Virginia777: Anarcissie, What do you mean by “liberalism-capitalism”?

Liberalism is the political system of capitalism; capitalism is the economic system of liberalism. 

In classical liberalism, in theory the state is set up with a few simple rules and a limited government.  Men—in the 18th century only White males of age and property were deemed fully human—can then do as they please, protected by a set of rights: they do not need orders from the lord, the priest, the guild, or tradition, as in the Middle Ages.  If you apply this pattern to economic life, you get the early stage of capitalism, as described by Adam Smith. 

Of course, things have changed since 1776.  One change was the expansion of the idea of who is fully human.  Since you mentioned Martin Luther King, I’ll give the Civil Rights movement as an example: the descendants of the Negro slaves, who had been denied some of the liberal rights, demanded full rights and participation in the state, while carefully avoiding a direct, violent confrontation with it.  Since the movement had liberal aims, it could be tolerated and absorbed.  However, when King began to involve himself significantly in anti-war politics, he was eliminated: “war is the health of the state”, even the liberal state.  Something similar would have happened if King had decided that capitalism was opposed to his perhaps Christian vision of the good economy, although not necessarily assassination; the FBI was on his case, and while he was alive, he had many powerful enemies.  Once he was safely dead, of course, he became a saint and highways and buildings were named after him, while the inconvenient parts of his politics were obscured and forgotten.

You apparently know more about the relation of civil rights to gender movements than I do, Anarcissie.

Virgina, there is no Santy Claus.  I’m sorry.

Folktruther—in the case of both Christianity and capitalism, I’m looking at the foundation of the movement as the revolutionary point—the time at which the ideology takes hold somewhere and begins to grow, at the same time destroying its competitors.  Things are well along by the time one class replaces another—and in any case, while Christianity seems to have blown itself out as anything but a reactionary attempt to escape modernity, capitalism remains revolutionary long past the point at which the bourgeoisie got control of the state.

Radical feminism, Gay rights, and the hippies all appeared in the mid-to-late 1960s, and at the time all of them emerged from the breaking of the repressive power of the image of the White Man which I attribute to the partial success of the Civil Rights movement.  (see “Notes from the First Year”, for instance, which appeared in 1967 or 1968. http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm/notes/).  Incidentally the first article on the mentioned site makes the connection explicit: “May I suggest the reason for this, why women’s history has been hushed up just as Negro history has been hushed up, so that the black child learns, not about Nat Turner but about the triumph of Ralph Bunche, or George Washington Carver and the peanut.” (Shulamith Firestone)

Anarcissie, What do you mean by “liberalism-capitalism”?

and Folktruther, can anyone ever call Christianity “bad” after these three words: Martin Luther King?

She might want the children now.

If you mean, Anarcissie, that Christianty helped erode classical ideology, which was dying anyway, sure.  Marxists mean by ‘revolutionary’ one class replacing another.

It is true that serfdom replaced slavery on the big plantations, which were chopped up, but this occurred to rurual areas and ancient Christianity was largely an urban movement.  Gibbon says that at the time Constintine made it a state religion, no more than 5% of the population was Christian.

The civil rights movement empowering women and gays did not occur until the 70’s.  The consciousness raising groups of feminists did not spread until then. And the gay movement was jumpstarted by Stonewall in the early 70’s, gays fighting back the cops who were hasseling them for no reason in a bar.

But historically the relation between the civil rights movement of Af-Ams and the gender movements of women and gays have not been argued, to my knowledge, in histories.  In any event, I hadn’t noticed the relation.

I think the reason that they have been more successful, to the extent they have been, is that more women and gays were part of the professional class and therefore had the social prestige to lead the urban masses to more enlightened views.  In the rural areas, social progressive views are anathema.

It is small town, rural, that Palin represents.

By hetzer, September 16 at 4:46 pm #

I disagree.

I have been raising my 2 children for the past 7 years with little help from their recovering alcoholic addict mother.

Now that shes gotten out of college and is looking to become a lawyer/advocate, maybe I can get the courts to get her to pay child support.

The courts are extremely gender bias.

For some reason that no one really understands, tobacco became unpopular.  The advertising and government initiatives simply rode the wave.  That is the way it is now with matriarchy.  Look around you.  It is the women who are doing the work, raising the children and all the rest.  Men have largely become idle.

Folktruther:
‘Really good points, hetzer.  As to Christianity as a revolutionary ideology, Anarcissie, I can only say—foosh.

Hoever your analysis of the sexual revolution is highly original-I’ve never seen it before.  It appears quite reasonable.’

Neither idea is mine.  The idea that Christianity rotted away the values and social structure of the Roman world was written up by Gibbon and Nietzsche, as well as many others before and after them.

The idea that the Civil Rights movement seriously disrupted the political and social order of the West, or at least of the United States, has been around for a while too, but I’m not sure which writers to point out.  That the Civil Rights movement instigated or restarted the New Left, hippiedom, the anti-war movement, feminism and Gay rights was a point explicitly made and accepted to the point of cliché in the ‘60s.  When rightists rant about the evils of the ‘60s, what they’re talking about is essentially the Civil Rights movement, although sometimes they seem to be unaware of it.

