It started with something a friend of mine said recently. A group of us were ragging on corporations, and someone commented about something vile a corporation recently did, and the friend quipped, “It’s almost like corporations were made up of people.” The subtext to his sarcasm was to imply that it’s silly to discuss corporations as if they’re some separate entity from humanity because, after all, corporations are made up of people and, evidently, will only do the same good and ill that humans do.

Unfortunately, despite what the conservative-leaning Supreme Court thinks (vis-à-vis “Citizens United v FEC”), corporations aren’t people. They are a collection of people, that, like any collection of people, make a gestalt that is very different than the sum of its parts. To claim to not be able to analyze and critique (and judge ethically) corporations as a separate thing because they’re made of people, is utterly meaningless. By that rationale, nothing could be said about anything within the realm of human culture and creation because, after all, it’s all made by, or made up of, people. Like all forms of human culture and its production, corporations can — and should — be analyzed and critiqued as a concept that acts separate and apart from humanity in general. Why?

Think of it this way: Would you walk into a library and find a literary book club in progress and expect it to behave and have the save motives and agenda as, say, the group of Ultimate Wrestling fans that show up regularly at the local sports bar? Or how about the local Baptist Bible study group versus the local Society for Creative Anachronism group? They’re all made of people, yes? But any group of people with a shared goal, or interest, is going to A. be very similar to other groups that have the same goals and interests; and B. be very different from groups with different goals and interests. Similar groups will be similar enough that you can usually talk about that kind of group using generalities, and different groups can be different enough to be able to critique them as altogether different entities. This sounds silly and obvious when stated like that, but it’s the ridiculously obvious reason corporations lend themselves to separate and justified deconstruction and critique apart from the motivations and behaviors of people in general.

One of the reasons should be obvious: self-selection. Particular type of people with particular types of demeanors, attitudes, outlooks, ideologies, will choose to associate themselves with others of similar types, under the banner of a shared goal or interest. You will find particular types of people at a book club and different particular types at the sports bar. Oh, sure, there will be cross-over. The occasional mixed-martial-art fan may also be a Jane Eyre fan, and the occasional Nicholas Sparks fan will be seen at the sports bar. But the exceptions point up the rule.

And so too with corporations. Particular types of people seek and earn MBAs and become stock traders and managers and accountants and whatnot who gravitate toward the corporate culture. And the larger, the more multi-national the corporation, the more the individual dissolves and melds into the background of the homogeneous culture of the corporation. Those who don’t fit in or are different than the corporate culture demands, either self-select to leave the culture, or get pushed out for not fitting in — not being a “team player.” And so the corporate culture self-reinforces and insulates itself even more in order to achieve its goals and realize its agenda.

And what is the corporation’s goals and agenda? All groups, organizations, have goals and agendas. The book club, the Bible study, the sports cub, the football team, the knitting circle, the SCA group, the anti-vaccination group, the local skeptics’ club, the Young Democrats, the Future Business Leaders of America… all groups that have come together for a shared interest have an overarching goal. And what is the corporation’s? Profit, pure and simple. Profit by means of selling a product or service to as close to 100% of the market share as possible, and by any means it can get away with. In fact, legally, a corporation can’t make operating decisions that would knowingly deprive the shareholders from making money. As observed by Robert Hinkley in “Redesigning Corporate Law,”

“Distilled to its essence, [the law] says that the people who run corporations have a legal duty to shareholders, and that duty is to make money. Failing this duty can leave directors and officers open to being sued by shareholders. This explains why corporations find social issues such as humanrights irrelevant – because they fall outside the corporation’s legal mandate. Secondly, these provisions explain why executives behave differently than they might as individual citizens, because the law says their only obligation in business is to make money.“

Well, you can’t make it more plain than that. Corporations exist to make money; and civil liberties, human rights, decency, laws, are all obstacles that must be worked around and, wherever possible, ignored and broken, in order to reach its goal.

A corporation, because of its self-selection and its over-aching goal that all members of the corporation buy into, makes the corporation act as something individualized and apart from humanity. In a way, a corporation is like a person — a sociopath. An amoral being without empathy or remorse, single-minded and manipulative, and dangerous. Capable and willing to do any harm necessary if it means getting what it wants.

In society, when an individual sociopathic human does harm, we punish them. We take them out of society. When a corporation does harm, what happens? The corporation may get fined, it may get sued. But as the link above explains, that’s just a cost of doing business. The corporation will likely continue on without a hitch, especially if it’s a multi-national where its finances are in the Cayman Islands, its management is in Dubai, and its production is in China. Some CEO or manager may become the face of “the problem,” get slapped on the wrist, leave the company — but the company persists as juggernaut. (And the CEO likely will be just fine as well, don’t you worry. Most corporate CEOs and managers sit on the board of directors of other corporations in an incestual game of musical chairs. Boards that hire on a new CEO from another corporation who leads the company for a while, makes several million, gets a few million more as a severance package even if he does a poor job, where he’ll move on to oversee the hiring of a CEO in another company he helps run.)

Oh, and by the way, most of the people on top, the CEOs and managers and directors of the board, aren’t generally people who started out at a community college and worked full time and took classes until they Made It. No, that group at the top, who shuffle around the companies and hand each other favors, are the type of people satirized in this “Note of Appreciation from the Rich.” So when the top of the corporate structure is led by these hereditary, dynastic, feudal lords, and the bottom 95% is constructed of those who strive to be like those at the top — you get a very particular type of culture.

Corporations are, in general, evil in the same way a psychopath is evil. (In fact, it’s estimated that an inordinate amount of corporate leaders are, in fact, sociopaths and psychopaths. Why? Again: self-selected culture.) So, like all and any construct of human creation, the corporation is something that has its own agenda, goals, motivations, effects, and sub-culture, which is perfectly open to deconstruction and ethical judgement.

For more, excellent analysis of why we should analyze and deconstruct any element of human culture, see Roland Barthes Mythologies. It’s actually very short, and a fascinating read.

With the coming of this completely arbitrarily demarcated new year and new decade (contrary to popular opinion, decades begin on “1″ years, e.g.: 2011, not “0,” e.g.: 2010), I need to make some serious changes; I need to refocus, re-prioritize, and start anew. As someone I don’t recall said, “If you want things to be different, you must do something different.”

Part of my problem is frakkin’ Facebook. It’s an evil, evil bane on productivity and a facilitator of my getting distracted and bent-out-of-shape about subjects that, while are important, serves only to make me upset and completely unproductive in regards to what’s even more important in my life: my nascent, budding writing career that I hope to make into a viable “second job,” with aspirations of it being my main job within a couple/few years.

In addition to the craptacular events that have sideswiped me and/or made me utter a general “WTF, world? W. T. F.?!” every other week, it seems, I recently read a blog post by writer/director Kevin Smith: “SMonologue #2.” The first half he discusses “Clerks 3″ and the cost/process of investing in a movie idea and making it happen. But the important bit is the last half, in which he writes:

Don’t pursue a role, LIVE that role. Like my sister told me, back when I confessed I wanted to be a filmmaker…

“Then BE a filmmaker,” she said.

“That’s what I’m saying: I wanna be.”

And that’s when she gave me the million dollar advice…

“No - BE a filmmaker. You say you wanna be; just BE a filmmaker. Think every thought AS a filmmaker. Don’t pine for it or pursue it; BE it. You ARE a filmmaker; you just haven’t made a film yet.”

And it sounded artsy-fartsy as fuck, but it was CRAZY useful advice. A slacker hit the sheets that night, but the CLERKS-guy got out of bed the following morning.

The old writer’s adage goes: “A writer writes.” It means a writer doesn’t pine to write, a writer doesn’t think about writing and wishing, a writer does it. Good, bad, lots, little, it doesn’t matter.

It reminded me of a blog post from popular and well-awarded SF author, John Scalzi (whose books I love and is only 2 years older than me), I read some months ago, and then came across again recently: Writing: Find the Time or Don’t. And while he’s not normally this in-your-face, this is obviously a subject, the kvetching about finding time to write, that gets his goat — so he writes:

This is why at this point in time I have really very little patience for people who say they want to write but then come up with all sorts of excuses as to why they don’t have the time. You know what, today is the day my friend Jay Lake goes into surgery to remove a huge chunk of his liver. After which he goes into chemo. For the third time in two years. Between chemo and everything else, he still does work for his day job. And when I last saw him, he was telling me about the novel he was just finishing up. Let me repeat that for you: Jay Lake has been fighting cancer and has had poison running through his system for two years, still does work for his day job and has written novels. So will you please just shut the fuck up about how hard it is for you to find the time and inspiration to write, and just do it or not.

Kind of puts things into perspective, don’-it? Regardless of what goals you want to pursue. For me, writing has been what I’ve wanted to do since I read my first Ray Bradbury story around 4th grade. Solidified when I started writing narratives of my D&D game exploits around 6th grade. And what have I got to show for 30 years of wanting to be a writer? Three finished short stories and a novel that’s still shambling toward an ever-ungraspable ending. Bupkis! Why? Oh, because I have work, and family, and school, and yadda yadda yadda. It’s really all because I’m easily distracted. The Internet has helped give me adult ADD. My falling ass-backwards into a computer career didn’t help, as it forced me to multi-task. Oh, and good news, studies on multi-tasking has been shown to make you suck at everything you’re trying to do at the same time. Oh, and your general reasoning ability as well.

