July/August, 2008
Sociology of the State
by Lil Joe
Dear Reader,
This article originated in a discussion of Max Weber and the sociology of the state.
However, the issue was raised concerning Engels and Lenin's concept of state and revolution, as if they were identical. They are not. Engels' concepts are identical with Marx's, and Lenin's with Trotsky and Stalin. Since these issues and authors have universal significance for revolutionaries and socialists, and in particular revolutionaries who consider themselves socialists, especially of significance since the collapse of the Soviet State and the privatization of the economy, I recognized the need to deal with these things generally in an article.
Most importantly for revolutionaries who consider themselves socialists, is the issue of capitalism and overcoming capitalism by national liberation movements and worker's parties in power. In the 1960's-70's United States in the African-American movement and the Anti-War movement activists rediscovered socialist and communist literature and politics, after having been demonized by McCarthyism's anti-communism.
Yet, the rediscovery by American activists of socialism and communism was but only a caricature of it. It was a "New Left" demonized the American working class and trade unions as selfish white men, spoiled by the crumbs from the imperialist table. This New Left believed that racial and identity politics - Black nationalists, Chicano ethnic activist-nationalists, feminists, and the outcaste lumpinproletariat - were the revolutionary forces internal in the belly of the U.S. imperialist "beast"/ "Babylon". [See Malcolm X Speaks, Hamilton and Carmichael's "Black Power", Aquino's "Occupied America", Kate Mallet's "Sexual Politics"]
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Monday 20 March 2006 8:05 PM GMT
General strike called in France
French unions and student bodies have called for a general strike and protest marches on 28 March to pressure the government to withdraw a job law they say will create insecurity for a generation of young workers.
"All the unions are calling to make 28 March a day of demonstrations, strikes and work stoppages," Rene Valadon, confederal secretary of the Force Ouvriere union, said on Monday after a meeting of France's main unions, student and high school groups.
February, 2006
Revolutionary epoch?
Mike wrote:
A question with which I am struggling is whether capitalist society is poised to enter what Marx called "an epoch of social revolution". There is no global or even widespread revolutionary upsurge of which I am aware whose existence would support such a position. But, throughout history, economic change has preceded social reorganization. Currently, scientific advance is giving rise to important economic change. In particular, computer-controlled production, electronics etc. have greatly reduced the labor-time required to produce virtually everything. Much high-tech production is literally labor-less.
Some assumptions and context:
In Capital Marx studied how commodities are produced and exchanged in capitalist society. He articulates the Law of Value which asserts that, generally, the amount of labor-time required to produce a commodity determines its exchange value and that commodity exchange transfers commodities of equal exchange value. He also showed that value-producing labor is the source of profit..
June 1, 2005
Economics and Politics: The State and Revolution
by Lil Joe
Joe_radical@earthlink.net
Introduction
In this short essay, I will argue that the essence of the State flows from or is a product of human sociology. In other words, what I here call the State at the same time embodies and mediates the technological divisions of labor, economies of exchange, the subsequent class formations with mutually exclusive economic interests, and the resultant and mutually opposed political factions representing classes. Every class struggle is a political struggle, both relative and absolute.
continue...May 29, 2004
Thesis on Imperialism and War
by Lil Joe
Joe_radical@earthlink.net
Modern productive forces and advanced technology is daily
creating a uniform international working-class. Presently, it is a
global class in-itself -- that is, workers or proletarians are a
multi-ethnic cosmopolitan class of property-less individuals that
everywhere must sell their labor power to ascertain the wherewithal
(money) to purchase means of subsistence. However, in the more
advanced industrial capitalist democracies in Western Europe the
political praxis of sharpening class struggle is engendering what
is becoming class-conscious, a class for-itself.
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