Beyond Capitalism

An Interview With Cynthia Kaufman

by ROBERT JENSEN, Counterpunch

I’m fond of books that don’t claim to have The Answer but instead are useful guides in our search for answers.

Such a volume is Cynthia Kaufman’s Getting Past Capitalism: History, Vision, Hope, which expresses in clear, concise language thoughts that likely have been bumping around in the minds of many of us who reject capitalism. The book is particularly powerful because of its modesty; Kaufman promises no new grand theory and instead offers insights that we all can use in our daily lives.

The only thing I didn’t like about the book when I first read it was its hefty hardcover price tag. Now the book has been released in a more affordable paperback, which sparked me to ask Kaufman to elaborate on her ideas.

A philosopher who draws on work from many disciplines, Kaufman is the director of the Institute of Community and Civic Engagement at De Anza College in Cupertino, CA, and also has experience as a union organizer and activist in the Central American solidarity movement and other struggles. She also is the author of the 2003 book, Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change.

Robert Jensen: Critiques of capitalism have been around since the beginning of capitalism. Is there anything distinctive about this moment? Mainstream society continues to operate as if “there is no alternative” to capitalism, but at the same time, the failures of capitalism are more evident than ever.

Cynthia Kaufman: Indeed, those failures are clear. The issue of inequality in this country, and the ways that money has captured our political system, are serious indicators of that. And climate change is a game-changer. We really are in serious trouble as a species if we stick with business as usual. We desperately need to find alternatives, and in fact we are surrounded by them.

Partially because these things have gotten so bad—but also because of the spectacular disaster caused by deregulation and the neoliberal model of capitalism on steroids that caused the world economic crash of 2008—people are beginning to see that the current system is not sustainable. That has opened up, for example, the space for the surprisingly positive response to the Occupy movement when it sprang up in response to the crash.

RJ: How would you characterize the struggle against capitalism? You point out there is no “command center” to target. How should we think about this struggle?

CK: The main argument of the book is that capitalism is constituted by a varied of different practices, and so challenging capitalism needs to be about a variety of struggles. I draw on the important work of J.K. Gibson-Graham, who argues that we should model anti-capitalist struggle on feminist struggles. Second-wave feminists didn’t look for an overthrow of patriarchy. Instead, they analyzed what they were up against and fought it in all of its varied manifestations.

One of the problems with traditional anti-capitalist thought is that it defines capitalism as a totality, which encourages us to imagine another totality, socialism, which we can try to replace it with. This totalizing perspective has colonized the imagination of anti-capitalism and left us waiting for a revolution we can never have.

In the book I argue that we see ourselves as inhabiting a complex social world that has some capitalist things going on in it as well as some socialist ones, some communist ones, and many where economics are not separated out of the broader fabric of life (such as sharing and gift giving, and mutual support). The way we get past capitalism is by building on the healthy non-capitalist aspects of our world while we also do pitched battle with the capitalist ones that we have a fair chance of winning against. In that way we build a better world and shrink the destructive capitalist practices that are part of the social fabric.

RJ: Although almost no one likes labels, in many situations we do have to apply labels to our politics. How do you describe yourself in the context of this critique of capitalism?

CK: That really depends on who I am talking to. I tend to not use the word “socialist,” because even though more young adults in the United States in a poll say they support socialism than do capitalism, the word socialism doesn’t have a lot of meaning in this country. Also, when I talk about alternatives to capitalism, socialism is one thing we need to build among many. I often refer to myself as a radical, reminding people that the word radical comes from the Latin word radix, meaning root. I think we need to get to the roots of problems as we try to solve them. I also like the word anti-capitalist.

I think a lot of people use the word progressive as a code for “left,” because it is a bold statement to call oneself a leftist in this country. I’m OK using whatever words communicate and get people with the program of building a socially just world.

RJ: How did you become a leftist?

CK: I grew up in a fairly non-political family. I come from a mixed Jewish and Catholic family with strong family memories of persecution, poverty, and class resentment. I grew up quite alienated from my surroundings in suburban San Diego, where white people were expected to be happy and content with the social world. I was always looking for ways to make life less flat and meaningless than it seemed to be. When I was 20, I read an article about U.S. support for the dictatorship in El Salvador. That moved me, and I contacted the organization mentioned in the article and asked if I could volunteer. I was quickly asked to do much more than that, and have been active in social justice politics ever since then. I now inhabit a social world full of meaning, inspiration, purpose, and interesting loving people.

RJ: Back to terms and labels. Help us understand the pros and cons of the terms we can use to describe a critique of capitalism. Let’s start with the three traditional terms from the left: socialist, communist, and anarchist.

CK: The terms socialist and communist are mostly about describing the world we want after capitalism, and I think they are both important. In my chapter on alternatives to capitalism I talk about the importance of pursuing multiple alternatives. I follow Richard Wolff and Steven Resnick in defining socialism as a mode of production in which the state is an important vector in taking and providing resources. States can be more or less democratic, and so can socialism. I think any ideal society that exists on a large scale, which is what we most likely have in store for us as a human race, will involve some aspects of socialism. Things like water and sewage systems require states in a large-scale society, but states are also a good mechanism for dealing with health care, education, public transportation, and infrastructure.

Communism then defines a society in which there are communal forms for dealing with resources. Many communal forms exist where there are not communist governments. The Mondragon cooperatives in Spain and the thousands of worker-owned cooperatives in the United States, are viable alternatives to capitalism.

