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Monday, July 26, 2010

Memoirs of a Parliamentarian Troubles the Marxist Capitalists Most as Sidu Soren and Five Maoists Encountered in Gwaltor!

Memoirs of a Parliamentarian Troubles the Marxist Capitalists Most as Sidu Soren and Five Maoists Encountered in Gwaltor!

Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Derams- Chapter 529

Palash Biswas

http://indianholocaustmyfatherslifeandtime.blogspot.com/

The CPM on Monday dismissed as "rubbish and false assertions" ex-Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee's scathing comments on party chief Prakash Karat and said they "are just post-facto justifications of a person who defected to the ruling establishment".

The CPM also claimed Chatterjee had agreed to quit as the Speaker before the vote of confidence in the UPA government in July 2008 but had backed out later reneging on his commitment given to the party.

I was Never associated with CPIM as we considered it Revisionist as CPIM treated CPI the same. I landed in Dhanbad and involved myself in Jharkhand Movement and Investigative Journalism in Coalfields in 1980, the year after the Marich Jhanpi genocide. Jyoti Basu, Jatin Chakrabarti, Ashok Mitra and Pramod dasgupta were in Control of Left Front and the Party. In fact, I came to know the Parliamentarian so much respected only after he was defeated by Ms Mamata Banerjee, a First Timer, in Jadavpur in 1980. But  I considered him one of the best Parliamentarian CPIM had, only after he reprented Bolpur. But when I came close to the Party as a Social Activist fighting for the Citizenship, Civic and Human Rights of the Black Untouchable refugees countrywide, I could know the Party Affairs better. But the Capitalist ways of Buddha, Somnath and Nirupam Trio disappointed me rather very fast. Betrayl of the marxists and Genocide Culture Unfolded, the Scientific Brahaminical Marxist Gestapo Genocide Culture EXPOSED only after Nandigram Massacre!

Accusing Somnath Chatterjee of making "false assertions" in his forthcoming book in which he launched a scathing attack on General Secretary Prakash Karat, CPI(M) today said the former Speaker had agreed to quit over the Indo-US nuclear deal issue but had backed out later.

"Somnath Chatterjee had earlier in a letter to the party dated July 9, 2008 agreed to abide by the decision of the party and resign from the post of Speakership. He later backed out from this commitment to abide by the party decision," CPI(M) Politburo said in a statement here.

Chatterjee had launched a vitriolic attack against Karat in his book saying that "disastrous" policies and "misguided" actions of the current leadership had resulted in the major debacle in the 2009 general elections.

"Thanks to the disastrous polices and misguided actions of the current leadership, the Leftist movement in the country has become almost irrelevant", according to excerpts from the book titled Keeping the Faith: Memoirs of a Parliamentarian.

Personally, I oppose the Indo US Nuclear deal and I believe that the Opposition to US Cor[poarte Imperialism has NOTHING to do with the DEBACLE of the Marxists in Bengal.Not Prakash Karat, but the Bengali Brahamins including Somnath da have been responsible for the DEMISE of CPIM. But the party seems to be divided on SOMNATH and the debate is IGNITED once again with the Memoirs of a Parliamentarian!81-year-old Chatterjee, who had targeted Karat in his latest book for the party's debacle in the 2009 General Elections, was also slammed for dragging late party stalwart and former West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu's name into the controversy over his resignation as Speaker.

Left parties are in talks with 'secular' parties to corner the government in Parliament on the price situation and today submitted adjournment notices to demand a discussion on the issue.

While informal consultations have been held with some parties, top Left parliamentary leaders would meet their counterparts from parties like TDP, BJD and AIADMK tomorrow to discuss the strategy as to how they would take forward their struggle on rising prices, Left sources said.

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Leaders of the CPI(M), CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc, who met here today, said they have sent notices for adjournment of the Question Hour in the Lok Sabha tomorrow to take up a discussion on rising prices and deregulation of prices of petroleum products.

The sources were hopeful of support from the NDA on the price rise issue even though the Left parties do not have any floor coordination with the BJP-led opposition alliance.

While the government has made it clear that it would not agree to an adjournment motion on the price rise issue on the ground that it was not a "recent occurrence", Left parties maintained that de-regulation of prices of petrol and diesel was a decision taken after the budget session of Parliament.

Today's meeting was attended by Sitaram Yechury and Basudeb Acharia (both CPI-M), Gurudas Dasgupta and D Raja (both CPI), Barun Mukherjee and Narahari Mahato (both Forward Bloc) and Manohar Tirkey (RSP).

Besides price rise, the Left parties would raise the issue of mining scam and seek to take the government to task on the Bhopal gas case verdict and its repercussions, the sources said.

They would link the liability and compensation issues in the Bhopal gas case with the Civil Nuclear Liability Bill, which is pending before a Parliamentary Standing Committee, they said.

During the session, members of the four parties would also raise the issue of instances of terrorism by Hindutva fundamentalists and the progress in implementation of Ranganath Misra Commission's recommendations on education and job-related problems faced by the minorities.

A comprehensive law on food security that would guarantee a universal distribution system too would be demanded by the Left parties, which would also seek passage of the long-pending Women's Reservation Bill by the Lok Sabha. The legislation has already been approved by the Rajya Sabha.

In a statement, the CPM Poliburo accused the 10-time MP of making "false assertions" while a senior member Biman Bose said the remarks were rubbish and in bad taste and an attempt to malign the party.

"I feel that these are rubbish. If somebody wants to malign the party, that is in bad taste and is sad," Bose, the state party secretary, told reporters in Kolkata to a query on Chatterjee's accusations.

Chatterjee, who was expelled from CPM for refusing to resign from the post of Lok Sabha Speaker before confidence vote in Parliament in July 2008 ignoring a party decision, has made several comments on Karat and the present party leadership in his book 'Keeping the Faith: Memoirs of a Parliamentarian'.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) on Monday said former Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee's allegation that "disastrous" policies and "misguided" actions of the current leadership led to poll debacles was a view expressed by "a person who defected to the rulingetablishment".

The CPI-M said Chatterjee has made "a number of false assertions" in his forthcoming book ("Keeping the Faith: Memoirs of a Parliamentarian").

Under attack from veteran leader Somnath Chatterjee over the Left's electoral debacle, CPM general secretary Prakash Karat on Sunday remained tightlipped about criticism of his leadership and said his party would react to it.

"I won't respond. My party will react (to Chatterjee's charge)," Karat told reporters here emerging from the two-day state committee meeting of the CPM which concluded today.

"He (Chatterjee) is not in the party. So I don't need to react," he said when asked on the charge that he has made the Left movement irrelevant.
Before leaving for Delhi, he said that the extended Central Committee meeting of the CPM in Vijaywada next month would decide on programmes against the neo-liberal policies pursued by the Congress-led UPA government.

In a blistering attack on Karat, Chatterjee, who was expelled by the CPM in July, 2008 after he refused to abide by the party directive to resign as Lok Sabha Speaker, has said "disastrous" policies and "misguided" actions of the "current" leadership had resulted in the major debacle in the 2009 general elections.

The former Lok Sabha Speaker has given vent to his dismay over the state of affairs in the CPM in his book titled 'Keeping the Faith: Memoirs of a Parliamentarian' to be released later this month.

The veteran parliamentary was expelled by the party in July 2008, after he refused to resign as Lok Sabha speaker.

"It is totally wrong to say that five members of the politburo decided to expel him the day after the trust vote session of the Lok Sabha was held," the CPI-M said in a statement in New Delhi.

Chatterjee has attacked CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat and the Left party's leadership in his book to be released later this month.

Explaining the circumstances under which Chatterjee was expelled, the CPI-M said "the decision to take disciplinary action against Chatterjee was taken at a pull Politburo meeting held July 19, 2008".

"The politburo decided to convey to Somnath Chatterjee once more, the decision that he should forthwith resign from the speakership and not preside over the Lok Sabha session on the trust vote.

"The politburo concluded that if he refused to do so he should be expelled from the party as it would amount to helping the Congress-led government," the statement said.

"Somnath Chatterjee had earlier in a letter to the party dated Aug 9, 2008 agreed to abide by the decision of the party and resign from the post. He later backed out from this commitment to abide by the decision," it said.

"All the other views expressed by him are just post-facto justifications of a person who defected to the ruling establishment," it added.

Hitting back at Chatterjee, the CPM Politburo said " he had earlier in a letter to the Party dated July 9, 2008 agreed to abide by the decision of the Party and resign from the post of Speakership. He later backed out from this commitment to abide by the Party decision."

The CPM maintained that all the views expressed by Chatterjee "are just post-facto justifications of a person who defected to the ruling establishment".

It said Chatterjee has made "a number of false assertions" and maintained that it was "totally wrong to say that five members of the Politburo decided to expel him the day after the trust vote session of the Lok Sabha was held".

Rebutting his charges that Karat and a few others had decided to expel him, the statement said a meeting of the full Politburo on July 19, 2008, had taken the decision to take disciplinary action against Chatterjee. The Left parties had then decided to withdraw support to the UPA-I government over the nuclear deal.

The Politburo also maintained that it was "unfortunate that Chatterjee has sought to draw Basu's name into this matter when he is no more".

Biman Bose also criticised Chatterjee in this regard. "Anybody can present a dead man's comments anyway he wants. Whether he has really said that cannot be confirmed or denied."

Chatterjee had said that Basu during a meeting on July 12, 2008 had advised him not to resign as Speaker.

'Arrogant' Karat to blame for Left's plight: Somnath Chatterjee

Mohua Chatterjee, TNN, Jul 25, 2010, 12.58am IST
Tags:Somnath Chatterjee|autobiography|CPM|Prakash Karat|former lok sabha speaker|Keeping the Faith: Memoirs of a Parliamentarian

'Arrogant' Karat to blame for Left's plight, says SomnathSee photo

NEW DELHI: Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee's tell-all autobiography not only chronicles the drama that led to his expulsion from the CPM and the Left's withdrawal of support to UPA-I, it launches a scathing attack on "arrogant and intolerant" CPM boss Prakash Karat. He writes that Karat has been responsible for making the Left movement "irrelevant".

The book, titled "Keeping the Faith: Memoirs of a Parliamentarian", will be released by PM Manmohan Singh on August 21. Excerpts, exclusively seen by TOI, have Chatterjee bitterly attacking Karat and other members of the current leadership for becoming conceited because they were being consulted by the PM. He says they lost perspective and left the CPM at the mercy of "political marauders".

Chatterjee also discloses that his mentor, the late Jyoti Basu, had defied the leadership and the party line to advise him to not resign as Speaker. He had even communicated this to Sitaram Yechury, but Chatterjee wonders if Basu's views were really debated by the leadership.

Chatterjee says his expulsion was totally undemocratic. "When I refused to bow to the party's diktat...Prakash Karat gave vent to his ire by summarily expelling me...it was the saddest day ... since the passing away of my parents." Chatterjee says the decision was taken by just five members of a 17-member politburo and even that was not unanimous.

"That his (Karat's) arrogance and intolerance had reached a peak was clearly demonstrated by the fact that he decided to expel me summarily, without even a show-cause notice. that anyone in the party could defy his diktat was inconceivable to him!"

The veteran Communist believes that the "Karat line" of brinkmanship on the Indo-US nuclear deal is to blame for the Left's rout in its strongholds. With the CPM currently reeling in West Bengal (in Kerala, too, it won just four seat in the 2009 LS polls), Chatterjee's criticism of Karat may reflect the differences between the Bengal party and the central Marxist leadership.

In the book that is published by HarperCollins, Chatterjee narrates how Jyoti Basu advised him to preside over the trust motion as the Speaker and that Chatterjee had mentioned it to Sitaram Yechury. He writes: "...I have received a lot of guidance...from Jyoti Basu... I felt I should take his opinion at that critical juncture. I met him in Kolkata on July 12, 2008 and showed him my communication with the party... he advised me that I should preside over the proceedings of the House on the confidence motion. My resignation, he felt as I too believed, would suggest that I was compromising my position as Speaker and allowing my actions to be dictated by my party, which would be wholly unethical..."

