Apparently, Ron Paul is Hip-Hop

For Jamusa

While we have often taken up the question of efforts to make a coherent politics out of hip-hop, today we take up the injecting of politics into it.

See the new unofficial endorsement of right-wing Libertarian candidate for president, Ron Paul, by the blog Where HipHop and Libertarianism Meet (WHHLM).

First, while WHHLM states that Paul has no control over who endorses him, it should be to no one's surprise that Stormfront (a "white nationalist" group) has endorsed Ron Paul. Politicians like Paul pretend to have a monopoly on the term "libertarianism", ignoring its left-wing and anarchist traditions. Of course, the danger in subscribing simply to "libertarianism" leaves one open to its chauvinistic variants. Because of this, alternatives have developed (libertarian socialism, libertarian communism, etc.) which attempt to deviate from the petty property rights and fake populism of its right-wing counterpart.

A great bulk of the hip-hop generation, or those influenced by hip-hop, are undocumented workers; people that Ron Paul wants to effectively strip of any rights or aid as if the surplus-value they contribute to the US economy through their labor is nil. Immigrants give more precisely because they are exploited to a higher degree than American-born workers. This makes them central to the emancipation of working people generally, just as the eradication of slave labor in the US South was central to the struggle of Northern workers.

Secondly, the pitfalls of the politics of WHHLM is that a preconceived agenda winds up being forced on hip-hop from without. As a result, it squeezes hip-hop into categories which are incompatible with its content ("Hip-hop should be this or that.").

This is not to say that one cannot interject to push an object into a particular direction, but this direction has to be a latent tendency within it already. Reaction (right-wing libertarianism), minus one Zionist rapper who springs to mind, is not an existing tendency and is, in fact, antithetical to hip-hop. This is because of hip-hop's inherent mass character. The property rights of a few and backward nationalism are not of a mass, universal content.

Democracy and Hip-Hop is a blog with a political perspective on social issues also, but the divergence is that we let hip-hop as an object become on its own terms, accepting the components which are necessarily authoritarian. Authoritarianism should be struggled against, but only as it manifests in reality and social relationships, not as it manifests in art.

Check out Where HipHop and Libertarianism Meet and let us know how it strikes you.

Michael Eric Dyson on Today Show

*Please read our current position on Dyson here. -July 31, 2008

The Today Show which featured hip-hop author and professor Michael Eric Dyson aired earlier this Summer on July 17, 2007. While it is a just a few months dated, there are some worthwhile examinations.

Over at hiphopmusic.com, Brandon Soderberg wrote an interesting critique of Dyson's view that warrants respect.

What is most valuable about Dyson's perspective is his take on bling-bling as a negation of poverty instead of simple materialism. It is somewhat reminiscent of an underdeveloped version of Rob Odell's Dialectics of Hip-Hop.

Let us know what you think.

Ann Coulter Speaks at Tulane

Monday night, Oct. 22, at Tulane University, Ann Coulter spoke on behalf of "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week". There were about 1500 present. The only visible opposition appeared to be from mainly white liberals and peaceniks. What was urgently needed was a militant, anti-fascist response.

We distributed 100 counter-fliers for the event in hopes to raise a critical anti-fascist perspective.

Two points about Ann Coulter's Islamo-Fascism claims (there is a much larger discussion of this happening over at Three Way Fight):

1. Fascist movements are not anti-capitalist nor anti-civilization, even though they employ forms and language which appear as such. Neither Hitler nor Mussolini expropriated the ruling interests, but in fact, intensified the antagonism between the ruling and working class by smashing the workers' movement. To paint fascism as something external or opposed to capitalism is complete misunderstanding of its historical roots. (see C.L.R.'s The Lesson of Germany) (This is, indeed, a highly vague sort-of reduction of a point, but I'm intentionally keeping this post brief. This can be argued further in the comment section.)

2. Islamic resistance cannot all be so uncritically and lazily subsumed into synthetic fascist categories which obscures not only fascism's historical context and condition, but is racist, anti-Muslim, and anti-Arab. I've argued this further in Islam and Armed Struggle as well as in the most recent TWF blog.

There is a highly valuable conversation happening over there that if you're out of the loop, you should read.

An Article of Movement Times

Below is an article published in Time Magazine dated March 21, 1969 about the wave of wildcat strikes that were seizing upon the auto plants of Britain. The article represents what was, in essence, an example of a time in social upheaval. It reveals the slant of the establishment media which inevitably accepts the permanency of capitalist social relations and division of work.

In the United States, the wildcats in Detroit were a result of in-plant company/union racism against Black and Arab workers, speed-up, and deteriorating factory conditions. Its most visible form of organized resistance were on behalf of the Revolutionary Union Movements. They were an uniquely American manifestation of working class self-activity and self-organization.

The article below deals explicitly with how wildcats manifested in Britain. For those interested in a look at how workplace resistance has manifested in Britain's hip-hop generation, watch the drama Human Traffic.*

The Wildcat Has Nine Lives

Some policymakers at Ford Motor Co. must rue the day, back in 1911, that the company set up shop in Britain. Though its pay scales run well above the industry average in Britain, Ford has been a prime target of wildcat strikes that torment the country's economy and damage its deteriorating trade position. Last year Ford lost 1.2 million man-hours to "unofficial" walkouts, often led by only a handful of professional soreheads. Lately the company has hoped to buy its way out of the strike nightmare by offering its workers a simple tit-for-tat: extra money for no wildcat strikes. The result is a crippling strike against the no-strike clause.

