This is a blog, not an academic paper, and the content is driven by personal passion. I am very angry about what is happening to my country, and to North American society as a whole, and this blog will not be temperate in tone.
Contemplate the following details very closely, because they are what is planned for you.
You are an employee in a factory. You have no union. Anyone who attempts to form one, or even casually speaks of the possibility, will be arrested and sent to a concentration camp. In fact, all sorts of political and religious dissidents are sent to camps, where they are often disassembled for medical parts [1]. This suggests caution is in order. Anyway, the issue never comes up, for nothing along those lines has ever happened in your factory, and you have no notion of how workers could challenge or influence anything. Your employer monitors and controls every aspect of your personal life. You have no “private” life. You are unmarried, and will remain so. You live in sexually segregated barracks. There is little free time to do anything about it, anyway, because your work shifts occupy most of your time awake. If there is a sudden need for some change in production, you are roused by superiors at four in the morning and sent to the assembly line. If you are injured on the job, or exposure to pollutants renders you incapable of working, you are simply thrown out without compensation. You earn a pittance. The shiny products you produce are for export, and you could not afford to buy any of them. Not that you care. All you are concerned with is keeping this “good” job, which is actually one of the coveted ones. All the other alternatives are worse.
The factory you work in is gleaming and new. All the best architects and engineers have been employed in building it, and it is a marvel of productive efficiency. The corporation incurred very low costs, and constructed it in record time. There were no environmental inquiries, no tedious legal barriers, and no annoying regulations to worry about, once the Party okayed the deal. Several thousand people lived on the selected site, but there is no “private property” in this set up, at least when it comes to ordinary people. The State owns all land. They were all cleared away at gunpoint, and their homes bulldozed. They now live in a shantytown slum. Few of them were fortunate enough to get jobs in the new factory, like you were, so you give thanks for your good luck. Whatever the Corporation needs to thrive is provided by an omnipotent State, which owns and controls everything in the final analysis. It has at its disposal a huge army, a vigorously active Secret Police, and a horde of local informers who will rat on you if you step out of line. It controls all communications, chooses who will be educated and who will not, and makes sure that education includes a completely fictitious “history”, with substantial events simply erased from the past. Life, even outside work, is sexually repressive, rigid, and conformist. A small “middle class” of technical professionals, managers and Party officials has access to a much more pleasant lifestyle, shops in shopping malls, goes to amusement parks, looks up things on the (heavily censored) Internet. Their life is a lot looser, but they are adept at feeling out the limits that they must stay within, which constantly shift with state policy. Anyway, things for this group are immeasurably better now than they were in the past, and they are not going to “rock the boat.” However, as an ordinary industrial worker, this does not concern you. You have no access to any of these privileges and you don’t expect to ever have, though you maintain a dim hope that your “good” job will enable you to keep your family from sinking back into the squalor of your native village. Anyway, you have little to compare with. The events of the previous generation were so horrible, that your parents won’t even talk about them. As far as everyone around you is concerned, things just keep getting better and better.
This, of course, is the Conservative Utopia, the kind of society that every Conservative intellectual yearns for, and contemplates with saliva dripping from their lips. It’s called “Communism.” The working conditions described above are not from some dystopian science fiction novel. They are the recently documented conditions in some of the most prestigious facilities of global corporations manufacturing in China. Anyone familiar with China knows that conditions in many other Chinese factories are much worse.
Communism is an ultra-conservative ideology promoting exploitation, slavery, and genocide. It has no connection whatsoever with anything progressive, democratic, egalitarian, or “liberal.” It is, however, very closely connected to the modern Conservative movement, which emerged in the United States during the Reagan administration, saturated American life, and was subsequently exported in various permutations to other countries (including my own, Canada). It is this connection that I intend to explore. It’s a very intimate connection, which has resulted in the transferal of most of North America’s wealth to the Communist Party, a decades-long process that is now almost complete. Conventional political thought continues to represent Conservatives as ideological opponents of Communism. Nothing in the events of the last few decades supports this mindlessly repeated notion.
