In Memory of the Chicago Anarchists

Happy May Day, everyone. Remember the Haymarket Martyrs!

Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt

By Umberto Eco
Writing in New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995, pp.12-15. Excerpted in Utne Reader, November-December 1995, pp. 57-59.

The following version follows the text and formatting of the Utne Reader article, and in addition, makes the first sentence of each numbered point a statement in bold type. Italics are in the original.

For the full article, consult the New York Review of Books, purchase the full article online; or purchase Eco's new collection of essays: Five Moral Pieces.

In spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various historical forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.

* * *

1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.

Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counterrevolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but is was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of the faiths indulgently accepted by the Roman pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history. This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of forgotten languages -- in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little-known religions of Asia.

This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, "the combination of different forms of belief or practice;" such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and although they seem to say different or incompatible things, they all are nevertheless alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.

As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.

If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine, who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge -- that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.

2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.

Both Fascists and Nazis worshipped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon blood and earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life. The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.

3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.

Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Hermann Goering's fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play ("When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs," and "universities are nests of reds." The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.

4. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.

In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.

5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.

Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.

That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old "proletarians" are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.

7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.

This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the United States, a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson's The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.

8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.

When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.

9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.

Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such "final solutions" implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.

10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.

Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people in the world, the members or the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler.

11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero.

In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Spanish Falangists was Viva la Muerte ("Long Live Death!"). In nonfascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.

12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.

This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons -- doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.

13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.

In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view -- one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.

Because of its qualitative populism, Ur-Fascism must be against "rotten" parliamentary governments. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.

14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.

Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the official language of what he called Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.

* * *

Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, "I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares." Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances — every day, in every part of the world. Franklin Roosevelt's words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: "If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land." Freedom and liberation are an unending task.

War Crimes

I just got back from seeing Taxi to the Dark Side, and if I had any doubt that this administration was guilty of war crimes, those doubts have been eliminated. Of course, it only takes his implicit admission to such by quietly trying to pardon himself in 2006 of any crimes connected with the torture and mistreatment of U.S. detainees, or that, on a more recent note, the CIA, DoD and other agencies are getting in more trouble over the destruction of hundreds of hours of videotapes documenting harsh interrogations in 2005 to tell me that they're guilty.

What is more outrageous than this is that the American people could not care enough to prosecute them for such heinous crimes.

The New York Times has two frequent Op-Ed Columnists: William Kristol, leading neoconservative intellectual and founder and editor of conservative periodical The Weekly Standard; and David Brooks, a self-proclaimed conservative in the tradition of William F. Buckly, Jr. So to all you who call the NYT a bastion of liberalism: HA!

The NYT is a politically moderate, capitalist newspaper. I find it frighteningly ironic that the blow-hard propaganda artists on Fox "News" Network call themselves balanced because they have some half-twit like Colmes on as their token liberal and then at the same time call the NYT, which has leading conservative intellectuals as columnists, a liberal paper (spoken as though "liberal" was the quality of Satan that makes him so). Makes you wonder how far to the right the Fox blow-hards have to be to call "liberal" a paper that includes Kristol or Brooks three days a week, doesn't it?

On March 6th, a story appeared on the BBC website regarding the German military's unease about using the Iron Cross as a medal of honor. It strikes as particularly odd that the German military, who used the Iron cross well before the Nazi's co-opted it, would still nonetheless be unwilling to reclaim it for use considering we in the USA have no problem putting it on our vehicles or on our clothing, like the company West Coast Choppers likes to do.

Is the American public that ignorant of history not to be concerned about such cavalier use of such a problematic symbol? In the case of WCC, it's part of a band image of "toughness" and fearless that is related to fear and aggression -- qualities looked upon as superior by the SS. Am I the only one who sees this? My in-laws and I walked into a high-end clothing store once and saw jeans with an iron cross on each back pocket. So this is not just WCC.

So we Americans are either stereotypically historically ignorant or we are OK with the implicit racism in using this symbol. Either way, I'm very concerned.

In the context of protest management and non-lethal weaponry:

"There have been several studies that have shown that the militarization of the police doesn't just include the technology transfer and the tactics and the training, it's actually the personnel themselves are being largely drawn from the military. So people are bringing their experiences of occupation back from Iraq into your local neighborhood; and so a lot of that same mentality of seeing the public as a kind of enemy, as opposed to a citizen whose rights must to be protected, is being transfered in both formal and informal ways into civilian policing." - From The Invisible War

Feel like being looked at as an enemy combatant by merely exercising your right to peacefully assemble? Well, you might not have a choice in the matter. Now we have a militarized police force that is more likely to inflict harm on people because "non-lethal weaponry" makes it seem more acceptable. People are still killed by tasers, and they blinded and paralyzed by bean bags. Yet they are regularly used in protests to merely assert power, without provocation. When the political rhetoric makes protesters "terrorist lovers" and former Iraq soldiers, who were trained to see civilians as potential terrorists, begin to constitute more and more of the police force, it does not take much for the police to become by action and constitution a second military, whose members are much more psychologically capable of and ready to use unnecessary force against the American citizenry.

Slowly, the frog boils…

I have recently gone back to Hannah Arendt's 1958 work _The Human Condition_. This is a book that I would strongly recommend to anyone who is sympathetic to criticisms that modernity has brought us little more than alienation and consumerism. Someone who is sympathetic to much of Marx's criticisms, Arendt is also strongly critical of him, lumping him together with Adam Smith and saying they are both to blame for the "socialized man" and the glorification of labor. By glorifying labor -- either as the means of aggregating wealth or as the means of producing for all -- and by turning "public" into something that merely indicates the administration of things, we have been robbed of one our most fundamental liberties: the ability to speak and to act and to bring newness into the world, or, for that matter, to have a world at all. All become mere consumables to be manufactures and destroyed, and all of our labor power is directed at this cycle of futility. We thus let whiter away the space in which we are able to be political people -- people who have the freedom to engage with others as equals.

The argument is too nuanced for me to lay out here. A brief summary of the work can be found on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Nonetheless, take this as a strong recommendation for anyone who is not sympathetic to capitalism.

