You know I'm wondering about this.

In only a month we've seen that Obama is going to continue with the Imperial juggernaut unfettered by any pesky constituents who dreamt otherwise.

In only a month we've seen Obama will gladly hand over taxpayer dollar to the proven grand bandits of Wall St. and will do so in amounts that would leave even the Bush gang green with envy.

In only a month we've seen that the much rumored Changling has surrounded himself with a cesspool of reactionary troglodytes, the very same pariahs that have been swirling around DC for decades.

So I wonder, as we bear witness to the entire charade what are the responsibilities of those who approached their guy with nothing less than religious fervor.

Do these people not have any responsibility to hold their man's "feet to the fire?"

Do they not bear any responsibility for the criminal acts they have enabled with their tacit or vocal support for this guy?

So do they just get to walk away from the voting booth and now just lament that their guy has been "a disappointment so far" and not bear any responsibility for his policies, policies which many of us have described in detail long before they even became policies?

I need to know.

Beautiful. If you don't post this at DU then I will.

Beautiful. If you don't post this at DU then I will.


Go for it. You have my complete permission as you know.

Here's the updated version I posted over at RigInt:


You know I'm wondering about this.

In only a month we've seen that Obama is going to continue with the Imperial juggernaut unfettered by any pesky constituents who dreamt otherwise.

In only a month we've seen Obama will gladly hand over taxpayer dollar to the proven grand bandits of Wall St. and will do so in amounts that would leave even the Bush gang green with envy.

In only a month we've seen that the much rumored Changling has surrounded himself with a cesspool of reactionary troglodytes, the very same pariahs that have been swirling around DC for decades.

So I wonder, as we bear witness to the entire charade what are the responsibilities of those who approached their guy with nothing less than religious fervor.

Do these people not have any responsibility to hold their man's "feet to the fire?"

Do they not bear any responsibility for the criminal acts they have enabled with their tacit or vocal support for this guy?

So do they just get to walk away from the voting booth and now just lament that their guy has been "a disappointment so far" and not bear any responsibility for his policies, policies which many of us have described in detail long before they even became policies?

Is their any responsibility for every child who is bombed by US planes in Afghanistan?

Is their any responsibility for the Obama supported continuation of the corporate takeover of the world and for this unending financial disaster?

What about for wiretapping and rendition (both of which Obama supports)?

Are you willing to stand behind Obama as he commits crime after crime?

I need to know.

Just added a few spices.

Send the link over when you post so I can put in the input.

I've been away from the internets for the most part but am gearing up and this thought in the OP is at the moment bothering me quite a bit. These fuckers gave outrageous and belligerent support to this Obama character and now they seem to have walked off the set whilst the play continues and their man is putting on his criminal act with his crew of DC insiders.

Where are these fuckers to get in the way of their messiah as he sends stimuli up our collective asses?

Maybe that civic religion of voting ain't what it's cracked up to be?

Here, guys, I'll save you some time:

"Give him a chance. I'm giving him at least six months..."

"Our president has been doing a great job"

"As long as Bush is out I'm happy"

"That's a right-wing scare tactic"

"Your candidate lost the primary - get over it"

"Here are some photos of our president on the beach!"

I'll do it in the AM when I can keep a eye on it.

Might get locked as 'flamebait', imagine.

I'll do it in the AM when I can keep a eye on it.

Might get locked as 'flamebait', imagine.


Post the link when you do it please...

Bombs away:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5096212

Bah, that didn't last long. Shouldn't be so obvious('Chlamor' & our address on sig line). Shoulda attributed the piece to Chomsky or some other 'luminary'.



The original author of this discourse has been banned from DU, and published the above-quoted manifesto on another board. We'd just as soon not facilitate board wars.

diplomatically,
Bright

They're so predictable. I decided to talk about "divide and conquer" this morning - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5096558&mesg_id=5096676. So far no one is interested.

Damn Changling!!

isn't it better to try and sow division among the people in an imperialist country like ours? the last thing the rest of the world needs right now is a United States working toward a common purpose, such as rebuilding its economy on the backs of the global poor, or emancipating women and girls around the (muslim) world, or whatever.

remember what happened last time the US was united in a time of crisis? afghanistan and iraq, that's what happened.

i don't know, i'm just thinking outloud. (or online rather)

isn't it better to try and sow division among the people in an imperialist country like ours? the last thing the rest of the world needs right now is a United States working toward a common purpose, such as rebuilding its economy on the backs of the global poor, or emancipating women and girls around the (muslim) world, or whatever.

remember what happened last time the US was united in a time of crisis? afghanistan and iraq, that's what happened.

i don't know, i'm just thinking outloud. (or online rather)


How does one do that? I understand the sentiment but how is that accomplished, practically? That leads to the next set of questions in your post such as did the U.S. being "united in time of crisis" have anything whatever to do with Afghanistan and Iraq?

It is very complicated living in the belly of beast.

isn't it better to try and sow division among the people in an imperialist country like ours? the last thing the rest of the world needs right now is a United States working toward a common purpose, such as rebuilding its economy on the backs of the global poor, or emancipating women and girls around the (muslim) world, or whatever.

remember what happened last time the US was united in a time of crisis? afghanistan and iraq, that's what happened.

i don't know, i'm just thinking outloud. (or online rather)


How does one do that? I understand the sentiment but how is that accomplished, practically? That leads to the next set of questions in your post such as did the U.S. being "united in time of crisis" have anything whatever to do with Afghanistan and Iraq?

It is very complicated living in the belly of beast.



Your thinking out loud is refreshing. Here's a contribution.

Lets assume the following as true:

1) Obama's victory was primarily due to anti-Bush sentiment with a solid dose of populism, not mentioned but there, nevertheless.

2) The current popularity ratings for Obama reflect the traditional honeymoon period and an information delay on the moderate nature of the administration and a general desire for assistance from the government.

3) There are already indicators that there's little tolerance for blatant signs of the "old ways." Ii think that the Obama folks were generally surprised that they couldn't sell Daschle. They kept Geithner at a price. Like the calls against the first bailout bill, the one that lost, these protests were rapid and spontaneous.

There's no reason to sow dissent, it's endemic. There is a reason to help shape the message, namely that only a new system will work. There's also a need to spot the shills who show up as the new Huey Longs, intending to betray the populism that they ardently advance.

If Afghanistan goes forward, then the deal is over.

It's desperation time -- enough people are aware of the real desperation to create all sorts of dissent.

isn't it better to try and sow division among the people in an imperialist country like ours? the last thing the rest of the world needs right now is a United States working toward a common purpose, such as rebuilding its economy on the backs of the global poor, or emancipating women and girls around the (muslim) world, or whatever.

remember what happened last time the US was united in a time of crisis? afghanistan and iraq, that's what happened.

i don't know, i'm just thinking outloud. (or online rather)


How does one do that? I understand the sentiment but how is that accomplished, practically? That leads to the next set of questions in your post such as did the U.S. being "united in time of crisis" have anything whatever to do with Afghanistan and Iraq?

It is very complicated living in the belly of beast.



One thing seems for sure, it's gotta happen here, the power of the US must be neutralized. I don't think I'm being Trotiskist or Orientalists, it's just that the coercive power is so great. Attacking an enemy's main strength is counter-intuitive in strategy, yet I see nothing for it. The wreckage of socialists societies and crushed revolutions litter the 20th century, the US is the primary culprit.

It is very complicated living in the belly of the beast, indeed. Che may have admired our tactical situation but it's damned daunting. But what choice do we have?

If Afghanistan goes forward, then the deal is over.

It's desperation time -- enough people are aware of the real desperation to create all sorts of dissent.



I've been getting some pretty random comments to my posts all over DU - people who haven't posted that much & are not the "celebrities" over there who are really fed up and see Obama clearly. I think there's a lot of dissent out there. Everyday Americans coming together is exactly what we need.

Barely anyone is talking about Afghanistan and he just authorized more troops to be sent there.

If Afghanistan goes forward, then the deal is over.

It's desperation time -- enough people are aware of the real desperation to create all sorts of dissent.



I've been getting some pretty random comments to my posts all over DU - people who haven't posted that much & are not the "celebrities" over there who are really fed up and see Obama clearly. I think there's a lot of dissent out there. Everyday Americans coming together is exactly what we need.

Barely anyone is talking about Afghanistan and he just authorized more troops to be sent there.


It's an unspeakable embarrassment, like daddy's drinkin'. I'd wager that 90% of those who still vocally support that adventure are among the 'paid'.

If Afghanistan goes forward, then the deal is over.

It's desperation time -- enough people are aware of the real desperation to create all sorts of dissent.



I've been getting some pretty random comments to my posts all over DU - people who haven't posted that much & are not the "celebrities" over there who are really fed up and see Obama clearly. I think there's a lot of dissent out there. Everyday Americans coming together is exactly what we need.

Barely anyone is talking about Afghanistan and he just authorized more troops to be sent there.


It's an unspeakable embarrassment, like daddy's drinkin'. I'd wager that 90% of those who still vocally support that adventure are among the 'paid'.


Mr. Obama..GET OUT OF AFGHANISTAN

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5098504

isn't it better to try and sow division among the people in an imperialist country like ours? the last thing the rest of the world needs right now is a United States working toward a common purpose, such as rebuilding its economy on the backs of the global poor, or emancipating women and girls around the (muslim) world, or whatever.

remember what happened last time the US was united in a time of crisis? afghanistan and iraq, that's what happened.

i don't know, i'm just thinking outloud. (or online rather)


How does one do that? I understand the sentiment but how is that accomplished, practically? That leads to the next set of questions in your post such as did the U.S. being "united in time of crisis" have anything whatever to do with Afghanistan and Iraq?

It is very complicated living in the belly of beast.



One thing seems for sure, it's gotta happen here, the power of the US must be neutralized. I don't think I'm being Trotiskist or Orientalists, it's just that the coercive power is so great. Attacking an enemy's main strength is counter-intuitive in strategy, yet I see nothing for it. The wreckage of socialists societies and crushed revolutions litter the 20th century, the US is the primary culprit.

