Summary
1 - The end of History or the eternal return?
2 - The market's victory was based on barbarism
3 - The common objective between political and capitalist classes
4 - About the so-called socialism
5 - For a strategy of survival and change
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1 - The end of history or the eternal return?
The gang`s supporters generally conservative and reactionary, even when adopting m formally interesting acronyms and purposes for the common people are, as a rule, prepared to supplant competition and much less to meet the aspirations of the people, the electorate. The names they bear, coming from distant times, lose all their ideological and programmatic meaning, due to the funneling promoted by neoliberalism, so well defined by Baroness Thatcher - There is No Alternative - or, by Fukuyama - “The End of History and the Last Man ”. It is clear that in both cases was the conclusion that capitalism would be a return to paradise, though the collateral damage, such as wars and pandemics, have never abandoned the land and humanity.
As for wars, the Balkans were the scene where the “democrat” Clinton exercised his muscle, taking advantage of Russia's weakness, creating micro-states, properly armed with American weapons, in the ruins of the Slavic yoke; with the latter, divided into seven nation-states, with the integration of some, in EU and NATO; with the only two of the majority catholic population, benefiting from the papal blessing. The humiliation of Mogadishio in 1993 and the bloody attacks on the embassies of Nairobi and Dar-es-Salam in 1998, were on Clinton's face; they could only be fait-divers, but they were not.
History, after all, went on.
Following September 11th, Bush moves to Afghanistan, and, the desired transformer results culminated without glory, with the almost total withdrawal, sponsored by Trump, twenty years later; in that period, Chinese, Pakistani and Indian investments began in that country; but with the poppy business in American hands. The incorporation of Portuguese mercenaries, and the presence of two well-known elements, improperly in uniform, is a demonstration of the transformation of the western invasion into clowning.
Minister of Defense
Two years later (2003) it occurs the invasion and destruction of Iraq with a focus on the capture of Saddam and the segmentation of the country between Kurdish, Shiite and, Sunni zones or entities; an action that will leave in history the quality of the promoters of the operation - Bush, Blair and Aznar, with Durão serving the tea, in the Azores. Western intervention in Libya followed in 2011, with the high patronage of Obama, holder of the Nobel Peace Prize two years earlier; and the division of oil between invading partners. They looked indifferently to Gaddafi's murder, after being sodomized by the soldiery; showing one more exemple of Western civilization.
In this impetus, the “Arab springs” were framed within the scope of which Mubarak was deposed, replaced by Morsi, linked to the Muslim Brotherhood that won the elections in Egypt, and, immediately, imprisoned and replaced by an undamaged democrat, General al-Sisi, ready to do anything to receive the support of the sultans and the zionist entity.
That plan included the overthrow of the Syrian regime, to prevent the formation of a Shiite axis, from Iran to the Mediterranean; and, to this purpose, financial support for ISIS was channeled by the sultans of the region, partially applied in the purchase of war material to the North American weapons emporiums. The consequences are well known - fragmentation of Iraq, the continuation of the war in northern Syria and, - not all is bad - the creation in Rojava of a project of direct democracy; all this, causing a huge flow of refugees towards Europe.
And, to finish this point, we remember the collapse of the Libyan state facilitating the disintegration and the war in the Sahel countries that surely (?) the western support would...avoid.
Internet and information technologies, being politically neutral, are integrated into any practice, such as ancient abacuses. Of course, they accelerate the pace of transactions and practice knavery, despite the preachings of angelic environmentalists who intend they can convince capitalists to regard the environmental balance and the quality of life on the planet. The ancient Christian devotees were followed by people loving God as St. Shenufe, Popes Borgia, and, much later, Pope Wojtyla; without forgetting the "ecologist " Joschka Fischer, an accomplice in the bombing of Serbia, of course, while eating tofu.
After all, history is going on. The usual and age-old sequence of plunder, war, inequality, oligarchy, migration and poverty prevails, generated by minorities of the rich, bankers, speculators, their believers and, mercenaries, in addition to the various and unlikely strains that form the political classes; at the moment, clumsy managers of the effects of the pandemic. And, stupid enough to think it is despicable to help the ancient colonized peoples in fighting the virus that… long ago discovered that the Earth is round.
