Sep 26 2007

Of Hamster Wheels and Men

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human ham

By Charles Sullivan

9/26/07

It is evident that the US, or Israel, is going to launch an unprovoked attack on Iran in the near future, just as it did against Iraq and countless other defenseless nations within recent memory. As a result, untold numbers of innocent people will die and huge sums of money will change hands. Both the U.S. and Israel will consolidate their power in the Middle East and injustice and death will follow in their wake.

Bush’s co-conspirators in Congress are standing down, leaving little doubt as to whom they serve. As always, the mainstream media is preparing the way by serving as an organ of the Military-industrial complex by beating the drums of war and perpetuating lies.

Outside of a small number of citizens, few people seem capable of plumbing the depths of our conundrum. Under the umbrella of capitalism, business is the business of America, and death, inequity, and misery are its chief byproducts. Thus the rich are getting richer and the wealth generated by the producers is being concentrated into fewer hands than ever before.

War and class warfare are among the offshoots of capitalism. They are opposite sides of the same coin, like Democrat and Republican. Significant change will not occur until the people rise up in revolt and take matters into their own hands—a state of affairs that is virtually unimaginable. Nothing less than a fundamental paradigm shift from capitalism to a just an equitable socio-economic system is required.

It is not difficult to know what kind of response the present threat demands of us—yet only a handful of thoughtful and courageous people will act appropriately against them.

I am quite certain that indifference, apathy, belligerent nationalism, and dumb-foundedness are not appropriate responses to the cancer that is festering in the Pentagon, the halls of Congress, and America’s corporate board rooms and political think tanks.

I am willing to bet that the average American never contemplates the inequities that capitalism foists upon the world, or the unwarranted faith we have in the concept of private ownership, unregulated markets, and trickle down economics. This is a system that was created to serve the wealthy and to oppress the majority, and it is fundamentally predatory in nature.

Championed by the likes of Milton Friedman, capitalism and private ownership is the holy grail of the American economic system, and they are considered beyond reproach even by those who barely survive under their ponderous weight. The nemesis of capital and privilege is an organized and mobilized citizenry. Throughout America’s short history, alternative political and economic systems such as communism and socialism, long associated with organized labor and radical unionism, have occasionally gained a foothold in the barren political landscape and, predictably, were thoroughly demonized by the mainstream media and its corporate funders.

Alternatives to capitalism have been tried but they have always been undermined by the US, which allows their critics to assert that these social experiments have been tried and failed. But left alone to evolve without outside interference, other socio-economic systems that serve people and the public interest might well flourish over for profit systems that promote private enterprise, which explains why so much energy and treasure is spent to undermine them.

Does anyone really believe that capitalism would be so prevalent today if it had been so systematically undermined by other governments as its counterparts? The playing field has never been level. Yet, despite such intense oppression, alternatives continue to spring up like undesirable weeds in capitalism’s well groomed garden. Left untended, the garden quickly reverts to its natural state, which, clearly, is not capitalism or public funded privatized wealth accumulation.

Early on, working class Americans have been programmed to rail against any system that poses a threat to capitalism and its attendant Plutocratic rule. There was the era of McCarthyism in the 1950’s, and long before that the constant specter of the red menace that has always been associated with organized labor and other social justice movements.

Any ideology that is opposed to capitalism has always been presented to the people as a threat to democracy itself, which is an absurd notion. Through propaganda and other distortions of truth, the interests of the ruling clique are widely perceived to also be the people’s interest. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Democracy is the greatest threat to capitalism and Plutocracy; and, as history attests, it is vigorously repressed by those in power, often by acts of state sponsored terrorism and militarism.

Unregulated corporate power and the unbridled exploitation of land and people are as far from true free markets and democracy as anything can be.

Through the judicious use of lies and propaganda the corporate media, aided by the educational system, has successfully steered the collective American psyche away from the very ideologies that might potentially be our greatest benefactors. The underlying causes of societal injustice, including the inequitable distribution of wealth and power, are thus kept safely out of the public conscience, beyond the pale of moral and intellectual discourse. Unregulated corporate power and free markets are hailed in the mainstream media as humankind’s greatest achievements. They are marketed to the very people it exploits as liberating, democratic institutions.

The founding fathers recognized that an aroused and organized citizenry was the primary threat to the ruling elite. Organized labor, in particular, has always been perceived as a threat to the established orthodoxy. A democratic workplace would inevitably lead to a democratic society, and thus deny the strength of the ruling Plutocracy.

It is remarkable that for more than 230 years the Plutocracy has not only successfully kept the majority of the people supporting economic and social policy that is detrimental to the people, they have also kept them from thinking about alternatives that could provide relief from the social and economic injustice wrought by capitalism—among them, universal health care and socialized higher education. The government is always waging a cold war against the working class people, whatever their country of origin.

