Commitment-Phobia in the First World

What follows will probably be a largely disorganized mess. I have a lot of thoughts and a lot of links that I want to present, to I'm just going to organize them by "theme" below and then sum up what I think the commonality is at the end.

Marriages and Relationships:

39% of Americans think marriage is becoming obsolete. (Compared with 28% in 1978.) To quote some stats:

"Census data reflect a declining percentage of married adults: 54% in 2010, down from 57% in 2000 and 72% in 1960.

At the same time, the median age at first marriage increased in 2010 to its highest ever — 28.2 for men and 26.1 for women, according to Census. That's up from 26.8 and 25.1 in 2000. Among those ages 25-34, the percentage of those who are married fell below unmarrieds for the first time in more than a century."

Anyhow, continuing...

A bourgeois opinion on WHY Americans think marriage is obsolete. According to this article, some experts believe that, even now, least 75% of existing marriages in the U.S. are unhappy ones.

European opposite-sex couples are increasingly going for civil unions rather than marriages. This is the "in-between" marriage on the one hand and non-romance on the other.

Casual sex is increasing in the United States.

The main source of divorce: the semi-happy marriage. Quote: "While most of the women Haag interviewed said they felt lonely in their semi-happy marriages, men told her that they felt "trapped" or "penned in." It didn't seem to matter if they married "too young" or waited until they were older; what mattered was what people expected from their marriages. And for many, the traditional blueprint that their parents followed is simply no longer a good fit." The basic problem, the article contends, is boredom in marriage. The new generation is seeking more adventure, more excitement, so argues the author of Marriage Confidential: The Post-Romantic Age of Workhorse Wives, Royal Children, Undersexed Spouses, and Rebel Couples Who Are Rewriting the Rules. We will return to this note later, so bear it in mind.


Religion:

Experts predict that organized religion will eventually go extinct in at least nine First and Second World countries. Take note of this, quote: "[The unaffiliated are] not necessarily atheists or non-believers, experts say, just people who do not associate themselves with a particular religion or house of worship at the time of the survey."

The article also (in a bizarrely skeptical fashion) describes the views of others who have long predicted the development of this trend in First World attitudes toward religion thus:

And Abrams, Wiener and Yaple are not the first to predict the end of religion.

Peter Berger, a former president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, once said that, "People will become so bored with what religious groups have to offer that they will look elsewhere."

He said Protestantism "has reached the strange state of self-liquidation," that Catholicism was in severe crisis, and anticipated that "religions are likely to survive in small enclaves and pockets" in the United States.

THE COMMON THEME: BOREDOM PRODUCES COMMITMENT-PHOBIA

So why are the populations of exploiter countries so bored that they need a constant supply of new adventures? Could it be because they have so little real work to do? And could that be because they are living off the backs of others? Hmmm.....! Yes, such (being lazy exploiters) is the basis of d0-nothingism in revolutionary circles as well, I strongly suspect. It is a parasite mentality.

...Yeah, this was probably my worst article yet. Oh well, I hope I made some interesting points anyway.

The Global Slum and the Mall Economy: New Challenges Communist Revolutionaries Face Today

Prairie Fire has authored a very good article on the sorts of new challenges that we face today in terms of how to radically change the world for the better. It is good enough (and short enough) to be worth re-posting in its entirety here:

Prairie Fire: New world, new challenges, new science

Posted on April 24, 2011 by MSH

New world, new challenges, new science
by Prairie Fire
(llco.org)

In 1965, as wars of liberation waged around the world, Lin Biao wrote of the great divide between the global city versus the global countryside, the rich countries versus the poor countries, the First World versus the Third World. This continues to be the principal contradiction today. Lin Biao saw the world revolution through the lenses of people’s war. Just as Mao’s people’s war in China advanced from the countryside to surround, then conquer, China’s cities, so too would global people’s war advance from the global countryside to surround, then conquer, the global city. This basic outlook continues to be correct today, as it was in 1965. However, the world has changed greatly in the last half century. Our political economy, our concepts of underdevelopment, class, revolutionary agency, and practice must all be updated to meet these challenges. Here are some basic points that need to be understood by revolutionaries:

