Wobbly times number 197

Writings of Daniel Deleon: A Collection of Essays by One of the Founders of American Revolutionary Socialism by Daniel de Leon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The best introduction to socialism you can get. DeLeon deals with reformist tactics, revolutionary unionism, the abolition of wage labour, the change necessary in the mode of production and the establishment of common ownership of the collective product of labour...aka socialism. From here, go to "Value, Price and Profit" and then to "CAPITAL" v.1-v.4 THEORIES OF SURPLUS VALUE.

The reader can safely disregard DeLeon's bitter rejection of the post-1908 IWW. In this reader's opinion the Preamble to the Constitution of the IWW actually improved after 1908 and was in no way an endorsement of anti-political sects.

View all my reviews

Wobbly times number 185

Workers produce the wealth of nations for wages.

The upper 10% own 80% of the wealth workers
produce.  The social wage gets some of that
wealth back to the workers.  The social wage
is funded by taxes on the wealth workers
produce.  Trickle down economic theory states
that the taxes on the upper 10% should be cut.
This leads to the declaration of 'budget emergencies' 
by conservative politicians and to calls for
either more regressive taxes e.g. widening and
raising the GST or cuts to public health, education
and welfare, including the age pension.

How much wealth would be produced in Australia
during the month of May, if everyone who depends
on wages to make a living went on general strike
from May 1st to May 31st?

Wobbly times number 178

My dialogue with Jennifer on how 
shamanism relates to Bataille, Marechera 
and the upheaval of 60s freaks who 
used psychedelic substances as catalysts 
to transgress the bounds of 
"The Death Culture" while 
attempting to create an alternative 
society; but failed to transcend the 
domination of Capital in the end.

Wobbly times number 150

On progressive nationalism

"The right of self-determination means that a nation may arrange its life in the way it wishes. It has the right to arrange its life on the basis of autonomy. It has the right to enter into federal relations with other nations. It has the right to complete secession. Nations are sovereign, and all nations have equal rights."  Stalin, Marxism and the National Question

To speak or write about 'nations' doing this or that or having rights is a prime example of reification.  Stalin was a revolutionary social democrat in 1913 when he wrote the above and like Stalin, most social democrats of the time thought similarly about the right of national self-determination.  The ever growing move away from promoting class conscious praxis for the abolition of the wage system, toward what might be called 'progressive nationalism' on the eve of World War I, demonstrates how far the socialist workers' movement which Marx and Engels had been part of, had been coopted and folded into the dominant ideas of the capitalist epoch through reified thinking in general and political opportunism in particular.  

As Marx critically observed about reification in The Holy Family Chapter VI

"Once man is recognised as the essence, the basis of all human activity and situations, only 'Criticism' can invent new categories and transform man himself into a category and into the principle of a whole series of categories, as it is doing now. It is true that in so doing it takes the only road to salvation that has remained for frightened and persecuted theological inhumanity. History does nothing, it “possesses no immense wealth”, it “wages no battles”. It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights; “history” is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims."

Nationalism is the political movement of the capitalist class (aka the bourgeoisie) to achieve domination of the producing classes through the establishment of its own political State.  The conception of national sovereignty for the capitalist class develops within and emerges from the womb of feudalism, the system the bourgeoisie sublates via political revolution.  Under feudalism, political power is held by the aristocratic class and sovereignty is in the hands of a monarch, aka the sovereign.  Thus, the 'right of national self-determination' is the political program of those rulers in waiting who wish to impose the wage system on the majority, the working class.    

Colonialism grew out of aristocratic class rule and the well learned historical examples for the projections of class power presented by the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Sumerian etc. slave owning classes.  The primary difference between the ancient domination of slave producers within empires, from feudalistic empire building, was the ever growing wealth and consequent political power of the capitalist class, a class which began to seethe and chafe under aristocratic rule as its colonialist mercantilism expanded in historical tandem with the closing of the commons by aristocrats in search of private sources of wealth.  Privatisation by class ruled governments is hardly a new concept.  Henry VIII made vagabond (read 'unemployed) peasants criminals, having them hanged along the roadsides of his kingdom. However, the major political-economic consequence of the closing of the commons was the ever growing employment of displaced peasants as wage-labourers, the workers who created the product of their collective labour as commodities, owned by the employing class and made available in markets for sale with a view to profit.  In the West, this roiling, ever wealth accumulating capitalist class began to show its political face in alliance with the landlord class in parliamentary institutions. In the ideological sphere the decline of feudalism was marked by the gradual decline of feudalist legitimising religions e.g. in Europe, the Catholic Church and with that decline, the rise of the Protestant movement with its work ethic and the ever dominating ideology, bourgeois individualism.  "Dieu et mon droit" was dying.

Whether or not it is labeled 'progressive', nationalist ideology is based on the notion that the employers and the workers have class interests in common.  But within the inherently exploitive wage-system, exploiters and producers have no class interests in common: Buyers do not have interests in common with sellers when they come to the marketplace for commodities.  Anti-colonialist nationalism has been and is the struggle of nascent ruling classes to cement their sovereign rule over the producing classes of workers and peasants through the establishment of a political State.  While the establishment of a capitalist political State may liberate the bourgeois from domination by monarchists or faraway colonial ruling classes, it does nothing, in terms of promoting the emancipation of the workers from wage-slavery.  

"The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the workers themselves"   This was the principle on which the First International was based.  That principle is as true now as it was then.  The wage-system existed then and it exists now, even within political States labeled, 'socialist'.  

In order to emancipate themselves, the workers will have to abandon contemporary leftist mythologies concerning 'progressive nationalism', 'boring from within' the pro-capitalist trade unions and parties, as well as the absurdly conservative notion of, 'a fair day's wage for a fair day's work.'  Until they do, they will continue to spend their lives, as they spend their money, as wage-slaves, all equal under the law, in their own identities, democratically voting for bourgeois to lead them in government, while competing with each other for approval-votes from employers--because, as bourgeois ideology goes, the only way one can be free is if, some other one is un-free.  C'est la vie under the rule of Capital.    

Wobbly times number 145

For those who attempt to understand the material universe using dialectical logic, there are conceptual tools which the mind can use to orient perceptions within the myriad phenomena: the unity of opposites, the categories of universal, particular and individual and the totality, among others e.g. the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative change.  The following is my own dialectical analysis of 'identity politics':

Classes developed within classless populations of hunter/gatherers as agriculture and animal husbandry were brought into being--products of human labour and innovation.  This occurred first around 10,000 years ago when humans began their march out of a total dependence on hunting, fishing and gathering within Nature alone, towards class dominated civilisation in which human beings had some certainty and control over the security of their food supplies, which had previously been left to the dependency structures demanded of humans adapting to their immediate, multiple Earth-wide environments; the exodus out of Africa put humans everywhere by 8,000 BCE.  This was the moment when humans first discovered that certain plant foods could be domesticated, along with the possibility of domestication of certain animals. Breeding domestic animals was, I think, the beginning of a 'scientific' understanding of reproduction amongst humans i.e. the parts which males and females played in the process, which beforehand had remained ensconced, within the sphere of human reason, in mystified religious explanation.  

