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“Embracing Global Goals, Scope and Action: Becoming Global Actors… Claiming the ‘All’”

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Please check out our latest (2014-12.01) “anti-coercion commercials” posted on YouTube. Art by Wassily Kandinsky (except in “Future Freedom” which presents “Freedom Sun” by David Sterenberg) and original music and beats by Thandiwe Satterwhite. The entire collection can be found at: “Nascence Anti-coercion Commercials”:

 

“…and I have to say… it has occurred to me more than once… that their fantasy… these Plato’s Tribesmen… is to replace those gods on Mount Olympus… with themselves: the roar of their drones overhead… that are to inspire fear and dread…”

 

“…all we need to regenerate hopeful energy… is a vision… a view… of a free future… how can we move on as a species if the vast majority are not allowed to develop their gifts?… not allowed… to think…”

 

“Sisters and Brothers: “If we stop to consider the matter we’ll see that our diminishment is the point of ‘division’ – beyond its main purpose to contain and control us… – to distinguish who is ‘good’ from who ‘isn’t’… to sift out the obedient… that ‘division’ is key to establish the need for some artificial… mythical belief in the efficacy of ‘hierarchical leadership’… and this ‘style’ of ‘leadership’ is co-signed by illusory notions of ‘excellence’ (perfection)… and that ‘excellence’ is determined by means of educational institutions… which exist to select ‘obedience’… – and that the ‘job’ of this ‘educational result’ (the obedient) is to construct and control ‘popular opinion’… the endorsement of which protects the ideology of ‘democracy’… which forms the warp and weft of ‘rule’.”

* “WUR of December 7th, 2014… “Embracing Global Goals, Scope and Action: Becoming Global Actors… Claiming the ‘All’”:

 

[Please check out the audio for our most recent ‘non-coercion commercials’:

 

“…our diminishment is the point of ‘division’… – which protects the ideology of ‘democracy’… which forms the warp and weft of ‘rule’. And so this diminishment is made to justify everything… its every horror may be laid at its door: “are they poor?… well… it’s because they’re ‘uneducated’…” “do they tend to dissolution… do they drink… use drugs… disrespect their bodies?… well… what do you expect… they never learned better… we must work harder to ‘help’ them… by building the technological and surveillance infrastructure to ‘identify’ their ‘needs’… so we can drag them into the twenty-first century…” I heard her say: “They don’t want to ‘lead’…” But ‘Mother’ didn’t want to be a fearless evolutionary… till she was… Things change… in our sense of ourselves… as we gain new information… We are all brilliant – and probably all the more so to the degree we know how much we’ve yet to grow…”

 

“…all we need to regenerate hopeful energy… is a vision… a view… of a free future… how can we move on as a species if the vast majority are not allowed to develop their gifts?… not allowed… to think…”

 

“…so we are being set up for conflict… and while we're told via the media that that conflict is white against black… what we know in our own experience is that there is actually a coming together… I mean Barack couldn't have been elected otherwise… around wanting to be free from surveillance… free from this constant assault on our civil liberties… free from the oppressiveness of always having to struggle to survive… but the conflict that we are being set up for… is the police and the people perceiving each other as mutual enemies… which means that minimally we-the-people have to begin countering these moves on 'power's part… to divide us… So… instead of saying 'the police'… when referring to their acts of brutality against us… that we say 'the state' instead… and recognize that the police are paid actors…”

 

“…It worries me that I very rarely hear said that the main issue is work… that the lever of the wage does in fact convert us into something very like a machine… that says what it is paid to say… does what it is paid to do… and that that means a totalitarian future. If we were to talk about it we would see that when you restrict the ability of people to be free agents… to think and act independently… it means being set up for authoritarian rule… which we are in fact living in… without discussing it…”

 

“My concerns about our lack of clarity about the word ‘vision’… when applied to the critique of our current social arrangement… is part of a general concern about the lack of clear definitions among those of us who want to end ‘power’s privilege. This concern centers on that sentence we began with: ‘Power’ is global… ‘class’ is totalitarian. What does this tell us about an effective vision? If we agree that the ‘citizen’ – ‘barbarian’ divide… is at the root of all ‘class’ ideologies… then we can see that ‘class’ itself provides the fundamental raison d’etre for the state … and that… therefore… necessarily… there’s built-in inequality… and… if we truly want to be free… then… necessarily… we cannot accept enslavement… or ‘barbarian’-status… for any of us.”

 

“And how does a common concept of ‘vision’ make a difference when… as we’re seeing in Hong Kong… the state can play its trump-card of physical repression… can employ clandestine military action… and… because it owns the media (as we saw in Egypt… and of course here in the U.S. with the Occupy Movement…) can mobilize the ‘internalized state’ in our sleeping brothers and sisters? Now this has always been our primary challenge… that ‘internalized state’ within all of us… because we are turned over to the system and ‘educated’ by the ‘masters’. It’s very hard to challenge the state…”

 

“…developing a common global vision of… and activism for… freedom… may be less of a problem than we suppose precisely because – I mean we’ve never done this… we’re going to be talking more about what ‘global action’ means in upcoming shows… but it’s a game-changer… it changes the rhythm of our activism… it’s a new beat… it’s a global beat… it means we reverberate back and forth with each other… it’s ‘call-and-response’… in real time… using instantaneous communication means – it’s a different world from what has ever existed before – it’s just getting past that initial challenge of doing something that we’ve never done before.”

 

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Today’s show:

 

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…‘dialectics’: “the art of intellectual intuition, of visualizing the divine originals, the Forms or Ideas, of unveiling the Great Mystery behind the common man’s everyday world of appearances…” Doesn’t the possibility of induction into that secret society sound deliciously… tantalizingly… appealing?… if you’re a child… a child systematically denied the feeling of being valued… that you matter? And wouldn’t such a description explode into the world of such a child like revelation… because it seems to ‘explain’ everything… all the oppressive phoniness of everyone around you that you’ve perceived since you were an infant: “Aha!… nothing felt true because it isn’t! It’s mere ‘appearance’!”… If we accept the reality of a crafted world… crafted by an infinitesimally small number… but who have magnified their impact over the centuries by being ‘systematic’… by having an objective: realization of the Divine Originals… and accumulating resources towards the goal of manifesting them in the world… and by rearing their offspring to carry the mission forward when the older ‘adepts’ pass on…

 

December 5th, 2014… Brothers and Sisters: in our June 15, 2014 show… we were guided by Karl Popper into Plato’s ‘theory of education’… which Popper argues corrupts the education of youth to this day… as it assigns educational institutions the task: “to select the future leaders, and to train them for leadership…” Another way of saying this… is to say that its task is to continuously reproduce the status quo… i.e. ‘rule’… i.e the system of ‘class’. Karl Popper… and Martin Bernal in Black Athena… has helped us to see that the world we live in is not what it is by happenstance… but rather is extremely crafted.

 

Who crafts it?

 

The highest expression of the ‘knowledge’ ‘power’ wants to see transmitted to “only the very wisest adepts…” is ‘dialectics’: “the art of intellectual intuition, of visualizing the divine originals, the Forms or Ideas, of unveiling the Great Mystery behind the common man’s everyday world of appearances…” Doesn’t the possibility of induction into that secret society sound deliciously… tantalizingly… appealing?… if you’re a child… a child systematically denied the feeling of being valued… that you matter? And wouldn’t such a description explode into the world of such a child like revelation… because it seems to ‘explain’ everything… all the oppressive phoniness of everyone around you that you’ve perceived since you were an infant: “Aha!… nothing felt true because it isn’t! It’s mere ‘appearance’!” And wouldn’t the lure of appreciation dangled before you… to be given if you but meet all the expectations that the ‘masters’ of ‘statescraft’ require of you… wouldn’t that lure be too strong to resist… you who have never experienced the security of recognition?

 

If we accept the reality of a crafted world… crafted by an infinitesimally small number… but who have magnified their impact over the centuries by being ‘systematic’… by having an objective: realization of the Divine Originals… and accumulating resources towards the goal of manifesting them in the world… and by rearing their offspring to carry the mission forward when the older ‘adepts’ pass on…

 

…if we accept that this is going on… what implications flow from that recognition?: the recognition that there are a tiny… committed… and secretive few… in possession of vast resources… and who have cultivated the knowledge and the control of the levers and tools for manipulating human behavior to compel broad popular participation in realizing the world they want – and necessarily everything depends on keeping the goal secret… and maintaining control… And if we are being played… if media is theater… and politics overall… if the truth is never exposed to public scrutiny for discussion… what does that mean for our activism… our organizing… our strategy? Are we really going to just follow those phony machinations… and treat them as real forever? Or are we… at some point… going to turn to what we want?

 

…if we accept that this is going on… what implications flow from that recognition?: the recognition that there are a tiny… committed… and secretive few… in possession of vast resources… and who have cultivated the knowledge and the control of the levers and tools for manipulating human behavior to compel broad popular participation in realizing the world they want – and necessarily everything depends on keeping the goal secret… and maintaining control.

 

How would you do it? How would you keep the goal secret and maintain that control of human behavior? Would infiltrating and shaping key institutions be key tactics you would employ?

 

And if we are being played… if media is theater… and politics overall… if the truth is never exposed to public scrutiny for discussion…

 

…what does that mean for our activism… our organizing… our strategy? Are we really going to just follow those phony machinations… and treat them as real forever? Or are we… at some point… going to turn to what we want?

 

These thoughts come because of a fragment of a conversation I heard today (December 5, 2014) over the airwaves. I heard a woman say that “racism is in America’s DNA”… and I thought, “No it isn’t… it’s in the ‘DNA’ of Plato’s Tribesmen… and we… as always bear the blame… wear the hair-shirt… lay down in that iron maiden ‘power’ presents to us…”

If you possess sufficient means…

…you can makes things seem to be… that are in fact…

…not…

…for as Bentham said… but confirm the lie on all sides…

…sweep Truth into the shadows…

…and Voila! a populace is made that play-acts its way all-unwitting… through its days…

…condemned to a life of confusion…

…but if we refuse to play… and make ourselves…

…the world we live in… consciously…

…this Hideous Pantomime of Life will end…

…and Authentic Life begins.

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We do not have a people’s media. Sisters and Brothers: a ‘People’s Media’ cannot be ‘isolated news stories’… reported on occasionally… that may or may not be followed regularly – and which has no objective of global human freedom. Because of course we have to have a larger goal… a reclaimed world… or else we're held… jumping from one made-problem to the next… ad infinitum… forever kept… in defensive mode… …and this movement… while global… necessarily happens in specific locations… and is in that sense… local… which means we have to have local means… interlinked globally… for building and communicating… what we do…. Consider for a moment how ‘power’ maintains its control by disseminating the opposite message for its objective… how it disseminates this message innumerably across every mechanism for mind-control that it has available to it – every mechanism that it has created: the family and educational systems… the systems of coerced work (which we call ‘the economy’…) all the official media… as well as through the informal means we see in social media… We have to have some means of addressing this ‘power’-strategy.… Just as all the musicians tune their instruments to a single note so they may work in concert… so must we find our ‘note’ in common… …and we need a common frequency on which to play. Is there a way to meet these needs that you can see?

 

(As we begin these discussions and as reality begins to sink in… that word ‘hideous’… trust… is gonna rise in our throats and our minds and our hearts… hideous… I look at children… so perfect… so righteously strong and truthful and honest… the thought of them being turned over to this ‘system’… which is what has been going on for millennia… is hideous… the waste of our lives… is hideous.)

 

December 6th, 2014… Rain was pouring this morning when I said to my son, “I feel for the folks occupying the (Berkeley Main) Post Office…” “They’re gone,” he replied. What? I had only just… by happenstance… discovered they were there… a matter of days earlier. “I saw them all lined up on Thursday… their camp was being dismantled… but not by the Berkeley Police – it was U.S. Postal Inspectors.” What? I’d heard no mention of any of it on the ‘public’ radio stations… not the encampment… not the dismantlement… much less any urging of support for them.

 

And of course we have to have a larger goal… a reclaimed world… or else we're held… jumping from one made-problem to the next… ad infinitum… forever kept… in defensive mode…

 

…and this movement… while global… necessarily happens in specific locations… and is in that sense… local… which means we have to have local means… interlinked globally… for building and communicating… what we do….

 

We do not have a people’s media. Sisters and Brothers: a ‘People’s Media’ cannot be ‘isolated news stories’… reported on occasionally… that may or may not be followed regularly – and which has no objective… does not disseminate the message of… of global human freedom.

 

Consider for a moment how ‘power’ maintains its control by disseminating the opposite message for its objective… how it disseminates this message innumerably across every mechanism for mind-control that it has available to it – every mechanism that it has created: the family and educational systems… the systems of coerced work… all the official media… as well as through the informal means we see in social media…

 

…that opposite message being: “You live in the best possible world… the best people have been selected to plan… design… and lead it – the whole scientifically-managed and efficient. Of course nothing’s perfect. We will need you to help us ‘fix it’…” – and there you are… the purpose of your life handed to you… if you’ve gotten so far as to ask the question. For those who don’t bother to ask – “What is my purpose?” – because it’s all too depressing: “make brief work of your life and decrease the surplus population.”

 

We have an earth to save… a world to win… can we really be so easily checked? Recall Du Bois’ laborious efforts to counter the media blackout about the punitive indictment aimed at him. We have to have some means of addressing this ‘power’-strategy.

 

Just as all the musicians tune their instruments to a single note so they may work in concert… so must we find our ‘note’ in common…

 

…and we need a common frequency on which to play.

 

Is there a way to meet these needs that you can see?

 

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Beginning with the December 7, 2014 show, we will begin thinking through more specifically what it means to set our activism… to a global beat. We’ll have those discussions on the page: “Embracing Global Goals, Scope and Action: Becoming Global Actors… Claiming the ‘All’”… – P.S.

 

Sisters and Brothers: Zora… Du Bois… Martin… and Malcolm… did not love Black folks any less when the scope of their active love… the concern of their activism… widened to encompass all commoners under class. We all have our families and Tribes… but… as Fromm put it: “to love one’s flesh and blood is no achievement…” and certainly… in this moment… much more is needed from us.

 

I added that “Claiming the ‘All’” right after a global climate summit… because I heard folks use language like: “This is a global movement…” and I thought… “This isn’t what I mean by ‘global movement…’ so I gotta be clearer about what I mean… to distinguish it from their use of language like that.” Because it is inevitable that ‘power’ is going to use [their destruction of the planet] to their advantage. They [attempt to] use everything to serve their goal… their objective… of locking us in place so they can ‘corral’ and harness what they consider to be the ‘brain-power of the planet’ – Right. We've talked a lot about that… that you can't suppress… repress… destroy… the ability for the vast vast majority to think… and then claim to have identified ‘the best of the best of the best… to design the world for all the rest…’. That’s nonsense… (on to Popper on Hegel’s philosophy of identity: – “The leading idea, and at the same time the link between Hegel’s dialectics and his philosophy of identity, is Heraclitus’ doctrine of the unity of opposites. ‘The path that leads up and the path that leads down are identical’, Heraclitus had said…” – [“…the unity of opposites…”: – This has always been ‘power’s wet-dream… the fantasy that we will just dissolve into ‘our role’… their ‘idea’ of us… into our assigned tasks… and be ‘one with them…’ as they ‘lead us into Perfection…’ It’s what they've wanted from Day One… ‘Unity of Opposites’… i.e.… us dissolved into them… – P.S.]

 

On this page – “Embracing Global Goals, Scope and Action: Becoming Global Actors… Claiming the ‘All’” – we'll begin thinking through more specifically what it means to set our activism… to a global beat.

 

(I added that “Claiming the ‘All’” right after a global climate summit… because I heard folks use language like: “This is a global movement…” and I thought… “This isn’t what I mean by ‘global movement…’ so I gotta be clearer about what I mean… to distinguish it from their use of language like that.” Because it is inevitable that ‘power’ is going to use [their destruction of the planet] to their advantage. They [attempt to] use everything to serve their goal… their objective… of locking us in place so they can ‘corral’ and harness what they consider to be the ‘brain-power of the planet’ – Right. We've talked a lot about that… that you can't suppress… repress… destroy… the ability for the vast vast majority to think… and then claim to have identified ‘the best of the best of the best… to design the world for all the rest…’. That’s nonsense. Popper devoted an enormous about of analytical force (work) to debunking it… to show us that what that creates is the triumph of mediocrity. Period. You cannot by force compel creativity: the intangible creative 'genius' of us.)

 

So on this page we're going to be thinking through more specifically what it means to set our activism… to a global beat.

 

By way of Preamble to that discussion, consider this from Popper… we’re catching him mid-stream… explaining Hegel’s ‘philosophy’:

So much for Hegel’s dialectic triad [‘thesis’ – ‘antithesis’ – ‘synthesis’], one of the two pillars on which his philosophy rests. The significance of the theory will be seen when I proceed to its application.

 

The other of the two pillars of Hegelianism is his so-called philosophy of identity. It is, in its turn, an application of dialectics. I do not intend to waste the reader’s time by attempting to make sense of it, especially since I have tried to do so elsewhere; for in the main, the philosophy of identity is nothing but shameless equivocation, and, to use Hegel’s own words, it consists of nothing but ‘fancies, even imbecile fancies’. It is a maze in which are caught the shadows and echoes of past philosophies, of Heraclitus, Plato, and Aristotle, as well as of Rousseau and Kant, and in which they now celebrate a kind of witches’ sabbath, madly trying to confuse and beguile the naive onlooker. The leading idea, and at the same time the link between Hegel’s dialectics and his philosophy of identity, is Heraclitus’ doctrine of the unity of opposites. ‘The path that leads up and the path that leads down are identical’, Heraclitus had said, and Hegel repeats this when he says: ‘The way west and the way east are the same.’

[“…the unity of opposites…”: – This has always been ‘power’s wet-dream… the fantasy that we will just dissolve into ‘our role’… their ‘idea’ of us… into our assigned tasks… and be ‘one with them…’ as they ‘lead us into Perfection…’ It’s what they've wanted from Day One… ‘Unity of Opposites’… i.e.… us dissolved into them… – P.S.]

“…the unity of reality and appearance…”: – I’m an elder now so I’ve heard this crap paraded as the pinnacle of ‘wisdom’ my whole life… and I'm so hoping that… we can inoculate our youth today from this… insidious… faux-wisdom… phony-knowledge… It's from the perspective of ‘years’ that I can see how important Karl Popper is… and understand why he did this massive work of unmasking these frauds… Hegel I mean…

[“…the unity of reality and appearance…”: – I’m an elder now so I’ve heard this crap paraded as the pinnacle of ‘wisdom’ my whole life… and I'm so hoping that… we can inoculate our youth today from this… insidious… faux-wisdom… phony-knowledge… It's from the perspective of ‘years’ that I can see how important Karl Popper is… and understand why he did this massive work of unmasking these frauds… Hegel particularly… and he did not consider Marx a fraud at all… we'll talk more about that… he very much appreciated Marx's honesty… and he even believed that there were aspects of Plato that were honest… that he truly believed… as did Bentham… that they were working for ‘the best Republic…’ ‘the best world.’ Plato lied like a dog of course… the best example… obviously… is what he did to Socrates… you can’t forgive him for that… although that pales in comparison to… the larger betrayal of… all humanity… although it falls on his descendants to take responsibility for that… I suppose… preserving and pushing him forever forward… providing us with the substance behind… the vampire metaphor… – P.S.]

“…all these ghosts from the past seem to haunt the brain of the Great Dictator while he performs his dance with his balloon, with his puffed-up and fictitious problems of God and the World. But there is method in this madness, and even Prussian method. For behind the apparent confusion there lurk the interests of the absolute monarchy of Frederick William. The philosophy of identity serves to justify the existing order. Its main upshot is an ethical and juridical positivism, the doctrine that what is, is good, since there can be no standards but existing standards; it is the doctrine that might is right.…” – [“…there can be no standards but existing standards…”: It is in this light that we can best make sense of ‘power’s systematic and relentless assault upon earth-connected peoples: Nigerian… Pakistani… and Mexican villagers… Uygurs… Bedouins… the global Indigenous… – P.S.] “This is the philosophy of identity. Apart from ethical positivism a theory of truth also comes to light… In other words, everything that seems certain to those whose reason is up to date, must be true. Self-evidence is the same as truth…”: – [What would you say? Is it ‘philosophy’ overall… or just ‘philosophy’ ‘in its latest stage of development’ that is apologia-elaborated-as-‘system’… for ‘rule’? … I vote for the former… – P.S.]

 

The other of the two pillars of Hegelianism is his so-called philosophy of identity. It is, in its turn, an application of dialectics. I do not intend to waste the reader’s time by attempting to make sense of it, especially since I have tried to do so elsewhere; for in the main, the philosophy of identity is nothing but shameless equivocation, and, to use Hegel’s own words, it consists of nothing but ‘fancies, even imbecile fancies’. It is a maze in which are caught the shadows and echoes of past philosophies, of Heraclitus, Plato, and Aristotle, as well as of Rousseau and Kant, and in which they now celebrate a kind of witches’ sabbath, madly trying to confuse and beguile the naive onlooker. The leading idea, and at the same time the link between Hegel’s dialectics and his philosophy of identity, is Heraclitus’ doctrine of the unity of opposites. ‘The path that leads up and the path that leads down are identical’, Heraclitus had said, and Hegel repeats this when he says: ‘The way west and the way east are the same.’ This Heraclitean doctrine of the identity of opposites is applied to a host of reminiscences from the old philosophies which are thereby ‘reduced to components’ of Hegel’s own system. Essence and Idea, the one and the many, substance and accident, form and content, subject and object, being and becoming, everything and nothing, change and rest, actuality and potentiality, reality and appearance, matter and spirit, all these ghosts from the past seem to haunt the brain of the Great Dictator while he performs his dance with his balloon, with his puffed-up and fictitious problems of God and the World. But there is method in this madness, and even Prussian method. For behind the apparent confusion there lurk the interests of the absolute monarchy of Frederick William. The philosophy of identity serves to justify the existing order. Its main upshot is an ethical and juridical positivism, the doctrine that what is, is good, since there can be no standards but existing standards; it is the doctrine that might is right.

[“…there can be no standards but existing standards…”: It is in this light that we can best make sense of ‘power’s systematic and relentless assault upon earth-connected peoples: Nigerian… Pakistani… and Mexican villagers… Uygurs… Bedouins… the global Indigenous… – P.S.]

How is this doctrine derived? Merely by a series of equivocations. Plato, whose Forms or Ideas, as we have seen, are entirely different from ‘ideas in the mind’, had said that the Ideas alone are real, and that perishable things are unreal. Hegel adopts from this doctrine the equation Ideal = Real. Kant talked, in his dialectics, about the ‘Ideas of pure Reason’, using the term ‘Idea’ in the sense of ‘ideas in the mind’. Hegel adopts from this the doctrine that the Ideas are something mental or spiritual or rational, which can be expressed in the equation Idea = Reason. Combined, these two equations, or rather equivocations, yield Real = Reason; and this allows Hegel to maintain that everything that is reasonable must be real, and everything that is real must be reasonable, and that the development of reality is the same as that of reason. And since there can be no higher standard in existence than the latest development of Reason and of the Idea, everything that is now real or actual exists by necessity, and must be reasonable as well as good. (Particularly good, as we shall see, is the actually existing Prussian state.)

 

This is the philosophy of identity. Apart from ethical positivism a theory of truth also comes to light, just as a by-product (to use Schopenhauer’s words). And a very convenient theory it is. All that is reasonable is real, we have seen. This means, of course, that all that is reasonable must conform to reality, and therefore must be true. Truth develops in the same way as reason develops, and everything that appeals to reason in its latest stage of development must also be true for that stage. In other words, everything that seems certain to those whose reason is up to date, must be true. Self-evidence is the same as truth.

[What would you say? Is it ‘philosophy’ overall… or just ‘philosophy’ ‘in its latest stage of development’ that is apologia-elaborated-as-‘system’… for ‘rule’? … I vote for the former… – P.S.]

Self-evidence is the same as truth. Provided you are up to date, all you need is to believe in a doctrine; this makes it, by definition, true. In this way, the opposition between what Hegel calls ‘the Subjective’, i.e. belief, and ‘the Objective’, i.e. truth, is turned into an identity; and this unity of opposites explains scientific knowledge also. ‘The Idea’ is the union of Subjective and Objective… Science presupposes that the separation between itself and Truth is already cancelled.

 

So much on Hegel’s philosophy of identity, the second pillar of wisdom on which his historicism is built.

[In “Beginning Again”… I suggest as a good shorthand for ‘historicism’: ‘story-leading-reality’… – P.S.]

With its erection, the somewhat tiresome work of analyzing Hegel’s more abstract doctrines comes to an end. The rest of this chapter will be confined to the practical political applications made by Hegel of these abstract theories. And these practical applications will show us more clearly the apologetic purpose of all his labours. [I included Popper’s discussion of this practical application at the end of “Revealing Division”… – P.S.]

 

Hegel’s dialectics, I assert, are very largely designed to pervert the ideas of 1789. (Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Vol. 2): The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the Aftermath)

[…which makes ‘Marxism’s homage to the man and his ‘work’… the use of his language… to my mind… very perverted…

 

…the motives of those who swim in his murky ‘philosophical’ waters is treated in the [Left, progressive] media as self-evident… it’s never discussed. But it’s been long for me a question. What is their goal?… these folks who carry him on their shoulders? They claim the progressive mantle… but it’s hard to believe their goal is freedom for all of us. But if so… how does employing this language – playing with abstract concepts that are not only utterly divorced from solving the dilemma of our containment… but are actually used to strengthen it – accomplish it? Given my experience since writing Waking Up… such ‘exercises’ suggest the hidden hand of ‘power’ behind scenes. What else could it be… if not serving the function – as Popper explained to us – of creating a gulf between ‘ruler’ and ‘ruled’– what else could it be… but agreeing to police the margin with a thick book of abstract concepts?

 

[Let's repeat that: “…Hegel’s dialectics, I assert, are very largely designed to pervert the ideas of 1789…” – …which makes ‘Marxism’s homage to the man and his ‘work’… the use of his language… to my mind… very perverted. Social critique in the ‘Marxist tradition’ – ‘progressive’ social criticism’ – draws on Hegel’s language as if he’s helpful… as if he serves we-the-people… which clearly he doesn’t…

 

(…the motives of those who swim in his murky ‘philosophical’ waters is treated in the media as self-evident… it’s never discussed. But it’s been long for me a question. What is their goal?… these folks who carry him on their shoulders? They claim the progressive mantle… but it’s hard to believe their goal is freedom for all of us. But if so… how does employing this language – playing with abstract concepts that are not only utterly divorced from solving the dilemma of our containment… but are actually used to strengthen it – accomplish it? Given my experience since writing Waking Up… such ‘exercises’ suggest the hidden hand of ‘power’ behind scenes. What else could it be… if not serving the function – as Popper explained to us – of creating a gulf between ‘ruler’ and ‘ruled’– what else could it be… but agreeing to police the margin with a thick book of abstract concepts?)

 

Popper… and – in an inversion of his service which would likely disturb him – Bentham – have provided us with the best explanation of why Hegel’s ‘system’ doesn’t serve us… we-the-people.

 

Bentham advised ‘power’ to ‘own the lexicon’… define the terms (we’ve discussed Bentham in many shows – the July 7, 2013 show for example –included in the first Waking Up Radio Conversations series… called “Reclaiming Our Leadership… Our Stolen Gifts… to Establish a Future Based on Distributed Generation (Vol. 1)” – devotes considerable time to discussing him. And he’s also featured in the blog, “Bentham’s Strategic Verities” and in “The Violence of Class”:

Bentham instructed ‘power’ on the importance of controlling the lexicon: the key definitions that ‘justify’ ‘class.’ Let's never forget his advice to rulers:

 

“He who defined the language ruled the universe…” making the sovereign-legislator “the ultimate lexicographer… The larger the scope and operational range of his abstractions, the wider his area of government, of legislative and judicial authority. To him, he said, ‘belongs the power of making wrong and right change nature…’” (Mary Peter Mack, quoting Jeremy Bentham, A Bentham Reader)

What this means for us… is that ‘power’… using ‘philosophy’… ‘abstract thought’… or the (constructed… crafted…) ‘authority of science’… spins a very sticky web… which it extends… and invites our manipulation. Or… as Popper says… imagine a maze in which all roads lead back… to a central containment – i.e. no escape. This is… the practical application… of Hegel’s philosophical maze: we are forever kept uncertain about what anything means… and then… all roads lead back to ‘power’… to ‘what is’. When ‘rulers’ claim that… that ‘up’ is ‘down’… and ‘wrong’ is ‘right’… what they’re really saying is: ‘might makes right’… they make their own luck… their own dominance… – P.S.]

And lest you imagine Popper’s passion is misplaced… that it little matters Hegel’s motives… to we-the-people… or to ‘power’… today… Recall: the vampire spans the generations… he still exists… is still called to service… by sheepdogs across the political spectrum…

 

And lest you imagine Popper’s passion is misplaced… that it little matters Hegel’s motives… to we-the-people… or to ‘power’… today… Recall: the vampire spans the generations… he still exists… is still called to service… by sheepdogs across the political spectrum – one recent iteration that we’ll consider when we discuss the Ellen Meiksins Wood article [below] is the book Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – a recent iteration of the ‘power’-strategy of employing the wizardry of ‘philosophy’ to intercept… and deflect… and sucker… our resistance. “Let the Dreams of the Dead rebuke the Blind who think that what is will be forever, and teach them that what was worth living for must live again, and that which merited death must stay dead.” Those in ‘power’ will ever resurrect ‘that which merits death’ to prop up its ‘system’ of Death-Worship… and we will ever strive for freedom… and the lesson we’re learning today is that the walls we’re reared to stay within fall… when we lean in toward each other…

 

And lest you imagine Popper’s passion is misplaced… that it little matters Hegel’s motives… to we-the-people… or to ‘power’… today… Recall: the vampire spans the generations… he still exists… is still called to service… by sheepdogs across the political spectrum – one recent iteration that we’ll consider when we discuss the Ellen Meiksins Wood article [below] is the book Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – a recent iteration of the ‘power’-strategy of employing the wizardry of ‘philosophy’ to intercept… and deflect… and sucker… our resistance.

 

It’s a pregnant prayer… and relevant… full of import for us… is one of Du Bois closing observations: “Let the Dreams of the Dead rebuke the Blind who think that what is will be forever, and teach them that what was worth living for must live again, and that which merited death must stay dead.”

 

Those in ‘power’ will ever resurrect ‘that which merits death’ to prop up its ‘system’ of Death-Worship…

 

…and we will ever strive for freedom…

 

…and the lesson we’re learning today is that the walls we’re reared to stay within fall… when we lean in toward each other… instead of engaging in comparison and competition over their contours… and asking the so-called rulers for more say over how they are constructed.

 

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What would a language be… that resonates with we-the-people globally?… a language that could challenge the language of ‘state-preservation’ – i.e. the language that preserves the rule of the many by the infinitesimal few – which all agents of sanctioned thought produce… to limit our view of what can be? Because to get free… we-the-people must be able to see it – freedom – which means being able to define it… describe it.… [The] black water coming out of [Brenda Jorgenson’s] faucet cannot be transmogrified into its opposite… cannot be made to say, “I represent, ‘what’s best for life…’” can only say that “might makes its way… using its instruments ‘money’ and ‘state’…” i.e. the bleeding earth will speak the truth… will say “it’s death that ‘power’ represents…”

 

Global action is premised on common dilemmas and definitions – revealed in common discussions; which, I believe, in turn will reveal: that all movement toward an authentically-different future is paralyzed by the state… essentially by – as Bentham told us – by its control of the definitions.

 

What would a language be… that resonates with we-the-people globally?… a language that could challenge the language of ‘state-preservation’ – i.e. the language that preserves the rule of the many by the infinitesimal few – which all agents of sanctioned thought produce… to limit our view of what can be? Because to get free… we-the-people must be able to see it – freedom – which means being able to define it… describe it.

 

The language of state-preservation is necessarily manipulative: ‘flexible’… variable… false. But while ‘thought’ (words… language…) is easily manipulatable… easily turned into its opposite… ‘reality’ is not… cannot be readily turned to serve ‘power’s purposes.

 

Here’s an illustration: when Halliburton throws a ‘Black and Gold’ bash in Tioga to ‘celebrate’ its rape of a North Dakota prairie… the money they can throw into the local community means… they control the message… the language… the media… and shape… to a degree… ‘legitimate belief’… i.e. license… lease… the internalized state trained into each one of us.

Tioga, population 3,000, welcomed North Dakota’s first well in 1951, more than a half-century before hydraulic fracturing liberated the “tight oil” trapped in the Bakken shale formation. So it was fitting that Tioga ring in the daily production milestone that had ushered the Bakken into the rarefied company of historic oil fields worldwide.

 

But Tioga also claims another record: what is considered the largest on-land oil spill in recent American history. And only Brenda Jorgenson, 61, who attended “to hear what does not get said,” mentioned that one, sotto voce.

 

The million-barrel bash was devoid of protesters save for Ms. Jorgenson, a tall, slender woman who has two wells at her driveway’s end and three jars in her refrigerator containing blackened water that she said came from her faucet during the fracking process. She did not, however, utter a contrary word.

 

“I’m not that brave (or stupid) to protest among that,” she said in an email afterward. “I’ve said it before: We’re out-gunned, outnumbered and out-suited.” (“Where Oil and Politics Mix: In North Dakota, a Rising Unease Over Effects on the Prairie,” by Deborah Sontag, The New York Times, November 24, 2014)

That black water coming out of her faucet cannot be transmogrified into its opposite… cannot be made to say, “I represent, ‘what’s best for life…’” can only say that “might makes its way… using its instruments ‘money’ and ‘state’…" i.e. the bleeding earth will speak the truth… will say “it’s death that ‘power’ represents”.

 

–––

 

[Today’s reading: We are beginning Chapter 5 of Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements… “1968: The Great Rehearsal”… – P.S.]

 

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* December 7, 2014 reading: Chapter 5 of Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements… “1968: The Great Rehearsal”

 

[I’m thinking we should think more about that… this week: The fact that both were spontaneous… and unplanned… explains… why they failed, and why they transformed the world.… Let’s think more on that… and with a purpose: toward “what is the implication of that statement for our strategic planning… for getting to the future we want… for organizing a global movement to unseat ‘power’… to move beyond a system of ‘rule’ and ‘class’…. What are the implications for a successful movement to achieve our ends?” Let’s think on that… – P.S.]

 

There have only been two world revolutions. One took place in 1848. The second took place in 1968. Both were historic failures. Both transformed the world. The fact that both were unplanned and therefore in a profound sense spontaneous explains both facts – the fact that they failed, and the fact that they transformed the world.…

[I’m thinking we should think more about that… this week… let’s do that… let’s think more about that: The fact that both were spontaneous… and unplanned… explains… why they failed, and why they transformed the world.… Let’s think more on that… and with a purpose: toward “what is the implication of that statement for our strategic planning… for getting to the future we want… for organizing a global movement to unseat ‘power’… to move beyond a system of ‘rule’ and ‘class’…. What are the implications for a successful movement to achieve our ends?” Let’s think on that… – P.S.]

“The same was true of 1968. It too was born of hopes at least as much as discontents. It too was a revolution against the counterrevolution represented by the U.S. organization of its world hegemony as of 1945…” […I like that they said that straight like that… that that was what was going on: the U.S. sealing the deal… going in for the kill… anointing itself ‘the Resurrection’… ‘the Saviors’… the ones who realize the dream… realize the Divine Originals – that the U.S. would be ‘The One’… “No, not Germany… No, not Britain… but US!” That’s Abandoned-childish I know… but that's who we got running things right now… – P.S.]

 

There have only been two world revolutions. One took place in 1848. The second took place in 1968. Both were historic failures. Both transformed the world. The fact that both were unplanned and therefore in a profound sense spontaneous explains both facts – the fact that they failed, and the fact that they transformed the world. We celebrate today July 14, 1789, or at least some people do. We celebrate November 7, 1917, or at least some people do. We do not celebrate 1848 or 1968. And yet the case can be made that these dates are as significant, perhaps even more significant, that the two that attract so much attention.

 

1848 was a revolution for popular sovereignty – both within the nation (down with autocracy) and of the nations (self-determination, the Volkerfruhling). 1848 was the revolution against the counterrevolution of 1815 (the Restoration, the Concert of Europe). It was a revolution “born at least as much of hopes as of discontents” (Namier: 1944, 4). It was certainly not the French Revolution the second time around. It represented rather an attempt both to fulfill its original hopes and to overcome its limitations. 1848 was, in a Hegelian sense, the sublation (Aufhebung) of 1789.

[‘Sublation’… says the dictionary… dates from the mid-19th century – probably just as Hegel was being seriously ‘sublated’ himself [and I mean his philosophy] – comes from the Latin ‘sublat’ (‘taken away’)… from ‘sub’ (‘from below’)… and from the stem ‘tollere’ (‘take away’); and means: “to assimilate a smaller entity into a larger one…” We can well imagine why the ‘man who blows up balloons’ for his ‘masters’ (he?… of their ilk? Yes… but why call him ‘great’?) would be drawn to such a notion.

 

Perhaps the global-state-statesmen used this word as they dispersed the populations of Europe in the lead-up to… the execution … and the aftermath… of World War II… hoping to dissolve the powerful-earth-connected who had been carefully knitting popular solidarity… into the states ‘power’ reconstituted to ‘disperse’ its (Solidarity’s) promise… – P.S.]

1848 was, in a Hegelian sense, the sublation (Aufhebung) of 1789.

 

The same was true of 1968. It too was born of hopes at least as much as discontents. It too was a revolution against the counterrevolution represented by the U.S. organization of its world hegemony as of 1945…

[…I like that they said that straight like that… that that was what was going on: the U.S. sealing the deal… going in for the kill… anointing itself ‘the Resurrection’… ‘the Saviors’… the ones who realize the dream… realize the Divine Originals – that the U.S. would be ‘The One’… “No, not Germany… No, not Britain… but US!” That’s Abandoned-childish I know… but that's who we got running things right now… – P.S.]

[Must say side-track: I'm beginning to suspect that there was more to the invite to the KPFZ-Lakeport Morning radio show a year ago than met the eye. When I hear that three hours of video-footage of me was simply ‘lost’… given my experience out in the world today… We know the 'power'-guys devote much effort… plotting and planning how to discredit threats… So when an unflattering photo of Martin Bernal is the first thing that pops up in a 'Google' search… this is not by accident… they spend a lot of time crafting popular opinion… what gets seen… what pops up first in the Google-search… So let's just say: I hope that footage doesn't get put to use by false-folks… by Plato's Tribesmen… – P.S.]

 

The same was true of 1968. It too was born of hopes at least as much as discontents. It too was a revolution against the counterrevolution represented by the U.S. organization of its world hegemony as of 1945. It too was an attempt to fulfill the original goals of the Russian Revolution, while very much an effort to overcome the limitations of that revolution. It too therefore was a sublation, a sublation this time of 1917.

[Must say side-track: I'm beginning to suspect that there was more to the invite to the KPFZ-Lakeport Morning radio show a year ago than met the eye. When I hear that three hours of video-footage of me was simply ‘lost’… given my experience out in the world today… I can't help but consider the experience of Frances Fox Piven (who was visited by false folks and taped in an effort to discredit her.)

 

We know the 'power'-guys devote much effort… plotting and planning how to discredit threats… So when an unflattering photo of Martin Bernal is the first thing that pops up in a 'Google' search… this is not by accident… they spend a lot of time crafting popular opinion… what gets seen… what pops up first in the Google-search… So let's just say: I hope that footage doesn't get put to use by false-folks… by Plato's Tribesmen – P.S.]

 

[Must say side-track Number Two: While I don't keep saying it, I'm sure you know there's been no change in my situation: in my interrupted on-line connection… in the absence of mail or contact… or the microwave bombardment… – P.S.]

 

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“What 1848 accomplished therefore was the historic turning of antisystemic forces toward a fundamental political strategy – that of seeking the intermediate goal of obtaining state power (one way or another) as the indispensable way-station on the road to transforming society and the world. To be sure, many argued against this strategy, but they were defeated in the debates. Over the following century, the opponents of this strategy grew weaker as the proponents of the strategy grew stronger.” [And this… I'm seeing… gets us back where we began… with Hegel… and with his philosophy of ‘national character’… his philosophy of a ‘hierarchy of states’… – this philosophy suggests to me… that his ‘election’… on both Right and Left… was a key tactic to contain… control… defuse… and deflect… our resistance. I suspect… that the ‘power’ of that day… which was forming… as Martin Bernal shows us… in the aftermath of the French Revolution… began to see that ‘nation’ was no threat… was… in fact… a way to herd and keep us under control. Recall: Hegel did that for Frederick William… A society that has been crafted for this long… without our discussion… represents severe containment of us. We've been caged… so tightly… so thoroughly… that it's not a surprise… our difficulty organizing at this juncture… our heart has been broken many times… – P.S.]

 

The same was true of 1968. It too was born of hopes at least as much as discontents. It too was a revolution against the counterrevolution represented by the U.S. organization of its world hegemony as of 1945. It too was an attempt to fulfill the original goals of the Russian Revolution, while very much an effort to overcome the limitations of that revolution. It too therefore was a sublation, a sublation this time of 1917.

 

The parallel goes further. 1848 was a failure – a failure in France, a failure in the rest of Europe. So too was 1968. In both cases the bubble of popular enthusiasm and radical innovation was burst within a relatively short period. In both cases, however, the political ground-rules of the world-system were profoundly and irrevocably changed as a result of the revolution. It was 1848 which institutionalized the old left (using the term broadly). And it was 1968 that institutionalized the new social movements. Looking forward, 1848 was in this sense the great rehearsal for the Paris Commune and the Russian Revolution, for the Baku Congress and Bandoeng. 1968 was the rehearsal for what?

 

The lesson that oppressed groups learned from 1848 was that it would not be easy to transform the system, and that the likelihood that “spontaneous” uprisings would in fact be able to accomplish such a transformation was rather small. Two things seemed clear as a result. The states were sufficiently bureaucratized and appropriately organized to function well as machineries to put down rebellions. Occasionally, because of wars or internal political divisions among powerful strata, their repressive machinery might buckle and a “revolution” seem to be possible. But the machineries could usually be pulled together quickly enough to put down the putative or abortive revolution. Secondly, the states could easily be controlled by the powerful strata through a combination of the latter’s economic strength, their political organization, and their cultural hegemony (to use Gramsci’s term of a later period).

[‘Economic strength’… ‘political organization’… ‘cultural hegemony’: the triptych of ‘power’s control… is this ‘neat’ summary useful for designing a popular global strategy?… – P.S.]

Since the states could control the masses and the powerful strata could control the states, it was clear that a serious effort of social transformation would require counter-organization – both politically and culturally. It is this perception that led to the formation for the first time of bureaucratically organized antisystemic movements with relatively clear middle-term objectives. These movements, in their two great variants of the social and the national movement, began to appear on the scene after 1848, and their numbers, geographic spread, and organizational efficiency grew steady in the century that followed.

 

What 1848 accomplished therefore was the historic turning of antisystemic forces toward a fundamental political strategy – that of seeking the intermediate goal of obtaining state power (one way or another) as the indispensable way-station on the road to transforming society and the world. To be sure, many argued against this strategy, but they were defeated in the debates. Over the following century, the opponents of this strategy grew weaker as the proponents of the strategy grew stronger.

[And this… I’m seeing… gets us back where we began… with Hegel… and with his philosophy of ‘national character’… his philosophy of a ‘hierarchy of states’… – this philosophy suggests to me… that his ‘election’… on both Right and Left… was a key tactic to contain… control… defuse… and deflect… our resistance. I suspect… that the ‘power’ of that day… which was forming… as Martin Bernal shows us… in the aftermath of the French Revolution… began to see that ‘nation’ was no threat… was… in fact… a way to herd and keep us under control. Recall: Hegel did that for Frederick William (a story you can read in Revealing Division…) – a society that has been crafted for this long… without our discussion… represents severe containment of us. We’ve been caged… so tightly… so thoroughly… that it’s not a surprise… our difficulty organizing at this juncture… our heart has been broken many times… it’s hard to believe in the possibility of global unity… particularly as they use relentlessly their strategy of infiltration and causing disharmony and dissension and despair internally – that’s their key tactic. How do we overcome that?

 

So it’s no surprise that we have a hard time knowing how to start forming trust again… in order to build the kind of unity we need – we-the-people – and I don’t mean through ‘our’ ‘herders’… the ‘organizations’… that have been licensed specifically for that purpose… to manage us. I mean we-the-people… we-actual-people… have to do this. But the existence of the Internet… the communication means for our global organizing exists now. New terms requires… new hope… new sentiment… new conviction… the building of the certainty that we have finally arrived at the moment for our freedom. It’s ‘Freedom Time’… and we can feel it… but we have to start acting on it. So get in touch… please! I would be happy to facilitate discussion rather than engage… – P.S.]

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* “WUR of December 14th, 2014… “Embracing Global Goals, Scope and Action: Becoming Global Actors… Claiming the ‘All’”:

 

“The photo (below) is for the December 14, 2014 show …”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[“The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1956”, from the photographs of Dan Weiner (1919 - 1959)]

 

(For the Waking Up Radio discussion of December 14, 2014.)

This show’s theme is: “Grow Agreement… Not Organization…” Turning on a broadcast on December 9, 2014 from the U.N. Climate Summit in Lima, Peru – I heard a guest say that ‘we’ had to move to a ‘post-carbon economy’…. And what would that look like concretely? I wondered.

 

Berkeley is a company town…

…and company towns are dead, man…

They have the company for a head…

…and their heart’s been bought and sold, man…

 

(This place has been massively invaded...

...that much I do know...

...and so how much in this protest is true... how much constructed... I can't say...

...but that much in it is falsely-driven... is certain.

 

China with Hong Kong… please…

…back your courageous childrens’ lead, man…

…choose ‘own’ before ‘throne’…

…they hold all of our hopes…

…for claiming freedom…

…too long-postponed, man…

 

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Please check out this example of our most recent (as of 2014-12.10) “anti-coercion commercials” posted on YouTube. Art by Wassily Kandinsky (except in “Future Freedom” which presents “Freedom Sun” by David Sterenberg) and original music and beats by Thandiwe Satterwhite. The entire collection (including the most recent) can be found at: “Nascence Anti-coercion Commercials”:

 

“…so we are being set up for conflict… and while we're told via the media that that conflict is white against black… what we know in our own experience is that there is actually a coming together… I mean Barack couldn't have been elected otherwise… around wanting to be free from surveillance… free from this constant assault on our civil liberties… free from the oppressiveness of always having to struggle to survive… but the conflict that we are being set up for… is the police and the people perceiving each other as mutual enemies… which means that minimally we-the-people have to begin countering these moves on 'power's part… to divide us… So… instead of saying 'the police'… when referring to their acts of brutality against us… that we say 'the state' instead… and recognize that the police are paid actors…”

…and that the issue… is work.

 

[…and please check out the audio for our most recent ‘non-coercion commercials’:

 

“As we begin these discussions and as reality begins to sink in… that word ‘hideous’… trust… is gonna rise in our throats and our minds and our hearts… hideous… I look at children… so perfect… so righteously strong and truthful and honest… the thought of them being turned over to this ‘system’… which is what has been going on for millennia… is hideous… the waste of our lives… is hideous”

 

“Is it clear that only fully-developing thought in every one of us is an effective check to concentrated ‘power’… because concentrated ‘power’ only exists by concentrating our energy. Let’s consider again the concept of ‘the nation’ in this light… In Waking Up I defined ‘political power’ as “…the ability to induce others to labor (while exempting yourself…)”and by that definition I think it's clear that if, in fact, 'politics' is about controlling… harnessing… the energy of the people, then it's about a system of class that has been… that there has been a continuous thread called 'class'… which explains why when there seems to be a 'revolution'… there's no fundamental change in the lives of we-the-people… we are still the energy-source for everything… and that it is that… that has to change… for there to be the evolution that we require… that we are responsible to see happen for humanity overall… as a whole… that is our responsibility: to forward all of us… as life… that's what we're here for. As George Eliot said, “what do we live for if not to make life less difficult to each other…” and I would add… that we can only do that fundamentally… by ending ‘power’ – ultimately – because they can manufacture difficulty ad infinitum… It is we-the-people who are going to have to take responsibility for the evolution of humanity itself…”

 

“What we’re going to be considering is that we are always ready soil for totalitarianism until we decide to confront the mindset of ‘class’ within our own thinking – thinking that we’re all trained in. Almost every day I hear some illustration in people’s speech of this reality… that it’s embedded in us… in our thoughts… people saying, “well, I just want my child to get a good education and get a good job….” How many times do we hear that? How many times did we speak it as parents? “Get a good job… be a good worker….” And we are entering in a time when there is no ability anymore of the earth to crank out enough wealth to capture the hands of enough people to allow the notion of a system based on ‘fair compensation for work’… of… “you give up your autonomy as a human being and we will give you a job”. Well that ‘social contract’, as we call it, can’t continue anymore. ‘Power’ knows that, that’s why they’re rushing, rushing, to plan our future for us… they got the ‘Trans-Pacific Partnership’, the ‘Trans-Atlantic Partnership’… they’re trying to unify the globe… quick! quick! make sure we got nowhere to go… then… when we start getting restless… direct our eyes to: “look! look! we got this U.N.-sponsored… that means it’s all of us globally… at least the big, smart ones… us important ones… we are figuring out… how to keep you guys… eating… given that we can’t give you ‘jobs’ anymore. But, don’t worry, we got it covered.”… Now… not only does that consign – because ‘hierarchy’ is a key ideology that they can never let go of because that would mean letting go of their exclusive privilege… so there’s going to be folks who don’t get to have ‘local self-sufficiency’… it’s not going to be an ‘even’ distribution… it never has been under ‘class’… it never will be… and once again we’re letting our so-called ‘betters’ decide these big questions of who gets to eat… who gets to use a little bit of their gifts… and who doesn’t. So given that this transition is inevitable… what we’re arguing in this space… is that it’s time for us to make the decisions for us…”

 

“Castles in the Air” is in honor of the people of Hong Kong:

 

“I learned this, at least…that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him…In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.” (Henry David Thoreau).”

December 10, 2014: Sisters and Brothers… In our December 7, 2014 show these words jumped out and called on us for further thought:

“There have only been two world revolutions. One took place in 1848. The second took place in 1968. Both were historic failures. Both transformed the world. The fact that both were unplanned and therefore in a profound sense spontaneous explains both facts – the fact that they failed, and the fact that they transformed the world.”

But I’m not at all certain that this picture’s been properly framed…

…and I think we may need to step back in the book a bit for me to explain…

 

This show’s theme is: “Grow Agreement… Not Organization…”

 

Note above photo [“The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1956”, from the photographs of Dan Weiner (1919 - 1959)]. (The love expressed in that man’s photographs… you have to wonder if there was more to that plane crash than met the eye… because ‘love’ is the greatest threat to ‘power’… and ‘power’ don’t suffer threats…) Folks didn't join an organization to accomplish this. They joined hearts.

 

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Turning on the radio – the broadcast of Democracy Now! on December 9, 2014 from the U.N. Climate Summit in Lima, Peru – I heard a guest say that ‘we’ had to move to a ‘post-carbon economy’…. And what would that look like concretely? I wondered. I listened on and this is some of what I heard:

 

One of the guests, Pascoe Sabido of the Corporate Europe Observatory, spoke about his organization’s just released report: “Corporate Conquistadors: The Many Ways Multinationals Both Drive and Profit from Climate Destruction.” He said:

Next year in Paris, I don’t predict that we’re going to have something that many of us are going to be happy with. It’s not going to be ambitious. It’s not going to be just. But the reason that is, is because we, as social movements, as concerned citizens, we don’t have power, we don’t have control over our governments, they are not listening to us. So, in order to get a good outcome here in the U.N., we need to have power at home, and we need to really build that accountability. And one of the clear ways is to get rid of the fossil fuel industry’s influence, you know, out of these talks, out of our national governments, and really build our power.

Atossa Soltani, founder and executive director of Amazon Watch:

…we have to really cut subsidies and stop exploration altogether of oil, gas, carbon, coal in the Amazon region—actually, everywhere. We have to basically stop expanding the search for more fossil fuels and start to talk about which reserves get kept underground…. We have to basically tax carbon.

But if Mr. Solon cannot hear nature in his own skin… as well as its contest with ‘the state within’… particularly as he runs a major ‘organization’… if he cannot see that he is a walking ‘authoritarian regime’… he cannot help “solve this critical issue…” The issue is who we give our allegiance to…

 

Pablo Solón, Bolivia’s former ambassador to the United Nations [who has] served as Bolivia’s chief negotiator on climate change, now lives in Thailand, in Bangkok, and is the director of Focus on the Global South. Earlier this week, he was a presenter at the International Rights of Nature Tribunal, which took place here in Lima. Asked, “what can you do outside, in civilian society, that you couldn’t do here at the COP? And now that you have this perspective, if you were here, what you would do as a climate negotiator?,” he replied:

Well, I think that if we want to address climate change, we should look [to] other places to have these meetings, more close to the people, more close to nature, and very far away from authoritarian regimes. That is key. Only if we are able to hear nature and hear the people, we are going to be able to solve this critical issue….

[But if Mr. Solon cannot hear nature in his own skin… as well as its contest with ‘the state within’… particularly as he runs a major ‘organization’… if he cannot see that he is a walking ‘authoritarian regime’… he cannot help “solve this critical issue…” – P.S.]

We must pay close attention to the language that is granted a broadcast voice… what is at risk?… “our economy”… who is the enemy?… the ‘extractivists’ (a word that's being put out there in the media of the professional Left…) at Bolivia (and later Ecuador will also be cited as well…) i.e. away from the ‘world market’… away from ‘the system’. On the contrary… it is the ‘world-economy’ that is at risk… the ‘world-economy’ that must be protected… for if we don’t ‘protect it’… how can ‘it’… in turn… “provide for us”?… So the framing disarms and defeats us before we can even start: “The ‘core’ countries ‘developed’… now… it’s only fair… the ‘periphery’ must be allowed the same ‘goodies’… the ‘periphery’ must be allowed to ‘develop its economy’… and so… to ‘progress’… ‘advance’… the quality of life for its ‘citizens’.

 

Well, I think this is a false reality. It’s created to hide what is really happening in the government. So, in reality, here you’re not negotiating. Everything is being solved outside of the COP in small meetings at very high level, and a final agreement is going to come from outside. I would say that after being here, I know that you spend a lot of time—you think that you’re creating a change by changing a comma, changing a word, but in reality, that is not changing the agreement. I firmly believe that only if we have a very strong social mobilization, social pressure, like the one that we had in New York, 400,000 persons marching, that is more… (“The People’s Climate March in September?) The People’s Climate March, yeah, that is more important than what you can do lobbying here. What we need to do is not only have a march like in New York, the People’s Climate March, that says take action, but we have to be more concrete: What kind of action do we want? And the issue is that here we are discussing about greenhouse gas emissions, but we don’t discuss here about extractive industries, about fossil fuel that has to be left under the soil. So how are you going to address climate change if you only discuss the issue of the temperature, but not the issue of the fossil fuels?… if we want to address climate change, and that if President Morales is going to lead the defense of Mother Earth and the rights of Mother Earth, we have to have a transition to get out of extractivism. We cannot base our economy in extractivists. And this is, I think, something that has to change in the case of Bolivia. Now they are discussing to have fracking in Bolivia, and I think this is a new danger. So, yes, there is a contradiction between what is said and what is done. And it is time to change this. And progressive governments should really do what they say in practice.

We must pay close attention to the language that is granted a broadcast voice…

…what is at risk?… “our economy”…

…who is the enemy?… the ‘extractivists’…

 

And he ends by pointing the finger at Bolivia…

 

…at Bolivia… i.e. away from the ‘world market’… away from ‘the system’. On the contrary… it is the ‘world-economy’ that is at risk… the ‘world-economy’ that must be protected… for if we don’t ‘protect it’… how can ‘it’… in turn… “provide for us”?

 

So the framing disarms and defeats us before we can even start: “The ‘core’ countries ‘developed’… now… it’s only fair… the ‘periphery’ must be allowed the same ‘goodies’… the ‘periphery’ must be allowed to ‘develop its economy’… and so… to ‘progress’… ‘advance’… the quality of life for its ‘citizens’.

