This is the first on two articles assessing

classes and class struggle in China’s past
and present day. The second, an exchange
with Yi Ching Wu by David Schweickart,
will appear tomorrow.

Yesterday’s Class Enemy:
Class Ideology and the Politics
of the Cultural Revolution

By Yi Ching Wu
University of Chicago

It is not so much of an exaggeration to say that the Cultural Revolution was all about class-it was, in any case, officially self-defined as “a great revolution in which one class overthrows another.” The notion of class framed the experiences and practices of hundreds of millions of Chinese people. Class and class struggle constituted the very political framework of the movement, and defined its main objectives. A highly elaborate vocabulary of class pervaded the everyday life of the entire Chinese population. But what did it really mean to talk about “class” during the Cultural Revolution? What was the meaning of “class struggle,” and who were its primary targets?

These apparently innocuous questions have no self-evident answers. In the contemporary Chinese context, the meanings of such political terms as “class,” “class struggle,” and “revolution” have been largely evacuated. They belong to this class of words which, by virtue of having been used so much and so often, have come to mean almost completely nothing at all. Yet these are by no means trivial questions. My purpose of probing the meaning and character of class politics during the Cultural Revolution is to explore two broad questions with regard to the internal complexity as well as the historical significance of the Cultural Revolution. First, in what sense was the Cultural Revolution cultural? And second, to what extent was it revolutionary? (more…)

.What They Say…

Globalists have been fighting against the increase in bilateral trade deals since the failure of the Doha round of the WTO. They much prefer multilateral deals that lay the foundation for globalized business. Says Michael Treschow, chairman of Ericsson, “We make source components from dozens of countries. What good is a deal with India if India does not have the same kind of deal with China? It just cuts across the supply chain. It is not countries that do business with countries but companies that do business with companies.” Goodbye to commerce nationalism, for transnational capitalists it just gets in-the-way of business. (more…)

Dollars & Sense collective member Mary Jirmanus recounts her stay in Beirut during the war in July.

How are things over “there?” I read an e-mail on July 15 from a friend while sitting in my cousin’s apartment in Rabieh, a Beirut suburb. It reads, “I can’t imagine what it’s like there— here things seem to be moving so slowly.” There: the physical, geographical reality of “the region” and “the conflict” on which my friend expects me to offer some insight as to whether Syria will get involved, whether this is the United States’ proxy war with Iran, whether World War III has started.

There: also my internal connection to the space and the constantly changing political scenario, where Al-Jazeera is our constant sound track, where each village mentioned in the news strikes a particular chord of concern, and where we (more…)

MRZine Book Review:

The End of Faith:

Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason

by Sam Harris.

Norton, New York, 2004.

ISBN 0-393-03515-8. 336 pp. Cloth $24.95.

Reviewed by Alexander Saxton

Sam Harris’ The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason is unusual among books recently issued by mainline publishers in that it begins by rejecting all religious faiths — not just Islam or fundamentalist Christianity but ALL — as contrary to reason and detrimental to the human condition. Thus far, your reviewer could read with enthusiastic agreement. But unfortunately, after this strong opener, Harris’ book goes downhill as he develops four themes that become increasingly problematic and end by contradicting his starting assertion. (more…)

Makati, Philippines
I stood on the steps of the entrance to the Makati City Hall, taking in the sights and sounds of the latest political stand-off in the heart of the country’s premier business center, where an embattled mayor fights off what is widely perceived to be political persecution by his sworn enemy, no less than the de facto president, Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Mayor Jejomar Binay’s fortitude and will to stand his ground is most apparent. He appears calm and focused as he is approached by a throng of concerned followers, supporters and mass media people lured by an unfolding real-life drama that could have some unusual twists and quite unexpected outcomes.

Mr. Binay’s preparation for this moment is clearly more than psychological: there is a sense of order and direction despite the tense atmosphere, the constant stream of people and the bellowing of the loud speaker conveying the ongoing (more…)

.China, the US and Goldman Sachs

Hank Paulson’s appointment to be secretary of the Treasury is a major concession by the Bush White House to the globalist fraction of the US ruling class. Weakened by the debacle in Iraq, Bush needs to shore up support in elite circles. The President’s nationalists and unilateralist policies have been a blow to the transnational capitalists whose ideas and wishes dominated during the first Bush and Clinton administrations. The Treasury was a symbol of globalist hegemony run by Wall Street stars Robert Ruben and Lawrence Summers. Those were the days when Washington’s strategy focused on the IMF, WTO and World Bank rather than Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

As former head of Goldman Sachs, Paulson comes from the world’s biggest investment bank, and many say the most (more…)

Author Stan Goff, a retired 26-year veteran of the U.S. Army Special Forces, sounds a warning call that many of the historical precursors of fascism—white supremacy, militarization of culture, vigilantism, masculine fear of female power, xenophobia and economic destabilization—are ascendant in America today.

When I was 18, before student tracking in the public schools had been formalized, an informal tracking system was nevertheless in place: the university track, the craft track, the poultry worker track, and the prison track. I was somewhere between the last two. Both my parents were working in a defense contractor factory, and I was left adrift in the factory-worker ’burbs to be trained by television and alcohol. Raised on a curriculum of McCarthyism, I did the most logical thing I could think of to avoid both the factory and eventual incarceration with the ne’er-do-wells with whom I was keeping company. I joined the Army, and volunteered to fight communists in Vietnam.

(more…)

SAN DIEGO, California - Oregon’s spectacular coastline could become the United States’ center for wave energy development in coming years, with plans underway to install power buoys in locations with enough potential to meet the state’s future energy needs.

