Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s visit to Beijing, currently underway, is just as important as Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s higher profile visit last month. She will be searching for ways to stabilize badly damaged economic relations threatening harm to all sides. On her first day of meetings Friday, she and Chinese Premier Li Qiang made pledges to strengthen their economic ties…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Delusional thinking. Trapped inside a world of knee jerking. Multi-Generational Trauma on steroids. Fear thy self and thy enemy, so self-loathing in a bipolar self-aggrandizing flipping. Yo-yo thinking.
If you attempt to get a bead on the “situation,” you know, THE Situation, it is almost impossible to be and to live and to survive in this society without many forms of media and collective consciousness pollution from flooding even a 9 to 5 and 8 to midnight, M-Sunday worker, busting his butt with two jobs.
The air is a miasma that is impossible to shelter from, and the spirits are wandering hoping for some form of sanity in the living. No matter how you open up your phone — and it is always on, no, 24/7 — or how you navigate your working life, the dirty deeds of the marketers and madmen and the propagandists and behavioral mad scientists and political pirates come through. You can not shelter yourself completely, or even partly with any significant buttressing against the poison of our times.
No man or woman is an island, no matter how hard some of my email friends think they are that Island in the Slipstream having checked out of the good old USA or Canada. Living in Baja, setting up a simple palm frond hut and simple low water and low yield garden, sure, it is an Island Unto Itself. But, in Baja, in Mexico, with so many injustices around and near and possibly just down the road? How does one buffer one’s totality from all of that?
There is a certain instantaneous insanity that captures the world, even the ones in Nomad-Landia or Off-the Grid-Landia, because to be of this world, is to be of this world. Same old passport, USA, no matter where one might find his or her island of peace. More power to them. But the DNA is pretty much a determinant.
Yet, some of us are navigating other rough seas, and sure, what a deal, getting out of Dodge City to end up in some red-tiled roof town in the grape vineyard hills of Portugal, with full WiFi, a heck of a Saturday market, and stroller dancers on Wednesdays and free museum entry on Mondays. The Church bells, the uniformed school children kicking footballs and drinking lemonade.
It’s that easy, no? Good health, at least a cool $500,000 in some investment portfolio, and, hmm, minimum, what $4,000 a month, not counting many “incidentals”?
Okay back to earth and gravity. I was looking into school bus driving since Joe Biden’s and FDR’s Social Security is an utter joke. Actually, just van driving was the ad I answered, as in special needs. Oh, that old time monopoly religion, and that old time making money off of the taxpayer, and that old time transnational fun. I was skirted into getting a commercial driver’s license, because the school district is hurting for bus drivers. I wonder why.
With more than a century of experience in providing safe and reliable transportation to students across the U.S. and Canada, we at First Student understand the priorities of today’s K-12 community. We can help you build a transportation solution tailored to your community’s needs.
Think Brussels, as this company’s headquarters is ensconced well in one of those lovely expensive buildings:
EQT Infrastructure completes acquisition of First Student and First Transit, the market leading providers of essential North American transportation services.
Oh, so, who is selling the taxpayer down the proverbial river without a paddle? And, these companies, like First Student, has 55,000 mostly part-time drivers and others, and that is just one aspect of our so-called public schools selling the public down the private sewer hole. That’s right, the janitorial services and food services, run by another privatizing baron, Sodexo:
Founded in Marseille, France, in 1966 by Pierre Bellon, Sodexo is the global leader in services that improve Quality of Life, an essential factor in individual and organizational performance. Operating in 56 countries, Sodexo serves 100 million consumers each day through its unique combination of On-site Food and Facilities Management Services, Benefits & Rewards Services and Personal and Home Services.
Yikes, they used to be a big private prison builder:
Sodexo does not contract with any prison entities, detention centers, or correctional facilities, public or private, in the United States. Sodexo does not operate any prisons or detention centers in any of the countries with the largest number of prisons. We provide food for staff and prisoners, maintenance and, in some cases, prisoner skills training, education and programs in 84 prisons in mainland Europe and Chile. Sodexo also fully manages five prisons – all in the United Kingdom.
Ahh, the Old SodexoMarriot scam: Sodexho Marriott and the For-Profit Prison Industry
An article in The Independent reported that inmate Natasha Chin was found unresponsive in her cell in 2016 at the Sodexo-operated prison HMP Bronzefield; her death was attributed to “medical neglect” on the coroner’s report.
In 2021, at HMP Peterborough, female prisoners reported having inadequate access to menstrual care products and other sanitary items. In 2017, four HMP Peterborough inmates were unlawfully strip-searched.
Companies, such as Marriott International, and private individuals’ lawsuits against Sodexo allege discriminatory lawsuits and mistreatment of employees. Since 2000, Good Jobs First, a subsidy and work violation tracker, reported over $103 million has been paid in penalties by Sodexo. (source)
Oh, I had talks with food services and the administrations in two colleges, asking why local amazing caterers in Spokane could not get on our community college campuses with the cafeteria contract. I talked with local caterers who certainly could’ve fulfilled a healthy and creative food and beverage contract with the schools. And still following a local farmer-production ethos.
However, it’s all about economies of scale, underselling, and giving away (sic) funds at the end of the year for student and faculty groups. Legal (sic) bribery.
Staffing K12, and colleges, well, done by outsourced staffing and professional head hunter outfits. Money money money in every aspect of the taxpayer base.
Back to the First Student. I had to get fingerprinted, and then I took the commercial learner permit test, at $60 with Oregon DMV (I took two of the four tests over). Then, well, I was supposed to get some medical check. In the end, the $13.50 an hour for the training period that will eventually get to $19.00 an hour to have all those K12 students on the bus, pick up and drop off, that’s it for this multi-billion dollar monopoly. Tons of on-line junk, and again, more middle application services running part of the show.
Note: The local Air B & B is paying $21 an hour for that service. Sure, you have a time limit, and, sure, you have to photo each room, and upload to prove to the Vacasa outfit the job was done, and to shunt any complaints from the next renter who might lie about garbage still in the pails or sheets in the washer.
In the end, everything about capitalism, whether it is transnational, monopoly, casino, parasitic, what have you, is absolutely against the worker, counter any collective bargaining, without regard to health and safety, anti-getting ahead for the lower economic class, and antithetical to a great work environment, etc. We have no single payer affordable health care-dental care-mental health care. We have outrageous de-regulated air travel. We have no train travel of note. We have not local public busses or micro-vans running 24/7. And, mom and pops can’t deliver kids to and from school because of the super high insurance rates, the litigation threats and expensive fuel costs. Again, the money is made by having money, by deploying economies of scale, through sophisticated thuggery with their lobbies and lobbyists, by stashing politicians in their pockets, by going IPO with publicly traded status, and through the endless graft and grifting galore.
We have turned our own citizens against our own public services — bridges, roads, biologists, justice departments, criminal investigators, FCC, SEC, you name it, we have become a nation that hates anything that might be government regulation and citizen oversight, in favor of this childish attitude: “the companies and corporations, they want to do good, because they have kids and families too, so why would they pollute them or endanger them . . . so let the corporations run America?” This mentality gets some of us to the point where a few vaunted ones and some middle class ones just want to get hell out of the USA because of these top reasons: broaden your horizons; moving abroad is a wonderful challenge; cheaper than you’d expect; new kinds of food; better education prospects; the main reason that people move abroad is employment; learn a new tongue; let go of the stress and let your new environs take over; build your confidence; lose your attachment to things.
This is the rationale for the new expats who want a fully WiFi, Zoom ready community up in the hills with the sheep, yodelers and fresh cheese.
Where are Americans emigrating to and why?
In 2015, the most popular countries for expats of all nations to move to are:
I’ll take Andre Vltchek’s DV piece, Stop Millions Of Western Immigrants!
Tens of millions of European and North American immigrants, legal and illegal, have been flooding both the cities and countryside in Asia, Latin America, and even Africa.
Western migrantsare charging like bulls and the ground is shaking under their feet; they are fleeing Europe and North America in hordes. Deep down they cannot stand their own lifestyle, their own societies, but you would hardly hear them pronounce it. They are too proud and too arrogant! But, after recognizing innumerable areas of the world as suitable for their personal needs – as safe, attractive and cheap – they simply pack and go!
We are told that some few hundred thousand African and Asian exiles are now causing a great “refugee crises” all over Europe! Governments and media are spreading panic, borders are being re-erected and armed forces are interrupting the free movement of people. But the number of foreigners illegally entering Europe is incomparably smaller than the number of Western migrants that are inundating, often illegally, virtually all corners of the world.
No “secret paradise” can be hidden any longer and no country can maintain its reasonable price structure. Potential European,North American and Australian immigrants are determined to enrich themselves by any means, at the expense of local populations.They are constantly searching for bargains: monitoring prices everywhere, ready to move at the spur of the moment, as long as the place offers some great bargains, has lax immigration laws, and a weak legal framework.
Everything pure and untapped gets corrupted. With lightning speed, Western immigrantsare snatching reasonably priced real estate and land. Then, they impose their lifestyle on all those “newly conquered territories”. As a result, entire cultures are collapsing or changing beyond recognition.
So, here we are, the transnational, economies of scale, end of mom and pop shops, with a big fish eats little fish mentality as oppressive as anything the Amazon Publishing, Starbucks Coffee, Well Fargo Banking can deliver us. Pick an industry or service industry, and you can see what monopoly looks like and how each year the shifting baseline moves closer and closer to us being those useless eaters and workers and breathers. Until, taking care of precious children, youth, before and after school, on slippery and icy roads, we get paid as bus drivers less than, well (not to knock people who clean for a living), but toilet and laundry cleaners.
Do your own research — check out the top mining companies, top offensive weapons companies, top lumber companies, top grocery chains, top insurance, top medical services, etc., etc. You end up with fewer choices, bigger barons.
And we aren’t just consumers and marks and interest rates and fines and penalties and fees and closing costs and overdrafts and tickets and maintenance fees and tolls and VATs to them. Each way, each step in this Western Culture, each transaction, each nanosecond that might give “them” a chance at marking us for rip-off, i.e. profits, we become useful idiots and useless everything else.
And we come down to this — public schools, taxpayers, footing the bill for major investment companies that rule the yellow bus mafia?. This is the way of Capitalism. You get $19 an hour driving a bus with school children, but $21 an hour cleaning up after a bunch of beer-drinking, dog-peeing, messy and dirty Air B & B customers.
Orientation
The golden age of left-wing economists
In part because the 1960s was still a period of capitalist abundance, there were few socialists in Yankeedom who pointed to the economic contradictions of capitalism as a motivator for the coming revolution. “Western Marxists” ignored the economy, imagining capitalism could go on forever. As first anarcho-communist and then as Situationists, the group I was in never talked about any economic laws that would drive the economy into a crisis. But a couple of my comrades, one from France, had been closely studying a book by Lyn Marcus (later his public name became Lyndon LaRouche) called Dialectical Economics. Here was a wake-up call for all of us to get back to economics, especially since by the late 1970s the days of economic abundance were over.
Throughout the next thirty years, good economic Marxists like Richard Wolff, David Harvey, Robert Brenner and John Bellamy Foster have carried the torch for political economy. However, it was not until The Great Recession of 2008 and the Occupy movement in 2011-2012 really brought economic crisis into the foreground of life in Mordor. Since then, more Marxist economists have emerged such as Michael Perelman, Michael Roberts, and Anwar Shaikh. They have all added depth and scope. Non-Marxist economics such as Michael Hudson, Steve Keen and Jack Rasmus have made acidic analyses of finance capital. The great value in all these economists is that they speak in natural language, not mathematical language. This makes it easier for the Yankee population to understand them.
Varieties of capitalist crises theory and their rivals
In his book The Long Depression Michael Roberts asks four key questions from which he derives eight possible answers about the nature of economic turmoil or even whether there is a crisis at all.
Within the camp which says no, a second question is answered.
1b) Do periodic fluctuations need fixing?
If the answer is “yes” you are a Keynesian like Paul Krugman. If the answer is “no” you are a libertarian like Milton Friedman. For the libertarians capitalism only goes through “business cycles”.
Within the camp that says “yes”, that capitalism is subject to crisis, a second question is asked:
If the answer is “no” you are an underconsumptionist like Marxists David Harvey or Rosa Luxemburg.
If the answer is “yes” about the kernel of the crisis found in production, there is another question:
2b) Are crises more than struggle over wages and profit shares?
If no, you are a profit-squeeze supporter. Economics associated with this are Baron and Sweezy and Richard Wolff.
If the answer to the kernel of the crisis is found in production is “yes”, a further question should be:
3a) Are crises integral to the accumulation crisis?
If the answer is “yes” you follow Marx’s argument about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. This is advocated by Michael Roberts, Anwar Shaikh and Robert Brenner.
If the answer to the question is crisis integral to the accumulation process is “no” then a further question is asked.
4a) Does extra-consumption come from outside the system?
If the answer is “yes” you are a follower of Rosa Luxemburg or David Harvey and claim that capitalism has limited resources and needs imperialism to survive.
If the answer is “no” to the question then there is second question.
4b) Does extra consumption come from state intervention?
If the answer is “yes” you are a post Keynesian such as Steve Keen.
If the answer is “no” you are a Malthusian.