He further writes, "Around 15/16 July 2008, Yechury came to my residence...I informed him about what had transpired during my meeting with Basu, who, as I was told by a reliable source, had sent a note to the general secretary (Karat). I do not know whether this note was placed at the politburo meeting or circulated...

"The first thing the party did the following day...was to hold a meeting of five local members of the politburo, which has a membership of 17." Two days later, he got an expulsion notice, which said "unanimously". "Later, I understood that even among the five, the decision had not been taken by a majority," he adds.

"Prakash Karat met me at my residence a few days after the party had decided to withdraw support... He said he felt insulted and betrayed... on the Indo-US nuclear deal. Because of what he called breach of promise, the party, according to him, had no option but to break with the UPA. In 2004, CPM had decided to support the UPA from outside," Chatterjee writes, to keep "the perceived greatest evil, a BJP-led NDA from coming to power...The party did not join the UPA government as it did not want to be held responsible for the government's acts... When the matter of joining the government came up, I had expressed my reservations about remaining outside...

"The PM and other senior leaders of the UPA were regularly meeting Karat and other Left leaders for every proposed action...the Left leaders were wielding the real authority...Thus, leaders like Karat, Bardhan and others came to acquire a larger-than-life image and influence. Too much proximity to the PM and the UPA chairperson and the accommodative attitude of the government... gave the latter the belief, if not the conviction, that their decisions would be the last word... they forgot their true strength in the House and wanted their decisions to be treated as final."

Chatterjee links this spell of Left arrogance with its electoral debacle. "In May 2009, the Left, as I had apprehended... suffered a major debacle... thanks to the disastrous policies and misguided actions of the current leadership... the Leftist movement in the country has become almost irrelevant and comrades who made sacrifices to build the party have become victims of political marauders."
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Arrogant-Karat-to-blame-for-Lefts-plight-Somnaths-autobiography/articleshow/6212137.cms
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Top Maoist among 8 extremists killed by security forces

WEST MIDNAPORE/RANCHI: In a setback to the Maoists, eight extremists, including a top leader and a woman, were gunned down on Monday by security forces in two operations in West Bengal and Jharkhand.

Sidhu Soren, chief of the Sidhu-Kanhu Gana Militia -- the armed wing of the Naxal-backed People Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA), was among six Maoists killed during the raid by CRPF and Special Action Force on a Maoist hideout in dense forests in Golatore area in West Midnapore, which also left a commando of the specialised anti-Naxal force SAF dead.

"We have found six bodies, including of a woman cadre and Sidhu Soren, chief of the Sidhu-Kanhu Gana Militia," West Midnapore Superintendent of Police Manoj Verma told PTI.

Soren, who was running the militia after the arrest of PCPA convenor Chhatradhar Mahato, was wanted in several cases of murder and kidnap, besides for setting afire Lalgarh police station, Verma said, adding that the encounter stretched for four hours.

Police claimed that the Maoists were planning to attack a police station and a CPI(M) party office.

Verma said that the nearby Sarenga police station and a CPI(M) party office in the area were marked on a map found from the encounter site. "It is certain that the Maoists had a definite plan to attack these two places," he said.

Special commando Ashish Tiwari, who was critically injured in the gunbattle, died while being taken to hospital.

Another top Maoist Kundan Pahan, however, managed to escape during an encounter in Kunthi district of Jharkhand which left two other Maoists dead.

Khunti is the operational area of Pahan who Jharkhand police believes plotted the beheading of Special Branch officer Francis Induwar last October.

Security forces unearthed a Naxal camp following the fierce 12-hour encounter along the Ranchi-Khunti border and a "large cache of weapons and explosives" were recovered.

"Two Maoists were killed in the encounter," Deputy Inspector General of Police (Chhotanagpur Range), R K Mallick said. The bodies were, however, taken away by the Maoists.

The operation involving personnel from specialised state force for Naxal operation - Jaguar, CRPF and Special Action Force had begun yesterday following intelligence inputs about the presence of Pahan in the forests of Rabou village.

However, the encounter ended following heavy rains and security forces suspect Pahan escaped.

Police said one SLR rifle, one INSAS rifle, one 9 mm pistol, two .303, two 12 bore rifles, three country-made guns and a huge quantity of ammunition were seized after the encounter in West Midnapore.

This was the second major success for the security forces in the district. Earlier, on June 16 the joint forces had shot dead 12 Maoists, including three women cadre, at Ranja forest under Salboni police station.

Soren was also the secretary of the PCPA and was in the news earlier this year after he fell out with the political leadership of the outfit and spurned Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee's offer for talks.

BJP, Left to give notices for adjournment motion

Keen to put the government on the mat on the price rise, the opposition, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Left parties, have decided to give notice for an adjournment motion on the issue on Tuesday, the second day of the monsoon session of parliament.

Both the BJP and Left parties said Tuesday that they will give notice for an adjournment motion in the Lok Sabha on the government's decision in June to hike the prices of petroleum products.

The Samajwadi Party that supports the government from outside, also affirmed that it was with the opposition in its demand for moving an adjournment motion on price rise.

The BJP said it will give notice for an adjournment motion on hike in prices of kerosene and LPG effected after the budget session, as it did not want the government to oppose the move on the grounds that it was not a matter of recent occurrence.

The rules provide that an adjournment motion should be restricted to a specific matter of recent occurrence involving the government.

Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj said that the party will give a notice on Tuesday in the Lok Sabha for an adjournment motion on the rise in prices of kerosene and LPG cylinders which were announced after the budget session of parliament ended.

Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Basudeb Acahria told IANS that the Left parties will give notice for adjournment motion on price rise, particularly the hike in prices of diesel, petrol, kerosene and LPG.

The Samajwadi Party, which had not voted against the government during the cut motions in the budget session and had staged a walk out, said on Tuesday it will support the opposition's demand for an adjournment motion.

"We want the issue of price rise to be discussed under an adjournment motion," part spokesman Mohan Singh told IANS.

Apart from the BJP and the four Left parties, various non-United Progressive Alliance parties, including the Biju Janata Dal, Janata Dal-United (JD-U), AIADMK, Indian National Lok Dal, Shiv Sena, Janata Dal-Secular, Telugu Desam Party and Shiromani Akali Dal had joined the call for a nationwide shutdown on July 5 against the price rise.

JD-U leader Sharad Yadav said on Monday that the increase in prices of essential commodities was a major issue and the battle against price rise would continue.

Indicating larger opposition unity on price rise, he said: "We are determined to fight on the issue."

The opposition leaders also feel that the government's allies such as DMK and Trinamool Congress will find it hard to defend the government on price rise and hike in prices of petroleum products

Kerala CM flayed for 'Muslim conspiracy' comment

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala chief minister V S Achuthanandan has incurred the ire of Muslim organisations and political parties for stating that radical outfit Popular Front wanted to turn the state into a Muslim-majority through their communal and divisive activities.

Regardless of their political differences, almost all Muslim organisations, including the mainstream party Indian Union Muslim League, dubbed Achuthanandan's statement as "dangerous" and meant to "insulting the entire community."

The 86-year-old CPI (M) veteran, while talking to reporters in New Delhi on Saturday, said the Popular Front, under scanner for chopping off the hand of a college lecturer, was indulging in communal and divisive activities with the aim of turning Kerala into a Muslim majority state.

While dubbing Achuthanandan's comment as "deplorable" and "dangerous", UDF leaders suspected it was part of a strategy of his party to play "Hindu card" in the forthcoming civic and assembly polls "as a last-ditch attempt" to regain the eroded support base of ruling LDF, as reflected in Parliament elections last year.

"Through his statement, chief minister is testing waters if the LDF could garner votes of the majority community since it has incurred the wrath of the minority communities through its policies," UDF convener P P Thankachan said.

Thankachan, a senior Congress leader, dared CPI(M) leadership to come out with its position on Achuthanandan's statement.

BJP said the chief minister's comment betrayed the "double standard" of his party on the issues of communalism and extremism.

If Achuthanandan was serious in his concerns on the growth of communal and extremist forces, he should be ready to outlaw Popular Front and issue a white paper on the radical outfits working in the state, BJP state president V Muraleedharan said.

Two months back, Achuthanandan surprised political circles in the state by saying Muslim and Christian communalism had been gaining strength in Kerala.

However, he later clarified that he only meant that certain elements in these communities were trying to push their communal agenda, it was interpreted by his political adversaries as a tactic to win the majority support.

CBI is not 'Congress Bureau of Investigation': PM

The CBI is not the "Congress Bureau of Investigation", Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Monday, refuting the Bharatiya Janata Party's allegations of conspiracy behind the arrest of its leader Amit Shah.

"CBI... is not Congress bureau of investigation. CBI is not a mouthpiece of the Congress," Manmohan Singh told reporters outside Parliament before the beginning of the monsoon session on Monday.

He was answering questions on the opposition party's allegation that the Congress-led central government was behind the arrest of former Gujarat minister Amit Shah in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh staged shootout case.

The prime minister stressed that the investigation into the 2005 Sohrabuddin Sheikh killing was initiated by the Supreme Court and the central government had nothing to do with it.

How a 15-yr-old vendor became a 'dead Maoist'
Supriya Sharma, TNN, Jul 25, 2010, 12.02am IST
BASTAR (Chhattisgarh): On June 3, late at night, in a clearing where the fields of Murdunda village merge into the jungle, a patrol party of CRPF's C168 battalion is fired on by the Maoists. The CRPF returns fire. The jawans see a figure emerge from the bushes and break into a run. They take aim and shoot. The figure is hit. It collapses. It turns out to be a young boy.

Till this point, the narratives converge — that of the police and the dead boy's family. But from here on, there are vastly different versions about what happened. The police say they found explosives near Lalu's dead body. "He was a Sangham (group) member of CPI Maoist and was planting a bomb at the spot," says Vijay Chauhan, officer in-charge of the Awapalli police station.

But Lalu's father, Unga Ooyam, says his 15-year-old son had gone to the fields that night simply to relieve himself. "He had gone to Awapalli to sell vegetables and buy rice. On the way back to our village Tekmetla, he stopped for the night at Murdunda. Past midnight, he woke up his cousin and asked him to accompany him to the fields. His cousin groggily refused, so Lalu stepped out alone. Next morning, townspeople alerted us that his corpse had been carried into the thana at Awapalli," he says.

Ooyam pulls out Lalu's picture from his shirt pocket. With it, tumbles out his membership card for 'Divine Life', a spiritual movement founded by Swami Sivananda. Its ashram near Dantewada has a substantial following among Bastar's tribals. Ooyam's entire family are devout believers. So was Lalu, says Ooyam.

Could the dead boy have been both Maoist and Divine Life believer? No, says the entire town. He was just another boy, insist many of them walking up to this correspondent on the muddied main avenue of Awapalli. "He sold vegetables right here," points one woman, adding, "Even the CRPF men bought lemons from him."

As the conflict intensifies in Bastar, Lalu's case could be a pointer to its complex faultlines. To start with, there is the classic counter-insurgency dilemma: how do you target the rebels without harming innocent civilians?

Security experts say 'mistakes' are bound to happen in any conflict, but it is best to acknowledge these as "regrettable civilian deaths" instead of denying or falsifying them as that turns the tide of public opinion against the security forces.

Take Munjmeta village. In 2006, the Maoists targeted a CRPF party near this village in Narayanpur. An exchange of fire took place not too far from the village pond. Two young brothers, bathing in the pond, were hit by bullets. The older died, the younger one was injured. Their grandmother rushed to look for them, with her neighbour, local barber Kishan Lal Srivas chasing after. "That's when the CRPF picked up my husband. They were angry since they had lost some men. He was repeatedly bludgeoned in the chest," recounts Kishan's wife Meena Bai. "He died on the seventh day."

