Disqus - Latest Comments for Schepers

Re: Political Affairs Magazine - The Roller Coaster: The Communist Party in the 1940s

Schepers — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:22:04 -0000

Many thanks to Norman Markowitz for this fine historical piece. I hope it is widely circulated and discussed. I recently re-read the Duclos letter which Markowitz mentions. This letter was by no means a sectarian document, as Earl Browder and his supporters no doubt believed, but a balanced critique which fully took into consideration the strategic need of American Communists to build center-left alliances including Democrats. But as the letter points out, Browder had taken really extreme positions that flew in the face of reality. He had also managed to persuade the leaders of the (pre-Castro) Cuban and Colombian Communist Parties to go along with this, and had an impact on the Mexican Communist Party also, though perhaps less strong. This led to illusions that under U.S. capitalist leadership and with wide open doors to U.S. corporate involvement in their economies, Latin American countries would somehow achieve both wealth and socialism. We know how that worked out. On the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, we should think about the comments of Fidel Castro in his interview with Tomas Borges, at http://www.marxists.org/his...

Re: HONDURAS UPDATE SEPTEMBER 28 2009

Schepers — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 01:23:05 -0000

I am sorry I really can't advise you. Most turmoil is going on in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, but there is stuff going on all over the country and it may really come to a head this week. Can't you put off your trip? The ruins will still be there for you. I am an anthropologist by background and really sympathize, but I would be very careful right now.

E.S.

Re: People's Weekly World - What�s really behind the �death panel� scare?

Schepers — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 22:47:10 -0000

What a splendid article, with so much ammunition to use against the anti-reform cabal!
The various components of the health care industry, including insurance, pharmaceuticals and others, are spendng hundreds of millions of dollars to stop reform that will cut into their profits and force them to treat patients as human beings and not sheep to be shorn. They are the ones who stand to lose if the following things are achieved:
1. Universal coverage with no restictions because of pre-existing conditions -- that puts an end to the practice of cherry-picking.
2. A public option -- that forces private entities to be less greedy and more efficient, or they will be driven out of business.
3. Pressure to stop the massive waste, fraud, duplication and inefficiency in current financing of health care and health care insurance coverage -- there go a whole bunch of ill-gotten fortunes down the drain.

These things amount to billions of dollars, and are the reason that health care is 16-17 % of our gross domestic product, instead of around 10 % in other wealthy countries. Not only for the sack of sick people,but for the sake of the economy, it is high time this plundering be stopped.

No wonder we see dirty tactics like telling senior citizens that they are going to lose their Medicare or even are going to be "euthanized".

Re: People's Weekly World - Lou Dobbs' journalism problem

Schepers — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:51:02 -0000

This is a great article. I would add that Dobbs has played a horrible role in the debate about immigrants' rights. He has sometimes used his CNN Cable program for weeks and weeks on end to do nothing but slander Latino immigrants. One of his famous escapades has been to falsely claim that immigrants have been vastly increasing the incidence of leprosy in this country. When this was investigated, it turned out to be a complete falsehood. Dobbs was confronted with this information, but refused to retract. He is one of a number of ultra-right figures who pretend to defend the interests of the US working class, but do nothing of the kind. Time to pull the plug on him, indeed!

Re: People's Weekly World - Dueling resolutions in Congress about Honduras

Schepers — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 15:34:46 -0000

In response to "heidi":

First of all the author is a he not a she, but that's not important.

Nowhere did the article say that Zelaya is campaigning for re-election as president, which the Honduran constitution indeed forbids. But there is a candidate for the Democratic Unification Party, Cesar Ham, who is running for president on a pro-Zelaya platform. When the coup took place on June 28, he had to flee for his life and has only just returned to Honduras. It is conceivable that if normal civilian government were restored now, an election in November could still have some legitimacy because Mr. Ham and his supporters could still mount a campaign without fear of harrasment or injury to candidate and voters. But if, as Micheletti is threatening, these elections are moved up, it is highly probable that they would take place in circumstances which would make a fair election impossible.
We have read the Honduran constitution very carefully; see the article on this selfsame webpage by Jose Cruz, which discusses the contradictory nature of that document.

