Pessimist Communism

Pessimist communism denounces state socialism (socialism in one country), social democracy (modest progressive reforms), and autonomous socialism (localism, anarchism, councilism, syndicalism etc.).  Internationalism is vital.  USSR and China restored capitalism because of a lack of internationalist approach.  Essentially, they could not compete with the more well established capitalist/imperialist powers (USA, England) When the conspiracy/libertarian crowd decry "globalism" the pessimist communist says global capital? No! global neoliberalism? Hell No! Global proletarian revolution? Hell yes! Global dictatorship of the proletariat? Yes! Yes!



Here Zizek provides us with two choices for the future: 1) Communism or 2) Fascist socialism.  Clearly, laissez faire capitalism cannot go unchecked for very long if humans are to continue to live on the planet.  Some kind of economic planning will be needed to avoid the very corporeal, coming, climate catastrophe and the more abstract, looming debt crisis fabricated by the casino charlatans on Wall Street etc.

In the USA (the proverbial, Marxian "belly of the beast"), the ruling class has two faces, both of which will eventually devolve into fascism. 1) Compassionate capitalism (green capitalism, black capitalism, pink capitalism, ethical capitalism, modest welfare state, limited Keynesianism etc.) coupled with excessive imperialism masked as "humanitarian intervention" (recall LBJ on Vietnam and Obama's wars in Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan and currently Iraq). These are what we call liberals, liberal-progressive, Democrats etc.  2) Cynical market fundamentalism (reckless capitalism, egoism, rugged individualism).  The second category includes libertarians, the ultra-rich (1%), Republicans and conservatives.  The second category, can of course, trace its roots to individualist anarchism.  From there, eugenics.  From there, fascism.  Pretty simple trajectory and pretty clearly marked by history.  However, the second category relies upon the first category.  The ultra-reactionary party must have a "bleeding heart" to denounce.

These cynical market fundamentalists love to hate FDR.  Of course, any good leftist worth her/his salt knows that he "saved capitalism from itself."  Conservative Democrat Seymour Martin Lipset (the original neocon) and multilevel-governance theorist Gary Marks concluded for the Hoover Institution:

The economic crisis of the 1930s was more severe in the United States than in any other large society except Germany. It presented American radicals with their greatest opportunity to build a third party since World War I, but the constitutional system and the brilliant way in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt co-opted the left prevented this [underline mine]. The Socialist and Communist Parties saw their support drop precipitously in the 1940 elections. America emerged from the Great Depression as the most antistatist country in the world.

Let us not forget, however, that FDR did not establish the American welfare state out of his compassion for the working class.  He did it because there was an actual proletarian revolution years before in the Soviet Union and because there was working class unrest in his own country.  The Communist Party USA, the Socialist Party of America and the Farmer-Labor Party were gaining headway as counter-hegemonic alternatives from the left. This the ruling class could not afford to ignore.  The myth of the compassionate liberal was thus created to co-opt the leftist tendencies amongst the working class.

Essentially, the "left-of-center" capitalist parties (Democrats USA, New Labour UK etc.) lend legitimacy to the capitalist system as a whole by creating a false alternative to cynical market fundamentalism.  They also function as a scapegoat for the failures of the market (recall how Obama was called a socialist when he gave golden parachutes to the banks and speculators on Wall Street) and a strawman to prop up ultra-reactionary parties (via backlash).

The working class throughout the world must not fall prey to these sado-masochistic mindfucks. When I hear working class individuals criticize fast food workers for building a movement to raise the minimum wage to a meager $15 an hour (other countries offer much higher minimums - see charts below) and call them lazy I am disappointed at the lack of solidarity and the blind swallowing of the ultra-right discourse.

 $15 minimum wage would be an improvement, but it's a modest demand.  Wealth redistribution is worth demanding, and hopefully we'll get there eventually, but a guarnteed minimum income would be good a start.

I will close this entry with something from Malcolm X that I think sums up the situation:

Neutrality Is Violence

To do nothing to prevent violence is itself a form of violence.  There is no neutrality.  If you are an active reactionary or a passive observer, either way you are allowing the oppressive status quo to maintain its hegemony.  Dissent is necessary.  It is a moral imperative.  To speak out against oppression and exploitation is the least we can do to counter the hegemonic ruling class.  We must continually come up with more creative ways in which to resist the powers-that-be.  A successful revolution redeems all previous failed revolutions... and isn't today a good day for a revolution?

