Bureaucratic Collectivist Capitalism

Al Ahram has another brilliant essay in this weeks issue; Egypt and the ghost of Marx

It reminds me of Max Schactman's critique of State Capitalism in the USSR as being Bureaucratic Collectivism. In this case the Egyptian economy went from being a State Capitalist economy under Nassar to becoming a bureaucratic Collectivist capitalism under neo-liberalism.

The similarities are striking. Complete down to the New Class criticism of the Soviet Union and by the fact that social upheaval that had occurred in the Seventies and Eighties by the professionals, technocrats, artists, writers, workers and poor that led to Glasnost is now occurring in Egypt.

It was natural for this kind of situation to lead to the predominance of suppressed "social" grumbling among various sectors of the populace, particularly traditional professionals such as teachers, lawyers, doctors and engineers, in addition to the armies of the unemployed. It was possible for any organized power opposed to the ruling party to exploit this situation in its interest and reap its fruits without regard to its political or religious nature. This is what the second class -- the Muslim Brotherhood -- did. Over seven decades it has succeeded in securing its bases among large groups including the small bourgeois in the cities as well as low- ranking civil servants and a wide section of professional syndicate members and other marginalised groups that have suffered from the mistakes of development policies over the last three decades.

Except instead of occurring because of Bureaucratic Collectivism it is because of Collectivist Bureaucratic Capitalism. The political analysis in this article about why the ruling class lost the election, though they won the government, to the Muslim Brotherhood is because the State and its capitalist class have become disengaged from the needs of the people. Neo-Liberalism in the Non-G8 world has become bureaucratic Collectivist Capitalism with a New Class in charge of what the Economist would call crony capitalism.

From a capitalism led by the state in the Nasser era to a capitalism "practiced" by individuals in the Sadat era, the door was opened wide to monopolistic practices marred by financial and institutional corruption. In the end this resulted in a "catholic alliance" between capitalism and government bureaucracy, followed by the appearance of a new, uncontrolled class -- "bureaucratic capitalists" -- that does not embrace real capitalism as much as its slogans, and which is not led by any ethical or social framework in the practice of its economic activity. In its presence, the state appears to have become incapable of providing the most basic services to its citizens.

With the arrival of the third millennium it appeared as though a new class was being formed in the womb of the Egyptian regime. Its form resembled that of the "comprador bourgeoisie," so named by theorists of the dependency school. This elite relied on external support more than connections on the domestic front, the price of its incorporation into the global market paid by overlooking society's basic demands. Many of the economic laws that have been passed recently can be read in this context.

Since then, it has appeared as though the process of "disengagement" between the state and society that began in the mid-1970s has reached its fullest extent. It has become clear that the state is attempting to replace its social legitimacy with another that is class-based and which relies on wealth that has swelled over the last decade. This development resembles a deal in which the regime benefits from the extraordinary economic capabilities of the new class while shoring up foreign legitimacy through compliance with economic transformation programmes. The new rich, in turn, benefit from the inheritance of a centralized state by moving from the world of a shadow economy to the world of politics and legitimacy through the doors of parliament.

Now compare that with Djilas theory of the New Class in the old Soviet Union and the similarities are stunning.

Djilas' New Class

A theory of the new class was developed by Milovan Djilas, who participated with Tito in the Yugoslavian Revolution, but was later purged by him as Djilas began to advocate democraticegalitarian ideals (which he believed were more in line with the way socialism and communism should look like). The theory of the new class is in contradiction to the claims of certain ruling communists, such as Stalin, who argued that their revolutions and/or social reforms had resulted in the extinction of any ruling class as such. It was Djilas' observation as a member of a communist government that party members stepped into the role of ruling class - a problem which he believed should be corrected through revolution. Djilas' completed his primary work on his new class theory in the mid 1950s. and

Djilas claimed that the new class' specific relationship to the means of production was one of collective political control, and that the new class' property form was political control. Thus for Djilas the new class not only seeks expanded material reproduction to politically justify its existence to the working class, but it also seeks expanded reproduction of political control as a form of property in itself. This can be compared to the capitalist who seeks expanded value through increased sharemarket values, even though the sharemarket itself does not necessarily reflect an increase in the value of commodities produced. Djilas uses this argument about property forms to indicate why the new class sought parades, marches and spectacles despite this activity lowering the levels of material productivity.

Djilas proposed that the new class only slowly came to self-consciousness of itself as a class. On arriving at a full self-consciousness the initial project undertaken would be massive industrialisation in order to cement the external security of the new class' rule against foreign or alternative ruling classes. In Djilas' schema this approximated the 1930s and 1940s in the Soviet Union. As the new class suborns all other interests to its own security during this period, it freely executes and purges its own members in order to achieve its major goal of security as a ruling class.