It is very complicated living in the belly of the beast, indeed. Che may have admired our tactical situation but it's damned daunting. But what choice do we have?

blindpig, you should be careful not to overestimate the military superiority of the US. this country is tucking its tail between its legs and backing down from iraq, and if its taking longer than it should, that's probably because the civilian leadership understands that the inevitable withdrawal will be politically damaging at home. meanwhile, defeat in afghanistan is a foregone conclusion. the US is deathly afraid of taking casualties and overly reliant on sophisticated, expensive military hardware (e.g., unmanned airplanes) to maintain a hollow dominance. nobody is scared of the US anymore. that is a positive thing!

anaxarchos, i don't have any good answers. i don't know how sowing division would play out in reality. i've been fruitlessly asking myself that question. maybe i just lack imagination. however, i'm sure all of us put together here could figure out a practical, non-nutty way to make US society more irrational & divided than it already is?

as for popular support for the iraq & afghanistan invasions, that's a matter of record. it doesn't require a huge leap to connect that with foreign policy, does it? americans love war until it's blindingly obvious they're losing. hence they by & large supported the occupation in iraq until they were confronted with the baffling but eternal truth that everybody universally hates foreign occupation, no matter how "well intentioned" it is at the outset. hopefully the US public will apply this hard-won education to the afghanistan occupation, unless they become convinced that the noble westerner has to rescue helpless afghani women and girls from their fathers, husbands, brothers, etc.

Here's someone who is calling Obama and the intransigent supporters of all he says/does out:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5108321&mesg_id=5108321

hopefully the US public will apply this hard-won education to the afghanistan occupation, unless they become convinced that the noble westerner has to rescue helpless afghani women and girls from their fathers, husbands, brothers, etc.


You're right, Squid, I've had that response to my anti-war posts on DU as well recently. I ask them when we are going to liberate women in Rwanda and elsewhere and they've not responded.

isn't it better to try and sow division among the people in an imperialist country like ours? the last thing the rest of the world needs right now is a United States working toward a common purpose, such as rebuilding its economy on the backs of the global poor, or emancipating women and girls around the (muslim) world, or whatever.

remember what happened last time the US was united in a time of crisis? afghanistan and iraq, that's what happened.

i don't know, i'm just thinking outloud. (or online rather)


How does one do that? I understand the sentiment but how is that accomplished, practically? That leads to the next set of questions in your post such as did the U.S. being "united in time of crisis" have anything whatever to do with Afghanistan and Iraq?

It is very complicated living in the belly of beast.



One thing seems for sure, it's gotta happen here, the power of the US must be neutralized. I don't think I'm being Trotiskist or Orientalists, it's just that the coercive power is so great. Attacking an enemy's main strength is counter-intuitive in strategy, yet I see nothing for it. The wreckage of socialists societies and crushed revolutions litter the 20th century, the US is the primary culprit.

It is very complicated living in the belly of the beast, indeed. Che may have admired our tactical situation but it's damned daunting. But what choice do we have?

blindpig, you should be careful not to overestimate the military superiority of the US. this country is tucking its tail between its legs and backing down from iraq, and if its taking longer than it should, that's probably because the civilian leadership understands that the inevitable withdrawal will be politically damaging at home. meanwhile, defeat in afghanistan is a foregone conclusion. the US is deathly afraid of taking casualties and overly reliant on sophisticated, expensive military hardware (e.g., unmanned airplanes) to maintain a hollow dominance. nobody is scared of the US anymore. that is a positive thing!

anaxarchos, i don't have any good answers. i don't know how sowing division would play out in reality. i've been fruitlessly asking myself that question. maybe i just lack imagination. however, i'm sure all of us put together here could figure out a practical, non-nutty way to make US society more irrational & divided than it already is?

as for popular support for the iraq & afghanistan invasions, that's a matter of record. it doesn't require a huge leap to connect that with foreign policy, does it? americans love war until it's blindingly obvious they're losing. hence they by & large supported the occupation in iraq until they were confronted with the baffling but eternal truth that everybody universally hates foreign occupation, no matter how "well intentioned" it is at the outset. hopefully the US public will apply this hard-won education to the afghanistan occupation, unless they become convinced that the noble westerner has to rescue helpless afghani women and girls from their fathers, husbands, brothers, etc.


Well aware of that vs, Gen Giap schooled me long ago. Ain't so much the conventional stuff that worries me, but the tide is turning and those fuckers gonna get desperate, liable to use anything at their disposal, against anybody.Can't just sit around and let others carry the weight, take the heat. Whatever can be accomplished here is magnified ten fold cause of our proximity to power.

Their first responsibility, apparently, was to descend willy-nilly on unsuspecting nonprofits per the urgings of their esteemed leader on MLK Day in more-trouble-than-its-worth quantities. I suppose the good news is 99% of them will never come back now that they've done their day of service or whatever.

Their second responsibility, imo, is to read the fucking Dem party platform so they can't pretend they don't know that this is exactly what should have been expected when they vote for fuckers like Obama. During the election fever in the fall while being berated for admitting I wasn't voting for him, I kept asking people if they'd actually read the party platform. NO ONE HAD!!!!

Honestly, I neither expect nor desire any sort of recognition on the part of the Obama voters that they have any responsibility for the outcomes of his presidency. That's the beauty of our political system, the voters, even the avid enthusiastic ones, get to remain a few steps removed from the bloodshed and hunger and injustice. They've already conceded that they must 'work within the system' for change so their standards clearly aren't very high.

Fuck em. If they haven't seen through it yet then they are willfully in denial and there is little hope (oops, I said 'hope').

And plus, ya know, Afghanistan is 'the good war'. Obama will kill innocent civilians in a much more reasonable and appropriate way than Bush did (*PUKE*)

Leftists don't belong at DU. It's a right-wing site for a right-wing party. I'm amazed they put up with as much of the 'leftist' kinda perspective as they do (and that ain't much). I suppose they need to help continue the charade that there is something 'left' about the Dem party, I dunno. The place is a disgusting cesspool.

If I were a mod there, I'd ban your ass in a second, bp ;)

If I were a mod there, I'd ban your ass in a second, bp ;)

Amazing, ain't it? Beyond me, I've been nasty and reckless, what's it gonna take?

Fuck it, my inner snapping turtle is wroth, I'm of a mind to jack it up , for The Kid.

More thoughts...

The self-proclaimed 'left wing' or progressives who identify as democrats have given themselves a pass. They see things this way - when they campaigned for and elected Obama they did so with the intention of pushing him to the left. They were clear all along that they wanted him to end the wars, help the poor, investigate the bush administration, etc. I mean, they've been ranting about it on internet discussion boards for years, and sending emails and letters and even voting in online polls! They made themselves perfectly clear. He owes it to them. So at this point if Obama governs in a centrist or right-wing way, he has betrayed them. Their intentions are pure, that's what matters.

But in reality, Obama's intentions were straightforward all along. He is a Democrat and, as such, will conform to the Democratic party platform. The Dem party is quite clear about supporting the rhetorical bullshit 'war on terror', the free-trade policies and other foreign policy that supports the mega-corporations rather than the people, etc etc. They voted for HIS platform, he doesn't serve THEIR deluded and misguided 'ideals'.

But they will never see it that way.

It's like a mental illness.

Quite right, Megan, that's always been the hallmark of liberals, having their cake and eating it too. Phil Ochs sure nailed it. Damn near all of these self-proclaimed 'leftists on DU are much the same, leftists but but, shuffle the feet, reform reform, just don't get out of hand, ya know. Other than consciously or unconsciously supporting the Man I think there is a strong current of fear motivating their prevarication. They suspect how nasty things could get, above and beyond their concern for their property and position they fear for their physical wellbeing, and their families. Well, so do I, but sometimes life is scary. What choice do we have? To ignore the outrages to justice, dignity and survival is unbearable. If the crunch comes in my time I cannot say for sure how I'll act, never know how a person will act the first time they see the elephant. Nonetheless, forward.

Might be interesting to post a thread over there defining 'left', no ifs, ands or buts.

Honestly over there I believe many of them think "left" and "liberal" are synonyms. Chlamor's blog on the subject would be very enlightening for them.

Well aware of that vs, Gen Giap schooled me long ago. Ain't so much the conventional stuff that worries me, but the tide is turning and those fuckers gonna get desperate, liable to use anything at their disposal, against anybody.Can't just sit around and let others carry the weight, take the heat. Whatever can be accomplished here is magnified ten fold cause of our proximity to power.

The principal contradiction, and driving force for change, are henceforth located in the realm of international economic relations. Imperialism is certainly not indestructible. But nor is it withering away... It is waiting to be attacked and destroyed from outside. What lies 'outside' imperialism is not—is no longer—the working classes of the home countries of imperialism, but those of the world outside their frontiers (http://maoist.ws/archive/economics/aeecologysolidarity.html).

(edited for clarity)

Hey blindpig what you do over there is perfect, and you fly under their radar somehow. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

I guess I clicked on one of the Obama polls (probably on housing for bobbie) this past December or so, because I get these email news items from change.org which is the Obamination blog site. Anyway, checking my spam box, I found another. Weeeelllll it relieves responsibility for the supporters with this line, I feel so much better!!:


Stay tuned for more stimulus numerology and updates from the world of change. Don't worry if you need someone to help translate it all into plain English -- we're here for ya.

Have a great weekend!

- The Change.org Team

Well aware of that vs, Gen Giap schooled me long ago. Ain't so much the conventional stuff that worries me, but the tide is turning and those fuckers gonna get desperate, liable to use anything at their disposal, against anybody.Can't just sit around and let others carry the weight, take the heat. Whatever can be accomplished here is magnified ten fold cause of our proximity to power.

The principal contradiction, and driving force for change, are henceforth located in the realm of international economic relations. Imperialism is certainly not indestructible. But nor is it withering away... It is waiting to be attacked and destroyed from outside. What lies 'outside' imperialism is not—is no longer—the working classes of the home countries of imperialism, but those of the world outside their frontiers (http://maoist.ws/archive/economics/aeecologysolidarity.html).