Who would I be talking about if I spoke of a certain political leader who mastered propaganda in order to dupe his own government and people of his country, who used the mechanism of democratic governance to actively destroy it by centralizing more and more power in his hands, who invoking a hidden Enemy in order to achieve his ends, and who used a clandestine organization to surveil, abduct, interrogate, and in terrorize not only these alleged hidden enemies but also citizens of his own country?

Stalin?

Hitler?


This, two days ago from the New York Times:

President Bush on Saturday further cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers, using his veto to shut down a Congressional effort to limit the Central Intelligence's latitude to subject terrorism suspects to harsh interrogation techniques.

Add in a bit of Iraq WMD's, PATRIOT ACT, FISA modifications and more, and you've got one hell of a case for the slow progression towards tyranny. I remember being told once that if you put a frog in water and slowly turn the heat up, it won't attempt an escape, because the change happens so slowly it doesn't notice what's happening. It's not true of frogs, but the anecdote still has something to say to us. It starts by targeting people radically "other." Then people a little less radically "other". Then political dissidents become "enemy combatants"… You see where this heads if the logic is played out? It started with the tazing of Andrew Meyer, who was tazered for just asking Al Gore some questions.

On Neoconservatism

Oh, Billy. Billy, Billy, Billy. You have taken to writing an op-ed in the enemy's newspaper. Why would a self-proclaimed neoconservative, who, as such, believes that American liberalism is the source of all decay, then take part in that liberalism by expressing your opinion in a liberal paper? Irony? Propaganda for those who know not who you are? But I guess it comes as no surprise that William Kristol, neoconservative and son of founding neoconservative Irving Kristol, would take to writing a piece of character assassination on Obama. Now, don't get me wrong, Billy. I'm not a big fan of liberalism myself. You see, I have problems with the State telling me what to do. I guess the irony here, though, is that you're not just against contemporary liberals, who, unlike classical liberals (libertarians), are more like State Progressives. You're also against traditional conservatives, who want the state out of everyone's pockets and homes. As a neoconservative, you feel that the moral relativism of American liberalism leads to moral decay, chaos, and a lack of national unity. So, you want to make America great again by selling your own version of Plato's Noble Lie. It's not the Democrats' Big Government that you abhor, it's their moral relativism. You all want a Big State, one that imposes moral order, and one that furthermore claims to be over and above all other nation-states.

I guess that's what it really frightening about neoconservatism: it is that it is strikingly similar to Nazism. Rather than speaking of the great Aryan Nation, though, they talk about the great American Nation. And, rather than the Nazi's imposing their high neo-classicist culture onto the rest of the world, neoconservatives want to impose American "freedom" on the rest of the world. You see, our morality is the best morality. Our culture is the best culture, and we need to export it an the end of a gun -- just like the Nazis. Sure, we don't have concentration camps, but I'm sure you wouldn't have a problem with it, with all of those repugnant moral degenerates…right? I mean, the neocons have no problem with the use of fear, as long as it gets people to come together and see Amercia as The Good and find some chimera to play the part of Pure Evil. Does not The Good require Pure Evil for its existence? Yeeesssss, and you know that, Billy. Which is why you and your comrades have been terrorizing the American public with your distortions of "terrorist threats" (which are no greater now than they ever have been, and not because of the Iraq war). Why should you have a problem eroding civil liberties, if its those very civil liberties which provide the environment for what you see as moral decay?

What is so morally repugnant about neoconservatism is that it perverts fundamental American value of liberty (because such liberties lead to the moral relativism you so fear) and posits instead a moral order imposed by an intellectual elite in Washington. Now, don't get me wrong, I see problems with most American metanarratives. But to make American liberty part of your Noble Lie is utterly repugnant. It is YOU and your comrades that are un-American, my friend. You, Herr Wolfowitz, Herr Rumsfeld, and the rest of your fascist gang. A Big State that imposes a moral order not only on its own people but on the rest of the world? How is that anything other than fascism, or in the very least a form of veiled totalitarianism? Hmph, no wonder many neocons are ex-Leninists, who still think that they are the intellectual vanguard that will lead the people out of their own ignorance.

In a way, neoconservatism is philosophically similar to Islamic fundamentalism. Islamic fundamentalism wants to impose a moral order, Islam, on others by a elite group of intellectuals to protect them from what it sees as moral decay (I guess that's why they call it Islamo-fascism). Neocons also want a core group of intellectuals to impose moral order on their own people -- Americans -- to protect them from moral decay. However, it is not not only Americans they wish to impose their order, but on the world (so should we start calling neoconservatisvism Amero-fascism? Sounds about right). And they do this by using rhetoric that talks about promoting freedom in the world. I find it SO ironic that American fundamentalism calls Islamic fundamentalism tyranny without also seeing itself as tyrannical. What a farce.

Oh, Billy, I can see why your ego might like to dream of being a philosopher king. I can see why your delusions of grandeur would make you believe that you can be Jesus and lead people to salvation. Sometimes I dream of it, too, but I also consider those some of my worst moments. I guess I don't feel bad speaking like this about you, my friend, because I'm really just mirroring your own op-ed piece in the NYT. Perhaps I should be more conspicuous, though. You say,

Barack Obama is an awfully talented politician. But could the American people, by November, decide that for all his impressive qualities, Obama tends too much toward the preening self-regard of Bill Clinton, the patronizing elitism of Al Gore and the haughty liberalism of John Kerry?

I don't like Obama either, but you are a prep-school boy who went to Harvard, was a professor of political science, and are now a part of a movement of intellectual elites that are trying to impose a metanarrative qua Noble Lie on the American public, and it is being done by way of a haughty throwback form of pre-modern political theory! HA! Who's the patronizing elitist here, Bill? I don't want to psychologize, but I think you're projecting. Perhaps you should take a hint from yourself and stop participating in a group of people who attempt to terrorize the American public with nightmares of chimeras and Nazi-style propaganda.

Here, let me try:

William Kristol is an awfully talented intellectual. But could the American people, by now, decide that for all his impressive qualities, Kristol tends too much toward the preening self-regard of Hitler, the patronizing elitism of Goebbels, and the haughty fascism of Mussolini?

Maybe I should re-write your whole piece, title it It's All About the Noble Lie and send it in to the NYT. How bout it, Bill?

