Repurposed Prose on the End of Times

The end-times are truly upon us!. Paul Kedrosky writes some Repurposed Prose on the End of Times

With respect to some of the more apocalyptic views out there, certainly anything is possible. That said, organizing my life around a return to barter and barbarism represents a financial variant of Pascal’s wager that I'm not currently willing to take -- in part because I can be financially and personally prudent without going all the way to hoarding gold, buying agricultural property, or stocking up on weaponry and canned goods.

Kedrosky had earlier quoted Niall Ferguson: "There Will Be Blood" in an interview with Heather Scoffield of Globe and Mail:

Heather Scoffield: Is a violent resolution to this crisis inevitable?

Niall Ferguson: “There will be blood, in the sense that a crisis of this magnitude is bound to increase political as well as economic [conflict]. It is bound to destabilize some countries. It will cause civil wars to break out, that have been dormant. It will topple governments that were moderate and bring in governments that are extreme. These things are pretty predictable. The question is whether the general destabilization, the return of, if you like, political risk, ultimately leads to something really big in the realm of geopolitics. That seems a less certain outcome…

…It's just that I don't see it producing anything comparable with 1914 or 1939. It's kind of hard to envisage a world war. Even when most pessimistic, I struggle to see how that would work, because the U.S., for all its difficulties in the financial world, is so overwhelmingly dominant in the military world.”

Meanwhile at Tomgram: Michael Klare, A Pandemic of Economic Violence.

As people lose confidence in the ability of markets and governments to solve the global crisis, they are likely to erupt into violent protests or to assault others they deem responsible for their plight, including government officials, plant managers, landlords, immigrants, and ethnic minorities. (The list could, in the future, prove long and unnerving.) If the present economic disaster turns into what President Obama has referred to as a "lost decade," the result could be a global landscape filled with economically-fueled upheavals.

Humans facing huge population cull if global temperatures rise 4C in next 100 years.

Climate experts told New Scientist they were optimistic that humans would survive but would have to adapt.

Vast numbers would have to migrate away from the equator and towards the poles.

National borders would have to be knocked down and humans would become mostly vegetarian with most animals being eaten to extinction.

Fish numbers would drop dramatically as acid levels rose in oceans.

And of course, Jim Kunstler has stared into the abyss so long that the The Abyss Stares Back

The public perception of the ongoing fiasco in governance has moved from sheer, mute incomprehension to goggle-eyed panic as the scrims of unreality peel away revealing something like a national death-watch scene in history's intensive care unit. Is the USA in recession, depression, or collapse? People are at least beginning to ask. Nature's way of hinting that something truly creepy may be up is when both Paul Volcker and George Soros both declare on the same day that the economic landscape is looking darker than the Great Depression.

Kunstler concludes with

It's not too late for President Obama to start uttering these truths so that we can avoid a turn to fascism and get on with the real business of America's next phase of history -- living locally, working hard at things that matter, and preserving civilized culture. What a lot of us can see now staring out of the abyss is a new dark age. I don't think it's necessarily our destiny to end up that way, but these days we're not doing much to avoid it.

We have several converging crises over the next several decades:

1. Economic collapse
2. Climate change
3. Water
4. Oil
5. Food
6. Political instability

I did not include population in that list because the number of people that can be supported depends on the technology and economic system in place. These factors are geographical facts: oil and water exist in certain places and not others. Whereas water is a renewable resource, oil is not (at rates needed for current economic activity - we have burnt through 150 million years' worth of oil in 150 years).

And the comments are about the green conspiracy! Our whole fucking world is collapsing around us, and people want to carry on as normal. Ferguson, Kedrosky, and others believe that economic recovery is possible in a few years and things will be back to normal. The oil is still running out, the climate is still getting warmer, the distribution of fresh water is changing, farmland is disappearing in one place and appearing in others. People will have to move if they want to survive.

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Food Not Bombs Battles City Government - and Wins

Gonzalo Vizcardo reports that Food Not Bombs Battles City Government - and Wins (subscription required) aftre the West Palm Beach City Commission (Florida, USA) decided to repeal the ordinance that banned the giving of free food to homeless people in front of the Central Library on Wednesday nights (by a Christain group) and Saturday afternoons (by the Anarchists). A similar ordinance was struck down in another city after the judge ruled that it violated the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion.

In September 2007 the city commission of West Palm Beach, Florida passed an ordinance prohibiting the distribution of free food in Centennial Park in front of the public library. The ordinance directly targeted Food Not Bombs (FNB), which serves vegetarian meals every Saturday afternoon, and Art and Compassion, a religious group which also serves free food and preaches to the homeless every Wednesday night. The reason? Like other ordinances and laws targeting homeless advocates across the nation, business owners and affluent residents want the homeless out of sight, even if that means banning public feedings in public places. The city's motivation for the ordinance is evident from Mayor Lois Frankel's recent statement that the groups "decided it's their right to destroy West Palm Beach's downtown commerce."

Emphasis Mine

The Capitalists do want the outcasts from the system hanging around. They could induce compassion in the oppressed masses and have them ask questions like:

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist."

Hélder Câmara

The Food Not Bombs Movement:

...is an international movement made up of autonomous all-volunteer collectives that was started in the early 1980s in Cambridge, Massachusetts by anti-nuclear activists protesting the Seabrook nuclear power plant. FNB operates under the idea that food is a right, not a privilege, and that the fact that there is so much hunger amid so much wealth is testament to our society's misallocation of resources and inequality. Currently, there are over 400 active chapters, half of which are outside of the United States. Groups collect food that would otherwise go to waste and serve vegetarian meals in public places.

Emphasis Mine

Unfortunately, in a Capitalist society, food is a commodity produced for profit. Only those with money can eat. The penniless starve because money is needed to realise profit.

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The New N Word: Nationalization

Barry Ritholtz wonders what all the fuss is about with The New N Word: Nationalization:

No matter. We now have a new N word today, and its Nationalization. Why the word is so fearful and loaded is beyond my comprehension. As Bloomberg’s David Reilly writes, “The nationalization debate is a smoke screen. We’ve already nationalized the big banks. Let’s just accept it and move on” — and I could not agree more.

Italics in Original

Unlike Paul Kedrosky who sees a Bank Nationalization and the Otto Problem in that people are stupid, Ritholtz sees no problem at all.

Maybe the red-baiting tirades from the likes of Miranda Devine are invisible to the intellegentisa. The propaganda is so pervasive and effective that no one needs to comment on it at all.

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If you don't like the rules, start your own church

Miranda Devine rails againsts the Socialist take-over of the Catholic Church, and says that If you don't like the rules, start your own church:

The Socialist Alliance posters outside St Mary's Catholic Church in Brisbane said it all. "Dump Intolerance, not Father Kennedy." "Who would Jesus sack?" The father in question is Peter Kennedy, the 70-year-old Catholic priest who is being forced out of the church he has turned into a green-leftist New Age drop-in centre.

Devine is worried about the Communist Fifth-Columnists:

"I take my authority from the people," Kennedy told reporters. Not God? No wonder the Socialist Alliance loves him. Socialism regards religion as a "spiritual oppressor", in the words of Lenin, who also said "Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism".

It doesn't matter which dupes the left uses to destroy organised religion, or how they commandeer the social justice work of well-meaning church people, the aim is never to foster religious practice or nourish a love of God.

Emphasis Mine

This is rather revealing: no mention of love thy neighbour. Just practice and a focus on heavenly things. The last thing Capitalists want are people who are concerned about their neighbours here on Earth.

Devine's concern is discipline and orthodoxy:

While you can feel pity for Bathersby, the mess is his own making. Having tolerated Kennedy's antics for years, and having presided over the transformation of Brisbane into the most progressive and least disciplined archdiocese in the country, he can hardly be surprised by the result.

Emphasis Mine

Devine concludes by appealing to popularity (not of Fr.Kennedy but of Pope John Paul II):

Good luck to him. No one is forced to be a Catholic, and the church - as it has been for 2000 years - is thriving the world over, wherever it has remained true to its teachings. The thousands of young people who spontaneously went to Rome for the funeral of the very orthodox Pope John Paul II were not activists trying to dismantle the church. They are the future, not Kennedy's outdated mumbo jumbo socialism.

