thoughts on change and structure

a.    I find that my personal time-construal and memory-retrieval schema are not as reliable these days, and I still tend to look at matters in a different light. It’s been a while since I read the source material, and my approach was not particularly scholarly, but I remember Max Weber wrote with particular clarity and insight.

b.    The first thing I recall was Weber’s assertion that the purpose of the state is to insulate the ruling class from the rest of the population. This it accomplishes by means of a political class (intelligentsia/nomenklatura/public servants) that governs in their interests. The other thing I remember is Weber’s extending Marx & Engels’ writing on alienation. His development of Durkheim’s “ennui” became a major thread in Reich’s work, especially in The Mass-Psychology of Fascism.

c.    From Weber’s perspective, one recognizes The Constitution as a social construction designed to protect the propertied class from laborers and slaves. This position was expressed by no less an authority than Princeton Law Professor (later President) Woodrow Wilson:

“The federal government was not by intention a democratic government. In plan and structure it had been meant to check the sweep and power of popular majorities…. The government had, in fact, been originated and organized upon the initiative and primarily in the interest of the mercantile and wealthy classes. Originally conceived in an effort to accommodate commercial disputes between the States, it had been urged to adoption by a minority, under the concerted and aggressive leadership of able men representing a ruling class….”  (That quote is from B. Ollman & J. Birnbaum, eds., The United States Constitution.)

d.    A very persuasive argument is laid out by Jerry Fresia in his book, Toward an American Revolution. (Now, if you haven’t given up… I apologize for being pedantic.)

e.    The half-century from the Crash, through the Depression, WWII, McCarthy, Korea, Civil Rights & Vietnam, ends with the Revolution in Iran. Several significant factors were driving down the 1% wealth share during this period, and “reforms” like progressive taxation, union protection, Social Security and FDIC were a response to those forces. 

f.    When the Stock Exchange crashed everyone who owned property lost some of their wealth, including the folks at the top. This was a period of rising militancy among working people, made worse by the Depression. Anti-capitalist screeds were widely available. Socialist and Progressive candidates were popular and serious contenders. Eugene Debs ran for President several times, once from jail. Upton Sinclair, the EPIC candidate for Governor of California, almost won. Norman Thomas and Paul Robeson were well-known orators. The demands of labor were fueled by the misery of poverty and exploitation. They were met with a ruthlessness that is shocking and shameful. It was popular outrage that forced Congress to legislate union protection in the Taft-Hartley Act. The Act also protects employers’ rights, but in such a way as to eviscerate labor’s major weapon: the strike. Most labor historians regard Taft-Hartley as a catastrophe for unions and a shield for the bosses. Consider, too, that while unions won the struggle for employer-paid pensions & healthcare, at the cost of their hourly wage, even those benefits have been reduced or disappeared. Taft-Hartley was of little help to workers, but the employers kept their golden parachutes. And Congress was complicit, all the way.

g.    Another major factor driving down the 1% wealth share was the diversion of resources for waging war. Over time, the 1% wealth share benefits from conflict since they hold most of the war bonds and all the military contracts which provide a reliable future revenue stream. The reallocation of capital, material and people caused real disruptions in the infrastructure and social structure of America. The state itself required a greater share of the national product, so everyone’s portion was bound to shrink. Once the military-industrial-academic complex was in place, tax dollars began to flow and the 1% wealth share rose.

h.    Although it might appear that the 1% wealth share was in decline, its minions certainly were not. From the Palmer raids to the HUAC hearings, the most virulent right-wing ideologists held sway in Washington and many state capitols. The ruthless extermination of the left was carried out by the Justice Department, the Post Office and the Treasury while organized crime became more entrenched. The resurgent new left of the sixties was likewise attacked by FBI, COINTELPRO and police assaults.

i.    During this period of turmoil, there was serious struggle for leadership in each of the two major parties. Democrats were divided on Vietnam and Johnson’s domestic programs. Republicans were recovering from Goldwater’s defeat and congratulating themselves on Reagan’s win in California, but without a clear vision of how to reform the party and take power. Narratives of this process have been emerging in recent years, illuminating the total indifference of the actors to the welfare of the citizenry or the consequences to the nation. The guiding principle is ever the same for all factions: maintain and maximize our status at the top.

