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July 19, 2013
In This Issue
Full Employment
Zimmerman Mindset
Modern Slavecatchers
Ohio War on Women
Manufactured Inequality
GOP: No More Bargaining
UK's Left Unity Efforts
More Bob Dylan
Marx on Human Nature
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 "Everyone has the right to work, to free of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."

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I. Introduction

The "Great Recession" that began in 2007 has caused the greatest percent of job losses since the Great Depression of 1929. This crisis is the end of an era of unrestrained 'neo-liberal' capitalism that became public policy during the Reagan administration. The crisis marks a new level of instability with the growth of a global financial elite that targeted US workers and our trade unions after World War II.

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Six Million Trayvons: How the George Zimmerman Mindset has Rigged the Justice System Against Young Black Men



By Judd Legum

Nation of Change

July 15, 2013 - George Zimmerman killed one boy, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Although a Florida jury found Zimmerman not guilty, his attitude - that a young black male is an object suspicion and contempt - not only cost Martin his life but has infected the entire United States criminal justice system.

Law Professor Michelle Alexander makes the point powerfully:

    It is the Zimmerman mindset that must be found guilty - far more than the man himself. It is a mindset that views black men and boys as nothing but a threat, good for nothing, up to no good no matter who they are or what they are doing. It is the Zimmerman mindset that has birthed a penal system unprecedented in world history, and relegated millions to a permanent undercaste.

The statistics back up Alexander's point. Minorities, especially the six million young black men in America, get much worse outcomes from the criminal justice system for the same conduct:

    1. A black male born in 2001 has a 32% chance of spending some portion of his life in prison. A white male born the same year has just a 6% chance. [Sentencing Project]

    2. In major American cities, as many as 80% of young African-American men have criminal records. [Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow]

    3. African-Americans who use drugs are more than four times as likely to be incarcerated than whites who use drugs. African Americans constitute 14% of the population and 14% of monthly drug users. But African-Americans respresent 34% of those arrested for a drug offense and 53% of those sentenced to prison for a drug offense. [American Bar Association]

    4. In seven states, African Americans constitute 80% or more of all drug offenders sent to prison. [Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow]

    5. Black students are three and a half times as likely to be suspended or expelled than their white peers. One in five black boys recieve an out-of-school suspension. Education Secretary Arne Duncan who commissioned the study, said "The undeniable truth is that the everyday education experience for too many students of color violates the principle of equity at the heart of the American promise." [New York Times]

    6. Black youth who are referred to juvenile court are much more likely to be detained, referred to adult court or end up in adult prison than their white counterparts. Blacks represented 28% of juvenile arrests, 30% of referrals to juvenile court, 37% of the detained population, 35% of youth judicially waived to criminal court and 58% of youth admitted to state adult prison. [National Council on Crime And Deliquency]

    7. The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. [Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow]

In 2004, the Amerian Bar Association created a commission which produced recommendation to address "racial and ethnic bias in the criminal justice system." Thus far, their recommendations have been largely ignored in much of the country.

This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/six-million-trayvons-how-george-zimmerman-mindset-has-rigged-justice-system-against-young-black-men-. All rights are reserved.



By Thom Hartmann

Alternet

July 15, 2013 - George Zimmerman kept close watch over his neighborhood. When Black men walked or even drove through the area, he alerted the police, over and over and over again [3]. Finally, exasperated that "they always" got away, he went out on a rainy night armed with a loaded gun and the Stand Your Ground law, looking for anybody who should not be in his largely White neighborhood.

The South has a long history of this sort of thing. They used to be called Slave Patrols.

Prior to the Civil War and Reconstruction, the main way Southern states maintained the institution of slavery was through local and statewide militias, also known as "Slave Patrols."  These Patrols were, in many states, required monthly duty for southern white men between the ages of 17 and 47, be they slave-owners or not.

Slave patrollers traveled, usually on horseback [the modern equivalent would be in a car], through the countryside looking for African-Americans who were "not where they belonged." When the patrollers found Black people in places where they "did not belong," punishment ranged from beatings, to repatriation to their slave owners, to death by being whipped, hung or shot.