After security has been achieved, the new class pursues a policy of moderation towards its own members, effectively granting material rewards and freedom of thought and action within the new class -- so long as this freedom is not used to undermine the rule of the new class. Djilas identified this period as the period of Khrushchev's government in the Soviet Union. Due to the emergence of conflicts of policy within the new class, the potential for palace coups, or populist revolutions is possible (as experienced in Poland and Hungary respectively).

Finally Djilas predicted a period of economic decline, as the political future of the new class was consolidated around a staid programme of corruption and self-interest at the expense of other social classes. This can be interpreted as a prediction of the Brezhnev era stagnation by Djilas.

How can capitalism be Bureaucratic Collectivist you ask. Well it is simple the IMF and World Bank as much as they are agencies of U.S. Imperialism, are in effect left overs of the post WWII Keynesian social welfare state. They fueled that dependency model of economics until the eighties when they shifted to a neo-liberal model of economic adjustment.

The World Bank in particular promoted the privatization of State Enterprises and attached funding strings that enforced the restructuring of national economies. The IMF used its clout to demand open markets, reductions in social spending and the further privatization of the economy.

The capitalist models they were using were not the existing sustainable local market economies, see my article on Africa, but rather they were opening up the existing state enterprises to investment by the local ruling classes and their bureaucracy, and allowing for international investment into these existing enterprises.

In the former Soviet Union this led to what we call Mafia Capitalism, where the old apparatchiks became the new bosses. The same thing occurred in Egypt. The bureaucracy became the new capitalist class. And since the WB and the IMF themselves are giant bureaucratic monopolies, they only understand dealing with large scale enterprises that are modeled on themselves.

The agenda of the WB and IMF was not to see the development of local sustainable economies but rather to open up closed economies to international investors and commodities.

As the article from Al Ahram shows this resulted in exactly the same collective bureaucratization that occurs under any form of State Capitalist model of development. It doesn't matter what the ideology is. In this case neo-liberal models of economics embraced by the U.S. and Britain impacted in these countries not as opening up the market place but actually closing the markets to the local communities and opening them up to the international capitalist corporations.

At the same time the IMF demanded that states reduce their obligations towards their citizens, claiming that privatization of water, utilities, public transit, and other services would allow for competition. The competition did not occur, rather state services become private monopolies. And reduced their social subsidization while searching for investment markets and investors to shore up their bottom line. Why build infrastructure in rural Egypt when you build housing and hotel developments in Israel or Saudi Arabia.

Egypt is not alone in suffering from this failed model of political economy. Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, and all the newly developed capitalist economies of the South have suffered exactly from this same form of bureaucratic Collectivist Capitalism. It is apparent in the democratic uprisings in these Latin American countries. Venezuela is an excellent example of the same crony ruling class dominant class being out of touch with the people as Egypt now experiences.

Chavez mobilized those out of power to gain power. The ruling class he faced down and still faces as an opposition includes the wealthy and powerful, the union bosses and their members who benefited from the bureaucratic Collectivist capitalism of the monopoly gas and oil industry, and from the middle classes whose wealth comes from their privilege.

Ironically it is the Left in Latin America that now calls for an end to the power of the bureaucratic Collectivist classes, and is trying new models of social and economic development that is sustainable, locally based and based on worker and consumer collectives and cooperatives.

It is this model that can challenge the globalization model of the WB and the IMF and their crony capitalist class in Egypt.

Also see:

The Need for Arab Anarchism

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Ibn Khaldun 14th Century Arab Libertarian

I found a reference to Ibn Khaldun in an op ed piece on Freedom of the Press in the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram. The article itself is well worth the read, as it gives a classic liberal view of the issue and its importance for the reformation of the Egyptian political system.

Often in the West we are given to believing the portrait painted by the media of the Middle East as a unitary Islamic culture, one that has no liberal traditions and is under the dominant authority of the Mullahs.

Ahmed Naguib Roushdy writes:

John Stuart Mill and John Locke wrote about freedom as a political principle, but it was Mill who fully enmeshed it in a philosophical theory. The Islamic historian and jurist, Ibn Khaldun, who preceded Adam Smith in calling for open markets and free trade by 400 years, said in his famous work Al-Muqaddema that restricting people's freedom would preclude the advance of economic development and commercial exchange. Modern economists and writers still consider that there is a connection between freedom and the welfare of nations.

I had not heard of Ibn Khaldun before reading this piece and so I googled him. As the author said he fits well within the liberal tradition, indeed in modern terms he can be seen as a precursor to both Adam Smith and Karl Marx.