Within pre-agricultural society, political power remained at an egalitarian level. Along with the politics of dominance and submission, based on private ownership of wealth which mark the generation of class society, came other dynamics of unequal political power, most especially that between men and women.  Patriarchal systems of dominance and submission sprang from necessities born of maintaining the dominance of the class of appropriators of wealth over the producers of wealth. During the earliest ages of planned production, the political dominance of owners of food surpluses of domesticated plants and animals grown and raised on their private land over and above that of the immediate needs for sustenance of producers themselves became the accepted norm. These owners of food surplus became the first ruling class. The mutual recognition amongst humans within their communities that private ownership of surplus was just, led to rules/laws for maintaining and protecting the priority of private ownership of property/wealth over possible communal need, an aspect of human social relations absent in the classless hunter/gatherer societies. This dominance (inherently an aspect of political power) was and continues to be maintained through force and violence or the implied threat of same within the social relations between human beings organised in political States. This phenomenon also occurs, most often murderously, within the political boundaries of so-called, 'failed States', e.g. 2012 Somalia.  The violence inherent in the political relationship between men and women flows out of the ownership of surplus wealth and the mutual recognition inherent in sustaining private ownership of same.  Within this mutual recognition, lie the seeds of the modern political State, the form of government within civilisations based on class rule and the maintenance of patriarchal forms of marriage.  

Class rule is perpetuated in the patriarchal organisation of class society and justified to its members on the basis of the need to identify offspring in the male line in order to pass on accumulated wealth.  Monogamy and polygamy become the only legitimate forms of marriage recognised within class society's political State.  These marriage forms are a direct result of the dynamics of unequal political power fundamental to the establishment of class divided society. They reflect a legitmation of male control over the female and a generalised preference for maintaining male ownership of lion's share of the class society's collectively produced wealth.  And with wealth comes dialectical opposite, political power. (I realise that there have been exceptions to this rule in history e.g.  Queen Elisabeth I, Gina Rinehart, Cleopatra and so on.)

Applying a dialectical analysis to what is known today as 'identity politics', one can logically discern the interconnection or unity of opposites within the various levels of the universal, particular and individual.  On the universal level, we can start with living beings.  Amongst the living beings, we can logically separate life into plants and animals--flora and fauna.  The totality of life, of course, continues to exist, independent of our efforts to logically grasp particulars and individuals within it. Amongst the animals, we can logically separate forms of life into various species, including, human beings. Most animal types are divided sexually between male and female. Exceptions, of course are those animals such as amoeba which replicate through self division.  Amongst humans we can further logically divide, in our minds, necessarily connected opposites or unities into classes, based on the producers of wealth and the appropriators of same.   

The differences between identity politics and class politics start with differing philosophical dynamics.  Identity politicos are committed to positively maintaining themselves as a particular ideological subset within the totality of humanity.  Class conscious workers are committed to negating themselves as a class and with that material feat, the elimination of the ideological subset of class. Whereas the practitioners of identity politics emphasise the positive differences between their particular identity and those who are not of their  identity, maintaining and recognising their identities of ideological subsets in the present and into the future; class conscious workers see the need to differentiate between the class interests of those who produce wealth from those who appropriate the lion's share in order to end this macro-dynamic of political power.  Ending the political domination of one human being over another is the end result of negating the class dominated civilisation.  Equal political power between all human individuals is communist praxis.       

To be sure, a worker can be for negating the negation of class rule while embracing some particular ideological subset of humanity.  Most individuals in this day and age identify themselves with one or more of these ideological subsets e.g.: the national, the religious, the political, the philosophical, the professional and so on.  Most individuals mentally place their various ideological identities into some hierarchical priority.  Most individuals who engage in identity politics, not only self-identify as this or that part of the myriad ideological subsets of humanity, they also identify other human beings as belonging some ideological subset of humanity, whether they, the others, want to be so identified or not.  A prominent example is race.  Although, most anthropologists and biologists would agree that there is only one race amongst human beings, the great mass of people have been socially schooled to identify two, three or more races amongst humans.  On the positive side, one human will identify him or herself as being 'white' or 'black' or 'red' etc.  By positive, I don't mean 'good', I mean more or less the affirmative, a 'yes' to the question, 'which race are you?' followed by the answer, 'I am this or that separate race.'

Identity politics have everything to do with saying, "I am".  Identity politics become for many individuals, a preferred escape route from the social alienation and oppression which are generated within the power dynamics of class dominated civilisation and its governmental expression, the political State. The longed for community (Gemeinschaft), which humans lost when they developed class dominated civilisation, expresses itself in stunted form with identity politics.  Identity politics can lead in all kinds of political directions, from a conservative's embrace of a particular nation State or race, to a liberal's love affair with celebrating the diversity of 'races' (which don't exist on a biological level) and nation States, which after all, are the governing structures of class rule.  

Identity politics are about preserving an ideological subset of humanity, of positively identifying one's self or one's perceptions of others as being something other, more than 'just' another alienated individual human being in class society. Within the scope of identity politics comes the struggle to place one identity's priority over another identified subset.  Thus, in racist politics, one race is given priority over another.  In sexist politics, one sex is given priority over another.  Where physical power to coerce is non-existent, moral suasion is used to promote political hierarchies of identity. In the dynamics of political power, dominance and submission always come into play.  With moral suasion comes brow beating guilt into those who will not submit sufficiently to the other identity's perceived priority.  Thus, the inherent tie to class dominated civilisation's social psychology of sado-masochism continues to be generated through identity politics.  As a result, the possibility for members of the working class to see themselves as the producers of all wealth not found in Nature and emancipating themselves from the exploitation inherent in the wage system i.e. making a social revolution for themselves, is retarded at best and at worst is squelched from yet another direction. 

Cui bono?  

About 10% of the population, the ones who scarf up over 70% of the world's wealth--the ruling classes on our planet, who, along with their flunkies, are the ones who benefit from maintaining the rule of the social relation Marx called Capital.

Wobbly times number 109

Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War
by Joe Bageant

These "Dispatches from America's class war" ring as true as America's Liberty Bell. Of course like the "Liberty Bell", the American Revolution's promise of "liberty and justice for all" cracked on first use. As with other bourgeois democracies, the ideals of the the American capitalist revolution were undermined by class rule. Liberty, equality and fraternity tended to break down under the rule of Capital, where, as the old wag's saying about the golden rule goes, those with the most gold, have made the rules. What Joe Bageant has done in DEER HUNTING WITH JESUS is to give his readers an up-to-date snapshot concerning the preemptions of America's revolutionary ideals as he focuses on the lower strata of the rural based working class. His microcosmic example is focused on the majority of the people who now live and work in his old home town of Winchester, Virginia. To be sure, he also shines in a light on his fellow workers' rulers: the lawyers, real estate agents, landlords and small business people (aka `cockroach capitalists', in Old Wob tongue).

