If we belong to a street gang or pretty much any gang of criminals, the way to the top, the way to achieve power is through brutal force. Generally, the most dangerous, the most threatening psychopath gets to be boss. Somebody more dangerous may come along and kill him. The new guy is boss. They don’t spend a lot of time taking minutes of meetings and discussing points of order. The craziest guy with the biggest gun calls the shots and everybody else listens.
In a somewhat more complex way, that is also how fascism works. In fact, there are many parallels with fascists and the average everyday band of criminals. Their goals are more or less the same and so are their methods.
Some may say that this is the law of the jungle; that humans are that way naturally. But if they studied anthropology beyond watching the Flintstones, they would know that hunter-gatherer societies were not violent and the individuals were not self serving but were in service to the rest of the community.
In the modern civilized world, we are generally compelled to play by a set of rules that are based in rationality and legal principles that are set according to standards that most agree with. Whether based in civil or common law, nations agree on a set of basic notions of what constitutes a civilized society. From these principles The Bill of Rights was adopted in the USA, The Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been adopted in Canada and each nation has a set of legal principles that citizens must abide by. Internationally we have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declared by the UN in 1948. In the civilized world, we have laws and no man or woman is above those laws.
Modern authority is based in rational principles and laws. Traditional or charismatic authority may be the basis for habits and customs within subcultures. These arbitrary rulers may hold sway over cults or movements, but they must all adhere to the principles of the wider legal authority of rational legal principles. This is what separates us from the archaic past and protects us from the tyranny of criminals or the menacing whims of violent madmen.
Now imagine living in a world that is run like a biker gang. Those that are most powerful, most violent and those with the biggest guns win. Legal principles mean nothing because the men with that power cannot be arrested and brought to trial. They have their own protection, their own police and their own military. They intend to force everybody else to abide by the law, but they are exempt. Not only that, they can make rules up as they go along. They do what they want and there is nothing anybody can do about it. Now the rulers can stack the deck in their own favour and nobody can stop them. They have at their command a military force that is the most powerful in the world.
This is what is going on in the world today. It’s not that the gangsters have gone wild and their mayhem will be over in a few years. The problem runs much deeper than that.
What is most important in the arrest and detention of suspected terrorists by American forces is not the plight of those men. What is even more important is the precedent that this has set. What is most important about the invasion of Iraq is not the massive slaughter and indiscriminate killing of many thousands of Iraqi people. What is even more important is the normalization and validation of the use of fascistic force. The cowards in the media and the cowards that mimic security legislation are complicit in this massive crime. As horrific as the oppression and killing is, the legacy that these actions project could be far worse. Aside from that, the legal principles that have been our protection from tyranny have been torn to shreds.
Those with financial, political, and military power have placed themselves above the law not only in their own society, but over all societies. Their response to dissent is either no response at all or they will repeat the same predictable lies over and over again. They thumb their noses at the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International or anybody that criticizes their draconian and brutal attack on civil liberties, the law, and on individuals. They will say that this is ‘the war on terror’; that we’ll have to excuse them while they lock people up without charges, torture people and invade other nations; unprovoked. If we accept this, then we’ll have to excuse every brutal dictator in history that had their nation attacked or threatened. The declaration at the Nuremberg Tribunals that initiating war, invading another country, is the ultimate war crime and contains within it all other war crimes, means nothing. The Geneva Conventions also mean nothing and the rule of law means nothing.
The Patriot Act was born in the violence of 9-11 and it was given immortality in the violence on July 7th in London. It effectively strips the citizens of the United States and any other citizen in the world of their fundamental human rights. The state can lock you up by claiming that you are an enemy. You have no right to a lawyer or a judge. You have no rights whatsoever and you may be tortured. You may also be spied on or killed should you arouse suspicion. We’ve recently seen what happened to Jean Charles de Menezes of Brazil for walking around with Arab colored skin.
The normalization of extraordinary state power has occurred with an alarming silence. Alarming too is the immunity of the corporate/state power from rule of law while at the same time stripping away ordinary legal protections for the average citizen. George W. Bush and company are free to terrorize whole societies at their leisure while brown skinned citizens have to worry about being apprehended or shot. The new oppression of the New World Order has racist, cultural, national, and class preferences. It has the same prejudices.
The language used by the overlords of the New World Order is disturbing in its ambiguity. To wage war against vague and subjective enemies is an excuse for tyranny. Passing laws that are worded with language that is open for any interpretation makes society vulnerable to abuse by the state. For example, recent legislation in Britain makes it an offence to “indirectly incite” anyone to commit terrorist acts. Couple the cavalier attitude judges and pretty much the whole legal profession has shown with respect to civil liberties over the past several years with this vague legal language adopted in the USA, Britain, Canada and other Western nations, and you have a recipe for explicit repression.
This indiscriminate language has a very aggressive edge. For Bush and company, the enemy has become quite abstract. Evil forces are 'out there' and they are enemies of freedom and democracy, according to Bush. As long as these elements exist, they pose a threat to the United States and the ‘free’ world. Bush stated in his last State of the Union address that it is the mission of the USA to free oppressed people all over the world. Considering his track record regarding freedom, we know what he is really talking about. This code for, 'we are going to take whatever we want, whenever we want to do it. When Bush mouths the word freedom, he necessarily perverts its meaning.
The standards that need to be met in order for Bush to rationalize military attacks have suddenly become very subjective. He doesn't have to find something hard like weapons of mass destruction any more. That proved too difficult. With the spineless media and henchmen by his side, Bush can justify an attack on just about anyone. The notion of and validation for ‘pre-emptive war’ has already been established. With the media, congress and other world leaders looking for their backbones, George W. Saprono will do what he wants.
We have awakened to a world where the mob has taken control. They have the biggest guns and Bush has the most ruthless gangland characters pulling his strings and yanking his chain. Besides, he is one of them. The World Court can go to hell, and every other court can go to hell. The guys with the most money and the biggest guns call the shots now.
From here it looks as if the maniacs in the White House and the terrorists that brought down the twin towers share the same goal of terrorizing American society. If their aim was to disrupt any sense of peace or civility in the United States, they have succeeded. If they aimed to play on the psychology and sense of security Americans may have had, they succeeded. But they couldn’t have done it without the Bush’s help in whipping up hysteria and fear.
Anti terrorist legislation is not about protecting you from terrorists. It’s about control. It’s about muting dissent in an era when the sweetness of the Keynsian state will give way to the full exposure of the ugly skeleton of the oppressive barbed iron state that has always been there.
But we need to hold our seat in the midst of this. In the midst of this insanity, if you listen you can still hear the voice of reason and calm. All the dogs are not barking up the same tree. Here is a fine example:
US District Judge John C. Coughenour said the successful prosecution of Ahmed Ressam should serve not only as a warning to terrorists but as a statement to the Bush administration about its terrorism-fighting tactics.
"We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, detain the defendant indefinitely as an enemy combatant or deny the defendant the right to counsel," he said. "The message to the world from today's sentencing is that our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nation apart."
He added that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have made Americans realize they are vulnerable to terrorism and that some believe "this threat renders our Constitution obsolete ... If that view is allowed to prevail, the terrorists will have won."
(http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072905N.shtml)
This was a stroke of courageous beauty amidst the backdrop of the ugly rise of what has the disturbing appearance of corporate/ bourgeois state tyranny . And there are many more. Watch for them, nurture them and protect them. They are our friends and allies.
This blog is an archive of articles I've published in MWC News, Indymedia, and on Newsgroups.
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Fuck Mainstream Media
When we pick up a paper or check the news on television we generally expect to be informed. The media has a responsibility and that responsibility is to inform us of what’s going on. If a dam is in danger of breaking two miles above our town, it is the responsibility of the media to let us know that the danger exists and why it exists. To a certain extent, we put our trust in them. But trusting the mainstream media is not a rational or intelligent choice to make. They have lied by saying things that are not true, by not saying things that are true, and very often through spinning bullshit, which is slightly different than lying. Sometimes bullshit is worse than lies. It’s not that they have done so several times, or even often. It’s that they do it all the time. They are programmed like a virus in software to fuck us up.
They never, by the way, use vulgarities like ‘fuck’. This is not an offhanded comment. It is very relevant. In fact, if you read media where the use of such words is acceptable, they have passed an important litmus test. They obviously don’t pander to the fucked up Christian Right and they don’t pander to the corporate elite who are very careful not to offend those that march in orderly fashion. They are in the business of providing audiences.
The mainstream media is not just a simple money pig. It is much more than that. With the marriage of the corporation to the state complete, it is natural for the corporate media to mouth the interests of both. The mainstream media has become a lackey, a tool of those that want to tell you that the Western world is in deep, deep danger. In a similar vein to Hitler’s fire in the Reichstag, the oil/ arms billionaires that run the White House want us to be terrified. They want a green light to make war in the Middle East and they want a green light to funnel billions of tax dollars into their own pockets through the sale of weapons systems. As a result we see very agitated talking heads that spew drivel ad nauseam about the need for security. It also serves their more sinister designs to build an iron shackled state apparatus where we will learn to live with less freedom and more security. We will learn that extremist views cannot be tolerated and they pose a threat to us all. Welcome to the Matrix.
They obviously serve many other functions besides making money and parroting the wishes of the aristocrats and overlords. They also strive to indoctrinate and shape the rabble into a uniform and docile mass of chauvinism.
Every day people are blown to bits in Iraq and often these events are not even mentioned in the news. When they are mentioned they will be treated rather frivolously. Contrast that with the severity and alarm on the airwaves whenever terrorists attack White or priveliged people. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, a disaster in Asia or Africa or Latin America may be mentioned casually while the misfortune of some rich, White Westerner would be a matter of much concern and excitement. Or they may focus on more ordinary folks like a runaway bride, or a missing teen in Aruba. This follows a pattern of implicit racism and it certainly suggests Brown foreigners are disposable and White Westerners are not. That pattern drives an implicit message into the minds of those that are vulnerable to its reception.
