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Linus Pauling, founder of Linux, was once asked the difference between himself and Bill Gates——-
” I’m a programmer, he’s a marketing man “.
And now Bill Gates is marketing himself as a World Figure, the philanthropist who will solve the problems of Africa . Well, its a nice long way from the problems at home .
A few years back, at Davos, one of that gang made a speech and said (paraphrase from memory)—“WE are the masters now”, and the assembled politicians applauded. Bunch of softheads.
” The business of government is to restrain business “, is not a quote from this frog, but a paraphrase from one of the Gods of the market-worshippers, a Scotsman called Adam Smith.
Posted by frog on Apr 11, 2006 at 10:06 PM
Linus Torvalds.
Pauling invented massive doses of vitamin C.
Posted by Major Major on Apr 12, 2006 at 9:57 AM
thanks major,, slip of the brain.
Posted by frog on Apr 13, 2006 at 6:31 AM
This is the one aspect of progressivism that America, in general, fails to grasp. The problem is the very structure of our economic system. The problem is also one of education. The author of this article has obviously read a great deal on this subject, authors that few Americans hear about, ever. I have 48 credits in philosophy at an American college, enough to graduate, and the closest we got to economic theory, was maybe Heidegger
Posted by Phaedrus on Apr 13, 2006 at 1:32 PM
American universities, colleges, and schools are afraid to broach the subject of socialism… and we are paying a terrible price for this.
All this crap about “markets,” “market socialism,” and what not, is sidetracking people from real issues.
People are even afraid to talk about socialized healthcare… and by the way, very few activists are even involved in the healthcare debate, which would move us back onto a very progressive track in this country, just as it has done in Canada… just let any two-bit, half-assed reactionary politician try to take universal healthcare away from Canadians and they get booted right out of office… Saskatchewan and Manitoba have had socialist governments for many years now because Canadians aren’t afraid to talk about socialism… and their talking socialism delivers big-time when it comes to healthcare, high-quality, lower costs educations, stronger labor laws… but most importantly, public debate and dialogue is more democratic with socialism talked about.
What the movements for peace and social justice need in this country is a good injection of socialist ideas. Here in Minnesota the two most popular governors were socialists, Floyd Olson and Elmer Benson… that should tell us something if we really want to defeat Bush and big-business… we should be building on the progressive legacy of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party.
People need to start opening their mouths and writing a little more.
Alan L. Maki
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
218-386-2432
Posted by alanmaki on Apr 14, 2006 at 11:36 AM
“What makes this group interesting is that their ideology is becoming indistinguishable from that of Antonio Negri, who has praised postmodern digital capitalism, which, according to Negri, is becoming almost indistinguishable from communism. By Negri
Posted by chuckville on Apr 14, 2006 at 2:36 PM
Great piece by Zizek. I just read an entry about Zizek on Andrew Keen’s blog and wanted to share that with you:
http://www.thegreatseduction.com
Posted by sabine on Apr 14, 2006 at 4:28 PM
Slavoy Zizek
Posted by radko on Apr 14, 2006 at 7:04 PM
Isn’t it great that Bill Gates gets to choose who he will help and who he won’t; such a great philanthropist—- kind of like a rich little god who makes the decisions of who will live and who will die…. a better alternative would be to bring Microsoft under public ownership, and use the profits to fund a publicly owned, publicly financed, and publicly administered socialized health care system… ditto for the rest of the capitalist enterprises… it is time to place human needs, and the protection of nature, before corporate profits.
By the way, Native people in northern Manitoba, Canada have asked Bill Gates to fund home building for their community because Bush’s clone who was elected to the head of the Canadian government with financing from the capitalist multi-national corporations refuses to fund human needs in Canada, while he has put up signs that all resources are for sale to the lowest multi-national corporate bidder… and then when there isn’t enough money left to finance Canada’s healthcare system, the right-wing think tanks will point their fingers and say, “See, socialism doesn’t work.” It has been months and Bill Gates has yet to respond to this plea for help, how come?
Socialism works just fine. Countries all over the world are clamoring for help from little Cuba’s doctors and the highly trained professional healthcare providers… from Venezuela to Pakistan… Castro even offered tremendous assistance to help the victims of Katrina while that great intellect of capitalist morality sitting in the Oval Office thumbed his nose at the offer, and twiddled his thumbs, sucked down anti-depressants causing his eyes to roll into the back of his head so he couldn’t see the effect of his policies that squandered billions on war while the infrastructure of our own country was going to hell and hundreds of people were left to drown and die.
I don’t see Bill Gates getting the same kind of rave reviews from other governments and the United Nations that Cuba is receiving… might I suggest that we tax the hell out of Bil Gates and Microsoft and give the money to Castro where it will really do some good… and people don’t even have to beg the Cubans for help… this is what I call socialist humanitarianism… it far surpases Bill Gate’s philanthropical endeavors, undertaken solely because it is all tax-deductible.
Oh yes—- how did Bil Gates attain his wealth? You got it, through exploitation of working people… oh ya, being the great philanthropist he is, Bill Gates shipped American jobs to India just to help poor starving people… cheap human labor never even enters the picture does it?
Posted by alanmaki on Apr 14, 2006 at 9:17 PM
Of course Zizek is right about this. Big-shot money men who flash their philanthropy cred are doing more than poncing themselves up with good causes… The underlying idea is the answer to systemic problems will be solved by the mega-capitalists, and so, make the world dependent upon the whim of their benevolence. It not only serves their PR goals (and maybe even salves their conscience), it is “disempowering” in the extreme. People should consider the logic behind simply expropriating these plutocrats and using these resources to solve problems as they see fit. But that’s Marxism there, and, as I have discovered, in this world, just voicing the old-school reasoning makes one a persona non grata.
Posted by TheoPapathanasis on Apr 16, 2006 at 10:54 AM
Marxism is what we need more of. That’s why the capitalists hate it so much.
Posted by alanmaki on Apr 16, 2006 at 10:00 PM
I can’t help but ask…
When today’s plutocrats are dispossessed and their wealth used for this generation’s social benefits, from where will come the wealth for the next generation’s benefits?
Is confiscation/expropriation really a strategy with a future? At what point will there be no more “excess” profit to scrape up, because no one is willing to invest their time, energy, or wealth in a productive enterprise for fear of having it taken away?
There is ample criticism to made against capitalism when it is practiced without ethical restraint, but that’s more a critique of non-existent ethics than it is the dynamics of the market. There’s no harm in discussing socialism in university, but then socialism’s own weaknesses and failures ought to be included in the discussion. One glaring example is the quickness with which it prescribes the seizing and redistribution of wealth as the major cure for social ills, apparently assuming that those who have invested in the creation of that wealth will continue to do so in spite of the likelihood of seizure.
(Of course new wealth is “created”! Turning plastic, glass, transistors, and wire into a computer IS the creation of new wealth, to cite but one example.)
I tend to think that the real problem in America has little to do with market economics per se, and more to do with government officials having too cozy a relationship with a treasured few corporate entities (particularly when they become lobbyists), which makes it all the more difficult for anyone outside the buddy-network to compete effectively and to make any gains.
One of my main concerns with state control of production is along those very lines, those of crony capitalism. I don’t anticipate that buddy-networks would fade out in a command economy, or one that is primarily-command with a little market mixed in. On the contrary, I think those buddy-networks will be even more the order of the day in that kind of setting, further excluding anyone not beholden to or members of those networks.
I suppose the guiding ethic is that no one at all will be excluded. That would be interesting to see. I’m not aware that it has ever occured.
I haven’t seen any evidence that socialism is inherently more ethical as a system than capitalism. Toleration for human suffering and environmental destruction as the result of one’s activities is the problem, and there are examples of rapacious capitalists and blood-fever socialists throughout history. Nor is socialism obviously more conducive to lasting prosperity for large numbers of people across generations of time than capitalism is, (although their rhetoric can be stirring, for a while) but if any of you has info to suggest that it is these things, I will be curious to read.
