Book Review: Mistaken Identity – Race and Class in the Age of Trump

I have not read Asad Haider's book. But I have read his articles on Identity Politics and have agreed with much of what he writes. I have also read a couple of contributions this author has written on this issue (identity politics as it is used today) and am in agreement with her approach as I see it. Facts For Working People has also posted articles on this issue, identity politics, class and the term, intersectionality) in particular a response to Rhode Island Socialists:  Response to Rhode Island Socialists (majority) Opinion. This was written a while ago and we do not see all aspects of this or any other issue as unchanging and set in stone.


We share this book review from the Socialist Party (Ireland) Facts For Working People is not affiliated to the Socialist Party Ireland.

 Laura Fitzgerald Nov 7, 2018 Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump
 By Asad Haider

Published by Verso Books, 2018
Reviewed by Laura Fitzgerald

…. when the liberal language of rights is used to defend a concrete identity group from injury, physical or verbal, that group ends up defined by its victimhood and individuals end up reduced to their victimized belonging.

Asad Haider’s insightful critique of Identity Politics focuses on the question of racial division in US capitalism. Haider’s central thesis is that identity politics fails to recognise the historical roots of racial division – a division that is entirely socially constructed and has no biological basis. From this it limits its anti-racism to seeking recognition and inclusion on an individual basis and ends up reinforcing the structures that serve to perpetuate that very racism.

Of course, recognition and inclusion for oppressed groupings is very important, but an approach that seeks to achieve this on an individual basis fundamentally eschews collective struggle, the only way in which a structural challenge to the roots of oppression can be mounted. Haider contends that if the “victimized belonging” of an oppressed grouping is to an identity that is the creation of capitalism, then the reinforcing of a solely identitarian consciousness serves to perpetuate the oppression itself, as the capitalist framework that created the oppressed identity is reinforced.

Haider deems Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676, in which European indentured servants and African slaves rose up together against the elite planters, as a “watershed moment” in US history. One from which the ruling class consciously ‘invented’ the white identity, or ‘whiteness’, including by legally codifying this divide and rule policy – with those of African descent always the most marginalised and oppressed. Haider sees this as the root of what developed into a central tenet of US capitalism: namely the state sponsored, structural oppression of African Americans. In many ways this is a basic point from the perspective of class politics – every ruling class needs to foster division amongst the exploited classes in an effort to maintain its supremacy. Haider’s identifying of this ‘divide and rule’ strategy on behalf of the capitalist establishment is very important nonetheless, precisely because it’s something that does not tend to be recognised in an Identity Politics framework.

Nancy Fraser, author of Fortunes of Feminism, has made the point that the radical and mass struggles of second wave feminism achieved very important legal and cultural advances for women. However, because the framework of the capitalist system remained intact, these reforms resulted in women from the elite class being able to advance to top positions of power (as CEOs, as head of the IMF etc.), but that the reality for working class and poor women under the ravages of neoliberal capitalism has been quite the opposite.

Haider makes a similar point in relation to the black freedom movement in the US. Essentially, off the back of the radical black civil rights mass struggles of the past, there is now at least a section of the African American population represented in positions of authority and power, while the majority of African Americans experience disproportionate levels of poverty, low pay, police brutality, lack of access to healthcare and incarceration. For Haider, the ideas of Identity Politics are perpetuated by a section of middle and elite class African Americans, essentially to maintain their positions.

Haider cites the desperately cynical, ahistorical and backward ideas of “Afro-pessimism” (the notion that white people’s enjoyment of black people’s suffering is the prime mover in history and society) in order to illustrate this. Haider contends that “Afro-pessimism has served as an ideological ballast for the emergent bureaucracies in Ferguson and beyond.” This relates to where important struggles against racist state violence have occurred and is an implicit critique of some of the more conservative elements that emerged in leadership positions that tended to funnel the movement into the orbit of the establishment, pro-capitalist Democratic Party – in other words away from the path of struggle.

The other side of this reality, however, is that precisely because ‘representation’ in some positions of power has not changed things for the majority of African Americans, there is a real opening for revolutionary politics. To indicate this potential, Haider quotes Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor about the murder of Freddie Gray by police in Baltimore:

When a Black mayor, governing a largely Black city, aids in the mobilisation of a military unit led by a Black woman to suppress a Black rebellion, we are in a new period of the Black freedom struggle.

Haider looks to the civil rights movement in the US of the 1950s and 1960s as an example of the approach of mass struggle that challenged the oppression of African Americans and increasingly, the economic injustices of capitalism as a system. Haider also references the role of black Marxists in the Communist Party in the US in the 1920s who pushed for the working-class movement to challenge racist ideas, while building solidarity and struggle within the working class. He also seeks inspiration from the Black Panther Party that resolutely put solidarity of all the oppressed and exploited, as well as implacable opposition to the capitalist system, at the heart of their programme.

Haider’s critique of Identity Politics is rooted in support for mass struggles against oppression, and an optimism about the potential for solidarity that can overcome divisions within the working class that exist on the basis of race, gender identity, sexual orientation etc. This is significant because it means it’s a critique that can have an impact on a new generation of workers and young people who wish to fight oppression and exploitation in all its forms, who in many cases have themselves come up against the problems of a strategy that boils down to inclusion on an individual basis within the framework of the status quo, rather than a collective struggle for a structural challenge to the status quo.

However, Mistaken Identity would have been considerably strengthened by more references to the role of organised labour in US history that the, albeit short, book underplays. Furthermore, while it’s completely correct to emanate the fighting spirit of the Combahee River Collective (a group of African American lesbian women in Boston in the 1960s, who were anti-capitalist and socialist and showed solidarity with many labour and social struggles in the city at the time), the quote from their manifesto that Haider references positively is problematic, namely:

We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression.

While the fighting spirit and solidarity that these women showed is a million miles away from the liberal Identity Politics that cuts across struggle, that Haider eloquently exposes in his book, it’s also the case that this aspect of the Combahee statement is certainly used today to reinforce some of those very same liberal Identity Politics methods. Of course, what we have to remember is the context in which this statement was drafted – i.e. the sexist and racist marginalising and dismissal that the
Combahee women themselves had experienced within the New Left that they were reacting against.

Finally, while referencing the need to challenge capitalism, Mistaken Identity does not give a sense of the potential power of the multi-racial, all gendered etc. working class as a whole – if it’s organised and conscious – to play the key role alongside radicalised oppressed groupings, to challenge that system, given that capitalism’s profits emanate from the unpaid labour of the working class. In the words of James Connolly, “none so fitted to break the chains as they who wear them, none so well equipped to decide what is a fetter… But whosoever carries the outworks of the citadel of oppression, the working class alone can raze it to the ground.”

