BRAZIL SIGNS MILITARY COOPERATION ACCORD WITH UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT - "Defense" against whom or what?!

BRAZIL SIGNS MILITARY COOPERATION ACCORD WITH UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT 
 "Defense" against whom or what?!
 
By Franz J. T. Lee

    Globalization alias global fascism, in a word, 'globofascism', is being run by a Lilliputian, omnipotent, terrorist global mafia, armed to its teeth, against over 6.5 billion wage workers, is being launched by a corporate syndicate of treacherous war criminals, who as an international ruling class, have already committed uncountable, abominable cardinal and capital crimes against hundred millions of innocent individuals, against vulnerable humanity. All kinds of war mongers and producers of arms of all calibers are hell bent on destroying Mother Nature and Life on Planet Earth.

Not a neutron, the weather, the ionosphere, a human feeling; not a neuron, a water molecule, a blade of grass, the moon, the human genome and the orbits of the planets in the solar system are save from the brutal, corporate vandalism of the Pentagon, NASA, NATO and other similar global military-industrial  organizations.  What they touch they change into a quagmire of wars, wares, goods and commodities on the world market. 
 
For all these reasons we have to reach out  for the stars, per aspera ad astra. We need cosmic, natural support, transversal logic, transvolutionary science and exvolutionary philosophy, we  have to negate feudal, clerical evolution, bourgeois democratic revolution and to surpass towards naturally and socially created,  creating and creative emancipation, towards natura naturata and natura naturans.

Now the military-industrial clique of Brazil (see below) has signed military cooperation with its hangman, thus betraying the peoples of Latin America. It is tightening the noose around the neck of the Bolivarian Revolution. The only true friend the workers of South America and elsewhere have, is their own concrete power, the international class struggle, consequent anti-capitalism, that is, real human emancipation.
Anexo:

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2010/04/140059.htm

U.S.- Brazil Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA)

On April 12, 2010 in Washington, D.C., Brazilian Minister of Defense Nelson Jobim and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates signed an agreement on defense cooperation between the governments of Brazil and the United States of America.

As the two most populous democracies in the Western Hemisphere, the United States and Brazil enjoy an increasingly close bilateral relationship, including in the area of defense. The DCA will enable U.S.-Brazil defense cooperation to deepen and expand into new areas of mutual interest.

Examples of cooperation promoted in the DCA include:

    * Cooperation in the fields of research and development, logistics support, technology security, and the acquisition of defense products and services.
    * Information exchanges on topics such as operational experiences, defense technology, and international peacekeeping operations.
    * Combined military training and education, and joint military exercises.
    * Collaboration relating to military systems and equipment.
    * Exchanges of instructors and students from defense institutions.
    * Naval ship visits.
    * Commercial initiatives related to defense matters.

The signing of the DCA reflects the many national and international security interests shared by both countries. These shared interests, and the benefits of close U.S.-Brazil defense cooperation, were shown in the response by the United States and Brazil to the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti – where thousands of U.S. and Brazilian military personnel worked side-by-side to deliver emergency, life-saving relief to the Haitian people.

The United States seeks partnership with the other nations in the Americas to address the complex security challenges that all our countries face. The strengthening of U.S.-Brazil defense cooperation at the strategic, operational and tactical levels will enable our two countries, and our neighbors, to come closer to achieving this goal.
 *****

It's Now or Never: Hands Off Mother Earth!

It's Now or Never: Hands Off Mother Earth!

By Jutta Schmitt

In Defense of our living planet and planetary life.

The Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth recently held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, by the World's People - as opposed to the world's transnational corporations and their executive branches or 'Governments of, by and for the Elites' - has concluded with The People's Agreement on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (1). This final document makes it very clear that if the so called "Copenhagen Understanding" had its way, the damages already inflicted on Mother Earth would become totally irreversible, with a 20 to 30 percent of species condemned to extinction, our forests and glaciers at risk of disappearing for good, with deserts expanding and droughts and floods affecting different regions of the planet, jeopardizing world food production and dramatically increasing the number of the hungry on the planet, which already exceeds 1 billion people.

The document goes straight to the essence of the problem our world is facing today, when pointing towards the fact, that the governments of the so called 'developed' countries, in complicity with part of the scientific community, are trying to reduce the debate and urgent action needed to avert the huge danger environmental contamination and climate change pose for life on planet Earth, to its perceivable effects - rising temperatures - rather than addressing the underlying root cause, the capitalist system. The People's Agreement direly warns that we are witnessing the agony of a patriarchal model of civilization based on the oppression and destruction of human beings and nature, which had been sharply accelerated by the industrial revolution and which today encompasses the entire globe. It states that this model of civilization -capitalism - has ruthlessly imposed on us its logics of competition and its notion of 'progress', which equals wellbeing with unlimited economic growth, no matter the consequences. The document states that capitalism is a mode of production and consumption which has the sole purpose of seeking unlimited profits, alienating humans from nature and converting everything into a commodity: water, land, the human genome, our ancestral cultures, biodiversity, justice, ethics, people's rights, death and life itself.

The People's Agreement bluntly shows that humanity today faces the final disjunctive: Either continue the devastating path of capitalism towards depredation and death, or start paving the way to a model of society that learns to live in harmony with nature and respects and cherishes life. The knowledge, wisdom and the ancestral way of life of our indigenous peoples, anchored in the concept of Earth as a living being, that is, as the totality of all the living, moving processes of which human beings only form a part, is being considered as the only method to help Mother Earth with all her living relations - humans included - survive and recover. The document goes on to categorically state that an alternative society must either live in harmony and equilibrium with itself and with nature, foster the collective wellbeing based on complementarity, solidarity and equity, respect Mother Earth's rights, value humans by virtue of what they are and not by what they possess, eliminate all forms of colonialism, imperialism and interventionism and foster peace between the peoples and with Mother Earth, or otherwise perish.

Thus and according to the People's Agreement, the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth must be adopted immediately and must comprise her right to life and to existence, her right to be respected, her right to continue her natural cycles and processes without alteration by humans, her right to maintain her identity and integrity as a totality of different, self-regulated and interrelated beings, her right to water as the spring of life, her right to clean air, her right to integral health, her right to be free from contamination, pollution, toxic and radioactive waste, her right not to be modified genetically, her right to be free from threats to a vital and healthy functioning, and finally, her right to a full and fast recovery from the violations of these rights by human activities.
  
In addition, the People's Agreement demands the creation of an International Court for Climate and Environmental Justice, and demands that the so-called 'developed' countries take their full responsibility as the major polluters and thus restore the environment including the atmospheric space above the so-called 'underdeveloped' countries, which has been contaminated by the pollutants of the 'developed' countries. Furthermore, the agreement demands that the 'developed countries' provide shelter to the hundreds of millions that will be displaced as a consequence of climate change provoked by THEIR greenhouse gas emissions and also provide the means to minimize and deal with the damage caused by these same emissions. This, of course, sets the stage for an inevitable confrontation between two radically antagonistic conception: The World People's Conception which places life over profit and which seeks an integral solution to climate change by identifying and tackling the root cause, and the World Elites' 'conception' or rather shortsightedness, which places profits over life and which seeks to make profit even from the demise of Mother Earth and life.

