Obama finance “reform” plan would give more authority
What is the most powerful business corporation in the US?
At one time some might have said General Motors. That was when GM was the #1 automaker on the planet and “what was good for GM was good for America” was the mantra on Capital Hill.
Many would nominate today Wall-Mart (#1 in revenue), Exxon-Mobil (#1 in profits), Citibank (the nation’s biggest bank), General Electric (arguably the most diversified) Microsoft (the computer giant), Google (information gatekeeper), or AT&T (communications behemoth). A fine case can be made for each of these not only being economically dominant but politically influential in shaping public policy effecting our lives, communities and the natural world.
None of the nominees come remotely close to the power and influence of one business corporation few even consider to be a business corporation: the Federal Reserve – a privately-owned and mostly independent financial institution.
The Federal Reserve System is grossly misnamed. It’s hardly federal at all (if federal is implied to be “public”) but, rather, established under the 1913 Federal Reserve Act as a private corporation composed of 12 regional Federal Reserve banks with the all-mighty power and authority to coin and issue our nation’s money and to regulate the volume of money through interest rates. It has, thus, the role of the nation’s central bank, yet it’s beholden largely to its major stockholders – private banks who hold all the stock in the regional banks in proportion to their size. The federal government cannot own stock, nor can the public. The largest stockholders in the Federal Reserve corporation are the nation’s biggest banks – JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, etc.
The President, Congress and the courts have little control over the Federal Reserve bank or their policies. The major exception is Presidential appointment and Senate confirmation of the seven Board of Governors – currently headed by Ben Bernanke. Once appointed for 14-year terms, Board Members function mostly independent from public control. Annual reports to Congress and twice-a-year appearances of the Fed Chair are about the only opportunities to learn what the Fed is up to (all the most urgent since the Fed’s books haven’t been audited).
Meanwhile each of the 12 regional banks have their own boards. They are all composed of member banks.
The corporate underpinning of the Fed was clarified and reinforced by a 1982 case, Lewis v. United States which declared the Federal Reserve Banks are "independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations", and there is not sufficient "federal government control over 'detailed physical performance' and 'day to day operation'" of the Federal Reserve Bank for it to be considered a federal agency.
Highlights of the case are at
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8518
The Fed creates our nation’s money. Actually, they buy the pieces of paper, called Federal Reserve Notes, which are printed by the US government for pennies on the dollar. Quite a profitable scheme. They use these Federal Reserve Notes then to buy US government bonds.
Why doesn’t the US government itself print US government money rather than selling government IOUs for Federal Reserve Notes that must be paid back with interest (which constitutes our national debt)? Fabulous question. It’s a democratic question that needs to be asked to every federal public official and brought up before the media and before groups we are a part of. Why? Because government debt is crippling the nation and preventing us from meeting our real needs and acting independently.
Obama plan shifts oversight duties
All this is background to the proposal this week by the Obama administration to “reform” the nation’s financial institutions. Some of the proposals changes are good, specifically the creation of a new agency to protect consumers by taking over the oversight of mortgages and prohibiting the Federal Reserve bank from use emergency powers to bail out failing banks
On the other hand, the proposal would give the Fed sweeping new powers to oversee the securities and insurance businesses and all other firms whose failure could threaten the economy. . These regulatory powers, as proposed, could duplicate and even overrule other regulators.
Giving a private financial corporate the power and authority to be master regulator of financial corporations is profoundly anti-democratic.
Congress will be debating this proposal over the weeks and months ahead.
Here’s 4 actions to take:
1. Learn more about the Federal Reserve. There are many excellent materials (books, articles, etc.) which expose this mighty corporation.
2. Tell your US Senators and Representatives to oppose any financial “reforms” that give the Federal Reserve any new power.
3. While you’re at it, ask your federal elected representatives to support HR 1486 calling for an independent audit of the Federal Reserve.
4. Ask your federal elected representatives to introduce legislation calling for the democratization of our currency. The creation of money is too important of a national function to be farmed out to a private corporation – as well as to banks. It’s time for money creation to be a public responsibility.
As Thomas Jefferson declared, "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
Friday, June 19, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION - An Anarchist Viewpoint.
My intention here is not to make points against Lenin, but rather to analyze "The State And Revolution" as objectively as possible, yet remain within the context of anarchism. This analysis written by Lenin some months before the October Revolution, has been called his most libertarian work. Writers such as Hal Draper, Raya Dunayevskya, C.L.R James, therefore claimed that Lenin was something of a libertarian socialist and Trotskyists have also used it to claim that he was in favour of workers' power.
The State and Revolution, more than any other document, spells out the Marxist concept of revolution and its immediate aftermath. It also brings into clear focus the differences and similarities between Marxism (a) and anarchism over the nature of revolutionary governance. (b) A major bone of contention between anarchists and Marxists is over the notion of the "workers' state." Anarchists typically see these concepts as a Marxist desire to erect a powerful centralized state and party dictatorship over the working class.
What is a state in Marxist terms? According to Lenin the state develops where class antagonisms cannot be reconciled. (1) For Engels the state is a power standing above society to alleviate the conflict. The state requires a territory, the armed forces not coinciding with the people. If the state stands over society liberation therefore ultimately requires its destruction. (2) The final goal of Marxists and Anarchists is thus the same – a stateless and classless society. It is in the details of the intervening period between the old system and the new where we find differences of opinion.