Some of the most comprehensive reports on the nature and extent of the Slave Patrols came from interviews done by the WPA (the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program created by FDR) during the Great Depression. At that time, former slaves and the children of former slaves were still alive and had stories to tell, and the WPA put people to work in the American South gathering and documenting those stories.

The WPA's Georgia Writers Project, Savannah Unit, produced a brilliant summary of stories taken from people who were alive (most as children) during the time of slavery, about their and their families interactions with slave patrollers. The report's title was "Drums and Shadows: survival stories among the Georgia coastal Negroes [4]).

Many other oral and written histories compiled by the WPA Writers Project are now maintained by the Library of Congress [5].

Dozens of other similar reports, as well as detailed state-by-state studies of slave patrols, even including membership rosters, are published in Sally E. Hadden's brilliant book "Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas [6]."

Hadden cites numerous stories and scores of sources about how the slave patrollers would beat, whip, or otherwise abuse African-Americans who were found off the plantation. Women were routinely subjected to rape, and men were usually beaten with sticks or whips.  Hadden writes of the stories compiled by the WPA:

    "Slaves might beg to be left out of a whipping from the patrol, hoping that mercy or caprice might avert a beating. Patrollers sometimes toyed with a slave, threatening a whipping, then let the slaves go free. The inherent arbitrariness of punishment added to the fear most slaves felt when they encountered slave patrols.

    "One former bondsmen [slave], Alex Woods, recalled how a patrol reacted to a begging slave. He said that the patrollers 'wouldn't allow [slaves] to call on de Lord when dey were wippin' 'em but they let 'em say, "Oh! pray, Oh! pray, marster."'

    "The harsh punishment a patrol could administer caused one former slave to like meeting the patrol with being sold to a new master - a slave would seek to avoid both fates at any cost. Few things compared to the agony a slave endured from a patroller beating. One ex-slave from South Carolina recalled what people heard when she was born: her mother 'screamed as if she were being beaten by patrollers.'"  (p.117)

The National Humanities Center reprinted an 1857 account by Austin Steward, who escaped slavery in 1813. Titled "Slaves and Slave Patrol," Steward opens the account with this summary [7]: 

"Slaves are never allowed to leave the plantation to which they belong, without a written pass. Should anyone venture to disobey this law, he will most likely be caught by the patrol and given thirty-nine lashes.

    "This patrol is always on duty every Sunday, going to each plantation under their supervision, entering every slave cabin, and examining closely the conduct of the slaves; and if they find one slave from another plantation without a pass, he is immediately punished with a severe flogging."

He then goes on to tell several harrowing stories of personal encounters with the slave patrol, including one that led to the death of six slaves, and reprints the North Carolina Slave Patrol regulations as follows: ...(Click title for more)

In what could become a blueprint for the Right, the state rushed through harsh restrictions on abortion rights.


By Sady Doyle
In These Times

July 15, 2013 - There's plenty of progressive talk about a "war on women," but this wasn't a battle. It was an assassination: quick, unexpected and catastrophic.

Women in Ohio didn't see this coming. The state's new two-year budget, approved by Governor John Kasich on June 30, includes several breathtaking restrictions on abortion and reproductive health clinics, and stands to strip funding from many rape crisis centers if they don't comply with gag orders. And it passed so quickly that many Ohioans only found out about the anti-choice measures after they had taken effect. Now, the pro-choice voters of Ohio find themselves facing a worst-case scenario: trying to pick up the pieces and regain their rights before too many women are hurt or killed by laws they didn't have time to fight. 

The abortion provisions were added to the budget on June 25, after only a week or two of discussion, and were passed into law five days later, giving media outlets and protestors less than a week to raise awareness or opposition. This is not to say there was no opposition before the budget's passage-only that it wasn't widespread enough, or quick enough, to have a real effect. Doctors spoke at the Ohio Statehouse, calling the provisions dangerous and unethical. But there weren't enough of them, or enough people willing to take them seriously, and so it didn't matter.

