The popular American view of socialism today is of a monolithic Communism led by what was once the Soviet Union ― continued today by rump periphery states such as Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam ― in which the seizure and retention of power by a guiding party was violent and undemocratic. This is a false Cold War myth.
Actually, the bulk of the socialist movement is and has been democratic. However, beginning in the 1880s there began to be a fissure between two kinds of socialists over tactics.
In one corner, were those willing to gain ascendancy gradually, legally, with a practical socioeconomic agenda and very little pretense of presenting a dogmatic philosophy rather than a view subject to scientific criticism. In the other, were those impatient with injustices, willing to jump past the legalities and niceties and seize power by the force of arms and hold onto it through terror.
In admittedly oversimplified terms, this is the crucial socialist debate in the late 19th century, after both the 1848 revolutions and 1870 commune failed. Socialists agreed in broad terms on the ultimate outcome ― socialization of the means of production ― but they came to disagree quite bitterly about how to get there.
The advocates of reform were exemplified by the renown Eduard Bernstein, a German social-democratic political theorist and politician, a member of the Social Democratic Party (the socialist party German workers identified with their interests, inspiring the Nazis to fly the false flag of “socialist” for their party’s name). Bernstein wrote a work called Evolutionary Socialism and became the standard leader of socialists who espoused social democracy, reformism and an electoral path to socialism.
He had known Marx and Engels well, but he regarded Marxist philosophical thinking, in particular the theory of historical materialism, as “immature.” (Contrary to all Cold War propaganda, pro or con, Marx himself made explicit in comments concerning a program of the early German socialists that atheism and related ideas, were his personal opinions, not socialism.) Bernstein helped develop the Second International (1889–1916), the precursor of modern and moderate western European socialism, which brought together socialist parties of 20 countries in a unified effort.
Against the reformist socialists stood firebrands such as Rosa Luxembourg, a German-Polish Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist, anti-war activist and revolutionary socialist of Polish origin. She founded the Spartacus League in 1915 (Spartacus was a Roman slave who led an uprising) and ultimately joined the Communist Party of Germany. A radical, she wrote a scathing response to Bernstein's book, an 1899 pamphlet titled Social Reform or Revolution?
Friday, September 15, 2017
Thursday, September 14, 2017
Anarchism
After the 1848 rebellion mentioned earlier, which was a series of political upheavals throughout a year; it involved workers from France and Spain to as far as Hungary, who went on general strikes, set up provisional governments in some cities and generally shook the continent. It remains the most widespread was of revolutions in European history and occurred all more or less at the same time, with no coordination.
At that point workers began to understand themselves as a socioeconomic class: those who possessed nothing (neither land nor factories) and had to sell their time at work. The 19th century word favored by Marx was "the proletariat." Proletarian is a Latin term used in Imperial Rome to refer to people so poor and uneducated that their principal contribution to Rome was to have children (prole, in Latin) who would then go into the Legions. Socialists argued that the land and factories should be controlled by workers, who were the ones who made these things productive, presumably through a government dedicated to serving workers.
Anarchists went a step further: they argued that the institution of government (along with the concept of property and all religion) was in itself evil and that instead workers should form voluntary associations to organize common ownership of the means of production. The French politician and writer Pierre-Joseph Proudhon is deemed the "father" of Anarchism, although he abandoned it, but the classic Anarchists are Peter Kropotkin, Mikhail Bakunin, Leon Tolstoy and others.
The most notable act of Anarchists in the 19th century was a short-lived rebellion known as the Paris Commune, a revolt during the Franco-Prussian War that led to the collapse of the French Second Empire under Napoleon III (aka Louis Napoleon, a nephew of the original) in September 1870. As Prussia besieged Paris, which was a hotbed of working-class radicalism, workers refused to fight to defend the capitalist-industrialist elite and seized the city from within, proclaimed a "Commune of Paris" led by Anarchists. They were ruthlessly suppressed by the French Army in what was later called "The Bloody Week," beginning May 21, 1871.
However, the ideas of the Commune — voluntarism, no property or religion and even free love — had enormous influence on Marx, who described the event as an example of his fateful phrase, "dictatorship of the proletariat" in his famous work, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon.
At that point workers began to understand themselves as a socioeconomic class: those who possessed nothing (neither land nor factories) and had to sell their time at work. The 19th century word favored by Marx was "the proletariat." Proletarian is a Latin term used in Imperial Rome to refer to people so poor and uneducated that their principal contribution to Rome was to have children (prole, in Latin) who would then go into the Legions. Socialists argued that the land and factories should be controlled by workers, who were the ones who made these things productive, presumably through a government dedicated to serving workers.
Anarchists went a step further: they argued that the institution of government (along with the concept of property and all religion) was in itself evil and that instead workers should form voluntary associations to organize common ownership of the means of production. The French politician and writer Pierre-Joseph Proudhon is deemed the "father" of Anarchism, although he abandoned it, but the classic Anarchists are Peter Kropotkin, Mikhail Bakunin, Leon Tolstoy and others.