For as long as I have been a leftist, I have been very sympathetic to anarchism, which I see as most importantly a critique of authoritarianism, and a caution against the accumulation of unjust forms of power. I think any healthy social movement needs some anarchist impulses to keep it honest. Anarchism as the name for an ideal total social form is a really complicated question. I have never found satisfying answers from anarchists about the definition of the state they are opposed to. Most are opposed to coercive forms of state power. Questions about large scale systems of organization and how they will be funded—those are questions it’s hard to get anarchists to give good answers to.

RJ: What about the seemingly endless debates about reform versus revolution?

CK: That is one of the most unproductive binaries in anti-capitalist thought. Most of the time, those terms function as frozen relics from debates within the German Social Democratic Party at the turn of the last century. In Marxism there are some very unhelpful ideas about the need to push for a revolution that will overturn all of society. Marx gets that from Hegel, and it leads to some very bad politics, such as the hope that things must get worse because that will then turn into the antithesis and get better from there. A kind of wishful thinking then grows out of not seeing a realistic path forward.

I think there is a legitimate critique of reformism, as a politics that is content with making small changes in society without asking for bigger and deeper changes. So in the book I talk about revolutionary reforms, meaning actions that we take in small ways to make the world a better place and disrupt some of the ways that capitalism is reproduced.

RJ: Is there an important distinction to be made between liberal and left?

CK: When I first came to political consciousness in the 1980s, it seemed important for people who shared my politics to call ourselves leftists and not liberals. Liberals were those who wanted a tolerant society but who weren’t willing to look at issues of power. Now after 30 years of the Reagan revolution with the liberal social welfare state under increasing attack, I think liberalism—meaning support for a welfare state and for public goods—needs to be defended. At this point in this country, it actually takes some courage to be liberal, and liberals are fighting for things I want them to be fighting for. So I’m all for liberalism, as well as leftism.

RJ: Based on your reading of the state of the world and what is possible through organizing and education, react to these pairs of words: optimism/pessimism.

CK: I am one who often quotes the Italian Marxist and anti-fascist philosopher Gramsci’s dictum that we should have pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. This means that we should have the courage to look our social problems fully in the face and understand just how huge are the problems that we are up against. And yet, the second part of that means that we need to look for the places where a difference can be made, and put our hearts into those cracks and fissures. We need to hold in our hearts the possibility of a better world, not because we have candy-coated the problems or lied about what we can accomplish, but because we know that we do often win and make a difference, and that all the good things we have in the world are the results of those who have had the courage and commitment to have done this work before us.

RJ: Another pair: success/failure.

CK: There is a cultural norm on the left of being afraid to declare victory, which is related to the binary of reform/revolution. Whereas reformists are winning small gains, revolutionaries don’t want people to be satisfied with those small victories because they worry this will lead to acceptance of the bigger picture of capitalism domination, and so they find a way to turn every victory into a defeat. In the book, I call for a culture of declaring victory wherever we can. You build movements and keep people in a struggle when it feels productive. Anti-capitalists have typically been the people in movements who have declared every gain to be a trick of the capitalist class to buy us off. That line isn’t very inspiring, and it shows no sensitivity to how social movements actually succeed.

RJ: Finally, hope/despair.

CK: I put hope into the title of the book, and my first reviewer said it was both startling and refreshing to see the words hope and capitalism in the same title. I think one of the reasons anti-capitalists tend to not have much hope is related to the ways we conceptualize what we are up against. Yes it is true that pro-capitalist forces have a lot of power. But so did slave-holding racists. We give ourselves hope when we conceptualize capitalism as a set of practices that can be challenged by fighting the piece of the puzzle we feel most compelled to fight.

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007). He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html.

Thailand: Anti-government protests disrupt election

By Tom Peters, wsws.org

Thailand-protests23
Protesters supporting the army and the royalist feudal cliques.
•

Millions of people were prevented from voting in Thailand’s election yesterday, as anti-government protesters blockaded ballot stations. According to the Electoral Commission, polls did not open in 42 of the country’s 375 electoral districts, affecting an estimated six million voters in parts of Bangkok and several southern provinces.

The disruption demonstrated the government’s tenuous hold on power. A state of emergency declared last month has had no effect in quelling protests. Around the country about 130,000 police were mobilised yesterday, as well as 5,000 soldiers in Bangkok, but they did not intervene to end blockades of voting stations.

At some polling venues people were unable to vote because the Electoral Commission, which the government accuses of tacitly supporting the protesters, failed to organise enough staff and ballot papers. Electoral Commission member Somchai Srisuthiyakorn, who previously called for the election to be postponed, wrote on Facebook on Thursday that the poll would be an “embarrassment” and might have the lowest turnout in history.

The protests were organised by the so-called People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC), which has blockaded Bangkok streets and government buildings for the past three months. It aims to topple Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s caretaker government and replace it with an unelected “people’s council,” which would essentially be a military-backed junta. The opposition Democrat Party resigned from parliament en masse in December to support the PDRC’s campaign and also boycotted the election.

The Democrats and PDRC represent sections of the ruling elite—including the military high command, ultra-royalists and the state bureaucracy—who are hostile to Yingluck and her brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Thaksin, a telecommunications billionaire, was ousted in a military coup in 2006 after he alienated sections of big business by opening the country to increased foreign investment and undermining the longstanding systems of patronage involving the military and state apparatus.

