Correcting our political perspective
The following is intended as a friendly bit of helpful advice to
those down on their luck Trots who call themselves the
‘fourth international'. It has been my
experience over the years that even a murky and slightly muddle
headed Trot is still heads and tails above everyone else in this
place, which isn't saying much for everyone else. It has been my
habit to consult a Trot from the Fourth International while always
taking everything with a grain of salt, such that I never consult a
Trot without making sure I am packing a salt shaker. However given
the gravity of the current social crisis, I am no longer willing to
tolerate carrying around a salt shaker, and so I thought that
instead I would write this critique of the Fourth
International.
Where to start?
Incendiary Propaganda
One of the results of the unfolding historical process is that
because of the degeneration of the Soviet Union a Trot has to walk
on stage to play the role of Satan the Political Devil, one of
history's greatest monsters. As the crisis has intensified, this
has resulted in an intellectual degeneration in the Fourth
International, as increasingly desperate Trots are found clutching
at straws in the hopes of somehow mastering the historical
situation in which they find themselves and thus resolving the
historical crisis of their movement.
One example of this sort of thing is the way in which a Trot will
use incendiary propaganda in the hopes of ditching the devil suit
by forcing ‘the ruling class' to wear the damn
devil suit instead. So we hear from Trots lately that the
‘ruling class' is driven by
‘their own filthy greed' and so on. Now the
truth is a little more complex. Consider the capitalist. Even the
greediest capitalist on earth is never found sitting ass first on
some giant pile of hoarded wealth. At the very least that
capitalist should stick that pile into some bank and earn 2 or 3
percent interest on the money, so simply trying to paint a
capitalist as some greedy money hoarding hog at the trough is
ineffective incendiary propaganda is also unlikely to result in a
Trot ditching a devil suit, because it turns out that capitalists
do perform some kind of useful social function in that they invest
money in various projects.
This then leaves us to ask the question ‘why is
it that capitalists are found investing money in various projects.'
This is the real question that needs to be asked. We elect
politicians but no one ever elected a capitalist and this leaves
one to wonder why it is that a capitalist is now found to be
holding the position of some kind of manager of all the world's
financial affairs. This is the real question.
Therefore we want to criticize the system, for as the saying goes,
it's bigger than all of us, and that means that it is bigger than a
capitalist or a politician as well.
This is not to say that there is no place for so called
‘class warfare', but that would only be true in
the case of really stubborn scheming shits, and even then the
question that still remains to be answered at the end of it all,
after cleaning the clock of those stubborn scheming shits, is why
do we have a system in place that empowers such stubborn scheming
shits like those ones.
Private Property
Now let us consider the issue of Iraq. Iraq was once some kind of
‘quasi-socialist' country. Iraq's oil money was
used by the Saddam and his state apparatus for the purposes of
building up the infrastructure of Iraq, such that Iraq became one
of the more modernized and developed nations in the region. A smart
dictator, such as Saddam, or such as Adolph Hitler, always writes
big cheques, with the difference between the two being that Hitler
was a moron because he borrowed the money until he maxed out his
credit card, and Saddam was more intelligent because he was
following a more stable long term strategy of spending Iraq's oil
money to modernize the country. Unfortunately for Saddam he became
some kind of pawn in the game of international power politics and
invaded Iran, or at least he managed to invade a few square miles
along the border of Iran, which was not much of an invasion, and
then he was stuck there for years making sure that Iran did not
return the favor by invading Iraq. This then caused Saddam to go
flat broke and from there it was all down hill for such a flat
broke dictator who could not longer write cheques for Iraq since he
was forced to write cheques to his creditors in the neighboring
countries, and so, in order to no longer have to do that, as we
know he decided that perhaps he might invade those neighboring
countries and rid himself of the burden of paying off his
debts.
Iraq was the one country on the earth not following the so-called
‘neo-liberal model'. Iraq did not give its oil
money to a capitalist so that the capitalist could act as some kind
of financial manager of Iraq's affairs, but instead Iraq was
cutting out the middle man as Saddam made the decisions to build up
Iraq's infrastructure instead. This was a very bad example, for
every other country in the world was agreeing to have a capitalist
appoint himself by a vote of one as their nation's financial
manager, and every other country in the world was not getting their
infrastructure built up, for the capitalist was taking the finances
of those countries and investing them in such things as strip malls
in Illinois or perhaps a car park in Indonesia. Saddam did not need
the capitalist, because he already had a supply of drill bits for
his oil wells, and therefore could not be blackmailed, and he was
selling a commodity known as oil so he could not be blackballed
either. Therefore Iraq was free to embarrass the capitalist of the
world by showing the entire world what happens when a capitalist
becomes the self appointed financial manager of all those countries
which had no other option but to cave in when they were being
bullied and blackballed by a capitalist.