The English Historian Arnold Toynbee says this about Ibn Khaldun;

Ibn Khaldūn, from Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History vol. iii, III. C. II. (b), p. 321
The last member of our Pleiad of historians is ‛Abd-ar-Rahmān ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldūn al-Hadramī of Tunis (vivebatA.D. 1332-1406)—an Arabic genius who achieved in a single 'acquiescence' of less than four years' length, out of a fifty-four years' span of adult working life, a life-work in the shape of a piece of literature which can bear comparison with the work of a Thucydides or the work of a Machiavelli for both breadth and profundity of vision as well as for sheer intellectual power. In his chosen field of intellectual activity he appears to have been inspired by no predecessors² and to have found no kindred souls among his contemporaries and to have kindled no answering spark of inspiration in any successors; and yet, in the Prolegomena (Muqaddimat) to his Universal History he has conceived and formulated a philosophy of history which is undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mind in any time or place. It was his single brief 'acquiescence' from a life of practical activity that gave Ibn Khaldūn his opportunity to cast his creative thought into literary shape.

His major life work can be defined as a Universal History of the Politcal Economy Arab world, It is a Sociology of Economics. In fact his work is remincint of the later works of Spencer, Weber and Veblen.

Ibn Khaldun, a Sufi who died in 1406 AD, was a renaissance man, the real father of sociology. He defined the foundations of sociology more than 4 centuries before Auguste Comte "discovered" them .

During his lifetime Ibn Khaldun is seeing the development of the earliest forms of capitalist primitive accumulation during the period of the last crusade the centralization of Arab control over the Middle East and the decline of European Fuedalism. This would not be recognized in Europe for another two hundred years. He developed a Labour Theory of Value predating Adam Smith, Ricardo and Marx. In fact he is a libertarian economic sociologist.

“Whoever takes someone's property, or uses him for forced labor, or presses an unjustified claim upon him It should be known that this is what the Lawgiver had in mind when he forbade injustice.”

Ibn Khaldun fits well within the World Systems Theory of the evolution of Capitalism as developed by Wallerstein and Arrigi. In fact it places Arrighi's dating of the earliest development of capitalism as far back as the 14th century as correct. Journal of World-Systems Research

Ibn Khaldun: Discourse of the Method and Concepts of Economic Sociology

Capitalists (al-mutamawwiluun)

The term "al-mutamawwiluun" refers to persons possessing a great deal of capital. These are individuals who have acquired great estates and farms. They are considered among the wealthiest inhabitants of a particular city. Their capital is generated through fluctuation of the market, imposition of taxes and commerce. They appropriate the labour power of other people in return for protection and other non-material services. Ibn Khaldun says that these are persons who live in great luxury and are accustomed to it. They compete in this respect with emirs and rulers. Emirs and rulers could use their power to undertake similar activities, something which Ibn Khaldun doest not recommend.

Class structure.

There are, according to Ibn Khaldun, three major classes:

At the top is the class of rulers. This is the class of those holding power. It also includes capitalists.

Thereafter comes the middle class. This is the class between the capitalists and the lower class. It composes entrepreneurs (al-mu^ctamiruun), i.e. those who are engaged in activities such as craftsmanship and the like and who are not capitalists.

At the bottom, says Ibn Khaldun, there is the lower class, described as those who have nothing to gain or to loose.

Surplus earnings in money and kind (al-muktasabaat)

This denotes all types of visible surplus earnings, contrary to utility-produces (al-mifaadaat) which are invisible.

Considering the two terms together, Ibn Khaldun says that al-mifaadaat and al-muktasabaat in their entirety or for the most are value realized from human labour. Human effort and labour is necessary for every unit of surplus in money and every unit of surplus in kind. Labour could be concealed or obvious, but whatever the case, none of these surpluses will be realized without labour

The know-how productivity (al-mifaad al-muqtana minhu)

This is one of the most important terms of Ibn Khaldun's theory of value. It represents the mere know-how labour which results in creation of utility. It is the productive skilled labour that creates value. There is nothing here but labour.

Ibn Khaldun means that when we buy an article, we do not buy only something concrete (the thing in itself), but we buy in fact the amount of labour which is spent to create that article. Since labour differs in its quality, the price of the article must also differ. Ibn Khaldun expresses this qualitative distinction by the linguistically related term al-qinyah.

Labour

Labour is the sine qua non of all, the source of value. It belongs to the things that constitute capital. One's value, says Ibn Khaldun, is embodied in one's labour and this can not be realized without payment. Labour, which constitutes one's sustenance, livelihood and surplus earnings, is divided into primary and additional labour.

