Occupying Our Commons
(See also: Getting To Our Future Freedom)
(And: You Know How I Know 'Localization' or 'Democratic Economics' Is A Con? …and…
Beginning To Rebuild Our Freedom (Pt. 1) …and…
To Rebuild Our Freedom (Pt. 2) …and…
Conversation with Joel McIver …and…
Staying Focused on Designing A Future… On Not Getting Divided)
(Issues discussed below are also discussed on The Waking Up Radio Show)
04.28.08 * "Immanuel's Heads Up!…"
11.12.11 – * "Re-Considering Immanuel's Words…"
11.13.11 * "Agent Provocateurs…"
11.18.11 * "…how do you know… without theory?"
11.19.11 * "…our souls… we are told… is the price we must pay… for 'order'…"
11.20.11 * "Students in the streets…"
11.21.11 * "Marxists…"
11.22.11 * "This is about Egypt, not Iran…"
11.23.11 * "Pundits…"
11.24.11 * "Anarchists…"
11.25.11 * "Unless and until we get focused…"
11.28.11 * "What are ‘good tactics’ when under attack?…"
11.30.11 * "Narrowing our frame of concern means…"
12.03.11 – * "Authentic 'Economics' - 1"
12.03.11 – * "Authentic 'Economics' - 2"
12.09.11 – 01.10.12* "Authentic 'Economics' - 3"
12.13.11: * "Divide and Conquer"
12.14.11 – 01.13.12* "Authentic 'Economics' - 4: Marx & Luxemburg "
12.15.11 – * "Attack the Block"
12.20.11 – * "Authentic 'Economics' - 5: Bleed the Beast"
12.23.11 – * "Getting to Our Future Freedom - 1"
11.17.11
One thing that is clear to me…
…from this crack-down we're seeing internationally…
…is…
…endurance…
…with daily soul-support from the broader community…*
…is key….
It takes time to perfect a strategy…
…and though…
…while in it…
…in that 'being-dragged-down-needing-so-much-soul-support' endurance…
…a constant having-to-endure…
…the spirit-sapping of agent-provocateurs…
…it may be hard to see…
…this strategy is working….
But the necessary added piece…
…to add to 24-7 public occupying…
…is the clear point on which we all agree…
…the need for bigger and bigger numbers…
[…which is happening… …Oakland got 20,000 in the street…
…in less than a week, General-Striking…]
…of brothers and sisters longing to be free…
…and who are willing…
…to push the demand…
…for in-perpetuity-communal-land…
…not hidden out-of-sight…
…but available for everyone to see…
…the good fellowship of communal living.
Living communally, in good fellowship… is the opposite… of the way 'power' wants us to be… which makes it the most oppositional… most evolutionary… strategy… [and the main target of agent provocateurs… see below]… which our yet-unconvinced-as-the-daily-propaganda-is-immense brothers and sisters… in the broader community… need to see… daily.
[Never underestimate the power of the visual… the sight of those colorful tents… strikes deep communal chords… and will bring more and more… faster. But it's up to broader community 'soul-supporters' to orchestrate… the counter-[to 'power's']-propaganda techniques… to create the necessary broader public advocacy.]
And… we will have to lay to rest… the propaganda that our global world is too 'complex'… to manage without hierarchy… and so without all the divisions… they stick us in.
At some point… (may it be soon)… New York occupiers will have to call for a General Strike / Pajama Party… with the point… of re-establishing the encampment… i.e. with tents… at Zucotti Park…
…with the point of building the numbers that can… successfully make the demand… for land… held in common… in plain sight… in the midst of the city… in perpetuity….
…and…
Brothers and Sisters:
We can deal with agent provocateurs *… lovingly… there are ways… trust me. But the weight of their negativity must be actively confronted… we cannot blithely dismiss… the seriousness… of the threat they present. We are sensitive souls, we ones who act with love. So those who support this cannot depend on endurance alone. We must help each other home.
11.18.11: * …without theory…
(see: “How do you know what to make of anything without theory?” in Waking Up)
When non-involved observers in the broader community complain that occupations outside of the main financial center (Wall St.) are missing the point… they are missing the point (or partisans seeking to defeat a mass movement)… it is only in breaking down divisions that we can build a mass movement… this is why agent provocateurs focus on hardening them (divisions).
'Power's' main strategy from Day One has been to use our strengths against us… our good hearts and generosity… our need to make 'tribe' and build community… our tolerance of human frailty.
Accepting folks at face-value means… it's easy for agents to weave… webs of duplicity.
It is an effective tactic… causing much damage… psychically… practically… stymieing movements crafted lovingly.
But the insistence on which 'power' focuses on division makes our way out obvious…
'Slapping the hand of Wall St.'?… nothing could be further from the minds of those who occupy with freedom in mind. Building community in encampments puts the feeling of 'freedom' in our bodies… daily… in reality… and it disconnects folks from the propaganda and puts them in touch with authenticity.
[And, by the by, this power of the communal is why 'power' targets those who maintain communal traditions… Black and Chicano folk in the U.S.… Uyghurs or Tibetans in China… all folks who are rural or earth-connected across all time, place and nation…. So those of us targeted have to learn to de-personalize it… recognize it as a political tactic… so we can address it realistically…effectively… and not let it deepen our own complicity (with a 'power' way-of-thinking).]
When your thought process comes from what's real...
…from what you see…
…around you in reality…
…materiality…
…there's a depth and fecundity unknown…
…to the punditry-prone….
But this depth can only bloom in minds when we possess time…
…a.k.a., our lives.
…and when what we see is true power…
…the artificial version…
…loses its allure.
But before we can covet it…
…we have to see it.
(from: “Wading Into The Muck Of State”)
When we are clearer on 'the point,' we recognize that coordination, intensity and speed are of the essence… because the point is not to institutionalize an encampment… the point is numbers… which encampments… generated globally… are a key aid to building…
…numbers to successfully make the demand… for land.
(Privatization is 'power's' mania… mainly to keep us in chains… keep us from claiming… our own lives…. As we (and earth) source 'all'… their sceptres fall… and matter not at all… once we are free.)
11.19.11* Our souls are the price we must pay?
Unconsciously… there are those on the left who believe… that for the sake of (an artificial) 'order'… we must sacrifice our souls. 'Money'… (along with herding us into narrow 'specialties' so we don't take responsibility… for everything… [i.e. become large, contain multitudes])… as the main mechanism for achieving… this artificial 'order'… has been the chief structurally-technologically-embedded propaganda piece… 'power' has invented…. De Tocqueville (Palmers’ Chat) tried to help us see… our vulnerability… when our training to defer to 'the economy' sinks us… in a sordid 'settling-for-less-than-our-full-human-possibilities'… and in apathy towards our brothers and sisters (and the earth)… sinking… so 'the economy' can 'rise'…
– this is the price of 'order'….
And all states globally make the boxes… the laws and the rules 'authority' approves… and, when we try to stretch… …unhitch… cracks the whip and drives us back to it.
This is all we can hope for, we're told: to make our box prettier than our neighbors'…
Folks, this is nuts…
…it has been nuts for millennia…
…and it's even more nuts now…
…when we have the technology, and the capability…
…to help each other be free…
…internationally…
…instantly.
And we co-sign this insanity only out of fear…
…our conditioning…
…to think our neighbor has less goodness in his heart than we…
…but coming out these boxes we can see…
…re-greet…
…lost empathy…
…and proclaim…
…we will not let brothers and sisters be constrained anywhere…
…not China, Congo, London, Moscow…
…not Syria, or right here, in the Bay Area….
The particular nation is the wrong frame…
…we are global beings.
Let's compose a new song…
…globally…
…with melodies strong…
…and rhymes clapped loud in reclaimed time…
…a.k.a. our lives…
…practiced 'til they lightly sit…
…in our global experiment…
…in good fellowship….
And when a time is set…
…for voices raised to send our common breath…
…into the skies…
…making real our harmony world-wide…
…our lives and loves and lands…
…intertwined…
…we embrace…
…our Freedom-Time.
11.20.11: * Students in the streets…
Students in the streets…
…thank you for making this your priority…
…as Petr’s “ere long history will have to be re-written on new lines” means…
…most of what you’re taught in academes…
…is wrong…
…and Samuel said the same…
…we have to end this game…
…replace ‘power’ with lives reclaimed…
…for the oceans…
…for the most ruthlessly enslaved…
…for the children yet-to-be…
…this moment is our legacy.
11.21.11: * Marxists…
Marxists…
…Karl told us philosophy will never change the world…
…except for ill, not good.…
But what he couldn’t say…
…is what we know today…
…that ‘artists’…
…with consciousness…
…could….
And we are all artists.
(‘Art’ but means…
…merging with the earth…
…and becoming ‘heart.’)
11.22.11: * This is about Egypt, not Iran…
To the degree that we are successful… internationally…
…we ‘up’ the stakes.…
The resumed threats of Israel against Iran remind us that ‘power’ exists…
…independent of government…
…using whatever its available means…
(…and Israel certainly fits in that category…)
…to keep ‘the people’…
…globally…
…from seeing…
…that we don’t need them…
…at all.
So this move they’re making at base…
…pitting state against state…
…is a desperate play…
…to stall or halt our global awakening…
…happening apace…
…beyond their ability to check…
…unless they derail it…
…with this age-old tactic.
