The USA: Scarecrows on the March

The USA: Scarecrows on the March - español

Atilio Boron

Translated from the Spanish by Machetera

Those rulers whom the gods wish to destroy are first overwhelmed by a crisis, then coaxed into promising the suffering a radical and effective cure for the maladies of the age and finally damned because their policies are lukewarm and ambivalent.  Obama was a victim of these vicious and vengeful gods who decided to give him an exemplary thrashing in this Tuesday’s elections, taking away control of the House of Representatives, a number of governorships, and reducing the Democratic majority that remains in the Senate to its absolute minimum.  More seriously, the doors to the loft that holds the worst scarecrows in U.S. society, the angriest and most agitated of them all, were thrown open wide, catapulting a number of them to the Senate or the House thanks to a vote from a public that has grown increasingly imbecilic thanks to the patient work of the great media of mass confusion.  For some time now they’ve been working to turn a large part of the U.S. population into those “trained thugs” of which the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci spoke.  Thanks to all this, the U.S. public has accepted as valid and reasonable, affirmations that would have provoked incredulity or hilarity among the most backward and superstitious people in medieval Europe.

Raj Patel on the battle for the world food system

Jill Hickson did this interview with Raj Patel where he talks about everything from food sovereignty to patriarchy, to sustainable agriculture in Cuba and the empowerment that Cubans have as citizens, to the roots of slow food, but he doesn’t stop there.  He talks about the way forward.  24 minutes that fly by in an instant.

A future of fanatics, fundamentalists and fascists

Citizenship and Capitalism

Santiago Alba Rico – HERRIA-2000

Translation: Machetera

Let’s start with a story.

Once upon a time there was a teacher who went on a journey and became lost in the desert.  He walked and walked without coming upon either houses or food and after a few days he was so tired and famished that he sat down on the ground and began to talk with the rocks that surrounded him.  He pleaded with them, he argued with them, he lectured them with conviction and patience.  He passed many hours that way when suddenly a fairy passed by, her attention drawn by the strange behavior of our man.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

The teacher looked up proudly, a little annoyed by the interruption.

“I’m teaching these rocks to turn themselves into bread.”

“That could take quite awhile,” said the fairy. “It’ll go a lot faster with this.”

And she took a magic wand out of her bag.

The man, furious and disgusted, answered, “I’m a rational man.  I don’t believe in magic.”

And turning his head, he continued to explain to three little rocks, the molecular composition of flour.

It’s going to blow!

Dorothea Lange, Damaged Child, Shacktown, Oklahoma – 1936

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Today Machetera presents a translation of Jorge Altamira’s excellent overview of the growing world economic crisis. It brings to mind Fidel’s description of how he became a communist, as told to Ignacio Ramonet:

On my own I came to the conclusion that the capitalist economy was absurd. What I’d already become, before I’d come into contact with Marxist or Leninist material, was a utopian Communist. A utopian Communist is someone whose ideas don’t have any basis in science or history, but who sees that things are very bad, who sees poverty, injustice, inequality, an insuperable contradiction between society and true development. And I also had an ethics; I told you that our ethics came fundamentally through Martí.

I was helped a very great deal by life, the way I lived, and the way I saw the way I lived. When people talked about the ‘crisis of overproduction’ and the ‘crisis of unemployment’ and other problems, I gradually came to the conclusion that the system didn’t work. The courses in History of Social Doctrines and Labour Legislation, which had texts written or compiled by people who’d been educated in theories of the Left, helped me to think more deeply about these things.

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The Worldwide Capitalist Crisis is Unstoppable

Jorge Altamira – In Defense of Marxism

In mid-February, Nouriel Roubini, a North American university professor whose words are followed closely in the financial trade and daily press, outlined twelve reasons to support his forecast of “a growing probability of a financial unwinding and economic ‘catastrophe’ from the banking crisis in progress” in the United States. In addition, he explained in blunter terms, his “pessimism about the ability of political and financial authorities to manage and contain a crisis of this magnitude.” According to Roubini, “one must prepare for the worst, in other words, for a systemic financial crisis.”(1) Inasmuch as the financial system is the crowning glory of the capitalist system, because it’s where all labor production acquires its value, Roubini’s warning makes clear the tendency toward dissolution of capitalist social relations and the inability of the present political system to deal with such a dissolution. It’s obvious moreover, that “an (unstoppable) financial systemic crisis” will not end at the North American borders.