A Movement Too Big To Fail
Chris Hedges, TruthDig
October 17, 2011
There is no danger that the protesters who have occupied squares, parks and plazas across the nation in defiance of the corporate state will be co-opted by the Democratic Party or groups like MoveOn. The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant. Union leaders, who pull down salaries five times that of the rank and file as they bargain away rights and benefits, know the foundations are shaking. So do Democratic politicians from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi. So do the array of “liberal” groups and institutions, including the press, that have worked to funnel discontented voters back into the swamp of electoral politics and mocked those who called for profound structural reform.
Resistance, real resistance, to the corporate state was displayed when a couple of thousand protesters, clutching mops and brooms, early Friday morning forced the owners of Zuccotti Park and the New York City police to back down from a proposed attempt to expel them in order to “clean” the premises. These protesters in that one glorious moment did what the traditional “liberal” establishment has steadily refused to do-fight back. And it was deeply moving to watch the corporate rats scamper back to their holes on Wall Street. It lent a whole new meaning to the phrase “too big to fail.”
Tinkering with the corporate state will not work. We will either be plunged into neo-feudalism and environmental catastrophe or we will wrest power from corporate hands. This radical message, one that demands a reversal of the corporate coup, is one the power elite, including the liberal class, is desperately trying to thwart. But the liberal class has no credibility left. It collaborated with corporate lobbyists to neglect the rights of tens of millions of Americans, as well as the innocents in our imperial wars. The best that liberals can do is sheepishly pretend this is what they wanted all along. Groups such as MoveOn and organized labor will find themselves without a constituency unless they at least pay lip service to the protests. The Teamsters’ arrival Friday morning to help defend the park signaled an infusion of this new radicalism into moribund unions rather than a co-opting of the protest movement by the traditional liberal establishment. The union bosses, in short, had no choice.
The Occupy Wall Street movement, like all radical movements, has obliterated the narrow political parameters. It proposes something new. It will not make concessions with corrupt systems of corporate power. It holds fast to moral imperatives regardless of the cost. It confronts authority out of a sense of responsibility. It is not interested in formal positions of power. It is not seeking office. It is not trying to get people to vote. It has no resources. It can’t carry suitcases of money to congressional offices or run millions of dollars of advertisements. All it can do is ask us to use our bodies and voices, often at personal risk, to fight back. It has no other way of defying the corporate state. This rebellion creates a real community instead of a managed or virtual one. It affirms our dignity. It permits us to become free and independent human beings.
Martin Luther King was repeatedly betrayed by liberal supporters, especially when he began to challenge economic forms of discrimination, which demanded that liberals, rather than simply white Southern racists, begin to make sacrifices. King too was a radical. He would not compromise on nonviolence, racism or justice. He understood that movements-such as the Liberty Party, which fought slavery, the suffragists, who fought for women’s rights, the labor movement and the civil rights movement-have always been the true correctives in American democracy. None of those movements achieved formal political power. But by holding fast to moral imperatives they made the powerful fear them. King knew that racial equality was impossible without economic justice and an end to militarism. And he had no intention of ceding to the demands of the liberal establishment that called on him to be calm and patience. “For years, I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions in the South, a little change here, a little change there,” King said shortly before he was assassinated. “Now I feel quite differently. I think you’ve got to have a reconstruction of the entire system, a revolution of values.”
King was killed in 1968 when he was in Memphis to support a strike by sanitation workers. By then he had begun to say that his dream, the one that the corporate state has frozen into a few safe clichés from his 1963 speech in Washington, had turned into a nightmare. King called at the end of his life for massive federal funds to rebuild inner cities, what he called “a radical redistribution of economic and political power,” a complete restructuring of “the architecture of American society.” He grasped that the inequities of capitalism had become the instrument by which the poor would always remain poor. “Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism,” King said, “but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God’s children.” On the eve of King’s murder he was preparing to organize a poor people’s march on Washington, D.C., designed to cause “major, massive dislocations,” a nonviolent demand by the poor, including the white underclass, for a system of economic equality. It would be 43 years before his vision was realized by an eclectic group of protesters who gathered before the gates of Wall Street.
The truth of America is understood only when you listen to voices in our impoverished rural enclaves, prisons and the urban slums, when you hear the words of our unemployed, those who have lost their homes or cannot pay their medical bills, our elderly and our children, especially the quarter of the nation’s children who depend on food stamps to eat, and all who are marginalized. There is more reality expressed about the American experience by the debt-burdened young men and women protesting in the parks than by all the chatter of the well-paid pundits and experts that pollutes the airwaves.
What kind of nation is it that spends far more to kill enemy combatants and Afghan and Iraqi civilians than it does to help its own citizens who live below the poverty line? What kind of nation is it that permits corporations to hold sick children hostage while their parents frantically bankrupt themselves to save their sons and daughters? What kind of nation is it that tosses its mentally ill onto urban heating grates? What kind of nation is it that abandons its unemployed while it loots its treasury on behalf of speculators? What kind of nation is it that ignores due process to torture and assassinate its own citizens? What kind of nation is it that refuses to halt the destruction of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel industry, dooming our children and our children’s children?
“America,” Langston Hughes wrote, “never was America to me.”
“The black vote mean [nothing],” the rapper Nas intones. “Who you gunna elect/ Satan or Satan? In the hood nothing is changing,/ We aint got no choices.”
Or listen to hip-hop artist Talib Kweli: “Back in the ’60s, there was a big push for black … politicians, and now we have more than we ever had before, but our communities are so much worse. A lot of people died for us to vote, I’m aware of that history, but these politicians are not in touch with people at all. Politics is not the truth to me, it’s an illusion.”
The liberal class functions in a traditional, capitalist democracy as a safety valve. It lets off enough steam to keep the system intact. It makes piecemeal and incremental reform possible. This is what happened during the Great Depression and the New Deal. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s greatest achievement was that he saved capitalism. Liberals in a functioning capitalist democracy are at the same time tasked with discrediting radicals, whether it is King, especially after he denounced the war in Vietnam, or later Noam Chomsky or Ralph Nader.
The stupidity of the corporate state is that it thought it could dispense with the liberal class. It thought it could shut off that safety valve in order to loot and pillage with no impediments. Corporate power forgot that the liberal class, when it functions, gives legitimacy to the power elite. And the reduction of the liberal class to silly courtiers, who have nothing to offer but empty rhetoric, meant that the growing discontent found other mechanisms and outlets. Liberals were reduced to stick figures, part of an elaborate pantomime, as they acted in preordained roles to give legitimacy to meaningless and useless political theater. But that game is over.
Human history has amply demonstrated that once those in positions of power become redundant and impotent, yet retain the trappings and privileges of power, they are brutally discarded. The liberal class, which insists on clinging to its positions of privilege while at the same time refusing to play its traditional role within the democratic state, has become a useless and despised appendage of corporate power. And as the engines of corporate power pollute and poison the ecosystem and propel us into a world where there will be only masters and serfs, the liberal class, which serves no purpose in the new configuration, is being abandoned and discarded by both the corporate state and radical dissidents. The best it can do is attach itself meekly to the new political configuration rising up to replace it.
An ineffectual liberal class means there is no hope of a correction or a reversal through the formal mechanisms of power. It ensures that the frustration and anger among the working and the middle class will find expression now in these protests that lie outside the confines of democratic institutions and the civilities of a liberal democracy. By emasculating the liberal class, which once ensured that restive citizens could institute moderate reforms, the corporate state has created a closed system defined by polarization, gridlock and political charades. It has removed the veneer of virtue and goodness that the liberal class offered to the power elite.
Liberal institutions, including the church, the press, the university, the Democratic Party, the arts and labor unions, set the parameters for limited self-criticism in a functioning democracy as well as small, incremental reforms. The liberal class is permitted to decry the worst excesses of power and champion basic human rights while at the same time endowing systems of power with a morality and virtue it does not possess. Liberals posit themselves as the conscience of the nation. They permit us, through their appeal to public virtues and the public good, to see ourselves and our state as fundamentally good.
But the liberal class, by having refused to question the utopian promises of unfettered capitalism and globalization and by condemning those who did, severed itself from the roots of creative and bold thought, the only forces that could have prevented the liberal class from merging completely with the power elite. The liberal class, which at once was betrayed and betrayed itself, has no role left to play in the battle between us and corporate dominance. All hope lies now with those in the street.
Liberals lack the vision and fortitude to challenge dominant free market ideologies. They have no ideological alternatives even as the Democratic Party openly betrays every principle the liberal class claims to espouse, from universal health care to an end to our permanent war economy to a demand for quality and affordable public education to a return of civil liberties to a demand for jobs and welfare of the working class. The corporate state forced the liberal class to join in the nation’s death march that began with the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Liberals such as Bill Clinton, for corporate money, accelerated the dismantling of our manufacturing base, the gutting of our regulatory agencies, the destruction of our social service programs and the empowerment of speculators who have trashed our economy. The liberal class, stripped of power, could only retreat into its atrophied institutions, where it busied itself with the boutique activism of political correctness and embraced positions it had previously condemned.
