Lord of the Flies is About Fascism, Not Anarchy

Lately, I have been thinking about the Lord of the Flies. This is a well-known book, one widely read in schools across the country, and one whose themes and allegories are explored, or rather dictated. The narrative generally pushed is that the book, and Golding, take a view of human nature as malicious and entirely self-serving, a distinctly Hobbesian view, and that Ralph’s civilizing them was all that kept them together before they became savage. I cannot help but find the truth to be the opposite. What the plotline of the story shows is the destruction of a society based on democracy by a charismatic leader who establishes himself on dictator- it is not a storyline about the dangers that come from humanity losing civilization and ‘devolving into anarchy’, but the dangers of authority and hierarchy.

            When the boys arrive on the island, Ralph convinces the boys to form a democracy of sorts- granted, a representative one, which is hierarchal, but one where at least the leader is held accountable to the rest of the community. They work together communally to build shelter and fire. The charismatic and power-hungry Jack, however, seeking glory, leads his choirboys to become hunters- this is in essence the beginning of the division of labor. Jack’s division of labor and establishing official roles for various groups (his choirboys as hunters and fire tenders) is reminiscent of corporatism, the economic system of fascist state, while Jack’s system was effectively a democratic commune.

The leadership of Jack, the unelected charismatic boy quickly becoming a despot, leads to poor initial consequences. The boys miss a chance to be rescues because Jack and his friends have taken the elite role of hunting and tending the fire, but neglect their duties.

            Meanwhile, the little ones (an allegory for the little man?) begin to become increasingly afraid of an unproven danger. Jack, like any despotic leader, uses this ‘fear of the other’ to gain control. In a way similar to how nationalists use the threat of foreigners, religious fundamentalists use the threat of heathens, or Statists in general use the threat of ‘lawlessness’, Jack exploits the threat of the Beast to gain control and establish himself as master of the group. This is how the Stalinists gained control of the Russian Revolution (fear of the Capitalists), how the conservative faction of the political structure justified repression of leftist thought in the US (fear of the Stalinists), how certain religious fundamentalists gain control of populations in the developing world (fear of the US), and how the US justifies crackdown on civil rights (fear of the Jihadists). The fear of the other is a building block to any successful putsch for greater control, and Jack played it as expertly as Hitler playing the resentment, fear of Communism, anti-Semitism of the post-Versailles German populace to aid his rise to power.

            After the children mistakenly come to believe in the beasts’ existence by misidentifying dead soldiers, Jack is able to exploit the fear of the children to grant himself total dominance. He leads his new followers off to create their own tribe.

            Jack’s tribe takes on ‘animalistic’, ‘primitive’ customs such as face painting, but this is no allegory for their ‘descent’ from civilization. Rather, it is allegorical for their relying increasingly on emotion and less on rationalism- this is a trait not of ‘primitive’ cultures, but rather, more uniformly, of fascists. Emotional appeal is, like the fear of the other and Jack’s charisma, a key in establishing the type of power structure found in fascist, phalangist, or Nazi states. The face painting also serves as an in-group identity of sorts, a uniform that masks difference and diversity with a symbol of group identity.

            Simon, a character who seems to be representative of peace, goes off into the island to search for the beast himself- it is the gentle one who looks for the truth behind what everyone is afraid of. He seems to find it, in the answer that the fear of the other, the beast that Jack uses to scapegoat, is indeed a creation of the boys, and that the beast, the capacity for irrational fear, wild emotion, and hatred of the other, is within us. He tries to explain the truth behind the Beast to Jack’s followers, but, like raging nationalists too blinded with hatred of outsiders to think, they fall on him in a fury whipped up by their religious/tribal ceremony- much like a crowd at a Nazi Rally in a fit of nationalist fervor for their Fuhrer.

            Jack’s tribe then raids the more peaceful democratic tribe lead by Ralph, kills Piggy, tortures Sam and Eric, and seeks to kill Ralph. It is, in short, an expansion for resources followed by a purge of opposing groups. This, again, is not the nature of ‘anarchy’, that name that our own philosophers and leaders use so easily to instill the fear of the other into us, but the natural extension of hierarchal power structure.

            Those who interpret the book as a ‘descent into chaos’ when ‘law and order’ and no longer imposed on humanity make a series of mistakes. First, they associate society, community, and civilization with hierarchy. Incapable of imagining any way of living without rulers, elected or otherwise most readers have a worldview that is a dichotomy between the hierarchal, orderly, and peaceful society of humanity, and the anarchic, chaotic, and warlike barbarism of ‘savages’. They mistakenly believe that hierarchy maintains the ‘rule of law’, and have an image of hierarchal systems as static and orderly- they do not analyze the structure of hierarchy and see its reliance on fear, both of the other and of punishment for disobedience, nor do they note the drive of hierarchies to expand and consume.

            What is truly baffling, however, is that readers so often view the tribe of jack as a move away from governance, where the ‘savage human nature’ runs free and untamed. The reality is quite the contrary. While Jack does use emotion and his tribe moves away from rationalism, it is not in the direction of anarchy, but in the direction of authoritarianism, dictatorship, and a certain type of mystic, supercharged tribalism whose only best parallel in the real world is fascism. The democratic society the boys start with is not destroyed by their turning their backs on civilization and losing the rule of law, but by their being exploited by a manipulative and ambitious ruler who, in so many Machiavellian ways, becomes, by force of personality, the fuehrer of the boys. Yes, Jack’s tribe moves away from rationalism, but this does not mean a move away from governance. We shall find that the worst governments tend to be the ones based off of irrational hatred- it is the political zealot who seeks by force of government to make his worldview reality and to gain power for himself that is the death of freedom. It is authoritarianism, not anarchy, that kills democracy in this book.

