02.06.10
Cultural Supplement: Film Review: “Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker”
These movie reviews introduce the Cultural Supplement to the issues of “Notes & Commentaries”. The link can be found here: http://mccaine.org/cultural-supplement/film-review-avatar-and-the-hurt-locker
Avatar
Two ‘political’ movies have drawn much attention lately, both for their supposed progressive political content as well as for their spectacular effects. In particular the first movie, “Avatar”, has drawn the eye, as it is the first blockbuster production using the latest 3D film technology and has been designed to maximally exploit this technology for its effects. The director, the Canadian James Cameron, had before had much financial success with “Titanic”, which became the best selling movie in terms of box office results of all time. Now he has done it again with “Avatar”, surpassing even his own record. The movie has been nominated besides for a significant number of Academy Awards, the American film prizes considered by the general public to be the most prestigious or at least important within the medium – although only one is reserved for the entire range of all films not originally in English, limiting its real meaning. This is all the more remarkable because many people have interpreted the message of “Avatar” to be an anti-imperialist and anticorporate one.
What then is there to “Avatar”? It must be said, upon viewing, that the effects are indeed spectacular. It is easily understood why this would be, if one considers the plot, or what passes for one. To quote one useful summary found on the Internet Movie Database:
“When his brother is killed in a robbery, paraplegic Marine Jake Sully decides to take his place in a mission on the distant world of Pandora. There he learns of greedy corporate figurehead Parker Selfridge’s intentions of driving off the native humanoid “Na’vi” in order to mine for the precious material scattered throughout their rich woodland. In exchange for the spinal surgery that will fix his legs, Jake gathers intel for the cooperating military unit spearheaded by gung-ho Colonel Quaritch, while simultaneously attempting to infiltrate the Na’vi people with the use of an “avatar” identity. While Jake begins to bond with the native tribe and quickly falls in love with the beautiful alien Neytiri, the restless Colonel moves forward with his ruthless extermination tactics, forcing the soldier to take a stand – and fight back in an epic battle for the fate of Pandora.”
The movie, based on this shoddy and traditional premise, basically follows two tracks. On the one hand, it seeks to overwhelm the viewer by immersing him entirely in the beautiful science-fiction world it has set up. The 3D technology is used to maximum effect to depict the many falling, running, gliding and flying scenes, both on the (appropriately cyberpunk) military-corporate base itself and on the lush and fantastic green world of Pandora, which more than anything resembles a Vernean ‘Lost World’. Moreover, the tribal people itself, the Na’vi, and their ecological surroundings have been worked out in quite surprising detail for a mainstream Hollywood film production. A linguist was hired to develop a realistic Na’vi language and the plants and animals of the fantastic world have been designed with an eye to evolutionary biology. Since the handicapped Marine protagonist, Jake Sully, only interacts with the Na’vi world through assuming control over a genetic Na’vi dummy rather than using his own body, issues such as lack of oxygen and immune system reactions are dispensed with. It would be easy to understate the spectacular effects achieved by immersing the cinema viewer in this world, which has cost the astounding sum of $400 million to make.
The other track, however, is where this movie’s great visual buildup completely collapses. The plot itself is an abomination, and no amount of faux progressive posturing can change this. Every single character is a complete cardboard figure; all dialogue proceeds according to Hollywood cliché and plot-functional stereotype; not a single person has normal, human or recognizable reactions to any circumstance. The overall structure of the plot is so completely a paint-by-numbers generic ‘tough hero finds rest in virtuous native world’, that it not only makes the impression of having been written on a napkin during an evening in the local pub, but that it is positively offensive to any real analysis of the interaction between tribal and traditionalist peoples and capitalist expansion. The very mineral that is being sought after by the utterly generic evil corporation is called “unobtainium”, as if to make a mockery of any attempt on the part of the viewer to actually be involved with the story at all.
Its anti-imperialist message is done so poorly that it actually manages to achieve the opposite effect of that intended. Not only is it completely ridiculous to leave an anti-technological message in a movie which uses the latest techniques and costs more through high tech production than many a real-life corporation can afford on R&D, but the Na’vi themselves are such stock Noble Savages that one cannot help but feel sympathy for the equally two-dimensional Marine colonel who simply wants to blow these sugary sweet elflings out of the way. What’s more, when one thinks about it, the Na’vi themselves aren’t and cannot be quite as noble as they are portrayed. To go anywhere within their forest environment, it is necessary to learn to ride animals and to leap long distances from one spot to another, and to be initiated as an adult (a hunter specifically, but we see no other classes), it is necessary to pass a number of gruelling physical and mental tests pitting one against the embodied forces of Nature. Needless to say, this is something that would not be possible for any person actually handicapped like Jake Sully is back in his own world. One is left to assume that while in the Na’vi world, a fierce and cruel eugenics system must weed out at least the physically frail and damaged, in the human world, someone like Jake Sully still gets a chance at a purpose in life even though his legs have been amputated. Clearly, score one for the humans! Another unintended effect is that of the high religiosity of the Na’vi. They are full of worship for the divine spirit that pervades all of nature, in a fairly sympathetic though enormously simplistic and whitewashed animist manner. It is suggested within the movie that because of ’special biochemical connections’ between the organisms of the planet, their religious views are actually correct – something so preposterous that one again can’t help but feel sympathy for the generic Corporation Manager when he bursts out laughing in response. Be that as it may, they do everything according to their religious beliefs, actively reject any attempts to provide scientific education, and equally refuse to coexist with the human presence. Within the tribe, all is arranged by the fiat of a male chieftain and a high priestess, positions that seem to be hereditary. In other words, taking their culture and their politics, such as they are, into account, the Na’vi appear as a group intended to be seen as the Noble Savage, but in reality appear as an idealized mixture between the Spartans and the Taliban.
