Guns of the Regressive Right or How to Kill a President

[Paul Trejo]

I don't know how much a member of the Marxist intelligensia would be swayed by Smoot. I find this part interesting :'' They didn't care about it a bit - but their ideology of making all these global left-wing movements into the puppets of Corporate Giants turned out to be brilliant -- said Jean-Paul Sartre -- because they actually distrated a significant portion of the intelligensia away from the Marxist paradigm'' I take Sartre seriously so I think this quote from him (if it is, or even if it's a particular persons 'interpretation') needs to be looked at in full context. Obviously the monroe doctrine needs to be considered as well.

Anyway, if we choose we could cover lots here that really might not have so much to do with that which we do have in common, namely Walker as pivotal. In this context the clarification about the Bealle fictions. And they certainly served a pupose of providing a palatable world view to people in a part of the world being ripped apart by systemic contradictions. Further on that particular matter. I find that most people react to circumstances most with pressure on the hip pocket nerve. That was not being applied by Cuba. That was being applied by the enormous nation wide economic shifts threatened by centuries old structures that would have to change as the world focused on the equal rights situation of the USofA at a time when TV developed dramatically during the Kennedy administration. How could the USofA possibly excert any moral force in the world when the world was finding out about the mess in the USoAs own back yard? No wonder that Kennedy himself sought to diminish the Oxford days ( The Ghosts Of Mississippi ) of late sep earl;y oct '62, still obfuscated today..

Thanks for the response, John. As for that citation from Sartre, that was from one of his final books, SEARCH FOR A METHOD (1960).

The Monroe Doctrine is sound from the viewpoint of self-centered security. It bears practical efficiency for self-preservation, so it's logical.

Someone might object that it steps on the toes of self-determinism of the foreign powers, but from the viewpoint of the 19th century, Catholic nations were never truly self-determined. The South American dictators of today are pathetic, but their dictators in the 19th century were equally pathetic. They just seemed to need more 'help'. As for economic forces as predominant - that is the case north or south, left or right. It's reality.

As for Cuba and Walker, we have a member here, Harry Dean, who was waist-deep in both. Harry was part of that generation that hated South American dictators so much that he and his college buddies devoted themselves to helping Castro. It was a Hemmingway thing. This was the 'hip' thing to do in the late 1950's. The late Gerry Hemming (formerly on this Forum) was also part of that generation. Also David Ferrie. But many of these folks (and all the ones I named here) were eventually turned off by Castro's movement when their own buddies were being given the firing squad for minor squabbles. They turned back to the right-wing to protect their idealistic best friends. Harry eventually went underground for the FBI to investigate the John Birch Society (another offshoot of Smoot) and found General Walker near the center of it, plotting the downfall of JFK.

Now, you speak of nationwide economic shifts in those days, and the force of equal rights. Very appropriate, because JFK was caught in just those cross-hairs. Walker represented the politics of Woodrow Wilson, nominated partly because Wilson defended the racial segregation of Princeton University, and lauded the KKK in public. JFK represented the politics of FDR, who realized that we could not win WW2 unless Hollywood portrayed the USA Military as fully integrated racially. It wasn't perfectly true, but Hollywood portrayed us that way anyway. It was a blazing success.

When the USA emerged from WW2 as the only Allied force that was not reduced to rubble, we were stunned to realize that although we'd defended the right of Great Britain to be the Global Superpower, as she had been accustomed for a few centuries, that instead we, the USA, were now the Global Superpower. This is what really changed everything - and we still haven't become entirely used to it.

We took over the Global duty of policing the globe from Great Britain - who stands behind us (like Tony Blair) cheering us on! London colleges and schools were integrated long before USA colleges and schools were integrated. We should have recognized that our historical duties would cause us to more and more resemble the Imperial powers we had always followed -- England and France.

Yes - the equal rights situation of the USA was developed from Hollywood and TV and JFK was very much in tune with that (since Joe Kennedy had once owned and operated RKO studios in Hollywood).

Yes - General Walker was his nemesis - the old guard, the Woodrow Wilson guard, the days of Princeton and Oxford, Mississippi. I agree with you that this political situation is still obfuscated today - and that is why the central role played by General Walker in the JFK assassination has taken so long to explore. We don't like to take a long, hard look at our racist right-wing, and its enduring legacy in our Global Society.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited December 26, 2011 by Paul Trejo

[Ron Ecker]

LBJ's comments to Madeleine Brown on 12/31/63 are extremely important

I liked the part where the buttons popped off his shirt as they were making love. At least that's how I remember the passage. Madeleine could spin a good yarn, but she was no Jackie Collins.

