ntA few months ago on the TV news, I saw what was dubbed a “red day”. This consisted of a bunch of people dressing up in red jackets or shirts carrying Canadian flags in “support of the troops.” You were left with the feeling that anyone with the temerity to show up with a banner saying “Support the Troops – Bring Em Home” would not be popular, to put it mildly. These pro-war demonstrations were organized by the Conservative government and their allies in the military. I thought it strange that they would dress in the color of the Liberal Party to support a war that only the right-wing is enamored of. But that wasn't what troubled me. The sight of people wearing a kind of political uniform demonstrating in favor of war and militarism had a familiar and ominous feeling about it. “Ah, but I am just being paranoid,” I thought.
Then, a few weeks ago I went to a demonstration in support of a coalition to replace the minority Conservative government. The anti-coalition right wing showed up for their demonstration, and low and behold many of them were dressed in red and waving Canadian flags. The hatred most of them directed toward us was something I had not seen in a long time. As a friend of mine said. “These people would stick us in a concentration camp if they could.” and I had the feeling he was not far off base.
I am sure if you were to question the people in red, they would hold reactionary opinions on a whole set of issues such as women, trade unions, First Nations, Quebec, immigrants etc. A kind of quasi-fascism has been whipped up by the Conservative Party and we must not allow them to get away with this.
Some other thoughts on this. This “people in red” thing is really a US import. We Canadians traditionally view wrapping yourself in the flag as vulgar and American. Anglo-Canadian nationalism is low key and tends to emphasize opposition to the influence of the US government and corporations upon our way of life, rather than some sort of rabid “Canuckism.” A further irony is the Conservative Party is the US corporate state's Canadian arm or Fifth Column. This is the party that wanted to drag us into the Iraq war of aggression. This is the party that wants to hand us over, lock, stock and barrel to US corporations. This is the party that destroyed the old Tory party and has imported US-style right-wing politics into this country.
But I have seen this before in Chile. The Pinochetistas are rabid, flag wrapped, super-nationalists – who gave their country over to the Gringos on a silver platter. Who killed or drove into exile the very people who created their national culture. Like the “people in red”, their nationalism is little more than a lot of noise.
What we have then, is a kind of “comprador fascism” Under the mask of nationalism they persecute – or in the case of the Canadian variety – intend to persecute - the progressive forces. The far-right mass are made up of “little people”, fearful and bigoted lower middle class types, but behind them lies the corporate ruling class. There is no longer a “national bourgeoisie”. The ruling class of Canada and the US have the same essential interests, and for them there is but one country to whom they are loyal - “Capitalistan.”
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Friday, December 19, 2008
This is What Democracy in Ohio Looks Like
From the local to the global, the ability of people to govern themselves is under assault. Some of the major sources of this attack are:
- Business corporations looking to make huge profits by converting what once had been “public” to “private” (“privatization, “ though a more descriptive term would be “corporatization”), including traditional public assets like water and sewer systems, roads, police and fire protection, and now even schools.
- Individuals looking to increase their power, status, and/or privileges by concentrating decision-making from many hands (We the People and government) to few (their own).
- A culture that reinforces notions that public policies are too complicated for ordinary people to understand (thus leaving policy making to experts); that distracts public attention away from self-determination toward the trivial and inane; that worships “the market” as the route to financial and economic salvation which is not to be regulated or controlled; that define certain arenas (economic in particular) as outside the scope of public input; that continues to erase memory of any/all historical examples of citizen control and definition of their lives; that equates anything that is “public” as being inefficient, wasteful, decrepit, and dangerous and anything “private” as efficient, modern and safe; and that keeps people separated to learn from one another and organize to (re)assert meaningful changes.
- Continual legal and constitutional definitions that further “enclose” and redefine “public” arenas as other “Ps”: “private,” “property,” “proprietary,” “privileged”—and thus beyond the reach of public planning, public shaping, and public evaluation.
- A national government that under the guise of “terrorism” has given itself permission to stifle dissent, intimidate dissenters and interrupt effort of self-determination.
But there is another side to this – a democratic/self-determination culture or “infrastructure.” In our communities and across the state exist alternatives to corporations, corporate governance and elite control.
Scores of documents, policies, institutions, structures and groups reflecting inclusiveness are in place – examples where those who are affected by decisions and policies have a legitimate role in the shaping and making of those decisions… or could if we made the effort. They are where We the People have a voice … or could have a real voice if we merely flexed our self-determination muscles.
Many of these documents, policies, institutions, structures and groups are built on the notion of the commons, broadly understood historically as any sets of resources (i.e. land, water, air) that a community recognizes as being accessible to any member of that community. Implied is that every member of the community with equal access to the commons has a voice in managing or maintaining them.
Not all of these are “governmental,” some are grassroots created and maintained alternative initiatives bypassing corporate and/or top down government versions of the same function. In the midst of dysfunctional, nonfunctional, undemocratic and/or corrupt state or corporate structures, these alternative grassroots initiatives represent “parallel” institutions that currently coexist with state or corporate power but could over time assume greater legitimacy, if not substitution, if they are more effective in fulfilling the needs of people and communities.
All together, this is what democracy in Ohio looks like!
Some of these are unique to Ohio, most are not. They are meant to inform and/or remind us what we may too often take for granted – that documents, policies, institutions structures and groups exist that are, once were, or for the very first time can become democratic/self-determining. When we fail to use them or be involved in them, they will wither and die. By our not being aware of them, they surely will be manipulated, eliminated or replaced by shells or shams controlled by corporations, top down government or the power elite.
The examples listed below are in no way equally “inclusive” or “democractic”—some, in fact, might quite rightly be argued to be at the moment not very inclusive or democratic at all. There are varying degrees of self-determination here, some more so on paper than in practice, some more so depending on the place, condition, and people involved. But all have democratic “openings” or possibilities. Where social change energies should be placed is a separate strategic question. They also reflect a basic human reality – institutions or structures, no matter how democratically constructed or configured, never alone ensure democratic outcomes. The commitment to and will of people in creating and nurturing authentic self-determination may be most important of all – the force needed to drive a wide and deep wedge into even the narrowest organizational democratic crack.
This directory is not meant to be useful primarily from a “consumer” perspective (i.e. in answering the questions, "Where's the nearest food coop?" or “Is there a public radio station in my town?”) but rather from a democracy/self-determination perspective. That is, it seeks to help readers value the democratic / self-determination openings which still exist or could exist with investment of activist energies. It also strives to reinforce the simultaneous need in working for social change to create or nurture alternatives while working to democratize existing laws, constitutions, policies, practices, and organizations. Finally, the goal of this directory is to stimulate awareness of and actions addressing the multiple threats to what are deemed “public” and available for common use by the constant and cancerous corporate and top-down governmental encroachment in the name of “privatization” or “corporatizaton.”
Democracy/self-determination is not just aims but processes, not just ends but also means. Listed are examples of both – documents, policies, institutions, structures or groups actually reflecting democratic/self-determining values and principles and/or calling for them, even if the callers are not themselves the perfect practitioners.
This directory in many ways reflects and speaks to the need for what is called a “Solidarity Economy” – the growing global movement of people and organizations seeking a new framework for social and economic development based on the principles of social solidarity, cooperation, egalitarianism, sustainability and economic democracy that puts people and the planet before private profits and power. A national organization working in this direction that we plan to support is the US Solidarity Economic Network, http://www.ussen.org
There is no presumption that this list is exhaustive. Huge gaps exist beyond our limited awareness. It’s an ongoing work in progress, meant and, in fact, expected to be amended by readers. Please send additions, feedback, challenges and critiques to GColeridge@afsc.org. Updates will occur regularly.
This is what democracy in Ohio looks like!
Directory at
http://www.afsc.net/PDFFiles/InfrastructureDecember08.pdf
- Business corporations looking to make huge profits by converting what once had been “public” to “private” (“privatization, “ though a more descriptive term would be “corporatization”), including traditional public assets like water and sewer systems, roads, police and fire protection, and now even schools.
- Individuals looking to increase their power, status, and/or privileges by concentrating decision-making from many hands (We the People and government) to few (their own).
- A culture that reinforces notions that public policies are too complicated for ordinary people to understand (thus leaving policy making to experts); that distracts public attention away from self-determination toward the trivial and inane; that worships “the market” as the route to financial and economic salvation which is not to be regulated or controlled; that define certain arenas (economic in particular) as outside the scope of public input; that continues to erase memory of any/all historical examples of citizen control and definition of their lives; that equates anything that is “public” as being inefficient, wasteful, decrepit, and dangerous and anything “private” as efficient, modern and safe; and that keeps people separated to learn from one another and organize to (re)assert meaningful changes.
- Continual legal and constitutional definitions that further “enclose” and redefine “public” arenas as other “Ps”: “private,” “property,” “proprietary,” “privileged”—and thus beyond the reach of public planning, public shaping, and public evaluation.
- A national government that under the guise of “terrorism” has given itself permission to stifle dissent, intimidate dissenters and interrupt effort of self-determination.
But there is another side to this – a democratic/self-determination culture or “infrastructure.” In our communities and across the state exist alternatives to corporations, corporate governance and elite control.
Scores of documents, policies, institutions, structures and groups reflecting inclusiveness are in place – examples where those who are affected by decisions and policies have a legitimate role in the shaping and making of those decisions… or could if we made the effort. They are where We the People have a voice … or could have a real voice if we merely flexed our self-determination muscles.
Many of these documents, policies, institutions, structures and groups are built on the notion of the commons, broadly understood historically as any sets of resources (i.e. land, water, air) that a community
Not all of these are “governmental,” some are grassroots created and maintained alternative initiatives bypassing corporate and/or top down government versions of the same function. In the midst of dysfunctional, nonfunctional, undemocratic and/or corrupt state or corporate structures, these alternative grassroots initiatives represent “parallel” institutions that currently coexist with state or corporate power but could over time assume greater legitimacy, if not substitution, if they are more effective in fulfilling the needs of people and communities.
All together, this is what democracy in Ohio looks like!
Some of these are unique to Ohio, most are not. They are meant to inform and/or remind us what we may too often take for granted – that documents, policies, institutions structures and groups exist that are, once were, or for the very first time can become democratic/self-determining. When we fail to use them or be involved in them, they will wither and die. By our not being aware of them, they surely will be manipulated, eliminated or replaced by shells or shams controlled by corporations, top down government or the power elite.
The examples listed below are in no way equally “inclusive” or “democractic”—some, in fact, might quite rightly be argued to be at the moment not very inclusive or democratic at all. There are varying degrees of self-determination here, some more so on paper than in practice, some more so depending on the place, condition, and people involved. But all have democratic “openings” or possibilities. Where social change energies should be placed is a separate strategic question. They also reflect a basic human reality – institutions or structures, no matter how democratically constructed or configured, never alone ensure democratic outcomes. The commitment to and will of people in creating and nurturing authentic self-determination may be most important of all – the force needed to drive a wide and deep wedge into even the narrowest organizational democratic crack.
This directory is not meant to be useful primarily from a “consumer” perspective (i.e. in answering the questions, "Where's the nearest food coop?" or “Is there a public radio station in my town?”) but rather from a democracy/self-determination perspective. That is, it seeks to help readers value the democratic / self-determination openings which still exist or could exist with investment of activist energies. It also strives to reinforce the simultaneous need in working for social change to create or nurture alternatives while working to democratize existing laws, constitutions, policies, practices, and organizations. Finally, the goal of this directory is to stimulate awareness of and actions addressing the multiple threats to what are deemed “public” and available for common use by the constant and cancerous corporate and top-down governmental encroachment in the name of “privatization” or “corporatizaton.”
Democracy/self-determination is not just aims but processes, not just ends but also means. Listed are examples of both – documents, policies, institutions, structures or groups actually reflecting democratic/self-determining values and principles and/or calling for them, even if the callers are not themselves the perfect practitioners.
This directory in many ways reflects and speaks to the need for what is called a “Solidarity Economy” – the growing global movement of people and organizations seeking a new framework for social and economic development based on the principles of social solidarity, cooperation, egalitarianism, sustainability and economic democracy that puts people and the planet before private profits and power. A national organization working in this direction that we plan to support is the US Solidarity Economic Network, http://www.ussen.org
There is no presumption that this list is exhaustive. Huge gaps exist beyond our limited awareness. It’s an ongoing work in progress, meant and, in fact, expected to be amended by readers. Please send additions, feedback, challenges and critiques to GColeridge@afsc.org. Updates will occur regularly.
This is what democracy in Ohio looks like!
Directory at
http://www.afsc.net/PDFFiles/InfrastructureDecember08.pdf
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Questions About Cooperative Socialism
The following questions were based on the previous article "The Myth of Socialism as Statism"
Anders writes: It definitely makes sense that a system of local control of the economy and governmental functions is quite different from the statist national socialism the people associate with the word socialism today. I'd be curious to see several things.
Question
1. What prevents workers co-ops?
1a. Most rich people's wealth is primarily tied up in capital goods that give workers jobs and produce goods that ordinary people buy (e.g. cars, flat screen tvs, clothes, books, houses.)
To the degree that capital comes from workers pension funds, don't workers own the means of production?
Doesn't all of this serve the same social function as co-ops?
ANS. 1. Lack of capital. Lack of the sort of privileges that the state granted to capitalists in order to establish the capitalist system.
1a. Ownership without control is meaningless. Think of "owning" a house, but not allowed to live in it our have any say over what happens to it. Workers have no control of their pension funds and those same funds have little direct say over the companies they technically own part of. The thing about coops is that members have a direct say in the direction of the coops, and a share of the profits. In no capitalist corporation do workers have the former, and only a small minority the latter, and even then the vast bulk of the profits go to the top.