In the end, the evil corporation is defeated, though at the cost of many lives among the tribal peoples. When all seems lost, Nature herself intervenes and sends (biochemically?) groups of birds and animals against the mercenaries hired by the company. Somehow, this manages to defeat them, despite their technological superiority (which is apparently not just an evil thing to have, but also totally ineffective). Despite this uplifting result, it is extraordinarily difficult to take this movie seriously as an anticapitalist or anti-imperialist production. Aside from the mentioned issues, there is no understanding whatever of what a real interaction between two such forces would be like. A more realistic and nuanced approach, for example, would have the corporation buy up a number of Na’vi with its greater wealth and arms, as well as having some Na’vi support the foreigners to rid themselves of their backwards theocratic rule. These ‘new Na’vi’ would then be installed as legitimate rulers by the company and its mercenaries, so that they can make treaty with them. Most likely, the Na’vi would be forcibly moved off the mineral-rich land to some worthless land elsewhere, where they would fall into civil war and destitution. Most Na’vi will eventually end up moving to the human world or working at the company’s Pandora stations. But such historically sensible analysis is completely alien to James Cameron’s vision, because it requires any intellectual effort whatsoever and it would set people to seriously think about the real capitalist dynamic in history, rather than providing a brief flash of ‘feel good’ sentiment about the virtuous natives which is then promptly forgotten as everyone leaves the cinema to jump in their cars or buy some extra popcorn. As it is, “Avatar” is a great lesson in how not to do ‘progressive’ movie-making.
The Hurt Locker
The other major ‘political’ movie of the moment is “The Hurt Locker”, a movie depicting the trials and tribulations of a US Army bomb disassembly squad in occupied Iraq. Here the plot is, if possible, even simpler: the squad gets a new team leader, a veteran of the Afghan wars with a case of post-traumatic stress disorder and a tendency to not follow any rules or procedure, causing just as much stress with his two squad mates. They have to manage to survive the last two months or so in Iraq with this antisocial adventurer, while we see from his perspective how he desperately tries in some way to relate to other people and maintain some degree of human relationships, although all attempts are eventually frustrated. When he befriends an Iraqi boy selling DVDs to foreign soldiers, the boy is murdered as a collaborator; when he attempts to look after a squad member who has difficulty coping with the stress, he later ends up accidentally injuring him. The movie ends unresolved, with the still traumatic squad leader deciding to re-volunteer for Iraq, not finding any peace of mind elsewhere.
So far, this is decent enough material. It subverts the old Hollywood concept of the “unorthodox rule-breaker who Gets Things Done” to some degree. It shows some scenes between the soldiers of the squad which do not neurotically avoid the necessarily homo-erotic, or at least homosocial, undertones, and what’s more, it’s made by a female director, which is a great rarity among larger Hollywood productions. Nonetheless the movie is severely flawed. Its problem is that it attempts both to be realistic and to have an engaging plot, but it cannot do both at once. If it wanted to be realistic, the squad leader (named Will James) would have been either disciplined or dead within a week for going over the line as often as he does, and there would be no story. To maintain the storyline and the tension between the characters, itself well-executed, the director Kathryn Bigelow has been forced to severely curtail the ‘realistic’ aspect, letting James get away with vastly more than he ever would and even having him praised by idiot superiors for it. Moreover, it requires also this squad to operate remarkably on its own, often in highly dangerous situations, with just three men and not receiving any land or air support. This is unlikely to say the least, and would make them easy targets in reality. Bigelow may be said to have realistically portrayed Iraq as such, with its groups of unintelligibly staring men, its sudden explosions, its endless heat and dust and its remarkable ugliness – all this when seen from the Western eye, of course. The scriptwriter, Mark Boal, has also done well in taking a slow pace with the action, not filling up the silence too much with dialogue, and keeping what dialogue there is serious and to the point. (I do not see much reason to share in the odd tendency of movie reviewers to credit every single aspect of a movie to its director, as if there are no scriptwriters.)
It remains of course a movie seen from Western eyes, and it is studiously noncommittal as to the correctness of the occupation as such. At most one could get the impression of its supposed futility, although whether that is correct is another matter. But that is acceptable enough if it manages to portray realism from the perspective of the soldiers with a compelling character portrait, as succeeded to some degree in the much-lauded television series “Generation Kill”. As it is, the movie however fails entirely to ’stand on two legs’, and rather hops back and forth between realism and dramatic tension. It does not make the movie a bad movie, but it prevents it from becoming a good one.
12.09.09
Jared Diamond and the ‘green’ capitalists
Well-known anthropologist and popular science writer Jared Diamond has written an opinion article in the New York Times in which he praises various large multinationals for adopting a supposedly more ‘green’ way of operating, since their profit incentive forces them to do so.(1) He is particularly lavish in his praise for the Chevron oil group, which is or was active in oil projects in New Guinea, the region Diamond is professionally specialized in. He has written about their activities in New Guinea before in his book Collapse, where he also lauded their supposed efforts to improve the environment.(2)
Now his reasoning runs as follows:
When I asked how a publicly traded company could justify to its shareholders its expenditures on the environment, Chevron employees and executives gave me at least five reasons.First, oil spills can be horribly expensive: it is far cheaper to prevent them than to clean them up. Second, clean practices reduce the risk that New Guinean landowners become angry, sue for damages and close the fields. (The company has been sued for problems in Ecuador that Chevron inherited when it merged with Texaco in 2001.) Next, environmental standards are becoming stricter around the world, so building clean facilities now minimizes having to do expensive retrofitting later.
Also, clean operations in one country give a company an advantage in bidding on leases in other countries. Finally, environmental practices of which employees are proud improve morale, help with recruitment and increase the length of time employees are likely to remain at the company.
(2)
Now rare is the person who actually believes that these are honest responses on the part of the Chevron group. As a matter of fact, the activities of that company in New Guinea were heavily contested by the local population, the same people Diamond is supposed to scientifically analyze, but whose interests he is apparently blind to. As Louis Proyect points out:
The 5,000 supposed local beneficiaries of the project, members of the Fasu, Foe and Kikori clans, became increasingly unhappy after oil began being shipped in late 1992. In December 1993, 60 Foe men were arrested for protesting over inadequate royalty payments and were carried off in Chevron helicopters to a nearby jail. Once again Diamond’s favorite capitalist corporation was relying on helicopters to deal with the restless natives.In December 1995, confrontations deepened further. Indigenous people threatened to blow up the pipeline, prompting Chevron to remove non-essential staff. Although Chevron eventually placated them with handouts, there is little doubt that a culture of dependency was created. Few of them actually work for Chevron but rely on the dole. When Chevron exhausts the local oil supplies, it is doubtful that native Papuans will be able to fend for themselves.