 

And the quiet voices of dissent are presented as if to say, “see… we don’t censor anything…” as if these voices sanction the ‘power’-agenda… the myth that the ‘global order’ does indeed exist for the sake of Progress (“See!… it functions!… it self-corrects!”…) as if there is no fundamental contradiction between our having that idyllic life in earth-connection… and ‘development’… “The destruction of nature is the destruction of our own energy and of our own existence here on Earth. And the destruction of our spaces is the destruction of indigenous populations. And even though you might not believe this, this is your destruction, as well…” “And I’m here to bring the voice of indigenous women, in particular of Brazil, those who couldn’t be here with us, and all of them who would say the same thing, so that we could unite our voices, because the reality is that in many of the organizations, there is not a space for women and indigenous women to participate. And so, many times they feel suffocated for the words that they cannot say…” But… consider: ‘power’ organizes us… mobilizes us… invisibly… by ‘occupying’ our (tacit) agreement… by getting us to co-sign their definitions. We move our first toe out from our deep pool of training saying, “where do I fit in?”

 

And the quiet voices of dissent are presented as if to say, “see… we don’t censor anything…” as if these voices sanction the ‘power’-agenda… the myth that the ‘global order’ does indeed exist for the sake of Progress (“See!… it functions!… it self-corrects!”…) as if there is no fundamental contradiction between our having that idyllic life in earth-connection… and ‘development’.

 

With the following context presented: “In 2012, the Sarayaku community won a case at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights against the Ecuadorean government after a foreign oil company was permitted to encroach on their land…” we heard these words from Nina Gualinga, a Kichwa youth leader from the Sarayaku people in Ecuador.

I grew up in a beautiful place in the rainforest of Ecuador, in Sarayaku. I don’t have words to describe my childhood, but it was beautiful. I cannot ask for anything else. When I was about seven years old, maybe eight, this representative of an oil company called CGC came to Sarayaku. It was Argentinian oil company. And I did not speak Spanish, but I saw that my elders, my mother and all the people in Sarayaku were worried, and there was tension. I did not know what was going on. And I asked my mother, “What is going on?” because everyone had gathered in this place we call Plaza to talk about what was happening. And all the children were playing outside, but I sat down beside my mother, and I asked her to translate for me. That was the first time I feared… that my land and the life that I knew was going to be destroyed.

Her aunt, Patricia Gualinga, also a Kichwa leader, added:

The destruction of nature is the destruction of our own energy and of our own existence here on Earth. And the destruction of our spaces is the destruction of indigenous populations. And even though you might not believe this, this is your destruction, as well…

Sônia Guajajara explained why they had come to the Climate Summit:

So, this is a traditional song from my people, and it’s basically saying, “I’m happy, we’re happy to be together.” And my name is Sônia Guajajara, and my people are from the state of Maranhão, which is in the Amazon in Brazil. And I’m here to bring the voice of indigenous women, in particular of Brazil, those who couldn’t be here with us, and all of them who would say the same thing, so that we could unite our voices, because the reality is that in many of the organizations, there is not a space for women and indigenous women to participate. And so, many times they feel suffocated for the words that they cannot say.

This ‘Climate Summit’ can provide illustration why we need to “Grow Agreement… Not Organization…” It shows us that ‘power’ sets the terms for our engagement (ways of being ‘active’ against ‘injustice’…) in claiming the definitions. ‘Claiming the definitions’ means they’re also claiming the word ‘organization’.

 

But… consider: ‘power’ organizes us… mobilizes us… invisibly… by ‘occupying’ our (tacit) agreement… by getting us to co-sign their definitions. We move our first toe out from our deep pool of training saying, “where do I fit in?”

 

Into what?

 

The organization.

 

–––

 

…we're all trapped by a 'global order'…. a 'world system'… and can only get free by combining our energies in a focused assault upon it... our fire is turned to ire against buffers readily supplied by 'power'… and has been for millennia.… But now we have something new… a concept of 'nation' that no longer wants to compete in the global system… but wants rather to escape it… which is not pipe dream… But at this juncture.… they want 'the state' to disappear… They want us born into such an over-constructed and overwhelming seeming-'truth' ('reality')… that it ceases to appear anything but completely 'natural'… that it is 'governed' as 'gods' govern…invisibly... but which nonetheless elicits absolute obedience… despite the con TINA… s is what we're going to see when we look at the book Empire - and I think it's clear that book is a 'power'-sanctioned product - that they actually want the state to disappear… i.e. no opponent… nothing to 'mediate' with…

 

How is a massive upsurge in electricity that wants to meet in global synergy contained? With lightning rods that disperse and draw to earth and keep it aimed on narrow locations.

 

While in truth we're all trapped by a 'global order'... a 'world system'… and can only get free by combining our energies in a focused assault upon it... our fire is turned to ire against buffers readily supplied by 'power'… and has been for millennia.

 

But now we have something new... a concept of 'nation' that no longer wants to compete in the global system… but wants rather to escape it... which is not pipe dream... despite the con TINA…

 

…“there is no alternative”… the so-called ‘rulers’ want us to think… and so they suffered ‘states’ because they needed a ‘mediating presence’ as our good-three put it…

 

But at this juncture.… they want 'the state' to disappear… They want us born into such an over-constructed and overwhelming seeming-'truth' ('reality')… that it ceases to appear anything but completely 'natural'… that it is 'governed' as 'gods' govern…invisibly... but which nonetheless elicits absolute obedience…

 

This is what we're going to see when we look at the book Empire - and I think it's clear that book is a 'power'-sanctioned product - that they actually want the state to disappear… i.e. no opponent… nothing to ‘mediate’ with…

 

The quote we began with seems to suggest that we-the-people can’t transform the world unless our ‘re-volt’… our ‘re-possible’ of the world… is spontaneous…

 

…now… given our experience with practical ‘politics’… I would say the reason why this has seemed to be the case is because… in the Aftermath of the French Revolution… ‘power’ got itself extremely organized… and so… therefore… that another way to say this is… in language we’ve used in these pages: that “a focused plan and concentrated ‘power’ will ever defeat diffuse goodness…” i.e., ‘power’ knows what it wants… is constantly looking for threats… and then intercepts them… with its clandestine tactics… leaving no trace for even rogue academics to ferret out…

 

…so ‘spontaneous’ changed the world because ‘power’ didn’t see it coming.

 

But the stakes are different today… we are seeing through this game… and so ‘power’ is hoping to dramatically orchestrate a change in the nature of ‘the state’…

 

…to pull off the ultimate magician’s trick… and disappear… and thereby preclude our resistance…

 

…leaving us to be… on-goingingly…

 

…crabs in a bucket…

 

–––

 

What a con, eh? You systematically train we-Plebs that only that which can be ‘proven’… i.e. ‘confirmed on all sides’… because actually ‘seen’ (and of course you have constructed what is ‘seen’…) has validity… while you reign invisibly…

 

We have to take back our Agreement from the so-called ‘rulers’… and work on giving it instead… to each other.

 

–––

 

* December 14, 2014 reading: Chapter 1 - 2 of Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements… “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”

 

So you see the states… cooperatively… orchestrated their own subjection to the world market. This describes well the nature of the exponential rate of destruction of society that Polanyi spoke of – because that's what the state was supposed to protect: the well-being… the health… of society. But to the degree it is subjected to the world-economy… that ability of the state to ‘protect its people’ from the ravages of rampant-unwilling-to-be-controlled ‘power’… decreases… is eliminated… completely. And this is not by ‘inevitable market forces’… this is by design… by the design of global-state-statesmen. It is no longer acceptable… at this juncture… to grant them that Academic cover… using that language of ‘laws of economics and development’…

 

[Today’s reading: We are briefly interrupting our reading of Chapter 5 to read some sections of Chapter 1 - 2 of Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements… “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”… because I think if we backtrack a bit in the book… it helps us understand… why we need to plan… and… have our own definitions… – P.S.]

 

Conclusion of Chapter 1: “Rethinking the Concepts of Class and Status-Group”

 

On the one hand, in the era of US hegemony (roughly 1945 – 70), the unity of the world market analytically presupposed by Marx (when he observed an era of British hegemony) and which was thought to have disappeared in the late nineteenth century, was in fact progressively reconstituted. The so-called transnationals sought to operate with minimal constraint by state-political apparatuses. Though the concentration of capital increased even further, its transnational expansion out of the American core became a major factor in the intensification of world market competition and in the consolidation of the unity of the world market. In this context the role played by states changed radically, though not everywhere to the same extent. Particularly outside of the Communist world, the emphasis in their action changed from territorial expansion and restriction of inter-enterprise competition within and across national / imperial boundaries, to strengthening the competitive edge of their territories as locales of production and to sustaining the transnational expansion of their respective national capitals.…

[…so we see ‘the state’ has thus served that purpose already… another reason for orchestrating ‘power’s disappearance in the disappearance of the form of ‘state’ we’ve been accustomed to thinking in terms of. I.e.… it already privatized the resources of the globe. Done. – P.S.]

[…the states… in “…strengthening the competitive edge of their territories as locales of production and… sustaining the transnational expansion of their respective national capitals… [productive investment capacity]”… They thereby contributed to the enhancement of the density and connectedness of world-economic networks that, in turn, undermined their ability to influence / control economic activity even within their own borders.

[(So you see the states… cooperatively… orchestrated their own subjection to the world market.) While this describes well the nature of the exponential rate of destruction of society that Polanyi spoke of (because that's what the state was supposed to protect – the well-being… the health… of society – but to the degree it is subjected to the world-economy… that ability of the state to ‘protect its people’ from the ravages of rampant-unwilling-to-be-controlled ‘power’… decreases… is eliminated… completely. And this is not by ‘inevitable market forces’… this is by design… by the design of global-state-statesmen. It is no longer acceptable… at this juncture… to grant them that Academic cover… using that language of ‘laws of economics and development’. We've seen through that… we-the-people. You… in Academia… I hope… will begin to reflect our transformed consciousness… our advanced understanding. This was written almost thirty years ago – now… I do get it… that those academic jobs are not offered to folks who don't stick to the script… so… Brothers and Sisters… it is us who has to do this… clearly.)

 

While this describes well the nature of the exponential rate of destruction of society that Polanyi spoke of… it… without intention I feel certain… provides ‘power’ that ‘Academic Shield’ we spoke of in our show of November 30th… in disappearing ‘power’… in presenting an inaccurate description of how it triumphed… its tactics… it disarms effective resistance… as “all difficulties are but easy… when they are known…” but first we have to know them…

 

[While this describes well the nature of the exponential rate of destruction of society that Polanyi spoke of… it… without intention I feel certain… provides ‘power’ that ‘Academic Shield’ we spoke of in our show of November 30th… i.e. ‘power’ has been ‘disappeared’ in such language as this: “…the world market… was… progressively reconstituted…” The problems with this are numerous. One… it underwrites notions of ‘natural’ ‘economic forces’… that then drive ‘Progress’… leaving conscious ‘global-state-statesmen’ action out of it. Two… it unconsciously reinforces the (unstated and propagandistic) deification of ‘Science’ as the ‘Guarantor of Order’… and the ‘Defender of the Rule of Reason’ (which… as Popper has explained (in the December 7, 2014 show…) disappears contrary positions and sanctifies itself. Three… in disappearing ‘power’… in presenting an inaccurate description of how it triumphed… its tactics… disarms effective resistance… as “all difficulties are but easy… when they are known…” but first we have to know them… – P.S.]

Our understanding of what it means to be ‘antisystemic’ has advanced… thanks to Jeremy Bentham… Karl Popper… Miklos Nyiszli… Herbert Marcuse… and Alice Miller – it has advanced in our discussions of them. We now can see that ‘the state’ succeeds… largely… through our internalization of it… And while this is what they mean by ‘power’s “cultural hegemony”… the way the ‘Mr. Smith Virus’ works is… you cannot accept ‘power’s taxonomy without buying its world-view as well…

 

On the other hand, the antisystemic movements have more and more taken on the clothing of “national-liberation movements,” claiming the double legitimacy of nationalist anti-imperialism and proletarian anti-capitalism. This has given them great strength as mobilizing movements. But, insofar as they have come to power in specific state structures operating within the interstate system, they have been caught in the constraints of this system that has led, among other things, to conflicts within and among such “post-revolutionary” states.

[Throughout our reading… some translation into ‘earth-speak’ will be needed… in order to advance our understanding… and so the clarity of our thought… and so our resistance… Our understanding of what it means to be ‘antisystemic’ has advanced… thanks to Jeremy Bentham… Karl Popper… Miklos Nyiszli… Herbert Marcuse… and Alice Miller – it has advanced in our discussions of them. We now can see that ‘the state’ succeeds… largely… through our internalization of it… And while this is what they mean by ‘power’s “cultural hegemony”… the way the ‘Mr. Smith Virus’ works is… you cannot accept ‘power’s taxonomy without buying its world-view as well. The chapter “Culture” in Waking Up is devoted to this problem: “…a big part of our difficulty planning the next social arrangement is that we don’t have our own language and we don’t speak podrunk…” ‘power’. But the problem re-stated practically would be: “…a big part of our difficulty planning the next social arrangement… is that our official ‘spokespeople’ speak ‘power’ only too well… and exclusively…” – P.S.]

And again… what's standing out for me… is that… because of 'power's invisibility… the clandestine manner of the global-state-statesmen's mechanisms for organizing the world… and their own planning… when our three talk about this dual analysis of how the world-system operates versus what they call 'social groups' – which include the 'nation'… the 'state'… – the interrelations between these two… the problem is that… because 'power' remains hidden… and out of that picture… it gives this false sense of legitimacy… a false veneer of… inevitability… that has set us back – or perhaps we should say that we've been stuck in it… and have not been able to progress… advance… our resistance…

 

A cogent analysis of existing trends within the world-system requires both a return to basics, in terms of an analysis of the operational mechanisms of capitalism as a mode of production, and a reconceptualization of the operational mechanisms of the social groups (that are formed, and reformed, and of course also disappear) that compete and conflict within this capitalist world-economy, as it continues to evolve and to transform itself.

[And again… what's standing out for me… is that… because of 'power's invisibility… the clandestine manner of the global-state-statesmen's mechanisms for organizing the world… and their own planning… when our three talk about this dual analysis of how the world-system operates versus what they call 'social groups' – which include the 'nation'… the 'state'… – the interrelations between these two… the problem is that… because 'power' remains hidden… and out of that picture… it gives this false sense of legitimacy… a false veneer of… inevitability… that has set us back – or perhaps we should say that we've been stuck in it… and have not been able to progress… advance… our resistance. – P.S.]

Chapter 2: “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”

 

Opposition to oppression is coterminous with the existence of hierarchical social systems.…

[That’s their way of saying… “‘class’ is ‘class’ is ‘class’… ‘power’ is ‘power’ is ‘power’…” I wish they had said it like that because then we’d be farther along… or maybe not… ‘power’ can suppress pretty good… it might have got on them and shut them up sooner… Now… "hierarchical social systems" is not coterminous with 'capitalism' is it? – P.S.]

Opposition to oppression is coterminous with the existence of hierarchical social systems. Opposition is permanent, but for the most part latent. The oppressed are too weak — politically, economically, and ideologically — to manifest their opposition constantly. However, as we know, when oppression becomes particularly acute, or expectations particularly deceived, or the power of the ruling stratum falters, people have risen up in an almost spontaneous manner to cry halt. This has taken the form of revolts, of riots, of flight.

[Are we seeing Hegel’s influence here? This suggests a stalemate… or a ‘unity of opposites’… which I dispute. We are not doomed to ‘class’ ad infinitum… we-the-people can do more than just react… we can go on the offensive… – P.S.]

[This suggests… ‘rule by disassembly…’ – P.S.]: “The multiple forms of human rebellion have for the most part been only partially efficacious at best. Sometimes they have forced the oppressors to reduce the pressure of the exploitation. But sometimes they have failed utterly to do so. However, one continuing sociological characteristic of these rebellions of the oppressed has been their “spontaneous,” short-term character. They have come and they have gone, having such effect as they did. When the next such rebellion came, it normally had little explicit relationship with the previous one. Indeed, this has been one of the great strengths of the world’s ruling strata throughout history – the non-continuity of rebellion.” [Recall our ‘vampire’ metaphors – the ‘Mr. Smith virus’… and so on – that attempt to grapple with the ‘phenomenon’ of ‘power’ ever-‘adapting’ (we won’t say ‘co-opting’… our ‘trip-tet’ don’t like it…) to our resistance… we could say that the paired issues of “the ‘internalized state’”… and “the question of our ‘organization’”… are the matters for our ‘understanding’ to ‘master’… in acquiring our long-overdue freedom… We gotta deal with our internalized ‘master’… – P.S.]

[This suggests… ‘rule by disassembly…’ – P.S.]:

The multiple forms of human rebellion have for the most part been only partially efficacious at best. Sometimes they have forced the oppressors to reduce the pressure of the exploitation. But sometimes they have failed utterly to do so. However, one continuing sociological characteristic of these rebellions of the oppressed has been their “spontaneous,” short-term character. They have come and they have gone, having such effect as they did. When the next such rebellion came, it normally had little explicit relationship with the previous one. Indeed, this has been one of the great strengths of the world’s ruling strata throughout history – the non-continuity of rebellion.

[And we have the Internet now, right?… So again… the fact that it ‘has been…’ throughout the history of the class-system… does not mean it is our fate ad infinitum… not by any means… – P.S.]

In the early history of the capitalist world-economy, the situation remained more or less the same as it had always been in this regard. Rebellions were many, scattered, discrete, momentary, and only partially efficacious at best. One of the contradictions, however, of capitalism as a system is that the very integrating tendencies that have been one of its defining characteristics have had an impact on the form of antisystemic activity.

 

Somewhere in the middle of the nineteenth century – 1848 is as good a symbolic date as any – there came to be a sociological innovation of profound significance for the politics of the capitalist world-economy. Groups of persons involved in antisystemic activity began to create a new institution: the continuing organization with members, officers, and specific political objectives (both long-run and short-term).

 

Such organized antisystemic movements had never existed before. One might argue that various religious sects had performed analogous roles with an analogous organization, but the long-run objectives of the religious sects were by definition otherworldly. The antisystemic organizations that came into existence in the nineteenth century were preeminently political, not religious – that is, they focused on the structures of “this world.”

[Recall our ‘vampire’ metaphors – the ‘Mr. Smith virus’… and so on – that attempt to grapple with the ‘phenomenon’ of ‘power’ ever-‘adapting’ (we won’t say ‘co-opting’… our ‘trip-tet’ don’t like it…) to our resistance. So… while we could say that the paired issues of “the ‘internalized state’”… and “the question of our ‘organization’”… are the matters for our ‘understanding’ to ‘master’… in acquiring our long-overdue freedom – while we could say this… the latter is really but an expression of the former… We gotta deal with our internalized ‘master’… – P.S.]

“In the course of the nineteenth century, two principal varieties of antisystemic movements emerged – what came to be called respectively the “social movement” and the “national movement”… Both kinds of movement, after considerable internal debate, created formal organizations. As such, these organizations had to evolve a basic strategy to transform their immediate world in the direction in which they wished it to go. In both cases, the analysis was identical. The key political structure of the modern world they saw to be the state. If these movements were to change anything, they had to control a state apparatus, which pragmatically meant “their” state apparatus. Consequently, the primary objective had to be obtaining state power… The traditional emphasis on the differences of the two varieties of movement has distracted our attention from some fundamental similarities….” What they have in common is that they don’t threaten ‘power’ fundamentally… That this frame has long been in existence – this ability to speak in these terms about what has been happening to us… is an enormous advance (and so suppressed…) – and yet we have not (in the progressive media…) seen a vigorous advancement of it… given that our grasping it… our ‘understanding’ claiming it is key to our taking the next step… has been a particularly egregious omission on the part of the official… professional… Left…

 

Social Movements and National Movements

 

In the course of the nineteenth century, two principal varieties of antisystemic movements emerged – what came to be called respectively the “social movement” and the “national movement.” The major difference between them lay in their definition of the problem. The social movement defined the oppression as that of employers over wage earners, the bourgeoisie over the proletariat. The ideals of the French Revolution – liberty, equality, and fraternity – could be realized, they felt, by replacing capitalism with socialism. The national movement, on the other hand, defined the oppression as that of one ethno-national group over another. The ideals could be realized by giving the oppressed group equal juridical status with the oppressing group by the creation of parallel (and usually separate) structures.

[In one of our recent considerations of the work of Immanuel Wallerstein… and ‘world-systems’ theory in general… we suggested that it could serve as our ‘language of transition’… because it viewed from ‘the vantage of the whole’… which… we argued… is key to our “claiming ‘the all’”…. This (above) framing provides us with a good illustration. That this frame has long been in existence – this ability to speak in these terms about what has been happening to us… is an enormous advance (and so suppressed…) – and yet we have not (in the progressive media…) seen a vigorous advancement of it… given that our grasping it… our ‘understanding’ claiming it is key to our taking the next step… has been a particularly egregious omission on the part of the official… professional… Left…– P.S.]

There has been a long discussion, within the movements and among scholars, about the differences between these two kinds of movements. No doubt they have differed both in their definitions of the problem and in the social bases of their support. In many places and at many times, the two varieties of movement found enough tactical congruence to work together politically.

 

The traditional emphasis on the differences of the two varieties of movement has distracted our attention from some fundamental similarities….

[…what they have in common is that they don’t threaten ‘power’ fundamentally… i.e. we are effectively trapped… we got nowhere to go – so long as we stay… within ‘power’s frame… play ‘power’s game… – P.S.]

“If one looks at the geography of the movements, one quickly notices a historical correlation. Social-democratic movements have become politically strong and have “come to power” (by electoral means, to be sure, and then in alternation with more conservative parties) almost only in the core states of the world-economy, but in virtually all of them…” […what this is describing is a ‘coming to an understanding’… between the global-state-statesmen… about the ‘goal’ of ‘world order’… and agreement specifically… that it be expressed… in an hierarchical arrangement – in theory ‘open-ended’. This is the background context – never acknowledged – that makes Professional Left trumpeting of the ‘European Social-Democracies’ as evidence of the success or viability of ‘democracy’ as a political strategy for… incrementally… ‘improving’ the quality of ‘society’… – so dishonest… – P.S.]

 

…Both kinds of movement, after considerable internal debate, created formal organizations. As such, these organizations had to evolve a basic strategy to transform their immediate world in the direction in which they wished it to go. In both cases, the analysis was identical. The key political structure of the modern world they saw to be the state. If these movements were to change anything, they had to control a state apparatus, which pragmatically meant “their” state apparatus. Consequently, the primary objective had to be obtaining state power.

[…we can see how that immediately served to divide us globally… – P.S.]

For the social movement, this meant that, despite the internationalism of their ideology — “workers of the world, unite!” – the organizations they created had to be national in structure. And the objective of these organizations had to be the coming to power of the movement in that state. Similarly, for the national movement, the objective came to be state power in a particular state. To be sure, the jurisdiction of this state was by definition what the national movement was about. Sometimes such a movement sought the creation of an entirely new state, either by secession or by merger, but in other cases this “new state” might have already existed in the form of a colonial or a regional administrative entity.

 

The fact that the two varieties of movement defined the same strategic objective accounts for their sense of rivalry with each other, particularly when a workers’ movement sought to obtain power in an entity out of which a given national movement was seeking to detach a zone in order to create a new state.

 

The parallel objectives – obtaining state power – led to a parallel internal debate on the mode of obtaining state power, which might be defined in polar terms as the legal path of political persuasion versus the illegal path of insurrectionary force. This has often been called reform versus revolution, but these two terms have become so overlaid with polemic and confusion that today they obscure more than they aid analysis.

 

It should be noted that in the case of the social movement, this internal debate culminated during the period between the First and Second World Wars in the existence of two rival and fiercely competitive Internationals, the Second and the Third, also known as the conflict between Social Democrats and Communists….

[…and what stands behind both… as well as behind the Right’s ‘philosophic’ line… is Hegel… – P.S.]

It should be noted that in the case of the social movement, this internal debate culminated during the period between the First and Second World Wars in the existence of two rival and fiercely competitive Internationals, the Second and the Third, also known as the conflict between Social Democrats and Communists. Though both the Second and Third Internationals asserted that they had the same objective of socialism, that they were movements based in the working class and on the left, and even (at least for a while ) that they assumed the same Marxist heritage, they rapidly became vehemently opposed one to the other, to the extent that their subsequent occasional political convergences (the “popular fronts”) have seemed at best tactical and momentary. In some tense, this has remained true right up to the present.

 

If one looks at the geography of the movements, one quickly notices a historical correlation. Social-democratic movements have become politically strong and have “come to power” (by electoral means, to be sure, and then in alternation with more conservative parties) almost only in the core states of the world-economy, but in virtually all of them….

[…what this is describing is a ‘coming to an understanding’… between the global-state-statesmen… about the ‘goal’ of ‘world order’… and agreement specifically… that it be expressed… in an hierarchical arrangement – in theory ‘open-ended’. This is the background context – never acknowledged – that makes Professional Left trumpeting of the ‘European Social-Democracies’ as evidence of the success or viability of ‘democracy’ as a political strategy for… incrementally… ‘improving’ the quality of ‘society’… – so dishonest… – P.S.]

If one looks at the geography of the movements, one quickly notices a historical correlation. Social-democratic movements have become politically strong and have “come to power” (by electoral means, to be sure, and then in alternation with more conservative parties) almost only in the core states of the world-economy, but in virtually all of them. Communist parties, by contrast, have become politically strong primarily in a certain range of semi peripheral and peripheral zones, and have come to power (sometimes by insurrection, but sometimes as a result of military occupation by the USSR) only in these zones. The only Western countries in which Communist parties have been relatively strong for a long period of time are France, Italy, and Spain, and it should be noted that Italy and Spain might well be considered semiperipheral. in any case, the parties in these three states have long since shed any insurrectionary inclinations.

 

We are therefore in the 1980s faced with the following political history of the modern world. Social-democratic parties have in fact achieved their primary political objective, coming to power in a relatively large number of core states. Communist parties have in fact come to power in a significant number of semi peripheral and peripheral countries – concentrated geographically in a band that runs from Eastern Europe to East and Southeast Asia. And in the rest of the world, in many of the countries, nationalist – sometimes even “radical nationalist” or “national liberation” – movements have come to power. In short, seen from the vantage point of 1848, the success of the antisystemic movements has been very impressive indeed.

 

“The questions have run like this. Have social-democratic parties achieved anything more than some redistribution to what are in fact “middle” strata located in core countries? Have Communist parties achieved anything more than some economic development for their countries? And even then, how much? And furthermore, has this not been primarily to benefit the so-called new class of a bureaucratic elite? Have nationalist movements achieved anything more than allowing the so-called compradore class a slightly larger slice of the world pie?…” […the answer to that last question is… clearly… “No!” – Bentham nailed it: that to claim the universe… ‘power’ sanctions… claims… defines… what is considered ‘legitimate’ language… – and this is why these so-called ‘antisystemic’ movements have not achieved anything but a tighter organization of the world-system… of ‘world-order’… tighter subjection… or tighter integration into… the world-system… – P.S.]

 

The Unfulfilled Revolution

 

How are we to appreciate the consequences? In gross terms, we can see two consequences that have moved in very different directions. On the one hand, these movements, taken collectively as a sort of “family” of movements, have become an increasingly consequential element in the politics of the world-system and have built upon their achievements. Later movements have profited from the successes of earlier movements by moral encouragement, example, lessons in political tactics, and direct assistance. Many concessions have been wrested from the world’s ruling strata.

 

On the other hand, the coming to state power of all these movements has resulted in a very widespread sense of unfulfilled revolution. The questions have run like this. Have social-democratic parties achieved anything more than some redistribution to what are in fact “middle” strata located in core countries? Have Communist parties achieved anything more than some economic development for their countries? And even then, how much? And furthermore, has this not been primarily to benefit the so-called new class of a bureaucratic elite? Have nationalist movements achieved anything more than allowing the so-called compradore class a slightly larger slice of the world pie?

[We have been arguing in these conversations… that Bentham nailed it – but before we go there… a different thought is coming to mind… that… in response to our authors last question… the answer is… clearly… “No!” – Bentham nailed it: that to claim the universe… ‘power’ sanctions… claims… defines… what is considered ‘legitimate’ language… –

 

– and this is why these so-called ‘antisystemic’ movements have not achieved anything but a tighter organization of the world-system… of ‘world-order’… tighter subjection… or tighter integration into… the world-system: they claim the language… they define what is considered ‘legitimate discourse’ – which… when we allow their definitions full-scope without challenging them… effectively contains us. So, while ‘world-systems’ theory may be a ‘transitional’ language… because it helps us think from ‘the vantage of the whole’… its usefulness for we-commoners purpose of achieving our freedom… is compromised by its uncritical acceptance… of the language of ‘economics’… that phony language of ‘development’… i.e. it plays ‘power’s game… unconsciously… – P.S.]

These are perhaps not the questions that ought to be asked, or the manner in which the issues should be posed. But in fact these are the questions that have been asked, and very widely. There is little doubt that the resulting skepticism has made deep inroads in the ranks of potential and even active supporters of the world’s antisystemic movements. As this skepticism began to take hold, there were a number of ways in which it began to express itself in ideological and organizational terms.…

[…and keep in mind as you hopefully re-read those words… that we re-visited this earlier section in order to have a deeper understanding of 1968… and recall the question that is being asked in that discussion of 1968: “What was 1968 a rehearsal for?…” Could it be… our freedom? – P.S.]

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* “WUR of December 21st, 2014… “Embracing Global Goals, Scope and Action: Becoming Global Actors… Claiming the ‘All’”:

[Please check out this example of our most recent (as of 2014-12.16) “anti-coercion commercials” posted on YouTube. Art by Wassily Kandinsky (except in “Future Freedom” which presents “Freedom Sun” by David Sterenberg) and original music and beats by Thandiwe Satterwhite. The entire collection (including the most recent) can be found at: “Nascence Anti-coercion Commercials”:

 

“I learned this, at least…that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him…In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.” (Henry David Thoreau)

 

…and please check out the audio for our most recent ‘non-coercion commercials’:

 

“Our cage has many sides… but all sides of our containment share a common wall: the lock on our thoughts ‘power’ holds that makes division… rank… hierarchy… authority… ‘the state’… seem legitimate… And today… I’m looking at this angle: ‘clandestine’… that manifests as ‘what is never spoken but which our bodies feel: that all around us seethes… from ‘power’s hidden actors… a festering excrescence… that saps our energy… and poisons our relations with… everything – the earth… our own breathing… our knowledge of ourselves and each other – when nothing is what it claims to be… or what it seems…’”

 

“So… they have all the cards… they set the terms… they set those terms in opposition to our nature… our biological inheritance of ‘mutual aid’… and then raise before our eyes our violent reaction to it… to these terms of coercion both tangible and tacit… and adding insult to injury the state then sets us up as ‘culprit’… even as it unleashes its violence upon us… ‘coercion’… that term… encompasses all violence... it’s the more accurate one to use… so let’s substitute it… just doing that one thing expands our thinking… ‘coercion’ is in every nook and cranny of our lives… compulsion is in every phrase they train us with… when we start thinking in terms of that – compulsion… coercion… force – we’ll see that there’s no aspect of our lives that isn’t dogged by it…”

 

“A society that has been crafted for this long… without our discussion… represents severe containment of us. We’ve been caged… so tightly… so thoroughly… that it’s not a surprise… our difficulty organizing at this juncture… our heart has been broken many times… it’s hard to believe in the possibility of global unity… particularly as they use relentlessly their strategy of infiltration and causing disharmony and dissension and despair internally – that’s their key tactic. How do we overcome that?… So it’s no surprise that we have a hard time knowing how to start forming trust again… in order to build the kind of unity we need – we-the-people – and I don’t mean through ‘our’ ‘herders’… the ‘organizations’… that have been licensed specifically for that purpose… to manage us. I mean we-the-people… we-actual-people… have to do this. But the existence of the Internet… the communication means for our global organizing exists now. New terms requires… new hope… new sentiment… new conviction… the building of the certainty that we have finally arrived at the moment for our freedom. It’s ‘Freedom Time’… and we can feel it… but we have to start acting on it.”

–––

 

Today’s show:

 

Globally… it seems that the key strategy that informs our protesting… we-the-global-people’s… our social-mobilizing for what we long for and deserve… something of a different ‘order’ from what ‘the system’ wants for us… that strategy continues to be: changing the nature of ‘the state’… …an attempt to make ‘it’ defend us instead of ‘power’… In the absence of our rich… on-going… discussion of the nature of ‘the state’… we will continue to make this mistake… to expend our energy in ways that fall far short of what is needed… to achieve our freedom…

 

December 16th, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: Globally… it seems that the key strategy that informs our protesting… we-the-global-people’s… our social-mobilizing for what we long for and deserve… something of a different ‘order’ from what ‘the system’ wants for us… that strategy continues to be: changing the nature of ‘the state’…

 

…an attempt to make ‘it’ defend us instead of ‘power’…

 

…in the absence of our rich… on-going… discussion of the nature of ‘the state’… we will continue to make this mistake… to expend our energy in ways that fall far short of what is needed… to achieve our freedom.

 

But… no doubt… the sheer global scope of protest… will push us to these discussions more quickly than was possible previously… in those days and times before… before we could inter-link our protests instantaneously.

 

In Belgium this week… our Sisters and Brothers are ‘General-Striking’… using that key tactic we must begin employing everywhere… and then simultaneously. All over the globe – in Turkey… Egypt… and here in the U.S. – we are resisting the criminalization of dissent. And we’re seeing… significantly – for example in Australia… where the people… preemptively… stood with their Muslim brothers and sisters following a ‘hostage-stand-off’ there… and here in the U.S.… in anti-police-brutality protests…

(…and surely… by the way… we can see… how easy it would be… for ‘power’ to plant… liberally… such instruments of fascism ‘needed’… amongst the police nationally… to orchestrate some version of what we’re seeing…

 

…but… significantly… we may also be… in response… also seeing… unexpectedly… perhaps… a challenge to their scheming – an organic-flip of their tactic…)

– that we-the-people are standing against Division.

 

–––

 

While I am not… by any means… trivializing the pain of losing our loved ones for no reason but because the state can – and against this in-your-face statement of absolute dominion over us… every fiber of our being revolts – where does that revolt lead us? Will the state ever relinquish its dominion over us if it doesn’t have to?… if we got nowhere else to turn… to satisfy the needs of our very existence… except to ‘it’? Do we not need a strategic-practical-politics-and-in-depth-systemic-analysis-driven-vision of the next global-social-arrangement… in which human energy is no longer coerced and managed… in which ‘class’-‘rank’-hierarchy’-‘authority’ (and therefore the state) have been responsibly braked… de-energized… and removed from our lives…

 

Because there are not… that I have heard… on-air discussions of the need for a strategic-practical-politics-and-in-depth-systemic-analysis-driven-vision of the next global-social-arrangement… in which human energy is no longer coerced and managed… in which ‘class’-‘rank’-hierarchy’-‘authority’ (and therefore the state) have been responsibly braked… de-energized… and removed from our lives…

 

…and certainly… then… no discussion of a plan for how to get there… of how to get this process rolling…

 

…the media commentary that appears here… and therefore in our radio conversations… lights upon the same discouraging absences… week after week…

 

…requiring the reminder… oft-needed as we are not wired for duplicity… as our bodies long to take things as they’re given…

 

…requiring us to remind ourselves that the ‘reality’ ‘power’ gives us to view is a construction… and that the voices that air… therefore… will largely… necessarily… correspond with it… with that construction.

 

I offer that preface to this… so that we who do see freedom in the offing won’t think a dark cloud has passed before our vision: the counsel I heard this morning (December 18, 2014… the venue was a progressive radio talk show…) from some selected spokespeople for the “Black Lives Matter” movement not only clouds the issue of ‘the coercive state’ and how we get beyond it… but attempts to drag this movement down a path not just destined… but designed… to shrink it.

 

While there was much use of language that sounded politically astute… assuring we listeners that everything they did was ‘strategic’… held the ‘end goal’ in mind… as well as the concern to sustain the movement ‘over time’… the absence of analysis exposed the pose as fatuous… at best.

(…although if the voices I heard are at all representative… a significant percentage of its ‘leadership’ is inauthentic… recycling the same tired ‘healing’ rhetoric I heard during the Occupy Movement… from folks planted to sink it. The radio show interview included discussion of a tactic called ‘Black Brunch’… described in an article in a local weekly… that featured these same people… like this: “[Black Brunch is] about taking the pain and suffering of so many wrongful deaths and airing them out, in the light of day, in play view of those who can easily avert their gaze.” [Will Butler, “Media Ignores Black Protests,” East Bay Express, December 17 – 23, 2014] The tactic is to compel people eating in a restaurant to face the fact that Black folk… particularly low-income Black folk… are being targeted by the state… are being murdered at a high rate… by agents of state. They, of course, do not use this language… but I propose it is an accurate language… a truthful language… a language that states the problem correctly.

 

Not long ago… in a state of preoccupation I wandered without thinking into a store [Your Basic Bird, I think it was…] in Berkeley that sells birds. I was completely unprepared for the display within… of such raw… naked… suffering.

 

One cockatoo in particular continues to haunt me… but I couldn’t see a way… not just to relieve his suffering… but the common suffering of all his kind… because…

 

…to free life… we have to free ourselves.

 

We see suffering…

…we scan our available means to relieve it…

…we see nothing…

…we are practical creatures…

…we move on…

 

And this is no less true in looking at ourselves at age two.

 

So when the suffering is perceived… we must have means… linkages between us that we enlarge in times of need.

 

The goal of reclaimed discourse must be reclaimed world… and this means on-going local gatherings to reclaim our own thought process.

 

Lack of information means we have no means to address our own suffering… and if we cannot address our own suffering… we can’t address the suffering of others…

 

‘Action’ beyond ‘protest’ – i.e. ‘action’ towards a free future – requires a clear vision. Clear vision outs the agents… as they stand in sharp relief against it. The word ‘protest’ evokes ‘grievance’… ‘anger’… ‘combatants’ – this is a scene into which agents are easily inserted. ‘Power’ welcomes this scene.

 

Why is there such deep confusion about ‘the state’… if not that Alice Miller could not be more right… that to learn at mother’s knee a tyrannical notion of ‘Authority’… plants deep seeds that only authentic probing with our own language can unseat.

 

While I am not… by any means… trivializing the pain of losing our loved ones for no reason but because the state can – there is a particular horror in that… in the arbitrariness and arrogance of that naked display of ‘power’: the state saying… “we can take your lives away and you can do nothing about it…” – the imposed sense of helplessness… a sense of helplessness they force us to feel… runs against our nature…

 

– and against this in-your-face statement of absolute dominion over us… every fiber of our being revolts.

 

But…

 

…where does that revolt lead us?

 

Will the state ever relinquish its dominion over us if it doesn’t have to?… if we got nowhere else to turn… to satisfy the needs of our very existence… except to ‘it’?

 

And…

 

…once we discuss it… will we not see… that underneath our fury at the state… there is a hidden rage… at our mutual betrayal… a force imposed on our free spirits… at an early age…

 

…a hidden rage we’ve not allowed ourselves to feel…

 

…and that exposing that rage… that pain… to our collective consciousness… will indeed allow us to move… not just beyond rage…

 

…but beyond the state.

 

By profound happenstance… the radio program that followed it told the story of a growing apathy among our Sisters and Brothers in Nigeria… who have lost yet more children to the paid cogs of the global-state machine…. This past April our Brothers and Sisters in Nigeria had a movement too… it was called “Bring Back Our Girls”… and now more children have been taken… and the people are growing sad… …which is all part of a larger plan… of the global-state-statesmen… to demoralize Mother Africa… …but imagine the mutual boost in our spirits… if we helped each other… How? The General Strike…

(…so they intend the only harvest of our pain to be… division… let’s flip that… let’s make our harvest… mutual aid…)

Much of the work of analysis that we need to proceed to our freedom has been done… by honest folks with heart who are still with us… and many more among the ancestors… they’ve given us the heads-up we need to not repeat the same mistakes endlessly. In recent and upcoming shows we are discussing how it happened… that our resistance consistently got directed down the false path of ‘claiming the state’ (what we've been calling in these shows… the ‘strategy’: “fix the state”…)

 

…to offer nothing but this as a ‘strategy’ at this moment in our human story… is worse than ‘fatuous’… it reeks of ‘power’s direct guidance…

 

By profound happenstance… the radio program that followed it told the story of a growing apathy among our Sisters and Brothers in Nigeria… who have lost yet more children to the paid cogs of the global-state machine….

 

But imagine…

 

…imagine if we joined hands with all of our Sisters and Brothers of African ancestry?… with all we children of Mother Africa.

 

What could we do?

 

What could we not? Once we start addressing the true… the actual and same… motive forces that stand lurking behind all of our lives… across-state…

 

We know the Nigerian government – but a tool… true… of the global-state-statesmen – stands behind this kidnapping… and many… many… other atrocities…

 

This past April our Brothers and Sisters in Nigeria had a movement too… it was called “Bring Back Our Girls”… and now more children have been taken… and the people are growing sad…

 

…which is all part of a larger plan… of the global-state-statesmen… to demoralize Mother Africa…

 

…imagine the mutual boost in our spirits… if we helped each other…

 

How? The General Strike…

 

–––

 

…not only can a ‘claim the state’ ‘strategy’ not ‘work’… but that it’s actually cultivated quicksand… a trap devised by centuries of ‘behind-sceners’… the global-state statesmen… ……and that the full implications of what this means we have been loath to face… that… if indeed… as we’ve been discussing… ‘power’s every move is not just planned… but over-constructed: planned-out to scenarios never conceived by us – i.e. reflects extreme craft… that the result achieved was the result intended… that the endless harvest of our blood and unrealized earth-gifts is precisely want they will continue to deliver to us… ad infinitum…

 

What we’re arguing here… is that not only can a ‘claim the state’ ‘strategy’ not ‘work’… but that it’s actually cultivated quicksand… a trap devised by centuries of ‘behind-sceners’… the global-state statesmen… to continuously lure our feet and sink us…

 

…and that the full implications of what this means we have been loath to face… no matter how often we’re told…

 

…that… if indeed… as we’ve been discussing… ‘power’s every move is not just planned… but over-constructed: planned-out to scenarios never conceived by us – i.e. reflects extreme craft…

 

…that the result achieved was the result intended…

 

…then…

 

…‘power’ never did… does not… never will…

 

…care about us…

 

…that the endless harvest of our blood and unrealized earth-gifts is precisely want they will continue to deliver to us… ad infinitum…

 

Why on earth would we leave to such as this – a point clear and obvious once we discuss it – to such as this… the decisions for all of us?

 

We wouldn’t. We won’t.

 

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[Today’s reading: We are briefly interrupting our reading of Chapter 5 to read some sections of Chapter 1 - 2 of Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements… “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”… – P.S.]

 

–––

 

* December 21, 2014 reading: Chapter 2 of Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements… “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”

 

Continuing Chapter 2: “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”

During last week’s show we discussed a ‘dilemma of antisystemic movements’ not considered by our three visiting friends from Academia… that being… the risk for us… in accepting ‘power’s framing… and definitions. So we have to scrutinize with due diligence… this notion of ‘great success’ for our resistance being expressed… in getting ourselves – or rather… some infinitesimal split-off portion of ourselves – snugly ensconced… in ‘government’… But the flip of this… is that we also must question the opposite… that the eruption of “wars or internal political divisions among powerful strata…” (this is from our Chapter 5 reading during the December 7, 2014 show…) represent failures of the ‘repressive machinery’… This question may sum this concern up… the question never incorporated in sanctioned analysis: “…what if the statesmen… absolutely… do not care about us… what if… concern for our lives… in and of themselves… never enters the scope of their actual (as opposed to feigned…) concern… or their political calculus (except in extremis?)

 

[Last week we… with our trio… pondered the implications of social movements and national movements getting to choose and outfit rooms in the State House. Was this a boon?… they asked. Especially as ‘power’s hold on us… the degree to which it determines every aspect of our lives… has but increased over time. Perhaps… we will ask today… perhaps we need a different standard for ‘success’… our own vision… and guideposts to mark our progress to it… – P.S.]

The Unfulfilled Revolution

 

How are we to appreciate the consequences? In gross terms, we can see two consequences that have moved in very different directions. On the one hand, these movements, taken collectively as a sort of “family” of movements, have become an increasingly consequential element in the politics of the world-system and have built upon their achievements. Later movements have profited from the successes of earlier movements by moral encouragement, example, lessons in political tactics, and direct assistance. Many concessions have been wrested from the world’s ruling strata.

 

On the other hand, the coming to state power of all these movements has resulted in a very widespread sense of unfulfilled revolution. The questions have run like this. Have social-democratic parties achieved anything more than some redistribution to what are in fact “middle” strata located in core countries? Have Communist parties achieved anything more than some economic development for their countries? And even then, how much? And furthermore, has this not been primarily to benefit the so-called new class of a bureaucratic elite? Have nationalist movements achieved anything more than allowing the so-called compradore class a slightly larger slice of the world pie.

 

These are perhaps not the questions that ought to be asked, or the manner in which the issues should be posed. But in fact these are the questions that have been asked, and very widely. There is little doubt that the resulting skepticism has made deep inroads in the ranks of potential and even active supporters of the world’s antisystemic movements. As this skepticism began to take hold, there were a number of ways in which it began to express itself in ideological and organizational terms.

 

The period after the Second World War was a period of great success for the historic antisystemic movements. Social democracy became firmly ensconced in the West….

[During last week’s show we discussed a ‘dilemma of antisystemic movements’ not considered by our three visiting friends from Academia… that being… the risk for us… in accepting ‘power’s framing… and definitions. So we have to scrutinize with due diligence… this notion of ‘great success’ for our resistance being expressed… in getting ourselves – or rather… some infinitesimal split-off portion of ourselves – snugly ensconced… in ‘government’… But the flip of this… is that we also must question the opposite… that the eruption of “wars or internal political divisions among powerful strata…” (this is from our Chapter 5 reading during the December 7, 2014 show…) represent failures of the ‘repressive machinery’…. More and more… as I ponder this ‘thought’ – the coherent thought of this perspective (and it is into a ‘mind’ we dip… when we agree to… if only temporarily… for ‘the sake of argument’… view from the same… share a… ‘perspective’ – of the ‘world-systems’ theorists… ponder their assumptions… test their definitions… the concern I have gets more definite… that the ‘sense’ we can extract from it… for our forwarding a ‘people’s perspective’… is limited… This question may sum this concern up… the question never incorporated in sanctioned analysis: “…what if the statesmen… absolutely… do not care about us… what if… concern for our lives… in and of themselves… never enters the scope of their actual (as opposed to feigned…) concern… or their political calculus (except in extremis?” – P.S.]

It is less that the social-democratic parties came to be seen as one of the alternating groups which could legitimately govern than that the main program of the social democrats, the welfare state, came to be accepted by even the conservative parties, if no doubt begrudgingly… [‘temper the desirable with the possible…’ was Plato’s counsel… and ever since… in the chambers of statesmen… are heard echoes of this… – P.S.] After all, even Richard Nixon said: “We are all Keynesians now.” Communist parties, of course, came to power in a whole series of states. And the post-1945 period saw one long process of decolonization, punctuated by some dramatic, politically important armed struggles, such as Vietnam, Algeria, and Nicaragua.

 

Nonetheless, by the 1960s, and even more by the 1970s, there began to occur a “break with the past” with the rise of a new kind of antisystemic movement (or movements within the movements) in world-regional locales as diverse as North America, Japan, Europe, China, and Mexico. The student, Black, and antiwar movements in the United States; the student movements in Japan and Mexico; the labor and student movements in Europe; the Cultural Revolution in China; and as of the 1970s the women’s movements; did not have identical roots or even common effects. Each one was located in political and economic processes shaped by the particular and different histories, and by the different positions in the world-system of the locales in which they arose and worked themselves out. Yet, by world-historical standards, they occurred in the same period and, moreover, they shared some common ideological themes that clearly set them apart from earlier varieties of antisystemic movements.

 

That word…‘asymmetry’… set me thinking: Surely… he must know… that there’s absolutely nothing natural in that ‘order’ he seems to approve… that that ‘order’ is a pleasant word for ‘force’… The world of ‘logic-systems’ is an invented world… elaborate and well-organized… there’s much to master… much to digest… much to offer in placation… the abyss where was your soul.

 

Their almost simultaneous occurrence can largely be traced to the fact that the movements of the late 1960s were precipitated by a common catalyst: the escalation of the anti-imperialist war in Vietnam. This escalation posed an immediate threat to the established patterns of life, and to the very lives not only of the Vietnamese but of American youth as well, and the war posed a clear threat to the security of the Chinese people. As for European youth and workers, while no immediate threat was posed to their lives and security, the indirect effects of the escalation (world monetary crisis, intensification of market competition, and so on) and the ideological spill-overs from the movements in the United States, from the Cultural Revolution in China, and from the struggle of the Vietnamese people soon provided enough reasons and rationalizations for rebellion.

 

Taken together, all these movements and their Vietnamese epicenter were important in disclosing a basic asymmetry in the power of systemic and antisystemic forces on a world scale.…

[Their use of the word ‘asymmetry’ in this description of the growth and extension of our global resistance… suggests… as we pointed out last week… a Hegelian influence… a notion… touched on in our earlier Wallerstein readings (a section in his chapter of Does Capitalism Have A Future? called: “Capitalism During Its Phase of ‘Normal’ Operation”) in which he argued that ‘normally’ the ‘world-system’ achieves a kind of equilibrium:

What is meant by hegemony in a world-economy is the ability of one state to impose a set of rules on the operation of all other states, such that there is relative order in the world-system. The importance of “relative” order is something on which Schumpeter insisted in his theorizing. Disorders – interstate and intrastate (civil) wars, Mafiosi protection rackets, extensive official and institutional corruption, rampant petty crime – are all profitable to small sectors of the world’s population. But they all hinder the global search for maximizing the accumulation of capital. Indeed, they bring about the destruction of much infrastructure necessary for the maintenance and expansion of capitalist accumulation.

 

It follows that the imposition of relative order by a hegemonic power is a positive benefit for the “normal” operation of the capitalist system as a whole. It is also of great benefit to the hegemonic power itself – its state, its entrepreneurs, its ordinary citizens. There is reason to doubt that the benefits to the system as a whole (and to the hegemonic power) also bring in their wake a benefit to other states and their enterprises and citizens. Therein lays the tension, and the explanation, of why achieving and maintaining hegemony is so difficult and so rare. (Immanuel Wallerstein, “Structural Crisis, Or Why Capitalists May No Longer Find Capitalism Rewarding,” in Does Capitalism Have A Future?)

There seems to be an ambivalence here not present thirty years prior, when he and his co-authors wrote: “Opposition to oppression is coterminous with the existence of hierarchical social systems. Opposition is permanent, but for the most part latent…”

 

‘Asymmetry’ presupposes ‘symmetry’… ‘step-by-step’ correspondence… i.e. that ‘we’ are an ‘effect’ of ‘power’s action. And while it’s certainly true that ‘power’ has ever… since ‘class’s onset… been strenuously endeavoring to shape us… make us… be what it ‘needs’… to accomplish its (variously defined over the ages… but all a specie of the same arrogance…) ‘greatness’… while certainly this is so… there is a missing factor which only we-the-people can add: our earth-given-knowledge of freedom… which never leaves us.

“Opposition will be continuous…”

…now that’s straightforward and clear…

It’s clearly true… we need no ‘proof’… we know it in our bodies…

And yet…

…treatises will flow…

…there will be oceans of deserts of theories…

…there will be endless dissertations on them…

And so… clarity was let go…

…because the incentives…

…were so ‘generous’…

Surely… he must know…

…that there’s absolutely nothing natural in that ‘order’ he seems to approve…

…that that ‘order’ is a pleasant word for ‘force’…

…that coercion’s both a fine web…

…and a tank that mows us down…

This is earth-speak:

…we will resist…

…we continue to resist…

…we will resist some more…

So… wither-dry-husk-blown-to-the-wind your phony ‘scientific theories’…

…your social algorithms…

Get you hence you calculating-cons…

…get you gone.

How dare you reduce the intricate web of our thought process…

…the sighing of our infinite hearts…

…to postulates and raw data…

…to be polished smooth…

How dare you take the mystery and magic of the subtle interweavings of our myriad experiences in multiple translations…

…both in fluid memory and real-time…

The world of ‘logic-systems’ is an invented world…

…elaborate and well-organized…

…there’s much to master…

…much to digest…

…much to offer in placation…

…the abyss where was your soul.

But I have a deeper… and broader… concern about their analysis. What I’m seeing now… is that the problem we identified in last week’s show: ‘power’s invisibility… the clandestine manner of the global-state-statesmen’s mechanisms for organizing the world… and of their own planning… distorts the analysis… the implications of this problem must be plumbed… and mos def discussed… using the frame of our earth-allegiance – and with a fearless acceptance of the results of the analysis that our Reason gives us: what if… all the blood-letting was exactly what ‘power’ wanted? The view of ‘all’ changes when we admit… that the goal of ‘power’ has ever been… to ‘keep the cattle herded’… The question we should ask to test the motive I’m imputing to them… this motive ‘herding us’… is… whether after all the blood-letting… all the violence… were we-the-global-people more or less… ‘disciplined’?… i.e. were ‘the people’ more tightly ‘organized’ in state-boxes? And without question we can answer, “Yes.”

 

But I have a deeper… and broader… concern about their analysis. What I’m seeing now… is that the problem we identified in last week’s show… that:

…because of ‘power’s invisibility… the clandestine manner of the global-state-statesmen’s mechanisms for organizing the world… and of their own planning… when our three [present their] analysis of how the world-system operates… because ‘power’ remains hidden… and out of that picture… it gives this false sense of legitimacy… a false veneer of… inevitability… that has set us back – or perhaps we should say that we’ve been stuck in it… and have not been able to progress… advance… our resistance…

…I’m beginning to see that the implications of this problem run deep… and must be plumbed… and mos def discussed… using the frame of our earth-allegiance… and of our developing people’s language of ‘refusal’… or rather… a language that looks beyond ‘the system’… a language of turning towards each other… and towards the world we want – and with a fearless acceptance of the results of the analysis that our Reason gives us… – P.S.]

The asymmetry was most dramatically exemplified on the battlefields themselves. Following the precedent of the Chinese war of national liberation, the Vietnamese showed how a national-liberation movement could, by shifting the confrontation with conventional armies onto nonconventional terrains (as in guerilla warfare), erode and eventually disintegrate the social, political, and military position of cumbersome imperial forces. From this point of view, the other movements (particularly the US antiwar movement) were part and parcel of this asymmetrical relation: to different degrees and in different ways, they showed how the shift of the confrontation between systemic and antisystemic forces onto nonconventional terrain was strengthening the latter and hampering / paralyzing the former.

[What if they’re wrong?… what if… as we saw during our readings of Savage Continent… that all the blood-letting was exactly what ‘power’ wanted? The view of ‘all’ changes when we admit… that the goal of ‘power’ has ever been… to ‘keep the cattle herded’… What if the result is the intention?… all the waste of our lives in war… all the blood-letting. Truman’s words were not an aberration: “Let them kill as many [of each other] as possible…” (that statement we learned from the Kevin Phillips book, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush…)

 

…and I don’t mean by this that ‘war is driven by a lust for profits…’ by a system of acquisition gone mad… ignoring its destructiveness. I’m not referring to a greedy arms industry… as Chalmers Johnson is describing here:

In many cases, the United States has been busy arming opponents in ongoing conflicts – Iran and Iraq, Greece and Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel, and China and Taiwan. Saddam Hussein, the number one “rogue” leader of the 1990s was during the 1980s simply an outstanding customer with an almost limitless line of credit because of his country’s oil reserves. Often the purchasing country makes its purchases conditional on the transfer of technology so that it can ultimately manufacture the item for itself and others. The result is the proliferation around the world not just of weapons but of new weapons industries. (Chalmers Johnson, ,Blowback, [2000], quoted in Kevin Phillips’ American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, [2004], p. 245)

 

Moral rhetoric notwithstanding, petroleum needs and armaments buildups have been important factors and motivators in two world wars; not incidentally, they have also been pillars of Bush family advancement. Oil, in particular, has long been a linchpin for defense and national security elites. After eight decades of Bush family private experience, even the born-again George W. Bush of the late 1980s was happy to take investment dollars from oil sheikhs.

 

Important as oil has been, great-power geopolitics has had a glamour and historical momentum beyond economics. Intellectuals in U.S. defense agencies, for their part – especially those denied their own military surfeit as youths – became caught up in what pundits called a latter-day version of the “Great Game” played out a century ago in south-central Asia. Indeed, imperial motivation have led to an outsized share of military conflicts.

