Dear Melanie:
The latest I read about, as if they haven't suffered enough, is women from
the Balkans being lured to the Europe and England to work as prostitutes and
your right, it goes on ad infinitum. It's disgusting, it's cruel and most
of us are powerless as individuals to do anything because many of us in
affluent countries who care are struggling to survive as well. And yes, I
agree, it is "impossibly depressing" to know about which is why most of us,
I think, in self defence choose not to read, or think about it. Thanks for
posting your feelings on this matter.
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
PS
99% of this could be eliminated with a Universal Basic Income!!!!
----------
>From: Melanie Milanich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: Thomas Lunde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: Irish Workfare
>Date: Fri, Jul 9, 1999, 6:14 PM
>
> Thomas,
> A few years ago on this list I quoted from a book I was reading, which I
don't
> recall the author or title now, however, it took your premise a bit further,
and
> suggested that the elite "haves" of the world were more or less desiring to
kill
> off the unnecessary people on the planet. I don't want to dwell on it
because it
> is impossibly depressing an idea, but more and more I see how the homeless are
> being treated, as well as refugees and victims of various disasters locally
and
> around the world, and I do feel that we have lost the Judeo-Christian
philosophy
> that once existed in the1950s about helping our fellowmen and doing good to
others,
> all those kinds of things to believe in that the potential of all human beings
was
> valued. Also I just bought a book from the bookstore, called
> Unwanted people, slavery today (or something like that I don't have it right
here)
> about the thousands, literally hundreds of thousands of women, children, youth
and
> adults who are in essense bought and sold for the sex trade, for beggars, for
> endentured labourers, and in African countries pure forms of slavery, buying
and
> sellling people exists today.
> As many countries economies collapse people turn increasingly to any way of
> survival. And there are some 800 million people without enough food or clean
water
> willing to do anything to get out of their plight.
> The Fortune 500 magazine put out its growing list of world billionaires last
week,
> but I don't hear any concern about all the unnecessary dying people.
> Melanie
> Thomas Lunde wrote:
>
>> ----------
>> >From: "Durant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> >Subject: Re: Irish Workfare
>> >Date: Wed, Jul 7, 1999, 10:14 PM
>>
>> Thomas:
>>
>> First, this is not my writing, but a quote typed from a book - a book
>> written by a popular author in 1912. They used different forms in writing
>> than what we use today, so, sometimes you have to work a little to get the
>> idea behind the cumbersome style.
>> >
>>
>> >> The problem turns, remember, upon the control of the means of production.
>> >> Capitalism means that this control is vested in the hands of few, while
>> >> political freedom is the appanage of all. It this anomaly cannot endure,
>> >> from its insecurity and from its own contradiction with its presumed moral
>> >> basis, you must either have a transformation of one or of the other of the
>> >> two elements which combined have been found unworkable. These two factors
>> >> are (1) The ownership of the means of production by a few; (2) The freedom
>> >> of all. To solve capitalism you must get rid of restricted ownership, or
of
>> >> freedom, or of both.
>> >>
>> > Eva asked:
>>
>> > What political freedom?? (and what the *^%$* is appanage, the
>> > dictionary didn't find any means to connect it to your sentence.)
>>
>> Thomas:
>>
>> Yes, I stumbled on this word appanage too when I was transcribing and I was
>> tempted to subsitute the word "appendage" but decided that perhaps I just
>> did not have enough education, so I left it as written.
>>
>> Now, as to political freedom. Belloc maintains in greater detail in other
>> parts of the book, but alludes to it here in the phrase, "this anomaly
>> cannot endure" his perception of the basic contradiction between belief
>> systems. On the one hand, the belief that democracy gives individuals
>> freedom by allowing them to choose who represents them and how they will be
>> represented by the political platforms of various parties - and I agree,
>> this is a very questionable freedom - and the anomaly that allows those with
>> capital to monopolize the means of production and thereby derive others of
>> their economic freedom.
>>
>> Eva continues:
>> >
>> > Your premise is false. Capitalism doesn't mean political freedom,
>> > most of the time not even nominally. Economic unequality
>> > cannot provide political equality, when economic power means
>> > political power.
>> > Therefore there is no reason why
>> > non-capitalism should lead necessarily to non-freedom.
>>
>> Thomas:
>>
>> You have prefectly made Belloc's point. Capitalism is the antithesis of
>> political freedom, which is why he argues that the dominance of capitalism
>> will lead to slavery. The anomaly between the two belief systems is that
>> you cannot have capitalism and freedom or you cannot have freedom and
>> capitalism.
>>
>> Eva continues:
>> >
>> > The conditions needed for
>> > a successful/democratic socialist transformation were missing
>> > in the historical events so far. This is straightforward analysis
>> > of historical data. A successful transformation has not
>> > happened yet, which does not mean it cannot, when the conditions are
>> > right. New systems have this nature of not yet ever being around.
>>
>> Thomas:
>>
>> Again, you must be studying Belloc in your spare time. He would have no
>> trouble agreeing with your conclusions and the difference between 1912 and
>> 1999 is just history. We are still stuck with capitalism because it
>> successfully buys the collaboration of each elected government. The
>> socialists have never had the capital to compete for the politicians support
>> and only occasionally, as at an election time, have the politicians had to
>> defer to the will of the people. But Belloc's observations and conclusions
>> are frightening. We either have capitalism with slavery or we have
>> democracy without capitalism. Given the brainwashing that we have all went
>> through from our culture, it is inconcievable for any new thought to gain
>> sufficient momentum to introduce change.
