The Capitalist Lie, part six

This is the final part of a six-part series first appearing in the Medium publication Coping with Capitalism July 9, 2024 in response to the lies propagandized by our capitalist society.

Reviewing the Terrain

Capitalism’s relationship with climate change is contained in the primary contradiction of this crisis. Growth equates to death.

This is a system deeply dependent on dependency. This feature befouls our entire consumer culture called modernity. We become addicts. Sick and depressed and unable to act or even care when matters become most urgent.

Yet, it is death that we face. The Mass Extinction and the end of our kind….

Is it any wonder?

Basing the entire globe’s economy on consumption while enabling power to tighten its grip – keeping us at one another’s throats.

Could this have worked out any worse? …For humanity, or for the other species?

Our destruction has become monumental. Our folly may well be fatal.

If there is to be any hope, then we must act and change soon.

Know thyself, Know thy Enemy

An inclusive movement to transform must invite our leaders to join us but must also insist they no longer lead. By coming to our agora – which should welcome all without prejudice – they become part of the collective.

In this common space, their power is given back to the people. This is necessary as they have failed us. Certainly, we all must accept our responsibility for these crises, but our leaders must also accept their responsibility and be held to account.

Reform has been without any meaningful effect.

Meanwhile, we have little time remaining.

Things must change. Yet, we still find these same leaders in charge. They ask us to continue to have faith in them.

Like many of us, our leaders are in denial. Denial takes many forms – from the denialists who are quickly becoming pariahs to the lukewarm denial afforded those who keep their heads in the sand. There is also the insidious form of cold denial – that it is too late to do anything to stop disaster or even that we can somehow save modernity and capitalism along with it.

This is the form of denial being promoted by our leaders. This is denying that capitalism, and much of modernity’s construct, must be abandoned to save humanity.

Modeling the Iraqi War, this is what Naomi Klein called the Security Age with its world of red zones and small enclaves of green zone. This is power doing what power does. This is computational and technological power, surveillance, coercive-psyopic violence, and brute force. Power will advance the claims of scarcity to justify hording, profit gouging, and to aggressively protect what is “rightly theirs”.
This is capitalism’s final act.

Our objective must be to flip this power pyramid so that capitalism is stopped for good, and our modern experiment geared down to something we can manage and deal with.

 

The Fish in the Sea

It is easy to be in denial. We are moderns. We have been seduced by consumerism, materialism and the comforts of our technology. The temptations are all around us. We believe we must keep this world in place so that our desires can be fulfilled, and our fears abated.

We become willing victims.

Growth and development have been the expansionist modern human capitalist mantra. As we’ve already seen, economic disparities restrict access to education and healthcare. This leads directly to explosive population growth.

Demographics are symptomatic of capitalism and not significant causes of climate change activity. Capitalist growth incentivizes not only higher populations, but the development of the populous poor nations. This brings with it both affluence and industrialization and creates better consumers for global goods. It also increases pollution and waste.

Capitalism is most exploitative and profitable with a plethora of consumers.

Unfortunately, it is far too easy to lay the blame on a planet unfit to support this many humans. Even as our leaders promise to make a better capitalist world, we continue to consume planet Earth as if she provides us unlimited resources.

Results speak volumes. Failure stares us straight in the face.

We must shut down the runaway consumption by first shutting down capitalism. This must be done protecting billions of people relying on industrialized food production. Industrialization has created surplus. Hunger has always been a byproduct of economics, not of our capacity to produce and distribute food. As we become more efficient, the effects of industrial agriculture will diminish. As long as we take significant strides to reduce birth rates around the globe, humans should be able to dramatically reduce energy demands and its effects on our habitat.

Along with those unwilling to act, authoritarians will be among our most significant threats. As consumers, we have been objectified and as workers we are exploited. We are to be the pawns in this game. We are expendable. Walled-off leaders become authoritarians acting without impunity through genocide, mass murder, black ops, and their death cults.

A vast amount of power is in a very few hands. This places all of humanity in peril.

Unification

To Educate – Coming together relies on getting the truth to as many as possible. As we educate, we unite. While we have many challenges, we are also afforded significant advantages. We can exploit modernity even as we struggle with it.

To Organize – As a non-hierarchical, revolutionary movement, we should utilize a cellular organizational structure where individual cells work somewhat independently to create tactical goals and agendas and manage these efforts. Each cell would work within the greater network of other cells sharing, correcting and advancing the strategic vision and goals.

This movement must be fluid and adaptable. As a people-led movement, our operations should involve a variety of organizations and movements within the larger network all working towards this common goal to overturn hegemonic leaders and their capitalist eco-culture.

Tactical goals (often strategically identified by specific organizations working at the cellular level) can become shared amongst other cells and even become part of the greater strategy.

A critical component is inclusiveness. The revolutionary network should not narrow its vision or goals to exclude viable members within this movement. This can even include sympathetic politicians. Yet, we must never forget the moral imperative that can not be abridged.

All are welcome, but our goals are paramount.

So, a movement of resistance can evolve through numerical strength into a revolutionary struggle.

To Unite – Education, organizing and uniting are continuous processes. This would be a global worker-consumer revolutionary movement. One might contemplate the work of many similar organizations through recent and more distant history – labor movements, civil rights struggles, anti-colonial revolutions, BLM-Occupy radical continuities, Mondragon, etc.

Although we are labeled as “workers” and “consumers” and may, as individuals, wish to shed these restrictive and derogatory labels, as revolutionaries we should embrace them. For these are the roles we have been assigned within the capitalist structure.

Understanding capitalism and how it functions, one must eventually conclude that the system is dependent on dependency, and this is the system’s ultimate Achilles heel.

As workers, we impact production, but labor has been commodified through globalization and technological advancements. Disrupting production will continue to have its place in a worker-consumer revolutionary movement, but capitalism doesn’t simply depend on production.

Capitalism depends on the market.

This is the ace we reveal from our consumer sleeves – we don’t simply control the market, we are the market.

We have the power, but without each other we have little ability to express this power and change reality.

Command, Sovereignty and Moral Authority

To Assemble – One effective strategy is to utilize People Assemblies to focus on solving problems. We will find that pushing authority down to the local/cellular level will make for better decisions, particularly as it affects their orbits. Similar assemblies can take place on various scales throughout the network.

While precious revolutionary experience must be embraced, a critical component should be centering the voice of the unheard. While it is imperative to refrain from silencing any voices, our movement must respond to the exploitation of our most vulnerable members. We must place women at the center of these conversations. Any who are oppressed, LGBTQ+, young people, black and brown, the poor, working people, and those who have been traditionally left out or left behind by mainstream capitalist society must be central in our discourse. Our mandate makes us stewards of Mother Earth and all her children.

When we center the voice of the unheard, we should remain attentive, respectful and leave plenty of space for the unheard to occupy. This is what an inclusive revolutionary movement must demand of each of us.

The moral imperative to save humanity and as much biodiversity as possible gives this movement its most important weapon of all – Moral Authority. This absolute authority must be nurtured and cherished at every step as it builds momentum.

This revolution must be non-violent and peaceful. This provides the best gateway to the future. Uniting people behind the revolution is critical as our power is only realized through cohesion and numbers. We must grow or die.

The opposition wields political power and physical might. We have little of either.

We are fighting for justice. This is a people’s collective striving to bring peace and security to our communities. A beast of many heads can’t be defeated through force but can be starved. Our strengths must be Moral Authority and Unity.

The opposition will reveal themselves to be devoid of morality. While we wish to save humanity and the other creatures of our Earth, the opposition is likely to devolve into cruelty and ignorance.

The people must lead a movement under the sovereignty of Planet Earth empowered with the Moral Authority that is our righteous cause.

Our Revolution

The Tactical – Tactical use of methodology can be global, regional or local. Local tactics can drive cell strategies but should also advance the greater worldwide strategic objectives.

Individual local cells may have specific causes they are looking to advance that might even conflict with other cells elsewhere, but all cells must share the global objectives of the greater network for planetary liberation.

The Arsenal – The weapons we are armed with all have tactical and strategic applications. These are Boycott, Demonstration and Strike.

As we’ve discussed, our impact on the market is more substantive than how we can disrupt production.

Boycott is a form of passive resistance. One must not act to be active. Tactically, this can be used to help shape oppositional behavior. Companies, specific products or entire industries could be targeted by tactical boycott.

The market has the ability, when unified, to bring a single company to its knees. This is accomplished simply by not buying from the targeted company until it acquiesces.

Demonstration would likely be centered on non-violent civil disobedience. Demonstrators would have to be skilled and trained and be willing and able to disrupt the capitalist structure. Numbers would be less important in these sorts of demonstrations, while skilled and trained non-violent participants would be essential.