Question
2.If all power dissolves to the local level - what is to prevent
a. people from seceding to have single family co-ops and businesses.
b. the local powers that be from oppressing newcomers and the younger generation.
c. the municipalities from being statist and failing just like real states? Similarly wouldn't the local municipalities that are most successful be like little hong kongs with comparatively few rules or municipal control?
d. didn't small scale socialist experiments always fail? similarly municipal socialism was always a drain on the local government. Privatization is important today precisely because the state needs productive private enterprise that it can tax, public enterprise is a drain on state resources.
e. How do co-ops and municipalities and various economic enterprises get created and how do the old ones disappear? In free enterprise firms dissolve and merge and get created from scratch.
f. what kind of violence would be necessary to maintain the system?
ANS. a. Nothing. And in a free society you could not put such restraints. But "all power would not dissolve to the local level." This is not political or economic autarky. As a paleao-libertarian, I am sure you are familiar with federalism and the subsidiary concept. They apply here and in questions b and c. As well.
b. A constitution and direct democracy of the town meeting/neighborhood assembly type combined with worker councils.
c. The municipalities would be situated within county, regional and national federations. Towns taken over by authoritarians would still have to deal with these federations.
d. I presume you are talking about either worker coops or "utopian" colonies.The former did in the 19th and early 20th Century due to severe under-capitalization due to working class poverty, governmental and corporate hostility. Today, there are thousands of worker coops and many of them are successful by any standard. Utopian colonies are not the pervue of this article, the vast majority did fail due to poor conception. The intentional communities of today, such as Georgist land trusts, eco villages, cooperative communities, and so forth have done rather well, all considered. I don't favor government ownership of any kind, so I really can't justify "municipal socialism", other than to say that I don't think that it has always been a drain on a community. Most municipal "nationalizations" were carried out not because of any ideology, but by conservative governments for practical reasons – corporate capitalism could not deliver the goods. I added "municipal ownership" because I am a political realist – Mutualists will not be the only tendency influencing events. (to say the least!)
e. Like any other business – people get together, form an association. They disappear when the members decide that they don't wish to continue with the project.
f As a system, very little. Since everyone would have a say in how their community is governed and the nature of the economy and workplace, since everyone would get a share of the wealth and extreme economic differences would disappear, there would be a restoration of community, and thus a decline in the social problems that create conflict with our present society.
I should add that none of the above is utopian. Coops already exist as do forms of direct democracy, decentralization and genuine federalism. All that is required is that such tendencies be generalized. And the countries that are the most egalitarian and democratic are also the ones with the least internal violence/social problems.
Anders writes: It definitely makes sense that a system of local control of the economy and governmental functions is quite different from the statist national socialism the people associate with the word socialism today. I'd be curious to see several things.
Question
1. What prevents workers co-ops?
1a. Most rich people's wealth is primarily tied up in capital goods that give workers jobs and produce goods that ordinary people buy (e.g. cars, flat screen tvs, clothes, books, houses.)
To the degree that capital comes from workers pension funds, don't workers own the means of production?
Doesn't all of this serve the same social function as co-ops?
ANS. 1. Lack of capital. Lack of the sort of privileges that the state granted to capitalists in order to establish the capitalist system.
1a. Ownership without control is meaningless. Think of "owning" a house, but not allowed to live in it our have any say over what happens to it. Workers have no control of their pension funds and those same funds have little direct say over the companies they technically own part of. The thing about coops is that members have a direct say in the direction of the coops, and a share of the profits. In no capitalist corporation do workers have the former, and only a small minority the latter, and even then the vast bulk of the profits go to the top.
Question
2.If all power dissolves to the local level - what is to prevent
a. people from seceding to have single family co-ops and businesses.
b. the local powers that be from oppressing newcomers and the younger generation.
c. the municipalities from being statist and failing just like real states? Similarly wouldn't the local municipalities that are most successful be like little hong kongs with comparatively few rules or municipal control?
d. didn't small scale socialist experiments always fail? similarly municipal socialism was always a drain on the local government. Privatization is important today precisely because the state needs productive private enterprise that it can tax, public enterprise is a drain on state resources.
e. How do co-ops and municipalities and various economic enterprises get created and how do the old ones disappear? In free enterprise firms dissolve and merge and get created from scratch.
f. what kind of violence would be necessary to maintain the system?
ANS. a. Nothing. And in a free society you could not put such restraints. But "all power would not dissolve to the local level." This is not political or economic autarky. As a paleao-libertarian, I am sure you are familiar with federalism and the subsidiary concept. They apply here and in questions b and c. As well.
b. A constitution and direct democracy of the town meeting/neighborhood assembly type combined with worker councils.
c. The municipalities would be situated within county, regional and national federations. Towns taken over by authoritarians would still have to deal with these federations.
d. I presume you are talking about either worker coops or "utopian" colonies.The former did in the 19th and early 20th Century due to severe under-capitalization due to working class poverty, governmental and corporate hostility. Today, there are thousands of worker coops and many of them are successful by any standard. Utopian colonies are not the pervue of this article, the vast majority did fail due to poor conception. The intentional communities of today, such as Georgist land trusts, eco villages, cooperative communities, and so forth have done rather well, all considered. I don't favor government ownership of any kind, so I really can't justify "municipal socialism", other than to say that I don't think that it has always been a drain on a community. Most municipal "nationalizations" were carried out not because of any ideology, but by conservative governments for practical reasons – corporate capitalism could not deliver the goods. I added "municipal ownership" because I am a political realist – Mutualists will not be the only tendency influencing events. (to say the least!)
e. Like any other business – people get together, form an association. They disappear when the members decide that they don't wish to continue with the project.
f As a system, very little. Since everyone would have a say in how their community is governed and the nature of the economy and workplace, since everyone would get a share of the wealth and extreme economic differences would disappear, there would be a restoration of community, and thus a decline in the social problems that create conflict with our present society.
I should add that none of the above is utopian. Coops already exist as do forms of direct democracy, decentralization and genuine federalism. All that is required is that such tendencies be generalized. And the countries that are the most egalitarian and democratic are also the ones with the least internal violence/social problems.
The Myth Of Socialism As Statism
This is from 2 years ago but an interesting set of questions was sent to me - appearing in the next posting based on this article.
What did the original socialists envision to be the owner and controller of the economy? Did they think it ought to be the state? Did they favor nationalization? Or did they want something else entirely? Let’s have a look, going right back to the late 18th Century, through the 19th and into the 20th, and see what important socialists and socialist organizations thought.
*Thomas Spence – farm land and industry owned by join stock companies, all farmers and workers as voting shareholders.
* St. Simon – a system of voluntary corporations
* Ricardian Socialists – worker coops
* Owen – industrial coops and cooperative intentional communities
* Fourier – the Phlanistery – an intentional community
* Cabet - industry owned by the municipality (“commune” in French, hence commune-ism)
* Flora Tristan – worker coops
* Proudhon – worker coops financed by Peoples Bank – a kind of credit union that issued money.
* Greene – mutualist banking system allowing farmers and workers to own means of production.
* Lasalle – worker coops financed by the state – for which he was excoriated by Marx as a “state socialist”
* Marx – a “national system of cooperative production”
* Tucker - mutualist banking system allowing farmers and workers to own means of production.
* Dietzgen – cooperative production
* Knights of Labor – worker coops
* Parsons – workers ownership and control of production
* Vanderveldt – socialist society as a ‘giant cooperative”
* Socialist Labor Party – industry owned and run democratically thru the Socialist Industrial Unions
* Socialist Party USA – until late 1920’s emphasized workers control of production.
* CGT France, 1919 Program - mixed economy with large industry owned by stakeholder coops.
* IWW – democratically run through the industrial unions.
* Socialist Party of Canada, Socialist Party of Great Britain, 1904-05 program – common ownership, democratically run – both parties, to this very day, bitterly opposed to nationalization.
* SDP – Erfurt Program 1892 – Minimum program includes a mixed economy of state, cooperative and municipal industries. While often considered a state socialist document, in reality it does not give predominance to state ownership.
Well? Where’s the statism? All these socialisms have one thing in common, a desire to create an economy where everyone has a share and a say.
Why The Confusion
The state did play a role in the Marxist parties of the Second International. But its role was not to nationalize industry and create a vast bureaucratic state socialist economy. Put simply, the workers parties were to be elected to the national government, and backed by the trade unions, cooperative movement and other popular organizations, would expropriate the big capitalist enterprises. Three things would then happen: 1. The expropriated enterprises handed over to the workers organizations, coops and municipalities. 2, The army and police disbanded and replaced by worker and municipal militias. 3. Political power decentralized to the cantonal and
municipal level and direct democracy and federalism introduced. These three aspects are the famous “withering away of the state” that Marx and Engels talked about.
The first problem with this scenario was that the workers parties never got a majority in parliament. So they began to water-down their program and adopt a lot of the statist reformism of the liberal reformers. Due to the Iron Law of Oligarchy the parties themselves became sclerotic and conservative. Then WW1 intervened, splitting the workers parties into hostile factions. Finally, under the baleful influence of the Fabians, the Stalinists and the “success” of state capitalism in the belligerent nations, the definition of socialism began to change from one of democratic and worker ownership and control to nationalization and statism. The new post-war social democracy began to pretend that state ownership/control was economic democracy since the state was democratic. This, as we see from the list above, was not anything like the economic democracy envisaged by the previous generations of socialists and labor militants.
What did the original socialists envision to be the owner and controller of the economy? Did they think it ought to be the state? Did they favor nationalization? Or did they want something else entirely? Let’s have a look, going right back to the late 18th Century, through the 19th and into the 20th, and see what important socialists and socialist organizations thought.
*Thomas Spence – farm land and industry owned by join stock companies, all farmers and workers as voting shareholders.
* St. Simon – a system of voluntary corporations
* Ricardian Socialists – worker coops
* Owen – industrial coops and cooperative intentional communities
* Fourier – the Phlanistery – an intentional community
* Cabet - industry owned by the municipality (“commune” in French, hence commune-ism)
* Flora Tristan – worker coops
* Proudhon – worker coops financed by Peoples Bank – a kind of credit union that issued money.
* Greene – mutualist banking system allowing farmers and workers to own means of production.
* Lasalle – worker coops financed by the state – for which he was excoriated by Marx as a “state socialist”
* Marx – a “national system of cooperative production”
* Tucker - mutualist banking system allowing farmers and workers to own means of production.
* Dietzgen – cooperative production
* Knights of Labor – worker coops
* Parsons – workers ownership and control of production
* Vanderveldt – socialist society as a ‘giant cooperative”
* Socialist Labor Party – industry owned and run democratically thru the Socialist Industrial Unions
* Socialist Party USA – until late 1920’s emphasized workers control of production.
* CGT France, 1919 Program - mixed economy with large industry owned by stakeholder coops.
* IWW – democratically run through the industrial unions.
* Socialist Party of Canada, Socialist Party of Great Britain, 1904-05 program – common ownership, democratically run – both parties, to this very day, bitterly opposed to nationalization.
* SDP – Erfurt Program 1892 – Minimum program includes a mixed economy of state, cooperative and municipal industries. While often considered a state socialist document, in reality it does not give predominance to state ownership.
Well? Where’s the statism? All these socialisms have one thing in common, a desire to create an economy where everyone has a share and a say.
Why The Confusion
The state did play a role in the Marxist parties of the Second International. But its role was not to nationalize industry and create a vast bureaucratic state socialist economy. Put simply, the workers parties were to be elected to the national government, and backed by the trade unions, cooperative movement and other popular organizations, would expropriate the big capitalist enterprises. Three things would then happen: 1. The expropriated enterprises handed over to the workers organizations, coops and municipalities. 2, The army and police disbanded and replaced by worker and municipal militias. 3. Political power decentralized to the cantonal and
municipal level and direct democracy and federalism introduced. These three aspects are the famous “withering away of the state” that Marx and Engels talked about.
The first problem with this scenario was that the workers parties never got a majority in parliament. So they began to water-down their program and adopt a lot of the statist reformism of the liberal reformers. Due to the Iron Law of Oligarchy the parties themselves became sclerotic and conservative. Then WW1 intervened, splitting the workers parties into hostile factions. Finally, under the baleful influence of the Fabians, the Stalinists and the “success” of state capitalism in the belligerent nations, the definition of socialism began to change from one of democratic and worker ownership and control to nationalization and statism. The new post-war social democracy began to pretend that state ownership/control was economic democracy since the state was democratic. This, as we see from the list above, was not anything like the economic democracy envisaged by the previous generations of socialists and labor militants.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Solidarity Quebec Victory
Solidarite Quebec has won a seat in the Quebec election. Although this is
only one seat this indicates a growing radicalization. The QS is a party of
the social movements and rejects the neo-liberalism of the Parti Quebecois.
It is also more radical than the NDP and is the first new left-wing
See http://www.quebecsolidaire.net/
Friday, December 5, 2008
Conservatives – the Stupid Party?
Yes, there are intelligent people who call themselves conservatives. Most of these hearken back to the humanitarian side of classical liberalism or to old fashioned Tory social consciousness. But they are few in number, cruelly thrust aside by neoconservative or neoliberal barbarism. (See my previous posting.)