There is no doubt that the corporate media is working overtime to indoctrinate the citizenry, especially in the United States. It is in the United States where this process is magnified and as a result, people outside the USA may be affected to a lesser degree. This is not to slight the citizens of America, it is just that it is Americans that live deepest inside the belly of the beast of American hegemony. The CBC in Canada for example, is noticeably different than mainstream American media.
The crux of the problem is that the media is owned and controlled by that special interest group – the one that’s extra special. They have their own interests and those interests happen to be against the interests of the rest of us. And it is those billionaires that set the tone, the content, and the agenda for the rest of the media. A small-town newspaper does not have the resources to hire investigative journalists and they pick up the main stories from the newswire. Those items are fed by that same special interest group. Here, Chomsky explains who sets the content and the agenda for the mainstream:
“The New York Times and CBS, for example. Well, first of all, they are major, very profitable, corporations. Furthermore, most of them are either linked to, or outright owned by, much bigger corporations, like General Electric, Westinghouse, and so on. They are way up at the top of the power structure of the private economy which is a very tyrannical structure. Corporations are basically tyrannies, hierarchic, controled from above. If you don’t like what they are doing you get out. The major media are just part of that system.”
Chomsky also makes the point that the media has a specific motive and that motive is the audience itself. That is why news stories are very short and their patterns are quite simplistic. Short attention grabbing sound bites or pleasing optics are important. Content is but not in the way it should be. The main thrust of the business is not to inform, the business is about grabbing an audience and people are the product. Chomsky continues:
"Take the New York Times. It’s a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don’t make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience is the product. The product is privileged people, just like the people who are writing the newspapers, you know, top-level decision-making people in society. You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations. In the case of the elite media, it’s big businesses." (Lifted from: http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/z9710-mainstream-media.html)
But there is more to this than selling audiences. You will notice that the media will make certain issues relevant and important. They will spin them out in concert with the party line and with each other, sometimes word for word. For example, the deficit was the big problem when the politicians and the large corporations wanted to cut social programs. Right wing think tanks and agencies like Moody’s of New York suddenly had a lot to say about how societies are governed and how tax money is spent. You will also notice that when tax dollars are spent on weapons systems, the media does not make an issue of the deficit. It is rarely mentioned, if at all. That is because those that control the media are the same people that profit from building weapons systems.
According to Peter Phillips, “The eleven largest or most influential media corporations in the United States are General Electric Company (NBC), Viacom Inc. (cable), The Walt Disney Company (ABC), Time Warner Inc.(CNN), Westinghouse Electric Corporation (CBS), The News Corporation Ltd. (Fox), Gannett Co. Inc., Knight-Ridder Inc., New York Times Co., Washington Post Co., and the Times Mirror Co. These eleven major broadcast and print media corporations now represent a major portion of the news information systems in the United states. For many people their entire source of news and information comes from these eleven corporations."
(Source:http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Media%20Censor_ProjCensor.html)
General Electric is in the business of making battlefield computer systems. Their director, former senator Sam Nunn (who also directs Chevron/Texaco) isn’t likely to promote journalists that research his connections or to report any stories that work against the interests of NBC. He is not likely to be happy about his reporters making anti war statements either.
Recently, media and political elites have been shouting concern about the dangers of extremism. This sounds quite ominous. How does one define extremism? What is extreme in one culture is moderate in another. Attending Mosque every day and praying five times a day would be extreme from a Western point of view while viewing explicit sex movies would be extreme from their point of view. And extremes shift in time as well. From the point of view of 1970, all politicians are now extremely right wing. From the point of view of politicians in the 1930’s, today’s politicians and the population in general would seem bizarre. The point is, when the elites take on enemies like extremists, or 'evil doers', when they can make these subjective judgments, we must watch our backs. This very general term, extremism, casts a wide net. Will the mainstream media cast dispersions on leftists, environmentalists, or any spiritual practice that they subjectively deem extreme? Have the elitist media set out to squash dissent of all kinds using the modern day fire at the Reichstag (9-11) to do it? It really looks as if this process has already begun.
Steve Mizrach points out, “Opinion in our society must be carefully shaped and molded within certain careful boundaries: those who transgress those boundaries are libel to wind up "extremists," "ideologues," "fanatics," or "agitators. Now that dissidents in the U.S. can no longer be labelled 'fellow travellers' of the Moscow-run Commie conspiracy, the task has become more urgent. And how is it that consent, that most valuable of social products, is manufactured?”
(Source: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Consent_AmerStyle.html)
Mizrach points out that the following tactics are employed by what we may regard, realistically, as the enemy; that is, the mainstream media. They mould opinion particularly on Sunday talk shows by parading the opinions of sycophants that are the mouthpieces that have been schooled within the hallowed halls of the university of corporate indoctrination.
These are bolstered by spin doctors, or, PR devils. “PR managers, known as "spin doctors" when working in government, are able to carefully craft speeches and advertisements which evoke powerful images in the American psyche, frequently using "power words" such as freedom, fairness, liberty, justice, and peacekeeping for policies which dominate, discriminate, imprison, exploit, and terrorize much of the rest of the world.” (Mizrach)
Mizrach also points out the real purpose of public opinion polls is not so much to measure public opinion as it is to shape it. They also employ academics and think tanks to shape and mould public opinion.
Together, these tools are used against us. They are more threatening an enemy to the citizens of Western nations than an army of bin Ladens. They are used not only to shape public opinion. They are used to lie to us and to indoctrinate the impressionable and the young.
But there remains wild cards; people with influence that are not politically correct. In the past several years we have witnessed the firings and muzzlings of very influential people. Bill Mahar was fired for stating the obvious on a show ironically named, “Politically Incorrect”. He isn’t alone. Phil Donahue and Peter Arnett have been fired for political reasons. This works very directly. Advertisers who are the corporate – or more generally, the business elites, have forced them off the air.
More recently the increasingly fascistic and bold business elites, represented by both the Democrats and Republicans, have de-clawed the relatively liberal Corporation for Public Broadcasting (PBS). Bill Moyers was called to the mat for his apparent ‘liberal’ bias. The message that has been sent to those with influence is to stay inside the box of what the corporate rulers deem politically correct for American politics. It is worth noticing the contrast between American media and that of any other country in the world. In Canada for instance, liberal is a political stance that people generally consider either middle of the road or maybe somewhat to the right. In Canada, socialism is leftist but curiously in America, socialism has been purged from politics. It’s as if it doesn’t exist.
We cannot underestimate the importance of Indymedia, bloggers, progressive web sites, and all progressive movements that rely on the internet. The internet is a genie let out of a bottle. This fluid and democratic flow of information is the blessing of this uncontrolled machine that sits before you. The corporations do not own or control this medium and here, we are free. And it is from here we face the enemy. From here we will work together to defeat the next rising wave of tyranny.
They never, by the way, use vulgarities like ‘fuck’. This is not an offhanded comment. It is very relevant. In fact, if you read media where the use of such words is acceptable, they have passed an important litmus test. They obviously don’t pander to the fucked up Christian Right and they don’t pander to the corporate elite who are very careful not to offend those that march in orderly fashion. They are in the business of providing audiences.
The mainstream media is not just a simple money pig. It is much more than that. With the marriage of the corporation to the state complete, it is natural for the corporate media to mouth the interests of both. The mainstream media has become a lackey, a tool of those that want to tell you that the Western world is in deep, deep danger. In a similar vein to Hitler’s fire in the Reichstag, the oil/ arms billionaires that run the White House want us to be terrified. They want a green light to make war in the Middle East and they want a green light to funnel billions of tax dollars into their own pockets through the sale of weapons systems. As a result we see very agitated talking heads that spew drivel ad nauseam about the need for security. It also serves their more sinister designs to build an iron shackled state apparatus where we will learn to live with less freedom and more security. We will learn that extremist views cannot be tolerated and they pose a threat to us all. Welcome to the Matrix.
They obviously serve many other functions besides making money and parroting the wishes of the aristocrats and overlords. They also strive to indoctrinate and shape the rabble into a uniform and docile mass of chauvinism.
Every day people are blown to bits in Iraq and often these events are not even mentioned in the news. When they are mentioned they will be treated rather frivolously. Contrast that with the severity and alarm on the airwaves whenever terrorists attack White or priveliged people. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, a disaster in Asia or Africa or Latin America may be mentioned casually while the misfortune of some rich, White Westerner would be a matter of much concern and excitement. Or they may focus on more ordinary folks like a runaway bride, or a missing teen in Aruba. This follows a pattern of implicit racism and it certainly suggests Brown foreigners are disposable and White Westerners are not. That pattern drives an implicit message into the minds of those that are vulnerable to its reception.
There is no doubt that the corporate media is working overtime to indoctrinate the citizenry, especially in the United States. It is in the United States where this process is magnified and as a result, people outside the USA may be affected to a lesser degree. This is not to slight the citizens of America, it is just that it is Americans that live deepest inside the belly of the beast of American hegemony. The CBC in Canada for example, is noticeably different than mainstream American media.
The crux of the problem is that the media is owned and controlled by that special interest group – the one that’s extra special. They have their own interests and those interests happen to be against the interests of the rest of us. And it is those billionaires that set the tone, the content, and the agenda for the rest of the media. A small-town newspaper does not have the resources to hire investigative journalists and they pick up the main stories from the newswire. Those items are fed by that same special interest group. Here, Chomsky explains who sets the content and the agenda for the mainstream:
“The New York Times and CBS, for example. Well, first of all, they are major, very profitable, corporations. Furthermore, most of them are either linked to, or outright owned by, much bigger corporations, like General Electric, Westinghouse, and so on. They are way up at the top of the power structure of the private economy which is a very tyrannical structure. Corporations are basically tyrannies, hierarchic, controled from above. If you don’t like what they are doing you get out. The major media are just part of that system.”
