Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Moral Man and Immoral Society
By Reinhold Niebuhr
After reading this book, written in 1932, with a new introduction written in 1960, I am convinced that his message is, if anything, more relevant today than when it was first written. His two major premises were: one, that individuals are capable of moral values and behavior, while larger groups are usually not; and, second, that what he calls, variously, “educational authorities,” “social scientists,” “middle-class intellectual and religious moralist hope [naively] to insinuate the ideal of personal morality into the behavior of groups.” “Since reason is always, to some degree, the servant of interest [read: special interests] in a social situation, social injustice cannot be resolved by moral and rational suasion alone, as the educator and social scientist usually believes. Conflict is inevitable, and in this conflict, power must be challenged by power.”
Later, “Modern educators, like rationalists of all the ages, are too enamored of the function of reason in life.. The world of history, particularly in man's collective behavior, will never be conquered by reason, unless reason uses tools, and is itself driven by forces which are not rational. All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.” Note that he says, “requires a measure of coercion.”
Of course, those whom he refers to as intellectual and religious moralists, we would call “Liberals.” Chris Hedges recent book, The Death of the Liberal Class, and Paul Krugman's book from 2004, The Great Unraveling, both make the same point in different ways. We are at the effect right now of a Plutocratic coup d'etat, a Right-wing Reactionary Revolution. As paradoxical as that term may seem, it is accurate, reflective as it is of the inherent cognitive dissonance plaguing those who are promoting and benefitting from it. Somewhere, Plato is smiling smugly, as his critique of Democracy – that it is based on the false belief that all citizens are equally capable of self-government – is being borne out again.
Krugman, in his introduction, quoted extensively from the doctoral thesis of Henry Kissinger (of all people), which traced a similar failure of the liberal thinkers to recognize and confront similar revolutions in Europe in the 19th Century and again in the mid-20th Century. When Niebuhr says that a measure of coercion is required, he is not talking about violent revolution, though he does acknowledge the need for limited forms of violence in dealing with what he calls the “privileged classes” who inevitably dominate any political system as long as they are unchallenged by the oppressed majority.
Niebuhr explains that as soon as human societies begin to develop more complexity, a privileged class always emerges, in one form or another. He returns often to the rampant hypocrisy which serves to mask the chasm between the moral values of the vast majority of individuals within a society, and the manifestly immoral, often bestial (predatory) values of the larger society (a group of groups). Values may be relatively moral within a group, but never between different groups, especially between those at the top and those at the bottom.
“With the increased centralization of economic power in the period of modern industrialism [and, nowadays, the financial institutions] … economic rather than political and military power has become the significant coercive force in modern society [remember: he was writing this in 1932!]. Either it defies the authority of the state or it bends the institutions of the state to its own purposes [sound familiar?]. Political power has been made [through media manipulations that Niebuhr could not have foreseen] responsible to industrial [and financial] interests, while economic power has become irresponsible to the need of the larger society.” “It may on occasion appropriate the police and army of the state to defend its interests against internal and external forces [can you say “Occupy”?].
“Power sacrifices justice to peace within the community and destroys peace between communities....The whole history of mankind bears testimony to the fact that the power which prevents [what it considers] anarchy in intra-group relationships encourages anarchy in intergroup relations.”
Commenting on another apparently permanent problem, Niebuhr wrote, 80 years ago, “Thus,for instance, a laissez faire economic theory is maintained... through the ignorant belief that the general welfare is best served by placing the least possible political restraints upon economic activity. The history of the last hundred years [now 180 years and counting...] is a refutation of the theory; but it is still maintained, or is dying a too lingering death, particularly in nations as politically incompetent as our own [again, some things never seem to change]. “It suffers because of the ignorance of those who suffer injustice at its hands because they fail to attribute their difficulties to the social anarchy and political irresponsibility which the theory sanctions.”
Chapter Five is titled, “The Ethical Attitudes of Privileged Classes.” “Classes may be formed on the basis of common functions in society, but they do not become sharply distinguished until function is translated into privilege.” That produces what I call the Envelope of Privilege. Also, privilege clings to those who need it most, and they will do almost anything to keep it. Niebuhr says: “The moral attitudes of dominant and privileged classes are characterized by universal self-deception and hypocrisy.” We are up here in the wagon of privilege because we are better, as Edward Bellamy noted long ago in Looking Backward.
Later, Niebuhr says: “The blessings which Jesus pronounced upon the poor and the warnings he sounded against riches are based on the recognition that there are temptations of riches which are too great to be overcome. They can only be escaped by voluntary or involuntary poverty. Special privileges make all men [and women] dishonest. The purest conscience and the clearest mind is prostituted by the desire to prove them morally justified.”
To summarize: denial and hypocrisy allow rationalization and protect against guilt and shame, because only a handful of humans are capable of conscious evil.
While discussing the role of violence in revolution, he writes,”nothing is intrinsically immoral except ill-will and nothing is intrinsically good except goodwill.” “Since it is very difficult to judge human motives [indeed!], it is natural that, from an external perspective, the social consequence of an action or policy should be regarded as more adequate tests of its morality than the hidden motives.”
The Marxian prediction of “inevitable revolution” was derailed by several developments: 1. The peasant class craved land reform and included some bourgeois values. 2. The middle class was greatly expanded by education and expanded suffrage, which made the political class more responsive to their need/wants. 3. Technology created ever more skilled workers whose pay was better. As they bought homes and watched some of their children rising through education and ambition, their unions became increasingly reactionary. 4. The worst excesses of Capitalism were modified externally and internally enough to stave off any ''inevitable'' collapse. They periodically over-produce and/or over-borrow [sound familiar?], creating economic crises, but they are incredibly clever using their money and political influence to wiggle through. FDR and World War II helped them a lot.
