Wobbly times number 147

May Day 2012 in Fremantle,
Western Australia
Filmed by Mike Ballard, this is the main May Day union 
workers' march through Fremantle, Western Australia 
on May 6, 2012. The film begins at the beginning of the 
march near the Fremantle Esplanade and ends after the 
march with the workers sharing home made beer brewed
 in honour of an old Australian seaman and unionist by 
the name of Paddy.


Employers know enough to belong to a 'union'. It's called 
The Chamber of Commerce. Doctors know enough to belong 
to the AMA. There are plenty of corrupt, shonky operators 
out there amongst the employing class, in the political State 
and amongst professionals. Corruption goes along with wealth 
and power accumulating at the top of a hire-arky. Even Lord Acton 
knew that. The real reason workers should actively join in union is 
to present a more powerful face to their employers when it comes 
time to negotiate the price of their skills. Without unions, there is 
NO negotiation. Without unions, there will be no resistance to the 
constant downward pressure on real wages by the employing class. 
It's market economics 101 folks. Employers want lower prices for the
 skills they purchase and workers should be wise enough to bargain 
for a higher price, including working conditions. Social justice 
remains an empty abstraction without its being filled in with 
workers receiving back more of what they produce.

Wobbly times number 143

 Click here to get to a series of lectures by various leftist thinkers addressing the Occupy Movement.

Wobbly times number 134

1:00pm, October 15th  Location: Forrest Place Murray Street Perth, Western Australia

 "The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as 'an immense accumulation of commodities'." Karl Marx CAPITAL volume I, page one.

We demonstrate our anger amidst the wealth we create. We are the 99%. We produce the wealth of nations. The 1% own what we produce and by virtue of the wealth they own, they run the political show. The 1% select the polytricksters the 99% are asked to vote for. This social relation of wealth and political power is based wage labour. The 99% are obliged to sell their skills and time in order to make a living. The 1% own the product of labour. The product of our labour is called capital. Its owners are the capitalists. The 1% are powerful because they own what the 99% produce.

The fact that 10% of Australian households own 45% of Australia's wealth while 50% of Australian households own only 7% of Australia's wealth is information which is unknown to most Australian workers.

Catch the Perthian Wobblies at the anti-Rulers' Fest demo in Perth on October 28th here

Wobbly times number 123

From the pages of the "Industrial Worker" circa 1995

RED LONDON, by Stewart Home ISBN 1 873176 12 0 Published in 1994 by AK Press 22 Lutton Place, Edinburgh EH8 9PE, Scotland, UK 5.95 Pounds + 10% handling U.S. order to AK Press, POB 40682, San Francisco, CA 94140-0682 $12.95 + $2.00 shipping

 RED LONDON is a novel about a revolt of the oppressed against their oppressors. Its protagonists spend their working lives as members of what is termed these days by official authorities from Clinton to Habermas as the "underclass". The sell their time as prostitutes, obscure rock musicians, porn magazine photographers and so forth; while devoting their free time to sexual pleasure and the murder of the ruling class. They are libertines with visceral passions. Their practice of meeting out class vengeance is both crude and ruthless. They are serious proles with serious lusts.

 RED LONDON is not for the squeamish or prudish of heart. Stewart Home's prose is on a par with the Marquis de Sade when it comes to sex and violence. Here's a taste. The setting is a rock concert for conservative teens, given by an older Tory rock star, Sebastian Fame, whose neurosis of choice happens to be pedophilia. Security for the concert is by a gang of fascist boot boys, known as the Aryan Youth League. Nobody suspects that the Soho Prostitutes Collective has planned a guerrilla action.

 "The minders jumped to attention when a van skidded to a halt outside the hall. Twelve masked wimmin leapt from the transit, while the driver remained at the wheel. The heavies relaxed. Obviously these birds were a part of some practical joke, one of their mates had no doubt set them up by writing to Jeremy Beadle. The two AYL yobs were mentally incapable of accepting the fact that many of the greatest fighters down the ages had been wimmin.

"'We don't need to see your faces', the fatter of the pair laughed,'just get your tits out.' "'Get your tits out, get your tits out, get your tits out for the lads!' his mate chanted, but not for long! "Cleo floored the sexist retard with a kidney punch that brought blood bubbling up through his mouth. Then the kung fu chick broke the bastard's spine by bringing her boot down on th back of his neck. There was the satisfying crunch of splintering bone and the fascist bore became just another name on the Met's long list of murder victims.

"Simultaneously, Melody Thrush slammed a clenched fist into the other minder's mouth. Having rearranged the brickhead's teeth, she landed a devastating blow to his stomach and within seconds, the prick was puking his lunch. If nature had been left to take its course, it looked like the bastard would have retched up his guts, piece by little piece. Instead the steel toe-capped boots of several SPC members rained in against his body. After the first few ribs had snapped with a sickening crack, a badly aimed kick hit the cunt's head and the beer boy's body went limp. It was bloody unfortunate that his brain no longer registered the searing pain which accompanied the early stages of the beating. But, to the fascist, the icy numbness of physical blackout was more welcome than a million pound win on the pools.

