How We Got Robbed Part 1

All living creatures have a hierarchy of needs. For us humans the primary needs - without which you can easily die - are food, water, shelter, medical care, and heating and clothing in cold climates. We have a second order of needs, such as basic furniture, utensils, transportation. While uncomfortable, it won't kill you to walk to the store, patch your old jeans or use a packing crate for a table, but the secondary order makes life livable, more than just a bare survival level of existence. The third level is what one might call common luxuries - refined foods, designer clothing, computers and other electronic gadgets. These luxuries are for pleasure and are not basic needs. No one ever died because they didn't have a TV, a VCR or an SUV.

The greatest first order expense is housing and this has increased far more than any other item. The cost of food has been stable or declined somewhat. (1) Heating has gotten more expensive due to the rise in gas and petroleum prices. The possible destruction of medicare threatens to cause medical expenses to rise. The largest second order expense is transportation, which has also risen rapidly. Many other second order goods have declined in price. Common luxuries, on the other hand, have dramatically fallen in price. We have a bizarre situation where you can buy a TV for $50 from Wallmart, but the rent for the apartment you watch it in in costs $1000, the inverse of life in 1965.

From 1935 to 1960 rent and transportation costs rose at a slower rate than other consumer items. (2) This changed over the next three decades. In 1969 the average household spent 15.4% on rent, 12.3% on transportation, (3) by 2001 the average household spent 20% on shelter and 13.5% on transportation. (4) This situation is much worse since in the 1960's most households were single income, whereas today the vast majority are double income. If you examine the 2001 figures in terms of individual income alone, housing costs would rise to 36% and transportation to 26%. The second income is being gobbled up in housing and transportation costs. If households paid rent and transportation at the same rate and manner as the 1960's they would save more than $11,000 per year!

Let's compare rent and income over the last 45 years or so. In 1961 the average income in Canada was $78 per week and average rent was $65. In 1971 the average income was $138 per week and the average rent was $110. By 1996 average income was $555 per week and the average rent was $657. What this means for the renter is that in 1961 it took slightly more than 3 days work to pay the rent, in 1971 it took 4 days and in 1996 it took 6 days, a situation undoubtedly worse in 2005. (5)

For the people at the bottom it is unbelievably bad. In 1971 the average Canadian minimum wage was $1.36 per hour, or 81 hours to pay an average rent. The minimum wage earner of 1996 would have to shell out 100 hours. But this isn't the only problem. While minimum wages don't vary from city to city, rents do. Rents in Vancouver or Toronto are well above the national average. Furthermore, there were many inexpensive rental units in the past. Back when an average rent was $65, the poor could find places for $25. The equivalent does not exist today.

1. I think food should be more expensive, but that's a matter for another column!
2. Historical Statistics of Canada, p. 304
3. The 2001 shelter figure includes mortgage payments not just rent. Figures from Statscan web site.
4. Canada Year Book 1976
5. Canada Year Book 1965, 1976, 1999

Peaceful Primates?

Dick Martin passed me an interesting article, called “A Natural History of Peace” which appeared, in of all places, FOREIGN AFFAIRS.

Summary: Humans like to think that they are unique, but the study of other primates has called into question the exceptionalism of our species. So what does primatology have to say about war and peace? Contrary to what was believed just a few decades ago, humans are not "killer apes" destined for violent conflict…

To read more
click here

Localization As The Solution

In “Ireland: Energy Scenarios and Beyond…”
localization and thus decentralization of the economy is seen as the only viable means to overcome the impending crisis brought on by Peak Oil.

More Info On The Petroeuro Threat To US Imperialism

“Current geopolitical tensions between the United States and Iran extend beyond the publicly stated concerns regarding Iran’s nuclear intentions, and likely include a proposed Iranian “petroeuro” system for oil trade.” Click HERE to continue this story by William Clark taken from “The Energy Bulletin”

Climate Change And Human Society

There is a growing body of evidence that climate factors played a major impact in human social evolution. The book, SAHARASIA
shows how authoritarianism and class society developed from destertification.
The latest findings in Africa show how drought drove humans out of that continent to populate the rest of the world. See the following
BBC story

The State Socialism Of the Rich – Again

See George Monbiot’s latest
Guardian article on how corporations get more in government handouts than the profits they make. Ah, free enterprise…

SELF-TRANSCENDENT PASSIONS

We need self-transcendent passions. They don't have to be artistic or intellectual. Could be golf or skiing - anything that consumes you, takes you out of yourself. Something you would rather do than anything else and no excuse will stop you from doing it. The passion lives thru you. You are never bored if you have that passion. Nor are you ever alone. Others share your passion and thus your life. The people with passion are the ones who make the world go round, while the passionless are the voyeurs, the followers, the sheeple.


All children are passionate. They attack life with fervor. The root of this fervor is imagination, a faculty all are born with. For many people the imagination is crushed early in life and the passion dies. Imagination and therefore, self-transcendent passion, is strangled by authoritarian parenting, the boredom that is skool and the emptiness of Korporate Krap Kulture, day and night shoved down the throats of children. But some of us always escape and maintain that childlike imagination and energy throughout our lives.

People who don't have a self-transcendent passion are wrapped up in themselves. They need to be entertained, and by other people. Their needs cannot be filled from within. The passionless do not understand the passionate. "Why does she go to meetings all the time and not stay home and watch TV with me?" "Can't he think about anything but fishing?" In their passionless ignorance they seek to control and even destroy the passionate. "You want to be an artist? Don't waste your time - get a real job!" "There's no money it what you are doing, you know!" "Put down that book and do something useful!"

You can't blame the passionate for at times feeling like Gulliver tied down by the Lilliputians.

IRAN MOVES TO EUROS

“Preparatory measures taken to sell oil in euros TEHRAN, Dec. 2 (MNA) - The Chairman of the Majlis Energy Commission, Kamal Daneshyar said here, on Friday, that preparatory measures have been taken to sell oil in euros instead of dollar, adding that such a measure is quite positive and should be taken as soon as possible. Speaking to the Persian service of Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), he went on to say that Iran should at the first phase sell its oil in both Dollar and Euro, and then gradually move toward Euro. as the mere source.” Quote from
Mehrnews

The beginning of the end for the Yanqui Dollah? Perhaps if other countries, say Russia, Venezuela and Mexico move to Euros.

ECONOMIC POWER GROWS OUT OF THE BARREL OF A GUN *

Question - Why don't working people simply tell the bosses to go to hell and organize work to suit their needs? After all, there are 10 times as many of us as there are of them...

Answer - Cause we would all be fired if we tried something like that.

What does it mean to be fired? Tossed out in the street, evicted from the workplace - bodily chucked out if need be. What if you refused to go? If management can't do it, they call security. If security can't do it, they send for the cops. If somehow you kept the cops at bay, then here comes the army. At this point, a couple of you might get shot just to make sure you understand who is really in charge of your life.

Thus, capitalism is in the final instance based upon violence, and all wage labor is ultimately forced labor.

Imagine a situation where the repressive forces of the state ceased to exist, or were converted into popular democratic forms - such as a workplace-based militia. Without the threat of boss violence, there would be true equality of contract. Workers would be free, if not to totally dispose of their labor power according to their wishes, at least to be in an equal bargaining position with their employers. They could decide which hours they worked and how the work was organized. They could demand "an opening of the books" when the bosses claimed there wasn't enough in the till.

For sure, the bosses wouldn't like that. Pushing people around is one of the joys of bossism. The more humane and decent among them would adapt to the new egalitarian situation, but most would not. They would flee to those countries where bullying and exploitation was still the norm. The rest of the world’s economy would take on an ever-increasing cooperative nature. With freedom, capitalism disappears...


* According to the Great Squeeker, Mouse C. Dung

THE END OF EMPIRE?

For the US Empire to be replaced by a new empire, a potential candidate must exist. Rome had an obvious successor in Byzantium and possibly the revived Persian Empire. At the end of WW1 everyone knew the US was about to replace Britain. We do not have any obvious candidates to succeed the USA. The most powerful economy in the world is the European Union, the most important states of which are ex-empires and are aware of what a terrible burden the imperial mantle can be. The citizens of these countries would be against the resumption of empire. Other potential candidates are India and China. Both countries have internal problems that make the social, political and economic difficulties of the USA look mild by comparison.

China and India are such huge and populous nations they are virtual empires or worlds to themselves. They have enough problems of their own without taking on the rest of the world. Problems like massive demographic and environmental disasters, towering corruption, minority nationalist movements, and three quarters of the population in abject poverty. As well, China has yet to undergo a transition from dictatorship to “democracy”. Both economies are fundamentally weak, being dependent on cheap exports to the developed world – a free ride that could end suddenly with high petroleum prices or political changes in the importing nations.

The old empires could rely on military power alone. A modern empire must have some level of appeal, some aspect of universality allowing it to expand and hold populations. The road to empire for America was paved by several hundred years of “Occidentalization”, a result of European colonialism. American culture, attitudes and politics were not altogether foreign to peoples who had already imbibed Western notions of “democracy” “rationalism”, science, education and clothing styles. Keep in mind these Western notions, now universal in at least half the world, were initially adopted at gun point. The cultures of China and India, no matter how much the rest of us might appreciate their cuisine, philosophy or the music of Ravi Shankar, are cultures still too “national” to have universal appeal.