It makes some sense that the wealthy and powerful should wish to conserve their power and wealth, even though this is done at our expense. It also makes sense that a host of toadies, such as loyal servants, hangers-on and wannabees, would have similar ideas to their masters. Then there are the various religious hate cults which the wealthy and powerful encourage. These "Christians" can be counted on to hate their neighbor, to be obsessed with the sins of the poor and ignore the atrocities committed by the master class. Combine the rich, the toadies and the nuts and you maybe get 20% of the population. But the cons can get up to 40% support. What about the other 20%?
It is hard for any rational, thoughtful person to be a right-winger. Even a basic knowledge of history shows us that to be "right" is to always be wrong. On every single issue of importance for the last 300 years the forces of progress have been correct and the forces of reaction dead wrong. Consider this list:
Parliament vs. the king. The right chose the king, parliament won. Slavery – the right supported the slave-owners. Universal male suffrage – the right opposed. Democratic and human rights for women, the right opposed. Colonialism – the left opposed, the right supported. Fascism, the left opposed, the right appeased, aided and abetted. Independence for the colonies, the right opposed. The US Civil Rights Movement, the right opposed. The women's movement, the right opposed. Environmentalism, the right opposed. Global warming, the right denies...
While the great mass of conservatives are not well educated and lack cultural sophistication, they in a sense, choose to be stupid. Ignorance is no excuse these days. With the Internet one can find an entire library of information on any subject in history with in seconds. Ignorance today is willful ignorance. To be willfully ignorant is to be stupid, even though you may not be so innately. To be willfully ignorant is to deliberately block out that which you do not want to know about, in other words, to be in a state of denial. But denial is not a conscious choice, like choosing brands of soup, but is rooted in sub-conscious repression.
Does the Conservative Mass Suffer From Stockholm Syndrome?
Dr. Gabor Mate in an interview given recently on CHLY, stated that people who are prejudiced against certain groups, in this case the homeless and drug addicts, are themselves emotionally wounded, but in a state of denial. In denying their own pain they deny it in others. The walking reminders of their own suffering, suffering that they have repressed, and therefore on the surface able to "cope with life", creates the "blame the victim" scenario. We are all familiar with the self-righteous letters to the editor (or even, shamefully enough, editorials) along the lines of "I was abused as as child but I didn't end up __________ " Or "These people could stop doing drugs if they wanted to." "They need to buck up, that's all." "The residential schools closed years ago, they are just an excuse."
I would take this further. One of the key aspects of conservative politics is the authoritarian personality. Statistically, someone with an authoritarian personality is far more likely to be attracted to the right than the left. Authoritarianism does not come out of the air, but is inculcated by authoritarian parenting. Such parenting by its very nature is abusive, as it is based upon repression, fear, and neglect of the child's emotional needs. The children of authoritarian parents are not allowed to express the rage that results from their parenting and thus repress it, giving rise to the state of denial. As adults they will fervently claim they adore their parents and their upbringing was the best imaginable.
Everyone with an authoritarian personality is a wounded individual. For the mass of ordinary people who have been subjected to an authoritarian parenting, the abuse does not end there. Throughout their lives they will be humiliated, bullied, and exploited by a range of authority figures such as teachers, police, bosses, politicians, bureaucrats and so forth. (Keep in mind these abusive officials are themselves deeply wounded individuals.)
What we then get is a form of Stockholm Syndrome. The dominated and humiliated tend to identify with their oppressors, in the same way that the kidnapped victims of terrorists sometimes identify with their captors. While the captive's affirmation of the terrorists is a result of both traumatization and the usually just cause (but not methods) of their captors, the mass conservative form is rooted in childhood trauma and subsequent repression.
The prejudices promoted by the rulers are similar to those that the conservative victim has learned from his parents. This provides the ideological link, in the same way the terrorists claims of fighting for freedom and justice, provide the link for the kidnapped. The childhood trauma and denial allow a shift from "I love my parents" (Who abused me - which is repressed) to "I love my boss" (Who bullies and exploits me – repressed) and "I love my President/Prime Minister" (Who sends my children off to be killed and squanders my tax money – repressed.)
A growing tendency toward humane parenting since WW2 has helped to undermine the dominant nature of the authoritarian personality. The right knows this, and hence the so-called culture war. It would be fine if we had several hundred years, but we don't. We face a triple threat – global economic crisis, global warming and peak oil. How do we neutralize the impact of, if not help cure the victims of conservative Stockholm Syndrome?
It makes some sense that the wealthy and powerful should wish to conserve their power and wealth, even though this is done at our expense. It also makes sense that a host of toadies, such as loyal servants, hangers-on and wannabees, would have similar ideas to their masters. Then there are the various religious hate cults which the wealthy and powerful encourage. These "Christians" can be counted on to hate their neighbor, to be obsessed with the sins of the poor and ignore the atrocities committed by the master class. Combine the rich, the toadies and the nuts and you maybe get 20% of the population. But the cons can get up to 40% support. What about the other 20%?
It is hard for any rational, thoughtful person to be a right-winger. Even a basic knowledge of history shows us that to be "right" is to always be wrong. On every single issue of importance for the last 300 years the forces of progress have been correct and the forces of reaction dead wrong. Consider this list:
Parliament vs. the king. The right chose the king, parliament won. Slavery – the right supported the slave-owners. Universal male suffrage – the right opposed. Democratic and human rights for women, the right opposed. Colonialism – the left opposed, the right supported. Fascism, the left opposed, the right appeased, aided and abetted. Independence for the colonies, the right opposed. The US Civil Rights Movement, the right opposed. The women's movement, the right opposed. Environmentalism, the right opposed. Global warming, the right denies...
While the great mass of conservatives are not well educated and lack cultural sophistication, they in a sense, choose to be stupid. Ignorance is no excuse these days. With the Internet one can find an entire library of information on any subject in history with in seconds. Ignorance today is willful ignorance. To be willfully ignorant is to be stupid, even though you may not be so innately. To be willfully ignorant is to deliberately block out that which you do not want to know about, in other words, to be in a state of denial. But denial is not a conscious choice, like choosing brands of soup, but is rooted in sub-conscious repression.
Does the Conservative Mass Suffer From Stockholm Syndrome?
Dr. Gabor Mate in an interview given recently on CHLY, stated that people who are prejudiced against certain groups, in this case the homeless and drug addicts, are themselves emotionally wounded, but in a state of denial. In denying their own pain they deny it in others. The walking reminders of their own suffering, suffering that they have repressed, and therefore on the surface able to "cope with life", creates the "blame the victim" scenario. We are all familiar with the self-righteous letters to the editor (or even, shamefully enough, editorials) along the lines of "I was abused as as child but I didn't end up __________ " Or "These people could stop doing drugs if they wanted to." "They need to buck up, that's all." "The residential schools closed years ago, they are just an excuse."
I would take this further. One of the key aspects of conservative politics is the authoritarian personality. Statistically, someone with an authoritarian personality is far more likely to be attracted to the right than the left. Authoritarianism does not come out of the air, but is inculcated by authoritarian parenting. Such parenting by its very nature is abusive, as it is based upon repression, fear, and neglect of the child's emotional needs. The children of authoritarian parents are not allowed to express the rage that results from their parenting and thus repress it, giving rise to the state of denial. As adults they will fervently claim they adore their parents and their upbringing was the best imaginable.
Everyone with an authoritarian personality is a wounded individual. For the mass of ordinary people who have been subjected to an authoritarian parenting, the abuse does not end there. Throughout their lives they will be humiliated, bullied, and exploited by a range of authority figures such as teachers, police, bosses, politicians, bureaucrats and so forth. (Keep in mind these abusive officials are themselves deeply wounded individuals.)
What we then get is a form of Stockholm Syndrome. The dominated and humiliated tend to identify with their oppressors, in the same way that the kidnapped victims of terrorists sometimes identify with their captors. While the captive's affirmation of the terrorists is a result of both traumatization and the usually just cause (but not methods) of their captors, the mass conservative form is rooted in childhood trauma and subsequent repression.
The prejudices promoted by the rulers are similar to those that the conservative victim has learned from his parents. This provides the ideological link, in the same way the terrorists claims of fighting for freedom and justice, provide the link for the kidnapped. The childhood trauma and denial allow a shift from "I love my parents" (Who abused me - which is repressed) to "I love my boss" (Who bullies and exploits me – repressed) and "I love my President/Prime Minister" (Who sends my children off to be killed and squanders my tax money – repressed.)
A growing tendency toward humane parenting since WW2 has helped to undermine the dominant nature of the authoritarian personality. The right knows this, and hence the so-called culture war. It would be fine if we had several hundred years, but we don't. We face a triple threat – global economic crisis, global warming and peak oil. How do we neutralize the impact of, if not help cure the victims of conservative Stockholm Syndrome?
Banks Bankrupt Democracy
The billions upon billions of dollars thrown at banks and insurance companies over the last few months has been beyond comprehension. Has there ever been a time when government has been so lavishly generous to assist, if not bailout, the most economically and politically powerful sector of business corporations?
Under the guise of “too big to fail,” our tax dollars have gone to bailout “Wall Street” with few conditions. Meanwhile, our “main streets,” ”side streets,” and “backstreets” suffer and crumble from neglect.
Those who came before us who struggled for political and economic freedom would be ashamed of our lack of outrage, not to mention resistance.
Public fear and anger toward commercial banks have been a historic reality -- for good reason. Those who control money control credit. Those who control the money supply shape governments and non-financial corporations.
Denial of loans by banks to finance wars brought Kings to their knees. Supplying money to industrial corporations enabled mass production and massive profits
The early founders of Ohio and this nation understood the inherent power of financial interests. Thomas Jefferson said, “We must crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
In an 1802 letter to his Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, Jefferson also reflected:
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
Early Ohio governance was based on similar fears. The Ohio Legislature awarded charters, granting the privilege for corporations to exist and operate in the state, to corporations one at a time. The terms were
rigid, especially for banking corporations. In the 1808 law to incorporate the Bank of Marietta, the Ohio General Assembly established stringent defining rules, including:
- The charter was granted for only 10 years
- The maximum interest on loans was set at 6%
- All directors had to reside in the same country as
the bank
- Bank debts could not exceed 3 times the sum
value of capital stock
- Bank directors were personally liable for excessive
debt
The public through the state legislature possessed and used their authority repeatedly to establish defining rules under which banks had to operate.
Business corporations violating the terms of their charters were severely punished by having their charters repealed, effectively dissolving their enterprises with assets distributed to the community and/or among those directly harmed. Banks were frequent violators and targets.
In an act to repeal the charter of the German Bank of Wooster in Wayne County and close its doors, the Ohio legislature stated:
It shall be the duty of the court of common pleas... or any judge of the supreme court...to restrain said bank, its officers, agents and servants or assignees, from exercising any corporate rights, privileges, and franchises whatever, or from paying out, selling, transferring, or in any way disposing of, the lands, tenements, goods, chattels, rights, credits, moneys, or effects whatsoever, of said bank... and force the bank commissioners to close the bank and deliver full possession of the banking house, keys, books, papers, lands, tenements, goods, chattels, moneys, property and effects of said bank, of every kind and description whatever...
The legislature authorized that the bank commissioners,
...shall possess the powers common to sheriffs... and may break open any house, or other building, in which any property, money, books, papers, or effects of said bank may be, having first made demand of entrance into such building; and if the said bank has made any assignment or transfer of its effects, books, property, papers, etc. for the settlement or with a view to its insolence, or for the purpose of avoiding the operations of this law, the same shall be deemed and treated as absolutely void.
Violators of the terms shall be deemed guilty of a crime, and, upon conviction, thereof, shall be imprisoned in the penitentiary and kept at hard labor, not less than one, nor more than 10 years.
Ohioans through their elected state legislature took this controlling bank business seriously. The state legislature in 1816 passed the “bonus law” which extended the charters of existing banks and tax exemption in exchange for a percentage of direct public ownership.
When the federally-chartered Second National Bank called in their debts as a result of the 1819 US economic collapse, Ohio banks were unable to come up with enough gold or silver to meet their $100,000 obligation. Ohioans would suffer as most could not pay off loans at that time. In response, the state legislature passed the “crowbar law” which taxed both state branches of Second National $50,000 each and authorized the state auditor to collect. Ohio auditor, Ralph Osborn, responded by entering one of the branches, showed officials a warrant he had signed, entered the vault, scooped up notes and currency estimated at $100,000 and left.
It was not only the state legislature but the state courts who felt compelled to ensure that citizen sovereignty was protected from rising banking power. The Ohio Supreme Court concluded in four rulings in 1853, all concerning commercial banks, that a corporate charter was not a contract – a direct challenge to an 1819 US Supreme Court decision Dartmouth v Woodward. The Ohio court ruled that bank charters were at root not about individual property rights but public self-governing rights and could be fundamentally controlled.
One of the four cases was Knoup v the Piqua Bank. In its ruling, the Ohio Supreme Court stated:
…[A] banking institution is a public institution, appointed for public purposes – never legitimately created for private purposes… its operations are subject to the control of that public, who may, from time to time, as the public good may require, enlarge, restrain, limit, modify its powers and duties, and, at pleasure, dispense with its benefits.
Our government if founded upon that sublime truth, acknowledged in both our present and old constitutions, as well as in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created free and equal, and that every exemption, immunity or privilege, is an invasion of the primordial estate, and natural rights of other citizens. Whenever, therefore, a franchise is conferred, upon a corporation, or an individual, nothing but the public good is to be considered: the private advantage which may result to the corporation or individual, is but incidental to the chief object and cannot ripen into a right of property.
…[W]hen the legislature authorizes… a bank to make currency, it grants what belongs to the public. The resumption of which privilege by the public affects no property, impairs no contract, infringes no right, but merely restores to its proper place, so much of popular sovereignty as was claimed by a grant of questionable authority, in clear derogation of common right.
