Marximation

This January there was some strange news from China, the airing of a Karl Marx animated series usually called Karl Marx the anime, but actually titled The Leader. There was quite a bit of fuss on news sites and social media, but oddly once episodes started floating around the net it quickly disappeared. It doesn't seem to have gained much traction even in the circles that make image reactions and jokes.

I found a youtube channel that not only uploaded all seven episodes but had also fansubbed the Chinese dialogue into English and Russian. I watched the whole show, and I think I see why it didn't last. Using the channel statistics as a guide, episode one has 100,000+ views, episode 2 though plummeted to 15,000 and the drop continued with the last episode getting around 7,000. There's a lot to untangle so I'm going to break it down a bit.

Expectations

I wasn't expecting much going in, its a biopic of Karl Marx that's seven episodes long. Each episode is around 24 minutes long, but at least four of those minutes are dedicated to credit sequences and a preview of the next episode. I was expecting more of a brief timeline and introduction to his ideas and inspirations. This seems to be what they were aiming for and some episodes mostly live up to this but the rest fall quite short.

The Look

Bluntly the show is very incompetent, both in animation and story structure, it seems to have deliberately gone out of its way to show off how poorly made much of it is. There's no consistency, it switches between 3D and 2D animation styles arbitrarily, the models are extremely janky in movement and stick out from the backgrounds. They often look creepy especially when laughing.

The models are also recycled heavily, Marx doesn't appear to age or change his clothes much from age 17 until the 1850's when he starts to show the beginnings of a beard. His wife Jenny is usually seen wearing her wealthy noblewoman dress and her maid is wearing a sexy formal French maids outfit. The crowds are some of the laziest I've ever seen, a good chunk of multiple episodes are dedicated to Marx giving a speech, and we get reaction shots from the audience, but whats weird is that these audience usually stay motionless until the speech is finished, and then they applaud robotically. Most do not even emote during, and many not in the front row despite being clearly visible often do not have faces.

This is not the worst example of lifeless crowds, this is only the first example. From the first episode, about two minutes in

It looks cheap and its very jarring. Even the show opener highlights many of the worst features of the animation. But what's really strange is that the first episode is the cheapest looking one, every other episode while not perfect is an improvement. Now animations having spikes and drops in quality is nothing unusual, budgets of both time and money can effect production, but I've never known the opening episode to be the one that's the most cheap looking. I honestly had to pause the episode multiple times to process what I was looking at, its not just that it looks bad, it often actively confuses.

An obvious 3D Gatling gun model

One two second cut later, and its transformed

I think the last episode looks the best, and its much easier to follow, but that's mainly because aside from an epilogue it focusses mostly on Marx coming to terms with his age and ill health. The section with him and his wife Jenny was surprisingly quite emotional.

 The Education

I was expecting this to be a brief introduction friendly to people who knew nothing of Karl Marx, and I think that was the intent, but it often falls short. I personally think it might be better to skip episodes 1 and 2 and start with 3, not only do the production values increase but not much is lost. Though later episodes do still have some pretty serious issues. 

It presents the information in small chunks, but sometimes it does so in a way that only makes sense if you already familiar with the topic at hand. The bits on Hegel and Kant are pretty blatant examples. Episode 2 covers the deep impression Hegel made on Marx, particularly the "Dialectic" but it doesn't explain what that is, and both philosophers and many others that pop up in the show are reduced to some very quick summaries that rely on terms that aren't in common usage. 

Another time Marx is outlining his ides on Historical Materialism, and his brief explanation is overlaid random scenes on a street in Brussels, but the connection between what he's saying and the imagery is not made clear.

Episode 5 the highpoint for me, is the best at this, it takes its time explaining some of the passages from Capital, and its framing works in the episode. It also has an effective use of colourful imagery, the Vampire like capitalist relationship. Other than that its main problem is its brief run time, big and important ideas and lessons are briefly mentioned and then everything has moved on.

I picked out this comment to highlight how poor a job it seems to be doing in teaching people about Karl Marx, most of the other comments weren't much better

The Revisionism

This overlaps a lot with both education and looks, but I wanted to make this its own section for clarity sake. While focussed almost exclusively on Marx, -with one exception to be dealt with later- it does reference and introduce, often for less than a minute some of the other political radicals that Marx rubbed shoulders with. Including his criticism of them. with the exception of Ruge whose briefly mentioned before he appears everyone else Marx interacts with just turns up is introduced by a brief name plate, cross swords with Marx and either immediately leaves to be banished for ever, or like Engels sticks around to become his admirer.

Episode 4 takes this to the extreme. Wietling walks into the Marx home, is briefly introduced for his accomplishments, he then talks and moves incredibly smugly, talks about Christian communism for a bit and toasts himself before Marx speaks up. Every part of this scene, the dialogue, the character movements, the facial emotions etc. Is telling the audience to dislike him, but the argument between him and Marx is so quick and surface level its mostly just angry words. The only part of the disagreement that's clear between the two if you don't already know all about their ideas is that Wietling thinks workers allying with the bourgeoisie is a mistake because they are enemies, and Marx disagrees because of his views on history. 

Who was right? Well we're supposed to sympathise with Marx and Wietling literally storms out of his house never to be seen again so I guess that's a win for Marx*. The International Working Men's Association is depicted as being the soul fruit of the labour of Marx, and it largely accords with his views. The reality was that it was diverse body full of people he couldn't stand and didn't fall under his direct control until 1872, when it promptly haemorrhaged members and collapsed.

In episode 6 there is a Marx/Bakunin stand off at the Hague Congress, Marx ridicules Bakunin as a conspirator, Bakunin has no allies, and he and his group are expelled. In reality Bakunin was never at the Hague Congress, Marx's motion to expel Bakunin failed, he was later expelled for questioning the new General Council, and when he left the majority of the membership also left, either to join him or like the other non Marx non Bakunin aligned groups like Blanqui's supporters simply to get away from the direction Marx was driving. The narration and the final episode don't acknowledge this at all, they give the impression that Marx's decision to prevent a split of the international, by well splitting the international was roaring success. 

