I note with some disappointment but no real surprise that Edward Martin and Mateo Pimentel, the authors of “Revisiting Marx and Liberalism” have not responded to my article, “No Marx!” which challenged their contention that for Marx, Socialism was the first stage of Communism.
In the United States as well as elsewhere in the global North West, Garrett Hardin’s virulent idea that “Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all” has abetted an ideology (capitalism) responsible for a global holocaust. Now, there is no life too sacred, no thing too sacrosanct that it might escape the deleterious effects of the global capitalist system and its expanding reach.
In their article “Revisiting Marx and Liberalism,” the authors, Edward Martin and Mateo Pimentel, repeat the old myth that “socialism for Marx is the first stage of communism.”
The 1923 publication of Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard contains a brief statement, one that today’s curious seekers and revolutionaries might entertain. “Not only in the world of commerce,” writes Søren Kierkegaard, the father of existentialist thought, “but also in the world of ideas our age has arranged a regular clearance-sale.” Of course, to claim that ideas exist on the market like everything else in a “world of commerce” is not to pinpoint a truth, but rather, to invoke a metaphor.
As usual, western media are deliberately confusing in communicating on the latest Mid-East conflict which eventually led to the recent atrocious bombing of Yemen by the US-directed Saudi alliance, including Qatar and other Gulf monarchies. They are proxies, to be sure, for their Washington masters. My heart is bleeding for Yemen, a country of warm and generous people I got to know well, working with them in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Over the past year, what appeared as hopeful signs, that Left governments were emerging as powerful alternatives to right-wing pro-US regimes, is turning into a historic rout, which will relegate them to the dustbin of history for many years to come. The rise and rapid decay of left-wing governments in France, Greece, and Brazil is not the result of a military coup, nor is it due to the machinations of the CIA.
A hundred years ago, it would have been unimaginable to have a pair of Muslim men enter a cafe or a public transportation vehicle, and then blow themselves up, killing dozens. Or to massacre the staff of a satirical magazine in Paris! Things like that were simply not done.
When you read the memoirs of Edward Said, or talk to old men and women in East Jerusalem, it becomes clear that the great part of Palestinian society used to be absolutely secular and moderate. It cared about life, culture, and even fashion, more than about religious dogmas.
Political economy is more often than not depicted as a Left-Right bifurcation. This is too simplistic. It overlooks the difference between, on the one hand, right-wingers such as the Conservatives, Labour Party, and Liberal Democrats from, on the other hand, the far Right British National Party in the United Kingdom. It also omits the differences on the Left, for example, between Communists and anarchists.
THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon.
Today the United States is changing its relationship with Cuba and the rest of the world, and we are beginning a project to lift the veil on the reality of our brutal and audacious imperial arrogance that has brought so much misery and suffering to Cuba, the hemisphere, and the world.
Comrades all:
We have all lived through intense and exciting moments in the last few days.
In this very month of December we successfully held the Fifth CARICOM-Cuba Summit. Last Sunday we held the Thirteenth Summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America and, on that occasion, we paid a well-deserved tribute to their founders: our close friend and Bolivarian President, Hugo Chávez Frías, and the Commander of the Cuban Revolution, Comrade Fidel Castro Ruz.