Regarding the communist/socialist ideal of “from each according to ability and to each according to need,” he says “it is sentimental and romantic [naïve!] to assume that any education or any example will ever completely destroy the inclination of human nature to seek special advantages at the expense of, or in indifference to, the needs and interests of others.” I think he is too cynical here, but we definitely have a problem with the nature of some humans – those for whom enough will never be enough.
Anticipating recent realizations of the limitations of the rational will, as part of his criticism of middle-class intellectual schemes to create a gradual political evolution toward a more just society, he says, “Such is the inclination of the human mind for beginning with assumptions which have been determined by other than rational considerations [aka irrational considerations], and building a superstructure of rationally acceptable judgements upon them, that all this can be done without any conscious dishonesty.”
The penultimate chapter titled, “Moral Values in Politics,” talks a lot about the need for “equal justice,” and the role of coercion in accomplishing that. The most important conclusion is that oppressed groups “have a higher moral right to challenge their oppressors than these have to maintain their rule.” Whether that requires violence “must be deferred.... It is important first to insist that equality [which he has earlier qualified as equal justice, since equality itself is an unreasonable and impossible goal in the real world] is a higher social goal than peace.” Especially since, “peace is often maintained by the privileged classes through clandestine coercion.”
This is painfully relevant at a time when billionaire oligarchs like the Koch brothers are using the “Citizens United” decision of the Supreme Court to sponsor demagogic appeals to ignorant, frightened voters to vote agains their own best interests, electing extremist Right-Wing Republicans to all levels of government so they can use our current debt crisis (here and in Europe) to complete the dismantlement of our social safety net, reducing government to military and police protection of their wealth and privileges, leaving millions of workers with no choice but to accept bad jobs for peon wages to prevent homelessness or even starvation.
Writing more than 80 years ago, Niebuhr said, “All social power is partially derived from the actual possession of physical instruments of coercion, economic or martial, but it depends also to a large degree upon its ability to secure unreasoned and unreasonable obedience, respect and reverence.” To which I would only add ignorance and insecurity, the ultimate “potting soil” for the worst demagoguery.
In the final chapter, “Individual and Social Morality,” he says that at a simple level we are talking about the inherent conflict between ethics and politics: “One focuses on the inner life of the individual, and the other in the necessities of man's social life.” This conflict, he says, is not insoluble, but is extremely difficult to solve. The key is “the control of moral goodwill. Any justice which is only justice soon degenerates in something less than justice. The realistic wisdom of the statesman is reduced to foolishness if it is not under the influence of the foolishness of the moral seer.”
On the last page of the book, “We can no longer buy the highest satisfaction of the individual life at the expense of social injustice. We cannot build our individual ladder to heaven and leave the total human enterprise unredeemed of its excesses and corruptions.” We need “new illusions for the abandoned ones.” “The most important of these illusions is that the collective life of mankind can achieve perfect justice.” This illusion is needed because “justice cannot even be approximated if the hope of its perfect realization does not generate a sublime madness in the soul. Nothing but such madness will do battle with the malignant powers and 'spiritual wickedness in high places.' This illusion is dangerous [of course] because it encourages fanaticisms. It must therefore be brought under the control of reason. We can only hope that reason will not destroy it [the necessary illusion] before its work is done.”
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Terrorists and Hostages
Terrorists and hostages: Since 2008, we have all been held hostage by financial terrorists, whose power derives from a combination of our dependence on financial markets and the instability and herd behavior of the stock and bond traders who run those markets. Everything that has been done by the President, the Federal Reserve Board and the Congress has been necessary to coddle and mollify those traders, lest they repeat the precipitous drop from 14,000+ Dow points to 7,000 following the demise of Lehman Brothers and the collapse of the credit markets. Bailouts, QE I and II, the failure to pursue and prosecute the perpetrators, the tolerance of their almost instant return to obscene profits and bonuses – all necessary to pump up the markets and pamper the traders. And all were successful for a while.
Until, that is, another group of terrorists emerged, political terrorists who call themselves the Tea Party. Angry at these policies and either ignorant of their purpose or not caring about the consequences, these terrorists, spurred on by sociopathic oligarchs like the Koch Brothers and political whores like Dick Armey, the founder and leader of Freedom Now, set out exploit the Debt Ceiling deadline in order to sabotage the government's strategy, regardless of the ultimate outcome. And they have succeeded, thanks largely to Obama”s inability/unwillingness to negotiate from strength. Besides which, as many columnists have been noting, he is well to the right of some elected Republicans.
Well, the Market and its traders responded as one might easily have anticipated. They hit the panic button. For those who may not be sufficiently informed about the modern financial marketplace, those same traders can make just as much money riding the market down as they do riding it up. They are essentially pimps, just carving out their piece of the action. Amoral at best; predatory at worst.
To summarize, we have two groups of terrorists, fighting over a corpse. And, by the way, nowhere in this scenario is there any strategy to resuscitate the real economy. Unemployment is actually beneficial for the business sector – much less likelihood of dangerous inflation – frightened, insecure workers don't dare even beg for higher wages to offset higher energy and food prices. Profits are up almost everywhere as automation, globalization and outsourcing enable higher “productivity,” which is really just more profit from less workers. Human labor is expensive and problematic. Intelligent people with serious money have no motivation to hire workers. There is no demand, anyway, because even those who have jobs are afraid to buy anything they don't need.
Let us pray that, as the pundits are finally acknowledging, next year's election will be about the true nature of this conflict: not the size of government, but its appropriate role. Many of us believe that an institution as powerful as government can only be justified if it serves to protect the powerless from powerful predators. Others have a medieval idea of government, that it should only protect the wealth and power of a privileged few at the expense of a desperate many. Those who are unwilling to pay the taxes necessary to maintain the first kind of government must be assumed to favor the second.