Russell Jacoby writes: “The left once dismissed the market as exploitative; it now honors the market as rational and humane. The left once disdained mass culture as exploitative; now it celebrates it as rebellious. The left once honored independent intellectuals as courageous; now it sneers at them as elitist. The left once rejected pluralism as superficial; now it worships it as profound. We are witnessing not simply a defeat of the left, but its conversion and perhaps inversion.”
Hope in this age of bankrupt capitalism comes with the return of the language of class conflict and rebellion, language that has been purged from the lexicon of the liberal class, language that defines this new movement. This does not mean we have to agree with Karl Marx, who advocated violence and whose worship of the state as a utopian mechanism led to another form of enslavement of the working class, but we have to learn again to speak in the vocabulary Marx employed. We have to grasp, as Marx and Adam Smith did, that corporations are not concerned with the common good. They exploit, pollute, impoverish, repress, kill and lie to make money. They throw poor families out of homes, let the uninsured die, wage useless wars to make profits, poison and pollute the ecosystem, slash social assistance programs, gut public education, trash the global economy, plunder the U.S. Treasury and crush all popular movements that seek justice for working men and women. They worship money and power. And, as Marx knew, unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes itself. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the perfect metaphor for the corporate state. It is part of the same nightmare experienced in postindustrial mill towns of New England and the abandoned steel mills of Ohio. It is a nightmare that Iraqis, Pakistanis and Afghans, living in terror and mourning their dead, endure daily.
What took place early Friday morning in Zuccotti Park was the first salvo in a long struggle for justice. It signaled a step backward by the corporate state in the face of popular pressure. And it was carried out by ordinary men and women who sleep at night on concrete, get soaked in rainstorms, eat donated food and have nothing as weapons but their dignity, resilience and courage. It is they, and they alone, who hold out the possibility of salvation. And if we join them we might have a chance.
PROUT
For a More Progressively Evolving Society
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Monday, October 31, 2011
The Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Coming Demise of Crony Capitalism
Tuesday 11 October 2011
by: Ravi Batra, Truthout | News Analysis
In 1978, to the laughter of many and the derision of a few, I wrote a book called, "The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism," which predicted that Soviet communism would vanish around the end of the century, whereas crony or monopoly capitalism would create the worst-ever concentration of wealth in its history, so much so that a social revolution would start its demise around 2010. My forecasts derived from the law of social cycles, which was pioneered by my late teacher and mentor, P. R. Sarkar. Lo and behold, Soviet communism disappeared right before your eyes during the 1990s, and now, just a year after 2010, middle-class America, spearheaded by a movement increasingly known as "Occupy Wall Street (OWS)," is beginning to revolt against Wall Street greed and crony capitalism. Will the revolt succeed? It surely will, because the pre-conditions for its success are all there.
The first question is this: Why does rising wealth disparity create poverty? My answer is that it causes overproduction and hence unemployment and destitution. It is all a matter of supply and demand. Inequality goes up when official economic policy does not allow wages to catch up with the ever-growing labor productivity, so that profits soar and rising productivity increasingly raises the incomes and bonuses of business executives. I have detailed this process in an earlier article. Then money sits idly in the vaults of bankers and big-business CEOs and restrains consumer demand, leading to overproduction and hence layoffs. The toxic combination of mounting layoffs and absent job creation raises poverty, which, according to official figures, is now the highest in 50 years.
The next question is: how has the government either restrained wages relative to productivity or made the rich richer and the poor poorer? It is easy to see that almost all official economic measures adopted since 1981 and contained in the following list have devastated the middle class. The list includes:
1. The Reagan income tax cut of 1981 that benefited the rich, but made it necessary to sharply raise all other federal taxes, paid mostly by the poor and the middle class, to finance that tax cut.
2. Unenforced antitrust laws, leading to mergers among large and profitable firms, but killing high-paying jobs in numerous industries.
3. Permitting the oil industry mergers in the 1990s that are now preventing oil prices from falling in the middle of the worst slump since the 1930s.
4. Permitting relentless mergers among pharmaceuticals and health insurance companies, so that America, far more than any other nation, now spends almost 15 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care that is mediocre by European and Japanese standards.
5. Unchecked use of outsourcing that kills high-paying jobs in manufacturing and services.
6. Ignoring the growth of the trade deficit that has destroyed our manufacturing base.
7. The 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act under President Clinton that led to reckless lending by banks and an unprecedented housing bubble, which collapsed in 2007 to trigger the ongoing slump.
8. The Bush tax cuts and bailouts that further benefited the rich while nearly doubling the government debt.
9. And finally, the decimation of the real minimum wage by President Reagan and other Republicans. (In 1981 the hourly minimum wage bought $8 worth of goods compared to $6 by the end of Reagan' presidency in 1988, and to mere $5.15 in 2006 under Bush.)
Looking at this nine-point list, is there any government program that a big business CEO would hate? Stated another way, is there any measure that has helped the middle class? I can't think of any. Thus, over the past three decades whatever the government did, ostensibly to help the people, actually ended up hurting them. Mergers, outsourcing and free trade raise productivity, but also lower wages, whereas the other provisions of the above list directly enrich the wealthy. The nine-point list is really a list of exploitation.
Let us now look at President Obama's record since January 2009 when he took office. The president's first act was to engineer another bailout, à la George W. Bush. The idea was that the $800 billion package of assisting banks and faltering industries would save or create some four million jobs. Did the measure succeed in its avowed purpose?
According to the latest estimate from the Congressional Budget office, the bailout created nearly 1.5 million jobs. Even if we accept the administration's claim of four million, the bailout was extremely wasteful and enormously enriched the rich. Dividing 800 billion by four million yields 200,000. In other words, the government spent $200,000 to create one job. When the average wage is less than $50,000 per year, where did the other $150,000 go? This suggests that companies that hired those four million people received $150,000 for each job they created. Thus, three-fourths of the bailout, or $600 billion, went to businesses, and a mere one-fourth benefited the unemployed. This is the best case for the Obama measure. It is clear that the bailouts, Bush's and Obama's, were extremely wasteful and hugely enriched the opulent.
The fact is that government deficits are not working and have always benefited the wealthy. Not surprisingly, the fastest and the sharpest rise in income and wealth inequality has occurred since 1981, when the culture of mega-deficits first began. Lasting prosperity occurs only when wages rise in proportion to productivity, as was the case through much of American history, especially from 1940 to 1980. Whenever wages trail productivity, debt and profits soar, only to be followed by overproduction and soaring poverty and misery for the middle class. Such was the case in the 1920s and the 1930s and such again has been the case since 1981.
If President Obama really wants to create millions of jobs, then all the economic measures adopted since Reagan's presidency must be abandoned. Of course, the Republicans would oppose him tooth and nail in this resolve; they would scream about the president hurting job creators, who in fact are job destroyers. Big business has decimated American jobs through mega-mergers, outsourcing, oil speculation and by shifting factories to Mexico and China. The nation can only prosper if the destructive ability of job destroyers is restrained through increased taxes or the creation of free markets.
When the government bails out mega banks and Wall Street firms, it amounts to shooting the economy in the foot. Our president seeks to bring about change, which was his campaign slogan. But once elected, he got sidetracked by thinking that change is possible through compromise. This has never happened before. Never in history have the exploited prospered by cooperating with the exploiter.
Compromise is what produced the government's nine-point list of measures described above. The Republicans were able to impose these measures whenever some Democrats compromised with them. When Reagan raised the gasoline tax and excise taxes in 1982, it was through the cooperation of the Democrats, who cooperated again in 1983 when Social Security and self-employment taxes went up sharply to pay for the massive income tax cut of 1981. The repeal of the Glass-Stiegel Act, the Bush tax cuts and bailout were all the handiwork of Republican lawmakers and right-wing Democrats.
America does not need another dose of increased government spending, but a rational economic policy that generates free-market capitalism to take the place of the current monopoly capitalism. In 1776, the nation declared independence; coincidentally, the same year Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, demonstrated how small businesses generate lasting prosperity for all, not just a privileged few. That is what we need again. It is well known that small firms have created the bulk of American jobs in recent years. This is then the best argument for breaking up business conglomerates not only to create jobs, but also to lower the oil price and the cost of health care.
The government should also adopt strong, not toothless, measures to eliminate the trade deficit, which is now running at $500 billion per year. This alone will create five million manufacturing jobs. Eliminating the trade deficit will raise US GDP by the same amount, and to produce that much output, new workers will be needed. Suppose it costs a business $100,000 to hire a worker, including salary, benefits and profit. Dividing 500 billion by 100,000 yields five million. In other words, eliminating the trade shortfall will generate five million new jobs, paying the average wage and benefits.
