Constant decentralization builds collective strength

Constant decentralization builds collective strength

What I’m trying to get at with this one is that sharing information, knowledge and skills disperses influence/power among more people, which strengthens and spreads organizational capacity.

Over-centralization generates hierarchical concentrations of influence/power that make an organization brittle, rigid, unadaptable, and vulnerable (too much strength concentrated at the top makes decapitation a simple way to break a structure). It also strangles the initiative and creativity of those involved, and restricts collective evolution.

This is not to pit the two energies against each other as “dispersal good; centralization bad” — without some centralization of political line, aka political unity, coordinated action can’t even happen. I see centralization/unity/coordination and decentralization/dispersal/democracy as two states of a dynamic wave — you can’t really separate them — each exists in relation to the other. What goes wrong is when the balance is off — then things get wobbly and off-kilter. Vigilance and care — by everyone!! — to constantly recalibrate is needed to stay in balance.

Take care and stay vigilant as you navigate the tricky waters, my friends 🌊

What does this moment ask of us?

What does this moment ask of us?

As waves of crises loom and crash, we can feel overwhelmed — there’s so much crying out to be done!! We may feel urges to respond to every outrage, but individually we just can’t — the system’s attacks come fast and furious from every side.

But collectively we face in all directions, and as a whole we do respond to every outrage, in countless ways.

The battlefield is everywhere. Each of us can figure out where and how we can access levers of change, where we each fit into the larger collective global movement. We can strenghten our connections so our work mutually builds on each other’s and co-evolves.

It’s a learning process with constant adjustments and realignments, mistakes and lessons, learning by trying and by doing and by communicating and sharing. As long as we keep oriented toward a future where all can thrive free of exploitation and oppression — and if we each do our part to get there, large or seemingly small (it’s never, never insignificant) — then we have a chance.

Love to all as you engage in your own ways ❤🌱🌞

Forced to become a commodity

Forced to become a commodity

Capitalism is so voracious that it can even commodify the critique and resistance that’s meant to undermine it. It’s a pretty damn formidable opponent. As I was thinking about that, some things that aren’t commodified also came to mind, many of them deemed “worthless” in market terms, but not at all so in broader reality… like a feather on the ground, a frog’s chirp outside the window, a knowing glance of shared understanding. Love to you all today as you defend your hearts and labors against commodification 💚

Comrades

“Comrades” is about that feeling you get when you’re working collectively for a common purpose, toward a common goal. You’re simultaneously able to multiply yourself, expand your voice and reach beyond what you ever dreamed possible or will ever know about, like ripples in a pond, and at the same time you lose yourself in a larger entity like one bird swooping in perfect unison with your flock, the flock you love and belong to deep in your soul, so that “I” and “we” lose any difference in meaning, like playing your specific notes with your specific instrument in a great orchestra, contributing with all your overflowing heart, both lost in and essential to the sound that’s infinitely more magnficent than anything you could ever do or create alone.

I made this drawing to share and spread that feeling, in the hope that it will resonate with you and reverberate further outward, that it will spark you to recall and/or anticipate this experience with optimism and the knowledge of profound connection with all the many people around the world who are on the same side, trying in all sincerity, near and far, past present and future, known and unknown in a great web of messy but directed energy and effort to wrest a just and caring way of life out of the remnants of this oppressive exploitative ecocidal nightmare — and that it will encourage you to take your part, whatever that may be, in this collective struggle.

Ink, watercolor, acrylic marker, and color pencils on paper, 2022

United, the working class can end capitalist exploitation

United, the working class can end capitalist domination

There are two ways out of capitalist hell:

One is breakdown and overwhelming disasters generated by the contradictions of the system itself, that ultimately make it impossible for capitalists to continue to run their enterprises. Their desperate attempts to retain power through the uncontrollable unraveling will generate a snowballing of mass suffering and death, with possibly an unlivable planet at the end of it, a silent steaming radioactive rock.

The other way out is for the international working class, through a collective act of self-emancipation, and leading an alliance of all people resisting capitalism-imperialism, to take away the power of the capitalist class while building new social structures capable of meeting the needs of humanity as an integral element of the living Earth.

Everything for Everyone

Everything for everyone

Private ownership and monopolizing of the means of living is a recent social construct that has no legitimacy. It’s an absurdity, an ultra-violent crime of mass murder. We’ve been indoctrinated for generations to accept domination and call it freedom. The natural world gives to one another. Our separation from that web of reciprocity was/is massively wrong. We need to repair our relationship with Earth, with everyone in the largest sense.

“Overthrow” and other verb choices

Throw them off!

When we talk about the need to transform society to one that isn’t dominated by capitalism, there are various verbs that offer themselves, each with its own nuances of meaning that map distinct action pathways. 

Do we “end” capitalism? I like this verb for its broad open-endedness, its ability to encompass the totality of all the different aspects of the mode of production that need to cease. But the shadow side of this word is its shapeshifting ambiguity — it could also shrink its meaning to imply that capitalism is a bad behavior that we could just decide to stop doing, or a policy that could be abolished through an act of will.

Which brings us to the phrase Abolish Capitalism — which has a formal institutional vibe that doesn’t resonate with me very much, as if it’s saying that it could be ended by a legal maneuver, by decree. And we all know that The Law is capitalist law, so that’s not happening.

Transforming capitalism is just reforming it, so I don’t like that word used that way. But to transform society away from or beyond capitalism — that works.

Overthrow is a frequently employed verb, describing the removal of the ruling class from power. It refers specifically to the political field, so what about the rest? Capitalism has invaded/overtaken/harnessed not just politics but all areas of human life: culture, ideology, spirituality — and it’s specifically rooted in the economy. The word “overthrow” doesn’t speak directly to that. BUT — taking the economy out of capitalist control (seizing the means of production) is not just confined to the economic field but also ecompasses a political act. It is a fight for the power to decide how society’s needs will be met. In order to take over the economy, the working class will have to conquer political power — this is why the political conflict is said to be the “principal contradiction” of a class-divided society. Its the battle that needs to be won in the superstructure as a condition of the fundamental contradiction being addressed in the economic base.

Sometimes I use the phrase “kill capitalism” as an emotionally charged and very simple expression of hostile antagonism. The verb “kill” reverberates with the implication that capitalism is alive. While perhaps capital isn’t a sentient being, it does have its own self-propelled motion, its own life in a sense, independent from human will. (Which is why overthrowing the capitalist ruling class, while necessary, won’t be enough to actually put an end to capitalism — even though it’s an important step that can’t be avoided).

“Smash” or “crush” serve to communicate hostile antagonism too. I liked these words better when I was younger for some reason (haha). Now I feel that they’re kind of one-sided, that they carry an aura of nihilism. Like the prospect of capitalism collapsing with no organized counterforce arising to replace it as a better structure for human society, thus leaving the field open for exploiters and oppressors to reorganize, the non-class-conscious contexts in which these verbs are often used bring to my mind a chaotic and uncontrolled slide into even worse widespread violent misery. (Should the words be asserted by working class-led organizations, though, my misgivings would transform into excited hope).

I really like the totality and grit expressed in “overcome,” though I’m uneasy with the lack of class antagonism in that word, as if capitalism is a problem we can solve within ourselves, like shaking an addiction or climbing a mountain.

I’m constantly looking for ways to express in combination the deliberate ending of capitalism intertwined with the rising of lifeways that allow for a thriving world. “Transformation” is what I gravitate to (referring not to capitalism of course, but to human society as a whole). Even that nice big word doesn’t really encompass the whole thing exactly the way I’d like to express it, though.

Maybe that’s where metaphors and images come in.