Reflection of the Zizekian Concept of Violence

Obama's AmeriKKKa

Prior to the 2012 election, reactionary pundit, Dinesh D'Souza (yeah, this asshole) wrote a book called The Roots of Obama's Rage and made a film based on it called 2016: Obama's America. It played in major theatures and grossed $32.9 million domestically, which according to Wikipedia, makes it "the fourth highest domestic grossing documentary and the second highest domestic grossing political documentary in the United States since 1982." (Farenheit 9/11 is #1 on both lists thankfully, as it was a scathing expose of the Bush family's role in 9/11 and one of Michael Moore's best.)  The film was worth seeing, as it precisely enunciated the conservative argument against Obama.  If you didn't see it, here is the trailer. 

D'Souza makes the argument that Obama is an anti-colonialist and for that reason he must be stopped from being the commander in chief of the greatest colonial power in the world.  D'Souza's argument is more like pro-Obama propaganda than anti.  He insists that American leftist heros like Frank Marshall Davis and Bill Ayers have been close comrades and mentors to Obama.  If this were true, it would certainly endear me to the current president.  Unfortunately, it is far from true.

Self-described democratic socialist and philosopher/African-American studies theorist Dr. Cornel West supported Obama's campaign in the early stages, but it wasn't long before he became critical of the man.  In a recent Salon interview, he had this to say about the president:

He doesn’t realize that a great leader, a statesperson, doesn’t just occupy middle ground. They occupy higher ground or the moral ground or even sometimes the holy ground. But the middle ground is not the place to go if you’re going to show courage and vision. And I think that’s his modus operandi. He always moves to the middle ground. It turned out that historically, this was not a moment for a middle-ground politician. We needed a high-ground statesperson and it’s clear now he’s not the one.

And so what did he do? Every time you’re headed toward middle ground what do you do? You go straight to the establishment and reassure them that you’re not too radical, and try to convince them that you are very much one of them so you end up with a John Brennan, architect of torture [as CIA Director]. Torturers go free but they’re real patriots so we can let them go free. The rule of law doesn’t mean anything.

I think sometimes well meaning individuals get involved with the Democratic Party for the right reasons.  Obama may be one of these individuals.  According to Thomas Surgue in a Salon article, "Obama worked for the Developing Communities Project (DCP) of the Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC), a group on Chicago’s South Side whose tactics ... were inspired by [Saul] Alinsky." He also, occasionally, did go to Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church. Unfortunately, however, along the way he became just another part of the establishment.  In fact, early in his political career, he ran against Bobby Rush, a former Black Panther,in a 2000 race for Illinois' 1st congressional district representative.  Already, he was flexing the stringy muscles of a moderate.

The situation in Ferguson, MO has shattered a lot of African-Americans' illusions about the extent to which Obama is their friend.  Red, black and green flags are a common site in Ferguson as the residents there express open resistance against the government.  In Texas, on August 9th, the "Huey P. Newton Gun Club" staged an "open-carry" rally in protest against "killer cops."

Obama's recent remarks on the Ferguson situation have been criticized as "tone deaf".  The fact that he has made any statement at all proves that it takes nothing less than a riot to get his attention.  Here is what he told demonstrators: 

While I understand the passions and the anger that arise over the death of Michael Brown, giving into that anger by looting or carrying guns, and even attacking the police only serves to raise tensions and stir chaos. It undermines rather than advancing justice.

It appears he is echoing the #notallcops and #stopthelooting cliche speech of such black liberals as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  

Mao said it best:

...[L]iberalism rejects ideological struggle and stands for unprincipled peace, thus giving rise to a decadent, Philistine attitude and bringing about political degeneration in certain units and individuals in the Party and the revolutionary organizations... 

To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism.

