WRONG AND RIGHT WAYS TO FIGHT IMPERIAL POWER

WRONG AND RIGHT WAYS TO FIGHT IMPERIAL POWER

Part One: ORIGINAL TITLE:

WHAT ALTERNATIVES ARE BEEN PROPOSED?

By Authors:

Aurelien Bernier : Desobeisson a l’ Union Europeenne; Les mille et Une nuits, 2011

and Jacques Nikonoff:  Sortir  de :’euro : Les mille et une nuits, 2011

( I guess they are 2 socialists from Europe)

(To make more attractive this reading I divided the full article in parts and put a new title:

WRONG AND RIGHT WAYS TO FIGHT IMPERIAL POWER

I placed some comments at the end, meanwhile I placed: First wrong response, second, third ++ resp.

 

First wrong response: “MARKET REGULATION” (financial & others). These are initiatives that monopolies & governments claim they are pursuing. In fact it is only empty rhetoric designed to mislead public opinion. These initiatives can’t stop the mas rush for financial return that is the result of  the logic of accumulation controlled by monopolies. They are therefore  a false alternative.

Second wrong response: a return to the past-war models. These response feed a triple nostalgia:

(1)    The rebuilding of a true  “social Democracy” in the West

(2)    The resurrections of “socialisms” founded on the principles that governed have in the twenty century in Europe

(3)    The return to formulas of popular nationalism found in the peripheries of the South.

These nostalgias imagine it is possible to “roll back” monopoly capitalism, forcing its regress to what is was in 1945 ( at the end of big recession: 1939-1945, that was the time of FDR in America). But history in Europe never allow such return to the past. So, capitalism must by confronted as it is today. Not as we would have wished by imagining the blocking of its evolution. However these longings  continue to haunt large segments of the left throughout the world.

Third wrong response, the hypocritical one: the search for ‘HUMANIST CONSENSUS’, I define this illusion as PIOUS WISH in the following way: the illusion of consensus among conflictive interest feed the interest of rich people, especially if they are religious persons. Some people called theocratic and racist-etnocratic manipulation of minds. Other people called naïve ‘ecology movement’ to those who profit from this ilusion. (The current Pope was accused of this aberration by one lady from South America who accuse him of this hypocrisy in a Vatican meeting “You help the neonazi movement in Chile against the elected – socialist government of Allende. You are neo-nazi, she said to him in public.) His humanist consensus was destroyed.

Four wrong response, The illusion of the past. Decir que el pasado explica el presente sin invocar lo especifico y las diferencias del  context lleva a un tipo de culturalismo equivocado que solo puede ser aceptado por las Iglesias y sectores etnocraticos o racistas que no tienen un apice de amor por la democracia, y la Libertad de expression. Este tipo de culturalism solo sirve a los duenios del poder economico y politico en el pais.

Fifth wrong  bias: the false priority of personal freedom. Soy “democrata” y eso me crea Libertad para ocultar mi fraude electoral. Al argumento y discurso que estos lanzan en la prensa nacional se le atribuye “supreme value”  y quien quiera discutirlo puede ser enjuiciado por financistas. Esta forma de manipular la democracia , la desacredita y reduce el status de la democracia a una ‘tragic farce’. Esto conduce a la violencia bi-partidaria y al possible separatism de Estados y regions frente a la Union Federal. En el US hoy vivimos este problema y la Victoria o derrota de los REPS en las elecciones de NOV para el Congreso puede crear base para el caos politico porque inmediatamente pedirian la renuncia de Biden.

 

QUE HACER?

Esta claro que el futuro de America no depende del pasado, depende de los comntextos politicos, sociales y economicos que hoy enfrentamos.

Quiza el FRAME DE HEGEL: LOS 4 TRIANGULOS del mismo tamanio contenidos  en UNO, PODRIA AYUDAR

See Hegel Frame.

En este frame el triangulo de arriba es el ESTADO donde la democ-vs- dictadura lo define la constitucion

El 2do triungulo es la Sociedad con clases sociales y elites que negocian status para sobrevivir

En el tercer y 4to triangulo contiene la realidad subjetiva (pienso luego existo) y la realidad objetiva (actuo luego existo). Este fue el esquema de analisis y accion usado por los Europeos y es el frame que yo use como Profesor de Sociologia en Peru.

Mi catedra se llamo SISTEMS THEORY y el frame de Hegel lo disemine en varias universidades de Peru-Chile

Entonces lance la propuesta de 3ra opcion politica para el US. A esta 3ra opcion habria que entregar el 20% del poder politico para romper con el Viejo Sistema duopolico (REPS and DEMS) que hoy conduce al caos en las elecciones para el congreso en Nov (si ganan los REPS para el congreso desconocen al Presidente Biden) y peor aun para las elecciones a President el 2024.

Si se introduce la 3ra opcion, el 2doPartido mas votado se llevaria el 30%  y el Pdo ganador se lleva el 50%, cualquiera sea el # de votos obtenidos. Esto requiere cambiar el Sistema electoral y es muy dificil que esto ocurra pues no se quiere evitar al caos que viene. No se quiere abandonar el Viejo Sistema Duopolico que conduce al desastre total

Si se reforma el Sistema electoral No importaria el numero real de votos obtenidos: LO QUE HABRIA QUE SALVAR ES LA UNIDAD NACIONAL y asi  lograr el optimo-paretiano: LA RECONCILIACION NACIONAL Pero esto  requiere modificar la ley electoral. El como hacerlo no es el problema de fondo, el porque hacerlo si es lo que importa.

 

SO, WHAT IS TO BE DONE Part 2

HERE SOME AUDACIOUS PROGRAMS FOR THE RADICAL LEFT done by original authors

I will organize the following general proposals under three heading:

1-Socialize the ownership of monopolies

2-De-financialise the management of the economy

3-De-globalise international relation. Socialize the ownerships of monopolies

 

The effectiveness of the alternative response necessarily requires the questioning of the very principal of private property of monopoly capital. Proposing to “regulate” financial operations, to return markets to ‘transparency’ to allow “agents expectation” to be rational’ and to define the terms of a consensus on these reforms without abolishing the private property of monopolies, is nothing other than throwing dust in the eyes of the naïve public. Monopolies are asking to “manage” reforms against their interests, ignoring the fact that they retain  THOUSAND  and one ways to circumvent the objective of such reforms.

The alternative social project should be to reverse the direction of the current social order produced by strategies of monopolies, in order to ensure decent wages growing in parallel with the productivity of social labor. This objective is simply impossible without the expropriation of the power of monopolies.

The “software of economic theories” must be reconstructed (in the words of Francois Morin). The absurd legal action is and the impossible of economic theory of “expectations” expels democracy from the management of economic decision making.  Audacity in this instance requires radical reform of education for training not only economists but also all those called to occupy management positions.

Monopolies are institutional bodies that must be managed according to the principles of democracy, in direct conflict with those who sanctify private property. Although the term “commons” imported from the Anglo-Saxon world, is itself ambiguous because always disconnected from the debate on the meaning of social conflicts (Anglo-Saxon language deliberately ignores the reality of social classes) the term could be invoked here specifically to call monopolies part of the “commons”.

The abolition of the private ownership of monopolies take place through their nationalization. The first legal action is unavoidable. But audacity here means going beyond that step to propose plans for the socialization of the management of nationalized monopolies and the promotion of social struggles yhat are engaged on this long road.

I will give here a concrete example of what could be invoked in plans of socialization. Capitalist farmers in developed countries, like ‘peasant farmers’ (mostly in the South) are prisoners of both the upstream monopolies that provide inputs and credits and the downstream ones of which they depend for processing, transportation and marketing of their products.. Therefore they don’t have real autonomy in their ‘decitions’. In addition, the productivity gains they made are siphoned off by monopolies that have reduced producers to the status of ‘subcontractors’. What a possible alternative?

Public institutions working withing a legal framework that would set the mode of governance must replace the monopolies. This would be constituted of representatives of :

1-farmers (the principle interest)

2-upstream units (manufacturing of inputs, banks) and downstream (food industry, retail chains) and

3-consumers

4-Local authorities (interested in natural and social environments: schools such as, hospitals, urban planning and housing, transportation)

5- THE State (citizens)

 

PART THREE :

Representatives of the components listed above would be self-selected according to procedures consistent with the own mode of socialized management, such as units of production of inputs that are themselves management by directorates of workers directly employed by the units concerned as well as those who are employed by the subcontracting unit and so on. These structures should be defined by formulas that associate management personnel with each of these levels, such as research centers for scientific, independent and appropriate technology. We can even conceive of a representation of capital providers ( the small “shareholders”) inherited from the nationalization, if deemed useful.

We are therefore talking about institutional approaches that are more complex than the form of “self-directed” or cooperative that we have known.  Ways of working need to be invented that allow the exercise of genuine democracy in the management of the economy, based on open negotiation among all interested parties. A formula is required that systematically links the democratization of society with social progress, jn contrast with the reality of capitalism which dissociate , which es reduced to the formal management of politics, from social conditions abandoned to the “market” dominated by what monopoly capital produces. Then ansd only then can we talk about true transparency of markets, regulated in institutionalized forms of socialized management.

The example may seem marginal in the developed capitalist countries because farmers are the very small proportion of workers (3-7 percent). However, this issue is central to the South where the rural population will remain significant for some time. Here access to land, which must be guaranteed for all  (with the least possible inequality of access) is fundamental to principles advancing peasant agriculture (I refer here to my previous work on the question “peasant agriculture” (or traditional and folkloric). The necessary progress of peasant agriculture does require some modernization (although this term is a misnomer because it immediately suggest modernization via capitalism) . More effective inputs, credits and supply changes are necessary to improve the productivity of peasant labor. The formulas proposed here pursue the objective of enabling these modernization in ways an in spirit  that is ‘non capitalist’, that is to say grounded in a socialist perspective.

Obviously the specific example chosen here is one that need to be institutionalized. The nationalization/ socialization  of the management of monopolies in the sectors of industry and transport, banks and other financial institutions should be imagined in the same spirit while talking into account the spicifities of their economic and social functions in the constitution of their directorates. Again these directorates should involve the workers in the company as well as those subcontractors, representatives of up-stream industries, banks, research institutions, consumers and citizens.

The nationalization/socialization of monopolies address a fundamental need at the central axis of the challenge confronting workings and people under contemporary capitalism  of generalized monopolies. Its is the only way to stop the accumulation by dispossession that id driven the management of the economy by monopolies.

The accumulation dominated by monopolies can indeed only reproduce  itself in the area subject to “market management” is constantly expanding. This is achieved by excessive privatization of public services (dispossession of citizens) , and access to natural resources (dispossession of citizens) and access to natural resources (dispossession of people). The extraction of profit ’independent’ economic units by the monopolies is even dispossession (of capitalist!) by the financial oligarchy.

 

Part 4

DE-FINANTIALIZATION: A WORLD WITHOUT WALL STREET