The most notable act of Anarchists in the 19th century was a short-lived rebellion known as the Paris Commune, a revolt during the Franco-Prussian War that led to the collapse of the French Second Empire under Napoleon III (aka Louis Napoleon, a nephew of the original) in September 1870. As Prussia besieged Paris, which was a hotbed of working-class radicalism, workers refused to fight to defend the capitalist-industrialist elite and seized the city from within, proclaimed a "Commune of Paris" led by Anarchists. They were ruthlessly suppressed by the French Army in what was later called "The Bloody Week," beginning May 21, 1871.
However, the ideas of the Commune — voluntarism, no property or religion and even free love — had enormous influence on Marx, who described the event as an example of his fateful phrase, "dictatorship of the proletariat" in his famous work, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon.
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Early Socialists
Socialism existed before Marx. American Founding Father Thomas Paine had proposed a plan to tax property owners to pay for the needs of the poor through something very similar to the Universal Basic Income being talked about today — but he was not consciously socialist.
In Europe, the first movements to become conscious of themselves as socialists were the Owenites, Chartists and Saint-Simonians, among others.
Robert Owen was an eccentric Welsh mill owner in Scotland who developed utopian ideas and in 1824, Owen traveled to the United States to invest the bulk of his fortune in an experimental 1,000-member colony on the banks of Indiana's Wabash River, called New Harmony. Owen originated the idea of an eight-hour work day in 1810!!!
Owenites overlapped with a number of other working-class movements, most notably the Chartists (so called for their People's Charter of 1838, which called for universal suffrage for all male adults); in England, as in the USA, voting was limited to property owners. The Chartists, like the Owenites called for a more equitable distribution of income and better living conditions for the working classes — which were, in truth, abominable.
Count Henri de Saint-Simon was the first person to actually use the term "socialism." He was fascinated by science and technology its potential to eliminate hard work; he advocated a socialist society that would eliminate the disorderly aspects of capitalism — such as booms and busts — through administrative efficiency and science as the path to a rationally organized and planned economy.
In Europe, the first movements to become conscious of themselves as socialists were the Owenites, Chartists and Saint-Simonians, among others.
Robert Owen was an eccentric Welsh mill owner in Scotland who developed utopian ideas and in 1824, Owen traveled to the United States to invest the bulk of his fortune in an experimental 1,000-member colony on the banks of Indiana's Wabash River, called New Harmony. Owen originated the idea of an eight-hour work day in 1810!!!
Owenites overlapped with a number of other working-class movements, most notably the Chartists (so called for their People's Charter of 1838, which called for universal suffrage for all male adults); in England, as in the USA, voting was limited to property owners. The Chartists, like the Owenites called for a more equitable distribution of income and better living conditions for the working classes — which were, in truth, abominable.
Count Henri de Saint-Simon was the first person to actually use the term "socialism." He was fascinated by science and technology its potential to eliminate hard work; he advocated a socialist society that would eliminate the disorderly aspects of capitalism — such as booms and busts — through administrative efficiency and science as the path to a rationally organized and planned economy.
Tuesday, September 12, 2017
Socialism
While Americans argued over slavery, Europe had begun to divide over what began to be called “wage slavery.” Just as the liberalism of Locke and Mill and capitalism of Smith had become the pillars of the social and economic order, an English economist named David Ricardo observed that the value of traded things — commodities — is determined by the quantity of labor needed to produce them, which industrialization made variable, rather than the material from which it comes, which remained more or less fixed.
This idea caught fire in the mind of Karl Marx, a German intellectual exiled in England who was then observing the new industrial economy. Marx concluded that capitalists — people with money beyond that needed for well-being, also known as capital invested in productive ventures — make profits from the difference between the costs of production (the labor and raw materials they pay for) and the market price they obtain. A key advantage in the process lies in the difference between what it costs for workers to stay alive and the ultimate price of the goods they make, which Marx called “surplus value”; this is what, Marx argued, capitalists take from workers.
Marx did not blame capitalists, whom he saw as trapped within the rules; instead, he viewed the economic system and capital itself as the cause of the surplus value theft. No real change would occur, he proposed, until control of production and markets was in the hands of all society, especially the workers.
The idea first appeared in a document called the Communist Manifesto, which Marx wrote with fellow exile Friedrich Engels in 1848. It was a fast and furious summary of complex ideas, written just as worker revolts broke out in the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history, from France to as far as Hungary. This was the dawn of what would be called the socialist movement, its ideas later developed in detail in many books, especially the three-volume Capital. Their key and simplest concept would prove maddeningly difficult to bring about.
To understand what was to happen in the United States, we need to review the emergence of socialism in Europe, which occurred in four steps: 1) the proto-socialism that built up to Marx and the First International; 2) Anarchism; 3) labor unions and 4) a broad-based debate within socialism between reform and revolution. All of this took place between from about the 1820s to the 1880s and a little beyond.
This idea caught fire in the mind of Karl Marx, a German intellectual exiled in England who was then observing the new industrial economy. Marx concluded that capitalists — people with money beyond that needed for well-being, also known as capital invested in productive ventures — make profits from the difference between the costs of production (the labor and raw materials they pay for) and the market price they obtain. A key advantage in the process lies in the difference between what it costs for workers to stay alive and the ultimate price of the goods they make, which Marx called “surplus value”; this is what, Marx argued, capitalists take from workers.
