Democracy Now...

Greetings good citizen,

One of the, er, ‘problems’ of being a revolutionary is the competition. Believe it or not, there are many, er, ‘alternatives to capitalism’ out there…

Unfortunately, most of ‘em are not alternatives at all but the exact same shit with different, er, ‘rules’

For example:

America Beyond Capitalism: Is It Possible?

January 3, 2012

        “Black Monday,” September 19, 1977, was the day 34 years ago when the shuttering of the Youngstown Sheet and Tube steel mill threw 5,000 steelworkers onto the streets of their decaying Midwestern hometown. No local, state or federal programs offered significant help. Steelworkers called training programs “funeral insurance”: they led nowhere since there were no other jobs available. Inspired by a young steelworker, an ecumenical religious coalition put forward a plan for community-worker ownership of the giant mill. The plan captured widespread media attention, the support of numerous Democrats and Republicans (including the conservative governor of the state at the time), and an initial $200 million in loan guarantees from the Carter administration. [snip]

The developmental trajectory from Youngstown to today illustrates what might be called “forced institutional innovation”—a process that, once underway, also suggests further possibilities for larger-scale and more refined development both within Ohio and elsewhere—especially as many other parts of the nation now experience the massive job losses and community decay that hit Ohio and other rustbelt states three decades ago. Critically, all involve new ways to give concrete meaning to the idea of democratizing capital.

Did ‘democratizing’ the company help it to survive?

That’s not what these pictures show

Which is not to say that they don’t have other facilities still in operation, but this is what a web search yielded.

Maybe maintaining a strong web presence isn’t foremost on the mind of the worker/owner.

Maybe they’re too busy thinking about the fuck job of being very silent, er, ‘partners’ in a company that owes its survival to the politics of globalization?

I admit to not reading beyond the first page of today’s offering and maybe there’s ‘full disclosure’ in there somewhere…but the first page sure reads like we could save our entire economy if we just ‘democratized’ capitalism!

If we made all of the workers ‘shareowners’ then they would all have a stake in the company’s future…and maybe they’d work harder and be more careful (which would boost company profits, thank you very much!)

Yeah, the capitalists LOVE giving away tiny shares of the company…hell, it’s ‘free’ to them!

That said, most people are completely clueless as to how ‘corporate democracy’ works.

Let’s fix that! First, you are issued ‘shares’ of the company and it is those shares that carry your ‘voting rights’.

Unlike our political system, under corporate democracy, one share equals one vote…so the more shares you own, the more your vote, er, ‘counts’.

Now, just like our political system, what you get to vote on is already decided for you by the ‘directors’ of the company.

SOME companies have by-laws that permit share-owner initiated ballot items but if you start circulating a petition to round up enough votes to put an issue on the ballot, chances are good you will be terminated before you can vote your handful of shares.

And understand this good citizen, for every share they ‘give away’ they give themselves two!

So you get to vote ‘your’ shares along the predetermined lines the company’s directors ‘recommend’…

Which is pretty much the same thing that happens when you step into the voting booth to find the media’s candidates lined up under their party’s designation.

All of the ‘deciding’ has been done for you…but you didn’t go out in the freezing cold to NOT vote, so you hold your nose and pick one!

Not that they don’t have their ways of fixing the outcome…they do.

But now everybody knows you can’t trust the ballot box, which turns the next election into a real interesting can of worms!

But I digress and time/space is running short.

‘Democratizing’ the workplace is NOT a solution much less an ‘alternative’ to capitalism.

In order to ‘fix’ our economy (both globally and locally) we need to put an end to ‘income streams’.

The term ’profit’ has to be redefined from what the owner ’nets’ to what society reaps in exchange for the effort expended!

There are too many worthwhile things that need doing that can’t be done because ’it is not profitable’ and we can start with the proper disposal of waste as the lead example!

So, back to the original question…can there be an ‘America after Capitalism?’

Oddly, the answer is, if we don’t stop capitalism in its tracks TODAY, there won’t be an America (or anything else) in the not too distant future.

How’s about them apples?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Different Something...

Greetings good citizen,

Seems I’m not the only one that is, er, ‘puzzled’ by this, um, ‘delayed reaction’ to the excesses that have become commonplace in our civilization.

