The Bolivarian Revolution:There is no third way- We must choose Socialism

[chlamor]

“For the Bolivarian Revolution there is no 'third way.' We must choose socialism"


Wednesday, Apr 20, 2005

By: Alan Woods - Marxist.com

On Monday April 18th, Adan Chavez, a leader of the Bolivarian movement, elder brother of the President and currently Venezuelan Ambassador in Cuba, invited me to have breakfast with him in La Casona, the traditional residence of Venezuelan presidents. I took the chance to conduct a brief interview with him.


AW: How did you become involved in politics?

ACh: When I was 16 I joined the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), a Marxist-Leninist organisation which had links with the Chilean MIR. There I started my political and revolutionary education. But after three years this party started to degenerate, becoming a revisionist party which even split into two fractions: one which continued to call itself the MIR and another called New Alternative. I decided not to join either of the two groups. I did not agree with revisionism and I was of the opinion that we needed to build a genuine revolutionary party in contact with the masses.

<snip>

AW: So, how do you see the role of Marxism in the Bolivarian revolution?

ACh: In the same way that we have reclaimed the ideas of Bolivar, Rodriguez and Zamora, I think that we must reclaim the genuine ideas of Marxism, applying them correctly to our society. The scientific method of Marxism is a necessity. We are a movement based on the “principles of the tree of the three roots”: Simon Bolivar, Simon Rodriguez and Ezequiel Zamora. But if you read these principles you will soon understand that they are not at all in contradiction with Marxism, they defend the principles of democracy, equality and humanity.

AW: And these principles, can they be carried out under the capitalist system?

ACh: I personally think they cannot. And President Chavez has said in the last few months that capitalism is slavery and that the Bolivarian revolution must go towards socialism. This conclusion is not by chance. It is the product of many discussions, many experiences and an in-depth analysis of the situation. The President used to consider the option of the so-called “Third Way” – a way between capitalism and socialism. We examined that and, as the President said, we have realised that for the Bolivarian revolution there is no third way possible, we must choose the way of socialism. This does not mean we are going to import other models from outside. Socialism is a system in which man is above Capital. That is clear. But we must adapt the ideas of socialism to the concrete conditions.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1426

[applegrove]

1. There is a third way. They just gave up.

[Dirk39]

2. Where?

And who is "they"?
If anyone have "given up" the third way, it was the corpocrats: after the Soviet Union did collapse, they were convinced that it was no longer necessary to compromise with the people. Now, they could bring us into collapse or the next ghetto or the next welfare line.
The third-way parties like the post-WWII socialdemocratic and socialist parties mostly in Europe were just tools to pacify the workers and the unemployed. And they could archieve some compromising making sure, the workers would stay calm. But these times are over.
The corporations and most of all the financial institutions, who are controlled by bankers and corporations like the IMF and the Worldbank among others: they "gave up" the third way. And they are pretty serious.

We will not re-establish and establish democracy anywhere in this world as long as we don't remove these people from power forever along with all of their supporters, their media-whores and their think-tanks.
If there is any kind of War Against Terror in this world, which is really a necessity, it's the war against these assholes and the whores, who support them.

And when it comes to socialism: "Man is above Capital. That is clear." - And I would add: that's all. Chavez said, we need to develop a "socialism for the 21. Century". Nothing would be more stupid - and I say this in all solidarity - than to revive the leninist model of socialism, esp. not the bolshevist party system. It might have had a historic significance, but it isn't a model for us now. Not in any way. And I hope that Chavez and the people in Venezuela are aware of that. On the other hand, they shouldn't get into the trap of a western-style "democracy", which is just a tool to guarantee that the corporations and banks will get into a hegemonial position to oppress us again.

And noone should expect the corporate media or the mainstream "democrats" to show any kind of respect for whatever happens in Venezuela, as long as they are not sure, that there will not be a democracy, but their corporate managed pseudo-democracy again, and if this doesn't work: how about a few death-squads and a bit of fascism, as long as they regain the power.
They will try everything to destroy the democracy in Venezuela, they will spin endless stories about oppression, torture, dictatorship etc. ppp.

Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[applegrove]

5. The west faces competition from the world. The west will not be

as rich as they have been. The 20th century was a bubble for North America. All the grow will be in middle classes in India, China, Brazil & Russia. They are not yet mature. So how do you want the average American to participate in that creation of wealth or those markets? Corporations are the only way.

And the corporations are our tools. Just like the markets belong to man. And the third way does not let the corporations dictate the way things have to be. Regulations are just as much a right to mankind as the existence of a corporation is. In fact, it was once the elites had their monopoly powers and regulations taken away from them that the markets expanded to create the first middle class.

You do not let the elites skew the markets. Right now a very few people have control over the NY stock exchange. They keep putting off a recession because Bush want to spend the USA government into the ground.

The third way says you recognize that anything you eat or own that you did not grow or make from your own front lawn, came from specialization and market activity. So anybodies middle class life (wealth is anything above subsistence) is based on the market.

So you fight for the markets. You fight for things like universal health care because that uses some market activity but it puts the monopoly power in the hands of the government and they can demand good deals from doctors & pharmaceutical companies, just like Wal-Mart does of its suppliers.

All of us, even the USof A live in liberal democracies with mixed market economies. The third way just says that the corporations and the markets need to be regulated for the good of the democracy. That elites should not be running wild and trying to build tribalism beneath them so democracy is destroyed and an elite class can become permanently entrenched.

The current WH is modeling the USA on Saudi Arabia. While they demand democracy in other parts of the world (so that Saudi wealth does not skew US finances & Saudi tribalism is not so well funded and filled with desperate & poor that it becomes a terrorist force). Democracy stops elites. It stops tribalism because tribalism is just the other side of the coin of elites. You cannot have one without the other.

The third way is about using all the tools man has created to benefit man, and allow a mature middle class in the USA to make some gains by all the growth that will take place in India, Russia, China & Brazil. Did you know that those 4 countries will together make an economy that is 10 times bigger than the Western economy of today?

The Bush WH would turn us back to the dark ages where monopolies and generational intact wealth makes all the regulations and as the people get poorer,the elites cut out larger & larger pieces of the pie for themselves.

The third way would force corporations to follow some code of good world citizenship of loose its charter. The third way would push for all the world to have universal health care (because it is the cheapest & best way to keep costs down). The third way is really the way it has been and will always be if we act as part of the brotherhood of mankind and use only the tools that improve the lives of the people and truly make the world a democratic place.

