Anarchists around the world have been awake and restless.

There was ELF and ALF Mexico, burning down McDonalds and Police Stations, their attacks spanning from D.F. across to Chihuahua and elsewhere, including the mass vandalism on the Telmex Company and liberation of animals. This series of actions was consequently followed up by an assortment of new bands of eco-anarchists, nihilists, individualists and Kaczinskians, each with escalating attacks, including assassination, arsons of entire strip malls and letter bombs, and all with noticeably different ideas being espoused in their communiqués. This culminated in the recent formation of the IAF and CCF “chapters” in Mexico and perhaps the non-anarchist Individualists Tending Towards the Wild with their bombings of Nano-tech sciences and Greenpeace. Some of these groups have found ways of communicating and have released joint statements. According to a reading of a hacked release from the private intelligence company Stratfor (search for “Mexico Hippy Bomber”), anarchist groups were in 2009 responsible for “more than 400 such attacks,” I think it’s safe to say that that number is growing.

Further south in the Americas there is also a growing violent anarchist offensive drawing from past movements of combatants to the Neo-Liberal dictatorships of the 70’s and 80’s, as well as building connections to Native resistance to Colonization and developing more current green anarchist and egoist tendencies. This is most dramatically characterized in $hile, where the anarchist movement seems strongest. The anarchists working on overthrowing the State of $hile act as an inspiration and beacon for the anarchist movement around the world. The networking of anarchists with Mapuche warriors, their role in the student movement (dubbed the Penguin Revolution), the constellation of squats and social centers, a multiplicity of written anarchist interpretations of past struggles, the growing and vibrant combative anarcho-punk and hip-hop scene, and of course the violence. There are anarchist bombings and arsons just about every week, if not considerably more, in $hile. These too reveal a complex, interweaving fabric of diverging tendencies in their following communiqués. Letters of responsibility ranging from what could be called “the movement for total liberation” which includes ALF, ELF critiques of anthropocentrism, right on down to a ruthless egoism, that to me, harkens back to the times of Ravachol or Bonnot. But the growing movement of anarchist attackers in South America seem to be resonating with the call of the Informal Anarchist Federation (IAF), with arsons and bombings in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and $hile to show. With these bombings there has been repression, with repression, solidarity, and anarchists know that solidarity means attack. From the “bombs case” in $hile to Luciano “Tortuga” Pitronellos’ failed bombing of a bank which left him injured, there has been numerous solidarity fires and explosions for them, not only in $hile, but around the world.

If $hile is indeed an inspiration for anarchists around the world, then I’m so glad Greece is there to step it up. Bank robbers in black, supermarket Robin’ Hoods (no pun intended), a black bloc attempting to storm and burn Parliament, squats in Exarchia, solidarity actions ending in the release from prison of insurrectionary anarchist Alfredo M. Bonanno, anti-fascist arsons, December 2008. Out of the anarchist space in Greece came the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire with their dozens of coordinated arsons in Thessaloniki and Athens, these were accompanied by a newly sharpened nihilist critique of Capitalism and the State. Members of CCF were eventually captured by the State, and when imprisoned issued a call. This was a new kind of call, against Maoist “Third-Worldist” guerrilla warfare, against attacking Imperialism to inspire the revolution, but for attacking Empire because it’s fun and you hate them for making your life shit. Instead of getting caught up in hierarchies and government traps, communiqués become communication for this new anarchist guerrilla, thousands of open dialogues through thousands of attacks on Control. Deep Green Resistance, with its anti-transgender feminist essentialism and Maoist authoritarian structure, will fail in the face of this new diffuse, low-intensity, anti-civilization urban guerrilla.

The call was heard in Italy with a series of arsons and parcel bombs, recently with the knee-capping of a much hated nuclear industrialist by the IAF (reminding us all of the “years of lead”) and arsons of tax offices. IAF and anarchist actions in England, with their green anarchist and insurrectionary movement, Sweden, Germany, Spain and elsewhere show anarchists’ growing capacity to take violent action with an equally coherent critique. Anti-nuclear barricades of train tracks, struggles against the TAV, charred BMWs in Berlin, and General Strike in Spain are a few examples of our recent anarchist practice.

Anarchist attacktivists (haha) in Russia have also been kicking it up a notch, with ELF sabotage spreading like wildfire in an ongoing campaign to save Kihmki forest outside of Moscow. Recently Anti-Fa linked up with eco-anarchists to fight the developers who hired Neo-Nazi’s to protect their property from the aforementioned forest defenders. Arsons, bombings, and paint-bombings of police cars and stations are also becoming more and more common, as many anonymous video communiqués on youtube would support, leading some groups to openly endorse the IAF struggle as their own.

Eat and Billy are imprisoned anarchists in Indonesia recently sentenced to over a year in prison for burning a bank ATM and claiming it as an action of the IAF. Punk rock in Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia is a force revealing, to me at least, the prospect of a larger anarchist resistance in the future. Australia has a growing anarchist movement, with squats, networking with Native resistance, prolific punk and hip hop rebels, Earth First! campaigns in Tasmania, extremely active anarchist graffiti crews in Melbourne, black blocs and anti-development and anti-state sabotage. New Zealand, or Aotearoa, also has a small insurrectionary and green anarchist movement, with numerous ALF actions and quite an expensive sabotage of a drill and an EF! campaign to save an area called Happy Valley. In Wellington that nations’ Capitol on the southern tip of the north island, was a bitter struggle to save a neighborhood called Te Aro from a yuppie motorway.

Anarchists in Guelph, Ontario in Canada, periodically blocking motorways with burning tires in solidarity with Native land reclamation, burning Corporations and country clubs to the ground as the ELF, the woodsquat solidarity campaign and the numerous paint-bombings and window smashings. Burning police cars and sabotaged train lines in Toronto. Montreal is right now in what appears to be daily anarchist and student riots complete with molotovs and newspaper box barricades. Nightly anarchist sabotage is quite frequent in Montreal, most of it not accompanied by a communiqué. Ottawa was active in visiting their local branches of RBC in 2010. The FFFC even set one on fire. Vancouver and the “Riot 2010” attack on the Olympics, the squatting adventures, arsons of police vans and probation centers, fighting the “community policing” center on Commercial Drive with rocks and fire. And whoever was blowing up that gas pipeline in B.C. over and over again.

Someone placed a bomb at the military recruitment center in Times Square New York and rode away on a bicycle, it happened before, I think the Mexico embassy for Brad Will — the anarchist, EF!, indymedia journalist killed by police in Oaxaca during the 2006 uprising — maybe. Railroad sabotage in Washington and Oregon, tons of broken windows of State, Capitalist and Religious buildings, arsons at banks, housing developments, police stations and meat packing plants all across the USA. Anarchists like Daniel McGowan, Sadie and Exile, Marie Mason, Jeffrey Leurs, Rod Coronado show that there were fires before. Big ones. There will also continue to be bigger anarchist fires and even more explosions and violence and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.

So here we are. We might seem like quite a violent bunch. I think we are, but there is of course something else. It’s the violence and all the other things we do as anarchists that act to make up the (A)-Team. When we win space we are quick to inhabit it and fill it with positive life-affirming activities: the pirate radio station, community garden, mushroom restoration projects, bicycle collectives, radical lending libraries, music genres, street art, publishing projects, herbal medicine, conflict resolution, squats, train-hopping, workshops, consensus decision making, communal living, an anarchist psychoanalysis, permaculture, rewilding practices. I know I said I wouldn’t go into the more positive ways anarchists have prefigured, but it is worth mentioning before I go on.

In spite of all of the positive things we anarchists do, there are those of us who also feel like masking up with a backpack full of gasoline and some sheets to burn down a Wal-Mart; maybe to inspire others, or maybe because we just plain hate the fuckers for just about every reason we could come up with and thought it would be better if there just wasn’t a Wal-Mart there anymore. Regardless, there are these people on the (A) team who will act with all they know how for as long as they know how in their war against the apparatuses of Control. It is important that they exist and continue to exist and that we vocally support them, regardless of our particular anarchist leanings and/or affiliations. I will now explain why.

By now it’s clear that anarchists have, whether we like it or not, become synonymous with a violent physical assault on class society in recent years (maybe not in Iraq or India). This is a good thing! A lot of people are really upset with modern society and anarchy has become that ancient child-like voice that says, “We love nature and all things free and wild and we want to burn everything that is built on oppression and domination, won’t you play with us?” and lo and behold, more are coming this way.

Michael Sykes, Eric McDavid, the Cleveland Anarchy Bridge! 5 (which are from now on dubbed the anti-hipster anarchists), the five more just arrested in Chicago at NATO — they will keep coming, more and more radicalized malcontents, a new generation of American born anarcho-bombers, at first apolitical or lefty goths/punks/metalheads/nerds who watched riot videos on submedia.tv and V for Vendetta, listen to Johnny Hobo, read some anarchist news and realized that this life is shit and they choose to burn it up. We can’t stop these kids from exploding and burning their enemies (why would we want to?), but we can throw a wrench in the works and fuck up the State’s ability to keep locking up our young Fire Starters by actively confronting their obviously clear infiltration strategies.

Their infiltration works surprisingly similar to a part in George Orwell’s novel 1984 where the Ministry creates a fake resistance and then arrests Winston for being a part of it and because he was ready to act against the Oceania State-Machine. While it would be a stretch to say that the United States’ security forces are stoked about Occupy, it is clear that they fund and maneuver amongst it with general ease. This must be stopped, not just in Occupy, but also in every place and spot where people join the anarchist movement. The CIA and the Ford Foundation have been funding the non-violent non-militant left since the 1950s, the 99% Spring, an even more liberal off shoot of Occupy Wall Street, has links to these organizations. Not only were uniformed Police invited into most Occupy camps, their hired informants were pushing our young Fire Starters and next generation anarcho-bombers into prison cells with talk of smoke bombs and molotovs, and C4 and bridges.

It as a great thing that intelligent, violent anarchist attack throughout the world has opened up a space where young, angry, poor, misfits who have been dealt the shit end of the stick in life can latch onto a bigger movement that has as its’ goal the total destruction of God, the State, Capital, Patriarchy, Racism, and Ecocide. We need to now more than ever, as anarchists, come together and refuse to denounce those in our movements who are the most violent and protect them by limiting the ability of the police to keep locking them up.

An example of that is Chicago, most of us stayed away, but this new generation of anarchists influenced by our anarchist counter-culture these past few years went. While of course it made perfect fucking sense to stay away from such an obvious trap: there in Chicago were these new anarchists, just looking hella awkward, but it was beautiful.

Anarchists have been busy this past little bit, but if you take a step back and look around at the movement against capitalism, you can see how everything we insurrectionist leaning anarchists have done in these past few years have resonated in the hearts and minds of the people who are the most willing to fight back. So anarchist attacktivists: keep on keeping on, not that you won’t die alone, but to fight for something is to make it your own.

To support my arguments, I will first provide an overview of how the criminal justice system works. From there I will offer an analysis on why the criminal justice system is flawed, and the racially discriminatory effect it has had on society. I will then discuss why the disproportionate number of minorities found in prison and impoverished in this country is directly tied to the contemporary ruling interests that were preserved by the U.S. Constitution. Showing that the system is inherently discriminatory, I propose an alternative method for viewing society through anarchism. I will spend time debunking myths regarding anarchism and explaining why it is a viable ideology. In the end, I will propose a restorative justice approach to criminal justice that requires neither the state nor the legal system.

Overview of criminal justice system

In theory, the function of the legal system, and the state is to provide a structure that creates an environment for society that protects individual and collective freedom. The intention of the legal system then, is to provide an objective set of rules for governing conduct and maintaining order in society. In order to cover all potential conflicts, the law is divided into two forms: (1) civil law, which are rules and regulations that decide transactions and grievances between individuals; and (2) criminal law, which are rules concerned with actions deemed dangerous or harmful to society as a whole, and are prosecuted by the state.

Relevant to this paper, the criminal justice system is the method by which society deals with individuals who violate criminal laws. It is the means for society to “enforce the standards of conduct necessary to protect individuals and the community.”¹ This system is composed of three parts: (1) police enforcement of the law; (2) adjudication of potential violations; and (3) punishment/rehabilitation for criminal acts.

The state authorizes police officers to enforce the law and maintain order. This permission allows the police to arrest individuals, and use deadly force when the circumstances permit. Since police officers are allowed to use their discretion in determining when there has been a violation of the law, and when to use deadly force, they are trained to be capable of assessing the situations they find themselves in, and acting accordingly.

As a check on the power given to police officers, state prosecutors are responsible for determining whether the charges have substance, and if the individual’s case should go to trial. In the words of Michelle Alexander, the prosecutor has the most power of any other criminal justice official, and is the person that “holds the key to the jailhouse door.”² This adds a special responsibility for prosecutors, according to Chief Judge, Isaac Christiancy:

The prosecuting officer represents the public interest, which can never be promoted by the conviction of the innocent. His object like that of the court should be simply justice; and he has no right to sacrifice this to any pride of professional success. And however strong may be his belief of the prisoner’s guilt, he must remember that though unfair means may happen to result in doing justice to the prisoner in the particular case yet justice so attained is unjust and dangerous to the whole community.³

If a prosecutor determines there is enough evidence for trial, the individual will be charged with committing a crime.

At trial, the adversarial system is used. This means the prosecutor will present evidence, in addition to arguments, explaining why the defendant is guilty of the alleged crime(s), and the defendant’s attorney, who is either appointed by the state or chosen independently, will do the same, except explaining why the defendant is not guilty. All this is presented before a judge, and sometimes a jury, who are regarded as objective third parties, and are responsible for determining the guilt of the defendant.

If an individual is convicted of a crime, they enter into the custody of the correctional authorities. An example of the stated role correctional authorities and prisons play in the criminal justice system is exemplified by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which “protects society by confining offenders in the controlled environments of prisons and community-based facilities that are safe, humane, cost-efficient, and appropriately secure, and that provide work and other self-improvement opportunities to assist offenders in becoming law-abiding citizens.”⁴ Prisoners can receive medical, educational, religious, and career assistance to achieve the stated edification goals. Prisoners can be released before fulfilling their required time in prison by being placed on parole, which means they are released back into society with certain restrictions on their freedom. Ultimately, the objective of the correctional authorities and prisons is to protect society from criminals, while also providing rehabilitation to them so that they leave prison better than when they entered.

In its entirety, the criminal justice system is structured to deliver justice in a fair manner that upholds the ideals America holds for itself.

The problem — the illusion

Despite the stated intent of the criminal justice system, there are clear, systemic problems with how it functions that not only call its existence into question, but also the legal system that produced it as well. At the core of the problem is the fact that “justice” is determined by the state, and not the individuals involved. Worsening this is the fact that the origin of the state was built on discriminatory ideals. This has resulted in a criminal justice system that does not serve the people, but works to maintain oppressive and discriminatory, governmental authority.

The victims and alleged offenders have little, to no, say in the determination of justice throughout the criminal process. The state replaces the actual victim as the injured party for trial, and seeks justice based on its own standards. Defendants are advised to remain silent, and to allow their attorney to do most of the speaking for them. In describing this phenomenon, Alexandra Natapoff, writes:

The United States’s criminal justice system is shaped by a fundamental absence: Criminal defendants rarely speak. From the first Miranda warnings through trial until sentencing, defendants are constantly encouraged to be quiet and to let their lawyers do the talking. And most do. Over ninety-five percent never go to trial, only half of those who do testify, and some defendants do not even speak at their own sentencings. As a result, in millions of criminal cases often involving hours of verbal negotiations and dozens of pages of transcripts, the typical defendant may say almost nothing to anyone but his or her own attorney.⁵ [...]

Defendant silence also has systemic implications for the integrity of the justice process. In our democracy, individual speech has historically been seen as an antidote to governmental overreaching. Criminal defendant speech is perhaps the quintessential example of the individual defending his or her life and liberty against the state. Yet silent defendants rarely express themselves directly to the government official deciding their fate, be it judge or prosecutor, and are often punished more harshly when they do. The justice system assumes that conversations between counsel and clients, and counsel’s own speech on behalf of clients, fulfill the personal needs of defendants as well as systemic requirements that defendants be “heard.” Yet most defense counsel are overworked, appointed counsel with insufficient time to spend communicating with their clients or fully exploring their clients’ personal stories.⁶

Together, the practice of “representation” does not form an honest quest for justice, since it silences the only individuals that are truly capable of determining it.

Although America’s legal system has determined that justice is most effectively administered through the adversarial system, the reality of the process shows that this is a contrived conclusion. The adversarial system relies on prosecutors to “do justice,” and for defense attorneys to be “zealous advocates” for their clients, relying on both sides to present their strongest arguments, so that a third-party trier of fact can make the best decision.⁷ This system relies on justice being equated with victory, which encourages both sides to be as uncooperative as possible with each other.

In living up to their roles as zealous advocates for their clients, and encouraged by the adversarial system, defense attorneys can employ a number of tactics to win cases, that do not help the trier of fact make an informed decision. In his essay outlining the problems with these tactics, labeled “aggressive defense,” William H. Simon, provides a few troublesome examples:

Defense lawyers sometimes have opportunities to draw out and delay cases, for instance, by deliberately arranging their schedules to require repeated continuances. This can have the advantage of exhausting prosecution witnesses and eroding their memories.

Defense lawyers are sometimes asked to present perjured testimony by defendants. They sometimes find they can benefit their clients by impeaching the testimony of prosecution witnesses they know to be truthful. And they sometimes can gain advantage by arguing to the jury that the evidence supports factual inferences they know to be untrue. [...]

Lawyers occasionally find it advantageous to disclose or threaten to disclose information that they know does not contribute to informed determination on the merits because such disclosure injures the prosecution or witnesses.⁸

While these tactics are permissible, each exemplifies how the adversarial system promotes the goals of the individual defendant over that of overall justice.

Prosecutors are also encouraged by the adversarial system to give precedence to winning rather than obtaining actual justice. As a representative of the state, prosecutors must be conscious of how the public perceives their decisions. To ensure this, almost everywhere in America, (except Alaska, Connecticut, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia) the job of chief prosecutor is determined by an election.⁹ To secure election, or reelection, prosecutors often campaign on how “tough” they are on crime, something that is usually demonstrated by the number of convictions a prosecutor has made. This equates convictions with justice, which consequently, creates an imbalance in the pursuit of justice, as it implies justice lies on the side of the prosecutor, by default, and not the defendant. In arguing that judges should not be elected, Justice John Paul Stevens said, “A campaign promise to ‘be tough on crime,’ or to ‘enforce the death penalty,’ is evidence of bias that should disqualify a [judicial] candidate from sitting in criminal cases.”¹⁰ The same argument can be made for prosecutors as well. Thus, in order to show proficiency, prosecutors are often encouraged to convict individuals. However, the argument that convictions equal justice is a fallacy. If this were true, the rate of recidivism would be decreasing, yet it is increasing. According to a 2006 report released by the bipartisan Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons, within three years of their release, 67% of former prisoners are rearrested and 52% are re-incarcerated.¹¹

Assisting the “convictions = justice” belief are economic incentives that permit individuals and corporations to profit from the number of prisoners a jail has. This is commonly referred to as the “private prison-industrial complex.” Between 1999 and 2010, the use of private prisons increased by 40% at the state level, and by 784% in the federal prison system.¹² This rise correlates with an increase in revenues as well: Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group, the two largest private prison companies, made over $2.9 billion combined in 2010.¹³ Explaining how these profits have been spent, the Justice Policy Institute states, “[a]s revenues of private prison companies have grown over the past decade, the companies have had more resources with which to build political power, and they have used this power to promote policies that lead to higher rates of incarceration.”¹⁴ Thus, a cycle exists where private prison facilities influence the criminal justice system through political and economic means, encouraging the flawed belief that convictions equal justice.

The confluence of economic and political motives for obtaining more convictions has had tremendously negative effects on society, and has helped usher in a period of “mass incarceration.” According to the International Centre for Prison Studies, the United States has the highest incarceration rate per 100,000 people of the national population, than any other country in the world.¹⁵ A New York Times article described the situation succinctly, “[t]he United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.”¹⁶

Furthermore, this period of mass incarceration has illuminated the racist character of America’s legal system. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, as of December 31, 2010, state and federal correctional authorities had jurisdiction over 1,612,395 prisoners, while a total of 7.1 million people were under the supervision of adult correctional authorities.¹⁷ Of the 1.6 million prisoners, 588,000 identified as Black, and 345,900 identified as Hispanic, representing 36% and 21%, respectively, of the prison population.¹⁸ This is alarming since, according to the 2010 U.S. Census, Blacks make up 12.6% of the American population, and Hispanics constitute another 16.3% of the population.¹⁹ Making the imbalance clearer, the estimated number of inmates held in custody in local, state, or federal prisons per 100,000 U.S. citizens, for Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites, respectively, is the following: 4,607; 1,908; and 769.²⁰ This means Blacks are nearly 6 times as likely as Whites to be in prison. Paul Butler writes:

Imagine a country in which more than half of the young male citizens [referring to Blacks] are under the supervision of the criminal justice system, either awaiting trial, in prison, or on probation or parole. Imagine a country in which two-thirds of the men can anticipate being arrested before they reach age thirty. Imagine a country in which there are more young men in prison than in college.²¹

The racial disparity is also present in death penalty cases. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, “[m]ore than half of the over 3300 people on death row nationwide are people of color; nearly 42% are African American. Prominent researchers have demonstrated that a defendant is more likely to get the death penalty if the victim is white than if the victim is black.”²² And according to Amnesty International, a 1990 report by the non-partisan U.S. General Accounting Office found, “a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and imposition of the death penalty.”²³ As a result, the effect of criminal laws, their enforcement and prosecution, has disproportionately placed more Blacks and Hispanics in jail than in the nation’s history.

Causes for the discriminatory effects of the criminal justice system

The disproportionate number of racial minorities involved in America’s criminal justice system is not by chance, but intent, as it is a consequence of the racist and classist interests the U.S. constitution was designed to protect. Starting in the mid-15th century, after the violent acquisition of land belonging to long-established indigenous communities, Americans and Europeans engaged in the cruel transportation of over 11 million Africans for over 450 years.²⁴ The African slave trade helped build America into one of the most powerful countries in the world, but also created a patriarchal society that reified racial discrimination by the creation of racial identities. These racial identities were used by the rich, White elites to create artificial divisions amongst the masses to pit them against each other, and not their rulers. The Populist leader from Georgia, Tom Watson, in calling for racial unity, said:

You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both. You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system which beggars both.²⁵

The rich, white men that had obtained economic and political power throughout the colonies utilized the opportunity the Constitutional Convention provided to ensure their power was maintained with the formation of the new country. Writing about the findings of fellow historian Charles A. Beard, Howard Zinn writes:

Beard applied this general idea [that the rich must either control the government directly, or control the laws by which the government operates] to the Constitution, by studying the economic backgrounds and political ideas of the fifty-five men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to draw up the Constitution. He found that a majority of them were lawyers by profession, that most of them were men of wealth, in land, slaves, manufacturing, or shipping, that half of them had money loaned out at interest, and that 40 of the 55 held government bonds, according to the records of the Treasury Department.

Thus Beard found that most of the makers of the Constitution had some direct economic interest in establishing a strong federal government: the manufacturing needed protective tariffs; the moneylenders wanted to stop the use of paper money to pay off debts, the land speculators wanted protection as they invaded Indian lands; slaveowners needed federal security against slave revolts and runaways; bondholders wanted a government able to raise money by nationwide taxation, to pay off those bonds.

Four groups, Beard noted, were not represented in the Constitutional Convention: slaves, indentured servants, women, men without property.²⁶

Summarizing the constitution then, Zinn writes:

The Constitution, then, illustrates the complexity of the American system: that it serves the interests of a wealthy elite, but also does enough for small property owners, for middle-income mechanics and farmers, to build a broad base of support. The slightly prosperous people who make up this base of support are buffers against the blacks, the Indians, the very poor whites. They enable the elite to keep control with a minimum of coercion, a maximum of law–all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity.²⁷

Those with power and influence, who had benefited from the use of slaves as a means of achieving economic and political power, helped ingrain slavery into their respective legal systems and cultures. Thus, representatives, especially from Southern states, had a strong interest in preserving slavery, and would not have agreed to join the union without a constitutional protection for it. This protection is exhibited by the original sections of the Constitution located at: Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 (recognizing the “three-fifths compromise”); Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1 (permitting the continuance of the slave trade until 1808); and Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3 (protection for the Fugitive Slave Act).

While legislation to abolish the slave trade became law in 1808, some state governments enacted Black Codes, or laws to regulate the institution of slavery and to place further restrictions on the liberty of Blacks. The Supreme Court did nothing to abolish slavery, or the racist laws, in fact, it thwarted an attempt by some Northern states to limit slavery, through the Missouri Compromise, by nationalizing the practice with its decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford.²⁸ The issue of slavery ultimately contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War, and the eventual passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments in 1865, 1868, and 1870, respectively (prohibiting slavery except as punishment for committing a crime, guaranteeing equal protection for all citizens, and prohibiting the denial of the right to vote based on race, respectively). However, the intent in maintaining a racially divided society persisted, as state governments implemented “Jim Crow” laws that segregated Blacks to a separate, and second-class citizenship. The Supreme Court again did nothing to repeal these laws until its decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka over 80 years later in 1954.²⁹ The Civil Rights Movement followed in the 1960s and 1970s and helped remove many of the overt forms of racial discrimination the legal system and federal government had maintained, but regardless of these changes, legally sanctioned racial discrimination has endured. Now, it operates in covert and institutionalized ways that can be shown through the impact of governmental policy. The government’s “War on Drugs” has become the most recent, post-Civil Rights Movement policy to continue the racial discrimination and exploitation of minorities in America. While the term “War on Drugs” was initially used by President Richard Nixon, it was under the Presidency of Ronald Reagan when it became heavily enforced. The purported purpose of the “war” was to reduce the illegal drug trade, by implementing policies that discouraged the production, distribution, and consumption of illegal drugs. This included imposing restrictive penalties on an individual’s liberties for committing drug-related crimes (i.e., losing the right to vote, denial of public benefits), and harsher sentencing guidelines (i.e., “three strikes laws,” mandatory minimums).

Although the appearance of the effort appears racially neutral, its enforcement has had a clear racial bias. Terming the initiative the “New Jim Crow,” Michelle Alexander explains that, “[a]s of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified …”³⁰ Illustrating the racial bias of this, Alexander continues:

This war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, even though studies consistently show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates. In fact, some studies indicate that white youth are significantly more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youth. Any notion that drug use among African Americans is more severe or dangerous is belied by the data. White youth, for example, have about three times the number of drug-related visits to the emergency room as their African American counterparts.³¹

Another indicator of the racial bias within the initiative can be shown through the difference in sentencing guidelines. In 1986, the U.S. Congress passed laws that created a 100:1 sentencing disparity for the possession or trafficking of crack, in comparison to the penalties for trafficking powder cocaine, which exhibits discrimination since Blacks are more likely to use crack than powder cocaine, a substance that is predominantly used by Whites.³² Compounding this further are the revelations journalist Gary Webb uncovered on how the Nicaraguan rebel group, the Contras, who were known for drug trafficking, were assisted by the U.S. government in distributing crack cocaine in Los Angeles, California to fund weapons purchases.³³ Thus, the undisguised racist laws and policies that targeted Blacks after the formation of the Constitution have continued, just in a less overt fashion.

