Alabama: There is an amazing book by Adam Hoschild called “Bury the chains” about the start of the anti-slavery movement.
As for your other point, I don’t see what is so principled about an “analysis” that is (a) wrong and (b) carries with it the injunction to help the wicked and powerful. Note that Lincoln was also pro-slavery when elected president. He argued that union was more important than principle and would have tolerated the continued existence of slavery if the South had not overplayed its hand.
“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” – from the first inaugural address.
So was voting as a Republican in 1859 endorsement of slavery?

Posted by: citizen k | Jul 31 2005 14:13 utc | 103

Monoclyus – I’m puzzled about how you can even bear to cite the pro-slavery hypocritical swine Pat Henry in view of your pure political stands.
“Would any one believe that I am Master of Slaves of my own purchase! I am drawn along by ye. general inconvenience of living without them, I will not, I cannot justify it.”

Posted by: citizen k | Jul 31 2005 14:47 utc | 105

It’s a sucker pitch because it is Ohio — possibly the most corrupt state in the USA for elections. If Diebiolt doesn’t want you, you may as well not run.
“Diebolt machine – worse than the Chicago Machine!”

Posted by: Scorpio | Jul 31 2005 15:34 utc | 107

jd: Forgive me, but you seem rather naive.
citizen k, in safari hat, with riding crop, looking down at his men cutting his horse’s hay: “I say, old chaps, haven’t you read the histories I’ve selected for you?”

Posted by: slothrop | Jul 31 2005 16:25 utc | 109

& k aalso to his mmen in the field – remember john smith – to wch the labouring men & women reply – which john brown. to which k responds
well well weel – history is a test my friends, my fellows – so as a betting men you will have to choose whether john brown is
a) a private investigator living out of sausilito
b) a marxist professor of the philosophy of science at the university at university of johannesburg
c) a librarian of braille texts in minnesota specialising in sanskrit
d) a real estate broker living in sussex
e) an advocate against slavery
f) a lawyer from new mexico
g) a liberian soldier
h) a kenyan bishop
& if you get that one right lads – i’m going to give you my cherished copy of norman podhoretz in a first edition & for that lassie over yonder i’m going to give you my nabakov also first edition becauseyou’re a hell of a girl
& k returns t the barrack carefully underlining the muted words of uncle harold bloom

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 31 2005 16:44 utc | 111

& the men in the field thinking as if endlessly argue with one another wasn’t john brown that constitutional lawyer from down georgetown way or if i am not completely mistaken maybe he is that logical posivist who now teaches in sydney
& the reflection continues as it always does with labouring men

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 31 2005 17:06 utc | 113

k
but what a fiasco

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 31 2005 17:12 utc | 115

straightfacedly endorse a policy that ended up with Hitler firmly in power.
Man. I just demonstrated, utilizing the history you conveniently kick into the ditch like a squashed squirrel, how the fight against the status quo social denmocrats was also a fight against fascism.
Same for us now. hurray for jd and alabama. the answer: don’t vote for the bastards until the party can demonstrate honest opposition to repubs. period.

Posted by: slothrop | Jul 31 2005 17:25 utc | 117

nationalsozialismus

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 31 2005 17:40 utc | 119

citizen k, analogies of the kind you propose are always plausible and rarely pertinent–rarely pertinent because the analogy itself forecloses the analysis of too many differences between the two poles. I think you know where I’m coming from on the subject of the Democrats in the year 2005: they (or is it we? for I’m a life-long Democrat!) are fierce upholders of the status quo. I refuse to delude myself by expecting any Democrat to lead an effective counter-movement against the American war machine. I hope that a counter-movement will emerge, but I’d be very surprised (humbled and delighted as well) if a Democrat were to lead a movement of that kind, and this for structural reasons–meaning that the Democrats have completely sold out to the Likudites without ever admitting this fact. Republicans, at least, have a visible and manifest bond with the neo-cons to push against, and it would be very interesting indeed to see a Republican lead an effective break within his or her party against its current foreign policy.

Posted by: alabama | Jul 31 2005 18:26 utc | 121

@citizen k
“I’m puzzled about how you can even bear to cite the pro-slavery hypocritical swine Pat Henry in view of your pure political stands.
Since the particular passage I quoted has absolutely nothing to do with the issue of slavery, except insofar as we should not allow ourselves to become slaves to special interests, it would be ad hominem of me not to have quoted him. The most detestable people in the world can hold worthwhile positions on some issues, and we, as rational adults, have within us the intellect to sort through and separate the philosophical wheat from the chaff. That is precisely why I can disagree with you in this thread and on this topic and still value your insight on other issues and in other threads. You seem to hold the same belief since you are objecting to inflexible purism.
If Pat Henry, Benedict Arnold or even Stalin voiced an argument that I felt were germane to the topic at hand, I would have no compunction about bringing their arguments to the table. My “pure” politics are concerned with addressing specific problems. At the time of this writing, I have no single monolithic political philosophy that I am convinced is inherently superior to all others. I only have a collection of beefs with policies that are being implemented and a firm conviction that the approaches we are using to address and solve them could not be more detrimental. I’m not selling a package; I’m examining things issue by issue and trying to address the faults I perceive as they arise.
My largest objection at this time is that “playing it safe” politically and throwing our support to those who are demonstrably at odds with a solution will not remedy anything.
I may be many things, but I am certainly not a purist. My particular take on the issue is that the people who will not consider options apart from the (increasingly misnamed) two-party system are the inflexible ones here. I do not even object to Hackett (except for his position on the Iraq War). My objection is advocating him on the sole grounds that he is a Democrat. If Hackett changed nothing, but called himself a member of the Constitution, Libertarian, Green, Reform or any other third party, nobody here would be sending him their $50… so he is not being endorsed simply because he is not a Republican. He is being endorsed because he calls himself a Democrat.
If I could be convinced that selling one’s soul would actually ease the suffering of the world (or even the citizens of the United States), I would not be so strident in my objection of it. But to support every member of the Democratic Party at this stage in history seems to me to be the penultimate expression of Leo Strauss’ Noble Lie.