Emphasis Mine

Instead, the Catholic Church has the problem of youth leaving it for other churchs: She played Mary during World Youth Day. Now she's defected to Hillsong:

SHE was a poster girl for World Youth Day, when more than 400,000 pilgrims gathered in Sydney to celebrate their Catholic faith.

We come to the problem of legitimacy: is the institution legitimate by its existence, or do the members grant legitimacy to the institution?

As for the Opium of the People, the real quote is:

Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Emphasis Mine

The Capitalists, like Devine, would prefer us to keep our illusions, accept the discipline of our betters, and conform to the existing society. In other words, thinking for ourselves is dangerous.

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The Anti-Economy: How the Pursuit of Private Fortunes is Destroying Community Wealth

RogerK wants the The Anti-Economy: How the Pursuit of Private Fortunes is Destroying Community Wealth without being called a Communist.

... Personally I think that we need to develop a system of public or community investment, the purpose of which is to insure that economic outputs vital to the community continue to be produced as needed, rather than trying to increase the purchasing power of private investors. I see no reason why such a system of community investment must imply state factories in the Soviet sense or must imply the complete death of private enterprise.

Emphasis Mine

The highlighted phase is a very good definition of Communism. The community directs investment not individual capitalists.

RogerK's position is that...

... However, it is not my intention in this essay to try to prove that these optimistic assessments about the extendability of the economic status quo are false. I am simply going assume that a complete decoupling of economic growth from resource consumption is impossible, so that, sooner or later we must stop expanding our total economic output.

Emphasis Mine

In other words, RogerK is going to assume a constant economic efficiency. The quantity and quality of commodities produced is assumed to be directly related to the quantity of resources consumed. The labour component in commodity production is ignored.

Another problem with this assumption is that the current level of resource is probably unsubstainable. And, in order to reach a substainable economic system, the standard of living will have to drop.

RogerK then goes onto expound his economic theory:

Many people have claimed (I am one of them) that our current economic system requires constant growth for healthy functioning. This growth orientation of the economy is oftentimes blamed solely on our financial/monetary system. Granting unearned purchasing power to businesses and/or individuals in exchange for a larger amount of purchasing power in the future requires growth in the net production of use value. The excess purchasing power owed to the financier has to come from somewhere. Either purchasing power is taken away from someone else, or the net production of use value must increase. Since finance as means of robbery cannot be a politically stable institution, the desire for real growth in the production and sales of use value predominates.

Emphasis Mine

What RogerK is skirting around here is the issue of profit. I think he considers profit for the capitalist to be earned while profit for the financiers to be unearned. Whereas for Communists, all profit is unearned.

Here, the phrase, net production of use value, shows a confusion Use Value with Exchange Value. Profit is realised as the difference in exchange value of the inputs and outputs.

The second highlighted sentence comes close to the reason for the instability of the Capitalist system. All commodities must be purchased by a consumer for profit to be realised. In a fully developed Capitalist society, the only consumers are the proletariat. Thus, the total purchasing power of the local economy is the sum of the wages earned by the proletariat. But the wages of the proletariat are included in the cost of the commodities produced. Hence, the effect of profit is to reduce purchasing power unless the profit is invested (which is really the purchasing of machinery and raw materials).

This current economic crisis is a result of a higher rate of profit and a lower rate of investment. The economy will spiral down until purcahsing power is restored to the proletariat.

RogerK does not understand that credit increases the rate of turnover of capital by advancing to the producer a discounted exchange value for the commodities produced. Instead of the producer waiting for the commodities to be sold to the ultimate consumer because the profit is realised, the producer receives a lesser amount quicker and is, thus, able to begin the production cycle earlier thereby increasing the rate of economic activity. Unfortunately, the increasing rate of economic activity means that the crisis in consumption is reached sooner unless other avenues of consumption are opened up.

Later on, RogerK makes an interesting point:

By voluntary simplicity I do not mean that we all should live like 18'th century rural small holders. I mean that we need to reach a socially agreed upon conception of 'enough' in the realm of material wealth. Individuals need to reach economic maturity in the same way that their bodies reach physical maturity. If the individual desires increasing wealth without boundary then so will the larger economy. No matter how creative and productive an individual may be their income should not exceed the socially agreed up definition of sufficiency.

Emphasis Mine

RogerK comes to the point that humanity needs to survive as a society not as an accidental collection of individuals. This is a major departure from Capitalist philosophy in which the uncoordinated activities of selfish individuals somehow leads to a functioning society. This is really a major development in the consciousness of RogerK.

RogerK stresses the point further in:

Mutual support is the other foundation stone of an economy which is not rushing to destroy the commons in the name of private material security. I have already pointed out that real physical savings consist of the built up infrastructure of society, including the knowledge and skill of its constituent citizens. Since mutual support is an objective physical reality, why don't we stop seeking a delusory financial 'independence' and implement a system of universal social security? We need to create a social environment in which people who put their shoulder to the wheel and help to create and maintain the economic infrastructure of society, even in a humble capacity, can have confidence that that infrastructure will be used to support them in their years of declining productivity.

Emphasis Mine

So, RogerK accepts that common ownership and economic cooperation are needed for a substainable economy. He later on counters the argument about the extreme individualism prevents such a society coming into being. He rather would not get into that argument. He hopes that people would see sense.

RogerK presents his own version of Socialism or Barbarism forecast to force people to see sense:

I have absolutely no doubt that, in the face of a productivity decline, real understanding of the nature of our situation and realistic proposals for alleviating the associated suffering will be hard to come by. However, if the unique and unvarying response to this situation, for all time to come, is a vain attempt to restore the 'normality' of exponential economic growth, then it is hard to see how the decline of industrial civilization can stop anywhere short of neolithic villages. I prefer to assume that the case is not so desperate and talk to other human beings about our common dilemma as if I thought that intelligent cooperation were possible.

Emphasis Mine

In summary, RogerK's economic and political theories are nascent. He can see some points clearly, but the distinction between use value and exchange value is impeding development there. The role of credit follows from understanding of the capitalist production cycle. He hopes that a capitalist society can change somehow into a socialist one without evening seeing the political forces that maintain the current society.

A good start, but a lot more work is needed.

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Global Counter-Insurgency

Anonymous posted two references to the shift in rhetoric about the long war.

Sen. John Kerry says Pakistan aid bill to be passed shortly , and that:

He opposed the use of term war on terror.

"What we are doing is conducting global counterinsurgency. And a counterinsurgency by definition needs to win hearts and minds of people it has to bring people on your side not push them away. So , I think we have to do a better job of implementing [o]ur strategy."

Once again, a member of the US government does question the US strategy at all. The only problem he sees is that the strategy has not been implemented correctly.

In Obama and the counter-insurgency era, Anthony Fenton concludes that

Since the Obama administration campaigned on the continuity of counter-insurgency and irregular war as key elements of US power projection under his administration, it is likely that these policies will attain a level of popular support not experienced by the Bush administration, and will see little critical scrutiny by the media. The challenge will be to shed light on and critically examine these policies as they manifest in any number of settings around the world in the days to come.

I think that Fenton forgets that the War on Terror was very popular in 2001 and 2002 both in the USA and here in Australia. I would say that the general population was thirsty for revenge over the attacks on 11 September 2001.

Pres. Bush could have called it the War on XYZZY and the people would have understood it to be a war on Islam. Such was the racism that underlay the response at the time.

The War on Terror has the effect of casting the US government as the good guys and the defenders of that is good and pure. It was a term for the time. Now that the war is dragging on and the timetable for the conquest of the Middle East is falling behind every day, a change in semantics is needed to maintain support.

It is interesting to note that both of these articles stress the continuity with the Bush administration. This is a way of saying that the strategy is correct and the US government is resolute in this matter. Only a few adjustments need to be made: "Smart Power" instead of "Hard Power" or "Soft Power".

But even the term, "Global Counter-Insurgency", is a mistake. The only thing that unites all of these resistence groups is the hatred of US military and economic incursions. The danger is that the US strategy make create the monster that it seeks to destroy.

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Global Counterinsurgency: Strategic Clarity for the Long War

Roper (2009:106) concludes that a change in the lexicon is an important weapon in the War on Terror:

The United States needs to refocus its efforts and resources to more effectively deal with the current global threat. Clear thinking supported by clear language will assist in this endeavor. American policy should focus more on denying support for those organizations with political goals inimical to US interests, rather than emphasizing the apprehension of individual terrorists. Removing the “war on terrorism” from the official lexicon and replacing it with more precise and descriptive terms such as “war on global hirabahist insurgency” or “global counterinsurgency” would be an important step in identifying the real nature of the enemy, the security challenges posed, and the array of techniques the enemy may employ. More importantly, the change in descriptor will help focus the intellectual framework required to develop a successful US strategy for dealing with this complex and lethal problem.

