happy national day of mourning!

“This day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots.”–Gov. John Winthrop

notes toward understanding capitalist crisis & theory

J Sakai offers some preliminary thoughts on applying Marxism to the current economic crisis.  It explains Marx’s “crisis of overproduction” very well.  Sakai suggests that the media and politicians essentially have misunderstood the situation. Speculation was not the cause of the crisis, but was in response to the impending crisis. The crisis primarily indicates the failure of Keynesian economics–in short, the idea of the regulated capitalist economy.

The following analysis was especially surprising:

Many of those who formerly were allowed to be in privileged demi-classes, allowed a little addict’s taste of the parasitic life, are now being thrown overboard. Not only in the u.s., because every major metropolitan nation today has growing numbers of “useless” citizens, who it no longer has any need for in production or in running their tattered empires. Who are privileged “surplus” except as consumers or soldiers. Like the privileged lower class of permanently jobless “proletarii” of the decaying Roman empire, free citizens without an economic role in a master-slave society; who were given meager “bread and circuses” welfare and told to breed more sons for Rome’s imperial armies.

Sakai interestingly suggests that many of the people in the First World, who have either been bought off with or inherited the “parasitic life,” are being “thrown overboard” as excess capital. The regular measure of unemployment in the United States currently has the unemployment rate at around 10%. The more realistic measure has the actual measure of the unemployed at about 17%. People in the United States have a number of safety nets, which include unemployment compensation and food stamps, to help ensure that they do not die from starvation in the face of an economic crisis.

The duration of unemployment compensation is limited, but Congress extended benefits twice.  Additionally, as part of the economic bailout program, the government increased food stamp benefits for recipients.

In a global comparison, the economic plight of Americans pales. Some of the worst unemployment rates in the world are in Africa and the Asian-Pacific Islands. Afghanistan, a victim of US imperlialism has an estimated unemployment rate of 40%. The majority of people in the world make money and survive by selling their labor power to the owners of capital. Without a job, they cannot make money or survive unless their government has social welfare programs. Many African nations do not even track unemployment rates. The following map shows how horribly endemic unemployment is to African countries. Djibouti 59%,Liberia 85%, Zimabwe 90%, Mozambique 60%.

The lack of a formation of revolutionary consciousness within the United States is not surprising, given the ability of welfare to provide for the survival of citizens. The classic colonialist line on unemployment among non-whites was the shiftlessness and laziness of the natives, which justified domination and exploitation. The higher unemployment rates in the Third World owe more to imperialism, legacies of colonialism, and political corruption. The other main cause that requires some uncovering is the exploitation of the Third World. Imperialism, colonialism, and local political corruption are the symptoms of being infected with First World parasites.

Consequently, the financial crisis in the United States will not create political alliances between the First World and the masses of the Third World. The only way for that to happen would be for the material conditions of life for the exploiters in the First World to more closely resemble the rest of the world, and they are nowhere near that bad currently. Economists are already proclaiming the worst of the recession over (probably) and that unemployment should begin to improve in early 2010.

Capitalism has taken a black eye but is fairly flexible. Even the increased concentration of wealth under monopoly capitalism continues to be seen as a good thing. Some people call that the mystical power of hegemony, but exploitation for superior material conditions and a closer relationship to capital seems a simpler explanation to me.

can you turn capitalists against the afghan war?

Carl Levin has proposed a tax on US citizens who earn more than $200,000 to fund a troop surge in Afghanistan.  It costs approximately $1,000,000 to have one troop in Afghanistan for a year. Approximately 1.1 billion people in the world live on less than $1 a day. The amount of money that supports one troop in occupying a foreign country could give 2,739 people in the Third World enough money to survive for a year.

Apparently Goldman Sachs has already told Obama to bring the troops home. Here’s the story.

terrorist mission made call of duty modern warfare 2 a success

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 has made video game history by generating $500 million in sales in its first week. The reason for the game’s popularity? It has a terrorist mission. As a covert United States operative, you engage in a terrorist action with Russian arms dealers. The player (who is actually a US agent) takes part in the terrorist action. You wander around an airport with automatic weapons and kill people. The end of the mission carries a little twist and ultimately makes the terrorists victorious. The game exposed the truth that the United States is in fact complicit with much terrorist activity around the world. When the Taliban were fighting the Soviet Union, the CIA provided them with weapons, money, and training.

Watch the terrorist mission:

Movie Review – 2012

In the last decade or so, apocalyptic Hollywood movies have been a dime a dozen. Back in 1998, two doomsday meteorite movies came out, Deep Impact first, followed by Armageddon. In the last few years, the apocalyptic movie has made a come back with Knowing and the latest iteration 2012 has topped the box office the past weekend. None of these films were true end-0f-humanity films, as at least a small group of human beings manages to survive each disaster.  The way that 2012 handled the continuation of the human species provides some food for thought.

The governments of the world keep the impending doom of humanity secret in 2012.  When various participants in the conspiracy threaten its secrecy, the US government murders them. The head of the Louvre, who replaced the original Mona Lisa with a copy so that the original could be preserved, is murdered in the same tunnel where Princess Diana died. One scene in China shows the capitalist Chinese government dynamiting mountains and displacing citizens in order to build a dam. The “dam” is in fact a bunker where the governments of the world are building arks to survive the tsunamis that will result as the earth’s crust destabilizes. In The Cost of Living, Arundhati Roy exposed how the Indian government displaced thousands of people without compensation for dam projects in a misguided attempt at economic development. Displacement in the name of “progress,” war, and colonialism continues to be a reality for millions of people.