The history of the plight of other minorities under oppressive laws and governmental policies should not go unmentioned. Latinos have been targeted through anti-immigrant laws, termed “Juan Crow,” that have had similar, but different effects on Latinos as Jim Crow did on Blacks.³⁴ Native Americans are also disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system since they are incarcerated at a rate 38% higher than the national per capita rate.³⁵ Muslims, especially after the September 11th events, have been subjected to racial profiling and surveillance by local and federal authorities, similar to how the Japanese, and Asians generally, were persecuted before and during World War II. Furthermore, the government’s practice of discriminating against groups based on racial identities is exemplified by its use of data obtained by the U.S. Census and the policies it has created.³⁶

Encapsulating the history of America’s legal system with the impact it has had on society, the conclusion can be drawn that it has successfully achieved the objectives its creators intended: a patriarchal, plutocracy ruled by Whites. The gap in equality on wealth, health, education, and employment between Blacks and Whites has continued to expand, further demonstrating the bias inherent in the construction of American society.³⁷ Thus, a new approach to how we live and interact with each other is desperately needed. One where our interconnectedness is valued, and where society nurtures everyone’s existence. This requires a culture that focuses on anti-oppressive structures, and has the goal of collectively liberating all people. Luckily, such a vision exists, and it is called anarchism.

Introduction to anarchism

The word “anarchism,” derived from the Greek root “anarchos,” means “without authority,” and according to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, its central ideals are freedom, equality, and mutual aid.³⁸ Despite this, in modern popular society, anarchism is surrounded by stigma and taboo, and invokes images of social chaos, in which terrorism is the prevailing means of establishing law and order, making anarchism seem both impractical and undesirable. However, through the fog of misperception and obscurity, lies a sociopolitical doctrine that challenges some of our deeply held assumptions on what the relationship between the individual and society can be, and calls us to work towards creating a truly free and cooperative society.

Behind some of the constructions of anarchism as a violent ideology are events that transpired between the years of 1890 and 1901. During this time period, individuals that identified as anarchists killed several ruling figures, including U.S. President William McKinley, King Umberto I of Italy, and Sadi Carnot, the President of France.³⁹ These are certainly extreme acts, but it is unfair, and too simple to ascribe these actions to all anarchists without an investigation into the circumstances surrounding each event, or consideration for the diversity of thought and tactics within anarchism itself. Such an investigation is beyond the scope of this paper, but suffice it to say, the use of violence, as a means to justify the ends anarchism seeks, is not a universally accepted tactic.

Another argument used to discredit anarchism is its perceived impracticality and lack of application outside of “non-primitive” societies. Generally, “primitive” societies are distinguished from modern societies because of an absence of an institutionalized government-like authority. Due to this distinction, “primitive” societies are considered irrelevant to discussions surrounding present-day social issues.

Anarchist anthropologist, David Graeber, provides an alternative lens to view this dichotomy through his book, Fragments of An Anarchist Anthropology.⁴⁰ Graeber writes that the popular American understanding of how human society has developed is that it has followed a linear path, beginning primitive and becoming more advanced and complex over time. Graeber explains that the anthropological record does not support this conclusion, using three egalitarian cultures, the Piaroa, Tiv, and Malagasy, as examples.⁴¹ Graeber writes:

… we [anthropologists] have been trying for decades now to convince the public that there’s no such thing as a ‘primitive,’ that ‘simple societies’ are not really all that simple, that no one ever existed in timeless isolation, that it makes no sense to speak of some social systems as more or less evolved.⁴²

Author Walter Cruttenden also takes time to dispel this myth, writing:

The leap was made: If Darwin had evidence that physical organisms adapt to fit their environment (evolve), then society, even over short periods, must evolve in the same linear fashion. In other words, if evolution existed in physical development, it must also play a role in societal and cultural development within humanity. This was very appealing to the intellectuals of post-Renaissance Europe as it justified a superior attitude toward less complex societies.⁴³

Everywhere in the world, it seems, archaeological digs are reshaping our view of the distant past. Not only are these findings revealing that civilizations were older than once thought, but they are showing that man was smarter and more progressive.⁴⁴

Based on this, Graber asks that we engage in a “thought experiment”:

What if, as a recent title put it, ‘we have never been modern’? What if there never was any fundamental break, and therefore, we are not living in a fundamentally different moral, social, or political universe than the Piaroa or Tiv or rural Malagasy? […]

Let us imagine, then, that the West, however defined, was nothing special, and further, that there has been no one fundamental break in human history. No one can deny there have been massive quantitative changes: the amount of energy consumed, the speed at which humans can travel, the number of books produced and read, all these numbers have been rising exponentially … The West might have introduced some new possibilities, but it hasn’t canceled any of the old ones out.⁴⁵

Without a basis for disregarding the social organization of “primitive” societies, anarchism remains a relevant sociopolitical doctrine.

While anarchism’s critics may concede that it is conceivable, they may still argue it is not the best way of structuring society. This position is exemplified by the thoughts of French Revolution thinker, Jacques-Pierre Brissot. Brissot, in denouncing his political rivals, the Enragés, accused them of advocating anarchy, warning that without the rule of law and government, there could be no way of delivering justice within society.⁴⁶ This sentiment is exemplified modernly in Paul Butler’s bold essay, “Racially Based Jury Nullification: Black Power In The Criminal Justice System.”⁴⁷ In Butler’s essay, he calls for Blacks to exercise jury nullification in particular circumstances as a way of protesting the unfair practices of the criminal justice system. Although Butler calls for the undermining of the legal system, he ensures that readers do not confuse his ideas as “encouraging anarchy” by explicitly stating so (“I am not encouraging anarchy.”⁴⁸ ). A logical assumption of Butler’s reasoning is that anarchy would be more problematic than reform.

Anarchism’s absence from mainstream America’s discussions should not reflect poorly on the ideals it promotes. In the opinion of anarchist author, John Zerzan, anarchism is about, “eradicating all forms of domination. This includes not only such obvious forms as the nation-state, … and the corporation, … but also such internalized forms as patriarchy, racism, and homophobia.”⁴⁹ “Domination” occurs in relationships where there is an unequal distribution of power, allowing the dominator(s) to exert their will over others. Being subject to domination causes mental and physical oppression, both of which obstruct human growth. For this reason, hierarchy is viewed negatively by anarchists, and instead, horizontal structures, dependent upon collaboration are encouraged. According to Anarchist writer, David Wieck, anarchism represents:

… a kind of intransigent effort to conceive of and to seek means to realize a human liberation from every power structure, every form of domination and hierarchy. Correlative with this negation is the positive faith that through the breakdown of mutually supportive institutions of power, possibilities can arise for noncoercive social cooperation, social unity, specifically a social unity in which individuality is fully realizable and in which freedom is defined not by rights and liberties but by the functioning of society as a network of voluntary cooperation. [...]

We are premising a society in which people have stopped living in fear of one another, in which gross violence, hatred, and contempt for life have become uncommon, in which alienation of person from person seldom reaches the malignant extremes to which we are accustomed.⁵⁰

Thus, anarchism does not advocate violence or mayhem, but rather calls for the liberation of everyone by removing oppressive social structures and practices from within our communities.

The vision anarchism has for society directly challenges a number of the core assumptions and principles held by mainstream America. For one, anarchists believe the current legal system and the authorization it provides for governmental and state power is both harmful and unnecessary.

In theory, the government is supposed to be of, for, and by the people, but the reality of its function has only ensured the existence of a ruling class, whose power and interests are perpetually preserved by the system of governance. David Graeber describes the state as having a dual character, where it is viewed as an institutionalized form of extortion by communities that seek to retain some degree of autonomy, while also appearing as a “utopian project in the written record.”⁵¹ Despite its idealistic aura, Peter Kropotkin writes that, “… Anarchists have often enough pointed out in their perpetual criticism of the various forms of government, that the mission of all governments, monarchical, constitutional, or republican, is to protect and maintain by force the privileges of the classes in possession …”⁵² Essentially, the power a community naturally has to rule itself, is given to a higher authority, the state, to govern on the community’s behalf. This opens the community to the abuses of power that result from hierarchical relationships. Additionally, the community’s reliance on the state to govern its affairs diminishes the community’s own power, making it, and its members, subservient to the state. This reliance on the state and the legal system creates an indirect way of resolving conflict. Rather than individuals settling disputes amongst themselves, they rely on impersonal laws to find a solution. To this point, Kropotkin writes:

[Quoting French jurist Dalloy] “… legislation is expected to do everything, and each fresh law being a fresh miscalculation, men are continually led to demand from it what can proceed only from themselves, from their own education and their own morality.” In existing States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves [the populace] altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it.⁵³

Allowing officials of the state to fill positions of power and determine policy for the community is problematic for the following reason:

The notion of “policy” presumes a state or governing apparatus which imposes its will on others. “Policy” is the negation of politics; policy is by definition something concocted by some form of elite, which presumes it knows better than others how their affairs are to be conducted. By participating in policy debates the very best one can achieve is to limit the damage, since the very premise is inimical to the idea of people managing their own affairs.⁵⁴

As a result, communities that concede their power to the state, reduce their independence and freedom to determine the type of society they want to live in.

The relinquishing of community power to a state government is unnecessary because there is no reason to believe the state can perform better than the community could. Anarchists believe we are capable of practicing a natural form of justice amongst ourselves, based on our conscience and innate ability to reason with one another, without trusting the process to a hierarchical ruling class of professionals. Kropotkin explains the manipulative justification for law by saying:

Its origin is the desire of the ruling class to give permanence to customs imposed by themselves for their own advantage. Its character is the skilful commingling of customs useful to society, customs which have no need of law to insure respect, with other customs useful only to rulers, injurious to the mass of the people, and maintained only by the fear of punishment.⁵⁵

The anarchist belief equates “law” with ethics, and reasons that since we learn ethics from our families, friends, and other members of our community, our current governmental legal system is not required.

The permanence of a state authority comes under further questioning when its actual existence is probed. Graeber writes:

In fact, the world is under no obligation to live up to our expectations, and insofar as “reality” refers to anything, it refers to precisely that which can never be entirely encompassed by our imaginative constructions. Totalities, in particular, are always creatures of the imagination. Nations, societies, ideologies, closed systems… none of these really exist. [...]

This is not an appeal for a flat-out rejection of such imaginary totalities … It is an appeal to always bear in mind that they are just that: tools of thought.⁵⁶

Thus, part of the state’s existence and legitimacy is due to the mental recognition we assign to it. If everyone were to shift their thinking to a worldview in which the state was undesired, and instead, looked to live without its authority, the state’s power and existence would be critically undermined.

The primary reason we acknowledge the authority of the state is its ability to use force as a means of enforcing compliance. This means anyone who breaks the law can have their liberty taken from them, or be killed by state officials. Sociologist Max Weber, describes the state as, “ a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.”⁵⁷ On the issue of force and violence, Graeber writes:

… violence, particularly structural violence, where all the power is on one side, creates ignorance. If you have the power to hit people over the head whenever you want, you don’t have to trouble yourself too much figuring out what they think is going on, and therefore, generally speaking, you don’t. Hence the sure-fire way to simplify social arrangements, to ignore the incredibly complex play of perspectives, passions, insights, desires, and mutual understandings that human life is really made of, is to make a rule and threaten to attack anyone who breaks it. This is why violence has always been the favored recourse of the stupid: it is the one form of stupidity to which it is almost impossible to come up with an intelligent response. It is also of course the basis of the state.⁵⁸

Consequently, the manner in which we allow the state to enforce compliance to the law is comparable to the rhetoric the American government uses to demonize “terrorist” groups and the countries labeled as their supporters. If terrorism is something we collectively admonish, our next step is to be honest in our introspection, and overcome the glaring contradiction that surrounds us.

Despite the state’s monopoly on the use of legitimate force, it still only exists because we acknowledge it to. To live in a truly cooperative and free society, we must be willing to let go of our reliance on the external state and legal system, and begin to engage each other on a local basis, and take full responsibility for the structure of our communities and neighborhoods.

A new way forward — a restorative approach to justice

The current legal system’s fundamental purpose is to resolve conflict. However, the power to determine resolutions is given to individuals that do not have an interest in the matter, and prevent the individuals involved to determine their own form of justice. Additionally, obedience to this system is enforced under duress. Rather than using force to achieve compliance, the anarchist approach to resolving conflict is voluntary, and believes justice can only be determined by the involved parties through dialogue. A justice system based on these principles exists, and is called restorative justice.

Restorative justice is a form of conflict resolution, used by different indigenous groups throughout the world, to settle disputes between individuals. According to a restorative justice co-director of facilitation, Matthew Johnson, “[r]eliance on the state to achieve justice or security goes against the idea that people are fully equipped to deal with their own conflicts — an idea that is at the core of restorative justice principles.”⁵⁹ In contrast to the current criminal justice system, where the state is viewed as the primary victim in criminal acts, and victims, offenders, and the community are given passive roles, restorative justice views crime as being directed against individual people.⁶⁰) This means conflicts and disputes are settled entirely by members of the community. The framework restorative justice uses, allows it to be applied in any circumstance in which a conflict is deemed to exist. At its core, it is a form of community justice that recognizes the interconnectedness of communal living, and that harm and conflicts are symptoms of communal inadequacies. Therefore, if everyone’s needs are being met, then consequently the causes for conflict are prevented.

Howard Zehr, a leading advocate and visionary for restorative justice, says that it has three primary pillars: harms and needs, obligations, and engagement.⁶¹ In regards to harm, Zehr writes, “[w]hile our first concern must be the harm experienced by victims, the focus on harm implies that we also need to be concerned about the harm experienced by offenders and communities.”⁶² The restorative approach tries to uncover the causes of conflicts in a manner that respects the perspectives of the people involved. Behind this is the belief that conflicts are created by misunderstandings and needs not being met for individuals. This method prevents individuals that have caused harm from being vilified, which encourages others to participate, and also reveals any inadequacies within the individual’s community.

The second pillar is that restorative justice “emphasizes offender accountability and responsibility.”⁶³ This means, rather than sending offenders to jail, they confront the people that have been harmed by their actions, and take responsibility for rectifying the situation. Offenders are permitted to tell their side of the story, but must also listen to how and why their actions led to the harm. Then together, the individuals work towards an agreeable solution. All this fits within the third pillar of engagement, which suggests that the primary parties affected by crime be given significant roles in the justice process.⁶⁴ An example of how the process works is as follows:

We [an organization that coordinates restorative justice conferences] would get a referral, call each principal actor in the conflict, interview them carefully and empathetically…making sure they are aware of the process as well as their own feelings…and get their consent to participate in the process. We would then repeat the process with everyone else involved and schedule a time that worked for everyone and an appropriate, neutral location. If it were a Victim-Offender Dialogue, it would likely take place at the correctional institution. The preparation process, where a trained facilitator would talk to each person individually, is generally the most important part and will determine the success of the conference. At the end of the conference, dialogue, etc., the facilitator(s) would help the participants generate a consensus agreement, that might include restitution, an apology, community service, etc., and follow up with participants after an established amount of time to ensure that they were satisfied with the agreement and that it was being followed as agreed.⁶⁵

Thus, the restorative justice process function of compassionately helping individuals learn from their mistakes.

Restorative justice practices are gaining traction and being applied throughout the country in a variety of contexts, but its success and continued use is dependent upon a continuing shift in societal values, and the strengthening of communal ties.⁶⁶ In some instances, forms of restorative justice are being used in conjunction with the criminal justice system for misdemeanor crimes. Defendants are given the choice of pleading guilty and going through a process in which they admit guilt, and discuss what caused them to commit the crime, and are then required to perform community service. While this is a step in the right direction, the process still operates under the power of the state. Additionally, it creates a problematic incentive for defendants to plead guilty to crimes just to escape accountability. Accountability is important in ensuring justice through the restorative method, however, without the force of the state to ensure this, the question becomes, how can society hold people accountable for their actions? Matthew Johnson believes:

… that accountability comes naturally with community and interdependent relationships. We tend to not view ourselves as connected in Western culture; we see ourselves primarily as individuals. In this context, accountability is not as important as escaping blame or harm. However, if I value my relationship with you more than my own willingness to avoid pain/consequences, I will tell you that I broke your favorite possession, etc., because I would want the same done for me, and we are interconnected. Also, accountability comes much easier when there is no expectation of punishment. If I knew you weren’t going to sue me, hit me, or shun me for admitting my wrongdoing, I would have much more of an incentive to tell the truth and be accountable. The current criminal justice system, along with the capitalist economic system, assumes that we act within our own self-interests, and this is just the way of things. Therefore, we incentive behavior that maximizes self-interest. Yet we turn around and criticize people for being selfish, etc. The principles of restorative justice go against this paradigm. Its practitioners have a much less cynical view of humanity, but nonetheless it’s quite possible that RJ (restorative justice) won’t reach its full potential without a radical re-evaluation of societal values.⁶⁵

Thus, in order for restorative justice to operate in the anarchist fashion it is intended to, and be successful, there needs to be an evolution in the way we live our lives, and the way we view one another.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the racist, classist, hierarchical interests represented in the formation of the Constitution have created a legal system, and subsequently, a criminal justice system, that has consistently failed to administer true justice. Thus, a new approach must be taken, which will require us to stop relying on the current criminal justice system, and its oppressive laws to solve our interpersonal issues. The criminal justice system will continue to work the way it has, as long as we continue to consent and participate in it. If we collectively take a stand and withdraw our consent from the system, and instead redirect how we deal with conflict to a restorative approach, the criminal justice system will become irrelevant. In explaining “revolutionary exodus,” David Graeber writes:

The theory of exodus proposes that the most effective way of opposing capitalism and the liberal state is not through direct confrontation but by means of what Paolo Virno has called “engaged withdrawal,” mass defection by those wishing to create new forms of community. One need only glance at the historical record to confirm that most successful forms of popular resistance have taken precisely this form. They have not involved challenging power head on (this usually leads to being slaughtered, or if not, turning into some—often even uglier—variant of the very thing one first challenged) but from one or another strategy of slipping away from its grasp, from flight, desertion, the founding of new communities.⁶⁷

Critical for creating this new society is a belief that it is possible and that we have the power to do it.

It is time to reaffirm what is already ours and reclaim our individual sovereignty. It is time for our self ownership to be reaffirmed and lived out in life. It is a metaphysical fact that we own our bodies and minds. All other ownerships can be challenged and are transitory at best, but self ownership is undeniable and permanent as long as we are living beings. Therefore it is ultimately, indeed must be our decision as to how we will conduct our lives the only law that we must accept is to do no harm to others and to recognize and respect the personal sovereignty of the other as they must ours. Recognition and respect of every person’s individual sovereignty is the only way in which systems of mutual cooperation can be successfully developed and maintained. And indeed is the only law required for peaceful coexistence with the greater society. But it is not a law of compulsion like most laws, but is rather the natural state of things such as the laws of physics.⁶⁸

1. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, 7, (1967).
2. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 86, (2010).
3. Hurd v. People, 25 Mich. 405 (Mich. 1872).
4. Federal Bureau of Prisons, (last visited Apr. 26, 2012).
5. Alexandra Natapoff, Speechless: The Silencing of Criminal Defendants, 80 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 1449 (2005).
6. Natapoff, supra note 5, at 1451.
7. Model Rules of Prof’l Conduct R. 3.8(a) (2008); Id. at Preamble, Scope, Terminology (2008).
8. William H. Simon, The Ethics of Criminal Defense, 91 Mich. L. Rev. 1703, 1704-5 (1993).
9. Ric Simmons, Election of Local Prosecutors, Ohio State University, Moritz School of Law, (last visited Apr. 27, 2012).
10. John Paul Stevens, Assoc. Justice, U.S. Supreme Court, Opening Assembly Address, American Bar Association Annual Meeting, Orlando, Florida (Aug. 3, 1996), in 12 St. John’s J. Legal Comment. 21, 30-31 (1996) (discussing need to improve quality of judges and espousing belief that judges should not be elected).
11. Commission On Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons, Confronting Confinement, 106, (2006).
12. Cody Mason, Too Good To Be True: Private Prisons In America, 1, (2012).
13. Justice Policy Institute, Gaming The System: How The Political Strategies of Private Prisons Promote Ineffective Incarceration Policies, 12 (2011).
14. Id. at 2.
15. International Centre For Prison Studies, Entire world – Prison Population Rates per 100,000 of the National Population, (last visited Apr. 27, 2012).
16. Adam Liptak, U.S. Prison Population Dwarfs That of Other Nations, (last visited Apr. 27, 2012).
17. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners In 2010, (last visted Apr. 27, 2012); Bureau of Justice Statistics, Correctional Populations In The United States, 2010, (last visited Apr. 27, 2012).
18. Bureau of Justice Statistics, supra note 17 (first cite), at Appendix, Table 12.
19. Karen R. Humes, Nicholas A. Jones, Roberto R. Ramirez, Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin: 2010, Table I (2011).
20. Bureau of Justice Statistics, supra note 17 (second cite), at Appendix Table 3.
21. Paul Butler, Racially Based Jury Nullification: Black Power in the Criminal Justice System, 105 Yale L.J. 677, 690-1 (1995).
22. Equal Justice Initiative, Racial Bias, (last visited Apr. 27, 2012).
23. Amnesty International, Death Penalty and Race, (last visited Apr. 27, 2012).
24. British Broadcasting Corporation, Quick guide: The Slave Trade, (last visited Apr. 27, 2012).
25. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present, 291 (2003).
26. Id. at 90-1.
27. Zinn, supra note 25, at 99.
28. Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (U.S. 1857).
29. Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (U.S. 1954).
30. Michelle Alexander, The Age of Obama As A Racial Nightmare, (last visited Apr. 27, 2012).
31. Alexander, supra note 30.
32. Jim Abrams, Congress Passes Bill To Reduce Disparity In Crack, Powder Cocaine Sentencing, (last visited Apr. 27, 2012).
33. See Gary Webb, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, Seven Stories Press; 2nd edition (1999).
34. Karla Mari McKanders, Sustaining Tiered Personhood: Jim Crow and Anti-Immigrant Laws, 26, Harv. J. on Racial & Ethnic Just., 163 (2010).
35. U.S. Commission On Civil Rights, A Quiet Crisis, Federal Funding And Unmet Needs In Indian Country, 68 (2003).
36. See Therese Beaudreault, The Race Categories On The U.S. Census: Representations of False Consciousness, (last visited May 6, 2012).
37. See Ajamu Dillahunt et al., United for a Fair Economy, State of the Dream 2010 DRAINED Joblessness and Foreclosed in Communities of Color; The Schott State Report on Black Males & Education. (last visited Apr. 27, 2012).
38. Encyclopedia Brittanica, Anarchism, (last visited Apr. 27, 2012).
39. Brittanica, supra note-38.
40. David Graeber, Fragments of An Anarchist Anthropology, (2004).
41. Graeber, supra note 40, at 65.
42. Id. at 41.
43. Walter Cruttenden, Lost Star of Myth And Time, 9 (2006).
44. Id. at 295.
45. Graeber, supra note 40, at 46-51.
46. Brittanica, supra note 38.
47. Butler, supra note 21, at 677.
48. Butler, supra note 21, at 20
49. Everythingology, Enemy of The State: An Interview With John Zerzan & Derrick Jensen, (last visited Apr. 27, 2012).
50. David Wieck, Anarchist Justice, (last visited Apr. 27, 2012).
51. Graeber, supra note 40 at 65.
52. Peter Kropotkin, Law And Authority, (last visited Apr. 27, 2012).
53. Id.
54. Graeber, supra note 40, at 9.
55. Kropotkin, supra note 52.
56. Graeber, supra note 40, at 43-5.
57. Max Weber, Politics As A Vocation, (last visited Apr. 27, 2012).
58. Graeber, supra note 40, at 72-3.
59. Email interview with Matthew Johnson, Co-Director of Facilitation, Conflict Resolution Center of Montgomery County (Apr. 26, 2012).
60. Mark S. Umbreit and Betty Vos and Robert B. Coates and Elizabeth Lightfoot, Restorative Justice In the twenty-first century: A social movement full of opportunities and pitfalls, 89 Marq. L. Rev. 251, 255 (2005). (This article provides a comprehensive breakdown of the variety of restorative justice models and their impact.
61. Howard Zehr, Little Book of Restorative Justice, 22 (2002).
62. Id. at 23.
63. Zehr, supra note 61, at 23.
64. Zehr, supra note 61, at 24.
65. Johnson, supra note 59.
66. Umbreit, supra note 60, at 261.
67. Graeber, supra note 40, at 60-1.
68. Consent Withdrawn, We Must Marginalize The State And Capitalism, (last visited Apr. 27, 2012).

The context for the Haymarket riot in 1886 was the movement for the eight-hour work day. The movement had started at least as early as 1877, when the Workingmen’s Party in Chicago called a general strike beginning July 25 in support of the eight-hour movement. The next day, on July 26, 1877, thousands of strikers were attacked and beaten into submission by police and U.S. Army infantrymen with fixed bayonets. Thirty strikers, including a number of children, were murdered by the police and federal troops. During that strike, typesetter Albert Parsons, later one of the Haymarket martyrs, was fired from his job because of a speech he had given during the strike. The bloody suppression of the 1877 strike caused another of the Haymarket martyrs, upholsterer August Spies, to join an armed worker’s self-defense organization.

The national movement for the eight-hour day reached a crescendo in the mid-1880s. In 1885, there were 645 strikes nationwide at over 2,400 businesses in support of the eight-hour goal. In 1886, the year of the Haymarket riot, the number of strikes had more than doubled to 1,400, affecting over 11,000 businesses!

On Saturday, May 1, 1886, a nationwide general strike in support of the eight-hour day was observed. In Chicago alone, 60,000 workers walked off their jobs. In a truly prescient headline, a Chicago labor newspaper that day announced: “The Dies Are Cast! The First of May, Whose Historical Significance Will Be Understood and Appreciated Only in Later Years, Is Here!” The general strike for the eight-hour day continued on Monday, May 3. On the afternoon of May 3, August Spies was addressing a rally of striking workers that had been locked out of the McCormick Reaper Works in Chicago, when hundreds of police officers simply began shooting into the crowd of workers. Several workers died, and many others were wounded. That night, Parsons, Spies, and other anarchists printed leaflets calling for a labor rally the next afternoon in Haymarket Square to protest the massacre of unarmed strikers by police at the McCormick plant.

The labor demonstration in Haymarket Square in the afternoon of Tuesday, May 4, 1886, was peaceful until the very end. Parsons spoke to the group and then left the rally to meet his family at a nearby labor hall. Spies spoke at the rally, urging peaceful action to protest the massacre of the previous day and to support the cause of the eight-hour day. Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison attended and reported to the police that the demonstration was “tame” (Harrison’s word) and peaceful. But near the end of the rally, an unknown person threw a bomb into the phalanx of police officers attending the rally. In response, the police officers attacked the unarmed laborers. Hundreds of police officers fired into the terrified, fleeing crowd. An unknown number of people were killed and many others were wounded. Many police officers were wounded, some seriously, by gunfire. Every such wounded police officer – every one! – had been shot by other police officers. In the bloody police riot that followed the bombing, police officers shot wildly and at random; labor protesters and police officers alike were shot down.

In the days after the riot, eight local Chicago anarchists were indicted and arrested: Parsons, Spies, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden, Louis Lingg, George Engel, Adolph Fischer, and Oscar Neebe. The indictment acknowledged that the bomb had been “thrown by an unknown person” but alleged that the unknown bomb-thrower had been “aided abetted, and encouraged” by the indicted anarchists. In the aftermath of the indictments of the eight anarchists, a kind of brutal martial law was imposed on Chicago. Anarchist and labor meeting halls were closed down. Hundreds of suspects were rounded up, interrogated, and held by police without charges being brought. Mayor Harrison closed down Chicago’s leading labor newspaper and banned public meetings – all by ukase. Mainstream newspapers blamed the eight-hour movement for the bombing and ensuing bloodshed, and in the Red Scare that followed, the eight-hour movement fizzled for a time. In fact, the eight-hour work day did not become law in the United States until the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.

All eight of the defendants were tried and convicted. Seven were sentenced to death. Fielden and Schwab later had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. Lingg died on the eve of his scheduled execution, probably assassinated by the police, although some accounts say that Lingg died by his own hand. Neebe was sentenced to 15 years. Parsons, Spies, Fischer and Engel were hanged. In a final gesture of retribution, the ropes used to kill the prisoners were made too short, so that instead of dying instantly when the trap doors opened on the gallows, each prisoner was made to suffocate to death slowly and excruciatingly. American justice.