Posted by: Monolycus | Jul 31 2005 20:21 utc | 123

dan of steele
How the hell can you not know what I am talking about?
Aside from the reference to Leonard Cohen, I simply listed wars that are part of the record, yet here people yammer away about being anti war. Anti which fucking war? And what does it mean to be anti war during a time of the 9.9/9.11/3.11 war? Whoever can’t answer that question is just a fucking idiot.

Posted by: razor | Jul 31 2005 20:39 utc | 125

Alabama: I’m not sure what you mean by saying the Dems have sold out to the Likudniks? Do you mean it literally in the sense that all or most Democratic office holders follow orders from Likud?
Monolycus: I certainly don’t advocate supporting people just because they are democrats. My support of Hackett is that, although I don’t agree with him on all positions, he seems like a smart decent person who would oppose torture, “unified executives”, flim-flam accounts, and the other components of the Republican regime – and he would vote against Tom Delay and his election would embolden the weak and confuse the badly intentioned.
So I agree with you that blind support of Democrats is counter-productive. I disagree with some who think that replacing a Loyal Party Member with a decent person in opposition is worthless unless the opposition person SAYS the right thing on all issues. I voted against our local Democratic representative, because he was a clown and the Dems were in a majority anyways. But I see the Republicans cementing a theocratic despotism and I’m not going to apply a purity test to those who oppose them. Reasonable people can disagree on what to do in Iraq now, the danger is that we are reaching or perhaps have already passed a tipping point in which power is so consolidated and opposition is so demonized that nothing can be done until the regime self-destructs. I think that this will be an unspeakable disaster for the world.
Citizen: Frederick Douglass and William Garrison were effective in creating the northern rejection of slavery. My reading doesn’t lead me to believe that Brown had a positive effect, but perhaps you have some suggested alternative readings?
RG: If you think America has caused damage to the world, you will be astounded at what will happen when the bourgeois democracy collapses and the new Imperialists and Apocalyptic Theocrats have free reign.

Posted by: citizen k | Jul 31 2005 22:13 utc | 127

“The Iraqi army in Fallujah, who don’t mind telling a journalist that they are all from cities in the south, don’t seem particularly thrilled to be here. (When the US tried recruiting Fallujis to fight in Fallujah, they turned their guns on the US or turned them over to the guerillas.)
    “Fallujah – death,” says one of them, drawing a finger across his throat, a motion that I would like to go one day in Iraq without seeing someone make.
    Most of the reconstruction that has taken place since the fighting has been the often partial rebuilding of houses. Iyad Allawi’s government sent 20 percent of the promised compensation.
    “It costs in Iraq right now at least 50 million dinars to build a house,” Salam said. “What is someone supposed to do if he only gets three million dinars? And these people, they have had to spend time out of their houses, and there is not a single family in Fallujah that does not have someone killed.”
    I approach some of the Marines on a base inside the city, to try and find out what life is like for them. They say there is no one at the base who can speak on the record, but I pause for a minute and chat, not terribly excited about walking back outside into the thick dust and, potentially, a line of fire. They ask why I have come, I am the first journalist they have seen in four months.
    “No one wants to talk about Fallujah,” says one of the Marines.”
david enders mother jones – truthout

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 31 2005 23:26 utc | 129

I have just finished writing a long rant about how the personal nature of some of the debate in here shows that we are making the classic mistake of confusing what someone says with the type of person they are. It got too long but I want to say this; Hackett says he called Bush an SOB. What he did was go into Iraq and participate in the slaughter of innocent civilians. I could not support such a person.
Rgiap is correct when he criticises US the nation. This country continually talks about the rights of man and democracy yet just about every action taken by this country as a nation has been to supress those rights in others.
I don’t want to confuse the actions of a nation with the morality of the individuals in that nation though. This would be as mistaken as confusing what people say with what they do because the nature of the machinery of the US state means that who people are rarely translates into what their nation does.
This becomes confusing though because we find ourselves in here continually talking about changing the point of view of individual US citizens when really we need to be discussing ways and means of destroying/modifying the machinery of nations whose actions don’t reflect it’s citizens.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 31 2005 23:52 utc | 131

debs
i don’t confuse between the policies & the person. k & razor could either be corporate lawyers, escoplian bishops or urban guerrillas – i don’t know who they are – i try to speak to what they say – not who they are – i have no idea
what i have quarreled with is a spurious form of historicism which tells a nice story but leaves something essential out – the truth
& as i imagine it is hard for people to get past the fervour or even the fanaticism of my anti imperialism – i find it difficult to get past their primitive anti communism