For those leftists who think that collaboration with the Democratic Party is necessary or even advantageous, THIS is what happens when a member of the Democratic establishment threatens the reactionary status quo:

Maybe some politicians get involved with the Democrats for the right reasons, but they ultimately are forced to make compromises.  Obama's government is the drone warfare government, it is the Iraq War III government, the Afghanistan surge government, the unconditional support for Israel's attacks on the civillians of Gaza government, the deportation government, the cuts in Food Stamps government, the electronic surveillance government.

Basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabar recently penned a brilliant article on the source of the current tensions in America.  He writes:

This fist-shaking of everyone’s racial agenda distracts America from the larger issue that the targets of police overreaction are based less on skin color and more on an even worse Ebola-level affliction: being poor. Of course, to many in America, being a person of color is synonymous with being poor, and being poor is synonymous with being a criminal. Ironically, this misperception is true even among the poor.

And that’s how the status quo wants it.

The U.S. Census Report finds that 50 million Americans are poor. Fifty million voters is a powerful block if they ever organized in an effort to pursue their common economic goals. So, it’s crucial that those in the wealthiest One Percent keep the poor fractured by distracting them with emotional issues like immigration, abortion and gun control so they never stop to wonder how they got so screwed over for so long.

...Rather than uniting to face the real foe—do-nothing politicians, legislators, and others in power—we fall into the trap of turning against each other, expending our energy battling our allies instead of our enemies.

I will conclude with a speech by Fred Hampton, another individual murdered in cold blood by police, that demonstrates what is needed in these times, better than I could say it:

We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.

We ain't gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we're gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we're gonna fight reactionary pigs with INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION. That's what it has to be. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people.

We have to understand very clearly that there's a man in our community called a capitalist. Sometimes he's black and sometimes he's white. But that man has to be driven out of our community, because anybody who comes into the community to make profit off the people by exploiting them can be defined as a capitalist. And we don't care how many programs they have, how long a dashiki they have. Because political power does not flow from the sleeve of a dashiki; political power flows from the barrel of a gun. It flows from the barrel of a gun! 

One of those capitalist men today is Barak Obama, and yes, his skin is of a darker hue. He has proven himself to be no hero, no progressive prophet.  Electing another liberal Democrat will not solve the problems of the working class in America.  We need a proletarian revolution!  Combat liberalism!  Defeat the capitalist pigs!

 

Silly Libertarians:

So here's a scenario: private firefighting companies where you pay them before they put out your fire. You could argue that multiple firefighting companies could compete for your business and thus the price would be driven down. So a bunch of fire trucks would show up at your house and you haggle with them over which one is willing to put out your fire for the lowest price. Or not. Because house fires are somewhat rare (supply and demand) in your area there is only one fire company and it is in the next town over. They charge a high fee because they don't put out fires as often and must charge more to cover overhead. If you cannot pay (probably because your reserve of silver was in your house, which is now on fire, or you could use bitcoin except that your computer is also currently burning) your fire just spreads to the neighbor's house. They can pay, but the fire is only doused on their property so they must pay extra to run the water continually until your house burns completely (you can pay them later for the water that accidentally splashed onto your house). Of course, even if you could pay, you've spent too much time working out the details of the transaction that your house burns anyway.

Also, if a Libertarian has to park on the street and pay a meter they are pissed.  If they have to park in a private lot and pay a business they swell with pride.



Finally, check this out:

It Only Took Half The Wikipedia Entry On Libertarianism To Convince Me It Was The Right Political Ideology For America

#agitpop : 

2) Music as a liberating force. without getting too spiritual music is the soundtrack to ecstasy. militaries use music to rally their troops. sufis Use music to bring them closer to divine oneness. Punk rock kids use music to rock the fuck out. That is a sacred pursuit. Catharsis. It is both sacred and profane. this paradox makes it a valuable tool. it has the power to separate the individual from their ego, thus freeing one from oneself. once this process has occured it is possible for a feeling of being part of something bigger. Thus the individual, whether musician/vanguard or audience, can achieve a communal understanding. music is the object to this subjective understanding. the dialectic between musician/vanguard and audience thus gives birth to a third meaning. Eisenstein Understood this in the context of film, but in a different way. for him the juxtaposition of two images created a third meaning when filtered through the viewer's gaze. music is different in one respect. The creator of music has the ability to respond to feedback by virtue of the fact that music does not take as long to make as a film. this is especially true in live situations. thus music is participatory and democratic.