Bageant describes Winchester's cockroach capitalists this way:

"Members of the business class, that legion of little Rotary Club spark plugs, are vital to the American corporate and political machine. They are where the institutionalized rip-off of working class people by the rich corporations finds its footing at the grassroots level, where they can stymie any increase in the minimum wage or snuff out anything remotely resembling a fair tax structure. Serving on every local governmental body, this mob of Kiwanis and Rotarians has connections. It can get that hundred acres rezoned for Wal-Mart or a sewer line to that two-thousand-unit housing development at taxpayer expense. When it comes to getting things done locally for big business, these folks, with the help of their lawyers, can raise the dead and give eyesight to the blind. They are God's gift to the big nonunion companies and the chip plants looking for a fresh river to piss cadmium into--the right wing's can-do boys. They are so far right they will not even eat the left wing of a chicken." p.45

Mr. Bageant peppers his aphoristic style with enough humour to keep all the but the most dour social stoic smiling. In his chapter titled, "Valley of the Guns" (a piece of writing sure to upset liberal gun control advocates like Michael Moore), Bageant explains his book's title.

"To nonhunters, the image conjured by the title of this book might seem absurd, rather like a NUKE THE WHALES bumper sticker. But the title also captures something that moves me about the people I grew up with, the intersection between hunting and religion in their lives. The link between protestant fundamentalism and deer hunting goes back to colonial times, when the restless Presbyterian Scots, along with English and German Protestant reformers, pushed across America, developing the unique hunting and farming-based frontier cultures that sustained them over most of America's history. Two hundred years later, they have settled down, but they have not quit hunting and they have not quit praying. Consequently, today we find organizations such as the Christian Deer Hunters Association (christiandeerhunters.org), which offers convenient pocket-size books of meditations, such as "Devotions for Deer Hunters", to help occupy the time during those long waits for game. Like their ancestors, deer hunters today understand how standing quietly and alone in the natural world leads to contemplation of God's gifts to man. And so, when a book like "Meditations for the Deer Stand" is seen in historical context, it is no joke. For those fortunate enough to spend whole days quietly standing in the November woods just watching the Creator's world, there is no irony at all in the notion that his son might be watching too, and maybe even willing to summon a couple of nice fat does within shooting range." p. 124-125

The ideological crack between the more liberal, more urban, coastal based U.S. workers and their small town, conservative rivals, living in the interior of the country, is one of the main political thrusts of DEER HUNTING WITH JESUS. The gun control issue is but one of many sore points dividing the U.S. working class thus, making its members easier to rule. The elephant standing in the room is the issue of work-time. Too many hours sold to the bosses makes it difficult for small town wage-slaves to do much in the way of educating themselves, reading or expanding their views of the world beyond the easily accessed, instant, canned gratification available from conservative Republican corporate AM radio pundits and their brethren on the bully pulpits of the nation's fundamentalist Christian churches. The toilers of Bageant's home town are literally being worked to death at jobs which market for low wages, kept even lower by the anti-union ideology which is so common in their everyday parlance as to be taken for `commonsense'. The same can be said for their socially conservative cultural traditions concerning: race relations, the possession of firearms, Big Gov'mint, namby-pamby intellectuals and warlike nationalism. Across that great bellwether, the great crack in the working class remains unrepaired as left liberal workers sit and sit and sit, disdaining contact with their `benighted' fellow citizens thus, leaving both sides ignorant of what the other is saying or doing and by extension the potential of their power as a class united. According to Bageant, this is a recipe for continued impotent expressions of working class power, while serving to maintain a ruling class status-quo which is on track to continue cutting U.S. workers' living standards and furthering the commodification of human values and humane relations.

Joe Bageant has written a book which should be on every IWW organiser's shelf. DEER HUNTING WITH JESUS answers many of the questions concerning how and why the workers in the USA are largely blind to their own class interests.

The Australian edition of DEER HUNTING WITH JESUS comes complete with an Australian oriented preface.

Wobbly times number 106

I'm not out to 'capture' anyone. Anyone who can be 'captured' doesn't have the mind set to be a class conscious revolutionary. Becoming a master of hounds is an abhorrent notion for me to contemplate.

Wobbly times number 97

ELEVEN PRINCIPLES


1. There is no afterlife, so stop worrying about death.


2. Eventually, everyone is forgotten.


3. If love doesn't develop out of some of your friendships, you're doing something wrong with your life.

4. Politically oppressive power can only really be destroyed by equalising political power amongst all men and women.


5. Use the materialist dialectic to pry various unities apart and examine them in their unities and so on to the last particularity you can find.


6. In any initial stage of communism (aka socialism), a producer should be able to draw from the associated producers' social store of goods and services in proportion to what she or he creates, quantified by society-wide, democratically approved/recognised labour time. Four hours of this sort of labour time into the social store gets the producer four hours worth of goods and services from the social store.

7. Never willingly give others the right to censor what you want to say.

A man took a boy to the cemetery saying, "Behold! They all followed the rules. They were good. They didn't complain. Don't you admire them?"

8. Advertising is capitalist graffiti.

9. A wage-slave has no security as an isolated individual which is just another reason why One Big Union of the working class is necessary.

10. There are lots of things and events in life-- motion between people, natural and human made disasters and so on.... Wisdom is having the capacity to choose which to remember and which to forget.


11. Sadists hate free individuals. Puritanical sadists are the worst.

Wobbly times number 74

Eleven Rules for Kids' Growing Minds

Bill Gates' vs. Mike Ballard's 

BG's Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

MB's Rule A: Why not ask why life isn't fair? Are you afraid of critical thinking? Isn't it the case that capitalists like Bill Gates are engaged in an unfair trade: wages in return for all the wealth workers produce for Gate's coporation? Aren't you just justifying your position of power over your hired producers?

BG's Rule 2: The world doesn't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

MB's Rule B: Listen to your bosses. They expect their hired producers to create wealth for them. Your self-esteem should be found in the knowledge that you're part of the producing class and not part of the parasitic class.

BG's Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.


MB's Rule C: You might make $60,000 a year, if you actively participate in union with your fellow workers. Be realistic: most of you will NEVER be a vice president of a corporation. You will produce the corporation and serve it though and as long as you refuse to organise, you will never make $60,000 a year.

BG's Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

MB's Rule D: Because the employing class can deprive you of your means of making a living, even though your labour is what creates the wealth which makes the boss a power over you. Again, a worker has no security except in union solidarity with fellow workers.

BG's Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

MB's Rule E: Better you should remember that your Grandparents were in the class struggle to provide their grandchildren with a decent standard of living, including the right to retire in security. Better you should be conscious that the labour you do for the fast food corporate giants makes them richer and richer while you struggle to pay rent on the wages you get from them and pass on to a greedy landlord class.

BG's Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

MB's Rule F: Learn from your parents' mistakes, especially the mistake they made of thinking that the employing class and the working class have interests in common.

BG's Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

MB's Rule G: Remember that you are not just a narrow individual with narrow interests which only concern your tiny personal world. There are corporations out there raping and pillaging the planet to the extent that your Earth's climate is being made to change. Sure, clean up your room. But don't stop there: make the people responsible for fouling the human nest, clean up their mess.

BG's Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

MB's Rule H: Correct the mistake of your parents' generation: organise to abolish wage-slavery and the system which puts people like Bill Gates in charge of large portions of your life and nature itself. Learn what democracy is and practice it.

BG's Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

MB's Rule I: Under the rule of capitalists, like Gates, remember that as a part of the working class, you'll be producing enough wealth in the first hour or two of your eight or more hours of employment, to pay for your wages. Make your employers give you more time for yourself. You and your workmates deserve it. Organise for shorter work time for yourselves, your family and your friends; it's the key to happiness and well being.