Demonstration can be used to disrupt production, supply chains or other infrastructures. As with all these methods, demonstrations would be tactically incorporated mainly while building towards a disruptive revolutionary populace that can alter the trajectory of society.

Using Strikes to disrupt producers and their allies would likely be a last resort both tactically and strategically.

The Cooperative – Without Mutual Aid, none of this is possible. After all, we must walk the walk and create a cooperative conservation-driven underground economy. It is this subversive, parallel economy that makes the whole revolution possible and gives the movement true purpose.

Only through this anti-capitalism can we grow this revolution and its alternative economics. As we become strategic, it is this economy that must become dominate to capitalism and leverage it into non-existence.

This is the cashless free-exchange market non-economy.

This is people helping people and our fellow species and Mother Earth.

For us to consume our own goods, we must eventually produce our own goods. Importantly, these are a humble set of necessary goods and services – nutritious food, clean water, healthy air, shelter and eventually healthcare, childcare and education. Our purpose is non-negotiable and serves our lives as we serve one another.

Life centers around an informal local community that is networked to the greater collective.

Once this new economy has matured, we can move towards a strategic boycott of the entire capitalist market.

Demonstrations will strategically dovetail into a complete paralysis of the political authorities and their authoritarian proxies along with all their capitalist institutions.

Once we strategically strike, the day will be won. We will no longer be making or buying their products while we completely shut down the death machine they call modern capitalism.

They are neither innovators nor unpredictable. They favor violence, subterfuge, lies, divide and conquer and, like wolves, will go for the weakest members of our herd.

Our response must be as one. We must rush to defend our fellows no matter how they are demonized by the bigoted hate-mongers. There can be no exception to this. We should be all for one and one for all or we lose Moral Authority and will lose this war.

Divide and conquer must be a thing of the past.

Their soldiers have mastered violence. Never be so foolhardy as to take this beast on from its heads. Yes, we are like fleas.

As they bring the violence to bear, we must rush to stand together. Our opposition must be as one, but our responses three-fold.

While they are united only in a common individual pursuit of self-interest, we have one interest. This can only be gained through peace and relies on love, cohesion and numbers, not physical might.

They rely on competition and have given this to us for suckling. We remain their patsies when we play by their rules.

We must care for our children and teach them to think for themselves. Then they will teach us true knowledge.

Once we walk on the battlefield, much of our plans will be tossed aside. We must be flexible, adaptable and cover as many aspects as we can, but the integrity of our singular cause must never be brought into question – we are here to save our biological family.

“Austerity” will be the Newspeak term for bringing capital to bear upon these red zones. Our expectations must be humbled as we come to one another’s aid and comfort.

Whether from our efforts or its own, this serpent will eat itself in the end. There will be an inflationary collapse and all of society may well go with it. Better to be prepared than otherwise.

The Right Time

That’s right. That time is now.

We must begin to unite under this cause. Our revolution must begin as a movement.

This is a call for each of us and the institutions devoted to protect us in our various identities to come together.

We must never forget that there may be any of a number of supposed justifications for a hierarchical global economic structure, but the true and most sacrosanct rationale is this very fact – that it is hierarchical and ensures that entrenched power remains that way.

We must also recognize and exploit our efficiencies. Even as capitalism depends on inefficiency, we must be thrifty and efficient. Ours is the miracle of the loaves and the fishes.

In closing, consider…. Revolution is the only sane recourse for anyone wishing to end this mass murder suicide madness.

Better ideas, contributions, corrections, critiques, and ways to advance this agenda are all desirable.

Take the first steps by commenting on this article.

This is Coping with Capitalism.

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The Tyranny of Capital and the Gilded Cage
The Capitalist Lie, part five

This is part five of a six-part series first appearing in the Medium publication Coping with Capitalism June 17, 2024 in response to the lies propagandized by our capitalist society. Much gratitude to Shawn Roberts, Jr. publisher and editor for his vision and improvements on this series.

 

Irresolvable Contradictions

Does capitalism make people more free?

This is a question we have touched on, but that might deserve a few more words since it is such a strong part of the purported rationale backing up this form of economy.

As we have mentioned, there are political systems and there are economic systems. Capitalism, as we have asserted, is an economic system and not a political system.

Political systems, in their laws, address political and personal freedoms.

The capitalist argument seems to be that economic freedom is an important aspect of the personal freedoms that people either enjoy or crave. After all, with capitalism, one can, for the most part, buy or sell whatever one wants as long as one has the money or credit for it.

Certainly, there are exceptions.

This may actually be the heart of the matter. The architecture of the complicated world we’ve constructed intertwines and interconnects with a support system built to protect and perfect the sources of power. Economics have staggering impacts on political freedom as we’ll see.

These forces can work in opposition or in more or less a harmony. In a capitalist nation like the current USA, economic freedoms trump political and individual liberties.

How this works at the most basic level is one requires capital to survive much less thrive. In this way we become enslaved by capital.

The core, and admittedly often abstract, truths about these issues are often starkly simple even as how they play out is maddingly complex.

Freedom really is the central aspect of this particular digression. Even those grasping for wealth and power find that they have become enslaved, so in this way there is a sense of commonality.

The reality is more damning, of course. Today, as the wealthy elite throughout the world perceive the existential threat to human life, they recognize their own vulnerability.

The response from power is always the same. The rich man reaches his arms around his pile and pulls it towards himself. This is what Naomi Klein called the Security Age. This is when the US President calls to build “a great, big, beautiful wall” around his nation.

The neoliberal bifurcation of the global economy has inflamed this tumor of a contradiction. The tight rope walk of capitalism has been thrown into imbalance with the dismantling of the welfare state and commodification of labor.

This clashes with the idea of people governing for themselves. Too many of these “ruled who rule” have been left out of the capitalist economy as it is practiced today.

Power is openly conspiratorial. These cats, and only these cats, run in the same circles. It is another “natural” process for the “fittest”. At its endpoint, neoliberalism forces the hand of power.

Given a choice, power will jealously retain all its wealth and all the power this wealth provides. Power, we should be very aware, will most likely wish to remove this notion of “democracy” instead of giving up any of their wealth and power. Nothing really changes from their perspective, except to ensure this reality stays the same or that they remain in charge.

The results of this experiment have metastasized right before our eyes with the rise of fascist tyranny among formerly “liberal democracies”. It is the only way for the powerful to remain in complete control. Of course, this is no insurance. After all, it turns out, the elite have miscalculated their entire schemes up to now.

We are in unprecedented crises and should expect unprecedented responses.

One striking example should alarm the American public. When the highest executive of the land, the one person most responsible for enforcing our laws, attempts to subvert and ultimately overturn the will of the citizenry in the full light of day, each of us should be concerned. Note how we continue to enable this treachery. If we value our liberty and our agency, our concern should be unprecedented.

In Mammon We Trust

Capitalism by its very nature concentrates power through the force of capital. In this way, power is nested within wealth like a Russian doll. As wealth is unevenly distributed, power becomes unevenly distributed.

The freedom to accumulate wealth most often from a position of privilege, serves the few able to attain this wealth who in turn gain the power that capital brings.

In this way, once again, capitalism trumps democracy.

When wealth and freedom come into conflict, as will happen when the economy bifurcates at our contemporary levels, wealth comes out on top as wealth equates to power.

Real freedom is contained within this power.

This isn’t anything new for people of color. Those placed into the weakest positions in our society are bell weathers to political freedoms. Ask a poor, Black trans woman if she feels free in this society.

The systemic economic reality places power in the hands of the wealthy and does not distribute it equally among the democratic stakeholders. So, America’s “democratic” power is no longer in the hands of the citizenry, but in the hands of the wealthy.

This is the plutocracy that has dominated American politics at least since 2010 and the momentous decision of the Supreme Court in Citizen’s United vs. FEC. This was a major lurch towards tyranny that the courts will continue to propagate as they too prioritize deregulated economics over personal liberties.

This freedom that stems from wealth and power is anything but democratic. It accumulates power among the very few. This becomes the freedom to exploit and to control and manipulate. By providing this freedom and power to the wealthiest few, freedom and liberty is snatched from the very many more of us who are simply citizens, workers, and consumers.

In essence, our economic system invites anyone with the capacity to grab wealth and power to use it to their greatest personal advantage even if this compromises the political system that is designed to empower the citizenry in an equitable fashion.

Because the economic system grants power to wealth, this erodes democracy and the freedom of its citizenry.

So as power brings exploitation and abuse across the economy, this abuse becomes politicized through fascism and authoritarianism.

What rights do we lose next? Who are the next victims of marginalization, exploitation or worse?

These are the questions we should ask as this is the ground upon which we walk.

