is how to hurt their interests at an acceptable cost to those doing the harm.
The traditional answer to this was solidarity and martyrdom. It is impossible to overstate how dangerous being a union activist right up to the middle of the 20th century was. You had to accept that you would be beaten, jailed and possibly killed. Violent confrontations with police and private cops were routine. Outright battles were not unknown, as when miners squared off against the military in a multi-day battle with over ten thousand casualties.
Nor did the early unions wring their hands about violence, even “criminal” violence. Clarence Darrow was a union lawyer for years. One of his most prominent cases was defending union members who set off explosives in a newspaper office, killing people in that office. The unions did not abandon those workers, who had clearly committed what we would call terrorism: they hired a star lawyer, one of the best in the country, to defend them.
The general strike, even more than the strike, was another answer: just shut the entire economy down. It was used because it inflicted real costs on employers: they still needed some workers. But a strike requires social solidarity: bringing in scabs must be socially unacceptable, either due to mores or because the scabs know they’ll have their kneecaps broken. A general strike requires enough workers to be willing to do it to shut down an entire city, region, or country.
The Gandhian resistance method is very similar to general strikes: it requires hundreds of thousands to millions of people to be willing to shut down the economy and dare the police or army to kill or imprison them all. When you have only a few hundred or thousand people, the police can deal with that easily enough: worst case they call in the national guard. Hundreds of thousands: not so much.
What all of these actions had in common is that they genuinely hurt the interests of the rich where it mattered, in the pocketbook.
You can also get change through making the lives of the rich unpleasant, or making them fear for their very lives. Social peace has often been bought by treating ordinary people better, when the rich genuinely feared the army and police couldn’t protect them.
But if the elites think that their security forces can protect them, and especially if they live in a bubble where they never have to face people whose lives they have made miserable, as is the case for most of our rich, who fly by private jet, travel about the city in helicopters or chauffered limos and live in gated enclaves; and if you can’t cost them any real money, why should they let you have any of the surplus of society beyond the bare minimum you need to remain useful to them? (Not to survive: as the cutting of food stamps in the US indicates, that’s not a priority for the oligarchy.)
Be clear that distribution of goods and money in an economy is almost entirely unrelated to any ethical idea of merit or deservedness. The bankers, amongst the best paid people in the world economy, destroyed far more money than they earned in the 00s, and yet are still paid billions of dollars in bonuses every year. They receive the money they do because they had the power to make the government make them whole after they lost everything, then the power to make the government make them even richer than before. They control a bundle of valuable rights from the state: the right to borrow at prime, the right to value assets to model (fantasy); the right to huge leverage; and the right lend, which is how money is actually created in our economy (aka. they can print money.)
This is why they’re rich: not because they produce net value: they destroy value; but because they have the power to make the government do what they want it to do and to make it not prosecute them when they break the laws, and even to change the laws so they can take even more money.
Distribution in an economy is based, virtually entirely, on power. A group receives goods and money because it can force others to give it to them. The libertarian fantasy of free markets and free choice is exactly that. They don’t exist today, they have rarely existed in the past, and to the extent they have existed they owe their existence entirely to government making sure they exist. As soon as any group gains enough power to take over government, they do, and free markets cease to exist because they make the government give them special rights,whether those are rights to print money, borrow low and lend high, or so-called intellectual property rights that let them continue to profit from ideas created 80 years ago.
Power, power is all that matters. Even distribution, or something close to it, happens only when there is relatively equality between groups in society or there is an existential threat to society which requires the willing participation of all parts of society.
If you ever want to see raises for ordinary people again, you must figure out how they will become powerful: and power means “what can they do to hurt people who cross them, hurt them really, really badly.”
Peace is the result of everyone knowing and believing in their hearts that if they break the conditions of the peace, others will react with overwhelming force. When it becomes clear that there is no cost for taking more of the pie, people will do so, and yes, did do so.
So: how do we punish the rich for what they have done? How do we force them (not convince, force) to give up more of the surplus crated by society?
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Adam Eran
Two words: Edward Snowden.
Celsius 233
How does one know when they have effected real change?
Elections and voting are a sick joke.
Bangkok is effectively shut down this morning. Political turmoil has been a part of my 10+ years here.
The yellow shirts shut down Suvarnabhumi airport in November, 2008. That was 2 years after a coup ousting Thaksin.
Ten years of protests, shutdowns, and violence; nothing has changed.