This excuse, that excuse…. Scalzi asks:

So: Do you want to write or don’t you? If your answer is “yes, but,” then here’s a small editing tip: what you’re doing is using six letters and two words to say “no.” And that’s fine. Just don’t kid yourself as to what “yes, but” means.

I’m sick of saying, “Yes, but…”. The answer is “yes, dammit!” Every year I age I’m closer to death. Closer to dementia. Closer to debilitating car accidents. Alzheimer’s. Embolisms and aneurysms. Things that will take away my ability to write without giving me any choice in the matter. Not to mention the fact that after 30, the adult brain begins to plasticize and harden neuropathways making it more and more difficult to learn new things, think in new ways, consider alternatives to assumed ways of thinking and knowledge — basically, makes you less of a nimble and adaptable person with a dynamic voice and ability to explore various and risky or challenging writing styles and subjects. Every year that passes is my life becoming less and less what I want it to be, with wasted opportunity and missed chances.

Find the time or make the time. Sit down, shut up and put your words together. Work at it and keep working at it. And if you need inspiration, think of yourself on your deathbed saying “well, at least I watched a lot of TV.” If saying such a thing as your life ebbs away fills you with existential horror, well, then. I think you know what to do. (Scalzi)

I am filled with that horror!

I can’t quit my insurance-providing day job, and of course I can’t give up my family. But I can squeeze those writing moments, those 250+ words a day, from the spaces where reading about how politicians are ruining our democracy, how the TSA are the new Brown Shirts, how religion does this or that, etc., currently saps my time and attention. The podcast “Writing Excuses,” episode: “5.8: The Excuses You’re Out Of” has three successful writers talking about all the “yes, buts,” and they reiterate what I encounter time and time again from writers (and other creators of art and scholarship) — they gave up TV in order to do what they wanted to do. Not necessarily all TV as at least one of them uses some shows as inspiration (more on some vs. all in a moment), but certainly the turning it on just to see what’s on habit — but the bottom line is you make the time to do what you want, and you make it a priority over the other things that you complain are sapping your time.

The idea of giving up wading through daily doses of political, anarchism, religious, social-critique articles and blogs and news and essays, cold turkey, is very daunting. Intimidating. Being a well-informed advocate of educating one’s self about the forces out there in socio-political economics and culture, is something I’ve become, is a central part of who I am. Ever since the late 90s, when I knew something was wrong with society and politics and middle-class life, but couldn’t put my finger on it. I kept hearing from both political sides what problems were and who was to blame, but it all seemed superficial and scapegoating for the real problems. Then a few years ago, I was introduced to a method of thought, an ideology (yes, “ideology,” no bones about it) that serves as a tool for examining culture and politics and economics and religion — everything, and everything made sense! I could begin, just, to see the roots of the problems and not just the symptoms.

One can’t unsee, unexperience, what one has seen and experienced. I can’t become that quality I loathe in most people in America who limit their entire social awareness and political activisim to spending 5 minutes every four (at best two) years in a voting booth, putting checks next to people who have been selected for them as their representitives, who don’t actually represent them at all! And then coast through life with smug arrogance that they’ve performed their civic duty and are engaged citizens of democracy — when all they’ve done is choose a lesser evil fed to them, maintaining the status quo, and aren’t any more engaged or civic than the person who stayed home during that one day in 1460 days (or 740). I can’t be that person. Granted, I use a lot of “yes, but”s when it comes to actually doing things like protesting or marching or letter-writing campaigns, and the like — but I see my endless shouting into the storm as a form of engagement with the cultural forces that affect my life without my consent. It’s a form of doing something that’s better than just passively watching FOX News or MSNBC and going “tsk tsk tsk” at the symptoms of cultural rot and manipulation. I don’t know if I can be passive and uninformed any more.

Part of my mind keeps trying to reassure me, no no no, of course not! Go ahead and be engaged in deep socio-politics and religion critique and the like, little bits. It’ll be OK. And I realize that voice sounds a lot like what I figure the mental voice of an addict tells him that it’s OK to still hang out with his druggie friends, or go places where people will be using. It’ll be OK. But I know hanging around Facebook with all the news feeds and interest groups that feed my “bad”-news-junkie addiction, will just suck me back into time-wasting distraction from what I truly want my goal in life to be right now. So, I have to ask myself, can I do it for one year? Can I block, set to ignore, defriend, unsubscribe from all the people and groups that send me socio-economic-political-religious news and info, and be a disattached and disengaged sleepwalker?

Unfortunately, not entirely, I can’t. Because that ideology I’ve embraced which makes sense of the world to me, is the same one I use to critique popular culture, literature, and the other subjects of my scholarly writing — the second aspect of my writing life I need to make active and viable. That aspect that I just spent years and racked up debt getting my Masters Degree in. I need to continue to nurture and engage the scholarship that will allow me to write interesting and applicable journal articles, and hopefully books. And no scholarship can be done absent of some model, some theory — some totalizing ideology. And, even if I were to limit my scholarship purely to the study of certain literature, I can’t avoid some engagement in contemporary socio-politics. More so since my general area of scholarship is in posthuman postmodernism. (Well, unless I wanted to approach it purely from a “liberal humanist” perspective and claim the text/film contains everything necessary within it already to expose the inherent “good, truth, and beauty of art,” with no need to contextualize it within its culture of its creation. Pah! Gag.)

So, I can’t cold turkey, but I can’t fall prey to rationalizations and distractions any longer. At least not for one whole year. I have this arbitrary new year to get rid of bad habits, make some new, and get significantly closer to the person I want to be, accomplishing the things I need to accomplish. I need to prune and lop off parts of the enabling where I can, and limit exposure to distraction everywhere else. To that end, my resolutions:

• Identify the Facebook friends and groups that are more than 33% about politics, socio-economics,religion, etc., and block/ignore/defriend them.
• Identify the RSS feeds that are the same, and delete them from my feeder/reader.
• Identify the podcasts that are the same, and delete them from my iTunes updater.
• Write at least 250 words a day, every day, of fiction or scholarly work — not blogging or journaling!*
• Read at least one short story or chapter of fiction a day, every day.

*250 words is basically only one page of text (without dialog), and isn’t much at all. I’ve written 15-page school papers in a day. But it’s Cory Doctorow’s minimum, and it’s a good low bar that should be do-able and won’t lead to ultimate failure. (Cory is a prolific author and social-political activist who straddles both roles and does it well! But then, I’m pretty sure he’s not human, either.)

Well, that’s my resolution for 2011. Hopefully by this time next year I can look back and proudly state that I see in me what I want to be, and there’s no turning back.

So, am I going to vote next week? Actually, yes. But, with caveats, and I’m more than happy to explain why.

First, a little parable:

Three wolves and six goats are discussing what to have for dinner. One courageous goat makes an impassioned case: “We should put it to a vote!” The other goats fear for his life, but surprisingly, the wolves acquiesce.

But when everyone is preparing to vote, the wolves take three of the goats aside. “Vote with us to make the other three goats dinner,” they threaten. “Otherwise, vote or no vote, we’ll eat you.”

The other three goats are shocked by the outcome of the election: a majority, including their comrades, has voted for them to be killed and eaten. They protest in outrage and terror, but the goat who first suggested the vote rebukes them: “Be thankful you live in a democracy! At least we got to have a say in this!”

Voting is a right. People fought and some literally died for he right to be able to vote in fair elections for such things as fair taxes, appropriate laws that are meant to help society function, and people who would represent them in a government by, of, and for the people.

But on most scales, that’s not what we have. We have a government where the higher up you go, the less you, as a person, are being represented so much as being governed in the interests of corporations. The congresspeople, the president, the massive support system that runs the federal government, are paid for by corporate profit — sanctified by the recent Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to spend as much money as they wish to make sure the politicians vote in their interests. In fact, the only politicians at all that get to that high of a level, that get their name on the ballot, are politicians that, regardless of the R or the D next to their name, will support corporate interests over those of the people.

These people do not represent me. I don’t not wish to associate a vote, by right and purchased by many people braver than I who gave their lives to give me the privilege and not the obligation to do so, to any of these people. A vote for a less vile, less corporate-owned, less dishonest, politician is not an exercise in freedom and liberty and civic duty — it is an insult and a mockery of freedom and liberty.

My right to vote quite certainly includes my right to choose to not vote, if that represents my opinion that the people who are my forced choices do not represent me. If I despise both options I have to vote for, I will complain about either one of them regardless of whichever one wins, and I should not have to be compelled to associate myself with either repugnancey in order to be granted the boon of being able to complain about them.

Especially when what I complain about is not just the puppets that I’m forced to choose between, but the entire corrupted and perverted system that puts only bought-and-paid-for corporate tools as my choices for representation.

Indeed, there are people who don’t vote, not because they are exercising their right not to, but because they’re too uninformed, detached, and unconcerned about the process, the system, civil rights and duties. You know what? They too have a right to complain! All people have an inalienable right to speak their mind (granted, so long as it does not directly incite harm to others), regardless of whether they participate in the farce.

I may pity and scowl at them in my own elitist, condescending way for not being involved and interested and engaged in the process, the events, the system that essentially controls their lives. But they still have a right to complain.

The parable above is often used to illustrate what’s called the tyranny of democracy. The idea that the minority must concede to will of the majority for no better reason than because they’re the majority. We all know this is on many levels wrong and unethical. It was seen during segregation, where the racist views of the majority violated the rights of a minority. We can see it today in such things as California’s Prop 8 in which the rights of a minority were eliminated by a majority vote.