Why A Workers' State?
It order to defend the revolution, revolutionaries must suppress counter-revolution and this is accomplished by the armed working population. By the very act of suppressing another class, the workers, in Marxist terms, have a "state." The state, ie, the proletariat organized as the ruling class. (3) The form that the workers state takes, Marx says, is that of suppression of the standing army and its replacement by the armed people. (4) Lenin too, saw the workers state as nothing more than the exploiting class being suppressed by the armed populace. But this"state" really is not a state in the regular sense of the word – a bureaucracy, standing army separate from the people, but is a "state" that is already disappearing. ("withering away") This is what is Lenin called the abolition of the state as state and is the fullest form of democracy. (5) 463 As soon as the revolution is successful and the workers have broken the power of the rulers, that remaining essence of the state begins to dissolve itself. For Engels, ...there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection...[there is] nothing necessitating a special coercive force or state. (6)
But workers simply cannot take over the existing state and use it. They must smash it and replace it with something new. In order for the revolution to be successful, it must be a people's revolution, (7) (peasants and workers) and the smashing of the state is the pre-condition of this alliance. This new form of governance is the Commune. The Commune is the form discovered by the proletariat under which the emancipation of the proletariat takes place. (8) The basic structure of the workers state or commune would be to ...elect delegates, all revocable, control and supervision by all, at wages the average of the worker. (9) Lenin mentions favorably Engels remark about the need to replace the term [workers] state with "commune" as more accurate and less confusing. (10)
A Contradiction?
While lauding the Commune and its direct democracy, Lenin also said that in this workers state, state power involves a centralized organization of forces – the vanguard "directing and organizing the new system... (11) But this seems contradicted by his favorable attitude to Engels rather decentralist view that in the early French Republic of 1792-98 each commune enjoyed complete self-government on the American model. (12) Engels also favored the Australian and Canadian system of provincial and municipal governments, seeking a situation where there was complete self-government for provinces, districts and communes... abolition of all local and provincial authority appointed by the state. (13)
We will see later, that Lenin seems to confuse centralization with unity and this confusion is one root of contention between Marxists and anarchists.
Two Different Analytic Tools.
By positing the state in its ultimate sense as one class suppressing another, Marxists engaged in an ontological definition – the state is essentially class domination. Anarchists, on the other hand view the state not as a concept or abstraction, but as the "really existing state". Their analysis is empirical (descriptive) – the state has a bureaucracy, a governing body and army separate from the people etc. Thus, for anarchists, the Commune is NOT a state, and for the Marxists it is the last vestige of the state. Both are right according to the choice of analytic tools, and the ontological and the empirical are both valid ways of looking at the world. Nor should Marxism be reduced to the ontological and anarchism to the empirical in some general way. Both tendencies use both methodologies, though sometimes in different ways.
Marx and Lenin Attack The Anarchists
If the above was all there was to State and Revolution, the situation between anarchists and Marxists would be "you say tomaytoe, I say tomahto." However, Lenin, and Marx and Engels before him, systematically misrepresented the anarchist position on revolution, organization and governance. While it is true that anarchists have also misrepresented Marxists, sometimes grossly, I would suggest that Marxist misinformation has only served to reinforce the negative stereotype anarchists often have of them. (c.)
Lenin states, contra anarchism, We are not utopians, we do not dream of dispensing at once with all administration, with all subordination. These are anarchist dreams. (14) Accordingly, The anarchists dismissed the question of political forms altogether (15) and only have a vague notion of what they wish to replace the state with. (16) They just want to destroy the state, period. Anarchism is thus a tactic of dispair, rather than taking into account practical problems.(17)
Let's see what Lenin's anarchist predecessors and contemporaries had to say about administration, political forms and their destruction. (All emphasis below is mine.)
On the other hand the State has also been confused with Government. Since there can be no State without government, it has sometimes been said that what one must aim at is the absence of government and not the abolition of the State. However, it seems to me that State and government are two concepts of a different order. The State idea means something quite different from the idea of government. The State, Its Historic Role, Peter Kropotkin
There is a need for a revolution... This conviction has led many to believe that the only important thing is the insurrection, and to overlook what has to be done to prevent an insurrection from remaining a sterile act of violence against which an act of reactionary violence would be the eventual reply. For those who believe this, all the practical questions of organization... are matters which will solve themselves... Yet the conclusion we come to is this: Social reorganization is something we must all think about right now... In order to abolish the police and all the harmful social institutions we must know what to put in their place... immediately, the very day we start demolishing. One only destroys, effectively and permanently, that which one replaces by something else; and to put off to a later date... would be to give time to the institutions one is intending to abolish to recover from the shock and reassert themselves, perhaps under other names, but certainly with the same structure. The Anarchist Revolution, Errico Malatesta
by the... federation of communes to replace the domineering, paternalistic state. Micheal Bakunin, Bakunin On Anarchy, Sam Dolgoff, Vintage 1971, P. 262
Collective power... workmen's associations in place of armies. Proudhon in George Woodcock, The Anarchist Reader, Fontana, 1980, p.293
A new form of political organization has to be worked out. And it is evident that the new form will have to be more popular, more decentralized, and nearer to the folkmoot self-government than representative government can ever be.
