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Occupy Wall Street Ends Capitalism's Alibi
This protest pinpoints how dysfunctional our economic system is: we must refashion it for human needs, not corporate aims
Occupy Wall Street has already weathered the usual early storms. The kept media ignored the protest, but that failed to end it. The partisans of inequality mocked it, but that failed to end it. The police servants of the status quo over-reacted and that failed to end it – indeed, it fueled the fire. And millions looking on said, "Wow!" And now, ever more people are organizing local, parallel demonstrations – from Boston to San Francisco and many places between.
Let me urge the occupiers to ignore the usual carping that besets powerful social movements in their earliest phases. Yes, you could be better organized, your demands more focused, your priorities clearer. All true, but in this moment, mostly irrelevant. Here is the key: if we want a mass and deep-rooted social movement of the left to re-emerge and transform the United States, we must welcome the many different streams, needs, desires, goals, energies and enthusiasms that inspire and sustain social movements. Now is the time to invite, welcome and gather them, in all their profusion and confusion. 
It is long overdue in the US for us to have a genuine conversation and struggle over our current economic system. Capitalism has gotten a free pass for far too long. (photo: pfarnac1)
The next step – and we are not there yet – will be to fashion the program and the organization to realize it. It's fine to talk about that now, to propose, debate and argue. But it is foolish and self-defeating to compromise achieving inclusive growth – now within our reach – for the sake of program and organization. The history of the US left is littered with such programs and organizations without a mass movement behind them or at their core.
So permit me, in the spirit of honoring and contributing something to this historic movement, to propose yet another dimension, another item to add to your agenda for social change. To achieve the goals of this renewed movement, we must finally change the organization of production that sustains and reproduces inequality and injustice. We need to replace the failed structure of our corporate enterprises that now deliver profits to so few, pollute the environment we all depend on, and corrupt our political system.
We need to end stock markets and boards of directors. The capacity to produce the goods and services we need should belong to everyone – just like the air, water, healthcare, education and security on which we likewise depend. We need to bring democracy to our enterprises. The workers within and the communities around enterprises can and should collectively shape how work is organized, what gets produced, and how we make use of the fruits of our collective efforts.
If we believe democracy is the best way to govern our residential communities, then it likewise deserves to govern our workplaces. Democracy at work is a goal that can help build this movement.
We all know that moving in this direction will elicit the screams of "socialism" from the usual predictable corners. The tired rhetoric lives on long after the cold war that orchestrated it fades out of memory. The audience for that rhetoric is fast fading, too. It is long overdue in the US for us to have a genuine conversation and struggle over our current economic system. Capitalism has gotten a free pass for far too long.
We take pride in questioning, challenging, criticizing and debating our health, education, military, transportation and other basic social institutions. We argue whether their current structures and functioning serve our needs. We work our way to changing them so they perform better. And so it should be.
Yet, for decades now, we have failed to similarly question, challenge, criticize and debate our economic system: capitalism. Because a taboo protected capitalism, cheerleading and celebrating it became obligatory. Criticism and questions got banished as heresy, disloyalty or worse. Behind the protective taboo, capitalism degenerated into the ineffective, unequal, crisis-ridden social disaster we all now bear.
Capitalism is the problem – and the joblessness, homelessness, insecurity, and austerity it now imposes everywhere are the costs we bear. We have the people, the skills and the tools to produce the goods and services needed for a just society to prosper. We just need to reorganize our producing units differently, to go beyond a capitalist economic system that no longer serves our needs.
Humanity learned to do without kings and emperors and slave masters. We found our way to a democratic alternative, however partial and unfinished the democratic project remains. We can now take the next step to realize that democratic project. We can bring democracy to our enterprises – by transforming them into cooperatives owned, operated and governed by democratic assemblies composed of all who work in them and all the residents of the communities who are interdependent with them.
Let me conclude by offering a slogan: "The US can do better than corporate capitalism." Let that be an idea and a debate that this renewed movement can engage. Doing so would give an immense gift to the US and the world. It would break through the taboo, finally subjecting capitalism to the critiques and debates it has evaded for far too long – and at far too great a cost to all of us.
• Richard Wolff is participating in a day-long teach-in at the Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park, New York on Tuesday 4 October. This article is based on remarks he will be addressing there at 6pm local time
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165 Comments so far
Show AllCapitalism is the problem. Especially our kind of capitalism, in which a very small group runs everything, runs everything into the ground, takes everything and leaves the people and the earth damaged. They even destroy smaller, innovative and productive capitalists as the financial speculators stampede across our country and the world.
A sleepy, misinformed and discouraged population is its handmaiden. These Wall Street occupiers have given us a wake up call and a nice cup of coffee to get us going. Now the day can begin.
There is only one "kind" of Capitalism. It goes through phases. One phase inevitably leads to the next. "Financial speculators stampeding across our country and the world" is the logical progression, the inevitable outcome of Capitalism. Capitalism has always destroyed smaller, innovative and productive capitalists. That is how it works and how it has always worked.