There were two big things wrong with this situation.

First, at least seven (and maybe all eight) of the defendants were actually innocent. By “actually innocent,” I do not mean that there was some hyper-legalistic technicality working in their favor. What I mean by “actually innocent” is that they had nothing whatever to do with the bombing. Some of them were not present when it happened. (For instance, Parsons was at a labor hall, and Engel was at home on Milwaukee Avenue.) The defendants had not known that the bombing would occur; they had not been involved in any planning or abetting; they had had nothing whatever to do with the crime. That is, they were actually innocent. (Some historians have argued that the one of the eight defendants, Louis Lingg, may have been tangentially involved in bomb-making; however, everyone agrees that if this were the case, no scintilla of evidence of that fact was introduced at his trial.)

The second problem with the execution and imprisonment of the Haymarket martyrs is the extreme injustice of their trial. On July 15, 1886, prosecutor Julius Grinnell made his opening statement, stressing the need to convict the dangerous anarchists in the dock. The next day, Judge Joseph E. Gary delivered a daylong address to the jury, repeating most of the points that had been raised by the prosecutor, and re-emphasizing the importance of all the defendants being convicted. Judge Gary was very clear on this point: the defendants needed to be convicted not for what they had actually done, but for what they believed. The defendants, after all, were admitted anarchists. No one was surprised. Judge Gary had spent weeks carefully selecting a jury that was bound to convict. When prospective jurors claimed that they were prejudiced against anarchists, Judge Gary put them on the jury. When prospective jurors said they believed that these specific defendants were guilty, Judge Gary put them on the jury. Judge Gary even seated a juror who was a relative of one of the slain police officers! Prosecution witnesses proffered wholly invented testimony, riddled with obvious contradictions and impossibilities. The defense offered the proverbial parade of witnesses who testified that the defendants had not thrown the bomb or were elsewhere when the bomb had been thrown.

All the defendants were convicted. Four (or, depending on how you look at it, five) were executed.

There was an international outpouring of support for the condemned Haymarket anarchists. Protest meetings, some featuring prominent people, were held in Paris, London, The Hague, Vienna, Brussels, Lyon, and elsewhere. This was, in fact, the ætiology of the worldwide observance of May Day. In the United States, however, the Haymarket trial led to reaction and a Red Scare – the first of several Red Scares in U.S. history. Illinois passed a law making it illegal to advocate “destruction of the existing order.” Similar laws were passed in other states and at the federal level. Cornell Professor H. C. Adams was one of many who lost his job after speaking out about the injustices of the Haymarket trial. Later Red Scares in the United States included the post-World War I Palmer Raids of 1919 and 1920; and, of course, the post-World War II McCarthy era. (Emma Goldman was deported as part of the Palmer Raids; a fine book has recently been published about the Palmer Raids: Young J. Edgar Hoover and the Red Scare 1919-1920, by Kenneth D. Ackerman, Viral History Press, September 27, 2011.)

On September 13, 1886, the Illinois Supreme Court rejected the appeal of the Haymarket defendants. The Anarchists’ Case, 122 Ill. 1, 12 N.E. 865 (1887). The case report (that is, the official court decision) of the Illinois Supreme Court decision takes up 130 pages in the Northeast Reporter and 265 pages in the Illinois Reporter (that is, the official law books). The overwhelming sense one gets from reading the case is that the Haymarket martyrs were convicted, imprisoned, and executed not for what they had done (for there was no evidence of that) but for what they believed and said.

The first thirty pages of the case in the Northeast Reporter (67 pages in the Illinois Reporter) are a collection of newspaper articles that appeared in Chicago labor newspapers with which the defendants were associated and reports of speeches given over the years by one defendant or another.

Let us examine the newspaper clippings first. The clippings come from three Chicago-area labor newspapers of the era. What is most interesting in this vast collection of articles cited and quoted by the Illinois Supreme Court is that the Court makes not the slightest attempt to connect any article(s) to any defendant(s). The trove of clippings is merely provided to explicate why the defendants are dangerous and deserve the sentences they received. The articles date back to 1884; many advocated in favor of the eight-hour work day. For example, on May 1, 1886, one newspaper published these dangerous, inflammatory words: “For twenty years the working people have been begging extortioners to introduce the eight-hour system, but have been put off with promises. Two years ago they resolved that the eight-hour system should be introduced in the United States on the first day of May, 1886. The reasonableness of this demand was conceded on all hands.” 122 Ill. at 26-27, 12 N.E. at 880. There was another dangerous newspaper article the very next day: “Even where the workingmen are willing to accept a corresponding reduction in wages with the introduction of the eight-hour system, they were mostly refused.” 122 Ill. At 28, 12 N.E. at 880.

Then there were the speeches. For example, the Court tells us that Parsons gave a speech on April 24, 1886 urging workers to demand an eight-hour day. 122 Ill. at 48, 12 N.E. at 888-889. He gave another speech on April 3, 1886 urging an “attempt to inaugurate the eight-hour system.” 122 Ill. At 48, 12 N.E. at 888. Indeed, the Illinois Supreme Court tells us that: “During the years 1885 and 1886 the defendants Fielden, Parsons, Engel, Spies, and Schwab made numerous speeches to workingmen.” 122 Ill. at 889, 12 N.E. at 50. The Court goes on to recite the dates and locations of some of these speeches, which defendants spoke (and in what sequence) and that the defendants were advocating the eight-hour work day. “At a meeting at Twelfth Street Turner Hall on October 11, 1885, Mr. August Spies was introduced . . . and offered a resolution . . . for the establishment of an eight-hour work-day, to begin May 1, 1886 . . .” 122 Ill. at 52, 12 N.E. at 890.

After losing in the Illinois Supreme Court, the defense team, led by lawyers William Perkins Black and Ben Butler, sought review by the U.S. Supreme Court. Their argument to the U. S. Supreme Court was a novel one for the time. They argued that the procedural irregularities of the trial violated guarantees of the Bill of Rights, which, they argued, were made applicable to the states through the due process clause of the (then-recently-enacted) Fourteenth Amendment.

This was an audacious argument (perhaps a better word would be “unwise”). The law of the land at that time, as set forth in the leading Supreme Court case Barron v. Baltimore, 32 U.S. (7 Pet.) 243 (1833), was that the Bill of Rights only limits actions by the federal government; the guarantees contained in the Bill of Rights do not apply to laws passed at the state level. (Under that rule, a state could, say, enact a law making it illegal to publicly criticize the Governor, because the First Amendment only applies to Congress, not the states. Likewise, a state could constitutionally pass a law making it, say, illegal to be Jewish.) After the Civil War, even though the plain text of the Fourteenth Amendment makes it clear that it is applying constitutional liberties to the states (“No State shall . . . nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law . . . .”), the Supreme Court still disagreed. In the notorious Slaughter-Houses Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1872), the Supreme Court again found that the guarantees of the Bill of Rights are not applicable to the states.

The United States Supreme Court made short shrift of the argument of the Haymarket defendants’ defense team. The Anarchists’ Case, 123 U.S. 131, 8 S.Ct. 22, 31 L.Ed. 80 (1887). “That the first 10 articles of amendment were not intended to limit the powers of the state governments in respect to their own people, but to operate on the national government alone, was decided more than half a century ago, and that decision has been steadily adhered to since. [The Supreme Court here collects cases for the abecedarian proposition, starting with Barron v. Baltimore in 1883.]” 123 U.S. at 166, 8 S.Ct. at 24.

It was not until the twentieth century, starting with Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925), that the Supreme Court began making the guarantees of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment – and then only on a piecemeal basis. And, although Gitlow was the beginning of this process, the victory for Mr. Gitlow himself was rather a pyrrhic one. Ben Gitlow was convicted of violating New York State criminal anarchy statute (enacted in 1902, re-enacted in 1909). 268 U.S. at 653, 45 S.Ct. at 654. His sole offense was that he had published an Anarchist Manifesto. New York’s criminal anarchy statute made it illegal to advocate anarchism in speech or in writing, regardless of how theoretically or abstractly. Gitlow appealed from the highest appellate court in New York, the Court of Appeals, to the U.S. Supreme Court. “The sole contention here is, essentially, that as there was no evidence of any concrete result flowing from the publication of the Manifesto or of circumstances showing the likelihood of such result, the statute as construed and applied by the trial court penalizes the mere utterance, as such, of doctrine having no quality of incitement.” 268 U.S. at 664, 45 S.Ct. at 629.

Gitlow argued that this circumstance violated the First Amendment, made applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. In dictum (that is a portion of the opinion not directly deciding the case at hand), the Court said (and this is why the case is famous): “For present purposes we may and do assume that freedom of speech and of the press – which are protected by the First Amendment from abridgement by Congress – are among the fundamental personal rights and ‘liberties’ protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the States.” 268 U.S. at 666, 45 S.Ct. at 630. The Court then upheld the constitutionality of New York’s criminal anarchy statute, and upheld Gitlow’s conviction. Justice Holmes issued a brief dissent (in which Justice Brandeis joined) repeating his view that there should be no punishment of speech absent “a clear and present danger” of resulting violence. 268 U.S. at 672, 45 U.S. at 632. Ben Gitlow went to prison for publishing a manifesto.

As the twentieth century progressed, one after another of the guarantees in the Bill of Rights were made applicable against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. Today, as Yale Law School Professor Akhil Reed Amar points out in The Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment, 101 Yale L. Journal 1193 (1992), the parts of the Bill of Rights that have been applied to the states “reads like the greatest hits of the modern era”: freedom of speech and the press (New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964)); privilege against compelled self-incrimination and right to counsel (Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966)); right to counsel (Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963)); right to a jury trial in a criminal case (Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145 (1968)).

But when plied in 1886 by the lawyers for the Haymarket defendants, the argument that the Bill of Rights applied to the states through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was a sure-fire loser. The Supreme Court declined even to hear the Haymarket appeal. 123 U.S. at 182, 8 S.Ct. at 32.

Today, I would hazard that not one American in 100 knows about the Haymarket riot, even though it provided the basis for the worldwide observances today of May Day. Probably not one American in a thousand could identify Albert Parsons or August Spies (much less Michael Schwab or Adolph Fischer).

Some Americans, however, do remember. On October 5, 1969, in connection with the “Days of Rage,” the Weatherman faction of SDS bombed the police statute that then stood in Haymarket Square. The statue was a memorial to the police officers, but not the workers, slain in the 1886 riot. The two Weatherman who actually pulled off the 1969 bombing were Bill Ayers, who describes the bombing in his 2001 book, “Fugitive Days” (Beacon Press, 2001), at 162-164; and Terry Robbins, who would die a few months later in the Greenwich Village townhouse blast on March 6, 1970. After the 1969 bombing, the Chicago city fathers rebuilt and re-installed the police statute in Haymarket Square; and one year later, on October 5, 1970, the Weathermen blew it up again. The Weathermen’s use of violence to protest the Vietnam War may have offended many Americans, but their appreciation of American history was far more keenly developed than that of many of their fellow and sister citizens.

Today, May Day is the international workers’ holiday, observed in much of the world – but ironically not here in the United States where the events occurred that originally gave rise to the holiday.

May Day, along with notions of radical worker action, has largely been ignored in the United States in recent years. But the time for complacency has passed.

While a worker walk-out may have been born from the secessio plebis of Ancient Rome, English Chartist and radical preacher William Benbow brought to modern times the idea of general strike as a “sacred month” in the first mass working-class labor movement. In 1877, the Great Railroad Strike began the first major labor action in the United States; centered in East Saint Louis, the strike shut down all industrial railway traffic through the National Stockyards, letting only passenger and mail trains through. In 1936, early in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, a series of strikes spread; half a million textile workers united in states across the country, dock workers and their associates in San Francisco, and radical Teamsters in Minneapolis all fought against the violence of police and armed strikebreakers. These strikes, and the unemployment councils that cropped up to encourage progressive change, pushed Roosevelt to enact bold reforms to the American system.

Over the course of two days in December of 1946, radical action brought the City of Oakland to a standstill. The general strike there inspired the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act that President Truman called a “conflict with important principles of our democratic society,” even as he used it twelve times over the course of his presidency. The act essentially killed the general strike as a tactic for the labor movement.

The power of the working class, however, is not tied to mainstream organized labor.  Concessions by the AFL-CIO to the government’s National Labor Relations Board have made the organization little more than a special interest group for the Democrats, even as they pass anti-labor and anti-free speech legislation. While the working class needs the strength of militant unionization—the IWW Food and Retail Workers United union in the Pacific Northwest being a good example—the policies of the National Labor Relations Board are decidedly anti-worker. Capitulation of reactionary unions to NLRB demands, and to the Democratic Party, constitutes abandonment of the working class.

Knowing that union leadership would be refused the blessing of their Democratic Party masters, rank-and-file members of labor joined with the Occupy Movement to speak for themselves; in October 2011, the General Assembly of Occupy Oakland voted overwhelmingly to shut down the city on November 2nd in response to the military-style crackdown on demonstrators by eighteen different police agencies, including the critical wounding of Scott Olsen and Kayvan Sabehgi, two veterans of the war in Iraq. The convergence of radical labor and Occupy Oakland made it possible to shut down the Port of Oakland, the fifth-largest container port in the nation, disrupting millions of dollars of capitalist income. This is only the beginning.

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking!

— William Butler Yeats

In December of 2011, Occupy Los Angeles called for a general strike on May Day, to “recognize housing, education, and healthcare as human rights.” This revival of May Day has been echoed by Occupations from wealthy Wall Street to poverty-stricken Oklahoma. Already, nationwide strikes have rocked other countries hit hard by the capitalist crisis, including Spain, Iceland, Portugal, and Greece.  Austerity measures in these countries have been enacted solely to appease unelected European Union technocrats, protecting the interests of wealthy investors and multinational banking cartels. The civil war that capitalism calls “peace” is intensifying universally; the May Day General Strike will be our response to their crisis.

On May 1st, 2012, we will revive the May Day the ruling class has tried to erase; we will celebrate International Workers’ Day in the United States as a political manifestation of class consciousness and international solidarity.

However, our demonstrations on May Day cannot be an exercise in paying homage to the past days of the global justice movement; instead, they must embody concrete preparation for the future. The anarchist concept of pre-figurative politics demands that we lay the foundations of future society solidly in the present. By retaking May Day, we stand in solidarity with a legacy of international struggle against neoliberal capitalism and authoritarian control. Values such as classlessness, autonomy, self-management, diversity, and mutual aid preclude borders; the internationalism of May Day is only one step in a long march towards an international solidarity.

The atmosphere across the globe seems pregnant with a revolutionary fervor unseen in recent years. The occupation at New York City’s New School in 2008 provided a glimpse into the possibilities of occupation when students seized their school building as a show of solidarity against the policies of a broken administration. The nascent student movement later reclaimed campuses across California, inspiring actions nationwide with the release of an influential text called “Communiqué from an Absent Future.” At the same time, organizers linked themselves to demonstrations in Greece over the police murder of a 15-year old anarchist in the neighborhood of Exarcheia.

With the European crisis beginning in late 2010 and Arab Spring blossoming in early 2011, international resistance to gutter government became not only widespread, but populist in nature. In Greece, the “I Won’t Pay” movement took shape as normal citizens ignored tolls, transit ticket costs, and bills for healthcare. Governor Scott Walker’s anti-labor actions designed to eliminate collective bargaining were met with thousands of people descending on the Madison, Wisconsin State Capitol. Later that spring, the May 15th movement known as los Indignados took over public squares in Spain and Greece and demanded a radical change to the political milieu.

Millions of people around the world are waking up to the realization that capitalism is a pyramid scheme.

Our unity with the workers of the world extends beyond May Day. Radical movements must seek more than an end to illegitimate and authoritarian governments; we demand the recognition of universal rights, respect of individual autonomy and local decision-making, and an end to coercive and subordinate relationships in all areas of our lives. As Bob Black writes inThe Abolition of Work:

To demonize state authoritarianism while ignoring identical, albeit contract-consecrated, subservient arrangements in the large-scale corporations which control the world economy is fetishism at its worst … Your supervisor gives you more or-else orders in a week than the police do in a decade.

Our struggle has to be more than mere conflict with a rigged economic system. Economics do not exist in a vacuum, but at the convergence of complex political, financial, and military interests. Historical, social, and legal dimensions come into play with the understanding that markets perpetrate inequities by favoring those with more power, wealth, and privilege. To avoid essentialism, we must strike hard at the intersections that prop up systemic inequality, even as we focus on unbridled market fundamentalism itself.

One of the most dangerous institutions that undergird capitalist economic structure is the military-industrial complex.

On May 20-21st, tens of thousands will gather in Chicago to demonstrate against the NATO military bloc. Serving as the armed will of the U.S. and Western Europe, NATO accounts for a staggering 70% of the world’s military spending, money that is used to control strategic resources of the Global South on behalf of a Western capitalist economic minority. While the majority of the planet lives on less than $2 per day, NATO swallows $2 billion per week on a war that nobody seems to want. The reasons are simple: poverty and wealth are functions of politico-economic entanglement; when resources abroad like oil or precious metals are determined to be matters of national security, the politics of who deserveswhat comes into play.

Contrast the billions spent by countries on weapons and war technology and the amount of money spent on help for the poverty-stricken children, women and men of the Global South. A stark picture is soon painted.

As spokesman for the Coalition Against NATO/G-8 War & Poverty Agenda, Andy Thayer reminds us that Richard Nixon, President of the US in ‘68, was no friend of the working class. However, even despite being “ideologically… far to the right of any previous post-WW II president, and a notorious racist and anti-Semite to boot,” Nixon enacted a series of measures “that marked him as by far the most “progressive” president since the Great Depression—far to the left of, yes, President Obama.” Despite his conservative principles, a mass movement of citizen agitation forced Nixon to enact Affirmative Action, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), expand food stamps, nominate a Supreme Court that gave us Roe v. Wade, and finally, a wind-down of the Vietnam War.

Young men and women who join the military, many for an education or a job opportunity, are being slaughtered around the world as the American Empire advances, using poor countries as proxy in many cases. As many soldiers refuse to reenlist, the temptation of tactical nuclear strike grows for the Pentagon. Without an immediate demand for disarmament, a global nuclear war is almost certainly on the horizon; already, we see the case built for attacks on Iran and North Korea. Thayer’s call for continuous and forceful action against warmongering is an urgent one; the opportunity to act against imperial militarism must be seized in Chicago as Obama takes the stage in his effort to make the NATO summit the centerpiece of his reelection campaign.

Chicago 1968 marked the beginning of the end for the Vietnam War. Exposing NATO’s military expansionist policies in Chicago 2012 may provide a valuable victory for Occupy Wall Street and for the global justice movement as a whole. War must be understood as a critical underpinning of the capitalist agenda.

The call for a general strike and the mobilization of opposition to NATO’s military stranglehold, however, must only be the beginning of a growing and sustained process of radical organization: of fellow citizens in the workplace, in our neighborhoods, and in our schools. Our movement must include the homeless, the working poor, the uneducated, the societal marginalized—those most disadvantaged by capitalist exploitation. Radical mo(ve)ments such as these serve as a wake-up call, not only to socio-political elites faced with a critical mass demanding change, but to the entirety of the working class who have realized the power they seek lies in their own direct action. Profound social transformation must be at the root of any economic recovery.

We live in a time when half-hearted notions of “reform” are served only as a recuperative mechanism for capitalist greed, where governments pledge that the only escape from financial crisis must come through workers surrendering their rights, where the commons is privatized and the rights of all are turned into a bargaining chip that benefits only a few. Women’s bodies are turned into battlegrounds as politicians fight for office. Social services, education, and jobs are being slashed in a scorched-earth campaign to preserve power.

Historically, government has failed in its responsibilities, unless forced by direct action: sit-ins and Freedom Rides for the rights of black people, strikes and boycotts for the rights of workers, mutinies and desertions of soldiers in order to stop a war. Today, we can be sure we will not see any change from the status quo … unless popular upsurge demands it. The best way to make our demands known? Hit capitalism in its pocketbook.

I’ll meet you at the barricades.

Despite the subterfuge of freedom and democracy, the rights of corporations have consistently superseded the sovereign rights of the individual and those of the community. Labor history and a litany of environmental catastrophes bear this out. For instance, everywhere one looks government agencies “ostensibly created to protect the public welfare” are allowing hydraulic fracturing of Marcellus shale, even when it poisons municipal drinking water and causes incalculable harm to the environment.

Our diverse forests are commodified, measured in board feet to be clear-cut and off-shored at prodigious bargain rates, like a liquidation sale. World class biodiversity is yielding to desertification and monoculture. Money changes hands. The few are getting rich at the expense of the many. The world and the people who live in it are treated like products to be exploited. We are told that nothing is sacred, save for the dollar and markets.

Nevertheless, it is an inescapable fact that no human being, including corporate CEOs and members of Congress, can live without potable water or breathable air. We are literally sacrificing the Earth’s life support systems and mortgaging the future, while attempting to satiate the greed of a few grotesquely wealthy individuals. Through lifelong indoctrination, Americans are persuaded that self-interested greed is in their best interest.

The rich and powerful have decreed that corporate profits “the Holy Grail of American capitalism” are more precious than life itself. The remorseless people in power are without conscience. History confirms that sociopaths do not hesitate to take what they want from their unsuspecting victims by any and all means.

But surely, even among Friedmanites, it must be allowed that some things cannot be commodified or bought and sold. For instance, clean air and potable water are the birthright of every living organism. These are necessities that belong to the commons; they cannot ethically be privately owned. In contrast to this assertion, two edicts of modern capitalism are private ownership and the commodification of workers and nature.

Capitalism, and the market fundamentalism that is associated with it, has stripped bare the Earth’s biodiversity and substituted a world of commodities in its stead. What we see and think we know is not real. It is the product of marketing and perception managers — a hologram.

There is growing conflict between capitalism and the planet’s ecology, its essential life support systems. A fierce struggle between capital and democracy is in progress. The booted foot of capitalism is pressing upon the throat of democracy. We inhabit a dying world and are inheriting dying freedoms. Corporate greed and over-population is the culprit. Conflict is everywhere.

Virtually all of the social upheaval, inequality, and environmental problems of today in some way ensue from capitalism, including overpopulation and armed aggression. Capitalism requires continuous economic expansion and a burgeoning market for consumers. This is simply not possible on a finite planet.

These tensions are manifested no more clearly than throughout the coal belt and mountains of West Virginia, where I make my home. Here, mountains are cleared of forests before being blown to smithereens in order to cheaply extract coal to enrich Massey Energy Corporation. The process, known as mountaintop removal, has poisoned streams, altered their courses, and changed the contours of the land and its hydrology. It has devastated both human and biological communities while filling the coffers of the timber and coal industries.

Conventional underground mining has claimed the lives of thousands of coal miners trying to scratch out a modest living from the Earth. At times, it has led to armed conflict between miners and the Pinkertons hired by the mining companies in places like Matewan and Blair Mountain.

In West Virginia, King Coal and the gas and oil industry run the state’s legislature. The government is effectively owned by corporate lobbyists. As a result, it is futile to make legal and moral appeals to government for redress of our grievances. If we limit ourselves to the tools that our oppressors provide us, the entire region will become a sacrifice zone. Working people and the poor make the sacrifices; billionaires and industry carry off the profit. We are left to deal with the aftermath.

The illusion of democracy “including voting in the absence of meaningful choice” is a poor substitute for direct action and anarchy. Democracy cannot flourish in the sterile soil that capitalism leaves in its wake. Either we have democracy or we have capitalism, or we create something entirely different. Radically opposing ideas cannot be reconciled.

Modern humans inhabit a human-engineered world of absurdities and contradictions. Regardless of the Supreme Court’s assertions, corporations are not people, and money is not speech. Every sentient human being knows this. However, the law says otherwise. We must deny the corporate state that victory by refusing to capitulate.

The struggle for community rights, egalitarianism, and social, economic, and environmental justice must occur outside of the system that creates inequality and fosters wanton destruction of the commons. Countless species of plants and animals that provide essential ecological services are being eliminated to create space for strip malls, gated communities, gambling casinos and golf courses. As a result, ecological and economic catastrophe loom. We are facing global famine in an anthropocentric over-heated world.

Globally, wealthy multinational corporations are gorging themselves on the biological and mineral wealth of the commons. What could be more absurd or unethical?

The brainchild of Adam Smith, capitalism, which replaced feudalism during the French Revolution, is founded upon demonstrably false premises, many of which were unknown in Smith’s time. Nevertheless, classically trained economists assert that capitalism is a primal force of nature rather than the defective human construct that it is. Modern capitalism has produced pathological symptoms and endorsed an ethos that is antithetical to life and to liberty. It is killing the world and foreclosing evolutionary possibilities.

Indeed, ethical considerations aside, and speaking purely from a biological perspective, one may emphatically state that modern capitalism is an aggressive cancer that is devouring its host. But most of us are in denial. People like me are asked not to utter the “C” word in public spaces. It might offend the well-intentioned believers. Whenever this occurs I am reminded of Thoreau, who uttered, “Any truth is better than make believe.” . One has an ethical obligation to state what one knows succinctly and clearly.

It is not in dispute that the ideology of constant expansion on a finite planet is contradicted by inviolable ecological dictums — among them, carrying capacity, ecological overshoot, and die-off. But classical economists act as if these laws do not apply, or they are mysteriously overridden by the irrational exuberance of capitalism.

In reality, every political economy is underlain by ecology and by living, evolving, biological systems. Ecology is the only economy that really matters.

By possessing even a modest degree of ecological literacy, one can make some revealing predictions with mathematical certainty. For example, the continuation of capitalism as the primary political economy can have one of two possible outcomes: the virtual destruction of the biosphere, meaning the death of the host organism, or the abolition of the capitalist system.

What would a post-capitalism world look like and how might it work?

Global capitalism, with its dependence on the availability of cheap fossil fuels and petrochemicals for food production, must give way to small-scale local economies and organic agriculture. Food must be locally grown and, as far as possible, other necessities locally produced. The age of cheap fossil fuels is ending. Industrialized man must bravely confront his addictions and embrace sobriety or he will self-destruct.

It is said that nature bats last. Humans do best when they emulate natural systems that have evolved over eons of time.

A moneyless economy based upon need must supplant the current profit-driven system of exploitation. Accordingly, goods and services may then be exchanged without the conduit of markets. These exchanges would be of equal value and thus inherently fair.

The classic business models will be replaced by worker-owned and worker-operated cooperatives. In this arrangement, workers – not a board of directors – make all of the business decisions. They share the risks and benefits and distribute the surpluses of production, while significantly reducing the work day and the work week. A portion of the surpluses of production is allocated to the betterment of the community and to the protection of the commons.

New economic models must be predicated upon ecological principles or they will fail. Existing alternatives to capitalism, such as Spain’s Mondragon Worker Cooperative, must be critically analyzed and evaluated as a model that could, with modifications, be implemented elsewhere.

There is no better teacher than evolution and natural selection. History confirms that the most revolutionary ideas are occasionally the oldest. For instance, anthropological studies indicate that early Homo sapiens evolved by implementing egalitarian principles into their tribal clans. People and the cultures they create must either evolve or perish.

The egalitarian societies of the future will look radically different from the capitalism of today. Political campaigns and elections will recede into history and quickly forgotten. Evolved societies do not need leaders or elected officials.

Every member of an egalitarian community is a leader. Power flows in a circular form rather than a linear, top-down hierarchy. It is derived directly from the people. There will be no social or economic stratification. No one shall have privileges or rights that are denied to others. Every member of the community must be equally empowered and equally valued. All people will have equal access to opportunity. Health care and higher education, like pure water and clean air, will be regarded as a right of birth and provided without cost.