Fears and anger toward economic and political power of banks were not just felt by Ohioans, but by citizens across the land. The Populist movement from the 1870’s to 1890’s focused their educational and organizational resistance to railroads and banks – believing that these corporations were impoverishing farmers and workers and destroying democracy. Their political party treatise, the Omaha Platform, stated:
We demand a national currency, safe, sound, and flexible, issued by the general government only, a full legal tender for all debts, public and private, and that without the use of banking corporations, a just, equitable, and efficient means of distribution direct to the people…
The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 only fueled the fear and anger toward banks and banking power in the minds of millions of citizens. The creation of the private grossly misnamed Federal Reserve Bank centralized currency creation and money supply in the hands of private bankers largely beyond the reach of the public. The Act established basic financial rules defined largely by the largest US banks. It created a financial cartel with all the concentration of economic wealth and political power that goes with it. Money could be created literally out of thin air on bank ledgers as loans issued to individuals, businesses, even governments.
Money is no longer backed by gold, silver or anything of real, intrinsic value or worth. In an economic crisis, whether recession or depression, more money is just added to the economy. This is inflationary.
Over the last several decades, financial institutions have rushed to the government to be bailed out. Risky investments in the 1980’s resulted in the collapse of hundreds of Savings and Loans and cost taxpayers $150 billion (some say twice this amount).
The current financial bailout of $700 billion to rescue the largest US banks in simply the latest installment of the privatizing profits and socializing losses scheme. This doesn’t include the $144 billion to bailout insurance giant AIG.
The financial sector has invested in politicians for years to ensure favorable treatment in the event of conditions like this. The financial sector was the single largest investor to George Bush’s 2004 campaign ($33.8 million) according to Open Secrets. The financial sector in 2008 was the second largest sector investor to Barack Obama’s campaign ($33.1 million) and the largest sector investor to John McCain’s campaign ($26.2 million) just to make sure all their political bases were covered.
This is probably enough to make sure no bank or financial corporation CEO is “imprisoned in the penitentiary and kept at hard labor, not less than one, nor more than 10 years” as was the case in the past to bank officials in Ohio. A little hard labor in a penitentiary, however, certainly seems more appropriate for some of these CEOs than a golden parachute.
When the government bailed out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the two critically wounded government-sponsored mortgage behemoths, to the amount of $200 billion; the Treasury Department effectively took them over….again. Originally these financial entities were public.
That may be the direction to take now – not simply public investment but public control. If banks want public dollars, the public should use their financial leverage to gain public control.
A second option is creating rules that reduce bank size. If banks are too big to fail (and have too much political influence), then they’re too big to exist. Break them up. Instead, recent federal rules coupled with funds from the $700 bailout package have resulted in further bank consolidation, including the acquisition of Cleveland-based National City bank by PNC bank of Pittsburgh.
Third, consideration should be given to revoking the charter of banks that have acted recklessly through risky investments, in particular those of buying and repackaging high risk mortgages for resale as quickly as possible. A charter revocation does not automatically mean a corporation has to be abolished and jobs lost – just remade under different terms. This could include holding managers and directors personally liable for reckless actions.
A fourth option is employee control. The top-down, private corporation is not the only business model known to the human species. If we feel greater democracy is required in our political spheres, what’s wrong with it in our economic spheres?
Economic Cooperatives are enterprises where workers and/or users are also owners. Decisions are democratically made by members (defined in different ways depending on the firm). There are still managers but they are beholden not to stockholders (who have power based on a “one dollar or share, one vote” system) but to members (based on a one person, one vote system). It’s an economic system mirroring our political system.
Banking corporations that may for good reason deserve to have their charters revoked would be prime candidates to have new terms defined encouraging a cooperative business model. If you think such a notion is complete pie-in-the-sky, just consider credit unions – financial institutions that are member owned and directed.
Finally, somewhere along the way the so-called and misnamed Federal Reserve Bank must be either significantly changed or abolished. Private banking corporations should not have the power to issue national currency.
Greater public awareness, action and resistance leading to greater sovereignty of our personal and national finances and financial institutions in not only sound economics but also essential to prevent the further bankruptcy of whatever amount of democracy we have left.
Under the guise of “too big to fail,” our tax dollars have gone to bailout “Wall Street” with few conditions. Meanwhile, our “main streets,” ”side streets,” and “backstreets” suffer and crumble from neglect.
Those who came before us who struggled for political and economic freedom would be ashamed of our lack of outrage, not to mention resistance.
Public fear and anger toward commercial banks have been a historic reality -- for good reason. Those who control money control credit. Those who control the money supply shape governments and non-financial corporations.
Denial of loans by banks to finance wars brought Kings to their knees. Supplying money to industrial corporations enabled mass production and massive profits
The early founders of Ohio and this nation understood the inherent power of financial interests. Thomas Jefferson said, “We must crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
In an 1802 letter to his Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, Jefferson also reflected:
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
Early Ohio governance was based on similar fears. The Ohio Legislature awarded charters, granting the privilege for corporations to exist and operate in the state, to corporations one at a time. The terms were
rigid, especially for banking corporations. In the 1808 law to incorporate the Bank of Marietta, the Ohio General Assembly established stringent defining rules, including:
- The charter was granted for only 10 years
- The maximum interest on loans was set at 6%
- All directors had to reside in the same country as
the bank
- Bank debts could not exceed 3 times the sum
value of capital stock
- Bank directors were personally liable for excessive
debt
The public through the state legislature possessed and used their authority repeatedly to establish defining rules under which banks had to operate.
Business corporations violating the terms of their charters were severely punished by having their charters repealed, effectively dissolving their enterprises with assets distributed to the community and/or among those directly harmed. Banks were frequent violators and targets.
In an act to repeal the charter of the German Bank of Wooster in Wayne County and close its doors, the Ohio legislature stated:
It shall be the duty of the court of common pleas... or any judge of the supreme court...to restrain said bank, its officers, agents and servants or assignees, from exercising any corporate rights, privileges, and franchises whatever, or from paying out, selling, transferring, or in any way disposing of, the lands, tenements, goods, chattels, rights, credits, moneys, or effects whatsoever, of said bank... and force the bank commissioners to close the bank and deliver full possession of the banking house, keys, books, papers, lands, tenements, goods, chattels, moneys, property and effects of said bank, of every kind and description whatever...
The legislature authorized that the bank commissioners,
...shall possess the powers common to sheriffs... and may break open any house, or other building, in which any property, money, books, papers, or effects of said bank may be, having first made demand of entrance into such building; and if the said bank has made any assignment or transfer of its effects, books, property, papers, etc. for the settlement or with a view to its insolence, or for the purpose of avoiding the operations of this law, the same shall be deemed and treated as absolutely void.
Violators of the terms shall be deemed guilty of a crime, and, upon conviction, thereof, shall be imprisoned in the penitentiary and kept at hard labor, not less than one, nor more than 10 years.
Ohioans through their elected state legislature took this controlling bank business seriously. The state legislature in 1816 passed the “bonus law” which extended the charters of existing banks and tax exemption in exchange for a percentage of direct public ownership.
When the federally-chartered Second National Bank called in their debts as a result of the 1819 US economic collapse, Ohio banks were unable to come up with enough gold or silver to meet their $100,000 obligation. Ohioans would suffer as most could not pay off loans at that time. In response, the state legislature passed the “crowbar law” which taxed both state branches of Second National $50,000 each and authorized the state auditor to collect. Ohio auditor, Ralph Osborn, responded by entering one of the branches, showed officials a warrant he had signed, entered the vault, scooped up notes and currency estimated at $100,000 and left.
It was not only the state legislature but the state courts who felt compelled to ensure that citizen sovereignty was protected from rising banking power. The Ohio Supreme Court concluded in four rulings in 1853, all concerning commercial banks, that a corporate charter was not a contract – a direct challenge to an 1819 US Supreme Court decision Dartmouth v Woodward. The Ohio court ruled that bank charters were at root not about individual property rights but public self-governing rights and could be fundamentally controlled.
One of the four cases was Knoup v the Piqua Bank. In its ruling, the Ohio Supreme Court stated:
…[A] banking institution is a public institution, appointed for public purposes – never legitimately created for private purposes… its operations are subject to the control of that public, who may, from time to time, as the public good may require, enlarge, restrain, limit, modify its powers and duties, and, at pleasure, dispense with its benefits.
Our government if founded upon that sublime truth, acknowledged in both our present and old constitutions, as well as in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created free and equal, and that every exemption, immunity or privilege, is an invasion of the primordial estate, and natural rights of other citizens. Whenever, therefore, a franchise is conferred, upon a corporation, or an individual, nothing but the public good is to be considered: the private advantage which may result to the corporation or individual, is but incidental to the chief object and cannot ripen into a right of property.
…[W]hen the legislature authorizes… a bank to make currency, it grants what belongs to the public. The resumption of which privilege by the public affects no property, impairs no contract, infringes no right, but merely restores to its proper place, so much of popular sovereignty as was claimed by a grant of questionable authority, in clear derogation of common right.
Fears and anger toward economic and political power of banks were not just felt by Ohioans, but by citizens across the land. The Populist movement from the 1870’s to 1890’s focused their educational and organizational resistance to railroads and banks – believing that these corporations were impoverishing farmers and workers and destroying democracy. Their political party treatise, the Omaha Platform, stated:
We demand a national currency, safe, sound, and flexible, issued by the general government only, a full legal tender for all debts, public and private, and that without the use of banking corporations, a just, equitable, and efficient means of distribution direct to the people…
The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 only fueled the fear and anger toward banks and banking power in the minds of millions of citizens. The creation of the private grossly misnamed Federal Reserve Bank centralized currency creation and money supply in the hands of private bankers largely beyond the reach of the public. The Act established basic financial rules defined largely by the largest US banks. It created a financial cartel with all the concentration of economic wealth and political power that goes with it. Money could be created literally out of thin air on bank ledgers as loans issued to individuals, businesses, even governments.
Money is no longer backed by gold, silver or anything of real, intrinsic value or worth. In an economic crisis, whether recession or depression, more money is just added to the economy. This is inflationary.
Over the last several decades, financial institutions have rushed to the government to be bailed out. Risky investments in the 1980’s resulted in the collapse of hundreds of Savings and Loans and cost taxpayers $150 billion (some say twice this amount).
The current financial bailout of $700 billion to rescue the largest US banks in simply the latest installment of the privatizing profits and socializing losses scheme. This doesn’t include the $144 billion to bailout insurance giant AIG.
The financial sector has invested in politicians for years to ensure favorable treatment in the event of conditions like this. The financial sector was the single largest investor to George Bush’s 2004 campaign ($33.8 million) according to Open Secrets. The financial sector in 2008 was the second largest sector investor to Barack Obama’s campaign ($33.1 million) and the largest sector investor to John McCain’s campaign ($26.2 million) just to make sure all their political bases were covered.
This is probably enough to make sure no bank or financial corporation CEO is “imprisoned in the penitentiary and kept at hard labor, not less than one, nor more than 10 years” as was the case in the past to bank officials in Ohio. A little hard labor in a penitentiary, however, certainly seems more appropriate for some of these CEOs than a golden parachute.
When the government bailed out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the two critically wounded government-sponsored mortgage behemoths, to the amount of $200 billion; the Treasury Department effectively took them over….again. Originally these financial entities were public.
That may be the direction to take now – not simply public investment but public control. If banks want public dollars, the public should use their financial leverage to gain public control.
A second option is creating rules that reduce bank size. If banks are too big to fail (and have too much political influence), then they’re too big to exist. Break them up. Instead, recent federal rules coupled with funds from the $700 bailout package have resulted in further bank consolidation, including the acquisition of Cleveland-based National City bank by PNC bank of Pittsburgh.
Third, consideration should be given to revoking the charter of banks that have acted recklessly through risky investments, in particular those of buying and repackaging high risk mortgages for resale as quickly as possible. A charter revocation does not automatically mean a corporation has to be abolished and jobs lost – just remade under different terms. This could include holding managers and directors personally liable for reckless actions.
A fourth option is employee control. The top-down, private corporation is not the only business model known to the human species. If we feel greater democracy is required in our political spheres, what’s wrong with it in our economic spheres?
Economic Cooperatives are enterprises where workers and/or users are also owners. Decisions are democratically made by members (defined in different ways depending on the firm). There are still managers but they are beholden not to stockholders (who have power based on a “one dollar or share, one vote” system) but to members (based on a one person, one vote system). It’s an economic system mirroring our political system.
Banking corporations that may for good reason deserve to have their charters revoked would be prime candidates to have new terms defined encouraging a cooperative business model. If you think such a notion is complete pie-in-the-sky, just consider credit unions – financial institutions that are member owned and directed.
Finally, somewhere along the way the so-called and misnamed Federal Reserve Bank must be either significantly changed or abolished. Private banking corporations should not have the power to issue national currency.
Greater public awareness, action and resistance leading to greater sovereignty of our personal and national finances and financial institutions in not only sound economics but also essential to prevent the further bankruptcy of whatever amount of democracy we have left.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
The Venezuelan Election
The PSUV, Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela, headed by Hugo Chavez gained 58% of the election, winning 17 of 23 governorships. The spin that the corporate media, and sadly the CBC, is putting on this is to trumpet the gains that the right-wing opposition made. Funny isn't it? Harper gets 38% and is a winner, Chavez 58% and is a loser. But it is going to be harder than ever for US propaganda to deem Hugo a dictator, since this is the second election in a year, the right-wing won the first and made slight gains in the second.
