The genie is out of the bottle

[maplesyrup]

Prior to the introduction of the internet the right could control communications - TV, Radio, Newspapers.

And initially the right controlled the 'net as well.

Now though, times are a changin' and people no longer have to go to the basically right wing media for their information, because the left has finally caught on, albeit, they are still playing catch up.

A good example of what I am talking about is Venezuela. President Chavez has made significant history with electoral victories, but even though the right wing press supresses its significance, connected via the 'net there are now groups meeting throughout the planet this week to discuss plans to build on his successes.

[August1991]

The choice of Margaret Thatcher as Tory leader in 1975, then her election in 1979 followed by Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 were all indicators of a shift to the "right". The popular destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 were also indicators. I think Vaclav Havel said that the only remaining Leftists are now teaching in western universities.

Tony Blair, Felipe Gonzalez and Bill Clinton are all examples of the left reforming. Even Francois Mitterand was pragmatic and comfortable with cohabitation. Jacques Chirac, by some standards, is now "Left". And what was Deng Hsiaoping's famous comment on the colour of cats?

This is a far cry from Michael Foot, James Laxer and the waffle, George McGovern, Georges Marchais, Henry Wallace and Arthur Scargill. Richard Nixon, for heaven's sakes, was interventionist - he imposed wage and price controls and created the EPA.

Across the world, from India to Italy, from Albania to Argentina, countries have by and large rejected State intervention and opted more or less for free markets.

If anything, modern communications technology (including the Internet) has exacerbated this.

I don't see this as a swing of the pendulum. This is a permanent change.

The old tax-and-spend, nationalize-commanding-heights, Directive-Plans, pro-Union Leftism won't work and isn't even popular.

At the same time, I happen to think the Left has an important role to play in deciding State policies. The State is in some ways the best institution, for example, to protect the environment, to protect children at risk and to redistribute wealth without destroying it.

But I'm still waiting for an intelligent Leftist to make some proposals. Instead, I just hear the old 1960s refrains ("profits are bad", "corporations are bad") of Noam Chomsky et al. Ugh.

Lastly, Canada is a minor backwater in world affairs. We have not been immune to these changes but the Quebec National Question has infected our federal politics and we've been left with the Liberal Party as a result. IOW, we get a fudge in which such institutions as the CBC, the CRTC can survive or an activist Supreme Court can thrive - and ideological questions defer to national unity.

[Guest eureka]

I won't comment for the moment. However, I would recommend that any who want to know something about the rise of the "Right" should read Lewis Lapham in the latest edition of Harpers Magazine.

The "success" is all about the power of money and it will bring a reaction that will sweep the neo-libs away.

[August1991]

The "success" is all about the power of money

Precisely my point, eureka. You don't know what money is. (It's only paper! How does mere paper have power?)

[Guest eureka]

Try reading the article. The sums spent on propaganda and the formation of new right wing propaganda machines: the takeover of the media by the right, are all well documented. The sums involved are astounding.

All precipated by the routing of Goldwater in 1964 and the panic of the elites at the success of progressive, liberal ideas.

[August1991]

All precipated by the routing of Goldwater in 1964 and the panic of the elites at the success of progressive, liberal ideas.

Typical old Leftist thinking. You look for conspiracies, invest in symbols and miss reality. How sad.

[Slavik44]

But I'm still waiting for an intelligent Leftist to make some proposals. Instead, I just hear the old 1960s refrains ("profits are bad", "corporations are bad") of Noam Chomsky et al. Ugh.

When profits are put ahead of a workers well being they are bad, and I think you are vastly overstating what many left wingers state when refering to such situations.

Lets nto be stupid if a company does not profit the workers won't have Jobs, however wanting to make sure a company does not profit at the expense of the workers, is nto saying profits are bad, likewise having laws and benchmarks in palce to ensure a corporation does not turn bad, does not mean you belive all corporations are bad, but it does mean that you are smart enough to realise that corporations when left unchecked can certianly be bad.

