The National Theory

The National Theory
by Kurt Schulz

The existence of the nation-state is traced back to the fusion of a city-state with an empire: the empire’s focus on frontiers combined with the city-state’s concept of government. It is from this that the modern republic arises.
The modern republic is virtually inseparable from the entity of the nation-state.
The nation-state, however, is a harmful cocktail ethnicism and government. A state must correspond with a geographic boundary, and anybody living within that boundary is subject to the laws of that state.
Problems arise from this frequently, especially in countries with mixed ethnicities – which in this day and age are virtually all of them. Even in the Koreas, one of the most homogenous regions in the world, there are minority populations of ethnic Chinese and Japanese.
Nation-states became a popular means of government in correspondence to the rise of nationalism. The dream was to unite all people of a certain “nation” under one state.
Yet this is an almost impossible goal, again because there is hardly a homogenous region in the world.
On top of this, history has proven that the creation of a nation-state has done little to help ethnic minorities within the nation-state, or members of the nation outside of the nation-state.
For example, the founding of the German Empire was Otto von Bismarck’s attempt to unite ethnic Germans under the Prussian crown. Resulting both from Bismarck’s loyalty to Prussia as well as his expansionist policies, non-Prussian Germans as well as ethnic French, Polish, Danish and Frisians lost their freedom to express their culture in a meaningful way. This was especially true with Bismarck’s policy of “Germanization”, a manifestation of his personal nationalism.
Even with the founding of the German Empire, there were still many European ethnic Germans living outside of Germany. These included Austria, but also Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Bessarabia and Bukovina. The treatment of ethnic Germans in these regions was sometimes bearable, sometimes brutal. In fact, after World War 2 most Eastern European countries expelled their German populations.
Up to today there are still issues with the nation-state. Ethnic Hungarians in Slovenia have complained of mistreatment, explosive civil war erupted in Bosnia between Serbians and Croatians, Kenya is currently split between the Kukuyu and Luo ethnic groups, Rwanada experienced a horrific genocide of Hutus massacring Tutsis, and
A nation-state neither protects minorities within their territory nor has absolute ability to protect members of their nation who are minorities in other countries. Warring nation-states will often mistreat members of each other’s ethnic enclaves.
On top of this, the idea that all members of a nation have a common interest is spurious. France, for example, has experienced longstanding divisions between urban and rural. Paris has 16% of France’s population, and is the largest urban area in France by a factor of almost 7. Naturally, Parisians have different interests than fishermen in Normandy or cattle farmers in Limousin.
In Canada, the provinces often are at odds with each other, but even within the provinces there are divisions. Northern Ontarians in Kapuskasing or Kenora have different interests than Torontonians, and the Cree of Northern Quebec have different interests than Montrealers. Residents of the Fraser River Valley likely have contrasting interests with those of the Central Coast, whose interests are different from Vancouver residents, whose interests are different from Vancouver Islanders.
So, it is clear that over geographical expanses, issues and interests change frequently. Even from town-to-town there can be a big difference in culture, way of life, ethnicity, etc. anywhere in the world.
The solution, as demonstrated, cannot be a nation-state, for they are incapable of managing the affairs of either ethnic minorities within their country or even the affairs of members of the same nation from region to region.
It would appear that the only legitimate social entity, therefore, is the community – that is to say, the people who one lives around, works with, and could interact with on relatively short notice.
As such, the only legitimate independent social institution – one that is not subject to the authority of a more powerful institution – is one organized around the community.
To this end, community socialists propose a system whereby every community across the world organizes themselves into one or more neighbourhood councils, which would be fully participatory and include every member. In these neighbourhood councils, all members would vote, and the community councils that the neighbourhood councils would send delegates to (proportional to their population) would put those votes into action. The community councils would send delegates to higher levels, and the votes of the neighbourhood councils would be tallied and combined by all representatives at all levels.
In simple terms, the neighbourhood council is where the decision is made, and the community council is responsible for making sure that the decisions of the neighbourhood councils are carried out at all levels.
This way, if there is an ethnic enclave – suppose ethnic Frisians in Northern Germany or French Canadians in Manitoba – and their community is made up of members of these ethnic groups, they could form community councils and federate with other Frisian/French Canadian communities into a Frisian Community Federation or French Canadian Union of sorts.
The added benefit, of course, lies outside of the concept of nationhood. That benefit is that no matter what nation one is a member of, their affairs are taken care of locally, where the people truly know what’s best for them.

