Forum Post: Beware Of Projecting A Message Of "Anti-Capitalism"
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 20, 2011, 1:11 a.m. EST by puff6962
(4052)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Capitalism, with all of its failings, remains the best system humanity has ever devised for creating prosperity. Unrestrained capitalism, however, can be a different animal.
Throughout history, periods of economic transitions have been marked by wide swings in wealth and great disparities of equality. We are in such a period today.
The goal of this movement should be directed towards correcting the factors that have led us towards an artificial economy that enriches the few while shedding the quality jobs of the many.
These goals may, in some cases, be general and, in others, very specific. They remain to be enumerated.
But, what I am telling you now is that any perception of this movement as "Anti-Capitalistic" will doom it to the fate of all populist movements of the past 150 years. Your opponents will seize upon you as radicals and your supporters will lend you only qualified support.
In real terms, this means that protests, occupations, and marches cannot interrupt the daily action of commerce. Protesters must present themselves as clean cut, honest, and exceedingly normal. The face of your movement should not be some smelly granola dude who hasn't shaved for a month. It just won't fly with mom or pop, and that is sadly who will determine the fate of the Occupy movement.
You've appealed to the margins of our society and now it is time to go mainstream. This means developing leadership for your movement and creating a core set of values. First among these values must be a reaffirmation of capitalism as the best economic system around which to form a society.....but with caveats. These would include progressive taxation policies, education subsidies, raising the minimum wage, instituting strict fair trade policies, ending the exporting of our jobs, and etc.
The second core value would be the necessity of removing big money from our political process. This is exceeding popular across a broad spectrum of Americans and it will only happen with a Constitutional Amendment. The language should ban all corporate donations and limit personal giving to some number multiplied by the federal minimum wage (100 x 7.25=$725). Further, no unrecorded interactions would be allowed between lobbyists and members of Congress. All such interactions would be public information.
The third core value is shared sacrifice, and this dovetails in with the notion of progressive taxation. It requires that the OWS movement be seen as a force strengthening our core institutions. OWS should support a military draft with the stipulation that equal percentages of both men and women be drawn from each 10th percentile of our socioeconomic strata. The rich should serve alongside the poor.......that alone should limit any military adventurism. OWS should further support the idea of one to two year periods of "national service" in return for government subsidized college tuition. This would expand Clinton's Americor and broaden it to most individuals 18-20 years of age. Those on unemployment or welfare should be required to participate in some form of government / employer sponsored work program as part of receiving their benefits.
Finally, all successful movements of the past 1000 years have prevailed by defining themselves through their opponents. If you want to project your message, then the targets of your protests must....by themselves....carry your message. Invading Grover Norquist's office highlights Mr. Norquist's almost dictatorial hold on the Right's taxation policies. Protesting Fox News will highlight the propaganda of the Right and it's crown jewel, Fox News. I could list a hundred targets, but that is for you guys to decide.
But, in all these pursuits, if you are labeled "Anti-Capitalistic," every good idea you generate, every successful protest you engineer, and every message you spread, will be like farting in the wind.
Populist movements die hard because they lack true leadership and/or their message rallies some while scaring the hell out of others. Fear, unfortunately, often trumps reason. So, avoid these pitfalls and you will have a chance at viability. Ignore them, and this glimmer of daylight will be extinguished for a long time to come.
I understand a fair free market can be good but the banks got the biggest welfare check ever given in history. Capitalism isn't about taking bailouts from govt it's about the strongest hardest working companies with the best product surviving. The bank bailouts are far from capitalism
Bailouts have no place in a FREE MARKET but this is not a free market because it is so heavily regulated and traded by our own elected representatives. When those reps coerce/force lending to high risk borrowers...well, the market is no longer free. Besides isn't it a bit of a stretch to call them all welfare checks when most were actually loans with interest which made a profit for the govt? Shouldn't the ire be directed at the govt who failed to give that money back to US? I don't want more freaking social programs. I want more of my tax dollars returned, I want them to quit taking so much, I want them to live/create spending bills within their means.
The ire is directed at both entities involved, the government and the corporations. More specifically, it is directed at the horribly corrupted relationship between them, there is good regulation and bad regulation, just like anything else. We need a better government that can answer to the people first, then dealing with how they spend our money should naturally follow and leave all parties satisfied.
So in other words, I,and some part of OWS, stand by you in being angry at the government, while at the same time i maintain an animosity towards the corporations as a part of the larger issue of money in politics. There is a lot we need to fix, and we need all the help we can get.
Corporations have become the immoral servants or their shareholders. They will use any method to keep earnings per share above expectations.
As a result, financial results must be carefully scrutinized.
The entire system is based on shadows of the truth.
and the "shareholders" of the redistributive nanny state are those who receive support and assistance payments from the politicians they vote for, and THEY will do anything it takes to maintain their power, regardless of the effect of the ever-increasing non-(and marginal) participation on the greater system....and the "pseudo-compassionate" leftists and liberal thinkers are their useful idiots...
Bailouts certainly don't have any part in our free-market economy:
http://thegreatrecession.info/blog/2009/01/downtime-part-6-bailing-out-the-biggest-bullies/
Neither do lies that claim the banks paid the money back (like Bank of America) when, in some cases at least, they paid back known TARP loans with occult loans from the Fed that were not overseen by anyone and apparently not known by anyone outside the Fed until Bloomberg forced open some of the books under the Freedom of Information Act.
Neither does welfare to rich tax payers via a subsidized tax structure have any place in a sustainable economy:
http://thegreatrecession.info/blog/2011/11/bushwhacked-by-the-bush-tax-cuts-for-the-rich/
Until these things are abolished, we'll never have a sustainable economy.
--Knave Dave
I can't help but feel that a better use of that money could have been to give it to the employees of said banks. Let the banks fall, during which time they'd have money to live off of until able to find new jobs.
I'm sure there are even better ideas, but even that's off the top of my head.
The best idea is to preserve our credit system from oblivion.
You cannot imagine what the would would have looked like if larger banks had all failed.....and, unfortunately, they would have without some very unpopular measures.
the best idea is blow up the credit system fight club style............
No, bailouts are not capitalism. But, it is what it is. If the banks had been allowed to fail, then I am certain our current situation would be dire.....read about the period around 1932 and you'll get the idea. When bad banks fail, there develops a panic and a run on banks. That results in good banks failing right beside the bad ones.
So, while I can see the necessity of preserving our banking system, I cannot support the fact that all of these guys who completely screwed up the world are getting obscene bonuses and, in some cases, are doing better than ever.
It has been calculated that the Fed loaned 7.7 trillion....trillion....to U.S. banks at 0.03 percent. This money was used to fill a canon shot through the chest of our economy. The banks, able to lend back to the government at around 3%, were thus given a machine to passively make money while lending to nobody. It is simply unparalleled. I do not understand how desperate the Fed believed our situation to be that they would do something so crazy. Were we at the Abyss? Could our entire credit system fail again?
Capitalism is as capitalism does. Cronies are commodities to be bought and sold like pork bellies.
Movements are.......what the parents end up thinking.
It is a sad truth, but student protests, anti-globalization activists, and etc. have all failed because they didn't focus on a message that brought their parents into the fold.
You can get the change that you want, but you have to couch your aims and your tactics to the beliefs of moderate Americans.
Anti-corruption
Anti-big money in politics
Promedicare and social security
Preserve American Jobs
Education....
In each of these, there are sentences that could be crafted in such a way that nobody could agree with the message......and that is what you're shooting for:
Eg. Do you think that medicare when you reach 65?
Eg. Do you think that we need to increase the availability for students to attend secondary education:
Personally I go the route of Capitalism + a good dose of Socialism to even out the playing field that Capitalism will often blaze through if left unchecked.
Yes. Predatory capitalism, in particular, must be restrained.
Good point. Corporations have their place in society. Government has its place in society. Unfortunately, Corporate institutions, lobbyists for the well-heeled have corrupted government, which in turn has allowed business sector to continue corrupting itself.
Diggin' the name, man...
no they have no place in society unless they serve the common good. to exist to simply make money is well, evil.
Yes, you are right, there is a cyclic component at play here.
Aye: If you want to project your message, then the targets of your protests must....by themselves....carry your message. Invading Grover Norquist's office highlights Mr. Norquist's almost dictatorial hold on the Right's taxation policies. Blockading Fox News will highlight the propaganda of the Right and it's instrument, Fox News. I could list a hundred targets, but that is for you guys to decide.
Aye?
I think you're mostly right; being anti-capitalist doesn't serve us well in many quarters.
I do want to bring up the historical example, though, of the major anarchist, communist and socialist movements of the 30s pulling FDR to the left. He co-opted these nascent potential third parties and prevented them from breaking out as serious competition to the two major parties. They, in turn, provided the base of support for the New Deal. That scenario might serve the American people well. I'm not saying we're there yet, but it's something to be considered. I think the movement likely has a positive impact, just by existing, no matter which way it goes.
This Hoover piece is obviously biased and has a different spin, but it is good food for thought: http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/7076
Yes, FDR was afraid of Upton Sinclair and the reemergence of socialism as a plausible movement. He used the fears of his fellow politicians of these groups as a bending rod for many New Deal policies. So, you're right. OWS may serve this role.
However, FDR did not have Fox News and Rush Limbaugh as opponents. (Instead, he had Will Rogers as an icebreaker). OWS will have to be seen as the antithesis of these forces in order to broaden it's base.
Right. I agree it's best we build as big a tent as possible, and not get pigeon-holed as anti-capitalist. I know what I want, which is well-regulated capitalism, functional democratic institutions, and some relative equality. I just don't want the movement to be so tame (I think my demands are "radically" moderate) that it's easily absorbed into the existing establishment without changing it - although there seems little danger of that. :)
FDR didn't have Fox/Rush, but did have people like Harry Koch: http://occupywallst.org/forum/grandpa-koch/
So basically do a bit of polishing up a turd, call it "good capitalism" and hope it doesn't start to smell before it's our grandchildren's turn to deal with it. Got it.
Some forms of evil can never be extinguished but instead must be reigned in by mores, personal ethics, and legal restrictions. Capitalism is not evil, predatory capitalism is.
Evil is as evil does - you can't uncorrupt and inherently corrupted system. It's based on foundational false assumptions with an inherent blindness to the natural world. the mathematical theories used by mainstream economists are predicated on the following unscientific assumptions:
The market system is a closed circular flow between production and consumption, with no inlets or outlets.Natural resources exist in a domain that is separate and distinct from a closed market system, and the economic value of these resources can be determined only by the dynamics that operate within this system. The costs of damage to the external natural environment by economic activities must be treated as costs that lie outside the closed market system or as costs that cannot be included in the pricing mechanisms that operate within the system.The external resources of nature are largely inexhaustible, and those that are not can be replaced by other resources or by technologies that minimize the use of the exhaustible resources or that rely on other resources. *There are no biophysical limits to the growth of market systems.
Capitalism is an epic fail
no capitalism is evil because it follows an extraction model and a take advantage mentality.
yeah that seems like what most of OWS wants, fools all. guess we won't be able to stop our slide to fascism.
What system do you wish to replace capitalism with?
have you ever heard of a resource based economy?
Have you ever heard of communism?
I love Fox news.
They why do you want to change the world?
Why do I want to change the world?
We're not changing the world; the world is dynamic and chaotic; it's a force we attempt to harness in an effort to lend order. Because everything requires our quantitative measure; and it's a long story...
In short, this is MY world; period.
Two basic concerns: outsourcing for the purpose of creating inexpensive imports, as I have said for years, has the ability to devalue labor worldwide. Eventually we will all be working for a penny a day; nay, a tenth of a penny a day, a week, a month. A world enslaved is not a "good." Call it, humanity in declension.