When you look at the many zealous Conservative ideological missionaries, you are seeing exact replicas of the Communist Party apparatchiki that once preyed on Eastern Europe, like so many werewolves. People such as Bill O’Reilly or Ann Coulter are Communism incarnate, perfect examples of ruthless, morally corrupt ideological fanatics claiming to voice the revealed “laws” of history and economics, oblivious to any human suffering, contemptuous of the “weakness” of those they would destroy, and willing to tell any lie to advance their cause. Like most such loud public bullies, they are sniveling cowards in real life. Any person who grew up in a Communist dictatorship would recognize them in an instant. The Conservative movement that consolidated in the 1970s, in great part inspired by the philosopher Leo Strauss, attracted exactly the same kind of personalities as the Communist Party did in an earlier generation. Ruthless, vindictive, back-stabbing zealots who crave the thrill of telling lies and manipulating people. (Strauss, in fact, openly taught the virtue of telling lies, as Lenin did.) Many were old Marxists, anxious to jump from a sinking ship without the inconvenience of actually changing their ideas. These drew heavily on that earlier movement for both their tactical methods and their ideological underpinnings. In short, Communism was rebranded and remarketed with the label “Conservative.” The most appropriate term for this movement would be “Neo-Communism.”
But the main danger to our freedom is not from loud-mouthed columnists and ideologues, or even Presidential candidates. They are merely shlubbs who take orders from on high. What really does damage is the solid core of wealthy and powerful people who drive the Conservative agenda in our society. These are not “true believers,” but cynical, cold, calculating experts, who know where their interests lie. They create an atmosphere of ideological fait accompli in the major institutions of our society, whether business, industry, education, civil service, or government. They have built an enormous stock of glib assertions and formulae, with which they can move any institution in the direction they want. Few opponents get past this bluffing stuff, which is equivalent to the spurious “science” of Dialectic Materialism, or the convoluted theology of the Middle Ages.
Conservatives, like Communists, are always talking in code. When they talk about the “need to be competitive in a global economy,” or the necessity of facing “economic realities,” it is a disingenuous code for “we will not be content until the average American and Canadian is reduced to the kind of exploitation and degradation that the Chinese worker suffers, and we will not be stopped until we achieve this goal.” That degradation is, in fact, their ultimate aim and ideal. Communism, and the kind of oppression that Communism means for the average human being, is the final and complete political expression of Conservative values.
Long ago, in this blog, I heaped justified scorn on those who claimed that the ruling Party in Beijing had “abandoned Communism,” and that democracy in China was just around the corner, part of an inevitable process of reform that should not be tampered with by questioning the Party’s policies or motives. In 2007, I wrote :
It is this hold on central power that is the heart of the Communist ideology, not some particular arrangement of management policy. If the regime chooses the looser option, it is not any less Communist, and it is not in any significant way changing its ideology. Much nonsense has been written about China “abandoning Communism”. This is not even remotely the case. Anyone who is naively waiting for “democratic reforms” to blossom in the regime will wait for eternity. As long as the cash flows in abundance, from global corporate and state transactions, the Communist aristocracy will never voluntarily relinquish their power. Why should they? What would make them? In fact, the Party in Beijing has made it perfectly plain that any movement toward democracy among the people of China will be swiftly and brutally crushed. This will not change. Ever.
I think my point can be taken as proven. For a long time, much was made of the notion that the emergence of a “middle class” by itself automatically set in motion a process of democritization. There were few convincing historical examples of this, but it was much repeated. But after decades of waiting, this was more or less set aside. Claims that China was democratizing, however slowly, had already worn pretty thin when I wrote that piece. They were ritually trotted out by politicians when they made another tributary pilgrimage to Beijing, in order to shrug off questions about human rights. Now, the bulk of commentary assumes that, as long as China developes a “market economy,” democracy and human rights are mere trimming, nice things that will probably “evolve” in some remote future, but are not really important. Few imagine that China will “democratize” or “liberalize” significantly any time soon, and even fewer care. Progress is to be measured by skyscrapers and industrial output, not be human freedom. This, of course, is the inevitable consequence of asserting the primacy of economic structure over both morality and political forms. This assertion underpins both Marxist and Conservative ideologies.
What fascinates and attracts Conservatives is not China’s potential for democratic progress, but something much more resembling the stuff that devoted Communists used to preach: China’s rise as the next global economic superpower, taken as self-evident, and inevitable. History (reified and personified, in the traditional Marxist fashion) is On The March, and the drumbeat is to be set by the Communist Party.
Conservatives are keen to promote this notion, but it conflicts with the traditional mummery of “anti-communism” peddled in the domestic tent-show. The trick, then, is to avoid saying the words “Communist Party.” The bulk of discussion in the media merely refers to “China”. Few notice the difference. In my writings, I’ve always been careful never to refer to any political or economic activity by the Communist Party of the Peoples Republic of China as being done by “China” or “the Chinese.” I am on the side of the people of China, who are quite distinct from the criminal scum who rule over and exploit them. You will never hear me refer to these criminals as “China”. They are the Communist Party, and should always be called by that name, and by no other.
