After the overthrow of communist governments in Eastern Europe, capitalism was paraded as the indomitable system that brings prosperity and democracy, the system that would prevail unto the end of history.
The present economic crisis, however, has convinced even some prominent free-marketeers that something is gravely amiss. Truth be told, capitalism has yet to come to terms with several historical forces that cause it endless trouble: democracy, prosperity, and capitalism itself, the very entities that capitalist rulers claim to be fostering.
Plutocracy vs. Democracy
Let us consider democracy first. In the United States we hear that capitalism is wedded to democracy, hence the phrase, "capitalist democracies." In fact, throughout our history there has been a largely antagonistic relationship between democracy and capital concentration. Some eighty years ago Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis commented, "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." Moneyed interests have been opponents not proponents of democracy.
The Constitution itself was fashioned by affluent gentlemen who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to repeatedly warn of the baneful and dangerous leveling effects of democracy. The document they cobbled together was far from democratic, being shackled with checks, vetoes, and requirements for artificial super majorities, a system designed to blunt the impact of popular demands.
In the early days of the Republic the rich and well-born imposed property qualifications for voting and officeholding. They opposed the direct election of candidates (note, their Electoral College is still with us). And for decades they resisted extending the franchise to less favored groups such as propertyless working men, immigrants, racial minorities, and women.
Today conservative forces continue to reject more equitable electoral features such as proportional representation, instant runoff, and publicly funded campaigns. They continue to create barriers to voting, be it through overly severe registration requirements, voter roll purges, inadequate polling accommodations, and electronic voting machines that consistently "malfunction" to the benefit of the more conservative candidates.
At times ruling interests have suppressed radical publications and public protests, resorting to police raids, arrests, and jailings – applied most recently with full force against demonstrators in St. Paul, Minnesota, during the 2008 Republican National Convention.
The conservative plutocracy also seeks to rollback democracy's social gains, such as public education, affordable housing, health care, collective bargaining, a living wage, safe work conditions, a non-toxic sustainable environment; the right to privacy, the separation of church and state, freedom from compulsory pregnancy, and the right to marry any consenting adult of one's own choosing.
About a century ago, US labor leader Eugene Victor Debs was thrown into jail during a strike. Sitting in his cell he could not escape the conclusion that in disputes between two private interests, capital and labor, the state was not a neutral arbiter. The force of the state – with its police, militia, courts, and laws – was unequivocally on the side of the company bosses. From this, Debs concluded that capitalism was not just an economic system but an entire social order, one that rigged the rules of democracy to favor the moneybags.
Capitalist rulers continue to pose as the progenitors of democracy even as they subvert it, not only at home but throughout Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Any nation that is not "investor friendly," that attempts to use its land, labor, capital, natural resources, and markets in a self-developing manner, outside the dominion of transnational corporate hegemony, runs the risk of being demonized and targeted as "a threat to U.S. national security."
Democracy becomes a problem for corporate America not when it fails to work but when it works too well, helping the populace move toward a more equitable and livable social order, narrowing the gap, however modestly, between the superrich and the rest of us. So democracy must be diluted and subverted, smothered with disinformation, media puffery, and mountains of campaign costs; with rigged electoral contests and partially disfranchised publics, bringing faux victories to more or less politically safe major-party candidates.
Capitalism vs. Prosperity
The corporate capitalists no more encourage prosperity than do they propagate democracy. Most of the world is capitalist, and most of the world is neither prosperous nor particularly democratic. One need only think of capitalist Nigeria, capitalist Indonesia, capitalist Thailand, capitalist Haiti, capitalist Colombia, capitalist Pakistan, capitalist South Africa, capitalist Latvia, and various other members of the Free World – more accurately, the Free Market World.
A prosperous, politically literate populace with high expectations about its standard of living and a keen sense of entitlement, pushing for continually better social conditions, is not the plutocracy's notion of an ideal workforce and a properly pliant polity. Corporate investors prefer poor populations. The poorer you are, the harder you will work—for less. The poorer you are, the less equipped you are to defend yourself against the abuses of wealth.
In the corporate world of "free-trade," the number of billionaires is increasing faster than ever while the number of people living in poverty is growing at a faster rate than the world's population. Poverty spreads as wealth accumulates.
Consider the United States. In the last eight years alone, while vast fortunes accrued at record rates, an additional six million Americans sank below the poverty level; median family income declined by over $2,000; consumer debt more than doubled; over seven million Americans lost their health insurance, and more than four million lost their pensions; meanwhile homelessness increased and housing foreclosures reached pandemic levels.
It is only in countries where capitalism has been reined in to some degree by social democracy that the populace has been able to secure a measure of prosperity; northern European nations such as Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark come to mind. But even in these social democracies popular gains are always at risk of being rolled back.
It is ironic to credit capitalism with the genius of economic prosperity when most attempts at material betterment have been vehemently and sometimes violently resisted by the capitalist class. The history of labor struggle provides endless illustration of this.
To the extent that life is bearable under the present U.S. economic order, it is because millions of people have waged bitter class struggles to advance their living standards and their rights as citizens, bringing some measure of humanity to an otherwise heartless politico-economic order.
A Self-devouring Beast
The capitalist state has two roles long recognized by political thinkers. First, like any state it must provide services that cannot be reliably developed through private means, such as public safety and orderly traffic. Second, the capitalist state protects the haves from the have-nots, securing the process of capital accumulation to benefit the moneyed interests, while heavily circumscribing the demands of the working populace, as Debs observed from his jail cell.
There is a third function of the capitalist state seldom mentioned. It consists of preventing the capitalist system from devouring itself. Consider the core contradiction Karl Marx pointed to: the tendency toward overproduction and market crisis. An economy dedicated to speedups and wage cuts, to making workers produce more and more for less and less, is always in danger of a crash. To maximize profits, wages must be kept down. But someone has to buy the goods and services being produced. For that, wages must be kept up. There is a chronic tendency – as we are seeing today – toward overproduction of private sector goods and services and underconsumption of necessities by the working populace.
In addition, there is the frequently overlooked self-destruction created by the moneyed players themselves. If left completely unsupervised, the more active command component of the financial system begins to devour less organized sources of wealth.
Instead of trying to make money by the arduous task of producing and marketing goods and services, the marauders tap directly into the money streams of the economy itself. During the 1990s we witnessed the collapse of an entire economy in Argentina when unchecked free marketeers stripped enterprises, pocketed vast sums, and left the country's productive capacity in shambles. The Argentine state, gorged on a heavy diet of free-market ideology, faltered in its function of saving capitalism from the capitalists.