Direct action will replace voting in political elections. Rather than consent to be governed, sovereign people can create the world they want to live in. In communities where people are empowered and where they have an equal stake, they will want to participate. Everyone brings something to the table. Everyone contributes and all of society benefits.

Communities will become as interconnected and interdependent as ecological systems. But each will remain autonomous within the larger matrix of nature. States and nations as we know them may eventually recede into history and disappear.

Rather than the callous competition and exploitation nurtured by capitalism, communities can be organized around the principle of cooperation and social need. As in healthy ecosystems, the welfare of the individual is dependent upon the well-being of the community — and vice versa. No one will be left behind. All of us shall rise together.

All living organisms share a common origin and a common destiny. Ecology and economy must merge into an integrated natural system suited to long-term survival in a world already ravaged by industrialized man. Ecological and social healing must be part of the process of building sustainable communities.

The transition from capitalism to cooperation will be neither smooth nor easy. There will be many false starts. At first, there will be fierce resistance to revolutionary change. People cling to the familiar and the comfortable, to what they know, even when the dominant paradigm and popular culture does them harm.

The first tentative steps of a journey are often the most difficult. There are no clear blueprints to follow. There will be trepidation and uncertainty. But we must commit to beginning. The alternative is oblivion. But if we embark on the voyage the survival of the species, and a new age of enlightenment will be possible.

Occupy! Scenes From Occupied America is a well-conceived and attractive book about the first weeks of the Occupy Wall Street movement that was recently published by the Left imprint Verso Books. It reads like a journal, except the entries are not from just one writer, but a collection of several. They range from the well-known like prison activist and Black Panther Angela Davis to a young activist named Manissa Mahawaral. Edited by a small group of occupiers and the editors of the journals n+1, Dissent, Triple Canopy, and The New Inquiry, this text primarily covers the scene at the Zurcotti Park encampment in Lower Manhattan where the Occupy Wall Street movement more or less began. Part diary and part reflection, some of its most compelling moments come when the younger occupiers write about various realizations they have during the course of the occupation.

My favorite anecdote of this type is from an activist involved in the Occupy movement in Oakland, CA. When she first began participating, she found the dislike of the police from certain members of the camp to be disturbing. After all, they too were part of the so-called 99%. However, after a few days in the camp and the violent police attacks on the Oakland camp and protests following the first raid on Oscar Grant Plaza, her understanding of law enforcement’s role in protecting the wealthy and powerful changed dramatically. “I am ashamed,” she writes. “I was so naive about the cops in Oakland, but even more than this I am furious… that the police are allowed to brutalize people….” It is moments like this where the Occupy movement becomes transcendent and more than the collection of individuals, groups and and encampments that it is. Interspersed throughout the book are a number of drawings and collages that are not only visually appealing but also clever statements about the essential issues involved.

The book is not just a collection observations from the frontlines. Also included are analyses of the economic reasons behind the movement from Left Business Observer editor Doug Henwood and a fascinating discussion of the history of the space where Occupy Atlanta was situated. This latter piece is also one of several pieces that discusses the role of people of color in the movement.

As one of the first of many books about the Occupy movement to be published, Occupy! Scenes From Occupied America sets a high standard. One hopes it is read by many, especially among those that couldn’t or didn’t make it to an Occupy camp before the State’s onslaught on them. This movement should not die.

Hot on the heels of the aforementioned book come OR Books addition. Titled Occupying Wall Street: The Inside Story of an Action That Changed America, this work covers similar ground to Occupy! Scenes From Occupied America. What it lacks in graphics, it makes up for in content. Written in a continuous narrative broken into chapters, Occupying Wall Street differs from the collection of vignettes contained in the Verso Books text, while also maintaining a more or less chronological telling of the original Zurcotti Park encampment from its beginning to its eventual destruction by the police on November 15, 2011. In addition, Occupying Wall Street spends more time placing the Occupy movement in the context of the international wave of protest that has swept from Greece to Britain to Tunisia and Egypt to the United States and a multitude of other localities around the globe.

Written by a larger collective of writers who modestly call themselves Writers for the 99%, the OR Books text functions as a description of life at Zurcotti Park and within the Occupy movement over the period noted above. If Occupy! Scenes From Occupied America is a journal of the Occupy Wall Street movement, then Occupying Wall Street: The Inside Story of an Action That Changed America is the literary equivalent of a wonderfully written diary. These two books are not exclusive to each other. in fact they are companion volumes that read together provide an engrossing and well-told description of one of the most hopeful protest movements to erupt in the capitalist world in decades.

The Young Lords Rise From the Pages

Speaking of attractive books to arrive recently on my bookshelf, the Haymarket Books reprint of the Young Lords 1971 book Palante: Voices and Photographs of the Young Lords, 1969-1971 certainly deserves a mention. The Young Lords Party was a revolutionary group of Puerto Rican youth that organized primarily among the young and working-class residents of New York’s Puerto Rican barrios during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Borrowing some of their style from the ideologically similar Black Panthers, this group was a dominant force in barrio politics during much of their existence. Their straightforward approach to solving some of the economic and political inequities in the barrio attracted thousands of supporters in the barrio and hundreds of powerful enemies in Christie Mansion and other edifices of power in New York. When I attended briefly attended Fordham University in the Bronx from Fall 1972 through Spring 1974 one of my smoking buddies was an active member of the group. His knowledge of Marxist theory was impressive as was his commitment to the struggle in the barrio. Needless to say, he and I had many intense discussions that taught me — as no book possibly could — the colonial situation of the Puerto Rican people and helped me unlearn years of misinformation about that island nation.

Palante is a history, explanation and discussion of the Young Lords Party from the perspective of its members in 1971. There is no bourgeois nationalism repeated in these pages. Instead, in the best tradition of other revolutionary nationalism, Palante argues that cultural and social freedom for the Puerto Rican nation is inseparable from economic freedom and a socialist revolution. For those uncertain of the difference, let me quote writer Earl Ofari from a 1969 article he wrote about the two phenomena as they relate to the black people of the United States :

“Revolutionary nationalists, unlike cultural nationalists, recognize that it is impossible to resolve the problems of black people under the structure of American Capitalism. This has led Huey Newton to correctly point out that one who adheres to the philosophy of revolutionary nationalism must of necessity be a socialist. For revolutionary nationalists, by and large, take the position that in order to oppose capitalism it is mandatory that one adopt an outlook of international working class solidarity with particular emphasis on the struggles of Third World people against Imperialism.”

The Young Lords believed the same analysis applied to the situation of the Puerto Ricans.

Looking at it today, the most striking aspect of this book is not the audacious (by today’s standards) writings calling for a revolution in the United States and an independent Puerto Rico. It is the collection of photographs. Difficult to pry one’s eyes away from, the photos herein rank up there with the best photojournalism has to offer. The struggles of the young revolutionaries and the people they worked with are evident in the faces on these pages and the places and actions set down in a darkroom forty years ago. The pride of a people realizing its power and the anger of that people realizing why and who has wronged it radiates from the stark black and white images that fill the last half of this beautiful work.

A fifth martyr, Louis Lingg, either took his own life while awaiting execution with his comrades, or he was murdered by the police. Lingg occupied a cell that was isolated from those of his comrades. According to newspaper reports at the time, Lingg deliberately detonated a small explosive device in his mouth, which blew off most of his face. It required several hours for him to die. No one has been able to explain how Lingg, an unrepentant defendant in the most famous prosecution in US history, and under tight security, was able to smuggle bombs into his tiny prison cell. Louis Lingg was almost certainly murdered by the police.

Alternatively, some historians have speculated that a sympathizer might have somehow managed to smuggle a small amount of explosives into the prison so that Lingg could deprive the state of the satisfaction of executing him. According to this theory, Lingg, not the state of Illinois, orchestrated his own death.

The Haymarket martyrs, as they were later called, were accused of inciting violence against the Chicago police force that, acting at the behest of prominent businessmen, frequently beat and murdered unarmed strikers with impunity. No police officer was ever tried, much less convicted, for their crimes against workers attempting to democratize the workplace. This theme should sound a familiar refrain to modern protestors.

No credible evidence was presented that tied any of the anarchists to the bomb that exploded among a mob of heavily armed policemen that had attacked a peaceful public rally in the Haymarket Square on the night of May 4, 1886. Sworn police testimony was contradicted by hundreds of eyewitnesses.

The Chicago anarchists were convicted of a crime they did not commit. Their trial, like later politically-motivated trials in the US, was a sham. The jurors, handpicked to convict by a specially appointed bailiff, were paid by local businessmen after getting the conviction and death sentence the business community desired. The prosecutors knew that Albert Parsons had already left the rally and was relaxing with his comrades at a nearby tavern when the incident occurred. It made no difference.

The Haymarket martyrs were fighting for the eight hour work day, the right to peaceful assembly and for freedom of speech. It was here that the idea of “one big union” originated. The men were tried and convicted for their anarchist beliefs rather than for the commission of any crime they committed.

America pays homage to statesmen like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams — its so called founding fathers. But working people have never known or have forgotten those who gave their lives in the struggle for social and economic justice in the workplace. Few contemporary American workers honor their fallen comrades. We owe these courageous men and women our eternal gratitude.

Class-conscious working people of today are fighting the same pitched battle as the Haymarket martyrs more than 124 years ago. As we witness the final death throes of capitalism, America is regressing. We are drifting back to Chicago of the 1880s. Those who have employment are producing more for their employers, working longer hours for less pay and receiving fewer benefits.

Corporate profits are soaring. Fewer employers are paying pensions. The disparity between rich and poor is increasing. The centralized state is imposing austerity upon working people. As class conflict intensifies, we are seeing tiny enclaves of opulence embedded within a global matrix of poverty and want.

Despite alternating cycles of boom and bust, little has changed between the rich and poor since 1887. Justice is still being denied by a system that is antithetical to social and economic democracy. We are living in a dystopia that provides justice to those who have the money to pay for it and denies those who do not.

But let us remember that regression inevitably spawns an equal and opposite reaction. The class-consciousness and resistance that August Spies spoke of during his sentencing in a Chicago Courthouse long ago are reawakening. We see his prophesies manifested in the Occupy Wall Street movement that is spreading across the nation and hurtling around the Earth with the speed of electrons. We see them particularly manifested in Oakland, California. US workers are finally organizing and resisting tyranny again. The strike is still our greatest weapon.

The Haymarket martyrs were men of principle and men of ideas who envisioned a more egalitarian world and sought to create it. This is the threat they posed to capitalism and Chicago’s business community. Their struggle is also our struggle. We must embrace it.

The spirit of Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engle, Adolph Fischer, and Louis Lingg, and countless others, preside over the OWS movements around the nation. These men lived large. They deserve to be remembered and honored. The state, despite its best efforts, could not murder an idea whose time had come. That idea has come again. In fact, it never really died.

There will be other martyrs. The global struggle for justice continues. Revolutionaries always circulate among us. Sometimes their heat sets everything ablaze.

Long live the spirit of resistance! Long live the spirit of the Haymarket Martyrs! Long live anarchy!

Author’s note: A detailed account of the lives of the Chicago anarchists is presented in a compelling book written by labor historian James Green titled Death in the Haymarket, published by Anchor Books.

Freedom of expression is the Matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom.

– Justice Benjamin Cardozo

The Press has the right to print or not print anything it wants. That right should be supported. There is, however, another issue — that of journalistic ethics. Since OWS began, there has been a deluge of misinformation, innuendo, and inflammatory speech in print in the nation’s newspapers. I defend the right of newspapers to misinform, but I also defend the rights of citizens to push back after being misrepresented in print. It should not be necessary to own a large printing press in order to respond to a news organization.

Sometimes economic issues are at play. Newspapers don’t want to offend the money/business interests in the community. Sometimes inaccurate reporting is the result of a lack of knowledge of journalists. After all, how many schools teach a course in ‘Anarchy’? Actually, there are some schools that do have such a course of study. Surprising as it might be, one school that has a history of offering a well-taught class in ‘Anarchy’ is Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. RPI is a highly respected right-leaning institution in Troy, New York. RPI receives military contracts.

The article below is a response to an editorial. The response was submitted to the paper days ago, but has not been published. It probably won’t be. Across the country many do not have Internet connections. The only means of responding to an editorial is in the newspaper itself. A conundrum — a Catch 22.

A Response

The Editorial in the November 15, 2011 issue of the Bennington Banner deserves a reply. Thank you for recognizing OWS. As a fan of newspapers, I place great importance on the Press. It is the fabric that ties a community together. In many locations, it is the only means of mass communication. This places a heavy moral burden on the Press. I had my first newspaper job in 1952. In those days, The Big Story was a favorite TV program about newspapers. Journalism was a highly respected calling.

There are a couple of issues with the editorial about OWS. First is the use of the word “Anarchy”. It is used as a highly inflammatory, prejudicial term implying violence, often to misinform the reader. In my day, labeling — without explanation — even a small part of the movement as such would be called ‘sloppy journalism’. It is a label that paints all with the same brush. Christians, Jews, Democrats, Republicans all have members who exhibit violence. No one should ever condemn the entire group for the actions of a few.

… Professor Howard Zinn, author of the People’s History of the United States… describes anarchism in his book Declarations of Independence as following: “Anarchists, I discovered, did not believe in anarchy as it is usually defined — disorder, disorganization, chaos, confusion, and everyone doing as they like. On the contrary, they believed that society should be organized in a thousand different ways, that people had to cooperate in work and in play, to create a good society. But anarchists insisted, any organization must avoid hierarchy and command from the top; it must be democratic, consensual, reaching decisions through constant discussion and argument.”… What attracted me to anarchism was its rejection of any bullying authority — the authority of the state, of the church, or the employer. Anarchism believes that if we can create an egalitarian society without extremes of poverty and wealth, and join hands across all national boundaries, we will not need police forces, prisons, armies, or war, because the underlying causes of these will be gone.¹

”

Bennington OWS is organizationally much like Professor Zinn describes. Maybe the most important fact about OWS is that it is a horizontal movement. There is no hierarchy. No chain-of-command. No leaders. No followers. It is not only about money and banks. Yes, the misadventures of Wall Street are an issue – but only one of many issues. OWS is anything that the people want it to be – locally and globally. It is by far the most democratic organization that anyone could wish for.

It is about building sustainable communities. It is about organic farming. It is about justice for all. It is about transparency. It is about smart meters and dumb grids. It is about giving consumers choice. It is about advocating for victims of injustice. It is about hunger and homelessness. It is about home foreclosures. It is about the environment. It is about health care. It is about fracking. It is about war and peace. It is about drones. It is about the use of cluster bombs and land mines by the USA. And — my personal favorite — it is about the First Amendment. The First Amendment, as written, applies only to the Congress – but the spirit of the First Amendment applies to all. Why is censorship of political speech so common in Vermont? Why is there censorship of political books in Vermont? Why are public buildings allowed to be used for political debate, when some on the ballot are excluded — as in the Bennington Fire House? It might be legal, but it is not in keeping with the spirit of free political speech. It gets even worse. Dennis Steele, a Vermont Candidate for Governor being was arrested. His crime: he wanted to participate in a candidates’ forum.

One thing I know about Bennington OWS is that is it dedicated, passionate, empathetic, and altruistic. It is the most community oriented movement in the area. Imagine dedicating many hours every week to the community, for no money and no personal gain. Everyone is encouraged to join with us to build a fair, just, sustainable Vermont for all.

And finally, I thank the writer of the Editorial for mentioning boycotts. Many of us have been pushing for boycotts and strikes for decades. Bennington OWS is action oriented. You’ll be hearing from us. Stay tuned in.

1. An excerpt from Food Not Bombs.

During this period, what arose was a romanticism for nature (hence, perhaps, the popularity of evolutionary theory at that time), and the belief that, if only man could be freed of the corruption of society and its contrived conventions—of the state, of the clergy and, for some, of matrimony and of private property—then man, therefore, would be poised to achieve heights undreamed of hitherto.

It was these conditions which gave rise to the French Revolution, which, ironically, came to depend on the keystone mechanism of the State—violence—and gave way to a period during which France conquered swathes of Western Civilization. Still, from 1770 until 1914, many have argued that a culture of staunch self-reliance generally attitudinized Western Civilization, sometimes summarized by the concept of laissez-faire.

Much of this self-reliance held that, if society is evil, then the State—which is merely the organized vertical force of society—is doubly evil. If man is innately good, then he ought to be completely freed from this coercive power of the State. Indeed, nineteenth century Liberalism believed man should be freed from all coercive power, among which might be included the church, army and other institutions. Society, in this case, would have little power other than the power required to restrain the strong from oppressing the weak.

The idea of a “community of interests” was also very strong during this period. This “community of interests” was a realm in which what was good for one was good for all. Somewhere, according to this belief, there did exist a reality where everybody would be secure, free, and prosperous, and that this pattern could be achieved over time. In it, each person could fall into that place in society best suited to his abilities. Implicit in this belief was that human ability is innate and can only be suppressed or altered by social discipline and that each individual is the best judge of his own self-interest.

In 1880, the belief that the current generation, and indeed all generations, was the culmination of a long process of history. Oftentimes, this long process is referred to as progress, a phenomenon that had lasted millennia and would continue forevermore. This belief ran so deep that progress, by many, was seen as inevitable and automatic.

These nineteenth century epistemes have, in the twentieth century, been considerably modified—or so it would seem at first glance. Wherefore such a change? Four traumatic decades at the onset of the twentieth century, and five decades of intense militarism by two premier Empires, led to a perceivable sea change in the disposition of men. Included in these shattering experiences are the First World War, world depression, world financial crisis, and the Second World War. These were then followed by the Cold War.

On the byway of these traumas, major adjustments were made in the western brain. Men now had viable reason to doubt their entrenched belief in the innate goodness of man. Evil was no longer merely the absence of good.

In the course of these events, millions were killed and billions of dollars wasted. Impossible to comprehend for most, such a blow altered man’s disposition on their own species. The First World War was seen as an aberration—and one from which they must quickly move on and forget.

For ten years a façade was created, a lie. In 1929, the stock market crashed. World depression ensued, and was followed by financial crisis. In the late thirties, sabers rattled as rearmament and aggression.

After 1945, a new world was evident. Opposed with the nineteenth century view of man as innately good and society as corrupting, increasingly the belief that man had a seemingly infinite capacity for untold evil insinuated itself into the minds of men. Without a society—that is, large institutions designed to quell man’s beastly desires, to nudge them towards desired beliefs and behaviors—man would certainly destroy himself. Efforts hinting at such a belief can be seen in the attempted erection of the League of Nations after the First World War, and the establishment of the United Nations (UN) after the Second World War.

The former western belief that human philosophies and abilities are innate and should be free from social duress in order to display individuality was replaced by the idea that the personality is a result of social repetition and training and must be coerced to socially acceptable ends. The laissez-faire economics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were to be replaced by social discipline and central planning.

The “community of interests” of the free market would take backseat to the welfare community, which must be organized by wise-men. An intellectual environment would arise friendly to assertions of some sort of “de-evolution” or social retrogression or human extinction. Democracy would now be replaced by authoritarianism, and the laissez-faire Capitalism by State Enterprise or command-and-control.

Now, here in the twenty-first century, it has grown clearer that progress is not a steady force with inevitable outcomes. Rather, man’s social development can be seen as a more anarchic, spontaneous process, no matter how much rulers attempt to ensure things remain predictable. These same notions are increasingly amending Darwin’s theory of evolution, or progress, towards more perfect forms.

The eighteenth and nineteenth century were schizophrenic times, as has been so much of human history. Nationalistic tendencies undermined royal empires, and out of this flux came a vibrant forum of idea sharing. Thoughts of a laissez-faire lifestyle wherein individuals were freed from the European caste system led to the mythology of the New World, even if the New World only reflected such a lifestyle pre-Constitution, and scantily so.

A way of understanding that was promoted, if too often implicitly and not explicitly, by eighteenth and nineteenth century sentiments, holds that the natural ought to be esteemed before the political. Even today, too often do our philosophies on how life should be grow politicized, thereby undermining their original power. Humans are not political beings. They are natural beings. The questions of how we should live our lives are unanswerable by politics, for politics is merely a means of ordering life by way of the state or government. The questions of how we should live our lives are answerable only by naturalism; that is, by recognizing that which makes us humans.

Our consciousness blossoms as a beautiful aberration from other life in the natural world as we know it. The cognitive niche, inherited from nature, that we inhabit gives us an axiom from which our understanding of the world stems. This can be easily interrupted and distorted by the data and information we are fed. Whether it be outright war, depression or manipulative fiction on television or in the movies, we are all easily victimized by the campaigning of pathological behavior by the trendsetters; that is, the ruling class—and our peers who follow. They have adopted the cynicism passed down by a century marred by two Great Wars, a deep depression, and a long standoff between two nuclear powers.

The cynicism bequeathed unto us by a violent twentieth century has led us to the belief that we need centralized governments and rulers to keep us from doing violence to one another. But what we see are large institutions, instead of keeping people in-line, projecting violence down civilization’s ladder, and turning individuals against themselves, thus creating the precise environment people hoped they would prevent. Indeed, they were all along the impetuses of the bloodletting and carnage people were attempting to escape.

Denmark elected a staunch right winger as prime minister. Denmark joined in military attacks with imperialist states against weaker states. I turned to journalist Ron Ridenour, who lives in Denmark, to give a first-hand voice to what is taking place.

I support revolution against occupation, oppression, exploitation; however, I hold that the long-term viability of a revolution must be rooted in the people — not in a personality. Therefore, I have reservations about “leaders” — for example, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez — who (besides implementing socialism for the masses) seemingly covet the esteem, if not the perks, of governmental office. Ridenour speaks Spanish, has lived in Cuba, written many books about the revolution there, so he is an informed go-to person for reflections on the revolution there and elsewhere.

Ridenour, notably, has also given voice to the very marginalized plight of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, has long been active in journalism, has his own website, and in his own words, “Besides using words in an effort to eradicate racism, inequality and wars, I have been an activist against wars, racism, chauvinism and for socialist solidarity.”

This week, I interviewed Ridenour about Denmark, Cuba, and the leaderless revolutionary stirrings against the financial elitists.

Kim Petersen: Denmark is supposed to be a peace-loving state with an envious social safety net. You pointed out in a recent article that the Danish political landscape has slanted rightwards? What caused this? And how can progressivist politics become predominant?

Ron Ridenour: The causes are several, both historical and contemporary. Leftist parties and unionists in Denmark, like people in most of the world, lost faith and hope in socialist-communist solutions due to the atrocities and corruption of Communist parties in power, and then with the fall of those governments in eastern Europe. Even those governments still calling themselves communists base their economies on capitalism today.

One of the main problems of nearly all leftist parties and governments is that they do not believe that the mass—unionists, unemployed, family farmers, students—are actually capable of ruling “sensibly.” One of the best of benevolent “dictators,” Fidel Castro, does not believe such either. Most leaders believe in themselves and not the mass. So, in fact, real socialism has yet to be attempted. No party in power has ever really begun the process of educating workers+ to use political power and then turning over power to the working class, as our ideology calls for.

Another factor, especially Danish, is a national inferiority complex. That is, “We’re just a little country, you know,” so we can’t expect to run things ourselves. This was actually a folksy saying of one of Denmark’s best known politicians, Erhard Jacobsen. For decades, Denmark relied upon Germany and since WWII it relies on the US, first for its economic Marshall Plan and since for its military might. And today Denmark is not a peace-loving state. It is involved in four wars alongside its Big Daddy.

Then there is the national complex of indifference, or “ligegladhed.” There has been a lot of charitable giving of money to the poor abroad but little engagement or true solidarity. Even the left-ish parliamentary party, Unity List (Enhedslisten), opposes support for opponents of the terrorist terror laws, or for armed resistance by the invaded of US-NATO wars.

One can never answer fully what causes policy without taking the economy into account. Danes still live comfortably economically, almost all, in relationship with others even European neighbors. I think that the left parties rely on parliamentarian politics because of this. They do not believe that significant numbers of people will actually support grass roots radical struggles. And the unions long ago aligned themselves with capitalist reformism and oppose extra-parliamentary struggles, including sustaining strikes, of any consequence. Why risk being arrested, losing your job and then your mortgage, your car or one of them simply to do the “right thing”?

How can progressive (?) politics become predominant? Well, if progressive means pushing for reformist policies within capitalism that is becoming dominant now for the two Danish so-called socialist parties in parliament. (Unity List and People’s Party/SF), and it has been so for the major Social Democratic party for decades. But if progressive means radical, then the economy has to collapse, or when it is in deep crises as it is now, then grass roots groups have to take to the streets and stay there just as is possibly happening with Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Uproar, perhaps in Spain and Greece. We have to kick the parliamentary-based politics out of our movements. We have to feel the power in ourselves and push the politicians out.

Yes, there must also be strong unions and workers must strike and/or join Occupy Wall Street. Radical-revolutionary political parties must educate and protest with sensible and morally just programs. They should not act against the more autonomous oriented grass roots groups but in parallel.

KP: This touches on the previous questions, in many countries, people scoffed that Americans could “elect” a born-again, foot-in-mouth, right-winger such as George W. Bush as president. Yet Canadians soon found themselves with Prime Minister Stephen Harper (a man to the right of Bush), and Danes wound up with Anders Fogh Rasmussen as prime minister (also a hawkish right-winger). Why do you think this is happening in much of the western world?

RR: Precisely because the left gave up actually being left. It was too difficult and most got too comfortable within the capitalist system. The left adopted the bourgeois democratic premise of making policy within parliaments whose role is to protect finance power. In Copenhagen, Wall Street is Børsen and its building is literally next door to parliament and the executive government.

When finance crises occur, you only have two sources to acquire money to pay for it: from the workers-pensioners-students or from the owners of capital and industry. The latter approach would mean that the rich will refuse to pay for their crises and so, you must nationalize their “private” property, that is, the production centers where wealth originates and the banks that manipulate the wealth for a few. But that takes guts, struggle, sacrifice.

PM Fogh Rasmussen was awarded the greater job of being the commander of NATO. He is loved by the warmongers on Wall Street and the Pentagon, and hated by the peoples who are invaded, but all the parliamentary parties here congratulated him. He should have been ostracized as well as the biggest of capitalists here, AP Møller-Mærsk, the world’s biggest shipper and a major warmonger. Instead his supermarkets, which take in half the food sales, are much of the left’s favorite stores because they are cheap.

We have to find that indignation that many Arabs have found, that some Spanish and Greeks are finding, that is part of OWS, and that us oldies had in the 60s-70s. We have to practice what we preach. Boycott the worst companies (like Mærsk and Coca-Cola…). Go on strike. Refuse to do the system’s bidding. Find our inner strength and alternative life styles. Act in solidarity with the oppressed-exploited-invaded.

KP: The progressivist image of Denmark is further diminished now with its participation in the NATO (currently headed by Fogh Rasmussen) invasion of a sovereign state. There are reports of Danish troops engaging in torture and massacres. How do you read this playing out on the streets in Denmark?

RR: Unfortunately, nothing is happening regarding these atrocities. There is one small group of pacifists who conduct a vigil in front of parliament daily since the beginning of the war against Afghanistan. But it is more of a curiosity than a threat. The anti-war movement died, in part because the Unity party dropped out of protesting because its leaders wanted “influence” with lucrative jobs in parliament. And the climate movement has so far refused to take up wars as part of their anti-pollution protests albeit wars are a major cause of pollution and adverse climate changes. I think they are just too scared of being accused of being outsiders or radicals….

KP: You hinted at a “shaky future” for the Cuban revolution. Do you see Cuba falling further away from the socialism won through the revolution? Who will stand to benefit (or lose) from Cuba’s opening to capitalism?