Additional labour generates surplus earnings. Increase in demand creates new types of crafts and more labour. The market flourishes, the surplus earnings of entrepreneurs increase. The income and expenditure of the state and civilization­ al-^cumraan grows. The cycle repeats itself with the increase of demand for luxuries. Al-^cumraan increases for the second time. The cycle leads to higher and higher stages of growth, until one reaches the final stage of al-^cumraan where growth cannot be overstepped. [Here lies the rudiments of the Multiplier Effect and of measurement of GNP]

Economic enterprise (al-i^ctimaar)

This term refers to productive activities ­activities that yield surplus earnings­ whether emanating from agricultural labourers, farmers, craftsmen, capitalists and all other tax payers.

Economic enterprise (al-i^ctimaar) results from ambitions and incentives. Business and activities stop when hope and stimulation vanishes. Ibn Khaldun says that man is a natural leader, but becomes apathetic when deprived of his leadership

Those who undertake such activities are called " al-mu^ctamiruun- entrepreneurs. They engage themselves into productive labour through active participation as opposed to, for instance, capitalists (al-mutamawwiluun).

Gross earnings in money and kind (al-makaasib).

The terms "al-makasib" is a general term. It covers income, expenditure, consumption and savings.Labour is the main foundation and source of al-makaasib. According to Ibn Khaldun, gross earnings are achieved after having covered one's expenditures (an-nafaqaat) and one's livelihood (al-ma^caash). The overspill is savings that could lead to:

• accumulation of money as dead capital (ar-riyaash) and/or
• accumulation of capital in kind (al-mutamawwal)

Gross earnings, says Ibn Khaldun, are measured in gold and silver.

Accumulation of money as dead capital (ar-riyaash) is a surplus that exceeds needs and necessities. It denotes money, or treasure (adh-dhakhiirah) as measured in gold and silver.

Accumulation of capital in kind (al-mutamawwal) is also a surplus (maksab) that exceeds needs and necessities. It refers to goods and properties (estates, farms etc.) which result from crafts and non-crafts and which can potentially be converted into cash or gold and silver.

On economics

"In the early stages of the state, taxes are light in their incidence, but fetch in a large revenue...As time passes and kings succeed each other, they lose their tribal habits in favor of more civilized ones. Their needs and exigencies grow...owing to the luxury in which they have been brought up. Hence they impose fresh taxes on their subjects...[and] sharply raise the rate of old taxes to increase their yield...But the effects on business of this rise in taxation make themselves felt. For business men are soon discouraged by the comparison of their profits with the burden of their taxes...Consequently production falls off, and with it the yield of taxation."

This sociological theory includes the concept known in economics as the Laffer Curve (the relationship between tax rates and tax revenue follows an inverted U shape).

For sociology it is interesting that he conceived both a central social conflict ("town" versus "desert") as well as a theory (using the concept of a "generation") of the necessary loss of power of city conquerors coming from the desert. The work is based around Ibn Khaldun's central concept of 'asabiyah "social cohesion." This cohesion arises spontaneously in tribes and other small kinship groups; and it can be intensified and enlarged by a religious ideology. Ibn Khaldun's analysis looks at how this cohesion carries groups to power but contains within itself the seeds - psychological, sociological, economic, political - of the group's downfall, to be replaced by a new group, dynasty or empire bound by a stronger (or at least younger and more vigorous) cohesion.

Perhaps the most frequently cited observation drawn from Ibn Khaldūn's work is, in layman's terms, the notion that when a society becomes a great civilization (and, presumably, the dominant culture in its region), its high point is followed by a period of decay. This means that the next cohesive group that conquers the diminished civilization is, by comparison, a group of barbarians. Once the barbarians solidify their control over the conquered society, however, they become attracted to its more refined aspects, such as literacy and arts, and either assimilate into or appropriate such cultural practices. Then, eventually, the former barbarians will be conquered by a new set of barbarians, who will repeat the process.

See:The Need for Arab Anarchism

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agorism, counter-economics, left libertarian, new libertarian or Movement of the Libertarian Left.

Harper Cabinet Predictions

Alright here are my predictions for the Harper cabinet.

Rona Ambrose Foreign Affairs

Monte Solberg Treasury Board

Jim Prentice Indian Affairs

Diane Ablonczy HRDC

Peter McKay Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness

Vic Toews Justice and Attorney General

Carolyn Skelton Agriculture

Stockwell Day Water Sports

Conservative cabinet hopefuls wait by the phone for 'The Call' from Harper

Stocking up Tory cabinet

Don't politicize appointments: chief justice

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Left, Right and Liberty

My old pal from our Canadian University Press (CUP) days; Terry Glavin in his latest blog entry criticizes what he sees as the libertarian/anarchist underpinings of the new left, the anti-war and the anti-globalization movement.

