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September 21, 2011

Class War, but not Obama's: It's Time to Make Other Arrangements

By Dan Mage

The corporate domination of of life in America and the Federal Government is nearly complete. Only a new "counter-culture," a counter-economic culture can break the corporate/governmental stranglehold on life's necessities.

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This is Class War, inverted and perverted, with the ruling class factions redistributing the wealth of the subordinate classes among themselves; whatever Obama says or does, it will continue. It is "business as usual."

Progressives remain very concerned with what is going on in Washington DC; good people, educated and compassionate people still cling to the illusion that if they just do something differently in the next election, something resembling a humane society with sane social policies will appear.

Certainly it is best to pay close attention to a government such as our own; it's advisable in the same sense that knowing the projected path of a hurricane or tornado is. Wherever you are, you don't want to get caught on the wrong side of it. However, the idea of controlling its direction at this late date may well be magical thinking.

While President Obama makes what may well be his last stand, demanding a slight deceleration of the impending disaster, a small group of actual radicals makes a stand on Wall Street, the results of which remain to be seen.

This is Class War, although President Obama's late decision to take a stand for the "the people" actually only calls for the most minor adjustments to business as usual.

"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."*

"Society is saved just as often as the circle of its rulers contracts, as a more exclusive interest is maintained against a wider one. Every demand of the simplest bourgeois financial reform, of the most ordinary liberalism, of the most formal republicanism, of the most shallow democracy, is simultaneously castigated as an "attempt on society" and stigmatized as "socialism." -Karl Marx "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" **

The primary demand of the ruling class is clear: "You will accept whatever deal we offer, and be grateful for it."

What we have seen so far with Obama (and I admit that I voted for him) discredits in the strongest of terms the whole line of hope-addicted mainstream liberal thought; that if we think positively, work hard, get good grades and a good education, we can work for "change from within." We can even grow up to be president"without having a world-class drug and weapons trafficker, and financier for terrorists for a father, to buy the government for us.

I'm sick of hearing about how important the next election is. Yes there may be a choice between "Bad" and "Worse" but all the energy that progressives spend on "working within the system," as well as the element of fully justifiable discontent from "Middle America" diverted into the campaigns of TP candidates, televangelists, and executioners wrapped in flags and bearing crosses, could actually change things drastically, if used for more direct and difficult to ignore tactics.

It's time now to "make other arrangements," we have a disaster in progress, a failing state and a falling empire; the flesh pulled from its bones by the jackals of international finance, perpetual warfare from an ever-changing array of ideological and religious combinations; there is profit and chaos, confusion and mass-murder, opportunities to sell weapons and seize control of lucrative drug trafficking routes.

Scream all you want "Wake up, throw down your guns, go back to your families!" You will not be heard; not by the zealots of the Abrahamic faiths, nor by the true believers in the various fundamentalist-materialist dogmas such as capitalism, communism of the Stalinist/Maoist variety, secular militarism in the name of sentimental patriotism, or blind fear and hatred stirred up by those struggling for power and property. People with nothing to lose will gladly accept a reason to live, give them a weapon and a reason to kill, and they will gladly accept these gifts too, along with the added bonus of a reason to die.

The basic control systems, the lines of organized coercion and containment will remain intact and continue to function. The controllers are well aware of the potentials of the impending disaster, and plans are in place for protecting the property and lives of the privileged and their more vital servants.

What happens to the rest of us unfortunately does not appear to concern "our" government anymore. One can hold out, and hope, provisionally, that the impending attacks on the most defenseless classes of American society can be weakened or delayed by legislative action, however, the post-9-11 depredations of the War State, and the continuation of corporate welfare from one regime to the next have made further suffering an inevitability for America's subordinate classes.

Homeless Man in Denver
Homeless Man in Denver
(Image by Dan Mage)
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As always, I hope I'm wrong but it appears that the train is headed over the cliff, the bridge is out, no one is pulling the brake line....can we derail it? Maybe, but there will still be a need for damage control.

Systems need to be put into place that can take the place of the failing government that society's most defenseless member have come to depend on. Alternatives to the very concept of "jobs" and "employment" can be created too. Why beg for slavery when we can build a free society, ruled from the bottom up instead of from the top down?

