achieved simply with the return of Zelaya alone. If a negotiated settlement is finally reached, this will not satisfy the demands of the masses for justice, and it will certainly not solve the economic and social problems that have pushed them to rally behind Zelaya.

Speaking to Tomas Aquino, from the Honduras Democratic United Party, he made it very clear that the Peoples’ Resistance Front Against the Coup rejects any kind of negotiation with the coup-plotters and stands for the unconditional reinstatement of the president. He added that the masses of the people have become radicalised through their own experience. “They no longer demand a referendum on the Constituent Assembly, they want a Constituent Assembly full stop, as they are not prepared to deal any more with the political institutions that organised the coup”.

The return of Zelaya, if it does finally take place in the next few days, will only be a real victory for the mass movement if it is achieved without concessions on his part. If so, it will strengthen the resolve of the workers and peasants, it will increase their confidence in their own strength.

This last week of struggle has been a very rich school of political education for the masses. Under the whip of repression their political understanding has developed by leaps and bounds. All that Zelaya wanted, apparently, was to carry out a consultation on the possibility of a referendum to decide on a Constituent Assembly! And just because of that, the oligarchy en bloc organised a military-civilian coup. As Andino explained to us, the coup has the support of all traditional political parties, the hierarchy of the Evangelical and Catholic churches, the monopoly mass media groups, the owners of industry, the landowners, the judiciary and the tops of the Army. The whole of the capitalist political establishment is against a minor democratic reform! Because they are terrified of the revolutionary implications of the direct participation of the masses of the workers and peasants in politics. The capitalist system cannot allow it. Andino added that, “what we see is the beginning of a revolution”, and he is correct.

The two main lessons to be learnt from these events are, on the one hand, that the oligarchy in these underdeveloped capitalist countries cannot allow even the most moderate progressive reforms if these are accompanied by a process of politicisation and mobilisation of the masses. They fear the revolutionary consequences of the active participation of the masses in politics. On the other hand it should by now be clear that it is utopian to expect that the institutions of the capitalist state (the judiciary, army hierarchy, mass media, police, etc.), will allow genuine revolutionary change to take place without them stepping in to defend the interests of their masters, the ruling class. This is a serious warning for the revolutionary movement in Bolivia, in neighbouring El Salvador, in Ecuador, etc.

The only way forward for the movement in Honduras is to continue the mobilisation against the coup. This must be organised and coordinated nationally through committees in every workplace, neighbourhood and village. An appeal must be made to the ranks of the Army, the ordinary soldiers who are also part of the people. Mass demonstrations must be protected by defence committees made up of the workers and peasants themselves. The army generals have already shown what they are capable of, the people cannot face them unprotected. Tomás Andino reported to us lots of different examples of fraternisation of police officers and soldiers with the protestors. These have not yet crystallised in any section of the army openly rebelling, but this could happen in the next few days.

Finally, the main weapon of working people against the oligarchy and the coup is the general strike. Without the permission of the working class not a wheel turns and not a light bulb shines in Honduras. Workers can bring the country to a halt and prevent the coup regime from functioning. Andino reported to In Defence of Marxism that about 60% of public sector workers had participated in the strike against the coup and that this week would see the spreading of the strike movement to the private sector. The call for strike action had been made by the three trade union confederations, all of them part of the Peoples Resistance Front.

Tomás Andino also made an appeal for action to the international working class. “There should be blockades against Honduran products on the part of dockers and transport workers. This can hit the capitalist class where it hurts”.

International solidarity on the part of working people and the labour movement internationally is also crucial. We stand firmly on the side of the Honduran people and against any attempts to water down their fundamental demands.

For the immediate return of Zelaya!

Trial and punishment for the coup plotters!

Full support for the struggle of the people of Honduras!

RENEGADE EYE

Defeat the reactionary military coup in Honduras – Mass mobilisation in the streets and general strike!

2009-06-29T10:48:00.004-05:00

By Jorge Martin
Monday June 29, 2009

The coup in Honduras highlights once again that even mild reforms within the capitalist system cannot be tolerated by the local oligarchies in Latin America and their imperialist masters. But Venezuela teaches that if the masses mobilise reaction can be stopped. Now is the time to mobilise the full force of the Honduran workers and poor.

Early in the morning on Sunday, June 28, a group of 200 soldiers surrounded the residence of the Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, and after a 20-minute gun battle with his 10-man personal guard he was arrested. He was then taken by plane to neighbouring Costa Rica where he gave a press conference denouncing a military coup by “right-wing oligarchs”, calling on the people to mobilise in the streets and promising to come back to the country.

The immediate origin of this reactionary military coup was the conflict over plans by Zelaya to call a referendum on the need for a Constituent Assembly, which was opposed by the right wing dominated Congress, the high command of the Army, and the tops of the judiciary.

Zelaya, popularly known as Mel, won the presidential elections in 2005 as candidate for the Honduras Liberal Party, narrowly defeating his main opponent from the National Party. Despite being a wealthy landowner, the political polarisation in this small and poor Central American country pushed him to take some measures in favour of the poor, the peasants and the workers, adopting “Bolivarianism” as his model. He soon lost the support of his own centre-right Liberal Party and was forced to ally himself with the organisations of workers and peasants. In an interview with Spain’s El País he describes his political evolution:

“Look, I thought of making changes from within the neoliberal scheme. But the rich do not make any concessions, not even a penny. The rich are not prepared to give up any of their money. They want to keep everything for themselves. Then, obviously, in order to make changes one has to bring the people on board.”

Honduras is one of the poorest countries in Latin America, with over 50% of the population living below the poverty line and with a rate of illiteracy of over 20%. More than one million of its 7.8 million inhabitants have had to emigrate to the US in search of jobs. In these conditions, even the most moderate and reasonable measures in favour of the majority of the population are bound to be met with brutal opposition on the part of the ruling class, capitalists, landowners, the owners of the media, the local oligarchy.

Among the measures taken by his government are a number of progressive reforms, including a national literacy campaign modelled on the examples of Cuba and Venezuela, an attempt to improve healthcare for the poorer sections of society (including access to cheaper drugs, grants for medical students to go to Cuba), a cut in interest rates for small farmers and a significant increase of 60% of the minimum wage.

He also moved to cut some of the most glaring privileges of the Honduran oligarchic ruling class. He broke the monopoly of the multinational companies in the importation of fuel, through an agreement with Venezuelan based Petrocaribe. Zelaya also took measures against the pharmaceutical multinationals which control 80% of all drugs sold in Honduras, all of them imported at high costs for the national health service, by signing an agreement with Venezuela and Cuba to import cheap generic versions of the most commonly used drugs. The president also denounced the monopoly of the oligarchy over the mass media and put an end to government subsidies for the big media groups.

In the international arena Zelaya sided with the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA), the regional alliance promoted by Venezuela which Honduras has now joined.

All these actions contributed to increase his popularity and social base amongst the poorest sections of the population and enraged the oligarchy which has ruled the country in close alliance with US interests for nearly 200 years. Honduras for most of the 20th century was a classic “banana republic”, dominated by United Fruit, which controlled the overwhelming majority of the country’s best agricultural land and ran it like a private fiefdom with no reference to the official government of the country. There were periodic interventions of US marines to remove governments which attempted to curtail the power of United Fruit. The country’s formal “independence” was just a smokescreen, since it was firmly ruled by US imperialism for the United Fruit Company. The US marines landed in Honduras in 1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1924, and 1925. In 1911, the new “Honduran” president was directly appointed by a US mediator. In 1930, when United Fruit faced a solid strike in its banana plantations on the Caribbean coast, a United States warship was dispatched to the area to quell it.

In the words of Major General Smedley Darlington Butler of the US Marines:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. (...) I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.(...) I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903"

Honduras also has a long history of Liberal presidents attempting to implement timid reforms and then being overthrown by the military and the oligarchy with the support and direct participation of the US. This was the case of president Vicente Mejía (1929-33), who was replaced by the dictatorship of general Carías Andino, supported by the banana companies which lasted until 1949. The same happened to president Villeda Morales, who attempted a mild agrarian reform and was overthrown by the US-sponsored coup of López Arellano, which ruled the country between 1965 and 1974. And of course, in the 1980s, Honduras became the main base for the operations of the US-organised contras, the counter-revolutionary thugs fighting against the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua.

Faced with the firm opposition of the capitalist class and imperialism, Zelaya thought that he could get around that by calling a referendum for a Constituent Assembly, following the model of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. He proposed that on Sunday June 28 a referendum would be organised to ask the population whether, as part of the November general elections, a referendum would be organised to call a Constituent Assembly. He had collected 400,000 signatures to back his proposal. On Tuesday June 23, the oligarchy, using its majority in the National Congress, passed a law declaring the proposed consultation illegal. The Supreme Court and the High Command of the Army also made similar statements. They were already preparing a military coup, in case the “constitutional coup” should fail. On the same day, left wing mayoral candidate for Tocoa local council suffered an attempt on his life when four hired thugs armed with AK47 assault rifles fired on his car.

On Wednesday 24, president Zelaya met with the High Command of the Armed Forces which refused to offer any logistical support for the consultation. Zelaya removed general Romeo Vasquez from his position as the head of the joint command of the Armed Forces. The other members of the Joint Command also resigned and Zelaya accepted their resignation. The Minister of Defence was also removed. On Thursday 25, troops were out on the streets of Tegucigalpa and the Supreme Court reinstated Romeo Vazquez to the high command of the Armed Forces. Zelaya made and appeal to the people to come out on the streets and thousands of workers and peasants gathered around the presidential palace to protect Zelaya. The troops withdrew.

On Friday, Zelaya, with a large number of supporters went into the military base where the ballots and the ballot boxes were being kept and took them away with no resistance before officials from the judiciary could seize them. Zelaya declared: “All the power of the bourgeois state was used to prevent it [the distribution of ballot boxes]. They used the judges, they used the military, the media groups. They could not prevent it.” And he added:

“We are talking about the bourgeois state. The bourgeois state is made up of the economic elite. The tops of the army, the political parties, the judges, and that bourgeois state feels threatened when I start to propose that the people should have a say.”

This initial resolution of the conflict in favour of the president and the people lured Zelaya into a false sense of security. On Saturday he declared to the Spanish El País that “I think I have control of most of the country… I control the Army... as long as I do not give orders which affect the rich.” He even added that he was confident that the US had intervened to stop the coup. A few hours later he had to jump from his bed when armed soldiers came for him.

The Honduran ruling class has lost no time. A state of emergency and curfew has been declared, Congress has quickly appointed a new president, Roberto Micheletti, who until now was president of the Congress and a wave of arrests of left-wing, worker and peasant activists was unleashed. According to some sources, Cesar Ham, the presidential candidate of the left-wing Democratic Unification Party was killed when he resisted arrest. Congress has ordered the arrest of the following mass movement leaders amongst others: Juan Baraona (Peoples’ Block leader), Carlos H Reyes (Peoples’ Block leader), Andrés Padrón (Human Rights Movement), Luther Castillos (trade union leader), Rafael Alegrón (Via Campesina peasant leader), César Han (Civic Council of Peoples and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras, CCOPIH), Andrés Pavón (CCOPIH), Marvin Ponce (CCOPIH), Salvador Zúñiga (CCOPIH) and Berta Cáceres (CCOPIH).

The Venezuelan, Cuban and Nicaraguan ambassadors were detained by masked military men while they were visiting foreign affairs minister Patricia Rodas. They were later released, not before having been beaten however. The whole script of the coup follows closely that of the April 2002 coup in Venezuela against Chavez, down to the role of the media, the taking off the air of government TV channel 8, and even details like the appearance of a forged letter from Zelaya resigning as a president! Obviously the same forces are involved in both countries.

It is clear and public knowledge that the US knew that a coup was being organised. They had had conversations with the leaders of Congress in which the coup had been discussed. The advice from the US had been against taking the step of arresting Zelaya. Probably the US administration, faced with the mass mobilisation on Friday and having learnt some lessons from Venezuela, was not very confident in taking what might be seen as an illegal step and were more in favour of continuing with the script of the “constitutional coup”, leaving the removal of Zelaya for another, more favourable, moment.

Obama’s statement on the coup was certainly very mild. He called on “all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter,” and added that the situation "must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference.”

We have a situation in which the democratically elected president has been illegally arrested by military forces and taken abroad and Obama calls on “all political and social actors” to respect democratic norms and the rule of law. This clearly leaves the door open to the arguments of the oligarchy that Zelaya was breaking the law by calling the consultation. A few hours later, after strongly worded statements by Chávez and a condemnation on the part of the Organisation of American States, the US administration came out publicly to say that they still recognised Zelaya as the legitimate president of Honduras.

Washington might have had some tactical disagreements with the oligarchy in Honduras, but they both share their opposition to any government that is seen as channelling the aspirations of the masses. We should not forget that the main characters in the coup are all military men trained in the infamous School of the Americas, and that the US still has 500 troops stationed in Honduras.

The same position seems to have been adopted by the Spanish El País, which has become the mouthpiece of Spanish multinational and imperialist interests in Latin America, waging a vitriolic campaign against the Venezuelan and Bolivian revolutions and against all left-wing mass movements on the continent. In a cynical editorial today their line is: We reject the coup, but we support its aims. (La vuelta del golpe, El País). They say that at the end of the day, “the truth is that on Sunday, either the president or the military, one oo the other, were inevitable going to violate legality”! So, while formally rejecting the coup they are blaming Zelaya for “violating legality” for calling “a consultation which is not allowed by the Constitution and which had been opposed by Congress, the electoral authority and the Supreme Court.”

There are two lessons that must be clearly learnt from the events in Honduras. One is that even the most moderate progressive reforms in favour of the workers and peasants cannot be tolerated by the ruling class. The struggle for healthcare, education, land reform, jobs and houses can only be solved as part of the struggle for socialism. The second is that one cannot carry out a genuine revolution while leaving intact the apparatus of the bourgeois state, which will sooner or later be used against the will of the majority of working people.

El País, from the other side of the barricade, clearly identifies what was at stake in Honduras on Sunday: “What was being decided, at the end of the day, was the balance of forces in Latin America. If Zelaya got his way in the re-election consultation, chavismo would have won terrain in Central America.” The opinion of El País is very clear. This had to be stopped; it is just that the method was not of the best.

Venezuelan president Chávez, described the situation correctly when he denounced the military coup: "It is a brutal coup d'etat, one of many that have taken place over 10 years in Latin America. Behind these soldiers are the Honduran bourgeois, the rich who converted Honduras into a Banana Republic, into a political and military base for North American imperialism."

But, as in Venezuela in 2002, thousands of Zelaya supporters have come out onto the streets to fight against the coup and to demand the reinstatement of the president.

The trade union organisations, including the CGT national confederation, have called a general strike for today Monday. This is the way forward. Only through the mass mobilisation of the workers and peasants can the coup be defeated. Such a mass movement must also make an appeal to the rank and file soldiers to refuse to follow orders from their officers. Hugo Chávez posed it thus: “Soldier, empty out your rifle against the oligarchy and not against the people.”

We must give our full support to the workers and peasants of Honduras in their struggle for the reinstatement of the president. We call on the international labour movement and solidarity organisations to demonstrate their opposition to this reactionary coup. A particular role must be played by workers and peasant organisations in the neighbouring countries of Central America and Mexico. Mass demonstrations and pickets of the embassies in these countries would serve as encouragement for the masses in Honduras.

Down with the reactionary coup in Honduras!
Mass mobilisation on the streets and a general strike!
Soldiers, turn your weapons against your officers and join the side of the people!

