No Mr. Charlies

Seems a lot of people are missing the obvious when it comes to the attack on Charlie Hebdo, even when they come oh so close by identifying it as "France's 9/11." 

No, I don't mean that "9/11" was an inside job.  I mean that 9/11 was so perfect that if it hadn't have happened, it would have been an inside job; that if it hadn't have happened, the bourgeoisie would have invented it.   

I mean that if we're going to talk about "France's 9/11," the issue to discuss is the purpose to which 9/11 was put.  The purpose was war, war spending, militarization, and the incredible boondoggle, the transfer of wealth from the so-called "national treasury" to the pockets of the security contractors, the military suppliers, to the corporations specializing in  kidnappings, tortures, assassinations.

And in all this talk about racism, and Charlie Hebdo  not being racist because "it attacked all religions and religious fundamentalism," we're ignoring the purpose racism serves.
 
Racism in its social manifestation expresses a relation of power.

To illustrate, a cartoon in the US of a black person, wearing overalls, eating watermelon, shuffling and saying "massah" is racist; not so for a cartoon showing white people wearing khaki pants, polo shirts, and running down to the mall to eat at Chuck E. Cheese pizzeria, and catch the director's cut of The Sound of Music.

Back in the day, there was an argument made by some claiming the Nation of Islam in the US was "racist" because their publications referred to "white, blue-eyed devils."

I didn't think so.  Those references were not "racism" because the Nation of Islam had absolutely zero power over the social relations that were the material basis for racism in the US. Those references were a response to, a defense against the institutionalized, programmatic attacks on African-Americans.

The relations of power, and to power, are fundamental to racism.

So...so that when the Danish newspaper publishes the cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb for a turban, that is indeed "racist;" and the cartoon about the doctor informing an expectant Moslem father "Congratulations, it's a bomb" is racist. 

The relations of power are such that the bombing that's really going on, the "dominant" so to speak mode of destruction is the bombing of people who are in the main Moslem.

Now you and I may agree  that the bombing isn't being done because they are practitioners of Islam, but that point might be lost on those having to endure daily bombings, and in particular lost when there is no class-conscious movement, on an international basis, opposing these bombings; engaging in the struggle against the system perpetrating these attacks.

Hebdo's cartoons fed, they reproduced, the dominant relations of power-- the relations that include white phosphorus being used, and with impunity by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza; the one that has capitalist intelligence agencies arming militias, encouraging their "extra-judicial" actions in order to buttress the characterization of those practicing Islam, and/or of those speaking Arabic,  as "savages," "brutes;" the relations that has the US torturing "suspects" who are Moslem; the very same relations, back in the day,  that had General John "Black Jack" Pershing executing rebels in the Philippines and burying them in pits with pigs. 

Say all you want about cartoons of the pope being naked and fucked in the ass.  Doesn't matter, and doesn't count.  Nobody's launching cruise missiles against the Vatican; killing hundreds of thousands of Catholics just for being there.

Our tasks are 1) to expose and oppose the "institutional policies," domestic and international of capitalism, that are used to categorize Arabs and/or Moslems as "enemies." 2) prevent the manipulation of events and reactions by the bourgeoisie and their state to further and expand these policies-- i.e. using "unity" or "shared values" as a stepping stone to further militarization 3) conceding nothing to, and identifying as reactionary, the ideology and practices, of fundamentalists who use the type of attacks against Charlie Hebdo as advertising, for recruitment.

January 13, 2015

NSFW

Breaking News,  White House Admits Error: "Someone of higher rank, conversant in French and Arabic, should have attended on behalf of the US. Unfortunately the only officials meeting those requirements are all connected with the US torture-interrogation program."

Priceless, isn't it?  Everyone with a racket, big and small, is out there in Paris--  Netanyahu? You must be kidding.  I wish I were.

Everyone's there flogging Charlie buttons, Charlie posters, Charlie pencils, Charlie banners, Charlie eyeglasses.  Revlon's got Charlize Theron (hey, her name even sounds French) there, passing out coupons for Charlie perfume in shatterproof bottles.  

Everyone's there flick-ing their Bics named Charlie. "Flick pour les flics."

Britain sends Prince Charles, with a button that says, Je suis vraiment Charlie.

Raytheon is represented by a predator drone named Charlie.

Sisi of Egypt is Charlie.

Fucking David Duke is a Charlie.

Restaurants are serving brunch cocktails called Bloody Charlies.

The French now have their own 9/11-- only it's  11/9,  onze-neuf.

Everyone's Charlie because they aren't.

Except....except for the chief executive of the US.  He forgot to show up.  Or send anyone...like the Secretary of State. Who speaks French.  Or a former president, like Clinton, whom the French just adore.  Je suis Charlie, mais je aime Bubba.  Or his own wife, even, Michelle who could replace him at all, and in all, functions and be an improvement.

