Nelson Mandela has died...

[Left-Wing Nutjob]

Didn't see a thread about it...it's all over the news.

[Remus Bleys]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/nelson-mandela-dead-t185590/index.html?t=185590

[Remus Bleys]

Yeah that's a good idea.
I think nelson mandela was a bourgeois nationalists and leftist support him because they uncritically support anyone who claims to be anti racist. I think this is because leftists have become so dismayed at its failures they support even the same people who perpetuate racism, simply because these people are 1) third world and 2) anti racist. But if we are to combat racism, the solution is anti capitalism not bourgeois nationalism.

[blake 3:17]

^^^I don't very often delete posts & that was inoffensive but seeing your post... All my peeps are mourning right now. I was going to link to an article about injustice in South Africa & realized it was in such bad taste. We all know there's great inequality there. In most of the places people are posting from there is great and gross inequality. While single out South Africa when the great Mandela has just passed?

There are years and years to discuss his legacy & mistakes. For most of us in the imperialist countries it makes more sense to look at how our states fucked up South Africa & challenge them on their cutesy response to Mandela's death.

[Remus Bleys]

^^^I don't very often delete posts & that was inoffensive but seeing your post... All my peeps are mourning right now. I was going to link to an article about injustice in South Africa & realized it was in such bad taste. We all know there's great inequality there. In most of the places people are posting from there is great and gross inequality. While single out South Africa when the great Mandela has just passed?

There are years and years to discuss his legacy & mistakes. For most of us in the imperialist countries it makes more sense to look at how our states fucked up South Africa & challenge them on their cutesy response to Mandela's death.

Dod I offend you in any way? You asked that this thread be devoted to more theoretical approach and I gave you one.

And there is nothing wrong with "singling out south africa" I think it would be important to post this article to show what travesty capitalism still causes around the world, and that shits just as bad as it was in the industrial revolution, but that it was just as bad in different places.

[Illegalitarian]

Yeah that's a good idea.
I think nelson mandela was a bourgeois nationalists and leftist support him because they uncritically support anyone who claims to be anti racist. I think this is because leftists have become so dismayed at its failures they support even the same people who perpetuate racism, simply because these people are 1) third world and 2) anti racist. But if we are to combat racism, the solution is anti capitalism not bourgeois nationalism.


I agree 100%, but I think it's a bit unfair to just dismiss Mandela because he did not attempt a socialist reconstruction of South Africa.

I feel the same about Mandela as I did Chavez, Sankara, and the other small handful of leaders who did so much to help change their countries for the better: Did he abolish the capitalist mode of production, empowering the working class to take charge of the society they helped build and maintain? No, but what he did for the working class, for the oppressed of South Africa, was definitely real and definitely positive, and certainly nothing to scoff at.

To me, socialism is about the abolition of inequality in all of its various forms. That's the point of it all, of what we fight for. It's what we hope to see in the world. Mandela was no socialist by any standard, but he certainly did do a lot in his life time to lift many, many people out of poverty, and helped break the oppressive chains of apartheid in his country for millions of oppressed blacks who were leaps and bounds better off after the ANC took power than they once were. Were they "band-aid on cancer" solutions typical of every other bourgeois liberal democracy? Well, yes, and had he worked towards building some form of socialism, permanent solutions would have possibly came to fruition, but he sadly chose a different route, what he most likely saw as the safer route. That does not mean that what he did and the scale he did it on should be taken as some sort of trivial accomplishment, to do so greatly diminishes the importance of his actions to all of those they helped.

It is for that reason that I can't bring myself to merely scoff at what he did just because he didn't do more with the power he was given. I don't hold his model up as one we should all follow, obviously, but to ignore his contributions to the exploited and oppressed people of South Africa comes off as some weird form of dogmatic Marxism to me, just as cold and logical as the neoliberal crowd

[CommieNicole]

He was a great anti aparthied activist, but still wanted capitalism. I do not think he was a socialist like many others seem to think he was, but that should not take away what he did for an oppressed people in South Africa. The ANC is sill fucked up today and South Africa is still bad for the majority of its people, but they no longer face a system that kills people based on skin color. He was a part of that struggle and his life should be celebrated for that.

