Kurdistan: Political and cultural revolution unfolds in Rojava

Evangelos Aretaios writes about how the Political and cultural revolution unfolds in Rojava, Kurdistan.

The Rojava model is based on two main pillars which may prove very efficient in the strengthening of democracy in the region. The first pillar is direct democracy as the basis of a communalist system in which citizens participate actively in decision-making and the management of the polis, from the neighborhood to the municipality and as far as the government. The second pillar, equally revolutionary, is the denial of the nation state structure and philosophy as such. In Rojava, many different religious and ethnic groups—Christians, Yezidis, Arabs, Turkmens, Chechens, Armenians—live together with the large Kurdish majority. By officially and insistently denying the nation state and by trying to create administrative structures that incorporate these different elements, the Rojava model gives to minorities a participatory role unprecedented in the Middle East — a role as equals in the management of the polis.

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Nationalism was the driving force behind Capitialism. It gave an identity to people who had thrown off the paternal relationships of Fedualism. A person was no longer defined by whom they owed service to, but by the nation they belonged to.

The creation of a nation expands the consciounsess of its citizens beyond that of the village. But the nation creates a new boundary that now restricts the growth of consciousness of humanity. We cling onto our nationality as fiercely as we once did with our feudal identity.

We need to burst this prison of nationalism, and embrace the universal humanity.

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Alienation: the non-issue

Chris Dillow writes about Alienation: the non-issue.

This poses the question: why isn't there more demand at the political level for fulfilling work?

The question gains force from two facts. First, autonomy at work is a big factor in life-satisfation. Politicians who want to improve well-being - as Cameron once claimed to - should therefore take an interest in working conditions. Secondly, workers who are happy - less alienated - are more productive. Less alienation should therefore help to close the productivity gap between the UK and other rich nations, which in turn should raise real wages.

Despite all this, working conditions are barely on the agenda at all in this election. Politically, the workplace is, as Marx said, a "hidden abode."

One reason for this is that politics has largely ceased to be a vehicle for improving lives. It is instead a form of narcissistic tribalism and low-grade celebrity tittle-tattle: when will Cameron resign? Who'll replace him? What does Miliband's kitchen look like?

And in this way, politics serves the interests of the boss class and not workers. Capitalist power is exercised not just consciously and explicitly, but by determining what becomes a political demand and what doesn't. Here's Steven Lukes:

Is it not the supreme exercise of power to get another or others to have the desires you want them to have - that is, to secure their compliance by controlling their thoughts and desires?...Is it not the supreme and most insidious use of power to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things?

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Workers should be struggling to make working the supreme achievement in life. It is through labour that we create a more just and harmonious society. Workers should determine what use the fruits of our labour are put to.

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Who Is This “Together” Starbucks’ Howard Schultz Is Talking About?

Ted Rall asks Who Is This “Together” Starbucks’ Howard Schultz Is Talking About?.

He’s considered a hero, and rightly so. Still, when French General Charles de Gaulle gave his most famous speech, the Appeal of 18 June 1940, not everyone was moved. “Nothing is lost for France!” the future leader of the Free French intoned into the BBC microphone to the people of France, who had just lost their country to the Nazi invasion. “The flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished!”

“Easy for him to say!” my grandfather raged. “He’s sitting over there in London, sipping tea! Here we’ve got the krauts up our ass!”

He changed his mind later. But still: terrible first communiqué.

Communications 101: If you hope others to follow you as a leader, remember who and where and what you are.

If you don’t, others will.

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This is a very important for Communists. Ww must be workers who share the struggles and privations of other workers.

It is very easy for me, a priviliged worker, to blog about Commmunism and Capitalism. But I can really talk to other privileged workers.

But this does not mean I should keep silent. All workers are needed to build the Communist society. It behoves us all, priviliged, skilled, non-skilled, and unemployed, to remember that we are all workers.

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Intergenerational report a dishonest weapon of the 1%

Alex Bainbridge writes that Intergenerational report a dishonest weapon of the 1%.

Further, Australia's GDP per capita — a rough measure of the country's wealth — continues to grow dramatically. In fact, per capita GDP growth has massively outpaced the growth in real wages, which is something every worker should remember next time the boss says there isn't enough money for a pay rise.

It is also something we should remember when the government says it cannot afford education or pensions.

The real alternative to Abbott's budget cuts — and the subtle or not so subtle media message that we cannot afford decent pensions, education and health care — is to take the money from the super rich through a fairer taxation system. The government now pays superannuation tax concessions to the very wealthiest that are comparable to the entire cost of the age pension.

