GlobalTalk

Generational Science and Class Struggle

[These excerpts from Generations: the History of America’s Future, 1584-2069 (1991) are updated with the specific generational nomenclature that Strauss and Howe subsequently deployed in The Fourth Turning (1997). Sequentially, they are somewhat rearranged to facilitate flow. My supplied headings and commentary are in bold.]

Just about the time that socialism collapsed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (1988-89), I was part of the last remnant of the New Communist Movement (NCM), a thing that broke out in the early 1970s as youthful, revolutionary-minded Boomers sought structure to sustain our Sixties awakening and rebellion against corporate-driven war, racism and sexism. The NCM tried to forge a revolutionary party, but 15 years of effort had proved that it could not be done. Our group – the New Democratic Movement, the last inculcation of the Communist Workers Party – broke up in 1989, disoriented and demoralized.

But it never seemed to me that Marxism lacked truth and understanding. Rather, it just didn’t seem to have the reach necessary to guide revolution in (what was becoming) the post-Cold War, global market. As I wrestled to gain perspective on our party-building failure, yet retain the truthful core of Marxist economic and class analysis, I happened, in 1991, to come across a newly published history of the US, one with a startlingly different (than Marxism) way of understanding social and political phenomena. In Generations: the History of America’s Future, 1584-2069, William Strauss and Neil Howe uncovered why even class-driven revolutions (like those predicted by Marx) cannot succeed at just any ol’ time…nor is it a matter of things being simply bad enough to spark one off. These things matter, a lot, but even if they’re present, a social revolution can (will) occur only when a certain generational configuration arrives on the political scene. Indeed, when the required configuration takes shape, revolutionary change is all but inevitable. Strauss and Howe showed that such configurations are recurrent, appearing, however, only at 80-year intervals.

When we youthful Boomers were rising in revolution (and trying to build a revolutionary party) back in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the critical, revolutionary configuration of generations identified by Strauss and Howe was only halfway formed. Once I realized their generational thesis was sound (in 1990), I accepted that it would be another 30 years before revolution could succeed in the US. This understanding provided considerable emotional support as I watched the slow disaster that was the Clinton-Bush-Obama years. But, now, I’m happy to see that the generational configuration has taken shape as predicted, and I welcome the wide path to revolution and socialism that it now portends.

As you read the excerpts below, keep in mind that this prophecy was written nearly 30 years ago, using generation theory as its guide. Just as with experiments to prove theories in physics (and other “hard” sciences), the accuracy of these “soft” science projections in the unfolding reality of human affairs is strong proof of their theory’s validity.

If you have an interest in history or, more significantly, if you wish to be a change agent in these difficult times, the generational theory of Strauss and Howe is as important as the class theory of Karl Marx or VI Lenin, the gender theory of Helen Fisher, the socioecological theories of Marvin Harris and Sing Chew and the monetary anthropology of David Graebner.

Strauss and Howe first explained the recurring cycles of history in 1991:

Cycles and futures are not supposed to be a happy mix. When Americans talk of generations, they like to associate them with hopes for progress – in particular, with the American Dream that each successive generation will fare better over time. The very concept of a historical cycle may seem to threaten these hopes and this dream. If history runs in circles, after all, how can it move forward? As the generational biographies (reported by the authors in Generations: the History of America’s Future, 1584-2069) have shown, however, our cycle is perfectly compatible with the progress of civilization by any standard normally used to measure it – material, spiritual, social, or cultural. All the cycle explains is when and why different generations apply different standards in working toward progress. Wherever we use the word “cycle,” the reader may if he wishes replace it with “spiral,” with all the opportunity and danger implicit in that word. A spiral turns in a circle while at the same time moving upward – or downward [349, emphasis in original].

Today’s Fourth Turning (aka, Crisis Era): the precipice of social – that is, generational – revolution.

THE MOOD OF A [FOURTH TURNING], such as the present time, reflects society’s transition into a secular crisis. A grim preoccupation with outer-world peril grows to maximum intensity, as spiritual curiosity declines. Artistic culture avoids nuance, often (in the form of propaganda) overtly reinforcing “good” conduct. Worldly problems are no longer deferred, but are allowed to congeal into a struggle requiring total consensus, aggressive public institutions, and personal sacrifice. Wars are very likely, and they are fought with fury and efficacy. Sex role distinctions widen, public and family order strengthen, and personal violence and substance abuse decline. A rush of hopeful confidence in near-term secular progress crowds out worries about questionable public means and contributes to a low tolerance for risk-prone lifestyles. Child-rearing reaches the cyclical point of maximum protection and structure. The era’s defining, two-apart generational dialogue arises between coming-of-age Civics [nowadays, Millennials] and aging Idealists [Boomers] – a friendly alliance that harnesses the worldly energy of the young but leaves values in the hands of the old [356].

Today’s Fourth Turning had its roots in the spiritual awakening (Second Turning) of the Sixties (core years, 1967-1980). At different stages in their generational development, Boomers and GenXers were shaped – in different ways – by the awakening.

RISING ADULTHOOD: Having cultivated a strong inner life during childhood, [Boomers] come of age experiencing a spiritual awakening. They burst forth with angry challenges to their elders’ public and private behavior, which they regard as intolerably deficient in moral worth. Unable to defend themselves effectively, aging [GIs] ultimately cede the values agenda to the young. Meanwhile, rising [Boomers] launch the entire society into a fever of renewal, which typically peaks and is already half forgotten by the time their last wave has entered rising adulthood. Right-brained spiritualists, they encourage individual autonomy, resist social cooperation (except as a means of self-discovery), and erode prevailing distinctions between sex roles [358].