Emphasis Mine

Roper's main points are that terrorism is a tactic, and that insurgency and terrorism may overlap but are not the same thing. "Understanding terrorism as an activity subsumed under a wide variety of activities employed by an insurgent movement provides the intellectual clarity required to identify the real enemy and formulate effective countermeasures. It is, therefore, inaccurate to semantically equate terrorism and insurgency." (Roper:2009,97)

Roper (2009:94-95) gives several definitions of terrorism but they all have the same assumption: violence by governments is legitimate while violence by non-government forces is not. Indeed, government terrorism is often described as an "... overreaction ... from target governments" (Roper:2009,p.97).

Roper (2009:98) contend that counter-insurgency strategies designed to suppress Communists is inappropiate for this new type of insurgency.

Classic counterinsurgency theory tends to assume a binary struggle between insurgent and counterinsurgent, yet insurgencies today may incorporate many diffuse, competing insurgent movements. In contrast to revolutionary war theory, these conflicts often lack a “united front.” Likewise, classic insurgency theory typically regards insurgency as between an internal nonstate actor and a single government. Today, however, there is real-time informal cooperation and cross-pollination between insurgents in many countries, often accomplished without a central controlling authority. The National Security Strategy of the United States describes terrorist networks as being more decentralized than traditional terrorist organizations; less dependent upon a central command structure; and more reliant upon inspiration from a common ideology. Although parallels—such as the need for contextually specific solutions—exist with the ideologically motivated Communist insurgencies of the mid- to late twentieth century, the franchise-like character of modern transnational insurgencies fueled by religious fanaticism is new.

Emphasis Mine

In this, Roper is wrong. A counter-example is the Irish resistance to the English occupation. The resistance was world-wide from support in the USA, Australia, Argentina, Canada, France, etc. A notable action against English tyranny took place at Vinegar Hill in 1804. A driving force of the international resistance was religion, and this has been going for 500 years.

Roper (2009:101-102) posits that the correct strategy is to:

The US strategic goal in the Long War is to preserve and promote the way of life of free and open societies based on the rule of law, defeat terrorist extremism, and create a global environment inhospitable to extremists. American strategy to achieve this goal is based on an international effort to deny terrorists resources. This strategy is comprised of three elements: protect the homeland; disrupt and attack terrorist networks; and counter ideological support for terrorism. Protecting the homeland is the defensive aspect of the strategy, but defense in and of itself is not enough. A successful strategy requires attacking the terrorists and their ability to operate, to include their leadership, funding, and communications. The most important component of the strategy is countering ideological support for terrorism—the “decisive effort.” It should be self-evident that countering ideological support for those who commit terrorist acts is as much a social, societal, and psychological issue as it is a physical one.

Emphasis Mine

The fundamental problem is that the American Government is a terrorist organisation itself. Everything it does is in furtherence of grabbing resources of the third world for its own benefit. Even its vaunted "Shock and Awe" campaign of 2003 was a classic case of terrorism - sheer brutality to achieve political acquiesence. It supports a terrorist government: Israel.

The gulf between the words of the US government and its actions are an abyss into which the US Army has cast itself. Every action by the US Military in Iraq and Afghanistan is terrorism against the local people. The US Military has become the biggest recruiter for the resistence. How can the US Army defeat itself?

Another underlying assumption of the article is that legimate governments are those who serve the interests of the USA. There is no self-determination in the US's view of the world. Everyone exists to serve the USA.

The very success of the USA economy means that the USA must be an empire that rules through terror. And this terror begets terror. In order to win the long war, the USA must destroy itself. Therein lies the danger for the rest of us.

References

Roper, Daniel S. (2009), "Global Counterinsurgency: Strategic Clarity for the Long War", Parameters, Autumn 2008, pp. 92-108 (Viewed 22 February 2009)

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Two billion more bourgeois

The Economist, in Two billion more bourgeois, admits that Karl Marx was right:

... But Marx thought “the bourgeoisie…has played a most revolutionary part” in history. And although The Economist rarely sees eye to eye with the father of communism, on this Marx was right.

The definition of the middle class in this article is that it ...consists of people with about a third of their income left for discretionary spending after providing basic food and shelter. Whereas the Marxist definition of the bourgeois is by property relations. The bourgeois own the means of production: factories, farms, mines, etc.

This is a classic case of the Capitalist economists dividing society up by income, whereas the true class divisions are by how people derive that income. The interests of the worker are different from that of the shareholder, bondholder, rentier, farmer, small business owner, etc.

The article goes onto make an important point:

As people emerge into the middle class, they do not merely create a new market. They think and behave differently. They are more open-minded, more concerned about their children’s future, more influenced by abstract values than traditional mores. In the words of David Riesman, an American sociologist, their minds work like radar, taking in signals from near and far, not like a gyroscope, pivoting on a point. Ideologically they lean towards free markets and democracy, which tend to be better than other systems at balancing out varied and conflicting interests. A poll we commissioned for our special report on the middle class in the developing world finds that such people are happier, more optimistic and more supportive of democracy than are the poor.

Emphasis Mine

The bourgeois have a different view of the world by virtue of their property relationships. They own things that make them money. They want to keep those things for themselves and make enough money to survive.

Here democracy is another one of those fluid terms that means different things to different classes. The bourgeois want to make decisions for their own benefit. Since they are a minority, they are not in favour of majority rule. So they continually devise means to keep the rabble under control, and behaving in a manner conducive to the bourgeois making money.

For the rabble (aka the poor), democracy means majority rule to defend their rights against the predations of the bourgeois.

Guess which version of democracy is more acceptable to The Economist?

The article contends that the growth of the bourgeois is a result of the global economic boom, and is rightly worried about the fate of the new members of this class:

Those at the bottom of the ladder do not have far to fall. But what happens if you have clambered up a few rungs, joined the new middle class and now face the prospect of slipping back into poverty? History suggests middle-class people can behave in radically different ways. The rising middle class of 19th-century Britain agitated peacefully for the vote; in Latin America in the 1990s the same sorts of people backed democracy. Yet the middle class also supported fascist governments in Europe in the 1930s and initially backed military juntas in Latin America in the 1980s.

Emphasis Mine

This article suggests that the improvishment of the bourgeois only occurs during economic downturns. Not so! The rate of improvishment merely increases in these times. The bourgeois have their property taken all the time by banks when their businesses fail. This is all part of Capitalism's ruthless efficiency.

How the bourgeois reacts depends on how they see their interests are best served. The petite bourgeois can swing either way: left or right. Despite what The Economist wants us to believe, the Capitalist Revolution in Great Britain was just as violent as elsewhere: the English Civil War, Peterloo, the Highland Clearances, the Irish Occupation, etc. It only appears peaceful in contrast to the energies unleashed by the French Revolution.

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An Engaged Workforce

Ruth Smith ponders whether An Engaged Workforce is ... an unrealistic ideal in the current business climate?

... Polling 23,600 directors, managers, and employees, they found that employee engagement is seen as one of the top three factors that drive an organisation's success (it ranks higher than strategy) and 75% of board members believe that it improves bottom-line performance. In these times, when the news is full of redundancies (layoffs), re-organisations, and failing businesses, I’m not sure if employee engagement is high on the business agenda.

Emphasis Mine

Later on, she muses:

In my work I have seen pockets of excellence where employee engagement seems to be occurring, and many places where it is obviously not! I have been asking questions about what is happening where engagement is prevalent. A pattern appears to be taking shape in the responses I get; engagement is more likely to occur when mangers purposefully include, and share power with, people within the organisation, co-creating a way of working together with their teams. There is a sense that the diverse range of people within the workplace community (not just the managers and leaders) are involved in, and feel accountable for, finding the solutions that are right for them, the business, and the future

Emphasis Mine

Power-sharing does not address the fundamental tenet of Capitalism: the owners of capital make the investment decisions. Power-sharing in this context is merely consultation before a decision is made.

The only thing we can hope for from this evolution in management thinking is the workers may gain in consciousness about their true power in the productive process, especially as other avenues are closed off (strikes, etc).