Until, that is, another group of terrorists emerged, political terrorists who call themselves the Tea Party. Angry at these policies and either ignorant of their purpose or not caring about the consequences, these terrorists, spurred on by sociopathic oligarchs like the Koch Brothers and political whores like Dick Armey, the founder and leader of Freedom Now, set out exploit the Debt Ceiling deadline in order to sabotage the government's strategy, regardless of the ultimate outcome. And they have succeeded, thanks largely to Obama”s inability/unwillingness to negotiate from strength. Besides which, as many columnists have been noting, he is well to the right of some elected Republicans.
Well, the Market and its traders responded as one might easily have anticipated. They hit the panic button. For those who may not be sufficiently informed about the modern financial marketplace, those same traders can make just as much money riding the market down as they do riding it up. They are essentially pimps, just carving out their piece of the action. Amoral at best; predatory at worst.
To summarize, we have two groups of terrorists, fighting over a corpse. And, by the way, nowhere in this scenario is there any strategy to resuscitate the real economy. Unemployment is actually beneficial for the business sector – much less likelihood of dangerous inflation – frightened, insecure workers don't dare even beg for higher wages to offset higher energy and food prices. Profits are up almost everywhere as automation, globalization and outsourcing enable higher “productivity,” which is really just more profit from less workers. Human labor is expensive and problematic. Intelligent people with serious money have no motivation to hire workers. There is no demand, anyway, because even those who have jobs are afraid to buy anything they don't need.
Let us pray that, as the pundits are finally acknowledging, next year's election will be about the true nature of this conflict: not the size of government, but its appropriate role. Many of us believe that an institution as powerful as government can only be justified if it serves to protect the powerless from powerful predators. Others have a medieval idea of government, that it should only protect the wealth and power of a privileged few at the expense of a desperate many. Those who are unwilling to pay the taxes necessary to maintain the first kind of government must be assumed to favor the second.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Four Parties?
If you are frustrated by our traditional two-party system, just wait. Change may be coming sooner than you think. Take a good look at the two parties that have dominated American politics for more than a century. They have never been more fragmented.
The Democratic Party is divided: what I call “lace-curtain liberals” – the Tea Party calls them the educated elite – Obama is the quintessential example; and the Progressives, some (like me!) more radical than others. Trust me, those two groups have only one thing in common: relative levels of concern for those being left behind.
The Republicans have the Country Club set, exemplified by John Boehner, and then they have the lunatic libertarians, most of whom have embraced the Tea Party. The only thing they have in common is their determination to dethrone Obama.
One interesting aspect of this is that educated elite Democrats and Country Club Republicans have one common goal – the maintenance of “business as usual,” no matter the long-term consequences. And, of course, the Progressives and the Tea Party have one common belief – that the government does not now and has not for some time represented anything but money. It has become tiresomely repetitive to say that we have created a Plutocracy.
The context of this is gradually becoming more evident, though only Obama and his advisors seem fully aware of it. We are held hostage by stock and bond traders and the markets they manage. The motivation behind the various stimulus programs is to soothe the fragile nerves of those traders and their customers. When the dam broke a couple of years ago, the market dropped by 50% almost overnight, inundating the retirement hopes of most Americans. Now that defined pension plans are exclusive to public employees, the rest of us are using IRA's and other tax-deferred programs to supplement the niggardly (and possibly illusory) Social Security benefits.
The jury is still out on whether or not these stimuli will succeed in getting our economy out of the trough we're wallowing in now. The Republicans have decided that their best hope of regaining complete control of the government is to stonewall and keep the economy (and unemployment) at present levels or worse, so they can blame it on Obama. But, one thing is painfully evident – unemployment will stay at unconscionable levels for the foreseeable future. Worse yet, the markets obviously like it. There is an economic principle known as the Phillips Curve that explains why. It states quite simply that unemployment and wage inflation are inversely proportional. The logic behind this is not obscure – the longer people are unemployed the more likely they are to accept lousy jobs at lousy wages, with no benefits. The result is more “productivity” (one of the ugliest words in the language), which means more goods and services from fewer workers. Lower labor costs mean higher profits. Add automation and globalization and it's easy to see why the stock market keeps going up in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Is that ugly enough for you?
So don't be surprised if we see four serious candidates for President in 2012, running on four different parties: Democrats, Progressives, Republicans and the Tea Party. Wonder what that will do to our nervous markets. If there is no electoral college majority the President will be chosen by the House of Representatives. There's no guarantee that they will be able to muster a majority in the House for anyone. Maybe that's the “apocalypse” predicted for the end of the Mayan calendar in December 2012. Stay tuned.
The Democratic Party is divided: what I call “lace-curtain liberals” – the Tea Party calls them the educated elite – Obama is the quintessential example; and the Progressives, some (like me!) more radical than others. Trust me, those two groups have only one thing in common: relative levels of concern for those being left behind.
The Republicans have the Country Club set, exemplified by John Boehner, and then they have the lunatic libertarians, most of whom have embraced the Tea Party. The only thing they have in common is their determination to dethrone Obama.
One interesting aspect of this is that educated elite Democrats and Country Club Republicans have one common goal – the maintenance of “business as usual,” no matter the long-term consequences. And, of course, the Progressives and the Tea Party have one common belief – that the government does not now and has not for some time represented anything but money. It has become tiresomely repetitive to say that we have created a Plutocracy.
The context of this is gradually becoming more evident, though only Obama and his advisors seem fully aware of it. We are held hostage by stock and bond traders and the markets they manage. The motivation behind the various stimulus programs is to soothe the fragile nerves of those traders and their customers. When the dam broke a couple of years ago, the market dropped by 50% almost overnight, inundating the retirement hopes of most Americans. Now that defined pension plans are exclusive to public employees, the rest of us are using IRA's and other tax-deferred programs to supplement the niggardly (and possibly illusory) Social Security benefits.