To make sure that Africa finally gets to participate in world markets. To make sure that just because the West is mature, the economies not as vibrant as before, that priorities are set so that all the people benefit from world trade. And where trade is unfair or evil, you regulate against that.

The third way is about true liberalism.

[Dirk39]

6. The competition isn't between "the" West and China or Russia...

It's between the corporations and their corrupt governments and institutions, who have hijacked OUR world and the ordinary people.

"The west will not be as rich as they have been."

Do you talk of a Wallmart-worker or John Kerry or an Enron worker, who has lost his job and his pensions?

"middle classes in India, China, Brazil & Russia"

When Clinton was still the president of the USA, the US and the wallstreet-dominated IMF and the Worldbank have stolen about 300 billion dollars from the russian economy, the live-expectancy rate was 48 years in 2001, 5 years lower than during the last years of communism.
Do you really talk about a new-middle-class or do you talk about a few people, who profit from selling out their economies and some more people, who think, they are the new "middle-class", while more and more people just don't count anymore. The corporations openly admit since many years that only 20% of the people are needed. 80% are superfluous (according to the chief of Hewlett Packard 15 years ago).
These people can only hope that they are left with some idiotic fastfood in front of their idiotic T.V. screens, instead of being put into a concentration camp. Might depend on what is cheaper for the shareholders.

The "raising middle-classes" in Russia, Brazil etc., you're talking about are just very few people, who collaborate with the Colonial Regime, hoping they would have to expect something better than the rest, but for most of them it will not work. We're much closer to a New Dark Age than to any kind of democratic Globalisation.

And that's not a corrupt Bush, replacing charming Mr. Clinton. Clinton didn't make any differance at all. He didn't stop what did start under Reagan and Bush I, he had nothing better in mind than to attack those on welfare.

The third-way paper was written in 1998 by Schröder and Blair under the influence of Clinton.

Both of them, esp. Schröder along with the Greens in Germany, did completely fail.
Schröder and the Social-Democratic Party have commited a before unknown and not expected attack against the welfare state in Germany: the result is even more unemployment, lower wages, a collapsing middle-class, cuts into the health-care and pension system...

It didn't work at all. In Great Britain as in Germany and to a lesser extent in the USA under Clinton the so-called third way was just a kind of trojan horse to commit political reforms - counterreforms would be a more adequate term - that rightwing and conservative parties wouldn't dare to commit. The third way is nothing but a gun shield for the neoliberal attacks against the welfare state.

(there is a difference between the USA and Europe: in Europe, with the exception of the UK, the conservative parties didn't dare to do what Thatcher and Reagan did: the Unions and the still somehow existing Labour Movement would not have let this happen).


I feel like an idiotic grandpa advising his "communist", pardon: neoliberal third-way grandson: nice idea, but it doesn't work. Where does it work? And if it did work during the "New-Deal" period after World War II, why doesn't it work anymore?

And so far I didn't see your growing wealthy middle-classes in China, Russia or India: I just see more people dying, losing their jobs, starving and simply being killed by the IMF and the Worldbank reforms.

The second Worldwar was a joke compared to the third that's going on for nearly 30 years.
Every single year, more people die as a consequence of the New World Order than during the entire Worldwar 2 including Ausschwitz.

The free-market reforms in Russia have caused more destruction than WW2 in the Soviet Union and I hope you remember, how the SU did look like after my german grandfathers did attack them.

If you want to be informed about what's happening, please don't believe in the statistics of the IMF and the Worldbank, who are responsible for these economic genocide.
You want to reduce the mortality rate among children?
Privatise or simply shut down some hospitals. Noone will count them anymore... It isn't profitable anyway.

But maybe we're just talking about lables, not issues?

I want a democratic elected government that has to serve the common interests. I want laws and rules that prohibit any kind of influence of corporations on the media or on the government. I want to completely ban advertising from newspapers, T.V. and Radio-Stations.

Information is to important in the world we live in, to leave it to Hamburger-Chains and corrupt corporations, what we've been told and not told.
I want politicians to earn exactly the average income of the country they live in and not one cent more.

You might laugh at me, but Brazil has tried the opposite: they have paid more than in any other country with the result that corruption was as high as never before.


I want the IMF and the Worldbank to be closed. I want an internation trial against these organisations like Nuremberg to make the economic genocide, they still commit, public to all people.


And I'm convinced that health care, food and having a roof on top of your head are basic human rights, nothing to be sold . It's not welfare, it's not an "alms", these are rights. And this should under no circumstances be left to private profit-oriented corporations.

This would be a start.

While you're talking about a third-way, capitalism has reached a stage, where you cannot draw any line anymore between capitalism, organized crime, terrorism and a criminal government. If the CIA wouldn't protect the drug market and launder the dirty drug-money, besides the money they use for their covert actions and gunrunning to terrorists, to pump it into the US economy, the Wallstreet would collapse. One of the reasons for the invasion into Afghanistan was that the Taliban did destroy the opium fields in the year 2000.

And you still talk about a happy new third way?

I have doubts!

But thanx a lot for your posting anyway,

Hi from Germany,
Dirk

[aneerkoinos]

7. Really

"And the corporations are our tools. Just like the markets belong to man. And the third way does not let the corporations dictate the way things have to be. Regulations are just as much a right to mankind as the existence of a corporation is. In fact, it was once the elites had their monopoly powers and regulations taken away from them that the markets expanded to create the first middle class."

Really, not. It's the other way around. People are tools of corporations, wich are sociopathic harmfull entities, by their very nature forced to maximize profit and externalize all social and enviromental costs.

WTO-globalization has made Third Way impossible.

Two main reasons:

1) Effective regulation a là social democracy is possible only on global scale, but the reality of nation states and blocks of states competing in the race to the bottom is not going to change for a long time.

2) Limited natural resources and population overshoot, meaning that there is not enough for everyone, leading to violent competition to control the remaining resources, both between and inside nations.

I live in a country (Nokialand) that is in international comparisons considered the best success story of the Third Way model, but even here it's not getting better, it's getting worse.

Banning stock market (and thus corporations) and socializing banks is the minimum requirement. Rest is open to discussion.

[Igel]

8. I think I disagree with one of your statements.

Yes, I'm sure I do.

The nature of the idealized, abstract corporation is not to be sociopathic, harmful, maximize profit, and externalize all (negative, presumably) social and environmental costs. The nature of the corporation, by definition, is to seek the goals of its shareholders as expressed by its trustees and limited by contracts and agreements entered into on behalf of the shareholders with non-shareholding investors. The mechanism is neutral.

