Aboriginal disadvantage worsens

Peter Boyle writes that Aboriginal disadvantage worsens.

The PM insulted the indigenous people by repeating the lie that Australia was just bush before invasion:

Abbott's insults can be understood as part of a disgusting attempt to justify this deepening racial oppression. It perpetuates the racist idea that Aboriginal people are inconsequential, sub-human and their conditions a result of their supposed inferiority.

Green Left Weekly has explained in some detail how the worsening conditions in Aboriginal communities can be traced back to racist cuts to essential services and the funding of Aboriginal-run community organisations by the Coalition government and its ALP predecessors.

That and the fact that Australian governments have refused to deliver real land rights and impose a strong regime of job quotas on private and public employers to address more than two centuries of racial oppression. That's the truth about the shamefully growing gap.

Emphasis Mine

Ordinary workers most likely work and travel with indigenous people everyday. Yet the white-fellows still subscribe to the subjective lies about black-fellow inferiority despite on the objective reality they see daily.

It is very hard to break this stranglehold of Capitalist subjectivity. It is being reinforced daily through our culture: portrayals in the media, opinions of the bosses and overseers.

Standing up to this endemic racism can be economically devastating through loss of job and home. It can also be fatal if one confronts a violent racist.

Maybe the solution for the time-being is to be a guerilla anti-racist.

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An Israeli-Arab Spring? 1.6 mn Palestinian-Israelis are Marginalized, Angry and Defiant

Emile Nakhleh ponders An Israeli-Arab Spring? 1.6 mn Palestinian-Israelis are Marginalized, Angry and Defiant.

As Israel moves to exclude Palestinian parties from parliament,

As Israeli politics moves to the right and the state becomes more Jewish and less pluralistic and inclusive, the Palestinian community, which constitutes over one-fifth of the population, feels more marginalised and alienated.

In response to endemic budgetary, economic, political, and social discrimination, the Arab community is becoming assertive, more Palestinian, and more confrontational. Calls for equality, justice, and an end to systemic discrimination by “Israeli Arab” civil society activists are now more vocal and confrontational.

Emphasis Mine

The Arabs within Israel are now increasingly viewing themselves as an indigenous population rather “Israeli Arab”:

Recent events clearly demonstrate that the Arabs in Israel are no longer a quiescent, cultural minority but an “indigenous national” minority deserving full citizenship rights regarding resources, collective rights, and representation on formal state bodies.

Nakhleh is pessimistic about a peaceful solution:

If violence and continued discrimination are part of Israel’s long-term strategy against its Arab minority to force Arab emigration, it is unlikely that the government would implement tangible initiatives to improve the condition of the Arab minority.

Accordingly, communal violence in Israel would increase, creating negative ramifications for regional peace and stability and for U.S. interests in the eastern Mediterranean.

Emphasis Mine

Let's call Israel's policies for what they are: genocide. The State of Israel aims for the removal of all indigenous populations from its illegally acquired territories.

That people could think that either Israel or the US would be embarrassed by such a description are sorely mistaken. The US was built through genocide as was any settler society (including Australia). One does not reject the foundations without severely affecting the stability of the whole structure.

It is up to workers to educate themselves on these matters and confront the horrific origins of the current Capitalist society and their place in it. It also means that workers will have to confront their own compliance with and benefiting from this state of affairs.

Guilt and shame can be major road-blocks to reconciliation and redemption.

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Why the big four banks should be nationalised

John Rainford argues Why the big four banks should be nationalised.

Australia managed its way through the GFC in better shape than most countries thanks to the Keynesian counter-cyclical economic policies that were implemented here and in China.

In Australia these included unlimited guarantees of bank deposits and wholesale funding. This led to the big four banks that were too big to fail getting bigger.

One result of the GFC has been that banks around the world have been required to lift their capital adequacy requirements so as to ameliorate the effects of any future economic downturn.

The big four in Australia have resisted this because it takes capital away from their dodgy investments and reserves it as part-insurance against future losses. They have threatened to claw back any increase in money reserves they will be required to hold by raising interest rates.

Several countries are debating the issue of breaking up large banks. A better idea would be to nationalise them.

I am rather embarassed to say that, despite Rainbird's article, the party's policies on Nationalisation are completely lacking. This is worrying because the Socialist Alliance are campaigning, in part. in the Victorian State Elections on Why the car industry should be nationalised.

The tenor of Rainford's article seems to be that the banks are treating the regulators with contempt. Although this is true, I do not see how we can appeal to workers by taking this approach.

Regulation, to most workers (especially in the non-privileged strata), are continually oppressed by regulation. They are hassled by ticket inspectors, parking inspectors, police, HR people, Real Estate agents, local councils, etc. They spend the whole day avoiding breaking some regulation or impost.

Treating regulators with contempt is not a crime with most workers. It is an attitude born of long and frustrating experience.

That people are actively trying to avoid regulations and paying fines is also not seen as a crime. It may unjust that the bigger fish can do this more easily, but the principle is not in question.

I think the question of nationalisation should be approached in a similar way to that made in Why the car industry should be nationalised by emphasising the benefits to workers.

I do not mean just economic benefits but the political and societal benefits of workers controlling their own lives rather than living at the whim of others.

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What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change

What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change.

Two (2) of the engineers who worked on Google's RE<C project write that:

As we reflected on the project, we came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach. So we’re issuing a call to action. There’s hope to avert disaster if our society takes a hard look at the true scale of the problem and uses that reckoning to shape its priorities.

Emphasis Mine

They had realised that even if the project had succeeded, it would not be enough to stop global warming as we have already passed the safety limit of 350ppm of CO₂. The amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere means that the Earth will keep warming for the next 100 years.

That realization prompted us to reconsider the economics of energy. What’s needed, we concluded, are reliable zero-carbon energy sources so cheap that the operators of power plants and industrial facilities alike have an economic rationale for switching over soon—say, within the next 40 years. Let’s face it, businesses won’t make sacrifices and pay more for clean energy based on altruism alone. Instead, we need solutions that appeal to their profit motives. RE<C’s stated goal was to make renewable energy cheaper than coal, but clearly that wouldn’t have been sufficient to spur a complete infrastructure changeover. So what price should we be aiming for?

Emphasis Mine

What a damming indictment of Capitalism? The survival of the human race is not profitable!

The real problem is how to convince workers that Capitalism needs to be overthrown. Even if workers could understand all of the scientific and engineering papers, they would still be reluctant to take action because they feel safer in what they know than with what might be. This is only natural.

It does not help that these pleas for action are coming from the privileged stratum of society. The workers are right to mistrust these collaborators. Past experience in various struggles has shown where the interests of these collaborators lie.

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Mike Treen: A critique of crisis theory

Mike Treen has A critique of crisis theory.

There is no natural end to Capitalism:

But there is no final crisis in this system — other than a descent into nuclear war, or barbarism arising from the sort of ecological winter or runaway ecological collapse that capitalism appears to be preparing for us. Short of such a disastrous outcome, the system will continue to carry on with its booms and busts until it is overthrown and replaced.

That can only be carried out by a conscious social and political force, by a class that is not bound to the system by material interest. That is why the working class is the only class that can overthrow this system. It is the only class not bound by property and profit to its perpetuation. It is the only class with the numbers and social power, if organised, if conscious enough, to effect this outcome and bring about real majority rule.

Feudalism had to end because the Capitalists needed the Serfs to become Workers. Otherwise Capitalist expansion could not take place.

The ruling class of a Socialist society already exists: the Proletariat. There is no need to transform the workers into something else. They only need to seize power.

As for crises, Treen remarks that:

Marx had identified the essence of the periodic crises of capitalism as crises of overproduction very early on, even in the Communist Manifesto in 1848.

Treen contrasts this idea of Marx with two (2) competing theories of Capitalist crises: tendency of the rate of profit to fall (TROPF); and the Keynesian idea of under-consumption.

I have fallen into the trap of treating over-production and under-consumption as being synonomous.

Treen rejects the idea of a fiat currency:

I think that is a big mistake. Ultimately, all non-commodity money — that is, token money and credit money — must have a relationship to a real money commodity like gold. This is true whether a formal gold standard exists or not. This lawful economic relationship still exists and therefore continues to be the underlying cause of crises of overproduction.

