Paul - Thank you for the stinging accuracy of your video piece today, Tuesday, Sept.10th. It is a chilling, raw-truth punch to the face and gut of every US citizen, each deceived by a lifetime of shameless propaganda and misinformation. I have been watching for 70-years, all of it, happening right it in front of my attentive eyes and ears. Along the way, I've read those increasingly scarce truth-tellers, like yourself, who expose the "shit-show" for what it is and has always been. Take care of yourself Paul. Truth telling is dangerous to the guise in charge. You are a threat to the Lie Machine. Your words, a Lighthouse beacon in the increasing darkness.
That's how I feel about Aaron Mate. He does not miss. He does not hold back. He explicates the issues with unique cogency. And even while reporting the grim news, he laughs at the absurdity of it. I do not know if I agree with his description of the events of Ukraine 2014. And while it might be unhealthy, I agree in deed am electrified by Useful Idiots. I think Revcom has some serious limitations Paul. There are arguments to make of it being cultish. RCP has been calling for the revolution for 30 years, and even today it only has 160 adherents. I was very involved with World Can't Wait during the frozen days of the Bush fils regime, which as you probably know, was essentially RCP. It gave me a good chance to open my mind to communism as such, and fuck the US capitalist class anyway. Space doesn't permit me to describe my encounter(s) with Kapital. I devoured the RCP newsletter. I can't remember if it was a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. I learned a lot. But I ultimately came to consider that RCP was peerless at diagnosing political issues. But when it came to turning on a dime and offering alternatives, all they had was Mao, Stalin and Marx. Sorry I've commented on the piece before I've viewed it. Which I will right now.
The first draft of this post neglected to cut and paste the below note of 2+ century of US military actions. Even now, the US is still trying to eject the democratically elected government in Venezuela. It just missed with the self-proclaimed Venezuelan president, Juan Gauido. But the Greaser. The Wet back. The invariably dusky: the migrant farmworker. The undocumented construction worker. they're the societal recalcitrants: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R42738/41 We rarely, ever? hear that Trump's wall, taken up by Biden, will bisect critical habitat for an indigenous threatened cat in the desert. "Power makes stupid," writes Nietzsche. The United States proves that in a million ways every day.
I've got to be honest: "all they had was Mao, Stalin, and Marx" means that while you might have read the RCP paper back in the day you just haven't read --- or understood --- core Avakian works. I'm not going to list all of them off for you. I'm talking about books and polemics like Breakthroughs (2019)... Conquer the World? The International Proletariat Must and Will. Revolution magazine, No. 50, December 1981; Constitution, Law, and Rights – in capitalist society and in the future socialist society ; THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation (2021); Democracy: Can't We Do Better Than That? (1986); Observations on Art and Culture, Science and Philosophy (2005); Phony Communism Is Dead... Long Live Real Communism! 2nd Edition by Bob Avakian (2004). Nobody who has been through these volumes (yes, a lot of reading) could say "all they had was Mao, Stalin, and Marx." Avakian and the RCP have significant criticisms of all those guys and Lenin too. In my experience, I have found that there's a bunch of intellectual and personal laziness behind the cult charge -- that along with a bunch of simple disagreement on the need for and possibility of revolution. The charge and the snark are covers for mental lethargy and surrender. Your guy AM I quit paying attention to a long time ago. I'm sure he still hits some right notes but he was pretty much self-exposed as kind of a stooge for Putin and Assad and you know I'm an internationalist and have no time for that crowd.. We have a lot of left intellectuals who end up getting exposed as never having had a solid background in real Marxism/historical materialism. BTW Marx was and is a pretty big deal; I think his paradigm (reduced by tons of left idiots to saying working class and class struggle a lot) is actually quite alive and well and in ways that Avakian rescues and appreciates quite well.
It’s good to be honest Paul. Just remember our friend Friederich however: “The inability to tell lies is the least part of truth.”
I read Avakian’s autobiography at the urging of what was to become fellow World Can’t Wait Chicago colleague, Jay. I’m pretty sure it was the autobiography. I thought it compelling reading and a very good book.