Repost: Before You Enlist, a Military Fact Sheet by Dan DiMaggio

This is a factsheet of sorts compiled by Dan DiMaggio on military recruitment. I post it here not to try to convince any people not to join the military, but to provide more facts to anyone considering it. Note, if you see any citations ([x]), these refer to sources that I did not include in this note.

1.Recently the military has expanded education benefits through the GI Bill. Yet in the past, only a small minority of recruits have actually received money for college, despite promises made by recruiters. According to one study, only 15% of those who paid into the G.I. Bill graduated with 4-year degrees. Expanding education benefits met significant resistance from military officials who fear that it will make it harder to retain soldiers and convince them to re-enlist.

2.The military itself admits that the top purpose of financial education incentives is not humanitarian, but ‘to encourage college-capable individuals to defer their college until after they have served in the military.” (Recruitment Handbook)

3.The military spends $4 billion a year on recruitment.

4.Only 10% of recruits initiate the recruitment process themselves.

5.In Philadelphia, the Army has opened a $13 million recruiting center disguised as a video arcade. It’s complete with leather seats, the latest in video games, and big Army simulator games – extremely realistic except that you can die as many times as you want. It has replaced the 5 other recruiting centers in Philadelphia. The military is hoping it will be a model for other urban areas, traditionally the hardest places to recruit. 

6.The Pentagon is increasingly partnering with Hollywood studios to showcase the military in blockbuster films. This includes the recent Transformers movie. As the film's Army liaison, Lt. Col. Gregory Bishop, notes: "As far as I know, this is the biggest joint military operation movie ever made, in terms of Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines. I can't think of one that's bigger."

7.Recruiters are so focused on getting into high schools because the military’s own studies show that the likelihood of joining declines with age and with increased education. “A 2007 Defense Department study reported the percentage of youths who would consider joining the military dropped from more than 25 percent at age 16 to less than 15 percent at age 21… "If you wait until they're (high school) seniors," instructs the U.S. Army's School Recruiting Program Handbook, "it's probably too late."”

8.The military can unilaterally change the terms of the enlistment contract at any time. According to the Department of Defense's own Enlistment/Re-enlistment Document: Laws and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may affect my status, pay, allowances, benefits, and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the provisions of this enlistment/re-enlistment document (DD Form 4/1, 1998, Sec. 9.5b).

9.While recruiters may make all sorts of promises, “if you do enlist, the military does not have to place you in your chosen career field or give you the specific training requested. Even if enlistees do receive training, it is often to develop military skills that will not transfer to the civilian job market. (There aren’t many jobs for M240 machine-gunners stateside).” (New Yorkers guide to counter-recruitment)

10.Veterans are much more likely to be unemployed than those who have never served in the military. The 2000 Census recorded a 17% unemployment rate among veterans, about four times the national average at the time. One study showed that only 12% of male vets and 6% of female vets use skills learned in the military in their current jobs. 1 in 3 homeless men in the U.S. are veterans, with nearly 200,000 veterans homeless on any given day.

11.Many people hope that joining the military will help them find the discipline they need in their life to make good on their potential. Yet the stress of combat, military life, and moral dilemmas posed by participating in a foreign occupying army wear on many veterans’ nerves and mental health. 1 in 5 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan  - 300,000 soldiers - report experiencing symptoms of PTSD or major depression, and 19% report experiencing a potentially traumatic brain injury while deployed.

12.The army’s mental health services for veterans are vastly inadequate. 121 soldiers committed suicide in 2007, a record, and another 2,100 attempted suicide or injured themselves, up from 350 in 2002. A January 2008 article further found 121 cases of murders committed by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the Times writes, “In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment -- along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems -- appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.”

13.As one journalist who visited Walter Reed Veterans’ Hospital reported in 2005, “The soldiers told me about their textbook symptoms of PTSD: sudden, ferocious bouts of rage, utter detachment, anxiety attacks accompanied by shortness of breath, and increased perspiration and rapid eye movement. They complained of relentless insomnia, racing thoughts, self-loathing, blackouts, hallucinations and the constant reliving of war through flashbacks by day and nightmares at night. Some described vivid fantasies of violence toward the Army brass in charge of patients there -- slicing their throats, throwing them out windows or shooting them. One psychiatric outpatient, who watched as his best friend was blown up by a roadside bomb in Iraq, said: ‘It does not matter how hardcore you are. Once you go to that war and you start to see dead bodies -- you see an arm over here, you see guts over there. There is no way you are ever going to erase that.’”[6]

14.“The military claims it treats everyone the same, regardless of skin color; but in reality, it has serious problems with inequality in the ranks. In 2004, 36.2% of the enlisted personnel were people of color, but they made up only 18.2% of the officers. Latinos in the Marine Corps, for example, made up 14.5% of the enlisted ranks, but only 6.2% of the officers (Dept. of Defense, Demographic Profile of the DoD and Coast Guard, Sept. 2004).