What I don't get MS is your contant swinging, You have commented many times about how Canadians are moving to the left, but then turn around and comment that the liberals have moved to the right. Correct em fi I am wrong but that would mean that well over 50% of Canadians voted for a right wing party this election, hardly moving to the left as chretien was definentley a left winger. I will not bother to search for news on American Politics but I am hoping you will take my workd for it when I say their president is a right winger, i woudl also argue that the democrats are more of an encompasing center right-Center left party. If we look towards Europe (hard to get statistics due to language impediments) but what I have found is that

It may already be wrong to speak of the legally constituted right-wing parties in Europe as the "far right", the support rate of so-called "far-right" parties has reached national levels of 18% in France, 27% in Austria and 23% in Switzerland.

Reached to me indicates it has gone up, meaning there has been a shift, a change a movement towards something, that something happens to be the right. China, whiel lead by a communist party has been shifting over to a free market economy. the only example you give is Chavez staying in power, Staying somewhere does not involve moovement, it involves not moving, hardly a shift to the left, besides that poor countries have historically been associated with Communist and socalist Idealogies, but Argentina is hardly an acurate sample group for the rest of the world. I am not saying a shift to the right is a good thing or a shift to the right is a bad thing, but i am saying if there is in shifting it isn't to the left, atleast in first world countries.

[maplesyrup]

What it really is all about is class struggle - rich against the poor. All executives are not bad, nor are the other employees, unionized or not, all bad.

But the ability to con people through control of the propagandist media (whether the media is Canadian, US Russian Chinese, Soviet, commie, fascist, capitalist, or socialist) is rapidly losing its strength.

But if you don't think captialism is in trouble look at what has been going in the stock markets since 1999. Sure there have been a few bull markets, but mainly we have had bear markets. The problem is there is actually a surplus of goods with no one with any money to purchase them. I think we are going to witness a major downswing in the stock markets over the next few years.

Of course we are in trouble - just look at the US deficit!

Also we are facing an energy crisis of major proportion. I don't necessarily agree with the solutions entirely, but we are going to be making a major shift into nuclear power, and other alternative forms of energy. Canada might be well positioned to exploit this rush to nuclear power as apparently we are the leaders in the world in producing uranium, or so I have heard.

But the days of snow jobs, of trying to tell the poor they are better off with low minimum wages, etc., are gone, and the business community needs to wake up to that fact. I don't know if there is anyone alive that believes that bullshit anymore.

Our major problem in society is the greed factor. I am not suggesting you take away incentives for people to earn money, but you can over do it, that's all. Sometimes we need to say enough is enough.

[August1991]

What it really is all about is class struggle

Your ideas were old in 1974, MS. I won't say what students in Poland think of them now. Everything in your post is 1960s rant, or older. The Left is needed. But not this way.

[playfullfellow]

Our major problem in society is the greed factor. I am not suggesting you take away incentives for people to earn money, but you can over do it, that's all. Sometimes we need to say enough is enough.

The problem with this theory MS is, where do you say enough is enough? A 5% return or 100% return on your investment? If the government is going to take the majority of my earnings, which they do already, why should I bust my hump trying to improve my financial situation through hard work? Why should I take the risk so the government can take my money and blow it on useless crap. I treat my staff well and there are times they make better money than I do but they are extremely loyal and do a damn good job for me. Why should I bother to make more money if the government takes it all. I may as well just keep the status quo which is not a benefit to the community because I could be creating more jobs if I wanted to.

[maplesyrup]

PFF......if you say your employees make more or as much as you sometimes that is not the problem I am addressing.

The problem which I am addressing is where some executive is making 100 times more that any of their coworkers, that kind of thing.

At some point an arbitrarity figure has to be drawn. We tried to have that with the tax system but there are just way too many loopholes.

We do need to repair our tax system.

[Guest eureka]

If you think conspiracy theories enter into the case, you should really read that article. It might stir your imagination. I don't think any are competent to discuss the issue without knowledge of some of the matters Lapham covers.

Incidentally, Lapham has had the misery brought into his life of having his daughter marry Brian Mulroney's son.

