[R-G] The road away from Serfdom

[Anthony Fenton]

The road away from Serfdom
COMMON SENSE
JOHN MAXWELL
Sunday, November 02, 2008
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20081101T200000-0500_142042_OBS_THE_ROAD_AWAY_FROM_SERFDOM.asp

John McCain's real problem is that if it is announced on Tuesday that  
he has won the election for the presidency of the United States,  
nobody will believe it.
JOHN MAXWELL

Every indicator - including popular sentiment worldwide - is against  
him.

The huge crowds - some standing in the rain to listen to Barack Obama;  
the millions of poor people's dollars donated to the Obama campaign,  
the hundreds of thousands of volunteers for Obama, the hundreds of  
songs written for Obama, the number of early voters who say they have  
voted for Obama, and finally, the public opinion polls have embedded  
into the consciousness of the world the idea that Barack Obama cannot  
lose this election if it is conducted fairly.

The world is suspicious of John McCain and his confederates.
They, led by Rove, Cheney and Bush have so discredited the US  
electoral system, have so reduced US credibility over the world, that  
nobody really believes anything they say.

And it isn't that they are simply unbelievable, untrustworthy and full  
of it, they and McCain and Palin are also viewed as socially backward  
and behind the times, technologically advanced but culturally  
primitive -unrepresentative of what the world believes the real  
America to be.

In a world where Liberal usually means right of centre, non-Americans  
are astonished to hear "Liberal' launched as a cuss-word by people who  
believe that the world was created in seven days and that dinosaurs  
and humans once walked the earth at the same time.

A few days ago it was announced that Volkswagen had overtaken Exxon- 
Mobil as the world's most highly valued company. In a world where  
'socialism' is an even more outrageous insult than 'liberal', it is  
startling to contemplate the fact that Volkswagen is a product of the  
post-war British Army of the Rhine directed by the 1945 British  
government of Clement Atlee- a bunch of socialist commissars who  
reinvented Hitler's 'People's Car' and put it on the road.

It was these same socialists who were responsible for civilising  
industrial relations in Germany by inventing the idea of Co- 
Determination, a system where the worker participates at every  
executive level of the German corporation and worker directors sit on  
corporate boards.

Co-Determination is an idea which has been so successful that it has  
transformed European social relations and flowered into the adoption  
of an EU social agenda - aimed at full employment and a more  
inclusive, participatory society. On December 9, 1989, the member  
states, with the historically ironic exception of the United Kingdom,  
adopted a declaration constituting the Community Charter of the  
Fundamental Social Rights of Workers.

Among the areas regulated in this charter are such matters as  
employment and remuneration, improvement of living and working  
conditions, social protection, freedom of association, collective  
bargaining, equal treatment of men and women, industrial health, the  
protection of children, elderly and disabled persons; and information,  
consultation and participation of workers in decision-making. Most of  
these principles are still, in the United States, subjects of bitter  
dispute.

A couple of weeks ago, President Bush, in a piteous appeal for a  
return to the wild, begged his fellow world leaders not to abandon the  
principles of laissez-faire when they come to remake the world in the  
aftermath of the current economic meltdown and the almost inevitable  
social catastrophe to follow.

The next president of the United States will need to come to terms  
with a world which no longer works according to American principles  
and rules. Free trade, globalisation, and the ideas behind the  
multilateral agreement on investment are obsolete.

This time, as in every crisis of capitalism, the pundits are dashing  
to the Internet and the libraries to reread Karl Marx.
Marx was not a sentimentalist. He hated neither capitalism nor  
capitalists. They were objective realities and functioned according to  
certain principles. Capitalism was doomed to fail because of its  
fundamental internal contradictions - not because of the greed of its  
practitioners.

These contradictions include the antagonism between the social,  
collective nature of production on the one hand, and private ownership  
of the means of production on the other; and the antagonism between  
the world market and the limitations of the nation state. Capitalism  
is based on production for profit and not for social need. The working  
class creates new value but receives only a portion of that new value  
back as wages.

The capitalists take the rest - the surplus. As a result, the working  
class collectively cannot afford to buy back all the goods it  
produces. Capitalism destroys its own markets by pauperising its  
workers and by over-production. Marx predicted globalisation and the  
worldwide effects we now experience.

The opponents of socialism, the proponents of laissez-faire, tend to  
believe like Margaret Thatcher that "There is no such thing as  
society" and like Ronald Reagan that "Government is not the answer,  
Government is the problem." The ultra-capitalists and globalisers  
abhor what they call "the Nanny State" - the welfare state that  
attempts to guarantee a basic level of civilised existence for all.

