Category Archives: Political

story and lessons related to the ICFI, WSWS and SEP.

CAPITALISM – a Great Reset or a Great Replacement.

Posted on by malpagaia

A Great Reset of capitalism from the top down.

Capitalism, our present socio-economic form of governance and productivity has long since become global, imperialist and dangerous, it now places too much emphasis on the accumulation of privately owned wealth, with far too little emphasis on meeting the social and cultural needs of humanity.

In our preparation for world socialist revolution and thereby the replacement of capitalism with socialism, the international working class will need to carefully consider some of the counter revolutionary forces working against us. For example, the World Economic Forum (WEF) should be seen as a very formidable counter revolutionary force that will need to be reckoned with. The WEF has a great deal of money, power and influence available for achieving its capitalist objectives. Take for example part of an introduction to a recent (2020) WEF project named ‘The Great Reset’ –

‘To achieve a better outcome, the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a “Great Reset” of capitalism..’ (weforum.org)

It can and probably should be assumed that in order ‘To achieve a better outcome’ within a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism, the working class would inevitably continue to be exploited. Given the extent to which capitalism depends on the exploitation of the working class to generate profit and thereby the privately owned wealth that underpins the WEF and its members, we can safely assume that any proposed ‘revamp’ of ‘societies and economies’ would not be done on behalf of the international working class.

While capitalism in its current form – from an international socialist perspective, might well be regarded as being in an advanced state of decay, it is clear from the above WEF statement that the ruling class is determined to keep capitalism alive and well in one form or another. It now appears most likely that capitalism is to be either ‘reset’ from the top down with more or worse of the same damage it now inflicts on our planetary Biosphere in general and the international working class in particular, or it is to be replaced with an international socialism via a political program and party of world socialist revolution, from the bottom up. The WEF is clearly a counter revolutionary capitalist forum that has little or nothing in common with the ICFI/SEP/IYSSE program and party of world socialist revolution. In promoting their ‘Great Reset of capitalism’ project the WEF goes on to say –

‘Clearly, the will to build a better society does exist. We must use it to secure the Great Reset that we so badly need. That will require stronger and more effective governments, though this does not imply an ideological push for bigger ones. And it will demand private-sector engagement every step of the way..’ (weforum.org)

Knowing in advance that the ‘Great Reset.. will demand private-sector engagement every step of the way’, should be more than enough to alert the international working class that this WEF project cannot be trusted to bring about any meaningful improvement to their working conditions and livelihood. On the contrary, it would appear that the WEF’s ‘Great Reset’ project is designed to ensure that smaller ‘stronger and more effective governments’ will be subordinate to the ‘private sector’.

Be this as it may, from an international socialist perspective the WEF is indeed a capitalist force to be reckoned with and strongly opposed. The only force capable of doing so is the same productive force that produces the profit and thereby the privately owned wealth of the capitalist members of the WEF, namely the international working class. To overcome such a formidable opponent and thereby replace international capitalism with international socialism will require a critical mass of the international working class to join the ICFI/SEP/IYSSE program and party of world socialist revolution. Only then can one prepare for and participate in the program of world socialist revolution.

A Great Replacement of capitalism from the bottom up.

From the perspective of the international working class, capitalism is a powerful global force that must be reckoned with and replaced by an even stronger global force. Replacing international capitalism with international socialism can only happen from the bottom up via the productive force of the international working class. Capitalism depends entirely on the productive force of the international working class to design, produce, operate, maintain and defend all of its territory, property, goods and services. By virtue of its productive role, it is the much exploited human productive force that can and must unite to overthrow its capitalist owners and state power.

The capitalist ruling class has no respect for planet Earth other than it being a so called ‘god given’ resource for the  accumulation of their privately owned material wealth. Capitalist ruling classes have long since colonised planet Earth into seperate, competitive, antagonistic nation states, the most powerful of which now jealously threaten each other with more than enough nuclear weapons to transform planet Earth into a lifeless desert. Climate change, wars, poverty, pandemics and tens of millions of displaced refugees having to flee from all of the above negative impacts are a direct result of a fundamentally flawed and mostly corrupt capitalism.

The replacement of capitalist socio-economic forms of governance and productivity that place so much emphasis on the accumulation of privately owned wealth with socialist socio-economic forms that place an emphasis on meeting the social and cultural needs of society, is long overdue. The political program and party of world socialist revolution namely the ICFI/SEP/IYSSE is well advanced and prepared to provide the international working class with the necessary revolutionary political leadership. Rank and file committees of workers, students and others are being well informed and encouraged to develop throughout the entire planet on a daily basis via the pages of WSWS.org .