The jury is still out on whether or not these stimuli will succeed in getting our economy out of the trough we're wallowing in now. The Republicans have decided that their best hope of regaining complete control of the government is to stonewall and keep the economy (and unemployment) at present levels or worse, so they can blame it on Obama. But, one thing is painfully evident – unemployment will stay at unconscionable levels for the foreseeable future. Worse yet, the markets obviously like it. There is an economic principle known as the Phillips Curve that explains why. It states quite simply that unemployment and wage inflation are inversely proportional. The logic behind this is not obscure – the longer people are unemployed the more likely they are to accept lousy jobs at lousy wages, with no benefits. The result is more “productivity” (one of the ugliest words in the language), which means more goods and services from fewer workers. Lower labor costs mean higher profits. Add automation and globalization and it's easy to see why the stock market keeps going up in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Is that ugly enough for you?
So don't be surprised if we see four serious candidates for President in 2012, running on four different parties: Democrats, Progressives, Republicans and the Tea Party. Wonder what that will do to our nervous markets. If there is no electoral college majority the President will be chosen by the House of Representatives. There's no guarantee that they will be able to muster a majority in the House for anyone. Maybe that's the “apocalypse” predicted for the end of the Mayan calendar in December 2012. Stay tuned.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Nonviolent Resistance
Nonviolent Resistance
I just finished reading Jim Wallis's God's Politics, which was published in 2005. It's hard to articulate my response, which ranged from highly positive to deep despair. On the one hand, the book provided irrefutable evidence that a large number of influential religious leaders, especially Christians, have, in fact, been actively attempting to stem the descent of our culture into savage social and economic injustice; on the other hand, current reality provides overwhelming evidence that their efforts have not only been ineffective, but apparently counter-productive, since things just keep getting worse.
These efforts chronicled by Wallis date back to the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, and extend right up to the time the book was published. One must assume that they have continued since. Yet, to reiterate, things just keep getting worse. As Frank Rich recently wrote in The New York Times Week in Review (“What Happened to Change We Can Believe In?” 10/24/10), the election of Obama has not created the “Change” we were expecting: if anything, it has exacerbated the downslide, fueling ignorance and demagoguery.
The obvious question is: what, if anything, can be done? Is the march of injustice unstoppable, inevitable? I'm not particularly sanguine that any of you who receive this message will even trouble to acknowledge it, much less respond. To be honest, I have been complaining to anyone who will listen since the election of Ronald Reagan made it clear to anyone with eyes to see, ears to hear, and a brain to understand, that Reactionary elements had assumed control and were unlikely to relinquish it, ever, unless forced to. Except for a few published letters and one essay in The Progressive Christian (asking the rhetorical question, What Would Martin Luther King, Jr. Do?) my repeated efforts to communicate with all of you have elicited a profound silence. And we know what Martin would be doing: he would be organizing massive nonviolent civil disobedience.
Now, lest there be any confusion, I have never and will not ever advocate violent force. But Wallis did include in his book a quote from, A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict, by Peter Ackerman and Jack Duvall. It's rather long, but defines “nonviolent resistance” better than anything I have ever seen. I am including it because it would seem, based on the rest of his book that neither he nor other advocates for social and economic justice (except for MLK Jr!) have ever taken it seriously. Here it is:
“The reality is that history-making nonviolent resistance is not usually taken as an act of moral display; it does not typically begin by putting flowers in gun barrels and it does not end when protesters disperse to go home. It involves the use of a panoply of forceful sanctions – strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, disrupting the functions of government, even nonviolent sabotage – in accordance with a strategy for undermining an oppressor's pillars of support. It is not about making a point, it's about taking power.
'“Regimes have been overthrown that had no compunction about brutalizing their opponents and denying them the right to speak their minds. How? By first demonstrating that opposition is possible, peeling away the regime's residual public and outside support, quashing its legitimacy, driving up the costs of maintaining control, and over-extending its repressive apparatus. Strategic nonviolent action is not about being nice to our oppressor, much less having to rely on his niceness. It's about dissolving the foundations of his power and forcing him out.”'
My purpose in writing this is to learn if there is anyone else out there who cares about stopping this juggernaut enough to join me in organizing the kind of civil disobedience just described. The key phrase, which exposes the ultimate failure of “liberal” attempts to stop in-justice throughout human history, is the next-to-last sentence in the quote. We have to stop projecting our own “niceness” onto those who are anything but “nice,” those for whom enough is never enough, whose existential cowardice leads them to espouse “conservative” authoritarian models about our personal behavior while simultaneously doing their best to create and preserve economic anarchy (under the false rubric of the “Free, Unregulated Marketplace”).
Sooner or later, it must become obvious to the Liberal Establishment that articles, books, documentary movies and TV programs not only fail to create significant change, they actually seem to provide a moral relief valve: well, we've done what we could, we've explained the problems so that anyone should be able to understand them, certainly “reasonable people” should respond eventually with the necessary reforms. I'm sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but we are not dealing with “reasonable people.” We are dealing with people who are mentally ill behind money and power. Lao Tse said it best a few millennia ago: “One who knows that enough is enough always has enough.” As I noted earlier, those who do not know that enough is enough, never have enough. And they take our good nature for weakness and stupidity, as a green light for continued predation.
If any of you actually take the trouble to read this and wish to establish a dialogue about how we can organize, just hit “reply” and acknowledge your agreement. As you may imagine, over the last 40+ years, I have prepared myself to contribute to this effort.
I will close this as I always do, by asking: How bad does it have to get?
I just finished reading Jim Wallis's God's Politics, which was published in 2005. It's hard to articulate my response, which ranged from highly positive to deep despair. On the one hand, the book provided irrefutable evidence that a large number of influential religious leaders, especially Christians, have, in fact, been actively attempting to stem the descent of our culture into savage social and economic injustice; on the other hand, current reality provides overwhelming evidence that their efforts have not only been ineffective, but apparently counter-productive, since things just keep getting worse.
These efforts chronicled by Wallis date back to the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, and extend right up to the time the book was published. One must assume that they have continued since. Yet, to reiterate, things just keep getting worse. As Frank Rich recently wrote in The New York Times Week in Review (“What Happened to Change We Can Believe In?” 10/24/10), the election of Obama has not created the “Change” we were expecting: if anything, it has exacerbated the downslide, fueling ignorance and demagoguery.
