Why We Need More Not Less Government Regulation by Thomas Riggins

One of the mantras of the radical right in this country is that the economy and everything else would be better off if we just had less government regulation. Since Lincoln told us the government was for, by and of the people I guess this just means Republicans and other right-wingers  don't think the American people should have much say in what goes on in this country. The economy and everything else will be much better off without any meddling by the American people, just leave everything in the hands of special private interest groups and all will be well.

 It is surprising how many people agree with this and think the government, i.e., them, should be cut back and regulations reduced. They think that instead of having control over their own lives, their environment, the air they breath, their jobs, their health, the food they eat and their children's education they should turn all this over to unregulated or minimally regulated private interest groups to take care of everything for them.

Many people still think that they would like to control their own lives and protect themselves from the onslaught of private interest groups and so they still support government regulations that function to protect them and their families from the rampages of the private sector.

The fact is that without regulations the private sector acts with unrestrained greed to exploit, steal, lie, rob, cheat and variously devastate the public  sector in order to enrich itself with no regard to the well being of the American people.

Here is just one example of many, of what goes on when there are few or no regulations to curb the private sector. This is from ScienceDaily of July 10, 2012 and it shows what happens to senior citizens and other elderly folks in this country with respect to the care they get from the under regulated private  agencies that provide caregivers for the elderly. ["Dangerous Caregivers for Elderly: Agencies Place Unqualified, Possibly Criminal Caregivers in Homes of Vulnerable Senors, Study Suggests," SD 7-10-12]

A recent study released by Northwestern University shows that many agencies hire caregivers for the elderly without any training, criminal background checks, or drug screening. As SD puts it: "many agencies recruit strangers off Craigslist and place them" in the homes of the elderly. This happens, of course, because these agencies are working under capitalist economic rules to maximize their profits by hiring the cheapest labor possible in a basically unregulated and unsupervised market. It's a perfect example of profits before people, which will always be the case without the iron hand of government regulation to restrain the private sector.

Dr. Lee Lindquist, who headed the study, was quoted by SD as saying, "People have a false sense of security when they hire a caretaker from an agency. There are good agencies out there, but there are plenty of bad ones and consumers need to be aware that they may not be getting the safe, qualified caregiver they expect. It's dangerous for the elderly patient who may be cognitively impaired."

Caveat emptor-- the slogan of our society! Why must the burden fall on the consumer? These agencies are committing fraud by sending out unqualified "caregivers" and pocketing the money. The agencies should just be closed down and the persons who run them thrown in prison.

Dr. Lindquist also remarked about caretakers she has seen bringing patients to her clinic: "Some of the paid caretakers are so unqualified it's scary and really puts the senior at risk." Some caretakers placed in a senior's home just watch TV all day and ignore the patient, not even bothering to properly feed them. The agencies try to cover up their fraud with fancy web sites and sophisticated marketing techniques some even advertise that their caretakers have been screened by the "National Scranton Test for Inappropriate Behavior" or the "Assessment of Christian Morality Test" which, Dr. Lindquist says, to her knowledge "don't exist."

What does exist is easy money for fraudsters and a blind eye from the government that is supposed to represent the people. Dr. Lindquist points out that: "These agencies are a largely unregulated industry that is growing rapidly with high need as our population ages. This is big business with potentially large profit margins and lots of people are jumping into it." This is a big business that needs to be regulated and even supervised by the federal government and gives compelling evidence that that the American people need to assert themselves and see that the government really represents their interests by enacting and enforcing more regulatory laws that constrict the private sector from exploiting the public in all areas of civil society, and by flushing out the right from all areas of governance.

Coming to Grips with Zizek by Thomas Riggins

Two new books by Slavoj Zizik (Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, 1038 pp., and Living in the End Times, 504 pp.) have just been reviewed by John Gray ("The Violent Visions of Slavoj Zizek") in July 12, 2012 issue of The New York Review of Books. Professor Gray is to be commended for wading through 1500 pages of undiluted Zizek (and perhaps saving some of us from having to do so). I propose to review Gray's article and thus give a meta-critique, as it were, of some of Zizek's views as presented by Gray. If anyone is stimulated to go on to read Zizek so much the better, or worse as the case may be. You can find Gray's original article here:The Violent Visions of Slavoj Žižek by John Gray | The New York ...…. My reflections are divided into five parts.

1.) Zizek has produced over 60 books in the last two decades or so and has become one of the most famous public intellectuals in the West; propounding a sort of non-Marxist Marxism. The NY Review article has a picture of the philosopher sitting up in his bed in Ljubljana, Slovenia with a framed picture of Stalin on the wall behind him. New Yorkers may remember that he addressed the OWS movement in Zuccotti Park last October.

So what is Zizek's message? At one time he was a member of the Communist Party of Slovenia but he quit in 1988 and has since articulated a critique of capitalist society more influenced by a strange version of Hegel than by Marx. Gray says a CENTRAL THEME of ZZ's work "is the need to shed the commitment to intellectual objectivity that guided radical thinkers in the past."  Intellectual objectivity is a BOURGEOIS ILLUSION and most radicals, at least most Marxists, have always been partisans for the working class. Gray should be clearer about what ZZ is trying to express with this criticism.

ZZ wants to, in his own words, "repeat the Marxist 'critique of political economy', without the utopian-ideological notion of communism as its inherent standard." We had better be pretty familiar with, at least, the three big volumes of Das Kapital before we decide on accepting ZZ's "repeat" of Marx's project! ZZ doesn't think the world communist movement was radical enough. He writes, "the twentieth-century communist project was utopian precisely insofar as it was not radical enough." What does this mean? "Marx's notion of the communist society," ZZ writes, "is itself the inherent capitalist fantasy; that is, a fantasmatic scenario for resolving the capitalist antagonisms he so aptly described."

2.) It is all very well for ZZ to put down what he thinks is Marx's notion of communist society, but as a matter of fact neither Marx nor Engels spent much time speculating about a future communist society precisely because they thought such idle speculation unwarranted; they were more interested in dissecting the nature of capitalism and the methods needed to overthrow it. ZZ at least follows their example as Gray points out that nowhere in the 1000+ pages of Less Than Nothing does ZZ discuss what he thinks a future communist society would/should be like.

What he does discuss  says Gray (who calls the book a "compendium" of all ZZ's past work) is his new and unique interpretation of Hegel (by way of Jacques Lacan's unscientific reinterpretation of Freud) and its application to a new reading of Marx. In other words, the arch-rationalist Hegel is viewed from the point of view of the irrationalist Lacan and this mishmash of misinterpretation is used to explain Marx to us. 

One of Lacan's teachings is that REALITY cannot be properly understood by LANGUAGE. Which, if true, would make science impossible and bar us from ever understanding the nature of the world we live in. But it is language that Lacan uses to tell us something about the nature of reality, i.e., that language can't do that! Lacan also rejected Hegel's view that Reason is imminent in history. Big deal-- Marx and the entire history of post-Hegelian materialism has rejected this notion of Absolute Idealism for the last 150 years or more and no one needed Lacan to tell us about the outmodedness of this Hegelian notion. 