In this sense and consequentially, the People's Agreement categorically rejects the false solutions to climate change, offered by the Elites in complicity with the established scientific community and profit-hungry, transnational corporations, which range from 'bio-fuels', nanotechnology, genetically modified organisms to geoengineering. As for the latter, the necessity to protect our already contaminated skies and seas from being totally deprived of the little that is left of their vital functions by injecting toxic chemicals into the atmosphere and by dumping iron into the oceans, has led to the creation of the HANDS OFF MOTHER EARTH CAMPAIGN by a coalition of international civil society groups, indigenous peoples organizations and social movements, who participated at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. The HOME campaign is aimed at raising public awareness with regard to large-scale manipulation of planetary sub-systems and provides a platform for individuals and organizations to voice their opposition to such geoengineering experiments.

Most importantly, the massive, already ongoing 'covert' - and at the same time openly visible experiments - of "Solar Radiation Management" MUST BE EXPOSED AND STOPPED.

The World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth has concluded its session on the 22nd of April with the People's Agreement and the call for immediate coordination of international action so as to see for the dissemination of its findings and the implementation of its demands. The Conference calls for the construction of a World Movement of the People for the Defense of Mother Earth, because Mother Earth is the only HOME we have.

It's now or never: We have to defend our living planet and planetary life. Thus, join the Hands Off Mother Earth Campaign! Welcome HOME! 

  http://www.handsoffmotherearth.org/

Notes  
 
(1) http://cmpcc.org/2010/04/23/acuerdo-de-los-pueblos/

jutta@franzlee.org.ve

http://juttaschmitt.blogspot.com

http://english-juttaschmitt.blogspot.com

Franz J. T. Lee: (VIDEOS) VIOLENCE VERSUS EMANCIPATION

(VIDEOS) VIOLENCE VERSUS EMANCIPATION
ANTICIPATORY FLASHES (PART FOUR)

By Franz J. T. Lee

  

VIDEOS PART FOUR

VIDEOS PART FOUR

TO VIEW THE VIDEOS, PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINKS.

http://www.4shared.com/video/ufIVY2PO/EMANCIPATION_PART_4A.html

http://www.4shared.com/video/wWxleban/EMANCIPATION_PART_4B.html

HOME

  

Exclusive Interview with Franz J. T. Lee: Venezuela and the USA. By Jesus Maria Nery Barrios (February 27th, 2008)

 