BG's Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

MB's Rule J: Again, an individual employee has no security. In real life under the rule of Capital, workers have to produce wealth for their employers or be sacked. Be afraid of your bosses and remember that the only way you can confront them with power, against the power they lord over you, is in courageous union with your fellow workers.


BG's Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

MB's Rule K: Classwide solidarity is a must. Nerds are workers too! Gates was a nerd who now employs thousands of nerd workers to produce his wealth. Chances are that nerds will continue to do this until they organise One Big Union with their fellow workers and get what they are entitled to: control and common ownership of their collective product of labour.

Wobbly Times number 70

Make 'em


Keep 'em tied to the capitalist system
That's what our rulers say
Give 'em healthcare tied to keeping their jobs
so they don't go getting all class conscious
and organising to demand more wages
free healthcare, shorter work time and the like
Make 'em think that meaning in life is tied to having kids
in private school
and a house with a mortgage hanging over their heads
for the rest of their working lives
Make 'em believe that more debt slavery
is freedom,
'trade in your union cards
for credit cards'
Have 'em sit in front of their masters' voice
during their free-time,
'listening for the new told lies
with supreme visions of lonely tunes'
Finally
tie their retirement to
the stock market gambling machine
via 401Ks and superannuation
Make 'em truly believe they have a stake
in the system of wage-slavery

Wobbly Times number 67

IS THE MINIMUM WAGE TOO HIGH?

Wages adjusted for inflation aka 'real wages' are now below what they were in 1964.

see: http://wobblytimes.blogspot.com/2009/09/wobbly-times-number-22.html

As for the minimum 'real wage', it's now below what it was in 1958. ... See More
see chart with blue and red diamonds at:
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html

Meanwhile, real productivity, output per hour of labour has increased by an average 2% or more per year over the 20th Century up till now. We're always being told via our media pundits and pollies that when productivity rises, wages rise. This axiom is a commonplace which you'll hear constantly coming from talking heads employed by the capitalist class...all part of the infotainment game. Thus, the vast accumulation of wealth continues apace. The lion's share ends up in the bank accounts, bonds, stocks and real estate holdings of about 10% of the population aka the capitalist and landlord classes.

see:
http://wobblytimes.blogspot.com/2009/08/wobbly-times-number-19.html

If you believe capitalist propagandists in the corporate and State media then, you're likely to think that the minimum wage is too high. You're likely to fall into the trap of a 'race to the bottom'. "If workers didn't ask so much, Ford wouldn't be shipping our jobs to Mexico and China."

We're really never educated to become class conscious in capitalist society. We're never told that labour creates all the wealth not already found in Nature. We are told that we're mere indvidudal consumers. Our knowledge of production (what goes on in our minds) is such that we attribute wealth creation to capitalist owners of industry instead of the people who must sell their time and skills to the employing class in order to make a lving e.g. Mercedes Benz makes great cars. This phenonmenon is known as 'reification' in philosophy.

see:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/

Wobbly Times number 54

Fascism Defined

Fascism is an epithet thrown around a lot by politicos. I think it's best to go to the source for a definition of what fascism is/was. Fascism isn't just any sort of authoritarian rule, it's a specific form of dictatorship which has private capitalists and workers forced by State law to collaborate in what Mussolini called "corporations", all for the good of the nation. Fascists all think that class struggle is a communist, anarchist, socialist ideological invention used by internationalist revolutionaries to destroy the fabric of a strong nation. Oh fascists know that there are classes; yes indeed they do. But fascists don't like the marketplace for commodities when it comes to labour power. Fascists think that both the employing class and the working class should do their moral duty to work together in 'corporations'. Fascists make it illegal to see the social relation between classes and class interests any other way. Fascists don't like 'flabby' liberals who endanger the nation by saying workers should have the right to organise in their own class interests to negotiate the price (aka wages) of their time, skills and working conditions with the employing class. Fascists don't like class conscious workers who organise to pursue their own material interests.

If this kind of rhetoric has a familiar ring to your ears, perhaps you've listened to people who have been influenced by fascist-nationalist thinking and who like the idea of restricting or even eliminating the rights of workers to strike, organise and the right of workers to be in classwide solidarity with their fellow workers in their negotiations with the employing class over wages and conditions. These people will say, "We must put restrictions on workers' ability to combine as a class or they will become too powerful and upset the national interests. After all, what's good for employers is good for workers too; they have common interests." Maybe these people didn't even know that they have been espousing the fundamental doctrine of the fascist State.

Benito Mussolini wrote:

32: "Fascist corporate economy is the economy of individuals of

associated groups and of the State."

47-8: "This fond of economy is regulated, strengthened and

harmonized for the sake of collective utility, by the producers

themselves -- be they employers, technicians or workers --

by means of the corporations created by the State which,

representing as it does the whole nation."From: Mussolini, Benito. 1936. The Corporate State (Firenze: Vallecchi).****************************************************


8. Outside the State there can be neither individuals nor groups (political parties, associations, syndicates, classes). Therefore, Fascism is opposed to Socialism, which confines the movement of history within the class struggle and ignores the unity of classes established in one economic and moral reality in the State: and analogously it is opposed to class syndicalism. (my MB interjection: class syndicalism is like the sort of unionism which the IWW promotes) Fascism recognizes the real exigencies for which the socialist and syndicalist movement arose, but while recognizing them wishes to bring them under the control of the State and give them a purpose within the corporative system of interests reconciled within the unity of the State.

and later in this piece…
…It might be said against this programme that it is a return to the corporations. It doesn’t matter!....I should like, nevertheless, the Assembly to accept the claims of national syndicalism from the point of view of economics…

Is it not surprising that from the first day in the Piazza San Sepolcro there should resound the word ‘Corporation’ which was destined in the creations at the base of the regime?

and later…
But when one says liberalism, one says the individual; when one says Fascism, one says the State. But the Fascist State is unique; it is an original creation. It is not reactionary but revolutionary in that it anticipates the solutions of certain universal problems. These problems are no longer seen in the same light: in the sphere of politics they are removed from party rivalries, from the supreme power of parliament, from the irresponsibility of assemblies; in the sphere of economics they are removed from the sphere of the syndicates’ activities—activities that were ever widening their scope and increasing their power, both on the workers’ side and on the employers’—removed from their struggles and their designs; in the moral sphere they are divorced from ideas of the need for order, discipline and obedience, and lifted into the plane of moral commandments of the fatherland…..

From “The Doctrine of Fascism” written by Benito Mussolini in 1932 in collaboration with Giovanni Gentile.

