Chavez and Down From the Mountain

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n13/greg-grandin/down-from-the-mountain

I read as much of the London Review of Books as I can, every two weeks.  This article here is one of the reasons.  They also have excellent reporters in the Middle East, with a lot less of an axe to grind..

( Pat Struthers)

Green New Deal

Per Karen Wagner:

I am interested in learning more about and supporting some or all mutually agreed-upon aspects of the Green New Deal.  And/or identifying a public education or public action/activity that we could partner with other groups on.

Here are a few sites to look at for this progressive sustainability platform: 

Data for Progress -  https://www.dataforprogress.org/green-new-deal/;  

Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal;  

The Atlantic, on A. Ocasio-Cortez' version - theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/12/ocasio-cortez-green-new-deal-winning-climate-strategy/576514/.

Thanks.

Karen

I found this on common dreams, there's also informative interviews of democracy now and and a informative articles on axis of logic...   george

Stop Dangerous and Counterproductive US Intervention in Venezuela

Democratic Socialists of AmericaJanuary 25, 2019

New York, NY - The National Political Committee, the elected leadership body of the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America), has put out the following statement:

Stop Dangerous and Counterproductive US Intervention in Venezuela

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) categorically opposes any and all efforts by the US government to intervene in the domestic politics of Venezuela. The US has a long and bloody track record of actions to overthrow democratically elected governments, stop the spread of socialism, and maintain US imperial dominance in the region. This includes the US government’s support of the 2002 Venezuelan coup that led to the temporary ouster of the legitimately-elected president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez. These imperial interventions must stop immediately; the future of the Venezuelan people, and the broader prosperity of Latin America depend on it.

Venezuela is currently suffering devastating economic and political crises that have left millions  without consistent access to basic goods and services, and in a state of perpetual insecurity. Inflation has reached astronomical levels, rendering the local currency practically valueless, and limiting the positive impact of regular minimum wage increases implemented by the Venezuelan government. In the wake of President Nicolás Maduro’s inauguration for a second term on January 10, the political situation has become still more dire.

Maduro’s inauguration was accompanied by claims from both the Venezuelan opposition as well as a host of governments in the region and beyond that, he is no longer the legitimately elected President of Venezuela. These claims are based on prior accusations that the May 2018 Venezuelan presidential election was marred by the government’s use of tactics that ensured Maduro’s victory in advance.

The newly-appointed leader of the opposition-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly, Juan Guaidó of the right-wing Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) party, used this legitimacy crisis as an opportunity to proclaim himself the acting President of Venezuela, and called upon the Venezuelan people to rise up in protest against the Maduro government. Many, including a small band of National Guard soldiers on January 22  (who were quickly suppressed by security forces), have heeded the call, leading to sustained protests across the country beginning on January 21.

Though there have been reports of repression on the part of the Venezuelan security forces (including the brief arrest of Guaidó himself outside Caracas) and property damage on the part of opposition protesters (including the arson of an important community center in Caracas), significant confrontations between government and opposition supporters have yet to materialize. Nor has there been any indication that top military leaders are planning to break with Maduro. Nonetheless, the situation remains extremely tense. Any small political miscalculation could provoke serious violence and chaos in the country.

The role of the United States government in this unfolding situation over the last two weeks has been substantial and extremely counterproductive. Its actions have served only to deepen political divisions and decrease the likelihood of a peaceful solution to the crisis. President Trump and Vice President Pence have both expressed their full support for the unelected Guaidó as acting President, and are working tirelessly to organize other nations to do the same. Further, Trump has stated that he is contemplating a military intervention in Venezuela, and the US National Security Council has indicated that it is strongly considering an embargo on Venezuelan oil imports to the United States. These actions would each have catastrophic consequences for the already suffering Venezuelan people. The US government is clearly more interested in using Venezuela as a boogeyman to show the dangers of socialism than in playing a constructive role in resolving the crisis. Unfortunately the consequences of this rhetorical posturing are all too real for the Venezuelan people.

The US government’s recent actions to destabilize Venezuela are only the most recent in a long series of unfortunate actions it has taken over the past several years. In addition to past reckless and worrying comments made by President Trump and other members of his administration about the need for foreign military intervention in Venezuela, the US government has imposed financial sanctions against Venezuela. These sanctions are putting further The sanctions also preclude Venezuelan firms from access to US credit, effectively eliminating the Venezuelan oil sector’s capacity to maintain current levels of production, let alone return to pre-2015 levels (which were more than twice as high as current levels). Given that Venezuela depends so heavily on oil exports to fund the importation of basic goods, the US government’s sanctions against Venezuela’s oil sector are tantamount to direct sanctions against the Venezuelan people, whose economic security grows more precarious by the week.

Both the increasingly top-down Venezuelan government as well as the fractious Venezuelan opposition, which has at times resorted to anti-democratic methods, bear significant responsibility for the current crisis and there are important critiques to be leveled against both. As US socialists, we have a duty to do everything we can to stop US imperialism and make the world safe for democracy and socialism; however, our role as an organization should not be to intervene in the internal politics of Venezuela. Instead, we have a responsibility to use the leverage we have to intervene strategically in US foreign policy to help the Venezuelan people defend the gains made during Hugo Chávez’s presidency.

To that end, we call upon the US government to immediately cease and desist all attempts to intervene in the internal politics of Venezuela and break with its shameful legacy of imperial control in the region. Further, we call upon DSA chapters and DSA supported political representatives to mobilize in this particularly critical moment around a campaign of solidarity with the Venezuelan people, aimed specifically at reversing the US government’s disastrous and counterproductive sanctions against Venezuela. These sanctions are putting further constraints on the importation of desperately needed food and medicine into Venezuela.