15.60% of women have experienced military sexual trauma (sexual assault or harassment), with 23% reporting sexual assault while in the military.

16. “In January, 2006, Col. Janis Karpinski told a forum in New York (the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration) that several female soldiers at Camp Victory in Iraq had died from dehydration. These women stopped drinking any fluids late in the day out of fear that they would be raped walking to isolated latrines at night. Karpinski stated that an Army surgeon who reported these deaths to his superiors was told to leave the facts and cause of death vague in these cases in future briefings…” 

17.The Pentagon maintains a database with information on all young people ages 16-25. In 2002 the Department of Defense began its Joint Advertising Market Research & Studies project (JAMRS) to compile the info on 30 million youth ages 16 to 25. This database “includes names, birth dates, addresses, Social Security numbers, individuals' e-mail addresses, ethnicity, telephone numbers, students' grade-point averages, field of academic study and other data” – over 700 pieces of information in all!

18.In the military, you will lose your basic rights. If you leave your work without permission, you can be arrested. Any disobedience can result in criminal punishment. You can be punished without the right to see a lawyer or have a trial. Your right to say what you think when and how you want will be restricted. Individual expression through the way you dress and wear your hair won’t be tolerated. You will be subject to routine urine tests for drugs. (. (From Project YANO’s pamphlet, “The Military’s Not Just a Job … It’s Eight Years of Your Life!”)

19.Section 9c of the military enlistment contract says that the length of service can change in the case of war: “In the event of war, my enlistment in the Armed Forces continues until six (6) months after the war ends, unless my enlistment is ended sooner by the President of the United States.” Nearly 60,000 soldiers have had their military service involuntarily extended since 2002 under the stop-loss policy.

20.Section 8c of the military enlistment contract implicitly acknowledges that recruiters may make false promises: “The agreements in this section and attached annex(es) are all the promises made to me by the Government. ANYTHING ELSE ANYONE HAS PROMISED ME IS NOT VALID AND WILL NOT BE HONORED.”

21.Recruiters lie. According to the NY Times, nearly one in five U.S. Army recruiters was under investigation in 2004 for offenses varying from ‘threats and coercion to false promises that applicants would be sent to Iraq.’ One veteran recruiter told a reporter for the Albany Times Union, ‘I’ve been recruiting for years and I don’t know one recruiter who wasn’t dishonest about it. I did it myself.”

22.In the midst of an unpopular war in Iraq, youth have routinely accused recruiters’ of lying, distorting information, and engaging in improper behavior to get them to enlist. There were 6,600 allegations of wrongdoing by recruiters in 2005 alone, according to the Government Accounting Office. Public outrage over recruiters’ tactics forced the military to declare a one day “stand-down” for all recruiters in May 2005.

23.A 2006 ABC television investigation, which sent undercover students into 10 recruitment offices in New York and New Jersey “reported that more than half of the recruiters were ‘stretching the truth or even worse, lying.’” “Some recruiters told our students if they enlisted there was little chance they’d go to war.” One recruiter even told a student, “We're not at war. War ended a long time ago.”

 24. In 2008 in Minneapolis, 4 military recruiters were suspended after an investigative report by Fox9 News. Recruiters told youth they could get $400,000 to start a small business (the real figure is $40,000, and it is quite difficult to get), that they would never see combat duty, and more.

25. The U.S. spends nearly as much on its military than the entire rest of the world combined. For 2009, the Pentagon has requested $711 billion, including $170 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. military spending is over 6 times that of the next leading military spender, China ($122 billion), and ten times that of #3 Russia  ($70 billion). With this money, in addition to occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. maintains over 700 military bases in 130 countries across the world.

Cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:

$2.9 billion per week; $410 million per day;  $17 million per hour; $284,722 per minute

$4,745 per second 

26. While state and local governments across the country face huge budget deficits, and the federal government deficit stands at $1.2 trillion, there are no proposals to cut the military budget, even under new president Obama.

27. Professor Paul Street writes, “American ‘defense’ spending outweighs domestic U.S federal expenditure on education by more than 8 to 1; income security by more than 4.5 to 1; nutrition by more than 11 to 1; housing by 14 to 1; and job training by 32 to 1. The military accounts for more than half of all discretionary federal spending.” Further, “a 2004 poll by the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations found that just 29 percent of Americans support the expansion of government spending on ‘defense.’ By contrast, 79 percent support increased spending on health care, 69 percent support increased spending on education, and 69 percent support increased spending on Social Security.”

 28. The money spent on the war in Iraq alone could have provided: 25 million four-year scholarships for university students OR

5 million affordable housing units OR

29 million children with health care for ten years OR

68 million homes with renewable electricity for ten years OR

1 million music and arts teachers for ten years OR

90 million Head Start places for children OR

10.7 million elementary school teachers for one year

I end with this quote:

"Above all else, military recruitment is a PROGRAM TO SOLICIT LABOR. Its

goal is to get people to contract for employment up to 24/7 for an

indeterminate period (usually misrepresented as limited to 3 years),

with a signing bonus (recoverable, however), low pay,

attractive-sounding but in part cancelable benefits, no rights to

unionize, limited rights of defense to charges of violation of its own

code of laws, and morally, psychologically, and physically dangerous

working conditions. . ."

