Drivers, Beware: The Costly, Deadly Dangers of Traffic Stops in the American Police State

Barry Ritholtz reposts Drivers, Beware: The Costly, Deadly Dangers of Traffic Stops in the American Police State from Washington's Blog.

In other words, in the American police state, “we the people” are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this mindset that any challenge to police authority is a threat that needs to be “neutralized” is a dangerous one that is part of a greater nationwide trend that sets the police beyond the reach of the Fourth Amendment. Moreover, when police officers are allowed to operate under the assumption that their word is law and that there is no room for any form of disagreement or even question, that serves to chill the First Amendment’s assurances of free speech, free assembly and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Frankly, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a casual “show your ID” request on a boardwalk, a stop-and-frisk search on a city street, or a traffic stop for speeding or just to check your insurance. If you feel like you can’t walk away from a police encounter of your own volition—and more often than not you can’t, especially when you’re being confronted by someone armed to the hilt with all manner of militarized weaponry and gear—then for all intents and purposes, you’re under arrest from the moment a cop stops you.

Sad, isn’t it, how quickly we have gone from a nation of laws—where the least among us had just as much right to be treated with dignity and respect as the next person (in principle, at least)—to a nation of law enforcers (revenue collectors with weapons) who treat us all like suspects and criminals?

Clearly, the language of freedom is no longer the common tongue spoken by the citizenry and their government. With the government having shifted into a language of force, “we the people” have been reduced to suspects in a surveillance state, criminals in a police state, and enemy combatants in a military empire.

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This has always been the case for people of colour. Now that white people are getting the same treatment, they are complaining about it.

Whiteness is now being means-tested—if you cannot show the means of a rich bank account, you are no longer white.

The white privilege is being withdrawn from those at the bottom and middle of the socio-economic ladder.

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Is radical leftism a trap for minorities?

Noah Smith asks Is radical leftism a trap for minorities? .

But ultimately, hopping on the radical leftist boat will hurt minorities. And I suspect that leftists in the humanities are doing minorities no favors by trying to convince them that radical leftism is their only hope, when in fact it is a self-defeating strategy.

So what will work? If history is any guide, the only option is to increase tolerance. I don't pretend to know how to increase tolerance. For immigrant groups, it seems to naturally fade over time, especially if those groups 1) organize to fight discriminatory policy, and 2) make a bunch of money. For African-Americans, intolerance seems much more entrenched. I don't pretend to know how to get rid of it, but I am pretty sure that a militant overthrow of capitalism would make things much, much worse.

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Smith does not see Capitalism, in itself, as oppressive. It is merely intolerance that is the problem. He sees intolerance as something to be done away with while preserving Capitalism.

Indeed, he does not see class analysis as useful for analysing anything useful under Capitalism.

I think Smith understands Marx's critique of Capitalism, but does not see himself as involved in any form of class war. He is a disinterested observer of the political economy. For him, Socialism has proven to be a failure and is not an alternative to Capitalism.

He believes himself to be on the right side of history. Yet, history is being made daily in the streets of Athens, Caracas, Havana, Bogata, and Rojava. There the oppression of Capitalism is most keenly felt, and most vigorously resisted as alternatives are built.

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Michael Lebowitz on SYRIZA and us: Social democracy or revolutionary democracy

Michael Lebowitz on SYRIZA and us: Social democracy or revolutionary democracy.

Certainly, there is a lesson here for future governments (and perhaps even the current SYRIZA government) — the absolute necessity to learn to walk upon two legs. But there is also a lesson for us — those of us without the present luxury of government. A socialist party must also walk upon two legs. Of course, it must struggle to capture the existing state from capital so that state can serve the needs of the working class rather than capital. However, it also must “promote by all means possible new democratic institutions, new spaces in which people can develop their powers through their protagonism”. Through the development of communal councils and workers’ councils (essential cells of the new socialist state), the working class develops its capacities and the strength to challenge capital and the old state.

The lesson of SYRIZA should be to never forget the concept of revolutionary practice — the simultaneous changing of circumstances and human activity or self-change. It is never too late to remember and apply this… and never too soon.

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We must cease the reproduction of capitalist thinking and habits within ourselves, and struggle with the creation of socialist thinking and habits.

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Ten years of BDS in solidarity with Palestine

Lisa Gleeson reflects on Ten years of BDS in solidarity with Palestine.

The standard Israeli response — that even the mildest statement of support for the Palestinian people is by definition anti-Semitic — gets trotted out at every opportunity. However, accusations of extremism from Israel and its supporters begin to sound incredibly hollow when examined against what its own officials say about Palestinians.

Recently appointed Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked is on record as calling for a genocide against the Palestinian people. Like many Israeli politicians she argues that all land in the West Bank and Gaza as well as pre-1967 Israel belongs to Israel and should never be ceded.

To the Western “referees” of the Oslo peace process this does not disqualify her as a negotiating partner in the process that allegedly has a “two state solution” as its goal. Instead, the Western arbiters, comically portraying themselves as “honest brokers”, demand that the Palestinian side prove to the Israelis that they are worthy partners in the peace process.

In this atmosphere there are few strategies left for Palestinians and their supporters, which makes BDS all the more important. A vigorous and dynamic BDS movement is needed now more than ever. The development of a global mass movement that puts irresistible pressure on Israel and its allies is a vital bulwark against ongoing attempts at destroying the entire Palestinian people.

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Now wonder Israeli settlers feel justified in burning alive children with such political support from their leaders.

The importance of the BDS campaign is to see the humanity of the outcasts in society, such as the Palestinians. That is the subjective aim of the campaign. The objective aim is to relieve the suffering of the Palestinian people.

When we see the humanity of the outcasts, we can empathise with them and see others, like Aborigines and refugees, as human beings. Then, we can see their suffering as unjustified.

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Britain: Jeremy Corbyn campaign gives voice to austerity anger

Britain: Jeremy Corbyn campaign gives voice to austerity anger.

A hollowed-out Labour Party may prove unwilling to tolerate a figure like Corbyn, who will attract full hostility from political, economic and media elites. But the movement to get him elected as leader is clearly giving voice to deep-seated anger at the pro-rich policies of both Britain's major parties — and a desire for Labour to provide an alternative from the ruling Conservative Party.

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Even if Corbyn wins and survives a coup, this will detract from building a mass movement because such a win reinforces the lie that the right leader can things back on track.

Workers need to really understand that the whole system is rigged against them—it is not that the wrong people are running the system.

However, this requires a huge leap in the development of the working class consciousness.

Even in Greece after all that has happened, the great majority of people want to stay in the Capitalist system. They just want the system to be less brutal towards them.

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Progression of the Police State Spanish Style: €300 Euro Fine for Calling Police Officer "Mate"; Law of Simmering Social Pots

Mike Shedlock writes that there is a Progression of the Police State Spanish Style: €300 Euro Fine for Calling Police Officer "Mate"; Law of Simmering Social Pots.

The gag law may limit minor protests for a while, but it will also simmer increasing resentment over time.

The law of simmering social pots: Putting a tight lid on a simmering social pot will eventually cause a huge boil-over, and perhaps an explosion, at some point in the future.

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An explosion of this sort releases pent-up frustrations but does not change the underlying causes without a political awareness among the oppressed. This awareness allows the oppressed to understand the situation, and seek appropriate remedies.

In gardening terms, there is a huge difference between trampling everything and weeding. The latter requires knowledge of what is desirable and the willingness to do the hard labour required to remove the weeds.

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United States: Should the left back Bernie Sanders' campaign? [Three] views

United States: Should the left back Bernie Sanders' campaign? [Three] views.

1. Dan La Botz: Sanders' campaign a political phenomenon that challenges preconceptions

Of all the far left groups, the International Socialist Organization had been the most critical of and hostile to the Sanders campaign—and for all the right reasons: his caucusing with Democrats, his foreign policy, and above all the belief that Sanders will be an obstacle to building an independent left movement and political alternative. The issue is whether these principled objections should keep us from working closely with Sanders’ supporters, while at the same time maintaining our own political independence.