And you thought Bush was stupid?  A bumbler?  How about this clown?  This guy doesn't recognize a business opportunity when it lands in his lap.  Like try this one:  "Say Angela, you still think our eavesdropping program is unjustified?  Bet you wish you had one.  We can do something about that."

Or maybe this one: "Hey Francoise, we got a bunch of these secret prisons, 3/4 empty, just sitting around costing us money.  We could let you have some space there.  Put anybody you want there, no questions asked... of you, that is.  You get to ask them anything you want, anyway you want to ask them.  Comes with room, water, and boards.   Nobody will ever know.  Guaranteed.  Feinstein won't tell.  Let me hook you up with our guy in the General Services Administration."

Look, they, white America, the bourgeoisie, hate this guy, because after all he's not white.  But they're disappointed because he's just not a hustler. Jackie Robinson?  He was a hustler.  Sammy Davis, Jr?  He was a hustler. But Barack doesn't get it. He can't close.  He can't make the sale.  He doesn't hustle.

January 12, 2015

 

 

Happy Old New Year

Maybe, Maybe Not

Haven't we been here before?  At least once?  Don't we know the face even if we can't recall the name?

Forget the visual cues, go for voice, the voice.  Haven't we heard this before-- heard it all and before and more than once about "radical mass organizations," "radical left popular organizations" with a new method and a new meaning and a real chance to do......to do what?.... if only.... if only what?  If only we put aside those thoughts that we've been here before where mass radical left popular democratic organizations get a real chance to do... what?, and with that chance firmly grasped between thumb and forefinger, take that spin on the capitalist merry-go-round, moving counter-clockwise, right-to-left-to-right again.  Haven't we been here before, at this un-amusement park, watching them whisper encouragement in the ear and patting the fiberglass flanks of their pretend horses, while at the same time shoving the bit of capital exploitation right down the throat of the real horses of revolution?

Maybe, maybe not.  That's what these merry-go-round jockeys think is a "dialectic."

Doesn't this all feel strangely familiar, and vice-versa?  Don't the new names, like Syriza or Podemos, and the new labels, "anti-capitalist alliance," all sound like somebody's trying to fool somebody into not remembering the last time, and the time before that?

It does, we have, and it is not deja vu, but something closer to dementia as the "plan," such as it is demands no recognition of the past; of the fact we have been here before. The plan demands no cognitive connections to those previous opportunities say like those 42 years ago in Chile, or 41 years ago in Portugal, or 40 in Spain; or 35 years ago in Nicaragua; or 33 years ago in Poland.  Or 15 years ago in Venezuela; or 10 years ago in Bolivia?  Or how many more times in Argentina? 

It's a...not quite a disease....but a syndrome. Tic, tic, tic.  Tics, jerks, spasms.

Haven't we suffered through this affliction called the "new, mass, radical, populist, democratic,left" before?

I think I remember something like this.  Wait, this time is different?  Of course it is.  It's always different.  But I think I almost recall that I heard that before, too. Last time.

This time it's different. You know who else says "This time it's different"? Economists.  And stock brokers..  "This time it's different.  This time we've conquered the business cycle."

"This time it's different."  I would have sworn that I heard that before, and in stereo, just the last time, because that time they were involved, that made it different; while this time we are involved, that makes this different.  Sure thing.  Maybe, maybe not.  That's a "dialectic," right?

And all those professors of Marx; all those profess- ers of Marx, with their forums; their call for papers; their prizes?   With their critiques schemes and dreams?  "Oxidizable money"?  "Banks serving the people"?  Enough to make someone almost remember someone saying once, "I am not a Marxist."

Haven't we had enough of all that?  Maybe, maybe not.

Maybe capital-- per Marx-- is a specific social relation; a social organization of labor, reproducing itself through the extrusion of labor-power as value, which means that it is value production that needs to be ummh...abolished, exploded, eradicated through the application of that labor power as a direct social  force which expression can only be realized, in assemblies, or councils, that exist outside and in political opposition to parliaments; operate  against constitutions, and beyond nations.

So...so what counts is not the parliamentary program, but what structures this "new movement" generates that can become organizations of distinctly dual power.

But maybe not.

Maybe all those who spend so much time and energy demonstrating the "eurocentric" error in Brenner's distinction of capitalism from other modes of production by capital's command of labor through economic, that is to say, market compulsion rather than direct physical coercion or "personal service" bonds, ought to recall that the bourgeoisie have always enforced that economic compulsion through the application of violence, and that unlike you, the bourgeoisie know that this time is no different.  They know they've been here before and they're ready, willing, and able to play it again.

But maybe not.

Maybe tethering a goat to a stake in the ground is not a good way to trap the lion, when you're the goat.

