Mike Harman

@mikeharman
27 Followers
34 Following
23 Posts
https://libcom.org/blog/mike-harman
Mike HarmanAug 24, 2018
Joseph is not hereAug 23, 2018

#SouthAfrica

Both white supremacists like Trump and capitalist managers like Cyril Ramaphosa's ANC are profiting from hyping supposed expropriation of white-owned farms.

But that's not what's happening. And those that are expropriating land for the poor - like Abahlali baseMjondolo - are facing heavy state repression, including murder by ANC heavies.

This from libcom is a few months old but still cuts through the hype.

https://libcom.org/news/real-land-expropriation-movement-south-africa-03032018

Mike HarmanAug 23, 2018
Pretty sure Makhan Singh wrote this history of the workers movement in Kenya knowing he'd get shot or re-arrested if he came out too strongly against Kenyatta.
https://libcom.org/library/jomo-kenyatta-post-war-labour-party-strikes-pass-system-makhan-singh
Mike HarmanAug 23, 2018
blues and the abstract tootAug 22, 2018
@false_dmitry
Arise you tweeters from your slumbers
Arise you criminals of beef
No reason is there to chase numbers
Turn over a new leaf
Cast off the fascists and the journos
From your shitposts arise, arise!
Forget the dunks and the sick burn-os
And cat pics will be the prize.....
Show threadMike HarmanAug 21, 2018
For example Ian Henderson, a British police officer who caught Mau Mau/KLFA General Kimathi in Kenya, went almost directly to Bahrain in 1966 as head of the intelligence service, and continued in post after independence until 1993.
Show threadMike HarmanAug 21, 2018
Marx was writing the history of capitalism and industrialisation in Western Europe in the 1860s, as it was happening. You don't get a decent treatment of colonialism until CLR James' Black Jacobins in the '30s - although to be fair colonisation was still actively happening in the 1930s too.
Show threadMike HarmanAug 21, 2018
Another example would be how the language used for secessionist movements like Catalonia is almost identical to that used for anti-colonial ones (national liberation, self-determination) when there is really nothing in common there. This conflation goes right back to 2nd international and Rosa vs Lenin afaict or at least the way those arguments get used since.
Show threadMike HarmanAug 21, 2018
One of the worst examples recently was popular French ultra-leftist Gilles Dauve claiming that forced labour peaked in the 18th century and was pushed out if the production process by mechanisation/industrialisation, which is the exact opposite of what happened. https://libcom.org/blog/dauve-versus-marx-31072018
Mike HarmanAug 21, 2018
Been thinking a lot recently about how so many people (but particularly marxists and anarchists) lack a working understanding of colonialism and its role in the development of capitalism as a world system. Have spent a decent chunk of the past two years trying to fill a lot of gaps in the libcom archive, but this self-reproduces in that most of the texts are in academic journals or books.
Mike HarmanAug 21, 2018
It's good to see lots of British commie twitter people on here, but is it because I've only been on for an hour, or are all the USians still on the birdsite or on other instances or something?
Mike HarmanAug 21, 2018
OK #introduction time. I'm Mike, I do various things for libcom.org in my spare time. Haven't used my personal account on the birdsite for quite some time so trying things out here. Been reading a lot about Africa's colonisation and decolonisation recently (Algeria and Kenya mainly). Not much into writing about myself.