This is not about Iran…
…this is about awakened Egyptians…
…with the taste of freedom in their mouths…
…who are not about to let it go now.…
Brothers and sisters in Egypt, and across the Arab world…
…and to your awakened supporters wherever you are…
…should Israel do what it’s threatening to…
(…and I know such a move from Israel seems insane…
…but we’re in the End Game…)
…please look coolly on this manipulation…
…and keep your eyes staid on freedom…
(…for us all…)
…steeling yourself to face…
…the dangerous machinations of ‘power’…
…when it’s afraid….
They fear your amazing courage and consciousness…
…seeing how you’ve inspired us…
…in just a matter of months…
…to set our sights…
…on a global ‘distributed-generation-mass-strike’….
From this point on…
…whatever ‘power’ may do…
…let’s re-commit to…
…our ‘sine qua nons’ of reverence and love…
…across the false divisions they impose on us.…
When ‘power’ tries to play us with war…
…we must work even harder…
…to show it the door….
11.23.11: * Pundits…
Pundits will play ‘power’s’ game…
…’til every hall of state…
…is filled with toddling babes…
…and laughing children…
…running up…
…and sliding down…
…the great staircase.
11.24.11: * "Anarchists"…
To those who say they represent ‘anarchy’…
…was Rosa misled when she said…
…to ‘the people’ you represent…
…“the common plunderer and thief…”?
…“who, like a school of sharks,…
…swim in the wake of the battleship of the revolution.”?
[Rosa Luxemburg, writing in 1906 about the role of ‘anarchists’ in the Russian Revolution of 1905, reprinted in her The Mass Strike.]
Black bandanas covering the face?
What better gift to donate…
…to malevolent operatives of state?
And what happened to, “being the future we want to see”?
In the future we want to see…
…do we really want folks running around pretending to be…
…a faux-heroic banditry…
…stuck in a Star Wars fantasy?
The mindset of such fits like a glove ‘power’s’ purposes and ways of thinking….
In all the essentials…
…they are an identity.
[…and, tomorrow, let's revisit those agent provocateurs…]
11.25.11: * "Unless and until we get focused"…
The purpose of the agent provocateurs…
…in addition to sowing division and sapping spirit… (we feel their inauthenticity… but as it cannot be consciously explained our energy is drained)…
…is to prevent us from getting focused… (and unless and until we get focused, we are but so much dust to the winds from above)…
…so they will constantly say that all the splintering is a good thing… that we don’t want “too much organization”… “at this stage”….
Folks… this ain’t a ‘stage’, this is it… we don’t get too many opportunities like this….
We are, through other means, at that moment I wrote about in Waking when we can begin planning and initiating… our ‘General-Striking’… and… we can… go one better yet… globally.
So… below… ‘please find’ how I think we can achieve… that O so essential: “coordination, intensity, and speed.”
There needs to be a flow… to make this go… and…
…art is key to concretize the visioning…
…a mobile ‘wall’ on which we draw…
…all the visions that the beings in our encampment…
…represent.
So… to help with “coordination, intensity and speed”… I think we need four things… (at least…)
…consistent across all occupying:
…Visioning…
…Art…
…Tradesmen and women… building…
…Strengthening ties with the broader community….
And ‘the flow’ to make it go comes-in in two ways: first, by the first three flowing into the fourth; and second, a sequential flow that starts with visioning.
The folks on the ground, holding this down, taking the full hit from the spirit-sapping agents… are the ones who must make the key decisions….
I don’t think we… those of us not facing… that particular challenge can fully appreciate how devastating it is… to spirit…
…so I suspect it’s a mistake for folks not carrying the weight to try to make decisions for those who are….
And…
…what best assists a continuous reclaiming of spirit?
…what better rebuilds ‘heart’…
…than expression through art?
Art must be at the heart of all we do.
Visioning:
What if we all, collectively, pictured the world we want to be… and those with drawing skills put it up as we envisioned it?
We could start by asking what qualities encompass it:
…powerful people who name themselves…
…good fellowship…
…self-sufficiency…
…restored relationships of reverence for the earth….
And, after all, what turns us all on when we start imagining how to change things…
…if not open-ended possibilities…
…horizons vast…
…chains relaxed…
…through purposeful acts…
…of imagination…
…previously untapped….
We need a mobile ‘wall’ that can be taken with us to a permanent communal space…
…we need tradesmen/women to build it…
…and help plan infrastructure.
And at each collective meeting…
…the group can look at the vision…
…and make additions….
Never forget… ‘abundance’ is our watchword… our earth-gift… our inheritance….
So with visioning there is no ‘either/or’… there’s room for all… in abundance.
But…
…if someone claims…
…their vision requires…
…dense, city-scapes fueled by wage-slaves…
…they’re in the wrong place….
In the future we want to be…
…every one must be free…
…that is the sine qua non of our visioning….
As…
…any conception of ‘future’ in which all are not free…
…depends on…
…requires…
…an absence of empathy.
And as the art in ‘process’ takes over from ‘rotating facilitation’, it spirals more and more… into other expressions…
Art:
Discovering the ancestors…
…communal dance and song…
…poetry and melodies that linger long…
…and interweave…
…globally…
…’til eventually…
…we find ourselves scheduling…
…an harmonic convergence…
…as a physical manifestation…
…of size…
…in real-time.
Tradesmen & women:
Folks in the trades, particularly, are very practical. We don’t like to see problems go on and on intractably….
We are problem-solvers by nature and know…
…it ain’t no big deal making things go.
So, for instance, at Oakland’s General Strike I spoke with a union brother who was a little frustrated that no one seemed to want his skills.
“Forget porto-potties,” he said, “I can hook them up with indoor toilets.”
(Sigh.)
Each site needs a construction crew of tradesmen and women who focus on practical issues… materializing… concretizing… making-real-alizing… the visions for the physical site… that we want ultimately to inhabit.
Strengthening ties with the broader community:
If we see our role as educating the broader community… i.e., as advocates for our future freedom… there are many ways in which we could be helpful.
‘Economics’ decoded:
It would be helpful, I think, to have an analysis in ‘plain-speak’… of how we got a system of such gross disparities… and how to get out of it….
‘Authentic economics,’ it would be… as opposed to the ‘propaganda economics’ we get from the media… (in which raping the earth… which includes human beings… is defined to mean ‘developing’… ‘economically’…) – i.e., an ideology that serves elites.
Another dimension is service…
…E.g., my friend Bob wanted to teach youth in my community basic carpentry (not just for hen-house building but also for making small, useful things with wood that could serve as holiday presents)… but he’s experiencing health issues… so… there floats yet another idea in limbo… but… if this component were in place, I could go to my local encampment and ask if they’d be willing to teach our youth… if materials were provided….
The broader community needs to feel hope for the future… an inspiring vision (and expanding people-resources requires an inspiring vision of the future)… no less than we do…
…and we need them… if we’re to survive ‘power’s’ media bombardment.
The Media War…
The Media War is where ‘power’ hoards… such superior forces that we must work very hard… to make the case… demonstrate… (by whatever media mechanisms we can orchestrate…) to folks lied to daily… the needs, seemingly unseen, that we are now meeting…
…and we need to show…
…the visions growing…
…while, simultaneously…
…maximizing coordination and intensity…
…globally…
…to counter negative media imagery….
So in response to a local media attack, we show…
…folks in the encampments growing…
…the future…
…showing them as…
…glowing…
…global…
…heroes.
We saw in the Oakland General Strike how labor… united with the progressive non-affiliated populace… united with students… united with those needing homes…tactically applied… purposively pressed… can reach any target…
…a bit of land, perhaps? …with a modest budget? …to help those without homes… a small thing to ask… given the trillions passed… from the people’s pockets… to finance.
We are in, through different means, the moment described in Waking Up where I suggested the General Strike must be tried.
We’re so close to our dramatically expanded power we don’t see it…
…but fully realizing it now…
…just takes coordination…
…of students… labor unions… wanderers and such like powerful folks…
…ready…
…to drive this power home.
I know we’re not accustomed to thinking of political actions as a thing to happen globally…
…but that’s the only way we’ll get free.
‘Power’ in every (U.S.) state is hurrying to put in place policies to divide…
…primarily those who got jobs against those who ain’t.
They know that in the future they want to impose many, many folks will be “out of work”… and so income tax revenue (from the regressive form they’ve forced on us) could not possibly support basic infrastructure… to they’re trying to shift the extraction of our dollars…
…to our need to consume (i.e. eat)…
…and away from job-collars.
Ending this dance of ‘rule’ they do…
…is so long over-due.
But ending it means…
…recognizing…
…that…
…just as “truth is truth until the end of reckoning”…
…so… “‘power’ is ‘power’ until the end of reckoning”…
…and if we play by its rules…
…use its tools…
…we’ll never find…
…our future.
11.28.11: * "What are ‘good tactics’ when under attack?"…
So what are ‘good tactics’ when a movement is being shut down?
…How do we know whether that hot idea that jumps off the flame of an encampment is just what the movement needs… or the work of an agent provocateur trying to mislead?
…How do we know…
…without our values?
…without the compass we possess with our ‘vision’-test?
So the visioning must proceed… openly… so all may see…
…and yet withstand…
…the constant attack…
(…hidden yet very much present…)
…of the agents.
How do we do that?
These are a few of the questions I will put to the group…
…and I urge you…
…to put them to yourselves too.
How do we jump-start a visioning process?
