Or maybe, Anarcissie, Spain sponsored cooperativism in Basque country to drain support from Basque terrorism.  As you may know, the Czar’s secret police funded marxism to drain support from Russian terrorism

Well, that’s encouraging.  I’m going to look into it more.

The anarchists in Spain at the time of the civil war allied themselves with the liberals and the Communists.  This turned out to be not good for their ideology or their health, as their allies turned against them.  A good many fled to France or other countries, and the remainder were either executed or “reeducated” by Franco.  Even so, sporadic guerrilla warfare continued in Spain well into the 1950s.

One of the peculiar things about cooperatives in the modern world is that they often seem to be viewed by ruling classes as good for certain kinds of people, especially post-colonials with no power and no money.  I suspect the idea used to be to divert people with strong communitarian ideas or culture away from Communism, just as in more advanced countries the CIA subsidized socialist and social-democratic parties and media.  There might be a strong desire on the part of very important people to avert the reappearance of revolutionary politics in Spain; thus, cooperatives might be subsidized as a less dangerous alternative.

Thanks, Anarcissie.  As you proaably know, Spain had a large anarchist movement during the Spanish civil war which Orwell much admired. I wondered what happened to it.  I briefly scanned Wikipedia for Mondragon and it made me very nervous to find that the Spanish governement subsidized it.  Why would it do that?

The coop is centered in a particular town, which I thought might be a model for the Post China period.  Gove Vidal gave an address to the National Press club in about 1992 arguing for a revision of the American Constitutiont through a Convention specified by Article five.  He favors city-states, and these city-states might be dominated by cooperative corporations.

That is why I did not reject out of hand the Alaskan Independant party.  A writer-Ketchem?- argues for splitting the US up into independant states.  this might be a step toward independant city-states, and thus toward cooperative independant city-states.

Speculative, yes, but noone knows what a post capitalist world is going to look like and won’t, unless we speculate.

Folktruther—as to books on cooperatives, I recommend wandering around the Net first.  Wikipedia is a good start, and Google will of course bring you billions of hits.  You will find a great variety of models, ranging across a great number of spectrums—political and cultural as well as those of size, wealth, type of business, and so on.  Some will appear more interesting than others.  Print will be referenced in some of the web pages.  It has been quite a while since I saw any books about cooperatives, but I’m sure they’re out there.  You may also be able to turn up some functioning cooperatives in your neighborhood and thus be able to observe them directly.

I notice that at the end of The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein mentions the appearance of a large number of cooperatives in South America to supplant the private businesses which were wrecked by the tender mercies of the IMF and the Chicago Boys.  This is a development with which I am unfamiliar, and I’m going to look into it.

The most famous and maybe the largest cooperative in the world is Mondragón.  It has an entry of its own in Wikipedia and a number of books are referenced there.

I don’t know enough about cooperatives either.  Wikapedia places them mostly in Europe.  kAs soon as I have time, I’ll get some books on cooperatives.  Is there any you recommend?

Folktruther: ’... What are the power conditions necessary for cooperatives, and communities, to sruvive and thrive?  They will not do so until this question is answered.’

Objectively, the American people have had the power to form cooperatives, communes and so forth throughout most of their history, and there are many instances of them thriving today.  They are pretty small, however, in relation to the major corporations.  In some areas they seem to be restricted by law—the fact that there are few credit unions and no cooperative HMOs in New York City seems odd unless it can be explained by regulation.

It would be easier to detect the balance and direction of forces if there were more force on the cooperative side, that is, more people interested in participating.  Then, those who resisted the cooperative movement would have to become more overt.  But when I have mentioned cooperatives and so on in public forums, the response has usually been dead silence.  Maybe people are taking the ideas in and thinking about them, but unfortunately it seems more likely that the concept of autonomy is so foreign to them that it’s water off a duck’s back.  Most recently I tried to get people at the Freelancers’ Union interested, but neither the leadership nor the rank and file responded my suggestions.  As in the past, the response is not resistance or hostility; it’s nothing.

I don’t think the issue is one of power so much as it is one of culture.  Of course, if the U.S. were to decline so much that it became as weak as Poland in the 1990s, or if it fell under an explicit dictatorship, then the social formations available to the people might well be very severely constrained to please whoever was in power.

