Thomas Riggins' Blog

The First Casuality of War

2012-01-25T11:18:00.000-08:00

Thomas Riggins

It was really disheartening watching the Republican presidential wannabes debating in Florida last Monday (1-23-2012). Three of the four blithely told the American people that there was, with respect to the war in Afghanistan, no substitute for victory and they would not pull out until our ally, the Afghan army, was ready to take on the Taliban and protect the country on its own. Their implication was that Obama would pull out early because he is not up to the task of seeing us through to victory.

It has well been said that truth is the first casualty of war. The American people have been consistently misled about the war in Afghanistan-- just as they have been about Iraq (we left behind a "democracy"), Vietnam, and every other war we have waged since the end of World War 2 (not excluding the Cold War).

Let's look at what is going on now in Afghanistan according to recent headlines in the New York Times (1-20-2012). This front page headline should tell us what is really going on vis a vis building up our "ally" the Afghan army: it reads, "Afghan Soldiers Step Up Killings of Allied Forces." In fact so many US/Nato troops are being killed by our Afghan allies that Nato, after declaring this was a small insignificant problem, announced that it would no longer issue the statistics regarding the number of allied troops killed by Afghan soldiers!

Let's take a closer look at this story. The NYT got hold of a classified report by the US side ("the coalition"--i.e., 80,000 US troops and a smattering of others from Nato to create an international flavor) and, in a Wiki Leaks moment, decided to reveal its contents. It says the Afghan forces being trained by the US side are killing more and more of the very coalition troops that are supposed to be training them as our allies. This is a symptom of the "contempt" with which the Americans and Afghans hold each other-- "never mind the Taliban."

The increased violence against the US forces by its own puppet army brings into doubt any future role the US may have in the country and any hopes it may have of leaving behind a puppet army that will look out for its interests and be able to stop the Taliban. What is more, "the failure by coalition commanders to address" the violence and the deteriorating situation can only exasperate the problem. The US does not want this to be a problem so it pretends that it is not. How can this work?

The contempt that American troops have towards the Afghan people was demonstrated by the recent videos of US troops urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban soldiers. While this was condemned by US officials the NYT reports that Facebook and chatrooms maintained by US troops were "full of praise for the desecration". This indicates that whatever the US says officially, the actual environment in which our troops are operating is permeated with racism and even hatred for Afghans-- the racism that permeates American society can't be left behind when we go overseas.

With respect to the increase in the killing of US troops and their allies by members of the Afghan army, the Times reports that US and Nato officials publicly downplay its significance by issuing press statements that the killings are "isolated incidents" or done by "disturbed individuals" or "Taliban infiltrators." Not to worry!

However, the secret report made by and for the coalition forces indicates that what our officials tell the the press, for domestic consumption, is the opposite of the truth. The NYT quotes the report as follows: "Lethal altercations are clearly not rare or isolated; they reflect a rapidly growing systemic homicide threat (a magnitude of which may be unprecedented between 'allies' in modern military history"). And the official statements "seem disingenuous, if not profoundly intellectually dishonest."

Did the secret report teach out military spokespeople anything? Well here is what Lt. Col. Jimmie E. Cummings, US spokesperson, had to say for public consumption, "incidents in the recent past where Afghan soldiers have wounded or killed I.S.A.F.[the American led International Security Assistance Force] members are isolated cases and are not occurring on a routine basis. We train and are partnered with Afghan personnel every day and we are not seeing any issues or concerns with our relationships." Then why order a report and then keep it secret? Personally, I don't believe much from the Pentagon anyway; most everything they and Nato say is just lies to befool the American people-- and they are very successful at least with Republican presidential candidates.

What type of "Afghan personnel" do we get to join our puppet army in the first place? This is how an Afghan commander (an Afghan Army Colonel) describes his own troops, according to the NYT, they are "thieves, liars and drug addicts." Not the best raw material to build an army to defend the "democratic gains" of the Afghan people with. These troops also don't like our troops. The colonel added."The sense of hatred is growing rapidly" because the Americans are "rude, arrogant bullies who use foul language."

The sooner we leave Afghanistan the better. How can we possibly think we can create a strong Afghan force when we don't respect them and they don't respect us? It is just another imperialist dream that ignores the world as it really is and operates on the assumption that the world you want to be in is the real world. It would be a great disaster for the American people, the Afghans, and everyone else for that matter for a Republican to take over the presidency this year and try and pursue the war in Afghanistan to "ultimate victory."

Frederick Engels on Dühringian vs. Marxian Socialism: Production

2012-01-10T09:09:00.000-08:00

Thomas Riggins

In the antepenultimate chapter of his book Anti-Dühring Engels explains the differences between the "socialism" espoused by Professor Eugen Dühring and the socialism of Karl Marx and himself. Dühring thinks the ideas of Marx are "bastards of historical and logical fantasy" and he seeks to replace them with his own views which are, naturally, the true historical and logical ideas which socialists should adopt.[Anti-Dühring Part III Chapter III "Production"]

Engels will compare his and Marx's "bastard" progeny with the "legitimate" progeny of Herr Dühring with respect to economic production in this chapter. Dühring rejects any notion of the capitalist production system which claims that economic crises are due to the very nature of the structure of capitalism itself. That is a Marxian fantasy.

For Dühring, Engels says, "crises are only occasional deviations from 'normalcy' and at most only serve to promote 'the development of a more regulated order.'" The Marxists maintain, au contraire, that crises are caused by over-production and this is a structural fault within the capitalist system itself. But Dühring rejects this and writes that the real reason for crises is, in his words,"the lagging behind of popular consumption … artificially produced under-consumption … with the natural growth of the NEEDS OF THE PEOPLE (!), which ultimately make the gulf between supply and demand so critically wide."

To this Engels replies that the masses have been forced to under-consume throughout history and in every economic system based on class exploitation, therefore under-consumption is not some artificially produced phenomenon but something all class societies share-- i.e., that the exploited class never has the value of its yearly production returned to it at the end of the year. The crises of industrial capitalism, however, only date from the the first quarter of the nineteenth century.

Thus, Engels concludes, it is under capitalism that periodic economic crises come into the world and while under-consumption of the masses is a PREREQUISITE it is not the CAUSE of crises. And knowing this, he says, "tells us just as little why crises exist today as why they did not exist before."

Dühring, in fact, does not think mass markets are all that important anyway. He himself says that capitalist production happens to "depend for its market mainly on THE CIRCLES OF THE POSSESSING CLASSES THEMSELVES." His confusion becomes only more apparent when he follows up on this by claiming that the most important industries (this is the 1870s remember) are cotton and iron production. But, Engels points out, the production of these two is entirely dependent on a mass market and the possessing class make up only an "infinitesimally small degree" of its market.

Engels then points out that capitalism, by it very need to grow and expand, brings about crises. He says, for example, in England there is just one small town (Oldham) that from 1872 to 1875 doubled its production of spun cotton [the number of its spindles went from 2.5 to 5 million] and this is just one of a dozen small towns around Manchester. Oldham, by the way, produced as much spun cotton as ALL of Germany (including Alsace). This was happening in towns all over Great Britain.

It thus shows "deep-rooted effrontery" on the part of Herr Dühring to blame the English masses for under-consumption rather than the capitalists for over-production when it comes to "the present complete stagnation in the yarn and cloth markets." [Engels is referring to an economic crises of the 1870s.]

Engels ends his critique of Herr Dühring's views on crises but gives a few quotes that demonstrate that Dühring has no idea about capitalism as an economic system but sees everything in terms of the behavior of individuals. If over-speculation and the unplanned building of private factories are responsible for crises we must see that as simply "the ordinary interplay of overstrain and relaxation" of the system and look closely at "the rashness of individual entrepreneurs and the lack of private circumspection" as one of the causes.

The only "rashness" here, Engels maintains, is the habit of turning the facts of economics into "moral reprobation." This is a problem of our times as well, not just the time of Engels. How often do we hear talk about our current crisis as a product of "greed" on the part of Wall Street bankers and that they should pay their "fair share" of taxes and such rubbish as if the decay of capitalism is a moral disorder on the part of the ruling class instead of a structural disorder that requires the replacement of the system rather than remedial Sunday school classes for the capitalists.

But all this has been treated of in the previous chapter of Anti-Dühring and Engels wants to move on (Cf. "Frederick Engels on the Theoretical Development of Modern Capitalism" in the November 2011 Political Affairs). Engels will now turn his attention to Dühring's new system of viewing socialism which is called "the natural system of society."

Dühring bases his system of socialism on what he calls the "universal principle of justice" which applies everywhere and is independent of historical and economic facts. This is enough to disqualify it as idealistic nonsense but Engels wants to philosophically pepper spay Dühring for having the gall to attack Marx for being unclear and fuzzy as to what type of socialism he believes in. It appears that the demands made in the name of the workers in the Communist Manifesto are "erroneous half measures" far inferior to Dühring's ideas which represent "a comprehensive schematism of great import in human history."

Marx, according to Dühring, thinks of socialism as "nothing more than the corporative ownership by groups of workers … an ownership that is both individual and social." Engels is upset because this is far from anything Marx has suggested and in truth actually applies to the system that Dühring has concocted.

Dühring advocates a federation of independent economic communes which compete with one another and which have absolute freedom of movement from one commune to another. In this crazy system the wealthy successful communes will out compete the poorly run communes which will become defunct as the people will all end up moving to the well run ones.

Production within the communes stays the same as production in the past--i.e., the communes are still capitalist in nature even though controlled by the workers. So the greatly touted natural system of justice and the new socialism amounts to the fact, Engels says, that "the commune takes the place of the capitalists."

What are Dühring's views on the most basic form of all hitherto existing methods of production-- i.e., the division of labor? With respect to the primary division, that between TOWN and COUNTRY (or industry and agriculture) he has little to say beyond some common place remarks about its "inevitable" nature and the possibility of overcoming it in the future. Thin gruel from Engels' point of view.

When it comes to the modern division of labor in trade and industry Dühring is very vague and only says that we have an "erroneous division of labor" and that all will be remedied in the future "as soon as account is taken of the various natural conditions and personal capabilities [of the workers]." Engels doesn't say so, but Dühring's views here are suspiciously similar to those of Plato in the Republic and very far from the socialist analysis of Marx to which Engels now turns.

Marx tells us that in all societies where production springs up "spontaneously" (including capitalism) we discover the means of production dominate the people not the other way around. The first great division of labour saw the development of towns and cities surrounded by peasant agriculturalists. This division has doomed rural people for thousands of years, Marx says, to "mental torpidity" and enslaved the town dwellers to their own specialized trade. This "stunting" of humanity increases with the increase of the division of labor.

Under capitalism the workers become tied to their machines and to one specific function and one tool. Capitalism, Marx says in Das Kapital "converts the laborer into a crippled monstrosity. by forcing his detail dexterity at the expense of a world of productive capabilities and instincts…. The individual himself is made the automatic motor of a fractional operation." How much this has been alleviated by the modern day union movement varies from country to country and in proportion to the percentage of workers who are unionized. The large number of working people in the US for example, that vote Republican shows that "mental torpidity" is not confined to the rural populations of Texas, Iowa or Alaska (to name a few).

It is not just the workers who suffer under the present day division of labor but also, Engels says, the "empty-minded bourgeois" chasing after profits (Donald Trump comes to mind), the lawyers dominated by "fossilized legal conceptions" and so-called "educated classes" of society plagued by "local narrow-mindedness" and "mental short-sightedness"-- just think of the tribe of Sunday morning news pundits paraded before the public by all the major TV networks, or the platoons of professors giving advice about everything under the sun and hardly agreeing on anything other than that capitalism is still the best of all possible economic formations.

But how are we to overcome this division of labor and the consequent alienation of humanity from its potentials and possibilities? One way only says Engels: "in making itself the master of all the means of production to use them in accordance with a social plan, society puts an end to the former subjection of men to their own means of production." In other words, socialism based on central planning and most importantly-- a feature historically absent in 20th century socialist societies due to their premature appearance in economically backward conditions-- planning democratically controlled and carried out by the working people themselves. The former alienating division of labor will be done away with as "society cannot free itself unless every individual is freed."

Engels says that this is not just a "fantasy" or a "pious wish." He maintains that the state of industrial development in the 1870s is so advanced that society could "reduce the time required for labour to a point which measured by our present conceptions, will be small indeed." This figure needs to be actually quantified-- but the point is all the goodies needed to live and thrive could be created with people just working a few hours a week and with no one being chained to any one boring and unsatisfying job. The growth in productivity since Engels' day must make this even more true today.

Engels quotes Das Kapital: "The employment of machinery does away with the necessity of crystallizing this distribution [of labor-tr] after the manner of Manufacture, by the constant annexation of a particular man to a particular function. Since the motion of the whole system does not proceed from the workman, but from the machinery, a change of persons can take place at any time without an interruption of the work…."

Modern capitalism with its constant crises and dislocations of industrial centers and working people and financial catastrophes makes, Marx says, it necessary that we posit as a "fundamental law of production, variation of work" so that modern workers have to be ready to change jobs and learn new skills or leave the labor market. This disrupts lives and threatens widespread social disorder. Only socialist planning and a system that puts people before profits can prevent society from self destructing under the contradictions generated by the present capitalist world market which, in the name of profits first and people last, fragments both human individuals and their social relations with others which inevitably results from the private appropriation of socially created wealth.

Engels also says that the abolition of capitalism and the development "one single vast plan" which harmoniously "dovetails" industry and the means of production so that the differences between town and country are overcome is a prerequisite to overcoming environmental degradation and "present poisoning the air water and land." To this must be added the current disaster of human induced global warming which simply cannot be dealt with as long as capitalism remains the dominant economic system. This problem was not seen in Engels' day and now, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence of impending doom, the various capitalist powers are unwilling to take the drastic regulatory measures needed to deal with the problem.

Engels maintains that none of these claims he is making is "utopian" but that they are logical conclusions of scientific central planning and the abolition of the difference between town and country. It looks as if the towns, or rather the great cities (such as New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing, etc., etc., will have be abolished as well! Engels says that it "is true that in the huge towns civilization has bequeathed us a heritage which it will take much time and trouble to get rid of." But, "the great towns will perish."

No, this is not Pol Pot, it is Frederick Engels and he is saying this because he envisions a complete redistribution of the population under socialism in order to get the "most equal distribution possible of modern industry." So the abolition of the separation of town and country means the abolition of the cities. They must and will be eliminated "however protracted a process it may be." This might just be a little too "utopian" and perhaps with the progress of science and communications since the 1870s, especially the growth of the internet, the contradictions between town and country can be resolved without offing the Big Apple.

In any event, leaving the abolition of cities aside, the point Engels wants to make is that Dühring's view of socialism leaves out of account that building socialism will necessitate "revolutionizing from top to bottom the old method of production and first of all putting an end to the old division of labour." Dühring thinks that the state can just take over production as is and harmonize it to people's "natural appetites and personal capabilities." He also thinks the division between town and country is natural and inevitable and has no plan for putting an end to the alienation and crippling of human capabilities that result from this division.

So much for Engels' critique of Dühringian socialism's handling of production. In the penultimate chapter of Anti-Dühring Engels will discuss the problems of distribution.

Blame The Brain

2011-12-29T13:12:00.001-08:00

Thomas Riggins

Why do people commit atrocities? What is responsible for brutality and the cold blooded murder of innocents carried out by Nazis, the Hutu in Rwanda , or the United States against the Vietnamese people and more recently much of the civilian population of Iraq? Some scientists believe they have found the answer.

ScienceDaily reports ("Brain's Failure to Appreciate Others May Permit Human Atrocities," 12-14-2011) that the part of the brain responsible for social interaction with others may malfunction resulting in callousness leading to inhumane actions towards others. Scientists at Duke and Princeton have hypothesized, in a recent study, that this brain area can "disengage" when people encounter others they think are "disgusting" and the resulting violence perpetrated against them is due to thinking these objectified others have no "thoughts and feelings."

The study, according to ScienceDaily, considers this a "shortcoming" which could account for the genocide and torture of other peoples. Examples of this kind of objectification can be seen in the calling of Jews "vermin" by the Nazis, the Tutsi "cockroaches" by the Hutu, and the American habit of calling others "gooks" (as well as other unflattering terms).

Lasana Harris (Duke) says that "When we encounter a person, we usually infer something about their minds [do they have more than one?]. Sometimes, we fail to do this, opening up the possibility that we do not perceive the person as fully human." I wonder about this? What is meant by fully human? Surely the Hutu, for example, who had lived with the Tutsi for centuries did not really fail to infer that they had "minds."

Practicing something called "social neuroscience" which seems to consist of showing different people pictures while they are undergoing an MRI and then drawing conclusions from which areas of the brain do or do not "light up" when asked questions about these pictures, the scientists conducting this study discovered that an area of the brain dealing with "social cognition"-- i.e., feelings, thoughts, empathy, etc., "failed to engage" when pictures of homeless people, drug addicts , and others "low on the social ladder" were shown.

Susan Fiske (Princeton) remarked, "We need to think about other people's experience. It's what makes them fully human to us." ScienceDaily reported that the researchers were struck by the fact "people will easily ascribe social cognition-- a belief in an internal life such as emotions-- to animals and cars, but will avoid making eye contact with the homeless panhandler in the subway."

I don't think many people, at least if they haven't recently watched "Herbie", really think cars have an internal emotional life. The reason people avoid eye contact with the homeless is not, I think, because they don't see them as fully human, but because they do and they know, deep down, that they are in what Sartre called "bad faith" with respect to not helping or being able to help a fellow human being.

What seems to be unaddressed in this study is the "cause" of the objectification of others. Suppose brain area X is responsible for empathy and it does not "light up" in Nazis when they are around Jews. is this the reason that Nazis engage in inhumane acts? Is it a brain malfunction? Or is it perhaps the case that people who have been educated as Nazis, who have been subjected to intense Nazi propaganda and have been led to believe the Nazi world view will then have brains that won't respond to empathy to those considered hostile to Nazism? It is not a brain malfunction but a normal brain response to educational conditioning. This is, by the way, why ruling classes seek to control the content of public and private education and de facto censor views and individuals they view as "subversive."

This is an interesting scientific study, but I do not think the answer to man's inhumanity to man, at least with respect to large political and social movements, is to be explained by college students (the test sample) looking at pictures while undergoing an MRI.

Capitalism in a Fish Bowl

2011-12-07T10:12:00.000-08:00

Thomas Riggins

Capitalism can sometimes be very confusing to figure out, especially with the complex interrelations of the world economy and the the different banking laws and corporate structures and all the national forms economies take. It would be helpful if we had a very simple way to look at it and figure it out. A simple model of how this system works which we could extrapolate to the whole system to understand it the better. I propose to discuss what is happening to the fish in the seas and to suggest that their fate under capitalism is just a smaller version of the fate that awaits us all if we allow this economic system to continue to dominate our lives and our planet. My information is taken from a ScienceDaily online article from December 5, 2011 entitled "Marine Predators in Trouble."

As we are well aware the world's oceans used to team with sea life and great flotillas of fishing vessels have scoured the seas to catch this life and bring it to market to feed a hungry world [at least a hungry rich northern world] and to make a profit-- especially a profit-- and if a particular species of fish could bring in a good profit it would be fished to extinction to obtain that profit rather than be allowed to recover to be fished again some day in the future. It is not a sustainable food supply that capitalism seeks to create-- but immediate profits on its investments. This is, by the way, why humane farming laws are difficult to enact and almost impossible to enforce.

At any rate, the SD article reports that scientists at the University of British Columbia have published a study that shows since the 1950s large marine predators such as marlins, swordfish, tunas and sharks have declined by 90% and have practically been wiped out in the northern Pacific and Atlantic by commercial fishing. These commercial fish, having been hunted to near extinction in the northern Hemisphere, are no longer sought in great numbers in the north by the fishing fleets. After sweeping them out of the coastal areas of the northern continents and islands, the fleets scoured the the open seas and have now headed to the southern Hemisphere where they intend to continue their unsustainable fishing methods to maintain their profits; pillaging the coasts and the open waters of the Indian and South Pacific and Atlantic oceans as well as the Antarctic Ocean.

One of the researchers mentioned in the SD article and lead author of the study, Laura Tremblay-Boyer, was quoted as saying: "Species such as tuna have been seriously exploited because of high market demand. A constant theme throughout of global marine ecosystems is these top predators are today prey for human beings, assisted by some serious technology. Top marine predators are more intrinsically vulnerable to the effects of fishing due to their life histories. Bluefin tuna, for instance, cannot reproduce until age nine." But the demand for fish from the markets of the north has not ceased. And now, the same shortage are beginning to appear in the southern oceans.

"After running out of predator fish in the north Atlantic and Pacific," co-author of the study Daniel Pauly said, "rather than implementing strict management and enforcement, the fishing industry pointed its bows south. The southern hemisphere predators are now on the same trajectory as the ones in the northern hemisphere. What happens next when we have nowhere left to turn?"

A good question. This is exactly the same behavior we have seen the capitalists engaging in with respect to climate change. Cancun, Copenhagen, and now Durban. No binding agreements-- infact the major world leaders didn't even bother to show up for this conference (Durban)-- and it is breathable air and temperatures compatible with life that is the issue. What does happened next when we have nowhere left to turn?

Farewell to McRib (for now)

2011-11-24T08:27:00.000-08:00

Thomas Riggins

The famous McRib pork patty has once again made a brief appearance at a McDonald's near you. For a brief three weeks, October 24 to November 14, the elusive pork patty was available to the masses of gustatorily challenged carnivores who have become addicted to its unique combination of nutritionally disastrous chemical toxins.

From it first appearance, 1981-1985, (occasioned by a dearth of chickens available for nuggetivation) the McRib has been on and off the McDonald's menu several times. It was widely available after being reintroduced in 1989-- until removed again in 2005. Since then it has had a sporadic career in different parts of the McDonald's Empire (except for Germany where it has always been available due to the unquenchable appetite for all things porky). But in the last couple of years the Empire has begun to make it available nationwide but only for a few weeks at a time with long periods between appearances.

What is the nature of this pork patty? It has no ribs in it so its name is somewhat misleading. Like a Hollywood star its real name, McRestructured-Meat-Product, was deemed by its creators too off putting to gain much attraction or many fans. Even McPork-Patty did not seem to have much appeal. But who doesn't like ribs? And who wouldn't fall for a juicy plump (at least in its roll) glob of restructured meat product with fake rib indentations slathered in barbecue sauce and introduced as the McRib sandwich (the name that brought it fame)?

But behind that lovely exterior McRib hides a sordid past. Its popularity masks its history of chemical dependence. It cannot show up to perform it culinary wonders unless it has been provided with seventy different chemicals and compounds by its legions of enablers.

It starts life on the slaughterhouse floor of Smithfield Foods which supplies McDonald with the raw meat that will become McRib. This relationship may soon end as the Humane Society of the United States is even now exposing what it calls cruel and inhumane treatment of the animals Smithfield slaughters and is asking for the intervention of the federal government to halt the company's alleged truly odious practices.

McDonald's takes this meat-- basically pork shoulder mixed with pig tripe (the next door neighbor of chitlins in the pig digestive system), hearts, and scalded pig stomach technically known as "restructured meat (pork) product" but, due to the company's friends in Congress, listed for the public as "pork"-- mashed up into a mush to which about three dozen chemicals and compounds are mixed (including sauce and bun) to make it appear presentable and sells it to the public. Since you can imagine what this slop might taste like in its natural state it needed all sorts of artificial flavors and colors mixed into it, and its sauce and bun, before anyone could be lured into embracing it with the love it so richly does not deserve.

One of its flavors comes from the 980 mg of salt it gets along with 26 grams of fat, including trans fat, and 41% of your daily maximum of cholesterol. McRib is now ready to weigh in at 500 calories, slightly less than the lead star at McDonald's, the Big Mack. And, if you find McRib's bun nice looking, one of the reasons is it is bleached with azodicarbonate a chemical more commonly used in making foamed plastics in shoe soles and gym mats. By the looks of some McRib's fans, azodicarbonate may be the closest they will ever get to a gym.

Why the periodic appearance of McRib? I don't know but it may have something to do with the fact that different states have different times of expiration for their statutes of limitation on personal injury law suits.

In any case, the McRib is once again in semi-retirement. If we are lucky, maybe by next Thanksgiving McDonald's will have McTurkey ready for us.

Greenhouse Gases Continue to Increase

2011-11-11T11:57:00.000-08:00

GREENHOUSE GASES BUILDING UP IN ATMOSPHERE DESPITE WARNINGS FROM SCIENTISTS
Thomas Riggins

Even as scientists around the world continue to warn that the build up of greenhouse gases, especially CO2 from carbon based fuels, is leading to drastic changes in the earth's climate which could result in catastrophic storms, floods, rising sea levels, famines and mass extinction of plants and animals the major international oil and gas cartels continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere while the leading governments of the world fail to take meaningful action to save the atmosphere.

Just this week Kerry Sheridan reported, in Agence France-Presse, that last year, according to the US Department of Energy (this is the one Gov. Perry couldn't remember he wanted to abolish) carbon based fuels (oil, gas, and coal) dumped the largest yearly amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in history. Led by the world's three greatest atmospheric polluters, China, the US, and India, the industrialized countries managed, despite all the warnings, to dump about 512 million metric-tons- of additional carbon into the air in 2010; the most ever seen in a single year since data began being collected as far back as 1751. This means there are about 9.1 billion metric tons of carbon based gases floating around in the atmosphere, about 6% more than in 2009. This is no way to fight global warming.

John Abraham of the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) School of Engineering was quoted as saying "This is very bad news. These results show that it will be harder to make the tough cuts to emissions if we are to head off a climate crisis." Another climate scientist, Scott Mandis, remarked that "Science tells us that we are driving in a fog headed toward a cliff but are unsure just how far away it is. Given this warning, it is quite foolish to be stepping on the accelerator."

In light of this it is shocking that so many people in our country don't even believe in this largely man made atmospheric pollution: this due to deep seated ignorance of science spawned by a dysfunctional education system, media complicity with Wall Street corporations that profit from a carbon based fuel economy, and know nothing right wing politicians, especially exemplified by the Republican presidential candidates who publicly proclaim that global warming induced by the burning of fossil fuels is a "hoax."

Fortunately the American people are beginning to wake up and take matters in their own hands. They are mobilizing to fight against states that desire to issue fracking permits to oil companies, and under the stimulus of the Occupy Wall Street movement and 350.org (the website devoted to mobilizing against global warming) have thrown a monkey wrench into the federal government's plan to rush through approval of the oil pipeline from Canada to Texas. Now they must mobilize against the oil drilling permits the government is handing out for off shore drilling in the Arctic and the Gulf of Mexico, especially the new ones to BP which hasn't even paid its fines for the Gulf spill it caused.

We must fight every plan to increase dependency on fossil fuels and demand that solar, wind, water, and other non polluting renewalable energy sources be developed (NOT including nuclear power).

Senator Rubio's Credibility Gap

2011-10-24T11:00:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

Senator Marko Rubio, a Tea Party Republican who wants to get rid of Medicare and cut back Social Security, according to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, is fighting back after he was exposed juicing up his official biography in order to appeal to the ultra-right.

Rubio, recently elected to the Senate from Florida, has been touted in some quarters as a potential vice-presidential candidate on the Republican ticket in 2012-- a male version of Sarah Palin, the New York Times calls him "charismatic."

The Senator, however, has been exposed as claiming to be the son of Cuban exiles who had to flee the evil regime of Fidel Castro to find freedom in segregationist Florida, when in fact his parents came over to the Sunshine State in 1956-- if they were escaping anyone it was Batista and his capitalist dictatorship.

But in Rubio's version, dished out to unsophisticated Florida voters and until recently a part of his official Senate biography, he said his "Cuban-born parents came to America following Fidel Castro's takeover." Well, that has been removed from his official bio when it was pointed out that Cuba was liberated from the Batista dictatorship in 1959 not 1956.

Rubio who once said about his parents that "They were immigrants, and they were also exiles. That is the essence of my story." The "essence" of his story turns out to be one big fat whopper-- not easily digested. Called out on his "exiles" story Rubio said it was "outrageous" to think he might have, as the Times put it "embellished his family story for political advantage." Duh! [See, "Senator Lashes Out at Critics Who Say He Embellished His Family's Story,'' by Lizette Alvarez and Jennifer Steinhauer, NYT 10-22-2011.]

It seems he just got confused about the dates. He said that "In hindsight, I wish I had found out about the dates. But it was not relevant to the important narrative about what my experience was." Not important! The son of people fleeing communist "tyranny" or just the son of run of the mill immigrants looking for more moolah than they could make under the Batista dictatorship is "not relevant."

But it is relevant. Here is what George Gonzalez, a Cuban-American teaching at the University Miami says: "Every Cuban-American knows when their parents arrived and the circumstances under which they arrived. That's part of the Cuban exile experience, the political and psychological trauma of it [most of them chose to come here so it's not really so much exile as becoming expats--tr]. So the idea that he was murky on those ideas does not cut ice." There are those who defend him of course but I think Gonzalez has hit the nail on its head. The people of Florida are stuck with this phony for six years, then they should dump him.

Frederick Engels on the Theoretical Development of Modern Socialism

2011-10-17T12:46:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

Engels discusses the theories of modern socialism in chapter two of part three of his book Anti-Dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science. We are informed that socialism is a politico-economic theory based on the materialist conception of history. Unlike idealist conceptions that history is based on the great ideas and actions of famous individuals (the view of Bertrand Russell for one), or guided by spiritual forces, or the expression of a grand plan set up by some deity or other (there are several choices as to which deity came up with the plan) materialists believe that the existence of the various institutions and social structures that have developed overtime, and by which various groups of humans arrange their social institutions, belief patterns, and social relations are to be understood, in the last analysis, by a study of how they interact to make their daily bread (production) and how they come to distribute what they made to each other (distribution). Thus the causes of the different phases of human development , Engels says, "are to be sought, not in the philosophy but in the economics of each particular epoch."

Today, Engels says (he means the 1870s in Europe but his comments are still as true now as then) there is a growing sense that something is basically wrong and unfair in how our national and international economic system operates. It can't employ all who wish to work, millions of people are living in poverty, famines droughts brought about by human activity engulf large sections of the globe and hunger stalks the streets of many of our largest cities, families are homeless and uprooted, and our schools and colleges fail to properly educate the youth to understand the world they live in. Yet a very small group of wealthy people grow richer and richer while the vast majority of humanity suffers and wastes away.

This shows, according to Engels, that new ways of production and distribution have evolved and that the social order we live in has not kept up with these developments. In fact our social order has become dysfunctional and is holding back all the possible potential improvements in human welfare that the new productive and distributive powers could provide. It is the task of socialists to discover and point out the current impediments which prevent the productive system from reaching its full potential and to discover the means of benefiting all humanity rather than just a small portion. And, he says: "These means are not to be invented, spun out of the head, but discovered with the aid of the head in the existing material facts of production."

Our present society is the creation of a class of people consisting of merchants, shopkeepers, owners of small manufacturing concerns, all those who made their living either by buying, selling, and trading commodities, small farmers who trucked their product to market and those who ministered to them (doctors, lawyers, teachers and preachers). Underneath this class was a class of laborers who made the commodities, or helped in their storage and distribution, upon which the former relied for their income. This latter class became the working class of today and the former the class of people living off of the surplus value created by the working class. Marx and others referred to them as the bourgeoisie or capitalists.

This mode of production, the creation of commodities for a market, has come to be called capitalism. The first capitalists found themselves subservient to a powerful ruling class of nobles consisting of feudal lords and (mostly) hereditary monarchs who lived by means of agricultural exploitation of serfs and taxation of the income of the developing bourgeoise. This ruling class stifled the productive capacity of the bourgeoise and prevented it from reaching its true potential. In other words, the bounds within which the feudal system restricted the capitalists were incompatible with that class's growing mode of production and so, Engels says, the "bourgeoisie broke up the feudal system and built upon its ruins the capitalist order of society."

Once the feudal bonds were broken (the French Revolution was one of the most dramatic instances) the capitalist mode of production flourished and developed the productive forces of society to unprecedented heights, only in its turn to find that its own associated method of distribution contradicted its mode of production. The social product is a collective creation of working people in all the branches of production but it is appropriated by a small number of capitalists who own and control the means by which this social product is created. The social product is then distributed in a way that increases the social wealth of the capitalist class at the expense of the well being of the working people, ultimately leading to their impoverishment. The only way the working people can free themselves from the exploitation of the capitalist class is by uniting together and abolishing it.

This conflict is waged daily in every work place, factory, field, and mine where the capitalist mode of production holds sway. This very active and real class warfare is a feature, 24/7, of daily life in almost every country on the face of the earth, and just like high blood pressure (the silent killer) it is going on and even intensifying whether the people involved are aware of it or not.

Engels says, "Modern socialism is nothing but the reflex in thought , of this conflict in fact; its ideal reflection in the minds, first, of the class directly suffering under it, the working class." The fact that in many countries many, and even most, working people are lacking this "reflex in thought" is testament to the power of the capitalist class, through its mass media and control of the education system, means of entertainment, and professional sports, to fill the heads of working people with illusions and a false sense of reality.

How did this class warfare between workers and capitalists begin? It was not to be found in the Middle Ages because the peasant farmers and handicraft men, or their families, made their own necessities by and large, and the products of their labor belonged to them. They could use them themselves or take them to market as commodities or pay their taxes and feudal dues in kind or exchange them with one another.

With the progress of invention it was possible for a person to set up shop with, say, many looms, and put many hands to work side by side with the peasant with his own loom in his hut making products for himself. Now the product of the man with many looms belonged to him and loom workers were given wages.

Engels says the old division of labor of the peasant village with products being exchanged in kind began to break up as this primitive factory system began to evolve. "In the midst of the old division of labour, grown up spontaneously and upon no definite plan, which had governed the whole of society, now arose division of labor upon a definite plan, as organized in the factory; side by side with individual production appeared social production." Planning locally, and eventually central planning, was a major feature of the success of capitalism. Whatever the problems of 20th century socialism were, they did not result from the use of central planning per se.

As the capitalist system evolved it eventually replaced individual production with social production but kept in place individual appropriation of the products that were produced-- thus creating a new class of exploited human beings that became known as the proletariat who soon began to stand outcast and starving amid the wonders they had made, which wonders were now the property of the bourgeoisie.

As production for a market became more and more wide spread it was soon discovered, Engels points out, that: "Anarchy reigns in socialized production." This is because no one can really tell what the fate of the the commodities they are making will be, will there be a demand for them, will they be sold at a profit or loss. Even with the planning involved in setting up the factory system there always remains this risk factor under capitalism.

Capitalism thus finds itself subject to the laws of EXCHANGE ("the only persistent form of social interrelations") which manifest themselves in competition. The anarchy became exacerbated since capitalism destroys competing modes of production and will not co-exist with them; thus handicrafts were replaced by the system of manufacture and manufacture by steam powered machinery.

This all happened under pressure of the age of discovery, starting roughly with the voyages of Columbus, and planting of colonies which vastly increased the number of markets and sealed the fate of the handicraft system which could not keep up with demand. It also led to the outbreaks of wars between nations fighting for market share-- a form of anarchistic behavior that still marks the world capitalist system.

It is at this point that Engels turns to Darwinian images to describe the relations of capitalists to one another. Both Marx and Engels were very impressed with The Origin of Species but neither were so-called "social Darwinists." Nevertheless today's globalization is simply an extension of the world market of the nineteenth century that Engels described as a universal struggle of existence between different capitalist elites and whole nations and those who fail are "remorselessly cast aside"-- unless, of course they get government stimulus money and bailouts.