RENEGADE EYE

Solidarity with the movement of the Iranian masses – Statement of the Revolutionary Marxist Current (Venezuela)

2009-06-24T13:53:00.003-05:00

By Revolutionary Marxist Current
Wednesday, 24 June 2009

In response to recent statements by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan Revolutionary Marxist Current has issued this statement. They express their support for the movement of the masses in Iran and explain the differences between the revolutionary movement in Venezuela and the counter-revolutionary regime in Iran.

The Bolivarian Revolution and Iran

In Iran we have a situation in which the opposition denounces electoral fraud, in which this allegation gets support from the imperialist powers and in which there are street demonstrations against the election results. It is understandable that many revolutionaries in Venezuela will draw parallels between what is happening in Iran and situations we have lived through during the Bolivarian revolution. In Venezuela, more than once, the reactionary and oligarchic counter-revolution, with the support of imperialism, has attempted to create a situation of chaos in the streets with the excuse of an alleged “electoral fraud” in order to de-legitimise the election victories of the revolution (during the recall referendum, in the 2006 presidential elections, during the constitutional reform referendum in 2007, etc).

However these parallels do not correspond to reality.

The Islamic Republic – a revolutionary regime?

First of all, the Iranian regime of the Islamic Republic is not a revolutionary regime. The Iranian revolution which was victorious in 1979, was a genuine mass revolution, with the active participation of the working class, the youth, the peasantry, the soldiers, the women, etc. The decisive factor which brought down the hated Shah was the general strike of the oil workers. Millions of workers organised shoras (factory councils) in their factories and took over control and administration of these, in a similar way to what oil workers did in Venezuela during the bosses lock out and sabotage of the economy in December 2002. Millions of peasants occupied the land of the big landowners (as they are doing now in Venezuela). The students occupied their schools and universities and proceeded to democratise them putting an end to the elitism that had dominated them. The soldiers also set up their shoras (councils) and proceeded to purge the army from reactionary officers. The oppressed nationalities (Kurds, Arabs, Azeri, etc) conquered their freedom. The Iranian people as a whole threw away the yoke of imperialism.

However, the current Iranian regime of the Islamic Republic was consolidated, in the period between 1979 and 1983, precisely on the basis of the smashing of this revolution on the part of the fundamentalist Islamic clerics. Over a period of several years all the conquests of the 1979 revolution were destroyed. Land was given back to landowners, expelling the peasants which had taken it. The factory councils were destroyed and replaced by Islamic shoras, leaving the workers with no right to organise or to strike. A particular interpretation of Islam was imposed on the population as a whole, bringing the most ruthless denial of women’s rights and creating an atmosphere of ideological oppression for the majority of the population.

The kidnapping and smashing of the workers’ and peoples’ revolution of 1979 on the part of fundamentalist Islamic clergy was only possible because of the wrong policies of all left wing organisations who thought that they could form a united front with the Muslim clerics led by Ayatollah Khomeini. They paid dearly for their mistakes. Over a period of four years, with increasingly brutal attacks against the left, the power of the Islamic Republic was consolidated over what had been a working class and anti-imperialist revolution. In order to be able to achieve this, the Muslim clerics dressed themselves in anti-imperialist robes, organising the incident of the US embassy and skilfully exploiting the war with Iraq. By 1983, all left wing parties had been banned (despite their support for a united front with Khomeini), and some 30,000 militants of different groups of the reformist, nationalist and revolutionary left had been killed. These are the origins of the present day Islamic Republic of Iran. Not a revolutionary regime, but rather a regime born by smashing a revolution.

Was there electoral fraud?

Some argue that on June 13, 2009 there was no electoral fraud, but there are numerous examples of this. To start with, any candidate standing for election has to be approved by the Guardian Council, an undemocratic 12-person body.

Regarding fraud itself, let’s just give a proven example. Conservative candidate Hoshem Rezaei, who has not called for nor participated in the protests last week, alleged that in 80 to 170 cities, voter turnout had been more than the electoral census. That is, more people had voted than were registered to vote! In all of these cities, Ahmadinejad had won with a large majority, in some cases by 80 or 90%. On June 21, after a week of demonstrations with the participation of millions of people and the death of at least 12 in clashes on Saturday June 20, the Guardian Council was forced to comment on these allegations. On behalf of the Guardian Council, Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei spoke on the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) Channel 2, and said that “statistics provided by the candidates, who claim more than 100% of those eligible have cast their ballot in 80-170 cities are not accurate - the incident has happened in only 50 cities”!! He then went on to explain that a turnout of over 100% was a “normal phenomena because there is no legal limitation for people to vote for the presidential elections in another city or province to which people often travel or commute”. Finally he added that since this “only affected 3 million people” it would not have altered the final results.

Ahmadinejad – a revolutionary?

As the clerics did in 1979, Ahmadinejad has used anti-imperialist and pro-poor rhetoric, in an attempt to win support from the masses. But let’s have a look at what the real conditions of the Iranian people are under his presidency. First of all, in Venezuela, the Bolivarian revolution has unleashed a wave of trade union organisation and militant struggle on part of the workers. President Chávez has called on the workers to occupy abandoned factories and to run them under workers’ control. In Iran the workers have no right to organise or to strike and if they break these laws they face the most brutal repression. In the case of the Tehran bus drivers, when 3,000 of them attempted to organise a union, the company replied with mass sackings, and the police attacked the trade union leaders, including the general secretary Ossalou, whose tounge the police thugs attempted to cut off.

When trade union activists in Sanandaj attempted to organise a May Day celebration in 2007, the police responded with brutal repression. Eleven of the leading activists were condemned to receive 10 lashings and to pay a fine before they were released. When some 2,000 worker activists attempted to organise a May Day celebration in Tehran this year, the police responded with brutal repression and 50 of them were arrested (some are still in jail). Millions of Iranian workers are owed unpaid wages for months. When they try to organise they face brutal police repression.

While in Venezuela the Bolivarian Revolution has put a halt to the process of privatisation of state-owned companies and renationalised many that had been privatised, in Iran, Ahmadinjead has accelerated privatisation of state-owned companies (167 privatisations in 2007/08 and a further 230 in 2008/09), including the privatisation of telecommunications, of the Isfahan Mobarakeh Steel mill, of the Isfahan Petrochemical Company, of the Kurdistan Cement Company, etc. The list of companies to be privatised include the largest petrochemical complex in the country, most large banks, gas and oil companies, the insurance sector, etc.

Even though Ahmadinejad’s government criticises US imperialism in an attempt to divert the masses from their internal problems, it is not even consequent in its struggle against this enemy which it criticises. The US military intervention in Iraq could count on the passivity of the Iranian government and ruling class, which saw the weakening of the rival Iraqi regime as an opportunity to strengthen their power in the region. Instead of favouring a unified revolutionary struggle for national liberation in the neighbouring country, the Iranian regime played a key role in putting a break to this and dividing the struggle on religious lines.

Mousavi, the “reformist” candidate, is not better. He was prime minister in the 1980s, during the massacre of 30,000 left wing activists. Now he has suddenly discovered that, without opposing the principles of the Islamic Republic, it needs to be “reformed”, that is, cosmetics changes from above are need, so that in the end all remains the same and he and his cronies can continue in power. The division between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi is the split between two sections of the reactionary regime: one which wants reforms from above in order to prevent revolution from below, and the other which wants to maintain control from above to prevent revolution from below.

However these divisions at the top have opened the space for a genuine mass movement that has challenged the regime over the past week. If there was any doubt about the revolutionary and peoples’ character of the movement of the Iranian masses, let’s see what the position of working class activists has been. The majority of workers and trade union organisations (illegal under Ahmadinejad) before the elections correctly declared that none of the candidates represented the interests of the workers and that therefore they would not advocate a vote for either of them. However, faced with the mass popular demonstrations of the last week, both the Vahed Syndicate of bus drivers and the workers at Iran Khodro, the largest car factory in the Middle East, expressed their support for the movement, and in the case of Khodro, came out on strike for half an hour in each shift. Now revolutionary activists in Iran are discussing the calling of a general strike against the regime and for democratic freedoms.

Clearly, as revolutionaries, we must oppose any imperialist interference in Iran. President Chávez has correctly supported Iran in international forums in the last few years against imperialist bullying on the part of the US. However, it would be fatal to mix up revolution with counter-revolution. The Bolivarian revolution must be on the side of the Iranian people, the workers, youth and women, who are in the streets of Tehran and the other cities carrying out their own Caracazo, or their own April 13, against the hated counter-revolutionary regime of the Islamic Republic.

On June 18, president Chávez once again congratulated Ahmadinejad on his reelection as a president and added the “solidarity of Venezuela in the face of the attack by world capitalism against the people of that country”. The Revolutionary Marxist Current in Venezuela, disagrees with this position and we would like to contribute to the debate with the above observations.

The images of brutal repression against the youth and workers of Iran and the realisation that in Iran a young student or a worker can go to jail for the simple act of organising a strike, creating a trade union or demonstrating against the state or the bosses, has caused a massive outrage against the Iranian government on the part of workers and youth all over the world. Several counter-revolutionary intellectuals and the mass media at the service of imperialism, conscious of this, are attempting – with the cynicism and demagogy which characterise them – to identify Venezuela with Iran, and an honest anti-imperialist and revolutionary president like Chávez with Ahmadinejad. An example of this is the recent article in Spain’s El País, which quotes Chávez's latest Alo Presidente broadcast.

With this comparison they want to saw confusion amongst workers around the world, weaken the sympathy and support for the Venezuelan revolution and undermine it as a point of reference for millions around the world. It is precisely for this reason that Venezuelan revolutionary workers and youth can only counter this campaign by opening a serious debate about the real character of the Iranian regime, studying its history and the current situation, and showing our solidarity with our Iranian class brothers and sisters in their struggle to conquer, through mass action, the same rights that Venezuelan workers have today. At the same time we must fight and denounce both the government’s repression against our brothers and sisters as well as the demagogy and manoeuvres of imperialism.

The Revolutionary Marxist Current stands in support of the revolutionary movement of the Iranian masses against the Islamic Republic, and particularly the movement of Iranian workers for democratic rights and economic demands, while at the same time we reject any imperialist interference.

Venezuela, June 22, 2009

RENEGADE EYE

Iranian Revolution: Second Open Thread

2009-06-22T15:13:00.004-05:00

Iran: A 1930s Level Crossroads for the International Left

The Iranian Revolution is a turning point, for the Middle East, and for the world. Politically you'll be judged by your stand. This article takes on the myths of both the extreme left and right about Iran. Both want Ahmadinejad to prevail, because of their good and evil bipolar worldview.

The people clash with the state. Jorge Martin argues a general strike is needed.

Later this week, I'll have a post about Chavez's position, offering disagreements with him, without giving comfort to reactionaries.

RENEGADE EYE

Iranian Revolution: Open Thread I

2009-06-18T15:29:00.004-05:00

Alan Woods: How Can Can The Movement Go Forward?

An Open Letter To Mir-Hossein Mousavi

Maryam Namazie

RENEGADE EYE

Iran: The 18th Brumaire of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

2009-06-15T12:03:00.005-05:00

By Alan Woods
Monday, 15 June 2009

Two candidates stood in the Iranian “elections”, but the regime had decided who was going to win long before any votes were cast. In spite of the mild, “loyal opposition” of Mousavi, large sections of the Iranian electorate used their vote to express opposition to the regime. Once the “result” was announced violence broke out on the streets, revealing the seething anger and discontent among the masses. This marks a new phase in the development of the Iranian revolution.

The French historian Alexis de Tocqueville once wrote that the most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it tries to reform. But it is even more dangerous when a bad regime refuses to reform.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Photo by Daniella Zalcman.

History knows many examples of a rotten autocracy, which after a long period in power has succumbed to an irreversible process of inner decay. In such a moment, all the internal contradictions that have remained hidden beneath the surface suddenly emerge. There are always two main tendencies: the hard liners and the reformists. The latter say: “we must reform from the top or else we will be overthrown.” The former say: “We must oppose reform because once we start change we will be overthrown.” And both are correct.

What was true in France in 1789 is also true in Iran in 2009. After three decades in power the regime of the mullahs is deeply unpopular. Analysts therefore expected Mousavi, widely regarded as a “reformist”, to do well. A presidential debate between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad roused the nation, and in the last days Mousavi's campaign caught fire, triggering massive street rallies in Tehran. What these rallies showed was a burning desire for change.

Mousavi had been widely expected to beat the controversial incumbent if there was a high turnout ‑ or at least do well enough to trigger a second round. What officials have called an unprecedented voter turnout at the polls Friday had been expected to boost Mousavi's chances of winning the presidency. The voter turnout surpassed 80 percent, at least two officials said on Saturday.

Iran's economic turmoil over the past four years should have undermined Ahmadinejad’s support even in rural areas to some extent. Yet the government announced that Ahmadinejad had not only won the election, but had secured a landslide with 62.63 percent of the vote as compared to Mir Hossein Mousavi’s 33.75 percent. According to the results, which were announced with indecent haste, Mousavi even lost in the area of Teheran where he has his main base. This virtuoso display of vote rigging was so blatant that it shocked even a people for whom such things could be regarded as normal practice.

Rigged Elections

The speed with which the announcement was made was in itself sufficient to indicate a massive fraud. Iran remains a predominantly rural country with an infrastructure that does not permit such a rapid assessment of election results. In a genuine election it would take several days to get all the results in from the provinces and villages and remote areas. Instead, Ahmadinejad immediately announced that he had won by a big majority. "The people of Iran inspired hope for all nations and created a source of pride in the nation and disappointed all the ill wishers," Ahmadinejad said in a nationwide TV address Saturday night. "This election was held at a juncture of history."

.For a despotic regime that holds all the reins of power firmly in its hands, it is not a difficult task to rig an election. After the polls closed – according to reports coming out of Iran ‑ heavily armed Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps were out on the streets. In one area of north Tehran, a stronghold of opposition challenger and reformist ex-Prime Minister Mousavi, foreign journalists reported a convoy of at least fifteen military vehicles filled with armed guards making their way along the side of the road. The Interior Ministry was also blocked and heavily guarded as the regime feared that Mousavi supporters might gather there to protest against the election count.

Ibrahim Yazdi, a leading Iranian dissident and Iran's foreign minister in the early days of the Islamic Republic, told American journalist Robert Dreyfuss:

“Many of us believe that the election was rigged. Not only Mousavi. We don't have any doubt. And as far as we are concerned, it is not legitimate. There were many, many irregularities. They did not permit the candidates to supervise the election or the counting of the ballots at the polling places. The minister of the interior announced that he would oversee the final count in his office, at the ministry, with only two aides present.

“In previous elections, they announced the results in each district, so people could follow up and make a judgment about the validity of the figures. In 2005, there were problems: in one district there were about 100,000 eligible voters, and they announced a total vote of 150,000. This time they didn't even release information about each particular district.

“In all, there were about 45,000 polling places. There were 14,000 mobile ones, that can move from place to place. Many of us protested that. Originally, these mobile polling places were supposed to be used in hospitals and so on. This time, they were used in police stations, army bases, and various military compounds. When it comes to the military compounds and so on, if even 500 extra votes were put into each of the 14,000 boxes, that is seven million votes.

“Mousavi and Karroubi [the main opposition candidates] had earlier established a joint committee to protect the peoples' votes. Many young people volunteered to work on that committee. But the authorities didn't let it happen. Last night [that is, election night] the security forces closed down that committee. There is no way, independent of the government and the Guardian Council, to verify the results.”

