Trigger warning: The following op-ed includes discussion of rape, including some graphic details.

The prevailing myth about police is that they work “to serve and protect” the people from crime.  Sometimes they may do that, but all too often the police are the ones committing crimes.  I’m not just talking about petty crimes; I’m talking about rape and sexual assault.

Take the case of Milwaukee police officer Michael Vagnini. On October 9th, Vagnini was charged with non-consensually inserting his finger into victims’ anuses on the claim of “searching” his victims for drugs.

The FBI defines rape as “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object … without the consent of the victim.”  By this definition, Vagnini raped multiple people while he was on the job.  In one instance, he allegedly caused his victim to experience anal bleeding for days.  In another, he added insult to injury by allegedly planting drugs on his victim.

Rather than serving and protecting, other officers chose to aid and abet. In one incident, Vagnini’s victim was held down by other officers while Vagnini raped him. Furthermore, the Milwaukee Police Department was aware of these incidents for “a couple of years.” They waited “until authorities recognized a pattern” before they did anything to hold him accountable. Translation: The police department was aware that Vagnini was committing rapes, but they waited to do anything about it until they had determined that he was a serial rapist.

This story is appalling, but sadly it is not unique. For example, in Utah police officers have been known to conduct “forced catheterization” searches, which consist of forcibly inserting a catheter into the victim’s urethra to perform drug tests. In 2004, Haley Hooper was held down by four officers while a catheter was inserted into her vagina.  While this met the legal definition of object rape, her lawsuit was dismissed on the grounds that the officers were protected by “qualified immunity.”  Officers involved in another forced catheterization were promoted rather than prosecuted.

These rapes happened under the cover of “searches,” but some officers are even more brazen. Craig Nash, a San Antonio police officer, allegedly raped a sex worker while he was holding her in custody.  In this case, there was DNA evidence against Nash, which is more than many rape cases have. Yet Nash was able to plead down from sexual assault to “official oppression,” which only carries a sentence of one year.

Meanwhile, Nash’s victim, a transgender woman, was locked up in a men’s prison. There, she likely faced persistent sexual violence and harassment. If not, it was probably because she was placed in solitary confinement, which is widely considered a form of torture. Either way, Nash’s victim faced a harsher punishment from the state’s “justice” system than the man who raped her.

These are just a few examples. Charles Johnson of the Molinari Institute has documented many more cases like this in a short series of blogs titled “Rapists on Patrol.”  But these are just the cases we know about.

Rape and sexual assault are notoriously under-reported crimes. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, 54% of rapes in the United States are not reported to police.  There are many reasons for this. For example, victims may justifiably fear that scrutiny will be placed on them more than on their rapist, and that the most intimate details of their personal lives will become fodder for victim blaming.

But when the rapist is a cop, the incentives not to report become stronger still. The rapist will be protected not only by sexist social norms, but by his powerful role in the criminal justice system. With such strong incentives for victims not to report, I think it is fair to conclude that the police rapes we’re aware of are merely the tip of the iceberg.

We are told that police are necessary to protect us from crime. But instead, police are committing truly appalling crimes. And for the most part, the legal system is protecting them while they do it.

Meanwhile, the state’s criminal justice system is woefully inadequate even at prosecuting rapes committed by ordinary citizens. According to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, 97% of rapists will not spend a single night in prison.

To fix this, we need a new system — a system that holds all perpetrators of violence accountable, without the privilege and injustice that has always characterized the rule of the state.

Translations for this article:

• Dutch, Machtsmisbruikers.

The following article was written by Jon Matonis and published on Forbes, October 4th, 2012.

Bitcoin is not about making rapid global transactions with little or no fee. Bitcoin is about preventing monetary tyranny. That is its raison d’être.

Monetary tyranny can take many ugly forms. It can be deliberate inflation, persecutory capital controls, prearranged defaults within the banking cartel, or even worse, blatant sovereign confiscation. Sadly, those threats are a potential in almost any jurisdiction in the world today. The United States does not have a monopoly on monetary repression and monetary tyranny.

Once the State is removed from the monetary sphere and loses the ability to define legal tender, its power becomes relegated to direct legislative and enforcement measures that do not immorally manipulate a currency. Taxes for wars and domestic misadventures will have to be raised the old-fashioned way — that is to say government money cannot be raised by simply debasing the currency.

Just as the Second Amendment in the United States, at its core, remains the final right of a free people to prevent their ultimate political repression, a powerful instrument is needed to prevent a corresponding repression — State monetary supremacy. That task has fallen to an unlikely open source project that is based on cryptography protocols and peer-to-peer distributed computing. As the mechanism for a decentralized, nonpolitical unit of account, the Bitcoin project uniquely facilitates this protection.

The timing of Bitcoin’s appearance, and subsequent growth, is no accident either. If one follows the relevant sentiments and trends, it’s evident that society was approaching a breaking point. Essentially, bitcoin is a reaction to three separate and ongoing developments: centralized monetary authority, diminishing financial privacy, and the entrenched legacy financial infrastructure. An alternative money provider that was centralized would probably not survive long in any jurisdiction. The emergence of Bitcoin was baked into the cake already.

We can see from the case against digital money provider e-gold that an efficient challenger to the provision of a stable monetary unit will not be permitted… really. In 1996, a humble oncologist named Doug Jackson bravely built an auditable and verifiable system of transferring ownership rights to gold and silver bullion in an online digital environment. Wired’s Kim Zetter described it this way:

E-gold is a privately issued digital currency backed by real gold and silver stored in banks in Europe and Dubai. Jackson says about 1,000 new e-gold accounts are opened daily, and the system processes between 50,000 and 100,000 transactions a day.

With a value independent of any national legal tender, the electronic cash has cultivated a libertarian image over the years, while drawing the ire of law enforcement agencies who frequently condemn it publicly as an anonymous, untraceable criminal haven, inaccessible to police scrutiny.

Where have we heard that before? Then in December 2005, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Secret Service raided e-gold’s Florida offices. Jackson tells Wired, “They basically raped our computers and also took us offline for 36 hours, took all the paper out of our office.” Jackson says that the government also froze parent company Gold and Silver Reserve’s U.S. bank account but the company survived, “only because its euro, pound and yen accounts are maintained outside the United States.” The physical bullion assets were subsequently seized as well.

With the prosecution resting on a civil complaint charging Gold and Silver Reserve, Inc. with operating as an unlicensed money-transmitting business,Jackson finally acquiesced in July 2008 and plead guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering (a victimless crime) and operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business rather than the alternative threat of 20 years in jail and a half million dollar fine.

Wired magazine, in June 2009, published this excellent account of the e-gold business in the wake of the federal investigation entitled “Bullion and Bandits: The Improbable Rise and Fall of E-Gold”. Also included in the article is probably the most telling photo of all — Doug Jackson sitting on the floor surrounded by file boxes labeled U.S. Secret Service.

Zetter writes, “At e-gold’s peak, the currency would be backed by 3.8 metric tons of gold, valued at more than $85 million.” E-gold founder Doug Jackson wanted to solve the world’s economic woes, “but instead got an electronic ankle bracelet for his trouble.”

Recently, in 2009, Bernard von NotHaus was indicted on counterfeiting charges for manufacturing a private metallic coin that actually contained some precious metals. After 23 years of research and development plus 11 years of operating in the marketplace, Liberty Dollar suspended operations. Following the conviction and for the appeal, the prominent Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee filed an amicus curiae brief in support of acquittal and revolving around the question of whether anyone but the government has the right to issue money. Afterwards, many commentators pointed out the absurdity of penalizing honest money to strengthen the facade of manipulated money.

Further contributing to the disturbing trend against monetary freedom and financial privacy are initiatives like the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which has been written about many times on these pages and also in The New York Times. Other countries around the world would not even contemplate such a brazen endeavor that imposes a costly withholding and disclosure regime on sovereign foreign entities and financial assets. Furthermore, they see it as American arrogance and American hegemony run amok.

However, society will not be ready to fully embrace the promises of decentralized nonpolitical currency until it can come to terms with the fact that money in a free society should not be used for the purposes of identity and asset tracking. Banks and governments may be concerned with that goal, but it is not the role of our money.

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Anthony Gregory.

TROCAS MULTILATERAIS

Trocas multilaterais são o objetivo do Centro em dois sentidos — somos a favor de uma sociedade fundamentada em cooperação pacífica e voluntária, e buscamos fomentar o entendimento por meio de diálogo permanente.

Eis porque estamos inaugurando esta nova parte de nosso site. Trocas Multilaterais – Mutual Exchange proporcionará oportunidades para trocas de ideias de interesse dos diversos públicos do Centro. Um ensaio de abertura, deliberadamente provocativo, será seguido de respostas vindas de dentro e de fora do C4SS. Contribuições e comentários de leitores são entusiasticamente encorajados.

Começamos com o ensaio de Anthony Gregory “Contra Kevin Carson quanto à Humanidade de Corporações e Professores do Governo,” o qual suscita alguma questões críticas acerca de aspectos do projeto de Kevin Carson. Seguir-se-ão respostas de Carson, Gary Chartier e outros.

*  *  *

Nem num milhão de anos eu teria tido a expectativa de concordar com Mitt Romney e discordar de Kevin Carson. Embora eu não seja mutualista, reconheço que Carson é um anarquista radical, e vejo Romney como fascista. Tenho tido em alta conta grande parte da crítica de Carson ao capitalismo de estado como bem-vindo corretivo para um movimento libertário com demasiada frequência deslumbrado com o statu quo corporatista e com o conservadorismo econômico. E no entanto discordo tanto do que parece a principal estocada de seu recente artigo, “Corporações São Pessoas? Hitler Também Era” que me vejo impelido a responder em defesa parcial do que foi enunciado por Romney, homem a quem já critiquei em muitos escritos e de modo nenhum vejo como aliado na luta por qualquer coisa que eu preze.

O principal ponto de Carson é que a afirmação de Romney de que “corporações são pessoas” é trivial e oculta a perversidade institucional envolvida. O fato de as corporações abrangerem pessoas é “tecnicamente verdade, obviamente. O dinheiro que uma corporação ganha a expensas dos consumidores e dos trabalhadores por meio de trocas desiguais forçadas pelo estado é todo distribuído para pessoas.”

De imediato, Carson assume a premissa de que os lucros corporativos geralmente resultam de “trocais desiguais forçadas pelo estado.” Certamente trabalhadores e consumidores amiúde enfrentam ônus impostos pelo estado que reduzem suas probabilidades de trocas otimamente benéficas. Significará isso, porém, que os autores dos lucros corporativos beneficiam-se a expensas deles? Não será possível para ambos os lados até em uma transação “desigual” ficarem em pior situação, na margem, por causa do envolvimento do estado, e no entanto ficarem em situação melhor por haver sido feita a troca? O que dizer dos muitos empresários que lucram em certo ano e têm grandes prejuízos no outro? Foi a expensas deles que consumidores e trabalhadores tiveram lucro?

Aqui tenho de concordar com a visão austríaca segundo a qual se duas partes vêm a fazer negócio, especialmente se ambas saírem satisfeitas, a preferência demonstrada(*) delas é a de que o negócio não foi feito a suas expensas, e sim a bem da melhora geral de sua situação, e isso não deveria ser invalidado por terceiros observadores. Tipicamente, é verdade, as trocas de trabalhadores e consumidores teriam sido ainda mais frutíferas para eles não fora o estado. Por vezes o estado inclusive cria trabalho cativo e mercados consumidores para as corporações. Contudo, a pura produtividade, mesmo na economia de mercado tolhida, por meio da qual trabalhadores e consumidores melhoraram sua situação ao longo dos anos, mesmo se não tanto quanto deveriam tê-lo feito, pareceria indicar que nem todas as suas interações com as corporações se fazem a expensas deles, liquidamente. Eles poderão beneficiar-se muito menos do que deveriam, por causa do estado, mas seguramente a experiência típica de consumidores ou trabalhadors envolvidos mesmo num sistema corporatista não é uma experiência de vitimização cabal, ao contrário do que implica Carson aqui: (* Para a ideia de preferência demonstrada, de Rothbard, e o contraste com a ideia de preferência revelada, de Samuelson ver, por exemplo,http://rationalargumentator.com/Rothbard_demonstratedpreference.html)

[T]odo sistema de exploração de classes da história humana serviu aos interesses de algum grupo de seres humanos. Em toda sociedade da história, não importa quão brutalmente exploradora, obviamente o ganho ilícito foi consumido por “pessoas.” Os patrícios romanos que viviam do suor dos escravos eram pessoas, e bem assim o eram os senhores feudais que extorquiam renda dos camponeses. Suspeito de terem sido “pessoas” — pessoas perversas — quem se aproveitou dos dentes de ouro extraídos em Auschwitz.

Pois bem, quanto a mim, sempre gosto de uma boa comparação com os nazistas, e  tenho posição explícita de oposição à Lei de Godwin. Essa comparação, contudo, parece muito irrazoável. Se a ideia é a de haver paralelo sensato a ser traçado entre aqueles que fazem as corporações lucrar e aqueles que prosperam em estados escravos e campos de concentração, encontro aqui muita coisa contra a qual protestar. Sei ser esse um argumento de reductio ad absurdum, mas ele parece fatalmente falho mesmo em sua concepção fundamental. Um consumidor que entra num Wal-Mart e compra um novo estéreo e CD poderia estar em situação muito melhor se o estado não impusesse barreiras protecionistas a fabricantes estrangeiros de eletrônicos, não aumentasse, por meio do copyright, o custo das músicas gravadas, e não impusesse uma centena de outros custos ao comprador. Entretanto, dificilmente este é vítima da troca ela própria. Ele pode escolher não comprar esses bens em absoluto, e ainda assim passar muito bem no mundo. Ele está realmente escolhendo dar seu dinheiro para as corporações, por mais falha a estrutura subjacente da economia. Além disso, embora qualquer dada corporação possa beneficiar-se de intervenção do estado, pode igualmente sofrer.