Thaksin and Yingluck also angered the traditional Bangkok elites by implementing limited reforms aimed at securing support from the country’s urban and rural poor. These include an increased minimum wage, cheaper healthcare and subsidies for rice farmers. The anti-government protesters have largely been drawn from sections of the Bangkok middle classes and from Democrat strongholds in the country’s south.

Thousands of people across the country held rallies to oppose the PDRC’s anti-democratic campaign. At some Bangkok polling booths “Red Shirt” protesters organised by the pro-government United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) confronted PDRC blockades and demanded their right to vote.

When officials responded to an altercation at the Din Daeng polling station by closing it, Red Shirt protesters were furious. One quoted in the Guardiandeclared: “This is ridiculous. Why didn’t anyone figure out how to deal with this before the day of the election? The Election Commission should let us vote to see who will win and who will lose.”

While no violence was reported yesterday, on Saturday nine people were injured in a shoot-out that began when Red Shirt protesters demanded that the PDRC end its blockade of a polling station in the Bangkok suburb of Lak Si. Gunfire reportedly came from both sides, but no one was arrested. UDD chair Tida Thawornseth declared at a press conference yesterday that “soldiers sat watching what was happening, doing nothing.” She questioned whether the military itself staged the attack.

The incident follows a string of attacks on PDRC rallies and protest leaders in recent weeks by unidentified people. The PDRC blames the government and its supporters, but the PDRC has the most to gain by staging a provocation to provide the pretext for a military intervention. Army Chief General Prayuth Chan-Ocha previously indicated that the military would step in to prevent widespread violence.

Yingluck pushed ahead with an early election in an effort to shore up her rule following the Democrats’ resignation from parliament. Even though her Puea Thai Party will almost certainly win a majority, the country’s political crisis will intensify, however. The Electoral Commission announced it would conduct by-elections for areas where polling booths did not open, but this could take several months.

In December, protesters prevented any candidates from registering in 28 constituencies by blockading registration sites. Unless the EC agrees to re-register candidates, the next parliament will not be able to fill 95 percent of seats as required under the constitution and cannot convene to install a new government. The Yingluck government will remain in caretaker mode, with limited powers.

The Democrats announced that they will apply to the Constitution Court to declare the election invalid. The opposition is attempting to re-run the events leading up to the 2006 coup. At that time, the Democrats similarly boycotted an election, which was then annulled by the court. The ruling created a constitutional crisis that paved the way for the military to oust Thaksin.

The government already faces legal challenges from a judiciary that largely supports the opposition. The National Anti-Corruption Commission is fast-tracking an impeachment case brought by the Democrats against Yingluck, based on allegations that she failed to prevent losses linked to the government’s rice subsidy scheme. The NACC has also accused 308 law-makers, mostly from Puea Thai, of acting illegally by attempting to amend the constitution to make the Senate a fully-elected body. If found guilty, they could be banned from politics.

Underlying the increasing tensions between rival factions of Thailand’s ruling class is a rapidly worsening economic crisis. The stock market has fallen 10 percent since November and the government has slashed its economic growth estimates for this year from 5.1 percent to 3.1 percent since December. The New York Times noted on January 30 that Thailand’s unrest “comes just as investors are pulling their money from emerging markets worldwide” as a result of the US Federal Reserve’s decision to “taper” its quantitative easing program, which had kept down interest rates in the US and sent investors looking for better returns in countries like Thailand.

Domestic and foreign capitalists are demanding that the political crisis be resolved so that the economic crisis can be imposed on working people. A recent report by HSBC bank, entitled “ASEAN Perspectives: A sputtering domestic engine,” called on Thailand to carry out “structural reforms” to improve its competitiveness, including the scrapping of “excessive subsidies, including the rice programmes.”

Yingluck is just as committed to this austerity agenda as her opponents. She has repeatedly appealed to big business and the military to support her re-election as the best means to carry out this agenda. While the ruling Puea Thai government postures as a defender of democracy, it is equally ready as its opponents to resort to anti-democratic measures to impose the demands of big business and foreign investors.

The Grim Truth Behind the ‘Scandinavian Miracle’

The Guardian [1] / By Michael Booth [2]

“The Nordic Countries: The Next Supermodel” [8], boomed the Economist; “Copenhagen really is wonderful for so many reasons,” [9]gushed the Guardian.

Whether it is Denmark’s happiness, its restaurants, or TV dramas; Sweden’s gender equality, crime novels and retail giants; Finland’s schools; Norway’s oil wealth and weird songs about foxes; or Iceland’s bounce-back from the financial abyss, we have an insatiable appetite for positive Nordic news stories. After decades dreaming of life among olive trees and vineyards, these days for some reason, we Brits are now projecting our need for the existence of an earthly paradise northwards.

I have contributed to the relentless Tetris shower of print columns on the wonders of Scandinavia myself over the years but now I say: enough!Nu er det nok! Enough with foraging for dinner. Enough with the impractical minimalist interiors. Enough with the envious reports on the abolition of gender-specific pronouns. Enough of the unblinking idolatry of all things knitted, bearded, rye bread-based and licorice-laced. It is time to redress the imbalance, shed a little light Beyond the Wall.