YOUTH: The [Gen X] generation is child to an era of still-powerful [GI] elders, torn [Silent] midlifers, and moralizing [Boomer] rising adults. With [Silent] approval, children are left free to their own norms of behavior and adjust to a world of narrowing sex-role distinctions. No longer protective, parents expose children to real-world anxieties and dangers. With a largely self-absorbed adult society immersed in a spiritual awakening, [GenX] youths are given little sense of mission or direction. Adults tend to view them harshly – at best, as inconvenient; at worst, as disappointing or even wicked [360].

The Third Turning (aka, Unraveling): the 1980s and 90s, the Reagan-Bush-Clinton political era. The change generations – Boomers, GenXers and Millennials, each a life phase older in their development – endured the Unraveling in different ways.

When America reaches [the end of the Third Turning, aka, the end of an Unraveling], sometime around 2003, each generation will fully occupy a phase of life. The surviving GIs will be very old, the Silent in elderhood, Boomers in midlife, [GenXers] in rising adulthood, and Millennials in youth. The generational alignment will match the constellations of 1924, 1855, 1766, and 1673. At all four of these moments, Americans perceived their social life to be fragmenting into centrifugal and uncontrollable wildness. The Boomer and [GenX] cultures will be moving into self-contained camps: loud, moralizing aggressors on the older side and atomized, pleasure-seeking victims on the younger – a vindictive age polarization America has not witnessed since the Roaring Twenties. Looking down the age ladder, elder Silents will express dismay at growing signs of tribalism, nativism, social intolerance, and just plain meanness. Boomers will voice exasperation over the ineffective leadership (however well-intentioned) of their next-elders and fury at the help-myself nihilism of their next juniors. Looking up, GenXers will sense among older generations an utter impracticality, an inability to see the world for what it really is [380].

MIDLIFE (Boomers): After their coming-of-age outburst, the [Boomers’] first instinct is to retrench, to concentration on perfecting the inner life. Entering midlife, they gradually reshape institutions around new values and assume a judgmental stance against what they perceive to be the moral vacuum of the younger [GenXers]. They come to political power slowly but resolutely, beginning with relatively weak leaders tolerant of their peers’ self-immersed impulses. Gradually, splits emerge and deepen between Boomer factions holding competing moral positions – each insisting on applying absolute principles to the outer world, but disagreeing with the other factions over what those principles should be [358].

RISING ADULTHOOD [GenXers] come of age with little collective self-esteem. Their early contact with the real world, however, gives them strong survival skills and high hopes for individual success. They perceive midlife [Boomers] as pompous and judgmental, and are themselves perceived as amoral and devoid of inner life. Defining themselves in cynical opposition to the [Boomers], who by now are starting to govern with an increasingly heavy hand, young [GenXer] adults engage in social and economic entrepreneurship, tinged with pleasure-seeking and other high-risk behavior. [360]

YOUTH: The [Millennial] generation spends childhood during a post-awakening era of sensitive [Silent] elders, values-oriented [Boomer] midlifers, and pleasure-seeking [GenX] rising adults. [Boomer] parents look upon these children as special, an instrument through which their inner visions can be achieved or defended. The child environment, now perceived to be dangerous, is pushed back toward greater protection and structure. Since adults expect children to be dutiful, smart, and potentially powerful, youths develop a clear collective mission and high ambition for cleaning up and rebuilding our outer world. [361]

The Fourth Turning: Post 9/11, post 2008. All change generations in peak positioning with Boomers settling intra-generational scores in 2020.

ELDERHOOD: One [Boomer] faction ultimately prevails, setting an agenda for decisive collective action. Producing leaders of great moral authority, [Boomers] impose their will sternly on people of all ages – calling on younger [GenX] and [Millennial] generations to make sacrifices for principled causes. The society now passes through an era of secular crisis – a key historic turning point, possibly a major war. After the crisis, public institutions substantially reflect the inner visions of [Boomer] elders, who look upon themselves as vital links to culture and civilization. From the young, they seek personal obedience and respect more than public power or reward [359].

MIDLIFE: Playing to win but half-expecting to lose, [GenXers] enter midlife accepting wide gaps in personal outcomes – and between sex roles. They regard success or failure as a private matter while they gradually learn to abide, and no longer fight, the [Boomer] stigma against their generation. They become cautious in family life and gradually mellow in personality. Their ablest peers become society’s most cunning, pragmatic, and colorful public figures – military and commercial managers of great realism, effective leaders for the secular crisis congealed by elder [Boomers] [360].

RISING ADULTHOOD: Coming of age, [Millennials] develop activity-oriented peer relationships, peer-enforced codes of conduct, and a strong sense of generational community. They band together at a historic moment and – guided by the principled wisdom of elder [Boomers] and the realistic leadership of midlife GenXers – successfully shoulder a secular crisis. After doing their duty unselfishly, they afterward expect, and receive, generous praise and reward from other generations. Left-brained achievers and instinctive team players, they expect human relationships to be clearly defined and push for wider distinctions between acceptable sex roles [361].

Prophecy turns real:

As America moves into the ensuing Crisis era (into the Fourth Turning after 911 and the 2008 financial crisis), long-deferred secular problems can be expected to reemerge with fearsome immediacy…Boomers…will turn up their moral megaphones to full blast. If ever there were a time to turn Pepperland into reality, many Boomers will be thinking, that time is nearing. On the brink of midlife and now beginning to tire, [GenXers] will sense their party boat drifting toward a waterfall – and will start thinking about which way to leap, and when. Millennials, busy transforming college life, will astound and delight elders with their friendly, optimistic, and team-playing attitude.

Moving further ahead, perhaps halfway into the Crisis era, history suggests the mood will calm somewhat. Engulfed in the electric air before a storm and perhaps already buffeted by the first shock, Americans will look toward the future with a new attitude of personal realism and public determination. The sense of community will strengthen, with one set of ideals pulling most political energy into its orbit. As each generation begins to feel the full burden of its next phase of life, each will push for a new social role definition: stewardship for elder Boomers, pragmatic management for midlife [GenXers], teamwork for rising-adult Millennials. The generational cycle will approach its moment of maximum opportunity – and danger.