(edited for clarity)



Damn vs, that link quit. I'd started reading it last night but wanted to give it a better look when I was more cognate. If you could repost I'd appreciate.

The gist I got from my brief viewing is that the workers of the imperial powers are hopelessly co-opted, are part and parcel of imperialism. Bit harsh, but I can certainly appreciate their argument. Need to give it a better look.

It's class warfare, baby




http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5145160

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5144327

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5146642

http://www.moonbattery.com/che_obama.gif

Someone over there figured this change will increase $300/$10,000 income for those with incomes over $250K. La de do da, naught but a sop.

Guess that shows us, a regular fuckin' Che he is.

Many will grasp this as vindication, damn thin gruel.

Many will grasp this as vindication, damn thin gruel.


Stone soup, I think.

Well aware of that vs, Gen Giap schooled me long ago. Ain't so much the conventional stuff that worries me, but the tide is turning and those fuckers gonna get desperate, liable to use anything at their disposal, against anybody.Can't just sit around and let others carry the weight, take the heat. Whatever can be accomplished here is magnified ten fold cause of our proximity to power.

The principal contradiction, and driving force for change, are henceforth located in the realm of international economic relations. Imperialism is certainly not indestructible. But nor is it withering away... It is waiting to be attacked and destroyed from outside. What lies 'outside' imperialism is not—is no longer—the working classes of the home countries of imperialism, but those of the world outside their frontiers (http://maoist.ws/archive/economics/aeecologysolidarity.html).

(edited for clarity)




It sure seemed that way to many at the time your article was written. If you let me abstract the conclusion from the article (which I think is pure horseshit), I think that the conclusion was shared by many in the 1960s and 1970s. In many ways, the debate over "imperialist super-profits", etc. had become immaterial. It was very clear that the workers movements in the advanced capitalist countries had ceased to lead anything and even the few powerful Socialist Parties in those countries which remained, seemed to underline that assumption. It was easy to see progress as being on the edge of national liberation and de-colonization movements, framed by a bi-polar world.

I'm pretty sure that it doesn't look like that today. The two big factors that changed were the fall of the Soviet Union which, in retrospect, made the Socialist brand of national liberation possible and - equally important - the seeming inability of the leading imperialist countries to maintain the status quo. I mean this last both internally ("rise of the middle class", etc.) and externally... the decay of the U.S. monopoly on the world seems to exactly mirror what happened to the British Empire 100 years ago... and for that matter, appears as an odd expression of the stagnation of the individual commercial monopolies (U.S. Steel, GM, AT&T, etc.). Capital, simply moves on without regard to any implied "social contracts".

There is a chart, which is well worth reproducing, from PopIndy (if I can find it) which shows income in the USA by 10% slices and then shows a very significant and broad increase in real income for perhaps the top 70% of the U.S. working population throughout the 1950s and into the early 60's before the bottom segments drop off in the period between now and then, one at a time. By the 1990s, the income slope has exactly reversed with 70% stagnant and declining (and converging) while 30% continue to advance. It's worth plotting those lines out to the present day.

Ya gotta pay to "buy" domestic tranquility and they seem unable to keep up the payments...

i'm probably going to regret this post but here goes:

anax, why do you dismiss the connection between the overdevelopment of the "advanced" countries, who are politically lagging (e.g., given to indulge in social-chauvinism and social-imperialism, two tendencies we'll see a lot more of in the coming years in the US and europe, the likes of which would probably make DU blush), and the underdevelopment of the "lagging" countries, who are politically advanced (e.g., given to indulge in "vulgar anti americanism," "anti-zionism," and "anti-modernization" (in reality only a specific kind of modernization, western-meted modernization))? if you're not dismissing it then you're seriously downplaying its importance and i'm not sure what to make of that. i'm not comfortable with it, it's wrong like a barking cat is wrong, because you're light years ahead of me politically. you seem to be saying that with the end of decolonization, and the demise of the USSR, the scattered struggles for national liberation have no greater political significance anymore. and judging from your post, you didn't put much stock in the non-aligned movement during the 60s and 70s. but if we in the home country find ourselves confronted with the more-or-less same problems of lenin's day, when the british empire was in a state of decay, what should we do? lenin attached great importance to liberation struggles of oppressed nations. why shouldn't we? and why is there all of a sudden confusion over whether the US is an oppressed or oppressor nation?

you also seem to be saying that with the stagnation of real wages and relative immiseration in the advanced countries, capitalism has at long last leveled (or is on the verge of leveling) the global working class, who can, and will, upon realizing their common interest, smash it. because everything hinges on the workers of the advanced countries coming around.

to quote lenin quoting cecil rhodes, "the empire is a bread-and-butter question." so, what if the workers of the advanced countries never *had* to come around? what if they already knew the score better than the radicals of the mother country, who never in their limited imaginations strayed from lenin's initial description of the workers aristocracy as constituting a "tiny minority," though their limited imaginations could still fit all the false consciousness arguments in the world. is the workers aristocracy a tiny minority today still? is it shrinking? would it go away quietly or would it struggle to survive?

nevermind. now, miraculously, the workers of the advanced (aka home) countries have no interest in rescuing western imperialism, they have nothing to lose but their chains, even though their relative privilege, their disproportionately large piece of the resource-pie, depends on its continued existence. and they have no interest in rescuing it because... they understand they cannot rescue it? i don't know. i'm a dumb radical anti-western baby. please explain.

i remember last year there was this one article in the cpgb organ, the weekly worker, around the time lehman bros. went under, about how the world will have to take a raincheck on communism because workers in the "advanced" countries aren't yet prepared to seize power. sorry, ten million children who die of preventable diseases and malnutrition every year because of imperialism's drain on your countries' economies, guess you'll have to wait until we run out of welfare! it made me sad. oh well. i guess 10 million children is a drop in the bucket unless they're european or euro-american children.

/end potentially disastrous post whereby i alienate socindy and prove to all i have nothing further to contribute here

not that i'm TOO REAL or BRUTALLY HONEST or something. i'm quite clueless and politically very timid. so if i come across as hostile i don't mean to & i'm sorry if the tone is arrogant or confrontational.

not that i'm TOO REAL or BRUTALLY HONEST or something. i'm quite clueless and politically very timid. so if i come across as hostile i don't mean to & i'm sorry if the tone is arrogant or confrontational.


No worries, mate... I don't take it as hostility at all. This is exactly the shit we should be talking about. Just gimme a bit-a time to respond.

nevermind. now, miraculously, the workers of the advanced (aka home) countries have no interest in rescuing western imperialism, they have nothing to lose but their chains, even though their relative privilege, their disproportionately large piece of the resource-pie, depends on its continued existence. and they have no interest in rescuing it because... they understand they cannot rescue it? i don't know. i'm a dumb radical anti-western baby. please explain.


Seems like a good post to me, squid.

Hey, one question. I hear the liberals saying all the time that the workers here are too fat and lazy, have too much, sit in front of TV drinking beer, shop at WalMart and go to NASCAR races etc. The idea is that they have too much (far more than the lazy so and sos deserve, as the liberals see things) and so they are therefore complacent.

But is this true? I see the opposite. The workers in Detroit didn't become more conservative as they made more, and today workers there are far more radical than workers in the rest of the country.

mike, generally everybody in the advanced countries "has too much" (without going into how this much-ness is determined). there's no use in pointing fingers unless you wish to plead not guilty by reason of buying organic, driving a prius and making soap from your dead pets, the dead end of ethical-consumerism.

the simple fact is the lagging countries cannot be brought up to the current consumption levels of the advanced countries, try as they might for the next three or four hundred years with all other factors staying the same (three or four hundred years we don't have, i might add), without unleashing environmental catastrophe on the planet. therefore first world consumption has to be brought down, and it would be somewhat utopian, somewhat gandhian, to expect the first world to carry this out on its own accord.

why would they acquiesce to a far lower standard of living than what they're used to and have been practically indoctrinated to believe is their birthright? from the fat/lazy workers to the high-power kamikaze yuppie set all the way to the bleeding-heart/bloody-fist imperialists who occupy the institutions of power... one way or another — i can't yet explain how because i've yet to work out a cogent explanation of its workings on a grand scale (tho' i hear andre gunder frank and m shahid alam and immanuel wallerstein are excellent places to start) — one way or another they all take out more than they put in.

personally, i find liberals' phony concerns about "the ticking time bomb of overpopulation" far more worrisome. it's their own hip, humane, sanitized brand of lebensraum.

i'm probably going to regret this post but here goes:

anax, why do you dismiss the connection between the overdevelopment of the "advanced" countries, who are politically lagging (e.g., given to indulge in social-chauvinism and social-imperialism, two tendencies we'll see a lot more of in the coming years in the US and europe, the likes of which would probably make DU blush), and the underdevelopment of the "lagging" countries, who are politically advanced (e.g., given to indulge in "vulgar anti americanism," "anti-zionism," and "anti-modernization" (in reality only a specific kind of modernization, western-meted modernization))? if you're not dismissing it then you're seriously downplaying its importance and i'm not sure what to make of that. i'm not comfortable with it, it's wrong like a barking cat is wrong, because you're light years ahead of me politically. you seem to be saying that with the end of decolonization, and the demise of the USSR, the scattered struggles for national liberation have no greater political significance anymore. and judging from your post, you didn't put much stock in the non-aligned movement during the 60s and 70s. but if we in the home country find ourselves confronted with the more-or-less same problems of lenin's day, when the british empire was in a state of decay, what should we do? lenin attached great importance to liberation struggles of oppressed nations. why shouldn't we? and why is there all of a sudden confusion over whether the US is an oppressed or oppressor nation?

you also seem to be saying that with the stagnation of real wages and relative immiseration in the advanced countries, capitalism has at long last leveled (or is on the verge of leveling) the global working class, who can, and will, upon realizing their common interest, smash it. because everything hinges on the workers of the advanced countries coming around.

to quote lenin quoting cecil rhodes, "the empire is a bread-and-butter question." so, what if the workers of the advanced countries never *had* to come around? what if they already knew the score better than the radicals of the mother country, who never in their limited imaginations strayed from lenin's initial description of the workers aristocracy as constituting a "tiny minority," though their limited imaginations could still fit all the false consciousness arguments in the world. is the workers aristocracy a tiny minority today still? is it shrinking? would it go away quietly or would it struggle to survive?

nevermind. now, miraculously, the workers of the advanced (aka home) countries have no interest in rescuing western imperialism, they have nothing to lose but their chains, even though their relative privilege, their disproportionately large piece of the resource-pie, depends on its continued existence. and they have no interest in rescuing it because... they understand they cannot rescue it? i don't know. i'm a dumb radical anti-western baby. please explain.

i remember last year there was this one article in the cpgb organ, the weekly worker, around the time lehman bros. went under, about how the world will have to take a raincheck on communism because workers in the "advanced" countries aren't yet prepared to seize power. sorry, ten million children who die of preventable diseases and malnutrition every year because of imperialism's drain on your countries' economies, guess you'll have to wait until we run out of welfare! it made me sad. oh well. i guess 10 million children is a drop in the bucket unless they're european or euro-american children.

