By Tom Siracuse: Stock markets, banks, and governments worldwide are getting more and more rattled as they fail to intimidate the working class into accepting the burden of a financial collapse caused by corrupt governments, greedy speculation, and unregulated bank loans. Despite the Obama administration’s announcements to buy up long term treasuries, a new “stimulus package”, and even a millionaires tax, stocks have suffered one of their biggest monthly losses since the Great Depression. Even if the Republicans went along with more taxes, these “reforms” would not solve the underlying problem; capitalism cannot control UNBRIDLED GREED. Continue reading

This presentation has two goals: proposing that if placed on a chart of political ideology the Green Party would be closest to anarchism, and through a generalized analysis of anarchism demonstrating that those who identify as anarchist should be approached by the Green Party for coalitions or direct support. These two goals will be achieved by concentrating on such issues as the resistance to hierarchy, the distinction between liberty and autonomy, and the role of power in an anarchist or Green vision. Continue reading

With the rise of neoliberalism, there is not only an intensive growth of market rationality in societies but an increasing control of humans within social space. Neoliberalism is the form of late capitalism that has emerged, beginning in the 1970’s, and is the predominant economic mode in the world. It proposes that all social and political actions can best be accomplished through the market, and with this attitude is also the implied demand that more and more people take on market discipline in their daily lives. Instead of a situation where “the personal is political” one will find that with neoliberalism “the personal is economic”. The market rationality becomes the major method of social interaction by way of capitalism’s extensive and intensive growth. Extensive growth is the spatial growth of the market, such as what would cross national borders to eventually encompass the entire globe. Intensive growth accompanies extensive growth and is the increasing commodification of culture that will occur in areas that have an established market system. Extensive growth crosses geographical borders quantitatively, while intensive growth crosses social boundaries qualitatively. As extensive growth determines the economic practices of areas such as nation-states, intensive growth redefines the social practices in areas where capitalism is already based. These two types of growth not only portray capitalism as the only way to engage in economics, but also the only way to engage in any type of social relationship. Neoliberalism imposes itself as the only reality as it grows, and from this position it engages in a deliberate regime of social control starting from the premise that society can not exist independent of capitalism and the market. Some, like former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, would claim that “there is no such thing as society” and that all relationships outside of the family are market relationships. Continue reading

The importance of democracy does not lie in its functions within the modern state, but rather in its ability to organize collective action in a decentralized way and thus be in competition with the market. By the time the 21st century arose, it seemed that the only important debate in public life was between the model of the state and the model of the market, one total yet centralized while the other was partial and decentralized. The state offered the chance for equality, and the market offered the chance for freedom. This debate was strongest in regards to the economy and the allocation of scarce and abundant goods. In fact, the nature of scarcity was redefined by this debate, appearing as artificial yet necessary in the market and seen as a vital factor in the state only in regards to propaganda that would marginalize the other as an enemy of the people. The limits of the state were in fact revealed, through a market-based critique, by the constant surfacing of scarcity whenever centralized or total planning of the economy was put forth. However, because the scarcity in question was artificial, the market model offered a decentralized alternative that failed to satisfy all parties involved. In other words, someone had to go without in the market, while the state offered universal access but in predetermined amounts for all involved. Both models, when set up against each other in comparison, failed to be adequate to the social body in providing both freedom and equality at the same time. The contrast of the failings reveal that democracy, as a primal form of collective action, can exist outside of both the market and the state while fulfilling the needs of those in the social sphere. Continue reading

By Tom Siracuse: More than 1.6 million students attend 5,000 charters in the U.S.. Only 10 states have no charters. Los Angeles and Detroit have around 70,000 students each in charters and Washington D.C.’s charters account for 58% of its public school students. The Louisiana State Legislature used the Katrina hurricane disaster to take over New Orleans’ public schools, de-unionized them and now 61% of the city’s students are in charters. Continue reading

By Tom Siracuse: 1. States and cities have budget deficits that must be solved by cutting expenditures, i.e. public sector worker wage freezes, layoffs, closing of schools, hospitals and firehouses, cuts in state and municipal workers’ wages, pensions and other benefits, raising tuition at city and state colleges and cuts in Medicaid to the poor. True, state and municipal budgets are largely spent on public services but this is the function of local government. Other ways of solving these deficits are not to be considered, increase revenue by borrowing or raising taxes. Borrowing only delays the problem so what about raising taxes? The working class and the middle class already pay high taxes while their incomes have stagnated. But the ultra rich have greatly increased their incomes while they have reduced their taxes in the past 30 years. In 1980 the top 10% of income earners accounted for 33% of the nation’s total income. Now they account for almost 50%. The top 1% went from 10% to 20% of the nation’s income. 400 individuals possess more wealth than 50% of all Americans combined! Yet Wisconsin’s Gov. Walker gave tax credits to businesses and health savings accounts that cost the state $117 million, nearly the size of the state’s projected budget deficit. Gov. Cuomo refuses to extend the “millionaires” tax of 7.8% for incomes of $300,000-$500,000 and 8.9% for incomes over $500,000. These income brackets paid up to 15.4% in the 1970’s. Cuomo’s projected state budget deficit of 10 billion would be reduced by 4 billion by this moderate tax alone. The partial restoration of a stock transfer tax of only 1 penny per transfer and a 50% tax on bankers’ bonuses over $50,000 would eliminate the deficit and produce a surplus! Continue reading

