Quebec, Protests, Activism, and Threats to Power. . .

So-called "radical" political protest and activism, from the great peasant revolts to the 'velvet' revolution, has always been, in the final analysis, about the big issues of justice, social and economic equality, and political representation. Sometimes activist movements have erupted into distinctly anti-capitalist efforts, more often such efforts are more modest and localized in nature. In the past thirty years or so in Western 'democratic' nations, activists' movements have generally been focused on protecting the gains that were made during the long post-war boom. The issues in this cause have been connected to holding the line on wages, workplace safety, tuition rises, public (and private) pensions, environmental protection, and the expansion of democracy. However, in the past decade or so we have seen a gradual change in discourse which has begun to subtly shift back toward the bigger issues of overall inequality and capitalism in general. Though this change is too general to be reduced to any one moment, I often think of the great WTO riots in Seattle. The reason for the change in discourse is fairly simple - the the post-war gains in economic and political equality are being lost and these losses coupled with a looming environmental crisis are causing a slow ideological change. Though the concentration in media control has made this ideological shift weaker and more gradual than it might otherwise be, the change is becoming palpable. The three primary areas that are changing people's minds are an awareness of the startling growth in income inequality in Western capitalist nations, the distinct attack being waged upon democracy by Western elites, and the environmental crisis. As usual, capitalists and economic and political elites have blithely ignored the general impact of their thirst for money and power and this is resulting in a growing number of people who are searching for the underlying causes of our big social and economic problems and the basic issues of capitalism will increasingly become a target for political activism. The more you take away from people the less they have to lose and the more they will look toward the economic system that is at the root of their perceived suffering.

Obviously the reaction of the economic and political elites to such activism will be predictable. They desperately attempt to portray economic inequalities as the outcomes of a "natural" and unchangeable process. Marx called it 'reification,' which is the portrayal of relations between people as only relations between things. They want you to believe that the control of our wealth by a handful of people is the result of some natural, unavoidable process rather than a result of a conscious effort by rich and powerful people.

Outside of the elite, a surprising number of people emulate the ideology of corporatism. The reasons for their support of such an ideology are multi-fold, but the primary reasons are pretty simple - ignorance and fear. Their ignorance is an almost total lack of historical and political knowledge, and their fear is the standard fear of, to borrow a phrase from Edmund Burke, the 'swinish multitude.' Many people see political activists on television and they imagine that any such activism will necessarily result in the rise of another Robespierre and the guillotine. The most unfortunate factor in this public ignorance and fear is that it often becomes the primary push toward greater and more dangerous radicalism. Events such as the French revolution are generally easily avoided through simple reforms. But elites, in their greed for money and power, get comfortable in their power and their egoism gradually convinces them that their positions and wealth are somehow 'god-given' and a natural expression of their merit. They are loath to succumb to reforms which may cede any of their wealth or power and in an effort to protect that power they gradually push the nation toward revolution. The scenario plays itself out over and over again until it begins to look like a comedy of errors, as it has over the past week in Quebec.

The political and economic elite in Quebec (and by association the rest of the nation) see the growing threat of radicalism expressed in a what began as a relatively simple student protest. Because the political elite are desperate to shift economic wealth away from the people and toward the rich and the corporate class, they gradually take the tax burden away from corporations and the rich and they slowly throw it onto the middle and working-classes. Anything that begins to threaten that shift strikes fear into the capitalist class, as it did in the Swing Riots of the 1830s or the anti-corn law riots in the 1840s. (In the early 1840s the Anti Corn-Law League whipped up the revolutionary fervor of working-class in an effort to overturn the Corn-Laws but it quickly betrayed the workers when it realized that the working-class didn't care that much about the corn-laws but they actually wanted real reforms in the system of industrial manufacturing.) In Quebec the ruling class was comfortable in ignoring the protests as long and it felt no threat to their overall plan to maintain their power. However, in the face of a perceived threat, it was the political elite that quickly expanded the issue beyond a protest over tuition fees and made it an issue of controlling dissent in general with a law that de facto attempts to stop protest altogether.

The efforts in Quebec may simply die away (as many such protests do). But make no mistake, these protests are part of a larger historical moment in which people are questioning the radically expanding wealth of a small group of people and a growing power of a corporate elite. Each time I see someone deride protestors as "selfish" or "stupid" I shake my head. As France inched toward revolution in the 1770 and 1780s the elites dismissed anyone who protested inequality as simple 'troublemakers" and "malcontents." And instead of reforming their shockingly unjust system of wealth, they further oppressed and attacked any and all opposition until it was too late and they found themselves at the wrong end of a guillotine. Deride radicals and activists if you will, but you do so at your own risk. Today they are only trying to protect their jobs, their right to an education, their pensions, and their basic democratic rights. Leave their demands unheeded and tomorrow you will find them in your gated communities, in your legislative buildings, in your corporate headquarters. And instead of carrying signs they will be carrying guns and bombs. And if you think it can't happen -- open a history book! It has happened time after time and it will happen again. As long as Western elites continue with their system of radical inequality it will not be a question of "will there be another revolution," rather it is only a question of "when will the next revolution be on our doorsteps?"

What is Capitalism?