Kropotkin in Paul Berman, Quotations From The Anarchists, Praeger, 1972, p. 68,
The nation is a free association of communes. Mandatories are at all time subject to recall. Carlo Piscane in Robert Graham, Anarchism, Black Rose, Montreal, 2005, p.66
Lenin claimed that the anarchists thought that the workers should "renounce the use of arms, organized violence, that is the state... [they] repudiated all authority, all subordination, all power." (18) Were anarchists that naive?
We must play an active part in the necessary physical struggle... in order to destroy all the repressive forces of the government and to induce the people to take possession of the land, homes, transport, factories, mines, and of all existing goods... We must... encourage action... in order to prevent the emergence of new authoritarian groups, new governments, combating them with violence if necessary... The Anarchist Revolution, Errico Malatesta
Revolution means war... Either the bourgeois world will subdue... the people... or the working masses will... destroy to its roots bourgeois exploitation... the uprooting of all that is represented by the State. Pps 372-373 It is necessary ... there be a real force in the field, one that knows what should be done...capable of taking hold of the Revolution and giving it direction salutery for the people... a serious international organization of workers' associations. p.375. Begin by striking down those who oppress you... and having destroyed the power of your enemies... disarmed and helpless... invite them to live and work along side you....p.377 The Political Philosophy of Bakunin G. P. Maximoff Free Press 1964,
The purpose of revolutionary organizations is to help people toward self-determination... the least interference from any sort of domination. Bakunin- The Philosophy of Freedom, Brian Morris, Black Rose 1993, p.148
It is necessary to make sure the [revolutionary] movement... is not simply a blind movement... on taking up the Winchester we go forth decided, not upon the enthronement of another boss, but the reclamation of rights of the people.
179 War against the wage system, Mexicans! ...make the lands and machinery of production for common use; and this can only be achieved through means of force... And if those who ...oppose this work of supreme social justice, kill them!
Dreams of Freedom, Ricardo Flores Magon,, eds Chaz Bufe, M.C. Veter, p.155
In each Syndicate [union] a group for defense was formed... they exercised themselves in the management of arms... not to be taken unawares [by] reactionary conspiracy... These Syndicalist battalions were not a force external to the people, they were the people themselves ...at the same time they seized the factories... they occupied... all the points where the reactionaries might have been able to concentrate... [they] were ruthlessly isolated... Emile Pouget, How We Shall Bring about The revolution, Pluto, London, 1990, p151
The structure of the CGT.. is neither centralist nor authoritarian...[it] is controlled from below...Confederal activities co-ordinated by the... delegates... In the regulation of collective affairs the Congress [of the CGT] is entirely sovereign. Pierre Monatte 1907 in George Woodcock The Anarchist Reader Fontana 1980. p. 214
Unless democracy is a fraud... each citizen in the sphere of his industry, each municipality, disctrict or provincial council, within its own territory, is the only natural and legitimate representative... The People is ... the organic union of wills... Such a union must be sought in the harmony of their interests, not in artificial centralization. Proudhon, Anarchism, Robt. Graham ed Black Rose 2005, p.57
Lenin claimed that Anarchists find no use in exploring past revolutions to find out what to replace state with. (18)
I would be unable to accept the view that all past revolutions though they were not anarchist revolutions were useless, nor that future ones which will still not be anarchist revolutions will be useless. The Anarchist Revolution, Errico Malatesta It should also be remembered that Kropotkin wrote an entire book on the French Revolution where he described the Parisian sections. Proudhon also wrote about it as well.
Marx disagreed with Bakunin and Proudhon on federalism and Lenin wrote it off as an aspect of the "petty bourgeois" nature of anarchism.. (19) For Lenin, Marx was a centralist and this was exemplified as The proletarians and poor peasants... organize themselves quite freely in communes, unite all the communes in... crushing the resistence of the capitalists, in transferring [industry] to the entire nation, won't that be centralism?
After reading the quotes from the anarchists above on organization and administration, there should be little doubt anarchists want to see the proletarians and poor peasants... organize themselves quite freely in communes, unite all the communes in... crushing the resistence of the capitalists, in transferring [industry] to the entire nation.. But this is seen not as "centralization" but "unity in action". For anarchists centralization means top-down control and no autonomy in the units that make up the centralized organization. We have already seen that Marx, Engels and Lenin all agree that control should be from the bottom up ...elect delegates, all revocable, control and supervision by all, and the communes should have the degree of autonomy necessary to carry out their functions, "complete self-government for provinces, districts and communes...
Lenin seems to confuse unity with centralization. Both he and Marx also seem confused about federalism. They deny the need for it, yet at the same time insist upon the complete self government of the communes. What is local autonomy combined with delegation, other than a form of federalism? It may be that Marx and Lenin thought federalism meant too loose a structure, communes or counties as virtual independent countries, and thus dis-unity and conflict. Perhaps like the thousands of petty German principalities during Marx's youth, or the "federalism" of business unionism where different trades scab on each other. But this was never the federal concept among social anarchists.
Finally there is the canard about "petty bourgeois anarchists". For sure there are such anarchists, just like there are "petty bourgeois" socialists. But these "individualist anarchists" are few in number compared with social anarchists. (d) This slander by Marxists has always seemed like psychological projection. Syndicalism is the most purely proletarian form of socialism, yet among the Marxist parties is where one finds lawyers, academics and the children of the middle class in charge.
