Mapping Out The Revolving Door Between Gov’t And Big Business

[It has long been said, and all-too-often forgotten, that the key to understanding and planning revolutionary strategy, is to understand the class nature of the state.  Despite the appearance of (and illusions derived from) the cosmetically democratic architecture, the state (its politicians, military, police, judges) belongs to the capitalists–lock, stock, and barrel.  So, when the rallying cry is raised, “get the corporations out of government” one must ask, “where’s the difference?”  Attempts to reform such a system inevitably lead to, in the words of the 60’s revolutionary Fred Hampton Sr., “answers that don’t answer…..conclusions that don’t conclude.”    This chart, from Tech Dirt, reveals some aspects of what the people–the “99%”–are up against. — Frontlines ed.] 

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from the crony-capitalism-is-corruption dept, techdirt.com

Via Larry Lessig we get series of Venn diagrams showing the revolving door between big business and government. When people talk about regulatory capture, this is what they mean. When people talk about corruption and crony capitalism, this is what they mean. If you want a quick visual idea of why so few people trust this government to do the right thing for the people, rather than the big companies, this is why:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111221/17561617164/mapping-out-revolving-door-between-govt-big-business-venn-diagrams.shtml

Nepal: Basanta on class struggle, revolutionary strategy, the international communist movement, and two-line struggle in the party

Interview with Basanta, Politburo Member, Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)

Tuesday, 13 December 2011

Q. You said there is class struggle in the making of the new constitution. Can you elaborate which classes are aligned in to Nepal to backwards from the marching forward and how it is reflected in the expression of the new constitution. How they are placed in different parties?  Which are the parties totally retrograde?

A. Constitution is a political document that guides the state power of the given country to drive forward. Like the state power, constitution is also relative to a certain class, oppressor or the oppressed. At one point of the people’s war, the Constituent Assembly came into being as a political tactic to drive forward the unfinished task of new democratic revolution in Nepal. The classes, which were fighting militarily during people’s war, are now clashing ideologically and politically in the Constituent Assembly. The front of class struggle has definitely changed but not the objective.

With the demolition of monarchy, feudalism has become weak in Nepal. The comprador bourgeois has acquired upper hand in the state power. However, the characteristic of the state power has not changed yet. The contradiction formed of the entire people of oppressed class, nation, region and sex on the one side and the comprador and bureaucratic bourgeoisie, which is leading the reactionary state power, on the other, is the principal contradiction. It is manifested now in the Constituent Assembly too. To write a constitution that paves the way forward to resolving the basic contradictions emerged out of semi-feudal and semi-colonial condition of Nepal and restructuring the state power accordingly is the task our party is trying to accomplish from the Constituent Assembly. However, two-line struggle seems to be sharp on the content of the constitution.

It is principally the class not a party, we are confronting with, in the Constituent Assembly. However, the ideological and political line of a party represents the interest of a certain class. In this sense, we have to struggle with the parties too. The Nepali Congress, a section of UML and some parties from Madhesh represent the interest of comprador and bureaucratic bourgeoisie and feudalism in Nepal. So we have sharp contention with them in the Constituent Assembly.

The Indian State’s Murder of Kishanji–and “the hour that the ship comes in”

Kishanji: not just another ‘martyr’

November 28, 2011

by Saroj Giri, Sanhati

Kishanji is not just a fighter against oppression, a brave and courageous soul. He presided over something unique in the history of resistance movement in the country – and maybe he was not even so aware of it. Several forms of resistance seem to have come together in his leadership – synchronizing armed fighting power of the people with open rallies, processions and demonstrations. If one is really serious about democratic mass upsurges then one cannot wish away ‘strategy’, the ‘use of force’ or ‘armed resistance’; that the life-veins of mass struggle extend into the zone of armed resistance – these otherwise old Leninist lessons were restated, reasserted, renewed afresh in the life and activity of Kishanji.

It is in this sense that Kishanji in a way rehabilitated the status of both mass movements and ‘military strategy’ within the left.

The US Black Left Must See the Struggles throughout the Americas as Core to an Anti-Imperialist and Revolutionary Strategy

[Throughout the world, and throughout the Americas, serious revolutionaries are focusing attention on strategic issues–analyzing the basic forces and alliances, and the changing landscape we face today.  The Black Left Unity Network, with this discussion paper, is considering these questions with a fundamentally hemispheric orientation, as anti-imperialist and revolutionary strategies are sharply debated. — Frontlines ed.]

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Black Left Unity Network Discussion Paper

There are more than 150 million African descendants in Latin America and the Caribbean and 50 plus million in the US, Canada and throughout North America. The conditions, contradictions, consciousness and social movements of African descendants throughout the Americas, have been shaped by the colonial and capitalist development, the domination of US imperialism, and by the resistance by to the economic, political and cultural subjugation that shape their particular forms of oppression.

The development of capitalism throughout the Americas shows a colonial history of societies that built their primitive base of accumulation of capital on the basis of the sale, reproduction and exploitation of the labor of enslaved Africans and Indigenous peoples. Wars were waged by the European colonial powers against the Indigenous peoples resulting in genocide, as they resisted drives to take their lands and to destroy their communities.