A rich country like Australia should be talking about lowering the retirement age and raising pensions at the same time as we plan increased spending on renewable energy and other measures that will truly make lives better for future generations.

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I am two minds about retirement: escape from Capitalism; and exclusion from Communism.

The escape from Capitalism means that workers are no longer alienated from their labour. Retired workers are now free to pursue meaningful and fulfilling labour if their retirement benefits permit it.

Therein lies the paradox of retirement under Capitalism. Alienated labour is replaced by grinding poverty. But that is the tyranny of Capitalism: unless one contributes to the growth in profits, one is of no use and therefore denied sustenance.

Whereas, under Communism, retirement means exclusion from the economic and political system. Workers contribute to the growth of society and the spread of benefits to all people. Retirement means turning back on society.

One may do different jobs as one ages but the contributions are still valued because they are needed. Being a worker means being a citizen.

Through labour society is built and enhanced. Withdrawal from the labour means withdrawal from society.

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End the suffering in the greyhound racing industry

Greg McFarlane wants to End the suffering in the greyhound racing industry.

Greyhounds who make it to the racecourse commonly endure injuries and all are retired by the age of three or four. The reward most dogs get is a death before their fifth birthday.

The racing industry treats animals this way because it exploits and objectifies them to make money. It uses them for entertainment and profit, placing no value on their sentience.

This multi-billion dollar industry contributes to human suffering in other ways. It encourages gambling —which can be highly destructive, ruining lives and devastating families and communities.

Greyhound racing —in its present form —is not a sport in any real way. It is big business, with big cash rewards for those prepared to gamble.

…

The Socialist Alliance opposes the greyhound racing industry.

It calls for an immediate end to government (and Labor opposition) support for the industry and enforce the ban on using live bait.

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Capitalism is the root of all evil.

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US finally agrees David Hicks is innocent

Richard Jackson writes that US finally agrees David Hicks is innocent.

Hicks’ problem with the media, he says, is that in the seven years he has been free, they continue to fixate on what he was doing in Afghanistan. Different media outlets continually tell him he has to answer this, before they will move on to other questions, such as his treatment at the hands of the US and Australia’s complicity in it.

Hicks spent five and a half years imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, after being sold by the Northern Alliance to the US military in Afghanistan in December 2001. While in US custody he was subject to an array of torture techniques, including, beatings, his right hand being fractured, being deprived of sleep through constant noise and lighting, being threatened with rape and torture, being isolated and put in solitary confinement, being shackled and put in stress positions.

He still suffers from his injuries, reeling off the problems: left knee, right elbow, wrists.

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Back in 2005 while discussing the differing treatment of Hicks, Habib, and the Danes, the following comment was made:

The different treatment can be explained by the capitalist media and Australian government's keenness to condemn a left-wing government such as Laos, while slavishly applauding the attempts of the US to run roughshod over an Australian citizens rights.

The media has to follow the government's script of who is an official enemy. Hicks has to be presumed to be guilty of something other than adolescent stupidty. By persisting in this line of questioning, the media avoids the hard questions of why the Australian government is negligent in the defence of Australian citizens' right when the US government, but will move heaven and earth when the Indonesian government.

The unspoken answer, as always, is the sacrosant American Alliance. Everything is sacrificed upon the altar for this false god.

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Pepperoni Turns Partisan

Mark Thoma asks Why are Republicans in the grips of "Big Pizza"? in response to Paul Krugman noting that Pepperoni Turns Partisan.

At a still deeper level, health experts may say that we need to change how we eat, pointing to scientific evidence, but the Republican base doesn’t much like experts, science, or evidence. Debates about nutrition policy bring out a kind of venomous anger … that is all too familiar if you’ve been following the debate over climate change.

Pizza partisanship, then, sounds like a joke, but it isn’t. It is, instead, a case study in the toxic mix of big money, blind ideology, and popular prejudices that is making America ever less governable.

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Here we have the profit motive driving pizza companies to promote a certain ideology (of individualism) that is detrimental to the health of their customers. This ideology has captured a political party through money and support. Thus, the state is bent to supporting the pizza companies.

Individualism is not the problem, but the profit motive. Individualism can be constructed to grow healthy human beings.

The laws of motion of Capitalism forbid the pizza companies from acting in any other way. Under Capitalism, they continually grow profits in order to survive. Not to do so results in destruction.

We must change how society operates in order to avoid these problems.

Change requires overcoming the perverted ideologies, and comfortable prejudices.

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How Higher Education Perpetuates Intergenerational Inequality

Mark Thoma writes that there is Bad news for those who propose education as the solution to inequality as Tim Taylor decribes How Higher Education Perpetuates Intergenerational Inequality.

