Defending Cuba

Prominent intellectuals and artists
in defense of Cuba
• Architect Oscar Niemeyer, diplomat and priest Miguel D’ Escoto, philosopher Istvan Meszaros, and various famous musicians condemn the anti-Cuba media campaign Cuba • Asian solidarity organizations reject interference of European Parliament

Pedro de la Hoz

THE media campaign recently unleashed against Cuba has been met with a forceful response from prominent intellectuals and artists, who are calling for respect for the island’s sovereignty and a commitment to the strict truth surrounding events that have been manipulated and distorted by those – one example being European Parliament MPs – who are trying to revert Cuba’s history.

Architect Oscar Niemeyer Puerto Ricans Roy Brown

The most recent additions to the statement "In defense of Cuba," an initiative from the Mexican chapter of the network In Defense of Humanity, include Brazilian Oscar Niemeyer, a leading figure in global architecture of the last century; Nicaraguan diplomat and priest Miguel D’ Escoto, former president of the UN General Assembly; Hungarian philosopher Istvan Meszaros; Puerto Rican independence advocate Rafael Cancel Miranda; and Spanish novelist Juan Madrid.

A group of well-known musicians who have defined generations with their songs also agree with the description of European interference "not only as an act of interference, which we condemn in virtue of our commitment to the principles of non-intervention and self-determination," but also as the imposition of "a sole model of democracy that, incidentally, is revealing itself to be increasingly insufficient and questionable." They include Uruguayan Daniel Viglietti, Dominican Víctor Víctor, Nicaraguan Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy, Puerto Ricans Roy Brown and Danny Rivera, Argentines Víctor Heredia and Raly Barrionuevo, and Paraguyan Ricardo Flecha.

Lucid and honest voices from the United States – the political analyst Michael Parenti, filmmaker Saul Landau, anthropologist James Early, Italian-American essayist Piero Gleijeses, and actor Danny Glover – all signed the statement which states that "the economic and media harassment to which Cuba is being subjected constitutes an attack on the human and political rights of a nation that decided to take a different road."

Bolivian filmmaker Jorge Sanjinés, his Mexican colleague Jorge Fons, Argentine novelist Vicente Battista, and Spanish dramatist Jaime Losada share the same conviction.

A total of 197 representatives from 20 countries in Asia and the Pacific declared themselves "In defense of Cuba" in a solidarity meeting that took place in Vientiane, the Laotian capital. Among those attending were ministers and parliamentarians from 10 countries. They refuted the interference of European MPs and argued Cuba’s right to construct a just and humane society.

What Price Hollywood?

Precious and the Big Payback
The NAACP House of Shame
By ISHMAEL REED

"I think he's mentally ill. He's lost it. It's like he's departed from being a creative artist to being a basher. ... He's a forgotten man, eclipsed by women ascending to new heights and getting prizes. Instead of applauding them, he goes on a rampage."

-- Sapphire on Ishmael Reed’s state of mind, The St. Louis Post Dispatch, February 28, 2010

Suppose the producers of a nominated picture like “Hurt Locker,” donated one million dollars to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and on the night of the Oscar presentations “Hurt Locker” received Oscars for best picture, best actress, best supporting actress and a special honor was awarded to the “producer.”

This is exactly what happened at the NAACP Image awards last Friday night. The film “Precious” received six awards as a kind of payback to Tyler Perry who donated one million plus dollars to the organization last November.

As a result, the NAACP gave segregated Hollywood the green light to admire this abhorrent, repellant movie. They must be gloating over at EW.com (Entertainment Weekly) sites with connections to the Oscars establishment and where my Op-Ed about “Precious” printed in The New York Times was the subject of criticism by Owen Gleiberman and Lisa Schwarzbaum. Their criticism was picked up by Sasha Stone at awardsdaily.com. They and the bloggers who weighed in about my state of mind and my low I.Q. and how I was connected to the part of the body that plays a key role in the elimination of wastes will probably use these NAACP awards as justification for their defense of the film and as evidence of the black community’s support for “Precious.”

Owen Gleiberman, a man whom I have never met, said that my criticism of the movie said more about me than about the movie. He never said what my criticism of the movie said about me. I also challenged Ms. Scwarzbaum to comment about an article printed in a Jewish magazine, Tablet (“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Why Jewish producers kept Jewish women off stage and screen,” 10/20/’09), which pointed to the discrimination against Jewish women by Jewish producers, from the early days of Hollywood to the period of Woody Allen and Larry David (a guy who thinks it funny to appear in a scene eating a cookie shaped like a black penis.)
The producers’ justification, historically, was that they didn’t want their women to play the kind of roles they assigned to black and white gentile women.

Ms. Scwarzbaum didn’t answer, but seems satisfied with the roles assigned to black women in “Precious,” which now bears the imprimatur of the NAACP, the nation’s leading Civil Rights organization. On Tuesday, when I debated Cameron Bailey, the African American co-director of the Toronto Film Festival, who brought the film to Canada, the NAACP awards were the first thing that he brought up. He also followed the sales pitch directed by Lionsgate that the critics of the film were either odd or mentally ill, as a way of minimizing the widespread discontent about this film among black Americans. The sales office has singled out Armond White as the lone critic opposing the film, and seeks to dismiss him as a “contrarian,” a trend begun by the New YorkTimes’ critic A.O. Scott, for whom the family in “Precious” was the typical impoverished black family. Bailey used the same word to criticize White.

Now, Bailey and the critics at EW, including amateur shrink Owen Gleiberman, and Sasha Stone would probably be outraged by a white producer receiving awards from an organization of which he is a benefactor, but wlll probably ignore or even seek to justify the million dollars plus donation that Tyler Perry, producer of “Precious,” gave to the NAACP in November.

Now if I am mentally ill for criticizing this film as Sapphire suggests, then I’m lucky to be spared the kind of racism that black mental patients experience. I’ve examined the kind of treatment accorded the poor and the black, the kind of people who are treated like trash by city governments, the kind of people who are experimented upon by the pharmaceutical companies, while white middle class patients receive talk therapy. Black kids are treated with toxic anti-depressant drugs even when it’s not necessary, a clear case of behavior modification. I had enough creative ability remaining to stage a play, called Body Parts, about the exploitation of African Americans and Africans by rogue pharmaceutical companies that distribute drugs with full knowledge of harmful results. Paying stiff fines is just the cost of doing business. In this play and others I, with the help of Berkeley’s Black Repertory Theater and The Nuyorican Poets Café, have created roles that challenge black actors and actresses, instead of degrading them with cliché roles as male sexual predators, prostitutes and women who marry their husband’s executioner.

Cecil Brown and I produced the movie “Two Fer” about conflicts on a college campus, which like “The Great Debaters” and “Miracle at Saint Anna” isn’t likely to wow a crossover audience. Spike Lee’s “The Miracle at Saint Anna” was praised at a reception I attended which honored those Buffalo Soldiers who liberated Italian towns and cities during World War II.

It was held on Feb.12, at the San Francisco Presidio, where the audience viewed the movie “Inside Buffalo.” The black soldiers received honors from the Italians years before honors came for them during the Clinton administration. They were commanded by Southern officers because they were said to know how to handle Niggers and were often sent to the front without adequate ammunition. It was Spike Lee who brought this story to the screen instead of Tom Hanks, Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg, who can do “Mr.” (in the Color Purple) but can’t find space in his war movies for Ivan J. Houston, a Buffalo Soldier, author of the book, Black Warriors, The Buffalo Soldiers or World War II. When is the last time you saw black soldiers enacting heroic deeds in a film?