Dialectics: fundamental contradiction

Purple and pink spiral snakes surrounded by stars

Every phenomenon contains interdependent contradictory elements that are in constant push-pull motion. Real life (as opposed to theoretical abstraction) is complex, and discrete entities encompass multitudes of contradictory processes, are affected by other various phenomena beyond their boundaries (boundaries that are often arbitrarily conceptualized), and are themselves elements of larger contradictions. Still, each has an essence, a fundamental contradiction that determines its existence, nature, and development — one that if its dominant aspect was overturned, would transform the whole phenomenon into something completely different from its previous self, with a new contradiction at its core.

Revolution: overturning

Mammal holding Revolution flag with insect smiling

A revolution is a total transformation of society. What is accepted as normal today will seem absurd tomorrow. 

Revolution is not just fixing what’s wrong with the picture; it’s breaking the entire framework. 

It is an overturning, an overcoming of all the imposed restraints that are preventing us from being in harmony with our surroundings and each other.

Uprisings, insurrections and general strikes are not in themselves revolution — though these can be revolutionary tools to weaken dominant structures while building new ones.

An aggregation of reforms doesn’t add up to a revolution — though fighting for reforms can strengthen us to push the struggle further toward that horizon.

Revolution is not simply a change in government, but requires the overthrow of all exploiters. It is the self-emancipation of the working class, a take-over and redistribution of power that ends structural exploitation in the social economy, and opens the door for power itself to dissipate.

Revolution goes beyond expropriating and sharing existing wealth; it is a reconception of what constitutes value.

We will transform the way we collectively meet our needs, make decisions, and understand ourselves. Our concepts of “we” expand far beyond current boundaries, as we move toward lifeways for a thriving world.

Revolution is an emergent process that can’t be commanded, but on the other hand is completely contingent on our actions.

Intentions for 2022: affirmations for revolution

After spending some time reviewing and thinking about my art practice of the last few years, during which I tried a lot of different things and learned much, but was consequently a little all over the place, I’ve clarified what I plan to focus on for the coming year (or more): Affirmations for Revolution.

I’d like the project to consolidate some thoughts based on my experiences and observations from decades of being involved in collective political initiatives and making art.

My intention currently is to articulate an overarching conceptual framework (worldview) using art with accompanying short texts. There will be different groups of image/text pieces digging into topics like economics, politics, culture, class struggle, emancipation, blahbity blah — plus sub-topics galore.

I’ve tried writing a lot of this out before, but all the overlapping facets and looping trails of logic have been too overwhelming and I’ve gotten bogged down, lost. I have a hard time with long forms of writing. Maybe breaking it down into little chunks will help me sort it out. We’ll see!

Ideas about these topics are constantly appearing and evolving in my mind, so whatever I write/paint/draw isn’t meant as a prescription for anyone else. But I want to share as a way to connect (which is one major purpose of making art) and in case they may be useful to others. We all shape culture by whatever we do and say; I’d like my small contribution to be intentional as much as possible. Or maybe the process will be interesting. Feel free to take whatever resonates with you, and leave the rest.

Art as Connection and Disconnection

I remember years ago walking down the street looking at trees, wondering what do we need art for, what do we need paintings of trees for, when the trees themselves are right here and they’re more beautiful that any interpretation of them can possibly be, and we can simply look at them directly? 

I wondered: isn’t art just a poor substitute for reality? Doesn’t a painting of a tree (for example) just put itself between us and the real tree like a wall, allowing us to ignore the real tree and care less about it, in favor of the fake image? We might assume that depictions of nature in art are meant to connect us with it and help us appreciate it more, but doesn’t image-making in fact distract our attention away from the real world and thereby contribute to the disconnection of humans from the rest of nature, which is a big part of the problem that’s facilitating the destruction of the planet?

I agonized over this, felt confused, and for a long time didn’t draw the beings around me. But I draw some of them now, from an impulse and with a feeling that is the opposite of disconnection, but is more like respect, reverence, love — and wanting to share that with other humans. The act of drawing someone can be a process of learning to know them. It’s close observation and bringing whom we see into our own bodies from our eyes to our hands as we create an interpretation that’s a combination of them with elements of our own imagination. It’s a very intimate act of connection that should be done thoughtfully and with respect.

Recently I drew a spiny orb weaver. I’ve also painted one, and made a wood cut-out of one. I am aware of a danger of symbolizing them. I think about this as potentially a problem.

I see these kind of spiders every day. I say hello to them. I try to stay out of their way, ducking under their webs rather than breaking them, if they’re in the middle of my path. I notice them with an open heart, with affection. And yet with a very few exceptions I don’t recognize or distinguish between individual ones. I like them as a species — I’m not sure that’s enough.

Do I offer the real ones less attention because I’ve made images of them? Does looking at the art take away from interacting with the spiders outside? I reflect on my behavior and don’t think that’s happening. Instead, creating and viewing the images seems to lead me to be more aware of the real ones because it would feel weird, out of alignmnet, hypocritical, to care more for the images than for the beings themselves. The art brings the spiders into more mindspace.

When I share the images, I’m inviting others to offer attention and connect together in care for these kind of spiders (and individual ones, plus other kinds of spiders by extension). The image is saying: spiny orb weavers are important. They are not to be dismissed or ignored. They are to be honored and respected, known and loved. When we see them don’t sweep their webs aside, but say hello.

Still I recognize the dialectic at work here, a unity of opposites: the danger of disconnection through mediation is always present and intertwined with art-as-connection. It’s not one way or the other but always both, and our intention matters, and it’s necessary to be careful.

5 Simple Daily Lifestyle Changes to Help Save the Planet

First the context:

A couple of years ago I received an email from a small local paper that included an invitation to be interviewed for an article about this:

“In our next issue, we want to include an article about How to better
take care of our environment. We want to draft an article with those
little actions people can do to help reduce problems regarding climate
change, protect ecosystems and natural resources such as water; the
ocean, and in general our planet. For instance, cleaning up beaches,
not buying bottled water, recycling, etc.”

My reply:

“Thank you for thinking of me! Would there be room in your article for me to address the overall systemic transformations that would be needed to stop environmental destruction? From my worldview, I can’t really address individual actions without putting it in a social context that questions the entire economy. If that would work for your piece, then I would like to participate. I could talk with you later today or sometime tomorrow. If not, then I’m probably not the right person to interview.”

We went back and forth a couple of times and I was pretty clear where I stood:

“I should tell you that my perspective is anti-capitalist, which might be kind of beyond the scope of your article.”

…but she said she still wanted to do it. So I talked with her on the phone, and then wrote up the following and sent it to her.

I never heard from her again…

****

5 Simple Daily Lifestyle Changes to Help Save the Planet:

1. Unite with your coworkers to struggle collectively against your employers for higher wages and shorter workdays in order to weaken the capitalist class and strengthen the working class as a whole to take over the means of production, defeat capitalism/imperialism (and its imperative to exploit labor for private profit through converting the natural world into commodities), and then run society in the interests of all, paving the way to end class divisions and ecocide altogether.

2. If you’re not part of the working class, act and build movements to act in solidarity with the struggles of workers against their capitalist exploiters, and for international working class unity, in order to weaken the global capitalist class, etc. (see above).

3. Speak up, act and build movements against all forms of oppression that serve class domination and imperialism. Dismantle institutional structures of oppression such as patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism and nationalism while challenging individual expressions of these.

4. Free all domesticated land such as lawns, industrial monocrop farms, golf courses, and city swales and allow these areas to revert back to the wild; ban the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides; and make sure all of society’s food is cultivated and obtained in ways that are in harmony with the thriving of the natural world.

5. Act from the knowledge that ecocide is a consequence of the global capitalist class imposing its economy over the world. Both individual and collective acts of intended resistance can often be recuperated back into the capitalist framework, and we must strive to make sure that our actions actually contribute to the weakening of capitalist domination.