Some years later, in the United States, came the multi-billion-dollar plunder perpetrated by corporate conspirators at Enron, WorldCom, Harkin, Adelphia, and a dozen other major companies. Inside players like Ken Lay turned successful corporate enterprises into sheer wreckage, wiping out the jobs and life savings of thousands of employees in order to pocket billions.
These thieves were caught and convicted. Does that not show capitalism's self-correcting capacity? Not really. The prosecution of such malfeasance – in any case coming too late – was a product of democracy's accountability and transparency, not capitalism's. Of itself the free market is an amoral system, with no strictures save "caveat emptor."
In the meltdown of 2008-09 the mounting financial surplus created a problem for the moneyed class: there were not enough opportunities to invest. With more money than they knew what to do with, big investors poured immense sums into nonexistent housing markets and other dodgy ventures, a legerdemain of hedge funds, derivatives, high leveraging, credit default swaps, predatory lending, and whatever else.
Among the victims were other capitalists, small investors, and the many workers who lost billions of dollars in savings and pensions. Perhaps the premiere brigand was Bernard Madoff. Described as "a longstanding leader in the financial services industry," Madoff ran a fraudulent fund that raked in $50 billion from wealthy investors, paying them back "with money that wasn't there," as he himself put it. The plutocracy devours its own children.
In the midst of the meltdown, at an October 2008 congressional hearing, former chair of the Federal Reserve and orthodox free-market devotee Alan Greenspan confessed that he had been mistaken to expect moneyed interests – groaning under an immense accumulation of capital that needs to be invested somewhere – to suddenly exercise self-restraint.
The classic laissez-faire theory is even more preposterous than Greenspan made it. In fact, the theory claims that everyone should pursue their own selfish interests without restraint. This unbridled competition supposedly will produce maximum benefits for all because the free market is governed by a miraculously benign "invisible hand" that optimizes collective outputs. ("Greed is good.")
Is the crisis of 2008-09 caused by a chronic tendency toward overproduction and hyper-financial accumulation, as Marx would have it? Or is it the outcome of the personal avarice of people like Bernard Madoff? In other words, is the problem systemic or individual? In fact, the two are not mutually exclusive. Capitalism breeds the venal perpetrators, and rewards the most unscrupulous among them. The crimes and crises are not irrational departures from a rational system, but the converse: they are the rational outcomes of a basically irrational and amoral system.
Worse still, the ensuing multi-billion dollar government bailouts are themselves being turned into an opportunity for pillage. Not only does the state fail to regulate, it becomes itself a source of plunder, pulling vast sums from the federal money machine, leaving the taxpayers to bleed.
Those who scold us for "running to the government for a handout" are themselves running to the government for a handout. Corporate America has always enjoyed grants-in-aid, loan guarantees, and other state and federal subventions. But the 2008-09 "rescue operation" offered a record feed at the public trough. More than $350 billion was dished out by a right-wing lame-duck Secretary of the Treasury to the biggest banks and financial houses without oversight--not to mention the more than $4 trillion that has come from the Federal Reserve. Most of the banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of New York Mellon, stated that they had no intention of letting anyone know where the money was going.
The big bankers used some of the bailout, we do know, to buy up smaller banks and prop up banks overseas. CEOs and other top banking executives are spending bailout funds on fabulous bonuses and lavish corporate spa retreats. Meanwhile, big bailout beneficiaries like Citigroup and Bank of America laid off tens of thousands of employees, inviting the question: why were they given all that money in the first place?
While hundreds of billions were being doled out to the very people who had caused the catastrophe, the housing market continued to wilt, credit remained paralyzed, unemployment worsened, and consumer spending sank to record lows.
In sum, free-market corporate capitalism is by its nature a disaster waiting to happen. Its essence is the transformation of living nature into mountains of commodities and commodities into heaps of dead capital. When left entirely to its own devices, capitalism foists its diseconomies and toxicity upon the general public and upon the natural environment – and eventually begins to devour itself.
The immense inequality in economic power that exists in our capitalist society translates into a formidable inequality of political power, which makes it all the more difficult to impose democratic regulations.
If the paladins of Corporate America want to know what really threatens "our way of life," it is their way of life, their boundless way of pilfering their own system, destroying the very foundation on which they stand, the very community on which they so lavishly feed.
--Michael Parenti's recent books include: Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader (City Lights); Democracy for the Few, 8th ed. (Wadsworth); and God and His Demons (forthcoming). For further information, visit his website: www.michaelparenti.org.
Is the Revolution in sight?
looks like the barge may be lifting off a sand bar...
January 22, 2009
January 14, 2009
Nature, Society and Human Survival , By Marc Brodine
From Political Affairs Online Magazine:
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/5781/1/281/
Editor’s Note: This article is based on a longer essay, “The Dialectics of Climate Change,” that addresses the ecological crisis in more detail, with more social and scientific examples. The complete essay relates dialectical materialism to the environment; provides a unified framework to help us understand the interrelationships between social, economic and environmental crises; addresses several contentious questions like China’s role, nuclear power, and the practical and theoretical challenges that environmental crises pose for socialists and communists; and proposes a number of steps humanity needs to take to begin to deal with the most crucial climate change questions. For an interview with Marc Brodine see: Political Affairs Radio – Episode 33
Frederick Engels, in his graveside address for Marx, noted that “Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.”
These are the fundamental realities of all human life: our lives are based on food, water, and resources that come from nature. As well, the ways in which we create and distribute food, drink and shelter impact the natural world we depend on. We need nature for our survival. If the air becomes too polluted for human health, we can’t simply breathe something else. Pollution that is blown away is blown away to somewhere else; it doesn’t just disappear. We can’t just stop eating; we require water.
Humans are not separate from their environment, and the environments of different countries are not separate from each other; what we experience in one region of the world is intimately connected to what people experience in other regions; what happens to natural global systems also happens to all of us.
All value to humanity comes either directly from nature, or from nature altered by human labor. If we compromise nature’s ability to regenerate the materials we need for our survival, we compromise our own ability to survive. We face a series of linked environmental problems – from climate change, to water use, to soil depletion – which have the potential to negatively affect sea levels, weather systems, our ability to grow food and drink water, and other essential aspects of human life. We can’t endlessly alter the balance of natural systems like the atmosphere or the oceans without suffering the consequences of that alteration.
