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Freethought
Association of West Michigan
Meeting Minutes for July 10, 2002, #119
Note a correction
to the bulletin listing of topics and events: "An Evolutionary
Approach to Critical Thinking" to be presented by Ron Palmer
will be on September 28 at 7PM. It was incorrectly shown as being
on the 25th.
Our Annual
Freethought Picnic is coming up this Saturday-July 13 starting
at 12, noon at Hagar Park in Jenison. Don Hansen handed out maps
he printed up for those who needed them. Hope to see you there!
July 20th
at 10AM is our Adopt-a-Highway clean-up scheduled time. We meet
at the Citgo station between Plainfield and the E. Beltline. Please
help if you are able to. Social time follows.
The topic
for our July 24 meeting is "The Federal Reserve Bank"
to be presented by Dennis Murphy.
On August
14, Dr. Herman Sullivan will present "The Neurological Basis
of Consciousness."
Steve Anderson
will present "Meditation for Heretics" on August 28.
This was rescheduled from a previous time due to Steve having
had surgery around the time of his originally- scheduled presentation.
Our topic
for this meeting was "Socialism vs. Capitalism" and
was presented by Freethought Association member and retired school
teacher (of 32 years), Frank Girard. He began by stating that
he regarded us as the ideal audience for a talk on this subject,
since we have rejected one aspect of social orthodoxy; religion,
and that since we have accepted the basic concepts of biological
evolution, it may be easier for us to entertain ideas related
to social evolution. In social evolution, one views the same struggle
for survival as is seen in biological evolution played out in
group social activities. This is manifested in migratory movement,
tool making, social organization in communal kinship groups and
so on-all designed for group survival. The earliest stage was
called, by Marx and Engels, "primitive communism."
Due to space
limitations, Girard's well-researched and thorough speech regarding
the historical events related to labor and class division, spanning
many centuries, will necessarily be condensed greatly. This unfortunately
truncated summary will expeditiously cover the history and events
in other lands and times and focus more on his presentation dealing
with more modern times and in our country. Girard said that the
development of agriculture seems to have been the critical event
that ended a classless society where everyone had as a birthright
a place at the table for resources. Farming created surpluses
and the need to guard and defend these resources, have distributors,
and a leadership elite and as it evolved, Girard argues, a society
emerged in which the labor system was chattel slavery. He stressed
that this emergence of rich landowners who controlled the means
of production not only stole away the mass' place at the table
but also their very independence from political control.
He took us
through coercive measures employed throughout Greek and Roman
times to keep the slave continuing to work while robbed of his
product and then to feudalism where the slave system was in decline
but was replaced by workers attached to the land as serfs, where
the worker labored in the landowner's fields for half a week,
after which he could work his own allotment and keep what he produced
to support himself and family. Frank noted that this structure
began to dissolve with a revival in trade where towns were established
and goods were produced for the market making for a new class
of businessmen who needed labor. The wages offered in these circumstances
attracted sharecroppers away from the fields, though were still,
according to the thesis of Girard's presentation, exploited workers.
The tools were owned by the employer, who could buy the worker's
labor time and not regard him as a valued contributor.
As the evolution
continued, the capitalist (business) class was in control of the
government and the powers of the state and then mere trade fell
to a large extent to industrialization, which made renting land
to subsistence farmers no longer as attractive. These people were
thrown off their lands to make way for urbanization and factory
labor-usually involving even the small children in long hours
of labor in harsh conditions and forced to live in slums and on
a poor diet.
In the US,
the working class in this period of social evolution were independent,
subsistence farmers (if white) or artisans serving a local market
with their skills. Land was cheap and the tools could be made
by hand. The farm could produce what was needed for the family
directly as well as indirectly, by selling the surplus for items
that could not be made on the farm. No boss, no layoffs. In the
trades there was the apprenticeship system with a secured future
outcome. Frank pointed out that this did not last as evolutionary
forces unfolded along technological and industrial lines. Farming
became industrialized with greater acreage, forcing the small
farmer off the land to become (like their European counterparts)
wage earners in cities.