This episode (heh) demonstrates a key failing in The Leader. Its supposed to be biographical, but it won't tolerate even mild and universally accepted criticism of Marx as political advocate or as a human being. Marx is apparently faultless, when I saw they were including Helene Demuth the maid I wondered if they'd dare depict him getting her pregnant. They didn't, it'd probably get in the way of depicting his relationship with Jenny as a fairy tale romance. His well known binge drinking is also absent, at one point he even criticises other revolutionaries for drinking too much. His behaviour with his enemies real and imagined is always depicted as noble and correct, but it can't go into detail about their opposing views and criticisms even to set up their defeat, so it all comes across as extremely shallow, which also makes Marx the character seem shallow and clueless. Marx never really convinces by the power of his argument, he just registers his dislike and the reactions of the characters does the hard work of presenting this as a victory to the audience.

Self Sabotage

Again this is tied in with all the other examples. A bizarre fault with the show is that it kept undermining what it was trying to achieve. An early scene in episode one that seems based on that famous scene from Good Will Hunting with the Bully, is supposed to establish Karl Marx as a genius but it totally undermines itself. Marx does this by reciting a very simplified explanation of Kant's views on dogmatism and scepticism, which shouldn't be a problem, but this is shown to stump all the other students, and more importantly the scene immediately before that was Karl Marx in a class room listening to his teacher tell him this. So we're supposed to be impressed by his ability to remember basic information told to him three hours earlier.

Another example in episode 3 and 4 they address the poverty of the Marx family, but each time this done while the maid and his wife are onscreen in there expensive clothing, because they were too cheap to update their models. Shortly after criticising Wietling, Marx starts ripping into Kriege's ideas on universal love, specifically the absurd notion that capitalists and lenders can be reached by appeals to their better nature. He's saying all of this to his good friend and dependable comrade Friedrich Engels, whom the show has established is a factory manager, and was moved to become a Communist because witnessing the plight of the working poor appealed to his better nature.

Lest you feel I'm being a bit hard, I personally agree with the criticism of Kriege, its just that The Leader is just giving out mixed signals in its incompetence. 

Last but not least, there's the case of Pierre Proudhon. Engels gives Marx a copy of his Proudhon's new book Philosophy of Poverty. While Marx is holding the book unopened, two random people start throwing out snippets of Proudhon's beliefs. At which point Marx still holding the unopened book starts ranting about Proudhon's "Petits-bourgeois" socialism and declares he will write a criticism called Poverty of Philosophy. It was at this point that I wasn't sure whether some of the instances of self sabotage were deliberate or not, Marx did write Poverty of Philosophy as an attack on Proudhon, and for many years it was considered a masterpiece in Marxist criticism. 

Until people started reading Proudhons book, where it was discovered that many of Marx's criticisms were incredibly inaccurate if not made up.

Propaganda

AKA, the reason this was really made. The Leader isn't really supposed to be an educational text, its made to capitalise on Karl Marx and use his legacy to legitimise the Chinese Communist Party. The CPC fully supported the creation of The Leader, particularly the Propaganda Department of the Communist Youth League and the  Central Office for the Research and Construction of Marxist Theory were involved.

This is the final image of the end credits of every episode. The credits are a timeline of Karl Marx's life so the connections aren't subtle.

It was made and released just before the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx's death, and the first speech Karl Marx gives on the show “Reflections of a Young Man on the Choice of a Profession” was also chosen as an extract for Xi Jinping's speech commemorating the 200th anniversary. 

“If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually be at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people.”

Even the titles for the episodes sound like they were taken from propaganda posters

1. Different Youth
2. Defending the Rights of the People
3. New World View
4. Scientific Socialism Shines Brightly
5. Great Work Das Kapital
6. First International
7. Marx Forever

And of course the name of the series The Leader isn't exactly subtle. But in case you didn't get it the last part of the final episode really drives it home. The ending credits are a timeline of key events in Marx's life, except for episode seven. In that episode the timeline is replaced with a history of Marxism-Leninism, through to the present day in the People's Republic. Complete with a narrator praising Mao Zedong, then Deng Xiaoping then the Three Represents and then finally Xi Jinping.

Xi Jinping's new era of socialism with Chinese Characteristics together will bring the people forward into a new era for China 

The intention is of course is crystal clear, Karl Marx is the indisputable leader of Communism, and the CPC is the heir to Communism, and so it is the heir to Karl Marx.

Of course its not exactly a new claim, just a few more heads to squeeze on the banners.

There is some attempt to justify this posture though, in an early episode Marx is absolutely indignant at the oppression of peasantry by the landlord class, and the Paris Commune is criticised for not having a strong central leadership. Also Marx did briefly talk about the importance of theory adapting it to historical conditions and reality. Which the narrator echoes at the end by claiming that Maoism through to Xi is just the Sinification of Marxism.

I also think though this is speculation that the propaganda potential of the series is the explanation for its poor production values, especially in earlier episodes. The series premiered on the 28th of January, with an episode a week, meaning it ended roughly around the anniversary date. If the decision to make the series had come late, with the anniversary being the hard deadline it must reach, then that would explain why the earlier episodes are the worst with the most obvious time and cost cutting. The later episodes which look much better would have had more time available to work on. But even in the last episodes there are obvious signs of short cuts in some sequences.

Conclusion

I think The Leader is doomed to be a curiosity, unless the CPC believes it was successful at propagandising to the youth of China I can't see this experiment being repeated. Its a shame but I don't recommend it, its not without its charms, but the combination of animation issues, shallow information, and propaganda distortions -and there were many more examples I could have listed- leave this as something best avoided. 

Which is a shame, as I don't believe the idea of an animated series is without merit, the Manga adaptation of Capital was largely a success, the films Young Karl Marx and the West German film about Rosa Luxemburg were very informative and interesting to watch, and historical drama's are becoming increasingly common and more refined. If the CPC didn't cobble this together to meet its targets and it was allowed artistic freedom it could've been something great. For all its faults the final episode was quite good so the people doing the actual work of making the production seem to have been capable of doing good work.

* Incidentally this same episode covers the revolutions of 1848, during which time many of Europe's bourgeoisie eventually allied with their despotic aristocracy to destroy the more radical workers and student revolutionaries. So it seems like Wietling was largely correct on that point but this is never addressed. 

