The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson participates in a group sail during the Rim of the Pacific war games. | U.S. Navy via AP From June 28th to the 30th, NATO leaders met in Madrid, producing a new Strategic Concept and declaring that Russia and China are the key threats to Western security, interests, and values. For the first time, the NATO summit was expanded to include Asia Pacific “sentinel states” encircling China—Australia, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand—and the North Atlantic was expanded to include the Indo-Pacific region. It must not be forgotten that this is the same NATO that, without U.N. Security Council approval, waged an illegal war on Afghanistan and bombed Libya. This is the same NATO that waged an illegal war on Iraq that cost between 185,000 and 208,000 civilian deaths and destabilized the Middle East. It is the same NATO that is now acting as the tool for expanding U.S. imperialism’s reach even further around the world. In a fact sheet released on July 12, the U.S. government outlined its latest efforts to retain its economic and political control of the Pacific region and to contain and control China. The fact sheet includes:
RIMPACSupporting this expansion, NATO is carrying out war games throughout July, the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises. The largest air, land, and sea war maneuvers in the world, they involve 238 ships, 170 aircraft, four submarines, and 25,000 military personnel from 26 countries. It is undeniable: NATO is becoming a Pacific military force. Nearly half of the 26 countries participating are NATO members or partners. Eight are members of NATO—Canada, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Four countries are Asia-Pacific “partners” of NATO—Australia, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand. RIMPAC increases the likelihood of armed conflict between the U.S. and China, and Pacific communities are calling for an alternative future that replaces militarized security with genuine human security. In Hawai’i, the Malu ‘Aina Center for Non-Violent Education and Action says: “Join the call to cancel RIMPAC and establish a demilitarized Pan-Pacific Zone of Peace. Redirect the massive expenditure of funds from war-making to serve humanity suffering from lack of food, water, and other unmet human needs amid a global pandemic, and expanding climate catastrophe. No More War and Training for War! Restore the Pacific as an Ocean of Peace!” Militarizing Australia and the Indo-PacificExpanding Australian militarization is also increasing the chances of conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific and the threat of a wider, cataclysmic war. RIMPAC is supplemented by regular U.S. naval patrols in China’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Australia, in coordination with Washington, is installing the EEZ sensing devices so the U.S. can destroy Chinese vessels as quickly as possible at the start of any conflict. Australia has joined provocative U.S. warships’ “freedom of navigation” exercises off the coast of China. The exercises have nothing to do with the freedom to transit in the region; they are part of U.S. efforts to maintain its military dominance of the region. Along with these provocations, the 290 U.S. military bases encircling China further increase threats to security and peace. An important element in this militarization is AUKUS, the military pact between Australia, the U.K., and the U.S. announced in September 2021. The major component of AUKUS is the agreement to transfer U.S. technology for nuclear-powered submarines to Australia. Under AUKUS, Australia will be further militarized and garrisoned with more deployments of U.S. aircraft in Australia; more U.S. surface and subsurface vessels in Australia; more joint war games; four new military bases; two new bases for the militarization of space; greater cooperation in hypersonic weapons, cyber warfare, underwater systems, artificial intelligence, and long-range strike capabilities; and support for combined military operations in the region. Hugh White, in his Quarterly Essay article, “Sleepwalk to War: Australia’s Unthinking Alliance with America,” regards AUKUS as a colossal folly. The planned eight nuclear submarines, expected to be delivered around 2040, will take too long to arrive and will be too few to make much of a difference in a war with China. AUKUS, he says, is tying Australia closer to America when the country should be pursuing a more independent foreign policy. Recently, Defense Minister Richard Marles said the government will announce by March which nuclear-powered submarines Australia will acquire and whether it will spend even more money to build a conventionally powered submarine fleet to bridge the gap between the retirement of the Collins class and the arrival of nuclear-powered vessels. “The Quad” military group is composed of the United States, Japan, India, and Australia. It has intelligence exchanges, interoperable equipment, and an increasing number of military exercises, strategic dialogues, technical agreements, and coordinated activities. The U.S., Japan, and Australia have signed an infrastructure agreement. Japan has been permanently included in India-U.S. naval exercises. India’s air force participated in Australia’s Pitch Black exercises. India is buying U.S. weaponry. Japan and Australia have held naval exercises and are planning air exercises and negotiating a visiting forces agreement. Japan has agreements with India on defense equipment and the security of classified communications. India and Australia have regular port visits and increasing military exercises. Whose rules?NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said: “China is openly contesting the rules-based international order” and challenging “our values, our interests, and our security.” Australian strategic analyst Clinton Fernandes, meanwhile, notes that the so-called “rules-based order” differs sharply from the United Nations international order underpinned by international law. For the U.S. and its allies, the U.N. Charter has two flaws. One is that it bans “the threat or use of force” in international affairs. That means that it bans U.S. foreign policy. Noam Chomsky points out: “The rules-based international order overcomes this flaw. It permits the threat and use of force […]. Illustrations are so dramatically obvious that one might think that they would be difficult to ignore. That would be a mistake: they are routinely ignored. […] “The second flaw is that the U.N. Security Council and the World Court set the rules. That flaw is also overcome in the rules-based international order, in which the U.S. sets the rules and others obey.” The rules-based order apparently also has no concern for the threat that war preparations pose to the planet’s survival. The RIMPAC war games are contributing to the destruction of the ecology and aggravation of the climate crisis in the Pacific region. RIMPAC will wreak havoc on whales, dolphins, Hawaiian monk seals, and other marine mammals through explosions, sonar, and ship strikes, and they will pollute the ocean with contaminates from vessels. Land forces will conduct ground assaults that will tear up beaches where green sea turtles come to breed. Other examples of the military’s destruction include Hawaii, where the U.S. Navy’s jet fuel storage has contaminated Oahu’s aquifers. In Henoko, Okinawa, activists have been fighting U.S. Marines to preserve the coral reef and the endangered dugong. We can probably expect the same kind of outcomes in Australia. What role for Australia?The defense policies of the new Australian Labor Party government show little improvement on the previous right-wing Scott Morrison government’s disastrous approach. While Prime Minister Albanese and his cabinet are making efforts to rebuild their influence among Pacific states and Foreign Minister Penny Wong has had one meeting with her Chinese counterpart, there is no sign of change in what Paul Malone calls “some move away from Australia’s position as a vassal state of the United States, some move to temper the war-mongering rhetoric.” Speaking recently in Washington, Deputy PM and Defense Minister Richard Marles claimed China was engaging in the biggest military build-up since the end of World War II. “It is massive. It is completely changing the strategic circumstances of the Indo-Pacific and I think, beyond that, the world,” he said. He claimed that the U.S.-Australia alliance “will need to contribute to a more effective balance of military power, aimed at avoiding a catastrophic failure of deterrence,” he said. “We will make the investment necessary to increase the range and lethality of the Australian Defense Force,” Marles said. In The Communist Manifesto Karl Marx warns that the constant class struggle can end “in the common ruin of the contending classes.” Chomsky echoes this when he writes: “We will find ways to cooperate to avert disaster and create a better world, as we still can. Or we will bring the human experiment to an inglorious end.” If spending on the military could provide us with peace, wouldn’t we have achieved that already? It should be obvious by now that countries trying to outspend one another by buying more and more deadly weapons systems do not create peace or security. It has not worked in the past, and it never will. It is time for us to join together and call on governments around the world to cut military spending and instead invest in the true needs of the people and the planet to build a just and sustainable peace. As with all op-eds published by People’s World, this article reflects the opinions of its author. AuthorDr. Hannah Middleton is a longtime peace and justice activist, a leader in the Communist Party of Australia and the Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition (AABCC). This article was republished from People's World. Archives August 2022