At this point, most likely late in the Crisis era, some spark of history can be expected to ignite a new social moment – a secular crisis – snapping generations into new roles. Such a crisis will give Boomers a chance to thrust their awakening ideals into the core of a new national (perhaps even global) order, [GenXers] a chance to redeem themselves while playing for the ultimate stakes, and Millennials a chance to demonstrate civic virtue and triumph over adversity. Meanwhile, a new generation of child Adaptives [Artists], smothered by heavily protective [GenX] nurturn, will cower at the sight of adults doing great deeds.

Enter the “Crisis of 2020.”

When will this crisis come? The climatic event may not arrive exactly in the year 2020, but it won’t arrive much sooner or later. A cycle is the length of four generations, or roughly eighty-eight years. If we plot a half cycle ahead from the Boom Awakening (and find the forty-fourth anniversaries of Woodstock and the Reagan Revolution), we project a crisis lasting from 2013 to 2024. If we plot a full cycle ahead from the last secular crisis (and find the eighty-eighth anniversaries of the FDR landslide and Pearl Harbor Day), we project a crisis lasting from 2020 to 2029. By either measure, the early 2020s appear fateful…

What will precipitate this crisis? It could be almost anything, including incidents trumped up by a generation of elderly warrior-priests (Boomers), gripped with visions of moral triumph. The spark that catches fire may seem accidental, but – as with many past examples (the overthrow of Andros, the Boston Tea Party, Lincoln’s election, and Pearl Harbor) – old Idealists may have a hand in stirring events to maximum political effect, mobilizing younger generations into action.

How significant will this crisis be? Recall the parallel eras: the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the years spanning the Great Depression and World War II. The Crisis of 2020 will be a major turning point in American history and an adrenaline-filled moment of trial. At its climax, Americans will feel that the fate of posterity – for generations to come – hangs in the balance.

What will the national mood be like? This crisis will be a pivotal moment in the lifecycles of all generations alive at the time. The sense of community will be omnipresent. Moral order will be unquestioned, with “rights” and “wrongs” crisply defined and obeyed. Sacrifices will be asked, and given. America will be implacably resolved to do what needs doing, and fix what needs fixing.

How will this crisis end? Three of the four antecedents ended in triumph, the fourth (the Civil War) in a mixture of moral failure, vast human tragedy, and a weak and vengeful sense of victory. We can foresee a full range of possible outcomes, from stirring achievement to apocalyptic tragedy…

Let's assume the crisis arrives on schedule, around the year 2020. Once the end is in view, all generations will gaze hopefully toward the milk and honey of the post-crisis world. By the year 2030, American society will settle into an Outer-Driven era (a High). Boomers will start moving on to the old-old rung. [GenXers] to elederhood, and Millennials to midlife. New Adaptives [Artists] will quiescently come of age, and an indulged new crop of Idealist children will command adult affections. The decade after the crisis – probably the 2030s – will be a slow-moving period in American history, a time of community and family life, spiritual staleness, and benign confidence about the future. The era will be upbeat but culturally bland, reminiscent of antecedent eras around 1710, 1800, 1880, and 1955. Midlife Millennials will set out on giant secular projects, while the more cautious rising-adult Adaptives (sometimes called Generation Y) will concentrate on smallish, ameliorative agendas. By this point, circa-2000 America will be remembered as socially disorganized, wild but fun, and somewhere on the cusp of what will then be perceived as the “modern” era – much as the 1920s were remembered in the 1950s.

After another quarter century has passed – when [GenXers] are eightyish curmudgeons and first-wave Millennials are on the brink of elderhood – a highly secular culture will be due for resacralization. We can expect that a team-playing cadre of sixtyish Millennials will then provide brittle targets for a rising generation of Idealist zealots. At that point, the Millennial Cycle will come to a close, and a new cycle will begin…

While every era is a drama of many actors, each generation follows its own script…

It was Strauss and Howe who uncovered these generational scripts and their enduring, ever cycling, four-act stage performance that makes history…and provokes revolution at roughly 80-year intervals. Lucky for us today, we’re actors at a revolutionary time – a Fourth Turning – that will turn government inside out to fulfill that old Boomer mantra: Save the World. Millennials are beating down walls to invoke Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. It looks like Strauss and Howe were right.

Prophecy and reality will converge in 2020. It’s been a long time coming, and I’m so glad its here.

[Steve Clark]

Medicare for All, Green New Deal: Revolutionary Socialism for Our Time?

The Left’s call for Medicare for All and a Green New Deal (M4A/GND) now sets the revolutionary edge in US politics, as the two-year run-up to the decisive 2020 election begins.

The M4A/GND is revolutionary because it begs the question: is it affordable and, if so, how? Already, this is among the main lines of debate in the campaign’s opening salvo.

In January, newly-elected Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) – the Alexander Hamilton of today’s revolution – stormed the US political stage with Medicare for All (from Bernie Sanders) and the Green New Deal. In reaction, Republicans joined former-Starbucks CEO/independent candidate Howard Schultz (and some confused Democrats, like Sherrod Brown) in mansplaining for AOC that her program’s price tag is crazy-stupid.

But, her message strikes a chord. In a firm nod to human necessity and popular demand, M4A/GND has emerged as a litmus tests for everyone with presidential ambitions. It now seems a near-certainty that Medicare for All and a Green New Deal will be two core pillars of the platform of whoever wins the Democratic primaries – and, then, the Presidency – in 2020.

But, first, would-be candidates will sort themselves out with their answers to the media’s doubting questions about affordability and who pays. I’m excited to see what the candidates have to say, because it will bear directly on how sharply and effectively the revolution steps out in its first days with power, come January 2021. In our lifetimes, the stakes have never been higher.