The late, great Ernest Mandel who was banned from entering the US for much of his life, wrote what is probably the very best introduction to Marx’s Capital ever written. Though trained as an economist, Mandel had a knack for explaining things in a simple, straightforward way that most people could understand. His long book on Marxist economic theory is really a remarkable achievement and demonstrates that even though Marx, like any important thinker, had flaws, he was also remarkably brilliant. One can use Mandel’s work to understand the ways that Marx outlined the complex ways in which capitalism functions and, amazingly, the ways that it continues to develop in ways that Marx’s ideas suggest it would.

One of the most interesting passages in Mandel’s introduction to Capital is found on page 82 of the Vintage paperback edition (1977) and concerns the definition of Capitalism. Now, defining an economic order is an immensely difficult conceptual task for many reasons. In the age of post-structuralist thought, so-called “meta-theories” are usually considered more than a little dodgy and maintaining a strict definition of an economic or social order is bound to not only find detractors but also to incite conceptual resistance. I fully understand, and often sympathize with this resistance, but I also understand the need for practical thought that helps to focus and encourage political and social activism. With this in mind, I give you Mandel’s outline for the conditions that define a capitalist order.

“(1)the fact that the mass of producers are not owners of the means of production in the economic sense of the word, but have to sell their labor power to the owners. (2)The fact that these owners are organized into separate firms which compete with each other for shares of the market on which commodities are sold, for profitable fields of investment for capital, for sources of raw material, etc. (that is the institution of private property in the economic sense of the word);  (3) the fact that these same owners of the means of production (different firms) are therefore, compelled to extort the maximum surplus-value from the producers, in order to accumulate more and more capital – which leads, under conditions of generalized commodity production and generalized alienation, to constantly growing mechanization of labor, concentration and centralization of capital, growing organic composition of capital, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and recurrent crises of over-production.”

Now, with a few addendums, I find this to be a remarkably cogent statement of explanation which, though written forty years ago, is still relevant today. Keeping this definition in mind also helps us understand certain apparently contrary elements in our modern capitalism. One thing that Mandel’s outline helps us remember is that even though large modern governments contain many social-democratic elements, they still function largely to grease the wheels of an increasingly globalizing capitalist order. In fact, putting aside the various socially-minded programs instituted in the last couple of generations (and these, though now being lost, are still very important), government increasingly exists to maintain the power and dominance of a relatively few very large corporations that actually dominate the economic production and distribution at a global level. In recent years we have seen a much greater concentration of wealth which is a direct result of the capitalist order as outlined by Mandel, and this concentration is integral to the nature of the capitalist order in general, and attempts during the 20^th century to mitigate it were quickly overridden by a more or less open conspiracy between big-capital and government.

Another thing that Mandel’s outline reminds us of is that modern forms of “command-capitalism” such as fascism or that which we see in the modern Chinese state are the exact opposite of socialism. Despite the fact that deeply ignorant people imagine that because the NAZI party had the word “socialist” in its name, fascism had (and continues to have) nothing to do with socialism and is in fact a form of command-capitalism. Hitler’s use of the word “socialist” was purely strategic and his party in fact functioned to maintain the very order that Mandel has outlined above. (Let us not forget that Fortune Magazine once said that Fascism was the future of Capitalism) Similarly, though the Chinese government which calls itself ‘Communist’ (never underestimate the Chinese wit), it oversees a system that is distinctly capitalist in nature.

I encourage everyone to read Mandel’s work to aid in the understanding of our modern capitalist order, a system that is increasingly lopsided at a social and economic level. Though modern technological gadgetry convinces people that they are prosperous even when they are not, economic exploitation and monetary inequality are leading to political inequality and an increasing misunderstanding of the economic order in which we live.

Who said it is a free country – your rent is due. 

Harper Hates Democracy. . . .

I read a really interesting book in manuscript form over the weekend while I was nursing my cold. It is about a man's personal journey to political enlightenment throughout certain adventures in England, the US, and Latin America. The adventures, such as being held in an El Salvadoran prison, are interesting but what I found particularly good was that it reminded me of why so many modern right-wingers hate democracy so much. The book uses a quote from Milton Friedman, the gist of which is that if democratically elected representatives enact any policies which are perceived to be controls on the so-called 'free-market' then these decisions are a priori anti-democratic. In other words, Friedman used the argument that Democracies are good only so long as they bring about decisions that he  agrees with, otherwise they are not actually democratic at all. 

This reminded me that modern right-wingers (and this doesn't necessarily apply to old school tories) hate democracy because they don't believe that the people of a nation can form a general will that has as its goal some kind of social plan, particularly about the distribution of resources. But since this is the primary goal of democracy, to believe such a thing is to hollow out the entire concept.

I remember a meeting in the 90s where a World Bank official was speaking about so-called 'good governance' and democracy in the Third World. The WB official was suggesting that Third World democracies had to follow the World Bank policies of eliminating social programs and deregulating markets. But when asked "what exactly is the point of democratic elections if the agenda is already set by a set of World Bank officials" the man had no response. 