Or maybe it is.  I think I recall the lion having the advantage in those sorts of encounters. But as the years accumulate,  maybe my memories aren't what they used to be. 

Haven't we heard before all about joining the new, mass, democratic, radical populist left organizations as Marxists.. to do...to do exactly what?  To keep it...honest?

Say what?  Are you kidding me?  "Keep it/them radical mass democratic populist left movements honest?"  Do you really think I'm that stupid? 

Maybe.

But maybe not.  Maybe I have just the slightest clue about history, about that conflict between means and relations of production that triggers and drives the social struggle.  And "keeping the 'movement' honest" is to embrace irrelevance; amounts to zero history. 

Tic, tic, tic.

January 4, 2015

On the One Hand; On the Other Hand

1. Wasn't it just yesterday that bankers, finance ministers, international monetary funders, bric-ers, emerging and established marketeers were complaining about the weak dollar; about the irresponsibility of quantitative easing; about all that "hot" money sloshing and flushing through the world markets threatening all of those bankers, ministers, funders, bric-ers, marketeers with the specter of.... not communism, certainly not anything quite so quaint and obsolete as that...but that walking nightmare for capitalists called inflation?

Actually, no it wasn't just yesterday.  It was a couple of years ago, but what's a couple of years in the past to somebody just now approaching the peak of his or her theoretical, analytic, literary, sexual and, I hasten to add, comic powers?

Putting aside my existing and anticipated personal triumphs for just a moment, now the complaint is about the strengthening dollar and its adverse impact on the emerging and established marketeers, on the funders and finders, the bankers and wankers; about the veritable tax the appreciated dollar levies on those forced to settle their international positions, their trade, in the currency underpinning trade.

Putting aside my personal triumphs for just another moment, now the complaint is about deflation;  declining commodity prices; devaluation, depreciation, de-just-about-everything, which in truth has gripped the markets, consistently but more or less thoroughly since 2008, but now made so visibly acute in the collapse of oil prices brought about by the dramatic increase in US production from "tight oil" sources.

The "strong dollar" has reversed the cash flows that buoyed the emerging market countries; the flood of oil from US (and Canadian) sources has glutted the markets, eroding the earning base of commodity exporters.  Where and when once upon a time the mainest of main enemies, the greatest and most satanical of Great Satans exported inflation thereby buttressing its privileged position atop the capitalist heap through unequal exchange, now and here the mainest enemy greatest  Satan maintains its unfair ranking by exporting deflation.  On the one hand...

At the same time,   there's no shortage of analysts, advisers, political economists, political economist columnists, etc. etc. eager to  point out the "windfall," the "benefits," the uptick the decline in oil prices will mean... will mean for almost everybody... for you, for me, for airlines, bus companies, city governments, auto and their parts manufacturers.  Why, it's a veritable wage increase.  It increases disposable income.  It increases consumer spending.  It's good for you and good for me and good for....

Almost everyone.  Sure it is.

2.  It's not really the case that the strengthening dollar has dictated the course of deflation to the world economy.  Deflation in Japan has been around for 20 years more or less; and deflation in Europe is entering a seventh year, during most of which the dollar has been relatively "weak" in relation to the euro.

And it's not just  that US daily production of crude has just about doubled in six years.  It is the case that US production has doubled while the rate of growth for both global oil production and consumption has slowed dramatically.  For the period 2000-2007, global production increased by 10 percent while consumption grew by 12 percent.  For 2007-2014, world production expanded by 6.5 percent, while global consumption grew 4.2 percent.

This marked deceleration in consumption has been driven by the collapse, pretty much, in rates of consumption in North America, which flipped, on the one hand, from a 5.8 percent increase for 2000-2007 to a decrease of 7 percent in the 2007-2014.  This configuration of increased, but slowing, production with declining consumption is overproduction.  More precisely, it is the overproduction of capital that determines the declining real consumption.

Now the development of social production is, in a very real sense, the development of overproduction.  After all, the critical category for such development is surplus, socially accessible surplus.  Surplus is the "movement from necessity to freedom," which is to say, surplus is the material representation of the productivity of social labor.

As capital, the means of production exist  as commodities, as  value-extracting;  realizing, and only realizing, their accumulated value in the expansion of new values.  Capital is always a mode of persistent overproduction, and overproduction is established as an expression of the determinant negation-- value production producing devaluation--  of capitalist reproduction.  Overproduction of capital, of value, is the sweet spot and the hard place, the hammer and the anvil of the rate of profit.

So much for theory.  In the concrete, overproduction of capital, and overproduction of commodities are not immediately the same.  In the concrete, overproduction of capital and overproduction of commodities converge.

In practice, the collapse in the oil prices is the moment when the value of oil, the socially necessary time for reproduction, has eaten away at the price of production, the price through which the total profit is apportioned among the sectors of capital according to mass and efficiency.   This is the moment when the insufficient profit has been generated in capital as a whole to support the mechanisms for distributing that profit. This is the moment when the production of value undermines the property relation underpinning value production.