Some of those at the reception, attended by over four hundred Italians, Italian Americans and others wept when an official from the Italian consulate told the black soldiers, “We will never forget.”

In Oakland, the theater that presented “Miracle at Saint Anna” offered only one showing at 10:30 p.m. “Saint Anna” was eclipsed by “Precious.”

Sapphire charges that I have been eclipsed by black women authors, many of whom I was the first to publish. She says that I have been left behind with no prizes. That may be true, but the same can’t be said about some of the prominent black women intellectuals and authors who have been offended by Sarah Siegel’s movie. One of the black women writers whom I published when she was a student is Terri McMillan. Al Young and I were also the first to publish an excerpt from Ntozake Shange’s “Colored Girls….” I introduced the poetry of the late Lucille Clifton to Langston Hughes who published her in a major anthology for the first time. (If an “old”- the adjective used by some of the young black womanist defenders of the film used about me- loser like me can manage to publish the works of over thirty black women writers from the U.S and Africa over the last five years, why can’t Sapphire do the same and shouldn’t she avoid verbs like “rampaging” in light of her poem “Wild Thing” which helped create the hysteria that resulted in five black and Hispanic kids being sent to prison for a crime that they didn’t commit.)

During a recent interview that I conducted with Terri McMillan, the most popular of African American women writers, she was fuming as she said that the film “went too far.” Sapphire might dismiss me as mentally ill and jealous of black women who have eclipsed me and left me without prizes, but what is her answer to Ms. McMillan who is certainly not hurting for book sales, or Princeton Professor Melisa Harris-Lacewell? Is she crazy? Does her criticism of “Precious” say more about her than about the movie? She wrote “Undoubtedly Mo'Nique has given an amazing performance in Precious. But the critical and popular embrace of this depiction of a monstrous black mother has potentially important, and troubling, political meaning.”
Apparently Gabourey Sidibe’s mother Alice Tan Ridley also has problems with the film. My response to my critic Sasha Stone and the mob of hateful furious bloggers she raised at awardsdaily was that during one of her shopping sprees in Paris she might buy some gifts for Ms. Ridley. She’s the real heroine of this whole sorry business. Ms. Ridley was offered a role in the movie but after reading the novel “Push” turned it down. She’d rather earn her keep by singing in the New York subway than perform in “Precious.”

When I informed the hateful bloggers at awardsdaily.com of this fact they said that I’d made it up, but when I referred them to YouTube, where she belts out a stirring rendition of “What’s Love Got To Do With It,” they thought it cruel of me to direct them to the video. They are part of a nation of junkies, and “Precious” has become a sort of non-prescription drug for them. A cheap high. Some of those whites who defended the film against my criticisms admitted that they hadn’t even seen it and I’m suffering from mental illness? Now the NAACP award will provide them with more psychological methadone. It will give the all white Oscars’ Board of Governors (37 men, 6 women) an excuse to salute this evil wretched thing, whose reward by the NAACP shows the sad decline of Julian Bond, who, when a young man, had a future so bright that he was considered for a vice presidential nomination. (Vice President of the Board of Governors is Kathleen Kennedy, who gave us “The Color Purple.” This means that “Precious” is a shoo-in for one of two Oscars.)

On Friday night, Julian Bond, the outgoing president of an organization that has been fighting stereotypes since 1915, shared the stage with a serial stereotypes trafficker and union buster, Tyler Perry, whose movie efforts were summed up by Spike Lee, the director of at least three movie classics as: “coonery and buffoonery.”

In the New York Times, Charles Blow, in a column called “Tyler Perry’s Crack Mother,” challenged the repeated use of the black crack mother image by the film-maker. He cited a 2007 study of college undergraduates published in the Journal of Ethnicity and Substance Abuse which found that young blacks’ rates of illicit drug use was substantially lower than their counterparts, with black women having the lowest rates of all.” Yet Owen Gleiberman says that the movie reflects reality. One of the awards ceremony’s guests was Quentin Tarantino, whose movie “Pulp Fiction” was full of lame and goofy racist jokes and memorable lines like:

Jimmie: "When you came pullin' in here, did you notice a sign on the front of my house that said 'Dead Nigger Storage?'"

Jules: "Jimmie, you know I ain't seen no shit…"... More »

Why was Julian Bond looking so grim during the ceremonies? He has a sense of history. He knows that the NAACP was not founded by minstrels but by intellectuals. They fought “Birth Of A Nation” and “Gone With The Wind.” Walter White, then NAACP’s secretary, went to Hollywood in 1942 and protested the roles in which black actors were cast. One of his allies was ex-presidential candidate, Wendell Willkie, who, during a speech delivered at a luncheon for Hollywood big wigs at 20th Century Fox, said:
“… that many of the persons responsible for Hollywood films belong to a racial and religious group which had been a target of Hitler, and that they should be the last to be guilty of doing to another minority the things which had been done to them.”

White “urged Hollywood to have courage enough to shake off its fears and taboos and to depict the Negro in flims as a normal human being and an integral part of the life of America and the world.” Walter White was opposed by those actors who benefited from stereotypical roles that in hindsight seem benign in light of the kind of black characters that Hollywood is selling today.
“If the [NAACP] secretary had charmed producers, directors, and white stars, many of Hollywood’s African American actors were downright hostile to his presence. They were furious that he came to town and tried to change the movies without consulting them. The Mammy stereotype and clownish roles had provided a steady income for Hattie McDaniel, Butterfly McQueen, Stepin Fetchit, Clarence Muse, and a handful of others. Fearing the secretary’s attempt to clean up the industry would result in their loss of livelihoods, they were gleeful when his first foray produced pious sentiment and little else. White disagreed, believing that his agitation would lead to expanded acting opportunities. But more to the point, he scorned his critics. Realistically, he said, he didn’t expect thanks for his work, but he did expect those actors, who ultimately benefit from his negotiations ‘without their having to lift a finger,’ would remain gratefully silent.’”*

Though White didn’t accomplish much his agitation did succeed in getting David O. Selznick to replace the black rapist in Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With The Wind,” with a white one but now the black rapist is back in full force with “Precious,” and its business model “The Color Purple”; even President Obama was shown on MAD TV as a Mandingo stud in bed with Hillary Clinton. Sapphire says that we need more films about black rapists.

In the days of Walter White and Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP had some fight, but now this proud organization has been reduced to becoming a ward of corporate America. Promoting the artery clogging products of fast foods merchants.Taking money from criminal banks like the Bank of America and from FedEx, which recently had to pay 50 million dollars to black employees for racial discrimination, which is something that Annie Day of the Revolutionary Communist Party might note. She wrote a piece denouncing my CounterPunch article “The Selling Of Precious.” She called me--you guessed it--a “misogynist,” your typical white middle class feminist. Applying a double standard to white and black men; deferential toward their fathers, brothers, employers and gurus; unwilling to give the brothers some slack. This woman is part of a cult that revolves around a white patriarch--a cult that was abandoned by some blacks who accused it of “white chauvinism.” A woman or her co-writer Carl Dix, a black man, will never lead this group. Their praise of the movie “Precious” jibes with that of Barbara Bush. Strange bedfellows indeed. Imagine the Revolutionary Communist Party having to wake up every morning next to Barbara Bush.