This is because the exchange of commodities is the basis of all Capitalist economic activity. When the exchange happens, the commodities have equal value. Because real money commodity can be exchanged for all other commodities, it because the basis of universal valuation.

Treen encourages all of us to study Marxist Crisis Theory:

I think we all should pay respect to the founders of scientific socialism and give this issue of crisis theory the attention and importance it deserves. We cannot leave it to others, to so-called experts.

I am not an “expert” on this stuff. It has been a continuing interest of mine, because it is important that we understand it and because it is important we understand who we are, what our role is, what we expect will happen to this system, who the agent of social change is going to be, and what the prospects are for making that happen in the world today. Those are all issues we can begin to address.

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Longest Continuous Period of War In American History

Barry Ritholtz writes about the Longest Continuous Period of War In American History.

Ritholtz writes that this endless war and unceasing alarms is weakening the US Republic through the corrosion of the legal and political system. He writes that it is a cynical attempt to garner power and to distract the populace from the real problems:

But — underneath the ever-changing marketing and branding campaign — it’s really just the good ‘ole military-industrial-and-banking complex consolidating their power and making money hand over fist.

It is in the interests of the Capitalists to preserve their power: both in the objective realm of physical force, and in the subjective realm of ideas. Since they are a minority, they must delude or subject the majority to their whims. They do not rule by consent—but by force and delusion.

The inherent danger of continuous wars, as the Spartans found out, is that your enemies learn how to fight you. Sparta was able to dominate their part of Greece for hundreds of years due to their reputation and mystique—they actually did very little fighting.

It was only with the conquest of Athens that the Spartans entered upon a period of continuous warfare. After a period of time, Sparta's enemies began to lose their fear of her and began to work out how to defeat her.

With defeat came the revolt of the subject peoples and slaves. This further undermined the Spartan war economy. Then Macedonia swept in to conquer all of Greece. Despite attempts to free herself, Sparta became a subject state of Macedonia, then Rome, then Byzantium, then Istanbul.

The three (3) Russian revolutions (1905, February 1917, and November 1917) came on the back of great military defeats. The German revolution of 1919 came with defeat in WWI. Military defeat is sometimes a catalyst for social revolution as the ruling class has lost its mystique of superiority and invincibility.

With this latest Capitalist crisis, war is probably seen as the only way to maintain power. But it is a dangerous one as it can hasten the demise of the ruling class.

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Israel moves to exclude Palestinian parties from parliament

Jonathan Cook reports that Israel moves to exclude Palestinian parties from parliament.

The Israeli parliament has voted overwhelmingly to suspend Haneen Zoabi, a legislator representing the state’s large Palestinian minority, for six months as a campaign to silence political dissent intensified.

Zoabi has not endeared herself to the Hebraic-speaking Israelis. She has criticised the latest assault on Gaza, has called the Israeli Air Force pilots terrorists, and the Israeli Army the equivalent of the violent Islamic State group.

There are other measures being considered to expel Zoabi from parliament and from Israel, as well as excluding Palestinians altogether from parliament. The rabid racism of the Israeli state cannot contemplate the existence and therefore the opinions and feelings of the oppressed Palestinians.

This is all part of the genocidal mind-set that the Zionists now operate under. Since their recent defeats in Gaza and Lebanon, the Zionists must plunge ahead into this madness. There is no way they can admit that they are wrong.

Aeyal Gross, a constitutional law professor at Tel Aviv University, warned that the Knesset’s treatment of Zoabi was “paving the way towards fascism and tyranny”.

The Hebraic-speaking Israelis should remember the Nuremburg Laws that gradually stripped the German Jews of their rights, livelihoods, political representation, among other things. Gross is right to be terrified of what is happening.

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Mumia: Real threat not Ebola, but capitalist health care

Mumia Abu-Jamal argues that the Real threat not Ebola, but capitalist health care.

This is not about the Ebola crisis, it is about the US health care crisis, made possible by a flawed business model that prioritises profit above all other things: even life itself.

Consider this: when [Thomas Eric] Duncan first entered Texas Presbyterian Hospital, he was interviewed by a screener, prescribed antibiotics, and sent home.

The screener was, more likely than not, not a medically-trained health care professional but a receptionist, perhaps armed with a checklist to cover. Chances are, she was perhaps the lowest-paid staff, until one considers the janitorial workers.

This business model, one followed by most institutions in the US, is now exposed as ineffective, dangerous and the least health-conscious.

That was a business decision, driven by the bottom line, of money — not life.

Emphasis Mine

The US has been lucky so far in that Ebola does not seem to have entered the population at large. As Mumia points out, this luck will not last given that the US health system is driven by profit alone.

Even this scare will not change the stance of the US health providers. Nor can the government force them to change. The bitter resistance to Obamacare is testament to the political power of the US health system.

But an Ebola outbreak is a disaster waiting to happen in the US. The lack of free, universal health-care means that the poor and undocumented will become the most affected because they are effectively denied access to health-care. Thus, Ebola will probably become established in the under-class.

This will lead to more discrimination and harassment of the poor and undocumented as Xenophobia runs amok in the ensuring panic. There will be little challenge to the US health care system despite its obvious failings.

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Opening the way to modernization

Cuba plans to focus on renewable energy sources (RES) as Opening the way to modernization.

Cuba currently produces 96% of its electricity through the use of fossil fuels. This statistic reveals that this is an economy highly dependent on imports with expensive production costs. For this reason, the Council of Ministers approved the Future Development of Renewable Energy Sources and the Efficient Use of Energy Policy on June 21, drawn up by the Governmental Commission charged with this task and responsible for exploiting the full potential of the country’s renewable energy sources.

The gist of the policy is to use alternative sources, such as:

• Sugar Cane biomass
• Wind
• Solar
• Hydropower

Coupled with the development of these alternative sources, there is also a drive to energy efficiency:

The increased use of the RES and the efficient use of energy are as comprehensive and transversal as the main aims of the country’s long term development plans, which are all directly linked.

The aim of this policy is:

The magnitude of this policy can be appreciated in the table of information below, but this is only one element in understanding the scope of the policy. Cuba is planning to generate 24% of its electrical energy, through RES, by 2030, which will result in a saving of more than 1.3 million tones of fossil fuel or approximately 780 million dollars per year.

This also shows the under-development of the Cuban in comparison with an advanced economy such as Germany. The figures quoted in If Germany Drops Coal, can the Industry Survive? are that …about 45% of Germany’s electricity comes from burning coal and for RES to account for around two thirds of supply within two decades.

This disparity will probably mean that Cuban industrial development will be impeded by having a greater reliance on fossil fuels when more advanced economies have substantially lessen theirs. And this will make it more difficult to catch up.

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Why the car industry should be nationalised

The Socialist Alliance gives its reasons on Why the car industry should be nationalised.

The Socialist Alliance calls for the nationalisation of the vehicle industry under worker and community control, to save jobs and to begin the process of converting the industry to make public transport vehicles or other products.

Nationalisations are not likely to happen without significant industrial action and other forms of action from workers and their organisations.

Unions in the manufacturing sector and the union movement generally should take up the nationalisation demand — as a response to economic crises and a step towards a different form of economy — as some unions did in the past.

Here, the Party is using the economic crisis to advance the political consciousness of the workers. The workers need to understand that they can control their own destiny. And, they have the power to do so.

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Michael Hoexter: Naomi Klein's "Hard-Money" Ideas Undermine Her Laudable Climate Action Goals

From Yves Smith, there is a repost of Michael Hoexter: Naomi Klein’s “Hard-Money” Ideas Undermine Her Laudable Climate Action Goals which is a review of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (TCE).

Hoexter derides Klein's attempt to use the profits from the Carbon-extraction industries (Coal, Oil, Gas, etc):

Of course, this is well-meaning economic freestyling on a number of different levels made to serve Klein’s, all-too-typical Left and liberal, preference to reduce economics to a simple morality play of victimizers and victims. For one, even within the terms of Klein’s stated policy preferences, Klein skims over that what she is proposing is akin to a complicated carbon tax, though Klein seems to think that this will be simply a matter of “taking” the fossil fuel industries’ ill-gotten gains as punishment. Klein seems to believe that fossil fuel companies will still continue to exist and function to a degree, generating profit and revenues, to in turn supply the money for climate action. In reality, not only would there be legal complexities in terms of corporate accounting and governance associated with such government actions but also the economic behavior of these companies and the fossil fuel sector overall after such fining or taxing is not explained in TCE.