Marx did not blame capitalists, whom he saw as trapped within the rules; instead, he viewed the economic system and capital itself as the cause of the surplus value theft. No real change would occur, he proposed, until control of production and markets was in the hands of all society, especially the workers.
The idea first appeared in a document called the Communist Manifesto, which Marx wrote with fellow exile Friedrich Engels in 1848. It was a fast and furious summary of complex ideas, written just as worker revolts broke out in the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history, from France to as far as Hungary. This was the dawn of what would be called the socialist movement, its ideas later developed in detail in many books, especially the three-volume Capital. Their key and simplest concept would prove maddeningly difficult to bring about.
To understand what was to happen in the United States, we need to review the emergence of socialism in Europe, which occurred in four steps: 1) the proto-socialism that built up to Marx and the First International; 2) Anarchism; 3) labor unions and 4) a broad-based debate within socialism between reform and revolution. All of this took place between from about the 1820s to the 1880s and a little beyond.
Monday, September 11, 2017
Slavery
The United States simmered to a boil over what South Carolinian lawmaker John Calhoun called the “peculiar institution” in the American South. At odds were two regions:
Americans did not think of the problems in the terms of social sciences that were then very new, but rather in terms of the national Messianism developed by the first Protestant English dissenters in Massachusetts. In a 1630 sermon delivered at sea, Puritan leader John Winthrop told his little community that they would be building “a city upon a hill” (Matthew 5:14) watched by the world and urged them to set an example of communal charity, affection and unity; if they failed, he warned, “we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world” of God’s judgment.
Slavery supporters pointed to the St. Paul’s Letter to Philemon, which addressed a Christian slave owner; the letter was carried by Onesimus, a runaway slave baptized by Paul and persuaded to return to his master. Christians of the Confederacy saw this as biblical writ for slavery; however, U.S. slavery was vastly unlike the slave system of antiquity St. Paul knew, particularly in the degree of dehumanization imposed on kidnapped Africans, including lifelong hereditary servitude.
Abolitionists could also point to Paul’s urging Philemon to treat the runaway no longer as a slave but as a brother in the faith, which he apparently did, to the point that Onesimus eventually became a bishop of the Church at Ephesus. In the wake of Protestant movements such as the Great Awakening and Pietism, both of which stressed personal transformation through spiritual rebirth and renewal, as well as individual devotion and piety, many Christians in the North supported Abraham Lincoln’s distinctly biblical oratory on the subject; they were supporters of escaped slaves’ “Underground Railroad” and embraced the fiery anti-slavery militancy of the renown insurgent John Brown.
- a Southern agrarian society organized as a caste system supported by unpaid laborers brought from Africa sold as chattel;
- in the North a new kind of social order based on capital and industry, which fed on immigrants recruited to work for bare survival wages in the North’s Blakean “Satanic mills.”
Americans did not think of the problems in the terms of social sciences that were then very new, but rather in terms of the national Messianism developed by the first Protestant English dissenters in Massachusetts. In a 1630 sermon delivered at sea, Puritan leader John Winthrop told his little community that they would be building “a city upon a hill” (Matthew 5:14) watched by the world and urged them to set an example of communal charity, affection and unity; if they failed, he warned, “we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world” of God’s judgment.
Slavery supporters pointed to the St. Paul’s Letter to Philemon, which addressed a Christian slave owner; the letter was carried by Onesimus, a runaway slave baptized by Paul and persuaded to return to his master. Christians of the Confederacy saw this as biblical writ for slavery; however, U.S. slavery was vastly unlike the slave system of antiquity St. Paul knew, particularly in the degree of dehumanization imposed on kidnapped Africans, including lifelong hereditary servitude.
Abolitionists could also point to Paul’s urging Philemon to treat the runaway no longer as a slave but as a brother in the faith, which he apparently did, to the point that Onesimus eventually became a bishop of the Church at Ephesus. In the wake of Protestant movements such as the Great Awakening and Pietism, both of which stressed personal transformation through spiritual rebirth and renewal, as well as individual devotion and piety, many Christians in the North supported Abraham Lincoln’s distinctly biblical oratory on the subject; they were supporters of escaped slaves’ “Underground Railroad” and embraced the fiery anti-slavery militancy of the renown insurgent John Brown.
Sunday, September 10, 2017
Liberty
The American foundational framework of ideas around which the budding conflicts would be resolved were not American. In the Declaration of Independence, for example, Thomas Jefferson borrowed quite liberally from John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, from which also are derived many ideas in the Constitution, including separation of church and state.
In this groundbreaking work, the 17th-century Enlightenment philosopher, also deemed the father of English and U.S. liberalism, proposed the notion of the social contract. In his words: “That which begins and actually constitutes any political society is nothing but the consent of any number of freemen capable of a majority to unite and incorporate into such a society. And this is that, and that only, which did or could give beginning to any lawful government in the world.”