China is bent on increasing its power not by military or ideological means, but by economic and diplomatic means.  In two decades it will have four times the US GDP to have the same per capita level.  Russia increasingly bears the same relation to China as Canada does to the US, with the exception of nuclear weapons that Russia can’t use against China.

Japan is increasingly an unimportant island off the coast of China, much like Britain to American. China is dominating East Asia the way that the US dominated latin America.  With one big difference.

East Asia contains half the people of the world.

This grouping is being united in the Souteast Asian Orgaization, which is due to expand.  With China neutralizing and separating Europe and the US, the power configuration for the next decades is easily forseen, given that there is no nuclear war.

Since the US is going down the toilet because of the counter revolution initiated by the Bushites, It may be possible to begin and strenghten the development of a new world movment in the US. The American people will be looking for alternatives.

That is why I was interested in your ideas on cooperatiaves.  But Polish Solidarity planned cooperatives as well.  Unitl they got into power.

What are the power conditions necessary for cooperatives, and communities, to sruvive and thrive?  They will not do so until this question is answered.

There will come a time, and it may not be in the too distant future, that the worldwide economic powers that be will cut the dollar loose and allow it to sink to it’s real, debt-based value.  Treasury securities will become pariahs with investors demanding much higher returns.  You think times are bad now?  Think it couldn’t happen?  Most of the talking heads on CNBC thought what is happening now could not happen either.

Marshall law will be the order of the day.  Troops deployed all over the world will be ordered home to point their weapons at their fellow citizens.

In the aftermath, fortunately, we will form a government in which accountability will primal and immediate and elected officials will truly be everyman’s servant, monied or not. 

And PNAC will merely be a disdainful rememberance.

This is not new news. As you’ve stated in previous articles, this has been going on since the Iraq invasion unilaterally with England.

That’s the straw that broke the camelels back, when there was no UN or Nato or G-7 recognition or consensus.

Folktruther—As I see it, all modern large-scale capitalism is state capitalism.  It is of course much more explicit and uniform in China than in the U.S.  So China may well be the model for the state-capitalist rulers of the future to coalesce around.  But as for China being the ruler or hegemon of the system, I don’t think that national entities will continue to be as important as in the past.  It is true that nationalism and racism have been powerful tools of great utility to ruling classes in the past, but the game is changing, and their excitements will probably be reserved for the poorer classes and less important countries, along with religious fundamentalism and other superstitions.  Capital does not need race or nation; its rulers have much more in common with each other than they do with those they rule.

The important niche which the U.S. now fills is that of world cop.  Should the U.S. be suddenly deposed or collapse, there is no entity at present to fill that niche, and a possibly very destructive contest would ensue between Europe, Russia, China and possibly other powers over it.  I think the rulers of all of them would prefer the demise of the U.S. to be slower and more orderly.

That world state will be led by China, which espouses STATE capitalism.  A third of their economy, including most of the banks, are owned by the state and managed by bureaucrats that have made their way up the party, not private industry.

The Chinese are currently dismayed because third quarter economic growth has only increased 9%.  This is three times historical world growth and even more US growth.  Although the American figures are so delusive and evasive they are hard to evaluate, my best guess is that China will pass the US in 2008 in total GDP, although only a fourth per capita.  But it is total growth, as Samuelson says, that produces world power.

China, and Asia, will restore thaeir traditional historical position in the world, a progressive power development since 60% of earthpeople live in Asia.  This also may allow, as the US decays, to develop a new form of power system in the US, different from state capitalism.  What that would be I don’t know.

Solidarity. in Poland, initially wanted to set up cooperatives, but sold out to world capital. What a revolution would bring to the US would depend on the ideological consciousness of the American population, and the power to implement it.

I don’t like to be depressing, but so far I find the disaster capitalism described by Klein as, overall, a pretty successful move towards a world corporate state, which as I said was more evident in the Clinton years.  Shock isn’t always required—look at the way in which intellectual property laws have been changed all over the earth to conform to the desires and interests of Sony and Disney and Monsanto.  Within this overall movement, different groups are fighting for position in the final arrangement, but no power of any size is so far interfering with the goal.  (That may change in the future.)