The sanctions also preclude Venezuelan firms from access to US credit, effectively eliminating the Venezuelan oil sector’s capacity to maintain current levels of production, let alone return to pre-2015 levels (which were more than twice as high as current levels). Given that Venezuela depends so heavily on oil exports to fund the importation of basic goods, the US government’s sanctions against Venezuela’s oil sector are tantamount to direct sanctions against the Venezuelan people, whose economic security grows more precarious by the week.

Both the increasingly top-down Venezuelan government as well as the fractious Venezuelan opposition, which has at times resorted to anti-democratic methods, bear significant responsibility for the current crisis and there are important critiques to be leveled against both. As US socialists, we have a duty to do everything we can to stop US imperialism and make the world safe for democracy and socialism; however, our role as an organization should not be to intervene in the internal politics of Venezuela. Instead, we have a responsibility to use the leverage we have to intervene strategically in US foreign policy to help the Venezuelan people defend the gains made during Hugo Chávez’s presidency.

To that end, we call upon the US government to immediately cease and desist all attempts to intervene in the internal politics of Venezuela and break with its shameful legacy of imperial control in the region. Further, we call upon DSA chapters and DSA supported political representatives to mobilize in this particularly critical moment around a campaign of solidarity with the Venezuelan people, aimed specifically at reversing the US government’s disastrous and counterproductive sanctions against Venezuela.

Solidarity with the people of Venezuela! Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution!

What EOC3 annual meeting meant to me....

Other people will want to add their two cents, so I'll just concentrate on putting out some of the valuable web resources that Colleen and her board put together.  In one word it was....

Inspiring.

http://umatillaclimate.org/   (That's their web site.  It's pretty.)

eoclimatechange@gmail.com (and that's their email.  Send 'em $20 if you like what you see...or just send them $20.)

Who are they?  No less that the breaking wave of climate change public education for Umatilla County and the surrounding area.  They have an ongoing gig at the Prodigal Son every 3rd Tuesday at 12 PM.  Call ahead if you want lunch ready for you when you get there!

---

The national climate reports have finally been released this year...and if you REALLY want to get deep into climate science:

https://science2017.globalchange.gov  (Fourth Annual Climate Assessment, Volume I)

https://nca2018.globalchange.gov   (Fourth Annual Climate Assessment, Volume II)

..will give you all you ever wanted to know.

---

Karen Wagner did an excellent job of, yes, inspiring all of us.  Karen's spiel on sustainability was dense and very enjoyable....you can just start here:

www.sustainabilityillustrated.com

...to get a good idea of our head space, there.

The concerned scientific community's consensus is that:

• the extraction of resources (things Nature can't easily replenish at all)
• the accumulation of wastes (things to difficult for Nature to recycle quickly)
• inhibition of natural processes (disruption of systems that keep things in balance)
• and barriers to basic human needs (as opposed to fabricated ones)

...are going to be the death of all of us.

'The planet doesn't give a shit about us.  It can survive this stupidity, but we can't.' - George Carlin

'Stupidity got us into this.  Why can't it get us out?' - Will Rogers

Meanwhile...the United Nations 'Sustainable Development Goals' page is here:

https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/envision2030.html

---

The USDA has published a great book if you want the local story on things:

Climate Change Vulnerability and Adaption in the Blue Mountain Region

Click on the link and you can download it; it's 334 pages but chock full of the REAL deal.

---

On a lighter and gratifying note, for those of you who grew up here or just plain love the place, Prof. Robert Carson of Whitman College (my semi-alma-mater) has written a 'natural history of the Blues' called, of all things, The Blues...it is available at local bookstores and, ughh, Amazon, if you really must patronize that evil and fornicating establishment. A link to a review is below:

https://bmlt.org/news2/2018/11/28/the-blues-natural-history-of-the-blue-mountains-of-northeastern-oregon-and-southeastern-washington

He will be speaking (I think?  You guys know how I am about dates and things...) at Fort Walla Walla on Thursday January 31st at 4PM.

---

Unless we just enjoy talking to ourselves, we will always, in our daily lives of hysterical activism, have a communications problem.  This late age of noise and chaos and anti-intellectual FauxNews gibberish is giving our fellow citizens a bad case of reason-deafness, so it's great to have resources we can use for fact-checking and touching ground occasionally; we can't all live safely in the choir, we gotta get out there and preach a little our own damn selves...

Karen's talk got the conversation about one thing we are only now realizing we have to make central; the justice of these causes of ours...in addition to the basic human physical needs, every person on the Earth has a wired in sense of fairness...and it can be taken apart into a list of guarantees, just like the physical needs:

• Satisfaction
• Affection
• Participation
• Leisure
• Freedom (that might need defining, but...)
• Protection
• Understanding
• Identity
• Creation

These things are what people need to not just to survive, but survive with style and dignity.

Parochial vs. Global and the state of STEM

Disclaimer:  No one has benefited from STEM more than myself.  In the early 80's at Heppner High School, in spite of the emphasis on football, we enjoyed some of the best science teachers in the State of Oregon.  Ralph Schubothe, Karen Howe, Duane Neiffer and Steve Brownfield were extremely proficient both as teachers and as enthusiasts for their subjects.  Any kid that showed the slightest interest in STEM (which didn't exists as a separate thing then) was given every possible resource to expand their knowledge, even outside the classroom.

I, myself, am a very lucky and very lazy mutant, and needed motivation more than enlightenment or enthusiasm, but HHS, despite its flaws then, served me as well as was possible in that day, in that place.

