State secrecy is nothing new, but the rise of the modern bureaucratic state is barely a century old, coinciding with the rise of massive industry and, ironically, with the advent of universal suffrage. Its rise chronicled by intellectual luminaries of the day such as Max Weber and Robert Michels, bureaucracy was the extension of rationalized organizational patterns from industrial capitalism to the sphere of government. Prior to the twentieth century Western governments kept the masses from participating via restrictive suffrage laws; after the advent of universal suffrage this shifted to limiting the possibility of direct democratic influence through oligarchic control over organizations necessary for the maintenance of the modern industrial society: political parties, state institutions, and capitalist corporations. Radical democrats fought back, and the twentieth century is littered with attempts at curtailing the power of elite oligarchy found in bureaucratic institutions via workers’ councils, grassroots political parties, the alternative press – but none ever succeeded in breaking the hold of secrecy and control they fought.

Complete transparency in government (and the economy) is a necessary feature of any truly democratic socio-economic system. Alienating the democratic will of many into that of a few representatives is a compromise (Rousseau claimed it was the abolition of democracy), and to retain any sort of democratic power the citizen must ultimately have access to everything their government does, overtly and covertly. It provides a necessary check against anti-democratic rule and government lies and half-truths. Without full access to information, it is often difficult for a person to make the best choice in any circumstance. Without access to information, the modern citizen has become a passive player in what amounts to a sham democracy, controlled by elites and bureaucrats cloaked in secrecy. It is the bureaucrats and elites who have access to critical information, allowing them to rule unchecked. Wikileaks provides the demos the possibility of reversing that trend.

The growth of the national security state and the technology it has used to dis-empower the demos is without parallel in world history. Yet, as Karl Marx long ago observed, every socio-economic advance eventually creates the conditions for its own demise – its own gravediggers. Capitalism created immense wealth, poverty, and the most concentrated and powerful ruling class in history, but via the collection of the urban working class and intense development of technology the possibility (still just a possibility) of a truly egalitarian order. The modern industrial bureaucratic state, itself part and parcel of contemporary capitalism, created vast swathes of routinized specialists across society whose technical expertise and need for secrecy eventually compromised the possibility of democratic check on their rule. Yet, the seeds for change, always existent within the bureaucracy, are now being actualized.

Much has been made of Wikileaks as reaction to the craven complicity of the mass media to the state. This is undoubtedly true, but again misses the point. Noam Chomsky pointed out long ago that the media, privately run and owned by corporate executives, has always been a gatekeeper and a fundamental part of industrial society. Reporters do not only desire access to the state, preventing them from consistently acting as a check on the oligarchs; the media is a pillar of the modern state. It has as much interest in the state’s survival (profits, elite status itself) as Wall Street or Barack Obama. When its paid employees attack the recklessness of Wikileaks, they are attacking their own ability to carefully manage and shape information for the public’s consumption. Wikileaks does no editing, save for redacting some names; it presents information to the public for its own analysis, understanding, and enlightenment. Wikileaks does not rely upon legions of trained reporters, but rather other citizens for its information. The release of the documents from Iraq was done by a courageous soldier who had come to understand the extent of the American state’s imperialism and crimes, and wished, for the benefit of other citizens and without monetary remuneration but rather prison in the offing, to expose the plutocrats who had conducted the war.

Wikileaks was, thus, always a latent possibility with the advent of the Internet and direct mass information exchange worldwide. Like any other anti-systemic movement, it only took a group of committed people to organize and exploit that possibility. It is, then, up to those committed to radical democracy and egalitarian social change to extend the gains made by Wikileaks by proliferating its example and encouraging the growth of transparency via document dumps at all levels. A world where all levels of government and the economy would have to be wary of exposure is one where the rank-and-file would no longer be met with opaque silence about the inner-workings of government, but could begin to take the oligarchs and plutocrats to task, the first step in a truly democratic worldwide revolution. Bureaucracy’s wall of mystique will be shattered, and the demos will wrest control away from the officials and the elected representatives who rely on secrecy to cut deals, divide the population, and keep the masses dis-empowered.

It is not often that the wheels of history give us the potential to swing the pendulum toward democratic rule and a curtailment of elite power. We have such a chance now, and it is up to us to take advantage of it. Let a thousand Wikileaks bloom – let us build the democracy of tomorrow, today.