What of "economy"?
Two... population growth has outpaced our economy; the economic logic of one, in a world of too few resources, must necessarily impugn the economic logic of another. But unfortunately the general welfare clause has so expanded federal powers as to the promote the irrational perception of an hereditary wealth for ALL; we are a nation without borders.
Every new statement by either government, or even the populace, contradicts the previous; you know yourself it's nothing more than irrational fiction.
Capitalism is "bad"; tents that shield us from the rain and the burgers that feed us, are "good."
Taxes are "bad"; unlimited spending is "good."
Printing money is "bad," but unlimited monetary supply is "good,"
We can go on and on all day.
Vietnam was bad; Iraq is good. "Free love" was good; "promiscuity" is bad.
Everything is nonsensical... everything.
Maybe if they turn the voltage up next time.
Obama pulled 500 billion from Medicare; he recommended another 250 bil in cuts while simultaneously expanding Medicaid. These medical costs are crippling states.
They're taking from people who have worked and paid taxes for forty years or more to give to people who rolled over the border illegally yesterday.
Everything is NONSENSICAL.
And middle America - you know, all those people of the "middling" sort, the vast middle ground, i.e., the "Silent Majority" - are very, very, tired of this anti-American mentality.
Nursing home patients rely hugely upon Medicaid.....very poor people rely upon Medicaid. Did those people skip paying into the system?
Since you are on this page at noontime, you either don't have a job or you have one that is so boring that you would spend your lunchtime on mental masturbation. So, I'll inform you Seymore that ANYONE in this country making less than around 60K a year on average throughout their lifetimes will get more out of the system than they will pay in. So, are you telling me that EVERYONE out there who makes less than 60K are a bunch of freeloaders and communists? It would seem to me that this "Silent Majority" of which you speak is very largely composed of those people.....some vast middle ground.....sounds more like a bunch of hypocrites to me.
That term, "Silent Majority," is an interesting choice of words. It was first spoken by a VP who was indicted on corruption....Spiro Agnew....and it was a reference to those who were tired of the changes wrought by the new Civil Right's laws. Why couldn't those black people just stay in their place?
I would put it to you, and other little Hitler youth who think like you do, that you are being imprecise in your language when you call people Liberals. There are no true "Liberals" anymore....and what qualifies as a Liberal today would have been called a moderate a recently as 30 years ago. Hell, Ronald Reagan would be a liberal today. So, Liberals are, to some people, anyone who disagrees with Fox News. To others, like you, they are bestowed a more ominous label. I would put it to you that whenever you are tempted to term someone a "liberal" that you instead substitute the phrase, "those people who want to give my money to niggers."
You are entirely for social programs that would benefit a loser like you, but help a poor black kid?
Your silent majority is a closeted racist minority that also happen to be hypocrites.
Don't tell me about incomes of 60k or less; I lived on such an income for many, many years.
Don't tell me about poor people.. I was one of them.
Don't tell me of "social services" - where is the dignity in that; what of pride and self-determinism?
Don't tell me about the Silent Majority of the Spiro Agnew era; it was I that resurrected the term, and I can assure you that that particular genre is no longer with us.
And your very "liberal" use of language suggests that you are a far greater racist than I have ever been.
Don't tell me about incomes of 60k or less; I lived on such an income for many, many years...............Then you're a freeloader by your definition.
Don't tell me about poor people.. I was one of them.............You were not poor, you were just an idiot.
Don't tell me of "social services" - where is the dignity in that; what of pride and self-determinism? ..............You want dignity, move to Somalia where you can truly make it on your own.
Don't tell me about the Silent Majority of the Spiro Agnew era; it was I that resurrected the term, and I can assure you that that particular genre is no longer with us.............You're still with us.
And your very "liberal" use of language suggests that you are a far greater racist than I have ever been.........Actually, some of my best friends are black. Wait, that is something people like you say.
If you want, I can give you the wrong number to the suicide prevention hotline.
haha... quite a conversation, ehh?
Poor is something people are generally born into as a matter of circumstance, just a twist of the fickle finger of fate.
The direct progenitor of this line served as the first president of what is today the state of Maine. Long story, descendants of Charlemagne via a long procession of French and English kings; the direct maternal lines are equally impressive. So "circumstance" is a long story, for all of us.
60K? Hah... I can remember the days when I dreamed of making 20; and I've supported two on less than 5. It was not THAT long ago and I can tell you quite honestly that I was every bit as poor as any black man in America is today, if not more so. But I was never a freeloader; I've always worked, paid my taxes and FICA, and have never ever asked for a handout from anyone... I don't owe the government; the government owes me.
I'm not sure about Somalia... I have, admittedly, considered Africa but I'd prefer west coast waterfront.
People have to stand for something... they begin by standing for themselves.
so the fuck what my great uncle invented the waffle cone in brooklyn. what the fuck is your point? i am a kohein so i am descended from aaron if you want to talk lineage. who gives a fuck.
The point is that wealth lasts but three generations; those that are rich today are poor tomorrow, many are born into circumstance. But I get tired of people crying about income inequality... We've become domesticated dogs; unable to resurrect those survival skills that once led us to hunt; we now smile and dance, wag our tails and beg. This is not the way of pride. Or a way of strength.
wealth lasts 60-75 years? dude what the fuck are you talking about???? you know nothing.... maybe you are a domesticated dog but i am an aware human being and this spring we will set the revolution off.
Except in rare cases, it lasts but three generations. This is the very reason the Bible served to instruct our ancestors to save unto the third generation.
And yea, that's exactly the way I see much of today's generation - they stomp their feet and scream for justice because they no longer possess the survival skills; they're like domesticated dogs.
So, you're a product of aristocratic inbreeding.
Maine sucks by the way.....except for Stephen King.
And how much does the government owe you, Sparky, you freeloading little silent majoritan you.
Exactly. Too often movements like this end up being pigeonholed as Communistic because of the over zealousness of college kids with a knee-jerk antipathy towards the "system."
It's easy to see how the "system" is flawed, but much more difficult to propose and work for solutions that actually hold water. Capitalism has withstood the test of time because of its unparalleled inefficiency in meeting the material demands of society as a whole.
That said, it is not a perfect system and does not always result in the greater good of society if left free to develop without any supervision. The invisible hand is not the infallible hand. It is absurd and unhistorical to think our interests are always served by politicians who sit on the side lines and do nothing.
Well said.
IT WON'T MATTER. The mass media is corporate control and that's their spin. I'm blue in the face screaming that it's not about being anti-capitalist, it's about anti-malevolent corporations controlling the government in defiance of the constitution and the will of the people. The revolution will not be televised because Murdoch and Koch own television now.
Direct your energies towards real power.
First you get power, then you get change.
Say it with me....
First you get power, then you get change.
Screaming will not give you power.....controlling the primary process of your elected representatives will.
meritocracy.
American dream.
middle class.
living wage.
manufacturing base.
anti-corruption.
fair regulations
The truth is that anyone who is anti-capitalism or anti-corporate is also anti-reality. These items are necessary parts of the modern world and they're not going away.
So, OWS should actually preach a message similar to the following:
"We want capitalism to work, but we want it to work better for all of it's participants and to, again, reward hard work."
"We also want for corporations to succeed, but we want for them to do so on their merits while treating their employees fairly and respecting both laws and basic morality."
That is the message that nobody can disagree with and spokespersons should sound similar.
Well don't forget they've seized the infrastructure of our government. Politicians (of all parties) owe their careers to Wall Street. Wall Street invests in them and the RIO is veto power of the will of the voters.
Then pass legislation that bans big money in politics and watch that all melt away. That is the only issue.....removing big money from politics.
yeah that is the only issue because before citizens united and the economic collapse that was the only problem we had............... and how would we pass legislation i can't pass a damn thing. all the politicians are already paid for.
Capitalism is a great concept as long as it is untainted by greed. When it runs amok without restraints, it makes the transition to a plutocracy, which is more restrictive to the common citizens than socialism.
OWS has never criticized the concept of capitalism, just the abuse and corruption of it. All they want is fair representation through the democratic process afforded to them in the constitution. Hence... "We the people"... not we the corporations!
Today's government has been so severely influenced by greed and corruption that it now only resembles what our forefathers envisioned for the people of this country.
When people in this country again pride themselves on building things.....greed will be tempered.
All that I have posted is centered on achieving this outcome.
I don't know if you got the memo but true capitalism is not what we are practicing today in this country. We have a series of top companies out there who's risks are being socialized by the institution the Fed and the American tax payer in what fucking text book is that even considered nothing less than socialism. Apparently they are too big to fail or in rich peoples term " oh dear, we can not let our corporate institutions fail because we might become poor , oh dear." You want to preach about anti-capitalism go preach it to the rich bastards that are nothing short of socialized fat cats. When true capitalism comes to America I will embrace it but what we have now is not capitalism.
Excellent point. Thanks!
And what would true capitalism bring to the average worker, to the environment, to the old and infirm, to the student, or to you?
If you are referring to laissez-faire capitalism or social darwinism then I should pre-empt you and tell you that we tried that once. Didn't work so well for the average Joe.
Capitalism only works when it is tempered by human impulses other than greed. Never forget that. Unrestrained capitalism, the lack of a graduated income taxation, and the absence of an estate tax will always eventually lead to gross inequalities and.......revolution.
So, if there is a Libertarian revolution then the only question is what form will the next revolution take. I really don't want to see either.
Also contains some good points. Any/every system will eventually be hijacked by the sleazebags, bullies and Greedy Bastards if there are no rules in place to protect the rest of us. None of this will ever be easy or simple...but we have to try.
Social norms, mores, ethics, and regulations can do more than you think.
The middle class was invented....it did not exist prior to WWII.....and the spirit of that postwar period can be reinvigorated.
I agree totally. Capitalism does remain the best system. However any local regulations are doomed for failure in today's global economy. The only thing that will save capitalism is global regulation. Even if we pass the best reforms here corporations do not have to play ball with us they can take their ball and leave. This is how we have gotten to this point of unfettered capitalism. Not even industry to go around and so nations compete with each other to attract industry in the race to the bottom. Local reforms only create negative comparative advantage.
If there existed a system to pass global regulations: wages, environmental, etc. . . then yes capitalism will be saved and work as it should. Unfortunately, as it stands, even with success in passing regulations here in America we will only further our economic decline and do nothing to change the perverted form of capitalism that currently exists.
Global Regulations is a simple solution but how do we do it?
Capitalism....banks, corporations, and jobs....have become too large or too mobile to provide for a stable framework for growth or to prevent a race to the bottom.
There must be segmentation in some fashion. There simply must be barriers to shipping jobs to wherever there is peasant labor.
The world is a small place, but it needs to get a little bigger.
Absolutely. IMO, the most logical solution is universal regulations, whether they be environmental, wage, worker protection, etc . . .
If regulations were universal then they have no place to go. The current global economy and local regulation is the root of most negative consequences, as you state, "the race to the bottom"
The current system is so far from free market ideals with subsidies, uneven regulation and maximum result of externalities.
The problem is that, much like the South in this country, many foreign nations have found their only economic draw to be cheap labor.
That will stand in the way, along with a host of other factors, of universal regulations for trade, labor, and capitalism on this planet.
As far as imposing barriers, I think that is good but would have minimal affect at this point in time, maybe would have done a lot 50 years ago.
The jobs are already gone, not to many left to ship, there are some but most are gone. The economy is global, the cry for democracy is global, the only solutions are global.
I love capitalism! I want to go as high as I can go, but capitalism with a conscience. No child should got to bed hungry, without a home, and in need of a Dr.. We as a compassionate society must provide basic needs for those who have fallen on hard times.