Rand Paul's Problem With Ilhan Omar. It's the Politics Stupid

It's her politics. 

Fortunate Son Rand Paul Has Never Thanked the US Worker For Giving Him Opportunities

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Rand Paul told Breitbart about Ilhan Omar, "maybe after she’s visited Somalia for a while, she might come back and appreciate America more."

What arrogant scum these people are. Rand Paul is a privileged member of the US upper class, a political representative of dying economic system fortunate to have been born a white male. Many workers will fall for his historical dishonesty as more than any other advanced capitalist country, US workers and the population in general are completely ignorant about colonial and imperialist history in Africa or anywhere else.

He talks of Somalia as if it has no history. He does this because to do so in an honest manner would explain why this small country is like it is. Why is the Congo and other countries in Africa continuously in crisis and unable to develop in the same manner that the European democracies did? Because it is rich in natural resources, that's why. Nigeria, Algeria, Kenya, Uganda Tanzania, I have heard such criticism about how backward these countries are throughout my life.

I heard it about Latin America and about Ireland one of Britain's first colonies. The Irish were too stupid to govern, the blacks are as well and they can’t govern either, and so on. Without understanding history, racism, religious hatred, nationalism are the only explanations left. The colonizing power has to justify its position by demonizing the colonized. Why else would they be in charge?  I am sure the Romans didn’t consider the original inhabitants of Britain to be smarter than them when they invaded in 55 BC and during their occupation of the island in the 1st century AD

I spent three years of my early childhood in Nigeria, another former colony. This was a British colony as was much of Africa. My father was in the army and he was posted there after WW2. He spent the entire war as a prisoner of the Japanese in Hong Kong and then Tokyo working for Mistubishi on the docks. Like millions of ordinary workers, he was one of the victims of the great wars of the 20th century between the former colonial powers of Europe and the Japanese which led then to the domination of US imperialism on the world stage.

For over 200 years, some 15 to 20 million of Africa's inhabitants were kidnapped with 3 million of them brought to the US.  British capitalism was quite happy to be the leading transporter of this cargo, and profiting handily from the slave trade. Liverpool and Bristol became major ports in this process.  This relationship with Africa was primarily through coastal communities and outposts where the cargo was picked up and loaded on to ships, it was less costly and not as dangerous as invading the land. But the abolition of slavery, the development of capitalist industry and the struggle for power between competing European powers necessitated expansion beyond the confines of the nation state and forced the colonial powers to head deep in to the continent. Another problem was also the inability of capitalist development to absorb the growing populations. This led to horrific conditions in Britain as the peasantry was driven off the land unable to find work. So the export of labor to the colonies was another by-product of capitalism’s rise and it could be a base on which the plundering power could rest. The plantation of Protestants in Ireland was another example of this strategy.

Colonial Africa 1920

According to some sources, as late as the 1870’s only 10% of the African continent was under direct European rule but by 1900, European colonial powers, France, England, Germany Portugal, had added some 10 million square miles of Africa as colonial possessions, about one fifth of the land mass of the globe according to Dr Saul David in Slavery and the Scramble For Africa. This was made possible to a great degree by the Berlin conference of 1884-85 that was designed to prevent war and competition between the colonial powers over the spoils.

The first World War revealed the worthlessness of treaties between the ruling classes of a social system in which the drive to war is an integral component; an agreement among thieves, by its very nature, is not binding. Millions of European workers died in this war so while the English working class benefited form British capitalism’s plunder of Africa, India and it’s colonial possessions, or a significant section of it did, millions of workers suffered there too. As for India, it has been estimated that British capitalism extracted some $40 trillion in wealth during its century of occupation in India.  

If we look at the national boundaries of the states in Africa, these were drawn up by the colonial powers.  There was British East Africa and Nigeria for example, was an area under control of the Royal Niger Company eventually becoming the two British protectorates (Protecting the economic interests of the British ruling class not Africans living there) of Northern and Southern Nigeria and eventually Nigeria. These borders are all artificially imposed. Imagine Nigeria as a box and contained in it are numerous cultures, traditions and tribal groupings who are now to adopt that national identity as “Nigerians”. It is no wonder tribal identity prevailed for so long and national identity was weak.

This is the same throughout Africa and the former colonial world. In Nigeria, British capitalism profited from the palm oil trade and also coal which was discovered there in 1909.  There was a huge coal strike in Nigeria in in 1949 as miners fought for higher wages and better conditions. The management refused to recognize the union and workers occupied the mines to avoid being replaced.  Miners’ wives got involved and led protests at the mine offices. Mine owners used the police to attack the women and the colonial government used the military and the police to crush the strike fearing it was also a precursor to the drive for independence.

These events became known as the Iva Valley Massacre. But this pales when compared to the 10 million or so estimated to have died at the hands of Belgium’s King Leopold who considered the Congo as his own back yard. The US and Belgium murdered Patrice Lumumba the Congolese leader who fought for independence in the 1960’s.

I know less about Somalia except it was French, British and Italian capitalism that controlled this part of the world, fought proxy wars there and plundered its resources. I only ask my fellow workers that when you read headlines in the US mass media about Rand Paul, in an interview with the ant-union right wing website, Breitbart saying, "I’m willing to contribute to buy her a ticket to go visit Somalia. I think she can look and maybe learn a little bit about the disaster that is Somalia." , ask why Somalia is a disaster and do a little investigation yourself. 

I do not support the Democratic Party. I would not vote for Omar on that basis. But listen to her. Pay attention to what she says, party or not, she stands up for workers interests far more than Paul, and is an embarrassment to Pelosi and the Democratic Party power. Her four years in a refugee camp has made her a tough nut. She is courageous and smart. I fear for her safety given the assault on her by parasites like the sexual deviant Trump and this right wing fortunate son, Rand Paul.

Rand Paul is no friend of the worker. These people blame American workers for our predicaments and the disaster that is the US. Auto-workers and unions are blamed for the auto crisis and the export of jobs (we’re paid too much and too lazy). The West Virginian working class is blamed for their own unemployment and the subsequent drug crisis. Blacks are blamed for conditions among the black working class that are a product of centuries of racism and exclusion form society. Teachers are the cause of the crisis in public education. The poor are to blame because they made the wrong decisions and the homeless the same. It’s never capitalism

The capitalist class in the former colonial world cannot solve the crises affecting its millions of inhabitants. Somalia is a mess because of capitalism; it cannot solve its own creation. Only a conscious and determined intervention by the working class in the US and internationally can reverse the disastrous course this rotten system and its adherents have charted for us. And the sooner rather than the later. Nature doesn’t guarantee us a future as a species.