But ZZ thinks that Lacan has shown more than just that Hegel was wrong to think that Reason Rules the World. ZZ, says Gray, thinks that Lacan has shown "the impotence of reason."  This is a fundamental attack on the legacy of the Enlightenment upon which all attempts to understand the world scientifically and rationally are based; it is ultimately a fascist outlook.

ZZ has also been influenced by the contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou (who has been himself influenced by Lacan and, shudder, Heidegger and has developed a form of Platonic Marxism).  Using some of Badiou's ideas ZZ constructs his own view of "dialectics" as being based, Gray says, on "the rejection  of the logical principle of noncontradiction." ZZ imputes this view to Hegel and thus claims Hegel rejected reason. ZZ writes  that for Hegel a (logical) proposition "is not  really suppressed by its negation." ZZ credits Hegel with the invention of a new type of logic: "paraconsistent  logic."

This is really confused. We have to distinguish between FORMAL LOGIC where the law of non-contradiction reigns, and Hegel's metaphysics or ontology of Being where there are different sorts of logic at work-- subjective logic (thoughts) and objective logic (the external world). But even here it is not a question of a "proposition" being suppressed. Hegel says neither things nor thoughts care for contradictions and when contradictions appear there is a movement to overcome and resolve them on higher levels of understanding and reason-- this is the inherent motion driving the "dialectic" a motion to overcome and eliminate contradictions.

Despite these considerations, ZZ forges ahead with his ill conceived "paraconsistant logic."  "Is not," he writes, "'postmodern' capitalism an increasingly paraconsistant system in which, in a variety of modes, P is non-P: the order is its own transgression, capitalism can thrive under communist rule. and so on?" 

At this point Gray quotes a long passage from Living in the End Times in which ZZ lays out the main theme of his book dealing with the response needed to "postmodern" capitalism: "The underlying premise of the present book is a simple one: the global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point. Its 'four riders of the apocalypse' are comprised by the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution, imbalances within the system itself (problems with intellectual property; forthcoming struggles over raw materials, food and water), and the explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions." ZZ misses here the fact that the four horsemen of the capitalist apocalypse are simply four manifestations  of the same fundamental contradiction under pinning the entire capitalist system, namely, the private appropriation of socially created wealth.

At this point Gray launches an unjustified attack on ZZ, accusing him of ignoring "historical facts" such as the environmental damage done by the Soviet Union and to the countryside by Mao's "cultural revolution." You can't just blame capitalism since both the SU and China had centrally planned economies. History, Gray says, does not provide any evidence that replacing capitalism by socialism will better protect the environment. 

What does "history" really show? Just take the case of the Soviet Union. The soviets tried to build socialism but were attacked by the western capitalist powers from day one. They had to take short cuts to industrialize and fend off the Nazi attack, and then the Nazi successor state as US imperialism took up the anti-communist crusade. China has a similar history. All parties in this conflict were societies still under the rule of the law of value, the reigning economic force in commodity producing economies. Socialism did not thrive (nor could it have thrived) in the primitive backward conditions it developed under in the 20th century. If socialist central planning were to replace the social anarchy of capitalism in the advanced capitalist states of the west (including Japan) where production could be based on need not profit (thus overcoming the law of value) we would be able to reign in our four apocalyptic horsemen and literally save the planet. This is what "history" really suggests and Gray's attack on ZZ on this issue is unjustified.

However, his next attack on ZZ has merit. ZZ's "Marxism" lacks any relation to the actual class struggle and does not reflect Marx's commitment to a materialist dialectic grounded in the empirical reality of day to day economic struggle. Here is what ZZ says: "Today's historical juncture does not compel us to drop the notion of the proletariat, or of the proletarian position--- on the contrary, it compels us to radicalize it to an existential level beyond even Marx's imagination. We need a more radical notion of the proletarian subject [i.e., the thinking and acting human being], a subject reduced to the evanescent point of the Cartesian cogito, deprived of its substantial content." 

This is just ridiculous. The worker treated in complete isolation from his/her class and relation to the means of production, treated as an isolated human being, is simply retrograde bourgeois idealism and in no way a more radical conception than that of Marx. It is an abandonment of the concept of the proletariat, or working class, as understood by Marxists.

3.) ZZ in fact abandons objectivity for a completely subjective position. "The truth we are dealing with here," he writes, "is not 'objective truth' but the self-relating truth about one's own subjective position; as such it is an engaged truth, measured not by its factual accuracy but by the way it affects  the subjective position of enunciation." In other words, "truth" is what inspires me to feel good about my chosen path-- my "project" and reinforces me in my actions to attain the fulfillment of my "project." ZZ thinks a communist society would be nice but doesn't think its really possible to attain but that doesn't mean we should not act up and agitate against the status quo. ZZ also thinks its ok to engage in terror if it helps my subjective enunciation. He supports Badiou's position in favor of "emancipatory terror" and lauds Mao's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

To top off this witch's brew of petty bourgeois pseudo-revolutionary clap-trap, ZZ, Gray points out, "praises the Khmer Rouge." For all the meaningless killings Pol Pot and his gang indulged in ZZ does not blame their fall from grace as related to their barbarity. "The Khmer Rouge, were," he says, "in a way, not radical enough: while they took the abstract negation of the past to the limit [this is how an "Hegelian" refers to the killing fields!-tr] they did not invent any new form of collectivity." Would a new form of collectivity have justified their actions? [As we shall see ZZ rejects these criticisms by Gray on the grounds that his theory of violence has been misunderstood].

ZZ even goes so far as to call himself a Leninist. Gray gives a quote from a 2009 interview where ZZ remarks that: "I am a Leninist. Lenin wasn't afraid to dirty his hands. If you can get power, grab it." Gray is right to think that Lenin (as well as Marx) would hold ZZ's views in contempt. Lenin recognized the need for violence, it would be forced upon the workers by the ruling class, but he never celebrated it in the manner of ZZ who thinks it should be applied in a terrorist manner as a morale booster for the radical movement even though a successful revolution to get rid of capitalism is impossible. Gray gives another gem from ZZ on this topic: "Francis Fukuyama was right: global capitalism is 'the end of history.'" Very few, if any, people claiming to be Leninists believe that Fukuyama was right; I don't think, based on some of his current writings, that even Fukuyama thinks he was right.

4.) In this section I will deal with some valid points Gray makes against ZZ's fascination with the cult of violence, but points that are tarnished by Gray's own hyper cold war anti-communism and distortion of facts. ZZ does not think class conflict has an objective basis, according to Gray, who produces this quote from ZZ maintaining that class war is not "a conflict between particular agents within social reality: it is not a difference between agents (which can be described by means of a detailed social analysis), but an antagonism ('struggle') which constitutes these agents." It is therefore ultimately subjective-- just the opposite of what Marx and Lenin held.

