Understanding and Overcoming America's Plutocracy

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

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

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

Emphasis Mine

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

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

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

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

Emphasis Mine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

McIlroy concludes that:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Feminism and Exclusion from Power

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emphasis Mine

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

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

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

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Israel's Gaza defeat a sign of Palestinian strength

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Take Kurdish freedom fighters off terrorist list

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bolton lists the demands of the Socialist Alliance as:

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

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Video gamers on the feminist frontline

Jemma Nott writes that Video gamers on the feminist frontlines.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Artificial Billionaires: Regimes' Crony Capitalism Stifling Middle East

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

Contributors at Informed Comment write that:

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

Emphasis Mine

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

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

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

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

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

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Europe blunders towards new recession

Dick Nichols writes that Europe blunders towards new recession.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Now the economists complain we're not shopping enough

Here

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

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

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

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

Hanauer concludes that:

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

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

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Bring war criminals to justice

John Pilger says to Bring war criminals to justice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I am a racist and so are you

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

Her conclusion is that:

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

Malcolm X once said that:

You cannot have Capitalism without Racism.

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Compliance

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

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

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

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

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

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Lack of Character?

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

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

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

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

Little's conclusion is that:

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

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

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

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

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Leninism for now

Paul Le Blanc writes about Leninism for now.

Le Blanc writes that:

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

Emphasis Mine

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

Le Blanc argues that:

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

Emphasis Mine

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

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

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

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Workers of the world unite!

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

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

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

Adonis contends that employee-owned businesses perform better:

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

And Adonis has the cheek to suggest that:

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

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

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

Le Blanc defines Socialism as follows:

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

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

Change can only be brought about by struggle:

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

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

The key to the struggle is the development of consciousness:

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

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

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

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What about Marx?

Dan Little asks What about Marx?.

Little concludes that:

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

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