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Archive for the ‘Eddy Laing’ Category

North Africa: Rebellion, Surprise & Strategy

Posted by John Steele on March 14, 2011

A survey of of recent rebellions in the Maghrib generates questions of strategy in this essay, written for Kasama by Eddy Laing — a piece of insights studded with wonderful quotations from some of the participants in these revolts.

“It remains of course for the peoples of the societies of the Maghrib to determine the course of their revolutions.

“But what emerges from the tenacious facts of their struggles is the importance of making a strategic analysis of friends and enemies with the perspective of complete social emancipation. Global capital has brought the forces of social emancipation together in the urban cores of these countries and it will only be through the course of their struggle –- to gather together all potential allies to root out the source of their oppression — that they will be able to enunciate an emancipatory program.”

Rebellion across the Maghrib and the specificity of events

by Eddy Laing

What kind of repression do you imagine it takes for a young man to do this? A man who has to feed his family by buying goods on credit, when they fine him and take his goods? In Sidi Bouzid (Tunisia), those with no connections and no money for bribes are humiliated and insulted and not allowed to live. — Leila Bouazizi, younger sister of Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire as a act of political protest. [1]

The rebellions sweeping the Maghrib, from Mauritania to Egypt, and across the Arabian peninsula have inspired hundreds of millions of people around the world. They have also raised important questions about revolution and liberation, coming as they do at a time when revolution has been declared ‘over’ by capitalist ideologues for many years now. As Mao Tsetung put it, ‘it is right to rebel against reactionaries!’ and none of the despots being targeted by the people of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Algeria, Mauritania, Iraq, Jordan, et al. are or have ever been anything other than clients of the neo-liberal order of capital in the world. They deserve to be overthrown. But what should come in their place? That is the hard question being posed to each of these rebellions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in >> analysis of news, Eddy Laing, Egypt, Libya, Middle East, Tunisia | Leave a Comment »

The Crisis: 3 years and counting

Posted by John Steele on September 2, 2010

Three years of  the deepest economic crisis since the 1930s, and no end in sight. The following piece gives a sketch of where things are at. Eddy Laing has written a number of previous pieces for Kasama.

“The crisis raises deep questions about the nature of capitalism for those who would like to find a way beyond this madness. The global parasitism of financial capital has been revealed in many of its interlinked part. Most importantly, global capitalism has severely weakened itself economically and politically through the course of this economic crisis, presenting opportunities for it to be deliberately weakened much further from without, both politically and ideologically. But its current condition is only the starting point for the more profound, active and deliberate social critique that is required.”

Great Recession, Age 3

by Eddy Laing
8/30/2010

“There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determines or influences the existence and development of the other contradictions.”
- Mao Tsetung, On Contradiction

September 2010 marks the second anniversary of the grand collapse of the global debt markets on which so much of the world imperialist system has depended for the last 35 years. This fourth quarter will also mark the third anniversary of the onset of the ‘technical’ recession of which the banking collapse is a major part. Three years later, despite all their best efforts to manipulate debt markets and monetary ‘tools,’ the world capitalist economy remains the metaphorical overturned cart in the ditch, horses splayed on the ground beside it, legs broken and twitching. Even their champion horse whisperer Ben Bernanke says it will remain as it is for several years.

Those financial circuits were and remain key segments of speculative money capital from which the ‘shining city on the hill’ derived its glow and was able to lord it over the rest of the world. The power for those circuits has always been the labor of billions of real people, throughout the colonial and neo-colonial world.

In the imperial homelands, for many people the old price of security meant averting your eyes from everything being done by imperialism in the Third World, keeping your shoulder to the wheel, staying in line, and making a deal with the devil in the form of a mortgage and personal debts so that you could pretend to live a ‘good life.’ The current recession, the most recent and most severe economic crisis in many decades, has brought that charade to an abrupt end and posed exceptionally serious questions for those who just a few years ago led rather different economic lives under this system.

This essay examines the reality of the recession three years later and presents evidence that it is ongoing, deepening, and that the measures taken by the ruling classes have only exacerbated their problems. This recession is effecting the political superstructures of many of those societies and effecting the ideological frames with which individuals and groups in them are interpreting and interacting with current socio-economic situations. In sum, this essay suggests how the current economic recession emerged as the overarching contradiction that is influencing the development of the other social contradictions currently inherent in most capitalist societies.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in >> analysis of news, capitalism, economics, Eddy Laing | 2 Comments »

It’s Human, It Speaks

Posted by Mike E on June 3, 2009

Homo Erectus (reconstruction from bones)

Did Homo Erectus speak? (artists reconstruction)

In discussion of an experiment (splicing the human gene FoxP2 into a mouse, Eddy has engaged deeply in how speech emerged, and what the interplay is between “nature and nurture” (specifically, what the relationship is between human’s physical aparatus and the invention of language). We post his most recent comment in that thread here in its own right.