To illustrate his position ZZ discusses the collectivization of agriculture and the struggle against the kulaks in the USSR in the 1920s and 30s. ZZ makes a valid observation that often non-Kulak poorer peasants  joined with the kulaks in opposing collectivization. This was a case of false consciousness. Americans are familiar with this phenomenon when they observe working people and minorities voting for the Republican Party and conservative candidates. ZZ says the Kulak non-Kulak boundary was often "blurred and unworkable: in a situation of generalized poverty, clear criteria no longer applied and the other two classes of peasants (poor and middle peasants -tr) often joined the kulaks (rich peasants- tr) in their resistance to forced collectivization." 

ZZ goes on to say, " The art of identifying a kulak was thus no longer a matter of objective social analysis; it became a kind of complex 'hermeneutics of suspicion," of identifying and individual's  'true political attitudes" hidden beneath his or her deceptive public proclamations." This is, by the way, the same "hermeneutics" Americans have to use, following the maxim that "all politicians are liars and say one thing but do another," when they try to figure out what candidates are saying and how they will actually behave once in office. 

 ZZ is wrong to think of this as a subjective process of self identification. Cases of false consciousness have objective social conditions (miseducation, prejudicial propaganda, poverty, illiteracy) as their causes. Gray is wrong, I think, to call ZZ's view "repugnant and grotesque" because he appeals to hermeneutics and doesn't criticize Stalin for killing millions of people but for using Marxist theory to try and explain what the actions of the USSR were with respect to collectivization. The idea that Soviet policy was to bring about forced collectivization by killing millions of people is a relic of cold war bunko. I recommend Michael Parenti's Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism  for a balanced discussion of the role of violence in Soviet history.

However, ZZ is to be faulted for rejecting using Marxist theory to understand and explain political actions. He says that a time comes to junk theory because "at some point the process has to be cut short with a massive and brutal intervention of subjectivity: class belonging is never a purely objective social fact, but is always also the result of struggle and social engagement." But you cannot have a successful people's movement (struggle and engagement) without a correct  analysis of the purely objective  social facts-- otherwise the movement has to rely on spontaneity and no movement has grown and prospered that based itself on spontaneity.

An idea of how far down the wrong road a social theorist calling him/herself a "Leninist" can wander is revealed by ZZ's attitudes towards Hitler and the Nazi apologist Martin Heidegger. Concerning Heidegger, ZZ writes, "His involvement with the Nazi's was not a simple mistake [of course not-- it was the essence of his world view-- tr] , but rather a 'right step in the wrong direction.'" How does ZZ arrive at this? He has a new reading of Heidegger to propose. He says, "Reading Heidegger against the grain, one discovers a thinker who was, at some points strangely close to communism…." Gray points out that ZZ  claims that the radically pro-Hitler Heidegger of the the mid 1930s could even be classified as "a future communist."  Indeed. What future does ZZ have in mind? Heidegger died in 1976 without ever, to my knowledge, having become any kind of communist.

ZZ thinks Heidegger was wrong, but also kind of right, in being a follower of Hitler, because there was a big problem with Hitler. Here is what it was, according to ZZ's own words quoted by Gray: "The problem with Hitler was that 'he was not violent enough,'  his violence was not 'essential' enough. Hitler did not really act, all his actions were fundamentally reactions, for he acted so that nothing would really change, staging a gigantic spectacle of pseudo-Revolution so that the capitalist order  would survive….  The true problem of Nazism is not that it 'went too far' in its subjectivist-nihilist hubris [ I am tempted to say it takes one to know one- tr] of exercising total power, but that it did not go far enough, that its violence was an impotent acting-out  which, ultimately, remained in the service of the very order it despised."

There is so much wrong with this that I hardly know where to begin. In the first place there was only one socio-economic order at any rate that Hitler "despised" and wanted to destroy-- that was the order represented by the Soviet Union (he also despised and wanted to destroy the Jews.) Hitler used all the power at his disposal to accomplish his aims. It is impossible to conceive of what destruction Hitler could have wrought if had used (and had) the means to wreak even more violence on the world that he in fact did. He would not have destroyed capitalism as that was the economic order he furthered in Germany-- it was socialism, Marxism that he wanted to destroy. The Nazi's also rejected bourgeois democracy-- but because it was too weak to save the West from the hoards of semi-barbaric Bolshevik Untermenshen waiting to burst out of the Soviet Union and inundate Aryan Europe. If World War II was an impotent acting-out, I shudder to think what Hitler could have achieved if he was on ZZ's  political viagra.

But what about the Jews? What about anti-Semitism? Gray suggests that ZZ's attitude towards eliminating anti-Semitism from the world would also involve eliminating the Jews. This may or may not be so but it does not make ZZ an anti-Semite; it only shows, if that is what he means, that he accepts the ultra-right Zionist view that non Jews will always be against Jews and the only solution is an exclusively Jewish state. Well, what does ZZ say about all this?

He states that "The fantasmatic [ZZ's own word for "fantastic"- tr]  status of anti-Semitism is clearly revealed by a statement attributed to Hitler: 'We have to kill the Jew within us.'" He continues: "Hitler's statement says more than it wants to say: against his intentions, it confirms that the Gentiles need the anti-Semitic figure of the "Jew" in order to maintain their identity. [Oh my! I hope Herr Hitler is not the representative spokesperson for the "Gentiles." Hitler's statement doesn't confirm anything other than his own personal anti-Semitism-tr] It is thus not only that 'the Jew is within us'-- what Hitler fatefully forgot to add is that he, the anti-Semite, is also in the Jew.  What does this paradoxical entwinement mean for the destiny of anti-Semitism?" 

Gray admits to having problems trying to figure just what ZZ means (he is too prolix and uses terms out of context from different philosophies to describe his own quite different views) but it seems quite a stretch to suggest that ZZ may be soft on anti-Semitism. ZZ himself has taken great umbrage at Gray's comments in this review and has penned a response that it well worth reading and claims to set the record straight on this issue. [Slavoj Žižek Responds to His Critics]

5.) An example Gray gives of using terms out of context is ZZ's assertion that one may say that Gandhi was more violent that Hitler. Why would anyone want to say that except for "shock value?" ZZ says, in his reply to Gray, that Gray has misinterpreted him. ZZ believes in a type of violence in which "no blood is shed" and then refers to Ghandi's struggles against the British in India-- usually referred to as based on "nonviolence." Since "nonviolence" is a special sort of "violence" it appears that since Ghandi was more nonviolent than Hitler he was more violent than Hitler. This is the "Hegelian" dialectic run amuck.