State Sen. Nina Turner sent out e-mails to constituents warning them of an attack on women. "I have been fighting on your behalf and I'm not alone, but we are outnumbered in a legislature run by ideologues," she wrote-but there was nothing as eye-catching as Wendy Davis' epic filibuster, and so the media coverage was light. As the week went on, Texan protesters numbered in the thousands, while on June 28, the Columbus Dispatch reports, only about 100 protesters were present at the Ohio Statehouse.

Texas is the state that abortion rights activists are looking to for inspiration. But Ohio is the state they should look to as a cautionary tale. There's plenty of progressive talk about a "war on women," but this wasn't a battle. It was an assassination: quick, unexpected and catastrophic. The story of Ohio is a story about how any American, even those who don't believe their reproductive rights are particularly endangered, can wake up one morning to find them gone.

"I hadn't actually heard about House Budget 59 until it passed, via the Huffington Post, late the night it happened," says protester Amanda Parker-Wolery, in Cleveland. "This bothered me, as an avid follower of the news. Something seemed amiss that not more people were talking about this beforehand. Come to find out, I wasn't the only one."

She wasn't. "Very few people in our state even knew what was going on," says Alliea Phipps, state director of the the non-profit women's organization UniteWomen.org, who worked to oppose the provisions before they were passed into law.

 Now, much of the work on the ground consists not just of figuring out ways to regain lost ground, but of making sure that fellow Ohioans know which rights they've lost. Bella Sin, another Cleveland protester who immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico, said that one of the most important parts of her work involves trying to get the word out to people for whom it's otherwise inaccessible: "I'm translating all of this information into Spanish, letting people know what happened." 

There's reason to believe that it simply couldn't have happened if the people of Ohio had been allowed to decide the matter directly. Ohio is not a state that tolerates political extremism of any stripe. It's a swing state, a moderate state, so resolutely middle-of-the-aisle that its voting preferences can famously be used to determine the outcome of national elections. As Ohio goes, so goes the nation.

And yet, Kasich's restrictions are unapologetically out-there. Overnight, the nation's political barometer has become an anti-choice fanatic's wet dream. Anyone seeking an abortion will be forced to submit to a state-mandated ultrasound-and to pay for that ultrasound after it is forced on them. Planned Parenthood has been effectively stripped of state funding, but so-called "crisis pregnancy centers"-unregulated anti-abortion disinformation centers famous for placing misleading ads, providing medically unsound advice and using coercive tactics-will be receiving taxpayer money. Any clinic providing abortions will be required, by law, to enter into a contract with a nearby hospital, guaranteeing transport if a client experiences complications and needs urgent care. But public hospitals will be prevented by law from entering into such contracts, meaning that clinics will be shut down if they can't find a local, privately owned hospital willing to comply. The state's rape crisis centers are also under attack: If they refer a pregnant survivor to abortion services, or even mention the word "abortion," they too will be defunded. According to Phipps, the law even endangers people who miscarry. Surgical abortions are often necessary after a first-trimester miscarriage to prevent hemorrhaging or infections. But the Kasich budget requires a 48-hour waiting period unless a doctor determines that the patient is at immediate risk of death.

So this, too, is a way the nation can go. If the reproductive rights battle in Texas is a story about how even conservative states can be brought to feel the power of pro-choice voters, then Ohio is a story about how, even in a state where most people do not share extremist anti-choice views, a few sufficiently conservative men in positions of power can bully their way into enacting extremist anti-choice policies. A poll released shortly before the budget passed indicated that 52 percent of voters said they did not support the proposed restrictions. Indeed, when similarly radical bills have been put forward on their own, and not within the context of a budget, as in the case of 2012's "heartbeat bill," they've been shot down. But because Republicans control the state legislature, the anti-abortion radicals have the edge.

So what's left? How can Ohioans regain those rights after they've been wiped off the books?

