Vote Out Anders

Is notorious right wing anti-union, pro aparthied hack Rob Anders in trouble in Calgary West?

We can only hope so.

Like his pals Jason Kenney and Ezra LeRant, Anders is a graduate of the Fraser Insititute intern program.

He went on to become the point man for the joint Fraser Institute/ National Citizens Coalition campaign against unions in the ninties.

And like Kenney he cut his teeth in politics south of the border working for the Republicans. And he still keeps his Republican ties.

He was the spokesman for Canadians Against Forced Unionisation, a Fraser Institute/NCC front group to push for Right To Work laws in Alberta,in 1995, thinking the Klein government would be open to these 'reforms'.

In his bio on the Conservative.ca election page they coyly refer to his union busting attempts;

"Prior to entering Parliament, Mr. Anders directed a labour market project (sic) for the National Citizens Coalition."

Labour market project, yeah right, he was pushing for Right to Work laws, and ending 'compulsory unionization' in Alberta.


In 2000 Anders got into hot water for denying, whether by commission or ommission, student employment projects for his riding.

Rob Anders, Canadian Alliance MP for Calgary West, refused to approve 83 out of about 200 grants recommended for his riding by Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC), which has been the subject of an ongoing financial scandal. The funding provides summer jobs and work experience for students by helping organizations and businesses cover the cost of hiring them.

And then he really made the news with his denouncing Nelson Mandela;

In 2001, the Federal Government decided to give Mandela honorary Canadian citizenship, making him only the second foreigner to receive such an honour. Rob Anders disagreed, calling Mandela, "a communist and a terrorist," decrying Mandela as "the politically correct Left-lib poster boy of today", and predicting that he would be forgotten in 30 years.

For this Warren Kinsella placed Rob Anders in both the second and third place catagories for top ten political outrages of the Parlimentary session of 2000-2001

As a poster boy for the extreme right in the Reform/Alliance and now Conservative party, he has used his position as an MP to do little for his constiuents and much to advance his own personal right wing agenda.

As a result in the 2004 election residents in his Calgary West riding launched the Vote Out Anders Campaign, complete with website. And apparently they are back as of this week.

His problems don't end there. On the CBC forum on Calgary West where folks can leave their comments they are overwhelming against Anders.

One of his personal political campaigns is against China. Now being the complete opportunist he is, he has latched onto the Galun Fong and Tibetans in order to persue his personal anti-communist agenda.

Just as the old right wing would admonish about the communist reds in Russia and Cuba, Anders is opposed to Red China. And he has the support of friends who are even slimier, like the notorious racist and fascist, Paul Fromm who is associated with White Power and Nazi groups in Canada and internationally.

It is typical of proto-fascists to disguise their poitics as anti-communism. It was traditional in the the 1960's for folks involved in the KKK and White Power and Nazi movements to claim that they weren't racist but saving America from communism. When it came to Martin Luther King these same creeps claimed he was a communist. Anders is no different, his attack on Mandela was racist and fascist, using red baiting as a cover.

Today he does the same around China.

Reform MP Rob Anders was asked to leave a Chinese New Year celebration
on Parliament Hill because he was wearing a T-shirt calling for China to
get out of Tibet. The 27-year-old MP for Calgary West appeared at the Wednesday night event wearing the T-shirt, which a1so bore the slogans Stop Tiananmen
tanks, forced abortions, burning books, and independent Indo-China,
Korea and Taiwan.

As a flack for the NCC he is Stephen Harpers loyal syncophant. Harper defended Anders outrageous comments about Mandeala and offered no criticism around his Anti-China provocations.

Certainly we all remember Tianamen square, and I have blogged here critically of the state captialist regime in China but Anders is an opportunist. He is not genuinely concered with Tibet or even the Falun Gong. He is doing this because he is a fascist and red baiting anti-communist propaganda is a sure sign of it.

At a Conservative fundraiser in Calgary this past spring it is reported that he raised the old right wing bugaboo about bilingualism being forced on all us good White English Canadians.

"Bilingualism is a problem today" Rob said. He complained that plaques that had been unilingual are now English and French and that it "didn't help" that people spoke "Chinese and Arab and other languages too" in Canada.

Yep he really feels for the oppressed Chinese peoples.

During the second week of the election campaign Anders used his parlimentary franking privleges to send out a torrid pamphlet denouncing crack addicts, homosexual sex marriage, and calling for law and order, in Richmond B.C.!

But take a look at the front of this pamphlet, typical scare tactics and fearmongering so commonly used in Nazi like propaganda campaigns.
Does this look like an election pamphlet to you?

Wow I didn't know Richmond B.C. was New York. But considering the crime rate and the increasing gun violence in the Lower mainland which has people worried this was a provocation. And you paid for it with your tax dollars.

The term homosexual sex marriage, used in this pamphlet is another provocation. He deliberately called it that. He did not call it Same Sex Marriage. He attempted to conjure up lewd sexual imagery with his misanthropic malapropism. Again from last spring Anders said this;

Then we got to Rob's favourite topic - "moral decay". "The problem with homosexuality and gay marriage" was that it led to a declining birth rate

Huh? The man defintely has sex on the brain, but the decline in the birth rate is not the fault of gays or lesbians.

Rob is a Roman scholar as well. He like many reactionaries before him uses the decline of the Roman empire to explain what he sees as moral decay in modern society. During the Same Sex Marriage debate in the House of Commons he said this;

Edward Gibbon goes on in his work, the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, to cite several things that made for the decline of the Roman Empire. One of those, the first that he cites, was the immorality that destroyed the integrity of family life.The second thing that Gibbon talks about is gender confusion and the problems that had in the Roman Empire. The third is disregard for religion. I think we can see some parallels today.

Once again, Augustus Caesar, to elongate the Roman Empire, restored the sanctity of marriage.

Those guilty of initiating divorce lost three-quarters of their property to their spouse. They did not get 50%. A woman would be stripped of her wealth and ornaments, and if the man introduced a new bride into his bed, his fortune would be lawfully seized by the vengeance of the exiled wife. We should think about that in terms of divorce rates. Offenders were even disabled from the repetition of nuptials. In other words, if people had a divorce they could not get remarried.

He stimulated the birth rate. He rewarded the parents of large families. As a matter of fact, if parents had as many as five children under the Emperor Augustus, they no longer paid any tax. One can imagine what not having to pay tax would do for a Canadian family with five children.

Yep you read that right Rob opposes divorce, and supports tax breaks for families with five children or more.