Puerto Rico: Mass movement brings down corrupt capitalist Governor .

 Trump can also fall to a mass movement.

Sean O' Torain

We print below an article from the World Socialist Website (WSWS).  Facts For Working People and this Blog has no affiliation with WSWS.

Puerto Ricans celebrate their victory in bringing down governor.

The importance of the events in Puerto Rico is they show that a mass movement can bring down a government. This is also true for the USA. A mass movement can bring down Trump and any US government which represents US capitalism. 

It should be the aim of every organization and individual who oppose the capitalist politician and predator in the White House to help build such a mass movement in the USA. The same would apply to state governors. The teachers'/educators movements as well as organized labor united with unorganized workers have the same potential power.

One reason the capitalist Democratic Party leadership are so hesitant to go after Trump is they want to keep the institutions that they have established to maintain the rule of capitalism intact. Another reason is they fear a mass movement might be triggered if they took bringing down Trump seriously. The lesson for socialists and activists and especially the DSA, is to break from the Democratic Party, stop supporting Sanders, and mobilize our 60,000 plus members to turn to the movements that are taking place against the attacks on workers living standards, against racism against sexism against climate change etc. DSA has the resources to help draw these together into a coalition against Trump, against the US capitalist class, and to build a mass movement. It is through such a movement that candidates can be put forward as the alternative to  those from the two capitalist parties

Part of this process should be DSA turning to union locals and workplaces and moving motions to ask the union membership to be part of this coalition. Out of this, a mass workers' political party can be built.  This is the way to bring down Trump as opposed to simply replacing him with other capitalist politicians. Such a movement can be the basis on which to build for a democratic socialist USA and democratic socialist world.

Puerto Rico governor resigns after popular protests

By Jerry White
25 July 2019

After two weeks of protests demanding his removal, Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló announced his resignation late Wednesday night. In a statement posted online, Rosselló said he would step down on August 2. The announcement was met with cheers by thousands of protesters who gathered outside the governor’s La Fortaleza (The Fortress) residence in the Old San Juan district of the Caribbean island’s capital.

Popular anger has been escalating since the release two weeks ago of private text messages between Rosselló and his inner circle, which mocked the victims of Hurricane Maria and draconian austerity measures imposed by the US federal government’s Fiscal Oversight Board. The protests reached their highpoint Monday with the largest demonstration in the history of the US territory. Between 500,000 and 1 million people participated in the huge procession in San Juan, a substantial portion of the island’s 3.2 million inhabitants.

Analysts suggested that Rosselló spent much of his last day seeking to work out a deal over obtaining a pardon if he is convicted on corruption charges. On Wednesday, attorneys commissioned by the president of Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives, Carlos Méndez Núñez, a member of Rosselló’s own New Progressive Party (NPP), found five offenses that constitute grounds for impeachment, including the embezzlement of public funds and neglect of his official duties. The state legislature announced it would convene a special session Thursday to begin impeachment proceedings if the governor did not resign.

Because Puerto Rico’s US colonial constitution does not include any provision for a special election, the governorship is being handed over to one of his cabinet officials, Secretary of Justice Wanda Vázquez, a fellow NPP member who has also been embroiled in various charges of unethical behavior.

In November 2018, the Office of the Independent Prosecutor accused her of improperly intervening on behalf of her daughter and son-in-law amidst a housing dispute, making her the first secretary of justice in Puerto Rico’s history to face criminal charges. She was eventually cleared of ethical charges by a judge in a case where Vazquez’s husband, Superior Court Jorge Diaz Reveron, was questioned for allegedly intervening with a potential witness in the failed case.

One of Vázquez’s close allies, Valerie Rodríguez Erazo, the wife of Elías Sánchez, is a “lobbyist” and close friend of Rosselló. According to a July 19 exposé by the Center for Investigative Journalism, Sánchez, who came up with the ranks of the NPP youth movement with Rosselló, helped direct government contracts, including for hurricane relief, to his favored clients, charging them commissions of up to 25 percent of the amount of the contracts and fixed retainers that have reached $50,000 per month.

Like rats jumping off a sinking ship, several high-ranking officials have resigned over the last few weeks, including the governor’s chief of staff who quit Tuesday night. Just days before cabinet officials who previously resigned, Julia Keleher, the former secretary of education, and Angela Avila-Marrero, former head of the health insurance administration, were arrested by the FBI on charges that they inflated contracts and steered them to favored firms.

Keleher, a close ally of Trump’s education secretary Betsy DeVos, sparked strikes and mass protests by teachers last year for closing 286 schools, laying off 5,000 teachers and expanding charters and other for-profit schools. Treasury Secretary Raul Maldonado also resigned after a federal investigation into the department.

While Trump and Democratic Party presidential candidates distanced themselves from Rosselló, the forced resignation of the MIT-trained politician by a mass movement encompassing large sections of the working class sent paroxysms of fear throughout the entire US political establishment. With no means of expressing their opposition to the looting of society by the corporate and financial elite, masses of workers and young people took to the streets to express their democratic will and social aspirations.

If Rosselló could be removed through such mass action, so could Trump. The last thing the Democrats want is for the events in Puerto Rico to inspire similar action on the US mainland that would threaten the capitalist economic and political order, which the Democrats no less than Trump and the Republicans defend.

As rotten and corrupt as the island’s political establishment is, they are considered petty thieves compared to the Wall Street bondholders and their financial hatchet men who sit on the Fiscal Oversight Board, appointed by President Obama in 2016. Hedge funds like GoldenTree and Baupost Group, the Boston-based hedge fund helmed by billionaire Seth Klarman, hold more than $50 billion in bonds and want to assure that they recover as much of their speculative investments as possible through the gutting of pensions and selloff of public assets like the island’s electrical utility and public school system.

To a certain extent, the social explosion is seen by the political establishment in Puerto Rico as an obstacle to the wholesale looting of the island by major hedge funds. The Fiscal Oversight Board still requires the agreement of the island’s legislature to pass bills to implement the US federal bankruptcy court’s debt-cutting plans.