On America's Rise of Midlife Suicide

The New York Times recently published an article, "Midlife Suicide Rises, Puzzling Researchers", in which the author sites research that says,

A new five-year analysis of the nation’s death rates recently released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the suicide rate among 45-to-54-year-olds increased nearly 20 percent from 1999 to 2004, the latest year studied, far outpacing changes in nearly every other age group. (All figures are adjusted for population.)

For women 45 to 54, the rate leapt 31 percent. “That is certainly a break from trends of the past,” said Ann Haas, the research director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

By contrast, the suicide rate for 15-to-19-year-olds increased less than 2 percent during that five-year period — and decreased among people 65 and older.

…At the moment, the prime suspect is the skyrocketing use — and abuse — of prescription drugs.

But why are people abusing Rx drugs? Let me postulate an answer: In the United States and in European nations, more and more jobs are service and executive jobs, were people "sell their 'personality'" to quote Fromm. Perhaps people are killing themselves more because they are already dead and so alienated that they cannot find a safe return. This would also account for the skyrocket in women's suicide, many of whom are now part of the service and executive economy. Fromm says,

Marx did not foresee the extent to which alienation was to become the fate of the vast majority of people, especially of the ever-increasing segment of the population which manipulates symbols and men, rather than machines. If anything, the clerk, the salesman, the executive, are even more alienated today than the skilled manual worker. The latter's functioning still depends on the expression of certain personal qualities like skill, reliability, etc., and he is not forced to sell his "personality," his smile, his opinions in the bargain; the symbol manipulators are hired not only for their skill, but for all those personality qualities which make them "attractive personality packages," easy to handle and manipulate. (pp. 56-7, Erich Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man, Frederick Ungar Publishing, New York, 1961).

On Legislating Progress

The 50 year anniversary of desegregation in Little Rock, AK where they were forced to integrate their schools by the armed force of the federal government, we are given reason to reflect on when it might or might not be appropriate to force states or local groups to submit to the will or a larger body of people to which the smaller group associates. Can we justify the State imposing, through military force, a legislative policy, ruled by the Federal Government, that aims to eradicate inequality and oppression? In this case, some might argue that if anarchists advocate the abolition of hierarchy, rulers, and oppression of all forms, then it seems to be a legitimate use of force to eradicate the inequality present in schools in Little Rock in 1957. We must be careful not to confuse the justification of an act of a State from the justification of the State itself. For example, and to complicate matters further: what would it mean for a freely-associated group of anarchists to use force to impose conditions that aim to eradicate archos [the Greek word for master and from which an-archy is derived]? In this case are the group of anarchists acting as masters against others?

This points to an internal contradiction in individualist accounts of anarchism: who is it that protects the culture that allows for forms of libertarianism? At some point such conditions need to be protected, if they are to remain. Do anarchists as a whole form a committee who are appointed to protect the conditions of anarchistic life? And if so, how is this done without contradiction? I suppose if the entire community agrees consensually upon the rules of a community, then there is no ruler, per se, other than the community consensus itself. But what happens if an individual refuses to obey that rule? What if one or more members cannot meet consensus? Are rules protecting the community then abandoned? Perhaps the threat does not loom large enough, and when the time comes when the community faces serious threat, consensus won't be too hard to come by. Does the community ostracize its members who fail to abide by its consensus, or does consensus need to be abandoned at the first member who fails to conform to the consensus? One might respond that individuals associate with other individuals in a multiplicity of ways, each association contingent on free agreement between members over the nature of their agreement. However, this still does not answer the question of how these very conditions are protected. Such a question requires the positing of a community of people within which the general consensus of the members is that individuals of the community must be free to associate with others. Ugh, this question will confuse me eternally.

I began this thought, however, asking about the rule of law to impose progress, i.e. when, if ever, is it appropriate to legislate change or to create change through law or rule. In the case of Little Rock and the Unites States Government, I think it is safe to say that when we surrender our morality to a class of people set aside from society -- legislators -- whose job it is to make laws for others to obey, then we surrender our morality to laws as such. What is right or wrong is determined by what is legal or illegal, and we need only look to Nazi Germany to see what legal atrocities were being had. This is not to say that the decision of the Federal Government to invade Little Rock was an equivalent state of affairs. In the Little Rock case, many of us would say that desegregation and equal opportunity for education is morally right. However, the coincidence in this case of what is morally right and what is legal does not give reason to make an identity of the two. Accepting the legislation of progress in human relations is to surrender humanity to the State.

I often wonder if, like our invasion of Iraq, where we attempt to promote democracy at the end of a gun to only make matters worse, the legislation of progress in human relations within our own country carries the same irony. Can we make better people through the force of law just as the current administration assumes it can make a better country through the force of military? This seems to be the fundamental assumption of Big State advocates - liberals and conservatives alike. On the effectiveness of legislating change, I heard recently on NPR that the southern states are much more desegregated in now than the northern states. Whereas the south had Jim Crow laws (separate but equal) that were soon found unconstitutional, the north had residential segregation, and it still strongly remains. On one hand, it seems that legislation -- specifically finding Crow laws unconstitutional -- lead to greater desegregation than those who already legislated equality but also had rules of community that were not articulated in law -- the residential segregation of the north. Two broadly construed communities were legislated to desegregate -- the North and the South. The one that resisted the most has found itself most ahead. Does this tell us anything of the effectiveness of legislating progress in human relations, or is it just a fancy coincidence, with innumerable dimensions of complexity that would make what seems pretty simple a much, much more complicated matter (I would opt for the latter. For example, no where does this seem to account for rates of racist, neo-Nazi, or other hate group activity, to say the least)?

As libertarian socialists, are we to merely advocate for the repeal of government as a permanent institution and class of people? If so, can we reasonably expect every member of a community to decide on every social issue that comes to bear on the community, and who would protect the conditions that make the community possible, i.e., how is the positive freedom of the community protected? It would seem that in some cases representatives would have to be elected to do research and make decisions. Perhaps all of these decisions would need to them be sent to referendum for a vote -- but a vote that wins 100% approval, of course. For anything less is a tyranny of the majority.

Erich Fromm's Exposition of Marx

I was recently reading Eric Fromm's Marx's Concept of Man, in which he discusses Marx's concept of alienation. I thought it was particularly relevant to my recent rant against Cox and Alm regarding their idea of measuring consumption as a more accurate reflection of wealth. Fromm quotes Marx:

The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theater or to balls, or to the public house, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you will be able to save and the greater will become your treasure which neither will moth nor rust will corrupt -- your capital. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have … everything which the economist takes away from you in life and humanity, he restores to you in the form of money and wealth … the production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.