Para aplicar a analogia de Carson, se o cliente do Wal-Mart é o homem cujos dentes estão sendo extraídos em Auschwitz, o Wal-Mart não é o sádico nazista que está procedendo à extração – é o negociante que vendeu-lhe os dentes. Talvez o recluso tenha sido desfavorecido injustamente, talvez por causa da intervenção do estado, nisso em que, antes de tudo, ele teve de comprar os dentes. Entretanto, o real paralelo em nossa economia mista não é alguém perdendo o que tem a fim de enriquecer um buscador de lucros corporativos. É, mais amiúde, alguém não ganhando tanto quanto deveria, por causa das regulamentações.

Concordo com que a personalidade corporativa possa colocar problemas e que apenas indivíduos têm direitos. Ron Paul, ele próprio não anarquista, também manifestou esta ideia em resposta à escolha de palavras de Romney. Carson, porém, parece estar indo muito além em sua crítica, não simplesmente questionando a categorização de ficções corporativas como “pessoas,” mas em realidade concordando com que elas constituem pessoas quando julga com severidade a condição ética e o papel produtivo dessas pessoas objeto de discussão.

Dependem lucros corporativos amiúde de intervenção do estado? Claro que sim. Eles não têm, contudo, necessariamente caráter de exploração. Eles certamente não se fazem sempre a expensas de consumidores e trabalhadores. Nós atores do mercado, mesmo um mercado corrompido pelo envolvimento do estado, nem sempre recaímos nitidamente nessas categorias de sermos consumidores e trabalhadores ou beneficiários corporativos. E muitas pessoas que lucram de empreendimentos corporativos fazem-no correndo grande risco, colocando tudo o que têm em jogo, sem o que o empreendendorismo e portanto crescimento econômico e portanto a própria civilização seriam impossíveis. Seguramente as grandes empresas têm prosperado graças ao estado. Eu próprio já expus essa ideia muitas vezes [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,7, 8, 9]. Contudo, o apoio do estado não é elemento indispensável dos lucros corporativos, nem são todas as corporações, mesmo em nosso mundo, tomando tudo em consideração, instituições predatórias cujos ganhos vêm sempre a expensas de trabalhadores e consumidores. No final, as pessoas que optam por comprar das corporações ou por trabalhar para elas, quando de fato há alternativas disponíveis, fazem-no porque estão interessadas em beneficiar-se a si próprias. Num mercado verdadeiramente livre, certamente muito mais boas alternativas estariam disponíveis. Isso não significa, porém, que as escolhas econômicas que as pessoas realmente fazem em nosso falho mundo tenham caráter de exploração ou de opressão.

Embora hostil em relação a aproveitadores corporativos, Carson é muito mais matizado ao discutir outras pessoas que prosperam graças a instituições de privilégio e exploração apoiados pelo estado — pessoas que, em minha opinião, tendem a ser pelo menos igualmente desrespeitosas dos direitos humanos na prática. Ele escreveu acerca da controvérsia trabalhista no Wisconsin em março último:

A educação seria sem dúvida diferente, de várias maneiras, numa sociedade livre — nada de leis de frequência obrigatória, e nada de processamento de recursos humanos em benefício do estado corporativo. Ensinar crianças, contudo, é importante função em qualquer sociedade, e muito do que aqueles professores públicos fazem hoje provavelmente seria carreado sem grandes mudanças.

Em meu modo de ver, os lucros corporativos existiriam em abundância num livre mercado, enquanto houver ineficiências para empresários identificar e tratar, assim beneficiando a sociedade como um todo. Acredito que sempre será assim. Talvez esta seja parte da razão pela qual eu seja capitalista e Carson não. Entretanto, independentemente da questão das corporações numa sociedade livre, discordo veementemente de que grande parte do que os professores de escolas públicas fazem seria “transferido sem grandes mudanças” numa sociedade livre. Dentro de uma geração ou por aí num mundo sem estado, duvido muito que a maioria das crianças fosse sujeitada a algo que se assemelhasse à escola convencional em absoluto. A escolaridade no lar, programas de aulas expositivas nas quais os professores verdadeiramente servem a estudantes e pais, aprendizado online conjugado com interações sociais mais livres e humanas, mais provavelmente prevalecerão, acredito e espero. Nosso sistema prussiano imperialista de escola pública é uma afronta, e as escolas privadas são quase cópias carbono do modelo estatista, por causa de leis de credenciamento e da inércia cultural estatista. A maioria dos empregos nas corporações são em realidade modelos de tratamento humano em comparação com o que muitos alunos de escolas públicas sofrem. Se alguém seria capaz de gostar desse tipo de coisa, eu pensaria num anarquista de mercado com tendências esquerdistas.

Contudo, mesmo sem saber exatamente como seria uma sociedade livre, é difícil para mim ver com que base libertária Carson se mostra mais disposto a humanizar professores de escolas públicas do que beneficiários corporativos. Afinal de contas, no mundo real, professores de escolas públicas sistematicamente conspiram com os administradores (seus pretensos inimigos de classe) e com a polícia para impor frequência. Carson denuncia que as leis de frequência são um problema, mas seguramente elas envenenam o sistema inteiro tanto quanto as intervenções do estado deslustram a vida corporativa. Os professores, em sua maioria, também alegremente se engajam em lavagem cerebral cívica sancionada pelo estado. Eles até impõem trabalhos de casa, onerando adicionalmente jovens pessoas já forçadas a aguentar nove horas ou em torno disso sentadas em torturadoras carteiras de olhos fixos em quadros-negros destruidores da mente, de tal maneira que elas vão para casa não para um pouco de alívio ou para alguma chance de algum desenvolvimento individual, mas sim para abuso adicional entorpecedor da mente. Os professores públicos tendem a ser melhor pagos do que suas contrapartes no setor privado, e tendem a choramingar mais alto todo ano por maior salário e melhores benefícios a expensas do contribuinte.

A quantidade de privilégio estatal envolvida em escorar a mamata da doutrinação das crianças é seguramente comparável, se não exceder de longe, à implicada no caso da corporação média. No entanto, os professores de escolas públicas tendem a estar mais diretamente envolvidos na imposição coercitiva do programa destrutivo de lavagem cerebral, abuso e humilhação do governo dos mais vulneráveis membros da sociedade, do que está a maioria dos beneficiários corporativos diretamente envolvidos em servir o estado onde a coerção se exerça sobre o indivíduo. Certo, deveríamos humanizar os professores das escolas públicas, reconhecer que seu trabalho em alguns casos parece-se um tanto com algo que poderia existir num livre mercado, compreender que muitos deles são boas pessoas que se ressentem do sistema tanto quanto nós nos ressentimos, e não vê-los todos como o equivalente de criminosos de guerra nazistas. No entanto, isso é ainda mais verdadeiro de empresários que recebem lucros corporativos.

Pareceria que Carson estaria usando um procurador para definir quem merece animosidade e quem é digno de simpatia, e esse procurador está baseado numa concepção esquerdista tosca de análise de classe, em vez de em análise de classe clássica liberal. É verdade que os libertários de tendência conservadora amiúde supersimplificam os temas ao considerarem todas as partes do “setor privado” vítimas e todos os “consumidores de tributos” parasitas. Entretanto, um procurador que tende à vilificação da classe capitalista e à empatia em relação à classe proletária — que é o que Carson parece estar fazendo — é algo pelo menos igualmente falho. Não que ele esteja defendendo os policiais do governo, mas Carson faz questão de observar: “Até parte do que a polícia faz, como deter o crime violento e apreender agressores, ainda seria necessário” numa sociedade livre. Seguramente. Mas, na prática, prefiro quase todo beneficiário corporativo a quase todo policial, independentemente da divisão trabalhador-classe capitalista que parece servir Carson em sua decisão no tocante a ou se humanizar um indivíduo que trabalha em nosso falho sistema, ou compará-lo a um nazista.

Admito que parte de minha resistência à concepção carsoniana de corporações como pessoas decorre de minha experiência pessoal. Durante anos em Berkeley, eu próprio comecei a dizer “as corporações são pessoas,” quando argumentando com esquerdinhas de todos os tipos – de social-democratas a social-anarquistas – que gastavam considerável tempo atacando corporações por todas as suas perversidades, mas tinham muito menos ódio do estado. Algumas dessas pessoas, mesmo os assim chamados radicais, por vezes respondiam ao meu fundamentalismo antiestatal com a ideia “governos são pessoas,” e eu argumentava muito como Carson fez em resposta a Romney, desconstruindo o que exatamente aquilo significava. No entanto, descobri que muitas pessoas que verberavam contra as corporações não davam um pio a respeito de liberdade ou mesmo de paz, quando esses eram os temas.

Agora concedo haver algo que se aproxima de uma falácia lógica em meu modo de sentir, se não no puro raciocínio que uso, nesses argumentos envolvendo a frase “corporações são pessoas” — admito que parte de minha reação é desencadeada emocionalmente, uma repulsa em relação àqueles que esposarão algumas das posições que Carson esposa  — e no entanto Carson parece estar indo ainda mais além nessa linha de julgar a posição de alguém baseado em de onde a pessoa procede. Carson escreve em “Corporações São Pessoas?”:

[L]ogo antes de eu ouvir falar da última mancada de Romney, estava lendo a respeito de um estudo do psicólogo Dacher Keltner. A experiência de vida dos ricos, diz ele, torna-os menos empáticos e mais egoístas do que as pessoas comuns. Parte disso é obtusidade deliberada; legitimar ideologias é algo que não apenas habitua os explorados a levar na cabeça como também permite que os exploradores durmam à noite dizendo para si próprios que os pobres realmente merecem.

Os ricos justificam suas relações com outras classes sociais com a ajuda da ideologia estadunidensista, por meio da qual exalçam a percepção de seu próprio entranhado individualismo e veem sua riqueza como resultado de caráter: “Eles acham que o sucesso econômico e resultados políticos, e resultados pessoais, têm a ver com comportamento individual, com uma boa ética de trabalho. …”

Em outras palavras, a ideologia espúria de “livre mercado” — por oposição à genuína — é o ópio das elites.

À parte a psicanálise precária, isso chega perto demais, para meu gosto, a ponto de parecer o polilogismo marxista que Ludwig von Mises refuta cabalmente em suas brilhantes obras, inclusive Ação Humana. “A ideologia estadunidensista,” argumenta Carson, repercute nas pessoas com base na classe, em vez de em princípios filosóficos de apelo potencialmente universal. Ele não diz que a classe determina o raciocínio filosófico de uma pessoa, mas passa perto.

De minha parte, acho que Carson não é preciso, isso se não estiver totalmente errado. Muitos estadunidenses mais pobres compram ideologia vulgar de livre mercado, muitas pessoas ricas denunciam o livre mercado — ou o genuíno ou sua contrafação — o tempo todo. Pessoas pobres votam nos Republicanos para protegerem-se do “socialismo.” E há aqueles, inclusive eu, que se opõem veementemente ao corporatismo e apesar disso ainda o preferem ao socialismo de estado amiúde advogado pela maioria das facções da esquerda. Enquanto isso, há cerca de meia dúzia de anarquistas profusamente ricos que me vêm à mente cujo radicalismo de mercado é positivamente genuíno. E então há os socialistas ricos, e os socialistas pobres, e tudo o que vem no meio. Ademais, Romney, se formos ler o pensamento dele como Carson parece estar fazendo, provavelmente não acredita em nada de sua própria retórica. Ele não está defendendo “ideologia espúria de ‘livre mercado’” para dormir melhor à noite — e sim para ganhar votos.

Mais importante, porém: é um equívoco tomar esse caminho ao criticar os pontos de vista de alguém. Se Romney está errado em humanizar corporações do modo como o fez, e não acredito que o ponto de vista dele seja nem de perto tão trivial quanto Carson acha, isso não é necessariamente um reflexo da classe à qual pertence Romney. Essa maneira marxiana de olhar o mundo é análise teórica pobre. Já ouvi pessoas de todos os pontos do espectro econômico parecerem com Romney falando acerca das corporações.

As corporações são pessoas também. E, sim, os governos também. Será que todas as pessoas que lucram a partir das grandes empresas merecem o que ganham? Não. Será que todos os trabalhadores do governo merecem nosso ódio? Não. No entanto, uma abordagem equilibrada baseada em respeito pela dignidade e liberdade do indivíduo numa sociedade amiúde demasiado estritamente controlada pelo maquinário brutal da coerção institucional produzirá um modo de ver muito mais matizado do que aquele que Carson produziu ao condenar os auferidores de lucro corporativos, e provavelmente um ponto de vista muito mais crítico dos professores públicos enquanto classe. Os beneficiários corporativos, em sua maioria,  não são tão maus quanto os nazistas. Muitos deles são heroicos benfeitores da humanidade. E, em sua maioria, são pelo menos tão defensáveis e admiráveis quanto o professor público médio que recebe pagamento do governo, mesmo quando pareça ser membro da “classe trabalhadora.”

