There are many that would have us believe, that we the world are merrily coasting along doing better than has ever been done before. They would have us also believe, that any problems that still confront us can be easily resolved through a combination of new technology and capitalism unlimited. This, in America, is almost always combined with belief that something is special about our country, and that the core spirit of democracy and freedom reside in our nationhood, under God and what they call the free enterprise system. This has become the prevailing national mythology, and it is nowhere more so than in the US, where the talk is constantly of DEMOCRACY, capital letters, we know what it is better than any other people in the world! But actually sad to say to the contrary, there is nowhere more where democracy is less understood than in the US of A. Capitalism is actually the antitheisis of economic democracy, which is the lynchpin of all democracy. Without economic democracy, there is no decision making for the common folk. Instead, there is only dictatorship by the rich, through their corporate control over the government and all economic activity. Yet, lack of economic democracy is considered the natural state of life by the overwhelming majority of common folk in the US.
The economic dictatorship of the rich not only distributes the products of production unfairly to the rich and away from the poor, but malforms production itself. Conservatives say that the market rationalizes what capitalists produce, but the contrary is actually true. As an example, few of us in the US actually want the war industry to dominate our economic life, yet the companies that produce the missiles, bombs, planes, tanks, ships, etc. grab control over the government to insure that production is directed to them through government financing from tax monies. Our energy companies do not direct energy production to conserving scarce natural resources as most of the population would like, but rather to the misuse of it, to motivate wars to monopolize energy resources for themselves, and to create legislation that directs national planning to making overuse of energy the only possibility for the mass of people. So we have the energy monopolies combine in pushing warfare along with the war material industries own push in that direction. War becomes the main highway for production in an undemocratic economic system run by the rich, for the rich.
All economic activity is perverted so that the rich benefit under capitalism. Thus, we have a medical system that’s main purpose is not to provide health, but rather to give out as little real care for as much cost as possible. We have a food production and distribution system whose sole design is to make maximum profits. There is no concern about the public health, or the nutrional value and taste of the food that the public is forced to consume. And in like manner, we have a housing industry whose only desire is to max their own money making, damn the need to make livable neighborhoods and cities. Newly constructed instant slums dot America all over as a result. Our country’s public health is deteriorating, and our cities’ landscapes become more degraded every year.
So how can this overproduction of crap, and underproduction of real value be halted? Not to do so is to doom our planet. Not to do so is to not only have a throwaway economy, but a throwaway world. Not to halt this type of economy run undemocratically for the rich, is to halt world life itself. Capitalist economy is a cancer eating away at world ecology. Since the decision making is undemocratic in this economic system, a resort to what the majority might want will be met by repression. Is met by repression. The rich will not voluntarily give up their undemocratically held economic power. They do not respect the decisions made at the government level if those decision run against their maintaining power held in dollars. The corporations do not like democracy, are threatened by democracy, and will repress democracy.
Let’s be clear here. Nobody thinks it right that criminals hold onto money made by criminal activity. An undemocratic economy runs as a criminal consortium of sorts. It is a form of pyramid scheme. Conservatives will go ballistic at this point, and shout that nobody has the right to tell others what to do with their own property. Well, they are wrong about that. Can you imagine that argument being made by major drug traffickers? Yes, the public does have a right to control the use of assets made by forms of criminal conduct. And capitalism is essentially just that. A series of criminal monopoly enterprises that conspire to deny adequate monies necessary to life for the majority of the world’s population. Their conspiracies, in fact, conspire to endanger and destroy our public life in multiple manners. These criminal conspiracies will have to be broken up for the world’s population to obtain the economic democracy necessary to maintain this world in a liveable manner. Instead of respecting the capitalist, the world should recognize the essential criminal nature of the capitalist. Each starving child of the world has a capitalist robbing them of life. Don’t let the conservative status quo lover convince you otherwise. Capitalism is theft. And the militarism that is the lifeblood of capitalism is theft.
Let’s imagine our biggest company here in Colorado Springs for a second. That company is Lockheed. The capitalist owners will keep Lockheed producing weaponry to kill people on the other side of the globe. They are not about to reform production and turn Lockheed into a company that sells goodwill. Or that distributes food, or that builds schools, community centers, and neighborhood hospitals and clinics. These capitalists are going to insist that their weaponry is for the public good, and that who they kill are the bad guys. That’s how they make their money. They are not going to give their American workforce democratic input into the workings of Lockheed. Lockheed is a criminal conspiracy, is it not? Not only against the people that their weaponry goes out to kill, but to their own workforce.
We need economic democracy before the world can begin to solve its problems. American workers need to stop just going along with the killing. It is not about just one war. They must stop accepting the crumbs that the superrich throw occasionally their way. They need to take responsibility for their own labor efforts. They need to demand input into the decision making. They need to recognize that it is their own tax dollars that go into paying off the rich running Lockheed at present. And if they get thrown out of work because the war is not hot at some moment in the future, they should not cheer on their corporate brass to make up new wars so as to resume more weaponry production. They need to throw Lockheed’s owners into jail for being war criminals, and they need to direct production democratically decided by they the workforce themselves, so as to benefit society as a whole, rather than to murder off parts of it.
Economic democracy is needed, and economic totalitarianism (the capitalist making all decisions, and other people none) needs to be rejected. That means Lockheed needs to be nationalized, and the owners disenfranchised. Their criminality demands punishment.
America now has a Democratic House of Representatives and Senate. Colorado has a Democratic house, senate and governor. El Paso County even has more Democratic representatives. But who did Colorado Springs elect to fill GOP Congressman Joel Hefley’s seat? A screaming idiot of a Republican, the ninny-voiced former state senator Douglas P. “Pea-brain” Lamborn. In the midst of a sea change of reform, area voters opted for not just another throwback, but a candidate even Hefley and fellow Republicans could not stoop to endorse. 