Consciousness plays a major role in empire building. Arrogance, xenophobia, racism, chauvinism and militarism are the attitudes that underlie the imperial ideology the majority of the population must possess in order to successfully pursue empire. One must hold others in contempt in order to dominate them. The ordinary person must believe in the righteousness of empire to willingly pay the taxes and give their lives in the inevitable imperial wars. The imperial ideology was at its height in the first decades of the 20th Century. Today, other than the Neocon lunatic fringe, it has few takers. As shown by the world-wide opposition to the Iraq War, most people reject militarism and empire-building.

The people of the world reject the Globalist’s New World Order – for what it is, a US dominated and driven global corporate state, Theirs is a new vision, of a world without empire, militarism and corporate greed. Theirs is a vision of grass roots, and therefore true cooperation among peoples, not states. Theirs is a vision of justice and peace, and thus the antidote to the disease of empire.

WHY THE US SHOULD NOT WITHDRAW FROM IRAQ

There is much talk of late, even from Republicans, of a need for the US to withdraw its troops from Iraq. I hope they don’t withdraw. Stay the course Bush-shites! No, I haven't gone nuts and joined the Brown Shirts. Simply put, the American people must be completely and totally inoculated against the twin diseases of militarism and empire. For this to occur, the Empire must be dragged ever further into the Middle East quagmire and unequivocally DEFEATED. War, empire and the Neocons must arouse as much disgust among the average American as kiddie porn and child rapists. The results of Neocon policies must be such that America will finally decide to mind its own business and leave the rest of the world alone. To withdraw now would leave behind many vestiges of the imperial cancer. The disease could metastasize any time in the future. Many people would see the war on Iraq as only a failure, not as an immoral policy that must never be duplicated in the future.

There is also the fact the attempted conquest of Iraq is tying down the US corporate state. It is evident to even the most bone-headed racist Neoconazi, that the Empire’s hold on the rest of the world is thereby rendered tenuous. The jewel in the Imperial Crown is not Iraq, but Latin America – its old (quiet literally ) stomping ground. If it weren't for Iraq, the Neocons would be attacking Venezuela, turning Columbia into another Viet Nam, and happily installing military dictatorships wherever possible.

Too bad for them, but the Southern Continent is in ferment. A powerful wave of democracy is pushing thru the region. Anti-corporate populism is on the rise. In a few years this populist revolution may be irreversible. A populist Latin America could then unite with the growing progressive and libertarian forces of Europe. A democratic social and economic model could arise and challenge the authoritarianism and corruption of the US corporate state. The beginning of this process exists within the Social Forums occurring in Europe and Latin America over the past few years.

The US Empire is the last empire and the sooner it is brought down, the better it will be for all of humanity.

LIARS AND THIEVES

The boss class and its mass media pimps constantly tell us there is not enough money in the till for decent wages, better education, and health care. We are endlessly reminded of the need for "frugality in government" and "care with the tax-payer's dollar." Recently in Vancouver I was once more made aware of what a great and smelly load of BS this is.

The municipal, provincial and federal governments have banded together to use taxpayers money to build a transportation link between Vancouver and the southern Lower Mainland municipalities. This is known as the RAV Line. There are two different routes, one far more expensive than the other. The Arbutus Street route would follow an existing - and recently abandoned - rail road track. The Cambie Street route requires tunneling and the building of an elevated track through a residential neighborhood. The Arbutus track would save tax-payers a billion dollars. Which system do you think our frugal and tax conscious neocons choose? If you said Arbutus go stand in the corner, dunce, why Cambie, of course!

This is a classic example of "When it's something WE want, there is no money in the till, When it's something THEY want, the sky's the limit." It also shows how government is a racket, a means of funneling tax money to friends and associates of the politicians and bureaucrats. Why chose the expensive route? A billion extra dollars channeled into the pockets of the construction companies which back the politicians, that's why.

BACK AGAIN!

I am back in Montreal again after two weeks in Naniamo on on Vancouver Island. Great weather, mile upon mile of bike paths and so many people walking. You can buy fish right off the boat in the harbour. If you are in the old part of the city you can walk to just about everything you want. There is a whole street of book shops and music stores. Then there is the down side. Naniamo used to have a large and thriving coop, a cooperative shopping center, in fact. We went to visit it, finding to our despair that the Coop went bankrupt last year and is no more. The same happened in Campbell River, we were told. When the big box stores moved in, the Coop couldn't compete. Low wages and lousy working conditions won out over reasonable wages and working conditions. The loss of the Coop is a loss for the city as a whole, for lower wages mean less wealth to recycle through other businesses and Coop profits remained in the community instead of feeding a foreign corporation. (They do have a credit union system which seems more popular than the banks, however.)

Funny thing, the city can tell you in great detail how to build your house, yet there are no zoning regulations to protect the public against these monsters. Naniamo is a small city, yet all the big boxes are built on the far northern reaches of the city limits. Not only have they killed the Coop, but also gutted the down town core by draining the customers away from the city center and forcing people to drive ten miles to buy a bed or a wheel barrow. Fine for the auto and petroleum industries, but piss poor for a people who pride themselves on having environmental consciousness.

Notice To Readers

I am out of town right now and there will be no new postings until Nov. 4th.

THE STATE SOCIALISM OF THE RICH (1)

In 1956 a law was passed which ended up building 41,000 miles of interstate highways. 90% of the cost was born by the US Federal Government.

The US Government's Marshall Plan forced Europeans to convert from coal to oil. When Europe asked the US for 47,000 freight cars and no trucks, the Marshall Plan sent 20,000 freight cars and 65,000 trucks. Thus by 1950, 11% of Marshall Plan "aid" was in oil - a wonderful boon for the US oil giants.

In 1945, the US Chamber of Commerce called for rural depopulation in order to create a mass of low-wage workers. Between 1945 and 1970 rural America lost one million farms and 25,000,000 people "one of the largest migrations in history." The US Federal Dept. of Agriculture did everything possible to destroy the small farm and replace it with the technology and chemical dependent agro-business.

In the 1930's only 5% of retail food sales were through supermarket chains. State-induced suburban sprawl destroyed the market gardens that used to surround every city. Thus the sale of produce was taken over by the supermarkets, who in turn pushed for corporate farming.

During the Second World War, William J. Levitt (Levittown) contracted to build housing for naval personel in Norfolk Virginia.(2)Levitt developed mass production methods for housing development. Levitt and imitators after the war used these techniques to develop the suburban housing tracts. Meanwhile, the Federal Government intervened in existing communities to separate commerce, work and residence. Mixed neighborhoods did not get funding for improvements. Furthermore, 40% of businesses evicted during housing renewal did not reopen. Their place was taken by corporations.


1. All info from THE DARK AGES by Marty Jezer, South End, 1982
2. African Americans were not allowed to live in Levittown - whites only!

WHO NEEDS FOREIGN INVESTMENT?

Way back in the Paleolithic Era of the 1950's and early 60's, believe it or not, there were hamburger joints, drug stores, hardware merchants, motels and hotels. Janitors also cleaned buildings and kitchen staff cooked food in hospitals. Not one of the organizations performing these services was a multinational corporation. Some were owned by regional chains, but most were local businesses.

The whole point of foreign investment is to introduce capital into an area that is short of it. Capital that cannot be supplied at home. But in the last 35 years we have seen foreign companies come in and take over all of the aforementioned businesses. What possible gain is there to have foreign investment do what we were already doing rather well? But foreign takeover is worse than that. Every dollar made by a regional or local company stays in that region or locality. The money is recycled several times through other businesses and everyone gains. This is called the Local Multiplier Effect. Now with the multinationals, the profits go to the major shareholders who could live anywhere, causing a net drain out of the community.

The problem is even worse where government-provided services have been corporatized. (Falsely known as "privatization.") Here the losses to the community are huge, as workers lose their jobs, wages are slashed and vacation time cut. Consider a situation where 100 workers have their wages cut from $15 and hour to $10 an hour and 30 are fired. The loss in buying power to their town is two million dollars a year. With the Local Multiplier Effect the extra buying power would go a long way to bolstering the towns economy. Its damn well time that people realized that when us workers lose, everyone loses, except the major investors who probably live in New York or London.

During the 1990's we witnesed the foreign takeover of existing large Canadian companies. A US company would march in, buy out the Canadian company, close down plants, fire most of the workers, and asset strip to pay off the loan to buy the company. The takover investment would be classified as foreign investment, yet it would have added nothing to the Canadian economy, but rather would have detracted from it. What was the point of it all?

Then there is the foreign investments that at first sight do seem to add to our economic betterment. But when you look again, you find vast government subsidies have been poured into these projects. We are paying others to do what we could do ourselves, and if we couldn't do them, maybe we are better off not doing them at all. Often these projects are unworkable and after a few years pull up stakes. We, the tax payers, are left to pay for the mess. Think only of the Bromont Quebec Hyundai plant and New Brunswick's Delorian.

Does anyone out there know of a balance sheet made on foreign investment to show what our real gains and losses are? I have tried googling the subject but don't come up with anything but neo-liberal apologetics.

PEOPLE WITHOUT GOVERNMENT

"People Without Government", written by the anthropologist Harold Barclay and has many important insights. The first of these is from of one of the greatest anthropologists, Claude Levy-Strauss, for whom the fundamental aspect of human society was reciprocity. For Pierre Clastres (the contemporary version of Levy-Strauss) this fundamental reciprocity was negated by coercive power or authoritarian hierarchies.

Barclay distinguishes two basic types of societies; "archies" and "anarchies." Anarchies are based upon reciprocity, what sanctions exist are diffuse and supernatural. Archies are characterized by legal sanctions backed by coercion and "a specialized and privileged body separated by its formation, status, and organization from the population as a whole." In other words a state.