Earlier this month, the financial overseers struck a deal with creditors, which will include cuts to the pension benefits of 300,000 public sector workers, retirees and their families, many of whom do not qualify for Social Security. Current employees will be shifted into individual retirement accounts tied to the stock market. Puerto Rican teachers voted against the deal, even though the American Federation of Teachers had urged a “yes” vote. Retired teachers will vote after the restructuring plan is introduced in the federal bankruptcy court.

The bondholders are completely unsatisfied and are demanding even more. Over the last several days the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and other leading corporate media outlets have expressed the far-fetched hope that the further discrediting of the island’s political establishment would strengthen the hand of the federal bankruptcy court and Fiscal Oversight Board—known on the island as the “La Junta”—making it easier to beat back the resistance of workers to draconian austerity measures.

Last week the Washington Post editorial board complained that the fiscal board’s “effectiveness has been hampered” and that “Congress should take steps to strengthen the board,” including granting it the power to veto measures passed by Puerto Rico’s legislature.

Commenting on the mass protests, Bloomberg News wrote, “The turmoil came just as a federal court judge Wednesday held a hearing in the bankruptcy case that was overshadowed by the administration’s dysfunction, which could create an opening for a federal oversight board to consolidate power and impose deeper budget-cutting measures as part of the more than two-year-old bankruptcy. The political crisis and corruption probes surrounding the administration may undermine opposition to such cuts by strengthening the view that the government is inefficiently run and rife with overspending, potentially freeing up more money for creditors.”

The Oversight Board is “facing a weak government,” Vicente Feliciano, president of Advantage Business Consulting, told the industry publication Bond Buyer. “Thus, it could impose its will as long as it stays within reasonable bounds.” Evercore Director of Municipal Research Howard Cure added, “With the taint surrounding the administration, the board may now feel emboldened to make more unilateral decisions and hope they get the cooperation of the bankruptcy court judge [who] might be less sympathetic to the administration.”

In a statement dripping with hypocrisy, the oversight board released a statement responding to the mass demonstrations, saying, “The people of Puerto Rico deserve a well-functioning, responsive, sustainable government that operates with integrity and transparency.” The statement added that the board hoped that the “political process swiftly resolves the current governance crisis.”

The masses who have taken to the streets, however, are in no mood to accept the dictates of Wall Street. Among the most popular chants are “¡Ricky renuncia y llévate a la junta!” or “Ricky resign and take la junta with you!”

The same financial vultures that are looting Puerto Rico have done the same to Argentina and other countries, along with Detroit and other cities on the mainland US. Financiers have expressed the hope that the bankruptcy restructuring of Puerto Rico will set the precedent for allowing the use of the federal courts to gut public pensions in cash-strapped US states.

The only way the working class in Puerto Rico can break the dictatorial grip of Wall Street is through uniting with workers on the mainland and internationally in common struggle.

Michael Roberts: The world’s scariest economist?

What I find refreshing about Michael Roberts' economic writings is his ability to put some of the more complex ideas in plain language. Roberts is a well respected radical economist of the Marxist tradition. I am not. But what is important for working people who want to grasp an understanding of how the real world works when it comes to the production of human needs, is to understand at the very least the general principles. Not everyone will be an expert, someone who chooses to dedicate their time to every aspect and variation inherent in all things.; we all have a role to play. As we say so often on this blog, no one knows everything and that includes people like me and people like Michael Roberts. What is important for workers dedicated to transforming our world is a collective leadership and what other contributors on the blog have referred to as the collective brain and collective consciousness of the working class. Workers interested in the economics of the system of production we live in and in which the means of production are in private hands and set in motion on the basis of profit should enjoy this critique of a radical "bourgeois" economist. By that I mean she does not stray beyond the limits of the capitalist system.  She provides no way out of this mess.  Richard Mellor

The world’s scariest economist?

 by Michael Roberts

Mariana Mazzucato is one of the world’s most influential economists, according to Quartz magazine.  She has won many awards for her work.  She is an adviser to the UK Labour Party on economic policy; she “has the ear” of radical Congress representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she advises Democratic presidential hopeful, Senator Elizabeth Warren and also Scottish Nationalist leader Nicola Sturgeon.  And she has written two key books: The Entrepreneurial State (2013) and the The Value of Everything (2018).

Mazzucato is considered radical, even ‘scary,’ by many mainstream economists and conservative politicians.  This is because she has highlighted the important role that the state and governments have played in delivering innovation in technology and in advancing productive investment.  The idea that the state can be a leading force in innovation and investment in useful activity is anathema to the right-wing neo-liberal ‘free market’ views of the majority of mainstream economists and politicians.

In earlier posts, I highlighted her important insights into how government investment and direction were essential to the development pf the new technologies of the internet, the worldwide web, microsoft, apple, the iphone etc.  The IPhone for example was developed using public funds and military procurement projects for microprocessors.  The innovators were publicly funded universities and research institutes, not clever entrepreneur capitalists.  Indeed, there is nothing new about government or state funding for the most important innovations in capitalist accumulation.  The technological advances made during the first and second world wars using government ‘defence’ funds were huge: jet aircraft, radar, telecomms, vehicle construction etc.

So it is no accident that the sharp fall in government investment to GDP in most advanced capitalist economies in the so-called neoloiberal period since the early 1980s has been accompanied by slowing productivity growth.

Capitalist sector investment has failed to deliver faster productivity per person since 1980s than in the period of higher government investment before.  Falling profitability in the 1970s in all the major economies led to cutting state sector investment in technology and ‘human capital’ in order to reduce taxes on capital and keep wages down.  Indeed, privatisation was the order of the day. That helped profitability in the capitalist sector a little (along with successive slumps), but at the expense of productivity growth.

As Mazzucato makes clear in her second book, The Value of Everything, government investment and production does create value ie things or services we need and is not just a (necessary) cost. But as I commented in a review of that book, in Marxist terms, Mazzucato conflates value with use-value.  Yes, government investment in schools, hospitals, transport, infrastructure and technology creates useful things, but under the capitalist mode of production for profit, it does not create value (surplus value or profit).  On the contrary, it can lower overall profitability for the capitalist sector. So there is an inherent contradiction in capitalism between more use-value and value.

Unfortunately, this is not recognised in Mazzucato’s work.  As a result, she sees her task as an economist to show how government can help to make capitalism work by getting governments to create more ‘value’.   For Mazzucato, governments can do more “than play a passive role in fixing market failures” (I doubt that it can even do that – MR) but instead “be allowed to embrace entrepreneurial spirit to steer the direction of innovation and economic growth”.  She wants governments to have missions “to get shit done”.  Now this sounds scary to the mainstream but they need not worry.  Mazzucato does not advocate replacing capitalism with socialism – as she says “I don’t think these words are helpful… there are all sorts of different ways to do capitalism.. that’s what I think needs completely rebooting rather than to start calling things socialism”. Here she echoes the approach of Elizabeth Warren.