Writings on Manifest Destiny and the White Man's Burden

Writings on Manifest Destiny and the White Man’s Burden
By Kurt Schulz


The basic premise of United States foreign policy since the outset of their expansion beyond the Appalachian Mountains is that of manifest destiny, which means that the expansion of the government in Washington to control all lands from Atlantic to Pacific, and eventually all of North America, was both obvious and inevitable. The nature of manifest destiny lies beyond the United States. It has been employed in ancient times, and continues to be the cornerstone of empire building by the United States and elsewhere to this day.
Manifest destiny is, at its core, a code based on three conclusions. One, that the American people and their institutions (i.e. government, military and state power) are virtuous. Two, that the United States must take as its mission spreading their institutions and to a lesser extent their people across the world to remake it in the image of the US. Three, that manifest destiny is a divine mandate from God, who wants the bastion of liberty (America) to exert itself across the world for the benefit of all of mankind…or at least of the righteous ones in the home country.
These principles can be found in the world’s ancient empires, from Persia to Britain and from Rome to Spain. All of these nations saw their leadership and their ethnic brethren to be of a pure and righteous breed. They may not have seen it as a burden to bring their cultures to other nations, but they certainly saw it as their God-given right to conquer and dominate. In fact, one might be hard-pressed to find an empire in the past that hasn’t taken some, if not all, of manifest destiny’s principles and applied it to their imperialist dreams.
A lot of what is found in manifest destiny is similar to its kissing cousin, the “White Man’s Burden”. Rife with Eurocentric racism, the White Man’s Burden assumes a more anthropological view of imperialism than does manifest destiny. That is to say, those subscribing to the ideal of the White Man’s Burden believe it to be the task of the white man to bring “civilization” to the “savage”. It is what prompted the Scramble for Africa: the idea that if European powers took over the world’s continents and instilled their technology, culture and way of life in the locals, the world would be a better place for all. It involves, in its most bare form, the invocation of sympathy among the general populace for those poor naked wretches biding the pelting of pitifully backwards cultures, so little taken care of by the righteous and ingenious white man.
Whereas manifest destiny is a matter more related to political annexation, while the White Man’s Burden is a far more cultural ideology, the similarities are striking. Both concepts came to prominence in the mid-1800s when the industrial might of Europe and America both took off, making exploring the world and overtaking the spear-and-arrow-wielding nations far easier. Subscribers to the White Man’s Burden saw it as their mission to bring their technology and political-economic systems to the savages. Manifest destiny advocates saw it as God’s will that the United States should expand beyond the Atlantic coast and across the Americas, ultimately bringing about sweeping changes to the globe.
At the core of both the manifest destiny and the White Man’s Burden theories is an ideology that prompted Europe and the United States to become arrogantly self-righteous enough to promote a set of principles that placed them and their institutions/social structures at the top of the world. The audacity of the twin evils comes from another set of divisive and often murderous tracks of thought: racism and nationalism. To understand the roots of manifest destiny and the White Man’s Burden, one must uncover the very nature of racism and nationalism.
Such a way did the world work at the time when both were developed that industrialism had exploded onto the scene in both countries. The United States and Europe alike had now harnessed nature for themselves and were using it to produce mighty machines that would allow them to conquer the world. Their motivation to do so, of course, was the very thing that came to taint the Industrial Revolution: greed. The desire, the uncontrollable craving for more and more, and more exotic is what led the powers of Europe to scramble for African colonies. It is why the Americans were not bound by the Appalachian Mountains and why Canada filled the West up with cheap Eastern European labour. It is because capital cannot exist without land, and in order to continue the economic growth that Euro-American capitalism sees mythically as eternal more land must be acquired. The connection, therefore, between capitalism and imperialism is the greed that fuels both.
Yet it was quite a few decades before either manifest destiny or the White Man’s Burden showed any signs of slowing down as a component of Euro-American foreign and domestic policy. Bringing civilization to the savage and acquiring their land in the process was the centerpiece of every offshore move that either sphere of the West made. It is the notion that non-European races were savages that allowed the Euro-American Empire to expand and conquer virtually the world.
Of course, the so-called savages were far from savage. Such civilizations labeled as such include those that themselves used to be technologically superior empires, such as Egypt, Persia/Iran, China, Abyssinia, the Aztecs and the Incas. Complex political systems in North America and Africa were toppled in place of European- or American-style governments. Many of the tribes and nations conquered – and often subsequently murdered – by the Anglo-American white men were fully functioning governing units, not dissimilar to either a democratic body (such as the Iroquois Confederacy) or a monarchy (chiefdoms across the Americas, Africa and Asia). Even if one does not consider their way of life or institutions to be significant enough evidence to remove the savage label, consider that the term savage was used to place non-Europeans on a scale of humanity, often likening the natives of Africa and the Americas to primates. In straight truth, there is no scientific evidence that even entertains the idea that one race is inferior to another in any sense.
So, where did the notion that one race is inferior to another come from? Simply, it would appear that the evaluation of the world’s respective cultures had much to do with it. While America and most of Western Europe were indulging in telecommunications, factories and grand architecture, African and American natives were dancing around fires and hunting with spears. With a cynical eye and a closed mind, the Europeans came out believing that the society they had built was far superior, and that any race that hadn’t developed to their level yet was inferior intellectually. An interesting position, to say the least, considering that China and the Middle East considered the Europeans to be scientifically lagging behind, that the Native North Americans were able to survive the harsh winters yet the “civilized” European settlers perished in great numbers, and that pyramids were on the banks of the Nile and at the foot of the Andes, none of them built by Europeans. In fact, scientific evidence is abundant to prove that the human race originates in Africa, essentially meaning that the earliest ancestors of the homo sapiens were black. Supposedly, these immense and ancient cultures are “savage”. Yet it seems perfectly clear that without the white man’s intervention, the world’s cultures could have done just fine. Any assertion otherwise is likely the product of the Eurocentric view that white European culture is superior. Just because any Third World country has Western-style “democracy” does not mean they are better off than if they had been left on their own.
Of course, it is easy to see that no culture or people like to be told that the way they are doing things is wrong and that it must change. It is from this perspective that one can bear witness to the nature of xenophobia. North Americans and Europeans fear immigration, and it comes from a historical context. Both of these imperial spheres have for centuries been expanding, conquering, moving in and either expelling the original residents or demanding that they change their way of life. Suddenly, immigration provides them with a taste of their own medicine, having foreign cultures arise in what is supposedly their land. While there are numerous complexities about the indigenous nature of Europe, one can assert with no error that North Americans have some nerve in proclaiming anything along the lines of “America for Americans”. Was it not early European settlers who arrived in northern North America (Canada and the United States) who kicked the Natives off of their land, murdered millions of them, and attempted to assimilate the survivors? Americans and Canadians as nations are as native to their land as the visible minority immigrants that they wish to block or kick out.
As big as the wave of anti-immigrant rhetoric has swept over North America and Europe in the wake of the dubious War on Terror is it is nothing new. While today it is Muslims and Hispanics who are the target of xenophobia, it was the Irish in the 19th Century, the Germans from the 1840s to the 1920s (and during and after World War II), the Chinese in the 1870s and the Italians and Polish in the 1920s. There is an illustrated and completely evident history of “nativism” in the United States, an idea that those born in the United States were better than immigrants of various backgrounds. The sad irony is that even to this day it exists, embodied in such classy individuals as Patrick Buchanan (an Irishman).
What this goes to show is that the societies emerging from Europe are historically, and to radically varying degrees presently, Eurocentric, xenophobic and imperialistic. It is illustrated in images of three white sheep kicking a black sheep off of a Swiss flag; in white men who are ascendants of immigrants protesting immigration (were their ancestors legal?); in the manifestations of mainstream fascism, the British National Party and the French Front National; and in the frustratingly patronizing demeanour of rich white men and celebrities who wish to bring their philanthropy to the Third World by introducing Western society to them.
Were the White Man’s Burden and manifest destiny a thing of the past, perhaps all of this would be unnecessary. Yet both are thriving to this day. In the case of manifest destiny, it is a specifically American concept and to this day is as manifest to Americans as ever. One needs to think only of the War in Iraq as an example. Recall the three themes of manifest destiny: American institutions and people are virtuous, the world must be remade in their image, and it is all the will of God. The wars in the Middle East are built around these three principles, and not in any way discreetly. Why else would George W. Bush insist that American-style democracy – which is highly undemocratic and has led to autocratic rule by the elite ruling class – is necessary for Iraq and the world. He may say “democracy” without adjectives, but it is quite clear that it is American-style liberal democracy that he intends. He furthers his conviction of the righteousness of the American people and their institutions through his hogwash, flag-waving rhetoric that passes as speech. He has convinced a nation of three hundred million people that the terrorists hate them because they are “free”, when in fact it has nothing to do with that. His espousals of American virtue combine with his desire to remake the world in America’s image, done through war and aggressive diplomacy to either pressure countries to accept America’s reign in the world or face invasion. The most telling evidence that America is in an age of neo-manifest destiny is the conviction that God is on America’s side. If it’s not George W. Bush’s rhetoric that God instructed him to send invaders to Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s the sheer presence of religion in American life: eighty per cent of Americans self-identify as Christians; “In God We Trust” has been on all coins and bills since 1938; and while only fifteen per cent of French citizens, ten per cent of UK citizens and twenty-five per cent of Israeli citizens attend religious services regularly, forty-one per cent of Americans do. Clearly, manifest destiny’s religious aspects are firmly rooted in the stranglehold that organized religion has on American society.
Sadly, a modern adaptation of an old ideology is not limited to manifest destiny. The White Man’s Burden survives in two forms today, one that is related to manifest destiny and another that is not.
The first kind is the one that shares an imperialist drive: basically, the desire to move into the “savages’” land and give them Western governments, economies and cultures. The World Bank and the IMF are the personification of the economics of the White Man’s Burden, wherein no part of the world is civilized if they do not adapt to capitalist globalization. The political-military component of the imperialist White Man’s Burden is witnessed in Iraq, which includes characteristics of manifest destiny as well, but also in Venezuela, Cuba, Grenada, Iran, North Korea, and Vietnam (in days past). All of these countries have faced or are facing invasion by the United States simply because the Americans and their allies felt it necessary to change the way things worked in those countries, which in their view was not up to the civilized level of a capitalist democratic society. This kind of political-economic imperialism draws on the White Man’s Burden as a means to make the population of the aggressor nation favour war. Take, for example, George W. Bush yet again: “I believe that you're going to see the rise of democracy in many countries in the broader Middle East, which will lay the foundation for peace.” This is strangely similar to the civilization envisioned for natives in Africa and the Americas.
The second kind of White Man’s Burden is that adopted by the richest people in the West. It is a thought process that reasons that since the West is so rich and has so much money, it is up to them to spread the wealth across the world. Theoretically a good and kind-intentioned idea considering that so many of the world’s people live in absolute poverty. The core problem with this sort of mentality – the kind that delivers such programs as Make Poverty History and LiveAid – is that it works within the global capitalist system. What good is one hundred million dollars raised for Africa if the starving tribesmen have no use for money? It is the same mindset that convinced the colonial powers to allow their colonies to become successor states, which only perpetuated the divisions in Africa, for those countries were drawn up based on what was best for imperial Europe, not the African people. Such is the case that internal strife and external conflict have erupted in virtually every African country since their respective independence. Now, after introducing a political system that has failed millions of Africans, the white man is throwing money – a concept of our own – at them. Helping a tribe to make a device to pump ground water out of a well is one thing: attempting to bring a Western way of life to them is another.
Lastly, the hard fact is that the problems created by manifest destiny and the White Man’s Burden will not go away with all of the African states dissolve, nor if the West continues to try to remake the continent in its image by choosing which governments to “support”. The challenges facing North American and Australian Aboriginals will not be solved if everybody of non-native ancestry evacuates those lands, nor if any attempt is made to assimilate the natives into the dominant culture. It is time for the white man to learn what he has frustratingly failed to learn time and again: live and let live. Allow the world’s civilizations, cultures and societies to grow in their own image, not yours. There are enough troubles in the lands where the white man dwells, the last thing that is needed are more pompous celebrities condescendingly trying to raise money for or take kids from the Third World.
The shackles of imperialism that bind those who are the victims of the ideology and those who mindlessly and oh-so-thoughtlessly subscribe to it must be cast off. The provincialism that separates mankind because of race or region must end, but not with one culture emerging as a leader of another, but with all cultures emerging as equal partners.

Ownership, the State and Society

Ownership, the State and Society

By Rick Smith

1. The Evolution of Democracy
2. The Advent of Private Ownership
3. The Current System
4. The World's Other Crimes
5. As It Could Be



