Question Everything

This blog is temporarily on hiatus for a couple weeks.

High Ranking Officials Admit 9-11 Could have been Prevented

A vision of an alternative to capitalism, hierarchy and the state has already been created, and it was produced by the oppressed during times of rebellion & revolution. Most major revolutions have seen various non-hierarchical organizations formed which began to reorganize society. The Russian had its' soviets, factory committees, peasant assemblies, the French had it's sections & communes, the Spanish had it's collectives & co-ops, the Iranian had it's shoras & worker committees, and the recent rebellion in Argentina had it's popular assemblies & factory occupations. These were created by ordinary people in revolt, not by intellectuals. They show the basic outlines of an alternative society, just extrapolate to apply the same principles to the whole of society.

Hunger and homelessness in the US have increased.

Elections do not allow ordinary citizens to control the state, the structure of society is such that the state is controlled by big business and the state bureaucracy. If Kucinich (or some other genuine reformer) were elected there would be massive capital flight and Kucinich would be forced to change his policies to obey big business & the state bureaucracy. When radical parties get elected they must become conservative. This has been proven repeatedly throughout history - look at Lula, the German Greens, the Social Democrats, etc. There may be differences in their pre-election platforms, but once in power both Kucinich & Bush must do largely the same thing. Wer'e more likely to have a revolution than to achieve signifigant change via electoralism. Reformists like to portray themselves as pragmatists but anyone who thinks that Kucinich, if elected, would be allowed to implement signifigant changes is a wild-eyed dreamer. And if your'e going to dream why not go whole hog and dream of revolution? For a more indepth critique of electoralism, see my essay The Dead End of Electoralism

More stuff on Iraq:
-Saddam: Celebrity Tyrant
-Let Us Rejoice At Saddam's Capture
-A Saddam Chronology
-The US is arresting Iraqi labor union leaders
-US Troops Gun Down Pro-Saddam Demonstrators
-William Pitt on Saddam's Capture
-Saddam, Like Hitler, Will Live on for Millions

Cuba is persecuting syndicalists and workers.

The capture of Saddam has resulted in another display of hypocrisy by the US government & media. Saddam was a brutal tyrant who deserves the Mussolini treatment but so do those who helped him. Saddam's worst atrocities were committed in the '80s with US approval. Many of the people in power now were key players in the US support for Saddam prior to the Gulf War including Cheney. Rumsfeld was the US envoy envoy to Iraq. Here they are, shaking hands in the mid-80s:



Yet none of these US war criminals, complicit in Saddam's atrocities, will ever stand trial for their crimes. It is just victor's justice metted out not because Saddam was a brutal tyrant but because he got in the way of the American Empire. If the US government was really interested in justice they'd be putting Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. on trial as well.

The official status of Saddam, according to Rumsfeld, is that he's not a Prisoner of War but will be given the same rights as a POW. This is part of the general strategy of the Bush administration to destroy the Geneva accords, including the Guantanamo detainees. Denying that captives in a war are POWs is a step towards abolishing rights for POWs. Once it's generally accepted that they're no longer considered POWs the US now has greater standing to deny them their rights, since they're no longer recognized as POWs. Of course this only applies to the US, Amerika still expects other countries to give American POWs their same rights. Back in March the US government & media were whining about how Iraq was putting American POWs on T.V., alleging that this violated their rights. Yet the US has put Saddam on TV and there hasn't been a peep from the media or the government who were whining about Iraq doing it. Apparently when the US does it to other countries the media & government think it's okay, but when other countries do it to the US it suddenly becomes wrong.

More censorship in the "war on drugs."

Why NeoClassical ("Supply and Demand") Economics is Bogus

The Anti-War Speech that Earned Eugene Debs 10 Years in Prison

Based on posts made here

The state is not just a machine of oppression by one class by another. It is a means by which a small elite oppresses the majority. All attempts to implement a "dictatorship of the proletariat" inevitably results in the rule of a small bureaucratic elite, not the working class. This has been proven by history; 100% of all "workers' states" have done this. Workers' Councils (what the Soviets originally) were first advocated by Anarchists before they were created in Russia. This is acknowledged by many non-anarchist historians. See "The Soviets" by Oscar Anweiller - it's the definitive history of the Russian soviets and written by a non-anarchist historian. Dictatorship of the proletariat is incompatible with soviets, soviets are proletarian and dictatorship of the proletariat came from bourgeois revolutionaries (Jacobins like Babeuf). In Russia, trying to create a "dictatorship of the proletariat" based on the soviets caused the soviets to die. In Spring 1918 the workers & peasants attempted to recall the Bolsheviks, the Bolsheviks responded by disbanding soviets with opposition majorities. This led to party dictatorship, the "soviets" just rubber-stamped the decisions of the party. Putting the Soviets in state form killed them.

