capitalism

Avoid the Papers.

~ solitaryproletarian ~ 2 Comments
The general reaction here to Trump and Brexit is one of shock, especially among the middle-class who can’t understand how it has all come about.  Hypocrisy reigns.  When it’s not ranting hysterically about the state of things, the establishment is keen to prostrate itself – ostensibly on behalf of the Irish population – in front of the demagogues.
Talk of the usual bowl of shamrock for Trump from Enda Kenny and an invitation to Ireland. In Europe and the US, the collapse of the so-called centre and the resulting re-emergence of the left, has been met with the reaction of the far-right (or alt-right as those pseudo-fascists are now being called – euphemism also reigns.  Newspeak.  Alt-truth, post-truth, ‘Ignorance is strength’).  The liberals seem to detest Trump, but they despise Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour and the socialist movements even more, whom they ridicule when they’re not ignoring.  They use every method to undermine sincere alternatives that threaten their status-quo, even moderate alternatives like Bernie Sanders.  The Irish Examiner has published articles claiming the threat to Irish democracy comes from the left and not the far-right.  Other papers have written virtually the same.  Why analyse politics properly when two ideas can be portrayed as two sides of the same coin.  Ignorance is strength.  Evidence is not needed for their purpose.  The liberal part of the establishment, once again it seems, will sacrifice all social progress and reform for the sake of maintaining economic class divisions and their privileged part within those classes, just as it did in the early 20th-century with Spain and Germany.  ‘History repeats itself, first as tragedy…’
I wrote to my expatriate father:
It’s all quite surreal at times.  Orwellian.  It may be best to avoid the papers. 

Where Trump’s Support comes from

~ solitaryproletarian ~ Leave a comment

In my previous post,  I wrote about how much of the American working-class, in general, reject the ideas of both Clinton and Trump. Where, then, does Trump’s support come from?  In an earlier post I also wrote about how the middle-class is generally more conservative when it comes to things like inequality and climate change, and so members of this class are therefore more likely to be Trump supporters.  The following passage from a recent Guardian column by Sarah Smarsh confirms this:

Earlier this year, primary exit polls revealed that Trump voters were, in fact, more affluent than most Americans, with a median household income of $72,000 – higher than that of Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders supporters. Forty-four percent of them had college degrees, well above the national average of 33% among whites or 29% overall. In January, political scientist Matthew MacWilliams reported findings that a penchant for authoritarianism – not income, education, gender, age or race –predicted Trump support.

These facts haven’t stopped pundits and journalists from pushing story after story about the white working class’s giddy embrace of a bloviating demagogue.

Mainstream media is set up to fail the ordinary American

Based on Trump’s campaign rhetoric and available data, it appears that most of his voters this November will be people who are getting by well enough but who think of themselves as victims.

The column is well worth reading in full.

American Presidents

~ solitaryproletarian ~ Leave a comment

From the two most prominent runners for US President, we could perceive that “anyone can be President – even one of these two”.   You may understand where this kind of argument comes from.  The fact that Trump and Clinton are the forerunners for the Oval Office is surely a perversion of the concept of American freedom?  Hasn’t this concept become stretched and twisted and distorted?  It is surely positive that anyone can campaign to be President, but these two, making it all the way through that great American democratic system?  Surely this is a sick joke taken too far?  Is this an absurd level of democracy?  Too much democracy?  Are we to blame, or is it the stupid half of the country?  America, the land where anyone can be President – it’s the American Dream, right?  And it is reality for Clinton and Trump, in front of us now, in its fantastical magnitude.

Conversely, this so-called race between Clinton and Trump is an example of how unlikely it is for anyone to become President, let alone be able to campaign for election.

Poor people, ordinary working people, and even moderates who fight for the needs of ordinary people may find it nigh impossible to campaign effectively for Presidency.  Even the mildly left-wing Bernie Sanders was swimming against the much stronger establishment current; With all that has happened to the US and its economy in the past few years, the establishment still had no appetite for Sanders.  Of course, millions of people actively supported Sanders in a movement not seen in the US in recent history, but the lives of those activists and supporters, their needs, ideas and voices are of little concern, and the media did not air them.

The central point here is that although anyone can run for President, the main discriminating factors are not intelligence, truth, ethics; They are wealth, power, and ruthlessness, with a dedication and loyalty only to people and institutions who share these traits and the system which encourages it.  Anyone who does even slightly differently, like Sanders, is instinctively expelled by the system itself.

