190th Anniversary of Marx’s Birth

It’s Marx’s birthday. Let’s PAR-TAY! (Damn it, OK! Who the hell invited Stalin!?).

“And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic anatomy of classes. What I did that was new was to prove:

1. that the existence of classes is only bound up with the particular, historical phases in the development of production [See: Historical Materialism]
2. that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
3. that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.

Karl Marx
Letter to Weydemeyer
March 5, 1852

Karl Mars was born today 190 years ago in the Prussian city of Trier to a Jewish family that had earlier converted to Protestantism in order to get ahead in Prussian society. According to the Marxist Internet Archieves:

At the insistent request of the Prussian government, Marx was banished from Paris in 1845, considered by both governments a dangerous revolutionary. Marx then moved to Brussels. In the spring of 1847 Marx and Engels joined a secret propaganda society called the Communist League. Marx and Engels took a prominent part in the League’s Second Congress (London, November 1847), at whose request they drew up the Communist Manifesto, which appeared in February 1848. With outstanding clarity, this work outlines a new world-conception based on materialism. This document analysises the realm of social life; the theory of the class struggle; the tasks of the Communists; and the revolutionary role of the proletariat – the creators of a new, communist society.

…

Marx’s life as a political exile was an extremely difficult one, as the correspondence between Marx and Engels clearly reveals. Poverty weighed heavily on Marx and his family; had it not been for Engels’ constant and selfless financial aid, Marx would not only have been unable to complete Capital but would have inevitably have been crushed by hunger and malnutrition.

Today, especially amongst the worsening food crisis and backlash against neo-liberalism Marx is just as important today as he was in the mid to late 19th century. Randhir Singh states:

It can be legitimately argued that the reasons which in the first place gave rise to the movement for socialism still hold, more so at the beginning of this century than they did at the beginning of the last or at any time earlier. Capitalism remains a deeply exploitative and ecologically disastrous way of organising social life. Apparently triumphant, capitalism continues to operate under the same structural compulsions, producing the same catastrophic consequences as before. It remains ridden with crises and congenitally unable to subordinate its achievements to the needs of human beings, unable, despite its prodigious productive abilities, to offer even bare survival to vast majorities in the world it dominates. Despite its current apotheosis, capitalism has resolved none of the problems which have for more than a century and a half given sustenance to socialist aspirations and struggles. The logic favouring a worldwide transition to socialism remains as compelling today as it has ever been.

…

the collapse of these [so called communist"] countries now, or their return to the capitalist fold, in any way settle the question of the future of socialism — the struggle still goes on and will, so long as capitalism lasts.

Image From:
The Business Innovation Insider

Secret Bush “Finding” Widens War on Iran

I just heard this on my way home from work on KPFA listener funded radio, on the program Democracy Now. Andrew Cockburn from CounterPunch reports:

Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, “unprecedented in its scope.”

Bush’s secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials. This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups.

…

A Marine amphibious force, originally due to leave San Diego for the Persian Gulf in mid June, has had its sailing date abruptly moved up to May 4. A scheduled meeting in Europe between French diplomats acting as intermediaries for the U.S. and Iranian representatives has been abruptly cancelled in the last two weeks. Petraeus is said to be at work on a master briefing for congress to demonstrate conclusively that the Iranians are the source of our current troubles in Iraq, thanks to their support for the Shia militia currently under attack by U.S. forces in Baghdad.

Of course, the main resistance is still coming from Sunni insurgents, but those are facts, and facts get in the way of the “truth.”

Image From:
PoliAnna.com

“Something has happened…”

“Something has happened which has made them overcome their fear.”

-Dr. Mohammed Al-Mahdy

Hossam has linked a short documentary by Al Jazeera English on Egypt since the rise of Mubarak 27 years ago.  It’s very good and I reccomend everyone check it out, if you are pressed for time I especially recommend parts three and four (each part only being 12 minutes) which are on the recent unrest in Egypt and the media and internet.