Bush invades Iraq March 19, 2003; I leave May 2003: January 13, 2014; it’s worse, not better. For context; I was 2 weeks short of 58 yo and had had enough war, lies, killing.
No more palliatives, no more words.
Are there solutions? Sure, more than one; I don’t see anybody doing anything.
Snowden is an exception. He has what it takes; and now he’s a hunted man, willing it seems, to pay whatever price the authorities extract. He’ll never be safe.
Too high a price, no. Just more than the majority are willing.
We don’t deserve anything other than what we now have; we have the government we deserve.
Dan H
Echoing Celcius above, we do indeed have what we deserve for the most part in the west. The only “solution” I know of is to start young and repeat often, but obviously this leaves the large mass of those already habituated to their patterns in the way. We have not been able as species to deal with the immense power of fungible money in a society organized around specialized professions. I don’t think we ever will be able to. This system is irreconcilable with our evolution/biology/nature. Unlimited accumulation of money, thus power, is directly opposed to democracy. Say it loud, say it often, especially around children.
Avedon
Can you fix this so I’ll feel better about linking one of the most depressing things I’ve ever read tomorrow?
“This is why their rich:”
markfromireland
There’s an assumption often made by Westerners that democracy/liberal democracy is the norm. It isn’t some kind of monarchy or oligarchy is the historical norm as a republican in the Irish sense of that word I find this distressing.
I agree with pretty much everything you’ve written above but I think you need to account for culture. Americans are by and large conformists and by and large authoritarians. The deference they show to:
1. Their economic elite.
2. Their civilian public officials.
3. Their military.
Is quite frankly sick-making and I mean that literally. Every time I see or read “thank you for your service” I think ‘yuk’ and my respect for the person who says or writes it plummets never to recover.
(I invite you to reflect upon my profession when reading the previous paragraph).
So while you’re right I think it goes deeper than that and that the sine qua non is to lose the deference. You have to be either completely desperate such as slaves – and there has been one, count it, “ONE”, successful slave revolt in history. Or you have to be angry because what you consider your rights and liberties – your entitlements, to have been infringed or to be under attack.
One of the major reasons why in three closely linked countries (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) the assault on the populace in general has been far more successful in one country than in the two others is that Danes are by and large easy-going and quite deferential to those in authority, while Swedes and Norwegians are not easy-going they’re fucking bloody-minded and anything but deferential. The elite gets away with far more in Denmark than they’d ever dare even contemplate in Sweden or Norway.
mfi
markfromireland
PS: Jean Froissart: on the Jacquerie, 1358
now often not mentioned by historians is that the lives of the peasantry improved for about three generations after that – because the French aristocracy were afraid of a repeat.
mfi
RW
Sounds sad but true.
PS:
“their rich” : “they’re rich”
“crated” : “created”
Formerly T-Bear
Sure you’re going to see resistance to the oligarchy about the time you’re seeing flying pink pigs. The Duhmerican public is incapable of escaping a wet paper bag and could not understand a conundrum even with the answer in plain sight; intelligence and the ability to use intelligence have been bred out of existence for generations running now, beliefs long ago supplanted knowledge, opinions pretend to be facts, and the ability to communicate has been subverted through fungibility of meaning, a veritable carnival house of mirrors frames everyday existence. The cardinal points of reference have become flags indicating solely the momentary direction of the winds, ersatz reality replaces the real thing, much akin to the Patriot Act replacing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights amendments originally appended. The Duhmerican public is notable for its apparent regression to a childlike state, jealous of the toys of others and dog-in-manger with their own; all to likely to pout or throw tantrums when told NO or denied some momentary desideratum; only capable of manichean concepts protected by high walled exceptionalism. And these children are to run the world? When? and for how long? Their regression to infantilism has robbed them of the ability to care for their own bodily functions, their minds filled with caca, their thoughts circling in the aqueous vortex of the toilet they’ve made of their lives. These creatures providing resistance to an established oligarchy? When you finish this piece of fiction, please inform as to the ending, I’ll probably not be going to see the movie version. I’ll have that answer when the TTP and TTIP make economic slaves of willfully ignorant citizens. The country has become not worth the candle.
Heads On Poles
“…He who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honour by non-violently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live for ever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully …
[When violence] is offered in self-defence or for the defence of the defenceless, it is an act of bravery far better than cowardly submission. “
Celsius 233
@ T-Bear
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wow, that’s quite the tour de force.