The obvious question is: what, if anything, can be done? Is the march of injustice unstoppable, inevitable? I'm not particularly sanguine that any of you who receive this message will even trouble to acknowledge it, much less respond. To be honest, I have been complaining to anyone who will listen since the election of Ronald Reagan made it clear to anyone with eyes to see, ears to hear, and a brain to understand, that Reactionary elements had assumed control and were unlikely to relinquish it, ever, unless forced to. Except for a few published letters and one essay in The Progressive Christian (asking the rhetorical question, What Would Martin Luther King, Jr. Do?) my repeated efforts to communicate with all of you have elicited a profound silence. And we know what Martin would be doing: he would be organizing massive nonviolent civil disobedience.
Now, lest there be any confusion, I have never and will not ever advocate violent force. But Wallis did include in his book a quote from, A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict, by Peter Ackerman and Jack Duvall. It's rather long, but defines “nonviolent resistance” better than anything I have ever seen. I am including it because it would seem, based on the rest of his book that neither he nor other advocates for social and economic justice (except for MLK Jr!) have ever taken it seriously. Here it is:
“The reality is that history-making nonviolent resistance is not usually taken as an act of moral display; it does not typically begin by putting flowers in gun barrels and it does not end when protesters disperse to go home. It involves the use of a panoply of forceful sanctions – strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, disrupting the functions of government, even nonviolent sabotage – in accordance with a strategy for undermining an oppressor's pillars of support. It is not about making a point, it's about taking power.
'“Regimes have been overthrown that had no compunction about brutalizing their opponents and denying them the right to speak their minds. How? By first demonstrating that opposition is possible, peeling away the regime's residual public and outside support, quashing its legitimacy, driving up the costs of maintaining control, and over-extending its repressive apparatus. Strategic nonviolent action is not about being nice to our oppressor, much less having to rely on his niceness. It's about dissolving the foundations of his power and forcing him out.”'
My purpose in writing this is to learn if there is anyone else out there who cares about stopping this juggernaut enough to join me in organizing the kind of civil disobedience just described. The key phrase, which exposes the ultimate failure of “liberal” attempts to stop in-justice throughout human history, is the next-to-last sentence in the quote. We have to stop projecting our own “niceness” onto those who are anything but “nice,” those for whom enough is never enough, whose existential cowardice leads them to espouse “conservative” authoritarian models about our personal behavior while simultaneously doing their best to create and preserve economic anarchy (under the false rubric of the “Free, Unregulated Marketplace”).
Sooner or later, it must become obvious to the Liberal Establishment that articles, books, documentary movies and TV programs not only fail to create significant change, they actually seem to provide a moral relief valve: well, we've done what we could, we've explained the problems so that anyone should be able to understand them, certainly “reasonable people” should respond eventually with the necessary reforms. I'm sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but we are not dealing with “reasonable people.” We are dealing with people who are mentally ill behind money and power. Lao Tse said it best a few millennia ago: “One who knows that enough is enough always has enough.” As I noted earlier, those who do not know that enough is enough, never have enough. And they take our good nature for weakness and stupidity, as a green light for continued predation.
If any of you actually take the trouble to read this and wish to establish a dialogue about how we can organize, just hit “reply” and acknowledge your agreement. As you may imagine, over the last 40+ years, I have prepared myself to contribute to this effort.
I will close this as I always do, by asking: How bad does it have to get?
Friday, February 12, 2010
A Call To Action
A Call To Action
Wake up, America! How bad does it have to get before people who do know better come out of where ever they have been hiding, rise up and demand meaningful change? Fear not, you cowards and malingerers, if you continue to do nothing (talking, writing, presenting clever arguments, and other typical “Liberal” tactics are a waste of time – only organized action has any chance of making a difference) I can assure you that things are going to get worse. A lot worse.
First, there will never be enough good jobs again. Never! The economic models that got us into this mess will never get us out of it. As Einstein said, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. More about new economic models later.
Second, the opposition is getting organized, and is taking action. The Tea Party is only the beginning. As history has demonstrated repeatedly, ignorance and insecurity are exceptionally fertile ground for the worst kind of demagoguery. And both are pandemic in America right now. Frightened, angry children everywhere in apparently adult bodies. And no dearth of dangerous demagogues eager to exploit them.
So far, they are still a minority, no matter how they may dominate the 24-hour News Media. But the absence of strong, motivated, organized opposition portends disaster, for our country, if not for the planet. Our Founding Fathers, and the Philosophers who inspired them, recognized the risks inherent in democracy. They tried, while creating our Constitution, to prevent the two greatest risks: the tyranny of an unenlightened majority, and the corruption of our Representatives by a Commercial Society. Their worst fears have been realized. Our putative democracy is on life support, and there is no “Living Will.”
The last time we were in the throes of a crisis like this one, in the 1930's, during the Great Depression, we had the exceptionally good fortune to be in the hands of a leader who was prepared to do whatever was necessary to get us out of it. FDR was not a “small d” democrat. He was a benevolent dictator, right out of Plato's Republic, and his goal was to save Capitalism from its own stupidity. And he succeeded. He did it by using his powers of persuasion, his eloquence, and the new technology provided by the wireless radio to galvanize the American people, by saying, in effect, “You know what we need, and we're going to do it together, whether they like it or not.” Lest there be any doubt, “they” were Congress and the Supreme Court, and the Federal Reserve, and the Financial Titans who got us into the mess.