 

Freedom? Free for whom?

In reality, freedom, like so many of our systems, is like an old, eccentric machine. You open one valve and 2-3 others close, flutter or stop operating altogether. Freedom is something that can be as open as the sky and the clouds. It is an umbrella of factors each with its own elements of liberty or constriction.

One simple extension of this is to ask if one person exploits their freedom to the fullest and gains power above and beyond that of his fellow citizen, does that entitle him to suppress the freedom of another? One might reflect that when one expands their own power, that they do this at the expense of the agency of others.

Capitalism quickly settles into a sort of “soft fascism” that one may experience working in the corporate environment. A world where true freedom only really exists in the corporate boardroom.

With the evisceration of the labor movement, like with economic power, this power of and over labor has also “bifurcated” into a tiny ruling elite and the near powerless masses.

Workers end up working longer, with less “free time”, making lower wages, and enjoying a dwindling skeleton of meaningful benefits.

Meanwhile, the accelerating trajectory of the inflationary spiral increases the costs of goods and services further strapping the working/consumer class forced further into debt and peonage while further enriching the monied class or producers, bankers, investors, and corporate leaders.

The capitalist system easily slips into the duality of master and of slave.

Property, especially the ownership of one’s own home, has long been a marker of the American Dream. Consider how the progeny of America’s middle class view the possibilities of this dream and marker of our society’s success. This dream, that has eluded so many in previous generations, has now become little more than a fantasy for most of us.

From the capitalist perspective, freedom does start with property. In reality though, this is the beginning of tyranny.

When white Europeans first began to exploit native peoples in America, they claimed Manifest Destiny as they murdered, enslaved, tortured, diseased and raped throughout the peoples of this land.

After all, isn’t this where all personal property in America really comes from? This sort of violent theft?

Or should we take this more literal? This property has been passed along the generations until today we see these stewards of the land, often those with ancestors capable of colonial exploitation, bringing us to the brink of extinction by befouling the land for which they retain these claims of possession.

Should we actually be asking a question never historically posed by European invaders in the frontier days or “who is it that owns this planet Earth”?

Do property owners who have brought our species to the brink of extinction “merit” this ownership inherited from the very ones who murdered and enslaved and stole all in an effort to capitalize on these crimes?

It seems that property and its possession can be called into question. When one is exploring this facet of freedom and liberty, doesn’t this have more than one side to it? Isn’t there some validity in the claim that this planet actually belongs to a collective and not a person?

It seems, under all these terms, that the existential crises we collectively face give ownership of the entire planet Earth to the responsible and loving hands of all the people of this planet Earth who rely on it to live and prosper. Not exclusively to the few who have exploited this land and through their power fully display their culpability for the mess we find ourselves in.

 

A Parting Clue

A striking example of freedom in America is revealed in global incarceration rates. In 2023, Iran incarcerated 228 out of every 100,000 citizens. Russia had 326 out of this number. Cuba 510. Rwanda had the second most incarcerated with 580. The USA has led these statistics for years and in 2023 had 629 out of 100,000 citizens incarcerated (a total of 2,068,800 leading the next highest gross number incarcerated in China by over 378,000 prisoners).

Yet, we claim to be the “freest nation in the world”.

As Michelle Alexander pointed out in her book The New Jim Crow, continuing a history of the exploitation of black and brown citizens today we have laws that restrict many of our personal liberties.

Alexander reminds us that the 13th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States that “ended slavery” actually secured the enslavement of the incarcerated. Post-restoration Jim Crow laws enabled the continued exploitation of black citizens by creating a variety of laws intended to lock them away and put them through the convict lease system. Through vagrancy laws, for example, blacks were forced into compromising labor contracts to avoid jail and this convict slavery in our prison institutions.

Not only do we use drug laws to enslave black and brown people, but America has, for all intents and purposes, criminalized poverty. Our society “deals” with poverty and a homelessness crisis exacerbated through the bifurcation of the neoliberal economy using the violently coercive tools of law enforcement and the judicial/carceral system.

The amount of services available to those without means is slim and dwindling. Virtually all transactions in a capitalist economy involve the transfer of money. Requiring poor defendants to post cash bail is a stark example of how poor people lose their freedoms due to a lack of financial resources.

As we explore these issues in our current “free society” we should remember that, from its beginning, America promised that “all men were created equal” and made claims of “liberty and justice for all”. Yet, during its complicated history, this nation of purported freedom has enslaved millions and created systems of domination and subjugation through class, gender, race, and other arbitrary modes.

One might argue that slaveholders were desirous of a sort of economic freedom to secure other humans as their personal property thus removing any modicum of freedom from the enslaved person.

Slaveholder’s justification literally became America’s justification up to the Civil War. We should be able to see that similar contradictions may still exist in our exalted society today.

One might consider if this ownership of another can be a type of “partial ownership” or that we may dictate to another how they carry their person, how they behave and how they may or may not treat an unborn child they may carry in their womb.

The ordered American state uses regulations (laws) to enforce the “will of the state” on the individual. This is intended to reduce or eliminate entirely undesirable behaviors such as murder, theft, rape, assault, and the like.

Among the more recent regulations is this stricture against owning another person (unless, of course, that person is incarcerated).

One might ask, who owns us? Who decides how we live, dress and behave? Who decides who we love? Who decides how we identify ourselves?

Pay close attention to the laws being passed for purported “moral”, “cultural” or social motives. Do they make people freer or less free?

When the state makes these decisions purportedly to repress anti-social behavior that is destructive or oppressive to other citizens can the state actually become the oppressor itself?

The criminalization of “vice” crimes like gambling, prostitution and drugs is an arguable example of the overreach and subjugation by the state and as Alexander pointed out the war on drugs is the primary tool for the “new Jim Crow” that has been so successful at incarcerating black and brown Americans at an obviously tyrannical rate.

This is designed to subjugate entire portions of our population – mostly black and brown men in America.

Again, who is next? Importantly though, is America becoming more free or more oppressive when it targets the weakest among us?

One can not simply ignore the economic pressures that have opened this valve and capitalism can not simply wash its hands of this suppression of personal liberties either. We see economics once again intertwined with politics and personal liberties.

In Part Six: A Call to Unite for Revolutionary Change we will conclude our examination of capitalism and its lies and consider the task before us.

fallen

Endgame Competition – Heads We Win, Tails You Lose
The Capitalist Lie, part four

This is part four of a six-part series first appearing in the Medium publication Coping with Capitalism May 21, 2024 in response to the lies propagandized by our capitalist society. Much gratitude to Shawn Roberts, Jr. publisher and editor for his vision and improvements on this series.

When examining capitalism as a social and cultural institution, one might hope that a meritocracy would encourage merit-worthy behavior and foster a cohesive and just society. With all these meritorious acts and attitudes, one might even hope a level of prosperity can be attained by the bulk of our citizens.

Yet, what we see in practice is anything but this. As we have concluded in the preceding critique, merit-worthy behavior is more the exception than the rule. Indeed, meritorious behavior only seems to appear despite the influences of our social order. Further, our capitalist society really demonstrates that we are encouraged to “game” the system without concern for how fair or just our behaviors might be. If we fail to act in self-interest, we are likely to be counted among society’s “losers” or even its “suckers”.

In his evaluation of ancient Greek political systems (political systems are how states institutionalize the creation, enforcement, and adjudication of laws), Aristotle concluded one system wasn’t necessarily any better than the next, but when those who rule make decisions for their own good and not the good of the state and its populace then politics, and ultimately the state itself, becomes corrupt.

As this is true with political systems, so it is true with economic systems (these being structures that determine how wealth is distributed). Thus, we have fully exposed the myth of the meritocracy, or this myth that those who have gained the power (which must follow wealth) show their deservedness of this power through the exercise of justice. No, today is worse than in Aristotle’s troublesome democracy, the rule of power gravitates unerringly towards the personalities at the center of this power supporting and expanding the original source of power.

Economics, like politics, must work for the common good, or else economics are not serving humanity, the community or any collective body, but only serve those who hold the power.

Conservation stands in direct opposition to capitalism’s reliance on the propelling energies of consumption. Along with this, the capitalist “meritocracy” is rooted in competition – a force directly opposed to cooperation. So, while a communal society might be built around conservation and cooperation, the capitalist society is rooted in the opposite forces of consumption and competition.

This competition is presented as natural, but it is only really a “natural” state in terms of power controlling the distribution of property. Nothing, in this respect, has really changed. The real argument, it seems, is this idea that the inequities of power somehow form a “natural state” to which we must all conform to and, at a minimum, ultimately succumb to.

