Surviving Capitalism (Not)

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

Monday, March 5, 2018

Extracts from a new book entitled "How Will Capitalism End?"

posted by Ron Horn

The book, published in 2016, that I will quote from is written by Wolfgang Streeck, a German sociologist who I believe has some important insights about the capitalist system that I would like to share with you and for your consideration. This doesn't mean that I endorse everything he writes in the book. After all, his educational experience has been somewhat contaminated by capitalist authorities that oversee all institutions within the US-led capitalist Empire. (Note: I've taken the liberty to re-format the paragraphs to make them more suitable for online reading.)

The image I have of the end of capitalism--an end that I believe is already under way--is one of a social system in chronic disrepair, for reasons of its own and regardless of the absence of a viable alternative. While we cannot know when and how capitalism will disappear and what will succeed it, what matters is that no force is on hand that could be expected to reverse the ... downward trends in economic growth, social equality,and financial stability and end their mutual reinforcement.

In contrast to the 1930s, there is today no political-economic formula on the horizon, Left or Right, that might provide capitalist societies with a coherent new regime of regulation.... Social integration as well as system integration seem irreversibly damaged and set to deteriorate further. What is most likely to happen as time passes is a continuous accumulation of small and not-so-small dysfunctions; none necessarily deadly as such, but most beyond repair ....

Conceiving of the end of capitalism as a process rather than an event raises the of how to define capitalism. Societies are complex entities that do not die in the organisms do: with the rare exception of total extinction, discontinuity is always embedded in some continuity. If we say that a society has ended, we mean that certain features of its organization that we consider essential to it have disappeared; others may well have survived.

I propose that to determine if capital is alive, dying or dead, we define it as a modern society that secures its collective reproduction as an unintended side-effect of individually rational, competitive profit maximization in pursuit of capital accumulation, through a 'labour process' combining privately owned capital with commodified labour power, fulfilling the ... promise of private vices turning into public benefits. It is this promise, I maintain, that contemporary capitalism can no long keep--ending its historical existence as a self-reproducing, sustainable, predictable and legitimate social order.

.... One might think that a long-lasting crisis of this sort would open up more than a few windows of opportunity for reformist or revolutionary agency. It seems, however, that disorganized capitalism is disorganizing not only itself but its opposition as well, depriving it of the capacity either to defeat capitalism or to rescue it. For capitalism to end, then, it must provide for its own destruction--which, I would argue, is exactly what we are witnessing today.

But why should capitalism, whatever its deficiencies, be in crisis at all if it no longer has any opposition worthy of the name? When Communism [i.e. the Soviet Union] imploded in 1989, this was widely viewed as capitalism's final triumph, as the 'end of history'. Even today, after 2008, the Old Left remains on the brink of extinction everywhere, while a New Left has, until now, failed to appear. The masses, the poor and powerless as much as the relatively well-to-do, seem firmly in the grip of consumerism, with collective goods, collective action and collective organization thoroughly out of fashion. As the only game in town, why should capitalism not carry on, by default if for no other reason?

At first glance, there is indeed much that speaks against pronouncing capitalism dead, regardless of all the ominous writing on the historical wall. As far as inequality is concerned, people may get used to it, especially with the help of public entertainment and political repression. Furthermore, examples abound of governments being re-elected that cut social spending and privatize public services, in pursuit of sound money for the owners of money. Concerning environmental deterioration, it proceeds so slowly compared to the hum lifespan, so one can deny it while learning to live with it. Technological advances with which to buy time, such as fracking, can never be ruled out, and if there are limits to the pacifying power of consumerism, we clearly are nowhere near them.

Moreover, adapting to more time-consuming and life-consuming work regimes can be taken as a competitive challenge, an opportunity for personal achievement. Cultural definitions of the good life have always been highly malleable and might well be stretched further to match the onward march of commodification, at least as long as racial or religious challenges to pro-capitalist re-education can be suppressed, ridiculed or otherwise marginalized.

Finally, most of today's stagnation theories apply only to the West, or just to the U.S., not to China, Russia, India or Brazil--countries to which the frontier of economic growth may be about to migrate, with vast virgin lands waiting to be made available for capitalist progress.