Conclusion
Marxists who adhere to the principles of the Paris Commune and anarchists have much more in common than they think. Strip away the polemical exaggerations, strip away the fallacious arguments, and you have two groups who seek Popular Power for the working masses.
It seemed to 19th Century revolutionaries that they could defeat other revolutionary tendencies through polemics, and these were often of dubious honesty. Criticism of genuine weaknesses and errors are to be desired, as they help develop our practice. False or polemically exaggerated statements do nothing but exacerbate division and animosity. Tendencies can be almost obliterated by violence – witness anarchism in the 1930's and 40's as it was stamped out by fascism and Stalinism. But when the ground is fertile they are reborn. A tendency will only be permanently reduced to insignificance when it is totally disconnected from the reality of the times and the needs of the people. Witness the Socialist Labor Party which has been dying since 1900 and experienced no significant growth during any of the periods of revolt of the last century. 150 years of polemics between Marxists and Anarchists, and guess what? Both of us are still here, in most cases more alive than in several generations.
More important than tendency or ideology is practice, or desired practice. If you believe in worker and neighborhood assembles with recallable delegates, self-management and multi-tendency direct democracy, these common principles should take precedence over the quarrels of 150 years ago.
FOOTNOTES
a. Except for " libertarian Marxism", which denies the need for any form of state.
b. I have chosen the word "governance" as a neutral term to describe the political organization of post-revolutionary society. Governance can be either statist or non-statist, in the anarchist usage of the term, state..
c. There have always been anarchists respectful of Marx, such as Albert Parsons, Daniel Guerin, Murray Bookchin and Kevin Carson. Furthermore, much anarchist animosity can be traced to Bakunin's understandable confusion between the German Social Democratic Party and the thinking of Marx and Engels.
d. Social anarchists are those with some level of class analysis, consider themselves socialists and favor, where needed, large scale organization. Social anarchists include mutualists, syndicalists and anarchist communists.
1. 387, 2. 387, 3. 402, 4. 418, 5. 397, 6. 395, 7. 416-17, 8. 432, 9. 481, 10. 440, 11. 404, 12. 447, 13. 448, 14. 425, 15. 431, 16. 484, 17. 488, 18. 436, 19. 427
All the above pages came from "The State and Revolution", in "Lenin's Collected Works" Vol. 25, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Order in the Court: Full Public Financing of Judicial Elections
This week’s US Supreme Court ruling that a West Virginia Supreme Court judge who received a huge political campaign contribution (or “investment” depending on your viewpoint) from Massey coal corporation should have recused himself from a case involving that corporation is raising serious questions within Ohio legal...and media... circles. Ohio is one of 39 states that elect some or all judges.
Will all elected judges now have to recuse themselves from all cases involving big campaign donors?
What if a big campaign donor/investor is only a minor party in a legal case?
Is there a contribution/investment threshold amount above which judges must recuse themselves?
Is it time to ditch direct election of judges altogether in favor of appointment by the Governor based on a merit selection system?
Glaringly absent from reports of this story containing comments from Ohio Chief Justice Thomas Moyer and political science and constitutional law professors is one solution that addresses many problem of private money in public elections: full public financing.
Maine, Arizona and other states provide candidates who agree not to accept any private money from any source (business corporations, labor unions, themselves) a fixed amount of public funds. Unfortunately because of the 1976 US Supreme Court Buckley vs Valeo nonsensical decision equating money with free speech, forcing candidates to accept public funds or imposing campaign spending limits is illegal. Also, because of several US Supreme Court decisions anointing business corporations as “persons,” it is illegal to prevent corporations from exercising their free speech “rights” by shelling out corporate cash to candidates, ballot campaigns, political parties, and third party issue front groups.
Nevertheless, a candidate who voluntarily accepts “Clean Money” in a full public finance system can in the course of his/her campaign point out how they are, in fact, beholden to their funders (the public) rather than to the funders of candidates who receive corporate donations.
A full public financing system serves, therefore, to both educate constituents on the insidious “pay to play” funding system of privately funded elections as well as provides a real choice for candidates and voters. Candidates who opt for public funding can spend the bulk of their campaign talking to voters rather than having to spent an inordinate amount of time dialing for dollars. Once elected, publicly funded candidates can freely work to reward their funders (i.e. the public) by acting for the common good. In the case of judges, that means making decisions on the merits of cases without having to worry about whether and how much plaintiffs or defendants may have contributed/invested in their political campaigns.
Voluntary public financing is by itself not enough to break the powerful link between corporations and candidates. We must also reverse the Buckley and corporate personhood Supreme Court decisions. Money is not speech. It’s property. Corporations are not people. They’re creations of and subordinate to the state and public.
Voluntary public financing, however, is a stepping stone to more democratic elections.
Will all elected judges now have to recuse themselves from all cases involving big campaign donors?
What if a big campaign donor/investor is only a minor party in a legal case?
Is there a contribution/investment threshold amount above which judges must recuse themselves?
Is it time to ditch direct election of judges altogether in favor of appointment by the Governor based on a merit selection system?
Glaringly absent from reports of this story containing comments from Ohio Chief Justice Thomas Moyer and political science and constitutional law professors is one solution that addresses many problem of private money in public elections: full public financing.