Let's look honestly at our present predicament. If your family or mine could not provide basic necessities nor pay our debts, we would be forced to file for Bankruptcy. Well, my city of San Francisco (and many others around the country), the state of California (and many other states), and the United States of America have been starved by the anti-tax policies of the last three decades into a state that can only be described as Bankruptcy. All that is missing is the resolution. And, how is Bankruptcy “resolved?” By wiping out debt. Period. The result is that usurious creditors end up holding toilet paper. Then maybe they can try to find a job. Clipping coupons and living off interest is not a “job.” It is parasitic behavior. The truth is that the whole world would be better off if all debt, personal, corporate and public, were summarily eradicated. What a relief! You mean our income can be used to meet basic human needs? Now there's a concept! Of course, the consequence is that no new debt can be created, if not forever, at least for a good many years.
If this seems a little drastic, consider this: we are also morally bankrupt. Millions of people, including children, for God's sake, in the world's richest country go to bed hungry every night.Millions more have little or no access to even minimal healthcare. Our educational system has been cut to the bone, teachers must spend all of their time teaching children how to take uniform tests of math and reading abilities, subjects like history, social studies, art and music get short shrift. Ladies and Gentlemen, the business if education is not to shove facts down the throats of children so they can spit them up on command, it is to teach them how to think, how to develop and use intelligent judgement.
So, ultimately, we are both economically and morally bankrupt. Is there anyone else out there ready to do something? If you are, let me know.
Wake up, America! How bad does it have to get before people who do know better come out of where ever they have been hiding, rise up and demand meaningful change? Fear not, you cowards and malingerers, if you continue to do nothing (talking, writing, presenting clever arguments, and other typical “Liberal” tactics are a waste of time – only organized action has any chance of making a difference) I can assure you that things are going to get worse. A lot worse.
First, there will never be enough good jobs again. Never! The economic models that got us into this mess will never get us out of it. As Einstein said, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. More about new economic models later.
Second, the opposition is getting organized, and is taking action. The Tea Party is only the beginning. As history has demonstrated repeatedly, ignorance and insecurity are exceptionally fertile ground for the worst kind of demagoguery. And both are pandemic in America right now. Frightened, angry children everywhere in apparently adult bodies. And no dearth of dangerous demagogues eager to exploit them.
So far, they are still a minority, no matter how they may dominate the 24-hour News Media. But the absence of strong, motivated, organized opposition portends disaster, for our country, if not for the planet. Our Founding Fathers, and the Philosophers who inspired them, recognized the risks inherent in democracy. They tried, while creating our Constitution, to prevent the two greatest risks: the tyranny of an unenlightened majority, and the corruption of our Representatives by a Commercial Society. Their worst fears have been realized. Our putative democracy is on life support, and there is no “Living Will.”
The last time we were in the throes of a crisis like this one, in the 1930's, during the Great Depression, we had the exceptionally good fortune to be in the hands of a leader who was prepared to do whatever was necessary to get us out of it. FDR was not a “small d” democrat. He was a benevolent dictator, right out of Plato's Republic, and his goal was to save Capitalism from its own stupidity. And he succeeded. He did it by using his powers of persuasion, his eloquence, and the new technology provided by the wireless radio to galvanize the American people, by saying, in effect, “You know what we need, and we're going to do it together, whether they like it or not.” Lest there be any doubt, “they” were Congress and the Supreme Court, and the Federal Reserve, and the Financial Titans who got us into the mess.
Let's look honestly at our present predicament. If your family or mine could not provide basic necessities nor pay our debts, we would be forced to file for Bankruptcy. Well, my city of San Francisco (and many others around the country), the state of California (and many other states), and the United States of America have been starved by the anti-tax policies of the last three decades into a state that can only be described as Bankruptcy. All that is missing is the resolution. And, how is Bankruptcy “resolved?” By wiping out debt. Period. The result is that usurious creditors end up holding toilet paper. Then maybe they can try to find a job. Clipping coupons and living off interest is not a “job.” It is parasitic behavior. The truth is that the whole world would be better off if all debt, personal, corporate and public, were summarily eradicated. What a relief! You mean our income can be used to meet basic human needs? Now there's a concept! Of course, the consequence is that no new debt can be created, if not forever, at least for a good many years.
If this seems a little drastic, consider this: we are also morally bankrupt. Millions of people, including children, for God's sake, in the world's richest country go to bed hungry every night.Millions more have little or no access to even minimal healthcare. Our educational system has been cut to the bone, teachers must spend all of their time teaching children how to take uniform tests of math and reading abilities, subjects like history, social studies, art and music get short shrift. Ladies and Gentlemen, the business if education is not to shove facts down the throats of children so they can spit them up on command, it is to teach them how to think, how to develop and use intelligent judgement.
So, ultimately, we are both economically and morally bankrupt. Is there anyone else out there ready to do something? If you are, let me know.
The Real State of the Union
The Real State of the Union
My fellow Americans, I must begin by apologizing to you for failing to keep my promises to you, and for choosing the wrong people to lead us out of the disaster I inherited from my predecessor. While I have no excuse, you should understand that my elitist education and recent political career have unfortunately isolated me from the realities plaguing the lives of ordinary Americans. My task this evening is to assure you the I have gotten the message – that I will henceforth dedicate my life and my presidency to the task of restoring our democracy and the quality of life for everyone, not just for the privileged few.
I am sure you realize that this will not be easy, for either of us. For openers, though, I must insist, in the strongest possible terms, that it is time for the American public to stop acting and thinking like frightened, angry children. We can only find our way out of this dilemma as adults. Adults understand that they are responsible for cleaning up their own messes; they understand that risk is a part of life, that no government can guarantee that they will always be protected from the determined efforts of suicidal enemies; they understand that freedom carries awesome responsibilities, including the need to be fully informed and rationally motivated by that knowledge; they understand that liberty can never be license to do whatever one wishes without proper concern for the consequences of our behavior on others.