Alas, Sanders was betrayed by his own party whose interests are always corporate, and thus, were choking politically and financially on the very moderate policies Sanders espoused.  He should have known – others did.  Sanders was as bad for the Democratic Party as Trump was for the Republican Party, even if it was for opposite beliefs.  Better, then, for the media to portray him as a crazed radical (or,at least, misguided, during kinder moments) who may have had good intentions, but was not the sensible choice.  Ordinary Sanders voters were not coaxed though.  Unlike Sanders in his defeat, his movement of followers remain convinced that Clinton is not a genuine alternative.  Her being the lesser-evil to Trump is not a point the many newly politically mobilised people find endearing .  They can think for themselves – now more politically sophisticated and experienced than ever.  And they’re talking to each other and convincing each other.  Many thousands of them actually transferred their allegiance from the Democratic Party to Jil Stein and her Green Party.

The resultant argument and movement against voting for the “lesser evil” is the most pervasive I have yet witnessed from the US, and it may not merely be because of visibility on social media (though social media likely helps); In 2008 social media was awash with support for Obama, including from my naive self – there was very little talk then of a third alternative to combat capitalistic trends; Now, social media is awash with confusion and enlightenment in equal quantities firing off in every direction.  This (like everything) is of course potentially very good and bad, and contains the ingredients for social effusion; Disillusion; Revolution; Reaction. Let’s wait and… no.  Let’s discuss, and read, and write, and protest, and see.

 

Adolescent America 

~ solitaryproletarian ~ Leave a comment

If we were to generalise  the American middle class, we could say that it behaves in a way such as a spoilt teenager might, who causes their parents grief because they do not get their own way all of the time.  The fact that global warming is a major concern for the whole planet, or that poverty and inequality increase as a result of current and past American economic policy, shouldn’t get in the way of a middle-class American’s pursuit of wealth, or, indeed, of their delusion of being able to become wealthy.  And utlimately, that’s what it all is, delusion.  Any scientific findings that contradict their illogical perceptions and dreams, are to be ruthlessly fought and suppressed.

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires”.

That quote may have been erroneously attributed to Steinbeck, but there is nonetheless an element of truth to it. Its truth increases if you replace “poor” with “middle-class”.  Some of the American petit-bourgeoisie sure do “love that smell of the emissions”,  as Sarah Palin once so bluntly put it.  “Adolescent America” is now personified through awful Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton – their vacuous bickering, throughout what is supposed to be the highest forum for debate in the US, the Presidential Elections – is starting to look like the last great tantrum of the bourgeois baby boomers.  The politics of American capitalism has certainly reached its crisis.

Credit must be paid, though, to the American working class, who have fought as tirelessly and as determinedly as any working class around the world. They backed Bernie Sanders, and fought for him against all the odds, and although Sanders capitulated to Clinton in the end, that hasn’t caused the core of the  American working-class (educated and energised as it is) to capitulate to the promises of Clinton nor the rhetoric of Trump.

Stand Back Socialist! Stand Back!

~ solitaryproletarian ~ Leave a comment

‘The Will of the People’ would be nothing more than the whim of the tyrant mob, the most blind and ruthless tyrant of all’ – Father Kane

‘All hail, then, to the mob, the incarnation of progress!’ – James Connolly

Business owners and establishment politicians are often represented as the “incarnation of progress” in modern society.  The public is often portrayed as a mass or “mob”, unworthy of making decisions or of the responsibility to change history.  In 1910, James Connolly eloquently and passionately conveyed how it was and is the public – ordinary people together in force and solidarity – who have made the significant changes and improvements in society throughout history.

In 1910 James Connolly wrote Labour Nationality and Religion in response to a discourse against Socialism by Father Kane in Dublin. Father Kane referred to the will of the people, essentially, as the will and rule of the ‘mob’.  Connolly embraces the word mob and uses it to encapsulate the positive role it has played throughout human history.

I thought it would be interesting to share this ever-relevant discourse here, starting with Father Kane’s impression of the public, and then Connolly’s response to it.