When I came to HHS from grade school as a freshman, I was already a giant science geek.  I had little more to do than express my interest in astronomy to Mr. Neiffer when I was encouraged to borrow the only telescope the school owned and USE it, to read every book the local libraries....and within two years I knew as much about the subject as anyone I knew, and I'd saved enough money to buy my own 'scope.

Karen Howe and Ralph Schubothe were just as critical to my obsessions.  Miss Howe realized within a few days that I would have no problem keeping up with algebra (and thanks to Mr. Lemley from 7th grade for that) and made a deal with me and a friend of mine:  finish the homework before class and we could take her period in the room across the hall, where Mr. Schubothe was the proprietor of two of the very first PC's.  Ralph sat us down and found out what we wanted, handed us the AppleSoft programming manuals, and said: "Take 'em home this weekend, read them, and we'll start next week."

The rest is history....I went on to get a scholarship to go to Whitman College in Walla Walla...and if that didn't work out as well as it should have, it certainly wasn't for lack of preparation; my grades were good-to-excellent and my enthusiasm for thinking has never wavered to this day.  That whole motivational thing, though....water under the bridge.

After that,  I had a lot of shitty jobs coming down the road...but eventually I realized that the most important skill I learned, in all that time, was my skill and ability to learn...in 1990, after I'd landed my first GOOD living wage job (Fleetwood Travel Trailers), I bought the books, did the work, and became a relatively competent technology jack-of-all-trades within five years...and that career has sustained me for going on 25 years now.

So what has changed?

---------------------------------------

1) 'Nothing really.'  Yes, as far as teaching talent goes, that is true.  Those kinds of teachers still exist, they still have that kind of enthusiasm...if you are interested in one of the most lucrative vocations that exist in this economy..

2) 'Well, they spend a LOT of money on STEM programs now!  Never has there been more resources and more support from industry....'

3) 'Th-th-th-INTERTUBES!  Yezzzsss!  Wid de Intertubes we can learn anything, on YouTube, in five minutes!  No need for sshcool at all, itz justa gubbimint conspiracy anyway to pollute our....'

4) 'Participation in sports is immensely valuable and our athletes learn the critical social and personal skills that academic programs lack, and which are necessary to succeed in this fast-moving economy...'

Whoops!  Stop right there....

Vocation.  Economy.  Industry.  Conspiracy.  Success.

Where, in any of that, do they mention:  abstract knowledge, open-mindedness, flexibility, critical thinking, research skills, self-discipline, comfort with failure...sure, you are exposed to all those words, but is where is the philosophical infrastructure that holds all that together?

Because of the lopsided emphasis in STEM programs, at least as they are pitched to school boards, business contributors, and parents, very little mention is made of how to become a useful PERSON through all of this.

That you must...

• live sustainably.
• develop a sense of justice.
• communicate your enthusiasm to others.
• participate in your community.
• take the long term view.

Sorely lacking in this entire conversation is the need to put STEM, and any other vocational programs in the K-12 system, in a larger context.  A GLOBAL context, to pardon my French.  Liberal education has become a dirty word, to the point where K-12 has entirely abandoned the idea of holistic education as too politically poisoned by 'meritocratic' and 'elitist' ideas to touch.  State colleges largely leave that out, too, and private and state universities are left to pick up the slack.

This is the core of the issue, with our entire communications problem.  After thirty years of educational reform and budget paranoia, we've forgotten why we wanted kids to do thirteen yeas of school, minimum, in the first place.  We wanted (or at least John Dewey wanted us to want) our children to become responsible citizens.  NOT consumers, not cogs in the economic machine, certainly not aquisitive racist maniacs with an incurable fetish for Second Amendment rights...(funny how they'll let all the rest of the Constitution go to keep that.  Almost as if the Founding Freaks had wasted their time on a bunch elitist European gibberrrr...)

Our whole pitch would be easy, if that was still the case....and any outreach we do to schools should keep that in mind.

Weekly DSA news

All;

Andrea and Dro are asking for new agenda items for the next meeting, so please contact them by email (or bother 'Drea at the GP) if you have something in particular.  Read the 'minutes' here:

https://pendletondsa.blogspot.com/2019/01/jan-13th-meeting-and-going-forward.html

..to stimulate your memory.

A bunch of us should be attending the EOC3 Annual Meeting. This is at BMCC (2nd floor of Umatilla Hall) from 10AM to 1PM January 26th.  Anybody want a followup after at the GP?

Lastly...George and I are still looking for more Zinn books, let us know if you want one.  I am also making some progress with the old inspirational VHS tapes George gave me to trans-code to digital; I will have a list of what I have, and download links for them, as I finish them.

'Color Consciousness' is the first video I'm working on; when I have more details on the provenance of this production I'll post them.  Many, many interviews of African-Americans, by an A-A, on how they saw this issue back in the 70's and 80's.

(Pat Struthers)

EOC3 Meeting announcement

Thanks from Paul for sending us this...

Greetings! 

You are invited to EOC3's Annual Meeting!

Every year, we gather with our members and interested public to discuss how the previous year progressed and to identify priorities for the organization's coming year. Annual meetings are open to the public, and are used to present new information, gather feedback about the success of current programs, and inquire with our stakeholders about priorities, topics, and speakers they'd like to see featured with our education programs!

Our meeting this year is on Sat January 26th 10 AM to 1 PM at the OSU Extension Conference Room, located on the 2nd floor of Umatilla Hall at the Pendleton BMCC. 

This event is open to everyone, and we would be thrilled to have anyone interested in environmental and climate science come and be part of planning for the future!