The awards were also sponsored by Disney who’s “Princess and The Frog” demeans African religion, a fact noticed by the religion editor of the Times, Samuel G. Freedman (Times,2/20/’10). And now the NAACP has given the segregated** Motion Picture Academy an excuse to perpetrate a cruel joke on the black Americans on Sunday night by awarding an actress an Oscar whose role in the movie was to ask her daughter to assist her in achieving an orgasm. NAACP founders W.E.B. DuBois and Ida B. Wells, who risked her life to spark a drive to end the lynching of black men in the South, must be rolling over in their graves.

Ishmael Reed is the publisher of Konch. His latest book is Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media. He can be reached at: ireedpub@yahoo.com.

* White, The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP by Kenneth Robert Janken. New York: The New Press, 2003.

* *The DGA[ Directors Guild of America] reports that just 4% of its director membership is black; the WGA says that 4.5% of members employed as TV writers and 3.2% of members employed as film writers are black (as of 2007, the last year for which data is available). And Paris Barclay, director-showrunner of "In Treatment" and co-chair of the DGA's Diversity Task Force, estimates that up to 82% of all episodes in television are "directed by Caucasian men."

A workers state sums-up a capitalist state

Full Text of Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009 BEIJING, March 12 (Xinhua) -- China's Information Office of the State Council published a report titled "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009" here Friday. Following is the full text: The State Department of the United States released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2009 on March 11, 2010, posing as "the world judge of human rights" again. As in previous years, the reports are full of accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China, but turn a blind eye to, or dodge and even cover up rampant human rights abuses on its own territory. The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009 is prepared to help people around the world understand the real situation of human rights in the United States. I. On Life, Property and Personal Security Widespread violent crimes in the United States posed threats to the lives, properties and personal security of its people. In 2008, U.S. residents experienced 4.9 million violent crimes, 16.3 million property crimes and 137,000 personal thefts, and the violent crime rate was 19.3 victimizations per 1,000 persons aged 12 or over, according to a report published by the U.S. Department of Justice in September 2009 (Criminal Victimization 2008, U.S. Department of Justice, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov). In 2008, over 14 million arrests occurred for all offenses (except traffic violations) in the country, and the arrest rate for violent crime was 198.2 per 100,000 inhabitants (Crime in the United States, 2008, http://www.fbi.gov). In 2009, a total of 35 domestic homicides occurred in Philadelphia, a 67 percent increase from 2008 (The New York Times, December 30, 2009). In New York City, 461 murders were reported in 2009, and the crime rate was 1,151 cases per 100,000 people. San Antonio in Texas was deemed as the most dangerous among 25 U.S. large cities with 2,538 crimes recorded per 100,000 people (The China Press, December 30, 2009). The murder rate rose 5.5 percent in towns with a population of 10,000 or fewer in 2008 (http://www.usatoday.com, June 1, 2009). Most of the United States' 15,000 annual murders occur in cities where they are concentrated in poorer neighborhoods (http://www.reuters.com, October 7, 2009). The United States ranks first in the world in terms of the number of privately-owned guns. According to the data from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), American gun owners, out of 309 million in total population, have more than 250 million guns, while a substantial proportion of U.S. gun owners had more than one weapon. Americans usually buy 7 billion rounds of ammunition a year, but in 2008 the figure jumped to about 9 billion (The China Press, September 25, 2009). In the United States, airline passengers are allowed to take unloaded weapons after declaration. In the United States, about 30,000 people die from gun-related incidents each year (The China Press, April 6, 2009). According to a FBI report, there had been 14,180 murder victims in 2008 (USA Today, September 15, 2009). Firearms were used in 66.9 percent of murders, 43.5 percent of robberies and 21.4 percent of aggravated assaults (http://www.thefreelibrary.com). USA Today reported that a man named Michael McLendon killed 10 people in two rural towns of Alabama before turning a gun on himself on March 11, 2009. On March 29, a man named Robert Stewart shot and killed eight people and injured three others in a nursing home in North Carolina (USA Today, March 11, 2009). On April 3, an immigrant called Jiverly Wong shot 13 people dead and wounded four others in an immigration services center in downtown Binghamton, New York (The New York Times, April 4, 2009). In the year 2009, a string of attacks on police shocked the country. On March 21, a 26-year-old jobless man shot and killed four police officers in Oakland, California, before he was killed by police gunfire (http://cbs5.com). On April 4, a man called Richard Poplawski shot three police officers to death in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On November 29, an ex-convict named Maurice Clemmons shot four police officers to death inside a coffee shop in Parkland, Washington (The New York Times, December 1, 2 and 3, 2009). Campuses became an area worst hit by violent crimes as shootings spread there and kept escalating. The U.S. Heritage Foundation reported that 11.3 percent of high school students in Washington D.C. reported being "threatened or injured" with a weapon while on school property during the 2007-2008 school year. In the same period, police responded to more than 900 calls to 911 reporting violent incidents at the addresses of Washington D.C. public schools (A Report of The Heritage Center for Data Analysis, School Safety in Washington, D.C.: New Data for the 2007-2008 School Year, http://www.heritage.org). In New Jersey public schools, a total of 17,666 violent incidents were reported in 2007-2008 (Annual Report on Violence, Vandalism and Substance Abuse in New Jersey Public Schools by New Jersey Department of Education, October 2009, http://www.state.nj.us). In the City University of New York, a total of 107 major crimes occurred in five of its campuses during 2006 and 2007(The New York Post, September 22, 2009). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 >>| |<< 11 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 >>|

