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extracts of a text of Jared James is censured by Indimedia Brasil

Anonyme, Viernes, Abril 5, 2002 - 00:55

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extracts of a text of Jared James (translated for the Portuguese) is censured by Indimedia Brasil, see texts below

extracts of a text of Jared James (translated for the Portuguese) is censured (http://www.brasil.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=21981&group=webcas...)
(http://www.brasil.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=21983&group=webcas...)
by Indimedia Brasil, see texts below

Single-issue campaigns

By Jared James

http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strategy/GettingFree/

We cannot destroy capitalism with single-issue campaigns. Yet the great bulk of the energies of radicals is spent on these campaigns. There are dozens of them: campaigns to preserve the forests, keep rent control, stop whaling, stop animal experiments, defend abortion rights, stop toxic dumping, stop the killing of baby seals, stop nuclear testing, stop smoking, stop pornography, stop drug testing, stop drugs, stop the war on drugs, stop police brutality, stop union busting, stop red-lining, stop the death penalty, stop racism, stop sexism, stop child abuse, stop the re-emerging slave trade, stop the bombing of Yugoslavia, stop the logging of redwoods, stop the spread of advertising, stop the patenting of genes, stop the trapping and killing of animals for furs, stop irradiated meat, stop genetically modified foods, stop human cloning, stop the death squads in Colombia, stop the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, stop the extermination of species, stop corporations from buying politicians, stop high stakes educational testing, stop the bovine growth hormone from being used on milk cows, stop micro radio from being banned, stop global warming, stop the militarization of space, stop the killing of the oceans, and on and on. What we are doing is spending our lives trying to fix up a system which generates evils far faster than we can ever eradicate them.
Although some of these campaigns use direct action (e.g., spikes in the trees to stop the chain saws or Greenpeace boats in front of the whaling ships to block the harpoons), for the most part the campaigns are directed at passing legislation in Congress to correct the problem. Unfortunately, reforms that are won in one decade, after endless agitation, can be easily wiped off the books the following decade, after the protesters have gone home, or after a new administration comes to power.
These struggles all have value and are needed. Could anyone think that the campaigns against global warming, or to free Leonard Peltier, or to aid the East Timorese ought to be abandoned? Single issue campaigns keep us aware of what's wrong, and sometimes even win. But in and of themselves, they cannot destroy capitalism, and thus cannot really fix things. It is utopian to believe that we can reform capitalism. Most of these evils can only be eradicated for good if we destroy capitalism itself and create a new civilization. We cannot afford to aim for anything less. Our very survival is at stake. There is one single-issue campaign I can wholehearted endorse: the total and permanent eradication of capitalism.
Many millions of us though are rootless, and are quite alienated from a particular place or local community. We are part of the vast mass of atomized individuals brought into being by the market for commodified labor. Our political activities tend to reflect this. We tend to act as free-floating protesters. But we could start to change this. We could start to root ourselves in our local communities. This will be more possible for some than others of course. There can be no hard and fast rule. Many of us though could start establishing free associations at work, at home, and in the neighborhood. In this way our fights to stop what we don't like, through single-issue campaigns, could be combined with what we do want. Plus we would have a lot more power to stop what we don't like. Our single-issue campaigns might start being more successful.
What is missing is free association, free assemblies, on the local level. If we added these into the mix, we would start getting somewhere. We could attack the ruling class on all fronts. There are millions of us, plenty of us to do everything, but everything must include fights on the local level, especially at the three strategic sites.

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Portuguese translation:

Campanhas Específicas

Não podemos destruir o capitalismo com campanhas específicas. Mesmo que os radicais gastem grandes energias nestas campanhas. Há dúzias delas: campanhas para preservar as florestas, controle dos aluguéis, parar com matança de baleias, parar com experiências em animais, defender o livre aborto, parar com contaminação tóxica, parar provas nucleares, parar de fumar, parar a pornografia, parar testes de drogas, parar com drogas, parar guerra das drogas, parar brutalidade policial, parar com a falência dos sindicatos, parar pena de morte, parar racismo, parar sexismo, parar com abuso infantil, parar o reemergente tráfico de escravos, parar o bombardeio contra os palestinos, parar de matar sequóias canadenses, parar propagação dos anúncios, parar patenteamento de genes, parar captura e matança de animais para comércio de peles, parar com irradiação na carne, parar com alimentos geneticamente modificados, parar clonagem humana, parar com esquadrões da morte na Colômbia, parar Banco Mundial e Organização Mundial do Comércio, parar a exterminação das espécies, parar corporações de comprar políticos, parar com avaliação educacional, parar uso de hormônio de crescimento bovino nas vacas leiteiras, impedir fim das rádios FM, parar com o efeito estufa, parar militarização do espaço, parar matança dos oceanos, e sem parar absolutamente nada. Tudo que conseguimos é desperdiçar nossas vidas tentando consertar um sistema que produz males mais rápido do que nossas ações tentando erradicá-los.