Like it or not, the Chavistas remain firmly in the camp of social democracy, as much as the US State Department and knee pad wearing liberals everywhere, would like to claim otherwise. But for me, this is a problem. Why? US and corporate-backed right-wing parties, with the corporate media at their side, undermine progressive governments, creating situations where they are thrown out of office. The right takes power and attacks the gains the people have made. All these reactionary measures are tarted up as "reforms". This see-saw has to stop, our rights and freedoms must be made permanent. The problem is, social democracy, not only allows this see-saw to occur, but sees the possibility of reactionaries taking power as an essential part of democracy.
No, I don't favour dictatorship. A dictatorship leads only to bureaucracy, paranoia and corruption. In seeking to protect the people from the oligarchs and CIA bum buddies, a dictatorship disempowers the people even more than a healthy social democracy.
What then is the alternative, one that is democratic and prevents the enemy from rolling back social progress? Certainly democratization of the media is necessary, but that would only be a small step in the right direction.
First off the oligarchy, its wannabees, its hired hounds and shills, religious fanatics and all-round haters, make up a fairly small minority of the population. There is another sector of the population that does not identify with the oligarchy, yet is not particularly conscious or educated, and will if suitable media campaigns are constructed support the forces of reaction. This sector, on the ground, that is, in the neighborhoods or the workplace, tends to work in its own interest and not that of reaction. It is only within the field of party politics or ideology that it acts otherwise. At the level of the workplace or neighborhood class trumps ideology and prejudice. (I should add, if this weren't the case, neighborhood associations and trade unions would be almost non-existent) Aside from a tiny fanatical minority, neighbors, no matter what religion or ideology, stand shoulder to shoulder against threats to their community. Trade union members are a cross section of the work force and when a strike is called both socialist and non-socialist workers stand side by side.
The solution then is to increase the amount of democracy in society, to bring it down to the local level and thus allow class interest to pre-dominate over acquired prejudices and ideologies. The basic political units should be neighborhood and work place councils, which are federated together and elect delegates to the higher levels of government. This will tend to reduce oligarchy's support to its own core, making it impossible for it to re-take power legally.
(I know that the PSUV has introduced neighborhood councils, but the government still runs on the old hierarchical system of representative government, favored by social democracy the world over.)
Like it or not, the Chavistas remain firmly in the camp of social democracy, as much as the US State Department and knee pad wearing liberals everywhere, would like to claim otherwise. But for me, this is a problem. Why? US and corporate-backed right-wing parties, with the corporate media at their side, undermine progressive governments, creating situations where they are thrown out of office. The right takes power and attacks the gains the people have made. All these reactionary measures are tarted up as "reforms". This see-saw has to stop, our rights and freedoms must be made permanent. The problem is, social democracy, not only allows this see-saw to occur, but sees the possibility of reactionaries taking power as an essential part of democracy.
No, I don't favour dictatorship. A dictatorship leads only to bureaucracy, paranoia and corruption. In seeking to protect the people from the oligarchs and CIA bum buddies, a dictatorship disempowers the people even more than a healthy social democracy.
What then is the alternative, one that is democratic and prevents the enemy from rolling back social progress? Certainly democratization of the media is necessary, but that would only be a small step in the right direction.
First off the oligarchy, its wannabees, its hired hounds and shills, religious fanatics and all-round haters, make up a fairly small minority of the population. There is another sector of the population that does not identify with the oligarchy, yet is not particularly conscious or educated, and will if suitable media campaigns are constructed support the forces of reaction. This sector, on the ground, that is, in the neighborhoods or the workplace, tends to work in its own interest and not that of reaction. It is only within the field of party politics or ideology that it acts otherwise. At the level of the workplace or neighborhood class trumps ideology and prejudice. (I should add, if this weren't the case, neighborhood associations and trade unions would be almost non-existent) Aside from a tiny fanatical minority, neighbors, no matter what religion or ideology, stand shoulder to shoulder against threats to their community. Trade union members are a cross section of the work force and when a strike is called both socialist and non-socialist workers stand side by side.
The solution then is to increase the amount of democracy in society, to bring it down to the local level and thus allow class interest to pre-dominate over acquired prejudices and ideologies. The basic political units should be neighborhood and work place councils, which are federated together and elect delegates to the higher levels of government. This will tend to reduce oligarchy's support to its own core, making it impossible for it to re-take power legally.
(I know that the PSUV has introduced neighborhood councils, but the government still runs on the old hierarchical system of representative government, favored by social democracy the world over.)
For More information on the election outcome see Jame Petras' article at
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3986
and Patrick Larsen's at http://www.marxist.com/venezuela-first-balance-sheet-elections.htm
Sunday, November 23, 2008
The Global Economic Crisis and the Experts
If it weren't for the suffering engendered by the global economic crisis, I would be laughing myself sick. None of the self-styled pundits and experts touted in the media knew it was coming. Other than a couple of mavericks, ignored by the mass media and especially the political leaders, none of the economists foretold it either. I, on the other hand, did, expecting it to happen any time in the last three or four years. The obvious signal of the coming crisis would be the imminent collapse of the housing bubble. This spring, I saw that the US housing market was really and truly in trouble, would soon collapse, and due to the interlinked nature of contemporary economies, the rot would spread globally. So I dumped my mutual funds, saving a chunk of my retirement money. In the years previous to this, I had paid off my mortgage, and indeed, had chosen a house within walking distance of down town and a yard big enough for a garden, all in preparation for the ''big one.''
I write this, not to pat myself on the back. I am a retired health care worker, not an economist. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the basic nature of the economy, just a little reading and a dollop of common sense. This same common sense suggests that you should read material critical of the system rather than its touts and ideologues, since they have a stake in it. One should no more believe capitalism's shills, than believing advertising for dish soap.
You find that crisis is endemic to the system, a relatively minor turn-down (that still puts millions out of work!) every 5 to 10 years and a whopper once and a while. Speculation booms are usually the last event before a crisis. A fall in profit in "real" industry – industry that makes things – due in part to market saturation, leads to speculative investment in areas such as real estate. As the value of a speculative product is largely hot air, eventually the balloon bursts, bringing the whole structure down with it. The situation was made worse by deregulation of the financial institutions which allowed vast frauds to be perpetuated.
Getting back to the pundits, experts, and economists who "didn't get it." I suspect that on the sly, most of them did, and have their money stashed safely. But their job was to pimp the system, to get as many suckers rounded up as possible and to protect the political gangsters and corporate bandits who set up the financial fraud.
These same pundits, experts, political gangsters and corporate bandits now claim "the turn-down should end by 2010", "Canada won't be effected much", and "de-regulation wasn't the problem."
They expect us to believe them?
I write this, not to pat myself on the back. I am a retired health care worker, not an economist. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the basic nature of the economy, just a little reading and a dollop of common sense. This same common sense suggests that you should read material critical of the system rather than its touts and ideologues, since they have a stake in it. One should no more believe capitalism's shills, than believing advertising for dish soap.
You find that crisis is endemic to the system, a relatively minor turn-down (that still puts millions out of work!) every 5 to 10 years and a whopper once and a while. Speculation booms are usually the last event before a crisis. A fall in profit in "real" industry – industry that makes things – due in part to market saturation, leads to speculative investment in areas such as real estate. As the value of a speculative product is largely hot air, eventually the balloon bursts, bringing the whole structure down with it. The situation was made worse by deregulation of the financial institutions which allowed vast frauds to be perpetuated.
Getting back to the pundits, experts, and economists who "didn't get it." I suspect that on the sly, most of them did, and have their money stashed safely. But their job was to pimp the system, to get as many suckers rounded up as possible and to protect the political gangsters and corporate bandits who set up the financial fraud.
These same pundits, experts, political gangsters and corporate bandits now claim "the turn-down should end by 2010", "Canada won't be effected much", and "de-regulation wasn't the problem."
They expect us to believe them?
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
The Free Lunch Gang or the Coming Demise of Neo-liberalism
This was originally written in December 2003
"There Ain’t No Sec Thing as A Free Lunch," (TANSTAAFL) the old libertarian slogan means everything is interconnected and influences everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. Acting as though it did is dangerous abstract thinking and has severe negative consequences. No group is more guilty of the free lunch mentality than the so-called conservatives who have been at the helm of government in the UK, Canada and the US for more than 20 years.
Monetarist policies were adopted by these governments to defeat the stagflation that had been infecting the economy. With typical abstract thinking, “unions” were deemed as a major part of the problem and they sought to crush them. Conservatives sought a “free lunch” of lower wages and lower expenditure on social welfare. In spite of the criticisms one can make of the trade union bureaucracy, there are no such thing as “unions”, in concrete terms what you have (or had) were tens of millions of wage earners, some of whom were reasonably well paid.
When the payment for the “free lunch” of destroying people’s living standards came due the following occurred:
The millions of unemployed, as whenever you have a great deal of unemployment, created massive social problems. It is surely no coincidence that the 1980’s saw a vast increase in suicide, crime, drug addiction, child poverty and homelessness. All of these social problems cost money, in the short term, and especially the long term.
Since two-thirds of the economy is consumer-based and the overwhelming majority of consumers are ordinary people, the recessions of the ‘80’s and early ‘90’s were long and it took years for “consumer confidence” to return. Furthermore, since many of these wage earners are now permanently earning less, the body of well paid potential consumers is less numerous, making the economy more fragile. In order to consume at an “acceptable” level, people turn to credit, which in turn adds to the potential fragility.
In the US and UK, the traditional manufacturing areas were devastated by “conservative” policies, resulting in a loss of manufacturing industries. Goods once made at home are now imported. For the USA, this has exacerbated the balance of payments problem, making the economy fragile.
Cut-backs at work have resulted in much heavier work loads. Many people work longer hours to keep up living standards. The result is employee burn-out and an enormous rise in stress-related illness. All of this costs money, in terms of time lost at work and insurance payments.
The hypocrisy of the “conservatives” has created cynicism among the populace. Voters were told that they would “get government off your back”, but what happened was more government than ever. People were told there was no money for wages or social services, yet hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on corporate welfare, government megaprojects and their favorite form of corporate welfare, war and “defense” industries. Along with this “lack of money” came an astronomical increase in incomes for CEO’s and government bureaucrats. It can be all summed up thus; when its something we want, there’s no money. When it’s something they want, the coffers are bottomless. “Conservatism” has revealed itself as nothing more than a sleazy racket to steal our money, destroy our communities and rob us of our liberties.
But the real payment for the “free lunch” has yet to be made. Twenty-five years of abuse, lies and out-right robbery have created the potential for immense social unrest. Should some act or event crystallize this latent anger, payment for the “free lunch” will be demanded in full. And the bill is going to be a big one.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Examining State Ballot Issues: Issue 3
‘I’ve received numerous emails over the last two weeks asking my views on a number of statewide issues on the November 4 ballot — Issues 1, 3 and 5. For what it’s worth, below is the second of my humble assessments of these three ballot measures seen through the lens of corporate power/democracy. The questions that are important to me in examining each Issue are:
Will passage of the Issue provide business corporations more or less rights, rules and/or powers to do what they want, when they want, where they want?
Relatedly, will passage of the Issue make it more or less difficult for citizens to govern themselves?
With these two questions in mind, below is my assessment of state Issue 3. A critique of Issue 1 can be found at
http://RealDemocracy.bravejournal.com
Issue 3
No state issue over the last several years has yielded so many questions that Issue 3. I’ve received nearly 20 inquiries. Those who’ve expressed their leanings are almost evenly split.
The Ohio Water Compact Constitutional Amendment was placed on the ballot by the state legislature as a compromise for their support of the Great Lakes Water Compact. The amendment, sponsored by State Senator Tim Grendell (R, Cleveland area) seeks to protect the “reasonable use” rights of landowners to water under or running through their property.
Supporters content the Great Lakes Water Compact will threaten existing property rights of Ohioans by defining ground water as publicly owned — trumping the rights of Ohio property owners to the water on and under their land. The measure would make explicit in the Ohio constitution the property right of a private property owner in the reasonable use of the ground water underlying the property owner’s land. However, property rights described under the proposed amendment are subject to the public welfare.
Opponents assert Issue 3 is not needed. The rights of property owners to water under current Ohio laws already exist and are clear. Some also fear that the amendment would create a section of the Ohio Constitution in which property rights are held above most other sections of Ohio's governing document.
Issue 3 has flown under the radar of many, if not most, Ohioans. This is unfortunate.
At first glance it would seem like a pretty innocuous Issue. Even if it’s overkill, what harm can their be in imbedding “reasonable use” of water in the state constitution?
But there are two troubling aspects to Issue 3 in my humble opinion.
First, the measure stipulates “reasonable use” of water by property owners — which includes corporate owners of property. “Reasonable use” of a corporation, especially if that corporation happens to be, say, a water corporation, may be a wee bit larger than reasonable use by you or me.
Many contend a major loophole of the Great Lakes Water Compact allow corporations to sell bottled Great Lakes water. The little skeptical voice in me says the rush to pass Issue 3 coinciding with passage of the Compact sets the table for a major export of Great Lakes water in bottled form. Maybe this is extreme paranoia.
On the other hand, the vagueness of the exact wording of Issue 3 coupled with the fact that it is a constitutional amendment result in both wide interpretation (in the favor of corporate use and abuse) and difficulty in altering it down the road (constitutions are not easy to change). The exact same conditions spelled out as a law, by contrast, can be amended by simple vote of a majority of the state legislature with support of the governor.