"Sebastian faltered and broke off midway through a song as the SPC cut through the hall in a flying wedge. After a few screams, the crowd fell silent and the only sound to be heard was the tramping of boots on the wooden floor. Cleo and Melody grabbed Fame. The other SPC members herded the audience into a side room. Adults were simply shot through the head and left where they fell.

"Sebastian was shoved across the stage and held against the wooden cross. Melody removed two hammers and a fistfull of six-inch nails..."

RED LONDON is Home's latest novel. Like his previous works of fiction: NO PITY, PURE MANIA and DEFIANT POSE, Home has set RED LONDON in a Britain which has already raced through the cautionary traffic light, flashing " a clockwork orange", into a nearly visible future populated by an increasingly class conscious, if semi-educated, proletariat, who live within the socio-economic boundaries of a capitalist system in terminal decay. In RED LONDON, the self-appointed vanguard of the lumpen and proles is composed of young men and wimmin, who have cut their ideological teeth on a tract penned by the then notorious K.L. Callan.

Callan's famously banned book, MARX, CHRIST, and SATAN UNITED IN STRUGGLE is passed in xerox copies between self-styled anarchist fighting units and individual anarcho-nihilists, like Adolf Kramer. Kramer is the main protagonist. His mental interior reads like a politico-genetic cross between Charles Manson and Ulrike Meinhof. He is the archetypical child of the urban terrorist movement, grown more sly; but just as psychopathically dogmatic as his forbearers. Adolf and his comrades are prone to using the blood of their class antagonists to dab quotes on walls at the scenes of their actions. It is invariably K.L. Callan's MARX, CHRIST and SATAN UNITED IN STRUGGLE which is quoted.

 "Adolf slit Gallon's throat with a flick-knife, then set to work ritually mutilating the bodies of the two class traitors. After dipping his fingers in the gouts of blood that were still spurting from Gallon's bulk, Kramer scrawled the following observation across the living room wall: Contrary to orthodox opinion, be it Situationist or conservative, it is quantitative--not qualitative--problems that lie at the root of the current crisis. "It was a quotation from MARX, CHRIST and SATAN UNITED IN STRUGGLE, magnum opus of that most mysterious of nihilists K.L. Callan."

 These exiles from main street move within a milieu of militant vegans, situationists, buddhist priests, nazis, skinheads and other assorted denizens of lumpen and prole origins. You follow them through the pages of RED LONDON as they drink, fight, and sexually amuse themselves in the public housing projects, whorehouses, streets and bogs of the city. RED LONDON is a simple book, written in a minimalist style, with more than a few repetitious icons e.g. the ubiquitous bottles of 100 Pipers Scotch, preferred brand of the underclass; the ever present sexual motif of couples, "beating out the primitive rhythm of the swamps." It's also an exciting bit of anarchist pulp fiction. The sex and ultra-violence can stir up your deepest Id-ish fantasies. But, I don't think that it should be read as an organizing prescription, the way its heroines/heroes seem to have read K.L. Callan's MARX... . Nor do it think that Stewart Home sees himself as the K.L. Callan of today. There is more tongue in cheek within RED LONDON than is to be found in the numerous scenes of oral sex. No. RL might better be read as a warning; much as the proles of yesteryear read Jack London's IRON HEEL, that foreboding tale predicting the advent of the fascist States of the mid 20th Century. The warining this time is for the bourgeois of the world, whose commodified morality leads them to treat their wage-slaves as nothing more than carbon-based biological work units to be thrown on society's scrap heap when they're all used up. Home has given us a novel about a pissed off underclass of midnight ramblers who are going to be the first to stick their knives right down the throats of the ruling class--and baby it hurts! The warning is as simple as that old working class aphorism--what goes around, comes around.

Wobbly times number 109

Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War
by Joe Bageant

These "Dispatches from America's class war" ring as true as America's Liberty Bell. Of course like the "Liberty Bell", the American Revolution's promise of "liberty and justice for all" cracked on first use. As with other bourgeois democracies, the ideals of the the American capitalist revolution were undermined by class rule. Liberty, equality and fraternity tended to break down under the rule of Capital, where, as the old wag's saying about the golden rule goes, those with the most gold, have made the rules. What Joe Bageant has done in DEER HUNTING WITH JESUS is to give his readers an up-to-date snapshot concerning the preemptions of America's revolutionary ideals as he focuses on the lower strata of the rural based working class. His microcosmic example is focused on the majority of the people who now live and work in his old home town of Winchester, Virginia. To be sure, he also shines in a light on his fellow workers' rulers: the lawyers, real estate agents, landlords and small business people (aka `cockroach capitalists', in Old Wob tongue).