2 - The market's victory was based on barbarism
Swarm around, very different acronyms, formally, for parties - socialists, social democrats, liberals, democrats, laborists, conservatives, christian democrats, anti-capitalists, communists, ecologists, greens, radicals, republicans[1]...though many of them just being crooks, corrupts and, liars. The number of party acronyms that circulate there will tend to rival the number of... coronavirus, on the loose.
In the Western world, the invention of the market economy was shown as the zenith of the human happiness; and, from there, the benefactors who come to apply it, within the framework of colonialism and non-colonialism; and, using the Keynesian model, like the neoliberal coprology.
· In the field of politics, we have to consider a creative process including military interventions, coups d'état, wars, invasions, kleptocratic oligarch regimes and, in more recent times, personal sanctions, popularized ad nauseam by the pachyderm Pompeo… the gods keep him out of the spotlight! In a more polished form, the products resulting from elections, they are, Dupont, or Dupond, calling these revolving doors, democratic change or market democracy. For a more prosaic image, if prefered, look at differences in coffee sweetened with white sugar or brown sugar.
· The oligarchic model applied to the economy goes by the name of a market economy. It was born from colonial plundering, slave labor, piracy (sometimes with a legal letter of marque), the proletarianization of peasants, who emigrated to the cities. its beneficiaries are called capitalists, sweetened name, later, for businessmen. In turn, work started to be carried out by people in precarious, fixed-term, "independent", subcontracted, experience, trainee roles, extending to the urban scene as something equivalent to working for the day, for the functions performed in the field. And who lives in an alternating regime, between unemployment and the work of shit, in the designation of the early deceased, David Graeber.
3 - The common objectives between political and capitalist classes
Politically, the political classes and the capitalists have a common goal; the use of the proceeds of the fiscal plunder and the domestication of the common people… to assure the GDP grows; and, that the companies invest, the external capital is installed...so that the GDP grows. As in all countries[2], that objective is present, it is necessary to create “competitive” taxation and labor prices, which must be also competitive… for GDP to grow. This litany is not very diversified but, monotonous and that ends up fixing itself on the conscious and unconscious of the mainatos (servants, in the former Portuguese African colonies).
The main parties are the managers of the product of the tax withdrawal and the guarantors of the gentleness at work; the rest of the groups are the bridesmaids who frame the procession and give it a false democratic appearance.
I partiti politici si dividono in grandi e piccoli.
I grandi mentono and rubano. I piccoli desiderano soprattutto di crescere[1] . - Emmanuel de Straznik
Within each party, hierarchies develop, fractions are in permanent struggle with each other, with groups in constitution and others, in loss of influence, within which the interests of the social groups they seek to represent, lose relevance. It is important, above all, the internal power and the ability to capture funds abroad, with all the importance to the establishment of close and lasting relationships with entrepreneurs. Political programs are repositories of phrases as hollow as consensual that cannot provoke dissent and that broaden the scope. This practice is what Robert Michels called, more than a hundred years ago, the iron law of parties; since it is its fulfillment that ensures the perpetuity of the institution. The inspiring institution was the German SPD.
Political parties do not act out based on love for their neighbors, but to keep under pressure the earnings and rights of employees, unemployed and pensioners, with a justification of deficit, debt, circumstances, obligations coming from Brussels, floods, fires, etc; on the other hand, of course, they proceed discreetly, to self-supply. No GDP growth is free to contain restraint for the earnings of workers and former workers; and, if the GDP stagnates or shrinks, it is already known who will be sacrificed. The people say that "whoever leaves and shares is a fool if he does not keep the best part".
“There are no laws against corruption because who writes the laws are the corrupts”
In the patronage hierarchy, the highest strains articulate with the parties in power to share the fiscal pie; for legislative production likely to favor capital accumulation; for the creation of a media environment that promotes sacrifice, so that the “country” does not sink; and, for the generation of the media and social environment that compels employees to accept greater tax burden and cheaper labor. The State is the mediator of redistribution, the sieve that separates and harvests gold nuggets, letting the sand flow into the stream and settle at the bottom of the river.
