Social Diseases and their Symptoms: Reform and/or Revolution

I watch and read what are called “progressive” items. And I tend to cheer for so-called “progressive” politicians. But on reflection they all are — what Eduard Bernstein called — Reformists rather than Revolutionists, as were, for example, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht

What is the difference? To use the analogy with diseases, there are causes of a disease and there are symptoms. A reformist is, in my view, someone who treats the symptoms; a revolutionist is someone who treats the causes.

As concerns public intellectuals, let’s face it: for such people to live fairly well in the modern world requires an income. This includes teachers, writers, journalists, media hosts and internet personalities, and politicians. One way of doing this is to have some kind of public forum, and attract donations, subscriptions, and advertisers. A book, a piece of writing, a performance, or a movie is — more or less — a one time attraction which will generate an immediate income. But a steadier source of income comes from a newspaper, a journal, a “show” — or movie-wise, a “serial.” [I myself after hoping for donations to this site, have turned to monetizing through advertising.]

To make my point about Reformists as contrasted with Revolutionists, let me concentrate on my favorite news hour: “Democracy Now,” which the host, Amy Goodman, calls a “show.” It starts off with a news summary concerned with war and peace, and then proceeds to concentrate on some specific topic or to conduct an interview. It intersperses a piece of music during transitions.

I have no quarrel with the topics covered. They are all concerned with the major symptoms of the social diseases — so many deaths here and there because of a war, a revolution, a disease; so much poverty, unemployment, homelessness here and there; bad leaders elected and corruption here and there; protests and brutal repressions here and there. The litany of evils continues show after show.

The show proposes anodynes: change this politician and change this law. What is missing from consideration are the causes of these social symptoms. And to deal with the causes there is need to transition to a Revolutionary stance. But dwelling on a revolutionary stance is counter-productive to a political “show” — which aims to entertain while delivering some remedial message. Actually the best form of this approach was practiced by George Carlin, the comedian, who couched his social and political commentary in the guise of comedy.

In my view — as was the view of many revolutionaries — the disease is Capitalism, and its sustainer, the State.

Although I think that Noam Chomsky has the best insights into the Social Problems — it takes will power to listen to his monotone voice. I find Chris Hedges’ preacher-like delivery more focused and succinct.

The main immediate global problem, as Chomsky keeps repeating, is that humans are destroying the ecosystem, and thus themselves. And, in my view, the direct cause of this is human overpopulation.

And the power of doing anything about this and other social problems such as capitalism is the central (federal) government — the State. The clearest understanding of how the State arises and its nature is to be found in the small book by Franz Oppenheimer, The State, 1914.
And there are two revolutionary attitudes toward the State: one is to take control of the State (this was done by Napoleon, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, among others). This is also the Macro-Democratic parliamentary method of electing a President, Prime-Minister, or other single “deciders.” The other method is to dispense with the State in favor of bottom-up micro-democratic communities (anarchism).

But where in a progressive news show like “Democracy Now,” is there a suggestion that the Swiss government is better than that of the United States? Where is the criticism of the U.S. Constitution as was undertaken by Lysander Spooner? And where among the pundits is there an understanding of Capitalism as a denying people free access to subsistence land?

Can a log-cabin be built in one day?

I read about the Harmonists (aka Rappists), who made their final move to Economy, which today is called Ambridge, Pa. on the Ohio River about 15 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. There is preserved some of the old Harmonist village, including the house of George Rapp, their founder and leader. Anyway, what struck me was the claim that they build log-houses at the rate of one a day! Is this possible? Watch the video clips below.

In 1824 they removed once more. They sold the town of Harmony and twenty thousand acres of land to Robert Owen, who settled upon it his New Lanark colony when he took possession. Owen paid one hundred and fifty thousand dollars not nearly the value of the property, it is said; but the Harmonists had suffered from fever and ague and unpleasant neighbors, and were determined to remove. They then bought the property they still hold at Economy, and in 1825 removed to this their new and final home. One of the older members told me that the first detachment which came up from Indiana consisted of ninety men , mechanics and farmers; and these “made the work fly.” They laid out the town,cleared the timber from the streets and house places ; and during some time completed a log-house every day. Many of these log-cabins are still standing, but are no longer used as residences. The first church, now used as a storehouse, was a log-house of uncommonly large dimensions. (Charles Nordhoff (1830-1901), The communistic societies of the United States, 1875, pp. 76-77)

Ohio Amish Barn Raising – May 13th, 2014 in 3 Minutes and 30 seconds

[Movie] Witness (1985) – ‘Building the Barn’ scene

Capitalism is the cause of Poverty

Watch the following clip in which Milton Friedman addresses the problem of poverty in the United States.

