Posts from — June 2009

Michael Albert outlines the post-capitalist economic model of participatory economics: an alternative to both market capitalism and centrally-planned coordinatorism (i.e. the Soviet Union), which promotes solidarity, equity, self-management, diversity, efficiency, and sustainability. [Read more →]

“I once dated a man who taught quantum physics. I learned two things that night.

The first being that if you ask a quantum physicist to explain how gravity works. Not what it is; not how it behaves; but how it works. He will first talk himself in circles, then wind up crying, then, sometime between entree and dessert, call you a bitch and leave.

The second revelation came as I sat at the bar in morose solitude pondering the cantilevered relationship between bartender’s gut and lower extremities.

Before the big bang,
Before time itself,
Before matter, energy, velocity,
There existed a single and measurable state called yearning.
This is the special force that on a day before there were days,
Obliterated nothing into everything.
It is the unseen strings tying planets to stars,
It is the maddening want we feel,
From first breath,
To last light.”

from In Plain Sight

Anger can bend gravity…

…and yet so can hope.

The successful revolutionary is a self-aware revolutionary. They work tirelessly to understand their own history and the history of others, to understand good theory and how it can be used in practice; they reflect on their work and how it can be improved; they work diligently to understand and improve their effect on others.

Many religious traditions encourage periods of spiritual contemplation and reflection, which the revolutionary would learn much from for their political work. Parts of the day, week, month, and year are set aside for fasting, prayer, reconciliation, and reflection. Calls to prayer, the Sabbath, pilgramages, and periods of fasting mark many of the world’s bigger religions.

A self-aware revolutionary movement would be infinitely more effective than a non-reflective, worn down one. Setting aside one day a week, a part of each day, and a period every year for thorough, deep, inward reflection - about our health, about our work, and about our lives - would do us all well. Activities could including writing, journaling, hiking, meditation, talk therapy, small group discussions, etc. - the list goes on.

Revolutionaries, to be effective, must make an active effort to be self-aware and conscious of their actions, thoughts, and theories. Mirrors are a powerful tool - if we only dare to actually look in them.

My friend Jonathan McIntosh - who runs Rebellious Pixels - just came out with a BRILLIANT feminist remix which critiques Eduard Cullen’s (of theTwilight series) stalkerish ways. Check it out, and be sure to visit his site and tell him what you think!

Since Barack Obama’s ascent to the presidency, I’ve heard countless progressives and members of the American Left talk about how we got “tricked”.

These progressives fall in three broad camps.

1. Progressives without a systemic analysis who genuinely are disappointed with the pace of “change” in our society and who thought Obama would fundamentally change our country;

2. Progressives who didn’t think Obama would change anything, and are working hard to push people further to the Left; and,

3. Progressives who didn’t think Obama would change anything and are revelling in the opportunity to say “I Told You So.”

The third group is where the biggest problems lie.

The bottom line is that Obama has changed some things, the most significant among them being the shift away from the openly homophobic, nativist, misogynistic, and nationalistic rhetoric of the past 8 years. That by itself should be welcomed and labelled significant.

But beyond that, the Left should know better. Our problems don’t stem from individuals (Obama, Bush) but rather systems: both institutional- (”representative”[sic] government, market economics, the nuclear family) and thought-systems (neoliberalism, fascism, white supremacy, patriarchy, neoconservatism, Liberalism).

Obama is a Liberal: he believes that the market can solve many of our problems, but that the government needs to step in and correct where the market has failed; he believes that a strong national security state is necessary for “America’s interests”, he believes that some social programs are necessary, etc…

But Obama isn’t going to change things, even if he wanted to (which he might genuinely like to do on some issues). Only an organized progressive bloc, and a growing Left offering alternatives, all taking action to raise the social costs of elite policies which negatively affect ordinary people, can force Obama - or any other force we’re pushing - to give us what we want, can do that.

What the new adminstration represents most is an opportunity. An opportunity to educate on why our problems will be solved by organized groups forcing elites to give us what we want, and that our problems come from systems and not individuals.

In particular, genuine progressives should call those who are being self-righteous (and who know better) out on their shit. If you understand the problem is systems, stop reenforcing individualism by saying “I told you so”. Being self-righteous doesn’t make you “radical”. Being compassionate and meeting people where they are at - and pushing them further - does.

The Left should know better.

“Why would it drive private insurance out of business? If private—if private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality healthcare, if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.”

Obama knows what he’s talking about. He clearly understands what he’s talking about. Which is why the Left should push the public debate even further.