Meena says she went to register a police case but "they said if you give in writing that your husband was killed by Naxals, we'll ensure you get compensation. But I refused. I thought if I did that, the next thing we know the junglewaale (Naxalites) will come and trouble us."

An investigation by a district judge found Meena's allegations against the CRPF 'prima facie true'. Her case is now being tried in the high court at Bilaspur. She still waits for compensation.

So far, there is just one instance of the security forces owning up to a mistake. In 2008, a woman and a child were killed in Cherpal, when a CRPF jawan fired at a man who was running away. The police gave the families Rs 1 lakh each as compensation. The state has given Rs 10 crore as compensation to the victims of Maoist violence but just Rs 1 lakh to those killed by security forces.

But compensation is not what preoccupies Ooyam. Sitting on the steps of a temple in Bijapur, he recounts: "When I saw my son's body, the policemen simply said he has been killed in a Naxal encounter." It was a shock to find out later that the police had labelled his son a Maoist.

A senior police officer claims the inability to separate civilians from the rebels limits the CRPF's operational ability. "Instead of being trigger happy, the CRPF men are timid, unwilling to shoot, scared they might get into trouble."

"These Naxals are clever people. Their leaders are first circled by the jan militia of armed adivasis, then protected by the Sangham of unarmed villagers. A lungi-chhaap walking past us often returns fire," says a jawan, betraying his frustration.

But a CRPF officer explains the reluctance to own up: unlike the Army that enters a conflict zone with immunity from criminal law, the state police and CRPF jawans are liable to be tried and sentenced under the normal legal process. "They could face a homicide sentence for an accidental civilian killing."

What complicates matters further is the hardening of the ideological divide in Chhattisgarh. The state government has skirmished long and hard with its critics, some of whom, it believes, act as a front for the Maoists, deliberately implicating the security forces in cases to cripple the fight against the rebels.

It doesn't help that the Maoists have a reputation for sophisticated propaganda. Truth or paranoia, this has made the state evade acknowledgement of error, lest it be seen to have ceded ground to the human rights lobby.

This intense ideological warfare leaves little middle ground for those caught in the crossfire — those like Lalu, whose death incidentally is not even on the radar of human rights groups.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-toi/special-report/How-a-15-yr-old-vendor-became-a-dead-Maoist/articleshow/6212001.cms

Why Amit should fear DSP Narendra Amin

TNN, Jul 25, 2010, 03.33am IST
AHMEDABAD: Of all the police officers behind bars in the Sohrabuddin encounter case, he is the one the Narendra Modi government distrusts the most.

If someone has to officially spill the beans one day on the murky goings on before the murder of Sohrabuddin and his wife Kauserbi, it is Narendra K Amin, a former DSP of crime branch in Ahmedabad.

At one time, he was among the cops who were closest to outgoing minister of state for home, Amit Shah. But the long period of incarceration - it is almost 40 months since Vanzara and Co. were jailed - seems to have turned Amin against his political masters.

A doctor by profession before he joined the Gujarat Police, Amin's proximity to Shah can be gauged from the fact that the two had telephone conversations 32 times during the week preceding the twin killings in November 2005.

Amin had the reputation of being a brave encounter specialist, having even fired at a mob in Hyderabad, killing one person, when the Gujarat Police went to pick up alleged plotters of post-Godhra reprisals.

In jail, Amin and Vanzara are said to have fought openly, exposing chinks in the defence. There have been indications in the past that the CBI would like to turn him into an approver. Even though booked for murder, Amin's role in the case is rather peripheral.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Why-Amit-should-fear-DSP-Narendra-Amin/articleshow/6212564.cms

India to get 57 more Hawk jet trainers for Rs 9,400 crore

With British PM David Cameron slated to come visiting next week, India is getting all set to order another 57 British Hawk AJTs (advanced jet trainers) in a project worth around Rs 9,400 crore.

As reported by TOI earlier, this will be "a follow-on" order to the ongoing Rs 8,000-crore AJT project, finalized in March 2004 with BAE Systems, under which IAF is already getting 66 Hawk AJTs.

The AJT project has been dogged by some controversy, hit as the Hawks were by the disruption in the supply of some spares from BAE Systems. But the glitches seem to have been ironed out now.

As per the original contract, while IAF received 24 of the twin-seater trainers in "flyaway condition" from BAE Systems, the other 42 are being progressively manufactured indigenously by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd under transfer of technology.

The Navy will get 17 of the 57 new Hawks, which will also be manfactured by HAL, for its own aircraft carrier-based fighter training. Towards this, Navy inked a Rs 3,042-crore deal with HAL on Friday. "We will get the delivery over 36 months from 2013 onwards," said a Navy officer.

The Hawks already inducted at the Bidar airbase are being used to train rookie IAF pilots on the intricacies of combat fighter jet flying.

The AJTs help the young pilots to bridge the quantum jump from flying sub-sonic aircraft like HPT-32 and Kiran trainers to directly handling the supersonic 'highly-unforgiving' MiG-21s, without any transitional training to improve inadequate flying skills as was the norm earlier.

Apart from their sheer usefulness in training rookie pilots, the Hawks can also be used as ground attack or air defence aircraft in times of war, capable as they are of carrying 6,800 pounds of weapons, rockets, bombs and air-to-air missiles.

Kabul to top agenda on Nirupama's Russia trip

Sachin Parashar, TNN, Jul 25, 2010, 02.55am IST
NEW DELHI: Close on the heels of the security meet in Kabul, foreign secretary Nirupama Rao will travel next week to Moscow where she will engage the Russians over the issue of political settlement in Afghanistan.

The visit will be yet another initiative in recently intensified attempts by India to garner support from like-minded nations to prevent the Taliban from coming back to power.

Highly placed government sources said on Wednesday that India and Russia were on the same page in the sense that both believe there can't be good Taliban and that the visit by Rao will explore further the extent to which the two countries can cooperate in dealing with the emerging situation in Kabul.

"The Russians are clearly allergic to putting boots on the ground in Afghanistan but they are a very important player in the region.

"They can use their sphere of influence in the region to provide transit facility to Afghanistan. We are looking at how we can cooperate with Moscow on this issue," said an official.
US condemns massive leak of Afghan war files
WASHINGTON: A whistleblower leaked tens of thousands of secret military files on the Afghan war on Monday, documenting the deaths of innocent civilians and how Pakistan's spy agency secretly supports the Taliban.

The leaks prompted a furious reaction from the White House, saying they put the lives of soldiers at risk, but the man behind the revelations said the controversy vindicated the decision to break cover.

In all, some 92,000 documents dating back to 2004 were released by the whistleblowers' website Wikileaks to the New York Times, Britain's Guardian newspaper and Germany's Der Spiegel news weekly.

They carry allegations that Iran is providing money and arms to Taliban insurgents, and details how widespread corruption is hampering a war now in its ninth year.

The New York Times said the archive illustrated "in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost 300 billion dollars on the war, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001" while the Guardian said the files painted "a devastating portrait of the failing war."

The Guardian said the files acknowledge at least 195 civilian deaths, adding "this is likely to be an underestimate because many disputed incidents are omitted from the daily snapshots reported by troops on the ground".

The bulk of the deaths are shootings by jumpy soldiers manning checkpoints. But they include details of how a deaf and dumb man who ran "out of fear and confusion" when a CIA squad entered his home village was then shot dead after he could not hear shouted orders to stop.

The most controversial allegations center around claims that Pakistan, a key US ally, allows its spies to meet directly with the Taliban.

According to the Times, Pakistan agents and Taliban representatives meet regularly "in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders."

In one document, Pakistan's former Inter-Services Intelligence spy chief Hamid Gul is described at a January 2009 meeting with insurgents following the killing of an Al-Qaeda leader in Pakistan named Zamarai, also known as Osama al-Kini.

"The meeting attendees were saddened by the news of Zamarai's death and discussed plans to complete Zamarai's last mission by facilitating the movement of a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device from Pakistan to Afghanistan through the Khan Pass," it said.

The Times noted that it was unclear whether the attack ever took place, and said that despite the official end of Gul's tenure at the ISI in 1989, "General Gul is mentioned so many times in the reports, if they are to be believed, that it seems unlikely that Pakistan's current military and intelligence officials could not know of at least some of his wide-ranging activities."

The White House issued a condemnation shortly before the leaks were posted online, saying the information could endanger US lives. It said concerns had already been raised about links between Pakistan intelligence and Afghan insurgents.

"The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security," said White House National Security Advisor James Jones.

But while calling the leaks "irresponsible," he promised they will not impact President Barack Obama's commitment "to deepen" partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, said the leaks consisted of "unprocessed" field reports that "do not reflect the current onground realities."

The White House released remarks made in the past by top officials expressing concern about links between Pakistan spy services and militants in Afghanistan.

In one dated March 31, 2009, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that Pakistan's ISI spy agency's contacts with extremist groups were "a real concern to us."

A US official, who asked not to be named, said he did not think that "anyone who follows this issue will find it surprising that there are concerns about ISI and safe havens in Pakistan.

The official said that Wikileaks wass "not an objective news outlet but rather an organization that opposes US policy in Afghanistan."

Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, said the reactions vindicated his organisation's mission.

"It is the role of good journalism to take on powerful abuses, and when powerful abuses are taken on, there is always a back reaction," Assange, an Australian former hacker and computer programmer, told the Guardian.

In an interview with The New York Times, Assange said the documents reveal broader and more pervasive levels of violence in Afghanistan than the military or the news media had previously reported.

"It shows not only the severe incidents but the general squalor of war, from the death of individual children to major operations that kill hundreds," he said.

South Korea, US stage anti-submarine drill in warning to North Korea

ABOARD THE USS GEORGE WASHINGTON: US and South Korean warships staged anti-submarine drills Monday as part of a major naval exercise intended to send a warning to North Korea despite its threats of nuclear retaliation.

The two allies, who accuse the North of sending a submarine to torpedo a South Korean warship, have assembled about 20 ships including the 97,000-ton carrier USS George Washington, 200 aircraft and 8,000 personnel.

Four F-22 Raptor stealth fighters are flying missions in and around Korea for the first time to show Washington's strong commitment to deter and defeat any provocative acts, Lieutenant General Jeffrey Remington, commander of the US 7th Air Force, told reporters.

Seoul and Washington say the four-day exercise which began Sunday -- their biggest for years -- is intended to stress that future attacks will meet a decisive response.

In addition to the current exercise, the first in a series this year, the United States has announced new sanctions to punish the North for the sinking and push it to scrap its nuclear weapons programme.

The communist North denies responsibility for the attack on the South's corvette in March which cost 46 lives. It describes the drill named "Invincible Spirit" as a rehearsal for war.

Monday's manoeuvres "focus on better detecting intrusions by an enemy's submarines and attacking them," a spokesman for the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters.

The South's military came in for strong criticism for failing to detect the alleged submarine attack near the disputed Yellow Sea border.

Hundreds of sailors lined the flight deck of the George Washington as 28 planes made a ceremonial fly-over in several waves, according to a pool report from the ship.

The exercise is being held in international waters in the Sea of Japan (East Sea), 200 km (125 miles) south of North Korean waters.

But the North's powerful National Defence Commission said Saturday the country's army and people "will legitimately counter with their powerful nuclear deterrence the largest-ever nuclear war exercises to be staged by the US and the South Korean puppet forces".

Ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun reiterated the criticism Monday, but less stridently.

"The sabre-rattling is a prelude to the second Korean War, to all intents and purposes," it said in a commentary, one day before the 57th anniversary of the armistice which ended the three-year conflict.

The US and South Korea "will have to pay a dear price if they persist in the criminal act of harassing peace and security on the peninsula, defying our repeated warnings," the paper added without restating the nuclear threat.

Rear Admiral Dan Cloyd, commander of Carrier Strike Group Five, told a pool reporter the war games are purely defensive in nature.

