This diary is being written by request.  The subject is all mine but I am doing this because I was asked.  I write this caveat because as time goes on my radical take on the world seems to diverge more and more with the rest of the commentators.  I am unable to focus on details and reductionist pieces any more.  I long ago came to the conclusion that these methods and the ideas they generated have failed.  If this is arrogant then I am arrogant.  I have studied for over half a century and these are the conclusions I have come to.  I have coauthored a book that sums up much of what I have learned and I’ll give a link if you want it.  The purpose of this diary is to give you a snapshot of the world model we have developed.  It is changing constantly so it needs periodic updates.  Read on below and I will give my answer to the question I ask in the title.

First of all the antithesis to the reductionist approach is that of systems analysis.  I will take a moment to remind you that when I use the word “system” it is in a very special context.  The reductionist counterpart has no meaning in this context.  The group is interested in the writing of Marx.   Marx wrote in a context that had little resemblance to the modern world.  Yet Marx had insights that outlive those limits.  The trick is to save the baby as we discard the bathwater.

Marx, for his time, was ahead of the field in understanding systems.  His ideas were founded on a sense of certain things happening without a mechanistic simple cause.  He wrote extensively to weave a more holistic view of what economics was as it connected with so many other things in human activity.  This was good and we need to go back with our modern understanding and put those ideas into today’s perspective.  This diary is not the place for that since it is at least a book.

Rather than do that I want to paint a picture (I am a painter…watercolor) of the world today as we might see it if our minds were able to take it all in. (The reductionist paradigm came about as a way of avoiding such an impossible task).  We are being forced to try to grapple with the whole system because we have more or less filled the planet and made the isolation of the past something that is disappearing as we watch in awe.

The earth system with its atmosphere and climate and oceans and ecosystems, etc has never been the subsystems our reductionist mentality created to deal with it, but as time goes on the error is being magnified non-linearly.  The role of the human species is a growing influence over time, anthropogenic global warming being but one aspect of this.  What Marx was concerned with was the role of the economic/political system in the way this one dominant species impacted on the world although he dealt with it as all humans did and most do, as if we can isolate our existence and our problems from the impact we have grown to have on the earth system.

Humans have generated conflicting world models within the common sphere of reductionist thought.  We have religions, reductionist science and other fragmented pieces of human “knowledge”.  We evolved from some beings that chimps have for example.  We like to think we are very different from them and we indeed are.  The scary part is the ways in which we remain similar.  Male female relations, political power, etc can be seen to have common features in both groups.

Part of the legacy of Cartesian reductionism is the mind/body duality and the way the living organism was metaphored as a special kind of machine.  These factors became integrated into the Capitalism Marx thought about and they shaped the way the relationship between wealth and labor were seen.  Power relations became formulated in terms that Marx described so well.  The problem is that these ideas were still in a reductionist box and remain there to this day.

So we have the fundamental challenge to face at this moment in history.  Is the human mind able to step outside of these long entrenched limits and confines and see us as a rouge species acting almost like a cancer on the planet?  Marx diagnosed the nature of this metastatic disease we had become.  He saw it in terms of the way the labors of humans that could be used in so many ways were channelled by the owners of the means of production into the creation of capital.

Here is where the systems idea is very enlightening.  The traditionional picture is that the greedy among us rise to power and control the rest of us and insist on a growing, unsustainable system to satisfy their greed.

Systems theory asks an important chicken and egg question at this point.  Is it the greedy humans that create the system or does the system simply find as many greedy humans as it needs to sustain itself and grow?  I submit that Robert Reich was correct in his book about “Supercapitalism” when he asserted that we could eliminate WalMart tomorrow and some other entity or entities would immediatly fill the vacuum and probaly evolve into something worse because of the ability to shed excess baggage.

Reductionism is wonderful for the human mind because it supplies answers.   Systems theory, recognizing the myriad complex interactions, can only describe things in general ways and can not supply false mechanistic explanations.

If this makes sense to you I apologize for bringing you to this point for you will not be able to go back.  Nor will you come up with answers the way you did before.  Nor will the political system seem like a useful tool for helping us.  No, those of us who have crossed the line are pessimistic.  The system grinds on.  It is like a cancer on the planet.  And as we look at our kids and grandkids we wonder.  And we hurt.

#Ride4Respect

Right now as you read this, Walmart Workers are on buses and they are caravanning from various cities to Bentonville, Arkansas where Walmart will be holding its annual shareholders meeting on June 7th. They plan to make their presence known by urging Walmart to stop its retaliation against associates who dare to speak out about working conditions. The #Ride4Respect uses the Freedom Riders of the Civil Rights Movement for inspiration. Completely appropriate, in my book. The fight for our rights as workers is a struggle for civil and human rights. Workers are American Citizens, and we are human beings. We don’t stop being Human Beings and Citizens when we pass through the doors of our place of employment.

One of the rights guaranteed to working people by U.S. Labor Law, is the right to speak out about the conditions of labor, and to do so without retaliation from our employer. That retaliation is illegal! Walmart’s retaliation has not ceased, in spite of denial that it exists, and in spite of promises to stop this retaliation (which they deny exists!) This is where the Unfair Labor Practice Strike comes into the picture. Striking Walmart Workers are a big part of the #Ride4Respect. This strike is historic as it will be the first prolonged ULP strike made by Walmart Workers. They are taking OUR Walmart’s fight for respect to another level.

Lisa Lopez walks and gives notice of ULP strike.
A Woman of Courage has put on her fighting clothes!
Mother Jones would be proud!

Impunity!

Now here’s the thing. Walmart should not be able to break labor law with impunity. Neither should workers have to put their jobs on the line to enforce labor law. Like any other crime, we should be able to report the crime, and the cops should show up and put the handcuffs on the culprit, namely Walmart….Yeah…right! We were threatened with arrest at our Black Friday Demo in San Antonio for putting our feet on Walmart’s grass! Six squad cars were there in jiffy when Walmart made their complaint.

So, OK, I’m stating the obvious here: Justice is not blind in America. She sees clearly who butters her bread. Walmart breaks labor laws, retaliates against workers illegally, endangers workers, practices wage theft. And if not done directly by Walmart, then by their supply chain. For which they claim no responsibility, but are ready and willing to claim the profits. They break labor laws with the impunity, meaning they know that no one will come to arrest them.

Therefore, it is up to the workers to put their jobs on the line to enforce labor laws themselves. These are low-wage workers who face hardship from the loss of even one day’s wages. Many of them can expect to be out of work for awhile, until their case is settled. Unless, of course, the case goes against them, in which case, they are just plain out of luck.

A 27 page report documenting Walmart’s abusive and retaliatory labor practices can be downloaded here: http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/.

Organizing Community Support

There is a movement afoot to organize Changing Walmart Teams on a community by community basis. I have been on three conference calls in the past three weeks which have included representatives from Making Change at Walmart, Jobs with Justice, and OUR Walmart. All of this is still in the planning stages, so I won’t go too far into it here. But I can say (speaking only for myself) that building strong local, ongoing, support teams is the most important thing we can do to support Walmart Workers.

This is going to be a long fight! We need to organize community support with a view to the long haul. Small, solid support groups, ready to step outside of the comfort zone. Groups that can hang together and offer real long-term support, and not just organized for one event.

Low-wage workers are finding the courage to stand up, we need to find the courage to stand beside them.

Supporting Low-wage workers is in our interest!

Let me make it plain, that I support the Walmart Workers and other low-wage workers because it is the right and moral thing to do. They are our Fellow Workers, and we care what happens to them.
When will we ever learn?
An injury to one is an injury to all!

But I also want to point out that fighting for low-wage workers is in the interest of the entire working class, from the highest to the lowest paid workers. Trickle-down is a crock of crap. I think all of us would agree on that point. In fact, the welfare of the working class is built from the bottom up, not from the top down. The higher the standard of living that we ensure for lowest paid workers, the better for the rest of us. When the boot of the ruling class comes to grind us down, we need to make sure that there is a limit (as a class!) to how much of a grinding we will take. Sad to say, the American working class has never established that limit. We allow the least among us to be ground down into dust.

Nothing has hurt the American working class more over the years, then its willingness (as a class) to buy into the ruling class notion that middle class workers are being robbed by the poor. Nothing. And then add to that racism and sexism, and we are screwed. But we screw ourselves by eating the load of crap that the ruling class feeds us.