And Glavin believes they are dangerous, American ideas influencing our glorious Canadian Social Democratic politics.

Glavin first quotes from Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, in Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can’t be Jammed (Harper Perennial, 2000)

Unfortunately, the idea of counterculture has become so deeply embedded in our understanding of society that it influences every aspect of social and political life. Most importantly, it has become the conceptual template for all contemporary leftist politics. Counterculture has almost completely replaced socialism as the basis of radical political thought. So if counterculture is a myth, then it is one that has misled an enormous number of people, with untold political consequences.”

The counterculture of music, smoke ins, Adbuster magazine, G@P anarchist hip clothing chic is recuperated by capitalism, thus it is not socialism it is protest chic. Well congratulations on discovering that the counter culture is a consumer form of capitalism which it always was anyways. 'Hip capitalism', as we called it in the seventies and eighties was a kinder groovier kind of capitalism. See my Hypocrisy of Hip Capitalism

It's an old debate in the Anarchist movement as well, lifestyle reformism versus social revolution. Today the debate over counter culture is exemplified by Murray Bookchin with his Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism and Richard Day with his new book Gramsci is Dead.

Do we create alternative drop out cultures that ignore the state (Day) or do we actively mobilize to create a social revolution based on class struggle (Bookchin). This debate is now occuring again in the anti-war/anti-globalization movement which I think is the point that Glavin is trying to make. I think, because it is far from clear, that he is identifying libertarian/anarchist politics with drop out politics of the old counterculutre.

But then he goes and says this.

Ron Dart is a Red Tory philosopher, a devout Anglican, an NDP supporter (at least for now), an authority on the beat poets and the Catholic mystic Thomas Merton, and the author more than a dozen books, including The Red Tory Tradition: Ancient Roots, New Routes. In conversation with Ron the other day, I heard more than just a faint echo of the Heath/Potter thesis.

Beware the “antistate” left, he said. It may be Harper’s loudest and most vociferous opposition, but listen carefully. It speaks the same language that Harper does. It cleaves to “liberal” ideas, but in the American meaning of the word. It is a “subtler imperialism” that threatens to render Canada incapable of articulating an effective, homegrown defence against neoconservatism.

Beware of the Anti-State Left. As if Anarchism and Libertarian ideas are somehow foreign to the Canadian Left, an American influence on good old Canadian Methodist Social Democracy. In a further leap of logic Glavin then tells us what kind of an outcome will happen if these dangerous libertarian, anti-state ideas influence the Canadian Left.

"And it comes with a warning Canadians should heed: Beware, else we end up with our own versions of Fox News shouting matches, and our own Al Frankens pitted against their Bill O’Reillys in the same degenerate American arguments, carried on in the same American language, and the same hoarse and hate-filled stalemate that has so horribly paralyzed and disfigured American politics."

I know Glavin has gone native, and lives in the heart of the counter culture beast on the Left Coast of Vancouver Island but really where has he been for the last thirty years since we both left university?

We already have those voices on the right, the Ezra Levants, the Fraser Institute, the Byfields, the Alberta/B.C./Western Report, etc etc. They have been around for ages. The right specializes in generalizations and outrageous statements, the social democratic left as I have complained before have been far too polite and nice in debates allowing these screaming ranting right wingers to brow beat them in media debates. Glavin appears to think that some how polite English school boy debate, tea and crumpets, good show ol boy, is the Canadian way.

But back to my main point Anarchism and the Libertarian Left are as Canadian as any other aspect of the New Left or the Old Left. Emma Goldman the famous anarchist agitator traveled across Canada and eventually died in Toronto in exile from the United States. The Revolutionary union, the IWW was active in Canada at the turn of last century and the radicals which formed it went on to form the One Big Union, the OBU. It was reviewed in Canada in the seventies by those of us young anarchists including some of us in CUP. And is is going strong again now.

George Woodcock the famous English professor from UBC and anarchist biographer and historian was one of the earliest promoters of anarchism in Canada in the sixties. By the late sixties the New Left in Canada had a strong anarchist compenent in it based on Our Generation, a magazine out of Quebec which represented what the editors broadly called the Extra Parlimentary Opposition in Canada, that is the New Left.

By the seventies we had Yippies and anarchist collectives in every city in Canada.
And Vancouver, Glavins home town was no exception. It was chock full of anarchists especially around the magazine the Open Road. Which is well documented in Alan Antliffs book Only A Beginning: An Anarchist Anthology

Besides the Social Democratic Left which would influence the Liberals and Progressives alike in the Forties, we had a tradition of both radical Communists and Anarchists in Canada.