Birth of our power: 1789

Marxism and the French Revolution Tess Lee Ack 23 March 2010

The first premier of the People’s Republic of China, Chou En-lai, was once asked for his assessment of the Great French Revolution. He replied: “It’s too early to say.” The Western media thought this was really profound and the anecdote was often cited as evidence of Chou’s intellectual depth. Chou was a Stalinist, of course, but for anyone claiming to be a Marxist, this was a mind bogglingly stupid thing to say. One of the great things about Marxism after all is that it provides the analytical tool we need to make such assessments: historical materialism. Marx and Engels grew up in a world shaped by the French Revolution. Marx was born in the Rhineland, in the west of what later became Germany. This area was occupied by Napoleon’s armies until 1814, which accelerated the dismantling of feudalism in the region, and also meant that its intellectual life was deeply affected by the ideas of the Revolution. Marx and Engels were not born as fully-fledged socialist revolutionaries. The body of theory and analysis that we now call Marxism developed over a period of time in response to actual historical events and was refined and clarified in the course of debates and arguments over other, competing, ideas. Understanding the causes and outcomes of the French Revolution was an essential part of this process. Marx and Engels began their political lives as ardent democrats, in a sense taking up the banner of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”, the slogans of the French Revolution. But by the early 1840s, Marx was beginning to realise that these ideals could never be achieved in a society based on material inequality, and that real freedom and democracy were impossible in a society that was divided into exploiters and exploited – that is, a class society. This insight was crucial to the development of Marx’s ideas. In 1844 he teamed up with Engels to work on a critique of the idealism of the Young Hegelians, and out of this came their first attempt to outline the methods of historical materialism, in a work called The German Ideology. Although never published in their lifetimes, it underpinned much of their later work, and it remains today the classic introduction to the materialist understanding of history. They wrote: “Instead of starting with ideas, society can only be understood and ultimately changed, by examining the material realities on which it is based. “The premises from which we begin are…the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity.… “The fundamental fact about real individuals is that they must engage in production in order to survive, and this shapes every other aspect of their lives.” To produce what we need to survive – that is, to feed, clothe and shelter ourselves – requires raw materials, labour, appropriate tools etc. Marx and Engels called this material aspect the forces of production. But production is also a social process, in which people have to organise and co-operate to produce the things they need. So it always involves social relations. The division of labour within production gives rise to distinct social classes, which are defined by their relationship to the means of production. The ruling class of any society is the class that controls the production process and the distribution of products. Their interests are directly counterposed to those of the class they exploit in order to produce a surplus. Marx and Engels called this aspect the social relations of production. So the material conditions of production include both the forces of production – the methods and technology used – and the social relations of production – how society is organised to do this. It’s on the basis of the concrete material conditions of production that the rest of a society develops: its culture, social structures and the institutions of the state – which include armed forces to protect the minority ruling class’s control over the means of production. The forces of production and the social relations of production together make up the mode of production. Marx and Engels divided human history into periods based on the prevailing mode of production: ancient, Asiatic, feudal, capitalist – each defined by how the ruling class extracts a surplus from the exploited class. In agriculturally-based feudal society for example, ownership of the land was central to the economy. The feudal social structure reflected that fact: lords who ruled by virtue of armed force, and peasants tied to the land. This is the starting point of Marx and Engels’ materialist conception of history – as they put it, “the ‘history of humanity’ must always be studied and treated in relation to the history of industry and exchange.” So how does all this help us to understand the French Revolution? Contemporary artists and intellectuals like Goethe, Beethoven and Wordsworth welcomed the revolution. As Goethe rightly put it in 1792, the high point of the revolution: “Here and today begins a new age in the history of the world.” The French Revolution cleared the path for the development of capitalism by destroying feudalism and feudal social relations. It forced the pace of change, accelerating the development of wealth and productive enterprise to previously undreamt of levels. It hastened the ascendency of reason and science, rather than mysticism and religion, as the dominant ideas of society, and it dealt a death blow to the idea that monarchs were born with a god-given right to rule. All of this constituted a huge leap forward for humanity. But while it raised the banner of freedom and insisted that all people are born equal, the French Revolution did not liberate humanity. Instead, it brought a new ruling class to power at the head of a new and even more brutal system of exploitation. It was a bourgeois revolution, named for the class that benefited from it, the bourgeoisie; it was the capitalists who formed the core of that class. Before the bourgeois revolutions the world was very different. Most people lived in small rural communities and worked the land. Rather than selling their labour to an employer, they were forced to hand over some of their crops to landlords or taxmen. Nation states, with their defined borders, common language, standing armies and unified markets did not exist. The bourgeois revolutions in England in the 17th century, and then in France in the 18th century, forcibly transformed society to create the conditions for capitalism: the modern system of competition, wage labour and nation states. There is no single template for bourgeois revolutions; they did not follow an identical, mechanical path, nor were the outcomes pre-determined. In the 19th century for example, bourgeois revolutions were largely carried out from above by existing regimes. The only necessary component of a bourgeois revolution, and what defines it as such, is the outcome: the establishment of a state committed to ensuring the accumulation of capital. That said, the French Revolution involved three key elements: firstly, the bourgeois leadership that gave the revolution its class character; secondly, the mass mobilisations of peasants, urban masses and revolutionary armies that were necessary to take power and defend the new state; and thirdly the thorough dismantling of feudalism and removal of obstacles to capitalist development. For Marx and Engels the French Revolution provided the clearest example of how capitalism had first emerged within feudalism as a subordinate mode of production and then become dominant across a particular national territory. But this outcome was not simply the inevitable evolutionary triumph of a more dynamic economic system; it required a struggle for political power by the capitalist class against the existing feudal order – i.e. revolution. Because it was a property-owning class, the bourgeoisie was able to develop its economic and social power within the structures of feudalism. In the 60 years before the revolution, French trade grew by 400 per cent, iron production by 300 per cent and coal production by 700 per cent. These are indicators of a real and significant growth in wealth based on commerce, manufacture and trade. Factories began to appear, such as the Le Creusot iron and steel factory which employed over 1,300 workers using the most modern machinery available at the time. The size of the bourgeoisie was also growing: by 1789 it’s estimated they numbered some 2.3 million, compared to only 120,000 nobles. In the north of France, capitalist agriculture emerged, stimulating the development of transport links and infrastructure such as ports, rail and canals. These economic changes also brought increasing class differentiation between landowners and day labourers, for example. There was a certain level of integration at the top of society. All landowners, whether noble or bourgeois, were increasingly producing for the market, and nobles were increasingly involved in trade and commerce. On the other hand, whenever the king needed money, some of the wealthier bourgeois were able to buy themselves positions which conferred noble status and therefore social privileges and tax exemptions. But there were limits to this process because the whole superstructure of the state, monarchy and church were based on feudal production. The nobles were determined to maintain their power and privileges, as well as their virtual monopoly of the state, especially the judiciary and the army. So a whole series of barriers remained – feudal dues and privileges, internal tolls, taxes, monopolies and so on. These barriers hindered economic development, and put France at a disadvantage compared to its more advanced rivals in Holland and England. They also excluded the vast bulk of the bourgeoisie from political power and influence. Marx described this situation as follows: “At a certain stage in their development the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production… “From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. “With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed.’ In 1789 the French state was virtually bankrupt, and this fiscal crisis meant the imposition of harsh taxes on the commoners. Not content with being exempt from this tax burden, the nobles also raised rents, further increasing popular hardship and discontent. At the same time there was a crisis of under-investment in the capitalist manufacturing sector as well as a crisis of subsistence in feudal agriculture, which led to skyrocketing bread prices and widespread hunger. The conjuncture of all these events plunged France into a profound social crisis. The calling by the king of the Estates General – a sort of parliament representing the various social classes – was an attempt to deal with the crisis by pushing through reform. But it rapidly became the focus around which all the accumulated tensions in French society erupted. Revisionist historians argue that it was all just a bit of a squabble between the nobility and the bourgeoisie which could and should have been resolved peacefully. They argue this, not on the basis of the historical evidence, but because it serves their mission in life, which is to deny the necessity of revolution to achieve fundamental change. They ignore the historical fact that all attempts at reform and compromise utterly failed, mainly because of the resistance put up by the old order. So although many of the wealthier bourgeois would have preferred to avoid revolution, they ultimately had no choice but to go along with it. The key political leadership, however, was not provided by the big bourgeoisie, the industrialists and financiers, but rather by radical, often petit bourgeois Jacobins (such as Robespierre who was a lawyer), and a layer of alienated intelligentsia who had no ties to the old regime and no future under it. The Jacobins realised that the bourgeoisie could not defeat the old order on their own. They understood that if the revolution didn’t go forward to a successful conclusion, the gains made so far would not survive – and nor would they. In order to destroy feudalism, it was necessary to mobilise the urban and rural masses, and to do that they needed an ideology to inspire the masses and convince them that they had something to gain from the revolution. The ideology of the French Revolution was provided by the ideas of the Enlightenment, distilled into the slogans of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”. The Jacobins emphasised the egalitarian aspects of these slogans, while also pointing to the dangers of the counter-revolution with their slogan of “Liberty or death”. There was as yet no working class in the modern sense, and while the masses were not yet capable of playing an independent role, their participation was crucial. The urban poor of Paris, the sans culottes and bras nus, were particularly important, intervening at key points to either save the revolution from defeat or push it forward. With the support of the masses, the Jacobins were able to defeat the counter-revolution, win the war with Austria and complete the abolition of feudalism using the extreme measures of the Terror. The Terror wasn’t only waged against openly counter-revolutionary elements. It was also a means to discipline sections of the bourgeoisie itself. They had to be forced to agree to measures such as price controls, anathema to any capitalist, in order to keep the masses on side. Once the main objectives of the revolution were secured, however, the Jacobins’ balancing act became untenable. Robespierre’s fall in July 1794 ushered in a period of reaction and repression known as Thermidor, which culminated in the dictatorship of Napoleon in 1799. It’s important to understand, though, that this period was also part of the bourgeois revolution. Far from being an attempt to overthrow the gains of the revolution, the aim was to consolidate them and establish a stable state. The masses who had brought the bourgeoisie to power had been profoundly radicalised by the realisation that they could influence historical events, and their expectations had been raised by promises of freedom and democracy. The most radical elements were known as the enragés (“the angry ones”) and one of their leaders, Jacques Roux, spelled out the class content of the revolutionary slogans, which clearly had quite different meanings depending on your class position. “Liberty is a mere illusion when one class of men can allow the other to starve with impunity. Equality is a mere illusion when through their economic monopolies the rich hold the power of life and death over their fellow men.” With the revolution secure, it was the radicalised masses who now posed the main danger to the new ruling class. In order to develop capitalist exploitation, law and order, not mass participation, had to become the order of the day. Jacques Roux saw the writing on the wall: “They have always used men of true spirit to make revolutions, and when they don’t need them any longer, they smash them, as they would a glass.” The victory of the revolution elevated the bourgeoisie from an oppressed junior partner in the exploiting classes to the dominant class in society. And with this went a state and legal structure that reflected their interests. For all their rhetoric, what motivated the bourgeoisie was not the creation of a better society for all, but their own advancement. One of the driving forces behind their revolutionary aspirations was to build a modern, efficient and militarily strong state that could compete with England. The French Revolution could not have produced socialism, or any kind of egalitarian society. The productive forces were not sufficiently developed to eliminate scarcity, and nor were the social forces that could be the agency of such a transformation. Nonetheless revolutionaries like Marat and Roux, the sans culottes and the enragés pointed to the future, when the emerging working class would have to confront the new ruling class. By the start of the 20th century, however, socialism was definitely on the historical agenda. In the intervening period, capitalism had conquered the world to become the dominant mode of production. The productive forces had developed to the point where enough wealth could be produced to provide a decent life for all, and the working class had grown in numbers and social weight. And in the process of resisting exploitation and the attacks of the capitalists, it developed an independent class consciousness and the ability to organise. In the course of struggles like the Paris Commune of 1871 and the Russian revolutions of 1905 and above all 1917, workers discovered how to rule collectively and democratically. Today it’s the social relations of capitalism that have turned into fetters holding back human progress and condemning most of humanity to grinding poverty and misery. Capitalism has killed millions as rival ruling classes battle for supremacy, and it threatens to destroy our planet. The evidence of the past century is that capitalism cannot be reformed. The capitalists are every bit as determined as the French nobility to protect their power and privilege. Capitalism is a system of crisis that continually forces workers to fight to protect their interests. At certain points in the course of such struggles, and particularly at times of crisis, workers can begin to see the need for a revolutionary transformation to replace the whole system. The process of revolution itself is crucial to developing working class consciousness and confidence in its ability to make a better world. As Marx and Engels wrote in The German Ideology: “This revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.” But how can we be confident that a workers’ revolution won’t just end up as another form of exploitative class society? Marx and Engels argued that the working class under capitalism occupies a unique position. Unlike the bourgeoisie under feudalism, workers don’t have their own form of private property to protect. In this sense, it is, in the words of The German Ideology, a “class which no longer counts as a class in society”. They sometimes called it the “universal class”. Also unlike the bourgeoisie, the working class has no objective or material interest in the exploitation of other social forces. On the contrary, it’s in their class interest to end exploitation forever. This – plus the fact that the working class today forms the majority of the world’s population – is why it’s possible for the working class to fight not just for its own interests, but for the interests and the liberation of humanity as a whole. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels state that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” and point out that in any class society there is a constant fight going on between oppressor and oppressed, exploiter and exploited. Such battles end “either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes”. It is not a given that society goes forward. The French Revolution did take humanity forward. For all its horrors, capitalism has laid the basis for socialism by developing the productive forces to the point where humanity no longer needs exploitation and class divisions. But we are long past the point where capitalism can play any progressive, much less revolutionary role in human history. Humanity can only be liberated by another revolution, led by the working class. And this is why it’s important to defend the Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution – it’s part of our argument for revolution today.