According to Kennedy, “the mining and petroleum sector is based on the degradation of natural capital and produces few human-made assets for PNG. It employs less than 2 percent of the population and does not add value to the raw materials. And in those boom years, the national government ran up an enormous foreign debt, causing it to bow to the strictures of a major structural adjustment program administered by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, in conjunction with its old colonial master Australia, in order to avert a cash-flow crisis.”
(3)
How come Diamond is so blind to these issues? First of all, he is of course no political economist, and one could say that therefore it is all too easy for a company with a sensible public relations department to fool and/or flatter an unsuspecting scientist into supporting their activities. But Diamond himelf has seen fit to use his scientific background to make quite expansive and speculative pronunciations about political economic development in the past, most notably in his best-selling book Guns, Germs and Steel.(5) So he cannot be acquitted on these grounds. It must then be his involvement with the World Wildlife Foundation and a pro-capitalist environmental group called Conservation International. The former of these has been happy to take money from multinational companies in return for good press regarding their environmental activities, under the reasoning that this way at least the money would go to good causes. Something similar applies to the latter organization. But this particular case of Diamond folly makes clear the dangers of such an approach. Capitalist firms are all too aware of the costs of environmental regulation on their profit margins: Chevron and similar companies as a result attempt to stave them off by making a good impression on the green-minded sections of the ruling class, so that they will not draw the public ire. As Proyect describes it:
If Chevron were solely about manipulating imagery, then the job of debunking WWF and Jared Diamond’s claims on their behalf would be a lot easier. As it turns out, Chevron did clean up their act to a significant extent in the 1980s and 90s. This was the product of sustained environmental protests and legal actions by the federal government. In 1994, Chevron spent almost $1.5 billion on environmental programs.
(6)
That is not to say however, as Diamond does, that the logic of capital can somehow be reconciled with the interests of the natural environment. Indeed, on occasion multinationals may donate money to environmental causes to improve their standing. Indeed, it is true that they depend on natural resources in many cases, such as Coca-Cola does with water (as Diamond stresses), and that this means that they will have an interest in making sure those resources will stay available for the future. But what is much more relevant is the question in the first place of the use of such resources. Coca-Cola may have an interest in making sure sufficient water is available to produce its soft drink. But do we really need the Coca-Cola company to know how important protecting the water supply is? And if such water is available, why should we waste it all on providing it to that soft drink company? Such companies only have an interest in renewal of resources up to the maximum of their own use. Beyond that, they have absolutely no incentive to create and maintain a sustainable metabolism with nature. Coca-Cola only needs sufficient water for its profit margins, and if it could, it would aggregate all water in the world for its own use to ensure this; and anything beyond the water it needs for its own production, it will not care a fig for. This is why the activities of the Coca-Cola company have been disastrous for the water supply in India, for example.
Diamond is quite right that the fact alone companies have an interest in maintaining renewal of resources should be a good thing. Every little bit helps in that regard. But what he fails to see is that it is precisely the private ownership of those resources that introduces the irrationality into the picture, where on the one hand Coca-Cola donates money to preserve the world’s largest rivers, and on the other hand it depletes the water commons in Rajastan. Coca-Cola does not desire the renewal of water as such, but the renewal of its hold over water in the production process. That is the logic of capital: common resources, private appropriation. This is no basis for a sustainable future, and Diamond should know better.
1), 3) Jared Diamond, “Will Big Business Save the Earth?”. New York Times (Dec. 5, 2009).
2) Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York, NY 2005).
4), 6) Louis Proyect, “Shilling for Chevron”. Counterpunch (May 9, 2005).
5) Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York, NY 2005).
12.04.09
The Red and the Green II: Judgment at København
There seems to be a general sentiment among those segments of the global population committed to the preservation and survival of the environment we live in that the coming United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in København, to be held between 7 and 18 December 2009, will be decisive. At this conference it will have to be decided whether the political leaders of the world are capable of undertaking serious and coordinated efforts to combat the environmental impact of capitalist industrialization, or whether they will by force of competition on the political and economic planes once again let down the needs and aspirations of the world’s population, human and nonhuman. The Kyoto Protocol, a moderate and very tempered attempt to bind the leading industrial and industrializing nations to a reduction in the output of greenhouse gases, has failed as the United States refuses to in any way curb its potential capital accumulation, even if this is for the benefit of the survival of the planet as we know it. At the same time, there is much acrimony between major industrializing states such as India and China and the Western nations, where the latter want the former to bear much of the burden of their polluting industrial output, whereas the former quite rightly point out that the Western nations never cared about it during their phase of Industrial Revolution and that they have consciously exported much of their own industry to those nations in the first place. Not only is the Third World now exploited by the First, it is also being made to pay for the privilege in ecological terms.
In the meantime, the international scientific collective, in the form of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has set much higher targets as being necessary if destructive global warming of at least two degrees Celcius on average is to be avoided. Industrialized nations need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80-95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, in order to provide a “reasonable chance” of averting warming beyond two degrees Celcius above pre-industrial temperature that would have significant risks of severe and irreversible impacts on human and ecological systems.(1) Already, the consequences are quite dire, particularly for the underdeveloped countries. Nations on floodplains or low levels such as Bangladesh are likely to face catastrophic floodings, beyond anything seen in the tsunami of 2004 that killed 200.000 people, as polar ice melts and water levels rise. Similar problems appear in mountainous regions such as Nepal, where the revolutionary government staged a cabinet meeting at the highest altitude ever recorded (5.250m) to emphasize the dangers of glacier melting for that country.(2) Rising sea temperatures and stronger El Niño effects will destroy the coral reefs and threaten fundamentally the populations of Polynesian archipelagos, such as Tuvalu. A warmer planet strongly threatens the biodiversity of our shared world as well, killing everything from Alpine flowers to Amazon toad species and butterflies.