*  *  *

Anthony Gregory é editor de pesquisa no Instituto Independente. Visite-o em AnthonyGregory.com.

Artigo original afixado por Anthony Gregory em 15 de agosto de 2011.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

The mills of government grind with exceeding slowness when it comes to turning out reform-measures. Indeed, it requires an enormous popular pressure to make them move at all; and when a measure designed to correct some crying evil in our social system is finally ground out into law, even then its enforcement is by no means assured. Political government offers privilege every facility for circumventing the popular will whenever it becomes inimical to the interests of privilege, as it is the business of political government to do; and the way of the reformer is by consequence hard and wearisomely repetitious. Thus, Federal laws aimed at the abolition of child-labour have twice been declared unconstitutional by Federal courts; meanwhile the economic slavery of children continues, just as the economic slavery of the expropriated masses, be they children or adults, will inevitably continue until its causes are finally known for what they are and are done away with.

There are many well-meaning people who, while they accept the social order which fosters economic slavery, have yet a horror of its manifestation in the enforced labour of children. This is perhaps due to the fact that in child-labour the cruelty of the system is dramatically apparent. The natural human instinct to protect the helpless of childhood makes people who have not dividends at stake resent any advantage being taken of the helplessness; whereas the exploitation of adults does not arouse the same feeling of pit and indignation because people, even those without dividends, are not accustomed to recognize the equal helplessness of adults in the face of the existing economic order. Then, too, as our child-welfare workers are at pains to point out, the health of the growing child may be permanently impaired and his proper physical and mental development thwarted by excessive labour at arduous tasks; while his legitimate claim to some degree of acquaintance with the three R’s is denied him when he is kept out of school in order that he may augment the family income through his labours. Indeed, the literature of the reformers of child-labour conditions, like most literature of reform, impresses one with the desire of its authors to right a lesser social evil in so far as is compatible with the careful preservation of the greater evil from which the lesser evil springs.

It is hard to discover any proper place for sentiment in this matter of child-labour. There are, as this paper sees it, two logical attitudes towards the up-bringing of children, both of which depend for justification upon the attitude which is to be taken towards life itself. If the purpose of life be hard labour for the many with excessive ease for the few, then the children of the working masses, as the labour-motors of the future, should of course be reared with proper regard to their future effectiveness as labour-motors. That is, they should not be required during their period of growth to perform labours which will incapacitate them, physically or mentally, fot their more profitable exploitation later on, when they should normally be more powerful and productive machines. Here the reformer has a logical place. Employers of child-labour, be they industrialists, or parents who use their children’s labour to assist them in their own occupations, are likely to overwork their little employees, the industrialist through short-sightedness or indifference, the parent through ignorance or necessity, or both. The reformer, by securing the passage of laws regulating the hours and conditions of child-labour, and prescribing a certain amount of compulsory “education,” may do much to correct this tendency, and thus insure a greater degree of health and a lesser degree of stupidity in that larger life of exploitation which awaits the exploited children of the poor.

But there is another, and we are inclined to believe a more legitimate conception of the purpose of life than this, namely: that life is given to us to be enjoyed; and the only true enjoyment of life consists in fulfilling the inherent law of being, which is physical, mental and spiritual growth. “The best man,” says Socrates, “is he who most tries to perfect himself, and the happiest man is he who most feels that he is perfecting himself.” If one accept this simple and logical view of goodness and happiness, then one must repudiate the economic exploitation, not of children only but also of adults, for the man whose nose is kept securely tied to the grindstone of physical necessities will have precious little leisure in which to perfect himself or to give thought to the proper development of his children. If he is obliged to work for a wage less than the amount needed to support his family, then if his children are to be adequately fed and clothed and sheltered, they must perforce be set to work at some gainful occupation, however much better it might be for them if they could play a little, or go to school. It is unfortunate, but people must eat before they can grow, and the only way they can get beyond a preoccupation with mere eating is to rid themselves of the gourmand that devours all their surplus — that is, of the land monopolist.

It is land-monopoly which, in the last analysis, makes it necessary for people to put their children to work; because land-monopoly means high rents and low wages. The connexion between land-monopoly and child-labor is especially clear, since seventy-two per cent of the child-labour in this country is agricultural and by far the greater number of that seventy-two percent of rural child-workers are the children of tenant-farmers. Because of the extortionate demandds of the landlords, the tenant-farmer is obliged to use the labour of his children in order to make ends meet; and n this connexion it is significant that tenant-framing and child-labour have both shown a very considerable increase in this country in recent years.

With the causes of child-labour thus apparent, it would seem that people who can regard with complacency such evils in our social order as starvation-wages or a “normal” unemployment-condition involving a million and a half-workers, must be either fools or knaves when they concern themselves with child-labour on anything but a strictly utilitarian basis. As for those whose enlightened love for childhood teaches them that the development and happiness of these little ones depends upon the removal of the economic disabilities which hamper all workers, their place is certainly not among the ranks of the reformers.

From reddit.com/r/Anarchism:

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“Too much public education only gets working people riled up and full of backsass.”
— Virginia Senator Harry Flood Byrd

My home town is one of those slowly rotting East Coast burgs that makes passers-through think to themselves: “What the hell is this? Mayberry USA on crack?”  The town’s 250-year old core is a blighted clot of ramshackle houses carved into apartments and cheesy businesses. Its outer rim of slurb is the typical ugly gash of commercial hell, an assortment of mindlessly jammed-together tire dealers, grim asphalt, slurp and burps, and car dealerships of the type that make the U.S. one of the ugliest nations on earth. A sign in the median strip of this gash proclaims Winchester an official U.S. “All-American Town.”

To its credit however, the town does have that special kind of seediness found only in the American South. It might even be considered weirdly colorful in an America Studies sort of way, with its hard-faced characters straight out of Grapes of Wrath and spooky and well-scrubbed Bible thumpers. Beauty being in the eye of the beholder, our local Chamber of Commerce calls it “Historic Winchester, Virginia.”  But many of us who grew up here call it Dickville; if you were born and raised here you were probably dicked from the beginning.

Faced with life in such a town, there is only one solution. Beer. So I sit here at Burt’s Westside Tavern (The name is changed on the slight chance some local will find this on the internet, then convince Burt he can sue me for libel). Burt’s Westside is a lunch and after-work beer dump, the lair of the rightwing working class, along with the regular line-up of small town loser boozers and a couple of militia types. In the end booth sits a fat guy wearing a tee shirt that reads: “One million battered women in this country and I’ve been eating mine plain!” That this is not considered especially offensive at Burt’s says all one needs to know about the cultural and gender sensitivity of the clientele. And the fact that this fellow — who I have known since high school and whose name is Pooty — votes, is probably something I would be afraid to contemplate, were not cheap American beer such a palliative for anxious thought tonight.

Every customer at Burt’s loves George Bush. Worships George Bush. One reason is because George Bush doesn’t give a shit. When his detractors point out the complete fraud of WMDs, he doesn’t give a shit.  When newspapers worldwide suggest Bush may be the biggest international threat today, Bush does not give a shit. This gives him street cred among these people who for better or worse, I must call my own. Why should they give a shit about international opinion? After all, as presented by the media, the world outside is altogether nasty terrain — a news hour nether region from whence child suicide bombers swarm toward us in a tide that will only be stopped by a good old goddam American pounding with the biggest ball busting bombs we can muster. So Bush “sounds right” when he says, “We will not cut and run.” And when George Bush sneers “Bring’em on!” he sounds even more right. Sounding right is everything when you don’t know shit from Shinola. Here is their political universe, which I’m sure you’ve heard before but it’s always best to keep horsecrap in one pile:

• Muslims are out to kill us all. So we need to kill them all first.
• Democrats, a party of liberal queers supported by ghetto blacks, Commie college professors and Mafia-backed unions, let 9/11 happen.
• The world hates us because we are rich.
• The snail-eating, wine-besotted French are a bunch of spiteful pussies, ungrateful that we saved their asses in World War II.

And that’s it. That is the common wisdom. If it appears too common to be believable, then you have never lived in the American South.

Such ignorance may be funny to observe, but if you think about it, it is the kind of viral stuff that has eaten away much of the American polity’s very ability to think and its ability to do more than merely react to propaganda, or to the price of gas or misrepresentations that sound right. And if you are a liberal, you are going to square off with these people at the polls in November. There are a lot of them, not all as ornery as the crowd at Burt’s to be sure, but never the less a huge number of the same political and economic stripe.

These are the skilled and semi-skilled workers, people without a college degree, (in this town, nearly two fifths of working adults without even a high school degree) some thoughtful and self-educating, others not. They represent 55% of all voters. Many are the inexplicable self-screwing working folks who voted neo-conservative Republican in 2000. Never mind that Bush’s economic policies are why so many of them are drinking short beers tonight, or that his tax plan made them poorer and the rich much richer. They approved of it simply because it was called a tax “cut”, and because many of them needed their $200 rebate scrap of that federal hog to pay off last winter’s heating bill. By any realistic assessment, nearly everyone in Burt’s is working poor. They would never admit it. Nor do government guidelines acknowledge them as such. But so long as the current administration infers that people like them are heroes (they identify heavily with the firemen, policemen of 911 and the soldiers in Iraq) they don’t need no steenking economic justice. According to a recent Roper poll, 49% of Americans in this economic class will vote for George Bush in ’04. Here in Burt’s it is probably 100%. Obviously, I am making no pretense at liberal humility or sensitivity. So if you are not willing to call dumb dumb when you see it, you might want to quit reading right about here.

What these folks really need is for someone to say out loud: “Now lookee here dammit! You are dumber than a sack of hammers and should’a got an education so you would have half a notion of what’s going on.” Someone once told me that and, along with the advice never to mix Mad Dog 20-20 with whiskey, it is the best I ever received. But no one in America is about to say such a thing out loud because it sounds elitist. It sounds un-American and undemocratic. It also might get your nose broken in certain venues. In an ersatz democracy maintaining the popular national fiction that everyone is equal, it is impermissible to say that, although we may all have equal constitutional rights, we are not equal. It takes at least some effort toward self-improvement just to get to the starting line of socioeconomic equality, plus an ongoing effort at being informed, if you want to function in America nowadays.

So why are my people so impervious to information? Hell, thanks to their kids, most of them I know even have the Internet. Well, I can say the Internet’s vast realms are available to all, including the presently uninformed. I can also say that a tater bug can drag a bale of cotton from my house to yours.  But that doesn’t make it true about the Internet or the tater bug. My faith in the Internet’s information democracy wilted when I once suggested to a friend facing eviction that we Google up renter’s rights to learn his options, and watched him type in “rinters kicked out.” Then too, when we bumped into the banner on a site reading: “JENNIFER LICKS THE HUGE MAN’S SWORD,” we both got kind of sidetracked. Yet two weeks later he had found Newsmax and learned how to bookmark it. Sometimes I think the GOP emits a special pheromone that attracts fools and money.

Pooty, how did we git so dumb?

Despite how it appears, our mamas did not drop us on our heads. What I watch in Burt’s with such mixed feelings of humor and outrage is America’s unacknowledged class system at work. Saying that our system and its GOP helmsmen skin the poor and working classes out of all opportunity is like saying a $40 hooker will nearly always steal your wallet on the way out of the motel room. Everybody knows that. However, no one but the so-called “far left” ever talks about the extremely localized and not so nice ways in which small and middle-sized towns such as Dickville are important to American capitalism’s machinery. They are where the first rip-offs are pulled, where the first muggings take place. Where the first dollars and opportunities are wrung from the basic needs of the machine’s human components, otherwise known as working stiffs. Southern towns like Dickville are perfect for observing it clearly because here it manifests itself in high definition, spittle flecked, living color. This pig wears no lipstick.

The lives and intellectual cultures of the hardest working people in these towns are not just stunted by the smallness of the society into which they were born. They are purposefully held in bondage by a local network of moneyed families, bankers, developers, lawyers, and business people in whose interests it is to have a cheap, unquestioning and compliant labor force. They invest in developing such a force by not investing (how’s that for making money out of thin air!) in the education and quality of life for anyone but their own. These places are, as they say, “investment paradise.” That means low taxes, few or no local regulations, no unions, and a Chamber of Commerce tricked out like a gaggle of hookers, welcoming the new non-union, air poisoning battery acid factory. “To hell with pollution. We gonna sell some propity, move some real’state today fellas!” Big contractors, realtors, lawyers, everybody gets a slice, except the poorly educated non-union mooks who will be employed at the acid plant at discount rates.

At the same time, and more importantly, this business cartel — and you have to call it that — controls most elected offices and municipal boards. Incidentally, it makes for some ridiculous civic scenarios: When our town’s educators decided to hold a conference on the future employment needs of our youth, the keynote speaker was the CEO of a local rendering plant — a vast, stinking facility that cooks down roadkills and expended deep fryer fats into the goop they put in animal feeds. He got a standing ovation from the school board and all the downtown main pickle vendors. Not a soul in that Best Western events room thought it was ironic. If you think I am insinuating that the pecker-in-the-dirt ignorance of folks like those at Burt’s has been institutionalized and cultivated, you are right.