To the extent that the shareholders make clear to the management that they desire bankrupcy, the management is bound to either obey, or resign. If the shareholders demand sustainable development, the corporation will follow. This isn't considered rational by society at large, but is a perfectly possible option. The student store I was involved with was an unincorporated non-profit, and functioned as a corporation. The directors, in keeping with demands of their constituents, demanded that it observe high moral and societal norms that limited income, and that profits from student necessities be kept to virtually nothing, and other profits subsidize student organizations. From the students' point of view, this was rational: it maximized what their goals were, social responsibility and profit for their advocacy groups.

In 21st century America, you find a welter of entities demanding the maximum return possible on their shares: some are very rich individual shareholders; some are very large institutional investors. The latter are no less rapacious than the "sharks of capitalism": insurance companies, pension funds, mutual funds. Ultimately, you find will a lot of individual shareholders, who find one point of agreement: they made money, they invested money, they want their money back.

If you seek the problem with corporations, seek the reasons they act as they do. They're not abstract entities; they're run by people, answering to people. And that's where the problem's to be located.

[applegrove]

9. Agreed - 100% n/t

[aneerkoinos]

10. Yeah, but

Corporations are not idealized abstracts but real entities.

Obviously there's a world of difference between small businez in "corporate" form, I myself own 40% of the stocks of a really tiny "corporate", and I'm not discussing them, but those publicly sold at stock-exchange, especially those without a single majority owner.

It is not correct picture that such entities, which are legal persons, are "run by people, answering to people", but complex, dynamic systems with logic of their own, and their owners and employees are just one part of the dynamics.

There's a good documentary called corporation, and here's a post about that documentary: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[applegrove]

13. The CEOs are encouraged to get profit in the short term and really

they are in a deregulated environment so they are all desperate to survive. And these days MBAs are taught that it is okay to compete with government, with consumers, with anything that moves..and not just their competitors in business. That needs to stop.

Like Big Pharma has no use for universal medicine because it means that people get to negotiate a better deal on drugs, and that they are healthier and have preventive medicine. So the drug companies see non-chronically sick people as bad.

The other most obvious is the green revolution and the anti-weed properties of new strains of rice or whatever. They are not anti-weed themselves..they have just been bread to withstand 4 times the chemical weed-killer. Now that is not pretty for the environment.

These things are insane.


We need to talk about how the stockholders get so much of the profit that the corporation wakes up at year end with not a penny to its name and the need to be predatory. We need to include a charitable mirror and externalities costs added to the cost of doing business. We need to talk about deregulations.

The corporation is just a tool. The problem is the people and the MBA schools and the elites.

We have some work to do.

Soviet people were not doing well under the old regime. People in Cuba (the only communist place left that has a market price tourist industry so it is not even communist fully) are not doing that great either.

[aneerkoinos]

15. Structures

I think it is extremely important to study and see how structures guide human action, instead of demonizing and scapegoating "other" people. Greed is a potential that some social structures actualize and strenghten, some social structures suffocate.

"Soviet people were not doing well under the old regime."

And they are doing even worse under the new IMF regime.

"People in Cuba (the only communist place left that has a market price tourist industry so it is not even communist fully) are not doing that great either."

To be exact, communist society is utopia, there are no communist states (the term is contradictory), only socialist. In socialism it is political decision, what room is allowed for market forces so that they give the most benefit to the people, in capitalism inevitably it's the capital and corporations that dictate how people should live (or die).

According to Human Development Index Cubans are doing pretty OK, despite decades of illegal embargo with sole purpose to hurt Cuban people.

[applegrove]

16. But they should all have small businesses and the ability to open a cafe

to the hoards of tourists that would descend on them if they were under someone other than Castro. Those people should be really middle class.

Instead..the people are not dying like so many starved people. But the command economy and rules about not letting people open their own business, have made for waste, everywhere. Wasted time, wasted careers, wasted opportunities.

No doubt the group that got kicked out deserved to be kicked out. The mafia and the elites are nobody to miss. They mess things up on the other end - like what is happening in Russia in the first few decades of freedom. Need I remind you that the US had slavery to create wealth for a very few in its first 100 years? And then they had robber barons? And that stopped for the most of the 20th Century.. and now you have neocons and Rovbots and corporate elites. Controlling those beasts is always a problem. It is called taxes. And didn't Putin (that scary guy) just take over Yukos Oil because they skirted taxes. That will put a cork in corporate Russia. (Yukos CEO went to jail then his huge oil conglomerate was taken and sold to various groups but mostly belongs to the government).

The third way says that you do the things you need to do and regulate the corporations & the markets to deliver public goods and stop the most horrid externalities and to make sure an adequate transfer of wealth takes place every generation so an embedded elite does not exist and accumulate too much power (money).

And the only way to control any corporation whatsoever is to control the humans who run them. That means laws (regulations & criminal laws) and jail-time if you break the laws.

Why there should even be a law against corporations trying to undo regulations. Regulations should have nothing to do with what the corporations say they need because as we have just witnessed that means: "undo this regulation, we make a killing, I pay myself $10,000, stockholders get money, workers are fired, the environment is degraded, tsunami victims do not get the shack by the sea to live in (and wealth that would have been theirs when they sold to a tourist business), etc.

WE HAVE WORK TO DO.

It is natural for a corporation left on its own to try and make it to monopoly. Do you not know how much stress goes into competeting? With a monopoly (like Wal-Mart) you just sit there and wave a magic want and tell your suppliers (small business) how much you want to pay.

[aneerkoinos]

18. Complicated issue

Equality is considered essential for social well-being, and giving too much leeway to private businesses will also lead to growing inequality, some people becoming "more equal than others", economically and politically more powerfull than others. The complicated question is how many fingers beside the pinky can society give to Satan without unleashing it, and there is no single correct answer.

"It is natural for a corporation left on its own to try and make it to monopoly."

Yup.

The problem for Western liberal representative democracy is that the genie is outta bottle, and cannot be put back working through the established democratic system, which has become less and less democratic and more and more plutocratic and oligarchic. Not with media and governements controlled by big money and corporate interest and not vice versa.

Yes, we have work to do.

But as long as there's still enough of panem et circenses to keep the population pacified, there will be change only towards worse. Sadly the system will have to collapse before new can be built. So the work is informing and educating and sharing thoughts, what we are doing here. And if one has chance, preparing for the collapse and post collapse by starting to build autonomous local economy.

[applegrove]

19. "autonomous local economy" is what the neocons want. That is

why they undo democracy in the USA and encourage tribalism (which allows for elites).