Meeting the social and cultural needs of society first and foremost would be a great step in the right direction for the human race in particular and our Biosphere in general. The establishment and development of federations of united socialist states throughout the entire planet would enable far more of our natural resources – including and especially that of human labour, to be put to better use. It would do away with the need for nation states to aggressively compete with each other, material wealth could be far more equitably distributed throughout the entire planet, wars, poverty, refugees and environmental degradation could become things of the past.

From a working class perspective, international socialism must be our next logical socio-economic form of governance and productivity, it would be one great step for humankind – from the bottom up.

Taffy,

Southern Winter 2020.

PaGaian Socialist – Newsletter #1 Equinox

Posted on by malpagaia

 

“But this is not yet the end of the road. No, it is only the beginning. Man calls himself the crown of creation. He has a certain right to that claim. But who has asserted that present-day man is the last and highest representative of the species Homo Sapiens? No, physically as well as spiritually he is very far from perfection, prematurely born biologically, with feeble thought, and has not produced any new organic equilibrium… Once he has done with the anarchic forces of his own society man will set to work on himself, in the pestle and retort of the chemist. For the first time mankind will regard itself as raw material, or at best as a physical and psychic semi-finished product. Socialism will mean a leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom in this sense also, that the man of today, with all his contradictions and lack of harmony, will open the road for a new and happier race.”

(Leon Trotsky – 1932)

Quarterly newsletters from PaGaian Socialist will be timed to coincide with planet Earth’s Equinox and Solstice moments in recognition of their primal influence on the development of our human intellect and consciousness. The intention of PaGaian Socialist newsletters is to encourage the development of our spiritual, political and social consciousness in preparation for an urgently needed revolutionary social change. The planetary crisis in which the human and all other species are now immersed is the result of profit driven forms of governance and industry. The full extent of the threat to our planetary life support systems is deliberately camouflaged by an international capitalist ruling elite that cleverly uses deceptive religious and temporal spin to minimise the spiritual, political and social consciousness of a subordinate international working class.

As we approach the third decade of the twenty-first century, the life support systems of planet Earth – better known as Gaia, are rapidly deteriorating for the vast majority of species, so too the economic and social circumstances for the vast majority of the planet’s human population. If we are going to have any chance of stopping and reversing this deterioration and develop more ecologically and socially sustainable systems for most if not all species, then a more sophisticated socialist form governance and industry is now urgently needed.

Human productivity and the development of human consciousness has now been dated back for millennia to a time when stone tools, symbolic art and ritual burials first emerged, to be followed over millennia by the production of complex language, agriculture, pottery, metallurgy, industry etc. Although our human ancestors had evidently produced a spiritual consciousness many millennia prior to developing a more rational scientific understanding of their world, both science and spirituality are now essential elements in the further development, cultivation and sophistication of our human, spiritual, political and social consciousness.

PaGaian Socialist newsletters will combine principles for a ‘functional cosmology’ as defined and elaborated on by the late Thomas Berry, with a contemporary Earth based spiritual practice and internationalist, socialist, political perspective. The aim of PaGaian Socialist newsletters will be to present information that is careful, trustworthy, newsworthy and not least, revolutionary. As the author of PaGaian Socialist newsletters let me elaborate on my use of the terms ‘PaGaian’ and ‘Socialist’.

‘PaGaian’ – expresses a reclaiming of the term Pagan as meaning a person who dwells in country, yet with Gaian spliced in it expresses a renewed scientific and contemporary understanding of that country – as planetary. (‘PaGaian Cosmology’ -Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. 2005 xi) – italics mine.

‘Socialist’ – expresses my understanding of governance and productivity that places an emphasis on meeting the economic, social and ecological needs of the human, as distinct from profit driven forms of governance and productivity, with their emphasis on the accumulation of privately owned property and wealth, most of which becomes available to a relatively small percentage of humanity.

In this way, the combined term ‘PaGaian Socialist’ encourages the fulfilment of the human through permanent, spiritual and political revolution – ‘permanent’ in the sense that it is simultaneously a personal and a planetary revolution. My spiritual consciousness is mainly informed and inspired by the late Thomas Berry’s ‘Twelve Principles for a Functional Cosmology’ and my partner Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. author of ‘PaGaian Cosmology’. My political consciousness is informed mainly by the writings of Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky, whose political lessons are best represented nowadays by the international revolutionary socialist program and political party of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and its Social Equality Party (SEP) as expressed daily on the World Socialist Website – WSWS.org

Equinox 2016.

