ONLINE GOLD: Overcoming the system’s false consciousness
Edition No. 5
EDITED BY PATRICE GREANVILLE
Dispatch first iteration 0002 2017-20-17 | Collated and edited by Patrice Greanville
MAIN COMMENTERS: • Luciana Bohne • Chris Driscoll • Ian Chambers • Bill Dores • Lee Burkett • Patrick Walker
The inevitable suckers listening to Democrats spell out their phony "bettter deal". The Dems are already trying various formulas for electoral rebirth in the next round of legitimating "elections". Faux populists like Liz Warren are being shopped all over the place, and a fresh spate of Obama wannabes like Corey Booker and Kamala Harris marketed widely to the perennially clueless.
What will trigger us to recognize our "false consciousness"--general global war or cataclysmic global warming (provided scientists are correct--and correct in ascribing the causes to capitalism)?
The old man was right, after all. Marx said it all, almost two centuries ago, but the system's apologists buried him.
" According to Marx every society in history organized its production according to its available means of production that determine relations of production (i.e. feudalism, capitalism, communism…) and its own concept of property.
This is what Marx calls the economic base. On top of the economic base Marx poses the "superstructure", all cultural structures that are the result of the economic base. An important part of the superstructure is, according to Marx, ideology. Ideology according to Marx is a veil pulled over the economic base in order to prevent people from seeing its inherit injustice (that is, until communism comes). Ideology convinces people that the current state of production is justified, warranted, "natural" or anything else which gets them to comply to it. Ideology has been famously referred to by Marx as "false consciousness". Revolutions come about when the fallacy of this consciousness is recognized. When Hegel and his followers saw a shift in human consciousness Marx saw a shift in human economical structures that results in changes to the ideology."
The "petit bourgeois" is the class in between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, in classical Marxist analysis. It's considered "the dangerous class" because it is economically insecure from one moment to the next (shopkeepers, members of the lower echelons of industry, and state institutions). It fears slipping into the rank of the proletariat and identifies with the ruling bourgeoisie. When push comes to shove, the petite bourgeoisie sides with fascism, for protection against the advances of the working class in matters that could damage the petit-bourgeois' tenuous social status.
Single payer, Medicare for all, is not the panacea everyone seems to think it is.
At best it's yet another baby step in the right direction. Yet, as with every other baby step given us, we will hail it as another "victory."
Aren't you ready to run? Why do we accept that fumbling steps, begrudgingly bestowed, are the best we can hope for?
What we expect, what we tolerate, what we settle for, is sickening and an indictment of our character as a nation.
As a post script: Medicare is still a "once removed" alternative to healthcare. It's just another sort of health insurance. It still allows for tremendous profit to be made by both the private insurers and the healthcare providers. Many illnesses and conditions are not covered. As a person who is now on Medicare I find it odd that I can receive "free" treatment for addiction, but that both eye care and dental care are not covered.
Pps: The healthcare providers are all private enterprise, and can decide if they will or will not accept Medicare. Many of them accept Medicare as a partial payment, sort of like a down payment, with additional fees being out of pocket. At the end of the day folks with Medicare are at the mercy of private enterprise. This is nowhere near the boon Medicare/Single Payer is made out to be.
Patrick Walker (first posted in June, 2017)
DEMOCRATS' "McRESISTANCE" IS AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO CLIMATE
Or, as my favorite new slogan rhymingly puts it, "A McResistance Summer Is Climate's Ultimate Bummer."
I was delighted to see that Paul Street--a writer-activist I admire--has likewise recognized the extreme threat to climate posed by Democrats' McResistance Summer. This is from Street's opening paragraph: "Here are twelve blasphemous thoughts for the current Russo-phobic season, likely to be a real carbon- and (see below) capital-cooked scorcher."
Please share WIDELY--and help Progressive Or Bust organize the (anti-duopoly) "resistance to the McResistance." (https://www.greanvillepost.com/2017/06/16/twelve-blasphemous-thoughts-some-summer-sacrilege/)
Patrick Walker says:Letting establishment Democrats’ get away with their shallow, Russia-obsessed “McResistance” to Trump is INTOLERABLE to progressives wishing to save the climate. Not only does it distract from the ultra-serious issue of runaway climate change; it’s intended purely to get a warmongering, neoliberal Democratic Party back into power without it reforming AT ALL. Among other things, this means Democrats recklessly continuing their fracking-heavy, “all of the above” energy policy–after Trumps’ anti-science barbarians have made the timetable for last-ditch climate action all that much shorter.Excerpt
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