My Review of The Communist Manifesto

So I finally read "The Communist Manifesto" by Karl Marx. I am putting this on my political blog instead of my review blog primarily because to properly analyze this, I think I need to speak and include my political beliefs, though I shall start from a purely literary perspective. Actually, no, before that, I'll start from an effectiveness purpose.

Reading it, and seeing the political rhetoric within, I understand why it scares Republicans. The ideas espoused by Karl Marx have had a heavy influence on most every government on earth. Indeed, Communism, after Capitalism, was the dominant political philosophy of the 20th century.

The common wisdom of the modern day is that communism was proven wrong because the Russians, the most dominant communist country, ground to a halt due to lagging technological development, corruption and a general lack of freedoms by the local populace. But for something that didn't supposedly didn't work, country after country that wanted to transform themselves from a poor rural or pre industrial society, chose Communism instead of Capitalism.

Furthermore, the first section of the Communist Manifesto, which speaks of the historical class struggle, might be a bit...hyperbolic, but it also makes some strikingly resonant points. The elite in this country are utterly unaccountable. Look at SOPA.

A government, or an elite, that truly respected the median 80% of this country, would never try to pass such an abomination.

And yet, Donald Rumsfeld, as much of an idiot as he is, makes a good point. From orbit, look at North Korea vs South Korea.

And yet...

If it was simply dictatorship that would make a country suffer, why do so many dictators choose the trappings of communism?

I argue that in part it is the powerful rhetoric of Karl Marx's work. History might show that capitalism makes a population more prosperous than communists, simply based on the wealth of the members involved.

But is that what we should measure the value of a society by? The communists certainly didn't. At least at first. In the 1940's and 1950's under Stalin, it was about the accomplishments of their people, defeating the Nazis and putting Sputnik in orbit.

Symbols won the cold war. Landing on the Moon. Star Wars. The Olympics. Bit by bit, the people in the Soviet Union saw how capitalism made Americans free and rich and grew jealous and resentful that their own government didn't give them such freedoms.

And now we have 2012. The central tenet of Capitalism is markets, which requires competition. But maybe...without Communism to compete against, Capitalism is also starting to lose its edge. The very things that Karl Marx talks about in the Manifesto are starting to happen again.

The non 1% are starting to be slowly relegated to serf status. Renfields and other apologetics will whine that the poor in America have it great. They will say that they have freedoms here and such.

And yet...

SOPA, a blantant attempt to steal the internet, something that many people depend on for their work every day, or their enjoyment, was passed in this so called Capitlist Democracy.

Libertarians often say that we don't have capitalism any more. And judging by the workings of our government, I'd agree with them.

The problem with the Manifesto is that there is no real end game in mind. So Karl Marx basically figures that the Proletariat will rise up against the Bourgeoisie and that they will all privately work together in some sort of utopia. It doesn't take into account the most negative of human emotions such as fear, avarice and greed. Capitalism, on the other hand, does.

So the defacto modus operandi for Communism became to enforce its ideals on those who didn't want to obey the tenants of communism.

A free society works more efficiently.

But has our own society become an illusion? Do the elite who run the country realize that giving us the illusion of freedom makes us more productive? But if we were truly free, and our vote truly mattered, would we have to choose between Barack Obama, who with the rest of the Democrats wanted to steal the internet like a bunch of Mafia Thugs until the very last possible moment when the light of day was shown on them like cockroaches?

Or the Republicans.

And really...if you aren't a Republican or a Renfield, do I really need to say what's wrong with the Republicans?

Libertarians often talk about the evil government that forces them to obey laws they don't like under threat of a gun. Well, guess what folks, that is what government is...the biggest mob. The person who controls the appartatus of force and how it is wielded. The theory of the Rule of Law is that it at least depersonalizes that force and makes it less passionate and less arbitrary.

And then we turn around and make corporations people. We say that Cash is Speech.

So for those of us who hold ideals other than the dollar being the ultimate arbiter of what makes society valuable or what makes an individual valuable, are we not also 'under the threat of a gun'? Indeed, if we are the majority in a democracy and the minority can use the levers of power to prevent us from enacting policies that benefit the majority, at what point does it become Tyranny of the Minority?

They say it doesn't.

But then again, they say a lot of things.

I look at Russia with Communism and Russia with Capitalism and I don't see much difference.

I see a lot of differences here, but then I look at the treatment of Occupy Wall Street and I must wonder...are we really free or,like the matrix, are we merely given the illusion of freedom to increase our productivity, and as the need for that illusion goes away, so our so called freedoms are more and more brazenly stripped from us.

I think Karl Marx got an awful lot right, but he never really answered the question of what happens when the Communists 'win' and a new set of Bourgeoisie takes over.

[News] Liability in Press Laws

So I promised to type this up some time ago, but here are the basics. Several of my friends and I were all sitting around talking about politics. I think it goes without saying that there was a very wide spectrum of political beliefs present, but we, like the populace at large, held a general disgust with the media and its current environment. I think this discussion was timely, because of what has been going on in England recently with FOX news hacking into the phones of several prominent people. The government is holding hearings over a wide range of press abuses from the phone hacking to the paparazzi. Here in the US, there are numerous instances of extremely grievous abuses by Big Media (that includes Fox and all network and cable news) but even newspapers and magazines.