Capitalism, socialism; what’s in a name?  Well, behind a name lies a categorisation of the structure of a mode of production and social relations.  Mazzucato wants capitalism to deliver more and better things and services for people, but without touching the private ownership of the means of production.  And talking about replacing capitalist companies with common ownership, planning and workers democracy would be a mistake. “If you start talking about socialism, it’s not going to make companies do anything different from what they’re doing now.”  But will suggesting that big business invest productively without taking into account “shareholder value” work either?

For Mazzucato, socialism is a nice idea but not practical.  “Regardless of what I would like to see in an ideal world, I think realistically we’ll have capitalism”. The problem I have with that conclusion is that being ‘realistic’ and accepting that capitalism will be here for the foreseeable future and so trying to make it work better is what is not realistic!  Under capitalism, can regular and recurring economic slumps be avoided that cost many millions their jobs, homes and livelihoods in every generation?  Can imperialist adventures and exploitations be avoided?  Can extreme inequality of wealth and income be reversed?  Can climate change and global warming be stopped?

Can any of these horrors realistically be removed by getting governments and multi-nationals to have ‘missions’ to ‘get shit done’ while still preserving the capitalist system of production and investment for private profit? That is what is unrealistic.  But it is safer to talk about saving capitalism from itself or making it work better with the help of government than replacing capitalism.  The latter would really be scary for the existing order.

British Labor Party Reports

We share this from LeftHorizons UK. If you are a reader of this blog in Britain and you have reports about what is happening in your CLP send them to:
editor@left-horizons.co.uk

If you are in the US and want to know more contact Left Horizons at the same address.

Labour Party AGMs show swings to the left.

Southend and Cumbria reports

The old-guard right wing of the Labour Party has every reason to be worried, judging by recent Annual General Meetings of Constituency Labour Parties reported to Left Horizons. The marked shift to the left of the Party membership, particularly with the hundreds of thousands of new members joining on the back of Jeremy Corbyn’s two leadership victories, is making itself felt in elections to officers’ positions in local parties.

In both Rochford and Southend East CLP and Southend West CLP, the left has recently swept the board, taking most officers positions and conference delegates. The old right wing barely put up any fight and many positions were uncontested. The PPC selection for Rochford and Southend East has taken place and was won by a Progress supporter, who greatly benefitted from being imposed before the snap election in 2017. The right wing, although in a minority, still hold five seats on the EC including chair and one V-C. Unfortunately, what the right still do control is the Labour Group on the local Council, with their position consolidated after joining an administration with Independents and Lib Dems

At the recent AGM of Carlisle CLP the Left slate took nine out of the fourteen executive officer positions, including Chair and Secretary.

The right didn't organise a slate this year and of the three officer positions they did secure, in two cases it was probably due the former incumbents from the left not contesting them this year, due in one case to having been elected as a councillor and in the other case for personal reasons. The Left also secured, unopposed, the delegate to annual conference.

Over the last year the numbers of those attending monthly General Committee meetings in Carlisle has fallen, largely because nationally Brexit has loomed so large that it has pushed Labour's policy agenda into the background. However, this is truer of the right in CLP who seem for the moment to have ceased to be an organised force. So, for example, there was little opposition to it when a motion was discussed opposing the anti Semitism witch hunt. Four new Left Labour councillors were elected onto Carlisle City Council in May.

Send in your Labour Party reports to editor@left-horizons.co.uk

Jewish American Researcher Gets the Treatment on El Al

Facts For Working People shares this article for the interest of our readers. It was originally published in MONDOWEISS.  MondoWeiss is not affiliated with Facts For Working People.

My name is Rachel, and Israel thinks I’m a security threat.
Rachel Marandett on July 25, 2019

My name is Rachel. I am a Jew. I don’t practice, but my grandmothers are Jewish and I identify as a Jew, so that means I am a Jew. 

My name is Rachel. I study Religious and Middle Eastern Studies. My research focuses on the Holocaust and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I have studied in Morocco and the Czech Republic. I know a little bit of Arabic and I hope I can learn more soon. 

My name is Rachel. I support human rights. I work at a non-profit that strives to prevent genocide and crimes against humanity. 

My name is Rachel and in the summer of 2019 I was interrogated for an hour and a half when trying to get on a flight from New Jersey to Tel Aviv. Over ten members of Israeli security working for the Israeli airline, El Al, took turns questioning me. My life, my friendships, my studies, and my family were picked apart. They mired on my Arab and Arab-American friends, the relationships I made in Morocco, and my research. I was partially strip searched and my entire body was poked and prodded with hands and scanners. Every single one of my belongings was confiscated and examined behind closed doors. I was yelled at by a large group of men to give them my computer password. They refused to explain why they needed it and I had classified work documents on my desktop. Scared and overwhelmed after 90 minutes of questioning, I decided not to comply. I was then off-boarded from the plane. 

When I went back to the airport for a rebooking the next day, I was pulled from the security line within minutes. I was searched and questioned extensively again and had my luggage and passport labeled a level 6 out of 6 security threat for further examination and interrogation upon my arrival in Israel. Knowing that there was a good chance I could be turned around in Israel after enduring hours of questioning yet again, I decided not to try for a third time to get on a flight with an airline that had already made it clear they wanted nothing to do with me. 

I don’t know why I was treated like this. When I asked, they kept saying “security.” 

They were thought policing. They were racially profiling my friends. They were afraid of the fact that I wasn’t afraid of the Middle East and the people who call it home. 

                                             **************************

For the purposes of my thesis research, I had wanted to go to both Israel and Palestine despite the significant issues I take with the actions of the Israeli government. I wanted to engage first-hand in the issues I spend every day studying. I was traveling with a research group that I trusted and respected, so I decided to put aside some of my political perspectives to accept a grant I was so lucky to have the opportunity to receive. 

However, by essentially denying me entry into the country, Israel asked me to boycott. And if they want me to, I will. 

The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is non-violent. I am non-violent. And Israel, you can be non-violent too. 

                                             **************************

I want to tell my story not because I want to get into Israel. In fact, I know that after I tell it, I probably never will. 

I want to tell my story because if this is what the Israeli government is doing to a 21-year-old American Jew doing research, what do you think they are doing to someone whose skin isn’t as white as mine? 