The Evolution of Democracy

The existence of a social institution is justified by the purpose it serves to those in society whom it governs and unquestionably must remain answerable to. In judging the validity of an institution, sufficient attention must be paid to studying its origins. In the case of the institution of democracy, its origins are deep within what is understood about how humans formed society. The dawn of society begins with tribalism and moves through to the concept of a nation-state, with various methods of governing taking over at the many intervals, but culminating in the popular triumph of democracy. Therefore, tracing the evolution of democracy through the stages of society is of paramount importance.
Presumably in the early stages of evolution humans first began to join together for mutual protection from dangerous wildlife and natural elements that otherwise threatened individual survival. This is reflected in today’s wildlife, the more intelligent of whom practice a habit of living in groups of multiple families for mutual defense. Human beings likely utilized each other’s strengths for the protection of the tribe as a whole, as is often found in isolated corners of the globe today. Early man, while capable of survival, did not have the intellectual capacity to form the concept of private property, but likely did conflict with one another when resources were scarce. In times of plentiful resources, with the concept of private property beyond them, early mankind would likely have experienced little conflict over survival. The structure of leadership from tribe to tribe would undoubtedly have varied, and a lack of historical documentation makes this a difficult matter to discern. Using isolated tribes still in existence in Africa, South America and Polynesia as examples, one may assume that chiefs would have ruled. There is naturally the possibility for other structures, whether based on rule by the most spiritual (theocracy), rule by the most intelligent (meritocracy), or rule by the wealthiest (oligarchy/aristocracy). Monarchy was the norm in Europe for centuries in the 2nd Millennium and hence was a dominant force in the world, and so the origins of monarchy must be determined. As a matter of rule by one person who inherited from the family his power– and occasionally though very seldom her power – monarchy’s roots lie in rule by chiefs in human tribes. Tribes would eventually give way to the next stage of social evolution that have led to the current situation, which are towns and villages.
This is intricately linked to the ability of humans to cultivate crops. In the age of tribalism, horticultural societies reigned supreme. Horticultural societies reaped their crops by moving from location to location in pursuit of soil that would sustain their production. Eventually, without knowledge of crop rotation, the nomadic tribes were forced to abandon what had been fertile land. When humans learned how to regenerate the nutrients in the soil, they were able to settle down in one location. Tribes that had previously lived in what today amounts to a shantytown could build permanent settlements, often around a major source of water (the Nile River, the Yangtze River, the Rhein River, the Indus Valley, etc.). Like the wandering tribes that preceded them, villages operated by having all members contribute based on the village’s needs and ultimately receive more than enough to survive. This is because the mutual survival doctrine of the nomadic tribes transferred into the villages, leaving out the pursuit of individual satisfaction. The degree of work performed was susceptible only to what was required to fulfill everyone’s needs. Ultimately, however, the settlement of villages separated agriculture from towns. This meant that there were those living in towns and those living in rural areas, which ultimately gave rise to the concept of private property. This is because farmers had to feed cities, and while there were communal farms at first, it is obvious that at some point or another the individual family farmers reserved plots of land for their own work. From the beginning, farmers have fed villages, and in the villages were a variety of services, but until the Industrial Revolution towns only served as a congregation point.
In these villages, chief-rule became obsolete. The example of Ancient Greece provides a good example of this phenomenon. Chief-rule became obsolete possibly because of the advent of this private property: now that individuals could own land on their own, they could manage it on their own too and were not subject a ruler whose mandate was largely arbitrary. It is only because farming and town life became so separated that the concept of private property arose because it was the first time such a division of lifestyles existed among the same people. Thus, Ancient Greek towns pioneered direct democracy: any person who owned property was entitled to a say in how their town was ruled. This, however, disenfranchised all those without property, effectively making Greek democracy a virtual dictatorship of the wealthy. It serves as an example of two modern concepts in a world thousands of years in the past: rule by the people and the holiness of private property. In varying forms, these two principles have survived the test of time.
The various city-states of Ancient Greece could not withstand the onslaught of the empires of Eurasia. Be they Roman, Byzantine or Ottoman, Greek democracy could not survive. While the idea of democracy would survive in the writings of Plato – and in the example of a handful of early East Indian republics – Europe became dominated by imperialism. This trend lasted for centuries, and in these empires rule was never democratic. Monarchy rose out of the ashes of Greek democracy, but the two held a common trait: they placed a paramount importance on private property. In Greece, only those with private property could have a say in the democratic city-states, and in the Eurasian empires the nobility and royalty were given large plots of land upon which they could rule over their subjects. The monarchies breached the convention of governing locally over a small territory and instead came to encompass thousands upon thousands of square kilometers. They were able to do this by breeding a hierarchy within the ruling system that gave local nobles the ability to govern as a ruler but made them answerable to the emperor or monarch. After all, no Roman Emperor could have conquered the Iberian Peninsula, the Balkans, Gaul, Britain or Turkey if they themselves exercised absolute sovereignty in the regions. This demonstrates how governments, regardless of the size of their territory, came to understand that their survival depends on having some sort of local governance. Otherwise, those living in the subjugated territories would be forced to reject the centralized government, something that was a greater threat than any invading force. Attempts to restore democratic rule across Europe occurred, with none of them extending beyond the scope of a city-state. The Magna Carte in 1215 was the first time that the powers of the king were limited in a constitutional manner, but still the monarch was able to call the parliament at his pleasure and there was no need to be accountable to the common citizen.
The nation-state grew out of the empire, and it was only able to do so because of the precedence set by monarchy’s ability to reign over a large territory. That is to say, they implemented a top-down system where decisions made at the top were binding on people and governments beneath. Nationalism arose out of the subjugation of ethno-linguistic groups in Europe’s empires. Such examples include Serbia, Ireland, a unified Germany and a unified Italy, Poland and Ukraine. All of these countries were either ruled by a foreign empire or were constantly threatened by one or more. These ethnic groups believed that the survival of their people depended on forming an independent state. The negative consequence of this was a rise in nationalism, a hatred for members of all nations other than one’s own. This is because the xenophobic reaction to foreign domination became to intertwined in the pursuit of “national self-determination”. This allowed for two side effects to take hold, the first being a revival of democracy because of the populist nature of nationalist movements. The second was the exceptional vulnerability of public debate to domination by demagogues. This is because the irrationality of nationalism allowed those who spoke best to preach to the xenophobic masses. Of course, the latter has been known to overrule the former, such as the case of Fascist Italy or Imperial Japan. The rise of the nation-state meant that for the first time the support of the common person became an asset to those who sought power and a threat to those who sought to hold onto it. The greatest trouble of the nation-state is demographics: never before has a nation-state existed that is completely ethnically homogenous. Since the nation-state was always meant for one nation, this meant that minorities living in the state’s territory were either silenced or subject to the will of the majority nation, an early example of “tyranny by the majority”. In a nation-state, which all states are in some way, it is impossible to avoid this condition no matter how hard good-intentioned reformists try.
To this day, no truly democratic country exists. In almost every country the state is in the firm control of the majority and leaves out minorities, or is in the control of a tyrannical regime whose status as a minority or majority does not matter: they oppress everybody. There is no country where democracy is accessible to every single citizen and is directly exercised by the people through a series of communes.