JMNB: Firstly, Prof. Dr. Franz Lee, it is an honor to make this exclusive interview with you, spotlighting current burning world issues. As well-known socialist revolutionary for nearly half a century, as international political analyst, excellent lecturer at many international universities and author of many writings mainly in German, English and Spanish on global, historical issues, especially about Africa, Europe and the Americas ... could you please tell us whether we are really heading inexorably towards a dreadful, global cataclysm with fatal results for the whole of humanity within a relative short period of time?
   FJTL: I am not a divine prophet, a Nostradamus, also not a fortune-teller revealing future strokes of luck, however, as natural scientist and social philosopher I am studying the transhistoric latencies and tendencies, the possibilities and realities of our epoch of imperialist corporate globalization. In this case I fear that you are right, ruling class man, homo homini lupus, is on the verge of destroying life on this planet, that is, within the space-time of only two centuries the current capitalist world order is hell bent on annihilating a huge solar, galactic process that probably took 6 billion years to materialize itself.
JMNB: Getting back to contemporary reality, to the 'plague' about which already Simon Bolivar has warned us, at the end of January, Robert Reich of the 'Financial Times' informed us that the North America's middle class is no longer coping, and is being threatened by bankruptcy.In your opinion, what did he mean, in how far does the housing fiasco in the USA affect the future of the world market, of mankind?
FJTL: A complex question indeed, but let us get down to brass tacks. Other sources have informed us that even in Europe, for example, in Germany, that the middle classes are waning away progressively. As a result of globalization, of concentration of capital, monopolization, merging and fusion of giant corporations like Exxon and Mobil (1998) or even Conoco and Phillips (2002), also Time and Warner (1987, 2000) and even with AOL.
Currently the capitalist mode of production is experiencing its worst crisis, a possible coming global recession. Although the USA annually spends more than the rest of the world together in military budgets, in the production of arms of mass destruction and on aggressive wars, yet its economy is in shambles, is being burdened by trillions worth of internal and external debts and an alarming fiscal deficit.
One wonders why the U.S. economy still is functioning and why its ailing dollar ... not based on productivity, but rather on wild speculation ... has not collapsed as yet.
In fact, nobody knows or can calculate when this crash will happen. The only thing that is sure, is that the U.S. economy will eventually collapse unless, in the last minute by some miracle, the current world system could be changed radically.
Furthermore, the greenback is losing its hegemony as a world currency by the second; the dollar is not worth the paper on which it is printed anymore, it is simply backed by mammoth debts. At the same rate that foreign petro-dollars flee from Wall Street towards the East, towards Europe and Asia, towards the promising realms of the euro and the yuan, the US dollar is losing its value.
Probably, not even the beggars of Manhattan or Harlem want U.S. dollars anymore; everybody is looking for euros or other foreign currencies.
JMNB: Are you really saying that not even God trusts in the greenback anymore?
FJTL: This is neither a joke nor an exaggeration, it is an issue of life or death of North American world hegemony. The acceptance of foreign European money as exchange value to legally buy goods in Manhattan was a thing unheard of until now. Believe it or not, a while ago Reuters informed us that the U.S. dollar, the 'king among currencies' ain't what it used to be.
Now businessmen simply say that 'money is money' and ''Euros Accepted' signs are popping up all over in shops in New York City. Making use of the favorable exchange rates, hordes of European tourists flood New York City with hard cash to burn and to search for cheap 'pleasure' in the 'land of a million opportunities'.
Yes, the American dollar is in death throes.
JMNB: As political scientist, how do you see the slump of the American economy, how is it affecting the middle classes, and in this century can the United States government or anything else for that matter still stop the inexorable collapse of the world market, of global capitalism?
FJTL: To be or not to be? What a question, my countrymen?
The dialectical problem, the contradictory dilemma is simple: if we would conquer power by means of a classical social revolution, by blowing up bridges, by using the guillotine, by means of a 'reign of terror' a la frances, by destroying the infrastructures and power centers of modern capitalism, we would surely not survive the global toxic results, the human chaos, physical hunger and planetary radio-activity. It would be a fierce global class war, a Pyhrric victory.
If we would be doing nothing, and just allow the Nazis of this world to eradicate poverty by simply making us mad, and then as 'mad cows' annihilating the poor, then the very same would happen. Metropolitan imperialism did not produce arsenals of arms of mass destruction to massacre aliens or international terrorists. As their own spokesmen declare, they are being accumulated for the coming global class war.
This is what dialectics is all about, what it means to be on the horns of a dilemma. To enter the current trimensional, micro-, meso- and macro-worlds, we urgently need new emancipatory paradigms and parameters, a new logic, science, philosophy and wisdom; this is the only road left for us, is the crossing of the Rubicon, is creative exodus, is getting out, is exvolution.
But, let us return to current U.S. patriotic reality, to our immediate world problem.
JMNB: Is the current U.S. economic slump spelling future fascist doom?
FJTL: De facto, the United States war economy is already in the fangs of full imperialist over-production of arms and wares of mass destruction, that is, the United States is already the fascist police officer of world corporate imperialism, is entering a cataclysmic recession, which could be followed by violent, terrorist, military aggressions and global invasions, to conquer all remaining energetic sources and resources, and thus will be desecrating the sovereignty of all nations.
JMNB: Does this mean that according to 'full spectrum dominance' Venezuela is next on the list? In quintessence, what is the good news, and what is the bad news for Venezuela at this critical moment of world history?
FJTL: Which news first?
JMNB: The good news.
FJTL: Well, that is very easy. Contrary to many countries of the South, Venezuela practically swims in an eternal ocean of oil, gas and fresh water; it possesses an immense biodiversity, strategic metals and minerals, and a tropical vegetation that could produce oxygen for centuries to come.
JMNB: D'accord. And the bad news?
FJTL: Precisely the very same news. Contrary to many countries of the South, Venezuela practically swims in an eternal ocean of oil, gas and fresh water; ....
This is why Venezuela is practically a member of the sonorous 'axis of evil', is target No.1 for a new 'discovery', 'Christianization', pacification and military conquest, is threatened by the Plan Colombia, and why this Sword of Damocles will forever hover over our heads.
Uncle Sam will commit any crime that could give world capitalism a new lease of life. This is revolutionary dialectics, where 'good' and 'bad' news are two sides of the very same world market coin.
JMNB: Apart from trying to save North American capitalism by means of bloody invasions and world wars, how is the Bush administration trying to counter the internal explosive situation? Are the middle classes disappearing? What is currently happening to them?
FJTL: Totally ignoring the ordeal of the working masses, to counter the economic collapse, President Bush is now offering a $150bn stimulus package, including middle-class tax cuts and an increased spending on infrastructure.
JMNB: Do you think that this will somehow relieve the economic agony? Could it save the middle classes from extinction?
FJTL: No, this aspirin will definitely just heighten the political headache, strengthen the economic fever and activate the fascist cancer. Economically, this is just offering peanuts, when we consider the huge military budget for 2008, that Exxon Mobil makes $1bn profits a week, not even to mention the booty of Chevron, SonocoPhillips, Haliburton, Bill Gates and consorts.
JMNB: In times of severe social uproar, could you please explain briefly the political role of middle classes a little more precisely?
FJTL: Experts in this field have already explained the negative, reformist role of the middle classes in times of depression and recession. Philosophically speaking, concerning the middle classes, they generally play a very opportunistic, even reactionary role in times of social crises, namely, when capitalism shows its true 'democratic' snarl: fascism.
The immense class struggles on a world scale ... exploding in Nepal, East Timor, the Middle East, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Ecuador and, of course, in Cuba and Venezuela ... now even encompasses 'proletarian' and 'bourgeois' nations and even continents. Hence, in globalization where physical labor of billions is becoming obsolete, as predicted by Marx and Engels in the 'Manifesto of the Communist Party', and in 'Capital', the middle classes will rapidly vanish, a few members may reach the shores of the upper echelons of imperialist corporatism, however, the immense majority in geometric numbers will progressively be devoured by the Moloch of global pauperization; as new unemployed starving masses, these ex-middle classes will have to share their misery with the wretched of the earth, and will have to storm the metropolitan flesh-pots and to forget all about their nightmares of 'communism' and their pipe-dreams about a good, capitalist, promised 'land of milk and honey'.
JMNB: Concerning the 'nightmares of communism' in your opinion, is it true that by inherent, inherited, ideological nature nearly all members of the middle classes (also in Venezuela) have a deep-seated, aggressive, anti-socialist, anti-communist and anti-Marxist world outlook?
FJTL: This anti-dialectical materialism, anti-hylozoism and anti-Marxism are not private assets of the middle classes only, some 2,500 years ago, already Anaxagoras was thrown out of Athens, was ostracized because he claimed that the Moon was not a divinity, not Selena, but simply a piece of rock. To preserve the ruling class status quo, all idealists, from Plato to Plotin, from St. Augustine to Saint Thomas of Aquinas, from the Papacy to the Vatican, all hated materialist philosophy. Furthermore, anti-communism, anti-Marxism are inherent basic elements of bourgeois, anti-proletarian, democratic, capitalist ideology: McCarthyism, Stalinism, Catholicism, Christianity, the world religions, Zionism, Apartheid, Gandhism, liberalism, revisionism, reformism, puntofijism, fascism and Nazism, as national socialism, all hated the very thoughts and acts of Marxist revolutionaries. In the last analysis, to them, a Marxist is the incorporation of the devil himself. Now, it seems that even the newly founded United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) is destined to take this anti-Marxist highway, if this should become true, then: 'Welcome, Uncle Sam'! Bye, Bye, Socialist Revolution!
JMNB: Before we follow up this train of thought, let us clarify another issue: like here in Venezuela, does it mean that the American middle classes have lived beyond their pay cheques, were living on credit, on credit cards? Will the Venezuelan middle classes eventually share the same fate of mass extinction? Will they soon lose their palaces and Hummer luxury cars to foreign and national banks?
FJTL: Yes, but this concerns different countries and distinct social classes and economic realities. We cannot deal in detail with such complex questions here. Nevertheless, could you please formulate your question more precisely?
JMNB: Okay, in what did the North American middle classes spend the money that they did not earn as yet, and will probably never earn, and what is really happening there? Are the North American middle classes eroding away?
FJTL: In spite of all the military pomp and glory, in a capitalist society of economic bankruptcy, in a 'great society', the inherent contradictions deepen, and it is the middle classes that first are feeling the volcanic eruptions. The moment when 'Third World' democratic revolutionaries conquer political power (not economic power), they tend to become middle classes, or at least to construct a new political middle class. This is the case currently in South Africa and Venezuela.
This is extremely dangerous for the forward march of a real, true socialist revolution. This new class, accumulating wealth and privileges, readily aligns itself with the counter-revolution.
JMNB: In brief, in this spirit, over the last months, economically, what really occurred in the USA?
FJTL: A lot of things that could scare us to death, however, the following, the possible collapse of world capitalism, concerns us here. As we have been informed last year the U.S. slump detonated in the housing sector, which abruptly ended the housing boom. Recession was dawning on the belligerent horizon and serious economic problems faced the banks and brokers, who possessed huge assets in mortgage securities. This again immediately affected the opulent middle classes.
JMNB: In this epoch of global class struggles, as mentioned by you before, we know that the middle classes are caught up between the two major contending historic forces, and that usually at first they experience the sysmic tremors of social upheaval. Hence, my questions: faced by an approximating disaster, by recession in the USA, which will spill over to Latin America, how are the Northern middle classes reacting? Did metropolitan capitalism come to their rescue? What is happening to their unpaid debts and homes? What will be their social destiny?
FJTL: Well, surely, these are fundamental questions, very educative for the Venezuelan 'Gente de petroleo', for the new political middle class, for the treacherous 'Chavistas without Chávez'.As we learned from the news, the newly pauperized middle classes, especially the lower sectors, desperately began to borrow. As a result of their home equity loans, in fact, their very homes became piggy banks. At the same time, the banks stepped in and credit cards were raining down like manna from the sky; furthermore, second mortgages and refinancing began to play havoc with this buffer class; like the USA itself, deeper and deeper, millions are progressively falling into the loan abyss, into the bottomless pit of globalization.
All this may cause rumbling, mumbling and roaring in the lower sectors of American society.
As such, in the United States the epoch of easily making and getting money suddenly came to a close. The bursting house bubble flung thousands of homeless citizens onto the merciless streets. ready to accompany the millions of poor devils who since decades were and are already sleeping under falling bridges.
Of course, all over anxiety and fear of dark days ahead, of an uncertain future are gripping not only the toiling laborers, but now also all middle class sectors, all previous lovers of capitalism, that is, all who were searching for a panacea, for change within this exploitative world order, that is, worldwide, from New York to London, from Berlin to Moscow, from Beijing to Tokyo, to Cape Town, to Rio deJaneiro, to Caracas, to Miami, etc. All the so-called technological benefits of globalized economic growth praised over the last decades did not even reach the middle classes, rather they mainly went into the production of arms and means of natural, mental and corporeal mass destruction, which just served the class interests of small global parasitic ruling elites. For example, the class interests of the hundreds of marauding billionaires in the world, of whom the USA harbors the lion's share. 432 of them make super profits worldwide, especially in the U.S. war economy; Germany has 55 billionaires, India 54, Russia 53, China 28, South Africa 3, Egypt 2 and Venezuela/Colombia remain with only 2.But things are becoming worse in the USA. Well known bourgeois analysts and economists like Sal Guatieri or John Ryding are telling us that "compelling evidence" exists that the United States is deep in recession. In fact, currently the recession has already reached the service sectors, restaurants, insurances, health care and hospitals. Well, during the next months, we will witness the Via Crucis of the U.S. dollar and the demise of the USA as a world super power. None of the competitors, neither China nor Europe, neither Russia nor India, show special interest in becoming super powers and to relieve the USA from its inexorable demise. Any final question?
JMNB: Yes, a very important one. It concerns our interview, it concerns countering the lies, myths and hoaxes spread by the huge international mass media about Venezuela, about President Chavez. Is a powerful electronic news medium, in foreign languages, like VHeadline imperative in the defense of democracy and socialism in Venezuela? Finally, do we really have a social, a socialist revolution in Venezuela?
FJTL: The truth is the Achilles Heel of the North American Empire of globalized corporate imperialism, of global fascism. In the fierce 'war of ideas', in this world of 'psychological warfare', of Orwellian Mind and Thought Control, of Newspeak, of a coming Mental Holocaust, urgently independent news media like our VHeadline website in English and Spanish, have to be supported materially and financially.
If we neglect this strategic praxical and theoretical weapon, our class enemies will have all the freedom in the world to denigrate us, to crush us, to assassinate the character of President Chávez and all these will weaken the already tender Bolivarian Revolution more and more, and eventually could nip it mercilessly in the bud.
It is extremely urgent that all forces of global resistance defend the truth in Venezuela, that they know what is going on here.
The counter-revolution is already in our midst, it is already capturing our news media, hence, let us take care. The Bolivarian Revolution is at stake.
Only Knowledge and Truth, only real revolutionary práxis and true emancipatory theory can still save it, that is, scientific and philosophic socialism.
The next months will be decisive, hence we have to act now.In conclusion, definitely, in the epoch of globalization, at the eve of the 21st century, social and socialist revolutions are very rare, very scarce indeed. Not anything is a revolution, is socialism. At least, the latter is the dialectical No, the negation of global capitalism and can be nothing else.
Surely, we are making the Bolivarian Revolution, over the last decade it really demonstrated its working class base: it showed magnificent paradigms of modern trails of elementary class struggle in April and December, 2002, and in January 2003.
Surely, we are constructing indigenous, Christian socialism, well, nothing wrong with this, we decide what we do and think. this is Bolivarian Socialism. However, our duty is to make permanently the world revolution; when it is there, we further it, when it is not there, we create it.
If we should lose it, we have to start all over again, enriched in praxical experience, invincible in social theory and powerful in emancipatory wisdom, creation and creativity.
We do not first support the revolution, then we get frustrated, because the revolution has entered the historical doldrums, then we leave it, and finally join the 'opposition'.
This is not revolutionary, this is cowardice, opportunism, is the behavior pattern of a traitor, of a treacherous reformist turncoat.If one should be the very last revolutionary on earth, it would still be one's duty to fight exploitation, domination, discrimination, genocide and alienation, the quintessence of capitalism, of globalization, we would have to defend the negation of capitalism, to construct its No, its Negation, Socialism.
Comrades, from Revolution to Emancipation, la lutta continua -- ¡Hasta la Victoria Siempre!
JMNB: Prof. Franz Lee, comrade, thanks for a most educative exclusive interview.
http://vheadlinevenezuelanews.blogspot.com/
vheadline@gmail.com