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8/2/2022 Why does the United States insist on slandering Cuban medical internationalism? By: Elson Concepción PérezRead NowNeither is it allowed that human beings are recruited as mercenaries, forced labor workforce, sexual exploitation workers, nor for the extraction and trade of organs. However, despite this prevailing truth, it does not mean that the island is exempt from appearing in one or another of the lists prepared by the U.S. State Department from time to time. So, Cuba, which is a proud, resilient country, is judged for anything such as this recurrent unfounded accusation of human trafficking. Behind these lists are the "sanctions", old and new, including those announced by Trump, which Biden keeps intact. It is the height of irrationality that Cuba should be sanctioned because it sends doctors and other health professionals to help the peoples in the poorest and most vulnerable sectors of society of dozens of countries. Making up that Cuban medical collaboration is an expression of human trafficking is crude and untruthful, to say the least, and a sign of the desire to use a fallacy to discredit medical solidarity offered by Cuba, which is a colossal, human task. It does not matter if this slander leaves children, women and the elderly to die unprotected by neoliberal governments or threatened by the United States, for whom the word solidarity is just another profitable practice. Cuba is once again included in the list of countries who fail to comply with the international standards to fight human trafficking according to a report on said crime in 2022, presented by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. To this repeated hoax, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla warned that the U.S. government lacks moral authority and lies about Cuba's fight against human trafficking. "Their slander will not succeed in tarnishing the exemplary work in preventing and combating this scourge, nor will they bend our commitment to international medical cooperation," the minister posted on Twitter. Translated by ESTI AuthorThis article was republished from Granma. Archives August 2022 8/2/2022 Starbucks is Selling Liquid Souvenirs of your Starbucks Experience. By: Peter CoffinRead NowKarl Marx’s concept of the commodity is simple: it’s anything that is produced to exchange for another thing. This exchange isn’t merely the trading of objects; it is a social relation in which all the labor which went into creating the two commodities is ultimately embodied as the value of both of these items. Marx also made it clear that both goods and services are commodities in Grundrisse with the example of the wandering tailor. The important aspects are that it took labor to produce and its primary purpose is exchange. Marx’s critique of capitalism is built upon this and some other key criticisms. Capitalism’s primary contradiction is the socialization of production and the private allocation of the product and profit, for instance. There has recently been a discourse about a cup of Starbucks coffee and the barista who makes it. I am not interested in the idea that the barista is a parasite, nor do I want to talk in-depth about whether their labor is “productive” or not. To me, productive and unproductive labor only matters in strategic calculation once a functioning revolutionary movement is built and it must be decided where to leverage power. In building such a movement, we shouldn't discriminate in that way; the more broad support we have the more chance we have of bringing in more labor that's potentially damaging to the bourgeoisie. Further, to assert that the labor of creating physical commodities is the only way a worker can be “productive” ignores that many are operating necessary infrastructure that could easily be leveraged against the bourgeoisie if controlled – transportation workers come to mind. Just as well, some physical commodities do not matter at all in the maintaining of bourgeois rule. Novelty fart sound machines come to mind – if the workers who make those were to strike, the capitalist ruling class would not care. To flag physical commodities as the sole result of truly “productive” labor can help creates the idea that one is simply buying a cup of coffee at Starbucks – and creates an argument about whether or not the labor to produce it is “productive,” a more or less meaningless distinction at this juncture. It creates the perception that the coffee itself necessitates the human labor going into it and that this transaction is simple. It is not; we exist in advanced imperial capitalism, a system that is built on decay; one that will repeatedly cycle through crises as it redraws boundaries to preserve itself. It has complex ideologies that justify it, and they are at play when you go to Starbucks. Yes, the physical cup of coffee is part of the commodity one is buying. But one can get coffee without having a person make it for you. One can get good coffee out of a machine at a gas station (not all of them, mind you) for a fraction of what one pays at a Starbucks. The social necessity of the labor the barista performs to create the coffee, then, is what we should consider. It’s important to note that socially necessary labor is not “labor that is necessary for society to function,” as one might infer colloquially. It is the amount of labor (measured in time) necessary to create a commodity. While I do not want to imply that there is no such thing as artisan coffee a machine can not create, I want to say that most coffee made from refined ingredients could be put together by a machine (that is to say, the socially necessary labor to produce coffee is in the production of its ingredients). That machine (or several) could replace Starbucks for most customers. There could easily be a drive-thru machine that distributes coffee to people in cars. There could easily be several machines on a corner where a Starbucks used to be. However, the product itself would be less profitable. Why? Well, put simply, one can’t arbitrarily set price. Price is derived from the exchange value of a commodity, and that value (as we noted at the beginning of this article) is derived from the commodity’s embodied labor. Put simply, if Starbucks moved over to this machine model, they could not maintain their current prices – and therefore would have to accept reduced profits. If they did not, they would risk being undercut by someone else utilizing the same business model at a reduced price which actually reflects the labor going into the coffee. That competitor would also be at an advantage as it would have no productive forces to dismantle or offload. Remember, if it were suddenly not useful to have a coffee shop, everything in a coffee shop becomes outmoded. What we are discussing is an example of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. As technology and technique advance, the amount of labor socially necessary to create a commodity decreases. Thus, the value of a commodity decreases. As Rajani Palme Dutt wrote in 1934’s Fascism and Social Revolution, this creates a capitalist revolt against technology – what he called “the artificial limitation of production.” “Today the tables are turned. It is no longer the bourgeoisie who are teaching the ignorant workers, displaced and starving in millions through the advance of machinery under capitalist conditions, the blessings and advantages of machinery in the abstract. On