My answer is that having no opposition may actually be more of a liability for capitalism than an asset. Social systems thrive on internal heterogeneity, on a pluralism of organizing principles protecting them from dedicating themselves entirely to a single purpose, crowding out other goals that must also be attended to if the system is be sustainable. Capitalism as we know it has benefited greatly from the rise of counter-movements against the rule of profit and of the market. Socialism and trade unionism, by putting a brake on commodification, prevented capitalism from destroying its non-capitalist foundations--trust, good faith, altruism, solidarity within families and communities, and the like. Under Keynesianism and Fordism, capitalism's more or less loyal opposition secured and helped stabilize aggregate demand, especially in recessions. Where circumstance were favourable, working-class organization even served as a 'productivity whip', by forcing capital to embark on more advanced production concepts.

... capitalism can survive only as long as it is not completely capitalist--as it has not yet rid of itself, or the society in which it resides, of 'necessary impurities". Seen this way , capitalism's defeat of its opposition may actually have been a Pyrrhic victory, free it from countervailing powers which, while sometimes inconvenient, had in fact supported it. Could it be that victorious capitalism has become its own worst enemy?

Sunday, March 4, 2018

How far can the Americans be pushed?

Click here to access article by Ghassan Kadi from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard. (Added a relevant quote by the author at 9:40 AM Seattle time.)

... after the petro-dollar loses its world dominance, and this doesn’t seem very far away, a time will come when it will become virtually impossible to keep propping up the American economy with quantitative easing (aka printing money). And as America loses its economic stature, its only remaining prowess and might will be in its nuclear arsenal. The question is this. If America is imposing sanctions and bans right left and centre right now, and for no good reason at all, will a much more desperate America use its nuclear power to restore its dominion?

Such questions have been troubling me for some time. With all I know about the desperate, sociopathic ruling class, I can't reach any other conclusion but that they will risk all in their determination to rule the world and to salvage their huge run-up of debts. They are totally addicted to the drugs of power based on concentrated wealth that capitalism has supplied them with. Anyone who has had any experience with addicts knows that they are likely to engage in desperate acts while under the influence of drugs.

We are now witnessing the end games that they are engaging in by converting every ounce of information into self-serving propaganda, subverting nations, activating military operations all over the world, and issuing bellicose threats to nations that stand in the Empire's way.

Nobody likes to be lied to, but the information that the ruling class's media corporations are spreading are riling all sorts of honest and aware people from right to left on America's political spectrum (which is mostly skewed to the right). We see almost daily articles by Paul Craig Roberts and Pat Buchanan, who are on the right of the spectrum, American libertarians like Ron Paul and James Corbett, and numerous liberals (people who believe that only reforms are needed to the capitalist system) who are all extremely troubled by the lies and other aggressive acts of the Empire's transnational capitalist ruling class.

I think that only the American people can stop them, but I don't hold much hope for this to happen given that so many Americans believe their lies while others who know that they are lying, but due to capitalist indoctrination of individualism, are mostly preoccupied with their who own security concerns.

Saturday, March 3, 2018

Colonizing the Western Mind

Click here to access article by Jason Hirthler posted on The Greanville Post.

I think this article provides much food for thought about the launching of neoliberalism by the ruling capitalist class that, according to the author, started in the 1970s and reached full bloom in the 1980s under the Reagan administration.

Still, I experienced annoyance at the wording of numerous statements which I, as a pretend editor, would have re-phrased. Some examples of this (in order of their appearance):

Instead of "On the left, the ruling ideology might be described as neoliberalism, a particularly vicious form of imperial capitalism that, as would be expected, is camouflaged in the lineaments of humanitarian aid and succor.", I would have re-written as "Leftists began to describe this ruling ideology as neoliberalism, ...."

Instead of "The ideological assumptions, which serve to justify what you could call neocolonial tactics, are relatively clear: the rights of the individual to be free of overreach from monolithic institutions like the state.", I would have written "... the rights of individual capitalists must be mostly free of interventions by the state."

Instead of "Together, an unshackled economy and an unfettered populace, newly equipped with individual rights, would produce the same flourishing and nourishing demos of mid-century America that had been the envy of humanity.", I would have written "By unshackling capitalists from government regulations while promoting more freedom for various social identities (such as gay and women's prerogatives), the neoliberalists disguised the former behind the wide publicity for the latter."

Instead of "The enduring lie is that there is no democracy without economic democracy.", I would write "The enduring lie is that there is no kind of democracy that limits the freedom for capitalists to participate in the economy."