Hoexter is correct in saying that a correct understanding of the role of money in the social-political system is essential for effective political action. This is why Marxist theory (which he also derides) is essential for the growing of the political consciousness of the working class.

This is not an issue to be left to our “betters”. We have to spend the time and effort really understand what Marx was writing about when he described the laws of motion for Capitalism.

My understanding of money is that it is a commodity just like any other. Its value derives from what be exchanged for it. This seems to be in contrast to the fiat currency view expressed by Hoexter.

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The Rojava revolution's radical democracy

A brief interview with Saleh Muslim Mohamed about The Rojava revolution's radical democracy is posted in Links magazine.

We have, in essence, developed a democracy without the state. That is a unique alternative in a region plagued by the internally conflicted Free Syrian Army, the Assad regime and the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

Another way of referring to this concept of democratic confederalism or democratic autonomy is radical democracy: to mobilise people to organise themselves and to defend themselves by means of peoples armies like the Peoples Defence Units (YPG) and Women's Defence Units (YPJ). We are practicing this model of self-rule and self-organisation without the state as we speak. Other people will speak of self-rule in theory, but for us, this search for self-rule is our daily revolution. Women, men, all strands of our society are now organised. The reason why Kobane still stands is because we have built these structures.

This is a different kind of Democracy:

Democratic autonomy is about the long term. It is about people understanding and exercising their rights. To get society to become politicised: that is the core of building democratic autonomy. In Europe you will find a society that is not politicised. Political parties are only about persuasion and individual benefits, not about actual emancipation and politicisation. Real democracy is based on a politicised society.

Emphasis Mine

For a Socialist Revolution to occur, the workers must be sufficiently polticised. They must that what happens in their daily lives in a political context.

This is very difficult to do in a society where politics is disparaged and derided. Political consciousness is vital to a healthy society. One can not delegate decisions about one's life to others.

And people should realise that all of our social interactions are mediated by politics. How we see and feel about the world influences what we do in the world.

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Michael Hudson: Putin's Pivot to Asia

Yves Smith comments on Michael Hudson: Putin’s Pivot to Asia.

Michael Hudson says that:

The most important way in which they’re coming together is reflected in Mr. Putin’s announcement that Russia is setting up its own bank clearing house system independent of the so-called SWIFT system. When you transfer funds from one bank to another, or when any bank uses U.S. dollars, it has to go through the SWIFT clearing house system in the United States.

Right now the only country that’s not part of this is Iran. To Russia, this has tipped America’s hand. It showed that what U.S. Cold Warriors really want is to break up Russia and China, and to interrupt their financial and banking services to disorient their economies. So Russia, China and Iran — and presumably other Asian countries — are now moving to establish their own currency clearing systems. To be independent of the SWIFT system and the U.S. dollar, Russia and China are denominating their trade and investments in rubles and yuan instead of the dollar. So what you’ve seen in the last few days in Beijing is a rejection of the dollar standard, and a rejection of American foreign policy behind it.

Emphasis Mine

The actions of the Capitalist State are designed to protect their own Capitalists. In the fierce competition between Capitalists, the politcal reality shapes the economic sphere.

The SWIFT system was originally conceived as a neutral entity. However, the interests of US Capitalists have undermined this neutrality by turning it into a political weapon against the official enemies.

It is this politicisation of the SWIFT system that has prompted the emergence of an economic competitor, not purely economic considerations. Here we the example of how politics and economic decisions are intertwined.

This will not change under a Socialist or Communist system. Then, the political decisions will, openly, drive the economic decisions.

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Tony Abbott refuses to order Royal Commission into Commonwealth Bank

Jim McIlroy writes that Tony Abbott refuses to order Royal Commission into Commonwealth Bank …despite the clear recommendation of a landmark Senate inquiry into financial planning scandals at the CBA.

Susan Price, Socialist Alliance candidate for the seat of Summer Hill in the upcoming NSW state elections, said, "This scandal underlines the importance of the Socialist Alliance's call for the big banks to be nationalised under workers' and community control.

"Australia's Big Four banks are making massive profits from ripping off the people, while facing minimal public scrutiny. The CBA was a publicly-owned bank, until the Hawke-Keating Labor government privatised it in the early 1990s.

"We need to campaign for the CBA and other big banks to be placed in public hands, and to be run in the interests of the people. Any profits could be used to help fund education, health and public transport — not pouring into the pockets of the super-rich as they are now," Price said.

This objective will not be achieved outside of a Socialist Revolution, but it has value in raising people's consciousness about considering the limitations of Capitalism in providing social benefit.

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Hedges and Wolin on How New-Style Propagandizing Promotes Inverted Totalitarianism

Yves Smith comments on Hedges and Wolin on How New-Style Propagandizing Promotes Inverted Totalitarianism.

Younger readers may not recognize how radical the transformation of public discourse has been over the last 40 years. While there were always intellectuals who were largely above consuming much mass media, as well as political groups on the far right and left that also largely rejected it, in the 1960s and well into the 1980s, mass media shaped political discourse. … Local newspapers were much more influential in their markets then than now, but they seldom deviated much from the national middle of the road, pro-middle class sentiment. The sort of fragmentation that this interview mentions is in part a result of the Karl Rove strategy of focusing on hot-button interests of narrowly-sliced interest groups, along with media fragmentation which has made it easier to target, as in isolate, them.

Emphasis Mine

The “Inverted Totalitarianism” refers to controls on the foreign populations, rather than the domestic one.

Fragmentation of the subject classes has always been in place for class societies. This fragmentation has taken the form of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and the like.

And in any class society, the lower classes have to be kept in line through a combination of force and propaganda. The ratio changes depending on need.

I think this piece is a reaction to the narrowing of the elite through the economic crises of the past twenty (20) years. The controlling class is being shed as no longer necessary. And former members want to return to the good old days (for them).

Maybe, they should realise that their interests lie with the workers now, not the Capitalists. They should shape their political consciousness appropriately.

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Encroaching Tides (2014)

Union of Concerned Scientists warn about Encroaching Tides (2014).

By 2045, many coastal communities are expected to see roughly one foot of sea level rise. The resulting increases in tidal flooding will be substantial and nearly universal in the 52 communities analyzed.

One-third of the 52 locations would face tidal flooding more than 180 times per year. Nine locations, including Atlantic City and Cape May, New Jersey could see tidal flooding 240 times or more per year.

A growing proportion of these floods would be extensive, and as floods reach farther into communities, they would also last longer. Flood-prone areas in five of the mid-Atlantic communities studied could be inundated more than 10 percent of the time.

All because of Climate Change!

Most of these communities would have to be abandoned by the time babies born today are having their own babies.

And it is too late to stop this sea-level rise. What we urgently need to do is to stop it from getting much worse.

Denial is not going stop people from losing their homes and communities.

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If Germany Drops Coal, can the Industry Survive?

Jake Richardson asks If Germany Drops Coal, can the Industry Survive?

Germany is looking into cutting its use of coal power, at the same time that it is cutting out nuclear. If it does, there could be a ripple effect because Germany is a major player in the European energy market. A Berlin-based journalist said that Germany’s emphasis on renewables is already impacting electricity markets in Poland and the Czech Republic. (Denmark is also exploring how it might go coal-free, but even sooner.)

Germany is also phasing out nuclear power in favour of renewable energy. However, the biggest challenge to a 100% renewable energy generation is the storage of energy:

One advantage of solar and wind power is that it doesn’t take as long to construct these kinds of renewable plants. Energy storage for renewables is not close to catching up to renewable electricity production, but it does seem to be picking up some steam, so to speak.

But, in Australia, we going in the reverse direction thanks to the Conservative government. Gains are being wound back in favour of coal.

This is a consequence of having a Capitalist system: profit trumps survival everytime!