[John Dolva]

Ok. Taking his essay of '57, (which developed into the intro to Critique of Reason, 60), which was actually an attempt to reconcile existentialism and marxism. :

''... (wiki) Sartre then turns to his own experience with Marx. He describes an early attraction to Marx's thought^[10] since it did a better job of describing the condition of the proletariat than the "optimistic humanism" that was being taught at university.^[11] Despite this affinity toward Marx's works, Sartre claims that his generation's interpretation of Marxism remained tainted by idealism and individualism^[11] until World War II broke down the dominant societal structures.^[12] Despite this apparent victory of Marxism, existentialism persisted because Marxism stagnated.^[13] Marxism became a tool for the security and policies of the Soviet Union. The Soviets halted the organic conflict and debate that develops a philosophy, and turned Marxist materialism into an idealism in which reality was made to conform to the a priori, ideological beliefs of Soviet bureaucrats. Sartre points to the 1956 Hungarian uprising where Soviet leaders assumed that any revolt must be counter-revolutionary and anti-Marxist when, in fact, the Hungarian revolt came directly from the working class.^[14] In contrast to this inflexible mode of thinking, Sartre points to Marx's writings on the Revolutions of 1848 and Eighteenth Brumaire in which Marx examined class relations instead of taking them as given.^[15][16] Sartre notes that his contemporary Marxists maintained a focus on "analysis" but criticizes this analysis as a superficial study focused on verifying Marxist absolutes ("eternal knowledge") instead of gaining an understanding of historical perspective, as Marx himself did.^[17]

Sartre turns his criticism on to other methods of investigation. He says that "American Sociology" has too much "theoretic uncertainty" while the once promising psychoanalysis has stagnated. Unlike these methods and the generally dominant idealism, existentialism and Marxism offer a possible means of understanding mankind and the world as a totality.^[18] Sartre claims that the class war predicted by Marxism has failed to occur because orthodox Marxism has become too rigid and "Scholastic".^[19] Despite its stagnation, Marxism remains the philosophy of this time.^[20] Both existentialism and Marxism see the world in dialectical terms where individual facts are meaningless; truth is found not in facts themselves but in their interaction: they only gain significance as part of a totality.^[21] György Lukács argued that existentialism and Marxist materialism could not be compatible, Sartre responds with a passage from Engels showing that its the dialectic resulting from economic conditions that drives history just as in Sartre's dialectically driven existentialism. Sartre concludes the chapter by citing Marx from Das Kapital: "The reign of freedom does not begin in fact until the time when the work imposed by necessity and external finality shall cease..."^[22] Sartre, following Marx, sees human freedom limited by economic scarcity. For Sartre, Marxism will remain the only possible philosophy until scarcity is overcome^[23]; moreover, he sees even conceiving of a successor theory--or what one might look like--as impossible until the scarcity problem is overcome.^[24]...)

^{To me the implied organic nature is also dealt with by Trotskys Permanent Revolution as an antidote to the stagnation Sartre discusses. It sounds like an interesting essay. I'd like to read it in all forms.}

---

I think a recognition of US centricity is good. There's so much there to explore.

Naturally a hypothesis must be built on solid foundations in order to be considered a viable theory. There's a lot I agree with and some I don't but until there (to me) appears a shaky foundation to proceed without a serious look I'm happy to run with it afa it goes

edit typos + add for fun

Edited December 27, 2011 by John Dolva

[Paul Trejo]

Ok. Taking his essay of '57, (which developed into the intro to Critique of Reason, 60), which was actually an attempt to reconcile existentialism and marxism. :

<snip wiki on Sartre's SEARCH FOR A METHOD>

Naturally a hypothesis must be built on solid foundations in order to be considered a viable theory. There's a lot I agree with and some I don't but until there (to me) appears a shaky foundation to proceed without a serious look I'm happy to run with it afa it goes...

<photo of Sartre, de Beauvoir and Guevara>

Thanks for the response, John. That's a great photo of Jean-Paul Sartre in conversation with Simone de Beauvoir and Che Guevara. This photo harks back to the days when Gerry Hemming, David Ferrie, Jack Ruby and our own Harry Dean were supporting Castro in an idealistic bid to eliminate all Latin American dictators. It didn't work - Castro's guys started lining up Americans in front of firing squads - but the idealism of American youth is immortal. Though a rightist, Gerry Hemming, even while a member of this Forum, bemoaned the day Che Guevara was killed.

In any case, Sartre's brilliant, BEING AND NOTHINGNESS (1950) was praised by the bourgeoisie as an antidote to Marxism. His intense individualism, his insistence on the ominpotence of Choice, even to re-interpret the past and the present, continues to shine on in the intellectual culture of the West.

By contrast, Sartre's so-called DIALECTICAL REASON (1960) was booed by the bourgeoisie as a capitulation to Marxism. His amateur materialism, his glorification of working class values, and his compromise of the power of Choice, were disappointments both ideologically and literarily. The literary value of this work did not extend much beyond the title. It sort of rambles in a materialistic malaise.

The flaw in BEING AND NOTHINGNESS, in my opinion, was its dualism. Sartre never mastered Hegelian dialectics (and I say this as a long-time member of the Hegel Society of America). This is probably why Sartre completely abandoned his original theory of existentialism in his later works; he himself was unsatisfied with the lack of dialiectical reason in it.

