Fascist Poland

President Kaczynski of Poland

You need to go read this blog.

Highlights:

The right-wing government headed by the gay-baiting Kaczynski twins -- President Lech and his brother, Prime Minister Jaroslaw (LEFT) -- announced it was planning to pass a sweeping bill that, under the guise of interdicting “the promotion of homosexuality,” would ban discussion of, or teaching about, homosexuality in the schools.

If you do not discuss 'the gay's' they dissapear, right? This is the same type of lack of educational empowerment that dooms future generations to teenage birth because they do not learn about birthcontrol or sexuality, both of which are natural parts of life. We must repress who we really are!

Vice Minister of Education Miroslaw Orzechowski told reporters that the main goal of the law is to “punish whomever promotes homosexuality or any other deviance of a sexual nature in educational establishments,” and that any teacher who violated the law could be fired, fined, and even imprisoned.

Little does he know that sexual nature is of a polymorphous nature and that homosexuality is natural. Homosexuality is now becoming more visible because the repressive apparatus used to either kill or marginalize homosexuals is begining to weaken in certain areas.

“Europe needs changes,” Giertych affirmed in his March 1 Heidelberg speech, saying that abortion -- which he called “a new form of barbarism” -- “must be banned,” and demanding that “homosexual propaganda must also be limited so children will have the correct view of the family.”

I am sorry, but 6 billion people is too many. I cannot be anti-abortion when the the ecological balance of earth is being flushed down the tubes. Not to mention there is no correct view of the family, only historically varying configurations.

Sub-Prime Market in Freefall

What do I see all over the L.A. Times today, huge problems within the sub-prime market due to delinquincies and foreclosures. Well, I called this 'collapse' of the sub-prime market a long time ago, it was only a matter of time, and is a manifestation of the inherent contradictions in the accumulation process of capital and the dialectic of class struggle.

Below is from an article I drafted back in 2006.

Historically, within the Marxist literature on housing the concern has been over the conditions of housing for the working class, lack of affordable housing and the crisis in terms of inability to provide housing for all. The first being an issue of quality and the later two issues of quantity. These main concerns were first highlighted in Engels’ “The Question of Housing”, where he outlined three main thesis of housing under a capitalist economic system, affordable housing will never exist in abundance because mass housing is not profitable enough, affordable housing is secondary to issues of income distribution and the issue of affordable housing will never be solved without ending capitalism and it is these three thesis that continue to hold the focus of Marxist’s with respect to the question of housing. However, I would like to shift attention away from the first issue – the conditions of housing - and indirectly towards the latter two - the inability to provide housing for all and the lack of affordable housing. I wish to specifically focus on how capital uses these two realities to its advantage in the accumulation process.

I write this paper with a few assumptions about capital that I must make explicit: (1) capital not only seeks the accumulation of capital but to guarantee this accumulation process, (2) capital seeks to expand the accumulation process, (3) capital seeks to prevent overproduction generally [although overproduction can also be used as a crisis mechanism to reduce to cost of labor], (4) capital seeks to minimize the existence of the white elephant – to minimize the time span between production and consumption and (5) different capitals can compete for the same total piece of the pie – (workers wages). I must also make clear that when I speak of capital I understand that capital can only act through human action and that although it may appear that I speak of capital as an inanimate entity I am merely referring to the internal logic of capital and the laws that guide its movement, which are typically manifested in reality through human actors.

These five assumptions underlie the foundation of my thesis, that Alternative A (Alt-A) loans are one attempted solution concocted by the industries of housing construction and mortgage lending to the problem of capital accumulation in the housing market. Through an investigation into the trends of wages, housing construction in aggregate numbers and sale price, alternative loans, default rates and bankruptcy laws this paper will demonstrate the my thesis holds true: that through the creation and extension of Alt-A loans capital seeks to expand the accumulation process, minimize the white elephant of unrealized exchange-value and prevent overproduction in the housing industry while through the legislative process capital seeks to guarantee its accumulation process through the passage of stricter bankruptcy laws.