A truly engaged workforce is one that runs the workplace and employs capital as it sees fit.

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Cactus says' why don't we try a bit of captalism in these times'

Cactus says' why don't we try a bit of captalism in these times'? Catcus gives an example in which certain companies make the wrong technological decisions.

And if these companies go bankrupt, its not the end of the aerospace industry. The parts of these companies that are functional would be scooped up by other companies, provided they were deemed to serve some useful function going forward.

Cactus concludes with

And the solution to the whole financial mess is the same as the solution in my little fable: let the companies that made bad decisions fail, and end the subsidies the industry receives. In other words, let the bad banks die, let their counterparties die as they made equally bad decisions (its not like companies in just about any industry aren't able to figure out in many cases who their riskiest counterparties are, regardless of the industry they're in, as per this piece by Yves Smith), and end the banking industry's monopoly access to the Fed. A lot of banks will go bankrupt - after all, being a middleman is relatively easy work. But a) its unfair and b) inefficient.

Following this approach would lead to some term pain - a lot of it in fact, but that pain is going to be there no matter what approach we take, and that goes doubly so for the silly and counterproductive plan pursued first by the Bush and now Obama administrations. But in the long run, bringing the banking system into some semblance of capitalism will make everyone better off... except the grifters.

Emphasis Mine

The fundamental flaw in Cactus' argument is that the efficient operation of Capitalism leads to a concentration of capital. Cactus assumes in the example given that other firms will enter the market as others go bankrupt. The assumption is one of homeostasis in the Capitalist system.

The reality of Capitalism is different. The efficient operation of Capitalism leads to a monopoly in a technological niche by efficiently removing less able firms and raising the barriers to entry at each iteration of the development of technology. Monopolies are only overthrown when their technological edge becomes obsolete.

We are in this economic depression precisely because of the efficient operation of Capitalism - not the opposite. We need to change the social relations to change the outcomes.

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What’s the Cross-Functional Team, and Why should I have one?

Steve Johnson asks, "What’s the Cross-Functional Team, and Why should I have one?"

First of all, the definition is given as:

The cross-functional team is a group of people who collectively represent the entire organization's interests in a specific product or product family. This team provides benefits for the individuals on the team, the product and its customers, and the organization at large.

This is a counter trend to the proletarization of work, in which work is broken down into rote tasks that are easily learnt. This method of work decomposition allows for the mechanisation of tasks, easy replacement of workers, and downward pressure on wages as less skill is needed to replace a skilled worker.

The cost of this proletarisation has been the alienation of workers from their work. This is now seen as a huge cost in the production of goods.

Instead of having micro-managed workers doing highly defined tasks without reference to what anyone else is doing, the cross-functional team encourages workers to a higher view of the productive process.

A healthy team improves organizational alignment. Members are kept "in the know" regarding product status, including market research, customer feedback, product development progress, product-related financials, and promotional plans and events. Each member is held responsible for bringing that information back to their own department or team. In addition, they feed the team their own department or team's feedback. The cross-functional team allows us to get one representative group aligned; in turn, they exponentially increase organizational awareness and alignment.

What is left unsaid in this article is that Department II workers are being replaced by Department I workers. The latter have to be mananged differently in order to extract value from their labour.

The organisation of work cannot be done by the managers anymore. The work is too fluid to be precisely defined. If it is done so, the job definition is very likely to be obsolete.

The balance of power within the workplace is tipping in favour of the less politically reliable workforce.

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Decisions, decisions

The Economist posits What people can learn from how social animals make collective decisions in Decisions, decisions.

DICTATORS and authoritarians will disagree, but democracies work better. It has long been held that decisions made collectively by large groups of people are more likely to turn out to be accurate than decisions made by individuals. The idea goes back to the “jury theorem” of Nicolas de Condorcet, an 18th-century French philosopher who was one of the first to apply mathematics to the social sciences. Now it is becoming clear that group decisions are also extremely valuable for the success of social animals, such as ants, bees, birds and dolphins. And those animals may have a thing or two to teach people about collective decision-making.

The article goes on to describe the two types of decisions:

Animals that live in groups make two sorts of choices: consensus decisions in which the group makes a single collective choice, as when house-hunting rock ants decide where to settle; and combined decisions, such as the allocation of jobs among worker bees.

Emphasis Mine

The first type of decision would be called democratic centralism in which everyone abides by the majority decision. This is used to set goals.

The second type of decision is used to implement those goals.

For the consensus decisions, it would appear that bees use an iterative decision making process in which ideas are shared with everybody and independently evaluating that information.

... To find out, Dr List and his colleagues made a computer model of the decision-making process. By tinkering around with it they found that computerised bees that were very good at finding nesting sites but did not share their information dramatically slowed down the migration, leaving the swarm homeless and vulnerable. Conversely, computerised bees that blindly followed the waggle dances of others without first checking whether the site was, in fact, as advertised, led to a swift but mistaken decision. The researchers concluded that the ability of bees to identify quickly the best site depends on the interplay of bees’ interdependence in communicating the whereabouts of the best site and their independence in confirming this information.

Emphasis Mine

In other words, a robust democracy depends on the free flow of information and the critical analysis of the participants. Everyone needs to be involved in the decision-making process through receiving and evaluating the information.

And there is the importance of cadre development:

Dr Franks and his colleagues identified a type of behaviour called “reverse tandem runs” that makes the process more efficient. During the carrying phase of migration, the scouts lead other scouts back along the quickest route to the old nest so that more scouts become familiar with the route. Thus the dynamics of collective decision-making are closely entwined with the implementation of these decisions. How this might pertain to choices that people might make is, as yet, unclear. But it does indicate the importance of recruiting active leaders to a cause because, as the ants and bees have discovered, the most important thing about collective decision-making is to get others to follow.

Emphasis Mine

So, we have the intellectual flagship of Capitalism describing Leninist party building theory. The success of this depends on:

• Free flow of information
• Critical analysis of this information
• Participation of everybody in the decision-making
• Development of leaders to implement the decisions of the group

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Cognitive Hierarchy Theory

Mark Thoma posts an excerpt about "Cognitive Hierarchy Theory" from Making a game of economic theory, EurekAlert which quotes Prof. Colin Camerer that instead of:

... "Almost all the analysis, however, assumes people plan ahead and carefully figure out what others will do, which often results in mathematical claims that are highly unrealistic cognitively."

In reality, Camerer says, a key part of strategizing about what other people--or corporations, or countries--will do involves thinking about what they think you will do. "You can also think about what others think you think. . . . It can go on and on."

This multiple steps in thinking ahead is called cognitive hierarchy theory. Camerer goes on to explain that not all people follow the same number of steps:

"The cognitive hierarchy theory finds that people only do a few steps of this kind of iterated thinking," he explains. "Usually, it's just one step: I act as if others are unpredictable. But sometimes it's two steps: I act as if others think *I* am unpredictable. You can think of the number of steps a person takes as their strategic IQ. A higher strategic IQ means you are outthinking a lot of other people."

This theory is a percularity of the Capitalist system in which all individuals have to compete for limited resources. Those who are able to think further ahead will gain more. It is really a justification for elitism: those who think more are rewarded more.

In a Communist economy, the emphasis would be on co-operation and theories like this will no longer be needed.

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Bank Nationalization and the Otto Problem

Paul Kedrosky opines about Bank Nationalization and the Otto Problem:

For all sorts of reasons, some knee-jerk, some nonsensical, and some entirely rational, the word "nationalization" has roughly the same effect on the average American as does the word "stupid" on Otto in the movie A Fish Called Wanda. The typical American could be dangling by a finger from a hot-air balloon and yet at the sound of the word nationalization they'll go off in a red-eyed rage about evil socialists and the end of America.

Emphasis in original

The problem is that the anti-Communist propaganda has been so effective that the American public can only react as it does. Kedrosky decries this as stupidity, but it is not. The brain-washing has been thorough and extremely effective that extreme measures to save the American Capitalist system are imperilled.

Kedrosky has a further problem:

The frustrating thing is that, if it were explained properly, most Americans would likely be demanding nationalization/pre-privatization. ...

Emphasis in original

The unstated reason for this is that people would understand it is in their best interests to nationalise the banks. You cannot have the people deciding what is best for them! Otherwise, there would be no need for the elite to make decisions for people!