Historicism ― the doctrine that some particular political entity is mystically fore-ordained and destined to rule ― is a classic component of Marxist and National Socialist thinking, and has been applied to every empire-on-the-make. Historicism has always appealed to the greedy and power-hungry, who are eager to re-inforce the notion that they’ve hopped on the right bandwagon. In 2012, the right bandwagon is the (discretely unnamed) Communist Party. Everyone eager to make a buck, or protect their bucks, is going to proclaim that its supremacy was pre-ordained, is unstoppable, inevitable, and right. See what happens if you suggest, in any respectable public forum, that a public policy be pursued in the United States or Canada that in any way conflicts with the prosperity and future dominance of the Communist Party. The chorus of denunciation will be defeaning, and it will be tricked out in the “market” version of predestination, little different from the old Marxist historicism. If the products exported from China are cheap because the people of China are criminally exploited, experts in the media will insist, the solution can never be to prevent or limit the purchase of goods produced by crime. People who download a copy of a tv show from the internet are deadly menaces whom the taxpayer must pay to hunt down and prosecute, but someone who locks a hundred women in a firetrap building and chains them to their sewing machines, beating them with a stick when they don’t produce, and can deliver a cotton garment for fifty cents to be sold here for fifty dollars, is not to be hindered in any way. The reason given is always little more than some indirect way of stating that the whole world must conform to the standards, policies and morals of the Communist Party, because its superiority and destined supremacy is inevitable and unstoppable. Again, it is political Conservatives who most consistently put forth this argument, echoed by corporate power and the rich in general.
For us to understand how this ideological imperative has been followed, I will have to make clear who most benefits from the current situation. It is not the people of the United States and Canada, nor is it the people of China. It is a small group of individuals and families who constitute the global aristocracy. The present global aristocracy, who possess wealth unimaginable to any ordinary person, include a handful of technological innovators who built industries, but the overwhelming majority of them are members of ancient European aristocratic families, old Communist Party gangsters, scions of the third world monarchs who were installed by the colonial powers (such as the Saudis), drug lords, arms dealers, stock market and real estate manipulators, or military thugs sitting on valuable chunks of natural resources. The cornerstone of the global economy, the oil industry, which directly or indirectly determines the nature of every transaction on earth, is owned overwhelmingly by hereditary nobility, military dictators, or ex-KGB goons.
This is not, however, how the members of this aristocracy view themselves, or like to talk about themselves. Every one of this mangy assortment sees themself as a sort of Randian super-hero ― a person who deserves every penny of their wealth because of the inate superiority they possess as a member of the “creative class.” The more obviously these “creative” supermen acquired their wealth through inheritance or crime, the more aggressively they will promote themselves as a meritocracy. This is echoed even more vociferously by the small fry, the parvenus aching to join the upper echelons.
This psychology can be shown with a very small example. Leo Dennis Kozlowski was the CEO of Tyco International from 1976 to 2002, and was briefly among the wealthiest men in the United States. Tyco International was a holding company that may, in its early days, have financed and nurtured some creative endeavors, but by the time Kozlowski became CEO it grew fat by buying up companies, stripping them of their assets, and destroying them. Tyco absorbed over a thousand companies in this way, in fields as varied as fiber-optic cable and disposable diapers. Those that were not shut down were agressively “downsized,” their American employees eliminated, the remaining jobs exported. Kozlowski, in this way, subtracted a considerable amount of productive industry from the American economy. For this achievement, he was the object of gushing admiration among Conservatives columnists, and graced the cover of Business Week. Fewer jobs for uppity, demanding Americans, and more jobs for obedient and controllable Chinese workers! More American production was being eliminated. Kozlowski was another hero pushing the heavy wagon of history down the correct path of destiny. But the only “creativity” that Kozlowski brought to the enterprise was the inspiration of teaming up with CFO Mark Schwartz, who helped him cook the company books and steal a hundred and fifty million dollars from shareholders. Even within the limits of what’s legal, shareholders ended up paying for the $6,000 shower curtains in our hero’s $30,000,000 apartment, a $15,000 umbrella stand, and a million dollar birthday party graced with a life-sized ice sculpture of Michelangelo’s David urinating Stolichnaya vodka. Nevertheless, when Kozlowski surprisingly faced prison for his criminal activities, he was widely regarded as a martyr in the business press. He certainly regarded himself as such. From his public pronouncements, it is apparent that he considered himself the supreme example of the innately superior person, the quintessence of the “creative class,” a noble example of the aristocracy of merit brought down by the jealousy and resentment of the rabble. Didn’t they know that he deserved a $15,000 umbrella stand, and that mere laws and regulations should never have stood between him and and its acquisition? Multiply Kozlowski a thousand times, and you get the clamoring horde of self-styled “entrepreneurs” who have strip-mined the American and Canadian economies, and you get an idea of the tone on the precarious fringes of the global aristocracy. Greg Palast, a journalist who uncovers business and stock market fraud, once asked a particularly loathsome billionaire why he bothered going to considerable trouble, merely to devise a complicated fraud that robbed a few hundred dollars worth of fuel from everyone who lived on an impoverished Indian reservation. His answer: “Because I want every penny that’s coming to me.” There are hundreds of this type, small fry with a few hundred millions, but they remain insecure. The really wealthy and the really powerful have less neurosis and more confidence in the permanence and inheritability of their power. They generally do not publicly boast about how creative they are. But they hold, in the long run, the same sense of entitlement.