The Advent of Private Ownership

The origins of human society in a nomadic tribal format made ownership of land impossible, except by the tribe as a whole or by the chief. Sufficient evidence exists to make the former the more likely, and indeed more feasible, possibility. Personal possession came to include the land that one lives upon when the divide between town and rural came into existence. The result was lack of distinction between property and possession that justifies the type of capitalistic exploitation today.
The pastures are where early human civilization first produced. Since it was a horticultural society, there was no time for individual members of the tribes to claim land for themselves. Instead, these tribes saw the land that gave food to them as being something that no human could own. Thus, early mankind had a view of the land that is more in tune with North American Native culture than North American European culture. The nomadic tribes would farm the land collectively and use the crops to feed all those who worked – which was everyone who in the tribe who could. Even when tribes began to settle in specific locations and give up the nomadic lifestyle, before the division of rural and town there still existed a view of the land as belonging to all for the benefit of all. The only times that a conflict over the land would arise would be when competing tribes would seek the best land. There was no individual competition except perhaps over the best crops that would come from the land. Nevertheless, the sense of co-operation that arose the need to work together for survival made the pastures a place of peace and an early example of the benefits of infusing one’s own needs with the needs of all.
At the time when crop rotation came into existence, towns did not develop immediately that cast farmers into rural regions. This can be witnessed in what is known about Native American culture, wherein the land surrounding a settlement of houses would be used but the concentration of tents into a very small portion of land would mean that there was no need to separate farmer from townsperson: they were one and the same. While Biblical accounts ofl fer a perspective that while on the move the Israelites practiced this type of society, at some point towns began to develop that required farmers to settle on the outskirts for practical purposes. It is at this point in history that the right to use a certain parcel of land would have been developed. Once there became those who did work that was not farming, the farmers would have to have acquired a means to distribute their produce to those who did other work. It is likely that at first the farmers worked together, but as the population grew tribes became less and less distinctive and eventually the “nation” arose. This would have made it impossible for farmers to work as one organ if only because of the impracticality of such massive organization at the time. This problem would have bred the sort of circumstances that necessitated an individualist approach to farming. For this to work out, each farmer would have to claim land for his own personal use and not the use of other farmers if he were to be able to benefit from selling to the townspeople. Since different parts of land are more fertile than others – for example, if they are closer to a water source or in less dry territory they are more fertile – there would have arisen a conflict over which land belonged to whom, and how much one farmer could morally take in such a coveted territory. All of these circumstances (trade with townspeople, conflict over the best land, etc.) created a bartering system, and eventually this would have led to the production of money.
Slavery is an institution that predates written history. Its exact origins are not entirely clear, but one theory is that the first slaves were used as servants for royalty or government. In application to the theoretical development of society, this would mean that at some point the chiefs of tribes would have begun to use slaves for their personal use. However, an aspect of slavery that this point misses is that it is unpaid, which means that slavery in its modern definition likely does not predate money, as a tribe without money would not have paid any who worked. Thus, what would have been called slavery would have arisen once property and money were introduced into society, as they would have been denied the property that those who worked on farms would have accumulated. There is also a direct connotation between xenophobic racism and slavery, as is evidenced by Israeli slavery in Ancient Egypt. Likely, the importation of captured members of other races did not satisfy the demand for free labour by the royalty and ultimately class divisions began to show. Class divisions also arose during the advance of feudalism. At this point, royalty began to become decentralized (recall the rise of empires). It was at this point that serfdom arose, allowing wealthy property-owning nobility to virtually enslave the farming masses and the poor townsfolk. The end of feudalism, and by extension serfdom, came about because of the growing population. No longer could the lords exchange sufficient land for military service of their subjects. Furthermore, the Age of Exploration brought about colonialism which about the empowerment of monarchs to build Empires. Such an example is France prior to the French Revolution, where the Bourbon dynasty’s consolidation of their power away from feudal lords brought about massive upheaval.
The Industrial Revolution can be credited with ending serfdom for three reasons. For one, lords lost their capacity to exploit human labour through land alone, which up to that point was all that they possessed. Next is that the dramatic shift in population from rural to urban left the feudal lords incapable of asserting dominance in their traditional domain of agriculture. Lastly, the fall of the monarchy in France led the other European powers to recognize the grievances of the people and restructure the government. This in particular meant that lords no longer had the ability to control land exclusively, but instead were forced to recognize the property “rights” of the average citizen. By a variety of means, common people had now begun to form a middle class that became lords in every name but title. They became the owners of the means of production across Europe. This ownership translated into virtual mastership, for while the worker sold his or her labour to the owner, the owner maintained an authoritarian relationship throughout the workday. This is because of the prevailing view among the capitalist class that property is rights, meaning that those who possessed property had rights (including exclusively holding the right to vote) whereas those who did not became subordinates for this new generation of lords. All of the factories, mines, ports, railroads and other means of production were in the hands of individual owners and required labour to turn the raw materials into anything valuable. The value made off of this labour was put directly into the hands of the owner who returned a tiny portion that he had guaranteed to his workers but kept a significant amount of the profit as capital – that is, unpaid labour. Certainly there were expenses, but they were and to this day still are vastly outweighed by the amount of profit retained by the capitalist class. This was the beginning of the division of the human race in the developed world into two major socioeconomic classes, the working class and the possessor class. The possessor class is that which has acquired property that is not used for living, such as land on which a home is built, but the kind that results in the exploitation of one human by another because it is valuable. Industrial might is a benefit that humanity has harnessed but is not used for the benefit of humanity. Rather, the possessor class uses industrial power for their own benefit, a condition that is as real today as it was at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
The history of possession begins when humans began to divide into separate classes, and it is for this reason that it remains. Possession in its raw form is nothing to be abhorred, for certainly nobody wishes to share a toothbrush with the world. This kind of possession is harmless. It is the kind of possession in the form of property as distinguished by its ability to result in exploitation of labour that is the source of virtually all strife in society. The possessor class’ ownership of the means of production is inherited from the days of feudalism, with the sole distinction that there is the tiniest chance of the common person rising to become a member of this class. This myth is precisely what allows such a socioeconomic structure to endure that causes the vast majority of people hardships as they struggle through life. These hardships include the familiar feeling of being overworked and underpaid, a lack of health benefits and a rising cost of living, but it also exists on a grander scale. For example, despite industrial power, North American countries often face crumbling infrastructure, inadequate housing, longer wait times at hospitals, and falling standards for education. The root of this problem is a lack of willingness by the possessor class to share even the smallest sliver of the vast wealth that they continue to accumulate on a greater basis every day. Yet a solution to this problem that results in a loss of power for the possessor class is considered unacceptable by the governments of the West because, simply, what’s theirs is theirs. This points to a complete unwillingness of government to alleviate the problems of the common person in the face of aggressive lobbying by the possessor class in a way that sets society back to the days of feudalism, when government and the possessor class were toxically intertwined.
A distinction, based on the history of ownership, must be made between the type of possession that are used for personal benefit without involving others and the type of possession that allows one to accumulate illegitimate wealth at the expense of nine-tenths of society. It is the latter kind of possession that is responsible for depriving society at large from the wealth that its members produce, thereby degrading humanity and damning it to a permanent authoritarian structure in an economic sense.








The Current System

North American and Europe share the common affliction of being caught between the warring ideologies of socialism and capitalism. Capitalism is the norm in economics, whereas governments make a half-hearted attempt to be socialist. To successfully examine how governments in the West work it is necessary to understand the method of governing in today’s world – liberal democracy – as well as the capitalist system and how it results in class struggle, and ultimately how in spite of class antagonism this system has endured for over a century.
Most Western governments (those of North America and Europe) are defined as a liberal democracy. Liberal democracy is a form of representative democracy, as opposed to direct democracy, wherein official are elected to represent the views of their electors. They are restrained in their powers by a constitution that protects the rights of individuals as well as prevents the majority from exercising complete tyranny over minorities. Liberal democracies are not so-named because they adhere to liberalism exclusively, but because they guarantee a multitude of individual freedoms. The rights and freedoms guaranteed in liberal democracy extend to what an individual may do with his or her spare time, but the structure of the system itself leaves the masses and the state terribly separated. This is the core flaw of representative democracy, wherein elected official are given mandates of a specified time to fulfill their promises. The span of time is usually long enough to allow politicians to do either nothing or go back on their promises without any accountability to the people. The expensive public relations campaigns waged in the name of being re-elected are enough to convince an astounding proportion of the population – so distracted with their busy working lives – to vote for the parties of broken promises and possessor class allegiance. The benefits of liberal democracy are the same benefits of democracy as a whole: smooth transition of government, multi-party elections, and some form of accountability to the common person however minimal. An alternative to liberal democracy must be sought if there is to be hope of effective government, because democracy is a hollow word indeed unless the people truly do exercise direct rule.
The partner of liberal democracy is capitalism, a natural relative for various reasons. For one, the unaccountability of liberal democracy exists in the capitalist sphere, albeit to a greater degree. Think for example of the countless times that corporate scandals have been uncovered: the Enron accounting fraud, Exxon over-reporting their oil reserves, Hewlett-Packard spying on their bureaucracy and journalists, Lockheed’s bribery, lead paint in Mattel’s Chinese-made toys, Pacific Gas and Energy poisoning the water supply in Hinkley, California, and the inflation of the price of Guinness stocks. These are just a few off of the very long list of instances where corporations cared more about their own profits than their employees, the general public, and even their own bureaucracy. The capitalist structure exists on two planes, the first being that which affects those working for the possessor class. The other plane is that which affects the general public. Culminated, these planes constitute almost all people except for the possessor class. Then again, this is the nature of the capitalist system because of its enshrinement of the “what’s mine is mine” mentality. Since young children in a capitalist country are raised to ravenously compete not for riches, there is no room to reconsider this destructive system. Some of the most dedicated progressive activists can be reluctant to suggest replacing the capitalist system and instead advocate changing it, and these people can be environmentalists, feminists, youth, and even labour unionists. It testifies to the arrogantly secure position that capitalism holds in society that this is the case. Capitalism and liberal democracy make the best partnership because liberal democracy makes the people feel as if they have a say, thereby staving off fundamental changes that would upset the power structure. Capitalism benefits liberal democracy because liberal democracy relies on heavy funds to keep the bureaucratic parties in power, and there is no better way to do this than by having the big parties align themselves with the possessor class. In Canada it is the Liberal and Conservative parties, and in the United States the Democrats and Republicans. Even in Europe traditionally progressive parties moved to the right in the 1990s, notably the Social Democratic Party in Germany, the Socialist Party in France, and most prominently the Labour Party in the UK. Part of the reason is the rise of popular capitalism following relentless Reaganomics in the 80s, but ultimately the progressive parties got caught up in what keeps liberal democracy ineffective. The parties fear losing power, and because of the clear benefits of allying with the possessor class for funds they become a party of that class themselves.
The result of the toxic twins of capitalism and liberal democracy and their alienating techniques is class antagonism. The division of society by who owns and who works is the natural consequence of private dominion over property that is used to exploit the labour of the toiling masses. This ties into the noticeable difference between what human society originated with – mass work for mass benefit with no ownership – and what emerged from the development of the monarchy and ultimately the nation-state. One may wonder how such a system survives: the key to this is the division of the working class. Since the possessor class views labour as a commodity, unionization becomes a monopolization of labour and prevents them from attaining the best price possible – the cheapest one – for someone’s labour. This division of the working class runs on an individualist plane, which works well for the possessor class because they themselves never had to band together to improve their lifestyles and thus see mankind marked only by absolute individual sovereignty. It naturally follows that in individualizing society the possessor class would have to convince the masses that they have a shot of joining them at the top. Yet this means asking someone to turn on his or her fellow worker by becoming an exploiter, something that if they are not willing to do condemns them to a lifetime under the ruling class. Even so, it is the fondest dream of many to become rich, but often it may be for financial freedom more than a thirst for all things luxurious. The working class has the power to emancipate themselves from this cycle by embracing a policy of unity and rejecting the illusion of ascension to the possessor class ranks. If they do this, casting off that which binds them to servitude, they can share in the wealth that the ruling class has withheld since the Industrial Revolution by placing the means of production in the hands of the common person.
The question of just how grandly the illusion of ascension has permeated society is vital to understanding class struggle. Primarily, it is based on the perception of the chances of making the transition to high society compared to exactly what the chances are. In terms of the perception, recent studies suggest that four in five Americans believe in the maxim that “if you are poor and work hard, you have a chance of becoming rich”. A further three in ten believed that putting in longer hours at work would make a difference in one’s chances of rising in the ranks. This compares to one-third of Brits, and less than one-quarter of French people. Yet in the United States, the reality does not reflect the perception. One report concludes that American children from low-income families have only a one per cent chance of making it to the to five per cent of income earners. Even children of middle-income American families had a one point eight per cent chance of making it to the same level, which is hardly better than the poor ones. Although the United States represents the most capitalist of any country in the world, only in the United Kingdom does one have a lesser chance of making it to the top five per cent of income earners – attributable only to the survival of the monarchy and nobility. In fact, as the rich-poor gap widens across the developed world, the chances of moving up the income ladder decrease drastically, and this gap’s widening shows no signs of slowing down. This is especially evident in statistics available from Canada, where real wages for workers, once inflation is taken into account, of all incomes have remained virtually frozen and has even decreased for those earning minimum wage since the 1970s. Meanwhile, Canada’s economy has grown by seventy-two per cent and Canadian workers have raised productivity by fifty-one percent over the same time period. It begs one to wonder why Canadian workers are half way to doubling their productivity yet earning no more. Especially since anybody can see that it is no beneficial to society either, with infrastructure crumbling in and between all major cities, poverty on the rise, an increasing burden on the health care system and ever more expensive education. Simply put, capitalism hoards the wealth produced by the masses for those who own what they use to produce that wealth. It is the source of all class antagonism and cannot be alleviated through capitalist reform.
An example of the crime of capitalism is the death of infrastructure across the developed world. Cracks run through urban, rural and small-town streets like a spider-web of disrepair. Many bridges are in desperate need of attention, as is exemplified by the bridge collapse in Minneapolis or the closing of the Montreal downtown due to a subway system glitch. The American Society of Civil Engineers has given grades for infrastructure across the country, with bridges receiving a C, dams a D, aviation a D+, rail a C- and roads a D. The world’s richest country should not have such damning reports on their infrastructure, not only the backbone of any economy but a matter of the safety of all citizens. Although this indicates that wealth produced by the public is not being used for the public good, more fundamental questions about what this means for the individual person must be considered. Although capitalism claims to reward the hard working, it has already been demonstrated that Canadian workers have been increasing productivity since the 1970s while receiving no portion of that. Capitalism is far too structured to give instant rewards for hard work because of the wage system – agreed upon transfers of money to the individual worker that are well below what the minimum production would allow so as to always ensure profit for the possessor class – and instead relies on the promise of promotion for hard work. Basically, crumbs are given with the promise of a meal later, and yet if every worker were to labour to their full extent there could be no promotion for all of them. Capitalism does not allow one to eat if they work hard, but if they are the hardest working.
The life force of the way that Western society is structured is the marriage of liberal democracy, so detached from the average citizen, to capitalism, so alienating to anybody relying on a salary or wage. Foundational changes need to be made not only to one Western country, but to all lands across the world to bring about the downfall of the global system that is capitalism.