Posted by Kuya on Apr 17, 2006 at 3:10 AM
Hello Kuya:
I do not think anybody actually needs capitalists to create wealth. Turning plastic, glass, transistors, and wire into a computer does not create wealth. It creates an object. The wealth is created by exploiting the labor nexus, which is, of course, many human beings. As for what’s done with the wealth upon its reification through sale, that’s a matter of distribution. In capitalism, the profit is the capitalist’s, because that’s the person that owns the capital. Think about Bush’s “ownership society” for a minute. The owners he’s really talking about are not America’s middle class home owners, but . . . plutocrats.
“At what point will there be no more
Posted by TheoPapathanasis on Apr 17, 2006 at 9:08 AM
You people rock! The thing is we can get wrapped in a lot of very serious talk about issues that are far removed from the point. That’s the nature of philosophic discussion. The point ultimately is this. We have moved from a world in which the actions of our day, how we spend our time, were dictated by the needs of survival, to one in which we face the possibility of not “having” to do anything. After all, that was and is the entire reason for the technological drive of the enlightenment, the end of scarcity. Well, guess what, its here. We can, as of this moment, provide for the basic needs of every human on this planet, every 2.8 seconds a child dies because we CHOOSE not to. We are still living with the decaying remnants of a system that worked very well to quickly exploit the resources of this planet in order that we might free ourselves from the drudgery and misery of the dangerous and mundane tasks necessary for our survival. This system is not suited however to the task of maintaining an economy of equilibrium in which the focus is no longer on the mastery of nature, but the “production” of a world in which every child born on this planet has equal access to food, shelter, healthcare, education, and a future free from the threat of warfare. And if we live in and promote a system in which this is not our dream, where we allow so many to live such miserably short and wasted lives, how can any of our moral and religious principles not be hopelessly compromised by the gnawing reality of our hypocrisy.
“The world
Posted by Phaedrus on Apr 17, 2006 at 12:25 PM
Phaedrus: Well said. That’s exactly the point. We choose not to do anything about it. The in-your-face-ness of today’s disparity of wealth is simply repulsive. Something “needs to be done.” Ignacio Ramonet said, “To begin with, we have to disarm the power of international finance which over the past 20 years has eaten into the world of politics, reducing the space available for democracy.”
http://mondediplo.com/2000/01/01leader
But how do you disarm interantional finance? It’s very difficult when people are afraid to talk about the simplest things, so, yes, that old idea of expropriation needs to come back into conversational currency.
It’s all very revolutionary, you know.
Posted by TheoPapathanasis on Apr 17, 2006 at 2:19 PM
Thanks, Theo and Phaedrus, for your responses.
Phaedrus’ point (if I may rephrase it a little) is perfectly correct that unless we act out our values in a way that actually relieves suffering and deprivation, we really are nothing but hypocrites. When I say “we”, of course, I could be talking about either capitalists or socialists. Both lay claim to a mechanism that, they each say, has the best chance to defeat poverty if it is implemented properly.
There’s the rub, yes? IF they’re implemented properly. How and under what conditions proper implementation takes place is rarely answered.
In my more cynical moments, I think of capitalists as those who think it’s OK to hoard more than they’ll ever need, and socialists as those who think it’s OK to grab from others what they don’t have themselves. Capitalists want to possess rather than share, socialists want to take rather than make. Those are glib generalizations, more like one-liners than anything else, but you get the drift.
I think my main attachment to a market approach has much to do with my conception of why people work at all, and especially why they try to be more creative, ambitious, and efficient than the guy next to them. To indulge in a grain of projection, why do I, Kuya, work my ass off? The answer is, incentive. I want more than basic maintenance for myself and my family, and in the here-and-now, I can obtain those rewards only if I keep my focus and apply my efforts toward earning them.
You see, it’s less about heroic entrepreneurs (although there are in fact lots of quite admirable entrepreneurs, they’re really not all rapacious gluttons) and more about regular people working to make ends meet and to improve their lot in life. Working for a reason that is meaningful within the context of their (our) oh-so-ordinary lives.
(continuing)
Posted by Kuya on Apr 17, 2006 at 11:26 PM
(to continue)
It’s pretty un-glamorous, not much inspiring, surely not heroic. It’s drawn from my experiences in a lot of different jobs, in which ordinary, semi-educated (or semi-uneducated) people work because they need to in order to survive and who, in some few cases, take chances and apply added efforts because they envision something better that they think is worth taking a shot at.
There is a level of elitism in that idea, I suppose, or at least an acceptance of inequality. But the concept that a harder worker, with more imagination, fortitude, and discipline than his neighbor, should actually get more material rewards does not offend me. In fact, I’m offended much more by what I perceive is in hand too often. When work and brains and heart really don’t get one ahead because the game is rigged in favor of the cronies of authority, or when in a world of relative plenty there is still squalorous poverty, or when generosity is negated by misappropriation and waste of assistance to those who need it most, that really is offensive. It
Posted by Kuya on Apr 17, 2006 at 11:27 PM
Ooopsy…
I should have said, “It
Posted by Kuya on Apr 17, 2006 at 11:30 PM
Hi again Kuya and thanks for writing.
Actually I don’t pay to much attention to any kind of capitalist/socialist dichotomy much these days. Personally, I think it kind of oversimplifies things and, ultimately, devolves into another ideological quarrel for the political hobbyists to tally up some talking points.
So when I read your “one liners” here:
Capitalists: clever gluttons who want to possess rather than share.
Socialists: thieves with the gift of the gab who want to take rather than make.
Well, no offense, but that’s what I’m getting and I think you’re admitting as much.
Now, when I talk about expropriation (to which you responded), I do not think any mainstream socialist party or politician (and they are mostly descended from the European social democrats) actually advocate that old school plan, certainly not here in Greece and obviously not in America (where I am from, and where one notices a real dearth of any kind of socialist thinking). Expropriation’s real deal, radical revolutionary stuff and not part of mainstream “socialist” politics, which have become quite amicable to the 3rd way agenda, something Zizek has described as “a social democracy purged of its minimal subversive sting, extinguishing even the faintest memory of anti-capitalism and class struggle.”
I hope you see what I mean. The expropriation stuff is so far “out of the box” today, nobody dares talk about it. Today’s socialists are mainly social reformers and market regulators.
Posted by TheoPapathanasis on Apr 18, 2006 at 7:15 AM
Re: The previous posts. Revisiting the old capitalism versus socialism smackdown is fruitless for a variety of reasons. Principally because any discussion pitting market efficiencies versus public goods is inherently country-specific. Cultural nuances, geographic limitations, historical legacies and geopolitical constraints all play a role. For the record, the U.S. could use a little more socialism (understood as a state-controlled allocation of resources toward the public good), and Europe could use a little less
Posted by radko on Apr 18, 2006 at 11:02 AM
Great comment radko,
If I may, I’d like to comment on part of your comment.
“My beef with Zizek was a little more specific. If he has such snide disdain for wealthy people who donate to socially progressive causes
Posted by TheoPapathanasis on Apr 18, 2006 at 4:49 PM
radko “smart ” donations to charity are minuscule compared to the ravages of increasing globalising “de-development ” .
If some or all of their donations are tax-deductible, how ironic. Is this true ?
Structural violence hits hardest “down there”, but we can all see it at home, too.
Posted by frog on Apr 19, 2006 at 4:06 PM
Hello again to all,
I like this thread. Always interesting to read all of your ideas.
Here’s a revolt I think won’t work at all: an armed struggle. I’ve come to believe that this actually strengthens the more beastly aspects of the state, rather than weakening it. Talk about expropriation! Shoot a uniform, and three more uniforms will spring up in its place. A failing strategy, and besides, it only enhances the likelihood that the rebels will become what they themselves hate, ending up as beastly or more so than the ones they’re supposedly saving us from.