the contrary, the bourgeoisie, now that they no longer see rising profits through the advance of machinery, but instead see their whole position and rule more and more visibly menaced by its development, change their tune; they deplore the evils of the too rapid advance of machinery; their tone becomes increasingly one of hostility, fear and hatred to the machine. It is the working class who, despite their still heavy sufferings through the advance of the machine under capitalism, now become the conscious champions of the machine, recognising in it the powerful ally of their fight for a new order, and seeing with clear understanding its gigantic future beneficent role once it becomes liberated for social use under the leadership of the working class and in communist society” Put simply, the artificial restriction of that (entirely technically possible) hypothetical “coffee machines instead of stores” business model is the artificial inflation of the value of a coffee through the injection of labor. The embodied labor is why Starbucks coffee has a high exchange value. But the value isn’t in the manufacturing of the final product. Most people see Starbucks as overpriced and pretentious, yet they manage to swindle people out of their hard-earned cash for bean water. This is how we find that the cup of coffee itself is actually the secondary aspect of the commodity one is purchasing. The service is the primary one. The service, however, isn’t simply the making of the coffee. In an advanced era of imperial capitalism justified by neoliberalism, we live extremely atomized, mediated, curated lives where people are funneled down various paths by various ideologies. The service is actually an image-commodity, an aspect of Guy Debord’s critique in Society of The Spectacle. We are not buying the service of a worker making us something, we are buying the ideology – the perception – that a person is necessary for both the coffee itself and that our interactions with them are normal and human. In reality, as my friend Fox Green of Space Commune put it in his article Deindustrialization and Fake Economy, the Starbucks barista is an actor in a play that the customer doesn’t realize they are watching – and to point this out is to break immersion. This acting is not one of an artist, however; we might consider unalienated acting a “creative labor” (as we might consider all self-directed or collaborative labor). That said, the Starbucks barista is performing entirely alien labor. Starbucks baristas are alienated from the product of their labor firstly in that they don’t even know what the product is. Most of them think their primary job is the making of coffee and that “The Experience” is just behavioral guidelines, but this couldn’t be further from the truth (as noted when we talked about the fact that their labor isn’t socially necessary to create the coffee). Now, even if they knew this, they couldn’t make choices about it; baristas are extensively trained and must adhere to these standards. The experience must be given; I have known people who have gone to work at Starbucks depressed and were sent home because of concern for The Experience. This product is created to spec and deviations are not allowed. Starbucks baristas are alienated from the act of production in that they, again, don’t really know what they are doing. They are simply performing a repeating sequence of actions and have little idea of what the final product they are producing even is. In the same way a factory worker might press a button to drill a hole in a cylinder that is part of something bigger, the barista performs a strict set of behaviors thinking they are simply selling coffee. The Experience is human interaction and the perception of the necessity of human labor, commodified. The image of communication, interaction, even closeness: This man’s libidinal connection to his barista makes me recall older men waiting for Britney Spears to turn 18 back in the day. It’s creepy. It’s creepy for a different reason, though: the connection he has with this person is mediated through layers of pretense and falseness. He doesn’t actually have a connection with this person, he has a connection with a role this person is fulfilling. That isn’t a criticism of the worker (nor is it an assertion these workers are not workers), it is a criticism of the job. A job that demeans and restricts a human being from exercising the creativity that separates us from “animals.” This person isn’t a parasite, they’re a servant of and a subject to the capitalist ruling class, as are all of us. To artificially inflate the value of coffee, labor is artificially injected into it. Let’s hypothetically say it costs around 70¢ (including ingredients and labor) to make a $3.65 grande latte. That labor ideologically justifies Starbucks keeping $2.95. Now, let’s hypothetically say an equivalent machine coffee removes the labor and costs 30¢ to make and sells for $1. That is a 70¢ margin, significantly less (keeping in mind these are estimates). It becomes obvious why they must find a way to include the labor in the commodity; it staves off the falling rate of profit. However, this is (as Dutt says) artificial. The point should not be to point out what workers are good and which ones are bad. Instead, it should be to spread class consciousness and unite the workers. Everyone deserves more. We deserve an economy that is built on benefiting us, the people. We deserve to resolve the contradiction of socialized production with the private allocation of product and profit. We deserve abundance. When someone wants to make artisanal coffee for people, it shouldn’t be a detriment for them to do so. It shouldn’t be a demeaning job that takes away their choice and dictates their expression of humanity. It should be unalienated, creative labor that we are free to engage in. Reducing the amount of embodied labor for things like coffee? It’s actually a step towards that rather than away. The capitalists want to artificially limit the productive forces, because they want to remain in control. We must unite and build against this. A new, socially owned and operated mode of production would unleash the productive forces, create immense wealth for everyone and free the human mind to live to its full potential. I promise that will result in better coffee. AuthorPeter Coffin is a video essayist (Very Important Documentaries), podcaster (PACD), and author. Relatable humor and a commitment to everyday people keeps their perspective fresh, fun, and most importantly sharp. Archives August 2022 "Thanks for the meeting, for the time, and for building bridges," said the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez in a meeting in the afternoon of July 12 with a group of students from New York University’s The New School, who are attending a summer course sponsored by Casa de las Américas. Díaz-Canel assured that between the Cuban and United States peoples there is a relationship of respect, friendship and fraternity. Photo: Estudio Revolución "Thanks for the meeting, for the time, and for building bridges," said the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez in a meeting in the afternoon of July 12 with a group of students from New York University’s The New School, who are attending a summer course sponsored by Casa de las Américas. The meeting was held in the Portocarrero Hall of the Palace of the Revolution, where the Head of State greeted each of the participants and answered their questions with sincerity. He expressed his certainty that there can be “many bridges” between Cuba and the United States because both countries “are not so far apart” and their peoples “are going to know each other increasingly better, and love each other increasingly more.” He also spoke of the beautiful lesson human beings can witness into the future: the relationship between two peoples, free of hatred and full of possibilities for sharing and complementing each other. With the optimism that has characterized the Cuban resistance, he stressed that the terrible roadblock posed by the U.S. blockade, can also be lifted with the support of friends. The meeting turned into a very humane, exciting afternoon, in which Díaz-Canel was accompanied by Minister of Culture Alpidio Alfonso and president of Casa de las Américas Abel Prieto Jimenez. The students who – as explained by program professor Gabriel Vignoli Teja – set out to find answers to world challenges by focusing their lens on Cuba, asked Díaz-Canel several questions. "Let's talk a little about socialism," the host said at one point on this far-reaching issue. In a comprehensive explanation, he explained that "for us socialism is to achieve the greatest