/end potentially disastrous post whereby i alienate socindy and prove to all i have nothing further to contribute here


hey squid

not an answer for you but step back from lenin and think about the manifesto. is there a mass reserve army of unemployed? is the proletariat becoming more and more impoverished over time? how many slaves feed the capitalist and how many must be fed BY the capitalists? what is the state of competition between the proletariat -- the force that determines the labor "market"?

is the push-pull of needing to simultaneouly aggrandize and expel the worker still dominating capitalist production?

every natl liberation movement is a positive as a blow against imperialism but unless their is an explicit worker's movement and someone advancing socialism..what happens? What CAN happen?

just stuff to think about

EDIT: for the record I think the manifesto is totally applicable to every one of those questions today

EDIT#2 operative question is really which class is capable of/charged with abolishing class society and WHY it falls on that historically determinate class (ie why can't the lumpen or even the vestigal peasantry take center stage). I think that is is the big distinction and its not dismissive in the least

mike, generally everybody in the advanced countries "has too much" (without going into how this much-ness is determined). there's no use in pointing fingers unless you wish to plead not guilty by reason of buying organic, driving a prius and making soap from your dead pets, the dead end of ethical-consumerism.

I don't agree that it is some "ethical" issue here that involves personal habits or choices. I don't agree that people in advanced countries "have too much." I don't think politics is a matter of personal guilt. I think the problem is capitalism, and the wealthy and powerful few are at fault, and that the people are not at fault because of their supposed moral or intellectual flaws and shortcomings.


the simple fact is the lagging countries cannot be brought up to the current consumption levels of the advanced countries, try as they might for the next three or four hundred years with all other factors staying the same (three or four hundred years we don't have, i might add), without unleashing environmental catastrophe on the planet. therefore first world consumption has to be brought down, and it would be somewhat utopian, somewhat gandhian, to expect the first world to carry this out on its own accord.

Yes, they can. Yes, the working people in lagging countries can be brought up to the current consumption levels of the advanced countries. I don't agree with these scarcity arguments, and "we all must sacrifice - starting with you poor people of color" arguments. Nor do I think that the working people here are at fault, and must accept a lowered standard of living. I think there is enough to go around, and that all can benefit from that.


why would they acquiesce to a far lower standard of living than what they're used to and have been practically indoctrinated to believe is their birthright? from the fat/lazy workers to the high-power kamikaze yuppie set all the way to the bleeding-heart/bloody-fist imperialists who occupy the institutions of power... one way or another — i can't yet explain how because i've yet to work out a cogent explanation of its workings on a grand scale (tho' i hear andre gunder frank and m shahid alam and immanuel wallerstein are excellent places to start) — one way or another they all take out more than they put in.

I am suspicious of these arguments. I don't agree that American workers "take out more than they put in." I don't agree that the American people need to change, scale back their supposed "consumerism" and that they are to blame for the state of the world. I am not going to blame the working people.


personally, i find liberals' phony concerns about "the ticking time bomb of overpopulation" far more worrisome. it's their own hip, humane, sanitized brand of lebensraum.


Agreed. Absolutely.

mike, generally everybody in the advanced countries "has too much" (without going into how this much-ness is determined). there's no use in pointing fingers unless you wish to plead not guilty by reason of buying organic, driving a prius and making soap from your dead pets, the dead end of ethical-consumerism.

I don't agree that it is some "ethical" issue here that involves personal habits or choices. I don't agree that people in advanced countries "have too much." I don't think politics is a matter of personal guilt. I think the problem is capitalism, and the wealthy and powerful few are at fault, and that the people are not at fault because of their supposed moral or intellectual flaws and shortcomings.


the simple fact is the lagging countries cannot be brought up to the current consumption levels of the advanced countries, try as they might for the next three or four hundred years with all other factors staying the same (three or four hundred years we don't have, i might add), without unleashing environmental catastrophe on the planet. therefore first world consumption has to be brought down, and it would be somewhat utopian, somewhat gandhian, to expect the first world to carry this out on its own accord.

Yes, they can. Yes, the working people in lagging countries can be brought up to the current consumption levels of the advanced countries. I don't agree with these scarcity arguments, and "we all must sacrifice - starting with you poor people of color" arguments. Nor do I think that the working people here are at fault, and must accept a lowered standard of living. I think there is enough to go around, and that all can benefit from that.


why would they acquiesce to a far lower standard of living than what they're used to and have been practically indoctrinated to believe is their birthright? from the fat/lazy workers to the high-power kamikaze yuppie set all the way to the bleeding-heart/bloody-fist imperialists who occupy the institutions of power... one way or another — i can't yet explain how because i've yet to work out a cogent explanation of its workings on a grand scale (tho' i hear andre gunder frank and m shahid alam and immanuel wallerstein are excellent places to start) — one way or another they all take out more than they put in.

I am suspicious of these arguments. I don't agree that American workers "take out more than they put in." I don't agree that the American people need to change, scale back their supposed "consumerism" and that they are to blame for the state of the world. I am not going to blame the working people.


personally, i find liberals' phony concerns about "the ticking time bomb of overpopulation" far more worrisome. it's their own hip, humane, sanitized brand of lebensraum.


Agreed. Absolutely.




You are absolutely correct to be "suspicious of these arguments". They are utterly and completely false. Not just the argument you specified but all of the issues you've called out.

There is very great confusion here - a melding of some sort of Malthusian "limited resources" theory with some Marxist sounding but totally anti-Marxist analysis, some sort of insane libertarian fragments which identify consumption with individual "choice", deep seated social chauvinism which identifies the interests of American workers (particularly the "middle class") with the international interests of the American ruling class and sets those workers against those of the rest of the world, and a very funky "morality" which purports to criticize all of the above.

1) The highest paid workers tend to be the most productive of surplus value and are therefore the most exploited.

2) The difference in wage rates between countries is due to the cost of labor, set historically and politically, and not due to a greater "exploitation" of lower wage workers.

3) The political expression of "social chauvinism" or the creation of a "labor aristocracy" are largely also political expressions, though quite serious in their impact. It is not hard to understand these sitting in America because they neatly mirror the superstructure of "white labor"... still, it is never implied that white workers are "less exploited". It is much more complex than that.

4) The eco-socialists have a point that capitalism will wreck the earth if it is in its interest and will move in a way which totally ignores other values... but, this does not and cannot be transformed into a theory of "scarce resources" in general. It is simply not true.

None of my commentary is directed against the squid. Quite the contrary, this seems to be the almost inescapable crapola of "left" politics in the U.S. and Europe and one of the things that have to be completely extinguished if we are ever to have a prayer.

[from j sakai's SETTLERS: THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE WHITE PROLETARIAT]

While there are numbers of Euro-Amerikan workers, they no longer combine into a separate proletarian class. The old white industrial proletariat of the 1930s has been dissolved by promotion and privilege, and its place taken by the colonial proletariats. The abnormal and historically brief contradiction of proletarian class conflict within the settler garrison has been ended. Just as in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the US oppressor nation is again a non-proletarian society that is purely capitalistic in character.

The level of decadence and general privilege can be measured by examining the class structure. Revisionist analyses of the US class structure are, of course, deliberately misleading. Most typically, the revisionists lump together the US oppressor nation with the various Third World oppressed nations and national minorities as one society. Their scheme is to try and hide Babylon behind the masses of colonial workers. They typically say: "America has a working class majority." This implies about settler society what is not true.

A more subtle distortion is to focus on Euro-Amerikans, but to determine "class" by sorting each individual man and woman into different occupational groupings (roughly correlating to a private relationship to the means of production and distribution). This approach lets the revisionists claim that "the majority of white Americans are working class."

This approach denies the "sensuous" reality of human society. Classes are huge, self-defined, living social formations, with general aspects and aspects unique to their own history, time and nation. Engels, in this regard, notes: "The working classes have always, according to the different states of the development of society, lived in different circumstances and had different relations to the owning and ruling classes." It is our task to discover and explore the tangible class formations that have their own existence in material life (completely independent of our investigation). The revisionist distortion on the contrary, seeks to arbitrarily concot statistical categories, fill them up (on paper, anyway) with abstract individuals — and call this "classes." This is just bougeois sociology with "left" rhetoric.

The U.S. oppressor nation is a patriarchal settler society of some complexity. In general Euro-Amerikans exist in family units, with the class identity of the family primarily dependent on the husband or father. We should say that we neither advocate this situation nor see it as eternal. It is the prevailing reality at this time, in this century, and it is our task to understand it.

