Rouge Forum Update—Happy Birthday Karl Marx

Dear Friends,

Can you teach about Marx? If not, why not?

Karl Marx: (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883)

Here are some images of Marx.

Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach can be found here.

Marx still stands far above his inheritors, all of them. And, per Lenin, one cannot fully understand Marx without understanding Hegel, especially the “Science of Logic,” but the entire body of work. Lukacs’, “The Young Hegel,” is a good pathway back to Hegel himself.

Here is Lenin writing on Hegel’s Science of Logic, a vast improvement over Lenin’s earlier Materialism and Empiro Criticism.

And, given the current election spectacle, we might remember what Marx and Engels wrote on the question of capitalist democracy, “The state is nothing but an instrument of oppression of one class by another–no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.”

The crux of Marxism, if there can be such a thing, is revolution, the negation of the negation: abolishing, retaining, moving to a higher level. Things change.

The question of class consciousness remains largely unresolved. Here is Bertell Ollman addressing the problem of why it is so many people are so easily turned into instruments of their own oppression, while others do resist

A podcast of Michael Baker’s radio interview with Seattle test resister Carl Chew can be found here: http://www.kzum.org/. You can also read a full interview with Chew by subscribing to Substance News.

We note, without envy, that Randi Weingarten, soon to be president of the American Federation of Teachers, will hold two jobs inside the AFT, and make about $600,000 a year, representing people being laid off in droves, people who often live in house trailers. NEA”s Reg Weaver, soon to be replaced by Dennis Van Roekel, makes about $450,000 a year and can live on his expense account.

School workers hold terrific potential power. In late April, 200,000 educators in the UK shut down the nation’s school system in protest against the government’s wage cutting plans. They were joined by 100,000 other workers striking in solidarity. More than a million people missed school.

Ken Goodman writes on the corrupt Reading First Phonics Education project, now clearly failed, at SusanOhanian.org.

We are still in the process of notifying nominees for the Rouge Forum Steering Committee, and awaiting word from others. That should be finalized by next week. We will also offer an analysis of why it is the anti-war, immigration rights, and anti-high-stakes testing movements are losing ground, despite a rise of apparent resistance.

Thanks to Melissa, Ido, Amber, Wayne, Sean, Tommie, Bob, Karen. Betty, Ann, Della, Candace, Erin, Beau, Sherry, Susan, Ken, Gerry, Georgia, Terry Ray, Elvira, Tony, Sandy, Sally, Adam, and Gina. Break up the Padres (sic)!

all the best

r

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