[JohnnyD]

Hi, this is my first post. Been lurking for years ...

... anyways to cut to the chase. I think Mandela was clearly not part of the militant working class cannon, however, brought about important bourgeois-democratic reforms
that clearly created healthier conditions for the class struggle in SA. Inspite of this , conditions for the working class there have continued to get worse, as a result of the global[/B] race to the bottom. He should be mourned and celebrated for what he was, a petty-bourgeois democratic insurgent.

[Greek Warrior]

Rest In Peace, Nelson Mandela.
He will always be alive in the hearts of those who dream of a better world.

[Ritzy Cat]

He did well. He didn't do what WE wanted him to do, but he did well, and that's good enough to have the legacy he deserves, imo.

[Leo Tyszka]

johnpilger. com/articles/mandelas-greatness-may-be-secured-but-not-his-legacy

(sorry I can't post links)

But since criticism's of Mandela were brought up, I would be interested in seeing opinions on this.


I feel the same about Mandela as I did Chavez, Sankara, and the other small handful of leaders who did so much to help change their countries for the better: Did he abolish the capitalist mode of production, empowering the working class to take charge of the society they helped build and maintain? No, but what he did for the working class, for the oppressed of South Africa, was definitely real and definitely positive, and certainly nothing to scoff at.

This is kinda naive way to view post-apartheid south africa. Yes he got rid of legal apartheid but as the article points out, he kept the apartheid police and forced neoliberal policies and went back on his larger promises made during his struggle against apartheid. He maintained the system of white supremacy but with a different group enforcing it. He reconciled with the colonial oppressors, while the rest of his country still suffered from the effects of apartheid and now his party uses the same apartheid laws to act the miners that they didn't kill.

[Comrade Jacob]

One less legend in the world. Goodbye great man!

[freecommunist]

He did well. He didn't do what WE wanted him to do, but he did well, and that's good enough to have the legacy he deserves, imo.

Yes, he did very well for himself and his family, millionaires after all.

As for the working class of South Africa, they didn't do so well did they.

http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2012-03-01/anc-%E2%80%93-a-hundred-years-in-the-service-of-capital

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Yeah that's a good idea.
I think nelson mandela was a bourgeois nationalists and leftist support him because they uncritically support anyone who claims to be anti racist. I think this is because leftists have become so dismayed at its failures they support even the same people who perpetuate racism, simply because these people are 1) third world and 2) anti racist. But if we are to combat racism, the solution is anti capitalism not bourgeois nationalism.

I don't think the support is entirely uncritical. Apartheid divided the black and white working classes in South Africa, created all sorts of legal barriers to working class organization, and allowed the South African state to become a major force of reaction in the African continent.

I see support of Mandela as similar to support of Lincoln during the Civil War. Lincoln was no Socialist, but his party and faction represented historical change that would do away with the reactionary institution of slavery and open space for black workers to organize politically and economically on their own terms. Of course, Union victory in the Civil War did not end racism in America, but that doesn't mean it wasn't worth it. Thus I think Marx was justified to lend his personal and moral support to Lincoln and the Union.

The good thing is that we as critical thinkers and supporters of the working class can see that the job wasn't finished, and that the struggle against Apartheid was only the first step of a longer struggle. More liberal people make the mistake of thinking Mandela fixed the problems, but we're not so naive. Of course, Lincoln's Republican successors threw the freed slaves under the bus and didn't redistribute the land of the slaveowners, and we can be critical of aspects of the Civil War and reconstruction like that. It seems however that there is a historically necessary struggle to be had against de jure racist structures, even if we know it won't "end" racism and capitalist exploitation. These legalistic structures only further hinder the rights and abilities of the toiling classes of slaves, workers and peasants to organize.

Of course the ANC gets more corrupt by the year, its politicians get richer, and the black bourgeoisie grows. We would have been able to predict that. I don't think it made the struggle against Apartheid counterproductive though, and we can see in the new South Africa there are working class movements rising up in the space created by the overthrow of Apartheid. People see how hypocritical the African Bourgeoisie running the country has become (just look at the current president's multimillion dollar house - which you can't since South Africa banned photographs of it), the mineworkers joining radical unions (and on occasion getting shot while striking), and with the traditional worker's institutions affiliated with the ANC selling their membership out. Mandela's rule didn't end the class struggle in South Africa, but at the same time I think we can respect that the end of Apartheid did bring very real benefits to South African society.