"Power without property has long been characteristic of political office, but it is a relatively recent phenomenon for economic management. In assuming some of the characteristics of political leaders, capitalist managers under big business parallel the position of managers of trusts and factories in the Soviet Union. Both hold power by virtue of office rather than of ownership. That power should follow management rather than ownership is perhaps inescapable in the conditions of modern large-scale technology and organization, whether the collectivism be of a private (American) or public (Russian) type. Nevertheless, in a democratic society massive concentration of power in the hands of a self-perpetuating oligarchy of corporate managers raises a host of questions, including how this power can be circumscribed and directed into channels where it will serve rather than threaten the general welfare."
-- From the Encyclopedia Britannica article, "Capitalism," 1971 (p. 844).
I agree to a point. Capitalism is A problem. It causes other problems. But our psychology is the problem that causes capitalism. It also caused Soviet style communism, which if capitalism was the problem, should have been the solution. It wasn't. Because of our psychological problems it, the only alternative we could come up with en masse, was only nationalized capitalism---materialistic/commodifying, reductionist, exploitive... (as shown by the extreme ecological degradation revealed after the fall of the USSR), just another expression of our fear, rage, grief and need.
We need to address our complex problem on many levels at once: political, economic, personal and others... and we need to keep in mind what the roots of the problem are, because if we diagnose it wrong, we can't fix it.
The question I have is, however bad the economic part is, can we afford to address it now rather than putting our effort into preventing the collapse of civilization and the extinction of most life on Earth that will almost certainly happen if we don't stop climate catastrophe and switch to renewable energy? I'm excited about the Wall Street occupation and the spread of doing something...anything... but do we have what it will take to fight this battle and that one at the same time? That one can't wait, and while they are connected, we can't let anything keep us from solving climate change and peak oil/peak everything.
There is no question but that we have to address everything at the same time. Humanity is also rapidly depleting our natural resource base, including soil nutrients, forests, oceans, fisheries, and on and on. Half of us will die from one of the most painful and debilitating diseases possible - cancer which is due to toxic pollution of all kinds. 8000 different chemicals in the US almost none of which have been tested for toxicity and safe usage.
If we do not make a rapid transition to a fully sustainable society as soon as possible, our goose is cooked. Same with needing to publicly finance all elections and get rid of the corporate lobbying and monied interests. While it would be nice if we could only focus on global warming; unfortunately there are many other problems that we just have to address at the same time.
Rob Wheeler
Well of course you’re right; we do need to address them all at once. My question, which went off the rails (sorry), is more how to do it than whether, and what I meant was that we can’t afford to ignore climate, the larger crisis (which I constantly harp on; I call it the 3Cs—Climate, Constitution and Corporations) and the common causes of all our problems . Other than my many comments, I see almost no discussion on and even less understanding of or interest in the essential part psychology plays in our problems . (There have a few articles at CD, Grist, AlterNet, etc. usually followed by flocks of comments demonstrating little understanding, even of how important it is). Humanity’s deep-rooted and long-standing psychological problems are not something that can be solved in time to stop global warming as fast as we need to, but have to be addressed as we address the other problems. I now see climate being pushed off the agenda, and the understanding and “treatment” of climate denialism, for example, thus becoming even more invisible than it has been. The psychology of our other problems are closely related.
There has been a sudden reversal of momentum that is thrilling to see that I/we have long awaited. We have endured a decade of reeling backwards over assaults on every front—financial, legal, health, economic, energy, ecology, war, and more, and now conservatives are experiencing that, with loud, popular revolts all over the country against financial inequality, climate (the XL pipeline demonstrations in WDC), health care and other areas of concern. But I think we have to be conscious of the way such movements can be blunted, sidetracked, co-opted and distracted. We had the beginnings of movement on Mountaintop Removal because there were some coal disasters (remember them? coal sludge dams breaking, mine collapse…) then that was dropped as a national story when BP filled the Gulf of Mexico with oil. We had the usual corporate media distractions and diversions and lies about that, but follow up reports and books (Antonia Juhasz’ Black Tide, e.g.) were beginning to give us tools to organize with. Then Fukushima happened. Now even that has been forgotten.
The fact that It’s SO bad, with one coalmine canary after another keeling over, has actually served to help the assault on the Earth and human rights. We just have to make sure that doesn’t happen again. I'm sure memories of all those disasters are in the motivation to be in the streets now; I just want it to be more conscious so we know explicitly why we're there, where we're going, what our strategies are to get there, and what we will insist on before stopping. There’s more to say about this but pardon me; I have to take care of the ducks and then go join the protest.
I suspect that it will not be possible to address sustainability (of humanity) until the system that has built an unsustainable world is changed ----- ergo ----- for all of the urgency involved, we must find a way to do both. It will, I believe, require a quick education of the populace, who must come to understand both problems before anything can be accomplished. How? I ask that all think about that. I believe it is doable, maybe, if we have not reached some tipping point that inevitably will occur if it has not already that dooms mankind.
