That Thin Illusion Of Democracy.

        Well the "election" is over all the ranting about change has resulted in the system staying the same, did you expect anything else? Now the privileged parasitical political ballerinas can get on with the business of plundering the public purse, and putting the ordinary people in there place, subservient at the bottom of the pile. Perhaps it will have some people scratching their heads and saying, "what was the point" of all that hype and phony hysteria. Let's hope so.

       This little summing up from Acorn Winter Oak:

The capitalist system will not abolish itself.

In fact, it will always do all that it physically can to preserve itself and its control over our lives. While it likes to pretend its structures of domination amount to “democracy”, this is not the case, because it could never leave the door open to the possibility of its own abolition by democratic means. The only changes possible via the fake-democracy of the system are limited reforms, which leave the system very much in place. When we say “limited”, we perhaps mean “extremely limited”, because even the mildest of social-democratic tinkering, undoing some of the worst excesses of contemporary neoliberalism, is beyond the pale for the system.
 

corbyn smear

        However, when the system draws the line too tightly around its preferred outcomes and uses its vast powers of manipulation to prevent these limited reforms, it risks exposing its so-called “democracy” as a sham. A whole new raft of people suddenly become aware of the true nature of the system and its fake-democratic window dressing. Their eyes are opened to the fact that there is no point in playing by the rules devised by the system, no point in walking time and time again into the same traps that it sets for us.
      These moments are risky for the system, because they risk radicalising people who, up to this point, had bought into much of its charade. The UK is currently experiencing one such moment. A vast amount of enthusiasm and hope had been invested – naively, from our perspective – in the possibility of an election victory for Corbyn’s Labour Party. The reforms proposed by Labour were far from fundamental and yet remained unacceptable to the system.
       The unprecedented blatancy of the propaganda assault on Corbyn has left many people, particularly young people, asking themselves some serious questions about the nature of British “democracy” and the approach that is needed if real social change is ever to be brought about.

 And that can’t be a bad thing!

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Ethical Capitalism??

      There is at the moment a lot of talk about turning our economic system into ethical capitalism. Appealing to our governments and corporate bodies  to join the green and ethical revolution. What a naive fantasy, an illusion, a blind alley that will only end in total disillusionment for it followers, and disaster for the rest of us. Capitalism's foundations are exploitation, it is based on making money from somebody else's efforts, how do you make that ethical? Let's hope those pursuing that path wake up in time to see the folly of their ways, go for real change, a real ethical and green society and the total demolition of capitalism. Then perhaps we can start to build that ethical and green society freed from the cancer of profit and exploitation.

      As usual, calm words of common sense from one of my favourite sites, Not Buying Anything. 

         The term Ethical Consumerism is an oxymoron. It is a dream, a fantasy that business as usual types hope will extend current harmful ways of doing things. Don't be fooled by this industrial strength green washing. In order to have ethical consumerism we would have to have an ethical supply chain. First there would have to be ethical resource extraction. Mining companies would no longer be able to hire thugs to murder indigenous activists blocking the mining sites that are destroying their livelihoods. Fomenting violent coups in order to mine resources such as lithium would definitely be out.
      Then there would need to be ethical manufacturing. If made ethical, companies would have to put people and the planet before shareholder interests, and the selfish motives of CEOs. Retail interests would also have to act ethically. No more cooking the books, or fleecing workers to pad the bottom line.
       At every stage corporations would have to do the ethical thing and take responsibility for any damage done while conducting their business. A study done showed that most, if not all, corporations would go bankrupt if they had to pay for the damage they do.
       And what about marketing? Can you imagine ethical advertising? Neither can I. Advertisers wouldn't be able to lie anymore. Or manipulate us with things like "nudging" and neuromarketing manipulation. The entire industry would crumble when they could no longer manufacture desire through the use of nefarious methods of mind control.
      The very greenwashing that brings us something as outlandish as ethical consumerism would become illegal. Greenwashing, and ethical consumerism would disappear into a void of lying blackness, never to be seen again.
       Let us not forget the ethical banking system that would be needed to support all the other ethical endeavours. What would that even look like? No interest to be paid, or charged, because getting something without working for it is unethical. Also, no more money laundering, or other dirty tricks.
      Wouldn't we also need an ethical tax regime? Large corporations and the uber wealthy would actually have to pay their fair share in such a system. And to guide it all, we would need ethical governance at the local, state, and federal levels. How is that going these days? Is propaganda ethical? Is jailing whistleblowers ethical? Is interfering in the business of other countries ethical?
      At best, ethical consumerism would lead to the end of consumerism. And along the way it might take down capitalism and the state, too. There is nothing ethical or logical about the greed, waste, corruption, and selfishness of our current system.
         Let them fail in a creative destruction the likes of which the world has never seen. That would be a welcome outcome. Anything less is a fantastical dream, because current ways can not go on for much longer.

So, what colour would you like your dragon?

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Must We Bend Our Knee At The Altar Of Capital?