The trade deficit can be eliminated by setting up a low export-exchange rate, the way China and other Asian nations have done. But first, the government must see the value of balancing our trade and then proper economic policy can be devised to reach the goal.
Outsourcing is now the biggest job destroyer. The government should impose a hefty tax on this practice. This way, if a company has to outsource some work, it will compensate the nation for creating joblessness in the economy. Finally, we need to eliminate the federal budget deficit. This can be done by repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and by enacting a small tax on financial transactions, while preserving crucial programs for the retirees. There is no reason to cut Social Security and Medicare, because President Reagan raised taxes sharply to guarantee the benefits to retiring baby boomers. In short, President Obama should do away with the nine-point list of exploitation mentioned above. He will then be able to bring about the change that he promised during the election campaign in 2008.
Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By now, we should know that excessive government spending is one such insanity. It creates very few jobs and primarily benefits the rich. In fact, I have shown mathematically to some audiences that, under reasonable assumptions, increased government debt goes completely into the pockets of the opulent. As the latest piece of evidence, from September 2010 to September 2011, the deficit rose $600 billion, but only 400,000 jobs were added.
I call upon the OWS movement to demand that the above nine-point list of exploitation be repealed, so that a free-market capitalism of small firms is reborn. This will strengthen the president's hand and enable him to face Republican lies and tactics that are only meant to further weaken the economy and force the president out of power. We need to make sure that Mr. Obama is re-elected, provided he accepts the repeal agenda, because the Republicans always do the same thing over and over, namely make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Additionally, we should also work to defeat Republican incumbents and rightist Democrats who will compromise to maintain the status quo and possibly cut Medicare.
Our efforts are bound to succeed. I am an economist and historian and made many forecasts in the past about the economy and social change. While 5 percent of my economic forecasts have been wrong, to my knowledge I have never made an error about forecasting a revolution. My latest estimate is that monopoly capitalism will go the way of Soviet communism by 2016.
O' brave protesters of the OWS movement, your effort will not only shape the 2012 elections, they will also end, once and for all, the brutality of the rich and powerful, who are responsible for the sorry state you are in. The change that you are about to bring will be glorified as what Abraham Lincoln did for black Americans. I hope that, with your support, Mr. Obama will be the harbinger of that change.
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
________________________________
Ravi Batra is a professor of economics at Southern Methodist University, Dallas. This article is based on his two books, "The New Golden Age" and "Greenspan's Fraud." His web site is http://ravibatra.com.
by: Ravi Batra, Truthout | News Analysis
In 1978, to the laughter of many and the derision of a few, I wrote a book called, "The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism," which predicted that Soviet communism would vanish around the end of the century, whereas crony or monopoly capitalism would create the worst-ever concentration of wealth in its history, so much so that a social revolution would start its demise around 2010. My forecasts derived from the law of social cycles, which was pioneered by my late teacher and mentor, P. R. Sarkar. Lo and behold, Soviet communism disappeared right before your eyes during the 1990s, and now, just a year after 2010, middle-class America, spearheaded by a movement increasingly known as "Occupy Wall Street (OWS)," is beginning to revolt against Wall Street greed and crony capitalism. Will the revolt succeed? It surely will, because the pre-conditions for its success are all there.
The first question is this: Why does rising wealth disparity create poverty? My answer is that it causes overproduction and hence unemployment and destitution. It is all a matter of supply and demand. Inequality goes up when official economic policy does not allow wages to catch up with the ever-growing labor productivity, so that profits soar and rising productivity increasingly raises the incomes and bonuses of business executives. I have detailed this process in an earlier article. Then money sits idly in the vaults of bankers and big-business CEOs and restrains consumer demand, leading to overproduction and hence layoffs. The toxic combination of mounting layoffs and absent job creation raises poverty, which, according to official figures, is now the highest in 50 years.
The next question is: how has the government either restrained wages relative to productivity or made the rich richer and the poor poorer? It is easy to see that almost all official economic measures adopted since 1981 and contained in the following list have devastated the middle class. The list includes:
1. The Reagan income tax cut of 1981 that benefited the rich, but made it necessary to sharply raise all other federal taxes, paid mostly by the poor and the middle class, to finance that tax cut.
2. Unenforced antitrust laws, leading to mergers among large and profitable firms, but killing high-paying jobs in numerous industries.
3. Permitting the oil industry mergers in the 1990s that are now preventing oil prices from falling in the middle of the worst slump since the 1930s.
4. Permitting relentless mergers among pharmaceuticals and health insurance companies, so that America, far more than any other nation, now spends almost 15 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care that is mediocre by European and Japanese standards.
5. Unchecked use of outsourcing that kills high-paying jobs in manufacturing and services.
6. Ignoring the growth of the trade deficit that has destroyed our manufacturing base.
7. The 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act under President Clinton that led to reckless lending by banks and an unprecedented housing bubble, which collapsed in 2007 to trigger the ongoing slump.
8. The Bush tax cuts and bailouts that further benefited the rich while nearly doubling the government debt.
9. And finally, the decimation of the real minimum wage by President Reagan and other Republicans. (In 1981 the hourly minimum wage bought $8 worth of goods compared to $6 by the end of Reagan' presidency in 1988, and to mere $5.15 in 2006 under Bush.)
Looking at this nine-point list, is there any government program that a big business CEO would hate? Stated another way, is there any measure that has helped the middle class? I can't think of any. Thus, over the past three decades whatever the government did, ostensibly to help the people, actually ended up hurting them. Mergers, outsourcing and free trade raise productivity, but also lower wages, whereas the other provisions of the above list directly enrich the wealthy. The nine-point list is really a list of exploitation.
Let us now look at President Obama's record since January 2009 when he took office. The president's first act was to engineer another bailout, à la George W. Bush. The idea was that the $800 billion package of assisting banks and faltering industries would save or create some four million jobs. Did the measure succeed in its avowed purpose?
According to the latest estimate from the Congressional Budget office, the bailout created nearly 1.5 million jobs. Even if we accept the administration's claim of four million, the bailout was extremely wasteful and enormously enriched the rich. Dividing 800 billion by four million yields 200,000. In other words, the government spent $200,000 to create one job. When the average wage is less than $50,000 per year, where did the other $150,000 go? This suggests that companies that hired those four million people received $150,000 for each job they created. Thus, three-fourths of the bailout, or $600 billion, went to businesses, and a mere one-fourth benefited the unemployed. This is the best case for the Obama measure. It is clear that the bailouts, Bush's and Obama's, were extremely wasteful and hugely enriched the opulent.
The fact is that government deficits are not working and have always benefited the wealthy. Not surprisingly, the fastest and the sharpest rise in income and wealth inequality has occurred since 1981, when the culture of mega-deficits first began. Lasting prosperity occurs only when wages rise in proportion to productivity, as was the case through much of American history, especially from 1940 to 1980. Whenever wages trail productivity, debt and profits soar, only to be followed by overproduction and soaring poverty and misery for the middle class. Such was the case in the 1920s and the 1930s and such again has been the case since 1981.
If President Obama really wants to create millions of jobs, then all the economic measures adopted since Reagan's presidency must be abandoned. Of course, the Republicans would oppose him tooth and nail in this resolve; they would scream about the president hurting job creators, who in fact are job destroyers. Big business has decimated American jobs through mega-mergers, outsourcing, oil speculation and by shifting factories to Mexico and China. The nation can only prosper if the destructive ability of job destroyers is restrained through increased taxes or the creation of free markets.
When the government bails out mega banks and Wall Street firms, it amounts to shooting the economy in the foot. Our president seeks to bring about change, which was his campaign slogan. But once elected, he got sidetracked by thinking that change is possible through compromise. This has never happened before. Never in history have the exploited prospered by cooperating with the exploiter.
Compromise is what produced the government's nine-point list of measures described above. The Republicans were able to impose these measures whenever some Democrats compromised with them. When Reagan raised the gasoline tax and excise taxes in 1982, it was through the cooperation of the Democrats, who cooperated again in 1983 when Social Security and self-employment taxes went up sharply to pay for the massive income tax cut of 1981. The repeal of the Glass-Stiegel Act, the Bush tax cuts and bailout were all the handiwork of Republican lawmakers and right-wing Democrats.
America does not need another dose of increased government spending, but a rational economic policy that generates free-market capitalism to take the place of the current monopoly capitalism. In 1776, the nation declared independence; coincidentally, the same year Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, demonstrated how small businesses generate lasting prosperity for all, not just a privileged few. That is what we need again. It is well known that small firms have created the bulk of American jobs in recent years. This is then the best argument for breaking up business conglomerates not only to create jobs, but also to lower the oil price and the cost of health care.