Now, Girard
asserted, the masses do not own or control the means of production
and receive a small fraction of the value of what they produce
for the owner. The exploitation isn't as obvious as with slave
and serf systems but can be understood when looking at what Marx
called "surplus value." Our daily wage is earned in
the 1st two hours of labor with the remaining 6 hours as surplus
for the capitalist business owner. At this point our speaker presented
a list of indictments of capitalism, as if to a court adjudicating
the matter:
The first
count was robbery as mentioned by the stealing of time and surplus
labor by the owner. The second was that it creates poverty by
its very nature, limiting the return from labor and controlling
production to make an "artificial scarcity" of services
and goods. Since we can produce all needed things in abundance,
there is no material reason why anyone should go without them.
This, Girard believes, is because the capitalist owner is interested
only in how profitable it will be to provide the goods and services
(from furniture to health care). Food, he stated, is not produced
to feed people, houses to shelter, etc., but instead with an eye
to the bottom line. Capitalism also drives wages down to increase
profit, creating a "working poor" phenomena. His third
count was capitalism's link to war with its tens of millions of
civilian casualties, starvation, disease, and the suffering of
refugees. Socialists argue that this is a result of commercial
rivalry for markets and resources (read oil in many modern conflicts)
and war is a natural consequence of a decaying economic system.
Girard gave as exhibits for support, various historical examples.
Global unemployment and poverty are conjoined twins that socialists
see leading to disenfranchised youths see no future except to
become freedom fighters, for example. He ended this count with
the anti-Vietnam slogan: "War is good for business, invest
your sons" and mentioned war's ability to distract people
from domestic problems (as can be seen with our current "War
on Terrorism" and the soaring approval ratings of a Commander-in-
Chief who previously had almost no mandate).
Count 4 dealt
with the production of harmful items fueled by profit while 5
dealt with capitalism's link to crime, as can be seen by the glut
of recent accounting scandals and nod & wink wealth-accruing
(for the CEO's) but society weakening bargains struck between
corporations. Goods are produced that are knowingly inherently
deadly to consume, dangerous (due to low production standards
and cheap parts) to operate or manufactured with a built in short
term durability. This secretary recalls reading how Henry Ford
investigated which part of his automobiles was last to wear out.
Upon locating it, he had it immediately replaced with a cheaper
version. Count 6 referenced capitalism's role in environmental
impoverishment, including destruction of rain forests, global
warming and pollution.
Finally, the
7th count was capitalism's history as an "enemy of democracy."
In this vein, Girard spoke on how there is no democracy in the
workplace, as one labors for a dictator that disallows free speech.
He gave the statistic that the capitalist class owns 90% of the
productive wealth of this country, giving it control of the political
system, making for corruption here by influencing bureaucrats
and abroad, by supporting foreign dictators. He concluded this
litany of indictments by saying that any jury would call for the
death penalty for capitalism upon examining these charges.
Socialists
see that a revolution is possible simply by numerical strength
of laborers, once they realize where their best interests (as
individuals and for larger society) lie and learn that there is
Constitutional backing for the abolition of private ownership
of productive wealth. This will lead to democratically organized
production and determine social needs on a global level and fill
them accordingly.
Frank disassociated
socialism with places where the political state functioned like
a gigantic corporation, saying that the socialism he described,
that does not make use of wages, money, the market and political
state- has never existed. He sees in it little need for the political
state, saying that when "there is no longer a robber class
that needs laws and coercion to enforce its ownership rights and
control the people, we'll not need government." No buying
or selling and no market is in place in this system---goods are
produced for human needs, not based upon market forces. When the
profit margin is reduced, businesses close down even if the need
is still there. Under the system Frank spoke of, needs will be
taken care of, regardless of the bottom line. The incentive for
crime is reduced if not eliminated. Socialism means, Frank said,
that people together own the factories and other industries and
the land and services like schools, nursing homes and hospitals.