Emile Schepers

Re: People's Weekly World - Denver March Urges Dems to Back Immigrant Rights

Schepers — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:26:40 -0000

I strongly agree with Greg's comment as well as with Tim Wheeler's article. I recommend readers check out, download and distribute the CPUSA pamphlet on myths and facts about immigration, which talks about the issues Greg mentions and also steers you to some excellent resources on the subject. It can be found online at: http://www.pww.org/article/...

Re: Confessions of a post-Cold War communist

Schepers — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 02:33:00 -0000

Joel, you apologize in advance for sharpness and unkindness. I don't see unkindness as you do not mention individuals, so there is nothing to apologize for on that score, but some of your points do not seem to me well founded. Stalin died more than 50 years ago and the CPUSA has long since repudiated that guy and all his repressive methods. So why do we keep talking about him as if his ideas have been guiding our party right up until now, through a oija board or something? At other points, I think you make some straw man arguments. Nobody ever took the position that we should kill everybody who is wrong; that's absurd, and I wonder you get it from. We also don't go around attacking other leaders and activists on the left unless they are really doing something that, in our opinion, damages the working class interest, such as ultra-left attacks on Obama for instance. If anybody in our party ever did that, it usually came from some personal hangup and not from something the party told him/her to do. On the contrary, party leaders since I joined have always stressed to me the need for unity and for not picking unnecessary fights that could disrupt it. And I am really sorry you missed the little Lenin readers which, even if you do not agree with Lenin on everything, are valuable means for accessing his original words and ideas so that you don't go off with a false idea of what he really said. Especially you should not criticize the little Lenin readers without having read them. (I guess you mean What is to be Done, Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder and State and Revolution, all of which are of more than historical interest today).
Beyond this, I will confine my comment mostly to the idea of democratic centralism. I joined the party in November 1987 and worked with CPUSA activists and read the old Daily World and Political Affairs for many years before that. I have been an activist in a wide range of social justice struggles since about October 1969, and have experienced just about everything that goes with that including family uproar because of political differences, police harrassment, being fired multiple times for political reasons, and so on. One of the things that attracted me to the CPUSA as opposed to the many "brand X's" around there was that it gave the impression of being a serious, task focused, no-nonsense organization. Democratic centralism gave me the feeling that, as long as I worked via the collective decision making process, someone always had my back. I did not have to deal with people from my own Party going off on some goofy egomaniacal tangent and undercutting my own political work. The few times that happened I had a structure to go to to get the situation corrected and the loose cannon firmly chastised by a collective to which he (loose cannons are generally male, for some reason or other) and I both felt accountable. For example, I have done a lot of Cuba solidarity work, and it would have ticked me off no end if any of our Party members had taken it into their heads to go around denouncing the Cuban Revolution. That would have been really disruptive, but NOBODY EVER DID THAT because the collective decision of our party, enforced via democratic centralism, was that we support the Cuban Revolution. One less worry for me as the CPUSA delegate to the Chicago Cuba Coalition! That does not happen in other kinds of political groups, guided by philosophies of social democracy, liberalism or anarcho-libertarianism, where the objective of expressing oneself gets elevated above the objective of getting things done. Naturally such groups tend to turn into talking shops, because nothing is ever definitely decided so as to be acted on in a unified, coherent way. So my appreciation of democratic centralism does not come from a book (although Lenin lays it out in WHAT IS TO BE DONE and many other places in ways I agree with) but from the real life experience which you, Joel, seem to elevate a little bit too much above systematic, scientific study. Both things are essential. Book learning means nothing without practical experience, but practical experience can not be fully integrated without study, for the simple reason that human reality is far more vast and complex than what one single person can experience first hand.
Of course democratic centralism can be abused and turned into a caricature of itself. It can be twisted into bureaucratic centralism, wherein one is expected to do a certain thing (or more often, not do it) not because it violates the decisions of Party collectives, but because some individual leader or other personally demands or forbids it. But hey, we don't live in a perfect world. If democratic centralism as I have here described it had not been party policy, I would never have joined, let alone stayed in the party. It is what makes the whole thing work. Without it, being part of a revolutionary party would be too frustrating, and much too dangerous to life and limb.
P.s. use of secret names indeed preceded McCarthyism, but repression preceded McCarthyism too, e.g. the Palmer Raids in 1919. Much of the communist movement has been illegal in its country of operation, including this one, at one time or another; in other circumstances people use assumed names in order to protect their families from harrassment because of their communist activities, or to not get fired from their jobs. It was not done on a whim, but because of real dangers and difficulties.