There but for the grace of God go I. We are all part of a grand ovarian lottery. We are born with different skills, but also vastly different levels of support and opportunity. Anybody who fails to grasp this basic truth has an embellished view of themselves.
In fact, if we took 1000 kids, raised them the same, gave them perfectly equal skills and education, and then released them at 18 and said to some, "go be investment bankers," and to others, "go be teachers or engineers," the economic rewards of our participants.....would be vastly different.
So, capitalism is a system of winners and losers and you had better have a safety net for those who are getting kicked by the system and pay for it from those who are kicking the system's ass. That's not class warfare, that is capitalism in a stable society.
Beautifully said!!!!
thanks.
puff, u r right.
We must be pro capitalism, as this is the best system we have.
We are currently in a fascist, communist inverted totalitarian crony state. whatever that means it sure isn't capitalism.
True. True.
This is why we are here this is why you are needed.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/inside-job-documentary/
Share, circulate, educate, inspire.
This one deserves a bump; there is some great stuff in here.
As the "Occupy Wall Street" protests enter their 5th month, members are wrestling with an issue as old as the Athenians who first hatched the idea of democracy around 500 B.C. Should we issue a set of demands and, if so, what should they be? LIKE OUR PAGE (Occupy Demand on Facebook) and submit your demands for CHANGE!
Unrestrained is pure. This is more fascist oriented.
Why should people who are anti-capitalist pretend they are not? Wouldn't that be disingenuous and dishonest, which is at they very least a contradiction for a movement that is demanding that government and corporations be honest.
words shape ideas and ideas shape actions.
beware the words of anti-capitalism.
Why should people who are anit-capitalist beware of the word anti-capitalism? If they believe they are anti-capitalist is that not what they should tell the world? Would it not be disingenuous to do otherwise?
Because that word signifies the ultimate in stupidity. You are not going to create some new economic system in this country.....good Lord, even I haven't smoked enough dope to dream up that one. Ever heard of a commune? That is what you sound like....some stupid flower child who wants to live in a dreamland.
If you spout this crap, you will be guilty of the furthest measure of overreach....more than that, you will brand yourself a raving lunatic.
Capitalism must be reformed and rehabilitated to benefit as many people as possible. The notion that it is going to be replaced by some fairytale created by some inebriated hippie is just laughable.
Whether or not you or anyone else thinks it is stupid, some (I would say many) OWS activists do see themselves as anticapitalist. If that is the case would it not be dishonest and disingenuous for them to present themselves as something they are not?
No, it is disingenuous for them to present themselves as sane.
Booooooooooooooooyyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh
Are you saying that by definition anyone who sees themselves as a socialist is mentally ill? That would include people like Noam Chomsky who was asked only last year to appear as a guest speaker at the United State Military Academy at West Point and literally millions of other people world wide and thousands of people in the United States.
After Stalin, China, Cuba, and etc. Anyone who does not recognize socialism as the prelude to totalitarianism is a damn fool. One can be socialistic in their esteem for their fellow man, but to believe that it is a workable economic system is simply juvenile.
You probably get laid spouting this stuff around a keg, but it is not the way the world works and it will never be the world works.
Far from being a socialist, Stalin killed more socialists, Communists and anarchists than any fascist or capitalist leader ever did.
You are happy in your insanity, aren't you.
Opposition to global capital, whether one understands it through an industrial or post-industrial lens, is as legitimate a perspective as any. If OWS is an "inclusive" movement as it purports to be, then creating a space where all viewpoints can be expressed -- including various radical critiques of global capital -- is a prerequisite.
OWS may be inclusive, but I am not. Take your nonsense somewhere else.
Why, because you say so? If only it was that easy.
Great...keep this topic at the top of the forum. Thanks. All trolls shall be assimilated.
To paraphrase Lewis Carroll, "We're all trolls here."
As my esteemed friend, George, recently commented, OWS is about having responsible capitalism, but NOT the criminal version of capiitalism running rampant in the USA today. If you don't know the difference, then you have a problem.
I know that the answer to that question is often measured in shades of gray.
Capitalism is an immoral system. Nothing wrong mentioning that.
What would you place in it's stead?
Worker control of the means of production.
Lmmfao.
Why is that funny?
Stop. You're killing me.
Name 5 great conservative comedians?
Pretty much anyone who falls for the divisive d vs r bullshit, when they are both working together, is pretty fuckin to me.
Name five communist ones.
Stomping out capitalism, one line of code at a time
Doubtful. Very Doubtful.
The problem is that real anticapitlist, trys to join, thinkig that the move is to go against corporatition corruptions. So then some get confused about . Is not the same going against Corporations because they are using bad the "CAPITALISM" , making corruption, and making laws that mistakes the way. Or just simple go against all the CAPITALISM system itself. The aproach is not always easy to explain inside, so more dificult to explain outside. Anyways we must go against what "REAL" things is going on, but is certanly not a REAL CAPITALISM, so you might be a pure capitalism, and therefor been ANTICAPITALISM , because you are against the actual capitalism....
You can see it get confuse, I can say "IM ANTICAPITLISM" , and you woul not understand if im against the real concept of capitalism, or against the actual capitalism that is managed by bankes , corporatition, and politics of nowadays.
Most people in this country don't support capitalism willingly. They've been shooed away from supporting their own interests by the establishment. The word 'socialism' has such negative connotations about it that people are afraid to fight for themselves.
I would say that socialism has been thoroughly discredited as an economic system. Further, I would say that anybody who could have devised a better system than capitalism would have done it a long time ago.
We're stuck with our imperfect capitalism, but that doesn't mean we can't make it better.
I disagree. I'm not a socialist in the traditional sense, but I believe that we have the capability to take care of everyone on this planet. I do not consider myself a liberal, I just realize that capitalism has ran it's course and can not function for the betterment of society anymore. Income inequality is a normal outcome of capitalism, so this movement is definitely an anti-capitalist one, regardless if people want to call it that or not. I understand that words like 'socialism' and 'marxism' have been so demonized in this country that it's almost impossible to talk about legitimate concerns without being labeled any number of negative things.
You lost me at "socialist." So too will you lose the majority of Americans.
Don't say 'capitalism.' ~ Frank Luntz (republican strategist, pollster, & FOX's favorite wordsmith)
"I'm trying to get that word removed and we're replacing it with either 'economic freedom' or 'free market,' " Luntz said. "The public . . . still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we're seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we've got a problem."
Your thoughts?
Capitalism is immoral when removed from responsible regulations, social mores, and basic human dignity.
I was once said that "all politics are local."
I believe that the brand of capitalism that works best is that form which requires a fiduciary duty of the producer. In other words, the best form of capitalism is often local.
Where that personal relationship, that trust, is not present....or may be perverted.....all manner of abuses have occurred.
Capitalism forgot to brush & floss it's fiduciaries (:p)
And that's a huge problem! Things will NEVER get better until people start to shake off old stereotypes.
And things will never get better until you wrap your ideas in some language that doesn't immediately conjure up images of Joseph Stalin and Eugene Debbs.
Many of your ideas could be incorporated into a capitalistic structure, just the way the New Deal intertwined progressives policies into a lassiz faire milieu.
That's my point! You can't mention the social well being of anyone without the whole concept being demonized with mention of Stalin and the like.
capitalism is destroying itself. How do you make goods cheaper while providing people with enough to look after themselves?
what happens when technology has taken most of the jobs, then what?
anyone who thinks playing with a fake system of values can sustain is lying to themselves. The "economy" is made up.
are we supposed to buy or die? what happens when you can't buy?
The same arguments were voiced in a prior severe recession.....in fact, many of the early remedies during this previous recession were aimed at reducing overabundance of crops and manufacturing.
This prior recession was known as the Great Depression.
The answer to your question lies in increasing aggregate demand across the planet and, if you are a mature industrial economy, then you need a workforce that produces things besides hamburgers and underwear. You must have a highly skilled and educated work force because muscle jobs can be done by peasants a half a world away.
America is suffering, in part, because it thought it could avoid this truth by building houses for each other and trading money back and forth.
Germany is the model for where our nation must go very quickly.....very smart people doing very smart work.
We must quickly become better educated, open to the world's best ideas, and we must enact a trade system that works.....I've proposed one on this forum.
This is a very serious concern to me. I don't want to see OWS hijacked by a anti-capitalist fringe group. Please OWS, stay on point! Expose the injustice!
Capitalism is not the problem. It is just a machine. It doesn't know.....it doesn't care.....if it enriches or if it is unfair.
The problem, and the source of blame, must therefore lie in operator error. We have not guided this machine nor adjusted it's mechanisms so that it runs predictably, ethically, and most efficiently to achieve the greatest good for ALL Americans.
Those who would tear down this machine should think very hard about whether they are focusing their energies upon the wrong source of error.
Perhaps you can put out a list of tactical messages. Instead of saying anti-capitalism, we should say ....??
meritocracy.
American dream.
middle class.
living wage.
manufacturing base.
anti-corruption.
fair regulations
The truth is that anyone who is anti-capitalism or anti-corporate is also anti-reality. These items are necessary parts of the modern world and they're not going away.
So, OWS should actually preach a message similar to the following:
"We want capitalism to work, but we want it to work better for all of it's participants and to, again, reward hard work."
"We also want for corporations to succeed, but we want for them to do so on their merits while treating their employees fairly and respecting both laws and basic morality."
That is the message that nobody can disagree with and spokespersons should sound similar.
Great list. Middle class still comes across a bit divisive, but I can't think of anything better to offer.
I agree, I'm way to jaded to chase fairy tales. We need practical approaches and solutions, not radical stuff.
100% love those messages.
Thank you! Not in 100% agreement with every point, but your overall message needs to be heard. Please check out this post also: http://occupywallst.org/forum/ows-image-problem-jeopardizes-potential-support/
Thanks for reading. Hope all is well.
How does the anti-corporate message play? Is that fair game.
People work at corporations and most corporations try their best to treat their employees fairly while making a buck for the shareholders. So, tread carefully.
I think the the message should be anti-corruption, anti-excessive greed, and should focus upon gross mismatches of CEO performance/payment received.
People work at corporations and most corporations try their best to treat their employees fairly while making a buck for the shareholders. So, tread carefully.
I think the the message should be anti-corruption, anti-excessive greed, and should focus upon gross mismatches of CEO performance/payment received.
Fair enough, but I think everyone should be aware of the Saipan Lawsuit and how some trans-national-corporations do business.
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/lwsch/journals/bctwj/20_2/05_FMS.htm
http://www.cleanclothes.org/newslist/617-saipan-sweatshop-lawsuit-ends-with-important-ga
http://www.globallabourrights.org/reports?id=0479
There's this false perception in US that every business started in a cramped garage somewhere in the suburbs or a small family business expanded into mega-chain and when they hit a successful product or idea they went public and everything started boosting and during the whole process nothing of the initial virtues , values and/or ideals changed in the heart of the founders or family members.
Today, within the modern notion of Capitalism or better put American take on Capitalism business people arrange their vocabularies for various indicative yet meaningless terminologies to emphasize the "right to exist" of these sentimental or maybe even fundamental rules or factors required for a "brand" to function on many levels; Terms like "Corporate ID or Corporate Culture" while in reality it serves no purpose but to distract .
And when you dig deeper you find that it is just none-sense.
The major shareholders and the Venture Capitals decide what the company represents and it is not that nerdy fusion of ideas in the dorm room or the hard labor of an ordinary family struggling to advance their small business.
These are myths that we are bombarded with every time we watch a documentary or read a paper on Corporate success;Scene after scene,Page after page after page as if it is an eye-catching intro written for a TV or Movie producer.
It has become so cliche that these stories don't even fool the average 8 year-old these days.
