'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties.. This...is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.--John Adams
IMO, that's where all too many progressives fall short -- including Sanders. Their heart is in the right place and more. Their ability to analyze the present situation is sharp, at times, astute. But they seem not to want to take the next, logical step.
Corporations are the natural result of capitalist internal logic, based as it is on the ownership of human beings, their time, their bodies, their autonomy. Capitalism is also based on the essence of slavery: Gain enormous wealth on the backs of others by organizing them and stripping them of their production, of the right to their production. Capitalism does this, and is fundamentally autocratic and anti-democratic. It's just the natural progression of things for this system to spawn mega-corporations trying to rule the world in their own way, as the laws of competitive motion in capitalism are themselves imperialistic, by default.
So, yes, we need to fight against corporate control. But if we really want to put an end to the massive inequality in place, we need to do more. We need to end the ability of anyone to get rich from the blood, sweat and tears of others. We need to do away with the massively unequal employer/employee dynamic altogether. No one should legally have that power over other humans.
up
0 users have voted.
—
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
No escape from it. No way to "tame" it. No way to tweak it enough to matter.
It's set up to generate inequality, because it's based on it. It's based on slavery.
Capitalism is M-C-M and exchange value, with the capitalist buying labor as a commodity to produce commodities for more money. The capitalist, unlike in previous economic systems, owns, outright, the production workers create from the getgo, and he/she appropriates all of the returns for that production for him or herself. Exploitation is built right in because the capitalist can never make their fortune if they pay their workers fairly, value for value, so they make the vast majority of their own compensation through the collection of unpaid work hours. The more unpaid labor they can organize and collect, the more they make for themselves.
Right off the bat, the fundamental logic and mechanics of capitalism sets up a perverse set of incentives that will always be in conflict -- between owner and worker, owner and consumer, and owner and the earth. They make more money the less they pay workers. They make more money the more each capitalist exchange is unequal. They make more money the more their costs are externalized to others -- like society.
And, yes, we have capitalism in America today. It wasn't dominant here until after the Civil War, but it is now, and all over the globe.
Two excellent books on the subject: The Invention of Capitalism, by Michael Perelman; The Origin of Capitalism, by Ellen Meiksins Wood. I highly recommend them both, and the latter, especially, as perhaps the best and most concise book on what capitalism is and what makes it unique.
up
0 users have voted.
—
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
Wow, I probably agreed with every word you have written all along this thread.
You mention concise, a demon I have often battled, and I have recently used:
Owners coerce humans to be workers, as being a wage slave is the lesser of two evils than dying. Wages are what turns humans into labor. Labor and capital both contribute to a biz but all profit goes to capital (owners).
To me it's as simple as 2 + 2 = 4
Given:
human + subsistence wage = labor
Logic: labor [2] + capital [2] = profit [4]
Therefor the inverse would be true: profit = 50% labor/50% capital [4 = 2 + 2]
Yet in capitalism/corporation profit goes 100% to capital.
So, under capitalism, 4 divided by 2 = 4 to owner, 0 to labor? [4 = 4 + 0] What! Who agreed to that?!?
“We all carry within us places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves and others.” ― Albert Camus
When I say we need to end capitalism, I'm not saying we need to end commerce, or trade, etc. etc. Far from it. I'm talking about a distinctive form of commerce and trade, one with its own unique set of rules and logic.
For instance, if you build custom chairs, with your own two hands, and you find all of your own clients and you don't have any employees, you're not a capitalist. You do your thing in the context of a capitalist system, but you're not a capitalist.
If, however, you pay others to make those chairs for you, and you appropriate the surplus value they create, you are a capitalist.
America, prior to the Civil War, had an economy wherein roughly 80% were self-employed in this manner. Small, direct producers, small farmers, artisans, craftspersons and so on. They weren't capitalists. But after the Civil War, that 80/20 split soon flipped, and capitalism as a distinct mode of commerce and trade became dominant, and America lost most of its direct producers, small farmers and the like.
Starting in Britain, capitalism conquered that island and spread across the globe. Once Britain lost its status as hegemon, and we took up that mantle, we became the promoter of world capitalism. Because of this, inequality has spread like wildfire as well. It needs to be replaced by egalitarian, cooperative forms of commerce and trade.
up
0 users have voted.
—
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
But if we really want to put an end to the massive inequality in place, we need to do more. We need to end the ability of anyone to get rich from the blood, sweat and tears of others. We need to do away with the massively unequal employer/employee dynamic altogether. No one should legally have that power over other humans.