And so, Kedrosky is left to fume at the injustice of it all:

So, is nationalization wonderful? Of course not. It's awful and wildly maddening in a capitalist economy. But is it better than the never-ending bailout? Yes. And liking it doesn't mean anyone's being called stupid or a socialist.

Once more, it's Socialism for the Rich while the poor should still think that Socialism is a very, very bad thing.

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Capitalism 3.0

Mark Thoma points to a new, improved version of Capitalism: "Capitalism 3.0":

Dani Rodrik says capitalism must be reinvented to build "a better balance between markets and their supporting institutions at the global level"

This is just an old version of Capitalism with some tweaks to the trimings. The fundamental problem of Capitalism is not addressed nor mentioned.

Dani Rodrik crows that:

Those who predict capitalism’s demise have to contend with one important historical fact: capitalism has an almost unlimited capacity to reinvent itself. Indeed, its malleability is the reason it has overcome periodic crises over the centuries and outlived critics from Karl Marx on. ...

Rodrik goes to write that increasing government intervention helped to stabilise the Capitalist system:

... The new balance that it established between state and market set the stage for an unprecedented period of social cohesion, stability and prosperity in the advanced economies that lasted until the mid-1970s.

This model became frayed from the 1980s on, and now appears to have broken down. The reason can be expressed in one word: globalization.

The postwar mixed economy was built for and operated at the level of nation-states, and required keeping the international economy at bay. ...

Here Rodrik forgets that the current manifestation of Globalisation is not the first one in history. The previous manifestation died at the start of World War I. That one was a more encompassing one in that direct military and political control was imposed by the imperial powers through their empires.

Following World War II, neo-colonialism became the norm in which local elites managed the process on behalf of foreign interests. This meant the system was not as efficient as before but more stable as it required less direct intervention.

However, the increasing confidence and power of these local elites has caused the imperial powers to revert to direct military and political control as seen in the cases of Serbia, Iraq, Chad, Panama, Chechyna, Tibet, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, etc.

Under Capitalism, the nation state exists as a protected market for the local Capitalists. Access to this market is of great interest to other Capitalists seeking to offset crises in their own markets.

Rodrik concludes that:

The lesson is not that capitalism is dead. It is that we need to reinvent it for a new century in which the forces of economic globalization are much more powerful than before. ... This means imagining a better balance between markets and their supporting institutions at the global level. Sometimes, this will require ... strengthening global governance. At other times, it will mean preventing markets from expanding beyond the reach of institutions that must remain national. The right approach will differ across country groupings and among issue areas.

Designing the next capitalism will not be easy. But we do have history on our side: capitalism’s saving grace is that it is almost infinitely malleable.

Once again, Rodrik hopes that, by having greater span of government control, the Capitalist crises can be contained. Rodrik wants a supra-national government to manage Capitalism for the Capitalists. In other words, the One World Government is being put forward as the salvation of the Capitalist system. This will not go down well with the petite Bourgeious who passionately believe that government is the cause of their problems.

The central problem of Capitalism is that profit both drives the system and causes it to collapse by reducing consumption. If goods cannot be consumed because of lack of money, then goods cannot be sold. Therefore, unsold goods represent unvalorised capital. Capital that cannot be valorised cannot be turned into profit. No expectation of profit means no investment in either machinery, raw materials, or labour. Thus, the amount of money available for the purchase of goods to be consumed is reduced. And so, the cycle continues.

I suppose Rodrik wants a Keynesian world government to keep consumption up during economic downturns. Government spending requires taxation. And taxation without representation has been the cause of a few revolutions.

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Rudd races off the Marx to jump hurdles of capitalism

Peter Hartcher watches as Rudd races off the Marx to jump hurdles of capitalism as the vultures circle:

"MARX was right," crowed the banner unfurled outside Parliament House yesterday by a group called Socialist Alternative. "Capitalism doesn't work."

Hartcher disagrees with this assessment, and concludes that being a temporary Socialist is a good thing:

A distinguishing characteristic of the Government's plans is that the state is filling the growth gap only until the private sector recovers.

Commendably, Rudd yesterday set out a doctrine for retracting the size of the Government's role in the economy once the crisis has passed. This sets Rudd apart from Whitlam. Indeed Rudd, like many leaders around the world at present, is saving capitalism from itself.

Crisis is inherent to financial capitalism. As one authority on crises, the late Charles Kindleberger, observed, there is nothing more ordinary in the four century history of financial capitalism than a crisis.

Where Marx went wrong was that he predicted the collapse of capitalism through the crises brought on by its "internal contradictions".

But where the state can sensibly manage its flaws and repair its crises, capitalism will recover and endure.

Emphasis Mine

In essence, Hartcher argues that Capitalism cannot operate without crises and that Marx was wrong to conclude that Capitalism will fail because of crises because Capitalism has survived crisis before and will do so again.

Hartcher asked not really answered the question: where do crisis come from? He relies on a descriptive answer - crises occur in Capitalism. His intellectual curiousity does not extend beyond that. It is like arguing that elephants have trunks because they would not be elephants without a trunk.

The classic Marxist answer to this question is that profits are increased at the expense of reducing income for the workers, and thereby reducing consumption. It is this reduced consumption that triggers these crises.

Keynesian economics is simply substaining consumption to reduce the inventories of goods so that profits can be realised.

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Still sings loudly

Jonathan Strauss reviews Gone for a Song: A Death in Custody on Palm Island by Chris Waters in Still sings loudly. The book is available at these Australian libraries.

Waters discusses the circumstances of Mulrunji’s death and the two coronial inquests into it. But he also expands from this to concise accounts of the record of race relations in Queensland, the history of Palm Island as a state concentration camp for Indigenous people resisting their oppression, and current social conditions on the island.

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Paulson Reverses Course

Stormy at Angry Bear asks as Paulson Reverses Course :

Whom are we bailing out? Who is getting the cash? Are they going to play the old "me first" games?

Not that I want to, but I am going to suggest a radical alternative. This ship is going down, fast. Financial capitalism is broken. (Note the adjective, please.) Nationalize the banks and all lending facilities. Just do it. Set a reasonable rate for credit cards and other types of loans--and mortgages. Set up real lending standards. No one gets ten credit cards; they get one, if that. No more multi-billion dollar CEOs and their cadres of wolves. No more figuring out ways to game the credit system.

For those of you who still believe in free market banking and lending, here is the bottom line: If you thought Ben Laden was a threat--or that Saddam Hussein, a third world dictator was a threat--, well, I have news for you. We are looking down the barrel of a real threat.

If this system really crashes, you will know what a security threat really is.

How about your homes, your jobs, your retirement?

We have met the real enemy. It is time we faced facts, hard facts. The guys in charge still want the old system to work, still want the lending boys to make a bundle.

Even if we nationalize the entire lending system, we will be a long time in recovering from this mess. But at least we will have understood our problem and took steps to rectify it.

The consequences of not facing it are too dire to contemplated.

Emphasis Mine. Italics in original

Stormy assumes that you can nationalise the financial system and keep Capitalism. Good try. Unfortunately, the investment decisions would no longer be done by the Capitalists but by bureauscrats: a form of Socialism.

As we are finding out, the amount of private capital pales against the amount of capital available through the financial system. This is why the current system is called financial Capitalism.

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Obama's First Test

William S Lind proposes that Obama's First Test:

...in the national security arena is likely to come not from al Qaeda or Iran or the Taliban but from within his own Democratic Party. Powerful constituencies in that party, the Feminists and the gays, will demand that he open the ground combat arms to women and allow acknowledged homosexuals to serve in the U.S. armed forces. If he agrees to either of these demands, or both, he will begin his Presidency by doing immense damage to the fighting ability of the America military.

Emphasis Mine

His argument proceeds from the Capitalist understanding of sexuality:

One of the most basic human factors is that men fight to prove they are real men. They join fighting organizations, whether the U.S. Army or U.S. Marine Corps or MS-13, because those organizations are made up of fighting men. Their membership is a badge of honor that says, "We're not sissies or pansies. We are men who fight, serving alongside other men who fight." That tells others and themselves they are real men.

Emphasis Mine

His view of masculinity is confined to anti-feminineness. It is not a positive definition rather defining maleness as not being something. Plus the definition requires that males exhibit aggression to prove themselves.

So the military exists to define and prove masculinity rather to protect society. If a conflict should arise between being masculine and protecting society, then I would assume that Lind would prefer masculinity be asserted.