It is a fact that the M4A/GND is a massive undertaking. Although proponents of Medicare for All are correct when saying its aggregate cost will never be more than the present aggregate cost of care (in fact, less, due to the elimination of industry profit-taking and vast new efficiencies in administrative costs), they lack a clear means of financing the trillion-dollar transition during which the old, predominately private system is dropped and the broadened Medicare system is implemented and brought to full-scale operation. Similarly, although everyone knows the fight to mitigate climate change (and the other ravages of our world’s socioecological crisis) will stimulate vast, new kinds of commerce over the long haul (generations to come!), it’s not clear how the kick-off and massive spending of the Green New Deal’s critical, first, get-up-to-scale phase can be financed.

Reacting to criticism that she lacks a financial plan, AOC posed the necessity of cutting back on the military budget. The US spends more than the entire rest of the world on "defense and security" so she’s more than right to look for savings in this area. But shaving the military-industrial complex is fraught with perceived security risks for Americans, especially because an alternative foreign policy to achieve peace, worldwide, without the widespread application of US force has yet to be articulated.

Other advocates of M4A/GND take the view that the program can be funded through higher taxes on rich Americans and corporations. The problem here is the evident ability of corporations (and rich individuals) to evade taxes through a global network of “tax shelter” operations. Although it is useful to recall that the US had tax rates as high as 90% during the 1950s heyday of deficit spending, today’s global market is a smorgasbord of financial investment opportunities that are beyond effective US control. In today’s world, no nation (even the US) effectively taxes the international revenue and wealth of corporations.

So, yes, it is good and right to call for cuts to the military and higher taxes on corporations, but a better and simpler remedy is available and should be first applied.

It’s one of the oldest stories about money, yet it still points the way today…

When the Romans conquered (and forged) western civilization (circa 340 BC), they cemented local rule in their new provinces with an incisive playbook of monetary and fiscal reform. Instead of allowing their legions to pillage and plunder (every army needs local food and supplies), they gave the troops denarii (the silver “dollars” of Roman coinage) and told them to purchase requisitions from the local gentry. Meanwhile, to adequately supply the necessary coinage, they took over local mines (and melted down any local coins), boosting previous mining and minting operations with newly enslaved, local captives. Finally, they informed the gentry that, henceforth, taxes to Rome would be due, exclusively, in denarii. With the new market and tax stream thus put in place, Roman emperors ensured the funds necessary to institutionalize their governance and ensure ongoing control of conquered provinces.

In effect, the Roman system created self-sustaining, local government by providing tokens of Roman credit (denarii) to its soldiers whose spending, in turn, stimulated the local economy, enlarging gentry revenues and allowing tax collection from the local elites. Coming into possession of the credit tokens, the gentry used them to dispel their tax debts to Rome.

The same is possible today. If/when the US government creates Medicare for All, it can hand out M4A cards to all Americans, providing a line of credit for use in local health care markets. When the credit is used to purchase services from approved, participating, for-profit and non-profit medical establishments (doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, etc.), M4A can then transfer the purchase as a digital credit (nothing, anymore, is done in cash) on the provider’s account. In turn, the providers use the credit to pay their staff and purchase goods and services in its local economy. Employees and contractors then purchase the wider range of goods and services that everyone needs to survive. As the economy prospers from this activity (which extends health care to millions of new patients while eliminating the financial burden of health insurance for businesses, employees and individuals), a new, self-sustaining health care industry will supplant today’s without any up-front payment of actual cash by the government.

But what about the credit line? How is that paid down? Well, first of all, it may never be paid down, but since it’s a debt of the public to the government (that is, to itself), not to private banks, the credit line carries no interest or fees that expropriate wealth for the sake of bank profit. There is no cost for carrying the debt indefinitely. Second, if the public really wants to pay down and eliminate the credit line over time, it can increase taxes on the pharmaceuticals, equipment makers, corporate hospitals, etc. that earn their profit from our collective, human health. Properly, some of their profit should pay down our debt.

The same approach can be applied to the financing of a Green New Deal, but, rather than to health care consumers (as in the M4A model), the government’s credit can be issued to mission-driven, publically-accountable NGOs (non-profit corporations) that employ people in efforts to fight climate change. Presumably, these efforts, eventually, will be coordinated by some kind of global Green New Deal and will bring full-employment to every region of the world (thus creating the basis for genuine world peace). But American voters can start with a US commitment to take charge of climate change mitigation in our own country. Just issue US government credit to non-profits, and watch them spur the economy with a huge, new round of genuine social and ecological problem-solving! That’s the formula and format of a Green New Deal with no outlay required to start.

There’s only one obstacle to this agenda: the corporate banks that currently own a de facto monopoly on the issue of credit. Because the US government condones this monopoly, it does not issue credit on its own, and no credit is available for the vital, non-profit economy that our society so desperately needs for health care and a healthy planet. If we’re going to save ourselves from the catastrophe of corporate-driven economic polarization and climate change, we have to break the credit monopoly of the big banks!

Indeed, as social democrats Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders may already perceive, socialism in the coming age has little to do with “taking” property from the corporations and the wealthy. Rather, it is about opening credit for the non-profit fight to save civilization and the planet from corporate greed. When we institutionalize socially responsible credit for the common good (not private profit!), we may finally achieve the socialist dream that so many visionaries before us imagined and pursued.

Socialism, now, is within practical reach.

[Steve Clark]

Trump is Corrupt, Heartless, Arrogant, Desperate and Destructive but...

Here’s Why US Banks Really Love the Mueller Probe

CNN, the NY Times and other mass media repeatedly state that Russia snared candidate Donald Trump in a conspiritoral plan to take power in the US because it desperately sought escape from harsh sanctions imposed by the West after Russia annexed Crimea.

For the huge wave of Millennial voters now asserting themselves in the US (and around the world) this makes sense. Indeed, the Mueller investigation, almost certainly, will prove it.