The effects of these patterns on inequality of incomes in the United States are clearcut: higher income families are better able to provide financial and other kinds of support for their children, both as they grow up, and when it comes time to attend college, and when it comes time to find a job after college. In this way, higher education has become a central part part of the process by which high-income families can seek to assure that their children are more likely to have high incomes, too.

And in Australia, the idea of equal access to higher education has eroded away to a phantom. I was the beneficiary of free university education. Now, young people now longer have the same opportunities as my generation did.

The higher education sector is now seen as a major export driver as students from developing countries are stripped of their families' hard earned cash and given dubious qualifications. This is part of Australia's version of imperialism.

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The Dynamism of American Islam

Jonathan Curiel discusses The Dynamism of American Islam.

Islam’s diversity in the United States offers an inspiring vision of the religion. When Malcolm X went on the hajj to Saudi Arabia in 1964, he was shocked to witness a similar diversity, and it prompted him to abandon his beliefs in the Nation of Islam for traditional Sunni Islam. He said he’d encountered Muslims “of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans” who were “all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood.”

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Malcolm X was forced to confront his hatred of white people through the hajj. He had to throw away many of his prejudices. And in doing so, he matured considerably.

But in doing so, he incurred the fatal wrath of his former comrades in the Nation of Islam. He knew it was dangerous, but he persist because he was true to himself. Integrity can be fatal.

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Be Calm, Robots Aren’t About to Take Your Job

Mark Thoma comments on Be Calm, Robots Aren’t About to Take Your Job, MIT Economist Says..

I've been arguing for a long time that in coming decades the major question will be about distribution, not production. I'm not very worried about stagnation, etc. — we'll have plenty of stuff to go around. I'm worried about, to quote the title of a political science textbook I used many, many, many years ago as an undergraduate, "who gets the cookies?" not how many cookies we're able to produce So I agree with Autor on this point:

Mr. Autor … added, “If we automate all the jobs, we’ll be rich—which means we’ll have a distribution problem, not an income problem.”

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Karl Marx made the same point in discussing Capitalism. The main problem has always been one of distribution.

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ALBA after ten years

John Riddell looks at ALBA after ten years.

During a visit to the Penobscot indigenous nation in Maine a few years ago, I found they were receiving material aid from Venezuela, in a program that also assisted Black communities in the United States. The Bolivarians thus confirmed the vision of Malcolm X, murdered 50 years ago today, who saw the freedom struggle in the global South as a beacon of hope for his people. ALBA has set an example for such mutual assistance, in a spirit of solidarity, among its members and also with non-member countries in the region.

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Nothing marks the moral poverty of the USA than this: poor countries are assisting the poor in the USA.

This is building the solidarity among the international proletariat. Workers, by helping each other, develop their political consciousness about the operations and morality of the Capitalist system.

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No, SYRIZA has not surrendered

Tom Walker writes that No, SYRIZA has not surrendered.

Insofar as the Syriza government is having to compromise — and clearly it is making compromises short of surrender — that represents not so much their failure as our own. Syriza has always been clear that we cannot expect Greece to defeat austerity alone.

The various European ministers on the other end of the continuing negotiation with the Greek government need to be feeling the pressure. We need a huge movement across Europe in solidarity with Greece, and we need to be throwing ourselves into building that movement, not reclining in our armchairs ready to say "I told you so".

We must put everything we can muster into shifting the political balance of forces across Europe. We now have four months of space in which to do so: we need to make them count.

There is clearly a division among the elite now over the issue of austerity, with the US government, the Adam Smith Institute and various prominent economists not usually associated with the left backing Greece's proposals. That crack is waiting to be forced open.

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SYRIZA has the difficult task of keeping the Greek economy functioning in a Capitalist world. Its political support is deeply dependent on its ability to deliver key election promises—some of which it has done so already.

That SYRIZA has survived a month in government, in itself, is a miracle.

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Farmers Walk Away From Leases Due to Plunging Grain Prices

Mike Shedlock writes that Farmers Walk Away From Leases Due to Plunging Grain Prices.

The price of corn is at a price seen in late 2006, wheat late 2005, and soybeans 2004. Land prices, lease prices, equipment prices, and fertilizer are much higher.

This has put the squeeze on many farmers, especially those who lease land. The result is best described as "walking away farmer style".

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This is a clash between the farmer and the rentiers. By refusing to reduce the rents, the landlords are committing economic suicide as farmers decamp.

This is an example of how class interests override class survival.

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Wal-Mart's Minimum Wage Breakdown

Barry Ritholtz writes that Wal-Mart's Minimum Wage Breakdown is a self-inflicted wound.