Chomsky also makes the point that the media has a specific motive and that motive is the audience itself. That is why news stories are very short and their patterns are quite simplistic. Short attention grabbing sound bites or pleasing optics are important. Content is but not in the way it should be. The main thrust of the business is not to inform, the business is about grabbing an audience and people are the product. Chomsky continues:
"Take the New York Times. It’s a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don’t make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience is the product. The product is privileged people, just like the people who are writing the newspapers, you know, top-level decision-making people in society. You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations. In the case of the elite media, it’s big businesses." (Lifted from: http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/z9710-mainstream-media.html)
But there is more to this than selling audiences. You will notice that the media will make certain issues relevant and important. They will spin them out in concert with the party line and with each other, sometimes word for word. For example, the deficit was the big problem when the politicians and the large corporations wanted to cut social programs. Right wing think tanks and agencies like Moody’s of New York suddenly had a lot to say about how societies are governed and how tax money is spent. You will also notice that when tax dollars are spent on weapons systems, the media does not make an issue of the deficit. It is rarely mentioned, if at all. That is because those that control the media are the same people that profit from building weapons systems.
According to Peter Phillips, “The eleven largest or most influential media corporations in the United States are General Electric Company (NBC), Viacom Inc. (cable), The Walt Disney Company (ABC), Time Warner Inc.(CNN), Westinghouse Electric Corporation (CBS), The News Corporation Ltd. (Fox), Gannett Co. Inc., Knight-Ridder Inc., New York Times Co., Washington Post Co., and the Times Mirror Co. These eleven major broadcast and print media corporations now represent a major portion of the news information systems in the United states. For many people their entire source of news and information comes from these eleven corporations."
(Source:http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Media%20Censor_ProjCensor.html)
General Electric is in the business of making battlefield computer systems. Their director, former senator Sam Nunn (who also directs Chevron/Texaco) isn’t likely to promote journalists that research his connections or to report any stories that work against the interests of NBC. He is not likely to be happy about his reporters making anti war statements either.
Recently, media and political elites have been shouting concern about the dangers of extremism. This sounds quite ominous. How does one define extremism? What is extreme in one culture is moderate in another. Attending Mosque every day and praying five times a day would be extreme from a Western point of view while viewing explicit sex movies would be extreme from their point of view. And extremes shift in time as well. From the point of view of 1970, all politicians are now extremely right wing. From the point of view of politicians in the 1930’s, today’s politicians and the population in general would seem bizarre. The point is, when the elites take on enemies like extremists, or 'evil doers', when they can make these subjective judgments, we must watch our backs. This very general term, extremism, casts a wide net. Will the mainstream media cast dispersions on leftists, environmentalists, or any spiritual practice that they subjectively deem extreme? Have the elitist media set out to squash dissent of all kinds using the modern day fire at the Reichstag (9-11) to do it? It really looks as if this process has already begun.
Steve Mizrach points out, “Opinion in our society must be carefully shaped and molded within certain careful boundaries: those who transgress those boundaries are libel to wind up "extremists," "ideologues," "fanatics," or "agitators. Now that dissidents in the U.S. can no longer be labelled 'fellow travellers' of the Moscow-run Commie conspiracy, the task has become more urgent. And how is it that consent, that most valuable of social products, is manufactured?”
(Source: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Consent_AmerStyle.html)
Mizrach points out that the following tactics are employed by what we may regard, realistically, as the enemy; that is, the mainstream media. They mould opinion particularly on Sunday talk shows by parading the opinions of sycophants that are the mouthpieces that have been schooled within the hallowed halls of the university of corporate indoctrination.
These are bolstered by spin doctors, or, PR devils. “PR managers, known as "spin doctors" when working in government, are able to carefully craft speeches and advertisements which evoke powerful images in the American psyche, frequently using "power words" such as freedom, fairness, liberty, justice, and peacekeeping for policies which dominate, discriminate, imprison, exploit, and terrorize much of the rest of the world.” (Mizrach)
Mizrach also points out the real purpose of public opinion polls is not so much to measure public opinion as it is to shape it. They also employ academics and think tanks to shape and mould public opinion.
Together, these tools are used against us. They are more threatening an enemy to the citizens of Western nations than an army of bin Ladens. They are used not only to shape public opinion. They are used to lie to us and to indoctrinate the impressionable and the young.
But there remains wild cards; people with influence that are not politically correct. In the past several years we have witnessed the firings and muzzlings of very influential people. Bill Mahar was fired for stating the obvious on a show ironically named, “Politically Incorrect”. He isn’t alone. Phil Donahue and Peter Arnett have been fired for political reasons. This works very directly. Advertisers who are the corporate – or more generally, the business elites, have forced them off the air.
More recently the increasingly fascistic and bold business elites, represented by both the Democrats and Republicans, have de-clawed the relatively liberal Corporation for Public Broadcasting (PBS). Bill Moyers was called to the mat for his apparent ‘liberal’ bias. The message that has been sent to those with influence is to stay inside the box of what the corporate rulers deem politically correct for American politics. It is worth noticing the contrast between American media and that of any other country in the world. In Canada for instance, liberal is a political stance that people generally consider either middle of the road or maybe somewhat to the right. In Canada, socialism is leftist but curiously in America, socialism has been purged from politics. It’s as if it doesn’t exist.
We cannot underestimate the importance of Indymedia, bloggers, progressive web sites, and all progressive movements that rely on the internet. The internet is a genie let out of a bottle. This fluid and democratic flow of information is the blessing of this uncontrolled machine that sits before you. The corporations do not own or control this medium and here, we are free. And it is from here we face the enemy. From here we will work together to defeat the next rising wave of tyranny.
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Freedom Fried
Freedom has a price. It is a price that we have been willing to pay for hundreds of years in most Western societies. The cost is a certain degree of necessary anxiety as a result of the unpredictable nature of disparate human impulses.
When the citizens and leaders of a society become jittery and fearful enough, they tend to sell their freedom for safety from the unknown and unpredictable. In societies that have cowed to fear, you may be stoned to death for committing adultery, you may be sanctioned for ‘extremist’ views, or you may be put to death for a crime you have not committed. That is a problem with a secure society. It is, after all, a myth. The upside is that all the trains tend to run on time.
To live in a free society we must tolerate known criminals living in our midst. We must tolerate all sorts of political and philosophical opinions that are an affront to our sensibilities. We have to accept the fact that anything can happen. Many unpleasant possibilities are plausible, even the possibility of being killed. But that’s life. Security is a myth and if we take a look around, if we take a look at what happens when societies give in to fear, we can see what happens. Those societies become tyrannical nightmares.
There is a border, a clear and distinct line that we cannot cross. We must prosecute a crime AFTER the individual has acted. And no nation can act against another preemptively.
That means that we cannot prosecute pedophiles that are likely to harm children before they act. Instead, we have to be awake and aware and take steps to protect them ourselves. The state cannot do it. We cannot prosecute those that will likely murder their spouse before they act. We have to act to protect ourselves and our loved ones. The state cannot do it. In free societies we have always endured this precarious situation. But we have done it.
But now all that is changing and what it may mean for us is a future of having to endure the iron shackles of an arbitrary and brutal state apparatus. We have to ask ourselves if we are that cowardly. Are we timid and fearful to the point that we allow the terrorists that slaughtered the people in the twin towers to take away our freedom?
They seem to be winning the war that Bush had boldly declared against terrorism. Not so much in the sense that they are managing to create enough carnage and fear in Iraq to be party to the complete terrorizing of that society as much as the effect they are having on American society. This also spills over into British, Canadian, Australian and many other societies.
Coincidentally, and fortunately for the terrorists of both stripes (the Arab terrorists and the American terrorists) there were two bombings in London just prior to a vote in the US House of Representatives on renewal of the misnamed and potentially fascistic Patriot Act. Following hours of intense debate they voted 257-171 to permanently extend 14 of 16 provisions that had a four year sunset. The remaining two provisions were given a ten year lease on life. This would not have happened without the London bombings. You'd almost think the Mid-Eastren and Western neo cons were working together. One provision is to permit "roving wiretaps" and the other will allow the state to search individuals library and medical records.
If it is the long term plan of the terrorists to destroy individual freedom in the West, they are doing a bang up job. Unfortunately, they are on the same page in this regard as the neo cons that are pushing this cancerous virus against the spirit of freedom through the media, through legislation and through the minds of the timid and fearful fools that buy into this fearful bullshit.
On this political front, we may have to make uncomfortable bedfellows. There are some conservatives that are vehemently passionate about individual liberty, some liberals and socialists as well. On this matter, we should be prepared to drop the guns we tend to hold at one another's heads and work together against the conservatives, liberals and socialists, that don't give a flying fuck about individual liberty and especially the terrorists and neo cons that are working to destroy it.
When the citizens and leaders of a society become jittery and fearful enough, they tend to sell their freedom for safety from the unknown and unpredictable. In societies that have cowed to fear, you may be stoned to death for committing adultery, you may be sanctioned for ‘extremist’ views, or you may be put to death for a crime you have not committed. That is a problem with a secure society. It is, after all, a myth. The upside is that all the trains tend to run on time.
To live in a free society we must tolerate known criminals living in our midst. We must tolerate all sorts of political and philosophical opinions that are an affront to our sensibilities. We have to accept the fact that anything can happen. Many unpleasant possibilities are plausible, even the possibility of being killed. But that’s life. Security is a myth and if we take a look around, if we take a look at what happens when societies give in to fear, we can see what happens. Those societies become tyrannical nightmares.
There is a border, a clear and distinct line that we cannot cross. We must prosecute a crime AFTER the individual has acted. And no nation can act against another preemptively.
That means that we cannot prosecute pedophiles that are likely to harm children before they act. Instead, we have to be awake and aware and take steps to protect them ourselves. The state cannot do it. We cannot prosecute those that will likely murder their spouse before they act. We have to act to protect ourselves and our loved ones. The state cannot do it. In free societies we have always endured this precarious situation. But we have done it.
