There seems to be an almost total media blackout on this. So far as I know, only MSNBC has covered it at all.
Archive for the ‘Anti-Capitalism’ Category
Occupy Wall Street
September 28, 2011Noam Chomsky
April 23, 2011
Noam Chomsky spoke at the University of Oregon earlier this week. An estimated 2000 people turned up to hear him. Chomsky admitted he had left his notes in his hotel room, so he would have to wing it. The title of his talk was “Global Hegemony: Its Facts and Images”. Chomsky began by quoting Adam Smith’s “Vile Maxim of the Masters of Mankind”: “All for us, nothing for everyone else.” Chomsky believes that this is increasingly how the ruling class thinks. From this he proceeded to talk about how economic power increasingly determines political power. He quoted Thomas Ferguson to the effect that elections are when investors gather to control the state. Obama’s victory in the presidential election was due to support from financial institutions. The result of this financial control of the government is that the country is at its highest level of inequality ever. The richest one tenth of one percent of the population have become spectacularly wealthy.
Chomsky argued that the Bretton Woods agreement resulted in a period of unparalleled economic growth in the years following World War II. However, Bretton Woods was abandoned during the 1970’s, one result of which was a sharp growth in the size of financial institutions. This has resulted in the weakening of banking regulation in the U.S. Chomsky argued that the concentration of wealth leads to a concentration of political power. Bush’s tax cuts, for example, were designed so that half of them went to the richest one percent of the population. He pointed out that during the last months of 2010, Obama imposed a pay freeze on federal employees, which amounts to a tax increase for them. He renewed the Bush tax cuts, and he reduced funding for Social Security, which, Chomsky believes will eventually lead to its privatization. He pointed out that the Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980’s resulted in criminal prosecutions. There have been no prosecutions of the criminal behavior that caused the financial meltdown of 2008. Bankers now have no incentive to obey the law, because they know they will not be punished.
Smith’s “Masters of Mankind” want the government to focus on cutting the deficit, not on stimulating the economy. Public education is being dismantled. Why this attack on Social Security and on education? They’re based on the principle that one should care about other people. This violates the Vile Maxim. Half the deficits are from military spending, but the rich don’t want this cut.
To some extent, this is built into our political system. James Madison, one of the founding fathers, said that power must be in the hands of the wealthy, because they are the most “responsible” members of society. Madison, according to Chomsky, was “pre-capitalist”. He imagined the wealthy to be benevolent aristocrats. He failed to foresee the rise of corporations that no longer care about the welfare of the country.
The market is based on the theory that consumers make rational choices. Business undermines this through advertising, which gets people to make irrational choices. They undermine democracy the same way.
The problem of capitalism has become an existential one, because corporations regard the survival of the species as an externality, meaning that is of no concern to them because it has nothing to do with them making a profit.
Mubarack is Gone
February 12, 2011Ted Rall
October 9, 2010
I went to see Ted Rall speak at the Eugene Public Library the other day. He was promoting his new book, The Anti-American Manifesto. Rall is an editorial cartoonist, a sometime war correspondent and President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. He started off by showing some of his cartoons. This was nice, except that he insisted on standing in front of the screen. Then he asked each person in the audience to think of two things: what could the government help with, and what was the most important global problem. He then asked a number people what they had come up with. The most common answers were health care and the environment. He then asked that those people who believed that the government would address these issues to raise their hands. Out of an audience of roughly a hundred people, three raised their hands. He then said that people in Eugene are more cynical than people in New York are.
He then pointed out that revolutions always occur when a reformer is in power. The examples he cited were Louis XVI in France and Nicholas II in Russia. (Nicholas wasn’t really a reformer. It would have been more accurate if he had said Kerensky.) He then said that Obama is about as progressive a president as we’re likely to ever get. The only way we’re going to get real change is through revolution. Rall seemed somewhat ambivalent about this. He admitted that both the French and Russian revolutions were bloody, but he argued that France and Russia are better off today because they happened.