I love your closing 7 or 8 sentences (not easy to count). You so colorfully illustrate our present line of decay; our present angle of repose gone steep.
And *not worth a candle* is apt; there is no light to be found or had…
Celsius 233
@ Heads On Poles
January 13, 2014
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Curious; why do you not attribute the author? Gandhi…
Heads On Poles
@ Celsius 233
Sorry, was being obtuse
@Adam Eran
Snowden is a hero & role-model, but I do worry that given the (United) state of the kleptocracy, his revelations will effect little change. Don’t need to look further than the fake FISA bill for proof of that. If you can sink the global economy without repercussions (bankers), do you really think global surveillance (NSA) is going to face any serious repercussions? The woman/man on the street cares much more about the former.
The main upside of the Snowden revelations are that he has REALLY galvanised the hacker community, who – in my opinion – will be best equipped contingent to fuck over our feudal masters in the future.
EGrise
I think 20th century labor had three things going for it that we don’t today:
1) No immersive media environment controlled by the bosses putting the blame on them (there were newspapers, et al. but not to the degree there is now)
2) Actual countervailing political leaders and ideas, e.g. Goldman, Debs, IWW, etc.
3) Desperation, both in terms of economics (spend 12 hours in the mine and your family still starves) and in terms of oppression – company stores, private police, aerial bombardment used against miners at Blair Mountain, the list goes on.
While I agree that Americans have an unfortunate tendency towards conformity and authoritarianism, I think the main reason that nothing’s happening yet is that the conditions are not universally bad enough for people to risk what little they have in violent actions against the bosses. Heck, right now it’s not clear to many workers that the bosses *are* the problem (as opposed to “illegals” and the Kenyan Muslim usurper in the White House). I think it’s going to have to get much, much worse before anything starts to happen, and then it will be too late.
David Kowalski
To make things work, the acronym for the economy needs to be the same as the acronym that stopped the Cold War: Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). What the banksters and oligoploly/oligopsony are doing is pure MADness. Time to give them back some of their own medicine.
nihil obstet
There’s another issue — any organization needs legitimacy. When people no longer see any reason to follow the moral norms that the organization needs to operate, they don’t do the things necessary to keep the structures from collapsing. As you’ve pointed out numerous times, the state will then have to spend unsustainable amounts on enforcement, and besides, the enforcers eventually become unreliable.
Despite the apparent apathy of lots of Americans, I think we’re seeing increasingly a withdrawal of consent on their part. I’d guess we’re likely to see a Soviet style collapse rather than an arming of the barricades. Unfortunately, I don’t see it leading to a much better outcome, but neither do I see a swarm of global elites able to strip the carcass of the U.S. economy as happened in Russia since there’s not an alternative rationale to guide its destruction, as Larry Summers and his Ivy League friends’ consulting did to the Soviets. And however brilliant our banksters may regard themselves, the collapse of the U.S. would not mean that U.S. elites would stay on top — they’d become the kept pets of succeeding elites. They wouldn’t like that.
On another thread in these comments — yes, we owe a lot to Snowden. Now let’s not forget Manning, who has suffered the power of an outraged elite.
drugstoreblonde
Ian, you’ve been on a quite a tear lately. Bravo.
When doe the book come out?
Ché Pasa
Labor power was never quite what we sometimes romantically make it out to be. Labor lost many of those battles, lost them badly, and the gains, when they came, grudgingly and at great expense to ordinary workers were modest — and reversible. Labor leaders were notoriously corrupt and in bed with capitalists — those who weren’t often wound up dead in jig time.
My grandfather was a union man, killed for his efforts on behalf of striking transit workers in Indianapolis. He was one of many who paid with their lives by murder and “accident” during several tumultuous years of “labor unrest.”
Though the strike was said to have been settled in workers’ favor, they actually got almost nothing. That they got anything at all, which in the case was that some got a 2 cent an hour raise (from 10 cents to 12 cents) was considered a major victory. Within a year, wages were reduced again.
Unless workers are really willing to risk everything they have — which may in turn bring discomfort or fear to the High and Mighty — nothing much will change for the better. One risk that has surprisingly not been taken (so far) is refusal to pay onerous charges, rents, fees, and debts. Our betters use these tactics all the time, and they nearly always get away with it. They are terrified the Rabble will learn to do likewise. And that would start hurting them financially in ways they could neither escape or easily recover from.