The second troubling notion about Issue 3 goes beyond “reasonable use” -- be it by the public (i.e. state), residents, or corporations. It has to do with the direction Issue 3 is headed.
Water is not simply a “resource” for human consumption. It’s not a commodity to be bought, sold or owned. Nor is it ultimately about “management,” be it good or bad.
The fundamental question is not what rights people have to water as much as does water itself have rights? Before you fall out of your chair, consider that Ecuador recently chose a different path when thinking about water and constitutions.
Citizens in that South American nation in September overwhelmingly approved a new national constitution that is the first in the world to recognize legally enforceable Rights of Nature, or ecosystem rights. The new Ecuadorian constitution proclaims nature the "right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution." The constitution forces the government to take, "precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles." This includes water.
Issue 3 with its increased constitutional protection of private property rights over water is headed in exactly the opposite direction that the prophetic people of Equator have steered.
The question ultimately may not be what rights people have to water as what rights water and all of nature has to its very existence, persistence, and regeneration.
I voted no on Issue 3.
Will passage of the Issue provide business corporations more or less rights, rules and/or powers to do what they want, when they want, where they want?
Relatedly, will passage of the Issue make it more or less difficult for citizens to govern themselves?
With these two questions in mind, below is my assessment of state Issue 3. A critique of Issue 1 can be found at
http://RealDemocracy.bravejournal.com
Issue 3
No state issue over the last several years has yielded so many questions that Issue 3. I’ve received nearly 20 inquiries. Those who’ve expressed their leanings are almost evenly split.
The Ohio Water Compact Constitutional Amendment was placed on the ballot by the state legislature as a compromise for their support of the Great Lakes Water Compact. The amendment, sponsored by State Senator Tim Grendell (R, Cleveland area) seeks to protect the “reasonable use” rights of landowners to water under or running through their property.
Supporters content the Great Lakes Water Compact will threaten existing property rights of Ohioans by defining ground water as publicly owned — trumping the rights of Ohio property owners to the water on and under their land. The measure would make explicit in the Ohio constitution the property right of a private property owner in the reasonable use of the ground water underlying the property owner’s land. However, property rights described under the proposed amendment are subject to the public welfare.
Opponents assert Issue 3 is not needed. The rights of property owners to water under current Ohio laws already exist and are clear. Some also fear that the amendment would create a section of the Ohio Constitution in which property rights are held above most other sections of Ohio's governing document.
Issue 3 has flown under the radar of many, if not most, Ohioans. This is unfortunate.
At first glance it would seem like a pretty innocuous Issue. Even if it’s overkill, what harm can their be in imbedding “reasonable use” of water in the state constitution?
But there are two troubling aspects to Issue 3 in my humble opinion.
First, the measure stipulates “reasonable use” of water by property owners — which includes corporate owners of property. “Reasonable use” of a corporation, especially if that corporation happens to be, say, a water corporation, may be a wee bit larger than reasonable use by you or me.
Many contend a major loophole of the Great Lakes Water Compact allow corporations to sell bottled Great Lakes water. The little skeptical voice in me says the rush to pass Issue 3 coinciding with passage of the Compact sets the table for a major export of Great Lakes water in bottled form. Maybe this is extreme paranoia.
On the other hand, the vagueness of the exact wording of Issue 3 coupled with the fact that it is a constitutional amendment result in both wide interpretation (in the favor of corporate use and abuse) and difficulty in altering it down the road (constitutions are not easy to change). The exact same conditions spelled out as a law, by contrast, can be amended by simple vote of a majority of the state legislature with support of the governor.
The second troubling notion about Issue 3 goes beyond “reasonable use” -- be it by the public (i.e. state), residents, or corporations. It has to do with the direction Issue 3 is headed.
Water is not simply a “resource” for human consumption. It’s not a commodity to be bought, sold or owned. Nor is it ultimately about “management,” be it good or bad.
The fundamental question is not what rights people have to water as much as does water itself have rights? Before you fall out of your chair, consider that Ecuador recently chose a different path when thinking about water and constitutions.
Citizens in that South American nation in September overwhelmingly approved a new national constitution that is the first in the world to recognize legally enforceable Rights of Nature, or ecosystem rights. The new Ecuadorian constitution proclaims nature the "right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution." The constitution forces the government to take, "precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles." This includes water.
Issue 3 with its increased constitutional protection of private property rights over water is headed in exactly the opposite direction that the prophetic people of Equator have steered.
The question ultimately may not be what rights people have to water as what rights water and all of nature has to its very existence, persistence, and regeneration.
I voted no on Issue 3.
The Day After Halloween
Far fewer kids seem out on Halloween trick or treating these past few years. One more example of the decline of community. Halloween has been replaced by phony parties in the malls. Commercialism reigns triumphant once again. One aspect of this decline has been the fear generated by the media about what might happen to those kiddies roaming around in the dark in your neighborhood. Add to this the urban legends that always appear about this time – poisoned candy, needles in apples or oranges. The latter was current when I was a kid 50 years ago!
Halloween was part of communal culture. You went around in home made costume to your neighbors and got gifts from them. Back in my day and beyond, Halloween also served another function – a kind of safety valve in the community. Living in a very authoritarian and repressive society, the young were given this one day of the year to cause mischief and torment their tormentors. While aimed at adult authority in general, the holiday also served as pay back time to individual members of the community who were unpleasant to children, such as the nasty teacher or the hateful old man down the street. They would get their windows soaped or the air let out of their tires. And the kids would snicker about this for months after.
Today, for the most part, the brute authoritarianism is gone. Children now face a more sublimated kind of tyranny. Every aspect of their lives is monitored and organized. It is of course, like the floggings and denigrating tirades of the past, "done for their own good." For "out there" lurks an army of kidnappers, child-buggerers, and gang members just waiting to pounce on Little Jason and Amanda.
Somehow I doubt it is all that much worse than when I was a kid. The difference is the lack of community. With real towns and real neighborhoods, we kids knew who all the "pervs" were and avoided them. Today "the public"is too aware, but then, overt knowledge of such things as pedophilia and incest was suppressed. We kids understood and expressed our awareness through warnings about not bending over to get the soap in a public shower and jokes about scoutmasters, priests and choirboys. In real communities, as the late Jane Jacobs pointed out, there are thousands of eyes seeing what goes on. The sick can't get away with much.
The anonymity and alienation of suburban life has given a much freer rein to the emotionally sick amongst us. This creates fear, and fear in turn, further destroys community. The suburb is a vicious circle that eternally grinds down everything that makes us human.The only way Halloween and all other forms of communal, non-alienated activity will revive is through rejecting the American-style suburb and a return to living in real neighborhoods.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Examining State Ballot Issues: Issue 1
‘’I’ve received numerous emails over the last two weeks asking my views on a number of statewide issues on the November 4 ballot — Issues 1, 3 and 5. For what it’s worth, below is the first of my humble assessments of these three ballot measures seen through the lens of corporate power/democracy. The questions that are important to me in examining each Issue are:
Will passage of the Issue provide business corporations more or less rights, rules and/or powers to do what they want, when they want, where they want?
Relatedly, will passage of the Issue make it more or less difficult for citizens to govern themselves?
With these two questions in mind, below is my assessment of state Issue 1. Similar assessments on Issues 3 and 5 will be shared over the next few days.
------
State Issue 1
The main provision of Issue 1 calls for an earlier filing deadline for citizen-initiated statewide ballot issues from 90 days before an election to 125 days. It also establishes deadlines for county board of elections to validate citizen petitions. Its last provision calls for streamlining citizen-initiative petition legal challenges by bypassing lower courts in favor of the Ohio Supreme Court.
Citizens concerned about their power to directly create laws (i.e. called a “citizen initiative”) should be extremely skeptical whenever any proposals are offered to amend the citizen initiative process.
It was the 1912 Ohio Constitutional Convention, which created 3 direct democratic tools — the initiative, referendum and recall. These tools permitted citizens to create and undue laws considered to be unjust, as well as to replace public officials between elections acting against the interests of the people. These democratic tools were added to the state constitution as a way to counter the corporate influence to mold, shape, and create public policies...and politicians. These tools are still needed today more than ever.
Anyone who has ever been involved in any citizen initiative campaign knows the extreme difficulty in collecting valid signatures. The more grassroots the initiative, the fewer the resources and petition circulators. Every single day is needed to collect names with the goal of gathering at least 50% more than the number of valid signatures required to account for those that will be tossed for any number of reasons.
Under current state law, completed citizen initiative petitions need to be submitted 90 days before the November election to qualify for that election. For those keeping track, that means early August. Issue one would move back the deadline 35 days — to the middle of June.
This stifles democracy.
It’s much more difficult to collect signatures in the winter and spring than during the summer here in Ohio. A mid-June deadline for signature submissions would effectively reduce the ability to organize a successful petition drive.
One might argue that petition circulators should just move indoors. Unfortunately, inside spaces are increasingly corporate spaces. One is generally not permitted to circulate petitions in workplaces or in corporate establishments — including malls. The first amendment right to petition doesn’t exist on corporate property. The corporate enclosure of what formerly had been public town squares significantly reduces the ability to speak, organize...and petition.
Issue 1 is being promoted as a means to increase efficiency and effectiveness of boards of elections to count and verify citizen petitions. Such is the perspective from the top looking down.
For citizens dedicated to making creating rules and laws that bypass legislative and executive bodies (people at the bottom looking up), making it more difficult to organize a successful citizen initiative petition is a step in the wrong direction.
Will passage of the Issue provide business corporations more or less rights, rules and/or powers to do what they want, when they want, where they want?
Relatedly, will passage of the Issue make it more or less difficult for citizens to govern themselves?
With these two questions in mind, below is my assessment of state Issue 1. Similar assessments on Issues 3 and 5 will be shared over the next few days.
------
State Issue 1
The main provision of Issue 1 calls for an earlier filing deadline for citizen-initiated statewide ballot issues from 90 days before an election to 125 days. It also establishes deadlines for county board of elections to validate citizen petitions. Its last provision calls for streamlining citizen-initiative petition legal challenges by bypassing lower courts in favor of the Ohio Supreme Court.
Citizens concerned about their power to directly create laws (i.e. called a “citizen initiative”) should be extremely skeptical whenever any proposals are offered to amend the citizen initiative process.
It was the 1912 Ohio Constitutional Convention, which created 3 direct democratic tools — the initiative, referendum and recall. These tools permitted citizens to create and undue laws considered to be unjust, as well as to replace public officials between elections acting against the interests of the people. These democratic tools were added to the state constitution as a way to counter the corporate influence to mold, shape, and create public policies...and politicians. These tools are still needed today more than ever.
Anyone who has ever been involved in any citizen initiative campaign knows the extreme difficulty in collecting valid signatures. The more grassroots the initiative, the fewer the resources and petition circulators. Every single day is needed to collect names with the goal of gathering at least 50% more than the number of valid signatures required to account for those that will be tossed for any number of reasons.
Under current state law, completed citizen initiative petitions need to be submitted 90 days before the November election to qualify for that election. For those keeping track, that means early August. Issue one would move back the deadline 35 days — to the middle of June.
This stifles democracy.
It’s much more difficult to collect signatures in the winter and spring than during the summer here in Ohio. A mid-June deadline for signature submissions would effectively reduce the ability to organize a successful petition drive.
One might argue that petition circulators should just move indoors. Unfortunately, inside spaces are increasingly corporate spaces. One is generally not permitted to circulate petitions in workplaces or in corporate establishments — including malls. The first amendment right to petition doesn’t exist on corporate property. The corporate enclosure of what formerly had been public town squares significantly reduces the ability to speak, organize...and petition.
Issue 1 is being promoted as a means to increase efficiency and effectiveness of boards of elections to count and verify citizen petitions. Such is the perspective from the top looking down.
For citizens dedicated to making creating rules and laws that bypass legislative and executive bodies (people at the bottom looking up), making it more difficult to organize a successful citizen initiative petition is a step in the wrong direction.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
An Interesting Response to the Economic Crisis
A Catalan militant, Enric Duran, has defrauded 39 Spanish banks of 500,000 Euros, using some of same techniques as the Wall Street scammers. He used the money to fund social movements and produce 200,000 copies of a free newspaper called CRISIS, describing the fraud as well as the nature of the money system and alternatives to capitalism. For the English on-line version see: http://polaris.moviments.net:8000/crisi
Thanks to Peter Gelderloos for this information. See http://www.counterpunch.org/gelderloos10162008.html
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
It Pays To Rebel!
From the time we are old enough to understand language more complex than Mummy or Daddy, we are told that rebellion is a sure road to ruin. In most families if you express a desire to do something "out of the ordinary", such as become a muscian, artist, or writer out pours a litany. "You won't make any money." "You will be wretched and poor." "That's not for our kind of people." Then all the stories about the poverty, drug addiction and alcoholism of noted artists. Later on in high school or university, if you take an interest in peace, and the environment or join a socialist or anarchist group, then comes, "You will never get a good job with ideas like that." "Be practical." "You'll end up behind the eight ball." "Idealism is fine, but it won't pay the rent." "Wait till you are 40, you'll think different." It seems that unless you do what you are told, keep your thoughts to yourself and join the sheep, your future is toast. But, in reality, how good is the pay back from conforming?
Examine even briefly the history of the past hundred years and the results of doing what you are told don't seem so great. One result is premature death. Millions of men died in obeying the bosses call for victims in their wars. Many millions more were seriously injured or came back emotional wrecks. Then there was that little episode in Germany with the funny mustache guy. Genocide and a war that killed maybe 50 million people. All the work of obedient "good Germans." Roll ahead a few years. The men of the 1950's and 60's who worked obcessively all their lives because that was what they were supposed to do died in droves before or shortly after retirement.