There are direct human costs of capitalism, but there are also serious indirect costs, as capitalist production and agriculture exploit the non-renewable resources we depend upon in an ever-speedier race to catastrophe.
Capitalism operates on several deadly assumptions: that nature is “free,” that natural resources are limitless, that the waste-absorbing capacity of nature is infinite, that economic activity and the natural world are separate, that short-term profit is more important than long-term sustainability, and that the production of more commodities without end is progress. This is in addition to the human exploitation and oppression capitalism engenders and profits from.
The potential of looming environmental catastrophe isn’t a single problem with a simple solution. The climate crisis, excessive garbage and toxic waste, an increasing list of endangered species, pollution and toxic chemicals in the air, water, soil, and in our food, our workplaces, and our homes, are among the myriad problems we face. When we are threatened with a series of related potential crises, the chances that one or another of them will happen are much greater. We can’t now predict exactly which of the interlocked environmental problems we face will first lead to major negative tipping points. But because we face so many related problems, we can be pretty sure that if we fail to act, one or another of these crises is going to get us.
That’s the nature of risk probability: many risks times many opportunities for system breakdown equals inevitable crisis. Because the world is a complex of interlocking processes with dynamic interrelationships, once any one of these crises hit, the chances of the others
occurring escalate rapidly. More global warming results in more forest fires. More forest fires heat the atmosphere and result in more glacial melting, melting more permafrost, releasing more greenhouse gases, melting more glaciers, resulting in more forest fires, all of which increase global warming. The world is a series of giant feedback loops. And humanity is busy impacting those feedback loops.
The real question is: will we continue to force these natural systems to work together against humanity? Or will we restructure our social, economic, agricultural, and industrial systems to work more in harmony with them?
Human Society Needs to Change
The adaptability of human social systems is more limited than general human adaptability. When oppressive, class-divided societies are stressed by external events, whether war, economic crisis, or impending environmental collapse, the ruling class first transmits the main burdens of that crisis to the oppressed and exploited classes, using money and power to escape the consequences as long as possible. So the crises that threaten us are not just environmental, they are also crises of our social and economic systems and will accelerate social and economic problems, contributing to even more social instability and conflict. The genocide in Rwanda is one example – global warming and competition for limited degraded agricultural land were
not the only causes, but certainly exacerbated the genocide.
When a society comes into unresovlable conflict with its environment, there are three basic adaptations that can happen:
• the society can move elsewhere and continue as before in a new place (the main adaptation in ancient times),
• people can stay where they are and transform their society and economy, or
• the society and people can die out.
There are many examples of all three occurring over the course of human history, such as the Mesopotamian Fertile Crescent, North Africa, and Easter Island.
Our globalized economy and globalized environmental crises have left us with nowhere else to go. We can change our economic practices or else perish, or perhaps survive in a diminished fashion in a much more inhospitable world.
In the 10,000 years of agriculture and the four or five centuries of capitalism, humans have already transformed our relations with the microbial world, the seas, the vegetation, the crust of the earth, and now the atmosphere. We have reached a new successional stage in our relations with the rest of nature. The ecological crisis of our species is inextricably entwined with capitalism and its inefficient use of resources for the profit of a relative handful of individuals. If we create ways to transform our relationship to nature by changing our social and economic systems, we may be able to adapt and create a new ecology that enables our species to continue. Otherwise, we will be subjected to the often brutal workings of climate change and natural selection.
The world will survive. That is not in question. The earth has been through many more cataclysmic changes than global warming will bring. Nature will reach a new equilibrium. The question is whether or not our species will be able to survive that new balance. And if we are, will it be compatible with developed human existence, with the existence of human sustainability at a level of technological and cultural advancement and agricultural and water sufficiency. We can either work with nature, or nature will work against us. Nature doesn’t “care” about humanity; humanity must care about nature. We must work to enable nature to sustain us.
Most discussions of global climate change are limited in an odd way. The problems are seen as problems of human interaction with natural systems (which they are) or as problems in need of technological solutions (which they are). But little is done to connect any of this to our economic and social systems. In a private property system, when we collectively face problems that need collective solutions (and it doesn’t get much bigger or more collective than global climate change, both on the problem side and the required solution side), we run into private property rights and private decision-making about production, land use, resources, disposal of waste, and investment. The environmental problems we face are fundamental, so the solutions need to be fundamental. Solutions to our collective problems must be collective solutions.
A starting point is transforming the political and economic system from one that is ruled by a tiny class that privately expropriates maximum profit from socially-produced goods and services, to one led by the vast majority, motivated by the collective survival and sustainability needs of humanity as a whole. As with fundamental solutions to other problems such as racism, inequality, economic exploitation and others, socialism is a necessity for the survival of the human race – not a guarantee, but a necessary precondition for the kinds of fundamental solutions humanity needs. Socialists also need to understand that if capitalism does a bad enough job of ruining the environment, then the material basis for socialism will be harmed or destroyed. Socialism is a necessary, essential aspect of the changes we need to make to protect the survival of our species, but it is not a sufficient condition by itself.
However, we can’t wait for socialism to preserve our existence on this planet. We need to stop making things worse now. As well, confronting environmental problems and their social and economic causes are part of what will convince millions that we need socialism.
What More is Needed?
Socialism is crucial to the environmental, industrial, agricultural, and distribution changes we need to make, but by itself that won’t be enough. We need to integrate socialist economics with environmental science.
The natural world we live in is not infinite, and the resources in and of nature are also not infinite. So our definition of the “greatest good” must not be the greatest amount of material goods, but rather improving the living and health standards of all humanity while facilitating the continual reproduction and restoration of the natural conditions which we need to survive. We can’t have healthy humanity without a healthy natural world.
While the history of socialist countries contain positive environmental steps (such as Cuba’s recycling, organic agriculture and reforestation programs), they also have produced some very negative examples. This is discussed in more detail in the complete essay, available online.
Ultimately, failures and problems of socialism represent a failure to think, research, plan and implement dialectically. Economics and development are based on nature, based on the ability of nature to reproduce itself, and based on maintaining a healthy balance between human needs and the needs of the natural systems humanity depends on. If economics and development don’t work to maintain that balance, they work against the survival of humanity, and that is as true of socialist development as any other kind.
