[OccupyCU] Fwd: This Thursday: Is Revolution Possible?

[jesse phillippe]

If people are interested in making it out to this public forum, it will be
at 7pm in Lincoln Hall (Room TBA)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: C-U Socialists (ISO) <info at newsletters.isouc.org>
Date: Mon, Sep 2, 2013 at 1:39 PM
Subject: This Thursday: Is Revolution Possible?
To: japhillippe at gmail.com


[image: The International Socialist Organization] <http://www.isouc.org>

In today's newsletter:

1. This Thursday: Is Revolution Possible?

2. NO ATTACK ON SYRIA!

_____________________________________________________

This Thursday, come hang with the ISO of Champaign-Urbana to discuss:

Is Revolution Possible?

Shaun Harkin, an activist and socialist from Chicago, will be presenting on
the possibility of socialist revolution, and what it might look like.


To each according to their need

Paul D'Amato writes about socialists believe a socialist society would look
like, as part ofhis ongoing series elaborating the ISO's "Where We Stand"
statement <http://socialistworker.org/series/the-politics-of-the-iso>.
 August 23, 2013

*The alternative is socialism, a society based on workers collectively
owning and controlling the wealth that their labor creates*.
-- From the ISO "Where We Stand"

YOU'VE SEEN the slogans at different protests "people over profits" and
"human need not corporate greed." They reflect a basic realization among
many people that there is something deeply wrong with the market-driven
priorities of capitalism.

[image: Where We Stand: The Politics of the ISO]

Take, for example, health care. More than 47 million people go without
health insurance because they simply cannot afford it. They are therefore
not considered by the highly profitable health care industry part of the
health care market.

Likewise, the 37 million people who go hungry every year in the United
States are not part of the food market. Profits cannot be made by feeding
the hungry. It is not simply that capitalism places more emphasis on profit
than on meeting human needs, it's that capitalism places no emphasis at all
on meeting human needs--it simply does not factor into how capitalists make
decision about production and distribution.

Certainly, capitalists know they must make something useful, i.e., that
someone else wants, in order to sell it for a profit. But the aim of the
operation is profit. When agribusiness worries about a "grain glut," it is
not because everyone in the world now has enough food.

In fact, millions starve every year even during food "gluts," because the
glut has nothing to do with human need, but only with whether or not the
food can be sold profitably. The 800 million starving people on the planet
are an irrelevant factor for the food industry.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

NOW, IMAGINE a society where the means of production are held in common, by
free association, and where labor is expended and allocated according to a
social plan. Instead of things being produced only if they can be sold
profitably, they are produced because they are socially necessary, and
their production and distribution is carried out according to a
democratically worked-out plan.


 SERIES: THE POLITICS OF THE
ISO<http://socialistworker.org/series/The-Politics-of-the-ISO>
*Paul D'Amato*, author of The Meaning of
Marxism<http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/The-Meaning-of-Marxism>,
looks in detail at the "Where We Stand" statement of the International
Socialist Organization.

   - A few profiting from the
many<http://socialistworker.org/2013/08/16/a-few-profiting-from-the-many>
   - To each according to their
need<http://socialistworker.org/2013/08/23/to-each-according-to-their-need>
   - On the shoulders of
giants<http://socialistworker.org/2013/08/30/on-the-shoulders-of-giants>



Imagine a society where, instead of "overproduction" being a trigger for
economic crisis, unemployment and bankruptcies, it merely offers an
opportunity to reduce the hours that society spends making that particular
thing. Imagine, moreover, that in this society, "overproduction" does not
mean overproduction in terms of what can be sold profitably on the market,
but in terms of what society needs.

Imagine a society in which all people take from society what they need, put
in what they can, and where no one is satisfied until everyone has adequate
food, shelter, clothing, transportation, health care and so on--including
those who through age or infirmity can no longer contribute productively or
care for themselves.

Such a society would still produce a surplus, but instead of that surplus
going to a tiny minority as profit, that surplus would be allocated in ways
to enhance the social and personal wellbeing of the whole society. Instead
of relying on the blind forces of the market, which impose upon each
capitalist the drive for profit as an external law of compulsion, we have a
society in which all decision about production and distribution are thought
out and consciously agreed upon.

Such a society would have no need for a special body to coerce the
population--a state--on behalf of a minority exploiting class. Such a
society would have no need to divide the population against itself--to pit
men against women, whites against Blacks, and so on--in order to maintain
the machinery of exploitation without hindrance.

That society is socialism.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

SOCIALISTIC AND communistic ideas have been dreamed about for centuries. In
the 1400s, for example, the Taborites, a religious sect in Bohemia,
preached a communism of shared consumption.