Maine, Arizona and other states provide candidates who agree not to accept any private money from any source (business corporations, labor unions, themselves) a fixed amount of public funds. Unfortunately because of the 1976 US Supreme Court Buckley vs Valeo nonsensical decision equating money with free speech, forcing candidates to accept public funds or imposing campaign spending limits is illegal. Also, because of several US Supreme Court decisions anointing business corporations as “persons,” it is illegal to prevent corporations from exercising their free speech “rights” by shelling out corporate cash to candidates, ballot campaigns, political parties, and third party issue front groups.
Nevertheless, a candidate who voluntarily accepts “Clean Money” in a full public finance system can in the course of his/her campaign point out how they are, in fact, beholden to their funders (the public) rather than to the funders of candidates who receive corporate donations.
A full public financing system serves, therefore, to both educate constituents on the insidious “pay to play” funding system of privately funded elections as well as provides a real choice for candidates and voters. Candidates who opt for public funding can spend the bulk of their campaign talking to voters rather than having to spent an inordinate amount of time dialing for dollars. Once elected, publicly funded candidates can freely work to reward their funders (i.e. the public) by acting for the common good. In the case of judges, that means making decisions on the merits of cases without having to worry about whether and how much plaintiffs or defendants may have contributed/invested in their political campaigns.
Voluntary public financing is by itself not enough to break the powerful link between corporations and candidates. We must also reverse the Buckley and corporate personhood Supreme Court decisions. Money is not speech. It’s property. Corporations are not people. They’re creations of and subordinate to the state and public.
Voluntary public financing, however, is a stepping stone to more democratic elections.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
ORGANIZATION THEORY – A Libertarian Perspective.
This latest work by Kevin Carson, expands many of the themes found in his groundbreaking STUDIES IN MUTUALIST POLITICAL ECONOMY published in 2004. In ORGANIZATION THEORY Carson first examines the literature on the economics of scale and finds the giant corporation to be highly inefficient. State intervention is the factor that allows the corporation to overcome this disadvantage. He next exposes the different variety of government policies which gave rise to and aided the growth of economic centralization and giantism.
In Part Two he examines the systemic effects and in Part Three examines the internal effects of top-down organization and centralization. There are three major problems, 1. the problem of having accurate knowledge 2. the problem of economic calculation given inaccurate knowledge 3. authoritarian irrationality and internal crises. He also tears into management fads and other attempts to reform the managerial system.
Decentralist alternatives to capitalism and authoritarian management are discussed in Part Four. These involve the abolition of state-granted privilege and the dissolution of the state into society. The potential for a libertarian economy that lies within the coming Peak Oil crisis and the new technologies and systems that make capitalism obsolete are examined, as are worker cooperatives and the provision of social services without the state.
Carson comes from a Mutualist anarchist perspective. But his critique of capitalism and the alternatives he presents are useful and applicable to the entire spectrum of anarchist and libertarian socialist thought. It is a devastating examination of the arguments put forth by capitalism's “libertarian”, liberal and neo-liberal apologists. This is truly a book that no anarchist or socialist should be without.
Some highlights from ORGANIZATION THEORY:
Mass production flooded America with goods, destroying local manufacturing, and creating a problem of over-production. To sell all these products , the "push model" of marketing with advertising, packaging and branding was created. The Sloan System of management at GM adopted in the 1920's, put manufacturing second, marketing first. Thus production was subservient to a marketing plan or strategy. Hence, contrary to the apologists of corporatism, the corporate economy is a planned economy.
The plutocratic system developed originally as the new capitalist class amalgamated with the land owners. Its legal basis lies with the creation of "artificial property rights" created by government. Natural property rights involve use – working vacant land, for example. Natural property rights reflect scarcity, while artificial property rights create it. Since land had been expropriated by landlords, it is very difficult for workers to create wealth on their own. Artificial property rights in land give the proprietor property rights in the labour of others. Capitalism could not exist without artificial property rights.
The guru of neo-liberalism, Friedrich Von Hayek, claimed that central state planning cannot work well due to problems of knowledge. Carson responds, if this is a point for the market system against state planning, it is also a point for the market system against the internal hierarchy of the corporation. Ludwig Von Mises, believed that double entry book keeping solved all managerial problems. So why not a centrally planned economy, if all managerial problems are solved? asks Carson.
The highly authoritarian nature of Mise's "libertarianism", is revealed in the following quote. [Corporate managers ]... have the courage to tell the masses what no politician tells them; You are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions... you owe to the effort of men who are better than you. If hierarchy works so well, why not put the CEO's in charge of a centrally planned economy? But in the real world that exists outside of the brain farts of economists and management gurus, hierarchy is a primitive mechanism for getting people to perform tasks which they have no rational interest in performing.
Steam and water power concentrated industry for obvious reasons. Electricity sent by power lines could be used anywhere and thus allowed for decentralized and small scale production. According to Carson, 10,000 people could be self-sufficient with no factory larger than 100 employees. But the corporate structure refused to go that route. The system selects against simple technologies... in favour of complex technologies that can be safely wielded by a priesthood. Furthermore, massive state intervention might also have tipped the balance between alternative forms of productive technology.
Apologists for corporate capitalism reject small scale and worker-managed production. They claim workers have shorter time horizons than capitalists, which must be the bad joke of the century, coming from people whose time horizon is the next quarterly profit statement. Small farming is stawmanned as being like subsistence farming as it was, not how it would have been minus rents, enclosures and state support for agribusiness, not to mention innovations like intensive gardening, composting, hydroponics etc.