Way before Stephen Harper and the neo-cons recuperated the term libertarian it was used by members of the new left. And as I have taken pains to show here on numerous occasions those on the right who call themselves libertarians are merely Lazzie-faire capitalists, not real libertarians.

And one of the major Libertarian theorists in the U.S. was Canadian Samuel Edward Konkin III (SEK3) who moved to LA from Edmonton. That is truly a 'subtle imperialism'. True SEK3 was a student of Murray Rothbard, the economic historian, who did much to promote the Libertarian ideology that so upsets Glavin and his Red Tory friend. A NEW AMERICAN REVOLUTION

But Red Tories are really classic liberals, fiscal conservatives and socially liberal. Not unlike Tommy Douglas and the old CCF. In fact that is the history of liberalism, it went from a radical idea to becoming the defender of the status quo. In fact old fashioned political conservatism in Canada is liberal. The success of the Manning Reform party, and indeed the so called libertarianism of Stephen Harper are not based on libertarianism at all but on populism, economic liberalism and American Republican conservatism.

Here is what Murray Rothbard has to say about liberalism the ideology of the Red Tories and the Social Democrats that Glavin claims are as Canadian as maple syrup and beaver pelts.

In England, the classical liberals began their shift from radicalism to quasi-conservatism in the early nineteenth century; a touchstone of this shift was the general British liberal attitude toward the national liberation struggle in Ireland. This struggle was twofold: against British political imperialism, and against feudal landlordism which had been imposed by that imperialism. By their Tory blindness toward the Irish drive for national independence, and especially for peasant property against feudal oppression, the British liberals (including Spencer) symbolized their effective abandonment of genuine Liberalism, which had been virtually born in a struggle against the feudal land system. Only in the United States, the great home of radical liberalism (where feudalism had never been able to take root outside the South), did natural rights and higher law theory, and consequent radical liberal movements, continue in prominence until the mid-nineteenth century. In their different ways, the Jacksonian and Abolitionist movements were the last powerful radical libertarian movements in American life.

Thus, with Liberalism abandoned from within, there was no longer a party of Hope in the Western world, no longer a "Left" movement to lead a struggle against the State and against the unbreached remainder of the Old Order. Into this gap, into this void created by the drying up of radical liberalism, there stepped a new movement: Socialism. Libertarians of the present day are accustomed to think of socialism as the polar opposite of the libertarian creed. But this is a grave mistake, responsible for a severe ideological disorientation of libertarians in the present world. As we have seen, Conservatism was the polar opposite of liberty; and socialism, while to the "left" of conservatism, was essentially a confused, middle-of-the road movement. It was, and still is, middle-of-the road because it tries to achieve Liberal ends by the use of Conservative means.

In other words the anarchist critique of socialism (being the left wing of the socialist movement), has been that its reliance on parilmentary politics and the idea of the seizure of state power by either elections or by revolution is flawed.

The anarchist or libertarian critique has been that social democracy, which is not socialism any more than Bolshevism is communism, is State Socialism, in other words Bismarkian socialism and thus a defense of the status quo. It is reformism an attempt to ameliorate the worst conditions of capitalism. European Social democracy died with WWI when it aided and abetted that war.

In Canada social democracy arose with the coming of the second wave immigrations of Central and Eastern Europeans who brought with them their growing revolutionary aspirations towards socialism and democracy that they lacked in the old country.They came to a Canada dominated by the English ruling classes and a French comprador class in Quebec.Canada's First Internment Camps

After WWI Canada saw the rise of a broad based immigrant workers and farmers movement. And again in the midst of the depression socialist ideas gained hold in the workers movement. After the second World War, the Progressives merged with the Conservatives, the CCF held power over a Liberal minority government, and Canada's war time state capitalist economy under C.D. Howe the Minister of Everything (and a darling of the neo-con right wing today ironically) easily shifted to welfare state capitalism of Keynesian model.

So Glavin and Dart are right in saying Canada's uniqueness in relationship to the U.S. is our social democratic values as a nation. I have said that here many times. That being said the libertarian spirit of Canadians also exists and is expressed on the left as well as the right. In particular in both Quebec and the Prairies where we have struggled against the English colonial mercantilist establishment of Ontario.Social Credit And Western Canadian Radicalism

What Glavin and Dart are attempting to do is identify social democracy with nationalism, with a unique Canadian identity of state capitalism. This is the same ideology of classic liberal nationalists like Mel Hurtig and Maude Barlow who run the amorphous mass organization the Council of Canadians. And while Hurtig is from Edmonton as a capitalist he always aspired, much like Peter Lougheed, to see the West as a real partner in late twentieth century Canadian Politics.

