by Frank Joseph Smecker from Toward Freedom.
I share many of the sentiments expressed in this interview by both parties. However, I am bothered by a phenomenon that I too often encounter with writers on the left--their insistence on seeing "civilization" as the problem. To his credit, the interviewer, Smecker, initially identifies the problem accurately as capitalism, but thereafter sticks with civilization. Michey Z constantly sees civilization as the problem. This always rankles me. It tends to suggest to me that these leftists/environmentalists don't really understand the problem and therefore can't have the right solutions. Of course, another explanation is that people are often reluctant to use the word capitalism because they may suffer consequences in terms of their careers.
Civilization includes everything that working people have created with their gifted minds and their labor to make life more meaningful, easier, and secure. It encompasses all literature, music and the arts, technology, knowledge of the universe, etc. Should we throw that all away?? Do we need to in order to survive?? NO!
THE problem is the economic AND political system called CAPITALISM. Usually the "political" part of it is covered over with a thin veneer of references to a republican or democratic form of government. This veneer consists only of carefully managed elections, elections which allow working people to choose between various agents of the capitalists.
The capitalist system was gradually created over a long period of time by sociopaths or opportunists who discovered ways that they could use other people for their benefit. By accumulating wealth and power, these people became a ruling class.
They established property laws that said that all things created on their property, consisting of either land or buildings, belonged to the owners who paid an hourly wage to their workers. The ruling class passed laws and established police agencies to enforce these laws. When working people fought back they were killed or imprisoned (they still are in many parts of the world). After a time working people became so indoctrinated with the virtues of this new system that they began to think of it as natural, or that there was no other alternative. Thus, working people today are being exploited without most of them being aware of it or realizing the injustices of such a system.
The same class of owners established banking institutions which over a long period of time evolved into central banks that issued money or notes to governments that legally established their use as money. (A good explanation of this historical process is found in Web of Debt by Ellen Brown.) These notes which the central banks create out of nothing are lent to governments. Thus, governments end up owing considerable debt including interest to the central banks. Governments then have to tax working people to pay these debts.
Using primarily these two methods of extracting wealth from working people has enabled this class of people to become very rich and powerful.
In today's world capitalism is like a giant parasite that has climbed onto the backs of working people without their knowing it. Thus working people have to work harder and harder and trash the environment in order to survive because they unknowingly are also feeding this parasite.
