If you have opinions about the subject matter of posts on this blog please share them. Do you have a story about how the system affects you at work school or home, or just in general? This is a place to share it.
I am sure that there will be some, including friends that
disagree with me here and those that agree but think I am not being realistic,
that what I suggest will never happen and that we have to do something now. I
understand this sentiment and agree we can take some half measures and do some
things, like better gun laws, that may temper some of the worst abuses that the
so-called free market imposes on us. But our goal should be to make everlasting
changes.
I once read somewhere that while the idea of revolutions or
social transformation of the present is normally seen as almost impossible,
after they occur they are remembered as the inevitable reaction to social
crises. Also, I try to keep these video thoughts short and there were other
points I would have liked to make. So I’ll
add a couple of them here.
One thing when we are talking about violence is to consider how many people die every year in the US because of the pathetic social services we have and in particular, health care. These deaths far outnumber gun deaths you can bet on it. And as Cedric Johnson points out in the preface of the book, The Panthers Can't Save Us Now, nearly all of the Democratic Party leadership who are screaming about gun laws and safety and how horrible this crime is, and who "took a knee" against racist policies, during the height of Black Lives Matter movement "...have openly opposed Medicare For All, free higher education and the expansion of other public goods."
Another important cause of the despair and alienation that
consumes people in society is that there seems to be no solution; so there is
no hope at all. Combined with all the reasons I refer to in the video this is
devastating. Seeing no alternative, people seek solutions in all sorts of ways
like religion, hero worship, narcissism, sexual obsession and so on. Religion,
which promotes the destructive idea that human nature is selfish, rotten and
inherently evil and the escape can only be found in the afterlife assuming you
worship the right deity is the most common.
In this state, all sorts of conspiracies can find root like
the fear that foreigners, people that don’t look like you or speak the same
language or worship the same god are about to consume you. The prevalence of
identity politics is part of this escape and is an attempt to undermine class
solidarity, workers seeing ourselves as having distinct class interests with
millions upon millions of others, of being a class un to ourselves, this is a
terrifying prospect to the ruling class and proponents of capitalism and the
so-called free market. We are in a struggle for the consciousness of the
working class. If you want to see how important class is, consider the image of
Michelle Obama with her arm around George W Bush referring to him as her “friend”
and “partner in crime. Our enemies know all too well what class solidarity is
and practice it religiously.
As one person commented on Facebook today:
"CLASS is not a demographic. It's not a liberal
categorization that fits into intersectionality. It doesn't compete for
attention or resources with marginalized groups.
ALL WORKERS of ALL MARGINALIZED GROUPS have CLASS in common.
Class politics serve us all."
Working class unity is the only solution to eliminating the added
oppression marginalized people suffer, or what socialists refer to as the “specially oppressed”
peoples, and we fight for all marginalized groups within the framework of uniting
the class. We cannot transform society without this approach. But this is
different than identity politics or intersectionality, an individualistic
reactionary approach no matter what its supporters say or write about it.
Also, please subscribe and "like" this video on You
Tube if you have a general agreement with it and also share from this blog on
FB or on You Tube.
On
the main stage of the Bitcoin 2022 conference last month, billionaire
tech investor Peter Thiel told the crowd of crypto enthusiasts that
Warren Buffet was a “sociopathic grandpa.” Buffet and others of his ilk
are part of a financial gerontocracy on the Bitcoin “enemies list,”
Thiel explained, and are standing in the way of a “revolutionary youth
movement.” They must be pushed aside for Bitcoin adoption to grow and
its value to increase. “Go out from this conference and take over the
world!” Thiel, the 54-year-old cofounder of PayPal, declared to rousing applause.
But that “revolutionary” movement is looking more dubious
by the day after the crypto crash earlier this month. Over the course
of a week, Bitcoin lost 30% of its value, and it has lost more than 50%
of its value over the last six months. Hundreds of other
cryptocurrencies took a beating too, including the collapse of so-called
stablecoin TerraUSD and its linked Luna tokens. A lot of ordinary
people who were conned into believing crypto was their path to financial
security are now left holding the bag. The Terra-Luna subreddit is full of devastating stories about losing everything; moderators have pinned national helpline numbers to the forum.
Cryptocurrencies use decentralized public ledgers known as blockchains to facilitate peer-to-peer financial transactions outside the control of states or banks. Bitcoin, the earliest
and most widely held cryptocurrency, promises a futuristic money
system, which lives on the blockchain free of state regulation and
intervention — intervention, Bitcoiners claim, that is frittering away
our savings through inflation-inducing policies.
Last month, during the still heady days of the Bitcoin 2022
conference, over 25,000 people gathered in Miami Beach to listen to
talks, to buy bitcoin merch, and party. Among the speakers at the
conference were tennis star Serena Williams and Super Bowl champion
Odell Beckham Jr., who have joined the growing ranks of celebritieshawkingcryptocurrencies and other crypto assets like NFTs, or nonfungible tokens.