I haven’t Avakian on my To Read list, not against any bias against him. Only because there’s no room there. I’ve just finished The Wisdom of Insecurity, for example, which I’ve wanted to read for decades. I’m just finishing Finkelstein’s new book I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It. Next in the stack is Khalidi’s Hundred Years War on Palestine.
I have two stacks of books on my kitchen island counter that have been there for literally years. Lee Camp’s Bullet Points and Headlines, a Jonathan Schell book – and how difficult is that going to be to read vis-à-vis the rapidity of current events? – Six or seven others. I don’t keep up with what I’d like in current events. Your writings, for example. The rest of Counterpunch. Little of Caitlin Johnstone. Next to nothing on social media. I’m 5 interviews behind at ScheerPost.
By the way I don’t know how you manage to be so prodigiously productive. You might as well be studying the volume of books that Robert Scherer, Chris Hedges and Norman Finkelstein comment on. I’m only 80% of the way through Finkelstein’s Bridges, but already he’s cited at least 6 books of from 400 to 1,200 pages, along with many other cites. I can’t imagine how those guys are capable of reading like they do.
I think it’s short-sighted of RCP to greet the potential new member into what seems more a cult than a movement, with hoots and hollers about unrealistic goals. There is no way the Left is ready for a revolution. It can’t even make for organizational meetings. I don’t know if Avakian and RCP are thinking armed revolution. If so, I think they would do well to heed Chomsky: The state will always have the bigger clubs and the most lethal guns.
I’m a good reader. Not as good as I should be. But better than average. I picked up the tome of Marx’s Kapital two time with an interregnum of about five years. The first time I slugged through 75 pages. Not understanding the practical application of a single thing Marx touched upon, not to speak of its utter boredom. I might as well have been reading a compendium of Ta Nehisi Coates, whose book Between the World and Me I fell permanently asleep with on about page 62. The second time with Kapital I didn’t have to reach page 75 to realize the experience was going to be much the same. Simplify, Simplify, Simplify, counseled Thoreau.
I think Marx had some very valuable ideas. A surplus army of workers. The nature of the division of the fruits of labor. Surplus value. Those type of things. If presented with the option of capitalism or communism it’s a no-brainer for me. Like the State of the Union address, however, or this week’s presidential debate, I’d rather the disgust be filtered through journalists’ reports.
Moreover, lifting from my review of Gabriel Kolko’s book After Socialism, which you can see in its entirety at Amazon, “’Marx is hard to understand because he is obtuse, supercilious, opaque, boring and utopian…’ The goals and the reasons for them that socialists, including Marx, held were laudable; thus Kolko assails the illusory analytic framework of Marx's social economic theory: ‘Marxism was a less formidable challenge to capitalism than might have emerged in the absence of the socialist movement's relative significant organizational strength.’”
Funny you should mention, Paul, MLK's call for a complete revolution of values is the way I remember him phrasing it. Known more contemporarily as a paradigm shift. In that same speech, the Beyond Vietnam speech I think it was, King took a couple of side jabs, naming the name, at Nietzsche. Said in the manner of King's hushed gravitas and spit with as much contempt as King was capable; Nietzsche call to lust for power. Apparently misunderstanding Nietzsche's contention that all life is will to power. For it was about a century earlier than Nietzsche had conceptualized a four book examination of just this process in values; in Nietzsche's terminology, a revaluation of all values. He completed two of the four conceived volumes The Antichrist and Twilight of the Idols, the latter a play on the title of a Wagner opera I believe, with whom Nietzsche had a close friendship and then a falling out, largely over Wagner's anti-Semitism. It would be interesting to learn whether MLK was aware of this contradiction.
"radical reconstruction of society itself" and saying the real issues are "systemic" (as mid-late 60s King did) is beyond values though...literally how society is set up.