[maplesyrup]

What it really is all about is class struggle

Your ideas were old in 1974, MS. I won't say what students in Poland think of them now. Everything in your post is 1960s rant, or older. The Left is needed. But not this way.

Why is it always the right that says it is not a class struggle?

Of course the rich would not want it mentioned as a class struggle.

[maplesyrup]

Did someone mention conspiracy theories? I am not sure who or what you were refering to, but try this article on for size and tell me what you think:

The Manchurian conspiracy

Sure there are tight groups that slither into power — but often they aren't too secretive. They hold public posts and have names like Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle etc. They issue manifestoes (Project for A New American Century) in out-of-the-way but hardly inaccessible places. Their conspiracies, in other words, are fairly public.

And it is true that in our time they are intimately linked to corporate power. But that does not mean they are reducible to corporate tools. George Bush and his (relatively open) co-conspirators thrive on business backing, and serve corporate interests. Yet they remain a separate social group operating in the political, not the economic, realm. What I like about Sen. Streep is she at least represents that political impulse. You can't picture her going to all the trouble of their convoluted conspiracy merely to increase quarterly profits. She's in it for other ends: power, ideology, ego.

[Hugo]

I'd keep quiet about right-wing conspiracy theories if I were you. It's pretty common knowledge that the history of the leftist movement is a Moscow-centrist and Soviet-funded attempt at sedition that has, unsurprisingly, lost its way since the source was destroyed.

As August correctly says, the left has had to evolve. The new left, embodied by Layton or even by a new-wave socialist like Solzenitzyn, has had to come to terms with democracy and with the free market. They now accept the democratic-capitalist organisation of the equal triumvirate of state, economy and culture, with the crucial caveat that they wish the state to be far more powerful and influential than either economy or culture. In this they show a disturbing ignorance for history, never seeming to realise that greater power invested in the state means greater misery, suffering and death for the people.

The changing face of the left has had to happen in reaction to reality. Marxism has died, faced with the undeniable reality that capitalism succeeded in all the fields that Marxism wanted to succeed in, whereas Marxism had become a dismal failure. One can expect this realisation to continue in the future, as the reformed left realises that the free market and a free culture achieve far more social good than their statist ideals ever could.

[Cartman]

The left has evolved. In fact, many leftists are suggesting that the problem with our society today is not so much that people go without the basics, but that our economy is over-developed and provides too much. That is why, for example, starvation for people in the West is less of a problem than is obesity.

Giddens and Beck suggest that we will likely face a serious crisis of legitimation as people are increasingly faced with these serious man-made risks (which are more dangerous than ever in history). Nuclear power, chemicals and bacteria in our drinking water, BSE, SARS, flesh-eating etc. have demonstrated that neither government regulation nor corporate self-regulation are working well at all. As these risks created by corporations in the first place, accumulate in frequency, intensity and duration, and scientists demonstrate that they cannot even ascertain or measure risks well, there will be a crisis-point. Gov't will become more relevant because self-policing has failed.

[Michael Hardner]

Auguste1991 says:

But I'm still waiting for an intelligent Leftist to make some proposals. Instead, I just hear the old 1960s refrains ("profits are bad", "corporations are bad") of Noam Chomsky et al. Ugh.

I wouldn't call myself a leftist, but others might.

Corporations helped build (N) American into what it is today, and even leftists have to acknowledge what they have done to improve millions of lives.

But how do we decide who owes what to whom ? Are we indebted more to the corporations or they to us ?

I propose better modes of discussion and clear, good-quality information from moderate representatives of both sides of the political divide to help guide us into the future.

We need this becasue we've now stumbled into something called a Global economy which might be the road to an unprecedented global cooperation and wealth. Or perhaps not.

The working people of North America have been judged as being overpaid. So they're asked to accept outsourcing, layoffs, reduced benefits and so forth. And they have done.

But when will the system balance itself out ? Can we trust the current modes of information to tell us that the pendulum has swung enough the other way ?

If it's truly a race to the bottom as some have suggested, then the only signal we will have that it has gone too far will be violence and upheaval.