At this moment of a Gaian Spring&Autumn Equinox, the alignment of the planet’s day/night shadow line can be viewed as an equally balanced vertical north/south orientation. At this particular time of year, the view from outer space is that of a planet clearly divided equally into two light and dark hemispheres. This planetary orientation is as good and natural a time as any for the human to not only celebrate this balance between the light and dark cycle of our planet, but also to become more aware of the importance of ‘balance’ as an essential aspect of cosmic creativity and thereby of human development. For this particular Equinox 2016 moment, I am using its natural cosmic balance to emphasise that equality must be an essential component of scientific socialism. Just as cosmic and planetary balance was essential for life to emerge and evolve, so too a more balanced ‘social equality’ is now emerging as essential if we are to halt and reverse the deterioration of the Gaian life support systems we are all so dependent on.

Just as an out of balance planetary axis and solar orbit would likely bring life as we know it to a wobbly end, so too millennium of un-balanced, artificial social inequality has driven the human into enslavement, exploitation, discrimination, poverty, wars and far too much unnecessary suffering. The geopolitical tensions that exist in 2016 are as widespread, intense and dangerous as they have ever been throughout human history, with some of the more powerful imperialist nation states now sabre rattling with nuclear weapons. The prospect of Gaia being plunged into a nuclear winter with all of its life destroying consequences is now possible because the human continues to suffer the burden of an artificial, un-balanced, social inequality – the essence of what Marx and Trotsky rigorously understood to be the struggle between a ruling class and a working class. The enslavement, exploitation, discrimination and impoverishment of a so-called working class by a so-called ruling class is not only incompatible with planet Earth’s natural more balanced order of things, it deliberately works against nature as a whole. Living with the burden of an all too often violent class struggle between a dominant ruling class and a subordinate working class is unsophisticated human behaviour – to put it mildly.

What we urgently need to do now is cultivate more sophisticated forms of relationship, governance and industry. To achieve this we must have a sufficiently empowering story going on between our ears, a primary story by which we can evaluate all other stories, be they spiritual or temporal. Gaian seasonal moments such as the Equinox and Solstice moments are not only a valuable expression of cosmic balance and natural creativity, the ritual celebration of them can also provide us with the text for a suitably sophisticated, unifying, primary story. As indeed it must have been for my Western European ancestors who evidently put in a great deal of time and effort building sacred places such as the more well-known Stone Henge in England and New Grange in Ireland, both of which were built-in recognition of and to celebrate planet Earth’s solstice moments and their seasonal harvests.

A primary story that is both personal and planetary, is essential for the expression of our inherent right to be, our right to habitat and for the fulfilment of our lives. Without a suitably sophisticated primary story of our own by which to evaluate all other incoming information, we will always be vulnerable to the daily waves of information that is more often than not biased and or deliberately misleading. This is particularly so in the context of commercial advertising, political propaganda and religious teachings, most of which is designed to win over our hearts and minds – not to mention our wages. Our personal primary story should enable us to cultivate a healthy body and mind – physically, psychologically and spiritually, that is capable of contributing to what a growing number of us humans now regard as urgently needed creative, revolutionary, social change.

For it to be our primary story, it must by definition be distinct from any other – secondary, story going on between our ears. Every one of the billions of cells that make up our body knows that ever since the emergence of the first living cell we have been in a seamless relationship with all of life on planet Earth. Every organ in our body knows that it is related to and must cooperate with every other organ in our body. Our animal body remembers and knows where and what it is – a planetary place and being. This biological information is being made more clearly available to us through science and must be among the foundation building blocks of our primary story.

Our primary story should also inform and be informed by a planetary consciousness that has been manifesting through and expressed by the human for millennia, at least since that time when our pre-historic ancestors started to deliberately observe then celebrate a rising and setting Sun, a waxing and waning Moon, with their daily, monthly and seasonal changes. Planetary consciousness manifests as a result of and in accordance with an evolving human consciousness. We can safely say that planet Earth, through the human, now deliberately reflects on and celebrates itself as conscious Self-awareness. This level of planetary consciousness has been made manifest through the productivity of the human, who from our earliest forms of carved objects to the recent photograph of planet Earth from the surface of her Moon, has continued to shape the material world in general and our social circumstances in particular, for the better and – unfortunately nowadays, for worse.

While the economic and social circumstances for most of humanity is clearly out of balance and thereby the cause of massive in-equality, poverty, violence, destruction and human suffering, a ritual celebration of the natural balance that occurs during planet Earth’s equinox and Solstice moments can have a very positive influence on our personal and social experience and hence – more importantly, the continuing development of our human consciousness toward an urgently needed planet wide, revolutionary social change.

