HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FRANZ!
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Friday, 29 October 2010
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FRANZ!
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
Venezuela: Achieving big things in small spaces - Towards Venezuelan food sovereignty
Achieving big things in small spaces ...
Towards Venezuelan food sovereignty
By: Jutta Schmitt
Under the slogan "Big things can be done in small spaces", on Saturday, October 16 th , in the preschool facilities of the small community of Las Mesitas de Higuerones, located in the Parish Ignacio Peña Fernández, of Campo Elías Municipality in the state of Mérida, an ecological training project was presented, titled: ''Agriculture and nutrition with the use of ecological techniques: Camacho Dugarte Family Garden“.
Under the National Training Program for Agriculture and Nutrition, guided and supervised by Professors Simón Hoyo and Marcial Bracho, agronomists and coordinators of that program in Merida, a group of female students from the Technical College Institute of Ejido (IUTE) presented the results of their one years' work, realized in the community of Las Mesitas de Higuerones with the objective of developing an agroecologial Family Garden Project.
Professor Simón Hoyo opened the event with words of welcome to the community members who had come to the place, and first referred to the great personal responsibility implicated in the participation in this important project, which forms part of the National Government's policy to establish food security for the Venezuelan population. He then told the audience that the agroecological Family Garden Project has a total duration of one year and is performed in three consecutive stages, that is, the diagnosis and location of the community and family on whose land the project will be realized, the stage of implementation or execution of the agroecological activity as such, from planting to harvesting, and finally, the presentation of the work that's been performed to the members of the community concerned.
Subsequently, the five students who had carried out the project, applicants to the degree of Ecological Agronomist, Ana Camacho, Keila Molina, Kerly Toro, Coromoto Paredes and Yamilet Rojas, proceeded with the presentation, step by step, of the project: ''Family Garden, Dugarte Camacho Unit.''
The general objectives that had been set up included the establishment of a home garden by means of ecological techniques, the comprehensive protection of the environment and human health, obtaining healthy and tasty products, the improvement of quality of life, providing support for family supplies, and the promotion not only of family unity, but of the unity and cooperation of the entire community. Among the specific objectives, the students mentioned the optimal use of a basically limited, physical space and the planting of vegetables suitable for the region, with their selection depending primarily on agro-climatic conditions, which, in this case, resulted in the selection of green onions, cilantro, sweet pepper, paprika, tomato and lettuce, including the planting of four aromatic species according to the basic requirements of agro-ecological techniques, in this case, basil, rosemary, aloe and tobacco.
The methodology applied divided the project into two phases, the 'office' or planning phase which included data collection and the selection of the community, and the 'field' or application phase with the corresponding diagnostic of the objective conditions present, and the proper implementation of the project itself.
After having selected the community and family that would provide the physical space for the project, the students proceeded with the demarcation and adaptation of the selected area, namely the preparation of the field and loosening-up of the soil, the building and leveling of plant beds, and the preparation of the soil substratum including its disinfection and subsequent fertilization with organic fertilizer, such as the application of humus or compost, which is a substance composed of organic products stemming from the decomposition of organic waste in a compost pile or bin. Regarding the disinfection of the substratum to prevent the emergence of weeds, the students explained to the community members present, that, for this purpose, the soil is placed in a box, irrigated with hot water and then covered with a dark plastic foil with the aim of intensifying the temperature, leaving it covered for approximately three days, depending on the microclimate of the place. After having prepared the substratum, the students went to obtain the seeds (some certified) that were purchased from the local retailers and the farmer's market.
With regard to the planting and later transplantation of the saplings, the students emphasized the importance of the control and prevention of infestation and disease by inserting, in various parts of the garden, a variety of herbs and aromatic species such as rosemary, basil, yerba santa, peppermint, aloe and tobacco, which have the function to keep pests away from the crop plants, apart from being highly beneficial to human health as they are medicinal. The inclusion of such plants is also promoting the revival of the knowledge and application of our highly effective and powerful, natural, ancestral medicine.
In what could be called the topical application of 'organic insecticides' in case of a contamination of plants with pests, the community members were informed that excellent results can be achieved without resorting to the kind of harmful, chemical pesticides that have done so much damage to our soils, by spraying a mixture of onion, garlic and vinegar - liquefied in a liter of water, percolated and then diluted with pure water - onto the affected plants. Equally effective is the maceration of the leaves of a local tree called 'Rabo Ratón', diluting the juice extracted from the leaves with water, and spraying it onto those plants infested with pests.