The idea of the military in a Capitalist society is that of a profession rather than a duty. Military people are a separate caste in society with their own values and needs.

In a Communist society, military obligations apply to everyone. Society is protected by the members of society itself. There is no need for a subset to be charged with these obligations. Membership in society requires that military obligations be undertaken. This is similar to Robert Heinlein's idea in Starship Troopers that citizens defend the body politic except that I propose that all are citizens and therefore obliged to do military service, rather than military service grants citizenship.

Again, we come up against what is maleness? Is it anti-femaleness, or something else? If I do not display the attributes of a woman, am I therefore male?

Is this a dumb question? Does maleness matter? Rather should we concentrate what it means to be human, and leave gender as a biological fact not a cultural construct? I am human because I live in a society and contribute to its culture by propagating its values and suppressing harmful actions. To do so requires that I perform my duty to that society through contributing to the economy that sustains the society.

I think Lind is wrong but his is a Capitalist opinion that requires a military caste to defend the interests of the Capitalist against other Capitalists and the Proletariat. He cannot have a citizen-based military because they would turn their guns against the purported rulers.

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Getting Ready for (Economic) Winter

Financial Armageddon is Getting Ready for (Economic) Winter by examining how A Snowblower Maker Braces for Slump's Blizzard of Woe.

I was intrigued how the owner was getting productivity improvements:

Every two weeks, small groups of workers are assembled and assigned to tackle a new set of problems. One group, for instance, was recently assigned to figure out how to reduce the number of steps needed to collect the parts for an edging machine. Mr. Ariens says he would be pushing for these incremental changes even if business was booming. However it's even more crucial now to cut costs, he says.

The important thing is the workers know enough to devise ways of productivity improvement but have to be pointed in the right direction.

This passivity of the proletariat in the face of change has to be overcome before Communism can be implemented. Union activity enables workers to stand up to owners. This gives the workers confidence in themselves and their ideas.

The workers need to know how the economy works. It is no good to say that something will come along. Always waiting for someone else to start doing things.

The current economic crisis is a good start for workers to examine the current economic system and start devising alternatives.

The Capitalists will be hoping for a short recession so that the workers can be put back to sleep. A prolonged recession means that workers may start to wonder about the system.

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Chloe Hooper: The Tall Man (3)

In another chapter of the saga started in The Tall Man, Peter Robson & Paul Benedek write that:

Palm Island Aboriginal man Lex Wotton was sentenced to six years’ jail for “riot with destruction” on November 7 — just four days after 22 police officers received “bravery awards” for their role in the 2004 Palm Island protests.

This juxtaposition of sentencing a protestor and awarding the police is a political statement of the Queensland government about the occupation of Aboriginal lands.

Sam Watson says to Protest Lex Wotton's shameful conviction!

Testimony from Robinson and other Palm Island police alleged that Wotton was wielding weapons, smashing police station windows, and distributing tins of petrol.

Watson commented: “Wotton's barrister, Clive Steirn, accused Queensland police of ‘lying through their teeth’ to convict his client. He said that ‘not only was Lex Wotton never a part of any riotous assembly, he did his level best to stop the violence.”

Watson concluded: "A white police officer admits he caused an Aboriginal man's death, yet he walks free. A black man, who can't be connected to anything except that he was on Palm Island on the day, is fitted up for jail.

At the meeting called on 26 November 2005, Chloe Hooper writes (p,64), that after the mayor had read out the Coroner's saying that the death was an accident,:

'Come on, people!', Lex calls. 'Will you accept this as an accident? No! I tell you people, things are going to burn. We'll decide when. I'm not going to accept it and I know a lot of you other people won't. So let's do something!' Half of Lex's eloquence is in his body. Instead of decrepitude there is strength and muscle and presence. He is a fantasy of a figure before white contact.

Emphasis Mine. Italics in original.

So Lex was organising a protest against the inadequate Coroner's report. There was anger at the blatant lies and cover-up of violence against Aborigines.

As the protest got out of control with the Police station and Sergeant's residence being burnt down, the police were barricaded inside their barracks, the green zone of Palm Island. They thought they were about to be massacred by the islanders. At point, a truce is negotiated (p.68):

But Lex Wotton, who had been trying to jemmy open the gate's padlock, now ordered the crowd to stop throwing rocks. They did so. 'You've won! You've won! [Senior Sergeant Roger] Whyte called. He negotiated for sixty minutes' grace, sixty minutes to get off the island. The Torres Strait Islander cop, Bert Tabaui, heard Wotton yell, 'We'll give you an hour to get off the island, then we'll kill you!'

The police managed to retreat to the hospital (p.69)

Lex faced the police. He was still angry, but the anger was now controlled. 'Time's up! he called to the cops. 'All I wanted was for you to get off the island!'

Emphasis Mine

However, the women objected to this demand. They wanted police protection against the men. (p.69) The police said they could not leave because [t]hey had no transportation Lex arranged for two cars to made available for their escape, but the police were fearful of an ambush on the way to the airport. (p.70)

The confrontation ends with the timely arrival of the airborne (p.71):

The thunder of helicopters filled the smoke-clouded sky. Extra police had now arrived and still more were coming. Inspector Richardson came outside and told Lex. 'We are not leaving this island. We are the police. You are the ones causing the problem...we are not going anywhere! No way in Australia!'

Lex Wotton froze. He turned around and faced the crowd. The revolution had failed. His idea that the police would leave the island had been biblical in ambition and naivete, a declaration of war that he had no chance of winning. His actions would draw national attention to Cameron Doomadgee's death, but at that moment he knew he would soon be the one inside a jail cell.

'The prty's over,' he called, 'we'll all go home!' Then he turned around to the police. 'You can come around later and pick me up.'

Emphasis Mine

The occupier is not easily dislodged from his conquests. No dissent is allowed.

However, in case, the resolve of the occupier is weakened by the crackdown and the relative leniency of Lex's sentence. Future oppression is assured but it could be one foot on the throat too many.

Other posts in this series are at:

• Chloe Hooper: The Tall Man (2) is my review of the book.
• Chloe Hooper: The Tall Man was about an article in the Big Issue.

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Theory of Victory

J.Boone Bartholomees advances his Theory of Victory (Parameters, Summer 2008, pp. 25-36) by distinguishing between winning and victory. He is of the opinion that one can win without achieving viotory.

He equates victory with the collapse of your opponent's will to continue the struggle. If one achieves one's objectives without breaking your opponent's will, then one has won without victory.

On p.26, Bartholomees writes that:

Victory in war is at the most basic level an assessment, not a fact or condition. It is someone’s opinion or an amalgamation of opinions. Victory in war may or may not have anything to do with objective criteria such as casualties or territory taken or lost. In winning a war, those things matter—at least at some level and always in terms of their effect on perception—but what matters most is the ultimate perception of the situation, not the facts. Different people, depending on their perspective, can legitimately differ in their assessment. The assessment aspect complicates the issue of winning exponentially since it introduces the uncontrolled variables of whose assessment takes precedence, for how much, and based on what criteria.

Emphasis Mine

Here we have the subjective determining the objective. Perception is important.

In discussing the three (3) levels of perspective (tactical, operational, and strategic), Bartholomees contends that the first two (2) have quantifiable conditions for success (p.27). He then asks:

Which level is most important? It is tempting to respond that all are equally important, but that would be incorrect. What counts in the end is the strategic outcome. The story comes to mind of Colonel Harry Summers talking to a North Vietnamese officer after the Vietnam War. Summers commented that the United States had won all the battles, and the North Vietnamese replied, “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.” Tactical and operational successes may set the stage for strategic victory, but they are not sufficient in themselves.

Emphasis Mine

No matter how many strikes are broken, demonstrations suppressed, activists arrested, publications suppressed, victory by the state is never assured. The state can win through maintaining itself while allowing a level of dissidence to be accommodated.

On p.28, Bartholomees puts forward two (2) components of success in war: achievement and decisiveness.

Decisiveness also reflects a range of potential outcomes. The decisiveness scale (Figure 2) shows potential outcomes varying from completely resolving the political issues at stake through various degrees of partial resolution to no effect (or status quo), worsened or deteriorated political conditions, to the final potential outcome that the war does not solve the problems for which it was fought, but actually exacerbates them. Decisiveness assesses the effect on the political issues.