Here is another example of ZZ, saying nothing according to Gray, engaging in meaningless wordplay. "The … virtualization of capitalism is ultimately the same as that of the electron in particle physics. The mass of each elementary particle is composed of its mass at rest plus the surplus provided by the acceleration of it movement; however, an electron's mass at rest is zero [sic], its mass consists only of the surplus generated by the acceleration, as if we are dealing with a nothing which acquires some deceptive substance only by magically spinning itself into an excess of itself." I'm not sure what ZZ is trying to say here about electrons, let alone capitalism (is surplus value "magical") but I don't think the rest mass of an electron is zero in the first place. For what it is worth Wikipedia says "The electron rest mass (symbol: me) is the mass of a stationary electron. It is one of the fundamental constants of physics….  It has a value of about 9.11×10−31 kilograms or about 5.486×10−4 atomic mass units, equivalent to an energy of about 8.19×10−14 joules or about 0.511 megaelectronvolts." 

Granted it is a very small mass, an electron is, after all, a very small particle-- but it is not zero. ZZ expects us to read 1038 pages of this stuff!  It might be a good reference book to ZZ ideas-- which don't seem to be very Leninist-- the index has 10 references to Lenin while Lacan has over 2 columns devoted to his views! Gray is a hostile reviewer, but he is also hostile to Marxism, nevertheless, his review calls into question ZZ's basic methods of thinking and expressing himself (Gray says he represents "formless radicalism"). To get some idea of where Gray is coming from (I don't think it's a very nice place since it's anti-Enlightenment) check out the following: John N. Gray - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Well, so much for coming to grips with ZZ-- for more information on Less Than Nothing the next stop is Amazon.com.

The 'Two Views' of Europe

There has been talk in the news recently of two contrasting views of the way Europe could emerge from the crisis: One strategy assumes it must take immediate steps toward debt mutualisation and needs either the European Central Bank (ECB) or an expanded European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to purchase distressed governments' bonds as soon as possible. Over time, this view has it, Europe would build the institutions needed to complement these policies: it would create a single bank supervisory body, build up the European commission's powers, and create a European Treasury, and strengthen the European parliament.

The other view being put forward is that to proceed with these new policies before the new institutions are in place would be reckless; it thinks that mutualising debts before European institutions have a veto over fiscal policies and going forward with capital injections before the single supervisory body is in place would only encourage more risk taking. Additionally, allowing the ECB to supervise the banks before the European parliament acquires the power to hold it accountable would worsen the EU's apparent lack of democracy.

The second view has not, however, placed democracy as its primary reason for the apparent reticence. It has mostly asserted that what is needed first is fiscal control over apparently unruly governments and state authorities, and that it wishes to build these institutions and powers first. Note that reckless government spending is put forward as the reason for this authority needing to be in place, even though it has been widely observed that private financial enterprises and banks have been the main source of needs for bail outs from public accounts. It is also not entirely evident that the European authorities such as they are prefer a political establishment or governments that are fiscally responsible in the terms that they seem to be suggesting. In fact they have supported New Democracy in Greece and the coalition including Pasok, which are the two parties that between them have the most responsibility for the lamentable condition of the state finances in Greece.

So is it a question of tardiness over fiscal authority due to possible risk, or merely unwillingness to move forward unless they have in place their preferred political parties? Or is it something else that is holding up proceedings? It does not appear to be a desire to have democracy in place first. In fact democracy would be a hindrance to the proposed fiscal authority, since it might not be wanted, and what we are seeing is a set of projections for the future put forward, already, by an authority. This authority decides to keep itself in the background, but from the talks on the need for fiscal authority it is clear that this desire must come from somewhere, from some already existing authority. This authority, therefore, is seeking greater powers, not mere existence, and it would be to reduce their powers to put their authority at the mercy of democratic oversight.

So in fact we have an already existing power deciding to delay because of the lack of power it perceives over its own authority. This power can see the reason for swift injections of capital to the European nations' central banks, but does not do so because, for some reason, it sees hurdles that must be overcome, such as to give it more power. So one of these reasons is presumably simply that it wants more power and can use monetary need as leverage, but is there other reasons? Capital injections from the ECB or ESM straight to banks would be a step on the road to mutualisation of Euro debt; the northern economies would be sharing the burden with the southern states that are in financial trouble, which would mean that their economies become more risky according to the markets. Perhaps this also could be a source of delay, a certain amount of protectionism of the northern economies. They are, after all, also capitalist competitors. As competitors, it stands to reason that some reward would be wanted for the sharing of risk, it is a point of strategic leverage, so this also implies more power is being sought, and that there is a lack of trust among competitors.

Is this central power guided by principles of European fraternity or is it guided by the principles of capitalism and neoliberal free market ideology? All factual evidence points to the latter. The logic of fiscal authority has been put forward under the banner of austerity and with the spin that it is profligate governments that are and have been to blame for the crisis, implicating democracy and the peoples' choices and sense of entitlement to welfare as a problem. There has been a particular focus on Greece where this story can be told in the most convincing fashion, because of its history and particular level of state corruption. Yet even in Greece the corruption of the state is due to private graft and the ability of the wealthy to escape from taxes, so that state money ends one way or another in private hands. Despite this, the 'troika' of lenders still wanted the old duopoly of state power to keep control, and threatened dire consequences if this was strayed from. And of course the state power persist with the austerity measures and the neoliberal ideology that it is peoples' entitlements that are the main cause of the crisis.

What does this ideology achieve? Three things: 1) it deflects from the real causes of the crisis; 2) in doing so deflects from the real solution to the crisis; 3) it pulls to the extreme right at a time when the left and socialism is resurgent. The extreme right is seen as political protection, a buffer, against the left, which have grown in stature (such as the rise of Syriza in Greece) simply as a result of the perceived failures of free market capitalism and neoliberal rightist policy. This left is not the standard left of duopoly politics but a new and more genuine kind, and is therefore not trusted by the traditional order.

Gary Tedman

Children and the Courts by Thomas Riggins

Well we can least congratulate the Supreme Court [SCOTUS] for its recent decision that sentencing children to life in prison without parole is unconstitutional, as is the use of mandatory one size fits all sentences. Justice Kagan was absolutely correct in stating, in her majority opinion, that the brains (and hence the minds) of children are undeveloped in those areas governing maturity, ethical and moral development, impulsiveness and judgment regarding the consequences of their actions. These areas of the brain are not fully functional until the mid 20s and children cannot be expected to behave as if they were already operational.

No matter what crimes children have committed it is neither just nor even sensible to lock them up for life and throw away the key. The adult personality of these children (with the possible exception of sociopaths or psychopaths) will be, with proper educational and environmental stimulation, completely different from that of the impulsive, immature juvenile offender presenting him or herself before a judge.

SCOTUS has made us a little more civilized with this decision but more has to be done; specifically it must be found unconstitutional (on the same 8th Amendment grounds of cruel and unusual punishment) to try children as adults-- after all they are not adults, they are children.

It is the not the fault of children that our capitalist society, plagued with institutional racism and inequality, throws many of them into horrible abusive environments devoid of decent educational opportunities, meaningful social programs, and inadequate living conditions (especially homelessness and uncaring foster care programs), and that as a result some of them end up in the for profit criminal "justice" system.

