The problem of resistance to the oligarchy

Two words: Edward Snowden.

Echoing Celcius above, we do indeed have what we deserve for the most part in the west. The only “solution” I know of is to start young and repeat often, but obviously this leaves the large mass of those already habituated to their patterns in the way. We have not been able as species to deal with the immense power of fungible money in a society organized around specialized professions. I don’t think we ever will be able to. This system is irreconcilable with our evolution/biology/nature. Unlimited accumulation of money, thus power, is directly opposed to democracy. Say it loud, say it often, especially around children.

There’s an assumption often made by Westerners that democracy/liberal democracy is the norm. It isn’t some kind of monarchy or oligarchy is the historical norm as a republican in the Irish sense of that word I find this distressing.

I agree with pretty much everything you’ve written above but I think you need to account for culture. Americans are by and large conformists and by and large authoritarians. The deference they show to:

1. Their economic elite.
2. Their civilian public officials.
3. Their military.

Is quite frankly sick-making and I mean that literally. Every time I see or read “thank you for your service” I think ‘yuk’ and my respect for the person who says or writes it plummets never to recover.

(I invite you to reflect upon my profession when reading the previous paragraph).

So while you’re right I think it goes deeper than that and that the sine qua non is to lose the deference. You have to be either completely desperate such as slaves – and there has been one, count it, “ONE”, successful slave revolt in history. Or you have to be angry because what you consider your rights and liberties – your entitlements, to have been infringed or to be under attack.

One of the major reasons why in three closely linked countries (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) the assault on the populace in general has been far more successful in one country than in the two others is that Danes are by and large easy-going and quite deferential to those in authority, while Swedes and Norwegians are not easy-going they’re fucking bloody-minded and anything but deferential. The elite gets away with far more in Denmark than they’d ever dare even contemplate in Sweden or Norway.

mfi

Sounds sad but true.

PS:
“their rich” : “they’re rich”

“crated” : “created”

“…He who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honour by non-violently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live for ever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully …

[When violence] is offered in self-defence or for the defence of the defenceless, it is an act of bravery far better than cowardly submission. “

@ Heads On Poles
January 13, 2014
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Curious; why do you not attribute the author? Gandhi…

I think 20th century labor had three things going for it that we don’t today:

1) No immersive media environment controlled by the bosses putting the blame on them (there were newspapers, et al. but not to the degree there is now)
2) Actual countervailing political leaders and ideas, e.g. Goldman, Debs, IWW, etc.
3) Desperation, both in terms of economics (spend 12 hours in the mine and your family still starves) and in terms of oppression – company stores, private police, aerial bombardment used against miners at Blair Mountain, the list goes on.

While I agree that Americans have an unfortunate tendency towards conformity and authoritarianism, I think the main reason that nothing’s happening yet is that the conditions are not universally bad enough for people to risk what little they have in violent actions against the bosses. Heck, right now it’s not clear to many workers that the bosses *are* the problem (as opposed to “illegals” and the Kenyan Muslim usurper in the White House). I think it’s going to have to get much, much worse before anything starts to happen, and then it will be too late.

There’s another issue — any organization needs legitimacy. When people no longer see any reason to follow the moral norms that the organization needs to operate, they don’t do the things necessary to keep the structures from collapsing. As you’ve pointed out numerous times, the state will then have to spend unsustainable amounts on enforcement, and besides, the enforcers eventually become unreliable.

Despite the apparent apathy of lots of Americans, I think we’re seeing increasingly a withdrawal of consent on their part. I’d guess we’re likely to see a Soviet style collapse rather than an arming of the barricades. Unfortunately, I don’t see it leading to a much better outcome, but neither do I see a swarm of global elites able to strip the carcass of the U.S. economy as happened in Russia since there’s not an alternative rationale to guide its destruction, as Larry Summers and his Ivy League friends’ consulting did to the Soviets. And however brilliant our banksters may regard themselves, the collapse of the U.S. would not mean that U.S. elites would stay on top — they’d become the kept pets of succeeding elites. They wouldn’t like that.

On another thread in these comments — yes, we owe a lot to Snowden. Now let’s not forget Manning, who has suffered the power of an outraged elite.

Labor power was never quite what we sometimes romantically make it out to be. Labor lost many of those battles, lost them badly, and the gains, when they came, grudgingly and at great expense to ordinary workers were modest — and reversible. Labor leaders were notoriously corrupt and in bed with capitalists — those who weren’t often wound up dead in jig time.

