Green Hell

I am trying to kill my lawn. All 7000 square feet of it. Few things are as stupid as being enslaved to the idea of having your yard look like the top of a billiard table. Perhaps the same sadists that invented the contemporary suburb also invented the lawn. Like the suburbs, where it proliferates like a noxious weed, the lawn serves no purpose, looks sterile, wastes labour and pollutes. Looking back on the history of lawns, it seems snobbery might well be the root cause of the malady. Two hundred years ago only the rich could afford a lawn, since cutting one was a laborious, and relatively costly procedure, involving someone highly skilled with a scythe. The wealthy enjoyed their lawns as both symbols of their wealth and their authoritarian passion for orderliness. Then, alas, in 1880 the lawnmower was invented and the middle classes, joyously emulating their masters, began replacing their back gardens with the Green Menace. I am attempting to eliminate the monstrosity that I have inherited when I bought my house and replace it with wild flowers, herbs, and fruit-bearing shrubs. But I am not alone in this endeavor.

Counterpunch ran an article on lawn elimination and there is even a

http://www.fritzhaeg.com/garden/initiatives/edibleestates/main.html

Web Site web site devoted to the cause. Homeowners of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your lawns!

Contempt

Only a people filled with contempt for others could march in and seize a territory, then expel or Working people have died by the millions – and are still dying – in unsafe mines and factories and the boss-classes wars. Only rulers filled with contempt for working people could do such a thing. Of course, this contempt is rationalized with verbiage about “survival of the fittest”, “national interest” and self-aggrandizing prattle about “expertise” and “leadership.”

Latin America was pillaged first by British companies and now by US corporate and governmental interests, the latter with their death squads and torture schools having introduced an unprecedented level of sadism. For the Imperial Masters to commit such crimes, they must feel the deepest contempt for the people they persecute and exploit. All callously written off with, “Well, they are only Indians, anyway,” or they are “communists” or have “an inferior culture.”

For several thousand years (at least) women and children have been humiliated, degraded, abused, beaten and raped by patriarchal society. Only men (and female Quislings) full of contempt (self-contempt for the later) would treat their sisters, mothers, wives and offspring in this manner. All the silly self-serving rationalizations are trotted out - “women are less intelligent”, children are “ignorant”, “their place is to obey.”

The fact is, the folks held in contempt by the Masters are actually SUPERIOR to them, (1) and maintaining that contempt is an unending task. What a constant struggle it is to prop up this facade! In spite of “inferiority”, the “natives” know the country and teach the arrogant, stupid white man how to live there, the workers keep things running and produce the wealth, not their inept and parasitic bosses, Latin Americans possess a history and culture that makes the Gringos look like poor uncultured wretches, women are usually wiser than men and children easily see through the adult's childish ideologically-rooted obsessions.

Now you might well ask that if contempt is a mask, a cover-up for exploitation and bullying, what is it about the dominators that makes them wish to commit these crimes? In part, we are dealing with deep-rooted insecurity. The need to trample over others to become “someone”, the overweening lust for power, all speak of people who need to bolster their egos in an obsessive manner. In reading the lives of the ruling classes, we often discover a family life of cold, distant parents and authoritarian schooling or upbringing. These are common roots of emotional insecurity.. We also read of the many “Little Caligulas”, the sociopathic spoiled brats of the ruling class. They have no empathy for the ordinary person, and if they have to kill a hundred thousand of them to pursue a political or economic goal, it is no more than stepping on a bug. Neurotics and sociopaths, our Masters are emotionally sick. Rather than, when the time comes, putting them up against the wall – as emotionally satisfying as that might be – they ought instead to be placed in institutions for the criminally insane.

1. True enough, during a class system's “Heroic Period” the rulers are quite often people of intelligence and character, however, during a time of decline, such as the present, the lesser types take charge. Compare Washington and Bush, Gladstone and Blair, and you get the idea.

The Myth Of Socialism As Statism

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 18^th 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 Bolsheviks 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.

Decadence

Well, I am back again. Now settled in, I can resume blogging. Thanks to all of you who cheered on my retirement.

I previously wrote (May 03 05) about intellectual decadence in the US, as exemplified by the spread of irrationalism and superstition. But this is not the only form of decadence, nor is this just an American problem. Where the need to control populations takes precedence over everything else, decadence will always arise.