RR: Yes, I am afraid that what I foresaw in that piece nearly a year ago it occurring rapidly now. More and more openings for capitalism have been adopted even before the Communist party national conference body has met and decided on precise policies to propose to the state. Raul Castro as both leader of the state and the party, following his brother, has already decided. Now, private property (housing) can be bought and sold; cars can be bought in hard currency at big prices, which very few Cubans can acquire legitimately; small enterprises are encouraged to employ workers, and thereby opening up officially for exploitation of labor.

Who will benefit is a new class of small capitalists and real estate hustlers, and speculation will become widespread. Relatives of Cubans in Miami and Spain will be even more privileged than those Cubans without such remittances. Wall Street will benefit in the end, because the blockade against Cuba will be lifted in the not distant future. Other Wall Streets in the world already benefit.

KP: In a summer article on the state of the revolution in Cuba, you defined ethics partially as “We act so that no one person, race or ethnic group is either over or under another.” You added, “We struggle to create equality for all.” If, indeed, the revolution is a revolution of the people and not about a personality or personalities, what does the unbroken political “leadership” of Fidel Castro from 1959 to 2008 speak to such ethics?

You also quoted from Che that “one must have a great deal of humanity and a strong sense of justice and truth in order not to fall into extreme dogmatism and cold scholasticism, into an isolation from the masses.”

In general I support much of what Fidel Castro has helped to bring about in Cuba, but I find that his one-man leadership of the revolution is dangerous in that it embeds the revolution in a person (in this case in a family) rather than in the people. Is Fidel Castro the only person besides his brother fit to “lead” (and do the people require a leader?) the revolution for Cubans?

RR: The points you quote from my piece and your question are part of dialogue, both fraternal and violently hostile, the non/anti-capitalist left has had for more than a century. In my own view, after half a century of struggle and thought that also embraces these points, my conclusion is NO to your question. And that, of course, holds true for Hugo Chavez (and all other leaders), albeit most of the left in Venezuela, as well as a large sector of the general population, believes Chavez is unique and most be their one and only leader for, perhaps, a lifetime. That was also the case with the Cuban people and Fidel for the first decade or so. Well, that is what the Arab uproar wants to end, albeit those gruesome dictators cannot be compared to the kind-hearted Fidel.

The main problem with one leader syndrome is that it saps the vision, inspiration and energy from the mass. I have seen this happening before my eyes during the eight years I worked in Cuba and lived with the people. They lost hope that socialism could actually be the best solution when they always had to wait for answers/permission/resources/materials from above. The same happened in Russia and Eastern Europe.

Now it has come to past that most Cubans, I think, really don’t believe socialism is worthwhile and they want a chance to try supply-demand marketing. This will split the people into classes and further antagonize the true solidarity amongst themselves and with other peoples that they had assiduously built. And that is the essence of what Che meant in the cited quotation—the state and the party have become isolated from the mass and they see no other way out than capitalism with some bourgeois democratic-oriented reforms, such as what the big powers are endeavoring to impose on the Arab rebellion.

Another major mistake that Cuban leaders made is not separating some powers between the state and the Communist party. As the unity strategy goes in Cuba when the state makes a policy for short-term economic benefit or for some diplomatic reason—such as backing the genocidal, brutal governments of Sri Lanka against the entire Tamil population—the party is disallowed from criticizing this or for showing solidarity with, for instance, the much discriminated-against Tamils.

KP: There is growing dissent in the United States, but it is marginalized and propagandized in the corporate media (nothing surprising there). The Occupy Wall Street movement in the US seems to be gathering momentum, having staying power, and perhaps causing ripples in the system. If the grassroots activism proves influential in the US, how do you think this might affect Europe?

RR: I see that 66% of the people Gallop polled in the US want the rich to be appropriately taxed, and 54% want all politicians out of a job. It is that spirit that has to take root, and that is growing in Europe too.

The most important and radical elements in these protests are that they are 1) anti-capitalist, 2) not led by self-interest seeking persons or parties. In fact, OWS is more radical than what we created in the 60s-70s, because it is primarily aimed at the true enemy: capitalism, which is the main cause for adverse climate changes and aggressive wars.

The first solidarity demos with OWS in Denmark are taking place Saturday (October 15) alongside hundreds other cities in scores of lands. This initiative was taken by the indignados in Spain. There, and in other countries on the verge of bankruptcy such as Greece, there is greater potential for sustained radical movements than there is right now in Scandinavia and Germany. But this economic crisis will not just melt any time soon—a spell of anger is mounting. I think in a few European countries protests will arise and continue sporadically, at least.
I see it as a positive development, in fact, that in the recent Danish election, the so-called red block won and with it the Unity party and SF have dropped key programmatic elements of any socialist nature. I think the Unity Party/SF sellout will help create a backlash that could become a true protest movement. But we must also recognize that too few people are really hurting enough economically here to cause them to develop a real sustained fight. I hope I’m wrong.

In Denmark, we must not go to a demo to hear jazz music and a handful of “leaders” speak and then go home to TV or to a cafe for beer and wine. We must find that inner indignation and with it empower ourselves. We must develop leadership in all of us. We must take over tactical areas and stay there. We have one big problem, even greater than the might of police brutality, and that is the weather. Already temperatures are falling to freezing in the evenings in some of Europe and in NYC it is getting cold too. We might have to postpone our staying power over the cold, raining, snowy winter months and return in even greater numbers and strength in the spring.

I close with a quote from Naomi Klein’s talk at Wall Street, October 6. “We have picked a fight with the most powerful economic and political forces on the planet. That’s frightening… Always be aware that there will be a temptation to shift to smaller targets… Don’t give in to that temptation… Let’s treat this beautiful movement as if it is the most important thing in the world.” “It is!” and she points to her favorite sign: “I care about you!”

After breaking up into constituent committees (media, messaging, supply, logistics, etc.), we eventually reformed into a general assembly, adopted certain general principles, and voted to reconvene on Thursday, October 6 at Cesar Chavez Park, across from City Hall. At that point, everyone of us had been given tasks to complete and missions to accomplish. Our responsibilities were to our local group, and to each other.

No leaders of any kind were chosen. Rather it was a tenet of the movement from the earliest days to steadfastly avoid the authoritarian model. Democracy in all things was the deliberate course we chose to follow.

In the past five days, the “Occupy Sacramento” movement has grown considerably, both in size and visibility. During that time, we have attempted to create a public space (in this case Cesar Chavez Park) where our movement can attract and educate — in a positive and peaceful manner — the 99% of our fellow citizens who continue to suffer under an unfair economic regime that disproportionately rewards the greedy and utterly disregards the basic human needs of everyone else.

It was in pursuit of that goal that I (in conjunction with some three dozen other men and women) made a conscious choice to be arrested in the park, and thereby tug on that unbroken thread of civil disobedience that runs through the rich fabric of our country’s history.

Suffice it to say that in the past three days, I’ve flouted “Warhol’s Dictum” by overstaying my 15 minutes. Every time I turn around, it seems, somebody is sticking a microphone or a TV camera in my face. I’ve been interviewed twice by two different reporters from the Sacramento News and Review, and once by the progressive website Think Progress, and have appeared on all four local TV stations.

But perhaps the most amusing of juxtapositions took place when I made two separate appearances in one night on KXTV Channel 10. In one, I’m identified by reporter Dave Marquis as a History instructor and asked to comment on a story he was putting together comparing Sacramento’s recent homelessness problem with the city’’s “Hoovervilles“ of the 1930’s.

In the other, I am shown being handcuffed and loaded into a paddy wagon.

Woody Allen could not have staged it better.

But from my personal perspective, there have been three gem-like moments to press in my dog-eared Book of Memories.

1. For two consecutive days, I’ve had the privilege of watching my lovely wife’s beaming face as it graced a few frames of Keith Olbermann’s Countdown on Current TV. Thanks, Keith. Thanks, Al.

2. On Saturday, Oct. 8, about 300 of us marched from Cesar Chavez Park to the Wells Fargo Building on Sacramento’s Capitol Mall. The place was closed, of course, so the cops watched impassively as we swarmed all over the place for no apparent reason. When I got my turn at the megaphone, I identified myself as a retired history teacher. I then pointed at the wonderfully restored stagecoach in the building’s lobby, and said, “You know, there’s a huge historical irony here. A hundred-and-fifty years ago, these stagecoaches were the most attractive targets for robbery in the Sacramento Valley. Now they’’ve become the symbol of a corporation that is committing shameless robbery on the rest of us.””

After the applause died down, I was asked by a member of the crowd, “Where did you teach?” When I told them, an astonished Afro-Latina-American women in her early-twenties named Autumn Thomas shouted out, “MR. BRADLEY – YOU WERE MY AMERICAN HISTORY TEACHER IN THE 8TH GRADE!!!” Equally astonished, I embraced her and told her how proud I was to see her standing up for her beliefs. She began to cry as the crowd roared its approval. Meanwhile I, misty-eyed and overcome with emotion, quietly left center stage.

That scene was not written by Woody Allen. That one was written by Aaron Sorkin.

3. Later that night (or should I say the following morning at 1:00 am) as I was being handcuffed and taken into police custody, several of my fellow “99 percenters” shouted out “What’s your name?” “Mark W. Bradley,” I replied. “What’s your occupation?” they asked. “I’m a school teacher,” I said.

I could be wrong, but I think I saw one or two of the cops in riot gear look a little crestfallen at that point. I know for a fact that several of the men and women holding billy clubs and pepper spray canisters were called in on their day off. I’m guessing that a few of them had been planning to go skiing this weekend. They were less than enthusiastic about participating in this Kabuki.

Sorry guys. Society needs you to protect and defend their property against all of us ACLU lawyers, public school teachers, nurses, paramedics, and struggling housewives. Always remember: you are the ‘thin blue line’ that prevents people like us from burning down our own neighborhoods.

When the fourteen of us arrived at the jail and were being processed, several cops gathered to ask us what we hoped to accomplish with all this foolishness, and by the way, couldn’t we achieve the same objective without breaking the law? Did we have any idea how much money this was going to cost us? Did we realize how little difference any of this was going to make?

It was a bit like undergoing psy-ops conducted by a bunch of heavily armed junior high students with half a semester of behavioral psychology under their belts. But the most persistent question they kept asking us was “who are your leaders?”

“We have no leaders” we replied.

Their incredulity was palpable, even profound. “Do you seriously expect us to believe that you’re operating over there without leaders? Who makes the decisions?”

“We vote on everything,” was our answer.

At this point, I remembered something I had learned in the ‘60’s, but had forgotten somewhere along the way. Cops, like career military, spend their whole working lives taking orders from their superiors and dishing them out to their subordinates. They really, truly, had no idea what we were talking about.

Later that morning, as I was being processes out, I had the pleasure of being subjected to the same sort of rudimentary “head games” by two overly officious and unnaturally sour-faced young police officers – one male, one female. They were like a couple of Imperial Storm troopers dabbling in Jedi Mind Control. Finally I could take it no longer. I asked them what THEY knew about the real issues at hand, and proceeded to launch into a 20-minute lecture on the history of civil disobedience in America, from the real Boston Tea Party, through Emerson, Thoreau, the Underground Railroad, and the Suffrage Movement, to the integration of lunch counters in the racially divided South of the 1960′s.

I felt like a minor-league Jesus in a third-rate temple. The two cops I’d been talking to had, by now, grown into a group of five. They were all thoroughly gobsmacked. One blond guy looked like he was actually learning something.

The captain in charge just wanted me gone.

When the young man and woman in uniform drove me through the steel doors to release me half a block away from the jail (seriously) they told me how much they had enjoyed our conversation. I thanked them for being so accommodating, and walked off into the sunrise.

You should have been right there with me, O my brothers and sisters, throwing dangerous ideas around like roundhouse punches.

Libya: Let us not be confused as to why Libya alone has been singled out for “humanitarian intervention”.

On April 9, Condoleezza Rice delivered a talk in San Francisco. Or tried to. The former Secretary of State was interrupted repeatedly by cries from the audience of “war criminal” and “torturer”. (For which we can thank our comrades in Code Pink and World Can’t Wait.) As one of the protesters was being taken away by security guards, Rice made the kind of statement that has now become standard for high American officials under such circumstances: “Aren’t you glad this lady lives in a democracy where she can express her opinion?” She also threw in another line that’s become de rigueur since the US overthrew Saddam Hussein, an argument that’s used when all other arguments fail: “The children of Iraq are actually not living under Saddam Hussein, thank God.”¹

My response to such a line is this: If you went into surgery to correct a knee problem and the surgeon mistakenly amputated your entire leg, what would you think if someone then remarked to you how nice it was that “you actually no longer have a knee problem, thank God.” … The people of Iraq no longer have a Saddam problem.

Unfortunately, they’ve lost just about everything else as well. Twenty years of American bombing, invasion, occupation and torture have led to the people of that unhappy land losing their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives … more than half the population either dead, disabled, in prison, or in foreign exile … the air, soil, water, blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium … the most awful birth defects … unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children … a river of blood runs alongside the Euphrates and Tigris … through a country that may never be put back together again.

In 2006, the UN special investigator on torture declared that reports from Iraq indicated that torture “is totally out of hand. The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein.” Another UN report of the same time disclosed a rise in “honor killings” of women.²

“It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003,” reported the Washington Post on May 5, 2007.

“I am not a political person, but I know that under Saddam Hussein, we had electricity, clean drinking water, a healthcare system that was the envy of the Arab world and free education through college,” Iraqi pharmacist Dr. Entisar Al-Arabi told American peace activist Medea Benjamin in 2010. “I have five children and every time I had a baby, I was entitled to a year of paid maternity leave. I owned a pharmacy and I could close up shop as late as I chose because the streets were safe. Today there is no security and Iraqis have terrible shortages of everything — electricity, food, water, medicines, even gasoline. Most of the educated people have fled the country, and those who remain look back longingly to the days of Saddam Hussein.”³

And this from two months ago:

Protesters, human rights workers and security officials say the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has responded to Iraq’s demonstrations in much the same way as many of its more authoritarian neighbors: with force. Witnesses in Baghdad and as far north as Kirkuk described watching last week as security forces in black uniforms, tracksuits and T-shirts roared up in trucks and Humvees, attacked protesters, rounded up others from cafes and homes and hauled them off, blindfolded, to army detention centers. Entire neighborhoods … were blockaded to prevent residents from joining the demonstrations. Journalists were beaten.⁴

So … can we expect the United States and its fellow thugs in NATO to intervene militarily in Iraq as they’re doing in Libya? To protect the protesters in Iraq as they tell us they’re doing in Libya? To effect regime change in Iraq as they’re conspiring, but not admitting, in Libya?

Similarly Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria … all have been bursting with protest and vicious government crackdown in recent months, even to a degree in Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive societies in the world. Not one of these governments has been assaulted by the United States, the UK, or France as Libya has been assaulted; not one of these countries’ opposition is receiving military, financial, legal and moral support from the Western powers as the Libyan rebels are — despite the Libyan rebels’ brutal behavior, racist murders, and the clear jihadist ties of some of them.⁵ The Libyan rebels are reminiscent of the Kosovo rebels — mafiosos famous for their trafficking in body parts and women, also unquestioningly supported by the Western powers against an Officially Designated Enemy, Serbia.

So why is only Libya the target for US/NATO missiles? Is there some principled or moral reason? Are the Libyans the worst abusers of their people in the region? In actuality, Libya offers its citizens a higher standard of living. (The 2010 UN Human Development Index, a composite measure of health, education and income ranked Libya first in Africa.) None of the other countries has a more secular government than Libya. (In contrast some of the Libyan rebels are in the habit of chanting that phrase we all know only too well: “Allah Akbar”.) None of the others has a human-rights record better than that of Libya, however imperfect that may be — in Egypt a government fact-finding mission has announced that during the recent uprising at least 846 protesters were killed as police forces shot them in the head and chest with live ammunition.⁶ Similar horror stories have been reported in Syria, Yemen and other countries of the region during this period.

It should be noted that the ultra-conservative Fox News reported on February 28: “As the United Nations works feverishly to condemn Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi for cracking down on protesters, the body’s Human Rights Council is poised to adopt a report chock-full of praise for Libya’s human rights record. The review commends Libya for improving educational opportunities, for making human rights a “priority” and for bettering its “constitutional” framework. Several countries, including Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia but also Canada, give Libya positive marks for the legal protections afforded to its citizens — who are now revolting against the regime and facing bloody reprisal.”

Of all the accusations made against Gaddafi perhaps the most meaningless is the oft-repeated “He’s killing his own people.” It’s true, but that’s what happens in civil wars. Abraham Lincoln also killed his own people.

Muammar Gaddafi has been an Officially Designated Enemy of the US longer than any living world leader except Fidel Castro. The animosity began in 1970, one year after Gaddafi took power in a coup, when he closed down a US air force base. He then embarked on a career of supporting what he regarded as revolutionary groups. During the 1970s and ’80s, Gaddafi was accused of using his large oil revenues to support — with funds, arms, training, havens, diplomacy, etc — a wide array of radical/insurgent/terrorist organizations, particularly certain Palestinian factions and Muslim dissident and minority movements in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia; the IRA and Basque and Corsican separatists in Europe; several groups engaged in struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa; various opposition groups and politicians in Latin America; the Japanese Red Army, the Italian Red Brigades, and Germany’s Baader-Meinhof gang.

It was claimed as well that Libya was behind, or at least somehow linked to, an attempt to blow up the US Embassy in Cairo, various plane hijackings, a bomb explosion on an American airliner over Greece, the blowing up of a French airliner over Africa, blowing up a synagogue in Istanbul, and blowing up a disco in Berlin which killed some American soldiers.⁷

In 1990, when the United States needed a country to (falsely) blame for the bombing of PanAm flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, Libya was the easy choice.

Gaddafi’s principal crime in the eyes of US President Ronald Reagan (1981-89) was not that he supported terrorist groups, but that he supported the wrong terrorist groups; i.e., Gaddafi was not supporting the same terrorists that Washington was, such as the Nicaraguan Contras, UNITA in Angola, Cuban exiles in Miami, the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala, and the US military in Grenada. The one band of terrorists the two men supported in common was the Moujahedeen in Afghanistan.

And if all this wasn’t enough to make Gaddafi Public Enemy Number One in Washington (Reagan referred to him as the “mad dog of the Middle East”), Gaddafi has been a frequent critic of US foreign policy, a serious anti-Zionist, pan-Africanist, and pan-Arabist (until the hypocrisy and conservatism of Arab governments proved a barrier). He also calls his government socialist. How much tolerance and patience can The Empire be expected to have? When widespread protests broke out in Tunisia and Egypt, could Washington have resisted instigating the same in the country sandwiched between those two? The CIA has been very busy supplying the rebels with arms, bombing support, money, and personnel.

It may well happen that the Western allies will succeed in forcing Gaddafi out of power. Then the world will look on innocently as the new Libyan government gives Washington what it has long sought: a host-country site for Africom, the US Africa Command, one of six regional commands the Pentagon has divided the world into. Many African countries approached to be the host have declined, at times in relatively strong terms. Africom at present is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. According to a State Department official: “We’ve got a big image problem down there. … Public opinion is really against getting into bed with the US. They just don’t trust the US.”⁸ Another thing scarcely any African country would tolerate is an American military base. There’s only one such base in Africa, in Djibouti. Watch for one in Libya sometime after the dust has settled. It’ll be situated close to the American oil wells. Or perhaps the people of Libya will be given a choice — an American base or a NATO base.

And remember — in the context of recent history concerning Iraq, North Korea, and Iran — if Libya had nuclear weapons the United States would not be attacking it.

Or the United States could realize that Gaddafi is no radical threat simply because of his love for Condoleezza Rice. Here is the Libyan leader in a March 27, 2007 interview on al-Jazeera TV: “Leezza, Leezza, Leezza … I love her very much. I admire her, and I’m proud of her, because she’s a black woman of African origin.”

Over the years, the American government and media have fed us all a constant diet of scandalous Gaddafi stories: He took various drugs, was an extreme womanizer, was bisexual, dressed in women’s clothing, wore makeup, carried a teddy bear, had epileptic fits, and much more; some part of it may have been true. And now we have the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, telling us that Gaddafi’s forces are increasingly engaging in sexual violence and that they have been issued the impotency drug Viagra, presumably to enhance their ability to rape.⁹ Remarkable. Who would have believed that the Libyan Army had so many men in their 60s and 70s?

As I write this, US/NATO missiles have slammed into a Libyan home killing a son and three young grandchildren of Gaddafi, this after repeated rejections of Gaddafi’s call for negotiations — another heartwarming milestone in the glorious history of humanitarian intervention, as well as a reminder of the US bombing of Libya in 1986 which killed a young daughter of Gaddafi.

Two more examples, if needed, of why capitalism can not be reformed

Transocean, the owner of the drilling rig that exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico a year ago, killing 11 workers and sending two hundred (200) million gallons of oil cascading over the shoreline of six American states, has announced that (through using some kind of arcane statistical method) it had “recorded the best year in safety performance in our Company’s history.” Accordingly, the company awarded obscene bonuses on top of obscene salaries to its top executives.¹⁰

In Japan, even as it struggles to contain one of history’s worst nuclear disasters, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has proposed building two new nuclear reactors at its radiation-spewing power plant. The plan had taken shape before the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and TEPCO officials see no reason to change it. The Japanese government agency in charge of approving such a project has reacted in shocked horror. “It was just unbelievable,” said the director of the agency.¹¹

Which leads us to A.W. Clausen, president of Bank of America, speaking to the Greater Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, in 1970:

It may sound heretical to some in this room to say that business enterprise is not an absolute necessity to human culture … Ancient Egypt functioned more than 3000 years without anything resembling what we today understand by the term ‘corporate enterprise’ or even ‘money’. Within our span of years, we have witnessed the rise of the Soviet Socialist empire. It survives without anything you or I would call a private corporation and little that approaches our own monetary mechanism. It survives and is far stronger than anyone might have expected from watching its turbulent beginnings in 1917 … It is easy to mislead ourselves into thinking that there is something preordained about our profit-motivated, free-market, private-enterprise system — that is, as they used to say of gold, universal and immutable.

Items of interest from a journal I’ve kept for 40 years, part III

• Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez memoir, Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story, pages 349-350: April 6, 2004. Sanchez was in Iraq in video teleconference with President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. One major American offensive was in operation, another about to be launched. According to Sanchez, Powell was talking tough that day: “We’ve got to smash somebody’s ass quickly,” Powell said. “There has to be a total victory somewhere. We must have a brute demonstration of power.” Then Bush spoke: “At the end of this campaign al-Sadr must be gone. At a minimum, he will be arrested. It is essential he be wiped out. Kick ass! If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can’t send that message. It’s an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal. … There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!”

• Noam Chomsky: “If there is really authentic popular participation in the decision-making and the free association of communities, yeah, that could be tremendously important. In fact that’s essentially the traditional anarchist ideal. That’s what was realized the only time for about a year in Spain in 1936 before it was crushed by outside forces, in fact all outside forces, Stalinist Russia, Hitler in Germany, Mussolini’s fascism and the Western democracies cooperated in crushing it. They were all afraid of it.”

• To Hitler, America was both the enemy and a role model, inspiring in its imperial seizure of great territories by force, its use of slave labor, its eradication of native populations.

• NATO’s secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, made clear in a speech to the Brookings Institution in Washington in 2008 that western interests in Afghanistan went well beyond good governance to the strategic interest in having a permanent military presence in a state that borders central Asia, China, Iran and Pakistan.

• CIA Special Collections of documents; “Instances Of the Use of US Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2010“

• Michael Collon: “Let’s replace the word ‘democratic’ by ‘with us’, and the word ‘terrorist’ by ‘against us’.”

• Ron Paul: “Those who caution that leaving Iraq would be a disaster are the same ones who promised the conflict would be a ‘cake-walk’.”

• Spc. Alex Horton, 22, writing in a blog while a marine in Iraq in 2007: “In the future, I want my children to grow up with the belief that what I did here was wrong, in a society that doesn’t deem that idea unpatriotic.”

• Henry Kissinger in a 1970 memo to Nixon: “The example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely have an impact on –– and even precedent value for –– other parts of the world, especially in Italy; the imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it.”

• Paul Craig Roberts: “International polls show that the rest of the world regard the US and Israel as the greatest dangers to world peace. Americans claim that they are fighting wars against terrorism, but it is US and Israeli terrorism that worries everyone else.”

• Chris Hedges: “If you are a young Muslim American and head off to the Middle East for a spell in a fundamentalist ‘madrassa,’ or religious school, Homeland Security will probably greet you at the airport when you return. But if you are an American Jew and you join hundreds of teenagers from Europe and Mexico for an eight-week training course run by the Israel Defense Forces, you can post your picture wearing an Israeli army uniform and holding an automatic weapon on MySpace.”

• “The US has never had a ‘foreign policy’ but a fanatical domestic policy which, once it had bled through to the Pacific, sought new hosts on which to feed.” Patrick Wilkinson

• C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (1956): “The only seriously accepted plan for ‘peace’ is a fully loaded pistol. In short, war or a high state of war preparedness is felt to be the normal and seemingly permanent condition of the United States.”

• The United States goes around the world sprinkling democracy dust.

• Iran, the latest threat to life as we know it.

• “Iran hit back at US allegations that it has failed to crack down on fugitive al-Qaeda members, calling on Washington to apologize to the world for its own past support of the network. ‘The Americans should present a full apology to the international community for the support they gave to al-Qaeda,’ said the foreign ministry, referring to a period in the 1980s when millions of dollars of covert US aid was channeled — through the Pakistani secret service — to Islamist groups battling the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.” (Agence France Presse, June 2, 2003)

• Tom Hayden: They believe that the exposure of the generals to a civilian academic atmosphere may humanize the process of war-making, not worrying that the actual danger may be the militarizing of the university.

• Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, in his 2007 book, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World: “I’m saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil.”

• After an avalanche of commentary, Greenspan backpedaled and obfuscated in his comments. He insisted he was talking about “oil security” and “the global economy”. But this was just proving his own point that mentioning oil as a motivation for war is “politically inconvenient”. It’s no way to get young men to kill other young men who’ve never done them any harm.

• The American people have no more authentic control over their government than do people in countries that we call dictatorships, particularly on issues of foreign policy.

1. Video of Rice talk.
2. Associated Press, September 21, 2006.
3. Common Dreams, August 20, 2010
4. Washington Post, March 4, 2011
5. Washington Times, February 24, 2011; The Telegraph (London), March 25, 2011; Alexander Cockburn, “Libya, Oh What a Stupid War; Fukushima, Cover-Up Amid Catastrophe”; “Al Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq” (PDF), Combating Terrorism Center, US Military Academy, West Point, NY, December 2007.
6. Associated Press, April 20, 2011.
7. Gaddafi’s history of supporting terrorism, real and alleged: William Blum, Killing Hope, chapter 48.
8. The Guardian (London), June 25, 2007.
9. Reuters news agency, April 29, 2011.
10. Washington Post, April 1, 2011.
11. Washington Post, April 6, 2011.

Against this simmering backdrop, psychologist and author, Bruce Levine’s book, Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated and Battling the Corporate Elite, is extraordinarily relevant. Levine tackles a massively important subject: namely, how to achieve social justice.

Get Up, Stand Up is anti-war, anti-capitalism, and anti-imperialism. It is about how to escape such destructive systems and societies.

Levine reveals one obstacle to escape from the system is so-called democracy. Levine finds democracy to be a game rigged to be won by elitists. The last US presidential election added to the historical evidence of a system predisposed to plutocrats. The result was that Barack Obama bailed out the Wall Street financiers with the money of the masses who have been bilked by the self-same tycoons.

It is also the masses who wind up paying for the wars of the elitists. The Nobel Prize peacenik, Obama, has raised expenditures for US militarism.

Levine opposes the wars of US empire, but he mislabels them. If one were unaware, then Afghan War and Viet Nam War would sound like civil wars, but it was a US war against Viet Nam, a US war against Afghanistan, and a US war against Iraq. So let us not obscure that fact by misleadingly labeling such “wars” minus the initiator and perpetrator of the violence.