 

None of the Bushes has ever been a serious intellectual in defense or foreign policy matters. For them, physical activity – especially sports such as golf or speedboating – has been more appealing than long evenings devoted to abstract thought. The effect has been to leave George W. Bush, like previous Texan wartime president Lyndon Johnson, at the mercy of second-rate defense intellectuals, this time ones who had changed the gray pinstripe of neoconservative think tanks for Pentagon togas of neoimperialism. (Kevin Phillips’ American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, [2004], p. 247)

Kevin Phillips explains in his ‘Preface’ why… the more he delved into the Bush Dynasty… the more he could see its participation with… and insinuation into… defining a clandestine… deceptively planned… entirely kept hidden… ‘imperial mission’ for the U.S. state:

I am not talking about ordinary lack of business ethnics or financial corruption…. Four generations of building toward dynasty, however, have infused the Bush family’s hunger for power and practices of crony capitalism with a moral arrogance and backstage disregard of the democratic and republican traditions of the U.S. government. As we will see, four generations of involvement with clandestine arms deals and European and Middle Eastern rogue banks will do that….

 

Few have looked at the facts of the family’s rise, but just as important, commentators have neglected the thread – not the mere occasion – of special interests, biases, scandals (especially those related to arms dealing), and blatant business cronyism. The evidence that accrues over four generations is extremely damning. This is especially true of the Bushes’ ties to the Wall Street financial world and the military-industrial complex.

 

But considering an additional relationship may explain even more. After four generations of connection to foreign intrigue and the intelligence community, plus three generations of immersion in the culture of secrecy (dating back to the Yale years of several men in the family), deceit and disinformation have become Bush political hallmarks. The Middle Eastern financial ties of both Bush presidents exemplify this lack of candor, as do the origins and machinations of both Bush wars with Iraq…. It doesn’t help that the major media have tended to use kid gloves with the family. (From the ‘Preface’ to Kevin Phillips’ American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, [2004])

The question we should ask to test the motive I’m imputing to them… this motive ‘herding us’… is… whether after all the blood-letting… all the violence… were we-the-global-people more or less… ‘disciplined’?… i.e. were our hearts broken? Did ‘the Grinch’ ‘steal Christmas’ (as we’re seeing across the African and Arab and Asian and South American lands – in Sierra Leone the state has outlawed touching… “no more touching babies… let them cry to no response… that should instill ‘discipline’…) and leave us in shock?… were ‘the people’ more tightly ‘organized’ in state-boxes? And without question we can answer, “Yes.” – P.S.]

…‘asymmetry’ in ‘warfare’? - You see… what we have to start discussing – and Polanyi saw this clearly – is that once they set up a global economy… we got nowhere to go… so the blood-letting can continue on both sides ad infinitum… because none of the global-state-statesmen care about us… they only care abut maintaining their hold… keeping their control… of us… This… then… is the only gauge… the only standard… that matters…

 

The outcome and implications of the combined and uneven development of the antisystemic movements of the 1960s and 1970s must be assessed at different levels. Locally, the Vietnam war had a very “conventional” outcome: the coming to state power of a “classical” antisystemic movement, and the subsequent strengthening of the bureaucratic structure of this state. Assessed from this angle, at the national level the outcome of the Vietnamese national-liberation movement did not differ significantly from the earlier kinds of antisystemic movements (national and social). Globally, however, the Vietnam war was a turning point in disclosing the limits of military actions in coercing the periphery into a hierarchical world order.

[But at least since Bentham… ‘power’ has known this… at least since Bentham… they’ve designed states specifically to control us by ‘teaching us’ ‘discipline’… i.e. to self-monitor and save ‘the state’ the trouble… Moreover… just as our three friends from Academia are showing us… so far only by implication… the employment of military coercion against the ‘periphery’ never lessened – we need only look around us today at the suffering of our Brothers and Sisters in Syria and Nigeria… all across the Asian… Arab… South American… and African worlds – rather… the ‘job’ just got transferred to local enforcers of ‘global-state’ imperative for control… – P.S.]

These limits and their recognition were the outcome not only of the confrontation on the battlefields but also, and possibly to a greater degree, of the movements unleashed elsewhere in the world-system. It was the nature of these other movements that most clearly marked a departure from, and a counterposition to, earlier patterns of antisystemic movements. To varying degrees, the Cultural Revolution in China, the student movements in the West, Japan, and Mexico, and the “autonomist” workers’ movements in Europe took as one of their themes the limits and dangers of the establishment and consolidation of bureaucratic structures by the movements themselves, and this was new.

 

The Cultural Revolution was largely directed against the bureaucratic power of the Communist Party and, whatever its failures from other points of view, its main achievement has been precisely to have prevented, or at least slowed down, the consolidation of party bureaucratic power in China. The student and youth movements that cropped up in the most diverse contexts were generally directed not only against the various bureaucratic powers that tried to curb and repress them (states, universities, parties) but also against all attempts to channel them toward the formation of new, and the strengthening of old, bureaucratic organizations. Although the new workers’ movements generally ended up by strengthening bureaucratic organizations (mostly unions), nonetheless the protagonists of these “new” movements showed an unprecedented awareness of the fact that bureaucratic organizations such as unions were bound to develop interests of their own that might differ in important respects from those of the workers they claimed to represent. What this meant, concretely, was that the instrumental attitude of unions and parties vis-à-vis the movement was matched and countered to an unprecedented extent by an instrumental attitude on the part of the movement vis-à-vis unions and parties.

[…‘asymmetry’ in ‘warfare’? You see… what we have to start discussing – and Polanyi saw this clearly – is that once they set up a global economy… we got nowhere to go… so the blood-letting can continue on both sides ad infinitum… because none of the global-state-statesmen care about us… they only care abut maintaining their hold… keeping their control… of us… This… then… is the only gauge… the only standard… that matters… – P.S.]

The anti-bureaucratic thrust of the movements of the 1960s and early 1970s can be traced to three main tendencies: the tremendous widening and deepening of the power of bureaucratic organizations as a result of the previous wave of antisystemic movements; the decreasing capabilities of such organizations to fulfill the expectations on which their emergence and expansion had been based; and the increasing efficacy of direct forms of action, that is, forms unmediated by bureaucratic organizations. On the first two tendencies, nothing needs to be added to what has already been said concerning the successes and limits of the earlier movements, except to point out that the reactivation of market competition under US hegemony since the Second World War had further tightened the world-economy constraints within which states acted….

 

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* “WUR of December 28th, 2014… “Embracing Global Goals, Scope and Action: Becoming Global Actors… Claiming the ‘All’”:

[Please check out this example of our most recent (as of 2014-12.21) “anti-coercion commercials” posted on YouTube. Art by Wassily Kandinsky (except in “Future Freedom” which presents “Freedom Sun” by David Sterenberg) and original music and beats by Thandiwe Satterwhite. The entire collection (including the most recent) can be found at: “Nascence Anti-coercion Commercials”:

 

“Continuous Growth:” Video

 

Here's the Mp3:

 

“It seems the earth-connected view the world more dynamically: a constant ‘growing’ or ‘unfolding’ in the midst of dense connections. Whereas those tightly held in ‘power’s grip perceive the world in categories that are fixed… fixed in the moment we are looking at them… to remain so for some period indefinite… categories which then determine the possibilities of those stuck in them.… A small example. Maybe ten years ago or so a Venezuelan documentary came out about one of the many initiatives of Hugo Chavez to build the confidence of the people: musical instruments were given to the children… I believe… of Caracas… and they were taught how to play them. One scene showed two children practicing… and one was further along in her claiming of the instrument. And when a sound from her friend’s instrument emerged discordant… they laughed and laughed. The sound was for them a joke… but never the person. It was understood… this is a process… this is what we all go through. That’s a lesson the earth teaches the earth-connected. But a ‘power’-allegiance would put the two in hierarchical rank and judge one to be the ‘lesser’ of the other… and the judgment tends to then become a label… from which others turn as from contagion.”

 

–––

When… in our reading of Antisystemic Movements this week… our three Academic friends make reference to a ‘commodification of labor power’ trend… I suggest we tell it like it is… that commodification of human energy… stripped of ‘scientific’ cover… is ‘power’ stamping its tattoo on our ass… relocating us from the earth’s lap… into the palm of ‘power’s hand.… what do you think the global-state-statesmen learned… from WWII?… if not that our lives… our settled relations… can be shredded at their whim… and we will accept it… if… we “have no alternative…”

 

December 23, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: Last week… with the help of our three friends from Academia… we began examining the material under-belly of the Imperial Beast… which is ‘Plato’s Tribe’ unleashed upon us… full force… in the centuries since the French Revolution… what sustains and supports their system of ‘class’ – that being: a single world-economy… the world’s people ‘progressively’ all trapped in a ‘state’… that state itself trapped in an ‘inter-state system’… hierarchically arranged…

 

…playing out as we went… in our analytical process… following our Reason’s guidance… what ‘power’ remaining a hidden actor means [and toward that end… please listen again… to this earlier conversation from the May 18, 2014 show… in which we asked what it means for our ability to develop an accurate understanding of our entrapment… and what it means for our ability to organize and advocate on our behalf: the obvious answer being… we can’t cultivate either if we don’t factor in… hidden ‘power’.

“So if ‘power’-as-behind-the-scenes-cross-national-colluder is systematically snipped out of the story we’re taught in school (and would it be ‘modern’-organized-‘power’ if it didn’t hide behind the buffers it sets up like lightning rods to draw the fire away from themselves?…) mind-made by ‘scholars’… and presented to us… how do we ‘out’ them… see their hand behind the propaganda-props… so that we can distinguish ‘truth’ from ‘con’ from ‘being mistaken’… in political analysis?”

So… “How can we ‘out’ them?”… indeed… particularly in this moment… when states see clearly ‘danger’ levels rising for imminent threats to their existence… when we’ve yet to begin discussing them.

 

Here then is another critical effect of the problem of ‘power’ remaining hidden: they are prepared for us… and our reactions to this moment of “global-class-system butting up against resource-limits (given the privatization framework…)” while we… are… mos def… not prepared for them.

 

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When… in our reading of Antisystemic Movements this week… our three Academic friends make reference to a ‘commodification of labor power’ trend… I suggest we tell it like it is… that commodification of human energy… stripped of ‘scientific’ cover… is ‘power’ stamping its tattoo on our ass… relocating us from the earth’s lap… into the palm of ‘power’s hand.

 

What they have learned… is that if they can keep us atomized… they can do anything they want with us.

 

Brothers and sisters: ‘nation-state- is a new notion in our human story… as Popper told us [this was discussed at the end of Revealing Division…] – a post-French Revolution-crafted solution for ‘power’…

 

…but we let them impose it…

 

…further…

 

…what do you think the global-state-statesmen learned… from WWII?… if not that our lives… our settled relations… can be shredded at their whim… and we will accept it… if… we “have no alternative…” (and if we have been conditioned to be obedient. But the obedience-training can be overcome… not so… the lack of alternative.)

 

…and… in the last absence do we not find the question, “Do we want to end ‘power’?” – i.e., “What is the goal?” – staring up at us… the condensed core from which all the other questions pour. When do we-the-people get to have that conversation?… Now ‘power’ is always stealing and redefining our words and terms… I think we may… this once… this ‘attention’… re-pay… and take this notion ‘implicit bias’ and fill it with more honest content… But here’s a bias that truly is disappeared into the structure of ‘the system’: reverence for ‘the intelligent’ – i.e. ‘the thinkers’ – and contempt for those imagined ones who aren’t. We will be arguing that this is the core bias of ‘class’… the substance and rationale beneath its key divide: ‘citizen’ – ‘barbarian’… …that ‘power’ always ‘wins’ by manipulating it – this bias – (in us…) …that the reason this manipulation of us works so brilliantly (for ‘power’…) is that we never see it – this bias… And we will be arguing also that because ‘power’ has been operating clandestinely within states – with its planted representatives invasively spread among us – …that not only does it keep watch upon our ‘protests’… it tries to lead them… and that to lead them properly you must provoke them.

 

So can we now… finally… now that we have global inter-communication means… advance our understanding – and so our resistance – sufficiently… to encompass this truth: we have to have an alternative… a global alternative – because their hold on us is a global hold – to escape their heartless dominion… and to put an end… to ‘power’… on behalf of ourselves… in defense of our earth… in reverence for all our relations… and with love for our future generations.

 

Now this is just obvious. So why is there no discussion of it on the Left… in the progressive media? Why is it not the… the only… discussion we’re having… if we want to end ‘power’? Does this absence not token deep suppression of speech?… of thought?

 

…as does the further absence of discussion of the global General Strike as a tactic that we all – all who want to end ‘power’ – must ultimately get behind…

 

…and… in the last absence do we not find the question, “Do we want to end ‘power’?” – i.e., “What is the goal?” – staring up at us… the condensed core from which all the other questions pour. When do we-the-people get to have that conversation?

 

But it is a bit of a Catch-22: in order to know what we want… we have to see ‘power’ – ‘the state’ – accurately… and in order to do that we need access to accurate information through our discussions… as… we have to accurately see what we got… before we can see its opposite. We keep pacing around the walls of our container: not seeing ‘power’… ‘seeing’ instead the seeming vacuousness or duplicity of our neighbors… resenting the omnipresent coercion built-into the system… disliking ourselves for our obedient bending before it… our helplessness… not trusting each other enough to even begin serious attempts to overcome atomization.

 

None of these walls self-erected… and isn’t there a proper causal relation between them?… and therefore an order to our discussions? And do we have all the pieces?

 

The argument in this space: that the ‘reality’ we’re given (globally…) – all the ‘education’ and ‘news’ and ‘expert-speak’… established around us (across ‘nation-state’…) to support it – is a construction… is premised on the ‘proven’ facts that: elites plan… that they keep their plans hidden… that the most important decisions that affect our lives are made clandestinely… and that these so-called ‘rulers’ – global ‘power’ – have perfected the mechanism of ‘control-via-states’.

 

These ‘facts’ are so well-established that they languish in the background of our consciousness. It is assumed… and so never discussed… that ‘power’ is and ever-was and ever-will be… because… – and at this point our thought process dissolves (after… perhaps… laying out vague notions of ‘human nature’… or there ‘not being any alternative’… we close the door on the discussion…) as the information and conversations to continue further along that vein are obsessively withheld.

 

Today… if you are in the media and want to talk about race… you must (it seems there is a circulating memo that says so…) not omit the words: ‘implicit bias’. Now ‘power’ is always stealing and redefining our words and terms… I think we may… this once… this ‘attention’… re-pay… and take this notion ‘implicit bias’ and fill it with more honest content… particularly as…there is really nothing ‘implicit’ about racism – it’s pretty clearly expressed out there… across-institution….

 

But here’s a bias that truly is disappeared into the structure of ‘the system’: reverence for ‘the intelligent’ – i.e. ‘the thinkers’ – and contempt for those imagined ones who aren’t.

 

We will be arguing that this is the core bias of ‘class’… the substance and rationale beneath its key divide: ‘citizen’ – ‘barbarian’…

 

…that ‘power’ always ‘wins’ by manipulating it – this bias – (in us…)

 

…that the reason this manipulation of us works so brilliantly (for ‘power’…) is that we never see it – this bias…

 

…and that it is employed to oil and validate its planted propagandists.

 

And we will be arguing also that because ‘power’ has been operating clandestinely within states – with its planted representatives invasively spread among us – since first it seized the gaudy-scepter… and made to claim our hearts… our souls… our thoughts…

 

…that not only does it keep watch upon our ‘protests’… it tries to lead them… and that to lead them properly you must provoke them.

 

–––

 

…there is much confusion about “what is ‘the state’?”… because of all those buffers… between ‘the people’ and ‘power’… and that this is precisely the borderland where dissent gets waylaid… gets intercepted… in this borderland of confusion… Because marketing human beings is such an unnatural thing… ‘power’ knows it must… to sweeten the deal… flatter youth to think that only the very cleverest among them will grasp the ‘importance’ of it – of what is obvious diminishment of ‘the human’ – its supposed ‘importance’ to the ‘overall development’ of the species…… what the very act of this does… as we learned from Karl Popper… is establish a divide… between those ‘who see’… the inductees… and the ‘lumpen’ ‘nons’: non-initiated… non-‘cultured’… non-intellectual… non-coveted… non-welcomed… the very act… establishes who is ‘in’: the ‘intellectual’ (the ‘citizen’)… and who is ‘out’… the ‘mere’ ‘hand’ (the ‘barbarian’…)

 

‘Power’ is haunted by the unknown… – its obsessive need for control may be it’s defining quality. Its ‘need’ for an ‘order’ that it has created… and is therefore predictable… bespeaks a horrible fear of being ‘out of control’. And of course… in setting for itself the task of total suppression of all humans on the planet… sets itself up to ‘fear’… ad infinitum… as the result is ‘war’ on us… without cessation… for we will ever resist suppression…

 

…unless…

 

…‘power’ intercepts us young…

 

…which is why they plant their ‘interceptors’ among… particularly the young…

 

Please listen again to this excerpt from our March 16, 2014 show… in which we examined the questions raised by the event Rage Against The Machine:

“So ‘claiming voice’ in a world where ‘power’ seeks to name us… that’s resistance…… that’s being ‘disobedient’… but then… what more is needed?… is the question that I ponder when I read George Eliot’s quote (and Joel’s book…) extended to conceive ‘power’ globally. Why is ‘disobedience’ alone… not enough… to expose… confront… and engage successfully with global ‘power’? For if it was… then… Rage Against The Machine… surely… and all the ones with equal determination if not more… all those large spirits… who refused to settle… who refused ‘obedience’ as their course in life… like Bob Marley… and Paul Robeson before him… also musicians who set out with intention to change the world… going head-to-head with ‘power’… would have done it… would have seen the ins and outs of ‘power’… and lit… that necessary global resistance. So why wasn’t it enough? In a show over a year ago we said… while thinking through that poem by George Eliot… that “our choice can’t be disobedience unless our obedience comes to our awareness…” – and that means that ‘the state’ becomes a question. But Joel’s book is helping me see that that conclusion – that ‘the state’ itself becomes a question – is not self-evident… that there is much confusion about “what is ‘the state’?”… because of all those buffers… between ‘the people’ and ‘power’… and that this is precisely the borderland where dissent gets waylaid… gets intercepted… in this borderland of confusion….”

Because marketing human beings is such an unnatural thing… a con imposed on us… in fact (a version of: “You take the Bible… we’ll take the land…”) ‘power’ knows it must… to sweeten the deal… flatter youth to think that only the very cleverest among them will grasp the ‘importance’ of it – of what is obvious diminishment of ‘the human’ – its supposed ‘importance’ to the ‘overall development’ of the species…

 

…what the very act of this does… as we learned from Karl Popper… is establish a divide… between those ‘who see’… the inductees… and the ‘lumpen’ ‘nons’: non-initiated… non-‘cultured’… non-intellectual… non-coveted… non-welcomed…

 

…the very act… establishes who is ‘in’: the ‘intellectual’ (the ‘citizen’)… and who is ‘out’… the ‘mere’ ‘hand’ (the ‘barbarian’…)

 

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Du Bois: “The knowledge of what to do in industry and how to do it in order to attain the resulting goods rests in the hands and brains of the workers and managers, and the judges of the result are the public. Consequently it is not so much a question as to whether the world will admit democratic control here as how can such control be long avoided […or… I suggest the question: “how has such control been so long avoided… given… we-the-people… we great sea of commoners… do it all: we ‘create… manage… and judge… the result’… – P.S.] when the people once understand the fundamentals of industry. How can civilization persist in letting one person or a group of persons, by secret inherent power, determine what goods shall be made – whether bread or champagne, overcoats or silk socks? Can so vast a power be kept from the people?…” [And of course the answer, “Yes. It can… and it has been…” the next question being: “How has that monopoly on confidence and knowledge been achieved?… particularly in a so-called ‘democracy’?” And Du Bois provided the answer: by keeping secret its hoarding… i.e. we are kept from seeing it… by embedding it into… our way of seeing… with it becoming… the background to ‘thought’… – P.S.]

 

Let’s ask for W.E.B. Du Bois’s help again… to find our way through this discussion of the ‘implicit bias’ called “reverence for ‘the intelligent’ / contempt for ‘the common’…” after which we’ll attempt to link it up with some advocacy I heard recently (from a few commentators on the ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests…) for the use of a ‘diversity of tactics’… or: “why we smash stuff… and why smashing stuff is not the point… but let’s do it anyway….” The following was written in 1919… when Du Bois was 51 – and, yes, we are talking a hundred years ago (tell me we haven’t been treading water… held in suspended animation… for millennia…):

Great as are our human differences and capabilities, there is not the slightest scientific reason for assuming that a given human being of any race or sex cannot reach normal, human development if he is granted a reasonable chance. This is, of course, denied. It is denied so volubly and so frequently and with such positive conviction that the majority of unthinking people seem to assume that most human beings are not human and have no right to human treatment or human opportunity. All this goes to prove that human beings are, and must be, woefully ignorant of each other. It always startles us to find folks thinking like ourselves.…

[Recall our sub-theme this week – and it’s a sub-theme (and expression) of the overall… “needing to ‘out’ the implicit bias of ‘contempt for the common… reverence for the so-called intellectual’…” which is outing ‘power’: that ‘commodification of human energy’ is ‘power’ stamping its tattoo on our ass… i.e. the ‘privatization’ of our uniqueness… the laying-claim to mystery… that which cannot be claimed… and that to even attempt such audaciousness… we – our communal existence – must be split: atomization… our earth-given gift of communality… of sociability… of cooperativeness… of mutual aid… shattered. But… we are in a different moment… a come-to-fruition of Nikola’s promise… that… with his gift… and that of his fellow tribesmen… our future freedom awaits… we must but believe in it… – P.S.]

If the foundations of democracy are thus seen to be sound, how are we going to make democracy effective where it now fails to function – particularly in industry? The Marxists assert that industrial democracy will automatically follow public ownership of machines and materials. [Not so much… a hundred years on we finally learned: ‘the state’ is ‘the state’ is ‘the state’… ‘power’ is ‘power’ is ‘power’ – P.S.] Their opponents object that nationalization of machines and materials would not suffice because the mass of people do not understand the industrial process. They do not know:

 

• What to do

• How to do it

• Who could do it best… or…

• How to apportion the resulting goods.

 

There can be no doubt but that monopoly of machines and materials […that would be… in earth-speak… us and the earth… – P.S.] is a chief source of the power of industrial tyrants over the common worker and that monopoly today is due as much to chance and cheating as to thrift and intelligence. So far as it is due to chance and cheating, the argument for public ownership of capital is incontrovertible even though it involves some interference with long vested rights and inheritance. This is being widely recognized in the whole civilized world. But how about the accumulation of goods due to thrift and intelligence – would democracy in industry interfere here to such an extent as to discourage enterprise and make impossible the intelligent direction of the mighty and intricate industrial process of modern times?

 

The knowledge of what to do in industry and how to do it in order to attain the resulting goods rests in the hands and brains of the workers and managers, and the judges of the result are the public. Consequently it is not so much a question as to whether the world will admit democratic control here as how can such control be long avoided […or… I suggest… the more relevant question: “how has such control been so long avoided… given… we-the-people… we great sea of commoners… do it all: we ‘create… manage… and judge… the result’… – P.S.] when the people once understand the fundamentals of industry. How can civilization persist in letting one person or a group of persons, by secret inherent power, determine what goods shall be made – whether bread or champagne, overcoats or silk socks? Can so vast a power be kept from the people?…

[And of course the answer has been, “Yes. It can… and it has been…” the next question being: “How has that monopoly on confidence and knowledge been achieved?… particularly in a so-called ‘democracy’?” And Du Bois provided the answer: by keeping secret its hoarding. And how best to hide a secret?: in plain sight… i.e. we are kept from seeing it… by embedding it into… our way of seeing… with it becoming… the background to ‘thought’… the context within which ‘thought’ occurs – making it seem that accepting its premises is the prerequisite to ‘thinking’… that if you do not accept them… you cannot be a ‘thinker’… with the implied threat that you could be forced to be… its opposite… and aren’t we all so afraid of being that? – P.S.]

Du Bois: “In industry, monarchy and the aristocracy rule, and there are those who, calling themselves democratic, believe that democracy can never enter here. Industry, they maintain, is a matter of technical knowledge and ability, and, therefore, is the eternal heritage of the few.… These things today, then, are not matters of free discussion and determination. [So Du Bois identified this problem a hundred years ago… and we have not been allowed to discuss… the lack of discussion… – no more proof need be presented… – P.S.] They are strictly controlled. Who controls them? Who makes these inner, but powerful rules? Few people know. Others assert and believe these rules are “natural” – a part of our inescapable physical environment. Some of them doubtless are; but most of them are just as clearly the dictates of self-interest laid down by the powerful private persons who today control industry. [And I imagine… ‘power’s reaction: “if Du Bois can see through to us… we’d best beef up the buffer ‘the market’… and the ideology ‘capitalism’…” and therein… perhaps… lay the answer to my previous question… how it is that we still haven’t talked about the lack of our ability to talk about it… because we don’t know that there is a missing discussion. Or at least… until now we didn't seem to know… that there have been some missing discussions… – P.S.] Just here it is that modern men demand that Democracy supplant skillfully concealed, but all too evident, Monarchy.”

 

Today the scientific and ethical boundaries of our industrial activities… [are] largely in the hands of a powerful few, who decide for their own good and regardless of the good of others.…

[So the key question… never discussed: “Shall ‘industry’… i.e. ‘power’… control the construction of our social world… or shall we-the-people do this… and what does control by us look like? Our ancestors devoted much sweat and love… and no doubt their blood… to get us far enough along on these questions… for us to see to the end of them… It’s imperative then that we not ignore their work… or pretend it never existed… and that we recognize that those who do… do not have good intentions… – P.S.]

These things today, then, are not matters of free discussion and determination. [So Du Bois identified this problem a hundred years ago… and we have not been allowed to discuss… the lack of discussion… – no more proof need be presented… – P.S.] They are strictly controlled. Who controls them? Who makes these inner, but powerful rules? Few people know. Others assert and believe these rules are “natural” – a part of our inescapable physical environment. Some of them doubtless are; but most of them are just as clearly the dictates of self-interest laid down by the powerful private persons who today control industry. [And I imagine… ‘power’s reaction: “if Du Bois can see through to us… we’d best beef up the buffer ‘the market’… and the ideology ‘capitalism’…” and therein… perhaps… lay the answer to my previous question… how it is that we still haven’t talked about the lack of our ability to talk about it… because we don’t know that there is a missing discussion. Or at least… until now we didn't seem to know… that there have been some missing discussions… – P.S.] Just here it is that modern men demand that Democracy supplant skillfully concealed, but all too evident, Monarchy.

 

In industry, monarchy and the aristocracy rule, and there are those who, calling themselves democratic, believe that democracy can never enter here. Industry, they maintain, is a matter of technical knowledge and ability, and, therefore, is the eternal heritage of the few.…

 

There are the ones who say: We must control labor or civilization will fail; we must control white labor in Europe and America; above all, we must control yellow labor in Asia and black labor in Africa and the South, else we shall have no tea, or rubber, or cotton. And yet, – and yet is it so easy to give up the dream of democracy? Must industry rule men or may men rule even industry?

[But of course ‘power’ believes that it is only the ‘right’ men… the ‘men-who-are-as-gods’ who should ‘rule’. This is the ideology of ‘class’ – that this mindset… in the hands of Plato’s Tribe is utterly dominant… is a fact which… until now… few were able to see… let alone face… at least over the airwaves. I think we all know this… but we never get to discuss it… – P.S.]

“…we have to smash the system to have a hole to build a society around…” [Excuse me… we – we- the people – built this stuff… this belongs to us… why would we ‘blow it up’? Our hands built it!] All of which displays (I believe) intentional misunderstanding (and misleading) about what is ‘the system’… ‘the state’… ‘power’… – I’m referring to an interview I heard on December 23, 2014 on KPFA… with a voice-disguised anonymous person given the tag ‘Ted’… for convenience. He was officially there to make the case for breaking windows during protests… but so much additional propaganda was dropped in the process… it’s hard for me to believe his speech was not calculated to be precisely that: conscious propaganda in the service of ‘power’. Now these were just tossed-off asides… but I’ve often found these ‘asides’ to be the main purpose of the speech – embedded propaganda… – P.S.]

 

That the problem of the democratization of industry is tremendous, let no man deny. We must spread that sympathy and intelligence which tolerates the widest individual freedom despite the necessary public control.… These steps are in many cases clear: the careful, steady increase of public democratic ownership of industry, beginning with the simplest type of public utilities and monopolies, and extending gradually as we learn the way.… (W.E.B. Du Bois, Darkwater, 1920)

With Karl Popper… he believes in the ability of humans to incrementally improve their condition as they identify and eliminate problems… with the proper application of Reason… that… little by little ‘man’ can… as ‘education’ about the true nature of the problems spreads… progressively… address them.

 

Of course… at fifty-one… he’s a young man yet… he came to think different when ‘power’… arrogant and bold… seized him in its teeth… and showed him their ‘vision’ of ‘democracy’… i.e.: ‘the powerful’ are ‘the best’… and only ‘the best’ get to sit their ass in the ‘say-so’ seat.

 

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I consulted Du Bois in order to show… that when some play-pretend ‘insurrectionist’… given access to the progressive airwaves… says that ‘we don’t know what we want’… so all he knows to do and recommend… is to break windows… he’s being extremely disingenuous… at best.

 

I’m referring to an interview I heard on December 23, 2014 on KPFA… with a voice-disguised anonymous person given the tag ‘Ted’… for convenience. He was officially there to make the case for breaking windows during protests… but so much additional propaganda was dropped in the process… it’s hard for me to believe his speech was not calculated to be precisely that: conscious propaganda in the service of ‘power’. Now these were just tossed-off asides… but I’ve often found these ‘asides’ to be the main purpose of the speech – embedded propaganda. He said

• “Youth! You have limited time… you must be productive [activists]!” No… I wouldn’t be sitting in this seat if that were so.

 

• “We must support the drunk!” OK… that was random… clearly suggestive of propaganda… ‘power’ has a lot invested in having its agents use the ruse ‘addictions’… i.e. “I’ve been wounded by ‘the system’…” to distract us from our purpose.

 

• “There is no alternative […where have we heard that before?… – P.S.] we have a void in organizations…” We should have a word – maybe ‘double-dump’ (although that sounds a bit earthy… maybe that makes it a good choice for earth-speak…) – for the multiple-simultaneous-plants-in-a-single-thrust this man favored. And this propaganda is akin to that invitation we discussed earlier… in which young people are lured into betrayal of their brothers and sisters by telling them that “only the most [add desired quality here… ‘clever’… ‘radical’?…] ‘see’… that this tactic is the most [whatever…]; and he is encouraging them to think of the ‘solution’ in terms of building an ‘organization’ [‘party’ perhaps?… hierarchically-structured and disciplined?… ‘power’ would love that…]

 

• “Violence disempowers the system…” Could you show me the analysis on that please?

 

• “We don’t know what we want… yet…” Yes we do… yes we do… we don't want to be forced anymore… We want a world in which we can share our gifts without force…

 

• “…we have to smash the system to have a hole to build a society around…” [Excuse me… we – we- the people – built this stuff… this is our stuff… why would we ‘blow it up’? Our hands built it!] All of which displays (I believe) intentional misunderstanding (and misleading) about what is ‘the system’… ‘the state’… ‘power’…

 

“We need to shut down the normal functioning of ‘the system’…” But that shouldn’t be the goal in itself. True… violence can do this… we have far too numerous victims of this tactic of ‘power’s… among our sisters and brothers globally… who can unfortunately testify to that truth… can testify to the ‘disruptive’ power of violence… ‘power’ has shown that exhaustively. A General Strike also disrupts business as usual… while being… and this is the point… one giant step toward our free future.

 

(…as does an earlier argument I heard from another local leader in the “Black Lives Matter” movement. When asked “what is the goal?” she replied: “To get the boot of the state off the neck of Black people so we can breathe.” Now what analysis of this present moment we’re in… leads her to think that police tactics against the powerless [and it is against the powerless that the hidden representatives of ‘power’ direct their ‘attention’: i.e. the low income and otherwise ‘defectives’… as these ‘new-brand-fascists’ think of us…] what analysis moves her to think this ‘weeding-out’ of certain among us [including good-hearted policemen, by the way…] will stop as a result of protest against it?…

 

…but even if it does… what about that global boot… on the necks of our brothers and sisters? Do we not have to stand together to stand up to global ‘power’? Returning to the ‘Ted’ interview:)

 

• He argued that “breaking stuff builds the movement…” I disagree. Remember the 20,000 plus (others said over 30,000) who streamed into downtown Oakland to celebrate the General Strike? Well… violence of the agents of state – overt and covert – sunk that hopefulness.

 

• “We need to shut down the normal functioning of ‘the system’…” But that shouldn’t be the goal in itself. True… violence can do this… we have far too numerous victims of this tactic of ‘power’s… among our sisters and brothers globally… who can unfortunately testify to that truth… can testify to the ‘disruptive’ power of violence… ‘power’ has shown that exhaustively. A General Strike also disrupts business as usual… while being… and this is the point… one giant step toward our free future.

 

• Then he said that ‘violence’ was also a good tactic because “tactics must be available to everyone… and empower…” A pregnant juxtaposition followed when… in another show on a different station… about the formerly incarcerated trying to fashion new lives outside (discussed in a film called Welcome Home…) a woman who used her sexuality as a tool for getting things from men, said: “it gave me a sense of power…” This is a much more accurate way of putting it. It didn’t empower… it made her feel powerful. I would suggest a more useful quality for determining tactics to be: “Does it build hopeful energy for a free future?”

…those who produced this legacy… who long to unburden their sistren and brethren… from the encumbrances of ‘power’… and who did not shy away from doing the necessary analysis – Kropotkin… Du Bois… Marcuse… Fromm… de Grazia – are unanimous in their insistence that we must have an alternative vision to ‘power’… and in trying to flesh out that vision… necessarily settle on the same questions: the centrality of ‘work’ and the necessity that we-the-people make the decisions about it; the importance of discussing collectively that vision of the world we want; and the need to get past the barrier: the myth ‘the unsuitableness of commoners for governance’… in order to achieve consensus about a people’s vision…. – What this tells us is that we already know… have known for some time… where we want to go… and what we need to do: i.e. the key issues that must be discussed… by all of us. That there must be broad… class-system-broad… discussion is obvious. How else develop consensus?

 

In that March 16, 2014 Waking Up Radio show mentioned earlier… we talked about two key tactics that ‘power’ uses to intercept and ‘capture’ dissent: the ‘Pied Piper’… and ‘the Police’. Now… ‘Pied Piper’ has many versions… but they generally fall either into camps ‘theoretical’ – i.e. ‘Pied Pipers’ who produce theory to intercept ‘thought’ – or ‘practical’: the ‘Pied Pipers’ who intercept the action-oriented… and serve as lightning-rods for fiery youth energy… to successfully draw and drain it of any worrisome content…. Both… by their actions… by engaging with the state in such a way that validates it… reinforce the ideology that “there is no alternative…”

 

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So I cited Du Bois as an example to show that we on the Left have quite a legacy of ‘thinking-through’ and ‘figuring-out’ bestowed to us… and that those who produced this legacy… who long to unburden their sistren and brethren… from the encumbrances of ‘power’… and who did not shy away from doing the necessary analysis – Kropotkin… Du Bois… Marcuse… Fromm… de Grazia – are unanimous in their insistence that we must have an alternative vision to ‘power’… and in trying to flesh out that vision… necessarily settle on the same questions: the centrality of ‘work’ and the necessity that we-the-people make the decisions about it; the importance of discussing collectively that vision of the world we want; and the need to get past the barrier: the myth ‘the unsuitableness of commoners for governance’… in order to achieve consensus about a people’s vision.

 

What this tells us is that we already know… have known for some time… where we want to go… and what we need to do: i.e. the key issues that must be discussed… by all of us. That there must be broad… class-system-broad… discussion is obvious. How else develop consensus?

 

What was not clear a hundred years ago (except to a few… like Tolstoi and Kropotkin…) was the global nature of the transformation that must occur… and into this gap in our understanding flowed the work of Terence Hopkins and Immanuel Wallerstein.

 

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[Today’s reading: We are briefly interrupting our reading of Chapter 5 to read some sections of Chapter 1 - 2 of Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements… “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”… – P.S.]

 

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* December 28, 2014 reading: Chapter 2 of Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements… “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”

 

“There are three different levels of personnel for whom the producer / owner has to pay: the unskilled and semiskilled workforce, the skilled workers and supervisory cadres, and the top managers.…” [What’s unfortunately being implied here is the… I believe… propagandistic notion of differential skill ‘explaining’ differential pay… that the created concept ‘low skill’ – the notion that an assignment to a low slot by the ‘world economy’… the ‘market’ – is legitimate. This view is upside-down. Those so-assigned are paid less because they hold ‘the system’ on their backs… they run the system… though this service be uncredited… they are paid less so that more can be extracted from them… so that ‘more’ can ‘be done’… on top of them… with their energy as fuel. Again: this is betrayal insinuated into our mutual relations. The divide ‘mental’ – ‘manual’ provides service to the class system that is both ideological and material… – P.S.]

 

Continuing Chapter 2: “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”

Last week we said… and today we reiterate: we need a different standard for ‘success’… our own vision… and guideposts to mark our progress to it – not a re-framed… re-packaged… ‘state’ (even if they change the name ‘the state’… to ‘regional administration…’ Today we have been arguing again (a question that needs much discussion and so is reiterated often here…) that we are lured to make this mistake… in the absence of our clarity… about the nature of ‘the state’… and that it is only this clarity that will allow us to move forward to begin designing the necessary alternative ‘people’s vision of a new… global… social arrangement… – P.S.]

As for the increasing efficacy of direct forms of action, the tendency concerns mainly the labor movement and was rooted in the joint impact of two key trends of the world-economy: the trend toward an increasing commodification of labor power…

[We’re going to be skipping ahead shortly… just a bit… so as a brief fill-in let me say that they are referring to the ferocity with which ‘power’ goes after the earth-connected (the word they use is ‘peasantry’…) a ‘tendency’ that has continued without cessation since it began. We see it today in more instances than we can name… but certainly… notably… it flails Nigerians… Syrians… Tunisians… the Mexican indigenous – everywhere there still exists an earth-connection… we see violence… we see this ‘tendency’ – ‘the commodification of human energy’ – used against them… and… using our ‘earth-alliance’ lens… we can now see it for what it is: Plato’s Tribe’s attempt to eliminate all ‘competition’… for our allegiance… – P.S.]

As for the increasing efficacy of direct forms of action, the tendency concerns mainly the labor movement and was rooted in the joint impact of two key trends of the world-economy: the trend toward an increasing commodification of labor power and the trend toward increasing division of labor and mechanization….

 

By the 1960s radical changes had occurred from both points of view, in core regions and in many semiperipheral countries.…

 

…Moreover, the increased commodification of labor had depleted the locally available strata of peasants that could be effectively and competitively mobilized to undermine the political and economic power of labor…

[These are the same tendencies… described slightly differently… that Immanuel Wallerstein discusses in his chapter in Does Capitalism Have A Future? In a section titled “Long-Term Structural Trends”… they are described as follows:… – P.S.]

How does one accumulate capital endlessly in a capitalist system? The basic method, albeit not the only one, is via production, in which the entrepreneur-producer retains the differential between what it costs to produce the commodity and the price at which the producer can sell it. The lower the costs and the higher the sales price, the more profit is realized and can then be reinvested.

 

But how can the differential between costs and sales price be maximized? There are two necessary elements in this exercise. To maximize sales price, there must be a quasi-monopoly, a subject we have already treated. It is how one in addition minimizes costs that we must now discuss. We start with the reality that there are always three generic costs in any production process. These are personnel costs, the costs of inputs, and taxation.

 

There are three different levels of personnel for whom the producer / owner has to pay: the unskilled and semiskilled workforce, the skilled workers and supervisory cadres, and the top managers. The costs of the least skilled workforce tend to go up in A-phases, as they collectively make demands on the employer in one form or other of syndical action. Employers during the A-phases may make concessions to the least skilled personnel because avoiding shutdowns or slowdowns may be less costly than wage increases. However, eventually these costs become too high for the employers, particularly for those in the leading industries.

[What’s unfortunately being implied here is the… I believe… propagandistic notion of differential skill ‘explaining’ differential pay… that the created concept ‘low skill’ – the notion that an assignment to a low slot by the ‘world economy’… the ‘market’ – is legitimate. This view is upside-down. Those so-assigned are paid less because they hold ‘the system’ on their backs… they run the system… though this service be uncredited… they are paid less so that more can be extracted from them… so that ‘more’ can ‘be done’… on top of them… with their energy as fuel. Again: this is betrayal insinuated into our mutual relations. The divide ‘mental’ – ‘manual’ provides service to the class system that is both ideological and material… – P.S.]

The solution for employers has historically been the runaway factory, that is, relocation to “historically” lower-wage areas during the B-period. There the workers are recruited from loci (usually rural) in which their real income is even lower than that offered by the newly installed (usually urban) production site. It seems to be a win-win situation for the worker and the employer. After some time, however, the transplanted workers feel more knowledgeable about their new situation and more aware of the low level of their wages in worldwide terms. They begin to engage in some syndical action. And sooner or later the employer finds that, as a result, the costs have again become too high. The solution is still another move.

 

The moves are costly but effective. Worldwide there is, however, a ratchet effect. The reductions never eliminate totally the increases. Over 500 years, this repeated process has virtually exhausted the loci into which to move. This can be measured by the degree of deruralization of the world-system, which has risen spectacularly in the last fifty years and seems to be proceeding apace.

 

“…the repeated syndical organization of the relatively low-skilled personnel are countered by the creation of a larger intermediate stratum.…” [David M. Gordon (in Fat and Mean: the Corporate Squeeze of Working Americans and the Myth of Managerial “Downsizing”…) called it, “…the “bureaucratic burden” – the massive size and cost of the managerial and supervisory apparatus of private U.S. corporations,” saying that, “…it’s one of the most stunning features of the U.S. economy.” With his help we argued – in our June 2, and 9, 2013 shows – against this implied ‘market mythology’… the false notion that ‘market determination’ (and ‘legitimization’) of value is anything but ideological service to the class system… – P.S.]

 

The increase in the costs of cadres is the result of two different considerations. One, the constantly increased scale of productive units requires more intermediate personnel to coordinate it. And two, the political dangers that result from the repeated syndical organization of the relatively low-skilled personnel are countered by the creation of a larger intermediate stratum who can be both political allies for the ruling stratum and models of a possible upward mobility for the unskilled majority, thereby blunting its political mobilization. Their salaries significantly increase the overall personnel bill. (Immanuel Wallerstein, Does Capitalism Have A Future?)

[David M. Gordon (in Fat and Mean: the Corporate Squeeze of Working Americans and the Myth of Managerial “Downsizing”…) called it, “…the “bureaucratic burden” – the massive size and cost of the managerial and supervisory apparatus of private U.S. corporations,” saying that, “…it’s one of the most stunning features of the U.S. economy.” With his help we argued – in our June 2, and 9, 2013 shows – against this implied ‘market mythology’… a mythology we unfortunately see in this excerpt from Wallerstein… the false notion that ‘market determination’ (and ‘legitimization’) of value is anything but ideological service to the class system. In the June 2, 2013 show, we said:

 

“If we believe this myth… that ‘inequality’ is a function of the mental – manual divide… and that this so-called fundamental divide is the driver of ‘progress’… then we can be easily convinced to accept the consequence: the weight of so-called ‘civilization’ being placed squarely on the backs of those who provide us our food… clothing… and natural resources… (and this in itself suggests conscious design, as there’s no intrinsic rationale for ‘paying’ corporate hacks [and the late economist David Gordon knew this, wrote about it in Fat and Mean] more than teachers… no rational reason why those who harvest our food are abused… while CEOs who rape the earth are given tax-breaks… and called ‘creators’…) It’s all a scam… as the debased and despised ‘hands’ are far more essential for sustaining life… and what surpasses this in significance?”

 

And in the June 9, 2013 show, we argued:

 

“Last week we said that maintaining the cons turns out to be the most highly-rewarded economic activity… and in previous shows we’ve argued that the Plato-driven ‘citizen’ – ‘barbarian’ division… in any of the many guises of ‘mental’ – ‘manual’ ‘labor’… ‘insider’ – ‘outside’ provides the key divide…

 

…so preserving this con must necessarily be highly remunerated…” – P.S.]

“As we have seen, for many persons the conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that the antisystemic movements have “failed” or, even worse, were “co-opted.” The change from “capitalist state” to “socialist state,”… has not had the transforming effects on world history – the reconstituting of trajectories of growth – that they had believed it would have…” [Let’s take this in… what they’re saying is that we have had good reason to doubt… that we could find the way out… We need discussion… aired… public… discussion… to find our way out of this… – P.S.]

 

As we have seen, for many persons the conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that the antisystemic movements have “failed” or, even worse, were “co-opted.” The change from “capitalist state” to “socialist state,” for many who think in these terms, has not had the transforming effects on world history – the reconstituting of trajectories of growth – that they had believed it would have. And the change from colony to state, whether by revolution or by negotiation, has lacked not only the world-historical effects but also, in most instances, even the internal redistribution of well-being so prominent in the programs of these movements. Social democracy has succeeded no better. Everywhere it finds its occupancy of state power merely a mediating presence – one constrained by the processes of accumulation on a world scale and by the twin requirements of governments: burying the dead and caring for the wounded, whether people or property […i.e. ‘damage control’… – P.S.]

[Let’s take this in… what they’re saying is that we have had good reason to doubt… that we could find the way out… or that we could credit a voice that claimed to see it. Our hearts got broke… and we haven’t had a chance to air… out loud… with each other… our fears and sadness… at the possibility that we truly are trapped in the insanity of putting ourselves up for auction. We need discussion… aired… public… discussion… to find our way out of this… – P.S.]

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* “WUR of January 4th, 2015… “Embracing Global Goals, Scope and Action: Becoming Global Actors… Claiming the ‘All’”:

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Please check out the audio for the next ‘non-coercion commercial’ we’re planning (spoken word is from the November 3, 2013 radio broadcast):

 

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“And as far as the state ‘protecting’ us goes… a sufficient time to reflect will expose… that the ruthless commodification of life that it sanctions and condones… is making our lives a hell-hole.… Karl Popper said: “We see here that Plato recognizes only one ultimate standard, the interest of the state. Everything that furthers it is good and virtuous and just; everything that threatens it is bad and wicked and unjust. Actions that serve it are moral; actions that endanger it, immoral. In other words, Plato’s moral code is strictly utilitarian; it is a code of collectivist or political utilitarianism. The criterion of morality is the interest of the state. Morality is nothing but political hygiene.” …and Popper’s words ring particularly prescient as we look about us at the accelerated efforts of ‘the state’ to ‘cleanse’ urban areas – of those without homes… of ‘criminality’ – defined broadly in this same ‘utilitarian’ sense Popper is talking about… i.e., that which challenges ‘the state’. When I listened this past Friday (11.01.13) to a discussion of the militarization of the police… how ‘Homeland Security’ has pressured more and more urban areas to create a detailed surveillance grid – ‘domain awareness’… a matrix-map of so-many-square-foot sections for ease of drone-targeting… using a ‘crime-fighting rationale… in which cell-phones are data-collection devices for the state (“information biometrics”)… and the police are encouraged to view their city as a battleground. And as the drones buzz the pleasant propaganda buzz drones in our ears… massaging away our fears… “no, no, no,” we’re told, “this isn’t a police-state you see, gaining greater and greater substance around you daily… police-states are passé… at least for we modern democracies….” No matter, we’re told, that their soothing tones fly in the face of the reality we see building around us daily… cities divided into carefully-plotted matrixes… surveillance cameras everywhere… drones constantly buzzing overhead… while the airwaves are flooded with soothing propaganda…. Let’s give ourselves a good shake, brothers and sisters, and find the means to communicate authentically… locally… not as members of any tribe but the Tribe of Free Beings. Overt Fascism is the fangs… but totalitarianism is the snake itself… and its coils are tightening around us as we speak….”

 

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“What is a vision of ‘democracy’ if we-the-people [our energy] are tightly controlled?” What does ‘democracy’ mean… if we are tightly controlled?… which is what a coerced-work system is for…. When do we – publicly – have that conversation?… – P.S.]

 

December 30, 2014… Sisters and Brothers:… Three themes interweave as we progress in our ‘thinking-through’ of how to get to… the certainty we-the-people need… to proceed to consensus: the importance of factoring ‘hidden power’ into our analysis… the importance of our having an accurate understanding of ‘the state’… and the importance of seeing and overcoming the implicit bias called… “Contempt for the ‘common’ / reverence for ‘the intellectual’”… i.e. the mental - manual divide. (Du Bois asked a hundred years ago: “What is a vision of ‘democracy’ if we-the-people [our energy] are tightly controlled?” What does ‘democracy’ mean… if we are tightly controlled?… which is what a coerced-work system is for…. When do we – publicly – have that conversation?)

 

Of course they all flow together… are angles on the single system of ‘class’ – and the point of them… of ‘the system’… as Du Bois said (and… notice… how much more bluntly ‘power’ spoke back then… a hundred years ago. It’s evidence of our growing consensus that today they must attempt to mimic… our generosity of spirit… and claim to care about all of us [even the indigenous!…]) the point of the totalitarian control of us which these three work together to produce is to ensure a continuous… and continuously reproducing… ‘class’ of debased humans… on which to run ‘power’s machine for generating what it calls ‘Knowledge’ – the continuous nature of this generation (according to their theory…) making it ‘Knowledge-Infinite’.

 

“Make them hunger…” Townsend said. Nothing’s changed. If you can keep folks dancing for that paycheck… you can make them do anything… I learned that one the hard way… Trust… – P.S.]

 

So perhaps this is the priority discussion for us to have… the – ‘historical’ and up to (and including) the present – complicity of we in the so-called ‘West’… who have accepted (all unconscious…) ‘power’s proposition: “…we will grant you… for your silence… better stuff… a little ‘convenience’…”

 

The issue to discuss… then… is one of basic fairness.

 

Is it fair for the burden of carrying the system to be disproportionately set?… particularly after hundreds of years of the same folks taking that hit?

 

And then… I thought again … about… “which is the ‘priority discussion’”… after waiting in line on New Year’s… and squeezing into a bookstore to get a four-dollar calendar… and then, in addition, finally snagging the Winter, 2014 edition of our local anarchist newspaper Slingshot. I’d been looking for another one…

(…unsuccessfully – they used to be in the library and at the local grocery store – no more… And not only Slingshot has gone missing… the student paper of UC – Berkeley was also not in evidence at the library this past Fall when I was trying to get details on the occupation going on then… and the free weeklies are down now to ‘one’ in my area. Tight control of us requires tight control of our access to information… i.e. they want to know who is reading what… and how much…)

…I’d been looking for another Slingshot ever since, in thinking about the April 27, 2014 show, I discovered Inci Stan’s exhilarating account of the Taksim Square occupation (Inci Stan, “Resistance Takes Root: Rebellion in Turkey’s Taksim Square,” Slingshot, Summer, 2014).

 

…I haven’t been able to read all of this current, Winter, issue yet (reading itself, of late, as I’ve already said, has become difficult… constantly challenged as I am… as I’ve also already said… by ‘the bombardment’…)

 

…and we… in the more ‘privileged’ regions of the ‘world-system’ (and I do see us in the U.S. as having the numero uno spot in terms of responsibility for doing this… given the wider box allowed us – purchased with other’s blood – and current threats to this state’s legitimacy and its need to protect it…) can only successfully address the bedrock injustice by being willing… to believe… in a world ‘run’… cherished… by us (after all…is it fair – has it ever been fair? – for any of us – at any time – to sacrifice our earth-gifts… our wholeness… our promise of a healthy planet given to all subsequent generations …so that an infinitesimal few may dream their fantasy of ‘supremacy’… while the vast sea-of-us is condemned to an endless nightmare of life embedded in lies… grief… and orchestrated brutality?)

 

…so I’m sure I’m just scratching the surface of its richness… and will likely return to it again in future… but I’d like to begin with two essays: “Existential Compost: Staying Inspired In Spite of Pain”, by Finn; and “The Darkness Before the Dawn: Resist Inertia, Embrace Collapse,” by Jesse D. Palmer.

 

Because ‘unfairness’ between us… globally… can only be successfully addressed… by addressing the bedrock injustice…

 

…and we… in the more ‘privileged’ regions of the ‘world-system’ (and I do see us in the U.S. as having the numero uno spot in terms of responsibility for doing this… given the wider box allowed us – purchased with other’s blood – and current threats to this state’s legitimacy and its need to protect it…) can only successfully address the bedrock injustice by being willing… to believe… in a world ‘run’… cherished… by us…

(…after all…is it fair – has it ever been fair? – for any of us – at any time – to sacrifice our earth-gifts… our wholeness… our promise of a healthy planet given to all subsequent generations…

 

…so that an infinitesimal few may dream their fantasy of ‘supremacy’… while the vast sea-of-us is condemned to an endless nightmare of life embedded in lies… grief… and orchestrated brutality?)

–––

 

So do we see… that though the goal they set… the result to which they are unalterably committed… can never happen… cannot be met… our lives will be sacrificed nonetheless… ad infinitum… if we don’t stop them… by taking back our birthright… our earth’s gift… our commonness… in holding close to our one breast… the planet.

 

As I wrote in Waking Up… I've had many jobs in the coerced work system. The last was as an electrician… but before that I worked in offices… and before that I was a student.

 

Universities are global gatherings – students are drawn from every fold in Grandma’s Apron. From all over the world young people come… along with older folk ostensibly there to teach them. A global convergence: one group to teach… the other to learn… or so the story goes.

 

Few tell the truth about this institution – I only know of Karl Popper’s critical contribution – few, like he, could so clearly explain how it serves as means for separating we from the so-called ‘rulers’… few but he help us see the mystique it wears as cloak… to hide the ugly face of ‘rule’. (The good news is… no one could be more authoritative… more masterful and eloquent… than he… i.e.: he fills our need… perfectly.)

 

But there’s another charge imposed upon this institution… that being… to find the so-called ‘best’ the earth produces… and this myth that ‘power’ has conditioned in us to believe – that ‘the best’ exists… and a ‘system’ can be designed to find these so-called ‘best’ – ‘power’ itself believes… or most… ‘historically’… do…

 

…but others are looking covetously… at what more can be squeezed… from every single human being.

 

Because it could not have escaped ‘power’s notice… how much innovation only occurs… as Nikola Tesla told them… once we escape the university’s strictures. And as Karl Popper said… universities are good at churning out mediocrity… because in order to do real… important… work… we have to get free of ‘the system’ in our head.

 

I began delving into the issue of work… full-heartedly… out of a deep and abiding outrage at the waste of our lives…

 

…and it may be ‘power’ too is haunted by what it might miss… of our creativeness… in the ‘seven billion brains’ on the planet…

 

But ‘power’ has ever wanted… to “have its cake and eat it…” They want us caged… yet they want us to produce… what can only come… from freedom.

 

So do we see… that though the goal they set… the result to which they are unalterably committed… can never happen… cannot be met…

 

…our lives will be sacrificed nonetheless… ad infinitum… if we don’t stop them… by taking back our birthright… our earth’s gift… our commonness… in holding close to our one breast… the planet.

 

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We all (under ‘class’) receive deep training in powerlessness as infants… when we see adult distress… and then our own… and then are told… in blows and boredom… in curses and coldness… in false-feeling-expressed… and in obliviousness: “you can do nothing about it…” so we let ourselves go.… We said there are three things to weave into our thinking / discussing / planning for a free future of self-determined… not coerced… work… Once you begin to discuss them I think you’ll see… that they fit one into the other neatly… as hidden ‘power’ stays hidden by being embedded… by their embedding themselves… in us. This is what Marcuse called “the democratic introjection of the masters into their subjects…” both by means of we parents… and then by means of ‘education’… to reinforce… pound tightly in… that early ‘learning’…

 

Throughout the course of the class system… until very recently… some among we commoners… circumstances allowing… traveled whatever amount of world they could traverse… to learn… to teach… and these… moved about without constraint of borders… in search of the truth… because… as Emily Dickinson says… the truth is circular… and… as we heard from Carlos Santana… “to find oneself… you must lose yourself…” and I would add: “in your brothers and sisters…” in the throng of them – both among the present… and among the ancestors – who long for human freedom… and… most particularly for us today… in those who understand the need for dismantling our deep conditioning of ‘service to the state’… which is also in us training in ‘powerlessness’… and consciously re-knitting our allegiance to each other… and the earth.