* * * * **

by Eddie Laing

Mike,

You’ve raised a number of very important points that require examination at length. I’m not sure this thread is the best forum for such a discussion, but I will certainly try to give a preliminary response to your two major questions of my perspective.

1) I am not familiar with any evidence of when speech was “invented.” You speak of “current evidence” — what is that? What evidence gives rise to your assumption that “language (in its most primitive forms) was invented about 50,000 years back.” My investigations do not suggest such evidence… and here we need to differentiate between the evidence of physical speech capabilities and what you are discussing (i.e. evidence of the SOCIAL emergence of actual speech).
There has been the exciting discovery of what the larynx of neanderthal was like (showing important anatomical differences that would have affected the range of possible vocalizations). It is rare for evidence of speech ability because they involve so much soft tissue and cartilage. But in this case it involved a particularly boney part of the larynx.
But (again) is there any evidence on when language of modern humans was socially “invented”?

This seems to roll several social processes and anatomical developments together that are better understood in their particularities. There should be no argument that human anatomy makes a very wide range of voicings possible, even more so than other primates.

However, there is a qualitative difference between signalization and symbolization. Even intentional vocalization — such as animal alarm calls or your dog whining for food or to be let outside — does not equate to truly semiotic activity (and symbols arise from and derive importance from representing social practices). Semiotic faculty is itself dialogically created and humans are apparently the only primates who have learned how to learn it. (Michael Tomasello and colleagues who are, like Enard, also at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, have published quite a bit on this. [Tomasello, M. and H. Rakoczy. 2003. "What Makes Human Cognition Unique? From Individual to Shared to Collective Intentionality." Mind & Language 18(2): 121-147.]

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in >> Science, archeology, Eddy Laing, evolution, human history, Mike Ely | 4 Comments »

Capitalism is a bankrupt system — we need to get rid of it!

Posted by Mike E on April 1, 2009

crisis-recession-global-financial

by Eddy Laing

The dramatic collapse of the financial sectors over the past year is showing capitalism for what it is: a global parasitic system that feeds on the creative labor of the people of the world. Capitalist profit and banking interest come from the surplus-value created by that labor.

The current economic crisis is a ‘crisis’ because the Ponzi scheme-like trade in financial derivatives — comprised of assorted sets of debt obligations — finally reached the point where the book value of debt obligations being traded greatly and obviously exceeded the value of the ‘assets’ on which they were supposedly based. There wasn’t enough surplus-value to profitably divide among all the various capitalists. Capitalist investment funds started demanding to be paid, capitalist banks couldn’t cover their obligations to the funds and started to default on loan holdings, capitalist credit insurers (like AIG) were called on to pay on their policies to the banks, and the collapse was on. (Even now, in the depths of the collapse, the banks demand to make a profit from the billions they borrow from the Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank.)

No longer able to borrow from the banks, manufacturing and commercial capitalists are shutting down factories and stores, laying off millions. Others, such as US auto companies, borrow billions from the governments on the condition that they lay-off workers, slash wages, and cut out the health benefits and pensions of retirees.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in >> analysis of news, Eddy Laing | Leave a Comment »

Kasama Position Paper: Current Collapse & Global Capitalism

Posted by John Steele on March 12, 2009

crisis-cash-factories-men

This essay is based on a paper presented at a recent gathering of the Kasama Project. It has been revised in response to comments at and after that meeting.

The Current Collapse and Global Capitalism

by Eddy Laing

One of the all-encompassing features of capitalism is its inherent anarchy. Economic competition and anarchy both engenders and provokes political and ideological contention on a global scale. This anarchy is evident the organization of production, commerce and finance with the primary objective of profit-taking by capitalists (rather than for the immediate or strategic interests and needs of society as a whole) and in the competition among the capitalists, as each seeks to maximize their slice of that profit at the expense of all others. This is currently evident as various capitalists and their journalistic and academic apologists offer competing stories about who or what is to blame for the present mess. In other words, there’s a whole lot of finger pointing going on. A great deal of this is not only not trustworthy; it is specifically designed to misdirect us from understanding the reasons behind this economic collapse.