1. Underdevelopment has taken new forms. Imperialism has created a lopsided world. Development has been, and continues to be, uneven from country to country. In the past, those countries that were considered to be developed were industrialized and also had diversified economies. Some of these developed countries were imperialist ones, others were socialist. The socialist ones built themselves up and sustained themselves through their own labor and resources. By contrast, the imperialist countries became developed on the backs of their colonies and neo-colonies. The imperialist countries built up their economies at the expense of others. For example, the industrial-revolution economies of Western Europe and North America were made possible and given a boost by the value created by slavery and value transfers from colonies. Cheap labor and raw materials, plunder of land through genocide, and the opening of new colonial markets aided in the modernization of the West. This process continues in various forms today. However, underdevelopment today differs in some respects than past underdevelopment. In the past, underdevelopment was often linked to both lack of industrialization and lack of diversification of production. In the past, an underdeveloped economy was usually a poor economy that was mainly geared toward production of one or two cash crops or mineral or other resource extraction. These products would then be processed, or refined, or enter into a larger production process in the imperialist developed countries. In other words, in the past, industrialization and diversification was almost always associated with development. And, lack of industrialization and lack of diversification was almost always associated with underdevelopment. Even though this old pattern continues in some places, in other places new patterns are emerging. Today, the wealthy, imperialist countries are no longer industrialized as they once were. Today, in many parts of the First World, fewer and fewer people are employed in factories. Rather, more and more people are employed in distribution, commerce, management, and the public sector. In many parts of the First World, populations consume more and more, but produces less and less. This is the rise of the mall economy of the First World. At the same time, factories are moved to the Third World. Many Third World economies have become industrialized and diversified, yet the primary beneficiaries of this are not Third World populations, but the imperial populations of the First World. In other words, even though the Third World countries are producing, the value is mainly directed outward to the First World. The surplus is not directed into the Third World economies in a way that benefits the population, aids self-determination, or produces truly national capital. Instead, the benefactors are the imperialists and the imperial populations. Thus healthy development is not simply a matter of industrialization and diversification. And underdevelopment is not simply a lack of these qualities. Today both the First World and Third World are increasingly mal-developed. The First World, producing less and consuming more, is increasingly parasitic on the Third World.

2. New Democracy will take new forms. In the past, imperialism divided the world, for the most part, into traditionally developed and traditionally underdeveloped countries. Traditionally underdeveloped countries were described in various ways: “semi-feudalism,” “comprador capitalism,” “bureaucrat capitalism,” etc. These descriptions emphasized various aspects of mal-development in the Third World. One implication of this was that revolution in the Third World could be described as a two stage process. The first stage is the New Democratic stage. The New Democratic revolution unites much of the peasantry, workers, petty bourgeoisie, and even some of the patriotic capitalists of the Third World against imperialism, for land reform, national development and basic democratic reforms. New Democratic revolution lays the basis for the second stage. The second stage is socialism, where the proletariat further reorganizes society in its interest. This lays the basis for communism, the end of all oppression. The changing nature of underdevelopment in the Third World today will affect the revolutionary process. The New Democracy of the future may not necessarily be an agricultural affair based on “land to the tiller.” It may not be based on land struggles at all. It may not be centered on the countryside. The slum dwelling classes and their concerns for shelter, to have their own small trade and businesses, and survival generally, may become a greater and greater part of the early revolutionary process, and of New Democracy. Or, this may lay the basis for a whole new kind of socialist revolution in the Third World: New Socialism.

3. The revolutionary agent will take ever new forms. The world economy has created vast reservoirs of impoverished people in the Third World who do not add to the total social product, but, rather, survive on the edges. Many of these people barely survive in the megaslums of the Third World. Many of them live in refugee camps or survive on aid. At the same time, in some parts of the Third World, the unionized industrial working class has become a relatively privileged strata among the population with less immediate interest in radical social transformation. This working class is sometimes more privileged than the numerous street vendors and small traders who reside in Third World slums. The concept of the proletariat need not be tied exclusively to a role within production per se, but can be tied to overall social position and impoverishment. In some places in the world, those who match Marx’s famous description of having “nothing to lose but their chains” are not always those who sell their labor to capitalists. Thus there is a rise of new proletarians.

4. Just as the class structure of the Third World has changed, so has the class structure of the First World. In the First World, the revolutionary class has passed from the scene. In the 1960s, there was some basis for thinking that a revolutionary social base existed within the ghettos and captive nations of the First World. Such a base is nonexistent today. There is no significant First World revolutionary class, no significant First World proletariat. There is no significant stand-in First World revolutionary class. This means that we must look beyond the First World for a revolutionary social base. This means global people’s war is the primary means of bringing the New Power of the proletariat to the First World.

5. With the growth of the global slum and new proletarians, the shape of future people’s wars will change. In some parts of the Third World, people’s war will follow the traditional Maoist pattern. It will be mostly peasant movement led by the communist line that establishes ever greater base areas and red zones, the new society in miniature, in those places where the state is weakest. It will be tied to New Democratic demands, especially the demand for land. It will be a protracted advance from the countryside to city. However, the changing world will make this pattern not viable everywhere. Some geographies make the traditional Maoist model problematic. Also, the growth in imperialist air power will affect the ability to set up traditional base areas and red zones. Most importantly, the growth of the urban population will make the urban slum more and more important in the people’s war.