Rall believes there could be a revolution in the U.S. He claimed that 88% of eligible voters don’t vote. (Is this true? I will have to look this up.) He refused to speculate, however, on how this would come about. He said we should not become preoccupied with “the next step”. He said he refuses to put a forward a political program, because that would be “divisive”. Maybe so, but how do we move forward without knowing what the next step should be? It seems to me that he needs to think this through more.
Nevertheless, I find it significant that a mainstream media figure like Rall is actually talking about revolution.
Peter Camejo
July 31, 2010
- Empty rhetoric is a form of capitulation.
- – Peter Camejo
I have just finished reading Peter Camejo’s memoir, North Star, which is available from Haymarket Books. Camejo is mostly remembered for having run as Ralph Nader’s running mate in the 2004 presidential election. However, he had a long and varied career before that. Although he was born in the U.S., he came from a wealthy Venezuelan family. He was a member of Venezuela’s yachting team at the 1960 Olympics. During the 1960’s, he was active in the anti-war movement. He played a leading role in the Battle of Telegraph Avenue, in which UC students fought with the Berkeley police. He became a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party. He ran for the U.S. Senate in 1970 (he debated Ted Kennedy) and for the presidency in 1976. (He reports that there were 66 undercover FBI agents working in his presidential campaign.) He was also involved in international work for the Fourth International. He tells of an incident in which he tried unsuccessfully to persuade a guerilla group in Argentina to release a businessman they had kidnapped. As I read about this, it occurred to me that under current “anti-terror” laws that exist in the U.S., he could have gone to prison for this. A striking example of how our freedoms have been eroded in recent years.
In the 1980’s he was expelled from the Socialist Workers Party. He founded a short-lived group called the North Star Network. He then moved into the field of socially responsible investing. In the 1990’s, he became involved in the Green Party. He ran for governor of California three times on the Green Party ticket.
I found the book fascinating. HIs accounts of his anti-war work provide insights into how to build broad coalitions, as well as how to confront police violence. However, I found his account of his time doing investment work less interesting, although he does give a revealing discussion of pension funds. He points out these funds are mostly managed by businessmen who are hostile to workers and to unions. He also points out that many environmental and conservation groups invest their money in companies that pollute, including oil companies. His account of the 2003 California recall election is amusing. (He gives an unflattering portrait of Arianna Huffington. Among other things, he points out that her attacks on Schwarzenegger made it easier for him to avoid discussing the issues.) I was disappointed that he never really discusses why the North Star Network never took off. I would think that might have been enlightening.
There are two aspects of this book that may well prove controversial. The first is his critique of Trotskyism. The second is his discussion of the left’s capitulation to the Democrats during the 2000’s. Camejo argues that during the 1930’s, when the Trotskyists were trying to differentiate themselves from the Stalinists, they became obsessed with having the “correct” interpretation of Marx and Lenin, as well as of events in the Soviet Union. The result, Camejo argues, is that they developed a rigid view of the world. (I have met Trotskyists who did seem to me ideologically rigid and obsessed with having the “correct” line on everything.) However, Camejo does admit that Trotskyists have played useful roles in political struggles – as his own participation in the 1960’s anti-war movement shows.
Camejo sees the left’s capitulation to the Democrats as an unmitigated disaster. It has paralyzed the left and made it easier for the Democrats to pursue pro-war and pro-corporate policies. Camejo has harsh words for Michael Moore, Medea Benjamin and others who threw their principles away to elect politicians whose positions they oppose. On this point, I agree completely with Camejo. It is going to take a long time to overcome all the damage that has been done.
Another of Camejo’s arguments concerns language. He argues that words such as “socialism” have acquired too much political and historical baggage, and that leftists must find new ways of explaining their ideas to people. I think Camejo may be right here, although I’m not sure how we would go about developing this new language. Camejo also urges leftists to study America’s radical history (such as the abolitionist movement) and to draw inspiration from it. I think this is an excellent idea.
One thing that struck me about this book is Camejo’s unwavering optimism, even after the collapse of the 2000’s. He expresses confidence that there will one day be a “Third American Revolution”. I certainly hope he was right about that.