A bootstrap is just another strap

Anyone who actually believes that all these poor working puds can beat this system, lift themselves up by their bootstraps, is either a neo-con ideologue or the child of advantage. Most readers of this article probably have a college education. Because only 25% of Americans get a college degree, we are the children of advantage, even if we got it the hard way. It may not feel like having one up on the majority, but if we get off the Internet for a while and spend just one day driving around the unpleasant towns and neighborhoods we avoid, those where the check cashing businesses and the pawnshops flourish, it becomes obvious. And I am not talking about ghettoes either. I’m talking about the heartland of America where it’s supposed to be all lightning bug summers and hotdogs on the grill.

Admittedly, in many places a true blue collar middle class still exists — just as unions still exist. But both have had the snot substantially kicked out of them by repeated Republican (and not a few Democratic) assaults. Both are on the ropes like some old boxing pug taking the facial cuts and popping eye capillaries with no referee to come in and stop the carnage. The American bootstrap myth is just another strap that makes the working poor privately conclude that they must in some way be inferior, given that they cannot seem to apply it to their lives. Hell Homer, if the friggin immigrant gooks can put together successful business of their own, why can’t you keep up with your truck payments? (Answer: Because he ain’t got no damned health insurance, and his family’s medicine keeps him broke.) Right now, even by the government’s spruced-up numbers, one-third of working Americans make less than $9 an hour.  Looking a decade ahead, five of the ten fastest-growing jobs will be menial, dead-end jokes on the next generation — mainly retail clerks, cashiers, and janitors, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Some of us were born sons of a toiling god, with the full understanding that life was never meant to be easy. But at least we could always believe that our kids had a chance for a better life. These days, it’s harder to believe that.  Allow me this simple observation from my own life:  I am quite certain that if I were trying to get into college today with the mediocre grades I made, and no family “college fund,” or family home to second mortgage, I would not have made it as far as I have. There were college scholarships, loans, and programs out the yin yang, and a high school education more or less prepared one for college.  That is not to say the class divide was not a steep and ugly ditch back then. It was. But it is an absolute canyon now and growing deeper. All one has to do is look around at the un-funded No Child Left Behind program or the scam of “teacher-based accountability.” When it became obvious that Johnny is now so damned dumb he can’t pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the bottom — assuming he could even read the instructions — the current regime was quick to get up a posse to lynch the school marm, then resume the theft of education funds on behalf of the rich. Neo-conservative leaders understand quite well that education has a liberalizing effect on a society. Presently they are devising methods to smuggle resources to those American madrassas, the Christian fundamentalist schools, a sure way to make the masses even more stupid if ever there was one. Is it any wonder the Gallup Poll tells us that 48 percent of Americans believe that God spit on his beefy paws and made the universe in seven days? Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution. It is no accident that number corresponds roughly to the number with college degrees. So intelligent liberals are advised to save their depression and the good booze for later, when things get worse.

Some final commie screed …

In case the blunt hammer with which I have been beating to death this issue of education-as-the-ultimate-solution still has not left its mark, allow me one more observation. Many people reading this financed their children’s education with second mortgages.  The working poor do not have that option. (Although college may be moot anyway if your kids graduate from neglected public high schools thinking that H2O is a cable channel.) They rent until they die, with no option of passing along accumulated wealth in the form of equity in a home — which is the way most families do it in this country — to their children. So over the generations they stay stuck or lose ground. And stay dumb and drink beer at Burt’s and vote Republican because no real liberal voice, the kind that speaks the rock bottom, undeniable truth, ever enters their lives. But it can. I have on occasion at Burt’s found an agreeing ear to all of the very arguments above.

When the current administration is finished looting the commonweal it will make the Reagan era rip-job look like a charity ball. That is a given. We will have to swallow it whole. Then it will be up to real liberals, and I am NOT talking about the Democratic Party kind, to repair the damage for decades to come. Assuming we can un-elect George Bush again, and assuming we can make it stick this time. We cannot count on another Clinton decade of free market slight of hand. Nor can we settle for Democratic Party concocted federal programs that give disenfranchised citizens a flush of money, then sends them forth with no more education than god gave a soggy animal cracker so they can be suckered into buying the newest four-wheel drive GM hog or die in the oil wars that are surely coming. Everyone will have to be smarter, if there is to be any kind of future for anyone but the rich, who will by then have managed to escape to Aspen, or the desert, or Southern France, or wherever it is that thievery’s princes always escape to. They have their choice of places, but we will be stuck here. Together.

One of the few good things about growing older is that one can remember what otherwise appears to have been purposefully erased from the national memory. Forty years ago all men of goodwill agreed that every citizen had the right to a free and credible education. Manifestation of one’s fullest potential was considered a national goal. Now these have come to be labeled as unworkable ideas. (Maybe even downright com’nist, Pooty.) But in the long term, those are the only things which will save us all, because if labor hath no brother, then doth no man. These are the only things that will realign us with that notion of good yeoman liberty to which we have always at least paid lip service, and toward which we should grope even in, and perhaps especially in, such darkening times. No, it will not stop the present jingoistic warmongering of our rogue nation. Nothing but millions taking to the streets can do that. But it will go a long, long way toward ensuring that it never happens again.

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Kevin Carson.

Observar duas intelectualmente deficientes bonecas Ken com “penteado tipo executivo” — Mitt Romney e Rick Perry — preparando-se para debater lembra-me o quanto sinto falta de Dan Quayle.

Por incrível que pareça, logo antes de eu ouvir falar da última mancada de Romney, estava lendo a respeito de um estudo do psicólogo Dacher Keltner. A experiência de vida dos ricos, diz ele, torna-os menos empáticos e mais egoístas do que as pessoas comuns. Parte disso é obtusidade deliberada; legitimar ideologias é algo que não apenas habitua os explorados a levar na cabeça como também permite que os exploradores durmam à noite dizendo para si próprios que os pobres realmente merecem.

Os ricos justificam suas relações com outras classes sociais com a ajuda da ideologia estadunidensista, por meio da qual exalçam a percepção de seu próprio entranhado individualismo e veem sua riqueza como resultado de caráter: “Eles acham que o sucesso econômico e resultados políticos, e resultados pessoais, têm a ver com comportamento individual, com uma boa ética de trabalho. …”(*) (* A Wikipedia explica que a ética de (ou do) trabalho não se confunde com ética de negócios e sim consiste num conjunto de valores baseado no trabalho árduo e na diligência. Exemplo, clássico aliás, seria a ética de trabalho protestante. Uma ética de trabalho incluiria ser pessoa de confiança, ter iniciativa, ou perseguir a aquisição de novas habilidades. A ética de trabalho, segundo alguns, não se limitaria ao trabalho árduo, mas também a virtudes pessoais daquele que trabalha arduamente, indispensáveis para o desenvolvimento e a sustentação de livres mercados. Ver Wikipedia, Work ethic.)

Em outras palavras, a ideologia espúria de “livre mercado” — por oposição à genuína — é o ópio das elites. Que as liberta da culpa pelo privilégio e torna sua existência suportável. A ideologia neoliberal — tal como aparece nos programas de locutores do CNBC, na página editorial do Wall Street Journal – WSJ, e nos artigos bajulatórios de FreedomWorks — defende o modelo existente de capitalismo corporativo e suas grandes concentrações de riqueza como se resultassem de virtude superior num mercado competitivo (“é assim que nosso sistema de livre mercado funciona”). Deliberadamente obscurece o papel fundamental da intervenção do governo — formas de escassez artificial, direitos artificiais de propriedade, subsídios — na atual distribuição de riqueza e de poder econômico.

De volta a Romney: Em resposta a um aparteador, ele replicou espirituosamente que “As corporações são pessoas. … Tudo o que as corporações ganham também vai para pessoas.” Diante das gargalhadas da plateia, ele perguntou “Para onde vocês pensam que vai?” “Para os bolsos deles!” retrucou o aparteador. “Bolsos de quem?” retornou Romney. “Para os bolsos de pessoas! Seres humanos, meu amigo.”

Isso é tecnicamente verdade, obviamente. O dinheiro que uma corporação ganha a expensas dos consumidores e dos trabalhadores por meio de trocas desiguais forçadas pelo estado é todo distribuído para pessoas.

Mas e daí? A menos que David Icke esteja certo e nós sejamos secretamente governados por lagartos alienígenasinvasores, todo sistema de exploração de classes da história humana serviu aos interesses de algum grupo de seres humanos. Em toda sociedade da história, não importa quão brutalmente exploradora, obviamente o ganho ilícito foi consumido por “pessoas.” Os patrícios romanos que viviam do suor dos escravos eram pessoas, e bem assim o eram os senhores feudais que extorquiam rents dos camponeses. Suspeito de terem sido “pessoas” — pessoas perversas — quem se aproveitou dos dentes de ouro extraídos em Auschwitz.

A questão é, que pessoas? Para quem a riqueza das corporações monopolistas flui desproporcionalmente? Para as mesmas pessoas para as quais foram os lucros do trabalho escravo e os rents do feudalismo, as pessoas descritas por Adam Smith: “Tudo para nós, e nada para outras pessoas, parece, em toda época do mundo, ter sido a vil máxima dos senhores do gênero humano.”

Felizmente para eles, os senhores têm a mitologia do “capitalismo de pessoas” — na qual os lucros corporativos vão todos para planos de aposentadoria pagos pelo empregador, para fundos de pensão e para a economia de posse de pessoas comuns que fazem day-trading na Internet — para assegurarem a si próprios não serem realmente lombrigas solitárias gigantes, em absoluto. Toda essa conversa acerca de injustiça e riqueza ganha sem trabalho é apenas “guerra de classes,” a “política da inveja.” Ou, como Romney desdenhou, “Houve uma época neste país quando não atacávamos as pessoas por causa do sucesso delas.”

O sucesso do próprio Romney merece alguma perscrutação. Ele está concorrendo como antigo Executivo Principal que — diferentemente de Obama — compreende “como a economia funciona.” Vejam, ele conhece em primeira mão as necessidades dos heroicos homens de negócios que “criam empregos.”

Em realidade, porém, Romney fez tudo usando o mesmo estoque de táticas/métodos de Mestre em Administração de Empresas que Chainsaw Al e Bob Nardelli: Eviscerar o capital humano, vender ativos da empresa em proveito pessoal, esvaziar a capacidade produtiva de longo prazo para inflar os números deste trimestre e fazer subir os preços das ações, em seguida garantir sua própria indenização por exoneração de executivo e emborcar a casca vazia em cima de outro comedor de carniça. Romney, como executivo, foi, para o enxugamento de pessoal [downsizing], o que Maria Tifoide foi para a tifoide.(*) (* Maria Tifoide foi a primeira pessoa nos Estados Unidos identificada como portadora assintomática do patógeno associado à febre tifoide. http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon)

É natural que Romney se agarre a qualquer pretexto para ver a si próprio como alguma coisa além de apenas outro paspalho da classe mais alta que por ocupar a terceira posição acha que conseguiu fazer um triplo(*). Graças ao evangelho de Sucesso, Realização e Prosperidade, os vis senhores do gênero humano podem continuar dizendo a si próprios que afinal não são parasitas; estão apenas tomando posse do que lhes é devido. (* Analogia com beisebol, esporte do qual não entendo.)

Artigo original afixado por Kevin Carson em 15 de agosto de 2011.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Anna Morgenstern.

Uma das coisas que torna a polêmica política diabolicamente difícil e amiúde sorrateiramente diversiva é as máquinas de propaganda da sociedade estatista evacuarem o contexto e eviscerarem o conteúdo, a fim de desinformar-nos e manipular-nos. Vale dizer, os eventos são-nos dados num vácuo, contra um campo de assunções ideológicas implícitas mas nunca postas em evidência. Uma vez aceitemos esse vácuo, não temos como entender o que realmente acontece e, pois, o que fazer a respeito, seja tática, seja estrategicamente. Esse plano de fundo de assunções também constrange nossas possibilidades conhecidas, tornando difícil escolher coerentemente quer meios, quer fins, no curto ou longo prazos. E visto as assunções ficarem ardilosamente embutidas, raramente são questionadas. Poder-se-ia chamar isso de o mito do não mito.

Em geral, esse mito é espertamente urdido com aparentes contradições mas sempre levando-nos em alguma direção que ajudará a classe dominante, na base de “se der cara eu venço, se der coroa você perde”.  Um vislumbre das eleições presidenciais nos Estados Unidos nos últimos 30 anos ou em torno disso é exemplo quase óbvio demais. De um lado sempre está um sujeito que posa de corporatista, militarista, conservador social devedor de favores a Wall Street… e do outro está o candidato Republicano.

Sim, Virgínia, há diferenças entre a “esquerda” e a “direita” oficiais. Essas diferenças, todavia, ficam “divididas” de tal modo que um segmento da classe dominante se beneficia independentemente de quem você apóie. Tendo pessoalmente a preferir a tirania econômica indireta à tirania pseudorreligiosa do controle do prazer, e suspeito que a maioria de vocês também preferiria, sendo vocês os descontraídos devassos que conheço e amo. Ainda assim nada há para comemorar. A outra vantagem, para os que pretendem ser nossos senhores, da criação de duas “alas” incoerentes e contraditórias em si próprias é que, numa democracia, eles tenderão a revezar-se na administração das coisas, de maneira a cada facção da classe dominante diligenciar para que suas probabilidades sejam mais favorecidas. Há guerra nos céus, mas não somos convidados para o jantar da vitória. Você poderá inclusive *ser* o jantar da vitória, de um modo ou de outro.