The harvest obtained in a fairly limited space, only a few months after planting, was 6 kilograms of paprika, 6 kg of tomatoes, 5 kg of sweet pepper, 3 kg of cilantro, 5 kg of lettuce and 2 kg of onions. After the presentation of the project, when inspecting the Family Garden in question, the community members could appreciate 'live' the nice appearance and taste of these items produced exclusively with ecological techniques and virtually zero production costs, given the fact that recycled material and supplies had been used for nurseries and other devices.
Ending their presentation, the five students concluded that creating an ecological home garden is easy to do and inexpensive, as it encourages the recycling of used materials that can be applied for the construction of plant beds, nurseries, compost bins and other devices. In addition, agro-ecological activity not only promotes family unity but at the same time, neighborhood and community integration, promoting mutual learning among all parts involved and encouraging participation in a new experience with highly gratifying results.
The students called on those present to adopt a healthy diet to the benefit of their health and that of the environment, two objectives that can precisely be achieved through the construction of a home garden under agro-ecological principles and techniques. They wholeheartedly thanked their teachers, classmates, colleagues, family and community members for their cooperation and support and, in turn, received a warm applause from the audience for their excellent performance and hard work concerning this recommendable project.
After the presentation Simón Hoyo intervened with a comment on the nature of this project and explained that this is a type of project that is in harmony with our reality and therefore allows us to undertake a comprehensive, human and natural development in the very space in which we find ourselves, with the help of the natural and human resources available therein. He said that in this way we can contribute directly from our communities with the long term vision of the country in accordance with Article 305 of our constitution, which stipulates food security based on sustainable agriculture as one of its pillars. In addition, Hoyo warned that in the face of the environmental and climatic crisis our planet is confronting, it is absolutely necessary that we humans step down from our illusory throne and put ourselves in our real context, that is, from a a cosmological point of view, understanding ourselves as infinitely small and insignificant beings. We're not the greatest thing on the planet, and much less can we claim the right to subdue the Earth and other forms of life to our destructive whims. He ended his comment by stressing that all teaching and learning that is generated in any of the educational institutions in our country, necessarily has to include the communities in order to transmit and at the same time generate, new knowledge and new values in a process of mutual respect and learning.
By way of a general conclusion, Marcial Bracho expressed his thanks to the community of Las Mesitas, to its Community Council, to the tutor, the students, the audience and to the writer of this report, intended to share the experience of this extraordinary project with the readers of this article. Referring to the example of the young students, Bracho pointed out the overwhelming importance of a comprehensive education of our youth, who has to be skilled and responsible to our society and country, given that it has to replace the older generations in a not too distant future. He highlighted that in this sense, the National Government's educational policies, in this case with regard to the teaching and application of ecological agriculture and nutrition, are addressed directly and specifically to the 'end user', that is, the people, the communities, to each and everyone of us. He regretted that the vast majority of our universities keep being isolated and exclusive places, enclosed into their four walls, unable to intertwine in an integrated way with our communities so as to share their teachings with the people and to help them solve the problems that affect them. He stressed the need for a comprehensive, humanist education, not only for our youth but for ourselves, so that we may learn to be servants of our communities and to always act under the principles of love, solidarity, equity, social justice and inclusion, our own ancestral values that have gotten lost in this perverse dynamics of capitalism which only promotes individualism, selfishness and greed. In this sense, Bracho evoked the formation of the new man with a deep sense of humanism and a new ethics.
He reminded the participants that the environmental problems that have emerged on a global scale like the destruction of the ozone layer, climate change, the pollution of soil, air and water, and deforestation, affect all of us without exception and can only be resolved by means of a humanist and ecological vocation, reason for which the importance of agroecology and its immediate application becomes so obvious, and whose feasibility has been conclusively demonstrated by the project presented.
He concluded his intervention by saying that the National Training Program for Agriculture and Nutrition currently has 54 home garden projects running nationwide, and that the five students form part of the first cohort of this program who will be promoting the development of organic food production with the purpose of establishing food sovereignty for our country in the future.