We now have a chance to make a real change for the better. Imagine the American working class with Walmart Workers, Fast Food Workers, and Warehouse Workers solidly organized! What a difference it would make for all of us.

I mean, really, sit down in quiet place and imagine that for a few minutes!
Then get up and start working to make it happen!

William Z Foster: The Importance of Organizing the Unorganized

The question of organizing the many millions of unorganized workers is the most vital matter now before the America labor movement. The future progress of the working class depends upon the solution of this great problem.

The organization of the unorganized is a life and death question for the labor movement. To bring the millions into the unions is necessary not only for the protection of the unorganized workers, and to further class ends in general, but also to safeguard the life of the existing organizations. Many of the trade unions are now under such heavy attacks from the employers that their very existence is threatened. These struggles can be resolved favorably to the workers only by drawing to their support the great mass of unorganized….

Failure of the unions to strengthen their ranks now by the inclusion of vast masses of the unorganized will expose them to the most deadly dangers in the slack industrial period that is not far ahead, when the employers will renew their “open shop” campaign of destruction against the unions with redoubled vigor.

True then, true now.

SOURCES

Making Change at Walmart
http://makingchangeatwalmart.org/

OUR Walmart
Organization United for Respect at Walmart
http://forrespect.org/

NLRB Employee Rights
http://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/employee-rights

Organize the Unorganized
-by William Z Foster
Chicago TUEL, 1926
Chapter I-”The Importance of Organizing the Unorganized”
http://archive.org/details/OrganizeTheUnorganized

For further study:
An interesting article on ULP strikes from LaborNotes.com:
http://www.labornotes.org/2012/08/making-sure-strike-centers-unfair-labor-practices

Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone?
WE DO!!

Follow the #Ride4Respect

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Ride4respect&src=hash

SIGN THIS PETITION
Stand with Walmart Workers/Petition for June 7
http://action.changewalmart.org/page/s/stand-with-strikers

DONATE
https://donate.changewalmart.org/page/contribute/direct-fr?source=20130530_mcaw

JOIN/PLAN AN EVENT
http://corporateactionnetwork.org/campaigns/june-7th-associate-appreciation-day/events

Connect with OUR Walmart
http://forrespect.org/

In Solidarity,
JayRaye

Bhaskar Sunkara’s recent essay in The Nation, Letter to ‘The Nation’ From a Young Radical, argues persuasively that American liberalism is “practically ineffective and analytically inadequate” to the twin political tasks of mobilizing supporters and generating policy. Sunkara blames the crisis of liberalism on the fact that, “Liberalism’s original sin lies in its lack of a dynamic theory of power,” which leads liberals–Sunkara specifically cites Obama–to treat

politics as a salon discussion between polite people with competing ideas. . . [in which] the best program … is assumed to prevail in the end…[and] political action is disconnected … from the bloody entanglement of interests and passions that mark our lived existence.

Admitting that liberalism is “a slippery term” Sunkara defines it in terms of the two dominant species of Washington Democratic insiders, which he defines as follows:

to the extent that we can assign coherence to the ideology, two main camps of modern American liberalism are identifiable: welfare liberals and technocratic liberals. The former, without the radicals they so often attacked marching at their left, have not adequately moored their efforts to the working class, while the latter naïvely disconnect policy from politics, often with frightening results.

Both sorts of liberalism, Sunkara argues, have failed analytically and politically, though in different ways and for different reasons. Nevertheless, Sankara has the same prescription: “the solution to liberalism’s impasse lies in the re-emergence of American radicalism.”

What would that look like? The first task is that

Socialists must urgently show progressives how alien the technocratic liberal worldview is to the goals of welfare-state liberalism—goals held by the rank and file of the liberal movement. … Broad anti-austerity coalitions, particularly those centered at the state and municipal levels like last year’s Chicago Teachers Union strike, point the way toward new coalitions between leftists and liberals committed to defending social goods.

But anti-austerity is not, of course, the full program, but

just one example of the kind of class politics that has to be reconstituted in America today; surely there are many others. The Next Left’s anti-austerity struggles must be connected to the environmental movement, to the struggle of immigrants for labor and citizenship rights, and even, as unromantic as it sounds, to the needs of middle-class service recipients.

Although Sunkara’s essay, like his groundbreaking publication Jacobin Magazine, is an important attempt at creating bridges between liberals and radicals during a time of onslaught by the corporate Right, even as it demonstrates the analytical weakness of liberalism, it suffers from some of the very same analytical inadequacies of liberalism itself, especially its lack of a dynamic theory of power.

Specifically, Sunkara’s categories of analysis are rooted in politics and ideology, with no moorings in the social formation beyond a few statements about working class support for social welfare liberalism–statements which fail to recognize the accomplishments wrought via American working class and subaltern self-activity. In light of this, it is perhaps not surprising–though it ought to be–that a self-described “young radical” had no place in his analysis for a discussion of capitalism as an exploitative economic system whose nature is at the root of or contributes greatly to every one of the social problems liberals profess to care about.

American Liberalism and the American Working Class

American liberalism is difficult to understand, not just because the word came to mean the opposite of what it had meant the prior century, but also because the modern version is genetically incapable of analytical consistency or rigor because it is based on half-truths about capitalism, which are the only truths the system allows into discourse about itself.

Specifically, modern liberals understand that capitalism creates class and other forms of conflict, but rather than seeing that conflict as inherent to the system and an engine for change, they seek to defuse its oppositional energy and channel what remains into policy proposals that preserve the status quo of capitalist relations. Given that, how could liberals do anything other than become, if not the enemies, then the unwitting enabler of the enemies, of the working class?

To be radical is to get to the root (Latin: radix=root) of things, to understand not merely their appearance but their underlying structures and dynamics. To understand American liberalism, we need to understand its history from the past forward, not start with a bestiary of newspaper pundits and then work back.

American liberalism originated during the New Deal, but the energy underlying it came not from FDR and friends but from American working people, not from above but from below. FDR came into office on a conservative platform of cutting the federal budget, and the centerpiece of his First New Deal (1933-34) was the NRA, a corporatist scheme that allowed big corporations to collude on production and prices as a way to replace “ruinous competition” with rationality.

Even the liberal accomplishments of the Second New Deal (1935-36), which included Social Security, rural electrification, etc., came about not because of liberal leaders but because of pressure from below. Consider the case of labor law.

The NRA had a landmark provision granting workers in NRA Code industries the right to organize labor unions–which was inserted only because of pressure from Labor leaders and rank and file members. After the Supreme Court struck down the NRA, labor law reform took the form of the National Labor Relations Act, which the FDR administration supported only belatedly and under political pressure.

But the Wagner Act itself well illustrates the inherent conservatism of liberalism. New Deal liberal leaders, including bill sponsor Sen. Robert Wagner, were equally disturbed by the militancy of working class strikers (especially the Sit Down strikers) and the violence of anti-union goons hired by employers.

As a result, the purpose of the NLRA was to rein in both sides, as though both labor and capital were equally to blame for the violence of the era’s labor struggles. Most particularly, labor unions were reduced to contract negotiators and managers, limited to engaging in collective bargaining on behalf of their members at a particular employer and then enforcing that contract. Unions were even made responsible for strikes that take place outside of the bargaining context, thus making the unions into enforcers against their own members.

Because they subscribe to orthodox economics, which holds that equilibrium is the natural state of capitalist markets and thus capitalist social formations, liberals are and always have been unable to conceive of social conflict as anything other than a social malady to be cured, and thus always wind up on the side of establishment institutions against those seeking to change them.

The Collapse of Liberalism

During the Great Prosperity of the Pax Americana-Sovietica, American capitalism dominated the world, US manufacturing capital reaped huge profits, and American workers used their union power to share in the prosperity. As corporate profits began a long-term decline in the late 60s-early 70s, however, capital began the process of reneging on what Sunkara rightly terms the Fordist compromise of the Boom era.

The macro-economic side of liberalism–the aspect of the ideology that was supposed to use Keynesian tools to ensure continuously rising GDP, i.e., a bigger economic pie–began to fail in the 70s, and the emergence of stagnant growth with inflation gave the right the opening it needed to turn its anti-labor ideas into policy, and liberalism became a dirty word in American politics.

Reconstituting a Broad American Left

The solution is not for liberals to become socialists, nor for them to adopt a Marxist analysis of capitalism, although those would be great of course.

