Karl's comrades

[Aptrgangr]

Karl's comrades

Toronto conference seeks new friends for an old cause

Craig Offman, National Post
Published: Saturday, May 12, 2007

Making Marxism relevant in this post-Soviet age of terror might seem like the mother of all struggles, but organizers of a four-day "Festival of Resistance" in Toronto are trying hard to pull it off -- and they've cast their net as widely as possible to do it.

Rather than focus on the evils of capitalism, the unlikely top billing of the opening night of the festival was devoted to a discussion about building unity between Muslims and the left; the keynote speaker was the controversial Islamic thinker Zafar Bangash, director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, who is in the news these days because he is in the midst of a heated battle to open a mosque in Newmarket -- not because he wants to see a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Desperate for new brothers in arms, Marxism appears to be doing some serious social networking. If this weekend's series of workshops at the festival is any indication, Marxism has a disparate cadre these days: green activists, the anti-war movement, the transgendered, members of First Nations, traditional Islam.

Inclusiveness is the buzzword here, where the members of this hodge-podge gathering can be overheard calling each other brother and sister. Participants call this membership drive "building unity," a much-repeated mantra throughout the opening night. Self-proclaimed Marxist James Clark, who helped organize the event, said that while there are disparate groups in attendance, they can all still rally around a slogan like "Out of Afghanistan and into Kyoto."

Gatherings like the one this weekend at the University of Toronto are an attempt to get the party restarted. Let's face it: Das Kapital is not selling like hotcakes anymore.

Maps of the world are no longer crowded with country names that begin with expressions such as the People's Republic. Almost all of the movement's Great Leaders are now waxed and tucked away in grand mausoleums. Some socialists are looking at the dissolution of Communism as an opportunity.

"We're looking at a new beginning," said liberal thinker Stanley Aronowitz, Distinguished Professor of sociology at the Graduate Centre of the City University of New York.

"We're no longer based on the existence of nation states. We must reinvent ourselves."

None of this sounds very Marxist, does it?

In orthodox (and oversimplified) terms, the theory of the great Prussian economist and thinker Karl Heinrich Marx --dead almost 125 years --and his co-thinker Friedrich Engels is as follows: Class struggle is the lens through which we should understand the development of society. Under capitalistic control, bourgeois oppression and its exploitation of labour will lead to a socialist, and ultimately, classless and atheist society.

For a good comrade, there is still no shortage of struggles to embrace. The capitalists are despoiling the earth. Neoliberalism -- the word used in these circles to describe globalization -- has demolished the working class by exporting jobs to China and other parts of Asia where labour is less expensive

There is even a new leader to look up to. Although Cuban leader Fidel Castro may be seeing his last days, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, flush with petro- dollars, seems fit to fill the beret-andgreen- garb void.

"I think there's a new audience for socialism," said Ted Glick, an environmental activist who gave another keynote address at this Toronto gathering called, "How do we stop capitalism from destroying the planet?"

"It's really a question of finding commonality," he said.

The opening night eluded predictability or stereotype. Old-school buzz phrases such as dialectal materialism weren't exactly verbal tics among participants.

Not one T-shirt that read "Eat the Rich" could be found anywhere. Some people wore red arm bands that made them look like members of the Maoist Red Gaurds, but when asked about the significance, one wearer grumpily told me that it meant he was an organizer.

The eclectic gathering had less to do with establishing a singular vision of a state than furthering disparate agendas. If they tried, they would likely find that some of their views would be incompatible.

"For atheists, considered worthy of the death penalty by Islamists, to team up with their ultimate opponents in attacking Canadian civic society, demonstrates the fundamental bankruptcy of these two political ideologies," says Tarek Fatah, a moderate and a critic of Mr. Bangash.

Still, Marxism has a long history of embracing strange and hostile bedfellows. Even back in pre-revolutionary Russia, Mensheviks, Bolsheviks and Bundists did not always agree. Some of these groups literally wanted to kill each other and sometimes did just that. To this day, there is no agreement on the ultimate goal of the movement.

"There are more people now saying they don't have answers," Prof. Aronowitz said over the phone.

For him, the anti-war protest is old stuff. He thinks the new paradigm is the land question: space. "This is the new frontier: How are people going to eat when there's global warming? And when so few will be able to grow food?"

Others, such as Mr. Glick, who said he celebrated the demise of the Berlin Wall, said he'd like see the movement focus on a democratic, bottom-up form of government that begins in the workplace.