 

We all (under ‘class’) receive deep training in powerlessness as infants… when we see adult distress… and then our own… and then are told… in blows and boredom… in curses and coldness… in false-feeling-expressed… and in obliviousness: “you can do nothing about it…”

 

…so we let ourselves go.…

(…I mean… you can actually see this in two-year-olds… you can see them trying to tempt adults back to themselves… back to reality… back to playfulness… back to joy… – and then their on-going perplexity… their on-going question: “Why? Why not? What’s wrong?…”

 

…and you can also see… see them give up on it… see them bow… to what feels like the inevitable: powerlessness… trained in us… beginning with our parents… because they have no choice: they have to work. We don’t own ourselves.)

 

Alice Miller told of one patient who recalled… in therapeutic treatment… how he took his authentic self at age three… and buried it… ceremoniously.

 

We said there are three things to weave into our thinking / discussing / planning for a free future of self-determined… not coerced… work: the importance of factoring ‘hidden power’ into our analysis… the importance of our having an accurate understanding of ‘the state’… and the importance of seeing and overcoming the implicit bias called… “Contempt for the ‘common’ / reverence for ‘the intellectual’”….

 

Once you begin to discuss them I think you’ll see… that they fit one into the other neatly… as hidden ‘power’ stays hidden by being embedded… by their embedding themselves… in us. This is what Marcuse called “the democratic introjection of the masters into their subjects…”

 

…both by means of we parents…

 

…and then by means of ‘education’…

 

…to reinforce… pound tightly in… that early ‘learning’…

 

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…it’s time to return to that burial site together with our brothers and sisters… and demand the world we wanted and needed as infants. We were right… the adults in our lives were misguided. To save each other and our children we must insist that ‘right’ must live.

 

Brothers and Sisters… what does it mean to be owned by states?… instead of ourselves?

 

This question is akin to my ‘first blog’ question: “Do you know how I know you’re a slave?”… i.e. a lot of good folks take umbrage at this notion…

 

I recall when I was hawking books a man’s angry reaction when I said: “Until we own ourselves…” He replied, “Nobody owns me, I’m my own man…”

 

Of course… when I brought in De Grazia… he agreed: “You can’t be truly free if you’re not free from necessity…” (and by this De Grazia did not mean states feeding us like pets… but our being self-determining… i.e…. us feeding ourselves…)

 

So when I read… in the Winter, 2014 issue of Slingshot… multiple articles on the theme of “What is really ‘doing something’ to end this system?… and what isn’t?”… when I hear activists for a classless world speak of doubt about the efficacy of their actions… I think… of that little child… who found a box to bury his true-‘self’ in… and turned his back on his deep wish… to be acknowledged in his own skin… and to be with others also so acknowledged…

 

…it’s time to return to that burial site together with our brothers and sisters… and demand the world we wanted and needed as infants. We were right… the adults in our lives were misguided. To save each other and our children we must insist that ‘right’ must live.

 

“Regardless of the details of theory and preferred tools for enacting change, the idea of a functional stateless society is very broad and complex. Getting to a point where such a world is feasible requires massive change in social infrastructure, and while I’m certainly not in opposition to idealistic end goals…” […I can see the two-year-old who let himself go here: “You gotta be realistic”… Where are the other elders out there who are gonna step up here? I mean… we watch the babies come up… we see there hearts get broke… we see them let go of their true selves… of their dreams…. You get to an age where you have to know: that's not right…. Their dreams matter more than these 'power'-guys pretensions… and so we step us. Come on elders. Come on. You got some clean-up work to do. We gotta make amends… for misleading the children… – P.S.]

 

To this question… “What is really ‘doing something’ to end this system?… and what isn’t?”… the first writer (Finn) replied (I paraphrase): “Seemingly small acts of resistance done by more and more can’t hurt… and cumulatively may open that door to Freedom… if propitious forces push them to the necessary momentum…”

 

… and the other (Jesse D. Palmer) said something initially similar… but then veered horribly off-key… from ‘useful sharing’ he took us into… ‘horrifically bad strategy’: “Seemingly small acts of resistance done by more and more can’t hurt… and in any case the collapse will come… and the infrastructure that blossomed in the wake of our self-healing moments will be most welcome…”

 

Both… I suspect… would agree with that man I met… that… in resisting ‘the system’… it doesn’t own them. They may even believe they are (more than most) ‘self-determining’… by being more conscious of the forces that shape ‘capitalist society’… and how they are constrained by them.

 

And of course ‘the system’ reinforces this belief (in the possibility of being self-determining) by selectively rewarding ‘achievement’… and holding up ‘The Select’ as evidence to validate… ‘the system’…

 

Marcuse noticed this ‘outcome’ too (of the ‘democratic introjection’): “How can you be in need of liberation if you’re already ‘free’?”…

 

…and there is the risk in this… which requires our discussion… that a possible conclusion to this inaccurate assumption is: “I know what’s happening… while most folks don’t…”

 

…and a further risk attendant upon this inaccurate assumption… is to conclude from it… that others are stupid… and from this to imagine that if this is so… our situation is hopeless… and we are truly are stuck in this system… ad infinitum…

 

Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not suggesting that our two Slingshot contributors think this… rather… what I am saying is that it’s imperative that our actions become more conscious… which happens…by… just as they are doing… discussing them:

Regardless of the details of theory and preferred tools for enacting change, the idea of a functional stateless society is very broad and complex. Getting to a point where such a world is feasible requires massive change in social infrastructure, and while I’m certainly not in opposition to idealistic end goals, […I can see the two-year-old who let himself go here: “You gotta be realistic”… Where are the other elders out there who are gonna step up here? I mean… we watch the babies come up… we see there hearts get broke… we see them let go of their true selves… of their dreams…. You get to an age where you have to know: that's not right…. Their dreams matter more than these 'power'-guys pretensions… and so we step us. Come on elders. Come on. You got some clean-up work to do. We gotta make amends… for misleading the children… – P.S.] I do support framing one’s personal politics in a way that encourages practical action without leading to “I want The Revolution or no change at all” burnout. Because we as anarchists advocate for dismantling structures that are mind-blowingly powerful and pervasive, what can we do to stay inspired when we feel unsure if the world we want will ever exist? (Finn, “Existential Compost: Staying Inspired In Spite of Pain,” Winter, 2014, Slingshot)

Because I agree… to feel good about what we’re doing… we have to see how it leads to the goal of a free society for all humans. And I would encourage all those who feel like Finn… to not run from that question: “What is the connection between what I'm doing and a world that's free for all of us?”… I would encourage us to not run from that question… to not try to fill it up with 'busyness': “Well, I'll just make this chicken coop then…” but to follow the question… in your quiet moments… and with your brothers and sisters: “What is the link?” Let's not run from it and say, “Well it's just immature… to think we can… [etc. etc.]…” So let's ask the question about strategy: “What is the connection between what I'm doing and that free society?”… And see the link… because then we do feel good about what we're doing… and once we feel good about what we’re doing… we absolutely want to free the children… globally… from a future of coerced work. The second essay I find exponentially more troubling… because it is (I’m sure unconsciously – although… this must be said… I think there is exactly zero-chance that any anarchist collective in the US has not been infiltrated… which is why it’s so important that we get clear on a strategy that makes this tactic irrelevant…) so propaganda-laden.

 

Finn concluded by saying: “Because we as anarchists advocate for dismantling structures that are mind-blowingly powerful and pervasive, what can we do to stay inspired when we feel unsure if the world we want will ever exist?”

 

When we discuss… our deep training in ‘powerlessness’… that the ‘structures’ we must dismantle are the ‘structures’ in us… the goal of a free global society will no longer seem so difficult or complex. Becoming ‘conscious actors’ means we understand why certain actions feel good and others don’t… so we can assess if we’re doing them for the ‘right’ reasons…

 

…given our ‘righteous’ goal.

 

Because I agree… to feel good about what we’re doing… we have to see how it leads to the goal of a free society for all humans. And I would encourage all those who feel like Finn… to not run from that question: “What is the connection between what I'm doing and a world that's free for all of us?”… I would encourage us to not run from that question… to not try to fill it up with 'busyness': “Well, I'll just make this chicken coop then…” but to follow the question… in your quiet moments… and with your brothers and sisters: “What is the link?” Let's not run from it and say, “Well it's just immature… to think we can… [etc. etc.]…” So let's ask the question about strategy: “What is the connection between what I'm doing and that free society?”… And see the link… because then we do feel good about what we're doing…

 

…and once we feel good about what we’re doing… we absolutely want to free the children… globally… from a future of coerced work.

 

The second essay I find exponentially more troubling… because it is (I’m sure unconsciously – although… this must be said… I think there is exactly zero-chance that any anarchist collective in the US has not been infiltrated… which is why it’s so important that we get clear on a strategy that makes this tactic irrelevant…) so propaganda-laden.

 

I found myself sitting for a long time with just the opening sentence:

We’re living in a frustrating time of political and cultural stagnation – both in terms of the collapsing corporate monster and our (currently feeble) resistance to it. (Jesse D. Palmer, “The Darkness Before the Dawn: Resist Inertia, Embrace Collapse,” Winter, 2014, Slingshot)

Who is ‘our’?… who is ‘we’? Right from the start we see he's thinking individualistically. Who is ‘feeble’? Hong Kong? Egypt? Tunisia? Iran? Ukraine? South Africa? Belgium? Scotland? Russia? Mexico? US? Spain? Any place you can think of… any place you can name… people are rising… we are challenging ‘the state’… I mean… the courage of our brothers and sisters is stunning. So you see as our scope widens… so does our hope…

 

…and the more we read… the more we see he is misleading horribly… about the nature of this transition we’re in… while presenting a story that… with ‘power’… is entirely… consonant.

 

I’m finding so much in this article troubling… particularly this notion of “embrace the collapse…” which is like saying: “Lay back and think of England…” that I want to devote more time to it… so let’s continue it next week.

 

Without these three discussions we noted at the beginning:

…the importance of factoring ‘hidden power’ into our analysis…

…the importance of our having an accurate understanding of ‘the state’…

…and the importance of seeing and overcoming the implicit bias called… “Contempt for the ‘common’ / reverence for ‘the intellectual’”… i.e. the mental - manual divide.

…we-who-long-for-freedom can be encouraged to a misunderstanding about the transition we’re in… which is a transition to a society in which ‘work’ is radically re-defined. And the question… the contestation we are (consciously or not) engaged in… is… whether that new definition will continue to involve coercion – albeit in a different form – or one which means us consciously reclaiming… our own human energy – i.e. us being self-determining…

 

Point being: Collapse? 'Power' is also eagerly waiting for 'collapse' – the collapse of our resistance. It's building our new cage as we speak.

 

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[Today’s reading: We are – briefly interrupting our reading of Chapter 5 – continuing our reading of Chapter 2 of Giovanni Arrighi’s, Terence K. Hopkins’, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements…: “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”… – P.S.]

 

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* January 4, 2015 reading: Chapter 2 of Giovanni Arrighi’s, Terence K. Hopkins’, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements… “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”

 

Continuing Chapter 2: “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”

 

“To the chagrin of some, the applause of others, the one coordinated effort toward a world revolution, the Comintern / Cominform, collapsed completely under the disintegrating weight of continuing state formation at all the locations of its operations … without exception, all current Communist parties are concerned first with domestic conditions and only secondarily if at all with world revolution.… On the other hand, we contend, as we said, that from the vantage point of 1848 the success of the antisystemic movements has been very impressive indeed. Moreover, that success does not dim in the least when viewed from the vantage point of today. Rather the opposite. For without such an appreciation, one cannot understand where the nonconventional terrain opened up by the most recent forms of antisystemic movements has come from historically and where therefore the movements seem likely to go in the historical future.”

 

Continuing Chapter 2: “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”

Let’s spin again the thread of our purpose… in reading together Antisystemic Movements: we are attempting to build a global consensus… about a global change… in ‘leadership’…. As… this system of ‘class’ is based on the premise… that the 99.999% of us… must not be allowed to make the big decisions… which keeps us forever… like them… abandoned children… – P.S.]

As we have seen, for many persons the conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that the antisystemic movements have “failed” or, even worse, were “co-opted.” The change from “capitalist state” to “socialist state,” for many who think in these terms, has not had the transforming effects on world history – the reconstituting of trajectories of growth – that they had believed it would have. And the change from colony to state, whether by revolution or by negotiation, has lacked not only the world-historical effects but also, in most instances, even the internal redistribution of well-being so prominent in the programs of these movements. Social democracy has succeeded no better. Everywhere it finds its occupancy of state power merely a mediating presence – one constrained by the processes of accumulation on a world scale and by the twin requirements of governments: burying the dead and caring for the wounded, whether people or property. To the chagrin of some, the applause of others, the one coordinated effort toward a world revolution, the Comintern / Cominform, collapsed completely under the disintegrating weight of continuing state formation at all the locations of its operations – its historical center, its loci of subsequent success, its other national arenas of strength, its points of marginal presence. without exception, all current Communist parties are concerned first with domestic conditions and only secondarily if at all with world revolution.

[“…the disintegrating weight of continuing state formation…” – seven little words… so condensed… this is not the ‘good condensed’ of a Dickinson poem… a magical gift that leads you into worlds of truth long forgotten… as it unfolds slowly in your mind… releasing trapped thought… revealing ever more and more the longer you sit with it. No. This ‘condensed’ is a sinkhole… disappearing the rich truth of our lives into an abyss of forgetfulness… that says… “…we used to know you existed… we used to care…”

 

Still…

 

…considering further the next day: having… in fact… sat with it… I’m seeing it afresh… and find that more… in fact… is being released from it. To sink?… we’ll see. But what cannot be contested… is… these three… are the ‘good-Academe’… they require you to think… so that means ‘good-condensed’… by definition…

 

My initial resistance to its ‘density of abstractness’ is the concern that more is disappeared of the truth than revealed… I’m still of two minds about it: what would this tell us about our experience living through it if we haven’t read Keith Lowe’s Savage Continent? – P.S.]

The Transformed Historical Ground

 

We, on the other hand, contend, as we said, that from the vantage point of 1848 the success of the antisystemic movements has been very impressive indeed. Moreover, that success does not dim in the least when viewed from the vantage point of today. Rather the opposite. For without such an appreciation, one cannot understand where the nonconventional terrain opened up by the most recent forms of antisystemic movements has come from historically and where therefore the movements seem likely to go in the historical future.

 

I hope you will… appreciate the practical nature of the guidance they provide (for our own construction of strategy.) I don't know of anything like it from Academe. By 'practical' I mean… just as there is this 'implicit bias' called 'reverence for the mental – manual divide'… for the so-called 'intellectual'… that we don't see… and so never gets discussed as such. Or… rather… we-the-people see it but it's not 'seen' publicly over the airwaves – and that matters. But just as that bias is not 'seen' publicly… we seem to accept as background the layers and layers of cons… of so-called 'complexity'… as stuff we have to wade through: "too hard to dismantle…" Well… they're talking about it… and it never gets talked about. This is authentic analysis. It was talked about by De Tocqueville. It was talked about by Diana Spearman… and we need to talk about it again… resurrect these important conversations about how we are locked in by these created layers and layers and layers of false 'complexity'… 'complexity' [that] doesn't exist in reality. This is what I'm trying to explain in my response to Finn's concern about how 'difficult' it all seems: "It's not real…" As soon as we stop believing in it… it dissolves instantly. It's not that hard… trust. They aren't constrained by it… it doesn't exist in their minds… it doesn't exist. They create that for us… or… rather… we create it… per their instructions… for ourselves… – P.S.]

[We'll have to carry this discussion over to the next show. I think it's an important one. I hope you'll re-read this discussion of the strategy that 'power' evolved to lock us down… as well as appreciate the practical nature of the guidance they provide (for our own construction of strategy.) I don't know of anything like it from Academe. By 'practical' I mean… just as there is this 'implicit bias' called 'reverence for the mental – manual divide'… for the so-called 'intellectual'… that we don't see… and so never gets discussed as such. Or… rather… we-the-people see it but it's not 'seen' publicly over the airwaves – and that matters. But just as that bias is not 'seen' publicly… we seem to accept as background the layers and layers of cons… of so-called 'complexity'… as stuff we have to wade through: "too hard to dismantle…" Well… they're talking about it… and it never gets talked about. This is authentic analysis. It was talked about by De Tocqueville. It was talked about by Diana Spearman… and we need to talk about it again… resurrect these important conversations about how we are locked in by these created layers and layers and layers of false 'complexity'…. And what they see… and are talking about… is that… on the global level: no such thing… 'power' moves freely… They are not constrained like us… and their thinking has never been constrained by this sense of… this weight of phony 'complexity'… because they made it they're not constrained by it… because it doesn't exist in reality. This is what I'm trying to explain in my response to Finn's concern about how 'difficult' it all seems: "It's not real…" As soon as we stop believing in it… it dissolves instantly. It's not that hard… trust. They aren't constrained by it… it doesn't exist in their minds… it doesn't exist. They create that for us… or… rather… we create it… per their instructions… for ourselves… – P.S.]

Let's also return to this quote next week: “…the on-going structural transformation of the capitalist world-economy has in effect opened up the locations in its overall operation where the process of class struggle is proving formative of the sides of conflict, and polarizing in the relations so formed…” – asking whether this is true or not: are we (we-the-people and 'power'…) mutually-determining in the sense that these three are saying?… Because that would suggest a kind of a spiraling-up 'growth'… and it ties then into… in a sense… in a different way from what Mr. Palmer meant… the question of 'inevitability' – because I think there's folks who think of 'collapse' not as 'collapse' but as a 'growth-up-into'… into an 'evolutionary' sense… our future. I've heard folks say that as well. So I think these two notions of 'a built-in tendency toward a major structural shift' can be distinguished. I.e. that there could be a major structural shift into a future not based on force… that could… in theory… some folks think… happen in and of itself (and I don't think so.)

[Recall that we said we would return to this quote next week: “…without such an [historical] appreciation, one cannot understand where the nonconventional terrain opened up by the most recent forms of antisystemic movements has come from historically and where therefore the movements seem likely to go in the historical future…” – because it's a question in my mind what that 'terrain' is… and who made it…

 

…because once we acknowledge "hidden 'power'"… things change in how we see things – P.S.]

 

At the same time, however, the antisystemic movements are of course not the only agencies to have altered the ground on which and through which current and future movements must continually form and operate. Those they would destroy – the organizing agencies of the accumulation process – have also been at work, owing partly to an “inner logic,” partly to the very successes of the movements and hence to the continually transformed historical ground which that “logic” has as its field of operation and contradiction. Above all, the on-going structural transformation of the capitalist world-economy has in effect opened up the locations in its overall operation where the process of class struggle is proving formative of the sides of conflict, and polarizing in the relations so formed.

[…I’m struggling with the distancing from our lived… pulsing… experience… our ‘aliveness’… of the academic language… and with the unconscious cover it provides ‘power’ in these notions of ‘inner logic’ and ‘on-going structural transformation of the capitalist world-economy’… and ‘class struggle’ ‘proving formative of the sides of conflict’… – P.S.]

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* “WUR of January 11th, 2015… “Embracing Global Goals, Scope and Action: Becoming Global Actors… Claiming the ‘All’”:

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Please check out the audio for the next ‘non-coercion commercials’ we’re planning (spoken word is from the December 28, 2014 and January 4, 2015 radio broadcasts):

 

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“Now these were just tossed-off asides… but I’ve often found these ‘asides’ to be the main purpose of the speech – embedded propaganda. He said: • “Youth! You have limited time… you must be productive [activists]!” No… I wouldn’t be sitting in this seat if that were so. • “We must support the drunk!” OK… that was random… clearly suggestive of propaganda… ‘power’ has a lot invested in having its agents use the ruse ‘addictions’… i.e. “I’ve been wounded by ‘the system’…” to distract us from our purpose. • “There is no alternative […where have we heard that before?… – P.S.] we have a void in organizations…” We should have a word – maybe ‘double-dump’ (although that sounds a bit earthy… maybe that makes it a good choice for earth-speak…) – for the multiple-simultaneous-plants-in-a-single-thrust this man favored. And this propaganda is akin to that invitation we discussed earlier… in which young people are lured into betrayal of their brothers and sisters by telling them that “only the most [add desired quality here… ‘clever’… ‘radical’?…] ‘see’… that this tactic is the most [whatever…]; and he is encouraging them to think of the ‘solution’ in terms of building an ‘organization’ [‘party’ perhaps?… hierarchically-structured and disciplined?… ‘power’ would love that…] • “Violence disempowers the system…” Could you show me the analysis on that please? • “We don’t know what we want… yet…” Yes we do… yes we do… we don't want to be forced anymore… We want a world in which we can share our gifts without force… • “…we have to smash the system to have a hole to build a society around…” [Excuse me… we – we- the people – built this stuff… this is our stuff… why would we ‘blow it up’? Our hands built it!] All of which displays (I believe) intentional misunderstanding (and misleading) about what is ‘the system’… ‘the state’… ‘power’…”

 

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We all (under ‘class’) receive deep training in powerlessness as infants… when we see adult distress… and then our own… and then are told… in blows and boredom… in curses and coldness… in false-feeling-expressed… and in obliviousness: “you can do nothing about it…” so we let ourselves go. …I mean… you can actually see this in two-year-olds… you can see them trying to tempt adults back to themselves… back to reality… back to playfulness… back to joy… – and then their on-going perplexity… their on-going question: “Why? Why not? What’s wrong?…” and you can also see… see them give up on it… see them bow… to what feels like the inevitable: powerlessness… trained in us… beginning with our parents… because they have no choice: they have to work. We don’t own ourselves.

 

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“We took time with Galbraith because he was studying ‘power’s track… the slime they drag behind them… showing its global nature… and how ‘governance’ is done clandestine… by applying and withdrawing ‘credit’… we see this whenever large sums are exchanged between large banks and states… or large states to smaller…. or on Galbraith’s and Henry’s scale… by the big global banks setting interest rates… and imposing ‘austerity’ globally… and we know that ‘austerity’ means ‘disciplining the people to accept less and less…’ less and less control over our own lives… less and less earth for our personal use… the absence of leisure for ourselves and our children… the absence of health… less and less safety net… and of course less and less food… especially untainted and fresh…. And this is a global imposition of ‘less’… accomplished ‘simply’ by siphoning ‘money’ (a representation of earth…) out of our communities… by ‘power’s henchmen in government… quite nonchalantly… who sadly or blithely (it little matters…) cite their ‘budget authority’… raise it up high and pound it hard on our heads. The wage work system destroys our empathy… …the surveillance state destroys our trust… each one of us is meant to grow our full gifts… division… coercion… and necessity forestalls their development… the hiding and pretense warps our humanness… and absolutely none of it (not remotely…) brings us happiness.”

 

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Today’s show:

 

What we’re asking today [once we get past the shady ‘technical difficulties’…] is: “What is… what we on the Left have been pleased to call… ‘the class struggle?”… and: “What kind of ‘struggle’ is it… when one side doesn’t know its opponent… while for the other… its every move must be conscious… as it sees itself as being ‘Mind’ incarnate?… The writings and conversations in this space… have advanced the position… that we-the-people are being intentionally manipulated… managed… moved… toward a given future — and if so… the absence of any discussion necessarily means the conscious actors utilize clandestine means. It’s time for broad public discussion of this question… and what it means for the quality of the world we live in… And we’re also asking… How does ‘power’ know what ‘dissent’ is useless (or… better yet… protects it…) and what dissent threatens it?… and it must know this in order to direct its agents…

 

What we’re asking today [once we get past the shady ‘technical difficulties’…] is: “What is… what we on the Left have been pleased to call… ‘the class struggle?”… and: “What kind of ‘struggle’ is it… when one side doesn’t know its opponent… while for the other… its every move must be conscious… as it sees itself as being ‘Mind’ incarnate?

 

The writings and conversations in this space… have advanced the position… that we-the-people are being intentionally manipulated… managed… moved… toward a given future — and if so… the absence of any discussion necessarily means the conscious actors utilize clandestine means. It’s time for broad public discussion of this question… and what it means for the quality of the world we live in…

 

…because if it is only a tiny few who shape our common global society… and these tiny few jealously guard their monopoly control of decision-making… the fact of that imbalance will continue to build on itself… and dissent will forever be suppressed… because this tiny few have the will… and the means… to do it.

 

And we’re also asking…

 

January 7, 2015… Sisters and Brothers:… How does ‘power’ know what ‘dissent’ is useless (or… better yet… protects it…) and what dissent threatens it?…

 

…and it must know this (and this is obvious…) in order to successfully (in the first instance…) provoke it… and (in the second instance…) destroy or deflect it…

 

…i.e. it must know this in order to direct its agents…

 

As you read the quotes below (I’ll be filling in the context… and adding my comments… access permitting… shortly…) please consider this: There is a material reality below… which means… propaganda must walk a fine line… between what it wants us to think – by skewing our perception of reality – and physical reality itself. For the purposes of our gaining our freedom… the two major considerations are really both manifestations of one thing: energy. As Craig Calhoun says: “Energy is basic.” (And I would add… human energy is most basic.) So the question to ask ourselves as we read that political theory… is… “Is it rooted in earth?”… “Does it come from a clear-minded focus on our relationship with the earth… and the centrality of ‘work’… to whatever ‘society’ we design for ourselves?”… “Or does it try to overwhelm… with ‘difficulties’… and ‘complexities’….

 

We begin with the Winter, 2014 Slingshot article that we first encountered last week… one that I said really disturbed me – its notion of ‘embracing collapse’ particularly:

We all sense the system is unsustainable – environmentally and economically. What that means is that the system as it is currently organized is on the verge of being swept away. [Notice how the passive tone alone immediately connotes… simultaneously ‘no conscious actors’ and ‘inevitability’… – P.S.] The system wants everyone to think that if it collapses, this will bring a period of famine, epidemic, destruction and suffering – and too many of us willingly buy into this narrative. Doom think is fashionable, accompanied by resignation and a reorientation to purely personal concerns since “we can’t do anything anyway…” Naturally the system seeks to preserve itself by psychologically and culturally promoting fear of its own collapse in such a way that people feel powerless, resigned and isolated so they’ll passively accept business as usual.

 

So Mr. Palmer’s claim that predictions of ‘famine’ etc. is ‘doom-think’… is quite difficult to take seriously… …and even more difficult to take seriously is his celebration of ‘collapse’ while carefully omitting any reason to celebrate… and lots of implied reasons… to fear…

 

We all sense the system is unsustainable – environmentally and economically. What that means is that the system as it is currently organized is on the verge of being swept away. The system wants everyone to think that if it collapses, this will bring a period of famine, epidemic, destruction and suffering – and too many of us willingly buy into this narrative. Doom think is fashionable, accompanied by resignation and a reorientation to purely personal concerns since “we can’t do anything anyway…” Naturally the system seeks to preserve itself by psychologically and culturally promoting fear of its own collapse in such a way that people feel powerless, resigned and isolated so they’ll passively accept business as usual.

[This is what I would call ‘sophisticated-slippery’ – another ‘tell’ that it’s ‘power’-propaganda: i.e. that it’s not just that its meaning is difficult to pin down – that it means both what it seems to be saying… and its opposite… simultaneously – but that it seeks to foster what it claims to be trying to prevent: fear and resignation. This is particularly evident once you read all three of these paragraphs…

 

The central slipperiness – aside from not being clear about what he means by ‘the system’ – is both telling us that the “the system as it is currently organized is on the verge of being swept away…” and that ‘the system’ “wants us to think” that this will mean famine… etc…

 

Now this is misleading because the ‘power’-guys… in their planning for the world they want… put the earth and its resources… the implications of resource shortages… front and center… as… without the actual picture of the physical reality… how can you plan? Recall what Craig Calhoun (from the London School of Economics… and it don’t get too much more ‘power’-purposed in Academia than that – outside of Oxford / Harvard / Cambridge / Yale…) recall what he had to say:

The extent to which nature is used up or irretrievably damaged is a problem for the future of capitalism (as well as life generally) It is a problem that exceeds the categories of economic analysis. This is partly because natural resources are extremely hard to price appropriately (especially with attention to long-term sustainability)… Understood as essentially limited resources, nature is also an object of competitive appropriation among capitalist organizations and the states on which they depend.… But a host of new competitions for scarce resources will shape the near future and pose challenges to capital as well as to states and human societies. Energy is basic. Minerals are needed for modern technologies. Water is in short and unpredictable supply and often polluted. even agricultural farmland is an object of competition as arid Arabia and crowded China fight to acquire rights to fertile Africa. (Craig Calhoun, “What Threatens Capitalism Now,” Does Capitalism Have A Future?)

So Mr. Palmer’s claim that predictions of ‘famine’ etc. is ‘doom-think’… is quite difficult to take seriously…

 

…and even more difficult to take seriously is his celebration of ‘collapse’ while carefully omitting any reason to celebrate… and lots of implied reasons… to fear:

Point being: let’s get beyond anger and blame… and embrace a strategy… that places us… beyond betrayal… You see: it’s the strategy that’s key… not some false attempt to ‘master’ our feelings… and the only strategy that places us beyond agents is not ‘issue-based’ – i.e. ‘fix-the-state-based’ – but rather ‘claiming-the-all-based’: a global reclaiming of human energy.

 

But another way to approach the system’s unsustainability is to rejoice, because this means that our current hassles are near an end. Part of the unsustainablility of the system is us. Our role – if we’re willing to step up can be to rise up against the system and its meaningless jobs, its production for profit not use, its ugly industrial machines, its police and endless wars, and its isolation, selfishness and loneliness.

 

Environmental collapse isn’t the only option and the question now is whether we can shake off our collective pessimism and see that the kind of collapse we’re about to be part of is really up to us. Sure, if nothing happens soon industrial capitalism will run up against natural limitations, killing us and itself. But we’re not dead yet — why the mournful sad faces when there’s still time to fight back against the coal mines, the oil trains, the fracking, and the greed, shortsightedness and corporate and governmental structures that are killing the planet? (Jesse D. Palmer, “The Darkness Before the Dawn: Resist Inertia, Embrace Collapse,” Winter, 2014, Slingshot)

The word ‘collapse’… instead of ‘transition’ – the choice of which (‘collapse’… rather than ‘transition’…) in repetition… with the word ‘inevitable’… seems likely the point of this propaganda…

(…and I don’t think it can be unconscious propaganda… in this case… given this is not some stroked and massaged pundit over the airwaves… but… we are supposed to believe… an unencumbered actor.

 

And I suppose I should reiterate here again… how helpful it is… to have an accurate understanding of ‘the state’ – i.e. that ‘the state’ exists within… i.e. that we are ‘the system’… a balm in a sense… to the wound that opens when we sense ‘betrayal’.

 

In one of my first blogs (“Is It Never Too Late To Be The Parent I Should Have Been?”) I said something like this: “anger at others… is really anger at oneself… which is really anger at ‘the system’…” Looking back on those words from today’s vantage… I can appreciate how much farther we can see… thanks to our found ancestors’ wisdom… those the state suppressed… because they are threatening to it… in particular: Miklos… Alice… Popper: even just these three I think… are sufficient… to plot our roadmap to the future.

 

Point being: “anger at the system equals anger at ourselves equals anger at our brothers and sisters who betray us”… means we will be – each one – ‘betrayer’ and ‘betrayed’… until we end this sick system.

 

Point being: let’s get beyond anger and blame… and embrace a strategy… that places us… beyond betrayal… You see: it’s the strategy that’s key… not some false attempt to ‘master’ our feelings… and the only strategy that places us beyond agents is not ‘issue-based’ – i.e. ‘fix-the-state-based’ – but rather ‘claiming-the-all-based’: a global reclaiming of human energy.)

It’s important for us to understand how propaganda works… the power of a single word… And the idea planted sub-consciously by this Slingshot piece… is the notion that ‘chaos will come’… ‘inevitably’. So his message: “Hope for the best… stay the course… don’t panic…” is disingenuous – the opposite overt message from the intended covert effect: i.e. fear and resignation… as ‘collapse is inevitable’… and – as the other Slingshot piece we looked at last week (by Finn) showed – to continue to do what can never result in human freedom (and this is the goal we’ve set…) doesn’t feel good… If we trust what our body says… trust its ‘logic’… it will guide us to what we need to do… move forward the strategy that will result in all humans getting free.

 

It’s important for us to understand how propaganda works… the power of a single word. (At the very beginning of Waking Up I recalled how a single word in a review of the book Dog Years drew me to the writer Mark Doty.)

 

As another example… recently my son and I had a conversation about the ‘Hunger Games’ films. When I called them propaganda his response was… “apparently the people fight back… they revolt…” But the story-line is not where the most insidious propaganda resides. Insidious propaganda works by planting notions beneath our notice… beneath our conscious awareness… repeated until it sets – and with ‘Hunger Games’… that repeated notion would be ‘districts’ – a world organized in districts – to get us thinking in terms of them… as the way the world ‘should be’ ‘structured’. To move an immensity (we-the-people) requires a gradual exposure… reinserted consistently… to the idea being promoted. ‘Power’ relies on frequent repetition of propaganda plants to guide us to the future they plan. And the idea planted sub-consciously by this Slingshot piece… is the notion that ‘chaos will come’… ‘inevitably’. So his message: “Hope for the best… stay the course… don’t panic…” is disingenuous – the opposite overt message from the intended covert effect: i.e. fear and resignation… as ‘collapse is inevitable’… and… as the other Slingshot piece we looked at last week (by Finn) showed: to continue to do what can never result in human freedom (and this is the goal we’ve set…) doesn’t feel good… our body sees the inauthenticity… and we long for honesty in all things.

 

If we trust what our body says… trust its ‘logic’… it will guide us to what we need to do… move forward the strategy that will result in all humans getting free.

 

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What propaganda does is to confuse… discourage us from trusting our body’s truth… and in so doing provides… the fog in which ‘power’ hides. For as we’ve said… ‘power’ must hide to survive… so they spin many webs to catch authentic thought… so they can fill it with poison… and see it turned… to feed what before it found abhorrent… Empire (the book) is the web… for the children of the Left.… This reads like Kissinger’s latest (Kissinger on the right flank… these guys on the left… and we’re… back in the harness again…): “The Westphalian peace reflected a practical accommodation to reality, not a unique moral insight. It relied on a system of independent states refraining from interference in each other’s domestic affairs and checking each other’s ambitions through a general equilibrium of power.” [You can hear in this the appeal to global-statesmen today… across place… — P.S.] No single claim to truth or universal rule had prevailed in Europe’s contests. [As if ‘rule’ is not a claim to “a single truth…” — P.S.]

 

What propaganda does is to confuse… discourage us from trusting our body’s truth… and in so doing provides… the fog in which ‘power’ hides. For as we’ve said… ‘power’ must hide to survive… so they spin many webs to catch authentic thought… so they can fill it with poison… and see it turned… to feed what before it found abhorrent… Empire (the book) is the web… for the children of the Left.

The emblem of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, an eagle with two heads, might give an adequate initial representation of the contemporary form of Empire. But whereas in the earlier emblem the two heads looked outward to designate the relative autonomy and peaceful coexistence of the respective territories, in our case the two heads would have to be turned inward, each attacking the other.

[And this is another propagandistic subliminal association: because we're good-hearted… and 'power' knows this… knows we don't want to be in eternal conflict… they know we hunger… long… dream… of peace.

 

This reads like Kissinger’s latest (Kissinger on the right flank… these guys on the left… and we’re… back in the harness again…):

No truly global “world order” has ever existed. What passes for order in our time was devised in Western Europe nearly four centuries ago, at a peace conference in the German region of Westphalia, conducted without the involvement or even the awareness of most other continents or civilizations… So it was that in Europe the conditions of the contemporary world were approximated: a multiplicity of political units, none powerful enough to defeat all others, many adhering to contradictory philosophies and internal practices, in search of neutral rules to regulate their conduct and mitigate conflict.

 

The Westphalian peace reflected a practical accommodation to reality, not a unique moral insight. It relied on a system of independent states refraining from interference in each other’s domestic affairs and checking each other’s ambitions through a general equilibrium of power. [You can hear in this the appeal to global-statesmen today… across place… — P.S.] No single claim to truth or universal rule had prevailed in Europe’s contests. Instead, each state was assigned the attribute of sovereign power over its territory.…

[As if ‘rule’ is not a claim to “a single truth… — P.S.]

…Of all these concepts of order, Westphalian principles are, at this writing, the sole generally recognized basis of what exists of a world order. The Westphalian system spread around the world as the framework for a state-based international order spanning multiple civilizations and regions because, as the European nations expanded […and this is a euphemism for “the spread of ‘civilization’…” for “the ‘civilizing effect’ of ‘the European system’…” — P.S.], they carried the blueprint of their international order with them. While they often neglected […‘neglected’… how delicately put… — P.S.] to apply concepts of sovereignty to the colonies and colonized peoples, when these peoples began to demand their independence, they did so in the name of Westphalian concepts […because: ‘there is no alternative’ (yet…) — P.S.]

 

…and this… I think… is where the question we ended last week’s show comes in… along with Popper’s explanation of Hegel’s ‘philosophy of identity’ (discussed in our December 7, 2014 show. In which we said that ‘power’ really likes this Heraclitian notion of “…the unity of opposites…” – the notion of our being willingly… happily… gratefully… subservient to them… …what we saw: the uses to which ‘philosophy’ has been put across the ages of ‘class’… beginning… most notably… with Heraclitus… who believed… or wanted subjugated peoples to believe… that all opposites… i.e. we-the-people and ‘power’… share a fundamental unity… and interest in common… and that con has been maintained by ‘rule’ consistently to this day… when it appears in a now-recurring notion of ‘world order’. The question we asked last week was: “Which ‘side’ — who — forms the other in this struggle?… ‘power’ vs. us… Who’s determinative?… Who’s reactive?… My point is that… when ‘trends’… the reflection of actual material reality… are viewed with the lens “keep the cattle herded”… instead of ’the inner logic of accumulation’… these questions answer themselves: i.e. our resistance to what… what cannot be denied is a tightening global vise… only shows ‘power’ where to make adjustments…

 

…The contemporary, now global Westphalian system — what colloquially is called the world community — has striven to curtail the anarchical nature of the world with an extensive network of international legal and organizational structures designed to foster open trade and a stable international financial system […it is because of these multiple converging economic and environmental crises… and the fact that ‘power’ knows that the kind of ‘stability’ that he's talking about — which was never a reality in the first place — 'power' can no longer deliver. They are trying to accustom us — on Right… on Left… and all points in-between — to the ‘need’ for the ‘big men’ stepping in… taking in hand our needs… — P.S.], establish accepted principles of resolving international disputes, and set limits on the conduct of wars when they do occur. This system of states now encompasses every culture and region. Its institutions have provided the neutral framework for the interactions of diverse societies — to a large extent independent of their respective values. (Henry Kissinger, World Order, 2014, p. 2 - 6)

…and this… I think… is where the question we ended last week’s show comes in… along with Popper’s explanation of Hegel’s ‘philosophy of identity’ (discussed in our December 7, 2014 show. In which we said that ‘power’ really likes this Heraclitian notion of “…the unity of opposites…” – the notion of our being willingly… happily… gratefully… subservient to them. Here’s an excerpt: “The leading idea, and at the same time the link between Hegel’s dialectics and his philosophy of identity, is Heraclitus’ doctrine of the unity of opposites. ‘The path that leads up and the path that leads down are identical’, Heraclitus had said…” – [“…the unity of opposites…”: – This has always been ‘power’s wet-dream… the fantasy that we will just dissolve into ‘our role’… their ‘idea’ of us… into our assigned tasks… and be ‘one with them…’ as they ‘lead us into Perfection…’ It’s what they've wanted from Day One… ‘Unity of Opposites’… i.e.… us dissolved into them… – P.S.]

 

…what we saw: we saw the uses to which ‘philosophy’ has been put across the ages of ‘class’… beginning… most notably… with Heraclitus… who believed… or wanted subjugated peoples to believe… that all opposites… i.e. we-the-people and ‘power’… share a fundamental unity… an interest in common… and that con has been maintained by ‘rule’ consistently to this day… when it appears in a now-recurring notion of ‘world order’.

 

The question we asked last week was: “Which ‘side’ — who — forms the other in this struggle?… ‘power’ vs. us… Who’s determinative?… Who’s reactive?

 

We asked this in response to our Trio saying that the structural transformations of the world-system — which they will view in three aspects: the widening and deepening of ‘stateness’… the expansion of ‘ruler’-interlinkages globally… and our — we-the-people’s — global inter-relations mirroring those of ‘our’ state’s global inter-relations… i.e…. our identification with our ‘masters’… Marcuse’s ‘democratic introjection.’

 

My point is that… when ‘trends’… the reflection of actual material reality… are viewed with the lens “keep the cattle herded”… instead of ’the inner logic of accumulation’… these questions answer themselves: i.e. our resistance to what… what cannot be denied is a tightening global vise… only shows ‘power’ where to make adjustments… and the work of our three… based as it is honesty… heart… and reality… was clearly (to ‘power’…) worrying… and to massage troubled minds among the designated future managers… they commissioned Hardt and Negri.

 

Our Trio here are mis-seeing… they have ‘reality’ on its head… we-the-people aren’t ‘leading’ anything… we are being led…

 

All of this is so obvious… once we’re able to sit back and look at it…

 

…the question is… what are we going to do with it?

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[During the show we decided to skip ahead to the end of this Empire quote (because we were short on time…) to the paragraph that begins: “…A new sense of being is imposed on the constitution of Empire by the creative movement of the multitude…” – P.S.]

 

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The first head of the imperial eagle is a juridical structure and a constituted power, constructed by the machine of biopolitical command. The juridical process and the imperial machine are always subject to contradictions and crises. Order and peace – the eminent values that Empire proposes – can never be ahead but are nonetheless continually reproposed. The juridical process of the constitution of Empire lives this constant crisis that is considered (at least by the most attentive theoreticians) the price of its own development. There is, however, always a surplus. Empire’s continual extension and constant pressure to adhere ever more closely to the complexity and depth of the biopolitical realm force the imperial machine when it seems to resolve one conflict continually to open others. It tries to make them commensurate with its project, but they emerge once again as incommensurable, with all the elements of the new terrain mobile in space and flexible in time.

 

The other head of the imperial eagle is the plural multitude of productive, creative subjectivities of globalization that have learned to sail on this enormous sea. They are in perpetual motion and they form constellations of singularities and events that impose continual global reconfigurations on the system. This perpetual motion can be geographical, but it can refer also to modulations of form and processes of mixture and hybridization. The relationship between “system” and “asystemic” cannot be flattened onto any logic of correspondence in this perpetually modulating atopia. Even the asystemic elements produced by the new multitude are in fact global forces that cannot have a commensurate relationship, even an inverted one, with the system. Every insurrectional event that erupts within the order of the imperial system provokes a shock to the system in its entirety. From this perspective, the institutional frame in which we live is characterized by its radical contingency and precariousness, or really by the unforeseeability of the sequences of events — sequences that are always more brief or more compact temporally and thus ever less controllable. It becomes ever more difficult for Empire to intervene in the unforeseeable temporal sequences of events when they accelerate their temporality. The most relevant aspect that the struggles have demonstrated may be sudden accelerations, often cumulative, that can become vitally simultaneous, explosions that reveal a properly ontological power and unforeseeable attack on the most central equilibria of Empire.

 

Just as Empire in the spectacle of its force continually determines systemic recompositions, so too new figures of resistance are composed through the sequences of the events of struggle. This is another fundamental characteristic of the existence of the multitude today, within Empire and against Empire. New figures of struggle and new subjectivities are produced in the conjunction of events, in the universal nomadism, in the general mixture and miscegenation of individuals and populations, and in the technological metamorphoses of the imperial biopolitical machine. These new figures and subjectivities are produces because, although the struggles are indeed antysystemic, they are not posed merely against the imperial system – they are not simply negative forces. They also express, nourish, and develop positively their own constituent projects; they work toward the liberation of living labor, creating constellations of powerful singularities. This constituent aspect of the movement of the multitude, in its myriad faces, is really the positive terrain of the historical construction of Empire. This is not a historicist positivity but, on the contrary, a positivity of the res gestae [“the events or circumstances that relate to a particular case, especially constituting admissible evidence in a court of law”] of the multitude, an antagonistic and creative positivity. The deterritorializing power of the multitude is the productive force that sustains Empire and at the same time the force that calls for and makes necessary its destruction.

 

At this point, however, we should recognize that our metaphor breaks down and that the two-headed eagle is not really an adequate representation of at the relationship between Empire and the multitude, because it poses the two on the same level and thus does not recognize the real hierarchies and discontinuities that define their relationship. From one perspective Empire stands clearly over the multitude and subjects it to the rule of its overarching machine, as a new Leviathan. At the same time, however, from the perspective of social productivity and creativity, from what we have been calling the ontological perspective, the hierarchy is reversed. The multitude is the real productive force of our social world, whereas Empire is a mere apparatus of capture that lives only off the vitality of the multitude – as Marx would say, a vampire regime of accumulated dead labor that survives only by sucking off the blood of the living.

And here let’s pause to recall a point made during our Waking Up Radio show of February 16th, 2014:

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So the ‘story’… at base… that Left pundits are telling is as old as ‘class’… it’s called “the class struggle.”… And the issue before you… if you’re ‘power’… is how to insert your ‘piper’ in that story…

 

So the ‘story’… at base… that Left pundits are telling is as old as ‘class’… it’s called “the class struggle.”

 

This is the obvious story… the only story… for youth on the Left to latch upon… as it’s the truth….

 

And the issue before you… if you’re ‘power’… is how to insert your ‘piper’ in that story – and… recall… the ‘piper’ used to catch rats… but the people betrayed him… and so he decided to ply his trade with a different master.

 

But let’s pause for a moment and ask: does this make sense – inserting a ‘piper’ – … if we’re wearing our vampire hat?

(…and that’s a really good metaphor by the way…

 

…light… exposure… is what they’re most afraid of… it’s extraordinary how apt the vampire metaphor is… for ‘power’. It surpasses the ‘Mr. Smith Virus’ in this [addressing / explaining ‘power’s need to stay hidden… i.e. its fear of the truth… but also I suppose in its seductiveness…] which shouldn’t surprise us… as it was millennia in the shaping… to fit… ‘we-the-people’s dilemma… in attempting to wrestle with ‘power’…)

Because if it’s the right strategic move – inserting a ‘piper’ – … based on an accurate analysis… and you have bottomless resources with which to do it… ‘prove’ it… and centuries piled high of experience doing it….

 

If you must hide to survive… and you are the tiny few… far out-numbered by the billions of minds (potentially) devoted to the problem of how to get rid of you… i.e. the ‘role’ of ‘ruler’… how do you stay hidden?… except by systematic… continuous… misdirection (after of course you’ve established atomization… which defeats thought’s continuous growth…)? The thoughts you enforce on ‘the people’ must systematically and uniformly point away from you. Is this not obviously what ‘power’ must do?

 

And… as ‘power’ can’t defeat truth… and clearly they’ve tried… Fascism… Miklos shows us… was their most strenuous (because compressed within such a short time…) attempt at this…

– and by ‘defeat truth’ I mean in this instance ‘defeat the story “the class struggle”’… replace the reality that “there are a tiny few who want to rule over the rest…” with “there are a tiny few who are ‘the best’.”

‘Power’ has given its every waking breath to establish that Plato-driven myth in enough of our heads. It will never abandon it… it’s too core to their world-view and plans… but…

 

…as they see themselves as being masters of strategy… and with mountains of money… and think-tanks a’plenty… and bought-brains to fill them… we’d be foolish indeed to think they have no ‘Plan B’. (This too… is from Plato… who advised ‘power’: always temper the ideal… with the possible….)

 

And if mis-direction is key to keep the people from seeing you… you must give them a villain… prop it up as a target… to absorb all the world’s willingness to wrestle with wrong… to draw and expend… direct down useless efforts… and pass the uselessness on in the bargain… down… down… down the road… to subsequent generations… on and on flows confusion… ad infinitum…

 

…or so you hope.

 

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Returning to Empire, (the book):

Once we adopt this ontological standpoint, we can return to the juridical framework we investigated earlier and recognize the reasons for the real deficit that plagues the transition from international pubic law to the new public law of Empire, that is, the new conception of right that defines Empire. In other words, the frustration and the continual instability suffered by imperial right as it attempts to destroy the old values that served as reference points for international public law (the nation-states, the international order of Westphalia, the United Nations, and so forth) along with the so-called turbulence that accompanies this process are all symptoms of a properly ontological lack. As it constructs its supranational figure, power seems to be deprived of any real ground beneath it, or rather, it is lacking the motor that propels its movement. The rule of the biopolitical imperial context should thus be seen in the first instance as an empty machine, a spectacular machine, a parasitical machine.

Let’s pause again and recollect our first visit to Empire (the book) during the Waking Up Radio show of September 14th, 2014:

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…is not the loss of earth our greatest wound? – as earth is all… including us? –

 

…so to regain our souls we must…

 

…regain our earth-connection….

 

Over the next few shows… we’re going to be thinking through what that means in political terms.

 

In our show this week… and probably for a few more… I’d like to return to the question raised by our ‘conversation’ with Nelson Peery: “What are the organizational forms of our resistance… and of the new social arrangements we create?” (We really gotta start thinking this through… otherwise we’re treading water… doing what all the previous generations have already tried unsuccessfully to do… because it’s pretty obvious… every day… every second… that we don’t take our lives back… things get worse.)

 

September 9th, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: When Joel Bakan interviewed Ira Jackson, “a former Boston banker and head of the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Center for Business and Government at Harvard…” as part of his research for his book (or film), The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power – the Harvard ‘éminence grise’ said… according to Mr. Bakan… “that the problem with capitalism is that…

…we have a global theology without morality, without a Bible.” [And that’s dangerous, he warns –] we’re not going to be able to exist in a global context if we are the bastards of our business. Capitalism needs the moral equivalent of the Communist Manifesto, a manifesto for capitalism.

…a few eye-blinks later – or… when they but turned around… – they had such a book… although its authors protested much too much… that it was a manifesto, in fact, for us… for we-the-people. I’m referring to the book Empire, by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. One of the blurbs on the back reads: “…What Hardt and Negri offer is nothing less than a rewriting of The Communist Manifesto for our time…” said Slavoj Zizek. (He discreetly didn’t mention whose ‘manifesto’ it is.)

 

Drawing heavily on Spinoza… and Hegel… Hardt and Negri made the official proclamation: revolution was no longer needed… it had arrived… when we blinked our eyes.

 

But their search for ‘heart’ went unrequited… so instead they rummaged in their ‘Bin of Recyclables’… where ‘power’ keeps its best propaganda… they unearthed some choice bits… in the hopes that if washed up fresh… they could get us to hang ourselves with it.

 

But… that tattered old find called ‘Objectified Mind’ proved too rank to claim any takers… and now ‘power’ thinks… that because we blinked… they can con us into seeing them… as planetary ‘saviors’….

 

In our show this week… and probably for a few more… I’d like to return to the question raised by our ‘conversation’ with Nelson Peery: “What are the organizational forms of our resistance… and of the new social arrangements we create?”

(We really gotta start thinking this through… otherwise we’re treading water… doing what all the previous generations have already tried unsuccessfully to do… because it’s pretty obvious… every day… every second… that we don’t take our lives back… things get worse.)

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Am I being clear enough about the connections between ‘power’ hiding… their employing propaganda – layered hierarchical propaganda to correspond to the various ranks of us they've created – propaganda to help them hide… and stay hidden – and what we on the Left have been accustomed to call ‘the class struggle’…? Is Shakespeare right when he says, “all difficulties are but easy… when they are known…"? If so… we don't yet know… our opponent… Re: Empire (the book)… These are the points they hope have been established: ‘Power’… as the organized force of global-state-statesmen… doesn’t exist… it has been ‘dematerialized’ and dispersed… it is held by us… because we are “the productive capacity of ‘Empire’”… we are no longer ‘common’… we have become ‘the Multitude’… and ‘the Multitude’ is ‘the system’. This is entertainment and pacification for the more privileged… In this moment we’re in… at this juncture… if that critical piece of ‘ontological’ [“…to do with the nature of being…”] ‘Marxist’ political theory don’t say this: “‘Power’ is global and consciously organizes and acts as such… so the only possible successful challenge to this… is one that matches it… i.e. one in which we organize a global response consciously… organized globally consciously as such…” it’s propaganda.

[Am I being clear enough about the connections between ‘power’ hiding… their employing propaganda – layered hierarchical propaganda to correspond to the various ranks of us they’ve created – propaganda to help them hide… and stay hidden – and what we on the Left have been accustomed to call ‘the class struggle’…? Is Shakespeare right when he says, “all difficulties are but easy… when they are known…”? If so… we don’t yet know… our opponent… – P.S.]

Returning to Empire (the book)

…A new sense of being is imposed on the constitution of Empire by the creative movement of the multitude, or really it is continually present in this process as an alternative paradigm. It is internal to Empire and pushes forward its constitution, not as a negative that constructs a positive or any such dialectical resolution. Rather it acts as an absolutely positive force that pushes the dominating power toward an abstract and empty unification, to which it appears as the distinct alternative. From this perspective, when the constituted power of Empire appears merely as privation of being and production, as a simple abstract and empty trace of the constituent power of the multitude, then we will be able to recognize the real standpoint of our analysis. It is a standpoint that is both strategic and tactical, when the two are no longer different. [Which 'two'?… Who knows?… Who cares?… It don't matter… because their purpose is but to confuse… and… ultimately… to de-fuse… – P.S.] (Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, p. 59 - 63, Empire, (2000)

Their efforts up to this point have been devoted to putting the full weight of their full capabilities for generating bullshit in the form of slick, convoluted, (they hope) impenetrable misdirection and deceit… behind the much more concise… and to the same effect of… the phrase “there is no alternative…”

 

These are the points they hope have been established: ‘Power’… as the organized force of global-state-statesmen… doesn’t exist… it has been ‘dematerialized’ and dispersed… it is held by us… because we are “the productive capacity of ‘Empire’”… we are no longer ‘common’… we have become ‘the Multitude’… and ‘the Multitude’ is ‘the system’.

 

This is entertainment for the more privileged… as they have nothing better to do… and life loves mental challenges. But look at what this indulgence costs… in the spent blood and lives of our Brothers and Sisters… those ‘classed’ as ‘hands’ for this sick system.

 

Of course it’s more than ‘entertainment’ and ‘pacification’ (in a simple sense alone…) it’s also wooing those it needs for management roles into complicity… salving their doubt… dissolving any lingering fellow feeling.

 

And all this because… those with public voices refuse to admit… publicly… that 'power' is a conscious actor… and it acts clandestinely.

 

In this moment we’re in… at this juncture… if that critical piece of ‘ontological’ [“…to do with the nature of being…”] ‘Marxist’ political theory don’t say this: “‘Power’ is global and consciously organizes and acts as such… so the only possible successful challenge to this… is one that matches it… i.e. one in which we organize a global response consciously… organized globally consciously as such…” – stated as simply and concisely as this… it’s propaganda. This is where we are at: simply stated is best. We are a global One challenging a global ‘Power’… No further words – excepting of course Popper’s and Alice’s for inspiration… and for cementing our certainty – no further words of explanation of this moment are needed… only action.

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[Today’s reading: We are – briefly interrupting our reading of Chapter 5 – continuing our reading of Chapter 2 of Giovanni Arrighi’s, Terence K. Hopkins’, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements…: “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”… and including some excerpts from Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri… – P.S.]

 

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* January 11, 2015 reading: Chapter 2 of Giovanni Arrighi’s, Terence K. Hopkins’, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements… “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”… as well as excerpts from Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

 

“In the course of the twentieth century, indeed defining it, a massive sea-change has been occurring in the social relations of accumulation… so structurally transformed that the very workings of the accumulation process appear to be historically altered. It is this ongoing transformation that has continually remade the relational conditions both of the organizing agencies of accumulation and of those in fundamental struggle with them, the antisystemic movements; and so have continually remade as well the relational character of the struggle itself and hence the nature of the movements defined by it…” – [Implied in this… when viewed with our lens of: “controlling us takes precedence over accumulation for itself”… is a sea-change in how the so-called rulers decided to extend and intensify that control… a constant process of ‘power’ trying to ‘figure out’ a move… a hold… we can’t get out of…. The means of course they used were two… one… their traditional vise of credit… and two… per Hegel’s guidance – and De Tocqueville suggestive…: tie them up in laws till they cry, “Uncle!” – make involvement in decision-making for the conditions of our lives so ‘complicated’ and onerous… we ‘choose’… to bow out of it… – P.S.]