Joblessness is on the increase, and with joblessness comes loss of self-respect and despair. Without financial means, then seeking needed health care becomes a luxury one must forgo. Why are people not fighting back?

Levine says people are living in a state of fear. “Fear breaks human beings, and America’s health care system creates fear for the unhealthy and healthy alike.”

Get Up, Stand Up:
Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite
By Bruce E. Levine
Publisher: Chelsea Green
March 28, 2011
Paperback, 256 pages
ISBN: 9781603582988

Levine acknowledges the difficulty of getting past such a situation: “… without a large enough number of people regaining individual self-respect and collective self-confidence, even the best organizers will fail.”

Levine posits several reasons for people’s passivity, among them psychological explanations such as learned helplessness, abuse syndrome, cognitive dissonance, and others such as drugs, disinformation and propaganda, and alienation. Since solidarity is crucial to resistance, it follows that alienation would have a negative effect on resistance.

Higher education has long been pointed to as the way for lower-income classes to escape their penury. Some people even speciously claimed, despite palpable evidence to the contrary, that the education system was a meritocracy. Even the sham of a meritocracy crashed to the ground with the student loan debt that has burdened so many students during schooling and upon graduation. Levine calls it “indentured servitude.”

Big Brother is here. People can hardly move around in privacy anymore as CCTV has become increasingly omnipresent. Levine warns that such surveillance will be considered normal for the recent generations raised under watchful eyes.

Worker solidarity is imperiled as unions are targeted by governments and their corporate sponsors. Levine cites figures that reveal the wide gap between union and nonunion wages and benefits. Thus unions are targeted to better keep profits out of worker hands. Where unions do exist, all too often the union leadership has been co-opted by union leaders, which makes one wonder why workers don’t function by mass consensus instead.

The elitists also have a fear: workers uniting to overthrow them. That, Levine explains, is why the corporatocracy wages war on workers.

Schools are places where powerlessness in inculcated. Levine says, “A key way to break people is to deprive them of free and private time to reflect on who they are and what they truly care about.”

Levine does not fault teachers too much, noting that they function within an undemocratic system. However, in a system that routinely espouses the virtue of critical thinking, the paucity of critical thinking among educators can be staggering.

I know only too well the authoritarianism that is rife within schools. I asked at one school staff meeting if teachers were meant to impose a note-taking system upon all students or that students might be granted autonomy to choose a method that best suits them as diverse individuals. The answer was that they were to be compelled to adopt the system the school administration chose for them.

I replied, “That’s authoritarianism.”

“Yes,” came back the terse rejoinder.

No justification was forthcoming for the authoritarianism.

Levine also laments that attaining higher education entails “jumping through meaningless hoops” – contrary to what a critical thinker would willingly perform.

Levine also takes aim at mainstream psychology saying it buys into the prevailing economic system. That, however, would hold for most institutions within society. Levine touts liberation psychology, and compared to the human carnage wreaked by APA psychologists at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere in the US gulag, it is certainly a more humane human-centered approach.

Get Up, Stand Up argues that gaining individual self-respect and empowerment are crucial to overthrowing the classist system in society.

Levine sees benefit in a classless, non-hierarchical society. Levine states boldly his preference for anarchism despite the demonization of the term’s meaning.

To the argument that anarchism will not succeed because humans are intrinsically greedy, Levine rightly points out that this is assertion. Whether humans are greedy or altruistic: “no one can definitively prove their case.”

It is likeliest that human character is in large extent shaped by the system and society one finds oneself in. If so, and indubitably it is, then human character can be shaped by designing culture and society to elicit desirable traits.

The electoral battle field is a no-win scenario. The two-party Tweedle Dee-Tweedle Dum focus is distracting and enervating.

Levine holds that lesser evilism is bad for democracy. If lesser evilism is so terrible, one wonders what Levine meant when he wrote of the US presidential election in 2000, “… Nader and the Green party lost their luster.” It seems that one could just as well conversely state that lesser evilism gained luster, but for this writer, each election has adduced that lesser evilism appeases iniquity and only the evilists gain.

Levine recounts that elections are a long, long trail of defeats for progressives. What to do?

Levine calls for disruption, which he acknowledges is risky. It is not a novel call; it has been known by many for a long, long time. Workers have power in that their labor is required to work the factories and workplaces. Workers using their wages to consume is necessary to keep capitalism flowing. Disruption is another name for general strike.

Levine warns of “violent revolution, one risks the loss of life and the loss of even more power if defeated.” This is a risk. However, Levine does not address that violent revolution originates with the authoritarianism and classism of the capitalist system. Violence is the modus operandi of the elitists, and violent resistance is legitimized by the initial violence of the elitists.

Get Up, Stand Up examines alternatives to capitalist society, a dropping out of the rat race: communes, worker cooperatives, lower-cost online education or worker colleges.

The right to study in tuition free universities should be enjoyed by every person. If university academics truly are critical thinkers, they might ponder deeply whether the university hierarchy is justifiable and preferable.

Levine does not explore deeply an alternative economic system, and it would have improved Get Up, Stand Up if he had included discussion of such, for example, parecon which empowers workers and is non-hierarchical.

The basic thrust of Get Up, Stand Up is laudable. A few times the book digresses from its thesis, and that is when it read unevenly. For instance, Levine appears to take couched potshots at Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, referring to him as a “ruthless dictator” on one hand and “not all that powerful” on the other hand. Why does Levine use a figure demonized by the capitalist-imperialist hierarchy to make his points and rather unconvincingly?

Such examples are points of contention among leftists,¹ as is the current civil war with many foreign interlopers in Libya.

Solidarity is a sine qua non of revolution. The general strike will require everyone to look after each other. Electoral strategies and military or economic interference in the systems of other states are potentially unity destroying topics better discussed and decided upon after the revolution is won.

Get Up, Stand Up is valuable for societal and psychological insights into what fosters and maintains continuation of egregious violence, exploitation of resources and maldistribution of wealth, and classism (the ignoble prejudice that one group is in some way superior as human beings to other groups). Getting out of this jaundiced cycle of capitalism is needed for humanity to fully progress.

1. I do not use the term progressives here because progressives would not encourage or support violent intervention in the civil war of another state, especially by warmongering imperialist states that pursue regime change to exploit the resources of another state.

Human Resources begins with the psychological research on animal behavior, how rat, dog, pigeon behavior might be shaped. Behaviorist scientists John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner applied the behavior-shaping experiments to humans.

The human experiments turned even more sinister with an emphasis on eugenics, which is based in the notion that there are superior and inferior humans, superior and inferior races. Academia was very much involved in this movement, and as the documentary points out, it went to the highest levels of government, as president Calvin Coolidge supported eugenicist notions. Corporations funded the research, with the Rockefellers playing “a particularly devious role,” said historian Sharon Smith.

Rebecca Lemov, author of World as Laboratory, said the Rockefeller largesse made for the most funded social science project in history.

Taylorism and the Disempowerment of Workers

Even though moral philosopher Adam Smith had warned against the division of labor, another man, Frederick Taylor, disagreed. He atomized the workplace and work tasks. He set target times for worker tasks. This increased efficiency but at a cost of de-skilling workers and disempowering them.

Skilled labor was undermined by the atomization of tasks, the result being a loss of power and control by skilled workers. The exemplar is the assembly line instituted by anti-worker Henry Ford, which consolidated hierarchical control.

Human Resources calls it dehumanizing.

Labor does not need to be dehumanizing though. Human Resources interviews Michael Albert who, with Robin Hahnel, espouses an economy called participatory economics – or parecon. Albert says the corporation is pathological.¹ The pathology is the drive for profit without concern for people or the environment. The parecon workplace is egalitarian.

Paradoxically, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin supported Taylorism’s scientific management although it was disliked by workers. Human Resources quotes Lenin: “Socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly.” If this is the case, then the state has merely replaced the corporations in the economic system, and the Marxist refrain of a dictatorship of the proletariat becomes a meaningless slogan.

Human Resources argues that Lenin and Trotsky destroyed socialist institutions and waged a war against anarchists. They forced industrialization, leading to totalitarianism.

Thus, argues anarchist professor, Noam Chomsky, the term “socialism” became degraded.

Mikhail Bakunin, an anarchist opponent of authoritarian Communism, had foreseen the dangers of the state. Consequently, hierarchical political systems became entrenched worldwide.

Political scientist Stephen M. Sacks discusses the Hawthorne experiments, which looked at the quantity of work and worker satisfaction. It found that having discussions with workers, regardless of whether or not workers concerns were taken into consideration, increased productivity. Sachs says it doesn’t have to be that way. The workplace can be democratized.

Why should the economic system not be rational, for example, like a parecon?

Educating Workers

Educator John Taylor Gatto, author of Dumbing Us Down, illustrated how the education system makes people unable to think in context. Initially, he says, compulsory schooling was resisted by parents (who battled for control) and enforced by state militia.

Corporations, however, feared educated workers, and students were converted into “obedient tools.”

Educational theorist Alfie Kohn extolled on the paucity of critical thinking and debilitation of forced competition. He argues against grading because grades 1) cause a loss of interest in learning; i.e., it is no longer learning for the sake of knowledge, 2) lead to shallower thinking, and 3) lead students to choose easier tasks (the logical choice).

Competition, says Kohn, undermines character and destroys relations. He points to research which shows that competition isn’t necessary for excellence and tends to impede excellence at most tasks. Competition disrupts more difficult tasks and problem solving.

“Excellence,” he says “pulls in one direction and competition in another.”

If the system is one of competition, then that system must have winners and losers of competition. What does that mean for a society?

The Origins of Violence

Noble segues into causes of violence. He turns again to behaviorist psychology (which really does not have that much sway in contemporary psychology) and the frustration-aggression hypothesis which states that thwarting people from achieving their just rewards frustrates them and leads to aggression.

Human Resources portrays rampant hatred of the other in American society that is promulgated by the media. Historian Howard Zinn, in one of his last interviews, saw an intentionality in design; the hatred of others is scapegoating — deflecting the anger onto to others so the system can perpetuate itself.

Anthropologist Elliot Leyton even implied the system as being partially responsible for mass murders. He saw multiple murderers as “alienated individuals … that represent central cultural themes” that “are relatively ignored by government institutions…”

Governments, said Leyton, focus much more on control of public than serial and mass killers. “Governments and politicians are the main killers.” The state is a mass murderer.

Human Resources holds that modern military training best encapsulates the frustration-aggression hypothesis. The military funnels frustration into hatred and fear of a group.

Fear was used to manipulate human behavior.

Mind-control Experimentation

The CIA’s mind-control project MKULTRA “abandon[ed] any pretense to morality, leading to a nightmarish search for the holy grail of social engineering: a fully controlled, fully obedient human being.”

Projects included Artichoke, Bluebird, MKULTRA (truth serum, mind wipes) etc. Since 1973 these projects remain classified.

Under the auspices of the government, military, CIA, academia (universities and “leading professors”) drug, electroshock, brain surgery, noise manipulation, and other experiments were carried out on animals, patients, soldiers, citizens, and even children as “unwitting guinea pigs” for various drugs. Among the outcomes were psychosis and death. Compensation is denied for many cases.

Psychiatrist Colin Ross says authorities typically deny human experimentation, or when undeniable blame the laxer restraints of the time period. In the case of children used in mind-control experiments, national security was proffered as a justification.

MKULTRA was deemed a failure except that it produced Kubark, in essence a “torture manual.” It detailed deprivation experiments, stress positions, and electric shock – all used by US personnel on humans at Abu Ghraib, as horrific video shows.

How is that humans can live in a system that subjects them unwittingly to dangerous experimentation? How is it they can allow their country to terrorize people in other countries in a “war on terror”?

Human Resources points to TV and its fear-based programming which becomes reality. TV entertains but it also induces passivity and suggestibility in people.

Eugenics underlies Human Resources. Yet, a capacity for cruelty has been demonstrated in supposedly learned people, even by those who might consider themselves superior: management, politicians, commanders, and doctors.

Human Resources is another excellent documentary by Noble – a documentary that should cause all people to question the nature of the society they live in, who the authorities serve — and even more — should society have authorities, should it exist as a hierarchy? The film causes us to ask who we should fear – the authorities who pursue the development of weapons of mass destruction, who develop and implement the practice of torture, who use their own citizenry as unwitting guinea pigs? Who is the genuine terrorizer? Who is the genuine enemy?

1. The thesis of another excellent documentary, The Corporation.

The reaction of those whose homes were raided and their supporters was quick and determined. The targeted activists, their attorneys, and local supporters held a couple of press conferences within days of the raids and original subpoenas and a national network organized protests at Federal Buildings in a number of US cities and towns. Resolutions attacking the raids and subpoenas and pledging support for the activists and the right to organize were introduced and passed by a number of city councils and antiwar and labor organizations. The office of the US Attorney for the Northern Illinois District under the direction of US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald temporarily withdrew the subpoenas. However, they were reinstated in December, leading to the aforementioned refusal of those subpoenaed to appear in front of the grand jury. Several more subpoenas were served on other activists. In fact, nine more activists have been ordered to testify before the grand jury on January 25, 2011 in Chicago.

A sidebar regarding Patrick Fitzgerald might be beneficial here. If that name seems familiar, it is because he is associated with many high profile cases. He helped prosecute Scooter Libby in the case known as the Valerie Plame affair. For those who don’t remember this case, it involved members of the George Bush White House releasing the name of a CIA agent to the media–a federal offense. Although Libby was convicted of the crime, it has always been believed that others in the White House, including Vice President Cheney, were involved in its commission. This demands the question as to why no one else was prosecuted and how much the prosecutor (Fitzpatrick) was involved in limiting the prosecution to one individual, thereby sparing the White House from a criminal investigation. Patrick has also been involved in many other high profile cases, including the prosecution off Illinois governors Ryan and Blagojevich in separate corruption cases and a case involving torture by the Chicago police that resulted in the conviction of Chicago detective Jon Burge.

In another investigation targeting leftist, anarchist and antiwar political activists in the Twin Cities, several homes and offices were raided before, and during, the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis. If one recalls, that convention also saw the arrest of media members including Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, brutal attacks on protestors by police and private “contractors” working with police, and a lockdown against free speech activities in certain areas of the city. Several hundred people were arrested and many were beaten. Nine organizers were eventually charged with acts of terrorism. During their trial it became clear that the organizations these individuals were affiliated with had been infiltrated by government informers.

Similarly, last week the AntiWar Committee (one of the organizations targeted in the September raids) of the Twin Cities discovered that they too had had an informer in their midst since 2008. Going by the name Karen Sullivan, this woman claimed to be a single parent and a lesbian who did not get along with her child’s father. According to statements from members of the AntiWar Committee that appeared in the press, the group’s members were sympathetic to her cover story and, despite an initial concern by some members, accepted and befriended the woman. Also, since the AntiWar Committee (AWC) believed their meetings and activities to be covered by the first amendment and were always open to the public, there was little concern for secrecy.

“Ms. Sullivan” involved herself in AWC activities and meetings, even chairing some of them. She was also one of three AWC members that traveled to Palestine. As soon as they reached Israel, the members were told they would be detained unless they turned back. Two chose to stay and were detained while “Sullivan” went back to the US. It turns out that the Israeli authorities had prior knowledge of the visit and the intention of the group to meet with Palestinian women. While no one in the group could figure out how this was so, it seems apparent now that the “Ms. Sullivan” had provided this information to her handler who had in turn provided it to US officials, who then passed it on to the Israeli government.

In the wake of the January 8, 2011 shooting in Tucson, Arizona there have been calls by a number of politicians, media commentators and others suggesting the need for new laws limiting political speech in the United States. Meanwhile, efforts are underway in Congress to renew sections of the PATRIOT Act that are due to expire soon. History tells us that when laws designed to curb political speech are enacted in the US, they are used primarily against groups and individuals on the left side of the political spectrum. There is no need for more laws. Instead, there is a need for more free speech. Laws like the PATRIOT Act and The Effective Death Penalty and Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996 and the subsequent interpretation of those laws by the courts have criminalized political activities that were previously legal. The investigation that the raids and grand juries discussed here are an example of this.

The intention of the government in this and other similar investigations is to intimidate people into keeping silent so they can carry on their business with a minimum amount of attention from the public. As the discovery of an informer in the AWC shows, they will stop at nothing in their attempt to silence protest against their imperial designs. It doesn’t matter if they get any convictions or even an indictment out of their fishing expedition. If they have intimidated those who oppose imperial war and support people around the world in their struggle against military occupation, they will have accomplished their goal. This is reason enough to support those currently targeted by the FBI in the investigations discussed here. It is more than enough reason to attend the protests against the grand jury on January 25, 2011 around the US.

These claims are so absurd, they don’t even make for convincing satire. The real irony is that much of what passes for progressive mainstream media endorses this kind of surreal propaganda. The so-called alternative progressive media, if not embracing the lies outright, is willing to play the usual “better than nothing” game of self delusion. Look what we’ve accomplished! What a great first step!

Take the financial “reform” bill. We’ll probably be hearing a lot from progressives about the whistleblower provisions in this bill. This legislation was crafted by corporate lobbyists and works largely to the benefit of their clients. But watch as progressive apologists focus on an anomaly in the bill which provides anonymity to whistleblowers and stipulates a bounty be paid for information leading to successful prosecutions. What a tasty morsel to assuage the hunger of the starving masses! The assumption is, anonymous rewards for whistleblowers will encourage more people to come forward. In addition, costly bounties, on top of fines for malfeasance, will miraculously transform corporate behavior. 

Even if one is deluded enough to believe the SEC will enforce this provision in the bill in any substantive manner, since when have financial penalties ever changed corporate behavior? Such fines are chump change to the multinationals. They aren’t deterrents to corporate crime, only additional line items to be included in future budget projections. In recent years, BP has paid more than $730 million in fines. This hasn’t prevented them from continuing to destroy our environment, killing dozens of people in the process, while at the same time posting huge profits. 

Progressives have become well accustomed to compromising their core values to achieve meaningless victories. They cite minuscule gains as justification for their participation in a system which repeatedly disenfranchises them. In this way, they become willing partners in the advancement of the corporate agenda. The financial reform bill, like all legislation, is written by. and for, corporations. But let’s rally ´round some deceptively positive item in the bill so we can maintain the illusion of progress. What rubbish!

In 2008, in exchange for lame promises to end the war in Iraq, a vast majority of the anti-war movement not only endorsed, but campaigned for and enthusiastically promoted a pro-war candidate. As a result, Barack Obama came into office with a mandate to escalate the war in Afghanistan and expand it into Pakistan. The primary goal of the anti-war movement was sacrificed to the lunatic notion that “half a loaf is better than none.” As it turns out, we’re not even getting half a slice. Surprise, surprise!

As our consumer economy digests itself and passes the poor, working poor and fading middle class like a bowel movement into the toilet of destitution, we seem unable to raise more than a whimper from progressives. They remain happily ensconced in steerage on board the ship of state as the power elite in the ballroom overhead raise a toast to U.S. Empire and perpetual war. The so-called liberal opposition has become nothing more than a subculture of this failed system of class warfare we mistakenly call democracy. 

The bloated and obscene military industrial complex indiscriminately kills and maims innocents around the world in order to maintain its capitalist hegemony. Meanwhile, our rogue partner, Israel, inflames the Middle East with its rapacious ethnocentric colonial objectives. The ongoing brutal racism and ethnic cleansing in Palestine is blatant. It takes a monumental effort on the part of progressives to ignore the horrors being unleashed on the Palestinian people using our tax dollars. But ignore it they do. They wouldn’t want to alienate the Israel Lobby. That might jeopardize progressives’ political objectives. So they forget about justice and agree not to talk about the Zionist bull in the human-rights china shop.

Many alternative news sites rarely mention Israel or Palestinian human rights. Perhaps the thinking is, if you can’t find something positive to say, why say anything at all? Have you been to BuzzFlash.com lately? How about TruthOut.org? These two progressive-except-for-Palestine sites have joined forces in their mission to promote what they perceive to be a progressive agenda, for everyone but Palestinians. You would think the Israel Lobby has no impact on world affairs at all if these were your only sources of information. 

As for the “liberal” mainstream media, you can probably count on one hand the number of times Rachel Maddow has used the ‘P’ word since her ascent to the corporate media throne. What about Keith Olberman? If you catalog his coverage of Palestine over the last seven years, it would make for a very short list. These progressive icons have a strict “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy when it comes to Israel. 

But the blue ribbon for hypocrisy concerning Palestine goes to Thom Hartmann, the intellectual darling of progressive talk radio. His pro-Zionist mindset establishes a new standard for willful denial. Israel’s barbaric attack in 2009 on the one-and-a-half million defenseless civilians imprisoned in Gaza  resulted in the deaths of more than 1400 people, 350 of them children under the age of fifteen. On his radio program, Hartmann pointed out that this was hardly what one would call a massacre. If those had been Israeli children murdered, he may have taken a slightly different position on the matter.

When criticized for their blind support of Barack “Killer-Drone” Obama, progressives produce such absurd rejoinders as, “What would you have had us do, elect John McCain?” The real question in 2008, and in 2004 as well, should have been, “Why are we working to elect a pro-war corporatist?” 

Embracing honest logic is difficult for many progressives. They prefer to cling to their religion of “hope and change” and suffer the wages of compromise, unwilling to face the simple truth. The system has diverted the energy and resources of the Left from our main objectives. We have become pawns within this self-perpetuating, parasitic corporatocracy. Our voices have been co-opted to facilitate its Orwellian existence. 

Uh-oh. Conundrum. You mean to say that reasoned dialogue won’t save us; the status quo can’t be amended and made to conform to our naive expectations; we can’t work from within to excise the cancerous tumor that is our government? Everyone begins to wring their hands and wipe sweat from their brows (using facial tissue made from recycled paper, of course). Minds close, eyes glaze over. The collective hard drive of the Left crashes and everyone is stunned into silence. The screen flashes the ominous error message, “What Now? What Now?” 

Hey, I know. Let’s head off to the polls in the next election and vote against the most terrible option. That should solve the problem. Let’s continue marching in lockstep right over the lesser-of-two-evils cliff into oblivion. Let’s give pro-war corporatists the keys to the national treasury and watch in dismay as they transfer it into the pockets of the power elite while continuing to wage senseless wars against people all over the planet. Let’s empower yet another gang of lying, sociopathic stewards of empire and hope they don’t wreak more havoc than the previous bunch. There’s a plan we haven’t tried before!

If this madness appears to be a hopeless, downward spiral into totalitarianism and despair, that’s because it is. We are taking the same action over and over again, expecting different results. Insanity has replaced rationality.

It may seem like there are few options available to us. Certainly there are none at all if we continue to push that familiar boulder up the hill, only to watch it roll back down again. But if we can buck up and face reality, retire the usual song and dance routine which is getting us nowhere, then this will allow alternative strategies to develop. Once we disengage from the status quo, stop sacrificing our principles and resources in pursuit of pointless compromise, the passionate minds of the Left will come up with different approaches. We just need to establish a few simple guidelines to keep us on course.

First, compromise is for deciding what color to paint the bathroom. While common ground may be a great place to debate acceptable means to an end, if that common ground is in a pool of someone else’s blood, we must refuse to go there. Our objectives must be non-negotiable. They should not include the occasional splatter of the blood of innocents. Politics may be the art of the possible, but advocacy for human rights should be absolute. We cannot tolerate “some” inhumanity, nor sacrifice justice for the sake of achieving a resolution. 

Second, reconciliation is an objective, not a strategy. Anger is not violence; being non-violent doesn’t require us to be passive or even peaceful.The penchant many on the Left have for “respectful dialogue” is admirable. But it’s time to get over it and get angry. We are in a very small boat on rough seas. If some posturing fools stand up, threatening to capsize the boat, there isn’t much point in having a polite discussion with them. The only rational response is to tell them, “Sit down before you drown us all!” Say it loudly, and impolitely if need be, to make yourself heard above the noise of the threatening storm. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself in the water having a less-than-mutually-respectful dialogue with hungry sharks.

Third, and most important of all, stop voting! It only enables the status quo. What is this obsession we have with participating in a system which excludes the values and principles we believe in? If the menu consists of nothing but poisonous food, refuse to sit down at the table. The corporatocracy will never offer us candidates for national office who represent progressive values. Name any President and most members of Congress over the last 100 years. These are people who have participated in the slaughter of millions of innocent men, women and children around the globe. Their legacy belongs on trial in the Hague. Why do we continue to champion their fetid Empire, for any reason, under any circumstances? 

Unyielding commitment to the principles of human rights and social justice would provide the incentive we need to abandon this cycle of capitulation and instigate a true social revolution. Once we disengage from this inhumane paradigm, no longer lend our voices to its perpetuation, a world of possibilities will be open to us. It’s not as if we would be abandoning a program of proven success. The only thing we know for certain is what doesn’t work. 

In the last national election, roughly 130 million people showed up at the polls. Are you enjoying Bush’s third term yet? How many of those people hold progressive views? What would happen on election day if even as few as two percent of that 130 million showed up in Washington D.C. and cast a real vote for change. Imagine, millions of unarmed, non-violent people (too many to shoot, too many to arrest) converging on the heart of darkness to silence it, permanently.

Chaos you say? Anarchy? “OMB (oh my Buddha), what will we do now? With its head removed, this misbegotten leviathan, this bloodthirsty purveyor of terror, death and destruction, will cease to function.”

Hmmm… need we say more?

Until we refuse to endorse the criminality of our Empire, refuse to participate in our own deception, refuse to give our power to maniacs, the Left will continue to be an anachronism which pays lip service to progressive ideals. Isn’t it time we tried something new?

Arguably the three most influential end-point models of political organization are best represented by Adam Smith (capitalism), Karl Marx (socialism/communism), and Mikhail Bakunin (anarchism).¹ ,² ,³ These three men and many other persons who contributed to critiquing, perfecting and adapting or combining these end-point models were unquestionably brilliant, acute, and incisive.

The problem is none of these models has ever been put into practice in a sustainable way. This is because none of these models or their adaptations and combinations can successfully be put into practice by engineering a system for people to inhabit.

For these ideal models to work they must arise from a self-organization in which every individual has both the capacity to recognize when a foundational element of the model is being corrupted by a particular practice and the capacity to intervene to prevent or correct the corruption. With the capacity to intervene comes capacity to recognize.

The American libertarians understood this and inspired a revolutionary constitution that guaranteed the individual the right to intervene (bear arms, free speech, etc.). This libertarianism also nurtured a deep and healthy cultural distrust of governments, institutions, banks, and corporations.

To be sustainable, the above-mentioned socio-politico-economic models and their combinations cannot be imposed and managed from the top but instead must be driven from the base; must be discovered and developed by the individual connected to his/her community, and must be controlled by the individual via personal agency. As soon as the individual has little or no influence to correct the system then there is runaway hierarchical command and control and all the nasty oppressions that this necessarily implies.

For example, all three men mentioned above knew (expressly believed) that capitalism would lead to capital monopoly and the associated predation of the top corporatists and financiers. Smith wanted to prevent this by government and international regulations – although he underestimated the now obvious reality that capital would always evolve to own government. Marx saw world economic monopoly (globalization) as an inevitable consequence of capitalism and he elevated globalization to the status of a natural law. Bakunin saw that Marx’s model could not be applied without leading to the same kind of irreversible hierarchical predation as with capitalism.

Instead of being based on the power of individuals to monitor and correct, applied “capitalism” and “socialism” have been organized from the top, put in place via elite-run social engineering, and have used theoretical concepts of capitalism and socialism to rationalize and justify unrestrained hierarchical control by a dominant elite which has graciously provided illusions of democratic participation via workers’ councils, unions owned by the bosses, and fixed elections of elite-selected candidates.⁴

Activism to Stop the Exploitation Machine

This brings us to the question of First-World activism. How can individuals best obtain enough power to correct the most destructive aberrations of the present runaway command and control hierarchy of exploitation and oppression?

