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?