Come on, the spiritual transformation is doing the HARD WORK it even takes to tell the Truth.

Gosh, Virginia, you must be the child that the editor of a paper expounded that there WAS a Santy Claus.  A TRUE Santa Claus.

And of course what is TRUE is whatever is good about an ideology, and what is bad about it is not TRUE.

You can justify any ideology in the world that way, Virginia.  Including Satan’s darkest snares.

I think spiritual ideologies are essential to societies, but they must be honest and rational.  And the first thing that must be done with traditional religions, which have been hijacked by oppressive power, is to cleanse them historically of their inherited perverted values.

And this cannot be done unless decent people like yourself undergo a spiritual transformation, riding yourself of perverted values, like those discribed by hetzer.

Christianity is tainted by its association with the old testament and a false religion based on The Word.
Words are no good basis for Christianity.  We are moving from patriarchal father and son to mother and father, with priority to the mother.  Compassion comes from the mother.  Fathers can only fake it.

hetzer - we aren’t “moving” anywhere!! Compassion is THE fundamental Christian concept. Stop thinking that something “new” can be “created”. Well-worn experience tells us that is only dangerous (i.e. the “new” atheists!).

Yes, Christianity has been and is being, abused by disgusting forces time and time again. But haven’t you noticed how Good things always do?

We are stuck with that, but don’t think that TRUE Christianity is a bad thing, it is not!

Really good points, hetzer.  As to Christianity as a revolutionary ideology, Anarcissie, I can only say—foosh.

Hoever your analysis of the sexual revolution is highly original-I’ve never seen it before.  It appears quite reasonable.

Christ preached compassion and “forgive them for they know not what they do”, which was a radical departure from the Old Testament form of social control based on various forms of terror.  Christianity also emphasised individual, rather than national salvation contributing to individualism.  However, organized religion is still religion.  Every religious sect is basically a racket based on an inevitable partial understanding of God.  I think we are now leaving cruel religions based on print, and moving to a more organic concept based on compassion.

I think Christianity was revolutionary in its context.  The Roman Empire was based on slavery, and the idea that the majority of the people were no different from domestic animals, or, indeed, inanimate objects.  Christianity proposed that ordinary people had value regardless of whether they were enslaved, and that their true lives were outside the state.  That idea eventually destabilized the Roman Empire, although it took a long time by modern standards.  Constantine seriously corrupted Christianity (although the Christians of the time must have been eager to be corrupted) but it retained (and still retains) some core beliefs and values which are still anti-imperial and break out to cause trouble now and then.

As for the sexual revolution—this may seem like an odd take, but I think feminism, Gay liberation, and numerous other mostly egalitarian movements spun off the Civil Rights movement, as did the hippie movement (if you want to call it a movement) and much of the New Left.  Now, the Civil Rights movement was primarily a movement for egalitarian liberalism, so it was not at odds with the ostensible social order, but of course for three hundred years Europeans in North America had been creating the White Man, the sacred icon which they had to live up to in order to assume privileges of dominion for themselves.  The White Man required the Black man, or people, as an Other against whom he (it?) could be defined.  When the image was successfully impugned by the Other all sorts of cultural forces broke loose; we call the initial jailbreak “the Sixties”.  Wide and deep as these movements were, I don’t think they can be considered revolutionary, at least not yet, in that the political order has not really changed.  If anything, it has been slipping toward dictatorship, which I regard as retrograde.

Anarcissie- How is Christianity a revolutionary social movement.  It was made a state religion by Constantine, among other competitors among Asian ideologies, because, as Bertrand Russell states, it was strong in the military and made soldiers more willing to die if they felt they were going to Heaven.

The US revolution was not really a social revolution but what we would now call a war of national liberation.  A separation revolution leaves most of the institutions still intact.

You have a good point about violent revolutions.  the mililtary centralization tends to be turned on the revolutionary population.  But all histsorical transfers of power are opposed violently.

Except, now that I think of it, the sexual revolution.  Women and gays largely are liberating themselves without centralized violence.  And their oppresion was strongly enchrenched.  Why, do you think?  Is nagging a revolutionary force?  Could a world wide nagging movement develop to increase the power of world opinion to impede power criminality and transform social institutions?  Combined with what do you suppose?

I suppose a really irritating voice would help.  I irritate people, God knows, but I find irritating them in the same way over a long period of time too boring to pursue.  I am not really a pracital political person; I don’t like the exercise of power, I like to think about the power process.  I wonder how nagging couold be turned into a revolutionary political technique.  that would solve the violence problem, you must admit.

People will have a change of heart.

Folktruther: ‘Unfortunately, Anarcissie, I disagree.  We WILL gain freedom through slavery, war through peace, equality through hierarchy and abundance through scarcity.  If we acheive them at all.  The dialectical attainment of opposites is a very destructuve way to produce them, but can you deny that historically this is how they have been attained….’