Please read the Revcoms "5 Stops": https://revcom.us/en/a/596/message-from-the-national-revolution-tour-en.html
Paul - Thank you for the stinging accuracy of your video piece today, Tuesday, Sept.10th. It is a chilling, raw-truth punch to the face and gut of every US citizen, each deceived by a lifetime of shameless propaganda and misinformation. I have been watching for 70-years, all of it, happening right it in front of my attentive eyes and ears. Along the way, I've read those increasingly scarce truth-tellers, like yourself, who expose the "shit-show" for what it is and has always been. Take care of yourself Paul. Truth telling is dangerous to the guise in charge. You are a threat to the Lie Machine. Your words, a Lighthouse beacon in the increasing darkness.
That's how I feel about Aaron Mate. He does not miss. He does not hold back. He explicates the issues with unique cogency. And even while reporting the grim news, he laughs at the absurdity of it. I do not know if I agree with his description of the events of Ukraine 2014. And while it might be unhealthy, I agree in deed am electrified by Useful Idiots. I think Revcom has some serious limitations Paul. There are arguments to make of it being cultish. RCP has been calling for the revolution for 30 years, and even today it only has 160 adherents. I was very involved with World Can't Wait during the frozen days of the Bush fils regime, which as you probably know, was essentially RCP. It gave me a good chance to open my mind to communism as such, and fuck the US capitalist class anyway. Space doesn't permit me to describe my encounter(s) with Kapital. I devoured the RCP newsletter. I can't remember if it was a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. I learned a lot. But I ultimately came to consider that RCP was peerless at diagnosing political issues. But when it came to turning on a dime and offering alternatives, all they had was Mao, Stalin and Marx. Sorry I've commented on the piece before I've viewed it. Which I will right now.
The first draft of this post neglected to cut and paste the below note of 2+ century of US military actions. Even now, the US is still trying to eject the democratically elected government in Venezuela. It just missed with the self-proclaimed Venezuelan president, Juan Gauido. But the Greaser. The Wet back. The invariably dusky: the migrant farmworker. The undocumented construction worker. they're the societal recalcitrants: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R42738/41 We rarely, ever? hear that Trump's wall, taken up by Biden, will bisect critical habitat for an indigenous threatened cat in the desert. "Power makes stupid," writes Nietzsche. The United States proves that in a million ways every day.
I've got to be honest: "all they had was Mao, Stalin, and Marx" means that while you might have read the RCP paper back in the day you just haven't read --- or understood --- core Avakian works. I'm not going to list all of them off for you. I'm talking about books and polemics like Breakthroughs (2019)... Conquer the World? The International Proletariat Must and Will. Revolution magazine, No. 50, December 1981; Constitution, Law, and Rights – in capitalist society and in the future socialist society ; THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation (2021); Democracy: Can't We Do Better Than That? (1986); Observations on Art and Culture, Science and Philosophy (2005); Phony Communism Is Dead... Long Live Real Communism! 2nd Edition by Bob Avakian (2004). Nobody who has been through these volumes (yes, a lot of reading) could say "all they had was Mao, Stalin, and Marx." Avakian and the RCP have significant criticisms of all those guys and Lenin too. In my experience, I have found that there's a bunch of intellectual and personal laziness behind the cult charge -- that along with a bunch of simple disagreement on the need for and possibility of revolution. The charge and the snark are covers for mental lethargy and surrender. Your guy AM I quit paying attention to a long time ago. I'm sure he still hits some right notes but he was pretty much self-exposed as kind of a stooge for Putin and Assad and you know I'm an internationalist and have no time for that crowd.. We have a lot of left intellectuals who end up getting exposed as never having had a solid background in real Marxism/historical materialism. BTW Marx was and is a pretty big deal; I think his paradigm (reduced by tons of left idiots to saying working class and class struggle a lot) is actually quite alive and well and in ways that Avakian rescues and appreciates quite well.
It’s good to be honest Paul. Just remember our friend Friederich however: “The inability to tell lies is the least part of truth.”
I read Avakian’s autobiography at the urging of what was to become fellow World Can’t Wait Chicago colleague, Jay. I’m pretty sure it was the autobiography. I thought it compelling reading and a very good book.