My grandfather was a union man, killed for his efforts on behalf of striking transit workers in Indianapolis. He was one of many who paid with their lives by murder and “accident” during several tumultuous years of “labor unrest.”

Though the strike was said to have been settled in workers’ favor, they actually got almost nothing. That they got anything at all, which in the case was that some got a 2 cent an hour raise (from 10 cents to 12 cents) was considered a major victory. Within a year, wages were reduced again.

Unless workers are really willing to risk everything they have — which may in turn bring discomfort or fear to the High and Mighty — nothing much will change for the better. One risk that has surprisingly not been taken (so far) is refusal to pay onerous charges, rents, fees, and debts. Our betters use these tactics all the time, and they nearly always get away with it. They are terrified the Rabble will learn to do likewise. And that would start hurting them financially in ways they could neither escape or easily recover from.

There are many other financial perils that could be brought to bear on the rich, but for reasons that remain mysterious they are not employed or for the most part even discussed.

The days of street battles are not completely over (viz Thailand, Cambodia and elsewhere) but there are also far more sophisticated ways to bring discomfort to the New Nobility.

EGrise:

“While I agree that Americans have an unfortunate tendency towards conformity and authoritarianism, I think the main reason that nothing’s happening yet is that the conditions are not universally bad enough for people to risk what little they have in violent actions against the bosses. ”

I’ll add my perspective here:

The insulating layer of the professional/managerial strata got a huge shot in the arm during/after WWII, creating a large buffer between the upper class owners and the remaining ~80% of the population. This strata consists of scientists, engineers, managers, administrators, doctors, academics of all stripes, and other professions that require degrees and extensive training. I think most of this strata was necessary up until the present, though the increasing prevalence of degree inflation and bullshit jobs are indicators that there’s a bubble in their class–because there’s less need for them in the face of our economic decay (lots of manufacturing has gone overseas, and R&D is starting to follow) and because the conditions in the lower 80% have gotten bad enough that diploma mills and bad education are being used to try to grasp for better living standards. (Note: If we had a vital, growing economy then there would be continued strong demand for them and fewer bullshit jobs to keep them appeased).

Most of the managers and professionals still haven’t realized that they’re on the chopping block. Once they do (if they do–they’re heavily propagandized), I would expect change to happen. Now, the nature of the change is something else entirely and depends on how much they make common cause with the 80% of the population that they’ve been tasked with managing… I’m not too optimistic, but it is possible.

alyosha: “I doubt it. The ones on the chopping block are middle aged and up, and are doing whatever they can to hang on to their former lifestyle, slipping away. ”

There are also young people who see their futures disappearing, who see their potential being discarded before they even get a chance. They’re the ones who will want change more than the middle aged and elderly who, you correctly point out, will tend to hold on to their positions more. Its the future that’s on the chopping block too.

zhai2nan2 – At least in terms of numbers, there is almost one gun for every resident of the US, according to this estimate. This is only private arms, it doesn’t count guns owned by police departments and the military. We are a country completely awash in guns, leading the world in gun ownership. It is a tinderbox waiting for a spark.

My theory of collapse, FWIW, says we won’t see this spark until the economy, and particularly the currency collapses. Then you will see widespread panic and bloodbath on American soil, the likes of which very few Americans have ever witnessed previously. People killing each other for a ham sandwich, that kind of thing.

I’ve long been a fan of The Fourth Turning, whose ideas were talked about in the earlier thread about generational characteristics. For me, one of the book’s more intriguing ideas, is that you will know when the depth of “winter” has come, when no one can deny any longer that the world has changed and isn’t going back. This moment of intense bloodshed and especially panic is what I suspect will be our “winter” moment, just as gunfire breaking out at Fort Sumnter was the prior century’s winter moment. There was no going back to antebellum America after Fort Sumnter.

When our “winter” moment appears, the polarization between the oligarchy and the citizenry will become much clearer and pitched. This is when the oligarchy will bring out the guns and nakedly wield power to hold down the citizenry in an attempt to maintain order. The gloves will come off and everyone will recognize the farce for what it is. Most will applaud it, in much the way that American overwhelming viewed Edward Snowden as a traitor, at least initially.