In this article I will be drawing from David Harvey’s book The Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism. I picked this book, not because I agree with Harvey’s theory of crisis, but because he lays out the contradictions so exhaustively. I am not a political economist by training but I have studied hard to understand him. What is most important for my readers to understand is that there are a great number of reasons that capitalism is in very, very, very serious trouble.
What is a contradiction?
Harvey says a contradiction is when two seemingly opposing forces are simultaneously present within a particular situation, an entity, a process or an event. A contradiction can be produced either by innovations, disasters or slow decline.
Contradiction 1 Exchange-value is More Important than Use Value Though Use-Value Matters More in Real Life
The use value of a house is contained in the cost of its production. This includes all the materials that went into building the house as well as the cost of labor to complete the house. The use value of the house is its protection from bad weather conditions, prowlers, a place of comfort, privacy and social reproduction, including sex and taking care of children. The use value of a commodity is relatively stable.
But the exchange value of housing is not fixed. It is interdependent on surrounding houses. Property values can go down on my house if my neighbors’ houses are not kept up, even if my house has been kept up. On the other hand, a house that is not kept up can sell for a high price if it is located in a gentrifying neighborhood. Harvey points out that there have been property market crashes in 1928, 1973, 1987 and 2008. The contradiction is that use-values are captive to exchange values and this constantly destabilizes the economy. Harvey says exchange value is always in the driver’s seat.
Contradiction 2 Money is Valued Above the Social Value of Labor
Harvey identifies four constructive functions that money provides:
But there is a gap between money and the labor that ultimately produces it. Money hides the social labor that went into its material form. The problem is that money, which is supposed to be used to measure value, itself become a kind of commodity— that is money capital. Its use value is that it can be used to produce more value profit or surplus value. Its exchange value is, for example, an interest payment.
Commodity money such as gold and silver are rooted in tangible commodities with definite physical qualities like:
The problem is these commodity moneys are awkward to use on a daily basis of coin tokens. Bits of paper and then electronic moneys became much more practical in the exchange of goods. They are good at storing value but not so good in circulating commodities.
The problem is also the desire for finance capital as a means of social power becomes an end in itself. This distorts the concrete relation of the money that would be required simply to facilitate exchange. It also throws a monkey wrench into the supposed rationality of capitalist markets. Harvey writes that one of the most dangerous contradictions of capital is that of compounding growth so that with the abandonment of the metallic base, money could be printed infinitely by whoever was authorized to do so. This is exactly what is happening now with the Fed freely printing money without any foundation in gold or any real social wealth. Money out-of-control from material products is what leads to financial depression.
Contradiction 3 Private Property and the State Often have Conflicting Interests
Keeping refugees and immigrants out vs the need for cheap labor
The kind of rationality the state typically imposes is illustrated by its urban and regional planning practices.The job of the nation-state is to protect their borders from unwanted refugees or immigrants. On the other hand, capitalists need migrants to work under-the-table for dirt cheap wages. Capitalists indirectly fight with the state over the status of migrant workers.
Capitalists vs the matriarchal state
Secondly, the state can be divided into its matriarchal and patriarchal functions. Matriarchal functions include unemployment insurance, pensions, welfare, road construction and repair. The patriarchal state functions include the military, the police and prisons. Capitalists are against the matriarchal functions of the state because they cut into profits. However, capitalists are more than willing to invest in the police to protect them, prisons to house the unemployed or the military to take the natural resources of other countries.
Patriotism vs global trade
Even within the patriarchal state there are contradictions. On one hand the military is very patriotic and expect that people will buy Yankee cars. Harvey says the state is interested in the accumulation of wealth and power on a territorial basis. On the other hand, capitalists will seek to make a profit anywhere in the world and will import foreign cars and many other goods. As many of you know, capitalist oil businesses were making profits from Germany during the Nazi era and the Yankee state had to force them to leave.
Neocon war of all against all vs liberal laissez-faire trade policies
Lastly, the patriarchal state often opposes capitalists in its international ambitions. For example, neocon foreign policy war mongers like Victoria Nuland wants war with Russia and China. Liberal capitalists on the other hand, want to trade with China. Capital is not the only agent involved in the pursuit of technological advantages in civil society. The state apparatus looks for superior weaponry, surveillance and other methods for policing the population.
Contradiction 4 Capitalists Acting in Their Own Short-term Self-interest Undermine the Conditions of Their Own Reproduction
If the use value of a product and the price of the commodity were the same, there would be no room for capitalist profit. One the one hand, the common wealth created by social labor comes in a great variety of use values from the most basic knives and forks, to the food we eat, to the cars we drive. to the houses we live in and the clothes we wear. The capitalist private appropriation of common wealth along with the expropriation of social labor is legally sanction under normal conditions of trade. But there is a dark unseen and illegal side of the market which Harvey includes such as robbery, thievery, swindling, corruption, usury, predation, violence which goes unaccounted for. In addition, there is market cornering, price fixing and Ponzi schemes. All these activities weaken the socio-production process. Harvey writes:
It is stupid to seek to understand the world of capital without engaging with the drug cartels, traffickers in arms and the various mafias and other criminal forms of organization that play such a significant role in world trade. (53)
All this swindling and double-dealing is labor expended in counter-production which weakens the amount of energy left for production. This production includes the amount of wages paid and products consumed by workers to get to the next day.
Contradiction 5 The Class Struggle Over the Proportion of Wages given to Workers as Part of the Working Day
Harvey states that one of the most outstanding aspects of the capitalist system is that it does not appear to rely on cheating. For Marxists, labor has two aspects. On one hand, labor as human species is activity which distinguishes us from the rest of the animals and produces all real social wealth. One the other hand, there is labor power which is a commodity the capitalist rents for roughly half the working day. This “fairness” of the wage rests on the assumption that laborers have an individualized private property right over the labor they are capable of furnishing. But in reality, workers have a social property right over their labor because the cooperative social labor of all the workers in factories and offices produces all the wealth.
The commodification of labor power is the only way to solve a seemingly intractable contradiction within the circulation of capital. This contradiction is that in a fully functioning capitalist system, where coercion, cheating and robbery are supposedly ruled out, the exchanges should be based on the principle of equality – we exchange use values of products with each other and the value of those use values should be roughly the same. For all capitalists to realize a positive profit requires the existence of more value at the end of the day than there was at the beginning means an expansion of total output of social labor. Without that expansion there can be no capital. Zero growth defines a condition of crisis for capital. Here there is no room for profit. So where does the profit come from? As Harvey says, there must exist a commodity that has the capacity to create more value than it has itself. That commodity is labor power. And this is what capital relies upon for its own reproduction. It’s the exploitation of the extra five or six hours of the workers’ pay that is pocketed by capitalists. In reaction to workers joining in unions for higher wages and better working conditions capitalists will:
So there is a long-term, relentless struggle between capitalists and labor over the proportion of wages given to workers on a given day.
Capitalist contradictions about education
Another part of this conflict is over education. On one hand, capitalists want to keep workers as uneducated as possible so that they find out as little of the workings of capitalism as possible. But on the other hand, capitalists must make workers more creative in order to fix problems on the job. The problem for capitalists is they can’t control how the workers may use their creativity on the job to undermine capitalism one way or another.
Contradiction 6 The Contradiction Between Fixed and Circulating Capital
Capital investment takes three forms: as an investment in fixed capital – machinery, plants, land and investment and an investment in variable capital which is labor power. Labor power is remunerated afterproduction has occurred, whereas the means of production are usually paid for prior to production (fixed capital). But capital also invents the circulation of commodities. When the commodity is sold, then capital becomes liquid again. In the circulation of commodities, the speed of its circulation is also important. If one capitalist can circulate their commodities faster than another they have a certain competitive advantage. So they attempt to accelerate the turnover time of capital.
Limitations of making a profit on fixed capital
However, there are limits to the speed of circulation. To paraphrase Harvey, if I want to make steel, the iron ore and coal are still buried in the ground and it takes a lot of time to dig them out. There are not enough workers close by who are willing to sell their labor power. I need to build a blast furnace and that takes time. There are physical barriers to reducing this turn-around time to zero. Workers, furthermore, are not automatons. They may lay down their tools or slow down their labor process. (73-74)
Once the steel is finished it has to be sold. The commodity can sit on the market for some time before the buyer shows up. The capitalist has a vested interest in securing and accelerating the turnover time of consumption. One of the ways is to produce steel that rusts so fast it needs rapid replacement: planned obsolescence (73-74)
These problems center on the category of long-term investments in fixed capital.
In order for capital to circulate freely in space and time, physical infrastructures and built environments must be created that are fixed in space – anchored on the land in the form of roads, railways, communication towers and fiber-optics plants, airports and harbors, factory buildings offices, houses, schools, hospitals. More mobile forms of fixed capital are ships, trucks, planes and railway engines. (75)
Capital in danger of social sclerosis
The part which is moveable capital cannot be replaced during the item’s lifetime without loss of value. As time goes by the sheer mass of this long-lived and often physically immobile capital for both production and consumption increaserelative to capital that is continuously flowing. Whole sites are abandoned and wasted as in the rust belts of Mordor. On one hand, in order for capital to circulate freely in space and time, physical infrastructures and built environments must be created that are fixed in space. Yet capital has to periodically break out of the constraints imposed by the world it has constructed. As Harvey says, it is always in mortal danger of becoming sclerotic. Why?
Capital is forever in danger of becoming more sclerotic over time because of the increasing amount of fixed capital required. Fixed and circulating capital are in contradiction with each other but neither can exist without the other. The flow of that part of capital that facilitates circulation has to be slowed down. But the value of immobile fixed capital (like the container port terminal) can be realized only through its use. It is generally much slower.
From physical goods to spectacles
One solution for capitalists is to sell events rather than physical commodities. Harvey says there is a huge difference between, for example, the live transmission of a World Cup football match and lugging around bottled water, steel girders, furniture or perishable items like soft fruit, hot pork pies, milk and bread. Commodities are variably mobile depending upon their qualities and transportability. Production, with some exceptions, like transportation itself is the least mobile form of capital. It is usually locked down in place for a time. In shipbuilding it is considerable.
Contradiction 7 The Contradictory Nature of Low Wages vs Capitalist Realization
The goal of capitalism is to sell as many products as it can at the cheapest possible price. But in the process of making a profit the capitalist must:
The problem for capitalists is that if wages are kept low the aggregate demand of laborers won’t be enough to buy the products off the shelf. So if the cost of social reproducing of the laborers is being forced back into the household, then those laborers will be less likely to buy goods and services off the market. Lack of aggregate effective demand creates a serious barrier to the continuity of capital accumulation. Working class consumer power is a significant component of that effective demand. Yet if the capitalist insists on paying minimum wage how can the workers buy the products?
Between 1945 and the mid-1970s, the problem for capitalist was in the production of enough surplus valuebecause of unions were strong and wages high. When unions became weaker, wages dropped beginning in the 1970s. Then the problem for capitalists was was not in the achievement of extracting surplus value but in cultivating conditions for its realization since workers had less money to buy commodities. This is why in the early 1970s capitalists began issuing credit cards to workers in order for capitalist profits to be realized.
Contradiction 8 Contradiction and Alienation of Labor
Harvey says there is an important distinction between the technical and social division of labor. By technical he means a separate task within a complex series of operations, that anyone can do. By social he means the specialized task that only a person with adequate training or social standing can do, like a doctor, or an architect. In the technological division labor, the unity of mental and manual aspects of laboring was broken.
The meaning of the term “alienation” has psychological and sociological components. As a passive psychological term, it means to become isolated from connection to others whether at work or in leisure. As an active psychological state, it means being angry and hostile or feeling oppressed, deprived or disposed of. The person acts out that anger, lashing out without any clear definition. Teenage rebellion movies of years ago, The Wild One or Rebel Without a Cause, are examples.
As beautifully laid out by Bertell Ollman, sociologically alienation means the worker is estranged from his or her product of labor as well as the process of work. He/she is also alienated from other workers, from nature and from their own creativity. As Marx said it is only outside of work that the worker has the possibility to achieve any personal fulfillment. Uneven geographical development in the divisions of labor and the parallel increase in social inequality in life choices, are exacerbating that sense of alienation. This creates a danger for capitalists in the form of labor unions, strikes, labor parties and agitation for socialism. On one hand, the accumulation of capital requires squeezing the life out of the worker. On the other hand, this repression creates militancy on the part of workers.
Contradiction 9 Automation Might Shrink the Ratio of Necessity and Freedom vs Automation as the Driver od Unemployment
One of the mythological stories told by capitalists is that technological innovation would lead to more leisure time for workers. Well, since about 1970 in Yankeedom, we have seen an increase in the amount of full-time work from 40 hours to at least 50 hours per week. This is because capitalist motivation is not to create more leisure for workers, but to replace workers, especially militant workers, with machines.
On the other hand, automation and artificial intelligence now provide us with abundant means to achieve the Marxian dream of freedom beyond the realm of necessity. In other words, the population could have more leisure time to use their creativity for new inventions, new arts and new sciences. Full advantage could be taken of automation and artificial intelligence. But for the capitalists the more time that has been released from production, the more imperative it has become (for the capitalist) for the workers to absorb their leisure time in consumption. It has no room for authentically free time which neither produces nor consumes commercial wealth.