Political Decadence
With political decadence, all political parties become essentially the same. Today, all mainstream parties - even the Greens - indulge in forms of neoconnery. Gone is any pretense of challenging the corporate system. The elimination of different viewpoints shuts off debate and represses alternative policies. Political health is indicated by multiple parties with different views, which attract and involve the overwhelming majority of the population. Today you have a rapid decline in party memberships, and a fall-off in voting. The channels that would allow gradual change are blocked. A society in a state of political decadence will either collapse, become a dictatorship, or have a revolution.

With political decadence, only inferior individuals decide on a political career. Crusading lawyers, social gospel clergy, academics and statesmen once filled the Commons. (1) These have been replaced by carpetbaggers, hate cultists and semi-literate nobodies. While egotism and graft were always part of politics, now these seem the only reasons for a political career. The old politicians would lie to cover themselves, now they lie as a matter of principle. In the past, even Conservatives were motivated by a desire to help the average person, think only of John Diefenbaker and the Old Age Pension and the Charter of Rights. Today the political game is to harm as many people as you can and then gloat to the media about your crimes.
Media Decadence

Part of the problem of political decadence is rooted in media decadence. Any party which deviates from the party-line that all parties must follow is shouted down and marginalized by the media. Imagine if the NDP actually decided to take on the corporations. They would be inundated with slanderous propaganda.

While the mass media of the 1950's and '60's was also hostile to labour, minorities, the peace and student movements, most of the important writers and commentators were not. In fact, people like Pierre Berton, June Caldwell, Peter Gzoski, Barbara Frum and Alan Fotheringham were progressive and sympathetic. The odd right-wing moon bat was kept around for entertainment purposes only, as ex-MacLeans Magazine editor, Peter Newman claimed of Barbara Amiel, er, rather Lady Black of Crossbarhotel.

Good progressive writers and commentators have not disappeared - think only of Avi Lewis and Naomi Cline . But they are marginalized. The place of Berton, Caldwell etc., has been filled with pudgy nonentities churning out Neocon boilerplate.

Mass media decadence leads people to develop alternative media. But the most of the population is not aware of the alternative sources and relies upon the totalitarian mass media. This leads to a dumbing-down of the population, and the creation of a vicious circle of ignorance and right-wing reaction.

1. John Diefenbaker, the crusading prairie lawyer, Tommy Douglas, the social gospel Baptist minister, Pierre Trudeau, the academic, and Mike Pearson, the statesman.

The Sorrows of Retirement

My last day of work was this Friday. I am at once overjoyed to be free at last from wage slavery, yet a bit sad at the same time. No, I will not miss working, it has nothing to do with that. What makes me sad is the thought that my generation might be the last to end a life of slavery with ten or twenty good years left to enjoy living. The corruption our society has undergone in the last 25 years is such, that the rulers in their sociopathic greed are trying to force people to work longer. We have seen pensionable age extended in Italy and the UK and there is much noise in the media about the so-called upcoming social security crisis in the US. Private pensions have disappeared, more correctly stolen by the companies that were once obliged to provide these services to their loyal slaves.
The propaganda that "we cannot afford to pension the boomers" is total rubbish. At most it would cost another couple of percentage points of GDP, and this from a system that has been happy in the past to squander 40% of the GDP on murdering people, oops, sorry, I mean in wars.
Yes, there are jobs from which one would not wish to retire. These are the jobs that integrate life and work. Think of being a professional musician who is paid to play the music he or she likes, or an archeologist. But not much work is like that. Most work is shit work and we do it only to survive. Even if it isn’t shit work, having to do it for 40 hours a week makes it a drag. Hence, the majority of us look forward to our pension cheques and the free time to do what we really want to do.
A foolish person might well ask me, "Why do you care, you got your pension!" I can answer right now, that such a person ignores the fundamental reality that everything is interconnected with everything else. If the younger generation are bullied into working till the last ounce of labor is squeezed out of them, for sure, the society that would do such a thing is going to be unpleasant in other ways. Such greed and inhumanity might mean cutting my pension or the services offered to the elderly. Such amorality might mean the end of medicare. Minimally, the level of suffering would increase and this would have a negative effect upon society as a whole – a society I remain part of. Even if I did not suffer materially, at the very least, it is no pleasure to see others suffer. The suffering of others I consider a degradation of my personal environment.
My sadness has been tempered by the massive demonstrations and strikes in France. The people are revolting against the bloodsuckers who seek to degrade their living standards and working conditions. If this is the beginning of a trend, then future generations will not have to worry about their retirement.