Author: Franz J. T. Lee

Mail contact: venezuelanews@franzlee.org

franzjutta@cantv.net
http://espanol-franzjtlee.blogspot.com/ 
http://www.aporrea.org/ideologia/a91272.html
http://quebec.indymedia.org/en/node/29321

Franz J. T. Lee: (VIDEOS) VIOLENCE VERSUS EMANCIPATION (PART THREE)

(VIDEOS) VIOLENCE VERSUS EMANCIPATION
ANTICIPATORY FLASHES (PART THREE)

By Franz J. T. Lee

 By applying dialectical logic and by even venturing beyond its internal, systemic, universal limits, Franz tries to explain that Violence and Peace are just two different sides of the very same historical process. This Janus-faced, democratic-fascist monstrosity has to be annihilated in its total capitalist, imperialist, corporate quintessence, to be transcended by creative, creating  emancipation, by natural-social humanity. The opposite, the negation of Violence is not Peace. As Marx explained it already a century and a half ago in his article 'The Jewish Question', the 'superation' of both social processes, which determine and perpetuate themselves, is Human Emancipation. Below we are publishing the third part of a series of Franz's videos on this urgent topic and enlightening excerpts from previous publications which definitely will blaze the trail  to understand the current globalized terror and terrorist globalization.

VIDEOS PART THREE

PART THREE: REVOLUTION AND EMANCIPATION (A)

http://www.4shared.com/video/wbZX8IkR/EMANCIPATION_PART_3A.html

PART THREE: REVOLUTION AND EMANCIPATION (B)

http://www.4shared.com/video/rO1QESOd/EMANCIPATION_PART_3B.html

PART THREE: REVOLUTION AND EMANCIPATION (C)

http://www.4shared.com/video/c_bpXXry/EMANCIPATION_PART_3C.html

 

Venezuela: The Serpentine Road from Bourgeois Revolution 

to Proletarian Emancipation

By Franz J. T. Lee

Home

  In the third millennium the global belligerent conquest of 'Humania South', especially of the Caribbean, Central and South America, by the United States of America, is in full swing. However, on the historic world stage, in the wake of a possible systemic capitalist collapse, an inexorable Pyrrhic war is raging that is threatening to devour the super powers themselves. Poignantly, in political consonance with Rosa Luxemburg, Oscar Wilde has portrayed the quintessence  of the 'American Revolution' and of its disgraceful aftermath:

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." 1)

About the revolutionary legacy of the USA, Simon Bolivar hit the nail on its head:
"The United States appear to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty” 2)

However, a specter is haunting the United States of America and Europe: -- the specter of the Bolivarian Revolution. All the great powers "have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter": Pope and Obama, Merkel and Sarkozy, Goriletti and Uribe. De facto Uncle Sam has already invaded Colombia and has annexed it militarily. Any sober mind could note that  Venezuela is next on the list of conquest.  Precise bellicose preparations for a full scale attack, organized internally and externally, are well on their way. The coming confrontation is not a skirmish between Obama and Chavez, not ideological shadow boxing against the 'empire', not a vendetta between Chavez and Uribe, no, it is the logical continuation of the French Revolution, of bourgeois capitalist democracy, of social intrasystemic reform, of global imperialism. For us in Venezuela, ever since April 11, 2002, it was (and more than ever still is) a permanent global anti-capitalist war. It is the immediate urgency to defend and materialize our planetary 'Matria', our emancipatory matrix.

Beyond doubt, in the name of our Bolivarian Revolution much has been done for the various social classes, due to well-known constraints, for some less, for others more. Venezuela is still far away from becoming a socialist country within a global emancipatory process.