Bright & funny

I asked myself why I looooove making funny animals and plants in bright colors so much. Part of it is the pleasure of searching for balance in the tension of opposites — finding the sweet spot between simplicity vs complexity, respect combined with humor, color contrast, how abstract they can be while still remaining recognizable. I like exploring the relationship between the symbolic and the real. And it’s very soothing to make patterns. And certain bright colors just make my eyes feel happy.

Feelings, thoughts and actions in a blender

I used to believe that it doesn’t matter what your intentions are unless you act. That doing is determining; thinking is unreal. This belief didn’t correspond to my own behavior though, mucking about in the superstructure of ideology and culture all my life, even when I had jobs in places where opportunities for battles abounded on the economic front. 

I missed those opportunities, didn’t even see them because of the political orientation I’d been trained in by the group I was part of for 15 years of my young adulthood. Though for revolution against capitalism/imperialism, they had lost their focus on the core of class struggle. 

The misalignment persisited for decades. Even when I saw it and tried to flip it, with my limitations I just ended up reinforcing it. Now I’m too far down a path that’s shaped me into who I am, and I probably won’t find my way back to those kind of ripe workplace situations in this lifetime. Though who knows.

Anyway it’s not that I ever thought that superstructural activity was useless, far from it — I spent most of my efforts there. But I considered it a means to another end. I understand now that I had a non-dialectical approach to the intertwinement of ideology and practice. 

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Creativity strangled by the division of labor

* The land is the material basis of our lifeways, how we meet our material needs, and this is the foundation of human culture. Our cultures are shaped by place and time, evolving through history and reflecting our changing relationships with our surroundings and with other social formations. 

* Creating is a human impulse echoing nature’s constant creation. We apply our inherent creativity to all sorts of activities, from having children to cooking to fixing cars to sharing our stories to finding a new way home.

* In societies where divisions of labor developed, though much production was still centered in the home, some people became artisans, focusing on making specific things as their primary social economic activity. The artist came to be, servant of religion and royalty. As capitalism emerged it harnessed art to its own pursuits (as it did with science), standardizing it, professionalizing it, and hairsplitting it into ever more numerous separate forms and fields.

* We are discouraged from understanding our daily activities as creative, so that our natural impulse to create can be commercialized and sold back to us. 

Contradictions within contradictions

I’m thinking about contradictions within contradictions. This is how I view what is unfolding:
Within capitalism’s fundamental contradiction (capital vs labor), capital is the dominant force — it possesses the power to force the whole society to serve it. To become that powerful, capitalists had to become a self-conscious unified class (a “class for itself”). Working people are not currently unified enough to exercise collective class power — though that power is always inherent as potential, constantly emerging from the dynamic of capitalism.  It takes a lot of energy for the capitalists to keep suppressing and smashing it. As the working class-in-itself coalesces and strengthens into a class-for-itself, at the right moment it can rise and prevail. 

This capital-vs-labor contradiction is considered “fundamental” because the ongoing clash between these two interlocked opposing forces determines the way of life for the whole society. The constant battle between classes determines the course of history. Within the dynamic of this contradiction there are many others, including those internal to each main side. For example, competition generates conflict between concentrations of capital centered in different nations, and/or centered in different forms of investment. 

Conflicts within the capitalist class have been growing ever more acute since the last time they readjusted their system by redividing realms of control through inter-imperialist war, and are now coming to a head once again, filling the political arenas of various centers of capital with loud messy drama sometimes to the point of absurdities that would be laughable if they didn’t reflect such a dangerous situation.

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What’s Wrong with Capitalism?

…and why we must overcome it!!

Capitalism is a mode of production, the whole arrangement of society organized for the production of goods that meet our needs — like food, clothing and housing. 

It’s not only an economic system, but it also includes a political system, and a system of beliefs, that all reinforce each other. For example, how is it that one person is allowed own a factory that a hundred people work in? It’s only because we have been taught to believe in the right to private ownership.

Capitalism is based on class divisions. Under capitalism, there are two main classes that are in conflict with each other: capitalists and workers. The capitalists own the means of production — the factories, land, and raw materials. They own it not because they worked for it, or because they’re better people or because they deserve it, but usually because they or their ancestors stole it. The wealth of the capitalist class in the US was built on genocide, land theft, and slavery. Most wealth is inherited from those historical crimes. And today they increase it through wars of conquest and the global exploitation of workers.

Capitalists dispossess the working class so they can force us to work for low wages. Because we don’t own land or factories or raw materials, we can’t produce what we need. So our only option is to work for them.

Our labor increases their wealth, while they pay us as little as they can get away with. Wages are supposedly set at what we need for our survival—to pay our rent and feed our families. But we all know that it’s never enough. When we’re organized, we can fight for higher wages, but individually we’re caught in a bind: we can either work for what they offer, or we can starve.

The big scam of capitalism is that wages are supposedly a fair trade of money for the amount of time that we work. But capitalists are not buying our time—they are buying our labor power, our ability to work. When we produce goods for them, they sell them at a price higher than what they paid us. Where did this extra value come from?

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Some Functions of Art in the Revolutionary Movement

Art can make visible what is unseen:

1) Through visual metaphor, symbolism and mapping, art can uncover the underlying structures of a society that we generally take for granted as normal. Art can reveal invisible forces and mechanisms that perpetrate an irrational economy, a political clusterfuck, and a collective ideological fog. When we can perceive and name these forces and mechanisms, we discover that the problems they generate are not in fact natural, but are socially constructed monstrosities. We no longer need to accept them.

2) The revolutionary movement, the drive to freedom, is always arising; it is a fundamental urge of living beings. The capitalist class, desperate to maintain dominance, constantly attempts to twist this urge against itself and to conceal it, to make us believe it doesn’t exist. The oppressor culture attempts to co-opt every expression of the revolution, artistic and otherwise, to force it to submit to and serve the profit imperative. Only by exposing and facing this, can we break the spell.

3) By focusing attention on emerging tendencies, art can assist potentialities into existence. Art can shine a light on revolution’s path, revealing what’s happening at those edges of history that are starting to take shape just beyond our general collective perception. When we can see a path, we are no longer lost. We can start to move together in an intentional direction, toward a future we choose.

PS: Art is many things to many people. I’m not asserting a concept of what all art “should” be, but to clarify for myself (and for anyone who finds it useful) some ways that art can contribute to the revolution.

PPS: These functions are not restricted to art, but can also be accomplished through speaking, writing, and other forms of communication.

The older I get, the less right I am about everything

I’d like to say something that I’ve been thinking about for a while. Reflecting back on my decades-long political life with its many ups and downs, I realize that I’ve sometimes thought and acted in ways that have been dogmatic, judgmental, sectarian, controlling, co-dependent, and arrogant (I have other flaws too but let’s leave them for another day).

Of course we must all make judgements and choices about who and what to give our time and energy to, based on what we know at the time. But I’ve often just assumed that I fully understood situations and people. I believed I knew what other people should do or say, and even how they should do or say it, better than they did themselves.

All of us try to know as much as we can, and we inevitably form opinions, but as limited individual beings we can only understand so much. We can’t grasp the entire complexity of situations or see into the future. We can only read so much of what’s in another’s heart, or guess where the movement of history might take their lives and thoughts, what they might do, and what their myriad effects on others might be.

It’s so easy to judge another and dismiss them while feeling self-righteous. For all the times I’ve done that to anyone in the broadly-conceived anti-capitalist camp or among the masses exploited and/or oppressed by capitalism, I sincerely apologize. I struggle not to do it any more.

To be clear, this reflection is not a descent into agnosticism – I still have utter certainty about fundamental things (capitalism is killing us, and only the working class can lead humanity out of it) – and I know what side I’m on in the epic class struggle that defines our era, the outcome of which determines our collective future. And I still have my opinions about the process.