6. There is a growing ecological crisis. The capitalist system is based on infinite expansion beyond our means. Yet our Earthly resources are finite. Thus capitalism is incompatible with the continued survival of the planetary ecosystem. First World consumption is out of proportion; it is leading us toward ecological catastrophe. Environments are rapidly changing due to human intervention. Revolutionaries of the future are going to have to adopt strategies that take this into account. Revolutionaries need to examine not just the forces of production and social relations, but also the conditions of production themselves. Revolutionaries need to take the natural world into account. Socialist development cannot treat nature as a never ending resource to be consumed. The New Power of the future will need to be ecologically sustainable. The survival of all life on Earth is on the line.

7. New technology and greater mobility open up new paths for revolution. Greater communication and mobility mean that revolutions may be increasingly dynamic in important ways. Subjective and objective conditions can change in explosive ways, very rapidly. Tempos can accelerate seemingly out of nowhere. Events in one location can quickly influence events and conditions around the world. Revolution will become more globalized in important ways. New technologies will have a profound on impact on how revolutions are made. New technologies will open up new possibilities during socialist construction.

Leading Light Communism has advanced revolutionary science in almost every way. This is a big part of why Leading Light Communism is a whole new stage of revolutionary science. It is the pinnacle of revolutionary science today. Political economy is key to making revolution. However, it is not enough to limit these advances to the realm of theory. To match our advances in theory, we must also advance our organizational forms to meet today’s challenges. We must strike out in ever new, bold ways. We must not be afraid to lead not only in the ideological realm, but also on the ground. We have the plan, the organization, the leadership. Follow the Leading Light. Be the Leading Light.

A New Vision of Communism

The Leading Lights are the leaders of a new communist movement. Leading Light Communism is a new understanding of communism, the science of human emancipation.

Like earlier communists, Leading Lights aim to establish a world without class distinctions, economic exploitation, social oppression, or corresponding backward ideas. They aim to establish a world without borders or states, without money or barter, without exclusive professions. A world without racism or sexism or gender oppression or heterosexism or any other form of discrimination. A world free of religious illusions and the patriarchal family unit. A world with a balanced population distribution; one without overcrowded urban sprawl or isolating rural countryside. A world in which all possessions are owned in common. A world in which things are produced by those with the ability to produce them and distributed according to need, rather than according to market laws of supply and demand. A world without antagonistic social tensions and thus without war. In short, like earlier communists, Leading Lights seek to establish not a "perfect" world, but a nonetheless much better kind of world characterized by equality. And Leading Lights, like earlier communists, recognize that the only path from here to there is that of a worldwide revolution led by the proletariat, the lowest and most oppressed class of today's world, against the capitalist system and its ruling class, the bourgeoisie. Communists (real ones anyway) are the political expression of the proletariat. In particular, Leading Lights borrow many ideas from such renowned historical communist leaders as Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Mao Zedong.

Unlike earlier communists though, Leading Lights grasp that class distinctions have largely polarized along geographic (often national) lines in the current era, the era of capitalist imperialism. In today's world, the proletariat and other oppressed and exploited classes are overwhelmingly concentrated in the exploited countries, the Third World. The exploiter countries, the First World, consist overwhelmingly of parasites who live in luxury by sucking the resources out of the Third World, thus creating poverty and reinforcing backwardness. This overarching state of affairs is the main source of conflict in today's world. It is the main expression that class struggle takes in today's world. In answer to this problem, Leading Lights, the new vanguard of the proletariat, seek to lead a worldwide popular war from the Third World to overthrow imperialism and feudalism, thus preparing the ground for a revolutionary transition into socialism (a transitional state of affairs wherein the bourgeoisie at least largely no longer exist and wherein society owns the main means of production and primarily distributes the fruits of production according to need) and finally into communism. In keeping with this understanding of the shape of the contemporary world and with this strategy for the forcible overthrow of all existing conditions, Leading Lights can also be distinguished from earlier communists in their vision of what a communist world looks like. Leading Lights understand that it is not possible to generalize First World living standards, precisely because of the means by which those living standards have been achieved. First World living standards are so extravagant that they aren't even ecologically sustainable! Instead, Leading Light Communism is genuine global equality. It is sustainability. It evens out the wealth of the First World with that of the Third World. It balances the needs of humanity with those of the natural environment. In these ways, it represents a new understanding and a new level of equality: one grounded in the reality that our shared world has real limits that need to be respected, not disregarded. Leading Light Communism is shared abundance, not the impossible pipe dream of shared extravagance. The outdated vision of "communism" that advocates shared extravagance is what Leading Lights call First Worldism (or First World chauvinism) because it rationalizes the privileges of the exploiting First World populations; privileges which objectively cannot be generalized and thus made universal standards. All First Worldists in effect support the class enemies of the proletariat on one level or another because they insist on the retention, if not the further extension, of what objectively are their privileges over others.