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Wall Street gets what it wants

Seth Godin bemoans the idea that Wall Street gets what it wants.

Wall Street thinks it wants industrial-style reliable incremental growth, the stuff they got accustomed to getting from General Electric, General Mills and General Dynamic. But in fact, what they invested in this time is changing the world.

The world is going to change with or without this public company. It's bumpy for us along the way, though, because we trusted the companies that are now owned by people who want something else.

Godin forgets that Capitalism has its own laws of motion. One of those laws is reproduction of Capital. Capital has to be reproduced through profits. And Capital will go where it can reproduce the fastest.

The individual Capitalist is a slave to this law. If they do not follow the law, they will be extinguished as a Capitalist.

Godin can gush all he wants about the new economy, but Capitalism has to alienate the worker from the product of their labour in order to function. The mechanisation of work is an imperative either through rote or automation.

Godin's vision cannot be obtained until the workers wrest control of the means of production from the Capitalists. In other words, the workers have to push through a Socialist Revolution.

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Understanding and Overcoming America's Plutocracy

Jeffrey Sachs opines about Understanding and Overcoming America's Plutocracy.

Despite the results of the recent mid-term elections in the USA, Sachs writes that:

The evidence is overwhelming that politicians vote the interests of their donors, not of society at large. This has now been demonstrated rigorously by many researchers, most notably Princeton Professor Martin Gilens. Whether the Republicans or Democrats are in office, the results are little different. The interests at the top of the income distribution will prevail.

Emphasis Mine

Sachs is beguiled by the illusion that the Capitalist State can be bent to the will of the people, even though he has evidence clearly before him that it serves the interests of the Capitalists. Thus, he moans about the recent trend of politics in the USA.

Sachs hopes that the people will rescue the Capitalist State from itself:

Is there a way out? Yes, but it's a very tough path. Plutocracy has a way of spreading like an epidemic until democracy itself is abandoned. History shows the wreckage of democracies killed from within. And yet America has rallied in the past to push democratic reforms, notably in the Progressive Era from 1890-1914, the New Deal from 1933-1940, and the Great Society from 1961-1969.

All of these transformative successes required grass-roots activism, public protests and demonstrations, and eventually bold leaders, indeed drawn from the rich but with their hearts with the people: Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy. Yet in all of those cases, the mass public led and the great leaders followed the cause. This is our time and responsibility to help save democracy. The Occupy Movement and the 400,000 New Yorkers who marched for climate-change control in September are pointing the way.

Emphasis Mine

The three (3) periods cited by Sachs do, indeed, correspond to times of great radical movements: rise of radical trade-unionism (IWW, CIO); communist revolutions in Russia, Italy, Germany, Hungry, Romania; Youth Revolt and the Anti-Vietnam movement. All of these periods called into question the validity of the Capitalist system. Under such an existential threat, the Capitalist State responded by granting sufficient reforms in order to drain these movements of their momentum.

Though hugely unpopular with the ruling class, those leaders saved the system from itself. Sachs is calling for popular movements to be again subverted by the ruling class in order to save the system.

Barak Obama was supposed to be such a leader. His modest reform of affordable health care is unlikely to last as long as his presidency. He will leave no legacy. Richard Nixon left a far greater reformist legacy than Obama will leave.

Sachs has forgotten the largest mass mobilisation in history occurred in February 2003 (almost twelve (12) years ago)—ten (10) million people marched against the war in Iraq. And yet the war went ahead again.

The ruling class know that the workers are defenceless and leaderless. That is why they are so blatant in their attacks.

Until the workers expand their consciousness to see that the Capitalist system will always have it for them, these crises will continue.

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Australia: How and why the Gough Whitlam government's far-reaching reforms were won

Jim McIlroy opines about Australia: How and why the Gough Whitlam government's far-reaching reforms were won.

These reforms were the reactions to the radicalisation of the masses:

However, it is important to emphasise that the Whitlam victory occurred on the crest of a wave of popular mass struggles — most centrally the anti-Vietnam War moratoriums — and the rise of a new youth radicalisation that began on the university campuses and spread to broad layers of society from the 1960s to the early 1970s.

This upsurge also involved the new wave of women's liberation, the growing Aboriginal rights movement, the start of gay liberation and the modern environment movements. The youth revolt also challenged traditional authority roles in the family, education, morality, culture and politics.

…

In Australia, the anti-war movement grew from a small minority to a mass movement expressed in the Moratoriums of 1970 and 1971. General anti-war sentiment gradually increased to become a large majority by the time of the 1972 election.

It was in this tumultuous social context that the Whitlam Labor government came to power, carried on a huge wave of popular demand for real change.

As Capitalism has shown time and time again, it can co-opt these movements into the mainstream where they can be safely defused. Radicals are turned into reformist then into bureaucrats. From the barricades to the warrens of the bureaucracy. This has happened with the environmental, feminist, and Aboriginal radicals. They now fill in forms to get funding to keep going on. Thus, the slow grinding down of youthful vigour into middle-age malaise begins.

McIlroy writes that there are three (3) important lessons from the Whitlam Era:

First, that progressive change is possible — if we could afford free education in 1974, for instance, we surely can now.

Second, that the corporate elite will not accept any challenge to its interests, however mild. It will violate democracy to protect its interests.

And third, that the Labor Party is not an appropriate vehicle to achieve social change. Faced with a challenge to its mild reformist agenda in the mid-70s, Labor capitulated.

The problem with the ALP since its very beginnings was that it was not a party of the working-man but of a would-be petite burgeoisie. Their dream was not of an international working class, but of owning their own little business.

McIlroy concludes that:

We should remember the progressive gains from Whitlam's government, but remember they were not handed down but won by the struggles of ordinary people. And we can win them again — and more — in the future.

We now need to accelerate the vital task of building an alternative political movement to eventually challenge the status quo of big business rule, and to struggle for a socialist society.

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Fierce Entanglements require Dialogue: Israeli-Palestinian conflict rooted in their different stories about the World

Donald Ellis argues that Fierce Entanglements require Dialogue: Israeli-Palestinian conflict rooted in their different stories about the World.

The goal of conflict resolution is to moderate and bridge these incommensurate realities. Political solutions by leaders and elites, necessary as they are, do not directly redress subjugation, inequality, and oppression. Decisions that emerge from political leaders and elites become directives that are “sold” to the masses. Issues and solutions do not emerge naturally from the conflicting parties and the more resolutions reflect political accommodations and elite interests the more remote they are from the population.

The fundamental problem with this type of argument is that common ground can be achieved between the genocidists and their victims. The State of Israel wants no less than the complete obliteration of the Palestinians by whatever means necessary.

The Zionists have never accepted nor will accept a two state solution in the former British Mandate of Palestine.

The mere existence of Palestinians de-legitimises the State of Israel. They have claims that recognised under international law. They have rights due to them as human beings.

By denying Palestinians their claims and rights, the Zionists act outside of the law of nations and states.

Those with great power refuse to see the rights and claims of the powerless. This is why justice requires the overthrow of systems that permit such outrages.

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Feminism and Exclusion from Power

In Rebecca Solnit blog post, “The War Is Over (If You Want It), Feminism and Men”, she writes that:

The highest powers in the country [USA] have begun calling on men to take responsibility not only for their own conduct, but for that of the men around them, to be agents of change.

In my initial assessment of this post, I disagreed by writing that:

This war can not be won by participating in the current power structure because misogyny is the key to power. In order to have power in a Capitalist, one must be a misogynist. Becoming a feminist excludes one from power.

This is because of the fundamental authoritarianism of male culture: violence. Women see the direct violence violence through rape, murder, domestic violence, pornography, sexual harassment, office politics, slurs, glances. But there is also the hidden violence under which men live their lives.

Violence among males starts early with bullying, abuse, punishment, masculinisation. This is mainly violence for violence's sake. The message is that you can be hurt no matter what you do or say. It is important to know that violence can be inflicted and you are powerless to stop it.

Indeed, during my school years, corporal punishment was seen as a way of taming the wild beasts that we boys were seen as. This could be administered by almost anyone: parents, elder siblings, teachers, police, priests, nuns, and even total strangers. It was okay as long as there was seen to be taming the wildness or beastliness of the boys.