If the problem is that CEOs are making hundreds of times the wages of the lowest employee, that's not really a situation that will spark wide outrage. People have even accepted lower wages and benefits while the richest do better.

What will cause a problem is loss of homes, hunger and disease happening amidst pockets of increasing wealth and affluence.

The media systems we have now cannot tell us whether things are getting better or worse. The internet may be a thousand points of light, but without any prevailing authority.

If we as a society can't agree on answers to simple questions such as "who are we ?" "what are we doing ?" "what do we want to achieve ?" then we shouldn't be surprised at our lack of direction.

[Guest eureka]

When did it become common knowledge that the "ledt" is Moscow centred? Did you ever read Orwell, to cite one of the major voices of the left? Did you ever consider his hatred of Moscow was as deep as his hatred of Nazi Germany?

Democracy and Free Market Capitalism are incompatible with democracy. Liberal democracy has evolved though the regulation of Capitalism in the interest of all. "Tooth and claw" went out with the control of the 19th. century dinosaur capitalists.

You also need to give some attention the distinction between Socialism, Marxism, and totalitarianism. There is a world bwtween them and the right has often steered closer to totalitarianism than has Socialism. Socialism has always been democratic in its impulses and, to say of it that it is akin to Marxism, is to limit yourself to 19th. century theorists. The "Right" has not a democratic bone in its collective body. The idea is an absurdity when the right is all about the exploitation of economic opportunity and the gathering of the fruits to its denizens.

Both "Left" and "Right" have indeed evolved. The left has progressed in the direction of the improvement of economic conditions for all. The "Right" has faltered and slipped backward to Edwardian times.

I speak of no conspiracy theories but of the well documented gathering of "Rightist" forces to impose its interest on the "lumpenproletariat."

As long ago as 1950, Lionel Trilling said that "there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation," merely "irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas."

That holds equally true today. The "Right" recognized it in the 1960's with the march of liberal progress and gathered its money to the cause of persuading the public that its "irritable gestures" were ideas from which the public benefited. The greatest con job in the history of the human race.

[Michael Hardner]

Eureka:

When did it become common knowledge that the "ledt" is Moscow centred? Did you ever read Orwell, to cite one of the major voices of the left? Did you ever consider his hatred of Moscow was as deep as his hatred of Nazi Germany?

Hugo may have been referring to Soviet funding of radicals in the West, such as peace groups etc. I don't think there's any doubt that that happened, but to what degree it had an effect is anyone's guess.

[Hugo]

Hugo may have been referring to Soviet funding of radicals in the West, such as peace groups etc.

Indeed. Up until the collapse of the USSR, virtually all Western Marxist-Leninist parties were funded and controlled by Moscow and were little more than espionage agencies.

Furthermore, consider that as of February 2003, all but one of the anti-Iraq-war protests were organised by the Workers World Party, a Marxist-Leninist organisation that has openly supported Kim Jong-Il. The one that was not was organised by United For Peace and Justice, co-chaired by Leslie Cagan, a self-confessed and longtime Castro admirer.

Democracy and Free Market Capitalism are incompatible with democracy.

Not at all. Democracy is political freedom and political choice, capitalism is economic freedom and economic choice. Democracy allows you to choose your government and dispose of them if they are not to your liking, capitalism allows you to choose your employer and your suppliers and to reject them if they are not to your liking.

There is a world bwtween them and the right has often steered closer to totalitarianism than has Socialism.

When? Capitalism was born in America and Britain, the first and best of democracies. I challenge you to find me a totalitarian, capitalist state.

I should warn you that I am setting you up for a fall. If you reply, "Pinochet", I shall tell you that his economy was mercantilist as he concentrated wealth in certain groups and discouraged social mobility. If you reply, "Hitler", I shall tell you that the Nazi German economy was a command economy like that of the USSR. Hitler wasted no time in breaking big business to his will. Any other examples you can think of will meet a similar fate.

Socialism has always been democratic in its impulses

I thought socialism was supposed to be a transition from capitalism to communism? Marx and Lenin never rejected violence and terror, in fact, they endorsed it, as did virtually all communist thinkers.

