The Orchestration of the Soviet Collapse

Twenty years ago, on March 17, 1991, the first and only national referendum in Soviet history was held. Citizens of the Soviet republics were offered the opportunity to express themselves on the matter of the preservation of the union state in “an updated form.” And although six of the union republics refused to participate, the majority of the remaining population voted in favor of the preservation of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, only a few months later, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
- Russia and India Report

Why did the Soviet Union "collapse" if the majority of Soviet citizens favored reformed-socialism, but not all out capitalism?

Be sure Milton Friedman had something to do with it.

In the decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union millions of people died as a result of Friedman's neoliberal doctrine.

In addition to deaths, a significant social decline ensued in Russia including a decline in life-expectancy, a rapidly deteriorating privatized healthcare system, economic crises in 1992 and 1998, one of the highest suicide rates in the world, reversal of Gorbechov's anti-alcoholism policies resulting in one of highest rates of alcohol related death in the world, and an exponential increase in HIV/AIDS diagnoses.

Organized crime and oligarchy dominate today's Russian economy.  Shock therapy has given rise to gangster capitalism.  Are Russians better off now?

US vs. Denmark: or how we're not the greatest country in the world

US vs Denmark

July 24, 2011 at 9:15pm

Denmark, with a mixed market capitalist economy and a large welfare state, ranks as having the world's highest level of income equality. Denmark has frequently ranked as the happiest and least corrupt country in the world.  Here's how the happiness/economic equality numbers break down according to Forbes:

Denmark:

Ranking: #1
Percentage thriving: 82%
Percentage struggling: 17%
Percentage suffering: 1%
Daily experience: 7.9

US on the other hand:

Ranking: #14
Percentage thriving: 57%
Percentage struggling: 40%
Percentage suffering: 3%
Daily experience: 7.3

Mental illness numbers compare thusly:
United States: 12-month prevalence of any mental disorder: 26.2% of adult population, 5.8% of adult population are diagnosed with severe mental illness.
46.3% of adolescants and young adults age 13-18 years experience a lifetime prevalence of any mental disorder (that's almost half!!!)!  21.4% of the whole 13-18 year old population are diagnosed with a severe disorder!
(source: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/statistics/index.shtml)

Denmark:
It was very hard to find information in English on general mental health statistics in Denmark.
Here's what I did find: 16.5% of Danish youth 12-18 were diagnosed with a mental disorder.  That's a difference of 29.8%! (source: Gosden N, Kramp P, Gabrielsen G, Sestoft D. Prevalence of mental disorders among 15–17-year-old male adolescent remand prisoners in Denmark. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica [serial online]. February 2003;107(2):102-110. Available from: Academic Search Complete, Ipswich, MA. Accessed July 24, 2011.).

The afformentioned study mainly focused on juvenile prisioners.  Of the sample group only 2% were found to be psychotic.  Of adult prisioners only 3.7% were found to be psychotic.

Compare this to US prisioner mental health numbers:
"Among inmates with a mental condition ever treated
with a psychiatric medication, only 25.5% (SE =7.5%) of federal, 29.6% (SE = 2.8%)
of state, and 38.5% (SE = 1.5%) of local jail inmates were taking a psychiatric
medication at the time of arrest, whereas 69.1% (SE = 4.8%), 68.6% (SE = 1.9%),
and 45.5% (SE = 1.6%) were on a psychiatric medication after admission"
(source: Wilper A, Woolhandler S, Himmelstein D, et al. The Health and Health Care of US Prisoners: Results of a Nationwide Survey. American Journal of Public Health [serial online]. April 2009;99(4):666-672. Available from: Academic Search Complete, Ipswich, MA. Accessed July 24, 2011.)

The same study found that there was a chronic incidence of untreated physical illness amongst US prisioners.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) 7,225,800 people at yearend 2009 were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole — about 3.1% of adults in the U.S. resident population.  2,292,133 were incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails at year end 2009.

Whereas Denmark has a low incarceration rate with a total of 3774 inmates in the country.  Denmark has 59 people in prison for every 100,000 citizens or .00059%, a difference of 3.09941% from the US.

Crime rates for Denmark can be found here: http://www.nationmaster.com/country/da-denmark/cri-crime
For US go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

What are we doing wrong that Denmark is doing so damn right?

In the United States the highest tax bracket is US $373,651+ at only 35%, whereas in Denmark the highest bracket is US $138,050 at as high as 57% or as low as 43% depending on the amount of interest you pay annually.

Denmark is a constitutional monarchy with democratic aspects.  They have a strong welfare state.  Denmark has 20 weeks of paid parental leave and 32 of unpaid compared to the US which has 24 weeks of unpaid leave for mothers only (source: http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/parental_2008_09.pdf).  Denmark ensures that all Danes receive tax-funded health care and unemployment insurance.  The United States is stingy with these benefits limiting them only to the very poor.  The average worker in Denmark makes US $5,464, monthly gross and US $3,226 net according to a 2006 survey.  Sales tax is 25% compared to 8% in the most of the United States (some places like Montana are 0%).

In 2009 trade union density was 6.66 in Denmark as oppsed to 11.8 in the US.