If the accumulation of capital, the profit of capital, were exclusively dependent upon cost,  then the decline in the price of the inputs into any one or all sectors would always and forever amplify that profit and that accumulation.   Of course, profit and accumulation are not exclusively dependent upon cost, but upon the proportions, the relations, the social ratio of the living and "dead" or "congealed" components of production.  So the reduction in input costs will be overwhelmed in all sectors of capitalist production by the general devaluation, the general decline of profits; by the inability to generate the profit in production required for both the preservation of current values, and the realization of expanded values.

Overproduction is driven by the tendency of the rate of profit to decline.  Consequently, the "increase in real wages" predicted as a consequence of oil price declines will be more than offset by reductions in the total wage as a proportion of production through unemployment, austerity, low-wage jobs, temporary work; the "boost" to consumer spending will be more than offset by the curtailment of capital spending; the "stimulus" to  production will disappear in the contraction in business activity;  the prospect of recovery will be smothered by sharp declines in the circulation of commodities manifesting first in continued slow down in the rate of growth of world trade, and then in the absolute volumes and values in world trade.

Anybody arguing that declining oil prices, abstracted from the general conditions determining those price movements, foreshadow a general upturn for capitalism doesn't know up from down, ass from elbow, one hand from the other.

S.Artesian
December 17, 2014


 

Totally Unexpected, Completely Shocking, Unbelievably Surprising....

...news:  Heavily redacted executive summary of US Senate Select Intelligence Committee  report on CIA interrogation methods reveals CIA tortured; CIA lied; CIA deceived; CIA didn't actually obtain "intelligence."

From the Financial Times editorial of 11 December 2014: 

The most overlooked part of the US Senate's report on the Central Intelligence Agency's  use of torture is its remedies.  It offers none.  Many of the report's details are new and shocking.  There is no doubt that after 9/11 CIA routinely practiced brutal forms of torture, misled Congress about what it was up to and made false claims about the benefits of "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Technically not.  The most overlooked part of this entire charade is the assertion that the CIA method of operation was initiated after 9/11, as if all throughout the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, the CIA had not practiced brutal forms of interrogation and assassination; as if before 9/11 the CIA hadn't engaged in the protection of drug dealers; as if before 9/11 the CIA hadn't employed Mafioso, Nazis, murderers, torturers in its "everyday"activities; as if prior to 9/11 didn't mislead Congress; as if before and after  9/11 the Congress wasn't/isn't  only too happy to be misled; as if the CIA hasn't always been in the business of making false claims about everything and anything.

 Let's be clear, the CIA is no abscess on the body of US "democracy."  US "democracy" is the abscess on the body of the human species.    


S. Artesian
December 13, 2014

A Modest Proposal

Some worry has been expressed that the demonstrations against police murders of black people lack "demands" or "program."  Me?  I'm not worried.  I think that the demonstrations' organizing principle-- "Stop Police Murder"-- through taking to the streets is both necessary and sufficient. It, taking direct action, is the appropriate and only viable means to the end.

So the questions, so to speak, are not  "What are your goals?  What is your plan?  What's the strategy?"  The issue that needs addressing is "How do we sustain this?  How do we expand this struggle, make the struggle both more extensive and intensive?"   

It's tough for me to admit it, and probably impossible for others to believe it, by I don't have all the answers, emphasis on all.  But I do have a modest proposal.  I propose we start the expansion process by agitating for the separation and expulsion of all police unions, organizations, "brotherhoods," including those of  prison and security guards, etc. from membership in or confederations with labor unions.

Isolation of the police unions from those of labor means opposition and nothing is more important to the development of a workers' movement in the US today than rejection of and opposition to the police as part of that movement.

Demonstrations against union confederations that include police associations; unions that include police officers as members; labor organizations that maintain "fraternal" ties to police organizations; district labor councils that include or allow police representations-- seem like a good, and logical, place to start.

Leave your prescription pill vials at home, lest some cop mistake it for a gun.

December 5, 2014

Welcome to Ferguson, New York

So we have a video recording, an audio recording; we have the medical examiner's report-- "homicide;"  we have a cause, application of the choke hold, a "banned" maneuver, and we have a grand jury that "refuses" to indict.    The obvious conclusion is what it  always has been,  that the police are doing their jobs, and their job is  what it always has been, choking the life out of black people.  Next case.

Look, even the state of Mississippi was able to get Byron de la Beckwith to the actual trial stage three times. 

You have to understand the way the system works: black youth with his hands up? Mortal threat.  Black man selling loose cigarets? Capital crime.  White youth shooting dozens in a school?  Troubled boy.  White men fleecing thousands, earning millions?  Role models.

December 3, 2014