To claim property as our own, we must take it and build boundaries. This is a competitive stance – it’s mine and it’s not yours. Just as the American economy was founded on the exploitation of native peoples and black slaves, the roots of capitalism are similarly based upon this sort of violent theft.

With all of this comes the rationalizations for exploitation and genocide. In ancient times the powerful wielded physical might along with supernatural power, and this became the rigid social hierarchy and divine rights of aristocratic rulers in the Middle Ages. With colonialism came manifest destiny, the Christian mission, and the civilizing influence of the sword that were folded into economic expansion to provide the continuities of elite power.

All along the way, the powerful have claimed that it is somehow their merit that justifies their exploitation and that this isn’t merely just, but also somehow “natural” and something we should all accept and acquiesce to.

Michel Foucault has pointed out to us that reality is simply a manifestation of power. When someone or some institution says something is the truth, is part of a “natural” order, or something we must accept, then post-modernity states we must question this “truth” and examine how power has actually manifested this reality.

With the claims of a meritocracy, we can see that this is a rationale for the exploitation of others so that one can better their own position. This is not some sort of altruism or moral behavior. In fact, as we examine these claims closely, it becomes obvious that this competitive meritocracy is an important tool the powerful use to strengthen and expand their own position of power.

Once we recognize this, the various means of power consolidation become clear. In recent history, we can see this in the neoliberal counter-revolution. Milton Friedman and the Chicago school promoted this “supply-side” approach to economics claiming that capitalism works best when it is unfettered by regulations, taxation, and spending on social programs.

This approach emphasized the importance of capital for suppliers or producers claiming the market made up of worker-consumers would benefit when the capital pump was primed at the top. This approach was known as trickle-down economics, but was little more than another highly successful method of enrichment for those at the top.

Supply-side economics brought with it a fairly successful dismantling of the welfare state and eventually “austerity” for the masses as wealth-fare spending, corporate monopolization, consolidation, and tax breaks continued virtually unchecked for those in positions of power.

The reality that capitalism works best with strong consumer/worker markets flush with capital and that this environment frees the flow of investment capital was literally ignored. Market strength is actually demonstrated through a strong “middle income” portion of the economy. The inequities of the system make it like a tight-rope walk, but supply-siders’ neoliberalism has bifurcated the economy throwing the whole act into a dangerous imbalance.

The vast majority of the wealth funneled to the upper classes benefits the already rich. The numbers of newly rich are relatively few while those squeezed out of the ranks of the middle class are legion in number.

The real consumers in the capitalist system are not suppliers, not the wealthy, not corporate leaders, not investors, not hoarders of wealth, but consumers who are very simply also the very workers producing products and providing services.

While corporations have used technology and automation to diminish the value of labor, they have expanded their consumer base with a global reach. Manipulation of the financial sector has been strategically incorporated to put off the bad news for a later date.

This is how competition has worked in the capitalist world. Competitors show up with advantages and disadvantages. Many of these differences ensure success or failure for all intents and purposes, so the game can be said to be “rigged from the start” in favor of the powerful. It becomes overly simple for those who have benefited from this competitive system to leverage their power or to “game” the system to their own advantages. This should not be a surprise to anyone.

The system may be “competitive”, but when individuals start from various points on the circuit, we can’t claim it’s in any way fair.

In dismantling the welfare state and funneling capital back to the top, the neoliberals create a system where 1% of the population (the billionaire class) use 20% of the population (the upper classes) to manipulate and truly exploit 80% of the population (the rest of us).

That’s how competition works. Those on top ensure they will remain on top, then they use their power to manipulate the system to further enrich themselves and solidify their power further.

This is no natural state, but a truly unnatural state that will inevitably teeter in upon itself. As long as the system is consumption-based with a “freely” competitive marketplace, then the endemic morbidity of the system doesn’t go away, it becomes a crawling disease.

That’s not all. Competition is highly inefficient. It divides resources to attain objectives. It takes three enterprises to accomplish what one could accomplish. Yet, inefficiency also feeds into this goal to hollow out our planet extracting every bit of wealth we can from it. Being inefficient simply serves to exacerbate consumption which means inefficiency is a money-maker for people as well.

Like with consumption, the evils of competition have come home to roost. We aren’t simply paralyzed by failed leadership, but by capitalism’s demand for international competition making us innately ill-prepared for collective action. This is something competitive capitalism will not help us accomplish even as collective action is a necessity for our own survival.

Some of us make money on other people’s disease and illness while others make money off horribly devastating bombs being dropped on children and other innocents. Some make money peddling drugs that get people hooked and sick and, finally, dead. Others make money through the alienating and suffocating labor inflicted upon their workers for the sake of their petty and self-serving enrichment.

All this for the sake of freedom, but who’s freedom? we should ask.

Competition becomes an important variation of the “divide and conquer” strategy the powerful use to keep us at one another’s throats. By striving against one another for the few scraps thrown to us, the wealthy can keep us looking at each other instead at the source of our woes. For certain, competition serves as another very important means of control and exploitation.

This exploitation is on full display with capitalism’s modern iteration. Labor and the requirements of labor are not even a tertiary consideration today. We work, often more than one fulltime “gig”, only to come short of homeownership, mind-body prosperity, and any truly fulfilling enrichment in our lives other than the relations we can manage from such an unneighborly economics.

Competition doesn’t just fuel global conflict, but feeds internal conflict as well. Citizens end up funding these conflicts, expanded militaries, border security measures, surveillance, and black ops. Corporations and their leader/owners pocket the profits, advance their agendas and end up compromising the health of the very citizens the state is supposed to protect.

Why, one might ask, would the state wish to compromise the health of its citizens? For exactly the same reasons that corporations are willing to compromise the health of their customers or their workers or the community or even the health of the nation-state itself!

As with consumption, competition incentivizes behavior that is destructive to individuals, entire classes, “races”, gender identities, sexual orientations as well as any other identifiable lapel pin like simply being a “human being”. This is a feature of our competitive drive and in the end it even threatens the nation-state and, believe it or not, the very corrupted powerful plutocracy it is meant to protect and nurture. They are, after all, human too.

Power is quickly moving from nation-states to international enterprises. Watch where the money flows and you’ll see power will follow. One enterprise or nation pollutes the globe we all have inherited. Our competitive conflicts and paralysis only feed the fires of a global climate disaster.

Like with other global crises we face today, one must quickly realize these sorts of problems won’t be tackled through competitive efforts. There is no invasion from outer space. The problem looks at us in the mirror every morning and is manifested just outside our windows. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

That’s right. We built this world.

So, yes, we can change this world.

There is a caveat. We have to do it together.

 

In Part Five: The Tyranny of Capital and the Gilded Cage we will dive into how capitalism’s claims of fostering a free society are but another lie.

 

prizes

 

This is part three of a six-part series first appearing in the Medium publication Coping with Capitalism May 1, 2024 in response to the lies propagandized by our capitalist society. Much gratitude to Shawn Roberts, Jr. publisher and editor for his vision and improvements on this series.

We have been told that capitalism creates what has been called a “meritocracy” or creates a society where the hardest working, smartest and most deserving rise to the top and accumulate the most abundance of wealth (…and, as follows, power…).

This seems to be another claim that is hardly challenged or closely examined.

We must ask, what does it mean to be “most deserving”?

To merit the rewards of the economic system and to be “most deserving”, does this mean that someone leads a particularly moral life?

It seems not. Although certain moral precepts seem to be more-or-less perennial through various religions or other moral frameworks, the notion that a capitalist economy rewards those who exhibit moral behavior seems problematic to say the least.

One might consider that capitalism encourages a degree of materialism and that those seeking success in a capitalist economy may distort moral living through the pursuit of material gain.

In general, the competitive nature of the capitalist economy benefits those who “help themselves” in their pursuit of the rewards and merits of the system. This focus on the individual and his/her personal gain seems to smother any inkling that capitalism somehow encourages and rewards altruistic behavior and the moral life.

At the other extreme, one can look to legality. So, instead of considering whether those who “merit” the rewards of capitalism are behaving morally, we can instead consider whether they are acting within the laws established by the political system the capitalist economy works within.

The answer, of course, while a bit fuzzy, does give us some insight. While a criminal might find rewards, even great rewards, operating beyond the laws in a capitalist economy, they have placed themselves at risk and the system itself denies them true “merit” by condemning their behavior as illegal. So, while some cheat to achieve “merit”, when this cheating is illegal, they are at risk of punishment and in this way not truly meriting the rewards of the capitalistic system.

It seems that while we can state that criminals who manage to escape justice are demonstrating their “merit” in the system, the idea that “crime pays” is checked when perpetrators are brought to justice to “balance these books”.