I just wanted to apologize to those generally on the same side who I may have treated or thought of with insufficient regard, kindness, or respect (even if I believe you’re wrong about something). I would rather assume that we are each doing the best we can, and I appreciate all of you who are struggling to survive under capitalism and for a way forward out of it.

Solidarity is Power

I was thinking about how solidarity is our “secret weapon”, the one thing we have that can’t be corrupted by capitalist interests, the key to getting out of this mess. It’s the glue that holds us together when those in power are doing everything possible to divide us. It’s important to talk about why capitalism is evil and needs to be overcome, but it’s not enough to focus only on that. The collapse or destruction of capitalism won’t necessarily lead to a better place all by itself. What do we have that transcends it? The fact that we’re fighting for all of us! The fact that we either ALL get there or none of us do. No one can co-opt that because every other social initiative is only for the benefit of some, not for all. A while back I made a drawing with “Solidarity” on it, but it wasn’t completely satisfying — I’ve had a persistent feeling that it lacked something. Adding “power” to the equation solves it for me. Of course solidarity (like love, caring, friendship) is good in itself, not just a means to an end…BUT my mind is also constantly on the massive problem that we need to solve. And solidarity is what can give us the power to do that. “Solidarity is Power” says both what we need and how to get it.

Contradictory emotions

I painted two pieces last night. They’re both on the angry side.

My artwork seems to be falling on two sides of the anti-capitalist emotional spectrum lately: rage and horror on the one hand, and on the other hand, faith that humans can get our shit together and support one another to overcome it all. I keep thinking of Gramsci’s well-known statement: “I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.” I don’t feel like that exactly; my optimism isn’t a matter of *will* but just bubbles up naturally. It does go against my “intellect” — if I have to look at facts, I do believe that most life on Earth is likely fucked (unless there’s some surprising turn). But I’ve often been wrong. And my intuition still insists on hope.

Anyway these two approaches keep coming out in my work. I’m thinking of grouping and naming them accordingly, with contradictory words or phrases in the spirit of Gramsci’s statement. Maybe “Rage” and “Defiant Heart” or something like that.

Painting: “The interplay between base and superstructure”

Acrylic on canvas, 16″x20″

I started this without having an idea of where it would go. Some thoughts that arose in my mind while painting it:

Structure (economic activity) determines superstructure (culture & politics), but not absolutely. Ideas escape the confines that have been set up by economic imperative. Along with its designed parameters, the economy has also pushed for overflow to happen, inevitably and integrally. That’s evolution, which is always a process of active contradiction. The structure is still there underlying everything, but it begins to blur and go off-kilter as the superstructure pulls out of it and drags it along, pulling it out of shape even while it’s being shaped in turn.

Thinking about what art is.

Art is emotion made concrete. Art hurts and art heals. Art makes us think, know, and believe. Art is sharing from within. Art reveals and conceals. It alienates and connects. Through art we may discover truths. Art is our consolation. Art is our weapon. Art is more than painting, drawing, singing and dancing; it is also cooking, customizing a motorcycle, raising a child, cultivating a garden, relating history, making an argument. Art is the creative spirit expressing itself through us all. Art is life. Art is for everybody.

Art is not a spectator sport. Art is a process. It’s a vehicle for self-discovery and for contemplation of the world’s phenomena. Art is transformative. We don’t just look at it; we do it. The point is not only “what it means” but “what I thought about while creating it.” Art is a doorway. It invites us to relax into an idea. It unravels structured thought into intuition. Observation becomes insight.

This is by no means the entire picture.

Portrait of Henry Flagler

Portrait of Henry Flagler as a Vampire

Acrylic paint and paint marker on canvas, 16″x20″.

I painted this in defiance of all the unquestioned worshiping in South Florida of this oil and railroad tycoon/land developer. He’s a very big deal around here, considered a great man. My studio is actually located on a street — one of many — named after him, in a whole neighborhood called Flagler Village. I think it should be renamed to “Flagler Was an Evil Fucker Village”.

So what did he do wrong?

He was a co-founder (and partner with Rockefeller) of Standard Oil, which captured a monopoly on oil refining in the US, ushered in the age of fossil fuels, accelerated the ubiquity of their use and thereby global warming. He then used his Standard Oil fortune to break South Florida open like a ripe fruit, building a tourist resort empire with hotels and railroads, leading to the natural ecosystem being largely wiped out.

One may argue that it was all inevitable because of larger economic forces in an era of capitalist expansion, and if he didn’t do all that, then others would have. Nevertheless he is the one who actually did it…which is why contemporary developers and other predators who follow in his footsteps have engineered a culture of reverence around him. Thus the need to insist that he deserves contempt and disgust from the rest of us.

“I See What You’re Doing”

Here’s one of the pieces I’m going to show at “Art Mama Moves”, a group show opening next week in Fort Lauderdale. The details are here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1485781201518746/

I painted this during the period when actors and others began speaking up against sexual abuse in the workplace. It started out being about that, but is really about so much more. I wrote a little statement to go along with it…

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I appreciate so much anyone who speaks out against any kind of abuse, and right now, all the women currently speaking out against sexualized abuse in the workplace. Just naming it for what it is, is a huge accomplishment. We were silenced for far too long.

When I was in my teens and twenties, 30+ years ago, workplace sexual harassment (as well as “date rape”) weren’t even socially recognized concepts. So when they happened, the only way to deal with it was on an individual basis, with little or no support. At work, choices were limited: do we confront the creep, which might put us in a perpetual state of war with him and maybe also everyone else in the place, get us labeled as a troublemaker, and risk losing the job? Or we could try to avoid being alone around him, but stay in a constant state of anxiety and silent rage, and leave if it got worse. Or we could normalize it, convince ourselves that nothing’s wrong, and start drinking too much.

When I was 19, at one job interview I was told straight out that the job included sex with the owner, and if I had a problem with that I shouldn’t even bother applying. Back then, the only option I saw was to leave in disgust. Hell, even as recently as a couple years ago, one of my clients decided to parade around in only a towel during a work meeting. I dropped him as a client, but never confronted him about it. I was embarrassed and didn’t want to seem intolerant. Like many women, I was so conditioned in codependency that I dreaded making him feel uncomfortable more than I cared about my own discomfort — how twisted is that???

But there is courage and strength in numbers. With back up, we can do so much more. We can crush those creepy fuckers. I hope this new spirit of defiance spreads to every workplace in the whole damn world.

The fact that these accusations are spreading like wildfire, forces society to name this abuse for what it is, and acknowledge its pervasiveness. There’s no longer any excuse for saying it’s no big deal. There’s no longer any excuse for not backing up your coworker who makes a complaint.

The only way to stop abusers is to make them face extremely unpleasant consequences. They only stop when they’re forced to. Until now, being a workplace predator usually didn’t entail consequences for him; only for his victims. But today we have the chance to say: you’re done. Your career is over. Everyone hates you. This time it’s not MY life being ruined – it’s YOURS.

The spotlight on this issue may seem sudden, but it’s the culmination of many years of patient organizing and speaking out with little result. Now a tipping point has finally been reached. Organizers around many issues – homophobia, civil rights, police brutality, ecocide – toil for decades before crimes finally become widely seen as such, and can no longer be ignored. This doesn’t mean they’re resolved – far from it – but it’s a necessary step toward that possibility.

The “me too” movement makes me think about what other kinds of normalized systemic abuse might come to be seen for the crimes they are, might reach that tipping point and suddenly become unaccepted. If we’ll one day say to some corporate polluter: you really fucked up, your career is ruined, you’re never going to work again. That we’ll say: you put a cancer-causing chemical in people’s food, you cut down trees to build a mall for your own profit, you crafted a law against distributing food to homeless people, you denied someone health care, you threatened humanity with nuclear annihilation – you’re going DOWN!