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 1 2005 0:05 utc | 133

@citizen k
“I certainly don’t advocate supporting people just because they are democrats. My support of Hackett is that, although I don’t agree with him on all positions, he seems like a smart decent person who would oppose torture, “unified executives”, flim-flam accounts, and the other components of the Republican regime – and he would vote against Tom Delay and his election would embolden the weak and confuse the badly intentioned.”
If that is truly your assessment of Hackett, then I can’t fault you for lending him your support. I haven’t seen much evidence to indicate that those are the directions he would actually lean in practice, but I am inherently inclined not to trust the wealthy (which Hackett undoubtably is) because it has been my experience that honest endeavors do not make a person very wealthy these days. My criticism was never that he should not be supported because of his party affiliation; my criticism was that he should not be supported exclusively for that reason.
@R’Giap
I agree with your assessment that“…usama bin laden & george bush belong to the same firm – they share the same absolutes & the same brutality. they are effective allies in the war against the rest of us
& all things connsider it is a fight of the rich against the poor – as it always has been” , but I would like to caution you against another form of absolutism when you apply the doctrine of universal complicity to all Americans. It is not that the argument is without merit, it is that it is counterproductive. Even if we all share a cultural guilt (and I extend that to citizens the world over), by applying such broad strokes to assign guilt to the greatest number, you are diluting the responsibility of the most egregious. When everyone is assigned an equal partition of blame, and guilt is turned into a faceless abstract, nothing can be done to redress anything… and the individuals who initiated and perpetrated atrocities are no longer held to any particular degree of blame.
Further, many Americans are reasonable human beings. Many of them would agree with you until you antagonize them with anti-American sentiments. If you are contributing to the failure of Americans to wake up to what they are doing, even with entirely justifiable finger-pointing, you are contributing to the very problems you denounce and share the increasingly abstract blame with them. Being self-righteous might be justified, but it is not going to make the situation better for anyone and will only prolong hostilities. I understand where you are coming from and do not disagree with you, but I would like you to consider your approach to it. Simply being anti-American and blaming American citizens for the actions of their government is not going to wake up those Americans; it’s just going to bleed away people who would otherwise support what you are saying and distances all of us from prosecuting the key perpetrators.
@Debs is dead
“This becomes confusing though because we find ourselves in here continually talking about changing the point of view of individual US citizens when really we need to be discussing ways and means of destroying/modifying the machinery of nations whose actions don’t reflect it’s citizens.”
I agree entirely, and that is why I have been so vocal about the need for a populist/labour/proletarian party that is not a part of the very machinery that needs to be destroyed (I think it is already far too corrupt to be reformed). The problem with this, as I see it, is that it takes a great deal of fortitude and the willingness to operate away from the security blanket of an established party. “Playing it safe” is what has allowed the Dems/Repubs to become an indistinguishable threat to all of us. What we Americans need now is to examine our options outside that damnable machine. At the level to which the US has become an international pariah, I can guarantee that if we do not do this voluntarily, a combined international pressure will examine other options on our behalf sooner rather than later. I don’t see how “playing it safe” politically is a viable alternative any longer.

Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 1 2005 0:46 utc | 135

g
it was not an ode to war ot its glory – it is man at his most debased – though there exist just wars & they are nearly always a case of the oppressed fighting a necessary battle against tyrants – therefore the maoist dictum – long live the victory of people’s war – tho i have an immense quarrel with what constitutes elements of the iraqui resistance – it is in essence a people’s war & in the end who the fuck am i to question the right of a people to their own self determination – whatever the outcome
what i argue aagainst here & often is imperilist wars & their legitimisation or sanitisation as if there are no cadavres at the end of it.
i cannot & will not forget that people are being torn to pieces in this war & torn to pieces because a tyranny that controls u s policy has decided they want the middle east in their pocket like so many coins
& despite all the good that was in a hackworth – the mythology of american armed force is exactly that – a myth – & you know that from yr reading of either beevor or hastings that you suggested. they were an abysmal failure in korea – an absolute disaster in vietnam & the only thing they do half well is covert operations – or if you like – murder pure & simple. it is their only military talent
& there is much in the american soul – the soul of dreisier or a hammet or a faulkner or a barnes or crane etc etc etc that have given me & have given the world something to cherish – but that was a long time ago – the culture itself has become impoverished && even the things i used to love in your culture specifically music painting a literature have turned to shit
what america does create & still creates & it is not so strange under a tyranny – is scholars of an exceptional calibre – on nearly all fronts – not because of american exceptionalism but because it is the living reaction to a dying culture
i was once interested in jurisprudence of all kinds for example & in a moment in american history there was some very interesting jurisprudence – now there is none at all – you have a supreme cout full of numbskulls & not a substantial jurist amongst them – extraordinary small minds – that a scalia & a thomas epitomise – & scalia lauded as if he was the gratest mind since a marshall or frankfurter – he hasn’t an ounce of their jurisprudential brilliance – but perhaps that was an illussion – i wanted to believe in a possible america – an america at ease with itself – it is not & we now know that in our history it never will be

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 1 2005 1:03 utc | 137

@Jassalasca Jape I realise your question was directed primarily at Monolycus but after going to that site I decided I wanted to respond as well. In someways that is the opposite of what I think is required. I’m not talking about the Mondragon model which may be perfectly fine there is no real way of telling from that site.
The site is pretty inaccessible to the average human being though because it is needlessly abstract and verbose imo a bad way of communicating ideas.
There is a certain irony in parts of this discussion. Lend Lease was Roosevelt’s way of instituting something that most people nowadays believe gave a ‘good’ outcome even though the feeling from most US citizens at the time was that being involved in another European war would be a ‘bad’ thing to do. Who really knows what FDR’s motives were although subsequent events inform us that he wasn’t motivated by concern for the wellbeing of European Jewry.
It is particularly ironic because this was probably the last time US citizens opposed involvement in war out of concern for humanity and the way that FDR ignored that feeling and bought into a war that his citizenry didn’t want him to, has been used as a model for US involvement in conflicts since then.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 1 2005 1:19 utc | 139