"It is," Engels says, "the Darwinian struggle of the individual for existence transferred from nature to society with intensified violence." Capitalism reduces humanity back to its natural animal form of existence. This is the result of the intensification of the contradiction between socialized mode of production and the private capitalist appropriation of the social product.

One of the results of the unfettered competition between capitalists is that they lose control of their own economic system, as we see going on at present, and as it crashes the anarchy of production (which also reigns in the financial sector) forces "the great majority" of the people into becoming "proletarians." The current Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWSM) reflects the fact the "middle class" (actually a better paid strata of the working class mixed with small business people and professionals) is being forced into lower paid jobs, unemployment, bankruptcy, and debt and sees no way out for itself in this economy. They are becoming part of the surplus population (from the point of view of the capitalists) and don't like it. They have yet to fully realize that this is the natural outcome of capitalism and their only hope for a better life is to support socialist economic measures.

The OWSM is a natural response to what is the latest breakdown in the capitalist system. Engels dates the first general breakdown to the Crisis of 1825-- caused by over speculation by the banks (esp. the Bank of England) in unsound investments in Latin America (esp. Peru). Just as our current crisis, investors were given misinformation about the soundness of their investments and when the market collapsed were left holding bag. The banks use the term "asymmetric information" to note that what they know about the investment and what you know is different. The term "fraud" would be more to the point. In 1825 France bailed out England, in our current crisis the US taxpayers bailed out the banks.

These panics used to occur about every ten years but there was some stabilization after World War II and we had about 60 years of minor panics and recessions before this current world wide on going economic crash of the capitalist system-- with no end in sight. However, for Engels, what looks like a financial crisis is really a crisis in production. Socialized production has made too many goodies for the markets so factories laid off working people who then could not pay their bills-- esp. the fraudulent mortgages. Since the financial sector had cooked up so many mortgages based on "asymmetric information" the whole economy began to fall apart.

So many factories remain closed or under utilized that unemployment balloons, and the great productive forces available to our economy are dormant until the capitalists can figure how to get them going again in such a way that they, not the American people, can once again appropriate the wealth that will be created by the workers. The added twist of our day is that capitalists, their industries having become unproductive during the down turn, add to their profits by getting out of paying taxes, by adding fees and surcharges to service products, and by hiking interest rates to private borrowers (credit cards for example) even while commercial interest rates are held low by government intervention via the Federal Reserve.

As the corporate world flounders, as the auto industry recently did, it relies on "its official representative"-- namely the state-- to come to its aid. It should be obvious to all that the state which Lincoln called "of the people, for the people, by the people" is now "of, for, and by the corporations"-- it is their referee.

Engels says that the state will eventually be forced to take over the commanding heights of the economy simply because the capitalists can no longer control them due to the growing contradiction between the socialized productive forces (masses of workers united with or without unions in the creation of the social product in factories and industries and subject to increasing unemployment and poverty) and the private appropriation of the social product by the 1 to 10% of the ruling class and its top functionaries. The tipping point has not yet been reached, but it is coming-- if not in this crisis, then the next it will present itself.

This state takeover under capitalism is not yet socialism, Engels tells us, even though the commanding heights will have been converted into state property. However, the takeover reveals that all the functions of running the economy can be taken over by state "salaried employees." Since the "modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine" as it is forced to nationalize failing industries "it actually becomes the national capitalist." The state directly exploits the working people having done away with individual, and incompetent, private capitalists (done in by their own creation).

This is not a stable situation and in a democracy it cannot last. The contradiction between the state and the people brings "to a head" the capitalist relation between people and their government and this must "topple over." State capitalism is not, therefore, the answer to the class conflict, "but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements" leading to that answer.

Once the people understand the source of their problems is the private appropriation of the social product, then the 99% can really set an agenda to put the 1% in their place. Here is what Engels thinks should happen. The people should set about " the harmonizing of the modes of production, appropriation, and exchange." Hopefully they can do this through political action and the regulation of the three modes. Engels says "it depends only upon ourselves to subject them to our own will" and if we don't do so these forces will continue to work against us and to master us. State capitalism will be transformed in the direction of socialism.

The greatest challenge is to become conscious of the need for what is to be done especially when that need is the take over of the economy by the people because "this understanding goes against the grain of the capitalist mode of production and its defenders"--i.e., the capitalists, the major political parties, the mass media, the mainstream churches, and the public and private education systems as well as the leadership of most unions and mass organizations as presently constituted.

Nevertheless, according to Engels, as the crisis deepens this consciousness will begin to develop in all of the above institutions except for the capitalist class itself and those completely dependent upon it. The working people and its allies and friends, the 99%, will have to take political power out of the hands of the corporations and their flunkies, if they have not already been nationalized, and turn the current privately held means of production into state property.

A by product of this action, the abolition of private property, is that the 1% will no longer have the means to dominate the 99%-- all people will be equally working for their own and the common good. This is what Engels means when speaking of the ending of classes and class exploitation.

An even more startling consequence, to both his own time and ours, is Engels' (and Marx's) belief that the state will disappear. Even the most jaded Libertarian or demented tea bagger could never hope to get government reduced to zero. But Engels points out that throughout history the role of the state has been to control the 99% in the interests of the 1%-- be they slave owners, feudal lords, or capitalists. This role will no longer exist in a society where everything (economically speaking) is owned and managed by the people collectively at the points of production and distribution. There will still be planning commissions and civic associations, but the state, as we know it, will be superfluous.

This doesn't mean that the state will be formally abolished by some sort of declaration or proclamation. It will just slowly wither away over time as its functions become moribund. At least this is the ideal that Engels has in mind for it; perhaps like "liberty and justice for all" it will remain an ideal that every generation comes closer to but never 100% attains, then again maybe Engels will be right.

We must be mindful that all of this speculation about the coming to power of the working people, the disappearance of the 1%, the transition to socialism, etc., is dependent on the development of the productive forces of society to such a high degree of perfection that they can eliminate scarcity and there will be the possibility of abundance of food and other necessities and luxuries for all and that the only reason for poverty and suffering is the control of society by the 1% in its own selfish interests.

In the language of philosophy this means that Sartre's proposition in the Critique of Dialectical Reason : "Scarcity is a fundamental relation of our History and a contingent determination of our univocal relation to materiality" leading to his assertion "There is not enough for everybody" does not hold, it has been overcome and negated, for our world. Indeed, Engels thought it did not hold even in the nineteenth century. We have the productive capacity but we cannot use it due to the capitalist framework within which it exists. It is as the sick person-- the medicine exists to cure him but he hasn't the money to buy it, so he dies.

If this is ever done, and it is a big IF, the world humanity will find itself in after the passing of the capitalist mode of production will be very different from the world of today. Commodity production will cease as there will be no market and no anarchy of production. Objects with use values will be made according to a central plan and they will be made to satisfy human needs not to be sold for profit. There will be no more struggle for existence as all humans will be provided for and, Engels says, for the first time humanity will live as humans should and not be subject to an animal existence. For the first time humanity will control the laws of its own social existence and economy and not be subjected to them. The pre-history of humanity will be over and the true history of humanity will begin. It will be the beginning not the end of history. It will be the leap of humanity "from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom."

Well, as the Chinese say, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, I hope we have made that step on September 17, 2011 a few blocks from Wall Street in Liberty Square. But even if we haven't and Engels was at heart an utopian and his vision of the future a dream, still a dream, if that is all it is, can, as Martin Luther King, Jr. taught us, inspire people to fight for a better world.

Jim Crow Alabama County Loses in Federal Court

2011-09-27T17:23:00.000-07:00

Jim Crow Alive and Well in Alabama
Thomas Riggins

The title says Alabama, but Herr Crow is doing well in many other states as well, it's just that this story is about Shelby County a suburban area of Birmingham. This part of Alabama has been trying to disenfranchise Black people for years but the latest ploy has been shot down by a Federal District Court.

Shelby County officials, ever zealous in trying to protect the Constitution and the rights it grants to American citizens went to court because they feared that the US Congress was trampling the Constitution underfoot by extending the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for 25 years (this was done in 2006).This means it won't be until 2031 that Shelby County can start discriminating against Black voters, and Congress could extend the act again!

The Voting Rights Act applies to areas where a history of discrimination has been manifested-- almost every county in every Southern state, but also, according to the New York Times (9-22-2011) "Alaska, Arizona and isolated towns and counties around the country."

These areas cannot change any of their voting practices without getting permission from a panel of federal judges or the US Department of Justice. Shelby County, and no doubt other areas, feel discriminated against and, as we all know, discrimination is unconstitutional.

The good officials of Shelby county are not about to have their rights stepped on. They maintain that Jim Crow is history and they went to court to argue that "it is no longer constitutionally justifiable for Congress to arbitrarily impose" on them, and others, "disfavored treatment"-- i.e., getting permission before mucking around with their voting procedures. The US Congress, they maintained had no evidence "of intentional discrimination" and, even if it did it seems, it is still a disregard of states rights (I thought that was resolved in 1865).

The federal court, however, found otherwise. At least 14 cases of intentional voter discrimination between 1982 and 2006 had been determined by the courts. The federal judge also noted that the county has openly racist lawmakers and poll workers [preposterous-- what in Alabama?] and that a town in the county had, in 2008, tried to eliminate the only district with a Black majority.

Poor Shelby County-- it looks like it will have to wait until 2031 after all before it can overcome "disfavorment"-- as the federal judge, a Bush Jr. appointee, John D.Bates, concluded: "Bearing in mind both the historical context and the extensive evidence of recent voting discrimination reflected in that unprecedented legislative record [the attempt to eliminate the only Black majority voting district] the court concludes that 'current needs'-- the modern existence of intentional racial discrimination in voting-- do, in fact, justify Congress's 2006 reauthorization imposed on covered jurisdictions."

Maybe the county fathers will have better luck with Jim Beam than with Jim Crow.

What's the beef?

2011-09-15T11:27:00.000-07:00

Agriculture Department Toughens Regulations on Beef
Thomas Riggins

The New York Times reports that the beef industry is upset with the Agriculture Department for its promulgation of new regulations regarding deadly food toxins found in ground beef. (NYT Business Day 9-13-2011).

Millions of pounds of beef (primarily hamburger) have had to be recalled since 1994 when a strain of Escherichia coli was banned in ground beef. This strain of E coli is a deadly bacteria whose home base is the lower intestine of warm blooded animals. Due to that way we raise cattle and process meat (don't ask) the bacteria finds its way into our hamburgers as well as onto fruits and vegetables we buy.

Not all E. coli is dangerous, there are many strains, but E. coli 0157:H7 is deadly and has been the focus of attention by the Agriculture Department. Now, to the dismay of the beef industry, SIX more deadly, but rare, strains of E. coli are also to be banned and won't be going to market-- at least not in raw hamburger and similar products.

Dr. Elizabeth Hagen of the U.S. Department of Agriculture was quoted as saying, "We're doing this to prevent illness and to save lives. This is one of the biggest steps forward in the protection of the beef supply in some time."

It is certainly a noble objective to want to save lives and prevent sickness, but unfortunately it conflicts with an even more noble objective valued by the bourgeoisie-- namely making profits and getting rid of government regulations (bad for business).

Business already has it too good since its perfectly legal to sell food that is full of toxins as it is. Salmonella infested food can be sold to the public with just a warning to cook the food at a suitably high temperature or to wash it throughly. The government doesn't want to overly stress business interests by making them clean up their processing factories to eliminate salmonella contamination. What more do they want?

Well, for one, they want the new regulations against the six new strains of E. coli to go away. Here is what the American Meat Institute says: "Imposing this new regulatory program on ground beef will cost tens of millions of federal and industry dollars-- costs that likely will be borne by taxpayers and consumers. It is neither likely to yield a significant public health benefit nor is it good public policy."

Well it may cost tax payers money-- we have to pay for some things besides war after all, and the industry will certainly try to pass along the cost of cleaning up their processing plants to their customers; but what is the alternative? The Times reports that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates these six additional strains of E. coli sicken 133,000 people yearly and a third of them get sick from contaminated beef.

Nevertheless, the American Meat Institute not only says it is not good public policy to regulate against this contamination, it also concludes the need for regulation is "just not supported by the science." It is at least reassuring that the industry is aware that there is something out there called "science" that should be taken into account even if its use by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is misguided.

Anyway, waste not want not, the tainted meat can still be sold to the public-- it just can't be sold as fresh meat. E. coli 157 and the six new strains under regulation will be heated to 160 degrees F and sold to us in all those nice meat dishes that are labeled pre-cooked and all we have to do is warm and serve. The millions of little dead E. coli cells can then be happily consumed without, we are told, any ill effects. Yum, yum.

Drugs, Ads, and the FDA

2011-09-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

Drug Ads, the FDA, and People's Health
Thomas Riggins

I think we all know that under our capitalist system big corporations, given the choice between making profits or obeying the law, mostly go for profits. This capitalist penchant can be fatal to some consumers who rely upon the safety of the products they use. This law breaking behavior by the corporate world is especially dangerous when it comes to the selling of prescription drugs that are advertised as safe but are really not.

A recent study by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and reported in ScienceDaily of 8-18-2011 ("Majority of Pharmaceutical Ads Do Not Adhere to FDA Guidelines, New Study Finds") has disclosed that 82% of the ads placed by Drug companies in medical journals violate the Food and Drug Administration's regulations on truthfulness and risk disclosure and more than 50% failed to mention that death was a serious possibility from using the drug.

These ads are not directed at the public but at doctors and other health professionals who will be using these drugs to treat people in the future. Dr. Deborah Korenstein, the main author of the report was quoted by SD as saying, "Marketing research has consistently shown that journal advertising is the most profitable form of drug marketing, with an estimated return on investment of five dollars for every dollar spent." An irresistible temptation to hype your product and cover up its defects it seems.

Dr. Korenstein also remarked that "Our study, the first in nearly 20 years to provide a systematic assessment of the adherence of US advertisements to FDA guidance,
shows that the current system is not in the best interest of the health of the public."

Well of course it is not in the best interests of public health for the drug manufacturers to be engaged in massive fraudulent promotions of their products. But what about the FDA? Its job is to enforce the regulations and, as some other agencies do, it seems to be looking the other way with regard to these violations.

It is up to the executive branch to make sure the FDA is doing its job. Congress too is to blame. The drug lobbyists have more influence with our elected representatives than do the people who elect them. That means it is ultimately up to us, as voters, to see to it that everyone does their job. Next year will be a crucial election year and it is up to all progressives to go all out to convince the American people of the dangers that the current Republican agenda holds for democracy itself if it should get its adherents elected or re-elected.

If the Right gains more power in 2012 two things won't happen with respect to the FDA: its resources to police the drug industry will not be increased and stiffer regulations against drug industry fraud will not be forth coming. These are two crucial factors which must come about to keep dangerous drugs from being touted as safe.

Dr Korenstein explains: "The limited resources of the FDA's Division of Drug Marketing and Advertising are a major barrier to successful regulation of the pharmaceutical industry's multi-billion dollar marketing budget. We are hopeful that an update in FDA regulations, with increased emphasis on the transparent presentation of basic safety and efficacy information, might improve the quality of information provided in physician-directed pharmaceutical advertisements."

The science challenged crop of right wing ideologues who will be vying for power in next year's elections have no solutions to this, or any other, problem facing the American people. Let's make sure the folks who are going to vote know that and that those who think voting a waste of time know they may have to swallow a bitter pill if they don't vote.

Childhood Obesity and Food Adverts

2011-08-17T12:35:00.000-07:00

Major Food Companies Promote Childhood Obesity
Thomas Riggins

Any democratic government has a responsibility to protect the health and well being of its citizens and especially to prevent private interests from exploiting children for private gain or any other reason. This may look like common sense, but governments around the world, including the US government, have been far too lax in allowing food companies to manufacture, advertise, and sell foods for children that they know is unhealthy and will lead to serious health consequences in the future.

According to ScienceDaily (June 30,2011) scientists at the University of Liverpool in the UK have shown that children watching TV commercials promoting unhealthy foods (foods with too much fat,salt and sugar) develop a desire to eat these kinds of food in preference to nutritionally healthy alternatives ("TV Food Advertising Increases Children's Preference for Unhealthy Foods, Study Finds").

The study was conducted on children 6 to 13 years old who were shown a cartoon after watching 5 minutes of toy commercials or 5 minutes of commercials of unhealthy snack foods. The children were then allowed to choose what kind of foods they wanted from lists of healthy and unhealthy foods including famous brand names and non brand named foods. The children choose significantly more unhealthy foods to eat after the food commercials but not after the toy commercials.

Emma Boyland, one of the authors of the study was quoted as saying, "Obesity in young children is now a major health concern around the world. Our studies highlight that there are global connections between advertising, food preferences and consumption. This is a beyond-brand effect, increasing children's selections of all unhealthy foods -- not just those shown in the adverts."

If these conclusions hold up it means that governments should ban all such advertising aimed at children and indeed ban the the production and sale of unhealthy foods entirely. The purpose of food is to provide healthy nutrition to the food consumers, not profits to capitalists. It is simply not rational, nor moral, to allow private companies to enrich themselves by making millions of young children around the world unhealthy and obese.

The suggestions from Ms. Boyland are not as strong as those I suggest. She says that limiting TV watching time, for example, might be one solution since only children who watched more than 21 hours of television seem to have been negatively affected by the food commercials. However reports show that US teens spend about 20 hours a week in screen time (60%) but about 30% of teens spent 40 or so hours in screen time. I'm sure different countries will have different breakdowns

In any case, Boyland concludes by saying, "This study demonstrates that children are far more likely to eat unhealthy foods if they watch a lot of television. This suggests that it would be beneficial to reduce the amount of television that children watch. These findings also have implications for the regulation of television food advertising to children. A 9pm watershed should be introduced so that children are not exposed to high fat, high sugar and high salt food advertising during popular family viewing."

Well, that would be a start, but a people's government would simply ban all such fake food products in the first place.

Public Health Spending means Healthy People

2011-08-10T14:47:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

Some things that just seem obvious are often denied for devious political or personal reasons. It just seems obvious, for example, that the more money the government spends on public health projects, the more healthy people would become. Conversely, the more public health funds are cut the less healthy people would likely become.

All this talk about cutting Medicare and rolling back federal, state and local funding on public health (to fight the deficit) seems to really be saying that the government should not care if its citizens are healthy or sick-- each individual is on his or her own. Cut back proponents, of course, claim that the cut backs won't really make such a big difference: there will still be emergency rooms and private charity available. But they really know better.

Let's take this argument out of the realm of politics and right wing dogma and see what objective scientific evidence is available. I am happy to report that what seems intuitively obvious to common sense is also what scientists report to be objectively true. A report has just come out in the journal Health Affairs that provides clear evidence that the more that is spent on public health, the healthier the population becomes. The report is summarized in ScienceDaily for 8-8-2011("Increase in Public Health Spending Results in Healthier People, Study Suggests").

The study concentrated on four public health concerns: infant mortality, heart disease, diabetes and cancer and correlated variations in spending over a 13 year period on public health by local agencies in the nearly 3000 local public health agencies in the US. It was found that causes of death for these four health conditions fell from 1 to nearly 7% for each 10% of increased public health spending.

Glen P. Mays (University of Kentucky) one of two authors of the study (along with Sharla A. Smith of the University of Arkansas) was quoted as saying: "In light of the Affordable Care Act that authorized the largest expansion in federal public health spending in decades, coupled with an economic downturn that has precipitated large cuts in state and local government support for public health activities, it's critical to take a data-driven look at whether public health spending translates to improved health of our population. Our findings suggest that a connection between spending and health outcomes does exist, although it's important to note that resources must be successfully aimed at activities that target at-risk population groups to ensure that spending is resulting in positive outcomes."

We should note, therefore, that almost every cut in public health funding affects the four major groups of illness studied and translates into a higher death rate, especially in poorer areas, for real individual people not just statistical entities. The right wingers, who complain about President Obama's imaginary "death panels," should be called on the real death panels they run when they push through spending cuts in public health funding. Moderate Democrats should also think twice about inflicting higher death rates rather than higher tax rates.

Fracking: Who Regulates the Regulators?

2011-08-04T09:51:00.000-07:00

Fracking: Are the Regulators in Bed with the Oil and Gas Industry?
Thomas Riggins

One of the major concerns about the hydraulic fracturing industry, in which toxic chemicals and water are pumped under high pressure deep down in the earth to fracture and break up rock formations to release natural gas to be captured for commercial purposes, is that this method of fracking also can pollute and make undrinkable the water supplies in the area where it is applied.

A recent New York Times online article ("A Tainted Water Well, and Concern There May Be More" by Ian Urbina, 8-3-11) seems to suggest that some elements of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may be colluding with the oil and gas industry in covering up this threat.

The article reports, for example, that both the industry and those who are charged with regulating it, have told the American people for years that fracking is a safe way to extract natural gas and "has never contaminated underground drinking water": a statement that both know is untrue.

Urbina quotes the CEO of ExxonMobile, Rex W. Tillerson, who told Congress in 2010 that, "There have been over a million wells hydraulically fractured in the history of the industry, and there is not one, not one, reported case of a freshwater aquifer having ever been contaminated from hydraulic fracturing. Not one." And it is not just a dishonest CEO who makes that claim, it is also bandied about by "our" state and federal elected officials and EPA directors ("past and present") all of whom know, or should know, that this is untrue.

There is at least one reported case on record and many other contaminations have occurred but have not been officially "reported " because they have been suppressed and covered up by the industry with the help of high ranking leaders in the EPA. At least that is my conclusion from reading Urbina's article.

The one official report was about an incident in 1984 when Kaiser Exploration and Mining Company did some fracking in West Virginia which resulted in a water well being contaminated. The EPA published its report in 1987. The oil and gas industry knows all about it and was successful in keeping the EPA from investigating other incidents which could have been included in the report. So ExxonMobile and its friendly EPA directors know that "Not one case" is not true and the reason there is only one case is due to industry pressure to cover up others and that the EPA helped them do so.

EPA investigators can't fully document the other cases, back then as well as now, "because their details were sealed from the public when energy companies settled lawsuits with landowners." Urbina talked to Carla Greathouse, the author of the 1987 report, who said "If it's so safe, let the public review all the cases." She also revealed that she still didn't understand "why industry should be allowed to hide problems when public safety is at stake." She should read about how cozy the relationship is between Congress, the regulators, and the regulated not only in oil and gas but in every aspect of the government's dealings with powerful capitalist corporations.

An ExxonMobile spokesman, Alan T. Jeffers, when asked about sealed settlements, which prevent the facts about fracking from getting to the public, replied, according to Urbina, that if regulators actually were interested in this information subpoenas were available to them. But that's the point. The EPA didn't go after the oil and gas giants but just passively accepted that it couldn't investigate because of "sealed settlements." This is kowtowing to the industry, not protecting the public. "Our hands are tied," one anonymous EPA official stated. So the Environmental Protection Agency can't protect the environment because oil companies don't want it to. What the frack is that?

When in 2004 the EPA released a study that fracking for coal-bed methane wells posed almost no danger to drinking water people within the EPA itself complained that the official report was "unscientific and unduly influenced by industry." But who is there to regulate the regulators? Congress is ultimately responsible, but with the tea party at large in the House and industry lobbyists flooding Washington, don't expect much help from that quarter.

The people have to do it themselves by pressuring their elected representatives and demonstrating against the companies at their fracking sites and headquarters. And a rebuff at the polls next year for all those who put profits before people would not hurt.

Guest Blog: On Politically Correct Meat

2011-07-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

I think your blog on politically (and morally) correct meat is excellent and important.

It is good that scientific advance can in this instance contribute decisively to what in my view would be a politically and morally superior world while making a sound contribution to environmental preservation.

To Bentham goes the credit for first clearly coupling moral philosophy with the issue of causing pain to sentient beings. (Of course, this was the dominant view in Asian Indian civilization a thousand years before Bentham.) Bentham correctly found the crux to be in sentience, not just conscious awareness. (Tom is more convinced than I am that the lower animals are "conscious" of pain. It seems that the science is not decisive here, though it would be better to be in intellectual error than to induce horrible pain in other sentient beings. Cf. the research recently done in Ireland on the question of pain of lobsters in being boiled alive in addition to the late David Foster Wallace's famous essay on lobster pain. Lobster's do not have a developed brain with pre-frontal lobes and their spinal cord seems rudimentary. However,they are equipped with an inordinate number of tiny sensory organs over much of their bodies. These may help them in navigation and grasping and the like. But these organs could also involve a kind of pain-pleasure sensing mechanism on the avoidance-attraction model of behavior. Thus, there could be pain virtually throughout the body of the lobster, whatever may be the case in regard to crabs or crayfish or Japanese DOJO [a kind of river eel]) when being boiled alive).

What is of great importance, however, would be the overwhelming long-term environmental consequences of using "cultured meat." Given the incremental nature of greenhouse emissions and even more their consequences over time, even benefits on the scale projected by scientists in this instance would be highly significant.

There would be a cultural loss, however. "Food is culture," and the way we dine, notably with meat dishes, is so intertwined with much of high culture and even everyday life throughout the world (cf., e.g., the constant "noshing" of Thais on the street, e.g.) that the world would become less colorful and more interesting in spite of being more politically and morally correct and with a concomitant contribution to the restoration of the environment. But then head-hunting was out of favor with the British in Borneo and the Americans in the Philippines until the time came for the invasion of Borneo by Australian troops and guerrilla warfare in the Philippines so long as the heads gathered were Japanese. Cats and some bears are still boiled alive in some cuisines, as were mules in other cuisines, and this is certainly culturally unique. Yet, we condemn this nowadays, just as most of us look askance at head hunting (even though an environmental case for cannibalism has been on the agenda set forth by some radical environmentalists of advocates of "deep ecology." See
http://www.uq.edu.au/~pdwgrey/web/can/cannibalism.html. This essays is by the late Australian philosopher and logician Richard Routley (later Richard Slyvan).

In conclusion, in his plea for animals, Bentham referred to efforts to mitigate the treatment of blacks in the West Indies. He was also committed to reforming the criminal law and brought the attention of the learned world to important theoretical work with practical applications being done in Italy and France in this regard. Some of his ideas concerning prison construction seem nowadays far from humane (cf. Foucault on Bentham), but partly even more so in the light of the treatment of Islamic prisoners and Private Manning by organs of the American government in more recent times. Bentham is right, however, the way we treat humans is willy-nilly intimately and intricately intercalated with how we treat animals.

Jack Clontz in the Big Mango

Socialist US? Science Says It Can Happen

2011-07-27T17:15:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

One of the things many who consider themselves politically active would like to do is fundamentally change the US from a pro capitalist country to a pro socialist country. But to do that we would have to have the majority of the people begin to believe that socialism is a better system than capitalism.

Getting the American people to change their attitudes towards socialism and communism (Marxism-Leninism) has always been a worrisome problem for socialist activists. But now science has come to the rescue and has revealed how a tiny minority can, by sticking to its principles, get the vast majority to come around to its way of thinking.

ScienceDaily ("Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas" July 26, 2011) has reported on the research carried out at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute by SCNARC (Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center) that shows "when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of society." This finding applies to many types of belief including political views.

People often tell me that it will be a few more generations before we can have socialism in the US. Some have said it will take 500 years. That is a long time. But according to SCNARC we only need to get 10 percent of the people for socialism and the trick is done since the majority always end up adopting the minority view.

Granted that we have to get the 10 percent to have "an unshakable belief" in the socialist ideal so we shouldn't talk too much about "flexible interpretations of Marxism." Another thing is we have to hurry up and get that 10 percent because it is the tipping point.

"When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent," the SCNARC director Bolesaw Szymanski said "there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority. Once that number grows above 10 percent the idea spreads like flame." The age of the universe is considerably longer than 500 years so we really have to concentrate on building our readership and recruiting new people to our cause.

SD also reports that it doesn't matter from where or from whom the 10 percent comes-- just as long as the level of "committed opinion holders" reaches 10 percent. The conclusions reached by the scientists were based on computer models of different social networks were a society with a given belief system held by a majority population, which was also open minded, had introduced into it an additional 10 percent of people who were "true believers." In every case the beliefs of the introduced 10 percent were soon widespread and became the new majority consensus.

Sameet Sreenivasan, another SCNARC investigator, said, "In general, people do not like to have an unpopular opinion and are always seeking to try locally to come to consensus. We set up this dynamic in each of our models. As agents of change start to convince more and more people, the situation begins to change. People begin to question their own views at first and then completely adopt the new view to spread it even further. If the true believers just influenced their neighbors, that wouldn't change anything within the larger system, as we saw with percentages less than 10."

The scientists are not just engaging in idle research. There are real world situations to which this research will be applied. Gyorgy Korniss, who co-wrote the research paper, says, "There are clearly situations in which it helps to know how to efficiently spread some opinion or how to suppress a developing opinion. Some examples might be the need to quickly convince a town to move before a hurricane or spread new information on the prevention of disease in a rural village.

In fact I don't think the researchers had in mind getting people to adopt socialism. Note well that remark above about knowing how "to efficiently spread some opinion" and "how to suppress a developing opinion." SD lists the major funders of SCNARC and we see the money coming from the Army Research Laboratory, the Army Research Office, and the Office of Naval Research among others.

The true purpose of the research seems to me to be how to set up groups of government agents to disrupt liberal and progressive groups (remember the larger group is made up of open minded people and the true believers are "unshakable.") We are also told that the scientists want to study a polarized society where there is not just one traditional viewpoint to be changed. They want to expand their research to a society with two opposite major outlooks. "An example of this polarization would be Democrat versus Republican." Indeed.

The real practical value for socialists is to see that our major traditional group is neither Republican nor Democrat but the large groups of progressives, liberals, the "left", minorities, and working people who make up the real majority in the US. If we can get 10 percent of this group to favor a principled socialist agenda a new world really will be possible.

It's Time for Politically (and Morally) Correct Meat

2011-07-20T11:27:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

I think we all know, or should know, that there is something wrong will killing animals for their meat. Modern science has shown that animals have both sentience and consciousness, feel pain, and experience an emotional life. From insects to us there is great chain of being aware which we, who claim to be at the top of the chain, should respect as much as possible.

Our Morlock behavior is much to be regretted and we are, I think, under an obligation to model ourselves after our future, hopefully, Eloi incarnations. We are also obligated politically to strive towards a world where the exploitation of humans by other humans comes to an end: and beyond that the exploitation and infliction of suffering on our fellow creatures in general.

Now science has come up with a method by which we can satisfy our current Morlockean desire to eat animal flesh without actually killing and mutilating animals. The July 18th online issue of ScienceDigest ["Lab-Grown Meat Would Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Save Energy, Research Suggests] discusses tissue engineering in the laboratory which produces animal meat ("cultured meat'') without the animal, which would not only solve the problem of our moral responsibilities but actually reduces, somewhat, the threat to the planet from green house gases: the major greenhouse gas threat comes from fossil fuels, especially coal.

This scientific study from Oxford and Amsterdam universities says that cultured meat production would create only 4% of the greenhouse gases as are currently produced by animal raising and slaughtering techniques. While fowl would require more energy, the lab meat would require only a very small part of the land and water used with living birds. Meanwhile pork, sheep and beef could be produced in the same amount as today for 7 to 45% less energy, according to the report.

Oxford's Hanna Tuomisto, the director of the study, said: "What our study found was that the environmental impacts of cultured meat could be substantially lower that those of meat produced in the conventional way [i.e., by killing-tr]. Cultured meat could potentially be produced with up to 96% lower green house gas emissions, 45% less energy, 99% lower land use, and 96% lower water use than conventional meat."

There is a friendly little pond bacterium (Cyanobacteria hydrolysate) which is used as a food and energy source in the lab to grow muscle cells. Cultured meat is not yet ready to be mass produced but mass production is feasible. Ms Tuomisto says, "We are not saying that we could, or would necessarily want to to, replace conventional meat with its cultured counterpart right now [don't scare off the Morlocks], however, our research shows that cultured meat could be part of the solution to feeding the worlds growing population and at the same time cutting emissions and saving both energy and water. Simply put, cultured meat is, potentially, a much more efficient and environmentally-friendly way of putting meat on the table."

The scientists also pointed out the land no longer used for animal meat production could be reforested and used to capture atmospheric carbon-- plus transportation and refrigeration costs would be substantially reduced with cultured meat.

Finally Ms. Tuomisto remarked:"There are obviously many obstacles to overcome before we can say whether cultured meat will become part of our diet, not least of which is whether people would be prepared to eat it! But we hope our research will add to the debate about whether we could, or should, develop a less wasteful alternative to meat from animals."

Will people eat cultured meat? This depends on their level of political awareness and their moral sensitivity. Today, in a world where a Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachman can dream of being president of the US, where the Tea Party mentality stalks the land, where overseas people are gunned down in the streets for peaceful protests, American imperialism plans world domination, and Nato hopes to restore European hegemony in the third world, our "conventional" meat eating days seem far from over.

Nevertheless, another world is possible and we must set ourselves the task of trying to create it.

Are Republics Democratic?

2011-07-13T17:25:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

The United States is supposed to be a democracy but is it really? If we live in a country where some citizen's votes count more than others-- i.e., in which one person one vote is really not the standard how can we claim to be a real democratic state? At best we have a limited and imperfect democracy.

It seems that having been set up as a "republic" we have just the sort of government that does not work on the one person one vote principle. A recent article in ScienceDigest ("Not all Citizens' Votes Created Equal, and Study Says It Shows in Funding" 5-28-11) points out that many democracies have been set up to water down the power of the vote in favor of denying the idea of equal distribution of voting rights on the one person one vote formula.

Here is just one example: California has 66 times the number of people as Wyoming yet they both have 2 US senators. Considering the power of the Senate how is it democracy when states with little populations can block the will of the people in states with large populations? The Senate was deliberately created to block the popular will ( originally the people did not even get to vote for their Senators).

SD reports that these disproportions become really important when it comes to the distribution of money (and goods and services). The study comprises long term (decades) trends in nine different republics, including the US. "Other things being equal, the most over-represented states or provinces can expect to receive more than twice the federal spending as the most under-represented states or provinces," says University of Illinois political science professor Tiberiu Dragu who shared authorship of the study with his counter-part at Sanford Jonathan Rodden. The disparity in some South American republics was 5 to 1. El Norte beckons.

While other factors may be at work, Dr. Dragu says that the unfair voting arrangements "cannot be explained away, the story remains the same: Representatives of over-represented provinces are able to bargain for a disproportionate share of the budget."

I know of at least two states where this happens, readers can no doubt supply other examples from where they live. The taxes collected from the people of New York City go to support upstate New York as the City receives less than is taken from it. The people in South Florida are also taxed for the benefit of the northern part of the state.

This is a very widespread practice in republics. The authors write: "Our analysis indicates that the rules of representation are indeed highly consequential. Controlling for a variety of country- and province-level factors and using a variety of estimation techniques, we show that overrepresented provinces in political unions around the world are rather dramatically favored in the distribution of resources."

Most people seem to just accept these conditions as the result of historical events in the past, especially at the founding of the republics or political unions. Nevertheless they are unfair an undemocratic and people serious about democratic and human rights must try to correct these imbalances.

Dr. Dragu ends by saying, "An important question is whether the stability of such federations is threatened if citizens of under-represented regions -- or ethnic groups, or countries -- must provide large, permanent subsidies to those with greater representation."

Well, what are we to support: practical politics or justice?

Frederick Engels on the Historical Development of Modern Socialism

2011-07-11T18:00:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

In the first chapter of Part Three of his classic work Anti-Dühring, Engels discusses the origins of the modern socialist movement. He begins with the enthronement of "Reason" by the pre-revolutionary 18th century French philosophers who thought that only reason could be used to answer any of the questions of existence.

After the overthrow of Louis XVI and the abolition of the monarchical French state, a new state was constructed by the revolutionaries-- one based on "eternal" reason and designed to be completely rational. The spiritual progenitor of this state was Rousseau's book The Social Contract.