If you want to poke a hole in the economy of Big Money, how about this revolt: living a deliberate, calculatedly modest life. Divorce yourself from the cult of recreational shopping. A pushcart revolution, in which the rebels non-violently detach themselves from the hyperactive, glitz-ridden economy in favor of participation in a local, tiny-scale economy. Instead of going to work for the mega-company, one could scrape up the cash for the necessary permit and sell burritos at the beach or park. Instead of going into hock to own a house, rent a modest apartment, or even just a room if you’re single. Instead of cable TV, get a library card for yourself and your kids. Instead of department stores, get your clothes from thrift stores and second-hand outlets (my coolest shirts have been 2nd hand; a while back I bought 5 or 6 for the price I’d pay for only one at the mall, no lie). Mend rather than replace. Pay with cash as often as possible. Buy a lot less meat. Go to the local farmers’ market instead of the grocery chain. Take the bus or bike, or walk. Play with the kids and teach them to fish and fly kites, rather than paying $100s for a day at Stand-In-Line World. Pare down to a level of striking simplicity, and…
...publicize! Don’t be silent! Email family members and elected representatives and tell them why you’ve opted to step off the treadmill. Upload digital video telling your stories, and send them to TV stations (particularly foreign ones, but also the ones in your area). A bunch of people could share the cost of full-page ads, effectively saying not “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more!”, but “I’m fed up, and I’m not going to give you anything more!” Maybe Oprah Winfrey will take an interest and want to talk to you.
Would it catch on? Who knows? But, you’d be healthier, pay way less taxes (therefore not feeding bureaucrats and militars), and have confidence that you’re not figuratively in bed with someone you detest. It would be an unequivocal demonstration of your disgust with the economics you consider so destructive, and a counterexample against it.
Caveats: 1) your kids may revolt in their own right, and become the neo-corporate children of what they may perceive as their neo-hippie parents (as per the late 1970s/early 1980s); 2) if you get sick or injured, medical care could be frighteningly scarce (as per the millions of people who can’t afford decent insurance right now); 3) you’ll be considered fringe weirdos by mainstreamers in your countries (as per your already earned status as a “weirdo” to so many right now… not that that’s a bad thing, mind you, just that you all don’t fit too well into the mainstream… haha, as though I did!).
Anyway, it’s a thought. It would be concrete, active, and would be an actual alignment of ideas with behavior. That in itself would be revolutionary.
Posted by Kuya on Apr 20, 2006 at 1:38 AM
Hello Kuya and all
Yes. This is an unusually civilised thread. Sometimes the trolls and shills can be stimulating with their Islamophobia and other assorted rabidities, bullshit statistics, personal attacks, idiotic historical analogies, and so on , but this proves we do not need them .
Of course you are right about an armed struggle. . Maybe if I lived your side I would have an old rifle safely locked away, but will never know ! That Halliburton building of “refugee camps” and the prevalence of SWAT teams, Homeland Security apparatus, sure are worrying. Our Riot Police are not too pretty, either.
I counted 200 of them when I arrived very early for our Cherbourg demo on saturday, but they stayed right out of sight, and a dozen local cops stopped the traffic for our 20000 or so rainsoaked marchers.
A lifestyle revolt can be lonely at first , as one pursues a solitary maligned course, but then you get to meet others and a community arises.
One of my recreations is window-shopping for tools I need to work. I repair and make what I can, but keep an eagle mechanic’s eye on specs and prices when I go to the city. Keeps me up to date on the mountains of trash that people buy, and always a nice feeling to walk out empty-handed.
I gave away my lottery-prize TV at Christmas, life is far better without that temptation, and watch the very occasional bit on this machine. I also much enjoy watching interviews on your TV, recently GWB, Zinni, McCain, Billfrist, some laughs.
No buses in the normandy countryside, and too many hills for biking, but I’m watching the electric bike market . Instead of lugging a ton of van around, some pedalling and a little assistance will give me an easy 20km range to friends, grandchildren, the beach, the public library, and the best pub in frogland.
There we exchange books, views and news. And honorary frog pools what he learns from you and the net. Much more fun than yet another netblog. Unsurprising that Globalization and its offshoots often come up, because it is all around us.
They want to close the local hospitals, privatise the municipal water utility, the free public infant schools ? Follow their tracks….
One daughter , husband and friends building five houses together, it makes sense. Local bread, cheese, eggs, veg in the garden, a little meat from the local butcher, maybe I’ll start keeping chooks again to spite the avian flu propaganda .
caveats—- 1 children—
- mine grew up on books, bikes, and no telly, and haven’t revolted , ....longterm .
One recently considered buying a new car, then reconsidered . Her old ford does 6litres/100kms, which I can’t translate offhand , but is very low, and the capital cost written off long ago. She may get another five years out of it., or buy new when the idiot manufacturers and government realise that we want cars closer to 3litres/100km !
Another building her wooden eco-house; the last one building quality wooden houses.
2 health—the State system here not yet completely destroyed, and top-up insurance ‘just ’ feasible for weirdos and automatic for most of the salaried. .
3 initial distrust of fringe weirdos can evolve into repect ....
Some Obvious Compromises—
I still inevitably buy stuff made in China, can only acknowledge that some is made by virtually slave labour.
I still use too much Oil, but am planning responses for higher fuelprice.
I’m still on Bill Gates’s hiccupping software bundle, but the son in law is too busy on his house to put me onto Linus Torvalds.
Posted by frog on Apr 20, 2006 at 8:22 AM
Hi again everybody:
I am all for living as independently of capitalism as well as one can. However, I don’t think it’s an answer. It’s something we can do on an indivudual level as consumers and that’s its extent. When we start to look at things on systemic level however, it becomes increasingly clear (at least to me) that something more substantial needs to be done than moving out into the wilds to grow tomatoes (although I do love a good tomato).
Of course going around advocating violence is silly. It giives you a bad rep. It remains entirely possible that systemic social change might occur without violence. I suggest this would entail a vast majority of the planet’s population wanting something other than capitalism.
The question then remains, would capitalism (and so, individual capitalists) shoose to repress such a mass social movement through violence?
To me, that is the question.
So, when I, personally, advocate expropriation of the global plutocracy, I am not advocating violence. There is no reason this could not happen through the agency of politics.
However, I contend that advocating no revolution at all is the same as advocating violence. The already existing violence of these wars for resources, the violence against the environment, and the economic violence that’s visited upon the world’s poor.
Because, as a Marxist, I think all these things inhere in the social mechanism of capitalism.
Take care.
Posted by TheoPapathanasis on Apr 20, 2006 at 1:32 PM
Theo
Saving time and energy by partly withdrawing from the system leaves space for study and organising . Never been so busy .
Repression of new movements—- the threat and occasional use of physical violence is already here in the rich ‘north’. Always has been.
Anti-terrorism Laws are now in place just about all over, and they are already being used to persecute non-violent activists. Just try wearing the wrong tee shirt in London Paris or Washington .
They own most of the MSM, our job is to expose the lies and the news they don’t publish. Our peaceful demo on saturday was surprisingly well covered in the paper and on the news, and a few films on Chernobyl (20th anniversary) are coming on the television. They show how the french govt took absolutely no measures to protect the people, unlike many others.
got to keep on kicking and watch out for agents provocateurs—the oldest trick in the book.
Posted by frog on Apr 20, 2006 at 3:29 PM
True frog…
I was thinking about what kind of people actually become provacateurs, and I randomly stumbled on this by Serge:
“But there are not only people who are agents out of cowardice; there are, much more dangerously, those dilettantes and adventurers who believe in nothing, indifferent to the ideal they have been serving, taken by the idea of danger, intrigue, conspiracy, a complicated game in which they can make fools of everyone. They may have talent, their role may be almost undetectable.