We shouldn’t use up non-renewable resources wastefully, like oil, and we can’t act as if the waste-absorbing capacity of the natural world is infinite. Even renewable resources can be damaged by human activity – if water and soil are degraded faster than nature rebuilds them, they turn into non-renewable resources. Significant shifts in what and how we produce, and in how we package and distribute goods, are necessary for our survival as a species. We have to redesign our industrial processes to eliminate the creation of pollution and take other steps to decrease the impact of human activity on the natural world, including reducing the impact of our agricultural systems and reducing over-reliance on chemical fertilizers, including reducing toxic chemical wastes. We have to restore and rebalance our relationships with nature.
The collective problems of humanity require the collective thinking and action of humanity. That is part of what socialist economic democracy must be about, the mobilization of our collective intelligence, ability and activity to solve our shared problems.
What To Do
click to subscribe
There are many steps we need to take to address the linked series of environmental problems facing humanity. Some are changes in individual behavior; others are major changes in how we produce food and industrial commodities. Both kinds of changes are needed – if we only focus on changing the habits of individuals but still keep running our industries in ways that continue to produce pollution, CO2 and methane, we won’t make much of a dent in the problems.
Social, economic, industrial and agricultural changes are required to solve environmental problems. Capitalism is a big part of the problem, and engaging in struggles to solve ecological crises are part of the path to replacing capitalism.
Recognizing Necessity
Engels said that “freedom is the recognition of necessity.” Only by recognizing environmental imperatives will we be free to make the right choices for humanity’s survival. Only by recognizing the restraint required of us by natural systems can we become truly conscious factors in improving the world for ourselves and our descendents.
--Send your letter to the editor to pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/5781/1/281/
Editor’s Note: This article is based on a longer essay, “The Dialectics of Climate Change,” that addresses the ecological crisis in more detail, with more social and scientific examples. The complete essay relates dialectical materialism to the environment; provides a unified framework to help us understand the interrelationships between social, economic and environmental crises; addresses several contentious questions like China’s role, nuclear power, and the practical and theoretical challenges that environmental crises pose for socialists and communists; and proposes a number of steps humanity needs to take to begin to deal with the most crucial climate change questions. For an interview with Marc Brodine see: Political Affairs Radio – Episode 33
Frederick Engels, in his graveside address for Marx, noted that “Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.”
These are the fundamental realities of all human life: our lives are based on food, water, and resources that come from nature. As well, the ways in which we create and distribute food, drink and shelter impact the natural world we depend on. We need nature for our survival. If the air becomes too polluted for human health, we can’t simply breathe something else. Pollution that is blown away is blown away to somewhere else; it doesn’t just disappear. We can’t just stop eating; we require water.
Humans are not separate from their environment, and the environments of different countries are not separate from each other; what we experience in one region of the world is intimately connected to what people experience in other regions; what happens to natural global systems also happens to all of us.
All value to humanity comes either directly from nature, or from nature altered by human labor. If we compromise nature’s ability to regenerate the materials we need for our survival, we compromise our own ability to survive. We face a series of linked environmental problems – from climate change, to water use, to soil depletion – which have the potential to negatively affect sea levels, weather systems, our ability to grow food and drink water, and other essential aspects of human life. We can’t endlessly alter the balance of natural systems like the atmosphere or the oceans without suffering the consequences of that alteration.
There are direct human costs of capitalism, but there are also serious indirect costs, as capitalist production and agriculture exploit the non-renewable resources we depend upon in an ever-speedier race to catastrophe.
Capitalism operates on several deadly assumptions: that nature is “free,” that natural resources are limitless, that the waste-absorbing capacity of nature is infinite, that economic activity and the natural world are separate, that short-term profit is more important than long-term sustainability, and that the production of more commodities without end is progress. This is in addition to the human exploitation and oppression capitalism engenders and profits from.
The potential of looming environmental catastrophe isn’t a single problem with a simple solution. The climate crisis, excessive garbage and toxic waste, an increasing list of endangered species, pollution and toxic chemicals in the air, water, soil, and in our food, our workplaces, and our homes, are among the myriad problems we face. When we are threatened with a series of related potential crises, the chances that one or another of them will happen are much greater. We can’t now predict exactly which of the interlocked environmental problems we face will first lead to major negative tipping points. But because we face so many related problems, we can be pretty sure that if we fail to act, one or another of these crises is going to get us.
That’s the nature of risk probability: many risks times many opportunities for system breakdown equals inevitable crisis. Because the world is a complex of interlocking processes with dynamic interrelationships, once any one of these crises hit, the chances of the others
occurring escalate rapidly. More global warming results in more forest fires. More forest fires heat the atmosphere and result in more glacial melting, melting more permafrost, releasing more greenhouse gases, melting more glaciers, resulting in more forest fires, all of which increase global warming. The world is a series of giant feedback loops. And humanity is busy impacting those feedback loops.
The real question is: will we continue to force these natural systems to work together against humanity? Or will we restructure our social, economic, agricultural, and industrial systems to work more in harmony with them?
Human Society Needs to Change
The adaptability of human social systems is more limited than general human adaptability. When oppressive, class-divided societies are stressed by external events, whether war, economic crisis, or impending environmental collapse, the ruling class first transmits the main burdens of that crisis to the oppressed and exploited classes, using money and power to escape the consequences as long as possible. So the crises that threaten us are not just environmental, they are also crises of our social and economic systems and will accelerate social and economic problems, contributing to even more social instability and conflict. The genocide in Rwanda is one example – global warming and competition for limited degraded agricultural land were
not the only causes, but certainly exacerbated the genocide.
When a society comes into unresovlable conflict with its environment, there are three basic adaptations that can happen:
• the society can move elsewhere and continue as before in a new place (the main adaptation in ancient times),
• people can stay where they are and transform their society and economy, or
• the society and people can die out.
There are many examples of all three occurring over the course of human history, such as the Mesopotamian Fertile Crescent, North Africa, and Easter Island.
Our globalized economy and globalized environmental crises have left us with nowhere else to go. We can change our economic practices or else perish, or perhaps survive in a diminished fashion in a much more inhospitable world.
In the 10,000 years of agriculture and the four or five centuries of capitalism, humans have already transformed our relations with the microbial world, the seas, the vegetation, the crust of the earth, and now the atmosphere. We have reached a new successional stage in our relations with the rest of nature. The ecological crisis of our species is inextricably entwined with capitalism and its inefficient use of resources for the profit of a relative handful of individuals. If we create ways to transform our relationship to nature by changing our social and economic systems, we may be able to adapt and create a new ecology that enables our species to continue. Otherwise, we will be subjected to the often brutal workings of climate change and natural selection.