Take the Danes, for instance. True, they claim to be the happiest people in the world, but why no mention of the fact they are second only to Iceland when it comes to consuming anti- depressants [10]? And Sweden? If, as a headline in this paper once claimed, it is “the most successful society the world has ever seen” [11], why aren’t more of you dreaming of “a little place” in Umeå?

Actually, I have lived in Denmark – on and off – for about a decade, because my wife’s work is here (and she’s Danish). Life here is pretty comfortable, more so for indigenous families than for immigrants or ambitious go-getters (Google “Jantelov” [12] for more on this), but as with all the Nordic nations, it remains largely free of armed conflict, extreme poverty, natural disasters and Jeremy Kyle.

So let’s remove those rose-tinted ski goggles and take a closer look at the objects of our infatuation …

Protesters clash with police at an asylum centre near Copenhagen in 2008. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

DENMARK

Why do the Danes score so highly on international happiness surveys? Well, they do have high levels of trust and social cohesion, and do very nicely from industrial pork products, but according to the OECD they alsowork fewer hours per year than most of the rest of the world [13]. As a result, productivity is worryingly sluggish. How can they afford all those expensively foraged meals and hand-knitted woollens? Simple, the Danes also have the highest level of private debt in the world [14] (four times as much as the Italians, to put it into context; enough to warrant a warning from the IMF), while more than half of them admit to using the black market to obtain goods and services.

Perhaps the Danes’ dirtiest secret is that, according to a 2012 report from the Worldwide Fund for Nature [15], they have the fourth largest per capita ecological footprint in the world. Even ahead of the US. Those offshore windmills may look impressive as you land at Kastrup, but Denmark burns an awful lot of coal. Worth bearing that in mind the next time a Dane wags her finger at your patio heater.

I’m afraid I have to set you straight on Danish television too. Their big new drama series, Arvingerne (The Legacy, when it comes to BBC4 later this year [16]) is stunning, but the reality of prime-time Danish TV is day-to-day, wall-to-wall reruns of 15-year-old episodes of Midsomer Murders and documentaries on pig welfare. The Danes of course also have highest taxes in the world (though only the sixth-highest wages – hence the debt, I guess). As a spokesperson I interviewed at the Danish centre-right thinktank Cepos put it, they effectively work until Thursday lunchtime for the state’s coffers, and the other day and half for themselves.

Presumably the correlative of this is that Denmark has the best public services? According to the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment rankings (Pisa), Denmark’s schools lag behind even the UK’s [17]. Its health service is buckling too. (The other day, I turned up at my local A&E to be told that I had to make an appointment, which I can’t help feeling rather misunderstands the nature of the service.) According to the World Cancer Research Fund [18], the Danes have the highest cancer rates on the planet. “But at least the trains run on time!” I hear you say. No, that was Italy under Mussolini. The Danish national rail company has skirted bankruptcy in recent years, and the trains most assuredly do not run on time. Somehow, though, the government still managed to find £2m to fund a two-year tax-scandal investigation largely concerned, as far as I can make out, with the sexual orientation of the prime minister’s husband, Stephen Kinnock [19].

Most seriously of all, economic equality – which many believe is the foundation of societal success – is decreasing. According to a report in Politiken this month, the proportion of people below the poverty line has doubled over the last decade. Denmark is becoming a nation divided, essentially, between the places which have a branch of Sticks’n’Sushi (Copenhagen) and the rest. Denmark’s provinces have become a social dumping ground for non-western immigrants, the elderly, the unemployed and the unemployable who live alongside Denmark’s 22m intensively farmed pigs, raised 10 to a pen and pumped full of antibiotics (the pigs, that is).

Other awkward truths? There is more than a whiff of the police state about the fact that Danish policeman refuse to display ID numbers and can refuse to give their names. The Danes are aggressively jingoistic, waving their red-and-white dannebrog at the slightest provocation. Like the Swedes, they embraced privatisation with great enthusiasm (even the ambulance service is privatised); and can seem spectacularly unsophisticated in their race relations (cartoon depictions of black people with big lips and bones through their noses are not uncommon in the national press). And if you think a move across the North Sea would help you escape the paedophiles, racists, crooks and tax-dodging corporations one reads about in the British media on a daily basis, I’m afraid I must disabuse you of that too. Got plenty of them.

Plus side? No one talks about cricket.

NORWAY

The dignity and resolve of the Norwegian people in the wake of the attacks by Anders Behring Breivik in July 2011 was deeply impressive, but in September the rightwing, anti-Islamist Progress party – of which Breivik had been an active member for many years – won 16.3% of the vote in the general election, enough to elevate it into coalition government for the first time in its history. There remains a disturbing Islamophobic sub-subculture in Norway. Ask the Danes, and they will tell you that the Norwegians are the most insular and xenophobic of all the Scandinavians, and it is true that since they came into a bit of money in the 1970s the Norwegians have become increasingly Scrooge-like, hoarding their gold, fearful of outsiders.

Though 2013 saw a record number of asylum applications to Norway, it granted asylum to fewer than half of them (around 5,000 people), a third of the number that less wealthy Sweden admits (Sweden accepted over 9,000 from Syria alone). In his book Petromania, journalist Simon Sætre warns that the powerful oil lobby is “isolating us and making the country asocial”. According to him, his countrymen have been corrupted by their oil money, are working less, retiring earlier, and calling in sick more frequently. And while previous governments have controlled the spending of oil revenues, the new bunch are threatening a splurge which many warn could lead to full-blown Dutch disease [20].