4 - About the so-called socialism
For more than 10 years when we began to write and act against "this" - the political and economic system in Portugal (not only…) we, synthetically, designed by post-fascist regime - there were words that we refused to include in our speech to do not feed the reigning atavistic conservatism. One of those words, with a vast and diversified contents, is the term socialism as defining a salvific reality, for the present days.
Socialism was thought as a liberating formula against capitalism that we know quite well and, whose existence weighs heavily on the shoulders of the overwhelming majority of human beings.
Socialism, was claimed as unavoidable, mythical and salvific in defense of which, millions of generous individuals were sacrificed to come to suffer, undergoing, on the skin, the effects of a practice that led to the supremacy of a very well known disaster - capitalism. What is more, these disasters contributed greatly to keeping capitalism out of the dump of history.
In 1917, the Soviet Revolution called for a Copernician shift to economic, political, social life, to free women, oppressed peoples and nations; and that Maiakovsky would refer in a poem, with a pride felt in the presentation, abroad, of his red passport.
However, the elevation to power, in the name of socialism, of groups of unscrupulous and heavy-handed bureaucrats; secular priests who defend a unique thought; their supreme and indisputable leaders, had a first notable moment in Berlin, on 15/01/1919 when Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and thousands of workers were murdered by the "Social Democrats" (the current SPD), and its leader, Ebert, having as executive arm, a vengeful troop, felt as badly defeated at the war of 1914/18. From this massacre, a few years later, greater bestialities, greater misfortunes, carried out by Hitler, came to bear - in the name of his National-Socialism, as racist, murderer and, concentrationary.
However, in 1920, the Ukrainian militiamen of Makhno, contrary to the statist and hierarchical principles followed by Lenin, after having jointly fought the remains of the tsarist army, were victims of bloody persecution led by Trotsky - the usual performer of dirty work - more or less commissioned by Lenin. A work that Stalin continued in the thirties, causing the death of millions of poor Ukrainian peasants.
In 1921, was also in the name of socialism that Trotsky, backed by Lenin and Stalin, promoted the Kronstadt massacre, murdering thousands of those who had, a time before, played the October Revolution; the authoritarian ride, accelerates the creation of a totalitarian state, persecutions, murderers, in favor of a caste of bureaucrats, mindless executors of particularly severe laws.
After Lenin's death, the power was transferred to Stalin who eliminated the competition of the occasion and, of other later, real or fictitious, for some thirty years, continuing the name of socialism to the political and economic model, which entered the sadly celebrated, Gulag.
With the end of the regime, in 1991, the references to socialism in Russia disappeared; as in China, it happened gradually shortly after Mao's death, in 1976. Note that, in the latter case, the “socialist” reality was transfigured to such an extent by the regime that, in the 1970s, intellectuals of the class of Charles Bettelheim or Joan Robinson, a Labor economist, were completely deceived by what had been given to them, shown in China; Where, curiously, power remains monopolized by the CCP, even if concomitant with a clearly capitalist economic model.
These failures and opportunistic back-faces, drive to a current domination of more extremed reacionarism, corresponding to the increased aggressiveness of dominant capitalism, and its financial arrangements. On the other hand, they ideologically disarmed the traditional lefts and the unions, incapable of an alternative discourse and, putting into practice a constant and reactionary retreat, of ideological disarmament, in a logic of going behind, a word that, in English, has a very expressive and eloquent, word - tailism, go on the tail.
The reconciliation of reactionary policies with left-wing labels led to the defeat of Syriza, in Greece, in 2015, in a context with the capitulation of the “left”; and the gradual retreat of the electoral weight of Podemos, crouched around an Iglésias, devoted believer in Laclau's populism. The stagnant electoral Portuguese left stands, with the presentation, ultimously, the same number of votes than in the seventies, even though the population enrolled to vote has increased 3 million in the same period; and that, outlined, obedient, to march according to the conviniences of “sergeant” Costa (Portuguese primer), in everything that is essential for him.