Making of an Anarchist by Voltairine de Cleyre

Full text

Voltairine de Cleyre (November 17, 1866 – June 20, 1912) was an American anarchist, known for being a prolific writer and speaker, and opposing capitalism, the state, marriage, and the domination of religion over sexuality and women's lives. These latter beliefs have led many to cite her as a major early feminist.

Heartbreaking

Introduction/Explanation
I spent a lot of time trawling through websites about labour history and documents on or about Socialism and Communism. Probably more than is healthy but occasionally it provokes some surprises. On one of them I saw in its index a listing for Ludwig von Mises (yes that one) and wondered what the hell he was doing their. If your not familiar Mises was "classical liberal" economist who promoted capitalist economics and liberal politics, he fled Europe in 1940 to teach in the United States. He's also something of a patient zero for the modern American Pro capitalist free market movements. He's taught or had some connection to nearly every "the market is the source of all liberty" spokesmen in 20th century America, from Ayn Rand to Rothbard.

So not someone you'd expect to see on a website dedicated to workers revolt, or this blog except maybe as a punching bag. But having given in to curiosity I read it, and I actually see why it was chosen as something of value. That essay was Marxism and the Labour Movement, published in 1944, though I suspect based on some of its comments it was written earlier, possibly before Germany invaded Poland.
Normally I'd just quote from it quite liberally (heh) and add my own commentary, but honestly while it isn't perfect and can't help but engage in some pretty transparent bad faith commentary, it largely holds up and I'd be quoting well over 50% of it anyway, so I figured might as well repost it in full.
I'll add my comments and addendums at the end. Footnotes using numbers were used in the original text, mine will be using *.
This version of the text comes from a website known as Panarchy.org and comes this explanatory paragraph.
Note
This essay is taken from Omnipotent Government. Here von Mises presents Marx's ideas with a lucidity rarely encountered in other classical liberals. What emerges is that Marx vision was in favour of the development of the capitalistic mode of production in view of the construction of a post-capitalistic society*. Instead liberals have presented Marx as a rabid anti-capitalism propagandist. Many have done it and are still doing it for political gains, in order that liberal parties prevail over socialist parties. Whatever the reason, the manipulation has been a stumbling block to a fruitful analysis of Marx's ideas.
Now I do have somethings to say about this note, but I'll leave that until later. I'll just quickly add that I don't believe Panarchy.org was motivated by a desire to take down Marx by hosting this essay, I say that because they also host texts by both Marx and Engels and their introductions are usually fairly positive to those.
Now then.

Ludwig Von Mises, 

Marxism and the Labour Movement

(1944)

Karl Marx turned to socialism at a time when he did not yet know economics and because he did not know it. Later, when the failure of the Revolution of 1848 and 1849 forced him to flee Germany, he went to London. There, in the reading room of the British Museum, he discovered in the 'fifties not, as he boasted, the laws of capitalist evolution, but the writings of British political economy, the reports published by the British Government, and the pamphlets in which earlier British socialists used the theory of value as expounded by classical economics for a moral justification of labor's claims. These were the materials out of which Marx built his "economic foundations" of socialism.

Before he moved to London Marx had quite naively advocated a program of interventionism. In the Communist Manifesto in 1848 he expounded ten measures for imminent action. These points, which are described as "pretty generally applicable in the most advanced countries," are defined as "despotic inroads on the rights of property and on the conditions of bourgeois methods of production." Marx and Engels characterize them as "measures, economically unsatisfactory and untenable, but which in the course of events outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order and are indispensable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the whole mode of production." [1].

Eight of these ten points have been executed by the German Nazis with a radicalism that would have delighted Marx. The two remaining suggestions (namely, expropriation of private property in land and dedication of all rents of land to public expenditure, and abolition of all right of inheritance) have not yet been fully adopted by the Nazis. However, their methods of taxation, their agricultural planning, and their policies concerning rent restriction are daily approaching the goals determined by Marx**. The authors of the Communist Manifesto aimed at a step-by-step realization of socialism by measures of social reform. They were thus recommending procedures which Marx and the Marxians in later years branded as socio-reformist fraud.

In London, in the 'fifties, Marx learned very different ideas. The study of British political economy taught him that such acts of intervention in the operation of the market would not serve their purpose. From then on he dismissed such acts as "petty-bourgeois nonsense" which stemmed from ignorance of the laws of capitalist evolution. Class-conscious proletarians are not to base their hopes on such reforms. They are not to hinder the evolution of capitalism as the narrow-minded petty bourgeois want to. The proletarians, on the contrary, should hail every step of progress in the capitalist system of production. For socialism will not replace capitalism until capitalism has reached its full maturity, the highest stage of its own evolution. "No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new higher methods of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself." [2].

Therefore there is but one road toward the collapse of capitalism - i.e., the progressive evolution of capitalism itself. Socialization through the expropriation of capitalists is a process "which executes itself through the operation of the inherent laws of capitalist production." Then "the knell of capitalistic private property sounds." [3]. Socialism dawns and "ends . . . the primeval history of human society." [4].

From this viewpoint it is not only the endeavors of social reformers eager to restrain, to regulate, and to improve capitalism that must be deemed vain. No less contrary to purpose appear the plans of the workers themselves to raise wage rates and their standard of living, through unionization and through strikes, within the framework of capitalism. "The very development of modern industry must progressively turn the scales in favor of the capitalist against the workingman," and "consequently the general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise but to sink the average standard of wages." Such being the tendency of things within the capitalist system, the most that trade-unionism can attempt is to make "the best of the occasional chances for their temporary improvement." Trade-unions ought to understand that and to change their policies entirely, "Instead of the conservative motto: A fair day's wages for a fair day's work, they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: Abolition of the wages system!" [5].