How do we convince folks of the need?
…and that we all have to plan the future…
…not folks in academes?
I think it’s time… (long past actually…) to let ‘trust’ lead…
…and take the risk… of taking up that biggest question…
…not just among ourselves… but out in our broader communities…
…that question which should never be trumped: “What future do we want?”
…and to put ourselves at the service of gathering the stories we hear…
…the hopes… the fears… the dreams we dread to see disappear….
And I volunteer to help with the honing…
…the creation of our common language…
…as well as with the megaphoning….
So…
…what say you?
…what, at this point especially,…
…do we have to lose?
And…
…if we don’t yet have a common space…
…where can we… those without homes… go?
…while we find a place?
…to synthesize what we find…
…and coordinate with our brothers and sisters nation-wide?
And…
…if we still have our encampments, how do we hang onto them?…
…and once we have our encampments…
…how do we redirect them from the red-herring ‘Healing Project’…
(…and the agents know a ‘lifetime’ must be ‘spent’ on it –
…thus making it…
…inappropriate…
…for being in…
…the Global Evolution….
The effort to shut this down is too big…
…to indulge our individual healing projects in the encampments…
…and, I think we’ll find… as we bring justice to the world…
…our misery within…
…ends….)
…and focus instead…
…on visioning…
…and being the conduits of it…
…to the broader community?
11.30.11: * "…turning our backs on our brothers and sisters…."
(I’m feeling the Walt Whitman poem, “Sometimes With One I Love”….)
Thinking through… where there was congruence… between Waking Up and the Occupy Movement… and also pondering a pundit’s words to occupiers, “you have to stay on message”… I discovered some observations on where the movement is… but also where it isn’t….
While there are many common flows between Waking Up and the Occupy Movement… the two differ on where to go.
Many Occupy folks are using tactics that go with Waking’s analysis, without doing the analysis themselves… i.e., without thinking through why the tactics work… and therefore the theory behind them.
And tactics without theory is a boat without a rudder, easily scuttled… (as my son pointed out.) In rough waters, folks bail… fall back on what they know… fall back into their ‘comfort zone’… and those who have least… who’d been given hope… are left on their own.
This is why I emphasize so much the importance of having these critical conversations across society… but how do we have them without any media willing to host them?
Waking Up argues that we have to look at this ‘reality’ we’ve been given a lot more deeply than we’ve been accustomed to… and that once you do… you see that ‘the system’ – rigged for the few – depends on ‘division’….
And the analysis says more…
…it says that even if you could divvy up the pie more fairly locally… the greater tension is just shifted globally.
If you do the analysis you’ll see…
…the problem of ‘division’ cannot be solved nationally…
…unless…
…you’re willing to sacrifice empathy.
‘Power’ is making moves apace, apace, apace…
…to divide them with jobs…
…against them that ain’t….
So how do we get these discussions happening… across society?
And how does your local bank save the eyes… preserve the lives… of our brothers and sisters sitting on prizes ‘power’ wants?… or clear the skies of drones?
The earth is our home…
…and the earth…
…and our brothers and sisters on it…
…are at risk….
So how does this affect…
…the Occupy Movement?
12.03.11 – : * "Authentic 'Economics' - 1…"
When ‘class’ was but a babe…
…the box that named…
…your service to ‘the state’…
…was given out by ‘Fates’….
Sly tricksters, three…
…they parceled out your bit of time…
…then snipped your thread with glee….
But in this O so modern ‘class society’…
…our parcels are delivered…
…not by beldams…
…but by ‘the economy.’
We do not exist to serve a ‘market’… an ‘orderly’ plundering of the earth.
We need a ‘new economics’ for the new world… but before we can claim it, first we must understand how the ‘old economics’ was propaganda.
The ‘propaganda economics’ we get from the media…
(…even the so-called ‘progressive’…)
…would have us believe…
…that living in balance…
…harmony…
…with the earth…
…is a pipe dream.
‘Authentic economics’ leads to… the end of ‘economics’… the end of ‘earth-as-commodity.’
There is a theory behind our acts…whether or not we’re aware of it….
To escape servitude… we must become aware of it… make the unconscious… conscious… and then ask that O so essential soul that so essential question:
…“who do you serve?”
‘Power’ propagandizes that ‘the economy’ (the ‘market’), not the earth, provides us… with ‘life’ itself… is ‘life’ itself… our life-blood… circulating goods and services where they’re needed. It has systematically interposed itself between we-the-people and our earth – so that we turn to ‘it’… in its false face, ‘economy’… and cling… fearfully… to what we’re taught to believe… is ‘survival’ itself.
Basically… you see continuity… in class society… from Heraclitus (at least) on…
…the primacy of ‘the Idea’… over Life….
“And why coterminous with ‘class’?” you ask…
…because it is ‘Thought’ alone…
…that determines…
…to what ‘category’ (box) you belong….
Earth may tell you… as it told Emily… and Zora… and Sergei… and Andrey… and Bruce… and Bob… and Amilcar… and Miklos… and Nikola… and George… and Paul… and Martin… and Louis… and William… and Walt… and Karl… and John… and Malcolm… and Charlotte… and Walter… and Samuel… and Herman… and Francisco… and Fannie Lou… (who always come around again, despite ‘power’s’ efforts efforts of suppression)… “your power is so vast it blasts the top off of the world…” but… ‘Thought’ [read: ‘state’] has assigned you to a lowly box… so… clearly… the clear mind of babes concludes… it is ‘Thought’… that rules.
“Thought’ supercedes reality…
…this is a powerful lesson ‘class’ teaches… has taught from Day One…
…unconsciously.
The logic of it is so obvious we don’t see it… (“…so easily to be found that it took a highly educated scholar like himself to be unable to find it…” Samuel Butler, The Way Of All Flesh)…
…but as brilliant babes, the obvious is still the obvious…
…and has not been papered over…
…with words…
…i.e., our ‘awareness’ has not yet learned…
…to lie.
And so deeply ingrained in our psychic framing is the lie… truth appears as insane… and those who point at it… and call to reestablish its connection with the fabric and the fiber and the frame… of our lives… are named are named pariahs…
(… when they’re alive… of course when they’re dead ‘power’ swoops in and tries to make money off of them… unless their words are too subversive… like Popper’s… then… pure suppression is the tactic. Shel Silverstein has a ‘for-instance’: “Nashville is hard on the living, but it sure does well by the dead.”)
So…
…how to flip this? to begin ‘seeing’ (in our thoughts) with our eyes again?… and not our mis-taught ‘minds’?
That many have done so… (and, by the way, you don’t need to read a lot of books… to know that ‘class’ must go… just the right ones…. the ones who synthesized and advanced our ancestors’ gift… for us – we long-dead, living and yet-to-be children-of-the-earth-held-commonly. We need those ancestors who grew the furthest sight… the eagles of the protestors of class… to end this mess at last)….
That many have done so should give us hope… but not too much… as massive species die-offs are upon us… which very well may make our dilly-dallying-finger-flumping shilly-shallying-reason-thumping… of hopeful consequence none.
So…
…‘authentic economics’ merely means…
…seeing earth as the source of all…
…all ‘wealth’… all life… all things…
…and whatever ‘ingenious’ ‘thought’ may manifest and overlay…
…that plump, fecund belly…
…she will push through and out beyond it…
…and I, for one…
…choose…
…Her…
…for my allegiance.
12.03.11 – : * "Authentic 'Economics' - 2…"
There are two levels of this discussion… shallow and deep.
In the shallows, the water just ticking our feet… while our body’s still buried in sleep… immersed in unreality… we could translate thusly:
“…when they say ‘austerity’ they actually mean ‘living within the means “they” assign to us’”…
…but…
…it is not just ‘power’ that has carved out an indefensible place for itself… it is also those who are called ‘Intellect’…
…the ones who represent…
…for ‘power’…
…serve as its agents…
…while saying they do the heavy lifting…
…for ‘the people.’
So…
…in the shallow version, ‘all’ are agreed – meaning ‘left’, ‘right’ and ‘center’ – that the earth is a commodity… and so ‘economics’ is but scrambling for your piece… securing your ‘fair share’… of our grandmother’s hide… while you forswear… all thanks, all reverence, all relationship…
…while ‘power’ claims sole proprietorship…
…based on its ‘superior’ brains.
But ultimately…
…as we intend…
…to manifest our dignity and full inheritance…
…as living things…
…we must go deeply…
…and deeply we will go.
Expanding ‘markets’ is but one – granted, key – piece of the puzzle of ‘power’s’ need to control… on its road to realizing Plato’s dream of freezing ‘class’ in place… freeing the ‘philosopher-kings’ to think their fantasy… of supremacy…
(…a project the left punditocracy, and all functionaries of ‘state’… [that global shadow ‘state’ elites fervently embrace… a stinking bloom they hope to release on us soon…] has a lot of sympathy for – they just think they can do it better… that they are more ‘rational’… better ‘thinkers’ – which explains their complicity with… vulnerability to… ‘power’… (“O Vanity,” says he, “my favorite sin…”)
…key, because it systematically removes people from the land…
…and…
…disconnects us from our sources of power…
…true power…
…‘forcing’ us to shift our allegiance from earth to the would-be-kings….