ALL states are instruments by which a minority oppresses the majority. Any attempt to create a state controlled by the majority will end up being a state controlled by a minority because all states are forms of minority rule. "Non-antagonistic" states are impossible. Just because Marxists CLAIM their state will be controlled by the majority does not mean it will be. George Bush says all sorts of fancy things about democracy too, but the structure of states insures that they are always forms of minority rule. This is proven by history - there have been hundreds of attempts to create states controlled by the majority but all have resulted in states controlled by a minority.

The "revolutionary" leadership that built most Marxist states consisted mainly of members of the intelligentsia, not former workers or peasants. Lenin, for example, was a lawyer and a minor noble. Theoretically former workers or peasants could become part of the bureaucratic ruling class. Once in power individual workers who've gained powerful positions within the state cease being workers and become bureaucrats, a new ruling class over the majority. All actual "workers' states" had corruption and an exploitative elite. High level party members lived in mansions while others lived in slums. Even Bolshevik leaders like Alexandra Kollontai admitted this.

In Marxist states the proletariat don't actually have power, the party/bureaucratic elite do. One can say the proletariat have power, but actual power is in the hands of a small elite. When the proletariat are being beaten with a stick they aren't much happier if you call it the "proletariat's stick."

The dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of the Communist Party, that is why it is anti-proletarian. The party is a minority of the population and of the working class. The party itself is run by an even smaller minority, the leaders of the party. A tiny minority has decision making power, the rest just follow their orders. The state therefore isn't really controlled by the majority because it's this minority that holds power. When the politburo is making the decisions the proletariat is not. You can have the soviet (workers' councils) system or you can have the dictatorship of the "proletariat"/party but you cannot have both. The implementation of the dictatorship of the proletariat led to the death of the Soviets.

Many statists confuse organization with the state. Society (not "the country" - countries should be abolished) should be organized by voluntary non-hierarchical associations such as soviets (workers' councils). The state should be smashed. "Dictatorship of the proletariat" really means dictatorship of the leaders of the communist party. You can find a long description of how anarchists would run society here.

Many societies have not had private ownership of the means of production yet they still had exploiters. Ancient Egypt, for example. Or Feudalism. The abolition of private property is not sufficient to abolish class.

The claim that all actual workers' states had corruption & a priviledged elite is admitted even by pro-Bolshevik sources. Let's take Russia. Alexandra Kollontai, who was the only senior Bolshevik Leader to support Lenin's April theses from the start, said in her pamphlet "The Workers' Opposition":

"so far the problems of hygiene, sanitation, improving conditions of labour in the shops - in other words, the betterment of the workers' lot has occupied the last place in our policy. ... To our shame, in the heart of the Republic, in Moscow itself, working people are still living in filthy, overcrowded and unhygienic quarters, one visit to which makes one think that there has been no revolution at all. We all know that the housing problem cannot be solved in a few months, even years, and that due to our poverty, its solution is faced with the serious difficulties. But the facts of ever-growing inequality between the privileged groups of the population in Soviet Russia and the rank and file workers ... breed and nourish the dissatisfaction. The rank and file worker sees how the Soviet official and the practical man lives and how he lives ... during the revolution, the life and health of the workers in the shops commanded the least attention ... "We could not attend to that; pray, there was the military front. '' And yet whenever it was necessary to make repairs in any of the houses occupied by the Soviet institutions, they were able to find both the materials and the labour."

This is supported by numerous first hand accounts from many political perspectives. To varying degrees this is true of all "workers' states." Official documents and records from these states openly state it - party members received extra rations, better housing and other priviledges over the rest of the population.

The bourgeoisie should be ABOLISHED, not oppressed. The means of production should be immediately expropriated, once this has been done the bourgeoisie cease to exist because they no longer own the means of production. Ex-bourgeoisie may still exist, but not bourgeoisie. If ex-bourgeoisie attempt to forcibly impose a counter-revolution then the workers should be armed and democratic militias formed to defeat them. Those who are willing to live in the new society, and not take up arms against it, should be made equal to everyone else, with no priviledges. They should not be made into a new underclass, that will only perpetuate class society.