Contradiction 10 Technological Innovation vs Monopoly Capitalism
From competition to monopoly
According to Harvey, the development of technology first became a focus for capitalists in the second half of the 19thcentury with the rise of the machine tool industry. Harnessing energy like the steam engine was applied to multiple industries. The classic Marxist argument is that through capitalist competition, the productive forces (technology) increase and outdistance the capitalist capacity to use this productive power. This overabundance of products creates the conditions for socialism. But what Marx didn’t anticipate is that capital demonstrates a trend towards monopoly rather than competition. This is a less favorable environment for innovation.
Wealth of Nations is the founding myth of liberal economic theory. Capital is imagined as constructed by a plethora of molecular and competitive collisions of individual capitalists moving freely and searching for profitable opportunities within a chaotic sea of economic activity. But in fact by the end of the 19th century, corporations has overwhelmed Adam Smith’s competitive invisible hand. All this is news to market fundamentalist economists. Right-wing market libertarians present monopolies as an exception to the rule, rather than the predominant way of life under capitalism. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Walmart and Apple are all examples of oligarchies tending towards monopolies. The tendencies in many sectors of the economy – pharmaceuticals, oil, airlines, agribusiness, banking software, media and social media – suggest strong tendencies towards oligopoly, if not monopoly. In fact, says Harvey, most capitalists, if given the choice prefer to be monopolists rather than competitors
Lenin saw capital moving into a new phase of monopoly power associated with imperialism at the turn of the 20th century when the big industrial cartels combined with finance capital to dominate the leading national economies. This view re-emerged in the 1960’s with Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy’s book Monopoly Capitalism. The crisis of the 1970s – stagflation and inflation – was widely interpreted by Marxists as a typical crisis of monopoly capital.
Why monopolies put the brakes on innovation
Capitalism today limits the rate of technological innovation because:
All this means is that that the because the capitalist must speed up the production and consumption process, it is far from the ideal conditions of innovation. Scientific innovators are in no hurry and want their products to last. The contradiction is that capitalists want scientific innovation to create ever new processes and products. Yet in their efforts to shorten the turnover time of products, they undermine the innovative processes themselves. They will not be able to innovate at the pace that would develop the productive forces and would stagnate and shrink the rate of profit.
Contradiction 11 Globalization of Capital: Promises and Perils
The division of labor within capitalism is now taking place at a world-wide scale. Harvey writes that what is now in place is radically different from anything that existed prior to 1850.
There are three sectional classifications of the division of labor between:
On one hand a world market in grains can forestall a local crop failure. At its best all capitalist countries have the technology to support each other during famines, extreme weather, floods, earthquakes and droughts. The fact that capitalist countries limit these interventions to countries that are their allies does not limit their potential to serve the whole world.
One the other hand, as Harvey points out today the clothing factories in Bangladesh, the electronics factories of southern China, the maquiladora factories strung along the Mexican border or the chemical complexes in Indonesia are all interdependent. Small disruptions in a supply chain can have very large consequences. A strike in a key car parts factory in one region of the world can bring the whole production system to a halt everywhere. Supply chain blockages thanks to Covid result in delays in both the process of production and the delays on the product.
Contradiction 12 Uneven Geographical Developments: Super-Concentrations of Production and Wastelands
The capitalist division of labor has reached a world scale and this results in uneven pockets of production with high concentration of work in some areas and wastelands in other areas. Time is money for capitalism. Traversing space takes both time and money. As much as possible the near elimination of transport costs and times is a factor in location decision making. This permits capitalists to explore different profit opportunities in widely disparate places.
Harvey writes that what arises is “agglomeration” economies where many different capitals cluster together. For example, car parts and tire industries locate close to car plants. Different firms and industries can share facilities and access labor skills, information and infrastructures. However other regions may become wastelands increasingly bereft of activities. They get caught in a downward spiral of depression and decay. The result is uneven regional concentrations of wealth, power and influence. Affections and loyalties to particular places and cultural forms are destroyed and treated as anachronisms. Large blotches of the world become wastelands where nothing is grown and people can no longer live.
Capital never has to address its systemic failings because it moves them around geographically. Since myopic capitalists treat these wastelands as “externalities” the problem grows worse. The heads of nation-states are enslaved to capitalists and are in no position to address the geographical mess capitalists have created. There are, however, limits to continuous centralization through agglomeration. It results in overcrowding and rising pollution. In addition, labor may become better organized in its struggles against exploitation because of its regional concentration.
Contradiction 13 Finance Capital vs the Physical Economy
There are two ways in which capitalist crises might be produced:
1) chronic inequalities produce imbalances between production and realization; and
2) financialization of profit means capitalists will not invest in their own infrastructure.
In the case of financialization, what makes the current phase special is the phenomenal acceleration in the speed of circulation of finance capital and the reduction in financial transaction costs. If all capitalists seek to live off finance, insurance and real estate interests and are just speculating in asset value or living off capital gains the gap between finance capital and the real physical economy grows.
The problem of compound interest
Harvey points out that – Michael Hudson in the Bubble and Beyond is one of the only political economists who takes the issue of compound growth seriously. He says that most people do not understand very well the mathematics of compound interest.
Nor do they understand the phenomenon of compounding growth and the potential dangers it can pose. Harvey writes that compound interest curve rises very slowly for quite a while and then starts to accelerate and by the end the curve becomes a singularity as it sails off into infinity. Harvey goes into much more detail on pages 223-228 of his book.
There is one form that capital takes which permits accumulation without limit and that is the financial form. Today finance capital is now unchained from any physical limitations. In Mordor today the Fed issues fiat moneys that can be created without limit. Adding a few zeros to the quantity of money in the circulation is no problem for them. The danger is that the result will be a crisis of inflation. The contradiction is in disparities between accumulation process that is necessarily exponential and the conditions that might limit the capacity of exponential growth. These conditions are the requirements to invest in the physical aspects of the economy such as buildings, harnessing of energy and infrastructure.
Fictious capital instruments
Besides the printing of fiat money another financial instrument in the purchase of assets includes debt claims. Harvey writes an asset is simply a capitalized property title. This was paralleled by the creation of wholly new assets markets within the financial system itself such as currency futures, credit default swaps, and CDOs.
This was fictitious capital feeding off and generating even more fictitious capital.
Harvey writes there is a labyrinth of countervailing claims that were almost impossible to value except by way of some mix of future expectation, beliefs and outright crazy short-term betting in unregulated markets with no prospect of any long-term payoff.
Contradiction 14 Capital’s Relation to Nature
Liberal environmental politics has preferred to ignore entirely the fact that it is capitalism that produced the current ecological crisis. Harvey writes that they nibble away at issues on the periphery of the capitalist system while they never reach the core of the system that is producing the problem. “Deep ecologists” wrongly call Marxism “Promethean” which has a disregard for nature and claims that only human history matters. But John Bellamy Foster has dedicated the better part of his life arguing for the belief that Marx was ecologically sensitive and had a concept of capitalism as creating a “metabolic” rift with nature.
In addition, by training David Harvey is a geographer and has written books on a Marxist criticism of what capitalism has done to the natural world. The change in climate and the frequency of severe weather events is increasing. Catastrophic local events can be readily accommodated by capital since a predatory disaster capitalism is ready to go. But pollution problems do not get solved, only moved around in uneven benefits and losses. The capitalist system is not prepared for the slow, cancerous degradations. Harvey says that whereas the problems of in past were typically localized, they have now become more regionalized such as acid deposition, low level of ozone concentration, stratospheric ozone holes, habitat destruction, species extinction and loss of biodiversity.
Conclusion
Harvey points out that this one-at-a-time presentation of capitalist contradictions does not address that all these contradictions are feeding into each other forming an organic whole. Do capitalists understand these contradictions? For the most part, no. Most are enthralled with market fundamentalist theories. A minority have read Marx. But even so, their short-term material interests as capitalists blocks them from understanding the full ramifications of their system. So capitalists as a class do not understand their system. They blithely roll along accumulating finance capital and pay no attention to the fourteen fractures I’ve identified. What problems occur are dismissed as “business cycles”. As the fractures deepen we can count on capitalists to ramp up their ideology and distract us with more extreme forms entertainment, including football games, escapist movies and increasing violence in movies coupled with special effects.
The post Multiple Economic Fractures in Mordor first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
[T]he heroism of normality in Cuba does not generate headlines.
— Cuban revolutionary journalist Rosa Miriam Elizalde
July 11, 2021 in Cuba quickly went from legitimate, valid, peaceful street protests to violent provocations and destructive acts directed by US clients in Cuba. Thousands of people in many cities, towns, and working-class neighborhoods took to the streets in response to harsh, deteriorating conditions — the worst of the Covid Delta infections, hospitalizations, and deaths on the island before the application of the Cuban-vaccines; the electricity blackouts in the scorching Cuban summer; on top of the existing shortages of food, gasoline, and medicines — and perceived shortcomings in government measures and action. This was accompanied by the highly orchestrated, parallel activation of longstanding counter-revolutionary networks, catalyzed and coordinated by US “social media” platforms with clear, documented threads leading to Washington and its minions. Of course, these counter-revolutionary networks are financially sustained and politically directed by US government agencies.
While most of the protests remained peaceful, there were significant levels of violence in numerous neighborhoods, including assaults on police and other citizens; the destruction and looting of public and private homes, properties, and businesses; and overturning cars and dumping garbage in the streets. Some 1300 Cuban citizens were initially arrested and detained, with most subsequently released. Hundreds have been charged and tried over recent months in judicial proceedings that are ongoing, around 70 on relatively minor charges. Heavy sentences have been handed down for those convicted so far – based on documented evidence with the right to defense council and due process – of the violent crimes referred above.
Fizzle and Collapse
As the July 11 anniversary comes and goes, its ephemeral character became apparent within days — if not hours — as the “unprecedented uprising against communist tyranny” and for “freedom” fizzled out and collapsed.
The first line of defense for the Cuban revolutionary socialist government, under the leadership of President Miguel Diaz-Canel, was not “repression” (of course, the violent riots perpetrated directly and indirectly by US clients had to be quickly contained and stopped by force) but was political, on two intertwined levels, in the historic traditions of the Cuban Revolution and the undefeated legacy of Fidel Castro and his extraordinary leadership team in defense of Cuban sovereignty and socialism.
Within hours and days of the July 11 protests and subsequent counter-revolutionary violence, the Cuban revolutionaries and working class vanguard took to the streets in mass counter-mobilizations which made crystal clear what the actual political and social relationship of forces on the island is.
Part of this revolutionary mobilization was the initiatives of the Diaz-Canel government to directly go to neighborhoods and communities and cities where protests erupted. President Diaz-Canel was continually present on the ground, not behind legions of heavily armed police and military, not before a staged, hand-picked audience, but rather to listen to grievances and project advances and solutions within the limitations of the asphyxiating blockade.
The political tone taken by the Cuban president and government was not to castigate and demonize those who took to the streets on July 11 as participants, but to differentiate between legitimate and valid grievances and demands and the US-directed counterrevolutionary subversion and violence. This was complemented and intertwined with the actions of the mass organizations – the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR); Confederation of Cuban Workers (CTC), Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), and the mass organizations of small farmers, students, artists and intellectuals, and more — that are the grass-roots mass expressions of Cuba’s participatory, socialist “democracy,” which is, of course, distinct from the forms and practice of capitalist parliamentary “democracy,” a subject of great theoretical and practical-political importance (and for a different essay I would like to take up in the future.)
A July 10, 2022 NBC News piece grudgingly states that:
Since the protests a year ago, Cuba has taken steps to try to address discontent relating to conditions in the island, including renovating about 1,000 impoverished neighborhoods. President Miguel Díaz-Canel has also stressed the ‘urgent effort’ of addressing ‘opportunity’ — rather than ‘assistance’— aimed at the country’s youth, including tackling issues of employment, training and housing.
(See attached speech by Miguel Diaz-Canel.
From Trump to Biden
After July 11, 2021 bipartisan Washington and the capitalist media oligopolies unleashed a propaganda blitzkrieg against the Cuban government. This campaign unrealistically (wildly so!) raised expectations and illusions across the board in Washington; this was especially the case with right-wing Cuban-Americans energized under the Donald Trump Administration. (President Joseph Biden’s policies and broken campaign promises to alleviate or reverse Trump’s deepening of the blockade also accelerated the growth of Puentes de Amor-Bridges of Love and the inspiring Caravan movement of Cuban-Americans against the blockade, which have spread across the US, Canada, and worldwide.)
The Biden Administration instead shamelessly used the July 11, 2021 events as a cover for continuing and deepening the very same Trump measures. From Trump to Biden there was a seamless transition in these stepped-up “regime change” programs and economic asphyxiation.
Perhaps most critical in this further imperialist turning-of-the-screws under Biden and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was their decision to keep Cuba on the US State Department list of “state sponsors of terrorism,” reinstated in the last days of the Trump Administration. This obscenity is a stunningly bogus and two-faced fabrication that reversed the Barack Obama-Biden Administration’s removal of Cuba from the notorious list in May 2015. Revolutionary Cuba has been a historic and contemporary recipient of terrorism, mostly US-based, including directly and indirectly, from the US government. Inclusion on the lists makes state and private economic entities wary of economic exchanges with Cuba in fear of extraterritorial US sanctions.