The revisionist methodology comes up with conclusions like: "all secretaries are in the clerical sector of the working class." That sounds reasonable to many. Factually, however, it isn't true. For example, if a young Euro-Amerikan woman works as a secretary, came from a petitbourgeois family background, is married to a professional, lives in an exclusive white residential suburb or "arty" urban community, shares in a family income of $30,000 per year - is she working class? Could she be working class but her husband and children petit-bourgeois? Obviously, such a person would, in the actual social world that exists, be solidly flourishing within the petit bourgeoisie.

This is not such a far-fetched example. Fully 25% of Euro-Amerikan women employed as clerical-sales personnel are married to men who are managers or professionals. 17% of the wage-employed wives of male managers (includes small retail businesses) are blue-collar workers. (2) due to the patriarchal nature of Euro-Amerikan society, most women from the middle classes are forced, when seeking employment, to accept nonprofessional clerical and retail sales jobs. This does not necessarily change their class identity. One study shows that roughly one-third of all secretaries under 30 years of age are graduates of colleges or junior colleges. (3) This is commonplace knowledge. We have to describe classes as they exist, not define them as concocted categories of our making.

We can gain a better idea of this patriarchal settler society's class structure by looking at Euro-Amerikan male occupations alone. While this is nowhere near as accurate as conducting social investigation, actually going out and surveying the masses in all aspects of their lives, it should help us see the general outlines of the class situation.* This outline is not a full class analysis, we must caution; for our purposes here we do not need to separately delineate the big bourgeoisie, regional and local bourgeoisie, and the varied middle classes (small business proprietors, salaried managers, land-owning farmers, professionals, etc.). All these are placed into one bourgeois-petit-bourgeois grouping (which contains what are separate classes). This is based on the 1970 Census:

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/7700/1970census.gif

*The actual U.S. bourgeoisie is abnormally large. The wealthiest 1% of the U.S. Empire's population - one out of every 100 adults of all nationalities (primarily Euro-Amerikan) - own an average of $1.32 million each. (5) This is the zone where the upper petit-bourgeoisie and local bourgeoisie meet. Earlier studies indicate that the actual Big Bourgeoisie (DuPonts, Rockefellers, Morgans, etc.) is only a fraction of this number, perhaps as few as 15,000 individuals.

This breakdown of Euro-Amerikan male occupations has a very clear meaning, verifying everything about White Amerika that daily life has told us.

The bourgeois, the middle classes and the core of the labor aristocracy are the absolute majority (over 60%). The labor aristocracy is swollen in size. Almost 2 out of every 100 male Euro-Amerikans are policemen, firemen or other protective security workers. Highly-paid construction tradesmen, machinists, mechanics and other skilled craftsmen outnumber ordinary production and transportation workers. Even this greatly understates the extent of the settler labor aristocracy. Many Euro-Amerikan factory workers, technicians, clerical workers, and even general laborers (such as municipal Park Department "laborers" in the major cities) receive extra-proletarian wages, sometimes doing light labor and usually no toil at all. The settler labor aristocracy is considerably larger than its hard core, perhaps comprising as much as 50% of all male Euro-Amerikans.

Most importantly, Euro-Amerikans share an exceptional way of life. What is so exceptional about it is that almost all get to live in a bourgeois way, 'quite Philistine in the mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook ..." Thus, the mass of the lower middle classes, the huge labor aristocracy, and most workers are fused together by a common national way of life and a common national ideology as oppressors. The masses share a way of life that apes the bourgeoisie, dominated by a decadent preoccupation with private consumption. Consuming things and owning things, no matter how shoddy or trivial, is the mass religion. The real world of desperate toil, the world of the proletarians who own nothing but their labor power, is looked down upon with contempt and fear by the Euro-Amerikans.

Euro-Amerikans know how privileged they have it on a world scale, how exceptional they are. Interviews by one reporter in an Iowa industrial city found: "...the prevailing attitude expressed here was capsuled in this comment from Don Schatzberg, the 46-year-old foreman of a concrete-pipe plant:

" 'If you had a chance to pick your country, where else would you go? Where else can a working man own his own house and two cars and take a vacation every ye

ar? I'd say I'm a happy man, not a bit unhappy with my lifestyle,. . .'

"Like Mr. Schatzberg and many other Americans elsewhere, workers here often seemed to equate success with ownership of homes, cars, campers, boats and the like.

" ' I work a lot of hours,' said James Dirkes, Teamster union shop steward at Zeidler, 'but I've got a car, a truck, a boat and a camper to show for it.'

"And LaVone Feldpouch, a 36-year-old wife and mother who works as a clerk for Deere, where her husband is also employed, said: 'I feel my life is an upward curve,' She noted that she and her husband had accumulated three houses and added: 'We're not going to stop there.' They also own two cars, a truck, a boat and a motorcycle and take two vacation trips a year, one with their children and one without."

All statistics show that the amount of consumption in Euro-Amerikan society is staggering. Enough so that it establishes for the mass a certain culture. In the settler tradition today's Euro-Amerikan culture is one of homeowning, with 68.4% of all settler households in 1979 owning their own home (up 50% from 1940). These households share a cornucopia of private electric appliances: 89.8% of all U.S. homes in 1979 had color TVs (watched an average of over 6 hours per day), 55% had airconditioning, 77.3% had washing machines and 61% had clothes dryers, 43% had dishwashers, 52% had blenders and food processors, and so on. (7) Much of the world's health products are hoarded in the U.S., with, for example, one out of every three pairs of prescription eyeglasses in the world sold here.

In terms of the "basics," the most characteristic for Euro-Amerikans is the automobile. In 1980 there were a total of 104.6 million cars on the road. 84.1% of all U.S. households had cars, with 36.6% having two or more. (8) Everyone says that owning automobiles is a "necessity," without which transportation to work, (83% drive to work) shopping and childcare cannot be done.

A Bureau of Labor Statistics study shows how the "average wage owner" in Boston of 1875 had to spend 94% of the family income on "necessrtres: food, clothrng and housing." A "Century of Progress to 'the Good Life"' later, the study found that the "average wage earner" in 1972-73 in Boston spent only 62% on these necessities, meaning they "could afford to spend 38 percent... on nonessentials."(9) We should note that few Euro-Amerikans would agree with this elemental definition - since in their society such things as automobiles, sleeping pills, college education, drycleaning, telephones, etc. are viewed as "necessities."

These by no means exhaust the list of Euro-Amerikan private possessions. Stocks - one of every seven Euro-Amerikans owns at least some corporate stocks - vacation homes, land, hair dryers, motorcycles, exercise equipment, guns, boats, annual changes of clothing styles, and on and on. We have brought up these boring, almost mind-numbing lists of possessions to drive home the point that consuming is a disease among settlers, an infection that is dominant in that culture. Euro-Amerikan life is no longer centered around production but around consumption. This is the near-final stage of decadence.

All this is only made possible by the generalized high income that characterizes Euro-Amerikan mass life. The median Euro-Amerikan family income in 1981 was $23,517. This is not equally distributed, quite obviously, but the extent to which many Euro-Amerikans in all classes — an absolute majority — shared this generalized high income is striking. Between 1960 and 1979 the percentage of settler families earning over $25,000 per year (in constant 1979 dollars) doubled, making up 40% of the settler population. When we examine Euro-Amerikan families earning over $20,000 per year in terms of different occupations, this income sameness is very conspicuous.

http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/9093/breadwinner.gif

This generalized high income has come to characterize even industrial production workers, who in previous historical periods were highly exploited, and lived in abject misery. An upper stratum of unionized production workers in heavy industry earn on an approximate level with the petit-bourgeoisie. At the end of 1982 General Motors was paying its blue-collar workers an average base wage of $1 1.53 per hour, plus an additional .99 per hour average in shift and overtime premiums, and an additional $7.13 per hour in average benefits (health insurance, SUB, holiday and vacation pay, etc.). This is a total package of some $40,000 per year. Steelworkers average 1981 total wage package was $19.42 an hour. This compares to craft incomes in the most fortunate high:wage areas - in San Jose, California the latest pact raises union electricians' total wage to $24.40 an hour.(l2)

Most Euro-Amerikan workers no longer can go into such industries, however. Much more typical and more exploited would be Maureen Akin, recently written about as one of the 9,000 Motorola workers in Phoenix, Arizona. A 41-year-old divorcee, Ms. Akin earns $7.02 per hour (for a 36-hour work week) as a production worker making semi-conductors. Living on a restricted budget, she saw only one movie last year in order to pay for her son's orthodontic work and her daughter's college. When we go down even lower, we find the notoriously low-wage North Carolina textile mills (which in a low-wage industry have the poorest-paid workers of those in any state). Virtual symbols of backward, "poor white" exploitation, they paid an average production wage in 1982 of $5.24 per hour, or $10,900 per year. (13)

This low wage of North Carolina textile mill workers is much higher than world standards. This is roughly 30 times the wage that the Del Monte Division of the R.J. Reynolds Corp. pays the women workers who toil 10-12 hours each day on their vast Philippine plantations.(14) It is 11 1/2 times the wage that Rawlings Co. pays the Haitian women who stitch together all the major league baseballs. It is 5 times the wage that General motors pays its Afrikan autoworkers in Azania.(l5) The most exploited Euro-Amerikan workers live whole levels above the standard of the world proletariat, since they may be on the bottom, but they are on the bottom of a privileged nation of oppressors. Nation is the dominant factor, modifying class relations.

No matter where we look, the mass, extraproletarian privileges of Euro-Amerikans have structurally insulated them within their exceptional way of life. "Problems" like high mortgage rates for homes are problems of a particular way of life. The full extent of what the Euro-Amerikan masses get from their special relationship serving imperialism cannot be measured in dollars alone. Everyone in the Empire understands the saying: "If you're white, you're alright." To the settler garrison goes the first pick of whatever is available - homes, jobs, schools, food, health caw; government services, and so on. Whatever security is available under imperialism is theirs as well. This is taken for granted.

[...]

We are not just describing simple social bribery, as in the bourgeoisification of European workers in Germany, France, England, etc.