The flaw in DIALECTICAL REASON, in my opinion, was also its dualism. This is because Sartre succumbed to Marxism, which is fatally dualist. He should have struggled to master Hegelian dialetics, because I believe that is what he truly hungered for. But his generation would never truly grasp the essentials of dialectics. I suppose Sartre felt obliged to produce at least one more major tome in his career - something to top BEING AND NOTHINGNESS. But I was disappointed in DIALECTICAL REASON in many ways. It was largely a rank-and-file Marxism, coupled with pretences toward being working class. The references to Roland Barthes' brilliant portraits of French popular culture, television, wrestling matches, and so on, were the only bright spots, but clearly unoriginal. His title was promising -- but rather than develop Hegelian dialectics, Sartre chose to meander within Marxist dialectics which are so one-sided.

For one thing, the inner contradictions of the USSR were ignored by all Marxists. What would Sartre have written if he had lived to see the USSR crumble in 1990? That was pure economic reality - Marxism was a dismal failure after three generations of sacrifice because Marxists truly didn't know what they were doing. USSR propaganda was full of lies. Marxism was bankrupt in the 19th century but it took another century for the material experiment to flop before the intelligensia would believe it.

Today Cuba stands as a political island as much as a natural island. Investors stand ready to react on the day that Castro and his brother keel over from old age. Just like Deng Xiaoping transformed China into a neo-capitalist super-mall after Mao Tze Tung died, I predict that the next leader of Cuba will also turn to the West with arms outstretched.

In 1950 Sartre was happy to do battle with Marxism. In 1960 it seemed to Sartre that Marxism had completely laid bare the truth of the world. He was mistaken. Marxism is an ideology that limps on its own, but once it acquired State power in the USSR and China, it used guns to demand the name, 'the Truth'. Distribution is every bit as important as Production, but Marx could not see that, and he was so persuasive to so many that the Great Experiment had to be done, at the sacrifice of countless millions of human lives in the 20th century.

It is because Marxism is riddled with errors and flaws that the boldness of the Rightist propaganda (pioneered by H.L. Hunt and his LIFELINE program, which gave Dan Smoot his start, and which gave the John Birch Society their main arguments) could be so effective, so that Sartre himself had to marvel at it. As weak as the Rightist worldview was, the Marxist worldview was even weaker.

But all of this is hindsight, and hindsight is 20/20. In 1963, the world of JFK was swimming in this sort of confusion.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited December 27, 2011 by Paul Trejo

[John Dolva]

I suspect Sartres essay answers many of these concerns.

I'm looking for commonalities here. Naturally, generally, the militant right behaves predictably.

" As weak as the Rightist worldview was, the Marxist worldview was even weaker." in being weaker ( and destructive ), did the right do the right thing in the final analysis?

[Paul Trejo]

I suspect Sartre's essay answers many of these concerns.

I'm looking for commonalities here. Naturally, generally, the militant right behaves predictably.

"As weak as the Rightist worldview was, the Marxist worldview was even weaker;" in being weaker ( and destructive ), did the right do the right thing in the final analysis?

John, as for Sartre's SEARCH FOR A METHOD (1957) mainly he was looking for a justification for his 180 degree turn from BEING AND NOTHINGNESS (1950) to his DIALECTICAL REASON (1960).

Regarding what the right-wing hoped for, they mostly got the opposite. They wanted a USA without Black Liberation, and instead the USA celebrates Martin Luther King day annually. They wanted the USA to return to Isolationism, instead, the USA is the Global Superpower which replaced the British Empire. (Some of the right wing wanted the world of Dr. Strangelove, instead they have a world where thirty nations have some nuclear capability.) These are the issues that ultimately killed JFK.

The right-wing won one prize: the fall of the USSR. But the USSR was going to fall, anyway, because its model was defective. So, in my opinion, the only thing that the right-wing actually accomplished through its excesses was a counteraction of the excesses of the left-wing, which were perhaps more monstrous. Actually, the right wing and its old-world excesses made the pipe dream of extreme socialism look better by comparison - and so arguably delayed the fall of Communism.

In the same way, the moderate left-wing could have made huge advances for the working class in the 20th century, except for the extremists, the Marxists, who also insisted on anti-religion, anti-nationalism, anti-marriage, and the radical abolition of all private property as 'rider' bills. This made the right-wing look more sane by comparison, and arguably delayed any resolution.

For me, the right-wing in America is a joke. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh - here is biased journalism unashamed of its bias. They resemble quasi-Christian fanatics who stand on street-corners with placards reading, "The End is Coming Soon." It's embarrassing to see them.

The left-wing in America is even worse off, in my opinion, because it shriveled like a burnt turkey wing. Its original ideals died due to its century long contagion with the Marxist infection.

If there is still hope for our fevered planet, it rests in the fact that the USSR and Marxism became past history. China turned away from Mao and toward Deng Xiaoping who shifted China's economy toward America's economy, and so saved the current USA generation from an all-out Great Depression. (The top employer in the USA today is Wal-Mart, which mainly sells Chinese goods.)