There is also the issue of the negative PR generated by Wal-Mart’s low, low wages. As we discussed back in 2013, many of its full-time employees receive a full array of federal and state welfare. Wal-Mart has become the nation’s largest private-sector beneficiary of taxpayer-supported public assistance (see "How McDonald's and Wal-Mart Became Welfare Queens"). Indeed, the U.S. taxpayer has been subsidizing the wages of this publicly traded, private-sector company to the tune of $2.66 billion in government largess a year.

Although many factors contributed to the move, the simple reason for the increase is because Wal-Mart has stopped growing. Same-store sales have been little changed or declining for some time now. When we look at the underlying causes, the company’s workforce, and how it is managed, are the prime suspects.

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Cutting welfare means cutting Wal-Mart's profits!

If you treat your employees like shit, they will treat your customers like shit. Then you wonder why no-one shops here anymore.

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Knowledge Isn't Power

Mark Thoma excerpts from Paul Krugman's commentary that Knowledge Isn't Power.

So what is really going on? Corporate profits have soared as a share of national income, but there is no sign of a rise in the rate of return on investment…, it’s what you would expect if rising profits reflect monopoly power rather than returns to capital… — all the big gains are going to a tiny group of individuals holding strategic positions in corporate suites or astride the crossroads of finance. Rising inequality isn’t about who has the knowledge; it’s about who has the power.

Now, there’s a lot we could do to redress this inequality of power. We could levy higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and invest the proceeds in programs that help working families. We could raise the minimum wage and make it easier for workers to organize. It’s not hard to imagine a truly serious effort to make America less unequal.

But given the determination of one major party to move policy in exactly the opposite direction, advocating such an effort makes you sound partisan. Hence the desire to see the whole thing as an education problem instead. But we should recognize that popular evasion for what it is: a deeply unserious fantasy.

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Krugman is wrong to think that only one party is thrall of Wall Street: it is both parties.

As Michael Moore once said:

The Capitalists have two (2) political parties. It is time for the rest of us to get own political party.

Maybe after the success of SYRIZA in Greece, this could be a possibility.

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Free Palestinian political prisoner Lina Khattab!

Free Palestinian political prisoner Lina Khattab!.

Khattab’s mother, Samira Shaladeh told the Electronic Intifada: “Lina was brought into court, surrounded by a large troop of soldiers, her hands and feet cuffed. The court would not allow me to touch her and talk to her. I said that I am Lina’s mother, and it is my right to touch her and hug her, but the judge refused and told me that it is forbidden.

“I am a mother, my daughter was in front of me and I was forbidden from expressing my feelings. My baby was shackled hand and foot and I can do nothing. This occupation and the silence of the world are killing our children.

“Lina represents an entire people uprooted from their land by force of arms. Every day the occupation strikes and kills and demolishes, arrests, desecrates holy places, takes away farmers’ land and builds settlements. It forces Palestinians out while seeking to bring Jews from around the world to support its claims to a fake democracy.

“The truth is that the Palestinian people want to recover their homeland and achieve freedom for their people, and Lina is a part of this truth, rejecting steadfastly all of this violence against our people.

“Lina is still holding strong in the prison and her morale is high. Imprisonment does not worry her. Lina rejects the fabricated charges against her.

“I urge the solidarity organizations, those around the world who defend the rights of the Palestinian people, to raise the slogan of freedom for the student Lina Khattab and all imprisoned Palestinian students. She has the right to study media, like every other student at Birzeit University. We are struggling for Lina’s right to her freedom, to re-enter school and live her life like youth around the world.

“Lina dreams of a free Palestine, free from all forms of violence and oppression. She is a voice of truth and dignity in this unjust world.”

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People Aren’t Androids

Paul Krugman writes that People Aren’t Androids.

Branko says that the essential difference between skills and physical capital is that the former aren’t worth anything unless you work, and that is certainly an essential difference. I would, however, also emphasize the flip side: if you think of capital as something that rentiers can own, which is surely one of the important things we connote when we use the c-word, then labor force skills are not capital in that sense. Children of the wealthy can inherit or buy factories and buildings; absent indentured servitude or the coming of androids, they can’t buy worker skills.

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I agree with Krugman in that Human Capital is a bogus concept by Capitalist economists that tries to fit human development into the Capitalist economic and political model.

The development of workers has seen productivity attached to labour power, instead of Capital. The worker is more productive because of their skills and experience rather than by applying unskilled labour to Capital investments in machines.

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Cranking Up for 2016

Mark Thoma excerpts from Paul Krugman's article about Cranking Up for 2016.

The … modern American right seems to have abandoned the idea that there is an objective reality out there… What are you going to believe, right-wing doctrine or your own lying eyes? These days, the doctrine wins.