Peter Camejo, presente!
Howard Zinn (1922-2010)
January 28, 2010
I was saddened to learn of the death of Howard Zinn. This is a great loss, because there is no one else on the U.S. left quite like him. There is Chomsky, of course, but, because of the latter’s dry academicism, he has never been able to have the same visceral appeal that Zinn had. Through his writings Zinn was able to make people feel excited about history and about politics. He could present ideas in a way that made people care about them.
Although I knew people who knew Zinn, I never actually met him. (The closest I ever came was when I helped organize a book signing he did in Los Angeles several years ago.) I once did the lighting for an L.A. production of Zinn’s Marx in Soho, which starred Brian Jones. My job was pretty simple. I would turn the lights up at the beginning and turn them down at the end, and I would flicker them a couple of times in between. Sitting through so many performances, I got so that I could recite much of the play by heart. I was struck by the shrewd way the play is constructed. The topics are brought up in such a way as to have a maximum emotional effect on the audience. Zinn had a great feel for the theatre in addition to being a great historian.
I first heard about Zinn in the 1980’s when I was living in Massachusetts. Zinn was teaching at Boston University at the time, and he had gotten in a public feud with the university’s politically ambitious president, John Silber, a darling of neoconservatives. The media sided with Silber, portraying him as an advocate of “tough love” for the university, while dismissing Zinn as “politically correct” and clueless. It’s nice to know that Zinn had the last laugh. His reputation has grown, while Silber has been largely forgotten.
Zinn will be missed.
Wrapping Up the Naughts
December 30, 2009
Well, not only have we come to the end of the year, but we have also come to the end of the decade. All the reviews of the 2000’s that I’ve read have been pretty much the same. There seems to be universal agreement that this decade sucked big time. W.H. Auden once called the 1930’s a “low, dishonest decade.” The 2000’s certainly had more than their share of dishonesty. Just think of the mind-numbing barrage of lies during the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
This is all the more dismaying considering that the decade started out promisingly. The Anti-WTO demonstration in Seattle in November 1999 had reinvigorated the left. People wanted to do things, to get out in the streets and make a statement. During the Democratic National Convention in 2000, 40,000 people marched through the streets of Los Angeles, in the face of intimidation by the police. When George W. Bush stole the 2000 election, that didn’t put any damper on things. To many people, it just confirmed their suspicion that the system is totally corrupt. The police repression at the Genoa demonstration in the summer of 2001 did disturb some people, but still they felt that they could accomplish something.
I remember that summer I was living in Los Angeles, and I was involved in a solidarity campaign with the Immokalee farm workers. They had called for a boycott of Taco Bell, to get them to pressure the growers into raising their wages. Once a week we would have a demonstration in front of a Taco Bell in East Los Angeles. Each week the protest got bigger and louder. People from the neighborhood would join in, as well as students from nearby East Los Angeles College. They wanted to make a difference in the world. Teenagers would go up to cars in the drive-thru and explain to people why they shouldn’t buy from Taco Bell.
Then September 11th happened.
Suddenly people were all driving around with American flags on their cars and bumper stickers saying, “United We Stand.” This was an understandable visceral response to the attacks, but I could see that it would only lead to trouble. The media suddenly stopped treating Bush as a joke and began touting him as a national hero (even though he hid out at two air force bases during the day of the attacks.) In the economic slump that followed the attacks, Bush urged people to go out and shop. The media treated this as serious advice.
The left never really recovered from what happened. I think it fair to say that most of the people who marched through the streets of Seattle probably voted for John Kerry in the 2004 election. This is really sad, especially when you consider that Kerry is an enthusiastic supporter of everything those people were protesting against. (And Kerry was promising to send 40,000 more troops to Iraq.) “Anybody but Bush” became the mantra. Anyone who questioned this immediately found himself a pariah, if not threatened with physical violence. Kerry’s campaign slogan was “Help is on the way.” I guess people didn’t think they needed help, since Kerry lost the election.