The good little 1950's-60's housewives ended up alone in old age with no interests other than TV and bingo to comfort them. The people today who obey the media propaganda and simply must have three cars, a mini mansion and every new gadget that comes along, find themselves worked to death and in debt peonage. Then cigarettes, diet sodas, junk food, all consumed by the lemming masses whose pay back is obesity and cancer. And so on...
The vast majority of rebels who headed for the hills or took off to Mexico rather than get themselves killed in the trenches, survived. The socialists, anarchists and trade unionists who remained true to their convictions all their lives – and many did – ended up in old age admired and respected by a younger generation of militants. Addicted or alcoholic artists certainly existed, but they were always in the minority. Their misery was the product of their times, of the highly authoritarian and repressive system they lived under.
I do not personally know a single artist, musician, writer or social activist who is miserable, or an addict or drunkard. The vast majority of fellow rebels I have known and grown into middle age with, have been successful and managed to live lives, that while not up to the 3 car, McMansion "standard", are by no means impoverished. They have become respected in their fields, such as art, journalism, crafts, music, poetry, film, photography, teaching, medicine, research, politics or trade union work.
The real route to success is doing what you really want to do. To excel, one must push at the boundaries, to go beyond what was done before. Pushing the boundaries means refusing to do what you are told - in other words rebelling.
But it makes sense that the rebels do well and the sheep suffer. That is the whole point of the authoritarian structure that demands obedience and conformity. The rulers want the people to obey so they can be easily exploited. If everyone rebelled and thought for themselves the bosses would no longer be able to control the population. The "good worker" is supposed to be fleeced. Obedience is a suckers game.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Bosses Beware!
I was in for a surprise when I read the comments in Yahoo about the Indian worker who killed the CEO who fired him. The majority, while deploring the killing, understood that corporate greed caused the situation. What's more quite a few cheered and thought it a good idea.
Only a handful of commentators came down on the bosses side, often intersperced with racist remarks – the usual suspects, in other words.
This tells me there is a lot of pent-up anger at the bullies and greed-creeps these days. SEE:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/080923/world/india_italy_labour_crime_murder
No Blank Check Bailout of Wall St. Financial Corporations
Call, write, vigil, demonstrate this week
- Feel free to use AFSC national toll-free # to contact your congressperson and Senators Sherrod Brown and George Voinovich: 1-800-473-6711.
Call today!
- TrueMajority will have a new website up later today permitting citizens to self-organize local actions at congressional offices, Federal Reserve banks, or other key locations. Organize an event in your own community or join one already planned.
Congress as soon as Friday will likely vote on a massive taxpayer bailout of Wall Street. The Bush administration wants “clean” legislation with few if any strings or conditions — just a $700 BILLION blank check...at least...and a massive transfer of power and authority from the legislative to executive branch. This is a historic moment to ACT!
SAY NO TO A BLANK CHECK CORPORATE BAILOUT!
Groups across the country are demanding that any package to help Wall Street must:
Help Main Street
Help those who have had their homes foreclosed
Provide a stimulus package to taxpayers who will be paying off this massive additional debt for decades
Ensure that bankers and banking institutions are held accountable for their past financial decisions
Stipulate that no CEO of Wall Street corporations to be bailed out receives “Golden Parachutes,” pay raises or bonuses. CEO pay should be capped, if not reduced.
Guarantee that power and authority not be transferred from the legislative to executive branch. Given Wall Street’s financial meltdown and lack of recent Congressional oversight, needed now is greater public control of financial affairs.
Establish that any firm to be bailed out can’t lobby politicians or make political campaign contributions/investments
Include that future profits gained from bailed out companies be returned to the government.
Audit the Federal Reserve Bank, a private corporation, which hasn’t had its books examined.
Below is an excellent letter written by Marian Lupo from Columbus.
NOTE: For those in the Akron area:
Vigil: No Blank Check Corporate Bailout of Wall Street
Thursday, September 25, Noon
1655 W. Market St., Akron
(UFCW building which contains office of US Rep. Betty Sutton)
--------------
To: Representative Kucinich, Member, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, By Fax: 202-225-5745; 216-228-6465
Please exercise your power and influence to address the below.
To: Senators Dodd, Schumer, Shelby and Representatives Frank and Boehner.
By fax: 202-224-1083; 202-228-3027; 202-224-3416; 202-225-0182; 202-225-0704
Date: Sunday, September 21, 2008
I am writing today to you as a United States citizen regarding a matter of urgent concern. Although I do not reside in your district, I believe my letter captures the sentiments of millions of Americans who cannot write to you.
I strongly oppose bailing out the speculative, greedy, and irresponsible investment banking firms. My neighbors have lost their homes, and no one bailed them out.
I want you to audit the Federal Reserve Bank, which is a private corporation, and which has never produced their financials for audit by Congress.
I also want you to revoke the legislation, passed under President Wilson, which created the Federal Reserve Bank. Congress needs to resume their Constitutional responsibilities for the U.S. currency.
Further, I want Paulson investigated – as well as the investment bankers who, in my opinion, are at a minimum criminally negligent.
My neighborhood averages 3 to 7 foreclosures a week. These are working people. Homes are vacant and not cared for now, because the banks are negligent. The banks do not even bother to mow the lawns, and they are bankrupting the city budget for code enforcement. My whole neighborhood has declined, and now children are getting into trouble because these houses present attractive nuisances.
It is a disgrace what the banks have done to the U.S. people. There is a sign down the street from me that advertises a very nice home for $13,500.
As a taxpayer, I am willing to pay to help everyone stay in their home – but not to salvage institutions that have destroyed my neighborhood and are destroying my country, or in any way whatsoever to compensate the people whose greed led to this debacle: they should be in prison.
Thank You,
Marian Lupo
- Feel free to use AFSC national toll-free # to contact your congressperson and Senators Sherrod Brown and George Voinovich: 1-800-473-6711.
Call today!
- TrueMajority will have a new website up later today permitting citizens to self-organize local actions at congressional offices, Federal Reserve banks, or other key locations. Organize an event in your own community or join one already planned.
Congress as soon as Friday will likely vote on a massive taxpayer bailout of Wall Street. The Bush administration wants “clean” legislation with few if any strings or conditions — just a $700 BILLION blank check...at least...and a massive transfer of power and authority from the legislative to executive branch. This is a historic moment to ACT!
SAY NO TO A BLANK CHECK CORPORATE BAILOUT!
Groups across the country are demanding that any package to help Wall Street must:
Help Main Street
Help those who have had their homes foreclosed
Provide a stimulus package to taxpayers who will be paying off this massive additional debt for decades
Ensure that bankers and banking institutions are held accountable for their past financial decisions
Stipulate that no CEO of Wall Street corporations to be bailed out receives “Golden Parachutes,” pay raises or bonuses. CEO pay should be capped, if not reduced.
Guarantee that power and authority not be transferred from the legislative to executive branch. Given Wall Street’s financial meltdown and lack of recent Congressional oversight, needed now is greater public control of financial affairs.
Establish that any firm to be bailed out can’t lobby politicians or make political campaign contributions/investments
Include that future profits gained from bailed out companies be returned to the government.
Audit the Federal Reserve Bank, a private corporation, which hasn’t had its books examined.
Below is an excellent letter written by Marian Lupo from Columbus.
NOTE: For those in the Akron area:
Vigil: No Blank Check Corporate Bailout of Wall Street
Thursday, September 25, Noon
1655 W. Market St., Akron
(UFCW building which contains office of US Rep. Betty Sutton)
--------------
To: Representative Kucinich, Member, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, By Fax: 202-225-5745; 216-228-6465
Please exercise your power and influence to address the below.
To: Senators Dodd, Schumer, Shelby and Representatives Frank and Boehner.
By fax: 202-224-1083; 202-228-3027; 202-224-3416; 202-225-0182; 202-225-0704
Date: Sunday, September 21, 2008
I am writing today to you as a United States citizen regarding a matter of urgent concern. Although I do not reside in your district, I believe my letter captures the sentiments of millions of Americans who cannot write to you.
I strongly oppose bailing out the speculative, greedy, and irresponsible investment banking firms. My neighbors have lost their homes, and no one bailed them out.
I want you to audit the Federal Reserve Bank, which is a private corporation, and which has never produced their financials for audit by Congress.
I also want you to revoke the legislation, passed under President Wilson, which created the Federal Reserve Bank. Congress needs to resume their Constitutional responsibilities for the U.S. currency.
Further, I want Paulson investigated – as well as the investment bankers who, in my opinion, are at a minimum criminally negligent.
My neighborhood averages 3 to 7 foreclosures a week. These are working people. Homes are vacant and not cared for now, because the banks are negligent. The banks do not even bother to mow the lawns, and they are bankrupting the city budget for code enforcement. My whole neighborhood has declined, and now children are getting into trouble because these houses present attractive nuisances.
It is a disgrace what the banks have done to the U.S. people. There is a sign down the street from me that advertises a very nice home for $13,500.
As a taxpayer, I am willing to pay to help everyone stay in their home – but not to salvage institutions that have destroyed my neighborhood and are destroying my country, or in any way whatsoever to compensate the people whose greed led to this debacle: they should be in prison.
Thank You,
Marian Lupo
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Against The Oligarchy In Bolivia - For Popular Power
SOLIDARITY WITH THE BOLIVIAN PEOPLE! ---- THE FUTURE OF LATIN AMERICA IS BEING PLAYED OUT IN BOLIVIA! ---- The current events in Bolivia leave the organized anarchists of the Federação Anarquista Gaúcha (Brazil) with a sense of alarm. The problem is not the defence of a government with a nationalist profile and indigenous roots. It is the unconditional defence of the popular struggle of Latin American people. We have had and continue to keep organic contacts with Bolivian comrades since 2003, that is before the people's victory in the "Gas War", before the fall of Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada, before the fall of the president who succeeded him, Carlos Mesa, and long before the MAS' election victory.
Even then it was clear to the FAG that the political game in Bolivia was a tough one, without legal or institutional limits. The struggle to build Popular Power ("poder popular") has various aspects and at the moment the Evo Morales and Álvaro Garcia Linera government expresses the wishes of the people to win back definitive sovereignty over their ancestral land. Evo does not do just what he wants, and neither does he govern with the bankers, like the ex-factory worker Lula. Today, the country that defeated neo-liberalism dozens of times is facing
its greatest challenge. The various ancestral peoples and nationalities of the old Viceroyalty of Upper Peru, the traditional Quechua, Aymara, Guaraní, Tupi societies and dozens of other ethnic groups, the living descendants in the melting pot of the cities, the heroic resistance of the miners, the cocaleros, of El Alto, of Cochabamba, the corner-to-corner street fighting in La Paz, all this has defeated the enemy several times. These people have made the organization of the social fabric, the practice of communal justice and grassroots alliances into the bulwark of the defeat of a system of rotten political parties, corrupted by the privatizations of the 1980s; with stones and dynamite they defeated the Army which operated under the control of the trafficker General Hugo Banzer; by promoting cooperative practices, they reject the poisonous presence of the oil transnationals, including the hateful sub-imperialist presence of Brazil.
The struggle is now an intestine one, against the oligarchy of the so-called Half Moon which dominates the departments of Tarija, Beni, Pando and Chuquisaca and is controlled by the large landowners, soya farmers and drug traffickers in Santa Cruz, against the interests of the people. The Morales government is one of the targets, but these people are also aiming at destroying popular organization and the indigenous alternatives, the traditional, community forms of controlling social life, the re-appropriation by the people of the ownership of the subsoil and its natural resources. This struggle for autonomy is nothing more than the political will of an oligarchy allied with the transnationals, an attempt at a coup sponsored by the Department of State, the CIA and the DEA and financed with money stolen from the Bolivian people.
The multitude of men and women who struggle for "autonomy" are mostly the employees, party members and supporters of these oligarchies. The situation of civil, anti-governmental disobedience in Bolivia at the moment is immense. On the left, the social protests are getting stronger and stronger and their demands are forcing Morales to do what a majority of the organized people propose. But on the fight, the oligarchy which also emerged victorious from the revocative referendum of the national and regional governments is devoting every effort to the chaos, the lockout and the economic blockade. They do not want to pay taxes to the government in La Paz, they want to keep for themselves all the wealth of the country, just as the banks suck our GDP and the squalid bureaucracy sucked the lifeblood of the Venezuelan PDVSA before the people gained victory in April 2002. Comrades, today in Bolivia there is a struggle against the oligarchy; it is a struggle which is part of the Latin American peoples' war against the chains of imperialism, masked under the macabre guise of globalization.
We must be clear about something, though. It must be stated that the FAG as an
organization does not support the defence of any Statist or bourgeois government. Our support is as always for the process being carried on by the peoples who wish to defend their Bolivarian, Artigist heritage; it is for the political will of the social institutions and grassroots bodies who arduously combat the growing bureaucracy in Venezuela and the vacillation that is typical of charismatic leaders, but without the organicism and due obedience to the people, as is proper for true socialist militants. Lastly, our struggle is alongside the Ecuadorian CONAIE (Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de Ecuador), the Venezuelan ANMCLA (Associación Nacional Medios Comunitarios, Libres y Alternatives), the heroic COR (Central Obrero Regional) in El Alto and the entire popular movement in Bolivia.