As a result, we have evolved into a nation of imperialists addicted to war and other forms of violence, which accrues tremendous wealth and power to the rich, while simultaneously undermining the people’s collective welfare, and the wellbeing of the planet.

Attached to their ipods, cell phones, their computers, television sets, and right wing media, the American people are detached from reality. So long as they are free to consume and waste, and sufficient entertainment is provided, the people will not rise up in revolt.

Because of this separation from reality, Americans do not empathize with people outside of their own immediate families, beyond a small sphere of friends and acquaintances. We have no sense of community, and little visceral connection to the wild earth that sustains all life. We are reductionists who do not appreciate the organic whole. Thus we cannot connect the dots and think in rational terms of cause and effect. We have commodified the earth and her people in order to exploit them for profit.

Too many Americans exist with a false sense of entitlement and privilege that is not nearly as prevalent in other parts of the world, where the effects of capitalism are better understood. Confident in our right to consume, while ignoring the misery our consumption and waste is causing others, we do not perceive the connection between capitalism, war, socio-economic class, cheap labor, and planetary destruction.

Dr. Martin Luther King said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The Wobblies understood: “An injury to one is an injury to all.” But we do not easily think beyond the self and rarely see ourselves as a part of a vibrant global community—a part of nature. We even erect psychological barriers that prevent us from questioning the established orthodoxy, as we witnessed in the aftermath of 9-11. We do as we are told, rather than doing what is right and just. Americans fear the government and tremble before authority.

It is this spiritual isolation and emptiness that allows us to comprise so little of the earth’s population, and to consume so much of her precious biological and ecological wealth—the planetary life support systems that sustain all life.

The American worker, despite all evidence to the contrary, and notwithstanding the lessons of history, continues to subscribe to the ideology of the capitalist model and its empty promises dressed in the seductive garments of the ‘American Dream’. That dream is now, more than ever, as millions of Americans are coming to realize, more myth than reality.

Capitalism has forced a nation-sized plantation upon the working class people of this country, and a world-sized gulag upon people everywhere. Workers keep only a tiny percent of the wealth they create for their employers, just enough to keep them playing the game—a game only a select few will ever win. Someone else always reaps the benefits of our labor.

American workers are like hamsters imprisoned in a cage, spinning our hamster wheels with furious speed, working harder, producing more, more, more—ever more; until our hearts explode or our bodies wear out under mountains of debt.

Hardly a handful of people realize what an elaborate hoax has been erected around us, what a sham this moribund system of waste and exploitation really is.

So we go from one plantation to another, drifting like tumbleweeds from one job to another but always imprisoned by the same exploitive, dehumanizing capitalist system.

At some level, I believe that the majority of the people intuit that something is terribly wrong. Thus they subscribe to the idea of reform and resort to electoral politics—a system that is wholly owned and operated by special interest money and corporate lobbyists. Their faith in the vote is misplaced and their energy is misdirected, which thus helps to maintain the established order, and prevents us from doing anything meaningful and direct. It assures consistency through the centuries: Imperial wars and occupations, a widening gap between the rich and poor; falling wages, union busting, and unfathomable environmental destruction on a global scale.

There are no political solutions available to us. There are no knights in shinning armor coming to the rescue. In a system awash in money the vote has no meaning. It is a mistake to think that the tools provided by capitalism can do anything other than perpetuate the system that is already in place, as history clearly demonstrates. Whether George Bush, Ron Paul, or Hillary Clinton occupies the White House, the result will be the same. Politicians are the property of special interest money. Few of them serve the people.

We must stop believing that reform of this corrupt system is even possible. Misplaced faith in corrupt politicians keeps us from fomenting the seeds of revolution, which are our only salvation and our destiny if we are to survive as a people. If only we could conjure up the fighting spirit that these times require.

People can only affect change by accepting personal responsibility and through direct action. We, ourselves, must become the agents for radical, revolutionary transformation. Rather than putting our trust in George Bush and Hillary Clinton or the sycophants in Congress, we must believe in ourselves and directly assert the power we have. We the people, when organized and mobilized, are the most powerful revolutionary force on earth. All we need is solidarity, but solidarity can be as elusive as a wisp of smoke, especially when so much capital is expended to keep us isolated and disorganized, and propagandized.

Both voting and sporadic protests, while they may temporarily make us feel useful, do not have much long term effect. Let us not simply say no to war with our vote, but with our bodies and our treasure. If we wish to see social justice enacted, we must not merely vote for it, we must, ourselves, become the agents of justice. We must oppose injustice not only on philosophical and ethical grounds, but in the theater of action, with our bodies.

Democracy and justice are too important to entrust to politicians who serve money, rather than people and the public welfare. We must do more than give lip service to the mere symbols of justice while doing nothing to actually obtain justice, or even worse—undermining it by voting more Plutocrats into office. Each of us must act to bring justice to bear. It is wrong to quietly tolerate what is being done to our country.