Another politician that was impressed by Augustus Ceaser and applied these same policies to his Reich was Adolph Hitler.

Augustus himself was not innocent of plotting executions to eliminate personal enemies. He favored loyalists like Herod who controlled their subjects, whatever the method. In fact, when he found that Herod was more effective in suppressing revolts than Roman governors In running the empire as a centralized corporation, he was more concerned to suppress public dissent than to promote social justice. Thus, he was also the father of the totalitarian state.

Both Hitler and Mussolin were fascinated with ancient Rome and attempted to ressurect it in the modern age.

For a self professed Christian, Rob sure does like them authoritarian pagan Roman Emperors who were slave owners and drenched in the blood of conquered peoples.

And despite his admonions about how great Augustus was, how moral, Rob did overlook Augustus Ceasars incestous affair with his sister. But then they hadn't run the HBO mini series Rome on cable yet.

Augustus' personal life, on the other hand, was a series of disappointments & disasters. He had no son & his only daughter's sons all died before him. So, he was forced to adopt his wife's son, Tiberius, whom he disliked. In public Augustus posed as champion of traditional family values; but the intrigues & scandalous behavior of his own family, including his wife, daughter & their children produced one of history's most lurid soap operas, complete with the murder of kin, public debauchery & incest.

In a commentary article in the right wing National Review Online Rob had an article on humour, a Canadian export south, where he said;

the Liberal party supports what is increasingly becoming a dogmatic, one-party-state (secular) theocracy.

Huh? A what? How can you be a secular theocracy, is Paul Martin the Pope or Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire? Is this another Roman refernce by Rob? After all Canada is a Catholic country.

And Rob wrote this last January the Liberals were a Minority government. Minority as in there were more opposition members than Liberals. I think Rob has gotten Ottawa confused with Alberta.

Besides voting against Same Sex Marriage, during the past sitting of the House,
Anders voted against:

C-2, Child Pornography
C-278, Employment Insurance

C-263, Prohibition of replacement workers in labour disputes

C-272, Sponsorship of a relative for immigration purposes
C-283, Immigration and refugee protection and sponsorships
C-206, Alcohol warning labels

C-14, Tlicho Land Claims and Self-Government Agreement

C-21, Not-for-profit corporations
C-13, DNA data bank
C-11, Whistleblower protection and procedure
C-17, Marijuana
C-65, Street racing
C-64, Prohibit removal of Vehicle Identification Number
C-63 An Act to amend An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Income Tax Act
C-260 An Act respecting the negotiation, approval, tabling and publication of treaties (Treaties Act)
C-48, Budget Amendments

But he did vote in favour of
C-30, Parliamentarian salaries to increase in accordance with private sector salaries

Rob has a real thingee about drugs, in an article in the conservatice weekly Human Events he attempted to link the bust of B.C. provincial Liberal party staffers, members of Gordon Campells government, with Paul Martin and the booming B.C. marijuana trade.

So the citizens of Calgary West are once again being asked to vote, but unlike last election they have an alternative to Mr. Anders.

Jennifer Pollack the former chair of the Calgary Board of Education is running against Mr. Anders. Ms. Pollack is a high profile canadidate.

And one who has faced the wrath of Ralph Klein. She and members of her democratically elected board were ousted after the Klein government, in an unprecidented move, because they refused to be his scapegoat for deficits that were a direct result of his governments failure to fully fund public education.
It appeared this coup de dat was organized with the conivance of Conservatives on the the board. Fights began right after the election between the minority of Conservatives and the majority Liberals on the board. After being deposed by the Klein government, Pollack ran again and was relected to the school board.

Last election Anders got over 55% of the vote, with a lower voter turn out. than the 2000 election. The Liberals got just over 29% with a low impact campaign with a no name candidate. With an active Vote Out Anders campaign, pragmatic politicks calls for a united front vote for Pollack.

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Canada
Federal Election
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Calgary West
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Rob Anders
Nelson Mandela

B.C. will determine the winner

The battle field may be Ontario, but in reality it will be the West, sans Alberta, where the race will be run and won come election night. In particular it will finally be B.C.'s turn to determine who is in or out of government. The polls shows the largest variation between the Conservatives and Liberals occurs in Western Canada. Leaving out Tory Blue Alberta which carries little variance, the poll has been jumping up for the Liberals ,NDP and yes the Greens and a steady decline for the Conservatives.

Western Canada
Includes: Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia

DATE	CON	LIB	NDP	GRN			FIRM
12/22/05	38	36	19	7			SES
12/21/05	39	35	20	7			SES
12/20/05	41	33	19	6			SES

Manitoba and Saskatchewan

DATE	CON	NDP	LIB	GRN			FIRM
12/22/05	41	29	27	3			Strategic Counsel

DATE	LIB	CON	NDP	GRN			FIRM
12/21/05	35	27	25	13			Leger

British Columbia

DATE	LIB	NDP	CON	GRN			FIRM
12/22/05	35	34	26	5			Strategic Counsel
12/21/05	39	29	26	6			Strategic Counsel
12/20/05	38	26	32	4			Strategic Counsel

DATE	LIB	CON	NDP	GRN			FIRM
12/21/05	34	32	24	5			Leger

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Federal Election
Politics

Lets Not Forget the Hostages

The Christian Peace Keepers Team is still being held hostage in Iraq. These pacifist observers and activists are two Canadians a Brit and an American. Bush blathered on this week about the success he is having in Iraq and forgot to mention these hostages or the other victims of his imperial war. Their execution date has come and gone, and now their families and friends are still waiting.

Families of Iraq hostages issue new appeal

Christian Peacemaker Teams member Canadian James Loney, of Toronto, is seen in this undated handout photo.

This Christmas season our thoughts should be with them and the hunderds of Iraqi civilians held hostage by the Iraqi state and its American Occupying army. Light a candle, sign the petition, send an email of solidarity to the CPT.

I recieved this email on line from Sojourners, and since the article is only available by email I am posting it here.

'Waiting has taken on a whole new meaning'

by Rose Marie Berger

Living in Baghdad outside the Green Zone, Christian peacemaker Maxine Nash talks about what Advent means while four of her team members are held hostage.

WEB EXCLUSIVE

When Maxine Nash volunteered to go to Iraq, she didn't go with weapons ready. She went armed with her faith, her skills in conflict resolution, and her courage to be as defenseless as those she was serving: the ordinary people of Iraq.