But, it’s only true as far as it goes. And if the “blue wave” doesn’t come to grips with the deeper issue, the wave could be steered into a liberal rather than progressive candidacy in 2020. Masking the distinction between the two, the corporate mass media is setting us up for a disastrous re-run of 2016.

To put it simply, the real issue in this entire saga is corporate power – in particular, Big Bank power – in both the global economy and US politics. Progressive voters appreciate the absolute necessity of targeting corporate prerogatives while liberals aim to accommodate them. To Millennials, I say, go deeper. This difference is crucial, and your future on this planet could turn on it!

When Boomer progressives (like myself) were coming of political age, back in the Sixties, we “raged against the machine,” opposing the Viet Nam War abroad while fighting minority and women’s oppression at home. It was a generational rebellion, fierce and protracted. At first, we were surprised how the system utterly rejected and suppressed our protests. As we fought, however, we learned why: the corporations of the military industrial complex were making fortunes from the war. Fighting on other fronts, we also learned that, in our cities, banks were drawing red lines in poor neighborhoods to depress property values and spur gentrification. And, we saw how glass ceilings in corporations reflected and perpetuated male domination of workplaces everywhere. In 1970, when the environmental movement burst on the scene, we quickly learned that corporations were behind the ecological destruction of our planet, too.

Back then, we fought hard and made some gains, but we were young and not well enough positioned in society to make any fundamental changes. Running the show according to their Cold War values, our GI generation elders – some liberal (Kennedy, Johnson), others conservative (Nixon, Reagan) – suppressed our generation’s critique, and the system continued intact. We did, however, carry the lessons of our youthful awakening into our midlife careers and families. Not to claim too much credit, but our Sixties enlightenment helped nurture today’s more alert political consciousness. Today, it’s a rare Millennial who doesn’t understand that Citizens United was a catastrophic Supreme Court decision; that corporations are NOT people, too; and that candidates who welcome corporate donations do corporate bidding once they are in office. And fortunately, for all us today – Millennials, GenXers and Boomers, alike – there is no reactionary, older generation to stand in the way of the anti-corporate revolution we seek.

Nevertheless, the Boomer presidents of the 1990s and 2000s – Clinton, Bush and Obama – never “got the memo” on this broadening anti-corporate consensus. Corporate interests continued to thrive under all of them.

All praise, therefore, to Millennials for breaking with liberalism to back Bernie Sanders against Hillary Clinton in 2016, and no scorn for settling for her or staying home when the other choice was Trump. But the epic struggle remains. Under Trump, the corporations still have hegemony in American government, and we have to settle that account next year. For that, a clear-minded, anti-corporate progressive has to win the 2020 nomination.

Therefore, it’s important to be as clear as possible about what is really behind the Mueller investigation…that is, why it is fully backed by US-based banks, energy giants and the military industrial complex and why it is enthusiastically promoted by the mass media. As we Boomers have come to say, “It’s the corporations, stupid.” They never go away; they’re always working their angle. If we want to defeat them, we have to understand and expose their modus operandi. Most specifically, we have to look into the ways and means of international corporate finance.

Payments System

With so many countries and currencies in our world, it is, of course, necessary to have a system for international exchange. The present system, directed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Bank of International Settlements (BIS), was established in the wake of WWII. Under this system, when you buy stocks, bonds or any other financial instrument, you must purchase in one of now-five, elite currencies approved for international exchange by the IMF (even though, in virtually all cases, the transaction is an electronic funds transfer (EFT) and requires no actual cash). Thus, if you live in Denmark and want to buy stock in General Motors (a US-based corporation), you buy the stock in dollars (the US currency). True, you may write your check in Danish krones, but, as the fine print delineates, your actual purchase (and eventual sale) of the GM stock must be in US dollars. Hence, your krones-denominated check will be converted to US dollars as the transaction is completed, and, for this conversion, you will pay a fee. While you own the stock, your dividends will be paid in US dollars, and, later, when you sell the stock, you’ll also be paid in US dollars. It will be up to you to convert (or not) the dollars to krones (and to pay the required fees).

Of course, in buying bank, corporate or government securities, you are, in effect, lending money to the sellers, and you will be repaid (plus gains and minus losses) when you sell. If, instead of lending, you want to borrow, the same general currency rules apply. If you borrow US dollars (from, say, JPMorgan Chase, the world’s biggest bank), you must pay back in US dollars. You can’t use your own local currency. Thus, if you’re a South African CEO and need foreign funds – because the domestic credit market is too tight or, for some reason (too many bankruptcies?), you’ve been banished from borrowing in it – to expand your construction company’s operations, you might borrow a few million dollars from a US bank. Then, as the expanded business operates successfully, receiving South African rands (the local currency) for the local sale of its services, you must convert the rands into dollars to repay your loan. Also, of course, as you pay the interest on your credit line, you must pay in dollars. Thus, in addition to repaying your loan, you must skim some of your rand profits to pay the interest, and you have to pay the fees to convert rands into dollars for loan-related payments of all kinds.

Evidence indicates that, a decade or more ago, Trump’s various bankruptcies put him on the list of “junk” American borrowers, deeply curtailing access to US lenders. He looked around for international creditors who might not be so restrictive. Unfortunately for him, he found out that the whole world’s credit management system is run by the IMF/BIS, under the effective control of the big US banks. On the upside, however, he also discovered a developing “black market” of ruble-denominated credit that the IMF/BIS system was (inadvertently?) nurturing through its squeeze of Russia. Apparently, Trump, Kushner, Manafort, Flynn, Stone, Ross and others dipped heavily into its temptations.