It is amazing that not only Americans but those who look to American Corporate Culture from outside accept it to be true and want to learn and practice it some day.
These are the new Gods and the demons are those that oppose it.
So when you speak of Capitalism you also need to address the Behaviors. They go hand in hand. It is not as if God created Capitalism. Man created it and it is just as imperfect as other man made objects.
It is what it is. Corporations and venture capital are important entities. They have increasingly involved to be a-national rather than international. Corporations play one country against another and that is another source of the evil that I think must be factored into any long term economic policy.
The a-national mask might have been the only option after WWII because basically what happened at that point is that they realized they could not roll back to the politically created financial void in the world immediately, back to say 1870s!
So this new phase began where a "power mask" was applied to a system of banks and financial institutions who did not really have to abide by those rules and regulations created to make the system appear responsible, productive, and in a sense for the good of people.
Today we discover there's nothing farther from truth than this con job.
Another power mask which has developed is that the corporations constantly say they want to find long term economic solutions, sustainable, blah blah, but the truth is as you mentioned they constantly prefer to be "evil" rather than sane. To them being good like truthful is insanity. The only conclusion I could reach analyzing this was that they fear they would be predictable since once you are predictable someone can bet against you and win; which of course they call "strategy".
Yes, it is a sad truth but nations, as institutions, are in danger by their corporations.
Some quasi-capitalistic systems.....the Chinese in particular.....have circumvented this by owning part of the corporations and, in many cases, de facto ownership.
First of all we can get ourselves into a long discussion of where do Chinese fit in the formula of world economy?
Then we will get into whether politics is the underlying logic to the whole thing etc.
But wouldn't it be more rational and plausible to think of it as what it actually is: a financial/economics issue.
And if we agree with the latter scenario we can't just say because Chinese have their particular approach to a global economic system inside their own country is something that has caused or influenced the financial crisis directly or indirectly even if it seems to be strictly controlled by their government.
That would be escaping a solution and hanging the blame on something that is external and came much later.
However, we could ask:
Did Chinese actually invent financial corruption?
Of course not.
We can call the American-European system a much harsher quasi-capitalistic system because of overseas tax havens, various currencies (Dollar, Pound, Euro...), stock markets, banks and most importantly the people that run these operations are a group of elitist de facto owners and everyone knows that is the reality.
I am expressing the thought that corporations increasing exist outside of any nation and hold their allegiance to none.
China has circumvented this phenomenon by retaining partial ownership of many Chinese corporations.
That's their nature. Companies don't care about nations, governments, and consequently people that vote or even the average consumer. They care about making huge profits in the shortest possible time.
China's presence in the global financial markets is one of enduring innovative tactics against a global trend of capitalization that originated in the West and mainly in US .
Karl Marx and others like him never predicted such a move by any communist country. Their ideas now seem very much like the ideas of founding fathers in American Revolution.
They're both Semi-Utopian and have these correlations inside a system which does not see beyond its familiar territory.
This Chinese phenomenon is a result of a highly motivated capital system clashing with a highly maneuverable socialist system.
In reality China's take on capitalism is something the West will never have either the tools or stamina to confront or comprehend based on its own understanding of China, therefore there really does not exist any comprehensive solution to change China's approach to the global financial system.
And people like Timothy Giethner, Bernanke, and Greenspan know that. They have tried and have failed to come up with a solution. That's because Capitalism is a foundation in US but in China it is only a concept and Chinese do with it whatever they like.
The Buffett trade plan is the answer here.
China will retaliate with similar plans.
Don't forget we no longer live in the post WWII era. Buffett is an aggressive businessman. There's little room for the liberal aggressiveness like Buffett's. There's too much waste.
Buffett is trying to turn everything into paper and we now know where that ends!
Hopefully we will also see the replacement of loans and insurance for average people in the form of paper by something more realistic like taxes (if taxes are regulated towards a productive end) ,stable property value, and sound investments. Rich people can buy all the insurance they want and get the biggest loans they can afford--on paper--!
Companies like Berkshires,Omahas and Walmarts have to stop pretending they want to save American values and bullshit like that. It won't work. People are smarter than that.
Yes, other nations may emulate the certificate and exchange system. But, as we are by far the single largest market in the world by so great a margin.....I think we will be ok.
Being one of the largest markets in the world does not guarantee security. It is similar to the too big to fail analogy.
In the end it comes down to who actually does the work in this world.
Also,we now live in a world where "luxury" is gradually giving way to "disposable" and in that process market size is a matter of new qualitative perception and not the old quantity. In other words we used to identify quality with luxury but no longer that is the case.
In such environment the market is very flexible, broad, already homogenized and competitive to the last cent, therefore turning it into certification is something of unnecessary and wasteful measure.
This might even deter and isolate investors and entrepreneurs. It is a concept of bottle necking free trade and that's exactly what will happen. It is like trying to do an excel document on your mobile! of course Buffet doesn't mind that because he can hire Walmart to do exactly that for him!
That's why I think Buffet is a stupid wanker! He thinks that we live in the Middle Ages and he is The Micheal Angelo or even better The Newton of his age!
Buffett is perhaps the smartest man I have ever met and I simply cannot respond to you politely, so I will only say this.
There is a hidden cost to all of those cheap products you accuse Buffett of promulgating.....Buffett has nothing to do with Walmart, never has......free trade is not free because when you buy that chinese weed trimmer because it is 10 dollars cheaper than the one you could have bought from an American manufacturer.....you are selling off a portion of our manufacturing base and those jobs aren't (under the current system) coming back.
However, if there is this system in place, then when a trade deficit is in place here in America, the added cost of the trade certificate may bring the cost of the Chinese good in line with that of an American product.
Thus, the Buffett plan would support American manufacturing and would dissuade those who ship our jobs overseas.
How is that anti-American. You have to be a fool for not seeing the logic of this....woops. I said I would be polite.
Let me re-phrase your accusation then answer it:
Why do American consumers sell out to Chinese manufacturers for only $10 less value on a weed trimmer?
Well, this can be viewed on many levels but let's just stick to some of the more well known ones. I hope it won't be boring since it is kinda repeated material.
1- In the 70's after the oil crisis Americans started buying foreign made cars. People with a low budget went for the Japanese and richer ones started buying European cars. Before that if you bought foreign cars in US you were considered unpatriotic.
But what happened eventually the Japanese and Europeans started manufacturing in US because after a while they discovered they had to somehow convince US manufacturers that they are in a different game although some will always argue nowadays American car manufacturers are in trouble for that same reason. Where was Buffett with his great ideas? He was probably working on his insurance rates higher for European cars lower for Japanese! How cool! Now he has a greater share of the pie!
2- China started practically doing the same thing Japanese did. They followed up on the Japanese idea of selling abroad. The only difference was that they had a cheap labor capability and they used it.
3- Now if you hike prices for Chinese products naturally you will have none of it coming to US, instead you'll find people going to Mexico or Brazil and buying it over there. In fact they can order it online and the shipping cost will not be that different. Chinese can do that.
Look at the medical industry. So many Americans who have little or no health care go to Europe or places like India to get treated. They'd rather pay 2 grand for the trip than 20 grand hospitals charge here and get their medication for free too.
4- American manufacturing has lost the glamor it once had. Why? because nobody cares anymore if something is made in USA. If it shines and works it is fine. In fact so many people go to China these days to buy things like sneakers and electronics because they can buy the same brand much cheaper over there than in US. They enjoy their visit too and have a lot of fun eating real Chinese cuisine and whatever they can find.
5- I may be a fool but logic says I either have to come up with a better idea that is based on at least one solid platform of economic delineation or keep trying something that is going to drag it further into substantial chaos.
btw I don't care if you're not polite. It's your comment!
Buffett does not invest in commodities and industries relying upon huge capital expenditures. Cars are commodities.....there are too many manufacturers for one to achieve a true durable economic advantage.
China has cheap labor and the largest foreign currency reserve in history. It has achieved this by artificially devaluing the juan.
Mexican, Brazilian, Guatemalan (the cheapest labor on the planet), and other nations whose imports arrive in this country would be required to buy the import certificates on the exchange as well. Again, if there was a scarcity of these certificates....as would occur with large US trade deficits....they would be valued upwards and this would represent a variable tariff on all products from worldwide producers trying to bring stuff into this country.
People travel to China to buy shit? Are you fucking crazy. Tell me what percentage of our population travels to China to buy any significant amount of goods. You've been sipping too much soy sauce.
Medical vacations are still a rarity and probably should remain so. If you have a complication....who are you going to call?
You don't seem to grasp the core concept here and for that I'm very sorry. You obviously put some thought into your response.....so keep thinking.
This idea is the best out there....perhaps the best in history.....but, if you don't understand the genius of Buffett, perhaps you'll never see the genius of his idea here.
I didn't say commodities. I said products and services like cars and insurance.
Cars are products. Insurance is a service.
But just for the sake of argument we, cannot look at industries and commodities as separate issues. They're all tied together and in future more so as resources get more scarce.
If China can devalvue its currency so can others. The problem is others want to have the cake and want to eat it too.
I don't think the certificates represent any value since they are prone to degradation more than they are likely to increase in value. Because there's a limited time involved in either purchase and transfer of the certificate to be valuable. So it is like wasting money on something that you have no control over its value in an unpredictable time frame. That's nuts!
Investors (importers-exporters) will never go for something as wild as this. It is like gambling in a lottery and only the insiders might be able to benefit and that's illegal, since the only condition for real profit is that you are an insider.
It doesn't serve the interest of the American people either, since Americans have no stake in it and only serves the interest of those few banks who have control over its volume and transfer.
It is not even clear who regulates these satanic certificates; of course it isn't the government. It is another global Zionist bankers scheme who already have stolen from Americans and the rest of the western world.
Read this. It's worth your soy bean:
"It feels like everything we buy comes from China. In fact, less than 3 percent of personal spending in the U.S. goes to China, according to a new report from the SF Fed"
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/08/10/139388532/only-a-tiny-sliver-of-americans-personal-spending-goes-to-china
The core concept is that Americans can't compete with China.
I never saw the genius of Buffett and will never ever want to see it. That's not only a wish but a sincere promise.
I'm just against doesn't work..
Capitalism is like the board game monopoly. The outcome is predictable, all the treasure will eventually end up with one or 1%. That is where we are today. We can play the same game again and hope to be the winner next time or we can do something different. If you choose leaders your leaderless movement will die. We can only win if this stays We and not me.
No, estate taxes and graduated income tax rates (upper bracket above 50%) counters this tendency.
Monopoly was modeled on the impression of The Gilded Age. But, that age passed and The Great Compression ensued.
How did that occur? History actually runs contrary to your premise. A more meritocratic system of generating wealth for all is possible......it already has occurred in the past.
Here we are today with the 1% having all the wealth. How do you figure history proves me wrong. It might not be a straight line graph but it got right to where it is today.
The middle class is not a historical entity. It was created by certain policies. I suggest that you read Krugman's, "The Conscience of a Liberal," first half of the book.
Evidently it doesn't work very well, for a time upper tax rates were up over 70%. I don't have a degree in economics but what I see is some fatal flaws with capitalism. It seems to me that capitalism requires that we continue to populate or grow for the majority of people to do well. We have 7 billion people on planet, how many do you think we can feed? It also requires that everyone play by rules but we live in system that says you will be better off if you cheat.The biggest flaw is it encourages us to take more than we give and that by itself is, through cause and effect, a recipe for failure.
American wealth was highly concentrated up until the 1920's. Thereafter, income and estate taxes countered the great estates and progressive policies and norms made all work something noble. The minimum wage was a living wage. The workday became eight hours. Kids went to school instead of to work with their parents.