This was a challenging experience because interrogation is painful and draining and because I was barred from an opportunity I was looking forward to, but what about the people who are barred from ever seeing their home or family again? What about the people that live every day in fear of destruction, demolition, and death in the open-air prison we call the Gaza Strip? 

                                             **************************

So today, I ask the Israeli government to reassess their priorities and security practices. I ask them to think critically about what the word “threat” means and what/whom constitutes as one. I don’t. My Arab and Arab-American friends don’t. A Palestinian 18-year-old visiting her grandparents doesn’t. In fact almost all Palestinians don’t. Just as almost all Americans, almost all French, German, Mexicans, Brazilians, Iranians, and Moroccans don’t. 

I also ask the US government to rethink their unequivocal support for Israel in the wake of the crimes against humanity they are committing and the unethical practices they are engaging in. I ask the US to think critically about what democracy means to our country and if the practices of Israel really deserve the label of “the gold standard for democracy in the Middle East” that is so often attributed to them. 

Finally, I call on the young people of America and of the world to be the change. We are the future and we have the power to change the systems that do so many worse things than block an innocent American Jew from getting on a flight to Israel. Support Palestine, support BDS, and support human rights because none of us should ever be considered a threat again for what we look like, what our name is, who our friends are, or where we have been. 

                                             **************************

My name is Rachel. But if my name was Ruhee, would you be reading this story? If my name were Ruhee, would I even be able to tell it? 

I am sharing my story because we live in a world where not everyone can. I am sharing my story because something needs to change. 

For me.
But, more importantly, for the people who will never see their homes and families again. In Palestine. And across the world.

Rachel Marandett is a Pomona College senior majoring in Religious Studies with a concentration in global violence and a minor in Middle Eastern Studies. She has studied in both Morocco and the Czech Republic to help prepare for her thesis research on the Holocaust and Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a Pomona College Humanities Studio Fellow. 

US Corporate Media Complicit in Protecting Mass Killers.

Richard Mellore

This is worth watching. As I did so I thought about people like Blair, Bush, Wolfowitz, Pearl Rumsfeld. These people are war criminals guilty of mass murder. The US Congress and Obama who followed the imbecile Bush are all guilty of mass murder.

Look up Frank Kozer who is mentioned in this video and it is hard to find much about him. He is the individual from the NSA in this video who contacted Britain's equivalent of the GCHQ, to urge the British to assist the US in bribing, cajoling, threatening and doing what it would take to get 6 countries to support going to war in Iraq. The Iraqi people had already been through hell and some 500,000 mainly women and children had died through the US imposed sanctions. Madeline Albright, another mass killer, said on national TV, these deaths were "worth it."

British prime minister Blair was part of the plan, another killer. Powell, the US general, all of them killers. We saw next to nothing about this woman's heroic actions on behalf of freedom here in the US. This is why Assange and Wilkileaks should be defended and why the US ruling class hates him so much.  Wikileaks exposed their phony diplomacy, the diplomacy of thieves and liars, murders and killers. They don't have the courage or will to kill themselves in the main, they organize killing.

The mass media in the US and its counterpart in the UK portrays these politicians and their system as just, almost divine, the fount of knowledge and human culture. We should be grateful to Wikileaks and people like this woman that through their efforts attempt to expose the hypocrisy and make social fact what we know deep down. When you watch or read our mass media and there is handling of top politicians and presidential figures as if they were decent human beings, think about how the victims and the relatives of the victims and the dead, feel about their polices.  The Iraqi's have had their country destroyed, over one million dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.

There is a film coming out next month based on this whistlblower's story. It's called"Official Secrets".

Ilhan Omar's Clear and Precise Response on CNN Panel

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, Retired

Not only does Ilhan Omar call this question asked of her "appalling" which it is. She gives a clear explanation as to why. This woman is very savvy and also don't forget, who knows what she has faced in her life as a Somali refugee, she is a tough person.

Followers of this blog are well aware that we do not support the Democratic Party. We welcomed the election victory of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez over Crowly as we believe that it will hasten what will in our view be an inevitable split in the Democratic Party and it appears that split could come sooner than later.

What is lacking in the politics of the new Congresspersons is a clear explanation of what their alternative is. It does seem with AOC (I am not as informed about Ilhan Omar) that some version of Roosevelt's New Deal is it. This is not possible in this era and even back then, the New Deal excluded millions of workers. The Social Security Act for example did not apply to agricultural and domestic workers many of them black and Latino workers that were dominant in these industries. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) had an explicit policy of not insuring suburban mortgages for African-Americans. Roosevelt, being a Democrat, had to appease the racist Southern Democrats and this was done at the expense of black folks. He even opposed the anti-lynching law.

"Roosevelt’s need to accommodate Southern racists often complicated the implementation of his programs, according to Digital History. Distribution of relief in the South, for example, slowed to a trickle because Southern relief administrators didn’t want to distribute money to Blacks. One Georgia relief agent told Roosevelt’s emissary Lorena Hickok that “any N*gger who gets over $8 a week is a spoiled N*gger, that’s all … The Negroes regard the President as the Messiah, and they think that … they’ll all be getting $12 a week for the rest of their lives.” The Atlanta Black Star 

I do not think Omar is in DSA but Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Rashida Tlaib are. There are also many more DSA members that have won political office and its Congresspersons, hopefully in unity with others on the left wing of the Democratic Party should campaign for the DSA leaderships to withdraw its support for Bernie Sanders, a Democrat for President, and for DSA to use its tremendous resources of some 60,000 members to build a movement which would run independent candidates on a program that speaks to the immediate needs of working class people and the environment in which we find ourselves. Along with this DSA can help build a national direct action movement to throw back this offensive of big business by drawing together and offering it's resources to the multitude of movements that have been fighting back on issues important to them.

The teachers/ educators movement is of particular importance as this movement shattered the decades old propaganda of the trade union hierarchy that we cannot win, that concessions have to be made. They showed one thing, where the established labor officialdom was weaker or not present at all, the rank and file workers, not facing a powerful combination of the employers and the passivity and in many cases outright betrayal of their own leaders, found their feet and made gains. In the main, the top leadership are silent on these issues and the the left in the trade union movement more often than not provide a left cover for them, some political currents like Labor Notes rarely if ever, mentioning the leadership at all. But a struggle to change the direction of organized labor and the country will inevitable mean some conflict with the present hierarchy and it is important to prepare for this not ignore their role.