I suggest that liberals and radicals can come together by focusing on and actively supporting those elements of the US working class–including many working people who identify more strongly in racial or ethnic terms than in class terms–that are engaging in rights’ struggles. We should be looking to them for guidance on the issues, on emerging organizational forms of struggle, and much more.

Fast food workers, for example, are not simply demanding higher wages and better working conditions. Like Occupy, the fast food workers are pioneering new forms of worker organization, largely out of necessity imposed by the nature of the fast food industry. The collective bargaining model of the NLRA simply does not apply to fast food, with its very small units of production and high employee turnover, and workers are responding by making demands that do not fit within that paradigm. Consider also the struggles of the Immokalee, Florida, workers, whose innovative campaigns have succeeded in breaking the usual labor mold.

This means that liberals would need to reserve pre-judgment of worker demands as excessive or outside the box or too radical, and that radicals would need to likewise reserve pre-judgment of demands as too conservative or beside the point of class struggle. Mostly, for those of us who are writers and/or activists, it means listening to those who are most often ignored with open minds.

“Once upon a time there was a poor mother who lived alone with her son, Jack. All they had in the world was an old cow to give them milk. One day the cow stopped giving milk so the woman had to sell her. She told Jack to take the cow to market and to get as much money as he could for her.
On his way to market Jack met a man who wanted to buy the cow. He offered Jack five beans for the cow. Jack knew that his mother would be very angry if he sold the cow for beans. “They are very special beans” said the man. “They are MAGIC ! – they will bring you good luck!” Jack thought that he and his mother needed some good luck, so he gave the cow to the man in return for the magic beans.”

Jack’s tale begins with some economic truths: trade is grounded in the perceived fair value of an exchange of goods and services and, in times of hardship, people will accept forms of trade that they might not consider otherwise. Fortunately, the old man did not take advantage of Jack’s naive ideas of fair value, as the beans were indeed magic. (Why the man was willing to trade them for a spent cow remains open to question.)
Most of us make less fanciful decisions, and consider carefully whether an item we are purchasing is a good value, but until recently, most of us have not questioned the inherent worth of cash in pocket, the piece of plastic that represents funds in our account, the place where this money is kept, or the balance between trust and government regulation that keeps the entire system running. Since the financial crash things have begun to change. Kos diarists have examined the role the banks play on a personal level: skimming a little off every transaction, and assessing excessive fees. Others, particularly bobswern and gjohnsit, have assessed the banks’ culpability in crippling the system itself.
This trend has accelerated to the point that trust in banks is becoming increasingly difficult. Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi has shown the breadth and depth of manipulations meant to keep tight control of money in a few centers. He also shows exactly how national governments, their courts and regulatory authorities, have become helpless or even complicit in this process.

It’s now evident that there is a ubiquitous culture among the banks to collude and cheat their customers as many times as they can in as many forms as they can conceive,” he said. “And that’s not just surmising. This is just based upon what they’ve been caught at.

The foundation of the Capitalist system itself has been called into question, at least in its present incarnation. If governments can’t regulate their own money supply for the benefit of the majority of their own citizens, and banks abuse their position shamelessly on account of that, people will eventually turn elsewhere. I believe that the rise of virtual currencies, such as the Bitcoin, and alternative trading schemes, such as local scrip and barter exchanges, are symptoms of an economic system that is bent to the breaking point.

Part of the problem with how money works under Capitalism-as-practiced, is that it functions two ways: on one level as a medium of exchange and on another as the object of capital. Unfortunately these roles are diametrically opposed. Money is passed from one hand to another frequently as goods and services are bought and sold, but as an object, its role is to stay put, and hopefully attract other money to it through interest or speculation. Unfortunately, its latter job has become more important to the people who control most of it: the infamous 1%. Capital is currently sitting in a black hole sucking more money beyond the reach of individuals, and even businesses. Gjohnsit, in the diary “No, you aren’t crazy. The economy is busted” states, “Money velocity is one of the most basic measuring sticks for economic activity. The fewer monetary transactions, the less economic activity”. I am republishing his FED graph, which shows exactly how much velocity has slowed in the recent past.

Because money is not functioning properly on a small to medium scale, other forms of exchange are becoming more popular. If individuals and businesses are turning to these alternatives, it signifies the failure of Capitalism-as-practiced even more than street protests such as UK Uncut and the Occupy movement. The marketplace itself is beginning to judge the current system as not fit for purpose. Despite the fact that alternatives can be unstable, dependent on perceived value, and can also be subject to legal restraint should they become too successful, their use is increasing. From simple barter to internet currency, people are looking for workarounds.

Barter on smaller and larger scales:

Several friends of mine have recently joined a barter club. To join, you must be vouched for by at least two club members, at which point you get a password and can post items for trade on the club’s Facebook page. The rules are complex, extensive, and moderated heavily to ensure that spammers and businesses don’t post under the guise of individuals. Cash purchases are strictly forbidden. However, sometimes a poster will list “specific consumables” in their list of acceptable trades. The most popular consumable is toilet paper. Everyone uses it and everyone knows its value. Reportedly however, most people can work out trades of some sort without resorting to using currency in any form, even toilet paper. Time bartering schemes work in a similar manner with services rather than goods the medium of exchange. Both they and local barter clubs are as much about community building with like-minded people as they are about avoiding corporate consumerism. They could be thought of as tribal in nature, requiring a level of trust that extends only to a small circle of people. However, their small scale means that they also don’t challenge current financial hegemony.
Surprisingly, a much more extensive and organised form of barter exists: business-to-business barter exchanges. According to some sources, 1/3 of NYSE businesses use at least some forms of barter. The International

Reciprocal Trade Association, one of the certifying bodies, “made it possible for over 400,000 companies World Wide to utilize their Excess Business Capacities and underperforming assets, to earn an estimated $12 Billion dollars in previously lost and wasted revenues.” This is done through trade credits, a form of virtual currency, and is particularly useful for small businesses like printers, where labour costs make up a great deal of their budget, and businesses whose overhead is fixed, like hotels. Membership in the IRTA cover the costs of investigating the businesses involved, and keeping track of these trades for tax purposes. Trust is therefore delegated to the certifying authority, so its reputation is important, as is its stability. Interestingly enough, after supplies of the the metal-based Liberty Dollar were confiscated in 2009, and its promoter prosecuted, the IRTA felt the need to distance itself, insisting their “trade dollars” were “a legal and robust form of commerce in America”, sanctioned by President Reagan himself. Governmental authority is supported as taxes are paid. Even so, $12 billion does not pass through the hands of banks, so some challenge to the status quo is involved.

Local Currencies

Scrips that work within a limited area often arise in reaction to economic trends that hurt a population cohesive enough to try to mitigate them. One recent example is the push against globalization, monopoly of big box stores, and other ways that big Capital tries to extract maximum profit while contributing minimally to the community. They are like local bartering and time-sharing schemes in that they are meant to reinforce local ties more than a substitute for national currency. In the past, local scrips arose during the Depression in both America and Europe, and some worked effectively to benefit the communities that used them. But they were mainly implemented because, then as now, the velocity of national currencies had slowed to a crawl. Unfortunately, the latter, when successful did challenge central banks authority, and became victims of their own success.

Many current UK initiatives, such as the Totnes, and Bristol Pounds have come from the Transition Town movement, which seeks to build robust local economies in a post peak-oil world. They are instituted to rebuild interpersonal relationships and ecological resilience. Totnes’ effort has been particularly successful, partly because Totnes is a fairly remote market town in Devon. The area has also been a magnet for Progressives since 1925, when Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst set up an experimental school at nearby Dartington Hall. Because of its local success, the Totnes Pound has become an example to larger cities like Bristol. In Totnes, places where their scrip can be used are limited to local businesses and restaurants. However the Bristol Pound is morphing into a virtual currency, is banked by their local credit union, can be applied to energy bills, and is becoming more flexible. In this way, it is becoming more like earlier incarnations of local currency such as the Wara, which was used in Bavaria and Austria during the early 1930s.

The Wara was a form of Stamp Scrip, invented by Silvio Gesell, a German businessman, specifically meant to increase the velocity of money. Once a month, stamps worth a percentage of the value are affixed to the back of a note to keep it current. This makes it a form of monetary hot potato and discourages hoarding. The most famous examples of how this could restart moribund economies are those that took place between World Wars I and II, in Wörgl, Austria and Schwanenkirchen, Germany. In Wörgl, the mayor instituted it by depositing 40,000 Austrian schillings in a savings bank and issuing notes worth 98% of a schilling. They could theoretically be redeemed, but thrifty townspeople were inclined to keep the extra 2%. Initially it was put into place to finance local works projects, and stamp sales financed a soup kitchen.