Bush did not further this goal, although he did make an attempt to turn Iraq into a territory more amenable to dominance by certain corporations which was that part of the general method he seems to have understood.  This effort has been a disaster. I attribute his failure to incompetence, criminality, and, probably, insufficient intellectual power to understand the program.  But I’m just guessing; a war crimes trial and close examination by a team of good psychiatrists would be needed to get a factual picture.

Anarcissie—the primary reason that the Bushite could not govern an empire was NOT because they were inept or criminal, although they were both. 

It was because they identified with an neocon ideology that had aims and policies contrary to the public ideology, and reality,  required for good govenance.  As Klein demonstrates, neocon power wanted to deregulate, privatize and cut social spending.  And the Bushites did so astonishingly effectively and locked in their Reforms, as they call them.  And are still doing so.

The major historical problem is not that they are incompetent, or criminal, but that they are ideologically insane.  The same problem as with the Japanese militarists and Hitler.  These inner ideologies are incompatible with success in the more general realm.

Ideological insanity is not unusual among the power mad.  Consider for example, the Pope in the middle of the 19th century who had the legislature he appointed crown him ideologically as Infailable in Faith and Morals.  It is this type of megalomania which is not merely absurd, but communally insane. 

But since the ruling class does not sponsor and subsidize the learned and mass media to subvert authorized power, no such concepts are in common use to identify it.  Political insanity is attributed to incompetence, or mistakes, or crimes.  Rather than with ideologies, and ideologues,  that have lost contact with political reality.  And became rich or powerful in doing so.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank[1], credit card debt is about is about $969 billion.  Overall consumer debt, including non-revolving credit like auto loans, is $2.585 trillion.  This is not chicken feed, but it is not large compared to the loss of value in the real estate and equities markets.  Widespread inability to pay could be easily remedied by bailing everyone out, that is, inflating the money, thus covertly taxing wage earners, pensioners, and their savings accounts to pay for their more aggressively consumerist fellow-citizens.  If that were the only problem.
 
[1] http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g19/Current/

As an American living overseaes (23 yrs, it is the politics of the present administration that people do not like.  Where is the “justice” in their politics with other countries?

Going back 50-60 yrs to the middle East and starting with England, then, the U.S., “justice” in dealing with these countries really hasn´t been fair because the basis of Capitalistic-Democracy, has a flaw like the Socialism-Marxism of the late USSR.  The flaw is the rulers have only their interests at heart.  The others are quite left-out.

I should note that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bremer and so on are also criminals—certainly war criminals and probably involved in other crimes as well.  They were evidently competent at politics, at least office closed-door politics, but they were completely inept at running an empire, both because of their natural ineptitude and their base criminality.  I find that rather surprising.  You’d think a mighty empire could hire better help.

Alright, Anarcissie, if that’s how you want to define incompetence.  It is usually referred to as a lack of ability or talent for the job.  In this case, Iraq,  the primary determenent was a gross misperception of one’s power allied with an private ideology at varience with the conventially accepted American ideology.

When the Chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Shishinski, was fired for stating to congress that it would take several (later explicitly stated at four hundred thousand) troops to occupy Iraq, it was primarily not because Rumsfield was incompetent militarily.

It was because he was acting as a cost cutting CEO who wanted to put private Contractors as part of his privatization policy.  His major enemy in this endeavor was not Iraq, it was the Pentogon beaurcracy. 

When Brenner fired the upper levels of the Iraqi government, it was not primarily because he was incompetent, but was ordered to privatize and deregulate in accordance with Friedman’s loony economics.

Cheney and Rumsfield, and, yes, Bush, were talented people in their fields, in the grip of an anti-people ideology.  This required them to pursue short range policies incompatible with the long range policies necessary for the US power system.  That they thought they had enough power to do so without wrecking the US was an ideological deformation.  And look how much money they made for themselves and their friends doing so.