In Europe the bribed workers came from a long history of class war, in societies with centuries of sharply defined and rigid class divisions. Their classes, however bribed and infected, still exist as formations in the actual social world - occupying traditional communities, continuing a definite class culture. Politically, the European working class still swell the large, nominally-"socialist", voluntary industrial unions (which do not exist in the U.S. oppressor nation), and are electorally represented by their traditional working-class parties - the German Social-Democratic Party

, the French Communist Party, etc. Of course, the long-range trends of world polarization and internationalization mean that all oppressor nation societies have become more alike and will become even more so.

In Amerika this bribery, this bourgeoisification, took place within the context of a settler society, which has its own history, culture and traditions - based not on class struggle, but on their material role as the privileged garrison over the continental Empire. The immigrant European proletarians were bribed by being absorbed - "integrated" if you will — into this specific society.

So in Amerika intra-oppressor class distinctions have always been muted on the mass level by the fact that the main distinction was whether you were a settler or a subject, whether you were in the slave patrols or enslaved in the fields, whether you were in the frontier garrison community or imprisoned in the reservation. This was the all-important identity, to which everything else was subordinate. Only someone with no contact with reality can fail to see this.

[you can read the rest here (http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2005/10/28/sakaisettlersocr.pdf) starting at p. 151]

Let me just chime in here and say that the folks in "advanced countries" do have way too much.

Much of the problem comes from the fact that most folks in "advanced countries" have been reared in a fashion that has conditioned them and forced them to need this "too much" just survive.

As for example we could consider energy used in transportation systems in the US and how that was forcibly constructed in a way to benefit the ruling class.

What is considered "middle class" in the US is quite rightly characterized as energy gluttons of the most appalling order.

Thank you Mr. Squid for your service. I have been trying to explain to KOBH why I'm not worried about economic determinism. The article you just reproduced does a better job than I ever could have.

I have a question: The author attempts to find evidence for his premise by describing the actual organization of classes in America. Are his categories accurate? (Yet another opportunity to describe something for KOBH while he is sick in bed). If his categories are accurate, are they described by their relation to the social relations of production? If not how are they remotely Marxist?

How are they not liberal to the nth degree - a mere matter of self description?

A proletarian movement which denies the revolutionary... nay, even the "progressive", role of the proletariat... wadda country?

Give ya a hint - read the section in the Manifesto on "True" Socialism... Our new Hegelians seem to have overcome the deficiencies of the "old" theory buy putting new meaning to old, tired, concepts.

Let me just chime in here and say that the folks in "advanced countries" do have way too much.

Much of the problem comes from the fact that most folks in "advanced countries" have been reared in a fashion that has conditioned them and forced them to need this "too much" just survive.

As for example we could consider energy used in transportation systems in the US and how that was forcibly constructed in a way to benefit the ruling class.

What is considered "middle class" in the US is quite rightly characterized as energy gluttons of the most appalling order.


I agree chlamor, but I won't blame the people. I also think that people can live every well - in ways that the people here do not live well now - without destroying the environment. Food, shelter, education, clothing, transportation. All of those can be done in ways that do not destroy the earth, and that do not require deprivation, nor a change in himan nature or American nature, or people's mentality or anything else about them.

Most people are forced onto the consumerism, the automobile culture, the throw away culture. They are not choosing it or preferring it.

As it is now, people cannot choose anything else. Middle class - how many people are living that anymore? I think it is dead, and I think most people will not miss it. A also think that there are political solutions to this, rather than spiritual or cultural.

If the only way to get resources was to gamble at the casino, that would not mean that the challenge was to break the people of their gambling habit.

Are his categories accurate?
i'll get back to you on this and the other questions. the author never claims to be a marxist nor did i post that excerpt because i was trying to pass him off as one. though in fairness to sakai, western marxists have been churning out a lot of garbage justifications for the lack of "consciousness" in their home countries far longer than sakai has been writing, and in publishing SETTLERS he was simply attempting to answer questions that a lot of people had about US political culture

maybe we're not understanding each other. more likely i'm not making myself clear, and that would be the saddest thing of all to me because i'm trying very hard to be understood. i suppose i shoul dbe happy to be the goofus to everybody else's gallant. at least i hope i can be of some use in helping others learn, even if it is quite frustrating to me, discrediting myself w/ every post like this.

let me be plain (or try to be plain) (or keep spluttering). this has nothing to do w/ culture or religion or showing people the error of their ways so please cut it out w/ the strawmanning mike, because that's totally what you're doing. it has nothing to do with "choice" but rather interests. i can't believe some people here are accusing ME of putting the individual on a pedestal when others think the best idea is to peddle socialism to post-industrial-anomie americans to show them the way out of their late capitalist spiritual malaise or whatever. "oh, you never really wanted personal automobiles and single family detached housing etc, that was just advertising-induced hypnosis. here is what you really need..."

this is what i think and it is not very impressive, but that should be excusable to some extent because it is in an embryonic stage: i think there is a definite parasitic relationship between the overdeveloped countries and the underdeveloped countries that can be intuitively grasped but there is not some single obvious mechanism by which value is transferred from the third world to the first world, so naturally this takes time to understand as well as to explain to others & i can't afford books right now. (but you're right, anax, if i am going to hate america, i should hate it fully, deeply, comprehensively, defensibly.)

what i am only BEGINNING to understand is that economic development is in a sort of zero sum deal... that underdevelopment and overdevelopment are inseparably linked, and the antagonism between the first world and the third world can only be resolved, to the satisfaction of the overwhelming majority of the world's population, by the latter abolishing the former, not the other way around. or else, we might as well throw our support behind the oppressor nations' civilizing imperative, sit back and wait for western imperialism to work its magic, don't you think?

i was not born nor did i set out on my illustrious internet-posting career to be a vulgar anti-american. it just sort of... happened, like falling in love

i mean, something is obviously wrong with this picture

http://www.newhorizons.org/future/elgin_2020_fig3.gif

and furthermore,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/guides/457000/457022/img/1169457081.gif

Are his categories accurate?
i'll get back to you on this and the other questions. the author never claims to be a marxist nor did i post that excerpt because i was trying to pass him off as one. though in fairness to sakai, western marxists have been churning out a lot of garbage justifications for the lack of "consciousness" in their home countries far longer than sakai has been writing, and in publishing SETTLERS he was simply attempting to answer questions that a lot of people had about US political culture

maybe we're not understanding each other. more likely i'm not making myself clear, and that would be the saddest thing of all to me because i'm trying very hard to be understood. i suppose i shoul dbe happy to be the goofus to everybody else's gallant. at least i hope i can be of some use in helping others learn, even if it is quite frustrating to me, discrediting myself w/ every post like this.

let me be plain (or try to be plain) (or keep spluttering). this has nothing to do w/ culture or religion or showing people the error of their ways so please cut it out w/ the strawmanning mike, because that's totally what you're doing. it has nothing to do with "choice" but rather interests. i can't believe some people here are accusing ME of putting the individual on a pedestal when others think the best idea is to peddle socialism to post-industrial-anomie americans to show them the way out of their late capitalist spiritual malaise or whatever. "oh, you never really wanted personal automobiles and single family detached housing etc, that was just advertising-induced hypnosis. here is what you really need..."

this is what i think and it is not very impressive, but that should be excusable to some extent because it is in an embryonic stage: i think there is a definite parasitic relationship between the overdeveloped countries and the underdeveloped countries that can be intuitively grasped but there is not some single obvious mechanism by which value is transferred from the third world to the first world, so naturally this takes time to understand as well as to explain to others & i can't afford books right now. (but you're right, anax, if i am going to hate america, i should hate it fully, deeply, comprehensively, defensibly.)

what i am only BEGINNING to understand is that economic development is in a sort of zero sum deal... that underdevelopment and overdevelopment are inseparably linked, and the antagonism between the first world and the third world can only be resolved, to the satisfaction of the overwhelming majority of the world's population, by the latter abolishing the former, not the other way around. or else, we might as well throw our support behind the oppressor nations' civilizing imperative, sit back and wait for western imperialism to work its magic, don't you think?

i was not born nor did i set out on my illustrious internet-posting career to be a vulgar anti-american. it just sort of... happened, like falling in love


hey squid i think you're doing fine, maybe just obsessing that everyone is judging you a bit too much. i don't see anyone aiming to judge here.

the thing is, its not really the case that its solely first vs third world, in part because socialism isn't synonymous with egalitarianism. that was quite the debate in the 17 and 1800s -- is egalitarianism even conceptually viable, let alone practically. of course the question was entangled within the context of fairly rapidly changing social conditions

remember that the scientific definition of exploitation -- and there is one -- is not linked (directly) to immiseration. abstract labor, whence springs surplus value, is as much a calculus as it is a thing..although it is extracted in only one way of course

"workers of the world" cuts both above and below without pity or regard

i was not born nor did i set out on my illustrious internet-posting career to be a vulgar anti-american. it just sort of... happened, like falling in love

Lol, I can relate. Thank you for the graphics you posted. They remind me of the ones Chlamor posted showing how Israel/Palestine has changed over the past 50 years (with Israel gobbling up land as fast as it can). Sometimes pictures really do tell the tale more effectively than words.