Father Kane on socialism and the “mob”:

In Socialism there could be no healthy public opinion, no public opinion at all except that manufactured by officialdom or that artificially cultivated by the demagogues of the mob. There could be no free expression of free opinion. The press would be only the press of the officials. Printing machines, publishing firms, libraries, public halls, would be the exclusive property of the state. We do not indeed advocate utter licence for the press, but we do advocate its legitimate liberty. There would be no liberty of the press under Socialism; no liberty even of speech, for the monster machine of officialdom would grind out all opposition – for the monster machine would be labelled, ‘The Will of the People’, and ‘The Will of the People’ would be nothing more than the whim of the tyrant mob, the most blind and ruthless tyrant of all, because blindly led by blind leaders. Brave men fear no foe, and free men will brook no fetter. You will have thought, in your boyhood, with hot tears, of the deeds of heroes who fought and fell in defence of the freedom of their fatherland. That enthusiasm of your boyhood will have become toned down with maturer years in its outward expression, but mature years will have made it more strong and staunch for ever, more ready to break forth with all the energy of your life and with all the sacrifice of your death in defiance of slavery. You may have rough times to face; you may have rough paths to tread, you may have hard taskmasters to urge you toil, and hard paymasters to stint your wage; you may have hard circumstances to limit your life within a narrow field; but after all your life is your own, and your home is your own, and your wage is your own, and you are free. Freedom is your birthright. Even our dilapidated modern nations allow to a man his birthright – freedom. You would fight for your birthright, freedom, against any man, against any nation, against the world; and if you could not live for your freedom, you would die for it. You would not sell your birthright, freedom, to Satan; and I do not think that you are likely to surrender your birthright, freedom, to the Socialist. Stand back! We are free men. Stand back, Socialist! God has given us the rights of man, to our own life, to our own property, to our own freedom. We will take our chance in the struggle of life. We may have a hard time or a good time, we may be born lucky or unlucky, but we are free men. Stand back, Socialist! God has given us our birthright, freedom, and, by the grace of God, we will hold to it in life and in death.

Connolly’s response:

After you have done laughing at this hysterical outburst we will proceed to calmly discuss its central propositions. To take the latter part first, it is very amusing to hear a man, to whom a comfortable living is assured, assure us that we ought to tell the Socialist that “we will take our chance in the struggle of life…

How can a person, or a class, be free when its means of life are in the grasp of another? How can the working class be free when the sole chance of existence of its individual members depends upon their ability to make a profit for others?

The argument about the freedom of the press – a strange argument from such a source – is too absurd to need serious consideration. Truly, all means of printing will be the common property of all, and if any opposition party, any new philosophy, doctrine, science, or even hair-brained scheme has enough followers to pay society for the labour of printing its publications, society will have no more right nor desire to refuse the service than a government of the present day has to refuse the use of its libraries to the political enemies who desire to use those sources of knowledge to its undoing. It will be as possible to hire a printing machine from the community as it will be to hire a hall. Under Socialism the will of the people will be supreme, all officials will be elected from below and hold their position solely during good behaviour, and as the interests of private property, which according to St. Clement are the sole origin of contention among men, will no longer exist, there will be little use of law-making machinery, and no means whereby officialdom can corrupt the people.

This will be the rule of the people at last realised. But says Father Kane, at last showing the cloven foot, “the will of the people would be nothing more than the whim of the tyrant mob, the most blind and ruthless tyrant of all, because blindly led by blind leaders”. Spoken like a good Tory and staunch friend of despotism! What is the political and social record of the mob in history as against the record of the other classes? There was a time, stretching for more than a thousand years, when the mob was without power or influence, when the entire power of the governments of the world was concentrated in the hands of the kings, the nobles and the hierarchy. That was the blackest period in human history. It was the period during which human life was not regarded as being of as much value as the lives of hares and deer; it was the period when freedom of speech was unknown, when trial by jury was suppressed, when men and women were tortured to make them confess crimes before they were found guilty, when persons obnoxious to the ruling powers were arrested and kept in prison (often for a lifetime) without trial; and it was the period during which a vindictive legal code inflicted the death penalty for more than one hundred and fifty offences – when a boy was hung for stealing an apple, a farmer for killing a hare on the roadside. It was during this undisturbed reign of the kings, the nobles, and the hierarchy that religious persecutions flourished, when Protestants killed Catholics, Catholics slaughtered Protestants, and both hunted Jews, when man “;made in God’s image” murdered his fellow-man for daring to worship God in a way different from that of the majority; it was then that governments answered their critics by the torture, when racks and thumbscrews pulled apart the limbs of men and women, when political and religious opponents of the state had their naked feet and legs placed in tin boots of boiling oil, their heads crushed between the jaws of a vice, their bodies stretched across a wheel while their bones were broken by blows of an iron bar, water forced down their throats until their stomachs distended and burst, and when little children toiled in mine and factory for twelve, fourteen and sixteen hours per day. But at last, with the development of manufacturing, came the gathering together of the mob, and consequent knowledge of its numbers and power, and with the gathering together also came the possibility of acquiring education. Then the mob started upon its upward march to power – a power only to be realised in the Socialist Republic. In the course of that upward march the mob has transformed and humanised the world. It has abolished religious persecution and imposed toleration upon the bigots of all creeds; it has established the value of human life, softened the horrors of war as a preliminary to abolishing it, compelled trial by jury, abolished the death penalty for all offences save one, and in some countries abolished it for all; and to-day it is fighting to keep the children from the factory and mine, and put them to school. The mob, “the most blind and ruthless tyrant of all”, with one sweep of its grimy, toil-worn hand, swept the stocks, the thumbscrew, the wheel, the boots of burning oil, the torturer’s vice and the stake into the oblivion of history, and they who to-day would seek to view those arguments of kings, nobles, and ecclesiastics must seek them in the lumber room of the museum.