You are drinking Kool-aid my friend. I will not fight the neocon & corporate agenda by fulfilling their end-game. That would just be stupid.

We defeat them and go the third way by getting back in control of the greater democracy and encouraging empathy across cultures and different groups. We read out to the moderates who are religious but not into diminishing the lives of others. We reach out to the majority of the country who do not want to see abortion treating like it is trite and offer them a whole host of options to keep abortion to a minimum like birth control (man pills and man operations for teens) and the morning after pill, etc.

Going local is giving up all of our democratic power. The corporations make up 51 of the biggest 100 economies in the world. You bet they want us to retreat and go local. They want to not have to face entities as big as national governments.

"autonomous local economy" is exactly what they want. They don't want us getting together, town by town, state by state and forming federal powers.

Don't drink the Kool-Aid my friend. I may have to come along and give you the Heimlich Manoeuvre .

[aneerkoinos]

20. Easy boy, easy!

Stop pouring that Kool-Aid in my general direction!

Zapatista movement gaining autonomy, and even rejecting the money offers from the Mexican Federal governement is not what the corporatism ordered.

Cuba staying and Venezuela becoming free from the corporate rule is a visible threat to the New World Order of corporatism, which requires total control, human population in dependant serfdom to corporate means of production, a new world order of feodalism. That, my friend, is the endgame, and economically autonomous communities (FREE communities) in control of their natural resources are the worst enemy and most efficient way of resistance.

There is no fair trade, if people are not in control of their natural resources, only imperialistic pillage and rape.

One of the better ideas is local (community scale) currencies, it's been tried in many places, and the experiences are very good.

You misunderstand the word autonomy, when you take it to mean isolationism and unsolidarity and exclusive tribalism. That is not what I mean. Only autonomous communities, which are in control of their fortunes and not controlled, can act together for the good of all. The well known slogan from the Worl Social Forum goes: "Think global, act local".

Last but not least, in US, where the situation is worst and the survival chances for the federal state are close to nil when the Perfect Storm (Peak Oil, Debts unravelling etc) hits, building local autonomous community economies is a matter of survival, matter of life and death. Yes, it is that bad, and what is drinking Kool-Aid is believing in pipe dreams. And yes, my name is Kassandra.

[applegrove]

21. As long as the power remains with the federal governments and they

keep the god given power to use tools like regulations to meet the needs of their democratic and free people.

Local is bad. That is divide and conquer.

Now grass roots movements across countries and across the world... those are good.

[aneerkoinos]

22. False dichotomy

The issue is not local versus federal/global, the issue is issues.

The European Union experience shows us that it is possible to share sovereignity in mutually beneficient ways. But at the same time it is important to keep the decision making power as close to the people as possible, as local and democratic as possible, to utilize local know-how and human creativity to the fullest potential. This principle has even a fancy name, subsidiarety. There are issues that can only be effectively decided on international, such as basic guidelines and minimum requirements for human rights, enviromental and labor regulation, details and other issues need not centralized decision making in the higher echelons. Deciding which issues should be decided and how on which level is of course very complicated.

PS: "god given power"? Please.

[applegrove]

23. I use religious terms - as a figure of speech unknowingly. But if I was

devout I would be very offended by you telling me how to speak. I think that is the great weakness of the Democrats. That so many liberals took religion to be something frivolous and wrong. It is just another way of experiencing the world. Some people are born with the capacity to have faith. Others not so much.

And it was a coalition of the liberal & the religious (as always not mutually exclusive) who undid the robber barons at the turn of the century and stopped child labor. They were also hand in hand with civil rights workers in the 1950s and 1960s.

We cannot just hand over our religious brethren to the other side by ridiculing how they see the world. 'god given right' is an old term. But I use it to denote truths that someone feels are basic.

I do not censor myself because I picked it up from some very, very great Christians in my past. I was not even aware that I did. I also swear (and I am not quite sure where that came from).

I'm sure it is ever true, but I often feel the people who jump down the throats of the devoted, who are here to discuss openly, I often wonder how many of the people who attack are freepers.

We gain nothing by forgetting how to empathize. My rule of thumb - if you are a good person - you are under my tent. I expect there to be a variety of ways to look at the world. I don't expect democracy to give me exactly what I want..and to not have to look at truths other than my own... I expect democracy to give me what I need.

[aneerkoinos]

26. Religion

I consider myself rather religious/spiritual person (not Christian, though), and think that cultural evolution towards socialism is by necessity as much spiritual process as political.

Yes, it is a figure in speech, and my intention is not to play language police. Why I jumped on that is that I think that particular thought is not beneficial, because it implies that our rights and responsibilities are not social facts which we can affect and evolve in the process, but immutable things preordained by some external authority.

Also, I don't subscribe to the view that religiouss beliefs and thoughts are a tabu and so private that they cannot be discussed and criticized. I oppose any and all forms of dogmatism and authoritarianism, not subject to dialogue, and when Chistianity goes that way, IMO it goes very much against what Jesus spoke. No matter how many "Christians" get offended by saying so.

[applegrove]

29. Can they use their own vocabulary on this board without being corrected

by you?

[applegrove]

24. You keep sounding like a freeper. Surely there should be national

standards. Surely public's goods should be delivered by the corporations. Surely you don't want people to decide on reproductive rights based on a particular neighborhood consensus. Surely the man-pill should be funded and developed right away.

Even Richard Perle admits norms exist. He just want all of ours to be changed into something that works for his Utopia. And that doesn't suit me at all.

Going against the neocon desire to see the world chopped up into local groups & tribalism is not what you want. That is about keeping people fighting at the local level and not with power at the federal level. That is about the creation of a corporate Uber-elite. And elites require than people go 'loco' ..ahem I mean go 'local'.

You either use your federal government or you loose it. The Repukes are trying very hard to break the bonds.

[aneerkoinos]

27. LOL

I don't think it's kosher to call someone a freeper here on DU. If you really feel that, use the alert-button. I won't and let that pass, because it's only amusing to a socialist with strong anarcho-syndicalist tendencies.

Now to the subject. I don't think you even read my post, or if you did, you sure as hell didn't understand it.

I did mention basic human righst as one issue to be decided on highest political level possible, and for me that includes people's right to decide what they do with their own body.

Federal state, in this case the US federal state, is a tool that can be used in many ways. Repukes and many Dems too are using it for militarism, warfare and imperialism to pillage natural resources from other people, and to create a fundie christian corporate fascism at home, an oppressive totalitarian police state.