Tanto quanto eu perceba, os dois maiores problemas sociais que temos numa sociedade estatista são Guerra e Pobreza. E, como seria de esperar, raramente esses dois temas são tratados diretamente.

Quase todos os “problemas” sociais com que se defronta o mundo de hoje são resultado direto ou indireto da pobreza. Falta de acesso a água limpa potável, falta de acesso a cuidados de saúde, crime, até poluição, estão, todos, relacionados com pobreza. E as “soluções” políticas oferecidas são programas tipo colcha de retalhos quebra-galhos que aliviam um ou mais dos sintomas de pobreza, mas projetados para fazer o mínimo possível para reduzir a pobreza em si. Muitos deles criam mais pobreza no longo prazo, gerando todos novos problemas para a classe dominante “resolver”.  Ao advogar uma solução política para qualquer desses microproblemas fora de contexto você fica à mercê da classe dominante que diz, à maneira de Agostinho: “Eliminemos a pobreza, mas não ainda”.  A interpretação mais caridosa do esquerdismo político poderia dizer que a esperança é a de que, dando-se paulatinamente poder ao povo, ele poderá gradualmente fazer reverter a gravata aplicada na economia pela classe dominante. Como, todavia, observou a respeito da escravidão WL Garrison:  “Gradualismo na teoria é perpetuidade na prática”. A ideia de “onerar os ricos” é um disparate. Os ricos nunca se onerarão a si próprios. Não pode haver estado no qual a classe dominante aja contra seus próprios interesses de modo total e coerentemente.

Na verdade, há, na esquerda política oficial, muito pouca sensibilização ou apoio a políticas que afetariam diretamente a elite corporativa, mediante subtrair-se seus subsídios e privilégios. O raciocínio ou justificativa parece ser que “precisamos dos ricos para formar uma base tributária a ser usada para ajudar os pobres”.  A ironia seria engraçada, não fora pelas implicações concretas.

O resultado inevitável naturalmente é que a classe dos pobres se expande enquanto a classe média é arrochada e finalmente torna-se “caro demais” manter todos os programas voltados para manter os pobres em situação confortável, e são tomadas “medidas de austeridade”. Então, quando os pobres naturalmente se rebelam, a ala oficial da “direita” arenga acerca de como os pobres desejam despojar a classe média, e estão dispostos a tomar medidas violentas para tanto. Ou o quê? Morrer de inanição? Viver em miséria abjeta? Bem, está certo, Chefe. A “direita” adora falar acerca da moralidade da propriedade privada, mas na verdade não é sincera. Os ricos não têm respeito pela propriedade privada das classes pobre e média. Usam isso como pretensa clava contra os pobres forçados à miséria e contra a classe média que naturalmente deseja um pedaço do espólio do saque estatista. Quando, porém, seus próprios interesses são ameaçados, então são todos a favor de socorros financeiros e empréstimos garantidos pelo governo e coisas da espécie. Toda a justificativa para a existência de bancos centrais (ou quase centrais, como na Lei Nacional dos Bancos, muito antes da vil Reserva Federal existir, ou da frequente “suspensão dos pagamentos em espécie” antes disso) é pura e simplesmente “assistencialismo” para os ricos. Proteger o sistema bancário de falência sistêmica significa permitir aos bancos emprestar o que é essencialmente dinheiro roubado para pessoas ricas para empreendimentos arriscados a que elas não ousariam lançar-se com suas próprias economias. Não há outra maneira de um banco poder falir, mas isso nunca é explicado desse modo.

“Propriedade Intelectual” é outra forma de protecionismo para os ricos a expensas da propriedade real das classes pobre e média. Eles querem dizer a você o que você pode fazer com sua própria propriedade argumentando serem donos do conteúdo e das ideias embutidas nessa propriedade. Pelo fato de afirmarem isso, e de terem advogados, armas de fogo e dinheiro.

A pergunta a ser feita é “em vez de (fingir) combater todos esses problemas sociais associados à pobreza, por que simplesmente não acabamos com a pobreza?”  Um homem em situação confortável não pode ser economicamente coagido. Isso, porém, é exatamente aquilo de que a classe dominante tem medo. Seus membros preferirão ser bilionários num mundo com pobreza maciça a ser trilionários num mundo sem pobreza porque, neste último, o ricos será apenas mais uma pessoa a quem ninguém deve nada, de quem ninguém precisa particularmente. Ele deseja sentir-se importante, quer que vocês dependam dele. Quer que a economia segundo a qual benefícios para os ricos redundam em benefícios para todos seja verdade, e matará milhões de pessoas para assegurar que assim seja.

O que nos traz ao outro problema importante, a Guerra. A guerra permite o atingimento de três objetivos principais para a classe dominante. Primeiro, destrói excesso de capital e de trabalho fora do jardim murado dos que estão por dentro. Segundo, é meio de coagir membros renegados da classe dominante que decidam afastar-se demais das regras específicas do jogo. Terceiro, mobiliza, dentro do país, apoio à classe dominante. Os membros desta podem justificar mais intrometimento e incursão nos assuntos comuns de “seus” cidadãos durante tempo de guerra, argumentando tratar-se de situação de emergência, e essas medidas serem para o bem dos cidadãos como um todo.

É o primeiro desses dois benefícios que levou o General Smedly Butler a dizer “Guerra é Trapaça”.  O terceiro benefício levou Randolph Bourne a dizer “A Guerra é a Saúde do Estado”. O fato é que as pessoas comuns não se beneficiam com a guerra, mesmo quando seu governo específico “vence”. Algumas morrerão, todas pagarão, ou diretamente por meio de aumento de tributos ou, mais comumente, indiretamente, por meio de “gastos deficitários” que se transformam em inflação monetária, a mais regressiva forma de tributação (eis porque a “direita” política a prefere à tributação direta). Por cima disso, sofrem a devastação moral de serem estupeficadas pela matança de milhares ou até milhões de pessoas.

Portanto, se soluções políticas não podem superar a devastação global da pobreza e da guerra, o que poderá? A autonomia pessoal é o único modo de podermos solapar e depor a classe dominante.

Você não pode simplesmente levantar-se e mudar o sistema. O que pode fazer, porém, é subvertê-lo. Se pessoas bastantes subverterem as coisas por tempo longo o suficiente, o sistema mudará na prática. Para fazer isso, você terá de parar de comprar a ideia de que o sistema tal como existe é legítimo, que ele pode alegar direitos sobre o seu comportamento. Subversão, sedição e sabotagem. Ação direta na persecução de seus objetivos. Isso não apenas traz resultados como possibilita a você viver de novo como ser humano. Você será, se não completamente livre, libertado da malbaratadora armadilha de jogar fora sua vida tentando convencer a classe dominante a ir contra os próprios interesses dela.

Artigo original afixado por Anna Morgenstern em 6 de março de 2011.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

I haven’t read Brink Lindsey’s new book, Human Capitalism: How Economic Growth Has Made Us Smarter — and More Unequal, yet. But I’m following his exegeses thereof over at Bleeding Heart Libertarians, and I think I see some worthwhile points to argue in his post on the book’s “inconvenient implications” for libertarians:

“Inequality matters,” writes Lindsey. “Libertarians typically feel like they’re on the defensive when the subject of inequality comes up, and they tend to react by minimizing its importance. Growth and opportunity are what we should care about, not equal outcomes. Indeed, inequality is a corollary of freedom: people with different abilities and preferences will naturally diverge in terms of socioeconomic achievement. … But if you’re any kind of contractarian, and I am, you recognize that a society’s policies and institutions should be judged on how well they work for everybody. So if one group in society is thriving while the rest lack vital opportunities or are failing to take advantage of those that are available, it makes sense to sit up, take notice, and look carefully at whether current policies and institutions need to be altered.”

My first problem with this as a libertarian is not that I oppose “equality” and prefer growth and opportunity.

Rather it is — or at least stems from the fact — that I am not a “[social] contractarian.” As I mentioned in a comment over at Gene Callahan’s blog, I consider the notion of a “social contract” to be a political class weapon, on par in terms of innovation and destruction with the introduction of gunpowder, chemical weapons or the atom bomb, rather than as a treaty that ends Hobbes’s alleged “war of all against all.”

The poison pill in “equality of outcome” schemes pursuant to “social contract” is that they do a lot more to entrench and protect the status quo than they do to actually remedy injustices. They do the latter only temporarily, arbitrarily and capriciously. They are undertaken for the express purpose of simmering down discontent so as to prop up the wobbly (not Wobbly!) states which such discontent might topple.

The obvious example is the American civil rights movement as it manifested in the 1950s and 1960s. The resulting changes, from the Voting Rights Act to desegregation to “affirmative action,” were not implemented because they were right. They were implemented because that movement credibly threatened the continuation in power of the existing political class. So the political class vomited up a mess of pottage and enough people accepted it in lieu of their birthright to keep the establishment rolling along and on the rails.

My second problem is with Lindsey’s premise, to wit “people with different abilities and preferences will naturally diverge in terms of socioeconomic achievement.” The Center for a Stateless Society’s Kevin Carson has argued — to my mind compellingly — the opposite, in “Inequality as a Revolt Against Nature.”

The “social contract,” as embodied by the state, is inherently anti-equality. Its raison d’etre is to effect a continuous redistribution of wealth — an imposed inequality of outcome — “upward” from the productive class to the political class, and absent that imposed redistribution we would see a natural convergence, not a divergence, of socioeconomic achievement.

If “bleeding heart libertarians” really value equality, they have to give up the state to get it. Policy tweaks will never address the problem. The existence of “policy” — of political government — is the problem.

In its 67th edition, El Libertario, an anarchist newspaper from Venezuela, predicted Hugo Chávez’s victory in yesterday’s election, and reflected on the consequences that such victory would entail for the country:

“Chávez’s victory will only be enabled by the oxygen provided by an opposition candidate ideal for his interests, a representative of Venezuela’s oligarchy who participated in the coup d’état back in 2002. Capriles gave Chávez the perfect scenario for revitalizing the polarization, with a discourse focused in the middle class and scarce connection with the popular sectors. Despite pretending an inclusive approach, it was never a secret that key decisions were always made by the high command of the country’s most reactionary and conservative party: Primero Justicia. And despite the evident disenchantment with the results of Chavez’s administration and the sustained increase of social conflict, held at bay by the charismatic expectations of the caudillo, in this scenario Capriles is unable to convince dissident Chavistas and wide sectors of the populace. The future would bring stronger statism in the communal sector, exclusion of more people from the benefits of public policies due to political reasons, and via a domino effect, the Bolivarian hegemony of provincial and city governments in the upcoming local elections.”

Many persons are wont to speak of our commerce in boastful tones and to point with pride to our great commercial centers, with their swarms of human beings hurrying here and there, crowding each other in the streets or toiling all day long in shop or mart, as though all this were the acme of economic arrangements, the greatest achievement of mankind and the source of all human joy. So constantly have the writers, the orators and the dramatists held this idea up to the popular gaze that public sentiment has learned to accept it as correct, and even those who suffer most from the effects of modern commerce feel their breasts swell with pride as they gaze at the pictures of commercial centers in the illustrated magazines, or hear the stump-speakers boast of our commercial greatness.

To the superficial, and the one who is awed into admiration by vastness, the tangle of telephone wires over the city streets, the lines of trucks and drays crowding each other in their hurrying from depot to warehouse or from warehouse to retail store, the heavy trains speeding across the continent, all these have an effect that is irresistible.

But if we look below the surface and behold the picture there presented; see the ships that are wrecked, or railroad trains that have collided; hear the sobs of the sailor’s widow or the groans of the mangled brakeman, all because in the fierce rush of commerce the ship went to sea in a storm, or care was not taken to avoid an accident on the railroad; see the worn and aged men who have grown old while they might yet be young; see the gray-haired men who have grown so because their cargoes happened to reach port a few days late; see the wretched hovels and miserable lives of many who have given all their energy to carry on this mad chase; see the producer of wheat hungry, and the producer of wool cold; and his query rises, and, like the ghost in Hamlet will not “down:” is all this the perfection of human association or is it madness? It is far from the perfection of human association, and is, to a certain extent, madness.

Let us look into the workings of modern commerce, trace its effects back to their causes and see if it is either a blessing or a necessity. Without commerce the large cities as we know them, cities with their long streets of sky-high buildings, their splendor on one side and their squalor on the other, would not exist. These cities are the hot-beds of disease, crime and vice; the breeding places of all manner of disorders and infamies. But they are the legitimate and inevitable product of modern commerce.

Modem commerce is the companion of modern industry, and, like it, is the child of monopoly. Look at the internal commerce of America. Immense quantities of white lead are produced at Eureka, Nevada. All the requisites for making white lead are to be had, and altogether it is an ideal spot for the manufacture of white lead. But the Southern Pacific Railway Co. has interests in San Francisco, so it will not haul white lead from Eureka except at such rates as preclude its sale in competition with other white lead. They will haul the bar lead to San Francisco, then back past Eureka to Ogden or Salt Lake City or Denver for less than they will haul white lead from Eureka to these points. They have a monopoly of the hauling business in this region.