Marginal rates actually peaked at over 90% under Eisenhower. Of course, conservatism back then meant paying your bills, avoiding debt, and low bond rates......and Americans had some notion of shared sacrifice.
What causes us to take more and more is the loss of norms and mores countering greed. The We generation became the Me generation and that became the Free generation. Unfortunately, nothing in this world is free and, if it seems so, you are probably living on borrowed money.
OWS should stand for RESPONSIBLE CAPITALISM. What prevails today is a corrupted, pseudo Capitalism twisted to benefit the few who have managed to accumulate a majority of the wealth of the nation with a blatant disregard for the well being of those from whose work they profit.
True Capitalism should benefit all people but as can be seen, the income of the 99% in the last two decades has declined significantly but those of the 1% has increased over 300%. This is possible because there also exists a corrupt government run by corrupt individuals whose main occupation is to seek their own enrichment and power and protect those that provide the exorbitant amounts of money for their efforts.
Responsible Capitalism is financially responsible socially responsible politically responsible ethically/morally responsible environmentally responsible
Free citizens have an inalienable to protest for this. They have a right to insure that their government seeks the welfare of all the people. What they must also strive for is to do this in a way that does not destroy the norms that any society requires for the common good.
Capitalism should pit one company against one another, instead it has pitted man against man.
http://www.youtube.com/user/councilonsper#p/u/0/l37RhdFGVsM
you are completely unclued. "capitalism" does not exist. It never has existed. Its merely the carrot which corporate oligarchy uses to herd the sheeple, it is merely the name of the game played in the corporate oligarchies rigged casino.
Capitalism is a fine idea; when can we start?
You are blibbering ignorant inanities to defend a system which has never existed and most likely which will never exist; all as a pwned pwn of the grand divide and conquer oligarchs chess game for proles.
Put down the blue ISM flag and back away slowly.
sheesh.
Thanks for not bothering to even fucking read what ows is about or get clued on what is real before make believing yourself to be some kind of philosophical guru.
http://theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/2010/12/are-right-wing-trolls-paid-to-sabotage.html
The Oligarchy? Are mutual fund holders part of the Oligarchy?
Perhaps you would give us your version of what true capitalism entails. What is a ISM flag?
What is OWS about?
Humor an old man, educate me.
oligarchy. that means rule by the few. mutual fund holding is not relevant, the question is whether or not a mutual hold funder is in the elite caste. an ism flag. there are 50 of them in different stripes, from republicanism to liberalism to capitalism to atheism, all of which are nothign more than oligarchic con scams to keep everyone deluded and fighting over nonsense.
OWS is about evolving out from corporate oligarchy and creating a genuine democracy.
Right.........and many of the more blatant "communists" on this forum are right wing moles seeking to POISON the movement by giving FAUX news something to point at.
This is why I've written a declaration for this movement, bro, you completely read my mind on what ought this movement be. Read the Declaration: http://www.scribd.com/doc/73304557/Declaration-of-Independence-for-a-New-Era
I completely agree. I would just add that if we don't want to be branded as anti-capitalist, we need a pragmatic leader who can exclude the fringe elements in our movement. http://occupywallst.org/forum/ows-is-becoming-increasingly-unpopular-heres-how-t/
Beware even if that happens to be the most honest message of what those at the GA actually believe.
Everyone should use the phrases, "Fairness in Capitalism," "We are losing our Meritocracy," "We must again be a nation of builders," "CEO pay should be strictly tied to company performance," "The minimum wage should be a living wage," "Importers should be blocked from bringing in unsafe products and using slave labor," "Companies moving overseas should be blocked from importing the products they no longer make here."
Those are messages that resonate and those are arguments that shall work.
But they also have absolutely nothing with what the people at the NYC GA actually believe. Just look at what it says at the top of this page, right below Occupy Wall Street. It says: The Revolution Continues Worldwide!" That is what the people at the GA actually believe and that is what they are for. The real question, the most basic question for OWS supporters is, what do they mean by revolution? Certainly, I think, the vast majority of OWS supporters tend to see the notion of revolution as mere hyperbole. They would undoubtedly be satisfied with a few pieces of legislation. A change of some of the faces in Congress and perhaps a Constitutional amendment, all of which do not add up to a revolution as most people understand the term. So, if that is what they are for then they should expunge the notion of revolution from the rhetoric of OWS. But the problem is this is an extremely amorphous group that can't even agree among themselves. At the Demands Working Group, which is the natural habitat of these types in the GA, they can't even agree on a common set of demands and the group typically descends into petty bickering.
Conversely, the initiators of OWS while a minority are much more politically coherent and much, much more radical than the base. They are very influenced by the intellectual traditions of anarchism, but also very conversant in other radical traditions. Because of their greater coherence they are in a better position to shape the political direction of OWS despite their minority status.
They are, however, by no means sectarians in the sense of not knowing how to reach out effectively to those whose views are either more moderate or less developed than their own, which is precisely how they built the existing mass base of OWS. After all, all those more moderate people in OWS came out because of a call from the radicals. Perhaps most importantly, very, very on in the occupation it was able to reach out effectively and form an alliance which is probably responsible for the continued existence of OWS. They did this without condition, offering their solidarity in several local labor struggles and labor bureaucats have a political position which is about as far from anarchism as can be imagined. Yet they stand in solidarity with OWS, as do I.
I believe that the GA is absolutely correct in not raising demands, in only putting forward a list of grievances. OWS is barely two months old, not really even in its infancy, it is still essentially in the womb. People who are talking about a next step for OWS are way way premature until we have at least several million people in the streets and so far at least, the existing perspective of OWS seems to be right on the mark in building the movement.
While I'm generally against raising demands right now, if I were to raise any it would be: Seize all the assets of corporate America and reorganize them democratically from below in the interest of everyone instead of the interest of a tiny band of stock holders! The world revolution continues!
Meanwhile, educate everyone you can reach about the pledge signed by Senators and Representatives of both parties to support the lobbyist for Big Wealth, Grover Norquist, in preventing tax increases for the rich.
If enough of us made sure to vote against everyone who's signed - and they actually do sign, I'm not kidding - it would shift power away from the corporate and billionaire structure now in place.
"I believe that the GA is absolutely correct in not raising demands, in only putting forward a list of grievances. "
Horseshit.
Churchill once said, “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other possibilities.” OWS will follow the same pattern.
"I believe that the GA is absolutely correct in not raising demands, in only putting forward a list of grievances. " Horseshit.
Why? Make your argument, not just an invective. From a purely practical standpoint, based on what is actually going on at the NYC GA, the Demands Working Group, the natural habitat of demands fettishists, has been unable to come up with a coherent set of demands after weeks of working on it. Most Demands Working Group meetings tend to break up into petty arguments. There is more to this than ego involvement, which, I would argue is an inherent problem in coming up with specific demands per se. Part of the reason for that has to do with the fact that the movement is not really yet even in its infancy. It's really still in the womb and any effort to formulate a specific set of demands at this point is way, way premature, like expecting a baby who has not yet learned to crawl to attend graduate school. Once we have several million people in the streets it will be time enough for a "next stage."
But whether you agree with that or not, the practical issue for those who think specific demands are essential is how you build a consensus in the movement not just that demands are essential but for a specific demand or set of demands. Right now those who think it is so essential have so far been totally unsuccessful in even agreeing among themselves on what demand or demands are appropriate, much less winning over the movement as a whole on as set of agreed upon demands.
A list of grievances? Are you fucking kidding me? All that does in make you look like a bunch of whiners who can't come up with any objectives on your own.
If all you do is complain, then you are a complainer.
If you come up with realistic solutions, then you change the world.
So quit writing long posts to basically say nothing.
A list of grievances? Are you fucking kidding me? All that does in make you look like a bunch of whiners who can't come up with any objectives on your own. If all you do is complain, then you are a complainer. If you come up with realistic solutions, then you change the world.
Regarding the length of my posts, sorry for being windy. I'll really try to be more concise, but I thought we were having a conversation, speaking of which, I could really do without the invective.
Regarding the issue of demands, the problem is that the group charged with coming up with those demands, the Demands Working Group has been unable to come up with a coherent set of demands. It can't even agree among itself on appropriate demands, much less convince the entire GA or for that matter the general public. That being the case, how do you propose OWS come up with a set of demands?
Regarding the efficacy of grievances, the Declaration of Independence, on which our nation was founded, has no demands. It only lists grievances against King George, yet that's a pretty impressive document. Were the signatories to the Declaration of Independence nothing but a bunch of complainers? It didn't seem to turn out that way and they did change the world.
The minimum wage should be a living wage. All imports should be traced and NONE allowed into this company unless the related factories, mines, etc. comply with safety, environmental, and wage standards. We should no longer allow the "race to the bottom" by foreign and international corporations that prey upon desperate people and our own desire for cheap products. Pay a few more cents for that pair of underwear and you may end up saving the world.
Constitutional Amendments affirming collective bargaining a right, the availability of health care a right, and social security a function of our democracy. Powerful forces have aligned themselves in discrediting and destroying each of these aspects of our society. Clean air and water, as well as food safety, should be regarded as basic rights and should be enumerated as Constitutional rights.
Student Loans should be treated as any other debt during a bankruptcy. They should not be an endless yoke to those who chose to invest in their future.
Reconciliation bills should be fashioned by representatives of both parties.
Representatives should be barred from any form of lobbying for a span of five years following the end of their tenure.
The Equal Time requirements of media should be reinstated and frank errors, misrepresentations, and lies in reporting of the news should again require sanction. The news media serves a vital function in our Democracy and it is rotting on the vine. News has become entertainment and it must again be treated as a service to the public. Newspapers and investigative journalism are dying and our federal government must adopt every incentive, tax break, or subsidy to preserve them. I cannot stress this one enough. If our ability to find truth is allowed to perish, our ability to govern ourselves is lost.
We must once again be a nation of builders. At the end of World War II, returning GI’s were faced with a bleak job market. Our federal government anticipated their plight and, in order to shrink number of excess workers, offered the GI bill. This insight allowed millions, who otherwise would lack adequate financial resources, to attend college. This investment bred a generation of entrepreneurs, engineers, intellectuals, and scientists. The investment was returned tenfold. We are once again faced with a crisis that has left millions of Americans without work and unqualified for a transitioning economy. Our federal government should again take measures to shrink the surplus of workers without viable employment in our economy. A national endowment should be created that invests in what our country needs most; engineers, entrepreneurs, and experts (“the three ‘E’s’”). Scholarships, grants, and generous financial aid should be granted to students participating in approved programs advancing the three “E’s.” The effect would be a new generation of professionals proficient in science and the business opportunities of the future. A wise investment in our future will occur while abating, somewhat, the plight of the unemployed.
All kinds of people have all kinds of demands, many of which I agree with. Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether or not OWS as a movement should adopt demands at this point in its development (whether you agree with them or not), the practical question is how is anyone going to get OWS to adopt any demands?
The groups charged with this at the NYC GA, the Demands Working Group, which is where all the folks who fettishize demands hang out, after several weeks of discussion can't even agree within its own ranks on an appropriate set of demands. If they can't agree, how are they going to convince the GA, which is much more skeptical of the whole issue of demands, much less the general public? That is the central practical question for anyone who thinks that the OWS should adopt specific demands.
For me, since I'm of the view that the whole issue of demands is way too premature, I'm just fine with the fact that the Demands Working Group can't even agree within itself on what an appropriate set of demands might be.
First demand....Get big money out of politics.
Second demand.....Require that all lobbying activities be public information.
Third demand....End the Bush tax cuts.
Fourth demand....Renew a GI type education bill for science and engineering.
Fifth demand.....Break up the big banks.
Just elect me premiere, and I'll take care of it.