If you ever found yourself in a vastly outnumbered minority, and the majority voted that you had to give up something as necessary to your life as water and air, would you comply? When it comes down to it, does anyone really believe it makes sense to accept the authority of a group simply on the grounds that they outnumber everyone else? We accept majority rule because we do not believe it will threaten us – and those it does threaten are already silenced before anyone can hear their misgivings.

–From THE PARTY’S OVER: BEYOND POLITICS, BEYOND DEMOCRACY
http://thecloud.crimethinc.com/pdfs/democracy_reading.pdf

I agree with the position. Majority rule; minority suffers. That’s all well and good so long as you’re part of the majority. But everyone belongs in someone else’s minority group. What happens when the majority on a given position, or condition, votes to remove a right of yours? How fair is democracy to you then?

As an anarchist, I believe ultimately in the removal of all coerced obeisance to the will of another group, whether that group has the force of greater numbers, or a monopoly on violence (the state). But, like Marx who understood that capitalism was a necessary step on the road to socialism, then communism, I understand we’re likely not going to have mass anarchism (nor communism) within my lifetime. The state is here, and it’s not going anywhere, any time soon. And the structure of representative government, as corrupt and flawed and manipulated as it is, should at least somewhat be made to work for the people and not for corporations, whenever possible….

So, I’m going to vote next Tuesday, despite the fact it will be a violation of my integrity. (I don’t believe in the very system itself, I shouldn’t support it with my participation.) But, living completely on the grid, within the culture, subject to the will of the hegemonic cultural logic, and millions of other people have no choice — so I’ll go ahead and cast votes where, and only where, I have a choice in which I think one option is ethically acceptable, and not because it’s the alternative to a worse option. If neither option represents my beliefs, it’s not getting my approval simply because of some non-existent obligation to have to choose one.

What gets my goat, is how so many of the people who wallow in self-righteousness and decree that you’re unAmerican and not worthy of the right to free speech if you don’t vote, are people whose entire civic consciousness, entire political activity, entire involvement in the world around them, begin and end with that 30 minute exercise once every couple of years — maybe only every four years. And of course, that just the way those in power like it. Convince people that they’re actually capable of changing things, get rid of bad and install good, improve the system, by making them think that all they need to do is vote for person A or nearly identical person B, whose differences are those that make people bicker while ignoring the fact the rot goes down to the roots. Make people think that voting equals change, and just shuffle the same agents of corruption and dominance through the offices while the very system itself that underlies the main problems gets blissfully ignored.

So, if you’re one of those who sticks your nose into the air with superiority because you go out of your way to vote for a new boss, same as the old boss, save your breath on me. I’m going to participate in the farce. But you better anticipate some write-in names on my part.

There’s a hilarious video I can no longer find of a British comedy show sketch. Four stereotypical young anarchists come into a messy flat, and one of them passes out copies of Marx and Engles’ Capital. He says something like “OK, if we’re going to proper revolutionaries, we need to actually read this book, yeah?” “Yeah!” And with great, revolutionary gusto, they all open their copies and the leader starts reading: “The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as ‘an immense accumulation of commodities,’ its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity….” As he reads he starts getting more despondent and the others start looking distracted. After a few weighty sentences, he finally slams the book and says, “Ah bugger this. Let’s go kill someone!” “Yeah!” And off they go.

The sketch pointed out what most people, especially people who live in the U.S., have no clue about:

Karl Marx’s greatest work is not a revolutionary propaganda, it’s an political/economics theory book. There’s a reason why it’s called Capital and not Socialism or Communism. It’s a very, very detailed examination of capitalism as a basis of socio-economy. I can be tough to get through but it’s the best examination of capitalism there has been. Because it was written during early capitalism and Marx and Engles couldn’t have predicted global market capitalism, they did get some things wrong — but the basic explanation is sound as much today as it was 150 years ago.

To help the average person understand the tome, SF author Steven Brust has followed up his fascinating blog series on Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (arguably the father of capitalist economics) with a series presenting and discussing Capital. In his latest posting, he highlights a passage in which Marx quotes Benjamin Franklin!

“…It is the expression of equivalence between different sorts of commodities that alone brings into relief the specific character of value-creating labour, and that it does by actually reducing the different varieties of labour embodied in the different kinds of commodities to their common quality of human labour in the abstract.”

Here we have a footnote, in which Marx cites Ben Franklin, quoting him as saying, “Trade in general being nothing else but the exchange of labour for labour, the value of all things is…most justly measured by labour.” The point, here, is that, just as we are able to reduce the linen and the coat to values because they embody human in labor, so, too, the labor of producing them is, economically, reduced to abstract human labor.

(Emphasis mine.) I was quite intrigued by this inclusion, and I can’t help wondering what the American founding fathers might have thought about modern capitalism and Karl Marx’s assessment of it. I do know Thomas Paine would be turning in his grave if he knew what Glenn Beck and the Tea Party were doing with him. Check out some of these Paine quotes:

“Pay as a remission of taxes to every poor family, out of the surplus taxes, and in room of poor-rates, four pounds a year for every child under fourteen years of age.” Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man

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“It is painful to see old age working itself to death, in what are called civilised countries, for daily bread… pay to every such person of the age of fifty years … the sum of six pounds per annum out of the surplus taxes, and ten pounds per annum during life after the age of sixty… This support, as already remarked, is not of the nature of a charity but of a right.” Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man

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“Create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property.” Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice.

Yeesh! Sounds like a socialist, don’t he.

Speaking of Glenn Beck, back to Ben Franklin, in that same paragraph in that same essay Franklin wrote that Marx quotes from, Franklin wrote, “Now Silver and Gold being of no permanent Value….” That must be very awkward for Beck and his “BUY GOLD NOW before the inevitable  mass economic collapse occurs!” advertisers.

Anyway, with the intent of blogging a comment on just this Franklin quote used by Marx, I started searching for an image of Marx and Franklin together with absolutely no anticipation of actually finding something I didn’t have to Photoshop together. But then I found one: a still from a short video advertising Glenn Beck’s How to Argue With an Idiot. (Ugh! I feel dirty linking to that. But don’t let is be said I’m not fair in providing info.) It’s a short that is essentially a blatant ad hominem attack in which animated Marx and Franklin provide no info specific to the real people and serve only as mouthpieces in an extremely juvenile screed.

So this video makes Marx sound like an idiot in suggesting a progressive tax (which I’m not even sure Marx ever advocated) and then Beck-Ben “counters” not-Marx’s progressive tax by illustrating that the current tax situation is unfair. So…what’s Beck’s stance? Is the progressive tax Marx-level stupid? If so, why point out we don’t have a progressive tax situation? And why present the current unfair tax situation as if promoting a progressive tax as a solution while mocking it? It makes no sense. (Not surprising from the guy who professes churches who advocate Christianity, er, social justice I mean, are preaching Naziism and Communism; and warns that government “czars” is the Obama’s way to endorse socialism. 1. Nixon started the whole czar thing and Reagan made it famous with his “Drug Czar,” and 2. the Russian czar was the king that the communists rebelled against and expelled. Idiot.)

That aside, Beck-Ben presents the evil unfair tax numbers:

The top 1% are responsible for 40% of income tax,
the top 10% are responsible for 71% of income tax, and
the top 50% are responsible for 97% of the income tax.

OMG! Doesn’t that look evilly unfair!? You know what? Le’s just assume these numbers are correct. I’ll give him that. But any fact can look however you want it to look with divorced from any context. Of course, that’s what Beck’s best at: taking spurious and unconnected information and making false conclusions. Let’s add some more facts.

In 2007:

The top 1% owned 43% of the nation’s financial wealth,
the next 19% owned 50% of the nation’s financial wealth.
(The bottom 80% of the population owned 7% of the nation’s wealth.)
(source)

So, according to Beck, the top 50% paid 97% of the income tax; yet, the top 20% owned  93% of the wealth. Catch that? Even though half the nation paid 97% of the tax, only 1/5th owned 93% of the wealth.

Yeah, those tax numbers are unfair…in the direction opposite what Beck suggests!

Finally, Beck reveals the sociopathic outlook of the conservative when his pseudo-Franklin dumps on the poor for having the audacity of getting a tax refund. Oh no! The people in our society that struggle to even afford food and shelter aren’t having to pay income tax, when those who have problems deciding between the 3rd multi-million-dollar house or the 2nd private jet have to pay less than their fair share based on the grotesque percentage of wealth they own?

Why, that’s eeeviiil! Those slackers who work two jobs just to make ends meet and are still below the poverty line, need to belly up and give up their daycare money so that the 1% who own nearly half the nation’s wealth can feel better about using lawyers and accountants to take advantage of tax shelters and loopholes that no one in the lower 80% of the population have available to them.

If there’s anything Enron, the West Virginia mine tragedies, AIG and Goldman Sachs have taught us is that corporations care about safety, employees, doing the right thing, because capitalism and the mystical magical “invisible hand of the market” encourages corps and their owners to not put profit above all else!

Oh, wait….

http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2010/05/smoking-gun-bps-deep-horizon-mess
“Seems that a crew from Schlumberger, on contract to BP, hightailed it off the platform at their own expense 6 hours before the blowout becuase BP refused their recommendation to shut down the well.”