In this civilising, humanising work the mob had at all times to meet and master the hatred and opposition of kings and nobles; and there is not in history a record of any movement for abolishing torture, preventing war, establishing popular suffrage, or shortening the hours of labour led by the hierarchy. Against all this achievement of the mob its enemies have but one instance of abuse of power – the French reign of terror – and they suppress the fact that this classic instance of mob fury lasted but eight months, whereas the cold-blooded cruelty of the ruling classes which provoked it had endured for a thousand years.

All hail, then, to the mob, the incarnation of progress!

A Day of Brexit – What Facebook Thought

~ solitaryproletarian ~ Leave a comment

Results of the Brexit Referendum has dominated the narrative over the past 24 hours, through mainstream media and social media.  I thought it would be interesting to share some of the points, observations and opinions on it, from an Irish point-of-view, which were posted on facebook and appeared on my feed.

Tariq Ali:

The Referendum results have created a full-blown crisis in the UK and total panic in Brussels. Denmark and Holland will go next. The French elite will be under huge pressure to concede a referendum. The German establishment will be meeting frequently and in secret to prepare a Plan B, which will mean a serious restructuring of the Eurozone.
It was a revolt against the political establishment (Ed Miliband acknowledged this fact) and had Corbyn come out for LEAVE his party would have been in a very strong position. The Tories are wounded. Labour and others should demand an early election. Impossible to wait till 2020. And the election campaign should be waged fiercely for an anti-capitalist programme and fighting the Right on racism/xenophobia, etc. Mass campaigning of the sort that won Corbyn the leadership is the way forward.

PS: After I debated Varoufakis he came and whispered in my ear: ‘Tariq, don’t doubt that if there is a Brexit, I won’t be shedding any tears.’ Time for him to say it in public…

Screenshot 2016-06-24 at 19.34.47

FB User: 

Corbyn had an opportunity to stand up to the right-wing in his own party and put forward a principled Left and socialist position on the bosses’ club that is the EU. If he had, he would have been vindicated by the popular anger of the working class.

Instead, Corbyn and others on the Left capitulated. To quote Brendan O’Neill, the Left threw their “lot in with the very people it was founded a few hundred years ago to challenge: kings and tyrants and other benign guardians of the stupid people.”

Why? Because they were so frightened of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage that they sided with the Tories and EU to keep them in check? Cowards. Cowards who have abandoned the idea that working class have agency and can defend its own interests without having to rely on the benevolence of its enemies.

There’s a reckoning coming and it’s now time to rebuild a mass socialist alternative that stands in the legacy of Tony Benn and Bob Crow. It’s up to Corbyn et al now to decide which side they want to be on.

Screenshot 2016-06-25 at 11.52.01

Via a Facebook user: 

One thing is clear: The decision of Corbyn, the Labour left, and much of the wider left to support a Remain vote in the EU referendum was an incredible political own goal.

The referendum showed massive working class anger and disaffection. Had they argued for a leave vote, they could have dramatically changed the debate, and been well positioned to benefit from the enormous instability this will cause within the Tory government.

Instead, they sided with the establishment and the capitalist class. In doing so, they allowed UKIP and the populist right to be the main voice of people’s discontent and allowed the debate to be focused to a significant extent on immigration with no effective means of combatting anti-immigrant sentiments.

And of course, taking a remain position hasn’t stopped the Blairites and the media from blaming Corbyn for the result and looking for his head.

And what did they do it all for? To defend the anti-democratic, neo-liberal, racist EU austerity project.

There will now be a political crisis and a major discussion about what kind of exit should happen; it is still possible to cut across and challenge the anti-immigrant right and their narrative. But it would have been a lot easier if the left had held its nerve and stuck to its principles on the EU from the start.