I haven’t Avakian on my To Read list, not against any bias against him. Only because there’s no room there. I’ve just finished The Wisdom of Insecurity, for example, which I’ve wanted to read for decades. I’m just finishing Finkelstein’s new book I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It. Next in the stack is Khalidi’s Hundred Years War on Palestine.
I have two stacks of books on my kitchen island counter that have been there for literally years. Lee Camp’s Bullet Points and Headlines, a Jonathan Schell book – and how difficult is that going to be to read vis-à-vis the rapidity of current events? – Six or seven others. I don’t keep up with what I’d like in current events. Your writings, for example. The rest of Counterpunch. Little of Caitlin Johnstone. Next to nothing on social media. I’m 5 interviews behind at ScheerPost.
By the way I don’t know how you manage to be so prodigiously productive. You might as well be studying the volume of books that Robert Scherer, Chris Hedges and Norman Finkelstein comment on. I’m only 80% of the way through Finkelstein’s Bridges, but already he’s cited at least 6 books of from 400 to 1,200 pages, along with many other cites. I can’t imagine how those guys are capable of reading like they do.
I think it’s short-sighted of RCP to greet the potential new member into what seems more a cult than a movement, with hoots and hollers about unrealistic goals. There is no way the Left is ready for a revolution. It can’t even make for organizational meetings. I don’t know if Avakian and RCP are thinking armed revolution. If so, I think they would do well to heed Chomsky: The state will always have the bigger clubs and the most lethal guns.
I’m a good reader. Not as good as I should be. But better than average. I picked up the tome of Marx’s Kapital two time with an interregnum of about five years. The first time I slugged through 75 pages. Not understanding the practical application of a single thing Marx touched upon, not to speak of its utter boredom. I might as well have been reading a compendium of Ta Nehisi Coates, whose book Between the World and Me I fell permanently asleep with on about page 62. The second time with Kapital I didn’t have to reach page 75 to realize the experience was going to be much the same. Simplify, Simplify, Simplify, counseled Thoreau.
I think Marx had some very valuable ideas. A surplus army of workers. The nature of the division of the fruits of labor. Surplus value. Those type of things. If presented with the option of capitalism or communism it’s a no-brainer for me. Like the State of the Union address, however, or this week’s presidential debate, I’d rather the disgust be filtered through journalists’ reports.
Moreover, lifting from my review of Gabriel Kolko’s book After Socialism, which you can see in its entirety at Amazon, “’Marx is hard to understand because he is obtuse, supercilious, opaque, boring and utopian…’ The goals and the reasons for them that socialists, including Marx, held were laudable; thus Kolko assails the illusory analytic framework of Marx's social economic theory: ‘Marxism was a less formidable challenge to capitalism than might have emerged in the absence of the socialist movement's relative significant organizational strength.’”
Not sure who you’re referring to as AM.
Thanks for the dialog.
"What a revolution actually is"....can't wait.
Funny you should mention, Paul, MLK's call for a complete revolution of values is the way I remember him phrasing it. Known more contemporarily as a paradigm shift. In that same speech, the Beyond Vietnam speech I think it was, King took a couple of side jabs, naming the name, at Nietzsche. Said in the manner of King's hushed gravitas and spit with as much contempt as King was capable; Nietzsche call to lust for power. Apparently misunderstanding Nietzsche's contention that all life is will to power. For it was about a century earlier than Nietzsche had conceptualized a four book examination of just this process in values; in Nietzsche's terminology, a revaluation of all values. He completed two of the four conceived volumes The Antichrist and Twilight of the Idols, the latter a play on the title of a Wagner opera I believe, with whom Nietzsche had a close friendship and then a falling out, largely over Wagner's anti-Semitism. It would be interesting to learn whether MLK was aware of this contradiction.
"radical reconstruction of society itself" and saying the real issues are "systemic" (as mid-late 60s King did) is beyond values though...literally how society is set up.
Prescient, seen by others too.
https://boingboing.net/2024/07/31/tom-the-dancing-bug-how-the-media-handles-trumps-fascism.html