      If ever we needed proof that social reformist parties functioning within the capitalist rule book, just don't work, we need look no further than Greece today. What was a genuine explosion for real change from the people of Greece, was channelled into a party political farce, where the only change was the face of the new messiah. Once again a cartload of promises evaporated in the labyrinth of the state apparatus. Once again the people are expected to bend their knee before the altar of capital. The financial Mafia cracked their whip and the government obeyed. 

 Kneel before your new Messiah.

This from Void Network:

Election Boycott against Capital and the State
    The approval of the third memorandum by the SYRIZA—ANEL coalition government clearly destroys the reformist delusions. Very few continue to believe that under the domain of global capitalism, the European Union, and contemporary totalitarianism, that government programs could possibly satisfy the needs of the exploited. Through their facetious referendum, the Left government transformed the social effervescence of the “NO” into a resounding “YES” for emiseration. Now they are preparing for new elections, showing how quickly they have learned to take advantage of the rules of the bourgeois political game. In the same moment, a section of SYRIZA has split off, trying to renovate faith in the prospect of leftwing management of capitalism. They continue to cultivate the delusion of delegating the solution of social problems to self-proclaimed saviors, within a populist-nationalist program of interclass collaboration. But it is now clear that the neoliberal path as well as the statist alternative converge in their goals of capitalist growth and the further devaluation of our labor and our lives.
        It is more urgent than ever to understand that we can only rely on our own power. To prevent social cannibalism, it is necessary to organize the self-defense of the exploited and oppressed. Networks of social solidarity based in direct participation that take a position against the philanthropic logic of NGOs and the Church, can create a common field of defense and reproduction of our class in conditions of crisis and the assault of Capital. Simultaneously, we must sabotage the plans of the State and Capital, and organize our attack. With base unions and workers' initiatives that will attack the bureaucratic, state-legitimized syndicalism and organize in the workplace, with public assemblies that will turn neighborhoods into zones of resistance, with federated political groups, with all of these we have to reorganize every aspect of social life, and to organize our attack against the dominance of State and Capital. Inseparable from our self-defense as a class is the defense of the devalued segment of our class: the immigrants and the refugees. We will not allow the fascists to ever again appear in public space, promoting as always the interests of the bosses.

      In this year's Thessaloniki International Trade Fair, we make our first appearance in the movement as the Initiative for the Creation of the Anarchist Federation, emphasizing the collective organizing of our needs and the coalescence of the struggles of our class against contemporary totalitarianism. We support the uncompromising and independent social and class struggles, such as the struggle of the workers of the self-organized, occupied factory of BIO. ME. that of the residents of Halkidiki against the goldmine in Skouries, and all of the other self-organized initiatives from below, with which we will struggle together against the Thessaloniki International Trade Fair. Against the State, the European Union, local and international capital, we walk towards the social revolution, anarchy, and communism.
WE WILL NOT LIVE LIKE SLAVES.
FOR SOCIAL REVOLUTION,
FREEDOM, AND COMMUNISM—ANARCHY
      Open invitation to participate in the demonstration against the Thessaloniki International Fair*, Saturday, 5 September 2015, Kamara, 6pm
     *The Thessaloniki International Trade Fair is an annual meeting of investors and business owners, important in the Balkan and east Mediterranean region.
    Anarchist Group Thrialida (Fuse) (Athens), Anarchist Group Kathodon (On the Way) (Athens), Anarchist Group from Nea Filadelfia Athens, Anarchist Group Rubicon (Athens), Anarchists for Social Liberation (Athens), Void Circle (Political Section of Void Network, Athens), Libertarian Initiative of Thessaloniki, Anarchist Group Oktana (Crete), Libertarian Initiative Against State and Capital “No Man's Land” (Patras)

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CAMERON - MILIBAND, TWO OF A KIND!!

        The following is a short extract from Tony Benn's speech made at the weekend. It is all well and good what he says, but we don't want to to defeat the government and see a Miliband Labour government in its place. After all the man himself Ed, has said that they cannot reverse the cuts. To replace the Cameron/Clegg millionaires with look-a-like named Miliband is hardly going to improve the conditions of the ordinary people of this country. They are all singing from the same music sheet, it's just that the Cameron mob are singing it as a reel, while the Miliband bunch want to sing it as a waltz. The end result will be the same, a drastically decimated welfare system, a low wage economy and millionaires making loads of cash. It is not the faces at the front of the package that is the problem, it is the package itself.

          “The present government is mounting the biggest attack ever made on the welfare state created after the Second World War. Their aim is to finish the work begun under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

         When people came back from the war, the view was that it was the responsibility of government, representing the people as a whole, to provide affordable homes, free medical care, education for all, and key public services.

        All of that is now under threat. The Con-Dem Coalition's programme of austerity and privatisation will take us back 80 years.

          We are going to need a tidal wave of resistance from below to defeat the government. Every one of us needs to get active, involve others, spread the spirit of resistance to help to build a united mass movement to stop the cuts.”

What we want is a mass movement of resistance to change the system, not to change the face at the podium or the bums on the seats of power, and party political politics will never do that.

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