possible social justice," in a kind of logic that differs from the capitalist, imperial, hegemonic logic, in which man is the wolf of man and in which the aim is to fracture identities and cultures that do not want to align themselves with the logic of the current empire. "We always differentiate between the Government of the United States and the people of the United States. We feel a relationship of respect, friendship and fraternity with the people of the United States; we are united by cultural, historical and relational elements; our conflict is with the Government, for the way it has treated us,” stated Díaz-Canel and thus exposed "a process of transculturation " based on the domination of others. After an analysis on the platform of neoliberal and neocolonial domination that the United States is pushing, the President addressed the ideological edge of such expansion: "They rely on an enormous and intense media strategy, especially in the social networks, to discredit the Cuban Revolution. There are attacks every day," he denounced. And he recalled that such events may be normal in other latitudes, but they are taken to all negative extremes to manipulate emotions if they occur on the island. In that war, the real causes of the problems are ignored, "and then they try to personalize the causes of those problems in the Government, in the State, in the leaders to seek a rupture between the people and the Government, and confuse on that basis," he emphasized. It is a media scaffolding made of lies and perversity, with the support of something as seductive as the entertainment industry, he said. Returning to the "ideals of building a more just society, where there is economic growth with development and social equality," the Head of State did not overlook that "our economy is an economy of war, of blockade;" that does not renounce to reach everyone from variables as important as social security and by offering many possibilities of human fulfillment. The Revolution is working for the future it aspires to, he affirmed. "What happens is that the Revolution has never been able to develop its project of socialist construction in a linear way or in a favorable situation, because it has been under a blockade since its emergence, since it declared itself socialist. What would become of this country if we did not have a blockade?” he asked the young Americans as a way of reflection. “We have not attacked the United States in any way. This is an asymmetrical situation. We as a country would never do anything against the American people-first by vocation, by feeling-, we are not a danger to the security of that nation, and much less to its people,” he recalled. "We do not hate; we love love and, if we hate something, it is hatred itself." Díaz-Canel spoke of the talent and drive of the Cubans, qualities that could have taken us much further if there had not been an encirclement that he described as an unethical action. Cuban socialism, he said, "defends the dignity of man, that man should not be humiliated, sullied, exploited, discriminated against. That is our conception of socialism, and to which we do not renounce. What would the future hold for Cuba, if the Revolution were to be lost? Would it be developed capitalism? he asked. No question was left unanswered: the president spoke about music -about his preferences, which include giants such as Silvio Rodríguez, the Nueva Trova in general, and emblematic figures of American culture, including genres such as jazz. He also talked about Havana and its architecture, youth, the development of sports and how women have stood out after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. They talked about complex challenges such as housing, or about the ways of governing the country from within. "I think I answered all the questions," said the Head of State, affectionately, to the students. And then he wanted to know: "How you feel? A young girl told of her gratitude and how Cubans showed a people that knows how to be open and welcome all those who want to know and love them. It seemed that the meeting was about to end, but the young woman wanted to know what it feels like to have a responsibility like the one Díaz-Canel has in today's Cuba on his shoulders. "I try to follow in the footsteps of two giants every day, with the conviction that I am not a giant myself," he replied. And he spoke of what is left to be done to improve in order to continue sustaining and renewing the Revolution: "We know that many people in the world are looking with faith, with hope" at the Revolution; and we feel greatly committed to these realities. He spoke of the "commitment with the Revolution with which one was born," on behalf of all the comrades working in the leadership of the country. He emphasized "the commitment with the Cuban, heroic people, who have endured 60 years of blockade, and who do not give up." Sometimes, hard truths have to be told, he reflected; "we have to work with great honesty, with great transparency." In reference to Fidel and Raúl, he said: "To follow in the footsteps of those giants, we need more and more collective leadership; that is why we are so involved now in these issues of how to create more spaces for participation, so that people are more involved in decision making, so they can contribute all their wisdom." "If one follows the people and what they are saying, one can move forward, knowing where the mistakes were made, and where the causes generated by the blockade are, which has been particularly hard in these years of pandemic, " he reasoned. When one is worthy, there is respect; the beauty of life lies in the challenges; one must know how to overcome setbacks, he said. As for the great responsibility of leading Cuba, Díaz-Canel said: "One grows as one learns, one dominates issues as one goes deeper into them; especially when there is room for improvement, especially when you see you helped people improved their situation, when you see the country is moving forward, it makes you proud, it is very uplifting." He also spoke of the tremendous admiration he feels for our scientists those who knew how to defend "the life of the country" with the vaccine against COVID-19: "We have a beautiful people -you have seen it-, people with feelings; that when they set their mind on something, they do not give up until they make it possible; and with stoicism". He then shared a definition of special value: "the Cuban people do not want to be slaves, we will never be slaves again, and we will defend the Revolution. What we have to achieve is that the Revolution makes no mistake, he stressed before the students." At the end of the meeting, in which Cuba showed itself with its concerns, reality and challenges, the Head of State asked the young students to come back. Translated by ESTI AuthorThis article was republished from granma. Archives August 2022 8/1/2022 Polls show almost no one trusts US media, after decades of war propaganda and lies. By: Benjamin NortonRead NowThe CIA has long manipulated the media, spreading disinformation to justify US wars. Today just 11% of North Americans trust television news. Very few people in the United States trust the mainstream corporate media. This is confirmed by a July survey from the major polling firm Gallup, which found that just 11% of North Americans trust television news, and a mere 16% have confidence in newspapers. It’s quite easy to understand why. The US media apparatus has repeatedly shown itself over decades to be completely unreliable and highly politicized. The corporate media’s treachery has been especially clear in the demonstrably false stories it disseminated to try to justify the US wars on Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. This disgraceful legacy continues today, in the proxy war that Washington is waging on Russia via Ukraine. Fake news echoed by the press has served as a powerful form of US information warfare. CIA plays the media like a musical instrumentA co-founding officer of the CIA, Frank Wisner, famously referred to the media as a “mighty wurlitzer,” a type of musical instrument. He boasted that the US spy agency had so many assets in news rooms across the world that Washington could play the press like a musician, in order to manipulate public opinion. Revolutionary Black nationalist leader Malcolm X, who was assassinated in an operation backed by US police agencies, recognized the power of the US media in the 1960s, warning, “The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” US media outlets have a kind of symbiotic relationship with the government, and especially with intelligence agencies like the CIA, which act on behalf of Wall Street and powerful corporations. US spies