And while this piece seems ‘economic’ (and most likely is, for the players)… all pieces are at root political… about the control of ‘the people’…
…buying land… dictators… soldiers… scientists… inventors… media… agents… banks…
…all but linear iterations…
…of the same drear need…
…all a piece of one clear aim…
…“keep ‘the people’ chained”…
…and diverted from seeing their game.
But…
…there is a rumbling in the world…
…the earth is rising…
…cresting o’er…
…the stilted fantasies of ‘power’…
…and we… are… earth.
Henry John’s son acknowledged that he was bound by promise to give to William Aleyn with his (Henry’s) daughter in marriage one dress, worth a half mark, and one pan, holding two gallons, worth 16 d., and one “urtiol” holding a half gallon, worth 16 d., and two carpets, worth 2 s., and five silver shillings to repair a cart with iron, and six shillings of the silver given by them to the church; sum: 22 s. 4 d., of 9 s. of which said William discharged him. And for unjust detention said Henry is in mercy, 12 d. (p. 140)
Lucy, widow of Walter le Hurt, comes and gives the lord 2 d. to have an inquest whether she has greater right in a certain land which Richard le Hurt holds than Richard himself who is the holder. [The names of the members of the inquest are given.] These say on their oath that the aforesaid Lucy in her widowhood let herself fall into fornication and thereupon marry, without licence of the lord. And therefore William of Fawkham, at that time steward, decreed the aforesaid land to be forfeit and committed the land to Richard, brother of said Walter once husband of said Lucy, and thus it remains. (p. 182)
Men, like tenures, were either free or bond. In their great work of simplification which made the common law, the lawyers of the royal courts were impelled to draw a line between the bond and the free. For many reasons it was a convenience, but unhappily the lawyers could not found on a clear social distinction the distinction they made between bondmen and freemen. It is true that there had once been such a distinction. There were slaves in England at the time of the Conquest, thought they were few even then and disappearing. What the lawyers did was take from the Roman law the doctrine that men were either serfs or freemen and try to apply it to the distinction between men who held land in villeinage and those who held land by other tenures. According to Roman law, a serf was the mere chattel of his master, and the lawyers were prepared to envisage a villein as a serf. But custom was too stubborn for them. A villein, even apart from the land he held, was sometimes sold by one lord to another. He held his land, in theory, at the will of his lord. His goods, in theory, were his lord’s property. Nevertheless, so long as an English husbandman was a man who did customary services for his lord, tilled his own holding and handed it on to his son, and settled his disputes in the hallmote by the judgment of his neighbors, he could not be looked upon with conviction as a Roman slave. (p. 235)
In order to understand what the men of the thirteenth century [in England] understood by the word villein, we must take into consideration the economic organization of manors and the social classes recognized by the villagers themselves.
A villein was made free by entering religion or by dwelling for a year and a day on the royal demesne or in a borough having a royal charter. He was made free by marrying a free woman, though it is doubtful whether his children would be free. He might also, if his lord were willing, buy his freedom. Such a manumission appears on the court rolls of 1274 of Minchinhampton, Glos.:
Hugh Carter seeks to be freed from serfdom. And he gives the lord 13 s. 4 d. for having liberty, and 2 d. of chevage a year.
The payment of chevage, that is, head-money, was a regular feature of manumission.
Whether or not the Roman distinction between a freeman and a slave could be strictly applied to English conditions, the lawyers had done their work so well that people felt that a villein was something degraded. Villein itself was a French word, applied by a Norman lord to his English tenant. Already in the thirteenth century it was beginning to acquire the kind of meaning it had later. Villagers resented being called serfs, neifs (nativi), or villeins even if they were such. In the manorial courts this offence, like any other libel, was punished by fine. The truth was no defence. (p. 236 - 7)
In studying the relations between the lord of a manor and his tenants, at least two factors have to be considered: the interests of the two parties and their sentiments…. But we shall not understand the services unless we take into account still another factor: the intellectual scheme in terms of which both the lord and his men thought of their relations to one another.
This scheme is revealed by turns of speech and by ceremonies. If you asked a workman of the present day why he received wages from his employer, he would tell you that he received them in return for work done for his employer. In the same manner, if you had asked a medieval villein upon what terms he held his land, he would without question have replied that he held his land as a grant from the lord of the manor and in return rendered him certain rents and services. In both instances the relation between one man and the other, or, if you will, between master and man, was conceived to be reciprocal. It was thought of as being based upon an exchange. (p. 253)
Besides this work in tilling the soil, villains were commonly expected to perform other services. For one thing, they had to carry the lord’s goods between the manor and other places, using their own horses. When a manor was part of a large ecclesiastical estate which was managed as an economic unit, and at the same time was some distance away from the abbey or cathedral which was the head of the estate, the carrying service were especially heavy. (p. 257)
In every society there are men who control more of the food, clothing, and other forms of wealth produced in the society thatn do other men. The word control is used deliberately: from many points of view the control of wealth is more important than its mere possession, but this assertion raises questions which cannot be answered here. The ways in which the distribution of wealth takes place are various. Nevertheless in all societies, or better, nearly all societies, people will admit that there are rich men and poor men. In English villages of the thirteenth century, the only important source of wealth was land as used in husbandry. Accordingly, when villains worked for several days a week tilling their lord’s demesne, no Karl Marx was needed to explain to them that their lord was richer than any one of them because they yielded him a surplus of their labor….
The distribution of wealth between the lord and any one of his men was not only unequal, but was unequal because the man spent a part of his time working, without return, for his lord. But the minds of men did not dwell upon this inequality, except in times of disorder. Men usually look at the distribution of wealth not as it really is, that is, as it would appear to a skeptical outsider, but only as it is conceived to be according to a traditional mythology. Perhaps it is better to say that in every society a few men have been able to see the distribution of wealth and other such institutions as they really are, but if a few men have penetrated that far, they have usually penetrated far enough to know better than to give the reality away. They know that the reality in this sense is a matter of no importance. We recall the remark of Waldershare in Disraeli’s Endymion. He said that sensible men were all of the same religion. And when asked what that was, he replied: “Sensible men never tell.” That the distribution of wealth is never described as it really is but only as it is conceived to be according to a traditional mythology is as much true of our own times as it was of the Middle Ages, though most of us, very properly, will be irritated if we are asked to admit this fact. The only myths are the myths of other people.
One thing the mythology of the Middle Ages had in common with the mythology of our own times was that the relation between lord and man then, as between employer and workman now, was described as based upon an exchange…. A mythology is a matter of language. (George C. Homans, English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century, first published in 1941, p. 339 – 40)
12.09.11 – 01.10.12: * "Authentic 'Economics' - 3…"
Turning humans into ‘means’ may be the simplest… but most accurate… definition of ‘economy’…
…into ‘means’ to measure…
(…along with ‘money’…)
…‘power’s’ supremacy….
(‘Money’ is a measure of the earth’s consumption… purchase… shift… onto ‘power’s’ side… of the ‘balance sheet.’ ‘Economic growth’ / ‘economic health’ is code for ‘a tightly-leashed, “cheap” “workforce”… a well-raped earth.’)
But even more so…
…money’s means…
…to keep us working and so not seeing…
…it’s ‘power’s’ lever…
…and weapon nonpareil…
…that it wields to stop our thinking…
…and provide the cover they hide behind…
…shielded from our eyes.
So, making ‘economy’ our banner to fly… our rallying cry…
…raising its defense…
(…ignoring we’re a target…)
…forgoing…
…as always…
…our own growing…
…means never claiming our power…
…since we’re daily disavowing it.
But this thought can barely begin to form before ‘power’ announces that it’s stillborn. With narrowed eyes and contempt undisguised it sputters…
“What would your ‘alternative society’ look like?”
“You aren’t putting forward anything viable.”
This is ‘power’s’ trump card. “We’ve given you a perfectly acceptable world, you ingrates… what more do you want?” Folks on the street clear their throats to speak but before they can ‘power’ screeches in indignation, “why blame me if you failed to make yourself an attractive commodity!”
So we’re in a bad spot…
…as left, right and center are agreed…
…‘capitalism’s’ not only dying…
…it’s started to rot.
I’ve heard two different stories – from the progressive end – to explain the demise of ‘capitalism.’ The one I find most persuasive is from Immanuel Wallerstein (see below), who argues that capitalism is doomed because ‘power’ cannot freeze in place… a source of labor that’s permanently degraded… a ‘problem’ that threatens ‘power’ itself… unless…
…unless…
(…an ‘unless’ never discussed, broadly across… the ‘all’ of us…)
The other story… looking narrowly at the U.S…. is that ‘capital’ self-sinks by refusing to pay ‘its’ ‘workers’ what they need… to buy the mounting commodities…
…so the stuff gets stuck… and can’t become… the ‘money’ ‘capital’ needs to fulfill its function… to continuously consume the earth.
The question is not: “which is correct?” (as Immanuel’s comes from further back it’s by definition a better track… as… it’s only from the perspective of the ‘whole’ that the truth can be known. ‘Power’ depends… on keeping us fragmented…)
…the question is: why aren’t we discussing it?
…as… these two views suggest different moves… to very different futures.
In Immanuel’s (from the perspective of the ‘whole’), absolutely, no doubt, ‘power’s’ got to go…
…but from the narrow perspective of the (core) ‘nation-state’…
(…‘core – periphery’ being a model to impose locally as well as globally…)
…‘power’ says, “wait!… there’s a scientifically-proven, technologically-advanced solution we can orchestrate…
“…we want you to know… all you folks whining about a warming globe… there’s a win-win to sooth your troubled souls…
“…if you focus on the ‘here-at-home’… don’t get too vocal… and don’t cast your glances across the oceans… (not to folks overseas, or to the folks in your own peripheries…)
“…we’ll let ‘economy’ go ‘local’!”