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/costly_time-consuming_test_of.html

And the well-written and summary of the foundational causes of corporate disasters (whether it’s natural disaster or economic disaster)

http://www.socialistwebzine.org/2010/05/bp-oil-spill-crime-not-disaster.html

“BP has fought the federal government on safety procedures that might have minimized the impact of the most recent spill for more than a decade. CEOs do not get bonuses based upon ensuring future generation’s access to resources, clean air, or a hospitable climate. The purpose of corporations is not to oversee the welfare of the people of the world, but to make money. Environmental damage is not factored into the corporate calculations of costs and profits. Instead, environmental damage is viewed as the collateral damage of the free market in operation.”

See, here’s the situation: Under capitalism you are an owner of capital (the richest 1 to 5% of the population), you are a laborer, or you are unemployed. Now, most people in the world are part of the labor class. (This includes those who own their own businesses. Unless you actually own production factories, airlines, a media conglomerate, a bank, you are not a capitalist. You are a laborer.) But here’s the switcheroony: labor costs is the most despised, inconvenient, troublesome cost to those who own and run businesses. All this piles of money handed out to the necessary evil of workers. Business owners (including the bourgeoisie who own small businesses), work and work (ironically) to minimize labor costs–cut benefits, lower pay, decrease the number of employees costing the company money.

Seeing the problem here? The grand majority of human beings in the world are the enemy of business (so long as they’re labor and not consumers). Business grudgingly pays labor, as little as it can get away with, in order to give the masses the means to buy the commodities and services capitalism produces at obscene rates and worthlessness. The majority of the world’s population is the enemy of the very socio-economic base that they live under and serve.

Now, I’m not one to believe the whole “humans rule the earth by divine providence” or we’re masters of the animal kingdom or any of that hogwash. But let’s be honest: we humans, like it or not, regardless of any imbued esoteric meaning, are kind of in a position of power on this planet. We have species-wide sovereignty, agency, sentience, and capability. When you think about it, shouldn’t we be living under a socio-economic system where we’re in actual control? Where humans have a privileged place in our own societies to determine our own value and not be considered both an expendable commodity and a liability by the socio-economic base?! I mean, shouldn’t that simply be obvious?

In this world of commerce where labor (i.e.: most everyone) is an annoying liability to management and owners and shareholders–business as normal, in general–unions try to fight for the basic right of people to have an exchange value for their labor closer to the output value their labor produces.

Ah! says the average American. Labor unions?! They’re as bad as soviet commies. Well, here’s where things get fun….

Let’s grant for a moment that when you start scouring the land far and wide for unions, there are some that are as corrupt as the corporations they are fighting for workers’ rights against. (Co-opting and assimilation of labor-friendly things is a tool of capitalism to undermine its effort, but that’ll be addressed later.) But let’s talk generalities and averages here. What is the goal of the union?

To bilk workers of union dues, Joe American says.

No no no, that’s one of those rare instances. Back to general intent here. Unions fight to increase worker wages, benefits, leave time, insurance, etc. Now, fellow worker of the world, how in the world is that a bad thing?

Because they’re greedy and they ask for too much pay!

Uh huh. And what exactly is too much pay? Is it compared to what you make? Is it sour grapes and jealousy? Is it that you think the average steel worker, mine worker, nurse, actor, teacher, auto assembler, any of the millions of jobs served by unions, are buying multiple houses and several cars and taking trips at a whim’s notice to Europe on their ill-gotten union negotiated wages? Oh, no, sorry–I got workers confused with the owners of capital.

If things worked the way they should, the 80%+ of the world’s population who labor and toil and work for a living should not have to negotiate for an extra $5 and hour against the 1 to 5% of the population who own literally 90% of the world’s wealth.

This is an important point worth repeating: The super-majority of workers in the world, including you and everyone you likely know, should not have to also toil and fight to extract a few bucks more pay out of the 5% who own 90% of the world’s wealth.

Ah, says Joe, but when the union (or even non-union workers) fight for higher wages (which are always lower than the value of what their labor produces, by the way), that means products and services have to cost the consumer more! Unions and even wages themselves harm society!

Really? Here’s the really crazy thing about capitalism: When labor costs are forced to increase (e.g.: wage increases), the very same companies who raises the prices of their products and services tend to pay their CEOs and presidents and owners multi-million dollar compensation packages. Labor fights tooth-and-nail for more porridge, the consumer is forced to pay more for consumption, but the wealth that flows up the pyramid stays untouched and protected, allowing the rich to get richer.

And, here’s the joke of it all: We, the massive majority who are the labor class, are convinced to protect that flow of wealth up the pyramid, that it’s the right and natural way of things. We’re convinced to hate unions, to see other laborers as greedy, and put the capitalists on pedestals like royalty–behavior that harms ourselves and benefits those with the power and wealth! The labor class produces the goods, provides the services, has the expertise and skills, and the overwhelming numbers; the top 1 to 5% only have the wealth. But they control the masses and convince them, us, to work and vote and live against our own best interests in order to protect theirs.

Think about this: You’re in a room of a hundred people. You want to rule and control the other other 99. Do you do it by force? Yeah, see how far that gets ya. Or do you get the other 99 to do what you want by convincing them that what you want is the natural, proper way of things–even if it’s against their own interests? That’s what the capitalists have done with our entire cultural logic: convinced us greed is good, consumption is good, buy more stuff; that unions are greedy (uh oh! another contradiction!) and people should be thankful for the few bucks an hour their labor gets them and that to demand more compensation for their life-absorbing labor only harms everyone; and to ignore the fact that the only people who aren’t harmed by any of this are those to who all profits flow upward toward; and to accept as the natural and proper Way of Things that a tiny few (who are good at trading companies among each other), continue to get obscenely wealthy off the struggling labor of the masses who fight to keep their own wages and benefits as low as possible to make more profit for others.

Once more for effect: and to accept as the natural and proper Way of Things that a tiny few (who are good at trading companies among each other), continue to get obscenely wealthy off the struggling labor of the masses who fight to keep their own wages and benefits as low as possible to make more profit for others.

It’s an entirely upside down world we’re living in. When and how will it change?

(Facebook? Essay originally published: http://www.celticbear.com/weblog/2010/02/17/laboring-upside-down)

I’ve been a huge fan of SF author Steven Brust since circa 1988 when Taltos came out. (I didn’t know at the time that was not the first in the “Vlad Taltos” series, but it worked out OK.) After becoming a fan, I discovered Brust was a self-described Trotskyist. Being in my teens, early to mid-20s, I really didn’t have any idea what that was but I knew it was somehow connected to GASP! evil Communism! One part of my brain processed this information something like, “Huh, his writing is kick-ass, he seems really cool…perhaps whatever Trotskyism is it’s either a) inconsequential to who he is, or b) it’s not some all-encompassing evilness as my culture leads me to believe.” The other half of my mind processed more like, “LA LA LA LA I’M NOT LISTENING! I SEE NOTHINK! I HEAR NOTHINK! MOVE ALONG, CITIZEN!”

So the cognitive dissonance was dealt with by ardently ignoring it.

Until around 2007 when I started grad school and my first instructor was Dr. William Burling: the most influential professor, and one of the most influential persons, I’d ever met. I had the privilege of being a student of his for three (almost four) fantastic classes. What his greatest influence on me was to introduce me to the idea of questioning culture, society, government, art, everything. Everything is, to a greater or lesser degree, either a product of or a reflector of the socio-economic base of a culture and nearly everything in the culture is in service to those who control the wealth in society. In short, Dr. Burling was a Marxist, and by the fortune of serendipity, happened to come into my life just as I was questioning political structures.

At that time I was moving from Democrat to vague libertarian. It took nearly a year of questioning and study and investigation and debate, but eventually I too became a self-described Marxist. Although I’ve barely scratched the surface still of Marxist theory.

So, at one point as Dr. Burling and I were discussing Marxist theory and SF and fantasy literature, I realized something from the long forgotten recesses of my mind… (See, I kinda stopped reading Mr. Brust’s books by this point–not because I stopped liking them, but I’d pretty much stopped reading for pleasure altogether! I am glad to say I’ve since picked pleasure reading back up and have caught back up with all of Mr. Brust’s “Taltos” books at least.) I recalled that tidbit of info about my favorite fantasy author being a Trotskyist. I asked Dr. Burling, who had introduced me to Stanley Kim Robinson, and China Miéville, and Philip K. Dick, and a Marxist outlook of William Gibson (who, now, I have no idea how you couldn’t read Gibson with a Marxist outlook! My god, the man is postmodern materialist cultural criticism up and down!) if he had read any Steven Brust. He replied, somewhat dismissively that he didn’t have time for any pleasure reading. Then I mentioned Mr. Brust was a Trotskyist and, if I recalled, wrote in a couple of his novels about a peasant uprising in his fantasy world.

Dr. Burling grabbed a pen and asked me what that name was again.

Sadly, Dr. Burling passed away a couple of years later. I never did find out if he started looking into Brust’s writing. Probably not; he was pretty busy, in addition to teaching, editing a book of essays on Kim Stanley Robinson and working with  Miéville on a book of criticism about Marxist SF. *sigh* I still feel acute sense of honor of having been able to know the man and learn from him. He changed my entire way of looking at life and I could have missed it if I’d been a couple of years too late.

Anyway, so now that I’m deep in trying to learn and understand Marxist theory, both as it applies to literature and culture, guess what my favorite Trotskyist fantasy author has started doing? He’s reading and commenting on Karl Marx’s seminal work on socio-economics, Das Kapital.* (Volume 1, I believe, which is the one Marx had worked mostly on before he died, while Engels wrote the other volumes.)