“In this world, at this point, no political revolution is sustainable if it is not also a spiritual revolution – a complete ontological birth of new beings out of old… This time it will be a global consciousness of our global oneness, and it will realize itself on a very sophisticated technological stage; with perhaps a total merger of psychic and electronic activity.”  

(Barbara Mor – 1987)

 

malpataffy,

Equinox 2016 ce, 12016 he

Southern Hemisphere.

Lest We Forget, to question the lies and propaganda used to persuade the universal soldier to kill another.

Posted on by malpagaia

My preferred definition of a ‘universal soldier’ is – any human who is willing to obey a command to kill another human. It is precisely this level of strict obedience that enable wars to be threatened and or waged, so what is it about the story that goes on between the ears of the universal soldier that persuades and enables them to kill each other?

Apart from the few psychopaths who do it for the perverse excitement of it, most universal soldiers believe they are justified in obeying a command to kill each other because they are protecting or defending either a deity, a country and or their kin, from a perceived enemy. Such belief and obedience on the part of the universal soldier is usually justified whether the enemy is perceived in reality – as in battle, or as an abstract notion – such as in a perceived threat expressed in propaganda and or as dictated through nationalist military policy and strategy.

While I can understand and accept it being a natural instinct for adult humans to defend and protect ourselves and our kin from danger, I cannot understand or accept the need for any of us to obey a command to kill another human who has been deemed an enemy on the basis of religious belief nor nationalism.

The patriotic belief held by the universal soldier in their need to protect or defend a deity and or country, has existed for millennia. However, it is still a relatively recent phenomenon when compared with our more ancient and natural instinct for protecting and defending our kin – in other words for our survival as a species.

From my PaGaian Socialist perspective I can imagine how our natural defensive instinct to protect kin evolved over many millennia, at least since the time when our earliest human ancestors needed to constantly defend themselves from non-human predators. So what was it that caused our more recent human ancestors to start defending themselves from each other, from the enemy within? I don’t believe the emergence of the human as an enemy was such an inevitability as was the earlier more natural defensive instinct to defend ourselves against non-human predators.

The threat of danger from other humans was more likely to have resulted from an increasing number of groups spreading throughout the planet resulting in a diminishing of fertile land and resources available to such nomadic groups. As fertile lands and resources became more scarce and hence more valued, they were eventually settled. The earliest settlement of fertile lands with its increasing human productivity and cultural diversity inevitably led to the need to defend such places. This phase of human development and separation not only produced the original universal soldier, it has since come to dominate human consciousness, and threaten our very existence as a species. How and why has it come to this?

It doesn’t take a great stretch of my imagination to visualise the emergence of relatively small centralised groups organising and arming themselves to defend their settlements and resources from other human invaders. Then, it is only a matter of time before such groups eventually morph into roles of leadership, ownership and rulership, with the eventual formation of standing armies that are prepared to both defend against and or attack their human enemies. While such human war-like development can appear to follow an evolutionary development of our survival instinct to protect and defend our kin, in hindsight, it is more accurately described as a material, cultural construct, born out of increasing human productivity, ownership, rulership, wealth and greed.

Since the industrial revolution of the mid 1770s, this form of material development has rapidly morphed into nuclear armed imperialist nation states that now threaten our existence as a species. This is why the human population in general and the universal soldier in particular are constantly being lied to and thereby persuaded to accept war and the need to kill each other.

What then is the lie that the majority of us are being told? It is a complex lie, one that needs to be analysed and considered in some detail. If it were simple and easy to identify then the ruling class purveyors of the lie would not be able to recruit sufficient numbers of the universal soldier to protect their wealth and control.

Like most military apparel the lie is well camouflaged and difficult to see, it is couched in devious metaphor designed to distort reality and discourage any questioning of whose interests are really being served by the command to kill. The lie is camouflaged by the clever blending of abstract cultural constructs of deity, country, freedom and liberty with the more natural human instinct to protect and defend self and kin. These abstract cultural concepts underpin the well and truly tested strategy of divide and conquer. The human population is deliberately divided in many ways, but most importantly from the ruling class perspective, we are divided by nationality, ethnicity and religion.

Even though this strategy and level of division inevitably results in conflict and war between nationalist ruling classes, it is worth it from their elitist perspective because not only do they need to protect their rulership and wealth, they as a class do not expect to sacrifice their own lives, they are not the ones being commanded to kill another. Lest we forget, or worse still, lest we continue to believe the lies, illusions and propaganda perpetrated by a ruling class whose continuation depends entirely on the obedience of the universal soldier to kill another.