For example, even after all the tremendous devaluations that have taken place globally – the liquidation of large sums of debt, the bankruptcies of banks and factories, the huge declines in corporate stock prices – the story that continues to be spun out is that this collapse was caused by the growing number of sub-prime residential mortgage loan defaults. However, if we review the past six months of activity and disclosure within the financial sector, we instead see that huge amounts of debt have fuelled the operations of the financial sector for decades and at an exponentially increasing rate since the early 1970s. We further see that the massive credit defaults that have frozen the financial sectors are from debts that were organized within the financial and commercial sectors themselves – debt transactions among capitalists, not small homeowners. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in >> analysis of news, >> Kasama Project, capitalism, economics, Eddy Laing, Marxist theory | 26 Comments »

Transformation of Humanity — on a Worldwide Scale

Posted by John Steele on February 26, 2009

kenya-schoolroom

Is human history directionally oriented? Does it point toward the overcoming of class society? This is one question — a contentious one — raised in the following, the third and final part of this essay written for Kasama. The first two parts are here and here.

Why historical materialism matters, 3

by Eddy Laing

Economic Base, Political-Ideological Superstructure and the Need for Revolution

In their historical analysis, Marx and Engels specifically noted and partly described several types of societies that have existed over the past two thousand years, primarily citing the Mediterranean and Europe. Tribal societies, slave societies, feudal societies, and capitalist societies have each been characterized by distinctive but generalizable economic relationships and technologies (e.g. estate agriculture using slave labor together with small-scale handicraft production) and ideo-political superstructures (Roman or common law, literature and music, religions and customs, etc.) In every stratified society, the dominant class exerts hegemonic control over the rest of society, including over intellectual life, aspirations, and the ability of subaltern strata to express ideas independent of that dominant, ruling class narrative. The proletariat (and every other non-dominant class) is not only expropriated economically; they are expropriated in every aspect of culture including their intellectual life. Consider, for example, how the ruling class narrative defines popular discussions of ‘democracy’, ‘dictatorship’, ‘violence’, ‘peace’, ‘terrorism’, ‘economic crisis’, and so on.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in communism, Eddy Laing, Marxist theory, theory | 23 Comments »

The Development of Classes in Human Culture

Posted by John Steele on February 17, 2009

prehistory_cave_artHow did classes arise in human history? This is the chief topic of the following essay by Eddy Laing, the second in a three-part series written for Kasama. Part 1 appears here.

Why historical materialism matters, 2

by Eddy Laing

The Core of Culture is the Mode of Production

Every human society, regardless of its simplicity or complexity, coheres around modes of activity that solve the prerequisites of food, shelter, clothing and other basic physical and ideological needs. Generally, modes of production are comprised of the activities through which the group provides for this subsistence and reproduction, including the rules, customs, techniques, beliefs, and other ideas that have arisen from and in turn enable those basic activities, such as how those activities are communicated across generations and geography.

Marx described the capitalist mode of production as distinguished by two characteristics. First, the social product takes the form of commodities (a useful product of human labor created for exchange), and second, the aim of production is the creation of surplus-value (the value created by labor beyond its cost as labor-power), which is appropriated as interest, ground rent and profit by capitalists.33  In this mode of production, the capitalists direct the kinds of social production and how the social surplus (the surplus-labor of the society as a whole) will be used as they compete to exchange commodities in various markets. Within this type of economy, human labor is one of the commodities produced and traded. The proletarian sells her labor-power for wages with which she feeds, clothes and shelters herself and her dependants, and thereby lives to work another day (and create more surplus-value for the capitalists).

This does not mean that only one mode of production is possible in any society.

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Posted in capitalism, Eddy Laing, Fredrick Engels, human history, Karl Marx, Marxist theory | 13 Comments »

The Case for Historical Materialism

Posted by John Steele on February 13, 2009

We all probably know that one of Lagos_Nigeria_street_scene Marx and Engels’ great accomplishments is often said to be the creation of something called historical materialism, or in their own phrase, “the materialist conception of history.” What is this conception? What is the particularity of this approach to history, and how is it connected to revolutionary change?

In this essay, written for Kasama, Eddy Laing seeks to answer these questions, using not only the works of Marx and Engels, but more recent findings and research in anthropology and social sciences.

This is the first of three parts.

Why historical materialism matters, 1

by Eddy Laing

At the core of Marxism is the methodology of historical materialism (HM), which “regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence.” 1  As developed by Marx and Engels, the dialectical materialist conception of history is not just an interpretation of the world; it is a guide to active transformation and “in its essence critical and revolutionary.”2

Of course, it can be argued that any study of history is necessarily a study of social development. Unlike histories defined by the acts of presidents, generals, bankers or other elites, and measured against the Idea, or Moment or other ideological abstractions, historical materialism proceeds from an analysis of how society as a whole functions, “starting with the material production of life itself and comprehending the form of intercourse connected with and created by this mode of production.”3  In other words, historical materialism is a study of societies as they really are — as diverse and complex assemblies of people with various needs and aspirations. In order to do that, we need to examine society in all its stages and component reciprocal actions; how people make their lives, enact the state (laws, governance), and conduct themselves ideologically through religion, philosophy, ethics, morality, art, literature, music, etc. These activities and expressions are in fact social practices and, taken together, form the cultural matrix of the given society.