To the global heroes in occupations… making your ‘work’ a product of your own determination…
…doesn’t it feel good?
And now that you’ve experienced power starting to grow… how could you even think of letting that go?
And if you don’t propose to let it go, how do we move to a world in which our labor isn’t sold?…
…and if it’s right for your power to grow, why would it not be right to free all souls… from coercion imposed… by the Tribe of Plato?
Global ‘power’… and I mean by this subjugators (of people, and the earth as a whole) of whatever political ideology they use to justify their rule… has been calling the shots in a rigged game. It’s time to change the game… or, rather, end ‘games’…
…or choose lives lived by an old-new one called ‘Reverence’… in which we daily think up new ways to reclaim and honor Earth, our one berth… (including the earth in our own bodies… and those of our brothers and sisters. )
12.13.11: * "Divide and Conquer"
‘Power’ has concluded it can only defeat Barack…
…by splintering off…
…a significant chunk…
…of his constituents….
So a faux-progressive is launched…
…and his media-mate extends…
…an entire program…
…to his message…
(…“come on in!…
…have your way with…
…our audience!…)
I wonder how…
…he so easily found…
…a welcome mat…
…a cozy chat…
…at Democracy Now! ?
12.14.11 – : * "Authentic 'Economics' – 4: Marx and Luxemburg Weigh-in"
That Marx and Engels, by necessity, tell us a fairy story in The Communist Manifesto stands starkly today. Even as a thumbnail sketch… it damaged our chances for freedom far more than it helped them (the ‘stages’-thing… the ‘inevitability’… and especially that ‘science’-thing – as if it’s better to be ‘scientifically’ screwed than just screwed [‘power’-is-‘power’ is way more helpful for planning and getting to our future freedom] – and let’s not forget their failing to give our ancestors their due… and that unconscious violation of good fellowship.)
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
This reads a bit like “the Mr. Smith Virus”… that characteristic ‘power’ has of turning everything into itself… and to that extent, to the extent that it’s true that ‘power’ is a closed system… a self-reinforcing cycle, it is a shared descriptive. But this cycle (I would say ‘dead-end’) it imposes is not one of dynamism, but of destruction. It annihilates… true… in ever-increasing scope and degree… but that is not good news.
And when Marx says ‘capital’ (i.e. ‘money’) while meaning ‘you-and-me’… and says ‘it’… this thing called ‘capitalist system’… ‘it’ (!) created all the stuff from which their rule is made… (“the productive forces”…) he instantly demoralized us…
…for… how do we know? stuck as we are in the ‘atomization’… fragmentation… ‘power’ imposes… how do we know? prevented as we are from seeing the ‘whole’… if this is so… or no?
Especially as… he pretends preeminence…
…and we… we good-hearted ‘we’… we who tend toward tolerance… and reluctance to call folks out their name… are undermined by doubt… (“our doubts are traitors,” William said… and he was right.)
The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground – what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?
Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells [resulting in periodic crises that threaten “the existence of the entire bourgeois society”]…. In these crises a great part not only of the existing products but also of the previously created productive forces are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that in all earlier epochs would have seemed an absurdity – the epidemic of overproduction… [It] appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and as soon as they overcome these fetters they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.
The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism [i.e. by developing the means of production] to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons – the modern working class – the proletarians.
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed… The proletariat goes through various stages of development… Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class, The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product….
The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labor…. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own gravediggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
Where is the flaw in their reasoning… that ‘capitalism’ is self-generating?… or is it ‘reason’ itself wherein the mis-lead creeps?
Marx’s determination to find an internal ‘logic’ (‘order’ – clear categories… boundaries… levels… that behave as expected… even when they don’t…) to ‘capitalist development’… to set his work on the seemingly solid foundation of ‘science’… skewed his view of reality….
And it bestowed a magical glow… a mystic unfolding spell… before which… all else fell.
And far from stimulating our thinking, it cast a pall, overhanging-long… ’til now.
This is not to cast doubts on his ‘heart’… but only to say… unconscious motives sway… unbeknownst… even the most sincere ‘Mind.’
He longed to ‘prove’ ‘scientifically’…
[But… it’s the ‘why’ that’s interesting… and redeeming…
…Marx sensed the presence of the hidden malevolence…
…and fought against it…
…those folks of Plato’s Tribe who were actively applying…
…their focused energies towards realizing Plato’s fantasies…
…i.e…. they were creating the world they wanted…
…actively intervening…
…to shape and consecrate…
…a world based on rigid… unmovable… categories….
This is what Marx either felt or knew…
…and was reacting to.
He was telling them…
…“you can’t stop this…
…our ultimate…
…freedom.”]
…that ‘capitalism’ was a machine that is self-accumulating… resulting in “the universal development of the productive forces”… i.e., so much ‘wealth’ it would burst the bounds allowed by the capitalist economic system… and that we would necessarily… ‘logically’… move on… to a more just world. And this longing set him on a search to find the motive force behind this continuous accumulation. Who buys the surplus? he asked himself obsessively, that would allow capital to self-reproduce exponentially…
(…which is asking… how can ‘capital’ continuously re-invest… ad infinitum… or at least ’til only two classes remain… faced-off… we in such numbers that ‘capital’ quakes… as it realizes the adversary it’s made….)
But… again, who buys the surplus? once the world is everywhere ‘capitalist’?
But the commodity capital must be monetized before its conversion into productive capital, or before the surplus-value contained in it can be spent. Where does the money for this purpose come from?
Here the same question reappears, which we met previously. Where does the additional money come from, by which the additional surplus-value now contained in the form of commodities is to be realized? (Marx writing in Capital, Vol II, quoted in Rosa Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital, p. 155 and 163)
Enter… Rosa:
Marx’s diagram of enlarged reproduction cannot explain the actual and historical process of accumulation. And why? Because of the very premises of the diagram. The diagram sets out to describe the accumulative process on the assumption that the capitalists and workers are the sole agents of capitalist consumption. We have seen that Marx consistently and deliberately assumes the universal and exclusive domination of the capitalist mode of production as a theoretical premise of his analysis in all three volumes of Capital. Under these conditions, there can admittedly be no other classes of society than capitalists and workers; as the diagram has it, all ‘third persons’ of capitalist society… must, as consumers, be counted in with these two classes, and preferably with the capitalist class. This axiom, however, is a theoretical contrivance – real life has never known a self-sufficient capitalist society under the exclusive domination of the capitalist mode of production. (p. 348)
From the very beginning, the forms and laws of capitalist production aim to comprise the entire globe as a store of productive forces [human beings and the earth generally]. Capital, impelled to appropriate productive forces for the purposes of exploitation, ransacks the whole world, it procures its means of production from all corners of the earth, seizing them, if necessary, by force, from all levels of civilization and from all forms of society. The problem of the material elements of capitalist accumulation, far from being solved by the material form of the surplus value that has been produced, takes on quite a different aspect. It becomes necessary for capital progressively to dispose ever more fully of the whole globe, to acquire an unlimited choice of means of production, with regard to both quality and quantity, so as to find productive employment for the surplus value it has realized.
The process of accumulation, elastic and spasmodic as it is, requires inevitably free access to ever new areas of raw materials in case of need, both when imports from old sources fail or when social demand suddenly increases. (p. 358)
…capitalist production cannot manage without labour power from other social organizations… (p. 364)
And in fact, primitive conditions allow of a greater drive and of far more ruthless measures than could be tolerated under purely capitalist social conditions. (p. 365)
The solution to this problem which for almost a century has been the bone of contention in economic theory thus lies between the two extremes of the petty-bourgeois skepticism preached by Sismondi, v. Kirchmann, Vorontzov and Nicolayon, who flatly denied accumulation, and the crude optimism advocated by Ricardo, Say and Tugan Baranovski who believed in capital’s unlimited capacity for parthenogenesis [“reproduction from an ovum without fertilization”], with the logical corollary of capitalism-in-perpetuity. The solution envisaged by Marx lies in the dialectical conflict that capitalism needs non-capitalist social organizations as the setting for its development, that it proceeds by assimilating the very conditions which alone can ensure its own existence. (p. 366)
Internal capitalist trade can at best realize only certain quantities of value contained in the social product: the constant capital [e.g. the machinery] that has been used up, the variable capital [wages], and the consumed part of the surplus value. That part of the surplus value, however, which is earmarked for capitalization, must be realized elsewhere…. Further, with the international development of capitalism the capitalization of surplus value becomes ever more urgent and precarious, and the substratum of constant and variable capital becomes an ever-growing mass – both absolutely and in relation to the surplus value. (p. 367)
Hence derives the vital necessity for capitalism in its relations with colonial countries to appropriate the most important means of production [earth]. Since the primitive associations of the natives are the strongest protection for their social organizations and for their material bases of existence, capital must begin by planning for the systematic destruction and annihilation of all the non-capitalist social units which obstruct its development. With that we have passed beyond the state of primitive accumulation; this process is still going on. (p. 370)
The more violently, ruthlessly and thoroughly imperialism brings about the decline of non-capitalist civilizations, the more rapidly it cuts the very ground from under the feet of capitalist accumulation. Though imperialism is the historical method for prolonging the career of capitalism, it is also a sure means of bringing it to a swift conclusion. This is not to say that capitalist development must be actually driven to this extreme: the mere tendency towards imperialism of itself takes forms which make the final phase of capitalism a period of catastrophe…. ‘Sweating blood and filth with every pore from head to toe’ characterizes not only the birth of capital but also its progress in the world at every step, and thus capitalism prepares its own downfall under ever more violent contortions and convulsions. (Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital, p. 446 and 453)
Does an ember beseeching the ether…
– that ‘power’ seeks to smother…
…before willing tinder can reach her –
…exist…
…prior to the fire that redeems her?