“Repression”
Faced with the political debris from the post-7-11 failure of what had been the most concerted and coordinated stab at “regime change” in decades, Washington politicians and the capitalist media are settling on a common “explanation” for the actual course of events. The “explanation” comes down to the “exceptional” efficacy of Cuban government and state “repression.” That is, the ability of Cuba’s government and mobilized majority to defend itself and their sovereign workers state from the US blockade and US subversive projects, policies, and programs which are longstanding and well-funded. This is bipartisan Washington’s political line and rationalization for the collapse and routing of their client base and agencies…and they’re sticking to it!
A typical account in the NBC News online piece cited above quotes Juan Pappier, a “senior Americas researcher” at “Human Rights Watch”: “Over decades, the Cuban government has been able to develop a machinery of repression, which is unique in its sophistication in the Western Hemisphere,” said Pappier. What Human Rights Watch means by “unique in its sophistication” is that the Cuban Revolution and its revolutionary Marxist leadership has been particularly effective in defending itself against ongoing US bellicosity over many decades. That is fairly unique in the contemporary history of Latin American, Central American, and Caribbean revolutionary processes which necessarily come up against US subversion and intervention.
(See my article for a description of this notoriously anti-Cuban, Washington-echoing Human Rights Watch outfit.)
It is an illusion and a diversion to frame the failure of Washington and its clients inside Cuba to gain serious political traction and political momentum as the result of “repression.” It is, of course, the duty and obligation of the revolutionary socialist Cuban government to counter and defeat Washington’s permanent, subversive, “regime change” schemes. And the Cuban revolutionaries are damn good at it from experience! After all, necessity is the mother of invention.
What does not exist in Cuba for the counter-revolutionary forces under the direction of Washington is a mass base with a united organization and program. Their base is in Washington and part of the polarized Cuban-American community in Miami and elsewhere. Otherwise, inside Cuba what these forces have left are just various networks and money-laundering operations with threads that all lead to Washington. These groups do not exist to lead a mass counter-revolutionary movement for which they have no significant mass base, but to be points of support for any potential direct US military intervention and invasion under the “right” conditions of economic and social collapse from the US economic and political war.
Anyone with the slightest familiarity with Cuba’s mass participatory decision-making political forms and electoral processes – certainly distinct from the parliamentary democratic forms of many capitalist states — knows that freewheeling debate and contention within the Revolution is a norm that exists alongside necessary and voluntary revolutionary unity under the conditions of permanent economic, financial, and political siege by the US imperialist superpower. Within that crucible – not at all what any revolutionary Marxist would consider ideal – “socialist democracy” advances and flourishes. A stunning example today is the rich and sometimes contentious, nationwide debates, within a mass deliberative process, over modernization and updating of Cuba’s renamed Families Code that includes issues of same-sex marriage, the rights of children, and much more.
The caricature of a cowed and tyrannized Cuban population anxious to be “liberated” by a benevolent Uncle Sam is nonsense that has gained little political traction beyond the Washington and Miami policymaker’s bubble. Do most of them even believe it themselves?
Cracks in the Blockade’s Armor?
It is never easy for a bully to back down. Under some pressure to avoid a united boycott of the June 2022 US-hosted Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles Summit from numerous countries – including perhaps the entire bloc of Caribbean states constituting CARICOM – the Biden Administration made some limited concessions – easing family remittances (although mechanisms have yet to be established; loosening travel restrictions and allowing new airline routes; and liberalizing “people-to-people” exchanges (although normal tourist travel remains banned and hotel access for US citizens and legal residents is severely restricted) – that cushioned the Summit from a humiliating debacle. CARICOM, with the honorable exception of PM Ralph Gonsalves of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines – ended up in the room – although, once there, the remarks of CARICOM members blasted the exclusions of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua and US anti-Cuba policies from the floor.
At the same time the Biden Administration is under mounting pressure from the growing numbers of Cubans who are emigrating under the accumulating harshness of economic conditions that Biden’s blockade has maintained in continuity with Donald Trump’s policies. This is an inevitable consequence of the US economic war against Cuba. These numbers are up to over 140,000 leaving Cuba aiming to enter the US, the largest numbers since the so-called Mariel boat lift of 1980 that reached 125,000.
The Primary Contradiction
The triumph of the mobilized Cuban people and revolutionary socialist government over the Washington-directed “soft coup” was already apparent in the immediate aftermath of the July 11, 2021 events. This political triumph was intertwined with the successful development and production of Cuban vaccines against COVID-19 and the highly successful mass vaccination efforts, including for children two-years and up. November 15, 2021—the announced day that Cuban schools, tourism and much else officially reopened — was touted by Washington and its counter-revolutionary networks to be a day of renewed protests, with the banging of pots in the streets and from home windows, with all the hyperbole they could muster. But the “heroism of normality” triumphed on that day and the retreat and isolation of the US-directed counter-revolutionary network again fell flat.
We should add the incredible mobilizations – 6.5 million in the streets across the country, some one million in Havana – for the May Day celebrations which brought out the organized Cuban working class and fighting people as a whole. This was the first May Day held for two years because of COVID and the enthusiasm and determination of the marchers was evident to anyone there (as I was privileged to be).
May Day 2022 in Havana
All of this has also led to negative political consequences for the bipartisan US anti-Cuba aggressive policy implemented by Biden and Blinken in their first 18 months in the White House and “Foggy Bottom.” Their policy has failed to gain traction and remains isolated in the Americas, as registered at the Los Angeles Summit. This will be further registered worldwide in the annual Fall vote in the UN General Assembly – this will be the 30th such vote since 1992! – to overwhelmingly oppose the US extraterritorial commercial, financial, and economic embargo, the blockade. (Washington, of course, has appealed for the UN General Assembly to condemn the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation government of Vladimir Putin but has tried to put its head in the sand over 30 consecutive UN condemnations!) But for now bipartisan Washington is carrying on amidst the growing political wreckage.
At the same time, the economic (and thereby social) crisis in Cuba continues to deepen with a horrific, devastating impact. The US blockade is a sadistic policy, insofar as its authors are conscious of the human consequences of the tightening of the US asphyxiation policies under Trump and Biden.
In summary, we can say that the primary contradiction at this conjuncture in the fight for the normalization of US-Cuba relations is between the political isolation of bipartisan Washington and the political defeat – after such raised expectations and the anti-Cuba, anti-communist propaganda blitzkrieg – from July 11 to November 15, 2021 on one hand and the continuing and deepening material pounding from the blockade on the Cuban economy and people on the other.
It is clear from eyewitness reports from recent visitors to Cuba from the US solidarity movement that we are approaching a reality where Cuban people are going to die from shortages in medicines such as insulin and many other life-saving medications and medical equipment that the blockade prevents Cuba from purchasing. (And let us never forget – or forgive – that the blockade was deepened by the Trump and Biden Administrations during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.)
Everything in the next period flows from this primary contradiction which is also the primary political dynamic. There is no question that the resistance of the Cuban workers state, elected government, and fighting people will continue on every front. Biden and Blinken are going into a period where their anti-Cuba policy is more, not less, isolated. The October 2022 parliamentary elections in Brazil seem set for the ignominious ouster of the Jair Bolsonaro regime and the election of Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva. Lula da Silva, like President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico, is an historic friend of Cuba and a strong opponent of the US anti-Cuba blockade.
If elected, Lula, like other newly elected left-wing governments in Honduras, Chile, and Colombia, may or may not be able to effectively counter the resistance of the capitalists and large landowners, backed by the capitalist states (military, police, courts, prisons) they will be governing, to any progressive reforms in the interests of the working class, landless peasants, oppressed nationalities, women, and youth or anti-imperialist policies they aim to carry out to significantly diminish the neoliberal capitalist order in the current, mounting world capitalist economic crisis with its permanent political volatility and instability.
Nevertheless, none of these governments, even Chile’s President Gabriel Boric, who has tossed out some anti-Cuba boilerplate while also speaking out against the blockade, will be an ally to Biden and bipartisan Washington, in pursuing the criminal blockade.
The remaining months of 2022 will see the UN vote, the Brazilian presidential and parliamentary elections, and the mid-term Congressional elections in the United States.
The Cuba solidarity and anti-blockade movement must build on our significant advances in the next period to step up our solidarity aid and our political work against the blockade. Out of many fronts of struggle let us unite in one fist against the blockade. Let us support the many solidarity caravans and brigades traveling to Cuba in the coming days, weeks, and months. Support and donate to the Saving Lives Campaign for US-Cuba-Canada Collaboration and the Global Health Partners Campaign to send critically needed anesthesia machines and sutures to the Calixto Garcia Hospital main surgical trauma center in Havana. Let us unite in mass actions in New York City, across the US, Canada, and worldwide to mark the Fall UN vote!
We Are With the World!
Cuba Si, Bloqueo No!
The post One Year After July 11, 2021: Washington Carries On It’s Economic War Against Cuba Despite Political Isolation first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Orientation:
Question about the where, when, what of power
Is power something inside a person (an attribute) or a relationship between people? Is power a neutral concept, or does power have a positive or negative charge? Is power vertical or horizontal? Most of the time it seems that power is hierarchical and can be called power over people. But can there be horizontal power, that is power with people? What is the relationship between power and politics? Is politics a specific form of power or is power a particular form of politics? What is the relationship between power, persuasion, and control? Are they interchangeable? Are they three completely different categories or are they related and overlapping?
What is the relationship between power and authority? Are power and authority opposites? Is power a form of authority or is authority a form of power? Is all power intentional or can power be exerted unintentionally? What is the relationship between power, wealth, and prestige? Can you be powerful but not be wealthy and prestigious? Can you have wealth and prestige but not have power? What is the difference between potential power and latent power? What is the range of power in terms of the number of people it affects, the variety of tactics used or its depth of intensity?
Resources for this article
The field of political sociology has many very good theories of power. G. William Domhoff has written about how power is produced and distributed in two books about how the ruling class rules Yankeedom. These books are The Powers That Be and Who Rules America? W. Lawrence Neuman has covered much ground in his textbook Power, State and Society. The Italian Gianfranco Poggi has identified three types of power in his book Forms of Power. Michael Mann has written three volumes on power that have demonstrated a deep historical grounding. They are called The Sources of Social Power. Peter Morris has developed a theory of power from a philosophical standpoint. Stewart Clegg has written three books on power that I devoured. His work would require way more space than a single article. Robert Alfred and Roger Friedland have developed the richest theory of power from the point of view of six sociological schools. However, for purposes of just getting our feet wet, I will only draw from two books, one by Dennis Wrong, and the other by Steven Lukes. Wrong’s book is titled Power: Its Forms, Bases and Uses. Lukes’ book is called Power: A Radical View.
This piece will focus on vertical power: when a person or class has power over people to harness energy and labor to get work done. How exactly do they do this? My article is divided into three parts. The first is the delineation of eleven power bases. The second is a description of the three dimensions of power – pluralist, elitist, and class. I will close by answering the questions that I first posed in the orientation. At least as important, how does it get to be that people come to accept their own submission to power? This will be the subject of my next article.
I Range of power
We need to be able to access the range of power. What is the scope of power? In other words how far in breadth and depth does it cover? How long does it last? Dennis Wrong identifies three areas of extensiveness, comprehensiveness, and intensiveness.
Let’s use some examples. In the case of the sadist and masochist, power relations are narrowly extensive but highly comprehensive and intensive power relations. While dictatorial-tyrannical power will wield extensive and intensive power, the difficulty of maintaining the visibility at all times of the behavior of subjects sets limits to the comprehensiveness of its power.
There are three reasons why greater extensiveness of a power relation sets limits on authoritarian comprehensiveness and intensity. The first is the greater the number of subordinates makes for greater difficulty supervising all of their activities. Secondly, the more people it subordinates the more differentiated the chain of command is necessary to control them. Thirdly, the more people are involved the greater the likelihood of wide variation of the population’s attitudes toward the power holder.
II Power bases
By what means does the dominator achieve and maintain power? Let’s begin with the typology of power bases provided offered by Dennis Wrong. I’ve added a few of my own from some of the sources listed in the orientation section.
1) Force With force, an individual or political group achieves their objectives in the face of another group’s noncompliance by stripping them of the choice between compliance and noncompliance. Force is treating a human subject as if they were a physical object or a biological organism subject to pain or injury. There are two kinds of forces – physical force and psychic force.
2) Coercion This is a term that is mistakenly used interchangeably with force. Coercion is a threat of the use of force. For example, I am driving on a city street and I see a cop’s flashing lights go on, indicating for me to pull over. I pull over not because I respect the cop’s legitimate authority, but because he has a gun. A man involved with a woman having a domestic quarrel stands up and begins shouting and pointing. This is not force because there is no physical contact. However, there is clearly a threat of force.
Coercion can take the form of symbols such as “Beware of Dog” signs, or gestures such as shaking a fist, swaggering walks, or verbal statements such as “your money or your life”. It can take place as displays such as in military parades or the flourishing of nightsticks. Coercion can succeed without force, such as robbing a bank with a water pistol. In the short run this is the most effective form of power in terms of extensiveness, comprehensiveness, and intensity while requiring the least amount of communication. However, it is high in the cost of material and human resources.
3) Politics This is the control people exert over what, when, where, and how people can and can’t act. An example is parents controlling their kid’s behavior as long as the kid lives at home: “my house, my rules” say the parents. Nation-states control their populations with passports, laws, and statutes.