Bageant describes Winchester's cockroach capitalists this way:

"Members of the business class, that legion of little Rotary Club spark plugs, are vital to the American corporate and political machine. They are where the institutionalized rip-off of working class people by the rich corporations finds its footing at the grassroots level, where they can stymie any increase in the minimum wage or snuff out anything remotely resembling a fair tax structure. Serving on every local governmental body, this mob of Kiwanis and Rotarians has connections. It can get that hundred acres rezoned for Wal-Mart or a sewer line to that two-thousand-unit housing development at taxpayer expense. When it comes to getting things done locally for big business, these folks, with the help of their lawyers, can raise the dead and give eyesight to the blind. They are God's gift to the big nonunion companies and the chip plants looking for a fresh river to piss cadmium into--the right wing's can-do boys. They are so far right they will not even eat the left wing of a chicken." p.45

Mr. Bageant peppers his aphoristic style with enough humour to keep all the but the most dour social stoic smiling. In his chapter titled, "Valley of the Guns" (a piece of writing sure to upset liberal gun control advocates like Michael Moore), Bageant explains his book's title.

"To nonhunters, the image conjured by the title of this book might seem absurd, rather like a NUKE THE WHALES bumper sticker. But the title also captures something that moves me about the people I grew up with, the intersection between hunting and religion in their lives. The link between protestant fundamentalism and deer hunting goes back to colonial times, when the restless Presbyterian Scots, along with English and German Protestant reformers, pushed across America, developing the unique hunting and farming-based frontier cultures that sustained them over most of America's history. Two hundred years later, they have settled down, but they have not quit hunting and they have not quit praying. Consequently, today we find organizations such as the Christian Deer Hunters Association (christiandeerhunters.org), which offers convenient pocket-size books of meditations, such as "Devotions for Deer Hunters", to help occupy the time during those long waits for game. Like their ancestors, deer hunters today understand how standing quietly and alone in the natural world leads to contemplation of God's gifts to man. And so, when a book like "Meditations for the Deer Stand" is seen in historical context, it is no joke. For those fortunate enough to spend whole days quietly standing in the November woods just watching the Creator's world, there is no irony at all in the notion that his son might be watching too, and maybe even willing to summon a couple of nice fat does within shooting range." p. 124-125

The ideological crack between the more liberal, more urban, coastal based U.S. workers and their small town, conservative rivals, living in the interior of the country, is one of the main political thrusts of DEER HUNTING WITH JESUS. The gun control issue is but one of many sore points dividing the U.S. working class thus, making its members easier to rule. The elephant standing in the room is the issue of work-time. Too many hours sold to the bosses makes it difficult for small town wage-slaves to do much in the way of educating themselves, reading or expanding their views of the world beyond the easily accessed, instant, canned gratification available from conservative Republican corporate AM radio pundits and their brethren on the bully pulpits of the nation's fundamentalist Christian churches. The toilers of Bageant's home town are literally being worked to death at jobs which market for low wages, kept even lower by the anti-union ideology which is so common in their everyday parlance as to be taken for `commonsense'. The same can be said for their socially conservative cultural traditions concerning: race relations, the possession of firearms, Big Gov'mint, namby-pamby intellectuals and warlike nationalism. Across that great bellwether, the great crack in the working class remains unrepaired as left liberal workers sit and sit and sit, disdaining contact with their `benighted' fellow citizens thus, leaving both sides ignorant of what the other is saying or doing and by extension the potential of their power as a class united. According to Bageant, this is a recipe for continued impotent expressions of working class power, while serving to maintain a ruling class status-quo which is on track to continue cutting U.S. workers' living standards and furthering the commodification of human values and humane relations.

Joe Bageant has written a book which should be on every IWW organiser's shelf. DEER HUNTING WITH JESUS answers many of the questions concerning how and why the workers in the USA are largely blind to their own class interests.

The Australian edition of DEER HUNTING WITH JESUS comes complete with an Australian oriented preface.

Wobbly times number 105

The Paris Commune of 1871 was the workers' first attempt at ruling a society. As has been the case so far in history, capitalists, landlords and their hireling allies have been able to crush every attempt at expanding democracy beyond the bounds imposed by the system of wage-slavery.

Wobbly time number 104

West Australian workers were in the streets of Perth, marching on the state Parliament to demand of their polytricksters that they pass laws which would make capitalists hire West Australians and use West Australian based capitalists who employ West Australians for any work which needed doing in mining, shipping and related activities which labour is applied to natural resources based in Western Australia to produce wealth. Surely, the working class united will never be defeated. However, we live in a capitalist democracy which means that Australia is like all nations of the world, a political State controlled by the property owning capitalist and landlord classes. It's not 'our rocks, our soil, our minerals' as some of the protesters screamed. The natural resources of Australia like the political State of Australia are owned/beholden to the ruling class, some of whom happen to have Australian citizenship. Pro-capitalist polytricksters and 'a fair day's wage for a fair day's work' union leaders promote illusions about the meshing the class interests of workers and the employing class.