In FA Hayek's "Road to Serfdom?" the problem is stated: "In place of  
individual liberty, socialism offers security. It promises protection  
from personal economic necessities and restraints, and an equality of  
economic well-being." Hayek was not a socialist.

The main architect of the latest disaster, Alan Greenspan, has  
proclaimed himself confounded by the turn of events. He had a set of  
rules which he says had always worked. Until now! He cannot understand  
the disaster over which he presided.

Greenspan is a disciple of Ayn Rand, one of recent history's most  
eminent false prophets. Rand's theory - so-called 'Objectivism' -  
holds that human beings must rationally be selfish, putting individual  
self-interest first. She therefore rejects the ethical doctrine of  
altruism - a moral obligation to live not only for one's self but for  
the sake of others. Since Rand took millions of words to define her  
philosophy, any summary of it is perforce crude. I do not think,  
however, that I have misrepresented her, or Hayek, or Greenspan, or  
Thatcher or Reagan or the millions of others to whom freedom is a  
purely personal attribute and life is every man for himself and the  
devil take the hindmost.

Some others of us think that none of us is free if any of us is  
unfree. The fascists believe that any sense of duty outside of self is  
a fetter, restricting real freedom. We believe that only by our mutual  
recognition of all our humanity are we human, and that our  
civilisation and survival depend on that. We are all in the same boat  
and on the same journey.

Individual liberty clearly means different things to different people.  
The International Republican Institute, headed by John McCain, no  
doubt believes that the people of Haiti are free, and free to starve  
to death, while the people of Cuba are enslaved by socialism, free  
education and the best health services in the world.

The IRI was one of the prime movers in usurping Haitian sovereignty to  
get rid of Jean Bertrand Aristide whom they consider a serious threat  
to real democracy as he was intent on building another socialist/ 
welfare state alongside Cuba.

NAUGHT FOR THEIR COMFORT

The Gleaner on Wednesday betrayed the essentially parasitical view of  
imperial capitalism, when it headlined a soiree held at the Gleaner  
with the admonition "Look away from the USA", and reported that a  
number of academics and a (now obligatory) theologian were urging the  
government to seek financial aid from world powers other than the USA.

On Sunday last Mr Edward Seaga similarly gave his considered and  
equally obtuse opinion that Jamaica stood to gain nothing from either  
Obama or McCain.

I am not at all sure when or whether Jamaica has ever got any useful  
financial assistance from abroad, except in remittances sent by our  
own emigrants. What we have got is massive loans which have gone to  
pay for SUVs, foreign travel, air-conditioned garrison-townhouses and  
expensive white elephants such as Mr Seaga's redevelopment of downtown  
Kingston and the 'Doomsday Highway'. The Kingston redevelopment tore  
the heart out of our once fairly elegant and vibrant capital city  
transforming it into a tawdry, lawless, toxic disaster. The 'Doomsday  
Highway' is the best means yet devised for separating Jamaicans from  
their hard-earned pensions. Bauxite development destroyed our  
countryside and its communities, sending our farmers fleeing to  
languish on the street-corners of Birmingham and the Bronx and leaving  
thousands of children fatherless, hungry, illiterate and ripe for  
exploitation by pimps and gunmen and doomed to be brutalised, jailed  
or hanged for our criminal neglect.

Now, courtesy of Russian oligarchs and presidentially pardoned Swiss  
billionaires, we are to metastasise our bauxite disaster. This phase  
is really something destined to sterilise the land, destroy the  
landscape, the water supplies, and the culture, and to send even more  
peasants into exile and even more children into lives of crime and  
social degradation.

Additionally, by burning coal the new bauxite miracle will complete  
the destruction of our air quality as it destroys our water quality.  
In the 1960s the graffiti had it that birth control was "a plan to  
kill Negro". Little did the artists know about bauxite.

Now that the capitalists have established that the state - that is,  
us, we, the people - are the benefactors of last resort, it is time  
that we too discovered that truth. The billions we are spending to  
rescue banks and capitalists would be more efficiently and cost- 
effectively spent on rescuing our communities. If Obama becomes  
president, that is a discovery his constituents are likely to make  
sooner rather than later. In fact, some are already making it,  
demanding fundamental change and a new economic order.

The decay of imperial capitalism is bound to produce unforeseen  
byproducts, some beneficial, some toxic. Those who will survive need  
to be able to quickly choose between them.

When Jesus of Nazareth chased the moneychangers from the temple in  
Jerusalem he knew what he was doing. Yet, today, every Christian  
yearns to become a moneychanger.

Few of us recognise that our salvation is in our hands and in our lands.

But hunger is a great teacher.

Copyright©2008 John Maxwell
jankunnu at gmail.com