Most of you know that I worked for some time in Community Organizing. One of the fundamental tenets of that activity is that we are always trying to construct a type of social structure; like most structures, this one has a front door and a back door. We might say that, in Community Organizing, people with needs (some quite urgent and even desperate) come in through the front door and people with values (primarily, those which result in economic and social justice) come in through the back door. Now, my personal belief is that, when we strip away misinformation and fearful generalizations, we will find that a very large majority of Americans can be counted in one or both of those two groups. Again, those with needs and those with human values constitute a large majority. Lest there be any doubt, however, there are Americans who are not in either group. Since I have no concern about offending them, I will categorically state right now that those people have social values that would embarrass a hyena, and there is no need to include them in our discussion. They need to be marginalized and rendered powerless, one way or another, if our beloved country, humanity itself and even the planet are to have any future worth contemplating.
All of which begs the question: what should we be doing? If we can galvanize and organize this majority, what might we ask them to support? For openers, we need to understand that the economic models that got us into this condition will never get us out of it. I began by apologizing for choosing the wrong people to lead us back from the brink of disaster. The reason they are the “wrong people” is that they have spent their lives operating in a system which has outlived its usefulness. You might say, if you'll forgive the bad pun, that they were and are invested in it. If you look at that word, it's obvious that someone who is “in a vest' might well have difficulty “seeing” well. We have a saying, “he was invested in the idea, couldn't see the adverse consequences.” Yet, as Einstein once noted, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.
So, the first thing we need is new economic models. Interestingly enough, the field of Economics has recently (finally!) been expanding its vision, having less emphasis on the “rational actor” and the self-regulating nature of unregulated markets, and spending more time and attention on the irrational, emotional elements of economic behavior that don't submit so easily to reductionist formulas. Now, remember, I am talking about new economic models, which excludes old ideas like communism and socialism. Big anything is potentially bad news. Big government is as vulnerable to corruption and incompetence as big business.
Speaking of Big Government, the issue is not, and should never be the size of government. What we should be debating is the proper role of government, its function. For the last thirty years, thanks to the demagoguery of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, we have been devolving back to a medieval concept of government – that it exists only to protect and enhance the wealth and privileges of the few at the expense of the many. Feudalism, if you will. Until 1980, our idea of the function of government had been evolving toward its proper role – to protect the weak and helpless from the predations of the powerful – to promote and facilitate economic and social justice. Like any large, powerful institution, government must be transparent and responsive to the people. Not to money, or the economic elite, or to any “special interests,” but to the people. As I noted earlier, this can only be accomplished by an intelligent, well-educated, well-informed, politically active electorate. If you look around you, the absence of such an electorate can only have disastrous results. We are living with those results.
There is plenty of room for a vigorous national discussion about what the new economic models might look like, but the first thing we have to recognize is that there will never be enough good jobs again. Never. Automation, outsourcing, and especially the need to cut back on consumption and environmental degradation – no amount of educational reform can create jobs where they don't exist. Moreover, in a world of rising population and diminishing resources we should be rewarding those who are willing to lead a simpler lifestyle, not punishing them. Up until now, we have based our economic system on an egregious extortion: work or die. We have refused, from its inception to endorse the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, precisely because it mandates economic Human Rights (food, clothing, shelter, education and healthcare) whether one can pay the market price or not. If we had followed the lead of Franklin Roosevelt, who was preparing before his untimely death to propose an economic Bill of Rights (freedom from want, among others), we would have removed the power of the extortion.
The time has come to join the civilized world and recognize these basic rights/needs. As I noted earlier, this need not be accomplished with Socialism, a term which is bandied about by ignorant people who don't seem to understand that Socialism was conceived as a means of providing universal access to basic necessities, not as the end. It is an economic model that proposes to transfer control of “the means of production” from private ownership to the government in order to prevent oligarchs from taking more than their fair share of the profits. You may have noticed that most of the “means of production” are no longer located in America, and that recent events have required the government to assume effective control, if not outright ownership of a large portion of the means that are still here to prevent them from self-destructing.
Yet, despite government ownership, there is no citizen participation in that ownership. I would like to suggest here that our discussion of new economic models should start with the idea of People's Capitalism, with citizen participation in the ownership of our mutual assets. We have the necessary technology, we have a precedent provided by a Republican Administration, we lack only the willingness to implement the program. If every citizen owned minimal shares in a national Mutual Fund (something like the CalPers program that invests for many California Public Employees), we could provide basic necessities as dividend distributions from that
Fund. Then, work could be chosen as a means of providing a better life for oneself or ones family, or even as a means of creating a better world. Work chosen is life enhancing. America is already heaven for those who work because they want to not because they have to.
In conclusion, then, I ask you to consider carefully what I have proposed. Those who are old enough will remember that Reagan and his advisors promoted the idea of a “Silent Majority” (most of whom were silent because they were ashamed of their racism, misogyny and resentment toward those who were unwilling or unable to “play the game”), and rode it into the White House and set in motion thirty years of social devolution. Recently we have learned that they are not so “silent.” Even the possibility of restoring government to its rightful role has frightened and angered them, as well it might. Ignorance and fear are the ultimate “potting soil” for the worst kind of demagoguery. The last time the world was brought to its knees by the titans of finance, only Roosevelt saved us from the Fascism that seized much of the developed world.
Regarding my previous comments about the potential majority of those with needs and those with values, I would like to suggest that it is time to galvanize and organize a Decent Majority, composed of those who know that a better world is possible if we are willing to work to create it. Will you join me?
My fellow Americans, I must begin by apologizing to you for failing to keep my promises to you, and for choosing the wrong people to lead us out of the disaster I inherited from my predecessor. While I have no excuse, you should understand that my elitist education and recent political career have unfortunately isolated me from the realities plaguing the lives of ordinary Americans. My task this evening is to assure you the I have gotten the message – that I will henceforth dedicate my life and my presidency to the task of restoring our democracy and the quality of life for everyone, not just for the privileged few.