Look at another issue, health reform. … Then there’s foreign policy. … And don’t get me started on climate change.

Along with this denial of reality comes an absence of personal accountability. If anything, alleged experts seem to get points by showing that they’re willing to keep saying the same things no matter how embarrassingly wrong they’ve been in the past.

But let’s go back to those economic charlatans and cranks: Clearly, failure has only made them stronger, and now they are political kingmakers. Be very, very afraid.

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A decadent political and economic system, such as American Capitalism, is clearly more concerned with retaining power than with dealing with reality. These sychophants from the think tanks are simply telling the decaying elite fairy tales in order to make the alleged reality more palatable.

Facing reality means admitting the failure of Capitalism. Lies are so more comfortable.

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Muffed Answer Leads to Rethink

Tom Peters writes that a Muffed Answer Leads to Rethink.

So the idea, then, in an oversimplified nutshell, is to avoid organizational and professional extinction—and in fact pursue growth—by vaulting up the value added chain. In my shorthand: Become a remarkable "brand you" performing 100% value-added "wow projects" in an organizational unit transformed into an innovative "professional service firm"—e.g., devoted to applying intellectual capital to the organization's products and services. (The overall "home" organization, per my model, seeks differentiation by becoming a de facto "collection of integrated professional service firms.")

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Peters seems to saying that workers are being forced to develop themselves as active determiners of their own destiny by the forces of Capitalism. Workers have to become more than passive followers of the firm's management, if they are to survive in the emerging business environment.

Firms that cede power to the workers will have a greater rate of survival than those where the managers reatin control.

Capitalism is forcing socialist development upon the workers by having differential rates of survival. In other words, firms with greater Socialist consciousness will survive better in Capitalist business because greater profits are generated through greater worker productivity and lower cost of managerial supervision.

We may be seeing the synthesis being generated through the dialectical materialism of worker development and desire for profit growth.

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Thoughts on reform, revolution, social change and elections in light of SYRIZA's win

Mike Treen writes about his Thoughts on reform, revolution, social change and elections in light of SYRIZA's win.

Tens of thousands of working people in the barrios of Caracas and Laz Pas and other modern urban cities are actually small business people by definition but have been enthusiastic supporters of the revolutionary process. Industrial workers in large factories and farms are only a small percentage of the working population and while they can play a leading role through their unions and communities, they need allies among the “petty-bourgois” layers, especially among the small farmers. The desire of the revolutionary governments to minimise economic disruption and protect the jobs and living standards of their supporters is a smart tactic. It is also necessary to train a whole new layer of revolutionary minded professionals to provide some of the technical expertise needed.

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A modern state needs the petite-bourgeoise and labour aristocracy. In order for a state to make the transition to Socialism. these layers need to be radicalised, and drawn into the revolutionary process.

The officer corps in Venezuela had been somewhat unique in that it hadn't sent its people to the US military schools but instead to local universities where many were affected by the deep-seated radicalisation of youth that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s. Chavez himself was an instructor at the national military academy. This allowed revolutionary-minded young officers to get significant influence early in the revolutionary process and use that to defend the government and people.

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The revolutionary orientation of the Venezuelan Military Forces has been a vital feature of the survival of the Bolivarian Revolution.

As Maurice Bishop, the assassinated leader of revolutionary Grenada, commented, it is wrong to think that “a revolution is like instant coffee; you just throw it in a cup and it comes out presto”. Bishop himself was overthrown by a secret faction strongly influenced by Stalinist administrative and bureaucratic methods. This faction claimed to want to push the revolution forward but had no understanding of the need to patiently organise and educate working people to take on tasks that matched the level of consciousness and the objective class relations and material conditions and level of development. The end result of their seizure of power was to disarm and demoralise the workers and farmers of Grenada and open the door to invasion by the US under President Reagan in 1983.

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A revolutionary movement can not advance too far ahead of the workers. It must not despise the workers for their ignorance and lack of vision. These things take time. The movement must work with the people in order to gain their respect and trust.

Often it is true that organs of popular power have emerged in revolutionary situations and were not able to develop because the parties of the parliamentary left were opposed to that happening. That was certainly true for Spain from 1936-39 and at least partly true for Chile in 1970-73. But it could have been radically different if the party that had a parliamentary majority supported the growth of organs of popular power while pursuing a program of social measures that was able to win majority support in the country.

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It is foolish to expect soviets to appear out of thin air. The process of developing direct democracy is fraught with danger from subversion by the careerist and the secret policeman. Yet, we must continually seek opportunities to develop and nuture such flowerings of direct democracy.

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