Achievement considers how well one executes his strategy—in a sense, how well he did on the battlefield or campaign and in the immediate political realm. Achievement (Figure 3) can range from accomplishing nothing through increasing degrees of success until one is completely successful.

Emphasis Mine. Figures are in original, not reporoduced here.

What is ambiguous here is the definition of politics. I would propose that conflict aims to change the social relations within a society.

For example, if a worker wants to exchange each hour of labour for $20 instead of $15, then the worker enters into conflict with the employer who wants to maintain the current social relation between himself and the worker of exchanging $15 for every hour of labour provided by the worker.

Here there may be a political context, but the conflict involves identifable people not abstractions.

On p.36, Bartholomees concludes with:

The fact that war is about winning does not mean it is about victory. One can win a war, especially a limited war, without achieving victory; here the distinction in words becomes significant. Military force can legitimately be used to obtain goals short of total victory or for immediate political advantage with no intent of resolving the underlying issues. The point is that war is about politics, and consequently victory in the end is a political matter.

Emphasis Mine.

With the case of the class war, this ends with either the complete collapse of the Capitalist system into barbarism, or by its metamorphosis into Socialism. Either way, there will be a decisive outcome.

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If we only had a financial system

Steve Randy Waldman opines that If we only had a financial system, then Capitalism would really work.

The elephant that is not in the room is a financial system. By a financial system, I don't mean the tottering cartel of banks and insurers loudly sucking newly printed cash into "collateral postings" and "deleveragings" and other meaningless nonactivities. That is no financial system at all. It is an ecology of intestines and tapeworms, tubes through which dollars flow and are skimmed en route to destinations about which the tripe-creatures have little interest or concern.

No, a financial system would be forward-looking. A financial system would be interested in the world, rather than fascinated by the patterns that formed behind its own mathematical eyelids. A financial system would hunger for information. It would leave no human preference overlooked and no technological possibility unconsidered. A financial system would embrace us all, would want to learn from us all. It would not be something external, something outsourced to specialists in London or Manhattan. It would want "savers" to express what they plan to do, how they hope to live, rather than offering generic claims on money along a disembodied spectrum of "risk". It would thirst for proposals, ideas, business plans designed to meet the preferences thus expressed, or to achieve possibilities not widely considered. A financial system would be creative. No stock exchange could contain the vast and multifarious tapestry of investable ideas a financial system would educe. A financial system would offer us opportunities to invest not in distant opportunities where we are disadvantaged, but in projects that are informationally, if not physically, near to us. A financial system would be ruthless. It would allow us to have a voice in the most important decision we collectively make, but would force us each to bear the costs of our errors.

Emphasis Mine

In other words, Mr. Waldman wants the democratic control of the financial system so that investment decisions are made on the basis of human need not corporate greed.

An interesting concept - something that Marx and Engels raised in The Communist Manifesto over a 160 years ago.

If the financial decisions are too important to be left to bankers, why are the actual production decisions still left in the hands of owners?

As Mr. Waldman says, democratic control of the financial system means that people will have to take responsibility for those decisions. This is a welcome development in the people's consciousness. For too long, the mystique of representative democracy has allowed us to become lazy. Someone else makes the hard decisions. Someone else takes the consequences.

We cannot advance to a Communist society until the Proletariat develops responsibility for its existence and advancement.

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The Failure of Networked Systems: The Repercussions of Systematic Risk

aeldric discusses The Failure of Networked Systems: The Repercussions of Systematic Risk. He describes how an efficient system is more susceptible to systemic failure than an inefficient one. The pursuit of cost efficiency drives all components to operate at near-criticality.

This impetus towards maximal cost efficiency has been well known since before Marx's analysis of Capitalism. It is an inevitable consequence of the Capitalist production process. Competition drives profits lower, thereby forcing cost reductions.

The problem with a system operating at near-criticality is that is very vulnerable to "shocks". A minor change in an input or operating parameter causes the system to collapse. Actually, the system reorganises itself into a different equilibrium state which is no desirable to the users of the system.

In other words, the system undergoes a revolution. A new order has replaced the old order. Whether the new system is beneficial to the users of the system is immaterial to the operation of the system. The system has reorganised itself to accommodate the system inputs and operating parameters.

Since the inputs are external to the system, the only things that can be changed are the operating parameters. In a human system, these operating parameters are known as social relations. Theses are the rules under which we interact with each other on a daily basis.

To change a system that is working is not feasible because of the inherent risk in adjusting the operating parameters. To change a collapsed system is more feasible because of the desire to return to normalcy.

Sometimes, the system inputs are feedbacks from the system itself. Removing or adjusting the impact of the feedback can restore a system to desirable operating conditions.

In a Capitalist system, the most potent feedback is profit. We can eliminate profit through nationalisation, or adjust the impact of profit through taxation.

In other words, lower corporate taxation can lead to systemic collapse through unfettered feedback. This is the cause of the current crisis. The profits gained through home and commercial mortgages exceeded that of manufacturing leading to the distortion of the Capitalist economy.

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Informational Cascades and the Financial Crisis

Mark Thoma posts an extract about Informational Cascades and the Financial Crisis from Wall Street's Lemmings, by Cass R. Sunstein, TNR.

To get a sense of how cascades work, imagine that a group of people is deciding whether to invest in real estate or instead the stock market. Assume that group members are announcing their views in sequence. From his own knowledge and experience, each member has some private information about what should be done. But each member also attends, reasonably enough, to the judgments of others.

The author wants to believe that things are so simple:

As behavioral economist Robert Shiller has shown, ... people were greatly influenced by a process of social contagion that amounted to an informational cascade. ...

This is just simplified version of the Tipping Point theory. My conclusion was:

For us Communists, the message is that the mass-marketing of selling the party newspaper and mass rallies is still important.

There are no short-cuts: no magic viral marketing campaign waiting to be unleashed once get to the right people. The tipping point is just an anarchist pipe-dream of an influential event that triggers a magical transformation of society. People can be panicked for a time but then revert to old habits.

As the evangelists keep pointing out, change starts from the heart and moves outward into the world.

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Saving The System

The Economist wants to implement item #5 of the Communist Manifesto in Saving the System

Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.(Marx 1959, 342)

The magazine diagnoses the problem as:

... Today’s failure of confidence is based on three related issues: the solvency of banks, their ability to fund themselves in illiquid markets and the health of the real economy. The bursting of the housing bubble has led to hefty credit losses: most Western financial institutions are short of capital and some are insolvent. But liquidity is a more urgent problem. America’s decision last month to let Lehman Brothers fail—and the losses that implied to money-market funds that held its debt—prompted a global run on wholesale credit markets. It has become hard for banks, even healthy ones, to find finance; large companies with healthy cash flows have also been cut off from all but the shortest-term financing. That has increased worries about the real economy, which itself adds to the worries about banks’ solvency.

Emphasis Mine

Credit allows the early conversion of commodities into money. Instead of waiting for the goods to be sold to the ultimate consumer, and money returned to the manufacturer, credit allows for the partial realization of profits at every stage of the movement of goods from the factory to the consumer.

Credit, in itself, is not the problem: it is the management and allocation of credit among the various debtors.

In a banks run along capitalist lines, credit is allocated where the preceived profit is the greatest, not where the need is the greatest. The enterprise must do this in order to survive otherwise another enterprise with a larger capital base innovate and undercut it.

The negative feedback to this progression is risk. The higher the rate of profit should be correlated with the risk that the investment may fail. Government regulation tends to make banks aware of what types of risks they can undertake.

The specifics of the plan are:

This analysis suggests that governments must attack all three concerns at once. The priority, in terms of stemming the panic, is to unblock clogged credit markets. In most cases that means using central banks as an alternative source of short-term cash. This week the Fed took another step in that direction: by buying commercial paper, it is now in effect lending direct to companies. The British approach is equally bold. Alongside the Bank of England’s provision of short-term cash, the Treasury says it will sell guarantees for as much as £250 billion ($430 billion) of new short-term and medium-term debts issued by the banks. That is risky: if left for any length of time, those pledges give banks an incentive to behave recklessly. But a temporary guarantee system offers the best chance of stemming the panic, and if it were internationally co-ordinated it would be both more credible and less risky than a collection of disparate national promises.