…

What the Sanders campaign may accomplish is to popularize a program of social democratic reforms, to deepen the discussion about socialism, to bring together labor, black, female, and LGBTQ activists into a movement with enough cohesion, energy, dynamism, and excitement to continue to build something after the election. The Sanders campaign could contribute to the launching of a new period of social movements and upheavals with a higher level of political consciousness and if it does that, it will be a great contribution.

So, while remaining a registered Green and planning to work for Jill Stein in the election, I plan to work with the Sanders campaign in the primary period, hoping—like other Sanders supporters—that out of this experience we can build a new, stronger, left in America.

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2. ISO (USA): The problem with Bernie Sanders

At the same time, the left shouldn't abandon the electoral arena to the two capitalist parties. If we do, we create a vacuum that the Democrats will fill, co-opting movement activists, demobilizing unions and social movements, and redirecting their precious time, money and energy into electing candidates who then betray workers and the oppressed.

We need to win the new left born out of Occupy, public-sector union struggles and the Black Lives Matter movement to breaking with the Democratic Party and building an electoral alternative as a complement to struggle from below. Bernie Sanders' campaign inside the Democratic Party is an obstacle to that project.

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3. US Solidarity: Connecting Sanders' Audience’s Aspirations to Clear Working Class Political Alternatives

Jesse Jackson, despite winning 8 million votes in 1988, chose to demobilize the ostensibly independent Rainbow Coalition organization after losing the Democratic nomination so no ongoing coalition went on to continue working around issues of economic and racial justice after the campaign ended. This time, the left should urge Sanders supporters to keep the fight going through joining anti-austerity struggles, social movements or building local, multi-racial coalitions, including independent electoral infrastructures, that live on well after the presidential campaign.

We agree with Howie Hawkins when he says: “We should talk about why independent politics is the best way to build progressive power, about the Democratic Party as the historic graveyard of progressive movements, and about the need in 2016 for a progressive alternative when Sanders folds and endorses Clinton. I don’t expect many will be persuaded to quit the Sanders campaign before the primaries. But I do expect that many of them will want a Plan B, a progressive alternative to Clinton, after the primaries.”

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Sanders is getting people involved in politics. However, the problem is how to keep activism going after elections. Then, how to get people to raise their consciousness further into radical politics?

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Ted Rall: L.A. Confidential: How The LAPD Conspired To Get Me Fired From The Los Angeles Times — And How I Proved They Lied

Ted Rall writes L.A. Confidential: How The LAPD Conspired To Get Me Fired From The Los Angeles Times — And How I Proved They Lied.

Classic Streisand effect: In their attempt to discredit me and destroy my reputation as a journalist, the LAPD wound up discrediting themselves and further eroding its own reputation. And they’re taking the Times with them.

But the LAPD’s reputation has, of course, already been destroyed by decades of police brutality, systematic corruption and fatal police shootings of one unarmed black man after another.

Will the Times do the right thing: apologize, issue a retraction, and return my cartoons and blogs to the pages of the newspaper? I hope so.

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We need Rall's incisive journalism as well as his intregity.

The police and mass media are colluding to silence that voice as the support for Capitalism is rotting away under the daily exposure of corruption in the system.

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Israeli squatter-terrorists kill Palestinian toddler, injure 4 after setting their Home Ablaze

Juan Cole re-posts that Israeli squatter-terrorists kill Palestinian toddler, injure 4 after setting their Home Ablaze.

Israeli settlers killed a Palestinian toddler and injured four others early Friday morning after settling their home ablaze in the village of Doma near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, local sources said.

Ali Saad Dawabsha, one-and-a-half years old, died shortly after sustaining serious burns, said Ghassan Daghlas, an official who monitors settlement activity in the northern West Bank.

His mother and father, Riham and Saad, and their son Ahmad, 4, also sustained injuries and were evacuated to a nearby hospital, Daghlas said, adding that their home was left completely burned.

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ISIS burn a Jordanian pilot alive and are justly condemned throughout the world.

Israelis burn a Palestinian child alive and there is silence.

As John Pilger says, Palestinians are unworthy victims. Indeed, they are even blamed for all the violence done to them.

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Did Turkish Pres. Erdogan Make a Historic mistake in dumping Peace Process with Kurds?

JULIE POUCHER HARBIN asks Did Turkish Pres. Erdogan Make a Historic mistake in dumping Peace Process with Kurds?.

Turkey has become increasingly concerned that gains made by Kurds in Iraq and in Syria could encourage its own Kurdish minority to seek independence. Kurdish rebels released a statement on July 25, 2015 following the airstrikes that the conditions for observing the truce had been “eliminated”. The PKK’s military wing, the HPG, denounced this “aggression of war” by Turkey and vowed “resistance”. It described the bombings in northern Iraq as the “most serious military and political error” by Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party.

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What is missed in this analysis is that the Kurds are exploring an alternative political and economic system to Capitalism. This makes them more dangerous than ISIS.

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SYRIZA's dilemma

Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch discuss SYRIZA's dilemma.

The central problem is that even the most detailed plans now being advanced are presented as a set of alternative policies, but in fact amount to demands for an immediate political revolution. They fail to confront whether this is possible given the balance of forces inside Greece, as reflected in mostly unreconstructed institutions of the state itself, as well as by the continuing public preference for staying with the euro. Concrete political analysis, rather than a technical response to a political problem, is what is needed in the present moment.

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A politcal revolution is extremely unlikely, at this time, in Greece, or, indeed, elsewhere in the West. The troika knew this when they punished the Greek government for having the utter gall to even think of opposing austerity.

Workers have to understand what is happening in Greece will soon be happening in Portugal, Italy, Spain, and elsewhere.

A true political revolution is our salvation, not a negotiating ploy.

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On centrist utopianism

Chris Dillow writes On centrist utopianism.

I say all this as a counterweight to a longstanding prejudice — that centrists and moderates are realistic and hard-headed whilst we leftists are utopian dreamers. Of course, this accusation applies to some on the left — anything is true of someone — but for me the opposite is the case. I'm a Marxist because I'm a pessimist. It is those who think that (actually-existing) capitalism is easily reformable so that inefficiencies and injustices can be eliminated who seem to me to be the dreamers.

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Capitalism is all about increasing inequality, speculative bubbles, and recurring crises of over-production. One cannot reform the essential nature of a thing—one can only mollify its effects.

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Socialism, American-Style

Mark Thoma comments on Socialism, American-Style, by Gar Alperovitz and Thomas M. Hanna, Commentary, NY Times.

Moreover, contrary to conventional opinion, studies of the comparative efficiency of modern public enterprise show rough equivalency to private firms in many cases. …

With skepticism about capitalism growing among minorities and young voters, will we see more such endeavors in the future? Pendulums have a way of swinging, sometimes very sharply, when big economic tsunamis hit. It is possible that in the next big crisis, both sides might see the wisdom and practical benefits of public ownership, and embrace Joseph Schumpeter’s point even more boldly than they do today.

I think this would benefit from separating natural monopolies — where it is not surprising in the least that costs/prices are lower with public ownership (or strict regulation of prices if privately owned) — from the other examples. When *significant* market failures justify it, I fully support public ownership. But in most cases I'd prefer private sector ownership with regulatory oversight.

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The propaganda machine of Capitalism would never publicly admit the inherent deficiencies of markets. However, failures are sometimes too great to cover over as in the case of the GFC.

Public ownership and regulatory oversight are tacit admissions that economic forces should be subject to the popular will not to private whims. Yet, these are still far from the actuality of worker-controlled and directed enterprises under Communism.

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How Wealthy Is Everyone Who Isn't Rich?