These Marxian ideas might impress some Hegelians steeped in dialectics. Such doctrinaires were prepared to believe that capitalist production begets "with the inexorability of a law of nature its own negation" as "negation of negation," [6] and to wait until, "with the change of the economic basis," the "whole immense superstructure will have, more or less rapidly, accomplished its revolution." [7]. A political movement for the seizure of power, as Marx envisaged it, could not be built up on such beliefs. Workers could not be made supporters of them. It was hopeless to look for cooperation on the ground of such views from the labor movement, which did not have to be inaugurated but was already in existence. This labor movement was essentially a trade-union movement. Fully impregnated with ideas branded as petty bourgeois by Marx, unionized labor sought higher wage rates and fewer hours of work; it demanded labor legislation, price control of consumer's goods, and rent restriction. The workers sympathized not with Marxian teachings and the recipes derived from them but with the program of the interventionists and the social reformers. They were not prepared to renounce their plans and wait quietly for the far-distant day when capitalism was bound to turn into socialism. These workers were pleased when the Marxian propagandists explained to them that the inevitable laws of social evolution had destined them for greater things, that they were chosen to replace the rotten parasites of capitalist society, that the future was theirs. But they wanted to live for their own day, not for a distant future, and they asked for an immediate payment on account of their future inheritance.

The Marxians had to choose between a rigid uncompromising adherence to their master's teachings and an accommodating adaptation to the point of view of the workers, who could provide them with honors, power, influence and, last but not least, with a nice income. They could not resist the latter temptation, and yielded. They kept on discussing Marxian dialectics in the midst of their own circles; Marxism, moreover, had an esoteric character. But out in the open they talked and wrote in a different way. They headed the labor movement for which wage raises, labor legislation, and social insurance provisions were of greater importance than sophisticated discussions concerning "the riddle of the average rate of profit." They organized consumer's cooperatives and housing societies; they backed all the anticapitalist policies which they stigmatized in their Marxian writings as petty-bourgeois issues. They did everything that their Marxian theories denounced as nonsense, and they were prepared to sacrifice all their principles and convictions if some gain at the next election campaign could be expected from such a sacrifice. They were implacable doctrinaires in their esoteric books and unprincipled opportunists in their political activities.

The German Social Democrats developed this double-dealing into a perfect system. There was on the one side the very narrow circle of initiated Marxians, whose task it was to watch over the purity of the orthodox creed and to justify the party's political actions, incompatible with these creeds, by some paralogisms and fallacious inferences. After the death of Marx, Engels was the authentic interpreter of Marxian thought. With the death of Engels, Kautsky inherited this authority. He who deviated an inch from the correct dogma had to recant submissively or face pitiless exclusion from the party's ranks***. For all those who did not live on their own funds such an exclusion meant the loss of the source of income. On the other hand, there was the huge, daily increasing body of party bureaucrats, busy with the political activities of the labor movement. For these men the Marxian phraseology was only an adornment to their propaganda. They did not care a whit for historical materialism or for the theory of value. They were interventionists and reformers. They did whatever would make them popular with the masses, their employers. This opportunism was extremely successful. Membership figures and contributions to the party, its trade unions, cooperatives, and other associations increased steadily. The party became a powerful body with a large budget and thousands of employees. It controlled newspapers, publishing houses, printing offices, assembly halls, boarding houses, cooperatives, and plants to supply the needs of the cooperatives. It ran a school for the education of the rising generation of party executives. It was the most important agency in the Reich's political structure, and was paramount in the Second International Working Men's Association.

It was a serious mistake not to perceive this dualism, which housed under the same roof two radically different principles and tendencies, incompatible and incapable of being welded together. For it was the most characteristic feature of the German Social Democratic party and of all parties formed abroad after its model. The very small groups of zealous Marxians - probably never more than a few hundred persons in the whole Reich - were completely segregated from the rest of the party membership. They communicated with their foreign friends, especially with the Austrian Marxians (the "Austro-Marxian doctrinaires"), the exiled Russian revolutionaries, and with some Italian groups. In the Anglo-Saxon countries Marxism in those days was practically unknown****. With the daily political activities of the party these orthodox Marxians had little in common. Their points of view and their feelings were strange, even disgusting, not only to the masses but also to many party bureaucrats. The millions voting the Social Democratic ticket paid no attention to these endless theoretical discussions concerning the concentration of capital, the collapse of capitalism, finance capital and imperialism, and the relations between Marxian materialism and Kantian criticism. They tolerated this pedantic clan because they saw that they impressed and frightened the "bourgeois" world of statesmen, entrepreneurs, and clergymen, and that the government-appointed university professors, that German Brahmin caste, took them seriously and wrote voluminous works about Marxism. But they went their own way and let the learned doctors go theirs.

Much has been said concerning the alleged fundamental difference between the German labor movement and the British. But it is not recognized that a great many of these differences were of an accidental and external character only. Both labor parties desired socialism; both wanted to attain socialism gradually by reforms within the framework of capitalist society. Both labor movements were essentially trade-union movements. For German labor in the imperial Reich Marxism was only an ornament. The Marxians were a small group of literati*****.

The antagonism between the Marxian philosophy and that of labor organized in the Social Democratic party and its affiliated trade-unions became crucial the instant the party had to face new problems. The artificial compromise between Marxism and labor interventionism broke down when the conflict between doctrine and policies spread into fields which up to that moment had had no practical significance. The war put the party's alleged internationalism to the test, as the events of the postwar period did its alleged democratic tendencies and its program of socialization.





Notes
[1] Communist Manifesto, end of the second section. In their preface to a new edition of the Manifesto, dated June 24, 1872, Marx and Engels declare that because of changed circumstances "stress is no longer laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of the second section."
[2] Marx, Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, edited by Kautsky (Stuttgart, 1897), p. xii.
[3] Marx, Das Kapital (7th ed. Hamburg, 1914), I, p. 728.
[4] Marx, Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, p. xii.
[5] Marx, Value, Price and Profit, edited by Eleanor Marx Aveling (New York, 1901), pp. 72-74.
[6] Marx, Das Kapital, op. cit., p. 729.
[7] Marx, Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, p. xi.

Some Comments

* Just to comeback to that note, this is true up to a point, the writings of Marx contain many references to a progressive feature of Capitalist development, perhaps the most infamous example of this was when Marx commented on Imperialism. Especially regarding India in the 1850s for example this passage written in 1853 for the New York Daily Tribune 

All the English bourgeoisie may be forced to do will neither emancipate nor materially mend the social condition of the mass of the people, depending not only on the development of the productive powers, but on their appropriation by the people. But what they will not fail to do is to lay down the material premises for both. Has the bourgeoisie ever done more? Has it ever effected a progress without dragging individuals and people through blood and dirt, through misery and degradation?...