I speak of no conspiracy theories but of the well documented gathering of "Rightist" forces to impose its interest on the "lumpenproletariat."

Well documented, eh? I'd ask you for some of these documents but from our earlier conversations I know I can expect the man in the moon to fly down and sell me bushels of dayglo-orange tomatoes before I can expect you to provide a shred of proof for anything you say.

[Cartman]

I challenge you to find me a totalitarian, capitalist state.

I challenge you to offer an example of a country where an entirely free market exists devoid of government intervention. I certainly hope you will not use the US or the UK as examples.

[Hugo]

I challenge you to offer an example of a country where an entirely free market exists devoid of government intervention.

Sadly, I don't believe such a thing has ever been tried. The post-Revolutionary American government is probably the closest, but even that has wisps of mercantilism about it. Hopefully we shall be able to progress towards it. Movements like the Austrian School and the Mises Institute will probably be instrumental.

[Guest eureka]

You are beginning to amuse me and I would really like to experience the fall you are setting me up for. The only fall I can imagine is from a great height onto your ideas.

What an absurdity to say that all but one of the of the anti-war protests was organized by the Workers World Party. That needs no refutation. It is too silly to believe that you actually meant it.

Socialism is not a transitional step on the road to Communism. It is that in Marxist thinking, not in any of the preachings of the Socialist philosophers or activists. Socialism is an end to itself for all those and some, Robert Owen for example, were very mild in their ambitions.

Democracy is not at all the simplistic thing you would make of it. It is a highly complex balancing act that should, at its best, provide both freedoms and Rights (one of which is the right to security): the one thing it does not provide is the freedom to exploit the weakness of others. Socirty is, after all, a social contract: an unwritten contract that comes from ages of human intercourse and provides for the good of all.

Capitalism was not born in America and Britain. It existed since the first men came together in community. More to your ideas of capitalism as having only to do with commerce, there were advanced Capitalist societies before America was discovered and when Britain was still an agrarian society. Think of Amsterdam and of Venice for starters: or of the Hanseatic League and its members.

For totalitarianism, I will give you Germany and please don't respond with schoolboy responses. I could give you others but I don't want to die laughing as you try to tell me they were not totalitarianism.

I give you again, George Orwell. In 1949, Orwell said that everything he had written since 1936 was against totalitarianism. Who do you think he wrote about, particularly as a government employed propagandist against Nazi Germany.

For documentation on the "Right Wing" assault on democracy and the senses of the people, I have already given you the reference. The current issue of Harpers Magazine: Lewis Lapham's article. It sets it all out in a way that even the most fervent "Right Winger" will find hard to argue with. Lapham is, to my mind, the preeminent political analyst in America, and, with it, the most elegant writer amongst them. He is one who gives me hope for the future stability of that country.

[Hugo]

You are beginning to amuse me and I would really like to experience the fall you are setting me up for.

Alright, but this is really going to hurt, and you can't say you were not fairly warned. I even told you the traps I was laying for you in advance.

What an absurdity to say that all but one of the of the anti-war protests was organized by the Workers World Party. That needs no refutation. It is too silly to believe that you actually meant it.

Well, let's see. Here's John Perazzo's article from Frontpage Magazine. An excerpt:

On February 15, many thousands of protesters will assemble within sight of the United Nations building in New York to express their opposition to a war in Iraq. Their efforts will be duplicated in some 300 additional cities throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. This will be the first such protest not organized by the Workers World Party (WWP), an energetic Marxist-Leninist organization that openly supports Kim Jong Il’s brutal dictatorship in North Korea. Instead, it will be run by a group called United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ), whose co-chair Leslie Cagan is an enthusiastic, longtime supporter of yet another Communist despot, Fidel Castro.

Here's an article by Marc Cooper in Toronto's Now magazine. Another excerpt:

With the Bushies blindly pushing for conflict with Iraq, we'd argued, it's going to take a very big, a very broad and -- yes -- a very mainstream anti-war movement to maintain the peace. That's what The Nation magazine's Washington editor, David Corn, wrote in these pages when he publicly worried that the organization that ran this season's major U.S. peace rallies was dominated by a cultish sect of Stalinists in the minuscule Workers World Party.