Nor do these upper echelons bother to talk among themselves about the “free market”, which is always good for impressing the yokels, but is not taken seriously. Anyone who imagines that the rich believe in the merits of competition or free markets is, to put it bluntly, a fool. Competition and free markets can potentially take away wealth from the already wealthy. Nobody who has real wealth or exercises real power wants any kind of free market to exist. “Free market” rhetoric among the rich is merely the equivalent of “social justice” blather from Marxists. Neither group ever has, or ever will, have the slightest interest in these concepts, except as propaganda tools. When protesters take aristocratic claims at face value, and imagine that they are fighting against “free market capitalism,” or some such nonsense, instead of against ordinary, historically tried-and-true aristocracy, they profoundly misunderstand the nature of power. They then have little hope of successfully fighting it.
Conservative ideologists are, in fact, no more supportive of a free market than was Lenin or Mao. They aggressively oppose the three most fundamental principles of a free market.
The first principle of genuine free market theory is that a free market can only exist among a free people. Political freedom and democracy are the fundamental prerequisites of any free market. The Conservative doctrine is quite the opposite, that political democracy is irrelevant to the market, and that “economic freedom” (meaning the unhindered activity of corporations and aristocrats) can exist independently of political freedom. Thus, the economy of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile, in which slices of the pie were divided among Pinochet’s relatives, in exactly the same way that the slices of the pie in Cuba are divided among Fidel Castro’s relatives, was nevertheless universally described as a “free market” economy!
The second principle is what is called the “level playing field”, by which is meant that trade in a free market requires all participants to be subject to the same rules. Conservative doctrine insists that there should be no “level playing field,” that American and Canadian workers in a democracy should “compete” with slaves in slave labour camps, or peasants brutalized by torture and terror, and that these differences merely amount to jurisdictional vagaries within “the market”.
The third principle is that the participants in a free market must be individuals, each accountable for their actions, each responsible for their outcomes. The very concept of a modern corporation, of course, violates this principle, as it attributes “personhood” to an abstract collective entity, one that cannot be held accountable in any real sense, or face real punishment for wrong-doing. Any of the injustices and inefficiencies that Friedrich von Hayek identified in the “command economies” of the totalitarian State logically apply to the equally centralized “command economies” of corporations. (Hayek’s arguments were based on the nature of information flow in any collective organization. If inefficiency and injustice are innate to a “state” with a budget of a billion dollars, then the same inherent problems apply to a corporation with a budget of a billion dollars.) Modern Conservatives not only espouse this kind of blatant collectivism, they extend it to its logical end: the Communist Party is seen as just another corporation, a constituent part of the Market. You or I might be tarred with the sin of “socialism” if we joined in a union, or even opened a consumer co-op. But the Communist Party itself, guilty of mass-murder and criminality on a vast scale, centrally planned and claiming the absolute ownership of a billion human beings, is a member in good standing of the “free market.” All you have to do is add “Inc.” to the end of “Communist Party” and the logic works out thus: the Communist Party is a legitimate corporate part of the free market; market forces reward consolidation and centralization; if market forces made the Communist Party the sole economic entity, then that would be quite within the rules; ergo, the ultimate expression of the Free Market can be total control of the world by the Communist Party. But the argument is never carried that far, because it would expose its inbuilt absurdity. Besides, it is all just agitprop. The “free market” is merely a rhetorical tool for bamboozling the suckers.
