We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, July 9, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today:Thursday, July 9, 2020

  • As Long As Mass Media Propaganda Exists, Democracy Is A Sham by Caitlin Johnstone from her weblog. (My reaction: Propaganda is an indispensable element added to fascism to create the neofascism of the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire. It is a crucial weapon along with the re-writing of history added to the traditional weapons of fascism (example: the militarization of police) in order to control their populations. "Democracy" has nothing to do with fascism of either type.)
Prof. Wolff is what we are left with to expose the weaknesses of capitalism after the great ideological purge of the late 1940s and '50s (see this and this). This period that saw the careers of Hollywood producers, directors, and actors destroyed along with true leftist intellectuals was very well described by Bruce Lerr. 
As a result, we now we see a very few tamed leftists who pose as true socialists like Wolff attacking the weaknesses of capitalism regarding the provision of health services of our country. (Or we see intellectuals like Wilkinson avoiding the topic of capitalism as a class-based system in preference to the highly abstract and meaningless "Business".) Wolff has been playing to the crowd, and "dissident" websites like CounterPunch, as a safe "Marxist" by promoting worker cooperatives within a capitalist system. He knows, or should know, that worker cooperatives cannot compete with private enterprises because the former serve the welfare of workers, whereas the private enterprises regard workers as expensive commondities that they must reduce in order to compete in the marketplace vis-a-vis other companies.
By attacking capitalist health services he stays on very safe ground because the capitalist system cannot serve the whole population with health services--it was never designed for this purpose. Capitalism is inherently a class based system. It was designed to serve a tiny class which has over the centuries accumulated capital in ever concentrated amounts and in ever smaller hands. Today major capitalists hold more money than entire countries along with their enormous power to subvert entire countries (and even the UN), including our own, and today's events reflect that fact. It is obvious that capitalists could never prepare for a pandemic. It's simply not "efficient" use of resources that were designed only to serve the needs of a tiny minority--capitalists.
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