I wonder what would have happened if the CIO and Henry Wallace and others had adopted the KPD’s point of view in the 30’s
presented with a credible account of facts about this claim, I would agree. But that’s me.
you deceive here.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 1 2005 2:09 utc | 141

Citizen k:
>So I agree with you that blind support of Democrats is counter-productive. I disagree with some who think that replacing a Loyal Party Member with a decent person in opposition is worthless unless the opposition person SAYS the right thing on all issues.< Yes, I agree with you that a decent person in opposition is electable even if they don't say the right thing on ALL issues. However, Paul Hackett is running AS an Iraqi veteran, he is being marketed by the Democratic party because he IS an Iraqi war veteran and he shows pictures of himself with his marine buddies in Fallujah, Iraq on his web site. Cheerful, happy pictures. Therefore what Paul Hackett says about Iraq IS of primary importance since its the focus of his marketing strategy for his campaign. And might I add an issue that is literally a matter of life and death to thousands of human beings.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 1 2005 2:28 utc | 143

@Groucho I apoligise for not clearly stating what I meant which was that the will of the majority of US citizens was opposed to involvement in WW2, prior to Pearl harbor. This is why Roosevelt resorted to ploys like Lend Lease to aid Britain/France. He had no show of getting overt support for this war through a congress who knew the implacable opposition of their constituency to it.
I guess I omitted this specificity since I assumed, incorrectly that this was common knowledge.
If I had been in the US at the same time I would have agreed with the people who had either witnessed the horror that was WW1 or heard of it from those who had.
Very few of the people in any country anywhere opposed Hitler for any humanitarian reason initially. Diferent countries had different agendas and Roosevelt’s appears to have stemmed from some Anglophile tendencies more than anything else.
I wasn’t aware that I was arguing that Europe would be better off under Hitler, I believe that WW2 worst legacy was that ultimately the Nazi empire proved to be so evil that it made citizens of the victorious countries deceive themselves into thinking that they had fought a morally just war, when their entry into it had little to do with moral justness and it also led them to believe that future conflicts they involved themselves in would also carry the same aura of morality.
If you maintain I see myself on a high moral and ethical podium I suggest you reread what I write. I do not see the outcomes of the endeavours of the vast majority of people on this planet, no matter where they come from, myself included as being anything other than the result of people attempting to do the best they can in a complex and ambiguous existence.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 1 2005 2:48 utc | 145

OK, debs.
What really grated on me with your post was that you seemed to be saying that the several millions of people in the US who opposed the Iraq War did not exist.
The protest movement in this country before the war began totally amazed me. A lot of good people did everything they could to stop it.
The majority of people in this country were against the war until it started, and even then the percentace went the other way by only 10%.

Posted by: Groucho | Aug 1 2005 3:19 utc | 147

@RG:
Not much to say about it.
It is so tragic and criminal what these Bush fools have done since September 2001.
OBL sure got a bang with his 19, didn’t he now?

Posted by: Groucho | Aug 1 2005 3:37 utc | 149

For f***s sake aren’t we smart enough not to see everything in black and white? Dislike of the invasion of Iraq and the forces that created it doesn’t mean slavish adherence to fundamentalism. Opposition to US imperialism doesn’t equate to opposition to US citizens.
I’m begining to think I should have posted my rant from this am, if only to try to convince someone/anyone that this whole personal affront business that we’re all pulling is wasteful and negative. The reason I didn’t was that I wouldn’t want to read a screed like that so why would anyone else? However in it I tried to explain the difficulty I had in reconciling my rabid sometime anti-americanism with the good times I had with US friends and acquaintances.
Monocyclus pretty much said it all upthread when he pointed out to remembering giap that although his anti american imperialism statements were understandable, they didn’t contribute to any solution because many people in the US would take such raw expression personally, which would cause them to reject his contentions out of hand.
That doesn’t make rgiap wrong or those that are offended right either it just means we have all fallen into the territorial trap so frequently abused by disingenuous politicians.
When Rgiap has had a ping at Australia I have been known to reply with a post about Algeria or the oppression of Islamic schoolchildren in France. There is then a chance that rgiap will respond in kind and nothing is assisted apart from our disinclination to take notice of the other worthwhile bits of what each other is saying.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 1 2005 3:51 utc | 151

The navies of the world made the switch from coal to oil as a prelude to WWI. Thus the skirmishes in Mexico concerning America, Germany and Japan.
Germany did not have its own sources of oil. In World War II, Germany fought to get the oil in Russia and lost. The fighing in North Africa dealt directly with the issue of denying Germany oil to fuel its war machine.
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, they left the oil storage tanks alone, though they were in easy striking distance, and it the people who could keep them from that oil.
America was able, at that time, to supply its own oil for the myriad military uses of that black gold.
If Germany had been able to get to the oil, the outcome of WWII might have been different, in the same way that American Generals needed their pipelines to keep feeding their tanks and making material and keep advancing on the western front. the same with the eastern front. The same with North Africa. Saudi Arabia’s oil came on line in 1938, so that WWII also marked the beginning of the fight for the middle east in relation to oil, not empire.
And now we’re seemingly at the end of a cycle of wars based upon the limited nature of oil and the military’s reliance on it, corresponding with the dawn of peak oil.
Einstein said he didn’t know how the third world war would be fought, but that the one after that would be fought with sticks and stones.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 1 2005 4:40 utc | 153