Fromm warns that we "must not confuse the aim of overcoming the abysmal poverty which interferes with dignified life, with the aim of an ever-increasing consumption, which has been the supreme value for both Capitalism and Krushchevism. Marx's position was quite clearly on the side of the conquest of poverty, and equally against consumption as a supreme end." It is not the consumption of things which makes one wealthy, but the ability of one to be one's own master and to participate in the creative work that, as such, makes one human. Again, Fromm:

Independence and freedom, for Marx, are based on the act of self-creation. 'A being does not regard himself as independent unless he is his own master, and he is only his own master when he owes his existence to himself. A man who lives by the favor of another considers himself a dependent being. But I live completely by another person's favor when I owe to him not only the continuance of my life, but also its creation; when he is its source. My life has necessarily such a cause outside itself if it is not my own creation'…For Marx the aim of socialism was the emancipation of man, and the emancipation of man was the same as his self-realization in the process of productive relatedness and oneness with man and nature. The aim of socialism was the development of the individual personality.

According to Fromm, Marx would have criticized Communist Russia as "crude communism." Because Communist Russia was more concerned about universalizing consumption and in doing so maintained the division of labor, it was merely another form of capitalism. Fromm says that in crude communism

[T]he role of worker is not abolished but is extended to all men. The relation of private property [which Fromm interprets as capital as opposed to merely objects of use] remains the relation of the community to the world of things…. The community is only a community of work and of equality of wages paid out by the communal capital, by the community as universal capitalist. The two sides of the relation are raised to a supposed universality; labor as a condition in which everyone is placed, and capital as the acknowledged universality and power of the community.

Finally, Fromm states that Marx claimed that the revolution would begin with the emancipation of workers, because working class was the most alienated. However, now, what we see is that many in middle-management are more alienated from their labor than those who work in factories. For the middle-management worker must also "sell his 'personality,'" whereas the skilled laborer at least retains possession of this. The alienation that occurs is one in which the "what" of production means more than the producer. The producer worships the products of his labor instead of his own humanity. This is the fundamental problem of consumption of a measure of wealth -- it perverts the nature of man into something whose highest aim is to have rather than to be. Our own existence is defined by the objects of our production; we live for them and their acquisition.

From concludes his exposition of alienation brilliantly:

To what extent things and circumstance of our own making have become our masters, Marx could hardly have foreseen; yet nothing could prove his prophecy more drastically than the fact that the whole human race is today the prisoner of the nuclear weapons it has created, and of the political institutions which are equally of its own making. A frightened mankind waits anxiously to see whether it will be saved from the power of the things it has created, from the blind action of the bureaucracies it has appointed.

On the Rule of Reason

It might seem clear that allowing reason to be the sole arbiter of things to also be the way to freedom. For, if any law or institution, through the course of reasoning is found to be arbitrary or unnecessary by those over whom the laws or institutions rule, then why should they not be abolished? I agree entirely with this statement. However, if we examine reasoning closer, we find that reason is not an appeal to some Platonic logos through which we might find harmony in the perfected freedom of the mechanical order of reason. Unless one reduces all conversation to propositional logic (and even then), the elusiveness of meaning foils us. This implies that the possible paths of reasoning are laid out by the totality of the language within which reasoning takes place.

In the case of foreign languages, Hans-Georg Gadamer says,

when there is understanding, there is not translation but speech. To understand a foreign language means that we do not need to translate it into our own. When we really master a language, then no translation is necessary – in fact, any translation seems impossible… For you understand a language by living in it (TM, 386).

One might know this experience if one has ever begun to think in a foreign language or attempted to translate a term that has no corollary in one’s mother tongue. Although one might have a command of both languages, one finds oneself speechless. When we understand a language, i.e., when we live in it, we can switch into speaking in the foreign tongue without needing to think about the grammar or vocabulary – we do not first think in our mother tongue and then methodically translate it into the foreign tongue. The foreign tongue becomes like the mother tongue to us. As such, the world of that language – the ideas and existences that compose it – opens up to us as it does for another whose mother tongue is the foreign language.

There are concepts that at the more abstract levels in a language become untranslatable. Take the Greek word arate. It has been translated as "excellence" and "virtue", among other things. After 2,000 years, we're still not entirely sure what arate means, because no one lives in ancient Greek language anymore. Although we can roughly translate it, we are constantly brought up against contradictions in its definitions when we try to enter it into other translated statements in the same language. Ancient Greek hung together as an entire language; no one word, especially as a concept removed from the material world (like freedom or justice or anarchism) can live in a foreign language as comfortable as it does in its own.

So what does this aside have to do with reason? Abstract concepts exist within language, and the meanings they employ (when we try to define freedom, we employ other terms, and when we want to define them, we employ even others) open up only the possibilities that exist in that language. If I have no metaphorical concept of heart as we do in many Western cultures, i.e., - he has a big heart meaning he is generous, loving, etc., then I cannot speak of anyone or anything having a big heart, and this limits what I can express.

Certainly, we Euro-Caucasians have a rich historical discourse of freedom and anarchy that found most prominently its beginnings in the Renaissance (of Greek culture). But if we look to Japan, for example, we might find something different. One of my professors had said that while he was in Japan teaching teachers of English he had them read Emerson's Self-reliance. They found it practically unintelligible in spirit, because, they said, what was primary to them was not one's individual freedom, but harmony of the group. I think this has purchase, as we find find traces of this idea in the strongly influential philosophical thinking of Taoism and Confucianism (circularity, interconnectedness and harmony).

The danger with reason is that we might universalize it an impose our own linguistic world onto another, asserting that our reason is the correct reason, and that, ultimately, if one only heard correctly, truth will be shown. However, as I hopefully made clear above, each language has limits placed in its reasoning by the very thing which gives the power to reason -- language. This mistake primary for the horrors of Western colonization. We believed other cultures as "backwards," and it was the "white man's burden" to free these people from their shackles of ritualistic pre-modernity, not recognizing that our own anti-tradition antics were a tradition in themselves (yes, anarchism is a tradition; why else would many of us read Marx, Spooner, Bookchin, Proudhon, Kropotkin, et. al, or even refer to them with authority? From where do we get the ideas that rule and regulate our thinking?).

