“Today, a vague mood of “anti-imperialism” is back, led by Venezuela’s Chavez and his Latin American allies (Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia), more or less (with the exception of Stalinist Cuba) classical bourgeois-nationalist regimes. But Chavez in turn is allied, at least verbally and often practically, with the Iran of the ayatollahs, and Hezbollah, and Hamas, as well as newly-emergent China, which no one any longer dares call “socialist”. The British SWP allies with Islamic fundamentalists in local elections in the UK, and participates in mass demonstations (during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, summer 2007) chanting “We are all Hezbollah”. Somehow Hezbollah, whose statutes affirm the truth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is now part of the “left”; when will it be “We are all Taliban”? Why not, indeed?”

Loren Goldner

I’m for common ownership of the collective product of labour; the abolition of the wage system and production for use and need,what Marx had called in CAPITAL the “union of free individuals”, not State controlled commodity production for sale to producers in bondage to an employing class. Leninists are always on about their ‘socialist State’.Marx never wrote about establishing a ‘socialist State’ because for Marx the State was synonymous with the dictatorship of one class over others.

Leninist realism. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.

The filmmaker Todd Haynes burst upon the scene two years after his graduation from Brown University with his now-infamous 43-minute cult treasure “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story” (1987). Seizing upon the inspired gimmick of using Barbie and Ken dolls to sympathetically recount the story of the pop star’s death from anorexia, he spent months making miniature dishes, chairs, costumes, Kleenex and Ex-Lax boxes, and Carpenters’ records to create the film’s intricate, doll-size mise-en-scene. The result was both audacious and accomplished as the dolls seemingly ceased to be dolls leaving the audience weeping for the tragic singer. Unfortunately, Richard Carpenter’s enmity for the film (which made him look like a selfish jerk) led to the serving of a “cease and desist” order in 1989, and despite the director’s offer “to only show the film in clinics and schools, with all money going to the Karen Carpenter memorial fund for anorexia research,” “Superstar” remains buried, one of the few films in modern America that cannot be seen by the general public.

― Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

(Source: plutonumetrio)

We are not fans of Bookchin but this interview regarding the Situationist International  seems pretty spot on. We’ve met with folks who knew the SI and were in “1968” and this conforms to their analysis too. 

(Source: jacquesmove)

Plastic People of Universe. They started the collapse of Stalinism

The main argument for Stalinism is usually that it is succesful. The argument says Stalinism/Maoism/Hoxha, etc accomplished things where Marxism and Anarchism did not.

Here’s proof of the weakness of the argument and proof of the ultimate FAIL inherent in Stalinism.