Like the dealer who never touches his own supply, those dirty frackersthe Norwegians boast of using only renewable energy sources [21], all the while amassing the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund selling fossil fuels to the rest of us [22]. As Norwegian anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen put it to me when I visited his office in Oslo University: “We’ve always been used to thinking of ourselves as part of the solution, and with the oil we suddenly became part of the problem. Most people are really in denial.”

2006 WINTER OLYMPIC GAMES, TURIN, ITALY - 21 FEB 2006

Finns … having a quiet drink. Photograph: Martti Kainulainen/REX

ICELAND

We need not detain ourselves here too long. Only 320,000 – it would appear rather greedy and irresponsible – people cling to this breathtaking, yet borderline uninhabitable rock in the North Atlantic. Further attention will only encourage them.

FINLAND

I am very fond of the Finns, a most pragmatic, redoubtable people with a Sahara-dry sense of humour. But would I want to live in Finland? In summer, you’ll be plagued by mosquitos, in winter, you’ll freeze – that’s assuming no one shoots you, or you don’t shoot yourself. Finland ranks third in global gun ownership [23] behind only America and Yemen; has the highest murder rate in western Europe [24], double that of the UK; and by far the highest suicide rate in the Nordic countries.

The Finns are epic Friday-night bingers and alcohol is now the leading cause of death for Finnish men [25]. “At some point in the evening around 11.30pm, people start behaving aggressively, throwing punches, wrestling,” Heikki Aittokoski, foreign editor of Helsingin Sanomat, told me. “The next day, people laugh about it. In the US, they’d have an intervention.”

With its tarnished crown jewel, Nokia, devoured by Microsoft, Finland’s hitherto robust economy is more dependent than ever on selling paper – mostly I was told, to Russian porn barons. Luckily, judging by a recent journey I took with my eldest son the length of the country by train, the place appears to be 99% trees. The view was a bit samey.

A car burning after riots in Stockholm in 2013.

A car burning after riots in Stockholm in 2013. Photograph: EPA

The nation once dubbed “the west’s reigning educational superpower” (the Atlantic) has slipped in the latest Pisa rankings. This follows some unfortunate incidents involving Finnish students – the burning of Porvoo cathedral by an 18-year-old in 2006; the Jokela shootings (another disgruntled 18-year-old) in 2007, and the shooting of 10 more students by a peer in 2008 – which led some to speculate whether Finnish schools were quite as wonderful as their reputation would have us believe.

If you do decide to move there, don’t expect scintillating conversation. Finland’s is a reactive, listening culture, burdened by taboos too many to mention (civil war, second world war and cold war-related, mostly). They’re not big on chat. Look up the word “reticent” in the dictionary and you won’t find a picture of an awkward Finn standing in a corner looking at his shoelaces, but you should.

“We would always prefer to be alone,” a Finnish woman once admitted to me. She worked for the tourist board.

Sweden

Anything I say about the Swedes will pale in comparison to their own excoriating self-image. A few years ago, the Swedish Institute of Public Opinion Research asked young Swedes to describe their compatriots. The top eight adjectives they chose were: envious, stiff, industrious, nature loving, quiet, honest, dishonest, xenophobic.

I met with Åke Daun, Sweden’s most venerable ethnologist. “Swedes seem not to ‘feel as strongly’ as certain other people”, Daun writes in his excellent book, Swedish Mentality. “Swedish women try to moan as little as possible during childbirth and they often ask, when it is all over, whether they screamed very much. They are very pleased to be told they did not.” Apparently, crying at funerals is frowned upon and “remembered long afterwards”. The Swedes are, he says, “highly adept at insulating themselves from each other”. They will do anything to avoid sharing a lift with a stranger, as I found out during a day-long experiment behaving as un-Swedishly as possible in Stockholm.

Effectively a one-party state – albeit supported by a couple of shadowy industrialist families – for much of the 20th century, “neutral” Sweden (one of the world largest arms exporters [26]) continues to thrive economically thanks to its distinctive brand of totalitarian modernism, which curbs freedoms, suppresses dissent in the name of consensus, and seems hell-bent on severing the bonds between wife and husband, children and parents, and elderly on their children. Think of it as the China of the north.

Youth unemployment is higher than the UK’s and higher than the EU average [27]; integration is an ongoing challenge; and as with Norway and Denmark, the Swedish right is on the rise. A spokesman for the Sweden Democrats (currently at an all-time high of close to 10% in the polls [28]) insisted to me that immigrants were “more prone to violence”. I pointed out that Sweden was one of the most bloodthirsty nations on earth for much of the last millennium. I was told we’d run out of time.

Ask the Finns and they will tell you that Swedish ultra-feminism has emasculated their men, but they will struggle to drown their sorrows. Their state-run alcohol monopoly stores, the dreaded Systembolaget, were described by Susan Sontag as “part funeral parlour, part back-room abortionist”.