j.    For most Americans, if we think about such matters, the market is a “given,” something that’s there that you have to deal with. Whatever you need,  as long as you have money to exchange, the market is the place to get it. The market place has rules, and the rule book currently in use is called “capitalism.” Clearly, this was not always so. Other, older rule books have been used and new ones are being written in this time of transformation. The times they are a’changing.

k.    For much of our time here we have been an exceptionally literate nation, and despite the domination of two major parties since the early days of the republic, third parties have emerged offering critiques, programs and candidates to challenge mainstream thinking. Their influence and impact has, at times, been significant, but capitalist ideology has survived and become the “neo-liberal” structure some call the “new world order.”

time for a change

l.    There are some who can survey the panorama that appears before us and select the salient features that characterize the moment, providing cogent and incisive analysis for those of us whose vision tends toward the myopic, and who process information more slowly. There are no easy answers, no fool-proof methods, no infallible rubrics we can rely on nowadays, that I know of—not that there ever were such. I tend to use the lenses of history and psychology, much as Norman O. Brown did, to make sense of what I behold and experience. He was a Professor of Classics at UC Santa Cruz for many years. His synthesis of Freud & Marx (psychoanalysis and dialectical materialism) is the most powerful analytical methodology I have learned to use. (Life Against Death) I am not an adept, only a slow student attempting to apply what I have come to understand.

m.    The writer/observer sitting here, in Eagle Rock, California, early autumn of 2018, should be able to situate himself more precisely, for the reader, to account for inherent bias and distortion. So, this is the literary voice of a retired, college-educated man who spent two decades working in food service and three decades teaching in public and private schools. My partner is a brilliant, beautiful artist and teacher, who has graciously put up with me for more than thirty years. My grandparents were all born in central Europe and came to America as children just over a hundred years ago. My father was a clothing manufacturer, and his father was a tailor. My mother sold high fashion clothing, her father was a shopkeeper and mechanic. I am the second generation to be born and raised here.

n.    First, let me say how grateful I am to be alive, to have been born and to have lived this life. That alone is a miracle. Dayenu! To have this time to reflect and share my thoughts is a blessing and gift beyond measure. Dayenu! To have found a teacher and guide for a lifetime is grace beyond comprehension. Dayenu! Thank you, Prem Rawat.

o.    Human occupation of our homeworld has actually been quite brief. If you’re familiar with a particular representation of Earth as a 24-hour clock, humans have been here for about a minute, and human civilization is a small fraction of that. Nonetheless, the fifty thousand years of our rise has utterly transformed the planet to its current perilous condition. Without a doubt, the climate is changing as a consequence of human consumption and combustion of fossil fuels. There is nearly unanimous agreement that we have passed the “point of no return” for saving our civilization. Let us take a quick look at the thresholds we’ve crossed.

p.    Greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, methane and oxides of nitrogen and sulfur, have increased significantly with harmful effects due to reduced protection from the “ozone layer” and lower oxygen content in the air. These compounds become acidic in the atmosphere as rainfall, weakening and decimating forests. Absorbed into the oceans, the waters become acidic and lethal to many forms of sea life. This is particularly crucial with regard to coral reefs and krill.

q.    As global atmospheric temperatures rise we have watched the polar regions shrink precipitously. Glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, promising devastating, extensive droughts and severe crop failures leading to famines of unprecedented proportions, particularly in Asia. Changing weather patterns are now evident as hurricane season comes earlier, lasts longer and spawns more violent storms. The gulf stream is changing, affecting the behavior of fish as well as the migration patterns of birds and insects. As expected, the range of disease vectors such as mosquitoes, has grown, increasing the incidence of tropical and sub-tropical illnesses.

r.    These global phenomena have local manifestations as well. The decline in fish populations is an obvious example. Epidemics among livestock and fowl are more frequent. Wildfires and floods have become annual disasters on every continent, each year worse than the year before. And, of course, there are the oil spills, mine disasters, gas leaks and nuclear meltdowns human error tends to produce every year. Of late there is growing concern over plastic micro-beads infiltrating the waters and soils we depend on, adding to the incalculable volume of plastic waste accumulating in landfills and oceanic gyres.