The cause of all this is irrevocably man-made, a viewpoint shared strongly by the scientific communis opinio, but also confirmed by the everyday common sense that the limitless self-expanding accumulation of capital at the expense of our metabolic interaction with living nature cannot go on forever. It must have destructive consequences in its rapacious greed in nature as it does in society, and it has now been shown to be so. Already the murderous effects on human beings of air and water pollution, of smoke and lack of sunlight, of the subsumption of all human vital powers to the machinery of capital were observed and analyzed in the 19th Century. Now it is ever more strongly becoming clear that not just homo sapiens sapiens, but also all other species on our vulnerable planet are trampled underfoot as capital moves globally and “creates the world in its own image”. The specific form this takes in the 20th and especially 21st Century is the thirst for oil, which is the lifeblood of capital and all its productive powers, more precious than the real blood of the millions it destroys yearly. What coal was for the 19th Century, its vital power and cancer alike, oil is today. The search for oil has brought hitherto unknown energy and productivity to some of the most barren and remote regions of the world, such as the Arab sands and the remote wastes of Canada. But at the same time it has ruthlessly destroyed the natural environment of any place it is found, it has caused whole peoples to be thrown aside and made to fight each other to obtain but a fragment of the natural wealth they own, it has poisoned the ground and the air, the oceans and the snows to a degree never before seen, in order that ever more and ever faster our capitalist societies may expand. Few things so clearly indicate the interconnectedness of capitalism’s social contradictions and its natural contradictions as the worldwide addiction to the black gold.
Similarly, deforestation is a major issue that will have to be considered during the Climate Change Conference. Already very little of the natural rainforest of Borneo remains, because palm oil production has destroyed within one generation what countless generations beyond remembrance have taken for a monument of nature. The Amazon rainforest also, the lungs of the world, are even now being reduced by a segment as large as the American state of Delaware each year, and this even constitutes a historical low because Brazil’s government has taken great pains to protect it at any cost. But here the question is again one of both the main contradictions of capital at once: the deforestation is the result of the landlessness of many farmers in Brazil and Indonesia and the relative profitability of production of beef, palm oil and tropic wood for export, rather than a sustainable production in healthy interaction with nature for local needs. Indeed the Brazilian government has quite rightly pointed out that if the Western peoples attach such value to the Amazon rainforest, then they should pay the cost of their demands on the same Brazilian peoples on whose cheap production they count: let them put their money where their mouth is, and compensate the Brazilian poor for the destruction of our common environment they have forced them into. However, this too should apply to the landlord class in countries like Brazil and Indonesia. Neither of them have had significant land reform to take the pressure off the small peasantry and landless rural labor, and at the same time they lack the industrialization that would make proletarians out of peasants and so solve the contradiction. A similar reasoning in any case would apply to the industrialization efforts of nations such as China and India, since they have no choice but to submit their own natural resources to the fullest possible exploitation by capital if they are not given (and do not wish to take) the opportunity to choose a sustainable path of production for needs instead, the path of socialism. Capital must pay its bills, and either this will be in the shape of a massive redistribution of value from the industrialized nations to the Third World, or Gaia will pick up the bill herself, and then the consequences will be dire when she adjusts her balance accordingly.
It is clear then that the solution cannot be one that simply keeps capital accumulation in place, but in some other form. The mirage of ‘cap-and-trade’ schemes must be avoided. The illusion here is that market capitalism will solve the problem when given the right incentives to do so, when those incentives were absent in the first place because of the nature of capital as such. Paying capital to not expand, which the cap-and-trade idea basically entails, will lead to nothing but swindle and accounting fraud while it will prove practically impossible to set the hard limits low enough to make any effective impact on global warming. After all, if such limits could coexist with current rates of profit, why wouldn’t the ‘philantropist’ capitalists, from Bill Gates to Ratan Tata, seize the opportunity to show their good will? No, it is evident that it is not any specific malfunction of capital accumulation, nor any particular form it has contingently taken in recent times, but the very laws of motion of such accumulation themselves that are to blame for the current ecological crisis. The choice at København is exceedingly clear: either we all throw ourselves before the deadly Juggernaut of capital, and let it steer its own course at the expense of our planet, or we call a halt to this vehicle of destruction once and for all.
1) Rie Jerichow, “The rich-poor rift widens only days before the Copenhagen meeting”. http://en.cop15.dk/news/view+news?newsid=2816
2) Marianne Bom, “Cabinet meeting at Mt. Everest”. Associated Press (Dec. 04, 2009).
12.03.09
The Fall of the House of Dubai
The great capitalist dystopia of Dubai, a huge speculation bubble in paradisical tourist islands and business skyscrapers built on the slave-labor of South Asian migrant workers, is on the verge of collapse. Even though it is located in one of the driest and hottest parts of the world, its developer-king, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, saw a bright future for the place as the great playground of modern cosmopolitan capital. Indeed he presented himself and the whole project as a capitalist variation on the ‘enlightened kingdom’ of the old concept of the philosopher-king: none of those pesky things like regulations and taxes, or even good taste, could stand in the way of capitalist development here. In Dubai, anything would and should be possible on a larger and more commercial scale than ever before seen.
Financed largely by the oil income of its brother emirate of Abu Dhabi, it succeeded marvellously well at the spectacular show of capital’s boom during the 2000s. As one vision described the imagined Dubai of its Sheikh and investors:
Although you have an important business meeting at Internet City with clients from Hyderabad and Taipei, you have arrived a day early to treat yourself to one of the famed adventures at the Restless Planet themepark. After a soothing night’s sleep under the sea, you board a monorail for the Jurassic jungle. (…) With your adrenaline pumped up, you round off the afternoon with some snowboarding on the local indoor snow mountain (outdoors, the temperature is 105 degrees). Nearby is the world’s largest mall – the altar of the city’s famed Shopping Festival, which attracts millions of frenetic costumers each January – but you postpone the temptation. Instead, you indulge in some expensive Thai fusion cuisine. The gorgeous Russian blonde at the restaurant bar stares at you with vampiric hunger, and you wonder whether the local sin is as extravagant as the shopping…
(1)
Not all of this Thomas Friedmanesque wet dream has become reality yet, but indeed in Dubai there have been miracles of capitalist enterprise: artificial islands in the form of a palm leaf, indoor ski slopes and the project for the world’s tallest skyscraper. All this was an attempt to harness the power of capitalist competition to make this useless piece of desert, held in fiefdom by the Al-Maktoum Sheikhs since 1833 and never more than a minor slave trading Bedouin port(2), a place of prestige and wealth for the Arab aristocracy, one that would inspire other Arab rulers to live up to a new Renaissance of Arab culture. And indeed the project is one fitting of a second-rate Renaissance: it rests uncomfortably between the feudal and the capitalist in its vision, and suffers from the worst aspects of both while producing little than gaudy nonsense. Truly nothing is less efficient than the manner in which the Sheikh gave the $2 billion stipend of his Abu Dhabi supporters to four of his advisers and had them compete with each other for the greatest prestige in their development projects. Everyone with a lick of sense about economics knows that competition for prestige or status is inherently inefficient, since it is a zero-sum game: what the one gains, the other necessarily loses, and as a result the whole undertaking is an irrational waste.