Meme Blast

This was a response to a friend of mine who posted this on a popular social media website and then proceeded to defend it by saying that feminism is divisive.

First (among other things that are better iterated below) my response was:

By declaring your opposition to feminism you are being divisive, insisting that the particular ways in which one group or another is oppressed is greater than the oppression that women face. Empowerment movements (such as feminism, black power, red power, gay pride ad nauseum) exist in order to change the conditions of oppression under which these groups suffer. What could be wrong with that?

Of course, after much internet nonsense, I finally wrote this:

Read [your response], still don't understand what your problem with the term feminism is. Was going to leave well enough alone, but I'll oblige this rather specific request for my two cents, or dollar or whatever. My response is basically what I said before: 1) feminism is an empowerment movement for an oppressed group the same way black power, red power, gay pride etc. are. 2) there is not one feminism, but many feminisms. what historians call the first wave was primarily concerned with suffrage and was also very much linked to the abolition movement. you argue that feminists betrayed abolitionism, but the reality is that abolitionist men betrayed feminism as they felt that the sight of liberated women in the abolition movement would turn more conservative men who might be sympathetic to abolition (industrialists mostly) against the abolitionist cause. the second wave I do have problems with. basically it was in the 1970s and women were bossing other women around telling them that they shouldn't have children or do house work, but instead focus on their careers. this was particularly beneficial to capitalists as they were able to pay lower wages (adjusted for inflation) to both men and women (although there is still a pay gap between the sexes to this day, women making 70 cents on every man's dollar) as now heterosexual households were expected to collect dual incomes. the third wave started in the 1990s and concerned connecting struggles of oppressed peoples. unfortunately, some feminists in the current era seem to have reverted back to second wave and also justifications of female separatism and misandry have become accepted by some (especially radfems/terfs). 2a) the radical justification of misandry (which is a form of prejudice, but not sexism i.e.: systemic, institutionalized discrimination) is not all feminism. The Black Panther Party opposed the Nation of Islam's anti-white doctrine, but both can be described as black power movements. Again, I am an anti-Stalinist communist, but I do not say that Stalinism is not communism, just not a form of communism that I subscribe to. I would like to add this quote from bell hooks and encourage you to read the book that it is from (linked below - pdf).

Most men find it difficult to be patriarchs. Most men are disturbed by hatred and fear of women, by male violence against women, even the men who perpetuate this violence. But they fear letting go of the benefits. They are not certain what will happen to the world they know most intimately if patriarchy changes. So they find it easier to passively support male domination even when they know in their minds and hearts that it is wrong. Again and again men tell me they have no idea what it is feminists want. I believe them. I believe in their capacity to change and grow. And I believe that if they knew more about feminism they would no longer fear it, for they would find in feminist movement the hope of their own release from the bondage of patriarchy.

Also, check this out.

Finally, allow me to give you a personal anecdote as to why feminism is something that I (although I am a man, and although I have endured the occasional (in my mind undeserved) ad homenim attack of "oppressor," "partiarch," "sexist" ad nauseum from self-described feminists) not only subscribe to, but also identify with. When I was a kid I was into poetry, art and music. I was vegetarian at the age of 10. I never played with toy trucks as a kid nor was I interested in the least in sports. In fact, I hated my gym teachers. Not only did I have to face being called a "girl," "faggot," and "pussy" from the other kids in school, but my teachers, those in authority, made the same complaints about me, although in perhaps less vulgar language. I was actually in a fist fight in the locker room once because another boy on my soccer team felt I didn't perform soccer manly enough and that was why we lost the game. I never was really hurt by being called a girl (even though I knew I was not) or gay (which I also knew I was not) because those things were not bad in my eyes. I always enjoyed the company of girls. I often sat with them at lunch. I sometimes felt that I related better to the girls in my class than I did to the boys. Of course, I realized that this must not be something natural. I believed that probably many of the boys in my class felt the same way I did, but just weren't courageous enough to stand up the sexism they were confronted with and instead lived in this fictitious role of the masculine male. Now, there's not necessarily anything wrong with masculinity, per se. Some of us have more aggressive, more utilitarian personalities. I have known many women with these traits. It's not wrong, it's just not inherently male.