I am sure you realize that this will not be easy, for either of us. For openers, though, I must insist, in the strongest possible terms, that it is time for the American public to stop acting and thinking like frightened, angry children. We can only find our way out of this dilemma as adults. Adults understand that they are responsible for cleaning up their own messes; they understand that risk is a part of life, that no government can guarantee that they will always be protected from the determined efforts of suicidal enemies; they understand that freedom carries awesome responsibilities, including the need to be fully informed and rationally motivated by that knowledge; they understand that liberty can never be license to do whatever one wishes without proper concern for the consequences of our behavior on others.
Most of you know that I worked for some time in Community Organizing. One of the fundamental tenets of that activity is that we are always trying to construct a type of social structure; like most structures, this one has a front door and a back door. We might say that, in Community Organizing, people with needs (some quite urgent and even desperate) come in through the front door and people with values (primarily, those which result in economic and social justice) come in through the back door. Now, my personal belief is that, when we strip away misinformation and fearful generalizations, we will find that a very large majority of Americans can be counted in one or both of those two groups. Again, those with needs and those with human values constitute a large majority. Lest there be any doubt, however, there are Americans who are not in either group. Since I have no concern about offending them, I will categorically state right now that those people have social values that would embarrass a hyena, and there is no need to include them in our discussion. They need to be marginalized and rendered powerless, one way or another, if our beloved country, humanity itself and even the planet are to have any future worth contemplating.
All of which begs the question: what should we be doing? If we can galvanize and organize this majority, what might we ask them to support? For openers, we need to understand that the economic models that got us into this condition will never get us out of it. I began by apologizing for choosing the wrong people to lead us back from the brink of disaster. The reason they are the “wrong people” is that they have spent their lives operating in a system which has outlived its usefulness. You might say, if you'll forgive the bad pun, that they were and are invested in it. If you look at that word, it's obvious that someone who is “in a vest' might well have difficulty “seeing” well. We have a saying, “he was invested in the idea, couldn't see the adverse consequences.” Yet, as Einstein once noted, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.
So, the first thing we need is new economic models. Interestingly enough, the field of Economics has recently (finally!) been expanding its vision, having less emphasis on the “rational actor” and the self-regulating nature of unregulated markets, and spending more time and attention on the irrational, emotional elements of economic behavior that don't submit so easily to reductionist formulas. Now, remember, I am talking about new economic models, which excludes old ideas like communism and socialism. Big anything is potentially bad news. Big government is as vulnerable to corruption and incompetence as big business.
Speaking of Big Government, the issue is not, and should never be the size of government. What we should be debating is the proper role of government, its function. For the last thirty years, thanks to the demagoguery of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, we have been devolving back to a medieval concept of government – that it exists only to protect and enhance the wealth and privileges of the few at the expense of the many. Feudalism, if you will. Until 1980, our idea of the function of government had been evolving toward its proper role – to protect the weak and helpless from the predations of the powerful – to promote and facilitate economic and social justice. Like any large, powerful institution, government must be transparent and responsive to the people. Not to money, or the economic elite, or to any “special interests,” but to the people. As I noted earlier, this can only be accomplished by an intelligent, well-educated, well-informed, politically active electorate. If you look around you, the absence of such an electorate can only have disastrous results. We are living with those results.
There is plenty of room for a vigorous national discussion about what the new economic models might look like, but the first thing we have to recognize is that there will never be enough good jobs again. Never. Automation, outsourcing, and especially the need to cut back on consumption and environmental degradation – no amount of educational reform can create jobs where they don't exist. Moreover, in a world of rising population and diminishing resources we should be rewarding those who are willing to lead a simpler lifestyle, not punishing them. Up until now, we have based our economic system on an egregious extortion: work or die. We have refused, from its inception to endorse the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, precisely because it mandates economic Human Rights (food, clothing, shelter, education and healthcare) whether one can pay the market price or not. If we had followed the lead of Franklin Roosevelt, who was preparing before his untimely death to propose an economic Bill of Rights (freedom from want, among others), we would have removed the power of the extortion.
The time has come to join the civilized world and recognize these basic rights/needs. As I noted earlier, this need not be accomplished with Socialism, a term which is bandied about by ignorant people who don't seem to understand that Socialism was conceived as a means of providing universal access to basic necessities, not as the end. It is an economic model that proposes to transfer control of “the means of production” from private ownership to the government in order to prevent oligarchs from taking more than their fair share of the profits. You may have noticed that most of the “means of production” are no longer located in America, and that recent events have required the government to assume effective control, if not outright ownership of a large portion of the means that are still here to prevent them from self-destructing.
Yet, despite government ownership, there is no citizen participation in that ownership. I would like to suggest here that our discussion of new economic models should start with the idea of People's Capitalism, with citizen participation in the ownership of our mutual assets. We have the necessary technology, we have a precedent provided by a Republican Administration, we lack only the willingness to implement the program. If every citizen owned minimal shares in a national Mutual Fund (something like the CalPers program that invests for many California Public Employees), we could provide basic necessities as dividend distributions from that
Fund. Then, work could be chosen as a means of providing a better life for oneself or ones family, or even as a means of creating a better world. Work chosen is life enhancing. America is already heaven for those who work because they want to not because they have to.
In conclusion, then, I ask you to consider carefully what I have proposed. Those who are old enough will remember that Reagan and his advisors promoted the idea of a “Silent Majority” (most of whom were silent because they were ashamed of their racism, misogyny and resentment toward those who were unwilling or unable to “play the game”), and rode it into the White House and set in motion thirty years of social devolution. Recently we have learned that they are not so “silent.” Even the possibility of restoring government to its rightful role has frightened and angered them, as well it might. Ignorance and fear are the ultimate “potting soil” for the worst kind of demagoguery. The last time the world was brought to its knees by the titans of finance, only Roosevelt saved us from the Fascism that seized much of the developed world.
Regarding my previous comments about the potential majority of those with needs and those with values, I would like to suggest that it is time to galvanize and organize a Decent Majority, composed of those who know that a better world is possible if we are willing to work to create it. Will you join me?
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