Electrical engineers at Oregon State University are developing electricity-generating buoys they believe will be a key component for clean, green wave power. Their objective is to convert the Pacific Ocean’s heavy rolling swell into a renewable energy resource., relying on buoys to harness the near constant rise and fall of waves to produce electricity.

“Waves generate energy through motion,” said Dr. Annette von Jouanne, an electrical engineering professor at Oregon State University (OSU).

(more…)

The US-backed special tribunal in Baghdad signalled Monday that it will likely delay a verdict in the first trial of Saddam Hussein to November 5. Why hasn’t the mainstream media connected the dots between the Saddam’s judgment day and the midterm elections?

Here’s how the story was reported pretty much everywhere: “An Iraqi court trying Saddam Hussein for the killing of Shi’ite villagers in the 1980s could deliver a verdict on November 5, officials said, a ruling which could send the ousted leader to the gallows…”

A possible death-sentence for Saddam and his top lieutenants on November 5? Now, shouldn’t that raise a few eyebrows somewhere? If you happen to have a calendar close at hand, pull it over and take a quick look. That verdict would then come, curiously enough, just two days before the midterm elections. It’s the sort of (more…)

By Mike Locker and Dave Hancock

Venezuela is currently attempting to break the iron grip of the United States and the multinational corporations that continue to play a dominant role in its economy. The long term goal is to create an alternative international system that promotes social development over profit promotes productive sovereignty and bilateral cooperation over the short sighted demands of international finance. In order to shift the global balance of power and fuel the economic development of Venezuela in the interests of its own people, Chavez seeks to forge strong international ties with other developing nations to secure the necessary capital, technology and expertise traditionally provided by the multinational corporations and institutions he is looking to neutralize. Venezuela’s growing strategic relationship with China is but one example of this emerging trend.

Moving in this direction, China and Venezuela have recently announced the signing of at least eight major agreements in (more…)

You have probably heard the story of the scorpion that convinces a frog to carry it across a river. Halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog, which means both will drown. The frog does not understand; the scorpion explains, “I couldn’t help myself. It’s my nature.”

In the abstract, worker-owned enterprises and labor unions would appear to have much in common. Both share the goal of improving pay and working conditions. Both aim to give workers a say in the workplace. And both belong on any progressive’s short list of strategies for building a more just economic system.

But when unions and worker-owned businesses actually interact, they sometimes act more like the fabled arachnid.

The Ohio Employee Ownership Center at Kent State, where I work, provides preliminary technical assistance on worker buyouts. I once met with a group of employees exploring a worker buyout of a failing paper mill in southwest Ohio. When I (more…)

One day earlier this year I met Wang Hui at the Thinker’s Cafe near Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he teaches. A small, compact man with streaks of gray in his short hair and a pleasant face that always seems ready to break into a smile, he arrived, as he would to all our subsequent meetings, on an old-fashioned bicycle, dressed in dark corduroys, a suede jacket and a black turtleneck.Co-editor of China’s leading intellectual journal, Dushu (Reading), and the author of a four-volume history of Chinese thought, Wang, still in his mid- 40s, has emerged as a central figure among a group of writers and academics known collectively as the New Left.

New Left intellectuals advocate a “Chinese alternative” to the neoliberal market economy, one that will guarantee the welfare of the country’s 800 million (more…)

Carol Araullo is a regular columnist for Business World, the leading business newspaper in the Philippines. Her column, “Streetwise,” offers “Progressive Views on the Philippines and International Issues.” She is also the national chair of BAYAN (New Patriotic Alliance), the most significant Left-oppositional force in the country. She is also global vice chair for external affairs of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) and co-convenor of the Gloria Step Down Movement (GSM), Movement of Concerned Citizens for Civil
Liberties (MCCCL), PlunderWatch, DEFEND Philippines, Justice Not War Coalition, US Troops Out Now! and other broad alliances.

She and her husband Mike have two children. Her daughter, a graduate of the University of the Philippines with a degree in physics, is the country’s top female tri-athlete. Her son Atom is a well-know television youth personality.

Solidarityeconomy.net will be posting Araullo’s columns, which are usually political commentaries. Our first posting, however, is an autobiographical tribute to her father. (more…)

Millionaires are so last millennium. The new Forbes 400 list of richest Americans is billionaires only.

If you’re net worth is a mere $999 million, forget it. A billion means a thousand million, and that’s the Forbes 400 minimum — up from $900 million in 2005.

Donald Trump and two of his kids grace the Forbes 400 cover, but ranked No. 94 with $2.9 billion, Trump’s a long way from No. 1 Bill Gates with $53 billion.

The combined wealth of the 400 richest Americans is a record-breaking $1.25 trillion. That’s about the same amount of combined wealth held by the 57 million households who make up half the U.S. population.

(more…)

Vietnam is mentioned in the news quite often these days. But the references are almost always in relation to Iraq. What’s not being covered is what’s going on in Vietnam itself — which is unfortunate, because economically, politically and socially, it might just be the most interesting and inspiring nation on the planet.In the interest of full disclosure, my affection for Vietnam goes way back. As an anti-war activist I met with Vietnamese liaisons to the anti-war movement on several occasions. In 1970 I visited Hanoi and was profoundly impressed with the character and resolve of the people, not to mention the beauty of the country itself. Even then, during wartime, the food was terrific, too.

It still is, as I discovered earlier this year when I returned to Vietnam. The people are open, friendly and confident, just as they were before. But now, not only is the war over, Vietnam is the second-fastest-growing economy in the world. (China is first.) The standard of living of millions of people is improving at a rapid pace. (more…)