The World’s Other Crimes

For all the discussion of capitalism so far, it is indeed not the only evil to rear its head in the world. From the same source that capitalism comes from – organization the human race hierarchically – comes racism, sexism, heterosexism, ethnolinguism, ageism and ableism. These evils exist in society whether anybody likes to believe them or not, and the pedagogies of denial that seek to sweep them under the rug will not make them go away.
No issue plagues European and North American history in the same way that racism does. To begin, race has largely been discredited as a real factor in genetics, accounting for as little as five per cent of one’s genetic make-up, whereas ethnicity can compose up to eight-five per cent. Anthropologically, race was created to distinguish physical features of one human from another, and likely has its roots in the conflicts between white Europe and the Middle East and North Africa. European imperialist expansion into sub-Saharan Africa would have made this an even more acute line of division. In particular, one theory states that the Europeans viewed the size of the African man’s penis as something more akin to animals than humans, an early example of racism. Furthermore, the arrogant European saw the tribal structure of African society as being inferior to their Christian, civilized order. This explains the drives to bring civilization and Christianity, together or separately, to “the savage” or “the heathen”. This would come into play again with the colonization of the Americas, every aspect of which is drenched in the blood of millions of Native people and built on the slave labour of millions of Africans. Like the Africans, Native Americans were seen to possess physical features and a primal society that the Europeans saw as inferior to their own. The same condition existed in Australia and New Zealand, whose Native people have their own history of cultural assault that exists to this day, and in Asia where European powers asserted their control over India, China, Indochina, Indonesia and the Philippines. In everything, the empires of Europe made the excuse of seeking to spread civilization around the world when in reality their colonies acted as resource feeders to their mother countries. Raw materials were shamelessly extracted from the land and were almost always done by enslaving those that were willing to subordinate themselves and killing those that weren’t. Even to this day racism exists: “guest worker” programs import cheap labour from poor countries and deny these people any right of residency; race-motivated murder makes headlines more often than rarely; Native land claims in the courts in Canada number over eight hundred with only ten or so settled every year; Black Americans have a far shorter life expectancy even when considering only natural causes; the list is endless.
If there is one oppressive ideology that can challenge racism for the title of most widespread, it is sexism. Almost always this involves the notion that men are superior to women physically and/or mentally. However, it extends beyond this and includes such things as the perception of “male entitlement”. This explains why men raped one hundred per cent of female rape victims and seventy per cent of male rape victims. Sexism is not always about women being inferior to men, but men being superior. It is a common trend that has existed all throughout written history. Sexism’s roots are far more difficult to trace than racism’s because every society has males and females, whereas many societies have been racially homogenous in history. Many societies in history have elevated women to positions equal to or above that of men. However, the vast majority of historical societies have actively mistreated women. The latter came to exclusivity in the modern world though the rise of Judeo-Christian traditions in the European empires in the first few centuries AD that later expanded across the globe. Sexism exists today in many forms, including but not limited to the aforementioned victimization of women overwhelmingly by sexual violence. Other examples are the far greater likelihood of a woman of any age living in poverty than their male counterparts, the average wage of females being significantly lower than that of men, and the media’s assault on the self-esteem of females of all ages. As with racism, the pervasiveness of sexism in Western society is ridiculous and cannot be tolerated.
In line with sexism exists heterosexism, the notion that those of a heterosexual orientation are superior to those of homosexual, bisexual or transsexual orientation. It is not at all a new phenomenon but shares all the woes of sexism: that is to say, non-heterosexuality existed and was tolerated in societies the world over until the rise of Christianity in Europe whose Old Testament values spoke out strongly enough against homosexuality as to condone the death penalty for those of such a lifestyle. Historically, Japan, Greece, Africa, the pre-conquest Americas, Rome, China and the Middle East all had widespread homosexual and transgender behaviour that were in some cases revered as opposed to simply accepted. All of these societies had been untouched by overzealous Judeo-Christian religion – and Islam in the case of the Middle East – and only began to see it as a deviance of nature. “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” became a common mantra of the homophobes. However, there is evidence that homosexuals are partially created and partially influenced by environmental and hormonal factors. If homosexuality is indeed something incorporated into one’s biology, there is no excuse for not treating them as equals, and even if it is not, fundamental issues of freedom arise. Namely, homosexuality is an act that causes no harm to anybody whether in a homosexual relationship or not and there therefore exists no reasonability behind homophobia. Furthermore, the fundamentalist approach to homosexuality that states that it is unnatural fails to take into account how nature itself handles homosexuality. Were it unnatural, it would not occur in the natural world, yet there are documented instances of dolphins, elephants, penguins, flies, monkeys and great apes engaging in homosexual behaviour and even raising surrogate children as a couple. Basically, homosexuality is an inescapable aspect of sexuality and is nothing to be oppressed or repressed. Some Western societies even today are slow to embrace homosexual rights and to stop homophobic attacks. This must change and homosexuals must be recognized for the human beings they are and appreciated for the value of what they contribute to society just as everybody else does.
Certainly a prevalent issue in Canada, ethnolinguism is the alleged superiority of one ethnolingiustic group over another. Such an example is the ongoing conflict between English and French Canada, embodied in the Quebec debate. Ethnolinguism’s roots lie in xenophobia and are amplified by what is generally accepted to be the fatal flaw in humanity: namely, its fear for what it does not understand. What else embodies a lack of understanding better than a language barrier? Thus, not only do English and French Canada have conflicts, but the same condition exists in Belgium, Sri Lanka, Sudan, India, and the former Yugoslavia. Ethnolinguism as it applies to Canada in particular often ignores racial or ethnic barriers and instead is a construct based on language. For example, Quebec separatists in Canada’s legislatures include Alexis Wawanoloath (a Native), Vivian Barbot and Maka Kotto (Blacks) and Maria Mourani (an Italian). This indicates that in some places language is such a dividing line that it transcends all other barriers. In reality, the history of Quebec is one where the dominant class was largely English and the working or subordinate classes largely French. This oppression has led to a sense of Quebecois unity against English Canada, whom they see as the manifestation of their oppressors. It explains why French Canadians outside of Quebec by and large reject Quebec separatism – they were oppressed by the Anglophone ruling class as much as their fellow Anglophone workers. As with other ideologies, social structures begin and amplify ethnolinguistic tensions.
The last of the West’s major discriminating ideologies – although there are less common types – are the twins of ableism and ageism. The two are related because they draw from the same maxim, which is that those who cannot produce for the economy are useless human beings. The ableists may question why money made by working people is used to keep those who produce nothing alive, and may go as far as to advocate a mass slaughter of disabled people so as to reduce the “burden” on the rest of us. Ageists, like the ableists, discriminate against those who do not produce which in this case are senior citizens and youth. Ageists are condescending to both extremes on the age line, often presuming them to be of inferior intelligence. For youth, stereotypes abound that “kids today” are out of control and are destined for a life of hedonism and non-productivity, which may have to do with a fear that middle-aged people have that they will not be taken care of in their old age. This would make sense if it weren’t the same people who condescended towards senior citizens. This mostly involves opposition to taxpayer-funded pensions and other services for the elderly (probably out of jealousy), but includes prejudice about the ability of a senior to drive a car or think rationally. The sad irony of this type of discrimination – against non-producers – is that if the same attitude were taken towards all non-producers, one has to wonder what would happen to the possessor class who epitomize labourless income. The difference between youth, seniors and the disabled of course is that nobody asks to be a member of those demographics.
Discrimination does not result from capitalism necessarily, nor vice versa. Rather, a more logical approach is to see them all as components of the same ideology of dividing society among any lines necessary to advance the cause of individual pursuit of greatness. The only solution is to purge our minds of ideologies that divide the human race into anything, be it classes, races, ethnolinguistic groups, by age, by ability or by nationality.