Here’s a curious take on what the mainstream media and their political lackeys THINK is going on.

So let me answer it. What they want… is to do exactly what they are doing. They want to occupy Wall Street. They have built a campsite full of life, where power is exercised according to their voices. It’s a small space, it’s a relatively modest group of people at any one time, and the resources they command are few. But they are practicing the politics of place, the politics of building a truly public space. They are explicitly rejecting the politics of narrow media, the politics of the shopping mall. To understand #OccupyWallStreet, you have to get that it is not a media object or a march. It is first and foremost, a church of dissent, a space made sacred by a community. But like Medieval churches, it is also now the physical center of that community. It has become many things. Public square. Carnival. Place to get news. Daycare center. Health care center. Concert venue. Library. Performance space. School.

Few people, though an increasing number daily, have actually taken the time to go through a general assembly, to listen to what the people at #OccupyWallStreet actually want. General assemblies are the consensus-oriented group conversations at the heart of the occupations, where endlessly repeating the speaking of others is the painstaking and frustrating way that the group comes to make decisions. I spoke with a very experienced older DC hand who told me that he hasn’t been because he doesn’t have the patience of the young. This is as different a way of doing politics as distributed computing was to the old world of mainframes. So it isn’t surprising that the traditionalists are reacting as perplexed and dismissive of this new style of politics as the big iron types were with the rise of PCs.

Understand, all of the big names are ‘commenting’ on this true ‘grassroots phenomenon’ but, curiously, none of them are ‘leading’ this foray into civil disobedience…and that says something all by itself.

What does it say to you good citizen?

It ‘hints’ to me that ‘Libertarian gasbags’ are everywhere.

For more than a decade I have been stating that there isn’t a nickel’s worth of difference between the two, er, ‘mainstream’ political parties.

Why do you suppose that is?

Because they’re ALL ‘Libertarians’ masquerading as either Democrats or Republicans!

Is the ‘leaderless’ Occupy Wall Street movement testament to this realization?

They have a point, we really CAN’T trust EITHER political party and because of that our now ‘captive government’ has also proven that it puts its own interests ahead of those of the people.

One is tempted to say ‘the people who elected them’ but it seems I am not the only one who thinks the miniscule 30,000 member ‘Tea Party’ movement didn’t really ‘sweep’ the last mid-term elections…

In this respect, the occupy Wall Street movement makes sense; if we can’t trust the ‘posers’ then we have to have to take the necessary steps to re-establish something that is ‘real’.

Not that the posers aren’t ‘real’, it’s the level of participation they offer that’s fake!

You can almost hear them exclaim, “see ya in 4 years, suckers!”

Naturally, this ‘rudderless ship’ will not, by itself, lead us to safety.

I too am guilty of not being in attendance at any of these, er, ‘protest/demonstrations’, perhaps they really are hashing out which ‘path’ our civilization should take but, as I have just recently opined, neither the mainstream, corporate owned press NOR THE JUST AS DOMINATED ‘Alternative Press’ is reporting these discussions.

I don’t run ‘ads’ on my web page, I’m not in this for the fucking money!

If you see ads, please report them to me in the comments!

But I digress…again.

I find it, er, encouraging (as well as disturbing) that this ‘exploratory’ movement has sprung up from the decaying debris of our dying society.

If only because of the recognition it symbolizes among our youth that the future is up to them.

It says to me that we are NOT as ‘divided as the usurper wants us to think we are.

Here we are, at the beginning of a new presidential election cycle and the corporate owned media is already chanting the same two memes that have dominated the past three election cycles.

One is how ‘divided’ we are (this is NOT TRUE!) and the other is the total absence of any mention of the largest segment of our society, the working class, better known as the working poor!

How did the ‘working class’ disappear from our social dialog good citizen?

Is it because we all (mistakenly) believe we are some variant of Middle Class?

One of the new comic strips in the local rag just recently made this point using the movie theater soda as an analogy.

“What size soft drinks do you have”

“Medium and Large”

Incredulous, the man responds “How does that work?”

The kid behind the counter doesn’t see the problem (or the contradiction it presents) so he doesn’t reply to the question, he goes into defensive mode and responds

“you’re not going to pull a gun are you?”