Barry Ritholtz ponders How Wealthy Is Everyone Who Isn't Rich?.

Consider the 71 percent of the world's population that falls into the poor and low-income categories. TThis group devotes a very large share of its income to food, medicine, clothing, housing, education and energy. It therefore represents a huge market for basic goods and consumer staples.

Think of it another way. More than fourth-fifths of world's population live on less than $20 a day. TIn other words, how well this vast swath of humanity is doing will have important implications for industry, from health care and finance to agriculture and energy.

Income growth in these groups in both the developing and developed world will alter the economic and political landscape. The U.S. National Intelligence Council has called it a global megatrend.

Not to be too optimistic, but the economic state of world is getting better. As more people move into the global middle class, they are able to buy more consumer goods, save and invest. That creates a long-term self-interest in political stability and, one can hope, democratic institutions.

How well we adapt to these changes will determine how successful we in the U.S. are as investors, and as a nation.

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Of course, the implied argument of this article is that Capitalism is making the world a better place.

The efforts of governments in China, Laos, Venezuela, Vietnam, Ecuador, Cuba, and elsewhere in devoting large resources to food security, housing, literacy, medical programs to the poor is undoubtably a major part in this trend towards a better world.

Yet, we have seen in recent years the callous disregard of Capitalism towards the poor through austerity programs in Europe (especially in Greece), the destruction of nations with successful social programs such as Iraq and Libya, and the brutal supression of refugees fleeing the terror of war and poverty.

Ritholtz is naieve to believe the rising middle class is blind to what Capitalism really means. The US's role in enforcing the brutality of Capitalism will not be easily forgotten.

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The Eurasian Big Bang

Tom Engelhardt posts Pepe Escobar's report on The Eurasian Big Bang in which China and Russia Are Running Rings Around Washington.

In the end, whatever Washington may do, it will certainly reflect a fear of the increasing strategic depth Russia and China are developing economically, a reality now becoming visible across Eurasia. At Ufa, Putin told Xi on the record: "Combining efforts, no doubt we [Russia and China] will overcome all the problems before us."

Read “efforts” as new Silk Roads, that Eurasian Economic Union, the growing BRICS block, the expanding Shanghai Cooperation Organization, those China-based banks, and all the rest of what adds up to the beginning of a new integration of significant parts of the Eurasian land mass. As for Washington, fly like an eagle? Try instead: scream like a banshee.

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Strangely enough, America's victory in the Cold War has allowed all of this to happen—the dismantling of Socialism in a Single State in the former USSR; and the rise of Deng in the PRC. Instead of mutual hostility through ideological conflict over Marxist-Leninism and Maosim, there is a mutual recognization of a common enemy in the USA and its naval hegemony.

It is this naval hegemony that forced Russia, China, India, and Iran to realize that it can be made irrelevant through development of land transportation routes through the Eurasian land-mass.

Since US-dominated institutions are reluctant to fund such infrastructure development, Russia and China have led the development of alternative financial institutions thereby lessening somewhat the political and financial leveraeg of the USA.

For Australia, this means we will probably keep putting the choice between following China or USA for as long as possible. For the USA, we remain a positive strategic asset in South-East Asia. For China, our value would only exist in the negative sense.

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What Is Wrong with the West’s Economies?

Mark Thoma is skeptical that … the answer to our inequality/job satisfaction problems lies in the prescription given in What Is Wrong with the West’s Economies?.

Of the concrete steps that would help to widen flourishing, a reform of education stands out. The problem here is not a perceived mismatch between skills taught and skills in demand. … The problem is that young people are not taught to see the economy as a place where participants may imagine new things, where entrepreneurs may want to build them and investors may venture to back some of them. It is essential to educate young people to this image of the economy.

It will also be essential that high schools and colleges expose students to the human values expressed in the masterpieces of Western literature, so that young people will want to seek economies offering imaginative and creative careers. Education systems must put students in touch with the humanities in order to fuel the human desire to conceive the new and perchance to achieve innovations. This reorientation of general education will have to be supported by a similar reorientation of economic education.

We will all have to turn from the classical fixation on wealth accumulation and efficiency to a modern economics that places imagination and creativity at the center of economic life.

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What heresy from a Capitalist economist! Wealth accumulation is not the point of Capitalism!

I suppose this is a tacit admission that Capitalism is not living up to its ideal as a panacea for all social ills. The system is not delivering benefits to the poor because people are using it the wrong way!

This is the major blind-spot of all Capitalist economists—this is how Capitalism works. It is all about wealth accumulation. Wealth accumulates to the most efficient, the most ruthless, the most politically connected.

Wealth means accumulation of even more wealth. The less efficient, the less ruthless, the less politically connected are impoverished in the process and eventually discarded from the system altogether.

Changing how people see the world means changing the social, economic, and political systems that form those views. You cannot change one without changing the others.

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Obama Administration Throws Workers an Overtime Crumb — We Want the Whole Cake

Stephanie McMillan writes that Obama Administration Throws Workers an Overtime Crumb — We Want the Whole Cake.

Why even settle for a crumb? What about all the wages they stole through unpaid overtime up to now? They should RETURN ALL OF IT. How much: a year’s worth? Five years? Fifty? The amount will be determined by our collective strength, because they’ll never voluntarily return even a penny.

We gain nothing unless we fight for it. If we’re going to be strong enough to win our rights, then we need to organize. If establishment unions hold us back or sell us out—which happens all too often—then we need to organize on our own, into a new labor movement that workers control. The capitalists returned a crumb of what they owe us. Let’s band together and prevent them from taking it away again. Then we can start thinking about the rest of the cake.

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Knife at its throat, Greece yields to Troika brutality

Dick Nichols writes that with Knife at its throat, Greece yields to Troika brutality.

In this situation it is important to keep present that the basic reason for the signing of the Eurosummit deal was the SYRIZA-led government’s isolation. The energies of the left outside Greece are therefore best devoted to doing everything we can to strengthen understanding of Greece’s predicament and solidarity with its struggles, and to exposing the complicity of conservative and social-democratic governments in the European establishment’s ongoing war on the Greek threat to “There Is No Alternative”.

Greece has lost a battle—most probably unavoidably—but its courageous struggle against capitalist austerity continues. It must not be left to fight alone.

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Without a revolutionary movement, the Greece people were destined to be crushed. There are very few options under Capitalism for survival. Greece was given none.

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Conservatism with a Heart? It’s Called Socialism

Ted Rall writes that Conservatism with a Heart? It’s Called Socialism.

Boiled down to its essentials, the argument of would-be conservative reformers like Brooks is that it sure would be swell if capitalism could be made fairer. But the thing about capitalism is that unfairness isn’t an unfortunate side effect of this particular economic system. It’s a core feature.

Capitalism without unfairness and built-in inequality isn’t capitalism; it’s socialism. You don’t have to be Karl Marx to have been able to personally observe the tendency of power and money to aggregate into fewer and fewer hands over time, what we call monopolization, and to leverage those advantages in order to gather an even greater share.

…

Redistribution of income. And wealth. That’s the ticket to solving income inequality. When the time comes, however, I’m going to trust my local Communists — who have been pushing for and thinking about it forever — a hell of a lot more than the reform conservatives who think Ronald Reagan, who trashed the social safety net, was some kind of hero.

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Not strictly true. The difference between Capitalism and Socialism is about who owns and controls the means of production: Capitalists or workers. In this advanced stage of Capitalism, the struggle is between the bankers and the workers.

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Greece Bailout: Selling Out to Scummy International Bankers

Ted Rall writes about Greece Bailout: Selling Out to Scummy International Bankers.

What is the point, from the standpoint of Greek voters, of electoral democracy, if elected “representatives” are elected with clear messages, reinforced by clear mandates delivered via referenda, who then ignore those popular directives when they feel squeezed by the so-called “great powers” in distant, fancy conference rooms?

