![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
April 23, 2007
April found U.$. students in various places chewing on some subjects of interest to MIM. The most provocative publication we found was a new one, "FAHARI: Colored people in Amerikkka have received half of what is good and double of what is bad." "FAHARI" is a new publication from the State University of New York, New Paltz. The flipside of the publication is "Libertad: Change will come. . . with Evolution or Revolution which one are you waiting for?"
The March/April issue contained some articles about hip-hop, including one criticizing hip-hop "Black Republicans." The article is looking at the idea that hip-hop oriented toward money is ideologically no good.
Another article attacked homophobia in hip-hop, but there were even more articles on heterosexual love. Even so, at least one writer admitted, "I cannot say I am gay, straight or bisexual, or anything in between. I don't feel 110% comfortable with any of those titles." MIM would agree, because the more people we organize, the more we realize that we cannot leave out the asexual or the permanently single-minded. All kinds of things are going on in the population's sex life and it is presumptuous to oversimplify from persynal experience.
Even the take on Darfur in "FAHARI" was a little different, by starting with Iraq: "There were no Sunnis killing Shiites and visa (sic.) versa, and there is more electricity and running water in Baghdad not, than after the invasion of American troops."
Former Black Panther Elaine Brown is seeking the Green Party nomination; letters to Mumia Abu-Jamal and dialogue with prisoners fill out the rest of this issue. Unfortunately, "FAHARI" is not available on the Internet.
Next in line we found a Barnard publication chewing on many subjects. Even though we give this publication second place, we recognize that fundamentally, Barnard Bulletin is playing with MIM-type issues but ends up on the other side of the barricades. "The Man Issue" gives a pair of quotes that should indicate why the Barnard writers make MIM queasy.
"Maybe we should [be] working alongside 'the Man,' as a complementary and voluntary force that aids communities in need, communities that have not been paid enough attention by said Man."
"Who doesn't breathe a sigh of relief when a security guard is in the booth on the corner late at night, or a stationary police car is being manned down the block? But for many, the police are just another breath of stale city air, a sometimes power-abusing force that we grow accustomed to having around."--"Barnard Bulletin," 4-10 April 2007The fact is that men are much more likely to be killed than adult females, and male children die more frequently than female ones as well, with mothers the most common killers. Yet, Barnard wimmin's school type pseudo-feminism has made it cool to identify with police.
It has to be said that the female responses above are typical of the response to the state. The first sees the state as a caretaker. Social security works pretty well to soften the view of the state in the eyes of many females. The second quote points to street crime and again justifies the state. With females much less likely to be arrested for drug crimes and much less likely to wind up in prison, there is a gap in the perception of power that also leads to depoliticization.
Another publication to be considered for second place is Oberlin's "In Solidarity," which leads its April 11 issue with a story about deportations of undocumented people from Mexico and Central and South America.
MIM has reported before that one is more likely to find an orgy advertised for a college building than a serious revolutionary feminist discussion. Vassar College writers continue MIM's disappointment. One writer sees Nancy Pelosi as a victory. Another sees knocking down Bush administration "abstinence" officials as another feminist cause. "Truth is, feminists are making serious headway in challenging the blind ideology of abstinence-- perhaps more so than at any other time during the Bush presidency. So, for the record, this is a perfectly legitimate reason to kick back and finally celebrate our victories," says Carolyn Bradley writing for "The Miscellany News."
It could be worse, as with "Carolina Woman: The Magazine for Women in the Triangle." There is absolutely nothing to discuss in this issue we looked at. The front cover is about fashion. Ads are for liposuction, plastic surgery and cosmetics. "Carolina Woman" is not a student publication, so we cannot blame a lack of seriousness just on age or generation effects.
Then again, it could be worse than that. Oberlin's "The Grape" has four porn stories and one article why Wimmin's Studies is a waste of time at Oberlin. The article had some points, but in overall context we'd have to say, "nah."
At Oberlin, some rich kids mocked themselves pretty well. Here is what one had to say:
"Let's face it, sure we all love playing the guitar, and beer soaked mural painting, but ultimately, we'll all end up in some shitty job with an 100+K salary and great benefits. It's the American way as bet before us by our peace loving, hippie parents who ironically ended up getting stuck by the 'Man' on Wall Street. Yes friends, your lives as artists, idealists, drag queens, and communists will shortly be coming to an end as you take up the worship of the almighty dollar."--"The Grape," April 05, 2007This student has an excellent point and it is why we tell students they have to think while they are still in college and under good influences about how they are going to sustain the revolution after they leave college. In the 1960s, over 1 million U.$. students said they were for armed revolution, but obviously they did not sustain what they were thinking. Another student in the same publication explained how she used her breasts to lure a drunken male in a crash into an ambulance. It goes to show that pornography is our lifeblood here, and that is not counting the more blatantly pornographic articles.