I agree with your basic premise that we think wrong or as you call it psychology. Part of the evolution of capitalism has been the rise of marketing (convincing people that they need something) and it's evolution into the art of media relations. Our unsustainable economic system has been marketed to us and that includes our world view and our addiction to capitalism. Our entire way of life has been sold to us and until we realize that it was just another dishonest sale pitch (3 easy payments, one size fits all, only $14.95, we're the best country in the world, etc., etc.) we cannot begin to think for ourselves. Television and mass media are an opiate--a mind altering phantasm that confounds us.
Can we afford to do both now ? If we had the power to run our country we could save our environment. If we leave it to the corporations they will save the environment when it is profitable. It is why war is big business but there is no peace industry. There is no money to be made off peace.
Unless we get the, somewhere around, 80% of us who are interested in structural change that empowers everyone instead of just those with power, either in government, business or finance, we will NOT be able to address climate change. Right now power is going towards more destruction instead of building lasting democratic, socially owned structures. I do NOT believe we can do one without drastically addressing and actually winning for everyone this basic power struggle between the 1% who have, and want to hold onto, power over everything, to power for the people and collective ownership of the means of production. Marx was correct! Capitalism if not democratized or socialized, will destroy the world and itself! We need to take back for the people the parts of our world that already have been privatized and stop the forces that are at work as we speak using their money and power to privatize everything in our world including land, water, and the very air we breathe!
Are you ready?
You've been sitting there asking, "What can I do?" Well here is your chance.
Start your own community. Neighbors, friends, Co-workers. Grow your own food, make your own rules, print your own money, and create your own Government.
Walk into your job tomorrow and begin making friends with all your co-workers. Start a community within your job. First task. From there, implement a democracy at your place of work. The president of your company is there because the Board of Directors voted him there, not because the people of the company did. It's time we took democracy to our work place.
Don't wait for a savoir. A messiah. A UFO-God. Or a group of people camping out in New York.
Imagine the world as you wish to see it, and then go out there and make it a reality. You don't need to change THE world, you just have to change YOUR world.
I agree that it's time we took democracy to the work place.
This cannot happen without a struggle. Implementing democracy in the workplace will be met with furious resistance, and no attempts at growing your own food, making your own rules, printing your own money, and creating your own government will be tolerated by those in power.
Imagining the world as you wish to see it, and hoping to change the world by changing your personal reality are delusional and doomed to fail. We need to see the world as it is - that is where we are deficient - and we need to organize and act en masse, not as individuals.
The notions that reality is created by our individual internal state of mind, and that we need to focus on changing ourselves first are components of the rampant individualism that is the cause of the problems and can never be the solution.
Conditions drive social and political change, not ideas. Ideas are the product of social conditions, not the cause. Obsession with individual change is Uncle Tom-ism, and works against solidarity.
If you believe something is doomed to fail, then it is doomed to fail. If you do not yet understand the ways in which consciousness and the energy fields from our heart effect the world around us, then I suggest you read some book by Gregg Braden.
The smallest things can have the biggest impact on the world.
I'm not calling for people to be individually motivated, then those efforts are only for sense gratification. I want us to come together in Communities, to see everything as one, and elevate our spiritual minds. It's a group effort on a local scale. I understand that this is happening at a Macro scale, but you're delusional if you think your going to force someone to live a different way. People that work for Wall St want to work there. Some people will serve as Police or Soldiers and never question to what ends they serve. We can't change these people.
I know we've been led to believe we have to change congress, or wall st, or capitalism, or whatever system it is we feel is committing an injustice.
Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.
We do not need to change the system, we need to create a new one.
If you think you can do this en masse, think again. We have to start small and grow from there.
Less new Age Rubbish please, more Joe Hill and Emma Goldman.
Greg Bradon is a dangerous charlaton who says that cancer can be cured with emotion.
I don't agree that things fail because we believe they will fail, or succeed if we believe hard enough that they will succeed. That thinking belongs belongs in Amway meetings.
I don't agree that "energy fields from our heart effect the world around us." I would like to see some evidence to support that notion.
I don't agree that the challenge before us is to "change people's minds" - a matter of salesmanship - nor to "elevate our spiritual minds" - a matter of preaching and evangelizing.
Politics is neither snake oil sales nor tent revival religion, though many people in the US cannot imagine any other forms of social interaction.
"If you believe something is doomed to fail, then it is doomed to fail."
If you believe the sun will fail to shine tomorrow, will it fail to shine? If everyone believes the sun will fail to shine tomorrow, will it fail to shine?
This New Age nonsense is simply the de-educated person's understanding of projective identification. When we believe something, we take actions in alignment with that belief. Those actions might be gross and obvious or they might be as subtle as a small shift in one finger or dilation of pupils. Others might see that, consciously or not, and respond, consciously or not.
US leaders believed they couldn't trust the USSR's leaders so they built bombs and bombers and subs and missiles and put bases all around the USSR. Seeing that, the Soviet leaders believed they couldn't trust the US and built bombs and missiles and subs and tried to put them around the US. They took over countries, the US took over countries. Every action produced or reinforced a belief and that belief caused actions that caused other beliefs. No magic, no "fields" or auras or New Age pseudophysics. Psychological reality.