Eric Fromm on the social psychology of fascism:

The love for the powerful and the hatred for the powerless which is so typical for the sado-masochistic character explains a great deal of Hitler's and his follower's political actions. While the Republican government thought they could "appease" the Nazis by treating them leniently, they not only failed to appease them but aroused their hatred by the very lack of power and firmness they showed.
--Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom, pg 256-257

Hitler's -- and for that matter, Mussolini's -- "revolution" happened under protection of existing power and their favorite objects were those who could not defend themselves. One might even venture to assume that Hitler's attitude toward Great Britain was determined, among other factors, by this psychological complex. As long he felt Britain to be powerful, he loved and admired her. His book gives expression to this love for Britain. When he recognized the weakness of the British position before and after Munich his love changed into hatred and the wish to destroy it. From this viewpoint "appeasement" was a policy which for a personality like Hitler was bound to arouse hatred, not friendship.
--Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom, pg 257

Hitler recognizes clearly that his philosophy of self-denial and sacrifice is meant for those whose economic situation does not allow them any happiness. He does not want to bring about a social order which would make personal happiness possible for very individual; he wants to exploit the very poverty of the masses in order to make them believe in his evangelism of self-annihilation.
--Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom, pg 259

Given the psychological conditions, does Nazism not fulfill the emotional needs of the population, and is this psychological function not one factor that makes for its growing stability?

From all that has been said so far, it is evident that the answer to this question is in the negative. The fact of human individuation, of the destruction of all "primary bonds," cannot be reversed. The process of the destruction of the medieval world has taken four hundred years and is being completed in our era. Unless the whole industrial system, the whole mode of production, should be destroyed and changed to the preindustrial level, man will remain an individual who has completely emerged from the world surrounding him. We have seen that man cannot endure this negative freedom; that he tries to escape into new bondage which he has given up. But these new bonds do not constitute real union with the world. He pays for the new security by giving up the integrity of his self.
--Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom, pg 262-263


"No revision of economic theory is required to understand fascism. Equal and just exchange has driven itself to the point of absurdity, and the totalitarian order is this absurdity. The transition from liberalism has occurred logically enough, and less brutally than from the mercantile system into that of the nineteenth century. The same economic tendencies that create an ever higher productivity of labor through the mechanism of competition have suddenly turned into forces of social disorganization. The pride of liberalism, industry developed technically to the utmost, ruins its own principle because great parts of the population can no longer sell their labor. The reproduction of what exists by the labor market becomes inefficient. Previously the bourgeoisie was decentralized, a many-headed ruler; the expansion of the plant was the condition for every entrepreneur to increase his portion of the social surplus. He needed workers in order to prevail in the competition of the market. In the age of monopolies, the investment of more and more new capital no longer promises any great increase in profits. The mass of workers, from whom surplus value flows, diminishes in comparison to the apparatus which it serves. In recent times, industrial production has existed only as a condition for profit, for the expansion of the power of groups and individuals over human labor. Hunger itself provides no reason for the production of consumer goods. To produce for the insolvent demand, for the unemployed masses, would run counter to the laws of economy and religion that hold the order together; no bread without work."

"The Jews and Europe"

Max Horkheimer

Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung

December 1939


"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
- Adolf Hitler, 1925-1926 Mein Kampf, (p. 65)

"What we have to fight for is the necessary security for the existence and increase of our race and people, the subsistence of its children and the maintenance of our racial stock unmixed, the freedom and independence of the Fatherland; so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator."
- Adolf Hitler, 1925-1926 Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 8

"In short, the results of miscegenation are always the following: (a) The level of the superior race becomes lowered; (b) physical and mental degeneration sets in, thus leading slowly but steadily towards a progressive drying up of the vital sap. The act which brings about such a development is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator. And as a sin this act will be avenged."
- Adolf Hitler, 1925-1926 Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 11

"One cannot live faithfully and give up what has given meaning and purpose to one’s entire life. That would not be so if it were not a cardinal command. And no earthly power gave us that command. For the God, our God, who created our people, gave us that command!"
-Adolf Hitler, 1935 Triumph of the Will/Triumph des Willens

Wobbly Times number 51

The following is a transcription of an interview done with me at a Stanford University coffee shop back in the 1980s:

I hope to find a few kindred spirits who opposed the war Were you one of them? If so, I would like to know where you were and what you did.

I was one of them. I was at Michigan State University and then just an East Lansing worker from 1967-1975. I attended most all the anti-war demos and helped organizing a few. My orientation wasn't just to end that particular war; but to present a working class critque of capitalism, along with a presentation of what I thought would work better as a society.

First of all, I want to talk about how one joins the antiwar movement. "Join" the antiwar movement... I think that is a very strange term. We didn't have to enlist or enroll or anything. If the antiwar movement wasn't "joined," one merely "became" a part of it as it evolved. Do you agree?


Yes, if you prefer that verb.

How did it happen for you?


I was in the Marine Corps from 1963 to 1967. Out of high school, I was a patriotic lad, who thought that all the guys had to go in to the military either before or after college. As I knew that one could get money from the government to go to school after one had been "in", I used that knowledge to help me make my decision to enlist. In 1963 there was a universal draft. Also, it didn't hurt that my father had been in the Army as a career before he met an untimely death in the early 50's.

My experience in the USMC led me to a rather vague set of conclusions about the War as it developed. Primary among these was a skeptical reception to major media stories about what it was really like in the War. Although, I never set foot in Vietnam, I did have occasion to "debrief" fellow Marines about their experiences. None of these tales matched what was being written in "Time" magazine, my ideological mentor of choice then. Something was fishy and this nagging concept began to combine with an idea, generated in the bowels of USMC bureaucracy and hierarchy that the War was in reality not about what the major ideological sources claimed--democracy/national liberation--it was instead, a power struggle between States. I was evolving into an undefined sort of pacifist. This was helped along by reading Sartre's triolgy on the roads to freedom--TROUBLE SLEEP, AGE OF REASON, the third's title escapes me now. It was also hastened by meeting a brave young African American, who just refused to take orders and who was thrown in the brig and then out of the USMC. This guy was the one who turned me on to existentialism. I was also beginning to listen to Dylan and the Stones. I was determined not to become, "only a pawn in their game."

Did the madness of the sixties influence your affiliation with the antiwar movement?


Probably, the absurdity of bureaucratic acceptance, combined with the knowledge that we are all, "condemned to be free" i.e. we choose, whether we think so or not. We are responsible.

You said that your later years in USMC were marked by a nagging doubt about what America was doing, and you mentioned "USMC bureaucracy and hierarchy." That reminded me of the distrust we all felt for a monolithic "system." When you looked at the government and "military-industrial complex," did you perceive a giant, insensitive, illogical monolith that was difficult to trust? If not, what did you see?


Well yes. I became more and more convinced that the system was capitalism. As capitalism, the US system was democratic to a degree. The degree that it was democratic, depended largely on what era you were talking about. I saw it as becoming more and more democratic i.e. more and more run by the people; but not run by the people in many important areas, most importantly the economy. The economy was/is related directly to the question of the military industrial complex and those entities influence on the State. While we could elect representitives to the government, those representitives were often more beholden to the minority which made up the employing class and not the majority who made up the employed i.e. what in common terms is called the middle class.

I'm glad we both speak Bob Dylan. Right now, I would like to explore some of the frustration you probably felt about awakening others to the terrible things we were doing in Vietnam, but the public was sleeping soundly underneath all the "ideolgically impregnated/programmed ignorance" you saw around you. Those days reminded me of one of the closing verses of "Desolation Row":

all hail to Nero's Neptune
the Titanic sails at dawn
everybody is shouting,
"which side are you on?"
and Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot
are fighting in the captain's tower
while calypso singers laugh at them
and fishermen hold flowers
between the windows of the sea
where lovely mermaids flow
and nobody has to think too much about Desolation Row.