Nash, 43, a Quaker from Waukon, Iowa, joined the Christian Peacemaker Teams' steering committee in June 2002. CPT provides organizational support to persons committed to faith-based nonviolent alternatives in situations where lethal conflict is an immediate reality. As her service with CPT continued she was hooked by CPT's fundamental question: What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war? In the summer of 2003, Nash went through CPT's rigorous training in nonviolent intervention in conflict situations. In February 2004 she was on her way to Iraq, where she has been stationed full-time ever since.

CPT member Tom Fox visits with refugee children the month before he and three other team members were abducted.

On Nov. 26, four of Nash's team members were kidnapped by people calling themselves the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. In the days following the kidnapping, the group released videos of Tom Fox, 54, Norman Kember, 74, James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Sooden, 32, to al Jazeera threatening to kill the four men by Dec. 8 if detainees in U.S. and Iraqi prisons were not freed. The deadline was extended to Dec. 10; the date passed and there has been no further news. These four join hundreds of Iraqis who are currently held by kidnappers.

On Friday, Dec. 16, I called the CPT apartment in Baghdad and spoke with Maxine Nash about the four men, the Iraqi elections, and Advent. - RMB

BERGER: Maxine, thanks for talking to us. What are you and fellow Iraq team members Greg Rollins and Anita David doing in the midst of the kidnapping situation and the elections?

NASH: Well, right now we are pretty restricted to our apartment and our small neighborhood in Baghdad during the elections because of the road closures. They've been closed for three days and everybody is stuck right now. We haven't been able to get out and see what's happening very well, but we've been hearing lots from our neighbors.

BERGER: How was the voter turnout for this election?

NASH: There was an incredible voter turnout. People have told us that they waited in long lines and that the lines at the end of the day were as long as earlier on. This is different from the first election and referendum where the lines were pretty thinned out by the end of the day. This time it seemed pretty quiet. There was not a lot of violence or disturbances. In the past there has been a lot of on-the-ground violence in the voter lines. But the reports we hear is that this time everyone was smiling and friendly, and it was a good election.

BERGER: Were there any bombings?

NASH: The most we heard was mortars hitting the Green Zone. We heard one around 7 a.m. [Dec. 15] and a few more this morning. Because the mortars were clearly aimed at the Green Zone, the message seems to be clearly against the occupying force or the existing Iraqi government who are all headquartered in the Green Zone.

BERGER: Do you think the election outcomes will affect the work of CPT at all?

NASH: It's hard to know if the elections will affect our work. It's just wait and see for us, but we don't expect that the outcomes will have much effect on our ongoing work.

BERGER: Tell me about your ongoing work.

NASH: We have worked a lot on the detainee issue because we were getting requests from families who had a member taken into the American detention system and they needed English speakers to help them navigate the system. We first started doing that work when the Red Cross has been bombed. The Red Cross wasn't available to help, so people came to us. Now the U.S. has developed a better tracking system. We don't have to do so much of this work any more. It's easier for families to find people. Now we are doing a lot of human rights work to give media attention to situations that we think need more coverage.

BERGER: What are the current situations you are focusing on?

NASH: We are getting reports about people being disappeared within the U.S. detention system or in the Iraqi prison systems. We are trying to follow up on this.

BERGER: Have you seen a change in the presence of U.S. forces? The news we are getting is that they are pulling back.

NASH: The U.S. forces have pulled out of a few urban areas. In Karbala, for example, the Iraqi troops have taken over the area and the U.S. is much less visible. But Karbala is a pretty settled area. In Baghdad, there are still house raids and people being detained in the middle of the night - but we are seeing less of the U.S. troops. What we are learning though is that now the Iraqi troops have taken over doing the house raids and detaining people and are now putting people in Iraqi prisons. In areas with increased violence, like Ramadi, the U.S. troop presence has increased exponentially, according to the reports we hear.

BERGER: Thousands of people, including us here at Sojourners, are praying for the safe release of your four team members who are currently being held hostage.

NASH: Please tell every one thank you for us for the prayers. We wish that the four guys could somehow know that everyone is praying for them. In particular, I think Tom [Fox] is very aware of that kind of spiritual presence and I'm sure he feels it. A few weeks before they were taken we had a worship where we were doing centering prayer. Tom said that the word that kept coming to him in prayer was "open." Can you believe that? I think they all know that people are praying for them. Tom, I know, feels the spiritual support. And if he feels it, then he will tell the others.

BERGER: Has there been any further news about their fate?

NASH: There is no news yet. Continued prayers are our best hope. It really is the best thing we think to do. Also, please keep the story alive in the media. It keeps pressure on the kidnappers to acknowledge that the guys are who they say they are and to release them.

BERGER: What are your next steps?

NASH: We are looking for ways to expand attention to our human rights work. Tom, James, Harmeet, and Norman have now become part of that monitoring of human rights abuses. Our human rights work now includes the abduction of our four guys.

BERGER: What has waiting meant to you this Advent season?

NASH: My personal reflection is that waiting has taken on a whole new meaning. Advent is a season of hope. I am personally drawing strength from that. The comparisons between our Iraq and Jesus' Israel run through my mind. The season before Jesus was born was a troubling time. It was the time of an occupation. Jesus' parents were going to register for a census. We know what happened at the end: There was a miracle! We are hoping for the same thing at this point.

BERGER: How has your local community responded to the news of the kidnapping?

NASH: Our neighbors here are very saddened by what has happened. Many of the families here have had members kidnapped. For them it is not a new situation. But they know that we are here for the right reasons and that we are one of the few NGOs still here. They are very much against what has happened. They tell me, "I saw Tom on the TV and I cried," because that's how they found out the news. They bring us meals or ask if they can do shopping for us. The 10-year-old daughter of our neighbor told us she was doing her daily prayers for our kidnapped folks. It's very, very touching.

BERGER: Is there anything else you would like to say?

NASH: We want to express our deepest and sincere thanks for the outpouring of support that we have received. We've found out about all kinds of people doing things for us. Even the variety of people who have come out in support. There are people we would never have imagined - Muslim clerics and religious leaders. We are so thankful for the amount of support we've received. It's very hard for us even to imagine here in our cocoon in Baghdad, but we hear about all the vigils and prayers and things people are doing. We are very grateful.

---

Iraq Team Message to the Missing CPTers
17 December

Dear Harmeet, Jim, Norman, and Tom,

We still are longing to see your faces. So many people continue to let us know that they are thinking of you and praying for you. As Christmas approaches, we continue to hope that you will be able to join us and your families for the celebrations. Anita has written her aunt for the best turkey dressing recipe known to the world. We continue to stay in touch with your families. Your friends in Iraq ask about you all the time. We don't know how much you get outside, but the weather is nice here in Baghdad. We hope to see you soon.

