Wednesday, November 05, 2014
The
Oxford English Dictionary definition of work:
actions, doings, task, actions involving effort or exertion directed
at a definite end.
One
way our economic system is totally screwed up has to do with what is
considered work. Note well, the dictionary says work consists of
effort or action with a purpose. This means any
physical or mental activity with an end result in mind is work.
Hence, playing the violin is work, as is making breakfast, studying
philosophy, pulling weeds in the garden or volunteering for a
community organization.
Pretty
straight forward eh? But not in our idiot economic system. How so?
Suppose you are on welfare and volunteer 30 hours a week at a seniors
residence, or you are a stay-at-home parent. The capitalist system,
or rather its shills, do not consider you to be working. The notion
of work has been distorted, changed from purposeful
effort,
to solely that which brings monetary reward. Everything else, even
working 16 hours a day as a volunteer, is considered non-work, and
hence of not much value to society.
Sick
eh? But hang on, it gets worse. While the aforementioned volunteering
welfare recipient is considered a parasite, even though she is doing
something very beneficial, if she instead worked in a napalm factory,
she would be considered a useful member of society! Doing something
that ends up killing people is OK, helping them is not.
In
a capitalist society wage labour is the only form of work that is
directly profitable for the capitalist. Hence, the need to denigrate
all other forms of work, as these forms threaten the ability to
exploit labour. But in the real world, the one that exists outside
of that concocted by those fantasy-spinners, the "economists",
so much of what is valuable in life is done freely and without
monetary compensation as the ultimate goal.
Society
would collapse without this important form of work. Think what would
happen if no one raised their children, looked after their houses and
yards, or volunteered for the innumerable groups and associations
that keep the societal wheels turning. If the system had to pay for
all of this non-paid work, there wouldn't be enough money to do so.
In
the long term, we ought to abolish the wage system as the IWW has
demanded since 1905. In the meantime, a Guaranteed Annual Income
would help reestablish work in its authentic sense. Everyone
would get the GAI and there would be much more freedom to work at
what people were really interested in doing.
While
on the topic of work, it is necessary to talk about "laziness."
People who are less willing to engage in what the sheeple
consider "real work", ie wage labour, are denigrated as
lazy. However,
I have never met a lazy person.
People who sit around and no nothing are usually suffering from
depression. There is also a type of sociopath who sponges off
people. But most people deemed lazy by the sheeple are usually those
who want to do something other than slave for a boss. Take
bohemians, or the contemporary equivalent. They spend most of their
waking hours writing, painting, creating music, studying etc. The
sheeple consider them "lazy long-haired bums", yet after
they are dead, these same haters will idolize them as "creative
geniuses." Laziness is a myth, and was concocted to malign and
control those people whose interests and work does not have an
immediate or obvious monetary aspect.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Thursday, October 09, 2014
Warning to Neo-Con Liars
The
ex-Stalinist MORNING STAR, the Trotskyist, Committe For a Workers
International, SWP-UK, the 4th International, the
International Marxist Tendency, the independent socialist Nouveau
Parti Anticapitaliste and La Bataille Socialiste, all the anarchist
and syndicalist tendencies I can find, ALL support the Kurdish people
in their struggle against the IS, giving critical support (or better)
to the PKK and the Syrian Kurdish YPG. Indeed non-Kurdish militants are fighting right now in Kobane along side the Kurds.
So usual journalistic suspects, let's not hear any bellowing that the left refused to support the Kurds or was soft on ISIS. right here you are proven wrong before you even utter your filth!
Friday, October 03, 2014
A 25 Year Economic Depression?
A
CIA analyst says that the stock market is close to having a 70%
down-turn - a 25 year long depression and the demise of the American
Empire will result. (*) Will this happen? Maybe not as soon as he
says, but you can't go on printing money and creating stock bubbles
without crashing at some point. The way I see it, the crash could
come any time now within in the next 5 years.
A
25 year depression? That we should be so lucky! Lucky you say, given
all the suffering that such an event would entail? Well, if you want
to see suffering, think run-away climate change. This could result in
the loss of hundreds of millions, even billions of lives. If
something isn't done in the 10-20 year window of opportunity we have,
that nightmare scenario will certainly unfold. Everyone other than
Koch-rotted climate change deniers knows this, but nothing is being
done to offset this coming disaster.