The “un-level playing field” is more than just a contradiction in Conservative rhetoric. It is the principle tool that Conservatives have used to destroy the productive economies of the United States and Canada, and to transfer their wealth to the preferred political entity, the Communist Party. The productive industry of the United States and Canada has been systematically dismantled over the last generation. The United States is bankrupt (in truth, if not in name), with a significant portion of its astronomical debt in the hands of the Communist Party, and much of the rest scattered among an assortment of dictators, kings, and gangsters. Canada is in better fiscal shape, but it’s productive industry is under the same kind of attack through its current Conservative Party administration. Prime Minister Harper (freshly back from a groveling trip to Beijing) is eager to have it return to its colonial status as a backwoods exporter of natural resources. Plans are afoot to hand over control of key Canadian natural resources to a PRC state enterprise. Meanwhile, every Conservative party policy consistently sidelines industry. Our once most creative industrial corporation, Research In Motion (with its groundbreaking Blackberry), is collapsing in a shambles of managerial chaos, which I suspect will turn out to be rooted in malfeasance or financial gutting. The great factories that once ringed Toronto and Montreal are now mostly silent. Quebec and Ontario, the country’s industrial heartland, are not much better off than the United States.
The United States does not have the same bankroll of natural resources, and has suffered longer rule by more fanatical Conservatives. It’s industrial base is pretty much gone. Recently, when President Obama invited the new CEO of Apple, Inc. to the White House, it is said that he asked him “what would it take for Apple to manufacture the iPod in America?” The answer he got surprised him, but it would not have surprised me. The making of an iPod by American workers would only add a trivial amount to its manufacturing cost, easily absorbed by a company with such spectacular profit margins — but it would never happen. Why? Because there is no longer a functioning American supply chain. The intricated web of supporting industries, sub-industries and services that once made the United States the dominant industrial power of the world, a network built up by generations of dynamic economic creativity, no longer exists. The last generation has seen its complete disintegration. The obliteration of both America’s heavy industry, and the complex supply chain that supported it, is not the result of blind chance. It is the outcome of deliberate policy. I would contend that much of that policy is made to please a global aristocracy that has no particular interest in the well-being or future of Americans and Canadians, but has considerable access to elected officials. As long as the bulk of voters are preoccupied with silly “personality” issues or religious obsessions, these economic policies will be shaped without their knowledge.
With their children attending Swiss schools, their houses in France or the Caribbean, and their emotional loyalties with an international subculture of wealth and prestige, the (technically) American and Canadian rich don’t much worry about most domestic issues. But they do care about taxation. No matter how little they pay after the appropriate off-shoring, kickbacks, exemptions and special privileges, it is a point of Aristocratic Honour to resist even the implication that they should pay. Out come the sound bites about the menace of “socialism.” It is customary to inform us that “the fall of the Soviet Union demonstrated that redistribution of wealth leads to disaster.” This is typical Conservative sophistry, based on a mixture of mystical revelation, fantasy, and lies. No Communist regime ever “redistributed” anything, except in the sense that the Communist aristocracy stole everything from everyone and gave it to themselves. The Soviet Union did not fall because it was generous to its people, or because it taxed the rich. The Soviet rich lived in fabulous luxury, the average Soviet citizen lived in squalor. The few societies in the world that do practice a significant amount of “redistributive” taxation, such as the Scandinavian countries, are democracies, and are also prosperous societies, with a higher standard of living than the U.S. or Canada, and thriving commerce and manufacturing. Curiously, the evils of “socialism,” are never on the table when it comes to China and its Communist Party.
Similar sophistries appear when it comes to the massive unemployment and under-employment that has appeared in the United States, and the less dramatic, but still worrisome under-employment in Canada. Conservatives insist that we must never tax the wealthy, because they are the “creative element” of the society that “makes the jobs” for us. When we ask in turn, “so where are the jobs we used to have, in factories and laboratories, rather than in burger restaurants?” they quickly change their tone. In the manner of a parent dismissing a whining child, they scold: “those jobs are never coming back again.” End of discussion. Apparently we must not tax them for fear that they will not “give” us the jobs that they are not creating anyway, and have no intention of creating. In reality, as the United States and Canada have acquired greater and greater income differentials, with the wealthiest stratum getting more and more absurdly well off, these same people have not only refused to make any significant investment in production in our countries, they have systematically destroyed what production we had.
There are several ways to get wealthy. One is simple enough: steal stuff. Much of history consists of aristocracies simply plundering whatever is available. The peasants grow the crops because they must, if they hope to survive. Aristocrats ride in with swords and armour, and take it. If they’re especially clever, they leave enough so that some peasants survive and grow more crops; or they make a “protection deal” where they steal a little bit less than the aristocrat down the road, and promise to keep him from coming in. On such protection rackets, the basic Conservative worldview was founded. In return for not being killed, the bulk of human beings submit to rule by a “natural” aristocracy, generally hereditary, always deferred to and privileged above the common crowd. The history books write about them (and pretty much only them), and they get to be the “real” people, while the rest of us are disposable spear-carriers.