As I’ve mentioned before, in my opinion the two most revolutionary social movements, at least in the West, have been Christianity and liberalism-capitalism.  These did not turn violent until they had already achieved a great deal of power and influence.  In fact, in the case of lib-cap I would say the violence was the end of the revolution, the coup de grace rather than the beginning.

By contrast, there have been quite a number of violent revolutions which ended up with dictatorship, which seems logical to me—the state is the most efficient organization of human society for war, and the most basic form of the state is one governed by a military or Mafia-like hierarchy.  The only exception I can think of at the moment is the American Revolution, which was, I think, a resumption of the English Civil War by the new American upper classes, who thought they could get a better deal for themselves in a confederacy of liberal republics rather than as part of King George’s more centralized and perhaps more progressive Kaiserreich.  (King George needed a Bismarck and, unluckily for him, had only Lord North and his friends.)  After the period of dictatorship, what do we see?  Usually, a movement toward lib-cap; certainly in France and Russia, and probably in China eventually.

If, as I think Uncle Karl says, political forms grow out of economic relations, then this is exactly what we should expect.

Corporations need a population of corrupt and willing suckers to exist.  There are now wind generators that can power a single house and they are small and inexpensive.  Batteries are improving too.  This means that big energy has only its political and media influence to rely on now.  The grid can be almost completely eliminated.

The major problem in my mind is the crook media which has been weakening and corrupting this nation since the 1950’s.  It should be nationalized and made non-profit with strong and smart control.  (There is a reason for our media and its constant glorification of force and fraud, and it is demonic.)

Unfortunately, Anarcissie, I disagree.  We WILL gain freedom through slavery, war through peace, equality through hierarchy and abundance through scarcity.  If we acheive them at all.  The dialectical attainment of opposites is a very destructuve way to produce them, but can you deny that historically this is how they have been attained.  People have to be oppressed sufficiently historically before they revolt, and it is this oppression that forms the major discourse of history.

Not of course that I advocate them.  They occurr mostly when power systems decay and barbarism replaces what the Educated have taught us to call Civilization.  And people, as you stated, generally revolt to new and better forms of oppression.

My suggestion is that it is necessary to enlighten people about the nature of the historical power process and instill in ourselves with people values as opposed to power values, whatever we decide that these will be. 

Just as unions only develop a self defensive ideology and do not develop an over reaching worldview, so small democratic institutions need a general worldview that links them with other institutions.  We must act locally but think globally.

If we do so other forms of democratic internaction will occur that links people togehter to from a world opinion opposed to oppressive power.  Over historical time that can attain a force to restrict the criminal actions of national power systems and transnational corporations.

on 15 Februrary 2003, thirty million people from countries of every inhabited continent demonstrated in concerted action to oppose the US invasion of Iraq.  If 300 million poeple opposed it, we might have succeeded. 

Even so, world opinion has eroded the soft power of the US necessary to deplomacy, economic arrangements and military arrangements.  If this force of world opinion were strengthened and legitmated, other institutions could be developed to meet world problems.

As long as people understand the importance of democratic control of these institutions and the need to prevent them from freeing themselves from earthperson control.

Folktruther—As I see it, a mass or broad-based movement would have to arise from lower levels and smaller groups and relationships.  I think we can guess some of the attributes of such a movement, but we can’t specify its overall outlines or much of its detail because we are fairly ignorant about ourselves, and even more ignorant about our possibilities. There is also the question of the social and physical environment of the world in which it is to take place—something else about which we are profoundly ignorant.  Rather radical changes could occur in the near future: for example, the U.S. financial and monetary system has been badly mismanaged, and it is likely that there will be economic hell to pay; we may also see some dire changes in the biosphere that surrounds (and pervades) us, not only in terms of gross environmental circumstances but also at the level of microbes and other small organisms on which we depend, yet pay very little attention to.  These very possible disasters could lead to a pre-revolutionary situation but, as I read history, pre-revolutionary situations based on disaster and emergency generally lead to the assumption of authoritarian power by father figures of the worst sort, that is, retrograde dictatorships—progress in the wrong direction, from my point of view.

What we can do is try to set up situations in which social configurations will develop in the directions we prefer.  In spite of my professed ignorance, I think it is pretty certain that we will not achieve freedom through slavery, peace through war, equality through hiearachy, or abundance through scarcity.  (This means we must unequivocally reject the established order and its ruling class, because those are its principles of operation.)  What we have to do, I think, is seek out peace, freedom, equality and abundance in daily life at the most immediate level, and expand the field of our attentions outward as we succeed locally.

Anarcissie-I don’t deny that you have a good point and it is very difficult to get people interested in larger polities and economic entities, especially in the US.

But we have to try.  Small isolated entities are not enough.  Sooner or later they must combine into a larger grouping or they will be seized by power and perverted, as Constantine seized Christianity and the rich seized or destroyed the small businesses.