The fact that Europe is still struggling with the Euro and the European Union shows good faith that their extreme left and right wingers have been silenced; hopefully forever.

On the global front, the USA now faces a world more familiar to the British of 1899, viz. the struggle between Hinduism and Islam that would ultimately lead to the partition of India and the birth of Pakistan and the meteoric resurgence of Islam. (It makes sense that after WW1, WW2, the Cold War and the fall of Communism that the world would only settle back to its previous problems.)

To summarize: tempted by the British Middle East crisis, the German/Japanese Axis powers tried to return the world to its original, primitive mission of Slavery under a super-race. That scrambled the 20th century time track until the dust finally settled in 1975, when Nixon ended the Vietnam war, made an economic pact with China, and resigned over his many sins, including Watergate, the Bay of Pigs, and what not. Nixon was the last great quasi-monarchal President. The more predictable Bush regimes have been Parliamentary from the start -- demonstrated by our adventures in Kuwait, Iraq and the Middle East generally, which are still ongoing.

I hope we can find some commonalities in all this, John. I enjoy the conversation.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

[Kathleen Collins]

From that point on the JFK assassination failed cover up was managed by the Council on Foreign Relations whose inner circle leadership for decades has been dominated by inner circle CIA (Allen Dulles, John J. McCloy, Nelson Rockefeller, David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, George Herbert Walker Bush). Any time you hear an opinion maker on TV say something really stupid about the JFK assassination (lone nutter advocacy; not admitting Oswald was US intelligence), just google their "name CFR" ... or example "George Will CFR" or "Charles Krauthammer CFR" The CFR has been heavily manipulated by CIA Operation Mockingbird and the #1 crime they attempt to cover up - even 50 years later -is the JFK asssassination and that is because the CIA murdered John Kennedy.

With the help and participation of Lyndon Johnson, Clint Murchison, Sr. and H.L. Hunt - all with deep CIA/military connections. Like Vincent Salandria used to say early on, the JFK assassination was a coup d'etat and it is a "false mystery" as to what happened.

Robert, you're the most rabid researcher I ever read. But I want to remind you that Clint Murchison was a Jr. He was an old man. His son Is Clint Murchison III.

The next question may be from left field, but is Morris Beale related to Edie Beale, Jackie Kennedy's cousin?

Kathy C

[Guest Robert Morrow]

From that point on the JFK assassination failed cover up was managed by the Council on Foreign Relations whose inner circle leadership for decades has been dominated by inner circle CIA (Allen Dulles, John J. McCloy, Nelson Rockefeller, David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, George Herbert Walker Bush). Any time you hear an opinion maker on TV say something really stupid about the JFK assassination (lone nutter advocacy; not admitting Oswald was US intelligence), just google their "name CFR" ... or example "George Will CFR" or "Charles Krauthammer CFR" The CFR has been heavily manipulated by CIA Operation Mockingbird and the #1 crime they attempt to cover up - even 50 years later -is the JFK asssassination and that is because the CIA murdered John Kennedy.

With the help and participation of Lyndon Johnson, Clint Murchison, Sr. and H.L. Hunt - all with deep CIA/military connections. Like Vincent Salandria used to say early on, the JFK assassination was a coup d'etat and it is a "false mystery" as to what happened.

Robert, you're the most rabid researcher I ever read. But I want to remind you that Clint Murchison was a Jr. He was an old man. His son Is Clint Murchison III.

The next question may be from left field, but is Morris Beale related to Edie Beale, Jackie Kennedy's cousin?

Kathy C

Kathy, I am not really doubting you at all, but is Wikipedia also wrong on this matter? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Murchison,_Sr.

As for Morris Beale, I think he was an "anti-establishment" newsman ... and I think he basically nailed the JFK assassination in real time, pinning it on the "regressive right."

[John Dolva]

I suspect Sartre's essay answers many of these concerns.

I'm looking for commonalities here. Naturally, generally, the militant right behaves predictably.

"As weak as the Rightist worldview was, the Marxist worldview was even weaker;" in being weaker ( and destructive ), did the right do the right thing in the final analysis?

John, as for Sartre's SEARCH FOR A METHOD (1957) mainly he was looking for a justification for his 180 degree turn from BEING AND NOTHINGNESS (1950) to his DIALECTICAL REASON (1960).

Regarding what the right-wing hoped for, they mostly got the opposite. They wanted a USA without Black Liberation, and instead the USA celebrates Martin Luther King day annually. They wanted the USA to return to Isolationism, instead, the USA is the Global Superpower which replaced the British Empire. (Some of the right wing wanted the world of Dr. Strangelove, instead they have a world where thirty nations have some nuclear capability.) These are the issues that ultimately killed JFK.

The right-wing won one prize: the fall of the USSR. But the USSR was going to fall, anyway, because its model was defective. So, in my opinion, the only thing that the right-wing actually accomplished through its excesses was a counteraction of the excesses of the left-wing, which were perhaps more monstrous. Actually, the right wing and its old-world excesses made the pipe dream of extreme socialism look better by comparison - and so arguably delayed the fall of Communism.