With a rigged election result in his pocket Ahmadinejad’s insolence knew no bounds. The president said the elections were the "model of democracy" and accused "western oppressors" of criticizing the election process. "On Friday's election, the people of Iran emerged victorious," he declared. "The elections in Iran are really important. Election means consensus of all people's resolve and their crystallization of their demands and their wants, and it's a leap toward high peaks of aspiration and progress. Elections in Iran are [a] totally popular-based move that belongs to the people with a look at the future, aimed at constructing the future."

He indicated progress through consensus, saying economic and infrastructure reforms can be accomplished in Iran through a collective process. "All of us can join forces," he said, as his armed thugs were smashing people’s faces on the streets. Tens of thousands of flag-waving Ahmadinejad supporters gathered in the capital's Valiasr Square for the president's victory speech this evening, as he attempted a show of force he hopes will quell opposition protests.

"The 12 June election was an artistic expression of the nation, which created a new advancement in the history of elections in the country," the ayatollah Khamenei said. "The over 80 percent participation of the people and the 24 million votes cast for the president-elect is a real celebration which with the power of almighty God can guarantee the development, progress, national security, and the joy and excitement of the nation."

Spontaneous Protests

The nation was certainly excited – but not for joy. Reformist candidate Mehdi Karrubi called the declared results of the elections a "joke" and "astonishing." Even while Ahmadinejad praised the result and the huge turnout, Mousavi and supporters in the Tehran streets were crying foul as street clashes broke out. On Saturday afternoon the streets of the capital are generally quiet. But last Saturday spontaneous street demonstrations erupted on the streets of Tehran. This reflected an enormous accumulation of anger, despair, and bitterness within Iranian society that is pregnant with revolutionary implications.

"The Saturday after the election should always be a day of affection and patience," he said. "Both the supporters of the elected candidate and the supporters of other respectable candidates should refrain from making any provocative and doubtful behaviour. The respectable president-elect is the president of all the people of Iran and everybody, including yesterday's rivals, should protect and help him." These words from the Supreme Leader showed the regime’s fear of public disturbances. They were not wrong to have such fear.

Demonstrators chanted, "the president is committing a crime and the supreme leader is supporting him", highly inflammatory language in a regime where the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is considered irreproachable. Shops, government offices and businesses closed early as tension mounted. Crowds also gathered outside Mousavi's headquarters but there was no sign of Ahmadinejad's chief political rival. Supporters waved their fists and chanted anti-Ahmadinejad slogans.

Protesters set fire to rubbish bins and tyres, creating pillars of black smoke among the apartment blocks and office buildings in central Tehran. An empty bus was engulfed in flames on a side road. Police fought back with clubs, including mobile squads on motorcycles swinging truncheons, as protesters hurled stones and bottles at officers, shouting "Mousavi, give us our votes back" and "the election was full of lies".

More than 100 reformists, including Mohammad Reza Khatami, the brother of former president Mohammad Khatami, were arrested, according to leading reformist Mohammad Ali Abtahi. He told Reuters they were members of Iran's leading reformist party, Mosharekat. A judiciary spokesman denied they had been arrested but said they were summoned and "warned not to increase tension" before being released. The state imprisons and tortures trade unionists and beats up students, but bourgeois politicians get off with just a slap on the wrist.

.People leaned out of windows and balconies to watch the throngs of protesters march, many of whom were Mousavi supporters and conducted largely noisy but peaceful demonstrations. Later in the evening, an agitated and angry crowd emerged in Tehran's Moseni Square, with people breaking into shops, starting fires and tearing down signs. Two groups of people faced off against each other in the square, throwing rocks and bottles and shouting angrily. Observers believe the two sides could be supporters of Ahmadinejad on the one hand, and Mousavi on the other.

The protests, which were clearly spontaneous, were not limited to Teheran. They also broke out in other cities, including Tabriz, Orumieh, Hamedan and Rasht. It is clear that nobody organized these protests, and least of all the reformist leaders. The new technology has been a key tactic in politically mobilizing young people in Iran, but text messaging has not been working in Iran over recent days and Facebook was closed down. However, the old fashioned method of word of mouth still functions and Iranian protesters still arrived en masse at meeting places around Tehran on Saturday.

On Sunday the rioting continued. "There was this cat-and-mouse game between the rioters and the police," said Samson Desta, a CNN reporter, who was hit by a police baton. "For the time being, it seems like police have things under control. But we spoke to a lot of students and they're saying, ‘This is not going to go away. They may stop us now but we will come back and make sure our voices will be heard’."

This was the second day of protests in Tehran. On Saturday, thousands of demonstrators shouting "Death to the dictatorship" and "We want freedom" burned police motorcycles, tossed rocks through store windows, and set trash cans on fire.

On Sunday night a tense calm settled on the streets of Tehran, but the BBC's Jon Leyne, in the city, reported that clashes broke out by the office of Irna, Iran's official news agency, and also in at least one suburb. There were also new reports of a clampdown on independent media. The offices of the Saudi-funded Arabic TV station al-Arabiya were shut down for "unknown reasons", the channel said. Mobile phone service was restored but there were reports that text messaging remained restricted and curbs continued on access to popular internet sites, including the BBC. These actions do not show confidence but an extreme nervousness on the part of the regime.

Hypocrisy of Imperialists

Reaction emerged across the world, as countries such as the United States and Canada voiced concern over claims of voter irregularities. But the western governments who have been so outspoken in their criticism of the lack of human rights in Iran have been remarkably circumspect about the blatant electoral fraud and violence in Iran.

According to a CNN report, US military commanders in the Middle East were sent a message reminding American forces to maintain discipline and prudence if they encounter any Iranian military forces during potential unrest surrounding Iran's presidential election. US military concerns are taking into account "heightened Iranian sensitivity and maybe even fear for potential internal and external security threats," one official said.

Criticism in Washington has been unusually muted. Hilary Clinton has kept her mouth shut, leaving it to “the invisible man”, US vice-president, Joe Biden, to express his “doubts” about "the way they're suppressing crowds, the way in which people are being treated", although, using guarded language, he said the US had to accept "for the time being" Tehran's claim that Ahmadinejad won a resounding re-election. "There's an awful lot of questions about how this election was run," said Biden. "We don't have enough facts to make a firm judgment."

The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said that his government was worried about the situation and criticized "the somewhat brutal reaction" by authorities in response to demonstrations. The EU said in a statement it was "concerned about alleged irregularities" during Friday's vote.

This polite reticence of the imperialists is no accident. They are terrified of a revolution in Iran that will act like an earthquake throughout the Middle East and Asia. Moreover, Washington is hoping to re-establish good relations with the Teheran government, whose assistance they need to ensure an orderly retreat from Iraq and provide a guaranteed route for supplies to Afghanistan. It also needs Iranian support for its latest “peace initiative” over the Palestinian question. At least it would like assurances that Teheran will not sabotage it – although Netanyahu is already making a good job of that by insisting that any Palestinian state must be disarmed and renounce the right of return for the Palestinian Diaspora.

It is these factors that determine Obama’s conciliatory policy to the Islamic Republic, which we predicted in advance [see The invasion of Gaza: what does it mean?]. A week into his presidency, Obama extended an olive branch to Tehran, asking the regime to “unclench its fist”. Two months later, Obama broadcast a message to Iran, for the first time recognizing the ayatollahs as the legitimate representatives of the Iranian people. Last month, Obama acknowledged the Islamic Republic's right to enrich uranium and, in Cairo, he admitted CIA involvement in the overthrow of the Mossadegh government more than a half-century ago.

The people of Iran have long memories and know enough about imperialism to hate it with all their heart. When Prime Minister Mossadegh was ousted in the 1953 coup organized by the CIA and British intelligence the so-called western democracies replaced Iranian democracy with the monstrous dictatorship Shah. His bloody and corrupt rule was based on a reign of mass terror in which the notorious Savak secret police carried on a systematic campaign of murder and torture. The so-called western democracies supported this despotic puppet of imperialism and had nothing to say about the wholesale violation of human rights in Iran then. That is why Iranians have no reason to trust the good will of imperialism or listen to its hypocritical sermons on “democracy” today!

Splits in Regime

After the election Teheran was buzzing with rumours of a coup d’etat. But in reality this is not necessary. Ahmadinejad has already gathered so much power in his hands that he has already established a dictatorship in fact, if not legally. In addition to the regular forces of the state, he controls the Revolutionary Guard, which he used to brutally crush the demonstrations last weekend. Ahmadinejad controls the ministry of the interior, the ministry of information, the ministry of intelligence.

After the elections the security forces occupied the offices of many newspapers, to make sure that their reporting on the election was favourable. They changed headlines of many papers. This is an excellent way of ensuring good election coverage! The Guards are taking over everything, including many economic institutions. The ministry of the interior is tightening its control in all the provinces.

There are also rumours that Ahmadinejad is thinking about changing the Constitution to allow the president to serve more than two terms, to make his presidency more or less permanent. He is re-enacting the coup of Louis Bonaparte, who combined fraudulent elections and parliamentary intrigues with a reign of terror on the streets conducted by the notorious Society of 10 December, composed of thugs, criminals and lumpenproletarians. His social base is also similar: the backward peasantry, which can be used against the more advanced cities and towns.

In theory the situation looks hopeless. But this is only on the surface. Ahmadinejad and his followers have been kept in office, but the election has left Iran's capital steeped in bitterness and anger. The new government will be faced with serious problems at all levels, particularly the economy. The last remaining illusions of the peasantry will be shattered by the hardships imposed by the economic crisis.

In the last period, Ahmadinejad was kept in power partly on the basis of repression and anti-American demagogy but mainly by using Iran’s oil wealth for populist measures. This ensured him a certain base of support in the population, especially among the peasantry. But now the economic crisis and the falling price of oil will reduce his room for manoeuvre on this front. On the other hand, the “anti-imperialist” demagogy is wearing thin. People cannot eat nuclear warheads!

The history of dictatorial and autocratic regimes shows that it is impossible to maintain such a regime on the basis of repression alone. Once the masses start to move, no state apparatus, no matter how powerful or ferocious, can stop them. That is the lesson of France in 1789, of tsarist Russia in 1917 and of the Shah of Iran in 1979. Louis Bonaparte took power in a coup and stayed in power for two decades. But in the end his rule ended in the Paris Commune. Ahmadinejad will not be in power for so long for the reasons we have explained, and the longer he clings to power, the more explosive the situation will become and the sharper will be the internal contradictions in the regime.

Despite the show of strength, the inner cracks that are splitting the regime are deepening. There are voices in the establishment that are challenging Ahmadinejad. And it is not clear that he and the Sepah (the Revolutionary Guard) will be strong enough to overcome them. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is playing the Bonaparte, balancing between the factions. There will be clashes and splits between different factions that reflect a deep crisis of the regime itself.

In the interview we have already mentioned, Ibrahim Yazdi refers to the splits in the regime:

“After the last election [2005], after Ahmadinejad was first elected, there were many questions raised about Ahmadinejad's effort to isolate the Leader. We talked openly about this. This time, in preparation for the vote, they isolated him even further. For instance, in years past [former President] Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani was influential, perhaps even more influential than the leader. Now, with the slogans being used at Ahmadinejad's rallies, things like 'Death to Hashemi!', they have created a deep rift. Khamenei has also lost the support of many high-ranking members of the clergy.”

Cowardice of Reformers

The liberal reformers in Iran and abroad are sunk in the depths of despair. Mousavi has pledged to fight the verdict, using words like "tyranny" and adding, "I will not surrender to this dangerous charade." Even before the vote count ended, Mousavi issued a sharply worded letter urging the counting to stop because of "blatant violations" and lashed out at what he indicated was an unfair process.

The opposition leader said the results from "untrustworthy monitors" reflects "the weakening of the pillars that constitute the sacred system" of Iran and "the rule of authoritarianism and tyranny." Independent vote monitors were banned from polling places. "The results announced for the 10th presidential elections are astonishing. People who stood in long lines and knew well who they voted for were utterly surprised by the magicians working at the television and radio broadcasting," Mousavi said in his statement.

Mousavi's newspaper, Kalemeh Sabz, or the Green Word, did not appear on newsstands today. An editor speaking anonymously said authorities had been upset with Mousavi's statements. The paper's website reported that more than 10million votes in Friday's election were missing national identification numbers, which made the votes "untraceable".

As his supporters took to the streets of the capital again to face the batons and tear gas, Hossein Mousavi has launched a formal appeal against the election result. He has appealed to the ruling Council of Guardians to overturn the result, and urged his supporters to continue protests "in a peaceful and legal way”. “We have asked officials to let us hold a nationwide rally to let people display their rejection of the election process and its results," said Mousavi. The Council of Guardians is a constitutionally mandated body of six clerics and six jurists, which functions as Iran's electoral authority and has other powers. But Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the Supreme Leader and he has already stated that the election had been conducted fairly and ordered the three defeated candidates and their supporters to avoid "provocative" behaviour.

The mass demonstration planned by the opposition to protest electoral fraud has been banned. Therefore, the road to redress by legal and constitutional means is blocked. The only way to conquer democratic rights in Iran is by taking the revolutionary road. Iran, says Mousavi, "belongs to the people and not cheaters." There is even talk of his calling a general strike. But words are cheap, and the Iranian bourgeois reformist leaders would be more afraid of a movement of the masses than Khamenei himself.

Role of the Working Class

Like the Russian Cadets, the liberal reformers in Iran are terrified of revolution. Ibrahim Yazdi told his American interviewer: “Certainly, we are concerned about spontaneous reactions. Iran's youth has been engaged and mobilized. Around the country, there have already been some violent clashes. We do not agree with violence, because violence will only give the Right an excuse to suppress the opposition.” And again: “We are nor after subversion. We do not want to change the Constitution. We do want to create a viable political force that can exert its influence.” These words indicate the real psychology of the bourgeois reformers in Iran. They could have been copied from any newspaper of the Russian Liberals in February 1917.

The real historical analogy, however, is not Russia in 1917 but rather 1905, or even before that. Like the Russian Revolution before 1905, the Iranian Revolution is still in its infancy. It has a long way to run, and this is not a bad thing from the standpoint of the Iranian Marxists who need time to build their forces. Like the Russian workers before 1905, the Iranian working class is mainly young and inexperienced. The old generation of worker activists, who were mainly formed in the school of Stalinism, has largely disappeared, decimated by repression and disoriented by the false policies of their leaders.

It will require time and the experiences, both of victories and defeats, before the Iranian working class comes to the conclusion of the need to take power. Let us recall that in January 1905 the young Russian proletariat first came on the scene of history in a peaceful demonstration led by a priest, with religious icons in their hands, carrying a petition to the tsar. But one bloody clash was sufficient to impel them on the road to revolution in the space of 24 hours. We can expect similar sudden and sharp changes in Iran.

The campaign of Mousavi aroused the hopes of many people, especially the middle class youth and the women (he promised more rights for women). Now these hopes have been dashed. The police and “revolutionary guards” have given the youth an excellent lesson in the value of Iranian democracy with truncheons, fists and boots. The situation remains explosive. But in the absence of a clear programme, perspective and leadership, aimless street protests and rioting leads nowhere. Therefore probably the present wave of unrest will die down for a while. But it will come back with even greater violence at a later stage.

The reformers are weeping and wailing about the election defeat, but in reality these elections have solved nothing for the Iranian people, the working class or the regime itself. This decrepit regime is like the Old Man of the Sea who climbed onto the shoulders of Sinbad and refused to dismount. These elections are just one more lesson in the hard school of life, which will eventually convince the workers and youth that in order to shake the Old Man of the Sea from off their backs very radical measures will be necessary.