There are many other financial perils that could be brought to bear on the rich, but for reasons that remain mysterious they are not employed or for the most part even discussed.
The days of street battles are not completely over (viz Thailand, Cambodia and elsewhere) but there are also far more sophisticated ways to bring discomfort to the New Nobility.
Ian Welsh
Yes, grammatical errors fixed. Sorry, hard to see them right after I write a post.
RJMeyers
EGrise:
“While I agree that Americans have an unfortunate tendency towards conformity and authoritarianism, I think the main reason that nothing’s happening yet is that the conditions are not universally bad enough for people to risk what little they have in violent actions against the bosses. ”
I’ll add my perspective here:
The insulating layer of the professional/managerial strata got a huge shot in the arm during/after WWII, creating a large buffer between the upper class owners and the remaining ~80% of the population. This strata consists of scientists, engineers, managers, administrators, doctors, academics of all stripes, and other professions that require degrees and extensive training. I think most of this strata was necessary up until the present, though the increasing prevalence of degree inflation and bullshit jobs are indicators that there’s a bubble in their class–because there’s less need for them in the face of our economic decay (lots of manufacturing has gone overseas, and R&D is starting to follow) and because the conditions in the lower 80% have gotten bad enough that diploma mills and bad education are being used to try to grasp for better living standards. (Note: If we had a vital, growing economy then there would be continued strong demand for them and fewer bullshit jobs to keep them appeased).
Most of the managers and professionals still haven’t realized that they’re on the chopping block. Once they do (if they do–they’re heavily propagandized), I would expect change to happen. Now, the nature of the change is something else entirely and depends on how much they make common cause with the 80% of the population that they’ve been tasked with managing… I’m not too optimistic, but it is possible.
alyosha
RJ Meyers: Most of the managers and professionals still haven’t realized that they’re on the chopping block. Once they do (if they do–they’re heavily propagandized), I would expect change to happen
I doubt it. The ones on the chopping block are middle aged and up, and are doing whatever they can to hang on to their former lifestyle, slipping away. At best, some of them know something about history and can guide the young. Most of them have had pretty soft lives and know nothing about fighting back, and no longer have the vigor of youth to do so.
RJMeyers
alyosha: “I doubt it. The ones on the chopping block are middle aged and up, and are doing whatever they can to hang on to their former lifestyle, slipping away. ”
There are also young people who see their futures disappearing, who see their potential being discarded before they even get a chance. They’re the ones who will want change more than the middle aged and elderly who, you correctly point out, will tend to hold on to their positions more. Its the future that’s on the chopping block too.
zhai2nan2
When the USA started up in 1775, it was acknowledged that some men were free and other men were slaves. The free men had guns; the slaves did not.
Now, in 2014, the culture of gun ownership has receded.
If the vast majority of the USA were armed, the power dynamic might be a little different.
However, I suspect that the USA will encounter economic collapse long before it encounters political upheaval. There is no need to plan a revolution; the Federal Reserve will bankrupt the USA by destroying the value of the US dollar.
Whether this will lead to food riots and mass starvation remains to be seen.
alyosha
zhai2nan2 – At least in terms of numbers, there is almost one gun for every resident of the US, according to this estimate. This is only private arms, it doesn’t count guns owned by police departments and the military. We are a country completely awash in guns, leading the world in gun ownership. It is a tinderbox waiting for a spark.
My theory of collapse, FWIW, says we won’t see this spark until the economy, and particularly the currency collapses. Then you will see widespread panic and bloodbath on American soil, the likes of which very few Americans have ever witnessed previously. People killing each other for a ham sandwich, that kind of thing.
I’ve long been a fan of The Fourth Turning, whose ideas were talked about in the earlier thread about generational characteristics. For me, one of the book’s more intriguing ideas, is that you will know when the depth of “winter” has come, when no one can deny any longer that the world has changed and isn’t going back. This moment of intense bloodshed and especially panic is what I suspect will be our “winter” moment, just as gunfire breaking out at Fort Sumnter was the prior century’s winter moment. There was no going back to antebellum America after Fort Sumnter.
When our “winter” moment appears, the polarization between the oligarchy and the citizenry will become much clearer and pitched. This is when the oligarchy will bring out the guns and nakedly wield power to hold down the citizenry in an attempt to maintain order. The gloves will come off and everyone will recognize the farce for what it is. Most will applaud it, in much the way that American overwhelming viewed Edward Snowden as a traitor, at least initially.