Now the time has come for a capitalist to bully and ram his way
into Iraq. He is a helpful fellow, that capitalist, and as his
custom he is offering Iraq his services as a financial manager of
Iraq's oil wealth.
Now we make note of the fact that this is Iraq's oil wealth, or at
least it once was Iraq's oil wealth, as we could see during those
days when it was being used in Iraq for the benefit of the people
of Iraq, by building infrastructure rather than being used to
generate high rates of profitable returns somewhere on the planet
by some capitalist. I therefore ask the following question. When a
capitalist bullies his way into Iraq and then gets his hands on
Iraq's oil wealth, does the oil wealth of Iraq then become the
‘private property' of that capitalist? It
depends on who you ask. If you were to ask a capitalist system
judge in some capitalist system court, the judge would say that
yes, Iraq's oil wealth is now the private property of the
capitalist, for under the so called capitalist
‘justice system' possession of Iraq's oil wealth
is nine tenths of the law, which is convenient for a capitalist,
because it means that once a capitalist get his hands on Iraq's oil
wealth that means he gets to keep it.
Therefore we can see, by studying the example of Iraq, that a
capitalist actually owns nothing and that a capitalist actually has
no ‘private property' whatsoever, but rather
that this whole concept of the so called
‘privatized assets' of some capitalist consists
only of social wealth of which the capitalist is not the actual
owner but is just some kind of unelected, self appointed financial
planner. This point is quite important to drive home, for if you
start talking about firing a capitalist from his position as self
appointed financial planner of the world, and then taking societies
wealth and investing using some other method other than involving
that capitalist as the middle man, right away that capitalist will
start screaming hypocritically about ‘theft' and
attempting to tar and feather the socialist as some kind of immoral
thief, when, as anyone can see if they clear the smog out from
between their ears and study the example of Iraq, if anyone is
thief around this place it would be that capitalist himself.
A capitalist owns nothing, but instead has appointed himself
financial manager of all the world's surplus wealth. We know that
the world produces a lot of surplus wealth because the capitalist
will be found controlling fantastic billions of dollars of the
world's surplus wealth, and as the saying goes money does not grow
on trees.
Now in keeping with this discussion of who is the immoral thief
around this place, which is critically important, since it is the
principal brain washing tool that a capitalist uses to screw up the
minds of everyone on this planet, we should consider once again the
subject of Iraq's oil money, which will now be invested by that
self appointed financial planner of the world, some capitalist. Let
us suppose that a capitalist was to take Iraq's oil money, and then
invested it in a rubber band factory in Texas. There would then be
surplus value generated by the workers at the rubber band factory
and we know that this must be true because the capitalist might
generate billions in profits from that rubber band factory, and
money doesn't grow on trees. We also know that a capitalist does
not make rubber bands, and that he produces nothing himself, but is
instead some kind of financial planner for the rest of the world.
Now let us suppose that we were to fire a capitalist from his self
appointed job as financial manager of all the world's wealth, and
as part of the deal we were to tell the capitalist that the gig was
up at the rubber band factory, and that the capitalist should take
a long cold shower to cool down and then take a long, long walk. Of
course the capitalist would hypocritically scream bloody murder
because the rubber band factory was his ‘private
property', although as we can see if that rubber band factory
belonged to anyone it belonged to the people of Iraq because they
were the ones who paid for it, and the fact that some middle man
like that capitalist muscled his way into the middle of that deal
and signed some legal looking forms and various papers does not in
anyway change the fact that the rubber band factory was never the
private property of some capitalist. We could have just as easily
cut out the middle man and the people in Texas could have talked to
the people of Iraq and the people of Iraq could have agreed to
invest some of their oil money building a rubber band factory in
Texas, and so we can see that the capitalist is actually some kind
of redundant fifth wheel of the world economy and his helpful offer
to be a middle man in the circulation of all the world's produced
wealth is not really required and only someone who had been
brainwashed by a capitalist and that capitalist's phony so called
‘legal system' would feel that somehow a crime
had been committed if such a rubber band factory were turned over
to its true legal owners.
These are important points to make because everyone is so
brainwashed and so completely screwed in the head by the constant
devious behavior of capitalists that they don't think straight thus
causing them to think that for some reason firing a capitalist from
his job as financial planner of the world was an immoral crime of
some sort for it meant ‘stealing' what they
would call ‘the private property' of some
capitalist. Actually all that was really happening was that the
capitalist was getting his pink slip and his walking papers, and
all that horseshit about how all the wealth in the world was the
‘private property' of some capitalist is just
the horseshit spread around by that capitalist so that he cannot be
fired from his job, and remarkably this proves to be true even when
the capitalist proves himself to be a ruinously reckless
incompetent.