What hinders the development of human-scale and anti-authoritarian alternatives is not a lack of organizations, but an overabundance of them. A way to overcome capitalist hegemony in the cooperative/social economy is to create linkages between the organizations – a need to start functioning as a cohesive counter-economy. In spite of the problems of realization, it is increasingly impossible for capitalism to prevent people turning to small scale and household production. Ever more people are living unplugged and off the grid.
The present economy is fundamentally state capitalist, and as libertarians it is our objective to dismantle the state, and with it, the corporatist economy. But attacking any aspect of the state must not be our goal. Dismantle first the structures that facilitate exploitation. Evaluating the functions of the state in terms of the class purpose they serve makes it easier to understand the importance of dismantling them in the proper order. When the working population is free from exploitation, then the existing social welfare measures can be converted into forms of non-governmental mutual aid.
ORGANIZATION THEORY is available through Amazon.com
In Part Two he examines the systemic effects and in Part Three examines the internal effects of top-down organization and centralization. There are three major problems, 1. the problem of having accurate knowledge 2. the problem of economic calculation given inaccurate knowledge 3. authoritarian irrationality and internal crises. He also tears into management fads and other attempts to reform the managerial system.
Decentralist alternatives to capitalism and authoritarian management are discussed in Part Four. These involve the abolition of state-granted privilege and the dissolution of the state into society. The potential for a libertarian economy that lies within the coming Peak Oil crisis and the new technologies and systems that make capitalism obsolete are examined, as are worker cooperatives and the provision of social services without the state.
Carson comes from a Mutualist anarchist perspective. But his critique of capitalism and the alternatives he presents are useful and applicable to the entire spectrum of anarchist and libertarian socialist thought. It is a devastating examination of the arguments put forth by capitalism's “libertarian”, liberal and neo-liberal apologists. This is truly a book that no anarchist or socialist should be without.
Some highlights from ORGANIZATION THEORY:
Mass production flooded America with goods, destroying local manufacturing, and creating a problem of over-production. To sell all these products , the "push model" of marketing with advertising, packaging and branding was created. The Sloan System of management at GM adopted in the 1920's, put manufacturing second, marketing first. Thus production was subservient to a marketing plan or strategy. Hence, contrary to the apologists of corporatism, the corporate economy is a planned economy.
The plutocratic system developed originally as the new capitalist class amalgamated with the land owners. Its legal basis lies with the creation of "artificial property rights" created by government. Natural property rights involve use – working vacant land, for example. Natural property rights reflect scarcity, while artificial property rights create it. Since land had been expropriated by landlords, it is very difficult for workers to create wealth on their own. Artificial property rights in land give the proprietor property rights in the labour of others. Capitalism could not exist without artificial property rights.
The guru of neo-liberalism, Friedrich Von Hayek, claimed that central state planning cannot work well due to problems of knowledge. Carson responds, if this is a point for the market system against state planning, it is also a point for the market system against the internal hierarchy of the corporation. Ludwig Von Mises, believed that double entry book keeping solved all managerial problems. So why not a centrally planned economy, if all managerial problems are solved? asks Carson.
The highly authoritarian nature of Mise's "libertarianism", is revealed in the following quote. [Corporate managers ]... have the courage to tell the masses what no politician tells them; You are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions... you owe to the effort of men who are better than you. If hierarchy works so well, why not put the CEO's in charge of a centrally planned economy? But in the real world that exists outside of the brain farts of economists and management gurus, hierarchy is a primitive mechanism for getting people to perform tasks which they have no rational interest in performing.
Steam and water power concentrated industry for obvious reasons. Electricity sent by power lines could be used anywhere and thus allowed for decentralized and small scale production. According to Carson, 10,000 people could be self-sufficient with no factory larger than 100 employees. But the corporate structure refused to go that route. The system selects against simple technologies... in favour of complex technologies that can be safely wielded by a priesthood. Furthermore, massive state intervention might also have tipped the balance between alternative forms of productive technology.
Apologists for corporate capitalism reject small scale and worker-managed production. They claim workers have shorter time horizons than capitalists, which must be the bad joke of the century, coming from people whose time horizon is the next quarterly profit statement. Small farming is stawmanned as being like subsistence farming as it was, not how it would have been minus rents, enclosures and state support for agribusiness, not to mention innovations like intensive gardening, composting, hydroponics etc.
What hinders the development of human-scale and anti-authoritarian alternatives is not a lack of organizations, but an overabundance of them. A way to overcome capitalist hegemony in the cooperative/social economy is to create linkages between the organizations – a need to start functioning as a cohesive counter-economy. In spite of the problems of realization, it is increasingly impossible for capitalism to prevent people turning to small scale and household production. Ever more people are living unplugged and off the grid.
The present economy is fundamentally state capitalist, and as libertarians it is our objective to dismantle the state, and with it, the corporatist economy. But attacking any aspect of the state must not be our goal. Dismantle first the structures that facilitate exploitation. Evaluating the functions of the state in terms of the class purpose they serve makes it easier to understand the importance of dismantling them in the proper order. When the working population is free from exploitation, then the existing social welfare measures can be converted into forms of non-governmental mutual aid.