My own perspective is to start at the opposite extreme of yours.  Classic marxism focused on the developed economies of Europe, conceiving most of the world not yet ready for socialism.  When the communists seized power in Russia, a mostly peasant economy, and the capitalist countries invaded, a seige socialism developed that spread to the third world.  This didn’t work out too good.

I suggest that we try to get people to identify with humanity, the past, present and future persons of the earth, the masses of people opposed to their power systems or polities.  Conceptual innovations associated with 20th century American social science allow us, should we wish, to develop a math conceptual structure of simple relations among people, including power relations.  If such a conceptual structure can be legitimated, not necessarily or evey primarily in the US, it would begin to change our inherited worldviews. 

The conceptual langague generates and earthperson worldview, as I think of it, incompatible with the Western worldview that has legitimated liberal Democracies the past few centuries.

Should some such conception be legitimated over historical time, this would increase the power of world opinion to act as a force restricting national polities and trans-national corporations from criminal behavior.  It would therefore be necessary to link up the small enterprises with a schematic ideology that could unite people in pollitical action.

I know this sounds utopian, but we happen to beliving at a time in history when this is becoming both politically and technically feasible.  Cosndier for example the world demonstration of 15 February 2003, when perhaps thirty million people from every inhabited continent demonstrated in concerted action against the US invasion of Iraq.  If three hundred milliion demontrated, it might have stoped it.

National planners increasingly have to take world opinion into account in their calculations.  It is true that in the demented US power system this has been less of a factor, and this is why the US has catestrophically lost power.  Note however that in the Georgia-Russia war, the US is deferring to Europe.  Because it has to.

No one person can make a grand theory like marxism any more, but should a number of people unite around theory, then it can later be taken into the practical realsm, the way Christianity and marxism both spread.  There are what I think are good reasons why such an approach is feasible.

Anarchcissie-I’ve had some of the same experiences that you’ve had.  But your approach is new to me and I have to think about it a little.  I’ll be back at this space with a response within a week.

Folktruther—I came to the conclusion that decentralized transformation was the way to go by looking at history.  I noticed that the great transformative movements like Christianity and capitalism started out small and hid in the interstices or on the boundaries of the established order while they gathered strength, adherents, and repute. 

My own experience with attempts to organize communes, cooperatives, unions and so forth affected my thinking on this.  Small collective enterprises can be organized and can thrive if they have a clear purpose and are made up of people who are actively interested in the organization.  However, if they are not, nothing much is going to happen.  In a socialist enterprise or polity, the workers will have to take an active, lively interest in the conduct of the economy as a whole, as well as their own business; they will not be able to depend on the bosses to do it for them.  But I have found that the majority of my co-workers over the years have had little interest in such things.  They declined to combine in separate cooperative businesses and could not even bother with unions, a very mild form of attempting to affect the conditions of one’s work.  You cannot even give people socialism if they don’t want it, much less get them to fight for it.  And a fight there would surely be, if anyone attempted to contest control of the government in order to impose socialism from the top down.

In any case, as I mentioned before, we don’t know how to act collectively.  I just sat through a meeting where a dozen or more apparently intelligent people discussed the replacement of a broken doorknob at a community space for half an hour.  I have already mentioned the inability of my communard acquaintances to form a free trade zone with their peers.  I could probably provide a dozen stories like these.

I conclude from my experiences and observations that the only way to proceed is with small, local, decentralized activities made up of those who are interested, the hope being that once people see functioning examples of an alternative to the global work/war/welfare machine, they will want to join.

In a dubious battle all you can do is stand in the place of your friends.

Anarcissie—I find decentralization appealing but, like most people, I don’t think it is practical.  It would be practical if we lived in a reasonable world, or even if power minded its own business and adopted a live and let live approach to novelty.

But as you know, we don’t.  I don’t think that oppressive power would ALLOW decentralization to flourish.  Look how the oil companies and their reps stop renewable energy when our very survival is at stake.  The decentralization of energy through solar panels, turbines, etc threatens the profits of the big companies.

The greatest illustration is the Bolshevek revolution.  14 nations sent in three hundred thousand soldiers to fight on the side of the Whites during the civil war, killing about 13 million people.  This was largely eliminated from the Western history books and people still will often not believe it.  Captialist troops revolted, shot their officers, and joined the reds, all blanked out of Western mainstream history.

The anarchists Berkman and Emma Goldman were deported to Russia, and immediately denounced the centralization.  But what could the Bolsheveks do once they were committed to revolution and fighting all those countries.  You could argue that they shouldn’t have seized power in a predominantly peasant society, and the Mensheveks did so argue, but if they were defeated there would be an immense slaughter, as occurred when the Paris Commune fell.

So seige socialism developed historically and centralization as a military and political necessity.
How could small medical organs develop if they threatened Big Medicine and they were isolated when they were attacked economically and politically.  To defend themselves they would have to unite with others, and this involves centralization.  I don’t see any way out of this delemma at this time in history.

Hetzer- a safe, democractic world is what we are trying to create.  People have been trying for many centuries.  It isn’t easy to do.