"Mixing It Up" by Ishmael Reed

Ishmael Reed's Mixing It Up is a swift kick to the rotten pumpkin of:

-Right-wing foundations supporting Bell-Curve-style genetic racial inferiority theories;

-Cable news geniuses who can't wait to kick Black leaders;

-White liberal pundits and media log-rollers who defended Imus and rule independent Black political action out of order every chance they get.

He lampoons white liberals who create TV shows like The Wire and pretend they are portraying authentic Black urban life.

He takes on the "end-welfare-as-we-know-it" crowd and media out-riders like Oprah Winfrey.

I read this book in about six hours and could not put it down. Go get a copy. Share it with others. It quickens the pulse and connects a lot of dots.

Jay Rothermel

A recent NYT essay by Reed:

Fade to White

By ISHMAEL REED
Oakland, Calif.

JUDGING from the mail I’ve received, the conversations I’ve had and all that I’ve read, the responses to “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” fall largely along racial lines.

Among black men and women, there is widespread revulsion and anger over the Oscar-nominated film about an illiterate, obese black teenager who has two children by her father. The author Jill Nelson wrote: “I don’t eat at the table of self-hatred, inferiority or victimization. I haven’t bought into notions of rampant black pathology or embraced the overwrought, dishonest and black-people-hating pseudo-analysis too often passing as post-racial cold hard truths.” One black radio broadcaster said that he felt under psychological assault for two hours. So did I.

The blacks who are enraged by “Precious” have probably figured out that this film wasn’t meant for them. It was the enthusiastic response from white audiences and critics that culminated in the film being nominated for six Oscars by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, an outfit whose 43 governors are all white and whose membership in terms of diversity is about 40 years behind Mississippi. In fact, the director, Lee Daniels, said that the honor would bring even more “middle-class white Americans” to his film.

Is the enthusiasm of such white audiences and awards committees based on their being comfortable with the stereotypes shown? Barbara Bush, the former first lady, not only hosted a screening of “Precious” but also wrote about it in Newsweek, saying: “There are kids like Precious everywhere. Each day we walk by them: young boys and girls whose home lives are dark secrets.” Oprah Winfrey, whose endorsement assisted the movie’s distribution and its acceptance among her white fanbase, said, “None of us who sees the movie can now walk through the world and allow the Preciouses of the world to be invisible.”