-- Joe Maizlish

Los Angeles

Repost: A Communique from the Freak Liberation Front, as an Open Letter to Michael Alan, author of 'I Wish My Kids Had Cancer'

Katie McCarron is dead. Zain and Faryaal Akhter are dead. Ulysses Stable are dead. All were killed by their parents, for the same reason countless others have died. It was the same reason that a UN-recognized international organization released a video in which a mother is portrayed sympathetically while expressing a wish to murder her daughter. It is the same reason one Michael Alan has felt it necessary to write a book entitled: "I Wish My Kids Had Cancer". That reason is autism, or, much more accurately, the reason is the cure autism movement, and their hateful, destructive, and exclusionary rhetoric, which time and time again leaves little doubt: these people, whatever their stories and excuses, harbor behind their own self-pity and disappointment an unbridled and deadly hatred of the autistic.

Mr. Alan has written on the wall of his book's little fanclub, 

"I want to apologize to any group members who are being harrassed by those who take issue with the title of my book.... All of us fighting Autism fight it in our way, and this book helps the fight... Those who have read book, and those chose to respect someone who opens his family's life and puts everything he has on the line to help raise awareness should not be condemed by those who choose not to receive the message, and choose to be angry at those trying to help."

Mr. Alan, with all due respect (in your case, none whatsoever), spare me your bullshit. Portraying autism as a disease worse than cancer, ignoring the voices of autistic people, marginalizing legitimate complaints against your asinine bigotry, and contributing to the attitude of stigma that surrounds the autism discussion does not help us. Continuing to push the discredited and intellectually bankrupt conspiracy theory that thimerosal causes autism is not helping us. Continuing the frame the entire discussion around autism in the perspective of parents and families, and not the perspective of autistic people themselves, continuing to deny us our rightful place in the discussion and shut us up, does not help us. Pursuing an agenda of treatment that seeks not to help us function as ourselves, seeking our own happiness, but pushes always to make us over into the semblance of normalcy that people like yourself can finally learn to respect, does not help us. These things only further marginalize and dehumanize us, while propagating a mindset that can never help us, because it does not respect us or understand us.

Do not pretend otherwise. Do not lie to yourself and think that you are aiding us, respecting us, or fighting for us. You are fighting for yourself. You are selfishly bemoaning your lack of a normal child, and instead of showing your autistic children the love they deserve, have chosen instead to to wish a hideous death upon them. You have decided to proclaim their genetic mental pattern to be such a terrible thing that your wish, which, if wished by any other parent upon any other child could be grounds enough for protective services from such an obviously disturbed man, is actually reasonable. 

I cannot help but be reminded of the deaths of Katie McCarron, Zain and Faryaal Ahkter, Ullyses Stable, and the countless other martyred to the needs of parents who didn't want to deal with autistic kids. How many more of our autistic brothers and sisters will have to die because people like you cannot learn to cherish the children you have, instead of mourning the children you wanted? How many more of our brothers and sisters have to die because of the hateful and dehumanizing rhetoric that you and your vulturish ilk peddle? How many more need die because we are seen not as people, but as burdens, as objects, as problems? How many more need die because of your thinly disguised hate?

Mr. Alan, you may wish that your children had cancer. You may prefer the thought of a child who wastes away into nothingness as the cells in their body mutate and take over their tissue, turning their mortal vessel against them and ravaging their bodies into husks of their former selves. You may wish that I and all my fellow autistics, from Temple Grandin to Amanda Baggs, had cancer, and that our tongues would rot from our mouths and never speak a word against you again, never prove a burden to your society. But, we are kind. We don't wish you had cancer. We just wish you had autism.

Mr. Alan can be reached at michael_alan@comcast.net

P.S.- You make me sick.

Also:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgII1hQTsQJ2ommeilj7WXHYcAPHZB_NdSZ3-Sb9-Jk5xXb8fGgj9qjJKP-hERug2MtSBC6UedzJLR9zqocA1FeNpKwCvRih9HFShpzqGimPcahcE2dUdTHwHlBoWkBwDCEk5c3Kxnamw/s1600-h/conscience.jpg

Now get off this planet, you sick, disgusting sniveling pile of garbage masquerading as an excuse for a human being.

Manifesto of a Country Boy

I’m a farm boy- I had my first work when I was less than ten, I grew and sold my first crop around that same time, I’ve never had a job that wasn’t in agriculture or forestry, and I’ll be damned if I’m anything but a farm boy. So much so, that while the dreams of so many rural kids is to get to the cities, I’m majoring in environmental studies and biology the university not two or three mile as the crow flies from my house, aiming for graduate school in agronomy at the U of M.

Yessir, I’m a country man, and like every man in America, I’m beset by the expectations of my gender role- in the case of masculinity, it’s almost more of a race/class/gender role. What is a rural, white, man? I don’t know if the image of rural masculinity comes from an honest cultural tradition, or if it’s just something pushed by media, or both, but can tell you this: the image, the role, of the rural white man is a hyper-masculine, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-intellectual, anti-urban, pseudo-populist construct. A rural man, if popular image is to be believed, is responsible (a word that here means ‘willing to blame the poor for their lot while ignoring corporate subsidies’), hard working (‘won’t unionize’), ‘independent’ ( ‘willing to blame Mexicans for his lot while ignoring corporate outsourcing’), and humble (‘not an uppity intellectual’). He loves America (and doesn’t question the necessity of war), loves Jesus (and doesn’t question the agenda of his church), and doesn’t trust those big-city ‘latte liberals’, college students, and ‘radical environmentalists and feminists’ pushing their socialist agenda through big government and the Fed and liberal media and big business. No, a rural man is no soy-swilling, long-haired, effete snob. He’s a man’s man. And, let us not forget, a rural man is a carnivore; he takes his cornbread and coffee with short ribs, and he chows sweet beastflesh- never shall tofu touch his lips.

