TheGoodNews
TheGoodNews's JournalSocialism: Orwell's comments
Post Fri 11 Dec 2015, 17:48
More often than not it seems the media or even the general discourse is more interested in the things Orwell was critical of, i.e. the surveillance state, politicized language. Rarely does it seem that we get to hear much about what he was for other than a brief remark that he was a socialist.
From Orwell's memoir Homage to Catalonia:
"I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life-snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.-had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master...One had breathed the air of equality. I am well aware that it is now the fashion to deny that Socialism has anything to do with equality. In every country in the world a huge tribe of party-hacks and sleek little professors are busy 'proving' that Socialism means no more than a planned state-capitalism with the grab-motive left intact. But fortunately there also exists a vision of Socialism quite different from this." George Orwell - Homage to Catalonia
"Another World is Possible"
Great to see this article in the current issue of AdBusters
https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/1...-possible.html
Funny you never see or hear about this sort of thing on the History Channel. Why's that? Anyway, here's the whole text:
"The Spanish Civil War that occurred between 1936-1939 is always remembered as the fight between the Republicans and Franco’s nationalist semi-fascist forces. However, the war was marked by another, extraordinary event; in 1936, the year of the outbreak of the civil war, the world witnessed the first glimpses of an anarchist revolution. Sam Dolgoff, an American anarcho-syndicalist, stated that the Spanish Revolution “came closer to realizing the ideal of the free stateless society on a vast scale than any other revolution in history.”
The revolution was led by the CNT (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo), a confederation of anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist trade unions. A significant part of Spain’s economy was collectivized and put under direct worker’s control. In Catalonia, workers controlled more than 75% of the economy. We should not imagine Soviet-style forced collectivization, but, as Sam Dogloff said, “a genuine grass roots functional libertarian democracy, where each individual participated directly in the revolutionary reorganization of social life”. George Orwell, who has served as a combatant for the CNT, was able to document the revolution as a first-hand observer. Two short passages from his Homage to Catalonia, published in 1938, illustrate superbly the spirit of the revolution: “[T]here was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine,” and “many of the normal motives of civilized life—snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.—had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves and no one owned anyone else as his master.”
Unfortunately, the Spanish anarchist utopia did not last long. The anarchists were crushed by a temporary alliance between all other political parties (including the Communists and the Socialists) and the brief—but real—experience of an anarchist society faded away.
However, an important lesson can be drawn from the anarchist utopia of 1936: another world is possible (which is also the slogan of the World Social Forum). Before discussing anarchism’s possible role in the resistance to the capitalist world order, let’s shortly retrace last century’s main stages of the capitalist system’s consolidation: elites have won the long-lasting struggle against the working class; this was achieved firstly by granting workers some benefits after World War II, notably through the implementation of welfare systems in the West, then by fragmenting them with the increase in specialization of labor and the growth of the service industry during the post-Fordist period and finally by assessing the knockout blow through neoliberal policies, which erased hard-fought social and economic rights, diminished trade unions’ bargaining power and weakened their influence.
The libertarian revolutions of 1968 have also ended up in disappointment. Hopes brought by the “New Left” political movement that emerged from the demands of students, activists and workers, came to a close when economic powers and politics colluded in the 80s, removing the last glimmers of hope that change could happen from within the current political system. The 1980s also marked the beginning of the neoliberal era (deregulation of the financial system, erosion of welfare states, privatization programs, financial crises, cuts to public spending).
Finally, the fall of the Berlin Wall represented the end of the last bastion of ideological resistance against capitalism: communism. Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man main thesis was emblematic in the representation of the world we faced and still face today: the triumph of liberal democracy and capitalism marked the end point of mankind’s ideological and political evolution.
We live in a historically specific cultural paradigm, shaped during the course of the last century through mass media, popular culture and advertising, which converged together and formed our consumer culture and in an economic and political system structured to serve the interests of a small elite. In this scenario, anarchist thought has a dual function of resistance: as a challenge to the neoliberal ideology, and as a possible concrete utopia that can guide us in the construction of a valid alternative social order.
