Bulletin 665
Subject: Political
Power and Submission to the Beneficiaries of Imperialist
Law and Order, with an interpretation by filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini.
4 October 2015
Grenoble, France
Dear
Colleagues and Friends of CEIMSA,
In
recent discussions of capitalist class Power, and specifically European Fascist
power at the time of the US entry into the Second World War, we made reference
to the theoretical work of the late Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith,
1908-2006, (The Anatomy of Power, 1983) and that of the much celebrated
German sociologist Max Weber, 1864-1920, (Collected Political Writings, 1921). The revolutionary Italian filmmaker, Pier
Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975), also dealt with the subject of political power and
the patterns of subjugation/domination that he observed in the
capitalist consumer society in which he lived and died. The artistic genius of
Pasolini provides us with a palpable illustration -- an inside view-- of a
command economy governed by the rules and regulations of a self-interested
property-owning class. Such was the milieu of European Fascism and the
operations of its power hierarchy, whose managers celebrated a particular form
of “Law and Order”.
Please
see the seven items below, all of which pertain to understanding the
sources of dependent political power pyramids and the instrumental dynamics of
domination/subjugation that reproduce authoritarian relationships throughout
late capitalist societies.
Sincerely,
Francis
Feeley
Professor
of American Studies
University
of Grenoble-3
Director
of Research
University
of Paris-Nanterre
Center
for the Advanced Study of American Institutions and Social Movements
http://anglais.u-paris10.fr/IMG/pdf/Sem-III-21_April_2010.pdf
A.
Salò, or
the 120 Days of Sodom
1975 film
http://pubfilm.com/salo-or-the-120-days-of-sodom-1975-full-hd-pubfilm-free.html
(with English subtitles)
B.
John
Kenneth Galbraith’s text from “The Anatomy of Power” :
Power,
wrote John Kenneth Galbraith in his book, The Anatomy of Power (1983),
is the ability to make people submit to the will of another. With this
pithy definition of power, the famous Harvard University economist began to
develop a descriptive analysis of power, as it has existed in human society,
and perhaps as it exists in the entire animal kingdom. Apes are not
capitalists, nor are dogs and rabbits ..., nor are most of us. Nevertheless the
lives of all of us are interwoven into power networks, of which we are more or
less conscious.
Galbraith
offers us some useful categories with which to examine this network of which we
are a part.
I
have been concerned to make wholly visible these constants –to identify the sources
of power in personality, property, and organization and to
see the instruments by which power is exercised and enforced.(The
Anatomy of Power, p.2)
He
goes on to explain what he means by instruments of power :
It
is a measure of how slightly the subject of power has been analyzed that the
three reasonably obvious instruments of its exercise do not have
generally accepted names. These must be provided: I shall speak of condign,
compensatory, and conditioned power.(pp. 21-22)
According
to historic periods and specific situations, these concepts can be applied with
some measure of success. In 17th Century Europe, for example, we can
see how the power of charismatic personalities of absolute monarchs and
emperors, and how the pecuniary power of wages and investments (i.e. property)
which created bonds between people in the political economy of mercantile
capitalism shaped people’s behavior. Later beginning in the second half of the
18th Century, with the appearance of a new political economy of
liberal democracy and industrial capitalism, the power of personalities was
displaced in large part by another source of power, that of organization,
and with this displacement of the power source other instruments of power were
found to be useful: conditioned behavior was more reliable than the fear
of punishment (i.e. condign power); and, as time went on and consumerism
took over the cultural landscape, compensatory power lost its monopolistic hold
over many people. In short, in the contemporary political economy to see power
relationships as they really exist, we are advised to look at organizations
today (above all corporations, of course, but also churches, the military, and
other associations of highly disciplined people) as the primary sources
of power; the dominant instrument of contemporary power being explicit and/or
implicit indoctrination, which creates individual habits and mass conformities
that secure individual and group submission to the will of others.
Galbraith
goes on to discuss “the dialectic of power” –how sources and instruments give
rise to a symmetrical oppositions—and how the concentration and diffusion of
power at any given time is decisive in achieving established goals, but always
with unforeseen consequences. His chief concern in the 1980’s is our concern
today: the condign punishment administered by military/police
organizations to make people submit to the will of government policy makers,
and the conditioned power of corporate organizations (including the mass
media) to impose the will of the few on the population at large, with maximum
private profits going to the former while the latter suffer from the growing
inequalities.
Galbraith,
as always, fails in his analysis to give priority to social class
relationships, but the concepts he offers are useful in demystifying the
every-day relationships we encounter in the institutions and neighborhoods
where we live and work.
C.
Max
Weber on the Typology of power (from “Collected Political Writings,” 1921) :
3
types of ‘compliance’
[Three
means –physical, material, & symbolic—which are employed
within organizations/institutions to make subjects comply.]
1)
Coercive power, based “on the application or
the threat of application of physical sanctions.”
2)
Remunerative power based “on control over material
resources & rewards through allocations of salaries, wages, benefits,
etc….”
3)
Normative power, resting “on the allocation and
manipulation of symbolic rewards and deprivations.”