Here, in my view, two of the most important critics and theorists of First-World activism are Herbert Marcuse (One Dimensional Man) and Ward Churchill (Pacifism as Pathology)⁵ , ⁶ their work on the psycho-sociology of First-World activism is as acute and incisive as the works of Smith-Marx-Bakunin on socio-politico-economic models. I must add the canonical work of Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) geared towards liberation of the most wrenched but, in my opinion, universal and applicable to First-World activism.⁷ ,⁸

Marcuse explains in detail the fundamental challenge of activism seated in the relative comfort and relative personal freedom of the modern middle class. Churchill focuses on the main psychological defence reaction of First-World activists challenged by their consciousness of the broad murderous underbelly of the system. Freire simply lays out the universal essence of liberation from a necessarily-oppressive hierarchy, like few others have.

The goal of activism within capitalist and socialist hierarchies is for the individuals (ordinary citizens and mid-level managers) to find ways to effectively challenge and correct the system, thereby flattening the hierarchical pyramid rather than allowing or enabling its otherwise incessant sharpening. The goal of the activist is to increase democratic participation (i.e., direct influence) in all areas of activity and to reverse or impede the otherwise increasing concentration of power.

Optimally, the activist practices direct influence at the point of his/her strongest connection to the economy; at work for the worker, at school for the student, on the street for the homeless person, etc. This is the point at which the system has the strongest grip on the individual, but it is also the point where the individual has the most power against the system’s authoritarian oppression. Expressed as the Freirian mantra – in activism, in the struggle for liberation, “one can only fight one’s own oppression.” Our oppression primarily results from the undemocratic hierarchy that controls our lives.⁹

As middle class citizens of an empire, if we create an increase in democracy and a reduction of authoritarianism, then those exploited by the empire in the under classes and abroad immediately benefit from a loosening of the system’s grip.

Of course one also supports the struggles across social classes and across national borders and one derives knowledge and inspiration from the struggles of others, but the murderous killing machine will only become more powerful and more ferocious if we do not practice anti-hierarchy activism at the point of our strongest contact with the hierarchy.² , ³ , ⁶ , ⁷ , ¹⁰

Of course, this true activism against our own oppression and against hierarchical domination, like any true activism, is an activism that carries the highest potential risk for the individual. One cannot fight an oppressor without exposing oneself to backlash.¹¹ And the best safety net against this consequence of the battle is organization and community.

And Now the Pathology

And this is where the pathology starts. Why lose a good thing? Why risk job loss? Why create tension at work? Why not just get the degree and climb the hierarchy from which one can act? Cannot more be achieved by cooperation? Isn’t confrontation what oppressors do? Won’t we just become oppressors? Etc.

There are a million elaborate and slogan-supported rationalizations to not be an activist and most involve re-definitions of activism in terms of actions that present no significant risk to one’s socio-economic status.

For example, several players pick up the above need in activism to “organize” and substitute the organizing itself for the activism. The latter organizing is not one rooted in necessity for safety and in self-defence but instead takes on the characteristics of a membership drive and an educational program to build shared opinions.

This avoidance often involves the mystical notion of the “critical mass” whereby if enough citizens acquire the same opinion, then this opinion is magically implemented by the system, by some unspecified mechanism never before observed in history. Critical mass is a concept of physics and involves a nuclear chain reaction, but it is only relevant if one has a critical mass of radioactive nuclei – determined individuals prepared to react and create an explosion. It doesn’t work for opinions acquired mainly by reading flyers and watching documentary films.

Following this mythology of critical mass of opinion, organizers note that the 1960s brought out 10s and 100s of thousands of protesters into the streets and falsely conclude that we therefore need only bring out large numbers of protesters to accomplish societal change. They fail to realize that the protesters of the 1960s were protesting as an external demonstration and extension of their real activism at work and in community and that their mass movements included riots that were a serious concern for power that was already overstretched in Vietnam.⁵ , ¹²

In the present context of relatively advanced corporate fascism and socially engineered compliance,¹³ ,¹⁴ power knows that even large numbers of peaceful demonstrators will obediently go back to work on Monday morning and will not spontaneously and physically unseat their elected “representatives” or bosses.

Pacifism is the main pathology identified by Churchill. Not the true combatant-pacifism of Gandhi who said that it was better to take up arms than to practice a false pacifism of cowardice,¹⁵ but the pacifism of dogmatic non-violence as a substitute for direct anti-hierarchical activism. This pacifism is often accompanied by pathological conflict avoidance and by escapism into religion or ecological sectarianism and by the privileged practice of isolated alternative community building as an escape from the hierarchy of the dominant system. All these reactions were explained by Marcuse.

Other diversions include the amplification of valid but secondary and privileged preoccupations to be oppressed fairly within one’s class. Here I tentatively include: gay marriage, pay equity for women, affirmative action, political correctness activism, co-optation unionism, health care protection activism, ethical investment activism, and so on.

I mean that these struggles are generally rigorously confined by their practitioners in such a way as to protect and reinforce the overarching (workplace) economic hierarchical domination which in turn continues to increase its violent oppression of the included groups and to increase its exploitation of the excluded groups.

Gay marriage activism is a move towards equal treatment for all but is practiced in such a way to increase the state’s hierarchical control of relationships by strengthening rather than reforming the intrusive institution of state marriage; and the married gay couples continue to be oppressed by work and their children by school.

Pay equity activism is equal treatment by the oppressor in the wage slavery enterprise but is generally practiced in such a way as to bring women into the fold without necessarily making the workplace more democratic.

Affirmative action corrects a wrong but maintains the oppressive workplace unless individual employees directly fight against both racism and undemocratic authoritarianism.

Political correctness is an offshoot of pathological conflict avoidance, a desire to isolate oneself from any risk of (verbal) conflict via mental environment oversight rather than a commitment to participatory cultural transformation.

Co-optation unionism, the dominant form of unionism in North America, is a cancerous affliction in which workplace democracy and individual responsibility (e.g., professional or trades person independence) are horse traded away for salaries and benefits, under the threat of global economic “restructuring.” It works hand in hand with power to drive the system towards increased central command and control, towards corporate fascism. It dehumanizes the worker. Instead, unionism could be practiced as an arm in the struggle to democratize the workplace but it almost never is.

Universal health care coverage activism is practiced in a way which further locks us into the insane Big Pharma and technological medicine trap that the medical establishment has driven us into and further moves us away from public health and towards an ignorant dependence on a corrupt profession; whereas it could be an occasion for citizen involvement and for a broad participatory and empowered debate. Instead, it does nothing to put individuals responsibly in charge of health priorities.¹⁶

Let me not even address the absurdity of “ethical investment activism,” an oxymoron if ever there were one. It’s up there with the insanity of the corporate plan to make ethanol from food as a substitute for oil which some green anti-CO₂ sectarians have supported. (If you don’t want to produce CO2, kill yourself.)¹⁷

And so on. Equal treatment activism should be an occasion for anti-hierarchical activism not a substitute for it. That is not what one observes.

Let us not forget lifestyle and consumer choice false activisms, the less extreme versions of isolated alternative community life. I vote with my consumer choices? If we all just consumed responsibly and reduced our carbon footprints, the world could be saved? In fact, all societal efficiency gains are always made up for by increased global consumption. If cars can be made to consume less energy, then there will be more cars… This false activism is a classic guilt alleviation strategy that does nothing to confront the oppressive hierarchy. Instead, it protects the system by diverting individual attention towards inconsequential pursuits.

There are as many creative psychological devices to rationalize and internalize one’s subservience to the oppressor as there are individuals that support the killing machine. Since the killing machine most brutally targets brown people, Churchill proposes that this pathology of pacifism (which enables the killing machine) is a supreme racism, no matter how politically correct one’s language and consumer choices are.

Resilience of the Pathology

The first problem is one of perception.

The single largest barrier to human perception in a hierarchy is the individual’s desire to maintain his/her status within the hierarchy, as measured by economic and class status.

This barrier to perception is so strong that it may as well be physiological. In most circumstances it is just as difficult for a slave to perceive that he/she is a slave as it would be for the slave to see in the ultraviolet segment of the light spectrum. “I need the master because he protects us and organizes the work…” Indeed, the largest practical challenge in Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed is to create circumstances and occasions in the hope that self-awareness of the subject’s oppression will be catalyzed and nurtured.

Similarly, it is virtually impossible for members of the First-World middle class to perceive the depth of their own oppression and exploitation. They reason that they are relatively privileged and therefore cannot be oppressed, and they adopt the oppressions of others; or they blame themselves for all “failures” and difficulties and practice self-destruction; or they displace their need for meaningful work and societal agency with any number of transfers and escapes; etc.

The second problem is one of perception.

Most of all, it is impossible for institutionalized individuals in the First-World middle class to perceive solutions that involve risk, the possibility of losing economic and social status. We have no experience of defending ourselves against our oppression. We only have the experience of an institutionalized existence of compliance where our lives are laid out in stages: school, graduations, diplomas, career development, student debt management, mortgage payments, retirement savings…

In addition to this, individuals subjected to a hierarchy of domination are trained to seek approval and to fit in. They lose the natural tendency to seek truth and instead accept and feed upon the “tapestry of lies” (both right and left) provided and maintained by power and its army of service intellectuals.⁴ , ¹⁸ Information that is contrary to the approved mental environment is considered threatening and is either vehemently rejected or ridiculed. A good example of this response is the vicious cynicism of so-called-progressive left citizens and “activists” that is reserved for “conspiracy nuts” such as the proponents (truthers) of the 911-truth movement.

Information that would cause the First World middle class activist to question his/her no-risk-to-status response to perceived (and transferred/displaced) injustices or to question the value of his/her longstanding investment in the particular adopted no-risk-to-status response to the perceived injustices is denied entry and attacked.¹⁹ It cannot be perceived as something that is potentially true. The truthers themselves, for example, can delve into off-the-charts considerations only because this information is not threatening to them: They have adopted the belief that simply uncovering the truth and exposing it and explaining it can produce the needed change, if only a critical mass of informed citizens can be achieved via cyber space and public event or media activism.

All in all, truth is not compatible with approval and individuals subjected to a hierarchy of domination have little regard for truth. The substitute of choice is “like-mindedness”. This is why so-called-progressives hold “education” in such high regard. They intuitively understand that flyering and documentary films (etc.) are effective ways to sway institutionalized citizens into a given variety of like-mindedness.

There is almost no realization among First World activists of Freire’s praxis of liberation via fighting one’s own oppression as the only way to uncover the truth about one’s life.

Conclusion and the Vitality of the Right

We should despise both the authoritarian Right which leads to corporate fascism and the paternalistic Left of socialism and communism which leads to communal castration and death of the individual. Both Rght authoritarianism and Left paternalism depend on and produce control hierarchies. All hierarchies are violently oppressive by nature.⁷

First World citizens cannot significantly contribute to the needed anti-hierarchy activism and will only accommodate power and protect the killing machine as long as they are unable to authentically perceive their own oppression by the same hierarchy that is violently oppressing us all because the obedience training of school, the indoctrination of graduate and professional schools, and the complete control of the worker by the finance-corporate economy are unmistakably violent processes that deprive us of our humanity.

In this regard, the Right is more effective than the Left. Left progressives mistakenly see their privilege as proof that they are not oppressed. In fact, their “privilege” is only the reward for accepting to be violated in making them into gatekeepers and supporters of the hierarchy. Intuitively they know that effective activism could compromise their “privilege.”

The Right activists, on the other hand, root their politics in individual rights and see themselves as threatened by structures and changes that would remove their individual rights. In this way, they are closer to the true impulse of the anti-hierarchy activist and therefore represent a formidable instrument of power when they are manipulated.

Leaving aside the religious fanatics on the Right that would impose their beliefs on us all and the political correctness fanatics on the Left that would impose their beliefs on us all, American libertarianism has deep roots and is a powerful potential ally of anarchy-inspired anti-hierarchy (pro-democracy!) activism.

To my reading, American libertarianism is not an insignificant fringe movement and probably has not been co-opted to the same degree as fringe left anarchism. Dedicated anti-hierarchy activists, the only hope for significant First World contributions to liberation, would do well to ally themselves with libertarians and to participate in the societal discourse about the place of libertarianism in society.

Damn yes, own guns, no required schooling, no bank bail outs, no head office corporate decisions, voluntary taxation, accountable politicians, no insurance company controls, accessible cost-recovery-interest community-bank loans to individuals, coops and small businesses, no party-selected candidates, no wars abroad, no surveillance or personal information gathering, complete transparency in public and corporate affairs, no prohibition of any substances, no personal lifestyle and work choice criminalization, voluntary personal safety decisions, no restrictions on growing your own food, decriminalized assisted (or not) suicides, no legal or government bankruptcy protections for creditors (people first), health freedom, no barriers to work, no corporate or government controlled media, only community-controlled corporations…

A consistent application of libertarian principles anchored in individual freedom could go a long way to dismantling oppressive structures.

1. “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith, 1776.
2. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1848.
3. The Basic Bakunin – Writings 1869-1871 by Mikhail Bakunin.
4. For a discussion of the illusions provided and maintained by power see the essay “Some big lies of science” by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.
5. One Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse, 1964.
6. Pacifism as Pathology by Ward Churchill, 1986.
7. Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, 1970.
8. “Need for and Practice of Student Liberation” (essay) by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.
9. For an explanation applicable to the professional work environment see “Disciplined Minds” by Jeff Schmidt, 2000.
10. A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, 1980.
11. “Activism and Risk – Life beyond altruism” (essay) by Denis G. Rancourt, 2007.
12. For example, see Understanding Power – The indispensable Chomsky by Noam Chomsky, 2002.
13. “Canadian Education as an Impetus towards Fascism” (essay) by Denis G. Rancourt, 2009.
14. “G20-Toronto and lost sovereignty — A critical examination of the role of the CCLA” (essay) by Denis G. Rancourt, 2010.
15. “Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict: What we can learn from Gandhi” by Norman G. Finkelstein, 2009.
16. See note-4, “Some Big Lies of Science”, for a discussion of the “medicine is health” lie.
17. “Taking CO2 Seriously” (essay) by David F. Noble and Denis G. Rancourt, 2007.
18. “Against Chomsky” (essay) by Denis G. Rancourt, 2008.
19. “The Activist Wars” (essay) by Denis G. Rancourt, 2009.

As the populations of Canada and the United States continue to be ruled by casino capitalism, wars without end, and widening economic gaps between rich and everyone else, some of the Left have begun asking why these conditions have not birthed significant forms of anti-authoritarian opposition, or whether such situations historically lead to dramatic social change.

Here at Dissident Voice, journalist Charles Davis’ recent piece on “The Limits of Liberalism” echoed a familiar sense in liberal and progressive quarters:

And that brings me to the recent primary elections, which I believe illustrate a point I have learned many times over since ‘06; namely, that electoral politics is at best a diversion, a tried-and-true means for the political establishment to channel public anger with the status quo in such a way that the status quo is never seriously threatened.

Davis’ realization happened in 2006, but anarchists have understood the malignant nature of states and representative politics for over a century. Davis, like many on the Left now emerging from the haze of corporate mass media indoctrination (especially in the form of the Obama Presidential campaign), provides advice for those looking to break free of statist politics:

Instead of banking on a politician improving our world, my advice? Improve yourself. Be an example to others. Work not on the behalf of a political party, but your community. Put simply, forget the polling booth and head to the soup kitchen. At least then you won’t be complicit in a bloodied, immoral system.

Why is such inspirational advice necessary at this moment? According to psychologist Bruce E. Levine, the Left needs morale-boosting not more information.

The barrage of recent leftist self-examinations began back in December with Levine’s “Are Americans a Broken People? Why We’ve Stopped Fighting Back Against the Forces of Oppression.” The essay, which found some circulation online, asked some basic questions about traditional liberal assumptions about the power of information to enlighten and empower individuals:

Can people become so broken that truths of how they are being screwed do not “set them free” but instead further demoralize them? Has such a demoralization happened in the United States?

Do some totalitarians actually want us to hear how we have been screwed because they know that humiliating passivity in the face of obvious oppression will demoralize us even further?

Levine compares the American public’s docility in the face of increasing tyranny to “abuse syndrome,” in which victims, afraid to leave the abusive relationship, are forced to endure more abuse. Offering such victims more information about the nature of their abusive relationship does not help them change their situation. Instead, argues Levine, the informational pile-on produces greater demoralization:

Perhaps the ‘political genius’ of the Bush-Cheney regime was in their full realization that Americans were so broken that the regime could get away with damn near anything. And the more people did nothing about the boot slamming on their faces, the weaker people became.

What people need are forms of morale boosting, he claims. The
April 2010 edition of Harper’s, the American liberal establishment magazine, contains a similar analysis, this time describing the state of being a subjugated American in terms of the CIA interrogation technique of “learned helplessness,” the application of random and repeated “no touch” torture such that prisoners simply give up.

Under the headline “The Vanishing Liberal,” author Kevin Baker writes:

We have learned to be helpless. And in this state of political depression, it no longer matters how many elections liberals win for the Democrats, or how badly Republican, right-wing policies fail or how much damage they do to the country or the world. There is simply no way to do anything differently.

Baker then explains how this fatalism is contrary to traditional American liberalism and its belief in “human agency.” Baker ends on a note as dramatic and fatalistic as he began:

There is no longer any meaningful reformist impulse left in our politics. The idea of modern American liberalism has vanished among our elite, and simply voting for one man or supporting one of the two major parties will not restore it. The work will have to be done from the ground up, and it will have to be done by us.

Setting aside the laughable notion that the elites of America ever possessed some beneficent posture (part of an idealized liberal past, I suppose), the significance of Baker’s admissions and conclusions should not be overlooked: party politics in America is dead, and (in true anarchist fashion) “the work will have to be done from the ground up.

Italian Autonomist Franco “Bifo” Berardi, in his book Precarious Rhapsody, provides another explanation for the existence of this Great Liberal Depression:  the “psychopathogenic effects” of what he calls semio-capitalism, a “new regime” characterized by “the fusion of media and capital.” He writes:

Economic competition and digital intensification of informatic stimuli, combined together, induce a state of permanent electrocution that flows into a widespread pathology which manifests itself either in the panic syndrome or in attention disorders…. Depression descends on the cognitive worker because his or her own emotional, physical, intellectual system cannot indefinitely support the hyperactivity provoked by the market and by pharmaceuticals.

Berardi believes the new form of capitalism has produced “a psychopathic phenomenon of over-excitation, trembling, panic and finally of a depressive fall.” Berardi’s conclusions resemble Levine’s belief that the oppressed are overwhelmed by the new conditions of capital and media. Berardi writes quite explicitly, “The economic crisis depends for the most part on a circulation of sadness, depression, panic and demotivation.”

Is a moment like ours inevitable in the life of capitalism? “Is it ‘inevitable’ that capitalism will crash and produce the socialist-anarchist revolution?” asks Wayne Price in his March 2010 article for NEFAC. Price believes the current American Depression will continue and will worsen, along with environmental decay and state war-mongering. In response, he expects “an eventual new wave of popular radicalization, combining elements of the 30s and the 60s.”

According to Price, there are three basic narratives of how class struggle consciousness relates to capitalist crisis: the view that capitalism inevitably produces catastrophe and the working class response, or, as Marx and Engels wrote, “What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers”; the view held by liberals, which argues capitalism is not governed by deterministic laws, and that electoral politics might produce socialism, that “revolution is not needed”; and finally, the view that capitalism tends toward catastrophe, and so revolution, though not inevitable, is necessary to avoid “ruin and destruction.”

Price concludes:

One of these choices (ruin/barbarism/annihilation) will be the outcome if capitalism is given its head…. The other (revolutionary social-anarchism) requires that the working class become aware of the danger, conscious of the possible alternative to disaster, and decides to take the choice of freedom, cooperation, radical democracy, ecological balance, and internationalism…. The issue will be decided in struggle.

Perhaps there is an opportunity for anarchists to intervene in these liberal moments of depression and anxiety? Perhaps anarchists can be the group to transform liberal hopelessness into anarchist class struggle? When liberals admit the only avenue toward freedom, from this dire moment in history, is “from the ground up” and it will “have to be done by us,” what they are really saying is, “Only anarchism makes sense now.”

The next step is to educate liberals and others dispossessed of the current corporate statist order on the benefits of anarchism. This education should begin by dispelling common misunderstandings of anarchism, such as the idea that anarchism is about nothing but spreading chaos. As Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt describe in their recent book Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism, anarchism has an international legacy of mass class struggle movements. In addition, various strands of anarchism exist and have provided philosophical and tactical forms of resistance against racism, sexism, colonialism, and other forms of oppression.

Surprisingly, and perhaps indicative of the desperation of the current situation, the next step is something on which Charles Davis, Bruce Levine, Kevin Baker, and Wayne Price could all agree: begin building communities from the ground up.

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe depicts this anthropological causation. Defoe presents a character that is divested of civilization and summarily benefits—physically, psychologically, emotionally, and morally—as he is forced to live a primitive existence. Sadly, the titular figure makes the decision to replicate his lost culture and begins to suffer from many of the same ailments which he experienced prior to his separation from modern society.

Understandably, when Robinson Crusoe is first cast ashore, he worries whether he can survive. His fear is justified because, due to specialization, he does not possess the requisite skills to be self-sustaining. He knows nothing of how to construct a shelter or identify wild edibles. Only with the aide of a firearm and a naïve attitude toward the dangers of tropical water, does he progress through his first year.

By the commencement of his second year on the island, Crusoe has not only built a “castle,” but one replete with rafters, a thatched roof, shelving, two entrances, and a cellar. He fashions a table and chair along with various tools, such as a shovel and makeshift wheelbarrow. Through trial-and-error, he renders tallow from goat fat and crafts candles as well as a lamp. He learns to process food (dried grapes). Within the ensuing decade, he masters pottery, discovers the secrets to baking, engineers two boats, constructs a Dutch oven, teaches himself the art of basket weaving, and successfully tans hides and tailors his own clothing.

Crusoe is pleasantly surprised that his needs are not only met but surpassed by the island’s resources, “I possessed infinitely more than I knew what to do with.” He does become seriously ill shortly after his arrival but acute sickness is never mentioned again during his remaining 27 years on the island. This can be attributed to his heightened constitution, due not only to the nutritional diversity which the island affords—turtle, goat, fowl, hare, fish, eggs, and fruit, the latter in the form of grapes, melons, lemons, limes, and oranges—but his increased physical activity and improved mental health: He hosts an almost perpetual sense of accomplishment atop (which he makes explicit note) being relieved of social and familial pressures, expectations, and demands. Once he establishes a routine by which to sustain his daily needs, he finds that he is in possession of ample leisure time, whereby he takes up the “hobbies” (by definition, enterprises which are not vital to survival) of woodworking (as opposed to carpentry), tailoring, pottery, baking, and basket weaving.

Civilization demands that humans gain and retain absolute control. This is achieved by the immediate environment being domesticated so it no longer poses a threat before it is exploited in order to better serve a populace. Once this is completed, any (perceived) dangers posited by fellow humans are addressed in a like manner. This totalitarian approach to existence is in stanch contrast to organic integration into a previously or currently existing schematic. Anthropocentrism quickly transforms into ethnocentrism so as to further provide for a specific group, i.e. a particular society. Sadly, Crusoe begins emulating and replicating the civilization and society from which he has been cast.

His “civilized” tendencies first affect only him. He observes that the climate does not require one to be clothed and, as we see with the aborigines of the region, is actually prohibitive. His decision to remain almost fully dressed heightens the risk of dehydration (which perhaps contributed to his aforementioned ailment given he had yet to acclimate to the tropical weather¹ ). Also, despite admitting that money has no intrinsic value outside a society which acknowledges currency, “Alas! there the sorry, useless stuff lay [in a cave where it proceeded to mold]; I had no more manner of business for it,” he nonetheless puts himself at repeated risk while attempting to procure coinage. Though he states he does so for aesthetic reasons, he erects a second shelter, his “bower,” and—though one could argue this is a preventative measure should something happen to his “castle” (as witnessed when an earthquake occurred and a hurricane struck the island during the first year)—Crusoe’s capricious want foreshadows his ensuing, and otherwise avoidable, grief.

During a week-long furlong to his “bower,” Crusoe leaves a kid tethered at his “castle.” The goat nearly dies of dehydration. Though the animal was not kept as food, this incident nevertheless presages the trials of animal husbandry, which he will later devote himself. When he realizes that his gunpowder supply is diminishing, he begins utilizing traps and snares. However, shortly thereafter and believing such to be more economic, he builds a corral and proceeds to tame and breed goats. Likewise, he “accidentally” (after disposing of what he thought were mere husks) sows barley (before adding rice to his crop). He then dedicates his energies to horticulture. Granted, agriculture avails him to the possibilities of butter, bread, and cheese but it isn’t necessary for survival and results in a master-slave relationship that, inevitably, will be conveyed to people.

Crusoe was contented—and survived—upon the island’s resources yet, when he gains access to commodities which he prefers (as opposed to requires), he arbitrarily obligates himself: Not only must he plant, cultivate, and render seed, he has to feed, water, and supervise the goats and maintain their pen, atop crafting storage units (so as to keep his goods in ready supply). In a survival situation, any unnecessary expenditure, especially ones which run the risk of injury (such as carpentry), is undeniably foolish. (Which is why trapping and snaring are the best hunting methods for they are safer than using a firearm and more economic in respect to time and energy.) Though we could defend his decision to build a second shelter, few will argue that food storage isn’t a luxury, especially when produce is available year-round, and—more importantly—rearing livestock is dangerous. These stresses are compounded by the possibility of crop failure (the probability of which is abruptly increased by the cultivation of potentially invasive flora) and livestock losses as leisure time summarily diminishes due to agricultural responsibilities. As such, the “bower” becomes useless, the energy involved in its construction wasted, as the risks incurred in building it vain. Moreover, these “conveniences” capriciously restrict Crusoe’s naturally diversified diet.

Crusoe’s mental and emotional strain is further exacerbated when he discovers a foreign footprint in the sand. After 15 years of having “nothing to covet,” he fears that “[ . . . ] they [natives] [will] find my enclosure, destroy all my corn, and carry away all my flock of tame goats, and I should perish at last for mere want.” It is worthy to note that Crusoe refuses to acknowledge that, prior to his agricultural endeavors, a hunter-gatherer existence had sustained him and, thus, if said destruction were to occur, it would not result in his inevitable starvation. Upon finding the mysterious print, he spends three days in hiding and only reappears when he can no longer afford to neglect his goats. Had a threat been present, his arbitrary dependency upon livestock might have cost Crusoe his life. He devotes the next two years to reinforcing his “castle” and, to better veil his herd, builds another corral further into the island, all while abstaining from fire craft or engaging in any leisure activities for fear of being discovered. (It could also be conjectured that the illness he suffered during his first year on the island was due to unpurified water, which he now makes himself susceptible once again.² ) At the heart of Crusoe’s paranoia lies in his residual culturally-induced imperialism: Aware that other individuals might manifest themselves, i.e. a potential society, he claims private ownership of everything around him (note the frequency of possessives within the previous quotation) because he believes a hierarchy must necessarily exist—of which, he presumes he naturally resides at its apex—and, ergo, that others will desire what he “owns” as a consequence, so much so that he lives in crippling fear for approximately a decade. Whereas he once rejoiced that, “I was removed from all the wickedness of the world here; I had neither the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, nor the pride of life,” when (the mere thought of) a society presents itself, Crusoe’s hubris returns.