Over the 13-month period the project ran, the council not only carried out all the intended works projects, but also built new houses, a reservoir, a ski jump, and a bridge. The people also used scrip to replant forests, in anticipation of the future cash flow they would receive from the trees.

In Schwanenkirchen, a coal mine owner in the village of began to pay his workers in a form of Gesell’s scrip called the Wara. After the miners discovered that local merchants would accept it, they raised no objections.

When, after two years of complete stagnation, the workers for the first time brought home their pay envelopes, no one was interested in hoarding a cent of it; all the money went to the stores to pay off debts or for the purchase of necessities. The shopkeepers, too, were happy. Although at first they had felt a little hesitant about Wara, they had no choice, as no one had any other kind of money. The shopkeepers then forced it on the wholesalers, the wholesalers forced it on the manufacturers, who in turn tried to pass it on to those who carried their notes, or they exchanged it at Herr Hebecker’s mine for coal…So Wara kept circulating, a large part of it returning to the coal mine, where it provided work, profits and better conditions for the entire community. Indeed, one could not have recognized Schwanenkirchen a few months after work had resumed at the mine. The village was on a prosperity basis, workers and merchants were free from debts and a new spirit of freedom and life pervaded the town.

Unfortunately the mayor of Wörgl and the coal miner in Schwanenkirchen were a little too successful. Surrounding villages were jumping on board, and visitors from abroad were studying how to apply similar approaches. This was too much of a threat for the German and Austrian Central banks. In 1931, the German government ended use of the Wara by emergency decree, and in 1933, the Austrian government did likewise, first claiming that the idea was crazy, then Communist, and then Fascist. Ironically, their insistence on central control led to a lot of unfortunate “craziness” later on when high unemployment and desperation led the people of these countries to adopt those very philosophies, to no good end.
Obviously, the more the line between magic beans and genuine currency becomes blurred, the more likely the irate Giant of Central Authority is to come swarming down howling for blood, which brings us to the cautionary tale of the Liberty Dollar, and the recently fashionable Bitcoin, neither of which are based on a trusting community, both of which appeal to libertarians and individualists, and only one of which is (or was) backed by anything of intrinsic value.

Sound Currency versus Magic Beans

The Liberty Dollar was the brainchild of Bernard von NotHaus (seriously), more of a countercultural DFH than a libertarian. However, like a lot of very reactionary people, he believed that money should always represent something of genuine value such as precious metals. From 1998 through 2007, silver, gold, and copper coins were issued and notes printed, backed by metals housed in a secure warehouse in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Memberships in the scheme could be purchased allowing a discount. Merchant who would accept them were also offered a discount. Regional offices were set up, $60 million dollars worth of Liberty dollars went into circulation, and the FBI began to take notice. Von NotHause defended himself, saying the coins and notes did not have the words “legal tender” anywhere on them and were therefore a form of voluntary barter currency. Since the scrip looked like money, and could be used as money, the DOJ begged to disagree, and was quoted as saying “While these forms of anti-government activities do not involve violence, they are every bit as insidious and represent a clear and present danger to the economic stability of this country”. Von NotHaus was convicted in 2011 and could face 15 to 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and confiscation of £7 million in precious metals. He is still awaiting sentencing in a borrowed mansion in Malibu, and is quoted in the NYT as saying:

The thing that fires me up the most, is this is what happens: When money goes bad, people go crazy. Do you know why? Because they can’t exist without value. Value is intrinsic in man.

So if stable valuation based on physical reality is important, why has the Bitcoin been in the news lately, and why have investors such as the Winklevoss twins gone to the trouble to buy up $11 million worth of them? Bitcoins were launched in 2009 by someone under the nom de guerre of Satoshi Nakamoto, who may or may not actually be a consortium of programmers. Their value not insured by a central bank, based on the value of precious metals, or on the value of labour. Bitcoins are backed up by, well, nothing. They are manufactured out of thin air by a process known as “mining”, which consists of allowing your computer to be used as part of a system to record and document Bitcoin transactions. The mining process becomes more time consuming and less remunerative as time goes on, so early adopters, and those with proportionately larger computing power have had a definite advantage. The only thing that makes them at all attractive as a medium of exchange is that, like gold and limited edition Beanie Babies, only a certain amount will ever exist. In its early history, the Bitcoin carried a whiff of scandal, as the preferred and untraceable medium of exchange on the notorious drug website Silk Road, and as a way for the Iranians to get around the trade embargo leveled against them. Recently, their price spiked, reportedly because panicked Cypriots were trying to exchange them for Euros, but possibly because they had been widely covered in the media. Then they abruptly tanked when their security protocols came into question. Nonetheless, they have drawn attention in a way that more stable B-to-B barter exchanges and local currencies have not.

The US Government considers them a possible threat, purportedly because they could be used to fund drug dealers and terrorists or support unpopular regimes such as Iran and North Korea. Most economists think their volatility limits their usefulness, though Stanford’s Caroline Hoxby wrote: “First part is right: value derives from belief others want to use it for trade. Second part is not obvious: beliefs could stabilize or not.”

While their anonymous nature may have made Bitcoins initially attractive to people who did not want to run money through banks, they have come to appeal to the same contrarian demographic as the Liberty Dollar, simply because they are not a national currency reliant on the integrity of whatever central bank is responsible for them. Unlike barter schemes and community currency, they represent a complete lack of trust. If they have a community of adherents, it consists of fellow skeptics. At this point, people are willing to consider trading for beans in the hope that they will prove to be magic. All of these alternative forms of exchange are Anti-Capitalist in nature because Capitalism is simply not working for ordinary people and businesses dealing in goods and services. If a significant proportion of the population, across the political spectrum, is coming to this conclusion, governments should pay attention. The marketplace is talking.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega celebrating Sandinista election victory in 2006 in the Revolutionary Plaza, Managua.

“You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month.” – CIA operative discussing with Philip Graham, editor Washington Post, on the availability and prices of journalists willing to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories. (from “Katherine The Great,” by Deborah Davis (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991)

Thus Davis chronicles the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) official campaign to turn American newspapers, into conduits for its anti-communist ideology which began after World War II. It was called “Operation Mockingbird”. Perhaps the operation would have been more accurately named “Operation Cuckoo” as the cuckoo will lay its egg in another bird’s nest and steal the original. With this propaganda operation and spying operation, the CIA effectively threw objectivity out of the nest of American journalism and put CIA denominated news in its place.

The CIA was successful in capturing the nests of the biggest newspapers in the U.S., including the the “Washington Post”, the “N.Y. Times” , and the “Los Angeles Times”, among many others. They all still seem to be on team. During the years of the Contra war against the lawful Sandinista government in the 1980′s, the CIA employed similar methods here in Nicaragua. Is it still going on here?

When I first investigated moving to Nicaragua in 2012, I asked a friend there about which newspapers I should read there. I was told “none of them”. She said that the two biggest national Spanish language dailies, “La Prensa” and “El Nuevo Diario” were both strongly opposed to the current Sandinista government. Of the two, “La Prensa”, was the most virulently anti-Sandinista, akin in tone to Fox News vicious attacks on Obama’s bone fides.

Thus when I moved to Nicaragua, I began reading the lessor evil, “El Nuevo Diario”, on a daily basis. About three months ago, that paper changed radically. From being something akin to a neighborhood shopping newspaper, El Nuevo Diario suddenly expanded into four sections, in color, one section totally devoted to economic news, along with a large variety of reprints of stories from the New York Times.

Many of El Dario’s international stories now routinely take pot-shots at left wing governments such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina, although largely avoiding La Prensa’s Fox-like screams against President Ortega.

“La Prensa”, likely the biggest national paper, is owned by Violeta Chamorro and her family. In the 1980‘s during the Contra war, her paper routinely attacked the Sandinistas and received U.S. funds for their efforts. She was, in 1990, the first of the three U.S. funded anti-socialist presidents. She ended the 11 year reign of the revolutionary socialist Sandinista party. Chamorro and her two U.S. approved and funded successors spent the next 16 years, allowing the U.S. government to once again call the shots in Nicaragua. Restored to power, the local capitalists’ representatives virtually demolished all the social welfare programs that the Sandinistas had put in place when they ousted Somoza family dictatorship in 1979.