 

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In the course of the twentieth century, indeed defining it, a massive sea-change has been occurring in the social relations of accumulation. In a sentence, the relational networks forming the trunk lines [central supply line of a system or network] of the circuits of capital have been so structurally transformed that the very workings of the accumulation process appear to be historically altered. It is this ongoing transformation that has continually remade the relational conditions both of the organizing agencies of accumulation (by definition) and of those in fundamental struggle with them, the antisystemic movements; and so have continually remade as well the relational character of the struggle itself and hence the nature of the movements defined by it. To retrace the steps: the life cycles of the various movements have been a part of and have helped to form the structural shift; hence the relational struggles defining the movements as antisystemic; hence the movements themselves and the trajectories that make them antisystemic. We depict the ongoing transformation here by outlining three of its faces in the form of structural trends.

[Implied in this (if I’m not jumping the gun again…) as another word for ‘capital’ is ‘stimulus’… or ‘credit’… or ‘tool to effect social transformation… an upheaval in our settled… self-determined… social relations’ – so implied in this ‘transformation of the relational networks of the accumulation process’… when viewed with our lens of: “controlling us takes precedence over accumulation for itself”… is a sea-change in how the so-called rulers decided to extend and intensify that control. Because the facade ‘endless accumulation’ as a motive is… in reality… the motive “intensify the hold”… what is really going on behind it… is a constant process of ‘power’ trying to ‘figure out’ a move… a hold… we can’t get out of…. The means of course they used were two… one… their traditional vise of credit… and two… per Hegel’s guidance – and De Tocqueville suggestive…: tie them up in laws till they cry, “Uncle!” – make involvement in decision-making for the conditions of our lives so ‘complicated’ and onerous… we ‘choose’… to bow out of it… – P.S.]

“In one guise the transformation appears as simultaneously an increasing “stateness” of the world’s peoples (the number of “sovereign states” having more than tripled during the twentieth century) and an increasingly dense organization of the interstate system. Today virtually the whole of the globe’s nearly five billion people are politically partitioned into the subject populations of the hundred-and-sixty or so states of an interstate system, which contains a large number of formal interstate organizations. This might be called the widening of stateness. The deepening of stateness is another matter.… Of even more importance here, in some ways, is the still far greater growth in the density of the interstate system.” [This is… I guess you could call it ‘power’s process of cementing its own consciousness as global-state-statesmen… as understanding that they are about… as Kissinger says… as understanding that they are about… together… maintaining what is euphemistically called ‘world order’… – P.S.] “Hence, to a degree and extent never envisioned by the successful social and national movements when they eventually gained state power, both what agencies of a state administer internally, and how they do this, is increasingly determined, to use a Weber paring, not autonomously (as befits sovereignty) but heteronomously (as befits what?)”

 

In one guise the transformation appears as simultaneously an increasing “stateness” of the world’s peoples (the number of “sovereign states” having more than tripled during the twentieth century) and an increasingly dense organization of the interstate system. Today virtually the whole of the globe’s nearly five billion people are politically partitioned into the subject populations of the hundred-and-sixty or so states of an interstate system, which contains a large number of formal interstate organizations. This might be called the widening of stateness. The deepening of stateness is another matter. Here essentially we have in mind the growing “strength” of state agencies vis-a-vis local bodies (within or intersecting with the state’s jurisdiction). Measures of this are of many sorts, from the voluminous expansion of laws and of agencies to enforce them, through central-government taxes as growing proportions of measured domestic or national product, to the structural expansion of kinds of state agency, the geographical spread of their locations of operation, and the growing proportion of the labor force formed by their employees. Moreover, like international airports around the world, and for analogous if deeper reasons, the organizational form of stateness (the complex array of hierarchies forming the apparatus of administration) has everywhere virtually the same anatomy, the differences from place to place being of the order of variations on a theme. They are variations that no doubt matter a great deal to the subjects of state power, but, world-historically, they are nonetheless only variations and not qualitative departures in form.

[Now… all of this is patently about tightening 'power's control over us… why is it so hard for academics to state it as directly as this?… – P.S.]

One final point should perhaps be noted here. Much has been made of the extent to which, following the accessions to power of social and / or national antisystemic movements, a marked increase in the structural "centralization" of the state has occurred, that is, a marked increase in what we're calling here the deepening of stateness. And, examining the trends in state formation within the jurisdictions severally, one at a time, one does see that. However, watching the overall trend instate formation in the modern world as a singular historical system over the course of the twentieth century, one would be hard put to attribute the overall trend to any such "internal" processes or, for that matter, even to the interrelated successes of the particular social and national movements construed collectively as but particular emanations of a singular complex historical process of the modern world-system. For even in locations where, seen in that way, the world-historical process has been manifestly weakest (the movements least apparently successful), the structural trend in state formation is no less apparent than elsewhere.

 

Of even more importance here, in some ways, is the still far greater growth in the density of the interstate system. [This is… what would be a good way of putting it? I guess you could call it “‘power’s process of cementing its own consciousness as global-state-statesmen… as understanding that they are about…” as Kissinger says… “as understanding that they are about… together… maintaining what is euphemistically called ‘world order’”… – P.S.] Just using the simplest of assumptions, and reasoning purely formally from the fourfold increase in the number of states, there is a sixteenfold increase in their relations with one another. But that of course barely scratches the surface. The kinds of specialized relations among the states of the interstate system have expanded nearly as much as the kinds of internal state agency. Added to this there are over a dozen specialized United Nations agencies (in each of which most states are related as members) and a very large number of regional international organizations (such as OECD, OPEC, ASEAN, COMECON [“an economic association of eastern European countries founded in 1949 and analogous to the European Economic Community. With the collapse of communism in eastern Europe, the association was dissolved in 1991: Origin is the contraction of Council for Mutual Economic Assistance”,) NATO, OAU, and so on.) If one goes beyond the existence of the voluminous set of interstate relations to the frequency with which they’re activated, via meetings, postal mail, cable, telephone, and now, increasingly, electronic mail, the density of the interstate system’s relational network today is probably several times greater than the comparable density of the official intrastate relational network of the most advanced and centrally administered country of a century ago (say, France).

 

One result is an enmeshing within each state’s operations of the “internal” and “external” relational webs and processes to such an extent that the distinction itself, except perhaps for border crossings of people and goods, begins to lose substantive force (in contradiction to its nominal force, which is increased with every treaty signed, every package assessed for duty by customs, every postage stamp issued). Hence, to a degree and extent never envisioned by the successful social and national movements when they eventually gained state power, both what agencies of a state administer internally, and how they do this, is increasingly determined, to use a Weber paring, not autonomously (as befits sovereignty) but heteronomously (as befits what?).

“It is clear that in this aspect dictatorship is a development of tendencies inherent in a democratic system itself… Dictatorship and democracy are not proceeding in opposite directions but on parallel lines….” (Diana Spearman) [And so… a more practical version of that De Tocqueville quote… – “if you can get ‘the many’ chasing money… it leaves the few who play the higher stakes of ‘power’ freer to pursue their ambition…” – would be: “…if you can get the vast majority stuck in simply surviving (or ‘mired in minutiae…’ it leaves the infinitesimal few freer to play their global game of ‘supremacy’…” De Tocqueville describes the broad dissemination of the administrative function… both in allowing the township exclusive responsibility for the implementation and enforcement of State mandates… and in this administrative function being fragmented into non-interdependent parts… with each functionary in charge of his or her part responsible only for its own action. In this way… it’s less ‘machine-like’ – which implies central control toward accomplishing a goal – and more: ‘central control in monopolizing central control’… bringing to mind a treading in place… allowing ‘power’ (which doesn’t have a thousand thousand rules dragging on its ankles… impeding action…) both freedom of movement and privacy in which to do it… as the rest of us are too busy trying to maneuver in the muck of laws to notice what is in any case cloaked in secrecy – well-shielded from media scrutiny. ‘Power’ keeps ‘the people’ busy pretending to be free… while it pursues supremacy… – P.S.]

 

[The degree of administrative enmeshment of states within the interstate system is the logical extension of the tactics developed to control us within states to the global level – obviously a ‘TINA’-move… an attempt to block all exits and cement in place… the ‘global system’… which asks the question: As ‘power’ has… in the last 250 years… been steadfast in their global focus to maintain control of us… when do we acknowledge that we can only defend ourselves… by doing the same?

 

The page, Founding & Realizing A Test Site – not modeled on ‘democracy’… but on freedom – Premised On “Leisure IS Happiness…… includes a quote from Diana Spearman. Here’s an excerpt of it:

It is clear that in this aspect dictatorship is a development of tendencies inherent in a democratic system itself; tendencies arising from a misunderstanding of the nature of democracy. Professor Laski [H. Laski, The State in Theory and Practice, 1936] is clearly right when he says that the services which parties have rendered to the democratic state are inestimable, but clearly wrong when he includes amongst those services that they are among “the most solid obstacle we have against the danger of Caesarism.” Nothing is easier than for the democratic party itself to evolve into an instrument of dictatorship. The historical destruction of democracy through its own parties is assisted by the modern development of government from the administrative side. Dictatorship and democracy are not proceeding in opposite directions but on parallel lines…. (Diana Spearman, (from Chapter IV, “Authoritarian Tendencies in Democracy,” Modern Dictatorship, 1939, p. 174)

And we commented on this by saying:

And so a clearer… and more inclusive and practical (and so more accurate…) version of that De Tocqueville quote I cite in Unpacking ‘Democracy’ – “if you can get ‘the many’ chasing money… it leaves the few who play the higher stakes of ‘power’ freer to pursue their ambition…” – would be: “…if you can get the vast majority stuck in simply surviving (or ‘getting things done’… ‘accomplishment’…) it leaves the infinitesimal few freer to pursue their global game of ‘supremacy’ – the pursuit of ‘Knowledge Infinite.’” Diana Spearman’s book, Modern Dictatorship (excerpts and discussion of which can be found both in Palmers’ Chat – see its Table of Contents – and in “Revealing Division”) is helpful for understanding this underlying motive of ‘power’. The philosopher-king-statesmen reason that if they can own / control ‘all’ the ‘Knowledge’ – and particularly the ‘knowledge’ of how to kill us (see the January 26th, 2014 show… on the page: “Miklos Nyiszli’s Lessons On Class”) – then their ‘supremacy’ can never be challenged.

 

This practical angle can be expressed slightly differently… thereby shedding even more light on this matter of ‘what we got’… in having ‘democracy.’ De Tocqueville (p. 56 – 7) describes the broad dissemination of the administrative function… both in allowing the township exclusive responsibility for the implementation and enforcement of State mandates… and in this administrative function being fragmented into non-interdependent parts… with each functionary in charge of his or her part responsible only for its own action. In this way… it’s less ‘machine-like’ – which implies central control toward accomplishing a goal – and more: ‘central control in monopolizing central control’… bringing to mind a circular action rather than a forward motion… a treading in place… allowing ‘power’ (which doesn’t have a thousand thousand rules dragging on its ankles… impeding action…) both freedom of movement and privacy in which to do it… as the rest of us are too busy trying to maneuver in the muck of laws to notice what is in any case cloaked in secrecy – well-shielded from media scrutiny.

 

So ‘democracy’… or… ‘rule of law’ installed by ‘majority vote’… in practice means… immobility – ‘no change’ – Plato’s ‘best state’ is proceeding apace… and sometimes the route it takes is dictatorship… and sometimes ‘democracy’… which offers the ‘plus’ that some are allowed to pretend they are ‘free’… so between ‘dictatorship’ and ‘democracy’ the only distinguishing quality is… for the latter… better drugs… better illusions.

 

‘Power’ keeps ‘the people’ busy pretending to be free… while it pursues supremacy…

 

…or… “if you can get the many mired in minutiae… it leaves the few who play the higher stakes of ‘power’ freer to pursue their ambition.”

It is time to confront Du Bois’ question: what price do we place on freedom?… Are we ready to begin organizing these discussions?… – P.S.]

“…the degree to which virtually all interrelations among peoples in different state jurisdictions have become dimensions of their respective states’ relations with one another…” – the question is… how did this happen… by accident?… by ‘inner logic’… or was it by intent? Were there conscious actors… fostering it? And then of course… how do we break down that ‘power’-allegiance?… re-direct it to conscious global unity (GLU)… be… the ‘glue’ we want to see… so that we may cleave… adhere… to each other… and to the earth…. Let’s start doing this… Brothers and Sisters… let’s start consciously interweaving and mobilizing… based on our common longing for ‘freedom-leisure-happiness’… the right to which we globally assert… – P.S.]

 

A second result, and one of no less importance to our subject – the current and future terrain on, through, and against which present and future antisystemic movements are and will be operating […Don't you love… that they have this as their focus? Can you cite anybody else who gives anything for us like this?… Let's gather ourselves together… and get focused on the future we want… – P.S.] – is the degree to which virtually all interrelations among peoples in different state jurisdictions have become dimensions of their respective states’ relations with one another. This is not just a matter of travelers obtaining passports and visas and passing through emigration and immigration authorities, or of packages having to be sent with export and import permits and be duly processed, and so forth. These interstate procedures, which daily re-announce the borders of the respective jurisdictions of each constituent state, are but mediations of the movement of people, goods, and capital, and have been practiced for a rather long time.

[“…the degree to which virtually all interrelations among peoples in different state jurisdictions have become dimensions of their respective states’ relations with one another…” – the question is… how did this happen… by accident?… by ‘inner logic’… or was it by intent? Were there conscious actors… fostering it? And then of course… how do we break down that ‘power’-allegiance?… re-direct it to conscious global unity (GLU)… be… the ‘glue’ we want to see… so that we may cleave… adhere… to each other… and to the earth…. Let’s start doing this… Brothers and Sisters… let’s start consciously interweaving and mobilizing… based on our common longing for ‘freedom-leisure-happiness’… the right to which we globally assert… – P.S.]

“…The “openness” or “closure” of a state’s borders to such movements, however – we note parenthetically in passing – has always been less a matter of that state’s policies “toward the world” than of its location in the hierarchical ordering inherent in the capitalist world-economy’s interstate system. This location is determined not merely by academicians but by demonstrated or credible relational strengths, practical conditions effected by ruling classes….…” – [The ‘practical-mindedness’ of these ‘academicians’ puts them in a ‘class’ by themselves on the Left… – P.S.] [I can’t help wondering whether the book Empire… which followed some ten years later… was an attempt to settle these waters… i.e. lay claim to the ‘last word’ on the subject… Consider the following: – P.S.] “I remember the friendly argument I had with my son about the animated film Wall•E. I was put off by the propaganda that machines could, in theory, do everything.Huh? Machines pick the coffee beans, the cashews, assemble those ever tinier electronic components? Machines remove the coltan from the earth, and the people from their land?” But in retrospect… the essential message in the film is true to ‘power’s deepest wish — stemming I guess from their deep history of abandonment — to have their every need and whim addressed… by ‘hands’ devoted to them. This Economist… article captures it well. I fully expect the next hot ‘start-up’ to be: “WeWipeYourAssJustAsk”…

 

The “openness” or “closure” of a state’s borders to such movements, however – we note parenthetically in passing – has always been less a matter of that state’s policies “toward the world” than of its location in the hierarchical ordering inherent in the capitalist world-economy’s interstate system. This location is determined not merely by academicians but by demonstrated or credible relational strengths, practical conditions effected by ruling classes….

[The ‘practical-mindedness’ of these ‘academicians’ puts them in a ‘class’ by themselves on the Left… – P.S.]

…Rather it is a matter of the interstate system’s appropriating all manner of direct and circuitous relations among people of different countries (state jurisdictions) – whether religious, scientific, commercial, artistic, financial, linguistic, civilizational, educational, literary, productive, problem-focused, historical, philosophical, ad infinitum – such that they all become, at the very least, mediated, more often actually organized, by the counterpart agencies of different states through their established or newly formed relations with one another. The effect is to subordinate the interrelations among the world’s peoples not to raisons d’etat, a practice with which all of us are all too familiar, but to raisons du systeme d’etats, a practice with which most of us are all too unfamiliar.

[I can’t help wondering whether the book Empire… which followed some ten years later… was an attempt to settle these waters… i.e. lay claim to the ‘last word’ on the subject… Consider the following from that book: – P.S.]

Imperial command is exercised no longer through the disciplinary modalities of the modern state but rather through the modalities of biopolitical control. These modalities have as their basis and their object a productive multitude that cannot be regimented and normalized, but must nonetheless be governed, even in its autonomy. The concept of the People no longer functions as the organized subject of the system of command, and consequently the identity of the People is replaced by the mobility, flexibility, and perpetual differentiation of the multitude. This shift demystifies and destroys the circular modern ideal of the legitimacy of power by which power constructs from the multitude a single subject that could then in turn legitimate that same power. That sophistic tautology no longer works.

[Hold on: I think I see what they mean… I was just reading about this in the January 3 – 9, 2015 Economist… which tells us that… “the future of work…” is about us “being on tap”… in fact… they tell us… “there’s an app for that…”

 

In “Waking Up (The Plan, Part 3)” I wrote about the difference of opinion my son and I had on the film Wall•E: “I remember the friendly argument I had with my son about the animated film Wall•E. I was put off by the propaganda that machines could, in theory, do everything.Huh? Machines pick the coffee beans, the cashews, assemble those ever tinier electronic components? Machines remove the coltan from the earth, and the people from their land?” But in retrospect… the essential message in the film is true to ‘power’s deepest wish — stemming I guess from their deep history of abandonment — to have their every need and whim addressed… by ‘hands’ devoted to them. This Economist… article captures it well. I fully expect the next hot ‘start-up’ to be: “WeWipeYourAssJustAsk”… Continuing: – P.S.]

 

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[We skipped ahead again to the two end-Empire-quotes… and comment… – P.S.]

 

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The multitude is governed with the instruments of the post-modern capitalist system and within the social relations of the real subsumption. The multitude can only be ruled along internal lines, in production, in exchanges, in culture -- in other words, in the biopolitical context of its existence. In its deterritorialized autonomy, however, this biopolitical existence of the multitude has the potential to be transformed into an autonomous mass of intelligent productivity, into an absolute democratic power, as Spinoza would say. If that were to happen, capitalist domination of production, exchange, and communication would be overthrown. Preventing this is the first and primary task of imperial government. We should keep in mind, however, that the constitution of Empire depends for its own existence on the forces that pose this threat, the autonomous forces of productive cooperation. Their powers must be controlled but not destroyed. (Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, p. 344, Empire, (2000)

As we said earlier… ‘power’ prefers its propaganda-plants to be ‘sophisticated-slippery’… i.e. with (they hope) impenetrable layers… difficult to see. Empire, is a quite elaborate… quite ‘sophisticated’… illustration of this. Its clandestine advocacy of what it seems to be opposing is most insidious (or… its clandestine undermining of what it seems to be advocating…) Consider this:

When the proponents of the globalization of capital cry out against big government, they are being not only hypocritical but also ungrateful. Where would capital be if it had not put its hands on big government and made it work for centuries in its exclusive interest? And today where would imperial capital be if big government were not big enough to wield the power of life and death over the entire global multitude? Where would capital without a big government capable of printing money to produce and reproduce a global order that guarantees capitalist power and wealth? Or without the communications networks that expropriate the cooperation of the productive multitude? Every morning when they wake up, capitalists and their representatives across the world, instead of reading curses against big government in the Wall Street Journal, ought to get down on their knees and praise it!

Of course… what they really want is for us… we-the-people… to get this message: “Oh where or where would we be… without global ‘power’ providing… the infrastructure… the means… for all our needs?…

 

…and… more hidden in this is ‘power’s key strategy: “If you can get the Left chasing the red herring ‘money as culprit’… it leaves the Few who play the higher stakes game of ‘power’ freer to pursue their ambition.”

“…Some might object that the productive biopolitical universe still requires some form of command over it” […Isn't that really sleazy… really shady… really shameless?… implying that 'command' disappears… with their 'New World Order' in place… They're talking about the internalization of discipline… what Bentham told them to do (the 'Panopticon' serves as metaphor…) make us 'self-regulating' and save them the trouble… – P.S.], and that realistically we should aim not at destroying big government but at putting our hands on its controls. We have to put an end to such illusions that have plagued the socialist and communist traditions for so long!…”) – [They're talking about the very same things that Wallerstein, Arrighi, and Hopkins are talking about… but from such a place of dishonesty that it's hideous… – P.S.]

 

Now that the most radical conservative opponents of big government have collapsed under the weight of the paradox of their position, we want to pick up their banners where they left them in the mud. It is our turn now to cry “Big government is over!” Why should that slogan be the exclusive property of at the conservatives? Certainly, having been educated in class struggle, we know well that big government has also been an instrument for the redistribution of social wealth and that, under the pressure of working-class struggle, it has served in the fight for equality and democracy. Today, however, those times are over. In imperial postmodernity big government has become merely the despotic means of domination and the totalitarian production of subjectivity. Big government conducts the great orchestra of subjectivities reduced to commodities. And it is consequently the determination of the limits of desire: these are in fact the lines that, in the biopolitical Empire, establish the new division of labor across the global horizon, in the interest of reproducing the power to exploit and subjugate. We, on the contrary, struggle because desire has no limit and (since the desire to exist and at the desire to produce are one and the same thing) […Do you see the circular trap?… we 'desire'… we 'produce'… endlessly… – P.S.] because life can be continuously, freely, and equally enjoyed and reproduced.

 

Some might object that the productive biopolitical universe still requires some form of command over it […Isn't that really sleazy… really shady… really shameless?… implying that 'command' disappears… with their 'New World Order' in place… They're talking about the internalization of discipline… what Bentham told them to do (the 'Panopticon' serves as metaphor…) make us 'self-regulating' and save them the trouble… – P.S.], and that realistically we should aim not at destroying big government but at putting our hands on its controls. We have to put an end to such illusions that have plagued the socialist and communist traditions for so long! (Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, p. 348 - 9, Empire, (2000)

They're talking about the very same things that Wallerstein, Arrighi, and Hopkins are talking about… but from such a place of dishonesty that it's hideous…

 

Between the honest analysis of Giovanni, Immanuel and Terence… and this… there is a world of difference… an abyss…

 

We continue with our honest spokesmen… next week.

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* “WUR of January 18th, 2015… “Embracing Global Goals, Scope and Action: Becoming Global Actors… Claiming the ‘All’”:

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[Please check out the audio for the next ‘non-coercion commercials’ we’re planning. Spoken word for the first one is from our July 14, 2013 radio broadcast. It refers to events a year ago… and still in progress…. To read the full transcript for this show, you can download the pdf for Vol. 1 of: “Reclaiming Our Leadership: Waking Up Radio Conversations”… or visit the page: “To Rebuild Our Freedom (Pt. 2)”…

 

…and spoken word for the second is from last week’s show, January 11, 2015:

 

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“ – but I do want to re-emphasize the point that we have to be helping Egypt right now… which means helping ourselves…. If we can help Egypt forward this discussion of “how do we achieve our freedom when ‘the state’ has been captured by the ‘global economy’?”… which is just another word for ‘power’…. We have to be talking about this all over the globe… because otherwise we’re going to be duped by these pundits who tell us to ‘fix the state’… and that that’s the way… “let’s just start working on the Constitution…” come on…. And so Egypt is accelerating our thought process on this… because… whoa… I mean it’s breathtaking… two revolutions in the space of a couple years…. So… it’s like: “ok… here’s our revolution… we got rid of the dictator… alright, now let’s have this democracy… ok, no… didn’t work… perhaps ‘democracy’ is a con… hmm….” And so then they went ahead and called the question, right? “We don’t want repackaged tyranny… we want democracy…” and so now… they got nothing else left to give the Egyptian people but… ‘divide-and-conquer’: “Oh well, see, ‘tribalism’ is rearing its ugly head… that’s because, well, we turn against each other because of… blah, blah, blah…. Or… because the world economy is in such a dilapidated state… there’s scarce resources, so we gotta fight each other… blah, blah, blah…” So… this is not Egypt’s problem, this is the problem for global humanity… to see through this con ‘nation-state’… or… what I’m arguing is… because they’ve claimed the lexicon, we’ve got to start developing earth-terms… that cannot be co-opted… and undermined that way… that we cannot let them tell us that ‘leisure’ is ‘having free time’… we cannot let them tell us that ‘freedom’ is anything but ‘freedom from scarcity’… having the possession of our own bodies… being able to do what we want when we wake up in the morning… every single one of us…. We have the means. The earth is extremely generous.”

 

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“Am I being clear enough about the connections between ‘power’ hiding… their employing propaganda – layered hierarchical propaganda to correspond to the various ranks of us they’ve created – propaganda to help them hide… and stay hidden – and what we on the Left have been accustomed to call ‘the class struggle’…? Is Shakespeare right when he says, “all difficulties are but easy… when they are known…”? If so… we don’t yet know… our opponent…”

 

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“Pharaoh’s army… drowned in the Red Sea… Oh Mary don’t you weep… tell Martha not to moan…” The themes of today’s show are “seeing hidden ‘power’”… and seeing how they manipulate us – essentially with propaganda – with the means of transmission being media and / or agents… Last week we asked… is ‘the Left’ brave enough to face some facts: We are subjects not of ‘states’… but of an ‘inter-state system… e are prevented from seeing this by being encouraged to chase the red herring: “money is the culprit!”…

 

The themes of today’s show are “seeing hidden ‘power’”… and seeing how they manipulate us – essentially with propaganda – with the means of transmission being media and / or agents…

 

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January 12, 2015… Sisters and Brothers: Last week we asked… is ‘the Left’ brave enough to face some facts:

 

• We are subjects not of ‘states’… but of an ‘inter-state system’…

 

• We are prevented from seeing this by being encouraged to chase the red herring: “money is the culprit!”…

 

We believe this key ‘power’-propaganda because ‘power’ has a propaganda-machine that can churn out propaganda endlessly…. ‘Power’ is constantly… continuously… manipulating us by inserting its propaganda within key ideological frames… which they can only do effectively if they know how those frames influence us – we’ll be discussing Bentham next week… who made all this his particular ‘business’ – the primary things being (under ‘class’… particularly once its established… which it has been for thousands of years… and certainly in the times of Jesus of Nazareth… and you'll be able to see that… hear that… when we quote from some Biblical text… of language… words… speeches… attributed to him…) – and there’s a lot of overlap because they all must tap into our hearts… so these three major groups of ideological influence that ‘power’ focuses on are: authoritarian / familial / paternalistic / patriotic ideology (and all the ideologies of ‘rule’ fall into this category…); ‘scientific’ / ‘intellectual’ / ‘higher learning’ ideology; and religious ideology.

 

• We believe this key ‘power’-propaganda because ‘power’ has a propaganda-machine that can churn out propaganda endlessly…. ‘Power’ is constantly… continuously… manipulating us by inserting its propaganda within key ideological frames… which they can only do effectively if they know how those frames influence us – we’ll be discussing Bentham next week… who made all this his particular ‘business’ – the primary things being (under ‘class’… particularly once its established… which it has been for thousands of years… and certainly in the times of Jesus of Nazareth… and you'll be able to see that… hear that… when we quote from some Biblical text… of language… words… speeches… attributed to him…) – and there’s a lot of overlap because they all must tap into our hearts… so these three major groups of ideological influence that ‘power’ focuses on are: authoritarian / familial / paternalistic / patriotic ideology (and all the ideologies of ‘rule’ fall into this category…); ‘scientific’ / ‘intellectual’ / ‘higher learning’ ideology; and religious ideology. Here’s an illustration of what I mean by: “how ‘power’ manipulates us by knowing what influences us… and then inserting a story… or inserting the propaganda… within those ideological frames…:

Some background: ‘Egypt’… the wordbeat above particularly… sent me on a thought-jaunt… a ramble… a rove… down courses of thoughts… that opened wider when I heard the interview [discussed next week…] with a man who used as a metaphor an actual historical occurrence from Ancient Egypt… in which it's speculated that the origin of 'rule' (in some respects…) can… in a sense… be traced back to the elevation of a few within a clan to the status of 'priest'… and that 'priests' became a caste… which then creates a caste system… because once you have separated out a few as possessing greater knowledge… that immediately creates hierarchy…

 

So… the situation was: the regular flooding of the Nile became noticed… obviously… circumstances that predicted the coming of the regular flood… likewise… – that situation was used to create a disparity in knowledge that led to a few being elevated as 'special': a 'ruler' as 'predictors' of events that were critical for the survival of the group… Anyway… I heard an interview with a man who used that as metaphor… and it sent me… along with my wordbeat… down this 'thought-jaunt'…

 

So… the situation was: the regular flooding of the Nile became noticed… obviously… circumstances that predicted the coming of the regular flood… likewise… – that situation was used to create a disparity in knowledge that led to a few being elevated as 'special': a 'ruler' as 'predictors' of events that were critical for the survival of the group… Anyway… I heard an interview with a man who used that as metaphor… and it sent me… along with my wordbeat… down this 'thought-jaunt'…

 

…and these courses opened wider still on Martin Luther King’s birthday when I luckily allowed myself some jazz to escape the media-analysis… and though I didn’t know… I should have… that jazz-DJ nonpareil… non-parallel… non-peer… Alisa Clancy on FM 91.1 KCSM… “the jazz station”… had put together an amazing tribute. It was playing very low when I thought I heard (speaking of nonpareil…) Aretha’s peerless tone. She was singing this: “Pharaoh’s army… drowned in the Red Sea… Oh Mary don’t you weep… tell Martha not to moan…” and… later that morning… I thought… let’s just read the original… so I searched out the Bible my mother gave me… the one with the zipper… and tried… unsuccessfully… to find… the full story… (you non-Trogs out there I’m sure would have just Googled it… but I held out… an easy thing to do as only my son is granted access to the Internet at our house…) I was especially interested in the ‘Red Sea-drowning’ part – didn’t find it.

 

Point being… I found myself exploring… after an hiatus of several decades… a few New Testament chapters that I must have read once… but not for a long time…

 

…it is Jesus speaking. It is powerful speech – these New Testament speeches to his disciples (“…and the time draweth near…) – If the goal is ‘freedom’… and I'm going to be arguing that that has been the goal… since 'class' first came to sit on our souls… and that all the great religions… are a massive response to that vile burden we all are forced to bear… called 'class'… and that all the great religions… before they got taken over by 'power'… resonated with us because of that… because they acknowledge that what we are experiencing is wrong. And it is precisely because of their power – the power of their essential message – that 'power' had to take them over… and use them… as Bentham said… to control… both the thoughts in our head and how they get expressed in our actions.

 

Point being… I found myself exploring… after an hiatus of several decades… a few New Testament chapters that I must have read once (some paragraphs are underlined…) probably during one of my ‘lost’ summers… when I was forced to attend ‘Bible School’ with the brother closest to me in age… (we were too small to be bitter about it but we sure weren’t pleased …) The words that follow – from “The Gospel According to St. Luke”… end of Chapter 20 and towards the beginning of Chapter 21 – are printed in ‘red’… signifying that it is Jesus speaking. It is powerful speech – these New Testament speeches to his disciples – and I can well understand why some would be drawn to the pulpit to speak them:

“Beware of the scribes, which desire to walk in long robes, and love greetings in the markets, and the highest seats in the synagogues, and the chief rooms at feasts;

 

Which devour widows’ houses and for a shew [show] make long prayers: the same shall receive greater damnation….

 

…Take heed that ye be not deceived: for many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and the time draweth near: go ye not therefore after them.

 

But when ye shall hear of wars and commotions, be not terrified: for these things must first come to pass; but the end is not by and by.

 

Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:

 

And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.

 

But before all these, they shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues, and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers for my name’s sake.

 

And it shall turn to you for a testimony.

 

Settle it therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before what ye shall answer:

 

For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist.

 

And ye shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinsfolks, and friends; and some of you shall they cause to be put to death.

 

And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake.

 

But there shall not an hair of your head perish.

 

In your patience possess ye your souls.

 

And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh.

 

Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereto.

 

For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled….

 

And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;

 

Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

 

And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

 

And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.”

We’ve often said in this space that we must work backwards from the goal… to achieve it.

 

If the goal is ‘freedom’… and I'm going to be arguing that that has been the goal… since 'class' first came to sit on our souls… and that all the great religions… are a massive response to that inhibition called 'class'… that injustice called 'class'… that vile burden we all are forced to bear… called 'class'… and that all the great religions… before they got taken over by 'power'… resonated with us because of that… because they acknowledge that what we are experiencing is wrong. And it is precisely because of their power – the power of their essential message – that 'power' had to take them over… and use them… as Bentham said… to control… both the thoughts in our head (and how we interpret the thoughts in our head…) and how they get expressed in our actions.

 

If the goal is ‘freedom’… which we define here as “force out of our lives… ‘power’ ended…” just that simple – we never hear it spoken.… (…the fact that we never hear the deep reality of our lives talked about publicly – that coercion and hierarchy are its basis; that ‘rank’ divides us; that our children pay a high price for our absence as we bend to the imperative to survive – that we never hear it discussed is crazy-making…) I believe… un-manipulated by ‘power’… and with free and broad and open discussions… and listening to our Grandmother (Earth)’s voice… there will come clarity… rapidly… that we do indeed want ‘force’ out of our lives… ‘power’ / ‘rule’ / ‘class’… ended: ‘freedom from necessity’… manufactured or contingent…

 

If the goal is ‘freedom’… which we define here as “force out of our lives… ‘power’ ended…” just that simple – we never hear it spoken. So please bear with me if I can't always restore my playlist here at the station to its original structure. Folks mess with it. I appreciate your patience.

(…the fact that we never hear the deep reality of our lives talked about publicly – that coercion and hierarchy are its basis; that ‘rank’ divides us; that our children pay a high price for our absence as we bend to the imperative to survive – that we never hear it discussed is crazy-making… truly… to have what our bodies tell us is true never spoken… is wrong… and to see that passed on to the children is enraging…. We have to begin these conversations with each other and find some means to make them broad and public… so we can have our public discourse catch up to the oppressive circumstances of our lives…)

So the first question to be asked to test a tactic for its usefulness in furthering the achievement of our goal is: “Does it help us break down atomization?” And as the hold of ‘atomization’ can only be broken by our reaching out to each other… the next question to be asked to test a tactic for its usefulness in furthering the achievement of our goal is: “Is it about ‘reaching-out’?”… and… keeping our eye on the prize… we must add… “Is it about ‘reaching-out’ with our key precepts of ‘freedom’: “that ‘power’ controls us by means of atomization… and by teaching us to use coercion… and to renounce our natural empathy for each other and connection to the earth… and particularly with the earth that is our children….” How is it that we cannot see the damage done to them… when we accept ‘power’s terms for our existence… and so have no time for them? How is it that we cannot see the ‘everyday commonplace injury’ done to our children…

 

If the goal is ‘freedom’… which we define here as “force out of our lives… ‘power’ ended…” we’ve not yet had broad public discussions to determine what we-the-people mean by ‘freedom’ – we’ve not even had broad public discussions on what we mean by ‘we’… if there is a ‘we’… do we want a ‘we’… and if so… what kind of ‘we’…

they systematically are eroding our numbers when they erode the integrity of our children's souls (and ours) this explains the systematic attack on the indigenous on wholeness

I believe… un-manipulated by ‘power’… and with free and broad and open discussions… and listening to our Grandmother (Earth)’s voice… there will come clarity… rapidly… that we do indeed want ‘force’ out of our lives… ‘power’ / ‘rule’ / ‘class’… ended: ‘freedom from necessity’… manufactured or contingent…

 

…and as ‘power’ owns or controls – so long as we accept its definitions – all the resources of the planet… the only way to break that hold of force… is force of numbers… i.e…. overcoming ‘power’s quite obvious strategy of atomization…

 

So the first question to be asked to test a tactic for its usefulness in furthering the achievement of our goal is: “Does it help us break down atomization?” And as the hold of ‘atomization’ can only be broken by our reaching out to each other… the next question to be asked to test a tactic for its usefulness in furthering the achievement of our goal is: “Is it about ‘reaching-out’?”… and… keeping our eye on the prize… we must add… “Is it about ‘reaching-out’ with our key precepts of ‘freedom’: “that ‘power’ controls us by means of atomization… and by teaching us to use coercion… and to renounce our natural empathy for each other and connection to the earth… and particularly with the earth that is our children….” How is it that we cannot see the damage done to them… when we accept ‘power’s terms for our existence… and so have no time for them? How is it that we cannot see the ‘everyday commonplace injury’ done to our children… in the absence of our appreciation of them… our cuddling… singing… and playing… with them? I have seen children… unable yet to crawl… who cannot smile… who seem to exist across a vast Abyss of sadness. This is damage… the scope of which… pales the maliciousness of agents ‘power’ pays – whether open or clandestine – to insignificance. And yet we do not ‘see’ it. And these are children lost to ‘fellow-feeling’… lost to our movement to establish the reign of ‘Good Fellowship… and Attention-Giving… and Reverence’ in the world… and the end of ‘rule’. I hear folks on the Left talk of ‘strategy’… and yet… they will not build our numbers… the only strategy that wins for us our freedom.

 

And the more atomization – which is reinforced with every baby left to cry unheeded… sit unlooked-at… in such depression they cannot think of ‘playing’… in the fog of pain – the more ‘atomization’ is ignored by us… the more vulnerable we are to ‘power’s manipulation… because we so long for our greatness to be seen.

 

Think again on those words of Jesus: “Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven…” Doesn’t it seem to ‘explain’ what we see around us today? Would it not seem to convey to its Believers a ‘secret’ knowledge of which they are in possession… Now why would that mean "lost empathy"? …and as an aside… have we discussed why it is we are so drawn to the notion of… needing to believe in the notion of… our 'specialness'… of our seeming to possess secret 'knowledge' that no one else has. We see it across ideology…. It's part of how they keep us atomized – by reinforcing those 'secret knowledges' within each caste… within each 'class': “Yes… we are the chosen people… Yes… you're right our position is different from that of all others…”. 'Power' will elevate those folks who will say that about their particular tribe… every time. You can always get paid to do 'Division work'…

 

Think again on those words of Jesus: “Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven…”

 

Doesn’t it seem to ‘explain’ what we see around us today? Would it not seem to convey to its Believers a ‘secret’ knowledge of which they are in possession…

…and as an aside… have we discussed why it is we are so drawn to the notion of… needing to believe in the notion of… our 'specialness'… of our seeming to possess secret 'knowledge' that no one else has. We see it across ideology…. It's part of how they keep us atomized – by reinforcing those 'secret knowledges' within each caste… within each 'class': “Yes… we are the chosen people… Yes… you're right our position is different from that of all others…”. 'Power' will elevate those folks who will say that about their particular tribe… every time. You can always get paid to do 'Division work'. Always.

Doesn’t it seem to ‘explain’ what we see around us today? Would it not seem to convey to its Believers a ‘secret’ knowledge of which they are in possession… but not the ‘nons’… who live in fog around them? And does not ‘power’ possess the will… the motive… and the means – they have the technology… they have pockets so deep the bottom will never be reached (we'll get free first) – to cause these things? They have the technology… they have the means… – so the only question is… have they the will… and the motive? I'll leave that to your own pursuit of truth to discover… in your own way. I've formed my conclusions. And if so… if they have the will… and the motive… and have in fact used their ability to stimulate these things… would that not mean a vast vast many more of us lost to Empathy for each other?

…Now why would that mean "lost empathy" The words that we (will) read from Jesus seem to suggest that the ultimate in 'empathy' is to not distinguish between oneself and one's neighbor… and yet… when that precept is followed by prediction of inevitable collapse (as we discussed last week…) what does that produce if not lethargy… of a sort…. Because you possess that 'secret knowledge'… and you know… if others don't… that the end draws nigh… and that you must bear your suffering with patience… – do you see the effect… across the political spectrum… of pacifying a great many folk?…creating a kind of a somnolence out there… of folk waiting for the end to come… rather than intervening to stop this abomination… that we would not endure for a moment if we listened to the earth…

 

…after which… when we discuss it… our ears start to hear again…

Our nature is to learn from each other: movement… flow… synthesis – and yet we are being put in tighter and tighter-fitting boxes… with higher and higher walls between us… ‘Power’… far from installing ‘Perfection’… is attempting to install as permanent its reign of Death. We have been vesting our power in others: in ‘power’ that we imagine (as we are taught this ideology…) provides for us via ‘the economy’ or ‘market’… and ‘the state’… and we vest our power in those who speak for us… who see our suffering (“under ‘class’”… always must this be the coda – though it is never spoken… though it is made the background to our lives… it is nonetheless utterly false… and against our nature… to turn our backs on each other… as it requires of us…) – …so when folks see us… – because as children we don't get seen – and never more so than right now… because it is a progressive process of installation of their regime… never more so than right now our children are abandoned by us… are not seen by us… – if you doubt this… please… go to a park where small children play… and conduct a little 'experiment': start noticing children… and the complex set of responses it elicits…. Our children are not seen… and yet… we don't talk about that either…

 

Our nature is to learn from each other: movement… flow… synthesis – and yet we are being put in tighter and tighter-fitting boxes… with higher and higher walls between us… which… if ‘power’ succeeds in implementing its ‘vision’… would mean the end of authentic life and creativity… which cannot be leashed, corralled, and hoarded.

 

‘Power’… far from installing ‘Perfection’… is attempting to install as permanent its reign of Death. We have been vesting our power in others: in ‘power’ that we imagine (as we are taught this ideology…) provides for us via ‘the economy’ or ‘market’… and ‘the state’…

 

…and we vest our power in those who speak for us… who see our suffering (“under ‘class’”… always must this be the coda – though it is never spoken… though it is made the background to our lives… it is nonetheless utterly false… and against our nature… to turn our backs on each other… as it requires of us…) – we have (over the history of ‘class’…) tended to vest our own power in those who see our suffering…

(…and more so today than ever perhaps… because we have never been more invisible… which is what the reign of 'the market'… what folks can 'capitalism' accomplished for 'power' – it got us to alienate our own children… in order to survive… and they're doing this to the remaining Brothers and Sisters across the globe who still feel reverence for the earth… who still have the ability to feed themselves… apart from that global market. 'Power' will never stop till it has eradicated all hint of self-sufficiency… and installed utter dependence on them… literally… to exist…

 

…so when folks see us… – because as children we don't get seen – and never more so than right now… because it is a progressive process of installation of their regime… never more so than right now our children are abandoned by us… are not seen by us… – if you doubt this… please… go to a park where small children play… and conduct a little 'experiment': start noticing children… and the complex set of responses it elicits…. Our children are not seen… and yet… we don't talk about that either… It's as if… we are already… the walking dead…)

We have (over the history of ‘class’…) tended to vest our own power in those who acknowledge… name… our suffering… and try to alleviate it… and show how it will be exposed… and how we will escape it… by acknowledging true wealth: it is the theme when Jesus speaks: “Consider the ravens; for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?” [This comes to all of us: Why are the birds more free than we? I mean… truly… these thoughts from thousands of years ago… we're still thinking? We have this technology for a reason. Our Brothers and Sisters who developed it… developed it for us… not to seal us in our tombs… – P.S.] “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid…. Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” [Truth is spoke! – P.S.] “For a nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.” [Hear those words please… you global-state-statesmen… I think they're almost ready to come to pass… I think so… – P.S.] “Whereunto then shall I liken the men of this generation? And to what are they like? They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept.” [Abandoned children… that's the heart of this dilemma we're in… – P.S.]

 

So these ideologies… these religious ideologies… to which we gravitate… because the words are so powerful… because they say “someone does see you… you are not alone… we see that you suffer… and we care… when no one else does…” ‘power’ knows how powerful those words are… and makes sure it owns those who say them. It's that simple. This is speech that we need because we've been made invisible by a system that treats us like we're cogs in a machine… and so those who see our suffering… who show it… as such… who don't mince words about it… and then try to alleviate it… and show how it will be exposed… as such – exposed… that's key… because of the silence… the general installed silence: the outrage of that!… we long to see that corruption exposed. And then… finally… to show how we will escape it… by acknowledging true wealth: that's the 'escape' the great religions have offered – by your achievement of true wealth – your understanding that what 'the system' dangles in front of you… is false… and that that's… that's the only 'freedom' allowed… within that frame that accepts the reality of ‘class’…

 

…and we vest our power in those who speak for us… who see our suffering (“under ‘class’”… always must this be the coda – though it is never spoken… though it is made the background to our lives… it is nonetheless utterly false… and against our nature… to turn our backs on each other… as it requires us to do…) – we have (over the history of ‘class’…) tended to vest our own power in those who acknowledge… name… our suffering… and try to alleviate it… and show how it will be exposed… and how we will escape it… by acknowledging true wealth: it is the theme when Jesus speaks:

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (St. Mark 9, 36 – 37; St. Matthew 17, 26) (St. Luke 14, 11)

 

“For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” (St. Luke 14, 11)

 

““And as ye would that men should do to you, do you also to them likewise.” (St. Luke 6, 31)

 

“For where you treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (St. Luke 12, 34)

 

“A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.” (St. Matthew 12, 35)

 

“Consider the ravens; for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?” [This comes to all of us: Why are the birds more free than we? I mean… truly… these thoughts from thousands of years ago… we're still thinking? We have this technology for a reason. Our Brothers and Sisters who developed it… developed it for us… not to seal us in our tombs… – P.S.] (St. Luke 12, 24)

 

“Blessed are the poor in spirit; for their’s is the kingdom of heaven;… Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy…. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God…. Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid…. Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” [Truth is spoke! – P.S.] (St. Matthew 5, 3 – 17)

 

“For a nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.” (St. Luke 8, 17) “For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.” [Hear those words please… you global-state-statesmen… I think they're almost ready to come to pass… I think so… – P.S.] (St. Luke 12, 2)

 

“Whereunto then shall I liken the men of this generation? And to what are they like? They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept.” [Abandoned children… that's the heart of this dilemma we're in… – P.S.] (St. Luke 7, 31-2)

If ‘power’ works behind scenes how do we ‘see’ them… if not by their effects: increasing atomization… and ever-widening income-gaps… and… our separation from our own power is how we see them… along with our being progressively boxed… and dispirited by increasing Division… and by the systematic global assault on our earth connection… both in communal traditions and land possession… (Land possession is key to freedom… and I'm not talking 'legal sense'… I'm talking "When we're in our freedom… the social-arrangement we have created"-sense…) So these trends… don’t we see them everywhere? Is not the pattern clear?… the constant pressure to force all of us into utter dependence… to make our common earth resources totally private… ensure none of us can escape ‘necessity’… while boxing us into ‘neat’ categories… with high walls… across which we do not speak… except to snipe and blame… and scrabble with each other for a larger share… of goods made artificially scarce… And of course this is the crux… our refusal to ‘see’ abundance… (in us… Because we have been trained by them… everywhere we look we see… nothing but ‘scarcity’ (and I mean this particularly in how we see each other… that's the point. If we trusted each other… done!… we could do this today…. Truly… that's what the technology means… – if we trusted each other… and made this more important than anything else… if not for our own sake (and it should be for our own sake… if we can't love ourselves… how can we love anything?) Our doubts are traitors… our inability to trust… stalls us — to trust that our Sisters and Brothers… once we start… once we are rolling… will back us. Because this is what we want. It's that simple. But we have to 'see' it… it has to be spoken.

 

(And when will we hear the left say that?… that abandoned children are at the heart of this dilemma we're in…)

 

• ‘Power’ plans… they have a vision… they act clandestine… they must stay hidden…

 

…and how ’bout this one:

 

• We are tribal… we are wired to trust… we want a world in which our earth-gifts are not used against us…

 

If ‘power’ works behind scenes how do we ‘see’ them… if not by their effects: increasing atomization… and ever-widening income-gaps… and…

 

…our separation from our own power is how we see them… along with our being progressively boxed… and dispirited by increasing Division… and by the systematic global assault on our earth connection… both in communal traditions and land possession…

 

(Land possession is key to freedom… and I'm not talking 'legal sense'… I'm talking "When we're in our freedom… the social-arrangement we have created"-sense…)

 

So these trends… don’t we see them everywhere? Is not the pattern clear?… the constant pressure to force all of us into utter dependence… to make our common earth resources totally private… ensure none of us can escape ‘necessity’… while boxing us into ‘neat’ categories… with high walls… across which we do not speak… except to snipe and blame… and scrabble with each other for a larger share… of goods made artificially scarce.

 

And of course this is the crux… our refusal to ‘see’ abundance… (in us…)

 

…because we have been trained by them…

 

…everywhere we look we see…

 

…nothing but ‘scarcity’ (and I mean this particularly in how we see each other… that's the point. If we trusted each other… done!… we could do this today…. Truly… that's what the technology means… – if we trusted each other… and made this more important than anything else… if not for our own sake (and it should be for our own sake… if we can't love ourselves… how can we love anything?)

 

Our doubts are traitors… our inability to trust… stalls us — to trust that our Sisters and Brothers… once we start… once we are rolling… will back us. Because this is what we want. It's that simple. And… given just a hint of it… we'll take the next steps…. But we have to 'see' it… it has to be spoken.

 

We’ll continue this discussion next week.

 

[The January 25, 2015 follows immediately below. By some means, sections of the html code is being over-written or suppressed. It does not show to viewers of the page.]

 

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* “WUR of January 25th, 2015… “Embracing Global Goals, Scope and Action: Becoming Global Actors… Claiming the ‘All’”:

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[Please check out the audio for the next ‘non-coercion commercials’ we’re planning. Spoken word for the first one is from our February 24, 2013 radio broadcast…

 

…spoken word for the second is from November 11, 2012…

 

…spoken word for the third is from October 13, 2013…

 

…and spoken word for the fourth is from July 14, 2013:

 

* “WUR of January 25th, 2015… “Embracing Global Goals, Scope and Action: Becoming Global Actors… Claiming the ‘All’”:

 

“And then the issue of ‘drones’ arose… – oh… and by the way… I really believe it is time… long past time… for us to get this phony sense of 'indignation' out of the Left discourse. 'Phony'… because the Left 'Intellect' pretends to be above… and not manifesting… 'the system'…. All of us manifest 'the system' – and we're not going to get to our future freedom by not recognizing… seeing… how it manifests in us… how it reproduces itself in our own participation in it. Until we make these things conscious… and join with our Brothers and Sisters… and stop pretending that while we are ready… the problem is those other unconscious folks who are not… – then we are in fact going to keep spinning our wheels… playing 'power's game… which serves some pundits, I believe, consciously and unconsciously. And then they turned (this was Election Night coverage…) to this issue of ‘drones’… and the way [this pundit] attacked Barack was so virulent… it struck me as extremely self-righteous indignation… and whenever I hear this indignation expressed about the overt and covert violence of nation-states… and of the United States perhaps in particular… I think, “Excuse me… but… what does he think this president is the president of? The Republic for World Peace?” What does this pundit imagine to be the goal of the U.S. state in an international state-system? Whenever I hear all this false outrage of the Left punditry I think of Diane Keaton and Al Pacino walking that road… trailed by the limo… Al essentially saying: “…this is what all nation-states do in their battle for 'supremacy' (“anyhow never second best…”) while Diane sputters her indignation…” [Spoken word is from our November 11, 2012 radio broadcast.]

 

[Now what does Henry propose we-the-people do?…] “The second challenge is to organize a global alliance around this issue. This is more difficult, although steps are already being taken. Global organizations like Tax Justice International, Oxfam GB, Friends of the Earth, Global Witness and Christian Aid are converging on a new global campaign around the issue of havens and offshore tax evasion. They've been enlisting support for this effort from countries like Norway, Chile, Brazil, Spain and France, organizations like the UNDP, the World Bank and even the International Monetary Fund.… This is very exciting…” [Perhaps he should temper his excitement a bit… because… as we’ve been discussing with issues of re-defining ‘work’ and defining ‘happiness’… when ‘power’ is afraid of something… they ‘leap-frog’ jump to the front of it… and try to direct it… That’s a key tactic of control. Get to the front and lead them where you want them to go. And… again… having those resources is very seductive… everybody wants to see their power expanded… so it’s easy to lie to ourselves about it…] [Spoken word is from our October 13, 2013 radio broadcast.]

 

“And even though so many ancestors saw through the cons… and left their precious help… not a one could overcome the structure of class itself…. We have to change the infrastructure… and… never doubt… we all want this… good fellowship… heart… which… if we develop the stances and the practices we need… trumps heartless ‘division’… brings… the upstart Spring. And therein lies the key to a successful strategy when we find false minds are crawling through our movement.… I believe that allegiance to our values can inoculate us from the poisonous bite of agent provocateurs… Last week we said that the structures of class are designed to keep us contained… and that inserting good people in them cannot change them… but there is a second part to that question… which is that the real action of ‘statesmen’ happens behind scenes… and that the forefront is theater… and a third part… which is that the ‘imperialism of rationalism’ erects interior structures in us all.…” [Spoken word is from our July 14, 2013 radio broadcast.]

 

D-Way: “You had some propaganda props before we get started?” The Raven: “Just one. I caught a snippet of a documentary over the airwaves this week… it was on the insidiousness of racism… and I heard someone say, “…if I want my child to have a good education, I have to, unintentionally, reinforce power disparities and racial divisions….” But what is a 'good education?… In an earlier show we were discussing how hard it is for a young person to challenge conventional thinking… or to go against the crowd…. We said that part of the reason is that they're fresh from an educational system which is set up to convince young people to accept a lifetime of jumping through hoops… which is essentially a lifetime of following instructions and obeying authority at all levels… as Bentham pointed out…. We have a system designed to make us serve the few… while training us to think we serve the many – the 'greater good' – and we have to redesign education… as we free ourselves. We're going to have to design an education that reinforces the key values of the future we want: generalized human freedom.” [Spoken word is from our February 24, 2013 radio broadcast.]

 

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What does it mean to be ‘strategic’ – as I heard this from multiple ‘Black Lives Matters’ representatives: that what they do comes from that place… that awareness. But seeing ‘the state’ accurately is key to our developing a successful strategy – which means: those mental and physical spaces… which can harbor dismissed (from the airwaves) conversations… must become a priority… And repeatedly this week I heard references to the omnipresence of agents… now and historically… clogging the arteries of dissent… here in the U.S…. for instance: there was a pundit who’s written a book about Martin Luther King who mentioned in passing (almost as if it was too obvious to be discussed…) that two folks on his staff were FBI agents… another with a book about Billie Holliday and what she had to endure from FBI harassment (and you know if they were on Billie’s ass… they were on Aretha’s… and Janis’… and Jimi’s… and… it’s a long list… free-folk-shining challenges 'power' – those who tap into the root – they want all creativity on leash… so they can claim to be… its generator and patron – just don't fit with their picture of the Republic… they want every single one of us… utterly dependent…

 

Sisters and Brothers: From Day One… since writing Waking Up… there has been harassment… but each day it grows more intense… and this is also true for the ways in which the website is messed with. FYI: upcoming shows will be posted to the page "Embracing Global Goals" for some time yet - so if the links to the shows (listed by date) don't work… please scroll down from the most recent show-link that does and look for it. Thank you as always for listening… and for your patience.

 

Today’s show considers the possibility… that it is not disparity in material wealth that is ‘power’s greatest motive… but rather disparity in knowledge… for… the pursuit of truth… of which it is the token… can lead to wisdom… and wisdom cannot be bought… sold… or bartered…. But what they imagine they hoard and aggregate is not ‘knowledge’ – because true knowledge can’t be bought… sold… or bartered… and certainly not hoarded – but its absence.

 

Three other themes of our show today: what does it mean to be ‘strategic’ – as I heard this from multiple ‘Black Lives Matters’ representatives: that what they do comes from that place… that awareness. But seeing ‘the state’ accurately is key to our developing a successful strategy – which means: those mental and physical spaces… which can harbor dismissed (from the airwaves) conversations… must become a priority –

 

…for if we are subjects of a global inter-state system… seeing this exposes the claim (that I heard this week…) as false… that “we cannot fight imperialism abroad without fighting its expression – state-sanctioned violence – here in the U.S. first.” And once that discussion finds a public forum… our organization can advance.

 

And: “What is Martin Luther King’s ‘radical legacy’?

 

And lastly: “Getting to know our opponent… so that… we can get global-‘power’ off our backs…”

 

And the thread that ties these themes together is the question: Which comes first… in our evolution to freedom… seeing ourselves accurately… or seeing ‘the state’ accurately? Because the ruthlessness of states requires as its flip-side and complement… our diminishment… our disconnection from our power… which means: disconnection from ourselves (the ancestors)… the earth… and each other.