4) Economic power This kind of power involves control over material resources such as commodities, wages, salaries, tools, natural resources, money, and stocks. The power of a capitalist over a worker is a typical example.
5) Symbolic power As a college teacher I can control my students by the power I have over their grade. Symbolic power is control over certificates, grades, and diplomas.
6) Information control/persuasion This is control over communication, whether face-to-face or through media. This control can be over information content, information sources or how or when information is presented. Propaganda is hard-liner information control, while rhetoric (debate) or dialectic (classroom) are softer means of communication control.
Persuasion deals with changing attitudes (minds) and/or changing actions through the use of rhetoric. Face-to-face persuasion is more up-front rather than behind the scenes. Persuasion presents itself as an implicitly egalitarian relationship that leaves intact free choice without resorting to either tacit or overt threat to a group. As with all the forms of power before information control, it is irrelevant who the individual is, what the situation is, and the time and place of its occurrence. With information control, persuasion involves far more sensitivity to time, place, and circumstance. Mass persuasion using mass or internet communication is much closer to propaganda.
7) Charisma This form of power is based on the personal qualities of an individual such as charm, theatrical skills, oratory power, being articulate, or having spiritual vision. When applied to cults, charisma is the most unstable form of power because when the leader dies or is revealed to be fallible, whatever has been built falls with him.
8) Sexual resources Here we have the exchange of sexual favors for money, power, or fame. Sexual resources also involve the promise of sex and the manipulation of the other person with the prospects of having sex. So much of dating relationships is all about this.
9) Manipulation Manipulation is one of those words which is over-used and meant to refer to everything from news manipulation, advertising manipulation, or relations between equals. I will define manipulation as exclusively what happens between friends. It involves getting an equal to do something through exposure, distraction, deception, exaggeration, or guilt. In his book Influence, John Cialdini named many of these forms of manipulation which he called exploitation of reciprocity, foot-in the-door, foot-in-the mouth, door-in-the-face, and low-balling.
10) Legitimation This form of power involves the power holder having formal training, degrees, official clothing, badges, and reputation. What makes this form of power so powerful is that those in subordination have internalized the right of a legitimate authority to rule. Legitimacy means authority sanctioned by social structures and respect is given by subordinates (at least initially.) Authors of books and some political figures are examples. Legitimacy is the untested acceptance of another’s judgment.
All forms of power up to legitimacy require that those holding vertical power expend energy. In one case it involves the use of weapons, jails, and concentration camps. In the other wheeling and dealing behind the scenes, as in doing marketing research or advertising campaigns. In the case of mass persuasion, it involves studying how to write a successful political speech. But all these forms of power require constant replenishing of resources.
Using legitimate power may require initial external input through training or schooling, but over the course of generations the authorities can go long stretches without input because the subservient have internalized their authority. The initial input of authority involves the production of ideology of obedience through mass media, education, and religious socialization which people internalize. Once subordinates have internalized this ideology, this form of power is more or less set. Legitimate power is in some ways the most interesting because here the dominated have come to believe that the dominator deserves to be in this position. The extensiveness of legitimate authority is more limited, but it is most reliable in controlling the anticipated reactions of power subjects. Legitimate authority is most efficient in minimizing the need for keeping watch.
Most workers report to their jobs every day because they need the wages (economic power). But their attitude towards their bosses is mostly that their bosses also have legitimate authority. Many have come to believe that their bosses deserve to monopolize tools, resources, and property. When workers are upset, most of the time they demand better working conditions, more pay, and more benefits. They don’t challenge capitalist authority over what gets produced, how much, or by when. This 500-year-old system appears to be eternal and only rarely in revolutionary situations can workers imagine any other way of organizing production.
11) Competency This last form of power involves getting others to do something because of the powerholders demonstrated skills or know-how. The best example of this in the relationship between a doctor and her patient, a lawyer and his client, or a pilot and her passengers. On the one hand, all these forms of power are legitimate. But unlike most forms of power there are neither guns nor goods that are shown to command obedience. Unlike in persuasive forms of power, with competent authority no evidence is needed. A patient may listen to a doctor’s advice without understanding the rationale. Their authority is imputed, rather than demonstrated. In competent authority, comprehensiveness and intensity are low. Knowledge is not depleted with use, and costs have more to do with equipment. Its basis of knowledge is utilitarian.
An even better form of competency is a hunting leader of an egalitarian hunting and gathering society. Here the leader has no desire to lead but their leadership is insisted upon by the group because of their skills. A story is told by an anthropologist that the prospective leaders have to be dragged out of the bushes. Oftentimes the captain of a baseball team is chosen by the players, the first among equals because of their competency.
III Multiple power bases are used and morph into each other over time
Human motivation is almost always a heterogeneous mix of different, often conflicting impulses which play themselves out over time. Because of this, a stable power relation of some comprehensiveness and intensity is rarely based on a single form of power. Each form of power usually has more than one power base. For example, a college teacher will use symbolic power as primary force but will support it through politics and legitimacy. An employer will use economic power primarily but combine it with political power and information control.
In addition, power bases tend to change over time as relationships develop over time and routine sinks in. For example, in a cult the charismatic power of love for a leader can deteriorate into a simply authoritarian political bureaucratic power when the leader dies. Prison guards initially use force and coercion but over time some prisoners become attached to the guards (the Stockholm syndrome) and might even see the guards as having legitimate power. An occupation that is chosen initially for financial gain (economic power) but may be maintained out of pride of craft (competency) even when the person is making less money. It is in the long-term, self-interest for the powerholder to try to transform might into right, force, and coercion into legitimacy. On the other hand, the dependence of the subordinates’ position in the power relationship will motivate them to come part way to meet the powerholder.
IV Three dimensions of power: pluralist, elite and Marxist
Pluralist
In liberal theories of power, such as that of the political scientist Robert Dahl, the way power is measured is that different actors and different interest groups compete in different areas of interest. Power is purported to be diffused across situations and there is “nothing going on behind the scenes”. Power is neither unstructured nor systematic. Power is identified with the issues that agenda has set, for example, at a city council meeting. Power is subject to constant dissipation because of the push and pull of different veto groups. The exercise of power is strictly behavioral and observed and the word power is used interchangeably with persuasion.
Contrary to either elitist or Marxist theory, all power does not involve conflict because people gain power through accidents, unintended consequences, or just stating the issue more clearly. At the same time, those successful in a conflict of interest may involve more of their capacity to do things or more consent from others. There may be no struggle at all.
For the pluralists, the wielding of power is decentralized most of the time into several separate and single issues. This is different from elite theories that argue that the issues are connected. The wielding of power is overt and can be seen, as in the action of the leaders at a city council meeting who are limited in deciding on concrete issues in front of everyone. The preferences in a local participation have to do with the uniqueness of particular individuals rather than underlying class interests. Jeremy Bentham argued that preferences are the same as interests and are revealed by market behavior. Everyone is the best judge of their own interest and people are not seen as having illusions about their interests or being short-sighted about them. Interests are more or less revealed by participating in politics. For pluralists, political parties adequately make room for the interests of everyone because class conflict is the exception, not the rule for pluralists. Pluralists have complete confidence that voters are consciously aware of them and can articulate them. For pluralists it is too cynical to propose that people’s interests can be unconscious or that they can be inarticulate and politicians may have to express their interests for them. On a larger scale, pluralists think representative democracy works pretty well. Workers know what they want, can articulate what they want, and their representatives listen to them and carry out their will.
Politically and sociologically pluralists are rooted in the work of Emile Durkheim who believed that the state in capitalist society could allow democratic participation. When the masses explode, revolt, or create revolutionary situations it is a sign of group pathology rather that that the system isn’t working. For pluralists 40-50% of those who don’t vote do so because their will is being carried out by politicians, with their consent. It is not because there was anything wrong with the system or the candidates. Both the parties and the state are socialized to balance group demands and public interest. The image of the state is as a thermostat or referee between competing groups.
Elitist theories of power
Pluralist theories of power are clearly liberal. Class theories of power are straightforwardly Marxian socialist. Elite theory is considerably more complicated. For example, the Italian political theorists of politics – Pareto, Mosca and Michels – are all conservative. They explain political power as a battle of elites and dismiss the masses as apathetic, ignorant, and superstitious. On the other hand, theorists in the centrist tradition of Max Weber are more interested in explaining power in terms of the autonomy of state bureaucracies. On the left, theorists of power like C. Wright Mills, William Domhoff, Bachrach and Baratz analyze the ruling class much more critically than the Italian theorists and they are more hopeful about the power of the lower classes to assert their power. For the most part, we will focus of the elite theory of Bachrach and Bartaz because they directly challenged pluralist Robert Dahl’s description of power.
Elitist theories of power think there is a lot more going on behind the scenes than pluralists do. For both elitists and Marxists, issues are not diffused across social life, and many issues are interconnected. For example, both elitist and Marxist theorists will say that capitalists allow disagreements to be aired publicly around cultural issues of sexuality and religion but the rulers keep economic issues of the viability of capitalism and the gap between the rich and the poor off the table. For elitists and Marxists, there is not a plurality of different issues and different interest groups. Behind the scenes, there are the same few actors and the same few interest groups that prevail across all issues. The full thrust of power is not exhausted on the floors of city councils over real issues. For example, a city council will argue about where the next place will be that the homeless are dumped off. However, they will not discuss in public why real estate companies have the right to buy up as much property in a city as possible. For elitists, power is not diffused but stored and concentrated in the circulation of elite groups and is not lessened through the push and pull of competing groups.
For elitists, whether competing groups are more or less competent in what they are trying to do or more or less the subject of accident, all power involves conflicts of interests – whether they are overt or covert. Power and persuasion are not interchangeable. For elitists, all power involves force or fraud, as Machiavelli said. Power for elitists involves limiting the decision-making publicly, while political issues are consciously decided upon by individuals behind closed doors. For elitists, interests are far more important than preferences and they are not likely to be revealed publicly, most especially conflicts of interest in politics or economics. Interests are most deeply human, deep, and dark and are far more important than people’s preferences which are guided by conscious motivation. Elite theories allow that people can be mistaken about their interests and often conflicted about their preferences. For elitists, people who don’t vote do not do so because they assent to the available choices. It is because they are apathetic, ignorant and can’t think beyond their own self-interest.
For elite theorists, the state is more concerned with ruling than with governing, and in managing its bureaucracy (in the case of Weber) rather than ensuring the voices of its citizens are heard. While for pluralists’ society is the state, for elitists the state has independence from society and protects its own interests. For elitists, power is not situational, rising and declining. Power is structural and independent of situations, serving its own interest. Power is stored and concentrated in deep state institutions which stay in place as local regimes move in and out. Power is about politics, force, and the threat of force. The population doesn’t steer its own course but is manipulated. Exploitations come from the bottom of the class structure. Because the population is not seen as capable of self-organization, disturbances are short-lived because the lower classes cannot keep their attention focused. Unlike pluralists, those in power do not govern with consent but rule through competition between elites. For elite theorists, the state both manages the interests of the middle and upper classes, but also has an interest of its own.
Marxist theories of power
For Weberian elitists, power rests in the internal bureaucracy of the state, rather than social classes or interest groups. For Marxists, power is wielded by the capitalist class which controls the state and society and exploits the lower classes. Marxist theory is also cultural and psychological in how it distracts the working-class from defending its own interest.
For the capitalists, power would never be shown either at the city level or even at a state level. Capitalists wield power at the national level in the control of both political parties. Marxists argue that while the capitalist class may have differences in foreign policy, within the domestic sphere capitalists agree to keep any third political party from forming and suppress any workers’ movements for higher wages and better working conditions. Both political parties are anti-communist.
How are disruptions of the lower order treated? This depends about whether capitalism is expanding or contracting. If capitalism is developing in prosperous times, capitalists will attempt to entertain, distract, and present reified images of life to get lost in. Here workers will have false consciousness. If the productive forces are contracting capitalists may be more repressive, neglecting infrastructure and begin militarizing the police. Elitists will claim conflicts exist between themselves which eventually subside. For Marxists conflicts are endemic because there are terminal crises in capital which do not subside but spread to other social sectors. For Marxists, unlike liberal elitists, the state cannot manage conflict in the long run because the conflict between the capitalists and workers is much broader and deeper than anything the state can manage. When it comes to local expression of power at the city level the pluralist will fight over the plays of the game, elitists will fight over the rules of the game, while Marxists will challenge the game itself.
Unlike elitists, Marxists don’t think all conflict involves force. Conflict can express itself through smoldering class conflicts which may not require the use of force. In the areas of decision making, the bias of the system can be manifest without any meeting of capitalist minds. For example, many years ago I was on an economic justice committee at a Unitarian Church and we decided to do a campaign to “buy nothing” on Black Friday. We wanted to place an ad in a city newspaper. The first newspaper refused our ad. We went to another one and the same thing happened. When we were turned down for the third time, one member on our committee claimed the newspapers were conspiring against us. Someone else pointed out that there didn’t need to be a conspiracy. Each newspaper separately would be threatened by advertisers with withdrawing their ads if our ad ran. Since advertisers knew what the competing ads were before the paper was published, we could understand that we would be rejected by all capitalist newspapers without any of the copy editors contacting each other at all.
In terms of interests and preferences. Marxists’ theories suggest that working class people are not conscious of their interests (false consciousness) and their interests are shaped by advertisers behind their backs. Marxists must point out to workers what their real interests are because workers have illusions about their interests, such as the prospects of becoming millionaires.