It is worth noting the significance of this interesting experience because, if effectively multiplied on a national scale, it will no doubt be a decisive step in the battle against the globally imposed, harmful, capitalist practices which use food as an instrument of domination. But then, and to definitely ensure our long-term food sovereignty, we must 'go to the grain', so to speak. The seeds are the 'alpha and omega' of agriculture and constitute its essential means of production. Since time immemorial, seeds were obtained naturally from crop and exchanged among farming communities. They were common, social property and had the power to self-reproduce by virtue of their natural cycles.
Only with the consolidation of capitalism and the industrialization of agriculture began the conversion of seeds into a commodity, and thus began the process of their modification, privatization, patenting and full integration into the perverse mechanisms of the capitalist market. Far from being regarded as the sources of our life and food, seeds have been converted into catalysts for the expansion of markets and profits, and therefore they had to suffer modifications which have induced and increased their dependence on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and simultaneously have reduced their fertility and capacity to self-reproduce. The integration of various branches of science and production techniques such as chemistry, biology, pharmaceuticals and genetic engineering, along with the introduction of patents on seeds and accompanied by a process of concentration of capital, has led to the monopolization of the seed market by a handful of agribusiness corporations like Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and Bayer, who are among the 10 largest seed companies that together control 57% of the global market. Monsanto, based in the U.S. is the world's largest transnational seed company which holds 90 per cent of patents related to agricultural biotechnology and which controls a fifth of the global seed market. The patents owned by these multinationals give them the power to control planting, harvesting and the reproduction of seeds, and are placing into their hands the almost exclusive decision over the type of items to be offered on the international market, always determined by calculations of the highest profit possible. And who controls the seeds, controls the global food production.
This is why it is absolutely necessary to develop a strategy for food sovereignty, which, together with the promotion of agro-ecological techniques in the family and community-based production of food, includes the right and duty to preserve, reproduce and exchange natural, native, non-modified seeds, as well as the building of a national seed bank in order to store seeds of crop plants and wild plants, so as to counteract the loss of biodiversity and to conserve and restore native varieties. This strategy should also include the relentless struggle against the patentability of plants, animals and even ancestral knowledge, as determined by Article 124 of our Constitution.
In any case, thanks to the enthusiasm and vocation of some young students and their teachers, members of the National Training Program for Agriculture and Nutrition, this past October 16th in the community of Las Mesitas de Higuerones, joy and hope and a formidable sword have been sown to lead the fight for food sovereignty from the heart of our communities.
http://english-juttaschmitt.blogspot.com
jutta@franzlee.org.ve
Friday, 22 October 2010
Formal Logic, mind and thought control, Mental Holocaust in the epoch of Globalization
Formal Logic, mind and thought control, Mental Holocaust in the epoch of Globalization
(Most recent videos in Youtube)
By Franz J, T. Lee
Description:
This video in a very simple manner delineates the transhistoric Mind and Thought Control with which all kinds of oppressed, exploited and discriminated were intellectually 'educated', that is, cast into the boiling cauldron, the Moloch, of the Mental Holocaust by their respective ruling class masters. Formal Logic, religion, ideology, racist soaked language and fascist words formed and informed till this very hour the enslaved mind.
A. FORMAL LOGIC AND OBSCURANTISM
To see the Videos, click on the URLs below:
File: franz jt lee formal logics flv part 1
File: franz jt lee formal logics flv part 2
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH4Y48F61OE
File: franz jt lee formal logics flv part 3
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HchMffseRnA
B. FORMAL LOGIC AND THE MENTAL HOLOCAUST
File: Mental holocaust in globalization (1/2)
Url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqU-690Lc7I
File: Mental holocaust in globalization (2/2)
Sunday, 17 October 2010
EXFORMATION: (Videos & Audios) Franz J. T. Lee & Jutta Schmitt:
EXFORMATION: (Videos & Audios) Franz J. T. Lee & Jutta Schmitt:
Our 104 Video and Audio Files on Revolution, Socialism and Emancipation.
(Videos & Audios) Nuestros 104 Videos y Audios sobre la Revolución, el Socialismo y la Emancipación.