Understanding the law requires understanding its creation through human will alongside its use as an organization of society, which in turn places it directly in the tension between order and freedom. When looking at the law, as a human creation, one will find all laws come from the same source of human desire. Whether the law in question is autocratic or an expression of a collective free will, desire is the starting point. Desire precedes experience and can best be described as a human instinct that demands to play itself out across the social field. This is true of laws as well as political decisions, cultural ideas, or economic objects. All of these products of desire serve the purpose of satisfying that initial desire within society, and the law is no exception. Experience or use of these actualized effects will come later, and will determine what shape the social field will take and whether or not the original desire was satisfied. There is a nonlocality of form in desire, which means that before its actualization in the society forms exist as pure potential. This illustrates that reality in itself has two main and simultaneous components. The virtual is that of the pure potential of things, while the actual is the specific articulations of the virtual in particular times and places. Desire acts as the catalyst between the virtual and the actual, bringing certain forms into actual existence to serve that desire. These actual products are therefore structures that are made up of reality and in turn give shape to reality. That means that these structures are made up of various parts and relationships. All particular laws also follow this structural design in order to properly organize reality. Continue reading

In this day and age when political centrists are falsely accused of being socialists, it becomes vital to explicitly describe the nature of various ideologies such as anarchism, socialism, and communism and place them into their proper practical context in order to have a public discussion based on truth. For the past two years the American people have been besieged by a barrage of accusations leveled at the present government. One of the most prevalent accusations, and one of the most patently false, is the idea that the Obama administration is socialist. If one were to just look at the policies advocated by the president both during his election campaign and while in office, citizens would see that clearly the administration is nowhere near a socialist government. Wall Street and corporations have nothing to fear from the economic approach of the president or his advisors, most of whom come from financial or corporate backgrounds. The bank bailout, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the insurance mandate as the center of the healthcare law, and the use of Cap And Trade to make money for energy corporations rather than reduce carbon levels are all policies that would never be considered, much less proposed, by a socialist government. These examples each serve the interests of big corporations rather than empower the people or shift the ownership of the means of production to workers. Simply through direct experience, voters can tell that there is no overt or hidden radicalism in the government, to such a degree that many true socialists and other leftists are calling this “Bush’s third term”. However, this direct experience is being distorted by rightwing ideology where lie after lie is promulgated to such a wide degree that everyday people are unable to see what is directly in front of them. That is the inherent power of ideology as a structuring of meaning, specifically for conservative political purposes. If a public discussion is based on lies, then it becomes next to impossible for true leftists to articulate a real alternative to the status quo, an alternative that reveals how president Obama is a servant to the status quo through his many compromises and appeals to centrism. In this case, centrism acts as a tool for the rightwing to shift the overall debate toward their agenda, marginalizing any other viewpoint. At this time there is a great need to have other viewpoints that represent the interests of the marginalized. Continue reading

The economic theories of both Binary Economics and Social Credit offer a solution to the gap between labor and capital that is the inherent flaw of capitalism, while each theory addresses the problem from a different perspective. Binary Economics and Social Credit both seek the convergence of production and consumption, recognizing that producers in one section of the economy are also consumers in another section.Binary Economics proposes widespread capital distribution through various structures such as Employee Stock Ownership Plans and Community Investment Corporations to expand capital ownership. The problem that is addressed is the fact that labor and capital both produce value, but capital has the ability to overshadow the power of labor in capitalism. As ownership of human labor fails to provide for human needs, there is the need to expand capital ownership where workers, consumers, and residents would be voting shareholders of economic enterprises and be the recipient of dividends from those capital assets. This capital distribution would begin with interest-free loans that would develop the various mechanisms such as ESOPs, and the loans would be paid off from the initial dividend payments. Binary Economics understands that the economic sphere is the equivalence of labor and capital in order to function, and that capital distribution is the method for their convergence. This convergence of labor and capital acts as a supplement to production. Continue reading

The breaking up of the social field is one of the most important side effects of the overreliance on the market structure in capitalism, and requires an indepth analysis of its nature. The current state of economics that humans find themselves in can be called late capitalism or, more accurately, neoliberalism. Neoliberalism can be described as the active implementation of the logic of the market toward all aspects of the society and enforced by a set of political techniques that goes beyond the traditional actions of the state. Everyone must act as market actors and also must internalize market discipline in their everyday choices and social interactions. The clear result of such a rationality is the breaking up of the social as a separate sphere of human action that would in fact precede any economic system. The transition from the society to the market in neoliberalism creates a drastic shift in human experiences and existence. It therefore begs the question as to whether this taking apart of the social field is necessary or truly warranted. Continue reading