"I don't think there's anything we can do about it," Sin says frankly. "I've spoken to the [other pro-choice] organizations and we can either wait for [Kasich] to get out of office or... I don't know if we can overturn it. The long-range goal should be activism and figuring out how to fund those particular places that were defunded." She's planning a rally, with the social media hashtag #cle4women, and a burlesque benefit to raise funds.

Phipps is more hopeful. Although the state legislature is on summer break now, she says, there may be a chance to address the matter soon.

"There's a strong belief that Governor Kasich will call the legislature back to deal with Medicaid," she says, referring to a Medicaid expansion proposed by Kasich that did not make it into the final budget. The thinking seems to be that if the budget is reopened on this issue, pro-choicers may gain a necessary inroad to challenging the abortion restrictions.  "If not, we have to wait until September," she says. "There are other possibilities, and if you've been reading the national news, very few of these archaic laws have been found legal... in that case, the taxpayers will have to pay for a court battle." ...(Click title for more)
Reich: Inequality: Real, Personal and Intentional
Inequality is real, it's personal, it's expensive and it was created
Robert Reich animation: Inequality is real, it's personal, it's expensive and it was created

How the GOP Hopes to Take Away Americans' Right to Collective Bargaining



By Robert Creamer

Huffington Post

July 15, 2013 - The right to collective bargaining in the workplace is a human right -- just as fundamental as the right to free speech or the right to vote.

It is enshrined in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was adopted in 1948.

Three quarters of a century ago, our country passed labor laws that gave every worker the right to organize a union in their workplace to negotiate wages and working conditions with their employers.

When the largest percentage of private sector workers were in unions in the 1950's, the economy grew and the gap between high and low income Americans dramatically dropped in what economist Paul Krugman calls the "Great Compression."

Collective bargaining and growth of the labor movement were the principal engines that led to the creation of the American middle class -- the growth of wages, the 40-hour work week, and the weekend.

The reason collective bargaining is so fundamental should be obvious. Markets are good at allocating many resources in an economy. But left to their own devices they do a terrible job distributing the fruits of production among the people who create products and services.

Economic history shows irrefutably that without collective bargaining, the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer. Unless workers have the right to bargain as a group over wages and working conditions, employers have every incentive to hire workers who will work for the lowest possible wage in the worst possible conditions. And in a globalized economy with literally billions of increasingly skilled workers in developing countries, there is always someone who is willing to do the same job for less.

In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2012 union members had salaries that were -- on the average -- 20 percent higher than their non-union counterparts.

The only way to protect middle class incomes in the United States is to protect the precious right of collective bargaining and to extend it to most Americans. In fact, we would all be much better off if every worker in every place of employment could exercise their right to collective bargaining -- the same way we are all better off when everyone has the right to vote.

But for over three decades Wall Street and the largest corporations have waged an incessant war to effectively take away our ability to collectively bargain. The percentage of private sector jobs covered by collective bargaining agreements has shrunk from 35 percent in the 1950's when middle class wages were on the increase, to only 6.6 percent in 2012.

The one bright spot has been public sector workers, where 35 percent had collective bargaining rights in 2012. And everyone has seen the overt assault on public sector collective bargaining that Republican politicians have waged in state after state.

The Right Wing's campaign against collective bargaining is all about one thing -- allowing a tiny segment of our population to siphon off more and more of the country's wealth and leaving less and less for everyone else.

The reason the GOP wants to strip the rights of public sector unions is to cut taxes on the rich.

And the reason Wall Street and CEOs want to eliminate collective bargaining and unions is because they want to keep more money for themselves and give less to the workers who actually produce the products and services that are created by the companies they own -- it's that simple.

That kind of rapacious, unbridled greed may be good for them, but it spells disaster for the middle class and the broader economy. If worker incomes don't go up at the same pace as increased worker productivity -- their ability to create more products and services per hour -- then there ultimately won't be anyone with the money to buy the products and services they create and the economy will stagnate and collapse. Henry Ford knew that very well, when he said he wanted to pay his workers enough to allow them to buy the very cars they manufacture.