Still, it's always good to be with workers in motion, demanding more control of the wealth they produce and the natural resources of planet Earth. The problems of developing the class conscious organisation necessary to implement a social revolution i.e. total control of this wealth are, shall we say, many. In the end, the WA Premier came out of the Parliament building to address the 5,000 and was told, "Go home ya wanker!"

Wobbly times number 92

What is 'class'? Who is in the working class? Who is in the capitalist employing class?

Class is defined by how one makes a living. The working class are those people who must sell their skills on the labour market to an employer for a wage or salary in order to make a living. The workers have nothing else to sell in order to make a living. Once in awhile, workers will market things they already own in garage sales; but, for the most part, workers are totally dependent on capitalists to hire them in order to make ends meet. They must go out in the market, hat in hand and say, "Please Mr. Boss. Please buy my services."

The capitalist class make their living from buying workers' skills, as they buy other commodities e.g. petrol, trucks, buildings. The difference with labour power is that it can be employed to create more wealth. Capitalists only buy workers who can be useful to them. This is the law of the marketplace for commodities. Commodities can't be sold unless they are useful. Workers thus purchased are employed by capitalists for periods of time, at places of employment which the capitalist owns. This is, in fact, how capitalists become wealthy. Once the sale by worker and purchase by employer are completed, goods and/or services are created by the workers. This newly created wealth (the goods and/or services) is what the capitalist claims ownership over. Just to be crystal clear: workers are not paid based on the quality or quantity of product of their labour; they are purchased on the labour market according the going rate for their skills. The capitalist then hires other workers to sell these goods and/or services, which have been made by their hirelings, in the marketplace for commodities. This selling requires a market of consumers who find the goods and/or services the workers were hired to produce, useful. From the sale of the wealth in goods and/or services the workers produce, comes the capitalists' profit. Some of this profit is called 'capital' and reinvested in buying more workers and means of production. Some of the profit goes to taxes to support the capitalist State and some to help keep the polytricksters beholden to the ruling capitalist class. Some of the profit is saved for a rainy day and finally more is spent by the capitalists on themselves. Fancy cars, fast models and big mansions can be expensive.

************************************************************************

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.

FROM THE PREAMBLE TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD

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Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him. ^[4]

If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist. ^[5]

The capitalist then takes his stand on the law of the exchange of commodities. He, like all other buyers, seeks to get the greatest possible benefit out of the use-value of his commodity. Suddenly the voice of the labourer, which had been stifled in the storm and stress of the process of production, rises:

The commodity that I have sold to you differs from the crowd of other commodities, in that its use creates value, and a value greater than its own. That is why you bought it. That which on your side appears a spontaneous expansion of capital, is on mine extra expenditure of labour-power. You and I know on the market only one law, that of the exchange of commodities. And the consumption of the commodity belongs not to the seller who parts with it, but to the buyer, who acquires it. To you, therefore, belongs the use of my daily labour-power. But by means of the price that you pay for it each day, I must be able to reproduce it daily, and to sell it again. Apart from natural exhaustion through age, &c., I must be able on the morrow to work with the same normal amount of force, health and freshness as to-day. You preach to me constantly the gospel of “saving” and “abstinence.” Good! I will, like a sensible saving owner, husband my sole wealth, labour-power, and abstain from all foolish waste of it. I will each day spend, set in motion, put into action only as much of it as is compatible with its normal duration, and healthy development. By an unlimited extension of the working-day, you may in one day use up a quantity of labour-power greater than I can restore in three. What you gain in labour I lose in substance. The use of my labour-power and the spoliation of it are quite different things. If the average time that (doing a reasonable amount of work) an average labourer can live, is 30 years, the value of my labour-power, which you pay me from day to day is 1/(365×30) or 1/10950 of its total value. But if you consume it in 10 years, you pay me daily 1/10950 instead of 1/3650 of its total value, i.e., only 1/3 of its daily value, and you rob me, therefore, every day of 2/3 of the value of my commodity. You pay me for one day’s labour-power, whilst you use that of 3 days. That is against our contract and the law of exchanges. I demand, therefore, a working-day of normal length, and I demand it without any appeal to your heart, for in money matters sentiment is out of place. You may be a model citizen, perhaps a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and in the odour of sanctity to boot; but the thing that you represent face to face with me has no heart in its breast. That which seems to throb there is my own heart-beating. I demand the normal working-day because I, like every other seller, demand the value of my commodity. ^[6]

We see then, that, apart from extremely elastic bounds, the nature of the exchange of commodities itself imposes no limit to the working-day, no limit to surplus-labour. The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working-day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possible, two working-days out of one. On the other hand, the peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its consumption by the purchaser, and the labourer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working-day to one of definite normal duration. There is here, therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides. Hence is it that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working-day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., the working-class.