How does an archie come about? "Most authority commences as the raw power of the gangster and evolves into the "legitimate" authority of tacit acquiescence." Above all, the state is an organization for war. "Stateless societies less violent and brutish than those with a state." Nor are stateless societies only those of hunters and gatherers, for the majority of horticultural societies were anarchies. Barclay refers to Clastres again, who points out that the Neolithic was not decisive in changing the fundamental structure of society to an authoritarian one. The old patterns of non-coercive organization were not radically altered during this epoch. The state came much later.

Barclay examines a number of different societies that were anarchies. Many were tribal societies in North America or Africa. This would come as not much of a surprise, but he includes some others we might not be aware of. Ireland of 2000 years ago was "not truly governmental", having mass meeting democracy, no executive officers, no military and hence no way of enforcing decisions other than by common agreement. The Kabalyes of Algeria have no state either, important decisions are settled by consensus. The Santals of India, who number some three million people are "egalitarian", "decentralized", and the "barest indication of a governmental system." Decisions are made in open meetings by consensus. Village life is structured to prevent concentrations of power.

Sounds good to me!

1. PEOPLE WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, Harold Barclay, Kahn and Avril 1990 Note that Barclay uses "government" as a synonym for state. Not all critics of authoritarianism do this. Some consider government to include organization, both non-coercive and coercive. Hence for them, an anarchie would have a government, but one that lacked coercion.

SELF MANAGEMENT FOR SANITY

At one time people of color were not treated with respect. They were shown contempt, ruled by fear of punishment and bullied into submission. At one time women were not granted respect. They were shown contempt, ruled by fear of punishment and bullied into submission. At one time children were not treated with respect. They were shown contempt, ruled by fear of punishment and bullied into submission.

Today, the majority of the population think a contemptuous attitude toward people of color, women and children is barbaric. This change in attitude is a definite sign of social progress. However, this is still the situation for most of us in the work place. Our needs are not taken into account and we are ruled by sanctions. Indeed, it is getting worse under the neocon reaction. We are forced to work harder and longer. In the US workers have been stripped of their most basic democratic rights. We are treated like dirt. The only way we can win back our humanity is through self-management. Only then can we become responsible adults, ruled not by fear, but through knowledge and the pursuit of a common goal.

Self management is not only decent, humane and democratic, but is also common sense. Consider the logic behind authoritarian management. "The people who do the job are bossed by people who don't do the job." Following the logic of such a set-up, in a hospital surgeons ought to be managed by nurses and nurses by surgeons. The only people who really understand a job are the people who do it. Even where you have bosses who come up from the ranks, there is often a big time gap between being a line worker and a boss, in which time "what it is like" gets forgotten. Boss ideology also tends to supplant any sympathy that existed for the ordinary worker. Note how quickly the promoted learn to apologize for management's idiocies and crimes

Authoritarian management is ultimately rooted in feudalism. When capitalism developed it brought the irrational authoritarian and hierarchical methods of control along with it. Feudal society was obsessed by title and formality. Thus if someone had the title of "Lord" he was to be respected and obeyed even though he might be the most useless and incompetent creature on the planet. Given this world-view, we must obey our bosses even though they do not understand the job we do, for they have the title. This feudalistic nonsense was re-cycled in late 19th Century pseudo-science as Social Darwinism. (1) This ideology saw capitalists and their allied authorities as winners in the so-called "struggle for the survival of the fittest", thus justifying their exploitation and bullying. Social Darwinist thought is remains a strong undercurrent in ruling class ideology, as perusing any daily newspaper will show.

Authoritarian management is also rooted in psychological problems. For an insecure person to boss others about is a treat for the weak ego. This sort of person needs power, even if highly limited, say, to only bullying a couple of manual laborers. They seek power the way a drug addict seeks heroin. If authoritarian management was eliminated and democratic management introduced, such people would lose out big time - back to being ordinary workers, in fact due to their lack of real ability, lower in scale than the workers they once bossed.

It is said, though this might just be an excuse, that the biggest obstacle to any real form of worker-input is this lower and middle management. You would think it would be far cheaper and less hassle for the capitalists to just farm out the work to self-managed coops. The fact they don't do this is indicative of an obsessive need to control people. It isn't just wealth they seek, but power. Having thousands of employees makes them feel like a feudal lord with his serfs. They are as loony as their stooges and satraps, and if anything, crazier. Once again, a big chunk of the problem is rooted in psychology, and our ability to introduce self-management within capitalism is therefore quite limited. This does not mean we should not try, but in the long run we must eliminate capitalism and create a full-fledged cooperative, and therefore rational, economy.

1. Also one of the main components of Nazism, I might add. No wonder the heads of many major US corporations, including George W's grandpappy, loved Hitler.

The Hobbit Is Human

The Hobbit has now been confirmed as human and a variant of Homo Erectus, the immediate predecessor to Homo Sapiens. Nor was it someone who was microcephalic, but was a normal, but very small person. See Article here

TWO ERRORS

There are two errors to avoid when discussing Aboriginal People or our "primitive" ancestors. One is to romanticize them, to shoulder them with all our ideals of what a perfect society might look like. The reality is, these people were not politically correct, and often engaged in practices that we would regard as unsavory, such as feuding, raiding and slaving. The other error is to apply concepts of class structure and authority applicable only to our own society to Aboriginals and "primitives."

What do I mean by this? A clear division exists between cultures who have a state and class division and those who don't. West Coast societies had status hierarchy and slaves, but this should not be equated with the power hierarchies and slave economies of Classical Greece or the Roman Empire. What separates the two systems is the possession of, or lack of, coercive power. There is a difference between a status hierarchy and a power hierarchy. Luciano Pavarotti has immense status in the world, but any low-level bureaucrat has more coercive power. On the other hand, almost everyone regards George Bush with contempt, yet he has the power to kill us all.

Native societies, and presumably our own Paleolithic-Neolithic ancestors, confirmed immense status on some individuals. But they had little or no power to force people to do things. They could convince thru discussion, but not coerce. We cannot regard such societies as true class systems. Nor did they possess a state.

As for slaves, the idea of capturing and keeping one's enemies to do the dirty work may go back to the Mesolithic or even the Paleolithic. Changes in climate, population growth, or just following animal migration would force people to move great distances. Where the same ecological niche was used by both newcomer and the older settlers, conflict would arise. (On the other hand, conflict seems to have been avoided where different ecological niches were sought) 1. It probably didn't take very long to figure out it made more sense to keep the people captured in a raid rather than kill them. It would also confer more status upon the warrior who captured them. But this form of slavery cannot be equated to that found in a class society. Native slavery was not the most important part of the economy. Fishing, hunting and farming was done overwhelmingly by free people. Slavery was more status-bound than an economic force.

Then there is the question of war. Only a class society - that is one with a state - can fight true wars. Peoples without a state only raid and feud, not very nice, for sure, but rarely as destructive as wars promoted by states. It is generally accepted by historians and anthropologists that Native People were less violent before the coming of the European. Disruptions created by the fur trade, illness, European alliances and the vastly-increased killing power of fire arms made for a much greater level of violence. The Iroquois had been attempting to infiltrate Wendat (Huron) territory for 200 years. It was only in the mid-17th Century that the Wendat were decimated.

1. As with the Wendat farmers and Algonquin hunters or the Old European farmers and hunters. There seemed to be no conflict between these groups, one which occupied the valleys, the other the hills.

NATIVE AMERICAN PERMACULTURE

According to the British Columbian ethnobotanist, Nancy Turner there is "often little distinction between hunter-gatherer lifestyle... and diversified agrarian lifestyle..." (1.) In fact, there is a "continuum" between the two economies. This is a position I came to as well from reading about so-called primitive peoples. The distinction between hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists was part of the 19th century concept of Progress and linear social evolution. As though our ancestors, who have the same brains we have, who had an encyclopedic knowledge of plants and animals, were not capable of noticing that if seeds spill on the ground, plants would eventually grow.

For Turner there is an added misconception about hunter-gathers. They simply did not wander around looking for food, but were systematic about it, having regular territories with seasonal "crops" in different locations. The European invader was oblivious to Native economies, except where self-interest prevailed, like the fur trade. Racist arrogance precluded discussion or inquiry into how they gathered or produced fruit or vegetables. They were written off as "ignorant savages" stumbling aimlessly until they happened upon a berry patch.

British Columbian First Nations were certainly not just "gatherers." They engaged in controlled burning to encourage the growth of berry bushes and roots. Fruit trees and bushes were pruned, thinned and the soil tilled around them. Roots and berry bushes were transplanted to better or closer locations and fertilized with fish and seaweed. They often planted berry bushes near streams and waterfalls to allow for natural watering. Roots and bulbs were carefully selected, some for the harvest, others for replenishment of the crop. The Salishan peoples of Southern Vancouver Island depended upon fields of camas, a starchy tuber, the growth of which they encouraged by various means.

Some of these Native methods sound like permaculture. And if First Nations peoples engaged in permaculture, why not our own Mesolithic or even Paleolithic ancestors? This would help explain the ease of transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculturalists in Europe-Anatolia and the underlying cultural continuities which seem to run from the Paleolithic to the Chalcolithic or even Early Bronze Age. (2)

1. THE EARTHS BLANKET, by Nancy J. Turner, Douglas and MacIntyre 2004.
2. An egalitarian, shamanistic, relatively peaceful culture, existed in Europe from the time of Cro-Magnon peoples (The European ancestral population) to about 2500 BC., a period of more than 30,000 years.

THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY

General Motors destroyed the electric commuter railroads which flourished in the USA in the 1920's and '30's. They did this by insisting, as one of the largest shippers, that the railroads replace their electric locomotives with diesel units. Problem is diesel pollutes, the engines cost three times as much as an electric and last half as long. In 1935 there were seven times as many electric units as diesel, by 1970 there were ten times as many diesel as electric. (1)

But this was only the tip of the iceberg. After WW2 there was increasing pressure on the rail roads to convert from steam to diesel, as well. In 1945 almost all freight was transported by steam or electric. Within 10 years there were very few steam locomotives left in North America. In Europe this process took a little longer, steam finally being driven out in the early 1960's. This conversion process was a layer cake of disasters for both rail and the public.

First off, the expense for the railroad companies. Steam locomotives have a working life of about 50 years. Most of the engines were built in the 1930's, and those that weren't were from the 1920's or 1940's. Thus, we are looking at equipment that needed to be replaced from 1970 to 1990, yet they were all cut up for scrap metal by 1955! Locomotives were not the only loss. All the infrastructure created around steam, such as coaling stations, water towers, repair shops etc. either was scrapped or needed a complete and costly re-vamping. The destruction of all these locomotives and equipment is a loss that would run in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Even if much of the loss was written off in taxes, the expense was passed on to the tax-payer.

Now, while destroying all that perfectly good equipment, the rail lines would had to replace it with highly costly diesel units. Furthermore, these engines are not as durable as steam, are more complex, thus cost more to repair and need to be replaced more often.

The rail lines had to buy diesel from the oil companies. Many railroads owned coal mines, or as in Europe, both mines and rail were owned by the state. Furthermore, coal is found almost everywhere, whereas petroleum is rather rare by comparison. Western Europe is rich in coal, poor in oil, the same goes for Australia, Argentina, China, India, and South Africa. Canada is lucky to have coal on both the West and East coasts. The USA is sitting on a mountain of coal. Switching from steam to made diesel most of the world petro-dependent, leading ultimately to the oil crises and wars of the present epoch.

At the very time rail made the highly costly switch over, it was losing both freight and passengers. Government built air ports were helping the airlines steal passengers. Government built highways were converting medium haul freight to trucks and train passengers to bus passengers. Thus rail was caught in a pincer - costly investment on one side, loss of revenue on the other. Note how the state helped to destroy rail. Consider the amount of tax-payer wealth that had gone into building the lines in the first place - land grants, cheap loans, cash gifts, tax-write-offs - all of these would total to hundreds of billions of dollars of OUR money. Yet our money, once again to the tune of hundreds of billions was being used to destroy this investment!

All this may seem insane, but this was planned to happen this way. The oil companies and the auto manufactures found another new way to pillage the public and using their mouth pieces in government destroyed rail. We do not live in a free market economy and we never have. We live in a planned economy, one that is organized not for the benefit of the people, but for a tiny wealthy minority.

1.THE DARK AGES by Marty Jezer, South End, 1982

FREE MARKET CAPITALISM ? NO SECH THING!

Unfortunately some people on the left, like Murray Dobbin
still refer to the present state capitalist system as a free market system, without those telling quotes around the term “free market.” A little thought about how the present capitalist system works – with its corporate laws, government subsidies, patent laws, monopoly banking charters, injunctions against unions and other anti-worker legislation, not to mention imperialist wars – and this notion of “free markets” as well as “free enterprise”, “individualism”, and the “self-made man” are revealed as a load of bollocks.

Look a little deeper into the history of capitalism and you find the state virtually everywhere. Try the Enclosure Acts which destroyed the English peasantry, and the slave trade built on the strength of the British Navy, the destruction of the Indian textile industry, the Opium Wars… I could go on and on. All capitalism is essentially state capitalism, or to put it another way, capitalism is the state socialism of the rich. For anyone who wants to read of the statist origins of capitalism no better place to begin is the chapter on
primitive accumulation
of capital in Kevin Carson’s “Studies In Mutualist Political Economy”

NATONALIZE THE OIL?

A majority of Canadians favour nationalizing the oil industry and Eugene Plawiuk has an excellent blog article on this subject. Here are some quotes:

“We need to seriously look at the success Venezuela has had with its nationalization under workers control for a model of what to do in Canada with our Gas and Oil Reserves, the majority being in Alberta, and the American Oil companies… In this case it should not be about the Federal Government owning the resources, but the people, under a Proudhonian share capital model, with workers on the boards of directors and acting along with the public as share owners of the nationalized industry. First Nations peoples need to have a direct ownership in the resources, which are all situated on their lands and which they have not been compensated for by the Provincial government.”
Couldn’t agree more!

THE STUPIDIST RESPONSE TO KATRINA

Thanks to What Really Happened.com
I read what must be the world's stupidest (and cruelest) response to the horrific events in New Orleans. In
The Intellectual Activist, Sep 2 Robert Tracinski
says that welfare was to blame for the tragedy. He thinks that the alleged violence which greeted the alleged rescuers was the result of years of welfare dependency. First off, why believe the stories in the media? How childishly niave. Quite possibly they are gross exaggerations or even planted lies - think only of Saddam's "nookular" weapons - to let the Bushites off the hook for letting the people suffer.

Then, typical of the US authoritarian right, there is his irrationalism combined with provincialism. If "A" is the cause of "B", where "A" is significantly present, then so is "B." Across the 49th is a very well developed welfare system, far more generous than that of Dixie. But that would be too far to look - only the USA exists, I forgot. At the same time there have been natural disasters, Quebec's Great Ice Storm and the Winnipeg Flood. Neither of these were on the same scale as NO, but were significant enough to be a test of the anti-welfare thesis. In the poor, welfare-dependent areas of the cities there was cooperation, not violence, when disaster struck. QED welfare is not the cause of NO violence.

I would suggest the real reasons for the violence - if there was any - can be rooted in generations of brutal Nazi-like racism, bone-grinding poverty, poor education systems and CIA-introduced drugs. I would also suggest that welfare systems are the price you have to pay if you want to maintain a corporate capitalist system, otherwise you end up with a situation like Brazil, which I suppose for someone as cold blooded as Tracinski isn't such a bad idea.

CRIME AND THE SOCIAL REACTIONARIES

Cultural reactionaries (1) claim social liberalism results in increased crime rates. "Permissiveness", feminism, "the feminization of society" are all blamed. (Note the misogyny.) At the same time they want harsher punishment for criminals, shrieking, "our jails are hotels." (2) All this is pure demagogy. When making such statements proof should be given, yet it never is. The reason? There is no proof. If social liberalism caused crime, then countries where it predominated would have higher incidents of serious criminality than countries with a more conservative bent. If this were true, our reactionaries would shout the information from the rooftops!

The evidence is clearly the opposite. Denmark and Holland have lower crime rates than the UK and USA, the two lands where the hang 'em and flog em gang have the ear of the state.

Another comparison. If liberalism is the cause of crime then social liberals as individuals should have a higher rate of serious crimes than social conservatives. Once again, this is not the case, Serial or mass killers and sex criminals come almost entirely out of a socially conservative environment. This type of criminal is well noted for obsessions about the military, police or authoritarian religions. In fact, I cannot think of a single social liberal serial killer-serial rapist.

Social reactionaries are right in claiming societal break down and the resulting nihilism as factors contributing to criminality. Trouble is, they place the blame for this condition on the wrong people. Narcissists and nihilists don't come popping out of social liberalism, but are a manifestation of social conservatism in decadence. Social conservatives faced with the stresses of contemporary society tend to go in a nihilist direction as their ideology disintegrates. Proof you ask? Once again, where do criminals come from? Are hoards of left-wing college professors and social workers being carted off to prison for white collar crime? Nope, but capitalism's true believer, blue blazer, corporate whiz kids sure are. The children of the counter-culture out pillaging, raping and murdering? Boys raised by gay couples and feminists on the street stealing purses? Nope, just the kids of the socially conservative lower classes. (3)

Social liberalism is based on social democracy, moderate Protestantism, liberal Catholicism, Reform Judaism, and Humanism. As an ideology, it has also had its share of problems. However, as radicals abandoned social liberalism, rather than jettisoning ethics, they created a new ethic, one that in many respects, grew out of the old.(4) This post-modern ethic, staunchly opposed to war, global poverty, imperialism, gender inequality, sexual repression and religious intolerance, is in fact, today's anti-nihilist force par excellence.

Nihilism is also rooted in the ideology of the social reactionaries. Their religious cults regard the world as evil and they wait anxiously for its destruction. This is nihilism at its very worst, even those arch-nihilists, the Nazis, only wanted to kill some of the people, not all of them. These reactionary cultists have committed the ultimate sin and blasphemy by splitting the divine from creation in such a radical and extreme manner. (According to the *Zohar* sin IS separation.) And what kind of divinity would wish to inflict such suffering on his creation? It's not hard to figure out who the god of the social reactionaries really is... "Pleased ta meet you, hope you guessed mah name..."

Narcissists and psychopaths lack empathy, and this is mirrored in the reactionaries lack of empathy for humanity, fetuses excepted, and the world of nature. Their lack of empathy is especially obvious toward the poor, Blacks, Native People and the environment. Empathy is reserved for white males and obedient women and children. Nature is something to exploit and pave over.