Looking back now, the degree of beastliness seemed to be determined by class and ethnicity. Aboriginal boys got the worst no matter how well behaved they were. And their parents believed that they deserved it. No wonder the boys turned into men with no belief in decency or society. They had been beaten into beasts.

We, of the lower orders and paler complexions, fared somewhat better. Yet, we were turned into beats. I know of two (2) boys from my youth who murdered their fathers. There was always a tension within the neighbourhood about there would be one beating too far, and an orgy of violence would erupt.

This is the sheer terror of living in a violence-saturated world. One small mistake could be your last. So, you become cautious and predictable.

And this leads to the problem of alcohol during our adolescence: the reactions are intensified and the violence becomes deadly. Mistakes are truly fatal.

Yet, this problem of hidden violence does not disappear in adulthood. I am still threatened with rape or serious injury if I get too uppity. I am more adept at avoiding it. It is a part of my life.

What can I do about it? One thing I could do is join the power structure. I could become a dispenser of violence. This would take the edge off being a victim.

And I would be rewarded for doing so. I get access to more social status, more power, more credibility, more money, more sex, and better health.

So, why don't I? If I did, I would have to become someone I truly hate. I remember almost all of that abuse I suffered. I hate the perpetrators for doing that. I understand why they did it—they were trying to survive. It was them or me. Sensibly, they chose me.

In order to be a male feminist, one has to stand outside of the power structure and be seen as being weak. Therefore one becomes a target.

Those in power are not going to seriously weaken the basis of their power. It is up to we outsiders to do that for them.

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The War Is Over (If You Want It), Feminism and Men

Rebecca Solnit argues strongly that The War Is Over (If You Want It), Feminism and Men.

The situation as it has long existed needs to be described bluntly. Let's just say that a significant number of men hate women, whether it's the stranger harassed in the street, the Twitter user threatened into silence online, or the wife who's beaten. Some men believe they are entitled to humiliate, punish, silence, violate, and even annihilate women. As a consequence, women face a startling amount of everyday violence and an atmosphere of menace, as well as a host of smaller insults and aggressions meant to keep us down. It's not surprising, then, that the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies some men's rights groups as hate groups.

In this context, consider what we mean by rape culture. It's hate. Those sports-team and fraternity rapes, the ones that sometimes result in young men swapping phone videos that they never seem to recognize as evidence of felonies, are predicated on the idea that violating the rights, dignity, and body of another human being is a cool thing to do. Such group acts are based on a predatory-monster notion of what masculinity is, one to which many men don't subscribe but that affects us all. It's also a problem that men are capable of rectifying in ways women are not.

Emphasis Mine

Here is where the real time War on Terror should be waged. It should be waged against the terrorism that afflicts women everyday and every hour of the day. Terror forms their lives.

This war can not be won by participating in the current power structure because misogyny is the key to power. In order to have power in a Capitalist, one must be a misogynist. Becoming a feminist excludes one from power.

We must change the system to overcome this misogyny. An inclusive political system is the basis for an anti-rape culture.

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Israel's Gaza defeat a sign of Palestinian strength

Raul Bassi writes that Israel's Gaza defeat a sign of Palestinian strength.

Israel's July-August war on Gaza, under the pretext of Operation Protective Edge to counter Palestinian rocket fire, demonstrated why it will never defeat the Palestinian resistance.

As in Vietnam, the resistance in Gaza has to resort to war in the tunnels. This tactic is dictated by the overwhelming superiority of the occupying forces and the technical capabilities of the indigenous people.

Egypt is not North Vietnam nor China in this analogy. But the Gazans appear to be able to get sufficient support via the ordinary Egyptian and other Arabs in order to keep the tunnel networks open and operational.

I imagine that the Israeli offensive has exposed the blind-spots of their intelligence services because Hamas knows which tunnels were not discovered during the offensive. This will prove vital during the next Israeli offensive. And the one after that.

With each battle, Israel is slowly losing the war because Hamas learns more and more about the deficiencies of the IDF and associated intelligence services.

Hamas's popularity is based on the fact it has to date proven to be a useful instrument of resistance.

Israel may be able to kill large numbers of people, inflict tactical defeats, weaken Hamas' military capacity and destroy Palestinian infrastructure. But they will never be able to defeat the Palestinian peoples' resistance to colonial occupation.

After nearly seventy (70) years, it would have been obvious that the solution to the Palestinian problem for Israel is a political one. But is not easy for colonial powers to understand this. It took England 400 years to leave most of Ireland.

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Take Kurdish freedom fighters off terrorist list

Sue bolton says “Take Kurdish freedom fighters off terrorist list”.

There are two reasons to support the Kurds of Kobane. One reason is humanitarian: to prevent a massacre. The other reason is to protect and defend the building of an alternative society which should be a beacon for all left and progressive people in the world.

Unfortunately for the Kurds, their unacknowledged homeland, Kurdistan, is occuppied by four other states:

1. Iran
2. Iraq
3. Syria
4. Turkey

Turkey has been waging genocide against the Kurds. This is largely unreported in the West unless there is a terrorist attack in Istanbul.

Because Turkey is an important NATO ally (US client), this is tolerated in the West. Genocide is only wrong if it is done by official enemies. And since before 9/11, the PKK has classified as a terrorist even as it tries to defend against the genocidal attacks of the Turkish state.

This level of oppression calls for a new and substainable society in which everyone participates. This leads to progressive measures in governance and social norms:

The Kurds in Syria are building a society that should be a model for the Middle East — a society where the rights of minority religions and minority ethnic groups are protected, and where there is a revolution in women's rights. The US doesn't want to support the Kurds in Rojava because it is using sectarianism to keep compliant governments in power in various countries in the Middle East.

Once again, we see Capitalism relying on divise means to maintain power.

Bolton lists the demands of the Socialist Alliance as:

• Arms for the defenders of Kobane.
• Opening the border with Turkey and an aid corridor for Kurds.
• End Turkish support for IS.
• Remove the PKK from Australian terrorist list: they are freedom fighters not terrorists

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Video gamers on the feminist frontline

Jemma Nott writes that Video gamers on the feminist frontlines.

A fierce debate over women’s participation in video game culture has erupted online. Known as “GamerGate”, it is a battle over power and sexism in video games.

Women now represent nearly half of those who play video games, and the traditional gamer identity is being challenged. The problem of sexism in video games is part of a wider problem of misogyny in society, and in the same way misogyny is being confronted in parliament or at universities, it is also being confronted in gaming.

The women critics have been threatened with rape and death, but not the men critics. This is the same traditional response of all patriarchal societies to threats—whether in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Nigeria, DRC, UK, USA, etc.

What is lost is that GamerGate is just a widely publicised version of something that has been happening since feminism began — patriarchal society feeling threatened by the concept of cultural equality.

Men have been given a small space to rule over as compensation for loss of power in the rest of their lives: workplace, politics, culture. Like a rat defending their last bit of rotting cheese, men will fight tooth and claw to defend that rather than go after the big cheese in the elite's fridge. It is safer to do so.

We need to overcome what divides us as workers (racism, sexism, homophobia) before we can concentrate on overthrowing Capitalism. Capitalism needs sexism in order to survive.

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Evolution is real and God is no wizard, says Pope Francis

Evolution is real and God is no wizard, says Pope Francis. But this evolution is theistic rather than atheistic.

The type of evolutionary theory the Catholic Church espouses is teleological with Homo Sapiens as the end-product of a pre-determined process. But this is really nonsense given the catastrophes that life on Earth had to survive: asteroids, climate change, ice ages, super-volcanoes, Oxygen. Humans were reduced to about 2,000 to 10,000 individuals during the Stone Age. It was probably luck just we got through this at all.

What is more interesting is the tail-end of the article:

Pope Francis also delivered an off-the-cuff, mini-encyclical on the rights of the poor, the injustices of unemployment, and the need for environmental protection on Tuesday, saying he's not preaching communism but the Gospel.

He said the poor need land, a roof over their head and work, and said he knew well that "if I talk about this, some will think that the pope is communist".

