Other Considerations

In 1948, the ink barely dry on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, George Kennan (head of State Dept.policy planning staff) said: "We have about 50% of the worlds wealth, but only 6.3% of the worlds poulation.Our real task in the coming period...is to maintain this position of disparity...We need not decieve ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction..The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in STRAIGHT POWER CONCEPTS. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better." Realist.

Andy Stern, president of the growing Service Employee International Union, said in a Labor Day speech that "The American economy is not a zero-sum game", by which I assume he means enough wealth can be "created" to benefit all so there is no need for class warfare. Putting aside the whole discussion of how wealth is created and being a cheerleader for the "rising tide" theory, what of this idea of wealth being zero-sum? His is an international union, is he advocating equality of wages for ALL service workers the world over? Can everyone have as much wealth and consume as many resources, use as much energy, etc. as American workers?

"Cultural hegemony" was Gramscis' term for the insidious tendency for "the perspective of the ruling class to be absorbed by the mass of workers". As Naomi Klein says "Sometimes we were crushed by army tanks and sometimes we were crushed by think-tanks".

The other day I walked out of the hardware store proudly clutching my "energy saving" light bulbs only to notice my Escort surrounded in the parking lot by no less than seven huge, new, three- quarter- ton pick-ups. None of them had anything heavier than a labrador in the bed.

Lindsay Graham,the boyish Senator from S.Carolina, kicked off the" Surge Is Working" campaign on the Sunday talk shows and it has blossomed into a full fledged Spectacle of Secret Flights and newspaper editorials andRepublican presidential hopefuls. The Petraeus Report is the latest in a long line of "Much Anticipated" events and the hype is both predictable and banal beyond belief. There seems to be less general enthusiasm, but I havent been watching FOX. "Still I Look To Find A Reason To Believe"

"Working class resistance to different forms of exploitation does not in itself give the workers the capacity to organize the production/distribution process better simply on the basis of direct democracy. A social alternative is a complex system that has to be invented.Workers need (and sense they need) more than a radical political vanguard in order to resist the capitalist environment and to participate in another mode of production."
Catherine Samary