Re: People's Weekly World - Largest-ever workplace raid terrorizes 600 workers in Miss.

Schepers — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:59:35 -0000

In response to comment poster Anthony. You are right to state that because they have no rights, undocumented workers are easily exploited, which undercuts the position of the whole working class. But the solution is not to persecute the immigrant workers, but to get them the rights that would make it possible for them to unionize and fight for decent wages and working conditions for all, along with other workers. This means legalization. There is no way under current conditions for most undocumented workers to get legal status, and very few visas are available for people in countries like Mexico who are forced to migrate to find work.
Another issue is: Why is it possible for employers like Agroprocessors or Howard Industries to pay undocumented workers such low wages and make them work in such horrible conditions, when these things are against labor law in the first place? Child labor, dangerous conditions at work, no overtime pay etc. are all illegal whether the workers are undocumented, documented or US citizens. So why is labor law not being enforced? Note that Mississippi is a "right to work" (for less) state where unions don't have the leverage provided by having everybody in a workplace in the union and protected by its contract. The history of labor in Mississippi and other Deep South states is that formerly, unionization was blocked by playing African-American and white workers off against each other. That still goes on too, but now the new trick is to play immigrant and native born workers off against each other.
So rather than blame everything on undocumented immigrant workers who come here out of a desperate need to feed their families, let's make sure that (a) Right to work laws like the one in Mississipp are abolished (b) Undocumented immigrants are given a way to legalize themselves, which does not exist now and (c) State, federal and local governments strictly enforce all labor laws including especially those governing child labor, hours and wages and occupational health and safety. These are things which will not happen unless we oust the GOP ultra right from the White House and the leadership of Congress. We will still have to fight when that happens, but we will have a fighting chance.
So it is, too, about workers rights. The demand of the immigrants' rights movement is for LEGALIZATION of the undocumented, to STOP the exploitation, not to keep people in an undocumented status.

Re: A good point on Saddleback

Schepers — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:20:35 -0000

I agree that this is a step backward. As both the major candidates happen to be Christians, this turns into a rigged debate on who is the more genuine Christian, to exclusion of those who are of other religions or no religion. The US Constitution clearly states that there will be no religious test for any US government position, elected or appointed: Article VI, Section 3: "...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States". Most interpretations of the First Amendment see it as reinforcing this with its "freedom of religion" clause. However, it is a strategic goal of the Republican ultra-right to turn the United States of America into the United CHRISTIAN States of America. The effort to insert the Ten Commandments in pubic venues, and the theological focus on issues such as abortion and gay marriage are part of this. Part of it also is the whispering campaign to the effect that Obama is a closet Muslim (or perhaps the Antichrist, as some of the wilder spirits hint) . To force all candidates to prove in public that they are Christians is part and parcel. Given the dyamics of the present election campaign, I can perhaps understand why Obama's advisors decided to go along with the Saddleback debate, but this could have bad long-term repercussions.

Re: This Week's Ten Worst and Best of Marxism

Schepers — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:54:51 -0000

Well, I like these 10 bad and good ideas, especially the "bads", better than your first set. Just a couple of quibbles:

On the "worst":

On number 2, though I am the first to defend a class based approach against the vague humanism of social democrats and liberals, I think we must always remember that there was human society before there was class society, and that pre-class societies were usually characterized by values that more resemble what we would consider working class values -- cooperation, social solidarity, etc -- than capitalist values.

On number 6, though some might not understand it, "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will" is actually a good guide for tactical decision making.

On the "best", # 3 watch out for that Goethe quote about green reality and grey theory! In Goethe's "Faust", Mephistophiles, a manifestation of Satan, is interviewing a medical student who says that "theoretically" he is not supposed to have sexual relations with his patients, but he is tempted...." And Mephisto, always on the lookout for souls to capture and drag down to Hell, says "ah, go ahead -- grey is all theory, and green, green is the tree of life, my friend!" The lesson Goethe meant to emphasize is not to ditch principle in favor of personal expediency or pleasure.