27% of Spaniards are Out of Work. Yet in One Town Everyone Has a Job | Portside

27% of Spaniards are Out of Work. Yet in One Town Everyone Has a Job | Portside

Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo

A friend just sent this, and I was glad to see it. As I told him,

Thanks. Yes, we know about Sánchez Gordillo. He's a colorful character and a major headache to his comrades in the Communist Party — not because of the way he runs that little town of Marinaleda, but because he has instigated peaceful "assaults" on supermarkets (dozens of activists load up their shopping carts with what are considered basic necessities and at check-out refuse to pay) and the repeated occupation of some unused government-owned land. The problem for the CP (which functions through a broader coalition called Izquierda Unida) is that it is now part of the government of Andalusia, in partnership with the Socialist Party, and therefore is responsible for upholding the law. Which doesn't permit "stealing" (they call it "liberation" of goods) or unauthorized occupation of land.

He's media-savvy, very careful to avoid violence (the supermarket raiders are supposed to be polite to the checkout girls, etc.). And he is an embarrassing example to those other politicians who are doing nothing effective to halt the hunger.

However, the Socialist-Izquierda Unida coalition in Andalucía has not really been as passive as Sánchez Gordillo would have us believe. Among the measures taken in opposition to the conservative central government (employment creation, subsidies), the Andalucía government — alone of all the 17 regional governments of Spain — has order the "temporary expropriation" of empty residential buildings held by the banks, to house those who have been evicted from their homes by those banks. The bank can avoid such temporary expropriation by making the property available for a manageable rent. In the case of expropriation (which can last a maximum of 3 years), the regional government will compensate the banks a tiny percentage of the assessed value.

For more on the painful problem of evictions, see my article written for Radikal Portal (published in Norwegian); here is my original, English-language version, Spain's many currents of protest. The Norwegian version is here.

Caricature Map of Europe 1914 - StumbleUpon

Caricature Map of Europe 1914 - StumbleUpon

100 years ago. And today's map? Germany would be a fat, greedy banker, Spain a very thin gentlemen in shabby formal clothes with his hand out, Greece a flock of raging demons pursuing foreigners in a boneyard, Italy a grinning Berlusconi sitting on top of some very unhappy people whom Beppe is trying to tickle, France a mass of angry Lilliputians trying to tie down a struggling Marianne, Hungary… , Russia… , and on and on. Things are going nearly badly as they were 100 years ago, but the crisis we're on the brink of today is probably not world war. More like general collapse.  

Lost in revolution

The Angels of Zimbabwe by Peter de Lissovoy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When Joe, a conspicuously tall young white American, hitchhikes into white-ruled Rhodesia in the early stages of the 1964-1979 "bush war" against supremacist Ian Smith's Rhodesian Front, his passion for liberty and his reckless crossing of color-lines gets him deeper into confusion and ultimately heartbreak. Hoping to help the black African liberation fighters create the free, black African nation they call Zimbabwe, Joe gets himself hired as a very junior journalist for the daily Clarion — whose editor tolerates his ironies because he's an amusing Yank — and using his position and the paper's resources, he gets to observe closely the routines of both blacks and whites in the small, rigidly segregated capital Salisbury (now Harare) — in the town center, the blacks-only bus station, the whites-only spaces but with black servants in stores and offices, the rundown black townships, police violence against black women protesters with their babies strapped to their backs, and a surprisingly multiracial garden party on a country estate. The portraits of ZANU youth activists, aspiring black journalist Shakespeare Forboni, his buddy the little auto mechanic Moses Chivera and the dour, bitter and determined revolutionary Frankie Mundie suggest the range of personality types struggling for a liberation that meant something different to each of them; among the whites, most memorable are the Clarion editor Mr. Wein, a cautious but canny "liberal," the absolutely apolitical but generally good guy sports journalist, and — most tellingly — an older, formerly influential settler who remembers pioneer days and still clings to the hope that whites like him can make a contribution in the future black republic. The ending is an undramatic fade-out with nothing resolved, either for Zimbabwe or for Joe personally, but in the meantime we have been presented a vivid panorama of that last white-racist holdout in Africa and its tensions in its last days, and some clear suggestions of the conflicts that would emerge in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.

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List of common misconceptions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - StumbleUpon

I just stumbled upon this and enjoyed it — especially the first list, of history misconceptions.
List of common misconceptions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - StumbleUpon

Spanias kreative protestb�lge | Radikal Portal

The Norwegian news and opinion website Radikal Portal has invited me to become a regular contributor. Here is my first article, on protest movements in Spain — translated into Norwegian.
 
Spanias kreative protestb�lge | Radikal Portal

Since it's just possible that you don't read Norwegian, here is my English original in Scribd: Spain's many currents of protest

There have been developments since I wrote that piece, the most important being the gutting of the citizens' legislative initiative by the Popular Party to pass a much weaker version. The main argument, however, still stands: that protests surging outside of the traditional channels of parties and trade unions are shaking the whole institutional system in Spain and may be harbingers of serious change.

My next article for this site will be on Venezuela.