I think Marxists should be able to see too that if ANC rule wasn't ideal, it's not out of a moral failure of Mandela, it's because South Africa retained a bourgeois democracy and all of the social and political realities that entailed. I think we can also see that the narrative of Mandela as a huggable, cuddly, nonviolent liberal who just wanted racial equality and not economic equality or violent revolution is a misguided position sold to us by bourgeois media, and one that really has little basis in reality.

[Nakidana]

he did well, and that's good enough to have the legacy he deserves

:huh:

The more I try to understand this sentence the less sense it makes.

[The Intransigent Faction]

A fairly good commentary by Zizek:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/06/mandelas-socialist-failure/?_r=1

It's also important to remember, though, that just because so many bourgeois politicians offer words of praise doesn't mean we should take them at face value. Hell, even Netanyahu had nice words for him.

[blake 3:17]

Dod I offend you in any way?

Yeah, I was offended by the poor ahistorical theory. Ultra left nonsense is one thing, but it's extra irritating when a loss has just happened.

I think a lot of folks don't have a clue about either the anti-apartheid movement or the international pro-apartheid murderous game.

A quick but very informative piece on the American Right's support for South African apartheid: http://thinkprogress.org/home/2013/12/06/3029871/wing-timeline-mandela/

One of the leading right wing politicians in Canada was an active supporter of South African apartheid as a front line activist -- fucking nutz -- but he has a lot of power... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Clement
http://harpercrusade.blogspot.ca/2010/07/why-do-neoconservatives-hate-nelson.html

I thought this piece was great:


Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel.

Dear revisionists, Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel. Over the next few days you will try so, so hard to make him something he was not, and you will fail. You will try to smooth him, to sandblast him, to take away his Malcolm X. You will try to hide his anger from view. Right now, you are anxiously pacing the corridors of your condos and country estates, looking for the right words, the right tributes, the right-wing tributes. You will say that Mandela was not about race. You will say that Mandela was not about politics. You will say that Mandela was about nothing but one love, you will try to reduce him to a lilting reggae tune. “Let’s get together, and feel alright.” Yes, you will do that.

You will make out that apartheid was just some sort of evil mystical space disease that suddenly fell from the heavens and settled on all of us, had us all, black or white, in its thrall, until Mandela appeared from the ether to redeem us. You will try to make Mandela a Magic Negro and you will fail. You will say that Mandela stood above all for forgiveness whilst scuttling swiftly over the details of the perversity that he had the grace to forgive.
You will try to make out that apartheid was some horrid spontaneous historical aberration, and not the logical culmination of centuries of imperial arrogance. Yes, you will try that too. You will imply or audaciously state that its evils ended the day Mandela stepped out of jail. You will fold your hands and say the blacks have no-one to blame now but themselves.
Well, try hard as you like, and you’ll fail. Because Mandela was about politics and he was about race and he was about freedom and he was even about force, and he did what he felt he had to do and given the current economic inequality in South Africa he might even have died thinking he didn’t do nearly enough of it. And perhaps the greatest tragedy of Mandela’s life isn’t that he spent almost thirty years jailed by well-heeled racists who tried to shatter millions of spirits through breaking his soul, but that there weren’t or aren’t nearly enough people like him.
Because that’s South Africa now, a country long ago plunged headfirst so deep into the sewage of racial hatred that, for all Mandela’s efforts, it is still retching by the side of the swamp. Just imagine if Cape Town were London. Imagine seeing two million white people living in shacks and mud huts along the M25 as you make your way into the city, where most of the biggest houses and biggest jobs are occupied by a small, affluent to wealthy group of black people. There are no words for the resentment that would still simmer there.
Nelson Mandela was not a god, floating elegantly above us and saving us. He was utterly, thoroughly human, and he did all he did in spite of people like you. There is no need to name you because you know who you are, we know who you are, and you know we know that too. You didn’t break him in life, and you won’t shape him in death. You will try, wherever you are, and you will fail.


http://www.okwonga.com/?p=869

[Misericordia]

Good riddance. Hope he burns in hell for backstabbing the working classes.