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

The Hegemony of Freedom: Power as a Finite Resource

This story begins with the Law and Disorder Conference in Portland, Oregon and the chaos that descended upon it.  It should be seen as somewhat of an embarrassment for today's left.  However, not necessarily for the reasons one might imagine.  It was not a matter of anarchy gone awry, necessarily.  It was more a cognitive dissonance within anarchism between individualist libertarianism and collective democracy.

The melee ensued as a result of Kristian Williams' status as a panelist in a forum about the role of agent provocateurs in the anarchist movement.  However, his stated purpose for being there was not the bone of contention that caused the feud.  The disruption arose from his insistence that issues of sexual assault have become off limits to anyone other than abuse survivors.  These sentiments were stated in an essay entitled "The Politics of Denunciation."  The most controversial of the statements made in the essay are as follows:

Under this theory, the survivor, and the survivor alone, has the right to make demands … one obvious implication is that all allegations are treated as fact. And often, specific allegations are not even necessary.... It may be enough to characterize someone’s behavior … as ‘sexist,’ ‘misogynist,’ ‘patriarchal, ‘silencing,’ ‘triggering,’ unsafe,’ or ‘abusive. (additional source)

Earlier this year a blog post entitled "The Rise of the Post-New Left Political Vocabulary" by Stephen D’Arcy was published, which analyses more precisely "calling out" culture in today's left circles.  D'Arcy's article approaches the problematic more sensitively and is a more rounded critique, centered on historicity.

One major concern is that I and others have expressed is that this "calling out" culture uses humiliation as a tactic. It is a strategy of the defeated.  If we are to win in the broader struggle for liberation, we cannot shoot ourselves in the foot this way.  We are embarrassing and thus alienating our allies.  The problem arises when privilege is unconscious. Suddenly individuals new to today's leftism are being called out for things they don't understand. The cry then becomes:  My privilege has been checked. I'm still not liberated. What next?

Many of these current left tendencies arose at a point where damage control was necessary after a particularly reactionary period (Regan, Bush, Bush Jr.).  Perhaps the way to proceed is to be liberation oriented as opposed to doing constant damage control. I understand this means different things to different demographics, but I would advocate a return to the orthodox Marxist critique of political economy, whereby these particular oppressions can be linked though economic imperatives of the ruling class. I'm not suggesting, however, that all dialectical struggle arises from class antagonism. Certainly sexism was around much longer than capitalism or feudalism. I'm saying the reason these oppressions continue to be very real today is because they benefit the ruling class.

However, the embarrassment at the Law and Disorder Conference, was not necessarily an overly self-reflexive left. Perhaps the precise critique lies not in defending the correctness of Kimberly William's statements regarding the hegemony of abuse survivors, but in the failure to reconcile dissent from those statements within a "libertarian" framework. "Libertarian" socialism fails in its marriage to individualist freedom as a fundamental precept. In this arena "anarchism" is rendered impotent in its ability to appropriately respond to theoretical questions of privilege.

Recently, Mark Bray wrote a critique of what he deemed "liberal tendencies that plagued Occupy."  The first he discusses is what he deems "liberal libertarianism."  However, why does he necessarily adhere to "left libertarianism" while denouncing "liberal libertarianism?"  Much of what he criticizes in "liberal libertarianism" in inherent to libertarianism/anti-authoritarianism itself, particularly, the aspect of idiosyncratic individualism.  This liberal tendency arises from multiculturalism, which states that all points of view are valid, and so censorship, on whatever basis, is reproachable.  The "mic check" phenomenon at occupy exemplified this.  The collective voice of the movement could become whatever idiosyncratic rant whomever had the moxy to yell out "mic check" determined it to be.

Bray defines the "liberal libertarian" thusly:

The Liberal Libertarian is the person who has learned enough about the potentially heinous repercussions of coercion and exclusion to renounce authoritarian organizing structures, but takes this in such an individualistic direction that they also often dismiss even directly democratic structures and reject collective attempts to prevent boisterous individuals from completely disrupting assemblies, meetings, actions or any other collective endeavor.