Another way, much more difficult, and characteristic of relatively free people, is to create things of value and trade them to other people, who also create things of value. This is a lot of work, requires you to be relatively smart, and cannot be achieved merely by being born of the right family. It also requires you to deal justly and fairly with other people. If you are inclined to Conservative ideology, this part is particularly onerous, because dealing fairly with people requires you to treat them as equals, and undermines the fundamental Conservative values of rank and deference. Honest trade of this kind does not involve the thrill of dominance and bullying, the delights of theft, and the orgasmic rush of having people grovel before you. The wealth that you get this way is not much fun. It certainly doesn’t appeal to someone who feels an urgent need for an ice-David that pisses vodka.
If you are a true Conservative, and a successful aristocrat, the ideal way of getting wealth, which does not involve the inconvenient risk of fighting for it, and the unsatisfying boredom of working for it, is to position yourself somewhere where the wealth flows through you. Money must move, in large amounts, from one place to another, passing through you, creating the world of luxury and prestige that you crave. This requires there to be an “upstream” and a “downstream.” When local economies are dynamic and creative, in a democratic society, they are constantly re-absorbing their own capital. Wealth is being created in great quantity, but it is always being re-invested. It is always being used, and it always grouping and regrouping in unpredictable patterns among a great number of people. People in general are prospering. In an economically creative society, it is actually quite difficult for anyone to accumulate a huge personal fortune. A productive economy, the kind that produces the complex and adaptable supply chain that the United States and Canada once had, has better uses for money than $16,000 umbrella stands and vodka-pissing statues. Such things are characteristic of backward, primitive societies, ruled by sleazy monarchs and inbred nobility, not advanced economies. A thriving, dynamic, free economy cannot be easily “milked” by a small coterie of wealthy aristocrats.
So the free economy has to go ― the real one, that is, not the erzatz one peddled by Conservatives. The United States, Canada, and a handful of other countries have accumulated a tremendous amount of capital over many generations. This capital has been generated by democratic and egalitarian values, and the bulk of it is in a multiplicity of small enterprises, and the homes and savings of millions of ordinary people. Much was invested in infrastructure, all directed at the use of the bulk of the population. These countries were constructed, politically, for their ordinary people, and their economies were designed to serve ordinary people. To unlock the money, and get it to flow rapidly into the hands of a few, these extremely diverse and productive economies have to cease being productive, and become passive consumer societies. It is spending, especially spending on imports, that gets capital to move through a small number of hands in amazing quantities. Easy consumer credit, coupled with curtailed investment in infrastructure, and large-scale military spending get the ball rolling. But to maintain a fast pace of divestment, every factory must be shut down, every creative avenue stifled, every new manufacturing enterprise nipped in the bud. If this can be done, then millions of productive people can be stripped of their savings, their hard-won social services and risk-reduction systems, their homes, their modest pleasures, and their self respect. All this vast capital will pass through a small number of hands. The “un-level playing field” takes care of this. Production ceases to benefit millions in democracies, and is refitted to benefit the few in Conservative, anti-democratic societies.
I came to understand the true nature of Conservatism when I studied village life in India. Not only under its medieval rulers, and under the thumb of the British Empire, but well into the post-independence era, the rural Indian village remained a caste-ridden society, dominated by true Conservative values. In such villages, a small class of Brahmins, aristocrats by birth, lived quite well. Their dominance was firmly supported by religious orthodoxy and tradition. They were the “real” people, who also saw themselves as inherently “creative.” A small layer of skilled artisans supplied them with the requisite amusements and luxuries, in exchange for a slight improvement in prestige. The Brahmins’ duties were entirely spiritual, unsullied by the uncleanliness of craft or commerce. But there was one financial task that they were always eager to perform: lending money. In fact, is was virtually impossible for any of the great mass of peasants to survive for long without getting in debt to a Brahmin. A bad harvest, a sick child, or a cow that stopped giving milk would be enough to push a family over the edge. Almost all peasants of the lower castes were permanently in debt. As debtors, they could be called upon to do almost any unpaid service, and having a hundred peasants in debt to you was equivalent to having a palace with a hundred, cringing servants at your beck and call. At the bottom of this system were the dalit, the “untouchables,” whose very essence was ritually impure, and could barely by considered human. Once in awhile, on a very rare occasion, a dalit, or a very low caste peasant would have a stroke of good fortune. Perhaps a relative would get a job on the railroad, or a son would escape to the city, disguise his caste, and get a paying job. When this happened, the fortunate family would be very foolish indeed to pay back its debt to the Brahmins. The value of a debt was in its being a debt, not in the prospect of its being repaid. If a low caste or dalit was not in debt, he might not show the right respect. He might walk around with his head unbowed, and think he was as good as his betters. Any debtor paying off a debt was a bad example, a bad example indeed. Such radical insolence would have to be nipped in the bud. The idle sons of the high castes, raised from birth to abuse and bully their underlings, were always available and eager to burn down the hovel of any peasant with the temerity to repay a debt. If it was a dalit family, it was considered more appropriate to burn them alive, along with the hut. It made the point clearly. As the the Brahmins learned, debt can be a very good thing for some people, especially if only a few people are counted as “people.”