What’s really cool is that just before this he had read through and commented on Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (arguably the father of and the manual of modern capitalism). This kicked-ass because not only did I learn something from it (unfortunately I came in rather late), it just goes to show that Brust is interested in exploring all the angles of modern socio-economics and doesn’t just surround himself with material that fits his perceptions or ideologies. That’s certainly a quality to admire and emulate.

I’m looking forward to reading what he has to say about the tome. And I’m very glad that one side of my brain stopped being a pest and started paying attention. Marxism is not evil, Trotskyism is not evil, communism is not evil. These are just ideas, concepts, ways of investigating and ideas are never evil. They may not be good or practical ideas, but one should never dismiss a way of thinking, a way of investigating, because authority has proclaimed it verboten, taboo, out of bounds. Question everything, especially authority. There’s a reason why they are in power, and a means by which they stay in power.

* I think he’s moving his blog over to a new location. I’ll try to update this link if I can when it happens.

The Tyranny of the Majority:
If you ever found yourself in a vastly outnumbered minority, and the majority voted that you had to give up something as necessary to your life as water and air, would you comply? When it comes down to it, does anyone really believe it makes sense to accept the authority of a group simply on the grounds that they outnumber everyone else? We accept majority rule because we do not believe it will threaten us – and those it does threaten are already silenced before anyone can hear their misgivings.

[...]

Three wolves and six goats are discussing what to have for dinner. One courageous goat makes an impassioned case: “We should put it to a vote!” The other goats fear for his life, but surprisingly, the wolves acquiesce. But when everyone is preparing to vote, the wolves take three of the goats aside.
“Vote with us to make the other three goats dinner,” they threaten. “Otherwise, vote or no vote, we’ll eat you.”
The other three goats are shocked by the outcome of the election: a majority, including their comrades, has voted for them to be killed and eaten. They protest in outrage and terror, but the goat who first suggested the vote rebukes them: “Be thankful you live in a democracy! At least we got to have a say in this!”

–From THE PARTY’S OVER: BEYOND POLITICS, BEYOND DEMOCRACY
http://thecloud.crimethinc.com/pdfs/democracy_reading.pdf

So, I’ve discovered this Web site: CrimethInc. Ex-Workers’ Collective (http://www.crimethinc.com). They have some blog posts on the G-20 protests…and most interestingly, a non-protest that was treated as a violent protest by the police and resulted in more than a hundred arrests (including a great many who weren’t doing any protesting) and many injured. (State Repression at the G20 Protests) From this I started looking over the site. It’s an anarchists’ site, filled with info and publications geared toward helping people find the anarchist within and fight the system.

This is what’s struck me as interesting: Their reason for existing, their criticism of the system, their complaints of capitalism and democracy, I completely agree with–and I’ll explain why in a moment. But their explanation of their remedy, their idea of anarchy, I’m having trouble with. (Note, that anarchy does not mean violence or chaos in the sense of abuse of others, harming people. It simply means no government, no rule of imposed law, no masters.)

Ironically, these anarchists have, from what I can see, I great disdain for socialism, communism, any -ism apparently derived from Marxism. I say “ironic” because their entire criticism of the current state of capitalism and authoritarian democracy comes straight from Marxist criticism, 101. Take for example this page from the book Days of War, Night of Love:

(page image link: “How Does Capitalism Work“)

This is capitalist criticism straight from Marx’s Kapital (not verbatim, of course). Everything this anarchist site decries about the current state of capitalist economy, culture, and the police state used to protect the hegemony and the owners of capital, is Marxism stripped of the Marxist lingo (like “hegemony”). There’s nothing about their critique of capitalism I don’t agree with (my being a Marxist). However, and this is where things get uncomfortable, their ideas of overcoming the system I don’t know if I can support. Well, let me clarify…

At the core, I consider myself an anarcho-socialist. I too believe that the best path for humanity, for human advancement, equality, justice, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is the complete lack of government and forced adherence to someone else’s majority rule. However, I also believe that married to that must be a social contract of mutual cooperation, shared resources, publicly owned and operated resources, manufacture, distribution…capital. This is different from anarcho-libertarianism, or Objectivism (vis-à-vis Ayn Rand) which believes that in addition to lack of any forced rules or regulations, private ownership is valued above all. That humans are selfish and greedy by nature, and that we should live to acquire as much for ourselves as we can and help others only so much as we can gain from it ourselves. Pretty much ethically and morally bankrupt, in my opinion.

As I read through the CrimethInc site, most of what they believe (and what they purport anarchists believe) matches up with my anarcho-socialism. They support cooperation, mutually beneficial action, gift economy. Hey, great! But they also support a sort of worship of anti-social behavior, crime, vandalism, activities that make me cringe (e.g.: shoplifting). Although, all the anti-social behavior they support, is all geared toward the state, corporate America, the power structure, and not against other individuals and their personal rights. OK…that sounds good… I guess.

So, I’m left to question: Is my cringing because I’ve lived my entire life controlled by the hegemony, brainwashed into subservience to conformity with passivity, being a good little worker bee who keeps his head down and continues to make profit for his capitalist lords without making any trouble for them? Well, yes I have. We all have. That’s the entire goal of hegemony, be it capitalist or feudal or slave economy. Those in control use whatever sociological means available to control the other 99% of the people for their own benefit. This requires blind obedience to their laws. It requires complete acquiescence to state-supporting meek mildness.

When I remember these things, which I’ve been studying and contemplating for some years now, it reinforces my belief in the anarcho-half of my anarcho-socialism. So, why does the action of subversiveness bug me?

Since President Dubbya started taking away civil liberties after 9/11, I started studying libertarianism and even anarchy–but always from a level of personal rights and liberties. It wasn’t until I started grad school and my first professor, Dr. Burling, introduced me to Marxism that I learned that Bush, civil liberty removal, the corporate ownership of the government, wars, all of it, are a result of the economic foundation: capitalism. It is essentially the base on which everything is a superstructure built extending from it. Everything is about the material question: Who uses it and what is it for? With that in mind it’s easy (easier) to understand power, wealth, who benefits from it most, and how they exploit those without it. Dr. Burling helped change my entire outlook on culture, laws, economy, politics, etc.

But when asked why doesn’t he live outside the corruption and control of capitalism, his response was, in essence: you can’t escape it, it affects everyone, might as well not make your own life unnecessarily difficult fighting it. And this is a guy who, in addition to being an unashamed Marxist, was also a musician with a focus on rock (meaning nothing exactly, except an implication that he has a rebellious spirit).

And it also makes me think of vaunted Marxist cultural critic and major figure of the Frankfurt School, Theodor Adorno, who it is said that during the Paris riots of 1968 when asked by his students why he didn’t participate or support the student protests, he replied “How can you actively fight for something before you fully understand it?”

There is “theory,” and there is “praxis.” Praxis is putting theory into action. Is it that these Marxist critics and theorists I look up to, who happen to be intellectuals and educators, don’t know how to put their words into action? Do they not have the courage of their convictions? Or are all they are about is understanding and criticizing the current system, but not about doing anything about it? When asked what good is knowing how culture develops, knowing how the hegemony controls and influences our decisions and our wants? They have replied that it helps you understand why you make the decisions that you do, why you choose what products or how you sell your labor. But is that enough?

Frederic Jameson (Marxist cultural critic) has developed a concept of applying “cognitive mapping” to cultural criticism, which is a theory of mapping the contradictions in capitalism, where it affects our lives, and finding and exploiting the holes in it. And it’s a step toward praxis, which gives people like me hope of doing something to make a difference. To help turn the tables on capitalist exploitation and help the “seeds of rebellion” grow. But…what is that rebellion? What are we Marxist intellectuals waiting for? We who study culture, and politics, and socio-economics? Dr. Burling had cryptically referred to the biopic about Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries, in which a young, pre-revolutionary Guevara is asked about how to spark the South American peoples into revolution against their oppressors, he responds that you can’t have a revolution without guns.

But then, Dr. Burling often referred to other ways to create such drastic upheaval as to eliminate capitalism, without revolution and war, and used as examples Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy and 40, 50, 60 trilogy. Stories in which the only way to evolve from capitalism to egalitarian socialism is either to colonize another planet, or deal with Earth-shaking environmental disaster. So, do we just wait for change?

Back to my point: Are these anarchists doing what we intellectuals fear to do, but are a natural and proper result of the same Marxist-rooted criticism of capitalism we both share? Am I a hypocrite for complaining about and railing about capitalism and its ills and evils, but I continue to lust after home ownership and getting a better job and obeying all the laws of the land so I don’t draw the attention of the state’s police apparatus?

Is it because I have a family to care for? I don’t risk rocking the boat, and so I participate, if grudgingly, in my own commodification and the orgy of consumerism? Of course, this is exactly what the hegemony counts on, this conservativism that we’re all supposed to grow into. We’re allowed to rebel a little as a youth, test the bounds of social acceptance, and then “settle down.” Grow a family, buy a home, get a job you can’t leave because you can’t live without the insurance benefits. You become a productive worker bee who has too much to lose by questioning authority, bucking the system, making waves. Be a quiet little worker bee, and you get to go (somewhat) unnoticed by the system that exploits you and uses you and extorts you, giving little in return except an addiction to mass consumption.