Act on that first demand by getting everyone you know to vote against any incumbent who's taken the Grover Norquist pledge to protect Big Wealth from any tax increase. That would be a clear and easy place to start, and would it send a message!
Yes.
And conveniently would wipe out every R incumbent. ;)
First demand....Get big money out of politics. Second demand.....Require that all lobbying activities be public information. Third demand....End the Bush tax cuts. Fourth demand....Renew a GI type education bill for science and engineering. Fifth demand.....Break up the big banks. Just elect me premiere, and I'll take care of it.
All kinds of people have all kinds of demands, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't. Leaving aside for the moment whether or not OWS should raise any demands at this point in its development (whether you agree with them or not), how does anyone propose getting OWS to raise demands, any demands? That, it seems to me, is the central practical question for those who think demands are important, crucial or even essential.
The Demands Working Group, the group at the NYC GA charged with coming up with a list of demands for the GA after several weeks of contentious meetings can't even agree among itself on a set of demands. If that is the case, how in the world is it going to convince the GA, which is much more skeptical of the whole demands issue to begin with, much less the general public?
Well, you have kinda answered your own question.....Those people who are unable to gather behind very clear and highly popular positions are not really part of your functional movement. Instead, they are nuts and all they are really there for is to be arm wavers. They are like groupies who pretend they are somehow producing the music. They should be marginalized and a disciplined and reasonable center should guide the movement instead.
Every new movement has these people.....and the tendency for everyone wanting to be a little chief will destroy you.
Describe your objectives and this middle group of doers will materialize.
I think the movement is doing just fine and is perfectly functional. It just so happens that there is no consensus on what demands it should raise or even whether it should raise any demands at all and personally I'm just fine with that. Long live the world revolution! Solidarity forever!
OWS is a baby. Give it time.
It is motivating people, waking them up, and bringing them in. It is getting us all talking in new ways, and stomping on the ways the 1% had of shutting us up, like "you hate success" and "job creators".
But as people wake up, they learn. For example, pols from both parties have literally signed a pledge with a lobbyist, Norquist, to protect the 1% from tax increases. Enough of us react against that, and things can move!
OWS is a baby. Give it time. It is motivating people, waking them up, and bringing them in. It is getting us all talking in new ways, and stomping on the ways the 1% had of shutting us up, like "you hate success" and "job creators". But as people wake up, they learn. For example, pols from both parties have literally signed a pledge with a lobbyist, Norquist, to protect the 1% from tax increases. Enough of us react against that, and things can move!
Personally, I don't think OWS is even quite a baby yet. it's more like a fetus. Barely concieved. The whole point of this thread was about people thinking that OWS needed to raise a set of demands. Personally I think it is way to premature to think about that, but there is also the practical question that those people who are actually for OWS raising demands can't seem to get their act together even among themselves and agree on a common set of demands, much less be prepared to present it to the GA, all of which is fine with me since I think the whole issue of demands is premature anyway.
Ya right.
and you wonder how things got this bad.
Force all 501's to divulge their contributors during (by email link) their advertisements.
Require that all derivative contracts be codified, standardized, divided in units, and traded on an exchange. Additionally, require all financial institutions to completely reveal such contracts and counterparties to shareholders.
Require all medicare payments to pharmaceutical and medical appliance companies be below or at par with numbers agreed upon by these companies with foreign national health care plans. (ie. Medicare and Medicare D recipients should pay the Canadian rate and not a penny more).
No corporation should be allowed the ability of concentrated influence over our political process. ALL corporate donations to campaigns should cease and contact with representatives or their staff should be commensurate with that of individual constituents. Essentially, all corporate contact with government should be written and lobbyist should be turned into opinion writers. If the supreme court stands in the way, then enumerate the language in a Constitutional Amendment and lets have a vote. Lobbyists should not be allowed to donate to campaigns and lobbyists should have no direct role in writing legislation.
A military draft should be reinstated, but should require equal numbers of draftees from each 10 percent increments pf income levels in our population. This would provide a military that is a crossection of our population, but would mean that those who had parents in the top 10 and 20% would be more likely asked to serve. I think that alone would place a damper on any more stupid wars (I could be wrong). But, the powerful don't usually send to kids to war. Also, it would revive some semblance service by all to our country and shared sacrifice. It's simply disgusting that many GI's have rotated 4 tours through Iraq or Afghanistan, or have been "stopped out." This can simply never happen again.
All trade pacts should be ended and transformed into a system of import and export certificates. Such certificates would be issued for both imports and exports. If a distributor desired to import 1 million dollars worth of widgets, then he would be required to produce a counterbalancing export certificate for the transaction. These certificates would be unitized and traded upon an exchange. The result would quickly be fair trade. Think of America as a large, landed, estate. Now we, the gentry, are spending more each year than we produce and, to make up for the shortfall, we are selling off pieces of our estate. Eventually, we landed gentry are left as renters on what was once our own estate. That is America. If we continue to carry yearly, massive, trade imbalances, we are gradually selling off a piece of our wealth and earning capacity. Abolish the electoral college and replace the election of our President with the popular vote. The electoral college has become an enormously sophisticated method of gaming the system and allows disproportionate voting representation by “swing” states. Every vote should count and the current system alienates voters in “non-swing” states.
What we are seeing now is Capitalism without responsibility. No one on the top is held responsible for there actions. No matter how negative the outcome. There needs to be two main goals of OWS. Number one has already been established, Get money out of politics. The second needs to be re-strengthening and adding new laws to reestablish responsibility with in Capitalism.
capitalism does not exist AND has NEVER EXISTED. Its a neat idea in theory when can we start? The ACTUAL form of government we have is caste oligarchy, and that has always been a socialized and communist system socializing and communizing the elite caste and being fascist against the rest of us. "Capitalism" in that SCAM is just the carrot put in front of the dupes in order to suck them dry in the Vampires Casino.
The "wealth" of the rich is all of it idleness and number manipulation, they don't DO anything for society but VAMP on it. Thats NOT capitalism, SORRY to burst your bubble.
http://occupythiswiki.org/wiki/THE_99%25_POLITICAL_PARTY
http://occupythiswiki.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.followthemoney.org/?gclid=CMbY87bB-qsCFUPt7Qod9HE8mQ
http://maplight.org/us-congress/guide/data/money?9gtype=search&9gkw=list%20of%20campaign%20donations&9gad=6213192521.1&9gag=1786513361&gclid=CP61oYbB-qsCFQFZ7AodcTF0jw
http://www.opensecrets.org/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/our-new-wiki/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/non-violence-evolution-by-paradigm-shift/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w
Have you seen the movie DALLAS ?! Do you want to get rid of cunning people (J.R.)!? Vote petition on the Internet : http://wh.gov/jkl
Dallas was a television show.
Capitalism didn't create prosperity, new technology created prosperity. Capitalism has caused 1 billion people to go hungry everyday. Capitalism is slavery. Capitalism creates poverty. Capitalism creates wars.
The bailout is capitalism, because your dollars are printed by a private bank, not by the government. The banks and corporations own our government, and always has. Therefore, the United States government is a corporation.
Technology didn't create wealth, trade did. Your dollars are floating through a gigantic ocean and sometimes the current is against you and sometimes it is with you. But, if you think that capitalism is slavery, then I suggest you read about the histories of every other economic systems that have been tried.
I said prosperity, not wealth. Wealth is exclusive, it has nothing to do with global prosperity. Wealth is literally taking and hoarding valuable resources from the global population, and claiming it yours. That produces scarcity and wars my friend.
It is time that we claim these resources as common heritage of all people, producing mass abundance. We cannot do this in a monetary-based system, because any system that utilizes money for allocating resources is intrinsically corrupt. We are all born into a rich world, but sadly money became the tool for acquiring those riches. Free-market Capitalism has nothing to do with global prosperity, but rather 'individual' wealth and prosperity.
If we really wanted global prosperity, the question is not how much will it cost, but do we have the resources? This is call a Resource-Based Economy: http://thevenusproject.com/the-venus-project/resource-based-economy
This is just not the way the world works....I'm very sorry, but you wish to overturn three thousand years of precedent based on your views of property rights.
And for thousands of years people believed the Earth was flat, that doesn't make it right today. For thousands of years there was slavery, that doesn't make it right today. For thousands of years people believed in witches and demons, that doesn't make it right today.
Free-market is based on infinite growth, because one can consume resources until there is absolutely nothing left to consume but people. Eventually just a few people will privately own the entire planet. That kind of system is completely absurd.
Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
John Lennon... Lol, great song!
Fairy tales are fun, but they're not very useful.
Sounds more like a religious proposition than a serious political perspective to me. It seems to me that the only political document that OWS has produced, the Declaration of the Occupation, is certainly concrete, and it can be implied that its perspective is anticorporate and perhaps even anti-capitalist, but that is implied and not explicit. It is, however, concrete, and detailed while at the same time being quite short and readable.
Anticorporate is anticapitalism.
Some people do think that anticorporatism is anticapitalism, whereas, I would suggest that a more precise evaluation would show that corporatism is only one manifestation of capitalism and so an attack on corporatism is not necessarily an attack on capitalism as such. Also, for example, an attack on corporatism is by no means an attack on markets, at least not all markets, which are and essential component of capitalism.
I think that you can see the nuance of the distinction in your own response.
Life is full of nuance. We ignore them at our peril.
I don't agree with you about capitalism, but I agree about not imposing the socialist message as a condition for participating in the movement. As a socialist, I fought with others to keep the anti-Vietnam war movement as a united front organized around the demands to Bring the Troops Home Now! and Out Now! We knew it would have derailed the movement to insist that everyone who marched adopt an anti-capitalist program. We also believed that organizing masses of people against an imperialist war was the most revolutionary thing we could do.
In many ways, OWS is like 1966. There was the origin of student protests, somewhat as the outgrowth of the Civil Rights Marches, but the energies had not been channeled and leadership was lacking.
The failure of the student protests of the 1960 and 70's, and the counterculture, was the lack of any coherent set of objectives other than ending the war. In their desire to be different, the protesters failed to build upon what was right about America.
OWS should be very careful to avoid this error.
Thank you for your reply. I totally agree with you that leadership was lacking, looking back at the tragedy of a great party that successfully led the fight against the war but then self-destructed in a series of expulsions of its long-time members and its parochial interpretation of Trotskyism.
Apparently, what happened was that some of the national leadership of the Socialist Workers Party took a very narrow reading of Marxism and imposed it on the membership, and wouldn't allow any dissent, in spite of the party's founding principles that allowed for disciplined, loyal discussion within the party. As a result, hundreds of members were expelled, effectively ending the SWP as a viable revolutionary force.
There's a lot more to this, but it seems that the combination of quiescence in the country after the war ended and the SWP's turn to what they called the working class with the party's consequent disappearance into a small number of union effectively destroyed it.. Sadly, the SWP has abstained from any real support of Occupy Wall Street, other than a few articles its newspaper.
It's incredibly hard to sustain the struggle over the long haul, and it's not surprising that once the war ended, people who didn't have a theoretical program for changing society dropped away. I don't know if the activists of the 70's failed to build upon the positive, because most people who don't understand the need for independent labor and revolutionary parties look to the Democrats to change society.
And as I remember from the movement, "the Democratic Party has been the graveyard of every progressive movement in the 20th century." I think that's the main problem, which is why OWS has such enormous potential if it can avoid the pressure to give its power away to the parties of the 1%.
Thanks again, and sorry for a long comment.
The most important force in the universe is compound interest.....Albert Einstein.
The key in social and political movements is self-perpetual dynamics. It's like that old shampoo commercial where the lady says....And they'll tell their friends, and they'll tell their friends, and they'll tell their friends.