In 1979, the Sandinista movement ( officially the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, or FSLN).) had come to power after years of a revolutionary war that successfully ended the Somoza regime.

The Sandinistas, begun as a small, clandestine, Marxist anti-Somoza guerrilla group in the early 1960’s, was named after Augusto César Sandino, a revered national hero for successfully evicting the U.S. Marines from Nicaragua in 1932. Sandino’s rebel forces had made the continuation of the U.S.’s 20 year military occupation untenable. The FSLN was so-named by one of its main theoreticians and founders, Carlos Fonseca. Dying in a firefight with Somoza’s National Guards in 1976, he didn’t live to see victory. The FSLN’s heroism against the hated dictatorship, however, earned it massive popular support which culminated in Somoza’s ouster and the FSLN attaining power, first under the auspices of a ruling unity junta and then with Daniel Ortega’s election as president in 1984.

Upon defeating Somoza in 1979, the Sandinista movement introduced a vast socialist program of nationalizing land, creating worker cooperatives, both agrarian and industrial, and combating the then massive illiteracy by sending thousands of teams of students into the countryside and barrios to teach reading and writing, reportedly reducing the iliteracy rate from 50.36% to 12.94% in some five months The Sandinistas also set up a huge network of free, community based health clinics, providing health care to millions who had never before had access to such services.

The U.S., in the person of then President, Jimmy Carter, was politely civil to the new Nicaraguan government. But, with his loss to Ronald Reagan in 1981, the U.S. attitude turned openly and actively belligerent. (For an excellent and detailed account of Reagan’s anti-Sandinista efforts, see Stephen Kinzer’s “Blood of Brothers — Life and War in Nicaragua” (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, N.Y., 1991)

Thereafter, the Sandinista efforts to bring economic and social equality to the nation, were viciously obstructed by Reagan, who set about using the U.S.’s vast resources, both legal and illegal, to create and maintain the “ Contra” war against the Sandinista government, forcing the fledgling government to divert needed resources to its defense against the armed might of the U.S. which had created a proxy army, based in Honduras, to destabilize and destroy the new government.

Funding the Contra army against the Sandinista government was only one arm of the Reagan government’s attack. According to the Inventory of Conflict and Environment’s case study by Ellie Klerlein on “Environmental Effects of Nicaraguan Armed Conflicts”, the U.S. blocked World Bank and other foreign development loans, imposed restrictions on U.S. trade, including reducing Nicaragua’s sugar quota by 90%, and canceled its Overseas Private Investment Corporation insurance, needed to attract international loans and investment.

Reagan’s attempts to destabilize the Sandinista government were ultimately successful. By the time of the 1990 Nicaraguan election, after nine years of fighting to survive as an independent nation, the economy was in ruins. Kler in her case study cited above, puts the number of war-related deaths at 43,000. Thousands more were crippled by injuries. Food supplies were insufficient due to the Contra’s disruption of normal farming. As a result, the social fabric was in tatters.

Although the U.S.’s Contra army never succeeded in defeating the Sandinista movement militarily, the war so wrecked the economy that the U.S., by pouring a million of U.S. taxpayers’ dollars into the anti-sandinista opposition’s electoral efforts, were able to elect the U.S.’s approved unity candidate, Violeta Chamorro.

Virtually the first act of the Chamorro-led government was to grab back the land from the small farmers cooperatives that the Sandinista government had allocated to them from the nationalization of the Somoza family and friends ‘ holdings. The majority of the previously nationalized companies suffered the same fate.

Before their fall in 1979, two generations of the Somaza family dictatorship and its friends had acquired the majority of the assets of the whole country, including most of its arable land and virtually all its industries.

The first Somoza dictator, General Anastasio Somoza García, had taken presidential power in 1936. Formerly, he was head of the U.S. trained and equipped National Guards, which he employed to assassinate Augusto César Sandino in 1934. (See Kinzer, above,for details on General Somoza’s nasty history.)

General Anastasio Somoza ruled, officially and occasionally by proxy, until assassination 1956 by a young rebel poet. Thereafter Somoza’s eldest son took over until his own death, of natural causes, in 1956. Then the next eldest son, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, took over the presidency. The Somoza family ruled with an iron and greedy fist through the force of its personally controlled National Guard. After Somoza Debayle fled the country in 1979, remnants of his National Guard formed the nucleus of the U.S. created Contra force. (Kinzer, in “Blood of Brothers” gives a detailed account of Reagan’s military creation and maintenance of the Contras.)

Under the Somoza regime, the majority of the Nicaraguan population had owned nothing and lived in brutally poor conditions, without access to health care, education or land. Electoral votes were bought wholesale. It was a sham democracy controlled by the Somoza’s and their brutal and thoroughly corrupt National Guards. These were the conditions which gave rise to the Sandinista guerrilla group in the early 1960‘s and to the wide-spread hatred for the dictator.

During the 60’s and 70’s, even the upper class Chamorro family were vocal anti-Somoza opponents, even losing one activist publisher son, Pedro Chamorro, to assassination by the dictator in 1978. Perhaps that was one of Somoza’s most critical mis-steps. Thereafter even the U.S. withdrew their support.

By early 1979, virtually the whole country was supporting the Sandinista revolutionaries, who had taken control of most of the cities and towns. By July, even the National Guard had disintegrated. Somoza and his followers hurriedly left the country, taking millions from the national assets with them. The Sandinistas had won and would remain in government for next 11 years.

After the 1990 election, however, Pedro Chamorro ‘s widow, Violeta, was elected to office and she and her neo-liberal opposition supporters, set upon dismantling the vast community health care and free public education system that the Sandinistas had put into place. They simply diverted its funding.

In 2006, after 16 years of going backwards economically and socially, the FSLN’s Daniel Ortega, was again voted into the presidential office.

President Ortega immediately began re-building the shattered Sandinista social welfare programs, but he softened many of their previous socialist economic policies, successfully walking a fine line between cooperation with many of the U.S. controlled International Monetary fund and World Bank policies and those of Chavez’s Bolivarian socialist inspired programs of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) a progressive Latin American cooperation and development organization which has funded many large projects in Nicaragua.

Much to the distaste of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Ortega has been a strong ally of Venezuela’s Chavez government and now that of Nicholas Maduro, but he has also managed to juggle the World Bank and IMF investment demands with those of ALBA’s Bolivarian idealism to win re-election in 2011. He dances very well on thin ice.

During President Obama’s recent visit to Costa Rica, President Ortega joined other Central American leaders for a polite dinner meeting with Obama, but immediately left the group to fly to Venezuela to attend a memorial for his former close ally and friend, President Hugo Chavez. There he was outspoken in his support for the socialist Maduro and critical of U.S. meddling in Venezuela’s post-election politics. Unlike the most Latin American countries, the U.S. has refused to recognize Maduro’s victory.

The Sandinista government of today definitely pursues a “mixed economy” program, actively expanding social programs, such as health care, education, housing for the poor, micro-credits to small businesses, and job training, while encouraging foreign capitalist investment and providing sizable tax benefits to privately owned local and foreign industries.

President Ortega has seen, in the dead flesh of his own people, the dire effects of too openly flaunting U.S. capitalism’s economic hegemony. One suspects that Ortega will continue to quietly improve social conditions while courting more U.S. and foreign capitalist investment, thus hoping to avoid reawakening the active wrath of the North American colossus. If one is to judge by Nicaraguan national dailies, however, the U.S. is still maintaining its CIA funded propaganda war on the Sandinistas.

Perhaps Ortega is only waiting for his fellow Latin American countries in the Chavez-inspired CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) group (the U.S. and Canada were expressly excluded) to carry out their plans for a Latin American defensive military alliance. The U.S. and Canada were excluded from CELAC membership. Hopefully one day such an alliance might give socialist-minded countries like Nicaragua a better chance to thrive without U.S. interference. In the meantime, I expect President Ortega will keep on ice dancing, despite the fact that the the U.S.’s Operation Mockingbird may keep on singing its anti-socialist tunes in the Nicaraguan media.