Again, from my PaGaian Socialist perspective there is only one political story and program that comes anywhere near meeting the necessary criteria for achieving and end to war and permenant peace on our planet, namely The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and its associated political party, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) as expressed through the World Socialist Web Site – WSWS.org

 

Malpataffy

25th April 2015

LEST WE FORGET, we are planetary.

Posted on by malpagaia

If and when we care enough and pause for a moment to contemplate the seemingly never-ending gratuitous violence, death and destruction that we humans inflict on ourselves, we should not forget that ultimately we are all in a biological relationship with each other. In this sense, at the very least, we all come from and return to the same planetary place. Why then do some of us behave so badly toward others, including the ‘other’ than human species? My short answer is that most of us have been persuaded to forget that we are first and foremost a planetary being. My longer answer is that since we as a species have allowed – even encouraged, the emergence from within our midst of so-called ‘ruling classes’ many millions of our fellow beings have been involved in the seemingly deliberate violence, death and destruction that takes place between conflicting international ruling classes.

Nowadays it is the international ruling class that deliberately maintain their military capacity to defend and or attack their international counterparts as and when they deem it necessary. The reason for this is that ultimately none of them can afford to trust each other. We can safely assume that the international ruling class as a whole is made up of a relatively small percentage of the planet’s population, – for the purpose of this story I am suggesting the number is less than 0.001%. Such a relatively small grouping would still include all royal families, all fiefdoms, several thousand of the planet’s wealthiest families and all of their subservient political, religious leaders and war-lords. On the whole these ruling classes rule over nation states that as often as not, are in conflict with each other, usually in a mad scramble for limited resources and maximising their profit/wealth. Consequently these ruling classes need to exercise power and control over the rest of us because they are totally dependant on us to continue producing and defending their wealth and their nation states. The rest of us therefor I am suggesting make up at least 99.999% of the planet’s population, a relatively large subordinate grouping that includes all working families, – employed and unemployed, all children, students, volunteers, conscripts, police, mercenaries, insurgents, terrorists, refugees and the homeless etc.

The ruling classes maintain their control over the rest of us by cleverly persuading us from cradle to grave that what they do for us is in our nations best interest and what they expect us to do in return is therefor in our own best interests. Using secular stories ie political, economic, security, legal and spiritual stories ie religious, with reward and punishment themes, the ruling classes divide the rest of us into so many different nation states, ethnic cultures, religious beliefs, and socio economic classes that their control over us is almost guaranteed. While ecological, biological and environmental diversity is essential for our survival as a species and while cultural diversity has and can be good for our human development, unfortunately the ruling classes have long since perfected their ability to manipulate these phenomena via their primary strategy of ‘divide and conquer’, hence their need to continue persuading the rest of us to forget that we are planetary, that we are in fact related to each other.

When considering the ruling class strategy of divide and conquer, the rest of us do well to remember that most of our early human development including our emerging spiritual awareness – our learning how to relate to other and all-that-is, and our more fundamental material inventions such as tool making, symbolic, verbal and written expression, took place during a period when resources were shared and people cooperated with each other as a matter of survival. Moreover, we can think of this as a period of creative human development that took place without the encumbrance of the yet to emerge ruling classes, without their cleverly thought out jealous god stories, without their nation states and without their standing armies. This creative pre ruling class period is genetically remembered by every cell in our body as a period when the personal, the spiritual and the political was experienced as planetary, this is the way we were throughout our early human development.

If as a species we want a to secure a future for our descendants that does not depend on gratuitous violence as a means of resolving conflict – at any level, we must first rid ourselves of the existing ruling classes. The logic of a planetary ruling class divided into competing, conflicting, warring nation states must be replaced with the logic of a democratic, class free planetary society. The logic of a global system of production, distribution and consumption based on the accumulation of profit and wealth that mainly benefits a small minority ruling class must be replaced with the logic of a global system of production, distribution and consumption that meets the needs of the whole of society. What we all – including the so-called ruling classes, now need is a democratic planetary social system that is capable of being environmentally safe and viable for all future generations.

Thanks to my daily and seasonal PaGaian practice of celebrating cosmic creativity in general and our planet’s Earth/Sun/Moon relationship in particular, I can safely claim that for me the personal and the spiritual is first and foremost planetary. Until recently I had almost given up on the idea of a political story that I could relate to as planetary, then I came across the World Socialist Web Site WSWS.org and the International Committee of the Fourth International ICFI with its Social Equality Party SEP. I have even gone so far as to start referring to myself as a born again PaGaian Trotskyist.

More of my journeying into the political as planetary can be found at malpataffy.com

 

Taffy Seaborne

Southern Autumn 2014