We need to have strict equality and real freedom so speak in a safe democratic world.  Then things will somehow sort themselves out over time.  Remember, we are really just animals, and underneith it all we live an animal existence.  We aren’t lions or sheep.  We are just animals.

Anararcissie-your comments are concise and provocative.  Your conception of power systems are like those dramatized by Orwell.  But are they like this in all respects?

I come from a socialist tradition that asumes centralization, but the seige socialism that evolved was rejected historically.  You suggest starting with de-centralization.

I have to mull it over for a bit.  The truth fairy comes at nite and puts ideas under my pillow.  I’ll meet you here at Afghanistan gas within a week or so.

Folktruther—the point of the capitalist state is to produce scarcity, not abundance.  It is scarcity which make the capitalist manager and the state bureaucrats and military and police necessary, which gives them political power and social status.

Naturally the state’s ruling class also wants to produce a lot of material goods and services, mostly for purposes of waging ordinary and economic war and quiescing the population.  Hence surpluses which cannot be reinvested have to be disposed of.  Common methods include war and preparation for war, reconstruction after war or other disaster, waste, deliberate destruction, and consumerism.  In the last, the workers are more or less compelled to work at consuming some of the goods they have produced, and are constantly propagandized into desiring things they don’t have.  In short, while the state works at increasing production it must also work at increasing scarcity.  This will become an increasingly burdensome task for such as the Chinese ruling class unless they can get a permanent cold war going with some other state.  Should classical production outrun scarcity production one might see the appearance of anarchistic and/or communistic communities here and there.  However, they would have to lie pretty low to avoid being crushed by the state’s authorities, who would find their existence and threat even when they were small and strategically insignificant.  (Hence, perhaps, the charging of St. Paul Food Not Bombs with terrorism.)

Coming around to your observation about centralization, it is true that centralized production-consumption is more efficient from the ruling-class point of view.  But the measure of efficiency is ultimately a value judgement (reward divided by cost, which are both values), and therefore ultimately subjective.  When we switch the subject focus from the ruling class to the other participants, we may find that non-centralized production has a higher efficiency for them.  From my point of view, decentralization is more susceptible to autonomy, and therefore better.

I’ll give an example.  In the area of medical care, we find an increasing tendency toward centralization of both service and product delivery and payment.  As this happens the consumers have less and less ability to affect the level of the payments or the quality of the service.  (Private) capitalism does not seem to have worked in this area.

My solution would be to encourage the formation of consumer-owned medical insurance cooperatives.  As these (hopefully) grew in size, they could become HMOs and even come to the point of training their own doctors and building their own hospitals.  Their democratic political structure would encourage efficiency and economy (from the members’ point of view).  Good locales for starting enterprises like these would be labor unions, because many of them already fund medical insurance plans and have the internal bureaucracy necessary to manage such things.  The provision of such a service would also strengthen the union.  But I have been unable to obtain even a refutation of my idea.  Instead, people look toward the ultimate centralization, Single-Payer, under which they will become less autonomous than ever.

Centralized capitalism, Anarcissie, is much more efficient in industrializing peasant economies than American style capitalism.  In China the governemnt owns a third of the economy giving the leaders of the communist party the ability to capture forty or fifty percent of the income and invest it in ways that grow the economy four times faster than the US.  Faster than an economy in history over a longer span of time.

So what, you say.  The point is that they have hundreds of millions of peasants to get urbanized and this can be done in a few decades, assuming there is no major nuclear war.  And they are industrializing Asia, where 60% of the people live.  Assuming that any kind of socialism or anarchism must be start from an industrialized base, an earthperson socialism can develop much sooner the sooner the people are urbanized.

But once developed, the incremant of growth can be taken in less hours of work rather than in increased money.  Not of course that any power structure will permit this since it will give the people more freedom to shrug them off.  But at a certain point people can effectively demand it, like the French 35 hour week.
In which case a second, volenteer economy can arise which need not involve money.

For example, in South America, probably Argintina, during their economic dollar crisis, the people evolved a system of working for each other and getting points, which entitled them to used goods which others had no use for.  They were having problems with the system and I don’t know what happened to it, but if you don’t have to worry about necessities, people can contribute what they can because they want to, as we are doing here envisioning possible futures.

Marxism was originally oriented toward Europe because socialism was predicated on developed capitalism. This developed into the seige socialism that was rejected historically.  But if the whole people of the earth live in a developed economy, even in a new form of imperialism that China is developing, a new strategy may be possible to acheive the kind of anarchistic socialism that Marx,etc envisioned.

If you are not busy, I would be interested in your comments, Anarcissie.

Folktruther: My God, Anarcissie, I think I agree with you.  I must be getting sick.  I would only qualify that under capitalism it is a form of rental slavery rather than the ownership kind, which is a step forward historically.

Historically, capitalism is very recent.  So it seems natural to me that it incorporates relationships and and other forms from its predecessors.  And it is a dynamic system.  But at the moment I am doubtful about the way it is evolving.  I would like to be seeing more autonomy rather than more centralization. 