Take wool as another example. Large quantities of wool are grown in Southern and Eastern Oregon. This wool is shipped to Portland. From Portland it is shipped to New York. From there it goes to Lowell or Fall River where it is span and woven. From there the cloth is shipped to Boston, New York or Philadelphia where it is made up into clothing. This clothing goes to Chicago and St. Louis, and finally some of it reaches Portland from whence it is shipped to the towns in Southern and Eastern Oregon. The sheep-grower has raised much good wool, but after it has been hauled across the continent and back, the wool-grower only gets a few shoddy clothes, for the remainder has been absorbed by commerce — commission, storage, brokerage, transportation, insurance, profits.

I have eaten beef that was born in Southern Texas, fattened on the Staked Plains, butchered in Kansas City and cooked in Pan Handle City, Texas.

But what has monopoly to do with wool or beef being hauled so far and handled so much, yon may ask. I reply: Everything. In the country where the Wool is grown, all along the foot of the mountains, are splendid sites for woolen-goods factories. Mountain streams come tumbling down from the upper regions where the melting snows and ever-lasting springs start clear and pure, down for the lower altitudes. They could furnish power enough to run all spindles and looms needed to manufacture all the wool grown in this region. But monopoly of land puts the control of these sites into the hands of those who do not wish to use them for manufacturing purposes. Monopoly of machinery by means of patent laws, and monopoly of money compelling those who wish to purchase machinery to pay ruinous interest, preclude the possibility of putting in the necessary machinery, except by those who don’t want the factories there. Then, transportation companies make such discrimination against all such concerns when an attempt at their establishment is made, that they are killed thereby. The destruction of home butchering in Northern Texas was brought about by adverse legislation and transportation discrimination. As a result Armour & Co. would sell Kansas City beef cheaper than the local butcher could sell his product, and so he had to go out of business. Then the price of beef rose, but commerce flourished — the cattle were shipped to Kansas City, and then shipped back as dressed beef.

When we look at this question in the light of these facts, it becomes evident that less than three-fourths of our internal commerce — hauling, handling, transferring, interest paying, brokerage, etc. — is wasted, or worse than wasted. If the wool was manufactured near where it was grown, the wheat ground into flour at the nearest waterfall, and all industry organized on like considerations, the enormous amount of energy now wasted in these useless commercial transactions would be turned to producing necessities, comforts and luxuries. This would give far greater abundance and security, thus allowing greater leisure and opportunity for the cultivation of the artistic tastes and the literary and musical faculties.

Such an organization of industry can be accomplished only in a condition of freedom.

While government lasts commerce will continue to pillage and rob; to cause the young to look old; to furrow with care the brows of those who should be careless; and, while it fills the halls of some with splendor, it fills the cots of others with woe.

Away with the parent of monopoly — government — and all other monopolies will vanish like fog before the morning sun, and the re-organization of industries upon a sane and rational basis will proceed apace, and gaunt destitution be known no more in all the land.

The following article is translated into Spanish from the English original, written by Carlos Clemente.

Lamentablemente, la diferencia entre el optimismo exuberante con el que los partidarios de Henrique Capriles, candidato opositor en las elecciones presidenciales a celebrarse en Venezuela el domingo 8 de octubre, y el fanatismo mesiánico que intoxica las mentes chavistas, es una cuestión más de forma que de fondo.

Además, la irracionalidad con la que cada lado visualiza un futuro victorioso tiene como contraparte una absoluta miopía cuando se trata de ubicar a Chávez en un adecuado contexto histórico.

Más que representar una ruptura radical con el pasado, lo que define al régimen de Chávez es una exacerbación de las tendencias fundamentalmente oligárquicas de la socialdemocracia, reforzadas por el mayor tsunami de petrodólares que jamás haya inundando las arcas de Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), la gigantesca empresa petrolera estatal.

Pero la ramplona actitud de “cómo puede habernos pasado esto” de la oposición denota una desconcertante incapacidad de reconocer el grado en el que un puñado de familias de la vieja guardia, al acaparar una leonina proporción de la riqueza petrolera durante los cuarenta años de democracia corrupta que comienzan con la caída del dictador Marcos Pérez Jiménez en 1958, alimentó el rencor de las masas empobrecidas y la concomitante creencia de que la única manera de remediar la situación era que uno de su clase se hiciera del botín.

Por su parte, los partidarios de Chávez se aferran febrilmente a la fantástica versión promovida por el régimen (y legitimizada internacionalmente por intelectuales de izquierda del renombre de Noam Chomsky y Michael Albert) según la cual Chávez es el primer presidente en la historia de Venezuela que “al menos comparte algo de riqueza con los más pobres,” cuando en realidad todo lo que hizo El Comandante fuere reinsertar la letanía de subsidios y transferencias que mantuvieron a las masas mínimamente pacificadas desde 1958.

Fue solo a partir de la caída de los precios del petróleo de los años ochenta que los subsidios empezaron a mermar, y no hasta 1989 que se le impuso al pueblo el paquete de medidas de ajuste estructural avalado por el FMI, causando el “Caracazo”, en el que cientos de personas fueron masacradas por el ejército durante saqueos en las calles de la ciudad capital, y facilitando el ascenso de Chávez como héroe popular tras su intentona de golpe de estado al gobierno de Carlos Andrés Pérez en 1992.

Un viejo régimen vaciado de cualquier vestigio de legitimidad emparejado con la fé ciega en el Nuevo Líder fue la combinación perfecta que le permitió a Chávez prácticamente erradicar lo que quedaba de independencia entre las distintas ramas del poder estatal, soslayar completamente el control legislativo de los temas presupuestarios, y crear una densa red de organizaciones paraestatales para controlar sistemáticamente los movimientos populares.

Para rematar, la mayor parte de los miles de millones de petrodólares que se generaron durante la era chavista se dilapidaron en fallidos proyectos faraónicos de infraestructura, regalos generosos a regímenes aliados alrededor del mundo, y en el mejor estilo de antaño, en llenar los bolsillos de una casta de nuevos “Boligarcas”; o lo que resulta más bizarro aún, los de muchos de los más rancios personeros de la Cuarta República, como el gran amigo multimillonario de George W. Bush (“El Diablo” según Chávez), Gustavo Cisneros.

En este contexto tan particular, no es difícil para mi simpatizar con la idea de que en caso de que Capriles ganase, habría un buen chance de una mejoría para la mayoría de los venezolanos. Después de todo, Capriles sólo tendría que implementar políticas mínimamente sanas para lograr mejoras significativas en algunas áreas de extrema urgencia, como la difuminación de la horrorosa epidemia de violencia que ha sumergido al país en un baño de sangre en el que los más pobres son los más perjudicados, y domar la inflación galopante.

Pero al mismo tiempo, cualquier política exitosa que eventualmente pudiese implementar Capriles, aunque quizás llegase a aliviar los síntomas de una sociedad profundamente enferma, al mismo tiempo reforzaría la fundamental causa patológica: la idea profundamente arraigada en la psique venezolana de que la única forma de lograr cambios sociales positivos, es a través de “un mejor gobierno”.

Y aunque ésto último no me sorprende, definitivamente me desconcierta.

Artículo original publicado por Carlos Clemente el 07 de octubre 2012.

Traducido del inglés por Carlos Clemente.

Regrettably, the difference between the exuberant optimism with which supporters of Venezuelan opposition candidate Henrique Capriles have embraced him as a leader in the upcoming Presidential election in Venezuela on Sunday October 8th, and the messianism that intoxicates the minds of Chávez’s supporters, is only a matter of degree.

What’s more, the irrationality with which each side envisions a victorious future is matched by an utterly myopic approach to situating the Chávez era in a proper historical context.

Rather than a radical break with the past, what defines the Chávez regime is an exacerbation of the inherent oligarchical tendencies of social democracy, strengthened by the biggest petrodollar windfall ever to engross the coffers of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the gigantic state-owned oil company.

But the opposition’s crass how-on-earth-did-we-come-to-this attitude denotes a stultifying incapacity to recognize the degree to which a handful of families of the old guard, by enclosing the lion’s share of the country’s oil wealth throughout the four decades of corrupt democracy since the fall of dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 1958, bred the grudge of the impoverished masses, and the concomitant belief that the only way to remedy the situation was for one of their own rank and file to take over the booty.

On the other hand, Chavistas cling feverishly to the fantastic version tooted by the regime (and legitimized internationally by left-wing intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Michael Albert) according to which El Comandante is the first president in Venezuelan history that “at least shares some of the wealth with the poor,” when in reality all Chávez did was re-installing the litany of subsidies and cash transfers that barely appeased the masses since 1958.

It was only during the oil glut of the 80’s that subsidies started to dwindle, and not until 1989 that the first IMF-backed structural adjustment package was shoved down people’s throats, causing the subsequent Caracazo, in which hundreds of rioters were machine-gunned by the army in the streets of the capital city, and Chávez’s rising as a popular hero with an attempted coup d’état to the Carlos Andrés Pérez government in 1992.

An old regime devoid of any vestige of legitimacy coupled with the blind faith in the New Leader was the perfect combination that enabled Chávez to practically eradicate whatever was left of independence among the different branches of state power, to completely bypass legislative control of budgetary issues, and create an intricate web of parastatal organizations for the systematic political co-option of any kind of popular movement.

To top it all off, most of the enormous petrodollar windfall generated during the Chávez era were dilapidated in failed, pharaonic infrastructure projects, in generous gifts to friendly regimes all over the world, and in the best style of old times past, deviated towards the pockets of a host of new billionaire “Boligarchs,” or more bizarrely, to those of many of the most prominent old-regime cronies — George W. Bush’s (AKA “El Diablo” in Chávez’s parlance) billionaire uber-ally Gustavo Cisneros most prominently among them.

Within this particular context, it’s not difficult for me to sympathize with the idea that in the case of a Capriles victory, there’s a good chance of a better outlook for the majority of my fellow Venezuelans — after all, Capriles would only need to be willing and able to implement minimally sane policies to achieve significant gains in some urgent areas, like diffusing the horrendous epidemic of violence that has engulfed the country in a blood bath in which the poorest have been hit hardest, and taming rampant inflation.

But at the same time, every successful policy that he would eventually implement, even if it manages to alleviate the symptoms of a deeply sick society, would reinforce their truly fundamental root cause: the idea, deeply entrenched in the Venezuelan psyche, that positive social change can only come from “better government.”

And while that doesn’t surprise me, I simply cannot avoid being dismayed.

Translations for this article:

• Spanish, La Perversidad Inherente del Cambio Social Logrado por Medios Electorales, Edición Venezuela.

From the Markets Not Capitalism audiobook read by C4SS fellow Stephanie Murphy.

The following article is translated into Portuguese from the English original, written by Kevin Carson.

Steven Cohen, escrevendo no Huffington Post (“Precisamos Responder ao Ataque Contra o Serviço Público,” 13 de junho), escreve que “o ataque profundo e que se intensifica contra o governo e o serviço público” é “de dar medo.”

Permitam-me começar dizendo que já entrei em conflito com muitos libertários ao defender empregados do setor público como aqueles de Wisconsin contra acusações reflexas de parasitismo. Se eles estão engajados em funções legítimas tais como ensinar crianças ou entregar correspondência, que também existiriam como voluntárias mesmo numa sociedade sem estado, e se o estado atualmente reprime alternativas voluntárias, eles não são mais culpados do que os trabalhadores de fábricas soviéticas de propriedade do estado.

E já argumentei que sindicatos do setor público amiúde dão poder a esses trabalhadores contra aqueles situados nos altos escalões do estado, e isso poderia servir como ferramenta útil para genuína privatização — isto é, a visão de Proudhon de transferir as funções do estado para relacionamentos sociais voluntários. Isso significa, em vez da agenda direitista de “privatização” mediante leilão de funções do governo para corporações capitalistas compadrescas, mutualizar essas funções na forma de cooperativas de consumo de propriedade dos recebedores dos serviços. De qualquer forma, briosamente apoiarei qualquer sindicato local de professores contra um superintendente de escolas, em qualquer dia da semana.

Sem embargo, a expressão “serviço público” realmente me causa engulho. Do mesmo modo que “estadismo” e “consenso bipartidário,” essa expressão encaixa-se naquela espécie de jogos de quem bebe mais que você joga quando vê picaretas gerenciais centristas como David Gergen, Chris Matthews e David Brooks juntando-se para tirarem proveito de um programa de notícias de TV a cabo.

Em qualquer dia que seja, se você acompanhar o blog de Radley Balko, poderá ver notícias acerca de “servidores públicos” plantando evidência contra suspeitos e deflagrando invasões de lares sem bater à porta, ocasiões em que atiram em animais domésticos e brandem armas de fogo para crianças (tudo a propósito de ingestão pacífica de substâncias que o estado resolveu considerar “proibidas”), e mandando pessoas para a prisão com base no testemunho de presos tornados informantes coagidos a cometer perjúrio em troca de redução da pena/benefícios. Os “servidores públicos” dos sindicatos de guardas de prisões e policiais fazem lobby junto ao estado pedindo ampliação sempre mais draconiana e invasiva da Guerra Contra as Drogas. Os “servidores públicos” em aeroportos sujeitam diariamente sua “clientela” pública a degradação e humilhação.

Todo “servidor público” do Salão Oval em meu período de vida deflagrou guerras de agressão assassinando civis inocentes aos milhares ou centenas de milhares, e os “servidores públicos” do complexo industrial-militar gastam centenas de biliões de dólares mantendo guarnições num império de milhares de bases por todo o mundo, tudo para “defender”-nos contra países do outro lado do mundo que não têm como projetar força militar além de umas poucas centenas de milhas além de suas próprias fronteiras. E todas essas guerras são estudos de caso do tipo “parceria público-privada” que Cohen exalta, combatidas no interesse dos estimados Generais Motors, Electric e Mills.