In an age of absolute monarchy, in which a French king boasted that “L’etat c’est moi” (I am the State) and English kings still claimed power over Parliament, this was a revolutionary idea. It was extended by a 19th century thinker, John Stuart Mill, who conceived of liberty as the absence of restraint from government or others to develop one’s own unique abilities and capacities. In On Liberty, penned in 1859, he stated “the only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way.”
In this groundbreaking work, the 17th-century Enlightenment philosopher, also deemed the father of English and U.S. liberalism, proposed the notion of the social contract. In his words: “That which begins and actually constitutes any political society is nothing but the consent of any number of freemen capable of a majority to unite and incorporate into such a society. And this is that, and that only, which did or could give beginning to any lawful government in the world.”
In an age of absolute monarchy, in which a French king boasted that “L’etat c’est moi” (I am the State) and English kings still claimed power over Parliament, this was a revolutionary idea. It was extended by a 19th century thinker, John Stuart Mill, who conceived of liberty as the absence of restraint from government or others to develop one’s own unique abilities and capacities. In On Liberty, penned in 1859, he stated “the only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way.”
Saturday, September 09, 2017
Seeds of Conflict
It seems proper in a time of strife to recall early signs that in the young American republic all was not right nor yet perfected.
In the 1791–1794 Whisky Rebellion, more or less independent Pennsylvania family farmers rose up against a tax on distilled spirits they produced. The levy was enacted by Congress and President Washington to pay the rich interest on the bonds floated to finance the war of independence.
There were also 14 widespread major slave revolts between 1794 and 1859 — students usually only learn of Nat Turner’s. Besides that, there were enough escapes to justify legislation on their return and to spur the “Underground Railroad” to freedom.
Beginning with Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), there was a movement to gain property rights, access to education and later voting rights for women. With typical generosity of spirit, its leaders campaigned for the abolition of slavery and temperance before championing women’s rights.
Finally, although four signers of the Constitution were Irish (mostly Anglo-Irish), when a million and a half people fled the Emerald Isle’s Great Hunger of 1845-1852, these newly arrived white Europeans began to experience discrimination and mistreatment. This would repeat itself with every successive later immigration wave from Europe, with Germans, Poles, Italians, Russian Jews and others, who quickly formed self-defense organizations and rallied around the political leadership of the only immigrants who were native English speakers, the Irish.
In the 1791–1794 Whisky Rebellion, more or less independent Pennsylvania family farmers rose up against a tax on distilled spirits they produced. The levy was enacted by Congress and President Washington to pay the rich interest on the bonds floated to finance the war of independence.
There were also 14 widespread major slave revolts between 1794 and 1859 — students usually only learn of Nat Turner’s. Besides that, there were enough escapes to justify legislation on their return and to spur the “Underground Railroad” to freedom.
Beginning with Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), there was a movement to gain property rights, access to education and later voting rights for women. With typical generosity of spirit, its leaders campaigned for the abolition of slavery and temperance before championing women’s rights.
Finally, although four signers of the Constitution were Irish (mostly Anglo-Irish), when a million and a half people fled the Emerald Isle’s Great Hunger of 1845-1852, these newly arrived white Europeans began to experience discrimination and mistreatment. This would repeat itself with every successive later immigration wave from Europe, with Germans, Poles, Italians, Russian Jews and others, who quickly formed self-defense organizations and rallied around the political leadership of the only immigrants who were native English speakers, the Irish.
Friday, September 08, 2017
Capitalism
Political conservatives today celebrate capitalism as if their predecessors wisely invented it. Actually, “capitalist system” was first used in Karl Marx’s criticism of the mid-19th century economy.
The thought basis of capitalism was laid down by Adam Smith, some 75 years earlier, arguing that the best route to national wealth was open markets, free trade and laissez-faire (French for “let [it or them] do”) policies. He wrote that as little government restraint or taxation as possible should be imposed on wealthy investors, bankers, merchants and captains of industry.
Smith was a rebelling, on behalf of the industrial revolution, against the taxes and controls by kings and lords. He also fought against mercantilism, in Britain exemplified by Oliver Cromwell’s establishment of a merchant marine. That was a policy enhancing the trade position of one’s own nation at the expense of all others (yes, you guessed, Trump is unconsciously a mercantilist), originally in what turned out to be the 16th- to 18th-century ruinous pursuit of gold and silver reserves.
Smith placed his trust instead on what he described as the market’s “invisible hand” to provide “the necessaries of life.”
This continues the We Hold These Truths series, into which we inserted a Labor Day entry that broke the scheme a bit, simply for timeliness.
The thought basis of capitalism was laid down by Adam Smith, some 75 years earlier, arguing that the best route to national wealth was open markets, free trade and laissez-faire (French for “let [it or them] do”) policies. He wrote that as little government restraint or taxation as possible should be imposed on wealthy investors, bankers, merchants and captains of industry.