When we examine that middle ground between morality and legality with what we’ll call ethics, things are even more complicated. For the sense of ethics we are attempting to address, this is about the relationship between the individual and the community and about what a society might deem just and fair contrasted with what a society might argue is unjust and unfair.

As we begin to dig deeper into the question of ethics, this notion of the meritocracy begins to lose much of its veneer. Indeed, it could be argued that capitalism, as it is currently practiced, is more apt to reward unethical behavior and punish ethical behavior.

Put in the common vernacular, we would say, “nice guys finish last.”

Examples of this counter argument proliferate our society, really, to the point that we may be entirely unaware of how this force completely demolishes any notion that capitalism rewards the most deserving.

We might begin by touching upon a couple of examples such as how “America” and its “meritocracy” came into being. It seems, the America we wish to examine began when Europeans began to colonize the lands of indigenous peoples who populated North America.

Wealthier white Europeans used their power to displace poorer white Europeans westward. These poorer white Europeans in turn displaced (exploited, murdered, oppressed) the poor brown and indigenous people who had lived in these lands for generations finally exploiting black slaves imported from Africa to work these now blood-soaked lands.

This, it seems, is what “merited” the rewards of America’s early history and the beginnings of American-born capitalism.

One might recognize that exploitation really was a key component of the behavior that “merited” the rewards of our society.

On the other hand, one might argue that America, in pursuit of its ideal, has taken strides to eliminate the legal exploitation of entire bodies of people. This argument, like the real struggle for ethical ideals in our society, has, at best, very mixed results often failing entire portions of our society.

Can we say that all Americans, despite their race, creed, sexual orientation, gender identity, or economic class enjoy a fair society with equal opportunity and justice for all?

No, we can’t. In large part, the truth is that capitalism doesn’t seek justice or fairness particularly when one looks at economic status. Inequity, or the dependence on dependency, is “baked into” the capitalist cake.

Inequity is actually a defining characteristic of merit. What we mean is those who merit the rewards of capitalism, earn these rewards that are distributed to them. Those who don’t merit it, do not enjoy the same rewards. This is not a system striving for equity, but for “meritorious rewards” and the distribution of wealth and of power based on purported meritorious behavior.

While one may become overawed by various, mainly disingenuous, claims of equity, fairness and justice, the actual rationale for this capitalist inequity is the argument that those most deserving “merit” the better results of this inequity. Conversely, one might quickly deduce, the “dependents” of this system, such as those born disadvantaged or disabled, are deserving of what they get as much as those at the top of the economic pyramid deserve their riches and power.

When the system is supposed to reward meritorious behavior, but does the opposite in practice, we must question these claims. Unfortunately, these real-life examples are all too common.

During the 2008 financial crisis created by Wall Street operating in deregulated neoliberalism, executives who sold investors and the country a hallucinatory financial boom involving complicated schemes of fraud and theft were enriched by taxpayer bailouts, platinum parachute payoffs and with corporate bonuses largely paid for with taxpayer backed loans.

Banking and investment company executives responsible for this and who made truck-loads of cash were discovered to have hid billions in loans from investors, to have lied about billions of dollars in bonuses, and to have hid how they put together toxic mortgage deals that were certain to fail.

Instead of being held accountable, these wealthy Wall Street bankers and investors pocketed billions in government loans and company bonuses. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens lost their homes, their retirement futures and, too often, their jobs.

As capitalism works to deregulate, particularly the financial sector, what we often see is “legal” behavior that one might argue is entirely unethical, unjust and unfair. Consider how many wall street figures ended up in jail after the 2008 financial collapse.

Possibly more demonstrative of this issue is the recent opioid crisis and the role of pharmaceutical enterprises such as Perdue Pharma and the Sackler family who ran this firm. Perdue Pharma, as a company, was found guilty of intentionally misleading physicians and federal regulators for years. The Sacklers themselves maintain that they broke no laws and criminal charges have yet to be brought against any members of this wealthy and powerful family. Despite this, many argue, these people are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths due to addiction to the opioids their company produced and aggressively marketed as somehow safer than other highly addictive opioids.

These and too many, often relatively banal, examples demonstrate that enterprises regularly cause social ill, social division, environmental destruction, individual disease and even death for the sake of profit. In most cases they do this within the deregulated bounds of what has been determined to be legal.

Indeed, these efforts often do not come with malicious intent, but an insatiable drive for profits that blinds corporations from other considerations. The impacts of these behaviors can go so far as to weaken, erode and even outright destroy the fabric that holds our societies together including our political system itself – the very laws that are designed to promulgate behavior that was once deemed “ethical”.

Laws seem to have been created to protect corporations, their owners and directors from criminality. While corporations are treated by our justice system as people as it is convenient, this is quickly discarded as it becomes inconvenient – for example when one wants to prosecute individual corporate leaders for blatant criminality.

To use the example of the Sacklers, while a street dealer may get a dozen or so people hooked on opioids and be thrown in jail for a number of years, the directors of Perdue Pharma can get hundreds of thousands hooked on dope and not only escape justice, but greatly enrich themselves in so doing.

It truly seems that capitalism, in its current highly deregulated and neoliberal form, encourages cheating as long as one doesn’t pay a price – either by getting away with it because the cheating is actually considered legal, or by simply not getting caught.

What has our critique of the Meritocracy revealed? Well, while crime may not pay, it seems clear that cheating and unethical behavior most certainly do. Indeed, we may wish to conclude that those deserving of “merit” in a capitalist economy as it is practiced in the world today, are most often the unethical who “game” the system to their own benefit while cheating, lying, sowing discord, creating sickness and addiction, illness and eventually death.

Europe in the early Middle Ages was a rigid and hierarchical “gift-giving” society. Around 85% of the population were peasants living in poverty and squalor while the rest were the landowning families. When Europe became profit-taking, it became somewhat less rigid with a more prosperous middle class; nevertheless, much of the existing hierarchy remained in place.

To a large degree, the “meritocracy” of today’s capitalism is among the inheritances from this more archaic class-structure. As in the past, the “rewards” of our capitalism today is largely a matter of the arbitrary happenstance of familial connections. Indeed, something like 60% of wealth in America is inherited wealth and not “earned” through the school of hard knocks.

Opportunity has never been equally distributed. Is this feature something we can call “merit-worthy” when those who have been traditionally oppressed start the race from a disadvantage? Are we to claim that black and brown people in America are less worthy of merit because of the inequities of historical colonialism, white supremacy and enslavement? What of retributions? How has this factored into our meritocracy?

As we have mentioned, how should we consider the disadvantaged? Does it mean that if one is disabled or severely disadvantaged, that one no longer merits security, or power and agency in our society?

Certainly, contemporary society can make claims of social (class) mobility, but this mobility wasn’t just impossible for medieval peasants, it was impossible for far too many of us in our very recent past.

Even if class, race or other historical disadvantages can be shown to be a feature of our problematic past, it seems unlikely that one can argue the past doesn’t impact our present when so many advantages stem from the historically privileged portions of our society.

With our profit-taking social order, which global capitalism neatly fits within, the reward of the purported meritocracy is cash. All must participate in this form of exchange to participate in society and its economy.

The structure of the system requires all to strive for money to provide themselves with basic human needs – healthy food, clean air and water, shelter, clothing, reasonable health care and, one would hope, an education.

For those seeking the rewards of being a “success”, as the meritocracy defines it, they must strive for more than these basic needs. This incites the ambitious to better their own financial standing.

Yet, we have seen this success has little to do with being a moral person or even someone who behaves in a strictly ethical sense. Further, it seems most obvious, unethical behavior is more likely to be rewarded than to be punished by this system.

Even the social stigma built around a lack of ethics seems to have been lost to us in this age where wealth and affluence creates a most worshipful reverence among those desirous of achieving a similar status.

In a real sense, there really isn’t such a thing as ethics today.

When a society encourages its citizens to walk over the weakest members of the community to achieve success, this society has lost all sense of morality and justice. The drive to line our own pockets becomes a portal to crime and criminal-like behaviors that may have formerly been viewed as unethical and even predatory.
Like colonizers of the “wide-open” western American lands, we gain through exploitation, but can be counted among the “losers” when we lack the initiative to “exploit” the opportunity to profit. We must exploit not to be exploited.

In the end, this is where capitalism seems to lead us – to a real kleptocracy with crooked politicians, crooked cops, crooked judges, crooked tyrants, crooked business leaders and crooks in every nook and cranny of our society.

As everything revolves around profit, we are like the corporations and their leaders who we emulate and worship – laser-focused on increasing our own wealth without consideration given to others, to workers, to consumers, to community or to the environment.

Finally, we must ask, “is this worthy of merit?”.

Capitalism, like a foot race, is competitive. Some of us arrive at the meet with advantages while others come with disadvantages. Importantly, we can see that it is those who nudge aside their competitors that most often end up on the podium.