Such a thing could of course be nothing more than the lurid and kitschy fantasies of an Arab aristocrat used to collecting expensive yachts and horses if it weren’t for the potential to create a real estate bubble. This is indeed what has happened, as the constant investment into new projects led to influx of ‘quick’ financial capital that sought to profit off the initially oil-fed boom, and the continuing generosity of Abu Dhabi helped keep it afloat. But all capitalist bubbles must burst, and this year it has been the turn of the real estate ones. Dubai has been the last to be hit so far, but it, too, could not escape this fate. The large investment conglomerate Dubai World has had to call for a six month moratorium on financing its multi-billion dollar debt, and the Sheikh has gotten rid of three of the four advisors mentioned and replaced them with his aristocratic family. Moreover, there has been rumbling in Abu Dhabi about the investments from there and as a result the Sheikh has been hasty to re-emphasize his connections with the loose confederacy of the United Arab Emirates, while the Abu Dhabi stock exchange has crashed by 8.3%.(3)
Good news for the slave workers of Dubai, who may now perhaps be freed of the debt peonage they are held in for want of work for them to do, and good news also for all who understand man’s dependency on a healthy metabolism with the environment. Good news for those who do not see wealth and size as a fitting substitute where good taste is lacking, and for those who would wish a better future onto the Arabic world than to function as a childish playground for spoiled patriarchs. Bad news however for the investors, for the hastily fleeing ex-pat businessmen, and for the ‘inspiring nature of capitalism’. For indeed, capitalism has done much here that the endless generations of nomadic robbers and slave traders in the subcontinent could not do, as Marx and Engels pointed out:
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.
(4) Yet while the Sheikhs and Friedmans and Spikeds of this world are willing to triumphalize about this, they forget the necessary corollary that our friends also pointed out:
Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.
(5)
1) Mike Davis & Daniel Bertrand Monk, Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism (New York, NY 2007), p. 49.
2) Robert F. Worth & Heather Timmons, “Debt Crisis Tests Dubai’s Ruler”. New York Times (Dec. 3, 2009).
3) Vicky Francis, “Dubai’s Sheikhy foundations”. Spiked (Dec. 2, 2009). The idiotic triumphalists at Spiked incidentally have great trouble explaining away the obvious failures of the capitalist enthousiasm they worship.
4, 5) Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party [London 1848].
12.01.09
Swiss minaret ban sign of worrying xenophobia
The Swiss Confederation by referendum has decided, with a 57.5% majority, to constitutionally ban the use of minarets in the country. 22 of the 26 cantons also voted in favor of the proposition, making it legal.(1) The use or definition of minarets is not specifically defined, making the application of the provision unclear, and moreover there are only 4 mosques with minarets in the country to begin with. It is therefore obvious that the minaret itself here functions not as an architectural eyesore, which indeed it need not be given the excellent traditions of Islamic religious architecture, but as a proxy for the presence of muslims in Switzerland. Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, the Minister of Justice of the Confederation, attempted to explain the result of the referendum as “not a vote against Islam, but a vote directed against fundamentalist utterances”.(2) The preposterousness of this claim is obvious, given that a minaret, although a vehicle of utterances, is not itself an utterance. Nor does it make much sense to call a tower a ‘fundament’, whether conceptually or from an engineer’s perspective.
The ludicrousness of the proposition aside, it is yet another step in a worrying pan-European trend to directly attack the muslim minorities in their respective countries. Communism does not have any love for religion, Islam least of all, and seeks no accomodation with it. Nonetheless, it also does not condone outbursts of xenophobia, pogrom attitudes and other accoutrements of fascism. Such phenomena are becoming ever more common as the indigenous, ‘white’ majorities in the continent are feeling more threatened due to worsening economic perspectives and the squeeze on the petty bourgeoisie through ultraliberalism and its subsequent crises. When there is no way out through the left, which is still licking its wounds from the mauling it received over the past decades, the fearful will attempt to force their way out on the right. The result is a revival of fascistic instincts. Indeed, it would have been one thing if this particular clause were aimed at all religions equally, and their open signs of status and power: although it would still mistake the symptom for the cause, one could at least see a justifiable anticlerical sentiment in it. But equally specific as nonsensical singling out of the building structures of one particular religion violates the principle of equality between religions, when supported or opposed, which is an important rule to liberals and socialists alike. To oppose religion and the oppressions it enables is to oppose, as Marx pointed out, the sources of those oppressions. As he put it so long ago:
“The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.”
(3) Therefore, we must say yes to ripping the veil off Islam and its adherents as we do with all other religions, but we must say no to outright attacks on the outward phenomena of any specific religion as a vehicle for fascist sentiment.
1) “Swiss minaret ban may signal new right-wing surge”. Reuters (Nov. 30, 2009).
2) Rob Kievit, “Strong reactions to Swiss minaret ban”. Radio Netherlands Worldwide (Nov. 30, 2009).
3) Karl Marx, “Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”, in: Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher [Paris 1844].
11.11.09
Twenty Years After the Wall Fell: An Interview with a Ukrainian Communist
Reproduced from http://thecommune.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/volodymr-ishchenko-twenty-years-after-the-wall-fell/.
This interview gives a particularly sound perspective on the issues and strategic questions for Communism in Eastern Europe today, specifically in the former member states of the Soviet Union. Therefore it is reproduced in Notes & Commentaries.
Can you briefly introduce yourself?
I am one of the editors of “Commons” (http://commons.com.ua), a Ukrainian left-wing intellectual web-site aimed at filling the gap in quality leftist analysis that might contribute to social struggles here and now, in Ukraine and across the globe. There is a gap between existing leftist theories and the practical work of grassroots social movements, the latter not receiving satisfactory analysis. Local movements often fail to use practical experience and theoretical discussions from other regions of the globe.