We'd like to respond to "The Grape" on the point of "fair trade." Fair trade is the attempt of imperialist country people to pay a certain minimum price for commodities historically suspected of being too low in price to sustain a living for their producers--coffee being one. Now of course the bourgeois economist dogmatists will say then people should shift into other lines of work, if some commodities do not seem to sustain a living. Yet, that does not seem to happen or be an option in the real world in many countries. It's either produce ridiculous commodities or be without business. Ironically only strong socialist revolutions, the kind likely to be subverted by Uncle $am in Latin America could change land from producing for multinational corporate export to diversified food consumption. Imperialist countries dominate all other businesses except those truly exotic or undesirable to imperialist countries. It would be hard to start the banana-growing business in New York, but that does not mean banana workers receive a global minimum wage. There is too much political power behind the agricultural business people to suppress the workers in the Third World.
The "fair trade" lifestyle movement is one of the few lifestyle movements that MIM supports in the imperialist countries, as an imperfect sub-reform, mostly because it aims at the right question. In terms of theory, we say this movement has some chance of doing good because it crosses modes of production. It takes surplus-value in the imperialist countries and directs it to countries suspected of having feudal remnants. This may aid in the accumulation process in countries that would not otherwise break out of their ruts. Most lifestyle movements inside capitalist modes of production fail completely despite good intentions. "Fair trade" targets countries that are arguably not fully capitalist yet. Those countries suffer with labor systems that are highly coercive to allow some businesses to succeed that would not succeed if they paid U.$. minimum wages for example. The hope is that raising prices in exotic commodity markets will allow for a more normal labor movement to develop, one where survival wages are an option. Coffee, bananas, pineapple, coconuts--there are certain items where we are not worried that a substantial rise in prices will result in new producers in the imperialist countries. MIM does not see much applicability of bourgeois economics theory when it comes to workers making typical Third World wages. Those wages are that low for political reasons external to the market (as it exists in bourgeois theory), and thus the solution is political or a social movement.
Of course Andy Jordan is correct that in a capitalist world higher prices induce more suppliers into the business, but Jordan's argument that a price collapse follows would also mean that suppliers then leave the business for the price to rise again. There is also a possibility that workers will negotiate higher wages and supply will not increase just because commodity prices increased. That is indeed the hope with commodities such as coffee where the amounts of money concerned just seem to leave some single-commodity countries unable to advance. So we see "fair trade" as a kind of attempt to set a global minimum wage. The "fair trade" movement would be totally doomed except for the lopsided nature of the global economy. 1) Some countries are single commodity economies, so fair trade in that one commodity can make a big difference. 2) The beneficiaries of business in so many countries are u.$. consumers, so a fair trade movement again has a disproportionate effect.
As for the argument that "fair trade" allows an increase in middlemen, that depends on how well the program is administered. It also depends on who the middlemen are. If the middlemen are from the Third World, MIM is for that too, as good for development dynamics. Once again it will be possible for the local capitalist to cut out the middlemen and pay their workers higher wages as a means of competing under a "fair trade" pricing system.
Not too interesting was City College's "The Paper: Medium for People of African Descent." It had an ad from the African People's Revolutionary Party, but the most political article plugged the Democrats as a solution since the 2006 elections. Even worse is the University of Maryland's "Eclipse," which has straight-up imperialist discussion of the Democratic Party. At least the "Eclipse" did report on a film "Black Indians: An American Story." An 1830 law made it inconvenient for Blacks to claim to be Indian, as were many Black Seminoles. The whites transported indigenous people away.
City College's African paper gave props to Barak Obama. "FAHARI" noted that Barak Obama was getting it from both sides in the Black community--partly for not growing up in the Black experience and partly for not having a chance at winning, because he is Black. As of this writing, Obama has received the endorsement of Jesse Jackson, but not Al Sharpton yet. It would appear to MIM that if the Black voters swing behind Obama, Hillary Clinton is doomed, because Obama is already doing well among other voters