The Real Karl Marx by John Gray | The New York Review of Books

The Real Karl Marx by John Gray | The New York Review of Books

A thoughtful and informed review of Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life, by Jonathan Sperber, a study that puts Marx back in the epoch and amid the controversies in which he lived. According to Gray (the reviewer),

Marx understood the anarchic vitality of capitalism earlier and better than probably anyone else. But the vision of the future he imbibed from positivism, and shared with the other Victorian prophet he faces in Highgate Cemetery [Herbert Spencer], in which industrial societies stand on the brink of a scientific civilization in which the religions and conflicts of the past will fade way, is rationally groundless—

I wonder what the late Eric Hobsbawm would have thought of this book. In the essays collected in How to Change the World, he seems to have reached some of the same conclusions, but with a great difference: Hobsbawm was not very interested in an academic study of Marx and Marxism, but rather in "changing the world", trying to make it better — more equal, more fair, more liveable — which has been and continues to be the great project of those who have called themselves Marxists. Of course Marx alone cannot be taken as a guide for action in a world he never knew, our world of jet planes and Internet and a massive shift of political power away from Europe and toward the BRICS. But reading him can sure stimulate our thinking, the new thinking we need today.

Bir Cihan İki Sultan

I'm pleased to announce that the Turkish language version of my novel A Gift for the Sultan is now available from Nokta Kitap publishers in Istanbul.  Just 11.20 Turkish liras (4.76 € or US$6.25).

kitapyurdu: kitap - Bir Cihan İki Sultan & Timur ve Yıldırım'ın Mücadelesi - Geoffrey Fox,Orhan Tuncay, 138186159
(Click on the "kitapyurdu.com" link to see the book, or if it doesn't pop up, type my name in the search box — "Arama" — at top left of the "kitapyurdu.com" page.)

For the original (English language) version, go to Amazon or (e-book only) Smashwords.  For a complimentary review copy, e-book, English (if you think you might review it), just let me know.

Two months that changed the world

Histoire de la commune de 1871 by Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the one essential book on two months that changed the course of European history and set new patterns for 20th century revolutionary struggle worldwide.

Lissagaray first gives us the political background of the 1870-71 crisis, when the Second Empire of Louis Napoleon, or "Napoleon III" destroyed itself in a disastrous war with Prussia, during which extreme conservatives created a new government elected mainly by rural constituencies. The revolt of Parisian ouvriers and petits bourgeois began as outrage against that disgraced government, successor of the emperor, that not only had failed to defend them against Prussian siege and bombardment but now expected them to pay (through rent increases and taxes) the huge indemnization demanded by the Prussians.

The insurrection broke out without plan or clear leadership when on 18 March 1871 that conservative government sent troops to seize the cannons of the Paris Garde nationale. Populace and Gardes quickly mobilized to prevent the seizure, and the government troops, bewildered and unprepared for such action, fraternized with them. Two generals, already notorious for earlier bloodletting, were murdered by the mob, and now Paris was in open revolt. The reactionary government, led by the aged Adolphe Thiers, then withdrew from the city and established its new capital in nearby Versailles. In the next weeks the citizens of Paris had to organize all urban services, while simultaneously defending themselves from infantry and bombardment of Versailles while the Prussian army hemmed them in on the north and east. Revolutionary reforms in education, work hours, women's rights and opportunities followed in quick succession — but despite spirited, though woefully disorganized, defense by Parisians and foreigners such as Dombrowski and Wroblewski, Versailles troops finally broke through and began the systematic destruction and massacres of la semaine sanglante, the "bloody week" of 21-28 May, 1871, followed by mass executions, rigged trials and deportations that very nearly wiped out the whole of Paris' working class — 30 or 40,000 killed, more thousands imprisoned and/or deported, others fled to exile in Belgium, Switzerland or England.

Lissagaray was a young radical journalist in 1871, not an elected official nor with any formal responsibility in the Commune, but committed to its cause and ultimately, in the last desperate days, a combattant and eye-witness of the semaine sanglante. He escaped, ultimately to London, and spent the next five years reading every available document, interviewing and corresponding with survivors, and writing his great history, which was published in Belgium in 1876. In 1886, the book appeared in English translation by Eleanor Marx Aveling (youngest daughter of Karl Marx and Lissagaray's one-time fiancée). In 1896, five years before his death, Lissagaray re-issued his history with a new postscript, where he predicts that the socialist goals of the Commune would be realized in Germany. Things didn't turn out that way, but the Commune's influence on the strategic thinking of Lenin, Trotsky and others would later be decisive for another country.

There have been many more studies since Lissagaray, and there are other contemporary accounts with important additional information — those by Louise Michel and Jules Vallès deserve special mention. Some of Lissagaray's value judgments may be challenged, and there are aspects he didn't know about that are important for understanding how this massive revolt emerged and developed, but this big, careful study (with numerous notes and appendices) is our most valuable single account. (I read the Kindle version of the 1896 edition.)

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The New Yorker Rejects Itself: A Quasi-Scientific Analysis of Slush Piles | The Review Review

The New Yorker Rejects Itself: A Quasi-Scientific Analysis of Slush Piles | The Review Review

Aha! I thought so. The title is not quite accurate — The New Yorker didn't exactly reject itself, but… Well, read what happened.

The Middle East Times - International

My thanks to friend César Chelala for this article on the so-called "Peace Process":
The Middle East Times - International

I think he's right in his analysis, and I've sent him this comment about the overabundant press attention to the issue:

We are now almost overwhelmed with messages about this conflict, a lot of heat and too little light. Things are changing there — Netanyahu's base is eroding, his new alliances forcing him to break with the older ones, and any such shift creates little openings which a smart opposition could exploit. But of course the opposition is too busy fighting among themselves, Hamas against Fatah, each against its own internal Palestinian critics, Israeli peaceniks like Amos Oz unwilling to join forces with Israeli Arab parties, all of which leaves an agile opportunist like Netanyahu free to cobble together whatever kind of coalition can keep him in office. And meanwhile, the settlements keep encroaching on Palestinian land, making a peaceful settlement ever more difficult.