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Posted in capitalism, communism, Eddy Laing, Fredrick Engels, Karl Marx, theory | 1 Comment »

Capitalist Crisis Shreds Stability, and Perhaps Passivity

Posted by John Steele on December 20, 2008

 

Icelanders travel to Belgium to protest their frozen bank accounts

Icelanders travel to Belgium to protest their frozen bank accounts

Without warning and without some conscious decision by those running society, the crisis within this  capitalist system is crushing the hopes and plans of millions, even hundreds of millions of people in countries around the world. Foreclosures have swept whole neighborhoods in Michigan, Florida, Los Angeles and more. Retirees (and those planning retirement) have seen their pension savings evaporate overnight in the U.S. — or are facing the knives of federal bailout in the auto industry.

Capitalism has turned its ugly face to sections of the middle class in the U.S. who felt relatively secure and stable — in ways that are cruel, shocking and eye-opening.

Three months after the collapse of the financial sector, it is painfully obviousthat the US economy is not going to ‘recover’ in the near future.

The earlier debates over whether the ‘down-turn’ was a technical recession have given way to the admission that the US economy has been in a recession for the past 12 months and is still declining.

Government and mainstream economists continue to blame the housing market, but the contributing factors of this crisis are much more systemic.

The following essays by Kasama’s Eddy Laing are relevant to understanding this crisis, its parameters and causes. We are developing pdf-pamphlets of these essays — to make them easier to print-and-read, and also to circulate on lit tables and hand-to-hand.

Posted in >> analysis of news, capitalism, economics, Eddy Laing | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Who Are Bail-outs Really For?

Posted by John Steele on December 16, 2008

by Eddy Laingfor sale

Who and what are bail-outs and stimulus packages really for?

As has become painfully clear, the allocation of public debt as money-capital (in the forms of loans or stock purchases), is not being decided impartially. None of it is intended for ordinary people, of course. But among those who are the intended recipients, certain capitalists are favored and others are left to fend for themselves. So, for example, Wells Fargo was enabled to take over Wachovia, Merrril Lynch was offered up to Bank of America, and Citibank received a further ‘injection’ of money-capital, while others were allowed to declare bankruptcy.

And even those favored by the Treasury with (relatively) inexpensive stock purchases are allowed to stash that new money-capital away, even buying government bonds and, in effect, collecting interest from the lender. The continuing process reveals that even in times of crisis, capital is bound by its essential parasitism.

But even if here it appears to be feeding on itself, that is most definitely not the case. Capital is the expropriated surplus-value created by the working classes around the world. The money-capital being provided to the failing banks is wrung from the sweat and blood of the textile workers in Guatemala, the electronic assembly workers in China and Vietnam, the poor peasants in Peru and Mexico, as well as window makers in Chicago and autoworkers in Michigan and Ohio.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in >> analysis of news, Barack Obama, capitalism, economics, Eddy Laing, labor | 14 Comments »

Costs of Empire: ‘Time-bombs’, Guns, Risk and Anarchy (part 3)

Posted by John Steele on November 27, 2008

This is the third and concluding part of a three-part essay written for Kasama. Part 1 is here and part 2 is here.bagdad-350

by Eddy Laing

Capital roams the planet seeking out markets to acquire and human labor to exploit. Success is the ability to yield super-profits. This neo-liberal dystopia comes to define every aspect of ‘developing world’ economies. The methods and scale of exploitation engineered in Central America by US and other capitals is typical of imperial socio-economic relationships established throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America.

At the same time that Guatemala provides sweatshops to the global textile sector, it provides a market for US agribusiness which — thanks to free trade agreements — can now export cotton, wheat, beef and processed foods into Guatemala and all of Central America. This trade will further ruin the already-stunted local agricultural sectors which cannot compete with large-scale industrial agri-business. This same dynamic also increases pressure on Guatemalan agriculture toward growing cash-crops, such as sugar cane for ethanol production in the US, rather than grains, vegetables or fruits for local consumption.

Just before the current financial crisis erupted, some of the biggest US and European banks were embroiled in what one observer called “a battle over the best assets in Latin America’s last big banking opportunity,” (32) a mad dash to acquire stakes in the financial sectors throughout Central and South America. During the last half of 2006, HSBC bought up Grupo Banistmo (Panama) and Citigroup acquired both Grupo Financiero Uno (multi-national) and Grupo Cuscatln (El Salvador), while Scotiabank bought Banco Interfin (Costa Rica) and GE Money (division of General Electric Co.) bought 49.9% of BAC International Bank (Panama). Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in >> analysis of news, capitalism, communism, Eddy, Eddy Laing, Marxist theory | Leave a Comment »

 
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