Are Mrs. Bush and Ms. Winfrey suggesting, on the basis of a fictional film, that incest is widespread among black families? Statistics tell us that it’s certainly no more prevalent among blacks than whites. The National Center for Victims of Crime notes: “Incest does not discriminate. It happens in families that are financially privileged, as well as those of low socio-economic status. It happens to those of all racial and ethnic descent, and to those of all religious traditions.”

Given the news media’s tendency to use scandals involving black men, both fictional and real, to create “teaching tools” about the treatment of women, it was inevitable that a black male character associated with incest would be used to begin some national discussion about the state of black families.

This use of movies and books to cast collective shame upon an entire community doesn’t happen with works about white dysfunctional families. It wasn’t done, for instance, with “Requiem for a Dream,” starring the great Ellen Burstyn, about a white family dealing with drug addiction, or with “The Kiss,” a memoir about incest — in that case, a relationship between a white father and his adult daughter.

Such stereotyping has led to calamities being visited on minority communities. I’ve suggested that the Newseum in Washington create a Hall of Shame, which would include the front pages of newspapers whose inflammatory coverage led to explosions of racial hatred. I’m thinking, among many others, of 1921’s Tulsa riot, which started with a rumor that a black man had assaulted a white woman, and resulted in the murder of 300 blacks.

Black films looking to attract white audiences flatter them with another kind of stereotype: the merciful slave master. In guilt-free bits of merchandise like “Precious,” white characters are always portrayed as caring. There to help. Never shown as contributing to the oppression of African-Americans. Problems that members of the black underclass encounter are a result of their culture, their lack of personal responsibility.

It’s no surprise either that white critics — eight out of the nine comments used on the publicity Web site for “Precious” were from white men and women — maintain that the movie is worthwhile because, through the efforts of a teacher, this girl begins her first awkward efforts at writing.

Redemption through learning the ways of white culture is an old Hollywood theme. D. W. Griffith produced a series of movies in which Chinese, Indians and blacks were lifted from savagery through assimilation. A more recent example of climbing out of the ghetto through assimilation is “Dangerous Minds,” where black and Latino students are rescued by a curriculum that doesn’t include a single black or Latino writer.

By the movie’s end, Precious may be pushing toward literacy. But she is jobless, saddled with two children, one of whom has Down syndrome, and she’s learned that she has AIDS.

Some redemption.

Ishmael Reed is the author of the forthcoming “Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media.”

February 5, 2010

Op-Ed Contributor
_______________________________

Another excellent Reed essay debunking "Precious" and revealing its marketing program appears here.

Birth of our power: 1381 C.E.

Peasant movements and political agency

Written by Dominic Alexander

Was the Peasants Revolt of 1381 the result of organised political action or a spontaneous response to the hated poll tax?

Painting depicting the end of the peasant's revolt as Walworth kills Wat Tyler.

In 1381 the exploited classes of England erupted in a rebellion which surprised and for a time overwhelmed the ruling class; the rebels were able to execute a number of hated figures in the royal court, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury. How could this happen? One old answer rooted in the judicial records was that a ‘Great Society’ had organised this lightening strike of the mass against the elite. Rodney Hilton’s Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381(London 1973) , is a foundation text for the Marxist analysis of the revolt, its causes, nature and significance. Hilton comprehensively rejected the notion of a ‘Great Society’ organising the revolt.

It certainly seems like an anachronism, as if a revolutionary party existed amongst fourteenth-century peasants and artisans. Moreover, the notion served nineteenth-century historians as a way to distract from serious analysis of the society and economy of the time; rather the revolt was just the creation of a few nasty malcontents and ‘evil men’, as the medieval chronicler Froissart called them. However Hilton was able to show that it was the class nature of medieval society that led to 1381, as well as so many other medieval peasant movements. The rising was not merely the accidental creation of the corrupt imposition of the poll tax, as some historians would have it, nor was it any kind of ‘provincial’ rising, uniting the classes against a faction of the aristocracy. Rather it was the product of long-standing class struggles in the countryside over the feudal power of landowners, whether secular or ecclesiastic, and it was clearly led and directed by the exploited themselves.

These lines of analysis are some of the key strengths of Hilton’s work, which make the book still essential to study of the late middle ages. However, it is worth taking another look at the idea of a ‘Great Society’ which had supposedly directed the risings in Kent and Essex in particular. Hilton rejects the idea on the grounds that the Latin phrase found in the judicial records of the revolt could be translated as meaning various ‘big gangs’ rather than a single organisation. The picture Hilton gives is of a revolt which began ‘spontaneously’ and which developed organisation locally and haphazardly, creating these ‘gangs’ which attempted to direct events. It is Hilton’s attachment to the idea that villagers rose up in two counties ‘spontaneously’ which is problematic. He even refers occasionally to peasants revolts as being ‘elemental’. This is an unfortunate choice of words, implying an unconscious, mechanistic explosion of peasant rage, which is less than rationally human. And yet elsewhere in Bond Men, Hilton is able to demonstrate the originality and even sophistication of peasant demands and conceptions, and shows also the longstanding culture of religious dissent that lay behind the rebellion’s ideology; ‘when Adam delved and Eve span, who then was the gentleman?’.

Hilton is far from alone in tending, even against his better judgement, to lapse into a view of peasant struggles as being unconscious, primitive, and essentially mechanically determined. Some similar assumptions can be seen in Eric Hobsbawm’s work on the last phase of English rural rebellion, the Swing Riots beginning in 1830. E. J. Hobsbawm and George Rudé in Captain Swing (London 1969) give an account of the labourers’ protests against low wages and the elimination of commons rights which involved machine-smashing amongst other incidents of quite restrained violence against the gentry and its property. Here again the assumption that a peasant movement is at base spontaneous and ‘elementally’ un-organised actually leads Hobsbawm to miss the significance of the sequence of events in 1830-1, as we shall see.

At root of both Hilton’s and Hobsbawm’s misinterpretations is an unbalanced determinism; the same kind of determinism that sometimes led historians to plot urban riots against the exact rise and fall of bread prices. But all actions by an exploited class are conscious and organised to some degree. Not least because rebellion is dangerous and apt to be punished severely, it would have taken argument and serious practical and ideological justification to organise the kinds of action involved in either 1381 or 1830. Then as now it took the conscious activities of a minority among the exploited to turn class resentment, or localised outbreaks, into serious class war.

It turns out that in the case of 1381, something very much like a ‘Great Society’ must have existed prior to the rebellion because the events in Kent and Essex were, on closer inspection, highly co-ordinated and clearly planned. This is how the people took the gentry and authorities so completely by surprise that the King in London was left almost alone to face the rebel army. In a little known article by the left-wing early-medievalist, Nicholas Brooks (‘The organisation and Achievements of the Peasants of Kent and Essex in 1381’ in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R.H.C. Davis, eds. H. Mayr-Harting and R.I. Moore, 1985), noted that the impression left by Hilton, among other historians, was that the revolt ‘developed almost unintentionally, and that rural small-holders, bondmen and artisans were not capable of the elaborate planning necessary to realise their radical political and social aspirations’. He points out however that it only took two weeks for the insurgents to enter London after the initial outbreaks, which took place in both Kent and Essex on the same day and unfolded rapidly, comparing favourably with ‘that of the most highly trained infantry armies of later times’:

‘The synchronised assembly and movement of the insurgent forces in the two counties did not fit by chance into so neat a pattern. Decisions had to be taken and orders sent about meeting places, about dates and about targets; these decisions had to take account of the distances to be covered by each band on each day and of the time that would be needed to open gaols and to break into properties and destroy [tax] records. Every vill that sent men to the assembly-points had to be contacted in advance. . . the fundamental plan for bringing out the two shires simultaneously and moving next day to the county towns and to London on the following day must have been planned in advance by some form of central high command’ [p. 260].