Well, good citizen, how do you have a middle class that includes everybody who isn’t rich?

We all talk about the poor and the homeless but our politicians don’t…

And that should make us all wonder…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Commie Plot

Greetings good citizen,

Every once in a while the weekend offers up a little gem for our mutual consideration.

Tonight’s offering is such a fine tidbit I’m amazed it got past the editor.

A tip of the hat goes to Some Assembly Required where Mr. Michaelson introduces the piece like so:

Mortgage Insurance: Perhaps things could be better if the government worked for the people and not for the Usual Suspects. Like in Marinaleda, Spain.

[Emphasis, naturally, mine] Spain’s housing crisis is said to be worse than ours (due to a concentration on the building of vacation properties for rich foreigners rather than their own domestic market.)

Well, it seems a teeny-tiny town has escaped the carnage and is keeping it’s people employed despite the downturn. Do you wonder what their ‘secret’ is?

A Job and No Mortgage for All in a Spanish Town

By VICTORIA BURNETT
Published: May 25, 2009

MARINALEDA, Spain — The people of this small Andalusian town have never been shy about their political convictions. Since they occupied the estate of a local aristocrat in the 1980s, they and their fiery mayor, Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, have been synonymous in Spain with a dogged struggle for the rural poor.

Now that Spain’s real estate bust is fueling rampant unemployment, this Communist enclave, surrounded by sloping olive groves, is thumbing its nose at its countrymen’s capitalist folly. Attracted by its municipal housing program and bustling farming cooperative, people from neighboring villages and beyond have come here seeking jobs or homes, villagers and officials say.

Mr. Sánchez, a bearded 53-year-old who this month celebrated three decades as mayor of the town of 2,700, says the economic crisis proves the wisdom of his socialist vision.

“They all thought that the market was God, who made everything work with his invisible hand,” Mr. Sánchez said on a recent morning, seated in his office below a portrait of Che Guevara. “Before, it was a mortal sin to talk about the government having a role in the economy. Now, we see we have to put the economy at the service of man.”

While the rest of Spain gorged on cheap credit to buy overpriced houses, the people of Marinaleda were building their own, mortgage-free, under a municipal program, he said. If a resident loses his job, the cooperative hires him, he said, so nobody wants for work — a bold claim in a region with 21 percent unemployment.

Vanessa Romero, who moved here with her family from Barcelona in January after she and her husband lost their jobs, said she was drawn by the prospect of work and facilities like the nursery school, which costs about $17 a month. The couple make about $1,500 a month each working for the cooperative. [Good money when you don’t have a mortgage nut to crack!]

“If a town like this, with half the resources of other towns, or less, can provide work for people, why can’t other places do the same?” said Ms. Romero, whose parents were born in the town.

Critics say Mr. Sánchez’s claims are exaggerated and that he has succeeded in dividing up misery rather than creating wealth. By promoting low-productivity farm jobs, he has kept voters dependent on him for work and handouts, they say.

“This village has stagnated,” said Hipólito Aires, a Socialist town council member and gas station attendant. [Don’t forget ‘millionaire wannabe’] He said the political atmosphere in Marinaleda was stifling and that the mayor ostracized his opponents — a sentiment echoed by several residents who would speak only anonymously.

“Sánchez Gordillo criticized the local lords, but now he acts like them,” Mr. Aires said. “The biggest landowner in Marinaleda today is the mayor.” He was alluding to the mayor’s presumed power over the town and its 3,000-acre farm, though Mr. Sánchez, who does not own a car, says he owns no property other than his home. [Mr. Aires sounds suspiciously like a ‘conservative’ that probably lost his bid to become mayor sometime in the distant past. Makes you wonder how hard the reporter had to dig to find a ‘malcontent’? We certainly can’t have ‘commie success stories’ after communism has been so solidly ‘discredited’.]

Marinaleda became a center of leftist activism after Mr. Sánchez first won the mayoral election in April 1979 as a representative of the United Workers’ Collective, a Communist farm workers’ organization that promotes government through popular assemblies and believes that Andalusia should be independent from Spain. Over the years, the residents have occupied farms, picketed government offices and held hunger strikes to demand work and land.