Lastly, the appeal to reason also misses the psycho-historical nature of human existence. Arguing over ideas, we find our identities tied up in them and we have a hard time letting go. Ernest Becker quotes Otto Rank:

And so [Otto] Rank could say, 'Every conflict over truth is in the last analysis just the same old struggle over … immortality.' If anyone doubts this, let him try to explain away the life and death viciousness of all ideological disputes. Each person nourishes his immortality in the ideology of self-perpetuation to which he gives his allegiance; this gives his life the only abiding significance it can have. No wonder men go into a fit of rage over fine points of belief: if your adversary wins the argument about truth, you die. Your immortality system has been shown to be fallible, your life becomes fallible.

So, to close this thought, I think reasoning is a powerful and necessary means of acquiring and maintaining our freedom, but it is limited to the particularity of language and it cannot be made independent of our own individual historicity or that of our culture.

Consumption as a Measure of Wealth

It's amazing how far removed economists are from the day-to-day living of those they treat as objects. In a New York Times editorial, W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm claim that we are measuring wealth all wrong. Rather than measure income by an abstract idea like income, we should instead look to the concretes of consumption. Yes, that's right, your wealth is determined by your consumption. Cox and Alm claim that, if you look at it, many low income people are drawing from bank accounts, from insurance policies, etc., which are not classified as taxable income; and therefore, they live much better than the data suggest. They claim the the prices of goods have fallen, and so we now see more homes with goods like VCRs and cellular telephones. The difference, they claim, is merely that the wealth have a larger capital flow and put more money into savings. In fact, they say, the gap between wealthy and poor on the new consumption-wealth concept is only a 4:1 difference between the poorest 5th and the wealthiest 5th, not the 15:1 we get when we use taxable income.

The authors conveniently talk about an unclear "some" families who are mired in poverty and a "many" of the bottom 5th who are retirees and don't draw a large percentage of taxable income. I just love the fact that they ground their entire argument in statistics they admit they do not know! They say quite clearly, "While some of these families are mired in poverty, many (the exact proportion is unclear) are headed by retirees and those temporarily between jobs, and thus their low income total doesn’t accurately reflect their long-term financial status." It must be very unexact for them to not even say "approximately 10%+/-2%." They can only say "many", "some", and our hopeful or pessimistic wishes are to see the glass half empty or half full. I do not have data, but I am skeptical that the vast majority of retirees are drawing off their local bank savings accounts and Roth IRAs (Roth IRA's were only established 10 years ago), or that they great "many" are all drawing thousands a year from insurance policies. Furthermore, Cox and Alm say nothing of the inordinate amount of credit (student loans or credit cards -- also not taxable income, at least insofar as I am aware of) that causes the type of discrepancies between income and spending they show for the bottom fifth or that is now leading to the demise of many people through the housing deflation.

Their argument about retirees is suspicious, because we would have to assume that the "many" retiree households that account for the $10,000 in non-taxable income also account for the $10,000 a year average in taxable income (their annual dividends from their IRA bond funds?). If this is the case, are we to assume that the poorest fifth of the country is living well? According to their own graph, the "bottom fifth" of consumption households do not have a clothes dryer, internet, dishwasher or computer at home. And if we look at the bottom 10%, you can eliminate the microwave, VCR, air conditioning, television, clothes washer, and cell phone. And, what does it say if I have utilities that I pay on credit cards that I can never pay in full and fall deeper and deeper into debt until the Repo man comes for my car and the Bank for my home? I'm wealthy because I have a cell phone, even if it means I'll have nothing in 5 years?

So let's take another step back…why does consumption alone even count as wealth? I think it is a difficult enough case to make to say that income could count for wealth (if wealth is to account for some form of human flourishing), unless we are to make the trivial identity that income and assets are wealth, but to make the step to say that your income is a poor assessment of wealth and that we should rather merely look at consumption while ignoring debit and bad credit? I am no economist (and that fact will be obvious to those of you who are), but this all sounds very thin and slippery to me, and I think it only attempts to hide the real problem: more and more people are falling into the shackles of a wage-slavery whose master is debt.

How this ever made it into The Times is beyond me (not that I think The Times is the vanguard or truth and reason, but I did think it to have more integrity than this -- my mistake, obviously). I know this is an op-ed piece, but if these people claim to be a senior writer and another a chief economist for the Fed, shouldn't they be using citations, or are we just to talk you on their authority and The Times and never have the resources to double check your reasoning? An op-ed piece from the Fed should read like an academic argument, not like some propaganda hack making ungrounded conjecture. Of course, this is all in true keeping with every testimony I've seen by Bernanke, who speaks in mythical conjecture and what a friend of mine calls "strategic ambiguity" (like the "many"). It's a lot of hand-waving. I've been poor. I had to draw food stamps, visit the food bank, and stop driving because I couldn't afford gas (and almost couldn't afford the bus). Let me tell you: I certainly didn't feel wealthy. Sure, I had a computer (I built myself from parts and on which I ran Linux, so costs were very low), a cell phone (my only phone), and a washer and dryer (I shared a rented house with 5 others). But I didn't know if I was going to have enough groceries. Sure, I could sell the washer and dryer, maybe sell the computer, but that would hold me off for all of about 3 weeks. Then what? Then I'm back in the same situation, but without all my "wealth." I think if Cox and Alm ever tasted poverty and knew how much more complex it is than their neat equations that use people as mathematical objects, they would find their argument as implausible as I do.

I would love comments from people who have strong backgrounds in economic and social theory to help me out by developing any of these thoughts or pointing out weaknesses in them (I know not a lot of people read this [yet], so I admit I am largely talking to myself).

On the Coercion of Symbolic Violence

To help with the conversation on defining a "real" anybody (anarchist, socialist, etc.) or claiming them to be otherwise, I thought I would add the following (which is from an essay I wrote on violence):

According to Pierre Bourdieu, symbolic violence is the exercise of recognized constraint – that is, to move the indicative to the imperative by moving from the individual to the collective and making claims on one that they must attend to an action if they are really part of that group. Bourdieu gives the following example: “If I am an incarnate [a delegate or such] of the collective of the group, and if this is the group to which you belong, which defines you, which gives you an identity, which means you really are a teacher, really a Protestant, really a Catholic, etc., you really have no choice but to obey.” It is coercion that is not physical but that takes as its object of manipulation the identity of the individual. In other words, symbolic violence is the violence carried out by what Bourdieu calls symbolic power – “a power which presupposes recognition, that is, the misrecognition of the violence that is exercised through it.”

