Views in brief
Restrictions that hurt the vulnerable
I WOULD like to add one point to Elizabeth Schulte's excellent response to the Obama administration's shameful attack on women's access to Plan B emergency contraception ("It's not Plan B if you can't get it").
As Schulte points out, by attaching age restrictions to Plan B, whether the cutoff is 15 or 17, many women who do meet the age requirement will lack the proper ID required to prove it. And with the 72-hour window to be effective, it will take too long for most of them to acquire the proper ID in time.
This means that the restrictions will disproportionately impact young women, African Americans, Latinas, immigrants (particularly the undocumented) and low-income women, all of whom are less likely to have government-issued IDs.
Ironically, these are the very same groups who, because they tend to vote for Democrats, were targeted by the Republicans' racist voter ID laws. At the time, the Obama administration came to their defense, yet this time they are the biggest obstacle to making Plan B more widely available and accessible.
Of course, Plan B should be available for free to everyone, including men (who should take equal responsibility for preventing pregnancy).
Gary Lapon, New York City
Distortions about Proudhon
REGARDING TODD Chretien's "The Poverty of Proudhon's Anarchism," Proudhon never "openly" advocated the "stridently anti-Semitic views" quoted. These words were written in his private notebooks and unknown until the 1960s. So while despicable, they never made "Proudhon popular" as they were never "openly popularized" (or repeated).
To fail to mention these relevant facts distorts Proudhon's ideas and influence. It also fails to mention how Marx's book utilized selective quoting and false attribution. As my anthology Property is Theft! shows, Proudhon was right to proclaim it "a tissue of vulgarity, of calumny, of falsification and of plagiarism." There is far more to Proudhon than this article or The Poverty of Philosophy would suggest.
Marx was right on Proudhon's reformism and opposition to strikes, but he was wrong to push the labor movement towards electioneering. Social Democracy showed that Proudhon was right: the state "finds itself inevitably enchained to capital and directed against the proletariat," and so workers had to form "an agricultural and industrial combination" to wage "a war of labor against capital."
Proudhon failed to recognize that the labor movement was the means of achieving this, unlike later anarchists such as Bakunin, Kropotkin, Parsons and Goldman, who correctly argued we had to apply anarchist ideas within the unions to achieve social revolution.
Iain McKay, from the Internet
CounterPunch made the wrong argument
IN RESPONSE to "Why CounterPunch owes women an apology": First of all, thanks for this analysis.
As for the point about non-elite women's access to the kind of care Jolie received, the report on this story on Austrian TV news included an interview with a top Austrian physician dealing with cancer treatment. She was asked if ordinary Austrian women have access to the tests and treatment that Jolie had, and the answer was yes--and all of it is covered under Austria's medical social insurance plans.
The pseudo-radicals at Counterpunch should have been making this point, rather than ridiculing Jolie for alleged narcissism and class privilege.
Stan Nadel, Salzburg, Austria
What I witnessed in Venezuela
IN RESPONSE to "The creators and the creation": I was deeply moved while reading your book review. About five years ago, I won first prize in a fundraising raffle conducted by the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network: a trip to Venezuela as part of a brigade looking at the state and municipal elections.
So my wife and I spent two weeks in Venezuela, staying in the cheapest hotel imaginable, being introduced to the revolution from the ground up. There isn't a day goes by that I don't think about Venezuela now. I am a union delegate at work, and I am constantly faced with how weighed down many of the workers I represent are by a sense of powerlessness. But in Venezuela, even the homeless people we met on the streets had a greater sense of their own dignity.
We went right into the barrios and met the poorest of the poor who were transforming their lives and beamed with pride at their achievements. All the theories about alienation and liberation were personified. I remember one night in Vallencia, hearing the women of the community speaking, when it occurred to me that I had never before known what true human dignity is.
Most importantly, we gained an understanding of the contradictions and problems of the revolution. This book review ably balances all of these elements. I was very pleased to read it. Thank you.
Barry Healy, Perth, Western Australia
The evolution of CTU democracy
IN RESPONSE to "Will Chicago teachers keep moving forward?": Lee Sustar has made an eloquent contribution on Chicago Teachers Union history, essential for understanding what was at stake in the union election.
While I completely agree on the description of PACT and its sorry evolution, I would add only one point. PACT did manage one initiative which tipped the balance toward union democracy. Before winning office. PACT got a referendum passed that required the union to announce school-by-school results of contract votes.
While it was a small formal change, it marked a step back in the direction of member control over the machinery of the union.
Tina Beacock, Chicago