But now all that is changing and what it may mean for us is a future of having to endure the iron shackles of an arbitrary and brutal state apparatus. We have to ask ourselves if we are that cowardly. Are we timid and fearful to the point that we allow the terrorists that slaughtered the people in the twin towers to take away our freedom?
They seem to be winning the war that Bush had boldly declared against terrorism. Not so much in the sense that they are managing to create enough carnage and fear in Iraq to be party to the complete terrorizing of that society as much as the effect they are having on American society. This also spills over into British, Canadian, Australian and many other societies.
Coincidentally, and fortunately for the terrorists of both stripes (the Arab terrorists and the American terrorists) there were two bombings in London just prior to a vote in the US House of Representatives on renewal of the misnamed and potentially fascistic Patriot Act. Following hours of intense debate they voted 257-171 to permanently extend 14 of 16 provisions that had a four year sunset. The remaining two provisions were given a ten year lease on life. This would not have happened without the London bombings. You'd almost think the Mid-Eastren and Western neo cons were working together. One provision is to permit "roving wiretaps" and the other will allow the state to search individuals library and medical records.
If it is the long term plan of the terrorists to destroy individual freedom in the West, they are doing a bang up job. Unfortunately, they are on the same page in this regard as the neo cons that are pushing this cancerous virus against the spirit of freedom through the media, through legislation and through the minds of the timid and fearful fools that buy into this fearful bullshit.
On this political front, we may have to make uncomfortable bedfellows. There are some conservatives that are vehemently passionate about individual liberty, some liberals and socialists as well. On this matter, we should be prepared to drop the guns we tend to hold at one another's heads and work together against the conservatives, liberals and socialists, that don't give a flying fuck about individual liberty and especially the terrorists and neo cons that are working to destroy it.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
The Withering Away of the Quasi-Socialist State
‘Socialism proper’ is when the wealth of society is in the hands of the commons or the public as opposed to a particular individual or individuals. Quasi-socialism is piece-meal socialism embedded in capitalist societies. Examples of this are workers unions, social programs, the public ownership of roads and parks, or anything else that gives the working class and the public in general a greater degree of power.
Quasi-socialism has been deeply implanted in Western European and North American countries. Without it a society is always precariously teetering according to the whims of the economy. As a result, the people that live in that society are also precariously teetering between survival and death. Each day people starve to death in a world where there is enough for everybody.
Imagine the world where there is no quasi-socialism. A world where capitalism is completely unfettered and little or no social programs are in place. This is the situation in many countries around the world and it is a situation that capitalism tends toward through time.
In this situation a worker must sell his or her time to a business owner in order to eat, to buy health care and medicine, to feed the children, to buy electricity and so on. Without money the individual has no freedom, none whatsoever. He or she is not even free to access these basic necessities. Money is required to survive and without it, you don't. For the citizen and her children to be free of the stalking grim reaper she must surrender her time and labour to a business owner and produce wealth or provide services to that business owner. There is absolutely no freedom in this situation. It is a situation of wage-slavery. The choice is simple and stark. Either sell your time to a capitalist or die. So, obviously, the citizen sells his or her time to a capitalist.
While that worker is employed by the business owner, he or she is completely subject to the whims and arbitrary decisions of the boss. The owner might decide to have sex with the worker and may demand it. The choices the worker has at that point is to give in to the owners demands or face malnourishment or worse. The boss might discover that the worker is gay or may find out that the worker is of the wrong religion or has friends that are Black and for that reason, the owner fires the worker. The main point is that one individual has discretionary and arbitrary power over another. When that condition exists and it is a matter of survival and the choice is submission or survival, there is not a trace of freedom.
The agreed upon conditions could be ignored by the owner but the worker will be forced to comply and then some. For instance, the owner may decide that the worker should work several extra hours a day for free. I have lived in a country where workers worked six days a week and an additional two hours per day for the bosses for no pay. This was the expectation. Even at that, the bosses would notice who left first. Firings were arbitrary and came without warning and the threat was ominous. The oppression was ubiquitous for workers but the owners seemed to be having a good time.
A firing doesn’t mean the same thing where there is no social safety net. The sense of fear emanating from workers in that situation is palpable, especially when the boss is around.
Consider the contrast; in societies where unions have taken hold and where social programs have been developed, the standard of living is quite comfortable for most. In societies where unbridled capitalism exists, the standard of living is generally poor. This is because the more wealth is distributed among the population, the more demand there is for goods and services. But aside from those macro-economic considerations, there is the consideration of freedom. There is the consideration that one person, or one class of persons, has arbitrary power and control over others. This situation is completely unacceptable and it is a human rights issue.
So the choice is obvious. Unbridled capitalism is a set-up for abuse; a set-up for abject slavery and tyranny. The only acceptable conditions for capitalism are conditions where workers have a decent measure of power and economic freedom. That means that they have choices within and outside the workplace. That means that they are free to organize unions and that if they are unemployed, they are still free to make choices, to eat, to avail themselves of telephones and transportation and medical care. That means that an adequate social safety net is in place.
The problem is that capitalism has significant built in contradictions. And what that means for workers is that capitalism and capitalist states as a whole will become more austere as capitalism matures. The bangles and decorations at its edges are beginning to disappear. Universal health care, welfare, unemployment insurance, and the whole social safety net has started to rot and many people are falling through. They have landed on the sidewalks of the cities and they hold their hands out begging for spare change. They are doing so because they have lost their freedom to eat, to live in a home or to ride a bus. Whole families are homeless and the capitalist world is slipping into a foreboding future.
The big question is whether the withering away of the quasi-socialist state is irrevocable. Has capitalism grown to a point of no return or can we resurrect the ghost of John Maynard Keynes? Can the capitalists afford to throw us a few scraps? We must not forget however that while we in the West enjoyed the blessings of the marriage between J.M. Keynes and Henry Ford, people continued to starve to death in many parts of the world. Now capitalists are moving their shops there, to where the labour is cheap. Their need and desire to throw scraps to workers in the West has diminished.
In the near future we may lose our tax base for social programs. Maybe we will be forced to nationalize some of the profit making industries to pay for schools, hospitals and doctors. We can’t do without them. Or maybe we’ll have to take the whole socialism thing a few steps further than that.
Quasi-socialism has been deeply implanted in Western European and North American countries. Without it a society is always precariously teetering according to the whims of the economy. As a result, the people that live in that society are also precariously teetering between survival and death. Each day people starve to death in a world where there is enough for everybody.
Imagine the world where there is no quasi-socialism. A world where capitalism is completely unfettered and little or no social programs are in place. This is the situation in many countries around the world and it is a situation that capitalism tends toward through time.
In this situation a worker must sell his or her time to a business owner in order to eat, to buy health care and medicine, to feed the children, to buy electricity and so on. Without money the individual has no freedom, none whatsoever. He or she is not even free to access these basic necessities. Money is required to survive and without it, you don't. For the citizen and her children to be free of the stalking grim reaper she must surrender her time and labour to a business owner and produce wealth or provide services to that business owner. There is absolutely no freedom in this situation. It is a situation of wage-slavery. The choice is simple and stark. Either sell your time to a capitalist or die. So, obviously, the citizen sells his or her time to a capitalist.
While that worker is employed by the business owner, he or she is completely subject to the whims and arbitrary decisions of the boss. The owner might decide to have sex with the worker and may demand it. The choices the worker has at that point is to give in to the owners demands or face malnourishment or worse. The boss might discover that the worker is gay or may find out that the worker is of the wrong religion or has friends that are Black and for that reason, the owner fires the worker. The main point is that one individual has discretionary and arbitrary power over another. When that condition exists and it is a matter of survival and the choice is submission or survival, there is not a trace of freedom.
The agreed upon conditions could be ignored by the owner but the worker will be forced to comply and then some. For instance, the owner may decide that the worker should work several extra hours a day for free. I have lived in a country where workers worked six days a week and an additional two hours per day for the bosses for no pay. This was the expectation. Even at that, the bosses would notice who left first. Firings were arbitrary and came without warning and the threat was ominous. The oppression was ubiquitous for workers but the owners seemed to be having a good time.
A firing doesn’t mean the same thing where there is no social safety net. The sense of fear emanating from workers in that situation is palpable, especially when the boss is around.
Consider the contrast; in societies where unions have taken hold and where social programs have been developed, the standard of living is quite comfortable for most. In societies where unbridled capitalism exists, the standard of living is generally poor. This is because the more wealth is distributed among the population, the more demand there is for goods and services. But aside from those macro-economic considerations, there is the consideration of freedom. There is the consideration that one person, or one class of persons, has arbitrary power and control over others. This situation is completely unacceptable and it is a human rights issue.
So the choice is obvious. Unbridled capitalism is a set-up for abuse; a set-up for abject slavery and tyranny. The only acceptable conditions for capitalism are conditions where workers have a decent measure of power and economic freedom. That means that they have choices within and outside the workplace. That means that they are free to organize unions and that if they are unemployed, they are still free to make choices, to eat, to avail themselves of telephones and transportation and medical care. That means that an adequate social safety net is in place.
The problem is that capitalism has significant built in contradictions. And what that means for workers is that capitalism and capitalist states as a whole will become more austere as capitalism matures. The bangles and decorations at its edges are beginning to disappear. Universal health care, welfare, unemployment insurance, and the whole social safety net has started to rot and many people are falling through. They have landed on the sidewalks of the cities and they hold their hands out begging for spare change. They are doing so because they have lost their freedom to eat, to live in a home or to ride a bus. Whole families are homeless and the capitalist world is slipping into a foreboding future.
The big question is whether the withering away of the quasi-socialist state is irrevocable. Has capitalism grown to a point of no return or can we resurrect the ghost of John Maynard Keynes? Can the capitalists afford to throw us a few scraps? We must not forget however that while we in the West enjoyed the blessings of the marriage between J.M. Keynes and Henry Ford, people continued to starve to death in many parts of the world. Now capitalists are moving their shops there, to where the labour is cheap. Their need and desire to throw scraps to workers in the West has diminished.