>> >
>> >
>> >> Now there is only one alternative to freedom, which is the negation of it.
>> >> Either a man is free to work and not to work as he pleases, or he may be
>> >> liable to a legal compulsion to work, backed by the forces of the state.
In
>> >> the first he is a free man; in the second he is by definition a slave. We
>> >> have, therefore, so far as this factor of freedom is concerned, no choice
>> >> between a number of changes, but only the opportunity of one, to wit, the
>> >> establishment of slavery in place of freedom.
>>
>> Eva says:
>> >
>> > You suggest, that people are "free to work" at present?
>> > Because you are wrong in that case. Nobody, who
>> > HAS TO get up and go to work for an income that
>> > is necessary for living a life that is considered to be
>> > satisfactory in the given social/cultural setup, is free.
>>
>> Thomas:
>>
>> NOT ME! People have to work - or starve. The difference in my lifetime is
>> that we have moved from a workforce in which the government supported me
>> while my skills could not be used by capitalists until those skills were
>> needed again, to the present concept which is that my skills are irrelevant
>> and that I must work at whatever is available. In the first instance, I
>> felt a considerable degree of freedom, in the second instance, the full
>> weight of the state and my personal survival is dependant on doing any work
>> I am directed to do. I agree with Belloc, in the first instance, I felt a
>> free man, in the second instance, I feel a slave. When the only option is
>> starvation for non-complaince, withholding my labour becomes a pointless
>> option.
>>
>> Eva stated:
>> >
>> > The wast majority of us are wageslaves, whether we are
>> > happy with our particular situations/conscious of it or not.
>> > The state is an instrument of the status quo, it exist to
>> > enforce our status as wageslaves, and maintain the status of the owners of
>> > the means of production (private property).
>> >
>> > If we were free, no enforcement/state would be necessary,
>> > as we would work because we see the need for it or because we enjoy it,
>> > or both.
>>
>> Thomas:
>>
>> Again, Eva, I am total agreement with your statements. That is why I see,
>> though my answer may not be the only one or even the best one, that the
>> concept of a Basic Income is the device that would give me back my freedom
>> from capitalistic slavery.
>> >
>> >> Such a solution, the direct,
>> >> immediate, and conscious reestalishment of slavery, would provide a true
>> >> soltuioh of the problems which capitalism offers. It would guarantee,
under
>> >> workable regulations, sufficiency and security for the dispossessed. Such
a
>> >> solution, as I shall show, is the probable goal which our society will in
>> >> fact approach. To its immediate and conscious acceptance, however, there
is
>> >> an obstacle.
>>
>> Eva comments:
>> >>
>> >
>> > This is indeed, frightening. Especially as it seem to be
>> > repeated more and more often; the gist of it being, that
>> > democracy is mob's rule of the great unwashed, when
>> > clever, benevolent technocrats could govern us ever so well.
>> >
>> > Capitalism hasn't got the economic mechanism to provide
>> > continuous security for anyone - and last of all for the
>> > dispossessed. No form of government can change this.
>> > Hitler needed an artificial market (military/public work)
>> > and a war, to re-kindle the failing machinary. If you follow through your
>> > thread of thought, this is where you get.
>> > There is no capitalism
>> > with a human face, whether based on allegedly benevolent
>> > dictatorship or democracy. It hasn't got the economic machinary to
>> > support it other then for relatively short periods. That's why
>> > it is outmoded and all attempt of it's further zombification is
>> > madness, when we now have the conditions to do better.
>>
>> Thomas:
>>
>> True!
>> >
>> >
>> >> Thomas:
>> >>
>> >> The following article is an example of a State moving slowly towards
>> >> slavery. And as the article mentions, it is the very business class,
those
>> >> who, as Belloc identifies as the small minority who control the means of
>> >> production, who find the concepts of Socialism or Welfare state so
abhorrent
>> >> to their goals of personal wealth creation who are supporting the
political
>> >> moves that are leading the poor into slavery. First, we can see that the
>> >> plight of the poor has to increase in misery and finally as a sop, the
>> >> authorities will bring forth as a panacea to the cruelty they have
created,
>> >> "under workable regulations, sufficiency and security for the
dispossessed."
>> >>
>> Eva concludes:
>> >
>> > The whole of the middle-classes are sliding down to
>> > the uncertainties and statelessness insecurity of the underclass.
>> > This experience will sling them out of the stupor created by the
>> > virtual wealth of the last 50 years. Such awareness will bring
>> > the next revolution and the long awaited syncronisation
>> > of collective social relations with the collective and
>> > highly integrated work we already do: democracy, freedom and
>> > the shrinking and disappearing state.
>> >
>> >> Convince me that I am wrong?
>>
>> Thomas:
>>
>> Again I agree. However, I am more pessimistic than you in that I believe
>> externalities like climate change, the peak of oil production,
>> overpopulation and war have and will overtake our collective will to change
>> and that the current systems will remain in place, much like a dictator uses
>> a crisis to maintain power. As these catastrophes strike us with increasing
>> frequency, the state will get more draconian and capitalism will get more
>> vicious.
>> >>
>> >
>> > I did my best...
>> >
>> > Eva
>>
>> Thomas:
>>
>> Thanks
>> >
>> >> Respectfully,
>> >>
>> >> Thomas Lunde
>> >
>> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> >
>
>
>