–––
My life is in a little cup…
…a pinhole loosed where stoppered up…
…and outward flows…
…to where? who knows?
The point is as it…
…goes… goes… goes… goes…
–––
I watched the ravens preen…
…pick clean and shake…
…their satin coats…
…and how they dipped their wings like oars into the languid air…
…that roused and surried ’round their calls…
…to come to evening prayer.
–––
We, in low-income, urban communities…
…are poised on a knife-edge….
The hard times ‘power’ has been cooking up…
…is being served…
…and those who formerly would never think…
…to sample lowly fare…
…are come to view the wares….
So…
…cheek-by-jowl we live…
…uneasy-blent…
…of often feuding misconceptions…
…“‘opportunity’ meets…
…a ‘casting-overboard-of-hope’”…
…for if we fail to do this thing…
…in such a way that something new and fresh…
…is born…
…of all these differences…
…and instead…
…the same stale poisoned brew…
…of burned betrayal and thin abandonment…
…is what we let the so-called ‘masters’ lead us to…
…then…
…then…
…then…
–––
We tried…
…we ones excised…
…from so-called ‘good-life’…
…we tried to come together…
…and make new terms new lives new…
…community…
…on good-fellowship found…
…and love…
…and ‘power’ put the boot-and-shove to all our hopes…
…and now you say…
…“perhaps there’s still a way to play their game…
…and squeeze more wiggle-room and giggles out…
…of this small space that we’re allowed?…”
…
…when instead…
…we could re-write the terms by shouting out the words:
“We will not settle anymore…
“…we will not fix a game designed to make us lose…
“…but rather we will choose…
“…new terms new lives new…
“…recognitions…
“…that only earth can give…
“…in which we say ‘no craven begging…
“…and no deals…
“…no letting go of hopes or selling souls’…”
…
–––
12.15.11 – : * "Attack the Block"
(01.10.12: Prelude (Post):
Pundits! No one but you (if you) ever thought that electing Barack meant we were entering a “post-racial era”.
Trust.
Stop insulting us.)
Charlotte once said that a good and original painting was as rare as a good and original book. (And… on that note… Charlotte… Villette… wow.)
William told us that art turns the mirror to our eyes….
I would add that it helps us ‘see’ with our eyes again… and not our mis-taught minds…
…helps us see the hidden assumptions by which we live our lives…
(…under ‘class’….)
I will be pondering here, intermittently (…as it goes… goes… goes – I do think slow…), a film directed by Joe Cornish my son encouraged me to watch called Attack the Block. He’s a lover of film, is Mr. Cornish, and a lover of low-income youth… and… best of all… a lover of truth.
The heroism of survival in a system that has no ‘use’ for you is misunderstood by many reared with unconscious assumptions of superiority… and I’m talking all ages and races of people who are of good heart… but conditioned (by the system) to see their system-given privilege… as part of an ‘orderly’ structuring of the ‘economy’, in which one plays one’s position and ‘society’ as a whole is all the better for it….
This is dry-husk Plato…
…propped up and pumped…
…still masked as ‘justice.’
Atomization… fragmentation… insures that ‘folks-with-mind-jobs’ are rarely disabused of these notions… and the thought that there could be unfairness is seldom entertained. (“Vanity”… says he… “my favorite sin.”)
But…
…we are living in a time when separate lives… separates boxes… the many propped-up walls… are more permeable than before…
…an amazing time of opportunity… for those who hope to abolish walls… and move on.
But…
…the weight of three thousand years of (concentrated, calcified) ‘class’ is set against our doing so… our ending false divisions… and releasing the energy desperately needed… to heal the myriad dis-eases… the earth and we-as-earth are experiencing.
So while I applaud ‘protest’… I fear that “it’s all good!” message that’s being propagated. “Electoral politics? Go ’head! Try it! We’ll learn!” “Legislation? Fund-raising? Random acts of kindness? Non-profit work? Go ’head! It can’t hurt! At least we’ll learn!”
And this openness is exhilarating for a time… if you’re young… and of the right ‘class’… full of ambition (read: willing to kick and kiss ass)… i.e., willing to exist within very tight limits… and willing to leave the earth… to the moneyed interests.
And the oceans will die… but at least we tried… and after all, we got to experience… for a time… that high of free-floating ‘mind’.
I love youthful exuberance as much as anyone… but trial and error was never the way to truth…
If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor. (Nikola Tesla)
I think we need to convene a small group of folks like me who have been pondering… not ‘reform’… not ‘revolution’… not any ‘idea’… but pondering practically… the physical reality… of how to create our future freedom…
…evolution…
…folks who know it’s not a pipe dream…
…so we can begin a methodical (i.e. a relaying) process of ‘future-planning.’
If we have time to shut down ports, we have time for this.
I propose this process… two folks… in addition to myself… each choose two more… and when these seven arrive at consensus, they choose a replacement that broadens out the world representation… repeat again… and all the while share results and thought process online and in small groups…
…everywhere….
Who would I choose to make the beginning other than myself?
John Trudell and Joe Cornish, sight unseen… the soul that produced that pondering is worth a further listen, as far as I’m concerned.
Let’s start this conversation.
Let’s flesh out a vision… of a world designed for our natures as free, living, spirits… and not for the ignoble purposes of lost souls.
–––
…and to folks who future-plan… I recommend… … an organization of thoughts with these two words: ‘whole’… and… what ‘whole’ is when blood-and-flesh… ‘health’…
…and then… with this rudder / compass in hand… going further in… these directions: ‘material security’ (healthy bodies)… ‘emotional security’ (healthy hearts)… ‘spiritual security’ (healthy minds).
What physical structures of our created ‘world’ would ensure we can become our best selves?
… and ‘best’ in the sense of ‘wholes’… as Virginia saw.
And this is key: ignore, by every means, please, the words: ‘science’… ‘production’… and ‘technology’…
…these are substances ‘power’ hopes to use to re-solidify the chinks… re-solder broken links… and re-in-harden all our chains…
…and so to make our future for us out of cons that heretofore have served them beyond their wildest fantasies…
…while simultaneously freezing in place folks to be permanently degraded… Haitians… Africans generally… (wherever land is being bought en masse… the peoples there ‘power’ plans… to suck upon… unstintingly… as is their wont…)
Nothing matters but these: wholeness and health…
…we have ‘stuff’ enuf….
Trust.
12.20.11 – : * "Authentic 'Economics' - 5: Bleed the Beast"
Zora Neale Hurston collected parables of the people…
…the folks… she says… think like Shakespeare… authentically… in close connection with the earth… substance….
She loved the rich… inventive… assertive… claiming of language… words…
…for it is through words that we claim the world.
I thought about the tales I had heard as a child. How even the Bible was made over to suit our vivid imagination. How the devil always outsmarted God and how that over-noble hero Jack or John… outsmarted the devil. (Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men)
In one story… of European origin… when John beat ole Massa’s horse… but spared his own…
Massa tole John if he ever heard tell of him layin’ a whip on his hawse agin he was gointer take and kill John’s horse dead as a nit.
John tole ’im, “Massa, if you kill my hawse, Ah’ll beatcher makin’ money.”
And then Zora proceeds to show how ‘making money’ is a mind-game… and a game of hiding and hoarding superior information… and one of ‘bait-and-switch.’
This matter concerns us because… as Samuel Butler told us… one can do (almost) nothing… without money.
“Poverty is very wearying,” he said.
It is.
And it is very difficult to end a ‘class system’… when big piles of money have been accumulating at one end… while at the other… nada… forcing us to twist into all kinds of unflattering positions.
We did not make these terms… it was not us who bid the ‘world’ to turn this way…
…in which… for the right to live itself… one is required to pay…
…terms which made Shakespeare beg of boys for alms… and Goya… and Cabral… and Paul… and Zora…
…we did not make these terms…
…and… somehow… we will change them….
‘Economics’ being the transformation of ‘earth’ into measurable quantities… ‘money’…
…means that he who holds… aggregated… consolidated… ‘money’… holds the ‘ball’… the weight… that calls the ‘world’ to turn…
…its’ way.
So…
…when a very wily ‘progressive’ Prof reassures us…
…that ‘economics’ can become ‘democratic’…
…I suggest…
…we grab our Popper lenses… quick…
…and put his theory to the test.
The Prof in question is the subject of the 11.12.11 post on this page and was recently interviewed on Democracy Now!
So I see a trend of expanding possibility, building step by step on what’s already out there. We’ve learned a lot in the last several decades. And I think it’s going to grow over time because of the pain levels…. For instance, in San Francisco, there’s about $2 billion in state – in city money, that’s taxpayer money. Instead of putting it in the Bank of America, the proposal is put it in a city bank or a city credit union and then use that to finance development in the city.