s.    We who tend to live in urban and suburban communities know all this at a level of abstraction and detachment that is far removed from the immediacy of the crisis experienced by most of the planet’s human and non-human residents. For most of “us”, the fortunate 10%-20%, we note the rising cost of living, higher prices for food, fuel, water, services, housing, health care, etc. The “other 80%-90%” struggle to find food and water, enough to survive. They suffer from higher rates of infant mortality, shorter lifespan, housing insecurity, lack of health care, few schools…

t.    It seems obvious to me that this situation is unsustainable. The continued dependence on fossil fuels to power this civilization is suicidal. There is a need to radically and immediately change how human society behaves, if we are to avert global disaster and the collapse of human culture. Unfortunately, the “powers that be,” the 1% who rule the world, are not going to agree to the necessary changes. They will resist and use every means at their disposal, including state sanctioned violence (police & military), to maintain control of power. Clearly, power and control must be taken out of their hands. This can only be done by means of a global transformation of power relations between the people and the state: total world revolution.

u.    To my mind, one of the greatest achievements of human consciousness is the resolution of contradiction and paradox. For example, natural science, as physics was formerly known, could not resolve the apparently distinct features of light. Is light a particle or a wave? Similar conundrums regarding the nature of matter could not be resolved until Niels Bohr developed a model (or metaphor) that described the atom. Einstein and Planck were able to integrate the apparent contradictions and synthesize a “higher order of harmony” to explain and predict what could be observed experimentally. Quantum Theory was the result of that synthesis.

v.    It should be obvious to anyone who enjoys the luxury of space and time to reflect on the human condition and the state of the world that we have reached a critical juncture in the evolution of life on earth. The contradictions that we now confront are most dire, and should we fail to resolve these antagonistic forces, our species and perhaps nearly all terrestrial life forms now present will perish. It is clear to me that we must seek a “higher order of harmony” if we are to survive.

w.    If we can step away from our geocentric point of view, and look beyond a heliocentric horizon we might see ourselves as the temporary residents of a small, spinning water-covered rock on the edge of an extended spur between two arms of an unremarkable spiral galaxy, one of many millions that are scattered through the universe. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is estimated to be 100,000 light-years across, contains over 200 billion stars, including our homestar, the sun, which is 4.5 billion years old, a comparatively young star. As we ride our world, spinning at 1000 miles an hour, orbiting our star at 67,000 miles an hour, the solar system is rotating at more than 500,000 miles an hour around the hub of the galaxy. On average, we travel more than four billion miles through space every year. That is reality, and we are virtually unaware of it.

x.     Although I doubt this thought is original, it occurs to me that homo sapiens may be Nature’s way of liberating carbon that’s been sequestered underground for millions of years. The rapid release of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere and oceans is having profound effects on all planetary ecosystems. The oceans are becoming more acidic as carbon dioxide is absorbed, and acid rain is another well-known result of fossil fuel combustion. A number of scientific fields of inquiry -- archaeology, paleontology, geology, biology, botany, anthropology -- see this as the prelude to the sixth global extinction of species. All in all, I realize this is a misanthropic perspective on evolution, but the evidence clearly points toward humans as the agents of terrestrial ecocide in the anthropocene period.

y.    Coming now to the end of this rhetorical exercise, I want to thank you, dear reader, for indulging me with your thoughtful consideration. I hope you have found a measure of satisfaction in the process of reading these paragraphs. I hope it has been illuminating, as well as challenging, perhaps confirming your own ideas, raising questions and proposing paradoxical solutions, with a few splashes of irony. If you would like to respond to any of this, by all means, feel at liberty to do so. Please refrain from vulgar or offensive language. Let us be respectful of one another.

z.    Yes. I've been thinking about this stuff for a while. Having grown up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, I’ve been fortunate to live abroad for a year, as well as in the city, the mountains and the desert. I’ve lived in a couple communes, a collective, an ashram and several houses with lots of people with children and pets. And always there have been problems. Not the least of them was setting boundaries and respecting one another's space, physical and emotional. Over time, at least among the humans I've come to know, there seem to be a few common denominators-- things we generally do not/will not share (toothbrush, trombone, secrets, etc.) and those we do share. So for now, I'll work with the stuff we do share here on earth, and perhaps a rubric will appear that simplifies the problem. Enough for now. (Apologies for excessive verbiage.)