The myriad successes of the Nordic countries are no miracle, they were born of a combination of Lutheran modesty, peasant parsimony, geographical determinism and ruthless pragmatism (“The Russians are attacking? Join the Nazis! The Nazis are losing? Join the Allies!”). These societies function well for those who conform to the collective median, but they aren’t much fun for tall poppies. Schools rein in higher achievers for the sake of the less gifted; “elite” is a dirty word; displays of success, ambition or wealth are frowned upon. If you can cope with this, and the cost, and the cold (both metaphorical and inter-personal), then by all means join me in my adopted hyggelige home. I’ve rustled up a sorrel salad and there’s some expensive, weak beer in the fridge. Pull up an Egg. I hear Taggart’s on again!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

sociological term to negatively describe an attitude towards individuality and success common in Sweden^[3] and the rest of the Nordic countries, the term refers to a mentality that de-emphasizes individual effort and places all emphasis on the collective, while discouraging those who stand out as achievers.

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/world/grim-truth-behind-scandinavian-miracle

Links:
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/michael-booth
[3] http://www.theguardian.com/world/iceland
[4] http://www.theguardian.com/world/finland
[5] http://www.theguardian.com/world/denmark
[6] http://www.theguardian.com/world/norway
[7] http://www.theguardian.com/world/sweden

Why Capitalism Can’t Fix Our Most Urgent Problems

Whatever Happened to Economic Democracy?

Well, it never existed, that’s what happened.

David and Charles Koch: like the rest of their damned ilk, a blight on the face of the planet, and that’s not figuratively. They have no use for any form of democracy, political or economic. They show that capitalism is really a four-letter word.

by GARY ENGLER

Can capitalism solve the problems of global warming and growing inequality? It seems to me this is like discussing the issue of inappropriate hypersexual imagery bombarding 11-year olds and then asking: Can Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga fix the problem?

Real capitalism, not the theoretical version taught in school, is a system of minority rule in which a few people profit at the expense of others.

Real capitalists are always trying to cut their costs and increase their profits, which leads to unemployment, falling wages, rising economic disparity and not paying for the environmental damage they cause.

Private ownership of what are social means of livelihood produces incentives for capitalists to pass along the real costs of industry to communities, workers, future generations and other species.

Private ownership [of the means of production] makes growing inequality inevitable. A system can proclaim itself democratic, but if a minority holds most of the economic, and therefore social and political power, that minority will inevitably reward itself, its power will grow and ever-expanding inequality will be the result.

Capitalism is sociopathic. Its ideologues, like the late Margaret Thatcher, reject the social, claiming only individuals exist. Yet capitalism has driven individual producers to the fringes of economies. Most people, ninety per cent in the U.K., depend on wages or salary, working with others in cooperative, coordinated labour — social labour, but directed by wealthy minorities for their own profit.

Capitalism promotes greed. It boasts of this. So why would we be surprised when a small minority with most of the power looks after itself, in effect telling the rest of us: “Screw you and the planet you live on! We don’t care about global warming because we have the money to buy a nice place regardless of how high the oceans rise.”

Capitalism requires constant growth to satisfy its need for more profit. But what happens when the environment needs a smaller human footprint? When, at least in wealthier countries, we must learn to live with less stuff?

History shows capitalism reacts badly to declining markets. When the economy shrinks for a sustained period the system goes into crisis. Banks crash, unemployment grows and capitalists often turn to war to get their profits rising again.

The truth is a sustainable economy is incompatible with a system that constantly demands more profit.

To quote the greatest living English political philosopher, Russell Brand: “I know what the fucking system shouldn’t do. It shouldn’t destroy the planet and shouldn’t create massive economic disparity.”

Like Russell we know what we don’t like. That’s the easy part. But how can we get rid of capitalism and what is the alternative?

To answer we must go back to the issue of power and how to distribute it in a way that promotes the common good, a key element of which is a healthy environment. The best way is through more democracy. REAL democracy. Economic democracy.

Do you want an equitable, sustainable economy? Then help overthrow capitalism and create an economic democracy.

What exactly does this mean?

Let me give you an example: With the one pound one vote system that governs corporate capitalism, Richard Branson, with a net worth of 3.5 billion pounds get 3.5 billion votes. In comparison you (pointing) get 147 and you get 58. Most of you poor buggers owe more than you own so you get no votes at all. Economic democracy means giving everyone the right to a voice and an equal vote in their communities’ economic decisions. When everyone has an equal right in decision-making, economies will be motivated by general wellbeing, not private profit. Economic democracy means eliminating the divide between workers and owners by making everyone an owner. Economic democracy means multiple owning communities — local, regional, national, international — so that power does not become concentrated in the hands of a single central state. It means that wherever social labour occurs a system of democracy manages the enterprise.

Imagine companies that are democratically run by workers together with a local, regional, national or international government, whichever is appropriate to that enterprise; companies whose mandate it is to promote the common good, rather than the narrow self-interest of rich shareholders; companies that no longer have incentives to destroy the planet, but rather face real penalties for harming the environment.

Now, I know what at least some of you are thinking. This is not realistic. Your ideas are just pie in the sky. But the truth is capitalism has already created what one might call “objective conditions” that do indeed make economic democracy possible. Most people in most countries already depend on social labor. Most of you, if you find paid employment, will be salaried or wage workers. If we choose to fight for it, we can expand one-person, one-vote decision-making into every area where people work collectively, which is most of our economy. If we elect governments committed to it we could pass laws that limit private property to what is truly private and doesn’t give an individual power over others. We could create a system of social ownership with multiple democratic owning communities.