"They don't understand that love for the poor is at the centre of the Gospel," he said. "Demanding this isn't unusual, it's the social doctrine of the church."

Francis' remarks to the World Meeting of Popular Movements, delivered in his native Spanish, ran for more than six pages, single-spaced.

Francis has already been branded a Marxist by conservative US commentators for his unbridled criticism of capitalist excesses, for his demand that governments redistribute social benefits to the needy, and his call for the church to be a "poor church, for the poor".

This sharpening of the divide between the interests of the Capitalists and the workers has forced the Catholic Church to side with the interests of the workers. But this does not mean that the Church espouses Socialism or Communism. These are still anathema.

The decay of the Capitalist superstructure means that the interests of the workers can be accomodated through reformist politics. Harsh choices have to be made about what people support: Capitalists or workers. There is no longer a middle ground—only the extremes.

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Artificial Billionaires: Regimes' Crony Capitalism Stifling Middle East

The World Bank sees there is a problem with the wrong type of state involvement in the economy—Artificial Billionaires: Regimes’ Crony Capitalism Stifling Middle East.

Contributors at Informed Comment write that:

The “privileges” referred to in the report are the many old policies that continue to protect the business interests of entrenched elites. The report shows the extent to which these policies—designed to prevent or deter competitors while allowing elites to make easy money or “to earn rents”—distort the natural workings of economies in which businesses either grow and become more productive, or exit the market. In this environment, political connections are more important for success than innovative spirit.

Emphasis Mine

In the view of the Capitalists, the state is supposed to defend their class interests against the workers, not favour one faction of Capitalists over another.

Despite what is happening elsewhere as Europe blunders towards new recession, the contributors maintain that Capitalism needs only be set free in order for it to work properly:

Only by removing the type of privileges described in this report can the region move toward the level of job creation it needs. The report shows that promoting open markets and competition, and leveling the playing field, will provide an environment conducive to entrepreneurship and the emergence of dynamic firms. Reforms initiated transparently would make sure citizens are aware of what their governments are doing and can provide input into policymaking.

This proves that Capitalism has exhausted its intellectual vigour. Capitalists have become zombies shuffling mindlessly around while muttering “Reforms! Reforms!”.

Workers should realise that only a worker-lead and controlled government can overcome the malaise in investment and create an economy that benefits the workers over the Capitalists.

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Europe blunders towards new recession

Dick Nichols writes that Europe blunders towards new recession.

The main cause of the possible new recession in Europe is due to the fundamental problem of Capitalism:

The root cause is the lack of profitable investment opportunities in production, even as big capital is nearly drowning in retained earnings.

The Europe-wide shortfall in demand arising from the investment slump is also confirmed by the continuing decline in the annual EU inflation rate. It fell to a new low of 0.4% in September and was zero or negative in four of the crisis-hit countries of the “periphery” — Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy.

The IMF has proposed a Keynesian response of using the very low interest rates to fund public works:

The evidence of the costs of stagnant investment has now become so strong that IMF chief economist Oliver Blanchard has called on Germany to take advantage of its very low borrowing costs to raise its deficit and fund public investment in infrastructure.

Since Germany is so intransigently pro-business in pushing for lower public debt, lower wages, and lower taxes, the only real hope for Greece is for strong left-wing government action:

By the same token, however, if a Syriza government can force through its program of radical debt renegotiation, higher working-class incomes and greater public investment funded by higher taxes on the rich, then the start of the only possible road out of austerity will become visible.

The lessons of the last two hundred years of Capitalism are still being ignored. The Capitalists are only interested in protecting their capital. And the state protects the Capitalists. The sooner the workers wake up to this, the sooner they can start exploring alternatives to Capitalism.

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Now the economists complain we're not shopping enough

Here

Peter Boyle writes that Now the economists complain we're not shopping enough.

Boyle quotes Nick Hanauer from his essay “The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats”:

The thing about us businesspeople is that we love our customers rich and our employees poor. So for as long as there has been capitalism, capitalists have said the same thing about any effort to raise wages.

This highlights the fundamental cause of crises in Capitalism: underconsumption. The workers can only buy commodities with money they earn through labour. It is possible in the short-term for credit to be used to fill the gap, but as was seen in the GFC, this only delays the inevitable.

Hanauer concludes that:

If we don't do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn't eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when

Although this is welcome, the revolt could more likely end as a Fascist state because of the low political consciousness of the workers.

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Bring war criminals to justice

John Pilger says to Bring war criminals to justice.

The use of depleted Uranium (DU) in weapons by US and allied forces have led to an epidemic of cancers within Iraq. Yet, access to vital medical equipment is being denied, and the extent of the problem is being hidden:

The British oncologist Karol Sikora, chief of the cancer program of the World Health organisation (WHO) in the 1990s, wrote in the British Medical Journal: “Requested radiotherapy equipment, chemotherapy drugs and analgesics are consistently blocked by United States and British advisers [to the Iraq Sanctions Committee].”

He told me: “We were specifically told [by the WHO] not to talk about the whole Iraq business. The WHO is not an organisation that likes to get involved in politics.”

Recently, Hans von Sponeck, the former assistant secretary general of the United Nations and senior UN humanitarian official in Iraq, wrote to me: “The US government sought to prevent WHO from surveying areas in southern Iraq where depleted uranium had been used and caused serious health and environmental dangers.”

Today, a WHO report, the result on a landmark study conducted jointly with the Iraqi Ministry of Health has been “delayed”. Covering 10,800 households, it contains “damning evidence”, says a ministry official and, according to one of its researchers, remains “top secret”.

The report says that birth defects have risen to a “crisis” right across Iraqi society where DU and other toxic heavy metals were by the US and Britain. Fourteen years after he sounded the alarm, Dr Jawad Al-Ali reports “phenomenal” multiple cancers in entire families.

Dr Jawad Al-Ali had the abstract of his report published as EPIDEMIOLOGICAL STUDY AT THE SOUTH OF IRAQ (BASRAH CITY) for a conference, and there is a series of slides called The Effects of Wars on Iraq (some of the pictures are quite horrific).

So murder by radioactivity is acceptable if it is done in Iraq, while murder by cleaver is not if it is done in Woolwich.

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I am a racist and so are you

Helen Razer says that I am a racist and so are you.

Her conclusion is that:

Helen Razer is a horrid racist who selfishly fails to understand the pain of indigenous Australia.

…

I am white and I am Australian and I am a racist. The only way out of this shunless truth is to acknowledge it.

I agree. I am a white Australian who has benefited from the genocide of the Australian Aborigines and their continuing exploitation. I was brought up and educated to see them as sub-humans and not deserving of respect.

Yet, as I was an outsider because of my stutter, I had friends who were Aborigines during primary school. We were outcasts together.

Racism is something that is taught. It is an instrument of control. It separates people based on spurious categories.

We forget now, but white people used to discriminate against other white people.

In her book, “The History of White People, Nell Painter traces the evolution of whiteness as a concept passing from the Greeks to the Germans to the Nordic to the rich English to all English to include Irish and Germans to all Europeans and to those of 'mixed race'. She argues that whiteness is constructed to serve a political purpose. The enlargement is to co-opt former outsiders to become part of the system.

Malcolm X once said that:

You cannot have Capitalism without Racism.

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Compliance

Following on from Lack of Character?, I think the movie, “Compliance”, is a deeply disturbing one about how the perception of power can overcome moral scruples.

In this movie, the characters believe that they have no choice but to follow the dictates of the prank caller who calims to be a policeman. The mere assumption that teh caller is genuine is enough to give credibility to whatever lies they tell.

No matter how bizarre the request the caller makes, any moral scruples are quickly overcome by either threats or reasons. At the end of the movie, the manager is asked why didn't she stop the prank. Her reply was that the caller always had an answer to any objections she raised.

The prank only stopped when the gardener would not go along with the requests of the caller. His moral scruples were offended in such a way that he refused to comply with instructions.

What is important for me was that the higher the status of the employee or manager, the more likely they were to comply. Did this mean that advancement in a Capitalist economy requires one to overcome moral scruples? It would seem so.

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Lack of Character?

Dan Little questions the idea of immoral behaviour is due to a Lack of Character?