How far could this go? Let’s dream big. Why not go for taking down the entire capitalist system, the root of so much misery and oppression?

To make that possible, another normalized workplace violation needs to be exposed for the crime that it is, so that, too, it can no longer be ignored, excused, or tolerated. That crime is profiting off the labor of others. That crime is exploitation.

Imagine if we heard people on TV saying: “I was denied the means to obtain food or shelter unless I agreed to do whatever business owners asked of me for eight or ten or sixteen hours a day, and when I complied, I was only paid a small fraction of the value that I produced, and they stole all the rest for themselves.” And then imagine that instead of everyone going, “Eh, that’s just how it is, deal with it,” that mass outrage spread like wildfire. And then imagine that everyone subjected to these criminal acts began refusing to accept it, and that a majority of the population supported their resistance. Imagine the exploiters disgraced, isolated, driven from our midst. The way that everything humanity produces would have to change. Think about what else could melt away once that happened: wealth inequality, imperialism, ecocide. The control that capitalists currently have over the world would be broken.

Today, workers who speak out against exploitation are not generally listened to. They’re labeled complainers and troublemakers. They’re told that their abuse is not a problem, but a normal and necessary function of human society. They are told to suck it up and take their heartache to the bar on the weekend.

Sound familiar?

But we should consider it a badge of honor to be a troublemaker against abuse and exploitation. Let’s all be troublemakers. Let’s stop protecting or being loyal to our oppressors, our exploiters, our enemies. Call out their crimes for what they are, name the abusers and their violations against us, and stand up for each other in increasing numbers until justice can no longer be denied – until we can deprive predators of every systemic structure that has allowed them to exist.

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Some things I learned in 2016:

* Beliefs may change. Principles don’t.
* Some weeds shouldn’t be allowed to establish themselves.
* True love and happiness are real and possible, if we stay open and attentive and daring and lucky.
* Past conditioning can be overcome.
* It’s ok to just have fun sometimes, in spite of concurrent global catastrophes etc.
* It’s not ok to avoid communicating that something is wrong, when it is.
* A build-up of contradiction, if not mitigated, will burst.
* Letting go is a necessary part of transformation and renewal.
* Death is everywhere, and inevitable, and so is life.
* To non-workers, the working class is virtually invisible, and most non-workers like it that way.
* Capitalism is ultra-scary and dangerous, but the people are smart and brave and creative and resilient.
* Anything can happen. What we do is the only part of that equation that we have any control over.

If Workers Take Power:

ifcolor– Instead of the small class of capitalists controlling society, we can make our own decisions about work and social life.

– Instead of some of us being forced to work too many hours while others are unable to find a job at all, the work can be divided so everyone works a reasonable amount.

– Instead of competing against one another for scarce jobs, everyone can do meaningful and useful work that contributes to society.

– Instead of capitalists pitting us against each other by fostering racism, sexism, nationalism and other forms of oppressive ideologies, we can unite for the common good.

– Instead of the fruits of our labor enriching the few while the majority is kept in poverty, it can be distributed to provide food, shelter, medical care, household goods, education and recreation for everyone.

– Instead of destroying the environment for higher profits, we can implement sustainable ways to meet the needs of humanity and the planet.

– Instead of sacrificing our safety and health to cut costs, our well-being will be prioritized.

– Instead of half of the world’s food being wasted because it’s not profitable to sell it, we can eliminate hunger.

– Instead of being forced to wage wars of conquest for capitalists, the workers of the world can cooperate in peace.

Workers already provide all the goods and services for society. The global working class can decide together what we need, and how it is produced and distributed. Power is in our hands – if we organize, rise up and take it!

[Originally appeared at http://workers-power.org/2016/11/29/if-workers-take-power/]

What is Capitalism?

surplusvaluecolorCapitalism is a mode of production – a totality of social relations that shapes how the society as a whole reproduces itself, how we all meet our needs, how we get from one day to the next. There are different modes of production, distinguished from one another by what drives the economy. This economic foundation generates, and is in turn supported by, a corresponding political system (which keeps one class in power over everyone else), plus prevailing ways of thinking that make it all seem natural and inevitable (such as the idea that “poverty we shall always have with us.”)

Other contemporary and recent modes of production besides capitalism are slavery and feudalism. All of these have one thing in common: class divisions that facilitate the accumulation of wealth by a small parasitical minority on the backs of the producing majority.

For slavery and feudalism, the new wealth taken possession of by the ruling class is the product itself. Under feudalism, a landlord takes half or a third of a peasant’s grain, whatever the quantity is and however much work the peasant put into it. But capitalist accumulation runs on a different formula. For capitalists, the product itself is not the point—the wealth they accumulate is the labor power extracted from workers in the production process. Labor power is wealth crystalized in commodities, in the form of surplus value (a form of profit). The particular kinds of commodities we produce don’t really matter; the money is made in the production of them.

In order not to starve, workers, who possesses or control no means of production, must sell our labor power, or ability to work, to the capitalist, for wages. (Our predicament is no accident, but has been engineered through systematic historical dispossession of formerly self-sufficient, land-based people.)

The big scam of capitalism is that wages are supposedly a fair trade of money for the amount of time that we work. Wages are generally based on what capitalists decide that we need for our survival—to pay our rent and feed our families. But in reality, capitalists are not buying our time—they are buying our labor power, which they use to produce commodities for them, that they later sell at a price higher than what they paid us. This profit is reinvested as new capital, which causes businesses (and the economy as a whole) to constantly grow larger.

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Confessions of a Petit Bourgeois Radical Striving to Assist the Working Class in the Fight Against Capitalism

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An old comrade of mine died last spring. Around 25 years ago we were part of a team distributing “Revolutionary Worker” newspapers in Miami neighborhoods. After I left the RCP a few years later, we ceased working together but remained friends.

He left behind a box of pamphlets from the mid- to late-1970s issued by various New Left groups in the Bay Area, where much of his political development took place. I put them out on the porch and have been slowly going through them, curious about how the Left conceptualized revolutionary activity back then, and looking for clues as to why it largely abandoned class struggle in favor of social justice activism.

Judging by these pamphs, which were issued by at least half a dozen different communist organizations, it seems like the political scene in the Bay Area was pretty lively. Most of the texts are long, highly detailed polemics against rival communist groups, on questions ranging from the socialist character (or not) of China and Albania, to whether all forms of nationalism are reactionary (or not).

Personally, I’m interested in their attempts at participating in workers’ struggles and spreading revolutionary class consciousness among workers. Most, if not all, of them claimed to recognize the need for the working class (or some “most oppressed” section of it) to lead the struggle against capitalism/imperialism, but they seemed to have spent much of their energy attempting to be the leaders themselves, and going for each other’s throats in competitive attempts to become “The” Party.

I looked up the pamphlets online and in case you’re interested, many of them can actually be found in this vast archive of “anti-revisionist” struggle: https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/erol.htm

For someone unfamiliar with this history, these arguments between highly specialized groups can seem mind-boggling, with demarcations of line being pared down to what might seem an almost obsessive and insane narrowness. But keep in mind that it was a different time: social and political struggles were flaring up globally, including in the US, and as any movement matures, political differences translate into differences in approach and strategy that really do matter. So I’m not ridiculing the need for demarcations and polemics, which are always present whenever people try to do anything together (“Let’s watch Mistresses.” “Hell no, the acting has really gone downhill.”)

But it must be asked: where are they now? Did all that passionate quarreling make any difference at all, did it help advance working class power in the struggle against capitalism, or was it just a “tempest in a teapot”? Did it reflect an appropriate assessment of and response to the actual conditions that existed at the time?