See / Ver:
http://www.franzlee.org.ve/pandemonium01509.html
Tuesday, 12 October 2010
(English Document) - Franz J. T. Lee: En 2002, Solidaridad con la Revolución Bolivariana en la época del golpe militar y el sabotaje petrolero - Artículos en Inglés en Aporrea.Org
Franz J. T. Lee: En 2002, Solidaridad con la Revolución Bolivariana en la época del golpe militar y el sabotaje petrolero - Artículos en Inglés en Aporrea.Org
Archivos - Documents:
English:
International mass media conspiracy against Venezuela
Por: Dr. Franz J. T. Lee
Aporrea.Org - Fecha de publicación: 26/12/02
Articulo leido aproximadamente 5753 veces
This article was read about 5753 times.
Since decades, even centuries, as downtrodden peoples and revolutionaries of Africa, Asia, South America, Oceania, the Caribbean, and elsewhere, we are used to the distortions, lies, half-truths, character assassination, racism, discrimination, plots; to the body, mind and thought control mechanisms, to the inculcation of a master-slave mentality, of inferiority complexes, to our wonderful "education" and "socialization", to the "freedom of thought", to the "freedom of expression", to the magnificent "freedom of the press", to the "family" of Venevision, Globovision; of the fantastic "news" of "El Nacional", "El Universal", of the "Voice of Russia", the "Voice of America", UPI, Reuters, ARD, ZDF, CNN, BBC, dpa, New York Times, FAZ, Der Spiegel, BILD, etc., etc. (Now, we may also add the "Toronto Star!")
In fact, we are used to the cruel, racist fairy tales, nursery rhymes, legends,myths, etc., etc. We read, heard and swallowed hook, bait, sinker and shark, all about the dangerous, uncivilized, bloodthirsty "communists", "terrorists", "niggers", "coolies", "kaffirs", "latinos" "slit eyes", "camel drivers", "blacks", "natives", "indigenas", "aborigines", etc., etc.
Infowarfare, the mental holocaust, mass media terror, psychological manipulationand indoctrination did not begin yesterday; today they all are just more technologically refined, more perverse, more sadistic. We all, across our lives, have received a full dose of this cultural, traditional and ideological strychnine, disseminated by the ruling classes across their mass media, newspapers, radio, TV, books, stories, novelas, poems, songs, proverbs, psalms, credos, prayers, morals, lies.
In fact, the other day, pondering over this issue, I came to the conclusion that since yore, the "absolute" majority of mankind already lived and are still living in a world of virtual reality. What are coming now are the Platonic Virtual Ideas of the Virtual Idea, of Big Brother, of Global Fascism. Orwellian Virtual Reality!
Most of us do not have the foggiest idea what really is happening around us on earth. Surely, if most of the reporters of the international press agencies should be our only sources about world events, then, long ago already, we have been taken for a long ride. If we would only depend on our newspapers, TV, radio, opera, films and shows for "information", well, then any donkey could become an excellent teacher, a superb university professor." (December 18, 2002)
Not only the local mass media in Venezuela, (excluding the only channel controlled by the state, VTV) Globovision, Venevision, RCTV, Televen, and the local ones like TAM, CMT, OMC, including the corresponding radio stations (excluding Radio Nacional), also the majority of the corresponding Newspeak global mass media, deliberately spread formal-logical, one-sided, incomplete, biased, unilateral, blurred, false "information" , downright blatant lies, in other words, global corporate, ideological "news" about Venezuela, and about all world events that do not fit in their closed, universal system of "globalization", of "infinite justice" (Bush), against "absolute evil" (Chirac), thus defending their "right to assassinate" (Rumsfeld) all "terrorists" and "dictators" like Bin Laden and Chávez.
Now, among others, the "Toronto Star" follows in this Goebbels-Speak, this Nazi Newspeak. Hitler said it at the eve of his Nazi victory over Democracy: "If you want to control a people, control its education."
This is the quintessence of current, ruling "freedom of expression", of "freedom of thought", of "freedom of the press", of Globospeak!
See the quoted article below, and draw your own logical, rational conclusions!
TORONTO STAR
19/12/2002.