Then I would simply replace the last paragraph, which does nothing to advance his argument, with a summary of his thesis that would be something like this: "The ruling capitalist class began in the 1970s to construct a highly organized effort to advance a neoliberal agenda through its overwhelming control of corporate media and other institutions such as the film industry and education. The latter advanced the liberalizing themes of social identity while mostly disguising the steady promotion of government deregulation and lessening the restrictions placed on capitalist enterprise. Meanwhile, military interventions abroad in support of capitalist interests were always framed in corporate media has a promotion of human rights and freedoms. Such highly organized efforts effectively colonized the Western mind to support the ruling class's neoliberal agenda."

Friday, March 2, 2018

Thursday, March 1, 2018

The [Continuing] War Against Alternative Information

Click here to access article by Rick Sterling, a re-post from January 2017 from ConsortiumNews. (a "best post")

This post updates the legalization of the propaganda war being waged against the American people as revealed in yesterday's post by Debbie Lusignan on her YouTube channel called Sane Progressive. A more recent law was passed at the end of 2016 that established a specific agency to fill the minds of ordinary Americans with propaganda designed to promote the interests of the Empire's trans-nationalist capitalist ruling class.

The U.S. establishment is not content simply to have domination over the media narratives on critical foreign policy issues, such as Syria, Ukraine and Russia. It wants total domination. Thus we now have the “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act” that President Obama signed into law on Dec. 23 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2017, setting aside $160 million to combat any “propaganda” that challenges Official Washington’s version of reality.

As Sterling later explains:

The new law is remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least because it merges a new McCarthyism about purported dissemination of Russian “propaganda” on the Internet with a new Orwellianism by creating a kind of Ministry of Truth – or Global Engagement Center – to protect the American people from “foreign propaganda and disinformation."

As part of the effort to detect and defeat these unwanted narratives, the law authorizes the Center to: “Facilitate the use of a wide range of technologies and techniques by sharing expertise among Federal departments and agencies, seeking expertise from external sources, and implementing best practices.” (This section is an apparent reference to proposals that Google, Facebook and other technology companies find ways to block or brand certain Internet sites as purveyors of “Russian propaganda” or “fake news.”)

Thus, this propaganda war against ordinary Americans is now completely legal. We are their new enemy! Of course, we always were enemies of the ruling capitalist class, but these new laws provides a legal basis for their government to wage war against us.

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Entire CRISIS INDUSTRY Arose After Legalization of Psych-Ops in 2012 NDAA -- (a "best post")

Click here if you wish to access the video directly from YouTube which features Debbie Lusignan on her YouTube channel called Sane Progressive carefully explaining the crisis industry that has rapidly arisen after the Smith–Mundt Act (2012).

The Act was tacked onto the infamous National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013. This implications of this Act allowed propaganda and psychological operations (PSYOPS) to be legal within the USA. The designers of this bill carefully avoided explicitly mentioning that what was legal for US government agencies to use PSYOPS as well as propaganda in foreign countries, was now legal within the USA with the passage of this Act. Here is the pertinent language of the 2012 amendment to the Smith–Mundt Act of 1948:

Board of Governors are authorized to use funds appropriated or otherwise made available for public diplomacy information programs to provide for the preparation, dissemination, and use of information intended for foreign audiences abroad about the United States, its people, and its policies, through press, publications, radio, motion pictures, the Internet, and other information media, including social media, and through information centers, instructors, and other direct or indirect means of communication.

Thus, all the propaganda issued abroad by such organizations as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Marti, etc., were now legal in addition to the PSYOPS engaged in by the CIA all over the world. They just adjusted the Smith-Mundt Act to release the restrictions on the original bill of 1948 that prohibited such operations within the USA. This paved the way for the burgeoning "crisis industry". Lusignan carefully explains the growth and the details of many companies that consist of this industry.

Because of personal issues that are taking much of my time, I didn't have time to listen to all of the video. I listened basically to the first 30 minutes. But this material is outstanding. It contains her basic argument that the passage of the NDAA bill of 2013 permitted propaganda and PSYOPS within the USA, the details of the various companies that engage in fake political operations, and an excellent summary (from 28:00m to 30:00m) of the material she has presented so far. (You may need to wait a few more seconds for the following video to upload on your device.)

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

US Senate report details funding of patient advocacy groups by opioid manufacturers

Click here to access article by Brian Dixon from World Socialist Web Site.

Although Dixon's report focuses mainly on one minority report issued by a member of the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, he also cites other research from other sources that support the main thesis of this report as reported by the Executive summary of the report:

The fact that these same manufacturers provided millions of dollars to the groups described below suggests, at the very least, a direct link between corporate donations and the advancement of opioids friendly messaging. By aligning medical culture with industry goals in this way, many of the groups described in this report may have played a significant role in creating the necessary conditions for the U.S. opioids epidemic.