ORGANIZATION THEORY is available through Amazon.com
Taken for a Ride
Citizens and General Motors workers are being taken for a ride by the Obama administration’s plan to restructure GM.
The first article linked below , by Greg Palast, details how Obama’s “Car Czar,” Steven Rattner, is illegally pushing for the seizing of workers’ pension funds to pay off GM’s creditors --- namely JP Morgan Chase financial corporation and Citibank financial corporation.
The second link, an article by POCLAD principal Mike Ferner, critiques the effort to reform the auto corporation. Needed, instead, is a commitment to replace GM with a cooperative economic structure which converts industrial infrastructure to producing light rail, bullet trains and cleaner buses -- reliable and sustainable transportation.
Grand Theft Auto: The Bankruptcy of General Motors
by Greg Palast
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13812
We Don't Need the General Motors Corp.
by Mike Ferner
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/05-8
-----------------------
This is What Democracy in Ohio Looks Like: Ohio’s Democratic/Self-Determination Infrastructure
http://www.afsc.net/PDFFiles/InfrastructureDecember08.pdf
We are in the process of updating this publication which lists alternatives to corporations, corporate governance and elite control across the state. If you know of any documents, policies, institutions, structures, or groups that should be included, excluded, or revised — please let us know.
Please send any suggested changes to Adam Fischer at afischer@afsc.org by Friday, June 19.
Thank you.
The first article linked below , by Greg Palast, details how Obama’s “Car Czar,” Steven Rattner, is illegally pushing for the seizing of workers’ pension funds to pay off GM’s creditors --- namely JP Morgan Chase financial corporation and Citibank financial corporation.
The second link, an article by POCLAD principal Mike Ferner, critiques the effort to reform the auto corporation. Needed, instead, is a commitment to replace GM with a cooperative economic structure which converts industrial infrastructure to producing light rail, bullet trains and cleaner buses -- reliable and sustainable transportation.
Grand Theft Auto: The Bankruptcy of General Motors
by Greg Palast
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13812
We Don't Need the General Motors Corp.
by Mike Ferner
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/05-8
-----------------------
This is What Democracy in Ohio Looks Like: Ohio’s Democratic/Self-Determination Infrastructure
http://www.afsc.net/PDFFiles/InfrastructureDecember08.pdf
We are in the process of updating this publication which lists alternatives to corporations, corporate governance and elite control across the state. If you know of any documents, policies, institutions, structures, or groups that should be included, excluded, or revised — please let us know.
Please send any suggested changes to Adam Fischer at afischer@afsc.org by Friday, June 19.
Thank you.
Friday, June 5, 2009
The New Totalitarianism
The word "totalitarian" while politically loaded, is still a useful concept. As brutal and authoritarian as 18th and 19th Century England was it could not be considered a totalitarian state. Plain old authoritarianism is separated from totalitarianism by the high level of invasiveness of the latter. Also, the old authoritarian states were so inefficient and the techniques and technologies of domination so crude, they were highly ineffective. Even if they wanted to totally dominate the lives of the people they could not do so. The kings and tyrants of old wanted you to work for them obediently, fight in their wars and pretend to love them. Other than that, you could more or less do what you wanted.
Except, of course, for the Church. This was the real ancestor of totalitarianism. The first powerful institutions seriously interested in what you thought, what you ate, your sex life, what you read and talked about. And through their indoctrination, hierarchies of priests and their assistants, confession booths, Inquisitions, schools and media, they actually had the ability to dominate in a totalistic way. Indeed, the authoritarian churches are one of the roots of totalitarianism, both in the origins of fascism and the liberal tendencies to "benevolently" control the thought and actions of the general populace.
As everyone knows ,"classic" totalitarian systems are facism, nazi-fascism and Stalinism. The idea was to mold humanity in the image presented by the state ideology. This was achieved through terror, but also mass media, the education system, a party hierarchy that one had to join to get ahead, the creation of scape goats and demonic figures and an economic system geared to the needs of the state.
But classical totalitarianism suffered from a number of serious flaws. For the ruling classes, the the dictators they backed were unwilling to remain as puppets and had ideas of their own. Having the police and the army in their control they were able to attempt those plans. The second was the problem of succession, always a problem in a dictatorship. The third was inefficiency. Attempting to control everyone and anything proved an impossible task and the regimes bogged down in bureaucracy, corruption and gross inefficiency. People soon tired of their strutting tyrants and resented being directly told what to do and think, day in and day out. While overt unrest was impossible, the sullenness of the masses contributed greatly to inefficiency.
Due to the immense cruelty as well as the aforementioned flaws, serious revolutionaries have rejected the totalitarian (Stalinist) model of revolutionary governance. The ruling classses, in turn, have rejected classical fascism as an alternative. Consider the new form of "soft tyranny" as the ruling class version of EuroCommunism. (Do away with the really nasty stuff, but still have the same goal in mind.) Where old style fascism is still used, is as thugs against the popular movements, pseudo-gangs and scary puppets. They are handy for murdering trade union leaders and form the core of the Latin American Death Squads. The swastika flag popped up during the recent attempts by the far-right to break up Bolivia. P2 and Operation Gladio attempted to destabilize Italy on the CIA's orders in the 1970's. Otherwise, "old style" totalitarianism as a serious alternative to liberalism or democracy is in history's overflowing ash can.