Men like Harper hate democracy because they want us to believe that there is no society, just a bunch of individuals pursuing their own wealth. The last thing they want is the population actually deciding how society should be organized or how resources should be distributed and used. In other words, Harper wants his model of society to be perceived as 'natural' and immutable; and not something that democratic processes should be able to touch. Ironically of course, Harper's model actually consists of using the government to funnel tax-payer's money to large corporations while pretending that they believe in 'free markets.' 

Harper hates democracy because he hates people and loathes the idea that we can get together and collectively decide on our future. But society does exist and it belongs to the people who form it and we have democratic processes to decide on how we will form that society. If the market was all we needed, there would be no need of democracy. 

Milton Friedman is, by the way, quite dead and his model will die as well. Harper is a follower of Friedman and has shown his contempt for democracy again and again. But people will eventually realize that tyranny is not freedom and that society and the economy belongs to them and not to the CEOs of Bay Street, and the people will eventually take it back and the Harper era will be considered a dark period of our history. 

Either that or Harper and his ilk will slowly destroy everything good that society has built. 

Olympic protests and the Black Block. . .

Many people have been very upset by the so-called Black Block protesters at the Olympics. These self identified young 'anarchists' show up many of these international events, often wreaking havoc with their militant and sometimes violent tactics. They are a very loose affiliation of activists who have some very basic, gut-reaction objections to the inequities of modern capitalism and the power of what they consider to be an international ruling capitalist class that effectively controls much of thee agenda through a rather strong strangle-hold on the media. Thus they often target international meetings which they see as a reflection of this elitist control of democracy, media, and resources. Their basic strategy is fairly simple: create a certain degree of chaos on the street through mildly violent action, thus attracting media attention which, despite a large degree of corporate control still reports on these actions. 

Of course one can largely agree with the analysis of these people concerning the injustices of the international relations of  production and distribution without agreeing with their tactics. But the argument is not at all as clear as one would like it to be. Those who opposes such actions contend that they fail to progress the cause of greater international justice and democracy because they alienate many of the people who could be converted to the cause. ON the other hand, many of these anarchists would argue that without such actions there would be little or no coverage of the opposition to these international events, leading people to believe that these is no real problems with the international bodies such as the G20, the IMF, the World Bank etc. 

To a certain degree both these arguments are correct. In the face of a media controlled almost everywhere by a small group of corporations which, naturally, pursue a certain narrow corporatist agenda, it is near impossible to proliferate the debate concerning the corporate roots of global inequities and injustices. However, there are many who, if they really knew what was going on, would be profoundly opposed to much of what is really happening in the pursuit of international profit. But many of these people are just turned off by the sight of youths dressed in black breaking storefront windows and fighting with police. 

However one feels about these people and their actions, it would be folly not to take what they have to say seriously. There is an ever growing opposition to the inequities of the international economic system. These people are informed, often well educated, energetic, and committed. This is exactly the constituency of many of the worlds great revolutions. They are struggling for the same things that inspired those who fought the French revolution in thee 1789 and in many ways the goals of their cause are becoming ever more popular. In the years preceding the Revolution in France there was a tendency among the ruling class to ride in ever larger and more extravagant coaches as the desrepenciee in wealth become more pronounced in French culture. Today the differences between rich and poor are steadily growing, and the ultra-wealthy drive ever more extravagant vehicles and Wall St. and Bay St. Bankers and investors are making money that normal people can hardly imagine. 

And perhaps even more importantly many average people are feeling alienated by a system that is supposed to be democratic but is increasingly rarified and controlled by a political and economic elite. The very institutions that were supposed to guarantee the voice of the people are becoming more or less the 'playthings' of the rich and powerful who are able to manipulate them in their interests. This tendency causes a vague feeling of unease among people which, though they cannot necessarily express it in clear and rational discourse, slowly undermines the system's legitimacy. I believe the fairly strong reaction to the recent prorogation of parliament is a small example of this unease. The people in the so-called Black Block are just one of the most obvious expressions of this sentiment. But just as Parkinson's disease may begin with a very small tremor in the hand, social movements which lead to major social upheavals begin with a ragtag group of malcontents. Disregard them or condemn them if you will but you do so at your folly. 

Conflating categories in Political Science. . . .

Reading the thoughts of some bloggers I continue to be amazed by the degree of confusion that exists concerning the basic concepts usually associated with political science. People are continually conflating different categories within the canon to the detriment of our basic understanding of the central concepts. For example, I read one blogger who claimed that Canada is ‘not a democracy’ but a constitutional monarchy. Here is a basic misunderstanding; a conflation of categories if you will. Constitutional monarchy refers, or course, to the central ways in which a government functions on a technical level. Democracy, on the other hand, refers to the method by which the government is chosen. You could, in theory, have a non-democratic constitutional monarchy, or a very democratic one. (Some one might, of course, try to make the argument that any form of constitutionalism implies some form of democratic process but suffice to say, given the history of constitutional monarchies, this level of democracy could be, like 18^th century Britain, barely considered democratic).

Similarly some people seem to think that any form of democracy implies a priori some form of ‘market economy.’ Again this is a conflation of separate categories. If the constitutional monarchy refers to the technical functioning of government, and democracy refers to the method of choosing a government, a so-called ‘market economy’ refers simply to the way in which the production and distribution of the goods is organized. You could have a, for example, a Socialist Constitutional Monarchy with a high degree of democratic representation. You could also, as is the case with China, have a capitalist system of production with very little democratic process.