Simple Reasons Capitalism Isn’t Your Friend

I realize our group here in the halls of orange-land are small. I think most dKos readers are truly interested in the general betterment of humankind. Most of the problem is that Capitalism has always sold itself as a merit system. Its really not. I am going to try and show you why.

First and foremost, the most basic thing Capitalism is, is an EXTRACTION SYSTEM. Buy low, sell high. Make cheap, price at the highest the “market” will bear. These are the common sense adages we have been taught since birth. How else can you make a dollar, right? Without money, how in the world would anything work; buying a place to live, food, clothing, and any amenities we enjoy for leisure time.

Yet, if you think about it – the collapse of the market, and the austerity being imposed on the people while the rich make record profits is no aberration. Its the system doing exactly what it is supposed to do. What it always does. It extracts from the bottom to fill the top. What they told you is a lie to make you work against your own interests.

John Kozy © 2010:

The Western commercial system is extractive. It exists to extract more from consumers than it supplies in products and services. Its goal is profit, and profit literally means to make more (pro-ficere). Its goal has never been to improve the human condition but to exploit it. It works like this:

Consider two water tanks, initially each partially full, one above the other. One gallon of water is dumped from the upper tank into the lower one for each two gallons extracted from the lower tank and pumped into the upper tank. Over time, the lower tank ends up empty and the upper tank ends up full. The circulation of water between the tanks ends.

Extraction Capitalism is real, and it is you they are extracting from.

The Business Insider just reported “Profits Just Hit Another All-Time High, Wages Just Hit Another All-Time Low.”

You may, or may not have seen the viral video about income inequality. People generally think they would like to make more. But somehow they have convinced us the system is fair. Worse? They have kept it where few of us have any idea what is really going on.

Think too, about this little factoid while you view the below. Koch Brothers’ Wealth Grew By $33 Billion in 3 Years As America’s Schools Report 1 Million Homeless Kids.

“In one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression, the billionaire Koch brothers who habitually rail against government’s unfair burden on the wealthy, have almost doubled their net worth to a combined $64 billion.”

How much do they really need? They could give every kid a cool Mill, and still be the fattest cats on the block. But they won’t. They are Capitalists.

Its not just “broken at the moment.” It always has been.

Some of you may remember the kinder, gentler Capitalism that Workers demanded after the 1st Depression. But it is also plain to see the cycle began anew. In history, Empires always fall because people get tired of serving Elites. And every gain made by workers has been violently opposed by the PTB – and won with the blood of the workers.

Remember too, that while “regulation” may have been highest in the 1970′s and wages the most fair, there was still a broad segment of our society that has always endured poverty. Urban blacks, Appalachian whites, recent immigrants all have had to live on the most meager of wages because in order for profits to work, somebody has to make next to nothing. Miners. Railroad builders. The people in the fields that pick your food for you. Textile workers. Sweat shops.

There has never been a time there were not slums in this country. It is NOT because some people “don’t work hard enough.” It is not because “some people are inherently less suited to succeed.”

It really is obvious that wealth begets wealth, and poverty begets poverty. The American Dream they sold you is largely myth. It is not only the lower education system being “locally tax based” thus inherently inferior in low income neighborhoods; but higher education is economically slated to be accessible only to those with high incomes, or those who borrow from those with high incomes (bankers) and are willing to enrich them even more in both interest rates paying off that loan, and as lower level lackeys working for them to pay it off. Its more. There is a class cronyism involved.

If perhaps you have ever been, or been privy to the Upper Middle Class’s affairs: Country Club meetings, high end Golf Outings, perhaps a Gallery Opening… you understand it is who you know more than what you know. Consider that there is an almost exponentially tighter cronyism in the Millionare’s club, and the Billioniare’s? You can’t get within a “billion” miles of it.

They share opportunities among themselves, like builders in the UMC share contracts among themselves. No matter how good a architect or builder your low income cousin is? He will never get the city contract to create the new stadium unless he knows someone. Classes really help keep the next layer down, which serves the top just dandy.

This brings up a sub-point to this section. In the US the white middle to lower middle class uses the same cronyism to exclude people of color, except hiring them for the very lowest wage jobs. For extraction capitalism to work? Racism (and sexism) is part and parcel of the mechanics of it.

We have always had a caste system here, the dots are as just as indelible, but painted with the supposedly invisible ink of racism and classism. The land of opportunity keeps opportunities rare for the poor.

The Myth of Repression.

The myth says we have the “greatest system on Earth” and “no other system can work!” We hear it all the time: Look at how repressive Russia was, how evil China is, how it brings dictators and loss of personal freedom. Those were never truly non-capitalist states, they just became state capitalists with different elites. I’ll let the scholars argue that one. This is just you and I here, regular people, considering the sanity of thinking Capitalism sucks.

I’m not going to bore you with why I think they failed. I’ll just plant one idea. If I started a company in Michigan to give away free electricity, how long do you think I would last before somehow my company imploded by outright sabotage, bad press, failed inspections via payola, if not assassination attempts on me? Nothing happens in a vacuum – and to a whole world of Elites living large? There was nothing more dangerous than the idea of sharing the wealth. They were up against that.

Now, instead? Think of the worst human rights violators in recent history. For me, Saudis come to mind. Women are stoned for being raped. The poor have their hands cut off for stealing a loaf of bread. That place is as Capitalist as they come. The rich sell the oil and live in Palaces, the poor starve.

Pinochet who killed and tortured bazillions of his own? Not only a Capitalist, but OUR Capitalist!

I’m sure if you think about it – you can think of many more.

You really cannot have a Dictator without Capitalism – because it needs an untouchable Elite with the military might to keep people from rising against it. If people are free enough to control their own destinies, they would never vote for their own oppression.

(until here and now….)

Nothing Else Can WORK!

I know, for most of you, hearing the wisdom of dead guys from a time that is nothing like what we live in now makes your eyes roll back in your head. I get it. I’ve been reading some Marx, and if nothing else he was a dry and pedantic fucker who always took a thousand words to say what could be said in few. Yet, for his time, he was brilliant and comprehensive.

Without getting all economic professor and mathy? Its pretty simple. I figure we ourselves not only create ALL wealth, we ARE wealth. Or value, or both. You get what I mean, even as an average Joe. They haven’t got shit without us.

If you light your grill with a matchstick? Hours of work went into making it, and chances are only a couple people are getting rich off of it. But matchsticks don’t grow on trees, they are made from them. Someone cut the wood, someone else milled it down, someone trucked the raw materials, someone ground the toxic chemicals for the burn tip, someone ran the machine to dip them in, someone boxed it and someone shipped them out.

A lot of hours in that puppy, which lasts only seconds. POOF! Matches are cheap, but trust me, even with mechanization, all kind of hands are on that match before you touch it. And the companies that make them make a good profit, or they no longer would.

Now the CEO of that company probably takes in 500k a year. He didn’t invent it. He didn’t design the machines. He doesn’t run the machines. He never even touches them. All he does is find ways to pay less to make the matches, and make more off of selling them. He is rewarded solely for screwing the people who make them, and the consumers into paying more than they are worth. He doesn’t “work.” He is paid for being a predator. You see, there are only 2 materials more or less (simplifying for example) so there is little budge room on that – the money is made on the fact matches don’t exist without human labor. There is no product without us; hence we are really the real producer of all wealth. All of it. We just don’t get to keep it.

So, the “greatest system on Earth” is one in which we work our asses off to get a few guys rich, while begging to be paid enough to live on while creating the products that make them rich? It doesn’t reward by merit and hard work. Really. It rewards whoever is the biggest greedhead.

Ponder it for a second: If every time you had another couple over for dinner, they raced to get the biggest steak, power-slammed your beer, ate all the dessert before your kids could even have a tiny slice… I guarantee you would not invite the assholes over again. Yet this is who we willingly serve with our work. Greedheads. Dig?

But competition is healthy!

Ahhh, the John Wayne theory of rugged individualism and the hardy pioneer. They competed, the Indians died, and they “deserve” our respect for becoming ranchers and farmers. Cue the cattle drive rushing to be the 1st to get your cattle to market! Lets be faster, tougher, smarter, work harder! Which all sounds fine and dandy until you are hungry and reaching for that biscuit you cooked, and some overstuffed idiot snatches it quicker than you, and you go hungry. That is what competition is, what Capitalism does.