"In these days," went a description of their teachings, "there shall be no
king, ruler or subject on the earth, and all imposts and taxes shall cease;
no one shall force another to do anything, for all shall be equal brothers
and sisters...As in the town of Tabor there is no mine or thine, but all is
held in common."

A tract written in 1649 by Abiezer Coppe, a radical Ranter during the
period of the English Revolution, intoned: "The ax is laid to the root of
the tree...I will hew it down. And as I live, I will plague your Honor,
Pomp, Greatness, Superfluity, and confound it into parity, equality
community."

Later, as industrial capitalism began to develop, there arose socialists
who criticized the evils of this new system, but could not offer a bridge
from this society to one based on their socialist vision. The could
criticize capitalism as being bad, but by way of an alternative could only
offer blueprints for a better world.

The modern socialist movement, whose first theorists were Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels, saw itself as part of this tradition, with an important
difference. For it, "socialism was no longer an accidental discovery of
this or that brain, but the necessary outcome of the struggle between two
historically developed classes--the proletariat and the bourgeoisie."

The overthrow of capitalism, with its "crying contrasts of want and luxury,
starvation and surfeit," cannot be guaranteed simply by the "consciousness
that this mode of distribution is unjust, and that justice must eventually
triumph," wrote Engels in his classic book *Anti-Duhring*.

Socialism is possible as it never was before because in addition to the
knowledge that equality and freedom is just, capitalism has created the
material conditions, that is, the material abundance, and social forces
necessary to effect a change in that direction.

The modern call for the abolition of class antagonisms has behind it the
development by capitalism itself of untold wealth, its competitive tendency
which pushes it to ramp up human productivity and leads to the greater and
greater socialization of production; and finally, the creation of a class
of wage workers who have the concentrated power to challenge their class
oppression.

Engels sums up the reason that socialist ideas began really to take hold
most strongly in the period of the rise of modern capitalism:

The reason is that modern large-scale industry has called into being on the
one hand a proletariat, a class which for the first time in history can
demand the abolition, not of this or that particular class organization, or
of this or that particular class privilege, but of classes themselves, and
which is in such a position that it must carry through this demand on pain
of sinking to the level of the Chinese coolie.

On the other hand, this same large-scale industry has brought into being,
in the bourgeoisie, a class which has the monopoly of all the instruments
of production and means of subsistence, but which in each speculative boom
period and in each crash that follows it proves that it has become
incapable of any longer controlling the productive forces, which have grown
beyond its power, a class under whose leadership society is racing to ruin
like a locomotive whose jammed safety valve the driver is too weak to open.

In other words, the reason is that both the productive forces created by
the modern capitalist mode of production and the system of distribution of
goods established by it have come into crying contradiction with that mode
of production itself, and in fact to such a degree that, if the whole of
modern society is not to perish, a revolution in the mode of production and
distribution must take place, a revolution which will put an end to all
class distinctions.

On this tangible, material fact, which is impressing itself in a more or
less clear form, but with insuperable necessity, on the minds of the
exploited proletarians--on this fact, and not on the conceptions of justice
and injustice held by any armchair philosopher, is modern socialism's
confidence in victory founded.

*This article first appeared in the October 26, 2007, edition of* Socialist
Worker.

_________________________________________________________

Also, NO ATTACK ON SYRIA!



http://socialistworker.org/2013/08/28/imperial-hypocrisy-to-justify-an-assault
Imperial hypocrisy to justify an assault

Lee Sustar argues that Washington's threats to carry out a military assault
on Syria are an imperialist maneuver behind the façade of "humanitarian"
concerns.
 August 28, 2013

[image: Barack Obama and John Kerry answer reporters' questions
(WhiteHouse.gov)]Barack Obama and John Kerry answer reporters' questions
(WhiteHouse.gov)

EVIDENCE OF a horrific chemical weapons attack by the Syrian regime against
civilians has revived liberal calls for "humanitarian" intervention by the
U.S. military--despite the U.S. armed forces' own recent record of mass
death and destruction in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond.

For example, *Washington Post*columnist Eugene Robinson
wrote<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-assad-must-be-punished/2013/08/26/3aaceb94-0e8c-11e3-bdf6-e4fc677d94a1_story.html>
that
President Barack Obama should "punish Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's
homicidal regime with a military strike" because "any government or group
that employs chemical weapons must be made to suffer real consequences.
Obama should uphold this principle by destroying some of Assad's military
assets with cruise missiles." "omebody," says Robinson, "has to be the
world's policeman."