Now none of this comes as any revelation to a Trot. But the point
to be made here is that you must not deliver lectures on Marxist
doctrine, but rather you should speak to people where they are at
right now. As for this critical issue of so called
‘private property', it must be dealt with, for
Trots always come across sounding like gangsters and thieves. My
advice would be to focus on Iraq, for the simple reason that it is
the most clear and obvious real world example of this sort of
thing, where you can see the muscle man, the capitalist, worming
his way into position as some kind of self appointed middle man,
becoming a damnable thief, and then later on after having invested
in one dozen factories, the capitalist will then become a naked
hypocrite by claiming that each one of those one dozen factories
was his ‘private property' while addle headed
proletarians agree that it is not nice to be thief and that
therefore the solution must be to perhaps lead a capitalist around
on dog leash just to help to keep them under some kind of control.
That same principle applies whether it was Iraqi oil or if the
capitalist muscled in on Indonesian coffee beans of bauxite from
Brazil and then invested in twenty factories in Kuala Lumpur.
If you find yourself talking to some impenetrable character who
still does not grasp the concept, and perhaps thinks that Iraq is
just one bad anomaly, you might want to remind them of the era of
imperialist colonialism, when capitalists were really naked
plundering pirates and when the whole planet was Iraq, which then
explains all the looted plundered poverty we see on this planet,
for poverty is not some inexplicable historical accident. Today's
capitalist continues to be an imperialist colonialist and is still
being a thief and looting the tin from Madagascar and the
tangerines from Peru, the only difference being that in the middle
of the last century the capitalist did a quick phony exit from
imperialism and offered those countries their so called
‘independence' after which time that capitalist
kept on looting the place doing so under the guise of that
‘neo-liberalism', which is still colonial
robbery and confiscation by that same horde of capitalists who
invaded the planet in the first place, but is now being done using
such legal looking tools as signed documents which will be signed
by the capitalist, the new legal owner of Peru's tangerines and
also by some capitalistic stooge posing as a representative or
Peru's government. If a capitalist has trouble finding a willing
stooge then a capitalist can always bully up an unwilling stooge by
using such tools as capital flight from Peru, starving Peru,
bullying Peru, denying Peru spare parts, and so on. This will then
be blamed on some Peruvian government which it will then be said
had made ‘bad policy decisions' and therefore
created ‘a poor business environment' which then
resulted in ‘discouraging investment' and so on
and so on.
The Revolutionary Working Class
It seems to be the standard doctrine that from this time forward
only the ‘working class' has any revolutionary
potential. This could prove to be true. However it may not be true
and capitalism might still have some revolutionary potential, and
we might see capitalism creating a gigantic global monopoly which
would be one way of solving the current crisis which has as its
root cause the free market system itself which competitively turned
America into a gigantic constipating turd, and for which the only
solution is to not apply any more free market principles. You see
America, the gigantic constipating turd of global capitalism, is
not going to become competitive because it just isn't possible for
Americans to become cheap enough while still living in an expensive
country like America, and in addition, Americans are really
stubborn and unreasonable people in that no matter how many times
they receive lectures, they refuse to sell themselves for the real
cheap prices that would make a free market solution possible.
Therefore we can see that the only solution to be found to this
ruinously destructive unfolding crisis would be in either an
uncompetitive capitalist monopoly or a cooperative socialist
economy. If the capitalist creates such a global monopoly, then our
task becomes simpler because we would then just have the job ahead
of democratizing that global monopoly. If a capitalist does not
usher in the new era of the socialist economy and therefore there
is no trace of revolutionary potential left in that capitalist
system, then what that means is that the capitalist must now face
the prospect of revolutionizing the American people, for that is
what will happen as the process unfolds and America gets squeezed
out of the free market asshole of capitalism.
It becomes obvious then that to speak of this capitalist monopoly
is not to become a ‘two stage Stalinist', but
rather it is to make perfectly clear that the revolutionary hour
has come and that this time in history truly marks the very end of
the road for capitalism. Now should such a capitalist monopoly
emerge, then I would suppose that this would then make us all into
‘two stage Stalinists', because the alternative
would be to put up with a despotic undemocratic gigantic monopoly,
and so therefore as abhorrent as such an idea might be to any Trot,
nevertheless we would have to accept reality and hold our noses and
just go ahead and press on with the task placed before us by
history.