Everyone
from Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton to Matt Damon and Spike Lee have
gotten in on the crypto game, and they want you in on the game too.
Young adults (young men, in particular) are the primary targets of the
sell game. A Pew Research Center survey
found that as of November, 31% of people ages 18 to 29 have used,
traded, or invested in cryptocurrencies, compared with 21% of people
ages 30 to 49; 8% of people ages 50 to 64; and 3% of people age 65 or
over.
Libertarian
Trump supporter Peter Thiel and filmmaker Spike Lee, whose films
revolve around racial justice, may seem like strange bedfellows as
crypto hype men. But that’s because the appeal of cryptocurrency has
straddled an awkward fence: one part get-rich-quick scheme, one part
utopian solution to our plutocratic economic system. “Old money is out.
New money is in,” Lee said in his crypto ad.
"Old money's not going to pick us up. It pushes us down — exploits,
systematically oppresses. But new money — new money is positive,
inclusive, fluid, strong, culturally rich.” But there are good reasons
to be skeptical of all these claims, and the recent crypto crash is just
the beginning of the story.
For starters: Distrust the messengers. Because cryptocurrencies are not backed by states, their value is tied almost entirely to perceptions of future growth.
The more new blood enters the market, the greater the demand for
cryptocurrencies and assets, the further the price of the tokens will
rise. So when billionaire venture capitalists and millionaire
celebrities hype investment in crypto, they’re also pumping up their own
crypto wallets.
And when crypto prices tank, as they did recently, leave it to the billionaires with massive social media accounts to chastise anyone who wants to sell. As actor Ben McKenzie — yes, that’s Ryan from The O.C. — and journalist Jacob Silverman have pointed out,
encouraging fans who “have far less money to lose… to gamble on
speculative, unproven investments” has been shown to be a moral and
financial disaster.
Number Go Up. Or, Um, Way, Way Down.
Investing in crypto is often hawked as a get-rich-quick plan, but many argue that it’s an unsustainable pyramid scheme.
The popular Bitcoin meme “number go up”
and rocket ship emojis that declare cryptocurrency prices will go “to
the moon” define the crypto ethos. Before last week, this may have
seemed like an understandable sentiment, at least for the two largest
cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum; less so for the thousands of
other digital currencies, many of which have collapsed or are
essentially worthless. After all, Bitcoin was worth nothing when it was
invented in 2008; the tokens climbed to selling for nine cents in 2010,
and now a single bitcoin is worth tens of thousands of dollars (just how
many thousands depends on when you read this article).
The story of Laszlo Hanyecz,
who bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins in 2010, has become legend.
If he had held on to those bitcoins (or “HODLed” them, as bitcoiners
say), he would now have several hundred million dollars’ worth of crypto
wealth. But for every Laszlo, there are those who spent everything they
had when bitcoin was riding high and have seen their savings halved.
Who knows how much lower their holdings will go, and how fast?
Crypto
skeptics maintain that even after the May crash, crypto assets — which
are completely unmoored from physical reality — are still wildly
overvalued. This should be cause for concern, not celebration.
Cryptocurrencies share plenty of characteristics with bubbles and Ponzi schemes: Their value comes from other people being willing to buy them — until they’re not.
The most accurate comparison may be the basic “pump-and-dump”
scam, where traders acquire worthless investments, drive up prices
through hype and by trading among themselves, and then unload the assets
before the prices tank, leaving a lot of newcomers holding an empty
bag. Pump-and-dumps are rife in the crypto world (and often openly promoted as such). And, as othershaveargued, the premise of cryptocurrencies is rooted in this con. Like any successful pump-and-dump, people who get in early and get out before it collapses will make a lot of money. Those that come in too late and leave too late will take a beating.
Bitcoiners
often counter that there is an intrinsic value to bitcoin as the “money
of the future.” Further, its worth will hold steady, they say, because a
cap on the amount of tokens (21 million) that can ever be created is
built into bitcoin’s programming. But bitcoin, and even less so other
digital tokens, has not and cannot effectively function as currency due
to the volatility of its value and the logistical impracticalities
associated with transactions. The limited supply of bitcoin tokens has
done nothing to stop its wild fluctuations.
Multimillionaires
may feel fine about throwing money at a digital casino, as they
leverage social clout to get others in on the game and pad their
winnings. They might even stand losing a cool million here or there. But
for most people, putting their savings into crypto is more likely to
result in losing their shirts, homes, or worse. This has already
happened to people in droves.
Freedom Go Up. But It Hasn’t.
Lastly, some crypto promoters argue that there’s more to crypto than “number go up.” Alex Gladstein,
chief strategy officer of the bitcoin-pushing Human Rights Foundation,
explained to Bitcoin 2022 attendees, “I know that for a lot of you,
bitcoin is about ‘number go up,’… But bitcoin’s also about ‘freedom go
up.’ It’s about how a new monetary technology can help liberate people
around the world who are stuck in horrible, horrible situations.”