The problem is that even the governments of the world did not have enough capital to raise the money for the arks.  They had to look to private individuals to help finance their construction. The price tag for a space on the arks and the continuation of your life: 1 billion euros. The majority of the world is excluded from that. Of course, government bureaucrats all made sure they had spaces on the arks for “continuity of government.” The rich people bought their way on. And the poor remained ignorant that doomsday was on its way, or that there was a way to avoid it.

As Karl Marx noted, “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.” In the film and reality, the owners of capital survive and thrive on the exploitation of the poor. They only provide enough for the poor to subsist, if necessary, and accumulate the surplus capital. The Chinese workers who built the arks will be washed away in the tsunamis after they watch the rich and the bureaucrats board the arks. If people knew that their own deaths were imminent and that their governments were secretly building arks for their own survival, there would be revolution. So they kept the truth secret to permit the survival of a small group of people, mostly rich, in the same of “saving humanity.”

The movie attempts to reconcile this moral crisis with the African American President Thomas Wilson who has the courage to inform the American people that they’re all about to perish and to stay behind himself to die. He is brutally crushed in front of the White House by the USS John F. Kennedy. Adrian Helmsley, an African American geologist, notes that as he entered his quarters in the ark that they could fit ten people into a room meant for one. That is the inequality of capitalism. He also takes a stand near the end of the film and implores the world leaders on all the arks to let workers and the people who couldn’t get on a damaged ark into the viable ones. African Americans still experience inequality in the United States, so seeing them expose the truth while white people try to hide it is not surprising.  We should all be thankful for the real people who had the courage to stand up for truth, like Karl Marx.

Marx saw revolution and the transformation of social relations as the only means to resolving inequality. The only way 2012 could imagine a more egalitarian society was almost to entirely destroy it. Billions of people died, but a small elect group survived thanks to the arks. For the most part, rich people survived. Everyone else died. That narrative is the tale of human history. Contrast the mind sets of a Hollywood capitalist and a communist, Karl Marx. The capitalist wants to destroy excess capital, whether it’s building, machinery, or people. Communism is a fundamentally life-affirming outlook. Rather than kill 99% of humanity, Marx wanted to see greater equality for more. “Equality” under capitalism means more for a few and less for most.

try the true terrorists–the torturers

The wrong people will be on trial in New York City.  The US Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that the US government will seek the death penalty for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for his role in allegedly planning the 9/11 terror attacks.  Instead, the people who knew about and authorized the use of torture should be tried .  News articles have revealed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was transported between various secret CIA prisons in Europe, Africa and Asia.  While in US custody, he was waterboarded no fewer than 183 times.   Waterboarding makes victims feel like they are drowning and dying.  Other people in US custody have faced mock executions, sexual humiliation, and rape.

Barack Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay after he became President.  It is still open.  He has refused to open investigations into US torture. He also flipflopped on a pledge to release torture photos. The true extent of the torture that the US has conducted remains uncertain because it has been kept secret.  Until the truth comes out, we should believe accusations from the victims rather than the denials of the government.  We know that the US tortures.

Simply renaming torture “enhanced interrogation techniques” does not make torture legal.  The justice department authorized the use of torture, the Bush and Obama administrations knew about its use.  Congress was most likely told about the “techniques” in confidential briefings, but we may never know.  All we know is that the evidence of torture is bad.  It is embarrassing.  Obama and Defense Secretary Gates have said that release of the photographs would inflame people against the US. After the imperialist invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s a little late to worry about something like that.   Take heart–as the US kills human beings to expand markets, it sows the seeds of its own destruction.

Christopher Hitchens underwent waterboarding for Vanity Fair magazine.  He endured a total of eighteen seconds of waterboarding before he could handle no more.

Communism is Freedom

What do you think when you hear “communist freedom?”  Is this an oxymoron? In reality, it is not. Karl Marx helped to formulate the goals of communism.  Two of the most important goals were 1) a classless society which would eliminate class struggle and 2)the end of exploitation, which has been transformed through various stages of history.  In “The German Ideology” Marx identified the family with its “latent slavery” as the first exploitative relationship designed to meet the needs of a growing population.  When it no longer proved sufficient, tribal ownership and slavery were instituted.  After the tribal phase, human social relations created state ownership of the means of production.  At this point, the contradiction between citizens and slaves ossified.

Eventually human civilization reached the stage of advanced capitalist production, a stage that the French Revolution helped usher in.  Previously, primarily feudal relationships dictated that an aristocracy primarily controlled capital, passing it down from generation to generation.  However, a growing bourgeoisie class interested in increased profits successfully revolted and seized the means of production.  They also transformed it, moving from small guild-based production into the massive industrial production we are all familiar with.  The progress and accumulation of wealth among the bourgeoisie came at a price: the suffering and exploitation of the proletariat.

Marx also exposed the biggest lies of history.  All conflicts in human history were not religious, philosophical, or political.  If anyone has told you that the United States invaded Afghanistan because of terrorism–they lied.  All conflict in history has had material causes.  Either someone wanted to appropriate means of production, other forms of capital, or establish or maintain the exploitation of an underclass.  It is the responsibility of all people to look into, identify, and speak the truth about those causes.

Only revolution could bring about communism, Marx believed.  Communism would require a fundamental change in the means of production in a society, which would produce corresponding ideological changes. The number of exploiters in the world is small.  The richest 2% of the world control 50% of the world’s wealth. The average United States citizen has more than ten times the wealth of the average Indian citizen. The First World exploits the Third.

To end these inequities and realize greater human freedom–we are dedicated to communism.

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