Recently, I became a vegetarian. Not for animal rights purposes, mind you, though I’m not big on agribusiness practices. No, I did it for social and environmental reasons. I just don’t see the sense in using so much land to grow so much grain for so many cows, when there are so many hungry people in the world. Now, that right there ought to fulfill multiple expectations of the rural man- I’m trying to act pragmatically, responsibly, with personal integrity, and thriftily; I’m doing this against waste and against agro-industrial practices that screw up our common home and the lives we live in it. Yet, the fact that I just ate a lentil stew with a side of curried tofu ensures that my penis is now a nonfunctional organ hanging in front of my rapidly developing ovaries, and my flannel shirts have all just become ‘ironic’.

Now, this article isn’t about being a vegetarian. No, that’s just what got me thinking enough to write it. This article’s about what I already covered- a ridiculous standard of rural masculinity. How can one be a man? If I fail to follow the prescribed notions of manhood, I will have failed to assert myself, and I am not a man. If I assert myself and stand against this nonsense and for ecological and social responsibility and an active critique of the institutions of our society, I’ll have failed to follow the prescribed notions of manhood, and I am not a man. With such a standard, the only way to be a man is to be an irresponsible, callous, prejudiced, willfully ignorant person working for a goal contrary to your own self-interest. The Catch-22, of course, being that a person like that is not a tolerable man.

There’s only one solution I can think of, and it’s a continuation of what I’ve been doing since the day my sister showed me ‘Killing Us Softly’ and I stopped thinking that feminists were the man-hating hypocrites that I’d always seen and heard them portrayed as. The only solution is to break free of this whole damn stereotype of rural masculinity. Why should I follow a code of conduct based in asinine, sexist assumptions, a code of conduct that contradicts itself by demanding responsibility while demonizing responsible actions, that is anti-intellectual, that serves only to set rural folk against city folk and the petit bourgeois while demonizing those that fight the system of power, that discourages compassion, that fetishizes violence, that is pushed on us relentlessly by urban professionals working for massive corporations (the big six media companies and their entertainment subsidiaries)? Why the hell should I be a lapdog for a culture war waged by some bourgeois thinktank in New York against other bourgeois think tanks in New York? Why should I spend my days complaining about ‘latte liberals’ and the ‘Hollywood elite’ while corporate stooges and the Wall Street elite tell me how to live my life? Why should I teach my sons that an education and a vocabulary are things to be ashamed of?

Don’t misunderstand me here- I’m not attacking rural men. I AM a rural man. I’m not saying rural men are uneducated, racist, sexist, homophobic apologists for a system of exploitation and domination- I’m not saying that because it’s not true, unless you let it be. I’m saying we’re persistently portrayed as such and pressured to be such to the point where some of us have foolishly taken it as part of our identity. I’m not here to bash rural men, I’m here to tell you to stop letting conservative culture war pundits and the entertainment media shape your idea of what a rural man is. It’s time to take gender back, and then kick it’s ass. You want responsibility? Quit demonizing the poor and start thinking about who’s warming our planet. You want to fight the elite? Stop worrying about urban hipsters and start worrying about CEOs. You want the government to get out of your life? Let’s start with curtailing the runaway military-industrial complex, stopping theocratic blue laws, bringing accountability to the cops, and ending corporate welfare. You want honesty? Stop mindscrewing yourself into thinking capitalist-dominated financial institutions want to force socialism on you, and take a look at what those capitalist-dominated financial institutions ARE forcing on you.

The reactionaries think that because I’m a straight, rural white guy, they can count on me as some automatic recruit for the most troglodytic, regressive part of their agenda; a culture war that marginalizes and casts scorn on women, on femininity, working folk, people of color, immigrants, the at least 10% of our friends and neighbors who are gay, and others. They think they can make me into a sexist, homophobic, theocratic, nationalistic stooge who’ll turn a blind eye to their embezzling, warring, repression, civil rights abuses, union-busting, torture-funding, and river-poisoning just so I can feel like I’m holding on to the white, male privilege which, in the wake of the rape of rural communities by agribuiness, corporate-written government policy, and neocolonialist globalization, is all a lot of rural white guys have left.

No, sir; I ain’t gonna be that sort of ‘man’. I’m my own man, and this bowl of alu mattar? Consider it my resignation from your identity racket. My delicious resignation.

Repost: Green Unionism, Too!

Recently, I wrote on the need for Industrial Unionism here in Central Minnesota, to combat the exploitation of the working people. I write this month to highlight a second great injustice of the capitalist system: the degradation our common home, the pollution of our air and water, the waste of both finite and renewing resources, the de-valuing of nonhuman life, and the permanent altering of our habitat in such a way that it is no longer hospitable to that life which has heretofore adapted to it- in short, the ecological devastation that has seized the world in its deathly grip since the dawn of our current economic epoch.