Cohen admite que o governo federal está “distante demais” de grande parte daquilo com que lida, e recomenda federalismo — descentralizar grande parte das políticas para governos locais — como remédio. A maioria de nós da Esquerda já viu o processo de encheção de linguiça em ação no governo local, especialmente no tocante à “infraestrutura” tão louvada por Cohen, e o que vimos não é nada bonito. O governo local médio pode ser “rápido em atender” aos grosseirões do Rotary Club que administram as coisas (eles por lá também gostam muito de expressões tais como “serviço público”), mas certamente não a nós. O governo local típico é uma dessas casas exibidas como amostra por desenvolvedores imobiliários locais, e sua principal função é oferecer ruas e infraestrutura pública abaixo do custo aos novos bairros suburbanos e às grandes superlojas que proliferam em cada trevo da nova rodovia subsidiada pelo governo.

O discurso diversionista de Cohen acerca da grande guerra ideológica entre “capitalismo” e “comunismo” não tem nada a ver com o assunto. Pressupõe algum tipo de rivalidade entre governo e empresas, quando de fato os liberais do governo hipertrofiado têm sido — nas palavras de Roy Childs — “os lacaios servis dos grandes homens de negócios.”

Em minha opinião, a maior parte da rivalidade entre os assim chamados setores “público” e “privado” do discurso político estadunidense é mais ou menos tão genuína quanto aquela entre o “policial bom” e o “policial ruim” num recinto de interrogatório da polícia. O que é chamado de “setor privado” por aquele tipo de apologistas corporativos de direita que tipicamente se fazem passar por “libertários” é tão cartelizado e subsidiado pelo estado que a fronteira entre a corporação gigante do setor de capital monopolizado e o órgão de governo hipertrofiado é, na melhor das hipóteses, bastante indistinta.

Os grandes interesses empresariais aos quais autoproclamados “defensores do livre mercado” como Dick Armey desejam entregar o país são essencialmente criações do estado.

Assim, a observação de Cohen de ter “ensinado administração para futuros administradores públicos durante cerca de trinta anos” dispara, para mim, campainhas de alarme. Trabalhei tanto no setor “público” quanto no “privado” e vi parasitas de escritório em ambos, reduzindo equipes de funcionários de serviços gerais enquanto remetendo-se a si próprios a confortáveis retiros para gerentes. Os chefes de visão estreita são muito parecidos entre si.

Em realidade Cohen é defensor de exatamente o tipo de conluio governo-corporação que vem definindo o capitalismo tal como este vem existindo na prática nos últimos 150 anos ou mais. Ele argumenta que “[A]s potências econômicas do século 21 serão aquelas que concebam como desenvolver um relacionamento produtivo e sofisticado entre governo e setor privado.”

Isso é certamente verdade, sem dúvida. As “potências econômicas” que temos neste momento — várias centenas de corporações transnacionais que dominam a economia global — devem seu porte, se não sua própria existência, a uma “parceria” com o governo. É aquele tipo de parceria no qual o governo subsidia as despesas operacionais básicas delas e permite a elas externalizar seus custos de ineficiência decorrentes do grande porte para os contribuintes, limita severamente competição de preço e qualidade por meio de cartéis reguladores, e faz cumprir as assim chamadas leis de “propriedade intelectual” como barreiras ao surgimento de novos empreendimentos, de trás das quais gananciosos corporativos privilegiados podem extrair renda proveniente da escassez artificial.

Basta ver os exemplos de Cohen. Há o complexo Departamento de Agricultura dos Estados Unidos-agronegócios que (imitando a propaganda da Cargill), diz ele tornou os Estados Unidos “o celeiro de pão do mundo.” E, naturalmente, querido de todos os verdadeiros liberais, o Sistema Interestadual de Rodovias — construído sob a direção do Secretário do Departamento de Defesa Charles “O que é bom para a General Motors” Wilson, e que é agora a base do modelo de negócios das superlojas “armazéns sobre rodas” que destruíram o pequeno comércio de rua.

Em suma, o governo, em todos os níveis, oferece aquele tipo de “serviço público” do qual, se você não gostar, terá enorme dificuldade para desvencilhar-se. Tal serviço é compreensivelmente popular entre o “público” dos grandões corporativos e dos rentistas de cupons e vales. Qualquer seja porém o cliente desse “serviço público,” não é nem você nem eu.

Artigo original afixado por Kevin Carson em 14 de junho de 2011.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

Libertopia is an annual convention / festival for voluntaryists, market anarchists, and other people seeking liberty and peace through radical means, outside of electoral politics. It’s held every year in San Diego; the 2012 convention is coming up next weekend, from October 11 to October 14.

We’re happy to note that this year there will be a veritable mob of left-libertarians, free-market anti-capitalists, C4SSers, and other lefty-friendly commentators who have been invited to speak throughout the event — including a number of panel discussions, breakout sessions, and tabling with literature and one-on-one conversations. There’ll be a panel on Markets Not Capitalism featuring editors Charles Johnson and Gary Chartier, and contributors Roderick Long and Sheldon Richman. There’ll be breakout sessions by Charles Johnson and Roderick long for the Molinari Institute, on Race, Gender and Anarchy, and Ask an Anti-capitalist! A Freewheeling Q&A on Markets Not Capitalism, Left-Libertarianism, and Mutualist Ends Through Free-Market Means (The latter has been scheduled to be held Sunday morning in the John Galt Room, which I will just have to chalk up to one of the more hilarious examples of culture clash I’ve encountered since I got into the left-libertarian gig.) And also look for intriguing talks from C4SSers like Gary Chartier, Sheldon Richman, Stephanie Murphy, as well as presentations by Angela Keaon, Sharon Presley, and Anthony Gregory. You can see the full schedule online.

In addition to the line-up of talks, C4SS and its fiscal sponsor, the Molinari Institute, will be hosting a table in the exhibition space with copies of Markes Not Capitalism; the newly-released magazine, the Industrial Radical; and left-libertarian booklets, pamphlets, buttons, and zines galore. The Molinari Institute, C4SS’s fiscal sponsor, is holding a fundraiser this month to help make possible all this possible — to cover the travel costs and the cost of the exhibition-space table for Charles Johnson and Roderick Long. We’ve done everything we can to do this on a shoestring, from ridesharing to couch-surfing, but there’s still a couple of hefty charges we’re currently paying out of pocket to get Markets Not Capitalism and a rambunctious left-libertarian presence out to California. (In particular, $440 for the rental of a shared ride to transport C4SSers to San Diego, and $400 to reimburse Roderick Long for the expense of the exhibition-space table.)

If you want to help out, and to support left-libertarian outreach, engagement and scholarship, you can toss a few coins in the hat using the ChipIn widget above. We’re hoping to spread out the costs with a lot of small donations, and anything you can give towards the fundraising goal would be really helpful, and definitely appreciated. (Donations go to the Molinari Institute, and proceeds above the reimburseable travel and registration expenses, in the event there were any, would then go towards supporting the Molinari Institute’s production and distribution of market anarchist literature.) If you believe, as we do, in bringing out an uncompromising left-libertarian, individualist anarchism, please click through and contribute today.

Thanks! Hope to see y’ALL in California!

Cuba’s Yoani Sanchez: Detained for 30 hours for pissing off Raul Castro.

California’s Kevin Cogill: Sentenced to two months of house arrest for pissing off Cary Sherman.

I recently reread The Revolt of the Elites, by Christopher Lasch – one of my favorite writers. One of the most important themes in the book is his contrast of the Jeffersonian democratic ideal to the meritocratic ideal that replaced it.

Under the old, populist conception, what mattered was the class structure at any given time. The ideal was the wide diffusion of property ownership, with the great majority in the producing classes having a material base for economic independence. The advocates of the democratic ideal, as it existed through the first half of the nineteenth century,

understood that extremes of wealth and poverty would be fatal to the democratic experiment…. Democratic habits, they thought – self-reliance, responsibility, initiative–were best acquired in the exercise of a trade or the management of a small holding of property. A “competence,” as they called it, referred both to property itself and to the intelligence and enterprise required by its management. It stood to reason, therefore, that democracy worked best when democracy was distributed as widely as possible among the citizens.

The point can be stated more broadly: Democracy works best when men and women do things for themselves, with the help of their friends and neighbors, instead of depending on the state.

The average member of the producing classes should rest secure in the knowledge that he would be able to support himself in the future, without depending on the whims of an employer. The purpose of education was to produce a well-rounded individual. It aimed at the wide diffusion of the general competence needed by ordinary people for managing their own affairs, on the assumption that they retained control over the main forces affecting their daily lives.

When Lincoln argued that advocates of free labor “insisted on universal education,” he did not mean that education served as a means of upward mobility. He meant that citizens of a free country were expected to work with their heads as well as their hands…. Advocates of free labor took the position… that “heads” and “hands” should cooperate as friends; and that [each] particular head, should direct and control that particular pair of hands.

The meritocratic philosophy, on the other hand, holds that the functions of “hands” and “head” should be exercised by distinct classes of people, with the “head” class managing the “hands” class. “Social mobility” means simply that members of the “hands” class should have the opportunity to advance into the “head” class if they’re willing to go to school for twenty years and abase themselves before enough desk jockeys.

The shift from the democratic to the meritocratic ideal reflected the transition from a middle class based on widespread small property ownership, to a New Middle Class (described in an earlier post) based on position within a large organization.

The meritocratic philosophy, as Lasch described it, called not for rough equality of condition, but only for social mobility (defined as the rate of “promotion of non-elites into the professional-managerial class”).

The new managerial and professional elites… have a heavy investment in the notion of social mobility–the only kind of equality they understand. They would like to believe that Americans have always equated opportunity with upward mobility…. But a careful look at the historical record shows that the promise of American life came to be identified as social mobility only when more hopeful interpretations of opportunity had become to fade.

Through most of the nineteenth century, Americans viewed as abnormal both a large class of propertyless wage laborers, and the ownership of economic enterprise by an absentee rentier class that lived entirely off the returns on accumulated wealth. Such things were associated with the decadence and corruption of the Old World.

Lincoln denounced as the “mud-sill theory” the idea “that nobody labors unless someone else, owning capital, somehow, by the use of that capital, induces him to it.” He contrasted to this the small-r republican ideal, that “a large majority are neither hirers nor hired.”

One of Lasch’s most telling comments on meritocracy was this:

Social mobility does not undermine the influence of elites; if anything, it helps to solidify their influence by supporting the illusion that it rests solely on merit. It merely strengthens the likelihood that elites will exercise power irresponsibly, precisely because they recognize so few obligations to their predecessors or to the communities they profess to lead.

This attitude was demonstrated, in spades, by one of Joe Bageant’s correspondents:

In your essay “Sons of a Laboring God“, you wrote: “Anyone who actually believes that all these poor working puds can beat this system, lift themselves up by their bootstraps, is either a neo-con ideologue or the child of advantage.” I grew up on welfare. I had no central heat, our well ran dry most summers for up to a month, and at one point I only had two pairs of ripped, ill-fitting jeans and five stained T-shirts to wear for several months.

I starved my way through college and am now making $75,000 a year — and I’m only 27. I made it through by the skin of my teeth, fearing every moment that I wouldn’t make tuition, that I’d be kicked out of the dorms and have nowhere to live. When they gave me my diploma, I was crying so hard I couldn’t see. I forgot to shake the dean’s hand. It wasn’t easy, but with a little sacrifice it was possible. Upward mobility in the U.S. is neither a myth nor a pipe dream.

The reason these people you talk about can’t move up in life is nobody’s fault but their own…. There’s no reason they can’t go to college. They just don’t want to.

This “anyone who’s willing to work hard enough on pyramids can grow up to be Pharaoh” argument is, of course, a classic fallacy of composition: Bageant claims it’s impossible for “all these poor working puds” (emphasis added) to advance in the meritocracy, and the correspondent thinks an example of one person doing so proves Bageant wrong.

You can’t read an editorial page or a mass newsweekly without seeing some version of the argument for education, education, and more education as the cure for all of our class disparities. It’s regurgitated alike by technocratic liberals, and by neoconservative intellectuals (and if you scratch one of the latter, you find a technocratic liberal). Bageant quickly demolished it.

Look at it this way: The empire needs only about 20-25% of its population at the very most to administrate and perpetuate itself — through lawyers, insurance managers, financial managers, college teachers, media managers, scientists, bureaucrats, managers of all types and many other professions and semi-professions.

What happens to the rest? They are the production machinery of the empire and they are the consumers upon the empire depends to turn profits. If every one of them earned a college degree it would not change their status, but only drive down wages of the management class, who are essentially caterers to the corporate financial elites who govern most things simply by controlling the availability of money at all levels, to to bottom, hence your hard struggle to pay for college in an entirely capitalist profit driven economy….

Clawing down basic things like an education in such a competitive, reptilian environment makes people hard. And that’s what the empire wants, hardassed people in the degreed classes managing the dumbed down, over-fed proles whose mental activity consists of plugging their brains into their television sets so they can absorb the message to buy more, and absorb themselves in the bread and circus spectacles provided them through profitable media corporations operating mainly as extensions of the capitalist state’s propaganda system….

