Mute magazine - Culture and politics after the net - Asia

The situation of left communism today

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:21:10 +0000

ByLoren Goldner / SaNoShin

In-depth to say the least (it's 55 pages if you print it out) interview with marxist writer/activist and recent Mute collabor Loren Goldner by the South Korean SaNoShin group, covering the 20th century history of class struggle and present developments/future prospects.
From Goldner's Break Their Haughty Power website (http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/)

Electoral revolution in Nepal

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:22:03 +0000

ByGary Leupp

Overview of the maoist victory in the Nepalese Constitutent Assembly election by long-term observer and sympathiser Gary Leupp, a US academic and regular Counterpunch (www.counterpunch.org) contributor. It's not necessary to agree with Leupp that the maoists stand for 'communism' to recognize that the election result represents a major strategic success for the provisionally demilitarized 'people's war' and a geopolitical upheaval at the borders of India (where the Naxalite maoists continue to wage war) and China. More open to question, perhaps, is Leupp's claim that the event is overlooked or unreportable in Western media. The FT ran a remarkably positive full-page feature the day before yesterday, followed up yesterday with renewed emphasis on Party assurances the immediate agenda is not 'socialism' but the replacement of 'feudalism' with 'capitalist development'. (This is what Leupp says too, and it's the only part of his article to be criticised on the Kasama maoist website, where the article is reproduced (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/).) Incidentally, the article is tagged 'site-specific' (as in 'art') here because the maoists say they want to put a red flag on Mt. Everest that's big enough to see from the moon.

Report from Chengdu

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:38:24 +0000

ByHari Kunzru

Back in Beijing, after a tense couple of days in Chengdu. The city is the Eastern gateway to Tibet, located at the foot of the mountains. It has a huge PLA base, and was the jumping off point for the troops which are now saturating Tibet. The serious action is now apparently in the villages. There are reports of serious clashes in several rural districts, though Lhasa is now locked down. Police have been killed, and in the Aba area, the ratio of Tibetans to army is now 1:1 according to someone I talked to. I met a couple of journos who'd tried to get into Tibet hiding under blankets in a car. They'd been picked up - everyone seems to have failed to get into the areas of Tibet and Sichuan where the ongoing violence is concentrated.

Plague Politics

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:48:45 +0000

ByC. L-Stavrides

While bird flu panic made a return to the UK mainland last autumn, the promised pandemic failed to materialise. What does continue to evolve, however, are repressive forms of population management sustained by hypothetical threats of megadeath – writes C. L-Stavrides

The Korean Working Class: From Mass Strike to Casualization and Retreat, 1987-2007

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 02:47:01 +0000

ByLoren Goldner

Loren Goldner will be giving a talk on the subject of the Korean working class at Housmans bookstore in Kings Cross, London at 6pm on Saturday 19th of January.

More details: http://www.metamute.org/en/Three-Talks-by-Loren-Goldner

ABSTRACT

Darjeeling, India - August 2007

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 08:12:45 +0000

Darjeeling, India - August 2007

The 1, 2, 3 of India’s Growing Military Might

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 16:12:03 +0000

ByNima Maleki

Originally in Report on Positivity: A budding India-U.S. strategic partnership takes shape as India expands its military capacity. The Bay of Bengal will soon be witness to the largest joint naval exercises between India and the U.S. Three aircraft carriers will participate in the war games, two from the U.S., and one from India. A total of 17 warships, 13 of them from the U.S., will join India’s in an annual exercise taking place from 4-9 September. Two will come from Japan, one from Australia, and one from Singapore. They will be accompanied by submarines and dozens of naval warplanes. (1)

(2)

The Chinese Road

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 21:35:52 +0000

ByRichard Walker & Daniel Buck

From New Left Review (http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2678) some solid statistical evidence -- particularly strong on intersections of national, municipal, private and foreign capital -- for a point that might have seemed to border on truism but apparently is not gasped in mainstream 'China studies: the expansion of Chinese industrial capitalism in the last 20 years can is broadly comparable to the same process in Europe and America in the 19th century, and speculation over notions like 'the paradoxes of market socialism' is useless. (Anyone who doubted this should read Zola's Germinal next to any journalistic account of migrant labour in Chinese coal mines.) An earlier but more analytically developed account of some of the same phenomena, by Aufheben, can be found at: http://libcom.org/library/aufheben/aufheben-14-2006/welcome-to-the-chinese-century
The notion that 'state capitalism' is something specific to countries outside the 'Western' bloc is also usefully debunked by the excellent histories of Japanese and South Korean working class formation on the Echanges et Mouvement site: http://www.mondialisme.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=3