Embora algumas destas campanhas usem a ação direta (por exemplo, pregos nos troncos para impedir o corte das árvores ou os botes do Greenpeace para bloquear os arpões dos navios baleeiros), a maior parte dessas campanhas são dirigidas no sentido de alterar leis no Congresso para corrigir o problema. Infelizmente, muitas vezes tais reformas são implementadas apenas depois de uma década, e depois de uma infinita agitação, e quando menos se espera, depois que os manifestantes se desmobilizam, ou depois que uma nova administração chega ao poder, as leis voltam a ser como eram antes. Claro que todas estas lutas têm valor e são necessárias. Quem se oporia as campanhas contra o efeito estufa, pela libertação de Leonard Peltier, ou pela ajuda ao Timor Leste? As campanhas específicas nos mantém atentos àquilo que está errado, e às vezes até mesmo saem vitoriosas. Mas por elas mesmas, elas não podem destruir o capitalismo, elas sempre estarão na defensiva. É utópico acreditar que possamos reformar o capitalismo. A maioria destes males só pode ser erradicado para o bem de todos nós se destruirmos o capitalismo e criarmos uma nova civilização. Não podemos desejar nada menos do que destruir o capitalismo. É a nossa própria sobrevivência que está em jogo. Existe uma campanha específica que endosso de todo meu coração: a erradicação total e permanente de capitalismo.

Entretanto, muitos milhões de nós estamos desarraigados, totalmente alienados do local e da comunidade onde vivemos. Somos parte da vasta massa de indivíduos atomizados e concebidos para estar a disposição do mercado de trabalho, no sistema de escravidão-assalariada. Nossas atividades políticas tendem a refletir isto. Tendemos a agir como manifestantes à deriva. Mas poderíamos começar a mudar esse panorama. Para começar poderíamos nos arraigar em nossas comunidades locais. Claro que isto será mais possível para alguns do que para outros. Evidentemente, não pode haver nenhuma regra rígida e rápida. Muitos de nós poderíamos começar estabelecendo uma livre-associação no trabalho, em casa, e até mesmo no bairro. A partir destes três locais estratégicos podemos iniciar uma luta para acabar com aquilo que não gostamos, adotando campanhas específicas, que poderiam ser combinadas com aquilo que queremos. Teremos muito mais poder para parar com aquilo que não gostamos. Nossas campanhas específicas teriam uma chance de alcançar sucesso.

Falta-nos livre-associação, assembléias livres, em nível local. Se adicionássemos esses ingredientes na mistura, estaríamos dando os primeiros passos para chegar em algum lugar. Poderíamos atacar a classe dominante por todos os lados. Há milhões e milhões de nós, o suficiente para fazer tudo o que é necessário, mas de tudo que fizermos tem que haver envolvimento a nível local, especialmente nestes três locais estratégicos.