In the near future we may lose our tax base for social programs. Maybe we will be forced to nationalize some of the profit making industries to pay for schools, hospitals and doctors. We can’t do without them. Or maybe we’ll have to take the whole socialism thing a few steps further than that.
Monday, July 18, 2005
Magical Mysterious 1967
In 1966 our morals, behaviour, and values were similar to those of 1956, or 1946, or even 1826 for that matter. But in 1967 something suddenly shifted. In 1966 there was a mood of innocence and certainty. Young people used colloquial expressions like ‘swell’, ‘neat’, or ‘lady’. They dressed conservatively and wore their hair short. They fought for God and country and they were patriotic.
In 1967 it was as if somebody pulled a switch. Young people suddenly grew their hair long. They suddenly opposed war and they refused to carry guns. And they dropped their guns and they began to drop LSD. The language of youth changed dramatically. Youth spoke pejoratively of “the establishment” which generally meant not only the state and the private sector, but traditional ways of thinking and doing things. Suddenly everybody knew who Timothy Leary, Alan Ginsberg and Aldous Huxley were.
In 1967 the Western world swung into full social upheaval. The anti-war movement exploded in living colour, the civil rights movement became emboldened as did the women’s liberation movement and many other movements of protest and change. The rug was pulled out from beneath Lyndon Johnson and John Calvin and parents everywhere.
The times suddenly had a very anarchistic and rebellious feel to them. It seemed to be an anarchistic rebellion that emerged out of nowhere. People began to set up communes and there was explicit talk of socialism, communism, and revolution not only in America, but throughout Europe as well. In America there was the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers and various other organized groups of revolutionaries. But as anarchistic and socialistic as it might have seemed, in fact it was the full social completion of the capitalist revolution that began so very long ago. The modes of production had changed but the people didn’t – until now. It was the final act of the capitalist revolution and it contained within it the energy and vision of socialism.
As our material conditions change so do we. But not easily if the nature of the last paradigm was a palpable solidity and continuity. The forces of inertia were well developed in the mentality of stoic and 'proper' feudal society. This served to retard the natural flow of psychological change and as a result social change was ostensibly held back. Meanwhile, changes in technology, the processes of production and the relationships within the capitalistic sphere continued to march to the beat of the drum of progress. As a result the values and processes at the workplace developed strain against the traditional values and mores of the average household.
The utopian world of ideas and morality cannot withstand the practical considerations of human needs and the very tangible reality of production and distribution. The caricature may hold for a time but will perish if there is any practical compulsion to expel it. Sometimes it happens slowly and incrementally and sometimes they meet a swift and abrupt end. That is what happened in 1967. As a result, people that formed their world view prior to that stand ideologically opposed to those that came of age at that time or later. It was commonly referred to in the 60’s and 70’s as the generation gap.
The modern capitalist world had become, previous to 1967, reliant on the empiricism of the scientific method. This implicit assumption was contained within the capitalist paradigm and it was subversive to and would be the death blow for religious and beliefs and the power of the church.
Capitalism also usurped the power and privilege of nobility as the power of merchants and industrial capitalists grew. Traditional and arbitrary power gave way to rational laws and principles where it became theoretically possible for individual inhabitants of the lower classes to rise through the social mobility granted by free enterprise. Legal principles now would be legitimated through reasonable observations and logical processes.
Capitalism also granted greater personal freedom to each individual. The binds of the old social order were broken. Not only did social mobility become possible, but the rigidity of morality and the social rules of patriarchy and religious piety had now lost their grounding and legitimacy.
In this climate of freedom from the binds of feudalism, a wealth of ambition and inventions found its way to the market. New ways of producing, hustling wares, and managing industry were developed. Capitalism developed tools to reduce the drudgery of work at the workplace and in the home. An explosion of commodities flooded the capitalist world making life far more enjoyable that previous generations could have even imagined.
But as late as 1966 this psychological transformation had not taken hold within most households. Most of the population lived in the world of Norman Rockwell. World views emanating from the pulpit and from parents and grandparents help preserve the old social order. Change was threatening to those with the comfort of habit and ideological solidity. They barely noticed the great demographic shift taking place as people left the countryside and moved into cities. But even in the cities, the extent of popular rebellion was restricted to good boys like Elvis and Jimmy Dean. The Western world was stuck in the comfort of knowing one’s place. There was good and there was evil. The known was good and the foriegn was evil. There were proper folks and immodest outcasts. The social order was holding.
In the background however there was Alan Ginsberg and the Beats. There was the emerging civil rights movement and there were Marxists, feminists and anarchists lurking about. Women and minorities were demanding equality and although these voices seemed silent in the mainstream, they all made their contribution to the cultural revolution of the sixties.
While it marked the coming of age for full scale capitalist society, it was energized by the radicalism of socialism. The thrust and energy of the 60s was based in the strain that existed between the forces of production and the inertia of wholesome conservativism. The individualist liberating qualities of capitalism were empowered with a growing hunger for for collective liberation, all qualities that are born of the liberations and inequities of capitalism. This incendiary concoction didn't burn, it exploded. The sympathies of socialism were explicitly expressed while the free expression itself was a manifestation of now widely accepted social freedom of capitalist society.
The acrimony that is so apparent and seems so natural between capitalism and socialism is rooted in a similar conservative bent to the old school crackers. But the nature of capitalism is that of a shape shifter. Capitalism is inherently revolutionary and its own revolution against itself is programmed into the software. Socialism is a natural and necessary child of capitalism.
Wealth is based on the difference between the time worked by a worker that is equal to his or her wages, and the extra time the worker produces. That extra time has value and it is surplus value. This is the basis of the wealth of capitalists. Although capitalism carries with it a greater degree of freedom than serfdom, the reality is not freedom in any practical sense, except for the lords of capital; ergo, the germination of revolutionary energy. Workers are free, yes, but at the same time they are not. And as capitalism matures, the strain between those that own and control and those that are owned and controlled increases necessarily.
The worker in feudal times had, in some ways, more independence that the wage worker of modern capitalism. He devoted some of his earned wealth to the lord that he served but maintained his own field and animals. Craftsmen produced wealth directly with their hands and enjoyed a measure of independence. But the modern worker in the modern workplace has become an alienated tool of socialized production and is valued in these terms. He must sell his time to one capitalist or another or face destitution. The modern worker finds himself in a state of social anarchy in the world of work, commodity production, and distribution. Who knows what is going to sell, what will shut down or what the future will bring? Previously, there was binding security.
Capitalism does not contain within it the inertia, security, and solidity that feudal systems had and for that reason, there is always an undercurrent of change and anarchy.
This situation results in societies that are under the constant strain of conflict and upheaval. The shackles of religion and tradition have been broken. The conflict between the new master, the capitalist, and the serf-like wage worker, percolates continuously. The strain between the increasing difficulty gaining profit from a unit of work and the diminishing standard of living for the average wage slave impregnate all societies with the seeds of socialism. And in an ironic twist, it was these seeds of socialism, the resultant dissatisfaction with capitalism that burst forth in 1967 to result in the full expression of capitalist liberation.
Capitalism has socialized the forces of production. And as it matures and grows, the utility of the individual capitalist diminishes. Their role becomes nothing more than that of a gambler at a casino. Managers of corporations must find ways to squeeze profit out of increasing difficult circumstances. It becomes their job to cut wages, to appropriate as much wealth as possible for and to the great casino. What is in the interests of the casino players and managers is directly opposed to the interests of workers and consumers as well as the general public.
The next social upheaval will come and it will be fundamentally different that the one that began in 1967. 1967 marked the beginning of a wholesale acceptance of individual freedom from the shackles of residual feudalism. This residue had to be purged from the psychology of the new generation.
There is no way to predict when it will come or what it will mean to the way we do things and our common values. We can only try to make educated guesses. History has a way of unfolding with twists and turns that seem written by a madman.
In 1960 or even in 1966 it would have been impossible to predict what was about to happen. The next upheaval could come at any time. The changeover from the age of kings and lords to the age of the bourgeoisie happened incrementally and the explosion of rebellion occured late and well into its adolescence.
Socialism will be born of a big bang. It is a birth that will require explicit revolutionary energy. The timing and the details are impossible to predict. But there is no doubting that it will come. It’s in the cards.
In 1967 it was as if somebody pulled a switch. Young people suddenly grew their hair long. They suddenly opposed war and they refused to carry guns. And they dropped their guns and they began to drop LSD. The language of youth changed dramatically. Youth spoke pejoratively of “the establishment” which generally meant not only the state and the private sector, but traditional ways of thinking and doing things. Suddenly everybody knew who Timothy Leary, Alan Ginsberg and Aldous Huxley were.
In 1967 the Western world swung into full social upheaval. The anti-war movement exploded in living colour, the civil rights movement became emboldened as did the women’s liberation movement and many other movements of protest and change. The rug was pulled out from beneath Lyndon Johnson and John Calvin and parents everywhere.
The times suddenly had a very anarchistic and rebellious feel to them. It seemed to be an anarchistic rebellion that emerged out of nowhere. People began to set up communes and there was explicit talk of socialism, communism, and revolution not only in America, but throughout Europe as well. In America there was the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers and various other organized groups of revolutionaries. But as anarchistic and socialistic as it might have seemed, in fact it was the full social completion of the capitalist revolution that began so very long ago. The modes of production had changed but the people didn’t – until now. It was the final act of the capitalist revolution and it contained within it the energy and vision of socialism.
As our material conditions change so do we. But not easily if the nature of the last paradigm was a palpable solidity and continuity. The forces of inertia were well developed in the mentality of stoic and 'proper' feudal society. This served to retard the natural flow of psychological change and as a result social change was ostensibly held back. Meanwhile, changes in technology, the processes of production and the relationships within the capitalistic sphere continued to march to the beat of the drum of progress. As a result the values and processes at the workplace developed strain against the traditional values and mores of the average household.