"Our intent is to improve defence capabilities in areas such as anti-submarine warfare, air defence and anti-surface warfare," Cloyd said.

"Our intent is not to provoke reactions from any nation, be it North Korea, or any other here in the Western Pacific region."

In response to Beijing's protests, the current exercise was switched from the Yellow Sea separating China and South Korea to the eastern side of the peninsula.

Somnath Chatterjee

                                                                       
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Somnath Chatterjee
*

Speaker of Lok Sabha
In office
4 June 2004 – 16 May 2009
Preceded by Manohar Joshi
Succeeded by Meira Kumar

Member of the Lok Sabha for Bolpur, West Bengal
In office
1971–2009

Born 25 July 1929 (1929-07-25) (age 81)
Tezpur, Assam
Political party None (2008-)
CPI-M (1968-2008)
Spouse(s) Renu Chatterjee
Children 1 son and 2 daughters
Residence Kolkata
As of September 17, 2006
Source: [1]


Somnath Chatterjee (born July 25, 1929) is an Indian politician who had been associated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for most of his life, though he is currently an independent. He was the Speaker of the Lok Sabha (House of the People) from 2004 to 2009.

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[edit] Education and family background

Born in Tezpur, Assam, into an aristocratic Calcutta family, his father, Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee, was a prominent lawyer and intellectual around the time of India's independence, and his mother, Binapani Debi[1] ran the home. Somnath was educated at Mitra Institution School, Presidency College and then the University of Calcutta in Calcutta. He also attended Jesus College, Cambridge and graduating with a B.A. in 1952 and a M.A. in 1957, both in law, has been awarded an honorary fellowship by the college in 2007. He was called to the bar from the Middle Temple in London and took up legal practice as an advocate at the Calcutta High Court before joining active politics.

His father N.C. Chatterjee at one time had been a Hindu revivalist, and was one of the founders and one-time president of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, but he developed differences with the Hindu nationalist tone espoused by the party, which is a forerunner of today's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).[2] In 1948, when the communist party was banned in India and party leaders arrested, he formed the All India Civil Liberties Union, and agitated for their release. In the process, he came close to Jyoti Basu. He eventually left the Hindu Mahasabha when he got elected to the Parliament with CPI(M) support.

[edit] Political career

Somnath Chatterjee was a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) from 1968 to 2008. In 1971, he was nominated to contest an interim election caused by the death of his father, who had been elected from that constituency. He became a Member of the Lok Sabha in 1971 and was elected the first time as an independent candidate supported by the CPI(M). Subsequently he was re-elected nine times, except once when he lost to Mamata Banerjee in the Jadavpur Lok Sabha constituency in 1984. From 1989 until 2004 he was the leader of his party in the Lok Sabha. He was elected for the tenth time in 2004 as a member of the present 14th Lok Sabha from Bolpur Lok Sabha constituency, which is considered to be a CPI(M) stronghold. Following the election, on June 4, 2004 he was unanimously elected as the Speaker of the 14th Lok Sabha.

[edit] Expulsion from the CPI (M)

After the CPI (M) withdrew its support for the United Progressive Alliance-led government in mid-2008, the party included Chatterjee's name on its list of MPs who were withdrawing their support from the government, despite his non-partisan position as Speaker. Chatterjee, however, appeared unwilling to follow the party line to vote against the government in a crucial July 2008 confidence vote, as voting against the government would mean voting alongside the right-wing opposition BJP.[3] Ignoring the party's instructions, he decided to stay on in his post as Speaker of the House, acting in this capacity during the confidence vote. Following the vote, which the government survived, on July 23, 2008, the CPI (M) expelled him from the party for violation of party discipline.[4] A CPI (M) press release said, "The Politburo of the Communist Party of India-Marxist has unanimously decided to expel Somnath Chatterjee from the membership of the party with immediate effect. This action has been taken under Article XIX, clause 13 of the Party Constitution for seriously compromising the position of the party."[5] Bengal secretary Biman Bose said "Chatterjee may have acted according to the Indian Constitution but the party constitution is supreme in [the] case of party members."[6]

According to Chatterjee, the expulsion was "one of the saddest days" of his life. He suggested that future speakers should resign from their parties while serving in that office to help ensure its non-partisan standing.[7] His constituency of Bolpur had already been reserved for the Scheduled Castes, meaning he would have been unable to contest the seat in the next election; he announced in August 2008, following his expulsion from the CPI(M), that he would retire from politics at the time of the next election in 2009. He was broadly respected in his constituency; the CPI(M)'s 2009 candidate, Ramchandra Dom, expressed admiration for Chatterjee and vowed to continue his work, while the Congress candidate, Asit Mal, said that the people of Bolpur were "hurt at the way [Chatterjee] was driven out of the CPI-M" and that their feelings would "be reflected in the results".[8]

[edit] Awards and honors

In 1996 he won the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award. During Jyoti Basu's tenure, he was the Chairman of WBIDC and in that capacity he made countless overseas trips to promote FDI in West Bengal. His penchant for signing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), many of which never came to fruition, earned him the nickname "Mou-da"! After Buddhadeb Bhattacharya became the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Somnath's influence within the party and the state government waned considerably, although as Speaker of the Lok Sabha he held a constitutional position of importance.[9]

[edit] Controversies

In 2005, he was caught in a controversy over his statement on the Supreme Court orders related to the vote of confidence in the Jharkhand Assembly. He said that the Supreme Court was encroaching on the right of the Legislature by issuing orders on the proceedings of the Jharkhand Assembly.[10] He asked for a Presidential reference to the Supreme Court under Article 143 of the Indian Constitution. This remark was criticised by BJP] which supported the Supreme Court's decision.[11]

The Opposition demanded his resignation because he held an office of profit as Chairman of Santiniketan Sriniketan Development Authority (SSDA). He argued that since he did not profit from the office, the demand was baseless.[12]

[edit] Personal life

Chatterjee married Renu Chatterjee, who comes from the zemindar family in Lalgola, on February 7, 1950[2]. The couple have one son, Pratap and two daughters, Anuradha and Anushila.

Somnath Chatterjee is known for his fiscal integrity. When in 2004, as speaker, he moved into the official residence at 20 Akbar Road, he discontinued the practice of paying for toiletries and tea from the national exchequer[13]. On trips abroad, he bears the expenses of any accompanying family members.

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://164.100.47.134/newls/Biography.aspx?mpsno=73
  2. ^ a b http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/340802.html
  3. ^ "Speaker adamant, may quit both House and party", Hundustan Times, July 17, 2008.
  4. ^ "Somnath pays price for violating party line", IANS (headlinesindia.com), July 23, 2008.
  5. ^ CPI-M fails to pull down Govt, sacks Somnath. CNN IBN. July 23 2008. http://www.ibnlive.com/news/somnath-chatterjee-shown-the-door-by-cpim/69418-3.html?xml. Retrieved 2008-07-23.
  6. ^ The Telegraph. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080724/jsp/frontpage/story_9593437.jsp.
  7. ^ Santosh H K Narayan, "No taker of Speaker's suggestion", headlinesindia.com, August 1, 2008.
  8. ^ Sirshendu Panth, "Retired Somnath Chatterjee omnipresent in old constituency", IANS (thaindian.com), April 3, 2009.
  9. ^ Zee News Bureau. "Somnath Chatterjee -- Profile". http://www.zeenews.com/articles.asp?aid=457419&sid=NAT.
  10. ^ "The Conscientious Marxist" Tehelka Retrieved 2008-08-18
  11. ^ Speaker to seek Kalam's view on SC order, The Tribune India, 10 March 2006. Accessed 27 September 2006.
  12. ^ Not holding any office of profit, says Somnath, The Hindu, 25 March 2006. Accessed 27 September 2006.
  13. ^ http://www.business-standard.com/india/storypage.php?autono=328584

[edit] External links

Contemporarily, Karl Marx's innovative analytical methods — materialist dialectics, the labour theory of value, et cetera — are applied in archaeology, anthropology,[1] media studies,[2] political science, theater, history, sociological theory, cultural studies, education, economics, geography, literary criticism, aesthetics, critical psychology, and philosophy.[3]

Contents

[hide]

[edit] Classical Marxism

Main article: Classical Marxism
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The term Classical Marxism denotes the theory propounded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.[citation needed] As such, Classical Marxism distinguishes between "Marxism" as broadly perceived, and "what Marx believed"; thus, in 1883, Marx wrote to the French labour leader Jules Guesde and to Paul Lafargue (Marx's son-in-law) — both of whom claimed to represent Marxist principles — accusing them of "revolutionary phrase-mongering" and of denying the value of reformist struggle; from which derives the paraphrase: "If that is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist".[4] To wit, the US Marx scholar Hal Draper remarked, "there are few thinkers in modern history whose thought has been so badly misrepresented, by Marxists and anti-Marxists alike".[5]

[edit] Marx and Engels

Main articles: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Karl Marx - Founder of Marxism.

Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818—14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political economist, and socialist revolutionary, who addressed the matters of alienation and exploitation of the working class, the capitalist mode of production, and historical materialism. He is famous for analysing history in terms of class struggle, summarised in the initial line introducing the Communist Manifesto (1848): "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". His ideas were influential in his time, and it was greatly expanded by the successful Bolshevik October Revolution of 1917 in Imperial Russia.

Friedrich Engels, co-founder of Marxism.

Friedrich Engels (28 November 1820–5 August 1895) was a nineteenth century German political philosopher and Karl Marx's co-developer of communist theory. Marx and Engels met in September 1844; discovering that they shared like views of philosophy and socialism, they collaborated and wrote works such as Die heilige Familie (The Holy Family). After the French deported Marx from France in January 1845, Engels and Marx moved to Belgium, which then permitted greater freedom of expression than other European countries; later, in January 1846, they returned to Brussels to establish the Communist Correspondence Committee.

In 1847, they began writing The Communist Manifesto (1848), based upon Engels' The Principles of Communism; six weeks later, they published the 12,000-word pamphlet in February 1848. In March, Belgium expelled them, and they moved to Cologne, where they published the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, a politically radical newspaper. Again, by 1849, they had to leave Cologne for London. The Prussian authorities pressured the British government to expel Marx and Engels, but Prime Minister Lord John Russell refused.

After Karl Marx's death in 1883, Friedrich Engels became the editor and translator of Marx's writings. With his Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884) — analysing monogamous marriage as guaranteeing male social domination of women, a concept analogous, in communist theory, to the capitalist class's economic domination of the working class — Engels made intellectually significant contributions to feminist theory and Marxist feminism.

[edit] Early intellectual influences

Main article: Influences on Karl Marx

Different types of thinkers influenced the development of Classical Marxism; the primary influences derive from:

and secondary influences derive from:

[edit] Principal ideas

These are the principal concepts of Marxism:

[edit] Exploitation

A person is exploited if he or she performs more labour than necessary to produce the goods that he consumes; likewise, a person is an exploiter if he or she performs less labour than is necessary to produce the goods that he consumes.[6] Exploitation is a matter of surplus labour — the amount of labour one performs beyond what one receives in goods. Exploitation has been a socio-economic feature of every class society, and is one of the principal features distinguishing the social classes. The power of one social class to control the means of production enables its exploitation of the other classes.

In capitalism, the labour theory of value is the operative concern; the value of a commodity equals the total labour time required to produce it. Under that condition, surplus value (the difference between the value produced and the value received by a labourer) is synonymous with the term "surplus labour"; thus, capitalist exploitation is realised as deriving surplus value from the worker.

In pre-capitalist economies, exploitation of the worker was achieved via physical coercion. In the capitalist mode of production, that result is more subtly achieved; because the worker does not own the means of production, he or she must voluntarily enter into an exploitive work relationship with a capitalist in order to earn the necessities of life. The worker's entry into such employment is voluntary in that he or she chooses which capitalist to work for. However, the worker must work or starve. Thus, exploitation is inevitable, and that the "voluntary" nature of a worker participating in a capitalist society is illusory.