Recent articles on Iraq:
Chomsky: Of course it was all about Iraq's Rescources
Mumia: For Your Own Good?
Raimondo: George Bush, Trotskyite

Capitalism is not merely the exchange of goods & services, that is what markets are. Capitalism is an economic system based on wage-labor. Under capitalism the majority of the population has to sell their labor in order to make enough money to survive. The means of production (factories, mines, land, etc.) are monopolized by the capitalist class (who own them), everyone else sells their labor to this class of people. We have to sell our labor because the capitalists own the means of production, we are denied access to them. Capitalism is hierarchical - you have bosses telling wage-laborers what to do. It is also highly centralized - look at any corporation, it's a miniature centrally planned economy. Capitalism is one form of class system. Class is economic hierarchy, a social relation in which some have power over others with regard to economics. Other forms of class society include feudalism, in which serfs work the land and give a portion of what they produce, and/or unpaid labor, to the nobles and slavery, in which the master class controls the slaves, whom they own. Markets have existed in many economic systems, not just capitalism. In class systems the ruling class (those on top of the hierarchy) use their power to exploit those on the bottom and gain extra priviledges and wealth. Under capitalism this works like this:



It takes labor to produce things. If we all sat on our asses and did nothing we would not have any food or clothing or anything. "The market" doesn't change that. In order to produce things, including the basic necessities of life, labor must be performed to produce them. In order to create usefull things (food or whatever) one or more people must do labor to create them. Under capitalism, the worker labors to produce stuff. In exchange the worker gets paid a certain amount. The capitalist sells what the worker has produced and makes money off of it. If the commodity sells for $20, the raw material cost $1 and he paid his worker $5 then he makes $14. That money the capitalist gets he gets without doing any producitve labor, without producing anything. The money, however, can be traded for usefull things. Those things require labor to produce. Thus the capitalist is a parasite - he does no productive labor (he produces nothing) yet he gets a large share of what is produced. Other people produce things, he lives off what they produce. That is exploitation.

The existence of social mobility does not justify any social system. In colonial Brazil it was theoretically possible for a slave to become free and become a slave owner, and there are documented cases of this happening. It's rare, but it happened. But this does not justify slavery. The same is true of capitalism.

According to the UN on average 24,000 people starve to death everyday, primarily in the "third world." According to the same source, there is more than enough food produced to feed everyone and we currently have the tecnhnology to produce enough people to feed 30 billion people if we had to. That thousands starve to death every day is the direct result of the exploitation inherent in capitalism. Billions are not taken care of under the current system. Reforms have been done repeatedly, they have failed to fix this problem. And even if capitalism didn't cause massive death, a master who feeds his slaves well is still a master.

Capitalism cannot exist without a state because it requires a state in order to enforce property rights, maintaining the capitalists' monopoly (or near-monopoly) over the means of production. That monopoly was brought about by state violence and is maintained by state violence. Big business and big government are in bed with each other.

Instead of capitalism, worker self-management should be implemented. Workplaces should be run by worker assemblies using direct democracy and/or consensus. At present over 100 workplaces in Argentina are run by the workers and there have been many times throughout history when workers have taken over the means of production such as the Spanish Revolution, proving that self-management works. State ownership is no solution, that just replaces one set of exploiters with another, instead of corporate exploiters it creates state exploiters. Death to Capitalism and the State!

For a more detailed critique of capitalism, see my essays Tyranny of the Invisible Hand & Market Capitalism and Elite Rule

Based on posts made to here and here.

Implicitly behind support for the occupation of Iraq is the racist belief that Americans can run Iraq better then the Iraqis can. If the US were to pull out now the country would be "left in shambles" or "collapse into civil war" or some other doomsday scenario. But these things have already happened, thanks to the invasion & occupation! The war has already put the country in shambles and it will stay in shambles so long as it continues. Most of Bush's $87 billion went to the military to fight the war, not to rebuild Iraq. The "reconstruction" the US government intends to carry out is one that will benefit the US and it's corporations, like Halliburton and Betchel. It's not so much reconstruction as it is robbery. The occupation is effectively leading to a civil war anyway, as the guerillas attack those who collaborate with the US. And the war between the guerrillas and the US is becoming as bad as a civil war would be. If you were kidnapped and beaten, would you want to escape as soon as possible or would you want to be forced to stay kidnapped? Iraq is the one who's been kidnapped, the US is the one doing the kidnapping. Obviously the kidnapper/conquerer isn't going to take care of the victim except insofar as it furthers their own interests. If Nazi Germany defended its' occupation of France by arguing that if they didn't they would leave the country in shambles no one would take that seriously, so why should we take the same excuse seriously when the US occupies Iraq? The US should pull out immediately, it has no right to boss the rest of the world around. Iraqis do not need US troops occupying them in order to rebuild their country.

The Iraqis have every right to defend themselves from foreign aggressors. Western media smears the resistence as all being "Saddam remnants" and "foreign terrorists" but there's no real proof of this. If the guerillas didn't have popular support, or at least more support than the occupation, it's unlikely they would be able to last as long as they have. Guerilla wars require at least a small degree of popular support, otherwise non-combatants will tell the occupiers where the guerillas are, where they live, etc. The Iraqis should kill the minimum number necessary to force the US out of their country. The ideas put forth by idiot liberals to increase the number of troops their, raise troop morale and whatnot are all designed to boost the US position in the war, thereby lengthening it and increasing the number of people killed. All such proposals should be opposed in favor of an immediate pull out of all foreign troops and the defeat of American imperialism.