For the last several years, Senate Republicans have unleashed an insidious new plan to eliminate our right to collective bargaining. The GOP has abused Senate "filibuster" rules to prevent up or down votes on the President's appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that enforces the labor laws that allow ordinary people to organize and engage in collective bargaining....(Click title for more)

July 8, 2013 -- Green Left Weekly/Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Kate Hudson is a veteran British left-wing activist and former chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Hudson was a candidate for the left-wing Respect party in 2012's Manchester municipal by-election, but stood down after Respect leader George Galloway made "unacceptable and unretracted statements about the nature of rape".


Since then, Hudson has joined other left-wing activists, including film maker Ken Loach, in pushing the Left Unity initiative for a new left-wing party, which has received support from thousands of people across Britain.

Green Left Weekly's Jody Betzien spoke to Hudson after the huge People's Assembly in London, which brought together more than 4000 people to plan to a campaign against the brutal austerity of the British government.

* * *

The People's Assembly was a clear success with more than 4000 people attending. What was the significance of the event?

A will from many sides to take forward a coherent national anti-austerity movement in Britain. By which I mean the level of trade union support for it indicates a top level commitment to it. And also, of course, the commitment and enthusiasm from grassroots campaigners as well.

Over the past few years the most dynamic part of the anti-cuts movement has been the local campaigns in defence of local services. Things like occupations of libraries, defence of hospitals and campaigns against punitive inspections of people receiving disability support payments. These have been the life-blood of the movement.

But we have been devoid of any effective national way to draw that together to enable coherent pressure and alternatives to be put as well. We hope that with the People's Assembly having attracted so many people, that the possibly is now there to give more direction to the campaign.

Both Frances O'Grady (general secretary Trade Union Congress) and Len McCluskey (general secretary Unite the Union) made comments at the assembly committing the union movement to preparing for coordinated strike action. What is the significance of those calls?

For about the past year the question of coordinated strike action has been very much under discussion in the unions. In fact at the TUC congress last September there was a resolution that was overwhelmingly passed which calls on the TUC to look into the practicalities of a general strike.

As you may know there has only ever been one general strike in Britain in the 1920s, which was a disaster. The term general strike is generally something that is bandied about by very small ultra-left groups and has been generally frowned on as absurd. So the very fact that talk of a general strike or coordinated strike action is being discussed by union leaders is something that's very significant in itself.

Not least because since the 1980s the Thatcherite anti-union legislation has made the circumstances under which one can take strike action very narrow. It is hard to have a "legal" strike in Britain even if it is on questions of pay and conditions.

So working toward coordinated strike action is difficult but something union leaders now say is something they are willing to countenance. It fact Len McCluskey said they were prepared to break the law to take strike action, so that raises the question of political strike action.

The question there of course is, that the government response would include sequestering of union assets and so on. So there may be a high price to pay for breaking the laws, so it's a question of how many unions could do that collectively.

The austerity cuts impact is so severe now that unions are being forced to reconsider their past practice.

With the major parties' including the Labour Party's support of austerity, the movement faces a big challenge heading towards the next election. How do you think the movement can tackle this challenge?

This is a big question that is much debated. Historically, of course, working people have looked to Labour to defend them. Of course the development of the welfare state was under the post-war Labour government, and the party was founded by the union movement so people have expected Labour to stand up for ordinary people.

But unfortunately over the past 20 odd years Labour has moved further and further to the right and embraced neo-liberal economic policies as have all the social democratic parties across Europe.

Whereas across Europe in many countries you have a left party in that space to the left of Labour, there is no such viable party of any substance to the left of Labour which can give political representation by and for the working class.

Now with Labour embracing the Tory cuts and saying they won't reverse them many people feel that the time has come, no matter how difficult it may be, to work to found a new party of the left.

There are many on the left who also say that can't happen, the conditions don't exist in Britain; we've got no alternative but to reclaim the Labour party. Some of those discussions came out at the People's Assembly. But there is a strong trend and a growing initiative toward the founding of a new left party in Britain.

Is there pressure within the anti-austerity movement to direct energy leading to the next election to campaign for the "least worst" option of the Labour Party? For example focusing on campaigning in marginal seats.