If a national desire as clear-cut as that delivered by the Greek public — No. More. Austerity! — can be shrugged off just like that, it becomes clear that there is only one route left to effect real change: violence, revolution, violent revolution (which are one and the same).

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Revolution without a revolutionary party to guide it is likely to fail.

SYRIZA is not a revolutionary party. It wants to work within the system as do the majority of the Greeks.

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Former US Democrat Presidential Candidate Calls for Internment Camps for "Disloyal Americans" Americans

Mike Shedlock writes that Former US Democrat Presidential Candidate Calls for Internment Camps for "Disloyal Americans" Americans.

Idiotic "thought police" attacks on the constitution come from the right and the left.

Wesley Clark, like countless Republican constitutional hypocrites has just thrown his hat into the ring for perpetual war.

Don't like it? Then you belong in an internment camp until you do.

Is Clark's position any different from what happened in Nazi Germany or Iraq? What about China, or for that matter ISIS?

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Are the elites so wrapped up in themselves that they cannot see it is their actions and attitudes that are radicalising people?

All we need is someone to say Let them eat cake.

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Greece is not just a tragedy, but a lie

John Pilger writes that Greece is not just a tragedy, but a lie.

An historic betrayal has consumed Greece. Having set aside the mandate of the Greek electorate, the Syriza government has willfully ignored last week's landslide "No" vote and secretly agreed a raft of repressive, impoverishing measures in return for a "bailout" that means sinister foreign control and a warning to the world.

…

For a small country such as Greece, the euro is a colonial currency: a tether to a capitalist ideology so extreme that even the Pope pronounces it "intolerable" and "the dung of the devil". The euro is to Greece what the US dollar is to remote territories in the Pacific, whose poverty and servility is guaranteed by their dependency.

…

The leaders of Syriza are revolutionaries of a kind — but their revolution is the perverse, familiar appropriation of social democratic and parliamentary movements by liberals groomed to comply with neo-liberal drivel and a social engineering whose authentic face is that of Wolfgang Schauble, Germany's finance minister, an imperial thug. Like the Labour Party in Britain and its equivalents among former social democratic parties such as the Labor Party in Australia, still describing themselves as "liberal" or even "left", Syriza is the product of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, "schooled in postmodernism", as Alex Lantier wrote.

For them, class is the unmentionable, let alone an enduring struggle, regardless of the reality of the lives of most human beings. Syriza's luminaries are well-groomed; they lead not the resistance that ordinary people crave, as the Greek electorate has so bravely demonstrated, but "better terms" of a venal status quo that corrals and punishes the poor. When merged with "identity politics" and its insidious distractions, the consequence is not resistance, but subservience. "Mainstream" political life in Britain exemplifies this.

This is not inevitable, a done deal, if we wake up from the long, postmodern coma and reject the myths and deceptions of those who claim to represent us, and fight.

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Betrayal — that is a harsh word.

We must smash the lie of There Is No Alternative. We must do this daily through experience, reflection, and action. Then repeat.

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Britain's Left Unity on the struggle of the Greek people

Kate Hudson writes for Britain's Left Unity on the struggle of the Greek people.

Since its election in January, the SYRIZA-led government has been caught in a contradiction: it was elected by the people to oppose austerity but to keep Greece in the Eurozone. That has been a consistent theme throughout, even during and after the referendum which saw over 61% voting No to the terms of the bailout. The government has tried through negotiation to fulfil that mandate but that has clearly not been possible. The EU states and institutions will not allow a radical left government to succeed. A successful challenge to neoliberalism by Greece would have opened the door wide to further challenges across Europe, including Spain, which has seen recent electoral victories for left coalitions. TThe EU states and institutions have recognised the challenge and are waging class war, not only against Greece and its people but against all the peoples of Europe.

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Let no revolutionary misunderstand: there is no path to Socialism outside of revolution. The Capitalists have consistently demonstrated that they will ruthlessly and relentlessly defend Capitalism against all-comers.

Socialism is not won through the ballot-box. A socialist government, such as SYRIZA, can get into office, but the institutions of Capitalism will prevent it from implementing its election promises.

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Brutality towards Greece

Let no one misunderstand: the brutality shown to Greece is meant to be a lesson to everyone. There is no alternative to following the dictates of the bankers.

As Sinn Fein condemns treatment of Greece as 'alarming', says EU framework shattered, Gerry Adams says that:

“Today could well be the day when all pretence of a Europe of equal states and people was lost and replaced by a Europe of the powerful and the wealthy.”

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Kenneth Thomas, in Impending disaster in Greece, writes that:

The Germans, it would appear, have decided to push Greece from the eurozone. But demanding an end to Greek sovereignty and austerity as far as the eye can see is simply evil. Moreover, it negates the long-successful stand of European Central Bank (ECB) president Mario Draghi that the ECB would do “whatever it takes” to keep the eurozone intact. The ECB’s reputation would be damaged greatly should crisis recur in Spain, Portugal, Ireland, etc., now that the world knows the ECB will not do “whatever it takes.” This is a recipe for a new recession in Europe spreading from the EU periphery.

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Kevin O'Rourke says that 'Negotiating with Germany is a Waste of Time':

…I don’t suppose that any other left wing party that may come to power in the future seeking to challenge the current European economic policy mix will be as feckless as Syriza. The lesson that they will draw from this debacle is: negotiating with Germany is a waste of time; be willing to act unilaterally, be willing to default unilaterally, have a plan for achieving primary surplus if you haven’t already achieved it, have a hard default and euro exit (now possible, thanks to the Germans) option in your back pocket, and be willing to use it at the first sign of hassle from the ECB. A deal could have been done today that would have strengthened the Eurozone, but instead it has just become a lot more fragile.

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Bill McBride comments on Greek Deal:

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

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Greece Over the Brink

Mark Thoma posts an excerpt from Greece Over the Brink, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times.

Don’t be taken in by claims that troika officials are just technocrats explaining to the ignorant Greeks what must be done. These supposed technocrats are in fact fantasists who have disregarded everything we know about macroeconomics, and have been wrong every step of the way. This isn’t about analysis, it’s about power — the power of the creditors to pull the plug on the Greek economy, which persists as long as euro exit is considered unthinkable.

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Greece is witnessing a power struggle between an elected government and the unelected bureaucrats of international financial institutions. This is a proxy struggle between workers and the financial capitalists.

The Capitalists know that defeat in Greece almost assuredly means defeat in Spain. They will pull out all stops to make the expected 'NO' vote on Sunday to be irrelevant. Democracy must not allowed to prevail over the Capitalists.

Workers will have to realise that victory in Athens, or even in Madrid is not the end of the story. It is not even the beginning of the end. Only by joining the struggle to raise ours and others political consciousness can we make this the end of the beginning.

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Rojava fights off new Islamic State attack

Tony Iltis writes that Rojava fights off new Islamic State attack.

The Kurdish town of Kobane in northern Syria was attacked on June 25 by forces from the self-styled Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, which crossed from Turkey. This was the first significant IS attack on the town since a five-month siege was repulsed in January.

The attack appears to be a Turkish-backed response to recent military gains made by the Kurdish-led forces of the Women's Defence Units (YPJ) and People's Defence Units (YPG).

…

The Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the Kurdish-led forces as “terrorists”. Pro-government Turkish media has spread false allegations accusing the YPG of ethnic cleansing, which have been repeated by pro-Turkish Syrian opposition groups and some Western media.

Erdogan opposes the Administration of Democratic Autonomy-aligned forces because of their ideological ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a liberation struggle in Turkish Kurdistan, and to the left-wing Peoples Democratic Party (HDP).

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Once again, the Capitalists want the world to know that “There is No Alternative”. They are prepared to use their enemy, IS, in attempt to destroy what they see as a far-greater threat: that of an alternative, functioning society based on grass-roots democracy and socialist ideals.

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Greece: It’s the Politics, Stupid!