Four years later, we had Obama promising us “hope”, which sounded a little catchier. Then there was the financial meltdown, and Obama became a shoo-in. The irony here was that Obama is a firm supporter of the economic policies that led to the meltdown. Sometimes hope is just that.
The year started off with Israel’s savage attack on Gaza. Not a murmur of criticism from Obama or any of the other Democrats. Once in office he impressed everyone with his ability to form complete sentences, such a refreshing change from his predecessor. He put forward an economic stimulus plan (mostly tax cuts) that was too timid to have much effect. The Republicans immediately started screaming “socialism”, and they’ve been like a stuck record ever since. In October it was announced that, for no clear reason, Obama was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. (It seems that the prize was actually for not being George W. Bush. The legacy of W.’s presidency is that the bar has been lowered on just about everything.) Shortly afterward, Obama announced he was going to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
Now, the Democrats in Congress are on the verge of passing a Health Care “Reform” bill that has nothing progressive about it and is in some ways actually reactionary. One hopes that the way this bill made its way through the Senate will make people question the way our government is set up. The Senate (originally modeled after the British House of Lords) is an inherently undemocratic institution. Every state gets two senators, regardless of its size. Thus, California, which has a population of 36 million, has the same number of senators as Wyoming, which has 544,270 people. (More people live in the city of San Francisco than in the whole state of Wyoming.) This problem is compounded by the filibuster rule. It takes 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. (The idea here seems to be that having a simple majority just isn’t good enough.) So, we had the disgusting spectacle of Senate Democrats groveling at the feet of Joe Lieberman of Connecticut (pop. 3 million) and Ben Nelson of Nebraska (pop. 2 million). The most hilarious moment of the year came when Lieberman announced that he had suddenly changed his mind about the Medicare buy-in (which he had supported for years). He was now opposed to it, just because he had heard a liberal congressman say that he liked the idea. (This is the conservative mentality in its purest form: if the liberals are for it, I’m agin’ it!) So the Medicare buy-in was immediately jettisoned, without a murmur of protest. As for the cynical promises that were made to Nelson to get his one lousy vote, you can expect the Republicans to be making hay out of them in next year’s congressional elections.
Everything is not bleak, however. There have been a few glimmerings of a fightback, such as this summer’s G20 protests and the demonstrations at the Copenhagen climate conference. And there were the Viva Palestina convoys to Gaza. Interestingly, there has been an upsurge in struggle in Iran. It seems I was right in guessing that last summer’s demonstrations were about more that just a stolen election. So, I guess Obama wasn’t completely wrong about there being “hope”. It’s all a matter of what one does with it.
(By the way, the Immokalee workers eventually won concessions from Taco Bell. This was one of the few labor victories of this miserable decade.)
Is the Church of England Breeding Anarchists?
December 24, 2009
I found this the other day at the HuffPost:
Tim Jones, English Priest, Says Shoplifting Okay At Times
I guess this is another indication of how bad the economy has become. When priests start sounding like anarchists, you know the situation is serious.
The G20 Protests: Getting Back to Where We Were
September 28, 2009
I suppose everyone has seen the disturbing videos of police attacking demonstrators at the G20 protests in PIttsburgh. There are a couple of things we can learn from this. The first is that the cops will start busting heads if they know they have overwhelmingly superior numbers. The attacks were all on gatherings of a few hundred or so people. Clearly, demonstrations need to be as large as possible. Actions by small groups of anarchists just don’t cut the mustard.
The second is that the US Left has greatly weakened itself through its strategy of tailing the Democrats. According to the New York Times, there were between 3,000 and 4,000 people at the main march on Friday. Even if one assumes this was an under-estimate, it’s clear that there were much fewer people than those that showed up for the anti-WTO protests in Seattle in 1999. (The only union that took part was the United Steelworkers. So much for the AFL-CIO’s efforts to “revive” the labor movement.) It’s clear that it’s going to take a great deal of work just to get back to where we were ten years ago. This is what comes from making “lesser evil” arguments. The Left demobilizes itself.
The Spanish Prisoner 