My response:

If Marshall Sahlins is correct about hunter/gatherers forming the original “affluent” society, then poverty must surely be some kind of departure from the hunter/gatherer society. [I include horticulturists and herders.]

There are three characteristics which such primitive or “savage” societies have. The first is that everyone has a free access to subsistence land (socialism). The second is that they form small egalitarian democratic groups (anarchism). The third is that they share freely, and are prone to gift giving (communism).


Today (Dec. 3, 2020), someone posted on Facebook the following story, which for me illustrates the communism of hunter-gatherers:

“The anthropologist invited children from an African tribe to play a game. He placed a basket of fruit next to the tree and announced to the children, “The first of you to run to the tree will get all these sweet fruits.” When he motioned for the children to start the race, they clasped their hands tightly and ran all together, and then all sat together and enjoyed the delicious fruit.

The astonished anthropologist asked the children why they all ran together, because each of them could enjoy the fruit for themselves? To which the children replied: “Obonato”. Is it possible for one to be happy if everyone else is sad? “Obonato” in their language means: “I exist because we exist.””


Peter Joseph has characterized poverty as a deprivation of each of these. The first he calls “absolute poverty.” The second he calls “relative poverty.” The third he calls “poverty of the spirit.” [Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement, 2017, pp. 157-59.]

The fundamental one is the deprivation of people of a free access to subsistence land [absolute poverty].

This deprivation — as Franz Oppenheimer has convincingly shown — can occur only through conquest. The conquest results in class divisions between the conquerors and the conquered, which morphs into the governors and the governed, the masters and the slaves, the landlords and the serfs, and now into a tripart system of the governors, the employers, and the employees.

All these systems i.e., slavery, feudalism, and capitalism, have one thing in common: forbidding a free access to subsistence land.

Milton Friedman has claimed that capitalism has been responsible for reducing poverty. If Friedman were conscious of the fact that capitalism requires a mass of proletarians (these are people who do not have a free access to land and subsistence) — something created by the laws of a centralized State — then the fact that some proletarians are given wages by the same system which deprived them of subsistence to begin with, then the situation has the form of taking everything from you, and then returning some of it back to you.

In other words, capitalism creates a proletariat and then takes some of them out of the created poverty by employing them.


See also: Andrew Chrucky, Milton Friedman’s Hidden Anarchism in Capitalism and Freedom, Aug. 8, 2008.

The Danger of Disgruntled Employees and a Lame Duck President

Julian Carlton, on Aug. 14, 1914, set fire to Frank Lloyd Wright’s house, Teliesen, in Wisconsin, and killed seven people, this included killing with an axe.
“Carlton’s motive for the attack was never conclusively determined, as he pled not guilty and refused to explain himself to the authorities before passing away. However, it is most likely that Carlton snapped after learning he would be let go from his job at Taliesin. Witnesses claimed he had been in several disputes with both employees and Borthwick, and that Wright had begun advertising for another worker. Carlton’s wife Gertrude, who also lived and worked on the grounds, further testified that her husband had recently grown agitated and paranoid, and that the two of them were even supposed to travel to Chicago in search of work on the day of the rampage.”TALIESIN MASSACRE (FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT)

It has become a policy when firing an employee to have the employee pack-up his personal belongings under supervision and be escorted out of the building immediately. This is to prevent any time for brooding and performing acts of retaliation, as what seems to have occurred at Teliesen.

President Trump has been given roughly 70 days for brooding and retaliation, until his replacement on Jan. 20, 2021.

The Dilemma of Evil

I can understand and sympathize with either the judgment that Joe Biden is the lesser of the two evils or the judgment that Donald Trump is the lesser of the two evils. In other words, I and such people are in agreement that both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are evil. But if someone does not understand or agree that both are evil, then I consider such a person a fool.

It is abundantly clear that both the Democratic and the Republican Parties represent the interests of the rich. And this message was superbly expressed by Chris Hedges (see below):

Myopia of Richard Wolff’s Marxism

I don’t see the point of using any nominalization such as is done by using the suffix “-ism,” unless one is also willing to offer a definition by stating a set of necessary and sufficient conditions. Without a definition, any “-ism” breeds ambiguity and vagueness.