Actually, deep down, you know this is bullshit. Sharing is good. You learned it in kindergarten. Thats why we donate to charities. But wouldn’t it be nice to eliminate poverty instead? We can’t get there by making more greedheads, that is, lifting the world into our aggressive form of industrial competition. To have winners, someone HAS to lose.

Here’s a thought. Maybe work isn’t the sainted ethic you think it is. Maybe we could work way less and no one would go hungry. Maybe all this work and consume, make crappy products that wear out so you have to buy more, and work to have the money to buy more is illusion – simply to keep the money pouring upward into that tower of which we spoke above.

We are in an age of extreme pollution, overpopulation and quickly dwindling resources. The Capitalist model would rather have your local grocery chain throw out half their produce every week than lower prices. Heck, some places have made it illegal to collect rainwater, and certainly Monsanto wants it to be impossible to grow your own food. Remember Victory Gardens? They were before my time – but now you couldn’t plant one to feed your kids without paying someone royalties. Does this seem sane to you?

We have the technology to produce lasting products, to create free renewable energy. We have the capacity to not only grow, but deliver food to every person on Earth. Picture buying a car or refrigerator than never broke. A battery that would last forever. Less landfills, no payments. There is a reason we cannot have these things. There is no profit for the very few in it.

There is a reason in the US, we send jobs to places like Bangledesh and let them toil for pennies in factories that kill them. More profit for the few.

Here’s a question. When garments were made in the US by Unions, they were still cheaper than they are now made for pennies. Where did the “value” of their abuse go? To you? Hell no. To the rich, and we enabled it on their blood.

Socialism means Too Much Government

The government you have now? Or the government by and for the People? I see nothing wrong with using our collective pool of money (and that is what taxes are supposed to be) to serve ourselves the things we could not have alone.

No one but the insane would want more of their already dwindling money to pay for taxes, right? Yet, it is true that places with the highest taxes have the highest happiness ratings. They never worry about illness – they have free healthcare. They get free education. They have no homelessness, while we now have more empty foreclosed upon homes than homeless here.

Right now, nearly every Social agreement we have has been PRIVATIZED – and we are doing worse than ever. How is that “market” working out for you? Not only that? The profits – are theirs alone (private gains) while we bail out their losses! (publicize loss) What a rip off!

You are not getting your money’s worth now for a reason. The rich not only aren’t paying taxes, they are taking the lion’s share of our collective bank account out in subsidies and overblown contracts, all abetted by the Politicians they have purchased.

This what Capitalism does. It funnels to the top, then uses that money and power to codify laws to keep the power and money flowing to the top.

Socialism is DEMOCRATIC. It does not allow for a system where private, self-interested people can accrue that much power. Now, it doesn’t make you nationalize your small flower shop. It does create laws where you have to pay fairly and caps profits to a reasonable level. It does nationalize the things that meet our basic needs: BANKING, (so it cannot be predatory) utilities, education, health and housing.

To ever get to a more Communist world, Socialism is a necessary step. People need to feel safe enough and become educated enough to create their own systems of cooperative effort. I know, I know, the Capitalists are cringing and the pure Marxists are annoyed by that. This is my opinion. While the idea of people taking over factories is good, and owning their labor and sharing the fruits of what they create is grand – Marx was working toward Industrialization as a goal. We need to become post-industrial. Once we are, there will be less need for a Centralized Goverment.

Once we have a system that is more green, based on stability and sustainability, owning production would be a natural result. Instead of “making a profit” for town A and competing for the market with town B – the goal should be providing said product A for their area and receiving product B in return for our own.

Still? Less is more. There is no reason in the world that people need to work more than 20 hours a week – either in a field of their “calling” or as rotating voluntary service to keep infrastructure running. While no model will ever cover the shoe fetish of some, nor the video-game addiction of others? These extras could be “paid for” with labor.

I realize this is simplistic – but my goal here is to open eyes to the possibilities of another way, not argue to dust the minutia of implementing it.

But what of the lazy leeches?

“I want to do nothing when I grow up!” ~ said no child ever.

Prior to the industrial age, people had what I lovingly dub “callings.” Healing, mechanical, building, music, art, a love of animals, or growing things. I don’t think anyone ever wanted to be a miner. But think – the need to dig in the earth for fossil fuels would be gone, and the value of rocks for pretty things – gold, diamonds, etc – all symbols of classology – would become far less valuable. In a better world, who are you and what have you done to improve the world would be the bastion of esteem over what trinkets you own.

Sure, there will always be less desirable jobs. Garbage removal. Sewer maintenance. Cleaning. Those should be either paid a premium, or be mandatory volunteer for a short period in everyone’s life to access the benefits of society. If you think that is ridiculous, the model of restaurant management makes sure that to be hired to that position, you do every job in the place for weeks before you get to manage it. You have to have hands on empathy and the ability to provide the service to run a restaurant. Mostly done in case someone calls in? It has created respect for the people they manage.

If you are using the public education system to be a brain surgeon? Wonderful. It won’t kill you to have to serve as janitorial staff for a semester part time while starting in your field. See how that works? Everyone begins to have mutual respect for the shoes of others.

Most people who do not work would prefer to. They are just ill-fitted or ill-suited for the dehumanizing, unappreciated work they do. Marx called this alienation. I call it round peg in square hole syndrome. I would love to teach teenagers science, but never had the money for college. I love working as a gardener, though it doesn’t pay well. I have enjoyed working in inventory management and tool repair for the big three. I am now too old and sore, but rocked out waitressing. I hate cubicles and offices – I am entirely unsuited for sedentary work. I prefer to have to move around during my day. I used to love to work on cars, and can fix nearly everything.

Yet? I cannot find work that will provide for my son and I in any of those fields. Capitalism made them all too low paying. Again, it’s what it does.

Instead, most of us are related to producing or selling crap we don’t need to people who can’t afford it, who in turn have to do the same. All to never really be SECURE in our homes or food or illness – so some few can be Bazillionaires.

A safety net for the infirm or those with special needs is a wonderful thing. Is a person born with disabilities less worthy of food than you?

Its Capitalism that is crazy, not we, the Anti-Capitalists.

Consider two water tanks, if you will, sharing an endless cycle of refreshing one another.

Thats what we are about, really.

Its not scary.

Its not rocket science.

Its not un-doable, though those in the top tank would love you to think so.

Its having security, self-worth, cooperation, more free time and a greener planet.

Its about never, ever stamping someone into poverty to get ahead.

We have to end this insane extraction system and unify to “all of us”.

Join the Anti-Capitalist Group.

Here be Sanity!

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn with Pat Quinlan, Carlo Tresca,
Adolph Lessig, and Big Bill Haywood
Paterson, New Jersey 1913

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Arrives

On January 27, 1913 at the Doherty Silk Mill in Paterson, New Jersey, a workers committee requested a meeting with management. They wanted an end to the hated four-loom system which had doubled their work load with no increase in pay, and had caused the lay-offs of many of their fellow workers. When four members of that committee were fired, 800 silk workers, almost the entire work force, walked off the job spontaneously. They were without union organization to back them up. Being mostly foreign-born, non-English-speaking, unskilled workers, the AFL’s United Textile Workers did not want them.

But, in fact, there was another textile union in Paterson at that time: the IWW’s National Industrial Union of Textile Workers, Local 152 which local organizers, Ewald Koettgen and Adolph Lessig had established over several years of organizing. It was there, with this stalwart band of 100 Wobblies, that the strikers found a union willing to back up their strike. As it became clear that Doherty would not bargain with the strikers, Local 152 request help from IWW headquarters in Chicago.

On February 25, 1913, national IWW organizers, Pat Quinland, Carlos Tresca, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn arrived to speak at a mass meeting. All three were arrested that night at the meeting. Strikers followed them to the jail and held a rally outside the jail, singing and shouting for their release. Women shouted, “When the strike is won, Gurley Flynn will be the boss!”

By the time Big Bill Haywood arrived, later that week, the strike had spread to silk mills across Paterson. 300 mills were shut down, and 25,000 silk workers were on strike. Big Bill advised the strikers: “fold your arms or put your hands in your pocket and let the manufacturers do the worrying.”