But as these various small groupings develop new forms, it is necessary to link them up somehow to form a common front. Since they all will be quite different attempts, this might best be done initally by an ideological worldview integrating only the basic aspects of each, whatever that turns out to be.

A few years ago I visited a commune (about 100 members) who were trying to set up a sort of common economic zone where they would exchange goods and services with other outfits of their general type without necessarily going through the state money system, and could buy and sell things collectively from/to the outside world.  It seemed like a good idea to me, but they were not having much success at that time.  It is observations like this that make me think we have a lot to (re)learn. But people are definitely out there making the effort in their various funny ways.

The main thing is to help individuals develop smarts.  Once they understand how crooks, suckers, and slaves interact, they should be able to break up the patterns on an individual and personal basis.  America gave up smoking in that way.  All the smoking laws came later when enough people wanted to get rid of the 2nd hand smoke.  But, first they had to become sensitive to it.
The same thing can be done with sociopaths (crooks).
If we stop tolerating habitual and easy liars, that is one way we can surround sociopaths with restrictions.

My God, Anarcissie, I think I agree with you.  I must be getting sick.  I would only qualify that under capitalism it is a form of rental slavery rather than the ownership kind, which is a step forward historically.

But as these various small groupings develop new forms, it is necessary to link them up somehow to form a common front. Since they all will be quite different attempts, this might best be done initally by an ideological worldview integrating only the basic aspects of each, whatever that turns out to be.

This is quite important especially in the US because there are many, many small radical groupings that not only do not relate to the others, but do not even know of their existence.  If there were some loose central coordination, such as for example Indie media gives to local and national media, their imput would not be lost if and when the group faded out or disolved.  And such a loose coordination would greatly legitimate and thus magnify their power.  And thus increasing the number of such groupings.

Once people start talking and comparing notes, they will probably gradually evolve something better.  It is advantage that is the great enemy.  People with advantage are taken over by crooks who then have the jump on everyone else.

folktruther: ’... But then what?  If social theory is generalized from Europe to all earthpeople, how can an earthperson socialism (or whatever) be developed.  What one does now is dependant on what one wants to do later.  In order to get from here to there, we have to know what ‘there’ is. ...’

At this point, I don’t think we can know how to cultivate a larger social order, because the human race has been generally under slavery for thousands of years.  We are still walking in the shadow of slavery and this is why I think there is so much authoritarianism and such widespread desire to submit to authorities, make war, crush the weak, and so forth.  It’s slave mentality persisting in culture.

In fact, not only do we not know how to build the larger social order, it’s often very difficult for even small non-authoritarian organizations, groups, bands, to survive and thrive.  It’s something we have to relearn, not in the abstract sense of symbolic intellection, but in the communal practice of daily life.

What I think we can do is try to open spaces in the existing social order, “building the new world in the shell of the old” as I think the IWW put it once upon a time.  In those spaces, different experiments can be carried forward.  Those things which work in the sense of serving the desires and interests of their participants will live and grow, and the rest of us will learn from them.

But meanwhile we also have to resist imperialism, war, repression, the physical and biological destruction of our world, and the propaganda which supports these things in the media and academia.  This is a negative rather than a positive task and may prove easier to think about and do, and also easier to find allies for—many people who would not care to involve themselves in radical projects are still opposed to the violence of the present social order and are willing to do something about it.

So that’s a very light sketch of a program.

The right is effective because liars and bullies like Limbaugh speak in statements.  They have learned to speak like know-it-all’s.  Theleft should learn to stop appealing to reason or making arguments.  Above all it should get rid of the endless moralizing.  (People are not moral actors, period)  Statements like, “When is this crooked war going to end?” are far more powerful than learned presentations.

You are right, hetzer, Anarcissie, that new tactics are necessary.  But it is also necessary to update left ideology to conform to the new world situation that occurred after the fall of East Europe.

Classic marxism was aimed at the developed countries of Europe where Marx thought socialism was possible.  Marxism-Leninism was a syncrenism that expanded marxism to the world but was inconsistent theoretically because the underdeveloped countries were not ready for any but the seige socialism of the communist countries.

What is happening now is that China is leading Asia and the third world countries to developed capitalism, which shouldn’t take too many decades, assumming that there is no major nuclear war. 

But then what?  If social theory is generalized from Europe to all earthpeople, how can an earthperson socialism (or whatever) be developed.  What one does now is dependant on what one wants to do later.  In order to get from here to there, we have to know what ‘there’ is.

We don’t.  And I suggest that this plays a larger role in the theory vacuum on the left than is generally acknowledged.  In addition to new tactics, new theory is necessary.

hetzer: ’... Everyone should have planned to go into a teach in mode, occupying coffee shops and talking about the issues.  This would do more, I think, than carrying symbols and waving signs with moral appeals. ...’