The real weakness of the movement for democracy is that the powerful Iranian proletariat has not yet moved in a decisive way as it did in 1979. After long years of repression during which the workers movement was effectively beheaded, the working class needs time to find its feet. Like an athlete who has been inactive for a long time, the Iranian workers need to stretch their muscles and engage in exercise before moving decisively into action. There have already been many strikes on economic issues. The pressure from below is building up. This pressure finds its reflection even in the Labour House, the organization set up by the regime to control the workers. In the recent period the official journal of the Labour House even published an article by Lenin. How times are changing!

Iran is an overwhelmingly young country. Its population has a median age of 27. These people cannot remember a time when the mullahs were not in power. Long ago the mullahs were considered to be incorruptible, in contrast to the degenerate pro-western monarchy. But that was long ago. After decades in power the mullahs have been exposed as corrupt and the regime is losing the authority it used to have. Ahmadinejad had to bus in supporters from the villages in order to stage his mass rally. His real base is the Revolutionary Guards, but even they no longer inspire the kind of terror they did in the past. The most significant thing about the riots this weekend was not that they were suppressed, but that so many people were prepared to come onto the streets to defy the state and its repressive forces. This means that the days of the regime are numbered.

In the end it will result in a crisis. This will be a government of crisis, which will probably not last its full term. The political and social divisions inside Iran will be widened. The militancy of the workers will grow and express itself first in economic strikes for better wages and conditions, as we have already seen in the past few years, and later as political strikes and demonstrations. The most urgent need now is to organize the workers and provide the movement with a coherent programme, policy and banner. This can only be the red banner of socialism.

It is quite natural that the students are playing a key role at this stage in the revolution. It is very similar to the situation in Russia in 1901-3, or in Spain in 1930-31, just before the fall of the monarchy. Trotsky wrote at that time:

“When the bourgeoisie consciously and stubbornly refuses to take upon itself the solution of the tasks flowing from the crisis in bourgeois society; when the proletariat appears to be still unprepared to undertake the solution of these tasks itself, then the proscenium is often occupied by the students ... The revolutionary or semi-revolutionary activities of the students mean that bourgeois society is passing through a deep crisis...

“The Spanish workers displayed an entirely correct revolutionary instinct when they lent their support to the manifestations of the students. It is understood that they must do it under their own banner and under the leadership of their own proletarian organization. This must be guaranteed by Spanish Communism, and for that it needs a correct policy.

“This road pre-supposes on the part of the Communists a decisive, bold and energetic struggle for democratic slogans. Not to understand this would be the greatest mistake of sectarianism… If the revolutionary crisis is transformed into a revolution it will inevitably exceed the bourgeois boundaries, and in the event of victory, will have to transfer the power to the proletariat.” (Trotsky, Problems of the Spanish Revolution, May 1930)

The forces of the Iranian Marxists are small but they are growing by the day. By skilfully combining democratic demands with transitional demands linking the day to day struggles with the idea of socialist revolution, they will connect with an increasingly broad layer of workers and students who are looking for a fundamental change in society. The future of Iran lies on the revolutionary road, and the Iranian revolution is destined to shake the world.

London, June 15, 2009

UPDATE

RENEGADE EYE

Charlie abandoned his factory: Arrufat chocolate without a boss

2009-06-11T09:43:00.002-05:00

Znet
We all know the childhood tale of Charley and the Chocolate Factory best emulated in the psychedelic inspired 1971 film. Charley a poor, well intentioned boy wins the Willy Wonka chocolate factory in a stroke of good fortune - every child's fantasy and utopia. But would what happen if Charley grew older and greedy against the advice of Willy Wonka? If he ran the chocolate factory into ruins, throwing out the workers and closing up shop? And what if the oompa loompas would take over the plant to demand their unpaid salaries and severance pay? What if they would decide to start up production without Charley, collectively running the plant and relating to other worker occupied factories? Well, this alternate version of the childhood story is becoming a reality for workers in Argentina.

In Argentina, Charley did abandon his factory. But in this case, Charley is Diana Arrufat, heiress to the Arrufat chocolate factory in Buenos Aires. She closed the factory's doors on January 5, 2009. The workers, who are not the imagined oompa loompa refugees in the film, but real workers decided to occupy the plant. And now the workers are producing deliciously sweet delicacies without the supervision and exploitive practices of Charley.

Factory closure

On January 5, the workers got the news that they were fired. Diana Arrufat left a poster on the gate of the factory to inform the workers they no longer had jobs. The 50 workers still employed hadn't been paid their salaries for much of 2008. "They fired us without having to look at our faces. They abandoned us," says Alberto Cavrico a worker who has worked at the plant for more than 20 years. That they same day they to open the factory gate and remain inside the factory.

Within hours owner went to the police accusing the workers for "usurpation" and trespassing of the plant. Meanwhile, she has been unwilling to meet with the workers and labor ministry to discuss how to normalize the situation.

Arrufat, founded in 1931 had been a national leader in chocolate. The family run business was finally inherited by the original owner's granddaughter, Diana Arrufat in the late 90's. Since she took over the company, the factory took a turn for the worse. Workers describe how the owner would cut corners sacrificing product quality - using hydrogenated oil instead of cocoa butter and imitation cocoa instead of the real beans imported from Ecuador or Brazil. In its heyday, when the company produced high quality chocolate, it employed more than 300 workers. By 2008, the chocolate manufacturer only had 66 employees.

Throughout 2008, the owner was not paying workers their full salary, with the promise that they would be paid at a later date. The workers sent a report to the labor ministry in May 2008 that the owner owed them nearly 6 months in back salaries, was emptying out the plant and hadn't paid the workers' retirement funds for 10 years. By the end of 2008, on Christmas Day the owners gave the workers 50 pesos (less than 20 dollars) and then five days before firing them paid them 50 pesos again on New Year's.

Many of the workers had heard about factory occupations but never thought that they would face a factory closure. "I never thought that I'd have to sleep inside the factory on top of a machine to defend my job post," says Marta Laurino, a stead fast woman with over 30 years working at the plant. Concluding that the owners weren't coming back, at least to open up shop again - the workers decided in an assembly to continue to occupy the plant and form a cooperative.

Chocolate without a boss

Just 30 days after occupying the plant, the workers of Arrufat had already formed a cooperative and sought out the advice from other occupied factories operating since the 2001 financial crisis. They have successfully begun producing, although sporadically because the electricity in the plant has been turned off since Diana Arrufat ran up a $15,000 dollar debt with the privatized electric company Edesur. And the electric company won't turn the lights back on until the debt is paid.

Meanwhile, the workers have invented alternatives in order to produce. For Easter, the cooperative produced more than 10,000 chocolate Easter eggs. They got a loan of $5,000 dollars from the NGO La Base that provides low interest loans to occupied factories and worker cooperatives. They used this money to rent an industrial generator and buy raw materials - cocoa beans, cocoa butter, liquor and sugar needed to make high-quality chocolate. They decided to re-open the store front on the side of the factory. The day that they started producing the government health inspector came to the plant, the same inspector's office which hadn't visited the factory in probably 20 years according to the workers. The police also came because the workers opened the store front.

All of the eggs were sold out of the factory's store front before the end of the Easter season. The workers were able to pay back the loan within a week, sell the entire stock of Easter eggs and each take home around $1,000, no small feat after not getting a full salary for more than a year. With the remaining capital, rented a generator and bought more raw materials.

During much of the occupation before getting the loan and afterward, the workers were producing small quantities of chocolate by hand, unable to use the machinery because the electricity was shut off. A neighbor, a niece of Diana Arrufat, let the workers connect an electric line that way they would at least have lights and a refrigerator in the factory. And in a small space, with a domestic freezer, the workers began producing small batches of bonbons, chocolate bars and chocolate covered delicacies.

Production has helped the workers transform their subjectivity, seeing that they have more power to fight against the owner, judges, private companies and police constantly throwing monkey wrenches at their dreams. "The worker occupied factories insisted that we get back to work giving us the advice that we won't gain anything by sitting around. They're right producing without a boss does change your outlook and ability to believe in yourself," said Marta Laurino.

Now the cooperative hopes that they can gain enough momentum in the market to continue production with regularity. But they are fighting an eviction notice, criminal charges and bureaucratic offices preventing them from accessing a tax number for their cooperative, which they consequentially need to get an account with the electric company. Looking at the business model other worker recuperated enterprises have established, the workers at Arrufat make all their decisions collectively in a weekly assembly. All workers are paid the same wage. And they want to continue to reinvent social relations inside the plant.

New wave of occupations

Arrufat isn't the only factory that has been occupied since the global recession crept up. Since late 2008 there have been several new factory takeovers in Argentina. For example, the owners of Indugraf printing press shut down operations in a similar manner to Arrufat in November 2008. The printing house workers in Buenos Aires occupied their plant on December 5, the same week that workers in Chicago decided to occupy the Republic and Windows Doors Plant - to demand severance pay and benefits after being abruptly fired. Currently, they are fighting to form a cooperative and start up production without a boss. Other occupations include Disco de Oro, a plant producing the pastry dough to make empanadas, a meat filled pastry common in Argentina. Febatex, a textile plant producing thread and Lidercar, a meat packing plant are two more examples of recent worker occupations. These workers have had to collectively fight violent eviction threats and are still struggling to start up production as worker cooperatives.

Many workers from the newly occupied factories say that their bosses saw the crisis as the perfect opportunity to clear their debts by closing up shop, fraudulently liquidate assets, fire workers and later re-start production under a new firm. This was the case in Arrufat, and seems to be a global trend with many companies hoping for a bailout plan to re-open shop.

All of these newly formed cooperatives have said that they were influenced and inspired by the previous experiences of worker self-management in the nation. "The other worker occupied factories bring us hope that we can win this fight," says Mirta Solis, a long time chocolatier. Essentially, the worker run BAUEN Hotel in downtown Buenos Aires, has become the landing place or you could say launch pad for many of these factory takeovers. Workers, who decided to take over their plant, come to the BAUEN Hotel occupied since 2003 to get legal advice and political support.

FACTA or the Federation of Worker Self-managed Cooperatives has played an important role in supporting the cooperatives. FACTA, founded in 2007, is made up of more than 70 worker self-managed coops, many worker occupied others worker owned inspired by the recuperated enterprise phenomenon. FACTA's objective is to group cooperatives together so they can collectively negotiate institutional, political, legal and market challenges together; the idea being that 70 cooperative united can better negotiate with state representatives, institutional offices and other businesses. FACTA also brings identity. For Adrian Cerrano, from Arrufat FACTA's work has helped the new occupied factories to organize legally and as cooperatives. "We were occupying not knowing what to do and workers from the BAUEN, which forms part of FACTA and provided a lot of support. We decided to ask FACTA's lawyer to represent us legally."

Utopia tale

Arrufat is not yet a utopia, but at least workers are fulfilling the dream of fighting for their rights. "I worked at this factory for 25 years. I lost part of my body inside this factory because I lost my hand while working in this plant. This is what makes me make the sacrifices and work towards forming the cooperative and produce." They are setting an example for workers all around the world that through direct action and occupations they can prevent companies from using the crisis as an excuse to further exploit workers and make unnecessary cut-backs in hopes of getting a bailout plan. The government should support these experiences of worker-self-management, provide them with the same benefits and subsidies that capitalist business receive.

And if Charley, or any other boss, wants to leave his or her factory, let them! But the workers have the right to continue their work with dignity. "Maybe one day our story will be included in a chapter on the working class history that a group of workers occupy a plant and begin producing," said Adrian after lamenting the loss of his hand in the factory under capitalist supervision. And the occupied factories in Argentina are doing just that; writing a new chapter in working class history sending the message that workers can do what capitalists aren't interested in doing creating jobs and dignity for workers.

Marie Trigona is a writer, radio producer and filmmaker based in Argentina. She is currently writing a book on Worker Self-Management in Latin America forthcoming by AK Press. She can be reached at mtrigona@msn.com
RENEGADE EYE

Little Ashes (2008)***: Federico Garcia Lorca and Salvador Dali Were An Item

2009-06-08T01:15:00.006-05:00

A romantic story about the young life and loves of artist Salvador Dali, filmmaker Luis Buñuel and writer Federico Garcia Lorca. In 1922, Madrid is wavering on the edge of change as traditional values are challenged by the dangerous new influences of Jazz, Freud and the avant-garde. Salvador Dali arrives at the university, 18 years old and determined to become a great artist. His bizarre blend of shyness and rampant exhibitionism attracts the attention of two of the university's social elite - Federico Garcia Lorca and Luis Buñuel. Salvador is absorbed into their decadent group and for a time Salvador, Luis and Federico become a formidable trio, the most ultra-modern group in Madrid. However as time passes, Salvador feels an increasingly strong pull towards the charismatic Federico - who is himself oblivious of the attentions he is getting from his beautiful writer friend, Margarita. Finally, in the face of his friends' preoccupations - and Federico's growing renown as a poet - Luis sets off for Paris in search of his own artistic success. Federico and Salvador spend the holiday in the sea-side town of Cadaques. Both the idyllic surroundings and the warmth of the Dali family sweep Federico off his feet. Salvador and he draw closer, sharing their deepest beliefs, inspirations and secrets, convinced that they have found a kind of friendship undreamt of by others. It is more that a meeting of the minds; it is a fusion of souls. And then one night, in the phosphorescent water, it becomes something else. --© Regent Releasing

The Faithless Wife By Federico Garcia Lorca

So I took her to the river
believing she was a maiden,
but she already had a husband.
It was on St. James night
and almost as if I was obliged to.
The lanterns went out
and the crickets lighted up.
In the farthest street corners
I touched her sleeping breasts
and they opened to me suddenly
like spikes of hyacinth.
The starch of her petticoat
sounded in my ears
like a piece of silk
rent by ten knives.
Without silver light on their foliage
the trees had grown larger
and a horizon of dogs
barked very far from the river.

Past the blackberries,
the reeds and the hawthorne
underneath her cluster of hair
I made a hollow in the earth
I took off my tie,
she too off her dress.
I, my belt with the revolver,
She, her four bodices.
Nor nard nor mother-o’-pearl
have skin so fine,
nor does glass with silver
shine with such brilliance.
Her thighs slipped away from me
like startled fish,
half full of fire,
half full of cold.
That night I ran
on the best of roads
mounted on a nacre mare
without bridle stirrups.

As a man, I won’t repeat
the things she said to me.
The light of understanding
has made me more discreet.
Smeared with sand and kisses
I took her away from the river.
The swords of the lilies
battled with the air.

I behaved like what I am,
like a proper gypsy.
I gave her a large sewing basket,
of straw-colored satin,
but I did not fall in love
for although she had a husband
she told me she was a maiden
when I took her to the river.

Autosomodization By Salvador Dali

I thought it was an interesting, although trite movie, considering the background is the early days of the Spanish Civil War. Robert Pattinson (Twilight) was excellent as Dali, despite what critics say. ***

RENEGADE EYE

Anna May Wong: Celestial Star of Piccadilly, BBC R4

2009-05-31T18:49:00.005-05:00

I asked one of my favorite bloggers Madam Miaow, to contribute to my blog a post about her heroine Anna May Wong. Her profile says, "Poet, writer, broadcaster and all round trouble-maker. Madam Miaow casts a sharp eye over the political and cultural landscape and takes a scalpel and a shotgun to the guilty parties.