It strikes me that, in many ways, Carlin had turned himself into a modern Socrates, always questioning our words, thoughts, and actions, and finding himself disappointed in the lack of reflection in the rest of us. Carlin acknowledged this in perhaps his most important routine:

“I love words. I thank you for hearing my words. I want to tell you something about words that I uh, I think is important. I love, as I say, they’re my work, they’re my play, they’re my passion. Words are all we have really.”

The Seven Words routine was a milestone not just because Carlin managed to highlight the dilemma at the core of the modern condition, but also because it gave us a landmark Supreme Court case on freedom of speech that highlights how dangerous words can be to the guardians of mainstream mores, FCC vs. Pacifica Foundation. Carlin’s monologue, played on Pacifica Radio in NYC, engendered a dispute as to what constituted decent speech on broadcast media — and the Court decided that the population needed to be protected from hearing those “deadly” words spoken by Carlin, who had done so in an effort to help us enlighten ourselves about the power of speech.

Justice William Brennan, writing in a stinging dissent from the majority on that decision, stated that: “because the radio is undeniably a public medium, these actions are more properly viewed as a decision to take part, if only as a listener, in an ongoing public discourse.”

Censorship of language is an attempt to silence this public discourse, to stifle thoughts, actions, and ideas. George Carlin understood this perfectly well.

Carlin was concerned with pointing out how we, as a society, have started using euphemistic language as a way to avoid dealing with tough concepts. This is a corollary — and perhaps more dangerous than the official censorship — to the FCC’s abrogation of speech on TV and radio: self-censorship. In one of his books he noted:

“I mentioned several reasons we seem to employ so much of it [euphemistic language]: the need to avoid unpleasant realities; the need to make things sound more important than they are… but no matter what the purpose, the one thing euphemisms all have in common is that they soften the language. They portray reality as less vivid. And I’ve noticed Americans have a problem with reality; they prefer to avoid the truth and not look it in the eye. I think it’s one of the consequences of being fat and prosperous and too comfortable.”

Of course, the easy political examples are those we’ve been familiar with for a time now: George W. Bush’s “enemy combatants,” the “homicide” bombers, collateral damage. Carlin was adept at pointing these out along with the more common expressions we use between friends and colleagues. Religious, political, and cultural hypocrites were not spared his withering gaze — I once noted how a portion of his audience left during one of his anti-religious diatribes at a concert of his that I attended.

So what, then, is Carlin’s legacy? At the end of another of his famous routines he said that “the planet is fine, the people are fucked.” He was amused with our capacity to, essentially, kill ourselves off as a species. He said that:

“… it amuses me. Because it means the system is beginning to collapse, beginning to break down. I enjoy chaos and disorder. Not just because they help me professionally; they’re also my hobby. I’m an entropy buff.”

We are inundated with food yet prices are rising and people starve; we are awash in oil and prices have never been higher; we are aware of the effects of human-caused global warming and most of us choose to do nothing except complain about the weather; our government openly lies and violates Constitutional rights and all we do is shrug. Carlin’s choice was not to simply laugh at the downward spiral we were all on (by our choice); that is too superficial a reading of his humor. He was deeply concerned by the stupidity and violence we do to each other through laws, morals, and simply not acting.

His legacy, I think, is that our understanding of speech, of words, and our constant questioning of their meaning and use is our only outlet to discovering potential truths, to exposing lies, and perhaps building a world that’s a little nicer to live in, or at least, a little more amusing. It is, perhaps, a call to action, to understand that he was bitterly disappointed in how passive most people are in the face of injustice. In that respect, those of us who are political activists, or even those of us who are just trying to make small changes in our lives, could learn from Carlin to keep thinking and to be the gadfly that won’t let things rest, to tell the truth about the world in which we live.

Carlin, of course, put it best:

“Here’s the Secret News:
All people are afraid.
No one knows what they’re doing.
Everything is getting worse.
Some people deserve to die.
Your money is worthless.
No one is properly dressed.
At least one of your children will disappoint you.
The system is rigged.
Your house will never be completely clean.
All teachers are incompetent.
There are people who really dislike you.
Nothing is as good as it seems.
Things don’t last.
No one is paying attention.
The country is dying.
God doesn’t care.
Shhhhhh.”