One of the most common conflations in this regard is that of ‘Capitalism’ with a so-called free market.  Even a close reading of Smith will make clear this conflation. Capitalism is a generalized system of commodity production in which firms employ labor in the production of goods or services and make a profit from this process while the state ensures the smooth running of these relations. A market, on the other hand, refers specifically to a system of distribution. People love to throw the words ‘free market’ around even though there is very little that is actually ‘free’ in our so-called market. This is because to ensure the smooth running of ‘capitalism’ the markets must be tightly controlled and regulated. The conceptual proof of this argument is found in the fact that you could have a fairly free market without actually having ‘capitalism’ per se. People could come to a market selling goods and services that they have produced on their own without the profit of surplus value procured from excess labor and make sales in this market. This would be a free-market without capitalism.

Anyway, no time now to expand on these issues. Just wanted to make the observation that the concepts of political science are becoming terribly muddy and this is resulting in some shabby analysis. 

My City Councilor and the vagaries of Capitalist Ideology

Today I got my weekly update email from my city councilor, a one Mr. Glen Brooks, a man who instead of engaging in real political discourse once sent me an email telling me that on my next vacation abroad I should only purchase a one-way ticket. This weekly update is voicing his support for a legislated wage freeze for public sector workers. Now, Mr. Brooks isn’t all bad, he does make the concession that he thinks that instead of a total freeze he believes that it should be tied to the rate of inflation. Then he makes that always nauseating claim that he too is willing to take a wage freeze. Isn’t that big of him?

Well I will never support a legislative wage freeze because it goes against the very principle of collective bargaining which is one of the central mechanisms responsible for most of the workers’ rights and decent working conditions that people enjoy today. However, I will tell you what Mr. Brooks, if you vote to cut the City Councilor’s pay to the same rate as, say, the person who mops your office floor, then we will talk.

I am sick and tired of right-wing ideologues, whose very political impetus is the pursuit of personal greed, try to prevent people of earning even decent wages that allow them to raise a family and live in acceptable housing. Today’s right-wingers have really come no further than the ideological drivel expounded by Thomas Malthus two hundred years ago have they?! They continue to be guilty of the worst kind of conceptual idiocy and reification while at the same time parading themselves as intellectuals and genuine leaders. Well, my friends, if Edmund Burke, a man of remarkable eloquence and occasional brilliance, couldn’t make right-wing coherent, then what chance do intellectual midgets such as Glen Brooks have?  But put the reification aside people; our society does not consist of relations between things but between people. We build our society and we can take control of it as we wish. If our economy is not providing for people, it is not the people that need to change – it is the economy. And anyone who argues that this cannot happen is either hiding their own ideological greed behind conceptual clap-trap, is half-witted, or is the worst kind of materialist (philosophical and economic) and foolishly believes that as human beings we are simply subject to abstract laws of mechanism and have no control over our destiny. But if we can take hold of our individual destinies, then we can administer a significant influence on our collective destiny too. But you see, ironically right-wingers know this or they wouldn’t take part in government and pass legislation etc. It is only when average working people say we need to pass legislation that ensures that they cannot be exploited that right-wingers suddenly set the limits of our legislative possibilities. But this is just an ideological game played by greedy, self-serving people who set the limits of our collective power at the protection of corporations to enhance their bottom-line. 

The economic model and its victims. . . .

This morning on the CBC they were talking about a steel-workers’ strike. Not surprisingly the strike centered on the restructuring of pensions, an issue that has been inciting labour unrest all over the world in recent years. What struck me in particular was an interview with people around the community of the strike many of whom took the position, summed up by one interviewee, that “there is a new business model and people need to adjust to it, and if that means reductions in, or even elimination of, their pensions, that is just how it goes.” This position, though apparently widely held, strikes me as not only naïve but profoundly dangerous. It is naïve because it fails to recognize that business has always tried to undermine the power, the conditions, and the prosperity of workers. It was not that long ago in Western history that children worked in factories and mines and some workers were literally chained to their machines. And any effort to improve the wages or conditions of these workers, or to legislate the use of child labour, was met with terrifying predictions by business of economic disaster. These terrible conditions still prevail in many countries in the world and anyone who does not understand that business everywhere would be glad to bring back the bad old days is deeply naïve. Even where some people in business would find such regressive moves distasteful, they are structurally compelled to move whenever possible in this direction. What many people fail to understand is that what workers are actively pursuing are not just better conditions for themselves. Workers struggles are for all of us. Today we have rights to decent wages and working conditions because generations of union activists have struggled for these things. And every generation has been derided and cursed by many in the community while their victories have been enjoyed by all people in the labour force.