Or, as the "Preamble to the IWW Constitution" put it:
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
At least one of the hardest, anyway . . . . is that people don't get rich without hurting others. The wealthier they are, the more damage they did to get there -- and tend to still do. They can't get rich without diminishing others. Too many Americans, via generations of brainwashing, have come to believe that if one person gets rich -- a Bill Gates, a Steve Jobs -- no one else loses anything because of this. In reality, math doesn't work that way. Physics doesn't work that way.
Private individuals can not "gain" wealth without others losing it, and when money is power, they lose a great deal more than their dollars.
And, of course, "charity" also comes at a great price. That billionaire who just gave millions to fund a new hospital . . . . if he or she had paid fair wages from the getgo, it's far more likely that millions could afford health care on their own, without "charity." And if they had paid fair wages, they don't rise to billionaire status in the first place.
Rather than a nation depending on the "generosity" of a few, a truly just society would end that dependence altogether, and make sure everyone who worked never needed that kind of help from private benefactors or the public sector. Their work alone should be sufficient. And no one who wants to work should ever find a door closed to them.
up
0 users have voted.
—
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
At least one of the hardest, anyway . . . . is that people don't get rich without hurting others. The wealthier they are, the more damage they did to get there -- and tend to still do. They can't get rich without diminishing others. Too many Americans, via generations of brainwashing, have come to believe that if one person gets rich -- a Bill Gates, a Steve Jobs -- no one else loses anything because of this. In reality, math doesn't work that way. Physics doesn't work that way.
Bill Gates, in fact, openly said: "The economy is not a zero-sum game.", intending that we all beLIEve in the so-called "win-win" situation being the norm rather than the exceedingly rare phenomenon it really is.
My response: "Bill Gates wouldn't know the real world economy if it bit him in the ass!" He has never had to work his way through a winter as someone else's wage hireling. And the $20,000 he borrowed from his parents in 1975 to start Microsoft would set you back a cool $100,000 today. Again, not something a typical real-world economy participant (read: hourly wage earner) has the ability to do.
up
0 users have voted.
—
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
A capitalist must come out ahead on the deal, or there is no profit. If not on every step of the way, then cumulatively. And unless people believe that money or value or surplus value grow on trees, then someone's gain must necessarily means someone's loss. Actually, many, many someones. You can't have more than 100% of something. If person X grabs 90% of it, that leaves just 10% for everyone else. There is no possibility of someone grabbing 90% of something and everyone else still having access to that 90%.
up
0 users have voted.
—
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
The old folklore in götterdämmerung/ragnarǫk isn't a myth anymore, we're in it together. Not front row seats, sorry. We are the center stage actors. We are those Norse gods and our heaven counts its final days.
Sooner than you think. It is considered a near-term certainty by scientists who have studied climate data and applied their knowledge to predict the logical outcomes. Within 2030, that may be about a dozen years away from now, 2016. I would guess a lot of current homeowners won't be able to burn their mortgage deed when the last payout comes due on the final 30th year.
I sometimes work outside in what must be approaching 100% humidity and +95 deg. F. temperatures these days. I don't think it generally lasts more than 2 hours or more, typically between 2pm and 4pm are the peak torture events here. The hours before and after are almost as brutal. In the past, I have had some helpers who have to lie down in shade from heat exhaustion. I don't know what my threshold is, I think it's slightly better than what a typical desk jockey could tolerate, someone who pushes paper in chilled AC offices all day. I'm not bragging, the intense wet-bulb climate on normal Florida days will beat me up pretty bad. And I could collapse just as easily as the desk jockey should the power grid blow a fuse for a few hours.
I got to get up the next day and do it all over again, paying my bills on paycheck-to-paycheck life cycles somehow. So for me, it's adapt or die. And then die right after adapting. In my free time, I search for higher meanings in life.
This charade, that it's just a liberal scam funded by George Soros, will Pres. Trump be able to sell this as easily as he did real estate and assorted NYC street hustles? This is public sector business, not exactly his strongest forte. He'll find there's a little more accountability than he was able to avoid in the past. True, suckers are born every minute. Trump knows that instinctively. He uses it constantly. Except die-offs may be exceeding birth rates for this sub-species of humanity. Surely he will lack an audience soon.
Then the world's crumbling nuclear reactors and radioactive melt-downs will be bring on slower forms of dying. You know, those ugly cancers that procrastinate with horrific pain. There's icing on the cake, for that first cluster of survivors.
The Battle Cry of the Democratic Party:
If we are indeed the Party of Jefferson, we should listen to his words and the words of his Democratic Party heirs. Across two centuries they have told us explicitly what we need to be eternally vigilant of: Runaway, Unaccountable Corporate Power.A Lioness Roars: Elizabeth Warren and the Battle Cry of the Democratic Party
Used to be, before Clintonism and the Corporate takeover of the Democratic Party.