...
The illegal revolutionary
Posted by TheoPapathanasis on Apr 22, 2006 at 5:46 PM
theo
What you say above applies very well to large numbers of political adventurers who start out on the revolutionary or just highly critical left , and become “faithless adventurers” complicit with all they hated when young.
My actual local french point was that however peaceful we are, cops can be , and are ....., infiltrated in demos to do the ‘provocations’ to make headlines, justify repression.
Agreed on the wider scale,——anyone who has got as far as contemplating acts of terror and murder, who is psychologically or morally weak, is pretty easy to suborn. They easily can become a terror-professional, a gun or bomber for hire.
In the context of this discussion on Globalization and the possible answers to it, the rightwing proponents of corporate domination will use ALL means to win. They have the billions of dollars, we have, potentially, the billions of people, which must be scary for them.
They have the Media, for what it is worth, but we have the large numbers of people whose “Windows” glitches on them…..!
Posted by frog on Apr 23, 2006 at 1:23 PM
Oh yes, Frog, you are right to make the point. They do send in cops to the demos. At the big antiwar demo in DC two of them took up position right next to me! I know all about it. It’s almost funny, well, in a bitter, sad, and wretchedly unfunny way. At the previous demo in San Fransisco, there was a lot of footage of some guy beating the living daylights out of some other guy and the quasi-fascist shockjock Michael Savage was using it as “evidence” to condemn the demos, actually asking for then director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge to send in the National Guard. (I am totally serious about this.) It was pretty obvious to me that was a media stunt. As for all that Serge stuff, what I got from it was that those who just kind of fiddle around with revolution (maybe they find it kind of glamorous or something) are the most susceptible to not sticking it through and become “turncoats.” The longer I have been doing this, the more I realize it’s about constant intellectual training and, like the kung fu adgage goes, “one must learn to eat bitter.”
As for us versus the global plutocracy, I don’t think it’s just about about numbers versus dollars or guns versus numbers… At some level, they will simply have to surrender, however unwillingly; because we have nothing to lose, and, given the reality of capitalist ecocide, they have nothing to win.
Posted by TheoPapathanasis on Apr 23, 2006 at 3:02 PM
theo
every now and then some cop provocateur gets searched and they find his ID !
I resonated with your ‘constant intellectual training’ comment.
I’ve been more or less told that my job is to be a ‘guru’. It happened by accident, when people with less time to research asked me to sum up what’s going on….and I gave my first stumbling answers.
Since then, I have been working harder to be really sure of what I think, and know, with much help here as LB and countless others refine details about eg—real unemployment figs US. (bureau of census U6 v U3)
It becomes rather a nightmare hard-time, as geopolitics, GMO’s, WTO, IMF, Chernobylnuclear Power, IAEA, WHO, BigPharmaceutologicals, ETC, ETC,ETC,ETC, are all related, and I’m only one of me !
Here in france one of the propaganda arguments of the Right is to point to the Brit Economic Miracle, and to suggest to copy it. The MEDIA all push this bullshit thing, and my job locally, particularly as a brit, is to debunk it.
I was outraged a few years ago, when Bill Gates had a personal meeting with Chirac. Why in the name of God should a multi-billionaire have THAT access ? OK he “gave” a few millions , mostly of bullshit ‘free’ programmes away to schools, but that was pure marketing.
I’m sure that they still think they can still win. Wish I had your optimism on that one, but remember how the Wobblies got crushed in the US , maybe these guys believe they can do a chinese repression on all of us.
.
Posted by frog on Apr 23, 2006 at 5:40 PM
Frog: Hmm… personally, I’d suggest walking away from “gurudom” at your earliest convenience. Nobody should look to anyone else for too many answers or as a repository of knowledge. It creates a situation in which others can become dependent “brain bugs” (Starship Troopers) and that means that if something happens to those brains, the rest are left headless. I’m not saying your situation is like that (I don’t know anything about you), just pointing out thatt’s how hierarchies, factions and leaders originate and contributes to “followership.”
Debunking media propaganda is one of all time favorite activities.
There is o winning and losing. This is not a war and it’s not a football match. There is no score. The way I see it, “they” are very aware of what they are doing and, accordingly, also know if they don’t take a seat, the only thing they’ll have to win is a hothouse planet sizzling up all life like some kind of microwave oven, or maybe, if they are really lucky, a nuclear winter wonderland.
Posted by TheoPapathanasis on Apr 24, 2006 at 11:45 AM
Theo
Agreed . Unfortunate choice of word. Mostly a news service/encyclopaedia , giving info when asked , and just getting on with research and activities….
I’ve never been into the ‘leader’ or follower thing, particularly as an expat non-voter, but do have the local stake of kids and grandkids.
Well, plenty of losing going on now, here. Too early to say if opposition seriously growing, next few months hanging in the balance as national politicians politicking as usual.
Whatever happens business as usual for us, more work…
Posted by frog on Apr 24, 2006 at 12:44 PM
That sounds pretty straightforward and you are right, it’s about the kids that may or may not have much of a world left for them. I suppose all I mean meant was: make sure that anyone that looks to you are a “guru” is left with the idea to go out and become one too. This is the way.
There’s a great, if weird, moment in Trotsky, the closing words of Literature and Revolution, where the idealized vision of a future society and the Nietzschean notion of the uebermensch sort-of-kind-of meet. (Now, I am not exactly a Trotskyite per se (SWP, etc.). I’ve just read the guy and, as a revolutionist and writer, always found him indispensable.)
“It is difficult to predict the extent of self-government which the man of the future may reach or the heights to which he may carry his technique. Social construction and psycho-physical self-education will become two aspects of one and the same process. ... The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise. “
Now that’s optimistic!
Of course, both Nietzsche’s “uebermensch” and Trotsky’s “communist man” are projected, future ideals, states of being to strive towards and evolve into. (And take a look at Literature and Revolution for a cool comment on Nietzschean philosophy, herdism and the “struggle for one’s opinion, for one’s project, for one’s taste.”) I don’t really know whether or not this is the case. I do not believe we need to be content with simply “becoming.” That is to say, all of can actualize out potential and our potential is, by and large, as humans, perfectly equal. I think every single one of us can attain that state today, beginning right this instant, and the first step is to not look to those who know more than we do as teachers and gurus or mentors, but simply as friends and equals. Clearly if you have knowledge and others do not, you should transmit it; but as they say, don’t give them fish, give them angling.
And that’s how we and why are going to win. Because the social model we are up against does not believe in real egalitarianism, but operates within the framework of leaders and followers, rulers and ruled, etc., etc. Now, in our historical moment, this little truth gnaws away at the minds of many who secretly believe and understand it, but seem unsure how to begin going about the scary business of maximizing themselves. The other day, I described this to someone like this: Breaking away from a world where one allows others to think for oneself can look a lot like jumping into an abyss. So one suffers from some sort of spiritual or intellectual acrophobia, gets the jitters, and doesn’t jump. However, the nature of an abyss is to never end, it just goes on and on forever, so, somewhere in the midst of this mad and frightening drop, one might get bored of falling all the time and consider trying to fly. And fly we do, because we are not talking about a physical fall, we are talking about the human mind and the powers of the human mind are infinite. “Only in his brain is man the most highly developed living organism, not in other organic capabilities however” (Bloch).
(cont.)
Posted by TheoPapathanasis on Apr 24, 2006 at 4:12 PM
(...continued from above.)