[edit] Alienation

Alienation denotes the estrangement of people from their humanity (German: Gattungswesen, "species-essence", "species-being"), which is a systematic result of capitalism. Under capitalism, the fruits of production belong to the employers, who expropriate the surplus created by others, and so generate alienated labourers.[7] Alienation objectively describes the worker's situation in capitalism — his or her self-awareness of this condition is unnecessary.

[edit] Historical Materialism

The historical materialist theory of history, also synonymous to "the economic interpretation of history" (a coinage by Eduard Bernstein),[8] looks for the causes of societal development and change in the collective ways humans use to make the means for living. The social features of a society (social classes, political structures, ideologies) derive from economic activity; "base and superstructure" is the metaphoric common term describing this historic condition.

[edit] Base and superstructure

The base and superstructure metaphor explains that the totality of social relations regarding "the social production of their existence" i.e. civil society forms a society's economic base, from which rises a superstructure of political and legal institutions i.e. political society. The base corresponds to the social consciousness (politics, religion, philosophy, etc.), and it conditions the superstructure and the social consciousness. A conflict between the development of material productive forces and the relations of production provokes social revolutions, thus, the resultant changes to the economic base will lead to the transformation of the superstructure.[9] This relationship is reflexive; the base determines the superstructure, in the first instance, and remains the foundation of a form of social organization which then can act again upon both parts of the base and superstructure, whose relationship is dialectical, not literal.[citation needed][clarification needed]

[edit] Historical periodisation

Marx considered that these socio-economic conflicts have historically manifested themselves as distinct stages (one transitional) of development in Western Europe.[10]

  1. Primitive Communism: as in co-operative tribal societies.
  2. Slave Society: a development of tribal progression to city-state; Aristocracy is born.
  3. Feudalism: aristocrats are the ruling class; merchants evolve into capitalists.
  4. Capitalism: capitalists are the ruling class, who create and employ the proletariat.
  5. Socialism: workers gain class consciousness, and via proletarian revolution depose the capitalist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, replacing it in turn with dictatorship of the proletariat through which the socialization of the means of production can be realized.
  6. Communism: a classless and stateless society.

[edit] Class

The identity of a social class derives from its relationship to the means of production; Marx describes the social classes in capitalist societies:

  • Proletariat: "those individuals who sell their labour power, and who, in the capitalist mode of production, do not own the means of production".[citation needed] The capitalist mode of production establishes the conditions enabling the bourgeoisie to exploit the proletariat because the workers' labour generates a surplus value greater than the workers' wages.
  • Bourgeoisie: those who "own the means of production" and buy labour power from the proletariat, thus exploiting the proletariat; they subdivide as bourgeoisie and the petit bourgeoisie.
    • Petit bourgeoisie are those who employ labourers, but who also work, i.e. small business owners, peasant landlords, trade workers et al. Marxism predicts that the continual reinvention of the means of production eventually would destroy the petit bourgeoisie, degrading them from the middle class to the proletariat.
  • Lumpenproletariat: criminals, vagabonds, beggars, et al., who have no stake in the economy, and so sell their labour to the highest bidder.
  • Landlords: an historically important social class who retain some wealth and power.
  • Peasantry and farmers: a disorganised class incapable of effecting socio-economic change, most of whom would enter the proletariat, and some become landlords.
[edit] Class consciousness

Class consciousness denotes the awareness — of itself and the social world — that a social class possesses, and its capacity to rationally act in their best interests; hence, class consciousness is required before they can effect a successful revolution.

[edit] Ideology

Without defining ideology,[11] Marx used the term to denote the production of images of social reality; according to Engels, "ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces".[12] Because the ruling class controls the society's means of production, the superstructure of society, the ruling social ideas are determined by the best interests of said ruling class. In The German Ideology, "the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is, at the same time, its ruling intellectual force".[13] Therefore, the ideology of a society is of most importance, because it confuses the alienated classes and so might create a false consciousness, such as commodity fetishism.[citation needed]

[edit] Political economy

The term political economy originally denoted the study of the conditions under which economic production was organised in the capitalist system. In Marxism, political economy studies the means of production, specifically of capital, and how that is manifest as economic activity.

[edit] Marxist schools of thought

[edit] Marxism-Leninism

Main article: Marxism-Leninism

Note: this is a discussion of Marxism-Leninism as a school of thought. For a discussion of its political practice, see subsection Marxism#Marxism as a political practice below.

At least in terms of adherents and the impact on the world stage, Marxism-Leninism, also known colloquially as Bolshevism or simply communism is the biggest trend within Marxism, easily dwarfing all of the other schools of thought combined.[14] Marxism-Leninism is a term originally coined by the CPSU in order to denote the ideology that Vladimir Lenin had built upon the thought of Karl Marx. There are two broad areas that have set apart Marxism-Leninism as a school of thought.

First, Lenin's followers generally view his additions to the body of Marxism as the practical corollary to Marx's original theoretical contributions of the 19th century; insofar as they apply under the conditions of advanced capitalism that they found themselves working in. Lenin called this time-frame the era of Imperialism. For example, Joseph Stalin wrote that

" Leninism grew up and took shape under the conditions of imperialism, when the contradictions of capitalism had reached an extreme point, when the proletarian revolution had become an immediate practical question, when the old period of preparation of the working class for revolution had arrived at and passed into a new period, that of direct assault on capitalism.[15] "

The most important consequence of a Leninist-style theory of Imperialism is the strategic need for workers in the industrialized countries to bloc or ally with the oppressed nations contained within their respective countries' colonies abroad in order to overthrow capitalism. This is the source of the slogan

" Workers and Oppressed Peoples of the World, Unite![16] "

which is Lenin's twist on the traditional socialist slogan.

Second, the other distinguishing characteristic of Marxism-Leninism is how it approaches the question of organization. Lenin believed that the traditional model of the Social Democratic parties of the time, which was a loose, multitendency organization was inadequate for overthrowing the Tsarist regime in Russia. He proposed a hardened cadre organization that disciplined itself under the model of Democratic Centralism.

Marxism-Leninism was closely associated with the figure of Joseph Stalin until his death. Eventually after the death of Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev became the leader of the Soviet Union, an act which ultimately lead to the splintering of the Marxist-Leninism into several competing schools of thought.

[edit] Post-Stalin Moscow-aligned communism

At the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev made several ideological ruptures with his predecessor, Joseph Stalin. First, Khrushchev denounced the so-called Cult of Personality that had developed around Stalin, which ironically enough Khrushchev had had a pivotal role in fostering decades earlier. More importantly, however, Khrushchev rejected the heretofore orthodox Marxist-Leninist tenet that class struggle continues even under socialism. Rather, the State ought to rule in the name of all classes. A related principle that flowed from the former was the notion of peaceful co-existence, or that the newly emergent socialist bloc could peacefully compete with the capitalist world, solely by developing the productive forces of society.

[edit] Eurocommunism

Beginning around the 1970s, various communist parties in Western Europe, such as the Partito Comunista Italiano in Italy and the Partido Comunista de España under Santiago Carillo tried to hew to a more independent line from Moscow. Particularly in Italy, they leaned on the theories of Antonio Gramsci, despite the fact that Gramsci happened to consider himself an orthodox Marxist-Leninist. This trend went by the name Eurocommunism.

[edit] Anti-revisionism

There are many proponents of Marxist-Leninism who rejected the theses of Khrushchev, particularly Marxists of the Third World.[citation needed] They believed that Khrushchev was unacceptably altering or "revising" the fundamental tenets of Marxism-Leninism, a stance from which the label "anti-revisionist" is derived. Typically, anti-revisionists refer to themselves simply as Marxist-Leninists, although they may be referred to externally by the following epithets.

[edit] Maoism

Maoism takes its name from Mao Zedong, the erstwhile leader of the Peoples Republic of China; it is the variety of anti-revisionism that took inspiration, and in some cases received material support, from China, especially during the Mao period. There are several key concepts that were developed by Mao. First, Mao concurred with Stalin that not only does class struggle continue under the dictatorship of the proletariat, it actually accelerates as long as gains are being made by the proletariat at the expense of the disenfranchised bourgeoisie. Second, Mao developed a strategy for revolution called Prolonged People's War in what he termed the semi-feudal countries of the Third World. Prolonged People's War relied heavily on the peasantry. Third, Mao wrote many theoretical articles on epistemology and dialectics, which he called contradictions.

[edit] Hoxhaism

Hoxhaism, so named because of the central contribution of Albanian statesman Enver Hoxha, was closely aligned with China for a number of years, but grew critical of Maoism because of the so-called Three Worlds Theory put forth by elements within the Communist Party of China and because it viewed the actions of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping unfavorably. Ultimately, however, Hoxhaism as a trend came to the understanding that Socialism had never existed in China at all.

[edit] Marxism-Deleonism

Marxism-Deleonism, is a form of syndicalist Marxism developed by Daniel De Leon. De Leon was an early leader of the first US socialist political party, the Socialist Labor Party. This party exists to the present day. De Leonism lies outside the Leninist tradition of communism. The highly decentralized and democratic nature of the proposed De Leonist government is in contrast to the democratic centralism of Marxism-Leninism and what they see as the dictatorial nature of the Soviet Union. The success of the De Leonist plan depends on achieving majority support among the people both in the workplaces and at the polls, in contrast to the Leninist notion that a small vanguard party should lead the working class to carry out the revolution. Daniel De Leon and other De Leonist writers have issued frequent polemics against 'democratic socialist' movements, especially the Socialist Party of America, and consider them to be "reformist" or "bourgeois socialist". De Leonists have traditionally refrained from any activity or alliances viewed by them as trying to reform capitalism, though the Socialist Labor Party in De Leon's time was active during strikes and such, such as social justice movements.

[edit] Trotskyism

Main article: Trotskyism

Trotskyism is the usual term for followers of the ideas of Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky. Trotsky was a contemporary of Lenin from the early years of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, where he led a small trend in competition with both Lenin's Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks; nevertheless Trotsky's followers claim to be the heirs of Lenin in the same way that mainstream Marxist-Leninists do, hence the preferred self-designation amongst Trotskyists of Bolshevik-Leninists. There are several distinguishing characteristics of this school of thought; foremost is the theory of Permanent Revolution. This stated that in less-developed countries the bourgeoisie were too weak to lead their own 'bourgeois-democratic' revolutions. Due to this weakness, it fell to the proletariat to carry out the bourgeois revolution. However, with power in its hands the proletariat would then continue this revolution (permanently), thus transforming it from a bourgeois to a socialist revolution, and from a national to an international revolution.

Another shared characteristic between Trotskyists is a variety of theoretical justifications for their negative appraisal of the post-Lenin Soviet Union; that is to say, after Trotsky was expelled by a majority vote from the CPSU[17] and subsequently from the Soviet Union. As a consequence, Trotsky defined the Soviet Union under Stalin, as a planned economy ruled over by a bureaucratic caste. Trotsky advocated overthrowing the government of the Soviet Union after he was expelled from it.[18]

[edit] Left Communism

Main article: Left Communism

Left communism is the range of communist viewpoints held by the communist left, which criticizes the political ideas of the Bolsheviks from a position that is asserted to be more authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views of Leninism held by the Communist International after its first two congresses.

Although she lived before left communism became a distinct tendency, Rosa Luxemburg has been heavily influential for most left communists, both politically and theoretically. Proponents of left communism have included Herman Gorter, Anton Pannekoek, Otto Rühle, Karl Korsch, Amadeo Bordiga, and Paul Mattick.

Prominent left communist groups existing today include the International Communist Current and the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party. Also, different factions from the old Bordigist International Communist Party are considered left communist organizations.

[edit] Western Marxism

Main article: Western Marxism

Western Marxism is a term used to describe a wide variety of Marxist theoreticians based in Western and Central Europe (and more recently North America ), in contrast with philosophy in the Soviet Union, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia or the People's Republic of China.