But "eternal" reason turned out to be simply the explanation of existence from the point of view of the rising bourgeois class. The complexity of the new political reality they had created quite eluded them as the contradictions between their class and the newly conscious masses of the disposed poor of Paris and the countryside began to manifest themselves.

The wretched of the earth exerted themselves and the bourgeois rational state fell apart and morphed into the Reign of Terror under which the masses, for a moment, gained "the mastery" and saved the Revolution. With the abolition of feudalism the bourgeoisie had expected social peace but instead got a furious international response and the development of an intense struggle between the poor and the rich at home.

After Robespierre and the Jacobins, representing the French masses, were overthrown on 9 Thermidor Year II (July 27, 1794) by the conservative bourgeoisie, the new ruling class lost faith in its own ability to rule. After five years of corrupt government under the Directory, they surrendered to the coup d'etat of Napoleon Bonaparte on 18 Brumaire Year IX (November 9, 1799).

All this turmoil was a reflection of the "development of industry upon a capitalist basis [which] made poverty and misery of the working masses conditions of existence of society." From the dispossessed Paris masses (the "have-nothings" and other disadvantaged groups the proletariat began to develop "as the nucleus of a new class." However, at this time "the antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, was still very incompletely developed."

At this historical juncture the three "founders" of socialism appeared: Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen. First on the scene was Claude Henri Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825). The Revolution was supposed to be a victory of the Third Estate (production workers) over a ruling class of idlers (the nobility and the Catholic hierarchy and its priests). But, in reality Engels says, the victory did not go to the Third Estate as a whole but only that part of it owning property, "the socially privileged part."

Saint-Simon saw the Revolution as a struggle between "workers" (anyone engaged in productive activity) and "idlers"-- people living off unearned income. For him "the workers were not only the wage workers, but also the manufacturers, the merchants, and the bankers." Science and Industry must move to the forefront and lead the revolution. The undeveloped nature of the class struggle within the Third Estate is apparent-- the proletariat and the capitalists are in the same "class." (I can't say the vast majority of the American people have gone much beyond that stage of consciousness yet but it has recently begin to dawn on them that class struggle is real).

Saint-Simon's heart was in the right place as he wanted to improve the conditions of the lowest and greatest number of the Third Estate-- what would become the proletariat and included the masses of downtrodden peasants, the most numerous and poor; Engels quotes him: "la class la plus nombreuse et la plus pauvre." However his socialism was utopian as he expected the bankers to lead the way into the new world! "The bankers especially were to be called upon to direct the whole of social production by the regulation of credit." Ironically the bankers today, the finance capitalists, do control production but in their interests not those of "la plus nombreuse et la plus pauvre."

Saint-Simon actually thought the rich bourgeoisie, bankers and manufactures, would change themselves into public servants and use their ruling positions to help the poor and oppressed. But at least he realized the "poor and oppressed" made up the majority of "the people" (Third Estate). In fact Engels credits him with understanding that the Revolution was a three way struggle-- Nobility vs. the Bourgeoisie AND the propertyless masses even though there was a tendency to group the latter two together when contrasted to the Nobility.

His greatness was in proclaiming that "all men ought to work" and recognizing that within the bourgeois revolution the Reign of Terror represented the power of "the toiling masses" against the haut bourgeoisie. Engels quotes Saint-Simon addressing himself to the poor masses: "See what happened in France at the time when your comrades held sway there; they brought about a famine." The "they" are the bourgeois enemies of Robespierre and the rule of the Parisian sans culottes.

Saint-Simon also saw a future where economics was more important than politics , i.e., the administration of things (planned economy) over the administration of people (the bourgeois state)-- i.e, he envisioned "the abolition of the state." We find in Saint-Simon the seeds, Engels says, of "almost all the ideas of later Socialists that are not strictly economic."

Following on the appearance of Saint-Simon came the ideas of Francois-Marie Charles Fourier (1772-1837). He contrasted the actual living conditions of the people after the establishment of bourgeois rule ("material and moral misery") with the pictures of what life would be like painted by their pre-revolutionary propaganda and by the "rose-colored phraseology of the bourgeois ideologists of his time."

In his first book, The Theory of the Four Movements (1808) he wrote, "Social progress and changes of a period are accompanied by the progress of women towards freedom, while the decay of the social system brings with it a reduction of the freedoms enjoyed by women." Therefore, "Extension of the rights of women is the basic principle of all social progress."

Engels says of him, with respect to the above passage, that: "He was the first to declare that in any given society the degree of woman's emancipation is the natural measure of the general emancipation." This not only tells us a lot about Saudi Arabia, but where our own society is heading with its failure to pass an Equal Rights Amendment and the movement to restrict the right to abortion, as well as the recent Supreme Court ruling that the woman discriminated against for years at Walmart have no right to a class action suit to redress their grievances.

Fourier also divided the history of human development up to the present era into "four stages of evolution," which were 1.) Savagery 2.) the Patriarchate 3.) Barbarism, and 4.) Civilization. In this scheme "Civilization" appears with the development of capitalism in the 1500s and he says "that the civilized stage raises every vice practiced by barbarism in a simple fashion into a form of existence, complex, ambiguous, equivocal [and] hypocritical."

Engels says that for Fourier civilization develops along "a vicious circle" throwing up contradictions it cannot resolve and arriving at the exact opposite destinations that it wants to arrive at or at least pretends to want to arrive at so that, as Fourier writes, "under civilization POVERTY IS BORN OF SUPER-ABUNDANCE ITSELF." For example the US, the richest country in the world, has 25% of its children at or under the official poverty line-- a completely ridiculous society!

One of the things Engels admires about Fourier is his masterly use of the dialectical method in his writings, which he compares to that of Hegel "his contemporary." Engels also says something curious here. He says Fourier postulates the "ultimate destruction of the human race" which he introduced into historical science just as Kant had introduced the "ultimate destruction of the Earth" into natural science. But, in this pre-Star Trek world, Kant's end of the Earth scenario would have entailed the end of the human race as well.

Saint-Simon and Fourier were products of the French Revolution but, Engels points out, at the same time over in England just as great a revolution was taking place. The whole basis of bourgeois society was being changed by the development of steam engines and tool making machines and manufacture (from the Latin "manus" hand) was being replaced by gigantic factories were machines tended by workers began to to turn out commodities rather than commodities directly made by them, "thus revolutionizing the whole foundation of bourgeois society."

This industrial revolution began to divide society in to a powerful group of capitalists on one hand, and propertyless proletarians on the other. The heretofore large and stable middle class began to break up and tended to be forced down into the lower class of workers-- "it now led a precarious existence." Sound familiar?

However, then the term "middle class" had a different meaning than it does now. Then it meant the class of artisans and small shop keepers who thrived in the era of manufacture. Now it is used to refer to an income group consisting of well paid workers and professionals whose wages were partially subsidized by the mega-profits of the imperialist international capitalist corporations who bought a modicum of social peace at home at the expense of the international solidarity of first world workers with third world workers and peasants by the creation of a labor aristocracy, according to Lenin, in the metropolitan countries.

Professionals such as lawyers, doctors and the parasitical class of preachers and priests were also included. With the decline of high paying production jobs in the West due to the rise of industry in the third world, among other factors, these high wage jobs are disappearing forcing the "middle class" down into lower paying jobs and so, as in the first days of capitalism, it now leads "a precarious existence."

Another difference is that today we have labor unions, pro-working class political parties and associations, and growing class awareness which is developing into a major class battle for the protection of people's jobs, life styles and incomes. This battle is just beginning and should grow as today's world capitalist system proceeds further down the path of decay and self destruction.

But in the England of the early 1800s, capitalism was on the rise and not the decline. It was into this world that the third great early founder of socialism arose: Robert Owen (1771-1858).
Owen was a materialist in philosophy and thought that humans were the product of their heredity (although at this time nothing was known of genes or DNA or any of the mechanisms of heredity) and their environment, most particularly their childhood environment.

For 29 years (1800-1829) he managed New Lanark the large cotton-mill employing around 2500 "hands" in Scotland. And, Engels says, by "simply placing the people in conditions worthy of human beings" the workers lived in a society without "drunkenness, police, magistrates, lawsuits, poor laws, [or] charity." He sent all the children off to school at age 2, put the working day at 101/2 hours (not the 13 or 14 that was the norm) and kept everyone on full wages when there was a four month shut down due to a cotton crisis AND made large profits and doubled the value of the business. Well, my goodness! Why didn't all the capitalists follow suit?

They didn't follow suit, for the same reason Owen fought with the other shareholders at new Lanark-- they didn't like the extra expenses that had to be put out for "conditions worthy of human beings." After Owen left in 1829 the community continued, in one form or another, under different capitalists, until 1968 when it went bust. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site drawing in around 400,000 tourists a year to visit it and the house where Owen lived.

In his work "The Revolution in Mind and Practice" (1849) Owen wrote he was unhappy with New Lanark because "The people were slaves at my mercy." He pointed out that New Lanark's 2500 workers, with steam power, created as much social wealth as it it took 600,000 workers to create a couple of generations earlier. Those 600,000 had to be paid living wages just as the 2500-- so what happened to all the surplus wealth saved in wages that would have gone to 597,500 extra workers? It was pocketed by the capitalists.

This new wealth was being generated all over England. It was being used to wage the wars of the Empire and to maintain an oppressive aristocratic and bourgeois order at home. "And yet this new power was the creation of the working class." Owen wanted this vast new wealth to go to the working class that created it for the building of a new society in which it would be, as Engels says "the common property of all, to be worked for the common good of all."

In his day, because of his reforms at New Lanark, Owen was considered a great philanthropist. He was lionized and respected and welcome at the tables of the rich and powerful. But as soon as he started talking about the working class creating all the wealth and how it ought to build a new society based on "common property" he was dropped like a hot potato, became persona non gratia, and shunned by official society. He therefore went to the working class and became a union leader and, Engels says, "Every social movement, every real advance in England on behalf of the workers links itself on to the name of Robert Owen."

Owen called for the overthrow of three great impediments to the advance of the working class and the reform of society along communist lines-- private property, religion, and "the present form of marriage (Engels)." Marriage is going through some radical changes nowadays and it is certainly very different from the forms of marriage Owen would have seen in the early 19th century. But private property and religion (i.e., supernaturalism and superstition) are still major impediments that hold back social progress for workers.

The last few pages of this chapter Engels devotes to vituperative attacks against Dühring and his negative views of the three utopians compared to whom Dühring is a pipsqueak. Engels says Dühring displays "a really frightful ignorance of the works of the three utopians." Their works are still worth reading (Dühring's are not) and whatever limitations they have were the result of the undeveloped conditions of early industrial capitalism.

But, since the time of the utopians and today (the 1870s) "modern industry has developed the contradictions laying dormant in the capitalist mode of production into such crying antagonisms that the approaching collapse of this mode of production is, so to speak, palpable."

Well they may have been "palpable" to Engels, but capitalism is still around, sad to say. And once again the palpability of capitalist collapse is in the air. From the looming default of Greece, to the threat of defaults spreading to Spain, Portugal and Italy which will bring down the Euro-zone and mobilize millions of workers to take to the streets of Europe, to the failure of the recovery in the United States and the desperate turn to the Tea Party by big capital to nurture home grown fascism to attack the workers and their unions, the smell of capitalist decay is everywhere. Let us hope this generation of workers will pay due to the long ago optimism of Frederick Engels.

Children's Mental Health and War

2011-07-06T10:54:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

We all know what happens to many of our troops when they return home after fighting one of the Pentagon's dirty wars overseas. Who can forget what happened to thousands of the Vietnam vets after they returned home from a useless and criminal war fought as a result of the government's lies about what caused it and that we had to go for the sake of our freedom and security.

The vets were provided with inadequate medical care, many committed suicide, their families broke up, thousands became homeless, derelict and drug addicted and alcoholic suffering with mental problems and posttraumatic stress syndrome and lacked adequate care and mental health counselling to help them recover from all the horror, killings and massacres they had been ordered to participate in. And all for what-- so that part of the cost of war could recouped on their backs so that the rich wouldn't have to pay more taxes.

So we know what the government and the Pentagon does to many of its troops when it is done with them. The same thing is now happening to thousands of the young men and women returning from the same types of unjust and aggressive adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should not be surprised-- we have seen it all before and we will again if the peace movement does not galvanize more of us into action.

But now we are finding out, from new scientific surveys, that the government is not only willing to sacrifice thousands of veterans on the alter of capitalist greed and expansionism over its resource wars, but their children as well. ScienceDaily reports ("Length of Parental Military Deployment Associated with Children's Mental Health Diagnoses, Study Finds, July 4, 2011) that the children of soldiers deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) [why does the military always name their actions the opposite of what they are?] for longer times were more likely to have mental health issues that those whose parents were not deployed.

We have known for a long time that children of soldiers deployed in our imperialist wars are more likely than others to have mental problems but this study brings us up to date on our recent conflicts. The authors say "As troops face dynamic and evolving threats (e.g., an increasingly sophisticated array of roadside explosive devices) the need to anticipate the psychological consequences for their children and to offer timely intervention becomes increasingly important."

The roadside bombs are only one threat to our troops, and not the most deadly. The most deadly is the US Congress that abdicates its responsibility and duty to only authorize military engagements against real threats to the US, instead of caving in to the imperial presidency and the war lobby representing the defense industry and those who who make mega profits out of US involvements overseas. These wars for private profit at public expense are the real threat to our troops who are shipped overseas in bad faith not to fight for the country but for Daddy Warbucks and associates.

The study was conducted by Alyssa J. Mansfield, PhD of the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PSD) and colleagues and involved 307,520 children 5 to 17 years old: 51,355 were found to have mental health issues: "most often for stress disorders , depression, behavioral problems, and sleep disorders."

These were the numbers for children with at least one active duty parent. Now in the subset of at least one parent deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan, the study found that the longer the deployment or redeployment the more likely a mental problem would be found in a child.

The study turned up 6,579 children of parents from OIF and OEF deployments who were diagnosed for "acute stress reaction and adjustment disorders, depressive disorders, and behavioral disorders." The more the parent was deployed, the worse the diagnosis for the child in general. "Similar to findings among military spouses, prolonged deployment appears to be taking a mental health toll on children."

There is clearly a problem. The military has a simple solution. Either don't deploy soldiers who have children to combat zones or do not allow people with children to join the arm services in the first place. What is more important killing people overseas, or being killed by them, or having happy mentally healthy children (and adults) at home. I'm afraid we all know the answer to that one.

Big Tobacco Targets Minority Youth

2011-06-29T09:40:00.001-07:00

Thomas Riggins

According to a recent Sanford University Medical School study, the big tobacco companies are trying to lure minority youth into taking up the smoking of menthol cigarettes. Even though these companies know many of the these young people will die down the line from smoking their product, and they claim not to be targeting young people, the evidence uncovered by the Stanford report makes it it clear these companies are out to make a profit by selling as much death and disease as they can to minority youth.

The report is featured in ScienceDaily, "Menthol Cigarettes Marketed in 'Predatory' Pattern, Study Shows," for June 27, 2011. The Food and Drug Administration is on the verge of banning menthol in cigarettes. The lead researcher of the report, Lisa Henriksen, PhD, says, "The tobacco companies went out of their way to argue to the Food and Drug Administration that they don't use racial targeting. This evidence[of the Stanford study] is not consistent with those claims."

Menthol is used to make cigarettes less harsh and is said in company ads to bring about a feeling of "freshness." The major users of these kinds of cigarettes are teenagers, minorities and the poor ("low-income populations"). The FDA tasked the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee to study the health hazards of menthol cigarettes and the committee concluded, in its own words, "removal of menthol cigarettes from the marketplace would benefit public health in the United States."

This is not very startling since removing all cigarettes would benefit public health so naturally we didn't need a special committee to report back that banning menthol cigarettes would be beneficial. The recommendation in non-binding anyway. The committee is going to meet again in the middle of July to write up a final report-- let's hope it is more specific than the quote in SD.

The FDA should ban menthol cigarettes just to stop the industry's predation against middle and high school students. The committee, which has the Stanford report, should really come down hard on the industry. Since it was charged, Dr, Henriksen said, "with considering a broad definition of harm to smokers and other populations, particularly youth. We think our study, which shows the predatory marketing in school neighborhoods with higher concentrations of youth and African-American students, fits a broad definition of harm."

The report reveals an increase in cigarette use by youth between 2004 and 2008, and that in the age group 12-17 71.9% of African American youth prefer menthol brands (the figures for "whites" was 41% and Hispanics 47%). Comparing the actions of Newport (menthols made by Lorillard) with Marlboro Reds (Obama's brand and non menthol made by Philip Morris) the report shows that Newport offers special price reductions around schools that have a large African-American enrollment. Other brands were also studied.

SD reported that the study found that ads for menthol cigarettes increased by almost 6% near schools for every increase in the proportion of African-American students of 10%, and Newport cut the price of a pack by 12 cents for each of those 10% increases.

Also in the surrounding neighborhoods Newport also seemingly checked out the proportion of youth ages 10-17 (!)-- and for each 10% increase in their proportion, increased ads by 11.6% and had odds of 5.3% that Newports would sell at discounted prices. Marlboro Reds had no ads or price changes related to the presence of youth or African-American students.

So we now know despite the claims of the industry that it is targeting young people and minorities to take up smoking menthol cigarettes. African-American teens are being especially targeted.

Stephen Fortmann, MD, who also participated in making this study, was quoted as saying, "When kids are exposed to more cigarette advertising they are more likely to start smoking, which will undoubtedly lead to dire health consequences. Our study finds that tobacco companies are trying to make smoking more attractive to teens, when we as a society should be doing just the opposite. Adding menthol to cigarettes makes it easier to smoke and harder to quit, so the public health community strongly supports an FDA ban on menthol flavoring."

My prediction. The FDA will vote for the ban and the Supreme Court will over turn it as a violation of free speech. Libertarians and Tea Party folks will be against the ban as an infringement of personal liberty. What 10 year doesn't want a Newport to suck on while playing a slice'em and dice''em video game.

Russell, Mao and the Fate of China (Part Four & Last)

2011-06-26T10:46:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

The last chapter in Bertrand Russell's The Problem of China is entitled "The Outlook for China." Russell, writing in 1922, thinks that China (due to its population and resources) has the capacity to become the second greatest power in the world (after the United States). Today the US seems to be slipping economically so maybe China will become number one in the world sometime in the present century.

Three things will have to about for China to reach its full potential. Russell lists them as: 1.) The establishment of an orderly government [the CPC has accomplished this requirement]; 2.) Industrial development under Chinese control [this too has been brought about by the CPC whether you call it "market socialism" or "state capitalism"]; 3.) the spread of education [ditto care of the CPC].

All three prerequisites put forth by Russell have been attained if not quite in the manner he imagined in his book. Let's look at some of Russell's elaborations on these prerequisites.

First, the problem of orderly government: Russell says that in the 1920s China was functionally anarchic with battling warlords and weak central governments in the north and south of the country. He envisioned an eventual constitutional setup and a parliamentary form of government. But he cautioned that even so the masses of the people (Russell uses the term "public opinion") will have to be guided by what amounts to a Leninist political party using democratic centralist methods.

Here is what Russell wrote: "It will be necessary for the genuinely progressive people throughout the country to unite in a strongly disciplined society, arriving at collective decisions and enforcing support for those decisions upon all its members." That is just what happened under the leadership of CPC.

Second, the problem of industrial development: China, or any country for that matter, to be truly free has to also be economically free and that requires that it has control of its own railroads and natural resources. He thus thinks the Chinese government should own the railroads and the mines of China. He also thinks that state ownership of "a large amount" of the industry in China should also occur. "There are many arguments for State Socialism, or rather what Lenin calls State Capitalism, in any country which is economically but not culturally backward."

Russell thinks that is possible for China, with a strong and honest government, to skip over the stage of capitalism and lay the foundations for socialism. This is tricky business as the Chinese would find out much later. If you skip too far and too fast you can trip and fall on your face. With the right government "it will be possible to develop Chinese industry without, at the same time, developing the overweening power of private capitalists by which the Western nations are now both oppressed and misled." We can only hope that China is heading in this direction.

Third, the problem of education: Russell says that "Where the bulk of the population
cannot read, true democracy is impossible. Education is a good in itself, but is also essential for developing political consciousness, of which at present there is almost none in rural China."

By "democracy" Russell then, and almost all Western governments and their intellectual tools today, mean "bourgeois democracy"-- i.e., "democratic" institutions and constitutions that guarantee the government will be controlled by, for, and of one of two contending classes that exist in the modern capitalist world, i.e., the capitalist class. Russell proclaimed his belief in "socialism" (Mao even said Russell believed in "communism") but he never transcended the bourgeois concept of "democracy" inculcated in him by the British ruling class by which he was educated.

But the wider, and I believe correct, meaning of "democracy" (rule of the "demos" or people) includes other forms of government than those proclaimed by the bourgeoisie and their lackeys. It must refer to any form of government that objectively rules in the interests of its people i.e., the vast majority of its population composed of working people, called by old time communists "the toiling masses" and historically personified by the "people's democracies" and "people's republics" of eastern Europe and Asia, and by the only completely democratic state in the Western Hemisphere, Cuba.

In just a few years after Russell wrote the above words, hundreds of millions of the peasants of "rural China" would develop a political consciousness that would lead to the overthrow of the rule by landlords and capitalists in China and the establishment, however flawed, of a true people's republic. Then they learned to read.

Russell was both correct and incorrect in saying the following: "Until it has been established for some time, China must be, in fact if not in form, an oligarchy, because the uneducated masses cannot have any effective political opinion [or in the case of the US-- miseducated masses]. If that "oligarchy" is a real communist party (not one in name only) it will bring to the masses the correct political opinion that they and they alone control their own destiny and can abolish their subjection to a class that only lives off of their exploitation. The one party state may be the instrument leading to this liberation and its own eventual elimination, along with the state, but it also gives to the masses "effective political opinion" and if it doesn't it may find itself being eliminated ahead of schedule.

Russell hoped the Chinese, by combining "Western" science with their traditional culture, would create a new civilization free of the deficiencies of the capitalist West. What we are seeing now, in the 21st century, in China is perhaps the fulfillment of Russell's vision but it is a synthesis of Marx, left wing Confucianism, and modern science. Hopefully the coming century will see the end of Western "civilization" as we know it, a predatory war based imperialist system attempting to enchain the world, and the establishment of a real new world order. The values of Bertrand Russell will be better remembered and served in such a world.

Epilogue: What Mao thought of Russell's views on China.
Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung
COMMUNISM AND DICTATORSHIP
November 1920. January 1921
[Extracted from. two letters to Ts’ai Ho-sen[1895-1932 a leader of the CPC, arrested in Hong Kong by the British and turned over to the Kuomintang which killed him- tr], in November 1920 and January 1921.]

In his lecture at Changsha, Russell .... took a position in favour of communism but against the dictatorship of the workers and peasants. He said that one should employ the method of education to change the consciousness of the propertied classes, and that in this way it would not be necessary to limit freedom or to have recourse to war and bloody revolution.... My objections to Russell's view point can be stated in a few words: 'This is all very well as a theory, but it is unfeasible in practice' .... Education requires money, people and instruments. In today's world money is entirely in the hands of the capitalists. Those who have charge of education are all either capitalists or wives of capitalists. In today's world the schools and the press, the two most important instruments of education are entirely under capitalist control. In short, education in today's world is capitalist education. If we teach capitalism to children, these children, when they grow up will in turn teach capitalism to a second generation of children. Education thus remains in the hands of the capitalists. Then the capitalists have 'parliaments' to pass laws protecting the capitalists and handicapping the proletariat; they have 'governments' to apply these laws and to enforce the advantages and the prohibitions that they contain; they have 'armies' and 'police' to defend the well-being of the capitalists and to repress the demands of the proletariat; they have 'banks' to serve as repositories in the circulation of their wealth ; they have ' factories', which are the instruments by which they monopolize the production of goods. Thus, if the communists do not seize political power, they will not be able to find any refuge in this world; how, under such circumstances, could they take charge of education? Thus, the capitalists will continue to control education and to praise their capitalism to the skies, so that the number of coverts to the proletariat's communist propaganda will diminish from day to day. Consequently, I believe that the method of education is unfeasible.... What I have just said constitutes the first argument. The second argument is that, based on the principle of mental habits and on my observation of human history, I am of the opinion that one absolutely cannot expect the capitalists to become converted to communism.... If one wishes to use the power of education to transform them, then since one cannot obtain control of the whole or even an important part of the two instruments of education — schools and the press — even if one has a mouth and a tongue and one or two schools and newspapers as means of propaganda.... this is really not enough to change the mentality of the adherents of capitalism even slightly; how then can one hope that the latter will repent and turn toward the good? So much from a psychological standpoint. From a historical standpoint.... one observes that no despot imperialist and militarist throughout history has ever been known to leave the stage of history of his own free will without being overthrown by the people. Napoleon I proclaimed himself emperor and failed; then there was Napoleon III. Yuan Shih-K'ai failed; then, also there was Tuan Ch'i-jui.... From what I have just said based on both psychological and a historical standpoint, it can be seen that capitalism cannot be overthrown by the force of a few feeble efforts in the domain of education. This is the second argument. There is yet a third argument, most assuredly a very important argument, even more important in reality. If we use peaceful means to attain the goal of communism, when will we finally achieve it? Let us assume that a century will be required, a century marked by the unceasing groans of the proletariat. What position shall we adopt in the face of this situation? The proletariat is many times more numerous than the bourgeoisie; if we assume that the proletariat constitutes two-thirds of humanity, then one billion of the earth's one billion five hundred million inhabitants are proletarians (I fear that the figure is even higher), who during this century will be cruelly exploited by the remaining third of capitalists. How can we bear this? Furthermore, since the proletariat has already become conscious of the fact that it too should possess wealth, and of the fact that its sufferings are unnecessary, the proletarians are discontented, and a demand for communism has arisen and has already become a fact. This fact confronts us, we cannot make it disappear; when we become conscious of it we wish to act. This is why, in my opinion, the Russian revolution, as well as the radical communists in every country, will daily grow more powerful and numerous and more tightly organized. This is the natural result. This is the third argument.....
There is a further point pertaining to my doubts about anarchism. My argument pertains not merely to the impossibility of a society without power or organization. I should like to mention only the difficulties in the way of the establishment of such form of society and of its final attainment.... For all the reasons just stated, my present viewpoint on absolute liberalism, anarchism, and even democracy is that these things are fine in theory, but not feasible in practice....

Budget Cuts are really People Cuts

2011-06-22T11:24:00.001-07:00

Thomas Riggins

When governments decide to balance their budgets by cutting services to the very young and to the elderly, or by cutting medical care and pension benefits, they are doing more than just saving some money for the current fiscal year and trying to reign in social spending so that they can continue to cut taxes for the rich and increase military spending. They are also bringing about the premature deaths of thousands of people they judge to be a socially useless surplus population unable to produce surplus value for the capitalist economic system. Their deaths are the real savings, as the dead no longer need any services or medical care at all.

I'm not making this up. Science Daily reported that the British Medical Journal has concluded, "Radical cuts to social welfare spending could cause not just economic pain but cost lives." The BMJ article describes the effect of spending cuts in Europe, but it is not too wild to speculate that here in the U.S., where our social safety net has many more and bigger holes in it than in Europe, budget cuts to social and medical services will have even worse consequences for people.

David Stuckler of Oxford University and his team have shown a relation, revealing that the amounts of social spending by governments are "strongly associated" with people's risk of death from heart disease and illnesses linked to alcohol and other like conditions, which Science Daily calls "diseases relating to social circumstances."

The study showed that this association shows up even with health care budgets that have been protected. The science magazine reports that, according to Stuckler, "social welfare spending is as important, if not more so [than health budgets], for population health." It is not hard to figure out what will happen to the poor and elderly if, in the U.S., the big cuts to Medicare go through, along with reductions in social programs.

The Oxford group went over data, which included social programs aimed at families with children, job programs for the unemployed and help for the disabled, from 15 countries collected by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

We should not be surprised by their findings, namely "that when social spending was high, mortality rates fell, but when they were low, mortality rates rose substantially." They also found out that there were two areas where the state could cut spending without killing off the poor and elderly - areas with no "negative impact on the public's health." Those areas were the military and the prisons. But these are the very areas where they want to increase spending, for which cuts in public welfare have to be made.

The study concludes, "This report reveals that ordinary people may be paying the ultimate price for budget cuts - potentially costing them their lives."

You can be sure that what applies to the Europeans also applies to us, in spades.

Russell, Mao and the Fate of China (Part Three)

2011-06-19T10:07:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

Russell's chapter, "Present Forces and Tendencies in the Far East" (in The Problem of China) deals with the balance of power in this region in the 1920s and focuses on China, Japan, Russia and America. I will omit his comments on Japan here and concentrate on China's dealings with America and the influence of Russia. Russell points out that the interests of Britain are (leaving India to the side) basically the same as those of America-- at least its ruling sector of finance capital and NOT "the pacifistic and agrarian tendencies of the Middle West."

At this time Russell thought that the two most important "moral forces" in the Far East were those emanating from Russia and America. He thought the Americans to be more idealistic than the jaded imperialists running the European capitalist states. However he thought that cynical imperialist views were an inevitability as a nation's power increased and the Americans would abandon their idealism.

We must keep this in mind, he warns us, "when we wish to estimate the desirability of extending the influence of the United States." Today we can see that Russell was right. The United States has evolved into the most cynical and ruthless imperial power in the world, encircling the globe with its garrisons and fleets, and subjecting whole nations and peoples to its bloody domination in search of power, wealth, and resources.

All this, however, was in the future. The benign United States that appeared to Russell was that of the Harding Administration and the Washington Naval Conference, presided over by Secretary of State Charles Evan Hughes. The conference was held from late 1921 to early 1922 and was the first disarmament conference in modern history. It was designed to reign in Japanese aggression in China, limit naval construction, and keep the Open Door Policy in place in China.

Russell thought America's policy at the conference was a liberal one, but only because the outcome of the conference was in line with American interests in the Far East. What Russell really believed was that "when American interests or prejudices are involved liberal and humanitarian principles have no weight whatever." Have we seen anything to contradict this assessment since the days of Warren Harding (or those of George Washington for that matter)?

If American plans for the future economic development of China should be successful Russell thought it would be disastrous for China. It would certainly be good for America and her allies, but would involve "a gradually increasing flow of wealth from China to the investing countries, the chief of which is America [the CPC appears to have reversed this flow]; the development of a sweated proletariat [still a problem]; the spread of Christianity [another great evil]; the substitution of American civilization for Chinese [not yet but McDonalds and KFC have secured beach heads];…. the gradual awakening of China to her exploitation by the foreigner [China was already awake when Russell wrote]; and one day, fifty or a hundred years hence [around 1972 or 2022], the massacre of every white man throughout the Celestial Empire at a signal from some vast secret society."

Well, the great awakening was already at hand when Russell wrote, he was just blind to it. China liberated itself in a little over 25 years, despite the best actions the US and its allies could do to prevent it, and no vast secret society sprang up to threaten every "white man." The Celestial Empire has become a People's Republic.

Well, Russell's vision of the future was off, but the definition he gave of what the West considers "good" government was spot on, even today: "it is a government that yields fat dividends for capitalists." This is still the game plan in the 21st century.

Russell now embarks on some ill founded speculations which, nevertheless, hint at a grain of truth. He predicts, for example "it is not likely that Bolshevism [as seen in Russia-tr] as a creed will make much progress in China." He gives the following three reasons: 1) China has a decentralized state tending towards feudalism whereas Bolshevism requires a centralized state. Russell doesn't seem to understand a successful socialist revolution would reverse this tendency.

2) China is more suitable for anarchism because the Chinese have a great sense of personal freedom and the Bolsheviks need to have (and do have) more control over individuals "than has ever been known before." This is strange. The Chinese had just emerged from an oriental despotism under the Manchus that had regulated everything including dress and hair styles for the population, and had no tradition of anything like "personal freedom" as had developed in Europe.

3) Bolshevism opposes "private trading" which is the "breath of life to all Chinese except the literati." But ninety percent of the Chinese at this time were basically illiterate peasants most of whom were under the control of a feudalistic landlord class. The Chinese masses had more in common with the Russian masses than Russell seemed to realize.

The greatest appeal of Bolshevism, Russell said, was to the youth of China who wanted to develop industry by skipping the stage of capitalist development. But Russia was now engaged in the New Economic Policy and Russell thought this signaled a slow return to capitalist methods which would disillusion the Chinese.

But, Russell said, the fact that as a creed Bolshevism [i.e., Marxism] would not hold any lasting appeal, Bolshevism "as a political force" had a great future. What he meant was that Bolshevik Russia would continue to play the Great Game in Asia and follow in the footsteps of Tsarist imperialism with Bolshevik imperialism since "the Russians have an instinct for colonization" [!!].

Here is where Russell becomes very confused in his analysis. He doesn't really define "imperialism." Marxists at this time defined it as the international policy of monopoly capitalism based on the control of the state by financial capital sometimes allied with industrial capital. In this sense Bolshevik imperialism was a contradiction in terms. As far as "the Russians," lumped together without any attempt at class analysis, having an "instinct" to become colonialists -- such general statements are useless in trying to describe social reality.

Regardless, Russell thinks it would not be so bad for Russia to become hegemonic in Asia. The Russians could enter into more nearly equal relations with Asian peoples because their "character" [!!] is more "Asiatic" than that of the "English speaking-nations." English speaking nations would not be able to have the same understanding and ability "to enter into relations of equally" with these strange inscrutable Orientals. As a result an Asian Block of nations would arise as a defensive block and this would be good for world peace as well as "humanity."

Russell recommends that outside powers leave off meddling with the Chinese and attempting to impose their own values on them as the Chinese will, left to themselves, "find a solution suitable to their character" for their own political problems. This idea is of "national character" is quite unscientific and if Russell had understood what he read of Das Kapital and other Marxist writings and substituted some such phrase as "find a solution based on their own historical development and class relations" he would have made better sense. POC would have been better understood, in fact, if "national character" had been replaced by "historical development" whenever it occured along with a brief description of that development.

Russell goes on to predict what the future of China will most likely be. Marxists, as great predictors of the future themselves, especially its inevitable trends and outcomes, understand what a risky business this is and should have great sympathy for Russell's wrong headed prognosis.

Since the US emerged unscathed from WW I it had an excess of available capital to invest and would be the principal nation involved in China's future development. "As the financiers are the most splendid feature of the American civilization, China must be so governed as to enrich the financiers." The US will contribute greatly to building educational institutions in China so that Chinese intellectuals will end up serving the interests of the big Trusts just as American intellectuals do. As a result a conservative anti-radical reform system will be produced and touted as a great force for peace. But, Russell points out: "it is impossible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear or peace and freedom out of capitalism."

The US will encourage the growth of a stable government, foster an increase in income to build up a market for American goods, discourage other powers besides themselves from meddling in China, and look askance upon all attempts of the Chinese to control their own economy, especially the nationalization of the mines and railroads, which Russell sees as a "form of State Socialism or what Lenin calls State Capitalism." The reference to Lenin is in respect to the New Economic Plan (NEP) in Russia.

The US would also keep lists of radical students and see to it that they would not get jobs, try to impose its puritan morality on the Chinese, and because Americans think their own country and way of life are "perfect" they will do great damage to what is best in Chinese culture in their attempts to make China as much as possible resemble what they call "God's own country."

As a result of all this a "Marxian class-war will break out" between Asia and the West. The Asian forces will be led by a socialist Russia and be fought for freedom from the imperialist powers and their exploitation. These views are very different from those Russell will be representing in his future Cold War phase.

