[quote]
Well, it sounds as though you’re firmly committed to the belief that property rights are pretty absolute, and that taking property from someone by force is absolutely wrong. Would you say that that’s what you mean when you refer to “what this country was founded upon?”

In that case, I need to know: do you believe it would be right for us to abandon this continent and return it to the Native Americans who were here before us, and who forfeited their property to us only by means of our superior force?

Because if you say “no,” then it turns out that you don’t really believe that it’s always wrong to take property from others by force. And in that case you open the door to host of other instances where such might be the case.

There’s no third way. This continent was stolen, taken, and conquered by bloody force. It was an orgy of force, theft, and fraud. That’s what this country was founded upon, not the Libertarian fairy tale of a free-trading utopia that you seem to believe in.

If you’re against the taking of property against the will of the rightful owners, in all instances (as you seem to imply), then we’ve got to give the whole blasted continent back. It’s the fruit of the poisoned tree, as they say.

Somehow, I don’t think you’ll go along with that. In which case, your take on what constitutes property rights is, on some level, arbitrary. Once that’s conceded — and it has to be conceded here — your objection to “redistribution” becomes a matter of taste or personal preference, not the absolute matter of justice that you make it out to be.

There are a number of other presuppositions here, a number of other unexamined premises that could be overturned as well.[/quote]

Stan, what do you think?

***

STAN: I think your logic is faulty here.

do you believe it would be right for us to abandon this continent and return it to the Native Americans who were here before us, and who forfeited their property to us only by means of our superior force?

Because if you say “no,” then it turns out that you don’t really believe that it’s always wrong to take property from others by force. And in that case you open the door to host of other instances where such might be the case.

There’s no third way.

You set your argument up with BELIEF as your premise, but then you load the premise with an appeal to moral superiority to intimidate your opponent. The question is set up as a when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife cross, circumscribing your opponent’s answer in advance by limiting her/his options to reply to your false dichotomy (the demand for a yes or no answer to a question that is unsuited for it). Then you answer yourself (assuming the answer you have already presumed), and imply a linear causal progression from the IF (“if you say no”) to the THEN (“then it turns out yada yada yada”). The categorical claim after the THEN of course does not follow anything from the IF that is actually causative (a non sequitur… does not follow). You might be saying no because the changes in the world since the expropriation of that land have so evolved that there is no practicable way to have 300,000,000 peoplel “abandon a continent.” Then you wind up with the old fallacy that says every scratch turns to gangrene, camel’s nose in the tent, slippery slope…. etc etc etc etc etc. I also think you have a conclusion buried in your premise that is an uncritical assumption, yet that idea is the target of critical engagement here: What is property? Let’s hear about the history of “property,” because it is actually a strange and relatively new idea, and one that is not nearly as unidimensional as we might think.

[quote]
No, the Democrats are a far left party in that they are for the redistribution of wealth. That is to say they are for forcibly taking money out of my paycheck and putting it in the pocket of somone else who did not earn it, and to whom I would not give money if I had any choice in the matter.

So are the republicans. They want to put it in the pocket of a smaller group of people who already have more in their pocket than I do. That is what our liberal media, education, and other establishments would call right wing. From my perspective there isn’t much of a difference. We still have less money at the end of the month even though we work just as hard as we did before. It doesn’t matter if it is ending up with a thousand poor people, or one rich corporation. It still is given to other people and does not benifit us at all. In short, both parties are pushing a form of colectivism that is absolutly counter to what this country was founded on, and what it should be.

It is much more accurate to say that we have no real right than no real left. A real right wing movement advocates a government that keeps it’s hands off your earnings, your personal rights, your property rights, and just runs the country. I do not see such a movement anywhere these days.
If we don’t have a “real” left, in this country that is a good thing. We don’t need one. What we need is to keep what we earn, let mismanaged corporations fail when they naturally would and be replaced by new better ones, and to let people know that the government is not there to “take care” of them, but to maintain an environment where they can take care of themselves.
[/quote]

Would you approach this anthropologically – that it presumes people are self-contained little billiard balls that exist merely to bump into one another in their rational, self-interested transactions?

There are tens of millions of Americans who endorse just such a view. How would you reach them?

STAN: Do something with one of them. Then the relationship shifts from an abstract conversation about things not immediate to cooperative communication.

This has significantly destroyed the indigenous lives, cultures and societies of many peoples, created much social disorder, pain and suffering , and self-destruction against non-white peoples, and trashed their environments significantly.

^^^
Of course, I am not quite sure an absolute rejection of the concept of progress (“linearity”)is correct at all. Ending racism, imperialism and colonialism _is_ progress, an advance for humanity, our species. It doesn’t occur in a straight-line (strictly “linear”), but rather a zig-zag, i.e. one step forward, two step backwards,sometimes.
Industrialization was not all that socialism “did”. As I say here, it was the bulwark for major gains against the European colonialist system.