And when things get into that stage, so bad that the federal state is only an inch away from open fascism, it doesn't require much brain power to realize that the game is lost on that level, that resistance to fascism has to start again from scratch, by building stronger communities and community spirit.

The difference between us is that you think there is still some realistic hope of turning the tide on federal level from fascism to New Deal politics, I don't nourish such hopes anymore, at least for US. For EU, yes, to some extent I'm still hopefull, and for South American Union even more so.

[applegrove]

28. You cede a great deal of power to the neocons. It would be like them

to create a 'buzz' on the DU that all the federal powers are lost. That is how they win. You cut your losses and you will be cutting your losses forever more. That is how sociopaths and elites work. They always need more. Because they are empty vessels.

If you really feel the game is over at a federal level, why not post that as a thread and see how it goes? Such a radical change of heart (giving up) should be shared openly so that you can be coaxed back to humanity and the good fight.

I think 5 months after the election is lost when the Bush WH lost on SS and the democrats are onto the patterns of Rove... I think it is a little bit early to throw in the towel.

You may want to read up on PNAC documents. They talk all about local and how that is how human beings will exist - in their neocon Utopia.

[aneerkoinos]

33. Whoa!

So now I'm excluded from humanity and have to be "coaxed back"!???

Watch it, you are too emotionally attached to your thoughts and loosing your cool, attempting to demonize different views.

Outside US, and hardly even inside, US federal state and IMF etc controlled by it stopped being a force of good long time ago. For the people of the world it is enemy, sucking in all the resources, polluting and destroying the Earth, corrupting and oppressing and murdering the people on the face of Earth. There is no real difference between corporate neocons and corporate democrats, only that the latter are realists and smarter and thus more dangerous. Like I said, I'm a pragmatic and realist green socialist and internationalist, not neoliberal and nationalistic Third Way ideologue, which you are starting to look like more and more.

I really do hope you could win and take your country back and make it again even half-decent, but I don't see that politically realistic option. General US population is too ignorant, too individualistic and fragmented, too addicted to cheap energy and consumerism and corporate media propaganda, too proud, too hubristic and too aggressive, too much blinded by the Treasured American Mythology. DU has many good and wise people aboard, but it is a small minority and not a real political force.

[chlamor]

30. Sorry to step in here

but local Economies are in fact the only way. It really doesn't matter what Big Theory you or I put forth we will be returning to the local and it would be wise to do it in a well planned ceremonious manner.

Global-ization is only a nouveau term embedded in the brains of the media consumer by the neo-liberal robber barons. It is just a poor disguise for New age colonialism.

Also I challenge you to stop with the theories and use concrete examples, say for example in the world of 'Trade'. The global 'economy" is based on cheap fossil fuels and mass transportation and is in fact uneconomical and toxic in many ways. It cannibalizes the knowledge you need to survive and pours toxins into your lungs.

Here is a concrete example of the "Global Economy"-Consider the Tomato


Last January, while sitting in a restaurant in Toronto, I ordered a salad.  The salad came with a tomato on it.  I found myself wondering, “Where did this tomato come from?”  So I tracked it.
     The tomato’s story begins on land acquired by the U.S.-based Jolly Green Giant Company in partnership with the Mexican Development Corporation.  The land was previously an ejido—land used by farmers for publicly owned cooperative farms. 
     The tomato seed, a hybrid developed from an original Mexican strain, is now patented and owned by Calgene, Inc., which purchased the research from the University of California, Davis.  The university developed the hybrid with a research grant paid for by U.S. tax dollars.
     The land was fumigated with methyl bromide, an ozone-depleter 120 times more potent than cholorfluorocarbon-111 (CFC-111).  It was also treated with pesticides developed, manufactured and distributed by the Monsanto Corporation, one of America’s largest polluters.  Production waste was shipped to the world’s largest hazardous waste landfill in Emelle, Alabama—a predominantly poor, African-American community.
     The Mexican farmworkers were given no protection from the pesticides: no gloves, masks or safety instructions.  The make approximately $2.50/day and have no access to health care.
     Once harvested, the tomato was placed with others on a plastic tray covered in plastic wrap, then stored in a cardboard box.  The plastic is manufactured with chlorine produced by the Formosa Company of Point Comfort, Texas.  Workers and citizens of Point Comfort face a potentially significant risk of cancer and immune-suppression disease due to exposure to dioxin, a byproduct of chlorine production.
     The cardboard comes from British Columbia’s 300-year-old trees, which are processed in Great Lake-region pulp mills, where residents are warned against eating dioxin-contaminated fish.  The cardboard is then shipped by the United Trucking Company to Latin American farms.


The boxed tomatoes, reddened by ether (a tasteless gas with no nutritional value), are sent via refrigerated trucks throughout North America.  Both trucks and distribution centers are equipped with CFC cooling equipment made by DuPont of Wilmington, Delaware.  Once the tomato arrived at its destination in Toronto, the plastic packaging was thrown away, picked up, shipped back into the U.S. and burned in an incinerator in Detroit, Michigan.
     Throughout the process, fossil fuels drive the tomato’s trip.  The oil that fuels the trucks (and warms the climate) is drilled from the Gulf of Comache, Mexico, extracted by Chevron and processed by Pemex, the Mexican national oil company.  The fuel that makes the tomato’s trip possible is then shipped via tanker (dodging 3800 existing oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico) to refineries on the U.S. Gulf coast that are uniquely responsible for the death of that region’s environment and economy.  The fuel is then distributed to the plastic makers, pesticide pushers, packaging barons and motor-vehicle owners that make this killer tomato’s 3000-mile attack possible.
     If we look at the true economics of an everyday item like a 50-cent tomato—including the social costs of this type of production—you can see what is really driving this type of economic system.  You then realize that having your own garden and growing your own tomatoes can be a very subversive and radical act.
     And it makes the fruit that much sweeter.

http://www.no-one-right-way.com/killer_tomato.html

[applegrove]

31. Me - I think it is liberal to be open to trade and to let Africa

participate in the world economy. For sure if there are 10 Billion people in the world then all the farmers in the world will be busy. But right now Africans are shut out of the process. Would be nice to see them living on $5000 a year rather than $200. A few school uniforms. A local economy for them. A good return on hard work.

And they do not have to be corporations. Farmers unions can get together and sell around the world. Have you not heard of fair trade coffee.

I am a liberal. I believe in trade. And the fight is not over.

Who decided the fight was over and we had to jump to the neocon end game?