The war has nothing to do with defending the United States from Al-Qaeda, except for the fact that supporters of the US use this boogeymean to justify the war. There is no evidence linking Bin Laden & Saddam Hussein's government. Bin Laden is a fundamentalist and Sadaam is a Secular Nationalist - they hate each other. Hussein even fought an eight-year war with fundamentalists in Iran. Muslim Fundamentalists are his arch-enemy. No credible evidence has been presented tying the Republic of Iraq to any act of anti-American terrorism committed prior to the US invasion in recent years. Leaked UK intelligence proves that there is no link between Saddam and Bin Laden. Saddam's Iraq was not a threat to any other country. Iraq has not attacked any country since the U.S. stopped giving them weapons a decade ago. Every country bordering Iraq claims that Iraq is not a threat to them - even Kuwait and Iran (both past victims of Iraqi aggression).

Weapons of Mass destruction was another lie used to justify the war, if they actually had weapons of mass destruction they would have used them during the invasion. Even if Iraq did have a little mustard gas left over, that was not grounds for war. Many countries, including the U.S., have far deadlier weapons. The U.S. used weapons which are just as bad (such as "daisy cutters" and cluster bombs) during the war in Afghanistan. Considering that the US has more weapons of mass destruction then the rest of the world combined there is no reason why Iraq should be expected to disarm when the US isn't. The US has over 10,000 nukes - should it be invaded? If Rumsfeld, et al. were really worried about the spread of weapons of mass destruction, then they wouldn't have given Iraq weapons of mass destruction in the first place. Bush's "concern" about such weapons obviously is bogus, because plenty of other countries have such weapons, but he doesn't want to invade them. This was just a lie used to justify aggression against another country.

It's hypocritical to criticize Iraq for allegedly violating U.N. resolutions, yet support U.S.-forced "regime change" because the latter violates U.N. resolutions as well. Many countries besides Iraq have made far more serious violations of U.N. resolutions (Israel is an excellent example), yet Bush doesn't want to bomb them. The same U.N. resolution which requires Iraq to give up weapons of mass destruction orders the U.S. to stop giving weapons to other countries in the region, which the U.S. violates.

The Bush administration likes to compare the occupation to the US's occupation of Germany & Japan after WW2, but a better analogy is the US occupation of Nicaragua from 1912-1933. Like Iraq, this was not brought about by a World War but by ordinary non-World War imperialist interests. The US occupied Nicaragua to expand it's power and enforce neocolonialist relations, much as it is doing in Iraq. Just as in Iraq a guerilla war eventually developed against the US occupation. One of the major organizers of this guerilla war was Augusto Sandino, an anarcho-Syndicalist. Eventually the guerillas, combined with the great depression, killed enough American forces to make the US alter it's strategy. The US created a highly corrupt and brutal puppet government under the Somozas. They built up the Somozas forces until it was capable of dealing with the guerillas itself, then the occupation was lifted. A brutal US puppet dictatorship then crushed the resistence. It appears the guerillas in Iraq may be forcing the US to switch to a similar strategy. Bush is now accelerating plans to set up an Iraqi government with it's own police, military, etc. so as to have it deal with the popular resistence, instead of US forces. Domestically this client state will be portrayed as democratic, but in reality it will be an American puppet government.

All these claims of "promoting freedom and democracy" and "enforcing UN resolutions" are just a pretext for naked aggression against an oil-rich country. Killing people for oil is wrong. Bush's imperialist war against Iraq is ultimately no different then Saddam's 1991 invasion of Kuwait. All peoples have the right to self-determination and to be free of foreign domination. The U.S. has no right to bully the rest of the world around. The US is not interested in bringing democracy to Iraq or any other country, which is why there hasn't been any elections in Iraq. In the name of "fighting communism," the U.S. subverted many democratic regimes and supported numerous dictators and mass murderers, which were just as bad (and sometimes worse) as the Marxist-Leninists they claimed to oppose. Pinochet, Marcos, bin Laden, Mobutu Sese Seko, Papadopulos, Suharto, Savimbi, Banzer, Videla, Batista, Somoza, Cordova and many other brutal thugs all were backed by the U.S. government. The U.S. continues to back many tyrannical regimes today including the Saudis, Mubarak, Musharraf and others. If the U.S. government had any interest in promoting freedom and democracy, they wouldn't be supporting these dictatorships.