Ever the pessimist, Russell sees this war as so destructive all around that probably "no civilization of any sort would survive it." When the actual war came is was very destructive, but it was a civil war between the bourgeois democratic capitalist powers and the authoritarian fascist capitalist powers into which the Russians were drawn against their will and from which the Chinese emerged as a free and independent people determined to build socialism.

Russell ends his chapter on a socialist note about the evils of the "present "(1920s)
system of world wide capitalist domination. Russell's conclusion is almost a perfect description of the world we live in today. "The essential evil of the present system," he says, "as Socialists have pointed out over and over again, is production for profit instead of for use." American power may, for a while, impose peace, but never freedom for weak countries. "Only international Socialism can secure both; and owing to the stimulation of revolt by capitalist oppression, even peace alone can never be secure until international Socialism is established throughout the world."

Part Four coming up.

Video Games, Free Speech and Socialism

2011-06-15T12:39:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

Under socialism society would work to improve the well being of all its members. Individuals would be free to say and do what they wish with the proviso that they could not engage in activities that were harmful to others. There would also be a rich civil society wherein groups and organizations could form to pursue ends and activities that interested them, again with the only restraint being that they could not hurt others in pursuit of their special aims.

This kind of society would be very different from the capitalist society we are presently living under where individuals and groups are allowed to form that do pursue aims that are hurtful to others. Private businesses and corporations, for example, can form with the purpose, and indeed the duty, to increase their capital and make private profits.

There is nothing wrong with that as long as their activities are beneficial to society or at least do not harm others. In fact we have in the US a Bill of Rights as part of our Constitution and its function is to protect members of society to the extent of giving them certain rights to engage in individual and group actions which the government as such might not approve of.

What a socialist government would approve of is, in many instances, very different from what our present capitalist government would approve of. In the case of the application of the Bill of Rights there would presumably be certain activities prohibited under one form of government that would be allowed under the other.

For example, I think violent video games should be prohibited under any form of government, but definitely under socialism, and I don't think any violation of the Bill of Rights is involved.

Under our present capitalist government, however, special interest groups, whose goal is profit regardless of the harm that might be done to others, produce and sell violent video games and claim protection under the first amendment in the Bill of Rights (freedom of speech) to do so.

Why I think this is wrong is based on the following scientific evidence from Science Daily of 26 May 2011 ("Violent Video Games Reduce Brain Response to Violence and Increase Aggressive Behavior, Study Suggests").

This science report starts by informing us that;"Scientists have known for years that playing violent video games causes players to become more aggressive." Just what we need in our violence prone gun toting society where people are gunned down daily in the streets. Well, anyway, ''knowing that" and "knowing why" are two different questions. SD says new findings at the University of Missouri have discovered at least one reason why these games lead to aggressive behavior: "the brains of violent video game players become less responsive to violence, and this diminished brain response predicts an increase in aggression."

Dr. Bruce Bartholow, one of the scientists conducting the study, is quoted as saying: "Many researchers have believed that becoming desensitized to violence leads to increased human aggression. Until our study, however, this causal association had never been demonstrated experimentally."

In the experiment, people played violent and nonviolent video games and then played competitive games with an opponent in which they could inflict a painful stimulus to the loser. The games were rigged so the winners would be the ones who had just played the two types of video games. The experiment showed that those who had played the violent games inflicted more painful stimuli. There was a series of tests as well all of which reached the same conclusions about brain activity and aggression related to violent video games.

There is always the possibility that some third unknown factor is responsible for both the desire to play violent video games and the diminished brain activity that leads to aggressive behavior. But so far all the evidence points to the violent video games as the cause of the aggressive behavior.

Dr. Bartholow pointed out, according to SD, that evidence shows that grade school children on average are playing video games for forty hours a week-- more than any other activity. The scientists say young "children could become accustomed to violent behavior as their brains are forming." What kind of rational decent society would allow such a thing? Certainly not a socialist one. There is nothing in the first amendment that protects speech that is dangerous and harmful to the public. Violent video games should be treated just as falsely "shouting 'Fire' in a crowded theatre."i.e., as a clear and present danger to any society-- capitalist or socialist.

We don't want our kids to smoke, drink, or eat too much as that would hurt their bodies. But violent and aggressive (and unemployed) young brains are just what the military recruiters are looking for as we will need to expand the all volunteer army in the years ahead as our commitments in the middle east and Africa grow. A socialist society will have no need to bring up its youth in this way.

The last word goes to Dr. Bartholow: "More than any other media, these video games encourage active participation in violence. From a psychological perspective, video games are excellent teaching tools because they reward players for engaging in certain types of behavior.
Unfortunately, in many popular video games, the behavior is violence."

Russell, Mao and the Fate of China (Part Two)

2011-06-12T13:42:00.001-07:00

Thomas Riggins

Russell discusses the internal state of China, as he understood it in 1920-21, in his chapter "Modern China" in The Problem of China. He thinks there are only two ways the Chinese can escape from imperialist domination. The first way is for China to become a strong military power. Russell thinks this would be a disaster.

However since "the capitalist system involves in its very essence a predatory relation of the strong towards the weak [a perfectly good Leninist proposition even if clumsily expressed], internationally as well as nationally" he proposes a second way for Chinese liberation. The foreign imperialist powers will have to " become Socialistic." Russell thinks this is the only real solution for the Chinese.

It didn't occur to Russell that China might free itself by military means and work towards socialism at the same time. It goes without saying that the Chinese would be waiting for kingdom come to be liberated if they had taken Russell's advice and expected Europe and America to turn socialist.

Russell, as did many in his generation, expected a major war to eventually break out between Japan and the United States over which would be top dog in the far east, but did not see that war as an opportunity for the victims of imperialism to break free and become independent. At any rate, in respect to his "only" solution to Chinese liberation, Russell was wildly off the mark-- despite his Leninist grasp of the nature of capitalism.

Russell did, however, urge progressives to support the fledgling government of Sun Yat-sen which was at this time battling the war lord system. No one at that time foresaw that the Kuomintang would degenerate into a fascist despotism under Sun's successor Chiang Kai-shek, or that the recently founded Communist Party of China would be the eventual vehicle both for Chinese liberation and regeneration.

Russell's next comment was completely correct and was about an issue that, after the success of the revolution, the Chinese took very seriously. Russell wrote that "in the long run, if the birth-rate is as great as is usually supposed, no permanent cure for their poverty is possible while their families continue to be so large."

The introduction of birth control and the one child policy, which was a drastic step and is now being reevaluated, probably helped to considerably contain the population from an unmanageable explosion (not to credit natural disasters and the unintended consequences of policies that turned out to be mistaken with respect to premature industrial expansion and agricultural reforms in the 1950s).

Another problem the Chinese would have to overcome before they could hope to compete with the West, according to Russell, was lack of a modern educational system for the masses. This too the CPC saw as a major problem and immediately after coming to power launched a mass literacy program and built schools and institutions of higher learning throughout China.

This was a prerequisite, Russell said, as Chinese workers would need education and skills in order to command decent wages (he did not foresee a socialist revolution in China). Nevertheless industrialization in China, as in all other countries, would begin to develop by methods that are "sordid and cruel." Intellectuals, he remarked, "wish to be told of some less horrible method by which their country may be industrialized, but so far none is in sight."

Whether you are capitalist or socialist, it appears, if you are starting from a primitive economic base the only way you can accumulate capital to make industrial advances is to take it from the surplus value created by the working class. As we will see Russell thinks state capitalism, or state socialism (they are the same for him), would be the best way for the Chinese to go-- but he doesn't envision a revolution.

Russell now hits upon a major problem which I think was responsible for some of the major errors of the Mao era. "There is one traditional Chinese belief which dies very hard, and that is the belief that correct ethical sentiments are more important than detailed scientific knowledge. This view is, of course, derived from the Confucian tradition, and is more or less true in a pre-industrial society."

One would think that Russell, with commitments to science as the basis for correct knowledge of the world, would hold that "detailed scientific knowledge" is always to be preferred; how would a pre-industrial society ever advance to a higher level without also developing science?

In the 1950s and 60s Mao pushed the line that politics ( "correct ethical sentiments") was the correct guide to action and could win out over any objections based on economic (scientific) considerations. This led to the twin disasters of the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. There was no basis in Marxism for the views he was espousing even though Mao used Marxist terminology to try and explain his thought. If Russell was correct, this would have been a case of the unconscious Confucian substrata in Mao's world view manifesting itself in Marxist guise.

Mao himself was ant-Confucian at this time so even he was blind to the real origins of the reactionary policies he was peddling in Marxist dress. I should also point out that it was only one wing of Confucianism that held to this view-- an Idealist trend that developed in the Ming Dynasty and that there were other wings of Confucianism that were materialistically motivated. Mao had indeed studied Ming Confucianism and was influenced by it in his youth, and , I think, unconsciously after he assumed power.

Stay tuned for Part Three.

U.S. Prepares for Iraq Retreat

2011-06-08T04:16:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

According to the New York Times (6-7-2011) this summer the U.S. may be facing its "most dangerous remaining mission" in Iraq-- getting its troops out. Reading between the lines of Michael S. Schmidt's report from Baghdad reveals that the U.S. is about to leave a country that will be glad to see us go and that we have failed to have accomplished anything of value in for its people--- despite killing and displacing millions of them. We didn't even get the control of Iraq's oil as we had hoped. Witness Vincent Fernando's comments in Business Insider (online 2-3-2010): "Thus the U.S. invasion indeed unlocked Iraq's oil production potential as many critics said had been the plan all along, but in the end the U.S. won't have much control over it." (Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/sovereign-backed-oil-companies-creamed-the-multinationals-in-iraq-2010-2#ixzz1OhQqlFAs)

Meanwhile, the Iraqi resistance to occupation, "the resurgent threat", struck a U.S. base on Monday with deadly force unseen since 2009. It is difficult to estimate the popularity of the insurgence, as it is in constant flux, but a review of the research over the last several years indicates it has wide popular support as most people do not like being invaded and occupied.

According to the Times the resistance is waging a three pronged attack against the American occupation forces-- even as they prepare a partial retreat to Kuwait beginning, they hope, in July: they want the invaders to leave as planned, break their will to leave parts of the occupation army in situ, and impress upon the Iraqi people that they forced the invaders to withdraw.

There are about 46 to 47,000 troops left in the country and they have to leave along
a desert road 168 miles long that leads to Kuwait. They could be sitting ducks. The Iraqi's certainly remember how, after the cease fire in the Gulf War, their retreating troops were attacked in cold blood and thousands were butchered as they fled along the roads after leaving Kuwait.

Col. D. Crossman told the Times on Monday: "Our forces were attacked today, and we were just sitting still. What is going to happen to the threat [?] when we line up our trucks to leave and start moving out of the country?"

Well, Schmidt reports that the U.S., has learned a hard lesson and that is that it needs the support of the local population in order to succeed. But after having destroyed their country how can we count on their support? In that most American of ways, we will pay for it.

The U.S. will pay $100,000 a month in tribute to ten local tribal elders if they will protect the passage of the troops. At least its cheaper than asking Blackwater to do it. Of course the mighty U.S. military doesn't pay protection money so "officially the money is paid to have Iraqis clean the crucial roadway of debris" no doubt inspired by Lady Bird Johnson's program to spruce up the highways and byways of America while LBJ gassed and napalmed the Vietnamese peasantry.

Col. Crossman explained, "I can't possibly be all places at one time. There are real incentives for them to keep the highway safe. Those sheiks we have the best relationships with and have kept their highways clear and safe will be the most likely ones to get renewed for the rest of the year."

So far so good? The Times says roadside bomb attacks are "down" and so are attacks from the areas under control of the sheiks. At least that is the claim-- remember the worst attack in two years was just last monday. At any rate the sheiks "are happy to get the money" they have their own uses for it and it will soon run out after the withdrawal. So maybe the U.S. can pull off a safe retreat. Who wants to kill the goose who lays the golden the egg? But what if the goose is leaving town?

Money is money and the resistance also can pay off the sheiks, and the sheiks have to live with the resistance after the U.S. military has left the country (if indeed they are all really getting out). So, Col. Crossman admits, "There are some sheiks who are working for the other team and are being paid well by the militants so they can operate in their land." He should consider the fact that they are probably the same sheiks he thinks are on his payroll.

Russell, Mao and the Fate of China (Part One)

2011-06-05T12:59:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

In 1922 Bertrand Russell, then probably the most famous living philosopher in the world, published The Problem of China [POC]. This book was the result of Russell's being invited to China to give a series of lectures and conduct meetings with leading Chinese over a period of about six months. In POC Russell diagnoses the problems facing China as a result of its semi-occupation by European and Japanese imperialism. In the course of the book he also makes several recommendations and predictions concerning the future development of China.

The future leader of China, Mao Zedong, was either present at one of Russell's lectures or read a detailed account of it in the Chinese press. The purpose of this article is to discuss Russell's blueprint for Chinese liberation and compare it to what the Chinese, under the leadership of the Communist Party, actually did. Another purpose is to point out that many of Russell's comments about the role of the United States made over 90 years ago, as well as what was needed in China, are still relevant today.

A word of caution. Russell considered himself a radical and a "socialist", perhaps even a theoretical "communist" (although he was hostile to many of the actions of the Russian Bolsheviks) at this time. After WWII and up to the late 1950s Russell was a cold war anti-Communist, though not a ridiculous mindless one a la Sidney Hook and those in his milieu, before coming to his senses in the 1960s. I am only concerned, in this article, with Russell's political statements and opinions in the early 1920s. Some of Russell's views, while commonly held in the 20s, are completely politically incorrect by today's standards-- I will note them with explanation marks (!!) but otherwise I will not address them or pass over them in silence. These are usually remarks dealing with the nature of the "Chinese mind" or "character" as if all Chinese think a certain way.

This article will deal with Chapter One of POC: "Questions.''

In trying to understand China, Russell thinks he is dealing with a totally alien culture. He is forced to ask himself what his ultimate values are, what makes one culture or society "better" than another, and what ends does he wish to see triumph in the world. He says different people have different answers to these questions and he thinks they are just subjective preferences not amenable to argument. He will merely state his own and hope his reader will agree with him. Russell is no objectivist in morals. The ends he values are: "knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship and affection." He believes in the goals, if not always the methods, of communism (although he is not a Marxist), and thinks a socialist society will best approximate the ends he wants. There are elements in Chinese culture that also reflect his ends better than they are reflected in Euro-American culture.

Russell thinks a nation should be judged not only on how its own people are treated, but also on how it treats others. He finds China, in this respect, better than the imperialist nations of the West. In the following quote Russell uses the word "our" and I want to stress that he does not intend to restrict its meaning to the British Empire but uses it inclusively to refer to the major imperialist nations of Europe and the English speaking world or even to "capitalist" nations thus including Japan.

"Our prosperity," he writes, "and most of what we endeavor to secure for ourselves, can only be obtained by widespread exploitation of weaker nations ." The Chinese, however, obtain what they have by means of their own hard work. China is radically different today but I think what Russell says about it is still basically correct and what he says about "us" hasn't changed very much at all.

What happens in China, he says will determine the whole future course of world history. There are tremendous resources in China and whether they are to be controlled "by China, by Japan, or by the white races [!!], is a question of enormous importance, affecting not only the whole development of Chinese civilization, but the balance of power in the world, the prospects of peace, the destiny of Russia, and the chances of development toward a better economic system in the advanced nations."

This remark is as true today as it was some 90 years ago. Chinese civilization, however, is now, at least, much more in the hands of the Chinese, the world balance of power remains in flux, the destiny of Russia is still undetermined, and a better economic system for the West (i.e., socialism) is still a distant dream but may be positively influenced by the economic development of China.

I didn't mention the "prospects for peace" and that is because in the short term Russell was absolutely correct: the civil war and revolution in China, World War II (in the Pacific), the Korean War, and the Vietnam War all had China, in one way or another, as their focus and the hope of eventually controlling her resources as a backdrop. Today as well many circles in the West, associated with international finance capital, see China as a future threat and the US military has contingency plans for a war with her. So, Russell was quite prescient to see the economic resources of China as the focal point of contemporary history.

Part Two coming up!

Mr. Justice Scalia and the Dybbuk

2011-05-31T18:29:00.000-07:00

Mr. Justice Scalia and the Dybbuk
Thomas Riggins

I don't know exactly what the relation is between federal judges and dybbuks, but it seems that for second time since I can remember a federal justice has been possessed by a dybbuk.

The first time was when judge Julius Hoffman was possessed during the the 1969 trail of the Chicago Seven. Hoffman's behavior on the bench was so outrageous (he was later rebuked by a Federal Appeals Court) that the defense suggested that he been possessed by a dybbuk. Fortunately for him, the Radical Jewish Union in New York performed an exorcism, in absentia, in the the early 70s to free him of the dybbuk.

Now it seems that Justice Scalia has also been possessed by a dybbuk, even though dybbuks are not known to possess goyim, as no other explanation seems possible for the way he had demeaned his office by comments he made pertaining to the recent Supreme Court ruling requiring California to eliminate the severe over crowding in its prisons. (New York Times, 5-24-2011)

The court found that California was violating the Eighth Amendment (against cruel and unusual punishments) and must reduce its prison overcrowding by 30,000 souls or so over the next two years.

Here is some of evidence presented to the justices: prisoners held in cages the size of a telephone booth with no toilet; an inmate suicide rate 80 times the national average; a prisoner dies every 6 or 7 days as a result of unconstitutional behavior [that is 52 "capital punishments" as it were every year at least]. The Court, in ordering a reduction of the prison population by 30,000, will still leave the prison population at 137.5 % of capacity so some horrific conditions will still continue. The Times quotes David C. Fathi of the ACLU as saying, "This case involves ongoing, undisputed and lethal constitutional violations."

These horrible facts, being "undisputed", you might think the Court would have been outraged by this violation of the Constitution-- but it wasn't, it was only a 5 to 4 decision with the usual suspects caring little for the constitutional issues (i.e., Scalia, Alito (who has a touch of a Dybbuk himself), Thomas and Roberts).

Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, said, "A prison which deprives prisoners of basic sustenance, including adequate medical care, is incompatible with the concept of human dignity and has no place in civilized society." The votes against the majority indicates that some justices think it IS compatible, but their views on what it means to be civilized are wanting in the extreme.

Scalia's comments were particularly disgusting and demeaned his office-- faced with the evidence of high suicide rates and the unjust suffering and deaths of prisoners, he tried to justify his inhumane vote by insinuating that the court would be responsible for releasing thousands of "happy go lucky felons" many of whom "will undoubtedly be fine physical specimens who have developed intimidating muscles pumping iron in the prison gym."

This type of polemic is far beneath the dignity of the Supreme Court and can only be explained the the presence of a dybbuk or similar creature in control of the justice's mouth (he gave a rare oral objection). The other three dissenters also worried about violence that may be let loose on society and shed crocodile tears for future victims. But they know perfectly well, as the state had already declared that NO violent prisoners or those convicted of violent crimes would be released.

This split vote reveals that at least four of the justices on the Supreme Court are lacking in basic feelings of humanity and have no concerns about outrageous violations of those parts of the Bill of Rights designed to protect people from governmental abuse. In the name of the Bill of Rights it is imperative that no Republican president should come to power and be able to appoint such troglodytes to the Court. As for Justice Scalia-- I hope he gets treatment for his dybbuk as soon as possible-- certainly before he offers any more decisions to the Court.

JUST WHAT DO IQ TESTS REALLY MEASURE?

2011-05-25T15:29:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

Ever since I can remember IQ tests and what they are supposed to measure has
been one of the biggest controversies in psychology. The one thing most people agreed upon was that, whatever was being measured, these tests did not measure "intelligence."

The latest explanation is that they measure a person's "motivation" AND the likely hood of future success ("Motivation Plays a Critical Role in Determining IQ Test Scores" ScienceDaily 4-27-2011). And by "motivation" is meant that of the person being tested for taking the test itself.

Research carried out at the University of Pennsylvania by Angela Lee Duckworth
looked for a correlation between IQ test taking scores and the motivation shown by the test takers-- did they bother to finish, did they rush through the test just be done with it, were they just going through the motions having no real interest or belief the test meant anything versus following orders, taking it seriously and thinking a high score would benefit them.

"When people use IQ tests in social science research, where thousands of kids are taking IQ tests where it doesn't matter to them what they get, what's the effect of motivation on those scores?" Duckworth asked.

What the research showed was that long term outcomes could be predicted by these tests (higher economic and social status). "But," Duckworth said, "what our study questions is whether that's entirely because smarter people do better in life than other people or whether part of the predictive power [is] coming from test motivation." In other words the IQ tests may be measuring motivation to succeed rather than raw intelligence.

Then she asks, "Could it be that part of the reason doing well on this test predicts future success is because the kinds of traits that would result in you doing well -- compliance with authority, self-control, attentiveness, competitiveness -- are traits that also help you in life?"

Now "compliance with authority" and "self-control" (i.e., rebelliousness) may well be traits that exploited groups within society lack and thus are not traits valued by mainstream society. It would seem the tests also measure DOCILITY as well as motivation.

Duckworth's conclusion regarding her study is it "means that for people who get high IQ scores, they probably try hard and are intelligent. But for people who get low scores, it can be an absence of either or both of those traits."

So, if you get a low score you are either not intelligent or not motivated, or both. It follows, however, that intelligent, even very highly intelligent, people could score low on the IQ test because they are not motivated to go along with the social regime in which they find themselves. Therefore IQ tests are UNRELIABLE measures of a person's "intelligence."

On the other hand people who are docile around authority and take orders easily are likely to score high on the test compared to people who question authority and the status quo-- everything else being equal-- so the that test's main use would seem to be as a tool used by the powers to be to identify and hold back people who might potentially challenge their monopoly and control of power.

The results of Duckworth's study suggests that progressives should object to the use of IQ tests on students and young people by the authorities in an attempt to classify their future behaviors.

Thousands of Women Will Die of Breast Cancer Thanks to Republican Politics

2011-05-18T12:15:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

A study sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and recently published by ScienceDaily ("Air Pollution Exposure Affects Chances of Developing Premenopausal Breast Cancer, Study Finds" SD 4-20-2011) has found that both young girls and women (after their first baby) who have been exposed of air pollution may have had their DNA mutated so that they will contract breast cancer before menopause.

What the study showed was that this DNA mutation was greater in areas with higher levels of air pollution than in those with lower levels. These findings were presented at a recent meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. The chief investigator, Katharine Dobson, stated, "The investigation looked for an association between exposure to pollution and alterations to DNA that influence the presence or absence of key proteins. Such genetic changes are thought to be major contributors to cancer development and progression, including at very early stages."

With this information at hand, plus the information we already have that air pollution causes untold numbers of deaths due to respiratory failures, you would think our law makers would want to reduce air pollution as much as possible to save women from these unnecessary deaths and the associated pain and suffering.

But it seems that Republican lawmakers (and conservative Democrats) and public officials are more interested in the money they get from the lobbyists representing the big polluting corporations-- oil, gas, coal, utilities, mining, etc., than they are in the health of the American people. They are perfectly willing to expose children to the deadly effects of air pollution and try and prevent any regulations from going into effect that might limit the rights of big business to dirty our air . They are on a mission to destroy the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-- which one of their own helped set up (President Nixon.)

Newt Gingrich (who is now running for the Republican nomination for president) for example, supports the movement to ABOLISH the EPA entirely and thus give free reign to the polluters. He claims, according to the Center for American Progress, that people who want to control the air have no respect for ordinary people and their jobs!

Meanwhile surveys by the American Lung Association and public opinions polls show that around 75% of the American people support the EPA and want even more regulation than the agency now tries to enforce. It is at least a good sign for progressives that the fascist leaning Republican right hasn't the faintest idea what the American people really want.

The American people want healthy air for themselves and their children-- the big energy corporations want bigger profits for themselves. Whose interests should prevail in a democracy? We shall soon find out as Congress hold hearing on these subjects.

The EPA says that newly proposed rules for reducing, forget about eliminating, deadly pollutants from power plants, cement kilns and industrial boilers-- pollutants such as toxic metals, mercury,and acid gases will prevent tens of thousands of lives every year. Tens of thousands!

So what-- those people are just collateral damage to the executives of the big polluting industries and their Republican lapdogs. Representatives of the polluters have testified to Congress that they just can't comply with the Clean Air Act, and besides it will cost too much and also cost jobs. Sorry no can do.

Riling the Republicans is the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled that CO2 can be considered a pollutant because of GLOBAL WARMING and subject to EPA regulation. But Republicans don't even believe in global warming! How can the Supreme Court rule on a non existent thing?

The good news is that the movement to abolish the EPA is limited to the House. The GOPoids don't have control of the Senate or the Presidency. It is our job to keep it that way and to recover the House from the lunatic fringe. This must be done in the name our health, the atmosphere and the fight against breast cancer and other deadly diseases spread by Republican politics.

Karl Marx on Eugen Dühring

2011-05-15T13:30:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

Anti-Dühring is Engels' enduring criticism of the mishmash of philosophy, science, and socialism published in Germany by Eugen Dühring (1833-1921) in the middle of the 19th century as an alternative to the thought of Karl Marx. Engels' book is divided into three parts-- philosophy, political science, and socialism. But Engels did not write every chapter in his famous book. Chapter 10, the last of the section on political economy, was written by his friend and life long collaborator Karl Marx. This article discusses Marx's opinions of Dühring in that chapter, entitled, "From the Critical History."

It is Dühring's 1871 work Critical History of Political Economy that Marx intends to critique, beginning with Dühring's claim that his work in Political Economy "is absolutely without precedent." Here we will find a definitive treatment of the subject in a scientific manner. The science is, he says, "peculiarly mine."

Dühring's first great "discovery" is that Political Science is a modern creation with no medieval or ancient roots. Marx points out, however, that this claim to modernity was already put forth by him in Capital and Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. The difference is that Marx begins with the great founders of this science(from William Petty (1623-1687) and Boisguillebert (1646-1714) to Ricardo (1772-1823) and Sismondi (1773-1842) while Dühring begins with the "wretched abortions" of later bourgeois economists. Marx also has respect for the medieval and classical traditions.

Of course, since Political Science was founded in an attempt to scientifically understand modern CAPITALISM, you will not find it in the classical (slave) world , nor the middle ages (feudal). Capitalist societies are based on commodity production and exchange but there was limited commodity production and exchange in both the classical period and the Middle Ages and what the Ancients and other pre-moderns had to say about it is still worth while; Marx especially defends the economic writings of Aristotle (384-322 BC) and Plato (427-347 BC) from Dühring's unerudite "criticisms."

Dühring is also ignorant of the history and development of political economy in the modern period. For example, he takes a minor work [Antonio Serra's Breve trattato of 1613 as a defining work of Mercantilism-- the dominant economic theory of capitalism for its first 250 years of existence, ending around the time of Adam Smith (1723-1790)] while completely ignoring Thomas Mun's (1571-1641) A Discourse of Trade of 1609 which was "the mercantilist gospel" for the entire Seventeenth Century.

Worse than that is Dühring's treatment of William Petty, "the founder of modern political economy." After much hard thinking and many investigations, Petty in 1662
formulated one of the bed rock foundations of political economy as a science (Treatise on Taxes and Contributions). Here, Marx says he "lays it down in a definite and general form that the values of commodities must be measured by equal labour." Further, in a work of 1672 (Anatomy of Ireland) Petty has overcome "the last vestiges of mercantilist views."

These are great intellectual feats for the founder of the new science. Marx says about Petty, and this applies to Marx himself in our day, that what is "quite natural in a writer who is laying the foundations of political economy and is necessarily feeling his way, experimenting and struggling with a chaos of ideas which are only just taking shape, may seem strange in a writer who is surveying and summarizing more than a hundred and fifty years of investigation whose results have already passed in part from books into the consciousness of the generality." That Dühring fails to grasp this and thinks that "there is fair measure of superficiality" in Petty's thinking, only shows, Marx avers, that Dühring is a "vainglorious and pedantic mediocrity."

One of Petty's great successors was the the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) who, besides his works on the social contract and the foundations of epistemology, also wrote an important work in the fledgling science of political economy: Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interests and Raising the Value of Money, 1691.

Petty had already compared interest to "rent on money"-- i.e. to "rent of land and houses." His position was that all rent should be unregulated and determined by the market. This, of course, is a reactionary view today but not so in 1691. This was part of the fight against Mercantilism which progressives in those days rightly viewed as a system that held back social and economic progress by using the state to impose import duties and taxes to defend domestic markets and subsidize exports.

Trying to regulate interest rates, i.e., rent on money, Petty felt was "against the law of nature". Petty, Marx wrote, "declared that legislative regulation of the rate of interest was as stupid as regulation of exports of precious metals [a pillar of Mercantilism] or regulation of exchange rates." Ideas that are reactionary and unworkable today (just think of the ridiculous economic and philosophical bloviations of Ayn Rand and her followers) in the end stage of capitalism, were forward looking and progressive during its birth pangs.

Locke, whose economic essay, basically followed Petty's lead, had a great influence in those European countries struggling to go beyond the strictures of the Mercanilists or economic nationalists. Petty, who is, incidentally credited with the invention of the laissie faire school, was also supported by Sir Dudley North (1641-1691) in A Discourse on Trade, 1691, a contemporary of Locke's, whose work, Marx says "is a classical exposition, driven home with relentless logic, of the doctrine of free trade-- both foreign and internal…."

Locke and North deserve credit for furthering Petty's views and in developing them along new lines. But Dühring sees none of this. For Marx, the period 1691-1752 is crucial for the understanding of the development of political science. In was in this period that the writers influenced by Petty, Locke, North, and others, laid down the foundations for overthrowing Mercantilism. This period is a blank page for Herr Dühring. Dühring passes directly to David Hume (1711-1776) and the physiocrats. Marx has many interesting things to say about Hume as an economist (his philosophy is not mentioned) and why Dühring is so enamored with him.

Hume published his Economic Essays in 1752 and they are, in our current terminology, basically a plagerised version of the 1734 work of Jacob Vanderlint (died 1740) Money Answers All Things. While Hume almost literally follows Vanderlint, he is, according to Marx, "less profound." Dühring is unaware of Vanderlint and praises Hume while none the less failing to understand what he says.

Since Dühring doesn't have a real understanding of Hume I will just present Marx's views for the record. Hume's theory of money is that money is just a TOKEN of value and, ceteris paribus, "commodity prices rise in proportion to the increase in the volume of money in circulation, and fall in proportion to its decrease." Hume is basically saying that the increase in the amount of gold and silver in circulation, due to the imports from the New World, increases the prices of commodities. He also notes that this takes some time to spread through out the country until it finally trickles down to the working people: in Hume's words "it must first quicken the diligence of every individual before it increases the price of labour." So old is Reaganomics.

But Hume is not, according to Marx, addressing the "real scientific question" in this description-- i.e., how an increase in money "affects the prices of commodities." However, Marx does not answer this question here as he really wants to remark on Hume's theory of INTEREST. Hume says it is the not the money supply but the rate of profit that regulates the amount of interest (here he attacks Locke's view). Hume's theory is not original. Just as he got almost all his ideas from Vanderlint on most economic issues, his interest theory is just a rehash, and not as exact, of the work of J. Massie (died 1784) An Essay on the Governing Causes of the Natural Rate of Interest, 1750.

Hume, by the way, maintains a low interest rate means a nation is in a "flourishing condition." Well maybe in his day-- but we have low interest rates in the USA and we are hardly "flourishing", at least with respect to the majority of the population which is made up of working people.

There are other problems with Hume's ideas, according to Marx. Marx says "he had not the slightest understanding of the function of the precious metals as the measure of value." This is because he didn't know what "value" itself meant in terms of capitalist production. For example, he corrects Locke for holding that the precious metals only have "an imaginary value" by saying what they really have is "a fictitious value." These views are "much inferior" not only to those of Petty but to his contemporaries as well who were writing on these subjects-- esp. his friend Adam Smith.

Hume also is blind to the economic world coming into existence all around him. He holds to the outmoded view "that the 'merchant' is the mainspring of production." Despite these limitations, Marx concedes that in his day Hume was still a "respectable" political economist. His criticism is meant to dispel the over wrought praise Hume is given by Dühring. Because, while respectable, Marx adds, "he is anything but an original investigator, an even less an epoch making one."

Why does Marx think that Dühring likes Hume so much? It is because Dühring identified with Hume. Hume was denounced by the church for some of his views, but not so much as Gibbon was for his, Dühring too fell afoul of the authorities for some of his views. Hume attained a better reputation as a philosopher, and Dühring thinks that will also be his fate (it was not to be.)

Marx can't resist giving two quotes which many Hume fans would resent. The first is from a popular German world history book by Friedrich Schlosser (1766-1861): "In politics Hume was and always remained conservative and strongly monarchist in his views." He was also highly racist in his views on Africans. And William Cobbett (1762-1835) calls him "selfish" and a "lying Historian" [Hume wrote a history of England] and implies he was an hypocrite for attacking monks for their fatness, their not having wives or children and begging for their bread while he himself was without "a family or a wife and was a great fat fellow, fed, in considerable part, out of public money, without having merited it by any real public services."

Well, enough about Hume. Marx next turns his attention to Dühring and the physiocrats, especially the Tableau Economique of Francois Quesnay (1694-1744). Marx says Dühring's attempt to explain Quesnay's economic theories (the physiocrats were the first real school of modern economics, not counting the Mercantilists as modern!, and Quesnay was the founder) is completely mixed up and confused and shows, once again, that Dühring doesn't know what he is talking about. But so that WE can understand what the school was all about, Marx undertakes to explain it for our benefit.

The physiocrats divided society into three classes: the PRODUCTIVE class-- i.e., agricultural workers and farmers-- all wealth comes from a nation's agricultural production; the LANDLORDS [landowners, the nobility, the Church] who live off of the surplus produced by the farmers; and the STERILE class [the industrial bourgeoisie, merchants, etc, who live off of the raw materials and surpluses of the productive class. Where's the proletariat? Sorry, 17th century France was too backward to have noticed this newly developing class.

Quesnay is not describing the actually real existing economy of France-- he is constructing a simple MODEL that represents a starting point for understanding the actual economy (just as Marx did in Das Kapital). Marx says Quesday makes three premises to simplify the model: 1) he only looks at circulation between the classes and not within them; 2) he only deals with simple reproduction and constant prices; and 3) he treats all the annual purchases between the classes as a lump sum. Marx also notes that at this time almost all the non-food articles consumed by peasant families in Europe were home made and "treated as supplementary to agriculture."

Lets start the ball rolling: the Tableau (all figures are based on the value of French money in the 17th century) the total value of the harvest for one year is the starting point. This amount will be the "total reproduction" in France for that year-- let us refer to it as 5 economic units [5EU-- this was 5 million livres in those days].

Since the farmers are the only productive class they have the entire 5EU to themselves. They produced it by investing 2EU in seeds, etc., so they have a surplus of 3EU. They give 2EU to the landlords as RENT and the landlords then buy food from them in the amount of 1EU for the year so now the farmers have 2EU and the landlords 1EU.

With their 1EU left, the landlords buy the things they need to live on, etc., [other than agricultural goods] from the STERILE class. The farmers also buy from the Sterile class say 1EU but the sterile class has to buy food from the farmers but it does not buy back as much in EUs from the farmers as the farmers gave to it because, instead of a fair trade in equivalents, the sterile class has extracted a profit from the farmers by selling their commodities to them above the cost of production AND above their real value.

By the end of the year it is time to reap another harvest and the cycle continues. I have simplified Marx's exposition because the physiocrats are now only of historical interest and the main point has been shown-- i.e., that for them all wealth is produced by the farmers and is then distributed about society to the other classes.