Never mind that cryptocurrencies have not been proven to do this:
The future promised to us by proponents of cryptocurrencies is, in
fact, a deeply dystopian one. The underlying philosophy of crypto
faithfuls is a libertarian distrust of states and public institutions.
Suspicion of traditional finance and government is an understandable
sentiment to arrive at given our deeply unequal economic system, but the
medicine proposed by crypto devotees is worse than the disease.
The world that has been erected around blockchain technology is characterized by an increased concentration of wealth and power, with the top 10,000 bitcoin investors holding about a third of cryptocurrency in circulation. That’s an almost hundredfold increase
in inequality as it compares to the U.S. dollar economy. The
concentration of bitcoin miners — who mint new tokens by solving complex
mathematical questions — is even more dramatic. About 50 miners (0.1%)
control half of mining capacity.
The cost of this deeply unequal
and barely regulated digital con game is massive environmental stress.
The technology used to power most cryptocurrencies, known as “proof of
work,” requires warehouses full of computers working 24/7 around the
globe. (“Proof of stake,” an alternative blockchain consensus mechanism
that is less damaging to the environment, is used by a much smaller
portion of digital currencies.) Bitcoin processes alone exhaust more energy
than the entire country of Thailand, home to nearly 70 million people.
Our fuel-addicted economic system is on track for climate disaster, so
why would we put extra strain on it with assets that produce no tangible
goods and no social value?
Ultimately,
the affectionately termed “crypto-pills” that hype men offer us are not
a solution for our social or financial ills. Young people today are
facing significant economic demands, rising student loans, and a
precarious social and ecological future. To effectively meet these
challenges will require collective action in real life and other means
of building solidarity, not autonomous individuals gambling their wealth
on the blockchain.
It’s hard to write at times there’s so much to write about
and it would be a lot easier to have a pint or two. But I have to do something
to ease my mind as so much of the bourgeois media makes one sick that it’s hard
to know where to start.It’s not fake
news, it has a class bias which is more perfidious.
I have not abandoned the belief that the US working class
will enter the stage at some point and am inspired by recent events in the
class struggle as young workers are trying to unionize, but the delay means a
lot of unnecessary suffering along the way.
The first irritating
little snippet concerns Michelle Obama’s best friend and “partner in Crime” the mass murderer and war criminal George W.
Bush. Reading a report of him speaking to a
group of sycophants at his library
(all four books were there) in Dallas earlier this week, he was trying to
stress the difference between a “democratically”
elected Zelenskiy in the Ukraine (Who, were it not for the war wouldn’t have
been re-elected according to most reports) and the “rigged elections and despotism of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”.Instead
of Ukraine he said Iraq.Of course, he
invaded Iraq not Putin. "I love him
to death. He's a wonderful man, he's a funny man." Michelle Obama has
said of Bush. These people know what class solidarity is all about and workers
should take note. We can learn from our enemies.
In his memoirs, the
report said, Bush wrote of the invasion of Iraq, “No one was more shocked and angry than I was when we didn’t find the
weapons”. My guess is that about 20 million Iraqi’s might have been a
little angrier and possibly “shocked”
somewhat more than the imbecile Bush. After all, the US strategy in Iraq was
called “Shock and Awe” and it was
simply a mistake; anyone can make a mistake and if you’re the guy with the big guns
there’s no consequences for it.
Then I have to return
to a point I made the other day. The Russian foreign ministry announced that it
would consider opening up the Black Sea ports if removing the sanctions on
Russia is on the table. The UN is pleading with Russia to do so saying millions
will die of starvation due to the blockade.
Now let’s not forget
that there is a war on and I have stated on more than one occasion that there
is no side in this war between competing imperialist powers, the US/NATO bloc
and Russian/Chinese competitors, (China is the US’s main target) in which
workers have any interest in at all other than as observers and victims. Given
the UN’s comments about starving people in the world, if Russia’s offer to open
ports were met with a US/NATO bloc willingness to ease the pain of sanctions
which are hurting Russian workers, would this not save millions of lives? Not
just Russians, but Ukrainians and especially millions in the underdeveloped
world who are facing starvation. Would it not ease the tension and fear that
people throughout the world have over the possibility of a conflict between two
nuclear armed powers? I think it would.
Hell, the stock
market might even go up.