Their homicidal lunacy, and talent, was demonstrated by their orchestration of the 9/11-anthrax homicide.  They got away with members of the Bushite regime obviously being involved in this shock therapy, with the evidence in plain sight but airbrushed out by the mainstream media.  They banked on the premise that no mainstream truther would dare to question them, and they were largely right.  That is far from being an exhibition of incompetence.

Folktruther:
... The invasion of Iraq, Anarcissie, doesn’t demonstrate the Bushites incompetence any more than the Nazies invading the Soviet Union or the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor demonstrates their incompetance.  What it demonstrates is what Hobsbauwm calls the tendency of megalomania of imperialism.’

Both of the events you cite are excellent examples of strategic incompetence, although in the case of Japan it may be that their backs were to the wall (due to the Anglo-American petroleum embargo; this put the militaristic Japanese rulers in a position where they had to fight or back down.)  Megalomania, if by that you mean a great misestimation of one’s power and status in the world, would certainly cause incompetence.  In the case of the U.S., there has also been considerable incompetence at a lower level.  For example, it was strategically incompetent to invade and occupy Iraq in the first place; then, the occupation was carried out incompetently, so that the likely result will be a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad fighting with Sunni warlords in the west and the Kurds in the north with the American forces caught in between.  This will negatively affect the place of the U.S. in the board of directors of the global capitalist empire, but it won’t affect the empire as a whole very much.  Perhaps the role of primary satellite of China will be made available to “us”—but then, will “we” get to keep Air Strip One?

Thank you, Ballerina, for informing us of Bertoscuni’s support for Russia’s entering the Eu.  I always thought that Italy was under the US thumb.  I agree with you that the US has to be isolated before it gives up its unilaterialism, neoliberalism, and fraudulent War on Terrorims.

The invasion of Iraq, Anarcissie, doesn’t demonstrate the Bushites incompetence any more than the Nazies invading the Soviet Union or the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor demonstrates their incompetance.  What it demonstrates is what Hobsbauwm calls the tendency of megalomania of imperialism.

The Bushites are not stupid, they’e crazy.  They have to export neoliberalism by violence because there is no other way to do it.  Of course capitalism does not have to export neoliberalism, but that is what the Bushites seized power to do.  And they have locked it in to varying extents in the American power system.  That is why the US power system must be isolated, to destroy this power virus before they try to expand it to Russia or China.
Or Pakistan.

Folktruther…..i’m in agreement with you about russia being invited to join the EU along with the rest of the former republics.  Berlusconi has said pretty much the same thing.  Then if the Arabs could get their act together, they could form another block and protect their interests just as South America and Southeast Asia are doing.  The US needs to be isolated before it will learn anything though, i’m afraid.

The empire of capital need not invade Iraq or Iran; the normal modus operandi would be to merely draw them into a web of profitable business relationships, and thereby infiltrate and subvert their domestic institutions.  Military operations would be confined to brutal demonstrations against small, poor, backward states under the pretense of humanitarian concern, as with Serbia and Somalia.  Another example might be the operations against Iraq under the first Bush, which on the one hand were unnecessary, on the other, limited in scope.  These would accomplish the purpose of demonstrating the potential for death, destruction and terror at the hands of the world cop without the expense of actually realizing them.  Stepping fully into the quagmires of the Middle East, while it made money for a few people, was just the mistake it was anticipated to be by so many—hence, I think George W. Bush demonstrated his incompetence.  Although I guess I have to admit it did win him reelection in 2004.

Anarcissie-  I think Klein knows that the economic Freedom of deregulation, etc is a sham, and says somewhere that it is the rule by corporations rather tnan by government.  But she tends to pull her ideological punches to legitimate her main thesis to get it accepted in the mainstream media. She does not for example discuss the shock of 9/11-anthrax as a false flag operation, but leaves it open as a possiblity.

I don’t think the Bushites are basically incompetent; I think they are brilliant but power mad.  They know that the US is losing world power and this is their counterstrategy, which they know will fail eventually. Brzizenski, who outlined the geo-political strategy in THE GRAND CEHSSBOARD almost says so explicitly at one point.  And Bush has initially downplayed his long term role in history, which Cyrena also noticed.

