Sigma’s Simulacrum of Reality

Why? No idea. Just do.

Coming down with a bout of mild depression? Perhaps.

Need booze…

Sigh…

What do you say to this, neo-liberals?

The Scientific American’s research found that after stripping away all the ideological smokescreens and ’socialist paranoia’ of the neo-conservatives in the USA, Nordic states do fare better than Anglo-Saxon states.

It’s time for US leaders to find the courage to defy their country’s ‘tradition’ on this, for the benefit of the majority of its citizens. This also goes for Christianity. Religious zealots are pulling the strings behind US politics nowadays, and it’s a very worrying trend.

I got this cute little book from Bargain Basement Bookstore under Central Station about a month ago when I chanced upon this book for a ridiculous bargain price of $2.95. I knew then it was a sign from above that I should get it

Since I’ve read this book about a month ago, I don’t remember everything that well anymore. So bear with me.

Anyway, the Communist Manifesto (German title: Das Kapital) itself is actually just a very short booklet, consisting only of 38 pages for my copy. As everyone should already know (if not, please go back under your rock) it was written by the Germans Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848. It is the underlying philosophy which guided all communist governments in the past till the present.

Basically, the Manifesto is less a comprehensive theoretical guide than a fiery, rabble-rousing short treatise rallying the masses to go against capitalism. Marx (who’s the principle theorist of Communism, as stated by Engels himself) despaired of the fact that right after the dismantling of feudalism, certain large segments of most European societies still continued to live in hardship. This time the new oppressors were a new class of capitalists. He called this class the ‘bourgeois’ and contrasted them with the ‘proletariats’ or the poor working-class.

Its famous introduction:

“A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.”

Marx believed that the capitalists have taken over the role as the new oppressors of the working class in place of the landed gentry and nobility class of the old. This was understandable in the context of Marx’s time, as workers then really lead wretched lives akin to semi-slavery. They were widely exploited and put to work on very dangerous tasks and workplaces as well as being paid pittens.

Marx believed that private property is the root cause of the suffering of the working-class:

“But does wage labor create any property for the laborer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage labor, and which cannot increase except upon conditions of begetting a new supply of wage labor for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labor.”

Therefore, he believed that both classes cannot co-exist together and that the only way for the proletariat to free themselves from their slavery is through revolution. He felt that since the working-class vastly outnumbered the capitalists and middle-class bourgeois, the working-class should be the ruling class who would then rule to the benefit of the majority workers. He believe that the bourgeois and other privileged classes were reactionaries and would constantly seek to defend the status quo that was beneficial to them.

Quoted from the book:

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

Many people might have been told or heard that communism is supposed to be anti-religion. In actual fact, Marx hardly concerned himself with this at all in the Manifesto. There were only passing critiques of it, and even then, only on the authorities and formal organisational structures of religion which he thought also took part in subjugating and exploiting the working-class masses.

The biggest problem of the Manifesto is that it does not tell us how Marx intended his revolutions to happen and what organisational structure should be put in place of the (then) present ruling structures. Hence this is why we hear the term Marxist-Leninist. This is because Vladimir Lenin was the first leader who formulated the practical applications of communism (known as Leninism) as a complement to its theoretical elder brother of Marxism. His Bolshevik Party was the first successful communist party to seize government in the world during the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia.

Many people have argued that this omission has caused untold misery to many citizens of countries which have tried to implement communism. Other defenders of Marxism have said that all the past communist states deviated from what Marxist intended and true Marxism have not been discredited yet. They believe that communism is the ultimate system for countries since it won’t be based on the greed of the few but on collectives and sharing for the benefit of all. They just contend that the people haven’t reached a stage where this idea can work as yet.

An example of this is the common authoritarian characteristic of most communist government. Or the fact that most communist parties also had an infusion of nationalism into them. Marx never advocated the former, and was in fact very opposed to the latter. He actually envisioned workers from every nationality uniting to form an irresistible political movement that would launch proletariat revolutions around the world as a single movement.

