(My deepest gratitude to C for making me discover Schoenman! VS)
Ralph Schoenman is a political activist and head of Socialist Organizer, a Marxist group in San Francisco. He also hosts a weekly radio program with Mya Shone, Taking Aim on the Pacifica Radio station WBAI 99.5 FM. Schoenman was an associate of the philosopher Bertrand Russell and was the executive director of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. He was also Secretary General of the International Tribunal on U.S. War Crimes in Indochina, founder and Director of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, and Director of the Who Killed Kennedy Committee. Since the 1960s, Schoenman, an activist for over 45 years in support of international movements for liberation, peace and social justice movements, has traveled the world as a lecturer, activist and participant in revolutionary struggles. He supported Patrice Lumumba when the United State, Belgium, France and Britain cosnpired to overthrow the legendary Prime Minister of the Congo, met Malcolm X when they both were in London and was arrested in Bolivia for being in regular contact with Che Guevara during Che’s struggle to assist revolutionairies in the Andean country. In fact, Schoenman was imprisoned in Bolivia for his contacts with Guevara. Schoenman is the author of “Iraq and Kuwait: A history suppressed”. He is one of the few survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Hungary, in which seventy-five members of his group were killed. .
When I hear Marxists rail against oligarchy, I think they don’t want plutocracy but they seem hopelessly naive about the “vanguards of the revolution” running a socialist world.
The basic idea that an oligarch controls the country is correct but every country/political system suffers the same condition. In a socialist country, we have a gang of scoundrels that run that show, skate above the law, and take whatever steps required to sustain themselves in power. Its just a different cabal of gangsters. The capitalist countries have their cliques who have their own calculus of the enlightened to figure out who is and is not in the IN crowd.
It’s all baloney though because the justification is just a figleaf for the reality of power in the hands of a few. The recent version of this horror does not require such overtly brutal means to retain power. You need control of the press and the political parties, which, in the US, you can conveniently buy. Funny how the press like the WSJ howls about the press in Russia not being free, but what they mean is , its not for sale to international money- i.e. THEM.
Maybe much smaller countries would be helpful, so that the consequences of such cabals do not send millions of people to war possibly with nuclear weapons.
I do like this guy though but I want to hear more people talking about what WOULD work better- and how to get off this treadmill to hell. I often ask socialist friends – what do you WANT? Do you want an international S.E.C.- and defense department? because the farther this government is located, the worse the potential for it to pursue its venial and largely hidden agenda. This clique could accomplish the nightmare of mankind- world domination- probably by a handful of Jews, and the machinery for maintaining them in power would be the same as is being perfected in the US- A press bought an paid for, with rules of political discourse established what is allowed to be explored carefully delimited.- And maybe some concept of political parties which of course must share these common “civilized” democratic principles.
I remember the first time I heard the lady on NPR declare that democracy was more than one man one vote, and there are host of democratic principles, which she listed, and it sounded like a wish lists for socialists. SO that’s what they mean by democracy I thought. That explains a lot.
I learn a lot from NPR. A heard a commentator once defend Alger Hiss because at that time, of course, the USSR was our ally, so if you flog your conscience into making an exception for countries deemed our
“ally” well that works for some. e.g. Pollard.
@oldman: I have to say that I agree with everything you say (-: except the “learning from NPR”, of course :-)
It is true that in the Marxist societies you also had an elite of scoundrels running the show. But I can attest to the following fact:
I have seen the appartment of a Colonel in the KGB Special Forces (a unit called “Kaskad”) and I have seen the appartment of a 2 star General heading a chair at the Soviet General Staff Academy and both of them lived in decent, but MODEST conditions by Western standards. That is a fact which I saw with my own eyes. Now, it is true that I did not visit the private real estate of Politburo members, but I would say that I think that the disparity between the top 1% in the Soviet Union and the bottom 95% was nowhere near as big as it is in the USA. That is a fact which I – a bona fide anti-Soviet – witnessed with my own eyes.
So maybe Hegel is right when he says that quantitative differences eventually result in qualitative differences.
Yes, there was a clique of rich scoundrel at the top of the USSR, but by comparison with the SOBs at the top of the US Empire, they were outright ascetic in their life styles…
Does that make sense to you or am I being distracted by irrelevant observations?
@oldman: could you please send me your email at vineyardsaker@gmail.com?
thanks!