This will to just take the plunge is well illustrated in scenes in ‘The Matrix’ as well as in Grant Morrison’s ‘Invisibles’. It’s just something you have to go through at some point in your life. So, all a “guru” can hope to do is teach people how to make that leap in the first place (all this is kind of a weird image for a discussion of gurus, because “guru” implies weight, but I
Posted by TheoPapathanasis on Apr 24, 2006 at 4:13 PM
Oops… forgot to include scare quotes here:
And that
Posted by TheoPapathanasis on Apr 24, 2006 at 4:20 PM
Not so sure about the—useful sometime allies—i’d need a long spoon to sup with them .
Never come across Ernst Bloch, will have a look around later, Marc Bloch an inspiration, though, historian and Resistant. .
An example for our time.
Must go, work to do in a few hours for a Resistant , now 86, who survived that other invasion
Posted by frog on Apr 24, 2006 at 6:18 PM
Yeah, I am supposed to be asleep because I am said I do some scullery work in preparation for the European Social Forum here in Athens.
Yes, I take your point. That was a poor paraphrase on my part. The way Z put it was not about “useful sometime allies,” but “necessary tactical alliances.” (“Necessary” being the key word.) Anyway, I am in agreement with his overall assessment here.
The Spirit of Utopia was just translated into English. It’s mostly about music, but a lot of Zizek’s thoughts about the “messianic” nature of Marxism are already there in Bloch.
Posted by TheoPapathanasis on Apr 24, 2006 at 8:38 PM
Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.
And get out in the street and help drive out the Bushite junta. Struggle against fascsim. When we defeat fascism we can work on building socialism.
Posted by Spinoza750 on Aug 31, 2006 at 2:39 AM
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Reader Comments
Linus Pauling, founder of Linux, was once asked the difference between himself and Bill Gates——-
” I’m a programmer, he’s a marketing man “.
And now Bill Gates is marketing himself as a World Figure, the philanthropist who will solve the problems of Africa . Well, its a nice long way from the problems at home .
A few years back, at Davos, one of that gang made a speech and said (paraphrase from memory)—“WE are the masters now”, and the assembled politicians applauded. Bunch of softheads.
” The business of government is to restrain business “, is not a quote from this frog, but a paraphrase from one of the Gods of the market-worshippers, a Scotsman called Adam Smith.
Linus Torvalds.
Pauling invented massive doses of vitamin C.
thanks major,, slip of the brain.
This is the one aspect of progressivism that America, in general, fails to grasp. The problem is the very structure of our economic system. The problem is also one of education. The author of this article has obviously read a great deal on this subject, authors that few Americans hear about, ever. I have 48 credits in philosophy at an American college, enough to graduate, and the closest we got to economic theory, was maybe Heidegger
American universities, colleges, and schools are afraid to broach the subject of socialism… and we are paying a terrible price for this.
All this crap about “markets,” “market socialism,” and what not, is sidetracking people from real issues.
People are even afraid to talk about socialized healthcare… and by the way, very few activists are even involved in the healthcare debate, which would move us back onto a very progressive track in this country, just as it has done in Canada… just let any two-bit, half-assed reactionary politician try to take universal healthcare away from Canadians and they get booted right out of office… Saskatchewan and Manitoba have had socialist governments for many years now because Canadians aren’t afraid to talk about socialism… and their talking socialism delivers big-time when it comes to healthcare, high-quality, lower costs educations, stronger labor laws… but most importantly, public debate and dialogue is more democratic with socialism talked about.
What the movements for peace and social justice need in this country is a good injection of socialist ideas. Here in Minnesota the two most popular governors were socialists, Floyd Olson and Elmer Benson… that should tell us something if we really want to defeat Bush and big-business… we should be building on the progressive legacy of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party.
People need to start opening their mouths and writing a little more.
Alan L. Maki
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763
218-386-2432
“What makes this group interesting is that their ideology is becoming indistinguishable from that of Antonio Negri, who has praised postmodern digital capitalism, which, according to Negri, is becoming almost indistinguishable from communism. By Negri
Great piece by Zizek. I just read an entry about Zizek on Andrew Keen’s blog and wanted to share that with you:
http://www.thegreatseduction.com
Slavoy Zizek
Isn’t it great that Bill Gates gets to choose who he will help and who he won’t; such a great philanthropist—- kind of like a rich little god who makes the decisions of who will live and who will die…. a better alternative would be to bring Microsoft under public ownership, and use the profits to fund a publicly owned, publicly financed, and publicly administered socialized health care system… ditto for the rest of the capitalist enterprises… it is time to place human needs, and the protection of nature, before corporate profits.
By the way, Native people in northern Manitoba, Canada have asked Bill Gates to fund home building for their community because Bush’s clone who was elected to the head of the Canadian government with financing from the capitalist multi-national corporations refuses to fund human needs in Canada, while he has put up signs that all resources are for sale to the lowest multi-national corporate bidder… and then when there isn’t enough money left to finance Canada’s healthcare system, the right-wing think tanks will point their fingers and say, “See, socialism doesn’t work.” It has been months and Bill Gates has yet to respond to this plea for help, how come?
Socialism works just fine. Countries all over the world are clamoring for help from little Cuba’s doctors and the highly trained professional healthcare providers… from Venezuela to Pakistan… Castro even offered tremendous assistance to help the victims of Katrina while that great intellect of capitalist morality sitting in the Oval Office thumbed his nose at the offer, and twiddled his thumbs, sucked down anti-depressants causing his eyes to roll into the back of his head so he couldn’t see the effect of his policies that squandered billions on war while the infrastructure of our own country was going to hell and hundreds of people were left to drown and die.
I don’t see Bill Gates getting the same kind of rave reviews from other governments and the United Nations that Cuba is receiving… might I suggest that we tax the hell out of Bil Gates and Microsoft and give the money to Castro where it will really do some good… and people don’t even have to beg the Cubans for help… this is what I call socialist humanitarianism… it far surpases Bill Gate’s philanthropical endeavors, undertaken solely because it is all tax-deductible.
Oh yes—- how did Bil Gates attain his wealth? You got it, through exploitation of working people… oh ya, being the great philanthropist he is, Bill Gates shipped American jobs to India just to help poor starving people… cheap human labor never even enters the picture does it?
Of course Zizek is right about this. Big-shot money men who flash their philanthropy cred are doing more than poncing themselves up with good causes… The underlying idea is the answer to systemic problems will be solved by the mega-capitalists, and so, make the world dependent upon the whim of their benevolence. It not only serves their PR goals (and maybe even salves their conscience), it is “disempowering” in the extreme. People should consider the logic behind simply expropriating these plutocrats and using these resources to solve problems as they see fit. But that’s Marxism there, and, as I have discovered, in this world, just voicing the old-school reasoning makes one a persona non grata.
Marxism is what we need more of. That’s why the capitalists hate it so much.
I can’t help but ask…
When today’s plutocrats are dispossessed and their wealth used for this generation’s social benefits, from where will come the wealth for the next generation’s benefits?
Is confiscation/expropriation really a strategy with a future? At what point will there be no more “excess” profit to scrape up, because no one is willing to invest their time, energy, or wealth in a productive enterprise for fear of having it taken away?
There is ample criticism to made against capitalism when it is practiced without ethical restraint, but that’s more a critique of non-existent ethics than it is the dynamics of the market. There’s no harm in discussing socialism in university, but then socialism’s own weaknesses and failures ought to be included in the discussion. One glaring example is the quickness with which it prescribes the seizing and redistribution of wealth as the major cure for social ills, apparently assuming that those who have invested in the creation of that wealth will continue to do so in spite of the likelihood of seizure.
(Of course new wealth is “created”! Turning plastic, glass, transistors, and wire into a computer IS the creation of new wealth, to cite but one example.)
I tend to think that the real problem in America has little to do with market economics per se, and more to do with government officials having too cozy a relationship with a treasured few corporate entities (particularly when they become lobbyists), which makes it all the more difficult for anyone outside the buddy-network to compete effectively and to make any gains.