No group is more obsessed with vengeance than cultural reactionaries. These are the people eager to kill, er, pardon me, eager to have OTHER people kill, Arabs or string up Karla Homolka. Their sick lust for revenge barbarizes society, creating an environment for the crimes they get so excited about. What happens in society is best described as garbage-in, garbage-out, yet these folks aren't swift enough to understand that. Serial killers seek to revenge themselves on society or women. Now where do you think that idea came from, out of the air? Once again, the proof is there for all to see. Countries that take a less vindictive approach to justice, have a lower incidence of violent crime than the USA where revenge is the more the mode.

Central to societal breakdown is the destruction of community. Political and economic centralization, globalism, suburban sprawl, Walmart, MacDonalds, all of these help destroy community. Yet, when do reactionaries criticize any of this? Rather, they are the foremost apologists for these attacks.

Responsibility is a favorite word for these folks. The poor it seems must always be responsible, but not corporations. In order to be responsible people have to practice being responsible. How can they do that, if as the reactionaries wish, they are confined in authoritarian families and schools - the very essence of which is not to think and act for yourself, but do what you are told? People indoctrinated with an authoritarian mentality cannot show responsibility, for that you need mental freedom. Is this so hard to figure out? Then, the 8 hours a day, five days a week we are trapped in powerlessness in our work places. How can people learn to be responsible if the best hours of the day they are treated like cattle?

Family breakdown is another factor we can see eye to eye with the reactionaries. But they scapegoat feminists and our easier divorce laws. The difference between the past and the last 35 years is honesty. All marital problems were once swept under the rug and families were full of suppressed hostility and bitterness. Is having a divorce any worse than this? In reality, what causes family breakdown is complex, including decline of community and the extended family, unemployment, sexual repression, poor education, obsessive materialism, inflated housing costs, an immature concept of marriage and an infantile concept of manhood. Our reactionaries are the last folks on the planet to tackle these problems.

Reactionaries claim liberals and libertarians are wimps because they don't buy into the revenge cult and the over-exaggerated sense of individual responsibility. Reactionaries, on the other hand, are hypocrites and cowards, hiding behind demonizing verbiage, so as to ignore the major part their ideologies and practices play in fostering social break down and crime.


1. I chose the term "social reactionary" to separate out the sort of social conservatives who do look at the world in genuine ethical terms. Though a minority of right-wingers, such people share a concern about war, the loss of liberty, the increasing power of the state and corporations with the libertarian left. For example, Antiwar.com or LewRockwell.com
2. If I ever have any say in the matter, the idiots who think jails are a soft touch will spend a few years locked up in a 6 by 8 cell with a couple of four hundred pound, HIV-infected, psychopathic, homosexual bikers.
3. The typical criminal is young, male, poor, badly educated and comes from an abusive family. Their values, such as they are, tend toward social conservatism.
4. A major reason for the abandonment of liberalism was its inconsistency. Liberals were for peace, but in practice supported war. Liberals promoted democracy, yet supported centralization, the destroyer of democracy. Liberals claimed to believe in individual liberty, but urged the state to interfere in our lives. (Both drug and alcohol prohibition were largely the work of liberals.)

CONTRACT FEUDALISM

There is seemingly no depth to which US bosses won’t sink. The latest attempt to degrade and humiliate the work force is something called “no fault attendance." According to the Anarcho-Syndicalist Review #41 (www.syndicalist.org) “workers are penalized for every lateness or absence regardless of its cause.” The system works on a point scale, so many points for being late, six points and you are disciplined, twelve points and you are fired. “It doesn’t matter if workers are sick or had an accident on the way to work.” Welcome to 2005, which is starting to look an awful lot like 1005! Fired for attending a meeting, fired for supporting the wrong candidate, fired for blogs, now fired for being sick. How much longer will US workers put up with having their faces pushed into the mud by these psychopathic bullies? For more info on contract feudalism click
HERE

WORKER COOPS IN AMERICA

I just found this fantastic online book on the history of coops in the US while reading the GEO Newsletter www.geo.coop , John Curl’s “History Of Work Cooperation In America” examines virtually every one of the scores of groups who promoted and practiced worker cooperation from Leveller influenced settlers to the Knights of Labor, Populists, the IWW right to the present day.
See: www.red-coral.net/WorkCoops.html

SCAM PART 5 - THE EDUCATION RACKET

Even today, with all the blather about high tech, most jobs only require basic literacy. Yet, everyone is forced to get a highschool diploma. Up until 50 years ago this was not the case. The majority went as far as grade 8 and then got jobs. Only those young people going on to university or taking commercial courses for future white collar jobs completed high school. Then, in the mid-late 1950s a new scare was drummed up by the authorities, one that would eventually overshadow the Great Comic Book Panic and the Rock and Roll Hysteria. (1) This was the dreaded High School Drop Out Plague, which at times seemed a greater threat to "Our Way of Life" than those Evil Commies forever lurking under our beds.



This scam involved two groups, politicians and the education bureaucracy. The former sought to keep unemployment at a reasonably low level. One way of doing this was by keeping people out of the work force. An extra four years of schooling would reduce the unemployment figures by hundreds of thousands. For the education bureaucracy this was a gift from heaven. Force every child to go to highschool and education budgets would increase by 50%.



The scam worked its way up the education ladder. In 1960 if you got a BA or BSc that was enough. It was "open sesame" for most professions. But soon professions that were previously taught on the job required a further two years of education AFTER a bachelors degree. This sorry situation is nothing more than a cheap ploy to exclude people from these professions and create more jobs for the education racket.



Every middle class kid now must have a BA, whether they want it or not. Few will benefit much from it, other than the need for a piece of paper, so why bother? You see them jumping through all the bureaucratic hoops of the educational mandarinate. Most of them would rather be elsewhere. For many, university is a chance to drink beer, smoke weed and get laid, and for that you can't blame them. That's natural when you are 19 years old.



More to the point would be for young people to have real jobs, grab their tool boxes and head out to see the country, "on tour" like Joseph Dietzgen

and Pierre Proudhon did.



I do, however, believe that an educated populace is a good thing. The so-called libertarians who say "Why should I have to pay for other people's kids education?" are just damn fools. Everything is inter-connected, and don't ever forget it! The more genuine education a population has, the better it is for all of us. At its most basic - people who read, paint pictures or play music aren't out stealing old ladies purses. We would not wish to reproduce the pre-1960 situation where you had a poorly educated blue collar working class, a high school grad white collar working class and a university educated middle class. Rather, have people educated at ANY point in their lives. The young who do not want to go to school beyond the most basic level should get out and work. Many of them will eventually get bored with work and will return to class.



Important point! Formal education is not real education. Formal education is just "training." Real education is something else, something that comes from within - a passion and curiosity about the world. Few, if any, schools can give this. Formal education can provide the basic tools, like reading, writing and "figgerin", but the real education begins when you apply those mental tools on your own. The informal sort of education - which should be encouraged at all levels - such as public libraries, night courses, discussion groups, coop and community radio/TV, are the true areas of “cultural uplift.” Love of true education must also begin at home in the years before a child goes to school. Let there be vast campaigns to encourage parents to read to their children and give their offspring books.



1. For those of you to young to be familiar with these 1950's hysterias. The "authorities" in the early '50's deemed comic books the root cause of delinquency. These same authorities, as well as much of the adult population, felt the same about Rock and Roll, but with addition fears about sexuality, class and race. The fact that many adults believed such utter nonsense, and we teens obviously did not, was the beginning of what became known in the late '60's as the "Generation Gap."

PRODUCTIVITY? WHOSE PRODUCTIVITY?

The Quebecois writer, the late Pierre Bourgault , writing in his collection of essays LA COLERE Vol. 3 (Anger) makes the excellent point that the drive for productivity in services actually cuts down on productivity in general. (*) He gives two examples, one of department stores and the other of the banks. Both, with the view of raising productivity - in reality raising profits - have cut staff to the bone. The customer is forced to spend an inordinate amount of time searching for the items he/she wishes to purchase or waiting in line to do a banking transaction. Furthermore the ill-paid employees are also ill informed about the products. All this means a time loss - i.e., a cut in productivity for the customer. There is no overall gain in societal productivity, the company's gains are the publics loss.

We can see the problem elsewhere. Hospitals and other government services cut back on employees and force longer waiting times. Doctors no longer make house calls. The sick are now forced to spend their time in travel and in doctors waiting rooms, rather than lying in bed. Nor is the drive for productivity the only reason our time is of no consideration. Large centralized schools, certainly of benefit to bureaucrats, mean it takes longer for children to get to school. Suburban sprawl certainly fills the pockets of developers and the auto industry, but at the expense of the thousands of people stuck in traffic jams, who even at the best of times have long commutes.

Let's face it, we don't matter a damn!

(*) in the essay, "Les Services, Quels Services?"

FREE PUBLIC TRANSPORT Part 2

It seemed like a really radical idea at the time. But now a columnist in the
RABBLE
Is promotion the idea of free public transit. Go here for my April 9th article on the same subject. Good to see anarchist concepts going mainstream.

SCAM PART 4 - THE CRIME RACKET

I previously wrote about the War For Drugs. This is part of the crime racket, but certainly not all of it. State invented crimes such as "illegal" drugs or laws against the sex trade are an obvious scam created to maintain the Police-Prison Industrial Complex. (1) True crimes, anti-social acts such as fraud, robbery, assault, rape, murder, have also been incorporated into this complex. People who commit genuine anti-social acts see other people as objects to be used or exploited. This lack of empathy and the use of people as a means are the classic symptoms of emotional disturbances such as psychopathy and narcissism.