Smith was a rebelling, on behalf of the industrial revolution, against the taxes and controls by kings and lords. He also fought against mercantilism, in Britain exemplified by Oliver Cromwell’s establishment of a merchant marine. That was a policy enhancing the trade position of one’s own nation at the expense of all others (yes, you guessed, Trump is unconsciously a mercantilist), originally in what turned out to be the 16th- to 18th-century ruinous pursuit of gold and silver reserves.
Smith placed his trust instead on what he described as the market’s “invisible hand” to provide “the necessaries of life.”
This continues the We Hold These Truths series, into which we inserted a Labor Day entry that broke the scheme a bit, simply for timeliness.
Monday, September 04, 2017
Why U.S. Labor Day is in September and not May 1st
The U.S. Department of Labor website omits the ideological and antisocialist origins of the date chosen for the federal holiday that is celebrated the first Monday of September under the name of Labor Day. That's today.
In Europe and South America it is held on May 1st, to recall the Haymarket Massacre, which occurred on May 4, 1886, in Chicago. The incident leading to the deadly events occurred during a peaceful demonstration convened at a Chicago park called Haymarket; its purpose was to demand the eight-hour workday, now an almost universal practice. The workers were mostly immigrants from Germany and the Kingdom of Bohemia (now the Czech Republic).
A stranger — believed to be a provocateur hired to give police the excuse to crack down on the demonstrators — threw a dynamite bomb at the police, which responded predictably and dispersed the gathering. So much for the right to assembly. Seven police officers and at least four civilians were killed and dozens injured.
Lest you think these were rebels without a cause, consider that for their work they were paid $1.50 per day. Adjusted to 2017 dollars, it would be $38.63 a day, or $12,043.20 annually, just below the federal poverty level for a single person and half the level for a family of four. Plus, the work week, which then included Saturday, consisted of 60 hours of work.
In general, they protested the work of 10 hours a day for sums that did not yield enough to support a family, then or now. The Haymarket rally was also in response to the killing of several workers by police the day before.
The protests were not isolated incidents.
In October 1884, the Federation of Organized Workers and Unions unanimously fixed May 1st, 1886, as the target date for the adoption of the eight-hour working day. As the chosen date approached without action by the government to require an eight-hour day, the unions prepared a general strike.
On the appointed day, Saturday, May 1, 1886, which would then have been a workday, thousands of workers went on strike in major cities such as New York and Detroit, and crowds estimated between 300,000 and half a million chanted, "Eight-hour day, with no cut in pay."
After the riot in Chicago three days later, in Congress many lawmakers began to recognize the need to celebrate Labor Day. Most of the labor organizations, many affiliated to the First International, preferred May 1st, to commemorate the general strike that had led to the Haymarket Massacre.
President Grover Cleveland believed that such a holiday on May 1st would invite disorder and further strengthen the socialist movement. The chubby Cleveland belonged to the industrialists' wing of the Democratic Party, then known as the "Bourbon Democrats."
The alternative date used today has its origin in a parade celebrated Sept. 5, 1882, in New York by the Knights of Labor, an anti-socialist union of Catholic inspiration. The parade was repeated in 1884 and the Knights of Labor continued to hold it annually the first Monday of September. In 1887 Cleveland gave his support to the Knights' date as a national holiday.
All of this had at least two consequences.
First, popular pressure for the eight-hour day continued. At the 1888 convention of the American Federation of Labor, the same union that had protested in 1886, it was decided to launch another campaign and on May 1, 1890, was the date set set for another general strike.
The International Association of Workers (or Second International), meeting in Paris in 1889, endorsed the date for international demonstrations, thus beginning the international tradition of May Day.
But the struggle was long.
The eight-hour day in the United States was first won by the miners' union in 1898. Construction workers in San Francisco obtained it in 1900, typographers in 1905 and in 1914 the Ford Company doubled its current pay to $5 per day and reduced the workday from nine to eight hours.
However, it was not until 1916 that the federal government established the eight-hour day as a national standard.
Second, after the massacre eight anarchist workers were accused of conspiring to incite violence at the Haymarket demonstration. Five were sentenced to death (one committed suicide before being executed) and three were sentenced to prison terms.
The workers' movement called the accused the Martyrs of Chicago. The trial, which lasted until 1893, was universally viewed as illegitimate and deliberately malicious.
The new governor of Illinois, John Peter Altgeld, pardoned the defendants and joined in the criticism of the courts. Altgeld, one of the founders of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, could have been a candidate for president if he had not been born in Germany, as were many of the immigrants who fought for their rights as workers in Haymarket.
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Hurricane Metes Out Poetic Justice on Houston
What does Houston stand for if not the oil industry? Houston benefited from its nefarious alliance with the Motor City, Detroit, to marginalize U.S. environmentalism, destroy public transit and subjugate every oil producing nation by bribing their sheikhs and dictators to sell out their citizenry.
We already saw one kind of retribution in 9/11. Now Mother Nature has joined the cause.
Just as the auto industry's Detroit — the one place in which Martin Luther King, Jr., felt unfettered hate — was allowed to decline and die after the city's African-American poor exploded against inequality in 1967, Houston is now feeling the effect of climate change among the anti-Mexican Texas kickers.