The second prong of a crisis-resolution strategy must aim to boost banks’ capital. A new IMF report suggests Western banks need some $675 billion of new equity to prevent banks from rapidly reducing the number of loans on their books and hurting the real economy. Although there is plenty of private capital sloshing around, there is a chicken-and-egg problem: nobody wants to buy equity in an industry without enough capital. It is becoming abundantly clear that government funds—or at least government intervention—will be necessary to catalyse the rebuilding of banks’ balance sheets. Initially, America focused more on buying tainted assets from banks; now it seems keener on the “European” approach of injecting capital into their banks. Some degree of divergence is inevitable, but more co-ordination is needed.

Third, policymakers should act together to cushion the economic fallout. Now that commodity prices have plunged, the inflation risk has dramatically receded across the rich world. With asset prices plummeting and economies shrinking, deflation will soon be a bigger worry. The interest-rate cuts are an important start. Ideally, policymakers would not use only monetary policy. For instance, China could do a lot to help the rest of the world economy (and itself) by loosening fiscal policy and allowing its currency to appreciate more quickly.

Emphasis Mine

This is socialist intervention of a colossal scale but without taking control of the banks. The governments are intending to be passive investors which means that the risk of moral hazard increases not decrease (as noted above).

References

Marx, Karl. 1959. Capital, the Communist Manifesto and Other Writings. Ed. Max Eastman. New York: The Modern Library.

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System not immune to shocks

Heather Ridout, chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, says that the System not immune to shocks and urges a more socialist approach to the crisis.

The Federal Government has a vital role to play. Economic management has got a lot tougher and the Government should be ready to take up the slack in the economy as business investment and consumer spending retreats. It should prepare to bring forward key investment projects.

Perhaps the most difficult thing will be for the Government to keep an eye on the need for longer-term reforms in areas such as the federation, skills development, innovation, infrastructure planning and taxation. We may be in a period of crisis management but these require attention now if they are to underwrite a sustained recovery and a new era of prosperity.

Emphasis Mine

Back in 2005, BCA Admits Failure of Capitalism - Calls For Socialist Intervention. The on-going lies are about how Capitalism is the superior economic system (except when it goes down big time!) And yet, these business groups are all in favour in the government getting involved once the Capitalist system seizes up.

This free market ideology is unstable because of the positive feedback loops where investment follows profit not need.

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Dabbawala

The Economist is impressed by the success of the Dabbawala (also see Wikipedia article) in The cult of the dabbawala as a new management trend.

As usual, the capitalist press fails to realise that the free association of independent worker-owners is greatly superior to an organisation divided between owners and workers.

AS THE warrior king who defeated the Mughals and founded the Maratha empire of Western India in the 17th century, Shivaji Bhosle is remembered as a tactical genius as well as a benevolent ruler. The direct descendants of his Malva-caste soldiers are also developing a reputation for organisational excellence. Using an elaborate system of colour-coded boxes to convey over 170,000 meals to their destinations each day, the 5,000-strong dabbawala collective has built up an extraordinary reputation for the speed and accuracy of its deliveries. Word of their legendary efficiency and almost flawless logistics is now spreading through the rarefied world of management consulting. Impressed by the dabbawalas’ “six-sigma” certified error rate—reportedly on the order of one mistake per 6m deliveries—management gurus and bosses are queuing up to find out how they do it.

Emphasis Mine

The capitalists are impressed by the Dabbawala's efficiency and want to study it. They will be blind to the key features of the success:

• Decentralised management
• Four (4) levels of organisation: (Ramasastry:2004A, p.4)
1. Workers
2. Team Leaders
3. Group Leaders
4. Central Committee
• Equal pay for all workers

References:

Ramasastry, C.S. (2004A), DABBAWALLAHS OF MUMBAI (A), Publication #904D11, Ivey Management Services, Ontario, Canada (Not available online)

Ramasastry, C.S. (2004B), DABBAWALLAHS OF MUMBAI (B), Publication #904D13, Ivey Management Services, Ontario, Canada (Not available online)

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Chloe Hooper: The Tall Man (2)

I have finished reading Chloe Hooper's latest book, The Tall Man.

I had posted my reactions to a radio interview with Chloe Hooper: The Tall Man

Hooper leaves out one word from her story: occupation. The State of Queensland is engaged in an occupation of Aboriginal lands in North Queensland for the benefit of white settlers.

The Wild Time was the invasion of whites into this area, and the Stolen Generations was the ethnic cleansing undertaken to consolidate white control of the area's resources. Palm Island is part of the gulag of the occupation.

And in enforcing this occupation, Senior Sgt Chris Hurley became brutalised by the frontier justice. Even though he acknowledged his own racism and worked hard for Aboriginal betterment, he could not escape the racism of the State of Queensland. In putting on his uniform, he was putting on a history of genocide, racism, and brutality.

Hurley's struggle against institutional racism showed the limits of individual change. He had to choose between his soul and his uniform. Palm Island made that choice very stark.

Cameron Doomadgee's taunt of "Fucking cunts" and his punch to Hurley's face caused Hurley to explode into a rage that killed Doomadgee. Doomadgee saw a blue uniform. Hurley saw an insolent, ungrateful blackfellow. They could not see each other as human beings.

Hurley may have been coerced into pleading not guilty to the charge of manslaughter in order to protect the honour of the Queensland Police. Hooper seems to imply that Catholicism guides Hurley's career in the Police Service as a mixture of duty and using power for social justice. He could have been persauded to cover up to protect the progress being made by the reforms in the Police.

My reading of Hooper's story is that the cases when Hurley was brutal towards Aboriginals, he was either enforcing frontier justice or he was under stress in a dangerous situation. One case could even have been an accident when he backed over a woman's foot. The failure to acknowledge the incident or to apologise made the situation worse. These cases became easy to cover up and Hurley was drawn into this world of half-truths and denials.

The problem is not with the Police nor with the Government, it is with the white people of North Queensland. This was shown by the quick verdict of not guilty returned by the jury.

The wealth of North Queensland depends on the secure title of land there: mining, agriculture, tourism. Racism justifies the theft of land from the Aboriginals and the exploitation of those stolen resources. If the Police and Government did not support this racism, they would be replaced by those who would.

Hurley was wrong to attempt to change the racism of the Police from the inside. The economic forces that depend on racism are just too strong for individuals to overcome. And now he has to live with the blood of an innocent man on his hands. Hurley would have done better to plead guilty and accepted his punishment. Even better would have been to control his temper and not killed Doomadgee.

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The Only Diet for a Peacemaker Is a Vegetarian Diet

Picked up The Only Diet for a Peacemaker Is a Vegetarian Diet from DrumBeat: July 12, 2008 at the The Oil Drum.

John Dear argues that:

But for me being vegetarian boils down to peacemaking. If you want to be a peacemaker, Bruce said, reflecting the sentiments of Leo Tolstoy, you will want to eat as peaceful a diet as possible. "Vegetarianism," Tolstoy wrote, "is the taproot of humanitarianism." Other great humanitarians like Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer and Thich Nhat Hanh agree. The only diet for a peacemaker is a vegetarian diet.

Emphasis Mine

He states his vegetarianism began with reading Diet for a small planet by Frances Moore Lappe:

In it, Lappe, the great advocate for the hungry, makes an unassailable case that vegetarianism is the best way to eliminate world hunger and to sustain the environment.

The key points are:

1. The amount of plant food consumed by farm animals for human consumption is staggering (70% of US grain);
2. The amount of grain used for bio-fuels is not as bad but has an impact (10% of US grain);
3. The amount of greenhouse gas produced by farm animals is large (40% of methane - farts);
4. And there is the ancilliary impacts on water and land usage. (90% of water use in an industrialised country goes on agriculture)

In summary, vegetarianism reduces resource consumption and therefore the need for competition over resources.

However, vegetarianism goes beyond this to broaden our humanity through a connection with nature. Dear expresses this as a religious experience:

"Not to hurt our humble brethren, the animals," St. Francis of Assisi said, "is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission: to be of service to them whenever they require it. If you have people who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity," he continued, "you will have people who will deal likewise with other people."

And yet there are people who see meat-eating as an expression of their personhood. My being a vegetarian threatens their self-worth. Some become quite vocal and passionate about eating meat. It is as if my mere existence dimminishes their self-worth in some way. It is equivalent to being a teetotaler among beer drinkers, or a non-smoker among smokers.

But a change in personal dietary habits is only a small part in the need to fix the world so that humans can survive. We also need to change how the system works. This cannot be done by individuals - only by the people united.

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