In Part Four: Endgame Competition – Heads We Win, Tails You Lose we will consider how Capitalism relies on competition and what this means.

for sale by Haj

 

Shop ‘til you Drop – The Unsustainability of Capitalism
The Capitalist Lie, part two

This is part two of a six-part series first appearing in the Medium publication Coping with Capitalism April 23, 2024 in response to the lies propagandized by our capitalist society. Much gratitude to Shawn Roberts, Jr. publisher and editor for his vision and improvements on this series.

Capitalism is clearly a consumption-based economic system. In a real sense, the more consumption, the healthier the economics. Each transaction contributes to the success of the system.

Something is produced, brought to market, purchased and consumed. Certainly, services are also brought to market and consumed. Robust consumption of both goods and services is required for capitalism to function at its best.

Clearly, the very fact that capitalism is driven and entirely based on this essential feature – consumption of goods and services – seems to be neglected if not entirely forgotten by its proponents.

It is almost like capitalism, in its shadowy epicurean inner justification, emphasizes micro components of economic theory while virtually ignoring the big “macro” picture. The individual, and really the self, become more important than the whole or the collective. This doesn’t just take place at a theoretical level, but envelops the entire argument to satisfy the self and one’s needs and desires to justifying economic “liberty” that can mean full throttle exploitation and even oppression.

It likely bears repeating and is really this simple. Capitalism is a consumption-based economic system.

The system is driven by the mass consumption of resources, finished products and services. In truth, the more that is consumed, the more the system is propelled.

While one may be led to believe capitalism derives from lofty human aspiration, it seems more true that capitalism is directly rooted to our primordial past and our competitive interests to secure these needs and the various wants we are so concerned about and often believe we truly need.

One working example of this is the fact that the global market is capitalistic and competitive. There are no rules to the game, other than the “jungle” or “everyone for themselves” in the global economy. Rules or regulations can only emerge from individual trading partners and their specific agreements as to the terms of their trade. In this way the mythical competitive “natural state” becomes the force de rigueur when there are no rules or other compulsions for any economics other than this type of Darwinian struggle.

Of course, the success of consumption brings along important baggage. Indeed, this is at the heart of these “macro” difficulties.

The consumption of finite resources makes these resources less plentiful. As resources diminish, their value increases.

So even as vigorous consumer activity propels the capitalist economy, in consuming resources it creates what is called the inflationary spiral.

This is the critical contradiction of the capitalist or consumption-based economy. By encouraging consumption, by very literally basing the entire economy on consumption, the system steadily increases costs over time. Depletion of resources eventually leads to scarcity as demand continues while supplies diminish.

Immediately we can see that the system is clearly not sustainable. It unwinds until it can no longer support itself and it topples over.

There is both an ecological aspect to this and economic. These factors are interrelated. Certainly, deterioration of the environment has extraordinary costs that directly impact the capitalist economy even if these costs are tactically and temporarily delayed. Regardless, the capitalist economy will eventually suffer as costs increase over time and eventually this burdens the macro economy to the point of negative returns for most participants.

Factors such as under-regulated manipulation of capital can buy time as can such powerful forces as globalization and the exponential advancement of technologies displacing labor with automation.

Corporations have become global enterprises ideally with small payrolls and extensive networks of contractors able to provide finished product on the cheap. Global reach finds new markets that increase demand, but technological improvements diminish the demand and value for labor.

Despite these efforts, the system must eventually collapse.

In a real sense, any economic system is built upon the resources provided and fostered by our natural habitat and our ability to harness these resources. When the system propels us to consume these resources as vigorously as possible, the system is working to undermine its own foundations.

It is an economics that spends and does not save.

Capitalism, in its starkest sense, references the reward given to mankind for the exploitation and despoilment of planet Earth – our collective home.

Inflation must eventually accelerate into a final death plunge.

This is what we are seeing most starkly with the climate catastrophe. We see the contradictions of this system laid bare as the capitalist pursuit of “growth”, “development” and rising GDPs simply accelerates the deterioration of the environment.

This will inevitably lead to an inflationary collapse of the global economy.

At this end, once we free ourselves from our cultural shackles, we recognize that consumption is in opposition to conservation and a consumption-based system is fundamentally disastrous to any efforts to preserve our planet and its resources – human, animal, vegetable, and mineral.

Indeed, this is the heart of the matter. Capitalism is a form of slow suicide. The end game is self-immolation. This is an economics that erases the future.

Yet, the capitalist confidence men continue to tell us the same old myths.

In Part Three: The Myth of the Meritocracy and the Palace of Thieves we will unpack some of the frauds we are taught and bring them into the light of day.

lambchops by Haj

The Capitalist Lie – Welcome to the Slaughterhouse
The Capitalist Lie, part one

This is part one of a six-part series first appearing in the Medium publication Coping with Capitalism April 15, 2024 in response to the lies propagandized by our capitalist society. Much gratitude to Shawn Roberts, Jr. publisher and editor for his vision and improvements on this series.

Every one of us should take this moment and reflect on where humanity finds itself.

We have ascended great heights. Indeed, our dreams draw us towards the heavens itself.

Yet, with all of our genius, we are now facing what has been called the Mass Extinction that could well mean the eradication of most, if not all, human life on Earth.

What have we done to bring this upon ourselves?

It seems that our potent intellect fails to insulate us from our own intractable folly.

By reaching such great heights, we are like Icarus as we float above the clouds for only a moment before we must fall to certain doom.

This situation must change. Our society, the world we have constructed, as we know it, must transform and transform dramatically.

What is it that has led us here? Only by recognizing this, can we hope to change our situation for the better. Those responsible will reveal themselves.

Certainly, we all share responsibility on a sublimely real level, but the society we have constructed is both competitive and skewed into an intensely distilled concentration of real power.

This power has in no way been democratically distributed. Today, we see the rise in fascism around the world meaning power will further consolidate. That is exactly the idea.

The distortions are so amplified that we are kept confused, spinning on our heels, and utterly distracted.

We must seek the truth without prejudice. If we have any prayer to alter this course of complete social and demographic collapse, we should all pay very close attention.

What should be glaringly apparent to many by now is that our global system of economics must be held to account.

Our economics has, in truth, been based on thousands of years of hierarchical power and wealth. Our institutions and systems support these hierarchies exactly as they were intended to do.

Certainly, in years past, some distribution of power was deemed a political necessity; yet our economics is supported by and supports a violent, white-supremacist patriarchy that has been in place since the foundations of the Western world.

We could call this the Great Exploitation – of our neighbor and the natural world that supports us all. This would have been the perfect moniker. Power wielding power.

Labeling this system a competitive economy propelled by the consumption of goods and services or even simply calling it a consumption-driven economy would have been a more informative compromise for a name.

What we actually call this, of course, is global capitalism.

If you want to do it one better and ramp up the distortions and lies, call it by its Newspeak name. Therein lies the real problem for a good number in Americans.

…Go figure…many, it seems, wish to affix the preponderance of blame elsewhere.

There really isn’t a rush from a media too steeped in the deception of the propaganda model to expose the truth. Politics have become national with the national media monopolized in the hands of a wealthy elite. So, the lies are simply being amplified or the truth is quietly swept under the rug.

Most often, we hear this notion that our planet can’t support a human population of 8 billion people, and this is the apparent cause of our current climate troubles.

In truth, this line of thinking is likely a gross distortion of the facts. The most glaring evidence of this is that the vast majority of negative climate activity is attributed to a much smaller percentage of the world’s population.

While 80% of the globe’s population accounts for 20% of the climate change activity, a meager 20% of the population accounts for a whopping 80% of the negative impacts on the climate.

What is this telling us?

First, and most apparently, it is telling us that demographics are not the entirety, if even a significant portion, of the problem here.

So, while one might blame population for our woes, one would be missing the most significant point presented by the data. Poor people are accounting for only a minimum of climate change activity. Wealthy nations are overwhelmingly the most responsible.

Wealthy nations have industrialized. This means: high amounts of carbon emissions from a panoply of waste their industry creates; modern transportation networks that are built around the individual and the automobile; a neurotic intensity for repetitious consumer activity to support a materialist lifestyle; and a profit obsessed and “factoried” agriculture that features the cruel exploitation of animals. All of this activity drives a seemingly insatiable thirst for more and more energy while generating volumes of harmful waste.

Poor nations remain far behind wealthy nations in building industrialized economies that generate this level of greenhouse gas. It’s really that simple, but we seem to turn away when we are faced with these facts.

The truth is, once we examine demographics, we realize that in wealthy nations, with relatively broad, affordable and convenient access to both education and health care, birth rates begin to decline. When poorer countries fail to deliver this level of affluence to their citizens, birth rates are consistently higher.