Sanctions after all,
do not harm US imperialism's rivals in the Kremlin, Putin or his support
network. The US sanctions on Iraq that killed some 500,000, mostly women and
children never gave Saddam Hussein hunger pains. These half a million deaths "were worth it", the former US Secretary of State Madeline
Albright said,
But no. The US
Senate, that undemocratic body if there ever was one, has just approved a $40
billion aid package for Ukraine. The US taxpayer, many of whom do not have the
luxury of clean drinking water in urban centers, an access to health care,
public transportation and other social services, is forking out$6 billionto train the Ukrainian military and $9 billion so the Ukrainian
government can replace stocks of US made weapons we’ve already sent (the
defense industry lobbyists were there for that one I’m sure). Another almost $9
billion is economic assistance for the Ukrainian government, itself a
government of oligarchs and $5 billion for food and to cover the high increase
in prices.
Military equipment
the US is sending includes 18 Howitzers, 18 tactical vehicles to tow them and
18 artillery tubes.This will not win
this war for Ukraine but will prolong it and increase US defense corporations
bottom line. In addition, the burden of this deficit spending will be borne by
the US workers and middle class for years to come. As Blinken said, weakening Russia is the goal for the US here, not saving lives, people starve all the time due to economic decisions made by world powers. Anyway, China is the main economic rival and economic rivalry is aggression.
The Biden
Administration (the Europeans don’t matter) is upping the anti-unfortunately and
rather than taking that step which would be advantageous to the working class
internationally I would think, is aiming to supply Ukraine's ruling oligarchy
with anti-ship missiles so it can target Russian ships blocking the Black Sea
ports. This is getting perilously close to the US openly at war with Russia.
The US body politic,
dominated by representatives of the two parties of capital, is a dangerous
animal at a time when US imperialism’s global influence is threatened, there is
madness among them and Putin has given it a temporary boost as late stage capitalism
cannot avoid its wars and conflicts that is heading dangerously close to the
abyss.
There was some
opposition to the aid package. One
US Senator objects as it “shortchanges priorities at home.”, this
might be a voice in the wilderness, maybe cooler heads prevail, but……“I
mean we could build the border wall twice over and seal it with this amount of
money.” says Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri.
If you agree that there is an imperialist bloc of countries that
dominates and controls the world, then Australia should be included. It
may be a new and smaller entrant to the bloc, and it may be just a
satellite of US imperialism in the Asia-Pacific, but it still fits the
bill as part of the bloc.
And increasingly, the ruling strategists of Australian capital also
see it that way. Australia has a general election tomorrow (21 May); it
has one every three years (a leftover from its early days of democratic
development) and the ruling National-Liberal Coalition government has
been sounding the war bells. During the election campaign, Australia’s
defence minister Peter Dutton told the country to “prepare for war”, capping what analysts have called a “khaki campaign” by Scott Morrison’s right-wing government. Dutton ramped up the rhetoric, telling Australians: “The
only way you can preserve peace is to prepare for war and be strong as a
country, not to cower, not to be on bended knee and be weak.”
And where is the threat of war to come from? China, of course. To
counter what it sees as a threat from China, the Morrison’s government
has in recent years sealed what is called the Aukus security pact with
the US and UK and promised billions of dollars of defence and cyber
security spending – all designed to resist the ‘threat’ of China – or to
be more exact to follow the strategy of US imperialism to ‘contain’ and
stop China becoming a rising economic power in the region and globally.
In the public opinion polls, ‘Trumpist’ Morrison trails Labor leader
Anthony Albanese, with 54 per cent of voters backing the opposition
compared with 46 per cent for the government, according to the latest
Newspoll survey.
But don’t expect Albanese to alter Australia’s anti-China strategy.
Labor fully backs the Aukus pact and if he wins, Albanese will join the
meeting of the Quad — a security grouping of the US, Australia, India
and Japan —which is due to take place in Tokyo only three days after
Saturday’s election, with US president Joe Biden set to attend. Most
analysts say that Biden “would be comfortable” with a Labor victory.
While the strategists of imperialism will be happy, Australia’s
working people have more pressing problems. There are three issues
dominating the election: the huge rise in house prices driven beyond the
means of most Australians; the sharply rising cost of living where
prices are rising much faster than wages; and climate change, with ever
more destructive heatwaves, drought and floods affecting people’s lives.
Australia used to be called the ‘lucky country’ where people could
emigrate to and start a new and prosperous life in an economy that had
not suffered a recession of any note for decades. But the signs that
this was changing have been there since the Great Recession of 2008-9
and subsequent Long Depression that ensued up to the COVID pandemic
slump in 2020. After taking into account population growth, average
annual real GDP per person grew by about 2% a year in Australia up to
the Great Recession. However, since then, per capita growth has
averaged half that rate.
Source: IMF, author
Of course, this is a phenomenon found in nearly all major advanced
capitalist economies since the Great Recession, but it has affected the
‘lucky country’ too.
As elsewhere, the slowdown in economic growth can be connected to the
slowdown in productive investment growth. Indeed, investment to GDP
has declined sharply since the Great Recession.
Source: IMF, author
What lies behind the slowdown in real GDP and investment growth?