For that dynamic to occur, the message must be simple and the message must be sticky. This latter part can only occur if you stick to problems that evoke an emotional response and whose solution provides hope.
It's not easy. Very few social movements have ever proven viable and long lasting. The main problem is always that of "too many chiefs" and too complicated a message.
I have a growing sick feeling the longer that I am on this page.
I have come to the conclusion that the simplest way to move OWS towards some sort of consensus if for the movement to define itself through it's opponents. It's a very pragmatic calculation, but one that will work going into 2012.
"I have come to the conclusion that the simplest way to move OWS towards some sort of consensus if for the movement to define itself through it's opponents. It's a very pragmatic calculation, but one that will work going into 2012."
Good call. I guess we already have? Needs to be crystallized certainly. The movement is definitely not about to release a statement of policy positions or candidate support, as much as you and I wish it would...
That is why I think this strategy is necessary for now. Look at my forum topic.....
http://occupywallst.org/forum/slogans-have-to-be-simple-things-messages-even-sim/
That's for that great quote from Einstein! And I agree with you about hope, remembering a quote from James P. Cannon, the founder of the SWP: "Those who cannot inspire the masses can never lead a revolution."
Please don't get discouraged, or maybe just stay away from the internet for a while! (I read that the more hours people spend on the internet, the more depressed they get.) OWS has already defied a lot of what we're supposed to think about protest movements, and it speaks for so many, evoking exactly that emotional response you describe, which has become almost universal since the crash. I think, though, that there's going to have to be a very tough, disciplined leadership for OWS to make a permanent change. And there's nothing wrong with leadership--I was taught that the greatest problem facing the world is the crisis of (revolutionary) leadership. In terms of defining ourselves through our opposition--the ruling class is very organized (witness those two conference calls by 18 mayors around the country before the recent , coordinated nationwide evictions from the encampments).
Thanks again for your comments, and Solidarity! (signing off for now)
"As a socialist..."
how can you expect to be taken seriously?
and what is your answer to USSR, N Korea, Cuba? let me guess, "it's never been done right!"
pathetic.
The sensible socialist answer to USSR, N Korea, Cuba is Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland.
of course, that's next in the script. those are tiny nations with tiny, homogenous populations. will not work here. and, eventually, it will fail there, too. the unfunded liabilities will eventually bring it down because they will eventually run out of other people's money.
Actually, those countries are doing better than just about anywhere in the world.
"doing better" -- means a million things to a million people.
many flawed countries have good times before the bad times. when their bill comes due, and it will, what will the answer be? more of the same?
btw, no defense of USSR, NK or Cuba?
Actually, in those countries tax rates and the productivity of their citizens has placed their future national balance sheets pretty much intact. We are the the ones who have ordered everything on the menu while only wanting to pay for the appetizers.
So you're just going to ignore that they are tiny nations with homogenous populations?And you're not going to address the failure of the USSR, N Korea, and Cuba?
I agree with your criticisms of Stalinism, athough the Cuban revolution righted many injustices. Even with its minimal resources, Cuba provided better medical care to its citizens than has the United States.
It's just as important to protest the criminal governments in the so-called socialist countries as the 1% here, but there's a difference between the planned economy and capitalism. I don't pretend to be up to date on the countries you cite, so I won't be able to reply in greater depth. The major difference between capitalism and a socialist economy is that if something under capitalism doesn't make a profit, it doesn't get done--no matter how urgently it's needed. The terrible repression under Stalinist regimes is certainly a reason many people repudiate what they've been told is socialism.
[Removed]
the Cuban health care hoax...don't fall for it. one of a million example why: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/10/07/76572/commentary-the-cuban-health-care.html
"I don't pretend to be up to date on the countries you cite..."
I'll take your word for it, but you really don't know the USSR failed spectacularly?
that N Korea is a prison nation? check out a satellite image on google maps of N Korea. notice how brown it is and how green S Korea is. N Koreans have stripped the forests there for decades to burn wood to keep warm. it is the perfect example of socialism's ultimate destination.
and people advocate such a system. it's beyond ridiculous.
I'm sorry that because I haven't been an activist for a long time I don't have facts that are as current as yours. I completely agree with you about the failures of Stalinism, although apparently it was the planned economy that, in spite of the bureaucracy, allowed the Soviet Union to go from being the most backward country in Europe to the second power in the world in fifty years (witness Sputnik and all the other advances).
I'll have to look at your link another time, but the last I remember reading, there was less infant mortality, for example, in Cuba than in the United States.
I'm not an activist at all, so I am not sure why you think being an activist has a connection to knowing things. In fact, my experience tells me most activists don't know much, they just go where agitators point them and repeat simplistic mantras.
"(witness Sputnik and all the other advances)." -- what other advances? the toilet paper shortages? the rationed bread and vodka? the cement that fell apart in less than 5 years? the Trabant, the worst car ever built?
if you trust Cuba's reported statistics, I have a bridge to sell you.
I think if you're involved in a movement, you tend to read, not just march. I wish I could be doing a lot more to educate myself, and there's a lot of information to absorb. Especially ecoomics. I don't think I do understand the whole picture, but the driving down of the standard of living of the working classes and catastrophic capitalist crisis was predicted years ago in the socialist party I belonged to. The current disaster was not unexpected, and also was not seen as the product of individual greedy CEOs, but part of the dynamics of the profit system.
Also, I can't quote lots of information about atomic submarines, missiles, satellites, and any other technology that's been developed since the Russian Revolution, but it's obviously been significant.
And I don't know what information you have about Cuba, but the last I remember they had health care for the entire population, all children were getting vaccinated, and there was lower infant mortality in Cuba than in the United States. Also, even with its far lower standard of living and wealth as a country, Cuba has sent doctors all over the world to help in poorer countries.
"I wish I could be doing a lot more to educate myself, and there's a lot of information to absorb. Especially ecoomics. I don't think I do understand the whole picture"
despite this, you joined a socialist party.
wow, you can't make this shit up. I got news for you, socialist movements have been claiming an economic catastrophe is just around the corner since there have been socialist movements. are you familiar with the old adage about a roomful of monkeys and typewriters?
Cuba, where people risk their lives to escape to come here. Think about that--they need to ESCAPE from a country. What other kinds of places must one escape from? Prisons come to mind. Prisons, kidnappers and communist countries. And nearly all those who escape from the latter want to come here. What ingrates they must be, giving up all that swell healthcare to come to this fundamentally flawed horrorshow, huh? They must be crazy!
i need to explain something about the socialist economics I studied. I'm just being modest about what I learned, and attempting to avoid substituting slogans for facts. I spent about four years as an activist evaluating for myself some socialist analyses of what was happening in the world and attending classes and talks. What I learned described very well what was happening in the country and the world. Like Nixon's wage freeze in the early '70's, that his administration claimed wouldn't harm workers because it would be accompanied by a "price freeze"--which of course never happens. it was a capitalist trick that the Trotskyist group I belonged to understood and exposed, and was able to explain in the context of the economy as a whole.
What I'm trying to say is that you have to back up ideas with facts and reality, and the point of view that I've come to understand has been only too well confirmed by the course of world events. Just because I didn't create the ideas myself doesn't mean they're not valid--and very powerful.
I don't support everything the Cuban revolution has done (especially the horrors it perpetrated against gays in the early years of the revolution), but it did carry out some incredibly progressive programs that even with very little money provided a better standard of healthcare than the US, the richest country in the history of the world, does for Americans.
Regarding refugees, the US in the early '90's had a policy of denying political asylum to refugees from Haiti, and sent them back to certain retaliation and likely torture and death. Many people want to come here because they live in poverty in other countries (where their 1% are often kept in power with aid from the United States).
all strains of communism/marxism/trostskyism are failures. they have failed everywhere they have been tried and they inevitably devolve into human rights horror show autocracies. the reason is they deny human nature and attempt apply a one-size-fits-all approach to people. it's a pathetic joke and anyone living in the west claiming there is anything positive about them, including the ridiculous claim of great cuban healthcare, is laughably stuck in teen rebellion or hasn't lived up to their own lofty expectations and needs something to blame it on.
radical leftists living in the west are impossible to take seriously.
The world's present industrial civilization is handicapped by the coexistence of two universal, overlapping, and incompatible intellectual systems: the accumulated knowledge of the last four centuries of the properties and interrelationships of matter and energy; and the associated monetary culture which has evolved from folkways of prehistoric origin.
"The first of these two systems has been responsible for the spectacular rise, principally during the last two centuries, of the present industrial system and is essential for its continuance. The second, an inheritance from the prescientific past, operates by rules of its own having little in common with those of the matter-energy system. Nevertheless, the monetary system, by means of a loose coupling, exercises a general control over the matter-energy system upon which it is super[im]posed.
"Despite their inherent incompatibilities, these two systems during the last two centuries have had one fundamental characteristic in common, namely, exponential growth, which has made a reasonably stable coexistence possible. But, for various reasons, it is impossible for the matter-energy system to sustain exponential growth for more than a few tens of doublings, and this phase is by now almost over. The monetary system has no such constraints, and, according to one of its most fundamental rules, it must continue to grow by compound interest. This disparity between a monetary system which continues to grow exponentially and a physical system which is unable to do so leads to an increase with time in the ratio of money to the output of the physical system. This manifests itself as price inflation. A monetary alternative corresponding to a zero physical growth rate would be a zero interest rate. The result in either case would be large-scale financial instability."
M King Hubbert
he economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals.
For the sake of simplicity, in the discussion that follows I shall call “workers” all those who do not share in the ownership of the means of production—although this does not quite correspond to the customary use of the term. The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value. Insofar as the labor contract is “free,” what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists’ requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.
Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
The situation prevailing in an economy based on the private ownership of capital is thus characterized by two main principles: first, means of production (capital) are privately owned and the owners dispose of them as they see fit; second, the labor contract is free. Of course, there is no such thing as a pure capitalist society in this sense. In particular, it should be noted that the workers, through long and bitter political struggles, have succeeded in securing a somewhat improved form of the “free labor contract” for certain categories of workers. But taken as a whole, the present day economy does not differ much from “pure” capitalism.
Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers’ goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.
This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.
Albert Einstein
This post is kind of like saying "don't be anti-Nazi because we would not want to offend any genocidal white supremacists
Capitalism is a dead philosophy, scientifically invalid and physically impossible on a finite planet. The damage it has wrought on the planet may be close to irreversible and we are on the verge of a massive social train wreck due to the structural crisis we are in .
According to data - Americans have been getting collectively mentally and physically sicker for 50 years due to the capitalistic culture.
Capitalism is a social pathology
This is bullshit post filled with fallacies and misconceptions. In short, science debunks capitalism.
Though it may be a bit heavy for some, it must be stated; capitalism is reaching its endgame. The growth requirement which capitalism has built into itself is now colliding headlong with the limits of the natural world, which provides all of the raw stock required by industry. Like an organism undergoing ketosis, the system is beginning to devour itself for sustenance. Governments create imaginary capital to patch over privately created black holes of debt, while financial institutions feast on the accumulated “wealth” of the poorer strata of western society by mechanisms like foreclosure, stagnant wages, increasing tuitions, increasing interest payments, layoffs, and every other conceivable and now commonplace “austerity measure.”
It is this amalgam of symptoms of collapse that the people of the “first” world are now experiencing. Of course, these first-worlders have lived on the backs of exploited peoples, animals, and land bases for generations, all too happy to consume to their heart’s content in a drunken orgy of self-righteous hedonism. (In their defense, the masters of capital did scar these people at birth with the brand of consumption, bombarding them day and night with self defeating advertisements and a ceaseless campaign of pro-authoritarian, anti-life propaganda.)