For two weeks, all 23 Ford plants in Britain have been paralyzed. Every day, the company has lost almost $5,000,000 in production and Britain has lost about $2,400,000 in exports. Britain can ill afford the drain, especially since its trade deficit widened from $214 million in January to $338 million in February. Ford assembly lines in West Germany and Belgium are also pinched. The lack of British-made components has turned production schedules upside down. Ford executives have hinted that they may drop their expansion plans in Britain and divert some of their operations to calmer shores.

A Matter of Honor. The row was started by a contract offer that included wage increases averaging 81%, holiday bonuses and a guaranteed annual wage in return for no wildcat strikes. Leaders from all 16 Ford unions approved, and the committee's chairman called the deal "bold and imaginative." Similar sentiments were voiced by Barbara Castle, Minister of Employment and Productivity, who has been pressing for a major labor reform, chiefly through sharp restrictions on wildcat strikes (TIME, Jan. 31).

Then the deal broke down. The 480-odd union shop stewards, fearing that their power over "the lads on the floor" might slip if they could no longer call wildcat walkouts, ordered a strike of the 46,500 workers. Then leaders of the two top unions reversed themselves and fell into step with the shop stewards. Ford appealed to the courts, but in vain. As the judge said, labor contracts in Britain are "binding only in honor," not in law.

Near Anarchy. Both the Trades Union Council and Barbara Castle's ministry have tried to mediate. The union leaders seemed to be adamant about scrapping the "penalty clauses" and asked for additional pay increases. At week's end, negotiations had produced proposals acceptable to three of the unions, the company and the government—a development that could end the strike quickly. In Parliament, Mrs. Castle said: "Some industries are getting near anarchy today." British Ford's negotiators confessed that they felt like characters in Alice in Wonderland. They could hardly overstate the absurdity of bargaining with scores of union leaders who do not have to consult their membership either before or after an agreement and who are often out of touch with the people they represent. Prime Minister Harold Wilson condemned the strike leaders for imperiling Britain's efforts to build exports and employment. All that has happened at Ford, he said, only provides powerful support for his government's plan to enact laws against wildcat strikes.

Islam and Armed Struggle

The following piece is a response to Three Way Fight's recent post of a statement of Azar Majedi of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran.

I'll be anxious to read the ensuing internal debate between the Three Way Fight folks on this subject.

There a few of things going here. For one, Azar Majedi is a leading member of a Maoist vanguard party. I’m not accusing TWF of endorsing the position of this statement, as my conception of TWF is that it’s anti-vanguard party and anti-statist. Maoism, self-evidently, does not jive with this conception and, in fact, represents its opposite.

Secondly, while I would say that the TWF presents an interesting and pragmatic approach to political and class paradigms today, one my critiques lies in subsuming Islam, or even political Islam, into the Right or as inherently backward.

Furthermore, it’s a mistake to lump armed Islamic groups all into the same category, as all have different material bases as well as ideologies. For instance, Hamas has made it clear that they are not jihadists and have repudiated attempts by Al-Qaeda to lend material support. They see their interests as fundamentally opposed and not as mere competing groups. While they are committed to the overthrow and destruction of the state of Israel, they are not on a crusade to convert Jews and Christians to Islam. In fact, during the last Palestinian elections, a portion of Palestine’s Christian population voted in favor of Hamas. They are statist, indeed, and for this reason among others I do not support their political program, but in their politics, Christians and secularists are not antagonistic to the building of an Islamic state.

I believe that a correct approach to Hamas and groups like Hezbollah is in seeing them as a legitimate armed force against Israeli aggression, and in the context of Hamas, as a legitimate anti-colonial force. That’s not to say that we endorse terrorism and violent acts against unarmed civilians whom might otherwise be sympathetic, but we shouldn’t oppose armed struggle. Neither is this to say that Hamas and Hezbollah will not become their opposite, either in containing their revolt by [taking] a seat within the various state [bureaucracies], or by turning their guns wholesale against the Palestinian and Lebanese people. After all, all armed struggle is not independently valid, such as that of the Shining Path in Peru or the FARC in Colombia.

But just as we need to be careful in forming dubious alliances with elements in Islam which are reactionary and hostile to the self-management of working people, we need to be just as vigilant in doing so with authoritarian elements on the Left, such as the Maoists who believe the working class lacks the correct consciousness and therefore must be led by “revolutionary” vanguards.

Thirdly, religion and religious expression is and can be a valid ideological form of struggle against colonialism and imperialism. In America, Christianity was an important religious form in the fight against the British colonizers, just as it was in John Brown, the abolitionists’, and the slaves’ struggle against the Southern plantocracy. In the peasant wars in Germany and in Martin Luther’s Reformation of the 14th century, religion played an enormously indispensable role against the Roman Papacy.

Majedi’s statement is a wholesale condemnation of Islam, not only as a valid political force, but also as a religion. In doing so, she condemns the near half of the world who are Muslim, many of whom are working people who stand firm against Islamic reaction.

Religion is merely the form that struggles can assume, the content is always of a class dimension.

*Correction: The WCPI is not a Maoist organization, although they are vanguardist.