As It Could Be

Four chapters about how we have come to be where we are as a society and what’s wrong with the status quo. This could not be concluded without a legitimate and viable program to make steps forward for humanity away from individualism, hate and exploitation and towards a common brotherhood where our industrial and technological might is expanded and used for the good of all people and not the possessing few. This involves direct democracy, uniting the nations of the world, removing the means of production from private hands and placing them in the hands of their communities, replacing owner-sanctioned management in the workplace with management selected by the workers, and ultimately breaking down every single barrier facing mankind’s peaceful progression into the future together.
The very first step and the only means by which community socialism can take hold is the introduction of community-based, bottom-up democracy: call it community-democracy. The essence of community-democracy is keeping a big and bureaucratic government from calling the shots. Power must be restored to the communities of the world. Imagine a democracy where local community councils are formed in which every member living in the community participates and has a voice as well as a vote of their own. One vote for one person with a plurality being the only thing needed to pass approval. If the issue goes beyond the confines of a community, which could be as little as twelve people or as many as one hundred, the communities will form a partnership and have their combined membership vote on the issue. No expensive elections to pick representatives who, as most people living in a liberal democracy can relate to, simply do not listen. Only free votes by free people. This system can come about without a violent uprising against the current government – assuming that one’s country allows free association. All that is required is that members of a community learn see this as common ground and set up their council. From there, a domino effect can take hold, allowing surrounding communities to join in the wave for community-democracy, and once a riding or electoral district is dominated by community councils, they must elect a member who will fight for devolution of power to these community councils. It must be the first step, for once in it is easy for an elected official to be corrupted by the capitalist-state complex.
One of the primary issues that must be resolves it the existence of nationalism. Nationalism must be eradicated, a task that is not as lofty as it sounds. Although this has sometimes in history been accomplished through struggles like the Second World War or the end of apartheid in South Africa, the damage has never been truly recognized as being from one community onto another. This is why problems persist in the United States, former Yugoslavia, the Caucasus, and Israel. And as long as there is no real meeting of the minds from nation to nation, in the form of community to community, there can be no healing. Without healing, there is only more conflict, and ultimately only more poverty and violence. To accomplish this, the idea of the nation-state must be cast into history as something that only divides and does not settle conflicts. As an example, the concept of Quebec vs. English Canada must be abolished. In its place must be a united Canada that is not divided along provincial lines, for provinces were drawn up at the pleasure of the monarchy and in and of themselves divide people of similar ethnicity, custom, ancestry, nationality and even language. With community autonomy, the various French Canadian communities in Quebec and elsewhere can maintain their culture and preserve their heritage without confronting over seventeen million English Canadians through Quebec. Minority language communities across the world, from the Frisians in Germany to the Aymarans in Bolivia can enjoy the autonomy and protection from an overbearing majority through their own strength. Since power will not rest in federal or provincial/state governments there will be no need for antagonism between the communities at these levels. The new order will be the world’s nations living in common with one another through their local communities, eliminating the divide between nations that is bred by the nation-state.
These communities a need and an obligation to immediately make a move for repossession. Centuries ago the means of production fell in the hands of a ruling elite in the government that within the last two centuries fell into private hands, but that transition meant nothing to the privileged few who were able to take over the means of production. Never since the nation-state arose have the people owned the means of production – not even in the state capitalist governments of the USSR, the People’s Republic of China and their satellites. Yet it is time to take back what rightfully belongs to the people: mines, bridges, roads, ports, railroads, factories, oil patches and all that sustains an economy. The right of a community to own these is called, by community socialists, Mamlaka after the Swahili word for “right of ownership”. The optimal time to do this is when the company in possession of the particular means is facing hard times, making it more likely that they will give up their ill-conceived property. Whether a community council, province or federal government compensates the possessor class depends on the region and culture, so there exists no absolute program for this nationalization. Nevertheless, for a community to be able to use the means of production to better the lives of all people they themselves must possess the ability to do so, and this can only be achieved through Mamlaka. Otherwise, a damning cycle of taxing the citizens to pay the possessor class for what is produced on their property will leave the working class penniless and the possessors even wealthier than before.
The workplace need not change drastically, especially as not all businesses will be placed in public hands – retail, for example, may still be owned and operated by an individual, although ideally it would be small enough to necessitate the owner to work at the store. However, for the working class to emancipate itself from wage servitude it must take a greater role in the day-to-day running of their operations. This is the value of trade unions and workers’ councils. As it currently is, management of the workplace is selected by a bureaucracy in control of and working for ownership. In a community socialist system, management would be selected by the workers’ council at the workplace, and much like a representative in community-democracy they would be subject to the confidence of those beneath them at all times. Just as the trade unions are necessary today, even though the possessor class claims arrogantly that the woes of the working class have been alleviated, they will be necessary in community socialism. Their function will be to serve as a rallying point for working class unity, and in the case of large companies like a nationalized railroad network they would be needed for bargaining with such a large and centralized employer. It is important to maintain rank-and-file power within the trade unions themselves, for bureaucracy in the unions would be undesirable for the same reasons that it is undesirable in other aspects of life: it leads to decision making based more on manipulating superiors than what is good for the common person, and in this case the common worker. Thus, the call of community socialists is for an economy based on worker-backed management, community ownership and councils in the workplace that include every worker to the same degree that community-democracy includes every citizen.
The last aspect of the community socialist program is about the principle of people’s unity: achieving a world where nobody prejudges another based on anything on the exterior. Despite right-wing denial, discrimination based on any factor imaginable still rears its ugly head constantly. Seeing no evil, hearing no evil and speaking no evil will not eradicate the devil’s ideologies of hate. Even though eliminating the nation-state may dispose of nationalism, a new form of provincialism may arise between the communities. For this to be avoided, an effort must be made on the part of every community to be part of a federation of communities and to use this federation as a foundation for festivals to celebrate the unity of the world’s communities free from the bonds of misunderstanding. It is a concept as simple as any but is ultimately the hardest one to achieve, for prejudices are infused in our minds from the cradle to the grave and require a very conscious effort to cast them aside. One particularly good way to ensure that everybody experiences other cultures enough to not be affected by prejudice is to promote traveling. After all, the world belongs to every human being and is ours to experience.












Last Words

A sense of resignation to the current system has permeated the realms of contemporary activism. For example, while there are ongoing wars between the environmentalist camp and the capitalist powers, rarely is any fundamental change to the system proposed – instead, reforms or restrictions to capitalism are suggested. The same exists on the affirmative action front, where the solution to social inequalities is to elevate women or minorities to the possessor class instead of challenging the possessor class’ right to their ill-conceived power. Although three in five Canadians have responded to a poll saying that socialism is a viable political alternative to capitalism, a real challenge to capitalism only amounts once in a while, such as at Seattle or Quebec City.
Even so, opposition to globalization may not always imply opposition to capitalism itself. Calls for restricting capitalism are, to be blunt, foolhardy, for the capitalist system relies on being able to run amok so that it may exploit every worker, resource and portion of wealth that it can place its hands on. If any given capitalist system were restricted, its very lifeblood is placed in danger thereby risking the growth that is necessary to sustain it. Thus, the capitalist system is weak without rampant exploitation, and it must be replaced. This means that all activists must embrace a policy of fundamental economic change that does not restrict capitalism but abandons it altogether. Other economic systems have come and gone, and capitalism can be as such: the poverty and starvation proclaimed to be the result of abolishing capitalism are not a consequence, but something that the capitalist system has cursed humanity with and is only to be left behind.
There are over six billion human beings living on this planet, with the resources that our soil has given us being possessed by a remarkable few. Capitalism has expanded its reach across the planet in its insatiable need to consume what the world has to offer. Instead, this should be used to eliminate poverty, defeat world hunger, liberate the toiling masses and ultimately make the world fit for everybody to live on.
Humans are one people, weighed down only by what the possessor class wishes for them to be weighed down by so that they may be distracted focus from the possessor class’ rampant and wanton destruction of their livelihood.
Community socialism is an assertion of power for the common people, a rallying call to confront and overthrow. It is about returning sovereignty to the people. An era of unity from North to South and East to West is calling us all.
Do not hesitate: free this planet and ourselves through direct action against the current world order of the twins of capitalism and hate. Reorganize, repossess, and rise up!