[blake 3:17]

https://24.media.tumblr.com/4234786e465bb067316d10ef19b010f8/tumblr_mxfc6cdU5v1sop0l0o1_1280.jpg

It's amazing a man could inspire people half a world away for a 70th birthday.

[Remus Bleys]

Yeah, I was offended by the poor ahistorical theory. Ultra left nonsense is one thing, but it's extra irritating when a loss has just happened.
Oh okay. :rolleyes:


I think a lot of folks don't have a clue about either the anti-apartheid movement or the international pro-apartheid murderous game. This is unfortunately true.


A quick but very informative piece on the American Right's support for South African apartheid: http://thinkprogress.org/home/2013/12/06/3029871/wing-timeline-mandela/
Thinkprogress? Really? And of course the right supported the apartheid.

One of the leading right wing politicians in Canada was an active supporter of South African apartheid as a front line activist -- fucking nutz -- but he has a lot of power... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Clement
http://harpercrusade.blogspot.ca/2010/07/why-do-neoconservatives-hate-nelson.htmlBeing hated by the right =/= not being a bourgeois-nationalist

american right hates hugo chavez too


Good riddance. Hope he burns in hell for backstabbing the working classes.
2edgy4me2handle

[Comrade-AJK]

As somebody who lives in South Africa, I would just like to point out that Nelson Mandela was sent to prison, because he used violent revolutionary tactics against the racist government. he supported the freedom charter, which declared that the land and wealth of our country shall be shared amongst those who live and work in SA, regardless of race. Him and the other ANC leaders abandoned these socialist principles in order to achieve a peaceful transition to democracy, which would not cost the lives of innocent members of the black working class. i'm not saying that was the right decision, but it deserves to be said nonetheless

[blake 3:17]

Thanks AJK. It's easy for revolutionaries to preach civil war in other countries. I try to follow the advice given to the Italian Communist Party by the Vietnamese NLF -- you want to help? Make your own revolution.


Belows a link to an article critical of Mandela as president, and some of the deals made by the ANC. It is important to appreciate the over determining role of the IMF and World Bank.

http://http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/06/the-mandela-years-in-power/

[blake 3:17]

Nelson Mandela: neither sell-out nor saint
Mandela saved my country from a bloodbath, but his focus on the symbols of reconciliation was at the expense of real economic reform in South Africa

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/06/nelson-mandela-statesman-saved-south-africa-economic-reform

[ed miliband]

Yeah, I was offended by the poor ahistorical theory. Ultra left nonsense is one thing, but it's extra irritating when a loss has just happened.

hahaaha, weren't you proclaiming yourself the "right-wing of the ultra-left" a few months ago? :laugh:

[Devrim]

Nelson Mandela: neither sell-out nor saint
Mandela saved my country from a bloodbath, but his focus on the symbols of reconciliation was at the expense of real economic reform in South Africa

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/06/nelson-mandela-statesman-saved-south-africa-economic-reform

I think 'bloodbath' is how these people refer to revolution.

Devrim

[Per Levy]

oh well, a few years ago i was very ill and was sat on a sofa with a running tv, after some time i came across a documantary about mandela, sadly the best stuff that run at that time. it was a lovely docu that tried to be as unpolitcal as possible and cared much for mandelas private life and all that. one small little part of that documantary stuck into my head till this day, it was only a few seconds long and the most political that was said in that documantary. a black washerwoman was asked about mandela, she said that "nothing changed for them but that it was good that he was president". that to me says it all pretty much and it is no wonder why every liberal in the world and even conservatives love mandela. hey clinton and bush jr will go to his funeral.

[blake 3:17]

I think 'bloodbath' is how these people refer to revolution.

Devrim

These people? His name is Zakes Mda.

[Devrim]

These people? His name is Zakes Mda.

I meant these sort of people. I don't really care what his name is. Mandela saved capitalism in South Africa. There is a reason that the entire world bourgeoise is trying to beatify him at the moment. The one thing these people were terrified of was revolution, which they typify as a bloodbath.