But the point is (back to The Fourth Turning), when this happens, a psychological shift will have occurred, galvanizing a generation of fighters, in a way that is at only nebulous and fitful right now.
I want to stress that I hope I’m wrong. At the very least, America leads the world in gun ownership, which is backed by a powerful lobby and 2nd Amendment fanatics, and as we’ve seen from the episodes of kids shooting up schools and movie theaters, gun violence is becoming normal, we’re getting desensitized to it.
RJMeyers
A little OT, but Ian has mentioned here before the need to densify and change the suburbs. Just ran across a writeup of a new study that found most suburbs swamp the energy savings of urban centers, except in two places, NYC and LA, where either the urban core is remarkably efficient or the suburbs are actually not as bad as elsewhere:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/01/suburbanites-lead-their-urban-counterparts-in-carbon-emissions/
VietnamVet
These posts are right on the mark.
I do fear for the future since there appears no way that the Oligarchs can be restrained through democratic elections as they were by FDR in the 1930’s. Now, the Democrats are part of the problem. I will vote for anyone except the incumbent in the primaries but have vote Democrat in the election to protect my federal pension. Without it I am dead.
The strangest aspect of the 21st century is total denial of reality by everyone: media, politicians, and especially the wealthy who think they are living in a different world from us. From now on there is no more cheap energy except the sun. Demand drives the economy. Climate change is real. War is dangerous profit motive; it blows back. Renters trash property. We live on one earth.
guest
One reason the US will never lead and will probably be the last to come around to any sort of egalitarian reform or sustainable economy is that the US is to the rest of the world what the 0.01% is to the next 20% in the income distribution. We’re not all rich, but we are more suspicious of those below us than of those above us and our politics follow suit. Nobody says it, but I think most understand that we in the Us have many unfair advantages in the world, so we have the most to lose and/or least to gain from a fairer world. And if that is not the truth, at least it is perceived as such. So we learned to look away from the 3rd world in the 60s and 70s, and then when it started to creep into America (vast prison system, cities teaming with homeless hoards) we learned to look away from those in the 80s and 90s. And it will continue until well after the middle classes are gone, and then some.
Jeff Mowatt
Lift the rock and shine a light as my deceased colleague would say. Before he died he wrote of ‘Death Camps for Children’
“Excuses won’t work, particularly in light of a handful of oligarchs in Ukraine having been allowed to loot Ukraine’s economy for tens of billions of dollars. I point specifically to Akhmetov, Pinchuk, Poroshenko, and Kuchma, and this is certainly not an exhaustive list. These people can single-handedly finance 100% of all that will ever be needed to save Ukraine’s orphans. None of them evidently bother to think past their bank accounts, and seem to have at least tacit blessings at this point from the new regime to keep their loot while no one wants to consider Ukraine’s death camps, and the widespread poverty that produced them..”
Larry
“What all of these actions had in common is that they genuinely hurt the interests of the rich where it mattered, in the pocketbook.”
I think too it begins to have an impact on the perceptions of the previously non-involved about how ruthless big business can be. This can have an effect on where their support will ultimately lie when massive protests take place, when and if they do.
someofparts
What is see around me is a split between people who have resources and people who have a clear sense of what’s up. Once you get beyond money and mainstream demographics I hear plenty of clarity and motivation to fight back. But the people who feel that way don’t have computers, or reliable cars or enough money to feed their children.
BC Nurse Prof
Resistance is indeed a problem. Nicole Foss quotes Buckminster Fuller:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
http://www.theautomaticearth.com/crash-demand-response-david-holmgren-3/
This article is very well worth your time. Among other things, she warns of making yourselves targets for blowback from authorities.
Removing yourself from the culture is a big hit to corporations. I have been experiencing great pleasure in “not buying stuff.”
Barry
zhai2nan2 permalink
“When the USA started up in 1775, it was acknowledged that some men were free and other men were slaves. The free men had guns; the slaves did not.
Now, in 2014, the culture of gun ownership has receded.
If the vast majority of the USA were armed, the power dynamic might be a little different.”
A huge proportion of the USA is armed, including those who are getting screwed; it doesn’t make a difference. The states where the gun ownership rates are the highest are also the states where the (white, gun-owning) populace is screwed the hardest.