It also entails managing these industries together with elections
by the workers, with labor problems worked out by the laborers.
This spreads out, in this democratic fashion, regionally and finally
globally as Girard envisions it. Everyone who is able to work
will have to participate, resulting in full employment and sharing
of resources. No layoffs, replacements by cheaper labor, or downsizing
to cut costs is foreseen in this cooperative approach. "If
you work a thousand hours a year [, y]ou will get goods and services
that took a thousand hours to produce." The more you want,
the more hours you contribute.
Girard gave
a formula for calculating how many hours per year it takes to
produce all the items needed for that year and then dividing the
workload in a manner to create the products of the various industries.
Since he sees the practices outlined for labor as being the same
ones for government, there would be no need for ruling bodies-courts,
congresses or "kings" (to maintain the alliterative
sound). In a hand out sheet he distributed, it was noted that
incentive for participation in this system would arise from the
majority of workers suddenly being empowered, vital, having purpose,
contributing to their own well being and their family's and also
to larger society. In this system, equal access to the resources
and the ability to produce all that is required to satisfy human
needs, without regard to an elite minority judging these needs
based on profit, would occur. This secretary, while taking no
stance- pro or con- herein, on the general, overall ideas in the
presentation notes, however, that possibly "waste" in
terms of unnecessary production and resources drained in capitalist
schemes as well as industries underutilized or poorly managed
by those who do not do the labor might be reduced in this system.
The socialism
presented in this talk, does not call for a "kinder, gentler"
capitalism since it is opposed to the capitalist structure completely.
Business owners who might strive toward some of the ideals expressed
in this form of socialism would be committing financial suicide,
existing as they do in the larger status quo capitalist society;
so the approach becomes to scrap this larger system. In the socialistic
ideal given, there is simply no logic in depriving others or not
participating in a mutually beneficial system.
Questions
and statements following this presentation included comparing
this ideal to other "utopian" ones and even to religion;
refuting the "dictator" language of the business owner
as given in this talk (as well as support for the idea of the
severely curtailed power of the working class); agreement that
pure capitalism does not work but neither does pure socialism;
questions about incentive, the relative innate value of differing
forms of labor, problems regarding the lazy contributor who has
the same access to resources (since the same number of hours are
given) as the industrious and efficient worker; how the physically
and/or mentally challenged fit in; and how will "undesirable"
jobs still be filled without wage incentive? Girard said that
capitalism tries to convince the worker that he participates in
a truly reciprocal process and that this is like comparing rape
to consensual sex. What about self interest? Frank said that it
is in our self interest to have a smoothly running society and
mentioned the power of "social approval" to both motivate
individuals toward the greater good and steer them away from devastating
the cooperative system. All the tallying up of time with production
and resource access would, in one member's opinion, make for more
"bean counters" and we maybe have too many of these
already. As to production speed/ efficiency, since much is mechanized
now anyway-our pace is set by the speed of the machinery and even
if some members are not as useful, it would still be less wasteful,
in Girard's opinion, than our current support of a vast, "useless"
capitalist system.
"What
are property relationships? They are essentially relationships
of exclusion. The pen is mine- therefore it is not yours. You
take this pen and I will call the police. It is no use pleading
with them that the words of a brilliant new poem have just come
into your head and you feel inspired to write them down at once.
You may be a second Shelley- I may be illiterate; but if I possess
twenty pens and you own none the police will not decide who to
arrest on the basis of a poetry competition. "This factory
is mine; therefore I own all that is produced in it. It does not
matter that I may never visit my factory and would not be able
to operate the machines even if I did- I take what the producers
in the factory make and if they take any they are criminals who
must be reported to the police and dealt with." From "Society
Would be More Secure Without Police, Prisons or Armies" reprinted
from a debate with Dr. Stephen Coleman as the author of the above
quote given in 1986 at Conway Hall at a Forum meeting.
Secretary:
Charles LaRue.
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