It works the same with individuals and smaller groups. Two people walk into a room, one looks at the other, says jeez, what a slacker and stands up a little straighter and tightens all over. The 'slacker' looks at the other and says wow man what a dweeb and sinks a little farther down. Then they look at each other and the feeling is even stonger because they each have become more of what they wereonly more so, so the process repeats again. Each one's belief has changed both of them. neither one has any idea what just happened.
Yes, small things can have large impacts. We can trace the chains of effects and webs of relationships with science, and while science isn't perfect and doesn't know everything, with work we can constantly make it know more.
"no attempts at growing your own food, making your own rules, printing your own money, and creating your own government will be tolerated by those in power."
Organizing the workplace would also not be tolerated. The union-driven "organize the workplaces" would take too long and probably no longer stands a chance. Big institutions know full well what an organized workforce could accomplish -- especially the office workers, the clerks, the "pink collar workers," the (as they're now commonly called) "administrative assistants," the people who create and distribute the final copies of communiques, keep the records, do the real work of bureaucracies. The tasks performed by this working class are usually site specific and too complicated for their bosses to step in and do in a labor pinch (many of the senior managers would be hard pressed to perform alphabetization). There are no replacements who can quickly be brought in who can get these chores done because the learning curve for most workplace procedures is more complicated (and lengthy) than anyone other than the clerks themselves realize.
These "support staff" people (now not almost exclusively female as they were when I first became one) if organized nationally (or, better yet, internationally) could impact the uberbureaucracies and force major upgrades and concessions, monkeywrench the whole system. Which is why senior management is ever on the lookout for office employees openly discussing unionization. At will employees who do so are quickly fired -- there are consulting firms that help bosses contrive causes that won't lead to wrongful termination lawsuits. Similarly, there are legal consultants available to help institutions who have staff who do have employment contracts get rid of them. The "terminated" have a hard time proving their firing had to do with their unionization advocacy. Some institutions require a signed agreement to not even speak of such things as a condition of employment.
Here is where an organized clerk force could really help because they maintain the files where the action plans and authorizing memos are kept -- often having created the filing systems. They know where the work product bodies of bureaucracy are buried.
So institutions develop protocols and procedures to nip unionization efforts at the first hint of a bud. They are ever alert (or as some might refer to it "afraid"). But so too are the clerks afraid because they have responsibilities but no power. Maybe they "should" stand stolidly with their brethren and sisetren and refuse to work under such unfair conditions. But being unemployed in times of job scarcity (which does work to the advantage of bosses) is frightening and hopelessness generating. Most people with jobs will do whatever they have to and can to keep them though that's not working well for them at the moment.
I think the time when organizing the clerks could be done, five year ago, has passed. But I could be wrong. If workplace organizing begins to catch on, I will cheer.
Well certinally unionism has gotten a bad name, In IT where I work, they are enamoured with online gaming.... Maybe I could start a Guild, Only if I want SEIU to paicket my home It'd be the first real protest they've done in a long time! lol
>^^<
Thanks for your thoughts. You make some good points.
People often fall into the either - or trap. When both is the best choice. Both individual and mass revolution.
Deluded people like Greg Bradon aside, this is not what we're talking about. Personal change is absolutely crucial to political change and it's not about auras, fields or imagining reality to create it. It's about psychological reality, science and wisdom. "Rampant individualism" is itself a symptom and needs to be addressed both at its root and symptomatic levels, like everything else. Stop distorting the position and make an attempt to understand it.
Last time I checked every piece of dirt, every house, apartment, barn, shack, boat slip, or mooring was owned or controlled by somebody who is NOT me.
I have medical conditions that make keeping a job pretty f_ing unlikely assuming I could get one with my spotty work/school history. The social welfare system in the U.S. is a joke and refuses to address people like me.
So other than stepping out on the highway and making a brief wet spot there isn't a pantsload I can do without some organizational help. And there are millions like me.
Wolff will no doubt be dismissed as "utopian" by some posters here, but the truth is that there are many examples in modern history of workers doing exactly as he describes.
Take Greece for example. When the allies arrived at the close of WWII, the Greeks had already driven out the fascists. They had set up participatory governments across much of the country. The same was true of large parts of Italy, especially the North. These governments were indeed "socialist", but they had nothing in common with Stalin's Russia. They were "libertarian socialist".
What did the Allies do? They crushed these experiments and replaced them with fascist or crypto-fascist governments -- in the name of freeing people from fascism. The case of Greece was particularly horrific, with over 100,000 killed during the subsequent civil war. Churchill had rightly described the situation in Greece as "Anarchy", and desired a return of the Greek monarchy. With American help, he got it. The Yanks were even kind enough to supply napalm.
The case of Spain (before the war) is even more dramatic. All three power blocs -- the fascists, the Soviets and the "liberal democracies" joined forces to crush the anarchist revolution. Roosevelt permitted American oil companies to supply Franco in defiance of his own "non-intervention" policy, while Stalin, frightened of a real experiment in socialism, basically waged a proxy war against the anarchists.