The elites don’t fear your guns.
Bruce Wilder
I read this morning that several major foundations are going to pool $330 million to ransom the Detroit Institute of Arts collection from the banksters pressing forward in Detroit’s bankruptcy. The foundations are going to specify that the money “go to workers’ pensions”, rather than the maw of the creditors.
I guess my question is: Does anyone buy this PR bullshit? Does anyone believe this narrative?
The journamalists, who write this up for publication or broadcast, won’t question it, of course, except, possibly in the most muted tones, in paragraph 17. No one will highlight the diversion of funds from public purposes to the banksters. No one will highlight the fact the fact that museums and well-earned pensions, not the lenders, who failed to do their due diligence way back when, are taking the haircuts. And, not just taking “haircuts”, so-called, but being asked to fund the vultures, who bought up Detroit’s debt at a discount.
This is just one instance, one way in which the oligarchs and banksters continue to take everything, and their sycophants in the media facilitate it, and the passive millions accept it all.
The only aspects that fascinate me is the absence of organized, righteous anger.
Is neoliberalism such a suffocating ideology that no one can breathe, let alone think?
Dan H
Bruce Wilder,
It’s art…no significant number of people in the US gives a flying fuck about art.
Pelham
Celsius 233 mentions the protests in Bangkok. Now there’s an example that tends at least a little bit toward what Ian is talking about.
These folks seem to know what they’re doing. Yesterday they closed off the entire center of the city and next they’re planning to shut down the stock exchange. By contrast, Occupy Wall Street was a fizzle.
Granted, these protesters are middle class folk chafing at majority rule by Thailand’s impoverished majority. But they do have spunk — a commodity in desperately short supply here.
EGrise
Concerning guns, I like to quote our host from his latest podcast interview: “Gun ownership means both more than liberals think and less than conservatives think.”
Desqview/X
So they’re right-wing a**holes? I’d say there’s plenty of that kind of spunk here.
And if this some sort of “color revolution” being engineered by the Western power elite, then it’s hardly surprising that they’d not be orchestrating mass protests demanding their own to overthrow
Desqview/X
So they’re right-wing a**holes? I’d say there’s plenty of that kind of spunk here.
And if this some sort of “color revolution” being engineered by the Western power elite, then it’s hardly surprising that they’d not be orchestrating mass protests demanding their own overthrow is it?
OWS made a point of never inconveniencing any powerful interest. The dock strikes were timed to leave the vast majority of shipments unaffected, which for me clinched my suspicions that they were basically a nark operation.
S Brennan
Grist for the mill:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/big-money-keeps-populism-bay.html
Bruce Wilder
Dan H: It’s art…no significant number of people in the US gives a flying fuck about art.
Right.
Does anyone but the 1/10th of 1% care about the money?
S Brennan
“It’s art…no significant number of people in the US gives a flying fuck about art.”
It could be that “no significant number of” ever do anything to tread upon their patrons/masters wishes. Artist like to pretend not, but they are but glorified house servants.
BTW, anybody seen any ART activist protesting the incredible increase in 50 year old asthma drugs distributed in the USA? No? Could it be because wealthy white dudes don’t get asthma from dusty construction work, living next to highways and refineries? No, that’s for working white & black folk…and certainly not something “artists” want to get involved with.
Dan H
They would if they got that far, but any headline containing “art” is an instant pass for the majority of our population.
Dan H
S Brennan,
For glorified, publicized artists, sure. But that’s so obvious as to be menial… plenty of artists in the world never go mainstream because they are doing critical work. My point is that American culture is highly anti-intellectual. The average American cannot discern between the pimped Soho prodigy and the scrounging leftist poet, and has no interest in doing so. Ours is a culture of glorification of the lowest common denominator.
Celsius 233
Dan H
January 14, 2014
Bruce Wilder,
It’s art…no significant number of people in the US gives a flying fuck about art.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, the utter rot spewing forth (just above) about artists would at least make a case that a lot of people have no idea about artists and very likely have never known one.
That bile above is just ignorance and willful ignorance to boot.
That one knows nothing.
Celsius 233
Dan H; you jumped in just ahead of my post. Mine not aimed at you or Bruce.