Comments
Just so. n/t
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
That's it!
How blind are the Clinton supporters? Corporate pawns!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Correct. I'd throw international finance into that pile as well
and the goons who are protecting all of them in various "national" security agencies and private-sector security companies.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
people who think
something is worth dying for, have never died. No dead person has ever reported back that they died for something "worth it."
To quote General Patton:
Yeah, that!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
hecate, I love your quote from Lew Welch,
that alone is worth coming here for.
Yup
There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties.. This...is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.--John Adams
It's more than just the corporations. It's capitalism itself.
IMO, that's where all too many progressives fall short -- including Sanders. Their heart is in the right place and more. Their ability to analyze the present situation is sharp, at times, astute. But they seem not to want to take the next, logical step.
Corporations are the natural result of capitalist internal logic, based as it is on the ownership of human beings, their time, their bodies, their autonomy. Capitalism is also based on the essence of slavery: Gain enormous wealth on the backs of others by organizing them and stripping them of their production, of the right to their production. Capitalism does this, and is fundamentally autocratic and anti-democratic. It's just the natural progression of things for this system to spawn mega-corporations trying to rule the world in their own way, as the laws of competitive motion in capitalism are themselves imperialistic, by default.
So, yes, we need to fight against corporate control. But if we really want to put an end to the massive inequality in place, we need to do more. We need to end the ability of anyone to get rich from the blood, sweat and tears of others. We need to do away with the massively unequal employer/employee dynamic altogether. No one should legally have that power over other humans.
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
-- Albert Camus
I'm not sure it's capitalism itself
Rather, I believe it is what it mutates into when given free rein. I don't believe we've had capitalism in this country for a long time now.
I think it's the internal, normal logic of capitalism that . . .
guarantees this.
No escape from it. No way to "tame" it. No way to tweak it enough to matter.
It's set up to generate inequality, because it's based on it. It's based on slavery.
Capitalism is M-C-M and exchange value, with the capitalist buying labor as a commodity to produce commodities for more money. The capitalist, unlike in previous economic systems, owns, outright, the production workers create from the getgo, and he/she appropriates all of the returns for that production for him or herself. Exploitation is built right in because the capitalist can never make their fortune if they pay their workers fairly, value for value, so they make the vast majority of their own compensation through the collection of unpaid work hours. The more unpaid labor they can organize and collect, the more they make for themselves.
Right off the bat, the fundamental logic and mechanics of capitalism sets up a perverse set of incentives that will always be in conflict -- between owner and worker, owner and consumer, and owner and the earth. They make more money the less they pay workers. They make more money the more each capitalist exchange is unequal. They make more money the more their costs are externalized to others -- like society.
And, yes, we have capitalism in America today. It wasn't dominant here until after the Civil War, but it is now, and all over the globe.
Two excellent books on the subject: The Invention of Capitalism, by Michael Perelman; The Origin of Capitalism, by Ellen Meiksins Wood. I highly recommend them both, and the latter, especially, as perhaps the best and most concise book on what capitalism is and what makes it unique.
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
-- Albert Camus
hello
Wow, I probably agreed with every word you have written all along this thread.
You mention concise, a demon I have often battled, and I have recently used:
To me it's as simple as 2 + 2 = 4
Given:
human + subsistence wage = labor
Logic:
labor [2] + capital [2] = profit [4]
Therefor the inverse would be true:
profit = 50% labor/50% capital [4 = 2 + 2]
Yet in capitalism/corporation profit goes 100% to capital.
So, under capitalism, 4 divided by 2 = 4 to owner, 0 to labor? [4 = 4 + 0]
What! Who agreed to that?!?
Also, just to be clear . . . .
When I say we need to end capitalism, I'm not saying we need to end commerce, or trade, etc. etc. Far from it. I'm talking about a distinctive form of commerce and trade, one with its own unique set of rules and logic.
For instance, if you build custom chairs, with your own two hands, and you find all of your own clients and you don't have any employees, you're not a capitalist. You do your thing in the context of a capitalist system, but you're not a capitalist.
If, however, you pay others to make those chairs for you, and you appropriate the surplus value they create, you are a capitalist.
America, prior to the Civil War, had an economy wherein roughly 80% were self-employed in this manner. Small, direct producers, small farmers, artisans, craftspersons and so on. They weren't capitalists. But after the Civil War, that 80/20 split soon flipped, and capitalism as a distinct mode of commerce and trade became dominant, and America lost most of its direct producers, small farmers and the like.