Auto and oil industries, allied sectors and a few of their most suborned politicians conspired to destroy public transit (see the 1947 conviction of General Motors for conspiracy to destroy electric tramway systems) and prevent environmental measure that, in the 1970s might have stopped and reversed climate change. Even a Republican, the notorious Richard Nixon, recognized the need for environmental action by establishing the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.
Now it's too late. Climate change is irreversible, we can only soften the blows. The electric streetcar is gone. The Arab world is seeing the worst passions inflamed by deep and justified resentment at the exploitation, and now endless war, wrought on their countries by the West.
That is why Houston is flooded.
We already saw one kind of retribution in 9/11. Now Mother Nature has joined the cause.
Just as the auto industry's Detroit — the one place in which Martin Luther King, Jr., felt unfettered hate — was allowed to decline and die after the city's African-American poor exploded against inequality in 1967, Houston is now feeling the effect of climate change among the anti-Mexican Texas kickers.
Auto and oil industries, allied sectors and a few of their most suborned politicians conspired to destroy public transit (see the 1947 conviction of General Motors for conspiracy to destroy electric tramway systems) and prevent environmental measure that, in the 1970s might have stopped and reversed climate change. Even a Republican, the notorious Richard Nixon, recognized the need for environmental action by establishing the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.
Now it's too late. Climate change is irreversible, we can only soften the blows. The electric streetcar is gone. The Arab world is seeing the worst passions inflamed by deep and justified resentment at the exploitation, and now endless war, wrought on their countries by the West.
That is why Houston is flooded.
Sunday, August 27, 2017
Created Equal?
So we're in the late 18th century and early 19th. We have a tripartite government (with executive, legislative and judicial branches). Supposedly, the principles that led to the start of the new nation, the supposedly united former colonies called states, were that all people were "created equal" to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
But wait. Women could not vote. Nor could slaves nor Indians. Nor could even all white men. Those who were serfs, or "indentured," did not have a vote. Even among free men, only those who had property, meaning assets such as land or a business, could vote. So the USA began essentially as an agrarian oligarchy, which literally means, in its Greek roots, "rule of the few."
In the year 1776, a Scotsman named Adam Smith wrote a book titled The Wealth of Nations. Smith was a moral philosopher engaged in the then-new field of study called economics (which means literally the study of the management of a household). Applied to entire societies, Smith was interested in political economy, which he viewed as "a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator [with the twofold objectives of providing] a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people ... [and] to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue for the publick services."
This is one way to examine society. In short, I will be touching on the later development of sociology and psychology. In this way we can ask, how have Americans worked to secure their survival at each stage? How did they organize their society? What have they been like as people? How have who they were, what they did for a living, the institutions they favored and the personal way of living make them into what we try to understand today as one nation?
This is the second in a series of entries on the development of ideas that made the United States and the economic, social and political issues Americans debate, posted under the label WeHoldTheseTruths.
But wait. Women could not vote. Nor could slaves nor Indians. Nor could even all white men. Those who were serfs, or "indentured," did not have a vote. Even among free men, only those who had property, meaning assets such as land or a business, could vote. So the USA began essentially as an agrarian oligarchy, which literally means, in its Greek roots, "rule of the few."
In the year 1776, a Scotsman named Adam Smith wrote a book titled The Wealth of Nations. Smith was a moral philosopher engaged in the then-new field of study called economics (which means literally the study of the management of a household). Applied to entire societies, Smith was interested in political economy, which he viewed as "a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator [with the twofold objectives of providing] a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people ... [and] to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue for the publick services."
This is one way to examine society. In short, I will be touching on the later development of sociology and psychology. In this way we can ask, how have Americans worked to secure their survival at each stage? How did they organize their society? What have they been like as people? How have who they were, what they did for a living, the institutions they favored and the personal way of living make them into what we try to understand today as one nation?
This is the second in a series of entries on the development of ideas that made the United States and the economic, social and political issues Americans debate, posted under the label WeHoldTheseTruths.
Thursday, August 24, 2017
We Hold These Truths
A cyberfriend on Facebook nudged me into starting a brief series of entries on the development of ideas that made the United States and the economic, social and political issues Americans debate. I have decided to share my posts on her "wall" with the greater cyberspace under the label WeHoldTheseTruths.
What ideas brought us to the binary electoral choice of two basically similar political parties serving whomever pays the piper? Are there alternatives for running our society, making our economy fairer for all and, if so, what are they?
To look at the beginnings, I suppose we have to look at truth. Up to 1517, when one Martin Luther rebelled, truth in Europe was said to be divinely inspired and taught by the successors of the apostles of one Yeshua bar Yosif (aka Jesus the Christ). Then came Luther and said, more or less, "no, truth is revealed to my soul directly by God when I read the Bible."
Then, a few centuries later, people such as Francis Bacon, René Descartes, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant, proposed that the truth properly had to be reached by human reason and that all reasonable people, presented certain evidence, would agree.