With much love,
Your Teammates in Baghdad

+ See CPT's response to President Bush's address about the war in Iraq

+ Keep up with the CPT captives' news on the "Free the Captives" blog

+ Share this issue with your friends

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Thanks Zerbia

Well apparently my blog missive on the first leaders debate, in French, made Antonia Zerbisias blog. Nice to be noticed. Thanks. She says, I bet very few Canadians watched. And unfortunately that is probably true, but I bet alot of Quebecois watched.

Monte MIA

Well it was the night before the night before Christmas and all through the land the parties were happening and the Party's were packing it up for the holiday break.

So ya gotta ask yourself this late in the game why Monte Solberg's web site isn't listed on Conservative.ca

Now talk about Western Alien-Nation, as Monte does in his blog, this takes the cake. His awesome web page doesn't even rank a link. Now thats alien-nation.

Strange that, since he apparently is a longstanding MP from waaay back during the Reform Party days.

And gee, he is one of the CPC's most popular and famous bloggers. Even Zerbia sez so.

And his web site has been up for a long time.

And he is the CPC Minister of Finance in Waiting. Hmm what gives?

Poor Monte bad enough he can't get any respect from me here and here or from the guy that nominated him for Rogets Thesaurus.

But to be abandoned by his party this late in the election game......that's a big Webmaster oops...Poor Monte doesn't even rate updating despite the recently updated cute Snowman seasons greetings in Flash on the Conservatives web page. Ouch.

He just sits on their candidates page looking so forlorn, but you can email him.

Merry Christmas Mr. Solberg.


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Monte Solberg
Canada
Federal Election
Politics
Conservative
Stephen Harper

GST Savings Account

Here is an interesting accounting of what the GST savings will get ya under the Conservative 1% roll back plan.

That and a buck fifty will buy ya coffee at Tim Hortons as the Conservatives Minister of Finance in Waitng would say.

On the other had the Conservative plan to give a $500 tax deduction on trades tools is a damn fine idea. I wonder if my PDA qaulifies?

Maybe the NDP can put it in their next alternative budget under the Liberal Minority government, if you ask them nicely.

Hey since you aren't going to get elected anyhow, how about promising no taxes on mortgage loans that would encourage folks to buy homes.

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Monte Solberg
Canada
Federal Election
Politics
Conservative
Liberal
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Stephen Harper

State-less Socialism

I get called an oxymoron (which I guess is better than being called just a moron, by Warren Kinsella) for using the term Libertarian Communist.

When I pondered the title of this page I could have called it an anarchist, or anarcho-syndicalist, or autonomous marxist or a libertarian socialist, or left communist. But I decided to use the contradictory phrase libertarian communist. Which to me is embraces all these the ideas and those of the Anti-Parlimentary Communists, which included Sylvia Pankhurst, James Connolly and Guy Aldred.

My, my all these terms which are really interchangable. They really are only terms used for what Kropotkin orginally said of anarchism, 'we are the left wing of the socialist movement'. Why I use the term Libertarian Communist rather than Anarchist Socialist could be best illustrated by comparing the ideas of Marx and Benjamin Tucker .

Not to abolish wages, but to make every man dependent upon wages and secure to every man his whole wages is the aim of Anarchistic Socialism. What Anarchistic Socialism aims to abolish is usury. It does not want to deprive labor of its reward; it wants to deprive capital of its reward. It does not hold that labor should not be sold; it holds that capital should not be hired at usury. Benjamin Tucker

This is what I call distributist economics, that is the idea that the problem with the market place is distribution of goods rather than the social relations of production. Tucker was influenced by Prodhoun in this and it is the idea that the problem with capitalism is usury and monopoly, and could be summed up as a fair days wage for a fair days work.

In fact it is exactly that phrase which we get from the old labour movement of the time the American Federation of Labor, which was influenced by another 'anarchist socialist' Joe Labadie. Both Labadie and Tucker represent this American school of anarchist socialism.

Whereas the IWW took as their watchword Abolish the wages system. from Marx's essay Value, Price and Profit.

And for good reason, wages will never reflect thre real value of labour, merely its exchange value, the price paid for a good. In this Marx was using the original idea of gift economy, where the intrinsic value of the goods exchanged were determined socially, by prestige or importance of the person giving them, rather than their value as appraised in money or exchange value. Thus the call to abolish the wage system is a call to also end wage slavery, which is the source of all capitalist profit.

It is not a question of wages or prices; these are but the reflections of the social relations of capitalism. K. Marx

And this is where the Anarchist Socialist school of Labadie and Tucker diverges from what I call Libertarian or Anarchist Communism. Labadie and Tucker were the percursors of todays Libertarian movement, and still are. Whereas my position is closer to that of the older Anti-Statist Socialists and Communists.

Too often today Libertarianism is equated or associated with Ayn Rand, Objectivism, neo-conservatives, the Austrian School of Economics, and a host of other right wing theorists. The knee jerk reaction of many so called right wing libertarians (because they follow neo-liberal regulation economics I refer to them as liberaltarians for accuracy) I read or who occasionally post here, is to immediately equate ALL socialism as STATE socialism.

Idealistic socialists consider the socialism under Stalin’s state to be a far cry from what they want, which, if I understand their paradoxical philosophy correctly, is actually some form of voluntary socialist anarchy –In the end, state capitalists and state socialists will always find enough common ground to work together. They’ll continue to advance a corporate state socialism that no peaceful, freedom-loving individual wants. And so the rest of us, who reject the state and are willing to put all our other nominal differences aside, must stick together, at least in our attempts to push back the wave of statism imposed on us by the authoritarian socialists and state capitalists of all parties and all stripes.

Corporate State Socialism by Anthony Gregory

And this is their major failure in understanding the history of the socialist movement, which is where their libertarianism (anarchist socialism) originates from. They continue to mistake state capitalism (a historic evolution of capitalism) with socialism.

However there are some who you will find listed in the sidebar either under Blogs I Read, or A little Anarchy who are evolving a new debate amongst those of us that are Anti-Statists, Left Libertarians.

"Tom Knapp, you see — like Kevin Carson, myself, Professor Roderick Long and the Libertarian Left in general — holds that free-market anarchism is, in all essentials, fundamentally compatible with and/or identical to a genuinely voluntary, anti-state socialism." Brad Spangler

And it is not just the right that suffers from this knee jerk reaction, the left wing anarchists do as well. They like to dis and dump on Marx, Engels as well as the socialist and communist movements, as if the old fights over the First International of Bakunins day occured mere moments ago.