The devastating effects of English industry, when contemplated with regard to India, a country as vast as Europe, and containing 150 millions of acres, are palpable and confounding. But we must not forget... [t]he bourgeois period of history has to create the material basis of the new world — on the one hand universal intercourse founded upon the mutual dependency of mankind, and the means of that intercourse; on the other hand the development of the productive powers of man and the transformation of material production into a scientific domination of natural agencies. Bourgeois industry and commerce create these material conditions of a new world in the same way as geological revolutions have created the surface of the earth. When a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch, the market of the world and the modern powers of production, and subjected them to the common control of the most advanced peoples, then only will human progress cease to resemble that hideous, pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain.

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2009/01/marx-the-future-results-of-british-rule-in-india.html

 Though there is evidence that his ideas had started to shift somewhat on the progressive character of Empire building. One of the most commonly cited is a letter to Danielson in 1881 shortly before his death.
In India serious complications, if not a general outbreak, is in store for the British government. What the English take from them annually in the form of rent, dividends for railways useless to the Hindus; pensions for military and civil service men, for Afghanistan and other wars, etc., etc. – what they take from them without any equivalent and quite apart from what they appropriate to themselves annually within India, speaking only of the value of the commodities the Indians have gratuitously and annually to send over to England – it amounts to more than the total sum of income of the sixty millions of agricultural and industrial labourers of India! This is a bleeding process, with a vengeance! The famine years are pressing each other and in dimensions till now not yet suspected in Europe! There is an actual conspiracy going on wherein Hindus and Mussulmans co-operate; the British government is aware that something is “brewing,” but this shallow people (I mean the governmental men), stultified by their own parliamentary ways of talking and thinking, do not even desire to see clear, to realise the whole extent of the imminent danger! To delude others and by deluding them to delude yourself – this is: parliamentary wisdom in a nutshell! Tant mieux!

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/letters/81_02_19.htm

But yeah, his comments on the necessity for capitalistic development aren't very popular even amongst most self described Marxists.
**

This is the big weakness of the essay, I guess Mises can't help himself, this argument is incorrect on nearly every level. Let's get started with a refresher on the ten points from the Manifesto

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. 
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. 
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. 
 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

These are the ten points, Mises admits that points 1 and 3 weren't applicable, his assertion that they were on the way in the future though is dubious because he cites trends in Nazi economics that simply didn't exist. The main issue here is that Mises is lying, what similarities between the Manifesto and German economic reality of the 1930s was not the work of the Nazi party, but the government they replaced. They inherited large state companies and proceeded to sell them off.

The Great Depression spurred State ownership in Western capitalist countries. Germany was no exception; the last governments of the Weimar Republic took over firms in diverse sectors. Later, the Nazi regime transferred public ownership and public services to the private sector. In doing so, they went against the mainstream trends in the Western capitalist countries, none of which systematically reprivatized firms during the 1930s. Privatization in Nazi Germany was also unique in transferring to private hands the delivery of public services previously provided by government. The firms and the services transferred to private ownership belonged to diverse sectors. Privatization was part of an intentional policy with multiple objectives and was not ideologically driven. As in many recent privatizations, particularly within the European Union, strong financial restrictions were a central motivation. In addition, privatization was used as a political tool to enhance support for the government and for the Nazi Party.

Against the Mainstream Germa Bel  http://www.ub.edu/graap/nazi.pdf

The German Central bank was the Reichsbank which was founded in 1876 and was a private monopoly. Nazi policy changed its name to the German Reichsbank and placed it under the control of Hitler. Beyond the Reichsbank the Nazi party merely setup a regulatory body and then sold the states shares in the banking sector to private interests.

In the end, the Banking Investigation Committee recommended strengthening public supervision and control of private banking and introducing new restrictions on the creation of credit institutions and the exercise of the banking profession (Lurie, 1947, p. 62). These recommendations were implemented through the German Bank Act of 1934, which allowed the government to exercise tight control over private banks. Regulating banking appeared to the regime as a safe and economically sound alternative to proposals by party radicals for controlling finance through socialization (James, 1995, p. 291). Afterwards, and consistent with the theoretical insights of Shleifer and Vishny (1994), the reprivatization of the big commercial banks (Deutsche Bank, Commerz-Bank, and Dresdner-Bank) was implemented within the new regulatory framework. The alliance of financial interests and top economic echelons in the government held the reprivatization of State-owned banks as one of its top priorities.

And progressive income tax? Uh not really, if anything the Nazi party taxation plans benefited the wealthy who could make investments in their businesses tax deductible and count servants as dependendents. The highest rate of tax in Germany was 13.7% compared to 23.7% in the UK at the same time.

How about centralisation of the means of communication and transport? Again no, they all remained in private hands, the closest to centralisation I can think of would be the Authobahn construction programs, but again this was an inheritance from the previous government.

Railways: In the 1930s The Deutsche Reichsbahn (German Railways) was the largest single public enterprise in the world (Macmahon and Dittmar 1939, p. 484), bringing together most of the railways services operating within Germany. The German Budget for fiscal year 1934/35, the last one published (Pollock, 1938, p. 121), established that Railway preference shares4 worth Reichsmark (Rm.) 224 million were to be sold.5 

Point 8, well yes the Nazi party did establish large industrial armies to build roads and work in factories, however in the Manifesto this demand is coupled with the "Equal liability of all to work" and this was not the case in Nazi Germany. Jewish people were systematically denied the right to work outside of the ghettoes and labour camps.

Point 4 is the only point that I can see a case for comparison. The Nazi party did confiscate the property of exiles and its enemies.

***

The SPD weren't monolithic but it seems hard to deny that their orthodoxy fell overwhelmingly on the cautious and gradual approach. Rosa Luxemburg is famous for publishing the text "The Mass Strike" in 1906 which advocated for a general uprising of labour in the workplaces by seizing control through direct action of capitalist property. But the party under Kautsky very quickly moved away from such radical ideas and soon Luxemburg would find herself increasingly isolated as part of fringe minority. Though the official breaking point wouldn't come until the outbreak of the First World War.