And I think that direction, using those public monies, and not simply to finance corporations or speculation, but doing it in a way that builds up this already developing knowledge and base of worker-owned companies, community-owned developments, neighborhood developments, co-ops, that form of development, the way to think about it is the—you know, the two to three decades before the Progressive Era and the Populist Era really made a big national impact…. But I think the pain level is so high, it’s going to be quicker this time. So I take this local development process very seriously. And I think it can lead to national change, as the New Deal did at one point when the pain levels really struck.
Lots of younger people are looking at what will work in the midst of a failing economy, where the large corporations are falling day by day and the speculators on Wall Street are speculating away the money. I think we’re seeing a change in attitude, both increasing doubts about what’s now going on in the economy, deep doubts, very deep doubts—thanks to Occupation, it’s crystallized—but this other trend of saying, "What do you want? Where are we going?" in some ways to democratize the economy in a very American way, something very—you can explain to your neighbors, this is—this makes sense, in these cities that I’ve been talking about. You get a whole larger coalition of people understanding there’s a hell of a lot of pain here, we can develop something here that moves us in a direction of democratizing local economies and beyond. (Gar Alperovitz, Democracy Now!, December 15, 2011)
So… he concludes as he began…
…‘we’ will “democratize local economies” by “democratizing local economies.”
It would have been a (much) better use of our time if they had talked about how to tell an honest answerer from a prevaricator… or hidden propaganda techniques.
AMY GOODMAN: Gar Alperovitz argues… that we may be in the midst of a profound transition towards an economy characterized by more democratic structures of ownership…. So, what’s the evidence for this, Gar?
Facts not in evidence are herein assumed… is there really such a thing as “democratic structures of ownership”?
‘Honesty’ would help us think through this question…
‘Prevarication’ recognizes he is given the megaphone in order to plant ideas….
“Democratic economics” is a nonsensical phrase… but is he asked about that?… No…
…the patronizing notion that he “feels our pain”… (the word ‘pain’ is used at least seven times… as in, “there’s a lot of pain out there”…)
…and avoids substance at all costs….
An honest person would help us understand what is meant by the term he was invited in to discuss (I mean, he’s there to talk about it, right?)…
Instead, he talks about “the Progressive Era and the Populist Era” and worker-owned businesses, and credit unions…
…as if the definition of “democratic economics” was clearly understood by all… which it is not… and then throws statistics at us, as if “40%” of people doing something that isn’t defined should impress us.
He is given 10 or 15 minutes to tell us nothing at all… but his agenda is served very well.
When… and how… will we… we commoners… have some means to speak… out loud… our agenda?
So… as Gar et al. refused to do so, let’s us try to think through what “democratic economics” could mean… substantively… i.e. always remembering that there is an actual, physical reality at the base of all flowery phrases…
…and the relevant aspect of that base in this case, is that we have a global economic system…
…and that the titans of “the economy” take long strides… great stomping leaps… across the globe… and Greed has nothing ‘democratic’ about it.
‘Economics’ – where it begins… to where it ends – is all about sheer, naked ‘power’… to seize and eat as much… as fast… as possible….
Will ‘government’ rein-in ‘power’? But government has been captured by ‘power’. So how can ‘power’ be constrained? No idea.
‘Democracy’ not in the sense of “a system of government” means…
… “control of an organization or group by a majority of its members”… or “the practice of social equality.”
Honesty would compel these admissions:
…that behemoths will not willingly go away…
…that Greed is not easily suppressed…
…that Income Difference means the weak are left to the vicious….
These are realities which, if he avoids, while planting hollow phrases, means… he’s there at the service of his masters to plant propaganda points….
If we assume that “democratic economics” means scattered businesses created to suck on local communities for their sustenance…
…is it clear that ’til human beings are free such ‘economies’ (businesses) exist on sufferance only?
Last time I checked ‘ruthlessness’ was still a defining characteristic of ‘power’…
…so even if Wal-Mart is driven out of ‘wealthier’ communities, what will keep it out of bleaker ones?
…and the more scarce the dollars, the more terribly it will fight for them.
So does ‘local’ just mean keeping blissfully ignorant of what’s going on in the rest of the world?
When you see that ‘global economy’ means that brothers and sisters hidden from our eyes will be the first to be denied (…access to self-determined [healthy] lives)… it appears that “democratic economics” means… nothing less or more than: upcropping local businesses…
…which has always been…
…and since… it says nothing as to scope…
…putting fancy dress on this… is merely an attempt to get folks to experience an old reality as something new and different…
…which means it is but marketing… branding… advertising…
…i.e. it’s diversionary…
…delaying…
…with the purpose to fool enough of us long enough to stop our growing awakening….
Follow the money.
Money aggregated sufficiently… can control anything.
Which is why ‘the money lever’ was made.
But…
…look at the moment we’re in… this moment of global evolution…
…consider how expensive that is to contain…
…consider that and I think you’ll see… ‘power’s’ sense of urgency… to shut this awakening… down…
…and how desperately it’s pondering right now:
…“how to neutralize a global, youth-driven uprising? Suck them into cannons? Divide and conquer? Create conditions of drought?”
Our endurance is absolutely critical… but…
…we must hurry… the longer this goes on… the longer the suffering is prolonged.
12.23.11 – : * "Getting to Our Future Freedom - 1"
I understand why pundits refuse to say the words…
…they’re ‘bosses’ aren’t they?…
…and would-be masters pull their chains…
…same as with all wage slaves…
…but we…
…we…
…who see ‘injustice’ globally…?
…
Considering words I heard some pundits say…
…(as Occupy – Berkeley was being torn away…
…three days before a holiday…
…a holiday made…
…to celebrate…
…peace and good will towards men…
…[a visual even the most determined blindness could see…
…meant ‘the state’ does not exist for you and me])…
…I think I finally got it… the pundit ‘class’ believes in ‘power’….
Pundits perceive ‘political-jockeying’ as just ‘what-humans-do’… (I mean… ‘power’ ‘organizes’ our world for us, doesn’t it?… or seems to.)
“… we scramble and compete for place…”
…is what they say……as if behaving like ‘crabs-in-a-bucket’…
…is somehow in our DNA….
For the pundit ‘class’…
…‘power’s’ not only a given, but a pleasure too…
…a treat…
…suitable meat for superior palates to eat.
Perhaps this then…
…is its defining complicity…
…making them in it…
…illegitimate…
…‘spokesmen’…
…for those they claim to serve and represent…
…the ‘little folk’…
…who otherwise…
…would be both voiceless and blind…
…for don’t they say…
…that as we waste our lives away …
…consumed by jobs that barely pay the rent…
…or just exist apparently as cautionary tales…
…to keep wage-slaves from forging any steel in our back-bents…
…how could our lives have any meaning…
…if not for their gleaning intelligence?…
…and this is but the tip of what they do.
But you see…
…we commoners don’t believe…
…that we live but to scramble for a piece…
…of what is ours by birth.
We live…
…to live…
…not to exist…
…in a fruitless attempt…
…to satisfy the fantasies of ‘power’….
And so we cleave forever to the hope…
…of one day having health and wholeness back…
…from them that took it.
And far from ‘competition’…
…in the sense used by ‘economists’…
…being “nature’s way”…
…Petr showed the truth…
…that in reality…
…“nature’s way”…
…is mutual aid.
So…
…‘power’s’ determination to beat us…
…onto their side of the ‘imbalance sheet’…
…requires that they reward those…
…who adopt the values they promote…
…‘competition’… ‘greed’…
…‘disconnection from earth’…
…‘misanthropy’…
…and punish them that live…
…by values shaped by reverence….
Would you object to it if I called this project…
…‘breeding’?
Now…
…if you worked for ‘Public Works’… could you toss belongings of those already struggling, in a dumpster three days before a celebration of “goodwill towards men”… or at all?
Or…
…if you worked with words… could you sell them for pay… after hearing Charlotte say that the deity “Creative Impulse” was never to be subject to barter and exchange… ever?
Law itself should not compel me. I would pay a fine, or undergo an imprisonment, rather than write for a show and to order, perched up on a platform. (Charlotte Brontë, Villette)
Of course you could.
‘Jobs’ have tamed us… they exist… to keep our backs bent.
But now we see the price…
…of this our so-called ‘good life’…
…the cost of leaving to our so-called ‘betters’…
…the treatment of our earth…
…including that which is our bodies…
…and that these…
…our so-called ‘betters’…
…far from seeing with the vantage of the ‘whole’…
…have themselves been chopped…
…and sold….
All ‘privilege’…
…under ‘class’…
…casts illusory ‘superiority’…
…is ‘power’s’ grant…
…and leash…
They cannot speak for us.
So…
…while I understand why pundits refuse to say the words:
“we need a mass movement to end wage work”…
…why is it…
…that we do not sit…
…and ponder them a bit…
…on grandma’s ample back…
…and stretch out full…
…her gift of vision…
…she…
…who’s borne all of our dis-ease…
…so patiently…
…holding secrets of untold indignities…
…and feel the cost of all our stolen dreams…
…how grievous is the loss…
…and urgent is the need…
…to finally…
…rise…
…to meet them?
I believe that those words… said over… and over… and over… will bring us our future.
In this space [Getting to Our Future Freedom - 2]… over the coming weeks… I will be doing some ‘visioning-in’….