But the point is (back to The Fourth Turning), when this happens, a psychological shift will have occurred, galvanizing a generation of fighters, in a way that is at only nebulous and fitful right now.

I want to stress that I hope I’m wrong. At the very least, America leads the world in gun ownership, which is backed by a powerful lobby and 2nd Amendment fanatics, and as we’ve seen from the episodes of kids shooting up schools and movie theaters, gun violence is becoming normal, we’re getting desensitized to it.

These posts are right on the mark.

I do fear for the future since there appears no way that the Oligarchs can be restrained through democratic elections as they were by FDR in the 1930’s. Now, the Democrats are part of the problem. I will vote for anyone except the incumbent in the primaries but have vote Democrat in the election to protect my federal pension. Without it I am dead.

The strangest aspect of the 21st century is total denial of reality by everyone: media, politicians, and especially the wealthy who think they are living in a different world from us. From now on there is no more cheap energy except the sun. Demand drives the economy. Climate change is real. War is dangerous profit motive; it blows back. Renters trash property. We live on one earth.

Lift the rock and shine a light as my deceased colleague would say. Before he died he wrote of ‘Death Camps for Children’

“Excuses won’t work, particularly in light of a handful of oligarchs in Ukraine having been allowed to loot Ukraine’s economy for tens of billions of dollars. I point specifically to Akhmetov, Pinchuk, Poroshenko, and Kuchma, and this is certainly not an exhaustive list. These people can single-handedly finance 100% of all that will ever be needed to save Ukraine’s orphans. None of them evidently bother to think past their bank accounts, and seem to have at least tacit blessings at this point from the new regime to keep their loot while no one wants to consider Ukraine’s death camps, and the widespread poverty that produced them..”

What is see around me is a split between people who have resources and people who have a clear sense of what’s up. Once you get beyond money and mainstream demographics I hear plenty of clarity and motivation to fight back. But the people who feel that way don’t have computers, or reliable cars or enough money to feed their children.

zhai2nan2 permalink

“When the USA started up in 1775, it was acknowledged that some men were free and other men were slaves. The free men had guns; the slaves did not.

Now, in 2014, the culture of gun ownership has receded.

If the vast majority of the USA were armed, the power dynamic might be a little different.”

A huge proportion of the USA is armed, including those who are getting screwed; it doesn’t make a difference. The states where the gun ownership rates are the highest are also the states where the (white, gun-owning) populace is screwed the hardest.

The elites don’t fear your guns.

Bruce Wilder,

It’s art…no significant number of people in the US gives a flying fuck about art.

Concerning guns, I like to quote our host from his latest podcast interview: “Gun ownership means both more than liberals think and less than conservatives think.”

Granted, these protesters are middle class folk chafing at majority rule by Thailand’s impoverished majority. But they do have spunk — a commodity in desperately short supply here.

So they’re right-wing a**holes? I’d say there’s plenty of that kind of spunk here.

And if this some sort of “color revolution” being engineered by the Western power elite, then it’s hardly surprising that they’d not be orchestrating mass protests demanding their own overthrow is it?

By contrast, Occupy Wall Street was a fizzle.

OWS made a point of never inconveniencing any powerful interest. The dock strikes were timed to leave the vast majority of shipments unaffected, which for me clinched my suspicions that they were basically a nark operation.

Dan H: It’s art…no significant number of people in the US gives a flying fuck about art.

Right.

Does anyone but the 1/10th of 1% care about the money?

They would if they got that far, but any headline containing “art” is an instant pass for the majority of our population.

Dan H
January 14, 2014
Bruce Wilder,
It’s art…no significant number of people in the US gives a flying fuck about art.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, the utter rot spewing forth (just above) about artists would at least make a case that a lot of people have no idea about artists and very likely have never known one.
That bile above is just ignorance and willful ignorance to boot.
That one knows nothing.

One of the most important books people should read now (if they haven’t already) is Lawrence Goodwyn’s The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America, which details the rise and development of the farm revolt soon after the Civil War, and its transformation into the populist movement of the 1890s. One of the most important factors Goodwyn points out is that the farmers had to learn enough self-respect to no longer give deference to economic and political elites. This was a process that took three decades, and involved a succession of crucial political battles in which the populists were forced to think through the nature of the financial and monetary systems, and develop workable alternatives to them. The major reason why they succeeded – Goodwyn writes that the populist revolt was the only genuinely democratic political mass movement to challenge the economic status quo in American history – was that they self-consciously began to reach out to fellow farmers with program of paid professional lecturers, who traveled the countryside and gave talks on what amounted to Greenback economic doctrines, and recruited members to the Farmers Alliances. The history of the Non-Partisan League, Political Prairie Fire also details the same principles and practice of self-organizing.