The world will survive. That is not in question. The earth has been through many more cataclysmic changes than global warming will bring. Nature will reach a new equilibrium. The question is whether or not our species will be able to survive that new balance. And if we are, will it be compatible with developed human existence, with the existence of human sustainability at a level of technological and cultural advancement and agricultural and water sufficiency. We can either work with nature, or nature will work against us. Nature doesn’t “care” about humanity; humanity must care about nature. We must work to enable nature to sustain us.
Most discussions of global climate change are limited in an odd way. The problems are seen as problems of human interaction with natural systems (which they are) or as problems in need of technological solutions (which they are). But little is done to connect any of this to our economic and social systems. In a private property system, when we collectively face problems that need collective solutions (and it doesn’t get much bigger or more collective than global climate change, both on the problem side and the required solution side), we run into private property rights and private decision-making about production, land use, resources, disposal of waste, and investment. The environmental problems we face are fundamental, so the solutions need to be fundamental. Solutions to our collective problems must be collective solutions.
A starting point is transforming the political and economic system from one that is ruled by a tiny class that privately expropriates maximum profit from socially-produced goods and services, to one led by the vast majority, motivated by the collective survival and sustainability needs of humanity as a whole. As with fundamental solutions to other problems such as racism, inequality, economic exploitation and others, socialism is a necessity for the survival of the human race – not a guarantee, but a necessary precondition for the kinds of fundamental solutions humanity needs. Socialists also need to understand that if capitalism does a bad enough job of ruining the environment, then the material basis for socialism will be harmed or destroyed. Socialism is a necessary, essential aspect of the changes we need to make to protect the survival of our species, but it is not a sufficient condition by itself.
However, we can’t wait for socialism to preserve our existence on this planet. We need to stop making things worse now. As well, confronting environmental problems and their social and economic causes are part of what will convince millions that we need socialism.
What More is Needed?
Socialism is crucial to the environmental, industrial, agricultural, and distribution changes we need to make, but by itself that won’t be enough. We need to integrate socialist economics with environmental science.
The natural world we live in is not infinite, and the resources in and of nature are also not infinite. So our definition of the “greatest good” must not be the greatest amount of material goods, but rather improving the living and health standards of all humanity while facilitating the continual reproduction and restoration of the natural conditions which we need to survive. We can’t have healthy humanity without a healthy natural world.
While the history of socialist countries contain positive environmental steps (such as Cuba’s recycling, organic agriculture and reforestation programs), they also have produced some very negative examples. This is discussed in more detail in the complete essay, available online.
Ultimately, failures and problems of socialism represent a failure to think, research, plan and implement dialectically. Economics and development are based on nature, based on the ability of nature to reproduce itself, and based on maintaining a healthy balance between human needs and the needs of the natural systems humanity depends on. If economics and development don’t work to maintain that balance, they work against the survival of humanity, and that is as true of socialist development as any other kind.
We shouldn’t use up non-renewable resources wastefully, like oil, and we can’t act as if the waste-absorbing capacity of the natural world is infinite. Even renewable resources can be damaged by human activity – if water and soil are degraded faster than nature rebuilds them, they turn into non-renewable resources. Significant shifts in what and how we produce, and in how we package and distribute goods, are necessary for our survival as a species. We have to redesign our industrial processes to eliminate the creation of pollution and take other steps to decrease the impact of human activity on the natural world, including reducing the impact of our agricultural systems and reducing over-reliance on chemical fertilizers, including reducing toxic chemical wastes. We have to restore and rebalance our relationships with nature.
The collective problems of humanity require the collective thinking and action of humanity. That is part of what socialist economic democracy must be about, the mobilization of our collective intelligence, ability and activity to solve our shared problems.
What To Do
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There are many steps we need to take to address the linked series of environmental problems facing humanity. Some are changes in individual behavior; others are major changes in how we produce food and industrial commodities. Both kinds of changes are needed – if we only focus on changing the habits of individuals but still keep running our industries in ways that continue to produce pollution, CO2 and methane, we won’t make much of a dent in the problems.
Social, economic, industrial and agricultural changes are required to solve environmental problems. Capitalism is a big part of the problem, and engaging in struggles to solve ecological crises are part of the path to replacing capitalism.
Recognizing Necessity
Engels said that “freedom is the recognition of necessity.” Only by recognizing environmental imperatives will we be free to make the right choices for humanity’s survival. Only by recognizing the restraint required of us by natural systems can we become truly conscious factors in improving the world for ourselves and our descendents.
--Send your letter to the editor to pa-letters@politicalaffairs.net
January 12, 2009
Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad, Willem Buiter
September 29, 2008
The US House of Representatives has voted to reject the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act - the $700bn Treasury-funded facility for purchasing and managing toxic assets held by the US banking system.
Opposition to the proposal came from two different sources. A few remaining libertarians and believers in unfettered free enterprise voted against. Even when they recognise the risk that a calamitous collapse in economic activity may result, they view this as a form of creative destruction that is an integral part of a Darwinian market economy. I don’t know anything about Gresham Barrett, a Republican congressman from South Carolina but his statement fits the bill: “My fear is the government will be forever changing the face of the American free market. Because I believe so strongly in the principles of the free market and the belief in freedom, I will be opposing this bill.” Those who genuinely hold these views are mad, but honest and principled. I wish them a good depression.
A larger body of nay-voters consists of populist rabble-rousers or, worse, politicians who know better but follow the whims, fancies and passions of their constituents, even when this means that before long the real economy risks falling off a cliff. The following statement by Ted Poe, a Texan Republican member of Congress is a nice example: “New York City fatcats expect Joe Sixpack to buck up and pay for all of this nonsense,”… “Putting a financial gun to the head of every American is not the answer.”
The dedicated followers of constituency fashion reckon that the date of the election is likely to be before the full impact of the financial collapse made likely by this vote will hit their constituents’ jobs and businesses. They put re-election before the economic health of the nation and the interests of their constituents. Opportunism guides them rather than principle. I wish them a rather nasty depression.
What is likely to happen next? With a bit of luck, the House will be frightened by its own audacity and will reverse itself. If a substantively similar bill (or a better bill that addresses not just the problem of valuing toxic assets and getting them off the banks’ books, but also the problem of recapitalising the US banking sector) is passed in the next day or so, the damage can remain limited. If the markets fear that the nays have thrown their toys out of the pram for the long term, the following scenario is quite likely:
* The US stock market tanks. Bank shares collapse, as do the valuations of all highly leveraged financial institutions. Weaker versions of this occur in Europe, in Japan and in the emerging markets.