Capitalism lays waste to our common home. Some would be inclined to blame industry, or the concept of civilization itself, as the source of these problems; this is ignorant. While there is no doubt that the specialization of labor allowed by the agricultural revolution has enabled our species to construct a myriad of technologies, which have in turn enabled us to expand our footprint within the ecosystem, to blame technology is to ignore the power that chooses how we use that technology. In capitalism, that power is the capitalists, both as individuals and a class. To understand how we have reached our ecological crisis, we must understand how capitalism has forcibly guided the hand of industry in the short-term interest of the few at both the short and long-term expense of people and the Earth.

The capitalist system places value only in what is both owned and can be sold. For example, to this system, air quality is an ‘externality’, because it is a damage to our common resource- air cannot be owned nor sold and so does not count in the economic calculations of capitalists. While this is called, by the apologists of exploitation, a ‘tragedy of the commons’, we know it for what it really is; a tragedy that occurs when the needs of private holders takes precedence over the needs of those who use the commons; it is a tragedy of privatization and commodification. The response to this tragedy, enforced on the global south by the World Bank and their ilk, and increasingly coming to invade and dismantle the scant protection of progressivism in the north (all in the name of ‘free trade’), is to further privatize what is commonly held; already, they have privatized land, water, fisheries, and even ‘genetic information’- seeds. Such privatization serves only to further consolidate wealth into the hands of the capitalist class, to be further mismanaged.

Capitalism mismanages because it and the privatization scheme places the power to make decisions in the hands of a tiny class, disregarding the needs of communities. Consider the suffering of Appalachia: Who decides that it is most ‘efficient’ to blow up mountains, dump the mud and rock into the valleys, choke the air with carcinogens, and poison the rivers with acid runoff, all to extract coal to power some capitalist’s machines in some other place, choking that town’s air and poisoning its water, and at every step of the way spewing forth carbon, contributing to the deathly toll of climate change? It is the capitalist (or, in the modern corporation, the Board elected by the capitalists), safe in his office, away from the poisons he commands- the capitalist who can afford to keep his own home relatively free of pollution, and keep some crude semblance of wilderness alive in his estates for his enjoyment.

The needs of the people of Appalachia do not factor into the mining company’s decisions, nor do the needs of the people of Manchuria factor into the decisions of the manufacturing bosses or the State’s party bosses- so can the absentee bosses shift the ecological burden to the working classes, and ignore the costs of production, making a false efficiency from willfully blind industrialism. To the people who live and work in Appalachia or Manchuria, however, the pollution of their air and water, the loss of habitat and wildlife, the losses to public health, are all pressing concerns. Had the workers, living with the consequences of industry, their say, would such degradation be tolerated? Common sense, and the growing alliance of labor with the environmental movement, dictates that it would not, but as long as the decisions are made in the board room, dictating the will of the capitalist class without regard to the consequences suffered by workers and their communities, such degradation continues.

These insanities of capitalism, among others, ensure that any attempt to ‘green’ the system is doomed. The public can try, as they have and as they should, to introduce public regulation of pollution. But, the hand of the boss class, kept powerful by the labor of the dependant workers, has ways of breaking down, bypassing, and rewriting these regulations. Unopposed by the organized power of the workers, the bosses can make these regulations mean little or nothing, and continue with more or less regular capitalist relationships to the environment. The other action people can take is direct and economic; they can refuse to purchase unsustainable products. This is a popular and welcome strategy, but again, it is not enough- it does not change the fundamental nature of the industry, but only creates a niche market, a sub-section of that industry, still controlled by the capitalists, but selling organic or ‘fair trade’ (less exploited) goods- often, with the money flowing to exact same corporate despoilers to be reinvested in their deadly industrial processes. Consumer pressure alone is not enough, because it requires the huge majority of consumers to choose not to support industries that are poisoning people and destroying ecosystems. While it seems obvious that it is no more acceptable to pollute someone’s air and water or otherwise destroy their environment than it is to outright assault them, there are enough shortsighted blockheads and scissorbills in the world who don’t realize this and will continue to buy whatever good is cheapest in commodity price, regardless of its cost to the world.

There is another course of action, an effective and powerful course that addresses the problem directly at its primary source. This is the course of green unionism. Labor addresses the threat to the environment where it is greatest; in the factories, fields, and mines of industry. A capitalist may work around the other two strategies of environmental defense, and can even recuperate the losses of direct action, but what can they do, when the labor that keeps their industry running, refuses to work until real change is made?

Though any union will help to bring the environmental needs of the community into the question of economic decision-making, industrial unionism is especially suited to this job. An industrial union, such as the IWW, does not believe in shifting the burdens from one group of workers to another, as some business unions do. We don’t believe that getting rid of a polluter is progress, if they just move their pollution to a poorer side of town. We don’t think that putting solar panels up to power a business is sustainable, if the copper was gotten by ruining someone else’s home. We recognize that industrial pesticides hurt not only the workers in the field, but all the workers and communities downstream. Moving towards sustainability means solidarity not only with your own local community, but with people all over the world; this is a value that both bosses and too many business unions lack, but that forms the foundation of industrial unionism- a harm to one, whether through economic or ecological injustice, is a harm to all.