I am a Leading Light. Leading Lights Communism is the future. All other schools of "communism" are today outmoded. Our understanding of the present shape of the world and corresponding vision of communism matches reality. It is a major, and vital, breakthrough for our science. Are you on board with the future or are you stuck in the past?

Libya's "Civil" War in Perspective

I cannot resist re-posting a Workers' World article I recently ran across on the subject of Libya that really helps put things in perspective by focusing on the bigger picture within which this U.S.-led bombing and now apparently rebel-backing campaign is taking place. It's well worth reading. The reader may, however, disregard the final section under the heading "Working class enters anti-war movement" because it is nothing but a pack of First Worldist lies.

Libya and the era of imperialist reconquest

By Fred Goldstein

Published Mar 24, 2011 10:05 PM

However the rebellion in Libya began, it was both inevitable and entirely predictable that it would quickly become an opening for imperialist intervention and counterrevolution in the oil-rich North African country.

The fact that the “rebellion” received sympathetic, screaming headlines, ferociously hostile to the government of Moammar Gadhafi from the very beginning, should have been sufficient to put the entire anti-imperialist movement on guard. The boiler-plate propaganda about “massacres,” without the slightest evidence, was repeated as if it were the gospel truth. That should have been further evidence of the plans for “great power” intervention (“great” in their oppression, as Vladimir Lenin pointed out long ago).

The condemnations were particularly hypocritical coming from the mouths of the same imperialist powers that have been massacring oppressed people on every continent since the dawn of colonialism — from the slave trade in Africa to the cruelty of conquistadors in South America, the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the U.S., the colonization of India, up to the present-day campaigns against the Palestinians in Gaza, Predator drone massacres of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to say nothing of the wholesale destruction of Iraqi society and the attendant mass killing of civilians.

There have been numerous rebellions and many documented massacres of unarmed civilians in recent months that have not spurred military action by the imperialist powers. Is it even conceivable that Washington would lobby or arm-twist the Arab League to provide a figleaf for U.S. intervention in support of protesters in Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia or Jordan? No, because these have been genuine rebellions against autocratic regimes backed by the White House and the Pentagon.

There have been no campaigns to get U.N. Security Council resolutions authorizing military action in any of these countries. No aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, missile ships, AWACS planes, spy satellites, etc., moved into position to support these genuine popular uprisings against moth-eaten reactionary monarchies that guard the interests of the U.S. and Western oil companies, as well as the strategic position of the Pentagon in the Persian Gulf region.

Bush, Obama & ‘regime change’

The fact is that the Obama administration, the British and the French have de facto put Libya on the “axis of evil” list started by George W. Bush in his infamous 2002 State of the Union speech, where he singled out Iraq, Iran and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as targets for “regime change.” That is what “Gadhafi must go” means.

What these three countries have in common is that they all threw imperialism out of their countries during the rise of the socialist camp and the national liberation movements after World War II. They were part of a global movement that fought to establish economic and political independence from transnational banks, corporations and the Pentagon.

Libya falls directly into that category, having overthrown puppet King Idris and ousted imperialism in 1969 under the leadership of Col. Moammar Gadhafi. The Libyan revolution, like the revolutions in Iraq in 1958 and Iran in 1979, also nationalized Western-owned oil companies and shut down imperialist military bases. The fact that Gadhafi shifted toward the West later, opening up to oil companies and imposing International Monetary Fund-dictated austerity programs, is not enough to satisfy the voracious appetite of the corporations for profit. They want to take the whole country — lock, stock and barrel.

Libya & the era of reconquest

The invasion of Libya is part of a long-term trend on the part of the imperialist countries that began with the collapse of the USSR and Eastern Europe from 1989 to 1991. That trend is to reconquer territories and riches lost during the 20th-century rise of the socialist camp and the national liberation movements.

That is what the intervention in Libya is about. That is what the two wars in Iraq were about. And that is what the permanent threats to Iran and North Korea are about, not to mention the permanent blockade of Cuba, the military encirclement of China and the attempt to destroy the government of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

In other words, the right to national sovereignty, self-determination and self-defense of formerly oppressed countries is obsolete, according to the doctrine of the New World Order.

The mad adventure in Libya, led by Washington and supported by Britain and France, shows once again that war and militarism are an integral feature of imperialism and of the monopoly-capitalist system upon which it rests.

During the first half of the 20th century, imperialist war was driven by inter-imperialist rivalry and struggles over which country would be able to loot the colonial peoples. During the latter part of the 20th century, war and the threat of war were driven by the struggle of imperialism against the socialist camp and the national liberation movements — the Cold War.

Now the permanent tendency of imperialism toward war and militarism is driven by the drive for reconquest of the territories lost in that period.