* CDS spreads for banks explode, as will those of all highly leveraged financial institutions. Credits spreads generally take on loan-shark proportions, even for reputable borrowers. Again the rest of the world will experience a slightly milder version of this.
* No US bank will lend to any other US bank or any other highly leveraged institution. The same will happen elsewhere. Remaining sources of external finance for banks, other than the facilities created by the central banks and the Treasuries, will dry up.
* Banks and other highly leveraged institutions will try to unload assets at fire-sale prices in illiquid markets. Even assets not viewed as toxic before will become unsaleable at any price.
* The interaction of a growing lack of funding liquidity and increasing market illiquidity will destroy the banks’ business models.
* Banks will stop providing credit to households and to non-financial enterprises.
* Banks will collapse, both through balance sheet insolvency and through liquidity insolvency. No bank will be safe, not even the household names for whom the crisis has thus far brought more opportunities than disasters.
* Other highly leveraged financial institutions collapse on a large scale.
* Households and non-financial businesses revert to financial autarky, among wide-spread defaults and insolvencies.
* Consumer demand and investment demand collapse. Unemployment shoots up.
* The government suspends all trading in financial stocks until further notice.
* The government nationalises all US banks and other highly leveraged financial institutions. The shareholders get nothing up front and have to wait for an eventual re-privatisation or liquididation to find out whether they are left with anything at all. Holders of bank debt get a sizeable haircut ‘up front’ on the face value of the debt and have part of the remainder converted into equity that shares the fate of the old equity.
* We have the Great Depression of the 2010s.
None of this is unavoidable, provided the US Congress grows up and adopts forthwith something close to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act as a first, modest but necessary step towards re-establishing functioning securitisation markets and restoring financial health to the banking sector. Cutting off your nose to spite your face is not a sensible alternative.
PS My remaining financial wealth is now kept in a (small) old sock in an undisclosed location.
PPS The conduct of both US Presidential candidates in this matter makes them unfit for purpose.
_____________________________________________________
Willem Buiter: Professor of European Political Economy, London School of Economics and Political Science; former chief economist of the EBRD, former external member of the MPC;
September 29th, 2008 in Economics, Ethics, Financial Markets, Monetary Policy, Politics | Permalink
January 9, 2009
The time of the righteous By Gideon Levy
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054158.html
This war, perhaps more than its predecessors, is exposing the true deep veins of Israeli society. Racism and hatred are rearing their heads, as is the impulse for revenge and the thirst for blood. The "inclination of the commander" in the Israel Defense Forces is now "to kill as many as possible," as the military correspondents on television describe it. And even if the reference is to Hamas fighters, this inclination is still chilling.
The unbridled aggression and brutality are justified as "exercising caution": the frightening balance of blood - about 100 Palestinian dead for every Israeli killed, isn't raising any questions, as if we've decided that their blood is worth one hundred times less than ours, in acknowledgement of our inherent racism.
Rightists, nationalists, chauvinists and militarists are the only legitimate bon ton in town. Don't bother us about humaneness and compassion. Only at the edges of the camp can a voice of protest be heard - illegitimate, ostracized and ignored by media coverage - from a small but brave group of Jews and Arabs.
Alongside all this, rings another voice, perhaps the worst of all. This is the voice of the righteous and the hypocritical. My colleague, Ari Shavit, seems to be their eloquent spokesman. This week, Shavit wrote here ("Israel must double, triple, quadruple its medical aid to Gaza," Haaretz, January 7): "The Israeli offensive in Gaza is justified ... Only an immediate and generous humanitarian initiative will prove that even during the brutal warfare that has been forced on us, we remember that there are human beings on the other side."
To Shavit, who defended the justness of this war and insisted that it mustn't be lost, the price is immaterial, as is the fact that there are no victories in such unjust wars. And he dares, in the same breath, to preach "humaneness."
Does Shavit wish for us to kill and kill, and afterward to set up field hospitals and send medicine to care for the wounded? He knows that a war against a helpless population, perhaps the most helpless one in the world, that has nowhere to escape to, can only be cruel and despicable. But these people always want to come out of it looking good. We'll drop bombs on residential buildings, and then we'll treat the wounded at Ichilov; we'll shell meager places of refuge in United Nations schools, and then we'll rehabilitate the disabled at Beit Lewinstein. We'll shoot and then we'll cry, we'll kill and then we'll lament, we'll cut down women and children like automatic killing machines, and we'll also preserve our dignity.
The problem is - it just doesn't work that way. This is outrageous hypocrisy and self-righteousness. Those who make inflammatory calls for more and more violence without regard for the consequences are at least being more honest about it.
You can't have it both ways. The only "purity" in this war is the "purification from terrorists," which really means the sowing of horrendous tragedies. What's happening in Gaza is not a natural disaster, an earthquake or flood, for which it would be our duty and right to extend a helping hand to those affected, to send rescue squads, as we so love to do. Of all the rotten luck, all the disasters now occurring in Gaza are manmade - by us. Aid cannot be offered with bloodstained hands. Compassion cannot sprout from brutality.
Yet there are some who still want it both ways. To kill and destroy indiscriminately and also to come out looking good, with a clean conscience. To go ahead with war crimes without any sense of the heavy guilt that should accompany them. It takes some nerve. Anyone who justifies this war also justifies all its crimes. Anyone who preaches for this war and believes in the justness of the mass killing it is inflicting has no right whatsoever to speak about morality and humaneness. There is no such thing as simultaneously killing and nurturing. This attitude is a faithful representation of the basic, twofold Israeli sentiment that has been with us forever: To commit any wrong, but to feel pure in our own eyes. To kill, demolish, starve, imprison and humiliate - and be right, not to mention righteous. The righteous warmongers will not be able to allow themselves these luxuries.
Anyone who justifies this war also justifies all its crimes. Anyone who sees it as a defensive war must bear the moral responsibility for its consequences. Anyone who now encourages the politicians and the army to continue will also have to bear the mark of Cain that will be branded on his forehead after the war. All those who support the war also support the horror.