The government should also adopt strong, not toothless, measures to eliminate the trade deficit, which is now running at $500 billion per year. This alone will create five million manufacturing jobs. Eliminating the trade deficit will raise US GDP by the same amount, and to produce that much output, new workers will be needed. Suppose it costs a business $100,000 to hire a worker, including salary, benefits and profit. Dividing 500 billion by 100,000 yields five million. In other words, eliminating the trade shortfall will generate five million new jobs, paying the average wage and benefits.
The trade deficit can be eliminated by setting up a low export-exchange rate, the way China and other Asian nations have done. But first, the government must see the value of balancing our trade and then proper economic policy can be devised to reach the goal.
Outsourcing is now the biggest job destroyer. The government should impose a hefty tax on this practice. This way, if a company has to outsource some work, it will compensate the nation for creating joblessness in the economy. Finally, we need to eliminate the federal budget deficit. This can be done by repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and by enacting a small tax on financial transactions, while preserving crucial programs for the retirees. There is no reason to cut Social Security and Medicare, because President Reagan raised taxes sharply to guarantee the benefits to retiring baby boomers. In short, President Obama should do away with the nine-point list of exploitation mentioned above. He will then be able to bring about the change that he promised during the election campaign in 2008.
Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By now, we should know that excessive government spending is one such insanity. It creates very few jobs and primarily benefits the rich. In fact, I have shown mathematically to some audiences that, under reasonable assumptions, increased government debt goes completely into the pockets of the opulent. As the latest piece of evidence, from September 2010 to September 2011, the deficit rose $600 billion, but only 400,000 jobs were added.
I call upon the OWS movement to demand that the above nine-point list of exploitation be repealed, so that a free-market capitalism of small firms is reborn. This will strengthen the president's hand and enable him to face Republican lies and tactics that are only meant to further weaken the economy and force the president out of power. We need to make sure that Mr. Obama is re-elected, provided he accepts the repeal agenda, because the Republicans always do the same thing over and over, namely make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Additionally, we should also work to defeat Republican incumbents and rightist Democrats who will compromise to maintain the status quo and possibly cut Medicare.
Our efforts are bound to succeed. I am an economist and historian and made many forecasts in the past about the economy and social change. While 5 percent of my economic forecasts have been wrong, to my knowledge I have never made an error about forecasting a revolution. My latest estimate is that monopoly capitalism will go the way of Soviet communism by 2016.
O' brave protesters of the OWS movement, your effort will not only shape the 2012 elections, they will also end, once and for all, the brutality of the rich and powerful, who are responsible for the sorry state you are in. The change that you are about to bring will be glorified as what Abraham Lincoln did for black Americans. I hope that, with your support, Mr. Obama will be the harbinger of that change.
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
________________________________
Ravi Batra is a professor of economics at Southern Methodist University, Dallas. This article is based on his two books, "The New Golden Age" and "Greenspan's Fraud." His web site is http://ravibatra.com.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
The Future of the #Occupy Movement: Solidarity and Escalation
Mark Engler - October 21, 2011
A month after it began with a few hundred people marching on Wall Street, the #Occupy movement has grown to include tens of thousands of participants throughout the country and has captured headlines around the world. If it has not yet succeeded beyond its wildest dreams, that’s only because its participants have dreamed big: imagining a sustained popular uprising that could force fundamental changes in our political and economic system—ones that could end corporate dominance and promote real democracy.
The movement can, in fact, propel significant changes. But #OccupyWallStreet and its allied occupations still have a ways to go before realizing their potential. The two issues most pressing as they chart their next steps: solidarity and escalation.
“Co-optation” or Flattery?
Despite great success in capturing the public eye, the actual number of people camped out at the various occupations around the country remains relatively small. While there are several hundred people camping in hubs such as New York City and Los Angeles, overnight participants in smaller cities number in the dozens. What bolsters the power of these encampments is that they are representative of a much wider discontent. Far greater numbers of sympathizers turn out for mass meetings, marches, and online shows of support. And, importantly, more established political bodies—unions, advocacy organizations, and community groups representing large constituencies—have offered endorsements of the growing #Occupy effort.
As more have signed on, some activists have been wary of outside expressions of support. Particularly as Democratic Party officials (including President Obama and Vice President Biden) have said positive things about the movement, some have voiced concerns about “cooptation.” They have argued that outside liberals, “while pretending to advance the goals of the Occupy Movement,” could instead “undermine it from within.”
How big of a danger “cooptation” actually represents is a matter of dispute. In a recent interview, Chris Maisano asked veteran social movement theorist Frances Fox Piven about this issue. (Piven is author, among many other books, of the landmark Poor People’s Movements and has considered the issue of cooptation at length in her work.) I believe she struck the right tone in her response:
Moreover, Peter Drier has made the important point that, when it comes to social change, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The fact that mainstream figures attempt to co-opt and advance watered-down versions of movement demands (as they did with once-impossibly-radical calls for “a progressive income tax, the eight-hour day, the direct election of Senators, old age insurance, and voting rights for African Americans”) is not a defeat, but a sign of victory. Of course, if activists use this as an excuse to call it a day, that is a problem. But if we treat it as an occasion to push for even greater changes, it is a very positive thing.
Joining Forces, Gaining Power
One problem with the rhetoric of “cooptation” is that it casts the need to expand the movement’s reach in a negative light. It leads figures such as Chris Hedges, in a more-radical-than-thou cri de coeur, to adopt right-wing talking points denouncing allies as “union bosses,” rather than to approach coalition-building in a constructive manner. This is unfortunate. For, while cooptation is something to be avoided, a much more pressing and ongoing need for the #Occupy movement is fostering solidarity.
Before #OccupyWallStreet ever existed, there were lots of people working to fight banks, reverse foreclosures, and challenge corporate power. The problem was that their efforts were isolated and almost universally ignored by the media. The #Occupy movement has created a great opportunity for many of these campaigns to see themselves as part of a unified fight and to receive an added jolt of energy. In return, the more groups that sign on and see themselves as part of the #Occupy effort, the more that movement is able to sustain its status as a growing and dynamic force. It gains greater numbers of participants, more diversity, and heightened credibility.
Many actions that different local occupations have embraced have grown out of solidarity with groups that were already organizing to advance the interests of the 99 percent. As just one of many examples, #OccupyLA joined up with an anti-foreclosure action against several banks and successfully compelled the reversal of at least one foreclosure decision. This action—wonderfully militant and effective—did not emerge out of the occupation itself. Instead, it had already been organized by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), an LA community organization. But the fact that the #Occupy movement joined in solidarity was a great boon to all involved. It added a ton of energy to ACCE’s direct action. And, for the #Occupy folks, the positive media attention created by the action generated greater excitement about the City Hall encampment and helped bring a wider range of people to the occupation’s assemblies.
When Piven argued that cooptation is not the #Occupy movement’s biggest problem her interviewer replied, “What do you think their biggest problem is?”
Piven gave a prescient answer: “Spreading the movement. Thinking of second, third, fourth, fifth phases. Other forms of disruptive protest that are punchier than occupying a square.”
She is right. If the #Occupy movement is to remain in the media spotlight and continue gaining momentum, it must escalate. That could involve many steps, including occupying banks, continuing to use direct action against foreclosures, and embracing further international days of action. Solidarity will be an important part of all of these.
Within the call of “We Are the 99 Percent” is the idea that, while no one can take over the movement—no single individual or group can declare it over or announce that its ambitions have been satisfied—the coalition of those invited to take part is vast. The movement draws power from its reach. And that is no small part of its brilliance.
A month after it began with a few hundred people marching on Wall Street, the #Occupy movement has grown to include tens of thousands of participants throughout the country and has captured headlines around the world. If it has not yet succeeded beyond its wildest dreams, that’s only because its participants have dreamed big: imagining a sustained popular uprising that could force fundamental changes in our political and economic system—ones that could end corporate dominance and promote real democracy.
The movement can, in fact, propel significant changes. But #OccupyWallStreet and its allied occupations still have a ways to go before realizing their potential. The two issues most pressing as they chart their next steps: solidarity and escalation.
“Co-optation” or Flattery?
Despite great success in capturing the public eye, the actual number of people camped out at the various occupations around the country remains relatively small. While there are several hundred people camping in hubs such as New York City and Los Angeles, overnight participants in smaller cities number in the dozens. What bolsters the power of these encampments is that they are representative of a much wider discontent. Far greater numbers of sympathizers turn out for mass meetings, marches, and online shows of support. And, importantly, more established political bodies—unions, advocacy organizations, and community groups representing large constituencies—have offered endorsements of the growing #Occupy effort.