Good thoughts there Anon @ 1240

Posted by: Groucho | Aug 1 2005 4:56 utc | 155

@Jassa
“Monolycus: Something like this? Or the party of the Republicans or Democrats, but different? Just (genuinely) curious.”
I can’t say for sure, Jassa. I couldn’t read much of the page you linked to (I kept getting Spanish “no access allowed” messages). I’ve not heard of the Mondragon system, but if it is what I got the impression it is from the bits I was able to access, then I think it is very, very much the way to go.
Autonomous collectives (geez, I hope I’m not starting to sound like Dennis) empower people from the bottom-up, give meaning to their lives as their labour is something in which they are actually invested, promote greater access and equity for the members and, to top off, are more environmentally-friendly than the corporate structure (which I hasten to remind everyone is less than one-hundred years old and does not, repeat NOT, represent a “natural” social or economic development). Problem is, these collectives only work if there are a large number of them. One isolated commune in Spain (or anywhere else) is just a monastic retreat even if it serves as a nice model. I’ll have to look more deeply into it, but it sounds like a start.
As for the “like the party of Republicans or Democrats but different” question… I’d have to say very, very different. Political parties are not part of the US Constitutional arrangement. Our founding fathers were familiar with interest groups but not old-boy’s-clubs on this scale. If we are talking about making a genuine political change in the form of a new party, it would have to have some very binding checks and balances written into it to avoid becoming just another corrupt player like our friends “The Only Game In Town Party”.
This is a danger inherent to all nascent movements, from class revolutions to labor unions; when they are in their infancy and addressing a specific evil, they are necessary vehicles for social justice… but they quickly become the new evil once they gain formal recognition and start becoming exploited. In order not to be trading a frying pan for a fire, some method of transparency must be implented into their design. That is why I am fond of the community-level model. Local chapters, each having equal weight, inhibit a movement from becoming another bloated political-favour machine as soon as they win some public recognition.

Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 1 2005 6:03 utc | 157

@Monolycus, Debs
Sorry about the links, I hadn’t checked them. I studied Mondragon (cursorily) long ago, and I just grabbed the site reference as a shorthand explanation. Sorry for the static.
As I understand it, the Mondragon cooperative system is a closed-circuit economic system supporting both business finance and worker retirement retirement. Mondragon is a Basque community, which suffered from lack of services and economic depression. The Mondragon model was introduced by a Catholic priest who was also a smart economist (and, again if I remember correctly, a returnee). It is an economic model that does not aspire to affect Spanish national politics directly.
A common problem for cooperatives is that the value of the enterprise builds up, and this inflates the value of the initial shares. The founders have a disincentive to issue new shares, because their shares effectively represent their retirement fund. The end result is generally that the initial shareholders (originally the workers who did the buyout) ultimately sell their interest to some larger firm or holding company, and the coop dies.
If I remember correctly, Mondragon solves this problem through a cooperative banking system. I don’t remember the details. Here’s a better link.
Your response is interesting. I was curious about whether you felt some alternative principle of organization was desireable. As you point out, political parties on the old boy network plan (“faction” as Federalist 10 has it, I think) have a way of degrading into raw pork barrel frenzy and tyranny of the majority, and that way lies ever expanding industry capture and then oligarchy. Something else would be required to prevent that from happening, although I have no idea whether Mondragon fits into the picture.
The problem is that the props for collective action, on the Mondragon or any other peaceful model, depend ultimately on the legal environment. If some organization comes to be perceived as a threat to the hegemony of an R/D hammerlock on political power, its survival, or its cohesiveness, can be torpedoed by changes to law (i.e. the relevant corporate law or the tax codes).
That said, the idea that organizational structure is a threshold issue is interesting. I’ll settle back to lurking now …

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Aug 1 2005 12:56 utc | 159

k
both you & comrade slothrop agree on that point that imperialism has no national character. i believe the opposite to be true despite the fact that as part of trnsnational corporations others are beneficiaries, secondary beneficiaries of that empire
i will argue this with my 72 point cliches some time this week
slothrop – the cd morning glory – tim buckley – sublime & alabama has a precise mind in the affairs of the heart

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 1 2005 19:53 utc | 161

@Alabama:
if, indeed, an effective movement against this war is ever to arise at any moment, anywhere, it will have to do so from outside the American political system–from outside, I’ll make bold to say, the territorial boundaries of the USA itself
Well that’s rather harsh and a little too much hyperbole for my taste.
See my post 1119 PM, 31 July.

Posted by: Groucho | Aug 1 2005 20:46 utc | 163

What if nationalism is merely an extension of humanity’s innate territorial jealousy? Some countries have a sense of patriotism which appears to rule most of their decisions but others don’t. Is this because the ones that do have been subjected to ‘winding up’ by politicians seeking to control their sheeple? Or is it because the ones that don’t haven’t perceived threats to their territorial integrity.
When one considers how infrequently a country such as the US has had its territory threatened against the strength of patriotic fervour in that nation it is difficult to accept that it’s flag waving jingoism is a reaction to actual physical threat.
However I also believe that it would be a mistake to think that just because US agression likely stems more from a systemic abuse of it’s people’s instinctual self protection, that an actual threat from outside wouldn’t inspire a huge self protective reaction.
So when Alabama says that “if, indeed, an effective movement against this war is ever to arise at any moment, anywhere, it will have to do so from outside the American political system–from outside, I’ll make bold to say, the territorial boundaries of the USA itself.” I must respectfully disagree. Any attempt to force change upon a nation from outside it’s borders will always meet with far more resistance. People won’t even stop to consider the merit of the change before it is rejected.
If Stalin et al hadn’t commingled the spread of Marxist ideology with Russian Imperialism, it would have been much tougher for US politicians to convince their people to resist it. How many times were dedicated and able labour leaders dismissed as “Russian Agents”? The McCarthy witch hunt got its impetus from politicians convincing the people that US communists weren’t operating in the best interests of US citizens, they were “selling atom secrets to the Russkies” etc.
MoA is a compelling site for many us and one of the reasons for that is that there is a genuine interchange of ideas from people generally opposed to the invasion of Iraq, and those people appear to be about equally spread between those that live in the US and those that don’t. This gives all of us a unique oportunity to ‘reality check’ our thoughts.
Time and time again we have seen what happens if a US resident makes a statement that appears to place the interests of people in the US above those elsewhere or someone outside the US says something that denigrates US people and places their needs below those of the rest of the world. There is generally an explosion of invective which never advances the discussion.
Any attempt from outside the US to bring change to that country would meet with such strong resistance that it could only be introduced by force of arms which IMO would make it both self defeating and temporary.
Those of us on the outside can make gentle suggestions but overt cheerleading much less any indication of ‘glee’ at the US predicament will hinder any change.
My ‘gentle suggestion’ is that like so many other places in the world, change must come from outside the established political order. We can debate the best strategy/outcome for that change, in the end that change will come when US citizens force change upon the status quo.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 1 2005 22:10 utc | 165