selectively leak stories to journalists, controlling media narratives to serve elite economic interests. Mainstream news publications frequently promote stories based on flimsy accusations made by anonymous US government officials, without any concrete evidence. In this way, the US national security state can spread propaganda and fake news to demonize and destabilize Washington’s adversaries. This is not journalism; it’s information warfare. But large media corporations willingly go along with it, because they profit from it. Many mainstream news outlets have a revolving door with the US government, and are owned by billionaire oligarchs who also have large contracts with US government agencies. Top newspaper the Washington Post, for instance, is the personal property of Jeff Bezos, the richest man on Earth. Bezos is the founder of mega-corporation Amazon, which has billions of dollars worth of contracts with the CIA, Pentagon, and National Security Agency (NSA). Billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, meets with US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter at the Pentagon in 2016 The media’s long history of spreading fake news to justify US warsThe North American public has lost confidence in the media in no small part because of its long history of spreading blatant propaganda and fake news in an attempt to justify US wars of aggression. The media’s history of lying in defense of US wars can be traced back to the very beginning of the country. Newspapers rationalized genocide and ethnic cleansing of Indigenous peoples by European settler-colonialists by claiming the Natives were “barbarians” and “uncivilized.” In the 1898 war between the Spanish empire and the newly emerging US empire, North American media outlets promoted false stories to justify Washington’s colonization of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. This propaganda came to be known as “yellow journalism.” When the United States dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan in 1945, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, major media outlets scrambled to defend the crime against humanity. Top newspapers falsely claimed that the atomic bombing was necessary to end the war – despite the fact that the US government’s own Strategic Bombing Survey admitted that this was false, and that the Japanese empire would have surrendered even without the nuclear attack. The New York Times published a patently ridiculous article titled “No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin.” The respected media outlet obediently echoed a US general who “denied categorically that [the nuclear attack] produced a dangerous, lingering radioactivity.” Then, as the US empire sought to justify its scorched-earth wars in Southeast Asia in 1960s, media outlets echoed fake claims by Washington that Vietnamese communists had supposedly attacked US forces in the Gulf of Tonkin. This was soon proven to be false; it was actually a US act of provocation. In the 1980s, US media outlets absurdly blamed Nicaragua’s Sandinista government for atrocities carried out by the right-wing CIA-sponsored Contra gangs waging war on the Sandinista Front. Former Contra leader Edgar Chamorro later admitted that the Contras were “a proxy army controlled by the U.S. Government,” describing them as a “Central Intelligence Agency puppet” that massacred and tortured civilians in a “premeditated policy to terrorize civilian noncombatants to prevent them from cooperating with the Government.” While US media outlets falsely accused the Sandinistas of harming civilians, Edgar Chamorro wrote that the CIA-backed “‘contras’ burn down schools, homes and health centers as fast as the Sandinistas build them.” This US strategy of laundering information warfare through the press continued in 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. US media outlets promptly spread fake news claiming that Iraqi soldiers had removed Kuwaiti babies from incubators and left them on the ground to die. This was a complete lie, but was used to justify the US war on Iraq in 1990 and 1991. The fabrication originated with the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador, who spread the false claim in testimony before the US Congress, which identified her simply as Nayirah, without disclosing her familial ties. The daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador, referred to simply as Nayirah, spreads lies in the US Congress in 1990 Just over a decade later, Washington waged another war on Iraq. In the lead-up to the illegal US-led invasion in 2003, the media spread fake stories about Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein supposedly harboring “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs). This WMD conspiracy theory was also proven to be totally false. But almost no journalists who spread the US government’s fake claims were punished or faced professional consequences. This is because they were obediently serving the interests of Washington’s war machine – and that is the true role of the media. During the NATO war on Libya in 2011, the press once again repeated fake stories, claiming that leader Muammar Gaddafi gave his soldiers Viagra and ordered them to assault women. This was an utter lie. Likewise, in the Western proxy war on Syria that began on 2011, media outlets spread false reports blaming the government in Damascus for atrocities that were actually carried out by CIA-backed Salafi-jihadist extremist insurgents. Some of these falsehoods in the Syria war were exposed by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh. Yet despite his impressive credentials, Hersh has been basically blacklisted by the corporate media, because he damaged the reputation of the US empire. Mainstream outlets now refuse to publish the renowned and accomplished reporter. More recently, US media outlets were exposed for publishing blatantly fake stories about so-called Havana Syndrome, a vague medical condition allegedly affecting US spies and diplomats. Media networks claimed, without any evidence, that Russia, China, and/or Cuba were attacking US officials with futuristic “directed energy” weapons. The CIA later admitted that this was false. The media spread another ridiculous conspiracy theory during the administration of US President Donald Trump. The press ludicrously claimed for years that Trump was a puppet of Moscow, and that the Kremlin had supposedly helped him win the 2016 presidential election. No concrete evidence was ever presented, because it was false. This scandal came to be known popularly as “Russiagate.” The fake story was endlessly debunked. But it had a massive effect on US politics, and still today many media figures repeat the nonsensical myth that Trump was a Russian asset. Russia is one of the US media’s favorite bogeymen. In 2020, the press targeted Moscow with another fake news campaign. Dozens of major media outlets published false reports, based on unsubstantiated claims by anonymous CIA officials, that Russia was paying Taliban militants to kill the US soldiers who had been occupying their country for two decades. This story was, once again, shown to be a falsehood, but only after it had the intended impact of temporarily blocking the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Today, in the ongoing US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, Western media outlets have ramped up their dissemination of fake news to demonize Moscow. Top publications spread the false claim that Russia killed Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island. Many media networks echoed the myth of a virtuosic Ukrainian pilot known as the “Ghost of Kiev,” celebrating him as a hero, when in reality he didn’t exist. Some major outlets even published video game footage and claimed it showed Russia attacking Ukraine. NBC News admits that Ukraine’s “Ghost of Kyiv” myth, which was amplified by the media, was false Mainstream media outlets lie about US-sponsored coupsAny independent journalists in the United States who challenge the lies of the mainstream media are demonized and vilified. The New York Times attacked me personally because I reported on the objective historical fact that the United States sponsored a violent coup d’etat in Ukraine in 2014. A leaked recording of a phone call between top State Department official Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, proves they were planning the putsch against Ukraine’s democratically elected government. But despite this undeniable fact, the New York Times smeared me in an irresponsible and defamatory article, claiming I was spreading “conspiracy theories” and implying that I am supposedly collaborating with