The Players

We must understand that the inter-twining of the Pakistani government and militant Islamist groups has been common practice (and common knowledge within international circles) at least since Zia ul-Haq became military ruler in 1977. Many of the generals in the fearsome military intelligence and secret police agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), have been adherents of the Deobandi sect of Islam, a militant version of Islam which arose in India as a reaction to British occupation. Deobandi teachings influenced the Taliban, who were of course trained in Deobandi madrassahs within Pakistan.

The ISI detested Bhutto for multiple reasons: they did not want civilian control to disrupt the development of Pakistan’s nuclear program, nor did they trust that a civilian government would continue to fight their guerrilla war against India within the Kashmir. With a mixture of realpolitik and militant ideology, the ISI leadership feared détente and abandonment of terrorist actions supporting those fighting for Kashmiri independence. During Zia’s reign the ISI had been the driving force behind the development of the nuclear arms bazaar run by scientist A.Q. Khan. They were also the main people behind Gulbuddin Hekmatyar – perhaps the most extreme of the mujahedeen, and later they essentially created the Taliban. Let us note that the current head of the Pakistani military, General Ashfaq Kayani, was formerly head of the ISI. While Bhutto did not pose a threat to the ISI – she was not going to dismantle its apparatus nor did she attempt to during her two terms as prime minister – she would not have entirely been their puppet, either, given how apparent it was that the United States backed her campaign to reclaim the prime ministerial slot.

Pervez Musharraf fits into all of this in a more subtle manner than might be gathered by watching television analyses of Bhutto’s assassination. Yes, he has been the subject of assassination attempts from parts of the Pakistani government impatient with his alliance to the United States and how little has been achieved, in their eyes, on the Kashmiri question. Musharraf, however, likely declared martial law recently because he desired to negotiate a power-sharing deal with Bhutto from a position of strength. Musharraf has been pinned between a Bush administration that is increasingly displeased with his lack of action against Pakistani militants, and by those same militants (who made up most of his support base) for being too tied to the United States. The death of Bhutto may have been to send a signal to the Bush administration – there is no alternative now to an open theocracy in Pakistan besides a Musharraf administration.

For similar reasons, we must also inquire how much Nawaz Sharif knew about the attack. Mr. Sharif, birthed into politics from a right-wing Islamic movement and the military as a counter to Ms. Bhutto, is now the only non-military alternative to Musharraf. Given that he had recently entered into an electoral alliance with Benazir, it is unlikely his partisans carried out the attack. How much he may have known, however, is another question.

Governmental complicity?

It is highly unlikely that militant groups inside Pakistan would carry out an attack on Benazir Bhutto without at least tacit acceptance by high-ranking figures inside the Pakistani government. To do so would invite retribution from their allies in Islamabad, who would be displeased with unrest for which they were unprepared. Therefore, unless we see a major crackdown on militant groups over the next week, the most likely culprits are either militants moving with approval from the ISI or Musharraf, or a government directed assassination with their own agents. The Bush administration will now negotiate with the military, or no one at all. It indeed works out in Musharraf and the ISI’s favor, and to the detriment of Sharif, regardless of who wins the soon-to-be postponed elections.

Regardless, Pakistan will enter a period in which the military will likely desire to secure its place, either via elections and negotiation with the new prime minister, or through continuance of military rule via Musharraf’s new presidential term, with elections as window-dressing – business as usual in Pakistan. Although the media will likely portray Ms. Bhutto as a democratic saint, she was not – her desire to see her own return to power far outweighed any desire for a radical reformation of Pakistani politics. However, with her death, it is far less likely that the remaining oppositional leadership, who will immediately assume government complicity, will risk their lives the way Ms. Bhutto seemed willing to do. We have, of course, never really seen a full-fledged civil war in a nuclear power, and it is unlikely we will see Pakistan fall into such a conflict at the present time, but the future – to quote an overused Chinese proverb – will be an interesting time for the Pakistani people.