All Canadian nationalism is Ontario centric. It is based on the politics of Ontario's identity in relationship to the Americans and Quebec. Once upon a time Canadian Nationalism was the Ontario English ruling class identity, formed by its special relationship to the British Crown. Later as Canada became ten provinces, Ontario allowed the West to join in 'its' confederation not as a partner but as chattel colony for the mercantilist interests of its ruling class. Rebel Yell

Today Nationalism in Canada reflects the interests of Ontario, not the West or the Maritimes or Quebec. Today's social democrats be they Red Tories, New Democrats or Liberals, still cannot concieve of Canada as a different kind of federation. A more decentralized one, a real partnership, a renewed democracy with greater individual and community control and representation. The Bankruptcy of Liberal Federalism

In fact Toronto has become such a megacity it has veiewed itself as seperate from Ontario for many decades now, which is why Torontonians refer to Toronto, Canada. The base of Canadian nationalism is here in the heart of the beast. All the left has their base in Ontario, their national headquarters are either in Ottawa or Toronto. While capitalism has moved west.

Calgary is the new centre of Capitalism in Canada. Not Bay Street. Winnipeg was once what Calgary is today, the centre of rail, grain, furs and other real exports. Ontario was the industrial heartland where Winnipeg shipped goods to for processing. Winnipeg shared with Chicago the Grain Exchange and the Commodity exchange. Bay Street was le petit Wall Street. Real capitalism in Canada in the 20th Century has been a movement westward.

Toronto and Ontario cling to a rustbelt future, an old conservative elite whose time once was. Today the leaders of the liberal values of the status quo are interchangeable.

We have Bob Rae former NDP leader touted as a potential leadership candidate for the Federal Liberals. His brother already is.

We have the McQuinty brothers representing both the provincial and federal Liberals.

We have Jack Layton a former Toronto city counselor as federal NDP leader now joined in Parliment by his wife, Oliva Chow another former Toronto city conselor.

We have Belinda Stronach, millionaress, business scion of the new capitalism of post-fordism. She went from being a Conservative Leadership contender and MP to being a Liberal Cabinet minister and now MP and potential Liberal leadership candidate.

And we have Buzz Hargrove with his social democratic strategic voting in the last election endorsing the Liberals. While Ford and GM care not a wit who he votes for and still slash Canadian autoworkers jobs.

The political reality of Canada is that the base of social democratic power remains identified with the status quo, with its Nationalism and with its base in Ontario. This can be clearly seen from the last election. Where really nothing changed. The social democratic left is still stronger than the social conservatives who are now the government. But its base is the status quo, not radical change. Voting for Capitalism On January 23

On the other hand the election shows that libertarian/populist radical politics comes from the West and Quebec. Rather than embracing the staus quo as Glavin and Dart suggest, in order to revive a failed dream of a Federal NDP government, the left in Canada needs a good dose of libertarianism to thwart the right. Without it the contradictions of the Harper Conservatives will never be confronted their psuedo-libertarianism never exposed for the Republicanism it is. Whigs and Tory's

Glavin and Dart suggest we maintain the status quo, that the Left subsume itself into parlimentary politics, and existing trade union politics by extension. But the left has been doing that for fifty years and it has gotten us nowhere. It is the politics of the stationary bicycle. The libertarian left wants to put wheels on the bicycle and go somewhere.

See:

The Neo Liberal Canadian State

Historical Memory on the Eve of the Election

LABOUR HISTORY

The Edmonton General Strike Of 1919

Also references in the article: A greater union,

Calgary 1919-The Birth Of The OBU And The General Strike

The CCF:The Original Reform Movement

The Edmonton District Labour Council and Municipal Politics 1903-1906

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left wing

Paul Martin in Denial

Paul Martins final press conference as PM was yesterday and despite quizzing
and prodding to say he and his team screwed up and lost the election he just couldn't admit it. Martin surprised by his own undoing

Poor Paul spent years in a backroom battle with his hand picked back room boys only to become another Lame Duck PM. Despite all his statements to the contrary he was a lame duck. Martin makes no apologies for Liberal decline, boasts of economic legacy Undone by the backroom politics of the Liberal Party.

He is in good company with these folks other lame duck Prime Ministers undone by backroom party politics.








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Hockey Night in Kandahar

During yesterdays press briefing on Team Canada, the 2200 Canadian troops, two RCMP and on member each of CIDA and Foreign affairs going over to Kandahar to secure the province and begin infrastructure construction, Brig. General Fraser refered to his mission as equivalent to a hockey game.

He claimed he had an excellent forward line and a defensive line, the team was well equipped, the goal tendening was number one and his bench was deep.Wow guess they are going to plant a loonie somewhere in Kandahar like Team Canada did at the Winter Olympics.