Tony Wikrent
One of the most important books people should read now (if they haven’t already) is Lawrence Goodwyn’s The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America, which details the rise and development of the farm revolt soon after the Civil War, and its transformation into the populist movement of the 1890s. One of the most important factors Goodwyn points out is that the farmers had to learn enough self-respect to no longer give deference to economic and political elites. This was a process that took three decades, and involved a succession of crucial political battles in which the populists were forced to think through the nature of the financial and monetary systems, and develop workable alternatives to them. The major reason why they succeeded – Goodwyn writes that the populist revolt was the only genuinely democratic political mass movement to challenge the economic status quo in American history – was that they self-consciously began to reach out to fellow farmers with program of paid professional lecturers, who traveled the countryside and gave talks on what amounted to Greenback economic doctrines, and recruited members to the Farmers Alliances. The history of the Non-Partisan League, Political Prairie Fire also details the same principles and practice of self-organizing.
Just as important, Goodwyn explains how the populist movement was destroyed – by the 1896 election, in which the populists abandoned their Greenback economic doctrines in order to support the Democratic Party nominee for President, William Jennings Bryan, he of “Cross of Gold” speechifying fame. As Goodwyn points out, Jennings may have been against the gold standard, but he was still tied to the “hard money” doctrines of the bankers through his stand on the silver issue.
The disaster of the 1896 election is one of the principal motivations for my writing Elizabeth Warren won’t save you. Neither will the Pope (URL = http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/23/1263017/-Elizabeth-Warren-won-t-save-you-Neither-will-the-Pope), trying to warn progressives that the race for the White House is a diversion and a dead end, because all the real change as come from the level of Congress, Senate, and state legislatures. I briefly summarize the history of key populist victories, such as women’s suffrage, and abolition of slavery.
I also address the problem of a third party. I describe the history of how third parties have been extremely useful in getting progressives and populists elected to Congress, but have been absolute disasters as Presidential campaigns.
If we are to rescue the Democratic Party from its present subservience to the interests of Wall Street and big corporations, we need to revive the ideas of politically sovereign control over money creation that were the bedrock of Greenback Party doctrine.
The link will take you to the full introduction to The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America.
someofparts
You know, in all the thinking about how to stand against the oligarchs, this is the first time I’ve heard someone speak of deliberate educational outreach. It occurs to me that for starters we would need to agree on a curriculum. Personally I’d start with talking about state public banks to create alternatives to the private ones, because I think there is already widespread support for that sort of thing.
Bruce Wilder
Tony Wikrent:
Not to rain on your fantasy populist parade, but the 1896 election confirmed a new alignment of political coalitions for the Republicans, which would give them a presumptive national majority until 1930. The Republicans, the advocates of “sound money”, won against a coalition of those opposed to the Gold Standard. That the populists cooperated with Bryan, or vice-versa, didn’t destroy either one; the Republicans did that, quite effectively, with advocacy of the Gold Standard and a Protective Tariff. It didn’t help that Grover Cleveland, a “Gold” Democrat, had presided over the great depression following the Panic of 1893, with all the aplomb of Herbert Hoover; the Democratic Party was discredited by that experience, and Bryan’s candidacy was an extreme long-shot taken in desperation, a desperation that the Populists, apparently, shared.
The Protective Tariff was good economic policy; on the Gold Standard, the Republicans got lucky, as new discoveries and expanded production of gold around the world relieved the deflationary pressure, which had made such misery since 1872.
Formerly T-Bear
@ Tony Wikrent on January 15, 2014
and
@ Bruce Wilder on January 15, 2014
You both have presented an amazing dichotomy here that may illuminate something massively important that otherwise doesn’t appear in the public perception. You’ve presented two narratives of the same historical moment presenting alien conclusions. One presentation I recognize from history as it was taught once, the other appears as an opinion that obscures the point being presented by the first and draws a conclusion that invalidates the orthodox history. This phenomenon may simply arise as a result of reporting some more recent scholarship of the period, the narrative glossing over in summary the details presented, or again it may be something more. Can there be any better way to bury historical fact than to present in its stead some historical fabrication, tailored to the specifications of some political agenda? This is what your dichotomies suggest.
The phrase ‘sound money’ has been baked into economic history, Adam Smith was no stranger to the concept and wrote extensively of it, Marx suggested labour as the foundation of economic activity (and implied money the measure thereof), but it was the massive finds of gold in the 19th century that allowed the monetization of commodity gold into the world’s economic system, silver and copper sufficed previously (excepting Spanish collections of New World hoards and deposits) and as Smith’s economic philosophy was slaying the Mercantilist dragons, those dragons found safe shelter in commodity gold’s ‘Sound Money’.