These observations are not just progressive rhetoric. They are based on current scientific studies. ScienceDaily (June 18, 2012), for example, recently published an article called "Children, Brain Development and the Criminal Law." In this article SD states that, "The legal system needs to take greater account of new discoveries in neuroscience that show how a difficult childhood can affect the development of a young person's brain which can increase the risk of adolescent crimes, according to researchers."

Research has been carried out by a group directed by Dr. Eamon McCrory of University College, London which show "that early adversity-- such as a very chaotic and frightening home life-- can result in a young child becoming hyper vigilant to potential threats in their environment. This appears to influence the development of brain connectivity and functions."

Dr. McCrory's team also discovered that, with these brain changes, children may may engage in more impulsive risky behavior than others and this "may increase both their vulnerability to mental health problems and also their risk  of problem behaviors."

Additional research at Oxford University, by Dr. Seena Fazel, shows that besides the risks posed by the social environment, children suffering from Traumatic Brain Injury [TBI], either by accident of abuse (such as assault) are much more likely to engage in violent crimes (thus coming in contact with the criminal "justice" system). On top of this  Professor H. Williams (University of Exeter) has found that about 45% of  "young offenders have TBI histories, and more injuries are associated with greater violence."

Professor Williams concludes, "There is big gap between research conducted by neuroscientists and the realities of the day to day work of the justice system. Although criminal behavior results from a complex interplay of a host of factors, neuroscientists and clinicians are identifying key risk factors that-- if addressed-- could reduce crime. Investment in earlier, focused interventions may offset the costs of years of custody and social violence."

But we should note, that even if early intervention fails, these children still need to looked after as children who need and deserve out help. Surely it behooves the adults who must deal with these children on all levels to find ways to help them not lock them away for the rest of their lives in adult prisons.

Over thirteen million young people covered in 2011 by the Affordable Care Act by Thomas Riggins

According to a report in Science Daily (June 8, 2012) 13.7 million young people either remained on, or signed on to, health care coverage through the health insurance of their parents. This is an early benefit coming from the Affordable Care Act [ACA], (the full ACA doesn't go into effect until 2014). SD thinks 6.6 million of these young people (19 to 25 year olds) "would likely not have been able to do so" without the passage of the ACA.

 This information is good news and comes from a report issued by the Commonwealth Fund ("Young, Uninsured and in Debt: Why Young Adults Lack Health Insurance and How the Affordable Care Act is Helping.") But the news is not all rosy. Almost 39% of young adults in the age group did not qualify for coverage and 36% had serious problems with medical bills causing them to lose their savings, default on tuition and student loans, change their career and educational plans, or run out of money for rent, heat or food-- according to the report.

 Republicans, who derisively refer to the ACA as "Obama Care" and promise to junk it if they capture the White House and Congress in the Fall, may not be concerned with the problems of these young people, especially since most of them come from low-income families (whose problems are not high on the list of Republican concerns), but the vast majority of the American people who are workers in the low and middle income ranges have everything to gain and nothing to lose by seeing the provisions of the ACA go into effect.

 Sara Collins of the Commonwealth Fund said, "While the Affordable Care Act has already provided a new source of coverage for millions of young adults at risk of being uninsured, more help is needed for those left behind. The law's major insurance provisions slated for 2014, including expanded Medicaid and subsidized private plans through state insurance exchanges, will provide nearly all young adults across the income spectrum with affordable and comprehensive health plans."

 Although the fight to add a public option to the ACA must continue, the plan as it stands today is the best and most comprehensive option the American people have at hand to alleviate the suffering and even premature deaths of thousands of people the Republicans would leave out in the streets for lack of ability to pay for costly overpriced private insurance. This is literally a life and death issue for thousands of people and the ACA must be preserved at all costs. As the Commonwealth Fund president, Karen Davis, remarked, "The Affordable Care Act will provide all Americans with affordable coverage, and help young adults achieve healthy, productive, and financially secure futures." That the Republicans, in their rush to serve the selfish interests of the corporate elite, the 1%, and are willing to sacrifice the health and well being of the American people in the process, should be a sufficient guarantee to ensure their defeat in November. Their only hope of victory rests on voter suppression and distortion of the facts regarding their true intentions.

US Diktat to Pakistan Not Working by Thomas Riggins

The US is having more problems with its "ally" Pakistan according to a recent article in the New York Times ("Frustrations Grow as US and Pakistan Fail to Mend Ties" NYT 5/28/2012"). After summoning the President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari to the NATO conclave in Chicago last week and then berating and humiliating him in the best traditions of Imperial arrogance towards the lesser breeds without the law the US is frustrated because Pakistan has not capitulated to the dictates of the Obama administration. If we look at the Times article we can understand why.

Public opinion in Pakistan is decidedly anti-American and the US drone strikes in the country as well as the killing of 24 Pakistani troops by US-NATO forces by "mistake" hasn't helped the situation. How did the US respond when President Zardari brought up Pakistan's concerns about the relationship with the US-- reasonable concerns that could be easily solved if the US showed some good will and respect for the Pakistani people.

The situation is critical. Pakistan has closed the supply route US forces have been using in that country to transmit its war supplies to Afghanistan. The US wants this route opened up and thinks the best way to do that is not to address the concerns brought up by President Zardari but to browbeat him and demand that he shape up to US expectations. This is not a tactic designed to win the good will of the people of Pakistan-- no matter what they may ultimately think of their own political class.

When Zardari arrived in the windy city he found out that he would not be meeting with President Obama (a sign of imperial displeasure) but would have to endure a lot of hot air blowing his way from the Secretary of State Mrs. Clinton who was, as the NYT puts it "nothing if not blunt." She told a "subdued" Zardari "It's going to take leadership from you and others" to solve Pakistan's problems (many of which seem to be the US's problems in trying to "win" the war in Afghanistan or least tamp it down so that an inglorious exit can be pulled off). It seems that the US's inability to be militarily successful in the region is due to Zardari's lack of leadership skills rather than the ineptitude and stupidity of US policy makers.

Take for instance the case of the 24 Pakistani soldiers recently killed by "mistake" on the border of Afghanistan. Zardari says Pakistan lacks the resources to control all the troublesome insurgent groups in its border area, and his government needs to get maximum cooperation with other political parties and groups to carry out an effective policy, he told Mrs. Clinton, that "We're backed into a corner because you haven't apologized" for the killing of the soldiers (which has outraged Pakistani public opinion).

There is a simple solution to this major contentious issue between the two countries. US forces (NATO is just a cover for the US) "accidentally" kill a large number of our ally's troops and a simple apology to the Pakistanis would go a long way to relieving tensions, except the imperial pretensions of the US won't allow it to apologize. The NYT times even reports that US election year politics may be involved. Since this involves US military supply lines being disrupted the US's own troops could be adversely affected, and all because of the pride or perceived political expediency of politicians in Washington.