An industrial union is suited to green unionism because it is democratic. As we’ve already seen, hierarchical power relationships mean that the goals and values of one party take precedence over the values of others. While business unions are certainly better than no union, even they can form a controlling clique, and ignore the needs and desires of the rank and file. Industrial unions like the IWW don’t allow this centralization of power. The IWW structure is radically democratic- each shop, industry, and local is its own center of power, with the IWW general body serving as a coordinator, not a commander, of activities. This structure, whether applied to a union, an activist network (for example, Earth First!, which the IWW has worked with in the past and which uses this grassroots, federative organizational principle), or a society, ensures that people get a voice in what affects them; a central goal of designing an ecologically just society.

Finally, industrial unions are key to the defense of the environment in the workplace, because unlike business unions, the IWW and other industrial unions are openly and proudly advocates of economic democracy. Economic democracy is the negation of the capitalist method of organization, and the expansion of those things that make industrial unionism great; it is worker and community control of the factories and fields, the primacy of the people’s needs, both for constructed goods and for a healthy world, in the economic process, and the replacement of top-down control that benefits the owners without regard for the workers, with worker’s control, which benefits the workers and the community. In an ecologically conscious economic democracy (almost a redundancy), all value is considered; not only the value of commodity goods and stocks to the capitalist, but the very real value of our common resources and the people who depend on them, our children’s futures, and habitats and lives of non-human species- values that capitalism, in its commoditization of human and non-human life and devaluing of the wants and needs of the dispossessed, can never realize.

Whatever other measures are taken to ensure the continued well-being of our environment, the power of industry will exploit and recklessly plunder the world, unless guided by the hands of all those who share that world, and not a privileged few. Sustainability requires economic democracy and green unionism, and these demand industrial unionism. The IWW, with its commitment to sustainability and real change, is just the union we need, to make ecological and economic democracy come to life. 

Repost: Industrial Unionism Now!

Capitalism has never been kind to us. The machines of industry have unleashed both great productive capacity and great social change, abolishing all classes but holders of the means of production and those who work those means. While the inevitable conflict of social classes has been at turns sidetracked by nationalism, concessions, and the endless attempt to turn working people against their own interests, we know well enough: there is one primary struggle in our time- the struggle of the disenfranchised, the exploited, and the disempowered against the privileged and the powerful; the struggle of labor, and the disenfranchised of every hierarchy built into the class system, against capital and whole of the establishment that enshrines it. Never since the dawn of the industrial revolution has this been more clear- in the age of globalized corporate capitalism, the velvet glove of progressive reform has been stripped away to reveal the iron fist that is the profoundly undemocratic system of capital property. Since the age of neoliberalism and ‘trickle down’ economics, the cut-throat dictatorial corporate rule that has been exported to the third world for decades has come back to cast its sick sights on the workers of the West, and each new crisis brings newer cuts, more austerity measures, and a further stripping of those programs and reforms that created the middle class- all the while accumulating previously unheard-of wealth in the hands of the megarich while the wages of the American laborer stagnate, the small business holders are driven into the ranks of the workers.

Let’s not kid ourselves and think that ethical consumption or other indulgences is going to change the situation; fair trade and organic create a niche market selling to the sort of people who buy fair trade and organic (and, all too often, figure that this means they’ve ‘done their part’ in changing the world), but does not meaningfully challenge the paradigm of corporate capitalism. Something more is needed; something not on the consumer end, but on the producer end. What is needed is the labor movement.

Unions have acquired a bad reputation, mostly unjustified, but there are legitimate reasons. Union bureaucracy and hierarchy can be a disempowering and work at odds with the interest of the union rank and file. Many unions are all too willing to sign no-strike clauses and compete with other unions. American unions worked during the second Red Scare to purge the anti-capitalists from their ranks and remake themselves as a reformist, pro-business force and have since spent a huge amount of their funds campaigning for the lesser of two evils and the anti-labor Democratic Party while ignoring the need to organize unrepresented workers and carry out the real work of the union.

Yet labor is needed, whatever the problems of modern business unions; and so, a better model must be found, and organized. A model for real effective labor must be based in grassroots union democracy (decentralized power, federated organization, and recallable, accountable delegates), industrial solidarity (meaning that the industry is not split among multiple unions, but acts as one union), and an unapologetic pro-labor agenda (no no-strike clauses, no abandoning change for moderate reformism- the goal of the union has to be workplace democracy, not just collective bargaining). We need to organize that sort of labor, and a place to organize is right here in central Minnesota.

Unionizing in Saint Cloud won’t be easy. We’re a standard Midwestern town- an economic colony of neoliberalism, with the dominant players of both our productive and consumptive forces controlled, not by workers, not by local petit bourgeois, but by chains- chains of stores that make chains on the hands of labor. Such chains make it so any unionizing effort that has real effect on the lives of the people of this city needs to be not local, but regional, national, or international, and for this reason, this dilemma that faces every worker, the labor movement itself must be international. It is most important to note that in an age of global capital, no one community can become revolutionary. Globalization creates a race to the bottom- any attempt by a nation to institute progressive policies, or, even ‘worse’ (in the eyes of capital), real democracy will be met with the movement of business and capital from that nation to another, more desperate or more oppressed. As long as capitalists have people desperate enough or afraid enough not to demand change, they can always just move to the lowest bidder and make sure the labor market in the commodity of human lives works for them. Not to mention the IMF, the World Bank, and of rest of international monetary and exchange institutions set up by and for the wealthiest people in the world. Just look at what happened in South Africa or Poland after their revolutions; their entire economic reform program torn to pieces by these institutions, serving not the interest or the will of the people, but the interest and will of the capitalist class. Just look at America- you think closing the border will bring jobs? It’s not immigration that’s taking your job; it’s globalization done capitalist style.