Refreshments will be provided, and we have a fabulous agenda and keynote speaker to lead us in a discussion about what sustainability looks like for Umatilla County in the face of climate change. 

The OSU Extension Office is located within Umatilla Hall up at Pendleton's Blue Mountain Community College, address 2411 NW Carden Ave, Pendleton.

Please let EOC3 know if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or clarifications, by email at EastOregonClimateChange@Gmail.com, or by visiting our website at www.UmatillaClimate.Org . Otherwise, we'll see you at the meeting! 

Cheers,

Colleen Sanders

EOC3

Hi Everyone -- This is one of things being read and discussed by the walla walla dsa women's study group. Thought we would like to take a look at it too - george

What Is Socialist Feminism? By Barbara Ehrenreich

“What Is Socialist Feminism?” first appeared in WIN Magazine in 1976 and, subsequently, the New American Movement’s Working Papers on Socialism & Feminism. The introduction below is new, written by Ehrenreich for this republication. While Ehrenreich has several quibbles with her original essay — as she details in her prefatory notes below — we’re very pleased to republish it at a moment when more and more people are being exposed to socialist and feminist politics for the first time.

The following essay is best read as a core sample drilled from the radical thought of over fifty years ago, when both feminism and socialism were still novel ideas to most Americans. Many young white, formerly middle-class, women like myself embraced both of these abstractions and struggled, if only out of some sense of theoretical tidiness, to see how they are connected. I would never undertake such a project today. It seems too quaint, too open to divergent answers, too “ahistoric,” for my present-day tastes.

The only thing about this essay that makes me wince when I read it now is the casual postponement of issues like race and homophobia to some later, more all-encompassing, stage of socialist feminist theory. My only excuse is that capitalism and male domination seemed at the time to possess the dignity of being “systems,” while racism and homophobia were easily mistaken for more transient “attitudes.” But this is a feeble excuse. A half century later I am no longer so entranced by abstract “systems” and far more tethered to the concrete, which includes sickening amounts of cruelty to LGBTQ people and people of color. Anyone who is into theorizing needs to theorize those facts too.

There is also, I will admit, a bit of historical sloppiness in this essay. I seem to date capitalism from the Industrial Revolution, which makes it a relative newcomer on the human scene, no more than a couple hundred years old. What I should have been interested in is not capitalism but class societies — or “stratified” societies — which arose roughly five thousand years ago in the Mesopotamian world, along with archeological indications of rising male dominance, warfare, and slavery. How these things “arose” is a story encoded in thousands of geographically specific myths, bas-reliefs, and other forms of narrative; the challenging question is how they managed to persist through so many millennia and changes in the “mode of production.”

Today the only thing I find at all refreshing about “What Is Socialist Feminist?” is its suggestion that both forms of oppression are rooted in, or maintained by, violence. That word did not feature prominently in our theoretical vocabulary in 1976, which was much more concerned with notions like “production” and “reproduction,” wages for housework, and wages in the local factories. What may have turned my attention to it was a near-violent incident with the gun-carrying ex-husband of my upstairs neighbor, a single mother and welfare recipient. On the theoretical front, though, violence was an exotic and marginal issue.

All that has changed, of course. Feminists began to focus on violence against women within the next few years, and succeeded in getting federal legislation against it in 1994. Similarly, “police brutality” was an issue in the 1970s, but it took the steady barrage of police violence in the 1990s and succeeding decades to provoke the formation of Black Lives Matter. By the twenty-first century there was no avoiding violence against LGBTQ people, Muslims, or immigrants. And today, random gun violence has become an issue the Left can no longer wave off with a reference to gun manufacturers’ profits.

But in our “theory” — such as it is — violence remains peripheral. We know that what keeps us in line is ultimately the fear of getting our teeth knocked out or our foreheads shot in, whether by state-sanctioned attackers or by deranged ex-husbands or neighbors. Maybe we need to find a fancy way of saying that.

At some level, perhaps not too well articulated, socialist feminism has been around for a long time. You are a woman in a capitalist society. You get pissed off: about the job, about the bills, about your husband (or ex), about the kids’ school, the housework, being pretty, not being pretty, being looked at, not being look at (and either way, not listened to), etc. If you think about all these things and how they fit together and what has to be changed, and then you look around for some words to hold all these thoughts together in abbreviated form, you’d almost have to come up with “socialist feminism.”

A lot of us came to socialist feminism in just that kind of way. We were searching for a word/term/phrase which would begin to express all of our concerns, all of our principles, in a way that neither “socialist” nor “feminist” seemed to. I have to admit that most socialist feminists I know are not too happy with the term “socialist feminist” either. On the one hand it is too long (I have no hopes for a hyphenated mass movement); on the other hand it is much too short for what is, after all, really socialist internationalist anti-racist, anti-heterosexist feminism.

The trouble with taking a new label of any kind is that it creates an instant aura of sectarianism. “Socialist feminism” becomes a challenge, a mystery, an issue in and of itself. We have speakers, conferences, articles on “socialist feminism” — though we know perfectly well that both “socialism” and “feminism” are too huge and too inclusive to be subjects for any sensible speech, conference, article, etc. People, including avowed socialist feminists, ask themselves anxiously, “What is socialist feminism?” There is a kind of expectation that it is (or is about to be at any moment, maybe in the next speech, conference, or article) a brilliant synthesis of world historical proportions — an evolutionary leap beyond Marx, Freud, and Wollstonecraft. Or that it will turn out to be a nothing, a fad seized on by a few disgruntled feminists and female socialists, a temporary distraction.