Our collective tolerance for injustice and mediocrity makes us complicit in them. We do not hold the criminals and the real terrorists accountable and we continue to support the system that ushered them into power by participating in it and pretending that it is legitimate.

Action applied directly at the point of injustice is the only force that can bring about permanent and just change. But action, unlike rhetoric, requires courage and conviction. It means putting the fear of god into the hearts of the government, as ordinary people do in Europe and Latin America, putting our bodies on the line for what we believe in. When the state is an enemy of the people, all just men and women must become enemies of the state.

Change begins and ends with the individual. What we think and what we do matters only if we act on our beliefs and are even willing to die for them, if necessary. Peace can only follow justice; it never precedes it.

By putting faith in those who serve the almighty dollar, rather than directly upholding the principles of democracy ourselves, we diminish our own power—we cede it to the corrupt and diabolical whose primary purpose is to rape and exploit us. Let us leave the safe haven of our hamster wheels and occupy the streets until justice reigns for everyone. There is no other way.

Charles Sullivan is a nature photographer, free-lance writer, and activist residing in the Ridge and Valley Providence of geopolitical West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at .

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13 Responses to “Of Hamster Wheels and Men”

  1. Nikonon 27 Sep 2007 at 6:50 am

    Well written. Very depressing, but that is the state of the US today; depressing.

    I fear that things are going to get much, much worse before they get better.

    The maniacs that control the USA have taken the nation and the world too far down the road of depravity for any kind of “people’s revolution” to ever even happen in the first place, nevermind fixing the deep problems that confront mankind.

    What I’m getting at is that WWIII is on our doorstep and there’s going to be no winners aside from those with well-stocked bunkers and anti-radioactive gear. And what are they really going to inherit anyway?

  2. Paul Donovanon 27 Sep 2007 at 8:16 am

    This document is simply marvelous, and above all sobering, and moving. This piece by Charles Sullivan is truly a genuine appeal to conscience, and action, which we are in need of now more than ever.

    Like many of the pieces here at Cyrano’s Journal and its premier blog Thomas Paine’s Corner, I truly hope this document doesn’t become just another “blog thread”. This piece is the product of years of political cultivation, study, and wisdom, and consequently a powerful tool for bringing about social change.

    Therefore, this piece should be spread to every possible corner of the Internet, and beyond. Further, it is my belief that pieces such as this, should be sent to college radio stations, alternative media, and progressive media venues like WBAI, WPKN, etc which retain millions of urban, and suburban listeners that harbor left wing political sensibilities, just waiting for a call to action.

    On Feb 15th of 2003, before the war officially began, I marched towards the United Nations in NYC with well over a million people protesting the war in Iraq. The slogan of the march was “No Blood for Oil”. We must remember that the people are out there, and are getting ready to move, they just need to be reminded that we are not defeated, in fact if anything, we have grown in strength and numbers from the last several years of objective butchering by the Bush administration, and that fact is reflected by the intolerance with the Plutocrats currently being expressed on the internet, and other places.

    The next time we take to the streets the “demos” may be pounding the pavement loudly and in full force. Maybe we all know that if we march in the millions against a possible impending war with Iran, coupled with the health care issue, jobs, etc that the police state is going to be there, waiting, and ready to crack some heads. Just maybe we should expect that nothing will get done unless a few eggs get cracked in the process of making an omlette - Just hope they miss your egg that’s all :) - In reality, driving to work on the Grand Central is probably more dangerous than marching.

    These writers are doing their part, I think it’s time readers, and writers alike take action and plaster these pieces in text, and audio everywhere; from the university, union, and work place halls, to the shopping malls, and bathroom stalls of our country. Like the author insinuates, knowing is simply not enough if not followed by direct action, and initiative on the part of the individual.

    Anyway, I have said too much – Thank you Mr. Sullivan for this piece

  3. Onealon 28 Sep 2007 at 6:16 am

    Spot on. It’s good to see that more and more people with intelligence are opening their eyes. I have almost lost faith in humanity but maybe there’s hope.

  4. bob crachetteon 28 Sep 2007 at 9:23 am

    our non-illustrious president has placed us in a position never before realized in civilization. we are currently in a state of perpetual warfare. putin is cranking up the russian war machine. china has the largest navy. fear and dissent has thinned out our military till the only ones left are the yes men and quasi-military dorks in command. there are few competent people left guarding the gates. get ready for WW III.

  5. Roxan Tiscarenoon 28 Sep 2007 at 1:48 pm

    This is a good article, but I want to add that I also don’t want to live under the Marxist/Stalinist/Leninist ideal. I wouldn’t want to stand in lines for hours wating to get toilet paper.

    However, THE CORPORATE PERSONHOOD Law MUST BE ABOLISHED! It has run amuck long enough and like it has pointed out so well above, this hasn’t served anybody but the extremely wealthy.