As more have signed on, some activists have been wary of outside expressions of support. Particularly as Democratic Party officials (including President Obama and Vice President Biden) have said positive things about the movement, some have voiced concerns about “cooptation.” They have argued that outside liberals, “while pretending to advance the goals of the Occupy Movement,” could instead “undermine it from within.”
How big of a danger “cooptation” actually represents is a matter of dispute. In a recent interview, Chris Maisano asked veteran social movement theorist Frances Fox Piven about this issue. (Piven is author, among many other books, of the landmark Poor People’s Movements and has considered the issue of cooptation at length in her work.) I believe she struck the right tone in her response:
Maisano: [As] recent comments by even the president and vice-president have showed, a lot of the more institutionalized forces on the left like the unions and MoveOn and the Van Jones American Dream Movement are trying to latch on to the protests and turn them into what some people have called a liberal version of the Tea Party. How do you think their involvement will effect the movement? How should the activists at the core of the movement relate to them?
Piven: They should be friendly. They should ask them to do things; they should give them assignments. And not adopt the insignia of these groups as their own. In other words they should maintain considerable autonomy, but nevertheless they should treat these groups as allies, as they treated the unions as allies. But they shouldn’t ever let unions tell them what to do, they shouldn’t let Van Jones tell them what to do. Partly because they seem to know better, really.
So I don’t think that’s their biggest problem, how to deal with their erstwhile supporters.The danger of cooptation should be put in context. There have been some clearly opportunistic instances of Democrats trying to capitalize on the movement, such as the none-too-radical Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee attempting to build its mailing list through a “I Stand with #OccupyWallStreet” petition. But is it really possible that the Democratic Party would somehow swoop in and “take control” of the #Occupy movement? It doesn’t seem like even a remote possibility.
Moreover, Peter Drier has made the important point that, when it comes to social change, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The fact that mainstream figures attempt to co-opt and advance watered-down versions of movement demands (as they did with once-impossibly-radical calls for “a progressive income tax, the eight-hour day, the direct election of Senators, old age insurance, and voting rights for African Americans”) is not a defeat, but a sign of victory. Of course, if activists use this as an excuse to call it a day, that is a problem. But if we treat it as an occasion to push for even greater changes, it is a very positive thing.
Joining Forces, Gaining Power
One problem with the rhetoric of “cooptation” is that it casts the need to expand the movement’s reach in a negative light. It leads figures such as Chris Hedges, in a more-radical-than-thou cri de coeur, to adopt right-wing talking points denouncing allies as “union bosses,” rather than to approach coalition-building in a constructive manner. This is unfortunate. For, while cooptation is something to be avoided, a much more pressing and ongoing need for the #Occupy movement is fostering solidarity.
Before #OccupyWallStreet ever existed, there were lots of people working to fight banks, reverse foreclosures, and challenge corporate power. The problem was that their efforts were isolated and almost universally ignored by the media. The #Occupy movement has created a great opportunity for many of these campaigns to see themselves as part of a unified fight and to receive an added jolt of energy. In return, the more groups that sign on and see themselves as part of the #Occupy effort, the more that movement is able to sustain its status as a growing and dynamic force. It gains greater numbers of participants, more diversity, and heightened credibility.
Many actions that different local occupations have embraced have grown out of solidarity with groups that were already organizing to advance the interests of the 99 percent. As just one of many examples, #OccupyLA joined up with an anti-foreclosure action against several banks and successfully compelled the reversal of at least one foreclosure decision. This action—wonderfully militant and effective—did not emerge out of the occupation itself. Instead, it had already been organized by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), an LA community organization. But the fact that the #Occupy movement joined in solidarity was a great boon to all involved. It added a ton of energy to ACCE’s direct action. And, for the #Occupy folks, the positive media attention created by the action generated greater excitement about the City Hall encampment and helped bring a wider range of people to the occupation’s assemblies.
When Piven argued that cooptation is not the #Occupy movement’s biggest problem her interviewer replied, “What do you think their biggest problem is?”
Piven gave a prescient answer: “Spreading the movement. Thinking of second, third, fourth, fifth phases. Other forms of disruptive protest that are punchier than occupying a square.”
She is right. If the #Occupy movement is to remain in the media spotlight and continue gaining momentum, it must escalate. That could involve many steps, including occupying banks, continuing to use direct action against foreclosures, and embracing further international days of action. Solidarity will be an important part of all of these.
Within the call of “We Are the 99 Percent” is the idea that, while no one can take over the movement—no single individual or group can declare it over or announce that its ambitions have been satisfied—the coalition of those invited to take part is vast. The movement draws power from its reach. And that is no small part of its brilliance.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Social Psychology And Theory Of History
Mark Engler - October 21, 2011
A month after it began with a few hundred people marching on Wall Street, the #Occupy movement has grown to include tens of thousands of participants throughout the country and has captured headlines around the world. If it has not yet succeeded beyond its wildest dreams, that’s only because its participants have dreamed big: imagining a sustained popular uprising that could force fundamental changes in our political and economic system—ones that could end corporate dominance and promote real democracy.
The movement can, in fact, propel significant changes. But #OccupyWallStreet and its allied occupations still have a ways to go before realizing their potential. The two issues most pressing as they chart their next steps: solidarity and escalation.
“Co-optation” or Flattery?
Despite great success in capturing the public eye, the actual number of people camped out at the various occupations around the country remains relatively small. While there are several hundred people camping in hubs such as New York City and Los Angeles, overnight participants in smaller cities number in the dozens. What bolsters the power of these encampments is that they are representative of a much wider discontent. Far greater numbers of sympathizers turn out for mass meetings, marches, and online shows of support. And, importantly, more established political bodies—unions, advocacy organizations, and community groups representing large constituencies—have offered endorsements of the growing #Occupy effort.
As more have signed on, some activists have been wary of outside expressions of support. Particularly as Democratic Party officials (including President Obama and Vice President Biden) have said positive things about the movement, some have voiced concerns about “cooptation.” They have argued that outside liberals, “while pretending to advance the goals of the Occupy Movement,” could instead “undermine it from within.”
How big of a danger “cooptation” actually represents is a matter of dispute. In a recent interview, Chris Maisano asked veteran social movement theorist Frances Fox Piven about this issue. (Piven is author, among many other books, of the landmark Poor People’s Movements and has considered the issue of cooptation at length in her work.) I believe she struck the right tone in her response:
Moreover, Peter Drier has made the important point that, when it comes to social change, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The fact that mainstream figures attempt to co-opt and advance watered-down versions of movement demands (as they did with once-impossibly-radical calls for “a progressive income tax, the eight-hour day, the direct election of Senators, old age insurance, and voting rights for African Americans”) is not a defeat, but a sign of victory. Of course, if activists use this as an excuse to call it a day, that is a problem. But if we treat it as an occasion to push for even greater changes, it is a very positive thing.
Joining Forces, Gaining Power
One problem with the rhetoric of “cooptation” is that it casts the need to expand the movement’s reach in a negative light. It leads figures such as Chris Hedges, in a more-radical-than-thou cri de coeur, to adopt right-wing talking points denouncing allies as “union bosses,” rather than to approach coalition-building in a constructive manner. This is unfortunate. For, while cooptation is something to be avoided, a much more pressing and ongoing need for the #Occupy movement is fostering solidarity.
Before #OccupyWallStreet ever existed, there were lots of people working to fight banks, reverse foreclosures, and challenge corporate power. The problem was that their efforts were isolated and almost universally ignored by the media. The #Occupy movement has created a great opportunity for many of these campaigns to see themselves as part of a unified fight and to receive an added jolt of energy. In return, the more groups that sign on and see themselves as part of the #Occupy effort, the more that movement is able to sustain its status as a growing and dynamic force. It gains greater numbers of participants, more diversity, and heightened credibility.
Many actions that different local occupations have embraced have grown out of solidarity with groups that were already organizing to advance the interests of the 99 percent. As just one of many examples, #OccupyLA joined up with an anti-foreclosure action against several banks and successfully compelled the reversal of at least one foreclosure decision. This action—wonderfully militant and effective—did not emerge out of the occupation itself. Instead, it had already been organized by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), an LA community organization. But the fact that the #Occupy movement joined in solidarity was a great boon to all involved. It added a ton of energy to ACCE’s direct action. And, for the #Occupy folks, the positive media attention created by the action generated greater excitement about the City Hall encampment and helped bring a wider range of people to the occupation’s assemblies.
When Piven argued that cooptation is not the #Occupy movement’s biggest problem her interviewer replied, “What do you think their biggest problem is?”
Piven gave a prescient answer: “Spreading the movement. Thinking of second, third, fourth, fifth phases. Other forms of disruptive protest that are punchier than occupying a square.”