Little considers &ldqui;Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior by John Doris. Little puts Doris' thesis as:

the basic theory of action associated with virtue ethics and the theory of moral character is most likely incorrect. The character theory maintains that individuals have stable traits that lead them to behave similarly in a range of relevant but differing circumstances. A person with the traits of honesty or compassion will behave truthfully or benevolently in a range of circumstances, when it is easy to do so and when it is more difficult.

Doris' thesis is seen as an endorsement of situationism which …is the competing view that maintains that people's actions are more sensitive to features of the situation of action than to enduring underlying traits.

Little's conclusion is that:

Pure situationism seems to run deeply contrary to our ordinary, commonsense understandings of how and why people behave as they do. Doris doesn't have too much regard for commonsense when it comes to understanding behavior, though he does address the topic. But if we think about the people we've observed most closely in professional contexts, personal life, and politics, it seems hard to avoid the sober conclusion that these individuals do indeed have "character", for better or worse, and that their characters differ. This one can be counted on to deflect responsibility for bad outcomes in his or her division; that one is solidly committed to his spouse; and that one is forever expedient in appealing for votes. People differ in these ways in our ordinary experience; so it is difficult to find the experiments of Milgram or Zimbardo sufficient to erase our reliance on the idea of persistent character traits in ordinary people. (Could we design experiments that seek to evaluate characteristics like "avoids responsibility," "honors familial commitments," "acts out of devotion to principle"?)

My understanding of Marxist morality is that it tends towards situationism. People can only choose between the choices that their material circumstance allows.

For example, the necessity of earning a living may compel a person to accept an immoral job.

The purpose of a socialist revolution is to expand the choices available to workers so that they are not compelled to make immoral choices.

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Leninism for now

Paul Le Blanc writes about Leninism for now.

Le Blanc writes that:

Our purpose – as revolutionary socialists – is not simply to persuade people that socialism could be so much better than capitalism. Our purpose is not simply to protest, and organise protests, against capitalist injustice. Our purpose is not simply to organise struggles to bring about improvements under capitalism. Our purpose is not simply to interpret history and current events (or anything else) from a revolutionary socialist standpoint. Our primary purpose is to overturn existing power relationships, and to put political power into the hands of an organised, class-conscious working class (the class that we are part of, the class of the labouring majority), which is the key to establishing a socialist democracy.

Emphasis Mine

All revolutionary activity should be directed to that end. The daily struggles, protests, strikes, articles, newspapers are all conceived to raise the consciousness of the working class about its historic role and its historic duty. We are charged with saving the human species from Capitalism.

Le Blanc argues that:

The revolutionary vanguard is not those who claim to be building a revolutionary vanguard party under the banner of Lenin. The vanguard is a broad layer of the working class that has a significant degree of class-consciousness, that has some understanding of capitalism and the need to go beyond it, with some accumulated experience and commitment in the struggle against oppression and exploitation. Only when an organisation has a significant membership base in this layer can it be considered a revolutionary vanguard party.

Emphasis Mine

The problem is that no such party now exists. The reasons are many: the triumph of neo-liberalism; the destruction of unions; the fall of the Soviet Union; the re-emergence of Capitalism in China.

Le Blanc outlines a strategy to continue with a United Front approach of joining in the common struggle and learning from each other:

I think it is important for our different groups of the socialist left not to rush into hothouse efforts to forge some premature organisational unity. Instead we should focus on working together in real, practical struggles, with an eye towards possible unity, but with a focus on the actual struggles. Those struggles are the necessary, transformative precondition for possible unity. The only fruitful unity will come on the basis of joint action in such real, practical struggles. If such unity is achieved, the result might be a democratic, durable, well-run organisation of several thousand, with full-time organisers and new technologies being utilised to enable more and more people to become activist cadres working together to build local struggles, as well as advancing left-wing educational and cultural work, throughout the country. Such an organisation could

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Workers of the world unite!

James Adonis suggests that it is time for the Workers of the world unite!

The democratisation of the workplace, I suspect, is the way of the future. And by ‘democratisation’ I’m not referring merely to equality among employees and leaders when making decisions. I’m referring to employees themselves being both the owners and the leaders of the organisation. It’s already happening.

Besides referring to the standard example of Mondragon Corporation in Spain, Adonis refers to C-Mac Industries (Aust) as an employee-owned business. The website, however, says that it is a family and staff owned Australian company.

Adonis contends that employee-owned businesses perform better:

Data sourced by Employee Ownership Australia, a non-profit association helping organisations make the transition, show that these businesses have a higher rate of survival than other forms of enterprise. Employees, meanwhile, are four times less likely to be retrenched during a downturn. They also earn more than their peers working elsewhere.

And Adonis has the cheek to suggest that:

Putting people before profits. Surely that’s a good thing, right?

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Paul Le Blanc: The Third American Revolution — How do we get from the capitalist present to a socialist future?

Paul Le Blanc: The Third American Revolution — How do we get from the capitalist present to a socialist future?

Le Blanc defines Socialism as follows:

Socialism means rule by the people over the economic structures and resources that we need to keep ourselves alive and healthy, to engage in creative activity, to maintain good relationships with each other, to be able to have good and meaningful lives. The economy would be socially owned, democratically controlled and planfully utilised to meet the needs of all. It could be described as economic democracy.

This is to differentiate from the current system of dictatorship of the Capitalists, Formal democracy stops at the factory or office. Economic decisions are made in the interests of the owners, not society.

Change can only be brought about by struggle:

The actual history of the United States has been shaped and punctuated by struggles for freedom and social justice. To the extent that we have any freedoms at all and to the extent that there has been dignity and wellbeing for our people, it has only come about through the dynamics so perceptively described in 1857 by Frederick Douglass, the ex-slave who became a great spokesperson and organiser in the anti-slavery struggle:

The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. … If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

The key to the struggle is the development of consciousness:

The revolutionary socialist relies on the developing consciousness and power of a mass working-class base, putting pressure on all politicians, being in the hip pocket of none. To struggle successfully for reforms can help pave the way for mass socialist consciousness and a socialist future. The key is to build social movements and struggles that are politically independent of any pro-capitalist politicians. While some members of such movements will, in fact, support such politicians, the movement as a whole will need to remain independent in order to remain effective in being able to pressure all politicians.

A revolutionary party is part of the electoral process but is beholden to none. The electoral is part of the struggle:

Activists seeking to prepare the way for a socialist future face the challenge of developing tactics, educational and organising efforts and overarching strategies designed to build a durable mass socialist movement capable of winning meaningful victories in the here-and-now while preparing the way for the working-class majority coming to power, with a transition from capitalism to socialism. There will be a need to discuss, debate and define where electoral activities, street actions and other means toward that end fit into the overall scheme of things.

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What about Marx?

Dan Little asks What about Marx?.

Little concludes that:

So what about it? Is Marxism relevant today? Yes, if we can avoid the dogmatism and rigidity that were often associated with the tradition. Power, exploitation, class, structures of production and distribution, property relations, workplace hierarchy -- these features certainly continue to be an important part of our social world. We need to think of Marx's corpus as a multiple source of hypotheses and interpretations about how capitalism works. And we need to recognize fully that no theoretical framework captures the whole of history or society. Marxism is not a comprehensive theory of social organization and change. But it does provide a useful set of hypotheses about how some of the key social mechanisms work in a class-divided society. Seen from that perspective, Marxist thought serves as a sort of proto-paradigm or mental framework in terms of which to pursue more specific social and historical investigations.

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Eight die in Bangladesh garment factory fire as 18 more factories are closed down

Mass murder continues in Bangladesh as Eight die in Bangladesh garment factory fire as 18 more factories are closed down.

Nearly a thousand workers have been killed in recent weeks. And the response is:

The government at the weekend in a joint statement with the ILO and factory owners promised a labour law reform package that would allow "the right to collective bargaining" and provide for "occupational safety and health".

A United Nations expert group Wednesday urged international clothing brands not to pull out of the country but to work together with the government, international organisations, and civil society to address working conditions.

The reason companies moved production to countries like Bangladesh is because there were no unions and the lack of safe working conditions. This made production costs lower, and profits larger.