Richard Wolff calls himself a Marxist. And though he doesn’t offer any definitions, he focuses on the phenomenon which he calls “exploitation.” And “exploitation” means that the employer gets a “profit” while the employee does not. There would be no “exploitation” if the employees shared equally in the “profit.” And he thinks this is possible only if the workers jointly owned the enterprise.

If this is “Marxism,” it is a severe truncation of what Marx wrote. Marx major work “Capitalism” is subtitled “A Critique of Capitalist Production.” It is, in the main, an economic analysis of how capitalistic businesses work, and why if they run unregulated (laissez-faire), they will self- destruct.

And although Wolff is right about capitalist “exploitation” and the fact that the employer reaps a profit, Wolff does not seem to concern himself with how this kind of “exploitation” is possible, even though under capitalism worker-owned enterprises are possible.

A fuller understanding of Marx, requires taking into account also how capitalistic mode of production is possible and how historically it came about. This is explained by Marx in the 8th part of Capital: “The So-Called Primitive Accumulation,” especially Chapter 26: “The Secret of Primitive Accumulation,” where it is written: “In actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, briefly force, play the great part.”

The simple truth is that by the conqueror’s law (which morphs into a centralized government) people are barred from a free access to subsistence land, and, following the period of the Black Death, there were instituted laws controlling employment and forbidding vagabondage, i.e., it was forbidden to be without work if you did not possess land. Sort of catch-22: you did not have to work for someone if you had land, but you couldn’t get land without working for someone. But even if you did have land, you had to pay rent or taxes, or both.

Marx believed that it was the technology which accounted for the various forms of production, and gave rise to different forms of political organizations (= the alleged thesis of historical materialism). But according to one critic, Rudolf Stammler in his Wirtschaft und Recht nach der materialistischen Geschichtsausffassung (1896), Marx inverted the reality: “the social relations of production cannot exist outside a definite system of legal rules.” [Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology & Social Philosophy (1956), edited by T. B. Bottomore, in his “Introduction,” p. 33.]

My answer to Wolff striving for worker-controlled industries is that this can be achieved without resorting to a law such as that all factories are to be worker-controlled. If — by a different law — everyone is given a right to free subsistence land, then any entrepreneur will be able to secure workers only if he pays them something equivalent or better than they would get from working on their subsistence land. In other words, the worker would have better bargaining power resulting in a minimization or even a disappearance of profits.

Remember what Franz Oppenheimer wrote in, The State:

“For as long as man has ample opportunity to take up unoccupied land, “no one,” says Turgot, “would think of entering the service of another;” we may add, “at least for wages, which are not apt to be higher than the earnings of an independent peasant working an unmortgaged and sufficiently large property;” while mortgaging is not possible as long as land is yet free for the working or taking, as free as air and water.” p. 9-10

Types of Wars and Killings

I keep thinking of the slaughter of people which occurs by such things as dropping an atomic bomb over them. This is a mass extermination of people, as are genocides. I also have in mind dropping of napalm on villages and cities, as in Vietnam and Japan. [See: 67 Japanese Cities Firebombed in World War II]

My naive picture of war used to be the picture of a battle in which two armies faced each other — something like the Napoleonic battles. Below is a depiction the Battle of Austerlitz:

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But mass extermination has no semblance to these pictures of two armies facing each other. It has semblance more to an execution or pest control.

As to Napoleonic type battles which represent all State wars of the past, they all have the stench of Pyrrhic victories. Who is the winner? And the winner of what?

The winner is normally some individual — a monarch, a president, a general, or, today, some corporation and some CEO.

And who is the loser? The countless bodies on the battlefields (the “pawns”) and civilians . Think of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. It involved more that 1.5 million soldiers, of these .5 million dead French soldiers, and .4 million dead Russians.

Or, think of Abraham Lincoln’s invasion of the South in 1861. [It was not a “civil war” since it did not involve a struggle over the replacement of the federal government; it was a war against secession.] According to Wikipedia, “The war resulted in at least 1,030,000 casualties (3 percent of the population), including about 620,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease, and 50,000 civilians.”

What is appalling today are the assassinations and “collateral damages” by the U.S. “turkey shoots.” I have in mind the targeted killings by the use of helicopters and drones as below:

And there is concerted effort today in the U.S. to suppress reporting about such “turkey shoots.” Julian Assange is facing a British court which is deciding whether to extradite him to the U.S. to stand trial for violating the Espionage Act (1917) by publishing on Wikileaks materials provided to him by Chelsea Manning about such U.S. “turkey shoots.”