It’s the same cause that applies to all the major capitalist economies
in the last two decades: falling profitability of capital. The great
boom and revival of profitability in Australian capital from the 1980s,
led by Australia’s exploitation of resources in minerals, agricultural
products and energy, and the huge expansion of a skilled workforce with
‘liberalised’ labour markets, started to falter in the late 1990s. And
although there was a short uptick in profitability during the commodity
boom up to 2010, driven by demand from China for Australia’s
commodities, in the last decade, the decline in profitability resumed.
Profitability is still as high as it was in the Golden Age of the 1960s
(unlike most other major capitalist economies), but the trend is
downwards.
Source: Penn World Tables 10.0
The irony in the sabre-rattling of the coalition government against
China is that Australia had been ‘lucky’ because of its close proximity
to China, the fastest growing economy over the last 25 years. As one
commentator put it: “Australia was uniquely placed to benefit from
China and Asia’s long-term growth by exporting resources, agricultural
produce and services to the region”. Also the economy benefited from an
influx of skilled labour through immigration from all parts but also
immigrants who came with wealth of their own to invest.”
And Australia remains heavily dependent on its exports to China and
world growth in general. Until the pandemic, China was the largest
source of foreign investment in Australia, leapfrogging the US. But
strategy of American imperialism is now overriding economic reality.
The domestic issues in the election campaign centre round the sharply
rising rate of inflation – something hitting all the major capitalist
economies – and with little prospect of any solution from either
government or opposition. Inflation in the prices of goods and services
in Australia is rising much faster than wages. The annual inflation
rate is currently 5.1% (a 21-year high) and set to rise further, while
average wages are rising at just 2.4%. So real wages are falling at a
rate not seen for decades.
As in the US and Europe, the only answer offered by the authorities
is for the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to hike interest rates, while
calling for wage restraint. The RBA has now increased interest rates
(by 0.25% to 0.35%) for the first time in more than eleven years – and
the first hike in the middle of an election campaign since 2007.
These rate rises threaten the homes of millions of Australians. The housing bubble had already reached shocking proportions.
Australian households are now among the most indebted in the world.
Chris Martin, a senior research fellow in UNSW’s City Futures Research
Centre, said data from the Bank of International Settlements showed total credit to Australian households amounts to about 120% of annual GDP.
Major banks have already lifted interest rates for mortgages and
other loans, matching the RBA’s 0.25 basis point increase. The RBA
governor, Philip Lowe, said the cash rate could increase to 2.5% while
investors are tipping it will rise to about 3.75% by May 2023. -If so,
it’s estimated that 300,000 Australians could default on their mortgages
as repayments increase. Each percentage point increase adds on average
A$323 in monthly repayments, although some cities, such as Sydney are
much higher at A$486, according to CoreLogic data. Car loans and credit
card debt will also be more costly to repay at a time when the price for
fuel and many other goods is rising, adding to families’ financial
stress, Martin said.
Supposedly, the saving grace for Australians is ‘full employment’ to pay for these price rises.
But the headline unemployment rate hides the reality that employment
has not recovered yet from the pandemic slump. Prior to 2020,
employment was growing around 4.2% every two years, but since then it
has increased just 2.1% – in effect at half the speed it had been in the
period up to the pandemic.
Moreover, the working age population beginning to stall.
Australian capital is running out of more labour, especially as
immigration restrictions have stopped net immigration expanding. The
pool of working age people has barely grown at all.
Increasingly, Australian capital must rely on boosting productivity
growth to expand and raise profitability. But investment growth is
dropping off and productivity growth has been in a downward trend.
And on top of all this is the disaster of global warming and climate
change that is beginning to hit Australia for a cricket six. Climate
change in Australia has been a critical issue since the beginning of the
21st century. Australia is becoming hotter and will experience more extreme heat and longer fire seasons. In 2014, the Bureau of Meteorology released
a report on the state of Australia’s climate that highlighted several
key points, including the significant increase in Australia’s
temperatures (particularly night-time temperatures) and the increasing
frequency of bush fires, droughts and floods, which have all been linked to climate change.
In the past three years, record-breaking bushfire and flood events
have killed more than 500 people and billions of animals. Drought,
cyclones and freak tides have gripped communities. Queensland has been
ravaged by floods in recent months. In February, the state capital
Brisbane had more than 70% of its average yearly rainfall in just three
days. Australia is facing an “insurability crisis” with one in 25 homes
on track to be effectively uninsurable by 2030, according to a Climate
Council report. Another one in 11 are at risk of being underinsured.
Yet the economy depends very much on its fossil fuel exports and
developing the mining industry. Non-renewable fossil fuels still account for about 85 percent of Australia‘s electricity generation. Australia is one of the world’s largest per capita emitters –producing some
1.3 percent of global carbon emissions with only 0.3 of the world’s
population. For a nation so exposed to climate change, Australia
remains one of the world’s biggest emitters per head of population. The
government has promised to reduce emissions by 26% by 2030. Labor has
pledged a 43% cut. Both promises are below the 50% recommended by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The Chinese economy has slowed down, and with it the demand for
Australia’s exports. Anyway, the imperialist bloc wants Australia to
disengage from China. The cost of living is rising sharply; rising
interest rates risk a serious housing crisis; and global warming is out
of control. Neither government nor opposition have any answers.