It was not 19th century imperialism that they aimed for by postmodern imperalism.  Rumsfield initially wanted to invade Iraq, put Chalabi in place and get the hell out, to invade Iran.  But they underestimated the resistence to their loony neoliberalism.  I did not, which is why, when I was involved in peace marches, I didn’t think they would really invade.  They have only contempt for rank and file resistence, so little knowledge or concern about it.

It is true that in this sense they have been incompetant.  But think of the money they made.

As for Europe, you do not cosider the possibility of the historical DeGaulle geo-strategy, one Europe from the sea to the Urals.  Since Russia contains most of the minerals needed for Western Europe, the possiblity exists that a strategic alliance with Russia could replace America with much less domination.  This would forever allay the security fears of all parties if, for example, Russia, et al were admitted to the EU.  And Nato, effectively gutting it.

This would not militarily threaten China, it being a loose alliance, and would provide an economic counterweight to the US.  This would be the best outcome of a Nato defeat in Afghanistan for earthpeople, at one stroke emasculating American megalomania, and punishing the power system for the shock doctrine.

Europe could then turn toward China in the same way that Japan turned toward the West after WW2.  I have no doubt that their geoplanners are thinking about it, but the main resistence might come from the current major power structures of Germany and France.  Should Germany agree, they could do it.

This would result in Orwell’s three superpowers, hopefully with not the same effects for earthpeople.

The picture I get from The Shock Doctrine is a little different—probably somewhat different from the one Klein intends to present.  I see deregulation and privatization as a sham.  As Klein notes, the advancement of nominally libertarian economic principles were most often accompanied by and dependent on dictatorship, previously existing, or created by overthrowing or temporarily paralyzing a democracy.  But if you can tell me what I can say or do, then you can tell me what I can buy or sell; people cannot be economically liberated if they are politically oppressed.  A free market requires free speech, freedom of association, due process, equality before the law.  To me, then, what has been going on in the cases described by Klein is not deregulation but a transfer of regulation from the government to private parties, usually corporations.  A government may or may not be dictatorial; a traditional corporation is always authoritarian.  The tendency of things in general is not toward freedom of any sort but the increasing concentration of wealth and power in corporations and the increasing combination of the corporations into a kind of federation or empire of capital.

This program, which seemed clear during the Clinton years, has been masked in the U.S. by the incompetence and ignorance of the Bush administration, which has reverted to the outmoded national imperialism of the 19th century and probably done fairly serious damage to the world’s financial systems and economy as well.  It has also allowed Russia to get off the leash for the moment; this makes it possible for other, lesser powers to take an independent course.  Many of those in the American ruling or leadership classes are probably still of the smash’n'grab persuasion, and are now suffering the rewards of a deficient philosophy.  I suspect that their less reckless peers will soon eliminate those who do not eliminate themselves.

As far as the grip on Europe goes, I don’t at this point see any damage that a rational administration in the U.S. can’t repair, especially if an eloquent leader can persuade the people to suffer a bit as the U.S. economy is reconstructed.  It does not look to me like Europe is ready to run free; probably, they still think it will be to their advantage to serve as a large, favored American satellite, and have had enough of the burdens of empire for a few more generations to come.  And they are probably still afraid of the Russians.

The Gop-Dem leaders of the American power system are not incompetant, they are crazy.  We are being ruled by homicidal megalomanics, as the noted British historian implied.  He did not know why and neither did I until Naomi Klein published THE SHOCK DOCTRINE.

The Bushites, with Dem support, have maniacally privatized, deregulated, dewelfarized the American economy and every economy it controlled throuth the World Bank and other agencies.  This was in accord with an economic loony, Milton Friedman, a protege of von Hyack. 

Their wanting to give the banks a trillion tax dollars is in accord with their fundamental fantasy, which of course is highly lucrative to their cronies.  Why earn money by producing something when you can steal it.

The best thing that could happen to the American people and the people of the world is if Europe goes its own way, further isolating the US.  It is the only way to get the US power structure to understand that pre-emptive war has great drawbacks for the powerful. 

The European solution to the US world financial problem should be followed up by Eurpean withdarwal from Afghanistan, destroying world domination of the US.  This would assist the American population id defending themselves against the American power structure.