The Worker's Party
Any student of the history of revolution would know that in is a
constantly repeating pattern found in the historical record it is
characteristic for anarchists to launch their anarchist version of
the revolution prematurely. They always have this unusual tendency
to show up just a little to early. But this is alright, because
this curious repeating historical pattern means that you can always
use an anarchist revolution as a pocket watch, and given what I
have observed that would mean that the time must now be around two
minutes before midnight.
Now let us assume that Trots have found themselves trapped in such
a terrible historical crisis, that after years and years of effort
they find themselves sitting looking at a clock, realizing that it
is two minutes before midnight, and they have nothing going for
themselves worth mentioning, and are still regarded as Satan the
Political Devil by those grave diggers and undertakers of the
Marxist ‘dictatorship of the proletariat', the
proletarians of the world themselves. It was not some capitalist
who buried the Trots six feet under, but rather it was the failure
of Trots to accept the judgment of history concerning that failed
dictatorship experiment, and also to refuse to accept the judgment
of the proletarians who insisted on planting that thing six feet
under, and then stubbornly refused to have their
‘consciousness raised' so that they would learn
to like the idea sometime in the future when they were convinced to
change their mind by strong Marxist type arguments. (The solution
to this problem is obviously a democracy of the proletarians
because you just cannot force people to do things.)
When a Trot is found in such a crisis a Trot might also be found
short on ideas, and since not having any ideas is always
unacceptable, and since having an idea is always better than not
having even one single idea, therefore it is typical for people
found in crisis situations to come up with an idea, even if it is a
very bad idea. It would also be typical in a crisis situation for
people with no ideas to come up with bad ideas, since if they had a
good idea they would not be found in a crisis situation with no
ideas.
Let us suppose that the time was around seven in the evening, and
let us suppose that the Trot strategy was to form a mirror image of
a bourgeois political party and then begin the task of entering
into the process of bourgeois parliamentarianism. Perhaps that
strategy might have some use if the time was seven in the evening.
It is difficult for me to imagine that the ‘way
forward for the working class' is to form some worker's party and
then fight for the rights of worker's in the arena of the bourgeois
beginning the whole process at two minutes before midnight. The
idea seems even less likely to succeed when we consider that the
idea was first proposed at around eleven in the morning and now we
find that it is two minutes before midnight, which is not a good
time to start working on such a project. The fact that a Trot would
continually return to such an idea is a pretty clear indication
that a Trot has no ideas left at all, for if a Trot had even two or
perhaps three ideas left then we would assume that one of those
might have come up by now, since it would be obvious that dumping
over board the worker's party and a long struggle in parliament is
not a project anyone would want to begin working at two minutes
before midnight.
Strikes
Now it is one thing to criticize someone for having no ideas and
quite another to actually come up with some ideas, so I would like
to make a few suggestions.
Let us suppose that a Trot was to see some workers going on strike.
The correct approach to take would be to refuse to support the
striking workers and to just tell them all to go fuck
themselves.
Let us assume that worker's were once again being rebellious and
brainless morons and they were going on strike to get their COLA
and their health benefits restored, even though any worker with
even half a brain should understand by now that they cannot have
their cake and eat it too. Its either have a cake or eat a cake. So
you can see that when some pointlessly rebellious assholes decide
to go out on strike yet one more time it really is required that a
Trot tell them to shove their strike up their own arse.
The alternative would be for a Trot to come across looking like
some unrealistic pipe dreamer who goes around encouraging worker's
to engage in their valient struggle to get their living standards
increased, which would seem to indicate to me, every time I hear
that line coming from some Trot, that apparently a Trot is an
incompetent economist, for everyone knows that you just cannot get
your living standards increased while remaining very competitive.
It would also be a very bad strategy to encourage striking workers
to raise their living standards by joining up with their
international brothers and sisters who also on strike in other
countries, or who should be and could be on strike in other
countries, in one giant show of unity so as to get some capitalist
to raise their living standards overall. You see if some braindead
twit is out on strike, instead of having enough brains in his head
to give a pink slip to some capitalist along with a set of walking
papers, since capitalist like papers, especially signed papers,
well in that case it is only appropriate that you tell any worker
who goes on strike to go fuck themselves if they were looking for
support from you and you should also try to discourage other
workers from supporting them while they spend their time sucking on
some turd like that strike action.
You should also not support workers who are getting laid off by the
thousands, but instead if you were handing out Trot literature you
should not be sucking up to them and trying to be a really caring
Trot in the hopes of making a new friend, but rather your
literature should more or less say that they can now go off and
crawl under some rock somewhere and spend the rest of their lives
sucking on some turd for some much badly needed nourishment.