Having finished with the physiocrats Marx makes two more observations on Dühring's incompetence. First, Dühring thinks that the physiocratic school ended with Turgot (1727-1781) the originator of the Idea of Progress and controller-general of France, 1774-76, in charge of economic reforms under Louis XVI. But Marx says the school actually ended with Mirabeau (1749-1791) "the leading economic authority in the Constituent Assembly of 1789."

Second, Dühring barely mentions Sir James Steuart (1712-1780) whose work was between Hume and Adam Smith and who "permanently enriched the domain of political economy" (with An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy, 1767). And what he does say about him is wrong.

Marx ends his chapter with the opinion that Dühring's Critical History is not worth reading, and he is particularly upset that Dühring begins his history with the large landlords of ancient history and doesn't know anything about "the common ownership of land in the tribal and
village communities, which is the real starting-point of all history."

And with that said, we conclude our review of Part II of Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science.

Profits, Pollution and Politics

2011-05-10T18:39:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

While the big oil companies and the government collude to get more off shore oil rigs up and running, scientists are busy warning us of the dangers to human health and well being of the pollution that inevitably comes with off shore drilling.

On May 1 of this year ScienceDaily published an article warning of the danger to fetal development from chemicals found in crude oil: SD 5-1-2011 "Chemical Found in Crude Oil Linked to Congenital Heart Disease: Fetal Exposure to Solvents May Damage Heart."

Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) is one of the biggest causes of death in children and can be a chronic life long condition. A scientific study carried out by Dr. D. Gale McCarver and published by the American Academy of Pediatrics indicates that up to 82% of children studied may have had fetal exposure to the chemicals in crude oil and to other oil based solvents.

Two of the many (there are seventeen or so deadly chemicals involved) that could cause abnormal heart development in a fetus are ethyl benzene and trichloroethylene (TCE).

Fetuses can be contaminated with ethyl benzene by exposure to crude oil in spills such as the gigantic spill caused by BP in the Gulf of Mexico or the one caused by Exxon in Alaska by the wreck of the Exxon Valdez. Besides oil spills, fetal contamination can occur by a woman breathing car emissions, gasoline vapors or tobacco smoke.

We also have to be on guard against TCE which is found at hazardous waste dumps as well as in commercial products (spot removers, degreasers, and other types of cleaning products.

It is not only CHF that can be traced back to these oil products. An earlier report in SD, "Biomedical Scientist Concerned About Effects of Oil Spill on Human Health" (6-25-2010) detailed warnings from Professor Bongsup Cho, a leading researcher funded by the American Cancer Society and National Institutes of Health regarding the chemicals in the tar balls found along the coast and out to sea in the Gulf as a result of the BP oil spill.

These tar balls are contaminated with the same cancer causing chemicals found in tobacco smoke and diesel exhaust. Professor Cho is worried about their effect on wildlife and animals in the food chain and what can happen to humans when they are exposed to them-- either in nature or in the food chain (eating fish or shrimp, for example.)

These chemicals, besides being carcinogens, can also cause DNA mutations and birth defects. Professor Cho thinks that "orange sheen" is another potential human health hazard. This is the sheen covering much of the Gulf as a result the chemical interaction of crude oil and the chemicals used by the oil companies to disperse it.

With all these deadly chemicals being dumped in the environment scientists are being prevented from even finding out what many of them are , there are some 80,000 of them, because the capitalist corporations are more interested in their profits that in people and the government PERMITS them to keep secret some of the chemicals they are dumping [what we don't know can't hurt us!]. Professor Cho says, with regard to orange sheen, that "nobody knows what's in that color [he means nobody outside of the oil companies] and how toxic the chemicals are. Companies keep the chemical makeup of the dispersants secret."

Its about the time our government started forcing these private capitalist corporations to take more interest in protecting people and the environment. Nationalizing them and letting the workers run them would be a good first step.

Evidence of Torture at Gitmo Covered Up

2011-05-03T17:18:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

On April 26, 2011 ScienceDaily reported the results of a new study made of the medical records of GTMO prisoners ("Medical Evidence of Torture Neglected in Guantanamo Bay Detainees, Suggests Review of Records"). The study was first reported in the online journal PLoS Medicine. The researchers, Vincent Iacopino (Physicians for Human Rights) and Stephen Xenakis, a retired US Army brigadier general, found that the medical personnel responsible for looking after the GTMO prisoners neither documented nor asked the causes for either the physical or mental injuries of the people they were supposed to "care" for. The researchers only had access to nine case files but the evidence they uncovered was considered "compelling" with respect to this dereliction of duty.

The GTMO prisoners described treatment by the US soldiers and other personnel that is torture according to the UN Convention Against Torture. The US says it doesn't torture prisoners and so uses a narrower definition than the UN and calls its techniques "enhanced interrogation." And Saddam Hussein didn't "gas" people, they were victims of "enhanced atmospheric pollution."

Here is what the US did, call it what you will. The prisoners were beaten really severely, bones were fractured, they were sexually assaulted, some were told they would be raped, they were water boarded to the point of asphyxiation, they were taken to be executed then spared at the last moment, they were "disappeared" then returned, they were not allowed to sleep, they were subject to extreme temperatures, they were put in stress positions, and forced to be nude. This last, by the way, is now used on the mainland --e.g, Pvt. Manning.

All these injuries, and the psychological results were in the medical records, without saying how they occurred, and the injuries are all CONSISTANT with torture techniques the prisoners reported being subject to. The Department of Defense medical personal failed to document any of the causes of the prisoners injuries and any psychological problems resulting from torture they attributed to "personality disorders" or "routine stressors of confinement" according to SD.

This evidence shows that the government's medical personnel FAILED both professionally and personally in their duty to their patients. It appears to me that they were complicit in covering up crimes against humanity in the treatment of these prisoners and in violations of basic human rights. And not only to me. The editors of PLoS wrote:"This paper adds new evidence that will bolster calls for further investigation into the complicity of medical personnel in torture at Guantanamo Bay, which clearly breaches fundamental human rights."

Republican Rejection of Science Threatens Humanity

2011-04-24T11:47:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

ScienceDaily for April 19, 2001 has a disturbing news report ("Democrats and Republicans Increasingly Divided Over Global Warming, Study Says"). While scientists around the world are coming to a growing consensus concurring on the reality of global warming Americans are being polarized along political lines with Democrats accepting the scientific consensus and Republicans rejecting it.

Dr. Aaron M. McCright of Michigan State University published "a first-of-its-kind"
study of the politics of global warming. McCright, who was named in 2007 as a Kavli Frontiers Fellow in the National Academy of Sciences for his work on the sociology of climate change, says that it is "depressing" to see the gap growing between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of climate change. The gap jumped by 30% between 2001 and 2010. SD says McCright concludes that this gap keeps "meaningful national energy policies from being considered."

As long as science is rejected for pseudo-science how can we meaningfully solve our problems. How could we have funded cancer research if Republicans rejected the scientific view that cancers exist? This is pretty much where we are at today on the issue of global warming.

McCright says, "Instead of a public debate about different policies to deal with global warming, a significant percentage of the American public is still debating the science. As a result, we're failing to significantly address one of the most serious problems of our time."

By going over 10 years of Gallup Poll results the study found that people on the political right are increasingly rejecting the scientific consensus on global warming while people on the political left basically accept it.

Other finding were that in 2001 49% of Republicans thought global warming was already having effects but this number dropped to 29% in 2010. In 2001 60% of Democrats thought global warming was under way, a number that grew to 70% by 2010. In 2001 the gap between Republicans and Democrats was 11% and in 2010 41%.

If people did not call themselves Republicans or Democrats, but used the terms conservative and liberal instead then the gap grew from around 18% in 2001 to 44% in 2010.

Having a college degree makes it more likely that liberals and Democrats accept the scientific view but more unlikely that Republicans and conservatives will. If even college educated Republicans and conservatives are rejecting science then we are in real trouble. However, since we don't know how many of them got their degrees from bible colleges we can't really know for sure what's going on with them.

McCright explains these figures from the "prevailing" theory of how the American people get their political ideas-- from "political elites." McCright says, "In the last few decades political elites have become polarized on climate change. This has driven the political divide on this topic within the American public, as regular citizens have taken cues from ideological and party leaders they trust."

People also tend to turn to media outlets that reinforce what they already think. Think of Fox news vs NPR (which itself has more conservative than liberal viewpoints expressed, yet is deemed liberal). People who like one rarely pay attention to the other. Yet one actually reports scientific findings and the other prefers pseudo-science (take your pick).

Well, "this is not a recipe," McCright says, "for promoting a civil science-based discussion on this very serious environmental problem. Like with the national discussion on health care, we don't even agree on what the basic facts are."

Are things looking better? Not according to Dr. McCright. SD quotes him as follows: "Many Republican Party leaders have moved further to the right since the 2008 presidential election. We've also seen attacks on climate science by Tea Party activists. It seems like climate change denial has become something of a litmus test for Republican candidates. This continued elite polarization on climate change means that the general public will likely remain politically divided on climate change for a while."

So, the future does not portend well for the US to do anything serious in the realm of climate change. With many scientists convinced that 350 Parts per million of atmospheric CO2 is the upper limit that our air can take that is compatible in the long run with most life on Earth (we are already at 391 ppm and growing by 2ppm every year) the longer the Republicans ignore science and cater to special interest groups [i.e., the big capitalist corporations] the more damage they do to the entire planet for their personal short term agendas. This is a real crime against humanity now and in the future.

Human See, Human Do

2011-04-17T16:43:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

Where does human prejudice come from? What causes one group of humans to dislike and look down on another? Is this phenomenon inherent in the human species, or is it the result of cultural conditioning? What do scientists (or maybe "scientists") have to say about this?

Well, some scientists think they have the answer, as reported in ScienceDaily online on March 18, 2011 in an article entitled "Human Prejudice Has Ancient Evolutionary Roots."

As an introduction SD tells us that monkeys show prejudice "like humans" and that they are also "flexible" when letting others join their group. Now that monkeys can be territorial and hostile to outsiders is not disputable but that this is "like humans" is disputable. Now if the expression means outwardly and superficially similar-- as in "humans make love just like monkeys" that is one thing, but without knowing the inner cognitive state of monkey lovers it seems negatively anthropomorphic to say their love making is the "same" as humans. In the same way it is probably not correct to draw equivalencies between monkey and human "prejudice."

OK, what do the scientists actually have to say about this? SD reports that researches at Yale, headed by Laurie Santos, a psychologist, by conducting "ingenious experiments" have shown that monkeys treat outsiders "with the same suspicion and dislike" as humans do. This leads to the suggestion the "roots" of human prejudice and inter group conflict go deep into our evolutionary past.

"Pretty much every conflict in human history," Dr Santos said, "has involved people making distinctions on the basis of who is a member of their own race, religion, social class, and so on. The question we are interested in is: Where do these types of group distinctions come from?" Well, one answer may be that they come from the fact that there are really different religions and social classes. We should also note that some of the greatest conflicts in history were between members of the same "race" (a really outmoded term for a scientist to be using) conflicts between various European nations for example; the same religion (conflicts between various Christian nations, also within Islam) and the same social class as in the feudal conflicts between various kings and nobilities with each other. There are even many examples of people with the same "race", religion and social class fighting with each other. So insiders are just as likely to suffer "prejudice" as outsiders as far as humans are concerned.

Dr. Santos agrees that human culture is a factor, but she also thinks 25 million years of evolutionary development is also a factor. She came to this conclusions by studying the rhesus macaques [Macaca mulatta] living on Monkey Island (Cayo Santiago) off the coast of Puerto Rico. These are the descendents Old World monkeys who were transplanted to Monkey Island from India in 1938. They have the island to themselves and they serve as a research station for scientists. The website states, "Because of almost 70 years of research at this field site, subjects are well habituated to human experimenters." They also get free monkey chow provided by the scientists. Presumely the monkeys act the same way as their ancestors in the forests of India who were not habituated to humans and getting free monkey chow.

Santos' group gave various psychological tests to the monkeys and determined that, by looking at pictures of other monkeys, both in group and out group, monkeys looked longer at the pictures of out group monkeys and this suggested that they "spontaneously" detected strangers. This is because there is a "well known tendency" for animals to look longer at "novel or frightening things than at familiar or friendly things." Well, humans do that too I would think, so maybe the scientists are on firm ground in this respect.

Neha Mahajan, a team member, stated: "What made this result even more remarkable [why is a "well known tendency" remarkable?] is that monkeys in this population move around from group to group, so some of them who were 'outgroup' were previously 'in-group.' And yet, the result holds just as strongly for monkeys who have transferred groups only weeks earlier, suggesting that these monkeys are sensitive to who is currently to be thought of as an insider or an outsider. In other words, although monkeys divide the world into 'us' versus 'them,' they do so in a way that is flexible and is updated in real time." What is "flexible" about reacting just as strongly about former in, and now out, group monkeys as about monkeys that have always been out group. It seems to me this a "rigid" response: You are all the same, outies!

Using a test they devised based on the IAT (Implicit Association Test) which claims to test humans for "implicit biases" against others, the research group concluded, according to SD, that, "Like humans, monkeys tend to spontaneously view ingroup members positively and outgroup members negatively."

As a result of the Monkey Implicit Association Test they devised, the researchers think "the roots" of human prejudice may be 25 million years in the making since that is how long it has been since we shared a common ancestor with the rhesus monkeys.

Mahzarin Banaji, another group member, says, "Social psychologists introduced the world to the idea that the immediate situation is hugely powerful in determining behavior, even intergroup feelings. Evolutionary theorists have made us aware of our ancestral past. In this work, we weave the two together to show the importance of both these influences at work."

Santos herself concludes that "The bad news is that the tendency to dislike outgroup members appears to be evolutionarily quite old, and therefore may be less simple to eliminate than we'd like to think. [This reinforces those who think prejudice, racism, etc., are "natural" rather than learned behaviors]. The good news, though, is that even monkeys seem to be flexible [we saw above there is no basis for this statement] about who counts as a group member. If we humans can find ways to harness this evolved flexibility, it might allow us to become an even more tolerant species [assuming we are a "tolerant" species in the first place]." Anyway, being tolerant means respecting people in other groups not just accepting them into your own--"How white of you" does not indicate tolerance.

It should be noted that if the monkeys can simply change groups when they feel like it, and be accepted, there is no "prejudice" at all going on. Before I give up the view that human prejudice is 99% cultural I want to have both a "prejudice gene" and an example of monkeys gassing each other. A friendly welcoming manner is just as likely as prejudice toward the "other"-- cf. how the Caribs welcomed Columbus, granted this was their mistake, and Squanto helped out the Pilgrims. Native Americans had to learn to dislike Europeans.

As for the Implicit Association Test, its critics charge that it lacks empirical evidence of its efficacy and that its reliability measure is low-- i.e., when the same subjects are retested they give different responses. The IAT is not therefore a really strong scientific tool to use for the claims made on the basis of its results. What is true of the IAT would follow for the Monkey IAT as well.

A final quote from a Science News article: William von Hippel a psychologist at the University of New South Wales has said, "Rarely has a methodological tool garnered such strong adherents and detractors. The IAT should be vigorously researched and debated, but we still do not really understand what it reveals."

The Depressing Future of Men?

2011-03-31T10:24:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

Science Daily for March 1, 2011 reports that researchers at Emory University have predicted that as this century progresses more and more men will be afflicted with psychological depression [this on top of the economic depression and woes with which the capitalist system will be afflicting all humans in the coming years].

Why are men about to fall victim to this affliction? Dr. Boadie Dunlop is quoted from the March issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry: "Compared to women," he writes, "many men attach a great importance to their ROLES as PROVIDERS and PROTECTORS of their families. Failure to fulfill the ROLE OF BREADWINNER is associated with greater depression and marital conflict"-my emphasis tr.

But surely we are beyond teaching boys and young men that their futures in this new century involve their being protectors and breadwinners. Women too play these roles and if men,"compared to women" think these roles are of "great importance" that is due to a rotten educational system as well as retrograde religious attitudes that down grade the importance and person hood of women as compared to men.

According to Science Daily, since 2007 about 75% of the US jobs lost have been those of men. Women are having to become the "breadwinners" and, up from 4% in 1970, 22% of working women make more than their husbands. "Unfortunately," SD writes, "there is little reason for anyone to believe that traditional male jobs will return in significant numbers with economic recovery." The whole concept of "traditionally male jobs" is wrong headed. It stems from a time when women were not allowed full participation in civil society.

SD goes on to say, "Additionally, biological and sociological differences in men and women may make it harder for men to fit into the role of primary care provider to young children than most women."

Outside of nursing infants there are no biological differences in men that should make it difficult for them to act as primary care providers. As for "sociological differences"-- these are the results of educational and economic conditions imposed upon us by the capitalist nature of our society.

Dr. Dunlop seems to be aware of this as he says: "Men in the changing economy will face the same risks for depression that women faced in older economies: trapped in a family role from which they cannot escape because of an inability to find employment." He means inability to find employment in "traditionally male jobs."

SD also points out that depression regarding one's life circumstances is traditionally twice as great among women as among men, but that this may be about to change due to the new economic realities.

According to Dr. Dunlop: "The changing socioeconomic positions of the West could lead to prevalence in the rates of depression in men increasing, while rates in women decrease. Practitioners need to be aware of these forces of life, and be prepared to explore with their patients the meaning of these changes and interventions that might be helpful."

Well, as long as we have a capitalist economic system and an educational system based on patriarchal values this is bound to so and practitioners will have to gear themselves up to force human beings to accept and fit into the world that the capitalists create.

But both men and women have another model of society for which they could strive. The socialist model is not only possible but is necessary in order for males and females to live a fulfilling and normal life without "depression" due to not living up to defunct role models.

Let me end with a quote from Simone De Beauvoir's great classic The Second Sex:
"A world where men and women would be equal is easy to imagine because it is exactly the one the Soviet revolution promised: women raised and educated exactly like men would work under the same conditions and for the same salaries … marriage would be based on a free engagement that the spouses could break when the wanted to … birth control and abortion would be allowed … maternity leave would be paid for by the society that would have responsibility for the children, which does not mean that they would be taken from their parents but that they would not be abandoned to them."

That the Soviets failed to completely create and sustain this world does that mean that other men and women in our time should not struggle to bring it about.

Frederick Engels and Eugen Dühring on the Natural Laws of Economics and Ground Rent

2011-02-27T13:43:00.000-08:00

Thomas Riggins

Engels deals with Dühring's views on ground rent and the natural laws of economics in chapter nine of part two ("Political Economy") of his famous book "Anti-Dühring." Dühring claims that his theories on capitalism and socialism are the scientifically correct ones, not the overrated views of Herr Karl Marx, and that the worker's movement should follow his ideas not those of Marx and Engels. Engels proposes to look at Dühring's views on the "natural laws" of economics and of ground rent to see if there is anything to them.

The FIRST NATURAL LAW of economics, somehow overlooked by Adam Smith and others, has been discovered by Herr Dühring and is thusly quoted by Engels: "The productivity of the economic instruments, natural resources and human energy is increased by INVENTIONS and DISCOVERIES." This is pretty vapid, according to Engels, as are the following four other "laws" discovered by Herr Dühring. Law Two: (the division of labour) "The cleaving of trades and the dissection of activities raises the productivity of labour." Law Three: "DISTANCE AND TRANSPORT are the chief causes which hinder or facilitate the co-operation of the productive forces." Law Four: "The industrial state has an incomparably greater population capacity than the agricultural state." And finally, Law Five: "In economics nothing takes place without a material interest."

Engels says that Dühring's method in explicating economics is the same as in his discussions of philosophy: poorly expressed commonplaces and banal formulations of so-called natural laws. Dühring gives no proofs, just dogmatic assertions about the nature of wages, the earnings of capital and the nature of ground rent. In previous articles we have discussed Dühring's views on capital, wages, and surplus value, so now let us turn our attention to the meaning of "ground rent."

In his own words, Dühring says ground-rent is "that income which the proprietor AS SUCH draws from the land." But this is a legal right of the proprietor, it doesn't tell us what the economic basis of ground-rent is, so Dühring must dig a little deeper. Engels says he then compares a farm lease to "the loan of capital to an entrepreneur" but come across a "hitch" in so doing. The "hitch" is that we are not dealing with natural laws but historically developed laws. Ground-rent, Engels points out "is a part of political economy which is specifically English."

This is because England developed an economic system in which "rent had in fact been separated from profit and interest." Unlike Germany (Dühring's model) England developed large scale agricultural industries and the farmer (unlike the German peasant) hires workers to work his lands "on the lines of full-fledged capitalist entrepreneurs."

In England we have the three main bourgeois classes and their incomes: landlords getting ground-rent, capitalists getting profits, and workers getting wages. In England it is quite clear, though Dühring doesn't see it, that the farmer's income is "profit on capital." This has been known at least since the time of Adam Smith.

Smith (The Wealth of Nations) tells us labour revenue is called WAGES, that from stocks, etc., PROFIT, and from the land RENT. This is very clear when each type goes to different individuals, the worker, the capitalist, the landlord. However when the same individual gets two or more of these types of income "they are sometimes confounded with one another."

This is exactly what Herr Dühring is guilty of, according to Engels. Dühring sees that the capitalist farmer exploits rural labour and this exploitation puts revenue in his pocket, thus it becomes unavailable to the landlord as rent. So, the capitalist farmer is living on "rent" (not the exploitation of surplus labour) which has been taken from that which would have been available to the landlord.

In this amazing notion, that the landlord pays "rent" to his tenant farmer, we can see just how confused Dühring really is. Dühring thinks that ground-rent is "the whole surplus product obtained in farming by the exploitation of rural labour." Everyone else who has seriously studied this subject divides the surplus product from agriculture into ground-rent AND profit on capital.

But Dühring thinks there is NO real difference between the earnings of capital and ground rent; the one is revenue from industry and/or commerce the other from agriculture. This is the result of his view that all surplus wealth is the result of the subjugation and domination of man by man. The agricultural surplus is rent and the industrial surplus is profit on capital.

Dühring's views pit him against the views of "all classical political economy" which divides agricultural surplus into both the profit of the farmer AND ground rent.

Engels has accomplished what intended in this chapter of Anti-Dühring--i.e., that Dühring doesn't understand what ground rent is. Engels has not, however, explained just what it is himself.

It is not my purpose here to give an exposition on ground rent and the distinctions between rent, profits of production and interest, all of which are derived from the surplus value created by labour power. For this I refer you to volume three of Das Kapital.

I will note, however, that the notion of ground rent is a controversial subject as can be seen from a recent article by Benjamin Kunkel in THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS of Feb. 3, 2011. In "How Much is too Much" Kunkel reviews two recent books by David Harvey, THE ENIGMA OF CAPITAL: AND THE CRISES OF CAPITALISM and A COMPANION TO MARX'S 'CAPITAL'.

Kunkel points out that many Marxists are embarrassed by the concept of ground rent because it SEEMS difficult to reconcile the labour theory of value with the concept of rent since unimproved land doesn't incorporate human labour power.

David Harvey suggests that ground rent is "fictitious capital" ["virtual" capital?] and writes that it is based on a "claim on future profits from the use of land or, more directly, a claim on future labour."

These discussions, however, take us beyond the parameters of Engels' critique of Eugen Dühring and his misconceptions regarding ground rent.

Does Money Buy Happiness?

2011-01-11T08:03:00.000-08:00

Thomas Riggins

Money does NOT buy happiness, according to a recent scientific study in Science Daily online for 12-14-10 ["Over Long Haul, Money Doesn't Buy Happiness"]. Well, you could have fooled me. This study comes from "the founder of the field of happiness studies" Richard Easterlin and he wants to demonstrate that countries having a higher rate of economic growth don't have a greater increase in happiness.

A longterm study of 37 countries was undertaken and the researchers found that "the sense of well being" does not go up in a country with the growth of income. This conclusion is somewhat ambiguous as the researchers seem to be talking about the "happiness" of countries when only individual people are capable of happiness.

This paper contradicts previous findings based on short term studies which did show a positive correlation between increased national income and the increase of happiness (well being). Easterlin's negative finding is based on a long term (an average of 22 years) investigation of the relationship. The USC University Professor stated: "This article rebuts recent claims that there is a positive long-term relationship between happiness and income, when in fact, the relationship is nil."

"Nil" is probably not the right word. There is a short term relationship which is positive. Can anyone look at the suffering in Haiti due to the neglect and exploitation of its population by the industrialized countries, or the people of the southern Sudan living on less than 75 cents a day per person, and seriously believe their sense of "well-being" would not be improved if they were to live above the level of destitution?

Easterlin knows this for he also says, "Simply stated, the happiness-income paradox [named for him the Easterlin Paradox] is this: at a point in time both among and within countries, happiness and income are positively related. But, over time, happiness does not increase when a country's income increases." There may be a simple explanation for this "paradox." People's happiness increases when their country begins to accumulate enough wealth to lift the majority out of abject poverty. Past that threshold capitalist accumulation kicks in and as wealth increases it is siphoned off as surplus value by the capitalist class and does not reach the masses. At this stage only a tiny minority's well-being is affected by the increase in national wealth.

We should study the relation between the increase of the well-being of the different classes within a country--- capitalists, workers, peasants. The overall wealth of a country could increase and not correlate with an increase of a sense of well-being in the overall population due to a maldistribution of the wealth to a tiny upper crust.

"With incomes rising so rapidly in [certain] countries, it seems extraordinary that no surveys register the marked improvement in subjective well-being that mainstream economists and policy makers worldwide expect to find," Esterlin pointed out. He says that, e.g., in Chile, China, and South Korea per capita income has doubled yet there is no statistically significant indication of an increase in subjective well-being. One of the reasons for this may be due to what I explained above. Per capita income having doubled does NOT mean everyone is getting twice as much as they used to get.

"Where does this leave us?" Easterlin asks. "If economic growth is not the main route to greater happiness, what is? We may need to focus policy more directly on urgent personal concerns relating to things such as health and family live, rather than on the mere escalation of material goods."

Maybe we should focus on the fair and equal distribution of the material wealth created in the society on the basis of from each according to their ability to each according to their labor as a starting point. Wealth is also more than just material goods accumulated for your own satisfaction.

ENGELS ON CAPITAL AND SURPLUS VALUE

2011-01-01T07:37:00.000-08:00

Thomas Riggins

In chapters seven and eight of part two of Anti-Dühring ("Capital and Surplus Value"), Engels continues his role as Marx's bulldog. Again, Herr Dühring has gone too far in his criticisms of Marx and must be put in his place by sounder judgment and sharper intellect. Dühring has claimed Marx says that "capital is born of money" and the birth pangs took place at the "opening of the sixteenth century." Dühring calls Marx's ideas a mixture of history and logic which have become "bastards of historical and logical fantasy."

This upsets Engels to no end who himself responds that Dühring has "a crude and inept manner of expressing himself. Marx's real statement on this subject is found in Das Kapital vol 1, part 2, chapter 4 "The General Formula For Capital" where he writes: "As a matter of history, capital, as opposed to landed property invariably takes the form at first of money; it appears as moneyed wealth, as the capital of the merchant and of the usurer. But we have no need to refer to the origin of capital in order to discover that the first form of the appearance of capital is money. We can see it daily under our very eyes. All new capital to commence with, comes on the stage, that is, on the market, whether as commodities, labour, or money, even in our days, in the shape of money that by a definite process has to be transformed into capital."

But how does this transformation take place. Capital is used to invest to make more money and more capital. So how do I turn money into capital? Engels says when I take my own commodities to market I sell them to get money to buy things I need to live on. This is simple exchange. The capitalist goes to market to buy things he does not need to live on; he buys them in order to sell them for what he paid plus a profit-- and increment in money. "Marx calls this increment
SURPLUS VALUE."

But where does it come from? Capitalism results in an increase in the values in circulation so it can't come from cheating (that would effect the distribution not the amount of values) nor
from buying under or selling above the values of the commodities because the sum of values still remains the same. Yet capitalists do accumulate riches by selling dearer than they have bought."This problem," Engels says,"must be solved, and it must be solved in a PURELY ECONOMIC way, excluding all cheating and the intervention of any force-- the problem being: how is it possible constantly to sell dearer than one has bought, even on the hypothesis that equal values are always exchanged for equal values?"

The most important contribution of Marx to economic thought was the solution to this problem; Engels calls it "epoch-making." Here is the solution as presented by Engels. The increment doesn't take place in the money itself, nor in the price of the commodity sold (at this stage we are dealing with the exchange of equivalents: price = value, later we see how they can
differ). But something does change in the bought commodity--not its exchange VALUE but its USE-VALUE. The increment takes place during the commodity's consumption; and not just any commodity, but a very specific one.

Here is what Marx says about this from Das Kapital vol 1, chapter vi "The Buying and Selling of Labour Power": "In order to be able to extract value from the consumption of a commodity, our friend, Moneybags, must be so lucky as to find, within the sphere of circulation, in the market, a commodity, whose use-value, whose actual consumption, therefore, is itself an embodiment of labour, and, consequently, a creation of value. The possessor of money does find on the market such a special commodity in capacity for labour or labour-power."

But how is the value of labour-power determined? Again Marx: "The value of labour-power is determined, as in the case of every other commodity, by the labour-time necessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this special article. So far as it has value, it represents no more than a definite quantity of the average labour of society incorporated in it. Labour-power exists only as a capacity, or power of the living individual. Its production consequently pre-supposes his existence. Given the individual, the production of labour-power consists in his reproduction of himself or his maintenance. For his maintenance he requires a given quantity of the means of subsistence. Therefore the labour-time requisite for the production of labour-power reduces itself to that necessary for the production of those means of subsistence; in other words, the value of labour-power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the labourer."

This also includes the cost of raising a family of little baby laborers to take his place in the next generation. Suppose a worker could produce in six hours the value of goodies he needs to live on and Moneybags gives the worker the full value of his labor power. The goodies cost
$60 and that is what the capitalist gives the worker, paying him $10 an hour. The worker has also made $60 worth of goodies for the capitalist. An even exchange-- no increment for the capitalist.

What to do? The capitalist will hire the worker for $5 an hour for 12 hours. This is what free labor and the labor market are all about. After 12 hours the worker gets his agreed upon wage, buys his $60 of goodies and goes home. The capitalist however has been left with $60 from the first 6 hours AND $60 from the last 6 hours of the worker's toil. He sells the first $60 worth of goodies and gets his money back-- and sells the surplus $60 of goodies and makes a profit; a profit he did not work for but that he expropriates from the surplus value created by the worker. And this, Engels says, is how the "trick has been performed. Surplus-value has been produced; money has been converted into capital." Marx has thus demonstrated how surplus-plus value is created and has revealed "the core around which the whole existing social order has crystallized."

Now, under capitalism there is a "prerequisite" without which the capitalist can not get his hands on surplus-value and that is he must go to market and hire a FREE LABOURER. That is, a worker who can sell his labour power as a commodity and it is the only commodity he can sell. This is the condition working people have found themselves in since the end of the fifteenth century and the disintegration of the feudal order. Marx says "It is clearly the result of a past historical development." Marx and Engels appeared after this transitional period had been underway for about 400 years and we are two centuries further on than they. The present great world wide capitalist depression may or maynot be the "final conflict" which will mark the disintegration of capitalism and the arrival of the socialist order but as Marxists we must always be open to that possibility and continue to hold down the fort.

What is the upshot of all of Dühring's criticism of Marx and his proposed explanation of how capitalism works? Well, we need not go over all of Dühring's arguments and bombast against Marx. Suffice it to say that Engels concludes that Dühring actually steals his ideas from Marx, puts them forth in his own words and style and attacks Marx to cover up his theft; as Engels puts it Dühring "commits a clumsy plagiarism of Marx."

Just what, then, is the difference in Dühring's conception of capital and Marx's? For Marx every class dominated mode of production sweats surplus labour out of the productive class-- be they slaves, serfs, or modern workers (wage slaves). But it is only when, under a regime based on commodity production for a market, when the means of production employ surplus labour in the form of surplus value, that we have capitalism. This is a specific historical stage in the evolution of production. Dühring says any system that uses "surplus labour in any form" produces capital. He thus blurs the distinctions between different modes of production and makes capital an eternal law of nature with regard to economic activity.

What is more, for Dühring surplus value becomes simply the earnings of capital and is equivalent to profit. Whereas Marx makes it very clear in volume one of Das Kapital that surplus value should NOT be confused with profit. Dühring appears to only credit the capitalist in his role as a manufacturer as generating profit (surplus value.) Since Dühring claims to be explaining what Marx believes, Engels points out that Dühring should have paid more attention to what Marx ACTUALLY wrote. The profit made by the MERCHANT, Marx clearly says, is also a part of surplus value and the merchant can make a profit only because the industrial or manufacturing capitalist sells his product to him BELOW its full value "and thus relinquishes to him a part of the booty."

There are other subforms of surplus value besides manufacture's and merchant's profit, e.g., interest and ground-rent. But the explanations of these subdivisions will have to await volumes two and three of capital: only the outlines are being laid down in volume one. The complete explanation awaits "a scientific analysis of competition" and we can't make that analysis until the real inner nature, the essence, of capital is revealed in volume one. Engels gives as an analogy the understanding we have of the seeming motions of the planets which is based on knowledge of their real motions "which are not directly perceptible to the senses." [Empiricists take note!] Nevertheless, Marx gives us enough information in volume one to at least grasp in broad outline the subforms of surplus value to be dealt with in the later volumes.

It is because he doesn't know how competition works and also doesn't understand what Marx has said about it in volume one of Das Kapital, that Herr Dühring can't figure out how capitalists get back all that they have put out plus the surplus product at prices way above "the natural outlays of production." Where does this profit come from? He can't answer this question so he flees from the field of economics to that of politics and claims that the capitalist imposes a surcharge on his products by means of force. But Engels says FORCE can seize wealth but cannot produce it. Not only that, but Dühring leaves unexplained the ORIGIN of force itself. Dühringian economics gets us nowhere.

But all is not lost for Herr Dühring. His research finally leads him to some correct answers, although his distinctive way of expressing himself is not as clear as we might wish. Engels provides two quotes from Dühring that are on the right track. "IN EVERY CASE THE NET PROCEEDS OBTAINED BY THE UTILIZATION OF LABOUR-POWER CONSTITUTE THE INCOME OF THE MASTER...." And:"The characteristic feature of earnings of capital is that they are AN APPROPRIATION OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE PROCEEDS OF LABOUR-POWER."

What, Engels asks, is the INCOME OF THE MASTER but the surplus product the worker makes after the deduction for wages? What is THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE PROCEEDS OF LABOUR-POWER but that part which comes after the worker has created the value of his own maintenance-- i.e., surplus value? So where did Herr Dühring finally get a clue to the correct explanation of the relation between capital and surplus value? He got it, Engels says by "in his own style, DIRECTLY COPYING from CAPITAL"[i.e., volume one of Das Kapital]. So much for Herr Dühring's alternative theory of economics.

Job Loss Not So Bad?

2010-12-28T16:33:00.000-08:00

Thomas Riggins

Most people would just assume that losing your job would have grave psychological effects, depression, worry, feelings of helplessness, doubts about the future, and a general attitude of frustration and unhappiness about one's conditions. But a new study reported in Science Daily for 12-27-2010 ("Recovering from Job Loss: Most Report Few Long-Term Psychological Effects") challenges this bleak view. The study, put out by the American Psychological Association, says most people bounce back and end up just as satisfied with their lives as they were before they lost their jobs. This is good news for bosses who can send out pink slips without having to feel so bad.

Dr. Isaac Galatzer-Levy, the lead author of the study, points out that "Unemployment rates continue to be historically high in the United States and other countries. There's a real concern that this will have long-term implications on the mental well-being of a large portion of the work force. But this analysis suggests that people are able to cope with a job loss relatively well over time." Well, let's see what this is all about.