Quotes are taken from Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 209 & 212.

Dogmatism and Anarchism

My recent exchange with Francois Trembley, who thought is would be fruitful to call me a poser (for reasons still unclear to me), has led me to ask the question, "how do we define what and who are anarchists, and who or what is given the authority to make the definition as well as to make the judgment as to who or what 'fits' said definition?"

First, it seems clear to me that an-archism is a social environment without rulers or masters (as directly indicated from the Greek root). So at what point can someone sympathetic to anarchism charge that another's actions or words are outside the scope of anarchism? By who's definition and on what authority? Would it not be an infringement on another's freedom to implicitly coerce someone else's thought -- rather than using the cogency of reason -- by manipulating another's emotions into thinking that she is somehow an impostor, or should be shamed, or are somehow a hypocrite or not "pure" enough in their thought or action?

I agree with Trembley's assertion (see number 7 in the linked page) that there are limits to which we can sever our ties to the state. I would go further, and I hope he would agree, that those limits are contingent on an individual's situation, i.e., there is no one catch-all system of rules by which one can say "I am being anarchist enough" or "I am cooperating with the state too much." Take Trembley's own example - having a driver's license. Indeed, it is not necessary for many people to have a driver's license (ask any New York City resident, many of whom have ever had a driver's license in their life); however, for many might need a driver's license for operating their farm trucks or other work vehicles. So who is any one person to say if another needs a driver's license or not? Who is one to coerce another into abiding by the rules they set for themselves in their own contingent situation?

However, on the other hand, there has to be some way to say what is anarchistic and what is not. A case that shows this clearly is one taken ad absurdem: someone running a death camp who says that my charge against her actions (of not being a real anarchist) do not take into account her contingent situation and thus I have no right to call her actions into question or to coerce her into acting otherwise.

We cannot apply some general set of rules which do not take into one's contingent situation, but on the other hand, we cannot just allow anything to be accepted as "anarchism" without making the definition empty and meaningless. Furthermore, if we do find an action unacceptable -- oppressive or coercive -- what are the appropriate means by which the problem is addressed? Is the person ostracized (a form of coercion to make someone change) , is the person merely reasoned with (I think this option places too much faith in reason alone and does not account for the pluralities of reasoning)?

Finally, we have to understand that, as I think Foucault rightfully pointed out in general, all thought has normative power. That is, even to use anarchism as a means by which we judge ourselves is coercive -- anarchism as an idea undermines itself and imposes its order. It is under constant threat of becoming a dogmatism by which people want to assert their own rules about being an anarchist onto others; anarchism's adherents become veiled ideologues, who, if they had the power of the state would use it; or, just as bad, without the overt institution of the state, use other social norms to coerce others into being a "real" anarchist.

Perhaps we do need to lean heavily on reason and justification. I agree with Chomsky that there might be cases for authority, but that authority cannot be arbitrary, it must be justified and requested. Similarly, there might be cases where any number of actions would acceptable fall under being anarchist and at other times might not. Ultimately, it depends on the justification and reasoning for such actions. So what does it mean to be an anarchist? Perhaps we can start with the general definition taken strictly from the etymology of the word: one is an anarchist if one does what they can not to instantiate, sustain, or participate in systems or actions that act to (arbitrarily?) rule over others by any means. Any further than that, and we run into the problem of the individual's situatedness.

I don't claim to have the answers; these thoughts are open to revision, so feel free to comment (or post links to webpages/blogs on the topic. I only have one request: please don't start the conversation by slapping your interlocutor-to-be across the face (me or anyone else). That rarely ends well, and it draws attention away from the ideas that are being discussed.

Image was found here.

I heard an interesting ad for Ron Paul the other day where he says something along the lines of "everyone should be able to keep the fruits of his labor." The irony here, though, is that I think Paul is speaking only of liberation from taxes, i.e., no one should have the fruits of her labor -- the money earned from making a product and selling it or one's services on the market -- stolen by the State. But what about having the fruits of your labor stolen by capitalists, when a laborer receives only a fraction of what's left over from the revenue of sales when all but cost of labor has been accounted for?? That kind of theft of the fruits of one's labor seems to be just fine for Paul. If Paul has suggested that capitalism, too, is a form of theft of one's fruits-of-labor, please correct me. Otherwise, this is why he is only half-right.

Excerpted from an article in Free Inquiry Magazine, a publication of the Council for Secular Humanism:

"For the purpose of this perspective, I will consider the following regimes: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia. To be sure, they constitute a mixed bag of national identities, cultures, developmental levels, and history. But they all followed the fascist or protofascist model in obtaining, expanding, and maintaining power. Further, all these regimes have been overthrown, so a more or less complete picture of their basic characteristics and abuses is possible.

Analysis of these seven regimes reveals fourteen common threads that link them in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power. These basic characteristics are more prevalent and intense in some regimes than in others, but they all share at least some level of similarity.

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. From the prominent displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins, the fervor to show patriotic nationalism, both on the part of the regime itself and of citizens caught up in its frenzy, was always obvious. Catchy slogans, pride in the military, and demands for unity were common themes in expressing this nationalism. It was usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia.

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights. The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation.

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause. The most significant common thread among these regimes was the use of scapegoating as a means to divert the people’s attention from other problems, to shift blame for failures, and to channel frustration in controlled directions. The methods of choice—relentless propaganda and disinformation—were usually effective. Often the regimes would incite “spontaneous” acts against the target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, ethnic and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other religions, secularists, homosexuals, and “terrorists.” Active opponents of these regimes were inevitably labeled as terrorists and dealt with accordingly.

4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism. Ruling elites always identified closely with the military and the industrial infrastructure that supported it. A disproportionate share of national resources was allocated to the military, even when domestic needs were acute. The military was seen as an expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite.

5. Rampant sexism. Beyond the simple fact that the political elite and the national culture were male-dominated, these regimes inevitably viewed women as second-class citizens. They were adamantly anti-abortion and also homophobic. These attitudes were usually codified in Draconian laws that enjoyed strong support by the orthodox religion of the country, thus lending the regime cover for its abuses.