Any capitalist industry is confronted with roadblocks at one time or another in its quest for the valorization of capital, and when these events occur capital will seek to overcome these roadblocks in several ways, depending on the industry – within this article I will display that the Alt-A market emerged as one avenue to address the problems of capital valorization in the housing market. Yet, this attempted solution also creates its own problems or risks that must then be dealt with to minimize the interruptions that might occur in the process of accumulation. One way was to counteract the higher rate of delinquincy and foreclosure that exists in the sub-prime and Alt-A marekt is to charge higher interest rates on the loans.

However, the sub-prime companies failed to realize that or did not really care that with interest rates at historic lows they were bound to only go one way, up! And that the individuals taking out these loans whould not be able to afford such increases, since the only way they can afford a mortgage in the first place is through the opening up of these sub-prime markets. If you do not pay the worker enough, they cannot afford to own a home and therefore produce capital for your through interest payments. On top of this, the whole conception that since the worker already gets paid a shitty wage and therefore lacks savings and credit etc., they are thus forced to pay higher interest rates is ridiculous - in essence the worker gets jacked twice. Yet, this problem of trying to ensure demand while limiting disposable income, which is intrinsic to capital, may not be perceived as a problem with the tough consumer bankruptcy bill that was passed 2006, as these lenders are guaranteed their money some way or another, so who gets screwed in the end, again, the working classes.

LA Times Articles
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-subprime14mar14,0,7406728.story?coll=la-headlines-business
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mortgage14mar14,0,4068976.story?coll=la-headlines-business
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-market14mar14,0,4631202.story?coll=la-headlines-business

Antonio Gramsci's Notion of Hegemony

What we can do, for the moment, is to fix two major superstructural “levels”: the one that can be called “civil society”, that is the ensemble of organisms commonly called “private”, and that of “political society” or “the State”. These two levels correspond on the one hand to the function of “hegemony” which the dominant group exercises throughout society and on the other hand to that of “direct domination” or command exercised through the State and “juridical” government. The functions in question are precisely organizational and connective. The intellectuals are the dominant group’s “deputies” exercising the subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government (12).

These comprise:
1. The “spontaneous” consent of the given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is “historically” caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.
2. The apparatus of state coercive power which “legally” enforces discipline on those groups who do not “consent” either actively or passively. This apparatus is, however, constituted for the whole of society in anticipation of moments of crisis of command and direction when spontaneous consent has failed (12).

The function of organizing social hegemony and state domination certainly gives rise to a particular division of labor and therefore to a whole hierarchy of qualifications in some of which there is no apparent attribution of directive or organizational functions...The democratic-bureaucratic system has given rise to a great mass of functions which are not justified by the social necessities of production, through they are justified by the political necessities of the dominant fundamental group (12-13).

The modern State substitutes for the mechanical bloc of social groups their subordination to the active hegemony of the directive and dominant group, hence abolishes certain autonomies, which nevertheless are reborn in other forms, as parties, as trade unions, cultural associations. The contemporary dictatorships legally abolish these new forms of autonomy as well, and strive to incorporate them within State activity: the legal centralization of the entire national life in the hands of the dominant group becomes ‘totalitarian’ (54).

This study also leads to certain determinations of the concept of State, which is usually understood as political society (or dictatorship; or coercive apparatus to bring the mass of the people into conformity with the specific type of production and the specific economy at a given moment) and not as an equilibrium between political society and civil society (or hegemony of a social group over the entire national society exercised through the so-called private organizations, like the Church, the trade unions, the schools, etc.); it is precisely in civil society that intellectuals operate especially (56).

The supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as “domination” and as “intellectual and moral leadership”. A social group dominates antagonistic groups, which it tends to “liquidate”, or to subjugate perhaps even by armed force; it leads kindred and allied groups. A social group can, and indeed must, already exercise “leadership” before winning governmental power (this indeed is one of the principal conditions for the winning of such power); it subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power, but even it if holds it firmly in its grasp, it must continue to “lead” as well (57-8).

A class dominates in two ways, i.e. ‘leading’ and ‘dominant.’ It leads the classes which are its allies, and dominates those which are its enemies. Therefore, even before attaining power a class can (and must) lead; when it is in power, it becomes dominant, but continues to ‘lead’ as well…there can and must be a ‘political hegemony’ even before the attainment of governmental power, and one should not count solely on the power and material force which such a position gives in order to exercise political leadership or hegemony (57).