The utopian world of ideas and morality cannot withstand the practical considerations of human needs and the very tangible reality of production and distribution. The caricature may hold for a time but will perish if there is any practical compulsion to expel it. Sometimes it happens slowly and incrementally and sometimes they meet a swift and abrupt end. That is what happened in 1967. As a result, people that formed their world view prior to that stand ideologically opposed to those that came of age at that time or later. It was commonly referred to in the 60’s and 70’s as the generation gap.
The modern capitalist world had become, previous to 1967, reliant on the empiricism of the scientific method. This implicit assumption was contained within the capitalist paradigm and it was subversive to and would be the death blow for religious and beliefs and the power of the church.
Capitalism also usurped the power and privilege of nobility as the power of merchants and industrial capitalists grew. Traditional and arbitrary power gave way to rational laws and principles where it became theoretically possible for individual inhabitants of the lower classes to rise through the social mobility granted by free enterprise. Legal principles now would be legitimated through reasonable observations and logical processes.
Capitalism also granted greater personal freedom to each individual. The binds of the old social order were broken. Not only did social mobility become possible, but the rigidity of morality and the social rules of patriarchy and religious piety had now lost their grounding and legitimacy.
In this climate of freedom from the binds of feudalism, a wealth of ambition and inventions found its way to the market. New ways of producing, hustling wares, and managing industry were developed. Capitalism developed tools to reduce the drudgery of work at the workplace and in the home. An explosion of commodities flooded the capitalist world making life far more enjoyable that previous generations could have even imagined.
But as late as 1966 this psychological transformation had not taken hold within most households. Most of the population lived in the world of Norman Rockwell. World views emanating from the pulpit and from parents and grandparents help preserve the old social order. Change was threatening to those with the comfort of habit and ideological solidity. They barely noticed the great demographic shift taking place as people left the countryside and moved into cities. But even in the cities, the extent of popular rebellion was restricted to good boys like Elvis and Jimmy Dean. The Western world was stuck in the comfort of knowing one’s place. There was good and there was evil. The known was good and the foriegn was evil. There were proper folks and immodest outcasts. The social order was holding.
In the background however there was Alan Ginsberg and the Beats. There was the emerging civil rights movement and there were Marxists, feminists and anarchists lurking about. Women and minorities were demanding equality and although these voices seemed silent in the mainstream, they all made their contribution to the cultural revolution of the sixties.
While it marked the coming of age for full scale capitalist society, it was energized by the radicalism of socialism. The thrust and energy of the 60s was based in the strain that existed between the forces of production and the inertia of wholesome conservativism. The individualist liberating qualities of capitalism were empowered with a growing hunger for for collective liberation, all qualities that are born of the liberations and inequities of capitalism. This incendiary concoction didn't burn, it exploded. The sympathies of socialism were explicitly expressed while the free expression itself was a manifestation of now widely accepted social freedom of capitalist society.
The acrimony that is so apparent and seems so natural between capitalism and socialism is rooted in a similar conservative bent to the old school crackers. But the nature of capitalism is that of a shape shifter. Capitalism is inherently revolutionary and its own revolution against itself is programmed into the software. Socialism is a natural and necessary child of capitalism.
Wealth is based on the difference between the time worked by a worker that is equal to his or her wages, and the extra time the worker produces. That extra time has value and it is surplus value. This is the basis of the wealth of capitalists. Although capitalism carries with it a greater degree of freedom than serfdom, the reality is not freedom in any practical sense, except for the lords of capital; ergo, the germination of revolutionary energy. Workers are free, yes, but at the same time they are not. And as capitalism matures, the strain between those that own and control and those that are owned and controlled increases necessarily.
The worker in feudal times had, in some ways, more independence that the wage worker of modern capitalism. He devoted some of his earned wealth to the lord that he served but maintained his own field and animals. Craftsmen produced wealth directly with their hands and enjoyed a measure of independence. But the modern worker in the modern workplace has become an alienated tool of socialized production and is valued in these terms. He must sell his time to one capitalist or another or face destitution. The modern worker finds himself in a state of social anarchy in the world of work, commodity production, and distribution. Who knows what is going to sell, what will shut down or what the future will bring? Previously, there was binding security.
Capitalism does not contain within it the inertia, security, and solidity that feudal systems had and for that reason, there is always an undercurrent of change and anarchy.
This situation results in societies that are under the constant strain of conflict and upheaval. The shackles of religion and tradition have been broken. The conflict between the new master, the capitalist, and the serf-like wage worker, percolates continuously. The strain between the increasing difficulty gaining profit from a unit of work and the diminishing standard of living for the average wage slave impregnate all societies with the seeds of socialism. And in an ironic twist, it was these seeds of socialism, the resultant dissatisfaction with capitalism that burst forth in 1967 to result in the full expression of capitalist liberation.
Capitalism has socialized the forces of production. And as it matures and grows, the utility of the individual capitalist diminishes. Their role becomes nothing more than that of a gambler at a casino. Managers of corporations must find ways to squeeze profit out of increasing difficult circumstances. It becomes their job to cut wages, to appropriate as much wealth as possible for and to the great casino. What is in the interests of the casino players and managers is directly opposed to the interests of workers and consumers as well as the general public.
The next social upheaval will come and it will be fundamentally different that the one that began in 1967. 1967 marked the beginning of a wholesale acceptance of individual freedom from the shackles of residual feudalism. This residue had to be purged from the psychology of the new generation.
There is no way to predict when it will come or what it will mean to the way we do things and our common values. We can only try to make educated guesses. History has a way of unfolding with twists and turns that seem written by a madman.
In 1960 or even in 1966 it would have been impossible to predict what was about to happen. The next upheaval could come at any time. The changeover from the age of kings and lords to the age of the bourgeoisie happened incrementally and the explosion of rebellion occured late and well into its adolescence.
Socialism will be born of a big bang. It is a birth that will require explicit revolutionary energy. The timing and the details are impossible to predict. But there is no doubting that it will come. It’s in the cards.
Friday, July 15, 2005
Insidious Karma
The elder Bush's bullet, aimed several decades ago at Phillip Agee, missed and it will likely strike Karl Rove right between the eyes. Looks good on him.
As a teen I read Agee's book, "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" in utter fascination. I could never look at the government of the USA the same way again.
Dubya's daddy, George H. Bush was director of the CIA before he became El Presidente and he aimed a bullet toward the agile Agee and missed. He got the Intelligence Identities Protection Act passed into law with the intent of nailing Phillip Agee, or anybody like him, to the cross.
In 2003 the shadowy Robert Novak wrote, "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."
It looks like Bush's close advisor and friend, Karl Rove, is the one that let that cat out of the bag and Rove may be the one struck by the bullet aimed at Agee so long ago.
Strange isn't it? Bush senior takes a shot at Phillip Agree two decades ago and the bullet seems to be headed for Bush Junior's right hand man, Karl Rove.
Karma is rarely instant but it's gonna get you. It's gonna knock you right on the head.
As a teen I read Agee's book, "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" in utter fascination. I could never look at the government of the USA the same way again.
Dubya's daddy, George H. Bush was director of the CIA before he became El Presidente and he aimed a bullet toward the agile Agee and missed. He got the Intelligence Identities Protection Act passed into law with the intent of nailing Phillip Agee, or anybody like him, to the cross.
In 2003 the shadowy Robert Novak wrote, "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."
It looks like Bush's close advisor and friend, Karl Rove, is the one that let that cat out of the bag and Rove may be the one struck by the bullet aimed at Agee so long ago.
Strange isn't it? Bush senior takes a shot at Phillip Agree two decades ago and the bullet seems to be headed for Bush Junior's right hand man, Karl Rove.
Karma is rarely instant but it's gonna get you. It's gonna knock you right on the head.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Don’t Blame Bush
George W. Bush has taken on the appearance of something not natural, something supernatural, since he became president. Prior to his ascension he was just a bumbling fool. Sure he was cavalier with the gallows, but a bumbling fool nonetheless. Now he has become Satan to many horrified innocent bystanders.
But we can’t blame Bush.
During the last presidential campaign John Kerry was sounding more hawkish than Bush and his cabal of demons. And really, do you believe that if Kerry had won the election things would be any different in Iraq? It is likely that even if the Democrats had won the first election that by now Iraq would have been invaded.
This all depends on who is really in control. While it is true that the GOP is top heavy with oil billionaires, it is also true that the billionaires that dictate policy to the Republicans also tell the Democrats what to do. The lines of control are more convoluted than Halliburton and Cheney.
Here we come to the heart of a very important question. The question is; who really controls the American State? That is, who is in the shadows? Who is behind closed doors when the really big decisions are made? Who is it that tells Bush what to do?
Another interesting question is why this question is apparently completely off the radar as far as the mainstream media is concerned.
What seems to be happening recently would likely be happening if the marriage between the American state and the private sector was almost complete. Previously, American politicians held a modicum of political power but were heavily influenced by the business class. It may have shifted, apparently subtly, that the business class has taken full control of political decision making. The effects are not so subtle.
We might turn our attention to the question of who profits directly from war. If we peruse the who’s who in the war party (Boeing, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, etc.) we begin to get a picture that is bigger than partisan politics.
According to John Kenneth Galbraith, “In 2003, close to half the total US government discretionary expenditure was used for military purposes. A large part was for weapons procurement or development. Nuclear-powered submarines run to billions of dollars, individual planes to tens of millions each.
Galbraith explains further that weapons profiteers provide politicians with plans and designs for new weaponry that will provide good jobs and salaries for politicians constituencies and the privateers themselves will make a killing. What Galbraith does not explain, at least in this particular article (Corporate Power) is that this type of spending is immensely wasteful. It is really corporate welfare and it is not very useful to the general public.