Are his categories accurate?
i'll get back to you on this and the other questions. the author never claims to be a marxist nor did i post that excerpt because i was trying to pass him off as one. though in fairness to sakai, western marxists have been churning out a lot of garbage justifications for the lack of "consciousness" in their home countries far longer than sakai has been writing, and in publishing SETTLERS he was simply attempting to answer questions that a lot of people had about US political culture

maybe we're not understanding each other. more likely i'm not making myself clear, and that would be the saddest thing of all to me because i'm trying very hard to be understood. i suppose i shoul dbe happy to be the goofus to everybody else's gallant. at least i hope i can be of some use in helping others learn, even if it is quite frustrating to me, discrediting myself w/ every post like this.

let me be plain (or try to be plain) (or keep spluttering). this has nothing to do w/ culture or religion or showing people the error of their ways so please cut it out w/ the strawmanning mike, because that's totally what you're doing. it has nothing to do with "choice" but rather interests. i can't believe some people here are accusing ME of putting the individual on a pedestal when others think the best idea is to peddle socialism to post-industrial-anomie americans to show them the way out of their late capitalist spiritual malaise or whatever. "oh, you never really wanted personal automobiles and single family detached housing etc, that was just advertising-induced hypnosis. here is what you really need..."

this is what i think and it is not very impressive, but that should be excusable to some extent because it is in an embryonic stage: i think there is a definite parasitic relationship between the overdeveloped countries and the underdeveloped countries that can be intuitively grasped but there is not some single obvious mechanism by which value is transferred from the third world to the first world, so naturally this takes time to understand as well as to explain to others & i can't afford books right now. (but you're right, anax, if i am going to hate america, i should hate it fully, deeply, comprehensively, defensibly.)

what i am only BEGINNING to understand is that economic development is in a sort of zero sum deal... that underdevelopment and overdevelopment are inseparably linked, and the antagonism between the first world and the third world can only be resolved, to the satisfaction of the overwhelming majority of the world's population, by the latter abolishing the former, not the other way around. or else, we might as well throw our support behind the oppressor nations' civilizing imperative, sit back and wait for western imperialism to work its magic, don't you think?

i was not born nor did i set out on my illustrious internet-posting career to be a vulgar anti-american. it just sort of... happened, like falling in love


First of all vs let's be clear about one thing, I'm the goofus around here, I've worked hard at it and will not be usurped easily. You'll need heavy equipment to dig some of the holes I've dug for myself. Now that we got that out of the way...

I think that when considering the proletariat of the West's lack of leadersip in the struggle that you've got to consider that we're all the products of our environments. Don't think that's making excuses, simple fact. Call it bribery, and maybe it was, for a brief period. But in historical context it's just a blip, a sleeping policeman in Capital's road, a minor indulgence. It lasted about 30 years and now for the last 30 capital has been reasserting itself.

Looking at things from the '3rd world' perspective it's very easy to point fingers, I'd be tempted do the same. But from a materialist's view how could things be otherwise? It goes back to the environment which we find ourselves in, one that has been very much shaped by the capitalists for their purposes. But that's pretty much all over now, the facade and propaganda will remain but the material benefits are pretty much history, capital has moved on to other ways of maximising profits. All that's left to do is dispel the notion that this blip represents the rule but that it was rather a temporary exception.

It is obvious to me that we in the West consume too much, but our consumption has been massively promoted. Don't think anybody ever asked for all of this bullshit that we are buried in. And though no one will ask for it to be taken away we see that happening even as we speak. Ain't nothin' about principled self denial or anything like that, it's just critters responding to their environment.

Goofus enough for ya?

marx didn't have much access to stuff on economic history that wasn't hilariously eurocentric because those were simply the times he lived in & hilariously eurocentric economic histories were all that was available. that doesn't mean we should dismiss or neglect things like the world-systems approach, dependency theory, core-periphery theory, third worldism, etc.

the problem here, i'm sure, is not that i am incorrect, but that i am doing poorly in proving that i am correct. and objectively thats as bad as being incorrect , or worse.

the task here is to show that first world workers are not donors but recipients of surplus value, that they aren't exploited but in fact themselves exploiters.

marx didn't have much access to stuff on economic history that wasn't hilariously eurocentric because those were simply the times he lived in & hilariously eurocentric economic histories were all that was available. that doesn't mean we should dismiss or neglect things like the world-systems approach, dependency theory, core-periphery theory, third worldism, etc.

the problem here, i'm sure, is not that i am incorrect, but that i am doing poorly in proving that i am correct. and objectively thats as bad as being incorrect , or worse.

the task here is to show that first world workers are not donors but recipients of surplus value, that they aren't exploited but in fact themselves exploiters.


Alright...

1) Israel is a settler state. The colonial force is a Euro-Zionist group of settlers. The settlers came in classes. Is there such a thing as "Jewish Workers"? Come to think about it... is the problem "Zionists" or is it really "Jews"? Aren't the "Jews" worldwide so thoroughly wrapped around Zionist ideology and support for Israel that there is no real distinction?

2) Mexico is certainly not the first world and the history of Mexican Labor unions is at least as old as that of U.S. Labor unions. In general, would you say that the history of Mexican Labor unions is more advanced than that of unions in the United States? What evidence do you have? What about Argentine Unions? Brazilian? Filipino? Thai? But in all those countries, aren't the workers, particularly unionized workers, far wealthier than the typical rural peasantry... than indigenous peoples... than the "impoverished"? Aren't workers always more "privileged" than other classes in society... in the "third world", don't those classes tend to form an absolute majority - what evidence do we have that workers are not ALWAYS "bought off"?

3) The greatest resistance to Imperialism today comes from Islamism of some type. Is Islamism "progressive"? Has it always been "progressive"? What about the Mahdi in the Sudan of the 1870s? What about the Great Indian Mutiny? In Lebanon, today, the power of the left-wing Palestinian organizations, of the Lebanese Communist Party and various Arab Socialist groupings have been superceded by the power of Islamist organizations. Why did this happen? Is it a "progressive" development?

4) During the last 150 years, the U.S. went from a country of small property owners to a country in which less than 5% of the population owns their own means of production (arguably less than 2%). Yet, this yields a population which is overwhelmingly bourgeois? Is the U.S. work force really 50% bourgeois. Are there really 80 million "managers" and "professionals" and do they qualify as petty-bourgeoisie? How about cops? What are "classes", anyway? For that matter, what is "surplus value" and how is it "extracted"?

5) Your source projects that the CIO, the New Deal, and by implication, everything associated with these were in fact ruling-class plots to further their control. Why was any new plot necessary? What is not a plot? How is it possible that so many who were actually involved in those struggles missed everything but Japanese College professors and idiot middle-class students see such things so clearly... Since they are seeing so clearly, what is the end game of any struggle... how is victory possible? As far as I know, no peoples struggle has ever really won except those led by socialists. But that presents a dilemma. How can those who actually have fought and won be so wrong about the theory of what they won? Or, were they all manipulated tools as well? Then, why is this not an argument for suicide?

6) Name an important work of political or economic history which is not Euro-Centric? Philosophy? Economics? Sociology? Politics of any sort (including Mao and Ho)? Why is that? Or do you want to point to the great mystical works of ancient history as such an example? Those are mostly "religious" in the present definition? Do you claim otherwise?

Nothing you point to is anything other than middle-class "radical" phrase-mongering, brought to its knees by a sickening sentimentality and mysticism, proud of its own ignorance, and empty of plan or content... just about perfect for those who have never put up a fight against anything. Personally, I prefer the "well-meaning" liberals who at least are conscious of their own hypocrisy.

anax, why do you dismiss the connection between the overdevelopment of the "advanced" countries, who are politically lagging (e.g., given to indulge in social-chauvinism and social-imperialism, two tendencies we'll see a lot more of in the coming years in the US and europe, the likes of which would probably make DU blush), and the underdevelopment of the "lagging" countries, who are politically advanced (e.g., given to indulge in "vulgar anti americanism," "anti-zionism," and "anti-modernization" (in reality only a specific kind of modernization, western-meted modernization))? if you're not dismissing it then you're seriously downplaying its importance and i'm not sure what to make of that. i'm not comfortable with it, it's wrong like a barking cat is wrong, because you're light years ahead of me politically. you seem to be saying that with the end of decolonization, and the demise of the USSR, the scattered struggles for national liberation have no greater political significance anymore. and judging from your post, you didn't put much stock in the non-aligned movement during the 60s and 70s. but if we in the home country find ourselves confronted with the more-or-less same problems of lenin's day, when the british empire was in a state of decay, what should we do? lenin attached great importance to liberation struggles of oppressed nations. why shouldn't we? and why is there all of a sudden confusion over whether the US is an oppressed or oppressor nation?



I see no great difference between the impact of the fall of the Soviet Union on the more and less advanced "worlds". I think that just as the Western Communist parties seem to have gained and maintained their base mainly because of the inter-Imperialist struggles of, say, the 1880s to 1945, in that same way, the national liberation struggles of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s were rooted in postwar decolonization. In particular, the national liberation struggles led by Socialists were hugely dependent on the existence of a bipolar world. That world also directly propped up the "progressive" regimes which combined the national bourgeoisie with the proletarian organizations and radical petty-bourgeoisie of each of those countries. Examples of this last abound, from Ghana, to Tanzania, to Indonesia, to Allende's Chile, to Libya, to Algeria, to Arab Socialism and African Socialism as a whole as well as to two dozen other prominent examples. The examples listed found safe haven if nothing more in real world socialism and lost that possibility with its end.

The non-aligned movement follows the same pattern only less so. It survived in the cracks between the two worlds. Certainly, the Organization of African States and other non-aligned organizations played progressive roles but that game is over, for reasons not dissimilar to those above.

I see very little in the way of potentially serious national liberation movements today. An attempt to name these will make my point.

I don't see conditions as being similar to the time of Lenin. Quite the opposite, I see conditions similar to 50 years before, and we will once again have to start over. Where the epicenter of those struggles will be is far from clear to me or the forms which those struggles will take... but, look around you. The issues, worldwide, have made a joke of French Filosophers and post-industrialism and alienation and any other issues which might have bugged Paris students in 1968, or Berkley Free-Speechers for that matter.

I see nothing but clear, unmediated, unmoderated class struggle which will yield, as it always does, revolutionary movements in the weakest wall segments of the circulatory system of capitalism. I agree that there are no first and third worlds anymore in the sense that such existed even 30 years ago. Instead, we have a redux of the collapsing Empire: the U.S. with nowhere to go but down, the "advanced" countries which can no longer accept second place under the wing of American capitalism but may not have the "will" to do anything but drown with it, the developing countries, some of which will be impoverished and some of which will actually contend for the next world, and everybody else, in the bosom of whom some will take advantage of the new competition to once again raise the radical banners.

You are right that social chauvinism will be the measure again of who is whom... "Social Imperialism" too, will play a role, only exactly in reverse. Those who proclaim it will be the Quislings of the next age.