 

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January 22, 2015… Repeatedly over the airwaves this week… I heard folks say that ‘we’… here in the U.S…. have “freedom of speech”… and I think, “Sure… so long as you don’t mind becoming a target… and running daily gauntlets (that increase over time…) while enduring invisible bombardments… risking peace of mind… health… and life…”

 

…and repeatedly this week I heard references to the omnipresence of agents… now and historically… clogging the arteries of dissent… here in the U.S…. for instance: there was a pundit who’s written a book about Martin Luther King who mentioned in passing (almost as if it was too obvious to be discussed…) that two folks on his staff were FBI agents… another with a book about Billie Holliday and what she had to endure from FBI harassment (and you know if they were on Billie’s ass… they were on Aretha’s… and Janis’… and Jimi’s… and… it’s a long list. That they are doing this to me… reveals the tactic to my satisfaction… and… it does "change everything" in how you see it when folks drop out… or get ill… or lose their lives 'naturally'… if they were righteous folk… challenging 'power'… which means all strokes… congested hearts and cancers… are suspicious… if these are righteous folk… challenging 'power'… which simply means: free-folk-shining. Free-folk-shining challenges 'power' – those who tap into the root… our own power… – these 'power'-guys… these global-state-statesmen… they want all creativity on leash… so they can claim to be… its generator and patron – just don't fit with their picture of the Republic… they want every single one of us… utterly dependent…)

 

Oh… and then there’s ‘the news’ that the state is using radar (which means radio wave – microwave – energy…) to probe – see into – folks homes unbeknownst – and these discussions of state ‘intrusion’… by their bland tone and acceptance… seem not to see… that this means… that… at the very least… subjects of states don’t have ‘freedom of speech’. (Listening to what was playing as I came in this morning… I heard this being said: “…France… which is a surveillance state…” and I thought… ‘state’… by definition means… in this day… with an inter-state system… ‘surveillance state’… – all states are ‘surveillance states’… that's what they're set up to do.)

 

…another book from yet another pundit on the ‘national security state’ acknowledged that “no, this isn’t a democracy…” – as if… “ho-hum-so-what?” – oh… and then there’s ‘the news’ that the state is using radar (which means radio wave – microwave – energy…) to probe – see into – folks homes unbeknownst – and these discussions of state ‘intrusion’… by their bland tone and acceptance… seem not to see… that this means… that… at the very least… subjects of states don’t have ‘freedom of speech’.

(Listening to what was playing as I came in this morning… I heard this being said: “…France… which is a surveillance state…” and I thought… ‘state’… by definition means… in this day… with an inter-state system… ‘surveillance state’… – all states are ‘surveillance states’… that's what they're set up to do.)

So we don’t have ‘freedom of speech’…

 

…at some point… can it be discussed… that honesty compels this acknowledgement?

 

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A very powerful man… But with one line I took issue. He said this… or close to it: “If there isn’t a cause a man is willing to die for, he’s not fit to live.” I think there’s a different way to look at it: If there isn’t a cause a man (or woman) is willing to live for… then he (or she) will languish in soul-death… or soul-abandonment.… I found my meaning in the words: “We are here to synthesize and advance our ancestors’ gifts… who longed for human freedom… and to be part of its realization.” This… I believe… is the true way to honor their legacy. And in the case of King: to honor him would mean… carrying forward his reasoning to the place it was seeking… the vantage high… that sees the globe. When folks marvel all amazed at his alleged ‘prescience’… as they did this week… and as they do every year on King’s birthday… that his words of fifty years ago are still relevant (and I suppose, then, the continued relevance of Du Bois’s… and Kropotkin’s… of a hundred years ago… they’d find even more impressive – but why stop there? Why not go back to Antiphon in Ancient Greece… an early advocate for our freedom… or perhaps we should be amazed at how ‘prescient’ Xenophon could be in ‘anticipating’ Bentham?)

 

Brothers and Sisters: As part of the Martin Luther King remembrance broadcasts… a speech of his… given to what seemed a Hall of privileged Brits… a speech that had for some reason disappeared… was found and aired.

 

His voice in that charged house made me think of that line of Emily’s: “positive as sound”. He was assertive to a fault…. His words broke crystalline over that crowd… as if he cared not whether they were cut.

 

A very powerful man.

 

But with one line I took issue. He said this… or close to it: “If there isn’t a cause a man is willing to die for, he’s not fit to live.”

 

I think there’s a different way to look at it: If there isn’t a cause a man (or woman) is willing to live for… then he (or she) will languish in soul-death… or soul-abandonment.

 

We move so fast under ‘class’… to stay one step ahead of that Frankenstein-Made-Monster… that Created-Beast Necessity… taking ever more bites out of our ass… We move so fast… to ‘prove’ we’re good enough to live…

 

…or… as Orwell said… we’re so busy sucking what we’re told is jam we fail to notice we’re technically dead.

 

When I couldn’t ‘stick’ to a job I mourned… I feared the worst… I comforted myself with escapist Fillers-of-the-Time – my life adrift from its mooring that the ancestors had made for it – and then… after… I’d put on those clothes that never fit… and went back out into the Wilderness-of-Mindless-Competition… first one job interview… then the next…

 

Once… going home from one such… climbing into a seat on the bus … I happened to see my face looking back at me from an overhead mirror at the front… and in shock I saw a skull – a hollowed-eyed mask of death. It shook me… yes, it did… because instinctively I saw: the glimpse into the mirror showed me true. I wasn’t living… whatever you may call the practice I call ‘hoop-jumping’ it’s not living.

 

Though I saw it as a sign… the ‘seeing’ stood for act for some time after that… till I could find a path.

 

I groped… I let my body find its way… one step led to the next… and to the next… until I found the further insight that ‘uncoupled’ from our fellows-of-the-life… we are nothing but a seeking and a groping-back to them…

 

…I found my meaning in the words: “We are here to synthesize and advance our ancestors’ gifts… who longed for human freedom… and to be part of its realization.” This… I believe… is the true way to honor their legacy.

 

And in the case of King: to honor him would mean… carrying forward his reasoning to the place it was seeking… the vantage high… that sees the globe.

 

When folks marvel all amazed at his alleged ‘prescience’… as they did this week… and as they do every year on King’s birthday… that his words of fifty years ago are still relevant (and I suppose, then, the continued relevance of Du Bois’s… and Kropotkin’s… of a hundred years ago… they’d find even more impressive – but why stop there? Why not go back to Antiphon in Ancient Greece… an early advocate for our freedom… or perhaps we should be amazed at how ‘prescient’ Xenophon could be in ‘anticipating’ Bentham?)

 

This is not ‘inspiring’… this is Hope on the verge of expiring… she should not have to tread water for so long…

 

…the continued ‘relevance’ means we have not synthesized and advanced our ancestors’ gifts. If we had… I would not have heard a woman say (representing ‘Black Lives Matter’ locally…) on a progressive radio talk show… that they “have a strategic plan…” and then proceed to tell a caller (per Michael Moore’s advice some years ago…) a caller who was appalled at ‘die-ins’: “If you don’t like ‘Die-Ins’… then… lick stamps… spread the word… just get active!…” – and there goes ‘Strategic’ out the window… unnoticed and unmissed… i.e. whatever she had… it wasn’t ‘strategic’.

 

–––

 

…the ‘class’-system is based on the assumption of ‘scarcity’(…because… if we think about it… if ‘knowledge’ is scarce… belongs to only a few… that can easily form the mental frame for ‘scarcity’ overall… because if we don't know what to do to preserve our own lives… reproduce ourselves… we are condemned to be slaves to Necessity…) – the belief that ‘there isn’t enough… stuff…’ and that we-the-people are not sufficient… and that we believe this… contrary to reality… because this is the substance of our ‘education’, both official and the unspoken ‘education’ embedded in our social relations… utterly dependent… And so… therefore… we also said… the flip-side of the story “The Elevation of The Few”… is our diminishment… in our own eyes.

 

January 18, 2015… Sisters and Brothers: To control thought… said Bentham to statesmen… you must… from the vast array of ‘facts’… select those that reinforce the picture you have… of where you want the state to go… or… in our present… ‘modern’… case… those that further the realization of your vision for the global-state.

 

And as suppressed thoughts… and therefore suppressed discussions… necessarily means sculpting human beings… distorting our nature to serve base aims (but even if you say they are not ‘base’… the distortion is there… is the reality… all the same…)

 

…and this distortion of our lived reality…and our fundamental being… necessarily means… lives lived in confusion…

 

…which does not bring happiness…

 

…far from it…

 

…yet another item on our long list… of suppressed discussions.

 

The one we are picking up today is the thread we began last week of our distorted view of each other – reinforced by base ‘power’-propaganda-parable’ called “The Elevation of The Few.”

 

Last week we said that… in some respects… the origin of ‘rule’ can be traced back to the elevation of a few within a clan to the status of ‘priest’… and that… once ‘priests’ became a caste… you have… not just ‘hierarchy’ per se… but even more significantly… for our project of freeing ourselves from this entrapment… you have separated out a few as possessing greater knowledge… and I don't think we've appreciated the importance of that… for us today… no less than throughout the history of ‘class’…

 

…that the ‘class’-system is based on the assumption of ‘scarcity’ –

(…because… if we think about it… if ‘knowledge’ is scarce… belongs to only a few… that can easily form the mental frame for ‘scarcity’ overall… because if we don't know what to do to preserve our own lives… reproduce ourselves… we are condemned to be slaves to Necessity…)

The ‘class’-system is based on that assumption of ‘scarcity’ – the belief that ‘there isn’t enough… stuff…’ and that we-the-people are not sufficient. And we believe this… contrary to reality… because this is the substance of our ‘education’, both official and the unspoken ‘education’ embedded in our social relations.

 

And so… therefore… we also said… the flip-side of the story “The Elevation of The Few”… is our diminishment… in our own eyes.

 

–––

 

And truly… with this lens in our possession… the media-display becomes one long parade of illustration… of our conditioning to not see our own abundance.

 

First came an interview with a man who’d written a book of ‘economic’ definitions… to whom I found myself unexpectedly in debt… because his opening story was about Ancient Egypt… reminding me of something I didn’t want to forget…

 

…a story I’d first heard in V. Gordon Childe’s Man Makes Himself:

 

[Ok… so I’m ‘Exhibit A’ for what happens to one’s thought process when one is harassed… sped-up… and bombarded…. In this case… the consequence is: an ancestor gets mis-read and mis-represented. So… scratch the “Hegel and ‘Necessity’” bit (maybe later we’ll talk about it…) and go straight to the issue of ‘Knowledge’… – P.S.]

 

“Russian excavators have shown that the [Predmostian] hunters [of East and Central Europe] erected substantial half-subterranean houses to live in…” [So… we finally re-figured-oout 'Earthships'… after ten thousand years… – alright… it hasn't been that long… only a few thousand years ago there were Earthship-like structures in what is now called Equator. This is old technology… knowledge that we were stripped of… Why? Because it enables us to be self-sufficient… Oh no no no… we can't have that… we must have everything converted into commodities… with bills attached… – P.S.] “A plausible but rather speculative, and certainly much oversimplified, account of the genesis of the Egyptian monarchy would run as follows. In the prehistoric village, communities of self-sufficing food-producing clans whose cemeteries line the Nile Valley may have fallen under the sway of a class of magicians…” […and the connection here… the thread… is that he's presenting the evolution of 'class' as an 'innovation' that “gets the ball rolling…” from the perspective of folks who think like that… and I believe there's other ways to look at it… and I believe that Kropotkin did too — I invite us to consider the notion that a far more accurate way of seeing the project we’re told is ‘Progress’ is one of controlling us… – P.S.]

 

…Russian excavators have shown that the [Predmostian] hunters [of East and Central Europe] erected substantial half-subterranean houses to live in…. (p. 58)

[So… we finally re-figured-out 'Earthships'… after ten thousand years… – alright… it hasn't been that long… only a few thousand years ago there were Earthship-like structures in what is now called Equator. This is old technology… knowledge that we were stripped of… Why? Because it enables us to be self-sufficient… Oh no no no… we can't have that… we must have everything converted into commodities… with bills attached… – P.S.]

…Economically each group was self-sufficient. But self-sufficiency does not spell isolation; shells brought from the Mediterranean half been bound in the caves of Central France…. [To repeat a point from last week… that… our nature is to learn from each other: movement… flow… synthesis… is our endowment… – P.S.]. (p. 60)

 

…Conditions in the Nile Valley would have been exceptionally favorable to the deliberate cultivation of cereals. The Nile, swollen by the monsoon rains on the Abyssinian plateau, overflows its banks with remarkable regularity every autumn. The flood arrives at a convenient season when the heat is no longer so intense as to scorch young shoots. And so, Perry suggests, the reliable and timely Nile flood first prompted men to plant seeds deliberately and let them grow… And natural irrigation would be the prototype of all systems of cultivation… (p. 75)

 

A group always on the brink of starvation dare not risk change. The least deviation from the traditional procedures that have been found lot yield the essential modicum of subsistence may imperil the whole group… (p. 99)

 

…Of chieftainship there is no definite evidence in early neolithic cemeteries or villages […and the connection here… the thread… is that he's presenting the evolution of 'class' as an 'innovation' that “gets the ball rolling…” from the perspective of folks who think like that… and I believe there's other ways to look at it… and I believe that Kropotkin did too.… He begins this chapter by saying, “Fifteen thousand years is a generous estimate of the post-glacial (Ice Age) period, as against a conservative figure of 250,000 years for the preceding era. Yet in the last twentieth of his history man has begun to control Nature, or has at least succeeded in controlling her by co-operating with her…” — I invite us to consider the notion that a far more accurate way of seeing the project we’re told is ‘Progress’ is one of controlling us… – P.S.]. Nor is there unambiguous evidence of warfare… As to the magico-religious notions that held neolithic communities together, a few guesses may be hazarded…. (p. 101)

 

…cultivation may have required a closer observation of the seasons, a more accurate division of time, the year. Agricultural operations are essentially seasonal, and their success is largely dependent upon the time of their performance. But the proper season is determined by the sun, not by the moon’s phases, which provide a calendar for hunters. In northerly latitudes the changes in the sun’s path between the solstices are conspicuous enough to provide clues as to the seasons. The observation of such clues would emphasize the sun’s role as ruler of the seasons and guarantee his divinity.

 

But near the tropics the sun’s movement is less striking. There the stars, always visible in those cloudless skies, provide a more obvious means of determining and dividing the solar year. You note that certain stars or constellations take up a significant position in the sky at the time when experience suggests you should plant your crops, others when you may expect rain to ripen them. By so using the stars as guides… [and… by the way… this is another area where we have lost knowledge… I’m afraid we’d suffer in the comparison with our ancestors of ten thousand years ago… when it comes to true knowledge… the knowledge we need for managing our own lives… becoming powerful in an authentic sense: connection with the earth… – P.S.] By so using the stars as guides, men may have come to the belief that they actually influenced terrestrial affairs. You confuse connection in time with causal connection. Because the star Sirius is seen on the horizon at dawn when the Nile flood arrives, it is inferred that Sirius causes the Nile flood. Astrology is based on this sort of confusion…. (p. 103)

 

…A plausible but rather speculative, and certainly much oversimplified, account of the genesis of the Egyptian monarchy would run as follows. In the prehistoric village, communities of self-sufficing food-producing clans whose cemeteries line the Nile Valley may have fallen under the sway of a class of magicians. By the time most individual villagers, having found their private magics futile, were prepared to rely on the magic of the cleverer persons, some acquired a little authority by successful pretensions to influence the fertility of the crops, the weather, and the Nile flood. The invention of a solar calendar making possible the accurate prediction of the flood’s advent would be a sure way of justifying such pretensions and consolidating such authority. To enforce them the actual power of cutting off real water by blocking irrigation channels would be an effective means. (V. Gordon Childe, Man Makes Himself, p. 157)

…“Together these three facets of the ongoing structural transformation of the modern world-system […the increasing subjection of the world’s peoples to the inter-state system… the increasing subjection of ‘national economies’ to the world-economy… and the increasing organization (formation) of a world ruling class… i.e. one set of ‘rulers’… two faces…] Together these three facets reveal, to a greater or lesser extent, the structural surround of the state power seized or occupied by antisystemic movements in the course of the twentieth century, and indicate the degree and kind of reconstitution of terrain with which present and future movements of a like sort have to contend. […I.e. what we have to contend with – P.S.] They indicate as well – though this is not here a central concern of ours – the anachronism of the contents we give to the concepts with which we commonly work. The dilemmas of the antisystemic movements are thus in some measure the unintended product of a sort of false consciousness on the part, not of toadies nor even of hairsplitters, but of the most engaged of the intelligentsia.” [That's a really important point. In a sense… all of our radio shows can be linked to that fact. We have been mis-represented and set back… by the folks who… whether with intent or not… have ignored these words of our Good Three from Academe… And because 'power' embeds itself… through use of planted false folks… the money lever… and that lever that tugs on the deepest chords of our lives… what Bentham calls 'seductive motives'… – because 'power' embeds itself where thought grows or is influenced… we cannot know what part of the myopia […of Left Professionals…] is home-grown… and which part 'power'-sown… – P.S.]

 

The demarcation that Karl Popper describes so well – between the ‘rulers’ and ‘the people’ – starts here… some 10,000 years ago or so. The deal for those first ‘rulers’ was not sweet… unless you count the sweetened soil their bodies made… with their premature deaths… when their powers faded. And ever since… ‘rule’ has sought a way to make ‘rule’ both permanent… and safe (for themselves….)

 

Remember the poem of Plato’s Uncle Critias?…

“…and I have to say… it has occurred to me more than once… that their fantasy… these Plato’s Tribesmen… is to replace those gods on Mount Olympus… with themselves: the roar of their drones overhead… that are to inspire fear and dread…”

 

Then came, it seems, that wise and cunning man,

The first inventor of the fear of gods…

He framed a tale, a most alluring doctrine,

Concealing truth by veils of lying lore.

He told of the abode of awful gods,

Up in revolving vaults, whence thunder roars

And lightning’s fearful flashes blind the eye…

He thus encircled men by bonds of fear;

Surrounding them by gods in fair abodes,

He charmed them by his spells, and daunted them –

And lawlessness turned into law and order.

…that poem resonates in clear tones through this moment… as we are finally throwing back the curtain of their lies… and seeing the hidden ‘rulers’ where they hide in the so-called ‘economic forces’ they contrive… and in the distortions they’ve imposed… with force and manufactured scarcity… on our lives..

 

–––

 

“This changes everything…” says one pundit… about the notion… I believe… that global warming forces a re-evaluation of unrestricted ‘capitalism’ –

 

…but all these terms pundits use are ‘power’-given and driven – designed to keep us forever floundering in their sea of lies… as our Good Three From Academe will tell us later:

Together these three facets of the ongoing structural transformation of the modern world-system […the increasing subjection of the world’s peoples to the inter-state system… the increasing subjection of ‘national economies’ to the world-economy (as represented by the massive centralization of wealth – i.e. the consumed (destroyed) resources of the planet – into fewer and fewer hands… accomplished by the formation of large transnational corporations… and the increasing organization (formation) of a world ruling class… i.e. one set of ‘rulers’… two faces… And as we read these words of Terence Hopkins, Immanuel Wallerstein and Giovanni Arrighi… recall: they were given to us thirty years ago… – P.S.] Together these three facets of the ongoing structural transformation of the modern world-system, all of which reveal, to a greater or lesser extent, the structural surround of the state power seized or occupied by antisystemic movements in the course of the twentieth century, and indicate the degree and kind of reconstitution of terrain with which present and future movements of a like sort have to contend. […I.e. what we have to contend with – P.S.] They indicate as well – though this is not here a central concern of ours – the anachronism of the contents we give to the concepts with which we commonly work. The dilemmas of the antisystemic movements are thus in some measure the unintended product of a sort of false consciousness on the part, not of toadies nor even of hairsplitters, but of the most engaged of the intelligentsia. [That's a really important point. In a sense… all of our radio shows can be linked to that fact. We have been mis-represented and set back… by the folks who… whether with intent or not… have ignored these words of our Good Three from Academe… And because 'power' embeds itself… through use of planted false folks… the money lever… and that lever that tugs on the deepest chords of our lives… what Bentham calls 'seductive motives'… – because 'power' embeds itself where thought grows or is influenced… we cannot know what part of the myopia […of Left Professionals…] is home-grown… and which part 'power'-sown… – P.S.]

We must ask ourselves… What interest does a state – let alone an ‘inter-state system’ – have in our seeing our abundance?… our self-sufficiency in direct relations of cooperation? (…and isn't it clear that just as 'production' was the focus of this sick system of 'class'… so 'cooperation' is the focus of our new social arrangement?…) “This changes everything…”? Here’s an insight that truly does “change everything”: ‘Power’ plans… they have a vision… they act clandestine… they must stay hidden… – plug that into resources effectively limitless… and we have ourselves quite a problem… – plug that into resources effectively limitless… and we have ourselves quite a problem… one that’s solved by instant global communication.

 

We must ask ourselves… What interest does a state – let alone an ‘inter-state system’ – have in our seeing our abundance?… our self-sufficiency in direct relations of cooperation?…

(…and isn't it clear that just as 'production' was the focus of this sick system of 'class'… so 'cooperation' is the focus of our new social arrangement?…)

…and… if we are stopped from our need to realize this abundance… how does this lead to happiness?

 

It doesn’t.

 

We’re designed by states… the representation we get from pundits suggests… that they are deeply wedded to the belief that states (i.e. global-‘power’…) can do a better job of it than we ourselves. What do we think?

 

“This changes everything…”? Here’s an insight that truly does “change everything”:

‘Power’ plans… they have a vision… they act clandestine… they must stay hidden…

– plug that into resources effectively limitless… and we have ourselves quite a problem…

 

…one that’s solved by instant global communication.

 

–––

 

[Today’s reading: We are – briefly interrupting our reading of Chapter 5 – continuing our reading of Chapter 2 of Giovanni Arrighi’s, Terence K. Hopkins’, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements…: “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”… – P.S.]

 

–––

 

* * January 25, 2015 reading: Chapter 2 of Giovanni Arrighi’s, Terence K. Hopkins’, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements… “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”

* January 25, 2015 reading: Chapter 2 of Giovanni Arrighi’s, Terence K. Hopkins’, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements… “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”

 

–––

 

“The “openness” or “closure” of a state’s borders to such movements [of people, goods, and capital], however – we note parenthetically in passing – has always been less a matter of that state’s policies “toward the world” than of its location in the hierarchical ordering inherent in the capitalist world-economy’s interstate system.…” [We do see… that back then… thirty years ago and ongoingly through the surviving member… Immanuel Wallerstein… that these three had been trying to give us the language with which to make sense of our reality… so that we can successfully engage with global 'power'… so that we can know our opponent. Look how far that's gone… we will be asking ourselves… as we go along… ‘Power’ wants no competition for our allegiance… wants ‘the market’ to name us… the (deputized) state to claim (control) us. But increasingly… the state (as deputy) is participating in our naming… as it attempts to guide… and limit… dissent… it ‘deputizes’ our hunger for meaning… fostering ‘tribal’ groupings that can be safely (for it) contained with the nation-state frame… with the potential bonus (for ‘power’) that… through the resulting Division… and the ‘rules’ morass… the numbers needed to challenge them… can never be amassed… But what this also means is that… increasingly… 'tribal' groupings can be mobilized for purposes of Division… but not for forming a challenge to the state… – P.S.]

 

The “openness” or “closure” of a state’s borders to such movements [of people, goods, and capital], however – we note parenthetically in passing – has always been less a matter of that state’s policies “toward the world” than of its location in the hierarchical ordering inherent in the capitalist world-economy’s interstate system.

[We do see… that back then… thirty years ago and ongoingly through the surviving member… Immanuel Wallerstein… that these three had been trying to give us the language with which to make sense of our reality… so that we can successfully engage with global 'power'… so that we can know our opponent. Look how far that's gone… we will be asking ourselves… as we go along… – P.S.]

The “openness” or “closure” of a state’s borders to such movements [of people, goods, and capital], however – we note parenthetically in passing – has always been less a matter of that state’s policies “toward the world” than of its location in the hierarchical ordering inherent in the capitalist world-economy’s interstate system. This location is determined not merely by academicians but by demonstrated or credible relational strengths, practical conditions effected by ruling classes. [They were calling them out back then… and… so… where has that discussion been… for thirty years?… – P.S.] Rather it is a matter of the interstate system’s appropriating all manner of direct and circuitous relations among people of different countries (state jurisdictions) – whether religious, scientific, commercial, artistic, financial, linguistic, civilizational, educational, literary, productive, problem-focused, historical, philosophical, ad infinitum – such that they all become, at the very least, mediated, more often actually organized, by the counterpart agencies of different states through their established or newly formed relations with one another. The effect is to subordinate the interrelations among the world’s peoples not to raisons d’etat, a practice with which all of us are all too familiar, but to raisons du systeme d’etats, a practice with which most of us are all too unfamiliar.

 

There is, we should briefly note, a set of consequential historical contradictions being formed through this recreation of all varieties of social relations into networks within either inter- or intrastate frameworks. Many kinds of community – in the sense of communities of believers / practitioners – form in a way “worlds” of their own in relation to, in distinction from, and often in conflict with all others; that is, those who are not of their community, who are nonbelievers or nonpractitioners, hence nonmembers.…

[Two things… first… recall the focus of this chapter: “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”… i.e.… that which must be confronted for us to succeed in getting free… and… as we read… we must ask ourselves continually… “How important is our freedom to us?”… or… at the least… “Are we willing to organize discussions of this question?”

 

Secondly… what they are describing… Popper called ‘tribalism’… and professional Leftists might call ‘identity politics’… about which we have conflicting feelings… because we have never factored hidden ‘power’ into our discussions… such that we ca see… that ending ‘power’… ‘global-‘power’… must be our top priority… – P.S.]

…These are often large, encompassing worlds: the Islamic world; the scientific world; the African world (or, in the United States today, the Black world); the women’s world; the workers’ or proletarian world; and so forth. It is far from evident that such communities of consciousness can even persist, much less grow, within the structurally developing inter- and intrastate framework. The kind of contradiction noted here marks to an even greater extent the popular peace and environmental movements, but that is because they are perforce, in today’s world, state-oriented; whereas the communities of consciousness we have in mind elaborate themselves independently of stateness (hence, however, in contradiction to it and to interstateness, rather than through them).

[‘Power’… as to it we are but children… believes the privileged ones among its subjects should be given games for entertainment… to keep them busy… particularly… if ‘jobs’ must be dispensed with…

 

…so… per our training… as we leap eagerly at this lure… let’s give one to ourselves: “Can you see the hidden hand of ‘power’ in that scene?” (and in the one that follows…) ‘Power’ wants no competition for our allegiance… wants ‘the market’ to name us… the (deputized) state to claim (control) us. But increasingly… the state (as deputy) is participating in our naming… as it attempts to guide… and limit… dissent… it ‘deputizes’ our hunger for meaning… fostering ‘tribal’ groupings that can be safely (for it) contained with the nation-state frame… with the potential bonus (for ‘power’) that… through the resulting Division… and the ‘rules’ morass… the numbers needed to challenge them… can never be amassed… But what this also means is that… increasingly… 'tribal' groupings can be mobilized for purposes of Division… but not for forming a challenge to the state… – P.S.]

“We have dwelt at length on but one face of the ongoing structural transformation of the capitalist world-economy; that seen through a focus on the plane of the interstate system and its constituent units, the states, and their relations with one another. We have done so for two reasons. One is the seemingly enduring disposition, on the part of historical social scientists, to carry forward – all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding – the liberal ideological distinction between “state” and “economy,” or “state” and “market” in some versions, as if these were fundamental theoretical categories.…” Recall what we learned from Jeremy Bentham – bear with me… please… because this gets to the heart of our present dilemma… the one we noted last week that today our Three Friends will show… in their ‘Heads Up!’ from thirty years ago… that being: we do not know our opponent… …and if we do not know our opponent… we cannot be in a ‘class struggle’… …far better to call it… “Ambush… beat… and break…” but back to Bentham: “To produce disbelief of the existence of the matter of fact [i.e. authentic reality… – P.S.]… a man [must find] his own perceptions in relation to [it] confirmed by the reputed perceptions of all other men without exception.…” [That is key… that has always been key… that is why states must engage in surveillance and oversight of what we hear… what is said… what we see… – because what we think must be confirmed by “all other men without exception…” I mean… we should be discussing this… if we truly had an educational system… early on in high school… we should be preparing our young people to do battle with these folk who want to name us… claim us… turn us into subjects… for their benefit… not for Humanity's benefit. Their agenda is not ours… – P.S.]

 

Division of Labor, Centralization of Capital

 

We have dwelt at length on but one face of the ongoing structural transformation of the capitalist world-economy; that seen through a focus on the plane of the interstate system and its constituent units, the states, and their relations with one another. We have done so for two reasons. One is the seemingly enduring disposition, on the part of historical social scientists, to carry forward – all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding – the liberal ideological distinction between “state” and “economy,” or “state” and “market” in some versions, as if these were fundamental theoretical categories.…

[“…all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding…”

 

Recall what we learned from Jeremy Bentham – bear with me… please… because this gets to the heart of our present dilemma… the one we noted last week that today our Three Friends will show… in their ‘Heads Up!’ from thirty years ago… that being: we do not know our opponent…

 

…and if we do not know our opponent… we cannot be in a ‘class struggle’…

 

…far better to call it “an ambush in the dead of night… in which we’re over-powered… forced face-downward to the ground… hands tied behind our backs… blindfolded… put under the strictest of controls… the only information we can think piped in… direct… from their megaphones to our ears… while simultaneously being thrust in harness… carrot to the front… whip to our backs… made to be… simple energy… so that ‘a system’ can be fueled… continuously…”

 

And the ‘nature’ of that system… is not for our discussion… but imparted to ‘the rulers’… generation after generation…

 

…and while we resist… just as my parakeet friends mentioned in Unpacking Democracy fought the cage… this resistance is intuitive… not a ‘struggle’ in the sense of fighting to end a system that puts us in a cage… is set on naming us… telling us what we are… such that we never can… discover it.

 

“Ambush… beat… and break…” is perhaps what we should call it… what they've done to us…

 

…but back to Bentham… This is him speaking in his "Rationale of Judicial Evidence" – P.S.]

An incredible fact […say… that the liberal distinction between “state” and “economy,” or “state” and “market”… is ideological…) owes its incredibility to one cause, and to one cause only… disconformity (as supposed) to the established course of nature…

 

…To produce disbelief of the existence of the matter of fact in question, this disconformity must be such as (in his judgment) to render its existence incompatible with a certain portion, at least, of those other numberless matters of fact, of the existence of which he has been persuaded by the indeterminate but amble mass of evidence above indicated.

 

When the improbability (that is, the apparent, the relative, improbability) of an alleged fact, is set in the balance against testimony, it is still at bottom little more than testimony against testimony. Of the facts of the existence of which a man is persuaded, the knowledge, the persuasion, is derived partly from his own perceptions, partly from the alleged perceptions of others. But, in the unmeasurable mass of facts which (at least in a country where civilization is tolerably diffused) the most ignorant man is said to know, the number of those of which his knowledge is derived from his own immediate perceptions – from his own individual experience, is small, in comparison with those, for the knowledge or supposed knowledge of which, he stands indebted to the experience or supposed experience of others. […Do you see how ‘class’ can… in all fairness… be called ‘totalitarian’?… Consider how this is shown by the following… – P.S.]

 

Concerning individual facts, – so far as mere perception, exclusively of inference drawn from perception by judgment, is concerned, – no force of exterior evidence can either increase or diminish the degree of persuasion of which such perceptions cannot but have been productive. But in regard to species of facts, there is not one, perhaps, concerning which the persuasion derived by a man from his own experience, would not be capable of being overborne by allegations of contrary experience on the part of other men. What makes our confidence so entire as it is in regard to the existence of those species or classes of individual facts, the existence of which is announced by the phrase which exhibits as the cause of it this or that law of nature, is, – that, so often as it falls in his way to make the trial, a man finds his own perceptions in relation to them confirmed by the reputed perceptions of all other men without exception.

[That is key… that has always been key… that is why states must engage in surveillance and oversight of what we hear… what is said… what we see… – because what we think must be confirmed by “all other men without exception…” I mean… we should be discussing this… if we truly had an educational system… early on in high school… we should be preparing our young people to do battle with these folk who want to name us… claim us… turn us into subjects… for their benefit… not for Humanity's benefit. Their agenda is not ours… – P.S.]

“In determining whether any degree of credence ought to be given to an apparently anti-physical fact, regard must be had… to the probability of seductive motives acting upon the witnesses by whom the fact is affirmed…” [If we listen to our mother’s voice… if we allow earth-given words and meanings currency in our minds (and lives…) if we sit with them… let… those voluptuous tones enfold us… we might hear this: our nature is communal… our nature is to trust each other… and we want a world that reflects this truth… in which none of our fellows seeks to use us… manipulate our beliefs… and celebrate when they do… – P.S.]

 

…In determining whether any degree of credence ought to be given to an apparently anti-physical fact, regard must be had not only to the circumstantial evidence afforded by its apparent anti-physicality, but also to the probability of seductive motives acting upon the witnesses by whom the fact is affirmed. [If we listen to our mother’s voice… if we allow earth-given words and meanings currency in our minds (and lives…) if we sit with them… let… those voluptuous tones enfold us… we might hear this: our nature is communal… our nature is to trust each other… and we want a world that reflects this truth… in which none of our fellows seeks to use us… manipulate our beliefs… and celebrate when they do… – P.S.]

“Papa,” said Ernest, after we had left the house, “why didn’t Mrs. Heaton whip Jack when he trod on the egg?” [If you get a chance to read The Way of All Flesh… it is completely fresh… talks about the unconscious before Freud… I mean the man is just a brilliant soul… a shining light… and full of love and heart… and it shows on every page. But if you should venture into it… you'll find that it has to be largely autobiographical… and our poor little child Ernest was subjected to a lot of beating… – P.S.]

 

And consider this remembrance:

Next day I was to go back to London, but before I went I said I should like to take some new-laid eggs back with me, so Theobald took me to the house of a labourer in the village who lived a stone’s throw from the Rectory as being likely to supply me with them. Ernest, for some reason or other, was allowed to come too. I think the hens had begun to sit, but at any rate eggs were scarce, and the cottager’s wife could not find me more than seven or eight, which we proceeded to wrap up in separate pieces of paper so that I might take them to town safely.

 

This operation was carried on upon the ground in front of the cottage door, and while we were in the midst of it the cottager’s little boy, a lad much about Ernest’s age, trod upon one of the eggs that was wrapped up in paper and broke it.

 

“There now, Jack,” said his mother, “see what you’ve done, you’ve broken a nice egg and cost me a penny – Here, Emma,” she added, calling her daughter, “take the child away, there’s a dear.”

 

Emma came at once, and walked off with the youngster, taking him out of harm’s way.

 

“Papa,” said Ernest, after we had left the house, “why didn’t Mrs. Heaton whip Jack when he trod on the egg?” (Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh)

[If you get a chance to read The Way of All Flesh… because it's a different rhythm than we're used to… it started out for me… I found myself feeling… “I will get through this historical bit…” where Samuel Butler is establishing the historical context – it's like an 'establishment shot' in the opening of a film – and at first I feared this would be the way the book would be in general… and… it is completely fresh… talks about the unconscious before Freud… I mean the man is just a brilliant soul… a shining light… and full of love and heart… and it shows on every page. But if you should venture into it… you'll find that it has to be largely autobiographical… and our poor little child Ernest was subjected to a lot of beating… – P.S.]

I am deeply concerned about our earth-connected Brothers and Sisters… because there is a push – it feels like an acceleration… 'power' has been rushing rushing to annihilate earth-connected peoples [from Day One…] and it's only gained speed… every year it gets faster and faster… this huge maw going for our Brothers and Sisters who harbor within them the heart… the knowledge… we need… We here in the U.S. are being encouraged to not see as our Brothers and Sisters folks who are being slotted into that 'Hard Work' category… and then being massaged and wooed with the notion that… “well… we need certain sectors to do this… and other sectors to do that… and you guys [in the privileged regions of the world-economy…] are going to have to do the 'brain work' and you're needed…” and that's seductive because everybody [has the need… under 'class'…] to see themselves as 'smart'… – being asked to do the 'thinking' for the whole globe… for everybody: “Help us figure out this 'global warming' thing…” – and I'm very concerned that we might get suckered into it… We have to always remember: Number One for our activism… before even global warming… is getting our lives back… standing with our Brothers and Sisters.… We need those discussions.

 

[A key argument of these discussions is that ‘power’ triumphs over us by disconnecting us from our earth-given knowledge – and boy does that happen early… in a 'class'-system… –

 

…I have to figure out a way to express this better… because… even in a 'class'-system there are the earth-connected… and what I learned from books like The Way of All Flesh or George Eliot's Adam Bede… is that even in a 'class'-system… there are pockets of earth-connectedness across the centuries to the present… all over the world… and we have to remember that when we use terms that seem to suggest that… if you're 'European' you're this… or if you're African you're that – our diversity is rich… everywhere… and we need to preserve it… as those who listen regularly to this show know… I am deeply concerned about our Brothers and Sisters in villages in Africa… across the continent… in Mexico and South American… in India… China… Russia… the Ukraine… because there is a push – it feels like an acceleration… and we hear from reading Antisystemic Movements and Immanuel Wallerstein… we sense that from their perspective… thirty years ago… it was rushing rushing to annihilate earth-connected peoples then… and it's only gained speed… every year it gets faster and faster… this huge maw going for our Brothers and Sisters who harbor within them the heart… the knowledge… we need…

 

…so I guess it's a selfish sense of concern… that if we fail to reclaim our lives… right now – because 'power' is rushing to get hold of that escape route we got open right now called 'instant global communication' – then… it's going to be a lot more hardship… a lot more needless death… a lot more suffering…

 

We here in the U.S. are being encouraged to not see as our Brothers and Sisters folks who are being slotted into that 'Hard Work' category… and then being massaged and wooed with the notion that… “well… we need certain sectors to do this… and other sectors to do that… and you guys [in the privileged regions of the world-economy…] are going to have to do the 'brain work' and you're needed…” and that's seductive because everybody [has the need… under 'class'…] to see themselves as 'smart'… – being asked to do the 'thinking' for the whole globe… for everybody: “Help us figure out this 'global warming' thing…” – and I'm very concerned that we might get suckered into it…

 

We have to always remember: Number One for our activism… before even global warming… is getting our lives back… standing with our Brothers and Sisters… because if we allow ourselves to betray those in the 'low-slotted' categories yet again… it's going to come around and get us too… It already has. It already is. It's time for us to reclaim our thought process. We need those discussions.

 

And sitting and trying to 'fix' something that can't be fixed… while I'm in the midst of being flooded by these folk with their… microwave-energy-toys aimed at me… is not conducive to my health… and I want to see these discussions get flowing… going… rolling…. Truly… long overdue… thirty years!…

[Let me say in advance… in case it affects your ability to access the text for the next show… there were these 'dead zones'… or suppressions of html code… I don't know how these things are done… but it created access problems for this… the show of January 25th… which… if it persists… can make navigation of the page more of a challenge. And sitting and trying to 'fix' something that can't be fixed… while I'm in the midst of being flooded by these folk with their… microwave-energy-toys aimed at me… is not conducive to my health… and I want to see these discussions get flowing… going… rolling…. Truly… long overdue… thirty years! (Addendum: to any who may have noticed that my Kandinsky-plus-wordbeat videos have ground to a halt… FYI my account at Berkeley Community Media has been 'inadvertently' tagged 'non-member'… so I have been unable to submit any additional ones this past month…) – P.S.]

A key argument of these discussions is that ‘power’ triumphs over us by disconnecting us from our earth-given knowledge… and from the earth… and from each other… and that this was originally achieved by overt physical violence alone – on the global level the parallel is called ‘colonialism’. Bentham shows us – and of course later Alice Miller does as well – the use to which children were / are put… for ‘power’ to fully explore and explain the psychological dynamics at work in the shaping of human behavior under ‘class’… and the internalization of discipline… allowing ‘power’ to maximize and preference the ‘levers’ (that shape behavior…) that avoid physical violence with its own children… and the children it trains to replace themselves… And this is not to say that they necessarily don't use violence with their own children… only that Bentham recommended internalized discipline and the 'power' guys seem to have applied this to the larger political arena… and (you can tell by the propaganda that gets out there… you can always get paid to do Division work) it is also the case… that they encourage those of us targeted for extreme-'make-use-of'… we Black folks… to use violence and coercion against our children… they will prop folks up to say that its "part of our culture…" No it isn't.

 

A key argument of these discussions is that ‘power’ triumphs over us by disconnecting us from our earth-given knowledge… and from the earth… and from each other… and that this was originally achieved by overt physical violence alone – on the global level the parallel is called ‘colonialism’. Bentham shows us – and of course later Alice Miller does as well – the use to which children were / are put… for ‘power’ to fully explore and explain the psychological dynamics at work in the shaping of human behavior under ‘class’… and the internalization of discipline… allowing ‘power’ to maximize and preference the ‘levers’ (that shape behavior…) that avoid physical violence with its own children… and the children it trains to replace themselves…

[And this is not to say that they necessarily don't use violence with their own children… only that Bentham recommended internalized discipline and the 'power' guys seem to have applied this to the larger political arena… and (you can tell by the propaganda that gets out there… you can always get paid to do Division work) it is also the case… that they encourage those of us targeted for extreme-'make-use-of'… we Black folks… to use violence and coercion against our children… they will prop folks up to say that its "part of our culture…" No it isn't. It's part of our distress… part of the conditioning that all folks under 'class' have been subjected to…. And it's a common psychological dynamic… to identify with 'power'… with the powerful… So it's understandable… but this is another suppressed discussion… and… now that I've come to see how tightly controlled the airwaves are… I don't think it's just a matter of our willingness as Black folks to own it… but I think that's a big part… that it's still there… this rationalization for hurting our children… because that's what I still hear when I talk to folk… – and what I see. And I do not mean to suggest that it's more intense with us… because I don't think that at all – I'm just saying that… you can see what 'power' wants for the future… by the propaganda they put out there… because… they 'sculpt'… they shape the world they want… systematically… methodically. They want us… particularly… to not love ourselves: the folks that they intend to do the really hard physical work… they want us to see ourselves as debased… to not see ourselves as worthy… and there's no better way to do that… perhaps the only way to do that… is to have those who are in a position of trust… providers of nurturance and sustenance in a child's early life… if that person hits you… screams at you… turns their back on you… treats you as if you are 'less-than'… treats you as if you're not there… often…

 

…I mean this is throughout 'class'-society… but we are encouraged to think of this as part of our 'culture'… and it ain't… – P.S.]< – P.S.]<

…I cite Samuel Butler… and Alice… and Bentham… and all the others… to get us back to the ever-pressing (and authentically strategic…) question of numbers. Everything (to do with getting our freedom…) comes back to ‘numbers’… the flip-side of Division… [I hope we will ponder deeply – and take seriously the results of our reasoning – the fact that this… most cogent analysis [from our Good Three] of our… we folks who long for freedom… of our current position… is non-existant in the mouths of the pundits who give us our thoughts to think… for thirty years! Wallerstein… of course… is not a pundit… we are granted zero access… practically speaking… to him… in terms of public discussion. This… from our Good Three… is the most vigorous… rigorous… compelling and exhilarating analysis of what we got… in this current system… I know of… out of Academe… which means… what this is… is suppression of needed speech… Now that we have the means… please spread it… the probing this analysis represents… …and I hope… despite the obstacles put before us… we will get it abroad in the world…. It points to one conclusion only: we have to act globally… and as cooperation is our future and our nature… Let's start now melding our acts together. Our watchword must be numbers…

 

…I cite Samuel Butler… and Alice… and Bentham… and all the others… to get us back to the ever-pressing (and authentically strategic…) question of numbers. Everything (to do with getting our freedom…) comes back to ‘numbers’… the flip-side of Division… Building numbers is directly proportional to the depth and breadth… of we-the-people's reclaiming of our own thought-process… – P.S.]

…The other is the equally prevalent, although apparently less impermeable, disposition to imagine – again, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding – that the capitalist world-economy has evolved rather as an onion grows […as opposed to acknowledging… that there is a systematic privileging of some countries… in the inter-state system… along with a simultaneous… and intentional… debasement… of others… – P.S.], from a core of small and local beginnings through successively larger rings until the outer peripheral skin is formed, all by virtue of, in this view, the self-expansion of capital through its increasing subordination of labor.

[I hope we will ponder deeply – and take seriously the results of our reasoning – the fact that this… most cogent analysis of our… we folks who long for freedom… of our current position… is non-existant in the mouths of the pundits who give us our thoughts to think… for thirty years! Wallerstein… of course… is not a pundit… we are granted zero access… practically speaking… to him… in terms of public discussion. This… from our Good Three… is the most vigorous… rigorous… compelling and exhilarating analysis of what we got… in this current system… I know of… out of Academe… which means… what this is… is suppression of needed speech…

 

Now that we have the means… please spread it… the probing this analysis represents…

 

…and I hope… despite the obstacles put before us… we will get it abroad in the world…. It points to one conclusion only: we have to act globally… and as cooperation is our future and our nature… Let's start now melding our acts together.

 

Our watchword must be numbers… – P.S.]

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* “WUR of February 1st, 2015… “Embracing Global Goals, Scope and Action: Becoming Global Actors… Claiming the ‘All’”:

Sisters and Brothers: The word-beat below is from our September 30, 2012 Waking Up Radio show. It is Part 1 of a series on 'Moving Forward':

 

D-Way: “Then what is my responsibility to my Brothers and Sisters?… and how do my actions [get] in line with the analysis that I have done [confirming that class is totalitarian…] and also: you've talked with people on the street… and you're also seeing a lot of different perspectives… some people feel that they can only manage to do what they have control over… e.g. to be the best person… to effect change within their interactions in the physical world… and is that enough?… [in order] to not be overwhelmed by the overwhelming responsibility [of dealing with] this whole global system that has oppressed [all of us…] their far-reaches of control has suppressed the whole globe… – that is really overwhelming… So… how do we move forward?… those of us who are consciously trying to create a new world – where that system [of class] no longer exists… How do you do that… and still stay sane or feel powerful or feel strong?” The Raven: “I've been thinking about this question too… in the sense of: as you said D-Way… a lot of people both are done with a system of rigid… fixed… class divisions… and… feel powerless to change it… And so this is why I write… this is why I engage in conversations about this… because I don't see anything more important for us to focus on as a species right now. So I ponder what it means for our behavior and our beliefs to be so out of sync… what this means for our souls… what this means for how we are not addressing the problems that are critical for the species in order to heal the planet and ourselves… For instance… most people I talk to both agree that we are in totalitarianism… and yet admit that they don't really do anything about that. And that to me is horrifying. That to me is how Hitler came to 'power'.” [Spoken word is from our September 30, 2012 radio broadcast.]

 

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[Apologies… for taking so long to put up the advance text for the show… These days I spend so much time trying to clear this very sticky mucus out of my body… and reclaim my own machine (computer) from what I call these 'access attacks'… and then having to run out to upload… I am being majorly slowed down.

 

[Apologies… for taking so long to put up the advance text for the show… These days I spend so much time trying to clear this very sticky mucus out of my body… and reclaim my own machine (computer) from what I call these 'access attacks'… and then having to run out to upload… I am being majorly slowed down. By the way… whatever entity is responsible for the Berkeley Community Media website is refusing to correct the error in my account which has me tagged 'non-member'… which disallows new video project submissions…]

 

When humans have to do what they’re told… else starve… or shiver in rain and cold… that’s a set-up for totalitarianism. Scarcity forces our obedience… forces our compliance… forces us to accept the double-lie… that: “the ‘best’ rule… the rest bend…” serves the interests of all of us humans. So this we now see clearly… in the light of our Academe Three (confirmed in the work of Karl Popper and Martin Bernal particularly): the existence of a very self-consciously global ‘ruling’ elite… motivated not by ‘money’… but a longing to feel ‘supreme’ – not in ‘things’-acquisition… but as means for being (supposedly) supreme in ‘Knowledge’-possession.

 

‘‘Numbers’ must be our watchword… we said in last week’s show… and we’ve been… of late… identifying where our ‘numbers’ go: nationalist ideology… mutually-exclusive ‘tribal’ categories… authoritarian childrearing (which generates – for ‘power’ – the fruit of indefinite ‘diversion’… a lifetime of confusion… for its victims – who are us all…) ‘religious’ belief in ‘historical inevitability’ (and so… nothing but to wait… for the ‘Great Restoration’… when all ranks fall…)

 

…and of course our ‘numbers’ go in droves… compelled by actors heretofore unknown… into simple survival… made subjects of Necessity… by manufacturing ‘scarcity.’

 

And these rifts… we’ve been arguing… are not ‘historical accidents’… but the result of a conscious malevolence: an activist ‘ruler’ mindset bent… on acquiring ‘Knowledge-Infinite’…

 

…so it is most def not happenstance… that the mental frames for ‘totalitarianism’ and ‘class’ (the scarcity mindset – “worth must be ‘proven’” – and ‘might makes right’…) are mirror-images. When humans have to do what they’re told… else starve… or shiver in rain and cold… that’s a set-up for totalitarianism. Scarcity forces our obedience… forces our compliance… forces us to accept the double-lie… that: “the ‘best’ rule… the rest bend…” serves the interests of all of us humans.

 

So this we now see clearly… in the light of our Academe Three (confirmed in the work of Karl Popper and Martin Bernal particularly): the existence of a very self-consciously global ‘ruling’ elite… motivated not by ‘money’… but a longing to feel ‘supreme’ – not in ‘things’-acquisition… but as means for being (supposedly) supreme in ‘Knowledge’-possession.

 

So all the various ways our numbers are systematically reduced… our numbers available to come to consensus… on the need to discuss what should be the world we live in – how do we make what we want… come to be… Because we in the U.S. have this codified right to 'pursue happiness'… and that is not an individual pursuit… they try when they put out their propaganda to frame it that way and make it seem loony… but… rather… it is in fact our right as a people to come together and collectively discuss: What does it mean… to 'pursue happiness'… if not to realize our inherent gifts… our right to grow our knowledge… as they do!… or as they think they do but as we do authentically… …our right as a people to pursue truth… We have the codified right to come together and discuss how we do that… as a collective… as a people… In a sense I'm asking the same question that our Academe Three are asking: How do we confront the dilemmas facing our ability to move on as a global humanity? How do we do that? Because we are… all of us global humans…living in a moment when the story has to change…. …thinking may be the most basic way to begin listening to the earth… the first step… to regaining our thought process… which surely must be our first responsibility… For thirty years at least… we have not known our chiefest difficulty… I’d call this sorry pass ‘The Betrayal of the Pundits”… if ‘power’ didn’t possess total control of the media… …for if you hoard the ‘knowledge’ of how to kill ‘silently’ (cause ill-health no doctor can ever diagnose…) along with the levers (particularly the ‘money’-one…) that manipulate us…

 

So all the various ways our numbers are systematically reduced… our numbers available to come to consensus… on the need to discuss what should be the world we live in – how do we make what we want… come to be…

 

Because we in the U.S. have this codified right to 'pursue happiness'… and that is not an individual pursuit… they try when they put out their propaganda to frame it that way and make it seem loony… but… rather… it is in fact our right as a people to come together and collectively discuss: What does it mean… to 'pursue happiness'… if not to realize our inherent gifts… our right to grow our knowledge… as they do!… or as they think they do but as we do authentically…

 

…our right as a people to pursue truth…

 

We have the codified right to come together and discuss how we do that… as a collective… as a people…

 

So this systematic plan on 'power's part to keep us from doing that… what does that mean for us?

 

…what does this mean… for our growing the numbers we need?

 

In a sense I'm asking the same question that our Academe Three are asking: How do we confront the dilemmas facing our ability to move on as a global humanity? How do we do that?

 

We are… all of us global humans…living in a moment when the story has to change.

 

For thousands of years we’ve been subsisting in the fantasies of the Few… who like to pretend they rule… and so stack the deck… by limiting our thought process… and restricting the possibilities available to us…

 

…but that grip on our thoughts has grown slack… as our ancestors had (and still have) our back… they made the means… for us to communicate and plan globally… and restore stolen chips to our stack.

 

Recently my son reminded me of that metaphor of the elephant… chained so long… that even with the chain gone… stands in one spot… and won’t move…

 

What is our responsibility?… asked my son (in the wordbeat – above…)

 

Here’s the beginning (to be fleshed out in those suppressed discussions… about the world… the future… we want… the world in which we establish… freedom-leisure-happiness… in Abundance…)

 

…here’s the beginning of a round-about reply:

 

It occurred to me that in some respects it’s almost exhilarating to know that practically (i.e. for the purposes of our advancing our understanding… of our inherent unity… and of how to achieve… evolution for all humanity…) everything allowed over the airwaves has been vetted… because it compels us… to think… to not be tempted… to go on ‘automatic’…

 

…thinking may be the most basic way to begin listening to the earth… the first step… to regaining our thought process… which surely must be our first responsibility.

 

Shakespeare has said – and is here oft-repeated – that rough roads grow smooth… when they are known…

 

…but for thirty years at least… we have not known our chiefest difficulty… our main rough road… despite all the puzzle pieces having been shown us.

 

I’d call this sorry pass ‘The Betrayal of the Pundits”…if ‘power’ didn’t possess total control of the media…

 

…for if you hoard the ‘knowledge’ of how to kill ‘silently’ (cause ill-health no doctor can ever diagnose…) along with the levers (particularly the ‘money’-one…) that manipulate us…

 

And then I heard Chris Hedges over the airwaves attribute words to Karl Popper he didn’t say: something like 'the people are supposed to make the government fear them'… or some nonsense like that – and that gets you thinking (that's why I said it's almost exhilarating to know that everything out there is intentional propaganda these days… so what is it they are trying to do in misrepresenting Karl Popper? And that's the first time I ever heard his name over the airwaves… so you know there's a purpose there – intentional purpose. The state 'fear us'… come on… never… they don't… that's the point – not since the French Revolution – they do not want to ever fear us again.

 

So they know… just as Miklos Nyiszli said… that if they monopolize secret knowledge of how to kill and main with no one knowing… and monopolize as well knowledge of the 'big picture'… the overall plan of which specific instructions ('jobs'… functions…) are a tiny fragment… then…

 

…then they can get rid of dissent (and when has 'power' ever not wanted to do that?) with no noise… no muss… no fuss…

 

…and then add to this the knowledge of how to manipulate us – particularly that ‘money’-lever… because we have to eat… we have to keep our health…

 

So if 'power' hoards the 'knowledge' of how to control us…

 

…is it truly the fault of ‘the pundits’?

 

And then I heard Chris Hedges over the airwaves attribute words to Karl Popper he didn’t say: something like 'the people are supposed to make the government fear them'… or some nonsense like that – and that gets you thinking (that's why I said it's almost exhilarating to know that everything out there is intentional propaganda these days… so what is it they are trying to do in misrepresenting Karl Popper? And that's the first time I ever heard his name over the airwaves… so you know there's a purpose there – intentional purpose. The state 'fear us'… come on… never… they don't… that's the point – not since the French Revolution – they do not want to ever fear us again.

 

…and this in the context… of other such recent incidents of seeming reference to thoughts harbored here… a singular mention of Alice Miller – I had never heard her mentioned before – directing listeners not to the book of hers we need to read: For Your Own Good… which points the finger squarely at the state and totalitarian ideology… as does Karl Popper: focusing on Plato as the root of all totalitarian ideology…

 

…and this in the context… of other such recent incidents of seeming reference to thoughts harbored here… a singular mention of Alice Miller – I had never heard her mentioned before – directing listeners not to the book of hers we need to read: For Your Own Good… which points the finger squarely at the state and totalitarian ideology… as does Karl Popper: focusing on Plato as the root of all totalitarian ideology…

 

…and then there was this panel of pundits having a discussion on ‘freedom of speech’… and what limits it… the point being of course… to confirm its… if limited… existence… and the panel insisting on the need for we-the-people having our own conversations… never saying… what these conversations need to be… or why…

 

And I thought… what’s going on here… if not ‘power’ sending the message “of course we don’t censor… here’s an example… see… there are no suppressed conversations…”

 

We are… all of us global humans…living in a moment when the story has to change… and we have a responsibility… to think furiously… after which… to organize collective ‘thinking galleries’… in which discussion happens – maybe we should have a running list of suppressed discussions… like: why is it we don't talk about the 'money-lever'? – about the world we want… starting with you… and then spiraling outwards… thinking concretely… about the physical infrastructure. hat are you like in the world you want? If I were to answer… I’d say… “relaxed and ‘time-full’… no rush… no pressure… time without limits… Next circle out… imagine your house… where is it in relation to your nearest neighbor? What our Good Three are helping us to see… is that the global-interconnections now are such… that in thinking through how you would fully embrace ‘you’… you’re thinking ‘globally’ too… Let’s start manifesting what we want for all of us – no division.