^^^^

In fact, by any account,

^^^
CB: _Any_ account ? I’m not sure that the former colonial victims’ accounts agree with yours. What do the Chinese say on this ? Vietnamese ? Cubans ? Indians ? Ghanans ? Nigerians ? Venezuelans ? Bolivians ? Egyptians ? Many former Soviet Republics in Asia ? Iranians ? Libyans ? South Africans ?
Namibians ? Angolans ?
^^^

every one of those places is far worse off, and far more vulnerable now than they were even under colonial rule… not because of the beneficience of the colonizers, but because the neoliberal adaptation of capitalist accumulation, combined with the left’s devotion to industrial development and the “green revolution” as “progress,” has undermined subsistence and left these places far more dependent on a far less stable international economic regime.

^^^
CB: It is not at all clear that European colonialism and slavery of the 450 years before the last 60 was far better and far less vulnerable than life under neo-colonialism and neo-liberalism. You would have to do a lot more to prove this claim. You might have a very difficult time getting the former victims of colonialism who won national liberation struggles in the period I mentioned to agree with your claim, or wanting to return to the days of paleo-colonialism from whatever problems they have today. There is a certain neo-paternalist radicalism in claiming that these national liberation struggles have worsened the circumstances of the liberated nations.

^^^^^
The disorder exported to these peripheries is not simply the theft of item 1 (energy), item 2 (labor), et al. Poverty itself — when defined, for example, as having no money — is not intrinsically disordered. Subsistence ag societies, left to themselves, have been remarkable well self-organized, and have evolved perfectly viable ideas and practices to maintain social equilibrium.

^^^
CB: Yes, I know. See , for example, _Pigs for the Ancestors_ by Roy Rappaport, on Papua New Guinea’s Tsimbaga. And then our whole species lived like that for the first 190,000 (or more) years of our existence. Agriculture (production of surpluses) was only invented 5000 years ago (See _People of the Earth_ by Brian Fagan; archeology textbook).

Energy, natural resources and labor are not just “items”. They are essential necessities for all human life. To refer to their theft as “simple” is to not understand how humans go about living fundamentally.

^^^^

The “disorder” is far deeper than simply scarcity in the wake of theft. It is a constant disruption of a people’s natural propensity to self-organize, created by a constant disruption of all three aspects of existence: ecology, culture, and the personhood that corresponds to them.

^^^^
CB: Yes, the far deeper details of what you refer to as disruption are in the several books I listed earlier. “Colonialism and slavery” refer to a system of genocide. Maybe the word “genocide” will convey to you that what I said in the earlier post is far, _far_ deeper than “simply scarcity in the wake of theft.” Maybe I’ll bring some quotes from the sources I mentioned. Do you recall I referred to the _genocidal_ usurpation of the Western Hemisphere ? I don’t think you are telling me something deeper than what I said to you.

^^^^

The “green revolution,” hailed on right and left, has been far more damaging and destructive of social organizations than the primitive imperialism of direct conquest and occupation, and the collapse of the financialized global economy is about to expose just how thoroughgoing that crippling dependency has become.

^^^
CB: You’ll have to do a lot more than just assert the first claim. China, India, Persia, Mexico, Peru, Southeast Asia, Egypt, West Africa, et al had more than subsistence agriculture before the invasions of the Europeans,for starters. The Green Revolution is not what wrecked their social organization. Check out Parts IV and V in _People of the Earth_ on “Old World Civilizations” and “Native American Civilizations” on the social organization around the first “green revolutions” starting from 4 and 5 thousand years ago.

As to what will happen as a result of the financial crash, I’m not so sure it’s bad for the neo-colonies.

^^^^
CB: The Detroit City Council has passed a Food Policy Resolution authored by Maleek Yakini, who has been organizing urban organic gardening for years. It is false to say that we aren’t even close to using Stimulus money for this project. We very well might. YES WE CAN !

STAN: I’ve been writing all day, on another thing, but my brain cells are burnt. Perhaps you or someone else can respond to what I agree is an idiotic — and at the end of the day, imperial-racist — malthusian screed.

I don’t have a flair for writing as many here do, off topic-but the finance breakdown lately,has stopped a lot of 20 somethings having kids!

I used to be a big fan of “Omni” Magazine–May ‘82 J. Salk “To evolve, not merely survive..eliminate the need for war…be both conservative and liberal…be adaptive…emphasis on concensus…the matter too important to be left to politicians..groups of scientists and physicians…etc. etc. etc.

Maybe the developed world will destroy itself…but population will reestablish itself in unaffected regions of the planet? probably NOT likely…..the problem is GENETIC SELFISHNESS…THAT TO ME is not SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST! Only Andy Borowitz has written on the subject in popular journalism, in his satires! Not even here at feral scholar has the subject been addressed!??