That is my opinion...

hey anax given where this is going maybe we should try to define imperialism..? probably there is not unanimity on the subject

jesus, this is like putting out a candle w/ a fire extinguisher (where my arguments are the candle). why this focus on demolishing the weak positions of a middle class radical philistine like myself? to think i first came across sakai on popindy where mike posted "when race burns class"! how did things come to this?

look, by eurocentrism i mean to say the commonly held view that the european bourgeosie (and the society it craeted in its own image) sort of "bootstrapped" itself into prominence over the course of the past 400 years, where that map & chart from the UN are just visual representations of the culmination of that long, bloody process of wealth accumulation.

i thought surplus value is the product of surplus labor multiplied by rate of exploitation — surplus labor being labor performed above & beyond what is deemd socially necessary, a socially-and-historically-determined average duration & intensity of labor required to recoup the total of the average costs of inputs, including that of the worker's subsistence, but, then again, what constitutes subsistence also is socially & historically determined. (does that look okay so far? i'm not sure if it does.)

now, surplus value is realized through exchange. however the conditions of exchange, too, are socially determined (for instance, in the field of international relations), rather than conceived in a kind of vacuum, where two parties' (or nations') comparative "advantages" just happen to coincide, arent they? this comparative "advantage" tends to be self-reinforcing & benefits one party (or nation) while exploiting (or retarding development) of the other party (or nation), in particular between over- and under-developed countries. w/in a given nation, the social relations of production tend to be subordinated to that nation's already-established comparative "advantage" in the international arena. industrial development might well be put on the backburner in favor of nurturing a service sector whose very function is bound up w/ a better placed nation's own historically determined needs and wants, or nurturing cash-crop agriculture or mining or what ahve you. meanwhile the better placed nation's advantage lies in, say, cultivating government-subsidized cereal crops or cheaply manufacturing tractors. in any case, the general status quo for third world nations is an export-oriented economy instead of production for domestic consumption, for those nations which wish to play along, like india and china. in third world countries, then, to the benefit of the native elite and first world countries, the development of the forces of production is effectively held in check.

maybe i'm not seeing the problem right, because it seems to me that to argue that the demands of subsistence and the cost of wages are socially and historically determined apart from international relations is kind of circular in a way, since the demands of subsistence rise and fall w/ the general standard of living, & the general standard of living rises & falls for underdveloped countries with the extent & intensity of imperialist exploitation. do you see where i'm coming from?

what's more, the paucity of technology in the underdeveloped world hardly seems socially necessary, it falls well below average. a landless laborer in india neednt employ sticks & stones & garden rakes to eke out a living all the while tata motors is producing the cheapest car in the world that is still unaffordable to ~80% of the population.

i'll try to hash out a coherent explanation of first-world/third-world parasitism and international solidarity later if i can muster it... or i can just copy & paste more inflammatory, diversionary stuff. or i can drop the subject.

jesus, this is like putting out a candle w/ a fire extinguisher (where my arguments are the candle). why this focus on demolishing the weak positions of a middle class radical philistine like myself? to think i first came across sakai on popindy where mike posted "when race burns class"! how did things come to this?

look, by eurocentrism i mean to say the commonly held view that the european bourgeosie (and the society it craeted in its own image) sort of "bootstrapped" itself into prominence over the course of the past 400 years, where that map & chart from the UN are just visual representations of the culmination of that long, bloody process of wealth accumulation.

i thought surplus value is the product of surplus labor multiplied by rate of exploitation — surplus labor being labor performed above & beyond what is deemd socially necessary, a socially-and-historically-determined average duration & intensity of labor required to recoup the total of the average costs of inputs, including that of the worker's subsistence, but, then again, what constitutes subsistence also is socially & historically determined. (does that look okay so far? i'm not sure if it does.)

now, surplus value is realized through exchange. however the conditions of exchange, too, are socially determined (for instance, in the field of international relations), rather than conceived in a kind of vacuum, where two parties' (or nations') comparative "advantages" just happen to coincide, arent they? this comparative "advantage" tends to be self-reinforcing & benefits one party (or nation) while exploiting (or retarding development) of the other party (or nation), in particular between over- and under-developed countries. w/in a given nation, the social relations of production tend to be subordinated to that nation's already-established comparative "advantage" in the international arena. industrial development might well be put on the backburner in favor of nurturing a service sector whose very function is bound up w/ a better placed nation's own historically determined needs and wants, or nurturing cash-crop agriculture or mining or what ahve you. meanwhile the better placed nation's advantage lies in, say, cultivating government-subsidized cereal crops or cheaply manufacturing tractors. in any case, the general status quo for third world nations is an export-oriented economy instead of production for domestic consumption, for those nations which wish to play along, like india and china. in third world countries, then, to the benefit of the native elite and first world countries, the development of the forces of production is effectively held in check.

maybe i'm not seeing the problem right, because it seems to me that to argue that the demands of subsistence and the cost of wages are socially and historically determined apart from international relations is kind of circular in a way, since the demands of subsistence rise and fall w/ the general standard of living, & the general standard of living rises & falls for underdveloped countries with the extent & intensity of imperialist exploitation. do you see where i'm coming from?

what's more, the paucity of technology in the underdeveloped world hardly seems socially necessary, it falls well below average. a landless laborer in india neednt employ sticks & stones & garden rakes to eke out a living all the while tata motors is producing the cheapest car in the world that is still unaffordable to ~80% of the population.

i'll try to hash out a coherent explanation of first-world/third-world parasitism and international solidarity later if i can muster it... or i can just copy & paste more inflammatory, diversionary stuff. or i can drop the subject.


Ain't about you... It's about Sakai and a football field full of 1960s, 70s, and 80s types who I am still mad at and who did no service to our movement... shitheads.

As far as you go, I gave you a second direct post to answer your first direct set of questions. I am at your service. Ask me or gimme shit. It's OK. BP gets a pass on Bakunin and I ain't tochin' my best pal, chlams, on his pet peeves. You can be a crazy fuckin' Maoist if you really want.

Those other guys though... tired of them (I was tired of them the first time)... they are fucking dead - they just don't know it yet.

And this, comin' from a zombie himself (me).

I like walkin' the earth again. I think I'll stay.

http://www.jacobmake.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/zombie.jpg

jesus, this is like putting out a candle w/ a fire extinguisher (where my arguments are the candle). why this focus on demolishing the weak positions of a middle class radical philistine like myself? to think i first came across sakai on popindy where mike posted "when race burns class"! how did things come to this?


lol

Things ALWAYS come to this lol. No other way out of the thicket. But it is good.

Remember our mission statement:

Write some shit...
Drag in more people...
Get them to write some shit...
Stop whining....

Here is a question squid - these weak positions of middle class radical philistines such as ourselves - why do we care if they get demolished? See what I mean? Why do we take it personally?

I see our weak positions as middle class radical philistines as the debris that needs to be cleared away so we can see what the hell we are talking about, not as a crop that needs tending or protecting. It is only painful when we insist on internalizing them and taking it all personally.

you mean to tell me you never get attached to ideas, mike? you're only human after all.

you mean to tell me you never get attached to ideas, mike? you're only human after all.


Here is what I think happens. There are so few good ideas - we think - that when we see a good one, which doesn't take much, oh say 30 years ago, we grab onto the damned thing and hang on for dear life. Pick up a newspaper, or turn on the radio or TV and it seems like their are only five ideas in the world that just get repeated endlessly. So with this scarcity of ideas (we think) we are afraid that if we lose ours (and we think that losing an argument with some numbskull will cause us to lose them)we will have none and if we have none we will die (or be made the fool.) But what I learned here is that there are more ideas than you can shake a stick at, and we have only scratched the surface, and whatever I was thinking before was useless and boring. So the answer to that is "let it go."

We hang on tightly to our precious ideas even more because they are under assault (we think) from all directions. The answer to that is "fuck 'em."

Then we think that we need to have the "right" ideas or life as we know it will end. So we spend most of our time discarding stuff in a frantic search for the perfect doctrine to believe in (or how could we function in life?) and after putting all that work into the damned project, we are reluctant to discard our cherished collection of ideas (has our whole life been a waste of time??) The answer to that is "get off your high horse." lol

Then we think that we need to have the "right" ideas or life as we know it will end. So we spend most of our time discarding stuff in a frantic search for the perfect doctrine to believe in (or how could we function in life?) and after putting all that work into the damned project, we are reluctant to discard our cherished collection of ideas (has our whole life been a waste of time??) The answer to that is "get off your high horse." lol

Or in my case, fall off your low pony.

The thing I've found is that it doesn't matter what you want, what matters is what works. I came to this group as some sort of half-assed eco-socialist, and I still am one, but I realize that ecosocialism ain't, can't, get far by itself, that it is but an aspect of the problem. All must be subsumed, but included, in the greater struggle, else we ain't getting nowhere.

I was most concerned about the animals. BP told me we could help the critters by getting rid of capitalism. I've decided he's right. Sometimes people make things harder than they need to be, imho.

And now I remember what I came to this thread to write about. Obama supporters should be damned ashamed of themselves this morning.

Look at what these poor fools are doing: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=8243176&mesg_id=8243176

And now I remember what I came to this thread to write about. Obama supporters should be damned ashamed of themselves this morning.

Look at what these poor fools are doing: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=8243176&mesg_id=8243176


Ker-plop:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=8243176&mesg_id=8243535

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=8243176&mesg_id=8243741

Ha! Success.

Notice the shorter URLs now?

Heh. And your mission statement kicks ass. I couldn't even understand the one at the other site! :)

That poor poster over there - she is 57 and investing her retirement savings. *sigh* They are doing this because apparently last night Obama told them it was a good time to invest. Has he no shame?

Heh. And your mission statement kicks ass. I couldn't even understand the one at the other site!


Remember what a nightmare that mission statement project was there?

Anax wrote ours.

Yup, that "mission" statement was the beginning of the end and took forever. Less drama is much better.