This war, perhaps more than its predecessors, is exposing the true deep veins of Israeli society. Racism and hatred are rearing their heads, as is the impulse for revenge and the thirst for blood. The "inclination of the commander" in the Israel Defense Forces is now "to kill as many as possible," as the military correspondents on television describe it. And even if the reference is to Hamas fighters, this inclination is still chilling.
The unbridled aggression and brutality are justified as "exercising caution": the frightening balance of blood - about 100 Palestinian dead for every Israeli killed, isn't raising any questions, as if we've decided that their blood is worth one hundred times less than ours, in acknowledgement of our inherent racism.
Rightists, nationalists, chauvinists and militarists are the only legitimate bon ton in town. Don't bother us about humaneness and compassion. Only at the edges of the camp can a voice of protest be heard - illegitimate, ostracized and ignored by media coverage - from a small but brave group of Jews and Arabs.
Alongside all this, rings another voice, perhaps the worst of all. This is the voice of the righteous and the hypocritical. My colleague, Ari Shavit, seems to be their eloquent spokesman. This week, Shavit wrote here ("Israel must double, triple, quadruple its medical aid to Gaza," Haaretz, January 7): "The Israeli offensive in Gaza is justified ... Only an immediate and generous humanitarian initiative will prove that even during the brutal warfare that has been forced on us, we remember that there are human beings on the other side."
To Shavit, who defended the justness of this war and insisted that it mustn't be lost, the price is immaterial, as is the fact that there are no victories in such unjust wars. And he dares, in the same breath, to preach "humaneness."
Does Shavit wish for us to kill and kill, and afterward to set up field hospitals and send medicine to care for the wounded? He knows that a war against a helpless population, perhaps the most helpless one in the world, that has nowhere to escape to, can only be cruel and despicable. But these people always want to come out of it looking good. We'll drop bombs on residential buildings, and then we'll treat the wounded at Ichilov; we'll shell meager places of refuge in United Nations schools, and then we'll rehabilitate the disabled at Beit Lewinstein. We'll shoot and then we'll cry, we'll kill and then we'll lament, we'll cut down women and children like automatic killing machines, and we'll also preserve our dignity.
The problem is - it just doesn't work that way. This is outrageous hypocrisy and self-righteousness. Those who make inflammatory calls for more and more violence without regard for the consequences are at least being more honest about it.
You can't have it both ways. The only "purity" in this war is the "purification from terrorists," which really means the sowing of horrendous tragedies. What's happening in Gaza is not a natural disaster, an earthquake or flood, for which it would be our duty and right to extend a helping hand to those affected, to send rescue squads, as we so love to do. Of all the rotten luck, all the disasters now occurring in Gaza are manmade - by us. Aid cannot be offered with bloodstained hands. Compassion cannot sprout from brutality.
Yet there are some who still want it both ways. To kill and destroy indiscriminately and also to come out looking good, with a clean conscience. To go ahead with war crimes without any sense of the heavy guilt that should accompany them. It takes some nerve. Anyone who justifies this war also justifies all its crimes. Anyone who preaches for this war and believes in the justness of the mass killing it is inflicting has no right whatsoever to speak about morality and humaneness. There is no such thing as simultaneously killing and nurturing. This attitude is a faithful representation of the basic, twofold Israeli sentiment that has been with us forever: To commit any wrong, but to feel pure in our own eyes. To kill, demolish, starve, imprison and humiliate - and be right, not to mention righteous. The righteous warmongers will not be able to allow themselves these luxuries.
Anyone who justifies this war also justifies all its crimes. Anyone who sees it as a defensive war must bear the moral responsibility for its consequences. Anyone who now encourages the politicians and the army to continue will also have to bear the mark of Cain that will be branded on his forehead after the war. All those who support the war also support the horror.
January 3, 2009
Can you really not see? by By Amira Hass
Let us leave aside those Israelis whose ideology supports the dispossession of the Palestinian people because "God chose us." Leave aside the judges who whitewash every military policy of killing and destruction. Leave aside the military commanders who knowingly jail an entire nation in pens surrounded by walls, fortified observation towers, machine guns, barbed wire and blinding projectors. Leave aside the ministers. All of these are not counted among the collaborators. These are the architects, the planners, the designers, the executioners.
But there are others. Historians and mathematicians, senior editors, media stars, psychologists and family doctors, lawyers who do not support Gush Emunim and Kadima, teachers and educators, lovers of hiking trails and sing-alongs, high-tech wizards. Where are you? And what about you, researchers of Nazism, the Holocaust and Soviet gulags? Could you all be in favor of systematic discriminating laws? Laws stating that the Arabs of the Galilee will not even be compensated for the damages of the war by the same sums their Jewish neighbors are entitled to (Aryeh Dayan, Haaretz , August 21).
Could it be that you are all in favor of a racist Citizenship Law that forbids an Israeli Arab from living with his family in his own home? That you side with further expropriation of lands and the demolishing of additional orchards, for another settler neighborhood and another exclusively Jewish road? That you all back the shelling and missile fire killing the old and the young in the Gaza Strip?
Could it be that you all agree that a third of the West Bank (the Jordan Valley) should be off limits to Palestinians? That you all side with an Israeli policy that prevents tens of thousands of Palestinians who have obtained foreign citizenship from returning to their families in the occupied territories?
Could your mind really be so washed with the security excuse, used to forbid Gaza students from studying occupational therapy at Bethlehem and medicine at Abu Dis, and preventing sick people from Rafah from receiving medical treatment in Ramallah? Will also you find it easy to hide behind the explanation "we had no idea": we had no idea that the discrimination practiced in the distribution of water - which is solely controlled by Israel - leaves thousands of Palestinian households without water during the hot summer months; we had no idea that when the IDF blocks the entrance to villages, it also blocks their access to springs or water tanks.
But it cannot be that you don't see the iron gates along route 344 in the West Bank, blocking access to it from the Palestinian villages it passes by. It cannot be that you support preventing the access of thousands of farmers to their land and plantations, that you support the quarantine on Gaza which prevents the entry of medicine for hospitals, the disruption of electricity and water supply to 1.4 million human beings, closing their only outlet to the world for months.
Could it be that you do not know what is happening 15 minutes from your faculties and offices? Is it plausible that you support the system in which Hebrew soldiers, at checkpoints in the heart of the West Bank, are letting tens of thousands of people wait everyday for hours upon hours under the blazing sun, while selecting: residents of Nablus and Tul Karm are not allowed through, 35-year-olds and under - yallah, back to Jenin, residents of the Salem village are not even allowed to be here, a sick woman who skipped the line must learn a lesson and will be purposefully detained for hours. Machsom Watch's site is available for all; in it are countless such testimonies and worse, a day by day routine. But it cannot be that those who are appalled over every swastika painted on a Jewish grave in France and over every anti-Semitic headline in a Spanish local newspaper will not know how to reach this information, and will not be appalled and outraged.