Anti-authoritarians, i.e. leftists, are going to have to come up with some new tactics, that’s for sure.  The kind of stuff they have been doing since, I guess, Seattle has now been fully analyzed by the authorities and they can pretty well neutralize it.  We will get a lot of mileage out of the Soviet-style night attacks on innocent people, but only slowly; the Republicans, unfazed, have proceeded to screw themselves up in ways no one could have predicted far more thoroughly than any anarchists could, at least in the short term.

But the Left has had this problem before.  Many years ago, big formal demonstrations worked, to some extent.  Then the ruling class figured out how to neutralize them, and so the idea of having small groups perform disruptions became popular.  Since most disruptions are or can be made out to be violent, I was pretty sure the cops would figure out how to control them and turn them against the activists.  I think it’s pretty obvious that various kinds of provocation did the trick.  There also seems to be a national cop-media nexus, because events were staged so that the street violence could be made to overshadow the storm-trooper business which preceded it, and the MSM went along with that scheme all the way.

Not that I know what to do next….

This does not mean by any means that I have a CRUSH on him or any other political sociopath.

Re Anarcisse

I take Obama at his word.  That’s why I can’t understand why so many radicals—not liberals, radicals—got such a crush on him.  If you take his actual statements, outside of the slogans, he is and has been a cautious, conservative, center-to-right guy in the mainstream of the Democratic Party and the established order. 
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Anarcisse,

I am a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat who has always found that I could exist politically somewhere on the left side of the Democratic coalition, with people like Michael Moore and the PDA. I disagree with your characterization of Obama as “center right”. To me there have been two major wings of the Democratic party in recent years, the centrist DLC/Clinton wing and the Howard Dean “Democratic wing of the Democratic party.” Really this wing is a younger, updated version of the old liberals still represented by Ted Kennedy and Kerry, who were early Obama supporters. This breach has now been healed, the Dean wing won (my hat is off to him) and the Democratic party has moved to the left. Maybe not far enough to suit some people, but enough to make a big difference.

Re Anarcissie, September 1 at 7:39 pm #

Tony Wicher: ‘I see no reason to doubt Obama’s fundamental honesty and patriotism.’

But you said recently that, once elected, he would do something different from what he said he was going to do, to wit, ramp up the war in Afghanistan and possibly invade Pakistan.
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Anarcissie,

As far as I know, what he has said since “day one” and what I expect him to do is to withdraw combat troops from Iraq, where we all agree they never should have been sent, and devote some of them to the area where the narcoterrorist bin Laden gang known as Al Qaeda originated and has always operated. This makes sense to me. The question is, will he do this the stupid way or the smart way? Remember, Obama said in his famous 2002 anti-war speach that he does not oppose all wars, only stupid ones. What is the stupid way? It is to bomb Afghan villages, as has been going on under the Bush Administration. Now Hamid Karzai, our Afghanistan ally (some call him a puppet, but he is a decent man without much power) has appeared on 60 Minutes talking directly to the American people demanding a halt to the bombing of his country. Obama will not continue with this stupidity. He will halt the bombing. He will not annouce this with great fanfare, but quietly order it halted. His intention is to use ground troops instead, which he will be able to do if the army is not tied down in Iraq. The next question is how the troops will be used. Will they be used stupidly, to conduct search and destroy operations which will only further antagonize the people, or will they be used intelligently, to defend the people of Afghanistan against the Taliban, various warlords and the Al Qaeda assassins, while helping them build infrastructure, subsidizing the growth of crops other than opium and otherwise doing things to win over the people instead of antagonizing them? I think he and his advisors are smart enough to figure such things out. 

I take Obama at his word.  That’s why I can’t understand why so many radicals—not liberals, radicals—got such a crush on him.  If you take his actual statements, outside of the slogans, he is and has been a cautious, conservative, center-to-right guy in the mainstream of the Democratic Party and the established order.  He is not a peace candidate, and never was, and said so.  He’s not going to revolutionize foreign policy, military policy, health care, social security, taxes, the economy, police practices, immigration, the Federal Reserve Bank, education or anything else important, unless he goes back on what he had explicitly declared about himself, which I don’t think he will do unless he’s forced to by circumstances.  (And those circumstances will not be pressure from “progressives” because if they don’t turn the screws now they sure as hell aren’t going to have them to turn later.)

The only instance I know of where he went back on his word was the vote for FISA.  I don’t really understand that one; maybe he was threatened.  But otherwise I’m assuming he’ll do what he says he’s going to do, and among other things that includes expanding the war in Afghanistan.

Every real battle starts with diversions and harassment to rattle the enemy.  These raids and arrests are designed to demoralize “peace” groups and provoke them into acting crazy.  (The craziness only is recorded and broadcast.)

Everyone should have planned to go into a teach in mode, occupying coffee shops and talking about the issues.  This would do more, I think, than carrying symbols and waving signs with moral appeals.

The “anarchists” provide the perfect pretext for the police.  Does this seem familiar to anyone who was stupid enough to get sucked into the Chicago police riots?