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Class struggle is our starting point.

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Since class divisions formed among humans thousands of years ago, class struggle has been the driving force of all major social change. While in any given society there may be a variety of different classes, the central struggle, the one that shapes all the others, is that between a class that produces the bulk of what the whole society needs, and a non-productive, parasitical class that controls production and steals the social product.

To defend their ruling position and assert their interests, a class must dominate the entire society: by claiming ownership and taking possession of the means of subsistence and production (land, waters, resources, factories, etc), holding political power to facilitate the running of their affairs and to repress dissent, and directing the flow of information and development of knowledge, persuading people through culture and education into understanding the arrangement as natural and desirable.

Owners and producers are the two fundamental classes of any class-divided society, because the struggle between them determines its mode of production, the parameters of how things are produced and distributed, as well as everything else that can go on in that society. Slave owners and slaves struggle for and against slavery. Landlords and serfs or peasants struggle for and against feudalism. Capitalists and workers struggle for and against capitalism.

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Revolution: there is no formula

2Capitalism, even in deep crisis, will never cease struggling to adapt and grow. It will not collapse or dismantle itself, until it destroys the planet and everyone on it. So it falls on us to destroy it. In destroying capitalism, we construct something new. Revolution is the total transformation of the way everything is produced, the social relations of domination that go along with it, and the ways of thinking that keep us trapped.

We need to understand our roles in the revolutionary process so that we may direct our energies to contribute the most we possibly can. The more intentional we are, the more effective we can be as consciously active agents for emancipation and social transformation.

There is no formula or plan to tell us what to do. We learn what we can from the millions of revolutionaries who have existed everywhere in the world throughout history, but each place and time is different, so whatever worked for them can’t automatically be applied to our circumstances. While relayed experiences, theories and observations are extremely useful, the revolution can’t be simply handed to us by others; we have to figure it out for ourselves.

We learn by doing. We can only master something if we practice it. This is true for playing a musical instrument, making furniture, or organizing for revolution and building a new society. Knowledge doesn’t come from the sky or from inside our heads; it comes from the real world and our experience of it. We make decisions about what to do, based on our interpretations of reality.

Many people call themselves revolutionaries because they possess and express “correct” beliefs, or write up the perfect programme or position paper. But no amount of study of theory, no amount of discussion, no collection of brilliant insights can ever change things — unless they are based in reality and are in turn implemented in reality. Theories that don’t come from practice can’t connect to reality. And they’re useless until they are actually USED. Knowledge is not an end in itself, but a guide to action, a tool to affect the material world. It is in use that it becomes embodied, and real.

Since none of us can destroy capitalism alone; we need to act collectively. The reason we need theory is to construct a shared frame of reference with which to share knowledge and experiences, so we can overcome what divides us, and organize our disparate spontaneous acts of resistance into a unified and powerful social force.

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What is Surplus Value, and Why Should Anti-Capitalists Care?

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This first appeared in Skewed News.

Capitalism is an ever-expanding, extremely destructive mode of production that has come to dominate the world; pretty much all social production has been integrated into its framework.

The ways capitalism presents itself to most of us is through its many wretched effects: ecocide, oppression, imperialism, poverty and so on. Any or all of these may motivate us to oppose it. When we decide to organize against capitalism, we often tend to go after these effects. We protest and resist them. And they absolutely must be protested and resisted.

But I’m going to argue that if that’s all we do, we may be able to mitigate some of these miserable conditions that way, but we aren’t going to be able to get rid of capitalism, the system that causes and maintains them. We won’t even harm it. We not even touching it.

To destroy capitalism, we need to understand exactly what it is and what drives it.

Capitalism is a mode of production, that is, it is an ensemble of social relations that shape how the society as a whole reproduces itself, how we meet our needs, how we get from one day to the next. Every mode of production includes an economic foundation or base, which generates and is in turn supported by a political and ideological superstructure.

While we must attack capitalism politically and ideologically, these alone will not destroy it. Our strategy needs to go beyond addressing the superstructure and gets at the economic core of how capital reproduces itself. We need to destroy the production and accumulation of capital.

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Beyond Feminism and Other Defensive Battles: To End All Oppression, We Must Destroy Capitalism!

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This first appeared in Skewed News.

What does ending the oppression of women look like? How will we know when we’ve achieved it? When we’re allowed to get free abortions whenever we want? When we no longer have to fear or experience rape? When we stop sex trafficking? When we all feel positive about our bodies and minds? When all girls in the world are educated? When we achieve equal pay?

We want all these things, of course. We need them. They’re essential. But are they enough? Don’t we need more than that? I’m going to suggest that if we focus our energy only on these specific issues, then we’re setting our sights too low.

If we fight around them directly, we may get some victories. But these victories will be temporary, partial, and incomplete. Because as long as we live under capitalism, we will never get the whole package. We will never be truly free.

If we achieve equal pay, we’re still wage slaves. If we’re taught to read, the material we have access to is still determined by others. All our relationships—every kind of relationship—are still distorted and deformed by market forces. We’re still caught in the nightmare, still under the domination of the capitalist class, those few bloated parasites living off the blood and sweat of the vast majority of humanity.

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The Deadly Reign of the Animate Object: Capitalism and Sociopathy

Stephanie McMillan, 11/23/14
(Presented at Earth at Risk conference, San Francisco)

[also posted by Burnpile Press: http://burnpilepress.org/uncategorized/the-deadly-reign-of-the-animate-object-capitalism-and-sociopathy/

We all know that capitalism is killing the world. In order to stop it, we can’t just keep resisting its effects. Capitalism doesn’t care if we protest on street corners a thousand times; that just proves how tolerant and democratic it is. The solutions are not to be found within its framework. They are even less to be found at the individual level. We don’t actually have power as consumers – they would like us to think we do, but we can’t buy, or not buy, our way out of it. It is a social system, a class system, and can only be addressed at the level of collective, organized class struggle. We need to understand capital, how it works, the mechanisms that keep it in place, and the core of its functioning.

Capitalism is a mode of production based on the exploitation of labor in the generation of surplus value. This means that workers are paid a certain amount of wages for a day’s work, but what they produce is worth more than that. The extra value is called surplus value, and the capitalist just steals it. This is what all profit is based on. This is what private property is all about – its considered normal for the social means of production, the factories and land that produce the things we all use, to be privately owned, and for those owners to simply take whatever is produced with them.

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NGOs are Cages

2013-02-14-pay-youWe really need to understand the methods used by NGOs* to undermine radical political organizing efforts and divert us into political dead ends. The People’s Climate March is a good case study because it’s so blatant.

In South Florida, we saw the exact same process after the BP oil spill. Once the NGOs came in to the organizing meetings and were given the floor, all potential resistance was blocked, strangled, and left for dead. NGOs will descend on any organizing effort and try to take it over, dilute it, and bring it eventually to the Democratic Party. We can also see an identical set-up with the established labor unions and many other organizations.

If organizers are being paid, usually they are trapped in this dynamic, whether or not they want to be. While combining a job with organizing to challenge the system sounds very tempting and full of potential, it’s overwhelmingly not possible. They are two fundamentally incompatible aims, and those funding the job definitely do not have the aim of allowing its employees to undermine the system — the very system that allows the funders to exist, that they feed off of. Capitalists aren’t stupid, and they know how to keep their employees chained to a post, even if the leash feels long. With NGOs, capitalism has set up a great mechanism for itself both to generate revenue, and to pacify people who might otherwise be fighting to break the framework. “The unity of the chicken and the roach happens in the belly of the chicken.”

