Bryan G.
Dear Phil,
Thanks for the article and I’m sorry to have taken so long to get back
to you. As I read it I heard my own voice echoing the same or similar
arguments some years ago when I wrote a series of articles on
political, economic and ethical issues for a European journal.
The points you make about rights having their complement in
responsibilities is a point that needs to made with increasing
emphasis. In his famous book, The World we have Lost, a book about the
early modern period in English history, Peter Laslet describes how
employers in the sixteenth century employed apprentices in just the
way you suggest: they accepted all of their broader responsibilities.
In effect, the apprentice would become a full member of the family,
not just a ‘hand’, to use that most revealing of all metaphors that
arose in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution.
They accepted that when they employed someone they were employing the
complete person, not just one aspect of his complex personality. They
had responsibility for his emotional, moral and physical well being.
This strikes a sharp contrast with modern capitalism and liberal
democracy with their innate reductionist logic that sees society as
just a loose collection of isolated individuals and individuals as
just an abstraction, a ‘hand’.
It’s the logic of the free market to emphasise rights in isolation,
but it brings with it huge problems that we are ill-equipped to tackle
as long as we are in thrall to the nineteenth century ideology of the
free market. We have come to believe that this elegant
all-encompassing concept is nature’s ultimate self-righting mechanism,
that, if left to itself, will bring about the best of all worlds.
Unfortunately, politicians’ myopic gaze is so distorted by this
ideology that they fail to see the empirical evidence that shows not
only that free markets are an ideal concept rarely found in the real
world, but that they are driven more often that not by emotion, herd
instinct and panic. So, their blind acceptance of it as a regulatory
device is an abdication of reason.
More important, markets concentrate power into the hands of a few,
leaving societies riven by unsustainable social inequality. At
beginning of the twenty-first century we are left with problems that
were clearly foreseen in the nineteenth century and by many
commentators in the twentieth: an unsustainable passion for growth as
the natural world struggles to replenish itself (it takes the Earth
almost 15 months to regenerate what we use up in 12 months), global
warming, which is almost beyond our means to rein in, and rapidly
developing social injustice on a global scale, the threat of which can
only be held in check with ever greater concentrations of power in the
hands of leaders whose instincts are far from democratic.
I’m sorry to rant, but you have got me going. Like you, I suspect, I
would love to be able to contribute in some way to a movement that
raises consciousness of these issues in much the same way that the
Arab Spring was brought about. It has to be a bottom-up movement. Only
in this way can creative thinking break through the conventional
thinking of established ideologies.
Thank you for letting me read this. Keep in touch.
Best wishes,
Bryan G.
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Juan Carlos Chirgwin
Philip,
querido amigo,
Thank you for your letter and for your invitation to comment on your document.
But first of all let me apologise for my silence and lack of communication, but I do not have any longer the amount of energy and drive which I used spill daily during my younger days. Fortunately family obligations now take most of my productive time, and with Ximena we are always busy with the grandchildren.
Let me add though that I did read and much enjoyed documents you sent me months ago about Eve and Tony’s lives and their experiences. Thank you for sharing them.
Let me turn to your document concerning “property” and to protection values that by “natural law” are attached to such concept, although these have suffered pretty badly from man-made “legal erosion”. And therefore nowadays most of the “social obligations” connected with property appear to be hidden behind imposing walls of legal-paperwork that are in essence “illegitimate”.
But, the system that presently controls power in all the important political decision making centres, is well pleased with such arrangements and the only changes that might be tolerated are those that will add another turn of the screw of the “garrote vil” choking “public well-being”.
I feel just like you that our behaviour must we guided by both our individual needs and our responsibilities to other people and to our environment. The delicate balance between them is essential to ensure a stable relationship that allows the strengthening of the bonds among the different participants (beings and non-beings). Thus, from the very beginning we must strive to appreciate cooperation and respect – values that are totally lacking in today’s globalised world of domination and disdain for others.
In your document you analyse the problem of property from several angles. They include the meaning of property, and here we stumble with the first problem: it appears to have different meanings, and these changes are linked to categories both of people and of type of property.
The confusion of having different meanings for the same “word” is made worse when we learn that “the law” – an institution created by the people to ensure just treatment among them – has produced legal tools which justify some people to enjoy less obligations which are linked to their rights of property.
Finally confusion is turned to despair when this duplicity becomes the very essence of production and trading system, thus ensuring an economy that leads to concentration of riches and power in the hand of few people while the vast majority becomes responsible for all physical efforts and most of the intellectual input but with very meagre participation in the benefits which are obtained.
This overall look at the specific problem of property shows us that it is a complex problem. We humans have an uncanny twist to make our own life more difficult. And this is made worse the moment selfish interests creep into the fray. So I believe that we have to study “property” in terms of an idea (its conceptual meaning; its relationship with human values), in terms of its legitimate legal definition, and also as a factor of production and trade. Perhaps other aspects could be added, making it even more complex. But even if we just consider these three, we must be aware that although we might try to be as impartial and scientific as possible, we are –each one of us- in certain ways a product of a system made up not only of knowledge but of feelings.
As individuals, whether we like it or not, we have been for many years conditioned by “a life system” in which we were born, brought-up, educated and where we have preformed some kind of work and many other activities. Our language, our values, our traditions come as a special imprinting linked to some special culture; and there is no certainty this whole set of tools, that shape our social behaviour, does not have inclinations that play against the common good. Therefore, now that we are old enough to look back and analyse the ups-and-down of our lives, it is not difficult to feel that although each one of us is unique (a very promising trait), it is also true that most likely we could have been better. So most surely we all have a challenge ahead of us, and that is to strive for improvement. In order to strive in this direction we must verify each and every factor that guide our decisions and that condition our feelings, so that we can check all those factors which could affect negatively initiatives that search for the common good. We must be always alert and permanently striving to improve our social behaviour.