    With unions, I would be careful. They’re way too busy supporting illegal aliens now (who should have been considered “Scab Labor.”

    Lastly, please don’t vote for anybody belonging to the: CFR (Council on Foreign Relations), the Trilateral Commission, the SKull/Bones Society, the Bohemian Society or the Bilderbergs.

    The CFR in particular has cooked up this NAU plan (NORTH AMERICAN UNION) plan to merge: Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. That seems to make sense to me considering that illegal immigration is uncompletely uncontrolled and our borders (s) are left Wide Open…..Initially, I was dumbfounded why our borders weren’t controlled and anybody overstaying their student visas or were illegal weren’t promptly kicked out…but upon learning about this, the NAU makes perfect sense.

    AND—-This was built on top of NAFTA. With all the furvor about the Clintons (Hillary again), did everybody forget about this NAFTA?

    And–if anybody’s interested, check out the NAFTA Superhighway (based apparently) on I35. Interesting how a major bridge collapsed up there. Was this just a “happy accident” from overuse and/or under-reinforcedment or planned widening of this bridge to accommodate all those Mexican truckers coming up?

    Also, Our government seems far more concerned about guarding Korea’s borders than our own. ….So much for our “War on Terror.”

    Anyway, I’ve been trying to my part in informing people about what is going on too. There’s so much going on, it’s unbelievable.

    Whenever I mention the possibility of war with Iran, I get the rolled eyes, sighs, statements that it can’t happen, but if we’re right, we’re in deep, deep trouble and possibly on the way to WWIII.

    I also forgot that we have to look at these World Bankers such as the Rothschilds & Rockefellers as well and I don’t think the United Nations is any friend of ours. Look how they’re basically ignoring Zimbabwe and Darfur. With a UN like that, who needs them? We need to be removed from the UN.

    Anyway, I would also love to go out there and march but having MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity) which was treated exactly like Gulf War Syndrome, Agent Orange & the 9/11 Rescue Workers (largely discredited-thanks to MAINSTREAM MEDIA and the myriad lobbyists/foundations representing drug/pesticide makers etc to the White House), we were discredited and scorned–so we won’t be receiving any help any time soon. Many unfortunates with Chronic Fatigue/Fibromyalgia also received the same treatment. (MCS is what led to my discovery of the Mainstream Media Deception).

    I am in poor health, so I wound up being an “Armchair Activist.” All I can do is to try to continue to inform other people and still frequently email/petician our deaf, dumb, blind polticians who refuse to serve us and (no, I never voted anyone back in), but I’m still trying to do my part, as small as it is.

  6. Publius Gracchuson 28 Sep 2007 at 6:36 pm

    ROXAN TISCARENO:

    You say—”This is a good article, but I want to add that I also don’t want to live under the Marxist/Stalinist/Leninist ideal. I wouldn’t want to stand in lines for hours waiting to get toilet paper…”

    You’re confusing apples with oranges and falling for one of the oldest tricks in the capitalist propaganda arsenal.

    Scarcity or shoddiness in consumer goods in a socialist society (what you call with some emotional prejudice “Marxist/Stalinist/Leninist” ideal (when compared to, say US made or German made goods, just one example) is not inevitable or inherent in such systems. In other words, the mere fact that a society is socialist does not imply that it will suffer from shortages or shoddy services and products. That’s pure baloney. The experience of the Soviet Union where I presume you draw such negative conclusions is the answer to this confusion: The Soviet Union was a NATION and an SPECIFIC CULTURE caught in a long and sorry web of historical circumstances that a rich and industrially developed nation such as the US, or Canada, untouched by war in their own soil, did not and (should they choose socialism) would not have to suffer.

    People are always confusing systems with national examples of such systems, but the two are not always perfectly congruent. Sweden and France are capitalist, too, but living in Sweden or France “feels” very different than living here, especially if you are a working stiff.

    But to go back to the Soviet example. What do you think would happen to American standards—including toilet paper—if

    • we were invaded by a nation far more advanced than the US militarily (Nazi Germany invading USSR in WW2);
    • if such armies penetrated deep into our land and destroyed practically all transportation grids, 70,000 of our towns and cities, reducing to rubble New York, Atlanta, Dallas and Chicago, and practically 70% of all industrial and agricultural capacity, for starters;
    • Caused the death of 29 million people (low estimate) with consequent losses in productive capacity and dislocations;
    • Stole and sent back to their industrial centers just about anything of use they could lay a hand on.

    I could go on, but the figures are so staggering, and the experience so alien to most Americans (except WW2 veterans who got a glimpse of some of that) that I will stop here.

    Now consider that all of this happened to a nation that just BEFORE that enormous catastrophe of war and invasion by Nazi armies in the 1940s, had been in the throes of another social cataclysm, a painful revolution to liberate itself from a warmongering despot (the Czar); and that 19 major foreign armies had penetrated its borders to restore the old regime, some of which, like the American garrison, remained in the Russian Far East (Vladivostok) until 1923. That conflict had caused ewnormous penury, disruption, famine and—yes—scarcities. The Russkies are resourceful but they don’t walk on water—and neither do we, as you probably know.