 

We are… all of us global humans…living in a moment when the story has to change… and we have a responsibility… to think furiously…

 

…after which… to organize collective ‘thinking galleries’ in which discussion happens… – maybe we should have a running list of suppressed discussions… like: why is it we don't talk about the 'money-lever'?… the fact that if you force folk to have to jump through hierarchical hoops in order to survive… then we are going to be passively standing by when they roll out… unfold… the story they want to happen…

 

…so maybe we can think of it in terms of: 'think-ins'… or collective ‘thinking galleries’ (gatherings) in which discussion happens… about the world we want…

 

…starting with you… and then spiraling outwards… thinking concretely… about the physical infrastructure.

 

What are you like in the world you want? If I were to answer… I’d say… “relaxed and ‘time-full’… no rush… no pressure… time without limits…

 

Next circle out… imagine your house… where is it in relation to your nearest neighbor?

 

…then describe village life… and if you’re not in it… then how far away is it… and how do you relate to it?

 

What our Good Three are helping us to see… is that the global-interconnections now are such… that in thinking through how you would fully embrace ‘you’… you’re thinking ‘globally’ too…

 

Let’s start manifesting what we want for all of us – no division.

 

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“The principle directional tendency of capital is its centralization on a world scale in two forms; financial pools, and technically divided and integrated labor processes.” – “Fatherland in danger, national defense, people’s war for existence, “Kultur,” liberty – these were the slogans proclaimed by the parliamentary representatives of the Social Democracy. What followed was but the logical sequence. The position of the Party and the labor union press, the patriotic frenzy of the masses, the civil peace, the disintegration of the International, all these things were the inevitable consequence of that momentous orientation in the Reichstag.”

 

I want to juxtapose some quotes… and later unpack them:

 

The principle directional tendency of capital is its centralization on a world scale in two forms; financial pools, and technically divided and integrated labor processes. The first is effected through extraordinarily large-scale banking consortia managing “public” and “private” funds alike and mediated by such organs of the world’s bourgeoisie as the IMF, the IBRD [the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development… a.k.a. the World Bank], and the BIS. The second is effected of course through the multiplying transnationalization of production under the aegis of the transnational corporation. This determining direction of capital on a world scale – oddly enough, not one that departs greatly from that projected in “the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation” – entails for antisystemic forces at least three broad consequential subordinate directional tendencies. (“Beyond Haymarket?”, Antisystemic Movements)

“We are now facing the irrevocable fact of war. We are threatened by the horrors of invasion. The decision, today, is not for or against war; for us there can be but one question: By what means is this war to be conducted?… This danger must be averted, the civilization and the independence of our people must be safeguarded…. In the hour of danger we will not desert our fatherland. In this we feel that we stand in harmony with the [Socialist] International, which has always recognized the right of every people to its national independence….”

 

With these words the Reichstag [“‘Reichstag’: the main legislature of the German state under the Second and Third Reichs; from the German ‘reichs’, meaning ‘of the empire’ plus ‘tag’, meaning ‘diet’ or ‘a legislative assembly’ – from the Latin ‘day’s work’ or ‘meeting of councilors’…”] group [the ‘Socialists’… – P.S.] issued the countersign [for the state… i.e. it capitulated… caved… – P.S.] that determined and controlled the position of the German working class during the war. Fatherland in danger, national defense, people’s war for existence, “Kultur,” liberty – these were the slogans proclaimed by the parliamentary representatives of the Social Democracy. What followed was but the logical sequence. The position of the Party and the labor union press, the patriotic frenzy of the masses, the civil peace, the disintegration of the International, all these things were the inevitable consequence of that momentous orientation in the Reichstag. (Rosa Luxemburg, “The Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis in the German Social Democracy,” February, 1915)

 

“The world war has annihilated the work of forty years of European socialism…” [i.e. the dream of global freedom… – P.S.] – In this space we have been raising the possibility for discussion: What if the result was the intention? …we have been arguing – bringing in the testimony of numerous ancestors… including Jeremy Bentham… Karl Popper… Miklos Nyiszli… Alice Miller… Albert O. Hirschman… De Tocqueville… Diana Spearman… and one potent contemporary attestor… Martin Bernal – that the French Revolution marked a turning point in the ‘story’ of ‘rule’… a turn toward a conscious plan to unify the ‘ruling class’ by making ‘rule’ permanent… through its institutionalization… by means of resource-aggregation: i.e. the accumulation of capital to fund this vision… and the crafting of global elite educational institutions to provide the on-going human resources to implement it…

 

The world war has annihilated the work of forty years of European socialism [i.e. the dream of global freedom… – P.S.]: by destroying the revolutionary proletariat as a political force; by destroying the moral prestige of socialism; by scattering the workers’ International; by setting its Sections one against the other in fratricidal massacre; and by tying the aspirations and hopes of the masses of the people of the main countries in which capitalism has developed to the destinies of imperialism. (Rosa Luxemburg, “Theses in the Tasks of International Social Democracy,” April, 1915)

In this space we have been raising the possibility for discussion: What if the result was the intention? If so… Left myopia on this question is understandable…

 

…since…

 

…if it is indeed the case… as we have been arguing – bringing in the testimony of numerous ancestors… including Jeremy Bentham… Karl Popper… Miklos Nyiszli… Alice Miller… Albert O. Hirschman… De Tocqueville… Diana Spearman… and one potent contemporary attestor… Martin Bernal – that the French Revolution marked a turning point in the ‘story’ of ‘rule’… a turn toward a conscious plan to unify the ‘ruling class’ by making ‘rule’ permanent… through its institutionalization… by means of resource-aggregation: i.e. the accumulation of capital to fund this vision… and the crafting of global elite educational institutions to provide the on-going human resources to implement it… if this is what has been happening to us…

 

…then… it takes time to catch up to the hidden ‘work’ of hidden actors…

 

…and ‘power’s ‘head-start’ on us is not just in terms of years… but in terms of means…

 

…and ‘class’ as a system ensures that disproportionate means but increases over time… exponentially…

 

Rosa Luxemburg concludes her ‘Tasks’ by listing the ‘historic mission’ of ‘socialism’, the last of which states: “The immediate mission of socialism is the spiritual liberation of the proletariat from the tutelage of the bourgeoisie, which expressed itself through the influence of nationalist ideology… The workers’ fatherland, to the defense of which all else must be subordinated, is the Socialist International.” – …once you see and feel the velocity… and ferocity… with which ‘power’ has seized our love and heart in its teeth… and… yearly… weekly… daily… keeps shredding… …then how can you describe the “the principle directional tendency of capital…” as being anything but: a war on us… and on the planet? – “We are massively, seriously in urgent need of reconstructing the strategy, perhaps the ideology, perhaps the organizational structure of the family of world antisystemic movements; if we are to cope effectively with the real dilemmas before which we are placed, as the “stateness” of states and the “capitalist” nature of capitalism grow at an incredible pace.”

 

Rosa Luxemburg concludes her ‘Tasks’ by listing the ‘historic mission’ of ‘socialism’, the last of which states:

The immediate mission of socialism is the spiritual liberation of the proletariat from the tutelage of the bourgeoisie, which expressed itself through the influence of nationalist ideology. The national Sections must agitate in the parliaments and the press, denouncing the empty wordiness of nationalism as an instrument of bourgeois domination. The sole defense of all real national independence is at present the revolutionary class struggle against imperialism. The workers’ fatherland, to the defense of which all else must be subordinated, is the Socialist International.

 

Last week our Good Three – Immanuel Wallerstein… Giovanni Arrighi… and Terence K. Hopkins – presented their conclusion… that ‘power’ is global… and operates through interstate mechanisms which… in an ever-increasing way… make us subjects not of ‘states’… but of the global-system – making ‘state’ and market’ non-descriptive… and requiring a new language and mindset for movements that aspire to be ‘antisystemic’.

Together these three facets of the ongoing structural transformation of the modern world-system, all of which reveal, to a greater or lesser extent, the structural surround of the state power seized or occupied by anti systemic movements in the course of the twentieth century, and indicate the degree and kind of reconstitution of terrain with which present and future movements of a like sort have to contend. They indicate as well – though this is not here a central concern of ours – the anachronism of the contents we give to the concepts with which we commonly work. The dilemmas of the antisystemic movements are thus in some measure the unintended product of a sort of false consciousness on the part, not of toadies nor even of hairsplitters, but of the most engaged of the intelligentsia.

Let’s return to those earlier words:

The principle directional tendency of capital is its centralization on a world scale in two forms; financial pools, and technically divided and integrated labor processes. The first is effected through extraordinarily large-scale banking consortia managing “public” and “private” funds alike and mediated by such organs of the world’s bourgeoisie as the IMF, the IBRD [the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development… a.k.a. the World Bank], and the BIS. The second is effected of course through the multiplying transnationalization of production under the aegis of the transnational corporation. This determining direction of capital on a world scale – oddly enough, not one that departs greatly from that projected in “the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation” – entails for antisystemic forces at least three broad consequential subordinate directional tendencies. (“Beyond Haymarket?”, Antisystemic Movements)

When I first read them I was struck by the fact… that… four years on… beyond the essay “Dilemmas”… their language seemed… more wedded to ‘Marxist’ categories than ever… despite their recognizing… as we shall read shortly:

We are massively, seriously in urgent need of reconstructing the strategy, perhaps the ideology, perhaps the organizational structure of the family of world antisystemic movements; if we are to cope effectively with the real dilemmas before which we are placed, as the “stateness” of states and the “capitalist” nature of capitalism grow at an incredible pace. We know this creates objective contradictions for the system as such and for the managers of the status quo. But it creates dilemmas for the antisystemic movements almost as grave. Thus we cannot count on the “automaticity” of progress; thus we cannot abandon critical analysis of our real historical alternatives.

Because… once you look at things… from the bottom… and see… as Rosa did (“The world war has annihilated the work of forty years of European socialism…” – work beautifully depicted in Maxim Gorky’s Mother…) and as we have been reading in Keith Lowe’s Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II…

 

…once you see and feel the velocity… and ferocity… with which ‘power’ has seized our love and heart in its teeth… and… yearly… weekly… daily… keeps shredding…

 

…then how can you describe the “the principle directional tendency of capital…” as being anything but: a war on us… and on the planet?

 

…and then… I got stuck on: “the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation”… about which… Rosa said this: “The aim and incentive of capitalist production is not a surplus value pure and simple, to be appropriated in any desired quantity, but a surplus value ever growing into larger quantities, surplus value ad infinitum… It is the production of surplus value which turns reproduction of social necessities into a perpetuum mobile…” Perpetuum mobile… from the Latin: “perpetually moving thing…” perpetually consuming… eating… the earth… input: earth… output: means… infinite resources for the acquisition… securing… of ‘Infinite Knowledge’?… ‘Power’… perhaps – also perhaps it didn’t… doesn’t… care – flipped the ‘greed switch’… not caring that it can’t be turned off… but it always was… a device of art only… on the road to totalitarianism… ‘Power’ knows we need a ‘point’… ‘money’ has served as such a goal… using ‘capitalism’ as the mechanism / device… and Marxist theory as the legitimating ideology…

 

…and then… I got stuck on: “the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation”…

 

The aim and incentive of capitalist production is not a surplus value pure and simple, to be appropriated in any desired quantity, but a surplus value ever growing into larger quantities, surplus value ad infinitum. But to achieve this aim, the same magic means must be used over and over again, the means of capitalist production – the ever repeated as appropriation of the proceeds of unpaid wage labour in the process of commodity manufacture, and the subsequent realization of the commodities so produced.

 

Thus quite a new incentive is given to constantly renewed production, to the process of reproduction as a regular phenomenon in capitalist society, and incentive unknown to any other system of production. In every other economic system known to history, reproduction is determined by the unceasing need of society for consumer goods… But in a capitalist system of production… [for] the individual private producer… appropriation of surplus valued is his real incentive… It is the production of surplus value which turns reproduction of social necessities into a perpetuum mobile. (The Accumulation of Capital, p. 39)

Perpetuum mobile… from the Latin: “perpetually moving thing…” perpetually consuming… eating… the earth…

 

…input: earth… output: means… infinite resources for the acquisition… securing… of ‘Infinite Knowledge’?…

 

…a machine set in motion that cannot be ‘unset’… except by getting ‘the people’ to ‘regulate’ it…

 

 

…but it always was… a device of art only… on the road to totalitarianism…

 

The ‘power’-guys… the global-state-statesmen… prepared themselves by propagandizing (as Reagan said…) that ‘democracy’ is but a pause… on the road to dictatorship…

 

Nonetheless… they did not – cannot – see (as it seems to have eluded Bentham…) but William could have told them: that there is a lever of which they cannot maintain an exclusive hold – that the perpetuum mobile for knowledge… in reality cuts one way… ultimately… if the right note is played… toward truth…

 

There comes a point in any quest to understand when it is no longer acceptable to produce pap… even when paid to do so.

 

‘Power’ knows we need a ‘point’… ‘money’ has served as such a goal… using ‘capitalism’ as the mechanism / device… and Marxist theory as the legitimating ideology…

 

…and they can’t be faulted for conservatism in overweighting us with burdens… of every imaginable kind… and in every imaginable way…

 

…but…

 

…their assumption that only they… are determined to know… what it is that makes things go… led them astray…

 

…or to think that they can hide for long… once our search for truth is unified… in voice and song…

 

“For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.”

 

After which… we make our rough road smooth.

 

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[Today’s reading: We are – briefly interrupting our reading of Chapter 5 – and concluding our reading of Chapter 2 of Giovanni Arrighi’s, Terence K. Hopkins’, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements…: “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”… – P.S.]

 

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* * February 1, 2015 reading: Chapter 2 of Giovanni Arrighi’s, Terence K. Hopkins’, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements… “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”

 

This may be as good point as any… to call attention to a key area of difference between the argument of professional Leftists… usually Marxists as well… and the argument advanced here. When we read that the hierarchical structuring of states… “deepened the differences in productive capacity…” between them… we are hearing the ‘language of economics’ which Marxists necessarily use (…as they played… and continue to play… a key role in crafting it…) i.e.… we are entering into a worldview which accepts as legitimate (if only in a sense…) the value-assignment-role of ‘the market’ in determining ‘wealth’… But the argument here is that we cannot claim our freedom unless we renounce that language… that life must not be commodified for ‘rule’ to be unseated… and reverence become the defining quality of our lives…

 

We turn now to much briefer observations on two more faces of this transformation. A second face is in the organization of the structuring of another plane of the capitalist world-economy’s operation, the axial division of labor. This is the complex of interrelated production / transportation processes that is so ordered that the surplus-value created in the course of production and transportation is, historically, disproportionately appropriated at the organizing centers of the multiple and more-or-less lengthy chains or networks of dependent production processes.

[…by “the organizing centers…” they’re referring to those countries or regions ‘privileged’ to be… at the top of the inter-state-system hierarchy… given the ‘plum’ assignment of being… ‘the brains of the operation…’ So here again we see… that the ‘mental – manual’ distinction / segmentation… is key… – P.S.]

The relational patterns this ordering entails are thereby reproduced and, for additional reasons, their reproduction has cyclically deepened the differences in productive capacity between the organizing center or core portions of the axial division of labor and its increasingly peripheralized portions. In the twentieth century, the underlying transformation has effected some truly massive alterations in the constituent relations of the complex core-periphery axis and hence in the mapping of their respective global zones, the results of which – generally rendered as if the result of state policies – are broadly known.…

[Again… ‘power’ must hide to survive. This may be as good point as any – before we look more deeply at “the ‘state – market’ distinction ideology” – to call attention to a key area of difference between the argument of professional Leftists… usually Marxists as well… and the argument advanced here. When we read that the hierarchical structuring of states… “deepened the differences in productive capacity…” between them… we are hearing the ‘language of economics’ which Marxists necessarily use (…as they played… and continue to play… a key role in crafting it…) i.e.… we are entering into a worldview which accepts as legitimate (if only in a sense…) the value-assignment-role of ‘the market’ in determining ‘wealth’… But the argument here is that we cannot claim our freedom unless we renounce that language… that life must not be commodified for ‘rule’ to be unseated… and reverence become the defining quality of our lives… – P.S.]

“Of more immediate interest is the extraordinary growth in recent decades of a long-standing agency of the organizing center or core of the socialization of production (hence of labor) […more accurately called the ‘disciplining of human beings’… – P.S.] on a world scale; namely, what is currently called the multinational or transnational firm. In a sentence, many relations among materially dependent production processes that had been exchange relations…” [Recall what else is ‘historically original’: the ever-growing ‘stateness’ of the interstate system… the increasing density of inter-state relations within states themselves… the increasing irrelevance of what was in any case nominal ‘sovereignty’ to the functioning of ‘the system’… and the resulting “subordination (of the) interrelations among the world’s peoples…” to the self-interested imperatives – and our Trio are asking… what would those be? – of the interstate system. This underscores the point our Three are making: that the distinction ‘interstate system’ and ‘global market’ is ideological… It’s like a mystery that… bit by bit… they unfold before us: How did it come to be… this web in which we’re caught so thoroughly… ‘enfixed’ as to a tomb… – P.S.]

 

…Of more immediate interest is the extraordinary growth in recent decades of a long-standing agency of the organizing center or core of the socialization of production (hence of labor) […more accurately called the ‘disciplining of human beings’… – P.S.] on a world scale; namely, what is currently called the multinational or transnational firm. In a sentence, many relations among materially dependent production processes that had been exchange relations – or, if newly formed, could have been under other conditions (and so of, or potentially of, market-organized networks of commodity flows) – became transformed into (or, if new, formed as) intrafirm relations. The elemental arrangement – centralizations of capital, in the form of firms, entrepreneurially organizing geographically extensive and technically complex (for the time) chains of related production operations – is hardly new. It was, after all, what distinguished the chartered merchant (sic!) […again… the terms we’re given to think in… are intentionally deceptive… – P.S.] companies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from other capitalized operations. But in recent decades this “elemental arrangement” of the capitalist world-economy has been increasingly constituted on a scale, and in a form of both organization and production, that is historically original.…

[Recall what else is ‘historically original’: the ever-growing ‘stateness’ of the interstate system… the increasing density of inter-state relations within states themselves… the increasing irrelevance of what was in any case nominal ‘sovereignty’ to the functioning of ‘the system’… and the resulting “subordination (of the) interrelations among the world’s peoples…” to the self-interested imperatives – and our Trio are asking… what would those be? – of the interstate system. This underscores the point our Three are making: that the distinction ‘interstate system’ and ‘global market’ is ideological… It’s like a mystery that… bit by bit… they unfold before us: How did it come to be… this web in which we’re caught so thoroughly… ‘enfixed’ as to a tomb… – P.S.]

“The transnational corporations’ reconstruction of the world-scale division and integration of labor processes fundamentally alters the historical possibilities of what are still referred to, and not yet even nostalgically, as “national economies.” A third face of the ongoing structural transformation we are sketchily addressing here shows itself, so to speak, in the massive centralization of capital of the postwar decades. Slowly, haltingly, but more and more definitely, the central agency of capitalist accumulation on a world scale, a world ruling class in formation, is organizing a relational structure for continually resolving the massive contradictions… The centralization here is at the money point in the circuit of capital, and the borrowers are not directly capitalist entrepreneurs but are instead states, which in turn use the more-or-less encumbered credits to work with transnationals, operating with undistributed surpluses in various “development” projects, which, as they are realized materially, amount to what is called by some “Third World industrialization” and result in precisely the “deindustrialization” of previously core areas.” [This is called conquering and leashing the world’s peoples by sucking all the wealth – earth-resources stolen… i.e. destroyed… removed from the people’s use – out of the subject states… and into the hands of the banks… ‘power’s ‘money-face’… the ‘business-end’ of its subjection operation… through the deeply resistant… still get the bayonet… – P.S.]

 

…The transnational corporations’ reconstruction of the world-scale division and integration of labor processes fundamentally alters the historical possibilities of what are still referred to, and not yet even nostalgically, as “national economies.”

 

A third face of the ongoing structural transformation we are sketchily addressing here shows itself, so to speak, in the massive centralization of capital of the postwar decades. Slowly, haltingly, but more and more definitely, the central agency of capitalist accumulation on a world scale, a world ruling class in formation, is organizing a relational structure for continually resolving the massive contradictions, increasingly apparent between the transnational corporations’ control over, and hence responsibility for, the interruptions among productive processes and the multiple states’ control over, and hence responsibility for, the labor forces these production processes engage, more or less sporadically.

 

This structure being organized is basically a sort of replacement, at a “higher level” of course, for the late-lamented colonial empires, whose demise the national movements sought and the new hegemonic power, the United States, required. Through those arrangements, and such cousins of them as the Chinese concessions and the Ottoman capitulations, the axial division of labor had been furthered and, subject to the very system’s structural cycles, assured. The twentieth century’s thirty-years’ war (1914 – 45), insofar as it was about those arrangements, resolved the question of hegemonic power (a United States versus Germany fight, it was then understood) but left for invention the means of its exercise and, with that, the perpetuation of both the axial division of labor and the necessary multiple sovereignties, through which the interstate system and hence the relations of hegemony operated.

 

The invention was a long time in coming and seems to have emerged fully only, as we said earlier, after the narrowness of the limits of great-power military force had finally been established by the Vietnamese for all to see.…

[In our Waking Up Radio show of December 21, 2014 we posed the question: “What if… all the blood-letting was exactly what ‘power’ wanted?:

 

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But I have a deeper… and broader… concern about their analysis. What I’m seeing now… is that the problem we identified in last week’s show: ‘power’s invisibility… the clandestine manner of the global-state-statesmen’s mechanisms for organizing the world… and of their own planning… distorts the analysis… the implications of this problem must be plumbed… and mos def discussed… using the frame of our earth-allegiance – and with a fearless acceptance of the results of the analysis that our Reason gives us: what if… all the blood-letting was exactly what ‘power’ wanted? The view of ‘all’ changes when we admit… that the goal of ‘power’ has ever been… to ‘keep the cattle herded’… The question we should ask to test the motive I’m imputing to them… this motive ‘herding us’… is… whether after all the blood-letting… all the violence… were we-the-global-people more or less… ‘disciplined’?… i.e. were ‘the people’ more tightly ‘organized’ in state-boxes? And without question we can answer, “Yes.”.…” [Excerpt is from our December 21, 2014 radio broadcast.]

 

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The invention was a long time in coming and seems to have emerged fully only, as we said earlier, after the narrowness of the limits of great-power military force had finally been established by the Vietnamese for all to see. Crudely put, what seems to have been going on, by way of a structural replacement of the colonial empires, has been the simultaneous growth in massive centralizations of capital and a sort of deconcentration of capital (called deindustrialization in present core areas of the axial division of labor). The massive centralization has as its agencies quite small ad hoc steering committees of consortia, each composed of several hundred banks working in close relations both with central banks and with international genies, notably the IBRD, and IMF, and the BIS. The centralization here is at the money point in the circuit of capital, and the borrowers are not directly capitalist entrepreneurs but are instead states, which in turn use the more-or-less encumbered credits to work with transnationals, operating with undistributed surpluses in various “development” projects, which, as they are realized materially, amount to what is called by some “Third World industrialization” and result in precisely the “deindustrialization” of previously core areas.

[This is called conquering and leashing the world’s peoples by sucking all the wealth – earth-resources stolen… i.e. destroyed… removed from the people’s use – out of the subject states… and into the hands of the banks… ‘power’s ‘money-face’… the ‘business-end’ of its subjection operation… through the deeply resistant… still get the bayonet… – P.S.]

“This face of the transformation does suggest reconsidering the theoretically presumed concatenation [“a series of interconnected things or events… or the action of linking things together…”] of centralization and concentration of capital. But even more it suggests reconceptualizing the fundamental nature of the accumulation process as it is framed throughout the idea of the circuits of capital. For when the indebted states run into trouble, one of the agencies of this arrangement, the IMF, steps forward with austerity plans, the gist and substance of which amount to lowering the costs, now internationally reckoned, of the daily and generational reproduction of the labor forces of (within?) each of the countries. [… – P.S.]… Together these three facets of the ongoing structural transformation of the modern world-system, all of which reveal, to a greater or lesser extent, the structural surround of the state power seized or occupied by antisystemic movements in the course of the twentieth century… There remains a matter to end on here – to raise as a sort of coda – for nothing before has directly prefigured it… The kind of concern flagged in the Manifesto, the material means of unity among those geographically separate, remains central. The means themselves, and the very form of their materiality, have been fundamentally transformed. More and more antisystemic movements will find their own cohesion and coherence forged and destroyed by the newest of the means of mediating social relations.… Where then are we? We are massively, seriously in urgent need of reconstructing the strategy, perhaps the ideology, perhaps the organizational structure of the family of world antisystemic movements; if we are to cope effectively with the real dilemmas before which we are placed…” [Who do you know of since… to think so strategically… and so realistically… and so passionately… about how to effect a global movement… that is antisystemic… as we see in this… from Terence K. Hopkins… I invite Immanuel Wallerstein to challenge me on that… – P.S.]

 

This face of the transformation does suggest reconsidering the theoretically presumed concatenation [“a series of interconnected things or events… or the action of linking things together…”] of centralization and concentration of capital. But even more it suggests reconceptualizing the fundamental nature of the accumulation process as it is framed throughout the idea of the circuits of capital. For when the indebted states run into trouble, one of the agencies of this arrangement, the IMF, steps forward with austerity plans, the gist and substance of which amount to lowering the costs, now internationally reckoned, of the daily and generational reproduction of the labor forces of (within?) each of the countries.

[Once again… he’s saying the term ‘nation-state’ exists to invite confusion… And we know that when they talk about “lowering our reproduction costs…” they're talking about reducing our life expectancy… our health… our happiness… exponentially over time… – P.S.]

The arrangement is not per se historically new – one thinks of the Ottoman capitulations, for example – but it is far more massive and, as a structural array of processes of the world-system, far more frequent in occurrence and telling in its implications for the structuring of the accumulation process as such.

 

Together these three facets of the ongoing structural transformation of the modern world-system, all of which reveal, to a greater or lesser extent, the structural surround of the state power seized or occupied by anti systemic movements in the course of the twentieth century, and indicate the degree and kind of reconstitution of terrain with which present and future movements of a like sort have to contend. They indicate as well – though this is not here a central concern of ours – the anachronism of the contents we give to the concepts with which we commonly work. The dilemmas of the antisystemic movements are thus in some measure the unintended product of a sort of false consciousness on the part, not of toadies nor even of hairsplitters, but of the most engaged of the intelligentsia.

 

There remains a matter to end on here – to raise as a sort of coda – for nothing before has directly prefigured it. This is the ongoing transformation of communications networks. The Communist Manifesto observes: “And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.” It is now nearly a century and a half since that was written. That sentence has lost none of its force. But it must be understood contemporarily. In the United States, in the 1960s, what effected the interrelation of the hundred-and-fifty or so Black demonstrations and the even more numerous public forms of the antiwar movement was television, which is why the commanding officer of the Grenada operation (Grenada: less than half the size in territory and people of an upstate New York county) correctly, from the U.S. government’s point of view, decreed there was to be no accompanying news coverage of the invasion. The kind of concern flagged in the Manifesto, the material means of unity among those geographically separate, remains central. The means themselves, and the very form of their materiality, have been fundamentally transformed. More and more antisystemic movements will find their own cohesion and coherence forged and destroyed by the newest of the means of mediating social relations.

 

Where then are we? We are massively, seriously in urgent need of reconstructing the strategy, perhaps the ideology, perhaps the organizational structure of the family of world antisystemic movements; if we are to cope effectively with the real dilemmas before which we are placed, as the “stateness” of states and the “capitalist” nature of capitalism grow at an incredible pace. We know this creates objective contradictions for the system as such and for the managers of the status quo. But it creates dilemmas for the antisystemic movements almost as grave. Thus we cannot count on the “automaticity” of progress; thus we cannot abandon critical analysis of our real historical alternatives.

[Who do you know of since… to think so strategically… and so realistically… and so passionately… about how to effect a global movement… that is antisystemic… as we see in this… from Terence K. Hopkins… I invite Immanuel Wallerstein to challenge me on that… – P.S.]

[This concludes Chapter 2 of Antisystemic Movements: “Dilemmas of Antisystemic Movements”.]

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* “WUR of February 8th, 2015… “Embracing Global Goals, Scope and Action: Becoming Global Actors… Claiming the ‘All’”:

Sisters and Brothers: The word-beats below continue the conversation that D-Way and I had during our September 30, 2012 Waking Up Radio show. They are Parts 2 and 3 of a multi-part series on ‘Moving Forward’:

 

D-Way: “I’m wondering why… for people out there who you interact with… and they say they feel like they’re ‘powerless’ to do anything to combat the creeping totalitarianism state… that totalitarianism is here… people agree… but feel like they can’t do anything about it… so… why do you feel like we can do something about it?… like… what do you say to people who say that to you?… you know?… because it is overwhelming when you think about the level of control and dominance that this system has put over the globe… So why are you hopeful that we can effect that change?” The Raven: “Well I think one way to answer that question is to respond to what we were just listening to prior to this show… When we got within a couple blocks of the station we started hearing the voice of Helen Caldicott… and she was interviewing Colonel Ann Wright… and Ann Wright was bemoaning the fact that can’t get people to mobilize around… anything… that there is a scary passivity on the part of us… and a scary hearing loss on the part of both [political] parties… and so they were in effect acknowledging that we don’t have an existing democracy… and that the problem was out there somewhere… ‘the problem is Barack’… ‘the problem is apathy’… the problem is everywhere but that man or woman in the mirror… For instance… [in her identification with the state… and lack of recognition that change comes from below…] being eternally ‘surprised’ that ‘power’ acts like ‘power’… and then they’re always ‘surprised’ that people have no time to engage in political activism… and they… almost as an aside… they said, “Well… people want to keep their job…” as if that’s an aside… and irrelevant… to how we solve this problem… As long as they can control whether we eat or not… as long as we are not questioning the deep underpinnings of a ‘class’-system… how in the world can we pull ourselves out of a sense of apathy?” D-Way: “I wanted to… back it up a little bit to the personal responsibility and how you said that people see… in the media… problems like violence or sexual assault… but we rarely want to internalize it… see how we perpetuate the system… but I just wanted to go back and say: it’s hard for people to hear… that they are the problem… Are you suggesting that people should think of themselves as a problem?” [Spoken word is from our September 30, 2012 radio broadcast.]

 

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D-Way: “Because… I saw as a bit of a dichotomy your saying that in one case we internalize ‘the system’… but at the same time when [Ann Wright] is saying: “well… we did this…” then… I hear you distancing yourself from that… saying that “we didn’t… we’re not a part of that…” So… we’re not doing these horrific acts around the globe… but in our language isn’t it important to make a distinction between this system of oppression and ‘us’?… or do we need to claim those horrific acts that are happening around the globe?” The Raven: “Well… the distinction for me is that… it gets back to: ‘What’s the objective?’… ‘What’s the goal?’… and when pundits talk about… with… perhaps… a sense of shame… what ‘we’… meaning ‘the U.S. state’… is doing… what they’re saying… implicitly… is that: ‘I want to be proud of my state… we must fix this… we must put in office those people who will implement in an honorable way the intentions of the people of this [nation-]state… the citizenry… and what I’m arguing… is that this is ideology in the guise of something noble… that… in fact… part of our apathy… our dispiritedness… around engaging in authentic activism is that no one speaks honestly… When I talk to people on the street… there’s so much more just down-to-earth honorable honesty than I ever hear… ever hear… over the airwaves… So when I hear an Ann Wright bemoan the lack of integrity of the U.S. state… as if a state can be anything but what it was established to be… that is contributing to massive confusion out there… So I say that the responsibility of pundits (but… of course… they wouldn’t be pundits if they did this…) is to begin using an authentic… earth-based language…” D-Way: “Well I wasn’t talking about ‘the responsibility of the pundits’… I’m talking about the responsibility of individuals and the language we use in describing the relationship we have with this ‘power’ that controls us. What I’m asking… what is the language that we use to describe that?… because if ‘the system’ isn’t us… how come we shouldn’t say… ‘this is what we’re doing…’ in order to claim it… in order to take responsibility for those atrocious acts that are happening… and then speak out and push to change those actions?” [Spoken word is from our September 30, 2012 radio broadcast.]

 

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So when the young college-educated… urged to devise new ‘apps’… or financial ‘instruments’… or run all the ‘systems’… or launch some new ‘start-up’… to serve the global-state-statesmen… are told they are ‘creatives’… they are… if they buy it… eating up the latest version of the Conquering Race story… and holding hostage our free future… …because if they… the so-called ‘creatives’… who operate the networks – the grid that hosts our interconnections – were to decide… finally… that they are not ‘special’… not cut from some cloth of a more refined ‘order’… and make common cause with all of us-targeted… then it would be ‘game-over’ for ‘power’ and its ‘system’… and authentic existence… could begin again… ‘Education’ is quite literally the means for fostering the divisions that perpetuate ‘the system’.

 

Sisters and Brothers: Today’s theme is: how we are controlled by stories… and how… once ‘class’ (‘power’… the global-state statesmen…) is established globally… once the Roach Motel is fully-constructed… all the stories allowed are versions of one: “The Logic of Rule.” This story has a vision and a mission… and so… as those who own it are only .0001% of us…

(…by the by… as an intimate relation… standing by… the following has been on my mind to mention ever since Oxfam released its report on global inequality which said that one percent of the entire global population – we’re talking seventy million – owns as much as three and a half billion…

 

Really?… Well… here’s a request to the numbers-crunchers… you who compose these quantifications… give us instead the ratio we need… that most effects our getting free… that best reflects our true endowment – we commoners for millennia on leash – that being… the wealth-divergence between everyone else… and those Miniscule Few Ten Thousand: the point-zero-zero-zero-one percent…)

…must get us to implement it… this ‘vision’. And trained as they are to be militaristic… they’ve (in their minds) organized us into regiments: they need officers… and grunts… and downstairs servants…

 

…and us raised… willing… to bow to them:

The regeneration of the inferior or degenerate races by the superior races is part of the providential order of things for humanity…. Nature has made a race of workers, the Chinese race, who have wonderful manual dexterity and almost no sense of honor; govern them with justice, levying from them, in return for the blessing of such a government, an ample allowance for the conquering race, and they will be satisfied; a race of tillers of the soil, the Negro; treat him with kindness and humanity, and all will be as it should; a race of masters and soldiers, the European race. Reduce this noble race to working in the ergastulum […from the Greek ‘ergon’ for ‘work’… and (perhaps) the Greek ‘gaster’ for ‘stomach’…] like Negroes and Chinese, and they rebel…. But the life at which our workers rebel would make a Chinese or a fellah happy, as they are not military creatures in the least. Let each one do what he is made for, and all will be well. (Ernest Renan, quoted in Chinweizu, The West and the Rest of Us: White Predators, Black Slavers and the African Elite, 1975, in the chapter: “Global Power and the Myths of Racism”, which describes Mr. Renan as a “western humanist and idealist philosopher from France…”)

So when the young college-educated… urged to devise new ‘apps’… or financial ‘instruments’… or run all the ‘systems’… or launch some new ‘start-up’… to serve the global-state-statesmen…

 

…are told they are ‘creatives’… they are… if they buy it… eating up the latest version of the Conquering Race story…

 

…and holding hostage our free future…

 

…because if they… the so-called ‘creatives’… who operate the networks – the grid that hosts our interconnections – were to decide… finally… that they are not ‘special’… not cut from some cloth of a more refined ‘order’… and make common cause with all of us-targeted… then it would be ‘game-over’ for ‘power’ and its ‘system’… and authentic existence… could begin again…

 

‘Education’ is quite literally the means for fostering the divisions that perpetuate ‘the system’.

 

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(Request for suggestions for how to break out of this 'communications-isolation-unit' I feel like I have been put in… When I called I-Power [the Nascence site web host] to try to figure out why my web page html text / code for the January 25 show was seemingly being suppressed or overwritten… but in any case didn't show… I got a woman who was curious why I wasn't checking my stats… I replied that my files on the site were regularly being altered… so it didn't make a lot of sense to credit what the 'stats' said… She told me that my 'normal' daily 'average' number of folks visiting the website of '80' was ten times higher on January 18. I answered that that was extremely implausible and asked her to send me an email to that effect… She never did… – P.S.)

 

(Request for suggestions for how to break out of this 'communications-isolation-unit' I feel like I have been put in… When I called I-Power to try to figure out why my web page html text / code for the January 25 show was seemingly being suppressed or overwritten… but in any case didn't show… I got a woman who was curious why I wasn't checking my stats… I replied that my files on the site were regularly being altered… so it didn't make a lot of sense to credit what the 'stats' said… She told me that my 'normal' daily 'average' number of folks visiting the website of '80' was ten times higher on January 18. I answered that that was extremely implausible and asked her to send me an email to that effect… She never did… – P.S.)

 

Really?… Well… here’s a request to the numbers-crunchers… you who compose these quantifications… give us instead the ratio we need… that most effects our getting free… that best reflects our true endowment – we commoners for millennia on leash – that being… the wealth-divergence between everyone else… and those Miniscule Few Ten Thousand: the point-zero-zero-zero-one percent…)

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Stories are what we’re made of… we’ve said before in these discussions… and I don’t think we’ve fully appreciated what this means when we’re living under a system of ‘power’… of ‘Rule By the Few’…

 

…it means… as Bentham taught us… every ‘story’ that we hear… must reinforce ‘power’s ‘logic’… every story must add padding to their blanket of security…

 

…and right now… because we are in transition… because humans globally are turning from ‘Rule’… and are looking to the earth once again for guidance…

 

…‘power’ is on the defensive… a wounded tiger…

 

…which means… as the global-state-statesmen plan to remain hegemonic…

 

…and no ‘piece’ on the chessboard matters more than the U.S….

 

…that the next presidential election will be not just ‘knock-down-drag-out’-maxed-out… simply…

 

…but ‘simply’… the most ‘kick-stomping-dirty-tricks-to-the-death vicious… that any now walking have unfortunately seen…

 

…which means… you will be rewarded… as Cornell West knows… if you have a shtick that involves trashing Barack… who’s story they plan to put in their pockets… and mash it about… and pull it out tarnished… and use it to lie to future ‘students’ of ‘history’… the ones they intend to operate ‘the System’…

 

…and use it… of course… this goes without saying… use it… they fully intend… to regain the office of U.S. ‘president’…

 

…and you will be rewarded… as all the made-‘terrorists’… from Oaxaca to Abuja… from Damascus to Donetsk… also well know… you will be rewarded for causing sadness… for inspiring fear and despair… and sowing seeds of division…

 

So we… right now… are being treated to ‘stories’ most egregious… full of horrors… and scandals… and hearts-broken a’plenty…

 

…but far from this being a moment for watching… for sitting back in shock at this hideous ‘show’…

 

…rather… this is a moment… to go for the gold: to regain that world where we don’t ‘marvel’ at tyrants… who dress up in garb they think makes them ‘Titans’…

 

…but a world in which we… commoner-to-commoner… have joined hands globally… and are healing the planet… re-knitting our relations… and living our dreams.

 

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Sisters and Brothers… as we’re exploring ‘power’s obsessive need to control us with stories (which are… when ‘power’ is under threat… largely about directing our attention into division… and away from it…) and so as well its obsessive need to both create and vet the stories we get from media of any reach…

(…which… given the Internet and our instantaneous interconnections… has scaled up this task – bulked the weight of it on ‘power’s back – quite a bit. But they seem to have bit into it with gusto… there’s no shortage, it seems, of youth without means… but tech-savvy… willing to believe that… in serving ‘power’… they’ve joined the ‘winning team’… and so may partake vicariously in the acclaim awarded ‘power’s ‘heroic’ project – Goring’s ‘Heads Up!’ has yet to be discussed by us: his claim that if they’d succeeded they’d be deemed the masters of men… i.e…. that ‘class’… ‘power’… ‘rule’… has for its base conception since its inception the amorality of ‘Might Makes Right’… and Alice Miller explains how we reproduce this ‘system’ over the generations by implementing its ‘childrearing’ regime…)

…‘power’s obsessive need to both create and vet the stories we get from media of any reach can be illustrated with a story that seems to work against it… that ‘item’ we began with… the ‘inequality’-report by Oxfam – their response its release may help show what I mean… as well as ‘power’s sense of ‘economy’ and ‘layering’ strategy (both sources of pride as evidence… they imagine… of their superiority of ‘mind’ and therefore ‘fitness’… for ‘ruling’ over us…

 

…because while the notion of the ‘one percent’ is a key bit of ‘power’-propaganda…

(…for instance the latest speech by Chris Hedges urging folks to blame… not the global-state-statesmen… but rather one of the traditional buffers of ‘power’… along with the police: national ‘elites’… i.e. those with padded incomes… but who could never be aspirants to deification… as they have no global ‘reach’…)

 

…and this story provides additional mileage on it…

 

…but to reinforce it further and spin it harmless… we have Right-wing push-back from Gates et al…. twisting its message to say… the issue is ‘improvement’… not ‘disparity’… i.e. that old ‘Rising Tide’ yarn (which in the face of imminent ocean death… widespread drought… crop failures… and famine in water-robbed-lands… and violence the plan for our Brothers and Sisters with strong communal traditions… in the face of this… their ‘twist’ highlights how truly shameless these Lost Children… called ‘statesmen’… are…)

In Waking Up (in the chapter, "Progress"…) I argued that we-the-people are the ones to discuss and see… that ‘progress’ lies in our authentic unity – ‘authentic’ meaning… ‘based in individual self-sufficiency’ – and that to think these necessary thoughts (necessary for advancing the species to freedom…) we need a story that is the opposite of ‘power’s:

We are capable of investigating the world from a stance of unity, without linking that inquiry to a bunch of fanciful notions about ‘Thought realizing Itself,’ and some people being ‘good’ because they help Thought realize itself and other peoples being ‘bad’ because they don’t represent ‘Thought,’ or some such bullshit.

 

Let’s start telling ourselves a different story – if only out of solidarity, out of a need to grow together rather than in opposition.

 

The alternative story can be summed up in three words: “misery loves company.”

 

Some really, really unhappy people with big gaping holes in their souls, “under the pressure of necessity, resorted to violence.”

 

They set out on an endless mission to try to fill these holes with material stuff.

 

The sight of happy people drove them mad and they set about trying to destroy their happiness as thoroughly as possible.

 

From Necessity in the human story the road led to Child Abandonment and Violence, and then onward to Hierarchy and Passive Obedience.

 

Now it’s true that we can’t elevate this story to the level of ‘System,’ and in it there are lots of incompletely answered questions like, “how did they get so unhappy?” But, still, it fits the facts way better than the tale Hegel tells.

 

Fear stalked the globe, stealing wherever it went – food, resources, happiness. And destroying the happiness of others was most satisfying of all: to smash as it had been smashed, wound as it had been wounded – to do to others what had been done to it: it made orphans. It’s a common compulsion, a familiar vacancy – a death-fetish dynamic (Israel comes to mind.)

 

The lost child is the source of our troubles…. It’s time for us to heal the hurt, complete the circuit – return home. We have nothing now but our imaginations and our biological memory, but that’s enough for the task at hand, which is reunion. (Waking Up: Freeing Ourselves From Work, “Progress”, p. 133 – 4) [The html page: “Waking Up (Progress, "Survival and Complicity" [Part 6]”

 

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[Today’s reading: As a Preface to Chapter 5… we will be reading from Chapters 3: “The Liberation of Class Struggle?”… and 4: “Beyond Haymarket?”… before returning to Chapter 5 of Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements…, “1968: The Great Rehearsal”… – P.S.]

 

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* * February 8, 2015 reading: As a Preface to Chapter 5… we will be reading from Chapters 3: “The Liberation of Class Struggle?”… and 4: “Beyond Haymarket?”… before returning to Chapter 5 of Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements… “1968: The Great Rehearsal”…

[Re-reading that section (the end of the chapter “Progress” in Waking Up…) raised many questions… many of the same questions raised… although using very different language… in Antisystemic Movements… and chasing that fish… requires us to linger a bit… and explore in more depth our Good Three’s argument… leading to their Chapter 5 question: What was 1968 foreshadowing?

 

We’ll begin by reading towards the end of Chapter 4, “Beyond Haymarket?”… then splice in the end of Chapter 3, “The Liberation of Class Struggle?” (also posed as a question…) and then we’ll stop and assess… – P.S.]

The principle directional tendency of capital is its centralization on a world scale in two forms; financial pools, and technically divided and integrated labor processes. The first is effected through extraordinarily large-scale banking consortia managing “public” and “private” funds alike and mediated by such organs of the world’s bourgeoisie as the IMF, the IBRD [the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development… a.k.a. the World Bank], and the BIS. The second is effected of course through the multiplying transnationalization of production under the aegis of the transnational corporation. This determining direction of capital on a world scale… entails for antisystemic forcs at least three broad consequential subordinate directional tendencies.

 

First… the ongoing relocation of labor-using manufacturing processes to the semiperiphery and hence the shift there of the epicenter of “classically” framed and conducted class conflict – direct, organized, large-scale capital-labor struggles. That epicenter, and so its historical trajectory, will hence increasingly be formed within the jurisdictions of the states of that zone, and their politics indeed increasingly reflect the transformation.

 

Second is the de-nationalization, in effect, of domestic (“national”) labor forces. The world’s workers, increasingly made into laborers under the aegis of capital, move as they always have in order to be in relation to capital, a movement sharply furthered in speed and extent by developments in communications and transportation. Marx and Engels saw the railroad as shortening to a century, for national proletariats, the time needed to achieve the degree of class organization it took national bourgeoisies, with their miserable roads, five centuries to attain. Ship, air, and electronics have for decades now been analogously forming the possibility of an organized world proletariat within “national” locales. The possibility is at once eliminated, however, so long as we think with the state-formed consciousness that there are “nationals” and there are “immigrants,” and in that way reproduce the varieties of racism these historically formed categories inevitably entail. “National” and “immigrant” are categories of the capitalist world-economy’s interstate system; they have no place (except as phenomenologically [i.e. to do with objects in our consciousness and experience…] phenomenologically real conditions to be overcome) in the language of world-scale workers’ movements. (“Beyond Haymarket?”, Antisystemic Movements)

[‘Class’-consciousness means a common story… and the European burghers of the Middle Ages who worked together (‘self-organization’) had no organized… over-time-sustained… opposition… had no intentionally-affixed thousand-thousand rules and regs dragging at their feet… no ‘structurally-surrounding-state’ to hold them in place: rules and regs that establish monopolies in our head… over our thoughts… as Kenyatta said: “Oppressive laws and ordinances, which alone engross the monopoly of thought, of will, and of judgment, have been imposed…” – not just on Africa… but the globe…

 

…their ‘movements’ were not the result of some hidden action by a hand imagining itself to be tinkering with a ‘delicate watch’ mechanism…

 

What Our Three are saying here… is that once ‘class’ is global (and… we will be asking… does this mean that Marx is accurate in saying that the ‘system of production’… not just forms the basis of ‘society’ (for this expresses but a tautology…) but that it ‘evolves’ over time – even if we scrap those toxic hierarchical ‘stages’?…) then… objectively… we-the-people… and the ‘rulers’… are likewise global… – P.S.]

And third is the “official pauperism” sketched in the general law, which, to estimate from recent trends in the US and Western Europe, has two principal overlapping social locales, the young and the aged (both men and women) and women (of all ages). These were, it will be recalled, the first “officially protected” social segments of labor, in country after country, in the decade or so that “Haymarket” signifies. “Welfare,” too, has its contradictions. It seems likely that the “national” / “immigrant” categorization deepens the burdens of current capitalist development carried by the young, the old, and women, but it is only a deepening of the destruction of dignity, well-being, and hope that their pauperization per se entails.

[And here we’ll pause and consider an argument from Chapter 3 before returning. By “Beyond Haymarket”… they’re referring to the need – as the ground under our feet has shifted – the need for what they call ‘the class struggle’ and I call ‘the beat-down and break’ repeated over the centuries of class… and over the generations… as each child arrives free as the birds sing – the need to think differently – we who long for freedom – the need for new theory and strategy about how we-who-believe-in-freedom must confront ‘power’… so let’s listen to how our Good Three answer the question “The Liberation of Class Struggle?”… – P.S.]

National liberation in segments of the capitalist world-economy, and the transformations it has effected in relations of rule and other social relations, have altered the social structuring of the world-historical accumulation process. That much is historically evident and therefore theoretically to be taken into account. But it has not eliminated the relational conditions through which the accumulation process operates. And precisely that world-historical elimination, of the relational conditions through which accumulation of capital occurs, is what is entailed in the idea of the class struggle as the pivotal process in the transformation of the capitalist world-economy into a socialist world order.

 

Nor theoretically, in our view, could national-liberation movements, any more than core-zone social-democratic movements – given their common historical focus on securing and exercising power within the interstate system – have effected much more by way of change than they have done. If, however, we cease to accord strategic primacy to acquiring such state power within the interstate system, far more becomes historically possible and thereby, within the domain of historically realistic alternatives, theoretically possible. It would seem a dubious theoretical tenet to assert that national liberation, in its successive occurrences, is in any way a necessary condition of the revolutionary transformation of the world-economy. It is surely indefensible to claim it as a sufficient condition. (“The Liberation of Class Struggle?”, Antisystemic Movements)

 

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* “WUR of February 15th, 2015… “Embracing Global Goals, Scope and Action: Becoming Global Actors… Claiming the ‘All’”:

[Sisters and Brothers… two of the discussions planned for February 8, 2015 were postponed to the following (this) show: "Harper Lee's Examination of 'Class'"… and "Lessons from Jomo Kenyatta on Self-Governance"… They follow… – P.S.]

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As the media… we’ve been arguing… is ‘power’s means for inducting us into their stories… gathering us to serve (or at least not impede…) their ‘vision’…

 

…it’s important that we… we who long for freedom… install filters… or ‘power’-planted-story-detectors… in our ears…

 

…but before we continue with this theme… a brief pause to give thanks… for Harper Lee… one of the few who show sown-divisions… to help us understand… rather than to be divisive…

 

…particularly as… when the announcement that she was publishing another book was met by a lot of advance-attacking… my ‘power’-planted-story-detector went off… as there’s absolutely no doubt she’s a ‘national treasure’ among us…

 

– so why… the preemptive strike… unless it’s because…

 

…she – and this is a rare thing – brings so much light to the issue of ‘class’…

 

…and the ‘power’-guys don’t know what this new book says…

 

So let’s take a moment to appreciate the song and word of Harper Lee in To Kill A Mockingbird:

 

Atticus we’ll meet in a minute. But here’s Maycomb:

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

 

People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself….

Scout we’ll meet in a minute. But here’s Atticus:

Atticus was feeble: he was nearly fifty. When Jem and I asked him why he was so old, he said he got started late, which we felt reflected upon his abilities and manliness. He was much older than the parents of our school contemporaries, and there was nothing Jem or I could say about him when our classmates said, “My father – ”

 

Jem was football crazy. Atticus was never too tired to play keep-away, but when Jem wanted to tackle him Atticus would say, “I’m too old for that, son.”

 

Our father didn’t do anything. He worked in an office, not in a drugstore. Atticus did not drive a dump-truck for the county, he was not the sheriff, he did not farm, work in a garage, or do anything that could possibly arouse the admiration of anyone.

 

Besides that, he wore glasses. He was nearly blind in his left eye, and said left eyes were the tribal curse of the Finches. Whenever he wanted to see something well, he turned his head and looked from his right eye.

 

He did not do the things our schoolmates’ fathers did: he never went hunting, he did not play poker or fish or drink or smoke. He sat in the livingroom and read.

Now here’s Scout:

…I [Scout is speaking… this is from earlier in the book… she is “almost six…” has just had… that day… her first experience of school… and does not want to go back…] I told Atticus I didn’t feel very well and didn’t think I’d go to school any more if it was all right with him.

 

Atticus sat down in the swing and crossed his legs. His fingers wandered to his watchpocket; he said that was the only way he could think. He waited in amiable silence, and I sought to reinforce my position: “You never went to school and you do all right, so I’ll just stay home too. You can teach me like Grandaddy taught you ‘n’ Uncle Jack.”

 

“No I can’t,” said Atticus. “I have to make a living. Besides, they’d put me in jail if I kept you at home – dose of magnesia for you tonight and school tomorrow.

 

“I’m feeling all right, really.”

 

“Thought so, Now what’s the matter?”… [She tells him some things before finally getting to the point…]

 

…“But if I keep on goin’ to school, we can’t ever read any more…”;

 

“That’s really bothering you, isn’t it?”

 

“Yes sir.”

 

When Atticus looked down at me I saw the expression on his face that always made me expect something. “Do you know what a compromise is?” he asked.

 

“Bending the law?”

 

“No, an agreement reached by mutual concessions. It works this way,” he said. “If you’ll concede the necessity of going to school, we’ll go on reading every night just as we always have. Is it a bargain?”

 

“Yes, sir!”

 

“We’ll consider it sealed without the usual formality,” Atticus said, when he saw me preparing to spit….

 

…The remainder of my schooldays were no more auspicious than the first. Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics. What Jem called the Dewey Decimal System was school-side by the end of my first year, so I had no chance to compare it with other teaching techniques. I could only look around me: Atticus and my uncle, who went to school at home, knew everything – at least, what one didn’t know the other did. Furthermore, I couldn’t help noticing that my father had served for years in the state legislature, elected each time without opposition, innocent of the adjustments my teachers thought essential to the development of Good Citizenship. Jem, educated on a half-Decimal half-Duncecap basis, seemed to function effectively alone or in a group, but Jem was a poor example: no tutorial system devised by man could have stopped him from getting at books. As for me, I knew nothing except what I gathered from Time magazine and reading everything I could lay hands on at home, but as I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me…. (Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird, 1960)

Now that’s a great illustration of the contrast between the clarity with which children see… and the challenged vision of adults under ‘class’… due to manufactured ‘scarcity’ and the stories we’re led to believe. So while 10,000 years of subjection produces a profound paralysis of action in us… each child starts out fresh… with backs that must be made to bend…

 

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We are considering today the broad impact of the fact that… as Jomo Kenyatta will tell us… there is no ‘freedom of thought’ under the global system of ‘power’… that the story of ‘Rule’ – into which is merged its multiple versions: “Thought Realizing Itself”… “Development of the Productive Forces”… “The Civilizing Mission of Europeans”… “The Triumph of the Republic: Realizing Plato’s Vision”… “The Pursuit of Knowledge-Infinite” – that the ‘heroism’ implied in such… is a mirage… a faux-heroic attempt… to not-see an Abyss staring at it… which is best known by the name, Abandonment.

 

If… as is undeniably true… one story… and one story only… has become dominant: the story of ‘Rule’… who has the ‘power’ to make it ‘systematic’… to embed it in all institutions?: only the tiny… tiny… tiny… miniscule Few.

The Kikuyu system of government prior to the advent of the Europeans was based on true democratic principles. But according to the tribal legend, once upon a time there was a king in Kikuyuland, named Kikuyu, a grand-child of the elder daughter of the founder of the tribe. He ruled many moons and his method of governing was tyrannical. People were prevented from cultivating the land, as he commanded that all able-bodied men should join his army and be ready to move with their families at any time and to wherever he chose. Thus the population lived a sort of nomadic life and suffered many hardships from lack of food. At last they grew tired of wandering from place to place and finally decided to settle down. They approached the king and implored him to let them cultivate the land and establish permanent homes, but owing to his autocratic power he refused to hear or consider their plea. The people were very indignant with him for turning a deaf ear to their appeal, and in desperation they revolted against him….

 

…After king Kikuyu was dethroned, the government of the country was at once changed from a despotism to a democracy which was in keeping with the wishes of the majority of the people…. This achievement was celebrated all over the country; feasting, dancing, and singing went on with intervals for a period of six moons which preceded the new era of government by the people and for the people….

 

…Every village appointed a representative to the Council, which took the responsibility of drafting the new constitution….

 

…In order to… prevent any tendency to return to the system of despotic government, the change of , and the election for, the government offices should be based on a rotation system of generations…. It was… decided that one generation should hold the office of government for a period of thirty to forty years, at the end of which the ceremony… [took] place to declare that the old generation had completed its term of governing, and that the young generation was ready to take over the administration of the country….

 

The tribal democratic institutions which were the boast of the country, and the proof of tribal good sense, have been suppressed. Oppressive laws and ordinances, which alone engross the monopoly of thought, of will, and of judgment, have been imposed on the African people….