At the same time, there is a lack of information in English on important events of grassroots social struggles in Ukraine. Besides, we are very worried about the small quantity of leftist texts in Ukrainian while there is a widespread cliche that “leftist” = “pro-Russian”. We also want to create an independent source of information beyond sectarian conflicts caused by petty political ambitions.
What was the society that existed before 1989-91, and was its collapse the historic victory of capitalism over communism?There are a lot of rather boring discussions in the left-wing movement on “class nature” of USSR, whether it was “state capitalism”, a “degenerated workers’ state” or anything of this kind. Often a specific position on this question becomes a basis for founding political organisations and sectarian rivalry; often such discussions substitute for the real political actions necessary here and now. This is not to ignore this discussion at all, but to point out that it is not so important what exactly we call the Soviet society but what we think should and could have been done to improve it.
Was revolutionary action necessary or was it possible to push the Soviet nomenklatura to some progressive reforms? The answer to this question largely determines our attitude to the 1989 protests. With hindsight we can say that the 1990s neoliberal reforms were disastrous for the Ukrainian economy, culture and society in general. But should we consider the 1989 mass protests as just legitimating cover for privatising property by the part of the old Soviet elite? I would say no. Many people in Ukraine and in the USSR in general genuinely aspired towards some kind of democratic socialism with a “human face”, some even for a self-governing, libertarian socialism.
The Confederation of Anarcho-syndicalists was not a small organisation in the end of 1980s and the first title of the People’s Movement of Ukraine (Narodnyi Rukh Ukrainy) was People’s Movement of Ukraine for Perestroika [restructuring]. It was a strategic mistake by this popular wing of the 1989 events that they were closely allied with the so called “democratic” part of the split nomenklatura.
But many – even great – revolutions were defeated because of the lack of independent revolutionary organisations and we cannot disdain them for this. 1989 was a victory and a defeat at the same time: the victory of the emerging elite of a peripheral capitalist society and a defeat of the movement for genuine socialism. It would be absurd to call what we have now in Ukraine “western-style capitalism”. It is not “western-style” but it is becoming more and more similar to colonial-style, Third World capitalism with huge inequalities, the predominance of low surplus-value export production and mass migration from impoverished regions to wealthier countries. But we should also understand that the basis for this was laid down much earlier in the Brezhnev period when the USSR integrated to the world economy primarily as a supplier of natural resources.
Did the ‘Orange Revolution’ represent the continuation of the struggles of 1989-91?For nationalists and liberals obviously “yes”. They can symbolically connect the celebration of national identity and confirmation of their pro-Western orientation between 1989 and 2004. But, of course, this is not true for the left. In contrast to the 1989 movement the “Orange Revolution” did not include any significant and meaningful discussion of substantial reforms in Ukraine. The people were destined only to shout “Yushchenko! Yushchenko!” at Maidan.
What is the current situation of the Ukrainian working class and the prospects for the labour movement?And, of course, the “Orange Revolution” in no way reduced class exploitation. On the contrary, the new Labour Code which was adopted in the first reading in the Ukrainian parliament gets rid of many important rights inherited from the Soviet time and fixes the new balance of forces between labour and capital (to the benefit of the latter). In the same time we see new independent trade unions emerging and the radicalisation of workers’ struggle. This February workers of Kherson Engineering Plant occupied the factory in protest at huge wage arrears and the closure of the enterprise. This was the first occupation in post-Soviet Ukraine. The struggle in Kherson ended this September when the state forced the Kherson plant owner to pay the arrears and to to hire back half of the staff.
Many on the western left view America as the main imperialist power to be opposed, do you think Russia is also imperialist? How do you think the left in the West should relate to Russia?Of course, instances of anti-American and “patriotic” rhetoric should not deceive the left. Definitely Putin’s Russia cannot be viewed as any kind of progressive or anti-imperialist regime even of the Chavez or Morales type. The Russian oligarchic elite is quite well embedded in transnational ruling class networks whilst revenues from natural resources export are not spent on education, public health or any kind of social infrastructure. Instead, Putin continued with neoliberal reforms reducing labour rights in the new Labour Code, privatizing housing and the public sector. But at the same time Russia should not be demonized. In the same way as nationalist rhetoric is used in Russia for ruling class legitimacy, an opposing nationalist rhetoric is used in Ukraine shifting responsibility for all problems to Russia’s hostile policies and its “fifth column” in Ukraine. Appeals to Russian imperialism as the most dangerous threat for the Ukrainian nation has become a common way to justify even neofascist movements. It became clear when ultra-right activist Maksim Chaika was killed in Odessa this spring. Many mainstream journalists and even president Yushchenko himself presented him just as a “patriot”. Antifascists at the same time were deceitfully presented as “pro-Russian paramilitaries”
What dissident left existed during the Soviet era, and what are the prospects for the post-Stalinist left today?We can be highly sympathetic to the Ukrainian vernacular socialist tradition but we cannot ignore the fact that Ukraine has greatly changed since 1900-1920s. This is the most important reason why we did not see the resurrection of a mass national communist movement in post-Soviet Ukraine. Ukraine is not anymore a predominantly peasant country. Ukrainian national identity now appeals to only roughly half of Ukraine (the Western and Central regions) and in these regions it was taken over by right-wing nationalists since World War II. We can take some important insights from Ukrainian Marxists about the past but we cannot copy their analysis, rhetoric and action if we are striking for mass working class support not limited to certain regions and subcultures.
This is true not only for the Ukrainian Marxist tradition but for other more internationally recognized left-wing schools of thought. The left has to reconstruct and develop its theory in close connection with emerging grassroots movements: working-class, urban, environmental… The left’s theory should be once again re-connected to practical mass struggle. The problems of grassroots movements’ strategy, organization and mobilization should be the primary issues for the left. Only in discussing and solving practical problems of progressive social change can we develop our theory further, making it more adequate to the task of changing objective reality. Another problem is that the Ukrainian left should be more aware and connected to debates and struggles in global anticapitalist movements, learning its lessons and taking on inspiring examples and models of organisation.
I do not dare to give exhaustive definitions of what real communism could mean today. But what is most important is that real communism now must be with the masses and for the masses. It is definitely not another subculture or chat room for a handful of freaks pretending to be a “real vanguard” just because they have read a few more 100 or 150-year-old books.