The biggest setback to this expansion came in the late 40’s, 1950’s and 60’s with a significant worldwide anti-colonialist liberation struggle, backed up by the Soviet Union.

Not sure that this is true at all. A “setback” would imply something far more linear than what happened, and some telos within capitalist “development” (or a telos within socialist development… but industrialization has been the only thing that served as that pull-point). In fact, by any account, every one of those places is far worse off, and far more vulnerable now than they were even under colonial rule… not because of the beneficience of the colonizers, but because the neoliberal adaptation of capitalist accumulation, combined with the left’s devotion to industrial development and the “green revolution” as “progress,” has undermined subsistence and left these places far more dependent on a far less stable international economic regime.

The disorder exported to these peripheries is not simply the theft of item 1 (energy), item 2 (labor), et al. Poverty itself — when defined, for example, as having no money — is not intrinsically disordered. Subsistence ag societies, left to themselves, have been remarkable well self-organized, and have evolved perfectly viable ideas and practices to maintain social equilibrium. The “disorder” is far deeper than simply scarcity in the wake of theft. It is a constant disruption of a people’s natural propensity to self-organize, created by a constant disruption of all three aspects of existence: ecology, culture, and the personhood that corresponds to them.

The “green revolution,” hailed on right and left, has been far more damaging and destructive of social organizations than the primitive imperialism of direct conquest and occupation, and the collapse of the financialized global economy is about to expose just how thoroughgoing that crippling dependency has become.

I am more or less familiar with your anarcho-communist turn (if it can be called that, labels don’t really matter) of the last few years, and I agree for a variety of reasons that it is the only viable way forward. But the prevailing political atmosphere these last few months, in the wake of Obama’s election and now his taking office, convince me that the already utopian goal of local self-sufficiency/radical democracy/et al is further away than ever. The utter passivity of progressive forces, waiting for the messiah to deliver us to a better place, has been nothing short of astonishing. And the utter passivity includes left-wing people and movements who
self-consciously understand that power accedes nothing without demands, so to speak.

Somehow I get the impression that an invisible threshhold has been crossed these last few years and we’ve reached new levels of consumerist stupefaction. It’s hard to even imagine the anti-globalist mobilizations of 1999-2001 or the anti-war demos of 2003 (limited as those beasts were) taking place today. Oh, the squandered possibilities! Even a chimerical DLC centrist like Obama could be forced to do a few good things (“transitional” for the next stage of the struggle, as it were) if people were organized and in motion. For example, some kind of campaign involving popular education and civil disobedience could force Obama and the DP majority to devote a relatively tiny but nonetheless substantive chunk of stimulus package money to supporting community-based agriculture. Foreclosed residential property could be turned into organic gardens and the unemployed could be put to work, learning farming skills, earning needed income, and growing healthy food for otherwise underserved communities. One can even envision ensuing competition between careerists and leftists to take over ground-level administration and participation in this sort of endeavor, such as happened with some of the War on Poverty programs. (A radicalizing experience for many New Leftists and grassroots people of color!) But this (or anything like it) isn’t even close to happening. It (or anything like it) is not even on the radar screen, as far as I know. All the usual suspect NGO’s and pressure groups have been thoroughly coopted (as with Clinton in early 1993) and those fragmented masses outside the loop are either mesmerized by the media spectacle, too busy with surviving in the near-depression conditions, or cynically withdrawn (or more likely some combination of the three). Maybe I am horribly misreading what is going on and what is not going on, but in some respects I’m more dismayed than I’ve been in a long time.
An opportunity for human beings to take a small step toward making their own history lost. I’ll leave it at this for now…

European colonialism has been global since,you know, Columbus and Capitain Cook, et al. So, the periphery has been at its territorial max for a long time. The biggest setback to this expansion came in the late 40′s, 1950′s and 60′s with a significant worldwide anti-colonialist liberation struggle, backed up by the Soviet Union.

Exploited and oppressed labor was involved from the beginning, slavery being heavy duty labor.

I’d say the Marxist version of the labor _theory_ of value ( Smith and Ricardo had forms of a labor theory of value) doesn’t add anything to the actual activities, theory being only ideas, not practices. It is a way of analyzing how capitalists exploit the labor of wage-laborers and other laborers to accumulate wealth in the form of money capital. Labor is exploited from workers in both the core (imperial centers) and the periphery (colonies). Though the disorder visited on the periphery is greater, there is significant environmental and social disorder accumulating in the core. As far as things like industrial and nuclear waste, I believe there may be more in the “core”. Detroit probably has more industrial waste than any place in the periphery. You know the 4th Law of Thermodynamics: What goes around comes around (smile)