Daily Archive

Could this be a method to work within the system to change the system? This snippet from a Counterpunch article by Rob Urie is interesting because its hard to argue against the notion that sharing economic power *wouldn’t* be a benefit for a democratic society.  Push-back for lightyears from those who currently hold the levers of power, but what could they say directly to the notion?  The masses are too ignorant and don’t know what is good for them?  The current standard of living is so amazing right now that it would be foolish to address and change the current (im)balance of economic power?

This notion, I think, is a should be a genuine concern to the establishment parties in the US, because both parties are defenders of a system that is essentially “make the 1% greater even more, no matter what the economic and social cost”.  One can’t reasonably defend that notion.

I hope that AOC and her ‘squad’ continue to stay the course and force a new narrative into the poltical sphere in the US.  It is probably the only way America will go forward successfully in the future.

      “The subtext of these establishment machinations is that the American political system exists to provide cover for rule by capital. The posture of the political center as the locus of reason is belied by the willingness of establishment forces to risk killing everyone on the planet with nuclear weapons, environmental decline, genocidal wars and dysfunctional economics. It is this political center that is extreme, willing to risk everything to maintain control.

While it may be simplistic to posit a singularity of capitalist interests, is it also true that the manufacture of nuclear weapons is a business, that environmental decline is a by-product of capitalist production, that wars are undertaken both to control resources and to use up military inventory and that the level of economic dysfunction is proportional to the concentration of income and wealth amongst the oligarchs.

One could grant— improbably, that the collective ‘we’ were brought to this place in history honestly, that the world is complicated and that through genocide, slavery and wars too numerous to count, we did the best we could. But this wouldn’t have one iota of relevance to where we take it from here. In this sense, ‘the squad’ exists amongst the potential heroes of this moment.

Possibly of value here is Noam Chomsky’s functional definition of class as who it is that gets to decide. Capitalism has always been ‘authoritarian,’ with owners and bosses doing the deciding. Ironically, from the bourgeois perspective, politics finds these same authoritarians determining public policy through their surrogates in the political realm. Donald Trump’s existence is an argument against concentrated power, not who wields it.

An argument could be made that ‘the squad’ was elected on precisely this point. Policies that promote economic democracy are the best way to achieve political democracy. Conversely, the greatest threat to political democracy is concentrated economic power. The Federal government spent at least a few trillion dollars on gratuitous wars in recent years, and several trillion more on bailing out financial interests. The money has always been there to meet social needs.”