The prevailing opinion is dangerous because it fails to understand that it is not the people are not there to serve the economy, rather the economy is there to serve people. If we have an economic model that cannot provide adequate wages and decent pensions then it is the model that is wrong not the people. The simple fact is that the vast majority of wealth in every country and all over the world is in the hands of a very small group of people and there is plenty of wealth in the world for everyone to live a decent life and if someone claims that the model is changing in such a way that will not always, say, good wages, pensions, and a safe work environment, then the model must be changed. It is as simple as that. In the days when children worked in factories wealthy business people assured us that if we tried to change the business model it would just end in disaster. But here is the simple fact; the regions of the world which have seen the greatest number of regulations of such things as workers’ safety, environmental standards, and workers’ rights, as well as the strongest efforts at redistribution have seen the highest standards of living. The economics of this, and an idea that many would not like us to understand is that workers rights, high wages, and pensions, instead of being a drag on an economy are overall a impetuous to innovation. This has always been central to the development of capitalism. In fact capitalism grew in part out of the ravages of the black-death which made labour scarcer and more expensive, forcing innovations throughout the productive economy. When labour is expensive capitalists have been forced to innovate which has beneficial side effects for all of us. One of Marx’s most important insights was that the capitalist economy tends toward reification; that is the illusion that the economy is a set of relations between things and not between people. Capitalists will, of course, tell us that any efforts at changing the economic model will be disastrous. But the fact is that the economic model that exists today did not happen spontaneously, it was a creation of individuals acting quite consciously in particular ways. This is evident in the fact that we do not have a ‘free-market’ economy but a highly regulated economy the processes of which have been consciously designed to function in certain ways. The problem today is made more complex by the process of globalization. But it is still essentially the same problem and until people understand that we can make the economy serve the interests of everyone if we choose and as long as we let people promote the myth that the economic model is a force of its own then we will continue to be victims of the brutal self-interest of a small minority of wealthy and powerful people. It is a story as old as civilization which is rehashed for each generation but the struggle will and must continue. 

That Hideous Force....

Once again the government of Canada has acted reprehensibly, irresponsibly, and perhaps criminally, in the treatment of one of our citizens. Suaad Mohamud, a Canadian citizen was detained in Keyna with the assistance and cooperation of officials of the government of Canada. And, in an act that has frightening overtones, the Canadian government handed official documents over to the Keynan government to aid in their false accusations and abuse of this woman. And what is Stephen Harper's response to this abuse of power? It tells people to be more careful when traveling abroad!!! And to add insult to injury this comes on the very day that another Canadian court tells us that the government has abused Omar Khadar's rights and failed to live up to its United Nations obligations concerning the status of Child Soldiers. All the while the finance minister and a large group of his cronies are spending millions of dollars travelling in China trying to boost their financial prospects while ignoring the epic abuse of rights that happens there everyday.

Stephen Harper is presiding over the sell-off of Canada, both literally and metaphorically. Everything that compassionate and responsible Canadians hope that we can stand for is being dismantled and stripped away. And a thoughtless, malevolent, evil regime is taking its place. It is that hideous force that seeks to take away our humanity and replace it with a society of millions of slave-like workers without rights or dignity, working at the behest of a small group of uber-wealthy who live in ridiculous prosperity. 

Tomorrow, a Shelley poem reminding us of how little progress we have made. 

Capitalism and Historical Revisionism

I really like this; revisionists are already coming out of the woodwork to suggest that this crisis in capitalism (the depth of which is not yet clear), is not the fault of capitalists. Note the comment left by ‘Anonymous’ to my last entry. “What capitalist supports letting people buy things (houses in this case) that they can't actually afford?” Well … most of them! I guarantee that every person in every bank that gave a bad, or predatory, loan was a capitalist. It is not real complicated folks. The more you deregulate the bigger the mess will become.

Now all of this begs the question “what is capitalism?” This is of course a more complex question . Some people will claim that only a completely deregulated economic system in which the state only functions in extremely limited ways is true capitalism. There is no historical case for such a position. Adam Smith made a clear distinction between the ‘market’ and capitalism. The market is literally a place where people go to buy and sell goods. Capitalism is an economic system in which the government creates the best conditions for individual capitalist enterprises to be profitable, and (according to Smith) it should do so in the national interests. The idea of a completely deregulated system is not really in the Smithian agenda. It is no coincidence that the modern capitalist and banking system grew directly out of people who claimed to be capitalists. It is because they were, and are, Capitalists! These people will often pay lip service to the idea of the ‘free market’ but they seldom act on genuine deregulation because they know what a nightmare would ensue. Of, course Alan Greenspan never really followed Ayn Rand, if he had he would certainly not been the head of a Federal Reserve bank. But then Ayn Rand was not a follower of Ayn Rand, if she had been she would not have spent any time telling people about what she thought was the best kind of social economic system, such an effort smacks of altruism and is a performative contradiction. (And the argument that this effort was in her ‘self’ interest because if society reformed  in this way it would be better for her too, is nonsense because as any (even right-wing) game theorist will tell you such effort is a zero sum game)

Anyone who actually advocates such a deregulated capitalist system is not really paying attention to much of anything. Greed does not make investors smarter or better, rather it blinds them to smart investment. Unchecked greed is an illness much like compulsive gambling. If you really tried to deregulate capitalism society would crumble before you could say Adam Smith. First of all Smith, even to the degree that he believed in laissez-faire, did not function in a context of potential environmental disaster, or red-dye 5 in the food. Shall we deregulate the production and trade of plutonium? Anyone who really thinks so is mentally challenged. And once you realize that you need to regulate this, you realize that at some level the entire system demands some form of control and regulation.