I want to try to cut through some of the mystery which has grown up around socialist feminism. A logical way to start is to look at socialism and feminism separately. How does a socialist, more precisely, a Marxist, look at the world? How does a feminist?

To begin with, Marxism and feminism have an important thing in common: they are critical ways of looking at the world. Both rip away popular mythology and “common sense” wisdom and force us to look at experience in a new way. Both seek to understand the world — not in terms of static balances, symmetries, etc. (as in conventional social science) — but in terms of antagonisms. They lead to conclusions which are jarring and disturbing at the same time that they are liberating. There is no way to have a Marxist or feminist outlook and remain a spectator. To understand the reality laid bare by these analyses is to move into action to change it.

Marxism addresses itself to the class dynamics of capitalist society. Every social scientist knows that capitalist societies are characterized by more or less severe, systemic inequality. Marxism understands this inequality to arise from processes which are intrinsic to capitalism as an economic system. A minority of people (the capitalist class) own all the factories/energy sources/resources, etc. which everyone else depends on in order to live. The great majority (the working class) must work out of sheer necessity, under conditions set by the capitalists, for the wages the capitalists pay.

Since the capitalists make their profits by paying less in wages than the value of what the workers actually produce, the relationship between the two classes is necessarily one of irreconcilable antagonism. The capitalist class owes its very existence to the continued exploitation of the working class. What maintains this system of class rule is, in the last analysis, force. The capitalist class controls (directly or indirectly) the means of organized violence represented by the state – police, jails, etc. Only by waging a revolutionary struggle aimed at the seizure of state power can the working class free itself, and, ultimately, all people.

Feminism addresses itself to another familiar inequality. All human societies are marked by some degree of inequality between the sexes. If we survey human societies at a glance, sweeping through history and across continents, we see that they have commonly been characterized by: the subjugation of women to male authority, both with the family and in the community in general; the objectification of women as a form of property; a sexual division of labor in which women are confined to such activities as child-raising, performing personal services for adult males, and specified (usually low-prestige) forms of productive labor.

Feminists, struck by the near universality of these things, have looked for explanations in the biological “givens” which underlie all human social existence. Men are physically stronger than women on average, especially compared to pregnant women or women who are nursing babies. Furthermore, men have the power to make women pregnant. Thus, the forms that sexual inequality take — however various they may be from culture to culture – rest, in the last analysis, on what is clearly a physical advantage males hold over females. That is to say, they result ultimately on violence, or the threat of violence.

The ancient, biological root of male supremacy — the fact of male violence — is commonly obscured by the laws and conventions which regulate the relations between the sexes in any particular culture. But it is there, according to a feminist analysis. The possibility of male assault stands as a constant warning to “bad” (rebellious, aggressive) women, and drives “good” women into complicity with male supremacy. The reward for being “good” (“pretty,” submissive) is protection from random male violence and, in some cases, economic security.

Marxism rips away the myths about “democracy” and its “pluralism” to reveal a system of class rule that rests on forcible exploitation. Feminism cuts through myths about “instinct” and romantic love to expose male rule as a rule of force. Both analyses compel us to look at a fundamental injustice. The choice is to reach for the comfort of the myths or, as Marx put it, to work for a social order that does not require myths to sustain it.

It is possible to add up Marxism and feminism and call the sum “socialist feminism.” In fact, this is probably how most socialist feminists see it most of the time — as a kind of hybrid, pushing our feminism in socialist circles, our socialism in feminist circles. One trouble with leaving things like that, though, is that it keeps people wondering “Well, what is she really?” or demanding of us “What is the principal contradiction?” These kinds of questions, which sound so compelling and authoritative, often stop us in our tracks: “Make a choice!” “Be one or another!” But we know that there is a political consistency to socialist feminism. We are not hybrids or fence-sitters.

To get to that political consistency we have to differentiate ourselves, as feminists, from other kinds of feminists, and, as Marxists, from other kinds of Marxists. We have to stake out a (pardon the terminology here) socialist feminist kind of feminism and a socialist feminist kind of socialism. Only then is there a possibility that things will “add up” to something more than an uneasy juxtaposition.

I think that most radical feminists and socialist feminists would agree with my capsule characterization of feminism as far as it goes. The trouble with radical feminism, from a socialist feminist point of view, is that it doesn’t go any farther. It remains transfixed with the universality of male supremacy — things have never really changed; all social systems are patriarchies; imperialism, militarism, and capitalism are all simply expressions of innate male aggressiveness. And so on.

The problem with this, from a socialist feminist point of view, is not only that it leaves out men (and the possibility of reconciliation with them on a truly human and egalitarian basis) but that it leaves out an awful lot about women. For example, to discount a socialist country such as China as a “patriarchy” — as I have heard radical feminists do — is to ignore the real struggles and achievements of millions of women. Socialist feminists, while agreeing that there is something timeless and universal about women’s oppression, have insisted that it takes different forms in different settings, and that the differences are of vital importance. There is a difference between a society in which sexism is expressed in the form of female infanticide and a society in which sexism takes the form of unequal representation on the Central Committee. And the difference is worth dying for.

One of the historical variations on the theme of sexism which ought to concern all feminists is the set of changes that came with the transition from an agrarian society to industrial capitalism. This is no academic issue. The social system which industrial capitalism replaced was in fact a patriarchal one, and I am using that term now in its original sense, to mean a system in which production is centered in the household and is presided over by the oldest male. The fact is that industrial capitalism came along and tore the rug out from under patriarchy. Production went into the factories, and individuals broke off from the family to become “free” wage earners. To say that capitalism disrupted the patriarchal organization of production and family life is not, of course, to say that capitalism abolished male supremacy! But it is to say that the particular forms of sex oppression we experience today are, to a significant degree, recent developments. A huge historical discontinuity lies between us and true patriarchy. If we are to understand our experience as women today, we must move to a consideration of capitalism as a system.