Devrim

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I meant these sort of people. I don't really care what his name is. Mandela saved capitalism in South Africa. There is a reason that the entire world bourgeoise is trying to beatify him at the moment. The one thing these people were terrified of was revolution, which they typify as a bloodbath.

Devrim

I don't think it was Mandela alone that "saved capitalism" in South Africa. If anything I would say a bigger factor in "saving capitalism" was that Apartheid fell at around the same time as the fall of the USSR and the freeing of the Chinese market - events which greatly weakened most socialist movements around the world outside of some tiny outposts in Latin America, even weakening those which in no way associated themselves with the Soviet government. Mandela could have been a radical communist (of course he wasn't, but he did have some socialist sympathies) and he still would have ended up leading a Capitalist country simply because of the historical context. From what I understand he was even one of the more radical members of the ANC - the ANC just ignored the more radical demands in favor of business interests.

Also it's unclear that a bloody revolution in South Africa would really have overturned Capitalism. We've had plenty of bloody revolutions which just resulted in a ton of people mourning their dead relatives while slaving away for new Capitalist masters.

The real situation that I think people see Mandela as having "saved" people from was racial bloodshed where different tribal groups lashed out against one another and both the white and Indian minority, without actually overturning the means of production. The history of events like that go back to the Haitian revolution. Some charismatic and intelligent leaders bring people into a state of resistance against racist rule, the racist elites are butchered, and a new elite from within the previously discriminated against demographic takes over. At least now black and white workers can organize together without legal and social discrimination dividing the working class.

[Devrim]

I don't think it was Mandela alone that "saved capitalism" in South Africa.
Yes, of course you are right. When we think about the real Mandella, and not the hagiographies which are being written about him today, he was a pretty second-rate guerrilla leader, who got transformed into a international figure whilst imprisoned. He came out of prison,and went into the Presidency. He was obviously a 'figurehead'. An organisation such as the ANC, with a tradition of collective leadership, did not just invest one man, and one man in his mid-seventies, who had spent the last twenty-seven years in prison with some sort of autocratic power.


Also it's unclear that a bloody revolution in South Africa would really have overturned Capitalism. We've had plenty of bloody revolutions which just resulted in a ton of people mourning their dead relatives while slaving away for new Capitalist masters.

Of course, but you could equally say that about all revolutions before they happen. Revolution is always a risk.


The real situation that I think people see Mandela as having "saved" people from was racial bloodshed where different tribal groups lashed out against one another and both the white and Indian minority, without actually overturning the means of production. The history of events like that go back to the Haitian revolution. Some charismatic and intelligent leaders bring people into a state of resistance against racist rule, the racist elites are butchered, and a new elite from within the previously discriminated against demographic takes over. At least now black and white workers can organize together without legal and social discrimination dividing the working class.

Yes, this could have happened. There could also have been a workers' revolution. It is impossible to know.

I don't think though that the question of black and white workers organising together was of crucial importance. The white population is a tiny minority in South Africa (less than 10% of the total), and its percentage of the working class was obviously even smaller. Some workers will always side with the regime against the class struggle. I don't think the fact that the majority of a tiny minority (the white working class) almost certainly would have, would have ruled out whatever possibilities there may have been for workers' revolution.

Devrim

[blake 3:17]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided not to attend a memorial service for Nelson Mandela this week because it is too expensive to travel to South Africa, Israeli media reported Sunday.

Netanyahu had notified the South African authorities that he would fly in but cancelled his plans at the last minute due to the costs involved -- around 7.0 million shekels ($2 million) for his transport and security alone, pubic radio and the Haaretz daily reported.

"The decision was made in light of the high transportation costs resulting from the short notice of the trip and the security required for the prime minister in Johannesburg," Haaretz reported.

The Israeli leader has been in the spotlight recently with revelations that taxpayers dished out almost $1 million last year to maintain his three residences.

The media highlighted a bill of 17,000 euros ($23,000) for water to fill a swimming pool at his villa in Caesarea in the country's north.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/09/netanyahu-mandela-memorial_n_4409875.html

[Remus Bleys]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/09/netanyahu-mandela-memorial_n_4409875.html
Oh look, he is opposed to Israel and thus a radical! Is that really the point of this argument? I sure hope not.