[edit] Structural Marxism

Main article: Structural Marxism

Structural Marxism is an approach to Marxism based on structuralism, primarily associated with the work of the French theorist Louis Althusser and his students. It was influential in France during the late 1960s and 1970s, and also came to influence philosophers, political theorists and sociologists outside of France during the 1970s.

[edit] Neo-Marxism

Main article: Neo-Marxism

Neo-Marxism is a school of Marxism that began in the 20th century and hearkened back to the early writings of Marx, before the influence of Engels, which focused on dialectical idealism rather than dialectical materialism. It thus rejected economic determinism being instead far more libertarian. Neo-Marxism adds Max Weber's broader understanding of social inequality, such as status and power, to orthodox Marxist thought.

[edit] The Frankfurt School

Main article: Frankfurt School
Part of a series on the
Frankfurt School
Theorists of the Frankfurt School
Major works
Reason and Revolution
Dialectic of Enlightenment
Minima Moralia
Eros and Civilization
One-Dimensional Man
Negative Dialectics
Notable theorists
Max Horkheimer · Theodor Adorno
Herbert Marcuse · Walter Benjamin
Erich Fromm · Friedrich Pollock
Leo Löwenthal · Jürgen Habermas
Important concepts
Critical theory · Dialectic · Praxis
Psychoanalysis · Antipositivism
Popular culture · Culture industry
Advanced capitalism · Privatism
v • d • e

The Frankfurt School is a school of neo-Marxist social theory, social research, and philosophy. The grouping emerged at the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) of the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany. The term "Frankfurt School" is an informal term used to designate the thinkers affiliated with the Institute for Social Research or influenced by them: it is not the title of any institution, and the main thinkers of the Frankfurt School did not use the term to describe themselves.

The Frankfurt School gathered together dissident Marxists, severe critics of capitalism who believed that some of Marx's alleged followers had come to parrot a narrow selection of Marx's ideas, usually in defense of orthodox communist or social democratic parties. Influenced especially by the failure of working-class revolutions in Western Europe after World War I and by the rise of Nazism in an economically, technologically, and culturally advanced nation (Germany), they took up the task of choosing what parts of Marx's thought might serve to clarify social conditions which Marx himself had never seen. They drew on other schools of thought to fill in Marx's perceived omissions.

Max Weber exerted a major influence, as did Sigmund Freud (as in Herbert Marcuse's Freudo-Marxist synthesis in the 1954 work Eros and Civilization). Their emphasis on the "critical" component of theory was derived significantly from their attempt to overcome the limits of positivism, crude materialism, and phenomenology by returning to Kant's critical philosophy and its successors in German idealism, principally Hegel's philosophy, with its emphasis on negation and contradiction as inherent properties of reality.

[edit] Cultural Marxism

Main article: Cultural Marxism

Cultural Marxism is a form of Marxism that adds a critical theory based Marxist analysis of the role of the media, art, theatre, film and other cultural institutions in a society, often with an added emphasis on race and gender in addition to class. As a form of political analysis, Cultural Marxism gained strength in the 1920s, and was the model used by the Frankfurt School at Columbia University; and later by another group of intellectuals at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, England.

[edit] Autonomist Marxism

Main article: Autonomism

Autonomism is a term applied to a variety of social movements around the world, which emphasizes the ability to organize in autonomous and horizontal networks, as opposed to hierarchical structures such as unions or parties. Autonomist Marxists, including Harry Cleaver, broaden the definition of the working-class to include salaried and unpaid labour, such as skilled professions and housework; it focuses on the working class in advanced capitalist states as the primary force of change in the construct of capital. Modern autonomist theorists such as Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt argue that network power constructs are the most effective methods of organization against the neoliberal regime of accumulation, and predict a massive shift in the dynamics of capital into a 21st Century Empire.

[edit] Analytical Marxism

Main article: Analytical Marxism

Analytical Marxism refers to a style of thinking about Marxism that was prominent amongst a half-dozen analytically trained English-speaking philosophers and social scientists during the 1980s. It was mainly associated with the September Group of academics, so called because they have biennial meetings in varying locations every other September to discuss common interests. The group also dubbed itself "Non-Bullshit Marxism" (Cohen 2000a). It was characterized, in the words of David Miller, by "clear and rigorous thinking about questions that are usually blanketed by ideological fog". (Miller 1994)

[edit] Marxist humanism

Main article: Marxist humanism

Marxist humanism is a branch of Marxism that primarily focuses on Marx's earlier writings, especially the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 in which Marx develops his theory of alienation, as opposed to his later works, which are considered to be concerned more with his structural conception of capitalist society. It was opposed by Louis Althusser's "antihumanism", who qualified it as a revisionist movement.

Marxist humanists contend that 'Marxism' developed lopsided because Marx's early works were unknown until after the orthodox ideas were in vogue – the Manuscripts of 1844 were published only in 1932 – and it is necessary to understand Marx's philosophical foundations to understand his latter works properly.

[edit] Marxist theology

Ambox question.svg
 This section may contain previously unpublished synthesis of published material that conveys ideas not attributable to the original sources. See the talk page for details. (May 2009)
See also: Black liberation theology, Religious communism, and Religious socialism

Although Marx was intensely critical of institutionalized religion including Christianity, some Christians have "accepted the basic premises of Marxism and attempted to reinterpret Christian faith from this perspective."[19] Some of the resulting examples are some forms of liberation theology and black liberation theology. Pope Benedict XVI strongly opposed radical liberation theology while he was still a cardinal, with the Vatican condemning acceptance of Marxism. Black liberation theologian James Cone wrote in his book For My People that "for analyzing the structure of capitalism. Marxism as a tool of social analysis can disclose the gap between appearance and reality, and thereby help Christians to see how things really are."[20]

[edit] Key Western Marxists

[edit] Georg Lukács

Georg Lukács (April 13, 1885 – June 4, 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic in the tradition of Western Marxism. His main work History and Class Consciousness (written between 1919 and 1922 and first published in 1923), initiated the current of thought that came to be known as Western Marxism. The book is notable for contributing to debates concerning Marxism and its relation to sociology, politics and philosophy, and for reconstructing Marx's theory of alienation before many of the works of the Young Marx had been published. Lukács's work elaborates and expands upon Marxist theories such as ideology, false consciousness, reification and class consciousness.

[edit] Karl Korsch

Karl Korsch (August 15, 1886 - October 21, 1961) was born in Tostedt, near Hamburg, to the family of a middle-ranking bank official.

In his later work, he rejected orthodox (classical) Marxism as historically outmoded, wanting to adapt Marxism to a new historical situation. He wrote in his Ten Theses (1950) that "the first step in re-establishing a revolutionary theory and practice consists in breaking with that Marxism which claims to monopolize revolutionary initiative as well as theoretical and practical direction" and that "today, all attempts to re-establish the Marxist doctrine as a whole in its original function as a theory of the working classes social revolution are reactionary utopias."[21]

Korsch was especially concerned that Marxist theory was losing its precision and validity - in the words of the day, becoming "vulgarized" - within the upper echelons of the various socialist organizations. His masterwork, Marxism and Philosophy is an attempt to re-establish the historic character of Marxism as the heir to Hegel.

[edit] Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci (January 22, 1891 – April 27, 1937) was an Italian writer, politician and political theorist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy. Gramsci can be seen as one of the most important Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century, and in particular a key thinker in the development of Western Marxism. He wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment. These writings, known as the Prison Notebooks, contain Gramsci's tracing of Italian history and nationalism, as well as some ideas in Marxist theory, critical theory and educational theory associated with his name, such as:

[edit] Herbert Marcuse

Herbert Marcuse (July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a prominent German-American philosopher and sociologist of Jewish descent, and a member of the Frankfurt School.

Marcuse's critiques of capitalist society (especially his 1955 synthesis of Marx and Freud, Eros and Civilization, and his 1964 book One-Dimensional Man) resonated with the concerns of the leftist student movement in the 1960s. Because of his willingness to speak at student protests, Marcuse soon became known as "the father of the New Left," a term he disliked and rejected.

[edit] Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre (June 21, 1905 – April 15, 1980) was already a key and influential philosopher and playwright for his early writings on individualistic existentialism. In his later career, he attempted to reconcile the existential philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard with Marxist philosophy and Hegelian dialectics in his work Critique of Dialectical Reason.[22]

Sartre was also involved in Marxist politics and was impressed upon visiting Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, calling him "not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age".[23]

[edit] Louis Althusser

Louis Althusser (October 16, 1918 – October 22, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. He was a lifelong member and sometimes strong critic of the French Communist Party. His arguments and theses were set against the threats that he saw attacking the theoretical foundations of Marxism. These included both the influence of empiricism on Marxist theory, and humanist and reformist socialist orientations which manifested as divisions in the European Communist Parties, as well as the problem of the 'cult of personality' and of ideology itself. Althusser is commonly referred to as a Structural Marxist, although his relationship to other schools of French structuralism is not a simple affiliation and he is critical of many aspects of structuralism.

His essay Marxism and Humanism is a strong statement of anti-humanism in Marxist theory, condemning ideas like "human potential" and "species-being", which are often put forth by Marxists, as outgrowths of a bourgeois ideology of "humanity". His essay Contradiction and Overdetermination borrows the concept of overdetermination from psychoanalysis, in order to replace the idea of "contradiction" with a more complex model of multiple causality in political situations (an idea closely related to Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony).

Althusser is also widely known as a theorist of ideology, and his best-known essay is Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Toward an Investigation.[24] The essay establishes the concept of ideology, also based on Gramsci's theory of hegemony. Whereas hegemony is ultimately determined entirely by political forces, ideology draws on Freud's and Lacan's concepts of the unconscious and mirror-phase respectively, and describes the structures and systems that allow us to meaningfully have a concept of the self.

[edit] Hill, Hobsbawm, and Thompson

British Marxism deviated sharply from French (especially Althusserian) Marxism and, like the Frankfurt School, developed an attention to cultural experience and an emphasis on human agency while growing increasingly distant from determinist views of materialism. A circle of historians inside the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) formed the Communist Party Historians Group in 1946. They shared a common interest in 'history from below' and class structure in early capitalist society. Important members of the group included E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, Christopher Hill and Raphael Samuel.

While some members of the group (most notably E.P. Thompson) left the CPGB after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the common points of British Marxist historiography continued in their works. They placed a great emphasis on the subjective determination of history. E. P. Thompson famously engaged Althusser in The Poverty of Theory,[25] arguing that Althusser's theory overdetermined history, and left no space for historical revolt by the oppressed.

[edit] Post-Marxism

Main article: Post-Marxism

Post-Marxism represents the theoretical work of philosophers and social theorists who have built their theories upon those of Marx and Marxists but exceeded the limits of those theories in ways that puts them outside of Marxism. It begins with the basic tenets of Marxism but moves away from the Mode of Production as the starting point for analysis and includes factors other than class, such as gender, ethnicity etc., and a reflexive relationship between the base and superstructure.

Marxism remains a powerful theory in some unexpected and relatively obscure places, and is not always properly labeled as "Marxism". For example, many Mexican and some American archaeologists still employ a Marxist model to explain the Classic Maya Collapse[citation needed] (c. 900 A.D.) - without mentioning Marxism by name.

[edit] Marxist Feminism

Main article: Marxist feminism

Marxist feminism is a sub-type of feminist theory which focuses on the dismantling of capitalism as a way to liberate women. Marxist feminism states that private property, which gives rise to economic inequality, dependence, political confusion and ultimately unhealthy social relations between men and women, is the root of women's oppression.

According to Marxist theory, in capitalist societies the individual is shaped by class relations; that is, people's capacities, needs and interests are seen to be determined by the mode of production that characterises the society they inhabit. Marxist feminists see gender inequality as determined ultimately by the capitalist mode of production. Gender oppression is class oppression and women's subordination is seen as a form of class oppression which is maintained (like racism) because it serves the interests of capital and the ruling class. Marxist feminists have extended traditional Marxist analysis by looking at domestic labour as well as wage work in order to support their position.