Australia’s luck is turning for the worse.
“I believe that there
will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the
oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want
freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the
systems of exploitation.”
Malcom X, Speech to Barnard College and Columbia University February 18th 1965
by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
I remember reading Malcom X's speeches and how as he
developed his political thinking he was influenced by the colonial revolutions
in Africa and meeting with Nyere, Kenyatta, Nkrumah and others. He had
been sent by Elijah Muhammad to meet with the Klan in December of 1960 as the
Nation of Islam was in the process of making deals with the KKK for land in the
South. It disgusted him and Malcolm X was never sent back there by the
NOI. "I have never gone along with no Ku Klux Klan" he
said.
As a young kid growing up in England I have to say I was not
drawn to Malcolm X in any way. Why would I be? In his his early years he
would never have considered working class unity, workers of all colors,
nationality, races etc, joining together in struggle against capitalism and the
filth that goes with it. Plus, my thinking was tarred by the conditions I found
myself in and my mind was not fully open to such politics either; I recall being
influenced to a certain degree by the racist politics of Enoch Powell for a
brief moment in time. He was a very clever racist intellectual. But as I always
tell young workers getting involved in politics today, Malcolm X is an example
of how people can change and how objective conditions and world events can
transform us.
Over a short period of time since his early childhood and
experiencing the horror and brutality of racism, including the murder of his
own father, he became a pimp, got involved in drug dealing and other unsavory
activity. He then found in a religious cult a theoretical explanation that at
the time made some sense of what was happening to him and all black
people.
Later on, his travels and the colonial revolutions in Africa
had a huge influence on his thinking, broadened his horizons and he became one
of the 20th centuries greatest and most influential revolutionary
leaders. The black revolt in the US, the colonial revolutions in Africa
as nation after nation drove out the direct rule of European colonialism, these
were the events that were taking place around him.
Malcom X's influence has been so powerful that the white
racist capitalist class cannot ignore him. But, as they do with Martin Luther
King, they create a carnival like atmosphere around these figures as a
means of obscuring their ideas, it's just about blackness. How they thought, their differences and how they saw society and what
could be done to change the world around them is shoved to the background. This
is particularly the case with Malcolm X how his thinking was rapidly shifting
and that toward the end of his life was clearly moving towards a socialist view
of the world. When asked by Pierre Breton in January 1965:
"But you no
longer believe in a black state?", he replied, "No, I believe in a
society in which people can live like human beings on the basis of
equality."
Five weeks before his assassination he gave an interview to
the Young Socialist Newspaper and was asked to define Black Nationalism. His
answer was:
I
used to define black nationalism as the idea that the black man should control
the economy of his community, the politics of his community, and so forth.
But when I was in Africa in May, in Ghana, I was speaking
with the Algerian ambassador who is extremely militant and is a revolutionary in the true sense of the word (and has his
credentials as such for having carried on a successful revolution against
oppression in his country). When I told him that my political, social and
economic philosophy was black nationalism, he asked me very frankly, well,
where did that leave him? Because he was white. He was an African, but he was
Algerian, and to all appearances he was a white man. And he said if I define my
objective as the victory of black nationalism, where does that leave him? Where
does that leave revolutionaries in Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, Mauritania? So he
showed me where I was alienating people who were true revolutionaries,
dedicated to overthrowing the system of exploitation that exists on this earth
by any means necessary.*
So, I had to do a lot of thinking and reappraising of my
definition of black nationalism. Can we sum up the solution to the problems
confronting our people as black nationalism? And if you noticed, I haven't been
using the expression for several months. But I still would be hard pressed to
give a specific definition of the over-all philosophy which I think is
necessary for the liberation of the black people in this country.
Malcolm X was also speaking to the organized working class. He spoke to members of 1199 supporting their 59 day strike in 1962. He was clearly moving more towards a position of working class unity, of
the unity of all oppressed people against the oppressor. Malcolm X was not serving the interests of the US ruling class, albeit unintentionally as in the past, when his separatist views and lumping of all white people in one basket were useful to them as a means of weakening and dividing the working class as a whole.
Portraying all black leaders as having the same views was also useful. Clearly, Minister Louis Farrahkhan, the present leader of the Nation of Islam does not have the same world view as Malcolm X. Farrakhan, apart form being a cultish religious figure, is an extremely wealthy man and supports black capitalism. His struggle is for the freedom of black capitalism to exploit workers like their more powerful white counterparts, he knows he cannot be part of the white racists ruling class. It is useful to the white capitalist class to put these two figures with opposing political views in the same basket where their actual ideas can be obscured.