As part of the 'gender' debate, true to Rosa Luxemburg, for us over the last decade, social reform was a dialectical,  quantitative, pertinent means towards a qualitative end: world revolution, towards world peace. The perilous revolutionary road towards the Rubicon, to cross it towards emancipation, indeed is serpentine.

Bourgeois revolution brought about the current productive and destructive chaos and anarchy. The question remains:

can we poison the black mamba with its own venom, with its nearly invincible weapon: with revolution?

If not, then what is human emancipation?

With global class struggles how could we transcend, 'transvolve', from bourgeois / proletarian Revolution to Human Emancipation?

In their 'Manifesto' of 1848, Marx and Engels developed the first theory of imperialist globalization and scientifically already predicted the coming global capitalist anarchy, a direct product of the European bourgeois revolution in its totality:

"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. " 3)

But, what is 'revolution' all about in the epoch of globalization, of the final collapse of capitalism?

Historically the only revolution which radically transformed all previous economic, political, social, philosophic, logical, military, energetic, religious, moral, linguistic and cultural structures and relations into a single mode of auto-destruction, was (and still is) the global, bourgeois, capitalist democratic revolution. This unique planetary process, this revolution outmoded all previous modes of production. Currently, approximating the Rubicon of earthly existence and human life, less than one-tenth of humanity has already robbed 90% of human wealth. In its ravenous zeal to accumulate extra profits this parasitic elite is striving to materialize 'full spectrum dominance', is 'revolutionizing' its own belligerent, technological self-demise. Daily it is producing arsenals of mortal weapons of mass destruction, ranging from biological arms, like AIDS, ebola, monkey, bird and swine flu, to HAARP, to electro-magnetic weapons that could cut the planet nicely into halves ... or to station our only contaminated space ship near to Venus or Jupiter ... and to hundreds of mortal nuclear weapons of all fatal categories.

Except the bourgeois capitalist revolution, ever since 1789, why did all other revolutionary endeavors fail or why did we lose them? Perhaps, is there something fundamentally strange about social revolution?

Centuries ago the revolution formed the conditio sine qua non for the coming into being of various capitalist classes in Europe; also for their decisive victory over all the antiquated ruling lords, overlords and warlords. The success of its most effective discovery, of a seemingly invincible arm of social combat against a decrepit nobility and clergy, and later to be launched against obstreperous labor classes, assured that the outmoded world powers would never return again to stay and that henceforth as 'turn-coats' or Quislings their ideologues and mercenaries could be used freely in the service of capital accumulation, of alienating the workers or, if necessary, simply to be disposed of as over-productive, archaic flotsam and jetsam, by casting them onto the titanic capitalist dung-heap of history. Till today this is part and parcel of the intrinsic logic, the iron fist morality and reality of world capitalist revolution. Lately this happened to the Boer ruling classes of Apartheid South Africa. Accompanied by a Nobel Peace Prize this Herrenvolk was cast into eternal oblivion. What really got rid of Apartheid in the 'Land of Sunshine' was corrupt 'Sun City', the capitalist revolution towards total, totalitarian globalization, towards global Apartheid. Nothing has revolutionized the world more than the bourgeois accumulation of capital.
Marx's 'Capital' describes the very long history of economic, capitalist revolution, inter alia, of its exploitation. domination, discrimination, terrorism and alienation. In the Mediterranean region and adjacent territories, over more than 2500 years, the brutal unilateral accumulation of capital, wealth and power, the 'master-slave' class relations, the systemic, dialectical contradiction 'labor versus capital' and the forward march of homo homini lupus, of history, expressed themselves in various modes, appearance forms: in the French Revolution (1789), Industrial Revolution (1830) and the first anti-colonial 'American Revolution' against Britain. In reality, this was a colonial uprising against the British crown. The 'Boston Tea Party' and the revolting slogan 'Taxation without Representation is Tyranny!' formed part of the emerging anti-colonialism which was being born in the Caribbean and America. Only later it developed itself into a bourgeois capitalist social revolution per se, as part of the global capitalist revolution, euphemistically called the 'American Civil War' or 'American War of Secession' (1861 - 65).

As Oscar Wilde pointed out, there was nothing 'civil' or 'civilized' in this extension and globalization of imperialism, as had already been predicted scientifically in 1848 by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their monumental 'Manifesto of the Communist Party'.

American imperialist barbarism in Iraq and Afghanistan shows what the famous revolution was all about. More than ever we have to clarify, to conceptualize what is a social revolution and what it is not. For classical socialism this is clear, but things are changing very rapidly nowadays. Adjectives describe essential appearance forms (of a noun), phenomena of a thing, a concept, relation or process.

Let us look at a simple example:

White snow. Snow is white.

It would be totally absurd to talk about boiling snow. With silvery, boiling water, we could make a delicious tea, but we cannot make snow balls with boiling water. This is independent of the fact that both could be the same thing, could be the same chemical composition, H2O. It would be absurd to talk about 'national socialism' in Venezuela or about 'Christian socialism' in the Vatican. How could the bourgeoisie that invented and made the revolution with and against the proletariat now be confronted by the proletarian revolution. Did the revolution change? Do we have to update our arms?

This proletariat is a product of the bourgeois accumulation  of capital, of capitalist economic, political and social revolution. Because there is no living substitute for healthy, human thinking and thought, isolated words, written phrases, even language, do not think for us, they are just imperfect social tools. Only Pavlov dogs, 'speaking tools', radio and TV apparatuses, cell phones, 'think tanks', walking encyclopedia, Zombies and angels are exempted from acting and thinking. They do not need to worry about making the revolution or to emancipate themselves.

Surely we are free to call our ideas,  thoughts and acts, in any language, in any words, by any name. Practice, ideology, freedom, socialism or democracy are words that we often use in political life, but they could become virulent breeding grounds, degenerate seeds of confusion, propaganda, mind and thought control; as such they lack stringent decision, incision and precision. On the battlefield, in the 'war of ideas', they result in sinister, anti-emancipatory, repetitive, reactionary, barren practices.

Concepts like 'revolution' or 'socialism' are superstructural historic expressions of their specific age; different words could portray the very same idea or thing; some words even change into their very opposites. Fascist ideology and propaganda use semantic tricks to confound the ordinary working people. For example, from the 'Manifesto of the Communist Party' (1848) till the October Revolution (1917), cum grano salis, politically the following words as described in socialist literature were practically used as synonyms: a Marxist, revolutionary, communist and Social Democrat. Today the former and the latter are total opposites, arch-enemies.

However, semantics is not the apple of discord here. The problem for Venezuela, for the Bolivarians, is scientifically to act and philosophically to think the revolution, is to understand what is its ideology and practice, and to surpass all these as praxis, theory and 'human emancipation' (Marx).

This we have to do pretty fast, from its Colombian military air bases, the Yankee 'plague' (Simon Bolivar) is already pointing its arms of mass destruction at Caracas.

Hence, continuing with our central topic, what is the difference between the general word 'revolution' in any language, and the philosophic concept 'rivoluzione' or 'rivoltura'?

The latter were coined by the emerging bourgeoisie during the Renaissance. It is really all fair in love and war. Shakespeare's Juliet had a sweet taste of this theoretical dilemma:

 "JULIET:
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet ..." 4)


Names and words are not identical to living, flowing contradictions, relations and realities. In globalized imperialism there exists no eternal, absolute truths to be learned by rote as quotes, proverbs, catechisms,  prayers or dogmas. In many educational institutions and socialization centers we still are producing 'Pavlov dogs', we are destroying the brains, the weapons, of our children; we are making them easy prey to the fascist 'rainbow revolutions', to the Murdoch empire, to the  Mental Holocaust, to mind and thought control and destruction.