For sure we will be more local when the oil runs out. But giving up the political is just a little early seeing as how on the national scene, the Repukes are beginning to tank.

[chlamor]

32. Unpack what you say

and it would resemble the argument put forth by those who exploit "Africa", though I suspect and hope you don't feel as they do. Of course I have heard of Fair Trade coffee and bananas etc. again you are just theorizing. give me the exact economic tally of bananas coming and going fair trade or no. Make sure you take all aspects into account-tranrportation, agricultural methodology, environmental consequences sales profits etc. what you will find is that Fair Trade bananas in NY or England are the result of a polluting uneconomicla arrangememt.

Your ridiculous assertion about jumping to the neo-con game does not merit comment.

School uniforms? Sounds authoritarian and a bit of a civilizing mission colonial-speak.

The "Africans" "Vietnamese" etc. don't need 5,000 or even 200 dollars per year nor do you, again more abstraction, what they/we need is autonomy to unravel the fiat currency illusion and the West to stop pillaging their land so that the spoiled children in the West can have cell phones and their divine birthright the Mid-winter banana.

Do you ever wonder whose blood is in your morning coffee?

Define economy.

[applegrove]

34. Wow - you blame me for the world's ills. Or you blame Liberals (who

are the original free traders). Fact is farm life is harsh. But less harsh than subsistence farming. Next in line comes factory work. Then middle class.

You either want subsistence farmers to stay subsistence farmers... and not participate in the world economy where they have a comparative advantage ... or you want them to participate in the world economy where they can get cash for some crops and send the girls to school (I use school uniform to denote the barrier to schools many people face...they have to pay for books and uniform in some instances - how ridiculous is that... my parents never had to.. but then I lived in a rich society with free & good funding for schools).

Here is a link about Africa & Trade. Fact is that if you are not surviving by eating and making clothes out of what you can grow on your front lawn, you are in a market and enjoying some form of wealth (albeit it could be a small amount of extra money). And you are specializing. So why would you want to live in a Country where there is trade and wealth and you can get work and buy a computer..and they don't get to live in a market that is so integrated?

I find arguing with Utopians very hard. There is one socialist country on the planet and that is Cuba. Everyone else is in a mixed market economy (yes even the USA) and if they live in democracy, they live in liberal democracies. I want the Africans to have everything you have.

That does not mean we don't regulate corporations so they deliver public goods (like universal health care so Pharmacies do not abuse their monopolies and people can get the best deal on health care). We regulate for environmental things. We stop awful trade practices and make sure all corporations are following standards (or we take away their charter).

The middle class in the USA is mature. The 20th century was a bubble of wealth where North America didn't have to compete with the Soviet block, with Europeans after the war, with the less developed nations. But we got to sell & get resources to all these places. That was unrealistic. We will never be so wealthy again. So we have to pick and choose which social programs are the most important and fight against neocons for those. Most of the growth (wealth creation) in the world will be in India, China, Brazil & Russia. Those 4 countries will bust a move with middle classes 3 Billion strong (the USA middle class is 200 million and it makes up half of world trade today... in 40 years.. the 4 countries above will together be an economy 10 times greater that all the Western economies today). You either participate in that phenomenal growth (through the internet & corporations) or you get cut out.

Let me repeat. There will be almost 3 Billion new middle class people created. Because of trade.

Our job is to ensure that the corporations do not set up the norms for the world. If it was up to the neocons, there would be no national health care programs or public schools. They are Utopians and they will destroy many lives with their prudish policies and their practice of creating myths and then believing them (otherwise known as drinking your own ****). We have a fight on our hand. But dismissing corporations outright is stupid and Utopian. Corporations are tools created by man. We own them. We can regulate them exactly how we want. They got loose. The pendulum will swing back.

The thing we own and you seem to hate - though you can afford a computer so you are not living off your local biosphere - is the market. The market was invented by humans everywhere 10,000 years ago. And it has made for middle class and increases in standards of living. The last time the elites got control of the market was in the Dark Ages. That went really bad. Capitalism and the middle class emerged only when the elites had their monopolies taken away from them (royalty, slavery, religious control over the intellectual, and robber barons were not allowed to be monopolies)in the 20th Century.

The market is ours. As is the planet. We have to fight for the markets instead of rejecting them. You do not defeat elites & their followers that act tribal & adolescent by holding onto Utopian ideals. It is time to put away childish things. Only Cuba is a socialist country. Those Nordic European ones are all mixed market economies. And they have to whittle down their social programs because the time of European dominance (and all roads leading to Europeans) is over.

If you care about the poor then you want them out of garbage dumps and into factories. Or you want them getting a little cash instead of subsistence farming.

The Internet will allow for a woman in Africa to make a gorgeous piece of craft-work, go to her local library, download a picture of it on the computer, advertise it on Ebay, get paid $100 dollars for it, and do really well. Look at what the Inuit are doing with their co-op sculptures in the Canadian North? But she has to have the extra cash to buy the craft tools and dies and such from farming and getting cash.

Think of the possibilities for a community who can put enough cash together to put in a ground water pump so the women do not have to walk 4 miles a day to a lake? Think of them pooling resources and buying a digital camera and having an internet centre.

Here is a little piece on the Africa you do not always hear about.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58294-20...

Trust me. The internet is a great leveler. So is opening our markets to the world. And since other people will be doing all the growth.. you do not want to get shut out of that market of 3Billion people if you come up with the greatest widget!

[chlamor]

41. Have you ever farmed?

The average American has 300 energy slaves. I'm not blaming anyone just trying to get you to get away from biological denial and abstractions.

The INTERNET is absolute powerlessness for the likes of you and I- remember that while you and I exchange info the foreign exchange arbiters of our world exchange POWER.

The computer is another gadget which has transfixed the techno-euphorians and deluded them into thinking they have power.

There is no freedom without land- You cannot eat data.


300 lbs of ore must be mined for the amount of copper in one computer. The computer and the cell phone are two of the most toxic gadgets on earth. Ask those in Silicon Valley what the rate of cancer is and why.

We are of the Earth.

I highly recommend you read Tom Frank's work on the notion of the computer as the great leveler. of course one could just examine how the disparity has increased in this great info age.

HOWEVER THE ASSUMPTION THAT IS THROUGHOUT YOUR ARGUMENT AND MOST IN THE WEST IS THAT POVERTY IS THE PROBLEM_IT IS NOT> WEALTH IS THE PROBLEM AND POVERTY AND ECOLOGICAL DESTRUCTION ARE THE NATURAL OFFSPRING OF WEALTH AND ALL ITS ACCOUTREMENT'S.

