Following the major news networks’ projections of Scott Walker’s victory in the Wisconsin recall vote Tuesday, the dominant reaction among anti-Walker activists was apocalyptic. “If out-of-state corporate interests can outspend us ten-to-one, and that’s enough to beat all this grassroots organizing and public outrage, then democracy is dead.”
Well, no. Technically, it’s just more dirt on top of the grave. Frankly, I’m surprised at the popular reaction to the vote. What did they expect? The state has always been an “executive committee of the ruling class.” Citizens United may have stripped the mask off the system and exposed it in its full vulgarity, but the political system has been rigged in the interests of the big money players since there was a political system. To quote Charles Johnson:
“If you put all your hope for social change in legal reform … then … you will find yourself outmaneuvered at every turn by those who have the deepest pockets and the best media access and the tightest connections. There is no hope for turning this system against them; because, after all, the system was made for them and the system was made by them. Reformist political campaigns inevitably turn out to suck a lot of time and money into the politics — with just about none of the reform coming out on the other end.”
Trying to change the system by voting for political candidates, or by “getting a seat at the table” to influence legislation, is like trying to beat the house in Vegas playing by house rules. The system can only be “reformed,” if you follow its own prescribed rules, in a manner consistent with the logic of the system. Recently MPAA chief Chris Dodd defended the SOPA digital copyright bill, with a straight face, saying “all the stakeholders had been at the table.” All the stakeholders — Disney, the RIAA and MPAA, Microsoft, Pfizer, Monsanto. You know … everyone except you and me.
We need to fight by our own rules rather than theirs. Asymmetric warfare is called that because it’s war between adversaries who are badly mismatched in resources. Fighting a conventional war against a superpower, or fighting corporate interests for control of their political process, is like a 90 lb. weakling trying to knock out the Hulk by pasting him one on the jaw. Asymmetric warfare is playing by our own rules, attacking the weak point of the enemy in ways forbidden by their preferred set of rules. It’s like the 90 lb. weakling beating the Hulk by moving faster and landing the first blow — and making that first blow a good hard kick in the groin.
The beauty of the age we live in is that the wealth and resources of the ruling class are becoming increasingly worthless. The new decentralized, distributed, and cheap technologies for production and comfortable subsistence nullify the propertied classes’ advantage in resources. Their wealth has historically depended on state enforcement of their control over scarce land and capital, so they could charge us rents in return for access to the means of livelihood and production. Their wealth depends on our need for them. Now that we have the means to produce a decent quality of life with hardly any land or capital, we don’t need them any more.
As they find it harder and harder to compete with progressively cheaper and more efficient technologies in the hands of ordinary people, they lean increasingly on a state that’s bankrupting itself trying to prop them up. So we can beat them simply by withdrawing from their system and building our own.
The plutocracy depends on the state for its wealth. We don’t. All we have to do to destroy them is walk away. So they’d like nothing better than to distract us from building the kind of society and economy we want for ourselves and abandoning theirs to rot, and instead waste our effort and money fighting for control of their system on their terms.
Let them have the Wisconsin state government, and every other government. It’s always been theirs anyway. And now it will die along with them.
Citations to this article:
- Kevin Carson, Asymmetric warfare is way to fight political ruling class, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 06/25/12
- Kevin Carson, Wisconsin: It was Always Theirs Anyway, Hernando [Florida] Today, 06/15/12
When I was involved in electoral politics, I saw for myself that the system is subtly but consistently skewed in favor of those already in power. It's tricky to pin it to a single rule or practice, and a lot of the most corrupt aspects are hidden in plain sight. Campaign finance is part of it, Citizens United is part of it, duopoly control of the "debates" is part of it, the fact that some people believe the two-party system is in the Constitution is part of it, the corporate media are part of it, the revolving door of lobbyists and legislators is part of it, actual bribery is part of it, superficial wedge issues are part of it, ALEC is part of it, and the list goes on and on.
A number of people here in Wisconsin (at least some of the folks I hang around with) have come to the realization that just because you play by the rules doesn't mean things are fair. The rules themselves can be unfair. And that describes the electoral system. The only choice is which corporate drone you want to vote for, and even that's subject to the gravitational mass of the donors to each drone.
My friends and I are fed up with politics. We'll be building worker cooperatives from now on.
How's this for inspiration?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imxFcg7xd7o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUt6nq7bV0I
My recent post Romney's plan for unemploment!
Some people think that Scott Walker's success here is a victory for the "establishment". Truth is that the government worker's unions are as undemocratic a mafia as the "establishment" ever was or is. They both feed off the productive members of society who in increasing numbers are "shrugging" off the onus of having to support these leeches. I like the central theme of this article : that to effect true reform you have to asymmetrically step outside the box and never return to it. If we all just walked away and didn't deal with any of them, how powerful could they pretend to be? If it comes down to our guns against theirs, they are certain to lose as they are outnumbered fifty to one. The sooner this all collapses the better off we all shall be.
"My friends and I are fed up with politics. We'll be building worker cooperatives from now on."
Exactly, that is the real winning.
No Kidding:
“When the business interests … pushed through the first installment of civil service reform in 1883, they expected that they would be able to control both political parties equally. Indeed, some of them intended to contribute to both and to allow an alternation of the two parties in public office in order to conceal their own influence, inhibit any exhibition of independence of politicians, and allow the electorate to believe that they were exercising their own free choice.” …
“Hopefully, the elements of choice and freedom may survive for the ordinary individual in that he may be free to make a choice between two opposing political groups (even if these groups have little policy choice within the parameters of policy established by the experts) and he may have the choice to switch his economic support from one large unit to another. But, in general, his freedom and choice will be controlled within the very narrow alternatives by the fact that he will be numbered from birth and followed, as a number, through his educational training, his required military or other public service, his tax contributions, his health and medical requirements, and his final retirement and death benefits.” …
“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.”
Carroll Quigley, in "Tragedy and Hope", 1965, writing in general approbation of the whole scheme.
Why do you take sides in the election? As an anarchist, how can you? Corporate rent-seekers versus blood-sucking government unions… Why do you side with state employees? Why?
"Why do you take sides in the election in my imagination?"
There, fixed that for ya.
To "Why?," I had only the most marginal stake in the election, but I marched repeatedly in favor of the unions. Some see this as a fight for PUBLIC SECTOR unions, but I see it as a fight for public sector UNIONS. There's no question that Scott Walker is a corporatist, to a near-comical degree. I'm not a member of a public sector union myself, but I've been hired by them to interpret for their meetings on many occasions, and I see them as… well, a stop-gap. There are vanishingly few government agencies I know of that don't act like corporations, and the need for collective bargaining is conspicuous. Are there government employees living high on the hog? Maybe… but not the janitors I worked for.
As for the election itself…. the Koch brothers spent a lot of money to convince me to vote for Walker. I voted for the other guy — just to spite them.