“Just imagine, the whole place being upset by one little Chinese girl in the scullery.” (Piccadilly, 1929)

Anna Chen aka Madam Miaow writes and presents A Celestial Star In Piccadilly, a half-hour profile of Hollywood's first Chinese movie star for BBC Radio 4.
Broadcast 11:30am, Tuesday 13th January 2009.
Pick of the Day in Guardian Guide, Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.

LISTEN AGAIN ONLINE FOR SEVEN DAYS AFTER BROADCAST HERE

While I was growing up in Hackney, there were few east asian women in the culture reflecting anything like my appearance. Those that did slip through were not necessarily an inspiration. Yoko Ono was unfairly reviled in the media as a hate figure, although – far from breaking up the Beatles –she was a respected Fluxus artist in her own right and famous among the avant-garde cognoscenti way before John Lennon was anything more than a pop star. The twin horrors of my childhood, Suzy Wong and Juicy Lucy – happy hookers who migrated from popular literature onto the screen – were always there to define me in the eyes of a society without any other reference points. There were powerful women, too, but they came in the shape of Jiang Qing (Madam Mao), the kleptocratic Imelda Marcos and, in fiction, the evil daughter of Fu Manchu. Her I quite liked.

I wondered who the young Anna May Wong had to look up to. She grew up as third-generation Chinese born in a youthful America when Native Americans were safely out of the way on their reservations and former slaves were consigned to ghettos and plantations. Chinese-Americans were about as low as you could get; depicted as so much of a danger to working men and decent citizens that the US government introduced legislation specifically designed to curb the ambitions of the Yellow Peril within. Their ambitions may have been humble — earning an honest dollar for one's labour, living in safety and security, bringing up families of their own — but the owners of capital tolerated them only as cheap labour, while much of the labour movement in both the Britain and the USA (Wobblies excluded) saw the Chinese as more of a threat than as fellow workers.

Various schools of thought say that Asiatic humans first walked over the Beriing Straits 10,000 years ago and populated the Americas down to their southernmost tip. Others contend that Imperial Chinese ships arrived in the 15th century, predating Columbus by decades; or that they initially landed in California on Portuguese ships carrying silver from mines in the Philippines.

What we do know is that in the mid-19th century, the discovery of gold at Sutters Mill in 1848 drew first a trickle and then a flood of Chinese who joined in the Gold Rush, populating the west coast and working the mines in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The next wave of immigration was brought in as cheap coolie labour by Charles Crocker in the 1860s to build his Central Pacific railroad which would link Sacramento with the East and bring the West into the Union during the Civil War. Conditions were harsh and they were paid less than their white counterparts.

But not all Chinese would submit and conform to the role of coolie; there was one major strike with thousands laying down tools as they busted through granite mountains and worked in 20-foot snowdrifts. It was a strike that had the potential to unite all workers, and ever since I found out about it in the early 1990s while working with Sinophile author Martin Booth on his film script The Celestial Cowboys in 1993, it has inspired me, especially as there are those who insist that Chinese are genetically bourgeois and incapable of working-class consciousness. The strikers were eventually starved back to work with a few concessions but they had shown they they weren’t all pushovers.

Many miners and railworkers settled in the US and formed America’s first Chinese communities. These were Anna May Wong’s roots.

In a world bereft of role models, Anna May carved out an acting career in the early days of the Hollywood film industry. She started young, as an extra on the streets of Los Angeles, learning her craft and gaining proper roles in defiance of her traditionalist father, who wanted her at home in the family laundry.

By 17, she was starring in Hollywood’s first technicolour movie, The Toll of the Sea, as the Madame Butterfly character, “marrying” an American who promptly dumps her when he returns to his homeland and a white wife. She dies tragically at the climax, beginning a pattern that would endure for most of her career.

Trapped in Dragon Lady or Lotus Blossom roles, she grew tired of being demeaned, insulted and limited. Anti-miscegenation laws meant she wasn’t allowed to kiss a romantic lead if he was white, even if he was a white actor playing a Chinese. Your sexuality got you killed, at least symbolically.

In the late 1920s she came to Britain, where she was already a huge star and made the black and white silent feature film Piccadilly for the German director E A Dupont. This was perhaps her greatest starring role, but she still had to die at the end. Death was the fate she had to endure for the crime of being attractive. I take a closer look at this movie in the programme as there’s a plethora of prejudice leaking at the edges, some of it hilarious, much of it still extant today.

Anna May was the toast of Europe: mates with Paul Robeson, Josephine Baker, Marlene Dietrich and, strangely, Leni Riefenstahl. Such was the contrast in Europe with what she’d experienced back home that she once stated there was no racism in Germany. And that was in the Thirties, which gives you some idea how bad it must have been if you were a minority in the Land of the Free.

She starred with Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express, acted with a greenhorn Laurence Olivier on the London stage. Philosopher Walter Benjamin had a major crush on her. She dined with royalty and was adored by her fans. Eric Maschwitz wrote the classic song “These Foolish Things” about her.

Yet Hollywood still refused to lower the drawbridge and give her the starring roles she deserved. Those still went to white actresses in Yellowface. Myrna Loy as evil Daughter of Fu Manchu? Loy, Katherine Hepburn, Luise Rainer and Tilli Losch were all considered better at being Chinese than Anna May Wong.

These things take their toll and she died in 1961, at the unnervingly early age of 56.

But isn’t everything different today? Nope, it’s still with us. The form has mutated but the content lives on. A Celestial Star in Piccadilly is one case study in how minorities are rendered invisible in the culture and as producers of culture, while the fruits of their labour are appropriated by those who sit at High Table.

And the danger of that is it’s the sleep of reason where monsters are born.

Hmmm, sounds familiar and rather too close to home ...

Interviewees include:
Graham Russell Gao Hodges, Anna May Wong's biographer, Laundryman's Daughter
Diana Yeh, historian
Alice Lee, writer and actress who performed her one woman show about Anna May Wong, Daughter of the Dragon
Elaine Mae Woo, director of Frosted Yellow Willows about Anna May
Ed Manwell, film producer, Frosted Yellow Willows
Neil Brand, composer of the new score for the BFI Southbank rerelease of Piccadilly on DVD
Jasper Sharp, east Asian film expert
Kevin Brownlow, legendary film historian and filmmaker
Margie Tai and Connie Ho, who remember Anna May Wong visiting their Limehouse neighbourhood when they were kids

Produced by Chris Eldon Lee for Culture Wise Productions
Many thanks to Mukti Jain Campion of Culture Wise for giving me latitude and for her wonderful feedback

Thanks to Socialist Unity for carrying this post here

Harpy Marx has reviewed it here.

Anna on Anna May Wong and Chinese in Hollywood. The Good Earth review.

Anna started writing her novel, Coolie, on the Transcontinental strike by Chinese workers since 1994, taking longer than construction of the railroad itself.

RENEGADE EYE

Socialism Only Way Forward for Sri Lanka’s Tamils

2009-05-25T22:17:00.004-05:00

By Camilo Cahis in Toronto Monday, 25 May 2009

The Sri Lankan government has declared victory over the Tamil Tigers, but this does not remove the question of the rights of the Tamil people. The solution lies in a struggle for a socialist Sri Lanka where the rights of all peoples would be respected, including the right to their own homeland if the Tamils requested it.

The Sri Lankan government, along with the bourgeois press, is loudly celebrating the apparent defeat of the Tamil Tigers and their leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. The government is saying that the long civil war in Sri Lanka that has killed as many as 80,000 people is finally over and that peace and prosperity can finally return to Sri Lanka's people, including its Tamil population. Many Tamils, rightfully, feel that this is not the case - especially in the context of the present world economic crisis ‑ and that their situation in Sri Lanka will not improve.

Read The Rest of The ArticleHERE

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RENEGADE EYE

Charlie Chaplin's Speech from The Great Dictator

2009-05-19T15:56:00.004-05:00

I'm sorry but I don't want to be an Emperor, that's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate;
has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in:
machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical,
our cleverness hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little:
More than machinery we need humanity;
More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.

Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say "Do not despair".

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish. . .

Soldiers: don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.

Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate, only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers: don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.

In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written:
"The kingdom of God is within man"
Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men; in you, the people.

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let's use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.

Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!

. . .

Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting, the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality.

The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow, into the light of hope, into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up.

RENEGADE EYE

The State of Blogs and Blogging/Open Thread

2009-05-17T01:51:00.002-05:00

I'm curious how people feel about their personal blogs, in this period when Twitter and Facebook are so popular. Potentially you can reach more people than with your blog.

I think it is a hard period to just start blogging. I think if you have a new blog, you should visit other blogs, and recruit an audience.

I think trading links is important. The more you are linked to, the higher you are on Google. I try to plan ahead my posts. If I know an event like elections in El Salvador are coming up, I'll post on the elections. People will be Googling the elections.

Is debate important to you?

This is an open thread. Ok to raise any topic.

RENEGADE EYE

Ted Grant and The Chinese Revolution

2009-05-12T16:20:00.008-05:00

I was asked to have a discussion on this blog, about the differences between Maoism and Trotskyism, or the difference between the Maoist concept of mass line as opposed to the Trotskyist transitional program. The Maoist method is synthecizing opinion into an action program. The transitional program is raising demands that bridge reform demands with revolution demands. An example is the slogan Peace, Land and Bread during the 1917 Russian Revolution. Peace meaning end Russia's involvement in WWI, Land meaning land to the peasants, and Bread meaning better worker's lives. transitional demands challenge capitalism. That doesn't mean reform demands are ignored.

This is an excerpt from the writings of Trotskyist Ted Grant. What is remarkable, is that it was written before the victory of the Chinese Revolution.

Two Sides of the Coin

While supporting the destruction of feudalism in China, it must be emphasised that only a horrible caricature of the Marxist conception of the revolution will result because of the leadership of the Stalinists. Not a real democracy, but a totalitarian regime as brutal as that of Chiang Kai Shek will develop. Like the regimes in Eastern Europe, Mao will look to Russia as his model. Undoubtedly, tremendous economic progress will be achieved. But the masses, both workers and peasants, will find themselves enslaved by the bureaucracy.

The Stalinists are incorporating into their regime ex-feudal militarists, capitalist elements, and the bureaucratic officialdom in the towns who will occupy positions of privilege and power.

On the basis of such a backward economy, a large scale differentiation among the peasants (as after the Russian revolution during the period of the N.E.P.) aided by the failure to nationalise the land: the capitalist elements in trade, and even in light industry, might provide a base for capitalist counter-revolution. It must be borne in mind that in China the proletariat is weaker in relation to the peasantry than was the case in Russia during the N.E.P. owing to the more backward development of China. Even in Czechoslovakia and other Eastern European countries similarly, where the capitalist elements were relatively weaker, nevertheless the danger of a capitalist overturn existed for a time. The fact that the workers and peasants will not have any democratic control and that the totalitarian tyranny will have superimposed upon it the Asiatic barbarism and cruelties of the old regime, gives rise to this possibility. However, it seems likely that the capitalist elements will be defeated because of the historical tendency of the decay of capitalism on a world scale. The impotence of world imperialism is shown by the fact that whereas they intervened directly against the Chinese revolution in 1925-7, today they look on helplessly at the collapse of the Chiang regime.

However, it is quite likely that Stalin will have a new Tito on his hands. The shrewder capitalist commentators are already speculating on this although they derive cold comfort from it. Mao will have a powerful base in China with its 450-500 million population and its potential resources, and the undoubted mass support his regime will possess in the early stages. The conflicts which will thus open out should be further means of assisting the world working class to understand the real nature of Stalinism.

Read The Whole Article

RENEGADE EYE

More Food and Blogging

2009-05-08T01:50:00.002-05:00

Another episode of this blog's nod to blogs and good food.

I asked several bloggers, to send me recipes; preferably easy to prepare, common ingredients, ethnic etc. In addition if I print the recipe, I'll plug your blog. Send recipes to me at the email address at my profile. I was going to print them all in one post, but I acquired too many. Political agreement doesn't matter. Atleast every month I'll continue this series. Leave comments about food, the blog, restaraunts etc. Everyone who sent recipes, will eventually have them published. I'm going in random order.

Who'd expect this revolutionary socialist to plug a recipe and blog of a Christian conservative? Nanc has two blogs, one is It's Curtains For You..., and the apolitical OH BOO" moments.... During a certain bitter political clash I was involved in, where I was attacked personally, Nanc stood up for me. Nanc is a good cook, except for anything involving tea bags.

Now The Main Event

Poor People's Dolma (vegetarian)

1. prepare and set aside one-two cups cooked brown rice (be sure to salt water)
2. chop one small onion and set aside
3. chop one cup of whatever type mushrooms you'd like

in a skillet, saute in two tablespoons of olive oil #2 and #3 ingredients - just before they turn brown, add a quarter cup of raisins and a quarter cup of craisins (cranberry raisins) - as they're about to plump, add your prepared rice and you may now add some garlic powder and cayenne to taste - mix well, turn off heat and cover.

ahhhhhhh, the grape leaves - you can buy them prepared in a jar - take about 20 of them and layer them out flat on paper towels to soak up the liquid on them. in the middle of each leaf place approximately one quarter cup of the cooked mixture or less depending upon the size of each leaf. fold two sides toward the middle and then roll one end over and continue to roll up until it looks like a short green eggroll.

make as many as you have grape leaves and mixture.

place these fold side down into a shallow baking dish and drizzle with a mixture of a half cup of your favorite vinaigrette and a quarter cup fresh lemon juice. place into 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes. remove from oven and eat warm or place into sealed container in the refrigerator and have as a cool appetizer - me, if i eat all 20 - i call it a meal!

if you're wondering why i call this "poor people's dolma" it's because true dolma is made with bulghur, lamb and currant filling.

RENEGADE EYE

Is The Consciousness Of The Masses Too Low? Or Is The Problem One Of Leadership?

2009-05-04T11:17:00.005-05:00

By Josef Falkinger Monday, 04 May 2009

It is fashionable among some layers on the left to blame the workers' "low consciousness" for the lack of a genuine left alternative emerging within the labour movement internationally. This is utterly false and represents a lack of understanding of how the working class moves historically. The working class is fully aware of the situation it is in. What it requires is a leadership up to task of leading the class in its struggle to change society.

"Der Feind, den wir am meisten hassen,
der uns umlagert schwarz und dicht,
das ist der Unverstand der Massen,
den nur des Geistes Schwert durchbricht."

"The enemy, that we hate most,
Who besieges us black and densely,
It is the masses' stupidity
broken only by the sword of the ghost."
(Ferdinand Freiligrath, German poet and friend of Marx)

Like the poet Freiligrath in the 19th century, many on the left today are of the opinion that the so-called "low consciousness of the masses" is the reason why we have not seen successful revolutions, or major movements of the working class in recent years. These people constantly complain about how deeply people are indoctrinated and manipulated by so-called "neoliberal" ideology. This actually reflects the "low consciousness" of these "lefts", and their total lack of understanding of the working class and its organisations.

Revolutionary Marxism has a completely different approach to this question. It is the leadership of the traditional mass organisations of the working class and the Left, not the masses, that is in an unprecedented crisis. Revolutionary Marxists distinguish themselves from all other tendencies on the left with their approach to the question of political mass consciousness and its inner dynamics.

Read the rest of the article

RENEGADE EYE

Mayday Greetings/Odds and Ends/Open Thread

2009-04-30T23:40:00.004-05:00

Happy Mayday!