Right now we are seeing the proletarianization of college graduates, as increasingly more of them are forced to take service and labor jobs. (Remember that it only takes a limited number to directly or indirectly manage the working masses, which these days includes workers like hospital technicians, and a thousand other occupations we have not traditionally thought of as working class.)

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008. 

Alan Avans has an interesting post up at Ecodema, provocatively entitled “The Social Economy and Social Credit: Two Wings of One Bird?”

The post was inspired by a recent commenter’s question:

Why do the greater part of cooperatives behave in much the same way as other firms in terms of management and in terms of the links they develop, or don’t develop, in their communities?

The answer, according to Avans:

I’ve concluded that the essense of the challenge activists for economic democracy face is that we can never negotiate a cooperative commonwealth based on orthodox economic terms.

The prairie populists of Canada and USAmerica once had a unique opportunity for a breakthrough past the restraints of the orthodox economics of the early twentieth century.

So what went wrong? The takeover of a socialist movement, originally dominated by actual producers and interested in building alternative economic institutions, by Fabian social democrats.

Social democratic Fabianism, which would be an early adopter of Keynesian policy prescriptions, came to dominate socialist thought and shape the limits of a socialist agenda. It also displaced guild socialism and its historic project of building a decentralized and non-statist social economy. Fabianism more-or-less adopted the conventional wisdom of orthodox economics.

Populists and socialists in USAmerica and Canada squandered their opportunity to build the cooperative commonwealth in North America when the larger part of the movement gave way to a Fabian form of social democracy.

The guild socialist G.D.H. Cole argued in an article (PDF) I once stumbled across that Fabianism preferred to leave the institutional framework of the capitalist economy as it was, with the government merely redistributing part of the product. The reason, Cole suspected, was that changing the institutional framework to put workers in direct control of the production process wouldn’t leave much of a role for Fabian intellectuals.

“Social democracy,” on the other hand, has plenty of room for a caste of privileged managers and planners. As John Kenneth Galbraith used to describe it, “socialism” just meant reclassifying the men in gray flannel suits who ran the big corporations as employees of the state planning agency rather than the corporate stockholders – and then they’d go on doing pretty much the same thing they did before. And, naturally, workers would also go right on doing what they did before: taking orders from the men in gray flannel suits.

In practice, of course, even that never happened; the SD and Fabian intellectuals have been the dupes of the plutocracy. As corporate liberalism (aka “Progressivism”) evolved in the U.S., the New Class was simply adopted as a junior partner by the capitalist class. As Hilaire Belloc predicted in The Servile State, the New Class has been allowed to pursue its agenda of regimenting the lower orders and socially engineering us “for our own good,” only to the extent that it has served the plutocracy’s need for rational planning to guarantee secure and predictable profits. Anyone who thinks nanny statists like Hillary, Rosie, Barbra and their ilk are “anti-capitalist” is delusional: Hillary made a 10,000% profit on cattle futures and was a Wal-Mart director, for cryin’ out loud!

The problem that Avans points to is a real one. Economic counter-institutions, unfortunately, work within the framework of a larger corporate capitalist economy. They compete in markets in which the institutional culture of the dominant firms is top-down and hierarchical, and are in great danger of absorbing this institutional culture themselves. That’s why you have a non-profit and cooperative sector whose management is indistinguishable from its capitalist counterparts: prestige salaries, middle management featherbedding, bureaucratic irrationality, and slavish adherence to the latest motivational/management theory dogma. The problem is exacerbated by a capitalist financial system, which extends positive reinforcement (in the form of credit) to firms following an orthodox organizational model (even when bottom-up organization is far more efficient). Paul Goodman described it this way, in The Community of Scholars:

In brief, …the inevitability of centralism will be self-proving. A system destroys its competitors by pre-empting the means and channels, and then proves that it is the only conceivable mode of operating.

The solution is to promote as much consolidation as possible within the counter-economy. We need to get back to the job of “building the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.” A great deal of production and consumption already takes place within the social or gift economy, self-employment, barter, etc. The linkages need to be increased and strengthened between those involved in consumers’ and producers’ co-ops, self-employment, LETS systems, home gardening and other household production, informal barter, etc. What economic counter-institutions already exist need to start functioning as a cohesive counter-economy.

As Hernando de Soto has pointed out, the resources already available to us are enormous. If we could leverage and mobilize them sufficiently, they might be made to function as a counterweight to the capitalist economy. For example: the average residential lot, if subjected to biointensive farming methods, could supply the majority of a family’s vegetable needs. And what’s more important, the total labor involved in doing this would be less than it takes to earn the money to buy equivalent produce from the supermarket. The average person could increase his independence of the wage-system, improve the quality of his food, and reduce his total work hours, all at once. This is an ideal theme for mutualist propaganda.

A key objective should be building the secondary institutions we need to make the resources we already have more usable. Most people engage in a great deal of informal production to meet their own needs, but lack either access or awareness of the institutional framework by which they might cooperate and exchange with others involved in similar activities. Expanding LETS systems and increasing public awareness of them is vital. Every need that can be met by producing for oneself, or exchanging one’s own produce for that of a neighbor, increases the amount of one’s total consumption needs that can be met without depending on employment at someone else’s whim. If an organic gardener lives next door to a plumber and they exchange produce for plumbing work, neither one can provide an outlet for the other’s entire output. But both, at least, will have a secure source of supply for both his vegetables and plumbing needs, and an equally secure market for the portion of his own output consumed by the other. The more different trades come into the system, the larger the proportion of total needs that can be met outside the framework of a job.

Ultimately, we need a cooperative alternative to the capitalists’ banking system, to increase the cooperative economy’s access to its own mutual credit. This is illegal, under the terms of capitalist banking law. The banking system is set up to prevent ordinary people from leveraging their own property for interest-free credit through mutual banking. Gary Elkin has argued that it might be possible to slip mutual banking in through the back door, by piggybacking it on a LETS system. Members of a LETS system might start out by extending store credit against the future labor of other members, and expand from there. Here’s how Elkin described the functioning of such a system:

Along these lines, I want to sketch an updated version of mutual banking, complete with e-money transfer capability via the Internet. As I see it, a mutual bank should grow from a collectively owned and operated barter association that is responsive to the participatory-democratic assembly of a radical urban community. Here’s a possible scenario:

The new economic system — not yet self-sufficient but increasingly so — is born when the community barter association begins issuing an alternative currency accepted as money by all businesses within the system. For reasons discussed below, this “currency” does not at first take the form of tangible monetary tokens (i.e. coins or bills), but is circulated entirely through transactions involving the use of barter-cards, personal checks, and “e-money” transfers via modem/Internet.

Since it doesn’t charge interest — the source of regular banks’ profits — and since its purpose is to provide economic assistance to the community, it may be possible to charter this new financial institution as a nonprofit charitable organization. In order to get non-profit status, however, it is essential that mutual-credit organizations not be officially described as “banks” “thrifts,” “savings and loans,” “credit unions,” etc., which would make them subject to the charter laws governing such institutions. For convenience I’ll refer to an anarchist zero-interest credit-issuer as a “mutual barter clearinghouse” (or just “clearinghouse” for short). Other semantic expedients regarding the official description of its operations may also be necessary in dealing with the State.

The clearinghouse has a twofold mandate: first, to extend interest-free credit to members; second, to manage the circulation of credit-money within the system, charging only a small service fee (probably one percent or less) which covers its costs of operation. Such costs would include the making of plastic barter cards, printing personal checks, keeping track of transactions, paying its workers, insuring itself against losses from uncollectible debts, and so forth.

The clearinghouse is organized and functions as follows. Members of the original barter association are invited to become subscriber-members of the mutual bank by pledging a certain amount of property as “collateral” (referred to by some other term — perhaps “pledge” is good enough). On the basis of this pledge, an account is opened for the new member and credited with a sum of mutual dollars equivalent to some fraction of the assessed value of the property pledged. The new member agrees to repay this amount plus the cost-covering service fee by a certain date. The mutual dollars in the new account may then be transferred through the clearinghouse by using a barter card, by writing a personal check, or by sending e-money via modem to the accounts of other members, who have agreed to receive mutual money in payment for all debts.

The opening of this sort of account is, of course, the same as taking out of a “loan” in the sense that a commercial bank “lends” by extending credit to a borrower in return for a signed note pledging a certain amount of property as security. It’s like fractional-reserve banking in this respect. The crucial difference, however, is that the clearinghouse does not purport to be “lending” a sum of money that it already has, as is fraudulently claimed, with much hand-waving and doubletalk, by commercial banks. (Hence the creation of mutual credit does not have to be officially described as “making a loan.”) Instead it honestly admits that it is creating new money in the form of credit, but charging no interest for doing so. New accounts can also be opened simply telling the clearinghouse that one wants an account and then arranging with other people who already have balances to transfer mutual money into one’s new account. —

The capital and land of the rich is worthless to them without a supply of labor to produce surplus value. And even if they can find labor, their ability to extract surplus value from their labor force depends on a labor market that favors buyers over sellers. Anything that marginally increases the independence of labor and reduces its dependence on wages, and marginally reduces the supply of labor available to capitalists and landlords, will also marginally reduce the rate of profit and thus make their land and capital less profitable to them. The value of land and capital to landlords and capitalists depends on the ability to hire labor on their own terms. Anything that increases the marginal price of labor will reduce the marginal returns on capital and land.

What’s more, even a partial shift in bargaining power from capital to labor will increase the share of their product that wage-workers receive even in capitalist industry. The individualist anarchists argue that a removal of special legal privileges for capital would increase the bargaining power of labor until the rate of profit was effectively zero, and capitalist enterprises took on the character (de facto) of workers’ co-ops.

And the owning classes use less efficient forms of production precisely because the state gives them preferential access to large tracts of land and subsidizes the inefficiency costs of large-scale production. Those engaged in the alternative economy, on the other hand, will be making the most intensive and efficient use of the land and capital available to them. So the balance of forces between the alternative and capitalist economy will not be anywhere near as uneven as the distribution of property might indicate.

If everyone capable of benefiting from the alternative economy participates in it, and it makes full and efficient use of the resources already available to them, eventually we’ll have a society where most of what the average person consumes is produced in a network of self-employed or worker-owned production, and the owning classes are left with large tracts of land and understaffed factories that are almost useless to them because it’s so hard to hire labor except at an unprofitable price. At that point, the correlation of forces will have shifted until the capitalists and landlords are islands in a mutualist sea–and their land and factories will be the last thing to fall, just like the U.S Embassy in Saigon.

Addendum – Right after posting this, I happened on this excellent post by Dave Pollard. It included the following passage, which is a perfect restatement of what Paul Goodman said in the quote above.

What is the reason that so many bottom-up ideas and innovations never make it into the commercial marketplace? I’m not a believer in conspiracy theories that corporations deliberately buy up and suppress more durable inventions to keep them from cannibalizing their market. I think it’s more likely that people with good ideas are just disconnected from those with the skills and resources needed to implement those ideas. And vice versa — those with commercialization skills and resources are rewarded by the market (and by shareholders) for not fixing what ain’t broke, for not changing what they’re doing until and unless they have to.

So on the one hand we have an astonishing and unprecedented flood of good ideas, made possible by the democratization of knowledge (the Internet etc.), and on the other hand we have this incredible inertia by those who could make those ideas reality, change everything.

Just when you think American politics can’t get any more surreal, a walking tapeworm stands up in front of 150 other tapeworms at a fundraiser hosted by private equity manager and tapeworm Marc Leder, and accuses 47 percent of Americans — who allegedly don’t pay any taxes — of parasitism.

“… there are 47 percent … who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them. … And the government should give it to them.”

If you think about it, it’s a fair guess most of those 47 percent don’t have big enough paychecks to pay income taxes on because the kinds of people in Romney’s audience — people who can afford $50,000 for a plate of canned chicken a la king and frozen peas — stole it from them.

Because, you see, the 47% do pay taxes. They pay taxes to the owners of this country — of whom Romney’s audience are probably a typical sample.

They — we — pay taxes every time we pay higher rent or a higher mortgage on a parcel of land because the government enforces absentee title to vacant and unimproved land and takes it out of competition with landlord property.

We pay taxes every time we pay a 2000% markup on a pill under patent, a software CD under copyright or a pair of trademarked sneakers some sweatshop workers got paid almost nothing to produce, because of the state’s enforcement of so-called “intellectual property.”

We pay taxes every time we buy a piece of consumer electronics, 80% of the price of which is embedded rents on patents rather than actual labor and materials.

We pay taxes on every manufactured good that carries a 20% oligopoly pricing markup, because of the state’s regulatory cartels.

We pay taxes every time we pay artificially inflated interest because the state gives “private” usurers a monopoly on issuing the medium of exchange.

We pay taxes every time we hire a cab licensed under the medallion system, use professional services regulated by state licensing cartels, or make purchases at brick-and-mortar shops protected from competition by local zoning laws.

We pay taxes every time we get pay for a day’s work that’s less than the value we create, because the state’s artificial property rights make land and capital artificially scarce and expensive for labor and thereby shift bargaining power in the labor market toward the employers of labor.

And that’s before we even get to the web “official” sales taxes, “sin” taxes, personal property taxes and payroll taxes that encumber virtually every activity and transaction the political class takes notice of.

It’s the kinds of people in Mittens’ audience — an audience of landlords, usurers, monopolists and bosses, to whom we pay the taxes enumerated above every time we make a purchase or do a day’s work — who are dependent on, and are taken very, very good care of by government, largely at the expense of the working public they look down on.