From CAPITAL, Volume I, section on the 'working day'.

Wobbly Times number 54

Fascism Defined

Fascism is an epithet thrown around a lot by politicos. I think it's best to go to the source for a definition of what fascism is/was. Fascism isn't just any sort of authoritarian rule, it's a specific form of dictatorship which has private capitalists and workers forced by State law to collaborate in what Mussolini called "corporations", all for the good of the nation. Fascists all think that class struggle is a communist, anarchist, socialist ideological invention used by internationalist revolutionaries to destroy the fabric of a strong nation. Oh fascists know that there are classes; yes indeed they do. But fascists don't like the marketplace for commodities when it comes to labour power. Fascists think that both the employing class and the working class should do their moral duty to work together in 'corporations'. Fascists make it illegal to see the social relation between classes and class interests any other way. Fascists don't like 'flabby' liberals who endanger the nation by saying workers should have the right to organise in their own class interests to negotiate the price (aka wages) of their time, skills and working conditions with the employing class. Fascists don't like class conscious workers who organise to pursue their own material interests.

If this kind of rhetoric has a familiar ring to your ears, perhaps you've listened to people who have been influenced by fascist-nationalist thinking and who like the idea of restricting or even eliminating the rights of workers to strike, organise and the right of workers to be in classwide solidarity with their fellow workers in their negotiations with the employing class over wages and conditions. These people will say, "We must put restrictions on workers' ability to combine as a class or they will become too powerful and upset the national interests. After all, what's good for employers is good for workers too; they have common interests." Maybe these people didn't even know that they have been espousing the fundamental doctrine of the fascist State.

Benito Mussolini wrote:

32: "Fascist corporate economy is the economy of individuals of

associated groups and of the State."

47-8: "This fond of economy is regulated, strengthened and

harmonized for the sake of collective utility, by the producers

themselves -- be they employers, technicians or workers --

by means of the corporations created by the State which,

representing as it does the whole nation."From: Mussolini, Benito. 1936. The Corporate State (Firenze: Vallecchi).****************************************************


8. Outside the State there can be neither individuals nor groups (political parties, associations, syndicates, classes). Therefore, Fascism is opposed to Socialism, which confines the movement of history within the class struggle and ignores the unity of classes established in one economic and moral reality in the State: and analogously it is opposed to class syndicalism. (my MB interjection: class syndicalism is like the sort of unionism which the IWW promotes) Fascism recognizes the real exigencies for which the socialist and syndicalist movement arose, but while recognizing them wishes to bring them under the control of the State and give them a purpose within the corporative system of interests reconciled within the unity of the State.

and later in this piece…
…It might be said against this programme that it is a return to the corporations. It doesn’t matter!....I should like, nevertheless, the Assembly to accept the claims of national syndicalism from the point of view of economics…

Is it not surprising that from the first day in the Piazza San Sepolcro there should resound the word ‘Corporation’ which was destined in the creations at the base of the regime?

and later…
But when one says liberalism, one says the individual; when one says Fascism, one says the State. But the Fascist State is unique; it is an original creation. It is not reactionary but revolutionary in that it anticipates the solutions of certain universal problems. These problems are no longer seen in the same light: in the sphere of politics they are removed from party rivalries, from the supreme power of parliament, from the irresponsibility of assemblies; in the sphere of economics they are removed from the sphere of the syndicates’ activities—activities that were ever widening their scope and increasing their power, both on the workers’ side and on the employers’—removed from their struggles and their designs; in the moral sphere they are divorced from ideas of the need for order, discipline and obedience, and lifted into the plane of moral commandments of the fatherland…..

From “The Doctrine of Fascism” written by Benito Mussolini in 1932 in collaboration with Giovanni Gentile.

Eric Fromm on the social psychology of fascism:

The love for the powerful and the hatred for the powerless which is so typical for the sado-masochistic character explains a great deal of Hitler's and his follower's political actions. While the Republican government thought they could "appease" the Nazis by treating them leniently, they not only failed to appease them but aroused their hatred by the very lack of power and firmness they showed.
--Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom, pg 256-257

Hitler's -- and for that matter, Mussolini's -- "revolution" happened under protection of existing power and their favorite objects were those who could not defend themselves. One might even venture to assume that Hitler's attitude toward Great Britain was determined, among other factors, by this psychological complex. As long he felt Britain to be powerful, he loved and admired her. His book gives expression to this love for Britain. When he recognized the weakness of the British position before and after Munich his love changed into hatred and the wish to destroy it. From this viewpoint "appeasement" was a policy which for a personality like Hitler was bound to arouse hatred, not friendship.
--Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom, pg 257

Hitler recognizes clearly that his philosophy of self-denial and sacrifice is meant for those whose economic situation does not allow them any happiness. He does not want to bring about a social order which would make personal happiness possible for very individual; he wants to exploit the very poverty of the masses in order to make them believe in his evangelism of self-annihilation.
--Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom, pg 259

Given the psychological conditions, does Nazism not fulfill the emotional needs of the population, and is this psychological function not one factor that makes for its growing stability?