There are obviously other ways I could have gotten to the same point. I could have simply said that, as feminists, we are most interested in the most oppressed women — poor and working-class women, Third World women, etc., and for that reason we are led to a need to comprehend and confront capitalism. I could have said that we need to address ourselves to the class system simply because women are members of classes. But I am trying to bring out something else about our perspective as feminists: there is no way to understand sexism as it acts on our lives without putting it in the historical context of capitalism.

I think most socialist feminists would also agree with the capsule summary of Marxist theory as far as it goes. And the trouble again is that there are a lot of people (I’ll call them “mechanical Marxists”) who do not go any further. To these people, the only “real” and important things that go on in capitalist society are those things that relate to the productive process or the conventional political sphere. From such a point of view, every other part of experience and social existence — things having to do with education, sexuality, recreation, the family, art, music, housework (you name it) — is peripheral to the central dynamics of social change; it is part of the “superstructure” or “culture.”

Socialist feminists are in a very different camp from what I am calling “mechanical Marxists.” We (along with many, many Marxists who are not feminists) see capitalism as a social and cultural totality. We understand that, in its search for markets, capitalism is driven to penetrate every nook and cranny of social existence. Especially in the phase of monopoly capitalism, the realm of consumption is every bit as important, just from an economic point of view, as the realm of production. So we cannot understand class struggle as something confined to issues of wages and hours, or confined only to workplace issues. Class struggle occurs in every arena where the interests of classes conflict, and that includes education, health, art, music, etc. We aim to transform not only the ownership of the means of production, but the totality of social existence.

As Marxists, we come to feminism from a completely different place than the mechanical Marxists. Because we see monopoly capitalism as a political/ economic/cultural totality, we have room within our Marxist framework for feminist issues which have nothing ostensibly to do with production or “politics,” issues that have to do with the family, health care, “private” life.

Furthermore, in our brand of Marxism, there is no “woman question” because we never compartmentalized women off to the “superstructure” or somewhere in the first place. Marxists of a mechanical bent continually ponder the issue of the unwaged woman (the housewife): is she really a member of the working class? That is, does she really produce surplus value? We say, of course housewives are members of the working class — not because we have some elaborate proof that they really do produce surplus value — but because we understand a class as being composed of people, and as having a social existence quite apart from the capitalist-dominated realm of production. When we think of class in this way, then we see that in fact the women who seemed most peripheral, the housewives, are at the very heart of their class — raising children, holding together families, maintaining the cultural and social networks of the community.

We are coming out of a kind of feminism and a kind of Marxism whose interests quite naturally flow together. I think we are in a position now to see why it is that socialist feminism has been so mystified: the idea of socialist feminism is a great mystery or paradox, so long as what you mean by socialism is really what I have called “mechanical Marxism” and what you mean by feminism is an ahistorical kind of radical feminism. These things just don’t add up; they have nothing in common.

But if you put together another kind of socialism and another kind of feminism, as I have tried to define them, you do get some common ground, and that is one of the most important things about socialist feminism today. It is a space free from the constrictions of a truncated kind of feminism and a truncated version of Marxism — in which we can develop the kind of politics that addresses the political/economic/cultural totality of monopoly capitalist society. We could only go so far with the available kinds of feminism, the conventional kind of Marxism, and then we had to break out to something that is not so restrictive and incomplete in its view of the world. We had to take a new name, “socialist feminism,” in order to assert our determination to comprehend the whole of our experience and to forge a politics that reflects the totality of that comprehension.

However, I don’t want to leave socialist feminist theory as a “space” or a common ground. Things are beginning to grow in that “ground.” We are closer to a synthesis in our understanding of sex and class, capitalism and male domination, than we were a few years ago. Here I will indicate only very sketchily one such line of thinking:

1. The Marxist/feminist understanding that class and sex domination rest ultimately on force is correct, and this remains the most devastating critique of sexist/capitalist society. But there is a lot to that “ultimately.” In a day-to-day sense, most people acquiesce to sex and class domination without being held in line by the threat of violence, and often without even the threat of material deprivation.
2. It is very important, then, to figure out what it is, if not the direct application of force, that keeps things going. In the case of class, a great deal has been written already about why the US working class lacks militant class consciousness. Certainly ethnic divisions, especially the black/white division, are a key part of the answer. But I would argue, in addition to being divided, the working class has been socially atomized. Working-class neighborhoods have been destroyed and are allowed to decay; life has become increasingly privatized and inward-looking; skills once possessed by the working class have been expropriated by the capitalist class; and capitalist-controlled “mass culture” has edged out almost all indigenous working-class culture and institutions. Instead of collectivity and self-reliance as a class, there is mutual isolation and collective dependency on the capitalist class.
3. The subjugation of women, in the ways which are characteristic of late capitalist society, has been key to this process of class atomization. To put it another way, the forces which have atomized working-class life and promoted cultural/material dependence on the capitalist class are the same forces which have served to perpetuate the subjugation of women. It is women who are most isolated in what has become an increasingly privatized family existence (even when they work outside the home too). It is, in many key instances, women’s skills (productive skills, healing, midwifery, etc.) which have been discredited or banned to make way for commodities. It is, above all, women who are encouraged to be utterly passive/uncritical/dependent (i.e. “feminine”) in the face of the pervasive capitalist penetration of private life. Historically, late capitalist penetration of working-class life has singled out women as prime targets of pacification/”feminization” — because women are the culture-bearers of their class.
4. It follows that there is a fundamental interconnection between women’s struggle and what is traditionally conceived as class struggle. Not all women’s struggles have an inherently anticapitalist thrust (particularly not those which seek only to advance the power and wealth of special groups of women), but all those which build collectivity and collective confidence among women are vitally important to the building of class consciousness. Conversely, not all class struggles have an inherently anti-sexist thrust (especially not those that cling to pre-industrial patriarchal values), but all those which seek to build the social and cultural autonomy of the working class are necessarily linked to the struggle for women’s liberation.