Yes there is. I suppose the situation is because the Labour party was founded by the unions and has always been seen as the party of the organised working class there was never for example the development of a big Communist party in the same way that they developed across Europe.

The Labour party has occupied a specific space and trade unions are affiliated to it. So the connection to organised Labour is stronger than other Europeans social-democratic parties. That is one of the historic obstacles to the development of a left party.

So many people do feel that pressure needs to be applied to Labour to turn it left because there is no hope to build a left party.

If it was possible to turn the Labour party to the left that would be a very positive thing but people now have lost patience with that argument. There have been projects to reclaim the Labour party for the last couple of decades or so and it hasn't worked. And that is without even exploring the questions of what has been wrong with the Labour party all along and the partial nature of the post-war reforms.

I think that discussion will continue and there is no way round that but so many people new feel that Labour cannot be recovered and that the situation we face is so terrible, possibly on the road down to the capitalism of the 1930s, that we have to try and do something to reverse that.

We can't wait for the least worst option because Labour, the Labour Party of 2013 is a pro-austerity party. That is the nature of where capitalism is at at the moment and Labour is a party of capitalism.

It also hinges around a different view about the nature of the austerity policies. Some people say austerity isn't working as if the government's genuine goal is to try and reduce the deficit but they have chosen the wrong way of doing it.

Others contend that their goal is in fact not to reduce the deficit but to rearrange the economy and society to trash the welfare state which they didn't want to concede in 1945, reduce wages and increase profits. This issue was not addressed or explicit in the People's Assembly statement; that is another area of contention in the discussion as well.

What specific action plans were agreed at the assembly?

We have planned a demonstration in Manchester on September 29 at the Conservative Party conference and November 5 will be a day of direct action. Plus the establishment of local People's Assembly groups.

An unstated issue there is, if the focus is on the Conservative Party conference, what about our message to Labour at their conference; they may well be the next government in two years. That may not be explicit in the public materials about theAassembly but is is part of the discussions. As local People's Assemblies develop they will address all of these issues

Next year there will be a national recall of the assembly.

How should the British left respond to the strong results for the far-right UK Independence Party at the recent local elections?

The rise of the far-right has been happening across Europe as we see in Greece with Golden Dawn and France with the National Front. In the crisis where people are facing unemployment they can often look to scapegoat or blame people, like immigrants. Plus there is no party of the left explaining that it is not immigrants that are causing unemployment but rather ruling class policies. Unless you have a concrete analysis and are arguing for a different way forward people in their desperation will look to the far right, as happened in the 1930s....(Click title for more)
Bob Dylan Revisits 'Self Portrait' on Next
Bootleg Series', Hits Stores on Aug 27



By Andy Greene

Rolling Stone

JULY 16, 2013 - Critic Greil Marcus spoke for countless Bob Dylan fans when he began his Rolling Stone review of 1970's Self Portrait with a now-famous question: "What is this shit?" The two-LP set was a bizarre mishmash of pop covers (Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer"), pre-rock hits ("Blue Moon") and poorly recorded live cuts from Dylan's 1969 set at the Isle of Wight festival. Nearly every tune was overloaded with weird backup choirs, strings and horns. "I knew that opening was provocative," Marcus says today of his RS review. "But that's what everybody in the country was saying, and I had to reflect that."

Decades later, Self Portrait remains one of Dylan's least-loved releases. So it came as a surprise when he announced the latest volume in his ongoing Bootleg Series: a four-disc set called Another Self Portrait, drawing on never-before-heard material from Dylan's original acoustic recording sessions and outtakes from Self Portrait along with select cuts from 1968's Nashville Skyline and 1970's New Morning. A deluxe edition will feature a complete recording of Dylan and the Band's 1969 set at the Isle of Wight Festival as well as a remastered version of the original Self Portrait. Both editions hit shelves on August 27th.