As Jews we all enjoy the privilege Israel gives us, what makes us all collaborators. The question is what does every one of us do in an active and direct daily manner to minimize cooperation with a dispossessing, suppressing regime that never has its fill. Signing a petition and tutting will not do. Israel is a democracy for its Jews. We are not in danger of our lives, we will not be jailed in concentration camps, our livelihood will not be damaged and recreation in the countryside or abroad will not be denied to us. Therefore, the burden of collaboration and direct responsibility is immeasurably heavy.
But there are others. Historians and mathematicians, senior editors, media stars, psychologists and family doctors, lawyers who do not support Gush Emunim and Kadima, teachers and educators, lovers of hiking trails and sing-alongs, high-tech wizards. Where are you? And what about you, researchers of Nazism, the Holocaust and Soviet gulags? Could you all be in favor of systematic discriminating laws? Laws stating that the Arabs of the Galilee will not even be compensated for the damages of the war by the same sums their Jewish neighbors are entitled to (Aryeh Dayan, Haaretz , August 21).
Could it be that you are all in favor of a racist Citizenship Law that forbids an Israeli Arab from living with his family in his own home? That you side with further expropriation of lands and the demolishing of additional orchards, for another settler neighborhood and another exclusively Jewish road? That you all back the shelling and missile fire killing the old and the young in the Gaza Strip?
Could it be that you all agree that a third of the West Bank (the Jordan Valley) should be off limits to Palestinians? That you all side with an Israeli policy that prevents tens of thousands of Palestinians who have obtained foreign citizenship from returning to their families in the occupied territories?
Could your mind really be so washed with the security excuse, used to forbid Gaza students from studying occupational therapy at Bethlehem and medicine at Abu Dis, and preventing sick people from Rafah from receiving medical treatment in Ramallah? Will also you find it easy to hide behind the explanation "we had no idea": we had no idea that the discrimination practiced in the distribution of water - which is solely controlled by Israel - leaves thousands of Palestinian households without water during the hot summer months; we had no idea that when the IDF blocks the entrance to villages, it also blocks their access to springs or water tanks.
But it cannot be that you don't see the iron gates along route 344 in the West Bank, blocking access to it from the Palestinian villages it passes by. It cannot be that you support preventing the access of thousands of farmers to their land and plantations, that you support the quarantine on Gaza which prevents the entry of medicine for hospitals, the disruption of electricity and water supply to 1.4 million human beings, closing their only outlet to the world for months.
Could it be that you do not know what is happening 15 minutes from your faculties and offices? Is it plausible that you support the system in which Hebrew soldiers, at checkpoints in the heart of the West Bank, are letting tens of thousands of people wait everyday for hours upon hours under the blazing sun, while selecting: residents of Nablus and Tul Karm are not allowed through, 35-year-olds and under - yallah, back to Jenin, residents of the Salem village are not even allowed to be here, a sick woman who skipped the line must learn a lesson and will be purposefully detained for hours. Machsom Watch's site is available for all; in it are countless such testimonies and worse, a day by day routine. But it cannot be that those who are appalled over every swastika painted on a Jewish grave in France and over every anti-Semitic headline in a Spanish local newspaper will not know how to reach this information, and will not be appalled and outraged.
As Jews we all enjoy the privilege Israel gives us, what makes us all collaborators. The question is what does every one of us do in an active and direct daily manner to minimize cooperation with a dispossessing, suppressing regime that never has its fill. Signing a petition and tutting will not do. Israel is a democracy for its Jews. We are not in danger of our lives, we will not be jailed in concentration camps, our livelihood will not be damaged and recreation in the countryside or abroad will not be denied to us. Therefore, the burden of collaboration and direct responsibility is immeasurably heavy.
January 1, 2009
To a Skeptic: Why Sanctions VS Israel Can Work , by Andrew W Taylor
I am afraid I see that the ideology of religious/ethnic identity defines whose life and death matters. I have never seen this identity define human beings so markedly. As for "ideology" defining positions toward the Siege of Gaza, it is a very labile ideology that unites everyone from Bishop Tutu to Jimmy Carter to the UN General Assembly to me, nu ?
You as an individual may dismiss the right of the Palestinians to resist as ludicrous. I was in the ANC for a few years before Liberation Day and there were many saying the same thing about the outnumbered, outgunned Black South Africans and their resistance in the Townships. But what the naysayers didn't understand then was that the armed struggle was just one front of a many sided struggle that included the peaceful struggle in South Africa and the International Solidarity struggle demanding a boycott of South African products. Perhaps you know that the pinch of Sanctions (despite the US and Israel) helped bring South Africa to capitulation, and power sharing. The ANC won the first fair full Elections with its 2 partners COSATU and the SACP.
So now transpose these multi-layered fronts to the Palestinian struggle. Around the world a Sanctions on Israel Campaign is growing in strength. In the Streets of the world's cities, the people are now marching against Israeli Apartheid. As South Africa was a long arduous struggle on a number of fronts, so is the struggle for a Palestinian State, free of the Israeli Occupation. One thing you need not despair of, is the revolutionary patience and persistence of the world's "prisoners of starvation" and their allies in every land. Something in us wants freedom, but we seek it under a strategy. Bertholt Brecht wrote of this human project:
Forward, without forgetting
Where our strength can be seen now to be!
When starving or when eating
Forward, not forgetting
Our solidarity!
If we want to make this certain
We'll need you and your support.
It's yourselves you'll be deserting
if you rat your own sort.
Forward, without forgetting
Where our strength can be seen now to be!
When starving or when eating
Forward, not forgetting
Our solidarity!
All the gang of those who rule us
Hope our quarrels never stop
Helping them to split and fool us
So they can remain on top.
Forward, without forgetting
Where our strength can be seen now to be!
When starving or when eating
Forward, not forgetting
Our solidarity!
Workers of the world, uniting
Thats the way to lose your chains.
Mighty regiments now are fighting
That no tyrrany remains!
Forward, without forgetting
Till the concrete question is hurled
When starving or when eating:
Whose tomorrow is tomorrow?
And whose world is the world?
Bertolt Brecht
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