Imperialism & permanent war

U.S. imperialism now has two wars and a major post-war occupation going on simultaneously — in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq. It has made northeastern Pakistan a free-fire zone for predator drones. Since the collapse of the USSR and Eastern Europe in 1989-1991, it has launched five wars of conquest — in Iraq twice, in Yugoslavia in 1999. in Afghanistan in 2001, and now in Libya.

It has threatened two other wars — one against Iran and the other against People’s Korea. U.S. troops have been at war continuously for the last decade.

Washington has five aircraft carriers, each accompanied by a flotilla of 10 destroyers, frigates and other warships in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea surrounding Libya. The French and the Italian imperialists each have a carrier in the area as well.

The entire imperialist world, with a combined gross domestic product of more than $20 trillion, a combined population of close to a billion people, and a combined military machine worth at least $2 trillion is bearing down on Libya — an underdeveloped, formerly colonized country of 6 million people with an economy of some $40 billion that is without the capability to defend itself militarily against the juggernaut facing it.

The French and the British capitalist governments were clamoring for a no-fly zone as a pretext for intervention and to guard their oil interests. But it was not until Washington got behind the effort, forcing the Arab League and the U.N. Security Council to go along and moving its military flotilla and air force into position, that the attack could begin.

Working class enters anti-war movement

These wars have cost trillions of dollars. They are eroding the economic foundation of U.S. capitalist society and imposing a huge cost upon the workers, the poor and the oppressed who pay for the wars, both with their tax money and with the loss of vital social services.

This plunge into a new war comes in the midst of a profound economic crisis, a jobless recovery, growing mass unemployment and a budding rebellion of the working class, which has shown itself in the Wisconsin struggle against union busting and austerity budgets.

On March 19 a mass anti-war march took place in Madison, Wis., that was attended by thousands of unionists and their supporters in a joint effort with the anti-war movement. This is a step forward in the U.S. in the direction of giving the anti-war movement a working-class character.

As the wars multiply and the attacks on the workers grow more severe, a genuine working-class rebellion against imperialist war will come onto the agenda. The working class is the only class that can put an end to imperialist war.

---

Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

(Source: http://www.workers.org/2011/world/imperialist_reconquest_0331/)

See what I mean?

Well anyhow, let's briefly look at the the final section I advised the reader to disregard, such as to examine its basic flaws. The author rambles on about how the reconquest of Libya hurts Americans economically by way of tax drainage and "loss of vital social services". (Even Workers' World does not dare claim that there will be a substantial loss of American life.) Yes, I once believed the myth that imperialist war really hurts First world "workers" as well. It is forwarded by seemingly every revisionist organization in America. The purpose is to blur class distinctions between the general populations of the exploiter countries (like the United States) on the one hand and those of the exploited countries (like Libya) on the other and make the case that there is some sort of common interest between the exploited and oppressed on the one hand and their exploiters and oppressors on the other. What I have come to more thoroughly realize in recent months, however, is that this argument quite literally abolishes the labor aristocracy component of the law of uneven development. It separates imperialist conquest in the reader's mind from the logical consequences for Americans. Imperialist conquests occur for a reason. Everyone on the so-called radical left in America recognizes that the interests of the likes of the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Spain, and Canada in Libya have everything to do with increasing the profit margins of their respective oil giants. What they generally neglect to analyze, however, is how this increase in profit margins is realized on the domestic scene. It is realized through the suppression of price rises, and thus through increased consumption. Increased supply of oil lowers, or at least suppresses, the price thereof for its recipients in the First World.

When in the 1970s OPEC imposed an embargo on the sale of oil to countries supporting Israel (like the United States), oil prices soared in the First World as supplies diminished and, in some places, actually ran out. People had less money to spare as a result. Less money for governments to take in as tax revenue with which to fund lavish social services. There was general economic strain. Once supplication was resumed and oil production increased in the exporting countries, things stabilized again and the First World breathed a sigh of relief. This demonstrates how the theft of oil from the Third World is a key factor in Americans being able to drive around in their own private cars, for instance. It is just one small example of what I mean by how the First World populations benefit from the exploitation of the Third World. Imperialism is the method by which the loyalties of the First World population to the capitalist system are bought; the method by which relative social peace is achieved in the imperialist countries.

I believe this picture should adequately do the math for the reader.