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Why Environmentalists Should Support Working Class Struggles

[This piece appeared, among other places, in Counterpunch: http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/18/why-environmentalists-should-support-working-class-struggles/]

This is to specifically address class struggle as it relates to the ecological crisis. It will not address all the other (many!) reasons that working class struggle must be waged and supported.

First, we must recognize the fact that global capitalism is driving ecocide.

The problem reaches much farther back than capitalism itself. The combination of an early gendered division of labor with the adoption of agriculture and corresponding formation of permanent settlements set the stage for class divisions and the private accumulation of surplus wealth. Maintaining this arrangement required the development of states with armies, social oppression and repression to weaken internal opposition, and ideologies to make it all seem normal and pre-ordained. And as land was degraded and resources used up faster than they naturally replenished themselves, expansion became imperative, leading to conquest and forced unequal trade. These intertwined and matured over time into an ever-more complex tangle, culminating in late-stage capitalism: the all-encompassing, all-devouring, spectacular horror that is our current global social living arrangement.

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Capitalist Food Production: A Leading Cause of Hunger, Illness, Ecocide, Exploitation and Imperialist Domination

[Originally appeared at Salty Eggs]

By Stephanie McMillan

Capitalism is a dysfunctional economic system that benefits a few while exploiting and neglecting the majority. But it’s not only that. It’s also a social relationship of domination, where a small class of capitalists exerts power over the whole society through the private ownership of the means of production. Under capitalism, the purpose of all commodity production (including food) is not to meet the needs of the people; but to make a profit. Food production has become a massive profit center, as well as a tool of domination, both domestically and globally.

Nearly all food production on the planet has been industrialized, and is controlled by giant monopolies. The largest include Nestle, PepsiCo, Unilever, and Kraft. Monsanto and DuPont control much of the world’s seeds and other farming inputs. ADM and Cargill control much of agriculture and animal feed. Dole is the world largest fruit company.

Monsanto vice president (and Bill Gates Foundation board member) Rob Horsch said “He who controls food, controls the world.”

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The Class Struggle of Science

[Appeared in Salty Eggs]

by Stephanie McMillan

Economic systems are in dialectical (mutually interdependent and contradictory) relationship with the political structure and prevailing ideas of each society as a whole, with the economy being the dominant or determining aspect. This is not to say that influence doesn’t go the other way, but economy has a stranglehold on everything else, shaping its nature (both bending all other elements to its needs, while at the same time generating its own opposition). Though we are told (by the ruling class) that science is “neutral,” it is no less a product of class domination than any other set of ideas.

Pre-capitalist conceptions of science were less reductive and acknowledged a living world—the German “Wissenschaft” once referred to a broader notion of scientific knowledge that incorporated philosophy and spirituality. (Not coincidentally, Germany was until relatively recently not a nation, but a fragmented collection of feudal domains, while England had entered its colonial period by the time Francis Bacon declared his intention to extract nature’s secrets through torture.) As capitalism emerged in Europe (concentrated in England and France), science was harnessed to march in step with it, to solidify a mechanistic and utilitarian view of the world.

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A Brief Definition of Imperialism


http://onestruggle.net/2012/10/15/a-brief-definition-of-imperialism/

By Stephanie McMillan

The historical development of capitalism drives inexorably (though not uniformly) toward the concentration of capital. This is expedited by increasing the scale of production, dominating markets, and improving technology. Concentrations of capital form monopolies that can exert proportional power (control) over the economic and political arrangements of the social formations they dominate.

When capital, ruled by its growth imperative, inevitably reaches limits to the accumulation of surplus value within the territory (nation, or social formation) it already controls, it must expand beyond its borders to conquer other areas. It uses the state(s) of its home base(s) to wage politics (up to and including war, the most extreme form of politics) on other social formations—to subjugate the ones it can, as well as to compete with others over how to carve up the world.

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Land Defense and Class Struggle: Building Alliances to Defeat Capitalism

This is the text of the talk I gave at the Left Forum last weekend in NYC:

* * *

Environmental destruction is the most urgent and immediate problem we face. If we don’t solve it, nothing else will matter. I would argue that it’s the principle contradiction of the current period. Through it, the common ruin of contending classes is becoming increasingly likely, but as the economic and ecological crises converge, the possibility of liberation and social transformation also opens up. But only if we organize to make that happen.

The problem is accelerating because of capital’s constant need to expand into new areas. They have entered a period of extreme extraction, on a scale never before seen: fracking, oil from tar sands and deep sea drilling, mountaintop removal. Because of the falling rate of profit, capitalism can never economically catch up with itself and must constantly break through its limits in a vain attempt to resolve its own inherent internal contradiction.

Feudalism and all forms of class society have had internal contradictions that drove them to expand. But capitalism has taken this to a new level, because instead of just requiring more resources to continue existing (to feed an expanding agrarian population, for example), it requires constant growth of production to expand for its own sake. The needs of the population aren’t the point, and commodities aren’t even the point — accumulating surplus-value to expand capital itself is the entire point. This is what pushes it to exceed limits on a scale previously unimaginable.

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One storm, two responses

In 2005, Hurricane Wilma crossed over South Florida. The destruction was substantial. A telephone/electric pole lay across my back yard, its transformer trailing wires. Most of a large tree had come down on my neighbor’s roof. Branches were everywhere. Bits of the corrugated fiberglass roof of a plant nursery littered the ground ten blocks away. The electricity stayed off for eleven days. The municipal water supply stayed off for three.

I still had to go to work. As I made my way around town on my bike in the following days, I saw a difference in the way the people of my neighborhood and the people of the next neighborhood over handled their respective difficulties.

In the best of times, my neighborhood – mostly populated by short-term renters who were only around when not out working on boats for weeks or months on end – enjoyed little-to-no social cohesion. Few people even recognized each other as neighbors. Each was generally on his or her own.

Residents made a rather pathetic scene as they used soda cans to scoop water from street puddles into plastic kitchen garbage bins, to use for flushing toilets. The general mood was testy. It was hot and humid. Everyone was sweaty, with no showering in the foreseeable future, and food was rapidly spoiling. A fight broke out at a nearby gas station over ice.

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Why are there so many small groups on the Left?

People coming into political motion often take a look at the field of activity on the Left and shake their heads. “Why are there so many small, disunited groups?” they ask. “Why can’t they get along and work together?”

Line differences within groups have come from practice, or responses to the practice of others. At certain points in history the line differences are worth splitting up over, because they lead to qualitatively different further practice. Sections of groups part ways because each believes their way is correct and the other way is going to lead to failure.

But most of the sects that exist today emerged out of a previous era of struggle, and their differences are rooted in the past. Many of the questions that were once crucial and defining, are irrelevant to people coming into political life today. They don’t want to (and shouldn’t have to) go through a long list of historical verdicts and ideological points that they have to agree with to join a group. It’s too hard – what if they agree on 60% or 80% but can’t come to agreement on the rest? Then they’d either have to suppress their differences and join anyway, or would have to form another sect with that minor difference as the distinction between them.

Instead, now people are seeking to organize new groups from the ground up, with people who generally agree on current issues and basic goals, and are willing to figure out the rest as needed.

This is why, I think, there are so many small collectives starting everywhere. People coming into political life for the first time, or getting back into it after a long break, or coming out of some of these sects, are figuring out what they think about our current conditions. They are putting aside the impulse to form verdicts on historical questions, and starting over.

This doesn’t mean they don’t learn from previous struggles. People are studying — not to just appropriate a finished system of thought in the abstract, but creatively, in order to see how others approached similar problems in different times and places, and to find solutions and methods that can help today. It’s great that they’re starting fresh, because when people define their own theories, ideologies and political lines, then they’re rooted in their own experiences, observations, and emotions. The ideas become an integral part of the people, who then become an integral part of a movement, in a way that can’t happen if they come in and rely solely on the previous work of others. The creative process of articulating beliefs and forming principles, incorporating what makes sense from past lessons, and testing what parts of the new mix works and what doesn’t, is part of the liveliness of an emerging movement.

The people coming into motion today don’t see the need to divide themselves along the same lines, or down to the same level of detail as those who have been around a long time — though divisions are still there based on very broad historical verdicts and deep scars. For example, in recent decades I haven’t noticed anyone refuse to work with someone who has a different opinion on Enver Hoxha’s break with Mao. Most people don’t know or care about it. On the other hand, many anarchists still feel betrayed by communists because of the Spanish Civil War and other blunders and won’t even consider working with them, or will only with extreme wariness and some expression of regret on the part of the reds.

Splits form along new lines: anarchists are splitting over being vegan or omnivore. Deep green environmentalists demarcate themselves from technotopians. Anti-war activists congeal into mutually frosty camps around whether or not to express support for the rulers of countries being attacked by the U.S.

So the splits and divides are more (not always, but much more) based on issues and events that are occurring and relevant today.

It’s like ecological succession. The groups that emerged from the 1960s are mature, solid, complex organisms. They’ve been through a lot and grown into big trees. The new collectives emerging everywhere are pioneer species, like the small plants that spring up on damaged ground, fast-growing and highly adaptive, but fragile and less formed. Some will be short-lived and not very well-defined. They’ll prepare the ground for stronger plants to take root and become established.

A revolutionary situation will require a lot of different kinds of forces working in tandem. Like in an ecosystem, there is strength in diversity, and a particular role for all of these types of groups in relation to the others. We should cooperate as much as possible. The elders of the movement have experience and wisdom. The new people have fresh views and energy. We should appreciate both, and all be learning from one another.

50 Ways to Prepare for Revolution

[edited 5/10/11: added #42, combined #23 & #26. Edited again 5/13: added #31, combined #26 and #27, changed wording of #35]

by Stephanie McMillan

The people of the United States are currently unprepared to seize a revolutionary moment. We must fix that.

How can we raise our levels of revolutionary consciousness, organization and struggle?

Raise consciousness

1) Raise consciousness with the purpose of building organization and raising the level of struggle.

2) Investigate before forming opinions. Research how the world and the system function.

3) Read foundational and historical works about revolution, by those who have participated in and led them.

4) Analyze the system’s current condition and trajectory.

5) Learn about the resistance, uprisings and revolutions going on in the world today.

6) Read the material that currently active groups are issuing and discussing.

7) Continuously develop, elaborate upon and refine principles, theories and strategies for our movement.

8. Raise our voices. Articulate revolutionary ideas, and give them a public presence.

9) Listen and speak in the spirit of mutual clarification.

10) Participate in discussion, to develop our ideas and hone our skills in expressing them, and to help others do so.

11) Figure out how to use all our various talents, positions, energy and resources as effectively as possible, to expose the system’s evil, irredeemable and unreformable nature.

12) Analyze and explain the many ways the system dominates and exploits.

13) Stand with the dominated, exploited, invaded, colonized, threatened and oppressed.

14) Display a revolutionary spirit and celebrate it in others.

15) Exercise patience in winning over reluctant potential allies and supporters.

16) Ridicule and discredit the enemy.

17) Create revolutionary culture. Make videos and art, speak, sing, and write blogs, books, comments, leaflets, rhymes, stories, and articles about the enemy’s crimes and the people’s resistance.

18) Exchange ideas locally, nationally and (within the law or safe channels) globally.

19) Encourage others to participate in the revolutionary process.

Organize

20) Organize as a way to raise consciousness more broadly and to build struggle.

21) Start with people we know.

22) If our friends discourage us, make new friends.

23) Network sensibly with people online. Find local people online who express similar ideas, and meet with them.

24) Find a group that we basically agree with. Work with it.

25) If there’s no local group we want to work with, start one.

26) Write a leaflet with contact info. Pass it out in public to find potential comrades.

27) When we meet people, assess our points of agreement. If we agree on basic essentials, decide how to work together. If not, say goodbye for now.

28) Build strong ties locally and nationally, and build solidarity globally.

29) Define allies according to overall outlook and goals.

30) Don’t let secondary differences prevent cooperation. Handle differences between allies non-antagonistically.

31) Do not tolerate oppressive (sexist, racist, homophobic etc.) dynamics within the movement. Confront their expression and put a stop to it.

32) Refrain from saying anything aloud, on the phone or electronically that we wouldn’t want to hear played back in court.

33) Keep illegal drugs away from our political life.

34) Research and practice good security culture.

35) Prioritize the wellbeing of our organizations over personal benefit.

36) Ready our ranks to seize on any breaks in the legitimacy of the system.

Struggle

37) Use struggle to spread revolutionary consciousness and build organization.

38) Collectively determine what we want, and declare our demands.

39) Act as far as possible within our capacity, not either beyond or below our capacity.

40) Continuously strive to expand and consolidate our capacity and strength.

41) Assert our rights and our responsibilities.

42) Bring our revolutionary perspective into struggles already occurring.

43) Defend, support, and encourage our allies.

44) As opportunities arise, weaken the enemy and its ability to rule.

45) Obey the small laws. Don t get taken out of the game for something unworthy.

46) For illegal acts, make sure you can trust your comrades with your life and the lives of everyone connected to you.

47) Avoid being distracted and diverted into symbolic action-for-action’s sake.

48) Don t expect the enemy to act against its nature. It has no mercy and can not be reasoned with.

49) Turn every attack by the enemy into an opportunity to speak out, organize, and grow more powerful.

50) Be willing to work hard. Be smart. Be brave. Remember we’re all in this together.

Editorial Cartoons are Subversive

Here is something I wrote for the blog of the Amsterdam-based VJ (Video-Journalism) Movement.
http://blog.vjmovement.com/?p=94

* * *

When I draw editorial cartoons, I want them to do one or both of two things: expose the system and encourage resistance. In this era, when life on this planet is being systematically killed and converted into profit, and human beings are crushed by exploitation and oppression, to make a principle of creating apolitical art is worse than useless. In fact, in a time of acute crisis, there is no such thing as apolitical art. Whatever the intention of the artist, art that does not promote resistance (overtly or tacitly), in effect supports the status quo.

Purely decorative art does have its appropriate place and time: a time of peace, harmony and sustainability. Unfortunately, we don’t live in such a time. Today, the world cries out for a culture of resistance, art that contributes to building a movement to fight back. We are in a state of emergency, and conditions demand that artists (and everyone else, for that matter) be engaged in the process of putting an end to this system and transforming society.

Editorial cartoons are by nature critical. When asked why his work is always negative, one cartoonist points out that “a positive cartoon is called a greeting card.” I would add that a neutral cartoon is actually an illustration. The function of editorial cartoons is to attack and subvert those in power and their official pronouncements (which are, inevitably in class society, lies).

Editorial cartoons may not often be radical, and are rarely revolutionary, but if they are good, they are always oppositional. This is true even in parts of the world where open opposition is a death sentence. Under such conditions, a cartoonist’s opposition may be subtle or concealed, but it is always there. Readers perceive this. It is the reason readers love them.

Editorial cartoons reveal truths about current events and politics while making the reader laugh, usually in bitter recognition. The form – an image in a box, with or without a bit of text – forces the message to be pared down to its minimal essence. When done well, a cartoon reaches the reader’s consciousness with instant clarification, turning a previously complex or obscured concept into something now obvious.

I have often used the phrase “resistance through ridicule.” When we use humor to expose absurdity and hypocrisy, and inspire our readers to laugh at those in power, then we help our readers to be less afraid. When our respect for the powerful switches to contempt, we can better imagine them toppling from their lofty positions. We can imagine toppling them ourselves.

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