Are anarchists heroes I fear to admire? Or are they the hemp clothing wearing, organic food growing, dumpster diving neo-hippies that I can easily dismiss and marginalize, exactly as I’ve just done, because they threaten the social stability and conditioning I’ve internalized because I grew up brainwashed to become a quiet and non-trouble-making worker bee? Is that why when asked, I say I’m an anarcho-socialist “in theory” but “in practice” I’m a democratic-socialist? Isn’t that just a way for me to marginalize myself?

I don’t know. But this Fighting For Our Lives: An Anarchist Primer is at the very least thought-provoking reading.

To be fair: I’ve not read this book, only the review of it, so I’m kind of talking about something twice removed. But that’s ok–I’m actually going to be talking around the subject and about the review itself anyway.

So, evidently this book deconstructs the legend and the myth of Lincoln and really gets into the reality of his politics, policies, and socio-political beliefs based on his actions during his presidency and his time in Illinois politics. It turns out that an overarching belief of Lincoln was a strong federal government in control of social organization, individual state affairs and commerce, and the structure of mercantilism (which, by the way, was the socio-economic base preceding true and modern capitalism). And the Civil War was less to do with slavery than about federal (and imperial) control of the resources and wealth of the South.

Years and years ago, even a little into my teens, long before I had any ideas of libertarianism or especially Marxist criticism, I thought there was something wrong with the whole Civil War story we’re taught through both school and culture (the former really being a tool of the later, anyway). War itself is wrong, but that’s beside the point: What’s really going on that half a nation would want to split from the rest, and the side that controlled the organized military should act just like the empire we fought not a hundred years earlier to be free of in using armed force to prevent it? The idea that it was all about freeing the slaves didn’t ring true to me and seemed implausible, and for some vague and esoteric idea of simply keeping One Nation together is an even worse idea. (You don’t wage bloody war against your brother for some phantom notion of nationalism–at least, no rational person does. And if they do, how horrifically immoral and vile of an act is that!?)

No, even back when I still thought Marxism was the equivelent of Satanism, I understood it must have to do with economics, wealth, resources. (Later, as a Marxist, I’d learn that all wars are fundamentally about economics and resources.)

Ironically, this review of the book (and presumedly the book itself) while critiquing Lincoln’s political and war motivations as being economically motivated, (which is what materialist Marxism is all about doing), the review (and, again, evidentally the book) spends some time railing against some early 20th century American Maxist-Leninists who were working hard as historical revisionists to white-wash Lincoln and put a positive spin on his fascio-socialist politics. Now, these guys the review/book mention may very well have been Marxists, I don’t know. I’ll grant them this. And if true, the review/book is factually correct on this count and that’s fine. But the strong implication of both is that this is evidence that goes to the arguement that all Marxists approve of fascism and imperialim and seek to promote the kind of centralized goverment control of all resources and wealth that Lincoln appeared to want. And this mischaracterization simply points up yet again how very little libertarians, conservatives, capitalist bulldogs understand about Marxism.

For example, while it may be true that these particular Marxists the book likely cherry-picked were of the pro-fascism ilk, most of the Marxist critics, democratic-socialists, anarcho-socialists I’m aware of from the same time period would have been appalled at the kind of federalized control of commerce and wealth Lincoln was moving toward, and most especially the idea of waging war to secure that wealth and resources for federalized control. It was Marx and Engles who, before and during the very years of the American Civil War, were in Germany writing about how capitalism was the corrupt foundation upon which unjust, unnecessary, violent, wars just like the Civil War are based upon. They decried the very basis of wealth and resource and labor-exploiting economy that fueled Lincoln’s alleged desire to federalize and command.

Socialist activists like Max Eastman, John Reed, Emma Goldman, fought and were imprisoned for their views on wealth-inspired wars and their anti-war activism… In the 20s. Early anarchists like Bakunin (sp?) fought for anti-federalism (anti-governments in general) and were also socialists and believers in Marxist criticism. Marxist critics like Max Weber and Erich (sp?) Fromm (who identified as a libertarian socialist) were staunchly anti-war and anti-centralized power based on accumulation of wealth and resources! Modern libertarianism owes it’s existance to the early Marxists and scads of anarcho-socialists and libertarian socialists!

But nearly every current (American) self-proclaimed libertarian I know, knows nothing of their movement’s history, knows nothing about the various forms of socialism, erronously groups all socialists as Stalinists, and has no understanding whatsoever of Marxism. And sadly, they tend to have no interest at all in even acknowledging any differences. The differences, for one example, between a Soviet communist and an anarcho-socialist are as stark as night and day. But, when I try to even point this up, I’m usually met with a wall of righteous dismissal and the evident desire to remain ignorant as additional information would simply complicate their black-and-white ideological blanket hatred.

Hmm, OK, this will do nothing to improve the graces of my libertarian friends. Chances are, this may be the end of friendships.

Back to the Lincoln review/book: their anti-Marxist diatribes aside, their critique of Lincoln seems to make complete sense given the evidence. We live in a nation where the federalist North won, and the winners get to write history (and craft the general cultural message of why they won and what it was all about in the first place).

Now, don’t misunderstand me, and no offense meant (…OK, maybe a little offense, sorry…) I’m not only not a Southerner but I really don’t in general like the South. Besides their past hanging on to abhorrant slavery (which, again, had little to actually do with the war and the North was for a long time also a supporter of and a longer time a beneficiary of), I hate their current general racism, scientific ignorance, mysoginistic bigotry, religious zealotry, and food. (*sigh* OK, a lot of offense. Sorry.) In general, stereotyped broad strokes.

But even before I knew the word libertarianism, or the concept of anarcho-socialism, I believed in the message of the Declaration of Independence that stressed that any people have the right to rid itself of government it finds intrusive, abusive, overly controlling, domineering, and counter to the peoples’ desires for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And the 10th Amendment that states that all rights not expressly dictated by the Constitution fall to the states and to the people. I believe that includes the right to secede from the union should the constitutional, federal government grossly overstep its rights and bounds and violate the limits of the Constitution and the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. (Did I get you libertarians back?)

Ah, that ol’ “liberal media,” avoiding the truth and spreading lies. Well, part of that statement is correct.

(Feel free to skip the following introductory diatribe and go right to the featured link at the end of this essay. What it has to say is certainly more interesting and coherent than my ramblings.)

Until I gave up XM Radio, I used to listed to Air America all the time. It’s a very, unabashed, left-leaning radio media. And for the few years, during the Bush administration, that I listened to it, I would often hear of some new event, or disclosure, or revelation, or news of some sort that implicated Bush, Cheney, or any number of their cohorts, in war crimes at worst and outright deception at best. Now, knowing that I’m listening to a truly left-wing media outlet, (unlike most people who watch FOX news and listen to Limbaugh who think what they’re getting is “fair and balanced”), I would try to validate what I heard with other sources and gauge its certainty before I went around talking about it. If nothing else, I hate the idea of propagating a story to then turn around and find out it’s unfounded–but mostly, I worship at the altar of truth and try to live my life in discovery of what is and isn’t true.

Anyway, so when I would check out a story and find that it has enough credible, independent support to be true, I’d wait for this important, vital discovery or revelation to appear on mainstream news. And what would happen is maybe, maybe it might make a tiny appearance on Keith Olbermann’s show. Sometimes, rarely, it might get mentioned on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show (which is null of any affect since the context is it’s a comedy show). And if it did on either, it’d be the once and then never hear about it again. Would it get mentioned on other MSNBC shows? Nope. CNN? Never. ABC News and the like? Not hardly. The idea of the mainstream media being “liberal” was laughable!

For a long time, well…most of my life, I believed in the press as being on the whole fair and interested in the truth. It was our “fourth estate,” charged with uncovering the sometimes painful truth where those in power would want it buried. And then a few years ago, as I started to learn about who actually wielded socio-political power and discovered it was not the politicians by and large, but the top 1-5% richest people in the country (and the world), and that all aspects of our society are controlled and regulated (both intentionally and subconsciously) by capitalist hegemony, some truths started to come to light for me.

The mainstream news, the media, are all corporate owned. Major transnational, global market capitalist corporations which have as their bottom line…the bottom line, and not truth, news, fairness, balance. The money defines what becomes newsworthy and what gets ignored. The corporate media’s very close ties to the Bush dynasty helped keep his administration’s war crimes out of the news or its import minimized to insubstantial.

Now, at one time I would have argued that this control surely wouldn’t filter down to the reporters and the editors who research. Well, yes, it does. A climate, a culture, an agenda filters down from the top to the bottom and when people need work and can’t afford to be too choosy about who exploits their labor, er, pays them and provides their medical benefits, they’re willing to push what the overarching corporate agenda wants pushed and ignore what it wants ignored. And if that’s too much for a reporter to deal with, the editor above them, who has an even greater vested interest in his job, will help make sure the message conforms to the corporate agenda. And as the agenda becomes obvious and doesn’t remain latent, and the employee can’t handle being silenced, they’re free to work on the edges of society and blog, where they’re ignored by all but the fringes and are dismissed by society as irrelevant.

All this to introduce a recent SALON article which discusses this very corporate controlled media dynamic, even in what is thought of by most people as the most “liberal” of all media, Keith Olbermann. Enjoy:

• GE’s silencing of Olbermann and MSNBC’s sleazy use of Richard Wolffe

… Having Richard Wolffe host an MSNBC program — or serving as an almost daily “political analyst” –  is exactly tantamount to MSNBC’s just turning over an hour every night to a corporate lobbyist.  Wolffe’s role in life is to advance the P.R. interests of the corporations that pay him, including corporations with substantial interests in virtually every political issue that MSNBC and Countdown cover.  Yet MSNBC is putting him on as a guest-host and ”political analyst” on one of its prime-time political shows.  What makes that even more appalling is that, as Ana Marie Cox first noted, neither MSNBC nor Wolffe even disclose any of this….