China and Russia. Whenever the United States carries out a coup d’etat, mainstream media outlets act as Washington’s loyal lapdog, spreading false claims to justify its aggression. When the CIA overthrew Chile’s democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende in 1973, the press published fake stories to justify it and falsely portray the putsch as a popular uprising. The media used the same tactics of deception and information warfare to justify the 1953 CIA coup against Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, because he tried to nationalize his country’s oil, challenging the interests of British and US capitalists. Still today, we see the same propaganda and fake news. When the US government and right-wing extremists that it sponsored in Nicaragua tried to violently topple the democratically elected government in 2018, media outlets in both English and Spanish insisted that the violent putsch was actually “peaceful protests.” The press falsely blamed the Nicaraguan government for all deaths during the coup attempt, ignoring the fact that a huge number of the victims were people who supported the Sandinista Front or members of state security services who were killed by the fanatical coup-plotters. In a similar vein, the media played a key role in the US-backed far-right coup in Bolivia in November 2019. The press tried to justify the violent overthrow of democratically elected socialist President Evo Morales by falsely claiming that he rigged the election. This myth originated with the Washington-dominated Organization of American States (OAS), which helped sponsor the anti-democratic Bolivia putsch. The OAS’ false accusations were obediently spread by the media. But these lies were later thoroughly debunked by prominent academics. An academic expert debunks the lies spread by the OAS, US government, and media to try to justify the 2019 coup in Bolivia. The reason that mainstream media outlets continue to spread these fake reports, based on evidence-free claims of anonymous US government officials, is precisely because they help to advance Washington’s foreign-policy interests. For US elites, the fact that the stories are false is irrelevant. The professional reputation of corporate journalists is not hurt because they are fulfilling their political role as agents of information warfare, serving the US empire and the billionaire capitalist oligarchs who own the media companies and dictate US government policy. But for the North American public, it has become clearer and clearer by the year that the media is lying to us. North Americans don’t trust US political institutionsThe United States claims to be a model of “democracy” and “freedom,” defending a so-called “rules-based order” – in which Washington makes the rules and orders everyone around. But the reality is that many scientific studies prove that that US regime is deeply undemocratic and unpopular. The general mistrust that North Americans have in the media is a symptom of an overall lack of faith in the authoritarian US political system. A June poll by Gallup found staggeringly low levels of confidence in the US government. A mere 2% of North Americans believe their government does what is right “just about always,” and only 19% think it does what’s right “most of the time.” Many of these results fall on partisan lines. Liberals have confidence in the Democratic Party and are skeptical of Republicans, whereas conservatives have faith in the Republican Party and don’t believe Democrats. This extreme partisanism in the United States is partly a result of media conditioning. US news outlets compliantly follow the lines of one of the two corporate parties, the Democrats or Republicans. Although these two parties are nearly identical in their warmongering foreign policy and their neoliberal economic policy, they are at each other’s throats. These ruling corporate parties constantly squabble over cultural issues in order to distract the US public from the more important problems that directly affect their lives. North Americans likewise have very little faith in the other institutions that make up our deeply undemocratic society. Just 7% of North Americans have confidence in Congress, 14% in the justice system, 14% in big business, 23% in the presidency, 25% in the Supreme Court, 26% in large technology companies, and 45% in the police, according to another study by Gallup. One of the only US institutions that remains trusted is ironically the military, which constantly wages illegal wars around the world, with some 800 foreign bases. This widespread lack of confidence in institutions in the United States is a product of its ultra-capitalist model. The USA is a deeply individualistic, consumerist society in which the free market and capitalist profits are valued above everything else. This has led to an atomized culture in which many North Americans feel hopeless, depressed, and lonely. There is very little solidarity and empathy for the many people who suffer from poverty and homelessness. Corruption is rampant and systemic in the United States. The Supreme Court ruled that corporations are legally considered people. This means there is no limit to how much money large companies and billionaire capitalist oligarchs can spend on politics. In other words, bribery is essentially legal in the US political system. And candidates who have more money nearly always win the elections. In the 2016 election cycle, 95.41% of candidates running for the US House of Representatives who spent more money won, while 85.29% of candidates running for Senate with more funding won. According to any consistent definition of the term, this system cannot be considered a democracy. It is the textbook example of an undemocratic oligarchy and a plutocracy – a government ruled by the rich. While the United States portrays itself as the paradigm of democracy and freedom, actual scientific studies by academic experts show that the opposite is true: The USA is an authoritarian oligarchy run by a small handful of rich capitalists, plagued by brutal systematic violence, mass repression, and rampant racism. Yet the US empire seeks to impose its undemocratic model on countries around the world. Washington spends billions of dollars propping up corrupt right-wing dictatorships and bankrolling neoliberal opposition groups that use violence and other extremist tactics to destabilize independent foreign governments – especially socialist or nationalist states that use their natural resources to benefit their populations instead of Western corporations. Washington does this because the US oligarchy, the wealthy capitalists that truly control the government, want to exploit the resources and labor of the Global South to keep their authoritarian system going. These are the same plutocrats who own the press. And they use large media companies to spread propaganda and fake news to deceive the public and advance their economic interests. Polls show that most people in the United States can clearly see through this scam. But because the US system is so undemocratic and repressive, average working people have no real means of changing it. AuthorBenjamin Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the founder and editor of Multipolarista, and is based in Latin America. // Benjamín Norton es un periodista, escritor, y cineasta. Es fundador y editor de Multipolarista, y vive en Latinoamérica. This article was republished from Multipolarista. Archives August 2022 Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) visited the United States on July 12 and offered five proposals to U.S. President Joe Biden. These proposals are based on AMLO’s in-depth knowledge of Mexican history and his reading of the economic crisis in the United States, which seems to be losing its edge as a global leader. The first of the proposals that AMLO made was about Mexico allowing U.S. consumers to fill gasoline tanks on the Mexican side of the border. By doing so, it is permitting the United States to ease its inflation crisis. AMLO offered to double the supply of gasoline in Mexico in his show of support to further ease the crisis. Second, AMLO said that Mexico would provide for more than 600 miles of gas pipelines along the U.S.