In doing so they often throw Marx out with the bath water, something even Bakunin wouldn't do, since he admonished anarchists to read Marx's writings. Their dispute was political, over the practice and formation of the revolutionary organization of the workers movement. Bakunin was fascinated with secret societies, as well as unions and direct action. Marx and Engels argued for public mass workers political parties, to win sufferage and democratic reforms of the state.

The anarchist movement was very broad, as broad as the entire socialist movement itself. It carried the seeds of the gay and womens movement in it in England, where anarchism and socialism were united in William Morris's Socialist Labour Party.

When those that talk of nationalization, without speaking of workers ownership of the means of production, they are speaking of state capitalism, not socialism.

The influence of anarhco syndicalism on the communist left and the socialist movement cannot be under estimated. Along with the workers councils (soviets) that arose in 1905 in Russia and again during WWI in Russia and Italy showed that workers could run production by themselves for the good of all.

It gave a model of real socialism, not state socialism, not nationalization of capitalist industry and not Prussian War Socialism which the Bolsehveks degenerated into. Rather it opened a door on a future socialism that was not parlimentary, but revolutionary, and not middle class; the social welfare state.

Here are some quotes from the radical socialist movement which sound like they lept off the pages of the Libertarian movement in their criticism of the State and State Socialism.

Man will be compelled, Kropotkin declared, "to find new forms of organisation for the social functions which the State fulfils through the bureaucracy" and he insisted that ''as long as this is not done nothing will be done."

Anarchism as a Theory of Organization Colin Ward (1966)

On the other hand the State has also been confused with Government. Since there can be no State without government, it has sometimes been said that what one must aim at is the absence of government and not the abolition of the State.

However, it seems to me that State and government are two concepts of a different order. The State idea means something quite different from the idea of government. It not only includes the existence of a power situated above society, but also of a territorial concentration as well as the concentration in the hands of a few of many functions in the life of societies. It implies some new relationships between members of society which did not exist before the formation of the State. A whole mechanism of legislation and of policing has to be developed in order to subject some classes to the domination of others.

The State: Its Historic Role
Piotr Kropotkin
(1897)

For ourselves, we consider that State is and ought to be nothing whatever but the united power of the people, organized, not to be an instrument of oppression and mutual plunder among citizens; but, on the contrary, to secure to every one his own, and to cause justice and security to reign.

The State
Frédéric Bastiat
(1848)

Finally, in its struggle against the revolution, the parliamentary republic found itself compelled to strengthen, along the repressive measures, the resources and centralisation of governmental power. All revolutions perfected this machine instead of smashing it. The parties that contended in turn for domination regarded the possession of this huge state edifice as the principal spoils of the victor.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Karl Marx
(1852)

Socialism properly implies above all things the co-operative control by the workers of the machinery of production; without this co-operative control the public ownership by the State is not Socialism – it is only State capitalism.

Schemes of state and municipal ownership, if unaccompanied by this co-operative principle, are but schemes for the perfectioning of the mechanism of capitalist government-schemes to make the capitalist regime respectable and efficient for the purposes of the capitalist; in the second place they represent the class-conscious instinct of the business man who feels that capitalist should not prey upon capitalist, while all may unite to prey upon the workers. The chief immediate sufferers from private ownership of railways, canals, and telephones are the middle class shop-keeping element, and their resentment at the tariffs imposed is but the capitalist political expression of the old adage that “dog should not eat dog.”

It will thus be seen that an immense gulf separates the ‘nationalising’ proposals of the middle class from the ‘socialising’ demands of the revolutionary working class.

State Monopoly versus Socialism
James Connolly
Workers’ Republic, 10 June 1899

There is not a Socialist in the world today who can indicate with any degree of clearness how we can bring about the co-operative commonwealth except along the lines suggested by industrial organization of the workers.

Political institutions are not adapted to the administration of industry. Only industrial organizations are adapted to the administration of a co-operative commonwealth that we are working for. Only the industrial form of organization offers us even a theoretical constructive Socialist programme. There is no constructive Socialism except in the industrial field.

Here is a statement that no Socialist with a clear knowledge of the essentials of his doctrine can dispute. The political institutions of today are simply the coercive forces of capitalist society they have grown up out of, and are based upon, territorial divisions of power in the hands of the ruling class in past ages, and were carried over into capitalist society to suit the needs of the capitalist class when that class overthrew the dominion of its predecessors.

What the Socialist does realize is that under a social democratic form of society the administration of affairs will be in the hands of representatives of the various industries of the nation; that the workers in the shops and factories will organize themselves into unions, each union comprising all the workers at a given industry; that said union will democratically control the workshop life of its own industry, electing all foremen etc., and regulating the routine of labour in that industry in subordination to the needs of society in general, to the needs of its allied trades, and to the departments of industry to which it belongs; that representatives elected from these various departments of industry will meet and form the industrial administration or national government of the country.

In short, social democracy, as its name implies, is the application to industry, or to the social life of the nation, of the fundamental principles of democracy. Such application will necessarily have to begin in the workshop, and proceed logically and consecutively upward through all the grades of industrial organization until it reaches the culminating point of national executive power and direction. In other words, social democracy must proceed from the bottom upward, whereas capitalist political society is organized from above downward.

It will be seen that this conception of Socialism destroys at one blow all the fears of a bureaucratic State, ruling and ordering the lives of every individual from above, and thus gives assurance that the social order of the future will be an extension of the freedom of the individual, and not the suppression of it. In short, it blends the fullest democratic control with the most absolute expert supervision, something unthinkable of any society built upon the political State.

Industrial Unionism and Constructive Socialism
James Connolly
From Socialism Made Easy, 1908.

Trade Unionism has conquered social power and commanded influence in so far as it satisfied and arose from the social necessities of the capitalist epoch. Because it has answered capitalist needs, the Trade Union has qualified for its modern position as the sign manual of skilled labour.

But the growth in social and political importance of the Trade Union leader has not menaced the foundations of capitalist society. He has been cited more and more as the friend of reform and the enemy of revolution. It has been urged that he is a sober and responsible member of capitalist society. Consequently, capitalist apologists have been obliged to acknowledge that he discharged useful and important functions in society.

This admission has forced them to assert that the law of supply and demand does not determine, with exactness, the nominal - or even the actual price of the commodity, labour power. Hence it has been allowed that Trade Unions enable their members to increase the amount of the price received for their labour-power, without being hurtful to the interests of the commonwealth-i.e. the capitalist class-when conducted with moderation and fairness.