Mark Thoma excerpts from Francesco Saraceno writing about Greece: It’s the Politics, Stupid!.

What the past week made clear is that this, and only this was the objective of the creditors. This has been since the beginning about politics. Creditors cannot afford that an alternative to policies followed since 2010 in Greece and in the rest of the Eurozone materializes.

Austerity and structural reforms need to be the only way to go. Otherwise people could start asking questions; a risk you don’t want to run a few months before Spanish elections. Syriza needed to be made an example. You cannot survive in Europe, if you don’t embrace the Brussels-Berlin Consensus. Tsipras, like Papandreou, was left with the only option too ask for the Greek people’s opinion, because there has been no negotiation, just a huge smoke screen. Those of us who were discussing pros and cons of the different options on the table, well, we were wasting our time.

And if Greece needs to go down to prove it, so be it. If we transform the euro in a club in which countries come and go, so be it.

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The Capitalist's mantra is “There is no alternative”. They set the rules and we have to play by them.

Control is now all that matters to the Capitalists as the system crumbles around them.

Innovation means loss of control. Unions mean loss of control. Democracy means loss of control. All of these must be suppressed for the “Greater Good of Capitalism”.

Capitalism is a wounded giant lashing out in pain and agony as it feels the life-force drain away from it.

Are we ready to form a new society from the ruins of Capitalism? Or are we just going to die as well?

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Managerialism vs innovation

Chris Dillow writes about Managerialism vs innovation.

If this is the case, then perhaps secular stagnation is not so much an aberrant feature of hierarchical capitalism as its logical consequence. I've said that stagnation might be the result of firms' wising up to the fact that a lot of innovation doesn't pay. But it might also be due to managerialism squeezing out the slack space in which innovation can occur.

Perhaps, then, Marx was right: whereas for a long time capitalism promoted growth, it no longer does so. As he put it:

At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.

I say all this to endorse a point made by Mariana Mazzucato - that the Labour party can no longer assume that the economy will grow nicely but must instead put in place the policies and institutions that generate such growth. How compatible such institutions are with managerialist capitalism is, however, an open question — and one which Labour isn't even asking.

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In other words, the current structure of Capitalism is strangling itself through choosing control over innovation. The Capitalists are afraid of losing control as they have run out of ideas. The historic mission of Capitalism has reached its conclusion.

Capitalism is a spent force. Control is the only thing left. To maintain control, Capitalism must give birth to Fascism so the Capitalist class rules through naked force rather than the prosmise of ever-growing prosperity. They are running out of carrots—only sticks remain.

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Dvide and Rule

Stephanie McMillan writes about how Capitalists Divide And Rule.

Many on the petit bourgeois left, with their simplistic and reformist approaches, are slowly becoming the back-up singers for a political orientation that may lead to the realization of a race war as an initial stage of fascism. Progressives may find themselves regretting an orientation that substitutes identity politics and social justice campaigns for class struggle at the center of their strategy for social change. Though the former may gain temporary reforms (which will be inevitably wiped out again by the deepening crisis of capital), only the latter can open a path to the possibility of uprooting all forms of oppression. To wipe out the conditions for oppression, including racism, the fight against it must be situated in the context of class struggle.

Given the lack of an autonomous working class movement in the US, this will be a difficult task. Due to this lack, and making it even more difficult, is the populist tendency among the working class of many social formations (including the US)—a self-defeating right populism that leads workers to blame each other for concessions and losses imposed by capital.

The capitalists are extremely practiced at “divide and rule,” and invent fictional social categories (races, nations) to divide us. When workers accept these capitalist inventions and even base our political line and practice on them, then we are tightening our own chains. Instead of competing with one another for crumbs in a foolish dance choreographed by our exploiters, we must eradicate racism, identity politics, and other bourgeois ideological traps from our ranks, and unite to target the actual source of our exploitation and oppression, our common enemy: the capitalist class.

The act of this killer in Charleston must be denounced for what it is. He is a racist, of course—but he is not simply a racist. On his T-shirt, he had a fascist logo. We must clearly understand that his racism is for fascism, corresponding to the political objectives of specific fractions of capital as they attempt to resolve the current economic crisis in their favor.

For us, there is only one way that the crisis of capitalism can be resolved favorably: by the social force of an organized and united international working class fighting for its interests, which are fundamentally antagonistic to capital, toward the total global annihilation of capitalism. Genuine proletarian revolutionary militants need to strengthen and grow our ranks, construct disciplined, autonomous organizations capable of understanding what is going on under the surface of events and what is driving them, and constantly develop a political orientation (and corresponding line) to shift the balance of power in our favor.

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McMillan is right to be worried about Fascism in the USA and elsewhere. The revolutionary left is very weak. Trade unions are under continual attack and are weakening. And the discontent among the petite bourgeois is growing daily. This is especially seen in the growth of the Tea Party in the USA.

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Letter from the US: The racist Charleston massacre has clear political roots

Barry Sheppard writes a Letter from the US: The racist Charleston massacre has clear political roots.

Racism, as an idea, is not the cause of the oppression and exploitation of Blacks, with the result that it is not possible to simply solve problem by changing people's minds. Rather than the cause, racists ideas are the result of Black oppression — and its ideological justification.

Racism is a useful tool for the capitalist ruling class to divide and weaken the working class.

The government maintains the system of national oppression evident in the police, courts and jails enforcement of it, but at the same time it pretends the US is no longer a racist society. The result is apparently contradictory government stances.

It is this system that spawns the racism that grips the minds of the Dylann Roofs of this world.

Emphasis Mine

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Since 2002, Right-wing White Terrorists have Killed More Americans Than Muslim Extremists

Cenk Uygur writes that Since 2002, Right-wing White Terrorists have Killed More Americans Than Muslim Extremists.

But headlines can mislead. The main terrorist threat in the United States is not from violent Muslim extremists, but from right-wing extremists. Just ask the police.

In a survey we conducted with the Police Executive Research Forum last year of 382 law enforcement agencies, 74 percent reported anti-government extremism as one of the top three terrorist threats in their jurisdiction; 39 percent listed extremism connected with Al Qaeda or like-minded terrorist organizations. And only 3 percent identified the threat from Muslim extremists as severe, compared with 7 percent for anti-government and other forms of extremism

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Once again, a white gunman is a deranged individual while a non-white one is a terrorist. Thus, the media continues to construct racism.

And, yet, the threat is always from the non-white people. The objective reality of white terrorism stands in contrast to the subjective reality of non-white terrorism.

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The Education-Deficit Does Not Explain Rising Inequality

Mark Thoma posts an extract from Discussion of Matthew Rognlie: "Deciphering the Fall and Rise in the Net Capital Share": The Honest Broker for the Week of June 14, 2015, b J. Bradford DeLong.

So what, then, is going on and driving the sharp rise in inequality, if not some interaction between our education policy on the one hand and the continued progress of technology on the other? Thomas Piketty (2014) has a guess. Piketty guesses that the real explanation is that 1914-1980 is the anomaly. Without great political disturbances, wealth accumulates, concentrates, and dominates. The inequality trends we have seen over the past generation are simply a return to the normal pattern of income distribution in an industrialized market economy in which productivity growth is not unusually fast and political, depression, and military shocks not unusually large and prevalent. …

Emphasis Mine

So, economists are rediscovering the key insights of Karl Marx about Capital.

What is also missing from Piketty's insight is that the period of 1917-89 was when an alternative political and economic system severely challenged the legitimacy and hegemony of Capitalism. This system crushed Nazi Fascism by destroying its armies at Stalingrad, Kursk, Belorussia, and Berlin.

While this system of Russian Socialism was fatally flawed through the dominance of the bureaucracy of the central planning, it was viable for over seventy (70) years. A feudal country of peasants was rapidly modernised to a point that it could crush the second largest industrialised country in the world: Nazi Germany.