So why define the prevailing tendency in today's left as "libertarian socialism?"  I understand that this has a historical significance in the history of the IWW and other proposed libertarian socialist movements in America, but why not, instead, demand direct democratic socialism?  Here is an example of how the tolerant libertarianism of Occupy could go wrong when a reactionary throws a monkey wrench in the gears:



The incident(s) this wing-nut is referring to occurred because of OWS's reluctance to have any safety measures in place, what so ever, such as a kind of "people's security" like they did in Tarhir Square.  Why give these individuals fodder to attack our movement?  Self-conscious leaderlessness gives individuals whose will is opposite from the leftist values we espouse not only a platform for their idiotic rantings (and why give them one of ours when they have so many already?), but also creates an opportunity whereby oppressors can exploit the weaknesses of our movement, including, but not limited to physical and even sexual violence.

A discussion of the film The Act of Killing is relevant here.   It's international title was "Free Men" because the Indonesian word for gangster sounds like the English term "free men." As is a plague for foreign films, the title was changed to the more moralistic "Act of Killing" for ideological reasons. This concept of freedom is something that we should respect as a myth but beware of as a reality. Mussolini said "Every anarchist is a baffled dictator." There is perhaps some truth in that. Are not the stars of this postmodern film personifications of freedom gone wrong? Were they not free to live out their darkest fantasies with no consequences?  

Passolini's sado-masochistic film Salo also comes to mind, where at one point the sadists say, "The true anarchist is the fascist, because true freedom comes only from power."

An intriguing current in cyber-politics has arisen from these lines of thinking.  Moldbuggian neoreachtionarism has arisen from counter-intuitive roots: voluntarism, anarcho-capitalism and libertarianism.  Neoreactionism is a high-tech, Silicon-Valley based brand of techno-fascism pushed by nerd-blogger Mencious Moldbug and Google engineer Justine Tunney.  Tunney touts herself as an Occupy Wall Street activist, but her recent endorsement of Moldbug makes one wonder if she really "gets" OWS or how sincere her motives are for being involved with OWS in the first place.

OWS's triumph was its distinction between the "99%" and the "1%."  On Tunney's Twitter page she has a picture of her holding a sign that says "Give Class War @ Chance."  Which class does she want to win the war, one must wonder?  I like the slogan "we are the 99%" precisely because it creates an "us vs. them." Because we are not the 1%! Some sentimental people have perverted it to be "we are 100%" but I feel this deludes the power of the message. 

Power is a finite resource and it must be meted out equally for liberation to be possible. That means some must lose some power/freedom. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with losing my white-male-hetero privilege if it means a more complete liberation in the end. I'm just interested in actually achieving emancipation, and not simply sitting at the cool kid table in the lefty club.

It is incredibly baffling to those less theoretically inclined to decipher the link between vonluntaryism/anarcho-capitalism and neoreactionary techno-fascism.  It appears that fascism hegemonically becomes its opposite, unrestrained freedom. Of course this is not new. See the trajectory of Georges Sorel from syndicalist to fascist, or even Mussolini (prominent in the Italian Socialist Party early in his political career) for that matter. What is clear is that radicalism for radicalism's sake is not enough. 

Seeing power and freedom as interrelated and from there seeing power as a finite resource that must be distributed with an interest to egalitarianism is a necessary step.  A revival of Gramsci is incredibly important in these times. The concepts of praxis and hegemony have taken on renewed relevance. How creepily appropriate that Gramsci was executed by the ultimate left wing traitor, Mussolini.

For all our hope that things will continually get better and better, it is an unfortunate fact that in politics (as in physics) for every action (in the pursuit of emancipatory progress), there is an equal and opposite reaction.  The rise of the Nouvelle Droite in France, the participation of Svoboda in the recent Ukrainian revolution and the fascist character of their current regime, the current democratically elected regime in India, and the anti-Bolivarian protests in Venezuela make it clear that those of us on the left have a continuing responsibility to be ever vigilant against all forms of reactionarism and fascism that threaten to undue the progress already done.

Liberation is necessary before any kind of liberty can be pronounced.  One can declare a space a Beyian "Temporary Autonomous Zone," but until we have a society where the autonomy of all is respected, it is premature to declare universal freedom.

Dare to struggle!  Dare to win!