Oh, Hugo. The latest news from Venezuela borders on comical, if it didn’t sound like it was dredged up from the playbook of a failed team from last century. President Chavez is pushing a moral crusade to instill the principles of Che Guevara’s “New Socialist Man” on the Venezuelan population. Chavez wants to heavily limit whiskey imports, raise taxes on tobacco products, and encourage people to not “douse foods with too much hot sauce, exercise regularly, eat low-cholesterol foods, respect speed limits,” or have too much cosmetic surgery.

None of these are inherently bad principles on their own, but leftist paternalism is an old tradition and as bad as its right-wing cousin, especially when it carries the weight of the government behind it.

Marxists and radicals of all stripes have always had to contend with the consciousness created by capitalism as they struggle for a humanist future. Unfortunately there are two souls of this struggle: austere rejection of worldly pleasures and a libertine embrace of that pleasure. The former conjures up images of barracks socialism – Chinese and Russian Stalinists demanding that their socialist citizenry abandon the false values of capitalist society, and enforcing harsh penalties if they refuse. Capitalist mores would be educated out of the population; I fear Hugo has imbibed this from his love of the Cuban Stalinists Che and Castro.

I would argue that there is another way, understood by Marx himself, out of this conundrum without paternalism or self-denial. Any revolutionary movement or post-revolutionary society would be made up of people who had been socialized within capitalism. Thus, the struggle within them would always be against who they had been and where they had lived their entire lives, something Marx understood could not be legislated out of them. The birth pangs of the new order would contain defects from the old world, and there is no way around that. The new order would be a collective association of producers, with no masters or slaves, allowing people and society to develop fully for the first time.

Thus, instead of moralizing, those of us who wish real change should celebrate openness and those who embrace pleasure for the sake of self-fulfillment. The French Situationists, writing in the 1960s about the Paris Commune, described it as the biggest festival of the nineteenth century, where the workers of Paris understood they had become masters of their own fates. Old ways of thinking crumbled as people questioned the old order, old boundaries, old limitations placed on them by society and that they had internalized. Any restructuring of culture and mores requires introspection by a bulk of the population; I would advise Mr. Chavez that he should question the old moral order: religion, sexual values, inhibitions about alcohol and drugs, machismo, and challenge those who want to see a socialist future to inhibit themselves less, not more – but to use those lessened inhibitions towards self-fulfillment and change, not empty consumerism.

Emma Goldman once said (apocryphally): “If I can’t dance, I don’t want your revolution.” Mr. Chavez has taken admirable steps towards a welfare state – there has been no revolution yet – reducing unemployment from 18% to 8%, extending medical care to all, and a range of social programs for the poor. Yet, if he wants a revolution, he should take care to make sure that there is joy, life, and happiness in the revolutionaries, not self-denial. Then we will all be dancing with them.

This should be obvious reason for concern in an economy so dominated by a few dozen large firms. We are about to see a new era of rising prices via agreement between corporations – although it is probable that these agreements have been commonplace in the last hundred years they have been technically illegal if challenged in court.

Anti-trust laws and bans on price floors were an attempt to bust the monopolies and oligopolies of the “robber baron” age of American capitalism. Firms in an already advantageous position in the market can now out-price upstart competitors without having to fear additional competition from established rivals, and can do so legally. Indeed, the case heard by the courts was about a production firm cutting off supplies to retailers who did not abide by a price-floor agreement, i.e. they had lowered prices in order to stay competitive in their home markets.

What will become compelling in the future is that this price-fixing, coupled with decades of stagnating wages in the American workforce, will put an incredible squeeze on the American working class. It must be granted that the Supreme Court is and has always been the defender of American capitalism, but this is a stark example of the continued power of the American business elite and the sheer non-existence of a working class resistance. Eras in which there was a vibrant labor movement saw, if not hesitation on the part of the courts, mass mobilization against their decisions.

What makes a socialist such as myself laugh bitterly is that the ruling class in the US is perfectly willing to admit to socialistic methods of planning and control if it helps business continue accumulating wealth and capital. Price floors in a participatory economy, if necessary, would and should be debated by the public at large, and should be coupled with an increase in wages/income by the majority of the workforce. Indeed, even if we are simply talking about a market-economy, increasing the wages of the majority of poorer Americans would probably benefit the economy on the whole more than these price-fixing agreements, but not the pocketbooks of the wealthiest.