Here's an interview with David Corn, defending his article in the L.A. Weekly. Another excerpt:

Well, they [Workers World Party] are leading,

they're organizing the peace rallies. And to call them an organization is perhaps giving them too much credit. I doubt they have enough people to fill a telephone booth. They're a very small sectarian political outfit based in New York City. But they're the ones who have sort of put forward, you know, they put up the signs, they rent the buses, they (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a march or protest, a demonstration against the war.

And there are plenty more.

Socialism is not a transitional step on the road to Communism. It is that in Marxist thinking, not in any of the preachings of the Socialist philosophers or activists. Socialism is an end to itself for all those and some, Robert Owen for example, were very mild in their ambitions.

Ah. So what you are talking about is not socialism, but neo-socialism, perhaps better named statist democratic capitalism.

Capitalism was not born in America and Britain. It existed since the first men came together in community. More to your ideas of capitalism as having only to do with commerce, there were advanced Capitalist societies before America was discovered and when Britain was still an agrarian society.

What you call "capitalist" is actually called "mercantilist." There are many key differences, namely that mercantilism does not believe in free trade and instead believes in maximising exports and minimising imports, that mercantilism generally allows the state to control key industries such as precious metals and armaments, that mercantilism forbids social mobility and concentrates wealth in families rather than in classes and uses punitive state laws to keep the peasantry in their place. Capitalism does not share any of these values. There are more differences, but that's enough for now.

Socirty is, after all, a social contract

No, marriage is a social contract. Society is much harder to define.

For totalitarianism, I will give you Germany and please don't respond with schoolboy responses.

Alright, I'll respond with quotes from the most definitive historical text on Nazi Germany, William L. Shirer's superlative The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Thousands of ragged Nazi Party officials descended on the business houses of those who had not supported Hitler, threatening to seize them in some cases, and in others demanding well-paying jobs in the management. Dr. Gottfried Feder, the economic crank, now insisted that the party program be carried out - nationalization of big business, profit sharing and the abolition of unearned incomes and "interest slavery."

p. 283-284

For the first year Nazi economic policies... were devoted largely to putting the unemployed back to work by means of greatly expanded public works...

p. 357

General Ludendorff... had stressed the necessity of mobilizing the economy of the nation on the same totalitarian basis as everything else...

p. 357

In September 1936, with the inauguration of the Four Year Plan under the iron control of Goering, who replaced Schact as economic dictator... Germany went over to a total war economy... Imports were reduced to a bare minimum, severe price and wage controls were introduced, dividends restricted to 6 per cent...

p. 360

Laws decreed in October 1937 simply dissolved all corporations with a capital under $40,000 and forbade the establishment of new ones with a capital less than $2,000,000.

p. 361

So... economic dictatorship, Four Year Plans, price controls, wage controls, import/export restrictions, nationalising businesses, closing businesses... and you think Nazi Germany was capitalist?

You, sir, are an ass.

[Guest eureka]

Check "Vote no War" as one organization amongst many. Do you really believe those fanatical apologists?

Do you really think that a "miniscule" organization that very few people have heard of could organise mass demonstrations all over the world?

For Germany, do you not see the word "totalitarian" in your own quotes? Germany was a totalitarian state born of the Capitalist Right. Notice that new corporations with assets above 2 million could be formed.

Can you explain the profiteering by the Bush family interests and Ford amongst others through their connections with the large German corporations that fuelled the war machine?

In the same way, the USSR was a totalitarian state and not a Communist one after Lenin who has a doubtful claim himself. It started from the left and quickly shifted.

It is difficult to call either ideology "Right" or "Left" since when either descends into totalitarianism they converge in many respects. Both are statist.

No, I am not talking of neo-socialism. I am talking of Socialism, a diverse group of thinkers who came before Marx. Marx was a variant who was not a Socialist and saw Socialism as a stepping stone to a kind of anarchy. Anarchy, of course, proceeds more properly from the Right - part of the reason that Marxism failed.