TIMES UP-POWERDOWN

Do not be afraid of the level of change we all need to make. Live with less-Much less.

[applegrove]

42. I agree we need to learn with much less. And online, you could

oder a box of tomatoes or a truckload between you and your friends. Online, order it from people in Mexico. And get a better deal. And they get a better deal. And watch the corporations freak out and freak out about. And try and put regulations in place (hello big Pharma) so that you cannot get the best deal from suppliers yourself (WAlMART is currently the only place that is allowed to do that).

[aneerkoinos]

43. I say tomatos, you say tomaytoes

You still don't get the real issue.

With PO, when the price of the lubricant of trade and fossile energy put into production goes sky high, there is no global economy of scale, but local communities that, in order just to plain fucking survive, have to be self-sustainable food- and energy-wise to a certain degree, which degree is unknown, but certainly much more so than today.

Energy economy is the alfa and the omega, all the rest is superfluos. Start dealing with facts, not faux hopes.


The wisdom of building relatively (there are no absolutes) more self-sustained local communties/economies especially in US, is that no matter how you think it through, the likelihood of the US Federal state collapsing is much more that 50%, and what will you do if and when the likelihood becomes reality, and You have bet all your eggs in one basket, the one with poorer chanses. In this particular game the answer is not difficult: You, your spouse, your children will die. End of you, and who will miss your useless unrealistic hopes? Nobody.

Simple as that, much too simple to be accepteble, I know.

[chlamor]

44. Grow your own

Me and my friends eliminate the middle man eliminate the costly shipping (more costly than you seem to understand-ecological costs are the only real costs) and eliminate the accompanying greenhouse gases.

Any vegetable-fruit begins to lose nutrients the moment it is picked. food that travels a long distance is not only picked before it is ripened but is losing nutrients all along its journey so that by the time it hits the shelf or your belly it is devoid of most nutrients. So you think others should grow your food-build your house?

The only economical economy is local. The days of the three thousand mile Caesar Salad are coming to a close. If you are wise you will learn the joys of dirty fingers and sunburned shoulders. manual labor is rewarding if it is not in the industrial modality of wage slave-consumer-rent payer.

By the way DDT is used in Mexico as provided by US corps and then the food sprayed with the stuff is shipped here.

Biological denial is seductive and the machine messiah holds sway over too many.

EVERYTHING COMES FROM THE LAND.

[Selatius]

35. I'm not open to free trade without protections for workers/environment

I find it unjustifiable that folks in Africa are being paid pennies an hour to create things such as Nike shoes, which are sold for usually better than 50 dollars in the states.

Yes, I support elevating people out of poverty. Yes, I support making lives better for people, but I do not support free trade policies rigged to benefit multinational corporations only, nor do I support free trade policies that only degrade the environment, nor do I support free trade policies that make it illegal for sovereign nations to sue multinational firms whenever they are at fault for an industrial disaster or accident or when the public is harmed at large.

The corporatist agenda is to enslave all of mankind under the yoke of their vision of what exactly is free trade, which is dividing the peoples of the world and making them fight with each other in a race to the bottom. While I do favor autonomous regions that are economically self-sufficient, I do not favor that certain aspect of their agenda that cuts communications between communities and regions and thus does not allow mutual coordination and cooperation.

[applegrove]

36. I agree with everything you said. We have to ensure some great norms

and not let the corporations make the rules. We need standards. And yes - going local and focusing on that is wrong. Because national governments need to be big enough to take on the corporations. Because with the internet we will be a village anyway.

We should not cede one bit of national or international power. We should strengthen those.

Of course the neocon will say: "oh you have to be local". And I say "may I hand over more of what my political world is? Would you like my house, my pets, my savings?"

Sociopaths will have you cutting and cutting your losses like there is no tomorrow.

Of course they want all 'institutions' to be local. That would make them all small. Smaller than a corporation. That is bull****.

It is also exactly the neocon agenda. So that nobody can say boo to the corporations because we are not organized into big enough groups to break their monopolies or regulate them. And then they will play us all off against each other.

***holes!

[AG78]

37. Eveything keeps getting bigger

That won't be good for humanity.

As corporations grow, government has to grow. As government grows, corporations have to grow. If one becomes larger than the other, we have problems. If both global leviathans start working together, game over.

"We should not cede one bit of national or international power."

You're a bit late for that.

"we are not organized into big enough groups to break their monopolies or regulate them"

That's as close to impossible as you can get to do that on a global scale. Human beings don't work that way. Too many of us have a small problem looking beyond tint and geography.

Corporations, on the other hand, have but one color, don't see lines drawn on maps a long time ago, and have human rights without any of the human weaknesses(like having to eat, sleep, and breathe).

I think everything has to get smaller. But that won't happen unless the system crashes. But if that does start to happen, both government and business will get first cracks at trying to hold things together. So they'll both get bigger either way.

"Because with the internet we will be a village anyway"

It's a nice idea. That's why I love Lennon's "Imagine". Maybe one day.

[dcfirefighter]

49. The only real monopolies

are in things that cannot be reproduced.

Whe cannot have a leviathan government nor leviathan corporations.

We charge them for the rights we give them, and they break up.

We close the loop on free enterprise and end the business cycle that favors companies large enough to weather the storms.

[AG78]

38. Oops, replied to the wrong one

That won't be good for humanity.

As corporations grow, government has to grow. As government grows, corporations have to grow. If one becomes larger than the other, we have problems. If both global leviathans start working together, game over.

"We should not cede one bit of national or international power."

You're a bit late for that.

"we are not organized into big enough groups to break their monopolies or regulate them"

That's as close to impossible as you can get to do that on a global scale. Human beings don't work that way. Too many of us have a small problem looking beyond tint and geography.

Corporations, on the other hand, have but one color, don't see lines drawn on maps a long time ago, and have human rights without any of the human weaknesses(like having to eat, sleep, and breathe).

I think everything has to get smaller. But that won't happen unless the system crashes. But if that does start to happen, both government and business will get first cracks at trying to hold things together. So they'll both get bigger either way.

"Because with the internet we will be a village anyway"

It's a nice idea. That's why I love Lennon's "Imagine". Maybe one day.

[Selatius]

40. Size matters not. It is what you do with people that count.

If 1,000 relatively small communities operated separately and did not communicate in a particular region, and some nation-state or multinational firm decided to exploit and crush them, guess what? Game over for those communities. They are already divided and isolated from each other. The next step would be to crush each one systematically.