Human groups, throughout history, have shown brave attempts to question “systems of life” in which they lived. And some individuals even organised rebellions against “norms of behaviour” that had been imposed by force through organised structures of power which showed no respect for the common good of the vast majority of peoples. The most important modern political challenges to power structures, with worldwide repercussions, are those of the French Revolution and Bolshevik Revolution. In spite that these “ideas for social change” actually had a terrible cost in human lives, the mass of common people in countries that lived through it never had much opportunity to participate intellectually as individuals, to improve their social behaviour and contribute directly in better ways of government. Similar social tragedies followed independence efforts that eventually overthrew colonial empires during the 19th century and wars of liberation during the 20th century. History shows how, each and every successful uprising, was unable to deal with the legacy of the previous power system which through their ideas, institutions and manpower (their Status Quo), surreptitiously infiltrated the “new power system”.
From these rebellious efforts we can conclude that “ideas for social change” apparently need a prolonged period to organise masses of people to define by themselves and to practice new form of government; and, another indispensable condition, is that no external interference should occur threatening the good progress of the process of social change.
And all this longwinded chain of ideas leads me to uncomfortable conclusions. Our historical record seems to show that important events linked to “ideas for social change” have never been accepted by existing power systems. So perhaps the first conclusion is that authentic participation of the people has never come to fruition, at best ignored and most likely repressed. Democracy has never been truly present.
The second conclusion is that finally injustice can reach limits that are no longer tolerated and out of despair the suffering masses of people have no other way out but to turn to violence.
And an important remark to these conclusions: Up to now social upheaval has never expanded far enough and fast enough – important centres representing the interest of the “old regimes” remained sufficiently intact to pose a threat to the places where “ideas for social change” were in progress.
Thus it seems to me that the stuff that we are made of – our cultural legacy – is an important factor that plays against the “ideas for social change”. Most people are not willing to question the “system of power” in which they live. And the basic structures of modern social communities are conditioned by values, concepts and institutions that induce and control our thinking, feeling and actions in such a way that each individual “conforms to such norms”. Each individual is well aware of the risks implied by deviations from such norms.
We are at present living inside a complex system of power that is under the control of institutions
(multinational corporations) and in which virtual economic activities predominate. Furthermore countries and their governments, international institutions and world trade are all, directly or indirectly under their grip. Individuals and well meaning groups with alternative ways of thinking are thus faced with an enormous challenge. But even though they have been traditionally few in number and have limited tools to defend their ideas, they have always been present throughout history. I am sure that this is true today and that this will continue in the future until we change this world for the better.
Please forgive me for this untidy and obscure contribution but I hope that you might grasp that I am
very sympathetic to your assessment of the problem posed to us by “property”.
Best regards to you and your family. Lots of luck in all your endeavours.
Un gran abrazo
Juan Carlos
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Dominic Tweedie
Hello Phil,
Why are you stressing about the rich, qua rich? The act of exploitation happens in the workplace, not on the yacht.
The new relations of production that will supercede the sale and purchase of commodity labour-power and the consequent extraction of surplus value have to be visualised.
The new relations of production will equally as much as today be "collaborative projects" insofar as they conform to the basic human social pattern of two or more individuals mediated by a human artefact.
The problem today is not so much that the mediating social artefacts are property, but rather that they are in the first place commodity, and that for as much as we are in a world of commodities, human beings have been reduced to commodity labour-power.
The capitalist, acting as a capitalist, must throw his money back into the market, time and again. The capitalist's yacht, on the other hand, is not principally a circulating commodity, but is rather an enormous piece of consumption, and it is in this aspect of consumption that the yacht appears repulsive to you.
The essence of your criticism is not democracy or socialism. The essence of your criticism is bourgeois puritanism. You do not criticise commodity here. You criticise the rich when they attempt to escape from the world of commodity.
You criticise the rich when they try to cease behaving as bourgeois, and begin to behave as aristocrats. Of course to move from capitalism to feudalism is a step back. But your remedy is only to call, in effect, for the restoration of the (fantasy) bourgeois values of liberty, fraternity and equality. Such a "revolution" could only achieve the same result as before: the confirmation of bourgeois class rule.
May I offer you an alternative consolation? Consider that human beings do in fact behave in a largely communistic manner, even in the most bourgeois of societies. Language, the Internet, and daily life are all in practice carried on in the way of ancient society - interaction mediated by artefacts. Human relations are not entirely but only partially regimented by class-division and class domination.
I wish you would put http://domza.blogspot.com/ (Communist University) on your blogroll. It would give you support to the extent that you are not the only one kvetching, even if our conclusions may from time to time be different.
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C.A.B.
Phil, last week, I met someone helping to push democracy down to the smallest units of society by developing software tools that make collaborative decision-making as easy as possible. There is a small community in Australia -- Greater Geraldton -- already using these tools.
So you, for instance, would be shown how to make a specific proposal to do something about your fully justified outrage -- and put it up for debate by your community.
This is the way I lean -- towards action. I am tired of rhetoric, even of arguments as well thought-out as yours. I want to see more specific outlines of reform that other people help to improve.
Here's a clip from the website of the organisation CivicEvolution.org ... if the links don't go through, please would you re-post them:
"Think together to act together
We believe that meaningful change comes from the grassroots in the form of community written and supported plans to solve community problems.
How we do it
We complement traditional face-to-face citizen engagement with the scalability and access of social media and collaborative production. Our goal is to maximize everyone's ability to participate in creative community problem solving by giving them a platform where they can "Think together to act together."
Anyone can float ideas and aggregate clicks–meaningful change comes from a community written and supported plan to put an idea into action.
http://2029.civicevolution.org/
http://civicevolution.org/ ..."
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