The USSR also challenged the USA in the realm of scientific advance and research. Remember the space race!

The October Revolution was indeed one of the great political disturbances.

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The left, & social change

Chris Dillow writes about The left, & social change.

Perhaps another technology-induced social change is occuring. For example, the collapse in the cost of storing and transmitting information makes dencentralization — worker control — feasible where previously there was hierarchy. And lower capital requirements might be undermining the monopoly power of big capitalism in favour of smaller companies. We can encourage this for example by spending our money at indepedent coffee shops, craft breweries, worker coops or through P2P lending rather than at capitalist firms.  

What I'm saying here is that the transition to a better society might occur not (just) by protesting or waiting for a big bang revolution, but as a result of countless small individual actions, which might have echoes throughout society.  Obviously, I don't know what all these actions should be — but if the left can apply millions of brains to the question, it might find some answers.

Emphasis Mine

The technology-induced social change that is occurring in the complete automation of Department II. Workers who perform rote tasks are going to lose their livelihoods.

The workers who survive this purge are going to have skills and abilities are difficult to automate, or are of such a nature that automation devalues the product to the consumer. For example, an artist who paints by numbers can be replaced a machine, while an artist exceeds their customer's expectations is more likely to be employed. Another example is a programmer who codes through using Google, can be replaced by a program that does the same thing. Whereas a programmer who solves the problem that a customer has, is more likely to be employed.

I think that the sifting machine of Capitalism will favour the development of workers who think and see beyond their job. Besides being harder to replace by machines, they will develop the ability to stay ahead of the changing game.

The natural selection of the Capitalist workplace will workers develop their consciousness about the world around them as theories are rapidly destroyed in the furnace of Capitalism.

Workers who come together in revolutionary parties will be available to do develop faster through access to tested Marxist theory and practice. As these parties growth, the more ideas are generated and tested against reality until viable roads to Socialism are constructed.

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Liberal feminism's limits exposed

Meave Noonan writes that Liberal feminism's limits exposed.

A key weakness of the book is its relative silence around class, and failure to properly situate women’s oppression within the context of capitalism. A more sustained, overarching emphasis on the intersection of class with sexism, racism and other axes of oppression would help to illustrate the complex ways in which the system of capitalist accumulation benefits from the continued subjugation of women and other oppressed groups.

The changing nature of employment under neoliberalism is an issue which bears heavily on women, and it is therefore somewhat surprising that the book does not offer a more focused discussion of this issue.

Women are among those worst affected by the predominance of insecure work. The at-times outright contempt shown by both sides of Australian parliamentary politics for the disadvantage faced by single, working-class mothers casts the limits of liberal feminism into sharp relief.

The radical potential of feminist thought and action, if it is to achieve meaningful social change for all women, must be connected to the wider aim of creating a more just, egalitarian society.

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This requires the non-capitalists to see past the great national security swindle and be prepared to see why alliances for socialism must be built.

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Antonio Gramsci: Why alliances for socialism must be built

Bill Bonnar reflects on Antonio Gramsci: Why alliances for socialism must be built.

When Britain had an industrial economy this was a fairly straight forward question. Britain had a large working class centred on industry and organised through the trade union movement. This created the labour movement including a mass party of the working class; the Labour Party or in Italy; the Italian Communist Party.

For socialists the labour movement was the vehicle for socialism and their role was to work within that movement moving it to the left and resulting in the election of a left government. The only tactical discussion was whether socialists should work within the mass party of the working class or build a distinctive socialist party within the movement.

That was then. Today Britain is an archetypal post-industrial society. In Scotland the overwhelming majority of workers either work in the public sector or the retail and financial sectors. Manufacturing industry represents only a small proportion of the economy. The result is that the organised working class is much smaller and less influential than before and has largely lost its industrial base.

It alone can no longer be the same vehicle for socialist change it was in the past. It has to forge alliances with wider social forces seeking to build a broad based alliance against capitalism.

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The question is: how to build a revolutionary party without a proletariat? These days, the proletariat really exists in the developing world. Even there automation is dissolving the proletariat.

Automation is throwing up a new, but predicted, crisis in Capitalism: the extinguishment of profit. Without surplus value from exploited workers, there can be no profits. Without profits, Capitalism grinds to a halt.

Have we missed the revolutionary opportunity to create a Socialist society based on a viable working class? The means of production are becoming robots, and they are property that are owned by Capitalists.

Society has no future need for workers. Without workers, there can be no revolution. Without workers, there are no consumers.

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The great national security swindle

Tony Iltis debunks The great national security swindle.

The number of fatalities from terrorist attacks in Australia is tiny. Even taking into account Australians killed overseas, such as those killed in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing, there are far greater threats to Australian lives.

Safe Work Australia reported: “As at 26 May 2015, 65 Australian workers have been killed while at work” this year, and 38 women have been killed in domestic violence attacks since the start of the year.

The same state and federal governments that find unlimited resources to fund draconian “anti-terror” policing and prosecutions are unable to fund accommodation for women fleeing partner and ex-partner violence. “In March, there were 33,933 people on the Victorian public housing waiting list, with 9556 eligible for 'early' urgent housing, which includes many who have suffered family violence,” the May 22 Age said.

The Abbott government has responded to this threat to Australians' lives by further cutting funding to women's services and housing.

The government's response to the threat to Australians' lives from workplace accidents has been to foreshadow a further round of criminalisation of trade unions, particularly construction workers' unions, for attempting to protect occupational health and safety.

The Abbott government's attempts to convince Australians that they are threatened by terrorists was helped by the opening of the inquest into the deaths of Man Haron Monis and two hostages when he hijacked a Sydney cafe in December.

However, so far the evidence presented to the inquest suggests that Monis was an attention-seeking psychopath with a shotgun rather than an ideologically motivated terrorist.

Emphasis Mine

The issues of violence against women and the sacrifice of safety for profits do rank on the Capitalist agenda. The perpetrators are among the supporters of Capitalism: violent men and ruthless business owners. One does not attack one's own supporters.

Yet, the ruling class wants an enemy that we are all frightened of so that we need them to protect us.

We need to discover who the real enemy is.

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Introducing the Zero Labor Factory (90% Free Actually); Robots at Chili's, Applebees, Panera

Mike Shedlock writes about Introducing the Zero Labor Factory (90% Free Actually); Robots at Chili's, Applebees, Panera.

There is no shortage of labor. There is no shortage of skills either. Rather, there is a shortage of people willing to work for what factory owners are willing to pay.

And with cheap money everywhere you look, there is plenty of money at low rates to buy robots.

Emphasis Mine

Now, we are entering another crisis in Capitalism: the elimination of profits through the elimination of labour in Department II. Robots cannot be exploited to provide surplus value which is the origin of profit in a Capitalist system.

Robots work as fast as they are able. You cannot force robots to work faster or longer. Robots are unexploitable.

And the reduction in the labour forces means that there are less consumers able to buy the cheaper goods. Thus, Capitalists will find it harder to convert commodities into cash.

In a Communist society, all of these automated factories would be owned by the whole of society and the goods produced would be available to all as needed. Profit is no longer needed to keep the economy going.

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The vision thing

Chris Dillow writes about The vision thing.

One thing makes me hopeful — that this election was not a victory for austerity. The two main austerity parties — Tories and LibDems — saw their share of the vote fall by 14.4 percentage points whilst the two clearest anti-austerity parties (SNP and Greens) gained a combined 5.9 percentage points.  

On the other hand, though, I'm pessimistic. Ukip's success* shows that there is also public support for anti-market policies: Ukippers (and indeed many other voters) favour (pdf) controls on prices and rents as well as on immigration. And whilst a slogan "we'll put you in control" should in theory be a popular and coherent way of promoting worker democracy, I see very little public demand for it.