****

In the UK the dominant socialist party was the Labour party, unlike the French and German Social Democrats there were few if any Marx admirers within the Labour party ranks. It was founded largely by the Trade Unions and members of social reforming societies and smaller Socialist and workingmen's parties. Its intellectual wing became dominated by the Fabian society.

There was however a small Marxist current in the Social Democratic Federation founded by Henry Hyndman, but by 1911 it had split into several other competing groups that eventually faded away. Apparently Marx and Engels who didn't care for him very much, though the SDF did attract for a time at least most of the early English Marxists.

*****

The SPD at the turn of the 20th century was both the largest political party in Germany, (especially when factoring in its affiliated Trade Unions, co-operatives and associations) and the largest nominally Marxist group in the world. However not only were many of its rank and file not Marxists, but many of its leaders and theoreticians also came from non or anti Marxist traditions. When the party was formed it was done with the alliance of two groups, one around Marx and the other around Lassalle. And many of the works of Marx, Engels and Kautsky about the nature of Social Democracy and the role of the party were written as criticism or outright opposition to the rival currents within Social Democracy.

Such as the Critique of the Gotha Program, or Engels Anti-Duhring. So while the party was large and quite powerful physically, the party seems to have failed utterly in its role as teacher of the class, since even many of its leaders had at best payed lip service to the works of the three great Marxist thinkers, Marx, Engels and Kautsky. 

Peru: Literacy for Social Change

A couple of common themes in leftish discussion is a seemingly never ending argument about workers Co-operatives, and the problem of education. How do we educate "the masses" how can we escape the problems of liberal academia and so on. I've recently stumbled upon a short documentary that concerns both and intertwined them.

There are some advocates of alternative means of education, a very popular and highly influential advocate was Paulo Freire. Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed is an effort to link education with political and social liberation. A key example of this is the issue of adult illiteracy and how to solve it. He and many educators inspired by his methods found that by making a custom study plan based on the lives and the challenges and obstacles of the students was a very effective way to teach reading and writing, and at the same time stimulate awareness of their issues and help them develop ways to organise and improve on them.

The documentary Peru: Literacy for Social Change, features a group of educators using Freire's methods on a Co-operative farm in rural Peru in the 1970s. While there the cameras document life on the farm, the effects of the land reform that established the co-operative, how things changed, what hasn't changed, what issues they face and what steps the members are taking to address them.

On the co-operative side its an interesting case study, they initially lived on the land owned by a large land owner, and paid their rent through their labour, if they had any issues or needs they had to rely on the "Don" to provide, if he felt like. But after a land reform law was passed the owner left and the labourers became members of a co-operative that shared the land and the work.

They have a number of accomplishments, the most brutal working practices under the old landowner no longer happen. They can work in groups and use the co-ops tools, and women in the fields no longer have to strap their babies to their backs while working. they get holidays, a short fall no longer means no payment. The co-op remains profitable, the work is not as heavy as before, they've expanded housing, run a canteen, a social security system and have sent some of their members away to be trained as educators, and they've now returned to teach the rest of the co-operative how to read and write.

Nevertheless challenges remain, they're still tied to the wider economy, they aren't profitable enough to meet all their needs, some housing has been built but overcrowding is still a problem, the division of labour isn't exactly egalitarian with women having to juggle or combine work in the fields with raising and teaching the children because the co-op hasn't been able to open a nursery like it's been promising. The head of the co-op complains that many members treat like the old landlord (they even still call him Don) and put most of the responsibility for running the co-op on him alone. And perhaps most importantly, the farm still relies on large numbers of migrant labourers during harvest time.

The migrants are paid far less, they have to work much longer to come close to the same rate of pay, and they receive none of the benefits that co-operative members receive. Though the migrants interviewed do say that they aren't driven as hard as before, their pay has gone up and they can now work in groups with friends and family members so the atmosphere has improved.

 In short the co-op has improved the members lives, and has achievements it can be proud of, but its still a small part of the capitalist economy. It has to remain profitable to fund its benefits and it has to rely on a two tier system.

However, many of the members are aware of these issues and aren't happy about it. Over the course of the film they're seen to be discussing the problems, especially the disparity between members and migrant workers. The education initiative was part of their attempt to overcome it, and they've started have more frequent meetings and discussion groups.

The film ends with the co-operative hosting a large meeting to discuss issues such as housing and the migrant problem. Some advocate the whole co-op working on building new homes together and expanding the co-op to include the migrants as full members.

It'd be very interesting if the film makers had returned to the co-op a few years later to see how they got on, but the film was released in 1978 and rural Peru was not a very pleasant or safe place in the 80s.

Ultimately though, I think the film demonstrates that co-operative economics can have a strong list of achievements, they're ultimately limited in what they can accomplish on their own, and can't really break free from the capitalist economy.



https://youtu.be/mSgBkbJbzRs
Adult educator Paulo Freire developed literacy programs in northeastern Brazil to combat part of the colonial legacy of illiteracy and promote social change. This film depicts adult educators putting Freire's methods to work on a Peruvian co-operative cotton farm, teaching peasants how to read and write. The promise of the literacy program is that the peasants will be able to use their newly found confidence to change the reality of their daily existence and collectively gain control of their own lives

Ur Fascism - Umberto Eco

Full Essay https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf

While Eco is firm in claiming “There was only one Nazism," he says, “the fascist game can be played in many forms, and the name of the game does not change.” Eco reduces the qualities of what he calls “Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism” down to 14 “typical” features.

Venezuela 1989 The Caracazo Protests

https://youtu.be/n1kKu5jU9zs

Venezuela 1989

The Caracazo Protests

Mike Lanchin:

Hello and thank you for downloading Witness with me Mike Lanchin, and today we take you back to February of 1989 when Venezuela was hit by days of protests and rioting sparked by government austerity measures. In the crackdown that followed security forces killed more than 300 people; many of them innocent bystanders. I’ve been speaking to one woman inadvertently caught up in the violence.

[Shouting, screaming and the sounds of smashing windows and violence]

Its early evening on February the 27^th 1989, protestors and looters are out on the streets of the Venezuelan capital Caracas. It’s the first day of a wave of disturbances that have spread across the country. Ordinary Venezuelans many of them residents of the poorest neighbourhoods that surround the capital are venting their anger at a raft of new government economic measures.