From all that has been said so far, it is evident that the answer to this question is in the negative. The fact of human individuation, of the destruction of all "primary bonds," cannot be reversed. The process of the destruction of the medieval world has taken four hundred years and is being completed in our era. Unless the whole industrial system, the whole mode of production, should be destroyed and changed to the preindustrial level, man will remain an individual who has completely emerged from the world surrounding him. We have seen that man cannot endure this negative freedom; that he tries to escape into new bondage which he has given up. But these new bonds do not constitute real union with the world. He pays for the new security by giving up the integrity of his self.
--Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom, pg 262-263


"No revision of economic theory is required to understand fascism. Equal and just exchange has driven itself to the point of absurdity, and the totalitarian order is this absurdity. The transition from liberalism has occurred logically enough, and less brutally than from the mercantile system into that of the nineteenth century. The same economic tendencies that create an ever higher productivity of labor through the mechanism of competition have suddenly turned into forces of social disorganization. The pride of liberalism, industry developed technically to the utmost, ruins its own principle because great parts of the population can no longer sell their labor. The reproduction of what exists by the labor market becomes inefficient. Previously the bourgeoisie was decentralized, a many-headed ruler; the expansion of the plant was the condition for every entrepreneur to increase his portion of the social surplus. He needed workers in order to prevail in the competition of the market. In the age of monopolies, the investment of more and more new capital no longer promises any great increase in profits. The mass of workers, from whom surplus value flows, diminishes in comparison to the apparatus which it serves. In recent times, industrial production has existed only as a condition for profit, for the expansion of the power of groups and individuals over human labor. Hunger itself provides no reason for the production of consumer goods. To produce for the insolvent demand, for the unemployed masses, would run counter to the laws of economy and religion that hold the order together; no bread without work."

"The Jews and Europe"

Max Horkheimer

Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung

December 1939


"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
- Adolf Hitler, 1925-1926 Mein Kampf, (p. 65)

"What we have to fight for is the necessary security for the existence and increase of our race and people, the subsistence of its children and the maintenance of our racial stock unmixed, the freedom and independence of the Fatherland; so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the Creator."
- Adolf Hitler, 1925-1926 Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 8

"In short, the results of miscegenation are always the following: (a) The level of the superior race becomes lowered; (b) physical and mental degeneration sets in, thus leading slowly but steadily towards a progressive drying up of the vital sap. The act which brings about such a development is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator. And as a sin this act will be avenged."
- Adolf Hitler, 1925-1926 Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 11

"One cannot live faithfully and give up what has given meaning and purpose to one’s entire life. That would not be so if it were not a cardinal command. And no earthly power gave us that command. For the God, our God, who created our people, gave us that command!"
-Adolf Hitler, 1935 Triumph of the Will/Triumph des Willens

Wobbly Times number 50

Now that healthcare reform is on its way to passing in the USA, what should workers there be doing?

Looking at the history of reforming the capitalist system, one can say that our rulers wouldn't have Social Security to loot (and many of them are agitating to pillage this 'entitlement'), if reform hadn't happened and we wouldn't have Social Security to live on, if it hadn't happened. Same with Medicare, passed in '65.

The question is, "Why did they 'happen'?"

At least three reasons come to mind. One is that they happened because enough workers wanted them, agitated and organised for them to happen and that made our rulers anxious. Some of our rulers, in turn, thought, if we grant them access to this small bit of their surplus value, they'll go away and watch TV. But, not all our rulers wanted to give workers these pieces of the surplus value. So, there was a fight in Congress where our rulers' polytricksters roost. The Democrats represented the rulers who wanted to co:opt workers and the Republicans represented rulers who wanted to tell workers to go jump in the lake or face police repression, if they dared direct action to get the things they want.

The class struggle is between the workers and our rulers over control and ownership of the socially produced wealth, wealth produced by the working class in conjunction with Nature. We win some of these battles and we lose some. Even when we win, we lose in terms of liberal co:optation.

So, what to do?

Please the liberals and go watch TV?

Anger the conservatives and go burn a flag?

No.

We got some control and ownership over our surplus value with Social Security and Medicare. We got it by being conscious that we needed it and organising, agitating and educating to get it. The historical lesson is to organise and the class conscious lesson is to organise to take it ALL. After all, we produce the wealth, we should control and socially own it all. Workers are ENTITLED TO ALL THE WEALTH THEY PRODUCE!

