Unbeknownst to most Americans, even on the Left, there are a significant number of US-Viet Nam War veterans who have returned to live full or part-time in the country in which they had fought, to devote themselves to undoing some of the war's devastation -– in Viet Nam* and in themselves. These men began their resistance to the war at widely varying times, some while in the military, others immediately afterwards, and still others years later.
A downturn in economic activity was the original signal, for Marx and Engels, of capitalist crisis. But it has never been the only possible form the crisis could take. Any downturn encompasses a range of adverse consequences which are not reflected in charts of declining production.
too many words cross the boulevard
without looking both ways. too many words
enter the recruiting station with
empty hands and come out carrying a gun.
too many words leave their sons and
daughters behind or their parents
or their wives or husbands.
too many words
sit in front of a television screen
watching the twentyfour hour news for
twentyfour hours. too many words stuff a duffel bag
with fists of sand. too many words go blind.
too many words come home without
their legs on, without their helmets
Dreams
My dreams are of tenements,
welfare offices,
rats crawling in the subway,
murderers standing in the shadows.
I dream of rivers of blood,
of starving children,
crying,
afraid of the dark.
I never dream about democracy.
I dream about foreclosures,
homes lost forever
to real estate speculators,
who stay up all night,
planning the perfectly functioning market.
Law and Order
It is sometimes said that while anti-capitalist and alternative globalization movements are clear on what we do not want, we are less clear on what we do want (socialism, anarchism, specifics). Certainly, recent movements have not been as effective as their predecessors (labor in the 1910s and ‘30s; the social movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s) in sustaining the sorts of practices – intellectual and material – that put into effect aspects of the alternative world we seek.
When men are forbidden to think, their thinking sanctions what simply exists. -- Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics
John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard York, Critique of Intelligent Design (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008).
Michael Schwartz, War Without End: The Iraq War in Context (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2008).
During the Bush public relations campaign to sell the Iraq war, the American press devoted remarkably little critical analysis to the administration’s claims. In fact, one can say that the fourth estate was bullied by the Bush administration into repeating the talking points provided to it, and was therefore complicit in convincing the public that regime change was necessary in Iraq.
Victor Considerant, Principles of Socialism: Manifesto of 19th Century Democracy, Joan Roelofs trans. (Washington, DC: Maisonneuve Press, 2006).
Mat Callahan is a musician and author from San Francisco who currently resides in Bern, Switzerland. His musical work includes award-winning albums and collaborations such as founding legendary artists' collective Komotion International. He is the author of numerous books and articles, most recently The Trouble with Music (AK Press, 2006). http://www.matcallahan.com/; info@matcallahan.com