For pluralists, power is exercised through what is resolved on each agenda item. For elites, power is controlled over the decision-making process, of which items are not even on the agenda. For Marxists, power is exercised in convincing the population to take sides which go against their class interests. For example, recognizing that the funding for the police serves their interest more than low-cost housing. Workers are blinded by false consciousness which comes out of TV shows in which cops are brave and heroic individuals. They fail to understand that the police are a domestic state-terrorist organization mobilized to beat up and kill the working class. For Marxists, what it means to have power is to keep people from even articulating grievances which will threaten the economic interest of capitalism. Capitalists, through sports, movies, and nationalism shape workers’ very cognitions and perceptions so that they express their interests in superficial topics that have nothing to do with their own lives. Like elitists, Marxists think that non-socialist political parties cannot seriously improve life for the working class and that political participation in these parties is a waste of time. Capitalists control workers not primarily through force and coercion but through hegemony, in which the workers consent to be ruled through reactance theory. Reactance theory convinces workers that they are freely choosing. Marxists treat social explosions not as signs of pathology as pluralists do. Rather, they are treated as workers breaking through false consciousness and recognize their real interests lie in overthrowing capitalists. Please see the table at the end of the article for a summary of these and other contrasting points.
V The what, when, where, and how of power
Now that we have gone through the eleven power bases and the three dimensions of power, we are in a better position to answer the questions initially posed at the beginning of this article.
Is power individual or social?
On the surface, it appears that when it comes to power, one group has it and the other group doesn’t. But this is a mechanical way of thinking about how power is held. Powerholders can be weak and subordinates can be strong. More importantly, in most power situations those who are subordinate are many and those with power are few. This means we must explain how it is that those in a subordinate position allow those with power to rule. When most people are passive, we have to say that those people have some degree of complicity in allowing the small group in power to have their way. This is why power is a social relationship rather than an individual one. Pluralists and Marxists will agree that power is social. Elitists are more likely to think of power as mechanical with elites active and the masses passive. How subordinates allow those with power to rule will be the subject of my next article.
Is power neutral or is it negative or positive?
It is best to think of the word power in a neutral or even positive way rather than as strictly negative or a relationship that could somehow be avoided. After all, power is a collective and necessary process. Power is neutral in the sense that it is a collective exerted action to harness energy to do work in order to: a) mine resources (economic and sexual); b) confer prestige (status); c) coordinate action; and d) plan future collective action. Pluralists are uncomfortable admitting power exists and see it as negative. Elitists will see power as negative but inevitable. Marxists are more likely to see power as negative and positive and hold out that in communist society power will be used positively.
Is power over people or with people?
Most people use the term power to mean power over people. What this leaves out is the possibility that people can organize social relations without hierarchies, as the anarchists have pointed out. In this article the power bases and the dimensions of power have been used to have power over people. However, the power base of competency can be used to promote horizontal power relations. To be clear I will define two kinds of power:
The pluralists of one-dimensional power will think that power is over people and will try to substitute persuasion in their ideal city hall political engagements. For them, the political is situational. Elitists say there is only one kind of power and that is vertical, power over people. Three-dimensional class theorists see power as potentially power with people as part of the emergence of classless societies.
Is politics a specific form of power or is power a particular form of politics
Power and politics are very closely related but they are not interchangeable. As we have seen earlier in this article, politics is one of eleven power bases. Power is the end and politics is the means. Power is collective, exerted action to achieve outcomes. Politics is a means to control what, when, where, and how people move or don’t move throughout time and space. But other forms of power are necessary in order for politics to be successful. This includes force, coercion, legitimacy, and economic incentives. One-dimensional theories of power, being liberal politically, think power is a form of politics and are less willing to consider that power is pervasive so as to include all the other power bases. Two and three-dimensional theories of power claim politics is a means to power.
What is the relationship between power, persuasion, and control?
As we have seen in the section on power bases, persuasion is a particular form of power, and though its methods are less intense than other power bases, all persuasion involves power. However, not all power uses persuasion. Power can use force, coercion, and sexuality in which no appeal to reason is operating. Control is a particular form of power, specifically political. But as I said earlier, politics requires other power bases for it to be successful. Only pluralists hold out for the prospect that persuasion alone can win people over.
What is the relationship between power and authority? Are power and authority opposites? Is power a form of authority or is authority a form of power?
Again, power is the more general category. Authority usually involves the power base of legitimation. However, authority by itself is not enough. As a college teacher, my students might see me as legitimate, yet without the threat of the symbolic power of a grade, I cannot be assured they will listen to me. In addition, power can be asserted without authority. Ten other power bases can be operating in which the power holder will not have authority yet will be successful. Since pluralists tend to be more optimistic about social relations, they are more likely to think the public will listen to legitimate authorities than elitists or Marxists.
Is power intentional or can it be unintentional?
All power is intentional, but there is a difference between acting in order to achieve a certain outcome and achieving it and recognizing that other effects will unavoidably result. However, so long as the effects were foreseen by the actor, even if not aimed at as such, they still seem to count in the theories of Wrong and Lukes as constituting an exercise of power. This is in contrast to unanticipated and unintended effects which are instances where the situation is no longer under the command of those with power.
Some may object and say that intentional efforts to influence others often produce unintended as well as intended results. Unintended results of power should still be the responsibility of the person or group utilizing power. After all a dominating and overprotective mother does not intend to feminize the character of her son, yet this is what often happens. Isn’t she still responsible, regardless of her intentions? The effects others have on us, unintended by and even unknown to them, may influence us more profoundly than direct efforts.
To insist that power can be validly imputed to an actor only when she produces intended and foreseen effects on others does not consider that she may so also produce a wide range of far more significant unintended and unforeseen effects. Effects that are foreseen but not intended count as exercises of power. Those events which are unanticipated and unforeseen are not the responsibility of the power subject. To claim full responsibility for all effects, intended, anticipated and foreseen, unanticipated and unforeseen is to attribute a divine, all-knowing power to the powerholder and make the concept of power strident and unrealistic. Pluralists are most likely to attribute to powerholders good intentions and the negative consequences of their power to accidents or misunderstandings.
Power wealth and privilege
Having power is deeper than having wealth and prestige. Power uses wealth and prestige to maintain itself and achieve its ends. Wealth is a form of economic resources and privilege will usually go with legitimacy or sexual resources. But power can certainly be successful without them, by using some combination of the other power bases.
Potential vs latent power
Potential power and latent power are also very close, but valuable distinctions can be made. Potential power may or may not be used. When it is not used it has no impact on the anticipated reactions of others. An example is a wealthy miser who chooses to conceal his fortune. Another is someone who has a secret arsenal in his cupboard but does not use it. Latent power has anticipated reactions built in which it may have on others without the power holder having issued a command. Both elite and class theories are more likely to be sensitive to these subtleties.
• First published at Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism
The post The Social Anatomy and Dynamics of Power: Bases, Depth, Scope, and Dimensions first appeared on Dissident Voice.
Alex Saab’s April 6 hearing takes place in the setting of a mercurial world situation, where events in Ukraine may have indirect bearing on his case and on the larger US economic war against Venezuela.
*****
In a world where the US believes it makes the rules and the rest of humanity must follow its orders – what President Biden euphemistically calls the “rules-based order” – Washington has now even appropriated the prerogative to tell other countries who they may appoint as their ambassadors. As a consequence, Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab is fighting for his freedom before the 11th District Circuit Court in Miami.
US economic war against Venezuela
Alex Saab was appointed a special envoy with diplomatic credentials by the Venezuelan government on April 9, 2018. The businessman had worked on the government’s food assistance (CLAP) and public housing programs. More importantly, he was assisting the government in trying to circumvent sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the US; sanctions intended to punish the people so that they would be motivated to overthrow their democratically elected government.
The sanctions, which started in 2015 under Obama, have been ratcheted up by every successive US president since. Known as “unilateral coercive measures,” this kind of collective punishment is a form of economic warfare and is illegal under international law.
As the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) admits: “The Venezuelan economy’s performance has…fallen steeply since the imposition of a series of US sanctions.” By barring access to basic necessities, such measures are as deadly as bombs. An estimated 100,000 Venezuelans have perished due to the sanctions as of March 2020, according to former UN special rapporteur for human rights Alfred de Zayas.
Violation of diplomatic immunity
On June 12, 2020, with diplomatic passport in hand, Alex Saab was en route from Caracas to Tehran to procure food, medicine, and fuel in legal international trade. His plane was diverted to the island archipelago nation of Cabo Verde off the coast of West Africa for a refueling stop. There, in an egregious example of extra-territorial judicial overreach, the US had him seized without warrant and thrown in prison.
As a Venezuelan special envoy and deputy ambassador to the African Union, Saab was protected by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Under this treaty, diplomats are supposed to enjoy absolute immunity from arrest, even in the time of war.
Not only is the US a signatory to the Vienna Convention, but the US Diplomatic Relations Act also protects all diplomats. Further, Saab is not a US citizen, and the alleged “crime” did not take place in the US. In short, the US prosecution of Saab is not a legal one, but a purely political act in the economic war against Venezuela.
The regional court of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which has jurisdiction over Cabo Verde, ruled that not only must Saab be freed, but that he also be awarded monetary damages. Cabo Verde first appealed the verdict. After losing a second time, Cabo Verde simply flaunted the ruling, apparently under instructions from Washington. Similarly, the UN Human Rights Committee’s finding in favor of Saab was ignored.
While incarcerated in squalid conditions, Saab wrote a series of letters about how he was tortured in an unsuccessful attempt to force him to reveal the secrets that facilitated humanitarian supplies reaching Venezuela, bypassing the US blockade.
Second kidnapping of the Venezuelan diplomat
Then on October 16, 2021, the US perpetrated what Venezuelan President Maduro called the “second kidnapping.” Alex Saab was unlawfully abducted – spirited away with no legal papers and no notification to his family or legal team – and flown to Miami, where he has languished in prison. The US does not have an extradition treaty with Cabo Verde and, with its presidential election scheduled to be held the next day, the US feared that the new administration there would free Saab.
Initially, the US charged Saab with eight counts of money laundering. But the changes were reduced to a single one of “conspiracy to money launder,” a notoriously vague legal gimmick that is conveniently difficult to disprove.
Previously, an exhaustive three-year investigation was conducted into allegations that Saab was misusing Swiss banks. Swiss government prosecutors, however, found no evidence of money laundering on the part of the Venezuelan diplomat.
In fact, Saab is a political prisoner in the US empire’s drive to beat an independent Venezuela into submission by weaponizing economics. Even sources hostile to the Venezuelan government admit that the reason Saab is targeted is that he was instrumental in the “vast network [that] allowed Venezuela to evade [illegal] US oil sanctions.”
Venezuelan government/opposition dialogue
The Venezuelan government had been engaged in dialogue with their opposition, including US-backed Juan Guaidó, hoping that the talks in Mexico City would lead to some easing of the crippling US sanctions. Ambassador Saab had been appointed to the Venezuelan government’s delegation. But when he was kidnapped for the second time, Caracas immediately suspended the talks.
Opposition figurehead Juan Guaidó had been “anointed” president of Venezuela by Donald Trump in January 2019 and had been initially recognized by over fifty of the US’s allies. Now, the hapless puppet is recognized by only the Biden administration and a handful of US vassals. As the Wall Street Journal reports: “The political movement the US has backed in Venezuela to challenge the country’s authoritarian [sic] government is on the verge of breaking up…”
Guaidó’s opposition faction had previously boycotted what they considered “illegitimate” Venezuelan elections. But in Venezuela’s November 21 “mega-elections,” all the opposition – including the extreme far right – participated. Not only was this an implied recognition of the government’s legitimacy, but Maduro’s socialist party swept these regional and municipal elections.
Venezuela resists the economic war as the US faces blowback
The catastrophic US economic war against Venezuela, which deliberately and effectively targeted the cash cow of the Venezuelan oil industry, is being countered. The Maduro administration is trying to steer the economy out of its extreme dependency on petro chemicals.
In response to the US economic blockade, Venezuela partly backfilled with Russian and especially Chinese trade. Rebounding from a severe drop in exports, Venezuela led the region in percentage increase this the last year. Russia also provided military assistance as part of a larger global geopolitical shift.
After suffering negative growth, the Venezuelan economy is recovering with modest increases projected in GDP. Hyperinflation and currency freefall have now been overcome with monetary measures and de facto dollarization. The oil industry, after crashing, is again exhibiting vital signs with help from Iran, Russia, and China. The spike in international oil prices associated with the conflict in Ukraine also benefits Venezuela.
However, the sanctions against Russia by the US and its allies are explicitly designed to impact Venezuela. Over 40 countries in addition to Venezuela are sanctioned by the US, some one-third of humanity. Especially with the initiative against Russia, the US may be inadvertently precipitating a global realignment with more and more countries forced to decouple from the US-dominated world economic system.
Changing international climate
Meanwhile, the international scene has been looking more bullish for the Bolivarian Revolution. The right-wing clique of anti-Venezuela counties in the Organization of America States (OAS), known as the Lima Group, has disintegrated with left-leaning presidents elected in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Honduras, Bolivia, and Peru. Coming up are presidential elections with left-leaning front-runners in Brazil and Colombia, two of the most reactionary anti-Venezuela governments in the region.