Unlike my ‘Anonymous’ commentator claims, this crisis was not caused by the American government propping up the banking system. This claim would be laughable if it were not so pathetic. The crisis was caused by greedy people who were functioning in a deregulated  credit system which allowed them not only to make predatory loans but to actually sell these loans like markers in a context that did not demand the proper kinds of disclosure and transparency.  Much of this was done by Wall Street firms that spent more money paying their executives than they did monitoring their credit.  Why, because they were greedy, and their greed blinded them not only to social responsibility but to good investment practices.

Selfishness will never be a virtue. I am not a capitalist,  but I admit that a strong argument can be made that capitalism, well regulated, can function successfully in some areas of society. However, the pursuit of profit does not belong in some areas of society because it will just lead to elitism and destroy society. 

Put Ayn Rand in the dustbin

This is rich. Alan Greenspan, known to be a big fan of Ayn Rand, is now talking about nationalizing banks. Well, well, well. So much for laissez faire. In a philosophy in which selfishness is a virtue and capitalism is the highest ideal, it seems that Rand and her followers have suffered something of an ideological TKO. Time to face up to the simple fact of anyone with any sense has always been aware; unchecked selfishness leads to nothing but chaos and disaster. Not only does the market need to be heavily regulated to function properly, but there are major sections of society in which the market simply doesn’t belong. Regardless of what Greenspan , Rand, or their followers think, it is not socialism, but capitalism that will fall into the dustbin of history. 

Lack of Leadership

There really is no serious leadership in the political system today, at least at the highest levels. In Canada and the US conservatives are using recent economic problems to obtain tax cuts, an idea with which they have become obsessed; an economic move that will, in the long run, further complicate the basic problems that Capitalism is now suffering. Meanwhile conservatives, in their public discourse, are simply ignoring the fact that it was their policies that got us into this mess in the first place. The government of British Columbia passed a ‘balanced budget’ law a few years ago when they had convinced people that such a profoundly stupid idea was economically responsible, and now that have been forced to rescind the law in special session of the legislature. (Rather embarrassing if you ask me)But the past obsessions of Conservatives with tax cuts and deregulation has suffered a devastating and obvious discrediting; the only ones who don’t seem to realize it is, of course, conservatives. However, little leadership is being demonstrated on the other side of the political aisle. When the depressions and economic problems of the late 19^th and early 20^th century hit, it led to the progressive movement and major reforms to the economy including the move toward anti-trust laws. In the 1930s Roosevelt oversaw more significant changes to how capitalism functions with the creation of the welfare state. But today? There is really little or no talk of any serious changes or reforms to how capitalism works. We are going to build a few new bridges and fix some roads, but little else. Governments in a number of countries have made major investments in some capitalism enterprises like banks or insurance companies, and this even lead to a cover of Newsweek magazine that reads “We are all Socialists Now.” But this is obviously laughable. Governments have done nothing serious to overcome the problems that have now manifest themselves in the economy. Infrastructure spending will have little long-term effect on how the economy works. Politicians are just hoping to ride out the storm and stay afloat. Instead of bailing out banks governments should have taken that money and created National banks which could give low-interest,  loans with thirty-year terms to people seeking mortgages, as well as loans for small-businesses, thus by-passing some of the most blatant negative effects of market fluctuation on average people. Furthermore, the recent credit crisis has put so-called public-private partnerships in question. (See Mike Old’s article in this month’s HEU Guardian http://www.heu.org/~DOCUMENTS/Guardian/OWM/GuardWinter08_WEB_1.pdf) But governments are loath to give up policies that have gone so far to benefit their corporate friends in recent decades. Essentially, in the past thirty years or so, Governments have systematically designed economies in a way to divert money from average tax payers to large powerful corporations (much of it in the military sector). This has led to greater discrepancies between rich and poor, the gradual impoverishment of the middle-class, and outrageous profits that have mostly benefited the rich. Besides paying lip-service to the issue of Wall Street bonuses, these issues are not really on the radar of mainstream political discourse. But capitalism will crumble before their very eyes and until there is some genuine leadership, average people will pay the worst part of the price for this decay. 

Capitalism and the Auto Bailout

The US Senate failed to approve the congressional bailout of the auto industry today. The bailout didn’t pass largely because Republicans wanted the UAW workers to take significant pay and benefit cut to bring them in line with non-unionised workers in the same sector. The right has been continually suggesting that the failure of the US auto industry is almost exclusively the cause of auto-worker greed. And this is a common refrain of many people. Somehow capitalists and right-wing elements in the media have convinced people that workers are greedy and think of nothing but increasing their wealth. They have convinced people of this despite the fact that most worker’s strikes are not motivated by pay issues but by working conditions.

And here is the sixty-four thousand dollar question: why are people so willing to condemn worker greed and so unwilling to look to the unbridled greed of the market and upper management? Companies like Nortel can be pushed into bankruptcy simply because their ‘projections’ for profit are not sufficient for investors! They are still making a profit you understand, just not a high enough rate of profit. Meanwhile, in the auto-sector for example, upper-level managers can make multi-million dollar salaries.

When workers struggle for a few more dollars or a couple of extra sick days, they are just trying to carve out a slightly better life for themselves. They want better lives for their children, an occasional vacation, homes that are not in a constant state of disrepair. That is not greed. Meanwhile in some industries managers are flying in private jets and buying homes with cash.