Starting in Britain, capitalism conquered that island and spread across the globe. Once Britain lost its status as hegemon, and we took up that mantle, we became the promoter of world capitalism. Because of this, inequality has spread like wildfire as well. It needs to be replaced by egalitarian, cooperative forms of commerce and trade.
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
-- Albert Camus
THIS:
Or, as the "Preamble to the IWW Constitution" put it:
source
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
I think the hardest thing for Americans to consider . . . .
At least one of the hardest, anyway . . . . is that people don't get rich without hurting others. The wealthier they are, the more damage they did to get there -- and tend to still do. They can't get rich without diminishing others. Too many Americans, via generations of brainwashing, have come to believe that if one person gets rich -- a Bill Gates, a Steve Jobs -- no one else loses anything because of this. In reality, math doesn't work that way. Physics doesn't work that way.
Private individuals can not "gain" wealth without others losing it, and when money is power, they lose a great deal more than their dollars.
And, of course, "charity" also comes at a great price. That billionaire who just gave millions to fund a new hospital . . . . if he or she had paid fair wages from the getgo, it's far more likely that millions could afford health care on their own, without "charity." And if they had paid fair wages, they don't rise to billionaire status in the first place.
Rather than a nation depending on the "generosity" of a few, a truly just society would end that dependence altogether, and make sure everyone who worked never needed that kind of help from private benefactors or the public sector. Their work alone should be sufficient. And no one who wants to work should ever find a door closed to them.
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
-- Albert Camus
Bill Gates
Bill Gates, in fact, openly said: "The economy is not a zero-sum game.", intending that we all beLIEve in the so-called "win-win" situation being the norm rather than the exceedingly rare phenomenon it really is.
My response: "Bill Gates wouldn't know the real world economy if it bit him in the ass!" He has never had to work his way through a winter as someone else's wage hireling. And the $20,000 he borrowed from his parents in 1975 to start Microsoft would set you back a cool $100,000 today. Again, not something a typical real-world economy participant (read: hourly wage earner) has the ability to do.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Very true. Capitalism, like profit, is zero sum. By definition.
A capitalist must come out ahead on the deal, or there is no profit. If not on every step of the way, then cumulatively. And unless people believe that money or value or surplus value grow on trees, then someone's gain must necessarily means someone's loss. Actually, many, many someones. You can't have more than 100% of something. If person X grabs 90% of it, that leaves just 10% for everyone else. There is no possibility of someone grabbing 90% of something and everyone else still having access to that 90%.
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
-- Albert Camus
You have nailed it.
I try to explain this to people. Deaf ears.
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
Capitalism or bust?
The old folklore in götterdämmerung/ragnarǫk isn't a myth anymore, we're in it together. Not front row seats, sorry. We are the center stage actors. We are those Norse gods and our heaven counts its final days.
Sooner than you think. It is considered a near-term certainty by scientists who have studied climate data and applied their knowledge to predict the logical outcomes. Within 2030, that may be about a dozen years away from now, 2016. I would guess a lot of current homeowners won't be able to burn their mortgage deed when the last payout comes due on the final 30th year.
I sometimes work outside in what must be approaching 100% humidity and +95 deg. F. temperatures these days. I don't think it generally lasts more than 2 hours or more, typically between 2pm and 4pm are the peak torture events here. The hours before and after are almost as brutal. In the past, I have had some helpers who have to lie down in shade from heat exhaustion. I don't know what my threshold is, I think it's slightly better than what a typical desk jockey could tolerate, someone who pushes paper in chilled AC offices all day. I'm not bragging, the intense wet-bulb climate on normal Florida days will beat me up pretty bad. And I could collapse just as easily as the desk jockey should the power grid blow a fuse for a few hours.
I got to get up the next day and do it all over again, paying my bills on paycheck-to-paycheck life cycles somehow. So for me, it's adapt or die. And then die right after adapting. In my free time, I search for higher meanings in life.
This charade, that it's just a liberal scam funded by George Soros, will Pres. Trump be able to sell this as easily as he did real estate and assorted NYC street hustles? This is public sector business, not exactly his strongest forte. He'll find there's a little more accountability than he was able to avoid in the past. True, suckers are born every minute. Trump knows that instinctively. He uses it constantly. Except die-offs may be exceeding birth rates for this sub-species of humanity. Surely he will lack an audience soon.
Then the world's crumbling nuclear reactors and radioactive melt-downs will be bring on slower forms of dying. You know, those ugly cancers that procrastinate with horrific pain. There's icing on the cake, for that first cluster of survivors.
Used to be the rasion d'etre of the Democratic party
Used to be, before Clintonism and the Corporate takeover of the Democratic Party.
Yes!!!!!!
Yes!!!!!!