Emphasis Mine

I think the difference between austerity in Greece and the UK is that austerity in Greece was an existental crisis. Austerity there was threatening the idea of Greece. Whereas in the UK, austerity was a way of keeping the super-rich happy enough to stay there in order to spend enough to keep some of the people happy.

It is probably very early in the development of the workers' consciousness in places like the UK to talk about worker democracy. However, the workers in places like Venezuela can see the benefit of this through the nearness of Cuba and the effects in their daily lives. Thus, they are developing their consciousness at a faster pace.

This is probably due to that the effects of colonialism was never disguised in Venezuela as it was in the UK. Only a heavy hand of the military there kept things under control. Now that the military has aligned with the workers, there is an awakening of how society can be better organized.

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Guantanamo horrors shift military men's views

Phil Shannon writes that Guantanamo horrors shift military men's views.

The price Hicks was to pay for an end to his existence of fear, pain and despair, however, was the tag of “convicted terrorist”. This was despite Hicks’ guilty plea being coerced under extreme duress and, this year, ruled void in the US courts.

Mori, who retired from the military in 2012 and joined the social justice section of an Australian law firm, played a vital role in justice for Hicks. But he reminds the readers of his valuable book that “it was they, the Australian public, who got David Hicks out. I hope that the people of Australia never forget that.”

Like Mori, Sergeant Joe Hickman was “a patriotic American” and he was proud to finally get to “meet the enemy” as a guard in Guantanamo in 2006.

“Keeping terrorists locked up was an important job,” Hickman writes. But, like Mori, he also had standards, namely a belief in “basic American principles of decency”, even towards those he had been told were “evil men bent on destroying our country”.

Decency, however, was decidedly lacking in the “excessively punishing” detention conditions, cultural insults and “Rodney King-style beatings” of cuffed and shackled detainees.

Emphasis Mine

Here are two (2) US military men who defied the system because of their commitment to their principles. Their core values took them on a journey to the progressive side of politics. They had realized that the proclaimed conservative principles espoused by their superiors and government was a sham. They remembered that true conservatism is about the defence of rights. And they both paid a personal price for adherence to their principles.

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Rallies demand end to Aboriginal community closures

Rallies demand end to Aboriginal community closures.

Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance said: “These forced closures are indisputably an act of genocide that will have grave consequences for the people forced, under duress, to leave country. It is an act of cultural genocide that will damage vital cultural connections to country.

“It also signals an impending ecocide, resulting from the mining exploration and aggressive destruction of Aboriginal land that will inevitably ensue.”

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The mills of Capitalism grinds people down into autonomons shedding all identity: cultural; historical; personal. People should just be workers and consumers—nothing more.

Joining in this Aboriginal resistance helps us reclaim our own identity and humanity.

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"Serious" politics

Chris Dillow writes that "Serious" politics is flummery.

Politics has many ways of creating and sustaining what Paul Krugman calls "Very Serious People" and Nassim Nicholas Taleb "empty suits" — men (generally men) whose judgments (always judgments) are sensible, sober, and wrong. One reason why I'll be voting Green is to reject this flummery.

Another thing: one might ask why there is no political party with entirely sound economics — one that: is concerned about productivity; anti-austerian; pro-market (in the right institutional framework); and egalitarian. But that's another question. 

Emphasis Mine

Dillow writes that the mass media is complicit in framing the economic debate in terms that are acceptable to the Capitalist elite. The system cannot be questioned. Instead, the debate is about how to save the Capitalists from their own stupidity.

The idea of being pro-market is interesting. I suppose I am pro-market in that people should decide how the economy operates. It is ruled through the market of ideas and discussion.

Society, as a whole, should take responsibility for how the productive forces are used.

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Baltimore Riots Were Caused by Capitalism and Cops, Not Poverty

Ted Rall writes that the Baltimore Riots Were Caused by Capitalism and Cops, Not Poverty.

Liberals believe capitalism is a good system prone to excesses, which they propose to mitigate via reform and regulation: poverty, income inequality and racism associated with class are flaws in an otherwise laudable economic model.

But that’s not true. Poverty, and the racism that goes with it, are features, not bugs. The ruling classes require a permanent underclass to exploit directly, and serve as a warning to workers not to ask for big raises, shorter hours or other improvements in workplace conditions — be quiet, lest you wind up like them.

Emphasis Mine

Racism is also used to divide the working class against itself. Other sources of division are sexism, homophobia and xenophobia.

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Venezuela: Priorities of a Socialist Government

Venezuela shows what Socialism is like.

Venezuela slashes military budget by 34%

Social housing project delivers 700,000th home

This shows the priorities of a Socialist government.

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The Cops Have Met Their Enemies: They Are Us

Ted Rall writes that The Cops Have Met Their Enemies: They Are Us.

In many American cities, particularly those with majority white police forces in minority neighborhoods, the police are an occupying army. They view the locals not as citizens whose taxes pay their salaries, who are in fact their bosses, but as dangerous, troublesome rabble to be contained, controlled and suppressed. The militarization of domestic policing, which dates back to the 1950s and the establishment of the first SWAT team in Los Angeles, further separates gendarmes from civilians via training derived from warfare, heavy body armor and wildly excessive firearms.

Trust in the cops is at a record low, thanks in part to ubiquitous cell phone and security camera videos that document police abuse so meticulously that it’s no longer possible even for white law-and-order types to deny accusations by blacks that the cops are treating them like dirt. Look for the cop-citizen gap to widen further as the police increasingly treat whites — for example, during the crackdown against the Occupy movement — badly as well.

The cops have met their enemy, and he is us.

And now there’s no denying it.

Emphasis Mine

This is also known as 4GW. And also as Class Warfare.

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Heartless, clueless?

Chris Dillow asks if Capitalists are really Heartless, clueless?.

One is a form of naive cynicism which regards inequality and injustice as natural and inevitable, and so attempts to fight it must be futile and foolish whilst defenders of the system are hard-headed realists.

The other is a tendency to underweight the incompetence of those who are on the side of the rich.

Hostile portrayals of capitalists have for decades been of Gradgrindian figures grinding the faces of the poor rather than of bumbling oafs. And today bankers are routinely described as greedy when in fact what distinguishes them from the rest of us is their stupidity: most of us like a pound, but we didn't destroy an entire industry.

What this misses is the likelihood that a lot of success in business might be due to dumb luck.

In this sense, the claim that the the rich are heartless, by understating their stupidity, actually helps to legitimate inequality.

Emphasis Mine

What motivates the Capitalists is the defence of their class interests. And what defines their class is the control of the means of production. Thus, their class interest is to preserve that control.

How that control has evolved over time has been from direct control of personal property to the control of providing finance necessary for the operation of a business.

In the early days of Capitalism, the Capitalist was the man who owned and ran the business. This is the small businessman. This is the image that the petite bourgeoisie has of the Capitalist despite the radical changes over the past five (5) centuries. The confrontation between Capitalist and their enemies was at personal level and direct.

The capitalist then evolved to the stockholder who sat on the board of directors. Control and ownership was shared, but the Capitalist was still visible at the head of the firm. This started with the East India Company and its ilk in the seventeenth century and continued until the late nineteenth century with Andrew Carnegie, J.P.Morgan, etc.. The confrontation now evolved to be between masses of people: unions versus troops and police. The proxy war was waged throught the political system.

Nowadays, the Capitalist controls the finance provided to businesses. The control of businesses is indirect. Capital is owned—not the business. The political process has been subverted by international organisations such as the World Bank, IMF, ECB, WTO, and through treaties such as 'free-trade' deals. The Capitalist has vanished from the real world, yet their power is greater than before.

Now, the Capitalists dare to discipline entire nations: Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Spain, Italy, Iran, China, North Korea, etc.. Anyone who defies the existing world order can expect to be attacked and destroyed.

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Productivity, Robots, China, Growth

Mike Shedlock writes about Productivity, Robots, China, Growth.

Congratulations. You are more productive than ever. Just don't expect to be paid more for it. In reality, some machine is doing all that for you.