Without thinking and thought no emancipation!

The bourgeoisie knew that it could not make its revolution with Zombies, they needed their Maquiavelli, Adam Smith, Hobbes, Galileo, Kant, Hegel, etc.

In the epoch of globalization, in the mode of mass destruction, all scientific and philosophic working class struggles urgently necessitate 'praxical' incision, theoretical precision and 'transvolutionary' vision.

These are the central arms to emancipate ourselves: a new invisible logic, invulnerable science, invincible philosophy, the novum per se. Per aspera ad astra! Who does not aspire towards the unthinkable will never reach it!

Historically, at least as dialectical negation of capitalism, forming real and true anti-capitalism, as socialists, we could learn much from the stringent capitalist revolutionary modus operandi and modus vivendi. They only understand their own language, 'full spectrum dominance', the law of the guillotine, decadent terrorism. If social reform, millions of prayers, peaceful resistance and beautiful fraternal dialogues ever could stop United States war planes from bombing us and thus would leave our natural resources intact, then only 'military humanism', white phosphorous bombs and depleted uranium ammunition would disappear from the face of the earth. However, alas, war criminals always first shoot and then ask questions. E contrario,  emancipators are peaceful, they always behave civilized, that is why we have eternal peace talks, everlasting dialogues and a shortage of coffins and graveyards. Now and then David wins a battle against Goliath, but the price, the million casualties, is too high, and thereafter? After such heroic battles what is the Socialist Republic of Vietnam or Algeria today? Did we eliminate capitalism? What is going wrong? Our Bolivarian Revolution, our ALBA, quo vadis?

 Worldwide in every respect we have to be superior to world imperialism, but ... how to acquire this proletarian strength and power in a limited 'spacetime'? Should we change the latter?

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Gaza and Falujah remind us of over five centuries of exploitative labor pain, of bourgeois revolution. To construct the world market, the Bermuda Triangle of 'unequal exchange' (Samir Amin), no massacre, no genocide, no pillage were great enough to accumulate capital and profits, to satisfy power megalomania. Since Miletus, the Periclean golden age, the Spanish Inquisition, the European Conquest, no world religion, no ruling class ideology were holy enough to destroy millions of promising brains, to cast them into the Moloch of the superstructural Mental Holocaust.

In his "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard", Thomas Gray in elegant poetic fragrance is reminding us of  the immense cruelty of these cardinal and capital crimes against toiling humanity who never had any real future, who never had the chance to blossom, who were nipped in the bud. Till today millions of hopeful young persons are perishing in the toxic consumerist air. In 'favelas' and ghettos millions of 'lost souls' are vegetating in dire misery, eternal poverty and are being rotted out by means of military man-made epidemics and pandemics. What tremendous human vis vitalis, eros, libido and orgone are concentrated in billions of human beings, this creating, creative force progressively is being annihilated by a small power elite. What the masters most fear is that these  masses, their 'speaking tools' could one day become class conscious creators and emancipators. Western, European and Christian culture, civilization and colonization guaranteed the success of capitalist revolution on a world scale.

Thomas Gray tells us about this hidden human force:
"Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air." 5)

Now, what relevance does the above  have for us, for Venezuela, for the Bolivarian Revolution?

Thomas Paine, for a long time an  'illegitimate', atheist founding father of America, in a Cartesian doubting spirit, ...  that could also be applied to the very ideology of the bourgeois revolution itself, ... emphasized:

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right. " 6)

Yes, this is the repetition of diatribal lies until the very authors themselves believe in their own hoaxes, in the devil, 'terrorism', Bin Laden or Al-Qaeda. In the critical spirit of Ludwig Feuerbach, Paine was very clear about where to begin with the 'cultural revolution'; he did not trust in the marauding golden calf, in the divine dollar. Long before Karl Marx he stated:

"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. " 7)

In the same bourgeois democratic revolution Francisco de Miranda was fighting to realize liberty, equality and fraternity. The honorable inscription of his name in the Arc de Triomphe in Paris demonstrates his relevance in word and deed towards revolutionary enlightenment. Of course, the utopian and scientific socialists had hoped that the  revolution would not stop half way, would not be a betrayal of the human rights of global workers. However, in the very origin of the terms 'revolution' and 'revolver' we find the Janus-head of bourgeois revolution itself, its anti-feudal and anti-proletarian core, the suppression of workers' struggles. Ever since, the revolution expresses the intrasystemic dialectics, the laws of motion, the process of reckless accumulation of capital of this world order.

Now, revolutionary change can and must come only from within, anything else is 'terrorism', there is no exit, no exodus, no 'exvolution' from globalization, from corporate imperialism. Capitalism is an anarchic, chaotic closed mode of production.

Now we have a slight idea about revolution. Finally, let us take an etymological sojourn through the barren wilderness of bourgeois revolution. In words and concepts like Religion, Reform, Renaissance or Recession, generally 'Re-' means to return, regress, repeat, to come back in circular or cyclic form; like a rat race on a spinning wheel. The verb 'volver' means precisely the very same motion. Hence revolution is a double negation, a bodyguard of capital and a social guardian of the imperialist status quo ante rem and of the corporate, establishment in re.

During the feudal Middle Ages, in the city-states of Northern Italy the verb and concept 'revolver' and 'rivoluzione' or 'rivoltura' were created to express the bourgeois battle to gain political power against the outdated clergy and archaic nobility, but also to suppress the revolts of the upcoming workers. In the superstructure of the Renaissance the social concept 'revolution' coincided with the economic birth of 'labor houses', of the homo faber, of primitive factories, of capitalism as a future dominant mode of production. In the same way as the scientific and technological revolution was advancing, the bourgeoisie by means of the Reformation and mechanical materialism progressively was liberating itself from religious obscurantism and began to formulate its own secular theories of social revolution, as a desired, human, class act. After the betrayal of the bourgeoisie, by casting the workers out of the revolutionary benefits, the Industrial Revolution brought misery and poverty to the European working classes. In 1848, in the midst of various revolutions, Marx and Engels formulated the theory and program of 'human emancipation', the Manifesto of the Communist Party'. This is not a credo or dogma, it is a historic document to update, to renew, to rejuvenate.

Now, this is enough 'praxical' food for theoretical thought and enough theory for emancipatory delicatessen. Here in The Andes, facing Pico Bolivar, that is losing its snow cap, with reference to the above, to the urgent 'transvolution' from bourgeois revolution to creative emancipation we will continue with our critical opinions and analyses next time. 8)

 *****
Footnotes:
1) http://www.quotationspage.com/quote26131.html
2) http://thinkexist.com/quotation/the_united_states_
appear_to_be_destined_by/167529.html
3) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/
communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007
4) From Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, 1594.
5) http://thinkexist.com/quotation/full_many_
a_gem_of_purest_ray_serene-the_dark/257029.html
6) http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/
authors/t/Thomas_paine.html
7) ibid.
8) Meanwhile, also see: http://www.franz-lee.org/files/
pandemonium01037.html .
franz@franzlee.org.ve
http://espanol-franzjtlee.blogspot.com/
  http://www.franzlee.org.ve/pandemonium01382.html

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(VIDEOS) VIOLENCE VERSUS EMANCIPATION

(VIDEOS) VIOLENCE VERSUS EMANCIPATION
ANTICIPATORY FLASHES - PART TWO 

By Franz J. T. Lee

 By applying dialectical logic and by even venturing beyond its internal, systemic, universal limits, Franz tries to explain that Violence and Peace are just two different sides of the very same historical process. This Janus-faced, democratic-fascist monstrosity has to be annihilated in its total capitalist, imperialist, corporate quintessence, to be transcended by creative, creating  emancipation, by natural-social humanity. The opposite, the negation of Violence is not Peace. As Marx explained it already a century and a half ago in his article 'The Jewish Question', the 'superation' of both social processes, which determine and perpetuate themselves, is Human Emancipation. Below we are publishing the second part of a series of Franz's videos on this urgent topic and enlightening excerpts from previous publications which definitely will blaze the trail  to understand the current globalized terror and terrorist globalization.