[Archive report]

Reports speak of a frenzy of rioting and plunder. The position in the capital Caracas and major cities is bad enough for the US and Britain to have advised their nationals to visit the country.

Mike Lanchin:

Venezuela’s populist president Carlos Andres Perez had only just been re-elected for a second term. But now he faced a perfect storm of economic woes.

[Archive report]

Venezuela has foreign debts of around £18 billion, and its petroleum dominated economy has been hit by falling oil prices. In response President Peres has put up petrol prices, bus fares and the cost of basic foods.

Yris Medina:

People were really angry, shouting at the shopkeepers “you’ve got sugar stored in there, why don’t you sell it to me?”

Mike Lanchin:

19-year old Yris Medina was on her way home when she first came across the looters.

Yris Medina:

I saw lots of people carrying food and bags of meat on their backs, but also, they were carrying freezers, washing machines and furniture. I think that after they’d finished looting the food shops they moved onto the furniture stores.

Mike Lanchin:

And what did you think when you saw this happening?

Yris Medina:

Well I’m quite scared when it comes to seeing violence on the streets. And also, was quite young at the time and had my baby girl with me. So, all I wanted to do was get home safely.

Mike Lanchin:

And could you recognise any of the people who were doing the looting?

Yris Medina:

Yes, yes, I recognised many neighbours. But I didn’t get involved with them, I understand that some people needed to do it, but for me that’s not justifiable. It’s just vandalism and I don’t support it.

Mike Lanchin:

In those first hours of protests which became known as the Caracazo. Hundreds of shops and businesses were stripped, causing tens of thousands of dollars in damage. The country teetered on the brink of a total breakdown in law and order. The authorities seemed at first taken by surprise.

But on Febraury 28^th President Carlos Peres Andrez decreed a nationwide state of emergency and a night curfew. And he sent tanks and soldiers onto the streets.

[Archive report]

Police and troops have cracked down hard on the rioters and the looters. Civil liberties have been suspended, Venezuelans who have had 30 years of democracy in one of Latin America’s most stable countries, now have lost for the time being anyway the right of assembly and freedom of speech.

Mike Lanchin:

The army set about crushing any sign of protest.

[Gunfire]

Yris Medina:

That first night we hardly slept, we were very worried, there was lots and lots of shooting outside it felt like a war. My husband said we should sleep on the floor upstairs. I’m afraid he said that a stray bullet could come in.

Mike Lanchin:

For the next 48 hours, Yris and her husband Wolfgang and their baby girl didn’t dare venture out of the house. Food was running low.

Yris Medina:

On March 2^nd we eventually went out because we needed things, milk, some cereals for the baby, but all the shops nearest to us had been looted and so were totally empty. So, we had to go to another larger market further away across town. The soldiers were there making everyone queue up. And they told us “do your shopping quickly, you must get home before the curfew begins at six”.

Mike Lanchin:

And so, they hurried home in good time. Later that same evening as the curfew began Yris was upstairs doing some housework when Wolfgang joined her with the baby in his arms.

Yris Medina:

We were both standing there by the window and moved away just for a minute, turning around to go out of the room and that’s when I heard the shot.

It was like an explosion and I turned around and asked him “what was that?” and all he could say was “I”. I looked at the baby she was covered in blood but she wasn’t hurt. He turned and started to go down the stairs, but as he went down, he fell bleeding.

Mike Lanchin:

A single bullet fired by a soldier from the street had hit Wolfgang, gone through him and lodged itself in the wall.

Yris Medina:

I tried to stop the bleeding but it was like a tap had been opened, and I couldn’t close it and I said to him “try to hold on, try to hold on!” he was going unconscious, bleeding.

It was so hard because I wanted- I was getting so desperate, I couldn’t do anything.

Mike Lanchin:

By the time Yris and her brother-in-law managed Wolfgang to the nearest hospital he was dead. He was just 20 years old. They then made their way through the empty streets to the city morgue; the curfew was still in force.

Yris Medina:

A group of soldiers aggressively stopped us and demanded to know what we were doing. They said they had orders to shoot anyone outside. We told them we were taking the body of my husband to the morgue and they said to us “you can’t do that” and so they took his body from us and told us to go home.

Mike Lanchin:

That must have been so difficult for you.

Yris Medina:

When I got home, I just sat down outside on the pavement. I don’t know I said I was waiting for someone. Not wanting to go inside, my mind just went blank and all I could do was sit down and think what is going to happen to us now?

We were so young; we were just starting a family. We had lots of dreams, and now a bullet had finished all that. I still haven’t come to terms with all that, its been so hard to get over the terrible tragedy.

Mike Lanchin:

Yris’s husband was one of more than 300 people killed by soldiers during and after the protests. Many were innocent bystanders. Some say the final death toll was much higher since many of the victims were buried in unmarked mass graves.

Yris who did get her husbands body back to bury later formed a campaigning group with other relatives of victims. And in 2004 the Venezuelan government awarded them compensation. But no one has ever been convicted of the killings.

Yris Medina:

For me the truth and an explanation why, that’s what counts for me. That would mean justice for me, how is it possible that after 27 years I’ve still not been given an explanation about the death of Wolfgang.

Mike Lanchin:

The events of February and March of 1989 marked a dramatic change, not just in the lives of ordinary people like Yris Medina. Three years later an army officer called Hugo Chavez staged two coups in Venezuela setting in motion decades of instability. From which some say Venezuela has never recovered.

Yris Medina still lives in Caracas with her daughter whose now 27 years old.

When Chile Voted Against Pinochet

Link https://youtu.be/jlaz-rHCjTc

When Chile Voted Against Pinochet

Transcript

Mike Lanchin:

Hello and welcome to the Witness podcast with me Mike Lanchin. Today we go back to October of 1988 when for the first time ever Chileans got to vote on the 15-year military rule of General Augusto Pinochet. It was a clear yes or no referendum to determine whether the 72-year-old Dictator should stay in power.

I’ve been hearing from one of the people at the forefront of the No campaign.