6. A controlled mass media. Under some of the regimes, the mass media were under strict direct control and could be relied upon never to stray from the party line. Other regimes exercised more subtle power to ensure media orthodoxy. Methods included the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of the mass media were often politically compatible with the power elite. The result was usually success in keeping the general public unaware of the regimes’ excesses.

7. Obsession with national security. Inevitably, a national security apparatus was under direct control of the ruling elite. It was usually an instrument of oppression, operating in secret and beyond any constraints. Its actions were justified under the rubric of protecting “national security,” and questioning its activities was portrayed as unpatriotic or even treasonous.

8. Religion and ruling elite tied together. Unlike communist regimes, the fascist and protofascist regimes were never proclaimed as godless by their opponents. In fact, most of the regimes attached themselves to the predominant religion of the country and chose to portray themselves as militant defenders of that religion. The fact that the ruling elite’s behavior was incompatible with the precepts of the religion was generally swept under the rug. Propaganda kept up the illusion that the ruling elites were defenders of the faith and opponents of the “godless.” A perception was manufactured that opposing the power elite was tantamount to an attack on religion.

9. Power of corporations protected. Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised. The ruling elite saw the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production (in developed states), but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic elite were often pampered by the political elite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of “have-not” citizens.

10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated. Since organized labor was seen as the one power center that could challenge the political hegemony of the ruling elite and its corporate allies, it was inevitably crushed or made powerless. The poor formed an underclass, viewed with suspicion or outright contempt. Under some regimes, being poor was considered akin to a vice.

11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts. Intellectuals and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them were anathema to these regimes. Intellectual and academic freedom were considered subversive to national security and the patriotic ideal. Universities were tightly controlled; politically unreliable faculty harassed or eliminated. Unorthodox ideas or expressions of dissent were strongly attacked, silenced, or crushed. To these regimes, art and literature should serve the national interest or they had no right to exist.

12. Obsession with crime and punishment. Most of these regimes maintained Draconian systems of criminal justice with huge prison populations. The police were often glorified and had almost unchecked power, leading to rampant abuse. “Normal” and political crime were often merged into trumped-up criminal charges and sometimes used against political opponents of the regime. Fear, and hatred, of criminals or “traitors” was often promoted among the population as an excuse for more police power.

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Those in business circles and close to the power elite often used their position to enrich themselves. This corruption worked both ways; the power elite would receive financial gifts and property from the economic elite, who in turn would gain the benefit of government favoritism. Members of the power elite were in a position to obtain vast wealth from other sources as well: for example, by stealing national resources. With the national security apparatus under control and the media muzzled, this corruption was largely unconstrained and not well understood by the general population.

14. Fraudulent elections. Elections in the form of plebiscites or public opinion polls were usually bogus. When actual elections with candidates were held, they would usually be perverted by the power elite to get the desired result. Common methods included maintaining control of the election machinery, intimidating and disenfranchising opposition voters, destroying or disallowing legal votes, and, as a last resort, turning to a judiciary beholden to the power elite.

Does any of this ring alarm bells? Of course not. After all, this is America, officially a democracy with the rule of law, a constitution, a free press, honest elections, and a well-informed public constantly being put on guard against evils. Historical comparisons like these are just exercises in verbal gymnastics. Maybe, maybe not."

Loose Change: The Final Cut was released this holiday season. It is strongly recommended for anyone who questions our federal government's handling of the September 11th bombings.

We need to eliminate for-profit industry altogether. This does not require eliminating money. Nor does it require a Big State to set prices for goods. It means that whatever revenue is earned from the sale of a product is put directly back into the group of people who are producing the goods. It means the cost of the product reflects directly the cost of materials and labor alone. It means the people who actually do the work to produce something keep all of the payment received for it. It means eliminating a class of people who do nothing but push product prices up and labor wages down to maximize the profit that arises between the two. Once for-profit industries are eliminated, we will soon come to realize that middle management is superfluous, because there is no upper management from whom they take orders. There is no upper management because there are no capitalists who need agents to maximize the profits they reap. Without the bottom-down hierarchy of capitalist->wage-slave, a reversal takes place. Those in positions of responsibility are put there by the workers in that shop -- treasurer, market coordinator, supplies coordinator, etc. -- they are elected to those positions. If they do a bad job, someone else is hired or elected by the group. People do not make their way to the top by best abusing workers and scamming consumers. People make their way to the top because they are trusted by their co-workers. The only people who know what workers need to get a job done are the people doing the work themselves. We don't need a Big State, and we don't need Big Bosses, either.

Go here and see how, although he won at least 1% of the vote, and even though he is still running, Kucinich is completely absent from all reporting:

http://www.pollster.com/08-NH-Dem-Pres-Primary.php

Biden dropped out of the race and he is included in the results!!!! Kucinich is being systematically excluded. Anyone want to take guess as to why?