You might think, since the unemployment rate in the US was mentioned, that the study might have included US workers. It did not. The study was conducted in Germany and involved 774 German workers who had lost their jobs. They were asked how satisfied they felt about their lives and well being during the three years before and the four years after they lost their jobs. Dr. Galatzer-Levy said, with respect to the German workers, that "Just like in the current climate, these are people who are losing jobs not due to [any] fault of their own, but because they're the victims of large market forces." Beyond pointing out that working people under capitalism have no control over their destinies and thus no real democratic control of their lives, I am not sure we can extrapolate the German findings to the US.

After going over all the responses and dividing the groups into different categories the researchers came to the following conclusions. First, they say previous analysis of "the same data" revealed "that people never really returned to pre-unemployment levels of life satisfaction." This seems intuitively correct. However, the researchers used "a different analytical model" and their new model they think is more representative of how people respond to unemployment. Using the new model, on "the same data", they arrived at the following conclusion: "most people cope well with this event [job loss] and report few long-term effects on their overall well-being."

The authors think this shows the "resilience" of workers to job loss. It is similar to reactions to "other traumatic events" such as "the death of a loved one, terrorist attack" or "traumatic injury." Well, I'm glad to see they understand what getting a pink slip means to working people.

By the way in Germany 27.6 % of GNP is dedicated to social insurance, including health and unemployment insurance as opposed to 16.2% in the US. German workers get 60-67% of their wages in unemployment insurance while US workers get about 36%-- this might have something to do with feelings of "satisfaction."

Scientists Say We Need Power and Corruption

2010-12-21T06:53:00.000-08:00

Thomas Riggins

We all have heard of Lord Acton's dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We see it at work every day in our social life and politics. The police abuse their powers by racial profiling and even gunning down minority people with seeming impunity. Elected officials are seen selling out the interests of the people who elected them for lobbyist money and the promise of future favors from the giant corporations that actually rule the country.

Well, it turns out that all this power and corruption may not be so bad after all. Just last week Science News reported on an article recently published in the science journal Evolution which indicates that power and corruption may be good for us ["Power and Corruption May Be Good for Society" SD 12-14-2010]. I hope they are right because we have such a concentration of power and corruption in our society that it would justify our claim that "USA is Number One."

Let's see the evidence. Two professors, Francisco Úbeda at the University of Tennessee and Edgar Duéñez at Harvard say that while "Moral corruption and power asymmetries are pervasive in human societies... [they] may play a role in maintaining overall societal cooperation." Society needs cooperation in order to function. We all know the horrors that can happen if workers fail to cooperate with bosses or regular soldiers with their officers, or debt ridden unemployed people with the banks and credit card companies.

There have to be some groups that punish noncooperators and, the professors remind us, there are government officials and law enforcers who have that happy task. However these very groups often fail to cooperate among themselves and with each other because they abuse their power and are corrupt. It's the old problem of who polices the police. The professors also discovered the startling fact that these "law enforcers, by virtue of their positions, are able to sidestep punishment when they are caught failing to cooperate." Who would have thought it?

The bright side is that the vast majority of society does try to play by the rules since they don't want to be punished by the enforcers. Now the important thing is to maintain the optimum amount of social cooperation. We have a Goldilocks problem. Too much abuse of power and corruption and society begins to break down. Too little and the enforcers would not do a good job because they don't enjoy the perks of office (shooting you and getting away with it-- not paying for their donuts, etc.) "Law enforcers often enjoy privileges that allow them to avoid the full force of the law when they breach it. Law enforcing results in the general public abiding by the law. Thus law enforcers enjoy the benefits of a lawful society and are compensated for their law enforcing by being able to dodge the law." A pay raise might be a better compensation for doing your job.

The professors tell us that society is better off with abuse of power and corruption than without it since with it the law enforcers have more incentive to do their jobs. So the occasional shake down, bribe taking, unjustified shooting, illegal war even is actually good for society and keeps us safe-- it evens saves us paying higher taxes in salaries; even an illegal war creates jobs, although this bit of corruption and abuse of power may be from papa bear's bowl of porridge.

This "new" theory on the benefits of having a corrupt society has "far-reaching implications": it could help us understand "corrupt behaviors in social insects"-- a pressing problem facing the American people. It may also give us "insights on how to harness corruption to benefit society." I'm sure the new Republican majority in the House will be working on this one.

Infanticide and Infelicity

2010-12-14T08:28:00.000-08:00

Thomas Riggins

A disturbing, but unsurprising, article on infanticide has appeared in a recent issue of Science Daily (12-13-10: "Unlawful Killing of Newborns Soon After Birth Five Times Higher Than Thought, French Court Study Suggests.")

The technical term for this is neonaticide-- the killing of a baby within the first 24 hours of life. Research published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood indicate that the frequency of neonaticide in certain regions of France, where the research was focused, was five times higher than official estimates had anticipated.

We have all read about the horrific levels of infanticide, especially female infanticide, in some developing countries, and have been more or less told this is due to backward social conditions in such "semi-feudal" areas. So to find that even in bourgeois France, an advanced industrial country, there can five times the amount of neonaticide as officially predicted is an eye opener. And while there can be no doubt that the status of women and social context is a major factor, this just indicates that that the first world should not be complacent in thinking that infanticide is especially a problem of so called "backward" societies.

The authors of the study themselves have concluded that, contrary to expectations, it is not low social status or noticeable mental problems that are responsible for these killings in French society, but, rather, "low maternal self esteem and emotional immaturity" that is responsible. These are factors having to do with the status of women and their treatment in general, not only in "semi-feudal" countries, but also those of advanced capitalism.

Simone de Beauvoir pointed out long ago, in the The Second Sex, that "there is no such thing as maternal 'instinct': the word does not in any case apply to the human species. The mother's attitude is defined by her total situation and by the way she accepts it."

Going over the profiles of women who had killed their newborns, the researchers discovered "that the perception of a young poor, unemployed, single woman as the culprit was not borne out by the evidence." The women were mostly around 26 years old, had other children, did not show evidence of mental problems, had no record of being abused as children, and had regular jobs. Half of them were living with the baby's father.

They shared a common low level of self esteem [something you can get by the way your are treated by others], emotional immaturity [also a state contributed to by others including the society's depiction of the female] and a fear of being abandoned [definitely the product of a bad faith relationship on the part of the other creating an atmosphere of dependency].
The authors write: "Feeling very much alone, and for nearly half of them, depressed, [these women] probably did not have complete control over their lives or their sexuality." It not only takes a village to raise a child, it seems, it takes one to kill one as well.

The authors conclude, "Our findings suggest that preventive action, targeting only young, poor, unemployed and single women, or women in pregnancy denial, may not be appropriate." I also think we Marxists can conclude something from this study. We can conclude, with Simone de Beauvoir that "Only a balanced, healthy woman, conscious of her responsibilities, is capable of becoming a 'good mother.' The same, ceteris paribus, for the father. And what type of society are these good mothers and fathers most likely to flourish in? Madame be Beauvoir's suggestion seems correct to me: "A truly socialist ethic-- one that seeks justice without restraining liberty, one that imposes responsibilities on individuals but without abolishing individual
freedom-- will find itself most uncomfortable with problems posed by woman's condition."

Marxists and Marmots

2010-12-10T07:32:00.000-08:00

Thomas Riggins

How often do we hear that socialism sounds like a good idea but it doesn't work in practice because of human nature. This is an old refrain. People are by nature selfish and so competition is the natural outcome with the most talented and aggressive people reaching the top and the mediocre masses down on the bottom. But suppose it is really the opposite. Suppose those who engage in friendly cooperation really are closer to what nature intends. In a cooperative society maybe even the victims of aggressive actions still have a better chance to thrive than they would in a completely competitive environment. Maybe the Ayn Rand world is not the world for us and socialism is more natural after all.

A recent article in Science Daily (12-8-2010) may provide a clue to the answer to these speculations ("Social Relationships in Animals Have a Genetic Basis, New Research Reveals"). Scientists at UCLA have been studying marmots living in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Marmots are rodents who are a genus (Marmota) of the squirrel family (Sciuridae). Some marmots have a propensity, so we are told, to chuck wood and are known as woodchucks. Others can predict the weather (groundhogs) according to some.

The marmots I am linking to possible socialist ideas are the yellow-bellied marmots (M. flaviventris) studied by the scientists. The name refers to fur and not to their lack of valor.
The scientists found "that having many friendly interactions gave marmots fitness benefits--these marmots reproduced more," said Amanda Lea, one of the researchers and lead author of the paper. "Over a lifetime [about 15 yrs], a marmot that is very social will have more offspring than a less social one." Hmmmm. I wonder how much this applies to humans. This is one way of putting the "social" into socialism.

But the scientists also found out that some marmots are the victims of aggression from their fellow marmots. Those who do not respond in kind, that is those inclined to turn the other cheek pouch, also have a better survival rate. So it seems that "a marmot that is getting picked on frequently" also will have more offspring. It is the family unit as such that is really important. Tolerating aggression as well as strengthening friendly cooperation keeps marmot society functioning. "Those relationships are important for social stability and reproductive success. I believe these ideas are generalizable well beyond marmots," said the study's co-author Daniel T. Blumstein.

What is important is that these behaviors have a genetic basis and are passed on through the generations. If such behavior is common to mammals as such then humans also have these inborn tendencies for cooperation and tolerance. These genetic traits are, I think, much more in accord with the ideals of socialism than the ruthless free market world of Ayn Rand and other capitalist apologists.

Arizona's Two Death Penalties

2010-12-05T10:41:00.000-08:00

Thomas Riggins

First, I am not picking on Arizona, just using it as one example; it is standing in for any state that uses similar methods to try and balance its budget. Arizona currently has 126 felons on its death row awaiting execution. The national average cost for each prisoner from sentencing to execution is $2 million-- about 10 times the cost for life imprisonment.

But the 126 people on death row are not the only people the state of Arizona has sentenced to death. Arizona has cut its medicaid budget due to the on going collapse of the world capitalist system. To reduce its budget deficit low income people in Arizona will no longer receive organ transplants that had been paid for by the state.

The New York Times (12-3-10) refers to this as "Death by budget cut." The deaths of poor people due to the cut in medicaid is every bit as premeditated as those of prisoners given lethal injections by the state. The NYT reports that Francisco Felix, 32, will not get the liver transplant that would have saved his life. He is in the process of dying. The cost of the transplant was $200,000. It was his turn on the list but he was refused after the state ended this part of medicaid for the poor. If the governor commuted just one of the 126 people condemned to death he could have sentenced Francisco Felix to Life with his family and had $1,600,000 left over to save 8 more people as well; that what's left after the cost of transplant plus the $200,000 that the prisoner's life sentence will cost the state.

There are many other cases like that of Francisco Felix. These new rules took effect in October and no one has died yet. But the poor sick and needy are sitting on their own death row just as real as the 126 people legally under the sentence of death. They too have been legally given a death sentence. Sentenced to death not for murder but for being poor. A capital offense in Arizona.

If Arizona really wanted to save money the state would commute all 126 death sentences to life imprisonment. With the savings they could help save the lives of all their sick and poor citizens and residents who are in need of life saving medical procedures such as organ transplants. It is the only thing a civilized state can do.

Obama on the Fence?

2010-12-02T19:18:00.000-08:00

Thomas Riggins

Matt Bai has an article in the Wednesday New York Times "Debt-Busting Issue May Force Obama Off Fence." Bai says that Obama's fiscal commission has given him the choice of ruling for the next two years either from the center left [allied with "traditional liberals" who want the rich to pay their fair share of the taxes and cuts in the military budget] or from the center right [both Democratic and Republican centrists who want to reform "entitlement" programs and taxes].

Bai indicates he has to choose between a "liberal renaissance" or continue his attempts to work with the Republicans in a "postpartisan" alliance. The choice he makes will shape the political landscape for years to come-- for better or worse.

Although many think that Obama is the opium of the Left we can still work with him for progressive causes on whichever side of the fence he falls. Who would have wanted a McCain-Palin administration-- we wouldn't even have a fence, just a ditch.

Bai doesn't know which side Obama will choose. His recent two year pay freeze for federal workers (who did not cause the economic collapse) while bankers and CEOs (who did) are raking the money in is not a good sign of things to come.

Bai gives us some hints which side Obama will choose. I will give three major ones he points out. 1. Obama's books and writings indicate he is a "whatever works" pragmatist with no particular ideological commitment-- a political chameleon perhaps. 2. Bai reports that in private Obama has sometimes called himself "essentially a Blue Dog Democrat." He didn't mention this during the primaries! 3. Although he voted against confirming John Roberts as Chief Justice he "castigated" Democratic activists who criticized those Democratic senators who did saying they threatened "thoughtfulness and openness to new ideas." Well, the "thoughtfulness and new ideas" of John Roberts are not leading us down the road to a more democratic country.

In any event Bai says Obama is "loath to publicly disown his base on any specific issue." I'm not sure I like the adverbial phrase. The proof will be in the pudding. Obama must decide, according to Bai, either for the left or the right once the Bowles-Simpson committee gives him its report. Social Security is the acid test. Bai says that if he accepts the commission's recommendations on Social Security the outrage from his base will be so great he could face a primary challenge in 2012.

The Republicans would love that: something like a Feingold-Obama fight (suggested in The Nation by Cockburn) to cover themselves while they self destruct over a Palin-Romney brouhaha. Obama has come to the Rubicon-- how will the die be cast?

Health Care Heresies

2010-11-30T11:21:00.000-08:00

Thomas Riggins

Now that the Republicans and their neofascist fellow travelers have taken control of the House they have set them themselves the goal of repealing the recent health care reform the Democrats enacted. Flawed as that reform is it at least will enable 35 or so million people to get some sort of health insurance in the coming years. There are around 50 million without insurance at present. Hopefully these extra 15 million will also be covered.

The Republican reactionaries keep harping that we have the "best" health care in the world (we actually rate 37th among developed countries). Here are a couple of examples. The US has "the best medical care system in the world"-- Bob McDonnell, Republican Gov. of Virginia. We have the greatest medical care "the world has ever known"-- Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby.

So while reactionaries and rightist may consider denying this to be heretical, the following information from Science Daily may call their flights of fancy into question.

On November 29th Science Daily reported the results of an 11 nation study conducted by the Commonwealth Fund: "US Adults Most likely to Forgo Care Due to Cost, Have Trouble Paying Medical Bills, Survey Finds."

Of the 11 advanced industrial countries studied the US came in dead last with Americans having the highest numbler having to give up seeking health care due to cost, they also had the most trouble paying their medical bills [some 60 per cent of personal bankruptcies in the US are caused by medical bills another study showed]. Americans, even with insurance, have higher bills, more disputes with insurers, and more often have insurers refuse to cover procedures they thought were covered.

This is, of course, because of the for profit nature of health insurance. This is an industry that should be run out of business by a single payer government run system such as Medicare for all.

Here are some facts the study found.

1. 33% of Us adults went without necessary care, couldn't see a doctor, or couldn't afford to get medicine; in the U.K. and the Netherlands it's 5 to 6%.

2. 20% of Americans had problems paying for their care while in France it was 9%, Netherlands 4%, Germany 3% and U.K. 2%.

3. 35% of Americans paid $1000 or more out of pocket for medical care last year-- significantly more "than all of the other countries."

It goes without saying that the these figures are correlated along class and income perameters. The politicians who most oppose health reform for the poor have, of course, fully covered health care at taxpayer expense which, if made available to regular citizens they denounce as socialism.
The lead author of the study, Cathy Schoen, wrote, "In fact, the U.S. is the only country in the study where having health insurance doesn't guarantee you access to health care or financial protection when you're sick."

The study also found out that the people on Medicare have less problems with the US medical system than adults under the age of 65.

One can hardly imagine, given these grim realities, how Republicans and other reactionaries are able to carry off election victories of the magnitude they did in the 2010 midterms. The vast majority of the American people will continue to suffer not only with respect to medical coverage, but economically, socially, and in education. Yet they have the power of the vote and of wielding it to improve their lives and those of their children. They only need access to the facts, not readily provided by the establishment media. Lets work for and hope that the Left will do a better job of getting the truth out to the American people.

ENGELS ON SKILLED AND UNSKILLED LABOUR

2010-11-25T06:32:00.000-08:00

Thomas Riggins

In Chapter Six ('Simple and Compound Labour') of Part Two of his classic work Anti-Dühring, Frederick Engels addresses a charge made by the German professor Eugen Dühring to the effect that in his work Das Kapital Marx has made a major blunder which amounts to a socially dangerous heresy regarding socialism. What could this heresy be?

Dühring says that Marx's theory of value is only the common theory that all values are the result of labour and measured by labour-time. But Marx sheds no light on the difference between skilled and unskilled labour. In fact Marx is wrong when he tries to explain the difference by saying one person's labour can be worth more than another's because it has more average labour-time compounded within it. See below where Engels says Marx has no such conception regarding the "worth" of labour.

Dühring says that all labour-time is of absolutely equal value but one worker can have another's labour-time hidden within his own. For example, when I use a hammer made by another to do my work. The reason Marx can't see this, and actually thinks, one person's labour may be worth more than another's is his prejudice against giving the same value to the labour-time of a porter and to that of an architect. He also refers to Marx's theory as hazy lucubrations.

Engels tells us that the wrath of Dühring has been brought forth by a passage in Das Kapital (it is found in section two of Chapter One of Vol. 1) in which Marx distinguishes between skilled and unskilled labour. It runs as follows: "But the value of a commodity represents human labour in the abstract, the expenditure of human labour in general. And just as in society, a general or a banker plays a great part, but mere man, on the other hand, a very shabby part, so here with mere human labour. It is the expenditure of simple labour power, i.e., of the labour power which, on an average, apart from any special development, exists in the organism of every ordinary individual. Simple average labour, it is true, varies in character in different countries and at different times, but in a particular society it is given. Skilled labour counts only as simple labour intensified, or rather, as multiplied simple labour, a given quantity of skilled being considered equal to a greater quantity of simple labour. Experience shows that this reduction is constantly being made. A commodity may be the product of the most skilled labour, but its value, by equating it to the product of simple unskilled labour, represents a definite quantity of the latter labour alone. The different proportions in which different sorts of labour are reduced to unskilled labour as their standard, are established by a social process that goes on behind the backs of the producers, and, consequently, appear to be fixed by custom. For simplicity’s sake we shall henceforth account every kind of labour to be unskilled, simple labour; by this we do no more than save ourselves the trouble of making the reduction."

The main thing to notice is that Marx is talking about measuring the value of commodities that their producers exchange with one another in a simple society of commodity production. There is no such thing as "absolute value" involved and Marx is only setting up his definitions and categories in this first chapter of Das Kapital. Here he only states the relation between simple and compound labour, or skilled and unskilled labour. Engels remarks that this process of reducing skilled to unskilled labour in order to quantify it as a measure of value, at this point, "can only be stated but not as yet explained." Dühring is jumping the gun.

Not only that, but, Engels maintains, labour itself can have no value because value "is nothing
else than the expression of the socially necessary human labour materialized in an object." Labour is the measure of value and speaking of the value of labour is like speaking of the weight of heaviness. Here Engels remarks on Dühring's "brazenness" in his assertion earlier that Marx thought the labour time of one person was more valuable than that of another and that labour has a value. It was Marx "who first demonstrated that labour CAN have NO value, and why it cannot" [it is the measure of value not value itself].

This notion of Marx's is very important for socialism, Engel insists, as it is crucial for the socialist goal of liberating labour power "from its status as a COMMODITY." It is also the clue to the view, unlike Dühring's that distribution and production are completely separate departments within capitalism, that distribution will be geared to the interests of production and that production itself will be governed, reciprocally, "by a mode of distribution which allows ALL members of society to develop, maintain and exercise their capacities with maximum universality."

Dühring is simply wrong if he thinks every worker creates the same amount of value in the same amount of time. One worker works faster, another slower, one has more skill, another less, that is why an average has to be arrived at which is the basis of the notion of "socially necessary labour time." This is also why the slogan "Equal wages for equal labour time" is really a bit utopian. Unions of course demand equal hourly wages for all workers in the the same job grade because of the difficultly of measuring the value that each worker actually creates. Now that some unions have agreed to a two tier wage system even they are tacitily admitting the impracticability of "Equal wages for equal labour time." Anyway women and minorities and nonunionists have often been paid less for the same labour time. This results in a tendency for union wages to decline, as we now see happening. If working people only understood the socialist model of economics they would never tolerate the treatment doled out to them by the owning class.

How will the distinction between unskilled (simple) and skilled (compound) labour be handled under socialism? Engels says that under private production the costs of training a worker to become a skilled worker is paid for by private individuals and so they reap the rewards. A trained slave sells for more money and a skilled worker gets a higher wage.

However, under socialism the cost of training is borne by society [or the state]. The worker therefore has no right to higher pay for the extra values he creates. The extra value is reaped by society and used for general social purposes (education, medical care, food subsidies, the fire department, etc). This explains why medical doctors in socialist societies are seen as underpaid. They are not. The state paid for their skill and they work for fair wages, not having astronomical debts to pay off to private lenders, etc. Another slogan bites the dust here as it is not possible to adhere to it in either capitalism or socialism and that is the worker's demand that they should get "the full proceeds of labour." Under socialism the full preceeds of labour are collectively distributed throughout society on the basics of social needs. It is only in this sense that the workers can receive the "full" proceeds of their labour.

Global Warming: More or Less?

2010-11-23T18:58:00.000-08:00

Thomas Riggins

Many Republicans and other rightists deny there is any problem of global warming at all. The New York Times complains that Congress doesn't take the threat seriously. Meanwhile six billion tonnes of coal a year, half by China alone, is set to be burnt to fuel the world's industries. So is global warming getting worse or not?

Climate scientists rely on complicated and sophisticated computer modeling to come up with their estimates of global warming and its future consequences. Below is a brief review of four major scientific studies between 2008 and 2010 which will give us some idea of what is going on.

A Cornell University study was reported in Science Daily in 2008 which claimed global warming was being overestimated ("Global Warming Predictions Are Overestimated, Suggests Study on Black Carbon" ScienceDaily Nov. 25, 2008).

Black carbon is carbon in the earth's soil that results from the burning of organic material. There are many types of carbon in the soils of the earth and they are continuously releasing CO2 into the air-- at different rates depending on the source of the carbon.

It only takes a few years for organic matter in the soil to be released into the atmosphere as CO2-- except for black carbon. Scientists have found it takes from one to two thousand years for this type of carbon to convert to atmospheric CO2. Many popular computer models have not been been taking this fact about black carbon into consideration.

Once adjustment is made for this, the Cornell scientists reported, the amount of CO2 predicted to be released from the soil in the next 100 years is reduced by 20%. This is really significant because soil based carbon annually produces 10 times more CO2 than that produced by all "human activities combined."

This may reduce the estimate of future climate change, nevertheless, global warming is still heating the earth and a future catastrophe cannot avoided if we do not act to reduce this heating trend.

A ScienceDaily report from June 11, 2009 ("Carbon Emissions Linked To Global Warming In Simple Linear Relationship") from scientists at Concordia University, shows that there is a direct relationship between the amount of CO2 emitted and the rise in global temperature. Maybe we can't control natural CO2 emissions, but we have to control human emissions of CO2 which are exacerbating the natural carbon cycle.

Professor Damon Matthews, who headed this study, says that if there is to be hope limiting global warming to just 2 degrees [Celsius] we must limit ALL our FUTURE carbon emissions to 500 billion tonnes "about as much again" as we have emitted since the start of the Industrial Revolution. That "all" means forever! Good luck with that.

On July 13, 2009, ScienceDaily reported on an article in Interscience ("Trapping Carbon Dioxide Or Switching To Nuclear Power Not Enough To Solve Global Warming Problem.") This report, from scientists at LuLea University in Sweden, found that neither converting to nuclear power nor trapping CO2 [two of most popular capitalist solutions, besides cap and trade a non solution] would solve the global warming problem. That's nice to know but they don't provide any alternative solution.

Finally, as of this week. An article published on November 22, 2010 ("Cloud Study Predicts More Global Warming" from ScienceDaily) doesn't give us much to look forward to. Scientists from the University of Hawaii Manoa have constructed what they think to be the most up to date computer model with respect to the future extent of the earth's cloud cover over the next 100 years as it reacts to global warming. Clouds reflect much of the heat from the Sun back into space before it gets trapped by green house gases. Well, their model shows that the cloud cover will be much thinner than other computer models have considered and so IF they are correct then even the worse predictions of climate change would be underestimates of "the real change we could see." It is up to us comrades. Neither the bourgeoisie nor its politicians can solve this problem

Chips Ahoy

2010-11-16T06:54:00.001-08:00

Thomas Riggins

According to some recent news stories we all may be swallowing computer chips in the near future. Some big drug companies are planning to put micro-chips in the pills we take in order to make sure we take our meds (and of course use up those pills so we have to buy more).

Science fiction? Not in the least. Reuters reported on November 8, in a story by Ben Hirschler, that Novartis AG is hoping to get regulators to approve its new "smart pill" by 2012. Here is how it works. A microchip goes into the pill along with the meds, it transmits its information to a skin patch which in turn can relay the information over the internet or to a smartphone.

Sounds innocent enough. You really should take your meds and now your health care team can monitor you-- it's for your own good. The company also hope to "expand" the uses of their chip due to "the wealth of biometric" data that it can be programmed to report on. Hmmmm. There may be some reall risks here as who knows what information about your personal health these chips may be broadcasting to the outside world. Suppose you need to take more than one or two meds-- you can have all sorts of chips inside you at any one time broadcasting away.

Novartis wants to skip "full-scale clinical trials" since the chips are not themselves medicine, they are just being added to already approved medicines. But what are these chips made of? What affect may they have on the body? The article also asks how will the patient's private medical data be protected from third party monitoring "as it is transmitted from inside their bodies by wireless and Bluetooth"?

The regulators will have to address this issue but they seem supportive of Novartis plans. After all these broadcast microchips will make sure we are all taking our meds and this "should deliver better outcomes and [more importantly-tr] justify a higher price."

Reflections on "Obama's Economic View Is Rejected on World Stage"-NYT headline, 11-12-10

2010-11-12T08:28:00.000-08:00

Reflections on "Obama's Economic View Is Rejected on World Stage" NYT headline
11-12-10

Thomas Riggins

1. Interesting headline: Instead of "US Economic View" etc, the Times has personalized it to seem as if it is the president's personal view.

2. China, Britain, Germany and South Korea are the culprits. China is understandable it is not our "ally" but a revolt in the client states bodes ill for the empire.

3. BO (the US) wants to procure economic growth before reducing deficits. This core strategy is being outright rejected by other world leaders. This is a first for an American president at a G20 meeting.

4. The other leaders are upset over the Federal Reserve's devaluing the dollar and accuse the US of doing so to make the rest of the world pay for the American trade deficit instead solving its problems by decreasing spending at home. Nice try, but no cigar.

5. Here is what China told the US-- since the dollar is the world's reserve currency (for the time being) the US should consider the "global economy" not just its "national circumstances." Right. BO is supposed to come home and put US national interests second to those of China and others. That's a lead balloon if ever there was one.

6. Greenspan agreed that we were weakening the dollar to make the rest of the world pay for our mistakes!

7. Geithner denied this, saying we would never do that just "to gain competitive advantage."

8. Many other "big" powers see it Greenspan's way! The leaders of the UK (PM David
Cameron) and Germany (Chancellor Angela Merkel) dismissed BO's plea for stimulus spending and favored austerity.

9. This whole G20 disagreement is between the capitalists of the US and their allies (plus China) on how to get the world economy out of the doldrums but to the advantage of capitalists. BO's plan would favor American workers-- stimulus = more jobs-- and if the "world" follow's suit a bigger market for US goods so US capitalists also benefit.

10. The other nations reject this and want to help their capitalists through austerity-- balance their budgets by cutting social programs and reducing benefits to the masses of the working population and retired people. This allows for longer working hours and less taxes on the corporations to sustain benefits.

11. The US was more or less getting its way until this current G20 meeting-- the Europeans and others were reluctantly letting the US call the shots-- but the tea party takeover in our mid-term elections has weakened BO in the eyes of other world leaders so they are rejecting his leadership vís a vís the world economy.

12. The free trade accord with South Korea fell through as it was felt by BO's advisors better to return empty handed than to look as if (because he had) given too many concessions to get it signed.

13. Now that the world thinks WE manipulated the value of the dollar (as we did) to help our economy, we can't complain about the Chinese "under valuing" their currency. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

14. The sub-text of this G20 meeting is that plans are afoot for the creation of "rules for a new global financial order" not dominated by US capital-- that will truly be a New World Order-- but not the one the US planned on. First the decline, then the fall.

Popcorn, Pizza and Poison

2010-11-10T06:05:00.000-08:00

Thomas Riggins

Science marches on continuing to expose health and safety hazards that the large corporations dominating both the governments and the people of most of world expose all of us to in their quest for profits and markets.

A recent example to come to light is reported in a November 9, 2010 article in Science Daily regarding the dangerous toxic chemicals in fast food packaging ("Dangerous Chemicals in Food Wrappers Likely Migrating to Humans.") Chemists at the University of Toronto have been looking for the likely origin of PFCAs (perflorinated carboxylic acids) that appear as chemical contaminants in human blood.

One common PFCA is found in human blood all over the world. This is PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid). One of the chemists involved in the study, Jessica D'eon explained PFOA, the best known PFCA, like all PFCAs, is produced by the break down of polyfluoroalkyl phosphate esters (PAPs). "PAPs," she explained "are applied as greaseproofing agents to paper food contact packaging such as fast food wrappers and microwave popcorn bags."

These chemicals have been made industrially since the 1940s and are so widely used that they are found in the blood of most humans world wide. They are known to cause cancer and to have toxic effects. Industry has been successful in keeping them unregulated.

Scientists are now pushing for some government intervention but mere human health seems to always take a back seat to profits under capitalism. This new study shows that, in the words of
Scott Mabury who supervised the research, "the current use of PAPs in food contact applications does result in human exposure to PFCAs" in a significant way. The new research is also important because "some try to locate the blame for human exposure on environmental contamination that resulted from past chemical use rather than the chemicals that are currently in production."

Some governments are at least waking up to the possible need to regulate these chemicals, but they will drag their feet, if history is any guide, and allow lobbyists from the food and chemical industries to slow down and even postpone the implementation of regulations. Meanwhile, next time you unwrap your burger just remember you may be getting a little dose of poison with every bite.

As for pizza, a 2007 study carried out in Italy determined that the chemicals in recycled cardboard could be contaminating pizzas ("Chemicals From Recycled Cardboard May Contaminate Take-out Food, Researchers Say," Science Daily Nov. 30, 2007.) Here's the deal. Trying to be "green" (and no doubt to save on production costs) pizza box manufactures are turning to recycled cardboard to make pizza boxes.

The problem is the cardboard comes from many sources and often has printing on it, just as the pizza box does. Now there is a chemical in ink, DIBP (diisobutyl phthalate) which lurks in the recycled cardboard and the heat of the nice hot pizza inside the box causes it to leach out of the cardboard and settle down on the pizza so when you get your pizza with onions and peppers it actually come with onions, peppers and DIBP which has a similar make up to androgenic hormones (also known as testoids) in your body. Testoids can reduce sperm production and also induce sex differences along with other dire results.

The scientists who conducted this study have developed a test which can detect the amount of DIBP in pizza boxes (as well as other recycled materials used in food packaging). In Italy the use of recycled cardboard in pizza boxes has been banned. But what about the U.S.? Health conscious Americans can take comfort from the following 2010 news story by Trish Green:

"The Green Groove
Wal-Mart Recycles Cardboard Waste into Pizza Boxes

Pizza just got a bit greener at your local Wal-Mart!

Wal-Mart recently made a pretty bold statement, according to an article in Environmental Leader.com. The company wants to eliminate all packaging waste by reducing, recycling or reusing everything that comes into its 4,100 American stores by 2025.

Now that would be an amazing green accomplishment, especially for one of the world’s most recognized and successful companies. As part of this recycling mission, Wal-Mart is taking all of its cardboard waste and turning it into pizza boxes!"

Bon appetit.

ENGELS on The Theory of Value

2010-11-03T12:04:00.001-07:00

Thomas Riggins

Engels discusses the origin of the Marxist theory of value in Part II, Chapter V of his 1878 book Anti-Dühring confuting the views of the self styled "socialist" German professor Eugen Dühring. He does this by first taking issue with Dühring's faulty views and then presenting what he takes to be the correct, Marxist, outlook.

Dühring holds, in the first place, that the primary lesson of political economy is that the rule of wealth (and those who control it)throughout all world history is to be understood, in his words, as "economic power over men and things." Engels rejects this opinion for two reasons. First, the wealth associated with the ancient tribal and village societies at the basis of civilization was in no way created my "domination over men." These were cooperative non- class societies. Second, when we do come to more advanced class riven societies the wealth they created was more the domination over things that were then used to dominate men. Through out history we see "that wealth dominates men exclusively by means of the things which it has at its disposal."

The reason Dühring has explained wealth as primarily the domination over men is that he wishes to remove the discussion of exploitation from the realm of economics to that morality in order to resuscitate a version of Proudhon's "Property is theft" slogan. Dühring has divided the production of wealth into two great divisions; one of PRODUCTION and the other of DISTRIBUTION.
The production of wealth that is domination over things is GOOD but the wealth produced by domination over men is unjust and BAD.

Dühring's ideas applied to present day capitalism amount to the following: the capitalist system's production of wealth is fine and good and can be preserved, but the capitalist system's method of distribution is evil and bad and must be abolished. Engel's says views like this, that we can keep the capitalist mode of production and at the same time create a different and just mode of distribution, are "nonsense" and are expounded by people who have never grasped "the connection between production and distribution."

Dühring, having explained the origin of wealth, now turns to the subject of VALUE, and explains to us what "value" is. The value of a thing is, he says "the price or any other equivalent name, for example wages." The idea that Price = Value = Wages is absurd according to Engels.

So, what we have to find out is what value is and how it is determined. Dühring continues with a longer bombastic discussion of value and finally arrives at the conclusion that something's value depends on the labor time it takes to make it. He says: "The extent to which we invest our own energy into them (things) is the immediate determining cause of the existence of value in general and of a particular magnitude of it."

This is pretty pitiful as, Engels points out, this was already known, in the general way Dühring puts it, long before his (Dühring's) own time. And besides that, it is wrong in the way Dühring expresses it. It is not just your own energy-- you have to make something with a USE VALUE and you have take into consideration the SOCIALLY NECESSARY labor time it takes to make something.

But Dühring's theory gets worse. Besides the labor it contains there is another factor determining "value" and that is the fact another group of men besides the workers intervene and demand payment for the access to nature and the tools necessary for labor. This is done by force, "sword in hand," and amounts to an increase in the price of commodities and their value so that this group can collect its money. Dühring says this amounts to a "tax surcharge" imposed by force [added to the orignal or 'real' value].

Engels makes short work of this theory. If this is how prices are really set and value determined then what we have is, in effect, monopoly pricing. There are only two ways this could work. First all the sellers are jacking up the prices of their products. So as sellers they are reaping the profits of their "tax surcharge." But since all the products undergo this increase, the sellers, when they are buyers, also have to pay it and the surcharge cancels out. Engels says in this case "the prices have changed nominally but in reality -- in their mutual relationship -- have remained the same" and Dühring's forced increase in value is an 'illusion'."

The second way of explaining the increase in value is the "tax surcharge" actually represents real value that the men with "swords in hand" are getting-- namely they are getting value added to their products in the form of the unpaid labor of the working people. And this is just Marx's "theory of SURPLUS-VALUE." So Dühring's explanation of the creation of value is either an illusion or it is Marx's theory, a theory which Dühring rejects.

