4 January 1999
In "My Apprenticeship", Russian writer Maxim Gorky wrote that "A belief based on force of habit is one of the saddest and most harmful phenomena of our time - as in the shade of a stone wall everything new grows slowly, becoming stunted, lacking the sap of life."My trip to London of Rude Britannia in December confirmed that. My impressions were strong.
England is a country so utterly class based, that "custom" precedes dictates of reason. In London, one is surrounded by "history". But upon closer examination, it's the history of aristocracy - the ones who chained some of our ancestors as serfs and fit their heads upon spikes if they complained.
England is a country that's been ripe for revolution for 150 years yet the dictates of custom, tradition and what Marx called the "dead weight of history" has blinkered its people into a grudging "that's just the way it is" acceptance.
It is a country where the Labour Party, now given funding from millionaires, provides a Clintonesque muddling through of affairs, continuing Mad Maggie Thatcherism but papering it with the image of its leader Tony Blair, the perpetually smiling buddha of "New Labour".
It is a country where "individual liberty" and "individualism" are supposedly held in high esteem but it is only an individualism subjected to the dictates of the market. Everything is a commodity to be bought and sold for profit There is no other freedom than the marketplace. And there, the few own, the rest work to its dictates.
It is a country where advertisements in newspapers beg money to feed homeless dogs for Christmas while thousands of homeless people sleep in cardboard boxes on the streets.
After returning to Canada, it took me some time to understand that the differences between North American society and England were, for the most part, superficial. In the end, it's the same here.
Like Tony Blair, Liberals Jean Chretien and Paul Martin hypocritically take credit for minute increases in economic performance (which is not true) while saying that economic downturn is global, and so, out of their control (which is true). Reform -Tory premiers implement Thatcherism in their own way while the NDP's Alexa McDonough, and cohorts gaze in wonderment at Tony Blair's "Third Way" - the way to nowhere.
The government's paid hirelings assure us that we're on our way out of recession while Stats Can reports expose the lie. Wages and salaries are stagnant, employment is up only on the basis of people making their own or entering poorer paying jobs. The share of wealth between those at the top and the rest of us is greater than ever.
In December this was all painted over for us with mock Dickensian Christmas spirit. Sell commodities, make people feel guilty if they do not buy more, advertize and create superficial needs, put people in debt, then justify it with the religious myths of a man who may have existed 2,000 years ago.
Retailers were gleeful at their ability to sell toys, clothing at incredible profit. The rub is that many of the products are made in Indonesia, Pakistan, China, Mexico where workers are paid pennies a day (e.g., NIKE running shoes are based on exploitation of child labour). Let's not even consider child slavery where young boys and girls have been found chained to their workplaces.
The world's distribution of wealth between rich and the rest of us increases and 12 million children under five years of age die each year - 33,000 per day. Meanwhile, "Forbes" magazine informs us that the accumulated wealth of the 400 richest people in the U.S. is $738 billion - enough to bring a year's worth of basic health care and food to everyone in the world who have no such help.
I'm with Mrs. Cratchit. A Merry Xmas indeed!
In Toronto poverty and homelessness has been officially recognized as reaching crisis proportions. Many homeless have physical disabilities, are developmentally handicapped, suffer from acute mental problems, severe depression. They are considered the broken refuse of the system. It's predicted many will probably die this winter.
Meanwhile, in the midst of Yuletide preparations, U.S. and UK forces bombed Iraq, murdering innocent people to supposedly undermine "madman" Saddam Hussein.
But let's take a test. Who is mad?
a) Hussein;
b) Clinton;
c) Tony Blair;
d) all of the above?
Proving his "morality", Bill Clinton spared Moslem feelings during this destructive act of lunacy. The bombing was done before, not during, Ramadan. I guess that should make the dead feel better.
Actually, the answer to the quiz is:
e) the system we allow to perpetuate that allows all of this to happen.
The Greek philosopher Plato in his "Republic" advocated that lying is the prerogative of government. The "royal lie" was that god created the guardians (king philosopher/theologians), the soldiers, and the common herd. Once the common herd was taught the lie, the coming generations would blindly accept the way things are as natural, ordinary "common sense".
The new year is upon us and the revolution I'm hoping for is not . . . yet. My new year's wish is that we not accept the lie that this system (capitalism) is as good as it gets, that it's "natural", that there is no alternative to "practical politics".
The alternative is called Socialism. Once the overwhelming majority of
workers understand it and want to implement it then that alternative will be
very real and will become the only practical political solution forward.