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This will be a quick post by me; I can discuss my thoughts on this at great length, but I think it’s more important that one just simply read this fantastic article:

• Canadian Perspectives 2009: The Failure of Capitalism and the Need for a Socialist Alternative

“Capitalism has failed. This fact conditions all future developments.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, all the mouthpieces of capitalism repeated the mantra, ‘socialism has failed, capitalism has won, there is no alternative.’ Francis Fukuyama declared it was ‘the end of history.’ Free-markets, privatization, corporate tax-cuts, deregulation, and outsourcing were seen as the only way forward. In short, there was a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. The workers had lost and there was very little pity from the victors.”

It is kind of a long article, but please don’t let that dissuade you from reading–it has excellent material from beginning to end, especially as the thesis starts to really pick up steam about halfway through. This article is vital for anyone of any political bent: If you’re a die-hard capitalist, this article may give you a better understanding of real socialist perspectives so you can fight against actual socialism (if you continue to wish to do so) and not some false cartoon propaganda mockery of socialism that hasn’t existed since Stalin; people curious about what socialism is all about, this will give you a great, practical, real-world idea; socialists, well, I don’t need to say anything to you.

Bottom line: anyone interested in what’s going on in politics and economics lately, and what the future may hold, should read this article. As Kim Stanley Robinson mentioned a couple of weeks ago, humanity’s survival may depend on becoming post-capitalism!

KSR is an award winning Utopian author (with a PhD) who’s written, among many other critically acclaimed works, the Mars trilogy and the “Science in the Capital” trilogy. The former is about terraforming Mars and “Utopian” society that develops there, and the latter is about the effects of global warming. In his regular life, KSR is an “American-leftist” and works for social change and climate change awareness. (He made interesting comment that when he started writing, “utopian fiction” meant writing about perfect society, nowadays it means simply society surviving. Kind of indicative of some significant social change.) His talk was in dedication to Dr. Bill Burling who he collaborated with and edited a book of critical essays about KSR. (Dr. Burling was my professor and mentor who I recently mentioned passed away.)

Alright, so, what he said:

(Yikes, I got pretty busy and sick the last week, so this has been delayed; sorry. Hope my notes still make sense to me….)

So, KSR started off by telling us he comes from an American-leftist perspective, and that he sees the world though a particular ideology. But, the point is, we all experience the world through various ideologies–and it’s not something to be avoided, even if you could. He remarked that when people use the term “ideology” it’s usually as a negative: “I see things the way they are, but he sees things through ideology!” It is through ideology that we translate our experiences and make sense of the world we live in, whether it’s a leftist or conservative, humanist or religious, or any other ideology. The point it so identity the ways in which we make sense of the world, find the overlaps with other people and cooperate where we can to make things better.

He then talked about something that has always intrigued me about we as people and society: he observed that at each stage of our cultural development we as a culture believe we’re at the top of the ladder, the best we can be. After all, if there’s more we can do to be better and more advanced as a people, wouldn’t we be doing it already? Yet every ten or twenty years we look back and are amazed at how ridiculous we were as a culture–whether it’s something like clothing and music trends or the way we act in general. We must always strive to “become more sophisticated than your own cultural moment.” If we know that in a couple of decades we’re going to look back on what we are today, what we’re doing and how we’re behaving, and be amused or aghast or ashamed–let’s go ahead and start moving toward that better moment around the corner.

Our brains as hominids have grown larger and more capable over time. Our brains, as homo sapiens, are about as big as they can be and still more often than not pass through the birth canal; evolution caused our brains to advance faster than the rest of our bodies. Why? What was going on in our relatively stable environment millennia ago to cause our brains to advance so drastically? (Uhm, I don’t remember the exact point he got to from there, but he went on to say) we used to live in a world in which we experienced what we call the sublime on rare, amazing instances….

The sublime is the combination of  natural beauty and terror. It’s a kind of experience that fundamentally shakes our sense of reality. To the paleolithic human, the sublime was experienced when a lightning strike would explode yards away. Or when you run for your life from a wildcat and make it to the tribe alive. These are experiences of the sublime. Amazing and wonderful and terrifying.

But in our modern world, we still have the brains we maxed out on as paleolithic humans, but experience what our brains interpret as sublime on a constant basis! Riding in a car at amazing speeds whizzing past other zooming hunks of metal–that’s fundamentally sublime. Flying, easy to get food, ability to stay warm or cool without effort, constant shelter, these are mundane modern experiences that our brains evolved to find as unusual and awesome, but we’ve sublimated the experiences into white noise, and so our still in many ways anciently-wired minds strive to experience that heart-racing and hormone pumping reaction to the sublime experience that we should be having to this constant “technological sublime.” With the help of computers, games, drugs, television, we perform virtual rock throwing to strike down a charging enemy–in the form of watching sports or playing a first-person shooter game. Virtual travel, virtual sex, we use our cultural production to try to fulfill the experiences our brains evolved to experience, and feel the sense of accomplishment and success they were wired to feel–and we don’t quite get it. We earn 100,000 points at Game X, yea, yippie…but it’s an empty accomplishment. Hmm, maybe if I earn 200,000 points I’ll fill fulfilled. Easy food, no accomplishment. Maybe if I eat more I’ll feel like I caught my hunt. Easy clothing, comfort, everything. But we don’t feel truly happy much less the results of experiencing the sublime–so we consume more and more and more in constant search for fulfillment and happiness. And of course, a billion and a half corporations are more than happy to take advantage of our spiraling and recursive need/non-fulfillment by producing and selling us more and more and more.

The result: addiction to consumption.
The result: Global ecological impact = appetite x population x technology.

KSR then talked about the GINI figures and wealth distribution. During feudal period, power came from land ownership. In capitalism, power comes from money ownership. However, between the two periods, the power structure didn’t really change all that much. The powerful land owners became rich land owners.

What we have in capitalism wealth distribution is a pyramid where at the very top is 1% of the world’s population owning 99% of the world’s wealth. (In the US, the top 5% own 95% of the nation’s wealth. Go us.) The most damage to the ecosystem actually comes from the top and th bottoms of the pyramid. The top engages in hyper-consumerism. The bottom (and population-wise, the largest world group) is poverty stricken, they have to feed their children tonight, so the thought of sustainable natural resources don’t (can’t) factor in what they need to do to earn enough to feed their family.

The best wealth-to-population “shape” that we can have would be a flattened oval, where the majority of the population have the majority of the wealth reasonably equally distributed. This paradigm would be best not just because it’d be “nice,” but because it’s vital for the survival of our species.

Social justice, just like language and law, is a technology. It’s a development that changes and improves over time and to social conditions. We can change our concepts of social justice for the better for more people. Interestingly, the places on the world where women enjoy full legal rights and social justice, the “replacement rates” (childbirth rates) is low and sustainable. Where childbirth rates are high (and potentially socially and ecologically damaging) are where social justice is rare. (On a personal note, I find it interesting in the middle of the US where in general social justice is moderate (not near as good as many northern European countries) there are pockets of social injustice and high birth rates among the evangelical religious Christians. For example, “Quiverfull Families,” where women are expected to be baby-making machines and are considered second-class and second-rate people. “Helpmeets” at best!)

Back to consumption without happiness, by every statistical measurement of happiness over the last 50 years, we in the US aren’t any happier than people in other countries despite our increased ability to consume and 5x the consumption rate as [notes illegible here. I believe compared to comparable Western nations].

We as individuals conform to the norms of our culture. If we truly want to be happier people and/or less consuming people, we need to make big group decisions to change culture what equals happiness. In a manner of speaking, the impending climate change, though dangerous, is an opportunity to make massive social change across the board, including improvements to social justice and global living conditions!

(KSR advocated a resurgence of awareness for Henry David Thoreau’s Walden.)

At this point KSR started taking questions from the audience. In response to a question regarding his view on healthcare, he very much believes healthcare is a right for all. As was the saying among Italian workers: “health is not for sale!”

Something we have to remember as we desire change, is the government is us. He’s always found it amazing when people curse the government because the government if “for the people, of the people, and by the people.” When you curse the government, simply replace the word “government” with “us” and see what kind of sense that makes.

(Here’s where I diverge from KSR’s opinions, and when I had a moment with him I asked him about how I, and many of us, do not see the government any longer as by, of, and for us. The government is a corporatocracy, run by, for, and of corporations. People may still have some influence over government at local levels, which is vital and often ignored! People forget that change can start at home as all focus is on state and federal levels. But it’s at those levels where corporate interests hold sway. KSR’s response was basically that we still have the right of the vote, who we vote for. Yeah, well, that’s a great symbolism but it’s pretty much meaningless as the only people that are allowed by the corporate run campaign and election machines are corporate lackey X and a nearly identical corporate lackey Y. Their only differences are in superficial “wedge issue” topics that create a conflict between the voters that cause them to ignore the more important, fundamental issues rotting the core of society.)

He mentioned the site http://www.350.org and the data than can be found on it regarding how to sustain human and most current life on the planet, the CO2 in the atmosphere can’t be (on a long-term level) more than 350 parts per million. We’re currently at 389 and climbing rapidly.