So we are going to play hockey in Kandahar. No not really but it was so Canadian, so iconic. We can all now feel good about cheering for Team Canada against Team Taliban. Team Canada in Peril Butwhen our Canadian troops get injured or killed its going to be alot more serious than the Winter Olympics which coincide with Team Canada's mission to Kandahar.Team Canada waiting on injury reports

Brig. Gen. David Fraser, future multinational commander, speaks during a press conference Thursday in Ottawa.

"We do not take a back seat to any other nation in the world. Our soldiers are first-notch, first-class and ready for this mission," Fraser said.Last year, Canada's military was primed to battle "detestable murderers and scumbags," in the words of Gen. Rick Hillier, the chief of defence staff.Now in the wake of several serious attacks on Canadians and calls for a parliamentary debate on the country's role in Afghanistan, the military has toned down its tough talk."This mission is about Canadians helping Afghans," Fraser said yesterday as he repeatedly stressed the mission is "not just about combat operations."We are prepared to kill if we have to," he said. "But that is not my mandate, to just go out and just kill. My mandate is go out and help the Afghans address the challenges that face them," he said.And conspicuously absent was any mention of Canada's special forces, who have suffered casualties in operations in Afghanistan.Instead, the focus yesterday was on the "Team Canada" approach to rebuilding the country.

When asked about whether this mission would take the fight to the enemy, that is the insurgents and Taliban in the outlying areas surrounding Kandahar, the General said that his team would play hard offence and they have a strong defence. I tell ya that man knows how to skate around a press conference.

When ever a press type would ask if the General was worried he would face Iraq like conditions in Afghanistan Fraser would say, "we have nothing do with Iraq I am going to Afghanistan."

Whew that's good to know, had us worried there. The point that the General seemed to continually miss was that the reporters weren't saying we were going to Iraq they were refering to the door to door, combat operations that American forces have faced in towns like Faluja and if Canadian troops would face the same kind of fight in Kandahar. But Fraser avoided that crucial issue with all the gusto and grumpiness of Don Cherry.

Afghan officials have expressed fears that foreign fighters are emulating the rebellion in Iraq with a wave of suicide attacks, including an assault this week when a bomber, dressed in women's clothes, killed five Afghans at an army checkpoint. "There is a big group coming from Iraq," said Ghulam Dusthaqir Azad, governor of the southwestern province of Nimroz. "They're linked to Al Qaeda and fought against U.S. forces in Iraq. They have been ordered to come here. Many are suicide attackers."Despite the dangers, Fraser said that soldiers are "pumped" about the upcoming mission.And he praised the equipment the troops will be taking with them, including LAV III armoured vehicles, hi-tech aerial drones to provide a bird's-eye view and new 155-mm howitzers that can blast a precision-guided shell 40 kilometres with an accuracy of 10 metres.

Blogger Peaktalk raises some interesting questions about the Canadian and Dutch forces going to Kandahar, both countries being left leaning social democracies share a view that their soliders are Peacekeepers says Peaktalk

Peacekeeping missions by their very nature include a ‘war-component’ as you will have to pacify some elements that have fail to recognize the terms of the truce that a peacekeeping force is supposed to maintain. In some nations, Canada being a great example, most people don’t even know that their sons and daughters in Afghanistan are actually engaged in fighting the Taliban. “We’re a peaceful nation and we’re making peace” is an often heard belief and it is hard to argue with it as no one has ever made it clear to the average Canadian what their mission was all about. So, Canadians and Dutch alike are often left with the artificial peacekeeping construct, used to buy political support, to ignore realities on the ground, and to wishfully think that there are no real life threatening hazards in today’s world.

His link is out of date, it goes back to a 2004 article. His point is well made, we are not on a peace keeping mission, but a mission to secure a hostile area and then peace will ensue.A dangerous mission for Canada's troops

General Fraser yesterday cleared up our mission yesterday. Candians now know full well the mission we are sending Frasers Team Canada to Kandahar to do. Uh sort of. We are going to build infrastructure in Kandahar, public buildings, schools, roads, train their army and police, establish the area as a secure State.

After we subdue the nasty warlords and Taliban in the hills with our brand new state of the art Howitzer, we will build a hockey rink and play Canada's national game in the newly established state of Kandahar. We are making Kandahar safe for Tim Hortons to open a franchise.

And while the General assured us Team Canada is playing with best equipment possible, apparently that is not so.

Some of their equipment dates back to when Edward "Eddie" Shore, "The Edmonton Express" played for the Boston Bruins, the same year the 'lauging stock' of the NHL the Chicago Black Hawks beat Toronto for their second Stanely cup ever., 1937-1938.

Canadians armed with WWII pistols



History and Development
of the M1911/M1911Al Pistol


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