Marx Bicentennial. . .

This year is Marx’s bicentennial.  He was born in 1818 (May 5).  And March 14 was the 135th anniversary of his death.

This year is also the 170th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto.

Below are some of the pieces we have run on Redline about Marx’s ideas, including pieces which showing their continuing relevance to understanding the world as it is and as it could be.

What is Marxism?

What is exploitation?

How capitalism works – and why it doesn’t

Two articles on Wages, prices & lies and capitalist crisis

4,000 words on Capital

Karl Korsch on “tremendous and enduring” impact of Marx’s Capital (1932)

Engels on Marx on the Working Day

Marx’s critique of classical political economy

Capital, the working class and Marx’s critique of political economy

Capital and the state

How capitalist ideology works

Pilling’s Marx’s Capital: philosophy, dialectics and political economy

How capitalism under-develops the world

The political economy of low-wage labour 

Whatever happened to the leisure society?

Pensions and the retirement age – the problem is capitalism, not an aging population

A nightmare in whiteware: the ‘teamwork’ system, exploitation and alienation

Value, price and the ‘transformation problem’ in Marx’s Capital

The transformation problem and Marx’s crisis theory

Productive and unproductive labour in capitalist society

The use-value of Marx’s value theory

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Auckland solidarity with Palestinians

by Daphna Whitmore

Several hundred people turned out yesterday in Auckland to rally in solidarity with the people of Gaza. The vicious response of the Israeli army to the mass demonstrations at the Gaza prison fence has created a sense of urgency  that the situation demands action. The rally turned into a spontaneous march to the US Consulate.

Auckland solidarity march with Gaza

Ahmad Abdullah Abdullah al-Adaini, 1981-2018

by Susanne Kemp

It’s always problematic to point to this or that particular individual in the context of a massacre by state forces.  All lives lost are to be mourned – and we should get angry about all of them.

But in the case of the latest murder spree by the Israeli state, I want to mention Ahmad Abdullah Abdullah al-Adaini, a Palestinian Marxist and activist in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.  This comrade was murdered while participating in the right-of-return protest near the al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

Comrade Ahmad was born in the Gaza Strip in 1981 and later studied in Yemen.  Due to his studies and his English-language proficiency, Ahmad could have chosen a

Ramzy Baroud national speaking tour in New Zealand, May 18-24

Below we’re reprinting the official statement and itinerary for the speaking tour.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud’s NZ speaking tour itinerary – 18 to 24 May 2018.

Hosted by the NZ Palestine Solidarity Network

Ramzy Baroud brings the authentic voices of the Palestinian struggle for human rights to New Zealand, as part of a world-wide launch of his new book The Last Earth: a Palestinian Story.

Please note that signed copies of Ramzy’s book will be on sale for $35 at each venue – cash or EFTPOS (bookshop retail prices may vary). Other merchandise will be available also.

Each event is free entry and open to the public – bring your friends & workmates. There will be a collection for donations towards tour costs.

 

AUCKLAND: FRIDAY 18 MAY

10:30am: A special book signing event at UBIQ Auckland University Bookshop, 2 Alfred Street, Student Commons (off Princes or Symonds Street, City.)
12:00 midday: Listen to 95bFM radio for Kelly Enright’s studio interview with Ramzy Baroud on ‘The Wire’ current affairs programme.

AUCKLAND: SATURDAY 19 MAY

9:00am: Listen to Kim Hill’s face-to-face live interview with Ramzy on her popular ‘Saturday Morning’ programme, on RNZ National radio (FM 101.4)
2:00pm: Ramzy will speak at the Nakba Rally for Free Palestine, Aotea Square, Queen St, CBD.

AUCKLAND: SUNDAY 20 MAY

Free public talk: 7pm Freemans Bay Community Hall, 52 Hepburn St, Auckland.

 

HAMILTON: MONDAY 21 MAY
Free public talk: 7pm: Wintec, Room A2.05, City Campus, Hamilton.
Access via Gate 3 or Gate 2 on Tristram Street. Free parking.

 

WELLINGTON: TUESDAY 22 MAY

Book signing from 12pm to 1pm: Vic Books, Easterfield Building, 1 Kelburn Parade, Wellington 6012.
Evening event: 6pm Free Public talk: St Andrews on the Terrace, 30 The Terrace, Wellington City 6011. (Wellington event book sales by Vic Books).

 

CHRISTCHURCH: WEDS 23 MAY
Free public talk: 7pm Christchurch Cardboard Cathedral, 234 Hereford St, Christchurch 8011.

 

DUNEDIN: THURSDAY 24 MAY

Free public talk: 5:15pm Burns 2 Lecture theatre, Ground Floor Arts Building, Albany Street, University of Otago.

 

ABOUT THE BOOK AND ITS AUTHOR:

Gaza-born Palestinian author Ramzy Baroud is

Close the Israeli embassy, cut ties with Israel

by Daphna Whitmore

What other western country shoots demonstrators with snipers? Like a scene from Game of Thrones Israel continued its bloody killing spree on the Gaza border while celebrating the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem.

Men, women and children protesting in Gaza against the siege, their loss of land and nationhood

As Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were opening the embassy the death toll rose to more than 60 Palestinians with an estimated 2000 maimed this week. Meanwhile fascistic religious Jewish mobs in Jerusalem went on a rampage against Palestinians, all the while protected by the Israeli state.

Marx 200: Above all, a revolutionary – Yaffe on Wheen on Marx

May 5 marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx.  Below we’re running a review of Francis Wheen’s biography of Marx.  The review was written when the bio first came out and is by a prominent British Marxist.  Its author probably did more than anyone else to re-establish Marx’s crisis theory in the English-speaking world, back in the early 1970s, and also both to re-establish the Marxist tradition in Britain on ‘the Irish Question’ and the imnpact of imperialism on the political outlook of the British working class and the Marxist approach to Labourism and the British Labour Party.  We’ve added a few more subheads and paragraph divides to break up the text.

by David Yaffe

The first short biography of Karl Marx could be said to have been produced by his great friend and collaborator Frederick Engels on 17 March 1883 in a speech heard by the ten other people gathered together in Highgate Cemetery for Marx’s funeral. It offers very clear guidelines to those who would take it upon themselves to write future biographies. Marx, said Engels, was before all else a revolutionary:

‘His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival.’

So the appearance of yet another biography of Karl Marx, this time by the former Guardian columnist Francis Wheen,1 claiming that ‘it is time to strip away the mythology and rediscover Karl Marx the man’ (p1), should put us on our guard. For Marx the man cannot be separated from his real mission in life and the dedication and commitment that invariably accompanied it.

Faint praise

A biography like any other ‘commodity’ has to have a market niche. Another tabloid-style denunciation of the man and his works would have little mileage. Neither would a revolutionary vindication of Marx. Wheen knows his punters – he wrote weekly for them in The Guardian. They rejected Thatcherism and a Labour Party gone Thatcherite. They are disturbed by untrammelled market forces, corporate domination, financial speculation and increasing stress and insecurity at work. They are alarmed by environmental destruction and Third World poverty but want well-stocked supermarkets supplied by global markets. They want to see change but not

Wasting away in Jacindaville

by Don Franks

Nibbling pavlova, warm fuzzies all over
Hasn’t it been a great honeymoon
But there’s still shit in the river – old pensioners shiver
And Auckland house prices aren’t coming down anytime soon

Wasting away in Jacindaville
Waiting for the baby’s arrival
Some people claim a new dawn’s in the frame
But I know it’s still – just about survival

They hosted Obama, without any drama
Went over and had a wee bow to the Queen