 

The European prides himself on having done a great service to the Africans by stopping the “tribal warfares,” and says that the Africans ought to thank the strong power that has liberated them from their “constant fear” of being attacked by the neighboring warlike tribes. But consider the… modern warfare waged by the “civilized” tribes of Europe, and in which the Africans who have no part in the quarrels are forced to fight to defend so-called democracy. Take the case of the Great War, 1914 – 1918, in which tens of thousands of Africans lost their lives. The reward for this was taking away the best lands from the Africans, the introduction of kipande with its diabolical system of fingerprints as though the Africans were criminals, imposition of heavy taxation, and denial of freedom of speech, of the press, and of forming political or social organizations. This is what “democratic Britain” did in recognition of the services rendered by the Kenya Africans during 1914 – 1918. Another example is the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, where the wholesale massacre of the defenseless population took place to demonstrate European civilization. With these glaring facts in view can the Europeans boast of having stopped the “tribal warfare” and having established “perpetual peace” in Africa? It would have been much better for the Africans to continue with their tribal warfare, which they fought with pride and with the loss of a few warriors, rather than receiving the so-called civilizing missions which mean the subjugation of the African races to a perpetual state of serfdom.

 

In the old order of the African society, with all the evils that are supposed to be connected with it, a man was a man, and as such he had the rights of a man and liberty to exercise his will and thought in a direction which suited his purposes as well as those of his fellow-men; but today an African, no matter what his station in life, is like a horse which moves only in the direction that the rider pulls the rein. The harmony and stability of the African’s mode of life, in political, social, religious, and economic organizations, was based on the land which was, and still is, the soul of the people. The first step which the European civilizing missions took to disorganize the Africans in order to exploit and oppress them, especially in South and East Africa, was to take away the best African lands. This is one of the evils of European civilization that has found its way to the great African continent, and one which the past, present, and future African generations will never forget.

 

The land not only unites the living members of the tribe but also the dead ancestors and the unborn posterity. This fact is obvious, because it is in the ancestral lands that the ancestors lie buried, in the land which they once occupied. In this way the dead are able to keep direct communication with the living, and the sanctions which control behavior in both the collective life of the tribe and private lives of its individual members are the approval or disapproval of the ancestral spirits. Through incarnation the future generation is linked up with the past, thus bringing spiritually the three groups, i.e., dead, living, and unborn, into one organic whole. The annexation of the ancestral lands by the Europeans has robbed the African of the use of the productive asset on which his entire economic life depended. It has also interfered with the whole tribal organization whose genuine cooperation is based on constant communion with the ancestral spirits through which tribal law and custom, morality, and religion are maintained. (Jomo Kenyatta, Facing Mount Kenya [London, 1953], first Prime Minister and President of Kenya [1963])

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[Today’s reading: As a Preface to Chapter 5… we will be reading from Chapters 3: “The Liberation of Class Struggle?”… and 4: “Beyond Haymarket?”… before returning to Chapter 5 of Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements…, “1968: The Great Rehearsal”… – P.S.]

 

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* * February 15, 2015 reading: As a Preface to Chapter 5… we will be reading from Chapters 3: “The Liberation of Class Struggle?”… and 4: “Beyond Haymarket?”… before returning to Chapter 5 of Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s Antisystemic Movements… “1968: The Great Rehearsal”…

[We will be finishing the end of Chapter 3, “The Liberation of Class Struggle?” (in Antisystemic Movements…) and concluding our reading of the end of Chapter 4, “Beyond Haymarket?”… before resuming our Chapter 5 question: What was 1968 foreshadowing?… – P.S.]

The structuring and restructuring of the world-economy in the period of US hegemony has been effected in large part by the successes of the national-liberation movements, successes that have hinged in part on the United States' becoming hegemonic…

 

 

 

 

 

(Chapter 5, “1968: The Great Rehearsal”, begins by saying…

There have only been two world revolutions. One took place in 1848. The second took place in 1968. Both were historic failures. Both transformed the world. The fact that both were unplanned and therefore in a profound sense spontaneous explains both facts – the fact that they failed, and the fact that they transformed the world….

 

1848 was a revolution for popular sovereignty – both within the nation (down with autocracy) and of the nations (self-determination, the Volkerfruhling)….

 

…1968… was a revolution against the counterrevolution represented by the U.S. organization of its world hegemony as of 1945. It too was an attempt to fulfill the original goals of the Russian Revolution, while very much an effort to overcome the limitations of that revolution…

(…our reading resumes…)

 

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Since the states could control the masses and the powerful strata could control the states, it was clear that a serious effort of social transformation would require counter-organization – both politically and culturally. It is this perception that led to the formation for the first time of bureaucratically organized antisystemic movements with relatively clear middle-term objectives. These movements, in their two great variants of the social and the national movement, began to appear on the scene after 1848, and their numbers, geographic spread, and organizational efficiency grew steady in the century that followed.

 

What 1848 accomplished therefore was the historic turning of antisystemic forces toward a fundamental political strategy – that of seeking the intermediate goal of obtaining state power (one way or another) as the indispensable way-station on the road to transforming society and the world. To be sure, many argued against this strategy, but they were defeated in the debates. Over the following century, the opponents of this strategy grew weaker as the proponents of the strategy grew stronger.

 

1917 became such a big symbol because it was the first dramatic victory of the proponents of the state-power strategy (and in its revolutionary, as opposed to its evolutionary, variant). 1917 proved it could be done. And this time, unlike in 1848, the revolutionary government was neither suborned [bribed] nor overturned. It survived. 1917 may have been the most dramatic instance but it was not of course the only instance of successes, at least partial, of this strategy. The Mexican Revolution beginning in 1910 and the Chinese Revolution of 1911 culminating in 1949 also seemed to demonstrate worth of the strategy, for example.

 

By 1945, or perhaps more accurately by the 1950s, the strategy seemed to be bearing fruit around the world. All three major variants of the historic “old left” antisystemic movements – the Third International Communists, the Second International Social Democrats, and the nationalist movements (especially those outside Europe) – could point to notable successes: the armed struggle of the Communist parties in Yugoslavia and China, the massive 1945 electoral victory of the Labour Party in Great Britain, nationalist triumphs in India and Indonesia. It seemed but a matter of decades until the goals of 1848 would be realized in every corner of the globe.

[Are they serious? This was written… or at least presented… in 1988… and so obviously did not have the benefit of Keith Lowe’s Savage Continent… and its devastating portrait of where Europe was at in 1945… and the notion of a global antisystemic ‘sentiment’ at that moment that is ‘optimistic’… ‘minus Europe’… unless simply delusional… cannot stand up. It throws in even more stark relief the importance of Keith Lowe’s accomplishment… – P.S.]

This widespread optimism of the antisystemic forces was nonetheless quite exaggerated, for two reasons.

 

One, the institutionalization of US hegemony in the world-system as of 1945 made possible a generalized counterrevolutionary thrust…

[…not to belabor the point too much… but… the view from the ivory tower (and we must include among those who wear the ‘ivory tower’ tag the hierarchically-structured Left leadership of that day and beyond – remember Lowe’s documentation of how surviving Jews were thrown under the bus by such?) is necessarily skewed. We-down-here-in-the-cheap-seats are able to see that the “generalized counterrevolutionary thrust” had been stomping on us well before declared war removed millions of us from the planet… – P.S.]

One, the institutionalization of US hegemony in the world-system as of 1945 made possible a generalized counterrevolutionary thrust to slow down the pace of the growing political strength of the antisystemic movements. The US sought to “contain” the bloc of Communist states led by the USSR. And in Greece, in Western Europe, in Korea, they succeeded in such “containment.” The US government sought to “defang” the Western labor and social-democratic parties by rigidifying historic differences between the Second and Third Internationals and by erecting “anti-Communism” as an ideological carapace [shell]. This attempt too was largely successful, within the US itself and elsewhere. The US sought to slow down, dilute, and / or coopt the political expressions of Third World nationalism and, with some notable exceptions like Vietnam, this effort too was largely successful.

 

Were the counterrevolution all that had occurred politically, however, its effect would have been momentary at most.

[By defining ‘counterrevolution’ narrowly – i.e. to exclude totalitarianism with a ‘Left’ face – so distorts reality as to make it unrecognizable as such… – P.S.]

Were the counterrevolution all that had occurred politically, however, its effect would have been momentary at most. A second thing occurred to dampen the optimism of the antisystemic forces. The movements in power performed less well than had been expected; far less well. Already in the interwar period, the Soviet experience of the 1930s – the terrors and the errors – had shaken the world’s antisystemic movements. But in a sense Hitler and the long struggle of the Second World War washed away much of the dismay. However, the terrors and the errors repeated themselves after 1945 in one Communist state after another. Nor did the social-democratic governments look that good, engaged as they were in colonial repression. And, as one Third World nationalist movement after another created regimes that seemed to have their own fair share of terrors and errors, the optimism of the antisystemic forces began to be eroded.

 

While the US, and more generally the upper strata of the world system […what I call ‘power’… or ‘the global-state-statesmen’… – P.S.], attacked the antisystemic movements exogenously [externally] as it were, the movements were simultaneously suffering ailments endogenous to them, ailments which increasingly seemed to be themselves “part of the problem.”

 

It is in reaction to this double (exogenous and endogenous) difficulty of the traditional old left movements that the new social movements emerged, more or less in the 1960s. These new movements were concerned with the strength and survivability of the forces that dominated the world-system. But they were also concerned with what they felt was the poor performance, even the negative performance, of the world’s old left movements. In the beginning of the 1960s, the concern with the power and the evil of the proponents of the status quo was still uppermost in the minds of the emergent new movements, and their concern with the inefficacies of the old left opposition was still a secondary consideration. But as the decade went on, the emphasis began to shift, as the new movements bean to be more and more critical of the old movements. At first the new elements sought to be “reformist” of the tactics of the old antisystemic movements. Later, they often broke outright with them and even attacked them frontally. We cannot understand 1968 unless we see it as simultaneously a cri de coeur (“a passionate appeal”) against the evils of the world-system and a fundamental questioning of the strategy of the old left opposition to the world-system.

 

At its height, and when it had reached the highest level of screeching, the new left accused the old left of five sins: weakness, corruption, connivance, neglect, and arrogance. The weakness was said to be the inefficacy of the old antisystemic movements (the Social Democrats in the West, the Communists in the East, the nationalist governments in the South) in constraining the militarism, the exploitation, the imperialism, the racism, of the dominant forces in the world-system. The attitude towards the war in Vietnam became a touchstone on this issue. The corruption was said to be the fact that certain strata had, through the efforts of past antisystemic action, achieved certain material concessions and allowed their militance to be softened by this fact. The connivance was the charge of corruption taken one step further. It was said to be the willingness of certain strata worldwide actually to profit by the exploitation in the system, albeit at a lower level than that of the dominant strata. The neglect was said to be the obtuseness about, if not conscious ignoring of, the interests of the truly dispossessed, the real lower strata of the world-system (the subproletarians, the ethnic and racial minorities, and of course the women). The arrogance was said to be the contempt of the leadership of the old movements for the real problems of the lower strata, and their ideological self-assurance.

[Even a momentary plunge… into the sterile waters of ‘categorization’ following the vivid reenactments of Savage Continent feels jarring to me… but it highlights how far we’ve come… these past almost twenty-seven years… towards a living… practical-actual… global unity of humanity… we are feeling the future arriving… even as the ongoing ‘counter-evolution’ is doing all ‘it’ can… to stop it… – P.S.]

These were heady charges and they were not made all at once, or from the outset. It was an evolution from the mild questioning of the Port Huron founding statement of SDS in 1962 to the Weathermen in 1969 and after, or from the conventional views (if militantly implemented) of SNCC in the early 1960s to those of the Black Power movements of the late 1960s. It was an evolution from the Jeunesse Etudiante Communiste in France in the early 1960s who dared to be “pro-Italian,” to the barricades of May 1968 in Paris (and the virtually open break with the CGT and PCF). It was an evolution from the Prague Spring which emerged in late1967 to the founding of Solidarnosc in 1980.

 

When 1968 exploded – in Columbia University, in Paris, in Prague, in Mexico City and Tokyo, in the Italian October – it was an explosion. There was no central direction, no calculated tactical planning. The explosion was in a sense as much of a surprise to the participants as to those against whom it was directed. The most surprised were the old left movements who could not understand how they could be attacked from what seemed to them so unfair and so politically dangerous a perspective.

 

But the explosion was very powerful, shattering many authority relations, and shattering above all the Cold War consensus on both sides. Ideological hegemonies were challenged everywhere and the retreat, both of the powerful strata of the world-system and of the leadership of the old left antisystemic movements, was real. As we have already said, the retreat turned out to be temporary and the new movements were checked everywhere. But the changes in power relations effected by the movements were not reversed.

 

The Legacies of 1968

 

Four main changes can be distinguished. First, while the balance of military power between West and East has not changed appreciably since 1968, the capabilities of either the West or the East to police the South have become limited. The Tet Offensive of early 1968 has remained to this day a symbol of the impotence of capital-intensive warfare in curbing the intelligence and will of Third World peoples. Within five years of the offensive, the USA was forced to withdraw from Vietnam, and a new era in North-South relations began….

 

 

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* “Embracing Global Goals, Scope and Action: Becoming Global Actors… Claiming the ‘All’”: Introducing Our Discussion of: Antisystemic Movements… by Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein.

 

September 4th, 2014… Sisters and Brothers: In the WUR show of August 31, 2014 we argued that most of the ‘thought’ on the Left is ‘magical’… because based in and on a notion of ‘reality’ from which critical bits are extruded: ‘the democratic introjection’ (as Marcuse put it…) or ‘poisonous pedagogy’ (as Alice Miller put it…) – or ‘the state in us’ (as I’m putting it…) – and what’s also missing is an accurate understanding (as to source and aims) of ‘power’ as a conscious actor… i.e. with a clear vision and goal – an ‘original’ as their mentor Plato might put it – a model ever before their eyes that they use to sculpt… or pound… us into the shape they want. In short… what’s missing is the ‘theory’ of why we obey.

(We give our allegiance to the state because we have no other allegiance and we are communal beings and must plant our ‘solidarity’ somewhere. The state ensures we can have no other allegiance… the global-statesmen brook no challenges – these are not folks to whom we can entrust our earth… especially… the earth in us… the ‘ownership’ of which… once transferred to else but self… is lost.)

We can’t move forward until we confront our obedience. Here’s a mini-video – first in a series of ‘non-coercion commercials’ that I’m planning – that presents the concept:

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…or visit the video on you tube:

 

“Children are disappearing. Is it really just the state that’s robbing our children of their youth?… or is it also the state… in us?”

 

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But… I believe… ‘the state within’… and ‘the global state’ that ‘power’ is unfolding apace… must be confronted simultaneously… that confronting one confronts the other ‘naturally’… because the one is but the micro of the larger ‘death’… and ‘life’ is ‘life’… and cannot be split… is one continuous whole.

 

What this means… as we said in an earlier show… is that it’s critical that we – across all the false categories – start bulking up our solidarity… with the ancestors… the earth… and each other. And we’re going to be continuing to argue in upcoming shows… that the opposite of solidarity… is force and coercion… and that when we manifest force and coercion… we manifest the state… and when we oppose force and coercion… we oppose the state.

 

To help us think this through we will be reading together the first chapter of Antisystemic Movements… by Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein; followed by “The Proletarian Is Dead; Long Live the Housewife?” by Claudia von Werlhof, and then “A Manifesto for Global Capital?” by Ellen Meiksins Wood.

 

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* “Introduction” to Antisystemic Movements

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Sergei Konionkov’s To Those Who Fell Fighting for the Cause of Peace and the Brotherhood of Nations (1918) (…floating in a Goya sky… “as Peace should still her wheaten garland wear… (Hamlet, V. 2.41)]

 

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The concept of antisystemic movements is one which presumes an analytic perspective about a system. The system referred to here is the world-system of historical capitalism which, we argue, has given rise to a set of anti-systemic movements. It is the contours of this process that we are proposing to outline here. We are in search of the system-wide structural processes that have produced certain kinds of movements and which have simultaneously formed the constraints within which such movements have operated.

 

The movements have had their own mode of self-description. This self-description emerged largely out of categories that were formulated or crystallized in the nineteenth-century capitalist world-economy. Class and status-group were the two key concepts that justified these movements, explained their origins and their objectives, and indeed indicated the boundaries of their organizational networks.

 

The contemporary dilemmas of these movements are part and parcel of the same problem as the dilemmas of the concepts of class and status-group. That is why we felt that we could not analyze the movements, either historically or prospectively, without first rethinking these two concepts from a world-systems perspective.

 

We shall not repeat in this introduction the arguments that are to be found in the articles. We would merely like to suggest that if the structural processes that gave birth to these movements have been world-scale from the beginning, the organizational responses hitherto have been predominantly at the level of the various states. It is because we believe that new organizational responses will begin to surface that will be more world-scale that we think it urgent, not only for theory but for praxis, to reexamine the patterns and the degree of success of the world-system’s antisystemic movements heretofore.

[…“urgent… for praxis…” perhaps I’ve been too closeted in my personal journey… but I don’t believe there is today in academia any such concept of itself… as ‘urgently’ moving to help ‘praxis’ along… I don’t believe that… in general… it thinks much about we-cattle at all… – P.S.]

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* “Rethinking the Concepts of Class and Status-Group in a World Systems Perspective”

(…begins by revisiting The Wealth of Nations….)

 

This essay was presented at the IVth Colloquium of the annual International Colloquia on the World-Economy, sponsored by the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations; the Maison des Sciences de L’Homme; and the Starnberger Institut zur Erforschung Globalen Strukturen, Entwicklungen, und Krisen… in New Delhi, January 4 – 6, 1982.)

In his well-known but often neglected conclusion to Book I of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith defined the interests of “the three great, original and constituent orders of every civilized society,” that is, those who live by rent, those who live by wages, and those who live by profit….

[…“he who owns the lexicon rules the world…” truly… truly… we have been effectively penned… by definition… told… that the very existence of ‘civilization’ depends… on our being trapped… strapped… booted… leashed… bound to ploughs… and beat… – P.S.]

…His argument was that the interests of the first two orders coincide with the general interest of society because, according to his analysis, the real value of both rents and wages rises with the prosperity and falls with the economic decline of society. The interests of profit earners, on the other hand, are different from, and even opposite to, such general social interest, because to widen the market and narrow the competition are always in the interest of merchants and manufacturers. And, while to “widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; …to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens.”

 

Profit-earners not only have an interest contrary to the general one. They also have a better knowledge of their interest and a greater power and determination in pursuing it than those who live by either rent or wages….

[…perspective and scope of ‘interest’… I’ve never heard discussed… that the (constructed) structure itself places some… to ‘look long’… ‘think big’… and places us to see… and be… the opposite… never discussed (outside of Virginia Woolf…) is what it means that it’s only the miniscule few… who take responsibility for ‘the all’ of things… globally… and how this disproportion in ‘interest’… skews the very ‘quality’ of ‘humanity’ to suit the soul’s damage of the tiny few… – P.S.]

…The indolence of landowners, “which is the natural effect of the ease and security of their situation, renders them too often, not only ignorant, but incapable of that application of mind which is the necessary in order to foresee and understand the consequences of any public regulation.” As for the wage-earner, “he is incapable either of comprehending the general social interest, or of understanding its connection with his own.” Moreover, in the public deliberation, “his voice is little heard and less regarded, except upon some particular occasions, when his clamour is animated, set on, and supported by his employers, not for his, but their own particular purposes.”

[…as I read these words… the singularity of this present moment we are in… in which we finally can move… together… to a world that reflects our interests… we… whose energy has been… ‘historically’… ‘set on’ and used for other people’s purposes… the few… who ‘little hear and less regard’ our voices…. His words are true: we’ve never spoken before in our true voices… as our true voices need our true world to speak true. As we seek… as we see… as we speak… as we become… we bring into being… the world we need… to clarify our voices into that perfect harmony our souls have been seeking… for so long… – P.S.]

…Profit-earners, on the other hand, particularly those who employ the largest amount of capital, draw to themselves by their wealth the greatest share of the public consideration. Moreover, since during their whole lives they are engaged in plans and projects, they have a more acute understanding of their particular interest than the other orders of society.

 

The Wealth of Nations being a work of legislation, the purpose of this “class analysis” was to warn the sovereign against the dangers involved in following the advice and yielding to the pressures of merchants and master manufacturers. As the head of the national household, he should instead strengthen the rule of the market over civil society [i.e. allow ‘competition’ to exist… – P.S.], thereby achieving the double objective of a more efficient public administration and a greater well-being of the nation.

 

It is not our purpose here to assess the soundness of the advice given by Smith to the national householder or of the substantive analysis on which it was based. Rather, we want to point out those aspects of his analysis that can be considered as paradigmatic of political economy and that we can find duplicated in contemporary class analysis.

[…implicit… in drawing this equation between ‘political economy’ and ‘class analysis’… that runs clearly through The Wealth of Nations… is the heretofore undisguised thought… that humans-made-‘citizens’ have no ‘legitimate’ claim to existence… apart from our service to the state… following the ‘order’ to which we are assigned…. Now… confronting this fact – the fact that we tell ourselves… by our obedience… the very thing that Goering said of himself: “It is not I who live, but the [state] who lives in me…” – in broad, public discussions… signals the advance of humanity itself… – P.S.]

First, the tripartite social order of which he spoke was a predicate of a particular kind of society; that defined by the territorial reach of a definite sovereign or state. These were the states of Europe as they had been and were being formed within mutually exclusive domains operating within an interstate system.

 

Second, his social orders (or classes) were defined on the basis of property relations. The ownership of land, of capital, and of labor-power define his three great orders of society. Among the proprietors of capital, what some today would call a “fraction” of capital (merchants and master manufacturers) is singled out for special treatment in view of its political-economic power, of its greater self-awareness of its own interests, and of the opposition of its interests to the general social well-being.

 

Third, the interests of each of the social orders / classes were identified with its market situation; that is, both their competitive opportunities in relations to each other as classes (and of individuals within each class to each other), and the costs and benefits to each of them of monopoly power within markets, understood as restriction of entry. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith limited the subjective ground of collective action by a class to these market interests. Monopoly power in the product as well as in factor markets was traced back to the creation of tolerance of restrictions to entry on the part of the sovereign / state.

 

Fourth, market relations were defined within or between national economic spaces. Class conflicts and alignments were thus limited to struggles within each state for influence / control over its policies. The unit of analysis, in other words, was the nation-state, which determined both the context and the object of class contradictions.

 

Fifth, a “relative autonomy” of state actions in relation to class interests and powers was presupposed. The enactment of laws and regulations by the state was continuously traced to the powers and influence of particular classes or “fractions” thereof. But the sovereign was assumed to be in a position to distance himself from any particular interest to promote some form of general interest, reflecting and / or generating a consensus for this general interest.

 

If we contrast this analytical framework with that associated with Karl Marx’s critique of political economy (that is, of Smith and other classical economists), we notice two consequential shifts of focus: a shift away from state-defined economic spaces to world-economic space on the one hand, and a shift away from the marketplace to the workplace on the other.

 

The first shift implied that the market was no longer seen as enclosed within (or “embedded” in) each nation-state as an independent economic space, and that the world-economy was no longer conceived of as an interstate economy linking discrete national economic spaces. Rather, nation-states were seen as jurisdictional claims in a unitary world market. By effecting the socialization of labor on a world scale, the world market determined the most general context of the class contradictions and therefore of the class struggles of capitalist society, which Marx defined by its constitutive orders, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat:

The modern history of capital dates from the creation in the sixteenth century of a world-embracing commerce and world-embracing market. (Capital, Volume I)

 

This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages. (The Communist Manifesto)

This was not a mere matter of trade relations between sovereign states. Rather, the developing bourgeoisie…

…compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois modes of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeoisie themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. (The Communist Manifesto)

The world so created was characterized by a highly stratified structure of domination and had more than market interests as subjective grounds for collective action:

Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West. (The Communist Manifesto)

The second shift implied that the antagonism between the two great classes into which, according to Marx, bourgeois society as a whole tends to split, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, was no longer traced to relations in the product or factor markets but to relations in production. In order to define the interests of the nation and of its component classes, Smith took leave of the pin factory whose scenario opens The Wealth of Nations to follow the interplay of supply and demand in the marketplace, and of class interest in the national political arena. Marx, in his critique of political economy took us in the opposite direction. We take leave not of the shopfloor but of the noisy sphere of the market place (and, we may add, of the political arena) “where everything takes place on the surface and in view of all men,” and follow the owner of the means of production and the possessor of labor power “into the hidden abode of production, on whose threshold there stares us in the face ‘No admittance except on business.’” (Capital, Volume I) In this hidden abode of production, Marx discovered two quite contradictory tendencies that implied two quite different scenarios of class struggle and social transformation.

 

The first was the one generally emphasized in Marxist literature after Marx: even if we assume that in the marketplace the relationship between the owners of the means of production and the owners of labor-power appears as a relationship between equals, in the sense that the commodities they bring to the market tend to exchange at their full cost of production / reproduction (which, of course, is not always or even normally the case),…

[…and of course… as Polanyi reminded us… human energy is not… can not be… a ‘commodity’… i.e. it is not ‘produced for exchange in the market…’ and that applying this term to the earth and us… is a fiction…

 

…and of course… as Bentham reminded ‘rulers’… fictions can be enforced as real… by the state… but what a toll it takes… this living lives premised on lies… on our souls… – P.S.]

…the relationship would still be a fundamentally unequal one. This is so because of the longer-run effects of capitalist production on the relative value and the relative bargaining power of capital and labor. Capitalist production, that is, is seen as a process that tends to reduce the value of labor-power (its real costs of reproduction) and simultaneously to undermine the bargaining power of its possessors, so that the advantages of the reduction of labor’s costs of reproduction tend to accrue entirely to capital.

…but are not these “longer-run effects of capitalist production”… the ever-increasing disparity in relative ‘power’… and so in ‘relative bargaining power’… a function of ‘political’ ‘power’ – ‘the state’ as the tool of ‘power’? – and never… in reality… of ‘capitalist production’… at least if we use that word to suggest an effect of ‘market laws’… – P.S.]

This tendency obviously poses problems of realization of the growing mass of surplus labor that capital appropriates in production. These problems periodically manifest themselves in crises of overproduction that are overcome on the one hand…

…by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented. (The Communist Manifesto)

 

[…Kropotkin’s words… about seeing ‘history’ with fresh eyes – once they’re open… (“Petr understood that ‘power’ selectively passes down the ‘stories’ that further its mission, and that, “Ere long history will have to be re-written on new lines….” we said in the Waking Up Radio show of February 23rd, 2014…) – is never more relevant than when we’re looking at what’s called ‘the economy’…

 

…i.e. could it be that Marx… who wrote so forcefully about taking the world away from ‘philosophy’ and setting it on its feet again… was likewise viewing things falsely?… Adam Smith’s words – their full import – have never been taken to heart: we commoners have been “little heard and less regarded….” The whole point of ‘class’… is to establish (irrevocably… soon… they hope…) that we ‘don’t matter’… so why would any of its ‘thinkers’ – whose allegiance is to ‘Thought’… or so they might imagine – consider it worthwhile to try to see the world from the eyes of those who ‘can’t put two sentences together’?… who are ‘mere matter’… to the mind of ‘Thought’… to be used to advance… a ‘bigger’ agenda that they could ‘never understand’.

 

All to say… consider this… that ‘war’ is not to reinvigorate dead markets… but to suppress our uprisings against injustice. In the Waking Up Radio show of March 9th, 2014 we said that…

The book Savage Continent provides prodigious illustration of resources being removed from our use… and…turned back over to ‘power’… He describes… an orgy of destructiveness. This systematic attack on ‘economic life’ was itself the ‘economic system’ working at a clip (because the point is privatization: atomization plus privatization equals control of us… manufactured ‘scarcity’…) racing at a pace unequaled since… The ‘economic system’ is not ‘capitalism’…. It’s called ‘power’… and they invent a tool called ‘the economy’ to keep us confused… War is an expression of this ‘economic system’… and ‘the economy’ is war by other means… i.e…. it’s about controlling the energy of the majority… the goal being… to beat us into submission… and… in the ‘normal’ course of events… overt violence is (as Solozzo said…) “too expensive…” in terms of maintaining legitimacy… as a means of controlling. And so they ‘normally’ rely on Bentham… whose Panoptic guidance says: “wage war by other means… i.e. be ‘economic’… and ‘efficient’….” “Let the weight of scarcity weigh on their minds…” Bentham advised.

 

But when the people arise… ‘economy’… ‘efficiency’… and all that jazz… flies out the door…

 

…and in walks war.

 

‘Economy’ is just a tool… like any other technology.

 

So ‘war’ is always war on us… whether they spill our guts with guns… or markets.

 

The economy is just war by other means… and war is the profligate failure of ‘breeding’… to control the energy of the majority (the true point of the ‘education’ we’re all given.)

 

What they (the ‘power’-guys…) hate most… is resistance. What they love most… is obedience –

Further… can we finally now be honest about those “means whereby crises are prevented”? When Marx and Engels say ‘overproduction crises’ are only ‘solved’ by digging ever deeper ‘power’s grave… that is to say… by eating ever more “means whereby crises are prevented”… those ‘means’ are the earth and us… where ‘conquest’ – the raison d’être of ‘class’ – mowed right over us…. As our authors said: “the structural processes that gave birth to [resistance] have been world-scale from the beginning…” – and our ‘place’ in the structure has always been premised on the privileging or suffering of those ‘higher up’ or ‘low’…

 

What happened to us was not ‘economic’… but rather deeply ‘psychological’… – P.S.]

It would seem from the above that the unequal relation between labor and capital, continuously reproduced and enhanced in the workplace, leads capital either to self-destruction in the marketplace or to a greater development of the world-economy, both extensively (incorporations) and intensively. Given a finite globe, the more thorough this development, the greater the self-destructiveness of capital.

 

In this scenario labor plays no role in precipitating capitalist crises except in a negative sense; it is its growing subordination in the workplace, and consequent weakening of bargaining power in the marketplace, that are ultimately responsible for the outbreak of the “epidemic of overproduction,” as Marx called it. Labor, or its social personification, the proletariat, plays an active role only in transforming the self-destructiveness of capital into political revolution. The increasing precariousness of working and living conditions induces proletarians to form combinations against the bourgeoisie.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers….

 

This organization of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continuously being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier….

 

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. (The Communist Manifesto)

Alongside this scenario, however, as we indicated, Marx suggested another one, quite distinct in its unfolding. Both in the Manifesto and in Capital we are told that, along with the growing mass of misery, oppression, and degradation, the strength of the working class grows too, not so much as a result of political organization aimed at counteracting its structural weakness, but rather as a result of the very process of capitalist production.

Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital… grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation, but with this too grows the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. (Capital, Volume I)

 

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. Wage labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. 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. (The Communist Manifesto)

Here, therefore, the strengthening of labor in the workplace is the cause of the crisis of capital.

 

As we know, Marx never managed to reconcile these two contradictory tendencies that he discovered in the abode of production, let alone to work out fully and systematically all their implications for the analysis of class contradictions in capitalist society. Instead, Marx, in some of his historical writings, and many followers in their theoretical writings, gave up the critique of political economy and reverted to the Smithian paradigm of class analysis, reviving rather than carrying out the critique of political economy.

 

In the case of Marx, this retreat is most evident in his writings on the class struggle in France, in which class interests were defined in terms of a national political-economic space, and what goes on in the abode of production simply does not come into the picture at all. Obviously, Marx himself thought that the shift of focus he was advancing to analyze the overall, long-term tendencies of capitalist society had a limited relevance for the concrete analysis of a concrete instance of class struggle at a relatively low state of development of such tendencies.

[Let’s pause and recap… perhaps slightly translate (for our purposes…): Marx saw two (contradictory) ‘tendencies’ as inherent in the ‘process’ of capital accumulation (or ‘production’…): first… the unequal ‘power’ relation between those who “put ‘capital’ to work”… and we-who-do-the-work… is a bias that but increases over time… because ‘power’ uses its ‘power’ advantage to drive our bargaining position ever lower (‘cheapen its costs of labor’…) resulting in our increasing ‘immiseration’…

 

(…time-out to vent a suppressed rant… I am looking at a red line under ‘immiseration’… that is a politically-motivated red line… as are the lines under ‘commodification’… ‘commodify’… and ‘ain’t’… the rest will have to wait…)

 

…continuing… resulting in our increasing ‘immiseration’ over time… and… even though this results eventually in a ‘crisis of overproduction’ for ‘capital’… also referred to as a ‘crisis of realization’ – i.e., no one to buy its ‘stuff’ – this is not by our – we commoners’ – action or plan… as we are politically-weak paupers.

 

(But… I would argue… it’s also not “by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself…” – ‘power’ hides in so-called ‘economic forces’… there is absolutely no ‘objective reason’ why ‘the state’… in theory… could not undo the bias… except for the one we’re all trained in… of ‘might makes right’…. ‘Power’… ‘rule’… are not inevitable… though they are made by the few to seem so.).

 

However… despite our increasing pauperization… Marx prophesied our growing strength due to our increasing numbers and organization in ‘the abode of production’ (neglecting to consider that ‘society’ overall… was modeled on the design of the Panopticon.) Still… given that the scope… frame… and audience… for these two respective ‘analyses’ are different… it’s hard for me to see them as ‘contradictory tendencies’.

 

What I see as the pressing need for us… for all of us (globally)… is getting on the same page… which means we need to come to some agreement… as to what these “overall, long-term tendencies of capitalist society…” are… exactly… – P.S.]

Moreover, even at the theoretical level, the shift of focus away from the noisy sphere of political economy did not imply any belittlement of the nation-state as the main locus of political power, that is, of the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence over a given territory. This power embodied in nation-states, whatever its origins, could obviously be used, and has indeed generally been used, simultaneously in two directions: as an aggressive / defensive instrument of intra-capitalist competition in the world-economy, and as an aggressive / defensive instrument of class struggle in national locales. True, the growing density and connectedness of world-economic networks on the one hand, and the displacement of class contradictions from the marketplace to the workplace on the other, would ultimately make nation-states “obsolete” from both points of view. In outlining this tendency, however, Marx was only defining the situation that the capitalist world-economy would asymptotically [“asymptote: a line that continually approaches a given curve but does not meet it at any finite distance. From the Greek ‘not falling together’…”] …that the capitalist world-economy would asymptotically approach in the very long run. The farther the class struggle was from the projected asymptote, the more it would take on a political / national character. Even the proletariat, the class which in his view had neither country nor nationality, had first of all to wage a national struggle.

Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word. (The Communist Manifesto)

 

[Our intent… in examining ‘Marxism’… is… in translating it into terms that unify us globally – into ‘earth’-terms… as we all feel the same earth under our toes – to show that the path to freedom does not lie down a ‘Marxist’ road. This is not an easy task. ‘Marxism’ has claimed the energies of the Left for so long… its ‘intellectualism’ has such a cachet about it – it’s a language hard to learn… and a certain pride attaches to those who labored long to learn it… it’s acquisition then being such… that few who have it… are willing to relinquish it.

 

Nonetheless… I believe ours is a worthwhile project – this effort of ‘translation – ‘necessary’ even… perhaps… but I must say I’m not fully convinced… as simply trusting our bodies… should be sufficient….

 

But as we read this together… I ask that we keep in mind… what was discussed in the Waking Up Radio show of August 31, 2014… that… “the ‘modern’ language of ‘classification’… of ‘specialization’… of ‘ranking’ as to ‘historical stage’… and certainly as to ‘class’… is itself the key tactic of control… of containment… so it’s not just that when we’re trying to ‘win’ (play ‘power’s game…) that we’re snuggled up close and sucked right in… but even when we challenge its propaganda… because engaging with it hardens our chains… and in some sense validates the system….”

 

Reminding us of this caution is reminding us of the central problem: we’re told ‘civilization’ itself depends on our enslavement… we’re told Thought itself requires the categories ‘power’ provides… the key one being ‘class’. With the benefit of hindsight we could reply to Marx’s idea that “the proletariat must rise to be the leading class of the nation…” by saying that it has no empirical basis…

 

but it’s intent was polemical… not analytical…

 

…but when we reject the terms themselves… how reply? Why argue with false premises… except that so many still believe in them?

 

Within the mindset of ‘class’… we commoners can never become ‘the leading class’… surely this is obvious?

 

But what is less so… is whether we can re-define ‘the nation’… to our advantage… whether we can re-claim ‘the state’ from the global-statesmen – is that’s what’s happening this very moment (September 18, 2014) as the Scottish people vote on independence?… the transition?… a piece of it?… the first of the intermediate steps… to freedom?…. We will return to this question… – P.S.]

Marx’s empirical retreat into political economy did not, however, entail a corresponding retreat at the theoretical level. It simply implied a recognition of the distance separating the historical circumstances of nineteenth-century Europe from the asymptotic circumstances projected in the Manifesto and in Capital.

[But this assumes a ‘logic’ to ‘history’ that ‘it’ does not possess… – P.S.]

Far more than this was implicit in the retreat into / revival of political economy by Marxists after Marx, however. The most striking characteristic of the theories of finance and monopoly capital, of imperialism, and of state capitalism, synthesized in canonical form by Lenin, is that they take us back to the noisy sphere of political economic relations. Their main concerns are the forms of capitalist competition, and the class contradictions identified are those defined in terms of market interests and state power. However much such formulations may or may not be justified in terms of the political strategies of the time, we are concerned here with their elevation by epigones [“…a less distinguished follower or imitator of someone, esp. an artist of philosopher…” “from the Greek ‘epigonoi’: ‘those born afterward’…”] into theoretical advances rather than pragmatic retreats from Marx’s critique of Smithian political economy.

 

This theoretical retreat into political economy had some justification in the tendencies that came to characterize the capitalist world-economy around the turn of the century. The growing unity of the world market presupposed by Marx’s paradigmatic shift began to be undermined by the re-emergence of state protectionist / mercantilist policies. These policies increasingly transferred world capitalist competition from the realm of relations among enterprises to the realm of relations among states. As a consequence, war and national / imperial autarky [“…economic independence or self-sufficiency in a country, state, or society…”] came to the fore and in pragmatic terms shaped the scenario of the world-economy. Connected with this tendency, the high concentration and centralization of capital, characteristic of most of the new leading / core sectors of economic activity, led to a resurgence of practices, often backed by state power, that restricted competition within the national / imperial segments into which the world-economy was splitting. States thus returned to the forefront of world-economic life, and monopoly in and through the sovereign became once again the central issue around which conflicts and alignments among classes and fractions thereof revolved. This situation, which has broadly characterized the first half of the twentieth century, undoubtedly warranted a revival of political economy as the most relevant theoretical framework for the short- or medium-term analysis of class contradictions and conflicts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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* “The Proletarian Is Dead; Long Live the Housewife?” …by Claudia von Werlhof

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Francisco Goya’s Third of May, (1808, Portion)]

 

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If We Have Understood Housework, Then We Have Understood the Economy

 

Housework is a phenomenon that is most difficult to understand, but if we have understood housework, then we have understood everything. But this requires (and this requirement is still unfulfilled) that we do not view housework too narrowly or use it in a restricted sense, and that we relate it and indeed apply it to nothing less than the whole economy – in fact, to the world-economy. Only then will the explosive character and the significance of the so-called women’s question become recognizable in its generality. The women’s question is the most general – and not the most special – of all social questions, because all others are contained in it;…

[…because she’s putting them in it… – P.S.]

…because it, in contrast to all the questions to date, leaves no one out. This claim reflects not conceit, or arrogance; on the contrary, it reflects something inherent in the functioning of our society itself. For our society itself has created an historically unique (to date) situation, namely the situation that the women are always “the one below”. But only from below, hence at the bottom of the cask, can the whole be seen as the whole. Nothing is more important – actually nothing is more vitally necessary – than to support this tendency of analysis “from below.”

[…I agree… but what’s even more ‘below’ than women?… look beneath your feet… notice then… as we dissolve to dust… there is no difference… – P.S.]

The Connection between the World Economic Crisis and War danger: War Economy

 

The reasons that a really general theory of society and corresponding policy are necessary are nothing less than the currently beginning world economic crisis and the danger of war that is threatening us. I wonder more and more why this time no connection is being seen between crisis and war. In any case, the topic has not been raised up to now, not even in the rather broad peace movement in the Federal Republic of Germany, which is strange, because this connection has otherwise always been the subject matter of discussion. But today people are concerned only with moral or military-technological arguments. Why don’t people simply ask, “how come there now is suddenly a danger of war? The east-west conflict is actually nothing new!” Or, “What does it mean, we must tighten our belts? What has happened to the economic miracle for which we sweated a whole life long? What have you done with that?” These simple and fundamental questions of war and crisis are simply missing, at least in the public discussion. Why?

 

The answer is at first very simple: If there is a worldwide economic crisis, then it means that everywhere economic changes will take place. But can these be implemented without the application of violence?

[…is it clear that ‘power’ counts on suppressing the key discussions… to prevent our thought’s development from one generation to the next… to keep us treading water… while they continuously move… systematically… toward their dream’s installation… their fantasy of statis (how does Kissinger put it?… I listened to him yesterday – September 9, 2014 – hawking his book by the same name: World Order…) – P.S.]

Recently a German politician himself used the term “war economy”, and it is a kind of war economy towards which we are proceeding. I do not know what he meant by that, but I think that surely there is some objective background for this statement. To me it appears that changes in the world-economy are proceeding at full speed and are beginning to be noticeable more and more clearly also in the Western industrial nations. What is involved is not merely a cyclical crisis or a moderate structural change, but the beginning of a totally new phase of capitalist development, and nobody knows how it will look. It is characterized by the fact (which is exactly what is of primary importance) that it more or less does away with “free” wage labor. With this development, simultaneously, democracy, human rights, equality, freedom, and brotherhood are also called into question, not to speak of emancipation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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* “A Manifesto for Global Capitalism?”, by Ellen Meiksins Wood

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[From John Boswell’s The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe From Late Antiquity To The Renaissance]

 

(During the May 18, 2014 show, we finally remembered to add Alice Miller and Jeremy Bentham to the “puzzle pieces” we needed to see what ‘power’s plans are… and in the May 25, 2014 show we remembered John Boswell… for his The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe: From Late Antiquity To The Renaissance….)

 

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A capitalist manifesto

 

Imagine a manifesto for global capital, written by a guru of globalization. Its object would be to present a picture of the world in which opposition to globalization and to capitalism itself would be futile, a world in which the best we can do is go with the flow, lie back and think of Nike.

 

[We first considered these words of Ellen Meiksins Wood during the Waking Up Radio show of September 14, 2014:

 

“What would be the essential propositions of such a [capitalist] manifesto?… the nation-state has become a fiction… supranational institutions as the WTO and the IMF to facilitate capital flows, and the movements of labour… problems will be solved not by resistance to global capital, not by less globalization, but, on the contrary, by more…” – and I have to say… the perspicacity of Terence Hopkins is impressive. Recall our quote from him in Palmers’ Chat… in which he placed his finger on the key problem ‘power’ faces – in their determination to arrest our building confidence… and attempt to yet again meet it with suppression – which is… the use of the nation-state as a tool wielded from ‘below’ – Scotland… is the present case in point… and… the on-going uprising of the Indigenous… ditto… (We’re going to be thinking deeply… in upcoming shows… about this question of the ‘nation-state’.)

 

What would be the essential propositions of such a manifesto? It would probably begin by insisting that the globalization of capital and the integration of the global economy have so transformed the world that the nation-state has become a fiction, as capital flows have far outreached the borders and the powers of the state. The world is now essentially ruled by the impersonal laws of the global market. To the extent that capital flows, and the movements of labour, still require some regulation, we may need such supranational institutions as the WTO and the IMF. But their role is to facilitate, not to dominate. To be sure, there are still a few flaws in the system, such as the disparity between rich and poor. But such problems will be solved not by resistance to global capital, not by less globalization, but, on the contrary, by more. Those who resist the relentless movement of capitalist globalization are doing much more harm than good.

 

We can come back in a moment to challenging this picture of the world. But let us first ask this: if the purpose of this analysis is to discourage opposition, at what point in the argument is resistance to global capital most effectively disabled? Of course, the general lesson we are supposed to draw from it is that capitalist globalization is an irresistible force and that opposition to what is practically a law of nature is futile and counterproductive. But an even more significant element in the argument is that it denies that there is any concentration of power in the global economy.

[Exactly… ‘power’ must hide to exist… Bentham schooled them well on this… and Plato (implicitly…) before him ( ‘power’ is ‘power’ is ‘power’…) – P.S.]

Either power is an inappropriate category in defining the globalized world, or power is so diffuse and immaterial that it might as well not exist at all. In either case, there is no target for opposition.

[Precisely the point of all of ‘power’s ‘modern’ propaganda – and what elaborately crafted propaganda Empire was… which should flatter the folks it was trying to convince… – P.S.]

In this respect, the manifesto would be the equivalent on a global scale of much older ‘pluralist’ arguments in political science, challenged by Marxist theories of the state way back in the 1970s. According to that old liberal orthodoxy, there were no concentrations of class power in the liberal democratic state, only an infinite diffusion of countervailing powers throughout society. Now, we are told, even the state itself is effectively powerless, and political domination, no less than class rule, is a thing of the past. All political forces and organizational forms once designed to challenge the power of capital at the level of the state are even more irrelevant than they were in an earlier pluralist world, as irrelevant as the nation-state itself.

 

Such a manifesto would seem to imply that there is no effective possibility of opposition. The diffusion of power in capitalism has, to be sure, always presented a problem for oppositional forces. It has never been as easy to trace the class power of capital to a visible source as it was in pre-capitalist societies, where the capacity of economic exploitation rested on ‘extra-economic’ political and military powers. In capitalism, not only are the ‘economic’ and the ‘political’ separated, but the impersonal forces of ‘the market’ do much of capital’s work. Nonetheless, as long as there was some identity between national states and national economies, struggles against capital could be directed not only against specific employers ‘at the point of production’ but also against the capitalist class at a point of concentration in the state.

[And now – post-World Social Forum… post-‘Occupy’… – we see ‘power’ trying to hide… no longer in ‘strong’ industries… or ‘strong’ states… but in ‘strong’ individuals… ‘talent’ that seems ‘by nature’ to have got that way (i.e., ‘strong’…) – P.S.]

It was, in fact, the essence of Marxist critiques of pluralist theories that the state did indeed constitute a point of concentration of capitalist power. But even if the state did once represent such a concentration of power and hence also a target of opposition, in today’s globalized world, we are told, such possibilities of opposition no longer exist. What good are struggles at the point of production, when capital is organized in huge, transnational corporation? What good are political struggles when the nation-state is dead?

 

If it is really true that capitalist power is now a mystical force, immanent in the world and completely disembodied [she is using the language of… and restating the argument of… the book Empire… – P.S.], everywhere and nowhere, it is the end of anti-capitalist struggle. Of course, the most sensible thing would be to embrace this ubiquitous force. But, in any case, resistance is futile. No amount of whistling in the dark about the insurrectional energies generated by globalization can change the fact that for us the game is over. The only opposition available to us is symbolic gesture and spectacle…

[Does this shoe fit… the massive protest against the inaction of the global-statesmen in the face of global warming… that we just witnessed on September 21, 2014 in New York City? (I’m writing this on September 23, 2014…) I’ve heard nothing to suggest otherwise… – P.S.]

…or the internal refusal that gives a kind of spiritual freedom to the prisoner in chains. If there really is no material point at which the power of capital can be challenged, and with all forms of political action effectively disabled, the rule of capital is complete and eternal.

[And of course recent events… from the election of Barack… to the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt… to the Occupy Movement… to Ukraine… and the massive scale and the deep… diffuse… forms of resistance occurring globally… in this moment… show otherwise… – P.S.]

This counsel of surrender would be the message of a manifesto on behalf of global capital. It is also, like it or not, the message of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire. This monumental and ambitious book has been read by supporters and critics alike as a relatively optimistic manifesto for oppositional forces in the globalized world. It has been praised as an eloquent voice for anti-capitalist movements. But for all its insistence on the possibilities of insurrection and the power of the ‘multitude’, it is much less persuasive as a call to opposition than as an argument for the futility of oppositional politics; and it has rather more to say abut the irrelevance of old oppositional struggles and forces than about the possibilities of new ones.

 

“In this smooth space of Empire,” Hardt and Negri tell us, “there is no place of power – it is both everywhere and nowhere. Empire is an outopia or really a non-place.” What does this mean for the possibilities of opposition? We are told – in sweeping generalities – that, precisely because the power of Empire is everywhere and nowhere, “the virtual center of Empire can be attacked from any point.” What precisely this means remains unclear. But, as the argument proceeds, it is difficult to see what kind of opposition it allows, apart from spontaneous gestures on the part of an inchoate ‘multitude’, which, instead of resisting the processes of globalization, can somehow reorganize them toward new ends – though by what means and to what effect (apart from creating new ‘subjectivities’) remains a mystery.

[For each new generation… ‘power’ but redesigns its old cons. Just as she pointed out the basic equivalency between Empire’s key message and that “of much older ‘pluralist’ arguments in political science, challenged by Marxist theories of the state way back in the 1970s…” so too can we see in this pseudo-optimism in non-resistance (“…instead of resisting the processes of globalization, [we’re supposed to] somehow reorganize them toward new ends…”) the false encouragement of pseudo-resistance of Mr. Steele (discussed in the Waking Up Radio show of July 27th, 2014… – P.S.]

We are told in rather more concrete terms what kinds of opposition are not possible. Political movements and organized working-class struggle are fruitless, especially local and national struggles (Hardt and Negri are very critical of anti-capitalist movements that focus on such struggles), because their traditional targets no longer exist. The simple fact is that, since there is no locus of power, there can be no real counter-power.

The idea of counter-power and the idea of resistance against modern sovereignty in general thus becomes less and less possible…. A new type of resistance would have to be found that would be adequate to the dimensions of the new sovereignty…. Today, too, we can see that traditional forms of resistance, such as the institutional workers’ organizations developed through the major part of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have begun to lose their power. (quote from Empire)

[It’s interesting to contrast the shrouding effect of Hardt and Negri’s false pronouncements with the invigorating effect of Terence Hopkin’s… in his examination of Marx on this same issue:

 

“True, the growing density and connectedness of world-economic networks on the one hand, and the displacement of class contradictions from the marketplace to the workplace on the other, would ultimately make nation-states “obsolete” from both points of view. In outlining this tendency, however, Marx was only defining the situation that the capitalist world-economy would asymptotically [“asymptote: a line that continually approaches a given curve but does not meet it at any finite distance. From the Greek ‘not falling together’…”] …that the capitalist world-economy would asymptotically approach in the very long run. The farther the class struggle was from the projected asymptote, the more it would take on a political / national character. Even the proletariat, the class which in his view had neither country nor nationality, had first of all to wage a national struggle.” (Terence Hopkins, “Rethinking the Concepts of Class and Status-Group in a World Systems Perspective”)

 

(Discussed in the Waking Up Radio show of September 21, 2014 – “…Even the proletariat, the class which in his view had neither country nor nationality, had first of all to wage a national struggle.…” “Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word…” – and is planned for discussion during the September 28th, 2014 show as well…) – P.S.]

And so on. For all Empire’s lofty sentiments about new forms of contestation, this will be music to the ears of global capital. We are left with a mystical force opposed, if at all, by immaterial resistance.

 

But let us at least grant that Empire has its heart in the right place. Unlike our putative manifesto for global capital, it really does intend to celebrate, not to deny, the possibilities of contestation. The trouble is that its analysis of Empire denies us any such hope, no less effectively than the globalization manifesto does, and in alarmingly similar terms.

[…a ‘manifesto’ that robs us of our hope for freedom… cannot have its ‘heart in the right place’… because it has no heart – that we can see this is not just because we have the benefit of hindsight… that we’ve seen the World Social Forums… seen ‘Occupy’ catch fire globally… tied to massive and on-going anti-privatization mobilizations… seen one-third of the population of Egypt in the streets… seen… the beginning of the fulfillment of Nikola Tesla’s prophesy: that once we can communicate instantaneously with each other globally… we can no longer be lied to about each other – as easily – and global unity becomes a goal that’s achievable… if we can ‘disarm’ the global-state-statesmen…

 

…it is the absence of Plato’s Tribesmen in one’s analysis… that limits its effectiveness – and which would… in this case… have allowed us to see the propagandistic thrust of the argument – to recognize that the result: our demoralization… was in fact… the intention – and therefore to state unequivocally… the absence of ‘heart’ of Hardt and Negri – this book did not ‘achieve’ ‘celebrity’-status by accident… – P.S.]

The problem begins with the very first premise on which the whole argument of Empire is based. “Our basic hypothesis,” write Hardt and Negri, “is that sovereignty has taken a new form, composed of a series of national and supranational organisms united under a single logic of rule. This new global form of sovereignty is what we call Empire.” Its primary symptom is “the declining sovereignty of nation-states and their increasing inability to regulate economic and cultural exchanges.” This does not mean that sovereignty has disappeared together with the nation-state. It has simply changed its character. With the growth of transnational corporations, and global networks of production and circulation, “which have undermined the powers of nation-states, state functions and constitutional elements have effectively been displaced to other levels and domains.”

 

There is, of course, an important point here – which many other commentators have also made – about the ‘internationalization’ of the state: that nation-states, like other institutions in the global system, are now responding not simply to the demands of national capital but to the ‘logic’ and requirement of global capital. Although we should not underestimate the persistence of national capital and, for that matter, the roots of transnational capital within it, this is certainly a point worth making. It does not require us to assume that the nation-state is effectively dying; and I have even heard Michael Hardt explain, in a public lecture, that globalization did not exclude the nation-state. The point, he insisted, was simply that the state was now subsumed in the logic of Empire.

 

That said, the essential argument of Empire is something else: at the very least, it requires us to accept that there is an inverse relation between the degree of globalization and the importance of the nation-state. And herein lies the problem, because surely the critical point about the ‘internationalization’ of the state is that the nation-state is useful to global capital not to the extent that it is unable> to “regulate economic and cultural exchanges.” On the contrary, it is useful precisely because it can intervene in the global economy and, indeed, remains the single most effective means of intervention. The essence of globalization is not the declining capacity but the unique ability of nation-states to organize the world for global capital. This reality, and global capital’s inescapable need for territorial states to make possible its navigation of the world economy, is lost in the argument of Empire.

 

The book even seems indifferent to the coercive power concentrated in the state. That indifference is reflected in a conception of ‘sovereignty’ that allows Hardt and Negri to speak of the transfer of sovereign power away from the state, even though (a point on which Empire remains silent) it remains the dominant instrument of coercive force.

 

The first premise of Empire’s argument, then, is that the movements of sovereignty are parallel and conjoined with the movements of the economy, the networks of production and circulation. Give or take the odd time-lag or failure of synchronization, the two go hand-in-hand, so that the more global the economy becomes, the more global, too, will be the reach of sovereignty.

 

This account of the connection between the economic and political moments of capitalism displays a fundamental misunderstanding of how the system works. The consequence of this misunderstanding is that Empire never confronts the realities of power or the possibilities of ‘counter-power’ in the world of global capitalism. This, in fact, is the most striking characteristic of the book: that, while purporting to be a study of power in the new world of global capitalism, its argument depends on evading the issue of power.

 

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Economic hegemony and political sovereignty

 

Capitalism is distinctive among all social forms in its capacity to extend its dominion beyond the limits of political authority, by purely ‘economic’ means….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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* “TBA, 2014 Show …”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[From Jean-Leon Gerome’s The Slave Market, (early 1860s)]

 

(During the May 18, 2014 show, we finally remembered to add Alice Miller and Jeremy Bentham to the “puzzle pieces” we needed to see what ‘power’s plans are… and in the May 25, 2014 show we remembered John Boswell… for his The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe: From Late Antiquity To The Renaissance….)

 

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* “TBA, 2014 Show …”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[From John Boswell’s The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe From Late Antiquity To The Renaissance]

 

(During the May 18, 2014 show, we finally remembered to add Alice Miller and Jeremy Bentham to the “puzzle pieces” we needed to see what ‘power’s plans are… and in the May 25, 2014 show we remembered John Boswell… for his The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe: From Late Antiquity To The Renaissance….)

 

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* “TBA, 2014 Show …”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Francisco Goya’s Third of May, (1808)]

 

 

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Thandiwe's Word:

ithedawn@gmail.com

...on the challenge of beginning to create the alternative:

 

“The imagination has to be stimulated – that imaginative part of ourselves that manifests our dreams, through that fire, that passion, that is our art. Asking questions stimulates that process of figuring out, visualizing, and manifesting what we want. But we need each other's help in order to do that – to manifest our power – and we've been cut off from helping each other.”

 

 

 

© Nas2EndWork (the NEW)

http://www.nas2endwork.org