At least Dühring thinks he rejects it. His own theory, however, is just a "slovenly and confused" version of the theory of value proposed by David Ricardo and improved by Marx. Marx says: "The value of commodities is determined by the socially necessary general human labour embodied in them and this in turn is measured by its duration. Labour is the measure of all values, but labour itself has no value."

Dühring is trying to revive a really outmoded view that the value a commodity has is determined by the PRODUCTION OUTLAYS one of which, WAGES, measures what Dühring calls the "expenditure of energy" of the workers. This accounts for the production value of a commodity. The rest of the "value" is the "surcharge" added by the capitalist.

The view that wages = value = price [putting the "surcharge" aside] has been outmoded since the days of David Ricardo, Marx's immediate predecessor. Engels points out this view coexisted in Adam Smith with the view that labour time was the determinant of value but no one following scientific principles uses it now. However, there are still some who try to explain value this way [as true then as in 2010] for it is "the shallowest sycophants of the existing capitalist order of society who preach the determination of value by wages..." and who even say the capitalist's profits are themselves his wages-- i.e., "the wages of abstinence", of risk, management, etc. This is the kind of vulgar economics upon which Dühring founds his socialism.

Let's look at the real beginning of human society. At some time in the distant past primitive groups of ancient humans scrabbled about in bands spending most of their time in search of food. This conditioned lasted for untold generations from the time of our separation from the common ancestor we shared with the chimpanzees-- about five million years ago. Sometime in the last ten to twenty thousand years in our own species some groups (Engel's says "families") began to collect or create more food and useful instruments than they needed for day to day survival. A surplus of subsistence was created beyond the costs of maintaining the population and the surplus even was able to grow to the point of a creating a "social production and reserve fund."

The creation of this fund was a revolutionary historical development and the beginning of all human progress from then until now. However in "history, up to the present, this fund has been the possession of a privileged class, on which also devolved, along with this possession, political supremacy and intellectual leadership." Today, as in the past, this fund is a social fund made up of "the total mass of raw materials, instruments of production and means of subsistence." Every war imperialist or guerrilla, revolt, revolution, peasant uprising, worker's strike and election is a struggle over the control of this fund between those who control (or wish to control) it and those who make it. Socialism will exist when this fund is controlled by those who actually create it-- the productive portion the society-- the working people-- and it has become THE COMMON PROPERTY OF SOCIETY.

Today this fund, in almost every country in the world, rests in the hands of the capitalist class. This would be impossible if value was determined by wages. In that case the workers would get back in wages the value they created and there would be no capitalist exploitation.

It is, however, the quantity of socially necessary labour expended, not wages that determines value. The workers create more value for the capitalist than he pays out in wages and this fact f explains the origin of the profit on capital. It was Marx who discovered that these profits were merely a part, along with other kinds of appropriation, of the surplus value created by the workers. It is our duty as Marxists to educate the working people about these facts. One the workers are aware of the true origin of THE WEALTH OF NATIONS they will take steps to end their own exploitation and in so doing the exploitation of humanity in general.

SALT, SALUBRITY, and SOCIALISM

2010-11-02T12:41:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

When it comes to health care and economic development socialists hold that central planning, public control of development, and strict regulation of industry and finance is preferable to an uncontrolled and unaccountable "free" market. There is scientific evidence favoring the socialist view.

Science Daily (SD) reported on November 1 that the journal HEART published findings of an Australian research team that found when the state imposes mandatory limits to the amount of salt private industry adds to processed foods [the more salt the greater the health risk] the results of the reduction in salt content "could be 20 times more effective than voluntary curbs by industry."

SD reminds us that higher salt content is directly related to greater risks of heart disease and strokes. It is therefore incumbent for any government that cares about the health and well being of its citizens to see to it that the private economic benefits aimed at by the private sector do not trump the health needs of the general population when it comes to the level of salt added to the food supply.

The scientists compared the results that obtain in three scenarios. Taking 6 grams per day of salt as the recommended maximum amount to be consumed they then studied and compared the results of mandatory state regulations, voluntary compliance by private industry, and compliance by individuals with health problems who were told by their medical doctors to reduce their salt in take.

You might think sick people and people at risk would show the highest level of compliance in eliminating salt from their diets and thus making for a healthier population. But the Australian scientists, this research was done in Australia, found if people were left to their own devices with only "doctor's orders" then the reduction of cardiovascular disease in the general population would only decrease by 0.5%. Not very impressive.

If the government relied on voluntary compliance and only cajoled the processed food industry to reduce the excess salt they contaminate their products with (they add as much salt as they can because the junk say sell would have no taste otherwise) then cardiovascular health in the general population would decrease by about 1%. Well, that is a 100% improvement over the "doctor's order's" group, but no way near getting people down to 6 grams a day.

However, if the government mandated a healthy salt level in processed foods and made private industry comply, the scientists calculated that there would be a reduction of about 18% in cardiovascular disease in the general population.

The scientists say, however, when dealing with a large population of millions of people even the 1% decrease of cardiovascular disease brought about by voluntary compliance is "substantial." But it pales, I think, when compared with the 18% that government regulation would achieve. The government imposed regulations amount to an almost 20 fold increase over voluntary curbs.

The scientists also point out that salt "is not essential at such high levels" as it is found when added to food. It is just a cheap (but horribly unhealthy) way to make the product palatable.

The scientists conclude their study with these words: "Food manufacturers have a responsibility to make money for their shareholders, but they also have a responsibility to society. If corporate responsibility fails, maybe there is an ethical justification for government to step in and legislate."

"Maybe?" The only government that really serves the people and not the vested interests would be a socialist government and there would be no maybe about it for a socialist government. Come to think about it, there wouldn't be any shareholders either.

Web address: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101101191547.ht
"Mandatory Curbs on Food Salt Content 20 Times More Effective Than
Voluntary Curbs, Study Finds"

Wealth Buys Health

2010-10-26T12:52:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

The title above is part of a headline from a recent article in Science Daily.
Nobody should be surprised to learn that in a class society wealthy people are going to be healthier that poor folks. But the complete title of the article is actually "Wealth Buys Health -- Even in China."

Lets see just what this is supposed to show. Since Daily says we have long known, by scientific studies, that the "health gap" between rich and poor exists in the U.S. and that the gap "gets worse as people get older." The article then asks: "But is this because the U.S. is a capitalist society?" An interesting scientific question. The answer they propose is: "Apparently not."

North Carolina State University has recently released a study made of the health gap in China between people with high and low SES [socioeconomic status] and the study shows "the same is true for China" as for the U.S. But is it really the SAME? The study found "In China, the overall health gap across generations is getting narrower--- and it's getting wider in the U.S." A strange use of the word "same."

What the study seems to show is that in any society there is going to be a gap in the health between people of high and low SES. But can we infer that the type of economic system has nothing to do with this. China is not a capitalist society. It has a mixed economy and capitalism is being engineered in China, under state control, to develop the economic resources of the country, but not for the sole benefit of finance capital and big privately owned industrial monopolies.

The Chinese Communist Party can direct the economic development of China precisely because the economy is not subject to an unregulated and out of control "free market." It is for this reason that the health gap is growing smaller as China develops and it continues to grow larger in the capitalist U.S.

The present U.S. administration has tried to somewhat reverse this gap with health care reform ( "Obama care"--so called by the enemies of social progress in the U.S.) that would extend health benefits to 35 million people of lower SES. This reform is threatened and could be repealed if reactionary forces take over the government or make major in roads into it.
Chinese people, not living under monopoly capitalism, do not have to fear the reversal of their narrowing health gap.

Here is one of the conclusions from the authors of the North Carolina State study: "Even accounting for the fact that more recent generations are younger [in China] the health gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged has shrunk with each successive generation. This is the exact opposite [not "same"?] of what has been found in studies of the U.S. population, where the health gap has been shown to widen with each generation."

The researchers say it is not clear why this is so? What can the reason be? They plan more research and tell us, "We suspect this narrowing of the health gap in China is due to significant social and economic changes over the past 20 years, including changes in health behaviors and ACCESS (my emphasis-tr) to health care."

I think their future research may find this to be the case. As for the question about the growing health care gap in the U.S-- is this because the U.S. is a capitalist country?--I think the answer may be apparently "yes."

Too Fat to Fight

2010-10-19T09:52:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

Science Daily (Oct. 18, 2010) has reported a new analysis by Cornell University has uncovered a major threat to U.S. national security. Research has shown that about 25% of the young people needed to provide the cannon fodder for the U.S. military are too fat to pass the medical requirements for service in the armed forces.

The military needs to sign up 184,000 young people each year in order to carry on its wars and the garrisoning of its military outposts around the world and the fact that so many young people are too fat to fight means the Pentagon may have to rely more and more on private security mercenaries and drones to carry out its war plans.

John Crawley, one of the professors associated with the Cornell study says being overweight or obese is “the most common reason for medical disqualification.”
The coefficient of fatness is also higher based on income, education and race. Marxists and other progressives will not be shocked to find out that the poor, under-educated and racially or ethnically oppressed are likely to have higher coefficients of fatness.

The only example given in the article is the comparison of white female potential recruits compared to those of Black and Hispanic descent; the last two groups “are less likely to meet the weight standards.”

The problem, of course, is the prevalence of junk food sold by the big chains such as McDonald's, KFC, Burger King, Wendy’s, and hundreds of others that prey on the poor and minorities with their cheap unhealthy pseudo-food concoctions and the failure of the Food and Drug Administration and other government agencies to regulate the quality of food private capitalist corporations are allowed to offer to the public. Since people’s health doesn’t seem to motivate the FDA maybe the government will take some action when the military gets involved because it can’t get the troops it needs.

Some solutions have been suggested—short of providing the population with inexpensive healthy food – such as changing the health standards so that fatter people can join the military—but only for desk jobs. Also the drone flyers don’t have to be in good shape since their work is akin to playing video games—only real people not animations get killed. In fact many young people become obese from lack of exercise due to sitting and playing video war games all day long. These skills will serve the military well and the fatter a drone recruit is may be an indication of better skill at drone warfare.

It would be counter productive to reintroduce the draft as young people could just spend a month eating at McDonald's before taking their physical and being exempted. Dr. Crowley points out that obesity is not just a personal problem, as it has been made out to be, and “U.S. military leaders view it at a threat to national security and military readiness…” Once again a red flag threatens the hegemony of U.S. imperialism: but this time it sports golden arches.

Air Pollution and Diabetes: EPA Pollution Levels Set Too High

2010-10-12T10:06:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

A new national study has found that there is a statistical correlation between exposure to air pollution and adult diabetes. The air pollution studied is known as particulate air pollution so named for the small particles of microscopic matter that are found in factory smoke, engine exhaust, haze, and smog.

The particles are measured in nanometers so PM10 would be "particulate matter of 10 nanometers size." The Environmental Protection Agency standards say it is safe to breath air with a PM level of 2.5 or below. But is it? Has this level been set for people's health or to save auto makers and other pollution generating industries from the expense of having to clean up their exhaust to a level far below the "safe" level of PM2.5?

Under the Bush[W] administration the Union of Concerned Scientists condemned the blatant suppression of both the scientists and the scientific studies at the EPA to cover up the harmful effects of air pollution and the true levels of safety. The Obama administration has taken steps to improve the situation but more has to be done.

Science Daily (based on a study published in Diabetes Care) has recently reported that scientists have discovered that air pollution levels well below 2.5, in the range of 0.1 to 2.5, are linked to the development of diabetes in adults. Exposure to the particulate matter in air causes inflammation associated with insulin resistance which is a sign of possible future diabetes onset.

The scientists compared EPA data on air pollution levels with Centers for Disease Control [CDC] data on diabetes on a county by county basis for the entire US. Science Daily reports that, "In all analyses, there was a strong and consistent association between diabetes prevalence and PM2.5 concentrations." This association also held at lower levels.

Of course there are many other causes of diabetes-- heredity, obesity, diet, etc., but this new evidence also shows that the EPA's 2.5PM safety limit for air pollution is set too high. Congress and the Administration must take action to ensure that capitalist profits do not, yet again, come before people.

Science Notes: Loopholes in Climate Accord Portend Death of Coral Reefs by 2100

2010-10-05T12:20:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

It doesn't seem as if the big industrial nations are serious about trying to halt global warming. They are trying to address the issue again right now at a meeting in Tianjin, China from October 4 to the 9th but early press reports are warning people not to expect too much. The divide between the rich and poor nations, which caused last year's conference in Copenhagen to end in a debacle, are still present.

The governments of the major industrialized nations, with the exception of China, represent the interests of the large corporations including the industrial, oil and mining conglomerates which are responsible for much of the pollution driving global warming. Unless the people become more active and insistent these governments will continue to support the interests of the capitalist corporations at the expense of the planet and its inhabitants.

Time is running out for the planet. People left Copenhagen pledging to keep global warming down to 2 degrees C by 2100, but the big nations gave themselves so many loopholes that scientists are saying that the real increase will be more like 4.2 degrees C-- more than enough to kill off the remaining coral reefs, and, according to Environmental Research Letters, as reported by Science Daily, drastically increase ocean acidification and the destruction of the marine ecosystem.

Most people live day by day and a disaster predicted for one hundred years in the future doesn't seem to motivate them to action. The big corporations and their governments are counting on the inertia, indeed even apathy, to put off climate reform as long as possible.

Scientists are saying that just setting vague goals for 2100 is insufficient. Interim goals for 2020 and 2030 are needed to make sure we are on the right track. We need a 50 per cent reduction below 1990 levels of CO2 emissions by 2050 if the world is going to stand a chance of avoiding the catastrophe of the 4.2 degree C increase by 2100.

If the Tianjin conference comes to grief, as did the one at Copenhagen, due to the intransigence of the big capitalist powers it will be up to the international workers movement and democratic national elements to take up the struggle for saving the planet.

Science Notes: Did Wind Help Moses Part The Waters?

2010-09-28T13:14:00.000-07:00

by: THOMAS RIGGINS

reposted from Peoples World online

It is always risky to call upon science to verify a biblical story (and vice versa) but it can be interesting to see if a Biblical story and science can be reconciled. There is no real point though. A miracle is supposed to defy the laws of science, not be explained by them. Moses' parting of the Red Sea, as a religious doctrine, is purely a matter of faith (i.e., unwarranted belief) but could the religious myth have some basis in fact. A recent article in Science News reports on a scientific study that suggests the answer is yes.

Carl Drews of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado issued the following statement: "The parting of the waters can be understood through fluid dynamics. The wind moves the water in a way that's in accordance with physical laws, creating a safe passage with two sides and then abruptly allowing the water to rush back in."

Drews and his co-workers studied various atmospheric events worldwide where this phenomenon has been observed, and then did a very close study of Egypt and its possible typology and geography around 1250BC ( a possible setting for the legendary Exodus). Using computers they recreated several possible scenarios attempting to recreate the conditions that would allow for a "parting of the waters."

Drews said, "The simulations match fairly closely with the account in Exodus."

However, the only place where all the factors coincide to replicate the "parting of the waters" happen far from the Red Sea and require "a U-shaped formation of the Nile River and a shallow lagoon along the shoreline." The location is in the north of the Sinai Peninsula along a now vanished branch of the Nile.

Biblical scholars tell us that the name "Red Sea" is a mistranslation of the Hebrew for the "Sea of Reeds;" so the Red Sea itself really didn't have much to do with whatever historical basis, if any, there is to the legend of the Exodus. The location of the Sea of Reeds is unknown but may have been a smaller body of water in the Sinai and may be compatible with the explanation given by Drews.

The upshot of all this is, while the Biblical romance remains one of the great fictional accounts of our past, along with the Iliad and the Mahabharata, there is, nevertheless, no scientific reason that some real historical event could not have lain behind the legend of the "parting of the waters."

Drews concluded: "People have always been fascinated by this Exodus story, wondering if it comes from historical facts. What this study shows is that the description of the waters parting indeed has a basis in physical laws."

Engels : The Force Theory of Herr Eugen Dühring

2010-09-26T08:13:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

Chapters two, three and four of Part Two of Anti-Dühring "Political Economy" deal with Dühring's theory that political systems and power are PRIMARY and economic relations are SECONDARY-- both historically and in the present day. Engels says Dühring gives no evidence or arguments in favor of this theory (which he claims is ORIGINAL) but simply asserts it as a given. Engels says this is old hash and has been the way history has been seen since the beginning. The true history of mankind has actually taken place behind the scenes and is the real basis for the pompous doings of the kings and presidents, popes and generals that strut the stage and are memorialized in the history books.

Dühring's idea that all the previous history of mankind is based on man's enslavement of man-- i.e., on force-- and that this is the only way we can explain it is exemplified by his example of Robinson Crusoe and Friday. Crusoe enslaves Friday. But why does he do this? Engels says "only in order that Friday should work for Crusoe's benefit." That is for an ECONOMIC MOTIVE. Dühring has reversed the true relation between political order and economic order and does not see "that force is only the means and that the aim is economic advantage."

Slavery, by the way, the condition from which Dühring starts out his "political force is the basis of history" nonsense is itself the result of prior historical and economic developments.
Slavery requires two preconditions: tools and material for the slave to work upon and a food supply to provide a basic subsistence for the slave. This means that a prior historical period in which distribution of social wealth has developed must have preceded the introduction of slavery.

Engels gives as examples primitive societies with common land ownership where there was no slavery or it "played only a very subordinate role." This is also true of ancient Rome before it became an imperial power. Even in the US, Engels says, the cotton industry of England was more important than force in maintaining slavery in the South so that "in those districts where no cotton was grown or which, unlike the border states, did not breed slaves for the cotton growing states, it died out of itself without any force being used, simply because it did not pay."

But wait a minute. Doesn't this sound right about the world we live in? Dühring says capitalist property today is the result of the use of force in the past and in fact all past property accumulations are also based on force (Rome, Egypt, etc.,) and force is, in Dühring's words, "that form of domination AT THE ROOT OF WHICH LIES not merely the exclusion of fellow-men from the use of the natural means of subsistence, but also... the subjection of man to make him do servile work." It sounds right. Big business and the oil giants use force to take over natural resources (Niger Delta, Iraq, the Amazon), they force masses of third world workers into sweat shops at low wages, etc. Why isn't Dühring right on?

Well, Engels says he is not: "Private property by no means makes it appearance in history as the result of robbery [so much for 'property is theft'] or force. On the contrary, it already existed ... in the ancient primitive communes of all civilized peoples." Engels gives many examples of the development of private property by trade, individual labor, and the accumulation of wealth in the form of domestication of animals-- none of which involved force or robbery. His logical argument is, however, that before you can use force to take someone's property or to steal it from him, it (i.e., property) must already exist "therefore force may be able to change the possession of, but cannot create, private property as such." If Dühring had meant this he would have been correct but force is NOT at the root of the domination of man by private property.

Nor is force the cause of the "subjection of man to make him do servile work" at least with respect to modern capitalism. At this point Engels gives a long quote from DAS KAPITAL [from Vol. 1: Section One of Chapter XXIV "Conversion of Surplus Value Into Capital"] the upshot of which is that economies based on commodity production where property is based on the labor put into it evolve into capitalist economies where surplus value develops and labor becomes separated from property and "property," Marx writes, "turns out to be the right, on the part of the capitalist, to appropriate the unpaid labour of others or its product, and to be the impossibility on the part of the labourer, of appropriating his own product. The separation of property from labour has become the necessary consequence of a law that apparently originated in their identity."

Engels points out that Dühring never mentions Marx's arguments (since they would demolish his own) and that the whole structure of modern exploitation and servitude "can be explained by purely economic causes; at no point whatever are robbery, force, the state, or political interference of any kind necessary."

Again, Dühring is totally wrong when he writes "political conditions are the decisive cause of the economic situation." If that were the case, Engels says, then capitalism would have been voluntarily brought about by the feudal system; but that didn't happen. In the struggle to overthrow feudalism "the decisive weapon" was the ECONOMIC power of the bourgeoisie. An example being the great French Revolution of 1789 which broke out because the capitalist system had become the dominant economic power but, "The 'political conditions' in France remained unaltered, while the 'economic situation' had outgrown them." As a result the nobles no longer had an important social function but they nevertheless tried to keep control of the social wealth "in the revenues that came to" them.

This is not unlike today (2010). We have a socialized economy in that the large industries and banks etc., could be kept running by their workers alone if the capitalist class vanished overnight-- they too have no important social function. Even though they are useless they still fight to control the social wealth and increase their revenues. When the workers finally wake up to this fact, and their living conditions are as desperate as the French in 1789, the game will be up for the capitalists. A few more depressions will suffice one hopes.

While the living standards of the world's working class approaches, day by day, the level of the French in 1789 we find, as Engels says, "the bourgeoisie has already come close to occupying the position held by the nobility in 1789 [in our day they are no longer "close" they have equaled the position of the old nobility-tr]: it is becoming more and more not only socially superfluous, but a social hindrance; it is more and more becoming separated from productive activity, and like the nobility in the past, becoming more and more a class merely drawing revenues...." All this not only points to a socialist future but decisively shows that Dühring's view that politics determines economics is a "delusion."

The Secret World of the Chinese Communist Party?

2010-09-12T12:35:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

The New York Review of Books for 9-30-10 has an interesting article by Ian Johnson, former Beijing bureau chief for the WSJ, reviewing Richard McGregor's THE PARTY: THE SECRET WORLD OF CHINA'S COMMUNIST RULERS. I don't know how secret it can be if there is a whole book about it.

There are some interesting facts revealed in this review that readers of our sites will find useful. We are told that the CPC is basically the heart and soul of contemporary China and that the views of some, that the party is becoming irrelevant, are dead wrong. Johnson informs us that while many polices of the party are not actually "communist" it is still "Leninist in structure" and its organization and workings "would be recognizable to the leaders of the Russian Revolution." Coming from a WSJ reporter I don't know if this a compliment or not. McGregor's book also shows that despite its "secretive tendencies" the CP "can be usefully analyzed." Maybe the secret world is not really so secret after all.

Johnson says one big misunderstanding about China, and it is a BIG one, is that China "has been privatizing the economy." There is a stock market to be sure and many shares have been sold to investors around the world but "almost all Chinese companies of any size and importance remain in government hands." This is a socialist sine qua non I would think.

This fact is relatively unknown to outside investors due to "ignorant or unethical Western investment banks and lawyers." It seems that ultimate decision making in all really important Chinese companies is made by the Organization Department of the CPC and the NOT the board of directors of the company-- i.e., the party remains "in control of all personnel decisions." CEOs and directors thus dance to the tune of the party.

What about smaller companies, those not belonging to the commanding heights of the economy? Here too "government control still remains pervasive" if less direct. What Johnson means is that "the manager is often a former official or close to Party circles." Johnson is wrong to call this "government control" since even he admits "that these companies are run as the manager sees fit." What he really means is that there is a climate of shared values and aspirations between middle management and the party.

The party also has control of the government as the party, through the medium of "leading small groups" of experts and senior party leaders that have been set up to advise each of the ministries. These groups exist from the top "down to the grass roots." Westerners object to this system, especially in the legal system because judges are not independent and merely "translate court decisions made by Communist Party legal affairs committees into rulings." This objection is based on the Western notion that the only free and democratic organization of government has to be based on bourgeois notions of democracy and any other notions of democracy, especially socialist or people's democracy is bogus. This overlooks the fact that most bourgeois democracies are themselves bogus.

While many Western "experts" on China write off the CPC in the long term, Johnson shares the view that "the West has consistently underestimated the Party's ability to adapt and thus might be excessively negative about its future."

Johnson has some criticisms of his own but they seem to be motivated by his WSJ background. He thinks China needs more reform efforts and while he says "reforms haven't quite ground to a halt" nevertheless the state sector is making a comeback because the CPC has a policy "of recentralizing control." But this is what you would expect a socialist state to do.

He also faults Chinese foreign policy for being concerned with only two "narrow concerns." The first is territorial (Tibet and Taiwan) and the second is "resource extraction in Africa and Central America." Well the first is a concern with the territorial integrity of the country, which is actually being threatened, and is hardly a "narrow concern." Nor is the second, which deals with China's relation to the Third World and its trade policies. By all accounts most African and Central American countries have had better and fairer deals with the Chinese than with the West. Johnson doesn't even mention the CPC's push to increase the unionization of its workforce, which is in complete harmony with socialist principles.

All in all this is an interesting article which should be read by anyone interested in contemporary China and certainly by anyone contemplating buying and reading Richard McGregor's THE PARTY.

Marxism, Mosques, and Mockery

2010-08-28T13:40:00.000-07:00

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and the New York Islamic Cultural Center

Thomas Riggins

Spending six weeks in South Florida (Boca Raton) I thought I would be missing the action in NYC. Not the case. The "Ground Zero Mosque" flap is spreading throughout the land. The fact that the social center envisioned by some American Muslims is not a mosque (it is social center but also has a prayer room) nor is it to be located at ground zero doesn't seem to matter to the rabid opposition opposed to an Islamic center in lower Manhattan.

A Rasmussen poll released on August 23 claims 62% of those polled oppose the Islamic center. According to the New York Post (a paper subsidized by the ultra right billionaire Rubert Murdock) the pollsters reported that the opposition is based on the belief that the Islamic center is "a deliberate provocation that dishonors the memories of the 3000 [sic] people that died that day."

Marxists and other progressives understand that this is nonsense since the Islamic religion and Muslims in general are in no way responsible for the events of 9/11. We do know that right wing elements, including elements from the growing proto-fascist right, are using this issue for political purposes making a mockery of the constitutional rights of all Americans in the hopes of damaging the Obama administration and the Democratic congress.

Obama's comments were perfectly appropriate for a US President: all Americans have the right of religious freedom under the law and no group of right wing anti-American fanatics, tea baggers included, have a right to force their views on the rest of us.

The military has even stated that this anti-Islam agitation is hurting the war effort and threatening the lives of our troops. Ok, our troops should not be there in the first place and should be brought home immediately, but it shows the hypocrisy of the Dick Amorys, Newt Gingrichs, and John McCains and their ilk that they could care less about the troops in the field than a few extra votes from their crazed supporters.

Another mockery is the way The New York Post reports on this dispute: by twisting the facts and trying to stir up religious and ethnic hatred between Americans-- all to further Murdock's anti-working class political agenda. As evidence I offer the following headline From same issue of the NYP: "US worse than al Qaeda: imam" accompanied by a photo of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is the imam associated with the Islamic center, being hosted by the US embassy in Bahrain last Sunday. He is described as the imam "who decried Muslim blood on US hands." The subtext is, of course, here is this anti-American Muslim fanatic being sent to the Muslim world by the Obama administration as a guest of the State Department for who knows what evil purposes being hidden from the American people and he wants to build HIS mosque at GROUND ZERO!!! Yikes! Call out the Minuet Men!

Let's look at the actual story written by Murdock's mouthpiece, one Jennifer Fermino, pretending to be a reporter for a publication pretending to be a newspaper. Here is the first sentence, it sets the tone: "The Islamic cleric who wants to build a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero once claimed in a jaw-dropping speech that the United States has killed more innocent civilians than al Qaeda."

Two points: 1. This would be "jaw-dropping" only to ignorant Yahoos who know nothing about the history of US foreign policy and the conduct of the US military. 2. The statement happens to be true. In just one war alone, the Vietnam War, the US killed more innocent civilians than all the terrorist organizations in the world have managed to kill. The same is true of the civilian deaths in Iraq. If Ms. Fermino is so ignorant as not to know that she at least has an excellent qualification to be a NYP "reporter."

Here is what Imam Rauf actually said in a speech he gave in 2005: "We tend to forget in the West [if we ever knew-tr], that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims. You may remember that the US-led sanctions against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations."

Ms Fermino calls these statements "incendiary" but does not reveal to us that they are also true, which happens to be the case.

Imam Rauf said the following as well, which is also true, and he should be congratulated for his courage: "What complicates the discussion intra-Islamically, is the fact that the West has not been cognizant and has not addressed the issue of its own contribution to much injustice in the Arab and Muslim world. It is a difficult subject to discuss with Western audiences [they are distracted by constantly dropping their jaws-tr] but it is one that must be pointed out and must be raised."

The NYP also says he used the N word in his speech (he used it in a context describing how people SHOULD NOT judge other people-- by skin color or gender) not as US military slang uses it to describe Arabs as
sand n's.

This whole story is biased and designed to discredit the imam for speaking the TRUTH! It is based on a audio tape that can be heard on the Ayn Randroid website AtlasShrugs. I wish Atlas would shrug all the Randroids, Ferminos and other crypto-fascists opposing religious freedom and stirring up ethnic and religious hatred off the backs of the American people.

Ross Douthat on "The Marriage Ideal"

2010-08-10T15:27:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

The ultra-conservative Ross Douthat, an op ed columnist for The New York Times, has a piece in Monday's paper (8-9-2010 "The Marriage Ideal") which, as is usual with this ideological trend, distorts the issues involved in question of gay marriage.

His article appears sparked by Federal Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling last week "that laws defining marriage as a heterosexual union are unconstitutional, irrational and unjust. That they are irrational and unjust is obvious to any thinking person, their constitutionality will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.

Douthat agrees that the usual arguments in defense of heterosexual marriage as the only form that should be legally recognized are wrong (I think he means invalid and unsound). These are those based on claims of naturalness, tradition, universality, etc. But Douthat points out that other cultures have different conceptions of the nature and purpose of marriage and none of the arguments heard by Judge Walker were convincing.

Since those opposed to gay marriage are NOT really defending "some universal, biologically inevitable institution" just what are they defending, Douthat asks? Luckily for the defenders of traditional marriage only, who obviously don't know what they are talking about and can only give wrong headed arguments to federal judges, Douthat DOES know and is going to enlighten all of us.

The heterosexual marriage ideal "holds up the commitment to lifelong fidelity and support by two sexually different human beings-- a commitment that involves mutual surrender, arguably, of their reproductive self-interest-- as a unique admirable kind of relationship."

Well this is a find and admirable ideal for some, but should it be the only legal marriage relationship under US and international law? Has an anti-divorce clause also been slipped in? And what about a person who is both physically and in gender consciousness a male and a person who is transsexual and a physical male but whose gender consciousness is female: are these two sexually different human beings allowed to marry under the heterosexual only rules? They are heterosexual afterall.

Douthat maintains that this heterosexual ideal, including the nuclear family, isn't claiming to be the only possible way for a marriage to be arranged but that it is "worthy of distinctive recognition and support." And who would not agree? As long as its recognition and support does not come at the expense of other people's marriage ideals and does not involve special rights and laws that discriminate against those alternatives.

Many cultures don't have this marriage ideal that Douthat puts forward: "It's a particularly Western understanding, derived from Jewish ["Thank G-d I was not born a woman"] and Christian beliefs ["Women is destined to live under the authority of man" St. Thomas] about the order of creation ["Neither was man created for the woman; but the woman for the man"--St. Paul], and supplemented by later ideals about romantic love [the passive woman on the pedestal], the rights of children [let's deny them citizenship under the 14th Amendment if their parents lack papers], and the equality of the sexes [this last bit is laughable considering the majority of the heterosexual marriage only crowd are chauvinists in extremo.]"

Well at least we see where the heterosexual marriage only crowd is coming from in Douthat's construction. It's basically an attempt to force a particular religious interpretation of marriage on everybody else. Extremely un-American to say the least.

Douthat fears that this noble ideal of the meaning of marriage, which only exists in the fantasy world of ultra-conservatives, may be lost to newer "post-modern" ways of thinking. If this happens we will be "giving up one of the great ideas of Western civilization"-- patriarchal, repressive bourgeois marriage as one of the "great ideas" of the West! Barf. If you want to know the real meaning of this great ideal read about marriage in Simone de Beauvoir's still great book THE SECOND SEX.

Douthat thinks there must be a distinction made between gay marriage and his ideal form: "But based on Judge Walker's logic-- which suggests that any such distinction is bigoted and un-American-- I don't think a society that declares gay marriage to be a fundamental right will be capable of even entertaining this idea." Speed the Day.

Fruit Loops, Leninism, and Lunacy

2010-07-30T13:23:00.001-07:00

Thomas Riggins

Do you eat Fruit Loops? Do you let your children eat them? Well you would have to be a lunatic to do so after reading about how the food industry dumps all sorts of junk into processed foods and cereals just to make a buck. Take a look at "Ad Rules Stall, Keeping Cereal a Cartoon Staple"-- New York Times 7-24-2010 front page article by William Neuman).

Here is some of the lunacy. President Obama has recognized that there is an obesity epidemic spreading among American children. An epidemic which is increasing cases of diabetes and leading to premature heart problems among kids. No laughing matter. It's caused by junk food being passed off as healthy and nutritious food by the US food industry whose ONLY INTEREST is making big profits-- the kids can go to Hell for all they care.

The government isn't trying to force these food fascists to change what they put in their "food": it was just trying to set nutritional standards for food that could be advertised as healthy to small children watching Saturday morning cartoons.

The food industry has its own standards for child nutrition (it includes candy bars). Here are some perfectly healthy foods for children according to the industry: corn dog with fries (ConAgra), McDonald Happy Meal, Lucky Charms, Cocoa Pebbles, and Fruit Loops. Emm, emm, good! Not!

If you like fat, overweight, rolly polly children these are the foods for you.
The government would allow 8 grams of sugar per serving (too much anyway) but Cocoa Pebbles has 11 and Fruit Loops 12 grams according to the Times.

Anyway, not to worry, the pending rules have been stopped in their tracks.
Congress is paralyzed. The main reason? The food industry objects. That is the only argument against the new rules according to one expert in the field.

Here are some really great quotes from the article. This one from the Association of National Advertisers: "The [government] proposal was extraordinarily restrictive and would virtually end all food advertising as it is currently carried out to kids under 18 years of age."

The proposal was that kid's foods "would have to contain significant amounts of wholesome ingredients." Well that would definitely put an end to the foods currently being advertised since it's all junk.

Here is a gem: "With obesity rates the way they are, it is no longer acceptable for companies to be marketing foods to kids that contribute to obesity and heart disease and other health problems." Ok, this was from the good guys at the Center for Science and the Public Interest, but when was it EVER ACCEPTABLE to make kid's food that contributes to obesity and heart problems?

Some companies know their food is junk and have agreed NOT to pitch it to young children (Coke Cola, Mars, Hershey, Cadbury) but others insist on poisoning kids to make a buck-- Kellogg, McDonalds, Burger King and others.

These are little children we are talking about and these companies have no right to make money by exploiting them and selling junk food. If the government is afraid of big business too bad. But parents would have to be lunatics to buy this stuff.

So much for lunatics and fruit loops, but what has Leninism got to do with it? Well, the theory of monopoly capitalism spelled out in State and Revolution and Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism make fine summer reading and will explain just how this rotten capitalist system works. You will never again think good healthy food is the business of the "food" industry-- it's raw naked profits.

THE ONCE AND FUTURE COMMUNIST

2010-07-15T19:37:00.000-07:00

FREDERICK ENGELS ON THE SUBJECT MATTER AND METHOD OF POLITICAL ECONOMY AND THE COMING REVOLUTION
(Reflections on Chapter 1 Part 2 of Anti-Dühring)

Thomas Riggins

What is the subject matter and method of political economy according to Engels? First, though, what is political economy? Today we tend to teach economics as a special discipline and political science as another separate subject. This is an attempt by the bourgeoisie to keep politics and economics independent of one another. Marx and Engels, as did most nineteenth century thinkers, thought they were closely interrelated.

Political economy for Engels was the study of the laws governing the PRODUCTION and EXCHANGE “of the material means of subsistence in human society." While production and exchange are human functions they are intimately related to each other and have a reciprocal causative relationship.

However, there are many different ways to carry out production and exchange and they vary from society to society and culture to culture. Thus: “Political economy is therefore essentially a HISTORICAL science.”
By which Engels means its laws are not like those of physics-- the same for all-- but conditioned by historical circumstances.