Western Banks Squeeze Russia

Controlled by governors whose votes are allocated based on the size of their domestic economies (hence, the dominant power of the US representative, the chair of the Federal Reserve), the IMF sets and enforces all policy with regard to international payments. In turn, IMF policy is practically implemented by the BIS, which processes all the world’s EFTs. The IMF has the authority – and frequently uses it – to discipline (sanction) countries, corporations and people who do not play by the system’s rules. While such “policing” serves a necessary purpose in fighting financial crime, it also is deployed for political reasons. For instance, it was at the behest of the US-led majority on the Board of Governors that the IMF imposed sanctions on Iran and a number of its leaders in the (eventually successful) effort, during the Obama Administration, to compel negotiation over Iran’s purported drive to attain nuclear weapons.

Similar (very harsh) sanctions were promulgated on Russia (and targeted Russians) after that country seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, in the enduring aftermath of Ukraine’s 2005 Orange Revolution. That revolution had pulled Ukraine out of exclusive financial reliance on Moscow and into budding financial relationships with western banks.

Putin, of course, had wanted Ukraine – like Russia, a former republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) – to remain part of Russia’s financial orbit, but much ground had been lost after the circa-1990 collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe. Through the ensuing, chaotic decade, Western banks, via their institutional power at the IMF and broad influence in global markets of all sorts, were able to offer marginally better enticements in the former socialist nations than could Russian banks. The appeal wasn’t that the West offered more credit; rather, it could and did offer better terms because the West’s currencies – the US dollar, the British pound and the European euro – were all elite, IMF-designated currencies approved (along with the Japanese yen and, most recently, the Chinese renminbi) for international exchange. As such, borrowing and paying in these currencies imposes no routine, on-going currency conversion fees, thus rendering them more attractive to Ukrainian businesses, corporations and oligarchs, too. After the 2005 revolution, market penetration by western banks in Ukraine accelerated. Meanwhile, feeling the pinch of shrinking markets in Ukraine, Russian banks retaliated by financing havens (for instance, Cypriot banks in 2013) that engaged in extensive money “laundering” activity. These attracted the interest, not only of Trump and his crew, but a wide range of more mainstream western players such as John Podesta (soon-to-be Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair) and other private equity managers.

By 2014, Ukraine’s openings to western credit had accumulated enough to formally break the nation from the Russian orbit. The final denouement came when pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine, who were trying to position a ruble-denominated investment fund (the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU)) as the country’s primary source of credit, found themselves outflanked by politicians whose financial backers preferred the zero-fee credit options of western finance. Riding a post-Soviet, generational consensus to look westward in all things, Ukrainian investors blocked the nation’s membership in the EEU. Hostilities ensued, an attempted coup was squashed, and Russian-oriented politicians fled to Russia. In 2016, Putin responded by annexing Crimea. For that, the West dropped him from the G-8 and imposed IMF sanctions, turning Putin, Russia and the ruble into financial pariahs. In so doing, the West’s sanctions stoked the budding “black market” opportunities of Russia’s financial oligarchs while also spurring more sophisticated, geopolitical resistance to the West’s strengthening hegemony. With Putin’s blessing, they sought ways to influence US politicians and the American elections.

Bank Superprofits through Global Commerce

This “stealing” of the Ukrainian segment of the world’s credit market from Russia is a perfect example of how western finance capital uses its domination at the IMF to extract “superprofits” via the credit lines it extends to commercial entities in the global economy. Keep in mind that these banks, when they open a credit line, do not actually hand over any cash…all they do is create an account for the borrower and digitally enter the amount of its loan. From there, the bank begins to receive fees, interest and (in some cases) principal pay-downs from the borrower even though the lender put up none of its actual wealth. This is a huge bonanza for the banks. As most borrowers in global markets are, themselves, corporations that (by definition) exist is perpetuity, every “stolen” credit line adds two permanent revenue streams to western bank portfolios: interest on the credit extended and regular fees to convert payments from local currencies to the bank’s IMF-approved currency. Once a credit line is opened, it will pay dividends to its issuer for as long as the borrower remains in business. Thus, civilization’s aggregate debt never declines, but is constantly extended to the permanent benefit of banks. This corporate-driven, state-enforced siphon of foreign wealth is known as imperialism.

As the Ukrainian example shows, the only banks that can achieve and maintain this kind of hegemony in global credit markets are those of the elite (Big Five) currencies. National and local banks in nations with pedestrian currencies (i.e., Russia and the ruble) are barred from the game.

This is how imperialism works in today’s “financialized” global economy, the one that took shape once most of the socialist countries of the world (China excepted) were marginalized in the Soviet Union’s 1989 collapse. As in Ukraine, with socialism’s competition eliminated, western banks achieved a one-time bonanza in their “theft” of Russia’s old clients throughout Eastern Europe. But, also in the 1990s, a far more profound change came into play. The world’s ecological crisis – climate change, et al – began imposing real limits on avenues of traditional corporate “growth.” Outside of China, corporate borrowing entered a steady decline, requiring banks to find new ways to expand credit, the key to their profit. As real economic expansion was no longer ecologically sustainable (thus, impossible), the banks repackaged existing material wealth into tradable bank securities (remember the mortgage-backed securities collapse that set off the 2008 financial crash?) and used these “financializations” to foster still another layer of investment opportunity for global clients. Today, global debt (to banks) is at civilization’s all-time high, and finance capital enjoys the largest revenue streams in history. From these, it can pay good dividends to investors while, still, spending heavily on the kind of politicians (in the Big Five currency states) it needs to protect its prerogatives.

In today’s post-Cold War global economy, it’s not Russia but, rather, western finance that – via the IMF – compels the constant skimming of surplus from every nation’s economy for redeposit in the assets of the world’s biggest bank corporations. And the US state and military-industrial complex enforce this regime, couching it, of course, as ensuring peace and justice for all.