If the north-American auto industry fails, or the US economy in general goes into recession, it will not be because of worker greed. It will be because capitalists have fashioned an economy that is driven by a market that requires greater and greater rates of profit for public companies to stay afloat, by companies that have no conception or concern for the public good, and by managers whose rates of pay increase to outrageous levels even when the companies they control are going bankrupt. Of course, this is not an unusual occurrence in history. Before the French Revolution as the French economy began to sink, the aristocracy was so out of touch with reality that it was not uncommon for them to complain of the laziness of the peasants as a cause for their nations troubles. All this while most of the poor ate bread that was made with as much sawdust as wheat.

The next time you ate worried about the economy or your daily struggles, don’t blame your bus driver or the guy who assembled your car. Blame those who make millions of dollars while producing nothing for society.

Alan Greenspan and capitalism

So Alan Greenspan was “shocked” by the failure of his ideology! How about that folks??? He was shocked that people all acting in their own interested resulted in an economic disaster. The great stalwart of modern capitalist ideology was surprised by this??!! Of course if he had paid attention to even the simplest games theorists like John Nash or Garret Hardin, then he would have known what was coming. The game theory called ‘the tragedy of the commons’ tells you all you need to know. Capitalism, if it is to work at all, must not let the self interest of individuals go unchecked but there must be mechanisms to protect us from the excesses that lead from people’s self interest. It is not very complicated and the fact that Alan Greenspan who was chairman of the Fed for all those years didn’t understand this shows that either he was irretrievably stupid or that capitalism is a hopelessly blind ideology. Well I think in this case it both factors came into play. Now, I am a socialist and an idealist and I can live with the idea of a mixed economy for now, perhaps that is all that the human psyche is prepared for at this moment in history. But it is finally time for people to wake up and understand that certain elements of society simply don’t function if left to the self-interest of individuals or corporations, period! Time to wake up from the dream Stephen Harper and see what so many of us have know for ages, capitalism is on its way out.

A message to Capitalist...

A message from the socialists to the capitalists......WE TOLD YOU SO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Free-markets

It always makes me laugh when someone, usually a Tory, appeal to the so-called ‘free-market.’ There is no challenge or problem faced by society for which someone won’t offer the market as a solution. From health-care to endangered animals, some people think the market will solve all the problems; or at least that is what they say. The problem is that for all the talk, virtually no one really believes in a free market. Modern society is more heavily regulated than any in history and in the case of most of these regulations even the most ardent Tory or free-marketer are not willing to dispense with them. For example, when people talk about the market as a way of solving health-care issues, what they really mean is that we should create a situation in which large multi-national corporations can make more money out of the people’s illnesses and suffering. When was the last time you heard some free-marketer suggest that anyone should be able to offer their services as a doctor or sell home-made drugs to treat illness? Never, I am willing to wager. This is because no one really believes in a free-market; period. Every part of capitalist exchange in our society is heavily regulated and very few people would have it otherwise. Anyone who has tried to start a small business knows first-hand just how regulated things really are. Regulations determine what you can sell, where you can sell, how you can advertise what you can sell, etc. In fact, our so-called markets are so thoroughly regulated and controlled that I wager that Adam Smith would not even recognize our mode of production and distribution as free-market at all. It has been a while since I read the Wealth of Nations but I do recall that Smith was careful to distinguish between the ‘market’ and ‘capitalism.’ The market is a place where we exchange goods and services, but capitalism is a mode of production that is nationally based and one that the state helps to maintain in the national interest. (I think most people, including free-marketers would be surprised to realize the degree to which Smith embraced 19th century nationalism)

Now, I am not saying this to suggest that I object to regulations of markets, far from it. I mention it because once you start paying attention and realize that these free-marketers don’t really believe in free-markets at all, you are suddenly struck by the question; “what are these people really going on about then?” Well, if you take a close look at the economy in which we live, it doesn’t take much analysis to understand what is going on. Tories and ‘free-marketers’ drag out their inane, tired arguments about the market whenever they see an opportunity for big capital to make more money, or see a threat against big capital continuing to ensure their profits. And when you see the sorts of people who are involved in many Western governments, and you see the ties they have to oil companies, mineral companies, pharmaceuticals, developers, etc., the issue becomes frighteningly clear. In recent years these relations have, in many cases become embarrassingly obvious. Bush’s ties to big oil and the Saudi Royal family, and Dick Cheney’s connection to Haliburton are only the most public examples. And it is this connection between so-called free-market governments and big business that makes the whole thing seem to be a tragic-comedy. Because parties like the Conservatives in Canada, the Tories in Britain, and the Republicans in the US, almost never make significant changes in the market that benefit small business people, yet these are consistently the core of their support. There is a mass-hallucination in Western society that causes people to suffer from the delusion that Right-wing governments are ‘fiscally responsible’ and in favour of free-markets. And our hallucinations are constantly fed by media sources that help to perpetrate them. These illusions are closely tied to another prevailing unquestionably accepted notion in modern Capitalism, to wit: that private corporations can do anything that governments do, only more efficiently. The prevailing acceptance of this idea is confirmation of the adage; ‘tell a lie often enough and people will believe it.