Green Socialism

Green Socialism
By Kurt Schulz

The ability of mankind to build a livelihood that can maintain its survival can only be done through the extraction and use of the resources that the earth offers. These resources, whether renewable or non-renewable, must be managed effectively lest they become depleted. These include trees, fossil fuels, minerals, water and even air to name a few. A free capitalist market cannot be counted on to do so because the profit motive is based on what can be done in the present. For the future of the environment upon which human survival is dependant a new economic system must replace it that emphasizes human needs and goes beyond that only in the framework of environmental sustainability.
The question of how capitalism has treated the earth is fundamental in understanding why reformation is not the answer and why replacing the capitalist system is the best solution. The very nature of capitalism sets the stage for environmental exploitation, not least because capitalism shows no inhibition about exploiting human beings. The primary tenet of capitalism is the drive for profit, which can only be extracted from the resources offered by the earth. Everything produced in human history has been a result of manipulating raw materials from the natural environment. When the Industrial Revolution occurred and capitalism arose the first examples of the capitalist class abandoning the good of the environment in favour of their own wealth were witnessed.
Such a trend continues to this day, where the possessor class moves about the earth arrogantly extorting the globe’s communities of their natural resources. This is why generations are familiar with such concepts as the bulldozing of rainforests to mine what lies beneath the surface, recklessly overfishing using trawling nets and the like, and smog from factories and automobiles. Regardless of whether any of the environmental catastrophes that are a consequence of such actions could be avoided by minimizing consumption never occurs to the possessor class. This is because the system is not based on satisfying human needs, which can be done and then some with only a fraction of the consumption, but the drive for profit, and restraining resource extraction is simply not as profitable. The same applies for consuming the products of capitalism, like driving a car. Automobiles can be produced that use far less fossil fuels – some don’t even use fossil fuels! – but they cost more to produce, and because the possessor class needs to maintain their profits only a wealthy few can afford these automobiles. This condemns the urban working class to smog alerts because they cannot afford cars with better mileage. Simply put, the concept of green capitalism is a myth because any restrictions on the capitalist system ultimately harm either the system itself for the workers who must suffer a pay slash to compensate. This does not mean that there is something wrong with restricting consumption, but that it is not feasible in a capitalist system.
Conversely, many pundits of the possessor class point to the environmental degradation of the Soviet bloc and recently in China as evidence that socialism indeed is worse for the environment than capitalism. It is undeniable that the so-called Communist countries did wreak greater havoc on their environments, but the central issue to understanding this is whether or not these countries were ever indeed socialist in the first place. Socialism is a matter of local planning by the workers and the communities on economic matters in partnership with each other on a federal level. What existed in the Soviet Union, and the Stalinist People’s Republic of China that followed, was central planning by a bureaucratic state for the benefit of the state so that it could both maintain a high standard of living for Party members (nomenklatura) and fund their enormous military machines. These characteristics – the drive for profit, militarism, bureaucratic control, labourless income – are in fact more akin to capitalism than to socialism. As such, the Soviet and Chinese governments can only be described as “state capitalist” and not socialist. The state came to replace the individual capitalist, not to replace their system. The environmental damage in the former USSR and today in China is a result of the state capitalists doing what all capitalists do, which is pursue profit regardless of the environmental and subsequent human health damage.
What must arise and replace the capitalist system is one of community-democracy and socialism (community socialism) where those with power (the people) feel the effects of attacks on the environment. Economic planning can be done that harmonizes resource extraction and industrial processing with the environment. Furthermore, technological advancements have made it possible to have clean fuels, an absolutely necessary component of the entire industrial engine and the use of which will ensure clean air and water. By planning the economy based around what is needed and what modest luxuries can be provided waste is minimized and resource depletion is no longer a danger. Those working to produce the products and those living in the surrounding communities must form a partnership in the planning process. Of course, of vital concern to most people is whether or not jobs can be available with minimized production. However, it is important to not forget that the wealth produced under the capitalist system goes well above and beyond human needs but goes straight into the hands of the possessor class. This means that is the possessor class were no longer the owners of the means of production the wealth that they have, which reaches into the billions for just one person, would go into the hands of the employed. The essence of the system is only requiring from every person what work is necessary to ensure everybody’s needs plus luxuries and extras for the hardest working. This in fact means less work and easier work for the individual. To demonstrate this, suppose that a factory employs one thousand workers and pays each of them twenty dollars an hour. This is an expense of twenty thousand dollars every hour. Meanwhile, each worker produces eighty dollars worth of goods in one hour. This means that sixty dollars of what the individual worker produces is absent from their pay. If the worker labours for eight hours, he or she makes a grand total of one hundred sixty dollars every day. If the possessor class were not holding onto sixty dollars worth of wealth from the workers’ labour, the individual worker would only need to work two hours a day for the same amount. If that were enough but more work needed to be done, then the remaining six hours could be divided among three more workers, which means that employment could be eradicated by minimizing the burden on the individual worker. The has the dual benefit of reducing overproduction which damages the environment as well as reducing the burden and stress of the working day in the capitalist system for the average worker of any sector, be it blue-collar labour or white-collar office work.
All people have an interest in protecting the environment, but the capitalist system is not set up to allow this to happen. Only an economy that is planned democratically by all citizens on a local level, which carries up to a federal level, is a viable solution to environmental degradation. All humans need breathable air, drinkable water and edible food, which are all available if the current system is recognized for the dangers that it inflicts on humanity.

A History of and the Case for French Canada

A History of and the Case for French Canada

By Rick Smith

Turmoil in the sphere of politics in Canada has been dominated on-and-off again by the federalist question for years. Mostly, this revolves around the status of Quebec, which is tied directly to the issue of language. If there is to be hope for real, long-lasting and empowering political change in Canada this issue must be resolved. To resolve it requires an understanding of how the idea of a Quebecois nation came to be, analyzing the sources and history of Quebec nationalism, and ultimately exploring a solution of community socialism.

French explorer Jacques Cartier was only the second European to explore Canada’s East coast since the Vikings, and his French successor Samuel de Champlain established the first permanent European settlements after his arrival in 1603. These settlements were Port Royal in 1605 and Quebec (modern Quebec City) in 1608. These settlements would eventually grow to the colony of New France, respectively becoming the capitals of the provinces of Acadia and Canada. To do this, the French had to displace many Natives and ultimately saw many skirmishes and wars to assure French dominance over the Native population. Population growth in the colonies, however, was very slow and ultimately it was this that contributed to the downfall of New France to the English.

Beginning their conquest, the English sought to settle in Newfoundland to the northeast and the Thirteen Colonies to the south. Intercolonial wars forced France to give up the mainland Nova Scotia portion of Acadia in 1713, the French inhabitants of which were later expelled en masse, and in 1763 Canada fell into English hands. It was Canada that would become the Province of Quebec. British settlers then moved in and settled the Great Lakes region that would later become Upper Canada. This settlement caught the French population along the Saint Lawrence River between Anglophones in the west, east and south. At this time, New France’s population had been around 50,000 settlers, nearly all of them French-speaking. However, the British colonies had over one million people and after the American Revolution vast territories south of the Great Lakes that had previously been part of Quebec were ceded to the United States. To accommodate Loyalists to the United Kingdom the Province of Quebec was split into Upper Canada and Lower Canada, the former being Anglophone and the latter remaining Francophone.

With the influx of Anglophone Loyalists to Upper Canada and the Maritimes, the Francophone population quickly became minorities. It was the solidly-grounded settlements in Quebec that may have saved the Francophones from ultimate assimilation, rooting the French language and their culture in North America and giving the Francophone diaspora an anchor. The Acadians were some of the hardest hit in terms of assimilation, with the Great Expulsion sending many of them off to Louisiana for refusing to swear loyalty to the British Crown. The Cajuns, as they were renamed, number 600,000 with only 18,680 speaking Cajun French. This testifies to the rate that a language can be swallowed up, and even though Francophone communities exist in all of Canada’s provinces, their numbers are very small. Comparing the numbers to the Anglophone population in Quebec demonstrates that the dominance of English in Canada has very much eroded the French heritage of both Canada and Quebec itself. There is a notable sociological difference between the Francophones in Quebec and in other provinces. This difference must be taken into account when discussing the possibilities for a firmly united Canada.