In the same way, the moderate left-wing could have made huge advances for the working class in the 20th century, except for the extremists, the Marxists, who also insisted on anti-religion, anti-nationalism, anti-marriage, and the radical abolition of all private property as 'rider' bills. This made the right-wing look more sane by comparison, and arguably delayed any resolution.

For me, the right-wing in America is a joke. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh - here is biased journalism unashamed of its bias. They resemble quasi-Christian fanatics who stand on street-corners with placards reading, "The End is Coming Soon." It's embarrassing to see them.

The left-wing in America is even worse off, in my opinion, because it shriveled like a burnt turkey wing. Its original ideals died due to its century long contagion with the Marxist infection.

If there is still hope for our fevered planet, it rests in the fact that the USSR and Marxism became past history. China turned away from Mao and toward Deng Xiaoping who shifted China's economy toward America's economy, and so saved the current USA generation from an all-out Great Depression. (The top employer in the USA today is Wal-Mart, which mainly sells Chinese goods.)

The fact that Europe is still struggling with the Euro and the European Union shows good faith that their extreme left and right wingers have been silenced; hopefully forever.

On the global front, the USA now faces a world more familiar to the British of 1899, viz. the struggle between Hinduism and Islam that would ultimately lead to the partition of India and the birth of Pakistan and the meteoric resurgence of Islam. (It makes sense that after WW1, WW2, the Cold War and the fall of Communism that the world would only settle back to its previous problems.)

To summarize: tempted by the British Middle East crisis, the German/Japanese Axis powers tried to return the world to its original, primitive mission of Slavery under a super-race. That scrambled the 20th century time track until the dust finally settled in 1975, when Nixon ended the Vietnam war, made an economic pact with China, and resigned over his many sins, including Watergate, the Bay of Pigs, and what not. Nixon was the last great quasi-monarchal President. The more predictable Bush regimes have been Parliamentary from the start -- demonstrated by our adventures in Kuwait, Iraq and the Middle East generally, which are still ongoing.

I hope we can find some commonalities in all this, John. I enjoy the conversation.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Hey, me too, Paul. Tho it's really in risk of drifting way off topic. However I think, deluded or not, (I say not) understanding these things is essential in understanding the forces at work.

Back on the maybe off topic points, OK Sartre was intellectually dishonest and deluded in various ways (not). Maybe he was having a nervous breakdown or something. He wasn't the only one though;. Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, MLK, Cassius X, maybe the entire SDS membership too and numerable others living in the real world (Not just in the US). So deluded or not there's a commonality I think. What I'm getting at whatever it was/is it was/is a significant force.

_

on another matter. This has revived old interests. I got a copy of Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow in English (pub '57) of Capital (unfortunately without Vol 1) Got 2 and 3 (plus a bonus of marx and engels ''THE HOLY FAMILY or CRITIQUE OF CRITICAL CRITIQUE'' (say that quickly).. I wonder what you make of page 161 of Vol 2. I'm serious. I'm looking for answers to some fundamental points you have made.

Best to you too.

edit typo

Edited December 29, 2011 by John Dolva

[John Dolva]

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=18576

-------------

I've started looking at Engels and Marxs "The holy Family or Critique of critical Critique", 1844 as republished by the F.L.P.H., Moscow '56. It seems to promise to cover their position on Hegel as it was then. Interesting.

[Paul Trejo]

...I hope we can find some commonalities in all this, John. I enjoy the conversation.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Hey, me too, Paul. Tho it's really in risk of drifting way off topic. However I think, deluded or not, (I say not) understanding these things is essential in understanding the forces at work.

Back on the maybe off topic points, OK Sartre was intellectually dishonest and deluded in various ways (not). Maybe he was having a nervous breakdown or something. He wasn't the only one though;. Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, MLK, Cassius X, maybe the entire SDS membership too and numerable others living in the real world (Not just in the US). So deluded or not there's a commonality I think. What I'm getting at whatever it was/is it was/is a significant force.

_

on another matter. This has revived old interests. I got a copy of Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow in English (pub '57) of Capital (unfortunately without Vol 1) Got 2 and 3 (plus a bonus of marx and engels ''THE HOLY FAMILY or CRITIQUE OF CRITICAL CRITIQUE'' (say that quickly).. I wonder what you make of page 161 of Vol 2. I'm serious. I'm looking for answers to some fundamental points you have made.

Best to you too.

John, I don't think we're too off-topic, since when speaking of the book, GUNS OF THE REGRESSIVE RIGHT, we are speaking of the clash between left-wing and right-wing in the interpretation of the assassination of JFK. Morris Beale was on the left-wing, accusing the right-wing, while the Warren Commission was on the right-wing, accusing the left-wing.

As for Sartre, I don't think he was dishonest -- he was honestly dissatisfied with his own theory of existentialism, and instead of finding a valid solution, he simply turned to Marxism as a solution. I think it was lazy, but not dishonest.