The ‘normal’ exercise of hegemony on the now classical terrain of the parliamentary regime is characterized by the combination of force and consent, which balance each other reciprocally, without force predominating excessively over consent. Indeed, the attempt is always made to ensure that force will appear to be based on the consent of the majority, expressed by the so-called organs of public opinion-newspapers and associations-which, therefore, in certain situations, are artificially multiplied (80).

Undoubtedly the fact of hegemony presupposes that account be taken of the interests and the tendencies of the groups over which hegemony is to be exercised, and that a certain compromise equilibrium should be formed – in other words, that the leading group should make sacrifices of an economic-corporate kind. But there is also no doubt that such sacrifices and such a compromise cannot touch the essential; for though hegemony is ethical-political, it must also be hegemonic, must necessarily be based on the decisive function exercised by the leading group in the decisive nucleus of economic activity (161).

(Gramsic, Antonio. 1971[2005]. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. NY: International Publishers).

Laissez-Faire Liberalism

The ideas of the Free Trade movement are based on a theoretical error whose practical origin is not hard to identify; they are based on a distinction between political society and civil society, which is made into and presented as an organic one, whereas in fact it is merely methodological. Thus it is asserted that economic activity belongs to civil society, and that the State must not intervene to regulate it. But since in actual reality civil society and State are one and the same, it must be made clear that laissez-faire too is a form of State “regulation”, introduced and maintained by legislative and coercive means. It is a deliberate policy, conscious of its own ends, and not the spontaneous, automatic expression of economic facts. Consequently, laissez-faire liberalism is a political programme, designed to change – in so far as it is victorious – a State’s leading personnel, and to change the economic programme of the State itself – in other words the distribution of the national income.

In the case of laissez-faire liberalism, one is dealing with a fraction of the ruling class which wishes to modify not the structure of the State, but merely government policy; which wishes to reform the laws controlling commerce, but only indirectly those controlling industry.

(Gramsic, Antonio. 1971[2005]. Pp. 160 in Selections from the Prison Notebooks. NY: International Publishers).

Denmark: The Police State

Squatter's beware, you are not wanted in Denmark, they would rather fill the youth centre you occupy for leftist politics and housing with a Christian Fundamentalist Group. And if you do not comply, you get the iron law of oligarchy slapped down on you.

Can't find any 'illegal' immigrants to pick your crops, just make the convicts do it.

This article highlights the extreme degree that capital and its enforcer, the state, will take to obtain cheap labor. If they lose access to one social group that lacks political rights (illegal immigrants) and therefore can be easily intimidated, controlled and forced into degrading, inhumane and unjust working conditions state-capital jumps all over the next subservient, controlled population that lacks political rights – prisoners. Yes, Colorado passes a strict illegal immigration bill, causing all the “illegal’s” to flee the state. Guess what happens, the crops go bad because they do not have anybody to pick them. So what is the solution, have the Department of Corrections set up a program where the prisoners pick the crops for 60 CENTS A DAY. Yep, 60 cents a day, now if that does display how exploitative the working conditions are for migrant farm workers I do not know could.

But guess what, the cost to pay the prisoners and the guards to watch them supposedly will cost more than paying the “illegal’s” how pathetic and disgusting is that.

"Prisoners who are a low security risk may choose to work in the fields, earning 60 cents a day. They also are eligible for small bonuses. The inmates will be watched by prison guards, who will be paid by the farms. The cost is subject to negotiation, but farmers say they expect to pay more for the inmate labor and its associated costs than for their traditional workers."

If capital decided to pay workers who performed these jobs living wages than you would have a lot more people lining up to perform them. When you pay someone less than ONE DOLLAR A DAY and a Taco Bell taco costs 80 CENTS, the job will only be taken by lose lacking any better alternative, the marginalized and exploited individuals at the bottom of the social hierarchy, a population that capital is dependent upon.


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-inmates1mar01,0,7469220.story?page=2&coll=la-home-headlines