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Speaking to Strikers
Paterson, New Jersey 1913

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Speaks to Strikers

Meetings, rallies, marches, speeches, and singing were features of any IWW strike, and the Paterson Silk Strike fit that mold. Mass meetings were held every morning, and shop committee meetings each afternoon. Each shop elected two strikers to represent them on the shop committee, and this was the committee that ran the strike. There were also special meetings for the women and children who made up more than half of the strikers.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was much beloved by the strikers. Reporter Art Shields describes the strikers reaction to her:

Fifteen to twenty-thousand strikers and sympathizers were applauding a beautiful young woman, whose passionate voice reached everyone in the crowd. She spoke from a high platform heaped with gorgeous flowers. But violets and roses paled before this twenty-one-year-old beauty, and I fell in love with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn at first sight.

I wasn’t her only captive. No other woman speaker except Mother Jones won so many hearts as Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. She won them in struggles against big exploiters, not in quiet lecture halls….

And there was a dramatic scene when Elizabeth called an Italian girl she knew to the platform. This was a pale, thin teenager..Elizabeth embraced her and then said, “The silk bosses are killing Angelica. They are working her to death. They put her on four looms instead of two. She’s working twice as hard as before.”

…”But that isn’t all the silk bosses did to Angelica. They didn’t give her enough to eat.” Angelica, she said, was the only support of a sick mother and her younger brothers and sisters. Her father was dead. Her family was hungry The family seldom ate meat. “She’s also striking,” Elizabeth said, “for a raise to give her family enough to eat.”

The silk bosses are robbers, Elizabeth continued. The cars they are driving, the diamonds their wives are wearing, the rich food their families are eating, their winter vacations in Florida’s sunshine-all come from the labors of Angelica and twenty-five thousand other silk workers. “And when you win the raises you are fighting for,” she said, “you’ll get back only a little of what you produced. But these raises are just a beginning. The time is coming when you will run these plants for yourselves.”

“She got to be an idol with us.”

Irma Lombardi was a young seventeen-year-old striker. She left us this description of Gurley Flynn:

Gurley Flynn called a meeting just for the women one day. She started with that lovely way of hers. She looked at us and said, “Would you like to have nice clothes?” We replied, “Oh, yes.” “Would you like to have nice shoes?” “Oh,yes.” we shouted. “Well, you can’t have them. Your bosses’ daughters have those things!” We got mad. We knew it was true. We had shoes with holes, and they had lovely things. Then she said, “Would you like to have soft hands like your bosses’ daughters?” and we got mad all over again. She was a beautiful speaker. She got be an idol with us.

Sophie Cohen was the child of a former mill worker. Though not a striker, her father was passionate in his support of the strike, and often brought her to the rallies. She later remembered Gurley Flynn:

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
IWW Organizer

Gurley Flynn looked just like the pictures we see of her now. She was young, vibrant, enthusiastic. She wan’t really a good speaker, but she gave so much of herself in her talks. She would come at night to the soup kitchens. There were big cauldrons of soup set up in a lot next to the church and she would get up on a platform. There were red flares around her, and she’d get them singing and then she’d talk with them. It was just the thing people needed to keep them together and give them courage.

Sundays in Haledon

Meetings were not allowed in Paterson, but the nearby town of Haledon had a Socialist mayor who welcomed the strikers. On Sundays thousands of strikers marched to Haledon. A striker’s family offered the use of their two-story house. Speeches were given from the upper balcony to the crowd gathered below in the street and in the large green field opposite the house. Gurley Flynn later remembered those Sunday meetings fondly:

Sunday after Sunday , as the days became pleasanter, we spoke there to enormous crowds of thousands of people-the strikers and their families, workers from other Paterson industries, people from nearby New Jersey cities, delegations from all over America and from foreign countries. People who saw these Haledon meetings never forgot them.

But there was a deeper reason for going to Haledon on Sundays, Gurley Flynn explained:

Because Sunday is the day before Monday. Monday is the day that a break comes in every strike, if it is to come at all during the week. If you can bring the people safely over Monday they usually go along for the rest of the week. If on Sunday, however, you let those people stay at home, sit around the stove without any fire in it, sit down at the table were there isn’t much food, see the feet of the children with shoes getting thin and the bodies of children where the clothes are getting ragged, they begin to think in terms of “myself” and lose the spirit of the mass and the realization that all are suffering as they are suffering…And so our original reason for going to Haledon was to give them novelty, to give them variety, to take them en masse out of the city of Paterson some place else to sort of picnic over Sunday that would stimulate them for the rest of the week.

Mass Arrests
On the picket lines, the strikers were subject to daily mass arrest. Many were sentenced to ten or twenty days, some to six months at hard labor. Most of the strikers went straight back to the picket line upon their release. Seventeen-year-old Hannah Silverman was arrested three times. She was back on the picket line the next morning each time she was released. Big Bill Haywood hailed her as “the greatest little IWW woman in America.” When Carrie Torello was arrested, she gathered her children together, put them in the patrol wagon and told another striker, “If you see Freddie, tell him to come to Jail.”

The Paterson Press
The Paterson Press openly called for violence against the IWW organizers, calling for the formation of a vigilance committee to drive them out of town:

Los Angeles, Akron, Denver, Ottowa, and other cities kicked the I.W.W. out of town in short order…What is Paterson doing to discourage this revolutionary horde?

And another example:

Akron, Ohio, could not find a law to banish this dangerous revolutionist [Big Bill] and his cohorts but a citizens’ committee of 1000 men did the trick in short order. Can Akron, Ohio, accomplish something that Paterson, N.J., cannot duplicate? The Paterson Press dislikes to believe it, but time will tell.

WE NEVER FORGET
On Thursday, April 17, 1913, Modestino Valentino was murdered by private detectives, hired gunmen imported from New York by the mill owners. This man’s only crime against the mill owners was that he was standing on his own front porch watching the strikers hoot at the scab-herders. He was not a striker, nor was he a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. The hooting so bothered the gunmen that they felt compelled to open fire on unarmed workers. Gurley Flynn described how he died:

[He] grabbed his child and started through the doorway, when he was shot in the back. His wife grabbed the child and her husband fell and dead at her feet.

Gurley Flynn went with a committee of strikers to visit the widow:

She was in bed, awaiting the birth of a second child. On the other side of a folding partition was the casket of her dead husband, parallel to the bed. The priest came in while we were there but he made no objection to our request [for the I.W.W. to provide for the funeral.] She was a simple grief-stricken woman, who expressed her sympathy with the strikers, many of whom were her neighbors. She placed the blame where it belonged-on the company thugs who murdered her husband. It was a tragic example of force and violence by the employers in the class struggle-a worker dead , a woman widowed, two children, one unborn, left orphans-a story repeated all too often in my experience.

According to IWW historian, Fred Thompson, five workers in all lost their lives in the Paterson Silk Strike of 1913.

Hunger, the Great Strikebreaker
In spite of the courage shown by the strikers and their leaders, the silk strikers were defeated. Some small concessions were made by a few of the mill owners, but for the most part, strikers went back to work defeated. Some had been replaced by scabs and were never rehired. Gurley Flynn partially blamed the Pageant for the loss of the strike, asserting that it was a distraction from strike duties. It was a financial disaster also, which only further discouraged the strikers. But in the end the strike was lost because the strikers were starving. Gurley Flynn later spoke of the suffering that the strikers endured before they were driven back to work by hunger:

I saw men go out in Paterson without shoes, in the middle of winter and with bags on their feet, I went into a family to have a picture taken of a mother with eight children who didn’t have a crust of bread, didn’t have a bowl of milk for the baby in the house,-but the father was out on the picket line. Others were just as bad off. Thousands of them that we never heard of at all. This was the difficulty that the workers had to contend with in Paterson: hunger; hunger gnawing at their vitals; hunger tearing them down; and still they had the courage to fight it out for six months.

Let us honor their courage and sacrifice by continuing the struggle for social and economic justice.

Solidarity,
JayRaye

SOURCES

The IWW: Its First Seventy Years 1905-1975
-by Fred W Thompson & Patrick Murfin
IWW Press, 1976

The Rebel Girl
My First Life (1906-1926)
-by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
NY, 1979

Women and the American Labor Movement
From Colonial Times to the Eve of World War I
-by Philip S Foner
NY, 1979

My Shaping-Up Years
-by Art Shields
NY, 1982

Solidarity Forever
An Oral History of the IWW
-ed by Bird, Georgaks, & Shaffer
Lake View Press, 1985

Words on Fire
The Life and Writing of
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
-by Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall
Rutgers U Press, 1987

Rebel Voices
An IWW Anthology
-ed by Joyce L Kornbluh
Charles H Kerr Pub, 1988