If we accomplish these three things — replacing corporate ownership with social ownership, replacing capitalist entitlement with equal human entitlement and replacing master-servant relations with workplace democracy — the system that drives enterprises to maximize profits, regardless of the consequences, would no longer exist.

Capitalism and sustainability, can you have it all? No. But there is much better alternative: Economic democracy, a system that will offer authentic jobs, a nourishing work-life balance, your fair share of power and a healthy environment. This sounds like the essentials of a good life to me.

Adapted from a speech given at the One World Week Forum at the University of Warwick on January 30, 2014.

Gary Engler is a co-author of the New Commune-ist Manifesto — Workers of the World it Really is Time to Unite, recently released by Fernwood Publishing.

Surprise! Kerry Backs Keystone XL Pipeline

By Stephen Lendman

The war on nature and humanity continues.
Count on these business-owned criminals to accelerate the poisoning of the planet.

State Department endorsed the Keystone XL Pipeline project. It risks enormous environmental damage. It’s a controversial 1,661-mile Alberta, Canada to Port Arthur, TX pipeline. At issue is transporting toxic tar sands oil from Western Canada to refineries on America’s Gulf coast.

Doing so entails passing through environmentally sensitive areas in six states. They include waterways and the Ogallala Aquifer. It’s one of the world’s largest. It supplies about 30% of America’s irrigation ground water. It’s vital for human consumption. Friends of the Earth said Keystone XL (KXL) “will carry one of the world’s dirtiest fuels: tar sands oil.” Its route “could devastate ecosystems and pollute water sources, and would jeopardize public health.”

___________
There’s never “been a bigger con man in the White House than Barack Obama,” said Ralph Nader. He’s right, of course.
___________

It’ll double America’s dirty tar sands oil supply. Environmental toxicity will increase exponentially. Big Oil wants it. So do Republicans and many Democrats. Expect Obama to rubber-stamp approval. The State Department’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) falsely claimed no risks to health and safety. More on this below. TransCanada Corporation will build KXL. It’s spill-prone construction record assures trouble.

It promised its Keystone I pipeline would leak at most once every seven years. In year one, it leaked 12 times. It was once a month on average. It was unprecedented in US pipeline history. TarSandsBlockade.org asks “Why Oppose KXL?”

For many reasons, it states. NASA scientist James Hansen calls it “a fuse to the largest carbon bomb on the planet.” All pipelines spill. Avoidance is impossible. Large-scale environmental damage is too great a price to pay. TransCanada said up to 700,000 gallons of tar sands crude could leak without detection. Safeguards are weak and ineffective. Pipeline construction abuses eminent domain. TransCanada “intimidated landowners” along planned routes. It did so in previous pipeline construction. It contractually forced landowners to accede to its demands. It “fraudulently steals land from private citizens through eminent domain.”

Water contamination is certain. The Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer (CWA) is threatened. In March 2011, water resources & environmental engineer/consultant Lawrence Dunbar said CWA spillage would be environmentally disastrous. Human and natural resources would be impacted.

Release of enough tar sands contaminants would make affected water resources unfit for human consumption. CWA “is one of the greatest assets of the East-Central region of Texas. It provides water for agriculture, industry, and human consumption and use.” It’s far too valuable to contaminate. KXL assures it. Remediation would be hard to impossible to achieve. According to Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute, KXL will destroy more jobs than it creates. Its September 2011 “Pipe Dreams?” report said job creation claims lack credibility.

At best up to 4,650 temporary ones will be created. In two years or less they’ll be gone. “KXL will not be a major source of US jobs, nor will it play any substantial role at all in putting Americans back to work.” Diverting tar sands oil “now supplying Midwest refineries, so it can be sold at higher prices to the Gulf Coast and export markets (means) Midwest (consumers) could be paying 10 to 20 cents more per gallon for gasoline and diesel fuel.”

Doing so will adversely impact other spending and cost jobs. KXL will have “a chilling effect on green investments and green jobs creation.” Green investments generated “2.7 million jobs in the US and could generate many more.”

“Tar Sands oil and energy independence really do not belong in the same sentence.” Cornell, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other independent assessments say KXL assures higher gas prices. Exporting tar sands oil won’t reduce US dependence on foreign supplies. Prioritizing exports is planned. At issue is selling at the highest possible price. KXL violates tribal sovereignty. The Indigenous Environmental Network’s “Mother Earth Accord” supports and urges opposition to tar sands development. At issue is preserving the integrity of US and Canadian First Nations and tribal lands.

TransCanada won’t disclose an analysis of chemical dilutants used to facilitate transporting tar sands oil through KXL. At issue are human and environmentally destructive substances. The Pipeline Hazardous Material Safety Administration told Congress that pipeline regulations weren’t crafted with tar sands oil in mind. They’re woefully inadequate and require strengthening. At a time of business as usual, don’t expect it. On January 31, the State Department released its EIS report. Its analysis was rigged. Its methodology lacked credibility.

Results falsely claimed minimal environmental contamination risk. KXL’s southern area “Gulf Coast Project” failed to conduct its own environmental assessment. Issues related to the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer, wild fires, droughts, and others weren’t examined. Friends of the Earth (FOE) responded, saying:

“The State Department’s environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline is a farce. Since the beginning of the assessment, the oil industry has had a direct pipeline into the agency.”

“Perhaps most frustrating, is the apparent collusion between the State Department, oil industry and the Canadian government.”