The NYT reports that our "alliance" with Pakistan "is central to the Obama administration's plan to end the war in Afghanistan." But the Obama administration treats Pakistan and its president with unconcealed contempt and will assuredly cause a complete rupture of relations if it does not stop its bullying and high handed actions. Another example is the continuing drone attacks that the US makes in Pakistan despite the fact that the Pakistani Parliament and government objects to them. Here we have a sovereign country telling us to stop bombing its people and we completely ignore it and continue bombing. The US is shooting itself in the foot and blaming others for its self inflicted wounds.

The Parliament is democratically elected, as is the president of Pakistan (Pakistan is a parliamentary democracy so the role of the president is not the same as in the US) and the demands that they have made of the US can be seen as a democratic expression of the will of the Pakistani people. But what the people of Pakistan think or want is the last thing on the mind of Mrs. Clinton who used her time in Chicago to lecture Zardari on how to carry out the plans the US wants to see Pakistan adopt, and, as the NYT says, "to sell them to politicians in Pakistan." It may be the politicians in Pakistan are more interested in doing what their people want them to do rather than what Mrs. Clinton wants them to do.

But it is a brave new world gradually coming into existence outside of the US, one that increasingly refuses to bow to the imperial diktat and to accede unquestioningly to the demands of US imperialism and its corporate masters. People everywhere are becoming more insistent on their democratic rights, even in the US itself. Let us have the audacity to hope the Obama administration gets the message.

Engels on the State, Family, Education and Sex by Thomas Riggins

In the last chapter of his book Anti-Dühring, Engels treats of the state, family,education and sex by critiquing the views of the German "socialist" and professor Eugen Dühring's on these subjects. Dühring had created, on paper, a complete system of socialist governing thru means of collectives which, Engels has pointed out in his analysis in earlier parts of this book, is completely unworkable and perpetuates the capitalist relations of production and distribution which socialism is supposed to abolish. Having set up his system Dühring undertakes to discuss the nature of the "state of the future." His ideas are, Engels maintains, watered down simplifications of notions he has gleaned from Rousseau and Hegel.

In his own words, Dühring bases his state on the "sovereignty of the people." He explains what he means in the following passage of essentially meaningless mumbo jumbo: "If one presupposes agreements between each individual and every other individual in all directions, and if the object of these agreements is mutual aid against unjust offenses-- the the power required for the maintenance of right is only strengthened, and right is not deduced from the more superior strength of the many against the individual or of the majority against the minority." Don't worry if that passage doesn't make any sense, as Dühring adds the following to explicate it. He says, "THE SLIGHTEST ERROR in the conception of the role of the collective will would DESTROY the sovereignty of the individual, and this sovereignty is the only thing conducive to the deduction of real rights." Engels thinks this pretty "thick" even by the standards of Dühring's so called "philosophy of reality." This is especially so since the "sovereignty of the individual" consists in the fact that he or she is, Dühring says, "SUBJECT TO ABSOLUTE COMPULSION by the state." This is because the state "serves natural justice" and that is the best guarantee of individual sovereignty. There will be a police force for internal security and an army as well-- to enforce the will of the state-- which is the same as that of the community of sovereign individuals and to ensure people don't use their sovereignty in an incorrect and unsovereign manner. And just in case the state makes an error, well, the citizens will still be better off than they would have been if left in the state of nature! Anyway, they will get free lawyers too boot. Since Dühring says his new state is based on "sober and critical thought", he announces that religion will be banished from the commune."In the free society," he says, "there can be no religious worship; FOR every member of it has got beyond the primitive childish superstition that there are beings, behind nature or above it, who can be influenced by sacrifices or prayers. [A] socialitarian system, rightly conceived, HAS therefore … TO ABOLISH all the paraphernalia of religious magic, and therewith all the essential elements of religious worship."

It is important to note, since in the real history of socialism in the twentieth century some socialist and communist states tried to eliminate religion and religious practices by forceable means, that this idea ["the state HAS to…"] comes from Dühring, an enemy of the Marxist outlook, and not from anything Marx or Engels had to say. Engels explicitly criticizes this view. This is not to say Marx and Engels were in anyway "soft" on religion ["opium of the masses" and all that] but they respected "individual sovereignty" enough not to dream of using the "state' [which they wanted to abolish in any case] to trample on people's rights of conscience in religious affairs. At this point Engels adds a succinct account of the Marxist view of the origin, social function, and future of religion. It is more or less as follows. Religion is just a reflection in the brains of people of the forces in the external world that are out of their control which affect their lives and that they imagine as supernatural beings which they need to fear and placate. Originally these were the powers of nature that took on the guise of gods and goddess, but as human society progressed and evolved social forces also came to assume these roles. Over time, in the West at least) the many gods and goddess representing these alien powers were distilled down to one god [monotheism e.g., Jews and Moslems, or three gods posing as one as in the Jewish-pagan synthesis called Christianity- tr] and in this form religion will have a lease on life as long as humans are dominated by natural and social powers they neither understand nor control.

In contemporary capitalist society people are dominated and controlled by an economic system that they have themselves made yet rules over them as if it were an independently existing power beyond their control. The Market-- made by humans, rules humans. This is essentially the same reification as is found in religion and it reinforces religious attitudes and beliefs already historically present in modern society. Engels thinks of this development as the First Act of human development. It is now time for the Second Act. In the Second Act humans will take control of the means of production and distribution which they have created over the long ages [thereby hangs a tale] and by means of scientific understanding and advance be able to control them rather than being controlled by them. Science will also explain the origins of life, the workings of nature, and the role of humans, leading to advances in medicine, agriculture, education, etc., so that humans will seek to understand the world instead of bowing down before it in stupefaction. Engels says "only then will the last alien force which is still reflected in religion vanish: and with it will also vanish the religious reflection itself, for the simple reason that then there will be nothing left to reflect." Dühring can't wait and wants to administratively abolish religion before humanity has reached the intellectual and social level where it will of its own accord fade away. This will only inflame resistance, antagonize the masses, and strengthen the hold of superstition over the brains of people by giving it "a prolonged lease of life." I might add, if some of the socialists and communists of the past century, let alone this one, would have taken Engels to heart many mistakes and tragedies could have been avoided.

After Herr Dühring has disposed of religion he tells us that "man, made to rely solely on himself and nature and matured in the knowledge of his collective powers, can intrepidly enter on all the roads which the course of events and his own being open to him." Fine. Let us see how "man" travels down these roads. First he is born. Then he, or she as the case may be, is under the control of his mother the "natural tutor of children" until puberty (about 14 years) when the role of the father kicks in, as long as "real and uncontested paternity" can be demonstrated. If not a guardian is appointed. Ancient Roman law serves Dühring as a model for these ideas. This shows, Engels says, that Dühring has no sense of history. The family, for him, is immutable, basically the same in Ancient Rome as in modern capitalism with no allowance for the changes in economic conditions and social relations between the ancient world and contemporary world. Engels then quotes the following passage from volume one of Das Kapital to show the superiority of Marx's outlook to Dühring's. Marx wrote that "modern industry, by assigning as it does an important part in the process of production, outside the domestic sphere, to women, to young persons, and to children of both sexes [due to the rise of the working class movement capitalism's urge to exploit children in the productive process has been somewhat curtailed-- tr] creates a new economic foundation for a higher form of the family and the relations between the sexes." This new form is still in the process of creation, but there is no going back to the Ancient Roman family, nor even, as our Republican politicians are learning to their chagrin, to the patriarchal family of the Christian Middle Ages-- so beloved by the reactionary classes in our country.