Brooks bears out this analysis in painstaking attention to the timing, geography and choice of targets in all the key events in both counties. In contrast to other accounts, Brooks reveals that the documents clearly show the rebels were mounted; this was no primitive rural rable. Importantly, Brooks also notes that there is good evidence that the radical demands for the abolition of serfdom, and the effective annihilation of aristocratic government, existed right from the start of the rebellion. This is not the relatively blind agenda of an ‘elemental’ movement that developed its demands and programme in the course of the rebellion, as Hilton supposed.

A parallel critique of the Swing riots has been provided by Andrew Charlesworth in Social Protest in a Rural Society: The Spatial Diffusion of the Captain Swing Disturbances of 1830-31. Here a geographer’s approach to the timing and patterns of events revealed a great deal more co-ordination in the Swing ‘riots’ than Hobsbawm and Rudé allowed. Limited by a tendency to analyse from a deterministic perspective, Hobsbawm saw the Swing events as evidence of the age-old (and therefore unchanging) banditry type of rebellion by the peasantry. In fact, the pattern of events shows the agricultural labourers gathering and planning, at a local level, and deliberately spreading the movement, rather than the movement spreading spontaneously by example. Hobsbawm allows that contact with the great upswing of the radical politics of the period 1815-30 was significant but misses the extent to which village radicals led and organised the protests. Politicised areas in conscious relation to radical politics were at the heart of the movement, and were the most determined in the face of the authorities’ crackdown.

Hobsbawm’s picture of the rebellion was of an isolated and backward one. Inadvertently this construction gives ammunition to those right-wing liberal historians who tend to see every popular movement as inherently ‘reactionary’ and standing against progress (the same charge has been laid against 1381). Charlesworth’s analysis, emphasising the labourer’s organisational agency is a suitable antidote; they were responding creatively to new conditions, not blindly thrashing against modernity.

There is a delicate dialectic between analysis of determining structural forces and of the class struggle as the engine of history. Both Hilton and Hobsbawm in these instances paid too little attention to the agency of exploited classes. In all circumstances economic conditions and structures may limit our choices, but without the conscious, dedicated agency of the activist-inclined amongst the exploited, no class struggle would have ever had dramatic moments such as the Swing riots, let alone 1381.

A final point needs to be made before finishing. Historians who lack sympathy with rebels of the past unerringly find that their movements can be dismissed as failures, defeats, and even pointless reflexes against the march of history over their bodies. Hilton, a trifle cautiously, does point to the need to look at the results of the revolt in the long-term. Its proximate defeat did not mean that it was without positive results. Later research, not least by Hilton himself, has strengthened the argument that the revolt not only hastened, but may have precipitated the abandonment of serfdom. The revolt inspired further widespread local struggles, which if less spectacular, became a persistent warning to the ruling class. No mass movement can be dismissed on the basis that it failed to immediately achieve its key aims. It needs to be seen in the long-term context of its impact upon not only later struggles, but also the apparently unconnected decisions of ruling classes. Most of all however the study of past rebellions show how history is made from below.

Last Updated on Sunday, 14 March 2010 08:50 Sunday, 06 September 2009 10:08

French election round-up at LINKS

France: Sarkozy rejected in regional elections

....

By the executive committee of the New Anti-Capitalist Party

March 14, 2010 -- Paris -- Two major lessons emerge from the first round of the regional elections.

• The magnitude of abstention by millions of youth, workers and the unemployed, who mostly wished to register their rejection of the political parties that have alternated in power and that are responsible for aggravating their conditions of life.

• The vigor of the rejection of the right and President Nicholas Sarkozy's government -- accomplices of big investors and the richest classes, who have made the majority of the population pay the cost of the crisis and who are destroying public services and social gains -- fuelled the upsurge of the Socialist Party (PS) and Europe Écologie [Greens].

This rejection of the right allowed the PS and its allies, which have been governing 20 regions since 2004, not to be punished for their record.

Moreover, the campaign for the just completed first round was vitiated by the wave of disturbing racism from which the National Front (FN) greatly benefitted.

We thank the women and men who voted for the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) lists or the unity lists in which the NPA participated. Overall, our electoral results* are disappointing even though the results of some of our lists seem to be promising. We will analyse these facts and their causes in greater detail in coming days.

For next Sunday (March 21), we call on the voters to confirm and amplify the results of the first round by inflicting the greatest possible defeat on the lists supported by Sarkozy and [his right-wing Union for a Popular Movement] UMP. Punishing the right is an absolute necessity, even though we think that the left-wing majorities to come will be no better defence against the politics of Sarkozy than they have been for the last several years. However, punishing the right in the elections will not be enough to block its politics.

Just like what's happening in Greece, under a socialist government, it is likely to get worse in coming weeks. Pay for their crisis? No way! Like the front of youth, workers, the unemployed and the retired in Greece, we must prepare for the third round, which is social!

The 23rd of March has to become the first stage of convergence of struggles for pensions, wages and the prohibition of layoffs. And it's around these demands we wish to build the broadest unity against the right, the bosses and the bankers.

[The original statement "Déclaration du NPA au soir du premier tour des régionales" was published on the NPA web site on 14 March 2010. Translation by MRZine's Yoshie Furuhashi.]

French regional elections see centre weaken

By Jim Jepps

March 15, 2010 -- The Daily (Maybe) -- On March 14, the French regional elections saw the ruling right wing UMP take a beating and the Socialist Party (PS) extend its already extensive reach across French regional governments. The elections shine a light on exactly how unpopular Sarkozy’s government has become.
The right were determined to make this election about national identity and Islam, and the vote was conducted in the context of proposed laws to ban the burka. While playing the race card backfired for Sarkozy the dangerous game that the right were playing stoked the fascist vote and saw the National Front (FN) resurrected, gaining 12%*.

The FN's campaign focused on the "danger" that Islam poses to France and, as Sarkozy has just found out, if you encourage people to be racists they will vote for the down-the-line racists.

The results had added significance for the FN as long-time leader Jean-Marie Le Pen is 81 and is expected to step down from the party's leadership soon. The regional elections were an opportunity for potential leaders to jockey for position and Le Pen's daughter, Marine, who is already an MEP, has emerged as the likely successor.

The election's Islamophobic rhetoric spilled over into direct action with dozens of pig-masked protesters raiding a restaurant last week for the "offense" of selling halal burgers. Commenting on Sarkozy’s tactics Greens leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit pointed to the FN rise and said, "Bravo Mr. Sarkozy, here's the result."
However the story was not one sided and the French left, which has not always been strong on these issues, were able to confront these racist ideas with mixed success. The New Anti-Capitalist Party ran a hijab-wearing candidate to national uproar and most parties of the left refused to compromise with the anti-Islam mood.