VIDEOS PART TWO

THE DIALECTICS: VIOLENCE -- PEACE (A)

http://www.4shared.com/video/tNUwwZJX/EMANCIPATION_PART_2A.html

THE DIALECTICS: VIOLENCE -- PEACE (B)

http://www.4shared.com/video/k8pNX5xy/EMANCIPATION_PART_2B.html

THE DIALECTICS: VIOLENCE -- PEACE (C)

http://www.4shared.com/video/mgg6lQ8E/EMANCIPATION_PART_2C.html

THE DIALECTICS: VIOLENCE -- PEACE (D)

http://www.4shared.com/video/4PgopLXp/EMANCIPATION_PART_2D.html

Global Relevance of the Social Philosophy of
Mahatma K. Gandhi

By Franz J.T. Lee - January 18, 2005 at 9:42 pm

  The historic life and heroic struggle of Mahatma K. Gandhi (Oct 2, 1869 to Jan 30, 1948) against British colonial injustice, human degradation, economic exploitation and social discrimination are well known, here we will just spotlight certain selected aspects of his social philosophy, its moral principles and its contemporary relevance for global revolutionary and emancipatory efforts. Not by any means are we ignoring the worldwide invaluable works and moral contributions of the global, erudite, academic titans on the topic Gandhi, that definitely concern his social principles and ascetic modus vivendi, however, here, we will just quote K. Santhanam, who is also an expert in this matter, and who best describes our own philosophic deliberations:

"... he (Gandhi) lived an austere life, practiced strict vegetarianism and abstained from alcoholic drinks, tobacco and even the milder stimulants like coffee and tea. His attachment to simple natural remedies against illness and disease and his radical ideas on education are not so well known to the outside world and, even in India, they have not made much impact. Gandhi deliberately refrained from making these issues public and thereby confusing the people. The only exception was prohibition of intoxicating drinks which became a tool in the armory of satyagraha."
See: K. Santhanam, "Basic Principles Of Gandhism":
http://www.mkgandhi.org/gandhi-his%20relevance/cha p26.htm

Now, what are the fundamental political principles of Gandhism? Why should they concern Latin America and Venezuela? What relevance do they have for social conflicts, for an attempted military coup d'etat, for oil sabotage, for electoral campaigns, for Citizen Power?

Gandhism, existing on the other extreme of Marxism, surely should concern us, as Ernst Bloch would say, as the warm human current of emancipation, of  revolutionary processes that are "neither Marxist nor Anti-Marxist", that are against brutal violence, imperialist "terrorism"  and that categorically favor real world peace and true social justice.

Here in Venezuela, where morality is even elevated to a constitutional State power, surely Gandhi's social philosophical views have become topical again.
In fact, in his many addresses to the nation, very often, underlining nonviolence, social justice and human happiness, President Hugo Chávez Frías ocassionally refers to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. However, it can not be in our emancipatory interest eternally just to glorify any social reformer or revolutionary. On the contrary, as time passes by, in fairness to Gandhi himself, our scientific and philosophic duty is to enrich his life work, to criticize and "up-date" it constructively.

Firstly, as we know, Gandhi developed the famous social technique of "satyagraha" -- peaceful social action, a social philosophic system that enjoins nonviolent personal behavior and social responsibility.

However, in essence, it is not totally passive or pacifist, in cases of liberatory self-defense, it "holds fast to truth", defends it with "resistance", for example, like it was the case in the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, in which Gandhi, the "Indian Congress of South Africa" and the African National Congress (ANC)  had participated. In more detail, below we will deal with these basic principles of his philosophy.
(See: http://www.stanford.edu/~piber/nonviolence/glossar y.html)

Secondly, well-known is his life long struggle in India and in South Africa, against "untouchability", that is, against the ideological, discriminatory, psychological, caste and colonial notions of "race" superiority and inferiority. In this case, like many of us, Gandhi found himself between the devil and the deep, blue sea, between colonial racist ideology and ancient cultural traditions. He had to defend Indian cultural and moral values, to grasp the millions of pariahs on their level of social imagination, but at the same time with new, independent values, effectively he had to confront British colonial immorality and racism.

In the current revolutionary process of Latin American integration, of finding our own historical roots, of applying our own Bolivarian moral values, with the truth trying to ward off malicious, disinformation campaigns and US war-mongering, we find ourselves in a similar situation. Surely, Gandhi could give us a historic lesson, not to copy it, but to enrich, to materialize it.

Now, very briefly, let us critically highlight some of the basic elements of his social philosophy.

1. DIALECTICAL UNITY AND CONTRADICTION BETWEEN HUMAN ACTION AND SOCIAL THOUGHT

In typical, oriental tradition, using his specific idealist, religious terminology, concerning individual human beings, formal logically neglecting their social, class nature, their master and slave relations, nonetheless, he taught about the indivisible integrity, about the dialectical unity and contradiction of the human corporeal body and divine mind. According to Santhanam, confirming his dialectical philosophy:

"He (Gandhi) was never tired of saying that the body should be controlled by the mind and the mind by the soul."
(Santhanam, ibid.)

Of course, across the past century, the concept "control" has acquired very negative, modern connotations, especially in the realm of the "war of ideas", of "mind and thought control", that is, in general, in the realm of political domination, manipulation and indoctrination; hence, to understand Gandhi in an emancipatory sense, a better term would be "related" in a human, humane and humanist sense of harmony. In this way, by enriching Gandhi, together with him, we could surpass the blatant, mundane lies of reactionary ideology, and thus head towards the revolutionary theoretical cliffs of truth, of emancipatory Pico Bolivar.

In his own words, for us  Santhanam expresses this as follows:

"But this control is not to be achieved by despising or neglecting either the body or the mind or in the mystic exaltation of the soul by itself. He attached to physical health and well-being as much importance as to plain and logical thinking or moral responsibility."
(Santhanam, ibid.)

Leaving the generally emphasized Gandhist "spiritualization of politics" for a while aside, rather we should note that Gandhi , in his idealist dialectics, had underlined that, on the one hand, real thought ... we would say true, praxical theory ... organically must be related to highly moral endeavors, and on the other hand, to socially useful, right, righteous action ... we would say, to real, theoretical praxis.

However, in the last analysis, delving much deeper into his social philosophy, diving further into his favorite daily prayers, that is, in the verses of the Bhagavad Gita, it becomes obvious that Gandhi had no faith in purely abstract, virtuous spirituality by itself. He regarded it just as a kind of aureole or illumination which should accompany any liberating social thought and action.

2. A SIMPLE SET OF MORAL HUMAN VALUES

In a corrupt society of British colonial egoism, avarice and immorality, for India to gain social independence, Gandhi saw the liberating necessity of introducing ethical and moral social action and thought in the independence movement.

Precisely this was also the revolutionary motive of the Bolivarians why constitutionally a Moral Power had to be introduced in Venezuela, to erase forever the ossified, racist and alienating vices of centuries of oligarchism and "puntofijismo".