Dühring next informs us that "Every dreamer of social reforms naturally has ready a pedagogy corresponding to his new social life." He may think he is putting others down and himself coming up with a truly scientific plan for the educational needs of society, for the "foreseeable future", but he is actually a worse dreamer than those he opposes, according to Engels. In the schools of Dühring's future cooperative society the children will, Dühring writes, learn "everything which by itself and in principle can have any attraction for man" and so will include "the foundations and main conclusions of all sciences touching on the understanding of the world and of life." Dühring also tells us he sees in outline all the textbooks of the future but he is personally unable to actually see their contents and just what the children will be learning as that "can only really be expected from the free and enhanced forces of the new social order." But they will concentrate on physics, math, astronomy and mechanics while biology, botany, and zoology and such will be "topics for light conversation" [!]. He completely forgets to say anything about chemistry. Engels says his knowledge of the sciences seems to be confined to "Natural History for Children"-- a popular book of the 18th Century by Georg Christian Raff (1748-1788).

When it comes to the humanities, Dühring sounds like a second rate Plato. He wants to ban, for example, the great artistic creations of the past because too many of them have religious themes. As Plato banned Homer for portraying the Gods with human flaws, so Goethe is banned by Dühring for "poetic mysticism" and others for any religious content at all-- since religion is banned completely in the future state. American monoglot educators will appreciate Herr Dühring's attitude to foreign languages. Latin and Greek will be junked entirely, who needs dead languages. Living foreign languages "will remain of secondary importance" and the students will really concentrate on their own native tongue. Engels thinks this a way to perpetuate the dulling national narrow mindedness of people who are basically ignorant of the world and of the Other. Latin and Greek actually open up people's minds to a broader perspective of the world and history, at least if they have a classical education, and learning foreign modern languages also allows peoples to have greater understanding of others and their cultures. Dühring's views are those of the narrow minded Prussian Philistine and similar to the "English only" bigotry found on the right in this country.

Engels gives Dühring credit for at least being aware of the fact there will be a difference between educational policies under socialism and those currently employed in bourgeois society, but since he keeps capitalist relations of production in place in his future communal society he can't quite figure out what those policies will be. Thus he is reduced to coming up with such ideas as "young and old will work in the serious sense of the word" which, along with other empty phrases, Engels calls "spineless and meaningless ranting." Engels counterpoises a brief comment on socialist education from volume one of Das Kapital where Marx says that "from the Factory system budded, as Robert Owen has shown in detail, the germ of the education of the future, an education that will, in the case of every child over a given age, combine productive labour with instruction and gymnastics, not only as one of the methods of adding to the efficiency of production, but as the only method of producing fully developed human beings." Our own educational system, which produces drop outs and graduates functional illiterates, is American capitalism's answer to what education will be in the future.

Finally, after we find out how children will be educated in Dühring's future society, we find out how they are to come into the world. Dühring, no doubt inspired by Plato's Republic, tells us that future humans must be "sought in sexual union and selection, and furthermore in the care taken for or against the ensuring of certain results." We are here on the road to Dühringean eugenics. The most important thing to keep in mind about the future births is not the number but "whether nature or human circumspection succeeded or failed in regard to their quality." This leads Dühring to conclude that "It is obviously an advantage to prevent the birth of a human being who would only be a defective creature." Modern scientific sentiment would not reject this conclusion out of hand, regardless of the feelings of those blinded by religious prejudices or logically challenged. It all depends on the kinds of defects that are presented. Dühring is thinking, however, along lines made popular by Nietzsche, of some sort of super human race compared to the run of the mill humans that unaided Nature tends to produce.

Dühring believes in a human right which may be important, but is not generally appealed to these days, for the purposes of eugenics, i.e., "the right of the unborn world to the best possible composition" [biologically-- tr]. "Conception," he says, "and, if need be, also birth [infanticide- tr] offer the opportunity , or in exceptional cases selective, care in this connection." Dühring is not just talking about medical defects-- but also "aesthetic" defects. He thinks. in fact, that people should be bred to look like the ancient Greeks! "Grecian art -- the idealization of man in marble [not "European" man but "man"]-- will not be able to retain its historical importance when the less artistic, and therefore from the standpoint of the fate of the millions, far more important task of perfecting the human form in flesh and blood is taken in hand." OK, so we won't all look like Antinous or the Venus de Milo but that goal will be a work in progress for the future Dühringean society. How does Dühring bring about the this perfection of the human [ancient Greeks-- Dühring had no use for modern Greeks] form? Well, he says force would be harmful but it will come about as a natural result of the mating of beautiful people-- sort of by an "invisible hand" (but in this case a different anatomical feature will be at work). Here is Dühring's quote: [From the] "higher, genuinely human motives of wholesome sexual unions … the humanly ennobled form of sexual excitement , which in its intense manifestations is PASSIONATE LOVE, when reciprocated is the best guarantee of a union which will be acceptable also in its result…. It is only an effect of the second order that from a relation which in itself is harmonious a symphoniously composed product should result." Engels thinks Dühring's views on sex are "twaddle." This is because force would have to be used to make sure all unions were "wholesome" by Dühring's standards. In the real world it is not just the beautiful people who fall in love and have children (symphoniously composed products) but all kinds of people so "the second order" effects of love making would be the same in the future communal state of Herr Dühring as they are now. [He could however try for a rigged lottery a la Plato's Republic to match up the "best" people and only allow those with baby licenses to reproduce. This would lead to more problems than the Chinese have had with the one child policy-- which was successful in limiting population numbers but a failure from the point of view of creating balanced population growth.]

Engels also critiques Dühring's "noble ideas about the female sex in general"[prostitution is a normal activity due to the constraints of bourgeois marriage]-- but both Dühring's ideas and Engel's response are too shaped by nineteenth century conditions to be applicable to twenty-first century advanced industrial societies so I will pass this topic by and come to the conclusion of Anti-Dühring. After having gone over all the major views that Dühring had presented in a series of writings over the years, and refuting them by giving a proper Marxist response to his mixed up theoretical constructions, Engels sums up Dühring's oeuvre as being the product of MENTAL INCOMPETENCE DUE TO MEGALOMANIA.