Narcissism seems to have environmental origins, usually rooted in childhood. The origins of pschyopathic behavior are found in a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Genetic pre-disposition pschycopathic conditions can either be offset or encouraged by the social environment, most especially child rearing practices. Brain lesions caused by child abuse before the age of five might also be a factor. Few indeed, are the psychopaths who have not had an abusive childhood. The origins of psychopathic behavior and narcissism are reasonably well known, yet anti-social acts are treated as punishable crimes rather than as mental and social problems.

The reason for this is not to hard to figure out. Follow the buck! If crime was treated as a psycho-social problem, the Police-Prison-Industrial Complex would lose out big time. The free ride would end. Tax money that now went to the Complex would go to psychiatry, social services and mental institutions. The role of the police and courts would be reduced to apprehending and proving the guilt of the alleged offender. Prisons would no longer exist. Non-violent crimes would involve victim restitution and therapy. Dangerous individuals would still be separated from the rest of society, but in mental institutions not jail cells. Emphasis would be placed upon the root causes of anti-social acts. Overcoming poverty, child abuse and bullying would be an absolute priority. Society would vigorously combat social attitudes now promoted in consumer culture which encourage psychopathic or narcissistic behavior, such as the need to win at any cost, glorification of violence and contempt for people.

Like the ridiculous superstitions about cannabis trotted out by the Drug War Mafia, the Police-Prison Industrial Complex uses worn-out beliefs to keep its nose deep in the tax-payer hog trough. One of the most absurd of these beliefs is the notion of "legal insanity." The definition of legal insanity dates from 1844, long before psychology had developed. The courts, out of forgivable ignorance at the time, reduced mental illness to psychosis - the situation where a person is totally deluded in his-her actions. (2) The mentally ill who knew what they were doing, even though their acts were those of madmen, were deemed sane. Hence the jailing of psychopaths. (3) As one might expect, crammed in with other misfits, their conditions worsen in prison. Due to the nature of the law, they are released when their sentence is up, "cured" or not. Any attempt to change this 19th century conception to a contemporary clinical definition of insanity is fought tooth and nail by the courts and police. One need not wonder why.

Addendum

While treating crime as a psychological problem can be more humane, we must remain wary about the mental health industry. In the past, girls were placed in asylums for having pre-marital sex or for "being disobedient." One young woman in the late '50's was given multiple shock treatments because she liked to dress in black and carried a copy of Proust. I knew a fellow institutionalized for having long hair. Having a class analysis of society could get you marked as paranoid. Several fat volumes could be filled with similar horror stories. There will have to be many checks and balances installed to prevent such abuse.

1, These laws didn't start out as scams, but as the obsessions of authoritarian busy-bodies who wanted to impose their twisted ideas of morality on the population.
2. This was a progressive step in 1844. Before the notion of legal insanity was imposed, the psychotic were held accountable for their actions and suffered the most barbarous punishments.
3. What can you say about a system that deems a murderous lunatic like John Wayne Gacy, "sane"? What kind of crackpots are running the show? I also doubt whether serious psychopathic behavior can be "cured." Some people will have to be isolated from the public for their entire lives.

New Zapatista Statement

Subcomandante Marcos has announced the formation of a broad group of peasants, workers and social movements to create a mass movement with a common program. Rather than having this movement run candidates in the forthcoming election in Mexico it will work from outside to press for change. This is very wise, as it will allow the movement to keep its nose clean and thus minimize the danger of selling out. We have seen the various left wing parties come and go. They are founded with the best intentions and after some years in the parliamentary arena they sell out. We have seen the same with the Green Party. This is inevitable with electoral politics which, by its very nature, is based on lowest common denomenatorism, representation, not delegation and of course endless compromise. (Except when right wingers are in power. THEY don’t compromise.) Furthermore, when a left wing party takes power, they tend to demobilize their supporters, at a time when I think they ought to be out in the street as never before to keep the bastards honest. The only hope is for a non-electoral mass movement to hold their feet to the fire, thus forcing them to act. Let’s hope this libertarian populist concept of the Zapatistas spreads across the world.
See Subcomandante Marcos

THE TRUTH BEHIND THE TRUE STORY

I just read Micheal Finkel’s book, TRUE STORY, about Chris Longo, who murdered his wife and three small children in 2001. The author based his book on hundreds of pages of letters and jail interviews that he collected over the course of two years. Longo now faces the death penalty. The big question in the book is why he murdered, as he seemed to be so normal. Psychiatrists who examined him claimed he was a narcissist.

However, Longo's crime cannot be reduced to his personality disorder. Millions of people - in the US especially, are afflicted with narcissism, yet they do not commit violent crimes, let alone murder their families. Indeed, narcissism is seen by some as a virtual requirement for success in business. In order to turn a personality disorder in a criminal direction, the proper environment must be provided.

In Longo's case, there were two-inter-related conditions which led him to kill his family. One of these was the conservative consumer-obsessed culture. The other was authoritarian religion. One can easily imagine a different, yet still narcissistic Longo arising in a different cultural-environmental context. A Longo who cares nothing for bourgeois convention, fantasies himself as an artiste and sponges off everyone. A pain in the ass, but not a criminal.

The Longos wanted a yuppie lifestyle, but they couldn't afford it. This need led Chris Longo to engage in fraud and theft, in a kind of vicious circle that led to murder. What initially sparked his criminal activity involves a political context. His youngest daughter had severe health problems which drained his limited income and drove him into bankruptcy. In any civilized country health insurance would have covered these costs. Not so in the USA. Could it be that for want of a decent health care system a family was murdered?

Why did the Longo's have to have a middle class living standard? Because it was the thing to do. They were highly conservative, never questioning anything, always seemingly obedient to every convention, which included being overly polite, not drinking alcohol or swearing. For such people, the outward display of wealth is a compensation for their insecurity and their shallow, boring lives. Indeed, the latter aspect was to encourage Longo in his crime sprees. He got a thrill from stealing a car or writing a bum cheque.

But why couldn't the Longos afford their yuppie lifestyle? Both were highly intelligent and capable individuals. The cult they belonged to considered higher education to be a sin. Longo had only a Grade Nine education. With the destruction of US trade unions - another political context - the poorly educated can only get minimum wages. Yet they wanted to be middle class. Their cult however, didn't see anything wrong with materialist aspirations. Had Longo been a Quaker, Buddhist or Amish - no murders.

The cult also demanded subservience from women. The wife was not to question her husband's actions. A normal woman would have demanded to know where all the expensive automobiles and gifts were coming from on a $7.00 an hour job. A normal woman would have left Longo when his behavior became increasingly bizarre.

At the most crucial period in their lives - when Longo was finally revealed as a thief, fraud-artist, liar and cheat, the cult failed them. The family was ostracized, driving them into complete isolation, furthering the mad spiral that led to death.

Yes, Longo must die, yet not a word is said about the crazy system that produced him.

Scam Part 3 - The Corporate Law Fraud

The business corporation is actually a holdover from the 17th Century period of political absolutism and mercantilist economics. Corporations were set up by the state to give monopoly privileges to certain favored individuals - surprise, surprise, connected with the government and members of the so-called nobility. Genuine liberals such as Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith disliked corporations, fearing their ability to distort free exchange. However, other than banking and trading, few corporations existed in the early 19th Century. Most businesses were owned by individuals or partners and thus, were by todays standards very small. The Era of the Corporation really begins after the American Civil War.

A legal "innovation" was created which allowed for the rapid development of corporate business. This innovation, actually a form of legal fraud, was "limited liability". Up till then, and today as well if you are an ordinary person, each person is responsible for his or her debts. If you default on a loan the financial institution will come and take your house, your car and your furniture, leaving you in the street. What limited liability does is shift the burden of debt away from the officers of a corporation to the corporation itself. If a corporation with limited liability goes belly-up, legally, you can't grab the CEO's personal bank account, mansion and Rolls Royce. Thousands of small shareholders might lose everything, and the workers their jobs and pension funds, but not the bosses.

Having limited liability is like a gambling addict with a rich parent who funds the addiction. When the gambler loses, the parent pays, when the gambler wins, he keeps his winnings. Corporate officers have a free hand to speculate with other people's money. Such speculation can lose, but it can also win big. Such "big wins" inflate the market share and size of a corporation, furthering the process of concentration and centralization. Put another way, without limited liability, corporate officers would be very conservative with other people's money and high-risk speculation would not exist. Corporations would tend to be a lot smaller and many would not exist at all.

It is obvious that limited liability allows many opportunities for corruption, many more than would exist without this evil law.

In the 1880’s came the notion of the "corporation as fictitious individual", in fact limited liability implies this. Business corporations are a form of collective capitalism, they may have thousands of shareholders. The problem for the corporation bosses is that the Bill of Rights and the Rights of Man (sic) did not recognize the notion of collective right, only individual rights. The liberal revolutionaries of the 18th and early 19th Centuries saw collective right as a hang-over from feudalism. Such basic rights as freedom of speech and of the press, were freedoms of the individual, and of course, at that time presses and bookshops were owned by individuals and not corporations. (1)

Through the legal fraud which converted a collective structure into a fictitious individual, the corporation acquired the rights of a human individual. That a collective, often comprising thousands of individuals, is not an individual is obvious to anyone with any degree of sanity. But this only goes to show what a blatant and vicious fraud this law is. Thanks to the "fictitious individual" genuine, living, breathing individuals have great difficulty combating corporations, and especially corporate media or advertising, since such actions would be deemed an attack upon “individual rights." This has had very negative effects upon the media and has deeply undermined democracy. When newspapers were taken over by giant corporations, freedom of the press now applied to those corporations. Hundreds of newspapers which once spoke with hundreds of different voices, now spoke with two or three voices, those of their corporate masters. (For further reading on the history of the corporation as fictitious individual here is a good article by Thom Hartman)


(1) The technology was so simple that literally any printer could cast his own type, build his own press and start publishing a newspaper, the largest of which sold 10,000 copies.