Concerning the selection of the kind of moral values we could differ, but he considered the following to be of paramount importance:
"the main elements are selflessness, non-attachment, non-violence and active service." (ibid.)

Whether the human species, whether all or some human beings, or whether certain social classes are by "nature", by essence or spirit non-violent, pacifist or unselfish, we leave this to the thousands of erudite scholars to determine. However, what we have noticed across the last centuries is that the ruling social orders in which we are living, all have been violent, were killing millions of earth-dwellers by social order itself. We are being born in violence, live in violence, die in violence; even more so today, at the eve of global fascism.

But, in the words of Santhanam, let Gandhi explain to us the moral of this bloody, historical story:

" ... he believed that the growth of a man's personality is proportionate to his faith in and practice of these virtues. This is possible only when he identifies himself more and more with an ever-increasing circle till it embraces all humanity and even all living beings. He judged the value and vitality of social institutions by their capacity to foster such growth." (ibid.)

Surely, very soberly we can say that at the current level of the global production process, of permanent natural destruction and boundless social alienation, in a violent, capitalist, imperialist, corporate, fascist environment in agony, this human endeavor, as sublime as it may be, is impossible to attain anymore.

Gandhi, we ourselves, did not choose our serpentine road towards emancipation. Bush, his local opposition Quislings, his international CIA lackeys and the Pentagon-White House war-mongers with their "Project for a New American Century" and "Colombia Plan", paved the violent road of humanity with their belligerent, depleted uranium "mother of all bombs".

3, CONCERNING THE POLITICAL STATE

Precisely with reference to the above, concerning the colonial, political State, Gandhi suggested the following alternative. For him, what enjoys primary significance is only "the growth of individuals".  The State should only serve the interests of the individuals that make up society.

Here, in total contradiction with Socialism or Marxism, a politico-economic analysis of colonial and neocolonial realities is totally absent; no mention about any class interests or class struggles. In fact, on the contrary, in his earlier years, because of its social and sexual discipline, rather of its sexual repression, Gandhi defended this very oppressive caste-system in India. This ideal notion was not completely abandoned in his more mature writings.

Nonetheless, contrary to Maquiavelli, whose views he repudiated, Gandhi considered means just as important as ends, even more relevant than ends, never mind, even if they were socially desirable and "good".  Social ends direct, but human means constitute life itself.

According to him, in real political life, in the struggle for independence, human means have to be righteous, good, truthful and non-violent.

Of course, in a classless society, in the absence of competition, monopolization, centralization, globalization, accumulation of capital and profits, any sane person or individual would be inhuman not to agree with these Gandhist humane ends, however, in the true reality in which we currently live and die, for example in Iraq, more precisely in Fallujah, the sole application of this practice against our bloodthirsty arch-enemies would not only result in mass suicide,  globally, it would be genocidal for billions of working, toiling pariahs. In fact, Gandhi, and his disciple, Martin Luther King Jr.,  themselves had to take this bloody, Socratic hemlock. Definitely, neither raw violence nor myopic pacifism can emancipate us.

4. FAITH AND HOPE IN A GOD

This is the rock of ages on which Gandhi's social philosophy stands and falls. However, not only the world of Gandhi, but of over 90% of the global population, no matter whether they are actively, passively or culturally believers in a myriad of different divinities. Here, we refrain to comment about religious critique or critical religion in the 21st century, in the "Information Age". Let us allow Santhanam to summarize Gandhi's views on the matter.

"Faith in God is, according to Gandhi, the foundation of all moral values. He never defined God and was prepared to allow every person to have his own idea of God. For himself, he was inclined to think of Him as the Upanishadic Brahman. But, so long as a person believes in some source of spiritual life and holds it superior to the material universe, he is a believer in God."

CONCLUSION

Finally, in honor of Gandhi, we have to state that morality, that ethical behavior and thought, stand higher than any religious fantasies, chimeras or phantasmagorias. He himself preferred any true agnostic with high moral values to a corrupt, megalomaniac pharisee or to a State president, who in messianic bellicose array daily blesses Mammon or the nation.

Inter alia, across the twentieth century, the views of Gandhi on politics, economics and society played an important role in the independence movements against British colonialism in India and also in South Africa, where indentured Indian cheap labor was exploited to the maximum. In India itself, much later, to a certain extent they were even implemented in the various Five Year Plans, and in the program of Khadi and Village Industries. Also, the social philosophic views of Gandhi had influenced liberatory movements across the globe, in this way, Gandhi has left his own emancipatory imprint on the destiny of humanity.

***************** *********

A Brief History of Mohandas K. Gandhi
by Richard Attenborough

Mohandas K. Gandhi was born in 1869 to Hindu parents in the state of Gujarat in Western India. He entered an arranged marriage with Kasturbai Makanji when both were 13 years old. His family later sent him to London to study law, and in 1891 he was admitted to the Inner Temple, and called to the bar. In Southern Africa he worked ceaselessly to improve the rights of the immigrant Indians. It was there that he developed his creed of passive resistance against injustice, satyagraha, meaning truth force, and was frequently jailed as a result of the protests that he led. Before he returned to India with his wife and children in 1915, he had radically changed the lives of Indians living in Southern Africa.

Back in India, it was not long before he was taking the lead in the long struggle for independence from Britain. He never wavered in his unshakable belief in nonviolent protest and religious tolerance. When Muslim and Hindu compatriots committed acts of violence, whether against the British who ruled India, or against each other, he fasted until the fighting ceased. Independence, when it came in 1947, was not a military victory, but a triumph of human will. To Gandhi's despair, however, the country was partitioned into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The last two months of his life were spent trying to end the appalling violence which ensued, leading him to fast to the brink of death, an act which finally quelled the riots. In January 1948, at the age of 79, he was killed by an assassin as he walked through a crowed garden in New Delhi to take evening prayers. end of Attenborough's summary.

http://www.engagedpage.com/gan1.html

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Mac James
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Ghandi's View as Collective, not Individual
Submitted February 9, 2009 - 11:51 am by Pat (not verified)
One of the great lessons of Mahatma Ghandi and his peace-promoting views was that the collectve non-violence would win in the end, and is the only method of approaching peace. But Ghandi was a passivist who relied upon collective sacrifice to pursue that view, and millions followed. America is not India, and its individuals value life far more than reducing life to the sacrifices of oppression that Ghandi used to elevate the conscience of his followers. It doesn't apply therefore to America. There is no reason to suspect that India and America have similar objectives, methods, or conscience - in the deliberation and exercise of daily lives. Allowing India the privilege of dictating American lives, or American finances, therefore, is unacceptable, and unrealistic, unless Americans want to become like India in their perspectives on life.

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@ Pat
Submitted February 9, 2009 - 12:11 pm by Al Giordano
Pat - Utilizing the strategic and tactical breakthroughs developed by Gandhi in the last century is not akin to "allowing India the privilege of dictating American lives" and you haven't made a case that it is. Here's an example: Every hear of a reverend named Martin Luther King? According to his own writings and statements, Gandhi's strategies and tactics were the foundation of his own in the Civil Rights movement of the United States. And this month we're living another milestone in that struggle's successes, something that would have been impossible had King and others not adapted Gandhi's methods to the United States. Of course all struggles and their methods must be adapted to the land and the population in which they are utilized. But borrowing the best from another place does not surrender sovereignty anymore than those who play the saxophone -  developed by a Belgian named Saxe - are subjugating jazz to Belgium!

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/franz-jt-lee/2005/01/global-relevance-social-philosophy-mahatma-k-gandhi

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