Modern Trade Unionism enjoys this respectable reputation to a very large extent because it has sacrificed its original vitality. This was inevitable, since, in its very origin, it was reformist and not revolutionary. Trade Unionism has sacrificed no economic principle during its century's development. It has surrendered no industrial or political consistency. But it has not maintained its early earnestness or sentiment of solidarity. Had it done so, it would have been compelled to have evolved socially and politically. Instead of stagnating in reform, it would have had to progress towards revolution.

Our Trade Unionist friend, with his loose revolutionary violence and threatening, as opposed to a sound revolutionary activity, finding himself either consciously or unconsciously on the side of bourgeois society, will insist that there must be representation and delegation of authority.

To this I reply with the statement of Marxian philosophy, that every industrial epoch has its own system of representation. The fact that minority and majority rule find their harmonious expression in the political bureaucratic autocracy of capitalism signifies that its negation in the terms of Socialism shall embody a counter affirmative which embody the principle of true organisation and freedom of the individual idiosyncrasy. What the details of that organisation will be shall be made the subject of discussion in another essay. That it will not be "a Socialist majority" can be' seen from the fact that democracy usually signifies the surrender of majority incompetence and mis-education to the interests of minority expertism and bourgeois concentration of its power over the lives and destinies of the exploited proletarians, no less through the medium of the worker's Trade and Industrial Union, than through that of the Capitalist State.

Marx truly conceived of the bourgeois State as being but an executive committee for administering the ~affairs of the whole bourgeois class, which has stripped of its halo every profession previously venerated and regarded as honourable, and thus turned doctor, lawyer, priest, poet, philosopher, and labour leader into its paid wage workers. The Trade Union becomes daily more and more an essential department or expression of the bourgeois State.

Out of the class or property social system there cannot emerge a "representation" which signifies an honest attempt to secure just exposition of principles and expressions of antagonistic interests. Where there is no social or economic equality, there can be no democracy and no representation. The barren wilderness of money- juggling "freedom" cannot secure real personal liberty of being to any citizen. True organisation like true liberty belongs to the future - and the Socialist Commonwealth, or, as I have termed it elsewhere, the Anarchist Republic.

Trade Unionism and The Class War (1911)
Guy Aldred

Thus, economically, politically, and psychologically the whole of the trend of social evolution shows that Socialism can only have its social expression in an era of freedom, and its political expression in a State which shall treat of the management of production instead of the control of persons*. The psychological guarantee against expertism will be found in the contempt with which all men will regard it, and the tendency to excellence of administration ~ill be reposed in the admiration which all men will have for efficiency Should this possibility still meet with opposition on the ground that such a central directing authority finding its embodiment in a collective will, would not find legal oppression incongruous with its industrial basis, one cm only conclude that either humanity is inherently bad and progress an impossibility or else that in a system of absolute individualism must humanity's hope lie.

*Here the term 'State' is used in a sense entirely unhistorical. Such a political order is Anarchy and can only be termed a state in the sense of being a social condition

Representation and the State (1940)
Guy Aldred

Well thats all well and good and I could find more quotes to make my point but that is the past what about the future. Could we organize ourselves into self governing associations and federations? Could we replace the state with self governing anarcho communism? Why heck sure we could cause you are online in a libertarian communist gift economy right now.

During the Sixties, the New Left created a new form of radical politics: anarcho-communism. Above all, the Situationists and similar groups believed that the tribal gift economy proved that individuals could successfully live together without needing either the state or the market. From May 1968 to the late Nineties, this utopian vision of anarcho-communism has inspired community media and DIY culture activists. Within the universities, the gift economy already was the primary method of socialising labour. From its earliest days, the technical structure and social mores of the Net has ignored intellectual property. Although the system has expanded far beyond the university, the self-interest of Net users perpetuates this hi-tech gift economy. As an everyday activity, users circulate free information as e-mail, on listservs, in newsgroups, within on-line conferences and through Web sites. As shown by the Apache and Linux programs, the hi-tech gift economy is even at the forefront of software development. Contrary to the purist vision of the New Left, anarcho-communism on the Net can only exist in a compromised form. Money-commodity and gift relations are not just in conflict with each other, but also co-exist in symbiosis. The 'New Economy' of cyberspace is an advanced form of social democracy.

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Dissing the Left

Amongst the nutbars on the right is this particular nasty piece of work; Dissecting the Left who marches out all the old nonsense and stereotypes about the Nazi's being socialists cause they had it in their name. An excellent refutation of this particular odious slander can be found here.

Which is of course the same nonsense unfortunately that some leftists march out about Stalin, that he was a socialist cause Russia was called the Soviet Socialist Republic. Since Soviets (Workers Councils) were already eliminated by 1921, and as Lenin said; 'socialism is state capitalism and electricity', the Bolshevik regime in Russia was state capitalist not socialist.

And so were the later regimes of Mussolini, Hitler and FDR. All were forms of state capitalism, Keyensianism in the Allied nations, fascism in the Axis countries, and Stalinism in Russia. All were historic forms of proping up capitalism. And of course Dissecting the Left has as one of his sources this classic red baiting work;Friedrich Hayek. The Road to Serfdom: The Socialist Roots of Naziism. Hayek is as bad a historian as he is a political and economic philosopher.

Hitler in his own words defines what he means by National and Social and they have nothing to do with socialism, any more than Mussolini's fascism had anything to do with socialism or his origins in the Anarchist movement in Italy.

'NATIONAL' AND 'SOCIAL' ARE TWO IDENTICAL CONCEPTIONS. It was only the Jew who succeeded, through falsifying the social idea and turning it into Marxism, not only in divorcing the social idea from the national, but in actually representing them as utterly contradictory. That aim he has in fact achieved. At the founding of this Movement we formed the decision that we would give expression to this idea of ours of the identity of the two conceptions: despite all warnings, on the basis of what we had come to believe, on the basis of the sincerity of our will, we christened it ''National Socialist.' We said to ourselves that to be 'national' means above everything to act with a boundless and all-embracing love for the people and, if necessary, even to die for it. And similarly to be 'social' means so to build up the state and the community of the people that every individual acts in the interest of the community of the people and must be to such an extent convinced of the goodness, of the honorable straightforwardness of this community of the people as to be ready to die for it." - Adolf Hitler, Ræða í Munchen, 12. Apríl 1922

Often Karl Marx on the Jewish Question is quoted by these right wing nuts to justify their comparison of the fascist state with socialism. But contrary to the pull quotes they use out of context one should read the whole article.