The *New York Times* editorial board cautioned against an open-ended
intervention<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/opinion/responding-to-syrian-atrocities.html>,
but said that because Obama had made the use of chemical weapons a "red
line" that would trigger a U.S. response, the president now had to "follow
through." In other words, the credibility of the U.S. empire is now on the
line, so a military strike is unavoidable, according to the *Times*.

But the threatened U.S. military attack on Syria is motivated solely by
Washington's imperial aims in the Middle East, not by any desire to save
civilians from further repression by a brutal regime. The U.S. objective is
to contain and roll back the democratic revolutions of the Arab Spring, a
project it shares with allies Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf State
monarchies and, now, the Egyptian military that has reasserted its power.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

CERTAINLY THE U.S. hasn't been stirred to consider military action by the
fact that Syrians are dying in large numbers. An estimated 100,000 have
perished since the revolution against the Assad regime began in March
2011--the overwhelming majority of them civilians killed at the hands of
Assad's forces.

At least 1,000 people have died in the Ghouta region from the chemical
weapons attack, almost certainly sarin gas. Yet it wasn't the horror of the
weapons that caused Washington to prepare military action. As the *Foreign
Policy* website reported August
26<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/25/secret_cia_files_prove_america_helped_saddam_as_he_gassed_iran>,
" generation ago, America's military and intelligence communities knew
about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks far more
devastating than anything Syria has seen"--when Iraq, led by then-U.S. ally
Saddam Hussein, used such weapons against Iran in the 1980-88 Gulf War.

What U.S. politicians and the Pentagon fear most is that the use of
chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war would mean they could be used
against Syria's neighbor--and the chief U.S. ally in the region--Israel, as
well as any international "peacekeeping" forces in a post-Assad Syria. In
fact, the prospect of Islamist fighters getting control of chemical
weapons<http://www.hstoday.us/blogs/the-kimery-report/blog/officials-fear-al-qaeda-loyal-jihadists-could-overrun-syrian-wmd-sites-military-strike-contingencies-planned/8a162ac61929ea52cb547b478a391d9e.html>
is
a key factor in the U.S. hesitation to provide the opposition with the
heavy weaponry it has long sought.

What's more, the U.S., still struggling to recover from its failed
occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, is highly reluctant to put forces on
the ground in Syria. Even a Libya-style bombing campaign seems unlikely for
now, because of Syria's sophisticated, Russian-supplied air defense
systems<http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2013/08/27/Russia-Syria-has-defences-to-prevent-easy-victory-.html>.
Establishing a no-fly zone, as in Iraq after the first Gulf War, would
require a long-term bombing campaign, with likely losses of U.S. aircraft
and personnel. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
told Congress in
July<http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/07/23/204793903/no-fly-zone-in-syria-could-cost-1b-a-month-top-general-says>
that
an effort to "prevent the regime from using its military aircraft to bomb
and resupply" would cost "$500 million initially... as much as a billion
dollars per month over the course of a year."

Politicians and military leaders appear to have reached a
consensus<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/28/world/middleeast/obama-syria-strike.html>
on
a limited attack with Tomahawk missiles fired from warships and submarines.
The reported intention is to pressure Assad into foregoing the use of
chemical weapons and to keep the war from widening the refugee
crisis<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23803308> that
has already forced 1.7 million people--including 1 million children--out of
the country and internally displaced another 2 million children.

U.S. policymakers, however, are not only worried about al-Qaeda-linked
jihadists taking power. They're also concerned that the revolutionary
movement, the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), will bring to power a
popular democratic government in the wake of Assad.

As Joseph Daher of the Syrian Revolutionary Left Current points
out<http://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com/2013/08/24/imperialism-sectarianism-and-syrias-revolution/>,
the LCCs are the wellspring of the revolutionary movement and have
challenged the Islamists' repression and attempts to impose sharia law on
areas they control. "Our choice should not be to choose between on one side
the U.S.A. and Saudi Arabia, and on the other side Iran and Russia. Our
choice is revolutionary masses struggling for their emancipation," Daher
said in an interview with an Australian socialist group.

U.S. policy, therefore, is contradictory. It tolerated Gulf state Qatar's
support for Islamist fighters even while declaring the Syrian rebel group
Jabhat al-Nusra to be a "terrorist"
organization<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/world/middleeast/us-designates-syrian-al-nusra-front-as-terrorist-group.html>.
Washington has also insisted that Islamists take a back
seat<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/12/world/middleeast/syrian-opposition-groups-sign-unity-deal.html?pagewanted=all>
in
the latest version of the mainstream Syrian opposition, the National
Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. The U.S. and its
ally Turkey, moreover, have blocked heavy weapons from reaching the
fragmented opposition<http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-06-14/world/39962604_1_syrian-rebels-aleppo-qusair>
.