    To make matters a bit more impossible, right after WW2, the US led the coalition of nations bent on strangling the Soviet Union, the so-called “Cold War”, thereby again imposing innumerable hardships on the socialist experiment, hindering its normal development, and deforming its productive capacity in myriad ways, including the deviation of badly needed resources to costly weapons systems the USSR could ill afford but had no choice but to produce them, as the Americans had started an Arms Race that eventually bankrupted the Soviet Union while making fortunes for the plutocrats who own and profit from the US military-industrial complex.

    If you must compare systems, compare carefully and with honesty, unless you want to be one more cog in a large machinery of lies that is suffocating the planet and even the citizens of this dying republic.

  7. Willy Whittenon 29 Sep 2007 at 8:13 am

    This is a thought provoking article. I would like to address something that I feel needs to be repeated as often as it takes for it to sink in.
    The United States was founded as a republic, with a Constitution as the foundation of law. Such a system can only survive with care and vigelence–as ALL of the founders warned us from the very beginning. A republic and a democracy are not the same thing, regardless of the groomed confusion on this point. Democracy is the rule of people, not law. When the law becomes whim, it is no longer law. When there is no more law, the powerful have their way; they control and manipulate the many, provoking the mob with emotional ploys.

    PUBLIUS, the republic isn’t “dying”, it is dead and buried…by democracy, mob rule. As Plato points out in REPUBLIC; democracy is always the last stage of government before dictatorship. Read the Federalist Papers, and the Constitutional Debates, and you will be reading the well reasoned arguments against democracy.
    Woodrow Wilson lamented that he had ruined his country.
    He was a dupe of the International Bankers, with one of their agents attached to him at the temple; Col. Edmond House. It was under Wilson that we were saddled with the 16th and 17th Amendments (never lawfully ratified), the Federal Reserve, personal income tax…and “democracy”. The propaganda campaign to promote ‘democracy’ was one of the first ‘technological’ propaganda campaigns to be employed. Read, Edward Bernays, and Walter Lippman. They are open and straight forward about the “Invisible Government” that they were promoting.
    Having said all of this; a republic is not a “capitalist system”, it is a sensible system, based on REASON–that gives it a lot of leeway. The “common good” is reasonable and IS expressed in our (defunct) Constitution.
    There is room for a mixed system of free enterprise, and certain aspects of state enterprise–and real REASONING can tell us which enterprises are best left in the public arena.
    But reason cannot prevail in a lawless system. This system has been ripped from its moorings (constitutional law) by the conspiracy of the International Bankers–PREDATORS, who have ripped off, not just the US, but the whole planet. We can’t do anything about the whole planet, if we can’t even clean our own house.
    A return to constitutional government is the most reasonable and sane choice this nation has. It would take putting a lot of bickering aside to come together under this one central idea. People would have to become truly informed, throwing off the shackles of decades of insidioius mind control; and gaining a more sophisticated appreciation for the subtleties of our own language (as the ‘democracy–’republic’ issue). NEWSPEAK is alive and well in the US. For the sake of reason and sanity, this insidioius psychobabble must be untwined, and comprehended.
    Understanding PR, propaganda, perception manipulation, indeed; MIND CONTROL, is perhaps our greatest challenge as a people.

  8. Willy Whittenon 29 Sep 2007 at 9:41 am

    I have to address one more issue here; CENTRAL PLANNING. Simply put, central planning requires a police state for it to work–it has to be ENFORCED.
    For those here who look back to the Soviets with some sort of melancholy and agreement, I beg to differ. The Soviet system was bankrolled and promoted by the same Wall Street bankers that promoted Fascist Italy, Fascist Spain, Nazi Germany, and Social Democratic US. This is all detailed in Anthony Summer’s books, it is history, not supposition.
    I have mentioned the book ROAD TO SERFDOM, by Hayek on these comment streams several times. His main point is that central planning is the devil of the machine.
    Now the problem with Hayek’s book is not the writings of Hayek himself, but the fact that the concepts were absconded by the very masters of central planning themselves.
    One of their agents, Milton Friedman, promoted the book in the 1950’s and wrote a new forward to it–effectively stealing it’s thunder and undermining its brilliance through association…very much as the ‘Language of Freedom’ has been stolen by the tyrannical rhetoric of the ‘establishment’. Friedman’s system is indeed the most insidious of all; rather than clear and open socialism, he promotes socialism through the rhetoric of the ‘Free Market’, but his ‘free market’ is NOT! It is rapacious piracy–direct feudalism, skipping the social benefits of real socialism and moving directly to predatory gangsterism. Yes there are some social benefits to Socialism–but they come at the cost of your freedoms–and once freedoms begin to vanish it becomes a cascade.
    I fear that too many–even here, are still enthralled by Lollipop History…the bullshit taught in high school and promoted on television. It is Orwellian.
    There are only two places you can get anything you want–Alice’s Restaurant, and the universal library available on the internet. READ, LEARN, THINK WITH YOUR OWN MIND.
    Good luck to all…We will nead it.