[edit] Marxism as a political practice

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Since Marx's death in 1883, various groups around the world have appealed to Marxism as the theoretical basis for their politics and policies, which have often proved to be dramatically different and conflicting. One of the first major political splits occurred between the advocates of 'reformism', who argued that the transition to socialism could occur within existing bourgeois parliamentarian frameworks, and communists, who argued that the transition to a socialist society required a revolution and the dissolution of the capitalist state. The 'reformist' tendency, later known as social democracy, came to be dominant in most of the parties affiliated to the Second International and these parties supported their own governments in the First World War. This issue caused the communists to break away, forming their own parties which became members of the Third International.

The following countries had governments at some point in the twentieth century who at least nominally adhered to Marxism: Albania, Afghanistan, Angola, Benin, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Republic of Congo, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Ethiopia, Grenada, Hungary, Laos, Moldova, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nepal, Nicaragua, North Korea, Poland, Romania, Russia, the USSR and its republics, South Yemen, Yugoslavia, Venezuela, Vietnam. In addition, the Indian states of Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal have had Marxist governments. Some of these governments such as in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Chile, Moldova and parts of India have been democratic in nature and maintained regular multiparty elections, while most governments claiming to be Marxist in nature have established authoritarian governments.

Marxist political parties and movements have significantly declined since the fall of the Soviet Union, with some exceptions, perhaps most notably Nepal.

[edit] History

The 1917 October Revolution, led by Vladimir Lenin, was the first large scale attempt to put Marxist ideas about a workers' state into practice. The new government faced counter-revolution, civil war and foreign intervention. Many, both inside and outside the revolution, worried that the revolution came too early in Russia's economic development. Consequently, the major Socialist Party in the UK decried the revolution as anti-Marxist within twenty-four hours, according to Jonathan Wolff.[citation needed] Lenin consistently explained "this elementary truth of Marxism, that the victory of socialism requires the joint efforts of workers in a number of advanced countries" (Lenin, Sochineniya (Works), 5th ed Vol XLIV p418.) It could not be developed in Russia in isolation, he argued, but needed to be spread internationally.

The 1917 October Revolution did help inspire a revolutionary wave over the years that followed, with the development of Communist Parties worldwide, but without success in the vital advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe. Socialist revolution in Germany and other western countries failed, leaving the Soviet Union on its own. An intense period of debate and stopgap solutions ensued, war communism and the New Economic Policy (NEP). Lenin died and Joseph Stalin gradually assumed control, eliminating rivals and consolidating power as the Soviet Union faced the events of the 1930s and its global crisis-tendencies. Amidst the geopolitical threats which defined the period and included the probability of invasion, he instituted a ruthless program of industrialization which, while successful, was executed at great cost in human suffering, including millions of deaths, along with long-term environmental devastation.

Modern followers of Leon Trotsky maintain that as predicted by Lenin, Trotsky, and others already in the 1920s, Stalin's "socialism in one country" was unable to maintain itself, and according to some Marxist critics, the USSR ceased to show the characteristics of a socialist state long before its formal dissolution.

In the 1920s the economic calculation debate between Austrian Economists and Marxist economists took place. The Austrians claimed that Marxism is flawed because prices could not be set to recognize opportunity costs of factors of production, and so socialism could not make rational decisions.

Following World War II, Marxist ideology, often with Soviet military backing, spawned a rise in revolutionary communist parties all over the world. Some of these parties were eventually able to gain power, and establish their own version of a Marxist state. Such nations included the People's Republic of China, Vietnam, Romania, East Germany, Albania, Cambodia, Ethiopia, South Yemen, Yugoslavia, Cuba, and others. In some cases, these nations did not get along. The most notable examples were rifts that occurred between the Soviet Union and China, as well as Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (in 1948), whose leaders disagreed on certain elements of Marxism and how it should be implemented into society.

Many of these self-proclaimed Marxist nations (often styled People's Republics) eventually became authoritarian states, with stagnating economies. This caused some debate about whether Marxism was doomed in practise or these nations were in fact not led by "true Marxists". Critics of Marxism speculated that perhaps Marxist ideology itself was to blame for the nations' various problems. Followers of the currents within Marxism which opposed Stalin, principally cohered around Leon Trotsky, tended to locate the failure at the level of the failure of world revolution: for communism to have succeeded, they argue, it needed to encompass all the international trading relationships that capitalism had previously developed.

The Chinese experience seems to be unique. Rather than falling under a single family's self-serving and dynastic interpretation of Marxism as happened in North Korea and before 1989 in Eastern Europe, the Chinese government - after the end of the struggles over the Mao legacy in 1980 and the ascent of Deng Xiaoping - seems to have solved the succession crises that have plagued self-proclaimed Leninist governments since the death of Lenin himself. Key to this success is another Leninism which is a NEP (New Economic Policy) writ very large; Lenin's own NEP of the 1920s was the "permission" given to markets including speculation to operate by the Party which retained final control. The Russian experience in Perestroika was that markets under socialism were so opaque as to be both inefficient and corrupt but especially after China's application to join the WTO this does not seem to apply universally.

The death of "Marxism" in China has been prematurely announced but since the Hong Kong handover in 1997, the Beijing leadership has clearly retained final say over both commercial and political affairs. Questions remain however as to whether the Chinese Party has opened its markets to such a degree as to be no longer classified as a true Marxist party.[citation needed] A sort of tacit consent, and a desire in China's case to escape the chaos of pre-1949 memory, probably plays a role.

In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed and the new Russian state ceased to identify itself with Marxism. Other nations around the world followed suit. Since then, radical Marxism or Communism has generally ceased to be a prominent political force in global politics, and has largely been replaced by more moderate versions of democratic socialism—or, more commonly, by neoliberal capitalism. Marxism has also had to engage with the rise in the Environmental movement. A merging of Marxism, socialism, ecology and environmentalism has been achieved[where?], and is often referred to as Eco-socialism.

[edit] Social Democracy

Main article: Social Democracy
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Social democracy is a political ideology that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century. Many parties in the second half of the 19th century described themselves as social democratic, such as the British Social Democratic Federation, and the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In most cases these were revolutionary socialist or Marxist groups, who were not only seeking to introduce socialism, but also democracy in un-democratic countries.

The modern social democratic current came into being through a break within the socialist movement in the early 20th century, between two groups holding different views on the ideas of Karl Marx. Many related movements, including pacifism, anarchism, and syndicalism, arose at the same time (often by splitting from the main socialist movement, but also by emerging of new theories.) and had various quite different objections to Marxism. The social democrats, who were the majority of socialists at this time, did not reject Marxism (and in fact claimed to uphold it), but wanted to reform it in certain ways and tone down their criticism of capitalism. They argued that socialism should be achieved through evolution rather than revolution. Such views were strongly opposed by the revolutionary socialists, who argued that any attempt to reform capitalism was doomed to fail, because the reformists would be gradually corrupted and eventually turn into capitalists themselves.

Despite their differences, the reformist and revolutionary branches of socialism remained united until the outbreak of World War I. The war proved to be the final straw that pushed the tensions between them to breaking point. The reformist socialists supported their respective national governments in the war, a fact that was seen by the revolutionary socialists as outright treason against the working class (Since it betrayed the principle that the workers "have no nation", and the fact that usually the lowest classes are the ones sent into the war to fight, and die, putting the cause at the side). Bitter arguments ensued within socialist parties, as for example between Eduard Bernstein (reformist socialist) and Rosa Luxemburg (revolutionary socialist) within the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Eventually, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, most of the world's socialist parties fractured. The reformist socialists kept the name "Social democrats", while the revolutionary socialists began calling themselves "Communists", and soon formed the modern Communist movement. (See also Comintern)

Since the 1920s, doctrinal differences have been constantly growing between social democrats and Communists (who themselves are not unified on the way to achieve socialism), and Social Democracy is mostly used as a specifically Central European label for Labour Parties since then, especially in Germany and the Netherlands and especially since the 1959 Godesberg Program of the German SPD that rejected the praxis of class struggle altogether.

[edit] Socialism

Main article: Socialism (Marxism)
Main article: Socialism

The term "socialism" could be used to describe two fundamentally different ideologies - democratic socialism and Marxist-Leninist socialism. While Marxist-Leninists (Trotskyists, Stalinists, and Maoists) are often described as communists in the contemporary media, they are not recognized as such academically or by themselves. The Marxist-Leninists sought to work towards the workers' utopia in Marxist ideology by first creating a socialist state, which historically had almost always been a single-party dictatorship. On the other hand, democratic socialists attempt to work towards an ideal state by social reform and are often little different from social democrats, with the democratic socialists having a more leftist stance.

The Marxist-Leninist form of government has been in decline since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite states. Very few countries have governments which describe themselves as socialist. As of 2007, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, and the People's Republic of China had governments in power which describe themselves as socialist in the Marxist sense.

On the contrary, electoral parties which describe themselves as socialist or democratic socialist are on the rise, joined together by international organizations such as the Socialist International and the Fourth International. Parties described as socialist are currently dominant in Third World democracies and serve as the ruling party or the main opposition party in all European democracies. Eco-socialism, and Green politics with a strong leftist tinge, are on the rise in European democracies.

The characterization of a party or government often has little to do with its actual economical and social platform. The government of mainland China, which describes itself as socialist, allows a large private sector to flourish and is socially conservative compared to most Western democracies. A more specific example is universal health-care, which is a trademark issue of many European socialist parties but does not exist in mainland China. Therefore, the historical and cultural aspects of a movement must be taken into context in order for one to arrive at an accurate conclusion of its political ideology from its nominal characterization.

[edit] Communism

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Main article: Communist state

A number of states declared an allegiance to the principles of Marxism and have been ruled by self-described Communist Parties, either as a single-party state or a single list, which includes formally several parties, as was the case in the German Democratic Republic. Due to the dominance of the Communist Party in their governments, these states are often called "communist states" by Western political scientists. However, they have described themselves as "socialist", reserving the term "communism" for a future classless society, in which the state would no longer be necessary (on this understanding of communism, "communist state" would be an oxymoron) – for instance, the USSR was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Marxists contend that, historically, there has never been any communist country.

Communist governments have historically been characterized by state ownership of productive resources in a planned economy and sweeping campaigns of economic restructuring such as nationalization of industry and land reform (often focusing on collective farming or state farms.) While they promote collective ownership of the means of production, Communist governments have been characterized by a strong state apparatus in which decisions are made by the ruling Communist Party. Dissident 'authentic' communists have characterized the Soviet model as state socialism or state capitalism.

[edit] Marxism-Leninism

Main articles: Marxism-Leninism and Leninism

Marxism-Leninism, strictly speaking, refers to the version of Marxism developed by Vladimir Lenin known as Leninism[citation needed]. However, in various contexts, different (and sometimes opposing) political groups have used the term "Marxism-Leninism" to describe the ideologies that they claimed to be upholding. The core ideological features of Marxism-Leninism are those of Marxism and Leninism, that is to say, belief in the necessity of a violent overthrow of capitalism through communist revolution, to be followed by a dictatorship of the proletariat as the first stage of moving towards communism, and the need for a vanguard party to lead the proletariat in this effort. Those who view themselves as Marxist-Leninists, however, vary with regards to the leaders and thinkers that they choose to uphold as progressive (and to what extent). Maoists tend to downplay the importance of all other thinkers in favour of Mao Zedong, whereas Hoxhaists repudiate Mao.