There are a lot of great ideas that are floating around about geoengineering, but the bottom line is we need to get CO2 out of the atmosphere (and not into the oceans where it’s currently being soaked up and screwing up the food chain.) The best option is reforestation. And it’s possible that just a little effort and improvement can result in huge chain-reaction of thriving greenery. We can’t assume the problem is too big and out of control to deal with–then crisis is assured. We can’t stand around paralyzed, waiting for the next gee-whiz technology to get invented that will save us all. It might not come in time.

We need to promote “mindful consumption,” increase wind-powered technology, and absolutely 100% not burn coal. And “clean coal” is non-existent. It’s a marketing term that’s essentially meaningless.

Smart consumption. Interestingly, junking your current car for a hybrid may be more ecologically damaging as the increase in hybrid car production causes more of a carbon footprint than what’s saved by the hybrid cars.

“Sustainable development,” one of the buzzwords found on the printed materials for this day’s events and printed on a 50-foot wall banner in the theater, is also a marketing term that’s simply code for “capitalism”. We need to become post-capitalists. One thing we have to get past is this idea that capitalism is the end-all be-all of socio-political developments. There are better alternatives, and it doesn’t mean embracing Ludditeism. Low tech is not necessary to become post-capitalist.

We have to face that because of our ability to affect the world, we have stewardship over it. It’s a scary thought because we’re pretty ignorant as a species when it comes to world-building. We don’t even know how to make soil–we have to grow soil. We have to realize as we make change to save the eco-system (and human society) that we’re not giving up comfortable lifestyle, we have to give up a neurotic lifestyle!

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I have a love/hate relationship with the blog “Classically Liberal“. I couldn’t agree more with his analysis on the failed War on Drugs, the criticisms of institutional education, his disgust for the encroaching police state, police abuse of power, face-palming frustration at the destructive and absolutely absurd criminalization of sexuality, and pretty much anything having to do with civil rights. But his hatred of socialism based on as terrible misunderstanding and misrepresentation of it as the creationist “understanding” of evolution, really crinkles my spleen. His economic libertarianism is based on a very elitist, self-righteous, belief in immutable “human nature” and the inherent existence of an objective sense of “the good the true and the beautiful” in class-defined artistic production.

But, I have to say I’m really starting to agree with his criticism of this horrific spending-spree the government is on in bailing companies out. I wish I could remember who I heard recently say: “If a company is so big that it can’t be allowed to fail, then it’s too big for the ‘free market’ and must be broken apart.” Yep.

Anyway, check out this alarming video he has linked on his site under Spending our Future: The Bailout Crisis:

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BoingBoing has an article: “Marx was right!” in which the author discusses his move from being a dot-com capitalist to a return to a respect for Marx’s criticism of capitalism. (His wife, who said of his return to Marxist studies that it’s “worse than your reggae phase!”, could commiserate with mine!)

[quote] The work of Karl Marx is ultra relevant to understanding the world’s current financial mess, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Marx has become intellectually indispensable to me again, as if there ever should have been any doubt. It’s fascinating to consider that during the time period when Marx was writing “Capital,” there were few factories in England –it was largely an agrarian society still– yet somehow Marx was able to see clearly the mess that we would be in today. He’s the most accurate prophet in all of history, there should be no doubt about this. Marx viewed history with a very, very long telescope. How he was able to see so far into the future is a mystery of his particular genius, but Marx accurately extrapolated how capitalism’s endgame would play itself out at the very birth of the system. Marx saw how utterly destructive this system would ultimately become. Look around you: Marx was right.[/quote]

(On a related note, Richard Metzger posted a followup: “Marx was… second???” about Thomas Jefferson’s essay on “fictitious capital” decades before Marx wrote about it.)

Well, I could write for a long time regarding my thoughts and history in Marxist studies, but you don’t care, do you? Instead, let me link to this great page that helps explain both Marxist and anarchist theories in ordinary terms that speaks to the common person:

Questions about Capitalism and Class

Yes, it’s Chumbawamba’s Web site. They live the spirit of anarcho-socialism, and their answers to common questions about materialist criticism of capitalism is really fantastic! I really encourage you to read at least this one page I just linked top to bottom. That’s it, all I ask.

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(Drawing of Marx and Engles stolen borrowed from http://www.hermes-press.com/distinctions.htm)

I actually first met him a few times at the local astronomy club before I enrolled in grad school. He was the guy who first helped my sight my new telescope in to Saturn, and that’s an incredible sight! Imagine my surprise when weeks later on my first night of English 600, I discover he’s my teacher.

And in that class I was introduced to the concept of questioning ideology. I’d been a born-again skeptic for a couple/few years before that. But Dr. Burling taught me to go even deeper and examine and question the very base of all cultural assumptions and the very concept of “common sense” and “natural law.” It was from him that I learned that “Marxism” was not a dirty word. That I learned about critical theory and cultural criticism, of Lacan and Derrida, and Adorno and Jameson. I learned in that class about the politics of academia, the ideological nature of education, and the value of scholarship. That was literally a life-changing class.

And the next two classes I’d have with him continued that incredible education. I learned that science fiction was not embarrassing genre fiction meant for geek entertainment, but had a special place in cultural criticism. I would never read sf, (which I had always loved simply as escapism but knew just subliminally that it spoke something more to me, but I didn’t know what), the same way again.

He inspired me my first year to write a paper for a conference. I did, and presented it. And would the next year thanks to him. He inspired me to write for peer-reviewed scholarly journals. I have. He gave up his time to help me write at a much higher level than I ever realized I could. He spent a collected many, many hours talking with me in office hours, after class, in e-mails, about everything from the origins of sf to underlying ideological assumptions in current politics.

He was going to have Kim Stanley Robinson, who he had been corresponding with for quite some time and had edited a book about him, come talk to the class he was teaching this semester. This would-be 4th class I would have had with him. Now, whatever synergy of Dr. Burling and Kim Robinson’s time together with us could have gifted us, is gone forever.

I learned so much from him, and I was only just beginning. There was so much more I was planning on learning from him, so much more he could have taught me. It’s a selfish loss, I know. But I’m keenly missing the lost opportunity to confer with him in my future writing and scholarship, to seek his advice and counsel, and continue to learn from him. His wit, his audacity, his brilliance, gone. I’m not ready.

He had on a few occasions called me his peer. That was the greatest honor he could have ever given me.

Dr. William Burling was fiercely intelligent, absolutely committed to his students and the subject of his expertise, dedicated to the ideals of critical thinking and learning which surpassed the confines of organized, institutional education. He inspired me, pushed and challenged me, opened my eyes and changed my life. It’s a little darker of a world without him in it.

Something that’s got me irked late in the Presidential campaign is the constant bandying about “socialist” this and “Marxist” that. One person I follow on Twitter remarked of Obama after the election, “…too bad he’s a socialist,” and he was rooting for him. Now this:

• Paul Broun calls Obama a “Marxist”

Georgian Representative Broun took Obama’s comment to encourage and build up a civil service agenda (civil workers and Peace Corps, etc.) as tatamount to Marxism, like Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. I am so sick of people throwing “Marxist” around to mean anything non-American–and being utterly wrong.

Hitler was a national socialist at best–fascist in reality. Stalin was a fascist dictator. Neither of which in the least bit Marxist. Stalin started as a Marxist, back in the days of the Revolution with Trotsky and Lenin, then quickly abandoned the spirit and the letter of Marxism in order to become a religiously worship dictator, counter to Marxist concepts.

Marxism is indeed a criticism of capitalism–a very pointed criticism, indeed. But what Marx and Engles recommended or believed in was NOT socialism controlled by a dictator or even a ruling “party.” They believed in society owned by the proletariat, the workers, the people–not fascist rulers giving lip service to such ideals but in fact ruled the people with iron fist and continued to control the means of production and distribution. Marx would have been appalled by what Stalin did and disgusted by Hitler.

Obama is a liberal, but very much a liberal capitalist. And when it comes to actual (or nearest thing to) socialism: when you look at the high average level of lifestyle, lack of poverty, lack of health care induced bankruptcy, high level of social health, low infant mortality rates, high education rates of socialist countries like Canada, Sweden, Netherlands…. I have to wonder, what’s wrong with that?

• Print Your Own Money

. . . Unlike local currencies, centralized currencies were biased towards retaining their value over time. Capitalism (in addition to being a lot of other things) is the way people get rich simply for being rich. Capital becomes the most important component in the capital/labor/resources equation. Since the purpose of the Renaissance innovations was to keep the currently wealthy wealthy, the currency was biased to favor those who had it – and could mete it out at high interest rates to those who needed it for their transactions.

What we witnessed over the past decades has been the necessary endgame of the scenario.

. . .

The collapse of centrally controlled commerce and currency simply creates an opportunity for local commerce and currency to revive. For people to learn to work and live together on a human, local scale – as the original free market advocate, Adam Smith, actually suggested. Admittedly, this would be a painful transition for many – but it’s better than maintaining dependence on a fiscal system designed from the start to turn people and communities into extractable corporate assets. (Think about that the next time you’re called up to “human resources.”) . . .

This reminds me of the post I wrote not too long ago in which I discuss, ad nauseum, the failures of conservativism and the corruption of capitalism, and the ideals of anarcho-socialism:

• The failure of conservatism.

And to a lesser although probably more readable degree:

• Viva la hypocrisy!