That’s why labor movement doesn’t only need to be democratic- it needs to international. It must be a labor movement that can fight capitalism on every front, can make sure that every stage of the production and industrial process is beset by the forces of labor, can, as labor movements have historically done, prove a dynamic force against totalitarian regimes, and can maintain itself as a genuinely democratic engine of popular power.

It is for this reason that in the upcoming years we must attempt to build the labor movement in the form of the Industrial Workers of the World in Saint Cloud and central Minnesota. The IWW is the ideal union for the modern age- based in worker’s democracy, industrial organization, international solidarity, and an unabashed yet inclusive revolutionary agenda. The IWW also is one of the few unions that really thinks outside of the box- recently, the Wobblies have lead the way in unionizing the food and service industries (for example, Starbucks and Jimmy John’s), showing a drive to take up the cause of workers other unions are all too willing to ignore.  Ten IWW members in a community are all it takes to form a General Membership Branch, the basic organization from which further labor action, both local and, in solidarity with other communities, regional and international action can be taken. I urge readers, activists, and workers to join the IWW and building genuine labor resistance in central Minnesota, and the world!

Get That Boehner Away from America's Women!

Get That Boehner Away from America’s Women!

Or

America Must Rally Against GOP Anti-Choice Putsch

Emmett Doyle

            In 1973, Roe v Wade officially established the right of American women to control over their bodies and reproductive rights. Since that day, it has been under constant, unrelenting attack. This year may prove crucial in deciding its fate. As we speak, initiatives are underway on both state and federal levels to restrict access and rights to abortion.

The House has already voted to defund Planned Parenthood by halting Title X funding, which has, since 1970, allowed organizations like Planned Parenthood to provide lifesaving medical treatment to millions of women. One in five American women (including a good many pro-lifers) receive health care from Planned Parenthood, of those that do, six out of ten say it is their primary source of care.

The most ridiculous part of the defunding campaign in the continuing resolution, which also targets, among other things, teen pregnancy community grants, the Affordable Health Care Act, and the EPA’s ability to regulate air pollution, is that federal funding for abortions hasn’t happened since the 70s. All of the funding the Fed is cutting is coming out of the rest of Planned Parenthood’s services- providing contraceptive, cheap medical care, cancer and STI testing, and the like. The only way they’ll prevent any abortions with this is if they drive Planned Parenthood under- and then they’ll have done so at the expense of women’s health services. Of course, driving them under may actually increase the number of abortions, when one considers the 2.5 million people who receive contraceptives each year from the organization. Some 973,000 unintended pregnancies and 406,000 abortions are prevented each year by Planned Parenthood.

The defunding goes beyond the disenfranchisement of American women. The continuing resolution will also defund international family planning, AIDS fighting measures, the UN Population Fund, and foreign aid health services, and reinstate the global gag rule (The Mexico City Policy), forcing NGOs that receive any federal funding to refrain from performing or promoting abortion services- even if, like Planned Parenthood, their abortion services are not supported by the federal government.

In addition to the defunding, there is the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, which would not only redefine rape as ‘forcible rape’ (apparently being drugged and brutalized doesn’t count anymore), and the Protect Life Act, which would allow any hospitals receiving federal funds to refuse to terminate a pregnancy- even when a woman’s life is in danger (yes, ladies, your lives matter less than the potential life of fetuses; and embryos; and zygotes).

The assault on choice is coming not only through the federal level, but through the states. South Dakota, Nebraska (where already woman have been forced to give birth to a child she knew would not survive due to the state’s ban on abortion after 20 weeks), and Iowa are all currently reviewing bills that would define ‘protection of the unborn’ as legitimate grounds for murder- effectively legalizing an open season on abortion providers. South Dakota has passed a bill that forces women to visit a ‘Crisis Pregnancy Center’ (centers run by religious organizations, infamous for their misleading claims) before getting an abortion, and Texas is about to pass another just like it. Pennsylvania, Kansas, Virginia, Florida, Indiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and Ohio are all considering ‘Heartbeat Bills’ that would make abortion illegal after a heartbeat is detected (between eighteen days and five weeks). One bill in Georgia goes beyond crazy- it demands that all miscarriages (which make up about a quarter of all pregnancies) be investigates to make sure that there was no human involvement. Rep. Franklin (GOP), the man who introduced the bill, also introduced a measure to redefine rape victims as ‘accusers’ until defendants were proven guilty (because apparently, a crime didn’t happen until the perpetrator of that crime has been identified and convicted- well, unless the crime in question is anything but rape). Here in Minnesota, four identical bills have been introduced by the MN GOP, all similarly banning state funding for abortion. This can be recognized as nothing but a concerted putsch against women’s rights.

The pro-choice resistance, however, is fighting back. Demonstrations have been held all around the countries, condemnations are flying, and petitions are being circulated. The DFL here in Minnesota have returned fire on the GOP with the Reproductive Privacy Act, which would stop government from interfering with reproductive freedom in any manner. Still, the pro-choicers need to rally! There is a nationwide battle, in the streets, the media, and the legislature, that may decide the future of reproductive freedom in this country. I urge you, readers, to be on the side of choice.