The Self Portrait sessions began in New York at Columbia's Studio A in April 1969, but after just a few days of messing around with covers like "Folsom Prison Blues" and "Blue Moon," he abandoned the project for nearly a year. When they resumed in March 1970, Dylan had very little original material, and he again returned to covers, this time recording with a small band that included David Bromberg on guitar and bass and Al Kooper on organ.

"It was bizarre," Kooper tells Rolling Stone. "He wasn't writing any of the songs, which is an important part of a Bob Dylan album. He had a pile of Sing Out! magazines and he was taking the songs, as in the chords and lyrics, straight out of them. They were his main feed, then they pulled other things like 'Mr. Bojanges' and 'The Boxer.' I was like, 'Yikes!' At one point we recorded 'Come a Little Bit Closer' by Jay and the Americans. Hopefully nobody ever hears that."

They worked for about three days, cutting everything from Tom Paxton's "Annie's Going to Sing Her Song" to Gordon Lightfoot's "Early Morning Rain." Producer Bob Johnston then took the tapes to Nashville and Los Angeles, where he loaded them up with back-up singers, horns and additional bass and guitar. In very few cases did the overdubs improve the songs. "The unadulterated Self Portrait songs were very stark and arresting," says Marcus, who contributed liner notes to this new box set. "It's really the kind of music that didn't surface until Dylan's acoustic albums Good As I Been to You and World Gone Wrong over 20 years later."

Marcus wasn't the only critic to rip into the finished version of Self Portrait, and in later years, Dylan himself essentially said that he tanked the album on purpose. He was trying to raise his new family in New York, and the hippies were literally staking out his house, trying to coerce him into once again leading the protest movement.

"I said, 'Well, fuck it. I wish these people would just forget about me. I wanna do something they can't possibly like, they can't relate to," he told Rolling Stone in 1984. "They'll see it, and they'll listen, and they'll say, 'Well, let's go on to the next person. He ain't sayin' it no more. He ain't givin' us what we want,' you know? They'll go on to somebody else.'" ...(Click title for more)
Dialectics of Human Nature in Marx's Philosophy
By Mehmet Tabak
Palgrave Macmillan,
New York and London, 2012.
244pp., $85 / �55 hb

Reviewed by Chris Byron

At first glance Marx seems to have held conflicting views about human nature. In his earlier works he regularly employs notions like "species-being", "human essence", and "human nature". However, after his Theses on Feuerbach, philosophers debate whether a Marxian theory of human nature is even possible given Marx's new historical materialist framework.

Several camps have emerged within this debate. Some, like Ernest Mandel, believe that what Marx wrote in his youth is continued and further adapted in his later works. Thus, the term "species-being" may be jettisoned, but the concept remains in Marx's mature works. Others believe that not only is a static theory of human nature impossible in any serious historical materialist account of human development, but that Marx explicitly rejected such a theory in his Sixth Thesis.

There is also a camp, that I believe Sean Sayers occupies, that says that although Marx's theory of human nature is fluid, it still ensures the retention of his humanist views, and a humanist philosophy in general. Finally, there is the camp, notably occupied by Norman Geras, that tries to show that human nature is not logically inconsistent with Marx's Sixth Thesis, but does not offer a positive account of what Marx's theory of human nature is. Considering these camps have been developed and fortified over several decades, it is not only surprising but also a breath of fresh air to find a completely unique and genuinely new contribution to the debate.

Even if Mehmet Tabak were to fail in his project, which he does not, the sheer ingenuity and unexplored territory he is able to develop within former traversed roads, warrants the reading of this new book (his first). Even if you disagree with him, his shrewd theorizing will force you to reflect. Tabak's "main purpose" for writing this book is to "outline Karl Marx's philosophical system." This has been done before. What makes Tabak's writing so intriguing is that for him "[h]umanism ... is the basis of [Marx's] dialectical historical materialism," and "human nature, thus, constitutes the primary standpoint of [Marx's] thought ... because man is the subject and the main substance of the historical objective totality" (vii).