There is a tendency for the black petty bourgeois today, those who claim black capitalism as the solution to racism, to do the same. They will often quote Malcolm X but they rarely if ever quote his statement that, "You can't have capitalism without racism." The reason this class avoids this statement is that the conclusion one must draw from it is that we have to overthrow capitalism and we cannot overthrow capitalism without working class unity. Working class unity threatens the very existence of capitalism and the white racist bourgeois know it, so do the white petty bourgeois layers and so do the black petty bourgeois. It means class suicide for these layers in society but particularly so for the black capitalist class.
Hundreds of years of isolation and exclusion from "normal" society which also meant an inability to accumulate and have access to capital, suppressed the growth of such a class and it is socially weaker than its white counterparts who have much closer connections to the rulers of society.
The heroic struggle of the black workers and youth during the 50's and 60's forced the white racist bosses' to open some doors, to help strengthen the black middle class as a buffer between them and the revolutionary potential of the black working class and as a counter to working class unity. In times of increased opposition to racism and oppression in all its forms they can be dragged out to warn that "you can make it, look at us, but you have to work within the system."
How can anyone not look and listen to Malcolm X in this video and not be moved by this person, drawn to him? He is human you can see it. His home had been bombed, he knew his life was in danger from the state and from the Nation of Islam. That is another thing, how may white workers have read about him, read that autobiography by Haley, read his speeches? Of course he says things that are not pleasant, I don't agree with them, never did but you will notice his evolution. But I suggest that if you can't understand his history (the terror of the Klan and the apathy of millions to that terror) and look at him and people like him with that in mind, the problem is yours to solve. But most of all, he is an example of how a person can learn and change if they are willing. He admits his failings, he admits he simply aped what he was told by a cult figure.
He was a beautiful human being.
Sisters Mary and Lizzy Burns were two Manchester Irish women who
became the lovers of socialist writer Frederick Engels and played a
significant role in his life.
After a brief visit as teenager, Frederick Engels came to Manchester
in December 1842, aged 22, to work in the family firm Ermen &
Engels. Engels had been born in Barmen (now Wuppertal)
in Germany in November 1820 into a conservative wealthy family that had
made its money in cotton manufacturing. At the age of 18, he had become
involved in radical politics, contributing two anonymous articles to a
local newspaper which exposed the conditions endured by workers in the
mills and factories.
In 1841 Engels did military service in Berlin, though he spent much
of his time attending philosophy lectures at the university and debating
ideas with the Young Hegelians in numerous drinking establishments.. He
also began contributing articles to the radical newspaper Rheische Zeitung,
published in Cologne. His family were appalled at his political ideas
and hoped that by sending him to work in the family firm in Manchester,
he would be cured of them. On his way to Manchester he called into
Cologne to meet the new editor of the paper, Karl Marx, though at their
first meeting the two men did not get on particularly well.
Mary Burns
Engels worked in the firm’s business office on Southgate (the factory
was in Weaste, now demolished). At some point he met Mary Burns,
probably early in 1843. They may have met at the Owenite Hall of Science
on Deansgate at which Engels was a regular visitor, although some
historians have suggested that Mary worked in the Ermen & Engels
factory. According to research carried out by Roy Whitfield, Mary and
her sister Lydia (known as Lizzy) were the daughters of Michael Burns
and Mary Conroy and lived off Deansgate, then an area of foetid courts
and narrow alleys.
Marx’s daughter Eleanor described Mary in a letter to Kaut Kautsky
written in 1898, as “a Manchester factory girl, quite uneducated, though
she could read, and write a little”. She also said Mary was “pretty,
witty and altogether charming” and that her parents were very fond of
her and always spoke of her with the greatest affection.
Whilst in Manchester Engels made a detailed study of social
conditions in Manchester. It seems likely that the Burns sisters guided
him around the city, ensuring his safety in areas where a well-to–do
foreigner was a rare sight and potential target. Engels left Manchester
in August 1844, returned to Germany and finished writing the book. It
was published in Leipzig under the title The Condition of the Working Class in England
(It was not published in translation in Britain until 1892). The book
was dedicated “to the working classes of Great Britain” and Engels wrote
that:
“I wanted to see you in your own homes, to observe you in
your everyday life, to chat with you on your conditions and grievances,
to witness your struggles against the social and political power of
your oppressors. I have done so. I forsook the company and the
dinner-parties, the port wine and the champagne of the middle-classes
and devoted to my leisure hours to meeting plain working men.”
Twenty years later Marx wrote to Engels about the book:
“I have read your book again and I have realised that I
am not getting any younger . What power, what incisiveness and what
passion drive you to work in those days. That was a time when you were
never worried by academic scholarly reservations! Those were the days
when you made the reader feel that your theories would become hard facts
if not tomorrow then at any rate on the day after. Yet that very
illusion gave the whole work a human warmth and a touch of humour that
makes our later writings – where ‘black and white’ have become ‘grey and
grey’ – seem positively distasteful.”