At least, the criminals have been arrested:

A preliminary government investigation blamed the collapse on the vibrations of giant electricity generators and police have arrested 12 people including the complex's owner and four garment factory owners in connection with the disaster.

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Hawkings joins Academic Boycott of Israel

Juan Cole reports that Hawkings joins Academic Boycott of Israel.

Physicist Stephen Hawkings’ decision to boycott the annual President’s Conference in Jerusalem this year has been confirmed by Cambridge University. The university initially attempted to deny a political motive and said Hawkings was not going because of his health. It acknowledged the political motive when [t]he Guardian newspaper provided it with a copy of Hawkings’ May 3 withdrawal letter

This campaign of BDS has been going on for several years. Samah Sabawi wrote, in 2011, that:

Supporters of the non-violent global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement — especially members of the Greens — have been subjected to abuse in a deliberate national campaign of misinformation and slurs orchestrated against them. It has questioned their values and integrity and falsely accused them of anti-Semitism.

A great evil, the Holocaust, is being used to justify another evil, the occupation of Palestine.

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And Then There Was One

Tom Engelhart riffs on And Then There Was One: Imperial Gigantism and the Decline of Planet Earth.

Engelhart writes that:

The present capitalist model (the only one available) for a rising power, whether China, India, or Brazil, is also a model for planetary decline, possibly of a precipitous nature. The very definition of success -- more middle-class consumers, more car owners, more shoppers, which means more energy used, more fossil fuels burned, more greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere -- is also, as it never would have been before, the definition of failure. The greater the “success,” the more intense the droughts, the stronger the storms, the more extreme the weather, the higher the rise in sea levels, the hotter the temperatures, the greater the chaos in low-lying or tropical lands, the more profound the failure. The question is: Will this put an end to the previous patterns of history, including the until-now-predictable rise of the next great power, the next empire? On a devolving planet, is it even possible to imagine the next stage in imperial gigantism?

Human survival and Capitalism cannot continue to co-exist. We must make a choice.

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Suffering of Aboriginal people continues

John Pilger says that the Suffering of Aboriginal people continues.

In Western Australia, the brutal past of Rottnest Island is hidden away from the tourists who visit it.

What was done was the torture, humiliation and murder of the First Australians. Wrenched from their communities in an insidious genocide that divided and emasculated the indigenous nations, shackled men and boys as young as eight endured the perilous nine-hour journey in an open longboat. Cold, sick and terrified prisoners were jammed into a windowless "holding cell", like an oversized kennel.

Today, an historical plaque refers to it as The Boathouse. The suppression is breathtaking.

This suppression continues today:

During the boom, Aboriginal incarceration has more than doubled. Interned in often rat-infested cells, almost 60 per cent of the state's young prisoners are Aboriginal — out of 2.5 per cent of the population. While their mothers hold vigils outside, aboriginal children are held in solitary confinement in an adult jail.

A former prisons minister, Margaret Quirk, told me the state was now "racking and stacking" black Australians. Their rate of incarceration is five times that of apartheid South Africa.

The Aboriginal stereotype is violent, yet the violence routinely meted out to black Australians by authority is of little interest. Deaths in custody are common. An elder known as Mr. Ward was arrested for driving under the influence on a bush road. In searing heat, he was driven more than 300 miles in the iron pod of a prison van run by the British security company GSL. Inside the mobile cell the temperature reached 50 degrees centigrade. Mr. Ward cooked to death, his stomach burned raw where he had collapsed on the van's scorching floor.

Yet Australians condemn Indonesia for its treatment of prisoners (only if they are young, white women).

And people wonder why Australia is violent and racist because that is what the governments practice daily against the Aborigines. State violence becomes normal behaviour.

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Notes on defining the working class (2)

Continuing on from yesterday's Notes on defining the working class.

I suppose the biggest threat to a Communist revolution is the loss of the social nature of work as automation increases. Workers will find themselves devoting more time to tending machines rather than interacting with other workers.

This interaction would have been about how to survive on the job. Now, it is not uncommon for a worker to get killed in a factory without anyone noticing that it has happened. There was even one case where a worker disappeared into a pool of water and no one noticed for several hours.

There is a contradiction in the increasing automation of the workplace. The development of the productive forces has to reach a certain level before a Communistic society becomes sustainable. Yet, the isolation of workers in the workplace means that the solidarity of workers is dissolved.

Yet, the proletariat is now garvitating to Department I. MacMillan seems to say that anyone else but the workers of Department II leading the revolution would deform it because they are not part of the productive process.

But the workers in Department I are developing the class consciousness about where they are in the economic process. Unfortunately, they are adhering to the petit bourgeiose view of the world.

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Notes on defining the working class

Stephanie McMillan posts some Notes on defining the working class.

McMillan insists that:

The point that is often forgotten though, and which I am insisting upon, is that productive workers, the working class, as the ones who are at the core (or foundation) of the entire capitalist economy, who produce the surplus value that allows the existence of profit and its re-investment as new capital, is the only class in fundamental antagonistic contradiction to capital. By emancipating themselves as workers, they have to destroy all the myriad social relations (in the economic, political and ideological fields) that make up capitalism. This puts them in a unique position.

From MacMillan's description, I assume she means that these workers are in Department II. It is these workers alone that produce the surplus value that Capitalists turn into profits.

This poses an interesting problem with the decline in absolute and relative numbers of productive workers. If the whole of Department II were to be automated, would McMillan say that a proletarian revolution would be impossible because the true proletariat no longer exists?

MacMillan goes on to say that:

Workers who produce surplus value are the only ones who, by asserting their interests and following them through to their endpoint–stopping exploitation–can end the production of surplus value, and thus the reproduction of capital. Only they can follow through to the goal of overturning capitalism. No other classes will go that far (and that has been shown, historically, time and time again). This is why the working class must lead the revolutionary process, if we are to achieve the defeat of capitalism. They have to build an alliance with all the other dominated classes, who will together overturn the system. But their line must lead, or capitalism will be quickly reproduced/restored (as occurred in the Soviet Union and China).

This would mean that the proletariat (workers in Department II) have a limited time in which to launch a true proletarian revolution before their class is annihlated through automation.

The problem for advanced economies like Australia, revolutionary consciousness is more likely to arise among the intellectual working classes: professionals; artisans; relatively privileged ones. This consciousness is driven by the precarious nature of the working life. And it would tend to be conservative in nature in order to keep the status quo.

This is probably why advanced economies would tend to go Fascist rather than Communistic in times of crises.

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The Incredible Shrinking Cost of Solar Energy Drives Mega-Projects around the World

Juan Cole points to The Incredible Shrinking Cost of Solar Energy Drives Mega-Projects around the World.

It is estimated that the all-in-cost for Solar panels will have dropped from USD1.29 per Watt in 2009 to USD0.42 per Watt in 2015. So much has the cost dropped that:

Construction has begun on the world’s largest solar plant. MidAmerican Solar and SunPower Corp. are building a 579 megawatt installation, the Antelope Valley Solar Project, in Kern and Los Angeles counties in California. That is half a gigawatt, just enormous. It will provide electricity to 400,000 homes in the state (roughly 2 million people?), and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 775,000 tons a year. The US emits 5 billion metric tons a year of C02, second only to China, and forms a big part of the world’s carbon problem all by itself. We just need 645 more of the Antelope Valley projects.

Cole overlooks the critical issue of suitable sites for solar plants. All of the easy sites are now being developed. This has certainly lowered the cost of adoption of solar technology, but the problem comes when marginal sites are brought online.

An interesting development has been:

Important new research also shows that hybrid plants that have both solar panels and wind turbines dramatically increase efficiency and help with integration into the electrical grid. Earlier concerns that the turbines would cast shadows and so detract from the efficiency of the solar panels appear to have been overblown. Because in most places in the US there is more sun in the summer and more wind in the winter, a combined plant keeps the electricity feeding into the grid at a more constant rate all year round, which is more desirable than big spikes and fall-offs.

This is a fortunate geography for the USA that they are able to create such hybrid plants.

No one seems to have considered the problem of dust on solar panels. Deserts have loose sand, and wind will severely hamper the collection of solar energy as well as abrade the equipment.

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