Jared James

http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strategy/GettingFree/

The military might of the capitalist ruling class is of course an obvious obstacle to the establishment of democratic, autonomous neighborhoods. Their ability to simply murder us, if they choose to, to protect their profits, is very daunting indeed. Nevertheless, although this firepower is overwhelming, it is not invincible. We can defeat it. I hope I am beginning to show how in this essay.
We must never forget however that we are at war, and have been for 500 years. We are involved in class warfare. This defines our situation historically and sets limits to what we can do. It would be nice to think of peace, for example, but this is out of the question. It is excluded as an option by historical conditions. Peace can be achieved only by destroying capitalism.
The casualties from this war, on our side, long ago reached astronomical sums. It is estimated that thirty million people perished during the first century of the capitalist invasion of the Americas, including millions of Africans who were worked to death as slaves. Thousands of peasants died in the great revolts in France and Germany in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During the enclosures movement in England and during the first wave of industrialization, hundreds of thousands of people died needlessly. African slaves died by the millions (an estimated fifteen million) during the Atlantic crossing. Hundreds of poor people were hanged in London in the early nineteenth century to enforce the new property laws. During the Paris uprising of 1871, 30,000 communards were slaughtered. Twenty million were lost in Stalin’s Gulag, and millions more perished during the 1930s when the Soviet state expropriated the land and forced the collectivization of agriculture, an event historically comparable to the enclosures in England (and thus the Bolsheviks destroyed one of the greatest peasant revolutions of all time). Thousands of militants were murdered by the German police during the near revolution in Germany and Austria in 1919. Thousands of workers and peasants were killed during the Spanish Civil War. Hitler killed 10 million people in the camps (including six million Jews in the gas chambers). An estimated 200,000 labor leaders, activists, and citizens have been murdered in Guatemala since the coup in 1954. Thousands were lost in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Half-a-million communists were massacred in Indonesia in 1975. Millions of Vietnamese were killed by French and American capitalists during decades of colonialism. And how many were killed during British capital’s subjugation of India, and during capitalist Europe’s colonization of Asia and Africa? A major weapon of capitalists has always been to simply murder those who are threatening their rule. Thousands were killed by the contras and death squads in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Thousands were murdered in Chile by Pinochet during his counter-revolution, after the assassination of Allende. Speaking of assassinations – Patrice Lumumba, Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Gramsci (died in prison), Ricardo Flores Magon (died in prison), Che Guevara, Gustav Landauer, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Hampton, George Jackson, the Chicago anarchists, Amilcar Cabral, Steve Biko, Karl Liebnicht, Nat Turner, and thousands more. Thousands are being murdered every year now in Colombia. Thousands die every year in the workplace in the United States alone. Eighty thousand die needlessly in hospitals every year in the United States due to malpractice and negligence. Fifty thousand die every year in automobile accidents in the US, deaths directly due to deliberate capitalist decisions to scuttle mass transit in favor of an economy based on oil, roads, and cars (unsafe cars to boot). Thousands have died in mines since capitalism began. Millions of people are dying right now, every year, from famines directly attributable to capitalists, and from diseases easily prevented but for capitalists. Nearly all poverty-related deaths are because of capitalists. We cannot begin to estimate the stunted, wasted, and shortened lives caused by capitalists. Not to even mention the millions of us who have died fighting their stupid little world wars, and their equally stupid colonial wars. (This enumeration is very far from being complete.)
Capitalists (generically speaking) are not merely thieves. They are murderers. Their theft and murder is on a scale never seen before in history, a scale so vast it boggles the mind. Capitalists make Alexander, Caesar, Genghis, and Attila look like boy scouts. This is a terrible enemy we face.
I can just hear the cries of protest now that we cannot blame all this on capitalists, Hitler’s holocaust as well as Stalin’s Gulag, racial murders as well as famines. I can and I do, and if this were another essay than it is, I could present reasoned arguments and evidence to back up this claim.

Portuguese translation:

Capitalismo é Barbarie

O poder militar da classe dominante capitalista é evidentemente um obstáculo óbvio ao estabelecimento de bairros democráticos, autônomos. A habilidade que os capitalistas tem para simplesmente nos assassinar, se quiserem, para proteger seus lucros, realmente é apavorante. Não obstante, embora esse poder de fogo prevaleça, não é invencível. Podemos derrota-lo.

Nunca devemos nos esquecer que estamos em guerra, e essa guerra já dura 500 anos. Estamos envolvidos em uma guerra de classes. Isto define nossa situação historicamente e delimita o papel que podemos desempenhar. Seria ótimo pensar em paz, por exemplo, mas isto está fora de questão. Esta opção está excluída pelas condições históricas. A paz só pode ser alcançada pela destruição do capitalismo.

As vítimas desta guerra, do nosso lado, remonta a somas astronômicas, e não é de hoje que isso acontece. Calcula-se que trinta milhões de pessoas pereceram durante o primeiro século da invasão capitalista das Americas, inclusive milhões de africanos que morreram como escravos. Milhares de camponeses morreram nas grandes revoltas na França e Alemanha nos séculos XVI e XVII. Durante o movimento dos documentos na Inglaterra e durante a primeira onda de industrialização, morreram centenas de milhares de pessoas desnecessariamente. Escravos africanos morreram aos milhões (algumas estimativas chegam a quinze milhões) durante o cruzamento Atlântico. Centenas de pessoas pobres foram enforcadas em Londres no princípio do século XIX para forçar o povo a aceitar as novas leis de propriedade. Durante a insurreição de Paris de 1871, foram mortos 30.000 comunardos. Vinte milhões de vidas se perderam no Gulag de Stalin, e milhões mais pereceram nos anos trinta quando o estado soviético desapropriou a terra e forçou a coletivização da agricultura, um evento historicamente comparável ao dos documentos na Inglaterra (dessa forma, os bolcheviques destruíram uma das maiores revoluções camponesas de todos os tempos). Milhares de militantes foram assassinados pela polícia alemã durante na eminência da revolução na Alemanha e

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