All in all, an interesting read. Everyone should have at least read this once in order to understand what all the fuss about Marxism was about. And also to find out which criticisms of it were valid and which were not.

My book included great extra ‘before’ and ‘after’ sections in addition to the main Manifesto itself. The ‘before’ section explains what lead to Marx coming up with communism, how his society was like during his time, and the ‘’after’ section examines examples of communist states and what went wrong with them. It also debates about the continued validity of Marx’s criticism of capitalism in today’s world.

“Workers of the world, unite!”

“Liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice, socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality” - Mikhail Bakunin

Neo-liberalism in action

Earlier, I posted a couple of rants about how I hated working at Target during the Christmas Sale 2 week period. There I railed against certain aspects of it which I thought were influenced by neo-liberalist economic ideology espoused by Uncle Sam.

During the last term of the Howard government, Australia came under intense attack from neo-liberalism. This happened when the Howard government gained rare control of both houses for the first time in decades after the 04 elections. As a result, Howard tried passing WorkChoices, a set of very neo-liberal industrial relations policies.

I believe that Howard’s rhetorics and expectations that WorkChoices would increase the flexibility for employees and employers to design their own contracts are incredibly naive and unrealistic. Already, Australia’s ’socialist tendencies’ are considerably less pronounced when compared to other developed countries such as France or Germany. Strikes aren’t frequent occurrences, and even when they happen, they are usually quite accommodating and those unions provide skeleton crews to continue to man vital posts. Militant unionism are only a tiny minority in the national union body, and they are repeatedly marginalised by both sides of politics (yes, by Labor too).

One of the key ideologies underlying WorkChoices is that it sidelines unions in the contract bargaining between employees and employers. The Liberals argued that employees and employers knows best what each want from each other, and trade unions are an unnecessary party in these deliberations. However, especially for blue-collared workers, their bargaining powers are considerably less compared to their employers. Hence coming together in the form of a union is the only way they can compensate for their power disparity in these bargaining rounds to protect their wages, benefits and working conditions. Without unions, employers will easily steamroll over the concerns of a single employee in those areas. Here, the adage ’strength in unity, death in disunity’ holds very true. The Lib’s introduction of the AWAs seeks to eliminate the influence of unions in those deliberations.

Right now, as a result of Howard’s 11 years of gradual neo-liberalisationism, the workplace of Australia is increasingly becoming more casualised. This means that many jobs are on a ‘we’ll call you when we need you’ basis. Although this might be a neo-liberalist’s wet dream, it isn’t as erotic for the working-class. The casualisation of the workplace has resulted in unpredictable shifts and hours of work for them. These workers would also be subjected to an unpredictable income flow.

I used to be a bit critical towards the Australian restriction imposed on businesses to operate only between 9-5pm. However, my recent experience has persuaded me towards that camp now. True, extending the operating hours for shops is beneficial to consumers. But till what end? There has to be a balance with this. The employees in those shops are humans too. They need time to socialise, to rest, and to enjoy life in general. To swing too much towards consumer convenience (as well as employer profitability) is unfair. Constantly getting the late shift is no fun, I can tell you that. It restrict one’s social life. Luckily, Australia still hasn’t gone full ‘Asian’ in this regard atm. Its adoption of a one day a week late night shopping is a good compromise, IMO.

WorkChoices also seeked to eliminate penalty rates and worker’s prerequisite conditions. These aims are just blatant transferences of power to employers and pandering towards its voting bases. Penalty rates are fine as they are, which if I’m not mistaken are 1.5x for Sunday and after 5pm shifts, and 2x for public holidays. These are traditionally rest days for most Aussies but it’s cool if businesses want to continue to earn more profits during these times. They just have to pay their workers more for trading in their rest days to slave away on those days. It was this issue that played a big part in the ACTU and Labor campaigns against WorkChoices in the 07 election, which ultimately contributed to their victory over the Liberals.