And so here we have it; the dictatorship of the bourgeoise. They are seeming benevolent monarchs and they provide us with oodles of material goods whether we like them or not. In fact, they spend billions convincing us that our measure as a human being is gauged by the car we drive, our PC, our home and our gadgets. And we swallow it all, hook, line and sinker. They divert our collective attention away from the starving masses that live outside the tent of American hegemony. People that starve directly as a result of capitalsim. People in Haiti for instance. They divert our attention away from the 40 million plus Americans that have no heatlth insurance. They divert our attention away from the carnage and massive slaughter that is going on in Iraq. A slaughter that is aimed at keeping the hegemony healthy and our trinkets flowing. And to hell with the people that have to survive on this planet two hundred years from now – party on Wayne.
American foreign policy is shaped and dictated by the corporations that run the American state and so is a good deal of domestic policy. So called free trade agreements also give these very same corporate managers a handle and a great deal of leverage on domestic policies in other countries as well. It is corporate managers or their representatives behind those closed doors that pull Bush’s strings and they would be attaching the very same strings to John Kerry if he were president. The figurehead really doesn’t matter at this point.
It looks as if we're not in Kansas anymore Dorothy. Concentration camps, torture, pre-emptive war, the spitting on the Geneva Conventions, the cavalier disregard for spirit of the American Constitution and so on have Americans bewildered and non-Americans in awe. Bush has said that 9-11 will change everything. In this case, he was almost telling the truth. The recent exposure of the nature of the American state may have been helped along by 9-11. It was not caused by it however.
We can look forward to the privatization of all that is public in the future. We can look forward to unabashed corporate control of domestic policy not only in the USA, but everywhere. Because if we look into the nature of capitalism, it grows in one direction.
When that all happens, the dictatorship of the bourgeoise will be complete.
But we can’t blame Bush.
During the last presidential campaign John Kerry was sounding more hawkish than Bush and his cabal of demons. And really, do you believe that if Kerry had won the election things would be any different in Iraq? It is likely that even if the Democrats had won the first election that by now Iraq would have been invaded.
This all depends on who is really in control. While it is true that the GOP is top heavy with oil billionaires, it is also true that the billionaires that dictate policy to the Republicans also tell the Democrats what to do. The lines of control are more convoluted than Halliburton and Cheney.
Here we come to the heart of a very important question. The question is; who really controls the American State? That is, who is in the shadows? Who is behind closed doors when the really big decisions are made? Who is it that tells Bush what to do?
Another interesting question is why this question is apparently completely off the radar as far as the mainstream media is concerned.
What seems to be happening recently would likely be happening if the marriage between the American state and the private sector was almost complete. Previously, American politicians held a modicum of political power but were heavily influenced by the business class. It may have shifted, apparently subtly, that the business class has taken full control of political decision making. The effects are not so subtle.
We might turn our attention to the question of who profits directly from war. If we peruse the who’s who in the war party (Boeing, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, etc.) we begin to get a picture that is bigger than partisan politics.
According to John Kenneth Galbraith, “In 2003, close to half the total US government discretionary expenditure was used for military purposes. A large part was for weapons procurement or development. Nuclear-powered submarines run to billions of dollars, individual planes to tens of millions each.
Galbraith explains further that weapons profiteers provide politicians with plans and designs for new weaponry that will provide good jobs and salaries for politicians constituencies and the privateers themselves will make a killing. What Galbraith does not explain, at least in this particular article (Corporate Power) is that this type of spending is immensely wasteful. It is really corporate welfare and it is not very useful to the general public.
And so here we have it; the dictatorship of the bourgeoise. They are seeming benevolent monarchs and they provide us with oodles of material goods whether we like them or not. In fact, they spend billions convincing us that our measure as a human being is gauged by the car we drive, our PC, our home and our gadgets. And we swallow it all, hook, line and sinker. They divert our collective attention away from the starving masses that live outside the tent of American hegemony. People that starve directly as a result of capitalsim. People in Haiti for instance. They divert our attention away from the 40 million plus Americans that have no heatlth insurance. They divert our attention away from the carnage and massive slaughter that is going on in Iraq. A slaughter that is aimed at keeping the hegemony healthy and our trinkets flowing. And to hell with the people that have to survive on this planet two hundred years from now – party on Wayne.
American foreign policy is shaped and dictated by the corporations that run the American state and so is a good deal of domestic policy. So called free trade agreements also give these very same corporate managers a handle and a great deal of leverage on domestic policies in other countries as well. It is corporate managers or their representatives behind those closed doors that pull Bush’s strings and they would be attaching the very same strings to John Kerry if he were president. The figurehead really doesn’t matter at this point.
It looks as if we're not in Kansas anymore Dorothy. Concentration camps, torture, pre-emptive war, the spitting on the Geneva Conventions, the cavalier disregard for spirit of the American Constitution and so on have Americans bewildered and non-Americans in awe. Bush has said that 9-11 will change everything. In this case, he was almost telling the truth. The recent exposure of the nature of the American state may have been helped along by 9-11. It was not caused by it however.
We can look forward to the privatization of all that is public in the future. We can look forward to unabashed corporate control of domestic policy not only in the USA, but everywhere. Because if we look into the nature of capitalism, it grows in one direction.
When that all happens, the dictatorship of the bourgeoise will be complete.
Monday, July 11, 2005
The Myth of Freedom
What does the word 'socialism' conjure up? Does it bring to mind gulags, barbed wire, ugly concrete walls, death to dissidents, oppression and rigid control by a jackboot state apparatus? It should bring these things up as well as many more ugly images. If it doesn't, you have not been properly indocterinated. You better be careful, you might not be in the box.
For the moment, let us step outside of our collective indocterination and take a peek at what freedom is and what it could be.
Perhaps the greatest propaganda victory of capitalists over socialists during the so called cold war has been the success of the notion that capitalism equals freedom and socialism inevitably results in totalitarianism. The capitalists had willing accomplices; socialist farces making socialist faces. Country Joe Stalin and the Chairman that crushed Tibet were the people with the power. To be fair, they put together some impressive socialist polices. But a tyrannical dictator cannot be a socialist any more than a Christian can be a capitalist.
If we examine freedom and socialism and capitalism, we can see that there is nothing to suggest that socialism is oppressive and capitalism is liberating. The principles of socialism suggest otherwise as does the fundamentals of capitalism. Capitalism is inherently oppressive and socialism is inherently liberating.
The real freedom within the framework of capitalism is the freedom to oppress others; to own and control the life of another human being. The boss of an employee cannot own the worker or control a worker during his or her off hours but while he or she is at work, he owns and controls that person. And as capitalism matures and the terms of exploitation sharpen, the notion that the worker is free during his off work time becomes less clear. Some bosses demand that the worker is available through a phone call or submit to drug and alcohol screening. Workers rights are eroding and corporate power is expanding.
The worker's choice may be to quit - and then the choices are to work for another owner or face the ultimate state of oppression; poverty. And people in poverty have no choices or, in other words, no freedom.
In capitalist societies, freedom is granted through class, money, and power. Socialism holds the promise of freedom for everybody. The freedom to exploit or to be a tyrant however, vanishes. And if that is not socialism to you, it doesn't matter. It is socialism and anything less isn't. Freedom for all may seem like a dream now but it will be living material reality in the future.
More realistically and more now, the big dream of freedom is to strike it rich. It may be unfair to describe lotteries as ‘idiot tax’ because for most, it’s the only way out. Win big and suddenly we are catapulted into the realms of the gods and the beautiful people. No longer do we worry about the oppression of wage slavery, our kids future, lack of choices, destitution, Kraft Dinner - again - and so on. Because now we have joined the ranks of the idle rich and rich people are free to do what they want when they want to do it. They have so much money that their money magnetizes more money by simply existing. What a dream, what a beautiful life.
On the other hand many poor people are not even free to get food and medicine for their kids. Many poor people are starving and have no home. To not have choices is not to be free. The equation is simple: The more money you have, the more freedom you have.
‘But at least it isn’t the Gulag of Kim Jung Il’, will be the inevitable response from those that see in shades of black and white. ‘At least it isn’t the Berlin Wall’. This is true. But reality is not quite that simple. It may not be Kim Jung Il but it is Haiti and Honduras and it is Canada and America.
The fact remains that millions have suffered under well intentioned socialist revolutions. There is a very real and tragic history behind the association between socialism and totalitarianism. In each and every case, whenever a socialist revolution has occurred, the socialist state has had to defend itself against attacks from outside agitators as well as terrorists from within that were bent on the overthrow of the revolution. When we consider the reaction of the USA to the terrorist attacks on 9-11 and the extent of the paranoia that followed, we can then consider the paranoia of a smaller state that has the USA hell bent on overthrowing it.
It would be crude to suggest that the tyrants of socialism are solely the spawn of the Great Satan however. While it might be argued that Stalin was not a socialist in the proper sense of the word, the fact is that he grew to take power and became the dictator of an intended socialist state. But Stalin and the rest of the infamous dictators of socialist states have grown out of the rigidity and tyranny of feudalism. They held crude and primitive ideas about power, people, and leadership. In other words, they had not been refined into the liberalism that the relative freedom of capitalism can percolate. They believed that people had to be whipped into submission with brutal force.
This is not socialism however. Socialism requires that the working class control society. If any dictator or central committee have control, it is a gross perversion. Socialism is necessarily democratic and if it isn't, then it isn't 'social'.
Modern liberal capitalist democracies tend to contain within them the liberating tendencies of socialism. We see examples of it in the rational basis of our legal principles. That is, authority is based in rationality as opposed to emotion, tradition, or charisma. We see it in the demands for civil rights, in the demands for gender equality, for workers rights, gay rights and so on. These tendencies are the tendencies of socialism but within the framework of capitalism, they are merely liberalism. That is, we see single issue yuppies fighting the good fight while they step over the homeless and treat them as a nuisance. Liberalism hints at socialism, but it ain’t the real deal. It is about liberation for my self or my people – the rest can go to hell.