This, in very rough outline, is one direction which socialist feminist analysis is taking. No one is expecting a synthesis to emerge which will collapse socialist and feminist struggle into the same thing. The capsule summaries I gave earlier retain their “ultimate” truth: there are crucial aspects of capitalist domination (such as racial oppression) which a purely feminist perspective simply cannot account for or deal with — without bizarre distortions, that is. There are crucial aspects of sex oppression (such as male violence within the family) which socialist thought has little insight into — again, not without a lot of stretching and distortion. Hence the need to continue to be socialists and feminists. But there is enough of a synthesis, both in what we think and what we do for us to begin to have a self-confident identity as socialist feminists.

Jan 13th meeting, and going forward

Thanks to ALL OF YOU for coming to the first DSA potluck brunch; we promise less chaos the next time...but I think everyone got enough to eat and so we'll just remember to get set up earlier next time.  Thanks particularly to Andrea and Jen for being there early and coordinating with Carol at the GP, and staying at the end to make sure everything was as it had started....

IN any case....I didn't get everyone's name before they left but I wanted to put out at least a rough idea of what people seem to want to do and how this thing could be moved along in the future.  Karen's point about de-centralization of the group is pertinent and relevant; some of us are anarchists at best....

YES.  This is a WORK IN PROGRESS, and I will edit and update it as I know more...

-----------------------------------
I apologize in advance if it appears that I have 'cooked' the happenings at the meeting to create the summary below; please comment and correct me if I've left out something major, or if you just don't like the way this is organized...The structure below is nothing more than a sort of mental-map of what I saw in this afternoon...I've named names and such, but NONE of this should be considered even as much as the suggestion of a permanent thing.  PLEASE volunteer for whatever you would like most to do, or what you see most needs to be done...or just show up and call us all crazy once in a while to keep us grounded.
There were also a few people at the meeting I spaced out on, or didn't get the names of, or both.  Please let me know what I've missed!


Last things first:  next meeting is on Sunday, February 17th at 12 noon at the GP; potluck brunch seems to be popular, but if you are bringing anything that takes extra setup (my coffee machine fiasco is a good cautionary tale..), come at least 15 minutes early.  And thank you to EVERYONE for helping clean up...Carol and Ken love what we are doing but we need to keep up the good works.

ADMINISTRATIVE THINGS: (getting basics done)


Steering Committee: Dro and Andrea seemed to volunteer tentatively for that, so we will need to help define their responsibilities and continue to ask others to help them.  For now I suppose they will put together an agenda, run the meetings and keep us from bogging down in the middle of everything.
DSA Chapter exploration:  Ed Struthers and George know as much as anyone...
Howard Zinn reading group:  Andrea had a good notion: holding a discussion of the 'chapters of the month' just before the meeting, which may help with our solidarity as a group anyway.  Should we meet an hour or so early on these Sundays (say 11AM??) for that purpose, then move right into the brunch and meeting?
Blog and Email: Pat Struthers will continue maintaining the blog and coordinating the membership list, until we have something and/or someone more permanent in place.  Someone also needs to step up and act as a first contact for the group; this could be as easy as making their phone # available as the Pendleton DSA's official one, getting down basic information, and sending it to Pat...


LIASONS: (we will need regular reports on what other local orgs are doing)


Walla Walla DSA:  George knows the people up there, although Pat S. will mail Rachel E. there to keep them in the loop.
ROP: Brianna Spencer
Altrusa: Marie Struthers
Umatilla Democrats: Pat S. and Mark Peterson
Local Agriculture: Virginia Blakelock
EOC3: Paul
CTUIR: Brianna Spencer
KBLU: Pat S, Karen, Gary, Virginia, Ron, Ira
Other organizations ??? (Karen mentioned some others. Karen?)


ISSUES: (what we most want to be on our platform, and to work on locally)


Brianna Spencer brought an immediate thing up: support her the tribe in getting public drinking fountains in public spaces, both on the reservation and (I assume) in the surrounding area. Jenni is finding out more about it and will report to us, I hope...


Climate: Andrea, Jen, Paul, Gary (everyone liked this!)
Impeachment: Pat Lee, Pat S., Ron, Jack??
Money in Politics: Ed, Harvey (pretty much everyone wants this)
Sustainability: Eleanor, Paul, Virginia??
Foreign Policy/Education: Pat S, Ira, George  (trade policy, military, immigration)
Local Action: George, Ron

Erin McCusker was there, but we didn't give her another chance to talk, and Jack Davis was new and wanted to listen mostly...but everyone else jumped right in and had an enthusiasm to share.  A great start!

I KNOW I've left a lot out here, especially on the issues; there was a lot more said than I can easily condense, but the rough categories are there I think.  Again, please mail back or comment on the blog...

Dro's first blog

first thanks Pat for your expertise you are sharing with all of us.

Our second meeting was deeply pleasing and has refreshed my spirit. I appreciate the food and so many coming.