Anyway, the point here is that workplace democracy is not some "new" idea. It is however an idea whose time has come. The above examples demonstrate that states will do their best to destroy real democracy wherever it flowers. So far as I can see, the only way of preventing this is for the movement to be international.
Thanks for that> I too was aware of all of this history and it amazing how much of it is simply NOT known to the masses.
There a tendency by the people to pick and choose which parts of what they read of History suits their purposes and then ignore the rest. It is part and parcel of what lead to all these myths about "The Founding Fathers rising against Tyranny" in the USA and the USA being a beacon of hope and justice to the world.
It is the point made in "A Peoples history of the United States" and works by William Blum such as "killing Hope".
History has become a PR exercise and most of what the people "know" of history is in fact salesmanship. Calling Stalin a Socialist is just one of the examples of how the Western media and its Governments have manipulated the language and the facts.
The belief that "America" is the "good guy" prevents people from accurately perceiving and understanding history. In order to maintain the fiction about "America" history needs to be completely re-written.
Thank you for this. These two posts are revelations to me who took all the history courses offered at the local community college in the 1980s. I like: "History has become a PR exercise and most of what people 'know' of history is in fact salesmanship. Calling Stalin ............." These thoughts will help me when arguing my case for socialism with all my family/friends who have bought in to so-called conservative ideals.
And the Allies double crossed the Socialist French resistance fighters at the closing days of WW2 revealing their identities to the Nazis.
The policy you're referring to started in occupied Italy in 1943 under FDR, not later under Truman as documented by Kolko in "Politics of War." The policy involved returning known fascists to positions of power instead of qualified resistence members who happened to be mostly leftists and refusing to cooperate with the USSR in US/UK occupied zones, thus setting the stage for the Cold War that followed. Revealing identities to Nazis is new for me; can you provide some documentation?
De Gaule was at the head of the parade of 'Allies' who turned in the French Resistance - that's why he wanted to lead the 'liberation' of Paris - especially to cut off those socialists with 'communist' ideas - like socialists all over Europe who fought the Nazis. Didn't you know that the Nazis 'liberated' occupied Europe from the socialist threat? Meet the new boss - same as the old boss. All the older people in France (and Greece, and Spain, and Eastern Europe) know about this (seems the younger generations are as misinformed as Americans, from my experiences). It wasn't exactly a secret - Patton enlisted the Nazis to purge 'socialists' which he conflated with 'communists' a la Stalin. He wanted only born-again Nazis in charge of German administration for this exact reason.
I suggest the battle cry should be "Haves Without Have-Nots" the title of a book by the Philosopher Mortimer J. Adler. Usually Mr. Adler is quoted by some wing nut, but in the book he argues Political Democracy is not possible without Economic Democracy and all peoples are entitled to basic human needs, i.e. Health Care, Housing, Food, Work, equal participation in the political process, and Leisure to enjoy the fruits of the earth.
"We found our way to a democratic alternative, however partial and unfinished the democratic project remains."
Actually, it's not so much partial and unfinished as it is attacked and imperilled by the oxymoronic notion of a "democratic capitalist" entity per se, regardless of whether that entity governs corporate enterprise or political statehood processes. The underlying commonweal and private profit "motivators" inevitably contain inherent and very strong contradictions within themselves.
In fact, I thought the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City had expressed the central issue quite well and very succinctly when it said: "No true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power." I suppose it might have qualified that assessment just slightly by adding "unless that economic power is itself democratically governed", an extremely unlikely circumstance in the current capitalist so-called "free enterprise" environment that is, in fact, dedicated to eliminating what little democratic governance remains.
"Democratic capitalism" is as nonsensical as "free slavery." Slave holders in the 1850's promoted slavery as a matter of freedom and rights. Clearly their freedom and rights precluded freedom for others. Capitalism means freedom for a few to exploit the many. That can never be made democratic.
If you'd said to a founding father lets start a democracy,, you'd have been laughed out of the hall. They were all fatcats who first and foremost wrote the documents of our nation not wanting just anybody to vote and certinally didn't want competion in their industries such as they were, Same policy that required the first peoples to need to be removed so the fatcats could have more land to sell tax and just lord over.
>^^<
"expressed the central issue quite well and very succinctly when it said: 'No true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power'"
I agree completely.
"it might have qualified that assessment just slightly by adding 'unless that economic power is itself democratically governed',"
Disagree - the implication being that if economic power is democratically governed, then a true democracy is obtainable when the process is determined by economic power. There are other determinants besides "economic power" which must be included before a democracy can be considered "true" - otherwise it codifies, in essence, the concept of one dollar, one vote - with the wrinkle that we should all have the same number of dollars.
Imo, "economics", whatever your theory of same, has far too long overly dominated our discussion of "democracy" ....