The Ukrainian comrade is quite right in de-emphasizing as much as possible the endless theoretical discussions about the ‘nature’ of the USSR in Marxist terminology and more of similar sectarian points d’honneur. What matters today first and foremost is to get in the former nations of the Warsaw Pact a movement going that will oppose the imperialism of the United States and Russia both, and that will point to the limitations of nationalism now that self-determination has to some degree been achieved. Such a movement would point out both the flaws and the victories of the USSR and reject any simplistic rejection or adolation of that state, while strongly combating the neo-fascist tendencies in Eastern Europe that are the result of the historic defeat of the organized left in that region during a time of great poverty and social disintegration. Such a movement would combat equally the rising tide of racism and xenophobia and the neoliberal restructuring of their societies on behalf of the European Union and the United States. A pro-European policy must not be a pro-bourgeois policy and Communists cannot permit these countries to become test laboratories for ultraliberal experimenters. Not even in the name of a ‘pro-Western way’ between fascism and the quasi-Communist slavophilia of parties like that of Zhuganov in Russia.
A fresh and living socialism in nations like (the) Ukraine would seek collaboration with socialist forces in major Western nations like Germany and France to resist imperial politics, while at the same time pointing to the way in which Eastern Europe is a playground for exploitation by Western capital and build alliances with the Third World on this basis, as Ishchenko also points out. It would be a true ‘third way’ between the realities of nationalist proto-fascism and comprador subservience to foreign capital. May such a movement revive and have a long life.
11.09.09
Great divisions of global opinion on capitalism, USSR
The British Broadcasting Corporation recently held a poll in various countries of the world in which they asked the respondents’ opinions on capitalism and the fall of the Soviet Union, among other things.(1) Unsurprisingly, the opinions on the current world system were strongly divided in the world, and mostly between the rich and the poor nations. Nevertheless there were some interesting results. Only 11% of all people polled indicated the current capitalist system worked well, with many people desiring reform or regulation, and 23% indicating it was “fatally flawed”. We may take the latter position as an anti-capitalist one, meaning principled opposition to capitalism lives among a quarter of the sample polled, a better result than might be expected. Opposition to capitalism altogether was still intense in France, by far the most anti-capitalist of the Western nations: in this country 43% of the population indicated to oppose capitalism altogether, compared to 35% in Brazil and 38% in Mexico.
Opinions on the collapse and disappearance of the USSR were strongly divided by bloc. In the First World, unsurprisingly, this is overwhelmingly seen as a good thing: 79% in Germany, 76% in Britain and 74% in France feel that way. But in the former Soviet states, this is not the general opinion. In Russia only 22% feel this way, and even in the Ukraine it was only about 28% or so. In India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Egypt a strong majority of the population opposes still the fall of the USSR and sees it as a bad thing. This difference of viewpoint is analogous to the different perceptions of Soviet leaders such as Lenin and Stalin around the word. Even Lenin is generally despised in America and Britain, and Stalin is in the West altogether a byword for tyranny, absolutism and murder. But in much of the Third World Stalin is remembered mostly as an anti-imperialist and one who stood up against the colonial powers and made a weak nation strong, so opinion there is much more positive about him, and the same goes even more so for Lenin. The BBC poll makes once again clear that there is nothing ‘evident’ about the pro-capitalist, anti-Soviet mentality seen in most of the West, and that if one were to hold a global vote, much of the ‘consensus’ of Western liberals would collapse in ignominy. This is not in every way a good thing, as seen for example in the religious fanticism, the ignorance and superstition common in many of the poor nations of the world, but it does make it clear that a Westerner needs to have a broader perspective on politics than what happens in his own Parliament to understand the global division of opinion.
The survey also gives some reason for hope: when the French tradition of Communism is still strong in some form or another, also seen in the endurance of different Communist and anticapitalist parties in that country; when even in that bulwark of capital, the United States, some 15% of those polled want to abolish capitalism, and 19% see the fall of the USSR as bad; and even in a country with some strong regressive nationalist tendencies such as the Ukraine the majority of people see the collapse of the Soviet Union as a loss for the world, there is still some potential. This is all the more true because the USSR will not reappear as it was and with its fall has taken all of its flaws and troubles with it, but the lingering sentiment in its favor and against capital can be used as a valuable impetus for a new and better socialism.
(1) James Robbins, “Free market flawed, says survey”. BBC News (Nov. 9, 2009).
Italian court convicts CIA agents
Thanks to the persistent efforts of Italian procurator Armando Spataro, the CIA agents responsible for abducting Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, better known as Abu Omar, have been prosecuted for their crime committed with the connivance of the Italian government of Berlusconi. Just a few days ago, the court in Milano found 23 American agents and two Italians guilty of the crime, sentencing them to long imprisonments, mostly in absentia.(1) The CIA station chief in Milano, Robert Lady, got eight years’ imprisonment, whereas most others received five years, including a US Airforce colonel.
The lawyers for the Americans have said they will appeal, and in any case it is not expected that this will have much practical effect. The United States will no more extradite its secret agents to a foreign country than any other power would, and at most it will mean Lady c.s. will not be able to enter any country that is party to the Schengen agreement, which might limit their utility or at most their vacation prospects.(2) Nonetheless, this is an important move against the culture of impunity surrounding the American activities, overt and covert, that are part of their ‘War on Terror’. This quasi-war seems in practice to be used by the American governments as an effective way to bind its allies further to it by involving them in their criminal enterprises while at the same time using hitherto unaccepted measures against all suspected of islamist sentiments or support for any kind of resistance in the greater Middle East.
The independent Italian judicial branch, so much maligned by the Bonapartist charlatan Berlusconi because of their sheer temerity in holding his highness to the law, has fantastically vindicated itself in this case. It has called a halt to the illegal and extrajudicial activities of the Americans against perceived enemies, real or imaginary, on the European continent. It has also called attention to the complicity of many European governments in this, not just in Italy but also in Poland, Romania, and Ireland, to name a few, by finding two of its domestic agents guilty of that charge. The power of law alone to restrain political power bent on aggrandizing itself is very limited indeed, especially when it becomes a clash of sovereignties. As Marx pointed out, “between equal rights, force decides”. Nevertheless this case constitutes a great moral victory for legality and opposition to the arbitrary power of mighty states and empires. With the foundation of the International Criminal Court, the successes of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, its counterpart regarding Rwanda in Arusha, and the continued functioning of the International Court of Justice, even the last few decades of great power struggles and post-imperial proxy wars have seen some significant progress. The decision in Milano is another step on that difficult road.