Moral appeals do not win wars.  It takes smarts and appeals to smarts to get anywhere.

I’m glad you’re publicizing events in St. Paul.  There seems to be a considerable media blackout which I find more ominous than the events themselves, even the spooky Soviet-style police raids which preceded today’s nasty business.

<blockquote>
Tony Wicher: ‘I see no reason to doubt Obama’s fundamental honesty and patriotism.’

But you said recently that, once elected, he would do something different from what he said he was going to do, to wit, ramp up the war in Afghanistan and possibly invade Pakistan.

I take Obama at his word.  That’s why I can’t understand why so many radicals—not liberals, radicals—got such a crush on him.  If you take his actual statements, outside of the slogans, he is and has been a cautious, conservative, center-to-right guy in the mainstream of the Democratic Party and the established order.  He is not a peace candidate, and never was, and said so.  He’s not going to revolutionize foreign policy, military policy, health care, social security, taxes, the economy, police practices, immigration, the Federal Reserve Bank, education or anything else important, unless he goes back on what he had explicitly declared about himself, which I don’t think he will do unless he’s forced to by circumstances.  (And those circumstances will not be pressure from “progressives” because if they don’t turn the screws now they sure as hell aren’t going to have them to turn later.)

The only instance I know of where he went back on his word was the vote for FISA.  I don’t really understand that one; maybe he was threatened.  But otherwise I’m assuming he’ll do what he says he’s going to do, and among other things that includes expanding the war in Afghanistan.

Re thebeerdoctor, September 1 at 5:34 pm #

[ Special Note : a member of PDA/DFA Progressive Democracy South Jersey is interested in driving to St.Paul if others would be willing to help pay the gas and traveling expenses . If there is anyone interested in making the trip as a sign of solidarity with all those who have been arrested, please get in touch with me…..and I will put you in touch with the party willing to make the trip .....email me at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) ]
Amy Goodman and Two Democracy Now! Producers Unlawfully Arrested At the RNC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
http://www.democracynow.org

September 1, 2008

Contact:
Denis Moynihan 917-549-5000
Mike Burke 646-552-5107, (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

ST. PAUL, MN—Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was unlawfully arrested in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota at approximately 5 p.m. local time. Police violently manhandled Goodman, yanking her arm, as they arrested her. Video of her arrest can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjyvkR0bGQ

Goodman was arrested while attempting to free two Democracy Now! producers who were being unlawfully detained. They are Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. Kouddous and Salazar were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention. Goodman’s crime appears to have been defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press.

Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher told Democracy Now! that Kouddous and Salazar were being arrested on suspicion of rioting. They are currently being held at the Ramsey County jail in St. Paul.

Democracy Now! is calling on all journalists and concerned citizens to call the office of Mayor Chris Coleman and the Ramsey County Jail and demand the immediate release of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar.  These calls can be directed to: Chris Rider from Mayor Coleman’s office at 651-266-8535 and the Ramsey County Jail at 651-266-9350 (press extension 0).

Democracy Now! stands by Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar and condemns this action by Twin Cities law enforcement as a clear violation of the freedom of the press and the First Amendment rights of these journalists.

During the demonstration in which they were arrested law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force. Several dozen others were also arrested during this action.

Amy Goodman is one of the most well-known and well-respected journalists in the United States. She has received journalism’s top honors for her reporting and has a distinguished reputation of bravery and courage. The arrest of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar is a transparent attempt to intimidate journalists from the nation’s leading independent news outlet.

Democracy Now! is a nationally syndicated public TV and radio program that airs on over 700 radio and TV stations across the US and the globe.

Video of Amy Goodman’s Arrest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjyvkR0bGQ

That’s funny, Anarcissie, I voted for Johnson too in order to keep us out of war.  I didn’t vote for a long time after that.

Just remember, Obama is going to escalate the Afghan war and spread it to Pakistan by eliminating bombing and torture.  You have it straight from the horse’s mouth.

By Anarcissie, September 1 at 4:25 pm #

Tony Wicher: Just watch Obama’s policy on Afghanistan. As soon as he takes office, he will halt all bombing. ...

Sadly, I remember thinking long ago it was tremendously important to vote for and help Lyndon Johnson defeat Goldwater.  I, we, were convinced that Johnson was too smart to get sucked into a major war in Indochina.  “Part of the way with LBJ,” we said.
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Obama isn’t Johnson. Johnson turned out to be the worst snake in American history. Personally, I hold him responsible for the Vietnam War, the U.S.S. Liberty and, by God, the assassination of JFK. Who else could have covered it up? This country absolutely went to shit with Johnson and has not recovered since.

I see no reason to doubt Obama’s fundamental honesty and patriotism.

The Amy Goodman arrest outside the RNC in Minnesota needs to be looked. A 49 second startling reminder of the Corporate Police State we all now live in. Here is a link that works:

http://www.dohiyimir.org/2008/09/amy-goodman-arr.html

Tony Wicher: Just watch Obama’s policy on Afghanistan. As soon as he ta