Just wanted to clarify that point. And no, the Workers' World Party has by no means been consistently opposed to the imperialist campaign against Libya by the way. They have continually extended support to the various peace offerings...or, in other words, terms of partial surrender...that have been proposed for the government of Libya. Make no mistake: you cannot honestly claim to oppose this U.S.-led campaign of reconquest if you support the American/Western stooge regime in Benghazi that fully supports it and literally depends on it. (They depend on support from foreigners because they cannot find adequate support for their rebellion at home; because they are unpopular.) And you cannot honestly claim to oppose this imperialist reconquest of Libya if you refuse to support the actually existing resistance to it. Supporting the broad united front against imperialism in this context means advocating the complete defeat of the reactionary stooge regime in Benghazi and opposing acquiescence to any surrender terms, either complete or partial, on the part of the legitimate government of Libya: that of Muammar Gaddafi, who has recently claimed that he will no longer allow Western investment in Libya as a result of this direct attack on his country's sovereignty. The battle lines in Libya are clearly drawn. No one should still be under illusions about the desirability of the reactionary, pro-imperialist Libyan rebellion or about the desirability of peace with that clearly pro-imperialist side. As authentic communists, it is our duty to unequivocally support complete victory for the Libyan people and nothing less, not the policies of the U.S.-dominated UN or the comprador alliances around the world that support Western business interests, like the Arab League and the African Union.

And yes, complete victory for the Libyan people is possible, contrary to the claims of Workers' World, which measures military possibilities one-sidedly in terms of tanks and planes, not in terms of people power, of the spiritual atom bomb which the masses possess. The people of China historically rose up against and defeated a far "militarily superior" enemy in their popular war that established a socialist state. They did so by relying on the spirit of the people; on their hatred for being oppressed. Such is the key to victory here as well. However, this spirit can only be fully and consistently unleashed and directed along a socialist and communist path if it gains communist, that is Maoist-Third Worldist, leadership.

Dear Wisconsin Morons: This Land WASN'T "Made For You and Me"!

What follows is my reply to this commentary on recent developments in Wisconsin and where they're headed:

"...what is most important is that we support the union in their struggle..."

I thoroughly disagree!

Here, sharply posed, is the reality of the matter:

The "workers" in question make EXPONENTIALLY more than you do, and probably even two or three times what I do, as things are. They are NOT, as you portray them, desperately poor and just trying to eek out a living on the verge of starvation. They are so wealthy that a very large percentage of them probably even own businesses of their own on the side, as well as stock portfolios, real estate, etc.! 5.8% of $35,000-$70,000+ a year isn't going to kill anyone, or even close.

The hard and painful truth for the American "left" to accept is that these "workers" would actually lose more under AUTHENTIC socialism than is being demanded of them right now by "the Mubarak of the Midwest"! That they compare themselves to the Egyptian masses is an insult to the latter. Their conditions are not remotely similar and their demands are for the retention of their existing privileges OVER the Egyptian and other Third world masses. And moreover there isn't going to be any imperialist bourgeoisie or imperialist government with which to bargain/collaborate under socialism if it can at all be helped.

Even the Tea Party racists can spout out anti-corporate dribble when it is opportunistically convenient. They complain of the bank bailouts, of executive bonuses, of powerful bureaucrats, even sometimes of the Iraq War. Does this make them progressive? That'll be a cold day in hell!

The problem with the union movement in Wisconsin isn't that it's doomed to fail, it's that their objectives are reactionary! There is no "good" or "progressive" side to the debacle in Wisconsin. The situation instead reminds me of a lecture my law professor gave us in college one time. She described to us a case wherein a member of a pair of bank robbers decided he had been cheated by his partner and thus decided to sue for "his share" of the loot. Naturally, the court frowned on the case itself and found that neither of them had the right to stake a claim in the first place, given the means by which they had acquired the money in question.

In that connection, one of the various particularly disgusting features of the Wisconsin action has been the celebration of American patriotism, which is inevitably the celebration of American colonialism and imperialism. Check out Tom Morello's little number. News flash to spoiled Wisconsin morons: this land AIN'T your land! And it ain't my land either. This land WASN'T "made for you and me"! This is stolen land and the debacle in question is over stolen loot! What we are witnessing in that video thus amounts to a celebration of genocide and plundering. And no, throwing in a verse about relief lines does not change that overarching essence.

We shouldn't just "be the best protesters we can be". We need to ask these hard questions about the political contents of protests. We should not support ANY section of American exploiters in fighting for the retention, let alone extension, of their privileges. No one has a right to plunder, no matter how employed or waged they are. The proletariat is more essentially defined by the property-less condition than by the employed status anyway. The property-less condition is what gives the proletariat its class interest in bringing all property under common ownership. That's the only way the proletariat AS A CLASS can acquire property. The former First World proletariat, on the other hand, has acquired it by way of the de facto exploitation of the Third World masses, thereby rendering the latter the place where the international proletariat is overwhelmingly concentrated today. There is no First World proletariat to speak of. And even the 30% of these Wisconsin protesters you describe who allegedly have sympathies with socialism are, in fact, coming from a social-imperialist understanding of that, given the nature of their demands, as explained above.

