Libya : People's power + vast oil reserves = ???

Interestingly enough, popular committees are running the eastern
cities of Libya and are attempting to coordinate their actions. That's
one of the many good things to come out of Gadaffi's downfall : people's
assemblies have become tools ready to be used by genuine ... people.
But to what extent will the new tribal chiefs, military officers, former ministers, jurists, imams and "intellectuals" that have recently come to prominence be ultimately accountable before and controlled by the popular assemblies in their respective localities ? And what about
Socialism in such an oil-rich country ?

For the time being, each city's local council is ensuring the arrival of food
and supplies, setting up communications, getting local electricty plants
to function normally and providing for their local defense needs by having army
units and anti-Gaddafi fighters organize themselves into a coherent
local defense militia.
Moreover, Socialism appears to be an accepted idea, as all citizens
are aware that they get their wealth from oil, and that the proceeds of
such wealth should come back to the people.
So despite all the flux of civil war, the citizens of Libya have got two
ideas clearly in mind : a) local government answerable to the people and
b) ownership of the billions of dollars of proceeds from oil.
They feel Gaddafi failed them on both a) and b). But, alas, once a new
pro-Western government comes into place, they will once again be
deprived from a) and b). But maybe that's why there is so much chaos in
Libya, as the people do have a pretty good idea of a) and b) and will
not be relinquishing their weapons soon.
Libya could become an interesting experiment in people's power. If, of course,
a new government and corrupt officials intent on stealing the oil wealth for themselves
(and foreign interests) don't step in and take charge. Let's see how the class
struggle unfolds in Libya.

Marxism and Buddhism

Buddhism and Marxism have quite a good deal in common.

On Marxmail, Greg McDonald wrote :

Buddhists have lots of good ideas, if you can
separate the wheat from the chaff.

Agreed. Both are materialist philosophies, both hold inter-personal relationships as
the material basis for causality, both downplay the role of the individual ego and
ascribe it to a nexus of factors caused by external causality, both envision
change as a complex, dialectical process.
The main difference of course, is that Buddhism, while sympathetic to Marxism,
sees a change within the relationships of production as insufficient to achieve
true "enlightenment". Buddhism focuses on the recognition by an individual that
his/her "self" does not really exist but is the result of attachment to identity brought
about by external sensory stimuli. There is no "me", there is just constant
thought brought about by external stimuli.
Marxists, while regarding this emphasis on understanding the non-existence of the ego as
irrelevant, will have nothing to object to Buddhist psychology as such.
Stimuli-like/dislike-craving/hatred-idea of "self"-reaction-new inter-personal causality which
restarts the cycle. The only way to freedom is not through God, according to Buddhists, but through
recognizing that the "self" is not static, but a process of stimuli/reaction ."Letting go of attachments" is the way to happiness according to Buddhism.
This is a very, very long process (dozens of years of arduous self-reflection), before an individual can attain "nirvana".

God, Materialism and the Bible

First posted on Marxmail.

The old testament contains many, many strata, written at very different 
stages, in extremely varied circumstances. It is a complex document that 
cannot be easily resumed as "the triumph of private property and 
patriarchy".
In fact, at its core, there is a certain tilting of the Old Testament 
towards pastoralism, visible in the importance given to sheep and the 
fact that Jews had to pay "compensation" for the lives of their sons by 
sacrificing lambs (redemption through lamb sacrifice) "in exchange" for 
a son :

Exodus 13:2 "Consecrate to me every firstborn male. The first offspring 
of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether man or animal.

And every first male thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if thou wilt not 
redeem it, then thou shalt break his neck: and all the firstborn of man 
among thy children shalt thou redeem.

and it came to pass, when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, that the LORD 
slew all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man, 
and the firstborn of beast: therefore I sacrifice to the LORD all that 
openeth the matrix, being males; but all the firstborn of my children I 
redeem.
"

Hence the tradition of redeeming a male son with the sacrifice of a 
lamb, which in modern judaism is merely symbolical.

This equivalence between lamb and first male son is thus deeply present 
in Judaism and by extension Christianity ("Jesus is the lamb of God sent 
to reddeem through his blood the sins of mankind").. It goes back to 
very old practices among the pastoral tribes that would later be 
amalgamted within the so-called "Israelites".

Of course, the Old Testament then goes on to give a spurious 
"explanation" for such practices through the imaginary history of the 
flight from Egypt, a narrative that provides an explanation for daubing 
the door of the dwelling with lamb-blood (to ward of the spirit of the 
Lord who comes looking for the first-born child), celebrating PAssover 
(bitter herbs, lambs business, because of the great hast to escape the 
PAhroah's army) and quite a few other, otherwise "unexplainable" 
elements in Jewish folklore (ritual cleanliness for example).

The Old Testament thus contains a lot of evidence regarding the original 
nature of the various "Jewish" tribes that came to Palestine from the 
2nd millenium BC onward : they were pastoralists, whose mythology was 
overwhelmingly centered around sheep-rearing and for whom the 
lamb-conception season (easter) was of primordial importance. No triumph 
of agriculture, but a very slow, and begrudging transition from pastoral 
nomadism to settled cultivation.

The redeeming through a  lamb instead of the sacrifice of a  human babe, 
the symbolical equivalence of lamb and male chile, the notion of 
sacrifice (remember Isaac) is common to many pastoralist societies 
around the globe. That it left an imprint so profound (through the idea 
of "redemption" and eventually to that of Christ's "sacrifice") in later 
re-writings of the Old Testament myths (6th to 3rd century BC, when the 
inhabitants of Palestine were agriculturists and no longer nomads), is 
proof enough of the persistence of Pastoral and nomadic motives in the OT.

So I wouldn't say that the OT is the triumph of Private property over 
Pastoralism (which is quite Patriarchal by the way, the head of the 
family being in complete control !), but rather the re-interpretation, 
over several centuries, of Palestinian mythology and it's re-fitting 
into an agriculturist society. Two millenia of lamb/first-born son 
redemption (equivalence) symbolism still stubbornly refusing to adapt to 
new conditions. Right into the 1century BC (or 20th century AD for that 
matter). What more proof do you need that mythological/symbolical 
structures are incredibly resistant to change, and persist long after 
the mode of production that gave rise to them has ceesed to exist. The 
old concepts they contain are still operative, even though the actual 
content has long-ago vanished. And are still capable of being 
incorporated (even create) new beliefs.