Dear Friends,
The Rouge Forum Steering Committee had a refreshing, terrific, meeting in Detroit. The discussion focused, in part, on what to do as the sky falls. The long term answer, I think, is to build a mass base of class conscious people prepared to make sacrifices over time, educated to do grand strategy (equality and freedom on a distant horizon), strategy (who holds power here, and how can, instead, masses of people hold power?) and tactics (what shall we do for, say, twelve months?). You’ll see the specific results of the meeting in the next two weeks. That is the short term answer but perhaps the shorter term answer is to send out a longer Rouge Forum Update. Apologies, but the sky is falling…..
A salute to our old friend Ira Gollobin, author of “Dialectical Materialism,” whose web site is now online: http://gollobin.org/
And here is Chalmers Johnson, in a toned-down piece, arguing that the sky is still falling. In other public appearances and in his book, “Nemesis,” he said that an economic collapse, triggered by military adventures and hubris, would bring fascism, dictatorship, to the USA.
For a voice from the past; Aristotle on how tyrants rule.
“The lopping off of outstanding people and the destruction of the proud, and also the prohibition of common meals and club fellowships and education and all other things of this nature, in fact the close watch upon all things that usually engender…pride and confidence and the prevention of…study circles and other conferences for debate, and the employment of every means that will make people as much as possible unknown to one another (for familiarity increases mutual confidence), and for the people of the city to be always visible as they hang about the palace gates (for thus there would be at least concealment for what they are doing, and they would get into a habit of being humble from always acting in a servile way)…and to try not to be uniformed about any chance utterances or actions of any of the subjects, but to have spies…wherever there was any gathering or conference, ..and to cause quarrels between friend and friend and between the people and the notables, and among the rich. And it is a device of tyranny to make the subjects poor, so that a guard may not be kept, and also that the people being busy with their daily affairs may not have leisure to plot against their ruler. Instances of this are the pyramids in Egypt, and the building of the temple of the Olympian Zeus…(for all these undertakings produce the same effect, constant occupation and poverty among the subject people) and the levying of taxes, as at Syracuse (for in the reign of Dionysius the result of taxation used to be in five years men had contributed the whole of their substance). Also the tyrant is a stirrer-up of war, with the deliberate purpose of keeping the people busy and also of making them constantly in need of a leader.”
The wishes of a tyrant are directed by three aims, to produce humility, “for a humble-spirited man would not plot against anybody,” to prevent confidence among subjects, “for a tyranny is not destroyed until people come to trust each other,” and the people’s power to resist must be demolished, “so that nobody attempts impossibilities, as nobody tries to put down a tyranny if they do not have power behind them.” (From Aristotle, “Politics”).
The question to any government: Is this for the common good?
The ethics of every movement for change for the common good: Freedom and Equality.
Here are questions that could be used in most schools, designed to highlight the historical critique of tyranny.
And a letter from a friend about the financial crises:
“Just so we are all clear about one thing. The system we live under is called “capitalism.”
The people who benefit under it are the capitalists.
ANY “bailout”, etc., is going to be a bailout of the capitalists.
The aim and purpose of any such program is to help the capitalists.
That’s what capitalism is all about — profiting the capitalists.
Therefore, this or any possible plan will, first and foremost, profit the capitalists.
Will it help the rest of us? The answer is always the same. Some employees of the capitalists will benefit indirectly.
But “benefiting society” is not, and cannot possibly be, the purpose of such a program. Not under capitalism it can’t!
Capitalism needs capitalists. For the last 150 years or so the main capitalists it needs are financial capitalists — financiers.
Financial capitalists control the others, by controlling the supply of capital. Financial capitalists are the most powerful and — as we now see — the most important.
You can’t have finance capitalism without financiers.
So the whole purpose of the government’s actions is to benefit the financial capitalists.
That’s how problems under capitalism are solved. Otherwise, it’s not capitalism.Some of this will “trickle down” to some of us employees and workers. Of course!
The financial capitalists can’t function by themselves. They need the industrial, commercial, real estate, etc. capitalists, who will borrow from them.And THOSE capitalists need us, the employees and workers, to actually do the work, and by doing it, create all the value that the rest of the capitalists appropriate, invest, borrow, lend, gain, lose, and spend.
Paul Krugman’s column today in the New York Times points this out too. “Cash for Trash?”
Henry Paulson is a politically-connected investment banker, and this plan is his. (Paulson succeeded New Jersey’s own governor Jon Corzine as head of Goldman Sachs). Naturally enough, his plan hugely profits financial institutions, while not necessarily solving the economic problems of the country. Obviously this is deliberate.
This is, after all, capitalism. The capitalists win, no matter what else. The British Empire crashed and burned in the 20th century, but the Bank of England and other British banks are still among the strongest in the world.
That’s what capitalist politics are all about: profiting the financiers, who control the rest of the economy.
It’s not a “mistake”. It’s not “incompetence.” This is the way capitalism has always worked, since the 1830s at least. It cannot possibly work any other way. To ask capitalism not to work the way it must work is like asking a dog to act like a mouse.
* * * * *
So, let’s complain, for sure. I’m going to write “our” Congressman, and the two senators. But I’m not going to pretend I’m naive. I’m not going to say: “Make the government’s actions benefit ‘the little guy.'” The capitalists — mainly, the financiers — RUN the government. The government always benefits them. It never benefits “the little guy”, except as a by-product (they can’t let us all die out, or there would be no capital, and therefore no capitalists). Slavery wasn’t made for the slaves, but for the slave-owners. Capitalism wasn’t made for the workers, but for the capitalists. But we don’t have to like it. Any more than the slaves liked slavery. And, like the slave system, capitalism isn’t going to last forever. ”
Thanks to Greg and Katie, Adam and Gina, Joe and Joe, Bill Blank, Amber, Colleen, Kelly, Wayne, Ashwani, Ravi, MrJ, Bonnie and Marc, Sherry, Nancy, Grace and Lydia, Spencer and Brady, Kim B, Elaine H, Sally and Sandy, Bonnie Mc, Hope and Art.
All the best, r
Follow