Anyway, didn't you post about how none of us "know what it's like to live in the third world" and aren't you from Canada.

[CharliePounds]

There's an interesting text about the funeral and about Mandela called "Mandela can go to hell!" on the "Dialectical Delinquents" site.

Here are some extracts:
The function of the circus put on now for the funeral of Mandela in South Africa by the world’s dominant powers is to try to implant in the spectators’ heads the idea that capitalism can reform itself, can make progress, through “reconciliation” of formerly antagonistic forces. It is designed, once again, to reconcile the poor to those who keep them poor, smothering them in some transcendent fog where the only thing visible is Mandela’s smile whose charm is meant to induce amnesia about any significant contradiction. Judgement of people on the basis purely of their personality is generally a flight from looking beneath the surface, , which would entail a judgement on their relation to class society.. Whilst the intensified commodification of everything and the constant reinforcement of state power and the market economy everywhere creates ever-worsening disasters both on the ecological level and in the everyday lives of the vast majority behind the scenes, on stage the show must go on. We are everywhere encouraged to forget history in order to gaze admiringly on “the giant of history”, the man who, apparently, ended apartheid and improved the lot of millions of blacks. “History” is for the “Great”, not for nothings like you and me. The truth of the past and present of South Africa and elsewhere is photoshopped out of the picture. But in the real world, as a recent Oxfam report said, South Africa is “the most unequal country on earth and significantly more unequal than at the end of apartheid”....

It’s no coincidence that this almost overwhelming show - the world’s biggest funeral ever - is taking place during an epoch when, once again, proletarians are expressing their anger everywhere. The global show of unity in false memory of the dead – aimed at distracting from the real struggle for life by the living. The spectacle is, as ever, the rulers’ most insidious stun grenade, making everyone see stars as they fall into unconsciousness. Mandela is constantly evoked by the world’s rulers as a model for correct forms of “opposition” as much as by some of the world’s ruled. ”What cannot be done, as Mandela has taught us, is to sow hatred. Oppositions are a sign of democracy, but you should not stir up, nor exploit the anger and discontent or fuel dangerous feelings,” said an Italian politician about the wildcat strike and independent social movement spreading across Italy this week (see here). But for the masses of individuals attacked by the brutal power of the economy, by its ideologies, cops and armies, to evoke Mandela means repressing such feelings and repressing the acts that develop from them, which truly are dangerous to the hierarchical social relations embodied in bourgeois democracy.

When Mandela is evoked by the poor, it’s usually as support for some illusion of pacifist civil disobedience attributed to him (even though some of the ANC bombs during the 80s killed innocent bystanders). For example, this. Because the spectators remain above all external to history, they feel the need, particularly when the conflicts of present society have hit them directly, for their gestures of “opposition” to be embodied in mythological heroes, like St. Nelson, who represent history for them. Christ used to be essential to the Christian mentality because he is the subjective incarnation connecting Earth with heaven; he is the external being who makes the Christian mentality possible because it is the Earth that constitutes for Christianity the actual inaccessible heaven. The function of “the meek shall inherit the Earth” mentality for social relations on the Earth is to repress the recognition that the gates of heaven can only be stormed by furiously storming the Winter Palaces of the rich and powerful, and at the same time storming the palaces of richness and power that each individual potentially possesses. But for the ordinary submissive mentality “revolutionary” heroes like Mandela literally perform the function of Christ, and you don’t need to be a Christian to have a Christian mentality, to be hypnotised by the forces relentlessly promoting such an icon. The romantic vision of a “Giant of History” carries out, through the sacred person of the hero, the union of terrestrial triviality with the heaven of universal history. Zuma said, “Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father.” Only the Holy Ghost remains, haunting the living. And anyone who says “Mandela can go to hell” is a blaspheming heretic who should be burnt at the stake.