A sign of a changing political climate is an article in Forbes, which editorializes that US sanctions “have clearly become counterproductive” and calls for rescinding the coercive measures. The news outlet acknowledges that the sanctions “have impoverished the country but left the ruling class mostly untouched.” In other words, the sanctions had achieved their proximal goal of ravishing the Venezuelan economy but not its ultimate goal of regime change.
Even the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) think tank criticized the sanctions. Leading luminaries at this liberal cheerleader for US imperialism previously complained that Trump was holding back on the very sanctions, which he then imposed and which – in an apparent pang of conscience – WOLA now finds distasteful.
Another telling signal came on March 5, when the chief US government official for Latin America, Juan González, brought a delegation to Caracas and met with President Maduro. The two states do not have diplomatic relations, and this was the first high-level US visit in years. Escalating gasoline prices precipitated by the Ukraine conflict forced Washington’s concessionary move, implicitly recognizing the legitimacy of the Maduro administration. However, the discussions on easing oil sanctions have yet to yield results.
Another member of the US delegation was, significantly for Alex Saab, the US’s presidential special envoy for hostage affairs, Roger Carstens. Amid speculation that a deal might be struck to free the Venezuelan diplomat, Caracas released two imprisoned criminals with US citizenship as a gesture of goodwill.
Despite Washington’s best efforts to quash Venezuela, President Maduro has led a nation standing firm. The tide is flowing in favor of the Bolivarian Revolution and perhaps for Alex Saab. An international campaign has arisen to #FreeAlexSaab.
As his wife Camila Fabri Saab said: “It’s not a crime to fulfill a diplomatic mission. It’s not a crime to evade sanctions that are harming an entire country. It can’t be illegal to help a people.”
The post Illegally Imprisoned Venezuelan Diplomat Faces US Court Amid a Shifting Global Context first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Note to our readers: These are letters from a comrade of ours who currently lives in Russia. English is not the first language of HCE so please be understanding. In order to preserve the integrity of these letters, we kept the original phrasing as best we could.
March 11th
Hello Barbara,
Thank you for your message and concern. My wife and I are passing through a difficult phase in our lives. After our second vaccination in December, we, for some reason or other, went through a period of being sick, myself in a light form while my wife gave me a scare. Anyway, that is behind us. Barbara, I thought that in my late years, being 80 years old now, we would settle down and I would take good care of my wife, go for long walks in the forest-parks of Moscow. Fate, however, had other plans for us, and here we are in the midst of another war and sanctions surrounded by nations led by clowns, comedians, lunatics, and obsessed madmen. Allow me to give you my opinion on a number of issues.
The dependence of Europe on Russian natural gas
The US tried all the possible tricks to stop the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. Generally, they want this energy market for US companies, in spite if the fact that gas will be in liquid form and transported by ships. The port that has to receive the liquid gas must have a very expensive plant. Besides the market factor there is the geopolitical factor of having Europe depending on the US for their energy. Russia has always delivered through thick and thin and always will. I wonder whether the US and their companies will be just as trustworthy.
Zelensky’s dirty bomb threat
Chernobyl, the place where the terrible catastrophe happened, is located in the Ukraine. Zelensky declared that he would consider making an atom bomb if not given the security guarantees that he was asking for from Europe and the US on the second day of the war. He had in mind using materials from the damaged reactor and make a “dirty bomb”. I think that was the last straw. Russian special troops immediately moved to occupy Chernobyl. Thank goodness not a single shot was fired as the Ukrainian troops laid down their arms. The 8 years that the people of Donbas served as a shooting gallery for the Ukrainian nationalists and fascists has finally come to an end. Chernobyl at the present is being patrolled by joint Russian – Ukrainian units. There is a huge Sarcophagi covering the damaged reactor (if you see a clip or pictures, it is so ominous and awe striking. It makes you shiver).
The Mood of the Russian people
Now let me discuss the mood of the Russian people who I see on the street, the people who I talk to, and what I read and watch on local tv. Russians differ in their assessment of the war. By far the broadest section supports their president, and especially their armed forces. They are mainly working class, solid people, nationalists, and the majority of the left including CPRF.
Since the nomination of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats’ obsession with Russia’s and Trump’s supposed ties with them, these Democrats have played a terrible role in pushing the Russian people more to the right. Anything that is seen as part of the Democrats, like BLM, MeToo, or LGBT is derided here. White supremacy is on the rise. I have tried on many occasions to explain, for example, BLM. The conversation usually begins with “I don’t take a knee before a N.” So, I have to explain the rules of US football, who Colin Kaepernick is and the conditions of his kneeling during the national anthem. Presenting the subtleties of this is not easy when Russians are already riled up. The Communist Party in Ukraine was prohibited many years ago and in this void came nationalism and religion. Both cards were used to divide the Russians and the Ukrainians. Russia has officially declared that the aim of their operation in the Ukraine is demilitarization and denazification.
Then there is a loud minority of very young people guided by NGOs financed by the West, part of the humanitarian intellectuals, artists, and actors. They are against their army and its operations in the Ukraine. The Russian Government has started taking measures against openly anti-Russian channels like Echo Moscow and Dozhd/Rain.
The situation in Russia is characterized by a retreat of the liberals and pro-western opposition. The polls show that the support for the president is 75% as of today, March 11. The street is calm, my apartment is near a university and campus and I see hundreds of young people going about their studies. I see people shopping, and I go shopping too. No panic, no rush. If the West thinks by imposing draconian sanctions it will change the mood of the people, then it is right but exactly in the opposite direction, instead of the critical and quite often satiric attitude towards the authorities. In fact, they are consolidating and supporting it. A new world is being born and Russia with all her faults and problems is the midwife and godmother. I will stop here but I have lot more to say. Please let us continue with the dialogue
With affection and respect
HCE
Dear Bruce,
Before writing on my observations on religious hostilities, allow me to make some notes on what the Ukraine fascist and ultra-national ideology is based on and where it comes from. I will not go too far back in history but pick it up after WW2.
Nazi collaborators and their role:
The Ukrainian government after the disintegration of the Soviet Union till today, with V. Zelensky have tried their best to whitewash and portray these collaborators as heroes and founders of the Ukraine State. I have chosen to describe Stepan Bandera, who probably is the most popular among the fascists who march with his portrait. Kindly find below my translation from Russian about Bandera. I have taken extracts from an article and what seemed to me important that would provide an idea of the basis for fascism.
The History of S. Bandera and the rehabilitation of fascism in Ukraine including by V. Zelensky
Bandera Stepan Andreevich was a leader and organizer of the Ukrainian national movement in Western Ukraine and considered a terrorist. He was a member of the Ukrainian military organization (from 1928) and the Organization of the Ukraine nationalists (OUN) from 1929, and organizer of a series of terrorist acts. Bandera was condemned by the Polish authorities to life in prison and his memory has not been rehabilitated till now. He was considered a criminal.
Stepan Bandera and his supporters sought “independence” through violence, revolution, and genocide. The theoretical activity of the Bandera supporters started in Poland, their most notorious terror cases was the killing of government personalities Soviet Cousul Andre Mailov in 1933. In 1934 he participated in the organization in the killing of the Polish minister of interior Bronislav Peratski and the director of the Ukraine academic gymnasium Ivan Babi. He organized an explosion in the offices of the “Pratsia” newspaper.
In the summer of 1934, polish authorities arrested Bandera. On January 13, 1936, Stepan Bandera and his accomplices were sentenced to death for the murder of Peratski. Then the death penalty was changed to life in prison, which he spent till 1939 in Polish prisons. After the Nazis occupied Poland in 1939 he was freed.
During the German occupation, Bandera and his supporters cooperated with Hitler’s Germany and they terrorized the population. Poles and Jews were killed most of all. Immediately after the capture of Lvov the Bander, supporters jointly carried out mass pogroms.
In our days in Ukraine one of the dates that is commemorated as the “liberation movement for the independence of Ukraine” is 30 June 1941, when the Bandera supporters in Lvov declared the restoration of the Ukrainian state. In the “Act of the declaration of the Ukraine state”, there was the following point:
“The newly created Ukraine state will closely cooperate with the great National –Socialist Germany under the leadership of its leader Adolf Hitler, who is creating a new order in Europe the world and helps Ukraine to free itself from the Moscow occupation”
After the war, Stepan Bandera lived in Munich and worked for the British security services. A Soviet agent executed him in 1959.
The Ukraine authorities and V. Zelensky personally make a hero out of Bandera. Monuments are erected and marches take place in his honor in which the participants call for the killing of Russians. The original text of the link above contains pictures of the fascists in Ukraine during their marches, as well as a document in Ukrainian and its Russian translation, where Bandera and his supporters glorify Hitler and fawn over the Nazis, I recommend taking a look at it.
This is the ideology of a minority that has managed, with the financing and support of the West, to create an atmosphere of hate and terror, Russophobia, and xenophobia. The forces that could have stood up to them were either banned (the communists), or brainwashed and tempted by the dream of EU and NATO.
Fascist and nationalistic ideology in Ukraine is not a phenomenon that is purely local. it is part of the populist ultra-right ideas that have swept Europe and the US. These include the appearance of fascist movements that rode on the wave of capitalist austerity instability, lack of steady employment, to scapegoating refugees for the lack of capitalist prosperity.
Place of Religion: Ukraine Greek Orthodox vs Ukraine Greek Catholic Church
There is another card that has been played by the west, the card of religion. Little has been said in the western media about this, but the fact that religion started to play a big role in the life of the people of the countries who were living in what was the Soviet Union is undeniable. People of various classes and occupations became religious, some even fanatics.
Very briefly, historically in Ukraine there were two main religious tendencies. Ukraine Greek Orthodox in the East and Ukraine Greek Catholic in the West. Relations are not the best. The Ukraine Greek Catholic Church actively cooperated with Nazi Germany during its occupation of Ukraine. Moreover, after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Greek Orthodox Church in Ukraine from being part of the Moscow Patriarchy split into different parts mainly along nationalistic lines. This hatred was built not only on theological differences, but on property, including churches and land.
Economic self-sufficiency
I do not know whether you have heard Sergei Lavrov’s interview. There were the following words that made an impression on me:
“As for our economic problems, we will deal with them. We have coped with difficulties at all stages of our history when these difficulties arose. But this time, I assure you, we will get out of this crisis with a completely healthy psychology and a healthy consciousness. We will have no illusions about the reliability of the west as a partner. We will not have any illusions that the West, when it talks about its values, does not really believe in its promises and spells, and we will have no illusions that the West is capable of betrayal at any moment. It will betray anyone and betray its own values.” TASS reports Lavrov’s words. (My translation)
With affection and respect
HCE
• First published at Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism
The post Economic Tectonic Shifts: Letters from Russia first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
NOTE: In April of this year, my family had a medical emergency that required most of my time and attention. The result is that I am now the sole legal and physical guardian of two young children with significant needs. I hope to return to writing a regular newsletter now that they are in school. There is a lot going on and a lot to do. Solidarity, Margaret Flowers
This month, the Sanctions Kill coalition (Popular Resistance is a member) released its report: “The Impact and Consequences of US Sanctions.” The 35-page report was written in response to the Biden administration’s January call for a review of the US sanctions to determine if they ‘unduly hinder’ the ability of targeted nations to address the COVID-19 pandemic.
To date, there is no word on whether that review has been conducted, but given that the State Department and Treasury are tasked with conducting it, the same institutions that impose sanctions, the Sanctions Kill coalition had no confidence their report would challenge the US’ current foreign policy path of escalating economic war on 39 countries, or a third of the world population.
The Sanctions Kill report found that sanctions, which are being increasingly imposed by the United States in lieu of or in addition to military aggression, cause tremendous suffering and death, violate international laws, harm US industries, place the US in a position of civil and criminal liability and are isolating the US from the community of nations. The corporate media are silent on these harmful effects and criticism of sanctions.
Venezuelan UN Ambassador Samuel Moncada described the impact of sanctions this week at The People’s Forum (view the event here):
Sanctions are killing us…. They are homicidal. One of the awful effects of sanctions as a weapon, because it’s a kind of war, is that you don’t feel it here. You don’t even realize that sanctions are acting abroad…. You don’t feel it in any way. But we feel them…. That’s why they are so insidious and dangerous. [The US] is waging economic war against millions of people.
The sanctions imposed by the United States include restrictions on financial transactions, trade and travel, blockades on foreign loans and aid and the seizure of assets. The Sanctions Kill report found these measures violate the human rights of people in affected countries because they block access to basic necessities such as food, medicines and fuel and they prevent maintenance of important infrastructure such as water services, power generation and transmission and transportation. The so-called humanitarian exceptions that are supposed to prevent sanctions from blocking food and medicine don’t work – banks won’t allow the sales and shipping companies won’t transport the goods.
Technically what the United States is doing are not sanctions but are unilateral coercive measures (UCMs), which violate international law because they operate outside the structure provided by the United Nations. Legal sanctions are used as a punishment after a legal process determines a country violated a law. Unilateral coercive measures are imposed by the US and its western imperialist allies based on lies and without due process in order to effect a desired political outcome, such as regime change or retaliation.