“In what could be perceived as eagerness to please the oil industry and Canadian government, the State Department is issuing this report amidst an ongoing investigation into conflicts of interest, and lying, by its contractor.”

“It is unacceptable that the oil industry and a foreign government are better informed than the American Congress and its citizenry. By letting the oil industry influence this process, Secretary Kerry is undermining his long-established reputation as a leader in the fight against climate change.”

“President Obama can end this charade; sufficient scientific data exists to justify denying the Keystone XL pipeline. It is a simple matter of having the political will, and courage, to stand up to the oil industry. This decision is a defining moment in his environmental legacy.”

Last September, FOE said:

“(F)rom day one, the State Department’s review of the pipeline (was) polluted by conflicts of interest, insider lobbying and the heavy hand of Big Oil.” State Department officials relied on TransCanada-picked contractors for their report. Doing so represents an outrageous conflict of interest.

Relying on Big Oil interests related construction company interests eliminated any chance for responsible analysis. Obama had plenty of evidence without EIS to reject KXL. “The bottom line,” said FOE, “it’s not in the national interest. (K)ill “it now.” The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) said:

“Thousands of people around the country are taking a stand against the import of dirty tar sands oil – from farmers and ranchers in Nebraska who don’t want a tar sands pipeline plowed through their property, to families in Texas concerned about their drinking water, to Americans everywhere who want to move towards a clean energy future.”

NWF “is working to stop this dangerous project, and your voice is urgently needed. Take a stand against” KXL!

The Sierra Club urged “no more Big Oil pipeline spills that endanger our water.” KXL “threaten(s) the drinking water of two million Americans.” TransCanada has a deplorable environmental record.

In 2011 alone, over a quarter million Americans expressed opposition to KXL. Nebraska rancher Susan Luebbe perhaps spoke for others, saying: “How can the State Department even think of approving a new tar sands pipeline when the existing one is springing leaks on average once a month.”

“Ranchers, farmers and millions of other Americans depend on clean water from the Ogallala Aquifer, which lies directly under the path of” KXL. Last November, Public Citizen published a report titled “TransCanada’s Keystone XL Southern Segment: Construction Problems Raise Questions About the Integrity of the Pipeline.” It highlighted safety issues. Documented problems include “excessive bending or sagging, and pealing patches of field coating applied to cover damage on pipe about to be placed into the ground.”

“Anomalies” in pipe “buried for months include “dents, sags, and other problems that could lead to spills or leakage of toxic tar sands crude.” Public Citizen’s Texas office director Tom “Smitty” Smith said: “The government should investigate, and shouldn’t let crude flow until that is done.”

“Given the stakes – the potential for a catastrophic spill of hazardous crude along a pipeline that traverses hundreds of streams and rivers and comes within a few miles of some towns and cities – it would be irresponsible to allow the pipeline to start operating.”

During construction of Keystone I, TransCanada made 50 special conditions pledges. It violated 47 of them. In July 2011, its Bison natural gas pipeline exploded within six months of startup. Iroquois Pipeline Operations is a TransCanada subsidiary. In the 1990s, four senior executives pleaded guilty to knowingly violating environmental and safety pipeline construction permit provisions. They promised exceptional safety. They willfully failed to deliver. “TransCanada’s history with pipeline problems speaks for itself,” said Smith.

“I fear we could be looking at another pipeline whose integrity may be in question.” The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) urged “Stopping the Keystone XL.” Enormous potential environmental damage is risked, it said. It’ll transport “the dirtiest oil on the planet.” It’s “difficult, costly and energy-intensive to produce.” Constructing KXL will “kill more jobs than it creates.” Oil transported is intended for export, not domestic use.

KXL “was never in America’s national interest. Clean energy and fuel efficiency is the path forward for economic and energy security.” Reject “another tar sands pipeline.” Expect rubber-stamp Obama approval. He’s beholden to Big Oil. He’s been this way throughout his political career. His US Senate voting record was strongly pro-business. He supported strip-mining on public and private land. He backed secretly drafted Bush administration energy policy. Rhetorically he opposed it. He supported vastly expanding nuclear power, lax industry regulation, billions of dollars in subsidies, and other benefits demanding rejection. He voted for biofuels production and other agribusiness interests. He strongly supports GMO foods and ingredients.

He’s a corporate stooge. There’s never “been a bigger con man in the White House than Barack Obama,” said Ralph Nader. He says one thing. He does another. His rhetoric belies his policies. He’s a corporatist “from A to Z.” So are Kerry and likeminded administration officials.

On February, the State Department opened a 30 day comment period. Eight US agencies have 90 days to weigh in. They’ll offer feedback. It’s pro forma mumbo jumbo. What corporate America wants it gets. Obama’s fully on board. Expect rubber-stamp KXL approval. Last June, he signaled it saying he’ll back construction if “it does not significantly exacerbate the climate problem.”

Last week, TransCanada began shipping oil through its southern Keystone pipeline leg. It runs from Cushing, OK to Port Arthur, TX. TC awaits approval to begin building its 1,179 mile northern pipeline. It’ll transport tar sands oil from Hardisty, Alberta through Montana to Steele City, NB.

Environmental contamination will follow. Wealth, power and privilege alone matter. Obama is no man of the people. He’s a corporatist writ large. Change to believe in works one way. Betrayal and failure define him.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.