The conquest of French Canada did not end at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, but instead a new battlefield arose. With eastern North America firmly in their possession, the British managed to displace Natives and Acadians, but yet failed to push the Francophones out of the Saint Lawrence River valley. It was here that the Francophones had developed, and would continue to develop, a culture very much influenced by Roman Catholicism, French Civil Code, and their exposure and dealings with the Natives. Their lack of connection with France and their continual resistance to England prompted a uniquely French Canadian culture to develop, as opposed to English Canada, where Loyalists firmly took root and continued to maintain strong ties with Great Britain. The English took every opportunity to maintain peace within the Saint Lawrence valley, either through allowing freedom of language and religion, or by outright domination.

This domination became more apparent when Upper and Lower Canada were split to accommodate their respective Anglophone and Francophone populations. As was typical at the time, British North America was ruled by an upper class clique with little or no power vested in the common people. Even with an overwhelmingly Francophone population, the Anglophones in Quebec exercised enormous influence because of their ties to the British Crown. In fact, the Chateau Clique that ruled Lower Canada for decades was exclusively Anglophone despite the deceivingly French name. When the people of Lower Canada demanded Responsible Government (ie. responsible to the people) the assembly that they were given was weak and in fact exercised no real power. This culminated in the Lower Canada Rebellion, a well-known counterpart to the Upper Canada Rebellion around the same time. Through all of this, the Anglophone powers in British North America embarked on a campaign to replace French with English throughout the colonies, a move that affected thousands from former Acadia to what is now Northern Ontario and in between.

Another highly erroneous move by these governments was to persecute the Roman Catholic Church. This happened on and off again throughout the 18^th and 19^th Centuries and was another attempt to assimilate the Francophones similar to the linguistic campaigns. Although these attempts were largely unsuccessful with Quebec today maintaining a high Roman Catholic majority, the move itself again illustrates the obsession that the British Empire had with persecuting the way of life of the Francophone population of their colonies. This in itself likely has roots in the centuries of conflict between the Kingdoms of England and France. It is likely that much like the Acadians, the other Francophones were viewed with suspicion and thought to be perfect candidates for sabotage within the British Empire. Yet even considering all that they had been subject to at the hands of the English, Confederation brought Lower Canada into a union with Upper Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. However, it is here that the Quebecois beg to differ as to exactly what it meant. It is widely believed in Quebec that Confederation was supposed to be the union of two ethno-linguistic nations – Francophone and Anglophone – and it is clear that they treated it as such. After all, the West was blazed not just by Anglophones and Eastern European settlers, but many explorers of what then encompassed the Northwest Territories who came from Quebec. Even though their numbers are not as distributed across Canada as the Anglophones, the French Canadians have had an incredibly important hand in building this country. Yet more evidence of the Quebec mindset of “unity of two nations” can be seen in former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s faith in official bilingualism. This illustrates that he, as a federalist Quebecois, desired for his people to be able to enjoy the country just as much as their Anglophone countrymen. It is a dream that has yet to be realized but has become a rallying point for both separatism and Anglo-nationalist federalism.

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when separatism, or even Quebec nationalism, gained its foothold. One theory is that the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837 was the catalyst and others claim that it was conscription in the First or Second World War. The question, however, is not why nationalism exists – that is clear through the damage caused by Anglophone dominance – but why does nationalism have its place in Quebec society but not among Acadians or other French Canadian communities outside Quebec. Two possibilities exist, the first being that Francophone Quebecois have a sort of majority complex wherein they seek to exercise their rights as a majority within their provincial borders. This means breaking away from the Anglophone-majority Canada. The second explanation is related to the first in that it draws on the fact that Francophones make up the majority solely in Quebec as a province. Expanding on this, the concepts of nationalism and provincialism come into play. Certainly Quebecois separatists are nationalists in the sense that they see their people as being in need of a separate state apart from English Canada. This is made clear by the frequent use of words relating to Quebec (Quebecois(e), Quebec, etc.) as opposed to “Francophone”, indicating that their interest is not limited to the French language but has elements of provincialism.

Simply put, the perspective of Quebec nationalists has been limited by their lack of exposure to positive elements of English Canada. Whereas Francophones outside of Quebec and Native people, who have been just as damaged by English Canada, seek to be members of Canada, the condition in Quebec is altered by provincialism. Their exposure to Anglophones has included domination, subjugation and outright attacks on their culture and language. This is especially true for the Quebec working class, who identify their fellow workers as Francophone and the dominant ruling class as Anglophone. Therefore, the idea of “Quebec” as the manifestation of the struggle of Francophones becomes popular. In fact, the history of Quebec as described above shows that it came into existence as a result of imperial decisions from the British crown that were made based on which lands could be resettled by their own subjects. The borders of Quebec were not based on where the Francophones resided, but based on where the British knew they faced an uphill battle.

Keeping this in mind, it is clear that “French Canada” and “Quebec” are two different things. From a sociological perspective, the former is a nation, composed of people who share a common background. French Canada is all Francophones living in Canada, Quebec included. Therefore, what is “Quebec”? Quebec, as mentioned, is a province drawn up as an organizational entity in British North America, and nothing more. The concept of a Quebec nation is born from the need of residents of Quebec to attach themselves to a government that embraces them, particularly the working class who saw the pattern of Francophone workers and Anglophone bosses as being consistent in all aspects of society. This certainly helps to explain the overwhelming opposition to Quebec separatism from Francophones outside of Quebec, as they have been exposed to Anglophones in the same socioeconomic class as them and do not therefore see English Canada as the grand enemy. Quebec nationalism’s roots are in the socioeconomic separation of Anglophones and Francophones in Quebec where the majority Francophones were always subject to the will of Anglophones. They came to view Canada as being solely English Canada, and as they English were their oppressors, it is no surprise that Francophone-majority Quebec became a rallying point for them.

The principle scourge that drives a wedge between Quebec and the rest of Canada is not language: Francophone Canadians live happily and peacefully outside of Quebec, from Acadians in New Brunswick to small communities in Yukon and British Columbia. The scourge is hierarchy, the system where government and the economy are structured to place one person above another. The hierarchy in Canada was forged by the British Empire and thus has always been in the hands of Anglophones. This hierarchy exists today in English Canada, and it exists in Quebec, and in both cases they have rallied the common people behind them. This pits common Quebecer against common English Canadian all in the name of loyalty to a province or country, neither of which are loyalty to a people. For in reality, a country is just land ruled by a government and loyalty to either is a form of self-subjugation. In reality, loyalty must be placed in the hands of one’s fellow human. This means breaking free from the bonds that the concepts of “English Canada” and “Quebec” have to offer and instead striving down a path that leads to a united Canada emerging as a completely bilingual entity, with Francophone and Anglophone communities dotting the country, some areas having concentrated majorities of either one, and other areas split almost evenly between the two.

The only path to a future of happiness for all Canadians, Anglophone and Francophone, is to forge one nation under two languages. Canada was born as a separate nation from Britain under the guise of two nations uniting into one, but in fact English Canada soon swept away French Canada as an equal partner in the Confederation. This is a ridiculous betrayal that must be mended. Canada is a country of peace, harmony, and equality. Our culture is inseparably linked to the pasts of English Canada and French Canada and especially what they have accomplished together. The time has come to end the apartheid of the two as advocated by either Anglo-Canadian nationalism or Quebec nationalism. The French Canadians outside of Quebec see this clearly, as do many Anglophone Canadians as well as many Native Canadians. There is no path to a prosperous and viable future that involves provincialism or nationalism in any way. The issue of language must be solved by making an effort by both French and English Canadians to embrace both languages in daily life. By bringing both into daily life from Atlantic to Pacific Canadian culture retains its value as distinct from American culture. If Canada’s greatest fear is to be annexed by the United States, the only way to legitimately remain distinct is to become distinct, which means bringing our French heritage to the forefront across the land. The culture of French Canada is valuable and has much to offer English Canada, and vice versa. The time to live as distant strangers is over and any goals of creating separate countries or by marginalizing one by the other must be eliminated.

The concept of rejecting devotion to a “country” has arisen and must be embraced. A country is simply land, and while few would argue that Canada’s land is not beautiful in many regards, it is still simply land. What makes Canada a great place is the people and nothing more, and it is from the common person that true peace must come. Community socialism is truly the only answer to the divisions that fracture Canada. This requires instilling community-democracy and placing the means of production in the hands of all Canadians and not either private hands that will exploit and destroy it or the hands of a centralized government that will not serve the needs of all people. It is through the local governance of community-democracy and also the convergence of these communities that Canada’s various cultures and lifestyles can be protected and remain livable while eliminating the ignorance brought on by provincialism’s lack of scope beyond locality. Whether one lies in the rural West, big city Ontario, or a fishing village in Newfoundland; whether one is a working class Quebecer or a middle class Albertan; whether one lives in an isolated town in Nunavut or in the heart of Canada’s biggest cities; community socialism is the only thing that offers a desirable life to all people.

Canada is a wonderful country. Canadians are blessed to have a land of such natural beauty where pristine waterfalls, majestic mountains, primeval forests and thousands of kilometers of coastline remain available to all. It is up to every resident of Canada, however, to reject outright devotion to land or government and instead begin to devote their loyalty to their fellow person regardless of any factors, particularly language, for it is only through perfect unity that Canada can be an example for the entire world.