So the challenge lies in the fact, that the first sign of true oppression in a society is when the government moves to shut up or shut down the press. When you have a vibrant or democratic society, they need to find sneakier ways to do it like the “Protect IP” laws recently attempted to pass in Britain, Australia and here in the United States. You can still have an unspoken agreement among the major players that certain stories shall be spun a certain way (cough cough like Occupy Wall Street) but the truth is, I honestly believe in most cases this is simple idiocy, laziness and group think rather than some grand conspiracy.

They’re too incompetent and irresponsible to be in much of a conspiracy.

But how do you hold them responsible? Simply passing a law making certain kinds of behavior illegal is often ineffective, because they will either find clever ways to skirt the rules, or, if the enforcement is effective, then a government will use those enforcement tools to protect itself from embarrassing political stories. The “Official Secrets Act” in the UK, makes the abuses by the DHS in the US look like small potatoes.

So a friend of mine simply suggested the idea that you allow people to request that any footage or notes a media outlet took of them be made public in its entirety, and if they didn’t then they could be sued for damages of libel in a court of law. This is an excellent idea for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that it acknowledges that footage taken of an individual should guarantee THEM certain rights, not just the media. It also is an easily objective test. If you film me, I want the entire tape made public. If you won’t do that, you get sued.

That will discourage blatant manipulation which doesn’t carry the original intent of the individual.

Personally, I think we need more than that, but the fact that everyone present could agree on this reform seems like a very good place to start.

[Repost] GAO Audits Fed

(Via Bill Maxwell)

http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=BFA0CBEC-CCE1-4520-8899-122C8B719105

Topic List

This is mainly for administrative purposes, which I will be including in future posts at the bottom to help me remember, but the list of topics I want to do has grown so large I don't want to keep putting it off.

Neofederalism: Restrengthening the 10th amendment as an argument FOR liberalism
Neofederalism: the Oasis effect and who should rule?
Electing the Attorney General
Uniting Left and Right: Bitcoin
Why exactly does our DHS infrastructure need to be so secret? Who does that really serve?
The price of apathy
Corporations aren't actually evil vampires. They're just vampires. Its the Renfields that are the problem
How to exploit the apathetic
How to exploit the willing enablers of the Renfields
To Big to Fail: Entropy in Human Institutions past a certain size
The economy of scale vs the smaller element
The WTO: How it should be reformed or abolished
The UN: Dissolve the Security Council or Dissolve the UN

Repost from Daily Kos

They are becoming more sophisticated

Occupy wall street is becoming more sophisticated. The attempts to censor and oppress them are becoming more obvious. If the Tea Party REALLY cared about BOTH small government and controlling corporations they'd be all over this. If the news REALLY cared about 'the people' they'd cover #OccupyWallStreet in the hundreds to thousands when they covered Tea Party Rallies in the fifties.

The left is already aware that corporations own America. Some independents care. And as the Republicans have shown....if a sufficiently sized majority or even minority is willing to stand up and say, "NO!" then they cannot be stopped in this country. The wheels that make governance impossible without the will of a supra majority works both ways.

The false church of centrism combined with the fact that the rising generation is aware that their elders have been bought and paid for by Clinton Democrats and Corporate Democrats cannot hold the rank in file in check forever.

And all the pretty speeches followed by capitulative action by Obama cannot change that.

[Cons]The Founding Fathers

So the question is, how much should we take them as allegory and how much should we take them as historical persons?

I know that seems like it should be obvious, but it isn't.

You see as historical persons, they were flawed but brilliant men who lived in the context of their particular time frame. Conversely, as allegorical figures they are the architects that created the constitution that serves as the symbol of the social construct of our times. Having a written constitution provides stability to our system of governance, but we as a society decide how much of the written version we're going to accept vs how much of a 'living' document it might be.

Literalists interpret the constitution by the intent of the founding fathers and by the strict wording as it was meant a the time. But the problem is, that by restricting it to this, you can argue that you delegitimize it. Every flaw in a founding father (such as slave ownership) becomes another potential for angle of attack not just on a good but flawed man, but on the document that they helped create.

To white anglo saxon male, it is unfortunate that slavery happened, and it was eventually rectified with amendments to the constitution and (in the view of most) the civil rights acts passed in the 1960's. To someone of a different skin color, female or such, its not that simple. An amendment doesn't change the fact that the national story is SOMEONE ELSE's story. If the founding fathers are allegorical, then the document is living but if it is literal, then so too are the details of their stories. It is very hard to play down one without playing down the other.

I argue that the allegorical interpretation has its strengths. But then again, I'm in favor of having a constitutional convention every 50 years or so as a way of reconnecting people with the constitution. I understand why people are afraid of this, especially given our political difficulties now, but sometimes it is the hard choices that end up being the best ones.