Does all this mean that real communists, Maoist Third Worldists, have no role to play in this situation? Are we to just sit at home and lament from afar? Of course not! We have a role. Real communists, leading light communists, need to be in really any given "mass" action that arises in America, be it one of these unionist actions or even a Tea Party rally, precisely in order to undermine them and actively attract as many people as will be interested to the genuine communist pole. We are looking for the few First Worlders, for the few Americans, who are willing to betray their own class interests and their country and fight on the side of the world's oppressed and exploited majority in the Third World. We are working behind enemy lines. Genuinely progressive mobilization in this country is bound up with opposing American imperialism and supporting revolution in the Third World.

A New Breakthrough on the Topic of People's War!

Not a long post today. I just couldn't resist linking my readers up to this article because it has truly historic implications! Check it out.

A Basic Introduction to Marxism

It occurs to me that, from time to time, some casual readers not versed in Marxism may conceivably find their way to this blog. I therefore think it prudent to provide some information on the basics of scientific socialism and some resources for (definitely recommended) further reading. I plan on writing a small handful of articles covering the most basic and fundamental elements of Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, and perhaps some others if I should feel so inclined: one article per theory, with a list of recommended further readings included. This will be the first of these said articles. It is dedicated to informing the reader on the very, very basics of classical Marxism: the first school of scientific socialism.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were German-born intellectuals who worked in various cities in Europe as teachers, journalists, and political activists. As writers, they developed a sweeping theory of society and history, premised on the philosophical perspective of dialectical materialism, which provided them the framework within which to examine history and society in a scientific manner. Dialectical materialism is the perspective that material things are in a constant process of change brought about by the tension between conflicting or interacting forces, elements, or ideas. Historical materialism is that part of the theory of dialectical materialism which holds that the development of social thought and institutions is based upon material, economic forces (the production and distribution of the material requirements of life being the most basic purpose of civilization); it is the factor that enables the scientific analysis of the course of history. The basic idea is that every economic order grows to a state of maximum efficiency, while, at the same time, developing internal contradictions (weaknesses) that contribute to its decay.

Marx and Engels asserted that the key to understanding human culture and history was the struggle between classes. They used the term class to refer to a group of people within society who share the same social and economic status. According to Marx and Engels, class struggles have occurred in every form of society, no matter what its economic structure, or mode of production: slavery, feudalism, or capitalism. In each of these kinds of societies, a minority of people own or control the means of production, such as land, raw materials, tools and machines, labor, and money. This minority constitutes the ruling class. The vast majority of people own and control very little. They mainly own their own capacity to work. The ruling class uses its economic power to exploit workers by appropriating their surplus labor. In other words, workers are compelled to labor not merely to meet their own needs, but also those of the exploiting ruling class. As a result, workers become alienated from the fruits of their labor.

Marx and Engels portrayed the grand sweep of Western history (most history that was well-known in their historical context was Western history) as a process of progressively evolving forms of society. The struggle between classes was the motor of social change, fueling revolutions and leading history from one epoch to the next. Just as primitive agrarian society had yielded centuries before to feudal society, and in Europe feudalism given way to industrial capitalism, so too would capitalism be overthrown. Analyzing 19th-century capitalistic society, Marx and Engels observed a class struggle raging between the bourgeoisie, or capitalists who controlled the means of production, and the proletariat, whom they described as the industrial workers of their time, whom they believed were rapidly falling into a proletarian condition; a condition of being property-less (that is, without capital of any kind) and thus rendered dependent upon the sale of their labor power for survival. In their view, the bourgeoisie appropriated wealth from the proletariat by paying low wages and keeping the profits from sales and technological innovation for themselves. Marx and Engels were confident that the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the increasingly large and impoverished proletariat was coming to a head in the foremost societies of the West. The inevitable outcome would be a revolution in which the proletariat, taking advantage of strikes, elections, and violence, would displace the bourgeoisie as the ruling class. A political revolution was essential, in Marx’s view, because the state, with its armed power of enforcement, is the central instrument of capitalist society.

According to the theory of Marx and Engels, labor is the source of all value: all machines and tools produced, all land cultivated, all productive work that contributes to the provision for society of the material requirements for life, originate from labor. Justice therefore requires that, for a time, labor must also become the destiny of value. This morality corresponds to socialism: the short-term objective of the proletariat. Ultimately, however, the most basic problem of capitalistic society is that under capitalism production occurs for exchange purposes rather than for use purposes. In other words, production under capitalism occurs for the purpose of accumulating capital rather than for the purpose of meeting human needs. Private appropriation of the means of production thus comes into conflict with their basically and ever increasingly social character. Marx formulated that the alternative, socially-concerned morality of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" corresponds to full-fledged communism: the long-term objective of the proletariat.