Then you name the leaders of the US Black Liberation movement: "Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, MLK, Cassius X and the entire SDS membership too and numerable others". I respond as follows:

1. Medgar Evers was in no way a Communist. He struggled to enforce USA Rights according to USA laws, for Black Americans as well as White. That's not Communist; it's American. The ACLU has always been a truly patriotic organization, despite what its reactionary opponents have claimed.

2. Malcom X was in no way a Communist. He was a Muslim, and as such was always protected by the Freedom of Religion in the USA - free to say anything he wanted, as long as he did not lift guns. Also, Muslims are traditionally extreme rightists; e.g. some advocate the severest penalties against theft (protecting private property). Some Muslims also deny women's rights, so they belong to the extreme right at the level of the reactionary. There is nothing Communist about this; on the contrary. (I place Cassius X in this same category.)

3. MLK was in no way a Communist. The Communists had a very distinct ideology and vocabulary. They demanded the abolition of Religion; the abolition of Marriage; the abolition of Nationalism; and the abolition of private property. MLK's speeches lack that ideology and lack that vocabularly. So any non-racist person could have seen easily that MLK was not a Communist. Now, J. Edgar Hoover believed MLK was a Communist, and he made the FBI spy on MLK more than on any other US citizen in Hoover's career. Hoover was obsessed with MLK from a racist angle, in my opinion. He never found proof of Communism - rather, this obsession was largely a proof of Hoover's increasing senility.

4. Having witnessed the SDS in Chicago in 1969 first-hand, I found most SDS members to be simply anti-Vietnam war activists. Their violent objection was that Vietnam was an Undeclared War. This is not necessarily Communism or even leftist. My evidence is that the extreme rightist, General Edwin Walker, was also against the Vietnam war, on the same grounds! (Walker served loyally in WW2 and in Korea, but at the end of the an Undeclared War in Korea, he vowed publicly never again to join an Undeclared War. Walker resigned -- he did not retire with a pension -- after he perceived that he was going to be assigned to Vietnam. So, the SDS position was arguably American as apple pie.) My further evidence is that when Nixon ended the Vietnam war, the SDS simply faded away.

My point is that yes, left-wing struggles to represent minorities and others who are under-represented, is a significant force - but it is also often a misunderstood force. The three greatest American left-wing victories, IMHO, were (1) liberation from monarchal tyranny in 1776; and (2) liberation from legal Slavery in 1860 (and I mean here only real Slavery, where Slaves and their children are bought and sold like chattel, all under the Law); and (3) the Social Security and Unemployment Compensation Acts of 1940. Since that time the left wing has mainly been trying to hold #3 intact - more or less successfully.

As for your final point, you got an English version of DAS KAPTAL (which is easily available online now). You want my opinion about Volume 2, page 161. This identifies Chapter 8, entitled, FIXED CAPITAL AND CIRCULATING CAPlTAL, and section 1. DISTINCTIONS OF FORM. Is that correct? If so, here are my comments:

a. Marx begins with the bromide that in a Factory, some of the capital is invested in Machines. As Machines are used to make products, the wear-and-tear on the machines must be accounted using cost-accounting, so that a tiny portion the 'fixed cost' of the Machine (and its wear-and-tear) must be added to the cost of each product that comes from that Machine.

b. Today we would call this simple cost-accounting. Until the machine is completely worn-out, it retains some capital value. As it is used, its wear-and-tear must be compensated for in the price of each product sold. Some might call this a part of 'overhead' today.

c. It is merely a bromide to notice that the longer a Machine lasts, the more productive it is for the company.

d. The capital value (we say, Fixed Asset cost today) of a Machine that is half-worn out is still in circulation to that extent. Is that profound? I don't think so.

e. The Machine while still useful is an Asset of the Company - and of the Economy in general. Is that profound? Marx seems to think it is, but it is simply an extant value.

f. The part of the Machine's value that circulates is merely the part that has transferred (via wear and tear) to each individual product produced by that Machine.

g. All this does nothing else than define 'Fixed Asset' or as Marx said, 'Fixed Capital'. I see nothing profound in any of this.

h. Aside from this, there are other costs, overhead costs. But Marx only hints at them on page 191.

Well, there's the summary of page 191 of DAS KAPITAL Volume 2, John. And I must say that there is nothing exciting, profound or even very important about it. It is something that a beginning student of Accounting learns in his first few months of class. But then - I believe that true of the bulk of DAS KAPITAL.

Was that the page you had in mind? Maybe our versions are different, and you had a specific point in mind. Please let me know.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited January 1, 2012 by Paul Trejo

[Paul Trejo]

I've started looking at Engels and Marxs "The holy Family or Critique of critical Critique", 1844 as republished by the F.L.P.H., Moscow '56. It seems to promise to cover their position on Hegel as it was then. Interesting.

