10 GROUNDCOVER NEWS THINK ABOUT IT Does the system work? I am talking about the current system: its political economy and ideological foundation, the culture and social system we all have been socialized into. It’s called “growing up,” getting in compliance, that is. The December 30, 2022 issue of Groundcover News has an article I wrote, “Mother Nature’s Last Call,” which talks about our current geological age of humans and capitalism as the anthropocene. The victory of capitalism over feudalism was a centuries-long struggle for private property to replace the remaining commons as the dominant political economy. Feudalism privatized indigenous commons but created a social contract that gave peasants some rights to the land they lived on and worked. Private property is now regarded as the foundation for civilization and the creation of wealth.The social contract of feudalism viewed land use as some shared responsibility. The peasants had to give the lords a share of the crop but had rights to live on the land and benefit from their plot. When the growing business class saw the profits possible from sheep’s wool spun in the textile mills, they began the ideological, judicial and police/military campaign promoting the virtues of private property and the need to drive the peasantry off the land. You may have heard of the enclosure laws and vagrancy laws which KEN PARKS Groundcover vendor No. 490 revolutionary changes from feudalism to capitalism as an important advance in social evolution, preparing the way for the next revolutionary leap to socialism and then communism as we fulfilled the vision of sharing that is deep in the heart of humanity. “From each according to their ability, to each based on their contribution” is the ethic of socialism. “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need” is the ethic of communism. The struggle is intense. So is the system working? The capicreated large numbers of refugees. Many Scots went to Ireland following promises of land; as their numbers grew, the overflow went to “the new world” as the settler class that supported the privatization of indigenous land. Land-hungry peasants flooded “America” and became working class or settlers on indigenous land. The Indian wars began with the arrival of Europeans and coincided with the slave trade. Investing in violence for land and slaves was the business of the colonial phase of capitalism. The lure of profit brought many into “the pursuit of happiness,” as it was called. Capitalism is still evolving as it privatizes your time with many wonderful appearances of happiness that seem irresistible. There is no doubt that capitalism has created amazing productive capacity. Marx wrote positively about the talism of this epoch is designed to create large amounts of wealth, measured in capital, by extracting from nature and producing goods and services by human, animal or robot labor. This market mechanism, in which everything is a commodity for sale and speculation, has regular crises but is able to play financial games that basically move wealth from the bottom to the top. It is designed for that purpose. There is constant tinkering with the financial flow but the main current creates a wealth gap that has unbalanced the world towards war as the solution to any looming economic crises. Sanctions have done more damage than the nuclear weapons which are prepared to destroy the world upon command. We are in a life and death struggle. Natural law will overrule human law as our dysfunction continues. Therefore, climate chaos. We are at the point of no return, greatly addicted to our comfort zone. Definitely time to take a breath and reconsider reality. Do we have the nerve to consider a new social design that makes good work fun, productive and beneficial? Enough said. Time to work on redesigning our lives, especially towards “Democracy at Work” in the words of Richard Wolf’s Course on Capitalism. What did World War II resolve? The people wanted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the capitalist class wanted war. Hollywood was attacked first. “Salt of the Earth,'' an unsurpassable movie (and book) tells the story of this war. It has intensified since Star Wars (the Strategic Defense Initiative) and full spectrum domination warfare focused on information control. The capitalist designers and defenders have large amounts of money for their campaign which amounts to a war on the working class. If you say anything you will be accused of class warfare. We have all the resources we need, particularly our ability to face reality as death approaches. People — foremost, young people — have some sense of big changes coming as the ideological wheels of fascism and communism are turning. It is time to talk intergenerationally about what we want to do. MARCH 10, 2023
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