That is the quintessence of the original American philosophy and the underlying idea behind the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
You can see at least three layers of thinking that informed the framers of our nation's foundations: the idea of theological and absolute truth (Judeo-Christian religion), the notion of intuitively revealed truth through faith and, finally, empirical or factual reasoning. Today, many people question all three, not usually at the same time; but this is the source from which all our talk about principles and society and fairness, and so forth, springs forth.
What ideas brought us to the binary electoral choice of two basically similar political parties serving whomever pays the piper? Are there alternatives for running our society, making our economy fairer for all and, if so, what are they?
To look at the beginnings, I suppose we have to look at truth. Up to 1517, when one Martin Luther rebelled, truth in Europe was said to be divinely inspired and taught by the successors of the apostles of one Yeshua bar Yosif (aka Jesus the Christ). Then came Luther and said, more or less, "no, truth is revealed to my soul directly by God when I read the Bible."
Then, a few centuries later, people such as Francis Bacon, René Descartes, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant, proposed that the truth properly had to be reached by human reason and that all reasonable people, presented certain evidence, would agree.
That is the quintessence of the original American philosophy and the underlying idea behind the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
You can see at least three layers of thinking that informed the framers of our nation's foundations: the idea of theological and absolute truth (Judeo-Christian religion), the notion of intuitively revealed truth through faith and, finally, empirical or factual reasoning. Today, many people question all three, not usually at the same time; but this is the source from which all our talk about principles and society and fairness, and so forth, springs forth.
Monday, August 21, 2017
Blogging Christianity
Yesterday I reached the end of the trail of what became a Sunday blog about the history of the Christian faith. I had started it for a friend preparing for confirmation as an adult; she wanted to hear the outline of the Christian story in order, so she could grasp how Christian beliefs, morals and rituals developed.
The result was my blog Let Mountains Hear, its title drawn from Micah 6:2. It originally was just a tag in a blog about faith, generally and haphazardly, as ideas came. Then the history came to dominate, then it became a weekly blog, one post every Sunday.
Yesterday was the final, 140th post since April 2013.
Anyone interested in reading it through, from beginning to end (and correcting, corrections are always welcome), may
(a) start at the beginning Story of the Christian Faith and click on the Newer Post link at the very bottom of each entry; or
(b) use the menu at the top, which organizes the posts by era, starting with Abrahamic Faith, then Bethlehem through Chalcedon, Middle Ages, Renaissance & Reformation, Modernity, Our Time.
It grew like Topsy, with some posts longer than others, a few topics spread over posts — all guided by the inexorable march of historical time, with some attention to complexity.
Describing the setting and themes of the Nicene Creed took five weekly entries. The Protestant Reformation and various reactions took about 20. Looking back, I see I did not cover every possible detail, but I would argue that all the major developments that help define modern Christianity are there.
The idea was to write something by an ordinary person — I am neither a professional theologian nor historian —for ordinary people. My biases are my biases, I wear them on my sleeve, but I tried in general to be fair as I am fair in my professional work, journalism.
So, it is done.
Sunday, July 16, 2017
Why the pseudo-religious website Patheos should be really called Atheos
The Tldr (too long, didn't read): truth in advertising. Patheos (dubbed in its header as "hosting the conversation about faith") promotes itself as "the premier online destination to engage in the global dialogue about religion and spirituality," when in reality it is all about promoting atheism and anti-religious bias.
Atheos uses three tools of intellectual dishonesty to accomplish this:
In fact, in an online discussion I challenged my good friend Peter Kirkwood, who thought I was being a little too harsh on the website, to come up with "an article in Atheos that has a positive faith-inspiring piece, that is not about how so-and-so (absurdly unknown evangelical pastoroid) hates gays, sex and secularism."
He came up with 7 examples. I put the links and my response to each one immediately after.
They are supremely mockable pseudo-Christians, whose faith derives from an originally well-intentioned movement (see from my other blog the post Awakenings). Admittedly, so are almost all of us who believe in Jesus the Christ, hope for improving and try, often failing miserably, to love.
The subtlety and disingenuous approach of Atheos, however, demonstrates malicious and malevolent intent. They should change their name and let their atheist colors fly.
Atheos uses three tools of intellectual dishonesty to accomplish this:
- Postings attempt to present U.S. Protestant Evangelicals as mainstream Christianity instead of a minuscule set of U.S. sectoids made up of undereducated people who confuse memorizing Bible verses with knowledge and Christian faith. Yes, Evangelicals are a wet dream for people who like to wield straw-man arguments against Christianity; but they're not widely representative.
- Atheos prefers its bloggers to be either fringe people who are marginal even in their own tiny denominations, non-denominational, Unitarian (not Christian) and occasionally rabbis (to whom Christianity is, understandably, apostasy). Their pieces, time and time again, reflect a bias in favor of anything that makes adherents of Christian religion, specifically a Bible-belt caricature of Christianity, look like lunatic haters.
- The message is always that, if you strip the layers of (alleged or Evangelical) Christian belief, you come up empty. The truth always lies elsewhere. Some of the remembered fragments of Christianity from childhood may be comfort food for the soul — but never anything approximating truth.