More Banking Scam Info

A very interesting - and much more developed article on the banking scam at
Vive Le Canada

SCAM - PART 2 THE BANKING FRAUD

When you go to a bank and borrow money you probably think the bank loans you the money out of its deposits. This may have been the situation originally, but this is certainly not the case today. Banks are allowed, by governments, to loan 15- 17 times the amount they hold as deposits. "Credit that can be accessed by credit card, overdraft cheque or bank loan represents nothing more than a bank's promise to pay. Credit money exists only as numbers in bank computers…When someone borrows from a bank, perhaps taking out a housing loan, the bank records in the borrower's account the debt that must be repaid with interest, and in return provides a bank cheque to the borrower or direct to whoever he is purchasing the house from. The bank cheque is bank created credit, not backed up by the bank's own money nor anyone else's” (1) Deposits consist not just of coins and bills, as you might think, but also the credit of previous loans. Thus “ banks are able to build a mountain of credit based on earlier credit until it amounts to 95% of all money” (2)

As bizarre as it may seem, banks thus “ increase the money supply by creating money out of nothing” (3)

Of course, we, both as individuals and tax-payers, are forced to pay interest to the banks for our personal loans and government debt. Aside from the costs of processing a loan, which would include some kind of insurance to cover the minority who cannot pay up, the banks receive high interest payments for essentially doing nothing. Governments, or mutual aid systems, could simply loan out the money at cost, and the extra payments to the banks could be completely avoided.

More than 150 years ago, Proudhon realized that workers and farmers had their own in-built collateral. For workers, it was the amount of labor over a given time period, for farmers, the crop or harvest. Hence, there was no need to have collateral in gold, bills or property, nor was there any reason, other than government preventing it from occurring, for farmers and workers to create money and loan it out to each other thru a mutual banking system. For the longest time banks ignored the workers and poor farmers, but with the rise of consumer society came a realization that a bundle could be made loaning money to these here-to-fore ignored customers. Our collateral is our labor, but the banks reap the benefit.

Government debt, and remember the right-wingers howling about it as you read on, need not occur at all. Remember, credit is created out of nothing. Governments go to the banks, borrow the money, then print the money that has been credited to them by the banks. The tower of debt grows thru interest payments to the banks. Governments could simply cut out the middleman-banks and loan themselves the money at cost, i.e., the cost of printing those dollar bills. “when the State found itself short of money raised from taxes then -- instead of printing Treasury Bonds, selling them to the banking and non-banking sector in order to raise money, and then having to pay them back when they become due, and with interest attached, and with money that has been raised from taxpayers and the sale of even more Bonds -- it could simply create the money required "out of nothing", in the way that banks create money today, and spend it into society as public revenue.” (4)

The fact that governments don’t do this and instead run up huge debts thru interest make me highly suspicious. I am drawn to the conclusion that government debt is a fraud, that it has been deliberately created by the financial institutions and corrupt politicians as a means of milking the public. Now recall those right-wingers yelling about the need to pay off the debt and cutting social services in the process. If they were sincere about the debt, they would try to get rid of the middleman, and since they don’t, they must be part of the racket.

1, 2. 3. From http://dkd.net/davekidd/politics/money.html
4. http://www.prosperityuk.com/prosperity/articles/moneymake.html

THE SYSTEM IS A SCAM PART 1

This is a manufactured economy. No, not a manufacturing economy, but a manufactured economy. In the same way that Noam Chomsky talks of "manufacturing consent", much, if not most of the corporate economy, is artificial, serves no real human need and is simply created to feed itself.

THE WAR SCAM

About one trillion dollars is spent on war and the preparation for it, worldwide. (I refuse to use the Orwellian "defense spending") All of this is artificial, especially now that no superpower exists to militarily challenge the USA. Lets take, for the sake of argument, that Russia under Stalin was a threat for a few years after WW2. Governments genuinely concerned with world peace would have welcomed and supported the reformers who took power after him. But, on the contrary, the Cold War was advanced and everything done to undermine the possibility of reform in the USSR. (Even as late as 1990, sections of the US far right - presumably with military contracts in mind, claimed that the Gorbachov reforms were also a ploy.) Without question, the Cold War and its massive expense (and therefore massive corporate welfare) after the death of Stalin, if not before, was a fraud.

With no superpower to challenge the USA, a new threat had to be invented. Thus the "War on Terror", a "war" against an invisible foe, and one that can never be won, for nothing can stop a determined individual who is not afraid of dying. This new war is the ideal war for the scammers.

THE "ILLEGAL" DRUGS FRAUD

Then there is the so-called War On Drugs, or the War FOR Drugs as I prefer to call it. This is a complete and utter fraud. According to a former LA narcotics squad officer Mike Ruppert, who should know, at least HALF A TRILLION dollars of drug money washes in and out of the US financial apparatus. You can be assured that this money is not from the famed Colombian Drug Lords, Mafias, Hells Angels or ghetto gangs, but from the Big Boys who ultimately profit from these groups. (The criminal gangs are mere street corner juvenile delinquents along side the government officials and bankers who are really in charge.) As a pleasant offshoot of the War For Drugs, the police-prison-industrial complex, a happy $135 billion a year industry in the US, (all ripped off from taxes, natch.) not one half of which would exist without the criminalization of drugs. (1)

One other aspect of this crime are the links with the Nazis. Klaus Barbie, protected by the US government, was instrumental in setting up the massive cocaine trade in Bolivia, which then laid the basis for the Colombian coke barons and the importation of cocaine into the US ghettos as part of theIran-Contra scandal.


1. In 2001, Auditor General Sheila Fraser said the federal government was spending close to $500 million a year fighting the drug trade. Roughly 95 per cent of that goes to enforcement and policing, and two-thirds of the country's 50,000 annual drug arrests are for cannabis offenses. (Macleans 22-11-04) The hostility of the police and the political right to cannabis legalization has to be rooted in fear of a loss of tax money going to the police-prison-industrial complex. They also must fear that decrim of pot might next lead to demands that drug addiction be treated as a medical problem and not a criminal one, which would eventually kill the scam. See also
http://www.illuminati-news.com/marijuana-conspiracy.htm

ON THE SUPERIOR EFFICIENCY OF SMALL-SCALE ORGANIZATION

Excellent article on small scale organizations in Kevin Carson’s Blog Includes insights by Eugene Plawiuk, Jane Jacobs and Kirkpatrick Sale.

CAPITALISM DIDN'T INVENT ANYTHING

Apologists for capitalism like to lay claim for all the good things developed during the last 200 years. Wouldn't have happened without capitalist entrepreneurs, they say. And this is the reason that these entrepreneurs must be rewarded with colossal salaries and patent monopolies.

Trouble is, with this happy scenario, is inventors don't invent to become fabulously wealthy. There are legions of garage and basement-based inventors, and none of them are rich. Some like Edison and Ford do become rich, but in the beginning they weren't and yet they still invented. Inventing is their art, and like artists they will do so whether they are financially rewarded or not.

While financially successful inventors become capitalists as a matter of course, few inventors are themselves capitalists to begin with. The most common source of invention in the 19th and early 20th Century was the skilled worker. Edison and the Wright Brothers are the prime examples. Morse, Fulton, and Ericsson were artists. Watt an instrument maker. Edison a railway telegrapher. Kelvin, DeForest, (radio) Farnsworth, (TV) Bell, Faraday, Davie were scientists. Eastman (camera) an office clerk. Ford, and Howe (sewing machine) were machinists. Cyrus McCormack was a farmer.

Note that all great inventions are connected with a person's name. Inventions are made by individuals (Or two brothers as with the Wright Brothers and les freres Lumiere) and not by corporations. Corporate capitalism invents nothing. It might buy out someone's idea, or adapt an existing concept, but produces nothing new. Corporations develop ideas, but in a bureaucratic fashion. This explains the poor quality and impracticality of so much contemporary design. (1)The old inventors were practical people trying to find the simplest and most workable solution to a problem. The bureaucrats are merely looking for a marketing angle or a way of cheapening the cost, to which they will cheerfully sacrifice design.

Capitalism, and this is well known, suppresses inventions if they harm profits. Way back in the 1830's steam powered buses were running across England. The coaching industry and railways crushed the steam coaches by getting Parliament to enact the infamous "red flag law".(2.) Nicola Tesla found a way to transmit electricity without wires, his backer, J.P. Morgan, pulled the plug on him and a campaign of slander against Tesla was launched in the newspapers. A tacit agreement among the Big Three auto manufacturers in the US put the revolutionary Tucker car out of business.