Ilhan Omar is not backing down and two weeks ago she and Ocasio Cortez received a personal lashing in Peggy Noonan's column in the Wall Street Journal.  It reflects the political crisis the US ruling class is in, and their weak hold over US society that despite the statements and politics of these new Congresswomen being relatively mild in nature, they are forced to wage a serious slander campaign against them. This is also of great concern to Pelosi and co. who are being squeezed from both sides here. It is not what they are saying that is the problem, it is that they are saying what is on millions of people's minds. The DSA among many others on the left are not recognizing the opportunity that exists I think. By supporting Sanders the DSA leadership could wreck the gains DSA has made in the near future.

The "squad" as they have been called have time to lead the exodus out of the Democratic Party and offer a independent left alternative in 2020. Either way, watch Omar here and compare what and how she addresses this issue compared to our own leaders atop organized labor who say nothing at all. She is very good.

UK: Boris Johnson's Election Changes Nothing Fundamental

Boris will do a "great" job says Trump

The following is today's editorial from LeftHorizons UK

Johnson election changes nothing fundamental 

June 24th 2019

The election of Boris Johnson as Tory leader and Premier changes nothing fundamental in British politics. All his supposed ‘charisma’ will count for nothing. His “rhetorical flourishes” the Financial Times points out, will not mask the “harsh realities” he faces.

Johnson’s elevation marks a further decline in the quality of the political representatives of British capitalism. Once the British ruling class and its political representatives thought in terms of continents and centuries but in today’s Britain, a typical business plan is based on short-term greed, tomorrow’s profits and executive bonuses. As for the Conservative Party, it is mired in xenophobia and self-delusion, smeared with the grime of contending personal ambitions. For the second time in a decade, we have a Tory leader ‘schooled for leadership’ on the playing fields of Eton, followed by Oxford and the posh hooligans’ outfit known as the Bullingdon Club. This is a class and a party that are steeped in crisis and which have nothing to offer the overwhelming majority of the population, except unending austerity, poverty and cuts in living standards.

It is almost impossible to predict precise outcomes in British politics over the next few months. The only thing that can be said with any certainty is that British capitalism faces its greatest political, economic and perhaps constitutional crisis for generations. Johnson has won over the geriatric membership of his party by promising Brexit by the end of October, ‘do or die’, but his ability to achieve that is in some doubt. Last week, 36 Tory MPs either abstained or voted against the government, to express their opposition to the no-deal Brexit that Johnson is threatening. With a parliamentary bye-election in the offing and the possible resignation of some Tory MPs from the party, Johnson barely has a majority in parliament, if he has a majority at all. Whether or not he can steer his way through the House of Commons is therefore open to question.

Between two rocks and a hard place

For their part, the leaders of the EU appear to be determined not to accept any re-negotiation of the deal they agreed with Theresa May. Johnson is a politician devoid of any guiding principle beyond his own ambition, so we take for granted that anything he has said in his election campaign might be contradicted by what he says or does straight afterwards. But he has very little room to manoeuvre between apparent EU intransigence, a House of Commons unwilling to accept a no-deal Brexit and a Tory Party (and up-coming conference) hell-bent on a hard Brexit. He is between two rocks and a hard place.

For very plausible reasons, there is speculation on the likelihood of an autumn general election. It is certainly a possibility, but it is one with serious risks to the Tory Party. Conservative candidates only managed to get 9 per cent of the vote in the May Euro-elections and this side of Brexit, Nigel Farage’s party will be a significant complicating element in any general election. Many Tory MPs risk losing seats to Brexit Party or Labour candidates. Labour was twenty points behind in the polls when the 2017 general election campaign started and yet it came within a whisker of winning. That lesson will not be lost on the Tory leadership, even factoring in a ‘Boris bounce’ in their fortunes.

It would be wrong to try to make facile predictions of likely outcomes in the next few months, therefore. Volatility and uncertainty are the principle characteristics of British politics today. All we can do is identify some of the main features of the looming political crisis.

The first of these is the crisis in the Tory Party itself. Political honeymoons are usually measured in months, or at least in weeks. Johnson’s honeymoon would last days or even hours were it not for the imminent summer parliamentary break. As we have argued in many articles in the past, the crisis in that party between the Brexit and Remainer wings will inevitably lead to splits, with the possibility of alliances with the Brexit Party (before Brexit) or defections to it. Other Tories might split away, as some like Anna Soubry have already done, to one of the small pro-EU parties, possibly the Liberal-Democrats.

Labour’s right-wing sabotage

The second important element in the situation is the ideological split inside the Labour Party and the unwillingness of the old-guard right wing to be reconciled with Jeremy Corbyn and a radical-leaning Labour membership. The closer the Labour Party comes to a general election, the more desperate the Blairite right wing becomes and the more it actively seeks to sabotage the party’s chances. In the last few weeks we have seen a very public petition of right-wing MPs demanding the suspension of Chris Williamson MP (as indeed he was), a full-page anti-Corbyn advert in a national newspaper signed by 67 Labour peers and more threats of walk-outs. While ex-Labour MP Chuka Umunna has found his natural home in the Liberal-Democratic Party, there are scores more like him still in the Parliamentary Labour Party, with the same outlook, the same political views and the same festering hatred of anything remotely radical, never mind ‘socialist’.

We should not mince words over these people. They are ‘Labour’ in name only. Many so-called ‘Labour’ MPs and peers would far rather see a Tory government stay in office than see Labour under Corbyn win a general election. They are organically and ideologically opposed to the radical policies outlined by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell in the Labour manifesto of 2017. Capitalism, the so-called ‘free market’ system, is in their political DNA. They have used the issue of anti-Semitism – supported enthusiastically by the anti-Labour press and the BBC – as a stick with which to beat the leadership. Whatever Jeremy Corbyn does on anti-Semitism – whatever he does – it will never be enough for the right wing. They want Corbyn out and they want a Labour disciplinary system that gives them carte blanche to expel any left wing members from the party.

Unfortunately, there have been many on the left of the Labour Party, notably the self-elected leadership of Momentum, who have buckled under the relentless pressure of the media against Corby. They have caved in on the two key issues of the anti-Semitism campaign and on Open Selection, which would have been a means of selecting candidates who back the leader. Emboldened by the weakness of this section of the Labour left, therefore, Labour’s right wing will make more attempts to remove the Labour leader. In our editorial on June 13, we wrote, “When a new Tory leader is installed in July, watch out for a new, perhaps more serious, challenge to the Labour leadership” and we stand by those words. 