this time alabama & i converge. momentarily my friend – tho yr counsel on affairs of the heart was wiser than i wanted it to be.
as i’ve written here before – even extra parliamentiary opposition seems difficult in the u s based on two levels – a greater part of the people believing against all evidence to the contrary that the situation – politicaly, judicially, will return to normal. for me, such a return is not envisigable in the immediate or near future – if at all. the other, is that the repressive state apparatus in america is finely tuned for any effective opposition & it would not be strange for a person to understand what may be the cost of an effective engagement; the patriot acts are not written for foreign warriors but for internal dissent & an unprecedented control over the population – though it seems rupert murdoch & his allies have corrupted potentialities
the apaic connection & the righteous attack on it by alabama are not – i repeat not dressed up anti semitism. the extreme right of both countries have a mutual benfiting relatonship. the attack on aipac needs to be made with vigour. they are but one element of the corruption of the political process & there are many
on nights like these i wonder where he 12 million people are while iraquis are dying in great numbers & i want to say to in trlation to the ‘sob story’ that on any given month for over 50 years at least 3000 people die a month directly or indirectly from the policies of u s imperialism & some of that number within the belly of the beast itself
what hapened on sept 11 was armed propoganda – it was not & never contained any real military threat. in much the same way that the fraktion armee rouge in germany never posed any real threat to the state – in fact it was quickly absorbed by it & allowed for necessary changes in jurisprudence. the red brigades in italy are another question – because there it was carried over to the mass & it possesses deep & strong connections to the people. however, even in this case – buiness(mafia) continued as usual & the right was able to use its strategy of tension to allow italy to go from one mafiosi (andreotti) to another (berlusconi)
the wars against the arab people is a war of rich against poor. it was set in motion a long time before the cadre of 19 conducted their action
i’m not a brute razor but i’m not going to accept special pleading. america is not a victim though it is playing it as austria did until waldheim was completely unmsked & so too the fraudelent rewrting of austrian history

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 1 2005 22:27 utc | 167

Debs is dead, I’ve had some experience with American protest movements on the inside. I admire their courage, their energy, their ingenuity and good faith. But there are many such protests on many topics, only a few gaining the intensity and focus that can alter a bad trend in an urgent way. Has the anti-war movement risen to the scope and motion of a movement, from within, that could compel the civilian-military American institutions to change its ways? It hasn’t, and it won’t–least of all in the political sphere of our party politics. So something from elsewhere else will have to fan the flames, And this is hardly news. After all, the Abolitionist Movement, the one that citizen k so rightly applauds–did not “start” in the United States, It did nothing of the sort: Abolitionism was imported from England, mostly by clerics under the influence of Bishop Wilberforce, long before anything of the kind got started in New England in 1837.

Posted by: alabama | Aug 1 2005 22:38 utc | 169

“criticisms are come from some sort of knee-jerk anti-americanism”
should of course read: criticisms aren’t coming from some sort of knee-jerk anti-americanism

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 1 2005 23:03 utc | 171

@RG:
Get the landing craft, and the Chinese 4th Field Army Propaganda and Debate Elements ready to liberate us,for, as we have just been informed, we Americans cannot possibly accomplish anything, in this area, by ourselves.
Alabama, you are starting to sound as humorous as Tom Friedman. Need to stop reading NYT so much.
Aside from what the protest movement did, or did not produce, it looks like to me there is a plan to get most troops out of Iraq before the 06 elections.
This was foisted on Bush by the declining popularity of this war.
I must have missed something.

Posted by: Groucho | Aug 1 2005 23:07 utc | 173

That was a low blow Groucho. And I come to ‘bama’s defense. I was in a couple of those big antiwar gatherings that gained so little recognition. The systematic wall of public mind control has grown since then, and so yes it is helpful, or even necessary to get help from abroad.
That said, I do expect a coup to be executed soon by the factions of govt. that have been dissed so badly by the neocons. We have reached the tipping point.

Posted by: rapt | Aug 1 2005 23:19 utc | 175

And when I say 2-3 million that was in the major Metro areas. Little cities and towns had little protests.
And of course everbody in the world can help end this.

