elmussol

Mon, 25 May 2020 13:06:53 -0400

elmussol

elmussol@elsmussols.net

JP Proudhon wrote:

“To be governed is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so.... To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolised, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.”

There's new thing called the repressive, surveillance state evidently.

politics

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Mon, 25 May 2020 14:21:41 -0400

and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.”

In my language it sounds:

и, чтобы короновать всех, высмеивали, осмеивали, возмущались, бесчестно относились. Это - правительство; это - его справедливость; это - его нравственность".

"и, чтобы короновать всех" - "i chtoby coronavat vseh".
"To crown all" = "coronavat vseh"
In my language, this quote has additional actual meaning.

Mon, 25 May 2020 14:23:47 -0400

elmussol

elmussol@elsmussols.net

And the other one that gets me is the recent discovery of mutual aid and the fact that people can live together co-operatively in difficult circumstances. [cough]Kropotkin[/cough].

Mon, 25 May 2020 14:53:32 -0400

@elmussol the evolutionary model developed by an anarchist and geologist Kropotkin has been around for more than 100 years. But Western mass media, schools and simply ordinary consumers are not interested in promoting the Social Kropotkinism. It is more profitable for the authorities to promote the evolutionary model of British Doctor of Laws and Master of Arts, in order to support an appropriate social order.

rent strike

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 13:15:40 -0400

elmussol

elmussol@elsmussols.net

Relevant in the current situation I think.

#^Scooby-Doo and the Case of the Missing Landlords

#commentary

comic politics

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 15:58:59 -0400

elmussol

elmussol@elsmussols.net

And for those who can't be bothered to follow a link:

Image/photo

In 1844 Marx wrote "Rent of Land", talking about how landlords are more or less vampires on society, taking a percentage of all value created on their land simply for owning it.

However, as you can see if you read it, it is more or less just quoting Adam Smith and agreeing with him, with minor squabbles. One of the large motivations for Adam Smith writing The Wealth of Nations was to convince people to try to move capital away from the unproductive landlords (who at that time were mostly comprised of very wealthy landed English gentry) into the hands of entrepreneurs and workers. He noticed two things about landlords, first, as he puts it "The landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for the natural produce of the earth."

That is to say, they demand a percentage of what is extracted from their land, despite having done no work themselves to create that value. Adam Smith was more concerned with landlords that extracted a percentage of money from businesses than individuals renting houses, which at the time added up to a much larger amount of money being drained away (probably still true, but less so). He gives an example of the sudden discovery that a certain type of seaweed was useful in the production of alkaline salt. Landlords whose land happened to neighbor the sea where this type of seaweed grew immediately increased their rent, despite having done nothing to earn such money. They didn't even own where the seaweed was extracted, being in the ocean, but the adjacent land was needed to extract it, so they could blackmail entrepreneurs who used the seaweed for rent extraction.

The second thing he noticed about landlords is what they do with the money they extract. Unlikely entrepreneurs, they don't reinvest it into productive activity. A farmer, with their profits, tends to use a good portion of the money to improve their farm. They buy newer, more efficient machines. They hire help. They purchase seeds, they try to improve the soil, etc. All of this, over time, amounts for greater total production and a wealthier nation. The landlord who owns the land that the farmer rents from however, has nothing to improve. He makes money from taking money from the farmer, because he owns something. So what they tend to do was spend the money on themselves. Landed gentry in England would spend their money throwing fancy balls and purchasing luxuries. Entrepreneurs would spending their money to improve production. Therefore, he argued, if more of the money was diverted away from landlords, production would grow at a faster rate. In fact, Adam Smith noticed that the main way land increases in value is for other people to build things around it. For example, if a train is built next to a plot of land, suddenly the landlord will find his land more valuable, despite no effort of his own, and increase rent.

In this way Adam Smith thought that at least, while landlords produce nothing and contribute nothing and are generally a drain on society, their interests are at least aligned with society because they have a general interest for society to improve, since any improvement around them improves the value of their own land. This is where Marx disagrees, because despite this fact landlords will always have an interest against their tenants, in that they want to take as much value as possible from their tenant, so their interest in general run opposite society. This can be seen today in that landlords have a general interest for housing prices to rise continuously, whereas it would be better for society in general if housing prices fell continuously, so people could afford homes. This is why landlords will be extremely politically active to fight against any measure to make housing affordable, because it will decrease the value of homes and ultimately rent.

In short, when someone tells you that you are a dirty communist for saying landlords contribute nothing and merely drain society, remind them that the idea came first from Adam Smith.