How frustrated did the "ideolgically impregnated/programmed ignorance" make you and the other protesters around you feel when you tried to make the public aware of what was going on?



Pretty frustrated, indeed. We saw the media manipulation of the issues we brought up because we were bringing these issues up and then we'd see them in the press and it would take an entirely different slant.

No wonder the "ordinary" silent majority was against us. They had been the victims of disinformation. So, we attempted to build a counter culture, complete with its own media. "Music was our only friend--until the end."

Do you remember '68, with the Tet offensive, the assinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the Chicago convention and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia? What did you think of when you watched those events unfold on the news?


Yeah. I remember all of the above. I thought different things about each of the above. I hadn't yet read Marx in '68. By then, I had come to define myself as an anarchist; but I didn't know what exactly I meant by it. I was also contradictory. As I said, I began that year supporting McCarthy and ended it wanting to vote for the Peace and Freedom Party. The assassinations just seemed to stem naturally from a society going bonkers. The Chicago Democratic Convention appalled me. The USSR's invasion of Czechoslovakia didn't come as a surprise; after all there had been Hungary.

Do you think the madness started earlier, perhaps with the civil rights marches? With the JFK assassination?


Maybe.

We discussed your participation in demonstrations, and how the their tenor changed as the war continued:

"And the demonstrations... did they seem more innocent and peaceful in the beginning?

Yes. The participants were more innocent. Those opposing the demonstrations were nastier. They tended to crawl back in to the woodwork as flower power gave way to self-defense classes and steel toed boots.

When did they get nastier? After Chicago in '68? After the Cambodian Invasion in '70? How did they get nastier?

I'd say after Chicago in '68. People knew that they'd better start protecting themselves. At least some people knew. The analysis of the police began to take shape and develop then."

I wonder if you could send some specific anecdotes, do give those who read your remarks a flavor of what antiwar demonstrations were like. Is that possible?


I'll try. There were two types of demo: the planned and the spontaneous. The planned ones took weeks and even months to prepare for--leaflets, posters, publicity in the counter cultural press and so on. Then we we did it on whateve level, local, statewide or national. Most local ones were gatherings of 10 to 20 thousand people which would start in East Lansing and go to the State Capitol building in Lansing. It was a stroll about 5 miles down the main drag, Grand River Avenue. People would be encouraging others to speak some slogan in unison e.g. "One, two, three, four, we don't want your fucking war." or some such thing. Sometimes we would be attacked by onlookers; but most people were sort of tentatively curious, sometimes even supportive. The longer the war went on, the more supportive they got. You would usually be with some of your friends and stick with them throughout the demo. Sometimes you carried signs, sometimes flags. Many people smoked marijuanna and passed joints around. It all went with the counter culture.

At the end of the parade, we'd party. Some would seriously listen to the speeches given by politicians trying to latch on to the popular sentiment or to organizers from mostly lennists sects, who attempted to lead the masses to something or another. Most of us didn't give a damn about the politicians. We wanted the killing to stop, the death culture to die and for enjoyment to take over.

Spontaneous demos, like the one in 1972 over the Christmas bombing of Hanoi, were much more volatile. We ended up taking over the main arteries of the town of East Lansing during it. Without warning, people just started gathering in the streets. People were worried that this action by our government would provoke a nuclear response from the USSR and/or China. Lives were on the line. Serious statements needed to be made and they were. Shutting down business as usual was a form of forced general strike. The cops went crazy, using tear gas on the multitudes and lining the roofs of department stores with men armed with shotguns. But we held our ground. Well, at least for that first and the next night.

When we went out to lunch, you told me about one time when four or five busloads of police came to retake the admin building from a handful of freaks, and how the crowd switched sides from pro-police to pro-freaks when they saw the cops' abuse of powers. Could you please retell that story for the anthology?


Some freaks were arrested for marijuanna possession and/or giving it away in the Michigan State University student union during Spring Term, 1968. Their friends knew that they had been entrapped by the local campus narc police. So, they got pissed and occupied the Administration Building demanding the charges be dropped. The police were bussed in to campus--State Police--to bolster the local cops. There were about three city buses full of them all dressed up in riot gear with ax handle clubs about 5 feet long in their hands. When students on campus got wind that the Admin Bldg was being occupied by long hair freaks they started gathering around jeering the occupiers and waiting for the police to come.
When the cops got there the students outside were totally on the side of the authorities. The cops then lined up very military like on both sides of a 25 yard sidewalk which led from the street and their waiting three buses to the door of the Admin Bldg. A flying squad of helmeted cops was sent in to flush out the freaks.

Students stood outside, waiting for the action and they got it. The freaks were driven out the door and on to the sidewalk where they were pummled by the cops as they were forced to run the gauntlet. The formerly supportive students on the began making pleas to cease hitting these hippie peaceniks. But the police kept running them out through the gauntlet-- I think there were about ten in all, men and women. They were bloody, screaming pain by the time they got on the buses.

Well all hell broke loose then. The students saw that the cops weren't going to stop beating these people, so they started attacking the cops with stones and fists. The cops at first stood their ground; but then the situation became apparent to them--the hippies with ax handles and some of these "hippies" were students. The police were attacking us! We attacked back with a vengence. It was like an army who had their adversaries on the run. The buses began to move. The drivers tried to steer their way through the growing crowds and they people kept rocking the buses all along the way...

Eventually the buses were able to leave campus and behind them stood thousands of newly radicalized students, who had begun to understand which side they were on what it was telling us about the war in Vietnam.

You also told me about burning your hand on a teargas canister. That implies you must have felt outraged by the powers that be (at least once or twice). Can you share any anecdotes of how you felt at public demonstrations?


See above.
I've got too many and not much more time to tell them now. (I was on my lunch hour from work.)

You also spoke of the tension that existed between protesters and "rednecks." Were "rednecks supporters of the government? Why were protesters so cautious? What kinds of troubles were likely to occur between protesters and "rednecks"? Would they take place in public or in private? Specific examples would be good for giving readers a flavor of the time.


Red necks would beat protestors up. Protestors did not usually fight back on an individual level. If crowds were plowed in to by cars of rednecks, there would be a violent response.
They would happen both in public and private. At that time, having hair which was long was considered an act of anti-war activity. You were a target, if you had long hair.

Now I'm thinking about Abbie Hoffman's "second American revolution." How did you feel about people who wanted to overthrow the government?


I thought we needed more democracy. I think Abbie thought that too.

What do you mean when you said " we needed more democracy"? Was the "second American revolution" revolution founded upon the same rationale that Jefferson expressed in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government... [emphasis added]

To the best of your knowledge, was that the rationale of the "second American revolution"?


Precisely. However, as I've said above, I believed that democracy had evolved from Jefferson's time. I did think that capitalism had become destructive of those ends and the way I saw/see it is that the employing class is the ruling class and therefore the prime movers of governmental policy in the USA. That is to say, governmental policy is shaped according to the interests of the capitalist class; just as it was in the countries ruled by the dogma of "my country, right or wrong."