  9. onewaratatimeon 29 Sep 2007 at 11:38 am

    Willy, i’m sorry to say that your naturally lucid mind can at times be devilishly obtuse! You are so right about the need to understand the received propaganda from the system. But then you go on to rave about Hayek, and his Road to Serfdom, one of the most insidious books written in the 20th century. Freedman was a total “Hayekist” in his entire conception of markets, and so on, with a pinch of reality thrown in to adapt that theoretical models to political and social. Hayek is taught in all business schools, including Harvard’s, as the father of modern theoretical capitalism (corporatism). Get those libertarian blinders off while you can still use your brain, just follow the logic of what Hayek is talking about. When you do you find it leads EXACTLY to what you seem to hate so much: corporate royalty. And huge bureacracies responsible to no one but their superrich absentee owners, a puny minority. Is that a good system to live under? Look at the place we are now: endless wars, nosntop destruction of the planet in the name of “freedom” (to do as we please). It’s malignantlt idiotic. This is not a philosophy to honor but to denounce. The joke in the title, THE ROAD TO SERFDOM, is that in classical libertarian logic Hayek seems to be talking about liberating people from “totalitarian” serfdom (supposedly in the USSR, etc.) but is advocating a more sinister, if that is possibled, form of serfdom, one that begins by residing right inside people’s heads…while they remain convinced they live under FREEDOM. If that is not the imposture of all times, tell me what it is.

    Meanwhile stop speaking nonsense. The world’s superrich, capitalist bankers, whatever, DID NOT bankroll the Soviets—ever. They did everything in their power to bankrupt, shut down the Soviet experiment, and they won, which when you understand history a bit more correctly, is not a victory for us, ordinary folk, even if the whorish corporate media and western schools will keep telling you that. The Nazis were simply the naked face of capitalism attacking the Soviets. It’s not “an accident” that while Hitler and Mussolini persecuted and murdered the Left they embraced with both arms the plutocracy of Europe and America, many of whom played leading roles in the construction and financing of fascism. To say Wall Street financed FASCISM is probably much closer to the truth than the idiocy of saying the foaming-at-the-mouth capitalists paid The soviets to build a regime that would bury them! They may be irrational and corrupt, but they are certainly not suicidal. Considering what they do, the problems they cause, I wish they were.

    If you really want to get rid of your libertarian myopia before it completely shuts down your faculty to see, check out THE DIVINE RIGHT OF CAPITAL, by Marjorie Kelly, for starters.

    What is truly Orwellian is that YOU and similar on this thread keep ranting about the loss of freedom and democracy and can’t see that capitalism is the precise cause of that. Once you wrap your mind about that simple fact, go on and check which system your friend Hayek is propounding. Isn’t it the purest and most savage form of Capitalism? Hayek’s major influence is Von Mises, and his initial shift from true socialism toward reactionary viwpoints took place under such influences, in a period when Nazism was on the ascendancy (with which he amply sympathized).

    If you don’t believe me, or you doubt your own reasoning, go for something simpler to check what I say: verify who sang the praises and bestowed honors on Hayek? The silent, powerless and exploited masses, whom his philosophy wounded, or the rich and their wholly-owned institutions such as the corporate media, great universities (Chicago, Freiburg, etc.), who found in his “philosophy” admirable wisdom? Think, man, like you want others to do, but think well.

  10. onewaratatimeon 29 Sep 2007 at 11:41 am

    Willy, i’m sorry to say that your naturally lucid mind can at times be devilishly obtuse! You are so right about the need to detect the received propaganda from the system. But then you go on to rave about Hayek, and his Road to Serfdom, one of the most insidious books written in the 20th century. Friedman was a total “Hayekist” in his entire conception of markets, and so on, with a pinch of reality thrown in to adapt that theoretical model to political and social conditions. To this day Hayek is taught with reverence in all business schools, including Harvard’s, as the father of modern theoretical capitalism (corporatism). And what is corporatism but central planning one huge unaccountable corporation after another? (Central planning, by the way, like most technology, is neither good nor bad by definition; it is the specific uses you put a technology that determine its moral quality. Just two examples. A sharp knife in the hands of a mugger can kill you. Same knife in the hands of an expert surgeon can save your life. Second, consider that the reality of the world today is a huge human population—which I decry, as we are overruning the planet like an out-of-control band of locusts—divided often into “monster nations” such as the USA (300 million), China (1.3 Bn), Russia (200 mm) and so on. With a pressing reality of ever-scarcer natural resources—beginning with water—it’s inevitable that some form of collaborative planning has to take place or else there will be no chance in hell of even approximating a fair distribution of what’s available, and, just as bad, immense duplication, which with the biosphere against the wall is sheer insanity.)