Rosa Luxemburg the great revolutionary tells us this holiday in the political sense started in 1856 in Australia. It was related to the fight for the 08 hour day:

The happy idea of using a proletarian holiday celebration as a means to attain the eight-hour day was first born in Australia. The workers there decided in 1856 to organize a day of complete stoppage together with meetings and entertainment as a demonstration in favor of the eight-hour day. The day of this celebration was to be April 21. At first, the Australian workers intended this only for the year 1856. But this first celebration had such a strong effect on the proletarian masses of Australia, enlivening them and leading to new agitation, that it was decided to repeat the celebration every year.

She later explains how the holiday moved to May 01st.

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Facebook 50 Years Later...

CLICK TO ENLARGE

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The Carnival of Socialism

I was asked to host at this blog the July 19th Carnival of Socialism. I will be asked to pick the best writing about a socialist related theme, from blogdom.

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Open Thread

RENEGADE EYE

The 2009 Election Results: Reflecting the State of the Class Struggle in South Africa

2009-04-27T12:27:00.005-05:00

By David van Wyk in South Africa
Monday, 27 April 2009

What many consider to have been one of the most historic elections in Post-Apartheid South Africa is finally over. Over the last decade it has become clear that South African politics is still very much defined by a struggle over the issues of race and class. This election demonstrated that fact more than ever.

Even before Mbeki took over the helm from Mandela both the ruling party, the African National Congress and the two main opposition parties at the time, the New National Party and the Democratic Party, pushed for a neo-liberal agenda of structural adjustment and privatization. The first casualty of this shift to the right was many of the ANC’s struggle slogans, including the Freedom Charter promise that “the wealth of the country shall belong to the people”, followed by the social democratic Reconstruction and Development Programme which was replaced by the self-imposed structural adjustment represented by the Growth with Equity and Redistribution Programme (GEAR).

Once in power Mbeki endeared himself to global capitalism by “talking left and walking right” (Patrick Bond, 2004). Mbeki’s Government carried out pro-capitalist policies while at the same time trying to create a layer of a “black bourgeoisie”. From pursuing a presence in the main global financial and economic summits and structures, to appointing an Economic Advisory Council composed of the CEOs of major global multinationals and ‘deploying’ senior ANC people not in government into the fraction of mining billionaires as part of the ANC’s black economic empowerment programme.

Mbeki further pushed the neo-liberal New Economic Partnership for Economic Development (NEPAD) onto the rest of Africa. Opening up the African hinterland to South African and global mining corporations. Mbeki immersed himself so much in ‘international affairs’ that locals soon began to joke that he was the president who most frequently visited South Africa.

Back in South Africa Mbeki began to push his neo-liberal right wing agenda onto the ANC. With his trusted lieutenants Terror Lekota, Alec Erwin, Essop Pahad, Trevor Manuel and Manto Tshabalala Msimang he turned ANC conferences into red bashing and red baiting events. Mbeki was liberally supported by the neo-liberal media in South Africa who cheered his intentions to privatise state enterprises, while aspirant black bourgeois elements licked their lips in anticipation of the tasty morsels coming their way. Of course privatisation meant job-losses through down-sizing, right-sizing and given the current political climate possibly capsizing! These policies led to tensions and divisions within the ANC and between the ANC government and leadership and the other organisations in the Tripartite Alliance, COSATU and the SACP. COSATU called a series of general strikes reflecting the anger of workers and the poor against the capitalist policies of the government they had elected. Within the SACP there was also strong criticism towards the policies of the ANC government but the ANC leadership continued to cling to the discredited two-stage theory of the revolution. This states that first there will be a “National Democratic Revolution” which will overthrow capitalism, and then, later on, once this question is solved then we can raise the question of socialism. The leadership of the SACP insisted that the “deepening of the NDR” would somehow lead to socialism. But as a matter of fact, there was nothing to deepen, since the ANC in government was pursuing openly capitalist policies. To make matters worse, SACP members were sitting in parliament as ANC MPs voting for Mbeki's policies and some were even ministers in his government carrying these policies into practice.

In trying to entrench the shift to the right the Mbeki government allegedly began a process of using the structures of the state such as the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), the judiciary, the National Prosecuting Authority and of course the Office of the President to effect a purge against left-wing elements in the Ruling Party and in Government. This took the form of compromising those opposed to Mbeki. Thus an attempt was made to taint the leader of the South African Communist Party, Blade Nzimande by alleging that he corruptly pocketed a SAR500,000 donation from a corrupt businessman meant for the SACP. It now appears that this was a sting in which the businessman was promised a reprieve from charges of corruption if he laid charges of corruption against Nzimande. Then there were the rape charges against Zuma; it is alleged that the unfortunate mentally unstable girl had close ties to the NIA and the National Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils. Finally there was the corrupt arms deal, where Zuma’s lawyer client confidentiality was abused in an Apartheid style raid that targeted both his home and the offices of his lawyers. No one in the media mentions that the architect of the Arms Deal was Mbeki. The deal emanated from his office as Deputy President. All the transactions had to be authorized by the Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel who has a reputation of being a bean counter, while the economic trade offs were the responsibility of Alec Erwin. Despite there being rumours of back-handers involving tens of millions of dollars, only Zuma was ever investigated for allegedly receiving a pay-off of a paltry half a million. The energy in which the Zuma investigation was being pursued by both the NPA and the media clearly demonstrated an agenda other than good governance. This became especially apparent when Mbeki stepped in to protect Jackie Selebi the chief of police who kept rather unsavoury company, and the Deputy President Ngcuka who allegedly took her pals and family members on a spending spree to Dubai.

In the mineral rich provinces the peasantry faced a land grab from mining companies, many of whom have prominent members of the ANC and key civil servants under Mbeki as shareholders. In many cases rural communities who received their land back as part of the land restitution and redistribution programmes of the Department of Land Affairs just as quickly lost their land as the Department of Minerals and Energy issued prospecting and mining licenses to mining companies in bed with senior politicians and civil servants. Anglo Platinum proudly boasts of providing training in “human rights” for the police in platinum rich Limpopo province. To the right is a picture of the face of Sammy Ledwaba an activist from Motlhotlo village after the local police meted out some ‘human rights’ to him for resisting the expansion of an Anglo Platinum mining operation that means the relocation of his house, tilling fields and grazing land.

Given the huge boom in mineral commodity prices one would expect communities living in the vicinity of mines and in particular mineworkers to have experienced some improvement in their lot in terms of housing and wages. Yet many mineworkers find themselves in squatter camps; the Orwellian sanitized name used by government and the media is “informal settlements”. These squatter camps are cesspools of substance abuse, sexually transmitted disease, TB and HIV/AIDS. Thabo Mbeki’s denialist attitude further alienated the working class and the poor.

Given this rightwing shift and the prolonged pressure being brought to bear on the working class and the poorest of the poor during Mbeki’s tenure it is not surprising that the rank and file members of the ANC lost patience with the leadership of the organisation under Mbeki. The day of reckoning for the Mbeki clique came at the ANCs Polokwane Conference in December 2007. The resounding defeat of the Mbeki clique at Polokwane and his subsequent recall as president led to the resignation of his entire cabinet. The same clique then formed the Congress of the People (COPE) to great pomp and ceremony in the media and opposition parties who hoped that this ‘split’ would irreparably harm the ANC and the tripartite alliance and destroy the ruling party’s ability to run an effective election campaign. It was hoped that the left-wing populists would be taught a lesson in the 2009 election. After all, Mbeki had received nearly 40% of the votes at the Polokwane conference. By splitting the ANC the ruling class hoped to destroy its electoral domination and maybe form a new coalition government between the newly formed COPE and the DA, or at the very least form a strong opposition which would neutralise any danger of a leftward moving ANC government.

COPE ran a campaign which claimed that they were the true custodians of the Freedom Charter (the definitive script of the liberation struggle); that they were the voice of middle class reason, and that their members were above corruption. This despite the fact that COPE’s president Terror Lekota was Minister of Defence during much of the arms acquisition that became the arms scandal. Lekota was also caught out in 2003 for not declaring business interests to parliament.

Given these publicly known skeletons in Lekota’s cupboard and his reportedly abrasive, dictatorial personality, COPE wisely decided not to make him their presidential candidate for the 2009 elections. Instead they appointed the Reverend Mvume Dandlala, a priest eager to exchange the pulpit for the pillbox. Dandala found another priest in COPE, the Reverend Allan Boesak who spent time in jail for corruption. There are persistent rumours of divisions and leadership struggles in COPE. Apart from Lekota’s ego it is a party of “Chiefs” with very few “Indians”. COPE is funded by amongst others Mbeki loyalist and billionaire Sakkie Macozoma.

Instead of splitting the ANC vote, Cope split the middle class and fundamentalist Christian vote, and while the party fared poorly nationally it has become the official opposition party in four provinces taking support away from parties such as the United Christian Democratic Party (UCDP), the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Democratic Alliance (DA) in those provinces with very small white populations. However, Nationally COPE only managed to garner 7.43% of the vote. They failed to get any support from the working class and the poor, reconfirming the defeat of their leadership in the ANC nationally. The workers and the poor, once again, turned out massively to vote for the ANC, but this time an ANC that they saw as representing a change of policies, a shift to the left. As a matter of fact, even though the percentage of the vote for the ANC was slightly down, the actual number of votes went up (despite the split) to 11.6 million (as compared to 10.8 million in 2004 and 10.6 million in 1999, though still short of the historic 12.2 million of 1994).

Bringing us back to the hysterical anti-ANC white vote. The Democratic Alliance (DA) is celebrating a victory on the grounds that they managed to obtain 16.66% of the national vote. They are further celebrating the failure of the ANC to get a two thirds majority, a central tenet of their oppositionist election campaign built around white fears of black government and of the possibility of communist influence on that government. The DA failed to present the populace with an alternative vision to that of the ANC, and most voters will remember their posters which read “Stop Zuma!” and “Prevent an ANC two-thirds majority!” Today Afrikaans newspaper banners proclaimed, “South Africa stopped ANC two-thirds majority!” The ANC won 65.9% of the vote, just less than one percent of a two thirds majority. Given these statistics it would be more accurate to say that South Africans rejected neo-liberalism and religious fundamentalism of all sorts.

The DA did win slightly more than 50% of the vote in the Western Cape Province confirming the combined and uneven nature of issues of race and class in South Africa. The Western Cape is acting like a magnet for white South Africans, a Great Trek in reverse so to speak to the colonial days prior to 1834 when whites started penetrating the interior of South Africa beyond the Ghariep (Orange) river for the first time. Coloured voters in the Western Cape associate with the white population there and the area is still feeling the impact of the old Group Areas Act which made the province a ‘coloured preferential area’ as far as work opportunities and residential status was concerned. Many from the coloured community feel threatened by the increasing numbers of blacks seeking employment there and fear that an ANC provincial government would give preferential treatment to blacks as far as jobs, housing and services are concerned. Apart from the Western cape the ANC won all other provinces resoundingly.

The white electorate are told by opposition parties including the DA in just about every election that the ANC would change the constitution of the country should it win a two thirds majority. This despite the fact that the ANC has never campaigned with a manifesto that calls for any changes to the constitution. Almost all the opposition parties including the DA have campaigned around calls to change the constitution including bringing back the death penalty, criminalizing homosexuality, bringing back corporal punishment, curbing freedom of speech and expression through censorship, revoking labour rights, and changing the manner in which the president is elected. Just about the only part of the constitution that most parties to the right of the ANC do not want changed is the “Property Clause” which protects private property.

Currently the media and opposition parties are brining great pressure to bear on the ANC to exclude left-wingers from the alliance from ministerial positions and to continue with Thabo Mbeki’s neo-liberal policies.

Scarcely hours after the announcement that the ANC, with the help of its alliance partners, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, received an overwhelming mandate from the electorate, 65.9% nationally and 66.31% provincially, the voices of the capitalist class – the various investment agencies and Media – are warning the ANC not to shift policy to the left. Before the election the neo-liberal interests held a gun to the temple of the South African Electorate threatening that a two thirds majority for the ruling party would be bad for investment. Now they are hysterically trying to influence government economic policy away from the election manifesto for which the South African population voted so overwhelmingly. In other words the capitalist class wants to, yet again as with every previous election, steal victory from the working class and the poor by either scaring the leadership of the ANC with the threat of an investment strike, or through buying off that leadership. In the meantime the neo-liberal media are trying their best to demonise and ridicule the left in the ANC Alliance, on SABC one commentator went so far as to say that “there is not a single example on the planet of where communism has succeeded” (SABC3).

An editorial in the London-based Independent was very clear in its “advice” to Zuma:

“He should confirm that now by reappointing the ANC's widely respected finance minister, Trevor Manuel, who has steered the economy through 40 consecutive quarters of growth until the end of last year. He should offer a third term to the governor of its central bank, Tito Mboweni, one of the most respected economic officials in emerging markets. He should keep the former ANC Youth League leader Fikile Mbalula and the Communist Party general secretary Blade Nzimande, well away from any posts that might unsettle investors. And he should resist all temptation to reach for his infamous machine gun. Government is no place for the songs of opposition.” (Leading article: South Africa's New Beginning)

Given that the South African media is owned and controlled by corporate capitalist interests there is very little room for alternative viewpoints reaching the public. Even the public broadcaster, the SABC, slavishly repeats the mantra of neo-liberalism warning that the ANC will not be able to realize its election manifesto once in power because “the tax base is only 6 million taxpayers strong, while 23 million people registered as voters and the total population equals 50 million” (SABC 3, 24 April 2009). What the public is not told is that every South African pays 14% VAT on any purchases, including basic foodstuffs. Education, water, health, housing have all been commodified, and in order to create “conditions conducive for investment” the government has prostrated itself before corporate interests over the last 10 years, thus corporations pay a fraction of the price that ordinary consumers pay for utilities such as water and electricity, not to speak of a variety of other incentives offered by the Department of Trade and Industry. No wonder that South Africa has one of the biggest gaps between wealth and poverty in the world.

The poor have in fact subsidized the neo-liberal project advanced under the regime of Thabo Mbeki over the last decade. Corporations have shifted the costs of their environmental impact, their social impact and even the costs of exports onto the poor. Thus mineworkers live largely in shacks without potable water and electricity in places such as Rustenburg. Communities who have historically used stream, well and borehole water stream water in Limpopo province can no longer do so as mining operations have poisoned these sources of water. The same mining corporations now purify the water and sell it as a commodity back to the same water users – the water has been turned into a commodity through first poisoning it, then purifying it and selling it as a commodity. The principle of polluter pays has been subverted into the polluter is paid!

Jacob Zuma is trying to reassure capitalist interests, but this, as we have seen in the last 15 years, can only be done by attacking the workers and the poor. This is even more the case as South Africa has entered into recession and the country has its largest budget deficit in a decade. One cannot serve two masters. If the new ANC government wants to please big business it will soon come into collision with the workers and poor which will express themselves through COSATU and the SACP.

The task of Marxists in South Africa is to reach out to the most advanced elements within these organisations and start a serious struggle to put them on a clear socialist programme, one that is based not on some “National Democratic Revolution” but firmly on socialist revolution. If one thing has been clearly demonstrated by the last 15 years of bourgeois democracy and ANC government it is that the problems faced by the masses of workers and poor in South Africa, overwhelmingly Black, not even those related to racial discrimination or access to the land, housing, education and healthcare, cannot be solved within the limits of capitalism. Only the expropriation of the means of production, “the wealth of the land” that the Freedom Charter says should belong to the people, can lay the basis for a democratic plan of production that can start to address the problems of homelessness, poverty and unemployment which millions of South Africans still suffer from.