Nevertheless there are some general statements that can made. For example, Engels thinks it doesn’t matter what society you are dealing with the modes of production and exchange will CONDITION the way the society distributes its social product.

He says large and small scale farming always have very different distribution patterns. This is because the former is associated with class struggle (masters and slaves, lords and serfs, capitalists and wage slaves) while the latter can exist without class struggle (i.e., without classes).

Modern large scale industry can be contrasted with Medieval local handicraft production controlled by guilds. The latter lacks large capitalists and permanent wage slaves and the former is, along with the modern credit system and "free competition" (the exchange form of modern industry and credit) responsible for both these new classes.

Differences in distribution leads to CLASS DIFFERENCES and the development of the STATE which originally came about to defend small groups from external aggression and to protect the common interests (irrigation systems in the East according to Engels). As classes begin to develop the state takes on another function, that "of maintaining by force the conditions of existence and domination of the ruling class against the subject class."

New forms of distribution are not simply neutral developments of the interaction of the MODE OF PRODUCTION and the FORM OF EXCHANGE. In fact as new modes of production and exchange develop the old forms of distribution, the state, and the laws act as drags trying to
maintain the older forms of distribution. The new mode production and exchange faces a long struggle before it can cast off the older forms of distribution.

Engels thought that capitalism, in his time about three hundred years old, was undergoing just such an antithesis in its forms of distribution which was leading to its downfall. He described the antithesis as follows: on the one hand CONCENTRATION OF CAPITAL at one pole of society (that of the bourgeoisie) and at the other pole CONCENTRATION OF THE PROPERTYLESS MASSES without much capital into cities and towns.
He thought that as far a capitalism goes this double concentration "must of necessity bring about its downfall."

Well, Engels' timing was a bit off and the development of monopoly capitalism (modern imperialism), two world wars, premature revolutions in underdeveloped regions of the world, and the development of vast new markets in the third world have postponed the day of reckoning.

Capitalism is now over four hundred fifty years old and the CONCENTRATIONS Engels spoke of are even greater and more unstable. Capitalism has, in fact, run out of places to go and can no longer rely on the expansion of new markets to pull it out of the disruptions and market collapse caused by cyclical overproduction. The DOWNFALL expected by Engels is once again on the agenda and the current inability of the US, Europe, Japan, and much of the rest of the world to overcome the present world wide capitalist crisis means that the final conflict may be closer than any of us thinks.

As long as capitalist production is on the rise everyone, Engels says, welcomes it, even the victims of its way of distributing its products. Capitalism just seems to be the way economics works. The first hints that something is wrong with the system does NOT come from "the exploited masses themselves"-- it comes from "within the ruling class itself." Engels gives as examples the great utopians Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen.

The appearance of these early objectors indicates that the system has reached the top of its curve and is just beginning to decline. The utopians became aware of the horrible conditions of living the system was forcing upon its wage slaves and were full of moral indignation. But, Engels says, "moral indignation, however justifiable, cannot serve economic science as an argument, but only as a symptom."

If capitalist horrors became more and more manifest in Engels' day just think what they are like today. Millions around the world are unemployed or living in poverty and even slavery (or should I say billions)-- armed conflicts on every continent save Australia and Antarctica over resources and land, and the very oceans as well as the atmosphere, is in the process of being destroyed in the pursuit of capitalist profits.

The duty of economists is to explain how all of this is the consequence of the capitalist mode of production (although many economists prostitute themselves in the service of the system for the rewards of position and money at the cost of truth) and beyond that "to reveal, within the already dissolving economic form of motion, the elements of the future new organisation of production and exchange which will put an end to those abuses." Today only the communist , socialist, and workers parties are able to do this on a grand scale.

In his day, Engels pointed out that political economy had concentrated on the analysis of the capitalist system and had not yet described other modes of production from the past. In the century or so since his death this has been remedied by Marxist historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists and others.

In the meantime capitalism has developed even greater productive capacities than Engels imagined-- but these "colossal productive forces" the capitalists can no longer control-- they can't control their exploitation of the earth without destroying it-- Exxon, BP, and other giant oil companies, they can't mine it with polluting its water and air, blowing off the tops of its mountains, creating hugh rivers of toxic sludge, cutting down it rain forests and melting its glaciers and driving thousands of species toward extinction.

It only remains for us to show that all the vast powers of production the capitalists can no longer control "are only waiting to be taken possession of by a society organized for co-operative work on a planned basis to ensure to all members of society the means of existence and the free development of their capacities and indeed in constantly increasing measure." We should be yelling this from the roof tops: "We're mad as Hell and we're not going to take it anymore!" Put that in your tea bag and brew it. If the BP oil "spill" in the Gulf of Mexico doesn't convince you that the power of modern industry cannot be safely left in the control of for profit corporations, I'm afraid nothing will.

The science of political economy can be traced back to the beginnings of capitalism. Its most famous proponent was Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations) but it was also advanced by the great French thinkers of the Enlightenment. However, Engels points out, these thinkers thought they were dealing with universal laws of economics, just as physical scientists propose universal laws of nature.

"To them," Engels says, "the new science was not the expression of the conditions and requirements of their epoch, but the expression of eternal reason; the laws of production and exchange discovered by this science were not the laws of a historically determined form of those activities, but eternal laws of nature; they were deduced from the nature of man."

It was the work of Marx, and Engels, that really matured this science and saw that rather than eternal laws of nature economic laws of production and distribution were relative to economic systems-- feudalism, capitalism, etc. This is one reason Engels, in his book Anti-Dühring, could hold Dühring in such disdain who could write, after Das Capital, that he would, in his own words, explain "the most general LAWS OF NATURE governing all economics...."

There are a few more ideas exposited by Herr Dühring that Engels wants to correct. First Dühring thinks that capitalists, for instance, use FORCE as a means to exploit working people. Engels says this is wrong. Engels maintains that EVERY socialist worker KNOWS that force does not cause exploitation it only PROTECTS it: "the relation between capital and wage -labour is the basis of" exploitation and this relation is an economic one not one based on force.

Engels says Dühring also confounds the difference between PRODUCTION and CIRCULATION (i.e., exchange) by lumping them together under and heading of production and then adds DISTRIBUTION as a second and INDEPENDENT department of the economy. Far from this being the case, Engels tells us, distribution is in fact DEPENDENT on the production and exchange relations of any given society. In fact, if we know these two relations for any given historical society we can "infer the mode of distribution" in it.

So, Engels point is that, after a rough start in the seventeenth century and blooming forth in the Enlightenment, the science of political economy became fully scientific in the last half of the nineteenth century with the theories of Marx and the work of those economists who were influenced by him. Through their work working people the world over slowly became aware of their true role in production and distribution (the creation of surplus value) and how it is the exploitation of their labor power that is the basis of the capitalist system.

It is important to note that, for Marxists, it is not the idea that capitalism is somehow unjust and immoral (a la Dühring) that is the key point. Engels writes: "If for the impending overthrow of the present mode of distribution of the products of labour, with its crying contrasts of want and luxury, starvation and surfeit, we had no better guarantee than the consciousness that this mode of distribution is unjust, and that justice must eventually triumph, we should be in a pretty bad way, and we might have a long time to wait."

Engels appears to be a bit too optimistic. We are still waiting for the "impending overthrow" of capitalism. It has been overthrown in a few places but it has also been restored in large areas where it was previously overthrown. So, I think we are still waiting for a general overthrow-- which is long overdue. We should be impatient, but not unduly so. We have been waiting a hundred years or so while many of our fellows have been waiting over two thousand years for the overthrow of this earthly order with even less likelihood of being gratified. But we still "might have a long time to wait."

Well, just why did Engels think we would have a short wait? The reason was that unlike previous centuries when the only forces opposed to the exploitation of the masses of people by the few were based on appeals to morality or ethics, the nineteenth century saw the creation of a MATERIAL FORCE, not an ideal or religious one, that could actually contest and overthrow the existing economic order based on exploitation.

Two great revolutions had recently created movements calling for the end of class exploitation and for the equality of the people-- the English and French bourgeois revolutions. But these movements, Engels says "up to 1830 had left the working and suffering classes cold." But in Engels' day this call and this movement has in one generation "gained a strength that enables it to defy all the forces combined against it and to be confident of victory in the near future."

What made Engels so confident? There were two factors. First, modern industrial capitalism had created a working class ("called into being" a proletariat) that not only had the power to overthrow class privilege but the class system itself and further this is something it must do "on pain of sinking to the level of the Chinese coolie." Second, the bourgeoisie "has become incapable of any longer controlling the productive forces" created by modern industry. The bourgeoisie is "a class under whose leadership society is racing to ruin like a locomotive whose jammed safety-valve the driver is to weak to open."

History has a way of sometimes frustrating our expectations. To the working people of the generation following that of Engels, Lenin and the Russian Revolution represented the promise of the socialist victory. The bourgeois locomotive went off the rails and the resulting crash created two world wars and brought down the colonial empires of the Western Powers (at least de jure.)

However, unbeknownst to Engels, another engine was waiting in the roundhouse. This was the engine of US Imperialism which reconstructed the failed bourgeois system after the Second World War and brought about the downfall of the Russian Revolution. For a generation the call for the abolition of the classes left the workers of the US and it allies once again cold.

Meanwhile, against all expectations, the "Chinese coolies" had liberated themselves and created their own working class and are now creating a modern society based on a mixed economy. However, Engels was not too far off the mark. The advanced workers (in terms of pay scales) of the West are seeing their incomes sinking to the level of the Chinese. This will continue unless they "warm up" to the idea of socialism.

What are the future chances of socialism? Engels two factors are still at work. Capitalism is ripe for overthrow. As far as factor one is concerned. The class consciousness of the workers directed towards this end does not seem to be as developed as in Engels day. This is due to the massive pro capitalist propaganda both in the educational system and the mass media. But this hold is weakening and working people around the world are slowly beginning to wake up from their long sleep and see capitalism for what it really is. A naked system of human exploitation that can and must be replaced.

As for the second factor. The bourgeoisie is out of control! The rain forests, the oceans and the atmosphere are being destroyed by their run away system. These words of Engels are absolutely true today: "both the productive forces created by the modern capitalist mode of production and the system of distribution of goods established buy it have come into crying contradiction with that mode of production itself, and in fact to such a degree that, if the whole of modern society is not to perish, a revolution in the mode of production and distribution must take place, a revolution that will put an end to all class distinctions."

Unfortunately, I cannot agree with Engels that these two factors give me confidence that the Revolution will soon arrive. But that our society will perish if it doesn't seems all too apparent.

Afghan Update: Can the US Win?

2010-06-30T17:55:00.000-07:00

Afghan Update: Can the US Win?

Thomas Riggins

The following speculations are based on logical deductions from the report found in the NYT of 6-25-10 ["Pakistan Is Said to Pursue An Afghanistan Foothold] by Jane Petlez, Eric Schmitt and Carlotta Gall. I assume that the empirical descriptions and claims are factual but do not rely on any of the conclusions and opinions expressed by the authors.

This was the lead article on the front page of the Times for that day. It has a very revealing subtitle: "Exploiting Troubled U.S. Military Effort in Selling Itself as New Karzai Partner." This subtitle indicates several things: 1. Pakistan is not a true US ally but it is only using the US to further its own interests in the region (allies don't "exploit" each other. 2. President Karzai is in the market for a new ally since the US military effort is messed up. 3. "Troubled U.S. Military Effort" is code for "losing military effort" since after nine years of war in an undeveloped peasant country the US seems to be running around like a chicken with its head cut off not knowing what to do or when to do it.

The article reports that the actions of Pakistan will increase its influence in Afghanistan "but is likely to undermine United States interests, Pakistani and American officials said." That's great: both our "ally" and we agree they are out to undermine us (and the US will pay for the bill due to the hugh amounts of military aid and money we give to Pakistan).

But our INTERESTS are supposed to be to get rid of al-Qaeda and strengthen the Afghan government. Well Karzai doesn't want to be weaker so that's not why he is listening to the sales pitch. Therefore Pakistan is trying to help out al-Qaeda. OR our INTERESTS are not what we say they are. Fighting al-Qaeda (and the Taliban) are just pretexts given to the American people to keep them ignorant and uniformed.

Here is what Pakistan is offering to Karzai. The warlord SIRAJUDDIN HAQQANI is a major ally of Al-Quaeda and he "runs a major part of the insurgency in Afghanistan." The head of the Pakistani army Gen. ASHFAQ PARVEZ (our ally?) is telling Karzai that he can bring the warlord (the General's friend?) over to Karzai in a "power-sharing" agreement. The General has also offered to "personally" get "the Taliban leadership" (also his buddies?) to sign on, along with some "proxies" (whose "proxies"?).

Well, Sirajuddin Haqqani, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban (and proxies) are just the groups the US is fighting. Wouldn't it be nice if, instead of trying to get them and Karzai set up as a new Afghani government, Pakistan and Gen. Parvez would clue us in on how to defeat them or at least how better protect our troops. Perhaps Karzai, Parvez and company see the US as "dead man walking"-- they know we are through: it will just take us a few billion more dollars, thousands of more dead people, double digit unemployment and the complete deterioration of what's left of the economy (for regular people) before we get the hint.

Enter another player: Lt. Gen. AHMAD SHUJA PASHA (the "spy chief"). It is well known that Pakistan walks both sides of street-- getting funding from the US and passing it along to elements in the insurgency that work as its agents. The Times reports that both Parvez and Pasha are in agreement with President Karzai that the US isn't getting anywhere in Afghanistan and that after the war he should incorporate the Haqqani forces into a new government. The Times refers to Haqqani's forces as "a longtime Pakistani asset." These forces are a major part of the "insurgent" forces killing our troops. Pakistan is ally to die for!

When the war is finally over, and the US pulls out, the final deal-- brokered by Pakistan and the new Karzai government may not "guarantee Washington's prime objective in the war: denying Al Qaeda a haven." If this is the best news from the front that our "newspaper of record" is bringing us after nine years of slaughter, what reason is there for one more US soldier to be killed over there?

Pakistan keeps the Haqqani forces around to use against INDIA. What Pakistan wants is to get India out of Kashmir, the American sideshow in Afghanistan is just a diversion from that ultimate goal. The Times reports that Indian targets in Afghanistan are hit by the Haqqani forces and some times they attack US troops: "a possible signal from the Pakistanis to the Americans that it is in their interests too, to embrace a deal."

Excuse me! But if Pakistan's proxies are killing US troops isn't that a causus belli? Why are we giving a billion dollars to the Pakistani military when it is ordering attacks on US troops? Well it's not a causus belli but it is a causus for whining. General Petraeus informed Congress recently that both Kabul and Bagram Air base suffered major attacks from the Haqqani forces. He informed Gen. Kayani (as if he didn't know already). "Your guys are killing my guys." "I'm shocked! I'll look into it at once. Don't forget the rest of the money you are supposed to send us." "Oh, it's coming. We always pay our allies."

The special envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, was asked about melding Haqqani into the Afghan government. He didn't think it possible but said "Who knows?" Now there is a long range plan.

Meanwhile Inter-Sevices-Intellegence, Lt. Gen. Pasha's spy, agency is busy convincing Karsai that the US can't win. The American plan for Afghanistan "will not succeed" the ISI said. I expect the CIA told Karsai, "Who knows?"

Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas (Pakistani Army) said: "The American timetable for getting out makes it easier for Pakistan to play a more visible role." What does Pakistan want? It wants "hard core Taliban fighters" included in the final settlement. Those are the people we say we are fighting[ we may deal with "moderate" Taliban] because of their support of Al Qaeda and 9/11. In other words, Pakistan is working to help defeat the US. I'm beginning to think McChrystal gave that interview to Rolling Stone so that he would be fired. He didn't want to be around for the grand finale.

To give cover to its plans Pakistan says that the Haqqanis are willing to dump Al Qaeda (many experts think this is just to make the Americans feel better or a "tactical move" to fool Pakistan). But Gen. Kayani wants to broker a deal with two other leaders of the "insurgents" to fit into Karzai's post war government: the Taliban leader MULLAH MUHAMMAD OMAR and GULBUDDIN HEKMATYAR an insurgent warlord and ally of Pakistan.

[Hekmatyar is a former "freedom fighter" when he fought the Soviets, now of course he is fighting us so he is a "terrorist." This is the level of seriousness of our government and the press when explaining the reality of the war to the American people-tr]

Will Karsai even have a postwar government? Who Knows?

BP Up to its Old Tricks--( and the Government Too?)

2010-06-25T13:16:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

So it seems like it is still "Drill Baby Drill" at BP and with its friends in the government. BP is about to start a new ocean drilling project around three miles off the coast of Alaska, even as millions of gallons of oil still are pouring into the Gulf of Mexico. [Cf. "BP Is Pursuing Alaska Drilling Some Call Risky-- NYT 6-24-10].

Obama said he had stopped all new drilling offshore in the Arctic. So why is BP proceeding? It brought out tons of gravel and dumped them in the Beaufort Sea until it built up a 31 acre pile to a depth of around 22 feet, called it an island, and stuck its oil rig on top of it.

So now BP says they are not drilling in water so the rules that should apply to them are those of "on shore" NOT "off shore" drilling. And, Lo and Behold! The federal regulators agreed and gave the rig "on shore" status-- even though it is sitting three miles off shore! And BP has the worst environmental and safety record of any big oil company (they all have horrible records anyway).

BP already has its environmental permits approved by the feds (under Bush) and the state-- the government just accepted BP's own environmental impact statement and did not bother to do their own (how can you not trust BP?).

By the way, this well is an experimental project-- good luck Alaska. Also good luck to the bowhead whales-- the rig sits next to their migration route.

There is hope this madness can be stopped. BP has to file one last paper before it can begin to drill and the Obama administration can withhold permission-- let's hope it does and cancels this monstrosity left over from the Bush regime.

The Fall of General McChrystal

2010-06-23T11:20:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

After reading the Rolling Stone article that brought down McChrystal, I can only say that Obama really had no other choice but to "accept his resignation"--i.e., fire him. The arrogance and contempt shown by the general and his immediate staff towards the president and his team, of which McChrystal was obstensively a part, is hard to understand. What planet did McChrystal and his staff think they were living on to make such inflammatory comments about the president and vice president and other members of the administration?

However, there is even a greater story here than the downfall of an unwise general. Below is the conclusion to the Rolling Stone article which indicates that Afghanistan is a LOST CAUSE.

"After nine years of war, the Taliban simply remains too strongly entrenched for the U.S. military to openly attack. The very people that COIN [Counter Insurgency--tr] seeks to win over – the Afghan people – do not want us there. Our supposed ally, President Karzai, used his influence to delay the offensive [the surge], and the massive influx of aid championed by McChrystal is likely only to make things worse. "Throwing money at the problem exacerbates the problem," says Andrew Wilder, an expert at Tufts University who has studied the effect of aid in southern Afghanistan. "A tsunami of cash fuels corruption, delegitimizes the government and creates an environment where we're picking winners and losers" – a process that fuels resentment and hostility among the civilian population. So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war. There is a reason that President Obama studiously avoids using the word "victory" when he talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not really possible. Not even with Stanley McChrystal in charge. "

Note the following:

1. THE TALIBAN IS TOO STRONG FOR THE US TO OPENLY ATTACK.
2. THE AFGHAN PEOPLE DO NOT WANT US THERE.
3. SO FAR ALL THE US HAS DONE IS BRING ABOUT PERPETUAL WAR.
4. WINNING THIS WAR SEEMS NOT REALLY POSSIBLE.

This pessimism is only greater if you read the entire article. So while Obama was right to get rid of McChrystal, he is making a great mistake in taking the American people down the road of perpetuating this meaningless war. This was Bush's war, Bush's lunacy. We must convince Obama to abandon it or it will destroy his presidency and open the doors of reaction here at home.

New York Times Article on Obama Out of Line

2010-06-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

An article in the today's NYT (6-22-10) crosses the line between reporting and Glen Beck style defamation against President Obama. An article by Kevin Sack and Sheryl Gay Stolberg ["As Law Takes Effect, Obama Warns Insurers on Big Rate Increases"] reports that health care reform was helped through Congress due to Obama's "vilification of insurers." "Vilification" means, according to most dictionaries, and Wikepedia:

"Defamation—also called calumny, vilification, slander (for transitory statements), and libel (for written, broadcast, or otherwise published words)—is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government, or nation a negative image. It is usually, but not always [in Wales and parts of England--tr] a requirement that this claim be false and that the publication is communicated to someone other than the person defamed (the claimant)." [Wikepedia]

In fact Obama only said was everyone knows were the practices of the insurance
industry: denying coverage for preconditions, putting caps on payments, leaving millions of people out of the insurance pool, putting profits first, etc.

To report that the president engaged in "vilification" in a supposed news story is irresponsible and partisan, and the New York Times, which claims in its ads that it "employs the best journalists in the world, and the there is no disputing that", is a form of the worst yellow journalism and should be protested by all Times readers interested in factual reporting and not right-wing slander.

Chinese Workers Make Gains

2010-06-21T18:01:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

It is nice to read the following in the New York Times (2-21-10): "Chinese workers are much more willing these days to defend their rights and demand higher wages , ENCOURAGED BY RECENT POLICIES FROM THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT [read The Communist Party of China--tr] aimed at protecting laborers and closing the income gap."

There is nothing strange about a worker's government defending workers, although the NYT speculates about the motives of the CP (fear of a Solidarity type movement , and other theories not actually based on the evidence presented in the article).

Sticking to just the facts the article reveals that China has enacted laws protecting the rights of working people and that class consciousness is on the rise with more and more working people fighting back against their exploitation by capitalists who are regulated, but not suppressed, by the government as it tries to manage economic growth by a "socialist market economy."

The Chinese government, because of its socialist underpinnings, has been more active in fighting unemployment and job losses than its capitalist counterparts in the the US, Japan, and the EU.

Ruling coalition in South Africa Breaking Up?

2010-06-02T17:45:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

I hope not, but the New York Times' Celia W. Dugger reports (6-2-10) that
the 2 million strong labor federation COSATU has stated it will quit the African National Congress if its general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi is sanctioned for critical comments he made about the ANC.

Mr.Vati said that the ANC was seen as "soft" about government ministers engaged in corruption. I hope COASATU and the ANC don't split up. Mr. Vati has the right, in my way of thinking, to express his opinions and it is wrong to punish people for expressing themselves.

South African democracy must protect and not punish people because of critical comments. The better action for the ANC would be to prove Mr. Vati incorrect or to correct the conditions he has complained about.

GERMAN PRESIDENT TELLS TRUTH LOSES JOB

2010-06-01T18:31:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

The perils of capitalist politics have claimed another victim, According to The New York Times [6-1-10] German President Horst Köhler resigned on Monday because of the flack he received for a comment he made while horsting around in Afghanistan. He said that German troops serving in Afghanistan and other overseas stations were, as the Times reports, “deployed to protect German economic interests.” Meine Gute!

Anybody on the German Left knows that already-- but Horst is an ally of Angela Merkel and Conservatives don’t make comments like that-- even though they are perfectly true. The US certainly has its troops deployed around the world to back up its economic interests and where German interests coincide with those of Big Brother they will be showing up, but not in such large numbers, to at least give some moral support.

Let this be a warning to others not to slip up and let the cannon fodder find out what is really going on. It’s called Imperialism folks, and it's not about freedom, democracy, or human rights

DON'T WEAKEN OR RESTRICT MIRANDA RULES

2010-05-11T13:50:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

A specter is haunting Washington. The specter of the second Bush Administration. This specter is possessing members of the present administration. On Monday (5-10-10) the New York Times reported that Attorney General, Erich H. Holder Jr., wants a law so the US can "interrogate terrorism suspects without informing them of their [Miranda] rights." Do we really want the government to ignore people's rights? People SUSPECTED of a crime have a right to a fair hearing, a lawyer, a presumption of innocence, etc.

Holder thinks the government needs "greater flexibility to question terrorism suspects." But the government has been expanding the definition of who is a terrorist. It's not just the mad bomber from abroad anymore. Now there are mentally disturbed folks being labeled "domestic terrorists"-- no Miranda for them. There are animal rights activists being charged as "terrorists"-- no Miranda for them. Warning bells should go off anytime the government wants to take rights away from suspects, especially the usual suspects, because there is a danger we will all end up without these rights.

Holder is just pandering to the Republicans and their fear mongering instead of standing up to them and pointing out that the Miranda rules are necessary to protect everyone's rights. The Times reports that "Conservatives have long disliked the Miranda ruling, which is intended to ensure that confessions are not coerced."

It is so much easier to get a coerced confession, as the Innocence Project has shown and the almost weekly announcements of some poor soul, after umpteen years in jail, and been released as innocent. Holder should tell his Conservative critics that he understands and even appreciates their desire to help the US win more cases and get more convictions by the use of coerced confessions, but it's a bad idea since our stance is that we represent truth and justice and all that good stuff.

The Times also reports that "Despite the political furor over reading terrorism suspects their Miranda rights , it is not clear that doing so has had a major impact on recent interrogations." In fact it is all just political theatre. If you want to look tough, Mr. Attorney General, then stand up and fight for the Rule of Law and the Constitution and tell the Republicans their days of ignoring the Constitution and peoples rights under the law are over (at least for now).

Why These Evictions?

2010-05-08T14:23:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

This from Friday’s New York Times front page (5-7-10 by David Streitfeld): Nearly four million households nationwide are severely delinquent on their mortgages, THE BIGGEST BACKLOG SINCE THE HOUSING CRISIS BEGAN. As more and more of the homes edge toward repossession-- A RECORD QUARTER OF A MILLION WERE SEIZED BY LENDERS IN THE FIRST THREE MONTHS OF THIS YEAR....

Why hasn't the government acted to halt these evicitions and change the terms of these home loans? We all know who these lenders are-- bailed out banks living off of our tax money but with no government oversight (they should have been nationalized) AND lenders who misled vulnerable people into taking out loans they could not afford, often by telling them lies about the terms of the loans.

These lenders have one thing in common. They are all run by big shot capitalists who, on the whole, see the government as working for their interests.

The people being evicted are mostly working class people trying to stay alive and feed their families. The government is NOT looking out for their interests. It is not clamping down on the lenders and halting evictions.

This is a major battle in the CLASS WAR between working people and their exploiters. Where is the progressive outrage? Where is the leadership to stop this outrage? Why have not the White House and the Congress taken action?

ARIZONA IMMIGRATION LAWS HUMANE AND LEGAL

2010-05-01T13:04:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

The Arizona immigration laws are humane and legal, or so says Kris W. Kobach, former chief adviser on immigration issues to former (thank goodness) Attorney General John Ashcroft. Herr Kobach is presently working as a law professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City.

In a recent New York Times op ed (4-29-10) he gives five reasons to show that the new laws (he helped draft them) are really good for Arizona and the nation. His reasons are given in the form of rebuttals to the criticisms of those who predictably (his word) “favor relaxed enforcement of immigration laws.”

I want to show that his five “rebuttals” are ridiculous right-wing fewfaw for those who objectively and predictably favor racial profiling, and the treatment of undocumented workers as subhumans unworthy of constitutional protections or even basic humanitarian treatment (keeping their children from getting free medical care or education, for example.)

Criticism One: “It is unfair to demand that aliens carry their documents with them.” First I want to say even this terminology is dehumanizing. “Aliens”-- we are not talking about Klingons. Herr Kobach may be confusing undocumented workers with the aliens of V.

Well why is it not unfair? Herr Kobach objects to a statement by President Obama: “Now suddenly if you don’t have your papers ... you’re going to be harassed.” Is Obama right or wrong? Here is Rebuttal One:

The new law will make it a misdemeanor for an “alien” to be caught without his or her papers. It is already a federal offense for “aliens” to be paperless, all Arizona has done is make it also a STATE offense. Anyway “as anyone who has traveled abroad knows, other nations have similar documentation requirements.”

Since when is Arizona a nation? Checking people’s immigration status is a federal function why would a state want to take on that job. except to harass people the local cops take for being “alien.” Is it reasonable to think “humane” law enforcement types such as Sheriff Arpiao and his ilk, armed with this new state mandate will increase their harassment of the immigrant community in Arizona? Only a fool or a racist would think otherwise. Rebuttal One is meaningless fewfaw-- at least until Arizona succeeds from the union and becomes an independent nation.

Criticism Two: “’Reasonable suspicion’ is a meaningless term that will permit police misconduct.” Rebuttal Two. Herr Kobach says the federal courts over the last forty years have refined the meaning of “reasonable suspicion.” Sheriff Arpaio has to take into consideration “the totality of circumstances” before he can demand your papers. The example given by Herr Kobach as “most likely” is a “speeding van” stuffed with people without papers zooming along “a known alien-smuggling corridor “[i.e., any road or highway in Arizona] and having a driver “acting evasively.”

Really! That is the most likely scenario. A perfect storm of alieness. The best part is the driver of the van. Knowing the new law, stuffing his van with aliens, driving along a known alien-smuggling corridor (and hence knowing it to be heavily patrolled by officers on the look out for a totality of circumstances) this driver decides to speed right under the noses of the Arizona guardians of the law.

This is really the “most likely” way the new law will come into play. Deputy Bigitbrane brings his latest catch to Sheriff Arpiao. “What were the totality of circumstances deputy that led to this arrest?” “The whaaat?” “Why did you arrest this person?” “Well, he was hanging around a McDonalds and looks Mexican and only really speaks Mexican, his English ain’t any good, and didn’t have no green card or anything so he must be an illegal.” "Good enough! Lock him up!" That is what will really be going on all over Arizona (it practically already does.) Rebuttal Two is meaningless fewfaw.

Criticism Three: “The law will allow police to engage in racial profiling.” Rebuttal Three: It won’t because the law says the police “may not solely consider race color or national origin” when stopping people or demanding to know their immigration status. But let’s be real. In the real world a police officer sees five or six young white males hanging out in a McDonalds parking lot. Maybe they are just “hanging out” or waiting for some friends to show up.Who knows. Technically they are “loitering.” What is “most likely” is that the cops will cruise on by and not stop and demand their papers.

But what about a group of five or six Hispanic males? The cops can’t just say they look Mexican let’s demand their papers. They can’t “solely” use race or ethnicity. But “Mexicans” + “loitering” = it’s ok because there are now two reasons not one solely. Herr Kobach wants us to believe this doesn’t amount to “racial profiling.” Well the Bushites and the right in general can say this all they want. Any honest person who knows what really goes on in America vis a vis the police and racial profiling won’t believe them. They won’t even believe that Kobach believes it. It is just an excuse for teabagers and others to use to dodge charges of racism. Rebuttal Three is meaningless fewfaw.

Criticism Four: “It is unfair to demand that people carry a driver’s license.” Rebuttal Four: The new laws won’t require anyone to have a driver’s license. Arizona doesn't allow illegal aliens to have a driver’s license. So, if you produce a driver’s license the police can’t ask for any other papers. They must accept you as being legally in Arizona. But if you don’t have a driver’s license-- what then? That and being Hispanic = “reasonable suspicion.” Technically this rebuttal works but it is still fewfaw because it is not the real criticism which is that it is unfair to demand that people without a driver’s license prove they are “legal.”

Criticism Five: “State government’s aren’t allowed to get involved with immigration, which is a federal matter.” Rebuttal Five admits that the federal government is primarily responsible of immigration law but the Supreme Court has held that states can enact laws “to discourage” illegal immigration. The only example he gives is a law which makes it illegal to knowing hire an illegal. But this law targets American citizens and legal residents of the US and punishes them NOT the undocumented workers directly. The Arizona law, however, preempts the federal enforcement of laws directed at discovering and detaining illegal residents of the United States. Traditionally this has not been done by individual states and these kinds of laws reflect an upsurge of racism and jingoism by reactionary forces who are uniting around dangerous and even fascistic agendas in their opposition generally to progressive advances being pushed by center-left political coalitions and specifically by out and out racist forces opposed to President Obama because of who he is not because of his political ideas. This rebuttal is also just so much fewfaw.

My conclusion is that the immigration statute MAY be legal, the Supreme Court will decide, and I hope they find it unconstitutional, but it is definitely NOT humane and must be fought by all progressive forces. I’m sorry Herr Kobach, but it is difficult for me believe that anyone working for John Ashcroft knows or cares very much about the Constitution of the United States of America.

IRAQI ELECTIONS: DEMOCRACY IN ACTION

2010-04-30T13:26:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

Just seven weeks ago there was a "free" election in Iraq. The opposition even won! Imperialists were jubilant. Jingoists were dancing jigs. "See. It was all worth it. Democracy has come to the Islamic mideast."

The existing government cried "Foul!" While it is not unusual in that part of the world, as elsewhere, for the opposition to protest that the elections were rigged, it is a novelty for the existing government to protest that the elections it carried out were rigged. But that was what the existing religious government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki claimed when his rival former occupation Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's secular alliance came out on top by a few seats in the parliament.

It looked like the winner would be given a crack at forming a new government. But now, lo and behold, seven weeks later the government's election courts are tossing out one of the winning parliamentary candidates (more to come) on the grounds that he used to be a supporter of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party-- back in the bad old days of rigged elections.[See New York Times 4-27-10-- front page report by Steven Lee Myers].

This court previously vetted the candidates BEFORE the elections (just to make sure al-Maliki wouldn't have a rough time). But they must have slipped up because he lost anyway. So now its time to eliminate winning candidates AFTER the election. This MAY reverse the defeat of al-Maliki-- these disqualifications can be appealed.

Here is another trick. The courts are disqualifying 51 of the losing candidates after the votes have been counted so the votes they received will be redistributed to the victors. What are the odds, when all is said and done, it turns out that al-Maliki won after all. The lessons of Florida and Ohio have not been lost on the Iraqis.

Who Needs Lindsey Graham?

2010-04-28T06:40:00.000-07:00

Thomas Riggins

Monday’s NEW YORK TIMES reports that democrats have been “galvanized” to do something about immigration reform after Arizona put in place a new racist anti-immmigrant policy that not only profiles Hispanics and other nonwhites but gives a new meaning to the fundamentalist Xtian’s and red blooded American teabager’s notion of “love thy neighbor.” [NYT 2-26-2010 “Democrats Unite on Finance Bill, Pressuring G.O.P. by David M. Herszenhorn].

South Carolina Republican Sen. Graham seems outraged that the Dems want to do something to curb the incipient fascism raging amongst his race hating Republican cohorts in Arizona. So he has dropped out of cosponsoring a bill on climate change. Graham, Lieberman and Kerry were jointly proposing a bill to deal with the fact that global warming is threatening the very existence of life on our planet.

Well, it is a Southern virtue to prefer “Death Before Dishonor” and it is evidently a dishonor to be sympathetic to undocumented workers who have lost their jobs and incomes as a result of NAFTA and are trying to survive by finding work in Arizona and other states stolen from Mexico in a war of aggression. Yes, let the whole. world perish rather than share the sweet land of liberty with too many huddled masses yearning to be free.

Anyway, THE NATION [5-3-2010] says the Kerry-Lieberman-Graham Bill stinks and advocates its defeat. It basically is a bill favoring not the Earth but the coal and gas industries, nuclear power and off shore drilling ( President Obama came out for this but since a big rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico and is spreading oil all over the place he may have come to his senses). The bill would also “gut” the Environmental Protection Agency of regulatory power. In other words it’s a Profits Before People and To Hell With the Planet bill.

So if Graham has abandoned it, good riddance to bag baggage. The people don’t need Graham. They don’t need Lieberman either. And, Kerry-- what is he doing teaming up with a couple of Troglodytes? Even so-called “liberals”, when push comes to shove, put their mouths where imperialism’s money is. Come on John, maintain the illusion!