The problem as I see it is they should while including the brilliant idea of seperating church and state they could have addressed the need to seperate business from state as well! >^^<
always either or, isnt it
socialism , meaning actually communism which always becomes a dictatorship
or capitalism, with "free markets" which as we are seeing becomes an oligarchary or a dictatorship
these are the only two choices
Not at all
the best choice is regulated capitalism
keynesian capitalism
which is a mix of capitalism, and when that gets out of control or doesn't serve the needs of the people, goverment programs and regulations to make sure the ppeoples needs are served,, ie socialism
reward hard work, incentivise people to invent new things
but make sure that all of us have "a seat at the table" as the wonderful Joe Lieberman said when running for vice president
Unfortunately, Keynesian Capitalism will not and can not be raised from the grave. Keynesian capitalism brought us to where we are now, and that was inevitable. No longing for the good old days will change anything.
While I agree with the spirt, I respectfully disagree with your definitions. While most of the protesters haven't developed the vocabulary yet to express their feelings (which is understandable as we don't have a public discussion of corporate power) they *aren't* protesting capitalism. The thing is the U.S. is beyond capitalism and has been for years. We're in the coporate state era.
At best corporatism is a peversion of capitalism. It plays a lot of lip service to capitalism, but go and read "Wealth of Nations," all the things Adam Smith spoke out against are there. Corporations are only for market forces when the outcome benefits them, and when the market forces turn against them for any reason they are on their way to pay more money to lobbyists to get legistlation changed. They then have the nerve do decry "government as the problem" later if they have to follow even one regulation.
Capitalism is the storekeeper on the corner who is trying to make an honest living by keeping prices low and providing better service than the guy on the corner two blocks away... it's not Wal-Mart going to their lobbyist and sending 20k to quash a labor regulation they don't like. Capitalism, with proper regulation, can work, however you can't be cult-like and says it works with EVERYTHING... that's faith-based economics.
What do we need? We need corporate personhood to end so that we can take the money out of government and put the power of the country back where it was intended, in the hands of the individual voting constituent. We need to be able to say that fictional persons have less civil rights than living breathing persons once again. That change would make a massive difference. The economy stopped "lifting all boats" in 1975, which is the start of the rise of big corporate money in Washington. I don't believe that's a coincidence.
Nice post. As Orwell wrote, "the problem with competitions is that somebody wins them". Along similar lines, the anarchist philosophy Kropotkin wrote that "competition kills competition...resulting in monopoly".
I don't quite understand the logic behind the right-libertarian idea that corporatism is a "perversion of capitalism". Capital doesn't remain stagnant. It accrues. And "wealth is like sea water -- the more you drink the thirstier you get". It is incredibly naive to assume that a system designed to maximize profits, and which actually rewards individual greed, can somehow be "regulated" by the very institutions set up to maintain said system.
There has never been any such thing as a "free market". Indeed, ironically, the closest we have come to a "free market" has been under communal societies in which most of the wealth is shared.
Corporatism, or, if you like, fascism, is the highest form of capitalism. Wealth disparities cannot be perpetually maintained except through brute force. Why? Because human beings (even if only on a subconscious level) don't like being unequal. Even rich people are not particularly happy in this society, otherwise they wouldn't feel the need to buy ever larger piles of junk. We evolved in coooperative, non-hierarchical societies in which wealth and power were more or less evenly distributed. Therefore it makes perfect sense that a system (capitalism) based on the exact opposite of our evolutionary strategy makes us dysfunctional.
Important and valuable statement there -
"We evolved in coooperative, non-hierarchical societies in which wealth and power were more or less evenly distributed. Therefore it makes perfect sense that a system (capitalism) based on the exact opposite of our evolutionary strategy makes us dysfunctional."
This is the accurate and proper response to those who believe that Capitalism has always existed and is "human nature," and to those who say "we tried all of the other systems and they failed."
I agree with your outlook, but think you're disregarding a parallel tension that also is part of "our evolutionary strategy" as a species, an alternative side of "human nature."
Humans evolved in cooperative, non-hierarchical societies which were made up internally of often highly competitive individuals and subgroups. Hunter/gatherers did cooperate collectively and holistically. But those societies also created power heirarchies for decision making, and for organizing/coordinating the common enterprise efficiently from day to day, season to season, year to year. As a George Orwell "Animal Farm" character so pungently put it, all animals were equal but some were still more equal than others.
Phrased slightly differently than your usage, wealth and power were sometimes more evenly distributed, sometimes wealth and power were less evenly distributed. Occupying Wall Street rather than occupying Washington DC makes a lot more sense at this historical moment because that's where the source of today's shameful economic disparities, and the real levers of power for better or for worse, are currently lodged and most vividly on display.
Bill from Saginaw
Hi Bill,
I don't deny that human beings can be competitive as well as cooperative (otherwise there wouldn't be any such thing as capitalism), nor that hierarchies existed in hunter-gatherer societies.
The difference was that these hierarchies were not institutionalized; in other words, if someone was a particularly good hunter, or thinker, he or she would not be granted the right to lord over the rest of the society, nor accrue wealth at the expense of the majority. So called "stationary" "primitive" societies were more complex; oftentimes esteem would be granted on the basis of gift-giving, rather than wealth-hoarding.