The article lends support to the generalization that not only big corporations associated with the "legitimate" drug corporations, but all major corporations, including especially major financial and industrial, collude by using their riches to induce and corrupt other smaller sectors of the economy to support their profits (and ultimately power). This is so typical of a fascist type of capitalist governing system in which riches are used without any significant government regulations--because they control the government--as a method to extract ever more profits and concentrated power.

State Department Troll Farm Receives Huge Cash Infusion

Click here to access article by Bernhard from Moon of Alabama.

The author digs up the latest efforts to strengthen the ongoing efforts by the US ruling capitalist class to enclose your minds and that of people residing in the nations governed by the US-led Empire into thought concentration camps under their control. They have learned much from the experience of corporate efforts to successfully sell products to American consumers, and are now applying these lessons to capture our political thoughts as well.

Although financial and industrial corporations rule the Empire--and this constitutes fascism--the US Empire fascists prefer the more cost-effective methods of mind manipulation to that of brute force which characterized so much of the efforts of classical fascist governments of German and Italian capitalist ruling classes in the 1930s and early 1940s.

US Collapse – the Spectacle of Our Time

Click here to access article by Finian Cunningham from Sputnik. (While I am distracted with personal tasks, I am so appreciative that activists like Christopher (northwest Oregon) who draw my attention to outstanding articles like this to post on my website.)

Yes, this website is sponsored by the Russian government, but there is no evidence to even suggest that the views expressed are sponsored by either Russian capitalists or nationalists. In contrast to US media corporations which pitch pure propaganda in an increasingly failing effort to promote the hegemonic interests of the declining US-led Empire, Russia government sponsored websites invite independent journalists from all over the world to express their views. And I'm sure that Cunningham would not be posting articles on their website if he was pressured to promote any particular interest except that of the truth as he sees it.

In this article the Irish journalist Cunningham places so much responsibility on ordinary Americans like us to prevent a nuclear war conflagration and end the rule of the hegemonic US-led Empire peacefully so that humans can have a future to create better social systems. Of course, he is right. Are we up to (capable of meeting) this challenge?

World history has reached a foreboding cross-roads due to the collapsing of the American Empire. Can we navigate a safe path forward avoiding catastrophic war that often accompanies the demise of empires?

A lot, it seems, depends on ordinary American people becoming politically organized to challenge their dysfunctional system run by and for the elites. If the American people cannot hold their elites to account and break their corrupt rule, overhauling it with something more equitable and democratic, then the world is in peril of being plunged into total war. We can only but wish our American brothers and sisters solidarity and success.

Monday, February 26, 2018

Sunday, February 25, 2018

CIA, Media & The Mind-Controlled Opposition

Click here if you wish to access this rather lengthy (nearly 1hr and 17minutes), but important video directly from YouTube that I have embedded below my commentary. (At 7:45 AM on 2/27/2018 I edited the last paragraph to clarify my views regarding Seymour Hersh.)

In this edition of Probable Cause Newsbud Founder and Editor Sibel Edmonds is joined by Douglas Valentine, author of several non-fiction books, one novel, and one volume of poetry. He has lectured and appeared on TV and radio talk shows, testified as an expert witness, served as a documentary film consultant and worked as a private investigator. His most recent book is The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World. Edmonds and Valentine discuss the influence and operations of the CIA abroad and domestically, while controlling the Media.

After introductory remarks the host of the show and founder of Newsbud, formerly Boiling Frogs Post, and well-known whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds interviews Douglas Valentine (see this and this), author of many books, the most recent of which is entitled The CIA as Organized Crime. She starts out by asking Valentine about his impressions of the Neflix production of Wormwood (on my recommended films list). He tends to go on and on making cynical statements about Seymour Hersh which overwhelms the significance of the Wormwood series that mostly exposes the bio-weapons research that scientist Frank Olson was engaged in, and his subsequent murder in 1953 at the hands of the CIA when he posed a threat to expose what they were doing.

Following this Edmonds asks about the CIA to which Valentine engages in a lengthy answer with various statements that suggest that they are a nebulous bureaucracy with agents embedded everywhere: in corporate media, government, military, educational institutions like Harvard, in left-wing organizations, etc.