This, in a nutshell, is the fundamental basis of Conservatism, as it is of Communism. Society is envisioned as divided into classes or castes of people, with different functions, and ranked accorded to a inate system of worth. In the establishment of a ruling class, all sorts of claims of special worth and creativity are made, usually exaggerated fantasies of a self-described “meritocracy”. This is always presented as something new, an entirely new stage in history, or the arrival of a divinely ordained group of “the elect”, or “entrepreneurial geniuses”, or “genetic supermen”, or “new men”, whose triumph is predetermined by the laws of history. If necessary, a lot of pseudo-egalitarian claptrap will be spread about ― everyone will call each other “comrade”, or “citizen”, or the new rulers will strut about in “proletarian” clothing or play at being ultra-pious, or a great pretense will be made that anyone might “make it” in the system of rank and success. It’s a lie. It’s always a lie. Every aristocratic dynasty in history has claimed to be some kind of new thing, coming into power through merit, rather than inheritance. Communists came into power with that lie, shrieked it from every loudspeaker as they herded their “comrades” into execution pits, or set them to digging coal with their bare hands, or trudged them off to the cane fields at gunpoint. But Communist power is everywhere exercised, now, by a hereditary aristocracy. The industrialists of the early Industrial revolution claimed to be new, as well, rising through work and intelligence to challenge the old landed gentry. But the first thing they did when they got rich was to marry into that landed gentry, and their children inherited palaces and champagne frolics, not non-conformist piety. The same is true of the current global aristocracy, which can point to a handful of genuine industrial or business creators among their number, but largely consists of mere thugs, financial swindlers, and titled parasites. The few who did something creative are not to be counted on any higher moral plane, for they are not inclined to buck the system, and readily absorb the attitudes and swagger of the others.
But, back to the un-level playing field, for it is the key to our coming destruction. Conservative ideology insists, with more hysterical certainty than any of its other orthodoxies, that we must not make things for ourselves, and must buy things from Communist dictatorships. Every other doctrine has some wiggle-room, can be emphasized or de-emphasized, or can be skipped over with a wink. But this one must never be challenged, never be doubted, never even for a second. Never mind that these are stolen goods, sold by habitual criminals engaged in violent crime and fraud. We must buy them. Never mind that the “competition” of stolen goods drives the honest makers and sellers of goods into bankruptcy. Never mind that the endless flow of cash into the coffers of the slave trade drives every honest employer out of business, and throws us out of work. We must still buy the products of the Communist system of exploitation —- we must, we MUST, WE MUST!!!!!!
Yet there is no escaping reality: every time an American or a Canadian has walked into a store and bought an article produced in China’s exploitative Communist factories, they have helped seal their own doom. Fake “free market” transactions that are carried out on a playing field as dramatically un-level as that between a democracy and a dictatorship are unmitigated disaster for the citizens of the democracy. They set up a uni-directional flow of capital. Accumulated transactions of this sort trigger the dismantling of productive domestic industries. A producing economy transforms into a “service” economy, in which the only jobs are the jobs involved in distributing consumer goods, the purchase of which in turn strip the economy of more production, and so on. Debts accumulate. The country feeds off itself, slowly processing the remnants of past creativity and enterprise, like a fat man on a desert island living off the meals he consumed before he was shipwrecked. The financial sector booms and thrives, replacing industry as the principle activity in the economy. This is much like how your wallet would fill up with cash if you stopped paying bills, took your children out of school, and sold your car, furniture and appliances for cash. Your wallet would be a “healthy financial sector.” But you would be unhealthy.
Canadians seem to have the better prospect, temporarily. Our industry is trashed, but there are lots of natural resources to sell. While China is still manufacturing and selling stuff, we can make a living selling them oil, trees and rocks, much a we did for the British Empire when we were a bunch of backward rural hicks. I’m trying on my porkpie hat, and learning to chew tobakee, so I’ll be ready. But of course, as the Americans run out of credit, the number of solvent customers for China’s industrial production will quickly dry up. So will its demand for our resources. We will rapidly move from a sellers’ market, do a lot of “belt tightening”, then join our American friends in oblivion.