She is right. If the #Occupy movement is to remain in the media spotlight and continue gaining momentum, it must escalate. That could involve many steps, including occupying banks, continuing to use direct action against foreclosures, and embracing further international days of action. Solidarity will be an important part of all of these.
Within the call of “We Are the 99 Percent” is the idea that, while no one can take over the movement—no single individual or group can declare it over or announce that its ambitions have been satisfied—the coalition of those invited to take part is vast. The movement draws power from its reach. And that is no small part of its brilliance.
A month after it began with a few hundred people marching on Wall Street, the #Occupy movement has grown to include tens of thousands of participants throughout the country and has captured headlines around the world. If it has not yet succeeded beyond its wildest dreams, that’s only because its participants have dreamed big: imagining a sustained popular uprising that could force fundamental changes in our political and economic system—ones that could end corporate dominance and promote real democracy.
The movement can, in fact, propel significant changes. But #OccupyWallStreet and its allied occupations still have a ways to go before realizing their potential. The two issues most pressing as they chart their next steps: solidarity and escalation.
“Co-optation” or Flattery?
Despite great success in capturing the public eye, the actual number of people camped out at the various occupations around the country remains relatively small. While there are several hundred people camping in hubs such as New York City and Los Angeles, overnight participants in smaller cities number in the dozens. What bolsters the power of these encampments is that they are representative of a much wider discontent. Far greater numbers of sympathizers turn out for mass meetings, marches, and online shows of support. And, importantly, more established political bodies—unions, advocacy organizations, and community groups representing large constituencies—have offered endorsements of the growing #Occupy effort.
As more have signed on, some activists have been wary of outside expressions of support. Particularly as Democratic Party officials (including President Obama and Vice President Biden) have said positive things about the movement, some have voiced concerns about “cooptation.” They have argued that outside liberals, “while pretending to advance the goals of the Occupy Movement,” could instead “undermine it from within.”
How big of a danger “cooptation” actually represents is a matter of dispute. In a recent interview, Chris Maisano asked veteran social movement theorist Frances Fox Piven about this issue. (Piven is author, among many other books, of the landmark Poor People’s Movements and has considered the issue of cooptation at length in her work.) I believe she struck the right tone in her response:
Maisano: [As] recent comments by even the president and vice-president have showed, a lot of the more institutionalized forces on the left like the unions and MoveOn and the Van Jones American Dream Movement are trying to latch on to the protests and turn them into what some people have called a liberal version of the Tea Party. How do you think their involvement will effect the movement? How should the activists at the core of the movement relate to them?
Piven: They should be friendly. They should ask them to do things; they should give them assignments. And not adopt the insignia of these groups as their own. In other words they should maintain considerable autonomy, but nevertheless they should treat these groups as allies, as they treated the unions as allies. But they shouldn’t ever let unions tell them what to do, they shouldn’t let Van Jones tell them what to do. Partly because they seem to know better, really.
So I don’t think that’s their biggest problem, how to deal with their erstwhile supporters.The danger of cooptation should be put in context. There have been some clearly opportunistic instances of Democrats trying to capitalize on the movement, such as the none-too-radical Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee attempting to build its mailing list through a “I Stand with #OccupyWallStreet” petition. But is it really possible that the Democratic Party would somehow swoop in and “take control” of the #Occupy movement? It doesn’t seem like even a remote possibility.
Moreover, Peter Drier has made the important point that, when it comes to social change, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The fact that mainstream figures attempt to co-opt and advance watered-down versions of movement demands (as they did with once-impossibly-radical calls for “a progressive income tax, the eight-hour day, the direct election of Senators, old age insurance, and voting rights for African Americans”) is not a defeat, but a sign of victory. Of course, if activists use this as an excuse to call it a day, that is a problem. But if we treat it as an occasion to push for even greater changes, it is a very positive thing.
Joining Forces, Gaining Power
One problem with the rhetoric of “cooptation” is that it casts the need to expand the movement’s reach in a negative light. It leads figures such as Chris Hedges, in a more-radical-than-thou cri de coeur, to adopt right-wing talking points denouncing allies as “union bosses,” rather than to approach coalition-building in a constructive manner. This is unfortunate. For, while cooptation is something to be avoided, a much more pressing and ongoing need for the #Occupy movement is fostering solidarity.
Before #OccupyWallStreet ever existed, there were lots of people working to fight banks, reverse foreclosures, and challenge corporate power. The problem was that their efforts were isolated and almost universally ignored by the media. The #Occupy movement has created a great opportunity for many of these campaigns to see themselves as part of a unified fight and to receive an added jolt of energy. In return, the more groups that sign on and see themselves as part of the #Occupy effort, the more that movement is able to sustain its status as a growing and dynamic force. It gains greater numbers of participants, more diversity, and heightened credibility.
Many actions that different local occupations have embraced have grown out of solidarity with groups that were already organizing to advance the interests of the 99 percent. As just one of many examples, #OccupyLA joined up with an anti-foreclosure action against several banks and successfully compelled the reversal of at least one foreclosure decision. This action—wonderfully militant and effective—did not emerge out of the occupation itself. Instead, it had already been organized by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), an LA community organization. But the fact that the #Occupy movement joined in solidarity was a great boon to all involved. It added a ton of energy to ACCE’s direct action. And, for the #Occupy folks, the positive media attention created by the action generated greater excitement about the City Hall encampment and helped bring a wider range of people to the occupation’s assemblies.
When Piven argued that cooptation is not the #Occupy movement’s biggest problem her interviewer replied, “What do you think their biggest problem is?”
Piven gave a prescient answer: “Spreading the movement. Thinking of second, third, fourth, fifth phases. Other forms of disruptive protest that are punchier than occupying a square.”
She is right. If the #Occupy movement is to remain in the media spotlight and continue gaining momentum, it must escalate. That could involve many steps, including occupying banks, continuing to use direct action against foreclosures, and embracing further international days of action. Solidarity will be an important part of all of these.
Within the call of “We Are the 99 Percent” is the idea that, while no one can take over the movement—no single individual or group can declare it over or announce that its ambitions have been satisfied—the coalition of those invited to take part is vast. The movement draws power from its reach. And that is no small part of its brilliance.
Largest Land Owners on Earth
“Queen Elizabeth II the largest landowner on Earth.”
Well, that's mighty big o' you, madam.
Queen Elizabeth II, head of state of the United Kingdom and of 31 other states and territories, is the legal owner of about 6,600 million acres of land, one sixth of the earth’s non ocean surface.
She is the only person on earth who owns whole countries, and who owns countries that are not her own domestic territory. This land ownership is separate from her role as head of state and is different from other monarchies where no such claim is made – Norway, Belgium, Denmark etc.
The value of her land holding. £17,600,000,000,000 (approx).
This makes her the richest individual on earth. However, there is no way easily to value her real estate. There is no current market in the land of entire countries. At a rough estimate of $5,000 an acre, and based on the sale of Alaska to the USA by the Tsar, and of Louisiana to the USA by France, the Queen’s land holding is worth a notional $33,000,000,000,000 (Thirty three trillion dollars or about £17,600,000,000,000). Her holding is based on the laws of the countries she owns and her land title is valid in all the countries she owns. Her main holdings are Canada, the 2nd largest country on earth, with 2,467 million acres, Australia, the 7th largest country on earth with 1,900 million acres, the Papua New Guinea with114 million acres, New Zealand with 66 million acres and the UK with 60 million acres.
She is the world’s largest landowner by a significant margin. The next largest landowner is the Russian state, with an overall ownership of 4,219 million acres, and a direct ownership comparable with the Queen’s land holding of 2,447 million acres. The 3rd largest landowner is the Chinese state, which claims all of Chinese land, about 2,365 million acres. The 4th largest landowner on earth is the Federal Government of the United States, which owns about one third of the land of the USA, 760 million acres. The fifth largest landowner on earth is the King of Saudi Arabia with 553 million acres.
Sourced from the book "Who Owns the World", February 2007
Ten Largest Landowners in US
Land Grab: Media Mogul John Malone recently became the largest individual landowner in the U.S., edging out old friend, Ted Turner.
Malone, the 70-year-old billionaire chairman of Liberty Media, has well sated that hunger. He started his land feast slowly nearly two decades ago, collecting parcels in Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado. By the beginning of last year he had nearly 1 million acres. But in the last seven months, as property prices and the cost of borrowing have dropped, the hard-bargaining cable magnate’s land grab shifted into overdrive.
In August Malone bought the 290,100-acre Bell Ranch in northeastern New Mexico, after waiting years for it to drop to what he says was a “rational price.” (The ranch was initially listed in 2006 for $110 million, then for $83 million last year. Malone is rumored to have gotten it for closer to $60 million.) Then in February he made his biggest splash, snapping up 1 million acres of timberland in Maine and New Hampshire for a “fair price.”