Eugenio Garcia:

It was an unprecedented campaign, the likes of which had never existed in Chile. But there was also a certain tension, the feeling that something was going to happen. There were great expectations and the sort of nervous energy in the country.

[Music]

Song is Chile, la alegría ya viene, the official song of the No campaign.

Mike Lanchin:

For the very first time General Pinochet’s military rule was on the line.

[Archive broadcast from 1988]

To his supporters President Pinochet is a Latin American Charles de Gaulle, the strong man who came in to put his country back on its feet. And now the Dictator who had no compunction once about stamping out political opposition in the cruellest way is campaigning for the support of his people.

Eugenio Garcia:

Our biggest worry was whether the results would be recognised; not whether we would win because we were confidant of that. But really because everything was under the control of the military.

Mike Lanchin:

Chilean advertising executive Eugenio Garcia was just 20 years old when Augusto Pinochet and the Chilean military took power in a violent coup in September of 1973. With the support of the American CIA they had deposed the Marxist Salvador Allende whose short rule had divided the country.

Eugenio and his family had been keen Allende supporters.

Eugenio Garcia:

I remember on the day of the coup in 1973 seeing the bombers flying over the skies of Santiago, over my home. That was a very strong image for me, it spelt the end of a tradition like the break in the culture of our country.

Mike Lanchin:

The military drove Allende’s socialist supporters out of all public bodies, the Universities, the schools and small businesses. Eugenio’s father and elder brother lost their jobs, another brother went into hiding and another into exile.

But other suspected sympathisers fared worse, much worse. Tens of thousands of people were rounded up, many of them were tortured or disappeared. But by the early 1980s with opposition protests spreading the military authorities were yearning for some sort of legitimacy. They wrote a new constitution and included the stipulation that a referendum should be called to reaffirm Pinochet’s position as head of state. It was scheduled for October the 5^th 1988.

Eugenio Garcia:

When the referendum was announced I really was very doubtful. There had been a vote before to approve Pinochet’s new constitution but it was a fraud, so we feared this could be another trap to allow him to remain in power.

Mike Lanchin:

Pinochet himself and most of the ruling Junta were convinced that there was no way they could lose this vote. In fact, they were so confidant that they even agreed to give the opposition access to the airwaves; 15 minutes each day. Eugenio Garcia was the creative director of the anti-Pinochet campaign.

Eugenio Garcia:

In the no campaign there was lots of uncertainty about what approach to take. At first it was thought that the way was to criticise Pinochet for all his crimes. In other words, a hard-hitting campaign showing all the torture, disappearances and assassinations. Calling on people to vote on the basis of denouncements. I was young and strong headed and thought I knew better.

Mike Lanchin:

Eugenio Garcia argued that a negative campaign would frighten away undecided voters. He said that instead they needed a campaign focusing on optimism and hope using images of people hugging each other, dancing, laughing at the military as well as denouncing their crimes.

But that didn’t go down well with many in the No campaign, especially those who had personally suffered at the hands of the security forces.

Eugenio Garcia:

In one meeting where we presented our campaign ideas there was a lot of surprise, because it wasn’t what had been expected. They thought it was frivolous.

Mike Lanchin:

But Eugenio eventually won over the doubters, and in early September 1988 the No campaign was officially launched.

[Music]

Mike Lanchin:

Chile, la alegría ya viene, Chile happiness is on its way, was the campaigns main jingle and its logo was a rainbow, emblazoned on flags, t-shirts, and across TV screens.

Eugenio Garcia:

The metaphor we chose was that the country had been living under a dark cloud for the past 15 years, without light, oppressed. And that thanks to everyone’s votes the Heavens would open and a Rainbow would appear as it does after a storm. It was very emotional when we first saw our work on air. We even had some clips where we made fun of Pinochet, which was totally unheard of. We had a feeling of vertigo, of doing something that wasn’t allowed.

Mike Lanchin:

But as voting day approached fear and apprehension set in. Some of those involved in the No campaign were being followed by unmarked cars. Others were receiving anonymous threats. Eugenio got up early on polling day and drove to the University in Santiago where he voted.

Eugenio Garcia:

It was so strange because everything was silent. People were walking to and from voting and all you could hear were there footsteps. After that I went to see my kids at my ex-wife’s house., we had lunch and I stayed with them because we were all a bit nervous. My son was just a little boy and we were sort of frightened that something could happen.

Mike Lanchin:

And something was about to happen, but not as Eugenio had feared.

[Archive report from 1988]

Inside the calm and order of the government’s election centre they were still insisting that the Yes vote was ahead in the count by 7 or 8 percent. But these results were highly selective. But outside the No headquarters the police the strong arm of the Dictatorship seemed to be lining up to take action. No one knew how the government would react to the certainty of defeat.

Mike Lanchin:

But as the night wore on it became increasingly clear to the Generals that they had no option but to recognise the results. And so around midnight a military spokesman confirmed the No’s victory by a clear margin of 56% to 44%.

Eugenio Garcia:

I cried, I cried on my own, the kids were asleep in bed so I alone, it was emotional.

[Archive report from 1988]

For 15 years President Pinochet’s opponents have sung he’s going to fall. Last night they changed the words, “he has fallen”.

Eugenio Garcia:

Later when I saw my friends from the campaign I remember saying “bloody hell we won we did it!” it was such, such a great feeling that we’ve done something that was so huge.

Mike Lanchin:

But having put so much of himself into the winning campaign Eugenio felt exhausted. He says that he felt that nothing he could do in the future would compare with that feeling of success.

Eugenio Garcia:

So, I got into my car and just drove north to a desert from one day to the next. I spent a couple of days there and then came back and announced to my partner I was leaving the advertising firm. That I no longer felt the motivation to continue, and that is what I did.

Mike Lanchin:

Eugenio Garcia is now head of the state television broadcaster in Santiago. General Pinochet stayed on for another year as head of state before free elections that were won by the Christian Democrat and anti-Pinochet politician Patricio Aylwin. Pinochet then became a lifetime Senator; thus protecting him from criminal prosecution. He died in December 2006.

Eugenio Garcia was speaking to me from Chile for Witness, thanks for listening. 

Chile, la alegría ya viene

https://youtu.be/IFAMpW0hPNY