Only sustained internal growth in China would prevent this, but increasing domestic consumption in China would mean significantly spreading the wealth, which would substantially weaken the stranglehold of the Party. It considers itself lucky to have survived spreading the wealth to the extent it already has. The country is bristling with angry peasants and micro-revolts. The booming cities will go sour as more and more people learn that they aren’t going to be let into the privileged “middle class” and that trying to sneak a wank from a porn magazine when you get off your shift is as good as its going to get. Ten to one the Party will take the course that all other dictatorships have taken in similar circumstances: war abroad and terror at home. That is the solution that Conservative societies have usually chosen, and the People’s Republic is the quintessential Conservative society. In the long run, the unlevel playing field is no better for the people of China than it is for us.
Much attention is now focused on America’s debts. This contrasts sharply with the atmosphere at the height of the Bush, Jr. administation. When I was posting about its disastrous import in 2006, I was in a decided minority, as Conservatives sang the tune “deficits don’t matter.” Conservatives promoted government spending on a scale dwarfing anything ever seen before in the country’s history — mostly military spending, almost nothing on productive investment. Spending, not saving or building, was the Conservative notion of fiscal wisdom. When the country was attacked by a group of well-organized religious fanatics (who were bankrolled by the the Conservatives’s best buddies), Americans were told to go to the malls and shop. Few Conservatives worried about the mounting debts, because their ideology was promising unending prosperity in a utopian future, which would arrive the minute the last rich man ceased to pay even a dime of taxes, and the last burden of “regulation” was lifted from the “creative class.” But when Democrats ― slightly less Conservative than Republicans (sort of Mensheviki to the Bolsheviki) ― came into office, Conservative tub-thumpers suddenly discovered the debt, which is now mysteriously and magically blamed on “liberalism,” a bit of conceptual magic that reminds me of Stalin blaming crop failures on a plot of Jewish Doctors. But the problem is now beyond any conceivable political solution, whoever holds office. There is little prospect of the United States ever repaying these debts. Canada’s debts are not as disastrous. The previous, Liberal administration had balanced budgets for a decade, and built up surpluses. Their Conservative successors went on a spending spree, and pissed away the surplus, then were caught up short by the financial crisis. The current situation is bad, but a return to fiscal responsibility might put us back in the black, if the current Conservative anti-industrial, pro-export-resources policy is reversed. But if the current policies are pursued, we too will eventually go bankrupt.
But bankruptcy for our two nations and our new status as peasants is no reason for gloom. It’s the playing out of the marvelous Laws of History. Every real Conservative is delighted at the prospect. Our friends in the Communist Party have pointed the way, and Utopia is just around the corner. The “creative class” will be comfortably in the saddle, and free of ungentlemanly regulations. As for the rest of us, the “non-creative” class, we are to be plenty regulated. In fact, every aspect of our personal and private lives will come under the thumb of the State, which will, by and by, acquire the power to spy on us at will, control our sex lives, tell us who we can marry, and make us pee in cups on demand. Torture will again be a Good Thing. That pesky Bill of Rights (U.S.) and equally pesky Charter of Rights (Canada) will be flushed down the toilet. Millions of us will be shoved into prisons, which will use up a substantial part of our Gross National Products, and provide a lucrative business for friends of the elite. There may even be some exciting developments in the field of body part merchandizing. All these wonderful Utopian ideals are already on view in the People’s Republic of China, which is where most Conservatives learned about them, and learned to love them.
We’ll learn to love them, too. Who wouldn’t love a real Conservative world, full of tradition and good old family values? None of that troubling, confusing individual freedom. As happy peasants, we’ll learn a distinctive shuffling gait (don’t let those feet get too far off the ground!), and call our creative superiors “Massa.” At night, after an inspiring lecture, we will contemplate the delights of a society that respects tradition, where some are born to the manse, and the rest of us sing spirituals as we trudge to the fields and work stations. The schools will be gone for most of us, of course, at least the sort where nasty liberal ideas are discussed. No sense in “redistributing” knowledge. Nothing but uppitiness can come of it. Instead, plenty of healthy calisthenics, pledges of allegiance, and cool stuff, like Creationism, or Dialectical Materialism, or whatever dingbat hokus pokus our masters think we should think. Come to think of it, most of the things that we once considered normal attributes of civilized society will, one after another, go to the chopping block. Each will require “facing up to the realities of the global economy.” The “realities” will be our creditors, the ones we’ve been closing down our factories so we could pay to build their factories.
Anyway, not to worry, our principal creditors are nice, respectable people, much admired by Conservatives: the Communist Party of the Peoples Republic of China, who murdered, in their younger, impulsive days, roughly seventy million people.
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