One of my main concerns with state control of production is along those very lines, those of crony capitalism. I don’t anticipate that buddy-networks would fade out in a command economy, or one that is primarily-command with a little market mixed in. On the contrary, I think those buddy-networks will be even more the order of the day in that kind of setting, further excluding anyone not beholden to or members of those networks.
I suppose the guiding ethic is that no one at all will be excluded. That would be interesting to see. I’m not aware that it has ever occured.
I haven’t seen any evidence that socialism is inherently more ethical as a system than capitalism. Toleration for human suffering and environmental destruction as the result of one’s activities is the problem, and there are examples of rapacious capitalists and blood-fever socialists throughout history. Nor is socialism obviously more conducive to lasting prosperity for large numbers of people across generations of time than capitalism is, (although their rhetoric can be stirring, for a while) but if any of you has info to suggest that it is these things, I will be curious to read.
Hello Kuya:
I do not think anybody actually needs capitalists to create wealth. Turning plastic, glass, transistors, and wire into a computer does not create wealth. It creates an object. The wealth is created by exploiting the labor nexus, which is, of course, many human beings. As for what’s done with the wealth upon its reification through sale, that’s a matter of distribution. In capitalism, the profit is the capitalist’s, because that’s the person that owns the capital. Think about Bush’s “ownership society” for a minute. The owners he’s really talking about are not America’s middle class home owners, but . . . plutocrats.
“At what point will there be no more
You people rock! The thing is we can get wrapped in a lot of very serious talk about issues that are far removed from the point. That’s the nature of philosophic discussion. The point ultimately is this. We have moved from a world in which the actions of our day, how we spend our time, were dictated by the needs of survival, to one in which we face the possibility of not “having” to do anything. After all, that was and is the entire reason for the technological drive of the enlightenment, the end of scarcity. Well, guess what, its here. We can, as of this moment, provide for the basic needs of every human on this planet, every 2.8 seconds a child dies because we CHOOSE not to. We are still living with the decaying remnants of a system that worked very well to quickly exploit the resources of this planet in order that we might free ourselves from the drudgery and misery of the dangerous and mundane tasks necessary for our survival. This system is not suited however to the task of maintaining an economy of equilibrium in which the focus is no longer on the mastery of nature, but the “production” of a world in which every child born on this planet has equal access to food, shelter, healthcare, education, and a future free from the threat of warfare. And if we live in and promote a system in which this is not our dream, where we allow so many to live such miserably short and wasted lives, how can any of our moral and religious principles not be hopelessly compromised by the gnawing reality of our hypocrisy.
“The world
Phaedrus: Well said. That’s exactly the point. We choose not to do anything about it. The in-your-face-ness of today’s disparity of wealth is simply repulsive. Something “needs to be done.” Ignacio Ramonet said, “To begin with, we have to disarm the power of international finance which over the past 20 years has eaten into the world of politics, reducing the space available for democracy.”
http://mondediplo.com/2000/01/01leader
But how do you disarm interantional finance? It’s very difficult when people are afraid to talk about the simplest things, so, yes, that old idea of expropriation needs to come back into conversational currency.
It’s all very revolutionary, you know.
Thanks, Theo and Phaedrus, for your responses.
Phaedrus’ point (if I may rephrase it a little) is perfectly correct that unless we act out our values in a way that actually relieves suffering and deprivation, we really are nothing but hypocrites. When I say “we”, of course, I could be talking about either capitalists or socialists. Both lay claim to a mechanism that, they each say, has the best chance to defeat poverty if it is implemented properly.
There’s the rub, yes? IF they’re implemented properly. How and under what conditions proper implementation takes place is rarely answered.
In my more cynical moments, I think of capitalists as those who think it’s OK to hoard more than they’ll ever need, and socialists as those who think it’s OK to grab from others what they don’t have themselves. Capitalists want to possess rather than share, socialists want to take rather than make. Those are glib generalizations, more like one-liners than anything else, but you get the drift.
I think my main attachment to a market approach has much to do with my conception of why people work at all, and especially why they try to be more creative, ambitious, and efficient than the guy next to them. To indulge in a grain of projection, why do I, Kuya, work my ass off? The answer is, incentive. I want more than basic maintenance for myself and my family, and in the here-and-now, I can obtain those rewards only if I keep my focus and apply my efforts toward earning them.
You see, it’s less about heroic entrepreneurs (although there are in fact lots of quite admirable entrepreneurs, they’re really not all rapacious gluttons) and more about regular people working to make ends meet and to improve their lot in life. Working for a reason that is meaningful within the context of their (our) oh-so-ordinary lives.
(continuing)
(to continue)
It’s pretty un-glamorous, not much inspiring, surely not heroic. It’s drawn from my experiences in a lot of different jobs, in which ordinary, semi-educated (or semi-uneducated) people work because they need to in order to survive and who, in some few cases, take chances and apply added efforts because they envision something better that they think is worth taking a shot at.
There is a level of elitism in that idea, I suppose, or at least an acceptance of inequality. But the concept that a harder worker, with more imagination, fortitude, and discipline than his neighbor, should actually get more material rewards does not offend me. In fact, I’m offended much more by what I perceive is in hand too often. When work and brains and heart really don’t get one ahead because the game is rigged in favor of the cronies of authority, or when in a world of relative plenty there is still squalorous poverty, or when generosity is negated by misappropriation and waste of assistance to those who need it most, that really is offensive. It
Ooopsy…
I should have said, “It
Hi again Kuya and thanks for writing.
Actually I don’t pay to much attention to any kind of capitalist/socialist dichotomy much these days. Personally, I think it kind of oversimplifies things and, ultimately, devolves into another ideological quarrel for the political hobbyists to tally up some talking points.
So when I read your “one liners” here:
Capitalists: clever gluttons who want to possess rather than share.
Socialists: thieves with the gift of the gab who want to take rather than make.
Well, no offense, but that’s what I’m getting and I think you’re admitting as much.
Now, when I talk about expropriation (to which you responded), I do not think any mainstream socialist party or politician (and they are mostly descended from the European social democrats) actually advocate that old school plan, certainly not here in Greece and obviously not in America (where I am from, and where one notices a real dearth of any kind of socialist thinking). Expropriation’s real deal, radical revolutionary stuff and not part of mainstream “socialist” politics, which have become quite amicable to the 3rd way agenda, something Zizek has described as “a social democracy purged of its minimal subversive sting, extinguishing even the faintest memory of anti-capitalism and class struggle.”
I hope you see what I mean. The expropriation stuff is so far “out of the box” today, nobody dares talk about it. Today’s socialists are mainly social reformers and market regulators.
Re: The previous posts. Revisiting the old capitalism versus socialism smackdown is fruitless for a variety of reasons. Principally because any discussion pitting market efficiencies versus public goods is inherently country-specific. Cultural nuances, geographic limitations, historical legacies and geopolitical constraints all play a role. For the record, the U.S. could use a little more socialism (understood as a state-controlled allocation of resources toward the public good), and Europe could use a little less
Great comment radko,
If I may, I’d like to comment on part of your comment.
“My beef with Zizek was a little more specific. If he has such snide disdain for wealthy people who donate to socially progressive causes
radko “smart ” donations to charity are minuscule compared to the ravages of increasing globalising “de-development ” .
If some or all of their donations are tax-deductible, how ironic. Is this true ?
Structural violence hits hardest “down there”, but we can all see it at home, too.
Hello again to all,
I like this thread. Always interesting to read all of your ideas.
Here’s a revolt I think won’t work at all: an armed struggle. I’ve come to believe that this actually strengthens the more beastly aspects of the state, rather than weakening it. Talk about expropriation! Shoot a uniform, and three more uniforms will spring up in its place. A failing strategy, and besides, it only enhances the likelihood that the rebels will become what they themselves hate, ending up as beastly or more so than the ones they’re supposedly saving us from.