4
types of ‘social action’*
1)
Instrumental action (like ‘rational
choice’ developed in economic theory), where the actors weigh the relative
efficiency of different available Means to an End and sometimes the Ends
themselves, seeking to maximize ‘benefits’ (Zweckrational, i.e. with purpose);
2)
Value rationality, where the relative
effectiveness of the Means to an End may be assessed, but the
Ends are accepted as given, perhaps as a ‘Moral Imparative’ (like the
‘Protestant Work Ethnic’);
3)
Affectual action, where action is governed by
emotion;
4)
Traditional action, where action is governed by
customary or habitual practice.
[*Weber
allowed for ‘mixed types’ of action.]
D.
UMass
Amherst's Richard Wolff discusses why labor force participation is the lowest
since 1977 and what's really needed to stimulate the economy.
38% of American Workforce Still Jobless
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14823
E.
The
Curse of Totalitarianism and the Challenge of Critical Pedagogy
F.
Who's Donald Trump?
(1991)
by Jesse Kornbluth & Alvin Krinsky
(Watch the documentary that
he suppressed for 25 years!)
http://trumpthemovie.com/watch/
This
film was suppressed 25 years ago.
The
film was commissioned in 1988 by Leonard Stern as the first of a series on
celebrity businessmen and finished in 1991. Back then, the only way for a
film to be seen was on television or in the theater. Donald threatened to sue
any broadcaster or distributor that took on the film. In effect, it was
suppressed. It was screened twice in back-to-back standing room only showings
at the Bridgehampton Community House on July 3, 1991, the same day that Donald
announced his engagement to Marla Maples.
Why
it's important and why we should care now.
Now that Trump is running for president, it is time for the American People to
meet the real Donald and learn how he does business. The old
Trump and the new Trump? They're the same Trump.
The
80's was the beginning of the "me
generation" of billionaires.
The
80s was the first modern "decade of greed". Donald Trump was
the most visible of a handful of businessmen who became celebrities, a trend
that has continued to this day.
What's
happened with Trump since?
Since
the completion of the film, Trump’s Atlantic City Empire is gone - sunk
into bankruptcy. He is best known as the star of "The Apprentice,"
for building golf courses, slapping his name on buildings that
others build, and acting as a superstar real estate agent. Oh, and he is still
trying to move the Palm Beach airport.
G.
Time to imagine: From ‘Disaster Capitalism’
to a system of
our own
http://www.rt.com/op-edge/316472-disaster-capitalism-change-economy/
by
Cynthia McKinney, for RT
Since the founding of the United States, generations have been
inculcated with the belief that capitalism is the only acceptable method of
economic organization. Isn't it time for a radical change of thinking?
Critical analysts should have long recognized that the Unites
States is a country steeped in cognitive dissonance. How else could the very
Founding Fathers who were also holders of enslaved Africans write this in their
Declaration of Independence from King George III of England: “We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
This is what one should take as a clue that pathology lies ahead.
As an aside, I must say that it is good, from time to time, to
revisit these founding documents because as I re-read the Declaration of
Independence it becomes very clear that today we, too, are saddled with a
government like that of King George III—committing many of the very same
offenses delineated as grievances in the July 4, 1776 document. And so, you
could say that the United States has come full circle and is in dire need of
fundamental change.
READ MORE: Communist crucifix for Pope
Francis who lashes out at capitalism on Bolivia tour
Why, even Founding Father Thomas Jefferson wrote: “I hold it
that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing,
and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.” So,
there you have it: something is brewing. The people of the world have suffered
from capitalism in all its variant formations—from Crony Capitalism to Disaster
Capitalism; it has been a disaster for a growing number of people.
Crony Capitalism
Capitalism has shown itself to be a form of economic organization
that favors a minority of the people. Comedian George Carlin said it far more
succinctly than I can write it, when he talked about the real owners and the
politicians and their relationship to everything of value in a society. In
short, he concluded that capitalism created a global club “and you ain’t in
it.”
French economist Thomas Piketty, the author of "Capital
in the Twenty-first Century," seems to confirm this Carlin truism in his
study that found that, in the long run, the rate of return on investment in
capital is greater than growth which leads to a concentration of wealth; he
predicts that extreme income inequality, like the kind witnessed today,
especially in the United States, will get worse without political intervention.
Piketty advocates a global tax on wealth. Piketty explains his research here.
This originally Western European form of organization was
violently exported to and imposed on the rest of the non-Western European
world. And thus, writes Dr. Anibal Quijano, that capitalism is a power model
that gave birth to the idea of race and the classification of the world’s
population. According to Quijano, the “mental construction” of race was
used to express the experience of colonial domination and “its specific
rationality: Eurocentrism.” Quijano wrote that capitalism is merely another
form of labor control.
READ MORE: American dreaming, from G1
to Bilderberg
I believe that, with race as the line of demarcation, a global
superstructure of unearned privilege has been constructed; its objective is to
benefit a few to the disadvantage of everyone else. Thus, today, all six
billion of us are forced to abide by a rigged, apartheid-like global economic
system that serves the interests of the few who sit in command of it. Race is
the structural glue that holds together a ravenous human exploitation system.