We,
the people, simply don't have the strength to force through the
necessary economic changes. Our sociopathic ruling classes simply
ignore the mass protests and go on as ever. If we get serious they
use state terror to crush us. (We see this already in Canada, with
non-violent environmental protestors criminally slandered as a
“terrorist threat.”)
One
important result of the 2008 Crisis was a free fall in the use of
petroleum. The price of a barrel fell from $140 to $42. Admittedly,
the higher price was in part a result of speculation, but this
speculation was in itself based on the hope of a higher demand. What
happened in 2008 was that people began driving less to save money.
The masses of unemployed also didn't have a job to drive to. The
lower demand for goods also meant less petroleum use, both in the
manufacturing processes (think oil-based plastics) and in
transportation of those products. This fall off in demand will occur in the coming
crisis.
Shale
and tar sand oil was, and will be, negatively effected. This form of
oil production needs about $80 a barrel to be profitable. Below that
and they fold up shop. Furthermore, the tar sands are themselves a
major source of CO2.
With
the Economic Crisis Chapter 2, the whole developed world becomes like
Cuba enduring the the Yanqui economic blockade and the loss of
Russian sugar purchases. People cease buying, recycling and repairing
become the norm. Creative individuals discover that new products can
be produced locally in small shops and vast factories and corporate
agglomerations are unnecessary, indeed an impediment to a rational
system. Urban farming spreads. Local currencies are created to
replace the worthless official money. People leave the suburbs for
the cities or villages and the most wasteful way of living ever
devised is abandoned. The global economy continues to contract, and
in a virtuous circle ever further reduces the production of atmospheric
CO2.
A
lengthy and deep depression, by reducing CO2 emissions may well be
the action that buys us more time, enough time to finally get our
act together and change the system and create a sustainable,
steady state economy. Perhaps we can avoid the horrors of
run-away climate change. (This
is the first time I have felt anything positive in years.)
The
depression may well be a factor in speeding up the process of social
and economic change. As of this moment, in spite of the hard times,
the austerity and endless war-mongering, the majority of the
population sit on their hands. Yet, surveys show this same majority
are not at all happy with the present conditions. They are just fence
sitting. Yet, many of them continue to vote for their worst enemies
and the people demonstrating in the streets are only a minority. Perhaps they sit
back out of fear, hanging on to what they have. Perhaps it is like
the situation of the frog in the gradually heating pot of water,
the negative effects haven't reached them yet. A second major shock
should knock them off that fence into active opposition. (**)
Once
the vast majority are in open opposition, the system is going down
the same road that East Germany took in 1989. State terror, so useful
against minorities, - think the suppression of Occupy in the USA -
becomes a dangerous option against majorities. It will only serve to
further inflame them. Support for the system could end up reduced to
the elite and their lackeys. At this point the political system would
collapse and could be replaced by the new forms of democracy that
have been gestating over the last three decades or more.
**
It is true that some of this opposition may gravitate to the
nationalist or fascist right, but that is a topic for another
discussion – too long for a footnote!
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
The Joys of Neo-Liberalism
From
1947 to 1973, Latin America experienced a 70% rise in real wages per
capita. States had the capacity to both distribute wealth and sustain
growth. They showed no need to subscribe wholesale to the capitalism
that dominated the American economic scene
Between the Reagan and Clinton administrations (1980 to 1998), Latin America’s average per capita income did not increase at all.
Looking
at Latin America’s poverty from the 1960s on evinces something
more: about 10% of the region’s denizens were destitute by today’s
subsistence standards of less than 2$ a day; however, by 1996, a
third of Latin America was poor by the same standards. After just two
decades of changes in international trade, ownership and sundry laws,
165 million Latin Americans were impoverished. Unfortunately, by
2005, regional poverty had increased from its 1996 levels, numbering
220 million poor.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/12/latin-america-and-the-us-techno-empire/
Thursday, September 18, 2014
How to Expose Right Wing Propaganda in the Media
Saturday, September 13, 2014
And More information on the Kurds and Murray Bookchin's Communalism
Article
by Janet Biehl -
http://new-compass.net/articles/bookchin-%C3%B6calan-and-dialectics-democracy
A
video of her speech written above -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBfK3ye_SBc
Social
ecology in the Mountains of Kurdistan -
http://www.kurdishquestion.com/insight-research/analysis/socialism-gender-equality-and-social-ecology-in-the-mountains-of-kurdistan/81-socialism-gender-equality-and-social-ecology-in-the-mountains-of-kurdistan.html