If you want to poke a hole in the economy of Big Money, how about this revolt: living a deliberate, calculatedly modest life. Divorce yourself from the cult of recreational shopping. A pushcart revolution, in which the rebels non-violently detach themselves from the hyperactive, glitz-ridden economy in favor of participation in a local, tiny-scale economy. Instead of going to work for the mega-company, one could scrape up the cash for the necessary permit and sell burritos at the beach or park. Instead of going into hock to own a house, rent a modest apartment, or even just a room if you’re single. Instead of cable TV, get a library card for yourself and your kids. Instead of department stores, get your clothes from thrift stores and second-hand outlets (my coolest shirts have been 2nd hand; a while back I bought 5 or 6 for the price I’d pay for only one at the mall, no lie). Mend rather than replace. Pay with cash as often as possible. Buy a lot less meat. Go to the local farmers’ market instead of the grocery chain. Take the bus or bike, or walk. Play with the kids and teach them to fish and fly kites, rather than paying $100s for a day at Stand-In-Line World. Pare down to a level of striking simplicity, and…
...publicize! Don’t be silent! Email family members and elected representatives and tell them why you’ve opted to step off the treadmill. Upload digital video telling your stories, and send them to TV stations (particularly foreign ones, but also the ones in your area). A bunch of people could share the cost of full-page ads, effectively saying not “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more!”, but “I’m fed up, and I’m not going to give you anything more!” Maybe Oprah Winfrey will take an interest and want to talk to you.
Would it catch on? Who knows? But, you’d be healthier, pay way less taxes (therefore not feeding bureaucrats and militars), and have confidence that you’re not figuratively in bed with someone you detest. It would be an unequivocal demonstration of your disgust with the economics you consider so destructive, and a counterexample against it.
Caveats: 1) your kids may revolt in their own right, and become the neo-corporate children of what they may perceive as their neo-hippie parents (as per the late 1970s/early 1980s); 2) if you get sick or injured, medical care could be frighteningly scarce (as per the millions of people who can’t afford decent insurance right now); 3) you’ll be considered fringe weirdos by mainstreamers in your countries (as per your already earned status as a “weirdo” to so many right now… not that that’s a bad thing, mind you, just that you all don’t fit too well into the mainstream… haha, as though I did!).
Anyway, it’s a thought. It would be concrete, active, and would be an actual alignment of ideas with behavior. That in itself would be revolutionary.
Hello Kuya and all
Yes. This is an unusually civilised thread. Sometimes the trolls and shills can be stimulating with their Islamophobia and other assorted rabidities, bullshit statistics, personal attacks, idiotic historical analogies, and so on , but this proves we do not need them .
Of course you are right about an armed struggle. . Maybe if I lived your side I would have an old rifle safely locked away, but will never know ! That Halliburton building of “refugee camps” and the prevalence of SWAT teams, Homeland Security apparatus, sure are worrying. Our Riot Police are not too pretty, either.
I counted 200 of them when I arrived very early for our Cherbourg demo on saturday, but they stayed right out of sight, and a dozen local cops stopped the traffic for our 20000 or so rainsoaked marchers.
A lifestyle revolt can be lonely at first , as one pursues a solitary maligned course, but then you get to meet others and a community arises.
One of my recreations is window-shopping for tools I need to work. I repair and make what I can, but keep an eagle mechanic’s eye on specs and prices when I go to the city. Keeps me up to date on the mountains of trash that people buy, and always a nice feeling to walk out empty-handed.
I gave away my lottery-prize TV at Christmas, life is far better without that temptation, and watch the very occasional bit on this machine. I also much enjoy watching interviews on your TV, recently GWB, Zinni, McCain, Billfrist, some laughs.
No buses in the normandy countryside, and too many hills for biking, but I’m watching the electric bike market . Instead of lugging a ton of van around, some pedalling and a little assistance will give me an easy 20km range to friends, grandchildren, the beach, the public library, and the best pub in frogland.
There we exchange books, views and news. And honorary frog pools what he learns from you and the net. Much more fun than yet another netblog. Unsurprising that Globalization and its offshoots often come up, because it is all around us.
They want to close the local hospitals, privatise the municipal water utility, the free public infant schools ? Follow their tracks….
One daughter , husband and friends building five houses together, it makes sense. Local bread, cheese, eggs, veg in the garden, a little meat from the local butcher, maybe I’ll start keeping chooks again to spite the avian flu propaganda .
caveats—- 1 children—
- mine grew up on books, bikes, and no telly, and haven’t revolted , ....longterm .
One recently considered buying a new car, then reconsidered . Her old ford does 6litres/100kms, which I can’t translate offhand , but is very low, and the capital cost written off long ago. She may get another five years out of it., or buy new when the idiot manufacturers and government realise that we want cars closer to 3litres/100km !
Another building her wooden eco-house; the last one building quality wooden houses.
2 health—the State system here not yet completely destroyed, and top-up insurance ‘just ’ feasible for weirdos and automatic for most of the salaried. .
3 initial distrust of fringe weirdos can evolve into repect ....
Some Obvious Compromises—
I still inevitably buy stuff made in China, can only acknowledge that some is made by virtually slave labour.
I still use too much Oil, but am planning responses for higher fuelprice.
I’m still on Bill Gates’s hiccupping software bundle, but the son in law is too busy on his house to put me onto Linus Torvalds.
Hi again everybody:
I am all for living as independently of capitalism as well as one can. However, I don’t think it’s an answer. It’s something we can do on an indivudual level as consumers and that’s its extent. When we start to look at things on systemic level however, it becomes increasingly clear (at least to me) that something more substantial needs to be done than moving out into the wilds to grow tomatoes (although I do love a good tomato).
Of course going around advocating violence is silly. It giives you a bad rep. It remains entirely possible that systemic social change might occur without violence. I suggest this would entail a vast majority of the planet’s population wanting something other than capitalism.
The question then remains, would capitalism (and so, individual capitalists) shoose to repress such a mass social movement through violence?
To me, that is the question.
So, when I, personally, advocate expropriation of the global plutocracy, I am not advocating violence. There is no reason this could not happen through the agency of politics.
However, I contend that advocating no revolution at all is the same as advocating violence. The already existing violence of these wars for resources, the violence against the environment, and the economic violence that’s visited upon the world’s poor.
Because, as a Marxist, I think all these things inhere in the social mechanism of capitalism.
Take care.
Theo
Saving time and energy by partly withdrawing from the system leaves space for study and organising . Never been so busy .
Repression of new movements—- the threat and occasional use of physical violence is already here in the rich ‘north’. Always has been.
Anti-terrorism Laws are now in place just about all over, and they are already being used to persecute non-violent activists. Just try wearing the wrong tee shirt in London Paris or Washington .
They own most of the MSM, our job is to expose the lies and the news they don’t publish. Our peaceful demo on saturday was surprisingly well covered in the paper and on the news, and a few films on Chernobyl (20th anniversary) are coming on the television. They show how the french govt took absolutely no measures to protect the people, unlike many others.
got to keep on kicking and watch out for agents provocateurs—the oldest trick in the book.
True frog…
I was thinking about what kind of people actually become provacateurs, and I randomly stumbled on this by Serge:
“But there are not only people who are agents out of cowardice; there are, much more dangerously, those dilettantes and adventurers who believe in nothing, indifferent to the ideal they have been serving, taken by the idea of danger, intrigue, conspiracy, a complicated game in which they can make fools of everyone. They may have talent, their role may be almost undetectable.
...
The illegal revolutionary
theo
What you say above applies very well to large numbers of political adventurers who start out on the revolutionary or just highly critical left , and become “faithless adventurers” complicit with all they hated when young.
My actual local french point was that however peaceful we are, cops can be , and are ....., infiltrated in demos to do the ‘provocations’ to make headlines, justify repression.