The turnover at the top is fitting. Malone (worth $4.5 billion) and Turner (worth $2.1 billion) are longtime acquaintances and business partners. Malone served on the board of Turner Broadcasting in the 1980s and bailed out Turner’s company in 1987. In 2007, through Liberty Media, Malone became the owner of the Atlanta Braves, Turner’s old baseball team. (“I will always think of them as Ted’s team,” says Malone.) The two have neighboring trophy ranches in northern New Mexico (Malone’s 250,000-acre TO Ranch runs east from Turner’s 591,000-acre Vermejo Park Ranch.) And it was Turner, 72, who “first gave me this land-buying disease,” says Malone, when the duo flew a helicopter over Vermejo. Says Turner: “Over the years I’ve shared my experiences with John. I consider him a good friend and have great respect for him.”
So no Hatfield-McCoy here. Malone recently visited Turner, who was “down in the dumps because I still have lots of dry powder and he’s pretty tapped out,” jokes Malone. “I think if it was a race, Ted would concede.”
Turner seems happy to do just that, saying he was glad to see Malone make his latest acquisition. “We’re working toward the same goal–to be stewards of the land and make sure it’s preserved for future generations,” says Turner.
But though their conservation ends may be the same, their means differ. “Ted’s idea of tradition is to go back to pre-European times,” says Malone. Turner famously poisoned a stretch of Cherry Creek–which runs through his Flying D Ranch in Montana–to rid it of the invasive brown and rainbow trout. (He replanted the stream with native cutthroat trout.) At Turner’s ranch bison roam free over land that’s been cleared of most signs of human habitation.
Malone, on the other hand, says, “I tend to be more willing to admit that human beings aren’t going away.” So he believes that trees can be harvested without damaging the ecology and wildlife. (“I’m not an extreme tree-hugger,” he says.) He will continue the sustainable forestry operation on the Maine and New Hampshire land (purchased from GMO Renewable Resources, a private equity firm). Malone is also looking at wind-power opportunities on the property and will keep the land open for public recreation, a Maine tradition. Malone takes the same “working farm” philosophy with his western properties, like the Bell Ranch, where he raises cattle and horses.
Malone wants to “break even” on his land, but there is more than economics involved. “There’s the emotional and intellectual aspect of walking the land and getting that sense of awe,” he says. “I own it, sort of, for my lifetime.”
Like Turner, he has plans to conserve most of it for beyond his lifetime, through perpetual conservation easements. “But I’m not going to kid myself and think that 500 years from now, with population growth, that the government won’t start putting people on the land,” he says. “But at least I tried.”
Landowners
(Members of the Forbes Billionaires list in bold)
Singleton Family: 1.11 mn acres—Children of Dr. Henry Singleton, founder of Teledyne, Inc., run ranchland in New Mexico. Avid participants in local rodeos.
King Ranch: 911,215 acres—Land in Texas and Florida. Farm sugarcane, vegetables, citrus and pecans. The ranch produced 1946 Triple Crown winner, Assault.
Pingree heirs: 800,000 acres—Family’s Seven Island Land Company owns tract of land in Maine bigger than state of Rhode Island. Heirs of David Pingree, a 19th century shipper.
Reed family: 770,000 acres—Through Simpson Lumber Company, owns timberland in Pacific Northwest.
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Well, that's mighty big o' you, madam.
Queen Elizabeth II, head of state of the United Kingdom and of 31 other states and territories, is the legal owner of about 6,600 million acres of land, one sixth of the earth’s non ocean surface.
She is the only person on earth who owns whole countries, and who owns countries that are not her own domestic territory. This land ownership is separate from her role as head of state and is different from other monarchies where no such claim is made – Norway, Belgium, Denmark etc.
The value of her land holding. £17,600,000,000,000 (approx).
This makes her the richest individual on earth. However, there is no way easily to value her real estate. There is no current market in the land of entire countries. At a rough estimate of $5,000 an acre, and based on the sale of Alaska to the USA by the Tsar, and of Louisiana to the USA by France, the Queen’s land holding is worth a notional $33,000,000,000,000 (Thirty three trillion dollars or about £17,600,000,000,000). Her holding is based on the laws of the countries she owns and her land title is valid in all the countries she owns. Her main holdings are Canada, the 2nd largest country on earth, with 2,467 million acres, Australia, the 7th largest country on earth with 1,900 million acres, the Papua New Guinea with114 million acres, New Zealand with 66 million acres and the UK with 60 million acres.
She is the world’s largest landowner by a significant margin. The next largest landowner is the Russian state, with an overall ownership of 4,219 million acres, and a direct ownership comparable with the Queen’s land holding of 2,447 million acres. The 3rd largest landowner is the Chinese state, which claims all of Chinese land, about 2,365 million acres. The 4th largest landowner on earth is the Federal Government of the United States, which owns about one third of the land of the USA, 760 million acres. The fifth largest landowner on earth is the King of Saudi Arabia with 553 million acres.
| Queen Elizabeth II | 6,600 million acres |
| King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia | 553 million acres |
| King Bhumibol of Thailand | 126 million acres |
| King Mohammed IV of Morocco | 113 million acres |
| Sultan Quaboos of Oman | 76 million acres |
Sourced from the book "Who Owns the World", February 2007
Ten Largest Landowners in US
Land Grab: Media Mogul John Malone recently became the largest individual landowner in the U.S., edging out old friend, Ted Turner.
By Monte Burke
(This article appears in the 3/28/11 issue of Forbes Magazine, on newsstands now. Click here for a Q&A with Malone.)
When asked about the source of his lust for land, John C. Malone laughs. “My wife says it’s the Irish gene. A certain land hunger comes from being denied property ownership for so many generations.”
Malone, the 70-year-old billionaire chairman of Liberty Media, has well sated that hunger. He started his land feast slowly nearly two decades ago, collecting parcels in Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado. By the beginning of last year he had nearly 1 million acres. But in the last seven months, as property prices and the cost of borrowing have dropped, the hard-bargaining cable magnate’s land grab shifted into overdrive.
In August Malone bought the 290,100-acre Bell Ranch in northeastern New Mexico, after waiting years for it to drop to what he says was a “rational price.” (The ranch was initially listed in 2006 for $110 million, then for $83 million last year. Malone is rumored to have gotten it for closer to $60 million.) Then in February he made his biggest splash, snapping up 1 million acres of timberland in Maine and New Hampshire for a “fair price.”
With that acquisition Malone became the largest private landowner in the U.S., at 2.2 million acres, according to The Land Report, which tracks sales. He surpassed his fellow billionaire Ted Turner, who had held the title for the previous 15 years. Turner owns 2.1 million acres in the U.S. and has an additional 100,000 acres in South America.
The turnover at the top is fitting. Malone (worth $4.5 billion) and Turner (worth $2.1 billion) are longtime acquaintances and business partners. Malone served on the board of Turner Broadcasting in the 1980s and bailed out Turner’s company in 1987. In 2007, through Liberty Media, Malone became the owner of the Atlanta Braves, Turner’s old baseball team. (“I will always think of them as Ted’s team,” says Malone.) The two have neighboring trophy ranches in northern New Mexico (Malone’s 250,000-acre TO Ranch runs east from Turner’s 591,000-acre Vermejo Park Ranch.) And it was Turner, 72, who “first gave me this land-buying disease,” says Malone, when the duo flew a helicopter over Vermejo. Says Turner: “Over the years I’ve shared my experiences with John. I consider him a good friend and have great respect for him.”
So no Hatfield-McCoy here. Malone recently visited Turner, who was “down in the dumps because I still have lots of dry powder and he’s pretty tapped out,” jokes Malone. “I think if it was a race, Ted would concede.”
Turner seems happy to do just that, saying he was glad to see Malone make his latest acquisition. “We’re working toward the same goal–to be stewards of the land and make sure it’s preserved for future generations,” says Turner.
But though their conservation ends may be the same, their means differ. “Ted’s idea of tradition is to go back to pre-European times,” says Malone. Turner famously poisoned a stretch of Cherry Creek–which runs through his Flying D Ranch in Montana–to rid it of the invasive brown and rainbow trout. (He replanted the stream with native cutthroat trout.) At Turner’s ranch bison roam free over land that’s been cleared of most signs of human habitation.
Malone, on the other hand, says, “I tend to be more willing to admit that human beings aren’t going away.” So he believes that trees can be harvested without damaging the ecology and wildlife. (“I’m not an extreme tree-hugger,” he says.) He will continue the sustainable forestry operation on the Maine and New Hampshire land (purchased from GMO Renewable Resources, a private equity firm). Malone is also looking at wind-power opportunities on the property and will keep the land open for public recreation, a Maine tradition. Malone takes the same “working farm” philosophy with his western properties, like the Bell Ranch, where he raises cattle and horses.