Posted by: Groucho | Aug 1 2005 23:34 utc | 177

war what fucking war? it’s been a war all my fucking life

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 2 2005 0:06 utc | 179

Maybe for you, RG, but not for us:
At most, 500,000 American troops are at risk of being deployed to these war theaters at some time. Assume that for each of them some 20 members of the wider family sweat with fear when they hear that a helicopter crashed in Afghanistan or that X number of soldiers or Marines were killed or seriously wounded in Iraq. It implies that no more than 10 million Americans have any real emotional connection to these wars.
LINK

Posted by: Groucho | Aug 2 2005 0:29 utc | 181

Aside from what the protest movement did, or did not produce, it looks like to me there is a plan to get most troops out of Iraq before the 06 elections.
This was foisted on Bush by the declining popularity of this war.
Not so fast, Groucho. See this.

Aug. 8, 2005 issue – Donald Rumsfeld doesn’t like long-term occupations. He’s always made that clear. After U.S. forces took Baghdad, the Defense secretary had plans to reduce the U.S. presence in Iraq to 40,000 troops by the fall of 2003. Then the insurgency struck.
Now Rumsfeld is quietly moving toward his original goal—three years late…..
…..earlier this year the Pentagon had been mum on a withdrawal timetable, in part so as not to encourage the insurgents. Now the conditions for U.S. withdrawal no longer include a defeated insurgency, Pentagon sources say. The new administration mantra is that the insurgency can be beaten only politically, by the success of Iraq’s new government.
…
The Bush administration wants to pre-empt growing public pressure for withdrawal, which could give the insurgents a Vietnam-like strategic goal. Military planners, meanwhile, are deeply concerned about driving away Army careerists and recruits if current deployments are forced into 2007. If the U.S. Army has to do another rotation into Iraq in the fall of 2006 to keep force levels up to their current 138,000, it “goes off a cliff,” says retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey.

And this.

This week’s talk of “withdrawal in 2006” (20,000 troops, possibly, if the Constitution gets finished, things go well with the elections, the insurgents convert to Tibetan Buddhism, etc.) is a sham, as the New York Times’ Bob Herbert points out. The long-term goal was, and still is, to establish a permanent base of operations in
Iraq to control the world’s last great oil reserves. That doesn’t mean there couldn’t very well be troop reductions next year. But they may have more to do with human resources than human rights.

As to the lack of an antiwar movement in this country, maybe a little more is happening than is commonly acknowledged.

Frustrated with seeing the largest street protests since Vietnam marginalized by the mainstream media and dismissed by the president as a “focus group,” thousands of antiwar youth are targeting this Achilles’ heel of the neocon master plan.
“We think counter-recruitment is the smartest way to intervene with the war in Iraq,” John Sellers, founder of the Ruckus Society, told me. “Until Rumsfeld’s robot army is up and running, they’re going to need young men and women to fight. We feel the most effective strategy is to support the youth who are questioning our nation’s values and resisting war for resources.”
Ruckus has teamed up with Code Pink, the League of Independent Voters and other antiwar groups, to create Notyoursoldier.org, an organizing hub for counter-recruiting actions…..

Are their efforts having any effect? From the second link:

Last week, the Army’s top personnel officer announced the Army won’t meet its recruiting goals for 2005. So far this year, the active-duty Army has enlisted 47,121 recruits. The goal was 80,000. There’s little chance to make up the gap the official conceded…..

What anti-war effort there is has targeted the War Party’s most vulnerable area: the supply of kids willing to be cannon fodder. This isn’t eye-catching march-in-the-street stuff, which doesn’t work anyway since BushCo ignores it and demonizes the participants. But educating the kids who are going to risk their lives for this imperial lie is effective. If the cannon fodder won’t volunteer, the Empire has a problem.
So, who’s paying for our patriotism?

President Bush assures us that the ongoing twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are worth the sacrifices they entail. Editorialists around the nation agree and say that a steadfast American public was willing to stay the course.
Should anyone be surprised by this national resolve, given that these wars visit no sacrifice of any sort — neither blood nor angst nor taxes — on well over 95 percent of the American people?
At most, 500,000 American troops are at risk of being deployed to these war theaters at some time. Assume that for each of them some 20 members of the wider family sweat with fear when they hear that a helicopter crashed in Afghanistan or that X number of soldiers or Marines were killed or seriously wounded in Iraq. It implies that no more than 10 million Americans have any real emotional connection to these wars.

A large part of the neocon strategy has been to insulate the populace from any whiff of sacrifice, relying on just a small percentage of less well off people to pay the real [American] price of this war. Get enough of those people to opt out and the Empire either has to change course or go to the draft and face a much larger possibility of popular unrest. To minimize the potential for popular opposition to the war to form, they needed a quick victory and to limit the percentage of the population that would feel the effects of the war.
The article continues:

The administration and Congress have gone to extraordinary lengths to insulate voters from the money cost of the wars — to the point even of excluding outlays for them from the regular budget process. Furthermore, they have financed the wars not with taxes but by borrowing abroad.
The strategic shielding of most voters from any emotional or financial sacrifice for these wars cannot but trigger the analogue of what is called “moral hazard” in the context of health insurance, a field in which I’ve done a lot of scholarly work. There, moral hazard refers to the tendency of well-insured patients to use health care with complete indifference to the cost they visit on others…..But if all but a handful of Americans are completely insulated against the emotional — and financial — cost of war, is it not natural to suspect moral hazard will be at work in that context as well?
A policymaking elite whose families and purses are shielded from the sacrifices war entails may rush into it hastily and ill prepared, as surely was the case of the Iraq war…..

I believe we could apply the author’s moral hazard thesis to most of the country, not just the elites, especially the flag-waving decal-pasting morons who mindlessly support this war without the vaguest clue about the real reasons we are there. Things aren’t going according to the original plan, but it isn’t the lagging support for the war that is forcing a change in strategy; it is the inability of the small segment of Americans who are actually fighting the war to continue doing it that is the motivating factor.