This is ‘work’ that I hope we will all be participating in.
* 11.13.11:
You know how puzzles you’re working on get solved when your body is relaxed in sleep?
I didn’t visit Occupy Oakland until the General Strike. I went down to thank those physically there… each day… every day – and night. Though it was a joyous day each camper I found exhibited an affect that puzzled me…. I felt exhilarated but that feeling wasn’t reflected back – from the marchers, yes, but not from the campers. I felt from them an ominous combination ‘resigned-grim-sad’… a mild suspicion, like it really didn’t matter anymore, and a little fear….
Now I wonder if these emotions were conscious… for I trust my judgment here… or just their bodies speaking.
The following Saturday morning I found myself on a BART train going back there. I was worried about the anti-occupy propaganda campaign ‘power’ had turned the heat high on. I wondered if any political education was going on at the camp. And by ‘political education’ I wasn’t thinking of professors stopping by to lecture on Marxist Theory or on “the history of public confrontation with the state in America.” No, I was thinking of the help the ancestors are offering… those great lovers of life who kept their eyes staid on freedom despite being mired in the muck of ‘class’… and being dragged, every move they made, by its chains. And I was thinking practically… an education that was also facilitated problem-solving. But mostly I was thinking of the point of ‘political education’: crafting a better ‘life’… for us all…
I was thinking of the future.
Can we just say this out loud… so we can begin to do something about it… I don’t know about the other encampment sites, but Oakland’s is riddled with agent provocateurs. (And, as an aside, the fact that ‘power’ is pulling out all the stops to sink this should give you some idea of its significance… which makes those petty criticisms I’ve been hearing from the left pretty odious.)
Within the first five minutes of my visit all the main propaganda points the agents have been ordered to disseminate were delivered… on the sly… by ‘reps’ paid to intercept the public. I was both subtly and grossly given this picture: out-of-town stoners with head lice there to parasitically consume city resources.
The scent of ganja wafted everywhere. Weed dispersed liberally is hard for those abused by class society to refuse… as is profuse, duplicitous, ego-pumping and like psychological manipulation… but the paid-phony-campers keep their heads and sobriety. [A friend pointed out that, no, this is not so, they often sacrifice their own… to addiction.]
Propaganda points planted, I was soon deserted since I proved unreceptive soil. But one young man sat with me and talked. He said, “None of us knows who anyone else is here. Here we’re all equal…. There’s no way to tell if someone is an agent provocateur.” And I replied, “No, there isn’t. But it is possible to distinguish good from bad tactics.”
We… the people… we commoners… have to recognize that these heroic campers are sitting in a pit of vipers… and are being systematically worn down. They need consistent… daily… support… on the ground… and in the media.
So… I propose… a group hug. You, reading this, you who long for our future freedom, think of the people you know… the resource treasure trove they compose… particularly those who can help us secure critical components of our future:*
Lawyers to create a ‘land-held-in-common-in-perpetuity’ agreement to make with the state…
Musicians to bring gratitude and plan a harmonic convergence with all the folks on all the commons being claimed internationally… [Imagine if this were done regularly… allowing us to see… auditorially… how fast our numbers were growing… and to feel… the whole world swaying as one… simultaneously.]
Progressive media programmers to figure out how to combat ‘power’s’ propaganda campaign with the people’s visions… We need our own daily radio time slot… preferably 5:30 – 5:55 AM daily on KPFA to allow folks going to work to be part of the daily issues and allow early-risers among the camp-folks and community supporters to start each day with solid political grounding… and to know… we are not alone.
‘Retired’ folk and others with time who can coordinate all of this into daily-soul-support to these heroes securing our future… step up!
The people… the broader community… need to know that our future is on the line and that the occupation folks are bravely trying to hold it down for all of us.
To you… on the ground… in the sites… expanding the commons… I urge you to set aside two chunks of time daily: one for political education (I have facilitation skills and can help with this)… and another for future-oriented resources… as soul-support and consistent reminder of the stakes. It is imagining our future freedom that gives us all hope, so each day must manifest it.
* Considering: Immanuel's "Heads Up!"
11.12.11: Considering again… as we pitch our tents… the words of Immanuel Wallerstein (below)… I can't help but ask:
What is a movement to re-claim our earth if it does not begin in a process of community visioning… to develop an alternative path to ‘power’? – as it’s ‘power’s’ manufactured ‘need’ (ultimately the need to be seen) that has brought us this present catastrophe?
Is ‘power’ driving us off a cliff?
Is ‘capitalism’ doomed?
How do you know?
Does ‘power’ cease to exist when ‘capitalism’s’ evil ways catch up to it?
Aren’t these discussions we should be having?
Aren’t the answers to these questions critical for developing the kind of consensus that would allow us to move forward collectively as human beings to a world in which everyone… not only has access to material stuff – which in the present system is possible only if one is selected by ‘power’ to serve – but can wake up every morning with the words, "what do I want to do today?"
So… a query to those of good heart in the progressive airwaves… Immanuel Wallerstein spoke these provocative words over three and a half years ago. Hearing them, I assumed they would spark furious subsequent discussion… primarily as a community service to encourage us all to take ownership of our collective future. Why has this not come to pass?
What could be more important to discuss?… and what other discussion would more readily energize… all of us?
(Later today…)
Additional thoughts after listening to… what struck me as… a very wily ‘progressive’ pundit [see above: * "Authentic 'Economics' - 5: Bleed the Beast"] trying to sooth… if not ‘pooh-pooh’… all pessimistic prognostications about the collapse of ‘our’ economic system. He was advocating for what he termed a gradual “reconstruction” of ‘capitalism’ into “de-centralized, democratized, localized” institutions….
So… no need to worry about its decay as it's ‘capitalism’s destiny to be tamed… or ‘wither-away’….
If ‘capitalism’ has lost its edge, does it follow that ‘power’ is harmless?
Perhaps we need a ‘little red book of Popper’ on Plato… as a guide to ‘power’s’ propaganda playbook… to provide some strong lenses and eyes… a little help for our side… to see through ‘power’s’ many disguises. Recall Popper’s warning (see: Palmers’ Chat) “that we must guard against the danger of being impressed by mere words…” (William shows us this… in the character of Polonius. It doesn't matter what ‘power’ calls things… what matters is the reality. So if ‘power’ no longer calls itself ‘capitalism,’ but says instead it's a ‘Global State’… Plato's ‘Best State’… that elevates the ‘truly great’… a ‘state’ that best represents ‘science’ and ‘technology’… keep your ‘Popper lens’ on ‘high resolution.’)
I have many questions for this perspective, starting with the definition of any ‘new’ ‘economic system’… and…
…in it are humans ‘things’?… allocated by a ‘money-lever’ where we’re ‘needed’?… (by…?)
’Til free are we not still commodities?… does it really matter if the chains are forged ‘locally’?
To fully probe his proposed solution deserves more considered exploration… but here’s a thing too to consider…
Why should we settle?
Because it’s easier to end ‘power’ than end, say, ‘corporate personhood’…
As a Malaysian cartoonist recently said, it’s “better to punch than to pinch…” ‘better’ not just because more principled, but better strategically. There are many more folks willing to plan our future freedom than are willing to work on a constitutional amendment.
And why bet the survival of our oceans…and our most ruthlessly exploited brothers and sisters… and… (it’s a long list)… on ‘power’s’ capacity, let alone willingness, to gradually ‘evolve’?
* Immanuel's "Heads Up!" of 04.28.08
Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, explains the podrunks’ impoverishment imperative this way:
The issue is not whether capitalism will continue to exist or not. It’s doomed. The issue is what will replace it. It’s no longer possible to have serious accumulation of capital because the costs are too high in terms of purchasing power… Capitalism as a system depends on lots of people working to produce surplus value that ends up in a few hands. This results in polarization. If thirty percent of Indians or the Chinese are middle class…a lot more money has to go into their hands. So the world level of profits declines with the growth of the middle class globally. And they consume an enormous amount of goods – food and energy – so you see prices go way up because there are more people who can afford to buy those products. Now there could be a substitution – Americans consume less as the Chinese consume more – but there’s resistance to that…One way is to reduce labor costs… bring in rural populations at lower wages, but we’re running out of them. Within the next twenty-five years they’ll be wiped out. (Interview on Against the Grain, KPFA Radio, April 28 and 29, 2008)
As capitalism runs out of sixteen year-old girls in Djakarta, Cavite, Lagos, Sao Paulo, Tijuana, with their dexterous fingers and endurance, fresh from the farmlands their governments grab, the families their governments impoverish, with their good hearts and heroic shoulders, whatever will capitalism do?
In that interview Wallerstein added that when production – making things – can no longer return the rate of profit podrunks want, provide their raison d’etre, they redirect their ‘capital’ to finance, “which is simply speculation, which leads to high unemployment, wider disparities, and debt.” [See: The Two Winds (pt. 2) in Waking Up]
...we have no choice but to unplug and to organize -- thereby embracing our responsibility as thinking human beings.
This unique moment in human history presents us with a choice. We either reclaim responsibility for making the decisions that we all have to live with, or we allow 'Power' to make them – and their plans for us are not benign....
Consider Catherine Austin Fitts blog on "Depopulation" which amplifies our sense of urgency.... Note as well the blog on this site: Depopulation... and: Unmasking Complicity's False Sweetness and Countering Complicity With Good Fellowship.