    Get those libertarian blinders off while you can still use your brain, just follow the logic of what Hayek is talking about. When you do you find it leads EXACTLY to what you seem to hate so much: corporate royalty. And huge bureacracies responsible to no one but their superrich absentee owners, a puny minority. Is that a good system to live under? Look at the place we are now: endless wars, nosntop destruction of the planet in the name of “freedom” (to do as we please). It’s malignantlt idiotic. This is not a philosophy to honor but to denounce. The joke in the title, THE ROAD TO SERFDOM, is that in classical libertarian logic Hayek seems to be talking about liberating people from “totalitarian” serfdom (supposedly in the USSR, etc.) but is advocating a more sinister, if that is possibled, form of serfdom, one that begins by residing right inside people’s heads…while they remain convinced they live under FREEDOM. If that is not the imposture of all times, tell me what it is.

    Meanwhile stop speaking nonsense. The world’s superrich, capitalist bankers, whatever, DID NOT bankroll the Soviets—ever. They did everything in their power to bankrupt, shut down the Soviet experiment, and they won, which when you understand history a bit more correctly, is not a victory for us, ordinary folk, even if the whorish corporate media and western schools will keep telling you that. The Nazis were simply the naked face of capitalism attacking the Soviets. It’s not “an accident” that while Hitler and Mussolini persecuted and murdered the Left they embraced with both arms the plutocracy of Europe and America, many of whom played leading roles in the construction and financing of fascism. To say Wall Street financed FASCISM is probably much closer to the truth than the idiocy of saying the foaming-at-the-mouth capitalists paid The soviets to build a regime that would bury them! They may be irrational and corrupt, but they are certainly not suicidal. Considering what they do, the problems they cause, I wish they were.

    If you really want to get rid of your libertarian myopia before it completely shuts down your faculty to see, check out THE DIVINE RIGHT OF CAPITAL, by Marjorie Kelly, for starters.

    What is truly Orwellian is that YOU and similar on this thread keep ranting about the loss of freedom and democracy and can’t see that capitalism is the precise cause of that. Once you wrap your mind about that simple fact, go on and check which system your friend Hayek is propounding. Isn’t it the purest and most savage form of Capitalism? Hayek’s major influence is Von Mises, and his initial shift from true socialism toward reactionary viwpoints took place under such influences, in a period when Nazism was on the ascendancy (with which he amply sympathized).

    If you don’t believe me, or you doubt your own reasoning, go for something simpler to check what I say: verify who sang the praises and bestowed honors on Hayek? The silent, powerless and exploited masses, whom his philosophy wounded, or the rich and their wholly-owned institutions such as the corporate media, great universities (Chicago, Freiburg, etc.), who found in his “philosophy” admirable wisdom?

    While some people will never learn, having received so heavy a dose of indoctrination about the wonderfulness of capitalism that their faculties never recover, and waste their lives trying to differentiate between “corporate capitalism” and “classical liberalism” (or “libertarian” as Hayek defined himself), the so called distinction is useless… It’s the legendary case of a distinction without a difference.

    As the WIKI notes,

    “Hayek attracted new attention in the 1980s and 1990s with the rise of conservative governments in the United States and the United Kingdom. Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative British prime minister from 1979 to 1990, was an outspoken devotée of Hayek’s writings. Shortly after Thatcher became Leader of the party, she “reached into her briefcase and took out a book. It was Friedrich von Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty. Interrupting [the speaker], she held the book up for all of us to see. ‘This’, she said sternly, ‘is what we believe’, and banged Hayek down on the table.”[10] After winning the 1979 election, Thatcher appointed Keith Joseph, the director of the Hayekian Centre for Policy Studies, as her secretary of state for industry in an effort to redirect parliament’s economic strategies. Likewise, some of Ronald Reagan’s economic advisers were friends of Hayek.[11].”

    Ask the tens of millions of people shagged by Thatcher’s policies, or Reagan’s, how they fared under such rightwing paladins. If they have any brains to realize when they’ve been had, they’ll tell you immediately that these people did not represent the interests of the average citizen but the pinnacle of wealth and privilege…wrapped, though, in the baloney of freedom and democracy.

    Think, man, like you want others to do, but think well. Good luck to all.

  11. cyanobacteriaon 29 Sep 2007 at 2:43 pm

    The very own site of the LIBERAL-INTERNATIONAL pays tribute to Hayek thusly:

    Hayek´s advocacy of global capitalism had an enormous influence not only on nearly all prominent economists and philosophers such as K. R. Popper and Robert Nozick, but also on leading politicians in West and East, especially Ludwig Erhard, Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan, and Vaclav Klaus of Czech Republic, Leszek Balcerovicz of Poland and Mart Laar of Estonia et.al.. Therefore Hayek also became a favourite target of those socialists and protectionists, and — more recently —of critics of globalisation and “Neoliberalism”.