Some characterize the nature of capitalism as “crony” capitalism because social
relationships able to wield state power are oftentimes determinants of one’s
“success,” not necessarily one’s talent or merit. Linguist and social
commentator Noam Chomsky even said that
capitalism is incompatible with democracy!
Disaster Capitalism
Another variant of capitalism is known as “Disaster Capitalism,”
popularized by author Naomi Klein. She points out that the US government’s use
of shock in torture on the individual level is now being harnessed and carried
out on a mass scale by some capitalists. In an interview with The Nation she says,
“The exploitation of crisis and shock has very consciously been used by
radical free marketeers.”
She observes the use of crisis to introduce changes advocated by a
few that would never be acceptable to the majority in the absence of the
crisis, adding that the shocks have to get bigger and bigger as people become
aware of the capitalist machinations.
Eventually, the solutions to the crisis are exactly the ones
advocated by those who planned prior to the crisis; thus, when the crisis hits,
a plan for change can be introduced by the few as salvation for the many.
I have long seen this purposeful misbehavior in the continual
destabilization of Africa; I have seen democratic administrations violently
deposed by a few Western Europeans or US leaders with kleptocrats installed and
the world sighed in boredom. And these actions are very good for the bottom
line: better than respectful trade. Why pay for a resource when you can get it
for relatively free and a few African lives? I write in detail about my eyewitness
accounts of just this kind of state behavior done to benefit certain
individuals in my book, Ain’t Nothing Like
Freedom.
Klein describes the multiple US wars against Iraq and Hurricane Katrina
as examples of Disaster Capitalism. On the other side of those “opportunities”
are the millions of Iraqis and thousands of Katrina survivors who still haven’t
made it back home yet. Klein characterizes Disaster Capitalism as “making
money out of misery.”
I hope this sets the stage for why a rebellion is building. I hope
this background clarifies why Lady Rothschild and her apparent ideological
acolyte, Former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich, are now fawning over the
virtues of capitalism, hoping that we the people will somehow forget our
current misery. Hence the need for Reich’s soon-to-be-released book, Saving
Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few.
READ MORE: American capitalism: A
disaster with no ‘moral center’
However, drawing from the work of others, I think it’s pretty
clear that capitalism has always been about the few and has never been about
the many. So, despite Reich and Rothschild, what I’m sensing is that there is a
real opportunity for us to define for ourselves the kind of system we want to
be governed by! Why are they working so hard to save capitalism? Because, as Ronald Heifetz reminds us, there is no such thing as a
broken system. Global economic structure benefits some and disadvantages
others. The architects of the current system benefit immensely from it and they
don’t want us to get any ideas about changing anything! So they will introduce
the changes that we need by admitting a few more members into the club!
But, we can do better than that! And we must.
Things are getting
interesting
Journalist and feminist Carol Hanisch put it this way last year
when Lady Rothschild first enunciated her goals for “Inclusive Capitalism.” Hanish
wrote, “The superrich are getting nervous that the great slurp up from the
pockets of low and middle income working people into their own dangerously
bulging ones is causing “unrest” around the world.”
Dr. Nafeez Ahmed wrote in The Guardian that the “Inclusive
Capitalism” initiative, laden with neocon ideology, was merely a Trojan Horse to combat a rising “global revolt.” Dr. Ahmed
further writes that the current global nervousness on the part of the so-called
one percent comes at a time of immense economic and social change—due to the
end of relatively inexpensive fossil fuels.
One thing is clear and that is that if we have a plan in the midst
of chaos, we can win, too. They don’t always have to be the ones with the
plans. Right now, some think tanks are churning out visions of the global
social structure after this chaotic period ends. Well, I think it’s high time
that we apply their theories of Cliodynamics, Chaos, and Creative Destruction
in order to usher in that deep, transformational, second-order change that most
of us everywhere agree is needed.
In the memorable words of neocon Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of Chicago, “You
never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”
Next week, in my fourth and final installment in this series, I
will explore the visions of change that we are all working for. Feel free to
share your thoughts and ideas with me.
http://claritypress.com/McKinneyII.html
http://www.claritypress.com/McKinney.html
https://www.facebook.com/CynthiaMcKinneyOfficial
http://www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com/CynthiaSpeaks
Silence is the
deadliest weapon of mass destruction.
"My weapon is
media, lectures, protest, organization." Kenneth
S. Carr (Dedon Kamathi)
"The Bush family
has a political dynasty that the Kennedy family was not allowed to have." Steve
Cokely
"Be true to who
you are. Don't worry how others may view you. Society is ill, infected with
racism, homophobia, and violence. Always remember, it is no measure of health
to be well-adjusted to such a profoundly sick society." Coretta
Scott King
"We as a nation
must undergo a radical revolution of values." Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr.
"The biggest
weapon in the hands of the oppressors is the minds of the oppressed." Steve
Biko
"Make your spirit
flexible, and nothing will ever bend you out of shape." Wisdom by
Taro Gold
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