Even with capitalism and the free market undisturbed, the spirit of voluntary cooperation and communal efforts at survival can compete. With the element of greed removed from the picture, and self interest defined in a new way, a genuine "counter-culture" can emerge as a significant political and economic force.

Huge and anti-human totalitarian structures have come to dominate not only the economy and government, but the very motions and emotions, eating and sleeping, dreaming and waking of all who must earn and spend. This cultural and economic reality is still packaged and marketed as "freedom." Yet the demands made by these cultural and economic institutions have the commonality of self-sacrifice and ultimately self-annihilation.

We need a system of small, fast-moving and flexible cooperatives, to compete with existing providers of basic services. We need more neighborhood food banks and food co-ops, community gardens for food production, and to slowly find ways to provide much of what the corporate/governmental oligopoly currently produces, better and cheaper. People might be more inclined to "bite the hand that feeds them,' if there are other, gentler hands ready to feed nearby.

There is no need for "self-sacrifice" here; what is called for is an end to sacrifice; the demand placed on each individual born into any level of the servant classes to "be a productive member of society." Responsibility is presently defined as ability to pay, and willingness to work for any pay. When things don't make sense, we are expected to trust in "the deciders;" after all "they have good reasons for what they do."

A Declaration of Class War is a Declaration of Refusal, regardless of the cost and social stigma, to participate in the obscene; to take part in the rituals of human sacrifice or wave banners in support of those who carry these rituals out. Above all cast not votes for men who regardless of their party affiliation or campaign speeches will, by necessity, order that the killing continue. A president's single greatest power is the power to make war, and at this point in history, there will be no man elected to this office who is unwilling to continue the business at hand.

The "Occupation of Wall Street," although undertaken by a just a handful of idealists who are for the most part very young, can have meaning and effect if is taken as a signal, a "first shot" fired in a Class War that while non-violent, will by necessity be a confrontation of power, by power, speaking the language of money and power. If used as a starting point for a sustained effort at building a counter-economic culture to break the government/corporate stranglehold on life's necessities, this occupation will not have been in vain.

REFERENCES:

*The "History repeats itself"" quote is attributed to Karl Marx, although debate still goes on as to exactly what he meant in context.

** Marx, Karl : The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte translated by Saul K. Padover from the German edition of 1869



Authors Website: http:/v-vector.com

Authors Bio:

I was born in NYC in 1959. I grew up in the DC area, the product of suburbia and liberal parents with doctoral-level educations. I dropped out of the public school system in eighth grade, and from all schooling by the age of 16. My life rapidly became a typical story of downwardly mobile suburban youth in the late 70s and early 80s.

I worked for low wages, hung around the fringes of various 60s-relic left-anarchist factions, drank and used drugs as much as possible and had sex with pretty much anyone who was available.

One day, early in the fall of 1984, at an outdoor concert on the Monument Grounds in DC, a couple of undercover cops jumped out of a bush at me while I was smoking some cannabis with a few people I'd just met. I pulled a knife; for some reason they didn't shoot me, and when I saw the badges and guns, I dropped the blade. Charged with APDW (Assault on Police Officers with a Deadly Weapon), I feared that I would be going to prison for a really long time (I would be, but not for this case).

I had the good fortune of entering my plea before the Hon. Rufus King, a liberal judge now retired and active in efforts to reform the criminal justice system.

After a conviction for one count of misdemeanor assault, and receiving 2 years of Federal probation, I moved to Colorado, was accepted to Naropa University in Boulder (Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics) got married, had a kid, dropped out again, got divorced, and returned to my pattern of downward mobility and anti-social behavior.

I was arrested and sentenced to the Colorado Department of Corrections on multiple drug and robbery convictions in 1995, served over seven years in prison, and five on parole.

I discharged my parole on July 1st of 2008 and moved back to the east coast, meanwhile having married a woman I met in DC in 1983.

I wrote for the now defunct Associated Content and Helium, and published one article with Reason (online)

I currently have several works in progress, and recently completed a prison memoir, which I am now editing for publication.

My political views are hard-line left-libertarian, and I am dedicated to the idea of ending the new prohibition and the ridiculous "War on Drugs," as I have seen its result, the American Gulag from the inside, and consider it to be an ongoing crime against humanity.


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