WorkChoices have also transferred minimum wage setting powers from the National Wage Cases at the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) to the newly created Australian Fair Pay Commission. Again, this body is just another unashamed attempt by the Libs to exercise their neo-liberal ideologue and has almost nothing to do with necessity as the AIRC has performed its role well in the past. I am not a diehard supporter of the minimum wage. Instead, I am a supporter of proper welfare net for the disadvantaged in society. Hence I’m open to other methods of achieving this. John Lee and Rajan seem to be big supporters of the income tax credit method of achieving this. After perusing it for a bit, I don’t really see why it seems so enticing to them. Basically, this model just transfers the tax burden towards the poor from businesses to the government, which in extension to the public taxpayers. Plus the increased complexity of this method will surely increase the cost of administering it.

The problem I feel with neo-liberals and such is that they tend to view the workforce as merely another commodity, when it so isn’t the case. Workers can never just be viewed as something which which companies can obtain and discard subject to economic conditions, however enticing this idea may be to the neo-libs. This is because there are serious flow on effects with those actions that adversely affect workers. The welfare of families are at stake when a worker is sacked. Societal ills could then easily follow suit. Therefore, increased consideration before the sacking of workers is, IMO, essential.

Of all the WorkChoices aims, I can say that I only agree with one. This is the exemption of companies with fewer than 101 employees from unfair dismissal laws. I guess this is because I can’t stand over-whining spoilt lousy workers who tries to screw their bosses with large payouts and costly termination processes. So sue me.

One of the simplest reasons why I’m not a supporter of neo-liberalism is the same reason why I’m not a supporter of communism: The examples of countries where they’re implemented leaves a lot to be desired. The USA is undoubtedly the champion of neo-liberalism. There, unions are castrated. Big businesses flourish. Minimum wage is peanuts.

And the results of all that? The emergence of the ‘working poor-class’, people who hold 2 or 3 minimum wage jobs (hooray, employment flexibility!). Ummn, doesn’t that kinda give us a clue as to how accurate their ‘minimum wage’ definition is?? A society where there exist a big and growing income disparity among its people. Where big corporations have undoubtedly demonstrated that they are incapable of ’self-regulation’, putting the neo-liberal’s beliefs of this to shreds. True, the USA is still the no. 1 economic power in the world, but what’s the point of that if the majority of its people don’t get a decent piece of the pie?

The mere fact that there are 3 major US presidential candidates on both sides of politics: Edwards and Obama for the Dems and Huckabee for the Reps, which based their campaign platforms on championing the interests of the ‘little guys’ says a lot about the very unequal wealth distribution in that country.

I take a look at the Human Development Index (HDI) ranking and what do I see? The top 10 countries consist of 5 strongly social democratic countries: Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and France, with the rest consisting of countries with nominal social democratic traditions: Australia, Canada, Netherlands, Ireland and Japan (strong government intervention and partnership policies).

And where’s the great proponent of neo-liberalism on this list? The largest and strongest economy in the world is merely at no. 12. Unimpressive.

And therein lies the greatest flaw in neo-liberalism: Too much emphasis on profit generation at all cost and not near enough effort on wealth redistribution. This results in the formation of a ’super-rich’ class which merely reinvest their considerable wealth as capital to further accumulate more wealth, generating an impenetrable and under-taxed ‘wealth cycle’. The middle-class there have little chance of breaking into this ‘financial heaven’ due to insufficient income accumulation, while the working-class have nothing to look forward to except further exploitation of their labour in return for pitiful wages. Factor in the extra ‘barriers’ that the rich class have constructed to perpetuate their position in society: private schools, private healthcare services, exclusive suburbs, costly university fees, and you have a society that’s clearly divided into 2 (like what Edward has pickup up on in his ‘Two Americas” speech).

So do we really want to live in a society like this? My answer to this is a big, resounding “NO, THANK YOU“. I’ll take my $12/hour minimum wage, welfare safety net, union-involved social democratic country any day instead, thanks.