Outward Journey / Inward Journey

First, I would like to note that due to my own sloth and lack of a computer (the latter situation being now rectified; the former, probably not so much) I haven’t blogged at all lately.  Sorry about that.  Furthermore, I have arrived at the conclusion that the general ‘theme’ of this blog suits me no more.  I originally set this up so I would have a place to post my writings and findings as I attempted to discern God’s vocation for me as I kibbitzed about the country.  Hence ‘Outward Journey, Inward Journey.’

However I have arrived at a point both inwardly and physically (wonderful dichotomy, that) where I feel that I have by God’s grace am better able to discern and live into what I feel He is calling me to over the next significant portion of my life.  I am no longer moving around the country, and my living situation now is such that I am able to start laying the groundwork for a new church development.  In short, I am now living in a radical community in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, and the ways in which a church plant will materialize are quickly being revealed to me.  This new life situation has prompted me to reconsider whether this blog now suits my needs, and my answer is ‘no.’  Soon, I will be launching another blog, probably entitled ‘Bushwick Street Theologian.’  I will post a link thereto when the time comes.

Secondly, I want to write about capitalism’s present crisis.  Clearly, it is possible to surmise that capitalist interests are the beneficiaries of economic precarity.  High unemployment causes lower labor costs and higher margins for the parasitic class of bosses, who, producing nothing, command and control the means of production. Furthermore the current crisis has been transparently a means through which capital has been redistributed upwards — while the banksters cut jobs and foreclose, they pay themselves billions of dollars in executive bonuses from federal monies.  The claims that Obama is promoting ’socialism’ are farcical, if by socialism we mean the redistribution of wealth to the working class.

Even though the Recession itself is being manipulated by capital to suit its own ends, nevertheless I am hopeful.  In fact with each new twist in the downturn, with each bank loss totaling billions of dollars, every time the stock market takes yet another significant plunge, I react with some glee. Why? Because it opens up the opportunity to the anti-capitalist movement to significantly escalate our tactics. Indeed, I believe that measured escalation must be the principal goal at the moment. Specifically I think that eviction and foreclosure resistance would be a particularly fruitful tactic right now. Falling city and state budgets will lead to decreases in police budgets, leaving them less able to enforce the will of banks and landlords, and rising public anger will make them less inclined to do so. We should be developing ad hoc direct action networks of people to turn up at a home slated for eviction, occupying the house, thereby protecting the family who would otherwise lose their home. The worse the economic crisis becomes, the more people will be subject to this fate, and the more angry and radicalized the public will become.

It is only a small step from eviction-resistance and widespread squatting to the occupation of workplaces in the same manner as the occupations of 1968 France (although we should not fall into the trap of making reformist demands that they did), in which 10 million workers, from students to astronomers, occupied their workplaces in solidarity with the student revolt in Paris. Eviction-resistance also, if widespread, could lead to the organization of armed neighborhood defense committees. The former would be a giant leap forward in seizing the means of production from the bosses for the producing workers. The latter would establish at least semi-permanent autonomous zones from which the power of the capitalism-propagating State would be excluded.

As I stated, I believe the Recession poses an opportunity which we may not see again in our lifetimes. The longer it lasts, the better, for it allows for us to purposefully organize, and the more prone to radicalization people will become. Likewise, the deeper the Recession gets, the more opportunity to radicalize entire sectors of the public.

There are also signs that the anti-capitalist movement may actually, contrary to all past expectations (!) be rising to meet the challenge. For instance the Left Forum here in New York actually seems successful in bringing together communists of various varieties, democratic socialists, and anarchists together to the same event. This is an accomplishment.

Further, I believe that a sustained attack on capitalism will be tremendously powerful if the Christian Church is able to come to terms with the fact that capitalism’s ills are the direct result of its flawed and inherently sinful foundation: ones of greed, pride, idolatry, oppression of the poor, and the failure to recognize the inherent dignity of every human person. It is irreformable because these dreadful vices are inherent to it: without them the entire intellectual and economic system tumbles. The Church has been held in bondage by the ideology that a humane capitalism is possible: the idea is contradictory because the moment the economic system begins to be truly humane (rather than making pantomimes of humanity), it ceases to be capitalism.

Let us strive on, demanding that our political and economic system strive toward the model of the eschatological Kingdom of God, which although we are unable to achieve and which will be the work of God, we can use as our example and inspiration. Organize, agitate, escalate. Organize, agitate, escalate.

It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.

-Buenaventura Durriti

Thanx @ a diary at Dailykos, here’s a list of the top 25 underreported news stories you’re unlikely to hear about on CNN, MSNBC, or FOX in 2009.  Courtesy of Project Censored, a training project in media and the First Amendment at Sonoma State University.

Here are some excerpts from one:

In August 2007, one of the biggest and best-known American charity organizations, CARE, announced that it was turning down $45 million a year in food aid from the United States government. CARE claims that the way US aid is structured causes rather than reduces hunger in the countries where it is received.

[...]

CARE’s 2006 report, “White Paper on Food Aid Policy,” points out that the current food aid program is motivated by profit rather than altruism. The policy, which dictates that donated money be used to purchase food in the home country, results in a program driven by “the export and surplus disposal objectives of the exporting country” and not the needs of people in hunger.

The US policy implements the practice of monetization, a food aid policy in which the US government buys surplus food from American agribusinesses that have already been heavily subsidized, and ships it via US shipping lines (generating transport costs that eat up much of the $2 billion annual food aid provided by the US government) to aid organizations working around the world. The aid organizations then sell the US-grown crops to local populations, at a dramatically reduced cost. The aid organizations use proceeds from these sales to fund their development and anti-poverty programs. But several groups, with CARE at the forefront, have pointed out that this policy has the effect of undermining local farmers and destabilizing the very food production systems that aid organizations are working to strengthen.

[...]

“We are not against emergency food aid for things like drought and famine,” CARE spokeswoman Alina Labrada said, “but local farmers are being hurt instead of helped by this mechanism.”

The Olympic Torch has therefore become the symbol of the dominant neoliberal economic order, necessitating repressive measures similar to those required to maintain stability in production facilites around the lesser developed world. It is no accident that the police presence required to escort the torch through the cities of Europe and the US evokes memories of past anti-globalization protests.

But the angry, bleeding protesters have not cast a broad enough net of condemnation. The problem is not just China, but its incorporation into a global economically coercive system of social control. The protesters should therefore aspire not just to put out the torch because of China’s atrocious human rights record, but to seize it and destroy it in a provocative public exhibition of contempt for what it perversely represents.

Read the entire post at American Leftist here.

There was a troubling feature on Democracy Now! last night about how the debate about Video News Releases has failed to halt their use.  If you’re unfamiliar with this issue, here’s the jist: corporate public relations firms produce VNRs, which deliberately resemble news segments to promote their clients, and then release them to local television stations which air them without explanation about their origin.  In short it amounts to corporate propaganda being passed off as legitimate journalism.  You can read more about VNRs here.  For me it really speaks to the domination that corporations have over American society; while the work being done by the Center for Media and Democracy is certainly very good, it seems to me that it’s a bit like swatting at mosquitoes when really the swamp should be drained.  Every single aspect of our lives in America is affected by consumption capitalism and the corporations.  What we need is structural, democratic reform of the American economy which would in turn bring about a profound shift in our culture away from greed.

 You can read the report from Democracy Now! here.