Malone wants to “break even” on his land, but there is more than economics involved. “There’s the emotional and intellectual aspect of walking the land and getting that sense of awe,” he says. “I own it, sort of, for my lifetime.”
Like Turner, he has plans to conserve most of it for beyond his lifetime, through perpetual conservation easements. “But I’m not going to kid myself and think that 500 years from now, with population growth, that the government won’t start putting people on the land,” he says. “But at least I tried.”
Landowners
(Members of the Forbes Billionaires list in bold)
John Malone: 2.2 mn acres—With this year’s purchase of one million acres in Maine and New Hampshire, became the new top dog. Liberty Media chairman also owns property in New Mexico, Wyoming and Colorado.
Ted Turner: 2.1 mn acres—Land in seven states. Strident environmentalist has more than 50,000 bison. Has begun renewable energy plant (solar) in New Mexico.
Red Emmerson: 1.722 mn acres—Runs family-owned timber company Sierra Pacific Industries, founded by father, “Curly.” Biggest landowner in California. Recently has begun placing some land in conservation easements.
Brad Kelley: 1.7 mn acres—Discount cigarette billionaire owns land in Texas, New Mexico, and Florida, mostly used to propagate rare animal species, like the pygmy hippo and okapi.
Irving family: 1.2 mn acres—Through the timber company, Irving Woodlands, the Canadian family owns forest land in Maine, most of which is sustainably harvested.
Singleton Family: 1.11 mn acres—Children of Dr. Henry Singleton, founder of Teledyne, Inc., run ranchland in New Mexico. Avid participants in local rodeos.
King Ranch: 911,215 acres—Land in Texas and Florida. Farm sugarcane, vegetables, citrus and pecans. The ranch produced 1946 Triple Crown winner, Assault.
Pingree heirs: 800,000 acres—Family’s Seven Island Land Company owns tract of land in Maine bigger than state of Rhode Island. Heirs of David Pingree, a 19th century shipper.
Reed family: 770,000 acres—Through Simpson Lumber Company, owns timberland in Pacific Northwest.
Stanley Kroenke: 740,000—St. Louis Rams and Arsenal owner owns cattle and recreational ranches in Montana and Wyoming.
You can always find this blog via http://PROUT.Shows.it/ and comment below each post. To discuss further in our forum and explore the subtleties of the Progressive Utilization Theory with others, go here: http://ProgressiveSustainMeetUp.has.it/
Progressive Theories, Their Purpose and Practicality
A theory is an exposition of the general principles that govern some aspect of life. Hence, every theory must have a function. Generally speaking, that function may be either explanatory or practical, though in fact any successful theory must necessarily be both.
True knowledge is always both useful and usable information.
As PROUT is a socioeconomic theory, its purpose is to facilitate the happiness and welfare of all. The Five Fundamental Principles of PROUT embody both the practical and theoretical essence of this theory.
In a nutshell, the theory is that an ideal society makes progressive utilization of everything. Though the concept of progressive utilization sounds obvious, its implications require some amplification. Hence, the theory is broken down into five fundamental principles.
Each of the principles enlarges on the preceding principles. In other words, Principle 2 becomes practical only after applying Principle 1. Principle 3 becomes practical only after applying Principles 1 and 2. In this way, each successive principle not only adds insight into the theory of progressive utilization, but it also adds dimensions to the principles that precede it.
We may liken the practical aspects of PROUT to a lotus flower having five layers of petals. The outermost layer corresponds to the first principle, and the innermost layer corresponds to the fifth principle.
The Five Fundamental Principles of PROUT are:
1. There should be no accumulation of wealth without the permission of society.
2. There should be maximum utilization and rational distribution of the crude, subtle, and causal resources.
3. There should be maximum utilization of the physical, mental, and spiritual potentialities of the individual and collective beings.
4. There should be a proper adjustment among the crude, subtle, and causal utilizations.
5. Utilizations vary in accordance with time, space, and form; the utilizations should be progressive.
You can always find this blog via http://PROUT.Shows.it/ and comment below each post. To discuss further in our forum and explore the subtleties of the Progressive Utilization Theory with others, go here: http://ProgressiveSustainMeetUp.has.it/
True knowledge is always both useful and usable information.
As PROUT is a socioeconomic theory, its purpose is to facilitate the happiness and welfare of all. The Five Fundamental Principles of PROUT embody both the practical and theoretical essence of this theory.
In a nutshell, the theory is that an ideal society makes progressive utilization of everything. Though the concept of progressive utilization sounds obvious, its implications require some amplification. Hence, the theory is broken down into five fundamental principles.
Each of the principles enlarges on the preceding principles. In other words, Principle 2 becomes practical only after applying Principle 1. Principle 3 becomes practical only after applying Principles 1 and 2. In this way, each successive principle not only adds insight into the theory of progressive utilization, but it also adds dimensions to the principles that precede it.
We may liken the practical aspects of PROUT to a lotus flower having five layers of petals. The outermost layer corresponds to the first principle, and the innermost layer corresponds to the fifth principle.
The Five Fundamental Principles of PROUT are:
1. There should be no accumulation of wealth without the permission of society.
2. There should be maximum utilization and rational distribution of the crude, subtle, and causal resources.
3. There should be maximum utilization of the physical, mental, and spiritual potentialities of the individual and collective beings.
4. There should be a proper adjustment among the crude, subtle, and causal utilizations.
5. Utilizations vary in accordance with time, space, and form; the utilizations should be progressive.
You can always find this blog via http://PROUT.Shows.it/ and comment below each post. To discuss further in our forum and explore the subtleties of the Progressive Utilization Theory with others, go here: http://ProgressiveSustainMeetUp.has.it/
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Spiritual Humanism
Spiritual Humanism
PROUT is founded on the assumption that matter is not separate from consciousness but is rather a metamorphosed form of it. Similarly, consciousness, is not the result of mental activity but rather thought is also a form of consciousness. It is Consciousness that underlies psycho-physical reality and provides the inspiration for a rational view of life, moral integrity, and spiritual wisdom.
Spirituality and morality should not be equated with religious dogma and faith in God. All religions are frankly dualist systems that separate humans from their creator and the creation. The rationalist rebels against theology - Descartes, Leibnitz, and Kant - also failed to escape the vicious circle of dualism. To offer security, religion impressed upon people the need to submit before the imaginary will of God or a theological ethical code, sanctioned by the scriptures and defined by religious institutions. Morality in this sense, however, is the absence of freedom.
A philosophy based on spiritual and moral values, on the other hand, is able to explain human existence - including desire, emotion, instincts, intuition, will and reason - as an integrated framework and do so in a way that is accessible to human comprehension. Such a philosophy is required to build the new social organism and political institutions capable of fostering not only the harmonious relations of all races and cultural groups, but also the harmonious relation of human beings with all animate and inanimate objects.
Human existence is physical, mental and spiritual, with progress as an evolutionary continuum into higher consciousness and ultimately to the state of absolute freedom. Simultaneously, spiritual progress can only be attained on a firm physical and mental base. This physical and intellectual base has to be progressively adjusted to changing conditions of time and space. The natural human aspiration is to achieve freedom in all three spheres.
In our march towards freedom we cannot neglect other living beings. We have to develop a social system where all living beings can live securely, and where people can move towards emancipation by freeing their minds from superstition and dogma. This universalistic spirit is NeoHumanism or Spiritual Humanism. Human history thus far is a story of ruling classes trying to enhance their own social and material wealth at the cost of human values. This is why temples, churches, scriptures, laws, constitutions, corporations and international trade agreements have become more important than human beings. To confront this, PROUT maintains that a fundamental human philosophy is required to cement a new social system and not the changing social values based on self-interest embodied in contemporary ruling institutions.
Human values find their root in transpersonal essence, spirituality. Spirituality is not mystic speculation of life after death, but is realized in relation to the manifest universe. The philosophy of monism, which postulates the self to be in union with the rest of the universe and responsible for its well-being, is the essence of spiritual humanism. Sarkar wrote in his book Neo-Humanism in a Nutshell: Part 1: “What does the state stand for, what is the use of these regulations, and what is the march of civilization for, if human beings don't get a chance to build a good physical well-being, to invigorate their intelligence with knowledge, and to broaden their hearts with love and compassion? Instead of leading humanity to the goal of life, if the State stands in the way, then it cannot command loyalty, because humanity is superior to the State.”
You can always find this blog via http://PROUT.Shows.it/ and comment below each post. To discuss further in our forum and explore the subtleties of the Progressive Utilization Theory with others, go here: http://ProgressiveSustainMeetUp.has.it/
You can always find this blog via http://PROUT.Shows.it/ and comment below each post. To discuss further in our forum and explore the subtleties of the Progressive Utilization Theory with others, go here: http://ProgressiveSustainMeetUp.has.it/
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