-Mexico border to help transport natural gas from Texas to Arizona, California, and New Mexico. This would benefit 3 million people in the United States. This is indirectly reminiscent of the Texas gas crisis, which cost Mexico more than 65 billion Mexican pesos. Third, AMLO suggested the elimination of red tape and tariffs on food and general consumer goods to reduce the cost of living for U.S. and Mexican families. Fourth, AMLO noted that since the pandemic and the war in Ukraine are the main causes behind the current inflation, Mexico will conduct import substitution to reduce some of the import inflation. Production of oil will go alongside the development of alternative energy sources in Mexico, and the country will also enter the lithium industry. Fifth, given that the United States will need labor to implement its infrastructural modernization plans, AMLO proposed to organize the migration of workers northward to prevent labor shortages and asked the U.S. to provide these workers with temporary work visas for this purpose. He also asked Biden to “regularize” the legal status of the migrant population in the United States to guarantee the rights of the Mexican diaspora. A close analysis of these proposals indicates that the United States finds itself in a position of relative weakness vis-à-vis both its competitors abroad (such as China) and trade partners such as Mexico (as well as the rest of Latin America). The United States’ weakness coupled with AMLO’s active leadership in Latin America, as well as the Mexican national population and diaspora’s historic support for the Mexican government, finds parallels with other moments in the history of U.S.-Mexican relations. López Obrador’s History LessonsIn his speech in the Oval Office, López Obrador recalled that when former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) came to power after the economic crash of 1929, he found the United States in crisis due to the global recession and stock market crash. At that time, Roosevelt promoted state intervention to develop welfare programs, namely a mixed-Keynesian system known as the New Deal. In addition to FDR’s New Deal, the United States eased, but did not cease, its interventionist policy in Latin America. It withdrew its troops from Haiti and allowed the elimination of the Platt Amendment, which undermined the sovereignty of Cuba. Driven by the imminent threat of World War II, the United States was forced to seek solidarity in the American hemisphere to protect its interests and its territory from potential attacks. FDR’s term in office (1933-1945) coincided with that of Mexico’s President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940). Cárdenas, a general in the Mexican Revolution of 1910, is known in Mexican history for his initiatives to ensure the development of public infrastructure, land reforms, the vindication of the rights of the working class, and his socialist education project. But above all, Cárdenas is remembered for his decree to nationalize oil in 1938. All these actions and positions led to protests by powerful sectors in the United States. However, the internal and external balance of political-economic forces prevented the White House from stopping the nationalist process of Cárdenas, who also had strong popular support within Mexico. López Obrador has also done something similar with public investment in sovereign development projects like the Mayan Train, the Transisthmian Corridor, oil refineries, and the nationalization of lithium. López Obrador also reminded Biden that during Roosevelt’s presidency, Mexico and the United States created a legal migration program, the Bracero program, between 1942 and 1964, to reactivate the U.S. economy. AMLO closed his White House speech by urging Biden to be bold, to accept the end of neoliberalism in the world, and to stand up to the right wing in the United States: “I know that your adversaries—the conservatives—are going to be screaming all over the place, even to Heaven… But without a daring, a bold program of development and well-being, it will not be possible to solve problems. It will not be possible to get the people’s support. In the face of this crisis, the way out is not through conservatism. The way out is through transformation. We have to be bold in our actions [and] transform, not maintain, the status quo.” The Political Vanguard of the Continent López Obrador has not only established himself as the political reference point for the Latin American left but has also been leading the process of integration in the south of the region through the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) summit and his diplomacy in Central America. He has managed to undermine the interventionist capacity of the United States without losing the friendly relationship with Mexico’s northern neighbor, as this official visit to the United States demonstrates. Besides this, Mexico has proposed solutions to inflation and the global ailments caused by the pandemic and the Ukraine war, encouraging its U.S. counterpart to follow Mexico’s political economy. Latin America and the Caribbean are increasingly being seen as equals to the United States; are putting themselves on the front line in the battle for the sovereignty of countries such as Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela; and are backing progressive processes such as those in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, and Honduras. Likewise, López Obrador has put on the table a political subject that will be of paramount importance in U.S. domestic life: the rights of the Mexican and Latino migrant workers. AMLO has asked them to use their votes to monitor and shape the immigration legislative reforms in the United States and to ensure that the interests of the Global South are no longer ignored during policymaking in the West. AuthorRodrigo Guillot works in the International Department of the Instituto Nacional de Formación Política (INFP), the political education institute of Mexico’s Morena (Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional) party. He is a student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City. Find him on Twitter @RodrigoGuillot. This article was produced by Globetrotter. Archives August 2022 8/1/2022 Comments on: Marxism and Finitude-Comments on Simon's Critchley's Remarks on Quentin Meillassoux's After Finitude. By: Thomas RigginsRead NowThe TLS of February 27, 2009 has a review of an important philosophy book-- After Finitude by Quentin Meillassoux-- translated from the French by Ray Brassier [i.e. "Back to the great outdoors" by Simon Critchley]. The title of the article is due to Meillassoux's desire to get directly back to nature. The following are some Marxist impressions on the philosophical issues raised by this review especially with regard to materialism and idealism in contemporary philosophy. We are told that one of Meillassoux's targets is Kant who maintained that we have knowledge of the world as it APPEARS to us. Meillassoux wants to show that we can access "the world as it is in itself without being dependent on the existence of observers." So far so good. It is interesting to note that Science Daily online posted an article stating that physicists have demonstrated that we can know that there is a world independent of our observation-- but it is very weird [“Scientists Say That Reality Is Real”]. The problem seems to be with the phrase, vis a vis the world, to access "the world as it is in itself" independent of the observer. Critchley explains that Kant thinks there is a real world independent of us but that it is mediated through our perceptual apparatus. "The external material objects that I experience in perception are nothing but "mere appearances" or "representations". But, perhaps Critchley goes too far, or is it Meillassoux as well?, in saying for Kant "the outside world exists but is only the correlate of the concepts and categories through which we conceive it." At least "outside" is not the right word to use for Kant since both space and time are for him the a priori preconditions for human experience-- the independent world does not exist in space or time as these are human ways of perception and we don't know how else to explain the world. We are told that Meillassoux considers all this (i.e., The Critique of Pure Reason) a "catastrophe" because it has led to "correlationism." What it has actually led to is the thought that the world-- both physical and social-- is not necessarily 100% just as it appears to be to any of us. That creatures with different perceptual apparatus will see it differently and experience it differently. If there was a "catastrophe" it would have been due to Hume whose philosophy led to the skeptical positions regarding humanity's ability to know anything at all that drove Kant to write the Critique. But neither were "catastrophes." Both were milestones on the road of human self awareness which have contributed to the growth of our self knowledge. Critchley tells us that Melliassoux's target is the form of correlationism associated with Husserl's phenomenology which "is based on the idea of a correlation between the