This makes sense. A lot of it has to do with scale. In a society where people actually know one another, it is bad form to hoard wealth while others go without.
Indeed, if you look at Richard Lee's studies of the Kung, for example, the best hunters were also the most modest. They would attribute their prowess to luck, rather than skill, as humility -- rather than boasting and greed -- was regarded as a virtue. Or take Collin Turnbull's study of the Ituri Pygmies in the Congo. They "dislike personal authority". So while YES, competition and hierarchy are always present, they take place against a backdrop of cooperation and equality. Our society has inverted this "natural" evolutionary strategy.
War and wealth hoarding are indeed "natural", but then so is cannibalism and genocide. Human beings are, above all, adaptable. We adapt very well to cooperative, egalitarian societies, as this is the way we evolved and survived for 99 percent of our time on Earth; we can also adapt to competitive, stratified, war-like societies (about 1 percent of our time here); however, clearly, these conditions are not conducive to species survival, let alone happiness.
Orwell's work was propaganda to advance the red scare and defend the British Empire and Capitalism. It is no accident that it is required reading in US schools.
The message is this: "things have always been the way they are, and always will be, so give up. You may think that the capitalists are exploiting all of us and destroying the planet, but that cannot be true so look elsewhere - and if you refuse to look elsewhere you will be destroyed - and spend a lot of time in your head dreaming up utopias and fine-tuning your belief system and lifestyle."
If one gives this matter any thought at all, it soon becomes clear that Orwell's premise is illogical and nonsensical, though it is entirely consistent with the ruling class propaganda over the last 100 years: that Capitalism and empire represent some safe and happy "middle" between the extremes of Communism and fascism.
British intellectuals scaring people about the supposed dangers of working class solidarity and revolution remind me of slave owners warning slaves about the perils and dangers of freedom.
"Communism equals fascism" is so ridiculous, yet it has been absorbed and internalized by so many intellectuals in the US and Britain. It distorts people's thinking so much that it renders them incapable of critical thought, accurate perceptions, and precludes any understanding of history and social forces.
I'm gonna have to disagree with you on Orwell. Yes, there is a reason why Animal Farm and 1984 (used to be) taught in schools. But there is also a reason why Homage to Catalonia and Politics and the English Language are NOT taught in schools. Orwell was a socialist. However he was rightly disturbed by the ultra-hierarchical, murderous states that appropriated the term "socialism" and slaughtered millions of their own people. He was a something of a contrarian; at one point he even wrote a scathing critique of Ghandi. "To Kill an Elephant" is my personal favorite.
Chomsky and Hermann have argued that Orwell chose the wrong targets; however, they also acknowledge that the original forewards to Animal Farm and 1984 (excised from the American school editions) make clear that his dystopias do not refer exclusively to totalitarian, allegedly "socialist" societies, but capitalist societies as well. Indeed, the infamous "room 101" from 1984 derives from his own experience at the BBC.
It is interesting to note that many right wing populists believe that Orwell and Huxley were PRESCRIBING their "ideal society" for elites to follow, not criticizing it. This is absurd. If you read Orwell's essays or "Brave new World Revisited" you can clearly see that both men were libertarian socialists. The same is true of Koestler w/respect his work "Darkness at Noon". If we cannot tolerate constructive criticism from legitimate socialists we might as well slap on a Stalin badge and hand out copies of Mao's little red book.
Orwell worked closely with the Information Research Department of the British Foreign Office, including turning over names of "fellow travelers" to the government. He was one of many intellectuals who worked with intelligence agencies engaged in the red scare and McCarthyism and the promotion of British and US imperialist and capitalist interests.
The thin fig leaves - his supposed support of "real' socialism, and his supposed analysis of "Stalinism" - do not adequately hide the ugly truth, and there is nothing ambiguous or controversial about this. It is quite plain and out in the open.
Good essay on this topic -
http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv4n1/orwell.htm
excerpt -
Generations of children in all parts of the world have been brought up on the anti-communist fairy tale distortions of the history of the Great Socialist October Revolution by that arch-reactionary, George Orwell. In his writings, notably Animal Farm, 1984 and Homage to Catalonia, Orwell gave vent to his unbridled anti-communism. Although his words were of little artistic merit (and this is admitted even by bourgeois literary critics), he was widely published and his books prescribed as compulsory texts in the schools' curricula - for the sole reason that his works fulfilled a most useful political purpose for the big, as well as the petty, bourgeoisie in the imperialist countries and their satellites all over the world.
What attracted the bourgeoisie to this third-rate writer was not his pretended support for the ideals of the October Revolution, but his real driving hatred for the ideals of communism. Had Orwell's characterization of Stalin, and the CPSU that he led, corresponded to the truth, that would have made Stalin the darling of the imperialist bourgeoisie; had there been a steady erosion of revolutionary principles and had the dictatorship really collapsed into the dictatorship of a cynical few, Stalin's Russia would have been warmly embraced to the point of suffocation by imperialism. Precisely because the Russian reality did not accord with Orwellian reactionary fables, as the Soviet Union was busy tearing down her miserable capitalist and feudal past and constructing a bright socialist future for her people, imperialism waged a life and death struggle, ranging from economic blockade to armed intervention, against her.