Now, some will say that we're incapable of organising as a class. I assure you that those who say that aren't our rulers because our rulers in the employing class have got us organised as a class--to work for them, to produce wealth for them. We need to organise as a class for ourselves. To the degree that we are organised class consciously (even if that consciousness is dim-witted leftism), to that degree we will have the power to get what we deserve, EVERYTHING!

My advice: Keep your eyes on the prize, workers and you'll never be steered off course by liberal reform. Get wise and organise as a class and you'll have the power to defeat any attempt by reactionaries to put you in what they consider to be your place: cowering at their feet.

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Now, contrast what I have said with what Fidel Castro says about health care reform in the USA:

THE US HEALTHCARE REFORM

Barack Obama is a zealous believer in the imperialist capitalist
system imposed by the United States to the world. 'God bless the
United States,' is the final phrase of his speeches.

Some events hurt the sensitivity of the world public which
sympathized with the victory of the African-American over the
far-right candidate in that country. On the basis of one of the
deepest economic crises the world has known, and on the pain brought
on by the young Americans who lost their lives or were injured or
maimed in the genocidal wars of conquest unleashed by his predecessor,
he won with the vote of the majority of the 50% of Americans who cast
a vote in that democratic nation.

Out of an elementary sense of ethic, Obama should have
refrained from accepting the Nobel Peace Prize when he had already
decided on sending forty thousand troops to an absurd war in the heart
of Asia.

The warmongering policy and the plundering of natural
resources, as well as the unequal terms of trade of the current
administration toward the poor countries of the Third World are no
different from those of his predecessors, most of them from the
far-right, --with few exceptions throughout the past century.

The antidemocratic document imposed at the Copenhagen
Summit on the international community, which had given credit to his
promise to cooperate in the struggle against climate change, was
another one of those events that disappointed many people around the
world. The United States, the largest producer of greenhouse-gas
emissions, was not willing to make the necessary sacrifices despite
the flattering previous words of its president.

The list of contradictions would be endless between the
ideas defended by the Cuban nation for five decades with great
sacrifices and the selfish policies of that colossal empire.

Still, we don't feel any animosity toward Obama, much less
toward the American people. We feel that the Healthcare Reform has
been a significant battle and a success of his administration.
However, it is really amazing that 234 years after the Declaration of
Independence proclaimed in Philadelphia in the year 1776, which drew
inspiration from the ideas of the great French encyclopedists, the
government of that country has approved medical care for the
overwhelming majority of its citizens, something that Cuba
accomplished for its entire population half a century ago despite the
cruel and inhuman blockade imposed --and still in force-- by the
mightiest country that has ever existed. In the past, it was only
after almost a century of independence and following a bloody war,
that Abraham Lincoln could obtain the legal emancipation of the
slaves.

On the other hand, I can't help but think of a world where
over one-third of the population have no access to medical care or the
basic medicines required to ensure health. And this situation will be
aggravated as climate change, and water and food shortage worsen in a
globalized world where the population grows, the forests disappear,
the arable land decreases, the air is more polluted, and the human
species inhabiting it 'which emerged less than 200 thousand years
back, that is, 3.5 billion years after the first forms of life on the
planet'is running the real risk of annihilation.

Even conceding that the Health Reform comes as a success
to the Obama administration, the current President of the United
States cannot ignore that climate change poses a threat to health, and
worse still, to the very existence of every nation in the world, as
the rise in temperature 'beyond critical limits which are already in
sight' melts down the water of the glaciers, and the tens of millions
of cubic meters contained in the enormous ice caps of the Antarctic,
Greenland and Siberia melt down within a few decades leaving under
water every port facility in the world and lands where a large part of
the world population lives, works and eats today.

Obama, the leaders of the wealthy nations and their
allies, as well as their scientists and sophisticated research centers
are aware of this; they cannot ignore it.

I understand the satisfaction expressed in the
presidential speech and his recognition of the contribution made by
the members of Congress and the administration to make possible the
miracle of the Health Reform, which strengthens the government's
position vis-a-vis political lobbyists and mercenaries that curtail
the authority of the administration. It would be worse if those
responsible for tortures, murders on contract and genocide were in
charge of the US government again. As a man unquestionably smart and
sufficiently well informed, Obama knows there is no exaggeration in my
words. I hope the foolish remarks he sometimes makes about Cuba do not
cloud his mind.

In the aftermath of his success in this battle for the
right of every American to healthcare, 12 million immigrants, most of
them Latin American, Haitian and from other Caribbean countries are
demanding the legalization of their presence in the United States
where they do the hardest work and the American society cannot do
without them, but where they are arrested, separated from their
families and sent back to their countries.

The overwhelming majority migrated to America escaping the
tyrannies imposed by the United States on the countries of the region
and the dire poverty these have endured as a result of the plundering
of their resources and the unequal terms of trade. Their family
remittances make up a high percentage of the GDP of these countries'
economies. Now, they expect an act of basic justice. If the Cubans
have been singled out with an Adjustment Act which promotes brain
drain and the enticement of their educated youths, why are such brutal
methods applied to the illegal immigrants from Latin America and the
Caribbean?