Tentative Pendleton DSA Agenda for Jan 13th meeting
1. Group song, led by George
2. Reports
   1. Report on Walla Walla DSA chapter meeting of Monday, December 10th. Anyone? George, Dro, Pat, Ed, Marie all attended…
3. Old Business
   1. Hello again to everyone!
   2. Pendleton DSA blog news. Will be a low-key seminar hosted by Pat after the meeting to get everyone (that wants to participate in that way) comfortable with the blog. Pat will send out invites to it again (via email) Saturday night.
   3. Round-the-table with everyone together for first time, get an idea what this is and what all of us would like from it.
   4. Umatilla Democrats: Pat will attend their meeting Monday night. See the attached agenda for them, it is very interesting! They meet at the Community Room on the back side of the City Hall (beneath the Library) at 6PM; all attendees are welcome to participate.
   5. Howard Zinn: The People's History of the United States : We are building up copies, and I will buy some more in Kennewick tomorrow while I'm there. What else should be on the reading list?
   6. Platform items: Start with Seattle DSA and work from there? Ed Struthers recommends 'money in politics' as a major addition to the platform, and indeed the national Dems (and AOC) have made it a priority and a new ethical principle that as little money should be taken, voluntarily, from large donors as is politically feasable.
   7. Anyone interested in attending Women’s March on Monday Jan 14^th in Walla Walla? (Walla Walla DSA)
4. New Business
   1. Steering Committee?
   2. Walden harassment at his town hall meeting on the 23rd? See UCD agenda attached!
   3. Should we become an actual DSA chapter?
   4. Should we start a ‘People’s History’ study group, and are there other books that we should include?
   5. Once-around-the-table.
5. Wrap up
   1. Set new meeting date
   2. Adjourned

After-meeting

Cleanup so our hosts (Carol Hanks and the Great Pacific) will have us back.
Blog seminar with Pat.

LemmingsLeap #26 Raging Gorilla

I have read several articles about how we can tame global warming if only people would all go vegan. It sounds a lot like another “if only” that was going around a few years ago and that was if only we could stop driving our cars so much and turn down the thermostat, we could help stop global warming. I’m not the one who is going to say these measures would not help. In recent years I have cut back on my meat consumption and have always tried to lessen the need for driving. What I will tell you is that there is an 800 lb. gorilla in the room that no one wants to talk much about: military expenditures combined with the pollution and use of resources by the military.

We spend almost $700 billion a year on the military and what do we get in return? War. Disease. Crumbling infrastructure at home and bombed out infrastructure abroad. Dead and wounded soldiers by the thousands. Dead and wounded civilians by the million. Destruction of vast areas of the planet. Pollution of vast areas of the planet. Plus, as an added bonus, we get the largest contribution to global warming on the planet. We cannot stop global warming without stopping the American war machine.

The military serves an economic purpose in this country in that it makes jobs for people. This is one of the pushes that are used to justify the huge amount of money we spend on war. Those who are raking in the profits don’t want it to stop. In order to keep it going, we have to have more wars and that is exactly what we get. Since the end of the last century, we have had war after war chewing up billions of tons of resources, killing millions of people, severely injuring tens of millions of people and traumatizing millions more. In the meantime, bankers and makers and dealers of weapons have raked in trillions of dollars. But it’s not enough. They need more. To get more, they start more wars. The truth of the matter is that all those jobs “created” by the military are negative sum jobs, that is they don’t produce something that is lasting yet they use up an inordinate amount of resources that ultimately get destroyed or stored somewhere.

Why would we continue to support this waste of human life and resources? That can be summed up in one word: fear. Ebola. Avian influenza. Russia. Communism. Terrorists. Muslims. We have been made to fear our own shadows. Our leaders and those who have bought them use fear to keep us in line and because capitalism does not like competition. Look at what happens when a small company gets popular and starts to grow. They are bought out or if they refuse to sell they might find their suppliers less willing to give them good prices or any materials at all. Look at what has happened to our many grocery stores that now are owned by larger concerns. Look at any industry, any provider of goods or services and you will find that some larger concern has bought them up or is planning to. Look at what we did to Venezuela. We tried to subvert their election and failed. We tried to hurt them economically, socially and politically. Our rich don’t play fair and don’t want competition at all and playing fair is only for losers. That is why we have so many monopolies controlling so many of our industries.

Meanwhile, a gorilla is raging through the planet creating death and destruction everywhere as well as those massive profits as the people on the planet become more impoverished. The United States sells a large number of weapons and this stimulates other countries to manufacture and sell weapons as well. What do you think this does to the peace of the world? How can it possibly affect Mother Earth and the other beings on this planet that are non-human?

While I do agree that we can lessen the impact of global warming and other pollution problems if people go vegan, it’s only 10% of the problem. Concentrating on this one area and making individuals feel guilty for eating meat will not come close to solving the problem even if the effort is successful. We cannot begin to be successful unless we ramp down the military.

Check out the list below of what we consume because of the US military keeping in mind that this is just the US and that resources used for military purposes are wasted and provide only destruction.

Gasoline used by the US military in one year: 100 million gallons

39,000 areas within the US that are polluted by the military

10–15 tons of depleted uranium, a weapon considered illegal by the UN, used in Yugoslavia

1,000 tons of depleted uranium used in Iraq during 2003

900 of the 1200 superfund cleanup sites are military

Note: I tried searching for the amount of steel, rare earth and pesticides used by the US military and found no numbers to report. The military’s secrecy has kept it from an accounting of the resources it has used and prevents the public from a real assessment of the use of these materials.