“Hanging on the walls of the house I had pictures of Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Gandhi … I explained to the boys who each of the men was, and what he stood for.” (Long Walk to Freedom p240). In this autobiography Mandela declared that he “…had always been a Christian” (p620). It’s not in any way contradictory that this Christian used to have a picture of Stalin on his wall. Christians generally try to emulate or imitate Christ, just as Leftists evoke some other icon or other. The Bolsheviks were great pioneers in this type of cultifying: Lenin declared that to really be a Marxist one should always ask oneself, “What would Marx have thought and done in this situation?” Today one can find people protesting against this and that ignorantly using the image of Mandela to substitute for their own words and ideas. It’s no coincidence that the current global spectacle, with its tendency to pick up ideas and practices from, and unify, all previous forms of hierarchical power, particularly those developing capital accumulation, should today find itself united in its eulogy to a former Stalinist-turned-neoliberal. Christ, Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Gandhi, Mandela – the need for “radical” heroes tears us away from our own rebellious initiatives, and ends up crushing and co-opting every independent initiative. The need for rebel role models, for external authorities in pretensions to changing the world, imbued in some glow of perfection (though the content varies between the different forms necessary for each geographical place and epoch) is based on the maintenance of the utter nothingness of the lives of the admirers. Such an emptiness expresses the brutal powerlessness imposed by the self-same system they fail to set their minds and bodies against, the system that erects and resurrects the need for heroes and saints, particularly ones that are integral to the system, as Christ, Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Gandhi and Mandela, all in their different ways, most clearly were.

PS This is my first post, so I am not able to put up links, hence the formulation that seems a little strange without a link - "from here".

[freecommunist]

The link to the full article http://dialectical-delinquents.com/?page_id=4599 :)

[blake 3:17]

Our silence over Mandela’s support for Palestinians: Siddiqui
The word “Palestinan” was studiously avoided in the blanket coverage of the Nelson Mandela funderal, even though he was an unwavering supporter of the Palestinian cause.
...
About the argument that Israel is not the old South Africa, she has written: “Israel is not identical to South Africa. But that does not mean it is not an apartheid state. In fact, there are over 50 Israeli laws that discriminate against Palestinians … There are different rights and privileges for different categories of people that determine how and where they can live and work, with whom they can associate, where they can travel, whether they can live with their spouse, and so on. Permits for Palestinians to travel beyond their assigned areas are stringently controlled.”
The point was also made in June by the retired South African ambassador to Israel, Ismail Coovadia. Unlike Stephen Harper, who plans to visit a bird sanctuary in Israel named after him by the Jewish National Fund, Coovadia rejected the planting of trees in his honour by the Fund: “I cannot be a proponent of what I’ve witnessed in Israel — a replication of apartheid.”
Mandela initially believed in Gandhian non-violence but took up arms in the 1960s, saying “there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon.”
He was the first commander of the military wing of the ANC, the Spear of the Nation, which hit power stations and planted bombs and landmines, and carried out some acts of violence against civilians, to little effect.
But once he won, he did not make an issue of Israel’s ties with the apartheid regime. He accepted the legitimacy of Zionism, while upholding the rights of Palestinians: “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians. All of us need to do more in supporting the struggle of the people of Palestine for self-determination.”
In 1994, on the first weekend after his election as president, he visited a Cape Town synagogue. He appealed to South African Jewish expatriates to return home to help build the new nation, but made an exception for “those Jews who left for their homeland,” Israel.
He had always been close to South African Jews. His first boss was Jewish — Lazer Sidelsky, who hired him as a law clerk in the 1940s. (On his 1999 visit to Israel, Mandela met Sidelsky’s son, Barry).
Mandela acknowledged that Jews were “disproportionately represented among our white compatriots in the liberation struggle.” In his 1994 autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, he wrote: “I have found Jews to be more broad-minded than most whites on issues of race and politics.”
That liberal streak can be seen in the reaction to Netanyahu’s decision not go to the Mandela funeral, citing the high cost of the trip.
The prime minister was signalling that Israel “does not consider a man like Nelson Mandela … worth the price of a plane flight,” wrote Bradley Burston in the Israeli daily Haaretz. “With a wink and a nod to the settler right, the academic rabid right, and the KKK-esque far right, Netanyahu is sending an even stronger message: ‘This is where I stand on this Palestinian-lover, Mandela. And this is where I stand on his Palestinian-lover heirs.’”

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/12/21/our_silence_over_mandelas_support_for_palestinians _siddiqui.html