Editorial: Venezuela drifts toward anarchy
Hugo Chávez may be Venezuela's freely elected president, but he is fast losing his people's confidence. A million took to the streets this week demanding his resignation and fresh elections. Two million have signed a petition to that effect. For every Venezuelan who compares him to a saviour, there's another who calls him a dictator. The former paratrooper is an abrasive, autocratic, populist reformer who reviles Venezuela's business and landowner classes as a "rancid oligarchy" as he tries to channel more of the state's $40 billion oil wealth to the poor majority. He has rewritten the constitution, making it more democratic and egalitarian. And in a system where 1 per cent of the people own nearly half the land, he has tried to speed redistribution to the poor. He has also brought Venezuela into line with Mideast oil cartel pricing, driving up costs for the United States which gets 10 per cent of its oil from Venezuela. He gives Fidel Castro cheap fuel. And he has criticized George Bush's peremptory "you're with us or against us" philosophy. Predictably, Chávez has infuriated Venezuela's upper- and middle-class elite, who had long run the country of 23 million, as well as oil industry executives, trade unions and the media. Some of these forces tried to topple Chávez in a bloody April coup, and they're at it again. Since Dec. 2 they have shut down Venezuela's $180 billion economy, the world's fifth largest oil source.
Protests flare daily, businesses are shut, the oil industry has been crippled, and food and gas are scarce. People fear anarchy. Army chief Gen. Julio Garcia Montoya has denounced this "sabotage." Put simply, Venezuela's elite is having a hard time accepting the most basic tenet of democracy: Whoever wins an election has the right to govern for a full term. The rebellion has dark implications for all of Latin America's fragile democracies. Canada and the other Organization of American States countries should insist on a peaceful, lawful resolution to this crisis. Chávez may be autocratic, but is no tyrant. He was freely elected in 1998 and easily again in 2000. His term ends in 2007. If a vote were held today, he may even be re-elected. Under the constitution, there can be no binding referendum on new elections before next Aug. 23. Chávez would be smart to recognize that he needs to re-establish his legitimacy, and agree to early elections.But if he does not, Venezuela's putsch-friendly elite should wait until August, before demanding a vote. Whatever damage they fear Chávez may do to their interests between now and then will be nothing compared to the damage they will do to democracy and civil order, if they oust him lawlessly. "
Dr. Franz J. T. Lee
Professor,
Seminario de Psicologia Politica,
Escuela de Ciencias Politicas,
UNIVERSIDAD DE LOS ANDES,
Merida, Venezuela.
Articulo leido aproximadamente 5753 veces
Franz J. T. Lee
Más articulos de este autor
África: desde hace siglos viviendo en el abismo racista de la barbarie capitalista
¿Quo Vadis, África? Algunas reflexiones históricas sobre un futuro truncado
Venezuela: De la revolución sui generis a la quinta internacional
Después de Haití todo es posible: ¿Será que Vargas está nuevamente en la lista de destrucción masiva?
http://www.aporrea.org/actualidad/a1622.html
The next attack on the Bolivarian Revolution has begun!
Por: Franz J. T. Lee
Aporrea.Org - Fecha de publicación: 15/08/03
Nota de aporrea: Visit www.franzlee.org.ve
The next attack of the "Opposition", of the United States, against the Bolivarian Revolution has begun already; during the following days, the national and international conspiracy, especially by means of the mass media, will take on form again. The Government is already summoning the masses to take to the streets of Caracas, "celebrating the first half of Chávez' current government term"; in reality, it's about organizing and mobilizing the popular defence of the democratic Constitution, against all possible new murderous, destabilization manoeuvres.
Nationally and internationally, with the open help of the USA and their puppet governments and institutions in the region, the "Opposition" --additionally aided by its own reactionary national press, TV propaganda and manipulation machinery --, since months has prepared itself for yet another coup assault, under the coverage of a "recall referendum", which it is aware it couldn´t ever win, and the possible realization of which has been permanently boycotted by the very "opposition" so they could cast the blame on the Chávez government, a distortion of reality which the international press will disseminate around the globe, painting the picture of a dangerous, undemocratic, tyrannic and dictatorial Chávez.
Exactly because of the desperation of the national "golpistas", of the urgency for the USA to have "regime change" here, and officially trying to connect Chávez to "terrorists", to the guerrilla forces in Colombia, and even to Arab "terrorists", and probably having supplied the golpistas with all the necessary funds, arms and technological equipment, this time, the correlation of forces spells a fierce, violent confrontation, that will verge on civil war, exactly what the USA and the "opposition" need for foreign military intervention. Until now, the government intelligently has evaded this scenario, this trap, however, when full spectrum dominance is hell bent on annihilating a most dangerous opponent, a paradigm for the oppressed world, then, the enemy himself chooses the weapons of "peace", the forms of violence, and the only thing left for Venezuela is full spectrum self-defence, with its democratic constitution in the hands of millions of people.