Lincoln’s financing the Civil War saw the implementation of a national representative money into the economy, the greenback treasury bills which helped to open the Western territories to settlement, the Homestead Act exemplified that government policy. By the administration of US Grant, eastern financial interests were pushing ‘Sound Money’ again, at the same time as the gold standard was being implemented, effectively deflating both the money supply necessary for economic transactions as well as the vital supply of credit needed for economic production, not to mention the automatic transfer of wealth from debtor to creditor underlaying the policy of ‘Sound Money’. Eventually it was the massive export of grains and agricultural products to Europe in the late 19th Century that brought economic wealth to the producers and in turn fueled the final stages of industrialization that made the US economy the largest in the world well before the turn of the 20th century. A good presentation of ‘Sound Money’, ‘Austerity’ and ‘Gold Standard’ can be found in John Maynard Keynes’ writings “The Economic Consequences of Mr Churchill” for another appearance of those Mercantilist dragons still hiding in ‘Sound Money’. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
To decide between these two divergent propositions, it is quite necessary to know exactly what was stated and the context it was stated in. Nothing beats the original and contemporaneous commentary provides the sharpest context. Either time tested reports or commentary from trusted sources is next best resource available. Modern scholarship seldom adds more than some filling in of detail that can be trusted, but great caution must be exercised when that modern scholarship turns on its head all prior history. What agenda lays beneath such opinion or conclusion? ‘Who benefits in obscuring the history of ‘Sound Money’?’ is the question that requires answer (not that it isn’t obvious who is benefiting from the transfer of wealth at the heart of that policy).
mike
“PS: Jean Froissart: on the Jacquerie, 1358
now often not mentioned by historians is that the lives of the peasantry improved for about three generations after that – because the French aristocracy were afraid of a repeat.”
Sorry Mark, but that’s just not true. This was just after the Black Death (1348-50), which was the source of the discontent. The lives of the peasantry improved for the next three generations (longer actually) because half of the labor supply had died, and for a while labor was in demand. Wages went up considerably, just as they had declined prior to the plague as the population increased. Also, there was a lot of land available, as many villages/manors were wiped out completely, and the aristocrats were desperate to find people to farm for them. Froissart didn’t see any of this because he had no background in economics.
markfromireland
Yes it is true. Throughout France the lives of the peasantry improved because they rose up. The proximate cause of their rebellion is irrelevant. They rose and the rebellion was put down with great difficulty. it wasn’t until several generations later that the French ruling class felt secure enough to reintroduce the worst aspects of serfdom.
As to your Froissart comment – sorry but that’s a straw man, nothing that I wrote can reasonably be interpreted as saying that Froissart was offering any sort of economic analysis.
mfi
Aaron Layman
Excellent post. When gluttony, greed and fraud have become the order of the day, I’m afraid it will take a bigger reset (bigger than the 2008 debacle) to grab the public’s collective attention. Much of the public has simply become too comfortable, too pampered to care. It’s when the money runs out that things start to get interesting. Only then will the masses realize that their interests are not in line with the status quo elite and their stealth wealth extraction.
pk scott
The oligarchy has pretty successfully distracted a lot of people into believing that the source of their misery is the gays, the brown people, and the feral vaginas. I shake my head every day at their willingness to be mislead. I think the first step would have to be a critical mass of people correctly identifying the source of the problems.
Racer_X
Another vote for the law of the brick.
Formerly T-Bear
No alternative? What resistance? Going to risk all serendipitously? Let me know how that turns out at the end. (/sarcasm)
rXoX
You go to your job. And do nothing. And the day after that, you go to your job. And do nothing. And you do this with thousands or tens of thousands of others. Every day. All day. Until it starts to hurt. Hurt real, real bad.
It’s true that those who are least skilled may rapidly find themselves being replaced, but considering that more advanced economies have a great deal more people in cognitive intensive and highly skilled industries, it’s extremely unlikely those people could be replaced on short notice. Consider the case of bank workers here in Canada, who were obliged to train the “temporary foreign workers” who duly replaced them after several months. It did take several months. How long could a bank stand to have the majority of their workers show up and do nothing? How quickly could they replace them all?
That’s how you fix that problem. A massive work stoppage.