Postscript: Eugen Dühring survived Engel's critique and wrote more books and articles. In the 1880's he began turning out anti-Semitic writings some of which led Theodor Hertzel to conclude that the Jews needed their own state. Frederick Nietzsche's rantings against socialism were the result of his having read Dühring's works not those of Marx and Engels (although I doubt it would have made any difference). Of his many books only one has been translated into English-- his anti-Semitic tract on the Jewish question was published in 1997 as "Eugen Dühring on the Jews" by 1984 Press. Dühring died in 1921 thus being deprived of seeing the fruits of his anti-Semitic labors. These and other interesting facts about Dühring are to be found in the Wikipedia article "Eugen Dühring." These articles on Engels' book Anti-Dühring have been published serially over the past two years in Political Affairs (and some have also appeared in Counter Currents, Dissident Voice, NYC indymedia and other internet venues) and the complete set can be found published together on my blog (Thomas Riggins Blog) as well as at the blog Philosophy and Marxism Today as "Engels' Anti-Dühring: A Twenty-First Century Commentary."

The Rising Medical Debt Crisis by Thomas Riggins

This past month has seen nation wide demonstrations and protests about the impossible to pay off trillion dollar student debt that has been foisted upon the youth of this country by banks and lending institutions and other manifestations of the corporate institutions controlled by the 99%. But education is not the only sphere in which monopoly capitalism puts its profits before the welfare of the American people. Another area in which the people are mercilessly plundered for corporate profit is medical care. Recently ScienceDaily published an article discussing the rising medical debt in the state of California, which can be taken as typical for other states as well ("Medical Debt Keeps Rising, New Report Shows" SD Feb. 6, 2012). The report, from UCLA, reveals that hundreds of thousands of laid off and discharged workers have lost their health insurance as a result of the current depression (AKA "The Great Recession") and as a result the amount of medical debt in California made an alarming jump. The report reveals 18.4% of workers uninsured for a year were in debt, 23.2% uninsured for part of the year were in debt and 9.1% of those who had insurance due to employment were also in debt. Obviously, even having insurance through your job doesn't mean you will be taken care of. Shana Alex Lavarreda, the lead author of this study, was quoted as saying, "No Californian should have to take on debt to pay medical bills or go without access to health care just because they lost their job. As this recession has so clearly shown us, linking health care to a volatile job market puts us all at risk." Of course it's more than Californians that are at risk-- it's everyone in the US and around the world who should have debt free access to medical care-- one of the major demands of the socialist and worker's movements and of all progressive democratic people. This brings us to the Affordable Care Act. Dr. Robert K. Ross the president (and CEO) of the California Endowment, one of the foundations funding the study, said, This data clearly indicates the need for successful implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The rate of uninsured Americans increases annually, and the burden that presents to our care system is economically unsustainable. Health care reform will ensure that many millions of Californians [et al-- tr] need not fear a potential health catastrophe just because of an economic downturn." This is, as we all know, an election year and medical care for the American people and an extension of insurance to millions of the uninsured, should be of prime concern. Yet the Republican Party, in the face of scientific evidence of the necessity of implementing (and indeed enlarging the scope of) the Affordable Care Act, disparagingly attacks it as "Obama Care" (it is definitely an honor to Obama to have his name linked to an attempt to help millions of Americans get medical care) and want to see this act overthrown or repealed. This is an incredible position for the Republican Party to take and can only be explained by its complete subservience to the corporate interests of the 1%. The Republicans should be rebuked decisively at the polls for this sell out of the American people. The report reveals startling figures to back up this assessment. The number of those without insurance living in families considered poor (having incomes under 100% of the federal poverty level) grew to 33.1% in 2009 (from 29% in 2007) and 44.8% of uninsured children and 49.9 % of uninsured adults reported not seeing a medical person in the past year (for those with insurance the figures were 8.3% and 13.4 % respectively). The means, as SD puts it, "Lack of insurance equals lack of care." Looking at these figures led Diana M. Bontá, president (and CEO) of The California Wellness Foundation (another funder of the study) to comment that, "This report provides yet more evidence of the need for change of our current system of health care and also of the devastating effect California's budget crisis has had on the programs that support our state's most vulnerable residents." There are many other states besides California facing this crisis. The crisis could be even worse than described here (with figures from 2009) since COBRA has expired (the federal program that helped workers who lost their jobs keep the insurance from their employment).

Meat, Money, and Marxism: More Bad News About Red Meat

Meat, Money, and Marxism: More Bad News About Red Meat
Thomas Riggins

We have known for some time that having too much red meat in our diets has negative health consequences with respect to cancer and heart conditions. We also know that the meat industry goes out of the way to play down these risks as it is motivated by profits and not public health. As Marxists we also know that the only really effective way to protect the public from the negative consequences of the red meat diet is to demand that the government regulate and educate and that we must work towards expanding democratic control of the economy in order to achieve these ends.

New scientific evidence, recently released by the Harvard School of Public Health,
definitely shows that eating red meat increases mortality from both cancer and cardiovascular problems. The results of the Harvard study have been reported in ScienceDaily for 3-12-2012: "Red Meat Consumption Linked to Increased Risk of Total, Cardiovascular, and Cancer Mortality."

This report also has some good news, which is that we can all lower our risks for these health problems by replacing red meat with nuts, legumes, fish and poultry (and of course a vegetarian diet would dramatically reduce these risks.)

An Pan, the main author of the report, is quoted as saying: "Our study adds more evidence to the health risks of eating high amounts of red meat, which has been associated with type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, and certain cancers in other studies." The study followed thousands of people over two decades correlating their diets with disease incidents. The researchers found that eating processed red meat daily (e.g., two strips of bacon or a hot dog) increased your risk 20% (a daily serving of unprocessed red meat upped you risk 13%.) Cured red meat was thus 7% more deadly than uncured.

The report also found that those who replaced the red meat serving with fish, poultry, nuts, low fat dairy or legumes had a significant reduction in their risks of death. This led Frank Hu, a nutrition specialist and co-author of the report, to say, "This study provides clear evidence that regular consumption of red meat, especially processed meat, contributes substantially to premature death. On the other hand, choosing more healthful sources of protein in place of red meat can confer significant health benefits by reducing chronic disease morbidity and mortality."

So there it is. Limit red meat consumption in the interests of public health, and especially the health of children. Processed red meats as well as red meat in general should be regulated and reduced in school lunch programs (remember the Republicans in Congress want to classify pizza as a vegetable-- which shows the influence of the junk food industry) and in all other government food programs. The government should also undertake the making of public service announcements re healthy eating by the reduction of red meat.

The new USDA "food plate" simply has "protein" as one of its recommendations but no further recommendations such as less beef and more fish or other red meat substitutes. Beef should not be given equal time with chicken! In any event progressive politics goes hand in hand with progressive health advocacy and we can hope people will heed the warnings of science.

Frederick Engels on the Historical Development of Modern Socialism

Thomas Riggins [From the blog: Philosophy and Marxism Today]

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.