Thus, friends, beware, we are entering a decisive era of Venezuelan and Latin American history. Jacta est alea, the fascist dice are cast. Tomorrow it will be Syria, North Korea, Iran, ... We call for international solidarity in defence of the Bolivarian Revolution. The way it is being attacked indicates its emancipatory worth and value for mankind.
¡Hasta la Victoria siempre!
¡Por Ahora, A Paso De Vencedores!
Articulo leido aproximadamente 8362 veces
Franz J. T. Lee
Más articulos de este autor
África: desde hace siglos viviendo en el abismo racista de la barbarie capitalista
¿Quo Vadis, África? Algunas reflexiones históricas sobre un futuro truncado
Venezuela: De la revolución sui generis a la quinta internacional
Después de Haití todo es posible: ¿Será que Vargas está nuevamente en la lista de destrucción masiva?
http://www.aporrea.org/actualidad/a4277.html
Published: Thursday, October 12, 2006
Bylined to: Franz J. T. Lee
Columbus Day: No racism without capitalism, no capitalism without racism Bylined to: Franz J. T. Lee
University of Los Andes (ULA) professor Franz J. T. Lee writes: Two years ago, in an article "The transition from Columbus Day to Indian Resistance Day ...," I wrote: "This big lie, this hoax ... about the 'discovery' of America by Christopher Columbus, still infects the minds of millions in Latin America. Columbus was not among the first to know that the earth was round ... the ancient Mediterranean peoples already had this knowledge. He did not 'discover' America! Already centuries before, the Africans had fleets that crossed the Atlantic and they had a vivid, healthy, trans-cultural intercourse with the American indigenous peoples. Their artifacts and traces of their ancient cultures can be found all over Central America." One of the basic elements of the misery and poverty of the Americas concerns race prejudice, racial discrimination, racism, apartheid.
In the meantime, the global order in severe crisis has changed itself to full recogniz-ability, it shows its true fascist grimace in the United States of America, Europe, the Middle East,, Colombia, and elsewhere.
From the Great Wall of China, to the Apartheid "color bar," the Bantustan "Homelands," to the "iron curtain," the Berlin Wall, to the Israeli Wall, to the coming Mexican Yankee Wall, that limits Bush's patriot "Homeland," we can trace this capitalist, imperialist bloody trails of racist fascism. That the "New World" was celebrating five centuries of the "Day of the Race" already shows how effective were "discovery," "Christian pacification" and genocidal militarization in America.
In the forward march of the Conquest of the continents of Asia, Africa and America, including the Caribbean, Oceania and elsewhere, the indigenous peoples were converted into slaves and wage-slaves; those that refused to be integrated into the European labor process preferred to die, and millions of the "native" peoples were just massacred in genocidal colonial wars.This is what many Latin American states, excluding Venezuela, celebrate now.
It marks a dangerous low degree of transhistoric consciousness, completely outdated conceptions of history and a miserable social memory, the devastating reformist effects of a merciless ideological process of mind, thought and body control, of a physical and spiritual holocaust of hundreds of millions of enslaved, plundered and alienated peoples.
It is really time that we all wake up!
Also, it demonstrates the mortal effects of the religious onslaught of the Spanish Inquisition, the Dominican Order, Roman Catholicism, the Papacy and today the Vatican.
Not only were the poor serfs threatened by the "Second Death" in the Middle Ages, now Ratzinger is trying to rob us of our Limbo, where our un-baptized, innocent children, atomized by Bush's mother of all bombs, until now at least were resting in peace, and did not go straight to hell. Only Ratzinger and the devil know where Jesus Christ spent his last earthly stay between Golgotha and Ascension Day.
- Either with the stroke of a pen or with bombs Bush and Ratzinger eliminate concrete sacred places, and the Christians or believers do not even protest en masse anymore. In reality, in this line of hoaxes we find "Columbus Day."
The racial roots of "Columbus" go much deeper, they are blood-sucking us in all social spheres, in our inherited, colonial cultural structures. This venom has infiltrated our most sacred emotions, sentiments and daydreams, it captured our very souls.