The most accessible ground for us, “the 99%,” through which a radical change can be achieved, is that of ideas. No economic or political revolution can bring genuine change without, stated Serge Latouche, an advocator of the degrowth movement, “the decolonization of our minds” from the ideological framework we find ourselves in. Anarchism challenges the ideas, the dehistoricized and naturalized assumptions, and the taken-for-granted norms of today’s society. In an anarchist society, solidarity would replace individualism; mutual aid would prevail on competition; altruism on egoism; spirituality on materialism; the local on the global. Changing the current global framework of rules first necessitates an individual ideological liberation that can only come through self-awareness. To free our body we must first free our mind."
When America Came 'This Close' to Establishing a 30-Hour Workweek
Interesting that even though Congress overturned the Senate's decision to pass the Black-Connery bill in 1933, which would've established a 6-hour work day/30-hour work week, some businesses, including Kellog, implemented a 6-hour work day anyway and saw improvements in productivity and, naturally, reductions in unemployment. Kellog didn't fully phase out the shorter work day until the mid-1980s. It'd be nice if companies started bringing it back. The deciding factro, as the article notes in Kellogg's case, is the cost of benefits to so many additional employees. Could there be a way to work this out? Inverted income tax for example? Basic Income? With corporate profits so high, couldn't it still be feasible to take on more workers while reducing our work day, the top CEOs' salaries not withstanding?
http://www.alternet.org/labor/when-america-came-close-establishing-30-hour-workweek
The Black-Connery Bill stipulated a 30-hour work week
http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781577180999_chunk_g97815771809994_ss1-99Back in the 1930's the Senate passed the Black-Connery Bill, supported by the AFL, which stipulated a 30-hour work week only to have the House overturn the bill in favor of FDR's National Recovery Act. We came close. Could this bill be revived or can a new one mandating a shorter work week be based on it?
Arguments for a 4-hour workday
http://www.iww.org/history/library/misc/Bekken2000We've had the 8 hour workday for generations now. (At least in principle). With increases in productivity and acknowledgement that wages for most workers have remained stagnant since the 70's, isn't it time to demand shorter hours with our much delayed wage increases? Why not make Friday's a half-day?
And while we're at it, maybe we should re-appreciate what it took to get an 8 hour workday:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
Professor Richard Wolff outlines 3 ways to promote Workers' Co-Ops
http://www.rdwolff.com/content/organized-labor-public-banks-and-grassroots-keys-worker-owned-economy1. Keep working with organized labor
2. Invite the public finance movement to fund the new economy
3. Organize the restless to build a mass movement
Urban Gardening - Local USA: PBS
Good episode from the PBS series Local USA on urban gardening and the attempt by a community to maintain self-sufficiency during difficult times:
http://video.pbs.org/video/2365138223/
Minimum Wage should be $21.72 per hour - Center for Economic Policy and Research
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/jontalton/2014/01/17/vote-should-seattle-raise-the-minimum-wage/Worker Ownership for the 99%
This is a video is from 2012. It seems to be a good idea, bringing United Steelworkers, Mondragon and OEOC together to form worker coops. As the OEOC director said, studies suggest that worker coops are more productive. You can contact them to see what progress they may have made in the past two years here:
USW:
http://usw.org/our_union/contact
The Ohio Employee Ownership Center:
http://www.oeockent.org/resources-events/selling-to-your-employees/worker-owned-cooperatives/
And Mondragon:
http://www.mondragon-corporation.com/language/en-US/ENG/Contact-us.aspx
The NEW American Dream
How about a dream that everyone can benefit from that doesn't entail gross inequalities in wealth or further damage to our environment. Instead of us competing against each other, we could all benefit from a general increase in wages and reduced hours for the bottom 99%, and increased taxation on the 1%. We know the benefits, which includes more time to organize and manage the workplace and establish co-determination or maybe even workers' ownership. Not to mention the gains in our personal lives and lives in the community.
We already know a 6-hour workday is possible:
"Wages have been increased and the six-hour day introduced." The CNT in the Spanish Revolution by Jose Peirats.
There's also a movement for a 4-hour workday:
http://www.4hourworkday.org/
Whichever you think is more plausible, this discussion needs to begin.
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