His propriety over objects and animals quickly metamorphoses into domestication and ownership of people. Once more, this is merely an extension of one of civilization’s creeds: A person must control one’s surroundings. He rescues a Caribbean native from being cannibalized—not on moral grounds—but because Crusoe is in need of additional labor. Unnecessary augmenting the island’s population puts both parties at risk of contracting disease and is a mortal liability for Crusoe given that the autochthon is a cannibal. Crusoe’s apprehension is evident in his forcing the aborigine to sleep outside the “castle’s” fortifications. In hopes of subduing the threat, he neutralizes the native by eradicating his identity: Crusoe issues him an English title, “Friday” (thus depriving him of his given name), Christianizing him (negating his religion), and—perhaps paradoxically—assimilating him to European customs (dispossessing him of his culture). A further irony is that Crusoe was once enslaved yet regards and treats Friday as ethnically subservient, as epitomized by Crusoe’s insistence that Friday refer to him as “Master.” Crusoe proceeds to rescue others and tyrannize them, i.e. a Spanish refugee is described as “my [Crusoe’s] Spaniard.”

Crusoe sends out a rescue mission and, in preparation for greater numbers returning, he expands crops, domesticates more goats, dries additional grapes, and weaves extra baskets in order to transport a greater amount of goods. Before the mission’s return, mutineers dock and are quelled. After subverting them, since they too are products of specialization, he teaches five of the insurgents agriculture before leaving them the island. Years later, he returns to find the island’s population so great (children are now present after women were brought from the mainland) that he designates private plots for each of its residents. (The irony is that he postpones his return to the island, in part, due to owning a Brazilian plantation which he cannot personally oversee atop fretting about the security of his money while abroad.) Not only does he compound the dilemma by adding two workmen to the colony (growing numbers necessitates the arrival of technology in the form of a blacksmith) but he sends for more supplies and women from Brazil and England. Of these goods, cows and hogs are included, which implies that he believes (and perhaps rightfully so by this time), that the island cannot—or will not in the near future—naturally sustain its human occupants. Also, as with his request for Brazilian women, bringing foreign fauna to the island runs the risk of importing disease which could result in the demise of the island’s indigenous livestock and, conversely, introduce the new fauna to native illness. Thus, if—for whatever reason—the island’s populace had to resort to a hunter-gatherer existence, Crusoe’s induction of civilization, especially in the guise of agriculture, might inhibit survival because the islanders’ unregulated numbers are now dependent upon set yields (war, the consequence of class division and/or hubris, ruined a previous year’s crops), the native habitat may be unable to support present numbers, and/or the island’s ecosystem might be compromised.

When Robinson Crusoe first arrives on the island, he adopts anarcho-primitivist principles and soon finds himself happier than he had ever been.³ Unfortunately, he decides to abide by the dictums of civilization and, as a result, his newfound contentment promptly vanishes. Though for many years his ensuing discomfort is singular and self-inflicted, he departs from the island after instilling its remaining members with the ideals which deprived him of a rewarding existence. The inevitable consequence is that the island’s inhabitants will not be afforded the life which Crusoe once enjoyed nor will the island be able to sustain its populace as it once had.

1. We cannot issue Crusoe benefit of the doubt because Defoe shifts the location of the island where his source material was lost—Alexander Selkirk was stranded 400 miles west of central Chile—to Tobago, which is found off the northeast shore of Venezuela. Thus, it is appropriate that Selkirk was clad in fur when he appeared to his rescuers because Más a Tierra’s temperate rarely rises above 80°F yet the average low is slightly above freezing. This is contrast to Crusoe’s locale—which is only 11 latitudinal degrees from the Equator—where the average daily high is 90° and the low almost never dips below 75°. Nevertheless, and perhaps due to the social implications of wearing such, Crusoe does not strip his pelts of fur.
2. Though he could be utilizing the sterile acquisition methods of solar stills, rain catchment, dew collection, water vines, and condensation bags during this time, given the region’s climate, it is doubtful that he could avoid dehydration without boiling water.
3. As outlined in John Howell’s 1844 The Life and Adventures of Alexander Selkirk, http://dissidentvoice.org/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=16714&message=1R.L. Megroz’s 1939 The Real Robinson Crusoe, and Richard Steele’s 1713 article from The Englishman titled “Alexander Selkirk” (in which the author interviews the castaway), after his rescue, Selkirk longed to return to the life he had on Más a Tierra. In In Search of Robinson Crusoe, Daisuke Takahashi even conjectures that, prior to his death by yellow fever, Selkirk set to sea once more with the intention of returning, perhaps permanently, to the island.

Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.

– Michel de Montaigne

There is a scene in Louie Psihoyos’ film The Cove where a dolphin looks at itself in a mirror. It doesn’t ignore the image, look past it or mistake it for another dolphin. It performs a serious of maneuvers, swimming upside down, righting itself, gyrating this way and that. It looks into its own eyes. It is a conscious being.

In case you missed it, The Cove is a documentary exploring the plight of dolphins in captivity, as well as the annual dolphin slaughter in the Japanese village of Taiji. Among the more interesting facts exposed by the filmmakers: prior to the slaughter, dolphin “trainers” select the best specimens (driven into pens by a wall of ships using acoustic devices) to be imprisoned in “dolphinariums” across the globe. It establishes a direct link between dolphins in captivity – a multi-billion dollar industry – and the horrific butchery at Taiji.

Sea World and other “respectable” aquariums have apparently stopped acquiring dolphins via capture, choosing to breed the animals instead. “Breed” is a euphemism, and I don’t mean sex. Online videos reveal the grotesque spectacle of Sea World trainers masturbating sedated orcas and collecting the semen in plastic bags.

Whether kidnapped or bred, The Cove makes a compelling case that for dolphins and other cetaceans, captivity amounts to torture. One can extrapolate this to most wild animals in captivity, with varying degrees of evidentiary support.

Scientists now argue that the intelligence of dolphins may rival or even surpass our own.

In the wild, dolphins live in highly evolved and complex social structures bearing unique cultures, languages and interpersonal relationships. They swim vast distances in a single day. They have sex for pleasure. They play practical jokes on other species. They comfort one another. Like humans, they have been known to engage in what we call atrocities (albeit on a much, much smaller scale) including infanticide, rape, and cannibalism. Also like humans, dolphins have been known to come to the rescue of other species in peril – in their case, us.

Their primary means of navigating the world is sound.

Quite obviously, being locked in what amounts to a bathtub, bombarded with noisy music and boisterous crowds, denied their traditional social structures and relationships, and forced to “perform” in exchange for dead food is not a healthy or “humane” living environment for the ocean’s most intelligent creature. Nor is this really open to debate. We now know that dolphins in captivity (including orcas or “Killer Whales”) develop symptoms akin to neurosis. In an average seven year time span, half of all captive dolphins perish.  Causes include pneumonia, intestinal disease, chlorine poisoning, and a variety of stress-related illnesses.

Like caged parrots tearing out their feathers, captive dolphins frequently abuse themselves by banging their heads against the walls of their tanks.

For spectators, the willingness to patronize organizations like Sea World can be attributed to ignorance. “The dolphin’s smile”, says former dolphin trainer turned activist Ric O’Barry in The Cove, “is nature’s greatest deception”. It is highly unlikely that even a small percentage of Sea World customers understand that these beloved aquatic performers are living in a state of profound distress. One cannot say the same of the “trainers” and other professionals.

Jason Hribal, author of the forthcoming book Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance, exposes the disturbing history of orcas in captivity. While orca whales do not knowingly attack human beings in the wild (and have never killed one of us, so far as we know) they frequently do so under our “care”. Incidents range from orcas leaping out of the water and slapping human beings in the head with their pectoral fins, to orcas violently dragging trainers around their pools and submerging them under water until they drown. The history reveals an unmistakable pattern of calculated aggression. In an article published in Counterpunch, Hribal outlines one incident involving an orca in San Antonio:

The orca jumped on top of his trainer and repeatedly pushed the man underwater. Sea World, afterwards, tried to pass the incident off as rough play, saying that at no time was the trainer in danger. Witnesses did not buy it. As one of them explained, ‘the whale was staying between the [exit] ramp and the trainer and finally the trainer jumped on top of the whale’s back and leaped over him and another trainer caught him.’ At that point, ‘the whale turned around and slammed down on the ramp and he was pretty upset that the trainer got out of the pool.’

And another:

We do not know which orca it was that started it, but all three, Nootka, Haida, and Tilikum, took their turns dunking the screaming woman underwater. ‘She went up and down three times,’ another visitor continued. The Sealand employees ‘almost got her once with the hook pole, but they couldn’t because the whales were moving so fast.’ One trainer tossed out a floatation ring, but the whales would not let her grab it. In fact, the closer that such devices got to the young woman, the further out the whales pulled her into the pool. It took park officials two hours to recover her drowned body.’

Dozens of such incidents have slipped through Sea World’s carefully manufactured PR wall (including numerous attacks by “smiling” or bottlenose dolphins). Hundreds if not thousands are likely to have occurred behind the scenes. In all likelihood these are not “playful” mistakes but expressions of pent up rage. For some reason, we have no problem with the idea that a tiger might lash out in anger at a Siegfried or Roy, but recoil at the suggestion that orcas might do something similar to the perky slave-masters at Sea World.

Why don’t they bite us in half or swallow us whole? Luckily enough, human beings have never been on the orca’s menu. Their failure to react with frequent and extreme violence is far more likely to be a sign of intelligence than lack thereof.

The sole remaining justification for places like Sea World is that they serve a vital educational role. I’m a good case study in establishing the absurdity of this claim.

I was taken to the Vancouver Aquarium several times as a boy, where several orcas were held captive (a few belugas remain). I remember being dumbstruck at their awesome power, but don’t recall really appreciating them as a species until I encountered them in the wild or watched a documentary video (I can’t remember which came first).

As a teenager, I was lucky enough to have occasional access to beachfront property on Saturna Island in British Colombia. The first time I encountered wild orcas was in a tiny fishing boat about the size of a bathtub. As the pod approached, my father turned off the motor and told me to reel up my line. He informed me that “killer whales” do not attack humans. He also expressed displeasure at the “whale watching” boat traveling about twenty feet behind the pod. I would like to tell you I was the picture of valor during this encounter, but the truth is that I was scared shitless.

It is difficult to communicate the sensation of sitting in a tiny boat in the middle of a dozen or so ten-ton animals with jaws the size of Volkswagen bugs. Orcas attack everything from polar bears to great white sharks to whales ten times their size. Moose have been found in their stomachs. They are the apex predator of their environment. To a puny little human, they can be very frightening indeed. Wildlife filmmaker Martha Holmes (of BBC Blue Planet fame) had this to say on the subject:

Two words describe my first encounter with killer whales in the wild: absolutely terrifying.

Yet a strange thing happened that day, sitting in my little fishing boat: as they began gliding gracefully by, not even nudging us, my fear was replaced with respect.

I’ve seen orca pods on about 20 different occasions, one while snorkeling. Each incident was exhilarating in its own way. I eventually became so comfortable around the animals that when a pod swam by, I’d row out to meet them. Foolish? Probably. But they never once rocked my boat.

Seeing orcas in nature imbues you with a deep appreciation for the animal – not least because they don’t make mince meat of you. The same appreciation can be taught from a good documentary, article or book. Sea World teaches the opposite lessons. It teaches us that it’s acceptable to take the ocean’s apex predator, confine it to a virtual swimming pool and force it to perform stupid tricks for our passable amusement. It’s degrading for both species. In the end, it’s really not much different than forcing a bear to ride a unicycle while wearing a silly hat.

We heard the usual excuses in the wake of orca “trainer” Dawn Brancheau’s death at the hands of “Tilikum the killer whale” at Sea World. The animal was only “playing”, the trainer screwed up, it was a horrible “accident”. Eyewitness reports of the orca seizing her by the waist and violently thrashing her about were replaced by a story of Dawn’s ponytail “brushing Tilikum’s nose” and causing some sort of bizarre Orcoid reflex. Some suggested her hair became caught in the big dumb animal’s teeth, and that Tilikum was actually attempting to dislodge her from his massive jaw when tragedy ensued.

Other commentators argued that Tilikum was a “serial killer killer whale” (Dawn was the third victim). Call it the bad apple theory applied to marine biology. The American Family Association urged Sea World to put the animal to death. Quoting Exodus 21:28 (“When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable”), they dismissed out of hand the notion that the animal had any rights of its own.

At this point, one is tempted to argue that Tilikum the Killer Whale is, in all probability, more intelligent that the folks at the American Family Association. This is not meant in jest. Controversial anti-whaling activist Paul Watson (star of the highly popular Whale Wars on Animal Planet) notes in his article “Why Killing Whales is Murder”:

One difference that has been used for years to differentiate humans from all other animals is the presence of spindle neurons in the human brain. These specialized brain cells are thought to process emotion and are the cells behind feelings of love and grief. The spindle cells are located in the parts of the human brain linked with social organization, empathy, speech, and intuition.

Amazingly, a recent research project has revealed that these spindle cells reside in the same area of the brain in humpback whales, fin whales, orcas, and sperm whales as in humans. More importantly, they have existed in cetacean brains for much longer than humans have had them. Even more amazing is that proportionally these whales have three times as many of these spindle cells in their brains as humans have.

All this added to the fact that whale brains are larger, four-lobed compared to our three, and have more convolutions on the neo-cortex than humans and we are looking at the possibility of a sentient creature that has emotions, thinking abilities, self awareness, and is capable of intense suffering and grief.

‘Their potential for high-level brain function, clearly demonstrated already at the behavioural level, is confirmed by the existence of neuronal types once thought unique to humans and our closest relatives.’

[Professor] Hof added, ‘Dolphins communicate through huge song repertoires, recognize their own songs, and make up new ones. They also form coalitions to plan hunting strategies, teach these to younger individuals, and have evolved social networks similar to those of apes and humans.’

In a review of The Cove, a writer for the Japan times echoes a popular sentiment: “If dolphin killing is banned, why shouldn’t the slaughters of cows and pigs be banned as well?”

The analogy is not particularly helpful. Dolphins and whales are wild animals, and very few Japanese people eat them or are even aware of events like the annual slaughter at Taiji. A better comparison would be to ask: “What’s the difference between eating a chimp or a gorilla and eating a whale or dolphin?” Or: “What’s the difference between eating a lion or grizzly bear and eating a whale or dolphin?”

Because dolphins and whales (and sharks) are the apex predators of their environment, they are vitally important in maintaining the balance of the ocean’s ecosystems. They also take much longer to repopulate when they become endangered. The health of these animals is vital to the ocean’s health – and therefore human health – as a whole. Even in the absence of ethical considerations their slaughter is not only cruel and gratuitous but foolhardy in the extreme.

When we kill these animals we play with fire. As much as we like to pretend we have nature pretty much figured out, the truth is that we don’t know all that much about our own environments, let alone the ocean. Barely a day goes by in which some new discovery challenges previous assumptions or leaves experts perplexed. Recently, scientists discovered that blue whales are now singing in a richer, deeper tone. Why?

It’s a mystery said whale acoustic researcher Mark McDonald, co-author of a report on the recent findings. “It got to be really problematic when we started digging and hey, they’re going in the same direction all around the world yet they’re different song types.”

Biologists Hal Whitehead notes of the peculiar trend:

The exciting possibility, I think, is that they’re all listening to each other. This is a worldwide cultural phenomenon, and that’s very cool.

According to The Cove, the dolphin killers in Taiji are not motivated solely by the profit that dolphins – dead or alive – brings to their community. There is an element of misplaced nationalism at play, and there is also an element of equally misplaced inter-species competition. Many of the fishermen regard the slaughter as a form of “pest control”. Dolphins eat fish, ergo, they are our competitors.

Similar sentiments are often expressed by advocates of the barbaric seal slaughter in Canada. The seals are eating up all the cod, therefore their population needs to be kept in check. John Efford, former Canadian Minister of Natural Resources, spoke none too delicately of this widespread concern:

Mr. Speaker, I would like to see the 6 million seals, or whatever number is out there, killed and sold, or destroyed and burned. I do not care what happens to them…the more they kill the better, I will love it.

When critics point out that the East coast seal population was once five-to-ten times its current size, and that cod were nevertheless so plentiful that “the sea there is full of fish that can be taken not only with nets but with fishing-baskets, a stone being placed in the basket to sink it in the water” (John Cabot, 1497), seal hunt advocates use human mismanagement of fish stocks as further justification for the slaughter. Alas, we fucked it up so bad we have no choice but to continue driving spikes into the skulls of baby seals.

In reality, there is virtually no evidence that killing seals increases cod, and quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. There are at least twenty species of fish in the coastal waters of Newfoundland that prey on cod. The seals, in turn, prey upon the cod’s predators as well as the cod itself. Food webs are exceedingly complex, and cannot be reduced to a simple “human-seal-cod” or “human-dolphin-fish” dynamic. Clupeids have been identified as major predators of cod eggs and larvae in the Baltic. Guess who eats clupeids?

Strangely enough, there seems to be a good deal of online hostility toward The Cove. Some of the anger derives from people who feel the film treats Japanese people unfairly; in other cases it can be traced to a belief that animals should not have any sort of “rights”, and that suggesting as much is akin to religious blasphemy, cultural imperialism or anti-human bias.

Charges of “Japan bashing” have been leveled at the filmmakers. This is unfair, but also understandable. Regrettably, the film fails to mention the annual pilot whale slaughter in the Faroe Islands (Denmark) by European people. It also fails to mention the thousands of dolphins killed every year by driftnets. The Cove laudably establishes a link between the dolphin slaughter and the callous attitudes that allows the continuing degradation of the oceans, but where is mention that 50% of all seafood ends up in the food dishes of livestock living on factory farms? The second greatest predator of fish is not the seal, or the whale, or the shark – it is the pig.

There is no question, however, that Japan holds the current title for greatest defiler of our oceans. Since the 1931 Geneva Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, Japan has consistently ignored quotas, international boundaries and species protections. Currently, under the guise of “scientific research”, they butcher hundreds of whales in the wildly misnamed Antarctic whale sanctuary. Each killing is an atrocity in itself, with some whales taking up to an hour to perish. Explosive-tipped harpoons strike the first blow, followed by electrocution and prolonged drowning.

Recently, the Japanese government successfully lobbied against a proposed ban on the fishing of bluefin tuna by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Bluefin are critically endangered, and will likely go extinct in the near future. One might expect, considering Japan’s voracious appetite for the prized fish, that they would have led the charge in ensuring its survival. But to suggest as much would be to overlook a far more important consideration than sushi: profit.

In Japan, a bluefin currently sells for about $100,000. The more endangered the fish becomes, the more expensive it is to buy, the more eager are fishermen to catch it. Ain’t capitalism grand?

When it comes to dolphins and whales, neither taste nor sustenance is at issue. The meat tastes like especially fatty spam, or so I’m told, and if killing dolphins may once have provided essential nourishment to the town of Taiji (this is also unlikely), it is no longer necessary. It is however profitable. A live dolphin can go for a cool one-hundred-fifty-thousand. Thus are our closest cousins in the ocean reduced to circus freaks and delicacies.

A group of scientists recently claimed that the dolphin is so intelligent that it should qualify as a “non-human person”.

The researchers argue that their work shows it is morally unacceptable to keep such intelligent animals in amusement parks or to kill them for food or by accident when fishing. Some 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die in this way each year.

There are many assumptions at play here, the most glaring of which is the idea that human-defined “intelligence” should be the deciding factor in the way we treat other animals (rather than, say, the ability to feel pain). But let us run with the concept.

Religious fundamentalists, amongst others, are obviously not too keen on the prospect of dolphins being granted “personhood” status. Only humans have souls, so the theory goes, and to advocate otherwise is blasphemous.  In fact, it’s a restriction on human “freedom”.

The reductionism of dolphin = any other animal is important in this respect. It maintains our position upon God’s special throne and keeps nature in its proper place – beneath our collective boot.

To be fair to the right-wing Christians and libertarians, it is not difficult to find misanthropic sentiments amongst some environmentalists. Often these remarks come from extremely wealthy individuals who would undoubtedly save the life of an endangered whale over the life of an endangered human living in poverty. Prince Philip expressed his desire to return to earth as a “deadly virus” in order to reduce the human population. Henry Kissinger once stated, “Depopulation should be the highest priority of U.S. foreign policy towards the Third World.” Dr. Eric R. Pianka argued in a speech at the Texas Academy of Science, “We’re no better than bacteria!” and said that the human population should be reduced by 90%.

Strangely absent in the work of “human cull” advocates is the work of Frances Moore Lappe. Debunking Malthus with a vengeance, her work reveals that “antidemocratic power structures create and perpetuate conditions keeping fertility high” and that “children are poor people’s source of power”:

In sum, convincing historical evidence suggests that when individuals and families are gaining power because their rights are protected – particularly the rights to education, medical care including contraception, old-age security, and access to income-producing resources – they no longer have to depend only on their own families for survival.

Thus are progressive social values such as equality and social justice inextricably wed to environmental protection. Paradoxically, it is not overpopulation that creates poverty; it is poverty that creates overpopulation. Eventually, you end up with a sort of vicious cycle in which one begets the other.

The failure of many environmentalists to link hierarchical, anti-democratic socio-economic structures with the pillaging of Mother Earth is perhaps the single greatest stumbling block to achieving real sustainability. It is far easier to recommend lifestyle changes (minimize your meat intake, use less toilet paper, recycle) than to recommend a radical restructuring of our political and economic systems. The problem with limiting our critique to lifestyle choices is that the system keeps on humming along regardless, fish after fish, tree after tree. Endless growth is the defining characteristic of our modern economies, and endless growth spells suicide.

In his advocacy of libertarian socialism or “participatory democracy”, Noam Chomsky spoke convincingly on the relationship between institutionalized hierarchy and environmental destruction:

The reality is that under capitalist conditions – meaning maximization of short-term gain – you’re ultimately going to destroy the environment: the only question is when. Now, for a long time, it’s been possible to pretend that the environment is an infinite source and an infinite sink. Neither is true obviously, and we’re now sort of approaching the point where you can’t keep playing the game too much longer. It may not be very far off. Well, dealing with that problem is going to require large-scale social changes of an almost unimaginable kind. For one thing, it’s going to certainly require large-scale social planning, and that means participatory social planning if it’s going to be all meaningful. It’s also going to require a general recognition among human beings that an economic system driven by greed is going to self-destruct – it’s only a question of time before you make the planet unlivable.

Agreements don’t require centralized authority, certain kinds of agreements do. One’s assumption, at least, is that decentralization of power will lead to decisions that reflect the interests of the entire population. The idea is that policies flowing from any kind of decision-making apparatus are going to tend to reflect the interests of the people involved in making the decisions—which certainly seems plausible. So if a decision is made by some centralized authority, it is going to represent the interests of the particular group which is in power. But if power is actually rooted in large parts of the population—if people can actually participate in social planning—then they will presumably do so in terms of their own interests, and you can expect the decisions to reflect those interests. Well, the interest of the general population is to preserve human life; the interest of corporation is to make profits—those are fundamentally different interests.

Having jobs doesn’t require destroying the environment which makes life possible. I mean, if you have participatory social planning, and people are trying to work things out in terms of their own interests, they are going to want to balance opportunities to work with quality of work, with the type of energy available, with conditions of personal interaction, with the need to make sure your children survive, and so on and so forth. But those are all considerations that simply don’t arise for corporate executives, they just are not a part of the agenda. In fact, if the C.E.O. of General Electric started making decisions on that basis, he’d be thrown out his job in three seconds, or maybe there’d be a corporate takeover or something – because those things are not a part of his job. His job is to raise profit and market share, not make sure that the environment survives, or that his workers lead decent lives. And those goals are simply in conflict.

We have reached the point where “save the humans” might be just as accurate a slogan for the environmental movement as “save the whales”.

Antibiotics used in factory farms are creating a breeding ground for “superbugs”; Avian influenza, swine flu and other viruses are emerging with alarming regularity; Monsanto’s genetically modified crops were recently linked to liver and kidney damage; a study of 291 freshwater streams by the US Geological Survey found that more than two-thirds of the fish contained unsafe mercury levels; pesticides used in industrial agriculture are killing off the honey bees (responsible for pollinating more than 90 million crops in the United States alone).

Chemical pollution is causing an explosion in cancer rates. Dr. Dominique Belpome, a French cancer specialist, charted a 35% rise between 1980 and 2000 among the same age groups in France. He argues that 70% of all cancers are of environmental origin. Cancer rates in Canada are growing twice as fast as the population.

Human beings are causing the greatest mass extinction since the disappearance of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. According to a survey of 400 scientists, this “mass extinction event” is more dangerous to the survival of our species than “pollution, global warming and the thinning of the ozone layer.”

90% of the big fish in the ocean have disappeared. Again, according to scientists, “If the serial depletions continue unabated, major seafood stocks will collapse by 2048.” Seven out of ten human beings rely on seafood for their primary source of protein. If the oceans die – we die.

This isn’t a question of mere greed. Corporations are mandated by law to maximize profits regardless of social or environmental cost (see Dodge v. Ford). It should not be surprising, therefore, that overfishing has become the rule, any less that factory farming has emerged as the logical means by which we raise and slaughter livestock, or sweatshops the preferred method of producing commodities.

For warriors on the front lines – animal liberationists, sea shepherds, Earth Firsters – it is tempting to embrace a certain level of misanthropy. What kind of a dumb species spoils its own nest? And why should we care about the livelihood of fishermen or loggers when blue collar workers in countless other industries are being laid off by the hundreds of thousands due to “free trade” agreements, corporate downsizing and off-shoring of jobs?

I think it’s important to look at the bigger picture.

The reality is that so long as workers are living in a state of desperation, there will be more than enough bodies to dump toxic effluent from your friendly local factory farm into your once pristine waterways. So long as people can barely afford to eat, or are too busy working overtime to cook a good meal, McDonald’s and Burger King will persist in fattening up the populace. So long as dolphinariums make a killing, the killing of dolphins will continue.

I am sympathetic to people who scoff at “mainstream” or “liberal” environmentalists.

Most workers are too worried about their own horrific living conditions to consider the horrific living conditions of the former cow in their Big Mac. When a Bono or an Al Gore exit their private jets to lecture the plebs about sustainability, disgust is an entirely appropriate response. Many people, especially urbanites, cannot afford or do not have access to organic produce or meat from local farmers.

Ultimately, the worker/environment dichotomy is fallacious. It’s nothing more than a ruse designed by corporations to create hostility between workers and shield environmental pillage with the threat of unemployment. It suggests that the interests of animals/nature and man/sustenance/health are diametrically opposed. The opposite is true.

Real environmentalism recognizes the rights of human beings as well as the rights of dolphins. As much as we like to pretend otherwise, we are all, after all, part of the environment. This includes the “useless eaters” in the “third world” that eco-misanthropes like Prince Phillip would slaughter in the name of sustainability.

The Cove is important because it refuses to succumb to the either/or proposition. It links human health to animal health, and it also opens the door to an expanding awareness of the rights of animals in general.

If we can’t even extend human compassion to the most intelligent animal in the ocean – by all indications, a “non-human person” – then the prospects for doing so with other, allegedly “lesser” animals are bleak. This also applies to the human animal himself, who (let’s face it) should probably be placed on the endangered species list right alongside the bluefin tuna. It’s not just about saving other creatures, it’s about saving ourselves. From ourselves. At the very least, it’s about rescuing certain quaint notions about “humanity” which no longer seem justified – that we are capable of acting rationally, that we care about the fate of our grandchildren, and that short-term profit is not the sole impetus for our collective behavior.

The emerging consensus amongst scientists and environmentalists regarding our relationship with nature is not a leap forward but a leap backward. It represents a final, lasting recognition that indigenous peoples had it right after all.   What Frederick Turner described as “The Western Spirit Against the Wilderness” – the urge to conquer rather than co-exist, exploit rather than liberate – was doomed to failure from the moment we started viewing mother nature as the enemy rather than the protector.  The current, hollow speeches about green capitalism and sustainable development are the last gasps of a dying system.

Real, participatory democracy in both the political and economic realms will allow communities to act collectively and to consider factors other than short term profit. It is time for the mainstream environmental movement to recognize this fundamental correlation and act upon it. Save the whales. Save the humans.