This monstrous architecture has not only built into an impossible growth requirement, but also a series of premises concerning the validity of hierarchy.
From it's cancerous growth necessity. To the mentality created by a lifetime of advertising. To it's false assumptions and blindness of nature. To the complete unscientific nature of market economics.
Capitalism is an abomination that gave the perception of working to the first world for a brief period of history . That perception is quickly fading. Only the clueless and ideologues don't realize we are in late-stage capitalism
It's over, so long capitalism, don't let the historical door hit you in the ass
blah blah blah
FIRST Power, Then Change.
First Power, Then Change.
Capitalism has not failed. It has not been implemented. It would have been, had our constitution adhered to its purpose as laid out in the Declaration of Independence but it has not. Anyone who claims that capitalism has failed, but is a good system which should be tempered by the very policies which ARE in place and have lead to our current predicament does not understand Capitalism, Individual Rights, or the legitimate role of government.
For a clarification of the three, I would point interested parties to: http://occupywallst.org/forum/individual-rights-their-source-the-nature-of-gover/
I believe that if human beings are to ever live in peace, they must adopt the principles in the document above. Individual rights and legitimate government are not the solution to every problem, but they will provide a groundwork for the solutions to those problems which they do not explicitly solve.
Show me one modern industrial or post-industrial state who has been able to make things work with the neo-Laissez-faire garbage you guys spew.
You sound like the communists of a hundred years ago.....like the French Revolutionaries of 1789....
Except, you guys would bring about revolution just so that you could install a stronger, more oppressive, aristocracy.
It's a fucking insane fairy tale that I am just tired of hearing.
In response to your request I would state that none have tried it.
You fail to see the difference between economic power and political power. It is only the result of a government which provides incentive for companies to purchase its members (and which does not exist solely to protect individual rights) that we are even talking about 'corporate control'. A corporation, as such, has no legal authority to use force. It is only government which holds this power. Given that the government is granted absolute control over the economy, it makes sense that corporations would seek to control it.
I am tired of hearing people assert that it is appropriate to initiate the use of force against any group for the benefit of any other group. The initiation of the use of force is required in order to "raise the minimum wage", implement any taxation policies which tax activities required in order to sustain human life, and stop the exportation of American jobs. The only method by which the last can be achieved without the use of force is to implement policies under which it makes (economic) sense to keep jobs in America.
Are you sure that they didn't begin to try it but came down from their acid trip first?
If you're going to convince people that you are right you have to be prepared to argue in favor of your own ideas (logically) and against the ideas of your opponents (logically). Such a response as you have given above will only lead people to ignore you, regardless of whether or not what you are saying is true.
I really don't give a rat's ass about convincing you. In fact, I would rather have someone as dumb as you on the other side.
Why?
Capitalism Sucks!
http://occupywallst.org/forum/capitalism-has-a-built-in-design-flaw/
http://metapolitik.org/article/approaching-metapolitical-discourse
No, capitalism is the least of all evils.
Appropriate username, Puff.
For all of your: 'hot air'.
"Capitalism" refers to the private ownership of the means of production.
Always a bad idea.
In a society who's primary economic philosophy consists of stating flatly: "self interest is rational", any form of altruism or desire to help others becomes ipso-facto: irrational. We now know that this somewhat bizarre line of reasoning (known as: 'social-Darwinism') is a deeply flawed relic from some former, harsher, more patriarchal period of history that we have thankfully stepped out of.
Clearly - from looking at last year's BP disaster, the 8 other oil spills that year alone that did not get reported, the housing fiasco, the rampant greed and corruption on Wall St. and among regulators - markets do not, cannot and will not regulate themselves effectively.
Capitalism is Dead.
At least, true Capitalism is dead. We killed it... multinational corporations (Capitalists™), the people who buy their products, the politicians who take their bribes, the voters... All of us... Oops.
That's okay.
Modern 'Capitalism'™ (Corporate Socialism) is what author Douglas Rushkoff would call "legacy software" -- that is to say, an outdated, societal 'operating system' that no longer continues to serve it's intended purpose. While 'Capitalism'™ did great things for us back in the 20th Century (defeated the Nazis, rebuilt Europe, etc...) ...It's pretty much out of steam. It cannot continue on it's current trajectory without dire consequences -- both ecological and economic. In-fact, it's insulting to even call it 'capitalism' any more... More like: 'Capitalism'™ with a Capital 'C'. More like: Corporate Socialism. If it were pure capitalism - free market capitalism - we would all be independent contractors.
Never Fear
Not to worry, 'Capitalism™' was never particularly compatible with democracy to begin with. In fact, some would say that Capitalism™ is antithetical to democracy, since "The People" no longer have the power - rather, those with the money pull the strings.
http://metapolitik.org/article/approaching-metapolitical-discourse
Now, you sound like Father Coughlin on acid.
Honestly, I don't even know (or care) who that is.
But my position is shared by renowned scholars and critical thinkers the world over.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin
The "END THE FED" libertarians fail on all fronts. First they bring violence and racism to OWS, which smears our image. Second, they work against central values of OWS such as income disparity, unemployment, and regulation.
The violence and racism of the "END THE FED" movement has been well documented. There is no worse image for OWS than anti-Semitism and domestic terrorism.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/end-the-fed-movement-has-ties-to-domestic-terroris/
Capitalism + regulations = Prosperity
Review the postings here: THIS is the "core values" of OWS. It consists of three line responses posted by people incapable of focusing for more than three paragraphs.
They ARE decidedly non-capitalist, and any number of other self created fictions.
And they are already marginalized.
You are judging the intellectual underpinnings of what is possible from this movement by what people post on a casual forum?
Again, Seymore, why are you here? Is little pinkie chaffed or something? Taking a break, eh?
I'm still waiting for you to explain the world to me, so go shoot some Spidermans on the ceiling or something and then start typing.
Intellectual "underpinnings"? Underpinnings? What of over-pinnings?
I am also judging their actions.
UC Davis is now reoccupying... On Long Island, they are protesting CUNY tuition hikes... these tuition hikes are the direct result of the core philosophy that OWS professes to support.
Flash mobs have been empowered to steal en masse in DC...
Ok, ok, so forget the errant and abhorrent behavior...
Medicare is now said to "consume the entire Federal budget." Oh really? What of Iraq, and Afgahnistan? Libya... corruption, special interests, on and on...
To explain the "world" to you would take 3 - 500 pages, and someday, I'm going to do just that.
The best measure of understanding is brevity. You don't understand a damn thing.
Haha... my definition of world is brief but it's worth far more than your simple brevity.
You know, you've done some good posts here but you're still a dweeb.
And you are still, well, you. That was as brief as I can be, but I think it sums up things perfectly.
who says striving for prosperity is the answer
Travel to the Mexican countryside and then come back and say something so foolish. Prosperity is necessary but not sufficient to build a stable society.
And Billy Joel CDs, used bumble gum, cats and kittens, dogs and other pets, Billy Idol CDs, Legos, old coke bottles, anyone can think of other unix hangs units we just have to agree on their value.
Unit exchange, certainly would get rid of rich people if dollars were useless.
I personally am not against capitalism just dollars, we should use clams or seashells instead
fuck that i am anti-capitalist. time to try something new this shit isn't working and pretending that everything was just fine before the economic collapse or citizens united is not helping and is a complete fallacy. there are no jobs but in the service and restaurant industry and soon those will be automated out of existance. we need a new system, period anything else is well, less civilized.
interesting read. I like free-market capitalism myself. We have never actually experieced it in our lives though...thank you Federal Reserve. We have experienced Corporatism & Keynesianism. I would have to agree on a couple of points here but please don't advocate force against me personally if I try to donate past a certain amount to any particular candidate....that is restricting my 1st. Amendment right to free speach(yes, spending your money on whatever you want IS a free-speech issue). i would have a HUGE problem if we adopted this. I do agree with the statement that corporations in itself should not be allowed to invest their private funds in the name of thousands of employees to candidates. And a constitutional amendment should follow indeed.
So you want billionaires buying state legislatures and Congressmen?
Welcome to the Gilded Age.
[Removed]
Okay, but can we keep our Che Guevara flags?
Che only sent 1800 plus to the firing squad....but these kids will push this fact aside and instead vilify our police.
Che had people executed for impersonating officers and raping peasants. Our government used to execute teenage soldiers for getting scared in battle.
Lol.....holy hell. Lol...........
Im not condoning it. I'm just saying they weren't executed for their ideas or because they picked the wrong side. They were people who took advantage of the situation to commit horrible crimes
And so, do you own, display, condone this iconography?
No, but I do respect the man and the life he lead.
really? what other bigots do you respect?
check out the angola diaries. on top of everything else, he was a racist asshole.
Well I don't know about his diaries but you do realize that a large percentage of the people in Cuba are descendants of Africans right? He couldn't have hated black people that much if he was willing to die for them.
I'm pretty sure that if I think really hard I could come up with some people that I respect that could be considered bigots by today's standards based off of one or two things they wrote a long time ago.
"Well I don't know about his diaries"
yeah, that's obvious. unless you are currently under a white, pointy hood.
"He couldn't have hated black people that much..."
so it's ok if he just hated black a little bit? is that your position?
wow. just...wow.
you know, the proper response would have been, "hmmm...I guess I should read up on the other side of the debate over this very controversial person and see if I really do respect someone I know so little about."
I was just politely implying that you are full of shit.
no you weren't. you admitted you never heard of the diaries and implied that only hating black people a little bit is OK. you are a fawning buffoon, drawn to this mass-murdering scumbag's story by t-shirts worn by people you see as cool and you never bothered to look into the other, less favorable, side.
I read an 800 page biography on the man once. I don't remember every page of it but I do remember him going to the jungle in the Congo to train black people to fight their oppressors. So maybe what you read was wrong or out of context or not something to be embellished considering it came from his personal diary. You don't know me. I don't own che t shirts. I actually think they are stupid.
"I read an 800 page biography on the man once."
awww...did you get a cookie?
the diaries are a relatively recent revelation. so it didn't make it into the book because they weren't known then, or the writer chose to leave it out. fact is, they exist and they show he was a bigot on top of being a mass murdered. and if that book is where you get the idea he never killed anyone for their thoughts or ideas, you now have an emergency stash of toilet paper.
I disagree about mass murder but where can I read these diaries?
Fair enough, I get your jib.
bullshit. he killed many, many people for their thoughts and ideas.
he was a monster. a mass murdering madman. if there was a hell, he'd be in the middle of his 5th decade of savage sodomization by the barbed-penis wielding hellhounds of the 9th circle. fuck che.
remember, it's all about being cool.
nevermind che was a mass murderer and a bigot who had some very not nice things to say about black people in his angola diaries. none of that matters. radical fashion statements, bitchin' t-shirts, and being cool trumps all!
Love the t's! Nothing like displaying excessive ignorance on yourself.
I call people like that, people with gigantic holes in their ears (that look like elderly women's vaginas when the ornament isn't in), people who advocate crazy shit like an end to capitalism, people who scream bible passages on street corners, and others like them "announcers."
because they are announcing to everyone that they are batshit crazy or dumber than a bag of shit.
and don't get me wrong on the gigantic earring thing. I've got a few tattoos and I can appreciate body modification in many ways. but that shit is so silly and you end up walking around with 2 elderly vaginas hanging off your head!
You just made my evening as I just thought....what the fuck am I doing at 1am CST and I've got a fine piece of ass waiting for me.......night all...
Yeah, but he looks really good in a beret.
I know....I've been looking for a matching organic-hemp ensemble here in Chicago without luck......
LOL
Lasn agrees. It's just a "trojan horse" anyway:
http://occupywallst.org/article/occupywallstreet-update-from-adbusters/