He understands the flaw in the central right-wing narrative about government programs and markets. The right-wing narrative goes something like this:

The market (read: big business) comes up with the best solutions to all of our needs; government-run anything (besides government-run bombings and surveillance programs) is doomed to fail, since the bureaucracy of what they call “big government” creates contradictions and inefficiencies (correct, of course); finally, government programs, in addition to creating havoc in their own programs, negatively affects the free market as well.

Obama rightly points out that if an industry really offered a good product or if the product offered by a government program was really that bad, and if the market is really such a competitive place, then people would purchase the better product (in the Right’s view, non-government products) and shy away from the inferior product (the government produced one).

Obama sees the flaw in the market fundamentalism of the Right, while putting forth his own liberal market mythology that the failures of the market can be corrected by big government. To be able to do this, he clearly has a grasp of how markets work - and don’t work. The Left should put forth a third paradigm: that “representative” government and market-based economics are both incapable of delievering maximum efficiency and good products.

Here’s what we should propose:

1. We should stand by Obama’s claim that if the healthcare coverage market is so competitive, then a government run healthcare program shouldn’t be a threat to insurance companies. If, on the other hand, it is like we all suspect, and that the health insurance industry is fundamentally broken and that vast ineffiencies and fraud exist, then a well-run government healthcare program should be more desirable option for millions of Americans.

2. We should take the conservative (actually a libertarian left) critique to heart. On all issues - from defence and security, to healthcare and housing, to education and food, centralized government is a problem. Therefore, we should turn the conservative critique on its head and demand more government programs, with an added demand of localized control of those programs. We should demand localized, democratic control of a national healthcare plan. Take healthcare out of the hands of both corporations and government bureaucrats and coordinators. The people, their healthcare providers, and medical scientists know what’s best for our health and welfare. Corporate interests and government inefficiencies get in the way. Self-management and public (not state) ownership is the answer to our problems.

We should follow a similar strategy for all programs (stimulus packages, social programs, etc). Displace market and government inefficiencies with programs run and controlled directly by the people: government of, for, and by the people in practice.

“Fill your desire for something long, juicy…”

Burger King has really outdone themselves this time. The print advertisement for their new “Super Seven Incher” sandwich features an wide-eyed, blonde-haired, pale-skin, red lip-sticked, blushing woman with her mouth open, about to have Burger King’s Super Seven Incher put in her mouth. The text below? “It’ll Blow Your Mind Away”. Apparently subtlety is lost on them. And perhaps that’s for the best. Countless ads verge on being this explicit, but are masked in “subtlety” which allows the silence of critique.

This ad could be used as an incredibly powerful teaching tool when discussing gender equality with people convinced that women’s oppression is “over”. It’s become increasingly clear, from the assassination of Dr. George Tiller (the women’s healthcare provider in Wichita, Kansas), to the rampage at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, to the murder of a nine year-old Latina girl and her father by Minutemen terrorists, to the recent post-election surge in gun purchases, that the seeds of a very strong far-right-wing revival are underway. In its sights: gains made around women’s rights, rights and services for oppressed people, especially people of color and working people, and consciousness shifts around LGBT rights.

While at the root of this revival is certainly the actual far-right-wing organizations (the Minutemen, Fox News, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Pat Robertson, fascist and neo-nazi organizations), these organizations are only allowed to operate in an atmosphere where the objectification of human beings is increasingly pushed to its limits (i.e. “It’ll Blow Your Mind”).

The fight against conservative and patriarchal shifts in culture and consciousness should be at the forefront of our work. Through political remixes, and video blogging, and sharp cultural critique, progressives should take dig in for a long, hard fight for our lives and dignity.

As we’ve seen in recent days, hypersexualization and misogyny, open bigotry and white supremacy, and the likes, are having effects not just on the psyche of our nation, but also resulting in outright terrorism and violence.

I’m reading Erich Fromm’s Psychoanalysis and Religion along side Galeano’s Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone and Wilhelm Reich’s The Sexual Revolution. In it, he quotes from his book Man for Himself. The quote, which I’ve copied below, speaks to the human struggle for understanding and meaning - a condition which revolutionaries should take to heart in constructing our narratives of society, program of solutions, and visions of the future.

Here is Fromm:

“Self-awareness, reason, and imagination have disrupted the “harmony” which characterizes animal existence. Their emergence has made man into an anomaly, into the freak of the universe. He is part of nature, subject to her physical laws and unable to change them, yet he transcends the rest of nature. He is set apart while being a part; he is homeless, yes chained to the home he shares with all creatures. Cast into this world at an accident place and time, he is forced out of it, again accidentally. Being aware of himself, he realizes his powerlessness and the limitations of his existence. He visualizes his own end: death. Never is he free from the dichotomy of his existence: he cannot rid himself of his mind, even if he should want to; he cannot rid himself of his body as long as he is alive - and his body makes him want to be alive.