The political impasse of the Morales government will need to be resolved by going beyond the legal possibilities. There is a popular left which lies further to the left of the recalcitrant vice-president Linera and the usual bureaucrats, who oscillate between the Latin American universities and governments with a veneer of nationalism. To the left of the MAS are the ex-guerrillas of the Movimiento Pachakuti, there is the El Alto Coordinación Regional, there are the social institutions such as Community Justice, there is an enormous organized social fabric that has no intention of consigning the country and the ancestral lands to the heirs of Cortés and Pizarro...
Another Battle of Ayacucho, another 1809 Uprising
In 1809, the courage of the young Bolivians refused to recognize the demands of Charlotte Joaquina of Spain to govern the Viceroyalties. This decision marked the direction of the liberation of America in the heart of the Continent. The realistic response soon arrived when the governor of Potosí, loyal to the colonialists, occupied the rebel towns militarily. In 1824 in the Battle of Ayacucho, the reaction was defeated both politically and militarily. But political independence did not guarantee the liberation of the peoples or bring Popular Power, Self-Management and Political Federalism. Almost 190 years later, the same struggle is with us again. The right is fighting against the advancement of popular power, the transformation of the National State into a public space under the people's direct control, the dismantlement of the bourgeois apparatus of social regulation. Today it is Bolivia's turn; in 2002 it was Venezuela's; three times over the past 11 years the people of Ecuador have rid themselves of a president; in December 2001 the Argentines defeated neo-liberalism and its plan to dismantle social life. Today the war of the Latin American peoples is marching towards their liberation in the Battle of the Bolivian Half Moon.
Defeat the oligarchy!
Defeat the CIA, the DEA and the US Department of State!
May the Bolivian people go beyond the limits of national government and advance
along the road to Popular Power!
Because neo-liberalism and imperialism are the same filth!
Because Popular Power in Latin America will be built with struggle!
All solidarity to the Bolivian people!
The future of our brother country will be Quechua, Aymara, Guaraní, Tupi and
popular or there will be no future!
Latin America will never surrender!
Popular Power, Social Self-Management and Political Federalism!
Porto Alegre, 13 September 2008
Federação Anarquista Gaúcha (FAG) – Fórum do Anarquismo Organizado (FAO) – in strategic alliance with the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation (FAU)
Translation by FdCA-International Relations Office
http://www.vermelhoenegro.org/fag
Even then it was clear to the FAG that the political game in Bolivia was a tough one, without legal or institutional limits. The struggle to build Popular Power ("poder popular") has various aspects and at the moment the Evo Morales and Álvaro Garcia Linera government expresses the wishes of the people to win back definitive sovereignty over their ancestral land. Evo does not do just what he wants, and neither does he govern with the bankers, like the ex-factory worker Lula. Today, the country that defeated neo-liberalism dozens of times is facing
its greatest challenge. The various ancestral peoples and nationalities of the old Viceroyalty of Upper Peru, the traditional Quechua, Aymara, Guaraní, Tupi societies and dozens of other ethnic groups, the living descendants in the melting pot of the cities, the heroic resistance of the miners, the cocaleros, of El Alto, of Cochabamba, the corner-to-corner street fighting in La Paz, all this has defeated the enemy several times. These people have made the organization of the social fabric, the practice of communal justice and grassroots alliances into the bulwark of the defeat of a system of rotten political parties, corrupted by the privatizations of the 1980s; with stones and dynamite they defeated the Army which operated under the control of the trafficker General Hugo Banzer; by promoting cooperative practices, they reject the poisonous presence of the oil transnationals, including the hateful sub-imperialist presence of Brazil.
The struggle is now an intestine one, against the oligarchy of the so-called Half Moon which dominates the departments of Tarija, Beni, Pando and Chuquisaca and is controlled by the large landowners, soya farmers and drug traffickers in Santa Cruz, against the interests of the people. The Morales government is one of the targets, but these people are also aiming at destroying popular organization and the indigenous alternatives, the traditional, community forms of controlling social life, the re-appropriation by the people of the ownership of the subsoil and its natural resources. This struggle for autonomy is nothing more than the political will of an oligarchy allied with the transnationals, an attempt at a coup sponsored by the Department of State, the CIA and the DEA and financed with money stolen from the Bolivian people.
The multitude of men and women who struggle for "autonomy" are mostly the employees, party members and supporters of these oligarchies. The situation of civil, anti-governmental disobedience in Bolivia at the moment is immense. On the left, the social protests are getting stronger and stronger and their demands are forcing Morales to do what a majority of the organized people propose. But on the fight, the oligarchy which also emerged victorious from the revocative referendum of the national and regional governments is devoting every effort to the chaos, the lockout and the economic blockade. They do not want to pay taxes to the government in La Paz, they want to keep for themselves all the wealth of the country, just as the banks suck our GDP and the squalid bureaucracy sucked the lifeblood of the Venezuelan PDVSA before the people gained victory in April 2002. Comrades, today in Bolivia there is a struggle against the oligarchy; it is a struggle which is part of the Latin American peoples' war against the chains of imperialism, masked under the macabre guise of globalization.
We must be clear about something, though. It must be stated that the FAG as an
organization does not support the defence of any Statist or bourgeois government. Our support is as always for the process being carried on by the peoples who wish to defend their Bolivarian, Artigist heritage; it is for the political will of the social institutions and grassroots bodies who arduously combat the growing bureaucracy in Venezuela and the vacillation that is typical of charismatic leaders, but without the organicism and due obedience to the people, as is proper for true socialist militants. Lastly, our struggle is alongside the Ecuadorian CONAIE (Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de Ecuador), the Venezuelan ANMCLA (Associación Nacional Medios Comunitarios, Libres y Alternatives), the heroic COR (Central Obrero Regional) in El Alto and the entire popular movement in Bolivia.
The political impasse of the Morales government will need to be resolved by going beyond the legal possibilities. There is a popular left which lies further to the left of the recalcitrant vice-president Linera and the usual bureaucrats, who oscillate between the Latin American universities and governments with a veneer of nationalism. To the left of the MAS are the ex-guerrillas of the Movimiento Pachakuti, there is the El Alto Coordinación Regional, there are the social institutions such as Community Justice, there is an enormous organized social fabric that has no intention of consigning the country and the ancestral lands to the heirs of Cortés and Pizarro...
Another Battle of Ayacucho, another 1809 Uprising
In 1809, the courage of the young Bolivians refused to recognize the demands of Charlotte Joaquina of Spain to govern the Viceroyalties. This decision marked the direction of the liberation of America in the heart of the Continent. The realistic response soon arrived when the governor of Potosí, loyal to the colonialists, occupied the rebel towns militarily. In 1824 in the Battle of Ayacucho, the reaction was defeated both politically and militarily. But political independence did not guarantee the liberation of the peoples or bring Popular Power, Self-Management and Political Federalism. Almost 190 years later, the same struggle is with us again. The right is fighting against the advancement of popular power, the transformation of the National State into a public space under the people's direct control, the dismantlement of the bourgeois apparatus of social regulation. Today it is Bolivia's turn; in 2002 it was Venezuela's; three times over the past 11 years the people of Ecuador have rid themselves of a president; in December 2001 the Argentines defeated neo-liberalism and its plan to dismantle social life. Today the war of the Latin American peoples is marching towards their liberation in the Battle of the Bolivian Half Moon.
Defeat the oligarchy!
Defeat the CIA, the DEA and the US Department of State!
May the Bolivian people go beyond the limits of national government and advance
along the road to Popular Power!
Because neo-liberalism and imperialism are the same filth!
Because Popular Power in Latin America will be built with struggle!
All solidarity to the Bolivian people!
The future of our brother country will be Quechua, Aymara, Guaraní, Tupi and
popular or there will be no future!
Latin America will never surrender!
Popular Power, Social Self-Management and Political Federalism!
Porto Alegre, 13 September 2008
Federação Anarquista Gaúcha (FAG) – Fórum do Anarquismo Organizado (FAO) – in strategic alliance with the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation (FAU)
Translation by FdCA-International Relations Office
http://www.vermelhoenegro.org/fag
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Constitution Day
Today, September 17, is Constitution Day. It was on this day in 1787 that the United States Constitution was signed.
The Constitution has been celebrate throughout our nation’s history in our schools, civil associations, religious institutions, and media as a profoundly democratic document. Afterall, it’s about We the People. What could be more democratic than that? Right?
Elements of the Constitution are inclusive. Many are not.
Several articles previously posted here have delved into this issue. In commemoration of this day, several are linked below.
A critical understanding of the Constitution is essential in any quest for true self-governance, justice, and peace. Social change movements in other countries in other places and/or in other times have not only worked for a change of faces (via elections) and a change of laws, but also a change of defining rules (i.e. removing undemocratic impediments in national Constitutions).
This last point is often overlooked here since it is assumed and culturally reinforced that the US Constitution promotes equality, justice and fairness — and contains provisions to easily alter it in places needing revision.
Analyzing the US Constitution is an essential step to understanding and eliminating impediments to real self-governance.
Below are three articles examining the undemocratic provisions of the US Constitution and suggestions for change. It’s followed by an article describing Ecuador’s proposed constitution granting inalienable rights to nature.
A U.S. Constitution with DEMOCRACY IN MIND
Second of two articles on the U.S. Constitution Spring, 2007
By What Authority, published by the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy [POCLAD]
http://www.poclad.org/deminsurgency/DemocracyInMind.pdf
The U.S. Constitution: Pull the Curtain
First of two articles on the U.S. Constitution Winter 2007
By What Authority, published by the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy (POCLAD)
http://www.poclad.org/deminsurgency/PullTheCurtain.pdf
The Case Against Judicial Review
by David Cobb
From “By What Authority,” a publication of the Program on Corporations, Law and
Democracy (POCLAD), Vol. 9, No. 2 • Fall, 2007.
http://www.poclad.org/deminsurgency/JudicialReview.pdf
Published on Thursday, September 4, 2008 by The Christian Science Monitor
Ecuador Constitution Would Grant Inalienable Rights To Nature
by Eoin O'Carroll
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/09/04-7
The Constitution has been celebrate throughout our nation’s history in our schools, civil associations, religious institutions, and media as a profoundly democratic document. Afterall, it’s about We the People. What could be more democratic than that? Right?
Elements of the Constitution are inclusive. Many are not.
Several articles previously posted here have delved into this issue. In commemoration of this day, several are linked below.
A critical understanding of the Constitution is essential in any quest for true self-governance, justice, and peace. Social change movements in other countries in other places and/or in other times have not only worked for a change of faces (via elections) and a change of laws, but also a change of defining rules (i.e. removing undemocratic impediments in national Constitutions).
This last point is often overlooked here since it is assumed and culturally reinforced that the US Constitution promotes equality, justice and fairness — and contains provisions to easily alter it in places needing revision.
Analyzing the US Constitution is an essential step to understanding and eliminating impediments to real self-governance.
Below are three articles examining the undemocratic provisions of the US Constitution and suggestions for change. It’s followed by an article describing Ecuador’s proposed constitution granting inalienable rights to nature.
A U.S. Constitution with DEMOCRACY IN MIND
Second of two articles on the U.S. Constitution Spring, 2007
By What Authority, published by the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy [POCLAD]
http://www.poclad.org/deminsurgency/DemocracyInMind.pdf
The U.S. Constitution: Pull the Curtain
First of two articles on the U.S. Constitution Winter 2007
By What Authority, published by the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy (POCLAD)
http://www.poclad.org/deminsurgency/PullTheCurtain.pdf
The Case Against Judicial Review
by David Cobb
From “By What Authority,” a publication of the Program on Corporations, Law and
Democracy (POCLAD), Vol. 9, No. 2 • Fall, 2007.
http://www.poclad.org/deminsurgency/JudicialReview.pdf
Published on Thursday, September 4, 2008 by The Christian Science Monitor
Ecuador Constitution Would Grant Inalienable Rights To Nature
by Eoin O'Carroll
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/09/04-7
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Victoria's Third Annual Anarchist Book Fair. Sept 12-13
I was impressed by last years book fair, and this year I was not disapointed.. There seemed to be at least as many people in attendance as previously, but I was pleased to see a broader cross section of the population than before. Although still largely "Euro" there was a significant contribution fromn First Nations people and I saw some Latino youth and other people of colour were present.The age range seemed broader too, not overwhelmingly young students, not that there would be anything wrong with that, but the movement has to expand into other sectors of the population to become a significant force. A fair number of babies too. Good going! Had a fine time talking and networking with folks from Victoria, Montreal, San Francisco, and Edmonton. The workshops seemed well attended – at least those in the morning-early afternoon. I only got to attend one of these, since I was tabling most of the time. This was about actualizing radical projects and was hosted by the amazing and brilliant surrealist poet, zinster, clown, and performance artist Paula Belina from Montreal. Sadly, I had to leave early, but found her workshop inspiring. The place I was going in such a hurry was the Camas Books Dinner, to help support this anarchist book shop and infocenter. About 70 people sat outside on trestle tables, chatting, listening to a guitar-mandolin-accordian duo by two very talented and beautiful young women. The food was great too, and had amusing names such as "Federated Commune Salad" While sitting there, surrounded by people of all ages and origins, it came to me that a line had been crossed. The scene was much like what I found in European anarchist circles – a sense of community, and though relatively few in number, grown beyond being a tiny, inward-looking sect, into something that has put down roots. Later at Camas Books the Anniversary Show of music and spoken word was held, but I could not stay for long, now feeling the length of the day.
I should point out that the events I describe were not the only ones occurring. A whole week of film, discussions and music preceded the Book Fair. (See www.victoriaanarchistbookfair.ca/ ) I salute the volunteers who put in so much effort and looked rather tired by Sunday afternoon!
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