But what does any of this have to do with labour and capitalism? And why would a pious man like Mr.Bangash -- who railed against a Jewish group that complained about the names of his league's soccer teams, including Jihad and Hezbollah -- appear at a gathering of people, who at least in name, believe that religion is an opiate of the masses?

"The issues of justice, inequality and poverty are common themes we can work together on. They are concerns of conscience," Mr. Bangash said after a speech in an overlit lecture hall filled with about 80 people, where he raged against the indignities of Islamophobia.

In the middle of the meeting, he adjourned to pray.

It might seem that Marxism is now just a push-me-pull-you of politics, but ironically it is like a religion that in an age of relativism has to mean a lot of things to a lot of people in order to survive. The Catholic faith struggles with people who wear condoms or support liberation theology, Jews with believers who marry outside of the faith or don't support Israel. It must almost bend over backwards to broaden its support, even if it means suppressing some of its most vital messages.

After the speeches about building unity with the Muslim community, there was a so-called question period which really was an opportunity for participants to deliver what they call "interventions," or polemical statements.

At one point, a self-proclaimed Trotskyite in his 20s stood and for about three minutes declared his "absolute hostility" to all religions. The crowd shouted him down.

Several speakers later, Benoit, a 40- year-old from Gatineau who delivered his intervention sitting down, said that when he last read the Communist Manifesto, it did not say, "Atheist Communist workers of the world unite."

Minutes later, the Trotskyite slinked out.

- - -

A MARXIST GLOSSARY

Bourgeoise: The dominant capitalist class who exploit the labouring classes, otherwise know as the proletariat.

Communism: The collective ownership of the means of production. Das Kapital: Translated as Capital, this is Karl Marx's seminal treatise on political economy. Its first volume was published in 1867.

Dialectic materialism: The belief that history is comprised of class struggle. Dictatorship of the proletariat: The first step on the path to the workers' revolution in which the proletariat take power away from the ruling class and giving the state all means of production. End of history: A time when class distinctions no longer exist.

Fetishism: The belief that commodities take on human properties. Theory of alienation: even though workers contribute to the general wealth of capitalist society, they feel distanced from the goods they produce because they do not own them.


© National Post 2007

canada.com


Nothing new...

[Menydh]

Desperate for new brothers in arms, Marxism appears to be doing some serious social networking. If this weekend's series of workshops at the festival is any indication, Marxism has a disparate cadre these days: green activists, the anti-war movement, the transgendered, members of First Nations, traditional Islam.

In fact there are signs of a forthcoming Islamo-Communist alliance. Or rather Islamo-Red since it is not only the neo-Communists but also the Socialists who are playing this game with their "alliance of civilizations". There are even rumours that the leader of the Spanish neo-Communists (Izquierda Unida), Gaspar Llamazares, is considering his conversion to Islam:

http://forum.stirpes.net/ibero-roman...-espanola.html
Spanish Communist leader to convert to Islam? :: :: Freedoms Zone

There is a name for this in Spain: neo-Witizan. After the family of the Goth King Witiza, who called the help of Islam to defeat King Rodrigo and then converted to Islam.

It is worth to notice that those "social" groups which the neo-Communists are trying to attract are the same that are constantly attacking Christianism and the Church. As it is worth to notice how their Atheist anti-Christianism has derived into pro-Islamism. Incidentally, Atheist and neo-Paganist anti-Christianism among nazis has produced a few pro-Islamists too. The Islamo-Brown alliance? or is "Brown" after all nothing but a tone of "Red"?

"We're looking at a new beginning," said liberal thinker Stanley Aronowitz, Distinguished Professor of sociology at the Graduate Centre of the City University of New York.

"We're no longer based on the existence of nation states. We must reinvent ourselves."

None of this sounds very Marxist, does it?

Well, it does sound Marxistoid in much a way, since it is, after all, the Marxist anti-Nationalist and Internationalist ideal adapting itself to the trends of the modern world. Islam is, by its own nature and doctrine, opposed to the idea of nation and a form of internationalism.

Several speakers later, Benoit, a 40- year-old from Gatineau who delivered his intervention sitting down, said that when he last read the Communist Manifesto, it did not say, "Atheist Communist workers of the world unite."

I guess that Llamazares must have read the Communist Manifesto too.

Anyway, something else to watch from close these days: the Islamo-Red alliance.