In fact, in an online discussion I challenged my good friend Peter Kirkwood, who thought I was being a little too harsh on the website, to come up with "an article in Atheos that has a positive faith-inspiring piece, that is not about how so-and-so (absurdly unknown evangelical pastoroid) hates gays, sex and secularism."
He came up with 7 examples. I put the links and my response to each one immediately after.
- What I Learned in Seminary: Doubt is Overrated. Here is a minister of a marginal Protestant church (the Church of Christ has about 2 million members) admitting he doesn't have any answers and his faith does not speak to the concerns of people. Not great advertising for his church, his ministry or his faith; nor inspiring.
- The Church Is Political, But How?. An evangelical admits that all [evangelical] "voter guides" are pro-Republican. Stop the presses! The evangelicals are a collection of miniscule churchlets (the biggest of which is the two or three Baptist groups, which are about 13 million) that have no common policy and have, by their own admission, a very narrow point of view. This is not Christianity, this is Evangelical World, an amusement park where some preachers get very rich selling "Bahbles."
- The Strange Task of Preaching: Isaiah 55:10-13. This can be summarized as "God is dead." However, let's pretend otherwise and keep on praying anyway so the author, a professor of preaching, can keep his day job. You don't believe, say so; don't hide behind Charlie Brown's favorite verses.
- Rosenzweig and Weil Are Dead. At last, Diogenes, we have an honest man: a rabbi. Franz Rosenzweig and Simone Weil were two 20th century Jews who dabbled in Christianity. R became every Hillel club's the poster boy for why youthful modern Jews should not convert to Christianity; W became the poster girl who couldn't bring herself to convert for a number of neurotic reasons. (I happen to like both R and W and have read a fair share of their writings, but they are not exactly on anyone's road to Damascus.) Again, Atheos posts models of not becoming Christian.
- Wonder Woman and Pinchas: The Persistent Appeal of Zealotry Here another rabbi, a convert from Christianity, effectively equates faith with "zealotry." He whimsically, but ineffectively in my view, taps Wonder Woman (no doubt to appeal to hipsters), then copies Richard Dawkins' argument (see my post Going to the Atheist Church) about violence in the Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament). Thank you, Atheos, for the propaganda from someone who left Christianity (a fact omitted on the site, of course).
- A Timeless Winning Trifecta for Every Age. I was willing to give this one a few points, but its Methodist author spends most of his time talking about being old. Eventually he wends his way to St. Paul and love, hope and faith, concluding they are worth it even for new generations (even though Boomers have it all wrong). What? Come again? Half a point for not saying anything overtly hostile to the faith; but Atheos gets subtle here: when it is a believer, make sure it is someone too distracted with himself to stay on topic.
- Christian: You Are Upset About the Wrong Things. In the final example of uplifting faith-inspiring propaganda from Atheos, we get a Baptist, but one who left ministry to make money, citing pseudo-sociology to remind us — stop the presses, again! — that Evangelicals care more about the evils of saying "shit" than 30,000 children dying. Cleverly, the author says "Christian," not "bigots who like to think the 'Bahble' makes them right."
They are supremely mockable pseudo-Christians, whose faith derives from an originally well-intentioned movement (see from my other blog the post Awakenings). Admittedly, so are almost all of us who believe in Jesus the Christ, hope for improving and try, often failing miserably, to love.
The subtlety and disingenuous approach of Atheos, however, demonstrates malicious and malevolent intent. They should change their name and let their atheist colors fly.
Sunday, July 02, 2017
Happy Real Independence Day
Cecilieaux is off for the holiday, but he left behind his now-traditional Independence Day blog post. Happy 2nd!
Today, July 2nd, rather than July 4th, is the actual day that independence of the territories that were to become the United States from Britain was first approved. This came in the form of a resolution that attorney Richard Henry Lee, a Virginian, proposed to the Second Continental Congress.
The brief document read:
The motion was approved by 12 of the 13 colonies. Indeed, John Adams, of Massachusetts, who seconded Lee's proposal, was so certain that a great step had been taken that he wrote to his wife Abigail:
Now, 241 years later, the festival is held on the 4th, when the delegates approved the wordier, some would say grander, announcement of the decision by Thomas Jefferson, who composed it in the absence of Lee, who had rushed back to Virginia due to his wife's illness.
In honor of someone born on this great day, however, let us fire off an imaginary firecracker.
Today, July 2nd, rather than July 4th, is the actual day that independence of the territories that were to become the United States from Britain was first approved. This came in the form of a resolution that attorney Richard Henry Lee, a Virginian, proposed to the Second Continental Congress.
The brief document read:
Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.
That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances.
That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.
The motion was approved by 12 of the 13 colonies. Indeed, John Adams, of Massachusetts, who seconded Lee's proposal, was so certain that a great step had been taken that he wrote to his wife Abigail:
The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.
Now, 241 years later, the festival is held on the 4th, when the delegates approved the wordier, some would say grander, announcement of the decision by Thomas Jefferson, who composed it in the absence of Lee, who had rushed back to Virginia due to his wife's illness.
In honor of someone born on this great day, however, let us fire off an imaginary firecracker.
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