Well, John, even though we're talking about the left-wing and the right-wing in the context of the JFK assassination, this topic is a bit far afield. I'll very briefly summarize my view. The year is 1844 and Engels and Marx are attacking those so-called Left Hegelians that refused to join the Communist movement; mainly Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner. Bruno Bauer was the leader of the so-called Left-Hegelians, although he himself refused to be called a Left-Hegelian.

Bauer, who was the oldest of the group, and the only one to directly study under Hegel (and won a prize from Hegel) was trying to teach the young Engels, Marx, Stirner and others how to understand Hegel. They failed in his opinion (and in mine) because they were really only interested in their political agendas, which they already held before joining this club.

Max Stirner is interesting; he was like the Ayn Rand of his day -- he believed that people are basically Egoistic and should mind their own business and take care of themselves, and then society would be perfect. His was the exact opposite of the Socialist mentality. Bruno Bauer was not an Egoist, but he rejected Socialism and Communism entirely. He was a true Hegelian, and he could see that Engels and Marx were trying to exploit people's ignorance of Hegelian dialectics to mislead them into thinking that Hegel (who died in 1831) would have approved of this new Communism. Bruno Bauer knew better - Hegel based his theory of Law (PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT, 1818) on the principle of Private Property. Also, Hegel was a devoted Lutheran. So Engels and Marx were liars back in 1844. They were worried that Bruno Bauer would block their growing readership, so they worked for a solid year to defame him.

Poor Bruno Bauer - he was thrown out of the University by the radical rightists, by the Prussian Monarchy and its fundamentalist reactionaries who mocked Bauer's theories of the Historical Jesus, the Markan Hypothesis, and the Messianic Secret. He was banned by right-wing extremists. Now, with Engels and Marx, he was being banned by the left-wing extremists as well. Bruno Bauer was once a well-respected academic authority, but his reputation did not survive this double-attack.

I know this because I specialize in the history of Bruno Bauer. Amazon.com still sells one of my books on this topic (mainly to libraries).

So - the lies that Engels and Marx tell about Hegel in all their works were never worth two bits. In those books you are currently perusing, John, you are reading the bizarre ideas of Engels and Marx, and nothing at all of Hegel's ideas. As a long-time member of the Hegel Society of America, John, I assure you that most Hegel scholars agree with my conclusion here.

Finally, Jean-Paul Sartre suspected something about this, without being able to articulate it; for example, in his SEARCH FOR A METHOD (p. 17) he admitted that even though Paris students in 1925 were allowed to study Marx (to refute him) they were not allowed to study Hegel (and if they had referenced Hegel they would have failed) - such was the irrational fear of Hegel in Paris in 1925. For that reason, he implies, students of his generation were wholly ignorant of dialectics; so I say they never fully understood these tricks by Marx.

Sartre's confusion reminds me of the confusion we find with Lee Harvey Oswald in his fake FPCC theatrics in New Orleans in 1963.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited January 1, 2012 by Paul Trejo

[John Dolva]

I'm taking time to go deeper into the many issues raised. Odviously I can't just take the word no matter how emphatic of some one on such often important issues. I was actually looking at page 161. There are words there that were later changed. Is it, in your opinion, in any way dealing with distribution.

Interesting. Hegelian Dialectics which allows for the supernatural apparently was/is the preferred way of dealing with dialectical materialism in the higher echelons of so inclined US miltary staff I wonder if Walker in any way considered himself a hegelian? As a sideline I perhaps understand why Oswald when he did refer to himself as a marxist-leninist which the foreword to these publications I got is by the 'institute of marxism-leninism. Anway: a curio.

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Edited January 2, 2012 by John Dolva

[Paul Trejo]

I'm taking time to go deeper into the many issues raised. Odviously I can't just take the word no matter how emphatic of some one on such often important issues. I was actually looking at page 161. There are words there that were later changed. Is it, in your opinion, in any way dealing with distribution.

Interesting. Hegelian Dialectics which allows for the supernatural apparently was/is the preferred way of dealing with dialectical materialism in the higher echelons of so inclined US miltary staff I wonder if Walker in any way considered himself a hegelian? As a sideline I perhaps understand why Oswald when he did refer to himself as a marxist-leninist which the foreword to these publications I got is by the 'institute of marxism-leninism. Anway: a curio.

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It's good to go deeper, John. Thanks for the conversation. As for page 161, I don't see any concentration on the business of Distribution; the main concentration is on Production and its alleged surplus value. However, in dealing with the sale of any manufactured product, one should consider the transportation costs, the warehouseing costs, the costs to support the family of the salesperson, and any overhead that salespeople have; and that was neglected in Marxism. I knew a man in Finland who was on the run from the USSR border police because he sold garments on the underground market. His so-called Crime was 'making a profit'. Actually, he was only trying to eke out a living, and his prices for these garments were roughly what others were charging. But the USSR system did not have the concept of the necessity of Distriubtion Costs, because Marx was obsessed with Production. Why was Marx obsessed with Production? I believe it was so that he could justify the State takeover of all Productive Machinery. Marx's idea of cost accounting was sophomoric.