UK election

Thu, 12 Dec 2019 18:03:27 -0500

elmussol

elmussol@elsmussols.net

#wtf

politics

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Thu, 12 Dec 2019 23:16:51 -0500

Michael

mike@narrow.world

:-(

Fri, 13 Dec 2019 03:36:00 -0500

Emanuel

emanuel@labonneheure.ch

Fri, 13 Dec 2019 04:16:04 -0500

elmussol

elmussol@elsmussols.net

Not just turkeys voting for Christmas, but turkeys voting for a weekly Christmas. I am baffled by the world.

Fri, 13 Dec 2019 07:38:42 -0500

...

Fri, 13 Dec 2019 09:50:50 -0500

When you participate in feudal or democratic elections - you are just participate in legitimization of this governments and their neocolonial politics.

By the way, it's like initiating a repetition of this his torical scenario.

Fri, 13 Dec 2019 09:55:31 -0500

elmussol

elmussol@elsmussols.net

Oh I don't, but it does reveal some of a population's mindset. You don't have to participate to draw conclusions.

Fri, 13 Dec 2019 10:26:17 -0500

@elmussol

Oh I don't, but it does reveal some of a population's mindset. You don't have to participate to draw conclusions.

Representative democracy in any case deprives the population of the opportunity to participate in decision-making. Voters (especially in Anglican bipartisan systems) are excluded from participating in decision-making. The role of voters is to legitimize the decisions of representatives.
In my opinion, it is better not to participate in this at all, to avoid communication and promotion of the agendas set by politicians, as they do in Zomia:
#^https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Not_Being_Governed
In my opinion, it's the perfect option to strive for.
Of course, the majority of Westerners benefit from the participation and legitimization of politicians' decisions, so they are so selflessly involved in promoting "representative democracy" around the world.

Also, i'm increasingly convinced that I'm not reporting any "revelations". As far as i understand, most Westerners understand it all perfectly:

Mostly, the fact is not always that the ‘population in the West is brainwashed’. That would really be quite a good scenario: and something relatively easy to correct.

The problem is much greater: The inhabitants of the West do not want to know, because deep inside, they do not want the system to change. They don’t want the world order to be modified.

They intuitively feel that if what is being proposed by Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and other countries were implemented, their personal privileges would vanish. Their countries would become equal to all other countries on earth; they would have to obey international laws, and their people would be forced to work hard for their living. Plundering the planet would be banned. Privileges would stop.

Therefore, it is better ‘not to know’, not to understand. This way, the ‘pie’, or call it ‘carrot’, would not be lost.

The ‘ignorance’in the West, I believe, is subconsciously ‘self-inflicted’. With knowledge, comes responsibility. With responsibility, an obligation to act (because not to act would be clearly immoral). All this could only lead to the loss of privileges.

The propagandists of the West are very well aware of the situation. I was told by some leading psychologists, that both psychiatrists and psychologists are employed and used in the process of ‘shaping the public opinion’, therefore, working for propaganda-makers. They study and analyze the ‘mood of the public’. They know public’s desires and aspirations.

All this is not as easy as it appears, is it?

Sadly, there is a silent (unpronounced and unsigned) agreement between the Western public and its establishment, as well as the corporate world, that the status quo should be maintained at all cost (paid for by “the others”); the West should be controlling the planet, and at least some part of the booty has to be shared among the (Western) masses.

What they are fighting over on the streets of Paris and other European cities is ‘how big the part of the pie that goes to the pockets of the common European people’ should be. There is absolutely no struggle to end the plunder of the world by the West.

I think this is the reason for the continuing democrazy agitation of Westerners for all this elections, although the most privileged of them still live in feudal realms.

Fri, 13 Dec 2019 12:30:12 -0500

elmussol

elmussol@elsmussols.net

Thanks Pete.

#^Pete Cogle's Podcast Factory: PCP#629… Please Do Not Sit On The Fence….

#^mp3 download

disgraceful on so many levels

Thu, 11 Apr 2019 17:25:36 -0400 last edited: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 17:29:13 -0400

elmussol

elmussol@elsmussols.net

Nice summary post here from Caity Johnsone:

#^Assange Has Been Arrested For US Extradition. The Time To Act Is Now.

h/t @hosh

politics

absent but still paying attention a bit

Tue, 19 Mar 2019 15:35:49 -0400

elmussol

elmussol@elsmussols.net

Things are bloody hard work at the moment (details unnecessary). So while I was doing the washing up this afternoon (there is a tranquility in the mundane), this popped up as next to listen to in my podcatcher:

Revolutionary Left Radio: Rebellious Mourning: Grief, Death, and Communal Resistance

#^mp3 download

#^shownotes

An hour and forty well spent. Anyone with a radical bone in their body will feel the same. The best expression of "why I am the way I am" I've heard in a very long time.

Let me know if you gave it a listen.

#revleftradio