Political emancipation is, at the same time, the dissolution of the old society on which the state alienated from the people, the sovereign power, is based. What was the character of the old society? It can be described in one word – feudalism. The character of the old civil society was directly political – that is to say, the elements of civil life, for example, property, or the family, or the mode of labor, were raised to the level of elements of political life in the form of seigniory, estates, and corporations. In this form, they determined the relation of the individual to the state as a whole – i.e., his political relation, that is, his relation of separation and exclusion from the other components of society. For that organization of national life did not raise property or labor to the level of social elements; on the contrary, it completed their separation from the state as a whole and constituted them as discrete societies within society. Thus, the vital functions and conditions of life of civil society remained, nevertheless, political, although political in the feudal sense – that is to say, they secluded the individual from the state as a whole and they converted the particular relation of his corporation to the state as a whole into his general relation to the life of the nation, just as they converted his particular civil activity and situation into his general activity and situation. As a result of this organization, the unity of the state, and also the consciousness, will, and activity of this unity, the general power of the state, are likewise bound to appear as the particular affair of a ruler isolated from the people, and of his servants.

Fascism and its counter revolution, a reactionary movement against the post WWI revolutionary workers movement, used the terms revolution and socialist, to identify itself with the workers movement, but in reality it was nothing of the kind.

Fascism was a return of fuedalism and the unitary idea of the State as Civil Society and Civil Society as the State. Instead of a King alienated from his people, Hitler and Mussolini used the creation of modern fuedal political state not to emancipate but to return to an earlier form of civil and political society, but with the ruler/Fuerher as the ultimate citizen, a voice of the Volk. In such a unitary state stability was the objective.

Despite the Futurist modernism of Facism, it was always an ideology in search of the past, an architecture of the ancient world, a celebration of the classical, of Rome and the Gothic. After WWI fascism created not a future but a larger than life replication of an idealized fuedal past. A glorious Holy Roman Empire of the Teutonic Knights.

Such a political counter revolution had more in common with Bonaparitism and the election of the French Emperor after the revolution than it had with the modern political state with its contradictions between the individual, the state and civil society.

In this Trotsky was right in defining Stalin and later Mao as Bonapartists, they had more in common with Hitler and Mussolini as Leaderand Soverigns of a new fuedalist movement, where as Luckas points out, the people of the estates have a conciousness of themselves as the state, that the state owes them a living and they owe their living to the state.

Whether these movements will be progressive (as in the French Revolution of 1789 or the Russian Revolution of 1917), or reactionary (as with Napoleon’s coup d’état) will depend on the position of the other classes involved in the conflict, and on the level of consciousness of the parties that lead them. For this reason, too, the ideological form taken by the class consciousness of the peasants changes its content more frequently than that of other classes: this is because it is always borrowed from elsewhere.

And as Marx points out it is the self recognition of ourselves as both individuals and social beings, and the creation of a mutualist society, one that allows for true 'self-government' that is the only way to overcome these contradictions. Not a unitary state which reduces the individual to a social role as citizen, comrade, or the Volk.

The political revolution which overthrew this sovereign power and raised state affairs to become affairs of the people, which constituted the political state as a matter of general concern, that is, as a real state, necessarily smashed all estates, corporations, guilds, and privileges, since they were all manifestations of the separation of the people from the community. The political revolution thereby abolished the political character of civil society. It broke up civil society into its simple component parts; on the one hand, the individuals; on the other hand, the material and spiritual elements constituting the content of the life and social position of these individuals. It set free the political spirit, which had been, as it were, split up, partitioned, and dispersed in the various blind alleys of feudal society. It gathered the dispersed parts of the political spirit, freed it from its intermixture with civil life, and established it as the sphere of the community, the general concern of the nation, ideally independent of those particular elements of civil life. A person’s distinct activity and distinct situation in life were reduced to a merely individual significance. They no longer constituted the general relation of the individual to the state as a whole. Public affairs as such, on the other hand, became the general affair of each individual, and the political function became the individual’s general function.

But, the completion of the idealism of the state was at the same time the completion of the materialism of civil society. Throwing off the political yoke meant at the same time throwing off the bonds which restrained the egoistic spirit of civil society. Political emancipation was, at the same time, the emancipation of civil society from politics, from having even the semblance of a universal content.

Feudal society was resolved into its basic element – man, but man as he really formed its basis – egoistic man.

This man, the member of civil society, is thus the basis, the precondition, of the political state. He is recognized as such by this state in the rights of man.

The liberty of egoistic man and the recognition of this liberty, however, is rather the recognition of the unrestrained movement of the spiritual and material elements which form the content of his life.

Hence, man was not freed from religion, he received religious freedom. He was not freed from property, he received freedom to own property. He was not freed from the egoism of business, he received freedom to engage in business.

The establishment of the political state and the dissolution of civil society into independent individuals – whose relation with one another on law, just as the relations of men in the system of estates and guilds depended on privilege – is accomplished by one and the same act. Man as a member of civil society, unpolitical man, inevitably appears, however, as the natural man. The “rights of man” appears as “natural rights,” because conscious activity is concentrated on the political act. Egoistic man is the passive result of the dissolved society, a result that is simply found in existence, an object of immediate certainty, therefore a natural object. The political revolution resolves civil life into its component parts, without revolutionizing these components themselves or subjecting them to criticism. It regards civil society, the world of needs, labor, private interests, civil law, as the basis of its existence, as a precondition not requiring further substantiation and therefore as its natural basis. Finally, man as a member of civil society is held to be man in his sensuous, individual, immediate existence, whereas political man is only abstract, artificial man, man as an allegorical, juridical person. The real man is recognized only in the shape of the egoistic individual, the true man is recognized only in the shape of the abstract citizen.

Therefore, Rousseau correctly described the abstract idea of political man as follows:

“Whoever dares undertake to establish a people’s institutions must feel himself capable of changing, as it were, human nature, of transforming each individual, who by himself is a complete and solitary whole, into a part of a larger whole, from which, in a sense, the individual receives his life and his being, of substituting a limited and mental existence for the physical and independent existence. He has to take from man his own powers, and give him in exchange alien powers which he cannot employ without the help of other men.”

All emancipation is a reduction of the human world and relationships to man himself.

Political emancipation is the reduction of man, on the one hand, to a member of civil society, to an egoistic, independent individual, and, on the other hand, to a citizen, a juridical person.

Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen, and as an individual human being has become a species-being in his everyday life, in his particular work, and in his particular situation, only when man has recognized and organized his “own powers” as social powers, and, consequently, no longer separates social power from himself in the shape of political power, only then will human emancipation have been accomplished.

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Democracy Watch Rates the Parties

Democracy Watch has rated the parties in this election on the issue of what they will do about Government accountability and reform. They point out that the Conservatives and NDP are the only parties discussing this issue. And based on their reccomendation of 65 neccasary reforms they put the Conservatives ahead of the NDP, with the following exceptions;

“The parties have all been making promises about what they will do if they win power, but only the Conservatives have given voters a reason to believe they won’t abuse power by promising to pass a comprehensive, multi-measure law to increase the federal government’s accountability as the first thing they will do if elected,” said Duff Conacher, Coordinator of Democracy Watch.

The NDP re-released their ethics and accountability plan first introduced in October, expanding it from seven to 20 measures, while the Liberals, Bloc and Greens have yet to make any solid promises in the area of government accountability and democratic reforms.

Unfortunately, even the Conservatives’ 56 pledges leave some key gaps, as follows (in some cases, as noted below, the NDP has pledged to close the gap):

• pass an “honesty in politics” law with high fines for liars (including requiring MPs who switch parties between elections to resign and run in a by-election, as the NDP proposes);
• expand the powers of the Registrar of Lobbyists, Information Commissioner and Auditor General so that they can fine and publicly name violators of the codes, rules and laws they enforce (the Conservatives only pledge to give the Ethics Commissioner the power to levy fines);
• to prevent secret donations from corrupting federal government politicians and officials, as proposed by the federal Department of Finance place federal politicians, their staff, Cabinet appointees and any government employees with decision-making power on the anti-corruption watch list of the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (Fintrac);
• as the NDP has proposed, require lobbyists to disclose how much they spend on each lobbying campaign and their past work with any Canadian or foreign government, political party or candidate, and clearly ban lobbyists from working with any government, political party or candidate, and;
• introduce and pass a “meaningful public consultation” law to ensure Canadians have a strong and direct say in government policy-making (as in Sweden).

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SOME REMARKS ON WAR SPIRIT

In America, the so-called high standard of living, urbanism, the sexual revolution only partly carried through, have notoriously resulted in excessive busyness with little reward in happiness, and in excessive stimulation with inadequate sexual or creative discharge. People are balked by the general inhibition of anger and physical aggression in our cities, offices, and streamlined industries and grievance committees. And since one cannot be angry, one cannot be affectionate.

At the same time, as part of the same urban-technological-economical-political complex, common people today are extraordinarily powerless. Few ever make, individually or in face-to-face associations, decisions about many of the most important matters. Labor decides about neither the product nor the process, the utility nor the distribution. Affairs are bureaucratized, with inevitable. petty delays and tensions. There is an almost total absence of real rather than formal democracy. A local meeting, e.g., a Parent-Teachers meeting, has no power to decide but can only exert pressure, which is usually cleverly evaded. Voters decide not issues or policies but the choice between equivalent Front personalities. The corporations dominate the economy and small enterprises are discouraged. The pattern, especially of middle-class life, is scheduled often down to the minute, and spontaneity is penalized. Even consumption goods are bought for emulation rather than final satisfaction. Police surveillance increases conformity and timidity. With increasing wealth, there is increasing insecurity.

According to the theory of masochism of Wilhelm Reich, which has become fairly standard, the result of such excessive stimulation and inadequate discharge is a need to "explode," be pierced, beaten, etc., in order to release the feelings that have been pent up. Of course, it is people themselves who are imprisoning themselves; they could release themselves if it were not for the totality of their fearfulness and ineffectuality. That is to say, they cannot release themselves. Instead, they feel that release must come from outside agents or events. More healthily, this is felt as excitement in destruction and danger; in the lure of daring and dangerous sports; in the innocent joy in watching a house burn down and living through hurricanes and earthquakes (and discussing them endlessly.) And characteristically of poor mankind, once they been given the cosmical permission of Necessity, people act with the community and heroism that is in them from the beginning. The case is darker, more painful and sadistic when, avidly but generally more privately, people read up the air disasters. Likewise, the nuclear phobia of many patients is a projection of their own self-destructive and destructive wishes, and it vanishes when so analyzed, that is, when the patient can reconnect the images of disaster to the actual things that he wants to explode, burn, poison, annihilate.

Similar are fantasies of destructive Enemies, who will do the job for us. And it does not help if two opposed Enemies cooperate in their projections, so that each one recognizes a threat in the other and arms accordingly and so provides more tangible proof of the threat. (This phenomenon of mirror-image projections has been somewhat studied by Professor Osgood.)

A less familiar factor, but to my mind a very important one, is the inhibited response to the insulting and nauseating tone of our commercialized popular culture and advertising. People experience a self-disgust and a wish to annihilate, vomit up, this way of life; but they hold their nausea down, they feel powerless to give up this culture – it is all there is-they cannot even shut off the TV.

On these grounds, we can speak of War Spirit as an epidemic wish to commit suicide en masse, as one community. To have the frustration over with! to get rid of all that junk at once! Thus, an important explanation of the paralysis of the public in safeguarding against, or simply dismissing, the obvious irrationality and danger of war policies, is that people are inwardly betrayed by a wish for the catastrophe that they rationally oppose.

So far negatively. But there is a positive side. Powerless and uninventive in decisive affairs of everyday life, people increasingly find excitement in the doings of the Great on far-off stages and in the Big News in the newspapers. This occurs everywhere as spectatoritis and TV-watching. An event might be happening outside the window, but people will watch it on the TV screen instead; for there, it is purified, magnified, and legitimized by the national medium. What is sponsored by a national network is Reality. And, of course, of this Big News the most important is the drama of the Warring Powers, that toys with, and continually threatens to satisfy, every man's orgastic-destructive urges. Brinkmanship and Playing Chicken and the Testing of bigger firecrackers – however stupid and immediately rejectable by common reason – are nevertheless taken as most serious maneuvers. The powerlessness of the small gets solace by identification with power Elites, and people eagerly say "We" and "They," meaning one bloc or the other.

The outpouring of dammed-up hostility is channeled antiseptically and guiltlessly through pugnacious diplomacy, interest in impersonal technology, and the excitement of war-games theory. Push-button and aerial war is especially like a dream. It is forbiddingly satisfactory in its effects, yet one is hardly responsible for it, one has hardly even touched a weapon. Games-theory has the mechanical innocence of a computer.

Paul Goodman, 1962
Speech at Columbia University to the SDS


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