Be careful what you wish for, China may grant it

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 23:26:44 +0000

ByJulian Delasantellis
This Asia Times Online (www.atimes.com) piece reads the recent bond yields panic back through the contradictions of the informal 'Bretton Woods 2' system (under which China funds the US deficits and props up the dollar by spending export proceeds on the accumulation of a trillion or so dollars worth of US Treasury bonds, i.e. it lends the US the money). Then the writer asks: what if the Chinese government tried to break out of this cycle by taking literally the US injunction to 'buy American' stuff: what if it started buying directly into US capital through 'Sovereign Wealth Funds', kind of like hedge funds but backed by the state's enormous dollar reserves, which would thus be channelled away from US economic life support?

Contours of the Putin era

Fri, 04 May 2007 21:11:01 +0000

ByTony Wood
From New Left Review, an overview of Putin's Russia which avoids the usual cliches about authoritarian nationalism versus oligarchic anarchy etc. While a state apparatus riddled (compared to, say, the late 'Soviet' Politburo) with serving security personnel is active at evey level of business, so representation of the business elite within the state has actually expanded significantly since the Yeltsin era. Unprecedented growth of state bureacracy is complimented by what some analysts call exceptional 'non-institutionalization' of public life, and certainly by the complimentary growth of a structurally essential informal-criminal sector. And underlying the administration's play for geopolitcal prestige is the policy of holding oil proceeds in dollars and euros, committing the country to what Wood calls 'deferred suicide' through non-reproduction (eg. one hospital in five lacks hot water and sewage facilities).

Gurgaon workers' news

Fri, 04 May 2007 20:13:44 +0000

ByGurgaon workers' news
Latest essential bulletin of inquiry and analysis from an inside perspective in Gurgaon, India's largest Special Economic Zone. (See url below)

Gurgaon Workers News

Newsletter 2 (April 2007)

Gurgaon workers' news 3

Fri, 04 May 2007 19:59:34 +0000

ByGurgaon Workers News
Latest bulletin of essential description and analysis of the Gurgaon Special Economic Zone from inside. The text seems to refuse copying (if anyone finds a way around this please add it), but the full site is found at: http://gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com/
and can also be reached through a link on Prol-position.

World liquidity crisis emerging

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 20:48:36 +0000

ByChris Laird
Further to the dominant theme of the last couple of weeks...
(from Prudent Bear: http://www.prudentbear.com/)

Christopher Laird is editor of the PrudentSquirrel newsletter.

Bangladesh: 'State of Emergency' powers extended and tightened - strikes & demonstrations banned, media gagged

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 16:36:41 +0000

ByRet Marut
Workers' massive actions and protests against the garment industry and govt in Bangladesh have continued (another 5 factories burned down last week!) but now face a serious state crackdown and supression both through the political process (elections, opportunism of the opposition party) and by the state of emergency which effectively renders political activity of a non-compliant nature illegal. This stuff reads like Capital vol.1, but with more violence - formaldehyde in the food (zombie preservatives for undead labour?), still no wage increases for a working class (barely) living on 10 quid a month despite a year of riots and torched factories, and now the state bans everything. The recipe for an explosion...?
2 reports from Libcom, one 12th Jan, another 27th. http://libcom.org

Prol-position 7: Callcenter in Delhi

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 17:22:05 +0000

ByProl-position
Prol-position newsletter 7 is out now at: http://www.prol-position.net/
It contains English versions of two important texts from the summer issue of German Wildcat
on 'underclass' as ideological category and the social reality it's deployed against, plus a series of well-informed critical accounts of the anti-CPE mobilization in France earlier this year, and this piece of workers' inquiry on a Delhi call centre that employs European 'advent(o)urists' alongside aspiring members of India's currently overbooked middle class.