Leninism holds that capitalism can only be overthrown by revolutionary means; that is, any attempts to reform capitalism from within, such as Fabianism and non-revolutionary forms of democratic socialism, are doomed to fail. The first goal of a Leninist party is to educate the proletariat, so as to remove the various modes of false consciousness the bourgeois have instilled in them, instilled in order to make them more docile and easier to exploit economically, such as religion and nationalism. Once the proletariat has gained class consciousness the party will coordinate the proletariat's total might to overthrow the existing government, thus the proletariat will seize all political and economic power. Lastly the proletariat (thanks to their education by the party) will implement a dictatorship of the proletariat which would bring upon them socialism, the lower phase of communism. After this, the party would essentially dissolve as the entire proletariat is elevated to the level of revolutionaries.

The dictatorship of the proletariat refers to the absolute power of the working class. It is governed by a system of proletarian direct democracy, in which workers hold political power through local councils known as soviets.

[edit] Trotskyism

Main article: Trotskyism

Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself a Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party. He considered himself an advocate of orthodox Marxism. His politics differed sharply from those of Stalin or Mao, most importantly in declaring the need for an international "permanent revolution". Numerous groups around the world continue to describe themselves as Trotskyist and see themselves as standing in this tradition, although they have diverse interpretations of the conclusions to be drawn from this.

Trotsky advocated proletarian revolution as set out in his theory of "permanent revolution", and he argued that in countries where the bourgeois-democratic revolution had not triumphed already (in other words, in places that had not yet implemented a capitalist democracy, such as Russia before 1917), it was necessary that the proletariat make it permanent by carrying out the tasks of the social revolution (the "socialist" or "communist" revolution) at the same time, in an uninterrupted process. Trotsky believed that a new socialist state would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world unless socialist revolutions quickly took hold in other countries as well, especially in the industrial powers with a developed proletariat.

On the political spectrum of Marxism, Trotskyists are considered to be on the left. They fervently support democracy, oppose political deals with the imperialist powers, and advocate a spreading of the revolution until it becomes global.

Trotsky developed the theory that the Russian workers' state had become a "bureaucratically degenerated workers' state". Capitalist rule had not been restored, and nationalized industry and economic planning, instituted under Lenin, were still in effect. However, the state was controlled by a bureaucratic caste with interests hostile to those of the working class. Trotsky defended the Soviet Union against attack from imperialist powers and against internal counter-revolution, but called for a political revolution within the USSR to restore socialist democracy. He argued that if the working class did not take power away from the Stalinist bureaucracy, the bureaucracy would restore capitalism in order to enrich itself. In the view of many Trotskyists, this is exactly what has happened since the beginning of Glasnost and Perestroika in the USSR. Some argue that the adoption of market socialism by the People's Republic of China has also led to capitalist counter-revolution.

[edit] Maoism

Main article: Maoism
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Maoism or Mao Zedong Thought (simplified Chinese: 毛泽东思想; traditional Chinese: 毛澤東思想; pinyin: Máo Zédōng Sīxiǎng), is a variant of Marxism-Leninism derived from the teachings of the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong (Wade-Giles transliteration: "Mao Tse-tung").

The term "Mao Zedong Thought" has always been the preferred term by the Communist Party of China, and the word "Maoism" has never been used in its English-language publications except pejoratively. Likewise, Maoist groups outside China have usually called themselves Marxist-Leninist rather than Maoist, a reflection of Mao's view that he did not change, but only developed, Marxism-Leninism. However, some[who?] Maoist groups, believing Mao's theories to have been sufficiently substantial additions to the basics of the Marxist canon, call themselves "Marxist-Leninist-Maoist" (MLM) or simply "Maoist".

In the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong Thought is part of the official doctrine of the Communist Party of China, but since the 1978 beginning of Deng Xiaoping's market economy-oriented reforms, the concept of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" has come to the forefront of Chinese politics, Chinese economic reform has taken hold, and the official definition and role of Mao's original ideology in the PRC has been radically altered and reduced (see History of China).

Unlike the earlier forms of Marxism-Leninism in which the urban proletariat was seen as the main source of revolution, and the countryside was largely ignored, Mao believed that peasantry could be the main force behind a revolution, led by the proletariat and a vanguard Communist party. The model for this was of course the Chinese communist rural Protracted People's War of the 1920s and 1930s, which eventually brought the Communist Party of China to power. Furthermore, unlike other forms of Marxism-Leninism in which large-scale industrial development was seen as a positive force, Maoism made all-round rural development the priority.

Mao felt that this strategy made sense during the early stages of socialism in a country in which most of the people were peasants. Unlike most other political ideologies, including other socialist and Marxist ones, Maoism contains an integral military doctrine and explicitly connects its political ideology with military strategy. In Maoist thought, "political power grows from the barrel of the gun" (a famous quote by Mao), and the peasantry can be mobilized to undertake a "people's war" of armed struggle involving guerrilla warfare in three stages.

[edit] Left communism

Main article: Left communism
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Left communism is the range of communist viewpoints held by the Communist Left, which criticizes the political ideas of the Bolsheviks from a position that is asserted to be more authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views of Leninism held by the Communist International after its first two Congresses.

Two major traditions can be observed within Left communism: the Dutch-German tradition; and the Italian tradition. The political positions those traditions have in common are a shared opposition to what is termed frontism, nationalism, all kinds of national liberation movements and parliamentarianism and there is an underlying commonality at a level of abstract theory. Crucially, Left Communist groups from both traditions tend to identify elements of commonality in each other.

The historical origins of Left Communism can be traced to the period before the First World War, but it only came into focus after 1918 . All Left Communists were supportive of the October Revolution in Russia, but retained a critical view of its development. Some, however, would in later years come to reject the idea that the revolution had a proletarian or socialist nature, asserting that it had simply carried out the tasks of the bourgeois revolution by creating a state capitalist system.

Left Communism first came into being as a clear movement in or around 1918. Its essential features were: a stress on the need to build a Communist Party entirely separate from the reformist and centrist elements who were seen as having betrayed socialism in 1914, opposition to all but the most restricted participation in elections, and an emphasis on the need for revolutionaries to move on the offensive. Apart from that, there was little in common between the various wings. Only the Italians accepted the need for electoral work at all for a very short period of time, and the German-Dutch, Italian and Russian wings opposed the "right of nations to self-determination", which they denounced as a form of bourgeois nationalism.

[edit] Disputing these claims

Some academics[who?] dispute the claim that the above political movements are Marxist. Communist governments have historically been characterized by state ownership of productive resources in a planned economy and sweeping campaigns of economic restructuring such as nationalization of industry and land reform (often focusing on collective farming or state farms.) While they promote collective ownership of the means of production, Communist governments have been characterized by a strong state apparatus in which decisions are made by the ruling Communist Party. Dissident communists have characterized the Soviet model as state socialism or state capitalism. Further, critics such as Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg have often claimed that a Stalinist or Maoist system of government creates a new ruling class, usually called the nomenklatura.

Marx defined "communism" as a classless, egalitarian and stateless society. To Marx, the notion of a communist state would have seemed an oxymoron, as he defined communism as the phase reached when class society and the state had already been abolished. Once the lower stage towards communism, commonly referred to as socialism, had been established, society would develop new social relations over the course of several generations, reaching what Marx called the higher phase of communism when not only bourgeois relations but every class social relations had been abandoned. Such a development has yet to occur in any historical self-claimed socialist state.

Some[who?] argue that socialist states have contained two new distinct classes: those who are in government and therefore have power, and those who are not in government and do not have power. Sometimes, this is taken to be a different form of capitalism, in which the government, as owner of the means of production, takes on the role formerly played by the bourgeois class; this arrangement is referred to as "State capitalism". These statist regimes have generally followed a command economy model without making a transition to this hypothetical final stage.

[edit] Criticisms

For more details on this topic, see Criticisms of Marxism.

Criticisms of Marxism are many and varied. They concern both the theory itself, and its later interpretations and implementations.

[edit] Right

Marx and Engels never dedicated much work to show how exactly a communist economy would function, leaving Marxism, at least in its classical form, a "negative ideology," concerned primarily with criticism of the status quo. Later generations of Marxists have attempted to fill in the gap, resulting in several different and competing Marxist views of the way a communist society should be organized.

Prominent economist Milton Friedman was of the opinion that free markets are the best and most efficient way of running the economy for the benefit of all.[26] In the economic calculation debate between Austrian Economists and Marxist economists, the Austrians claimed that Marxism is flawed because without a market for productive factors, which Marxism would abolish, productive factors could not be labeled with market prices and therefore, so the Austrians say, Marxism makes rational economic calculation impossible and would lead to social collapse. This criticism could also be seen as part of the Austrian School's general criticism of command-control-type mathematical modelling and Keynesian "fine-tuning" of the economy generally, which Austrian economists believe is not possible due to the inherent complexity of market participants' ever-evolving subjective choices.

Individualists disagree with the basic approach of Marxism, that of viewing all people as acting under the influence of socio-economic forces, and instead focus on the differences and unpredictable actions of individuals.

[edit] Left

Criticisms of Marxism have come from the political left as well:

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Bridget O'Laughlin (1975) Marxist Approaches in Anthropology Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 4: pp. 341–70 (October 1975) (doi:10.1146/annurev.an.04.100175.002013).
    William Roseberry (1997) Marx and Anthropology Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 26: pp. 25–46 (October 1997) (doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.26.1.25)
  2. ^ S. L. Becker (1984) "Marxist Approaches to Media Studies: The British Experience", Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 1(1): pp. 66–80.
  3. ^ See Manuel Alvarado, Robin Gutch, and Tana Wollen (1987) Learning the Media: Introduction to Media Teaching, Palgrave Macmillan.
  4. ^ See MIA introduction at "The Programme of the Parti Ouvrier"
  5. ^ Not found in search function at Draper Arkiv
  6. ^ Elster, pp. 79–80.
  7. ^ "Alienation" entry, A Dictionary of Sociology
  8. ^ Evans, p. 53; Marx's account of the theory is the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859). [1]. Another exposition of th theory is in The German Ideology. It, too, is available online from marxists.org.
  9. ^ See A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), Preface, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, with some notes by R. Rojas, and Engels: Anti-Dühring (1877), Introduction General
  10. ^ Marx does not claim to have produced a master-key to history. Historical materialism is not "an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale, imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself", K. Marx, Letter to editor of the Russian newspaper paper Otetchestvennye Zapiskym, 1877) He explains that his ideas are based upon a concrete study of the actual conditions in Europe.
  11. ^ Joseph McCarney: Ideology and False Consciousness, April 2005
  12. ^ Engels: Letter to Franz Mehring, (London 14 July 1893), Donna Torr, translator, in Marx and Engels Correspondence, International Publishers, 1968
  13. ^ Karl Marx, The German Ideology
  14. ^ For example, the Communist Party of China alone has more than 66 million members. See http://www.chinatoday.com/org/cpc/
  15. ^ http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/FL24.html#c1
  16. ^ http://www.workers.org/2008/us/ww_1982_1120/
  17. ^ http://www.plp.org/books/Stalin/node14.html#SECTION00500000000000000000
  18. ^ "The characterisation of the anti-bureaucratic revolution as "political revolution" referred to the fact that the bureaucracy had politically expropriated the proletariat ..." http://www.radicalsocialist.in/index.php/articles/marxist-theory/100-capitalist-restoration-in-the-former-soviet-union
  19. ^ "Marxist Theology" in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology, p. 352.
  20. ^ [2] Marxist Roots of Black Liberation Theology[unreliable source?]
  21. ^ Karl Korsch (1950) Ten Theses on Marxism Today
  22. ^ [plato.stanford.edu/entries/sartre/ Jean-Paul Sartre on Stanford Encyclopedia.]
  23. ^ Anderson, Jon. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. 1997 p.468
  24. ^ Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Toward an Investigation is available in several English volumes including Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays
  25. ^ Thompson, E. P., (1978). The Poverty of Theory & other essays Merlin, 1978. ISBN 085036-231-8.
  26. ^ Free to Choose, Milton Friedman

[edit] References

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[edit] General resources

[edit] Introductory articles

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