Sources:
Patrick Bond (2004) Talk Left Walk Right, South Africa’s Frustrated Global Reforms. University of KwaZul Natal Press: Pieter Maritzburg.

Renegade Eye

Cuba: Freedom of Expression & Socialism

2009-04-21T21:31:00.005-05:00

By Ron Ridenour
Tuesday, 21 April 2009

How much freedom of expression and real (active) power the Cuban working class and the population as a whole, possess and exercise is a vital matter for the very survival of socialism and its development, a question that is being addressed by a few hundred university students, professors and professionals in Havana since November 2007.

“It is not a question of luxury, an alternative which one can choose or not: worker democracy is a condition sin qua non for the normal unfolding of a socialist economy.”

Over the last 50 years, the Communist party and government strategy for survival has focused on unity: unity in decision-making, unity around the top leaders, and unity in the media. This strategy has enabled the country to resist the United States and allied efforts to smash it.

However, this approach has prevented leaders and the bureaucracy from believing that it can afford the “luxury” of allowing any significant active participation on the part of the population to discuss and decide what the nation’s politics and economy ought to be. Nor do the media question decisions taken.

When questioned about the wisdom of this control, officials either ignore the question or respond with examples of how the US intelligence apparatuses intervene in other countries´ processes when they are not in what Washington perceives as its interests.

Suffice it here to note the successful interventions in media organs during the Allende government in Chile (1970-73), and in Nicaragua during the first Sandinista government from 1979-1990.

Hunger for More Information

Cuba’s leadership has maintained that broader freedom of expression can place the nation’s very sovereignty in peril. While there is some truth to this historically, strict government control of the media and other channels of information and debate cripple the ability of the common man and woman from acquiring adequate information and ideas necessary for them to become empowered.

The University of Havana (Photo by Maycgx)

This had led a sizeable segment of the population, and especially the younger generations, to be, disbelievers of what they are told by the media. They hunger for more and open information.

Cuban historian and professor of the University of Oriente, Frank Josue Solar, recently wrote:

“It is not a question of luxury, an alternative which one can choose or not: worker democracy is a condition sin qua non for the normal unfolding of a socialist economy. Without this it is deformed, and finally perishes.”

In the past two years or so some leftist voices have begun to hold indoor workshops to discuss these questions. There are also handfuls of students at the University of Havana and the Cujae University who meet to discuss socialism’s future.

This is the first time in decades that the government has allowed such open critique, albeit confined indoors until now.

A group of university students, professors and professionals formed the Bolshevik Workshop to pay homage to the Russian revolution, at the 90th year anniversary in November 2007, and to discuss its trajectory and collapse.

Some 500 people assembled at the University of Havana. One of the workshop organizers, Ariel Dacal Diaz, a professor of law, delivered a paper on the subject. The English translation is available at Cuba, October, Youth and the Future.

Revitalizing Revolutionary Marxism in Cuba

At this assembly, and at a subsequent workshop, participants viewed the need to revitalize revolutionary Marxism, also in Cuba. The dozen coordinators of the original workshop continued writing but did not organize other meetings in 2008 although they did create a lively Spanish language website, www.cuba-urss.cult.cu. They propose to “contribute to the empowerment of persons and groups in their practice as citizen-subjects within the Cuban revolution as a process and with socialism as its project.”

A sizeable segment of the population is hungry for more and open information (Photo by Caridad)

The website has hundreds of essays and articles by readers and past and current theoreticians and leading activists such as: Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, Luxemburg, and Che…

At the end of January this year, the coordinators organized another workshop by the name: “To live the revolution 50 years after the triumph.” They now meet monthly at the Ministry of Culture’s Juan Marinello Center, close to the Plaza of the Revolution.

The Ministry’s Antonio Gramsci Department and the Superior Art Institute (ISA) are cosponsors. The meeting hall allotted can hold just under 100 persons. It was full at the initial workshop where the theme was: Sentidos y significados de la revolucion en la vida de nosotros. (The significance and meaning of the revolution in our lives).

This lay the basis for the following workshop- “The political system of the revolution: participation, popular subject and citizenship”–which I attended.

In its announcement folder, the coordinators wrote: “This workshop seeks to contribute to the analysis on the place of citizen participation in the political system, its forms of expression concerning sovereignty, the necessity of a political and legal culture consistent with the social protagonism at the moment to create, control, limit and enjoy the political and the law.”

Specific topics were: how does socialism reformulate the concept of citizenship; mechanisms of actual popular participation; how to contribute to empowerment, all within the context of Hagamos nuestra la revolución (Making the revolution ours).

After a brief introduction and a short Cuban film, “The revolution we make,” the filled meeting hall broke into four groups to discuss what experiences we had with active participation and with forced participation, and how we felt as subject-citizens. (My participation was mainly as an observer since I do not currently live and work in Cuba, which I did from 1987 to 1996.)

Frustrations and Impotence

Diverse expressions surfaced regarding active and “obligatory” participation. When people had felt they could participate and, perhaps make a difference they felt positive. The reverse was the case when their experiences were not truly voluntary.

Paulo Freire: “If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed.” (photo by Distant Camera)

A student said that it was possible “to participate but `they´ make the decisions”. A young woman student spoke enthusiastically about this workshop initiative, which allowed her to feel as an active subject, “hoping it can lead to making a difference for the society.”

A Colombian studying here said he felt more as a subject in Cuba than in Colombia but hoped for greater active participation.

An older woman, who classified herself as an ordinary worker, said she felt isolated. “`They´ don’t give me a chance to participate in any real sense. `They´ don’t take our commentaries seriously, so I feel like a crazy old woman.”

During a break, she said she believed the revolution has stood still since the mid-60s. A couple of older professional men, remembering those activist days when peasants and militia still carried weapons to defend the nation-which they did at the Bay of Pigs invasion and against counter-revolutionary groups infiltrated and financed by the CIA (Operation Mongoose)-believed the revolution died after that.

The walls were covered with handwritten quotations by Bertolt Brecht, Roque Dalton, Silvio Rodriguez and others. On one wall were posted words by Paulo Freire: “If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed.”

Summaries of each group’s discussion were read during the last plenary session. The experiences and sentiments were similar. Bureaucratic mechanism’s of control were outlined and criticized during the discussion period.

There was ample self-critique as well. We must overcome self-censorship. We must not yield to the fear of losing what we may have or hope to obtain, such as a better position, and thereby remain silent in face of unfairness or wrong decisions.

One young man said each of us should find ways to improve our own behavior. For example, we must stop throwing trash anywhere we feel like it. We should intervene in all our surroundings with a positive spirit that we can make change.

He said we can make “them” listen to us, because we are the producers, the people for whom the political structure serves. An older professor suggested we invite bureaucrats to meet with us, “because they are Cubans too and we could learn from one another”.

A young professor of law, Julio Antonio Fernandez, gave a brief talk, first giving a brushstroke of revolutionary political and legal history. He then defended the constitution of 1976 as a revolutionary one, and one legalizing an active citizenry for socialism, one that establishes popular control of all mechanisms for sovereignty. The audience was so attentive a pin could be heard to drop.

“We do not seek to regress to before the revolution: we must be designers and controllers… What is most important now is a critique of current state organisms and not the possible creation of ideal institutions,” said Fernandez.

He continued by asking: If a dominating regime is necessary how can it act without alienating the people? How can we democratize power?

We have formal rights of control, Fernandez said, but need to actualize them. The law is not that of the state but that of and for the people. Citizenry duty must be restored. He also spoke against continuing discrimination both of race and gender. The individual and the collective must recognize and confront these ills.

“The danger of imperialism is real and we must find forms to act taking this reality into account,” he concluded.

Participation Leads to Solutions

Following his well received analysis, the body was asked for comments, especially concerning the question of how one can participate in a revolutionary manner. One-fourth of the audience-25 people-made comments and offered ideas to further the revolutionary process, and some called for action.

Several people young and old said that the workshop process and its ideas should go public. There must be ways of involving workers, vital producers. Some said that while laws protect the right to associate and to organize associations, and no law prohibits strikes, the reality is something different.

No one dare try to organize strikes, and many who petition for permission to organize associations are ignored or denied their right.

An older lawyer said he was still waiting, now ten years, for a reply from the Ministry of Justice to his several petitions to organize a harmless, social association of descendants of Slavic people in Cuba.

A sociology professor said that while some professions were allowed to form associations, those in sociology-a study prohibited in Cuba for three decades, which the government reinstated in the mid-90s-were not. Yet no reason was given.

A history professor said it was necessary to define what socialism really is and what it should be. Among other things, socialism must be personal as well as collective. One must feel that he/she is a decision-maker. Without that sense, what occurred in Russia and Eastern Europe could well occur in Cuba.

“Participation leads to solutions and that is liberating,” he concluded.

Another person said that Internet is a liberating tool. The Cuban Ministry of Telecommunications has repeatedly said that broader access will be technologically possible when the Venezuelan undersea cable reaches Cuba later this year or next.

One participant raised doubts about whether a dominating state power was any longer a necessity, especially one in which many leaders retain power positions for many years, even decades.

A young female student said she felt stimulated by these workshops and was optimistic that positive changes could be made. Several youths echoed her sentiment. The last speaker, a Brazilian student, said that it was most important that the group not degenerate into sectarianism as do so many left groups around the world.

The next workshop, open to all, will take place on March 27, at 9:30 a.m. at the Centro Juan Marinello. Its theme will be: state property, social property and the socialization of production.

Originally published in the Havana Times, March 12
Marxist.com

RENEGADE EYE

Father Tries To Cash in on Daughter's Fame

2009-04-19T23:41:00.005-05:00

I hope I don't regret reprinting something from a dirt sheet. Renegade Eye

Mazher Mahmood, 19/04/2009

THE poverty-stricken father of Slumdog Millionaire child star Rubina Ali plans to become a millionaire himself-by SELLING his nine-year-old daughter.

In a bid to escape India's real-life slums, Rafiq Qureshi put angel-faced darling of the Oscars Rubina up for adoption, demanding millions of rupees worth £200,000.

As he offered the shocking deal to the News of the World's undercover fake sheik this week, Rafiq declared: "I have to consider what's best for me, my family and Rubina's future."

Rafiq tried to blame Hollywood bosses for forcing him to put his daughter up for SALE.

As he tried to fix the illegal adoption deal, real-life slum dweller Rafiq declared: "We've got nothing out of this film."

Then, almost embarrassed to speak it out loud, he whispered to an accomplice the price tag he has put on his innocent young daughter: "It's £200,000!"

That was an astonishing FOURFOLD increase on his opening demand. But Rafiq's equally demanding brother Mohiuddin insisted: "The child is special now. This is NOT an ordinary child. This is an Oscar child!"

BUY MY DAUGHTER: Father Rafiq (centre) and uncle Rajan More (left) pose with Rubina and our undercover team
Dad Rafiq is desperate to cash in on their nine-year-old's success in the blockbuster film by selling her to the highest bidder.

He sees it as his family's escape route from the notorious Bandra slum sprawl of Mumbai.

Rafiq revealed his scheme to undercover News of the World reporters posing as a wealthy family from Dubai.

Riches

We travelled to Mumbai to expose the illegal sale after a tip-off from a concerned close family friend and former neighbour.

Shockingly, this sort of transaction is far from unusual in an impoverished nation where human life comes cheap and children are often treated as a commodity.

Rubina won the hearts of film-lovers around the world playing young Latika in British director Danny Boyle's movie that picked up eight Oscars and a pile of other glittering awards. It tells the rags to riches story of a young man from the slums who wins the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

Filmed in Mumbai's seething pauper ghetto it depicts starkly true scenes of poverty and child cruelty, where young orphans are blinded and crippled by Fagin-like thugs and forced to beg on the streets. And with a staggering 11 million children abandoned in India every year, there is no shortage of young prey.

Our informant, now a city tour guide, told us: "Rubina's family are furious that despite the film doing so well and their pretty daughter becoming so famous, they are still living in such rough conditions.

"They were approached by one wealthy Middle Eastern family who saw their plight in an item on Al Jazeera TV. The couple expressed an interest in adopting young Rubina and her parents' eyes lit up.

"Dad Rafiq is streetwise and knows that soon his daughter's success will be forgotten and her moment of fame will be over. He has a family to feed and simply can't afford it. He is keen to find a rich family to bring up Rubina but only if they are willing to help the whole family to get out of the slums.

"The Middle East family were moved to tears by the plight of the young orphans shown in the film and fell in love with Rubina.

"Just as Western stars like Madonna do, they want to adopt children from poor areas and give them a better life.

"This family wanted to take Rubina abroad. They agreed to come to Mumbai to discuss the adoption in May.

"But the approach has made Rafiq very greedy and he has said that he will consider the highest offer for his child. But they realise that the money will soon stop coming in and Rafiq is open to all offers."

Our investigator made contact with Rafiq and said we had heard he was considering having Rubina adopted. He told Rafiq he was acting for a wealthy Arab sheik who wanted to take the youngster to live with him 2,000 miles away in Dubai.

Rafiq replied: "Yes, we are considering Rubina's future.

SECRET SHAME: Rubina Ali is held aloft at Mumbai celebrations by dad now trying to sell her.

"Why don't you speak to my brother-in-law, Rajan, and he will discuss it with you? I will ask him to call you."

After contacting us, Rubina's uncle Rajan More - who speaks good English - confirmed: "Yes, we are interested in securing our girl's future.

"Rubina's life is miserable and she lives here with her stepmother. Most of the time she stays with me because she is not happy at her parents' home.

"Obviously if you wanted to adopt we could discuss this, but her parents would also expect some proper compensation in return. We are talking of around £50,000 for this to happen." In another phone call, father Rafiq coolly confirmed: "Whatever you have discussed with Rajan, I agree with. Whatever money is agreed by Rajan, I will accept.

"We can discuss everything about this deal when we meet. There's a lot of interest in Rubina, she's become very famous."

Without querying the background, intentions, or even the names of Rubina's prospective new parents, Rafiq arranged to meet us.

Abuse

And as soon as we said the wealthy family lived in the United Arab Emirates Rafiq suggested: "We would love to come there.

"I have never been there but I have seen it in Indian films. It looks a great place."

Trafficking of poor Indian children to the Middle East, where they are forced to risk their lives as camel jockeys or subjected to sexual abuse, is common in the Mumbai slums. But that did not deter Rafiq.

His first plan was to bring Rubina plus other relatives to visit us in Dubai to discuss the deal. But he had to scrap the idea because he could not get a passport. He is disqualified because he is facing police charges over a knife attack.

That is why he did not accompany Rubina to the Oscars ceremony and her Uncle Mohiuddin went instead.

Rafiq tried to shrug off the problem, claiming: "There is a case against me but it's nothing. I'm trying to get it sorted now. In India you can buy anything if you have money!"

His Plan B was the meeting in Mumbai fixed for Thursday evening. But he arrived late with his little daughter at the luxurious Leela Kempinski hotel at 11.35pm, when most children her age would be in bed.
Also tagging along were trusted sidekick Rajan More, Rafiq's brother Mohiuddin, a friend called Dinesh Dubey and two young nephews. "They were all keen to see what the hotel looks like inside," explained Rajan as he entered the £480-a-night suite.

Smiling broadly, Rubina, who was wearing a torn orange and white Indian dress, looked around the room in amazement. She was proudly clutching her new Nokia mobile phone, a gift from a well-wisher.

She said: "My house is as big as the toilet you have here. We live in Gharib Nagar (Poor Man's Colony)."

As the young VIP ordered strawberry milk shake and ice-cream, dad Rafiq proudly told how his daughter clinched the part in the international blockbuster film.