The devastating earthquake that battered Haiti 'the
poorest nation in Latin America, hammered by an unprecedented natural
catastrophe that took the lives of more than 200 thousand people' and
the terrible economic damage that a similar phenomenon brought on
Chile are eloquent proof of the dangers looming over the so-called
civilization and of the need for dramatic measures that can give the
human species the hope to survive.

The Cold War failed to benefit the people of the world.
The huge economic, technological and scientific power of the United
States would be unable to survive the tragedy hovering on the planet.
President Obama should look up in a computer the relevant data and
talk to his most outstanding scientists; then, he will see how far his
country is of being the model it promotes for humanity.

As an African-American, he suffered the offense of
discrimination, according to his own narrative in the book 'Dreams
From My Father.' He was acquainted with the poverty of tens of
millions of Americans; educated in that country and as a successful
professional he has enjoyed the privileges of the rich middle class
and ended up idealizing the social system where the economic crisis,
the lives of Americans uselessly sacrificed and his undisputable
political talent gave him political victory.

Yet, to the most intractable right-wing Obama is an
extremist; and they threaten to continue fighting in the Senate to
neutralize the effects of the Health Reform and to openly boycott it
in several States of the Union by declaring it an unconstitutional
law.

The problems of our times are much more serious.

The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other
international financial institutions strictly controlled by the United
States the creators of tax havens and the culprits of the financial
chaos in the planet-- allow the bailout of the big American banks by
their government every time one of the frequent and increasingly
intense crises of the system hits that country.

The United States Federal Reserve capriciously mints the
hard currency that pays for the wars of conquest, the profits of the
Military Industrial Complex, the military bases distributed around the
world, and the large investments used by the transnational companies
to control the economy of many countries worldwide. Nixon unilaterally
suspended the gold standard while the vaults of the New York banks
keep seven thousand tons of gold, little over 25% of the world
reserves in that metal, a figure that at the end of World War II was
in excess of 80%. It is said that the US public debt exceeds 10
trillion dollars, which is more than 70% of its GDP and stands like a
burden for the new generations. This is said when the truth is that
the world economy is the one paying that debt with the huge amounts of
US dollars spent in purchasing goods and services, the same dollars
that the large transnationals of that country use to buy a
considerable portion of the world riches and to sustain that nation?s
consumer society.

Anyone understands that such a system is unsustainable and
also why the wealthiest sectors in the United States and their allies
in the world advocate a system that can only be sustained with
ignorance, deception and the conditioned reflexes created in the world
public through the monopoly over the mass media, including the main
networks of the Internet.

Today, the structure is crumbling with the accelerated
advance of climate change and its disastrous consequences which are
placing humanity face to face with an exceptional dilemma.

The wars between powers seem no longer a possible solution
to the great contradictions as they were until the second half of the
20th century. Still, they have had such an impact on the elements that
make human survival possible, that they could prematurely put an end
to the existence of the current intelligent species that populates our
planet.

A few days ago I expressed my firm belief that, in light
of the scientific knowledge prevailing today, the human beings will
have to solve their problems on planet Earth since they will never be
able to cover the distance separating the Sun from its closest star
located four light-years away, 'one light-year equals 187,500 miles
per second, as our high school students know' provided a planet similar
to our beautiful Earth existed around that sun.

The United States invests huge amounts of money to confirm
the presence of water on planet Mars, or if there was or is any
elementary form of life there. No one knows what for, if not out of
mere scientific curiosity. Millions of species are disappearing from
our planet at a faster pace and its enormous water sources are
constantly being poisoned.

The new laws of science 'following Einstein's formulas on
energy and matter, and the big-bang theory as the origin of the
millions of constellations and infinite stars and/or other
theories 'have given rise to deep changes in such basic concepts as
space and time, which draw the attention of and are subjected to
analysis by theologians. One of them, our Brazilian friend Friar
Betto, deals with the subject in his book 'The Work of the Artist: A
Holistic Vision of Universe,' presented in the recent International
Book Fair held in Havana.

The advancement of science in the past one hundred years
has had an impact on the traditional approaches that prevailed through
thousands of years in social sciences and even in Philosophy and
Theology.

The most honest thinkers are paying significant attention
to the new knowledge but we know absolutely nothing of how President
Obama feels about the compatibility of consumer societies with
science.

In the meantime, it is worthwhile meditating about these
subjects now and then; this will certainly not prevent human beings
from dreaming and from taking things with due serenity and steely
nerves, but it is the duty of at least those who chose to become
politicians and who sustain the noble and unwavering objective of a
human society where justice and solidarity prevail.

Fidel Castro Ruz
March 24, 2010
6:40 PM

http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2010/ing/f240310i.html