Auto workers
It would be especially important to be a first class asshole to
auto workers, since they are going down the shitter. What is
significant about these auto workers are that they are the last few
remaining small pieces of American auto turd being squeezed out of
the asshole of capitalism, and when you consider all the really
gigantic stools that have been passed out of that asshole in the
last few decades, you must realize that any auto worker who still
does not have the brains to fire a capitalist is an auto worker who
deserves now to be permanently flushed down the economic shit hole
of capitalism, there to float for a while, perhaps a year or two,
and then finally sink down into the crud that has already settled
down at the very bottom of that shitter.
It is also important never to agree with the unreasonable,
stubbornly rebellious demands of some auto worker. It is important
that auto workers be given lessons is sound economics. After all
they are the last few remaining pieces of auto turd still floating
in the toilet bowl of America, and all those other really gigantic
turds got a really good flushing for a reason, because it is just
not possible for an American to be a supporter of free enterprise
capitalism because there is no way that an American could ever be
cheap enough to be competitive enough while still living in an
expensive country like America. Now if some brainless auto worker
still wants to be a capitalist auto worker then an auto worker
should just be told straight out to go fuck themselves by
themselves, while every effort is made to ensure that no other
worker in the country does anything to support any actions or
demands of such a fucked up auto worker. Auto workers, like all
American workers, should also be told to grow up and act like a
fucking adult and stop stomping their feet and acting like bad
children or holding their breath until their face turns blue
because they are just not going to be getting all that stuff and
that is all there is to it, because it is capitalism.
You might meet up with some particularly stupid stubborn shit of an
auto worker who for some reason prefers to keep a capitalist on the
job as America's financial planner, perhaps for no other reason
than that it has always been that way (which is not much of a
reason). Such an auto worker may propose putting up a trade wall
barrier, which would then be a way an auto worker could be an auto
worker while a capitalist could still play the role of the middle
man who manages all the nation's financial affairs. This might work
for an auto worker but when you consider the trade war that would
result it would probably not be so good for the tangerine industry
worker, or the guy making those rubber bands, and when you consider
all the dropped turds that would have to be dropped just to save
one auto turd not to mention to save some fucked up auto working
turd who apparently would rather drop a turd on a tangerine worker
rather than dropping a turd on some capitalist, well you can see
how the only possible response to an auto worker like that one
would be to tell that dumb fucker to go find a spot to park his
card board box under some bridge, if he can still find a bridge
that is not already occupied by some of those other auto workers
who got squeezed out of the asshole of capitalism in their turn
before the turn finally came around to the last few auto
workers.
A Grand Coalition
Now it turns out that perhaps an auto worker or some striking
worker is not the only one around this place who might need to be
told to go fuck themselves, and it could also turn out to be true
that some Trots need to be told to fuck off and die as well. This
would mean forming the fifth international. That would not mean
that the fourth international would not still exist and be found
keeping busy but it would just mean that no one would be listening
so there really wouldn't be much of a point for a fourth
international to keep busy.
Now an auto worker or a striker will not tell a capitalist to fuck
off and give a capitalist a pink slip and a set of official looking
walking papers. As it turns out a politician will not even give a
capitalist a temporary lay off notice for as you know our
politicians are planning to stimulate the economy, and they are
planning to do it not by laying off that capitalist from his job as
our financial manager, even though that capitalist was the one who
laid that gigantic constipating turd known as America, and instead
our politicians seem to think that they are going to be getting
away with borrowing money while at the same time giving that
capitalist one more stimulating tax break.
Now if a Trot finds it offensive to grab a set of thumb screws at a
time like this, because it would ‘turning
towards bourgeois parliamentarianism' and
‘encouraging the deluded proletarians to harbor
delusions' then it really is time to tell a Trot to fuck off and
get out of our way and don't make any trouble for us, for it is
time for some rolling thunder to start rolling across this land as
those damnable buggers, those politicians, learn a real quick
lesson in what it means to be pissing us off all the time, those
stubborn fuckers.
Now I want to make the point here about how very unfortunate it
would be to be creating some ‘fifth
international' at a time like this, for as I have said, even a
murky Trot I have found to be a cut above every one else in this
place. However if Trots are going to be picking this moment in
history to become petty then they deserve either a real good kick
in the ass, and if that doesn't work they must be dumped overboard
like a dead weight. This is a rude thing to be saying, but I am not
in a very good mood right now and I don't feel much like tit
nursing some Trot at this particular moment in my life. If there
was some Trot around who wanted to be tit nursed then maybe a Trot
should just grow up.