Agreed on the wider scale,——anyone who has got as far as contemplating acts of terror and murder, who is psychologically or morally weak, is pretty easy to suborn. They easily can become a terror-professional, a gun or bomber for hire.
In the context of this discussion on Globalization and the possible answers to it, the rightwing proponents of corporate domination will use ALL means to win. They have the billions of dollars, we have, potentially, the billions of people, which must be scary for them.
They have the Media, for what it is worth, but we have the large numbers of people whose “Windows” glitches on them…..!
Oh yes, Frog, you are right to make the point. They do send in cops to the demos. At the big antiwar demo in DC two of them took up position right next to me! I know all about it. It’s almost funny, well, in a bitter, sad, and wretchedly unfunny way. At the previous demo in San Fransisco, there was a lot of footage of some guy beating the living daylights out of some other guy and the quasi-fascist shockjock Michael Savage was using it as “evidence” to condemn the demos, actually asking for then director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge to send in the National Guard. (I am totally serious about this.) It was pretty obvious to me that was a media stunt. As for all that Serge stuff, what I got from it was that those who just kind of fiddle around with revolution (maybe they find it kind of glamorous or something) are the most susceptible to not sticking it through and become “turncoats.” The longer I have been doing this, the more I realize it’s about constant intellectual training and, like the kung fu adgage goes, “one must learn to eat bitter.”
As for us versus the global plutocracy, I don’t think it’s just about about numbers versus dollars or guns versus numbers… At some level, they will simply have to surrender, however unwillingly; because we have nothing to lose, and, given the reality of capitalist ecocide, they have nothing to win.
theo
every now and then some cop provocateur gets searched and they find his ID !
I resonated with your ‘constant intellectual training’ comment.
I’ve been more or less told that my job is to be a ‘guru’. It happened by accident, when people with less time to research asked me to sum up what’s going on….and I gave my first stumbling answers.
Since then, I have been working harder to be really sure of what I think, and know, with much help here as LB and countless others refine details about eg—real unemployment figs US. (bureau of census U6 v U3)
It becomes rather a nightmare hard-time, as geopolitics, GMO’s, WTO, IMF, Chernobylnuclear Power, IAEA, WHO, BigPharmaceutologicals, ETC, ETC,ETC,ETC, are all related, and I’m only one of me !
Here in france one of the propaganda arguments of the Right is to point to the Brit Economic Miracle, and to suggest to copy it. The MEDIA all push this bullshit thing, and my job locally, particularly as a brit, is to debunk it.
I was outraged a few years ago, when Bill Gates had a personal meeting with Chirac. Why in the name of God should a multi-billionaire have THAT access ? OK he “gave” a few millions , mostly of bullshit ‘free’ programmes away to schools, but that was pure marketing.
I’m sure that they still think they can still win. Wish I had your optimism on that one, but remember how the Wobblies got crushed in the US , maybe these guys believe they can do a chinese repression on all of us.
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Frog: Hmm… personally, I’d suggest walking away from “gurudom” at your earliest convenience. Nobody should look to anyone else for too many answers or as a repository of knowledge. It creates a situation in which others can become dependent “brain bugs” (Starship Troopers) and that means that if something happens to those brains, the rest are left headless. I’m not saying your situation is like that (I don’t know anything about you), just pointing out thatt’s how hierarchies, factions and leaders originate and contributes to “followership.”
Debunking media propaganda is one of all time favorite activities.
There is o winning and losing. This is not a war and it’s not a football match. There is no score. The way I see it, “they” are very aware of what they are doing and, accordingly, also know if they don’t take a seat, the only thing they’ll have to win is a hothouse planet sizzling up all life like some kind of microwave oven, or maybe, if they are really lucky, a nuclear winter wonderland.
Theo
Agreed . Unfortunate choice of word. Mostly a news service/encyclopaedia , giving info when asked , and just getting on with research and activities….
I’ve never been into the ‘leader’ or follower thing, particularly as an expat non-voter, but do have the local stake of kids and grandkids.
Well, plenty of losing going on now, here. Too early to say if opposition seriously growing, next few months hanging in the balance as national politicians politicking as usual.
Whatever happens business as usual for us, more work…
That sounds pretty straightforward and you are right, it’s about the kids that may or may not have much of a world left for them. I suppose all I mean meant was: make sure that anyone that looks to you are a “guru” is left with the idea to go out and become one too. This is the way.
There’s a great, if weird, moment in Trotsky, the closing words of Literature and Revolution, where the idealized vision of a future society and the Nietzschean notion of the uebermensch sort-of-kind-of meet. (Now, I am not exactly a Trotskyite per se (SWP, etc.). I’ve just read the guy and, as a revolutionist and writer, always found him indispensable.)
“It is difficult to predict the extent of self-government which the man of the future may reach or the heights to which he may carry his technique. Social construction and psycho-physical self-education will become two aspects of one and the same process. ... The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise. “
Now that’s optimistic!
Of course, both Nietzsche’s “uebermensch” and Trotsky’s “communist man” are projected, future ideals, states of being to strive towards and evolve into. (And take a look at Literature and Revolution for a cool comment on Nietzschean philosophy, herdism and the “struggle for one’s opinion, for one’s project, for one’s taste.”) I don’t really know whether or not this is the case. I do not believe we need to be content with simply “becoming.” That is to say, all of can actualize out potential and our potential is, by and large, as humans, perfectly equal. I think every single one of us can attain that state today, beginning right this instant, and the first step is to not look to those who know more than we do as teachers and gurus or mentors, but simply as friends and equals. Clearly if you have knowledge and others do not, you should transmit it; but as they say, don’t give them fish, give them angling.
And that’s how we and why are going to win. Because the social model we are up against does not believe in real egalitarianism, but operates within the framework of leaders and followers, rulers and ruled, etc., etc. Now, in our historical moment, this little truth gnaws away at the minds of many who secretly believe and understand it, but seem unsure how to begin going about the scary business of maximizing themselves. The other day, I described this to someone like this: Breaking away from a world where one allows others to think for oneself can look a lot like jumping into an abyss. So one suffers from some sort of spiritual or intellectual acrophobia, gets the jitters, and doesn’t jump. However, the nature of an abyss is to never end, it just goes on and on forever, so, somewhere in the midst of this mad and frightening drop, one might get bored of falling all the time and consider trying to fly. And fly we do, because we are not talking about a physical fall, we are talking about the human mind and the powers of the human mind are infinite. “Only in his brain is man the most highly developed living organism, not in other organic capabilities however” (Bloch).
(cont.)
(...continued from above.)
This will to just take the plunge is well illustrated in scenes in ‘The Matrix’ as well as in Grant Morrison’s ‘Invisibles’. It’s just something you have to go through at some point in your life. So, all a “guru” can hope to do is teach people how to make that leap in the first place (all this is kind of a weird image for a discussion of gurus, because “guru” implies weight, but I
Oops… forgot to include scare quotes here:
And that
Not so sure about the—useful sometime allies—i’d need a long spoon to sup with them .
Never come across Ernst Bloch, will have a look around later, Marc Bloch an inspiration, though, historian and Resistant. .
An example for our time.
Must go, work to do in a few hours for a Resistant , now 86, who survived that other invasion
Yeah, I am supposed to be asleep because I am said I do some scullery work in preparation for the European Social Forum here in Athens.
Yes, I take your point. That was a poor paraphrase on my part. The way Z put it was not about “useful sometime allies,” but “necessary tactical alliances.” (“Necessary” being the key word.) Anyway, I am in agreement with his overall assessment here.
The Spirit of Utopia was just translated into English. It’s mostly about music, but a lot of Zizek’s thoughts about the “messianic” nature of Marxism are already there in Bloch.
Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.
And get out in the street and help drive out the Bushite junta. Struggle against fascsim. When we defeat fascism we can work on building socialism.
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