Within the current world order, within its world market that was constructed on the Bermuda Triangle of Columbus, we will never be able to annihilate racial discrimination and racism. The fascist racism that we are experiencing in the current wars of the Bush administration is inherent in master-slave relations, in capitalism. Imperialism lives and dies with its racist heart beat.
There is no racism without capitalism ... no capitalism without racism.
Hence, Venezuela and therewith the Bolivarian Revolution, get down urgently to your historic task, forever to eradicate capitalism from the Latin American soil, from our hearts, minds and actions.
Franz J. T. Lee
franz@vheadline.com
Saturday, 9 October 2010
Franz J. T. Lee: Venturing Beyond Bourgeois Revolution to Human Emancipation
ABOUT THE BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION IN VENEZUELA - Our Special URL today
Venturing Beyond Bourgeois Revolution to Human Emancipation
Venezuela: From Bourgeois Revolution to Proletarian Emancipation
By Franz J. T. Lee
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
Venturing Beyond Bourgeois Revolution to Human Emancipation
Venezuela: From Bourgeois Revolution to Proletarian Emancipation
By Franz J. T. Lee
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
Sunday, 3 October 2010
Franz J. T. Lee: (Videos) What is Revolution? What is Emancipation?
(Videos) What is Revolution? What is Emancipation?
A Brief Introduction by Franz J. T. Lee
To begin. Nearly all the main words, concepts and conceptions that we use to describe modern history, like revolution, renaissance, reformation, religion and reform, were coined and filled with ruling class interests and connotations without the intellectual participation of the exploited slaves, peasants and workers. The above are ruling ideas of the various ruling classes.
Words and language are very inadequate means of communication, they can barely capture an inkling of social flowing processes, they do not think for us. By rote we could learn a million words, and still remain as ignorant as ever. However, if pretty soon we will not start to think all of, by and for ourselves, here and now, others, for example, Murdoch or Bill Gates surely will be thinking for us, will swamp our skulls with fascist 'newspeak'. There is no antidote against pathological obscurantism, also there is no substitute for emancipatory intelligence.
Enjoy these creative glimpses about the anticipatory concepts revolution and emancipation.
To begin. Nearly all the main words, concepts and conceptions that we use to describe modern history, like revolution, renaissance, reformation, religion and reform, were coined and filled with ruling class interests and connotations without the intellectual participation of the exploited slaves, peasants and workers. The above are ruling ideas of the various ruling classes.
Words and language are very inadequate means of communication, they can barely capture an inkling of social flowing processes, they do not think for us. By rote we could learn a million words, and still remain as ignorant as ever. However, if pretty soon we will not start to think all of, by and for ourselves, here and now, others, for example, Murdoch or Bill Gates surely will be thinking for us, will swamp our skulls with fascist 'newspeak'. There is no antidote against pathological obscurantism, also there is no substitute for emancipatory intelligence.
Enjoy these creative glimpses about the anticipatory concepts revolution and emancipation.
revolution-0
revolution-1
revolution-0-01
revolution-0-02
http://www.4shared.com/video/KeQP11XB/reolution-0-02.html
Friday, 1 October 2010
(Audio) Introducción General a la 'Teor'ia de la Revolución Permanente' (León Trotsky) a escala mundial
(Audio) Introducción General a la 'Teor'ia de la Revolución Permanente' a escala mundial
Por Franz J. T. Lee
Charla dada en el seminario 'Teoría y Práctica Política' del Post Grado de Ciencias Políticas de la Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida, Venezuela - 30/09/2010.
(Original, sin editar.)
Tema: ¿Qué relevancia emancipatoria tiene la 'Teoría de la Revolución Permanente' de León Trotsky en el Tercer Milenio?
http://www.4shared.com/audio/tNrYmGt9/franz_jt_lee_la_revolucion_per.html
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Por Franz J. T. Lee
Charla dada en el seminario 'Teoría y Práctica Política' del Post Grado de Ciencias Políticas de la Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida, Venezuela - 30/09/2010.
(Original, sin editar.)
Tema: ¿Qué relevancia emancipatoria tiene la 'Teoría de la Revolución Permanente' de León Trotsky en el Tercer Milenio?
http://www.4shared.com/audio/tNrYmGt9/franz_jt_lee_la_revolucion_per.html
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