Their most prominent campaign culminated in 1991 with the regional government expropriating the 3,000-acre estate from the Duke of Infantado and leasing it to the town. The resulting cooperative, about seven miles north of Marinaleda, grows labor-intensive crops like artichokes, hot peppers, broccoli and broad beans, as well as wheat.

These days, Mr. Sánchez’s populism permeates life in this self-anointed “utopia for peace,” which has no municipal police (a savings of $350,000 a year, officials say).

Political murals and revolutionary slogans adorn the town’s whitewashed walls and streets are named after Latin American leftists. Every few weeks, the town hall declares a Red Sunday over a bullhorn and volunteers clean the streets or do odd jobs.
[The ‘horror’, a town using ‘volunteer’ labor!]

For one hour on television each Saturday, the mayor holds forth on politics or recites his own poetry, his trademark Palestinian scarf draped round his neck. He has rallied the residents around a plethora of causes, from resisting genetically modified crops to supporting the Sahrawi people’s struggle for self-determination in Western Sahara.

Comparing himself with another, though far more famous, bearded Communist, Mr. Sánchez said that he had been jailed seven times and that he had survived two assassination attempts, one from a fascist agitator and the other from an enraged police officer.

“His problem is, he is a permanent revolutionary,” said Mr. Aires, adding that “half the people at his rallies don’t even know where Palestine is.”[How much do you want to bet Mr. Aires is another such ‘ignorant’ person?]

Many, though, admire his zeal.

“I wish our mayor would do something like this for us,” said Francisco Pradas from the nearby town of Écija, who was picking beans at the cooperative farm on a recent morning. The farm manager, José Martin, said demand for jobs from other villages had increased since the crisis.

Back in town is the other jewel in Marinaleda’s Communist crown: a colony of neat, three-bedroom houses, built on municipal land with materials from the regional government. Prospective owners donate about 450 days of their work to the construction. The rub: to prevent people from profiting, residents cannot sell their houses.

Even so, demand from residents of nearby towns rose so much over the past few years that the town had to limit the program to long-term residents. About 350 houses have been built so far and the town plans to add 250 in the next two years.

Analysts and political opponents dismiss Mr. Sánchez’ populist bluster, noting that while he portrays Marinaleda as a Communist oasis, it depends heavily on money from the regional and central governments it decries. The materials for each house, for example, cost the regional government about $25,000. [Wouldn’t our capitalist friend ‘Flipper’ have a field day at those prices?]

Salvador Becera, an expert in anthropology at the Center for Andalusian Studies in Seville, said Mr. Sánchez had brought social equity to an uneducated, economically oppressed community. But his vision was anachronistic, he said, and the future of Andalusia lay not in the fields, but in industry and services. [Does anyone else think Mr. Becera is an idiot? Got food, Bubba?]

“Right now, they can puff out their chests because the economy is in crisis,” Mr. Becera said. “But what if they had the chance to get rich? [Geez, it hasn’t happened in 10,000 years so why does bean blower think its going to happen tomorrow?] Then who would stay in this little paradise that Sánchez Gordillo has created?”

Mr. Sánchez, though, is unshaken.

“We have an election every four years,” he said simply. “If people elect me with an absolute majority each time, I must be doing something right.”

Did I tell you this was a fantastic article or did I?

This piece has it all, frustrated millionaire wannabes and clueless intellectual morons who both utterly fail to appreciate what Mr. Sanchez has done.

Why is it these stupid bastards fail to realize we can’t all be ‘rich’? (Which is to point out that when we’re all rich, then no one will be…but it’s not like we’re in any real danger of THAT ever happening.)

Take a communist success story and dismiss it by dangling the false lure of ‘universal wealth’.

Ask yourself good citizen, is the capitalist system really that ‘warped’ that the only measure of ‘success’ is making more money than you need at the expense of those around you?

Sadly, the answer is yes…it is that warped.

Strangely, you are not to blame for your misguided values, you’ve been taught your whole life that it is your ‘right’ to be rich and that we all can be rich…somehow.

No irony should be lost on the fact that most of us owe more than we can ever expect to earn in our lifetime thanks to the banksters and the investors/employers.

There is another way and Mr. Sanchez proves it!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner