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