Posted by: lonesomeG | Aug 2 2005 0:47 utc | 183

Good Cites LonesomeG:
but it isn’t the lagging support for the war that is forcing a change in strategy; it is the inability of the small segment of Americans who are actually fighting the war to continue doing it that is the motivating factor.
I think it’s probably some of both.
May be wrong.

Posted by: Groucho | Aug 2 2005 1:01 utc | 185

The middle section of this thread reads like a Woody Allen comedy essay circa 1968.
Comedic relief is sometimes necessary, Mats.

Posted by: Groucho | Aug 2 2005 1:04 utc | 187

Thank you for the history Rgiap. I for one value greatly your experience and your perspective, mostly because it differs so much from mine and reinforces my limited world view.

Posted by: rapt | Aug 2 2005 2:11 utc | 189

@rgiap if you consider yerself brutish fine although I don’t. There is much in your history that is common to mine and much that isn’t.
NZ is the country that I avoided for most of my life (Gough Whitlam was sacked but Norman Kirk was almost certainly murdered) and even now I find being here difficult and would not be living here if mine were the only considerations.
I vent my spleen in other way than MoA and if I am coming across as some sort of self appointed ‘moderator/mediator’ I regret it.
When I have attempted to temper anything that you may have posted it has been more in an attempt to convince others not to take this criticism of US imperialism personally than to chide rgiap.
Anyway without lowering MoA to some sort of middle class exercise in esteem building through mutual admiration let me say that I’m honoured that you directed this explanation to debs.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 2 2005 2:15 utc | 191

but I am concerned that the humanists among us find it difficult to commit to any action local or national when we feel doing so means that some death and/or injustice will be ignored.
we’ve been ignoring death and injustice — or rather, murder and injustice — for so long… still to this day the majority of Americans believe that the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary and justified, or are fully aware of how many Americans died in the Viet Nam adventure but have no idea how many Vietnamese were killed by the US… and so on. ignoring death is something we are very good at — that all populations can be very good at. recent book about the Rwanda genocide underscores this amazing, terrifying ability of human beings to come to terms with mass murder, so long as it serves our private interests. even those wielding the machetes or dropping the napalm can reconcile themselves to their “work,” so how much easier for a comfortable public a thousand miles removed to ignore what its occupying army does…
I share your unease DebsID, and your sense of moral inadequacy, wrt my own response. what is needed to empower all of us imho is a mass movement — that is what it takes, traditionally, to change the course of national policy. right now for whatever reasons — media control, dumbing-down, fear, pick your poison — the public mood in the US seems to be one of obedience, conformity, acquiescence. we meekly submit to stupid “security” procedures in airports that we all know are a joke. we meekly submit to having our constitution revoked. why do we continue to be meek? I dunno. it’s not even true that most of us have security or a good job or the prospect of a brighter future — the usual reasons why people are happy with the system. where’s the mass unrest as ordinary Americans are slowly deprived of their traditional privileges, even their pension plans looted by the plutes?
how do we build a mass movement? all those that I can remember were built from the grass roots up, though “leadership cadres” and “vanguardists” always play a role as propagandists and rhetors.
meanwhile some of us dream of flight, some have already run (for euroland, for canada, for s or meso america). some keep hoping for reform from within, that the ailing system can fix itself. I no longer know what strategy I think will succeed in turning the tide. what I do know is that the damage is mounting with every passing week — damage to the biotic infrastructure (aka our life support systems), damage to international law and stability, damage to the economic order on which my parents’ and my own security were predicated, vile and often lethal damage to millions of people in “those other countries” that we (the royal we, that is, the “we” who are complicit by our meekness in the actions of our masters) invade, destabilise, impoverish, loot, destroy. it is like watching someone bleed to death while bystanders and paramedics argue urgently and passionately about the best course of treatment.
and vexingly I have no convincing answer to the burning question “What Is To Be Done”? all I feel, day by day, scandal by scandal, with the drip, drip, drip of bad news, is despair. maybe despair really is a sin.

Posted by: DeAnander | Aug 2 2005 2:31 utc | 193

And so it’s interesting to come here, from my physical home out in Bush’s America, otherwise known as DumbFuckistan, and listen to the intellectual left explain why there is no organized opposition.
1. Checklistism. I won’t support an ally unless they sign the checklist on some item X. i.e. someone who is steadfastly against torture and oligarchy does not sign onto my preferred but both dangerous and unpopular solution in Iraq – instead I am, de-facto, supporting the pro-torture, pro-sleaze candidate.
2. Embarassment about the crassness of America. A nation founded by peasants and workers and slaves and the refuse of all nations – NASCAR and hoops and vulgar jokes and grubby “traders” , skeptical of them big word perfessors.
3. Anti-reformism. We all know that the reformers who brought social democracy to Europe and the New Deal to the US are crap, unlike the steadfast dialecticians who either lost big time paving the way for Hitler or won and built their own police states.
4. Odd conspiracy theories – it’s the Jews, er, Likud.
5. And help from our European friends who know it’s all the Yanks fault because when the Beligians, for example, had free range, they epitomized the milk, the very clotted cream, of human kindness towards the natives.
What an appealing package. Amazing the streets are not packed with the revolutionary masses.

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 2 2005 3:08 utc | 195

My goodness Razor, what a huff you are in.

Posted by: Mrs. cleaver | Aug 2 2005 3:54 utc | 197

@Citizen K:
It wasn’t the jews, er Likud?

Posted by: Henry Ford | Aug 2 2005 4:20 utc | 199