intentional acts of consciousness and the objects of those acts...." What does this mean? Husserl uses the Greek term NOEMA to refer to an object as it is in-itself and NOESIS to refer to our thinking about it. We take the natural standpoint in everyday life-- i.e., we are dealing with externally existing objects in a real world. For the purposes of phenomenology we abandon this standpoint, bracket the object, and just study the way it appears to our consciousness. OK, this doesn't deny the existence of the material world but it correlates the object in this way-- the thing- in- itself and the thing-for- us. Husserl's student Heidegger is more subjective. For him the external object is determined by the noesis-- the human world is a by-product of consciousness-- so, as in Kant, we can't know the thing-in-itself. So what is the problem with this way of thinking? There are two, says Critchley. First, since it keeps reason away from the things-in-themselves, it opens the door to non reasonable explanations and theories about them (i.e., irrationalism and religion) Second: "it is wrong." Well, that is being blunt! Meillassoux thinks correlations are wrong because they can't say anything about the universe before the evolution of humans. But this is only true of the most rigid subjective idealists. Hegel (also mentioned as a correlationist) certainly believed the world to have had an objective existence before there were any people around. I can say that I think I only know the thing-in-itself indirectly by means of my perceptual apparatus and my experiences with it and yet still believe my perceptual apparatus is the product of the evolution of my species which is a recent event in the history of the universe. I neither have to "disavow" the existence of the material world nor be "an intellectual hypocrite" as Meillassoux seems to think. So now the question is--- if we reject correlationism do we have to go back to pre-Kantian "dogmatic" metaphysics? Meillassoux proposes what he calls SPECULATIVE REALISM. Critchley says, consider the metaphysics of Leibniz. Leibniz defended THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON. For every thing that exists there must be a reason why it, rather than some other thing, exists. He ends up proving the existence of God with this [a philosopher's God, not necessarily anything anybody else would use the word "God" to describe]. This is no good, thinks Meillassoux. Speculative Reason demands an absolute notion of an independently existing reality that we can have direct knowledge of and this "God" is an untidy remnant of pre-Kantian metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. Leibniz had asked, "Why is there something rather than nothing." Meillassoux dumps the principle of sufficient reason and answers "For no reason." There is no reason why there is something rather than nothing, it just is that way. Who is it now who is cutting off reason from the origin of the universe before man? The subtitle of the book is "An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency." The universe is not the result of necessity, but of a "brute contingent chaos," according to Critchley. Even though the principle of sufficient reason is not operative, human reason can explore the chaos and try to understand what is going on. But don't we need to believe in "reasons" to find out what is going on? Is it not just a dogmatic assertion to say that contingency is a necessity and fail to give a sufficient reason why this is so? We have now arrived at the "most speculative claim of the book", says Critchley. And that is that mathematics is the only method we have to find some stability and truth within the chaotic contingency of reality. Critchley writes that "his book is essentially a defense of the project of the mathematization of nature that one can find in Galileo and Descartes." We are told this reflects the mathematical ontology of his teacher Alain Badiou. So reality is a chaotic contingency but it follows mathematical laws. Hmmmm. Even if this may be fine for the physical sciences it will never due for the human sciences. Meillassoux is essentially a throw back to seventeenth century mechanical materialism. Human reality, history, psychology, the social sciences can only be understood by means of the hegelio-marxist dialectic which views this reality as in constant movement and change brought about by an inherent negativity which prevents its reduction to rigid mathematical formulae. According to Critchley, Meillassoux accepts Hume's view of nature (including man) as "a brute contingency that cannot be rationally explained", so how then can he use mathematics to explain it. How can you explain what cannot be explained? When it is rationally explained you get (non-academic) Marxism. Yipes! Critchley fears that this "mathematical romance" has seduced its author to attempt doing what Hume's philosophy "perhaps rightly prohibits." It was Hume's philosophy that generated the line Kant to Hegel to Marx, so it looks like Meillassoux should be looking forward not backward for the solution to his problems. Regardless of this caveat, Critchley finds the argument "absolutely exhilarating" as well as "brilliant." And while he finds the author "at his best when showing the complacency of contemporary Kantians and phenomenologists" I found myself wondering how widespread was the kind of "correlationism" Meillassoux objects to. All those in the Marxist tradition, Positivist tradition and Analytic tradition don't seem to be affected. He objects to an early work of Wittgenstein which Wittgenstein rejected and has now only historical interest. I think he has set up a lot of straw men to knock down. Critchley is also impressed by Meillassoux's SPECULATIVE REALISM which upholds nature as "cold and indifferent to humans." But this idea is as old as the hills. Hume held that nature cares as much for oysters as for humans, so there is nothing new here. Meillassoux promises another book to elaborate on his ideas on Speculative Reason. I hope it doesn't have "the fine-grained logic-chopping worthy of Duns Scotus" found by Critchley in After Finitude. Critchley himself makes three criticisms of the book. First, if we accept the view that "the world as it is in itself is the same as the world for us" and it is mathematics and science that reveals it "then philosophy becomes totally useless." Second, Meillassoux's model of science is physics which can describe the world before life, but what role is there for sciences like biology, psychology and economics"? Third, if physics reveals the world as it really is, how do we account for ethics and relative value systems? Should not the one real world be reflected in every cultural understanding? Critchley thinks it ironic that while advanced analytic thinkers, he mentions John McDowell and Robert Brandon, are incorporating the insights of Kant, Hegel and Heidegger into an update of the Anglo-American tradition, Meillassoux is moving backwards to Cartesianism [mechanical materialism--tr]. Critchley tells a story of a 1951 meeting between A.J.. Ayer and Georges Bataille. Ayer said he thought the Sun existed before man appeared, and Bataille thought the question meaningless since he was "more versed in Hegel and phenomenology" so as a correlationist he thought that "physical objects must be perceived by an observer to be said to exist."[Which, at least, is not Hegel's view at all.] Shocked by Ayer's attitude, Bataille is quoted as saying, "There exists between French and English philosophers a sort of abyss." The abyss, however, is between those educated in philosophy and a scientific world view and those innocent of science. Bataille's views were those of Mach and Avenarius and the Russian thinkers who Lenin criticized in his work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Marxism and the philosophy of Dialectical Materialism would certainly have sided with Ayer on this issue and seen Bataille as a representative in philosophy of an outmoded subjective idealism and the thinking of the declining bourgeoisie. The present time, when the bourgeois world is once again in crisis and manifesting symptoms of decline and decadence, is not a world where philosophers need to spend their intellectual energy in trying to refute a moribund French philosophical culture that was effectively exposed as meaningless by Lenin as well as Marx and Engels many generations ago. But if that is what Meillassoux wants to do, carry coals to Newcastle, who is to gainsay him? AuthorThomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. He is the author of Reading the Classical Texts of Marxism. Archives August 2022 |
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