(1) “CIA agents guilty of Italy kidnap”. BBC News (Nov. 4, 2009).
(2) Michael Ratner, “Has Italy sent a message?”. Socialist Worker (Nov. 9, 2009).
11.07.09
R.I.P. Chris Harman (1942-2009)
The news has come to us of the death of the well-known socialist author Chris Harman, who has suddenly and prematurely passed away as the result of a heart attack in Cairo.(1) He was a popular and active author of works of a historical and economic nature seen from a socialist perspective, a perspective he developed as a student at the London School of Economics. In particular his work about the movement of Paris 1968, The Fire Next Time, and his Marxist history of the world for a popular audience, A People’s History of the World, have justly become famous.
Aside from this he was active in the British Socialist Workers Party and for this reason took up consistently Trotskyist positions. He was for the longest time editor of the SWP paper Socialist Worker and of their theoretical journal International Socialism Journal. Here and elsewhere he held extensive debates with other Trotskyist economic thinkers such as Ernest Mandel and Alec Nove. As popular writer and speaker he has spread much socialist influence within and without the United Kingdom.
(1) http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/11/chris-harman-rip.html.
11.03.09
Prevent the removal of the Thälmann memorial in Ziegenhals
Reports have arrived today that the memorial for Ernst Thälmann in the small Brandenburg town of Ziegenhals is to be demolished, under instructions from the rightist council of Kreis Dahme-Spreewald. The memorial had been built as an anti-nazi memorial after WWII.(1)
As E.H. Carr showed in his important book The Twilight of Comintern, 1930-1935(2), the KPD leader Ernst Thälmann did not see the real danger of Nazism until it was way too late, and his leadership of the extremely divided KPD was largely ineffectual. On the other hand, it was not entirely his fault as the Comintern instructions he got were just as contradictory and meaningless, and far too focused on fighting the SPD, which in turn also deserves an important part of the blame for refusing cooperation. It is too much to pretend that Thälmann was much of an effective hero against Nazism however.
Notwithstanding that, there is absolutely no reason to remove a Thälmann memorial other than petty revanchism on the part of the right. It’s all the more galling since there are statues everywhere of feudal lords and absolute monarchs, and nobody considers removing those for political reasons (probably wisely). This sort of hypocrisy is typical of liberalism.
Here is the full statement in German of the call for preventing the memorial’s demolishing:
Noch im 70. Jahr des Beginns des Zweiten Weltkrieges mit dem deutschen Überfall auf Polen soll die bedeutende antifaschistische Gedenkstätte in Ziegenhals, die an die illegale Tagung des ZK der KPD und an den Widerstand gegen Hitler in Deutschland erinnert, abgerissen werden. Die Bagger stehen bereit. Der Abriss muß verhindert werden.
Diese Gedenkstätte ist kein bloßer regionaler Ort des Erinnerns in idyllischer Lage am Krossinsee nahe Berlin. Sie ist auch kein bloßes Ehrenmal für einen, wenn auch bedeutenden, Führer der deutschen und internationalen Arbeiterbewegung, für einen antifaschistischen Reichstagsabgeordneten, für dessen Freilassung aus Kerker und KZ sich bis zu seiner Ermordung Antifaschisten aus aller Welt einsetzten. Er hatte gemahnt, „Wer Hitler wählt, wählt Krieg“. Er hatte an diesem authentischen Ort unmittelbar nach der Machtergreifung des Faschismus auch in Anerkennung eigener Mängel zur antifaschistischen Einheitsfront aufgerufen, zur Entfaltung aller Formen des Massenwiderstandes und Massenkampfes gegen die faschistische Diktatur, zum Kampf gegen den wüsten faschistischen Terror und zum Sturz der Hitlerregierung. Er hat sich gegen die Militarisierung des Landes und der Jugend gewendet, um einen neuen imperialistischen Weltkrieg zu verhindern.
Den Erhalt der Gedenkstätte zu sichern ist die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, ist die deutsche Regierung der internationalen Öffentlichkeit schuldig, die nach dem 2. Weltkrieg mit Recht erwarten durfte, dass von deutschem Boden nie wieder Krieg ausgeht. Das Wort ist gebrochen worden. Siehe Jugoslawien oder Afghanistan.
Wie kann sich eine Regierung Deutschlands, das den 2. Weltkrieg begann und in dessen regionalen und kommunalen Parlamenten heute auch Vertreter der Neonazis sitzen, in dem sich rechtsradikale Umzüge und Straftaten mehren und in dem der Antikommunismus grassiert, so geschichtswidrig und verantwortungslos verhalten? Wir fordern, dass die Bundesrepublik ihrer Verantwortung gerecht wird, das Denkmal vor dem geplanten Geschichtsvandalismus zu bewahren.
Wir fordern, dass gewährleistet wird, dass der zu einem nur durch die Denkmalschutzauflagen erklärbaren Schleuderpreis in den Besitz der Immobilie gekommene Brandenburgische Ministerialrat der Verpflichtung gerecht wird, die er mit dem Kauf einging, „eine öffentliche Nutzung . . . weiterhin zu gewährleisten“. Er darf – wie das Berliner Kammergericht Berlin ihm vorhielt – nicht seine Eigeninteressen über den Erhalt der Gedenkstätte stellen.
Als Menschenrechts- und Friedenspreisträger der Gesellschaft zum Schutz von Bürgerrecht und Menschenwürde e.V. GBM fordern wir, auch dem Beitrag Thälmanns und der Kommunisten im antifaschistischen Kampf eine ehrende Erinnerung zu bewahren und ihren hervorgehobenen Wirkungsstätten den Status nationaler Gedenkstätten zu bewahren.
Wir fordern den Erhalt und die Wiedereröffnung der Gedenkstätte in Ziegenhals an historisch authentischem Ort.
(1) http://www.sozialistische-gedenkstaetten.de/br/Ziegenhals/ziegenhals.shtml
(2) E.H. Carr, The Twilight of Comintern, 1930-1935 (London 1982).