However, if those disparate communities communicated and coordinated with each other, the fact that they are independent or autonomous becomes irrelevant for the simple fact that they can coordinate and thus create a common front or coalition, a wall preventing said corporation or nation from attacking or exploiting them. It is not necessarily true that people in their respective communities have to give up decision-making power to a body comprised of a relatively few people (elected or not) in order to collaborate.

Also, keeping lanes of communication open will allow eventual integration (or not) at the pace that people in general will decide collectively, not the pace a certain individual or small group of individuals decide is best. I believe this can be done without ceding power to more centralized governing bodies. That kind of concentration of power can become quite dangerous. It must remain as diffused as possible.

The equation must be balanced. You cannot address the global aspect of the equation without also addressing the local aspect as well. "Think globally. Act locally."

[dcfirefighter]

46. Awesome

I planted my first garden this spring. I told my friends it's my 'Liberty Garden'.

[Selatius]

25. I support the general sentiment of your post

Decision-making power should be planted into the hands of as many people as possible. Basically, it means it should be as close to the people as possible. I agree that this doesn't mean that we divide ourselves up into small, autonomous groups and operate separately from each other. We can still operate as a united front, and this is still very possible. The key is open communication across all communities big and small. That is the way that larger regional and continental issues can be decided upon. No one says we cannot create a giant federation of communities as opposed to a federation of states.

[chlamor]

3. If you call saying so long to

Being raped pillaged and plundered by Big Oil and the IMF then maybe it's time we all gave up.

"They" are recovering their dignity and national sovereignty from The Beast

[kineneb]

4. Ironically, this is what Jesus was talking about

(and I am a Buddhist!) A rich man can no more get into heaven than a camel go through the eye of a needle. For all of you capitalist "christians" out there, go read Matthew.

A corporation is not a person and people do need to come before profits.

[Selatius]

11. I think socialism is the way as well, imho

I think it's the long-term solution. Mutual cooperation is the answer not just for the survival and wellbeing of humanity but the sustainability of life on this planet in general. Ultimately, the private ownership of capital is a form of oppression that only continues to exist through the enforcement of various forms of property law.

The resources that benefit man should, in my opinion, be used in a manner where everyone has a say in deciding how they will be alotted to each person. I reject the pay-to-play way of life we have as a long-term solution. It disenfranchises the poorest among us for the simple fact that they are the least able to pay. In my mind, this is wrong and cannot be morally justified.

If the greed-soaked lost souls, a product of a society that champions the accumulation of wealth, have their way, the public education system would be turned into a for-profit institution. Social Security would be a for-profit institution. Many social programs would cease to exist or be sold off to the highest bidder, all in the name of greater profits. This is not sustainable. It would represent a step backward.

I also firmly believe the change can be done in a highly democratic manner, preferably as direct as humanly possible. Socialism cannot be imposed by force or coercion because a few people think they know what's best for the people. Socialism without democracy is just a new form of tyranny. It can only come when people have been awakened to the new way and have chosen to embrace it together.

This was the mistake of more authoritarian forms of socialism. In the end, it led to totalitarian regimes as bad as those that they claimed to be against. The point was to liberate people, not replace the old oligarchy with a new oligarchy that only claims to represent the people.

This is why I have this particular star in my signature. It represents the ideals behind libertarian socialism/anarcho-syndicalism/anarcho-socialism.

[aneerkoinos]

12. Anthropos politikon zoon esti

"Human is a social being", said Aristotle.

Not (only) an individual consumerist.

And the best scientific theories about mind state that we are all ("spiritually") connected, not (only) egotistic islands on the material level.

Socrates, Jeebus, Buddha and Socialism. We can work this out, together.

[chlamor]

14. Ghost in the Machine

B.F. Skinner the master (bastard) of Operant conditioning believed human to be a machine, of course he was an alpha, and that we could be conditioned to be producer-consumer. Arthur Koestler who wrote "Ghost in the Machine" said no we are spirits in the material world (from which the Police derived album and song respectively). The two psycho-giants traveled the same lecture and cocktail circuit. Koestler would after a few cocktails secretly tell folks he was going to prove Skinner wrong using Skinner as an example. The emotionless Skinner said he couldn't be riled and Koestler would do just that. He told people to watch Skinners hands and note the agitation as Koestler tweaked him with arguments. Skinner despised Koestler.

It's all connected

Peace

[bemildred]

17. Koestler's "Act of Creation" is excellent too.

Skinner had the fascination with reductive descriptions of the world
that is characteristic of the insecure and half-smart. It is soooo
"rewarding" to think you really understand everything and have it all
under control.

[glitch]

39. I love this post.

Just saying.

[Matilda]

45. Me too.

Listening, learning, and loving it.

[dcfirefighter]

47. I think geonomics is the way

Socialism requires a command economy that can be subverted, and is often wrong.

Do not confuse what we have with real competitive free-enterprise.

Produced goods become cheaper with competition, but so does labor. Technology and process improvements mean that produced goods become cheaper faster than labor.

Non produced goods become more expensive with competition. These goods are gifts from God (or Nature if you prefer) or are the result of community development.

If we share these common gifts, all else becomes unneccessary. Oligopolies and Cartels are broken. Wealth production becomes efficient.

If we are to Socialize one thing, it would be the economic returns to the commonwealth. What is left after paying for government, can be divided among the people.

My recommendation for the first step: Socialize the economic returns to the commonwealth that are currently 'owned' or granted by the Federal Government: Federal Land user fees and FCC licenses. Mineral rights. It is my estimation that such rights, if auctioned rather than given as political gifts, would raise $500B in revenue, and not raise prices a whit. Conveniently, $500B is about what we pay in Social Security. We could eliminate most of the regressive payroll tax, which would lower the cost of labor, which would increase the use of labor, which would increase employment and wages.

[aneerkoinos]

50. Command economy?

Socialism is many things, and people (wrongly) often identify it only with soviet style centralized top to bottom planning. That kind of bureaucratism is well known also in capitalist economies and authoritarian corporate cultures.

No, the central issue in socialism is WHO is in command, Das Kapital and the owning class, or We, the people? Worker's and producer's co-operatives, where decision making is as decentraliced and democratic as possible, are good old socialist forms of entrepreneaul productive activity. In many places where owners have disappeared after a collapse (with all the cash), workers have taken over the factories and continued production, usually managing things by themselves much better than the former command economy under the authoritarian capitalist vampire.

[LittleClarkie]

48. I must be tired.

I looked at the title and saw bovine. Moo.