Apologists for the corporate system claim that capital's promotion through advertising and large scale production brings new improved goods to the masses and as a result brings the price down. But people know a good thing when they see it and don't need to be propagandized into buying something. No mass advertising was necessary to switch from flint and steel to matches, or candles to coal oil lamps and then to electricity. Advertising is mostly a way of getting people to buy what they don't need or to get a larger share of the market for a product that is in no way different from that of the so-called competition. (Think of Coke vs. Pepsi)

While it is true that an economy of scale is needed to produce complex goods like aircraft, automobiles and large ships, it really doesn't apply to most items and services. (3) Does the world really need and benefit from multinational corporations frying hamburgers, brewing beer, baking bread, manufacturing cheese, bottling soft drinks, or providing janitorial services? I think not. The quality of these goods and services is usually much better when delivered by small or local firms. If you want good beer you buy from a microbrewery not Molsons or Coors. Good bread is only found at local bakeries, mass production bread is only fit for pigs. MacDo burgers are crap and Kraft cheese has no taste.

1. Things have gotten insanely and unnecessarily complex. Why should you need a manual to operate your car radio-CD player? Why did they abolish the on-off switch for cell phones and pagers? Why are "help menus" so unhelpful?
2. The law by which any "horseless carriage" had to be preceded by a man bearing a red flag. This law, which wasn't killed until 1896, effectively gave France and Germany a big head start in the auto industry.

GRAMSCI WAS RIGHT

Early in 1968 I became aware of Antonio Gramsci and his concept of hegemony. That culture - in the sociological sense of the word - ought to be an area of contestation fitted right into my anarchist counter-culturalism. Simply put, Gramsci saw that the dominant culture tended to inoculate the population against liberatory practices and ideas. Revolutionaries had to struggle against this culture and create a new cultural hegemony. Essentially, the revolution required a change in consciousness before the political and economic changes could occur.

Little did I realize at the time how right Gramsci was and how important cultural change was to be in the coming years. "How so?" you ask. Look at the different outcome of the radicalism of the 1930's and the 1960's. The 1930's and 40's labor movement was followed by a period of reaction - the 1950's - and there was a break in continuity between the radicalisms of the two periods. When we 1960's radicals came on the scene, it was like having to invent the wheel all over again. (Which explains some of our - in retrospect - foolish errors)

The majority of the population in the 1930's - including those supporting the labor movement, accepted the dominant culture - one that was authoritarian, sexist, racist and sexually repressive. It was relatively easy for the rulers to force them back into conservative politics, since their daily lives were highly conservative. Many radicals were attracted to the authoritarian left and it took little effort to switch over to the authoritarian right when these parties failed to establish anything resembling socialism.

When we look at post-1960s radical movements there is no such break, only continuity. The radicalism may have changed form, but it was always there. From the student movement and hippies of the '60's to feminism and ecology of the 70's, to a re-born anti-war and environmental movement of the '80's, to the antiglobalist movements of the '90's and today, there is a continuity.

By challenging the core elements of the dominant culture, elements which reproduce and support authoritarian politics, like racism, sexism, homophobia, sexual repression, authoritarian child rearing and the cult of conformism - a large portion of the population became inoculated against the authoritarian right. (1)

This explains the violent "cultural war" waged by the right. They are essentially right-wing Gramscists without knowing it. They realize that a culture with liberatory aspects provides a matrix for a liberatory politics. The best way to break us is to destroy our cultural hegemony and replace it with an authoritarian hegemony. Then it will be easier to herd us back into slavery.

But this trick is not an easy one to pull off. The problem for the right is while political positions are often superficial and can be dropped without much adieu, deep cultural attitudes are not. The superiority of a life without many of the neurotic oppressions of the past (like sexual repression, child abuse, misogyny etc.) is so evident once you start living without them, you would rather die than return to the past. Daily life has been changed, the liberatory genie is out of the bottle, and other than exterminating us, it cannot be put back in again.

1. Child abuse and sexual oppression were the anvil and hammer that beat the authoritarian personality into existence. The authoritarian personality was the ultimate key to the preservation of the system.

Finally!

At last people are attempting to reverse the insanity of North American suburban existence. Rather than sprawl, a new community like a village. Includes minimizing auto traffic, setting up a land trust, affordable housing and no house more than 5 minutes walk from a school. This is to take place in Bamberton on Vancouver Island, Thanks to Marie Helene for sending this to me.

Zapatista Communique

Latest Zapatista Communique
HERE

Polynesians In California.

The old dogmas are dying. Social scientists are now seriously debating whether Polynesians managed to get to California more than 1000 years ago.

THE JOY OF BEING WRONG

I was wrong about the Zapatista Movement in Chiapas. When the EZNL first made it into the headlines back in 1994, I though, "Oh no! another Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group." The worst thing that could happen to the liberation movement I felt, would be the re-birth of Leninist ideology in Latin America. Such a rebirth would spur imitators in the First World and any hope for a re-implantation of libertarian socialism would be if not over, at least made very difficult.

I am so pleased that I was wrong about the Zapatistas and they turned out not to be Leninists after all. No matter what the original intentions of the small group of Maoists who entered Chiapas in the early 1980's, the movement they helped create went in another direction. And they went with it - truly "learning from the people." Rather than Leninism, they turned to the peasant anarcho-populism of Emiliano Zapata, which never really died out.

Rather than allying with Leninists, the Zapatistas have close relations with the Spanish anarcho-syndicalists. Rather giving rise to centralized authoritarian groups they have , by their existence, spurred the creation of mass social movements, one of which , The Consejo Indígena Popular de Oaxaca - Ricardo Flores Magón is a member of the international anarchist network, International Libertarian Solidarity

Discussing this development with an old friend at the recent Montreal Anarchist Book Fair, he said that it would be unlikely for indigenous people, given their culture and social organization, to be attracted to an authoritarian political movement. I think this has a lot to do with it.

I was also wrong about the end of "traditional" anarcho-syndicalist unions. After an initial burst of enthusiasm in the late-1970's - early '80's, unions like the CNT of Spain, French CNT and IWW lost members or split into hostile factions. I felt that these unions were finished as important instruments of working class struggle and that the essential ideas - self-management, local control, direct democracy and delegation - would arise elsewhere in new forms. This was already happening with the COBAs or base-committee organizations which developed in Italy and spread to France and Spain.

But out of the broken pieces of the old movement a new and revitalized syndicalism arose. The Spanish CGT now represents a million workers, the French CNT went from 100 members to 5000, the Italian syndicalists are gaining new members, the IWW has doubled its membership and is organizing once more. Anarcho-syndicalist groups are now found in virtually every European and Latin American country. And in Europe they work happily side by side with the COBAs.

May I continue to be wrong when I am pessimistic.

For more information see: Alternative Union Movement

CHILE AND VENEZUELA - NOT THE SAME

I wonder how many Venezuelans the US state is willing to murder in order to overthrow the populist Chavez government? Four thousand like in Chile, thirty thousand like in Argentina? Probably a lot more since the situation is far more difficult for the Gringos in Venezuela than either of these countries in the 1970's. But if they want a blood bath, they are going to wait a long time. Thankfully, this isn't 1973.

For one thing the level of popular support. Latest polls put support for Chavez at 70%, while the Chilean Unidad Popular of Allende, never got more than 45% of the votes. The US government was able to build Pinochet's coup on the basis of this opposition majority. Most important of all the army is on the side of the government, unlike in Chile. No doubt there are officers who would support a fascist rising, as some did in the last Gringo-sponsored coup, but not the military as a whole.

Furthermore, Chavez is both a miltary man and a populist. Latin American populism has never shied away from armed struggle - witness the populist revolutions in Costa Rica in 1948, Bolivia in 1952 and Chiapas in 1994 - and Chavez will not hesitate to arm the people should the Empire seek to impose its dictatorship. Salvador Allende, a social democrat in practice, if not in theory, instead sought to disarm the people and appease a right-wing controlled military.

Latin America as a whole is different today. Back in 1973, most governments south of the Rio Grande were right wing. Now they are left-wing populist and will be very angry at any attempt to overthrow a democratically elected progressive government. Last but not least, the Empire is suffering from imperial overstretch as its ill-fated attempt to subdue the Iraqi people has gotten nowhere. They can ill-afford a Latin American adventure.

This brings the question as to how libertarian socialists should deal with populist or revolutionary governments like that of Chavez. This question has been a sticky point for us, all the way back to the Russian Revolution. There are two traps which we seem to have habitually fallen into and hopefully avoid today. One position is to give full support to the revolutionary government and lose one's identity completely, like the anarchists and syndicalists who ended up in the Communist Party. The other position is to declare war on all governments, revolutionary or reactionary, and end up despised by the masses as counter-revolutionary. In this situation one ends up a tiny bitter sect without any influence. (1)

The correct position is to support the the mass of the population on an issue by issue basis, without becoming an actual supporter of the government itself. First loyalty is to the revolutionary movement and not to an ideology or government. Where the government aids the movement - for what ever reason - fine. Where the revolutionary government undermines that movement we are against it. Thus, one should support the popular movements initiated by the struggle against counter-revolution, and try to push these organizations as far as possible to an autonomist position. Where the revolutionary government radicalizes, we should radicalize further. Where the revolutionary government acts in an authoritarian manner against the popular forces we must actively oppose it. Thus, a position that is neither sycophantic nor seen as sectarian which aids the reactionaries. In a nutshell - we are for everything that improves the lives of the people and empowers them and against everything that harms them and enslaves them.

(1) Many years ago I told an activist friend that I was editing a collection of articles written by the Socialist Party of Canada. "Why on earth would you do that?" he asked. "I hate those people!" "All they ever do (all five of them) is come to our demonstrations and denounce everyone, if it was up to them people would never do anything." (I must point out that the tiny ultra-sectarian group in question was not the same as the SPC that I wrote about in The Impossibilists