You also mentioned an interest in presenting "a working class critque of capitalism, along with a presentation of what I thought would work better as a society." I suppose that presentation evolved over time. When did your presentations first appear?


1969.

How did they change as time passed?


They evolved from a vaguely philosophical Marxist critique, shaped mostly by Raya Dunevaskaya and CLR James to a more well defined prgrammatic approach engendered by reading DeLeon, the Situationists, Luckacs and Marx.

How did the public receive them?


Mostly with confusion, derision and ideolgically impregnated/programmed ignorance.

Were your presentations welcome, or did the public seem threatened?

10% welcome. 80% no opinion. 10% opposition.

I'm thinking about alienation of youth now. Did anyone ever harass you for being a member of the counterculture?


No. But the threat was always there. It was in the air. You didn't want to be anywhere near rednecks and rednecks were almost everywhere.

Were you regarded as a communist?


Not a CP member; but I was a known socialist. I ran "against" Congress in 1974 on the Socialist Labor Party ticket.

A traitor?


Few people call ex-Marines traitor.

An anarchist?


I've been called that by both the left and the right.

Did the police ever give you any grief -- drug searches and the like... did you feel alienated from the American culture?


Alienated. For sure. Police are always grief. I was only arrested once for being in a building with 165 other students, who were discussing the Kent State and Jackson State murders. It was May 4,1970. We wern't planning to be arrested, i.e. it wasn't a sit-in. We just continued our teach-in after the building, the Student Union had been officially closed. We didn't want to be arrested; we just wanted to talk.

When Agnew gave his speech about "effete intellectual snobs," how did his remarks make you feel?


Agnews remarks fell like water off a duck's back.

What about Nixon's plea for the "silent majority"? Did their words affect your behavior at subsequent demonstrations?



No.

When I mentioned Agnew's excoriation of protesters and Nixon's call for the silent majority, I recognize their remarks had little affect on you. Do you think they had any affect on the silent majority who came out to contend with you during your demonstrations?


Yes. We were questioning all authority which came from the Establishment. On the other hand, the people who supported the Establishment saw their ideals and dogmas under attack. Being conservative of those dogmas and ideals, they saw Nixon's people as giving voice to their frustrations. Disinformation by the major media plus bourgeois politicians=what democracy we had at that time.

Now I'm thinking about Daniel Ellseburg's Pentagon Papers and the role of the free press. How did you feel when the Papers were published? Maybe betrayed? Maybe a little more cynical about the people in power? Did they affect your behavior at d emonstrations?


No. They didn't affect my behaviour. They only confirmed what I already knew--we needed more democracy, not less.

If you have some other thoughts you would like to share with me regarding the antiwar movement, please do so.


The anti-war movement was essentially divided in to two wings. One wanted to just end this particular war because it was unjust. The other wing wanted to end war by ending the system that produced it. It identified itself as a "counter culture" because in essence, it began seeing itself as beginning to build a new society and consciousness within the womb of the old. The first group went on to become the yuppies. The second group developed in many directions but remained committed to bringing about a more democratic society.

Wobbly Times number 50

Now that healthcare reform is on its way to passing in the USA, what should workers there be doing?

Looking at the history of reforming the capitalist system, one can say that our rulers wouldn't have Social Security to loot (and many of them are agitating to pillage this 'entitlement'), if reform hadn't happened and we wouldn't have Social Security to live on, if it hadn't happened. Same with Medicare, passed in '65.

The question is, "Why did they 'happen'?"

At least three reasons come to mind. One is that they happened because enough workers wanted them, agitated and organised for them to happen and that made our rulers anxious. Some of our rulers, in turn, thought, if we grant them access to this small bit of their surplus value, they'll go away and watch TV. But, not all our rulers wanted to give workers these pieces of the surplus value. So, there was a fight in Congress where our rulers' polytricksters roost. The Democrats represented the rulers who wanted to co:opt workers and the Republicans represented rulers who wanted to tell workers to go jump in the lake or face police repression, if they dared direct action to get the things they want.

The class struggle is between the workers and our rulers over control and ownership of the socially produced wealth, wealth produced by the working class in conjunction with Nature. We win some of these battles and we lose some. Even when we win, we lose in terms of liberal co:optation.

So, what to do?

Please the liberals and go watch TV?

Anger the conservatives and go burn a flag?

No.

We got some control and ownership over our surplus value with Social Security and Medicare. We got it by being conscious that we needed it and organising, agitating and educating to get it. The historical lesson is to organise and the class conscious lesson is to organise to take it ALL. After all, we produce the wealth, we should control and socially own it all. Workers are ENTITLED TO ALL THE WEALTH THEY PRODUCE!

Now, some will say that we're incapable of organising as a class. I assure you that those who say that aren't our rulers because our rulers in the employing class have got us organised as a class--to work for them, to produce wealth for them. We need to organise as a class for ourselves. To the degree that we are organised class consciously (even if that consciousness is dim-witted leftism), to that degree we will have the power to get what we deserve, EVERYTHING!

My advice: Keep your eyes on the prize, workers and you'll never be steered off course by liberal reform. Get wise and organise as a class and you'll have the power to defeat any attempt by reactionaries to put you in what they consider to be your place: cowering at their feet.

**********************

Now, contrast what I have said with what Fidel Castro says about health care reform in the USA:

THE US HEALTHCARE REFORM

Barack Obama is a zealous believer in the imperialist capitalist
system imposed by the United States to the world. 'God bless the
United States,' is the final phrase of his speeches.

Some events hurt the sensitivity of the world public which
sympathized with the victory of the African-American over the
far-right candidate in that country. On the basis of one of the
deepest economic crises the world has known, and on the pain brought
on by the young Americans who lost their lives or were injured or
maimed in the genocidal wars of conquest unleashed by his predecessor,
he won with the vote of the majority of the 50% of Americans who cast
a vote in that democratic nation.

Out of an elementary sense of ethic, Obama should have
refrained from accepting the Nobel Peace Prize when he had already
decided on sending forty thousand troops to an absurd war in the heart
of Asia.

The warmongering policy and the plundering of natural
resources, as well as the unequal terms of trade of the current
administration toward the poor countries of the Third World are no
different from those of his predecessors, most of them from the
far-right, --with few exceptions throughout the past century.

The antidemocratic document imposed at the Copenhagen
Summit on the international community, which had given credit to his
promise to cooperate in the struggle against climate change, was
another one of those events that disappointed many people around the
world. The United States, the largest producer of greenhouse-gas
emissions, was not willing to make the necessary sacrifices despite
the flattering previous words of its president.

The list of contradictions would be endless between the
ideas defended by the Cuban nation for five decades with great
sacrifices and the selfish policies of that colossal empire.

Still, we don't feel any animosity toward Obama, much less
toward the American people. We feel that the Healthcare Reform has
been a significant battle and a success of his administration.
However, it is really amazing that 234 years after the Declaration of
Independence proclaimed in Philadelphia in the year 1776, which drew
inspiration from the ideas of the great French encyclopedists, the
government of that country has approved medical care for the
overwhelming majority of its citizens, something that Cuba
accomplished for its entire population half a century ago despite the
cruel and inhuman blockade imposed --and still in force-- by the
mightiest country that has ever existed. In the past, it was only
after almost a century of independence and following a bloody war,
that Abraham Lincoln could obtain the legal emancipation of the
slaves.