    (http://www.liberal-international.org/editorial.asp?ia_id=669)

    There you have, an inadvertent admission. Those of you who know well what globalisation really means on this thread will see that libertarians are FOR IT, not against it, as this very official site acknowledges.

  12. Willy Whittenon 29 Sep 2007 at 4:08 pm

    ONEWARATATIME,
    Isn’t it peculuar…so close, yet so far apart!
    I am going to take your advice and think this through. I am glad you have actually read Hayek…you HAVE haven’t you? You are not just hacking at his ‘followers’–now are you?
    The reason I’m suspicious on this count is…well, look at it this way, there are people who can read the Bible and find Jesus was talking about peace and love and compassion, and live their lives accordingly. There are others who will read the same Bible and end up believing in ‘Jesus Chirst God Of War’. The difference is not so much in their own interpretations but in the ORGANIZATIONS they find themselves in, and the AUTHORITIES they believe. Grand over-reaching stories are complex and are ripe for ‘interpretation’, and all of us–every single one of us brings our own baggage along to mix with whatever ideas we are offered.
    Now, I found Hayek compelling on what I found to be (my interpretation) his central point, the one I speak of in my posts here: CENTRAL PLANNING. I have said what I have to say on this point, and I find nothing in your argument here to move me.
    Get this and get it well–I AM NOT HAYEK–I am not a ‘follower of Hayek’–I read ROAD TO SERFDOM and see the logic of it, but I have not joined the ‘Chicago School’, and I dispise Friedman and his entire philosophy–and personally, I can’t see how they combine! But I haven’t read any of Hayek’s actual economic works. And I still advise that people read the book–if only to disagree with it!
    You claim that Wall Street had nothing to do with The Soviet Union–Read, Anthony Suttons well researched and meticulously footnoted book on Wall Street and the Rise of the Soviet Union. While it certainly does SEEM counterintuitive that the Capitalists would set up a nemisis–the actual historical record shows this to be the case.
    If we remain cognizant of Hegel however, the ‘counterintuitive’ aspect of such an assertion is dispelled.
    There is a ‘Gangsta’ saying from the streets, “If you don’t like it, buy it.” That is why Wall Street bought Marx; the Hegelian Dialectic = set up your own enemies and control them. Secretly finance both sides of any conflict, real or intellectual, and you control the outcome of the game.
    If you will read my posts with a closer view to the detail you will notice I have something to say about ‘democracy’ as well. I am not going to repeat what I have already said right here in this very thread. I certainly understand the word ‘freedom’ as it comes out of the mouths of the likes of people like George Bush and Friedman, and others of the fascist ilk.
    I have also made it clear that ‘Capitalism’ in my view, is NOT free market trade…okay? Don’t confuse me with others with whom you may have sparred.
    I trust that we are both compassionate, thinking individuals trying to sort out a mess that is, alas centuries in the making. My otherwise “lucid mind” is trying dear friend. I appreciate you taking the time to address me on these issues.
    I stand by my assertions against central planning in coersive systems. I stand by my love of liberty, in the sense it is promoted in the Declaration of Independence.
    I understand that there are two types of balogna produced in Bolagna Italy, the processed meat, and the processed rhetoric of ‘legalese’ from the old Roman Empire’s law school there. I don’t buy either.
    Those who prefer privilege to liberty do themseves a disservice, I am sure you must agree. Don’t follow my footprints farther than I have walked.

  13. Willy Whittenon 29 Sep 2007 at 4:32 pm

    cyanobacteriaon, Hi there, you came in the middle of my reply to onewaratatime.
    I just want to say, and to make it clear that I am not a ‘Libertarian’, nor a ‘Democrat, nor a ‘Republican’. I have arguments with all camps.
    Simply note however that Hayek, like Jesus is dead–no longer amongst us.
    Like I said in my reply to onewaratatime, the only book I have read by Hayek is his Road to Serfdom–perhaps the details of his economics theories would put me off–it certainly seems so from what I get from the likes of Thatcher and Reagan. But I am going to take your word for it at this time.
    What baffles me, is that Hayek made a lucid case AGAINST central planning in his book. How this can be turned into an engine for a central world government is beyond me.
    Recall, however that there were religious wars in Europe for centuries–all of them fighting over the meaning of the same texts–the Holy Bible. What I took from Hayek, and what others have taken from him are obviously at odds…I am at war with the New World Order–personally.
    I have read Marx, I have read Mein Kamph, I have read the Declaration of Independence. Even though they are ‘apples and oranges’, I will make a clear distinction: I choose the latter. If that seems ‘quaint’ and out of step with the ‘modern times’ so be it.

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