Engels and Marx became firm, indeed life-long, friends on their
second meeting in Paris in the summer of 1844 where Marx has been living
since the previous autumn, having been forced to leave Germany. They
met again in Brussels in the spring of 1845 – Marx now having been
forced to leave France) and then journeyed on to Manchester in July.
Here they worked together studying texts in Chetham’s Library. The table
at which they worked can still be seen.
In 1870 Engels wrote to Marx “in the last few days I have often
been sitting at the four-sided desk where we sat twenty-four years ago. I
like this place very much, because of its coloured glass the weather is
always fine there.”
On their return to Brussels in August 1845 Mary Burns accompanied
Engels. Marx and Engel lived next to each other and spent their time in
discussion with other exiles and drinking. Mary seems to have returned
to Manchester later that year.
Both Marx and Engels took part in the 1848 revolutions in Germany.
After the defeat of the revolutions in the summer of 1849 both men had
to leave Germany again. In 1850 they came to Britain which would be
their home for the rest of their lives. They struck a deal: Marx would
research and write while Engels would support him with the money he
earned as a partner at Engels & Ermen.
Frederick Engels arrived back in Manchester in November 1850, living
at 70 Great Ducie Street, and re-ignited his relationship with Mary. The
firm’s office was at 7 Southgate. In a letter he complained to Marx
about the gloomy view over a pub yard, probably that of the Star Hotel.
Nearby was another public house where James Belfield was the landlord.
Engels sent money regularly to Marx and they corresponded almost every
day. Many, but not all, of their letters have survived.
Engels now embarked upon an elaborate double life which was unearthed
after meticulous research by local historian Roy Whitfield in his book Frederick Engels in Manchester.
For his public life as a respectable businessmen Engels kept a set of
rooms in which he entertained his business friends, joined the Albert
Club (a club for German businessmen named in hour of Prince Albert; it
was situated on Oxford Road) and rode regularly with the Cheshire Hunt.
In the private part of his life Engels lived with Mary Burns who,
together with her sister Lizzy, ran boarding houses, moving from time to
time to different parts of Manchester. Engels was often registered as a
lodger at these houses but used different names, presumably for the
purpose of concealing his identity from the prurient. This did not
always work. In April 1854 he wrote to Marx “the philistines have got to
know that I am living with Mary”, forcing him to take private lodgings
once more.
In April 1862 he wrote to Marx, “I am living with Mary nearly all the
time now so as to spend as little money as possible. I can’t dispense
with my lodgings, otherwise I should move in with her altogether.”
Both Engels’ private and public lodgings are all long since
demolished. There is a plaque to him on Thorncliffe House, a University
of Manchester student residence, which is built on the site of 6
Thorncliffe Grove, Chorlton-on-Medlock, one of Engels’ “official”
residences.
Lizzie Burns
Engels and Mary Burns never married. She died suddenly on 7 January
1863 at 252 Hyde Road, Ardwick. Her burial place is lost. At some point
Frederick and Lizzy became lovers. Eleanor Marx was a frequent visitor
to the household and friends with Lizzy. She later write to Karl Kautsky
that Lizzy “was illiterate and could not read or write but she was
true, honest and in some ways as fine-souled a woman as you could meet.”
According to Paul Lafargue, Marx’s son-in-law, Lizzy was “in continual
touch with the many Irishmen in Manchester and always well informed of
their conspiracies.” He even suggested that “more than one Fenian found
hospitality in Engels’ house” and that they were involved in the dramatic rescue
of the Fenian leaders Kelly and Deasy in September 1867. There is no
evidence for this, although their house at 252 Hyde Road was close to
the rescue site.
Engels, to his great relief, finally retired from business on 30 June
1869. Eleanor Marx, who was staying with them, later wrote:
“I shall never forget the triumph with which he exclaimed
‘for the last time!’ as he put on hi boots in the morning to go to his
office. A few hours later we were standing at the gate waiting for him.
We saw him coming over the little field opposite the house where he
lived. He was swinging his stick in the air and singing, his face
beaming. Then we set the table for a celebration and drank champagne and
were happy.”
Frederick and Lizzy left Manchester for London in September 1870,
taking a house at 122 Regents Park Road, Primrose Hill, just ten minutes
walk from Marx. The comfortable house was an epicentre for the
burgeoning Socialist movement, with endless correspondence and visitors.
Lizzy suffered much ill-health in her later years and died on 11
September 1878, being buried in Kensal Green cemetery. She and Frederick
had married just before her death. Marx died on 14 March 1883 and was
buried in Highgate Cemetery. Finally Engels himself – by now the Grand
Old Man of International Socialism – died on 5 August 1895. At his
request his ashes were scattered at sea off Beachy Head.