Just as important, Goodwyn explains how the populist movement was destroyed – by the 1896 election, in which the populists abandoned their Greenback economic doctrines in order to support the Democratic Party nominee for President, William Jennings Bryan, he of “Cross of Gold” speechifying fame. As Goodwyn points out, Jennings may have been against the gold standard, but he was still tied to the “hard money” doctrines of the bankers through his stand on the silver issue.

The disaster of the 1896 election is one of the principal motivations for my writing Elizabeth Warren won’t save you. Neither will the Pope (URL = http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/23/1263017/-Elizabeth-Warren-won-t-save-you-Neither-will-the-Pope), trying to warn progressives that the race for the White House is a diversion and a dead end, because all the real change as come from the level of Congress, Senate, and state legislatures. I briefly summarize the history of key populist victories, such as women’s suffrage, and abolition of slavery.

I also address the problem of a third party. I describe the history of how third parties have been extremely useful in getting progressives and populists elected to Congress, but have been absolute disasters as Presidential campaigns.

If we are to rescue the Democratic Party from its present subservience to the interests of Wall Street and big corporations, we need to revive the ideas of politically sovereign control over money creation that were the bedrock of Greenback Party doctrine.
The link will take you to the full introduction to The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America.

Tony Wikrent:

Not to rain on your fantasy populist parade, but the 1896 election confirmed a new alignment of political coalitions for the Republicans, which would give them a presumptive national majority until 1930. The Republicans, the advocates of “sound money”, won against a coalition of those opposed to the Gold Standard. That the populists cooperated with Bryan, or vice-versa, didn’t destroy either one; the Republicans did that, quite effectively, with advocacy of the Gold Standard and a Protective Tariff. It didn’t help that Grover Cleveland, a “Gold” Democrat, had presided over the great depression following the Panic of 1893, with all the aplomb of Herbert Hoover; the Democratic Party was discredited by that experience, and Bryan’s candidacy was an extreme long-shot taken in desperation, a desperation that the Populists, apparently, shared.

The Protective Tariff was good economic policy; on the Gold Standard, the Republicans got lucky, as new discoveries and expanded production of gold around the world relieved the deflationary pressure, which had made such misery since 1872.

“PS: Jean Froissart: on the Jacquerie, 1358

now often not mentioned by historians is that the lives of the peasantry improved for about three generations after that – because the French aristocracy were afraid of a repeat.”

Sorry Mark, but that’s just not true. This was just after the Black Death (1348-50), which was the source of the discontent. The lives of the peasantry improved for the next three generations (longer actually) because half of the labor supply had died, and for a while labor was in demand. Wages went up considerably, just as they had declined prior to the plague as the population increased. Also, there was a lot of land available, as many villages/manors were wiped out completely, and the aristocrats were desperate to find people to farm for them. Froissart didn’t see any of this because he had no background in economics.

Excellent post. When gluttony, greed and fraud have become the order of the day, I’m afraid it will take a bigger reset (bigger than the 2008 debacle) to grab the public’s collective attention. Much of the public has simply become too comfortable, too pampered to care. It’s when the money runs out that things start to get interesting. Only then will the masses realize that their interests are not in line with the status quo elite and their stealth wealth extraction.

Another vote for the law of the brick.

You go to your job. And do nothing. And the day after that, you go to your job. And do nothing. And you do this with thousands or tens of thousands of others. Every day. All day. Until it starts to hurt. Hurt real, real bad.

It’s true that those who are least skilled may rapidly find themselves being replaced, but considering that more advanced economies have a great deal more people in cognitive intensive and highly skilled industries, it’s extremely unlikely those people could be replaced on short notice. Consider the case of bank workers here in Canada, who were obliged to train the “temporary foreign workers” who duly replaced them after several months. It did take several months. How long could a bank stand to have the majority of their workers show up and do nothing? How quickly could they replace them all?
That’s how you fix that problem. A massive work stoppage.