The Greens (Europe Écologie) ran a very clear anti-racist campaign and saw their vote skyrocket, leaving them as the nation's third party. It's clear that while French society is seeing a rise in racism, there is a powerful countertrend of anti-racism.

Martine Aubry, leader of the victorious Socialist Party, stressed that “the French sent a clear and strong message. They today expressed their refusal to see a divided France”. That may be overstating the case, but certainly Sarkozy’s poor performance is a real victory for the left.

The rise of Greens was not wholly unexpected -- as the Greens first won third place last year at the European elections -- but its impressive result of 13%*, including more than 20% in Paris, is a massive leap forward from the last regional elections six years ago in 2004 where the Greens polled just 2%*.

When the second round of voting takes place next Sunday, March 21, this puts the left in a formidable position because the Greens explicitly position themselves as a party of the left and take part in Socialist Party-led coalitions. Negotiations have already begun between the PS and the Greens for joint lists in the second round elections which will see unprecedented Green representation. This means that while the left won 20 of the 22 French regions last time they are in position to extend that already impressive hold on regional government.

However, one of the headlines of the election is the record low turnout, with over half the electorate refusing to cast their vote. A closer look at the Socialist Party support sees that it has had a successful night because its vote collapsed less spectacularly than Sarkozy’s vote rather than because of some revival in its fortunes.

The Socialist Party has been riven with splits and rows over the last few years that saw some leading members leave the party. Likewise Sarkozy's leadership has been consistently rocked by internal rows and disaffection –- including court cases and high profile walkouts. However, unlike the PS, Sarkozy has no potential coalition partners on the right with the FN adamant that it will not lend him support in the second round.

With the centre parties losing ground and the good results for the Greens and the FN it's clear that French society is becoming increasingly polarised, a pattern we've seen recently in a number of elections in Europe.
However, the parties of the far left, which stood on a number of unity tickets, did not significantly benefit from the collapse of the centre. The left vote was, as usual, split –- but this time between left unity coalitions. The New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA), whose most recognisable figure Olivier Besancenot was the highest-polling far left candidate at the last presidential election, polled a disappointing 2%*.

Much of the press attention was focused on the fact that one NPA region selected a young female activist who wears the hijab. The party’s leadership were supportive of their candidate but there is no doubt that this was a controversial decision both inside and outside of the party.

The NPA were outshone by the “Face of the Left” (Front de gauche), a coalition between disaffected Socialist Party members, Communists and some smaller parties. It polled a more respectable 6.2%*, however both parties will no doubt be disappointed with the results.

What all this means for French politics is clear -– that the future is unclear. With racism on the rise and the FN renewal of fortunes, the threat of the far right is still very much present. However the right-wing government is unloved and faces opposition both at the ballot box and in the streets.

It's quite possible that this period could see the Socialist Party put its troubles behind it and go on to win the presidency at the next election, but nothing is certain both because of threats to their right and to their left.

Although those coalitions to the Socialist Party's left did not perform very well at this election, their vote did not collapse either and they may still be able to capitalise on the problems of the centre. Certainly the extraordinary rise of the Greens' vote shows that French voters are willing to look to alternatives and to oppose the growing tide of racism.

French elections – first thoughts

By Liam Mac Uaid

March 15, 2010 -- Mac Uaid -- French Sarkozy took a well heralded pummelling in the first round of the French regional elections and some of the lessons from France are likely to apply in the upcoming British polls.

A few things leap out from the raw figures. The first is that lots of people decided not to vote.

According to one poll cited in Libération 53.5% of voters abstained. The New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA), which scored a modest 2%, suggests reasonably enough that it was young people, workers and the unemployed who stayed at home.

The second is the strength of the far right. The Front National won 11.7%* of the vote dispelling any fantasy that it's a spent force. The racist and Islamophobic undercurrent which ran throughout the pre-election period must have benefited Le Pen. On the other side of the coin, Europe Ecologie (EE) won 13.3%* making it the third-largest force after the UMP and the Socialist Party (PS).

The combined results of the anti-Sarkozy forces PS (30%*), EE (13%*), Front de gauche (6.2%*) and the NPA and LO’s combined 3.3%* tally up to a serious rejection of Sarkozy's project. However, the third lesson, which we can take from the NPA's relatively weak performance, is that offered a choice between an explicitly capitalist party and even a neoliberalised social-democratic party working-class voters will, in the first instance, return to social democracy rather than taking the more radical new option.

As Greece shows, having a social-democratic government offers very little protection at all when the International Monetary Fund and the European Union start demanding pension cuts, wage reductions and job losses. A lot of PS voters are heading for a hangover. The question then becomes one of offering a political expression for their inevitable disillusionment when the PS comes into office.

[Liam Mac Uaid is an editor of the British socialist newspaper, Socialist Resistance.]

Morning Star: Dissatisfied French voters deal slap to Sarkozy

March 15, 2010 -- Morning Star -- French voters have dealt President Nicolas Sarkozy and his conservative administration a resounding slap by favouring left-wing candidates in the first round of regional elections, according to official results.

With more than 96 per cent of votes counted, the opposition centre-left Socialist Party was frontrunner with around 30 per cent* of the vote.

Mr Sarkozy's Gaullist Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) was in second place with around 27 per cent*, while Europe Ecologie garnered 12.5 per cent* of the vote.

The far-right National Front took 11.5 per cent*.

The Left Front, which unites the French Communist Party, the Left Party and smaller groupings, won about six per cent*.

Together, candidates from the Socialist Party, Europe Ecology and the Left Front were just shy of 50 per cent* of the vote.

Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry described the result as "encouraging."

In casting their ballots, the French "wanted most of all to express their wish for a more just and stronger France", Ms Aubry said.

The Socialists, who already control 20 of the 22 regions of mainland France, have begun horse-trading with the Greens and the left in a bid to present unified slates of candidates in this Sunday's decisive second round.

The centre-left Socialists and their allies are now on track to score a grand slam on March 21 by winning every one of metropolitan France's 22 regions.

Though the campaign had focused on regional concerns such as roads and local jobs, the vote was seen by many as a referendum on Mr Sarkozy's sweeping pro-business reforms.

Voter turnout was at a record low of about 48 per cent, 10 points lower than in the last regional election six years ago.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon of the UMP insisted that the high abstention rate "does not permit us to draw any conclusions of national relevance" and stressed that "nothing has been decided for the second round".

But political analyst Roland Cayrol said: "The French people want to punish the governing powers. Members of the governing right attribute this score to the abstentions but, in reality, the success of the left is indisputable.".

Second round to the Socialist Party and allies

March 22, 2010 -- Le Monde reports: "The Left obtained 59% of the votes in six metropolitan regions where it dueled with the Right, according to TNS-Sofres/Logica. In 12 regions where there were triangle races joined by the National Front, the Socialist Party and its allies scored 49%, against 33.5% for the Right and 17.5% for the National Front" ("La gauche confirme son succès, l'Alsace reste à droite," 21 March 2010). The Right held on to Alsace and captured Réunion. The abstention rate is estimated to be between 49% and 49.5% this time, slightly lower than in the first round (53.6%), but much higher than in the second round of the 2004 regional elections (34.32%).