presentation on why nuclear power is no answer to climate change at: http:// mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/ smith280311.html An ecosocialist response starts from the understanding that the twin issues of nuclear power and climate change are intimately tied up with the question of class power. The capitalist class uses its power to make profits from the sale of energy, despoliation of the environment and the poisoning of the working class and the oppressed. Challenging them on nuclear power is part of the process of removing that class from political power. • For an expansion of this argument see http://www.isg-fi.org.uk/spip. php?article608, but to give an example on costs, Helen Caldicott in her book "Nuclear Power is Not the Answer" claims that federal subsidies to nuclear power were $15.3 per kilowatt hour for 15 years, quoting a source called the Renewable Energy Policy Project. That's equivalent to the government paying $15.3 million subsidy for every hour's operation of a 1GW nuclear reactor. Such basic errors -and it is by no means the only one in her book - make her book appear amateur and (Many of the ideas in this article are taken from a document of the International Marxist Group from 1980, which is available here: http://redmolerising. wordpress.com/2011/03/25/revolutionary-marxism-and-nuclear-power)
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* Reviews Bob: what we owe him and him us Piers Mostyn Is it possible to add to the respectful and fulsome coverage without simply adding to the iconography? We are so used to the overhyping of stars, particularly of yesteryear, purely for commercial or ideological ends. opposite: kitsch and cliche. The effect is to discourage a critical engagement with the world and provide a palliative, a secular version of the opium of the reconceived as outrider of freemarketeering to sell phones and so on. Political soul rebels whose artistry provided the soundtrack to militant anti-war and black struggle are used to providing a distraction from the stress and grind of 21st It has become very hard, in consuming popular culture of decades past, to distinguish the commercial re-packaging remained stubbornly resistant to all that. Sure he's made a packet, he once advertised Pepsi and struck a marketing deal with Starbucks. But he's remained largely immune from artistic corruption - both regarding his legacy and his His songs - complex, metaphorladen, full of irony, wit and erudition have by and large option. He hasn't been derailed or become a living museum of
his past - unlike nearly every
other popular artist, including
establishment" any more, but he's "beaten the system". He's kept going, creating new wonderful material, endlessly ploughing his field with a "Never Ending Tour", following succumbing to the demands of It would have been impossible years, without some wobbles: Christianity and a 15 year run of poor music from the mid1970s and late 1980s." But It is his early material that he is best known for and with good reason. He gave radical voice to the 1960s, ahead of the curve, pumping out incendiary political pieces like "Hard Rain" and calls to the barricades like "The Times They Are A Changing". His identification with anti-racism people is something that very few popular white artists have ever approached. This legacy is powerful. John Lennon, Bob Marley, Christy Moore and many others owe much to him. He refused to be treated as an icon or anointed leader of that generation, aware of the limitations of 1960s culture. He took a jaded distance from it well before its peak - famously not attending the Woodstock festival even though it was just up the road from his home. This critical stance and his willingness to confront even his loyal fans' conservatism made him a precursor of punk a decade before it happened. His music has never abandoned his engagement with critical social and political commentary, as Hurricane in the 1970s and Everything Is Broken in the 1980s showed. In the fine Working Man's
35 Blues #2 on his 2006 Modern Times album he anticipated not only the age of austerity, but also the struggle against it, singing, "the buying power of the proletariat's going down/ money's getting shallow and weak" and "You can hang back or fight your best on the front line." With his dense lyrics, multilayered references and puzzles, he introduces us to a world of complexity and confusion. A stark contrast to the anthemic triumphalism of much rock music that conveys a message that everything's OK and basically what it seems; you don't have to look deeper. The breadth of his influence mirrors the rich range of influences he draws on. In particular the blues and folk traditions of narrative song to express the pain and joy of existence. But also poetry, jazz, the European cabaret of Brecht/Weill and poetry. Dylan's own self-description is as a "link in the chain". Socialist politics was also a rich source material. His homage to leftie troubadour Woody Guthrie is well known. There was also Pete Seeger and Leadbelly - whose "Bourgeois Blues" was a scathing attack on the nexus of racism and class at the heart of the American state. Dylan's partner Suzi Rotolo was another leftist credited by him with radicalising his music. Dylan's first manager, Terri Thali, and her husband the folk singer Dave Van Ronk were active socialists. Van Ronk was, around that time, associated with the US
Socialist Workers Party. It
may well be that Thali was as well. Dylan wrote warmly of them in his memoir Chronicles
as having a major influence
on him, referring to Van
Ronk as talking all day about
political utopias, bourgeois
democracies, Trotskyists,
Marxists and international
workers' orders.
Rock on Bob.