The real issues – poverty, low pay, NHS and cuts

There may well be a few weeks of relative calm as parliament goes into its summer recess but the pace will quicken again at the end of August. Labour must continue to fight for a general election. If we asked the question, “what are people talking about at work, in shops, offices and in bus queues?”, we have a fairly good idea what the answer would be. They would be highly unlikely to be talking about anti-Semitism. They might be talking about Brexit. But what will definitely arouse passions will be bread-and-butter issues that impinge on their daily lives: poverty, low-pay, difficulties in paying rents or saving for mortgages, NHS cuts, library closures and all those things that reflect the experience of austerity in the last ten years. These are still the issues on which Labour needs to focus and campaign.

British capitalism and its Tory representatives offer nothing to men, women, young people or to the working class in general, those who form the big majority of the population. The Tories’ system benefits the only the millionaire-class, while it is destroying living standards for the many. On an international scale it even threatens the existence of human civilisation through climate change.

The Labour Party and particularly the Labour left must not weaken its resolve. If and when a general election is called, readers and supporters of Left Horizons will join the fight alongside hundreds of thousands of other party workers and youth to return Labour to office. A Labour government committed to socialist policies offers a way out of the circus of Boris Johnson’s politics and when the opportunity comes we must grasp it with both hands.

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Isn't Cambodia Near China?

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

I often write, somewhat jokingly, about the paranoia that consumes the US capitalist class that the rest of the world is out to destroy us. I say jokingly as I usually include the African Bees scare that some young people might not know about as it was some years ago. The mass media had headlines about this invasion. These bees were bigger and no doubt blacker, being African,  than our native born bees, so naturally they were a threat to our way of life. Big, black, African, that’s enough to scare the US ruling class.

Naturally, this paranoia is used as a propaganda tool as well in order to keep the US masses in a state of fear all the time, a siege mentality similar to the Protestants in Northern Ireland and the Jews in Israel and whites in the US south and in general. But it is also real as US capitalism is in competition with all the advanced capitalist economies and the various formations nation states build to try to compete with its vast economic and military power that has dominated the world since the beginning of the last century.  The EU is one example and Asian bloc (Asean), Latin America and so on. This paranoia has increased since the collapse of Stalinism and the old nuclear powered Soviet Union which acted as a sort of brake on western imperialist expansion, creating a bi-polar world in which Stalinism and US imperialism co-existed to a great degree divvying up the global spoils and maintaining a relative stability.

US Imperialism and its allies wanted capitalism, not democratic socialist states, to replace Stalinism and did everything it could to ensure that with the help of the Vatican and the leaders of the workers organizations in the west. Unfortunately, what was preferred, weak, dependent capitalist states, dependent on the US in particular, somewhat like South Korea that isn’t even in control of its own military, didn’t quite play out. Instead, Russia, but even more so China, are threatening US imperialism’s dominance on the world stage, politically and economically. As part of what we now know as the BRICS, Brazil, Russia, India, China, globalization and the entering on to the world market hundreds of millions of workers in China in particular is causing great concern in Washington and the Pentagon.

The reality is that Capitalism is a ruthless competitive system; there is nothing nice about it. The two world wars were capitalist wars, wars of conquest for markets, raw materials, labor forces. The slaughter of some 3 million Vietnamese by US imperialism (a conflict that directly cost 67,000 American lives) was also a war for markets and profit making.

What prompted me to write about this is I see that the US is concerned that the Cambodian government is allowing China to use a naval base there. This is, “…. raising US fears of Beijing’s global ambitions.”, the Wall Street Journal reports.

How dare these Chinese doing such a thing. Why, it’s anti-American.

Where is the US?

But isn’t Cambodia in South East Asia? I think it is. It borders Vietnam to the east and Laos to the north and both border China. Not only that, the US invaded Cambodia and its neighbor Laos in 1970 and as Christopher Hitchens writes, “…without a declaration of war, a notification to Congress or a warning to civilians to evacuate.”  It is estimated that some 350,000 Laotians and 600,000 Cambodians died in US capitalism’s bombing of these two small countries. *

I wonder how the Cambodian and Laotian populations remember this.

That so many Americans are unaware of the role of their own government in these catastrophes blinds them to how so many people in the rest of the world views it. The US has some 800 bases and installations in the world, which is the reason we at home are seeing our wages, benefits, social services and infrastructure deteriorate. But Cambodia is in China’s back yard. The Persian gulf is in Iran’s back yard.

But this is what capitalism is. If you are the one with the big stick, the bully, you fear any competition. But all nation states, certainly those with the resources and size of China and to a lesser extent Russia and India, want control over their resources, the immediate sphere of influence, their economy and so on.

When a dominant world power begins to lose its influence and reach, it becomes more paranoid and ever more violent. That is even the case with smaller oppressive states like South Africa under direct Apartheid. Despite seeing the writing on the wall, the aggressor, rather than beating a hasty retreat or accepting the inevitable and responding passively, has that one last vicious strike at the upstart daring to remove the boot from the neck.

If we look at British colonialism in Kenya and how it responded to the resistance to its

rule there, it knew its time was done yet it ensured the resistance was punished heavily. The British response to the Mau Mau uprising, signifying the end of direct rule, in Africa was brutal, "Between 1953 and 1956 Britain sent over a thousand Kenyans to the gallows, often on trumped up or non-existent charges. Meanwhile 70,000 people were imprisoned in camps without trial for between two and six years."  (source)

In fact, like the US and its western allies today that refers to any force that resists imperial violence as terrorism, insurgents, enemy combatant, militants, anything but a resistance movement, the British called the Kenyan resistance a rebellion, a rebellion in their own country. The Mau Mau and the Kenyan opposition to British rule was a colonial war of liberation. I enjoyed and learned a lot from a book on the Kenyan war of Independence titled, Histories of the Hanged, it’s a good read.

The presence of nuclear weapons has undoubtedly been a deterrent to world war and instead we have seen endless regional wars and wars by great powers like the US against upstarts. The US war against the Afghani population has lasted 17 years. We should not lose track of the fact that up until 1999 every Taliban official was on the payroll of the US government. The conflict in Afghanistan will never end any more than the conflicts in the Middle East will. The struggle of the Irish to evict British occupation has been going on for centuries and the division of the country still exists today. Ireland, Israel/Palestine, the Middle East, Kashmir, Africa in crisis and the refugee situation including the economic refugees fleeing the legacy of US imperialism in Mexico and Central America; these problems are caused by capitalism, they cannot be eliminated by it, only exacerbated.

*Christopher Hitchens, TheTrial of Henry Kissinger