Beginning with the Tri-lateral Commission's 1973 observation that there was "too much democracy" , the rulers have concocted a new form of totalitarianism that lacks the obvious faults of the earlier variety. Politically "democracy", still exists with multi-party elections. But the differences between parties has been narrowed to the cosmetic and any group that seriously tries to criticize the system is marginalized and demonized. The political spectrum has been moved sharply to the right. Yesterdays conservatives would be reviled as dangerous "socialists." Newspapers and the media all spew the same line, once again with cosmetic differences. Protest is disarmed by tactics such as no-protest areas, massive police presence, "kettling" and campaigns of slander and demonization. With "terrorism" as an excuse, our ability to travel has been restricted, and people are forced to "show their papers." just like in the old movies.
Public space and the freedom that used to go with it, has been sharply reduced by replacing streets full of shops with shopping malls. These, under a bizarre legal interpretation, are considered "private" spaces and so patrons are subject to the whims of the owners. By-laws have been enacted to prevent people from building their own homes, building small dwellings, using composting toilets instead of the sewage hook up. etc. Home owner associations and condo regulations infringe upon democratic rights (no election posters in the window) and all sorts of other invasive regulations apply. Indeed, in a supposed "age of individualism", the individual in North America has rarely had less freedom than now, with all the petty authoritarianism of city by-laws and strata councils.
Corporations have taken over virtually every aspect of life. Not only have businesses which were once local – hamburger joints, convenience stores, hotels etc. been swallowed by multi-nationals, but their advertising is everywhere, in schools, on people's clothing. Children are indoctrinated from birth to identify with corporate advertising. The spread of US style suburbs with shopping malls means the loss of the uniqueness of towns and a sameness everywhere. The notion of service is gone, every government institution must now make a profit and act like a corporation. Public-private institutions have amalgamated the corporation and the state, creating the corporate state of Mussolini's dreams. Massive corporatization of public services and agreements like NAFTA, which protect corporations from being nationalized, or in any way impinged upon, have stripped democracy of any meaning. The corporations are now a law unto themselves.
However, this "soft totalitarianism's" destruction of democracy and gagging of protest will backfire. By making improvement impossible, by eradicating the possibility of reform, by making us total slaves of corporate capitalism, they leave the people only one alternative. That is to cast aside the dream of petty reform and to overthrow the entire system.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Vargas Llosa Touts For Gangsters and Facists
Property is individual and private or it is not property, said the author Mario Vargas Llosa addressing a far-right conference entitled "International Conference for Freedom (sic) and Democracy (sic) held in Caracas. Er, I thought Venezuela was supposed to be a virtual dictatorship, and here they are allowing the enemy to hold a conference. For the record, I wouldn't. I would send these criminals packing, toute de suite. (For those who object to my statement, Venezuela is undergoing a revolutionary process, and you don't allow counter-revolutionaries a chance to regroup. (1) It is a matter of life or death, should reaction succeed in Venezuela, the outcome will be a bloodbath, that will make Pinochet look like Gandhi.)
Now Vargas Llosa is a fine novelist – I have read most of his books and enjoyed them – but he is a shitty politician and an even shittier anthropologist. Property is individual and private or it is not property, simply does not stand up to anthropological inquiry. Communal property is very common, almost universal among hunters and gatherers, early agriculturalists and the peasants of Russia until the end of the 19th Century. This line, was in fact, the very one the European invader used to steal First Nation's land. Since their communal property was not a legitimate form of property in the eyes of these land thieves, it was not owned and therefore open to appropriation. I wonder what the First Nations People think of Llosa's comment? I also wonder how the one billion members of cooperatives world-wide feel being told that their coops should not be recognized as property? Could it be the criminals for whom Llosa is the intellectual facade, are preparing for another robbery, seeking to pillage the social economy?
For someone who supports corporate capitalism, touting individual or private property, is laughable hypocrisy. Corporations are forms of collective capitalism. Apply Llosa's concept honestly and corporations are not legitimate property.
See http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/4488
1. Make the lands and machinery of production for common use... And those who... oppose this work of supreme social justice, kill them! Ricardo Flores Magon in the 1910 Mexican Revolution.
Now Vargas Llosa is a fine novelist – I have read most of his books and enjoyed them – but he is a shitty politician and an even shittier anthropologist. Property is individual and private or it is not property, simply does not stand up to anthropological inquiry. Communal property is very common, almost universal among hunters and gatherers, early agriculturalists and the peasants of Russia until the end of the 19th Century. This line, was in fact, the very one the European invader used to steal First Nation's land. Since their communal property was not a legitimate form of property in the eyes of these land thieves, it was not owned and therefore open to appropriation. I wonder what the First Nations People think of Llosa's comment? I also wonder how the one billion members of cooperatives world-wide feel being told that their coops should not be recognized as property? Could it be the criminals for whom Llosa is the intellectual facade, are preparing for another robbery, seeking to pillage the social economy?
For someone who supports corporate capitalism, touting individual or private property, is laughable hypocrisy. Corporations are forms of collective capitalism. Apply Llosa's concept honestly and corporations are not legitimate property.
See http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/4488
1. Make the lands and machinery of production for common use... And those who... oppose this work of supreme social justice, kill them! Ricardo Flores Magon in the 1910 Mexican Revolution.
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