Being the first property-less class in history, the proletariat (created by the advent of industrial capitalism), in Marxist theory, is therefore the first class in history with a direct, material interest in the bringing of all property under common ownership (because the only way the proletariat as a class can acquire property is by bringing it under common ownership), and of thus abolishing all classes and all exploitation itself. In Marxist theory, the previous non-existence of the proletariat explains why all earlier experiments in collectivism failed and why there is now, for the first time in history, the real possibility of establishing civilized communism.

Marx and Engels were almost silent about the particulars of what would happen after the proletarian revolution. They made provision for a brief transitional period during which workers would form a socialist society with the means of production owned in common. In this period, the proletarian majority of the population would need to enact a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat in order to seize the property of the bourgeois minority and stifle attempts to sabotage the popular government. Unlike previous ruling classes, in keeping with its class interests described above, the proletariat would not seek to install a new system of domination and exploitation; its goal would instead be a system of cooperation in which the immense majority, the proletariat, ruled for the benefit of all. Eventually, society would evolve into full communism, characterized by mutual affluence, the abolition of classes, and an end to the dehumanizing division of labor found in earlier forms of society. In this radically new condition, Marx and Engels wrote, abundance and social harmony would make it possible “for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd, or critic.” Labor performed out of economic necessity would give way to truly voluntary activity such that "the free development of each [becomes] the condition for the free development of all". It would come to be the case that all people would freely share all the world.

I'll wrap up this brief sketch of classical Marxism with an excerpt from an article by the International Communist Current (located here: http://en.internationalism.org/wr/271_poc_01.html) because they've done what, in my view, is a good job therein of summing up the aspects of the classical Marxist understanding of history that remain to be discussed:

"...Each level of development of the productive forces of a particular society corresponds to a given type of productive relationship. The relations of production are the relations established between men and women in their activity of producing goods destined to satisfy their needs. In primitive societies the productivity of labour was so low that it scarcely satisfied the barest physical needs of the members of the community. Exploitation and economic inequality were impossible in such a situation: if certain individuals had appropriated to themselves or consumed goods in greater quantities than other members of this society, then the poorer off [majority --my addition] would not have been able to survive at all. Exploitation, generally in the form of slavery established as the result of the territorial conquest of one tribe by another, could not appear until the average level of human production had gone beyond the basic minimum needed for physical survival. But between the satisfaction of this basic minimum and the full satisfaction, not only of the material but also the intellectual needs of humanity, there exists an entire range of development in the productivity of labour. By means of such development, mankind steadily became the master of nature. In historical terms, it was this period which separated the dissolution of primitive communist society from the era when fully developed communism would be possible. Just as mankind wasn’t naturally ‘good’ in those ages when men and women weren’t exploited under the conditions of primitive communism, so it hasn’t been naturally ‘bad’ in the epochs of exploitation which have followed. The exploitation of man by man and the existence of economic privilege became possible when average human production exceeded the physical minimum needed for human life to reproduce itself. Both became necessary because the level of human production could not fully satisfy all the needs of all the members of society.

As long as that was the case, communism was impossible, whatever objections the anarchists may raise to the contrary. But it is exactly this situation which capitalism has itself radically modified, owing to the enormous increase in the productivity of labour which it has brought into being. Capitalism methodically exploited every scientific discovery, generalised associated labour, and put to use the natural and human riches of the entire world. But obviously the increase in the productivity of labour set in motion by capitalism was paid for by an intensification of exploitation on a scale unknown in human history. However, such a profound increase in human productivity does represent the material basis for a communist society. By making itself the master of nature, capitalism created the conditions by which humanity may become master of itself."

Marx and Engels described the proletariat as "the working class" of capitalist society because they saw it becoming the principal class that did the toiling under capitalism, providing the wealth of society which the capitalist would essentially and mostly steal for himself. Society, they believed, was thus rapidly polarizing into two great hostile camps: again, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. They believed that more than 90% of the world's population would soon consist of proletarians and this fact, together with the vast wealth created by industrial production and appropriated privately, pretty much guaranteed world proletarian revolution. Their essential strategy is summed up well in the slogan they advanced in The Communist Manifesto: "Workers of the world, unite!" By "workers", they basically meant proletarians, whom they believed either were already in many countries and/or would soon become everywhere the overwhelming majority. Middle classes of non-proletarian workers were a minor and rapidly disappearing factor in this worldview.

Strongly recommended further reading:

I'll recommend studying the selected works of Marx and Engels highlighted by Progress Publishers at the Marxist Internet Archive:

Volume 1: 1845-1859

Volume 2: 1860-1872

Volume 3: 1875-1895

Three of Vladimir Lenin's works are also valuable in coming to understand the basics of classical Marxism:

Karl Marx: A Brief Biographical Sketch With an Exposition of Marxism

Frederick Engels

The Three Sources and Three Component-Parts of Marxism