A documentary of how an American lived for 6 weeks in a Ukrainian village

Peter Santenello, an American from San Francisco with limited Russian language skills, moves in with a local family in the village of Osypenko near the city of Berdyansk near the Sea of Azov in Ukraine. From one perspective, this shows how one can live on a homestead as an alternative to living on welfare, as in the United States.

Andrew Chrucky’s speech at the Haymarket Martyrs’ Monument, Forest Home Cemetery (Waldheim), Forest Park, IL — May 1, 2018

Transcript of Andrew Chrucky’s speech:

First of all, as I was riding here … anyway, I became an anarchist somewhere in 2000. The rest of my life I have been in philosophy, studying epistemology and logic … until it hit me in 2000, roughly. . . . Anyway, as I was biking over here I was thinking about what is the significance of this? … Well, when I woke up this morning I said, shit it’s May 1st, its the labor day for the whole world, and this is the greatest monument … this is the Mecca of the laboring people of the world. This is it, its like the Muslim Mecca. So, I said, what does this mean? I felt like it was like Easter for Christians. Why Easter? Well, I was talking with a fellow here and he said it was like Christmas for him. Well I said, Christmas was when Christ was born, and there is a promise of things to come. But Easter is the big event. Easter is the promise of heaven, of resurrection. Well, perhaps these people are buried here and they are dead, but their spirit has resurrected . . . it spread all over the world, so in a sense this to me is Easter.

Here we are.  I was listening to you talking about and thinking about workers.  And I want to talk to you about capitalism. What is the definition of capitalism? There is a movement called anarcho-capitalism. It is bullshit. I’ll tell you why its bullshit. They think that capitalism is free trade. Well, free trade is just barter. It always existed. It existed under slavery, it existed under feudalism. What is unique to capitalism is what came after the French Revolution. It came after the end of feudalism, at the end of slavery. But what happened? Well, you had wage workers, you had wage-slaves. You had to work because what was the alternative? The alternative was starvation, or being homeless, going around looking in garbage for food. Now, why is that? Why if you don’t work you don’t have food, you don’t have shelter? Well, it’s a simple thing: you don’t have access to land. You cannot grow your own food. All land is privatized. You cannot be a free man if you do not have access to land. This has been recognized throughout history. It was recognized in Roman times…you have a problem of people not having access to land. You had the Mexican Revolution … what was their slogan? Tierra y libertad. Tierra is land. After that you had the Russian Revolution in 1917. What do you think their slogan was? Zemlia y volia, which translates into land and freedom. They were fighting for land. Then in 1936 to 1939 you had the Spanish Civil War. What do you think their slogan was? [Someone in the audience says “Tierra y libertad”] Tierra y libertad! It’s all about land. Capitalism cannot exist if people have access to free land. All these other definitions of capitalism make so sense. They say its free trade. No. Free trade has always existed. If you don’t have free access to land, then you have to sell yourself. All right. Glory to the anarchist Easter!

Comments on Peter Joseph’s book, The New Human Rights Movement, 2017

I have now read most of Peter Joseph’s book, The New Human Rights Movement, 2017. It can be summarized as a condemnation of capitalism because capitalism creates all the maladies arising from poverty, capitalism uses war  for economic gain, and capitalism has created our present ecological disaster because it disregards  collateral damage.  Peter Joseph proposes that we should create a consumer economy by using all the advances we have made in science and technology.

My reaction is like that of Noam Chomsky: it is a nice proposal. Chomsky, when asked for an alternative, said that he has been offering alternatives for years, which is libertarian socialism — based on worker controlled enterprises of small democratic communities federated into larger unit.

Peter Joseph seems to have missed the Marxist thesis that the necessary condition for capitalism is the existence of a proletariat.  Proletarians  are people who have been deprived of access to subsistence land.  In view of this, my proposal is — in terms of priority — to first give each person free access to subsistence land. Afterwards we can talk about the use of science and technology for mutual aid.

Joseph, Chomsky, and I have these ideals, but how do we realize them? The three of us say that it must originate with the people through a grassroots movement. However I have more specific proposals for grassroots movements. 1. Nations have to be decentralized. All groups should have the right of secession. 2. Governments should be based on the autonomy of small communities. 3. No individual should hold decisional power; all powers should belong to councils.

If this sounds utopian, then my realistic proposal is: imitate Switzerland.

Disambiguation of Socialism

Just now I came across a video by Thomas diLorenzo, whom I admire about his expose of Abraham Lincoln. In this video he talks about his new book , The Problem with Socialism (2016), which criticizes socialism.  I think his criticisms are worth considering — and I am going to get a copy of his book.  Jokingly,  he says that his talk could be about how to argue with your Bernie Sanders roommate in college.  He defines “socialism”, roughly,  as “state managed means of production.”  This includes both state controlled industries, as in the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Venezuela; and what is called Social Democracy, which we have in the United States and Europe.  These kinds of Socialisms are to be contrasted with, what in the United States is called, Libertarianism.

Watch this video, but make sure you also watch the next video by Cameron Watt, who contrasts these kinds of state or authoritarian socialisms with “libertarian socialism” or “anarchism.”  ‘”Socialism” here does not mean state owned or managed industries, but worker-owned and managed industries; and “libertarian” does not mean private ownership of industries, but refers to a political structure rooted in direct democracy in small scale communities, federated into larger units.

Finally, watch Noam Chomsky’s explanation of how the word “socialism” traditionally has been used to refer to worker-controlled work-places, which is the view of “libertarian socialism.”

 

Andrew Chrucky’s annotated commentary on the debate between Stefan Molyneux and Peter Joseph of the Zeitgeist Movement about the free market system, which took place on September 23, 2013.

Here is the video of the debate. My commentary is below.

Commentary