Freedom cannot exist under capitalism except for those that have wealth and power. The bottom line is that we must sell our labour in order to live and in that process, we give up our freedom. The person that hires us can fire us. He has that power. And that power grants him control of me and you. He can fire us on a whim. As a result we live under the oppression of that person or organization. We feel that pressure in the presence of the bosses. If he (they) gets the notion, he can fire any employee arbitrarily. He might find out you are gay, or that you have a Black boyfriend and then the jig is up. The gay hating racist prick will fire you for incompetence or insubordination – or something. The point here is that one person has an unacceptable degree of power over another.
Without money we have no freedom in capitalist society because we have no choices. We cannot house ourselves or our family, we cannot eat and we cannot go anywhere or own anything. So, we sell ourselves to the boss.
Capitalism also requires control outside the workplace and to maintain that control they rely on the power of the monopoly and the power of the state. One example of the controlling nature of capitalism is the existence of copyright laws. Copyright laws are about control and control for profit. The capitalist state is rife with such laws and restrictions to control goods and information to allow the ‘lawful’ owners to make us pay. It is in the interests of capitalists to take control of all commodities and to reduce their availablility. They make us, the inmates of their madhouse, pay for insurance, electricity, communications, all the vital necessities of life and as a result, they have control of us. The wealth flows from us, to them and the only way to make the flow stream laterally or downward, is through sweat and subservience.
But what about pensions? What about unemployment insurance? What about free health care and social assistance? These are examples of freedom aren’t they? Are these not examples of having choices without being required to sell our souls?
The fact is, these are piece meal examples of socialism that exist in many modern capitalist societies. These are the results of the countless struggles carried out by socialists and agitators of the past. Take a look and you will see that what is humane in society, what is decent and what is good for people is always socialism.
What do we see from the other side? We see oil billionaires lying to wage war in Iraq. We see capitalist states invading country after country to maintian the supply to addicts. We see scores of workers thrown out of work when the capitalists can make more profit by shifting locations. We see the rich and their political minions doing their utmost to cut social programs, privatize health care, and generally make life as miserable as possible for the rest of us. The reason is that what's good for us is not good for them and vice versa. This is one of the fundamental problems with capitalism and that is why they (the capitalist class and their puppets) can be so bizarrely inhumane.
We ask ourselves why they keep wanting more and more. Surely five mansions and enough wealth to last for a thousand generations is enough. We may also ask ourselves why they seem to want to exclude everybody else from their grand party.
Power is intoxicating and they are addicted to it. The ego can also get quite drunk on the status they enjoy. But the real substantial effect of wealth is freedom and the ultra wealthy have not only tasted freedom, they swim in it. They have it exclusively and that leads them to believe that freedom is a zero sum game. But there is no reason to suggest that freedom is a limited commodity. We can all be free.
For the moment, let us step outside of our collective indocterination and take a peek at what freedom is and what it could be.
Perhaps the greatest propaganda victory of capitalists over socialists during the so called cold war has been the success of the notion that capitalism equals freedom and socialism inevitably results in totalitarianism. The capitalists had willing accomplices; socialist farces making socialist faces. Country Joe Stalin and the Chairman that crushed Tibet were the people with the power. To be fair, they put together some impressive socialist polices. But a tyrannical dictator cannot be a socialist any more than a Christian can be a capitalist.
If we examine freedom and socialism and capitalism, we can see that there is nothing to suggest that socialism is oppressive and capitalism is liberating. The principles of socialism suggest otherwise as does the fundamentals of capitalism. Capitalism is inherently oppressive and socialism is inherently liberating.
The real freedom within the framework of capitalism is the freedom to oppress others; to own and control the life of another human being. The boss of an employee cannot own the worker or control a worker during his or her off hours but while he or she is at work, he owns and controls that person. And as capitalism matures and the terms of exploitation sharpen, the notion that the worker is free during his off work time becomes less clear. Some bosses demand that the worker is available through a phone call or submit to drug and alcohol screening. Workers rights are eroding and corporate power is expanding.
The worker's choice may be to quit - and then the choices are to work for another owner or face the ultimate state of oppression; poverty. And people in poverty have no choices or, in other words, no freedom.
In capitalist societies, freedom is granted through class, money, and power. Socialism holds the promise of freedom for everybody. The freedom to exploit or to be a tyrant however, vanishes. And if that is not socialism to you, it doesn't matter. It is socialism and anything less isn't. Freedom for all may seem like a dream now but it will be living material reality in the future.
More realistically and more now, the big dream of freedom is to strike it rich. It may be unfair to describe lotteries as ‘idiot tax’ because for most, it’s the only way out. Win big and suddenly we are catapulted into the realms of the gods and the beautiful people. No longer do we worry about the oppression of wage slavery, our kids future, lack of choices, destitution, Kraft Dinner - again - and so on. Because now we have joined the ranks of the idle rich and rich people are free to do what they want when they want to do it. They have so much money that their money magnetizes more money by simply existing. What a dream, what a beautiful life.
On the other hand many poor people are not even free to get food and medicine for their kids. Many poor people are starving and have no home. To not have choices is not to be free. The equation is simple: The more money you have, the more freedom you have.
‘But at least it isn’t the Gulag of Kim Jung Il’, will be the inevitable response from those that see in shades of black and white. ‘At least it isn’t the Berlin Wall’. This is true. But reality is not quite that simple. It may not be Kim Jung Il but it is Haiti and Honduras and it is Canada and America.
The fact remains that millions have suffered under well intentioned socialist revolutions. There is a very real and tragic history behind the association between socialism and totalitarianism. In each and every case, whenever a socialist revolution has occurred, the socialist state has had to defend itself against attacks from outside agitators as well as terrorists from within that were bent on the overthrow of the revolution. When we consider the reaction of the USA to the terrorist attacks on 9-11 and the extent of the paranoia that followed, we can then consider the paranoia of a smaller state that has the USA hell bent on overthrowing it.
It would be crude to suggest that the tyrants of socialism are solely the spawn of the Great Satan however. While it might be argued that Stalin was not a socialist in the proper sense of the word, the fact is that he grew to take power and became the dictator of an intended socialist state. But Stalin and the rest of the infamous dictators of socialist states have grown out of the rigidity and tyranny of feudalism. They held crude and primitive ideas about power, people, and leadership. In other words, they had not been refined into the liberalism that the relative freedom of capitalism can percolate. They believed that people had to be whipped into submission with brutal force.
This is not socialism however. Socialism requires that the working class control society. If any dictator or central committee have control, it is a gross perversion. Socialism is necessarily democratic and if it isn't, then it isn't 'social'.
Modern liberal capitalist democracies tend to contain within them the liberating tendencies of socialism. We see examples of it in the rational basis of our legal principles. That is, authority is based in rationality as opposed to emotion, tradition, or charisma. We see it in the demands for civil rights, in the demands for gender equality, for workers rights, gay rights and so on. These tendencies are the tendencies of socialism but within the framework of capitalism, they are merely liberalism. That is, we see single issue yuppies fighting the good fight while they step over the homeless and treat them as a nuisance. Liberalism hints at socialism, but it ain’t the real deal. It is about liberation for my self or my people – the rest can go to hell.
Freedom cannot exist under capitalism except for those that have wealth and power. The bottom line is that we must sell our labour in order to live and in that process, we give up our freedom. The person that hires us can fire us. He has that power. And that power grants him control of me and you. He can fire us on a whim. As a result we live under the oppression of that person or organization. We feel that pressure in the presence of the bosses. If he (they) gets the notion, he can fire any employee arbitrarily. He might find out you are gay, or that you have a Black boyfriend and then the jig is up. The gay hating racist prick will fire you for incompetence or insubordination – or something. The point here is that one person has an unacceptable degree of power over another.
Without money we have no freedom in capitalist society because we have no choices. We cannot house ourselves or our family, we cannot eat and we cannot go anywhere or own anything. So, we sell ourselves to the boss.
Capitalism also requires control outside the workplace and to maintain that control they rely on the power of the monopoly and the power of the state. One example of the controlling nature of capitalism is the existence of copyright laws. Copyright laws are about control and control for profit. The capitalist state is rife with such laws and restrictions to control goods and information to allow the ‘lawful’ owners to make us pay. It is in the interests of capitalists to take control of all commodities and to reduce their availablility. They make us, the inmates of their madhouse, pay for insurance, electricity, communications, all the vital necessities of life and as a result, they have control of us. The wealth flows from us, to them and the only way to make the flow stream laterally or downward, is through sweat and subservience.
But what about pensions? What about unemployment insurance? What about free health care and social assistance? These are examples of freedom aren’t they? Are these not examples of having choices without being required to sell our souls?
The fact is, these are piece meal examples of socialism that exist in many modern capitalist societies. These are the results of the countless struggles carried out by socialists and agitators of the past. Take a look and you will see that what is humane in society, what is decent and what is good for people is always socialism.
What do we see from the other side? We see oil billionaires lying to wage war in Iraq. We see capitalist states invading country after country to maintian the supply to addicts. We see scores of workers thrown out of work when the capitalists can make more profit by shifting locations. We see the rich and their political minions doing their utmost to cut social programs, privatize health care, and generally make life as miserable as possible for the rest of us. The reason is that what's good for us is not good for them and vice versa. This is one of the fundamental problems with capitalism and that is why they (the capitalist class and their puppets) can be so bizarrely inhumane.
We ask ourselves why they keep wanting more and more. Surely five mansions and enough wealth to last for a thousand generations is enough. We may also ask ourselves why they seem to want to exclude everybody else from their grand party.
Power is intoxicating and they are addicted to it. The ego can also get quite drunk on the status they enjoy. But the real substantial effect of wealth is freedom and the ultra wealthy have not only tasted freedom, they swim in it. They have it exclusively and that leads them to believe that freedom is a zero sum game. But there is no reason to suggest that freedom is a limited commodity. We can all be free.
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