Archive for the 'Social Contract' Category

Aug 23 2007

Socialism in America Equals Hope for the World

Published by cyrano2 under Reactionaries, Depraved Aristocracy, Souless Capitalists, Capitalism, Collectivism, Communalism, Plutocracy, Social Contract, Savage Capitalism, Conscience, Crony Capitalism, Bourgeoisie, Socialism

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

debs

“While there is a lower class I am in it; while there is a criminal element I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free”

–Eugene Debs, American Socialist

By Paul A. Donovan

8/23/07

“The only thing most American know about socialism is they don’t like it. They have been led to believe that socialism is something to be either ridiculed as impractical, or feared as an instrument of the devil.”

–Leo Huberman

It is in fact difficult to shed light on what a socialist United States will look like, mostly because many think socialism, or other forms of publicly owned, and democratically controlled economies is an impossible goal to achieve in our country, mostly due to the hyper capitalist mentality of our nation, the strength of our ruling classes, and the overwhelmingly successful propaganda apparatus of the corporate system, which comprises the media, educational system, and many other venues, including the religious and political pulpit, and is reflected in the apathy, alarming confusion, and at times, indifference of our nation’s citizens, many of whom simply don’t know, don’t want to know, or don’t care where this country is headed (for a terrific insight into this puzzling and exasperating mindset I strongly recommend Deer Hunting with Jesus, by Joe Bageant, who also happens to be one of Cyrano’s senior contributing editors).

However, the capitalist systems own irrepressible dynamics and “make up”—which easily translate into a bill of indictment—are bringing about yet another wave of global repulsion and re-awakenings. In this framework, when I speak of this dynamic I am referring not so much to the more technical aspects of this phenomenon, but to its mass-perceived aspects, such as the following (in no particular order):

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Aug 15 2007

The Ugly Face of Capitalism: A Blight on the World

Published by cyrano2 under American Nightmare, Capitalism, Plutocracy, American Dream, Social Contract, Corporatism, Social Justice, Moral Courage, Crony Capitalism, Bourgeoisie

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

homeless_man

By Emily Spence

8/15/07

In Massachusetts of late, there’s been a recurrent radio commercial. It goes something like this: There are some great deals on foreclosed homes — really GRRREAAT! Someone had a loss and that is sad, but YOU can greatly benefit by the wonderful opportunity. So, please call [telephone number]. You will be happy you did. Imagine how well YOU can make out and win BIG! Boy, do we have a bargain for you!

When I hear this, I’m repulsed and don’t think about how well I could gain off of other people’s tragedies. Instead, I think of the plot of “The House of Sand and Fog,” an account in which an incredible amount of pain and deaths result from, amongst other causes, decent people trying to take advantage of a system gone terribly wrong.

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Jul 07 2007

Sicko: Framing the debate

Published by cyrano2 under American Illusion, Corporate Perfidy, Souless Capitalists, Capitalism, Corporate Media Lies, American Delusion, Social Contract, Corporatism, Savage Capitalism

Cyrano’s Journal Online, Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop are initiating a weekly email which will include links to both the most recent offerings and to timeless classics available on our very diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

human right he

By Andrew S. Taylor

7/7/07

The primary means by which any governing power structure controls its populace is by exerting influence over the individual thought-process, influencing how the populace perceives reality. The main channels of control are therefore systems of education and public discourse (i.e., the media), and the primary methods are censorship of ideas, and censorship of facts. If one can accomplish the latter sufficiently, there is little need for the former. Discourse can proceed in the form of ostensibly oppositional debate, while the most crucial questions and realities are hidden in plain view.

Control over what the public knows can be enough to prevent certain ideas from taking root. This method has two advantages. The first is that it provides the illusion, on the part of those controlled, that they have arrived at “their own conclusions” on a particular matter, since they have been presented with two seemingly opposed viewpoints and have been freely allowed to evaluate both critically. The second advantage is a direct consequence of the first - because the audience has inadvertently engaged in what may be a false premise underlying both propositions, they have also internalized and taken as implicit fact a concept which, if stated directly and in the plain light of day, might have been open to question. It naturally follows that such a method of control is wielded most effectively when the visibly state-fashioned controls are at a minimum, and the “voluntary” controls of social self-censorship are at a maximum. This provides in one fell swoop the greatest amount of passively-generated social control with the least-penetrable subterfuge. The greater the number of individuals who unknowingly participate in and propagate the false premise, the more effective the control. As for those who do see past the subterfuge - as long as they are either the direct and guiltless beneficiaries thereof, or are unable, due to social standing or problems of credibility, to effectively alter the overwhelming public bias, the power structure is safe and control is maintained.

As noted by Herbert Marcuse and others, advanced industrial capitalism provides a highly effective vehicle for such a system of control. Its ever-heightening pyramid of merged corporate and government entities, its ever-thinning and increasingly osmotic membrane of separation between “public” and “private” (both as a point of social conduct, and as a point of fiscal practice and law), and its uncanny ability to rapidly adapt to potentially threatening expressions of social rebellion by absorbing them into the mainstream in the form of a sterilized phenotype, result in an environment of discourse that is openly hostile to the unpleasant and discomforting work of rational thought.

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Jun 17 2007

What is Money? Outing the L-Word Part 3

Published by cyrano2 under Libertarian Lies, Souless Capitalists, Capitalism, Social Contract


By Andrew S. Taylor

6/17/07

“This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”

-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

We wish to live in a world where our wages have some objective meaning, and are not simply reflections of unthinking market relativism. But we live in an age of post-modern money, in which our currency - be it paper, plastic, or figures recorded in computer memory - serves as a re-writable “open text” for those to whom the world’s treasuries are entrusted. Its value can be altered by decree, trimmed and nudged with exacting precision in studied correlation to events throughout the world marketplace. As international banking is now completely reliant on electronic credit, we find that money is only sustained as a fact of reality by our own collective belief in it.

And yet, the bills and coins in our pockets feel so damn real. They work flawlessly for their intended purpose in our daily lives, and in these functions they are irreplaceable. Who has not at some point lost a $20 bill to a wayward breeze, and experienced that unique form of despair as it flutters away? In the backs of our minds, we know that the paper itself is worth next to nothing, but that what it represents is something intimately connected to our lives as individuals. It is for this reason that tax-time is such an emotionally difficult period for us - we feel (correctly) that something essential to our livelihoods is being forcibly extracted from us.

We console ourselves with the belief that the government needs to take “our” money to pay for the many social services that keep society going. But, how much must it take, and what stops it, in principle, from taking much more than it currently does? In these moments, we might be inclined to sympathize with the Libertarian position that, in essence, all taxation is theft, and that as long as we as a people submit to compulsory taxes, we have engaged in a Faustian deal whereby no moral imperative exists to prevent our total exploitation by the IRS - that only their scruples stand between us and forced poverty.

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