These false lefts venerate the State, they do not attack its power, even if it is showing, evidently, its role of helper of financial power, of multinationals and, the main den of corruption. Thus, the national party spectacles, as a rule, present two parties or, two alliances of parties, very similar, in terms of political practices, with a routine turnover, with the choice to come out of an artificial electoral crunch, generated by the eagerness to access the “Bowl"; in this context, all falsehoods, all unrealizable promises are worthwhile, to obtain the preferences of the commoners; and to people do not feel at the time of election, the alternation will be observed in the differences between the twins Thomson and Thompson.
Donde está la izquierda?
Al fondo, a la derecha[3]
5 - Strategy for survival and change
There is a dichotomous question of a methodological nature:
a) Is capitalism an evil, such as drought, climate change, covid-19, poverty, inequality, deforestation, patriarchy and many others? Is it an element that disputes, with the evils mentioned above, the championship of the problems that plague Humanity, the environment and the planet?
or,
b) We deal with a structural element that produces or strongly influences those evils, showing itself innocent only facing the effects of sunspots or a volcanic eruption?
Traditional ecologism and political parties in general, they accept capitalism as a given, a constant, like the day/night cycle, even if capitalism is the architect of the powerful and versatile global economic structures, invisible and criminal, that frame our lives; even if this acceptance is anti-historical, taken as a divine command for which we have strictly to accept, pray and pick up the pieces of the destruction.
In its poverty on policy and ideas, in the broth bland called eco-socialism, is it expected an outbreak of ethics that promotes the conversion of capitalists as benefactors of the planet and of humanity...like the famous Gates? And do they wait the regenerator effects of one more petition, delivered to the government? Do you have some hope after few moments of conversation with a mandarin? Over the centuries it has been expected something of the promised by dozens of evangelists and prophets but...where are the results? And do you hope, with Job's patience, that one day the political classes will find the will, the capacity and the autonomy to put capitalism in order, thus restoring a new, green Eden?
Pedro Pedreiro, penseiro, esperando o trem (Pedro, mason, thinker, waiting for the train[4] …
Aqueles que esperam o que nunca chega (those who wait what never reach) [5]
However, cautiously, these formations, in general, lean against the state budget to follow a comfortable life. Fluffy bed and hot plate at the right time, always go well…
We think that the first hypothesis reveals innocence, reactionary or, ignorance and benevolence, treating the main evil - capitalism - as just a competitor of the other evils that affect Humanity and the planet; removing causal links. In practice, it is a question of capitalism not being held accountable or lessened, of devaluation of the damages in force, trusting that the political classes, as capitalist managers, reconstitute this Eden. And that, even before the overall precariousness of work, the regular appearance of epidemics, the existence of armies and police to defend the apartheid of the political classes against the multitude that are deemed less meek and complicit with those; and who accept increased working hours, endemic unemployment, living in pestilent cities but, with the divine right to circulate on four wheels, polluting; while an eternal debt to the banks is maintained, to guarantee a ceiling, which can disappear, at any moment, in the face of a trivial unemployment crisis.
The role of the financial system in the global economy, or in national and domestic economies is the major determinant in the lives of people, companies and countries; but many people have an incomplete view about that and, perhaps benevolent, because access to credit only rarely is denied; for more, being so "attractive" given the effective interest rates very low , also linked to low inflation rates.
This and other texts in:
http://grazia-tanta.blogspot.com/
http://www.slideshare.net/durgarrai/documents
https://pt.scribd.com/uploads
[1] In Pela, Macedonia, at the time of Philip, father of Alexander, the political nomenclature was simpler - blues and greens
[2] https://grazia-tanta.blogspot.com/2020/03/o-salariado-na-europa-1_10.html
https://grazia-tanta.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-evolution-of-wealth-in-europe-200019_6.html?m=1
https://grazia-tanta.blogspot.com/2020/06/salarios-e-impostos-sua-evolucao-no.html
[3] Puerta del Sol, Madrid demonstration of Indignados , 2011 “Where is the Left? In the background, on the right side”
[4] Chico Buarque de Holanda, Brasilian writer and singer
[5] “Pequena Memória Pra Um Tempo Sem Memória” (Little Memory For A Time Without Memory) (Gonzaguinha and Luiz Gonzaga)
[1] Political parties are divided into large and small. The great ones lie and steal. The little ones especially want to grow up