Emphasis Mine

With China rapidly automating, the idea of cheap, replacable labour is in the dustbin of history.

This poses two (2) problems for Capitalism: reduction in the available surplus value; and reduction in the purchasing power of the working class. Without an income, workers cannot purchase goods and services, and profits cannot be materialised. Without workers, Capitalists cannot convert the surplus value of labour into profit.

Total automation is the death of Capitalism.

Workers can only survive in such a system by finding niches that are difficult to automate. This requires training and development. Workers will have to become self-directed because businesses are losing the profitability to do this for their workers.

In other words, workers will have to think like Communists in such a world. They will have to develop an appreciation of the Marxist critique of Capitalism so that they can understand how Capitalism works. They will have to develop their own abilities—they can no longer be passive receptables of corporate wisdom.

Economic survival means that workers cannot wait for governments to come to their aid. Workers have to develop their own abilities and solidarity.

But this only takes us part of the way towards a Communist revolution. Whether workers, in general, have the stomach for this remains to be seen.

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Syria, Yemen Conflicts only seem to be about Sunni-Shiite from 30,000 Feet

Juan Cole writes that Syria, Yemen Conflicts only seem to be about Sunni-Shiite from 30,000 Feet.

JUAN COLE: I see evidence of al-Qaeda thinkers, like Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was the number-two man for a long time, before bin Laden was killed, being influenced by Marxist thought, and radical Marxism. This is very clear in the technical terms that the Muslim far-right uses. They talk about a vanguard. This was a Leninist term. In some radical forms of Marxism, activists were impatient with the working class, which seemed not to want to fulfill its historical duty by rising up against the business classes, and so it engaged in sabotage—not everywhere all the time, but there were some groups that did that kind of thing in hopes of provoking a class war, because they knew the business classes would call upon their agents, the police, to crack down hard on sabotage and workers’ activism and so forth.

I think that al-Qaeda picked up this kind of thinking from the Marxist fringe in places like Egypt and so forth. I think that it is a deliberate strategy on their part, the sharpening of contradictions, or the heightening of contradictions, as it’s called. I think it explains everything that happened in Iraq.

I remember reading a New York Times piece in 2005 or so that al-Qaeda in Iraq had blown up a pet shop. There were pieces of rabbits and snakes wiggling on the ground. This author in The New York Times expressed himself with amazement. He said, “We should get out of Iraq now, because we can’t understand why you would do that. And if you don’t understand what your enemy is doing, then you should not be there.”

I understood exactly what they were doing. They were hitting soft targets. They were hitting businesses. It was a Shiite-owned pet shop. What they were trying to do was to get the Shiites’ goat in Iraq. They were trying to provoke a civil war, because they hoped that the Shiite clans who were being hit would go and attack Sunnis, and if they went and attacked the Sunnis, then al-Qaeda could go to the Sunnis and say, “Gee, you seem to be being attacked. We could protect you.”

So by provoking attacks on their own community, they actually could parlay that into power.

At the time, I was skeptical that they could succeed in this, but you come to last June, and they took over Mosul, the second-largest city in the country, in exactly this way—by continually provoking the Shia, getting reprisals going, and then going to the Sunnis against whom the reprisals were waged and saying, “You need protection.” By that time, the Mosulites said, “Yes, we do. Would you please come in,” even though Mosulites are cosmopolitan, secular-minded people. But they were willing to bring in this radical fundamentalist group just because they were tired of being targeted by the Shiite government.

Emphasis Mine

Marxists should always be sharpening the contradictions—but only through political means. We are offering an alternative political explanation for events. We want to show that there are Communist and Capitalist narratives at play in the world around us.

Marxists have rejected the terrorist mentality. Terrorism, as shown by events over the past twenty (20) years, has strengthen the Capitlist state through greater legal power, greater reliance on force, and the ready support of such measures by the population. Support for the government is almost reflexive once the terrorism aspect is highlighted.

The Capitalist is always willing to suppress the working class whenever it feels its interests are threatened. But it can, and has, retreat before determined resistance by a significant portion of the working class.

Marxists, at this stage of the struggle, are engaged in educating and radicalising the working class through mass actions, propaganda, and agitation. We join in the daily struggle to sharpen our political awareness of how the world works.

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Protests against racist police killings sweep US

Protests against racist police killings sweep US.

Protesters demanding widespread reform of the police took the streets on April 14, as killings of unarmed black men have become all-too frequent in US headlines.

Activists from various right groups rallied in different cities throughout the country. Signs carried by the protesters in New York read: “Stop Police brutality and mass murder.” Protesters spread the message on social media websites using hashtags, including the popular #BlackLivesMatter.

Emphasis Mine

The thinking behind these protests is mistaken: the police are not there to defend society against the criminals; but to defend the rich criminals against the poor members of society. This attitude determines the direction of police violence which is against the poor.

There are the misguided police officers who believe that they serve the community. It takes some time for the real situation to penetrate their thick skulls. Then they either leave or succumb to the pervasive corruption that the police are forced to immerse themselves.

In theoretical terms, the state serves the interests of the ruling class. And the police are merely the agents of violence in the service of the state. Everything flows from that.

In order to stop the police brutality, it is necessary to change the social order into a classless society.

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Huge rallies against WA community closures

Rachel Evans and Jemma Nott write that there were Huge rallies against WA community closures in Sydney and Melbourne.

Rebel Hanlon, assistant secretary of the NSW construction division of the CFMEU denounced capitalism’s role in the oppression of Indigenous people, including mining companies' land grabs and Deicorp, the developers threatening to move Indigenous people off the Block in Redfern.

He pledged the unions support for the campaign to maintain Aboriginal housing in Redfern. A contingent of Maori construction workers gave an energetic solidarity Haka.

Emphasis Mine

Here we have an advanced worker understanding and articulating the linkage between oppression of Aborigines and the engine of Capitalism. The building unions have a long history of workers educating themselves in the workings of Capitalism. This is why the governments have been keen to quash the militancy of the building unions.

The latest attempt to quash the CFEMU was commented on in Royal Commission 'prejudiced and biased':

Any defiance against the ruling class is a crime. A crime is defying the natural order of things.

And since Capitalism is currently the true natural order of things, workers who ask for and fight for decent working conditions and wages are against the natural order of things in which the Capitalists alone determine what is right and fair.

As I wrote in State governments share blame for (Not) Closing the Gap:

To really solve this problem requires all non-indigineous Australians to confront their racist attitudes towards Aborigines, and begin to redress the wrongs inflicted on them.

This requires that we acknowledge the racist basis for Capitalism and the invasion of Australia.

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Israeli Forces Target Journalists in West Bank

Mel Frykberg writes that Israeli Forces Target Journalists in West Bank.

On another occasion, I was accompanying a Palestinian ambulance which was trying to reach Jelazon camp to help Palestinian youths injured during clashes with the IDF.

Several military jeeps blocked the roads leading to the camp and refused to move when asked by the ambulance driver.

After I got out and spoke to the soldiers, showing them my credentials yet again, the jeep moved to the side and allowed the ambulance to continue.

The Israelis still appear to be sensitive to a certain degree to how they are portrayed in the Western media.

This has become apparent to me when covering violent clashes. As soon as it has been established that I am Australian, white and a woman, the aggression of the Israeli soldiers has abated and they have tried to get me on side by asking me if I am alright and warning me to take care,

However, I know that I too could easily fall prey to Israeli ammunition if I am not exceedingly careful so, on this basis, I choose to stay well away from the frontlines of clashes.

Emphasis Mine

Here is someone using their white privilege to benefit the oppressed, but they are acutely of the limits of that privilege as Rachel Corrie found to her cost.

Given the sensitivity of the Israeli government to pressure from Westerners, we should be our relative privilege to relieve the sufferings of the Palestinians through supporting the BDS campaign.

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