It amazing how 0.05 percent of the population votes and the nominating elections are practically decided. I think Edwards was right when he said that he would stay in the race because so many people have yet to have their voices heard (although I disagree heavily with the rhetorical ambiguity of "being heard"). Nonetheless, we already see candidates being eliminated from the discourse by media conglomerates. Kucinich & Gravel have already been taken out of the debates, even though only one state has held an official vote. How is this the democratic process? If you want to consider the Iowa caucuses, you have to accept that 1/3 of shift workers at a 24-hour plant/workplace could not make it to caucus unless they took off from work, and I doubt shift workers can afford to take off of work for anything other than an emergency. Swing shifts usually do not end until 9 or 10 PM. If it is not a 24 hour operation, and the workplace has only two shifts, then 1/2 of the workers would not be able to vote.
This is one of the reasons why having such a large central government is problematic. At a local level, everyone knows everyone else, at least moreso than at a national level. That is, I know many of the candidates I might elect in my local government. If not, it would be easy to get to know them or perhaps I know people who know them. It is clear why it is my city council representatives make the decisions they do. There is no heavy lobbying, party power-plays, and in most cases, they are not professional politicians. Thus, people are elected because they are trusted by the majority of people, and it is unlikely that local citizens would be systematically excluded from the process, because it is the local people who control the process.
Also, if we accept a large and powerful central government, we have to accept that it can be used for massive social change for either things we agree with or disagree with - and we have no direct say in the matter! The people of this large bureaucracy are far removed from the people they represent, Washington DC does have its own culture, and it does corrupt even the most noble.
This is not to say there should be no laws or order, but it is to say that there should not be professional politicians, who know no other life than being a politician, who do not work side-by-side the same people for whom they make decisions and whom they represent. I do believe that we need public education, I believe that retirees need to be taken care of, and I believe tat we need universal health care ought to be instated; but I do not believe that this can be done by an almighty federal government. I do not believe a change of heart can be had by a change in legislation. It is much easier for me to point to my neighbors and say "Can we really let Fred go without health care coverage?" than it is for me to say "we should all pool together to make sure everyone in the world has health coverage."
Surely, the federal government has done good - ending segregation, social security, etc., but this does not mean that the federal government was necessary for those changes nor does it mean that the federal government does more good than harm on a day-to-day basis by treating citizens as numbers and not neighbors. There is nothing to stop people from helping their neighbors, and when neighboring towns/cities need help, others will come to help. We see this with every disaster in America. It doesn't require legislation, it IS human nature. Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods - people flock to help. People do not wait for the federal government to tell them to help.
But what about problems like the the homeless, you ask? The problem is that we expect the government to do something about it, we have forgotten that we *are* the government. And if you knew the person who was homeless, you would probably et him into your home. When a colleague of mine suffered a fire in his apartment, I let him stay with me until he got things sorted out. Does that sound odd? It shouldn't. When we become dependent on Big Brother to do our work for us, we fail to accept any responsibility other than paying taxes, and half of every dollar you send to Washington is used for the military, anyway.
I am not a right-wing Christian. I do not believe in original sin. I do not believe that people starve because they sinned or because they are lazy. I believe that humans are naturally good and generous, and that they work when it is meaningful. Hobbies are work we that we call something else only because we have come to define work as "that which I hate to do." So if we enjoy doing it, and we don't get paid for it - it is a hobby.
What we have is a state that will forever uphold the status quo of corporatism. Sure, they might talk about curtailing it or increasing taxes for them, but they will never accept eliminating for-profit industry altogether. People have a right to exploit others' labor. You make me a widget that cost me $1 and I sell it for $2, I keep the extra $. Why? Because it's my right to. Whereas, prior to the industrial revolution the craftsman used to control his labor, now she must work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (and we are slowly losing our weekends), and she must ask permission from his owner to leave early or take a day off.
It used to be that craftsmen (and they were men centuries ago) owned their own tools. Perhaps there was a guild that pooled resources together. If you hired a craftsman, you hired them and their tools, and they kept all of the payment for their labor and its fruits. Merchants purchased the craftsman's fruits of labor to sell elsewhere. Essentially, there were:

Aristocrats
Merchants
Artisans/Craftsmen
Slaves

With the aggregation of wealth during the industrial revolution came the ability for people to own the machinery that used to be owned by the craftsman. No individual craftsman could afford a automobile plant. So, Henry Ford buys the tools, and says to the craftsmen "I'll let you work with my tools, but I get to take a cut of everything you do…and not just until the tools are paid for…I get a cut forever." The craftsman became a wage-slave; without his own means of producing goods, he was forced to rent himself out to others for just enough for shelter, food and clothing - just like a well-treated indentured servant. The only difference between wage-slavery and chattel slavery is that the wage-slave can choose which hovel he lives in, gets to choose whether she wants to use her $4 in daily food stamps for either coffee or peanut butter, and gets to choose her master. But she nonetheless has no control of his own labor or the price of her goods, and her living conditions give little more than basic physiological needs, if that. Now we have:

- Capitalists (active [venture capitalists] or passive [those who merely live off of investment interest)
- Professionals (doctors, lawyers, teachers, bankers, engineers, programmers, architects, and other salaried workers)
- Wage-slaves (hourly workers, skilled or unskilled)

Slowly, many of the professionals are slipping into wage-slave living conditions, and the gap between rich and poor widens. If the trend continues, we will end at a to a two-class system in which there are those who do not need to work to eat and those who cannot find enough to eat no matter how much they work.
What's that? You say that if people were allowed work at they pleasure without bosses that they just wouldn't work at all? Not if they don't get paid! And paid by whom? *Directly* by those whom reap the fruits of their labor, not by an intermediary owner of the laborers' tools. The only people your charge applies to are the filthy rich who need not work, who merely collect interest on money loaned out to people who needed capital to purchase means of producing so that they could hire wage-slaves so that they could skim off the labor of their slaves so that they could pay off the person who loaned them the money so that that person can not have to ever work for his daily bread. The truly lazy in this society are not the poor, but the independently wealthy. They will never have to clean someone else's toilet or empty someone else's trash, or do another's bidding for fear of not earning enough to eat. Nor do they ever have to worry about working to pay their bills. They go to Washington to become a politician or to lobby politicians to keep the status quo so that they can continue to live of the labor of others. Do you hear any Democrat or Republican challenging the wage-slave system? Do you hear any of them questioning the integrity of the very idea of corporatism? They are all invested in the giant machine that stamps each child with a number upon their birth, trains them to be a docile wage-slave, and helps to maintain their position in Washington, its culture, and the corporate capitalism they all subscribe to (except maybe Bernie Sanders, Denis Kucinich, and maybe Ron Paul).
Where are the libertarian socialists? Where are those leftists who broke from mainstream Marxism for fear of the Red Bureaucracy would become just as evil as capitalism -- another form of oppression? Where are those who hate the categorization and collectivism of identity politics, claiming it to be the flipside of racism on the oppression coin when it becomes institutionalized &legislated and yet also believe in a cooperative commonwealth that meets the basic human needs of its participants and that believes in eliminating all forms of oppression and arbitrary authority? I guess some are in the left wing of the Socialist Party USA, some are members of the IWW, and others either join other decentralized organizations or stick to themselves, carrying out their beliefs one-on-one and day-to-day, participating in community organizing and liberating local governance from State bureaucracy. I am surprised and alarmed that the only voice in America that gets serious attention is that of the Big State. Big State for the progressives, Big State for the conservatives. The libertarian capitalists are laughed at the the libertarian socialists are not even known. And we think we have a choice of candidates and inclusive political discussion?