The bottom line is that the U.S. would like to contain the civil war in
Syria, hoping for an outcome acceptable in Washington--like an ex-general
taking power who can preserve as much as possible of the existing state.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE CHEMICAL weapons massacre, however, complicates U.S. plans.

The mass killing in Ghouta was so awful that it forced the debate on Syria
to a head<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/21/syria-chemicals-weapons-experts-lethal-toxin>.
The warheads filled with sarin gas were targeted not at rebel fighters, but
women and children in their beds. Their lungs filled with fluid,
suffocating them. Hundreds more suffered severe and crippling injuries.
Anyone with a sense of justice will be incensed by such a calculated effort
to terrorize a vulnerable civilian population.

Now Western politicians are cynically trying to turn this horror to their
political advantage. British Prime Minister David
Cameron<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23851292>
 and French President Francois
Hollande<http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/9/80084/World/International/France-will-increase-its-military-support-to-Syria.aspx>
are
joining Obama in preparing the ground for military intervention.

Secretary of State John Kerry played to the outrage over the use of
chemical weapons<http://www.theguardian.com/world/middle-east-live/2013/aug/26/syria-crisis-military-action-un-inspectors-vist-chemical-attack>when
he denounced the Syrian regime: "As a father, I can't get the image out of
my head of a father who held up his dead child, wailing," he said.

But Kerry lacks credibility when it comes to speaking out against the
savagery of the Assad regime. As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, he made outreach to Syria a personal project, in the name of
encouraging Assad's pro-market economic reforms. Even after the regime
moved to repress pro-democracy protests in early 2011,Kerry continued to
praise Assad as a
reformer<http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2011/04/28/kerrys_softer_stance_on_syria_scrutinized/>
.

The scale of Assad's repression led Barack Obama to call for Assad's
downfall two years ago <http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-202_162-20094281.html>.
But since the U.S. was unwilling to intervene to oust him, Assad has been
able to hang on, thanks in large part to political, military and economic
aid from allies<http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/09/opinion/russia-syria-relations>--mainly
Russia, but also Iran, along with the Hezbollah movement in neighboring
Lebanon, which has joined directly in the war. With the U.S. making it
clear to Assad that he had no political future, his regime has dug in and
carried out steadily more savage repression.

Key to Assad's staying power is his ability to whip up fears among ethnic
and religious minorities that they will be slaughtered if Sunni Islamist
groups come to power--as well as his claim to be the defender of the Syrian
nation against foreign powers.

A U.S.-led military strike will not only add to the killing, but will play
into the hands of the regime as it uses nationalist appeals to justify
still more barbaric repression. Already, the U.S. and its ally Turkey are
trying to bring Syrian Kurds into the embrace of the pro-U.S. regime in
Iraqi Kurdistan<http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/29/us-turkey-kurds-idUSBRE96S0FW20130729>.
U.S. intervention will only aggravate ethnic and sectarian violence, as it
did in Iraq, which is suffering through the worst sectarian violence since
2008 <http://www.dw.de/un-iraq-sectarian-violence-worst-in-years/a-16853048>
.

While Western imperialist powers and their regional allies might like to
see Assad go, they are willing to tolerate his rule for now in order to
foreclose the possibility of revolutionary change in Syria. As the
Revolutionary Left Current put it in a statement after the Ghouta
attack<http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article3078>
:

Our revolution has no sincere ally, except for the revolutions of the
peoples of the region and the world and the militants who work to free
themselves from obscurantist, oppressive and exploitative regimes.



--

powered by phplist <http://www.phplist.com> v 2.10.17, © phpList
ltd<http://www.phplist.com/poweredby>



--
If you do not want to receive any more newsletters, this
link<http://newsletters.isouc.org//?p=unsubscribe&uid=d1b0fe1d1c36d879f13eb3cb1b0c564f>

To update your preferences and to unsubscribe visit this
link<http://newsletters.isouc.org//?p=preferences&uid=d1b0fe1d1c36d879f13eb3cb1b0c564f>
Forward a Message to Someone this
link<http://newsletters.isouc.org//?p=forward&uid=d1b0fe1d1c36d879f13eb3cb1b0c564f&mid=111>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/occupycu/attachments/20130902/f6e08071/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: header_with_blacktext.png
Type: image/png
Size: 19581 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/occupycu/attachments/20130902/f6e08071/attachment.png>