“Reason, man’s blessing, is also his curse; it forces him to cope everlastingly with the task of solving an insoluble dichotomy. Human existence is different in this respect from that of all other organisms; it is in a state of constant and unavoidable disequilibrium. Man’s life cannot “be lived” by repeating the pattern of his species; he must live. Man is the only animal that can be bored, that can be discontented, that can feel evicted from paradise. Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape. He cannot go back to the prehuman state of harmony with nature; he must proceed to develop his reason until he becomes the master of nature, and of himself.

“The emergence of reason has created a dichotomy within man which forces him to strive everylastingly for new solutions. The dynamism of his history is intrinsic to the existence of reason which causes him to develop and, through it, to create a world of his own in which he can feel at home with himself and his fellow men. Every stage he reaches leaves him discontented and perplexed, and this very perplexity urges him to new toward new solutions. There is no innate “drive for progress” in man; it is the contradiction of his experience that makes him proceed on the way he set out. Having lost paradise, the unity with nature, he has become the eternal wanderer (Odysseus, Oedipus, Abraham, Faust); he is impelled to go forward and with everlasting effort to make the unknown known by filling in with answers the blank spaces of his knowledge. He must give account to himself of himself, and of the meaning of his existence. He is driven to overcome this inner split, tormented by a craving for “absoluteness”, for another kind of harmony which can lift the curse by which he was separated from nature, from his fellow men, and from himself.”

I’m thankful to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, not only for his tremendous leadership in leading his country and the world in new wave of egalitarian revolution, but in particular for introducing me - and millions of other people around the world, to the great poet, Eduardo Galeano. I’m amazed daily by the re-realization about the degree to which my formalized schooling has thus far been wholly inadequate. Of course I shouldn’t find it surprizing, understanding the real role of formal schooling, but it continually does. I was with my friend John on a rainy day in the East Village. We were visiting several bookstores in New York’s East Village. I picked up a bunch of used books - books by Herbert Marcuse, Freud, and Erich Fromm. We spent a while in St. Mark’s Books, where I noticed Galeano’s new book: Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone. I opened the book, not knowing what to find, and I was immediately taken in. Under the dust jacket, the gorgeous red hardcover book is 400 pages long, and contains around 500-700 vignettes - short scenes which convey powerful lessons - each between half a page and a page in length. The stories draw from history, mythology, legend, religion, spiritual stories, parables, fairy tales, and social movements, each turning classic stories on their heads in imaginative ways to leave debunk the authoritarian myths we’re told about history and society. As my words are far too weak to do Eduardo Galeano’s poetry justice, here are two of his stories:

—
How Could We?
by Eduardo Galeano, Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone, pp. 4

To be mouth or mouthful, hunter or hunted. That was the question.
We deserved scorn, or at most pity. In the hostile wilderness no one respected us, no one feared us. We were the most vulnerable beasts in the animal kingdom, terrified of night and the jungle, useless as youngsters, not much better as adults, without claws or fangs or nimble feet or keen sense of smell.
Our early history is lost in mist. It seems all we ever did was break rocks and beat each other with clubs.
But one might well ask: Weren’t we able to survive, when survival was all but impossible, because we learned to share our food and band together for defense? Would today’s me-first, do-your-own-thing civilization have lasted more than a moment?

—
Guernica
by Eduardo Galeano, Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone, pp. 293

Paris, spring of 1937: Pablo Picasso wakes up and reads.
He reads the newspaper while having breakfast in his studio.
His coffee grows cold in the cup.
German planes have razed the city of Guernica. For three hours the Nazi air force chased and machine-gunned people fleeing the burning city.
General Franco insists that Guernica has been set aflame by Asturian dynamiters and Basque pyromachiacs from the ranks of the Communists.
Two years later in Madrid, Wolfram von Richthofen, commander of the German forces in Spain, sits beside Franco at the victory parade: killing Spaniards was Hitler’s rehearsal for his impending world war.
Many years later in New York, Colin Powell makes a speech at the United Nations to announce the imminent annihilation of Iraq.
While he speaks, the back of the room is hidden from view, Guernica is hidden from view. The reproduction of Picasso’s painting, which hangs there, is concealed behind an enormous blue cloth.
UN officials decided it was not the most appropriate backdrop for the proclaimation of a new round of butchery.

—
I’ll certainly be picking up more of Galeano’s books soon. I’m thinking about getting Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent next.