I remember seeing Noam Chomsky asked in an interview if he thought there were any real alternatives to a ‘free-market’ system, and he replied , “Yes, the system we have now.” The fact is that we already live in a system that has little to do with the ‘free-market.’ Thus socialist alternatives are not really radical ideas to pursue within the confines of our current mode of production and distribution.

So next time some Tory of free-marketer appeal to some principle of the free-market, just laugh in their face because they are only interested in market driven solutions when the price of access to that market is substantial enough that average people have no chance of actually benefiting from it.

Oil and the Casino Economy

At night I regularly listen to AM talk radio from the United States. And lately the most common topic of conversation has been the price of gasoline. Talk-show hosts rant and rave as do their callers, pointing out, probably quite rightly that soon the price of gas will cripple the US economy and cause great suffering to many people. Some callers are fond of pointing out that the roots of this problem in the US can be found in the history of the Reagan Administration which effectively put a halt to sponsorship to alternative energy research. “By this time,” they like to say, “we would have been completely energy independent if not for Reagan.” Maybe so, but largely irrelevant now. Meanwhile, in an exercise of pure public relations, the US senate calls in Oil Executives and grills them on the hill as if the head of Mobil or BP really sets the price of Gas, and as if, even if they did, the Congress would do anything about it anyway. But what is remarkable about all this is that I have never once heard, whether on talk radio or on television or in print, any one in the US offer a single solution to the problem. A talk radio host in Boston is attempting to get everyone in the US to put a sign in their car that just says “I am mad about the price of Gas.” This is the extent of acceptable activism in the US. But of course, besides the long term solutions of shifting energy production and usage to clean renewable sources, the only real solutions to the price of Gas in the US and elsewhere are things that people are not even willing to talk about: to wit; nationalize oil production and breakup the cartel of OPEC. People in Venezuela pay ten cents a gallon for gas because of a nationalized oil program. Now, first of all, I understand that in the long term, such a solution will not address the important environmental issues. But what I am really getting at here is that as capitalism begins to spiral out of control in many parts of the global economy, the very solutions that capitalism has made available are ones that people will not consider because prevailing ideology has managed to take real solutions off the table. Marx was careful to point out that a mode of production creates the very conditions for its evolution. In this case capitalism has created profoundly useful structures of production and distribution but the casino economy makes the delivery of certain goods (food is another prime example) unworkable. The solutions to these problems are simple; it is time for society at large to take control of certain systems of production and distribution in the interest of everyone. In the past six months most of the gains on global poverty made in the past decade have quickly eroded due to oil and food prices. But it is not want of supply that is the issue, it is the casino economy that is the problem. When the economy no longer serves the interest of people, it is time for people to take control of the economy.

Wait until gas in the US is ten or fifteen dollars a gallon and suddenly it will become patriotic to talk about nationalization.

Reductionism and the Right-Wing.

I have struggled with myself to understand the profound discomfort that I feel with the attitude, so prevalent today of the prevailing right-wing ideology. What is it that I feel to the very depths of my bones that is so wrong, so terribly corrupted, so utter inhuman, about these popular ideas? After much consideration, I have come to at least a partial conclusion. I have decided that it is not any one particular policy or position that I find so distasteful; rather, it is something to do with the manner in which they have reduced the abundance of the world. Everything about the modern right-wing ideology is offensively reductive. They restrict the rich diversity not only of the human experience but of nature itself. This is seen most blatantly in their reduction of all social and economic policies to so-called ‘measurable outcomes.’ Everything from healthcare to education is treated in terms of the crudest business model and reduced to inputs and outputs, as though you could measure normative values the way an accountant measures profits. You can see this in the contemporary obsession with standardized testing in education as though intelligence itself could be set to a formula. But of course education is no longer a social concern and even students are reduced to potential workers rather than growing individuals who can contribute in countless individual ways to the growth of our culture. Likewise, the citizen, once the central concept in democratic life and theory, has been reduced to the ‘tax-payer.’

But here is the rub; none of the most important things in life or society can be reduced to measurable quantities. Value cannot be measured. Education, for example, is not a number but a process of enrichment. We cannot reduce funding of education to an input-output model because its effects are moral, personal, and ideological. We cannot measure the investment return on normative standards, whether positive or negative. It is a deep perversion of the human and social soul to attempt to reduce health, education the environment, career satisfaction, or human happiness to a measurable quantity. This is, in my mind, precisely what it means to be human, to have values that are immeasurable and to look toward a better future that cannot be reduced to issues of measurability.

So here is what I have grown so uncomfortable with in the modern ideology; its proponents have abandoned one of the central aspects of their humanity – their illimitability. Thus when I look at George Bush or Stephen Harper, I see the soulless, mindless, heartless, autonomic creatures who have abandoned humanity and reduced individuals and society to a set rationalized functions that they think must always be measurable.

The way forward for people who oppose this reductive ideology need not be the creation of a complex ideology like those created in the 19th and 20th centuries. Rather, we need to begin simply by rejecting the technical-rationalism that has colonized our moral and normative lives and we must embrace our illimitable natures. The world is infinitely abundant, don’t let men in suits reduce it to numbers and equations!