This data exposes the potential causes underlying our planet’s rapid population growth. It seems embedded within global economic disparities. When people are provided affordable and convenient access to health care and education, they moderate population growth to the point of negative growth.

The problem is that bringing this level of affluence to the rest of the world would simply exacerbate the crisis before us even as populations drop. It’s in the data.

Swimming in these seas, we are like an addict. We may well realize we have a problem, but we deny what is causing the problem. This metaphor is significant as we really are dealing with the same demons as the addict or the alcoholic.

This remains lost to us.

That’s not all. When we begin to dig into why there are things like addiction, alienation, suicide, and other self-destructive and violent behaviors that plague our society and why these things are on the rise, we might begin to see what is behind all of this. That is, if we could introduce a meaningful level of honest self-critique into our thinking.

When our world finds itself racing towards extinction and destruction, a number of critical questions must be asked.

First, we must question the leadership that has brought us to this point and seems to be propelling us towards certain doom. Everyone should be concerned simply because these are the same group of leaders who brought us here.

Everyone – not just the poor and the black and brown people – should be concerned. Listen closely. Talk of “thinning the herd” seems darkly akin to “the Final Solution” particularly with the entirety of the rhetoric of this caste. LGBTQ+, Jews, immigrants, or anyone else “othered” – should be worried. In truth, even the rich should jump ship.

As we question our leaders, we must also cast a critical eye on our venerated institutions.

These institutions include our precious global economic system which is indeed known as capitalism.

In Part Two: Shop ‘til you Drop – the Unsustainability of Capitalism we will deconstruct some of the faulty mechanisms of a consumption-based economy.

 

American Death

 

Once upon a time, it was popular to call America’s form of representational government “democracy”. Now, many of those advocating for revolutionary change have drawn the distinction between democracy and the American Republic. There seems little question that in rhetorically drawing America away from democratic traditions, there is an attempt to make us all a little more comfortable with the idea of the rule by the few.

This isn’t something new either. The machinations of the cold war served to obscure the distinction between political systems of governance, such as democracy or authoritarianism, with economic systems such as capitalism or communism. This didn’t just serve to confuse one into believing one type of economy demanded a specific form of politics. America became a “democracy” and this implied a capitalist economy where individual freedom was nurtured. Meanwhile, communist economics were aligned with the oppressive totalitarianism of the Soviet Union and Red China.

In truth, political systems of government are how states determine their laws, enforce their laws, and adjudicate their laws. Political systems, like democratic forms of government, have no direct correlation to the economic systems that determine the division of wealth of a nation-state. Conversely, economic systems like capitalism are not political systems and have no direct bearing on individual liberties outside the market.

By conflating these, America propagandists successfully bundled “Communism” with fascist authoritarian rule and “Democracy” with the free markets of capitalism.

The result is a confusion of what socialism is and what it is capable of. More important, Americans have a residual dread fear of anything smacking of socialism. When someone proposes a socialist agenda, the fear of tyrannical oppression paralyzes the nation. Although this all served the propagandists of America’s cold war corporatism, it has become burdensome in our time of crises to say the least.

Where does America find itself not quite a year before the 2024 presidential elections?  

One important fact of the American political system has not changed. This “democracy” we have forged is decidedly a Two-Party System. You may like this or not, but it is the reality we all must deal with. To believe otherwise and to pursue phantom candidates from alternative parties is simply not an option unless one wishes to simply not participate in the vote-wielding potency of American politics and its two-party system.

So, we have a two-party system here in America. One of these political parties is corrupt. It has been bought and sold to serve corporate wealth and power. It is less beholden to the people and most in debt to wealthy donors, corporate big-wigs, and the billionaire class. It is filled with corrupt politicians seeking personal gain through increased wealth and the power that accompanies it.

One must seriously consider whether it is wise to support such a party. That is, until one considers the alternative. After all, this is a two-party system and not a three-party or pluralistic democracy.

The other political party in America is the Nazi Party.

This is not an exaggeration and is true in everything but name. The very ones who have reformed this political party espouse the ideology of fascism along with many of the aesthetics, slogans, racial animus, hatred, and violence.

If one calls themselves a Republican, one must consider this. First, the Grand Old Party you formerly embraced no longer exists. This is a plain and simple fact. That party is not coming back like some noble Lazarus either. Quite literally, this party has now become the Nazi Party.

In a two-party system, history instructs us that at some point one party will eventually come into power. This may be through presidential elections or dominance in one or both houses of congress. It is simply a feature of a two-party system that each party, at some point or another, will eventually come into power.

No problem there until one considers our new reality. In America, we have the corrupt party of neoliberal corporatism and the Nazi Party. Eventually, the Nazi Party will come into power.

Then America will have a One-Party System.

This party spells the end of America.

Unless, by some miracle of human insight followed by a Herculean struggle, the Nazi Party is utterly destroyed and erased from the American political landscape.

How did America get here? It seems what we see in American politics today is reflected throughout much of the world especially where one once expected to see liberal “democracies” in power.

Something has caused people to lose confidence in their institutions and their leadership. We are faced with an extraordinary stark division of wealth throughout the world. A smaller and narrower number of people hold an awesome level of power. One can state confidently and without exaggeration that the amount of power possessed by this very few is the most power ever grasped by human hands.

There is certainly the climate crisis. There are uncertainties, the fear of nuclear holocaust, the manipulation of the human genome, the rise of artificial intelligence, mass surveillance, more people competing for a dwindling pie, and any of a number of circumstances that traumatize and add to our already overstressed psyches. 

It’s simple really, isn’t it? We are facing the end of the world.

The result is an abandonment of the status quo – the political middle. This is the very same middle that has guided American and much of the world’s politics likely since the inception of these nations and their constitutions.

From our political vantage, this “middle” is very broad and encompasses both a “right” and a “left”, but not necessarily the political poles largely left out of serious political discourse within nations such as the USA.

As the middle is abandoned, some move to farther right and some farther left. Eventually, the extremes are drawn into mainline politics.

As usual with the version of “democracy” spread by America, the left ends up cut off. Rather a brutal and murderous military dictatorship friendly to multinationals than socialism antagonistic to these same businesses. Indeed, by labeling leftist politics as socialism or “worst”, the left is stigmatized to the point of being cut out of the political process as too “undemocratic”.

This was witnessed in the primaries leading up to the 2020 US presidential elections when every democratic primary candidate dropped out of the race as a unified whole once the “socialist” candidate on the left, Bernie Sanders, was becoming the leading candidate. This left the nomination to middle-of-the-road Joe Biden, the only other democrat left to face him.

Meanwhile, corporations who favor Biden will take the previous president, #45, over of a died-in-wool Wobbly like Sanders. So, we have the corrupt, middling, status quo and the fascist right.

On the right, we have He Who Shall Not Be Named. Former president #45 who tried to stay in office by overthrowing America’s form of democracy.

Now he whines about democracy and not being allowed on states, like Colorado and Maine’s, ballots. The media, operating under the Herman/Chomsky propaganda model, declare this disqualification would disenfranchise a whole slew of the American voting public.

Conveniently, these same journalists and opinion-makers seem to fail to see that there are two sides to this. Allowing someone to run for president who had formerly attempted to overthrow the government is the real outrage here, not barring this person from seeking this sort of political power he will certainly turn to tyranny. 

The fact is the 2024 presidential elections are almost certainly doomed to chaos. If Biden wins, the fascists will explode in furious outrage. If the other is even allowed to run, the elections will be viewed as illegitimate by those seeking to defend democracy in America.   

It seems America’s founders wished to protect the new republic from tyrants like King George or this new demon. Even as this 14^th amendment was a response to the threat from insurrectionists and rebel confederacies after the Civil War, it seems the very heart of our constitution is built to protect the American people from tyrannical rule.  

To simplify things – those who do not abide by the oaths of the office, should not be allowed to run for the office. Those who attempt to overthrow the government, should not be allowed to run for the same government they wish to overthrow.

We may need a little of the common sense of these founding fathers to recognize how critical this is to our nation’s survival.

To argue that this should be resolved in the court of law is another trap. Certainly, to throw him in jail for his crimes would require a proceeding in our criminal courts, but this is a matter of barring someone from running for office.

His guilt was on full display. The evidence isn’t a matter of hearsay, but has been gathered first-hand by the millions who watched him and listened to him in his many machinations designed to thwart our democracy.

This crime was performed in front of the entire nation day-after-day leading up to January 6^th. Certainly, a good many Americans have been deceived into believing the falsehoods spouted by this traitor and his sycophants.

Justice demands we filter out the distortions and lies and seek only the truth.