Mueller Probe and the “Deep State”

Appreciating this reality is key to fully understanding the political ramifications of the Mueller investigation of Russian interference in the US election. Among many clear and public purposes, of course, the US government has always taken actions and instituted programs intended to assist the business interests of US-based corporations, including, most importantly, its banks (prime example, Obama’s 2008 bailout). In addition to its public actions, the US state also sustains significant covert actions and programs, conducted by the CIA and other security agencies. Unless these covert programs are specifically reviewed, publicly identified, and intentionally abandoned and defunded, they continue from administration to administration. Some critics refer to them as the Deep State.

One need not conceive of the Deep State as a conscious conspiracy to recognize that it exists and operates on momentum of its own, acquired through decades of Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union. Americans who started work in these programs when the Cold War was a real thing certainly developed anti-communist bias that easily morphed into concerns that Russia, despite the collapse of socialism, is forever locked in a life-an-death struggle with western capitalism. Never repudiated, these views still guide the country’s security agencies, even though Russia, now, is also a capitalist country. Protective, cautious, yet aggressive to the extreme, these agencies watched with grave concern as evidence of Trump’s servile relationship with Russia surfaced during the 2016 campaign. Mingling in the wave of popular resistance to Trump, these Deep State forces used their connections with key US politicians (via the House and Senate security committees) to encourage a full investigation of Russian interference, eventually putting one of their own, Bob Mueller, in charge. [In 2002, when he was the FBI Director, Mueller had led the campaign against Iraq (formerly, a Middle East partner of Russia), testifying falsely – but consistent with corporate oil interests – that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.]

Of course, any nation is reasonable to resist efforts by foreign governments to interfere in its elections. And, to that point, Trump was ensnarled and “turned” for Russia’s benefit. He needs to be exposed and removed from office, but what, exactly, is the crime?

Is it being a corrupt businessman, or is it being a conspirator in a world domination scheme with the Russians? US financial interests – who run the IMF and rely on US military might to enforce their global regime – would like American voters to blame Russia; hence, they paint our unknowing nation and the willing Trump as victims of Russian espionage. In fact, however, the fundamental problem is neither Trump nor Russia but, rather, the ongoing, US-enforced, Big Five domination of our world’s international credit market. This imperialist reality forces every nation into subordinate, oppressed status and causes some to resist. Western banks aim to dominate Russia and have successfully confined its currency and credit to black market operations. Given this reality, it is not “criminal” for Russia to stand up against US and western imperialism, regardless of the tactics it employs or the fact that its own megalomaniac president may dream of resurrecting Russia’s Tsarist or Cold War empire someday. Trump is a crook ensnarled in the on-going struggle between western finance and the world’s beleaguered borrowers, in this case, Russia. But, he’s not a conspirator in some Russian play for global domination, as many liberal and Democratic backers of the Mueller investigation insinuate.

Clinton and China

A similar situation unfolded in the 1992 US presidential election (when Russia was in still in turmoil after socialism’s collapse). Running for president, Democrat Bill Clinton was accused of accepting nefarious funding from Chinese government sources posing as private citizens. At the time, China was on the threshold of its now-two decades of unprecedented economic growth, but its currency, the renminbi (or yuan) was not then among the elite, IMF-approved currencies. China wanted to be part of the club so it tried wheedling itself in American politics. But, Clinton’s source was exposed, and he rapidly renounced and returned his Chinese funding, with the Chinese acquiescing. The quid pro quo, however, turned out to be Clinton’s agreement to initiate a process at the IMF to eventually include the renminbi among the then-Big Four, something that western banks were more than willing to concede for the opportunity, in the meantime, to extend massive credit for China’s impending industrialization. Had the times been different – had he not had the support of western banks to make a deal with China – Clinton might have been the Trump of his era, a dupe of the Chinese; instead, he managed to slip the appearance of collusion with China by making a (western finance approved) concession to China’s strategic interest. Eventually, in 2016, the IMF approved the renminbi for international exchange, and the Big Five came into being.

With Clinton’s deal in place, western finance enjoyed two decades of active, extremely profitable credit extension to Chinese corporations and the Beijing government, but it left Russia and its ruble with the same, pedestrian status as all other, second-fiddle currencies in global finance.

Real Problem: US Imperialism

One can appropriately reject interference by China, Russia or any other nation in US political affairs, but the reality of US domination of global credit must be acknowledged and highlighted. This domination is the direct cause of all such inference. Not every effort to interfere will be so fortunate to find as willing a collaborator as was Trump for the Russians (though US interference, through the decades, has found many willing collaborators in places like Chile, Egypt and Guatemala, for instance). But, regardless of who wishes to occupy the presidency, covert election interference is inevitable so long as the US, via the IMF/BIS and the US armed forces, enforces western bank prerogatives in global finance.

From this perspective, Trump, though personally corrupt and contemptible and a criminal under US law, is a pawn and victim more than a real conspirator on behalf of a foreign power. The distinction matters because Millennials, facing a bleak ecological future, are a new and potentially transformative political force, and corporate interests – especially finance capital – are working overtime to suppress their anti-corporate awakening. Liberal Boomer politicians play into corporate hands every night on the news by suggesting that Russian interference in 2016 – not Hillary Clinton’s (and the Democratic Party’s) long embrace of corporate power – was the cause of Trump’s election.

Liberalism is a political philosophy that denies the systemic reality of corporate domination in American politics. Despite our world’s social and ecological crisis – a crisis nurtured entirely by insatiable corporate exploitation of Nature and people – liberals imagine a happy, on-going reconciliation of corporate and human necessities, if only caring leaders are elected. Liberals do not see the necessity of structural change – revolution! – that systemically restricts the power of corporations, especially financial corporations, and permanently elevates the relative interests and power of civilization’s people.

When Mueller’s report is issued and Trump is impeached and resigns, we will get President Pence. Aside from the strength gained in winning the impeachment skirmish, the revolution’s net gain will still be zero. The tipping point won’t come until 2020. Certainly, the voters will repudiate Pence in 2020, but, if a progressive is going to win that decisive election, we better be sure that a liberal doesn’t snare the nomination. For that, as we discard Trump and criticize foreign interference, we need to target the real culprit, the corporate regime of dollar-denominated finance.