On the other hand, I can't help but think of a world where
over one-third of the population have no access to medical care or the
basic medicines required to ensure health. And this situation will be
aggravated as climate change, and water and food shortage worsen in a
globalized world where the population grows, the forests disappear,
the arable land decreases, the air is more polluted, and the human
species inhabiting it 'which emerged less than 200 thousand years
back, that is, 3.5 billion years after the first forms of life on the
planet'is running the real risk of annihilation.

Even conceding that the Health Reform comes as a success
to the Obama administration, the current President of the United
States cannot ignore that climate change poses a threat to health, and
worse still, to the very existence of every nation in the world, as
the rise in temperature 'beyond critical limits which are already in
sight' melts down the water of the glaciers, and the tens of millions
of cubic meters contained in the enormous ice caps of the Antarctic,
Greenland and Siberia melt down within a few decades leaving under
water every port facility in the world and lands where a large part of
the world population lives, works and eats today.

Obama, the leaders of the wealthy nations and their
allies, as well as their scientists and sophisticated research centers
are aware of this; they cannot ignore it.

I understand the satisfaction expressed in the
presidential speech and his recognition of the contribution made by
the members of Congress and the administration to make possible the
miracle of the Health Reform, which strengthens the government's
position vis-a-vis political lobbyists and mercenaries that curtail
the authority of the administration. It would be worse if those
responsible for tortures, murders on contract and genocide were in
charge of the US government again. As a man unquestionably smart and
sufficiently well informed, Obama knows there is no exaggeration in my
words. I hope the foolish remarks he sometimes makes about Cuba do not
cloud his mind.

In the aftermath of his success in this battle for the
right of every American to healthcare, 12 million immigrants, most of
them Latin American, Haitian and from other Caribbean countries are
demanding the legalization of their presence in the United States
where they do the hardest work and the American society cannot do
without them, but where they are arrested, separated from their
families and sent back to their countries.

The overwhelming majority migrated to America escaping the
tyrannies imposed by the United States on the countries of the region
and the dire poverty these have endured as a result of the plundering
of their resources and the unequal terms of trade. Their family
remittances make up a high percentage of the GDP of these countries'
economies. Now, they expect an act of basic justice. If the Cubans
have been singled out with an Adjustment Act which promotes brain
drain and the enticement of their educated youths, why are such brutal
methods applied to the illegal immigrants from Latin America and the
Caribbean?

The devastating earthquake that battered Haiti 'the
poorest nation in Latin America, hammered by an unprecedented natural
catastrophe that took the lives of more than 200 thousand people' and
the terrible economic damage that a similar phenomenon brought on
Chile are eloquent proof of the dangers looming over the so-called
civilization and of the need for dramatic measures that can give the
human species the hope to survive.

The Cold War failed to benefit the people of the world.
The huge economic, technological and scientific power of the United
States would be unable to survive the tragedy hovering on the planet.
President Obama should look up in a computer the relevant data and
talk to his most outstanding scientists; then, he will see how far his
country is of being the model it promotes for humanity.

As an African-American, he suffered the offense of
discrimination, according to his own narrative in the book 'Dreams
From My Father.' He was acquainted with the poverty of tens of
millions of Americans; educated in that country and as a successful
professional he has enjoyed the privileges of the rich middle class
and ended up idealizing the social system where the economic crisis,
the lives of Americans uselessly sacrificed and his undisputable
political talent gave him political victory.

Yet, to the most intractable right-wing Obama is an
extremist; and they threaten to continue fighting in the Senate to
neutralize the effects of the Health Reform and to openly boycott it
in several States of the Union by declaring it an unconstitutional
law.

The problems of our times are much more serious.

The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other
international financial institutions strictly controlled by the United
States the creators of tax havens and the culprits of the financial
chaos in the planet-- allow the bailout of the big American banks by
their government every time one of the frequent and increasingly
intense crises of the system hits that country.

The United States Federal Reserve capriciously mints the
hard currency that pays for the wars of conquest, the profits of the
Military Industrial Complex, the military bases distributed around the
world, and the large investments used by the transnational companies
to control the economy of many countries worldwide. Nixon unilaterally
suspended the gold standard while the vaults of the New York banks
keep seven thousand tons of gold, little over 25% of the world
reserves in that metal, a figure that at the end of World War II was
in excess of 80%. It is said that the US public debt exceeds 10
trillion dollars, which is more than 70% of its GDP and stands like a
burden for the new generations. This is said when the truth is that
the world economy is the one paying that debt with the huge amounts of
US dollars spent in purchasing goods and services, the same dollars
that the large transnationals of that country use to buy a
considerable portion of the world riches and to sustain that nation?s
consumer society.

Anyone understands that such a system is unsustainable and
also why the wealthiest sectors in the United States and their allies
in the world advocate a system that can only be sustained with
ignorance, deception and the conditioned reflexes created in the world
public through the monopoly over the mass media, including the main
networks of the Internet.

Today, the structure is crumbling with the accelerated
advance of climate change and its disastrous consequences which are
placing humanity face to face with an exceptional dilemma.

The wars between powers seem no longer a possible solution
to the great contradictions as they were until the second half of the
20th century. Still, they have had such an impact on the elements that
make human survival possible, that they could prematurely put an end
to the existence of the current intelligent species that populates our
planet.

A few days ago I expressed my firm belief that, in light
of the scientific knowledge prevailing today, the human beings will
have to solve their problems on planet Earth since they will never be
able to cover the distance separating the Sun from its closest star
located four light-years away, 'one light-year equals 187,500 miles
per second, as our high school students know' provided a planet similar
to our beautiful Earth existed around that sun.

The United States invests huge amounts of money to confirm
the presence of water on planet Mars, or if there was or is any
elementary form of life there. No one knows what for, if not out of
mere scientific curiosity. Millions of species are disappearing from
our planet at a faster pace and its enormous water sources are
constantly being poisoned.

The new laws of science 'following Einstein's formulas on
energy and matter, and the big-bang theory as the origin of the
millions of constellations and infinite stars and/or other
theories 'have given rise to deep changes in such basic concepts as
space and time, which draw the attention of and are subjected to
analysis by theologians. One of them, our Brazilian friend Friar
Betto, deals with the subject in his book 'The Work of the Artist: A
Holistic Vision of Universe,' presented in the recent International
Book Fair held in Havana.

The advancement of science in the past one hundred years
has had an impact on the traditional approaches that prevailed through
thousands of years in social sciences and even in Philosophy and
Theology.

The most honest thinkers are paying significant attention
to the new knowledge but we know absolutely nothing of how President
Obama feels about the compatibility of consumer societies with
science.

In the meantime, it is worthwhile meditating about these
subjects now and then; this will certainly not prevent human beings
from dreaming and from taking things with due serenity and steely
nerves, but it is the duty of at least those who chose to become
politicians and who sustain the noble and unwavering objective of a
human society where justice and solidarity prevail.

Fidel Castro Ruz
March 24, 2010
6:40 PM

http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2010/ing/f240310i.html