That truth is that this was almost certainly the greatest crime ever perpetuated against the United States of America. Nixon and Benedict Arnold were choir boys compared to this one. Put him in the company of Jeff Davis and his ilk. 

This will be decided by the Supreme Court. Yet, the ruling should be obvious. This man does not meet the bar of eligibility for the presidency of this country.

This is a matter of his fitness to hold the greatest office in the land and not whether he is guilty of a crime or not. He took part in and led an insurrection against the government “of the people”. His guilt in this matter was on full display.

Allowed to take the oath of office of presidency once again, he will betray this oath once more and remove the last grasp of political power from “We the People”.

Yes, the 45^th president lowered the bar of the presidency. Are we to lower the bar further and allow insurrectionists to run for the highest office of the land?

This Supreme Court is likely to rule that he shall and to leave it to the voters to decide.

So, the bar has been lowered.

President Biden meets this low bar. He will likely be the only candidate of the two (and recall this is a Two-Party System) who can meet this low bar.

Why, because his opponent will almost certainly fail to meet this bar. In fact, most any potential nominee from the Republican Party would likely enable the former and 45^th president and/or the fascist agenda that will, based on Republican success, doom America to a One-Party System.  

The bar that Joe Biden meets, that low bar, is that Biden loves American democracy and wants to protect it.

Nothing else really matters. You can try to go further and sure, Biden reaches a higher bar than this, but the point is the other party doesn’t.

You can talk about Biden’s track record, voting record, challenges dealing with obstructionism, Israel, or whatever, but all of that doesn’t really matter when the opposition fails to reach this low bar that has been set for presidential candidates in this country for 2024.

Joe Biden must be the best candidate for president ever put forth in American history. This isn’t hyperbole. It’s a night and day decision and is entirely based on the opposition in this Two-Party System – the Nazis.

We must go further. We must eliminate this Nazi Party. It must be erased from the American political landscape. This party, called the Republican Party, and its leader, He Who Shall Not Be Named, spell the end of America’s experiment if we fail.

If we fail, America will make its final, greatest fall and become something it was never intended to be.

A One-Party system.     

Someone once said, “Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind.”

When Christ went into the desert, He went alone. Yet, there in the desolation of oneness was another. This presence we see brought into being as the Devil himself tempting Jesus with the fruits of worldly power.

So, in the desert all alone, Christ met with His devil. To this devil, Christ would command… “get you behind me”.

Christ did not banish the devil to some nefarious plane. Instead, He commanded the devil to “get behind me”.

It seems, this devil was a part of Christ. This devil is something we might call the Shadow.

Among the many illuminations of Carl Jung is the essentiality of our shadow selves. In the desert, we see Christ shine a light on His own shadow self and bring these temptations into the light of day so that He could confront each one by one.

To deny His shadow self, Christ would have empowered His shadow. The shadow can not be seen in unconscious darkness. He may not have openly worshipped Satan, but His service would at best be divided. As Christ told us, one can not be a good servant for two masters. One will either betray the one while serving the other or betray them both.

When Christ left the desert. His aspiration was to spread the good news. One might say that this is when things got political. This is when things reached a moral climax.  

The life of the Spirit begins with the inward moral journey for enlightenment and balance, but is never truly realized until the Spirit is moved to bring the light to all of humankind. One should not hide one’s light under a bushel.   

We may look to the life of Christ as an example of the life of service to one’s fellow creature.

After finding the peace within, Christ faced the sun and walked towards civilization where He would make the salvation of humankind His mission. His shadow, His demons, were cast behind Him.

The light can not exist without shadow, nor can the shadow be without light.  

Just as there is no courage without vulnerability, the capacity for wrongdoing provides us an opportunity to see ourselves in the most positive light. Without the capacity to do evil, we really can do no good.

God’s Law is only enforced through the moral order of the universe or with what one might call karma. As Christ instructed us, “you reap what you sow”. God’s Law allows for our free choice. Our collective fall is an example of this. Without this freedom, there is no moral choice being made, but only the coercion of a higher power. Without choice, one is really doing neither good nor evil, but simply what one is compelled to do.

Without the capacity to do evil, there can be no good.

The knowledge of this universe seems to rely on a sort of binary symbolism. We rarely know what something actually is except through a kind of negation. In other words, we only seem to gain an inkling of what something is through the realization of what something is not. Possibly, this is because much of what we consider “reality” is actually a manifestation from the Creator God and not the fundamental reality we often ascribe to it. In this way, the true nature of reality becomes elusive as we remain trapped in spacetime. The true vitality of the manifestation is missed, but like a lamp casting shades, for those who see, the material seems to illuminate that which is hidden from our eyes.

Like Christ, we must each shine a light on our own demons. They will otherwise operate in darkness.

After departing the desert, we find Christ with the Baptist in his wilderness at the River Jordan. It was from this confessional point that Christ could truly begin His mission as the dove of peace took flight from His shoulder.

Like the temptations in the desert, this was not a purge of the darkness, but a casting of the darkness into its rightful place.

Christ was led by the Light of God. This is the truth and the good news that Christ spread through ancient Judea.

It is the humility of this master who only takes it upon Himself the role of servant where we can best begin to understand our Savior. As a true servant of God, Christ became a servant to each of us.  

In the story of His life, we find a Christ who rubs shoulders with the sinners and those marked as the “unclean”. Christ made it abundantly clear. He did not come for the sake of the righteous and to give succor to the powerful of this world, but He came for the lowly sinner in need of correction and healing…those who were in need of Him, those who were being persecuted, exploited and oppressed by the powerful.  

Indeed, we have been told where to find Him upon His return.

The depth of meaning of this is lost to those who today claim the mantel of righteousness. They are the same as they were in Christ’s time. Sitting in their high places looking down upon the unclean masses.

Today, we can see as was seen then, that these same “righteous” are anything but. Indeed, none save the Savior Himself, are free of the shackles of sin. He is the first.  

Those that make these claims must make the same supplication they did in ancient times. They must humble themselves before the Lord, go to the lowly places and confess their sinning ways. There is no other path to Christ.

Each of us must bend a knee to ask forgiveness. There are no exceptions.

It is true that the judgment of the Father is always Mercy. God is Love and He is the All Creator. It is from this Love that we can begin to understand that Christ has come to serve and that He is truly the Good Shepard.

Even if Christ were to come to a world of Christian Love and not this Hell lorded over by Satan, He would still not be found with the righteous in paradise. This is not His place. He will be out seeking the lost sheep. He will be in this Hell with the sinners until that last, lost sheep is found and brought to the gates of paradise.

The first shall be last and the last shall be first. This is the Alpha and the Omega or the great unification of all that is. The monism or the oneness whole of God the Holy Father. The good news.

Each of you are a child of God.

The sinners in Christ’s day are really no different than today. They are the most vulnerable. They are the “unclean”, the despised and the outcasts. They are the “Other”. Today we see them as the persecuted and most targeted by the self-proclaimed righteous ones: the homeless and the poor, the stranger and the immigrant, black and brown people, any LGBTQ+, Jews, Muslims, the heterodox and so on and so on.   

We can watch the works of the powerful and hear their words. They are the victims, they say. They are the ones being persecuted despite their exalted state of grace. These are the innocent. Those who are at fault are the sinners. They may pick one, more, or even all to point their fingers at, but the fault is in the sinners and not within themselves and their own Shadow being.

Like in ancient times, they are likened to carved marble sarcophagi. Beautiful and ornate on the outside, but corrupt with death inside. Their example is really just hypocrisy, corruption and self-serving enrichment.

Which leads us to further consider, what lessons does all of this provide today’s Christian?

Today, those righteous few incite the many with violence pointing their fingers at the sinning trans, poor, immigrants. Suddenly, out leaps one of the mentally weak with a claw hammer attacking your family in brutal, bloody violence.

Who should we blame?

What responsibility to those leaders who demonize their opponents with violent rhetoric?

What of those who give support to these leaders?

What of you and I?

If, for example, we end up with an LBGTQ+ grandchild and they are attacked. What then?

How should that make us feel?

After all, we have given our support to these leaders and, it must be said, their violent rhetoric. It seems we become complicit in this violence when we lend them our support.

How should we feel about these issues now?

Do we condone a self-destructive social order that relies on vigilantism instead of some semblance of justice?

Do we even seek justice…or is it really just petty revenge?

Whose side are we on?

Are we among the righteous or the sinners? For, if you are to believe the words of Christ, He comes only for the sinners and not for the righteous. The righteous have no need for healing.

…and they know it.

Are you one of them?

How does this make you feel?

Once you have answered that, you might have gotten something out of this essay.

Go with God.

Find Joy

Love and Peace.  

Amen.