Toys

"One of our neighbours where we live took her to the audition," he said. "Around 1,500 kids turned up and my daughter passed. The film took over a year to make and she worked on it for a month."

Slumdog has been a roaring success, raking in a staggering £185 million at box offices around the world.

But Rafiq, 36, again complained: "They haven't looked after us. They gave some money at the start but they gave us nothing afterwards. They gave us around 150,000 rupees (£2,040). They've been talking about giving us a house, but all they do is talk." Rubina chipped in: "But I did get toys. When we were filming in Juhu beach I got some crayons."

In fact Danny Boyle and producer Christian Colson have set up a trust to ensure Rubina gets a proper education, is well housed and receives support dealing with media attention.

It was reported that Rafiq had spent some of his daughter's film fees on medical treatment to a leg he broke while working as a carpenter. He also used her cash to buy a new mobile phone for himself so agents can contact him to discuss work offers for his daughter. Rafiq has two other children - Sana, aged 13 and six-year-old Abbass - as well as another baby on the way by Rubina's stepmum Munni. Street-kid Rubina is one of only a handful of youngsters who attend school in her neighbourhood.

Rafiq added: "What they showed in the film is exactly how life is here. The government doesn't help us. We get nothing.

"We live in one room, seven of us sleep on the floor. I earn £2 to £3 a day. I have to consider what's best for me, my family and Rubina's future."

A fortnight ago Rubina and fellow child actor Azharuddin Ismail were each given a £12,000 luxury apartment by Slumdog sound engineer Rasul Pookutty. The property in Kerala, south India, was awarded to Rasul - who himself escaped poverty - by the local council in honour of his Oscar achievement.

But Rafiq dismissed the gesture, complaining: "We haven't got anything yet, it's all supposed to come later. It's all talk. It's being built, it'll take a year to be finished."

Stardom

And Rafiq insisted he had no intention of moving to Kerala, even when the apartment is complete.

"I won't move," he said. "I can never leave Mumbai. My childhood was here, everything I know is here in Mumbai."

As Rafiq spoke, Rubina excitedly looked around the suite, giggling and pointing out a large plasma TV on the wall to her 13-year-old cousin Mohsin.

Then she spoke about her new-found stardom. "I like being famous," she said. "Everyone where I live knows me and likes me now. Some people who I don't even know shout my name wherever I go - 'Rubina, Rubina'!"

She proudly told us how she had worked with the stars on Slumdog and with "Uncle Danny (Boyle)".

Update

Indian police say there is no evidence the father was selling Slumdog Kid.

RENEGADE EYE

Marxism and Religion in America

2009-04-16T01:10:00.004-05:00

Written by Josh Lucker
Friday, 10 April 2009

A recent survey shows that the United States may be becoming both less religious generally and less Christian specifically. This may come as a shock to some, as over the past decade, the Religious Right has for many people come to represent the public face of the country. This has been spurred on and encouraged by the cries coming from many liberals over the past few years of an impending “theocracy.” However, the facts on the ground are quite different, as the American Religious Identification Survey, performed by Trinity College in Hartford, CT, recently proved.

The study finds that the percentage of Americans who self-describe themselves as “Christian” has fallen by over 10 percent over the past 18 years, from 86 percent to 75 percent. Even more surprising is that “the fallen” are not making their way to other religions, but rather, are almost all entering the ranks of the “non-religious,” a category which has doubled since 1990 to 15 percent. Over 25 percent of participants said that they do not even expect a religious funeral. As ABC News points out, “Americans with no religious preference are now larger than all other major religious groups except Catholics and Baptists.” In fact, the trend toward non-religiosity is the only national trend found in the survey.

Over recent decades, the ideology of capitalist society, i.e. its morality, culture, etc., have been thrown into crisis. The old ideas, a key linchpin of the system, no longer carry the weight they once did. However, this crisis of ideas is merely a reflection or by product of a corresponding crisis of the capitalist system itself, which finds itself at an impasse.

The period of decline of socio-economic systems, such as the Roman Empire, saw their own “crises of morality,” their own “crises of faith,” and their own “apocalyptic yearnings” (the rise of Christianity itself being a prime example).

In fact, apocalyptic visions of the “end of the world” are merely the spiritual reflections of social systems which have outlived their historical usefulness. They reflect the semi-conscious realization of “prophets” that the world as it exists, or rather social relations as they exist, cannot continue as they have in the past. We have seen no shortage of these harbingers of doom in recent years, typified by the popularity of the Left Behind book series.

However, despite the attention given to the “non-religious” findings of the survey, another finding shows that the trend is not one-sided and linear, but rather, complex and contradictory. While the “non-religious” have increased and the mainstream Christian denominations have decreased, evangelical or “born-again” Christians have also increased.

This expresses a trend which we, as Marxists, would expect, but which the mainstream media seems completely unable to explain. The reason is that the crisis of the capitalist system finds expression in a crisis of ideas, a polarization both to the right and to the left, not simply a progressive, linear rejection of religion.

As the crisis continues, this will intensify further. Tony Perkins, of the Family Research Council, is somewhat correct, albeit one-sided, when he tells CNN that, “As the economy goes downward, I think people are going to be driven to religion.” Many others will turn away from religion altogether, but the crisis will continue to push a certain layer into the arms of the fundamentalists, further exacerbating the polarization.

Marxism as a philosophy is atheistic, but our ideas in relation to religion are far more complex than the caricature of “Godless communists” usually portrayed in the media. If people know anything about Marx’s ideas on religion, chances are they know that he said that religion was “the opium of the masses.” He did in fact say this, but what he actually meant goes far beyond an isolated quote.

The quote is from Marx’s Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, written in 1844. In it, he takes up the German critics of religion, a trend led by Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer and others, who focused their attacks, not on existing social relations, but on religion itself.

He points out that: “Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again… This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world… The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion… Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people…

“The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.”

As Marx explains, the 19th Century German critics of religion had the whole thing turned upside-down. Religion is merely the reflection of suffering in this world, inequality in this world, injustice in this world. So long as these conditions exist, religion cannot simply be “abolished,” because it has a material base. It is, as he put it, the “sigh of the oppressed creature.”

Today there are many people, such as the so-called “New Atheists” or “antitheists,” who continue on the path of the German critics. Representatives of this trend include Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. While the popularity of this trend, particularly among the youth, can be seen as a generally positive development, as it is “in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo,” it does not and cannot offer a solution to the “real suffering” of millions of people living under capitalism.

In other words, religion cannot simply be abolished or criticized out of existence. As Marxists, we believe that if you eliminate the conditions of misery that most of humanity lives under, that is, if we create conditions for “real happiness,” then over time, the need for “illusory happiness” will disappear on its own. If you do not agree, that is perfectly fine with us. In the future we can debate all we want about life after death, but in the meantime, we should work together to create the conditions for a life before death.

Mikhail Bakunin, a 19th Century Russian anarchist, proposed a Program of the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, which included as its first point: “The Alliance declares itself atheist; it wants abolition of cults, substitution of science for faith and human justice for divine justice.” In the margins of his copy of this document, Marx wrote: “As if one could declare by royal decree the abolition of faith!” This shows that those who believe that Marxism argues for a restriction of religious rights are misinformed.

Quite the opposite. We believe that there should be, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, a “wall of separation between church and state.” But we also believe that religion is a personal matter, between each person and his or her own conscience, not something to be banned or encouraged by the government.

In the struggle for a better world, we have far more in common, in terms of our goals and class outlook, with a liberation theologist in Latin America or a religious working class family in Ohio, than we do with some of the leaders of the “New Atheists,” such as Christopher Hitchens, a vocal supporter of the Iraq War.

RENEGADE EYE

You Are Being Lied to About Pirates

2009-04-14T01:07:00.004-05:00

Johann Hari
Columnist, London Independent
Posted April 13, 2009 | 10:05 AM (EST)

Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menace of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell -- and some justice on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda-heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains of All nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century." They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy." This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.

The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."

This is the context in which the men we are calling "pirates" have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a 'tax' on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas." William Scott would understand those words.

No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But the "pirates" have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news-site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence of the country's territorial waters." During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America's founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn't act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world's oil supply, we begin to shriek about "evil." If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gun-boats to root out Somalia's criminals.

The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent newspaper. To read more of his articles, click here. or here.

POSTSCRIPT: Some commenters seem bemused by the fact that both toxic dumping and the theft of fish are happening in the same place - wouldn't this make the fish contaminated? In fact, Somalia's coastline is vast, stretching to 3300km. Imagine how easy it would be - without any coastguard or army - to steal fish from Florida and dump nuclear waste on California, and you get the idea. These events are happening in different places - but with the same horrible effect: death for the locals, and stirred-up piracy. There's no contradiction.

RENEGADE EYE

Surprising Poll Finds Only Half of Americans Believe Capitalism is Better Than Socialism ... Or?

2009-04-10T15:43:00.002-05:00

Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet.
at 4:00 PM on April 9, 2009.

Do They Understand the Words?

The results of a new Rasmussen poll are an eye-opener in some ways...

Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.

Investors by a 5-to-1 margin choose capitalism. As for those who do not invest, 40% say capitalism is better while 25% prefer socialism.

It's certainly a fascinating finding, especially when compared with that of an earlier survey in which 70% of Americans prefered a free-market economy. Rasmussen also notes, "the fact that a 'free-market economy' attracts substantially more support than 'capitalism' may suggest some skepticism about whether capitalism in the United States today relies on free markets." Which just means we're not as dumb as we look.

But I take these findings with a significant grain of salt...

I doubt the terms "socialism" and "capitalism" are fully understood by most respondents, and Rasmussen didn't explain them (when asked which is better, 27 percent said 'whuh?'). Remember, according to the most recent (1997) Household Survey of Adult Civic Participation, less than a third of American adults read a newspaper or news magazine "almost every day." Almost a third couldn't tell you what "job or political office" Al Gore had held after he had been Vice President for five years, around a third didn't know which party held the majority in Congress and, stunningly, 49 percent of Americans surveyed didn't know "which party is more conservative at the national level."

Looking at other data as well, I think that there's widespread disilussionment with the American model of capitalism, and the response to Rasmussen's question is colored by the fact that most believe it to be the only one. The poll notes that just "fifteen percent of Americans say they prefer a government-managed economy ... 14% believe the federal government would do a better job running auto companies, and even fewer believe government would do a better job running financial firms." Given that, it's hard to see more than one in five opting for a system in which the state owns the means of production.

I'd be interested to see a poll that offered respondents a little information about what these terms mean, and also included "social democracy" as an option -- I've always seen a mostly free-market system with a far better safety net as the best of both worlds myself.

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.

I don't agree it's relevant that people know exactly what is meant by socialism, what is relevant is that about 30% of the US population isn't put off by socialism. Explaining socialism is my job.

RENEGADE EYE

Venezuela Expropriates Cargill Plant

2009-04-07T00:25:00.004-05:00

Written by Patrick Larsen
Friday, 03 April 2009

Throughout 2007 and 2008, scarcity of basic food products has been part of everyday life for millions of Venezuelans. Sometimes it has been coffee, other times sugar, milk, rice, cooking oil or beans that were unavailable on the shelves of super-markets and shops. This has created a potentially dangerous situation which could undermine support for the Bolivarian government.

The inability of the Venezuelan government to solve this problem played a key role in the defeat in the referendum on Constitutional reform in December 2007, where three million Chavez supporters abstained from voting. That explains why, at the beginning of 2008, a campaign was launched on the direct initiative of Chavez to solve the problem. This involved the use of the National Guard to confiscate hidden reserves of food and stop the smuggling of food into Colombia, where speculators can sell the food products at much more favorable prices.

The campaign demonstrated that food scarcity was the result of hoarding, speculation and smuggling on a massive scale. However, no effective measures were taken to deal with the root of the problem at that time. Private property of the food-producing sector was left untouched. As we warned at the time: “The seizure of food stocks by the National Guard and other bodies can temporarily ease the problem, but cannot solve it in the long term. Relying on the institutions of a state apparatus which is still a capitalist state to solve the problems of working people is like putting a fox in charge of guarding hens.”

In February, the government conducted a number of investigations of private companies in the food sector. In a rice processing plant in Guarico state, owned by the country’s largest food producer, Polar, it was revealed that the plant was only working at half capacity. Furthermore, the plant was adding artificial flavoring to 90 percent of its rice in order to get around the price controls decreed by he government, which only apply to essential, unenhanced food items.

On Saturday, February 28, Chavez decreed state intervention at the rice processing plant in Guárico, which is to run for 90 days. The workers at the plant have supported this measure with great enthusiasm and have begun to produce 100 percent unmodified rice. This shows that it is entirely possible to mass produce cheap rice as long as it is done under the control of the working class.

Having discovered this deliberate sabotage, Chavez emphasized that this was only the tip of the iceberg. On his TV program, Aló Presidente, on March 1, he threatened the capitalists in the food sector. If the sabotage continues, he said, “we will expropriate all of their plants, and convert them from private property into social property.”

Then on Wednesday, March 3, Chavez announced the expropriation of the rice plants of Cargill, a U.S.owned multinational food company. It was revealed that this rice-processing plant in Portuguesa was adding artificial flavoring to all of its rice to get round the price controls. Apart from that, INDEPABIS found approximately 18,000 tons of non-modified rice stored in the plant’s warehouse.

Chavez signed the official decree of expropriation of Cargill’s rice plants on March 6. In the same speech he stated that in the past, the oligarchy had been making the laws but that this era had now ended and “Now Venezuela has a government that only abides by the constitution and the people”. On Sunday, March 7, during his weekly Alo Presidente programme, Chavez replied to the criticisms on the part of Polar group owner Lorenzo Mendoza, and warned, “my hand will not shake when it comes to expropriating the whole of the Polar group if they are found to be breaking the law. Let this be a warning to the bourgeoisie as a whole: my hand will not shake,” adding, “And I would have the full support of the people.”

In what was a very radical speech, president Chavez also dismissed those who advocate the need to conciliate with the ruling class. “Some are trying to tell a tale that we have a technical draw, that we are neck and neck [with the opposition], this is completely false” and added, “with this story they want the revolution to surrender and that I should put my foot the brake and say: we cannot go forward, we need to reach agreements.” To these ideas he replied: “The revolution must charge ahead. There cannot be any agreement with the oligarchy or agreements at the top with anybody; I will make sure that we put our foot down on the accelerator of the Revolution.”

He continued: “We have an absolute majority” in the National Assembly, he said. It is now time to “dismantle the old bourgeois state, before it dismantles us.” This is completely correct, but it is also the responsibility of the workers’ movement and its leadership to take the initiative. Many opportunities have been wasted in the past. It is time to take decisive action.

The most striking feature of the recent developments in the struggle against food scarcity is the movement of the workers. Once the ice was broken with the state intervention in the rice-plant in Guárico, workers from the food industry all over Venezuela began to organize and call for action against the sabotage of the capitalists.

More than ever before, the Venezuelan revolution is clashing head-on with private property of the means of production. Private property is an obstacle to national sovereignty in the field of food production. In order to accomplish the basic tasks of the national-democratic revolution, the working class – leading the peasantry behind it – must put itself at the head of the revolution and smash the remnants of private property and the old bourgeois state apparatus. Only in this way can an effective agrarian reform and industrialization of agriculture be introduced, which would give a huge impetus to domestic food production. And in so doing, the national-democratic revolution will grow over into the Socialist revolution. In that sense the Venezuelan revolution will become “permanent”. This is the real lesson of the present dispute over the rice fields.

RENEGADE EYE