Finally, Denmark has a strong socialist movement.  In the 2007 election, the Socialist People's Party (SF) went from 11 to 23 seats in the Folketing (National Parliament) out of 179 members.  That is 6.1%.
There is currently one socialist representative in the United States, Bernie Sanders, I-VT of 435 House seats.  That is .22%.  There are 100 senators and no socialists occupy any of those seats. 

What do Danes get out of their monarchistic nanny state with high taxes?  Peace of mind, knowing that they don't have to face beggars on the street or rampant crime.  Less depression.  More satisfaction with their jobs and their lives.

morality, God, autonomy and praxis

The passage in Matt. 19:26 where Jesus states, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible,” renders the autonomous (i.e. : possessing of free will), human individual powerless. It is much like the Alcoholics Anonymous mantra, “...accept the things I cannot change....” i.e.: powerless against alcoholism, only through Higher Power can the “disease” be conquered. This “disease” ideology comes direct from a Judeo-Christian paradigm, especially the puritanical Protestant ethic on which Plymouth Rock was founded. “Sin” is supposedly moral corruption. Anton Lavey would have us believe that sin is what makes life worth living. Let us get one thing straight, sin is a product of ideology, nothing more. It has nothing to do with morality. Karl Marx said that religion serves the interests of the ruling class. This is clear when we examine the “Ham's curse” argument for racist slavery. Economic imperatives are the driving force behind religious ideology. The concept of sin, therefore (a product of ideology), was invented for one purpose; to keep the peasants from revolting. That is not a new concept, and perhaps not even a surprising one.

Sin's, the evil twin, has a “good” counterpart: virtue and a promise of a heavenly (or restored paradise Earth as in the Jehovah's Witness case) reward. Matt. 6:20 says to “store treasures in heaven.” This is directly opposed to the dialectical materialist notion of “heaven on Earth, now!” Joe Hill wrote in the song the Preacher and the Slave, “You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky; Work and pray, live on hay, You'll get pie in the sky when you die” followed by the dialectical response, “THAT'S A LIE!” Joe Hill then makes a plea for individuals/communities to take responsibility for their own lot in life in the final chorus, “You will eat, bye and bye, When you've learned how to cook and how to fry; Chop some wood, 'twill do you good Then you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye”

By declaring oneself an individual with moral autonomy one takes responsibility for one's actions; as opposed to the “all in God's plan/God works in mysterious ways” cliché of the religious Christians. That is not to say that the individual is the central unit by which society must be structured. Or more specifically that one can really do anything by oneself (the old cliché “no man is an island”). On the contrary, the greatest achievements of mankind have only been through cooperation with one another. Even the animals have learned this according to Kropotkin. In Billy Bragg's version of There is Power in a Union, “...it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand....”

The moral atheist is an anomaly to the devout because they assume that without a concept of God there are no morals. Vladimir Bartol was right in pronouncing that if “nothing is true everything is permitted.” However, atheists do not dismiss truth. The question the dialectical materialist would ask is “who's truth?” To many atheists the truth is that God inhibits moral praxis. Slavoj Zizek writes that when the apostle Paul stated in Gal. 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” he was not being inclusive. On the contrary, he was expressing exclusive universalism. A comment should also be made here regarding the “many Gods objection” to Pascal's Wager. Again, the question arises, “who's truth?”

Back to praxis, Gramsci wrote in the Prison Diaries that those who engage in religious praxis, that is work such as the Catholic Workers do, are far removed from transformative, productive, revolutionary praxis. He writes that most Christians who engage in work with the poor believe that there should remain at least one or two poor people in the world at all times so as not to prove Jesus wrong when he stated that there will always be rich and poor. Again, this is exclusivism.
Finally, I would like to make a note about anthropology. Franz Boas' concept of ethnocentrism is perhaps the best contribution the study of anthropology offered to the 20th century. This is relevant because religion is steeped in ethnocentrism. Atheism is not innocent in this either. Nor is Marxism. Any IDEOLOGY that seeks the moral high ground is guilty of ethnocentrism. However, cultural relativism only goes so far. One cannot simply accept exploitation and violations of human rights on the grounds of cultural relativism. This argument is not new, nor is it surprising. The relevance of this argument to the above discussion is this: once again - “who's truth?” Each person has a lens through which we see the world. 1 Corinthians 13:12 says we see “through a glass darkly.” Nobody is absolutely right because nobody has all the answers. However, that does not mean that one cannot proceed as though one is right. Confidence wins friends and isolates the enemies. There is also nothing wrong with having enemies. However, one must remember that we are none of us free of hypocrisy or the occasional lapse in moral judgment.

Are we really allowed our little pseudo-revolunionary idiosyncracies in industrial-capitalist society under the Google regime?  As long as we work and consume, albeit in a quasi-counter-cultural form?  Hot Topic is a hot topic.  Let us find out.

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Barry Goldwater 

4. Universal arming of the people. In future armies shall at the same time be workers’ armies so that the armed forces will not only consume, as in the past, but produce even more than it costs to maintain them.

In addition, these shall be a means of organising work

Marx and Engles - Demands of the Communist Party in Germany

Tolerance as an Ideology Category - Slavoj Zizek

S.C.U.M. Manifesto - Valerie Solanas 

 Industrial Society and Its Future - Ted Kaczynski

Situationist International Journal 

Manifesto of the Communist Party - Marx and Engles

Socialist Gun Review

They don't need to burn the books, they just remove them.
- RATM