It is also telling that the USSR collapsed largely upon its internal Economic failure which was based on its Economic, internal contradictions. In street terms, housewives were turning to the underground market by the millions, so that the Underworld Economy became richer than the legitimate Economy. That was firmly based on Marx's failure to define a workable Economic System.

As for Hegeian Dialectics allowing for the supernatural, that is an overstatement. Hegel was one of the leaders of the rationalist movement in theology in the early 1800's, along with Paulus and Herder. These theologians attempted to find a rational explanation for every alleged miracle in the Bible.

As for Dialectical Materialism, that is a self-contradiction. True dialectics calls for a balance of any two sides, but by choosing 'Materialism', Engels and Marx showed their one-sided orientation. So, their philosophy should really be called, 'two-sided one-sidedness,' because that's literally what Dialectical Materialism implies. (This was always clear to Hegelians - although the 20th century saw perhaps half a dozen true Hegelians until 1990 with the Fall of the USSR.)

As for the US Military staff, they, like Jean-Paul Sartre, would never have been allowed to study Hegel. It was a pathetic dogma in the West that Hegel always led to Marx. That's absurd, of course, since they are opposites. But that was the dogma, and just as the Paris Universities refused to teach Hegel to Sartre, so would West Point refuse to teach Hegel's dialectical system to their cadets.

It is impossible for Edwin Walker to have considered himself a Hegelian, since Edwin Walker was a Christian Fundamentalist -- and this typus rejected Hegel back in 1820, never looking back. Although Hegel considered himself a Lutheran, no traditional Lutheran ever considered himself a Hegelian.

As for Oswald, I maintain that he was always confused about these issues. He was a Marine. There has never been, in the entire history of the Marines, a truly Marxist Marine, because it is ideologically impossible. Oswald was not only a Marine, he was most likely an undercover operator in extreme rightist causes, and probably worked for the FBI (which is why Hoover refused to release all its records on Oswald, including tax records which probably would have shown FBI income).

Like any neophyte, Oswald probably read some namby-pamby British Socialist literature, and called himself a Marxist-Leninist on that basis. Oswald showed utterly zero grasp of Dialectics: two-sided or one-sided.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited January 2, 2012 by Paul Trejo

[John Dolva]

Paul, I agree interesting. There's just one thing. You continually refer to the USSR as an example of Communism at work. As a Trotskyist I find this a bit difficult to accept. Ditto calling China so. Afa Cuba goes I'd concede that it is a Socialist country that unlike the USSR has never not valued internationalism and solidarity whereas Stalins 'communism in one country' in a world where capitalism remains in any dominant form is a fundamental mistake, gladly allowed for by capital in its ceaseless drive to destroy marxism.

anyway, I found this piece interesting.

http://massthink.wor...nce-from-hegel/

''... The first point of difference between Hegel and Marx is both thinkers' conception of philosophy. For Hegel, philosophy is an activity of thought, a self-enclosed and self-sufficient Nachdenken (German for reflection, literally thinking-after) whose purpose is the clarification of what has happened (22-3). "To clarify an event is [for Hegel none other than] to explain it in terms of logical necessity [. . . in which the event is] fitted into some developing whole [i.e. the system]," in that process revealing its meaning, which can be no other than what it is (i.e. what has happened) (23). "The task of the philosopher is [thus] to discover that meaning [which is none other than God, or Spirit, or Mind: Geist], progressively correcting his conceptions after more and more of the web of cosmic structure [as Geist, through man, comes to know itself] has been disclosed to him" (23). Thus philosophy's only goal is (self-)understanding, in which "the world comes to self-consciousness and man rests in God" (23).

Marx retorts that this kind of philosophy is really a retrospective rationalization of the actual, existing state of things that, contrary to how Hegel portrays it, was really conditioned by the social, which is material. In other words, Hegel's philosophy is a teleological metaphysics that makes explanation justification and all history a theodicy (in which evil is the "counterpoint in a metaphysical harmony") (23). Against this, Marx proposes theory as the guide to practice in which practice is the life of theory (in which, as Lukács reads it, theory is grounded in and adjusts to reality just as reality adjusts to theory as reality becomes conscious of its inherent revolutionary potentials) (24). For Marx, then, philosophy is this "unity" (this dialectical materialist relationship, Lukács would say) between theory and practice—praxis—in which philosophy is immediately (in) reality (i.e. there is no remove between virtual philosophy and actual materiality, Deleuze would say), in which philosophy, in a very real sense, is real. ...''

edit add side issue: maybe this is why I find no conflict in buddhism as I understand it which is a bit of a misleading term itself as the last teaching Buddha taught a way of life which inherently was non judgemental. Ditto Marx didn't see a particular theological belief as an impediment but rather as something that would naturally find its place in a projected Communist world. It was Religion that was the Opiate.

In a similar way I find no contradiction in being a lutheran based liberation theologian. Maybe there is? I don't know.

Edited January 4, 2012 by John Dolva