When she asks him about the relationship of the CIA to the Deep State, his answer is even more nebulous: "they are millions of people working together." He doesn't seem to make any distinction between the CIA and the Deep State. Much later in the interview he makes several references to a "ruling class" in relation to the creation of heroes in American culture (in order to promote the consumption of products), but this is totally absent when he answers her question about the relationship of the CIA to the Deep State. It's clear to me that he doesn't really know much about the contemporary ruling class and their interests in promoting the Empire's capitalist interests and hegemony. He's so obsessed with the CIA that he can't see the bigger picture.

With my long time experience with Edmonds' websites, I don't think she understands either about the economic and political nature of the Deep State as the executive political network of the ruling capitalist class.

However, I don't wish to downplay the excellent contributions by Edmonds and Valentine who have frequently exposed the machinations of the secret intelligence agencies or the fake journalists that serve them. Except for Hersh about whom I am withholding judgement, as the Brits would say, they are "spot-on"! (def.)

Friday, February 23, 2018

Independent Journalist Corner: A Conversation with Andre Vltchek

Click here to access an interview with Vltchek conducted by Danny Haiphong that is posted on Black Agenda Report.

I continue to find so much compatibility with what Vltchek says and writes, particularly the following quotes in this piece:

Mass media became synonymous with imperialist propaganda. It is all very well-orchestrated; choreographed. And people in the West are so thoroughly brainwashed that they stopped asking questions regarding the most essential issues.

And most especially this:

The majority of people in the West are not able to commit themselves. They are too selfish, too egotistic. And they are full of nihilism: sweating and shitting nihilism.

They reject all ideologies and they do not want to govern. They despise those who are holding power. However, without ideology and without aiming at governing, no true revolution can take place. I don’t think the Western left is serious: there is no revolutionary force there, no willingness to sacrifice anything for the struggle. It is all weak, spineless and boring: like shouting at the high definition television set, or insulting opponents in the pub.

Thursday, February 22, 2018

How Biblical is Zionism?

Click here to access article by Laurent Guyénot from A bird's eye view of the Vineyard.

The author, who has a "PhD in Medieval Studies at Paris IV-Sorbonne, 2009", provides a well-documented, in-depth study of how a fundamentalist interpretation of the Hebrew Bible has been a prime influence on the imperialist inclinations of Zionist leaders throughout the history of the Zionist movement.

Only by taking account of the biblical roots of Zionism can one understand why Zionism has never been a nationalist movement like others. It could not be, as Gilad Atzmon remarked, from the moment it defined itself as a Jewish movement, aimed at creating a “Jewish state”.[6] Jewish exceptionalism is a biblical concept that has no equivalent in any other ethnic or religious culture.

I beg to differ (def.) a little bit with the last statement because many American Christians, who have frequently embraced Zionism, have also a fundamentalist interpretation of the Christian Bible.

Bringing us up to date on the post-WWII history of Israel, Guyénot writes:

...when the British started to limit Jewish immigration in Palestine in the 1930s, the Zionists turned to the rising new Imperial power: the United States. Today, the stranglehold of Zionists on US imperial policy is such that a few Jewish neocons can pull the US into a series of wars against Israel’s enemies with a single false flag attack.

The capacity of Israel to hijack the Empire’s foreign and military policy requires that a substantial Jewish elite remain in the US. Even Israel’s survival is entirely dependent on the influence of the Zionist power complex in the United States (euphemistically called the “pro-Israel lobby”).

Did you notice that in the first paragraph in the above quote, the author makes an oblique reference to the real significance of 9/11?

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

The Coming Wars to End All Wars

Click here to access article by Edward Curtin from his web-log (blog).

Americans, he argues, are being led step by step into a final series of war "to end all wars". All important political signs confirm he is right: the constant din of anti-Russian, anti-Iranian, anti-Chinese propaganda are designed to prepare gullible Americans into accepting this option. So far there are few signs that Americans are opposing this steady drift into what Empire propagandists portray as a kind of biblical Armageddon.

We are moving toward a global war that will become nuclear if an international ant-war movement doesn’t quickly arise to stop it. Most people bemoan the thought of such a war to end all wars, but refuse to analyze the factors leading to it. It happens step-by-step, and many steps have already been taken with more coming soon. It’s so obvious that most can’t see it, or don’t want to.

A major source for the Empire's promotion of this final series of wars is the extreme indebtedness of the USA to the holders of US sovereign debts (the total is nearly $21 trillion), and most of these creditors are members of the ruling capitalist class throughout the nations of the US-led Empire. (A careful reading of this report confirms this.) They, for the most part, see successful wars as the only option to climb out of the huge debt hole that the Empire's ruling capitalists have dug to finance their imperial project.