Marx's theory of the mode of production is usually and curtly presented as comprising the forces of production, which entail developed social relationships around them, giving rise to or conditioning a certain ideological superstructure. The productive relations are usually seen as the base of society. Tabak however wants to base Marx's system on Marx's theory of human nature. Marx has a particular view of mankind, which in relation to the material external world, conditions the entire mode of production. This leads to the further conclusion that all dialectical moments in Marx's system (e.g., alienation, bourgeois society, the economic structures of society, and the conditioning of the superstructure), are derived from a process of mankind's activity, and its realizations and negations.

Tabak is an adept dialectical thinker. He believes that if readers do not understand Marx's theory of human nature, they will inevitably misapprehend his entire system. Thus, it is paramount to ascertain Marx's theory of human nature. For Marx there are two constant determinants in history: human beings and nature. Thus Marx has to develop a theory of the human being within his theory of history. Marx's concept of human nature "is a dialectical composite of essence and existence" (3). Essence is a permanent characteristic that gives something its identity. The essence of human beings is their active and productive powers that can shape the external world. When humans are able to exercise their essence they are "active subjects responsible for the processes of self-determination" (4). This productive and active activity changes the external world, and after a while starts to change human beings and their social relationships.

This leads Tabak to conclude that "Marx's conception of human nature ... operates on two different, interrelated axes: the axis of the permanent and changing human characteristics and the axis of the inner and external characteristics" (7). Human essence is the constant "inner nature" of human beings. It exists alongside the fluctuating external world which shapes part of mankind's overall human nature. This dialectical relationship constitutes our overall human nature. Thus Tabak is able to retain a static and a fluctuating component, vindicating the claim that Marx did hold fast to a trans-historical theory of human nature, albeit human nature in any particular historical moment would be nuanced and different....(Click title for more)

Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism

The struggle for our nation's future has intensified. The rainbow coalition and multi-class alignment that coalesced around the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama defeated the far- right appeal to racism, misogyny, homophobia and rejection of science.  

 

This reflects the growing strength and cohesion of the multiracial labor movement and its allies within a larger progressive majority. Yet the 1% retains power and strives to manage economic crises in a way that sticks working people with the bill.

 

Unemployment, hunger and homelessness increase, union membership declines, and too many impoverished, crisis-shocked communities, especially in the South, remain captive to messages of hate. A rational response to the existential crisis of humanity-accelerating climate change-is blocked by capitalism's irrational profit drive. The 99% can solve these problems on the basis of our common humanity.

 

Pressures of war, austerity and climate danger demand new levels of unity and struggle. New forms of labor activism lead beyond traditional trade union organizing toward a broader working class movement. The uprisings from Wisconsin to Occupy to Wal-Mart, and from Trayvon Martin to the UndocuBus, represent an emerging democracy movement. Based in the working class, linked with the community, and following the path boldly taken by the civil rights movement, today's movements can win new demands.

 

Through years of experience, the Left has learned that building lasting unity among allies involves tactful, constructive and unrelenting struggle. Our work can replace neo-liberal influences with class, political, cultural and moral solidarity and democracy. CCDS focuses on the intersection of class, race and gender as fundamental to both an objective social analysis and an effective political agenda. The Left is indispensable to weaving the threads of struggle into a mass formation independent of the 1%.

 

Polls reveal a growing plurality of youth that prefer socialism to capitalism. With determination, we socialists proceed toward our common future. In pre-convention discussion, we will examine the economy, the environment, civil society, the commons and the state within the context of the class struggle. Now CCDS calls upon its members and allies to convene in Pittsburgh in July, 2013 to assess our experience and to plan for the future.

 

Access the Main Pre-Convention Discussion Documents at http://ccds-discussion.org   

 

Become a CCDS member today!

The time is long past for 'Lone Rangers'. Being a socialist by your self is no fun and doesn't help much. Join CCDS today--$36 regular, $48 household and $18 youth.

Better yet, beome a sustainer at $20 per month, and we'll send you a copy of Jack O'Dell's new book, 'Climbing Jacobs Ladder,' drawing on the lessons of the movement in the South in the 1950s and 1960s.

Solidarity, Carl Davidson, CCDS