For example, following the failed US-backed coup attempt in 2018 against Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, the United States Congress passed the NICA Act, which began an economic war against socialist Nicaragua. With presidential elections being held this November, the United States has ramped up both a propaganda campaign against the popular Ortega, who is expected to win, and Congress is in the process of passing the RENACER Act, which will impose more UCMs against Nicaragua.
Here is what US activists are saying about the RENACER Act and what you can do to stop it. If you want to learn more, BreakThrough News recently interviewed Jill Clark-Gollub of Friends of Latin America about the RENACER Act.
The Sanctions Kill report also found that the US is imposing secondary sanctions on countries that do business with sanctioned countries, another violation of international law, and is using sanctions to target business people, such as Meng Wanzhou of Huawei, and diplomats, such as Alex Saab. Saab is being held in Cabo Verde where he stopped last year on his way to Iran to negotiate the purchase of food and medicines for Venezuela. The US is working to extradite him while international support for Saab, whose imprisonment violates the Vienna Convention, is growing. Clearing the FOG spoke earlier this year with Roger Harris of Task Force on the Americas after he traveled with a delegation to Cabo Verde to visit Alex Saab. Click here to take action.
In front of the United Nations after the People’s Mobe rally and march. (September 2019. By Yuka Azuma)
Clearing the FOG spoke with two of the authors of the report, international lawyer John Philpot and Latin American solidarity activist David Paul. Philpot predicts a day of reckoning is coming for the United States because the UCMs violate multiple international laws, including the United Nations charter. They are a form of collective punishment, which is a crime against humanity.
As the United States’ status as a global hegemon declines, targeted countries are finding ways to work together to resist the brutal economic wars being waged by the US and build power. For years now, countries have worked on alternative financial instruments to bypass US sanctions in order to do business. One example is INSTEX, a trading mechanism developed by European nations and Iran.
One of the first major acts of defiance against US UCMs was in the spring of 2020 when Iran sent four tankers of oil and equipment to Venezuela despite a large US military presence in the surrounding waters. Recently, Iran defied US UCMs again when it sent a convoy of oil trucks through Syria to Lebanon, which is suffering greatly from an economic crisis and fuel shortage.
Cuba has been under a US economic blockade for more than 60 years but it continues to be a model of international solidarity, especially during the pandemic. Henry Reeves Medical Brigades have been sent to numerous countries to assist them in caring for COVID-19 patients. Now Cuba is in need of aid and Mexico is stepping up to provide it using its naval ships since commercial ships face many barriers due to the UCMs. People and organizations outside Cuba also worked to supply millions of syringes so Cubans can receive vaccinations against COVID-19.
Mexico was the host of the recent CELAC (the community of Caribbean and Latin American states) meetings where leaders openly criticized the Organization of American States as a tool of US imperialism and called for its reform or the creation of a new body. CELAC countries are working on ways to practice greater solidarity in the face of the pandemic, climate crisis and debt.
Similarly, the first African/CARICOM summit was held virtually earlier this month. A third of the countries being targeted by the US’ economic war are in Africa. In fact, almost all of the countries being sanctioned by the US are majority black or brown. Don Rojas covered the summit for Black Agenda Report, writing:
“The Summit was also a recognition of the political and economic imperative that the governments of Africa and the Caribbean must succeed in restructuring if our black and brown people and nations are ever going to assume their rightful place in the world.”
And this week, during the United Nations general assembly meetings, the foreign ministers of 18 countries met as the Group of Friends in Defense of the Charter of the United Nations and released a statement pledging to work together. They wrote, “…we convey our support to nations and peoples subjected to unilateral and arbitrary approaches that violate both the purposes and principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and the basic norms of international law, and renew our call for the full respect to the inalienable right of peoples to self-determination, as well as the territorial integrity and political independence of all nations.”
By Medea Benjamin
Those of us who live in the United States and its allied imperialist nations that enable these serious violations of human rights and international law have a responsibility to act to stop the use of economic warfare through unilateral coercive economic measures. Global power is shifting and we face multiple worldwide crises. It is imperative that imperialist nations change their foreign policy from death and destruction to diplomacy, solidarity and cooperation.
An important step is education so people understand that UCMs are as lethal as bombs and that they affect the whole world, including people living in countries that wage economic war. The SanctionsKill.org website contains numerous resources to help with this including a toolkit that provides you with a power point and script so anyone can give a presentation on sanctions. The toolkit informs about what UCMs are and the specific harms they do.
You can also send the new Sanctions Kill report to your members of Congress and demand they end them now or publicize the report in any way you can – use social media, local or independent media outlets, your organization’s website, etc. We must break through the media blockade and demand the truth be told about the illegality of UCMs and their devastating impact on people in targeted countries. Write letters to the editor when you see articles about sanctions.
Take action to stop the RENACER Act and join the call to free Alex Saab. There are many solidarity organizations that are working to support people in countries attacked through economic measures. One example is the Saving Lives Campaign, a joint effort by people in the US and Canada to provide aid to Cuba.
Ending sanctions will save millions of lives and move us forward on the path toward a world of cooperation, peace and solidarity. Nations like the United States use sanctions because their deadly impacts are not as visible as dropping bombs. We must expose this brutal economic warfare and demand an end to it.
The post New Report Exposes the US’ Brutal and Illegal Economic War first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
2020 was GloboCap Year Zero. The year when the global capitalist ruling classes did away with the illusion of democracy and reminded everyone who is actually in charge, and exactly what happens when anyone challenges them.
In the relatively short span of the last ten months, societies throughout the world have been transformed beyond recognition. Constitutional rights have been suspended. Protest has been banned. Dissent is being censored. Government officials are issuing edicts restricting the most basic aspects of our lives … where we can go, when we can go there, how long we are allowed to spend there, how many friends we are allowed to meet there, whether and when we can spend time with our families, what we are allowed to say to each other, who we can have sex with, where we have to stand, how we are allowed to eat and drink, etc. The list goes on and on.
The authorities have assumed control of the most intimate aspects of our daily lives. We are being managed like inmates in a prison, told when to eat, sleep, exercise, granted privileges for good behavior, punished for the slightest infractions of an ever-changing set of arbitrary rules, forced to wear identical, demeaning uniforms (albeit only on our faces), and otherwise relentlessly bullied, abused, and humiliated to keep us compliant.
None of which is accidental, or has anything to do with any actual virus, or any other type of public health threat. Yes, before some of you go ballistic, I do believe there is an actual virus, which a number of people have actually died from, or which at least has contributed to their deaths … but there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of any authentic public health threat that remotely justifies the totalitarian emergency measures we are being subjected to or the damage that is being done to society. Whatever you believe about the so-called “pandemic,” it really is as simple as that. Even if one accepts the official “science,” you do not transform the entire planet into a pathologized-totalitarian nightmare in response to a health threat of this nature.
The notion is quite literally insane.
GloboCap is not insane, however. They know exactly what they are doing … which is teaching us a lesson, a lesson about power. A lesson about who has it and who doesn’t. For students of history it’s a familiar lesson, a standard in the repertoire of empires, not to mention the repertoire of penal institutions.
The name of the lesson is “Look What We Can Do to You Any Time We Fucking Want.” The point of the lesson is self-explanatory. The USA taught the world this lesson when it nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. GloboCap (and the US military) taught it again when they invaded Iraq and destabilized the entire Greater Middle East. It is regularly taught in penitentiaries when the prisoners start to get a little too unruly and remember that they outnumber the guards. That’s where the “lockdown” concept originated. It isn’t medical terminology. It is penal institution terminology.
As we have been experiencing throughout 2020, the global capitalist ruling classes have no qualms about teaching us this lesson. It’s just that they would rather not have to unless it’s absolutely necessary. They would prefer that we believe we are living in “democracies,” governed by the “rule of law,” where everyone is “free,” and so on. It’s much more efficient and much less dangerous than having to repeatedly remind us that they can take away our “democratic rights” in a heartbeat, unleash armed goon squads to enforce their edicts, and otherwise control us with sheer brute force.
People who have spent time in prison, or who have lived in openly totalitarian societies, are familiar with being ruled by brute force. Most Westerners are not, so it has come as a shock. The majority of them still can’t process it. They cannot see what is staring them in the face. They cannot see it because they can’t afford to see it. If they did, it would completely short-circuit their brains. They would suffer massive psychotic breakdowns, and become entirely unable to function, so their psyches will not allow them to see it.
Others, who see it, can’t quite accept the simplicity of it (i.e., the lesson being taught), so they are proposing assorted complicated theories about what it is and who is behind it … the Great Reset, China, the Illuminati, Transhumanism, Satanism, Communism, whatever. Some of these theories are at least partially accurate. Others are utter bull-goose lunacy.
They all obscure the basic point of the lesson.
The point of the lesson is that GloboCap — the entire global-capitalist system acting as a single global entity — can, virtually any time it wants, suspend the Simulation of Democracy, and crack down on us with despotic force. It can (a) declare a “global pandemic” or some other type of “global emergency,” (b) cancel our so-called “rights,” (c) have the corporate media bombard us with lies and propaganda for months, (d) have the Internet companies censor any and all forms of dissent and evidence challenging said propaganda, (e) implement all kinds of new intrusive “safety” and “security” measures, including but not limited to the physical violation of our bodies … and so on. I think you get the picture. (The violation of our bodies is important, which is why they love “cavity searches” in prison, and why the torture-happy troops at Abu Ghraib were obsessed with sexually violating their victims.)
And the “pandemic” is only one part of the lesson. The other part is being forced to watch (or permitted to watch, depending on your perspective) as GloboCap makes an example of Trump, as they made examples of Corbyn and Sanders, as they made examples of Saddam and Gaddafi, and other “uncooperative” foreign leaders, as they will make an example of any political figurehead that challenges their power. It does not matter to GloboCap that such political figureheads pose no real threat. The people who rally around them do. Nor does it make the slightest difference whether these figureheads or the folks who support them identify as “left” or “right.” GloboCap could not possibly care less. The figureheads are just the teaching materials in the lesson that they are teaching us.
And now, here we are, at the end of the lesson … not the end of the War on Populism, just the end of this critical Trumpian part of it. Once the usurper has been driven out of office, the War on Populism will be folded back into the War on Terror, or the War on Extremism, or whatever GloboCap decides to call it … the name hardly matters. It is all the same war.
Whatever they decide to call it, this is GloboCap Year Zero. It is time for reeducation, my friends. It is time for cultural revolution. No, not communist cultural revolution … global capitalist cultural revolution. It is time to flush the aberration of the last four years down the memory hole, and implement global “New Normal” Gleichschaltung, to make sure that this never happens again.
Oh, yes, things are about to get “normal.” Extremely “normal.” Suffocatingly “normal.” Unimaginably oppressively “normal.” And I’m not just talking about the “Coronavirus measures.” This has been in the works for the last four years.
Remember, back in 2016, when everyone was so concerned about “normality,” and how Trump was “not normal,” and must never be “normalized?” Well, here we are. This is it. This is the part where GloboCap restores “normality,” a “new normality,” a pathologized-totalitarian “normality,” a “normality” which tolerates no dissent and demands complete ideological conformity.
From now on, when the GloboCap Intelligence Community and their mouthpieces in the corporate media tell you something happened, that thing will have happened, exactly as they say it happened, regardless of whether it actually happened, and anyone who says it didn’t will be labeled an “extremist,” a “conspiracy theorist,” a “denier,” or some other meaningless epithet. Such un-persons will be dealt with ruthlessly. They will be censored, deplatformed, demonetized, decertified, rendered unemployable, banned from traveling, socially ostracized, hospitalized, imprisoned, or otherwise erased from “normal” society.
You will do what you are told. You will not ask questions. You will believe whatever they tell you to believe. You will believe it, not because it makes any sense, but simply because you have been ordered to believe it. They aren’t trying to trick or deceive anybody. They know their lies don’t make any sense. And they know that you know they don’t make any sense. They want you to know it. That is the point. They want you to know they are lying to you, manipulating you, openly mocking you, and that they can say and do anything they want to you, and you will go along with it, no matter how insane.
If they order you to take a fucking vaccine, you will not ask what is in the vaccine, or start whining about the “potential side effects.” You will shut up and take the fucking vaccine. If they tell you to put a mask on your kid, you will put a fucking mask on your fucking kid. You will not go digging up Danish studies proving the pointlessness of putting masks on kids. If they tell you the Russians rigged the election, then the Russians rigged the fucking election. And, if, four years later, they turn around and tell you that rigging an election is impossible, then rigging an election is fucking impossible. It isn’t an invitation to debate. It is a GloboCap-verified fact-checked fact. You will stand (or kneel) in your designated, color-coded, social-distancing box and repeat this verified fact-checked fact, over and over, like a fucking parrot, or they will discover some new mutant variant of virus and put you back in fucking “lockdown.” They will do this until you get your mind right, or you can live the rest of your life on Zoom, or tweeting content that no one but the Internet censors will ever see into the digital void in your fucking pajamas. The choice is yours … it’s is all up to you!
Or … I don’t know, this is just a crazy idea, you could turn off the fucking corporate media, do a little fucking research on your own, grow a backbone and some fucking guts, and join the rest of us “dangerous extremists” who are trying to fight back against the New Normal. Yes, it will cost you, and we probably won’t win, but you won’t have to torture your kids on airplanes, and you don’t even have to “deny” the virus!
That’s it … my last column of 2020. Happy totalitarian holidays!
The post Year Zero first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.