Orwell was even more reactionary, if such a thing is possible, than Winston Churchill. The latter at least had the sense to wait until the end of the Second World War before publicly resuming his anti-communist crusade. Orwell by comparison could not contain his anti-communism even at the height of the war when the fate of humanity was being decided in the titanic trial of strength between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany in the battle of Stalingrad. He wrote his Animal Farm in 1943. Publisher after publisher rejected the book. Even bourgeois publishers, at least during those days when the dark forces of Nazism hovered ominously threatening to devour mankind, had more regard than Orwell. Faber rejected the book as did Victor Gollancz. The latter's reaction was: 'We couldn't have published it then. Those people [the Soviets]... had just saved our necks at Stalingrad.'
"and Homage to Catalonia, Orwell gave vent to his unbridled anti-communism"
No offense, but have you read the work in question?....Homage to Catalonia?
I certainly do not "worship" Orwell -- he was a deeply flawed human being like the rest of us -- but does he really deserve this sort of abuse?
I think Orwell was deeply committed to socialism; that's why he hated the Soviet Union.
Here is another excerpt from an article I linked to above:
The revolution in Catalonia was unlike any other socialist rebellion before or since. Its fury was reserved for priests, nuns, churches and monasteries, and the anarchists Orwell loved were famous for inventing new ways to kill clerics. That's what drew Orwell to Catalonia: the chance to help the men who were disemboweling priests in Barcelona and winding their guts around the altars. At last, a chance to smite the bloody Papists, the whore of Rome, Eric Blair's oldest and dearest hate. Not since Cromwell had an English Papist-baiter had such an opportunity to torment the filthy priests. Naturally, Orwell was on the first ship he could catch. It wasn't about socialism, it was about the chance to kill "a stinking RC" (Orwell's description of Wyndham Lewis).
Orwell's hatred of Catholics is so blatant that it's frightening. I wonder what kept his fans from seeing it.
http://exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7919&IBLOCK_ID=35
The source of yours is about as credible as the National Enquirer... the author takes snippets of an essay, while ignoring the mountains of other things Orwell has written, and then attaches his personal interpretations and opinions based in an obvious bias, and hopes that it sticks in the readers mind as 'fact'. This op-ed piece belongs in the National Enquirer. It is a far far stretch to call this opinionated bias of an article 'undisputed historical fact'.
This op-ed source that you provide also forgets to take into account Orwell's personal and political evolution as a HUMAN! Do you think he was somehow made of perfection from day one... no, he evolved and learned just like the rest of the human species. To not take this into account reveals the moronic nature of your author. Maybe if you (and the moronic author of your source) had actually read more of his writings you would have seen how Orwell evolved politically as a writer and journalist. If you had read his essay, "Why I write" you would have seen him explain how his earlier writings -- "Shooting an Elephant" is one of them -- were lifeless and lacked a purpose. (in his own words) "looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a POLITICAL purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally."
This essay in itself puts to rest the ABSURD opinions that the author writes about in his moronic opinionated piece.
Let me quote a revealing paragraph from Why I Write:
"First I spent five years in an unsuitable profession (the Indian Imperial Police, in Burma), and then I underwent poverty and the sense of failure. This increased my natural hatred of authority and made me for the first time fully aware of the existence of the working classes, and the job in Burma had given me some understanding of Imperialism: but these experiences were not enough to give me an accurate political orientation. Then came Hitler, the Spanish civil war, etc. By the end of 1935 I had still failed to reach a firm decision... The Spanish civil war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, AGAINST totalitarianism and FOR democratic Socialism, as I understand it."
But please do tell us why you believe that your source is credible and why we should believe some pompous assholes opinions - opinions that FAIL to take into account Orwell's political evolution. I mean, that is like saying that everything Bill Maher says on HBO is 'indisputable evidence' to prove a point... it's fucking ludicrous!
And while you are at it... why don't you tell us all why and how you are able to spam the CD comments section all day, 24/7?
Getting desperate, I see. You trot out the old "why and how you are able to spam the CD comments section all day, 24/7" canard.
I go weeks without posting at all. I just was offline for a week or so until the other day (unlike you, I don't keep that close track of when I do or don't post.) I have had a day to spend on the site today. Is that cause for suspicion?
"Getting desperate, I see."
No, not at all. And apparently you are the one who is desperate because you just avoided my entire comment and the other valid points I raised.... Good job of side-stepping.
"Orwell was even more reactionary, if such a thing is possible, than Winston Churchill."
Absurd. It would take the Devil him/her/self to be more reactionary than Winston Churchill.
Let us recall that Churchill was the first statesman to advocate dropping poison gas on the "lesser peoples", in IRAQ. Orwell never did any such thing. There is not a hint of racism in Orwell's essays or novels. Nor war-lust. He was a democratic socialist who detested both the Soviet Union and capitalist Britain. Why is that so difficult to understand?