Fudging The Issues Part 2

Fighting vs. Warfare

People have always fought. They get angry over something and slap each other around. Such quarrels might even lead to murder. Young males with more testosterone than brains might pick a beef with other equally mindless young males of a neighboring tribe and start a long-lasting feud. But fighting is not war. To have war you must have an army. To have an army you must have a state. Warriors are not soldiers. They are independent individuals fighting as individuals to prove how brave they are or to revenge themselves for some real or imagined slight. Soldiers are part of a machine, ordered around like robots and are in the army either because they have been conscripted or for the pay.

Warriors feud, raid and take prisoners as hostages or slaves, but they don’t generally seize and hold territory and its inhabitants. An army exists to conquer the enemy and grab its land, towns and people, enlarging the power, territory and labor force of the ruling class. War is essentially an imperialist venture. War is about power and wealth accrued through violence. Fighting is about any number of things.

War requires the existence of a state. Fighting pre-exists the state.

War and fighting are usually confused. As in the case of status and class, I think the confusion is ideologically based. Since interpersonal violence is not that uncommon, and war and fighting are confused, it becomes easy to claim that humans are naturally warlike. This attitude is an apology for war and imperialism. Opponents of war are branded as naive, since "war is natural" and "they are going against human nature."

Fudging The Issues Part 1

Status vs. Class Hierarchies

The other day I Googled "class division, origins" and other than the usual and expected tiresome Marxist stuff, got nothing. It figures, for when doing research on
The Primal Wound in the Concordia University Library, I looked for books on class origin, and orthodox anthropology had nothing to say on the subject. But they do have loads to say about STATUS.
The problem for me, however, is there is a world of difference between CLASS and STATUS. Luciano Pavarotti is a wealthy man and has all the status that you could ever want. Yet, he has no power to force anyone to do anything, nor does he exploit anyone. If he is rich it is because we like his music and pay to hear it. The most miserable small town petty bureaucrat has more power over us than Pavarotti.

Status is based upon respect for ability. One cannot force status anymore than one can force love. In a natural society – i.e. one that has neither state nor class, there is oodles of status. Since the notion of status is based upon ability, you thus have a wide number of statuses - the best poet, best dancer, best potter, best lover, best gardener, best carpenter, best warrior, best hunter, best conciliator, etc. And since ability generally improves with practice, most people in such a community, will in time, achieve status. Indeed, all will, if they live long enough, since the old are the repository of knowledge. Someone who might have been mediocre in everything earlier on, will still be respected as a Village Elder, late in life.

In such a society status becomes a factor for both survival and social cohesion. (The wide range of statuses makes for social cohesion – if only a tiny minority could achieve any level of status, there would be envy and destructive competition.) The best people are chosen for the job, and where community mobilization is needed, a natural leadership arises. If the leadership fails, those involved descend in status. Since they rely on the active support of their fellow villagers, they have no choice other than to hand their leadership over to others.

In a status-based society, there is no ability to coerce. The high-status cannot force others to do anything, all they can do is ask, plead, or at worst, slyly manipulate. There is no army, no police, no bureaucracy to bully people. A class society, on the other hand, is founded directly on the ability of a minority to coerce the majority.

Class society, creates a false sense of status. The king, priest or general, might well be (and usually is) the worst person in his society, both vicious and incompetent, yet having the ability to terrorize, creates the pretense of being the best, the wisest, the holiest. A chief in a status society, is often no richer than his fellows, or if he does hold the clan wealth in trust, he must give it away in a potlatch. The king, "nobility", or capitalist owns much of the wealth of society as his personal property and forces other to give him their wealth through state-enforced taxes, tithes, corvees and unequal contracts backed by potential violence.

This is not the place to discuss the origins of class society, but I wish to get back to my original point that orthodox anthropology ignores this issue. They fudge or deliberately confuse status and class. Since status is found virtually everywhere among human societies, by confusing class and status the underlying and very ideological assumption is that class society is therefore natural. Making something appear natural when it isn’t, is a common method of control. Orthodox anthropology engages in a cover-up of the origins of our present coercive and exploitative system.