Screenshot 2016-06-24 at 19.43.49

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another Anonymous Facebook User: 

In Barking and Dagenham, where less than half of the population now identify as white British, 62% of people voted to leave. In neighbouring Newham, one of the poorest and also the most ethnically diverse area of the country, 47% voted to leave.

FB User:

Difficult decision to make I’ll admit. Big business, TTIP etc on one side, racist fuckers leading on the other. The left should have properly backed breaking from Europe to take the arguments away from the bigots.

One thing that is clear is this morning is hilarious, “the markets”, the banks, big business have gone demented because of a democratic decision made by an actual population of people, imagine that? Pity the head bangers are heading up the Leave side. And all racists across Europe are going to jump on the bandwagon and raise their profile through this decision. The Left across Europe needs to get its shit together to channel this decision in the correct direction and demonstrate the real reasons this decision is important to stop the neo-liberal agenda of the European project.
A social Europe based on solidarity YES
A Europe based on controlling populations and pushing an economic agenda NO

Screenshot 2016-06-24 at 19.50.56

Ugh, Capitalists … : 

Screenshot 2016-06-24 at 19.59.35

 

Huey P. Ashmore:

People going on about how Brexit is a victory for backward racists like Farage should probably remember that the EU is paying the quasi-dictatorship of Turkey a 3 billion Euro bribe to block Syrian refugees coming into Europe with military force.

Screenshot 2016-06-24 at 20.04.20

Ruth Coppinger TD:

Media and establishment shocked by Brexit. The left case against the undemocratic and neo liberal EU was not as widely publicised as it would have been had Corbyn and the left made it, but those are factors in the large working class turnout that delivered the result. We need a Europe for the millions, not the millionaires.

Screenshot 2016-06-24 at 20.07.24

 

 

Why Bernie Sanders Is Important For Ireland

~ solitaryproletarian ~ Leave a comment

During a conversation with an acquaintance recently, I mentioned that we hear a lot about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in Ireland through our media, but virtually nothing about Bernie Sanders, as if Trump and Clinton were the only two campaigning for the US presidency.  The fact that we don’t hear about Sanders seemed innately important to me and I was (and am) concerned by it.

“It doensn’t really matter though, we can’t vote for them anyway”, was his quick answer.  His reply seemed at first quite clever due to its quickness and his assured tone, but it left me dissatisfied.  It dismissed my concerns as irrelevant.  I was irked by his off-handedness to the issue and the concerns one may have about it.  “Surely, this is an important and relevant issue?” I thought to myself.  At the time, I could not think of a response quickly enough (I was heading out with other friends for a few social drinks and I had not much time to talk).  I knew it was an important thing that we hear about Sanders – it seemed instinctively important – but I had never really given any thought to why it is, and so I could not think of a quick answer to the argument that “it doesn’t really matter” to Irish people.  “Why does it matter?”, I asked myself.

So why then, is it important for people outside of the US to hear about Bernie Sanders and his ideas, as well as Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s?  It is because Sanders represents a political alternative which is relevant to us all, regardless of our nationality, if we come from an ordinary background.  But this political alternative does not represent the interests of corporations and powerful interests in the US or elsewhere around the world.

Sanders has the potential to inspire the Irish working class, to influence our ideas and represents how the working class across the world are actually connected by these common interests.  Much of what Sanders says, is reflected in what Paul Murphy, Ruth Coppinger, et al say in Ireland, or what Jeremy Corbyn says in Britain; despite some political differences, all their arguments rotate around the broad idea of socialism and a re-working of how we organise the running of our society.

The fact that socialism is being discussed in the context of the US presidential election on such a large scale is surely an important thing to talk about too; the US, arguably the most advanced capitalist country on the planet.

 

MLK Day

~ solitaryproletarian ~ Leave a comment

Today, a headline from The Guardian has been shared about on social media: that the ‘Richest 62 people as wealthy as half of world’s population, says Oxfam’.  As one indication of how inequality has widened through the years of austerity – to the benefit of the world’s richest – almost exactly 2 years ago The Guardian wrote how the world’s 85 richest people were as wealthy as half of the world’s population.  Last year it was 80 people.  If wealth inequality continues at this rate, the world’s richest people will fit more comfortably in a van than in a bus.

oxfam bus

Today is Martin Luther King Day.  It is appropriate therefore, that along with this news story I take the opportunity to share some quotes by Dr. King about inequality.   His expressions about charities and philanthropy are also quite relevant to the previous article I published.

“Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.”

“Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.”

“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

“One day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ … When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.”