The revolution to save Nature and civilization in the era ahead is against corporations and their human enablers. Everything else follows from that.

Steve Clark

Only One Way to Tax Corporations Effectively

It is well-noted that the Republicans’ tax plan is a boon for corporations because it “permanently” (until another Congress decides differently) cuts the corporate tax rate by about half.

That’s a boondoggle for corporations, but, truth is, many of them pay little or no taxes, even under the current law. One issue is overseas revenues that, kept overseas, never turn into taxable profits; another is overseas tax havens through which corporations and the elite who run them park money in secret accounts specifically designed to hide otherwise taxable income; a third derives from the fact that corporate expenses are deducted from revenues before profits are declared and taxed, but such “business deductions” are near impossible to review, evaluate or limit; a fourth is the general laxness of corporate tax enforcement as successive administrations, catering to the cut-taxes mantra of recent decades, have cut funding for the IRS.

The fact is: with virtually unlimited assets devoted to the task, the corporate sector is hugely successful in minimizing its taxes. This has been the case for decades, and only the most naïve liberals still imagine that, somehow, the US government will reform itself into a powerful corporate tax collector. Never was and ain’t ever gonna be. Nothing for progressives to gain by getting lost in the weeds trying to retain or improve it.

Unless...

Unless progressives – and the politicians we elect to office – take up the only way to tax corporations effectively: a bank tax on corporate transactions. Under such taxes – which have been applied to other sectors in some countries and are under consideration in the European Union – banks collect a small fee on the electronic funds transfers (ETFs) of corporations, creating a potentially very large revenue stream for public use. And the tax is unavoidable, collected automatically on every EFT (and, of course, the financial system maintains records of all EFTs so oversight is feasible).

This kind of tax is equitable because it taxes every corporation at the same rate and precisely to the extent of its commercial activity in the US economy. Other countries that rely on the dollar for credit and currency might partner with the US to extend the transaction tax’s reach and bolster their own programs. Further, the rate of taxation can be easily adjusted to ensure that revenues keep up with a society’s needs.

The actual rate of taxation would be determined by the extent of social and ecological need. Such needs are complex, diverse and extensive, but they all share the reality that addressing them requires a lot of creative and sustained, worldwide effort that seldom, if ever, amounts to a profit-making enterprise. Because little profit can be made in solving socioecological problems, investors – in particular, the big financial institutions that dominate the global market – find no reason to extend credit to the non-profit, NGO sector that is trying to make a difference. Thus, this vital sector – which, remarkably, has both the answers to our social and ecological problems and the capacity to fully employ the world’s people in actually solving them – is financially starved and unable to perform at the level necessary to save civilization from an impending dark age.

The tax rate on corporate EFTs should be enough to adequately back a new NGO investment program designed to foster full employment through non-profit social and ecological problem-solving. This is the real meaning of corporate accountability: they have to pay for society to solve the problems they create. Despite dependence on civilization and nature as the source of their profits, corporations are destroying the climate, depleting resources, contaminating water and polarizing wealth as never before. Nevertheless, only corporate commerce has a revenue stream adequate to save civilization and nature from this corporate-driven catastrophe. Full employment must be the new barometer by which corporate tax rates are set.

The Republican plan is likely to be passed and put into effect. As past evidence clearly shows, the plan will be a boondoggle for corporations, but most will not expand operations, preferring instead to buy-back stock to enhance their on-paper respectability among core investors. At this world-historic juncture, when further industrial growth is strategically constrained by ecological factors, few corporations will risk putting money into expanded factories and transportation systems. Instead, they (and the elites who manage them) are looking to financial schemes, speculative bubbles and tax shelters. The bottom line is this: the global economy’s system of mass production and distribution has reached the limits of its real growth, but it still fails to adequately employ about 40 percent of the world’s people, including a substantial percentage in the US.

The only way to employ all these people – and, in the process, achieve sustainable and secure communities all over the world (defeating the underlying cause of violence and war) – is to grow the non-profit service economy, in the US and all over the world.

Yes, conceptually, this is a new system of corporate taxation, based on corporate accountability to civilization and nature. We can start in the US, possibly with a progressive Presidency and Congress (after 2020). But, corporate commerce, especially corporate finance, is a global system, and a progressive US administration – if it ever hopes to cut the US military and end its force applications (wars!) all over the world – will have to pursue the global adoption of this tax (and its full-employment mission), the only constructive alternative to force. Through its dominate position in the IMF, a progressive US government should be able to win British, European, Japanese and Chinese agreement to fund worldwide expansion of non-profit employment through this kind of corporate taxation.

It may seem too neat and clean, too simple and direct, but a tax on corporate EFTs can finance full employment worldwide while tackling social and ecological problems of every type. It can save civilization from a new dark age. This is the kind of tax reform progressives should support.

In the meantime, the Republicans will do theirs. It’s not going to work, and voters in 2018 and 2020 aren’t going to be satisfied. The wave of new politicians that we will see after these campaigns will be looking for a better tax remedy. A bank-collected tax on all corporate transactions is an idea whose time has come.

Let’s pave the road in that direction.

[Steve Clark]

Patriarchy: what is it, where’d it come from, what’s its future?

The #MeToo movement threatens to uproot the very long-established tradition of men exercising decisive power over women, especially in family, work and politics. To fully appreciate the potential of such women’s liberation, it’s important to understand the origins of patriarchy and its long, dysfunctional history.

Humans, of course, were not the first animals on earth. Our species, homo sapiens, is the last of several human species that evolved in east Africa over the course of millions of years. Our specific species evolved about 200,000 years ago, and, blocked by the impenetrable desert across northern Africa, gradually spread out to occupy the entire sub-Saharan region. Then, about 100,000 years ago, when a brief, global, cooling trend temporarily allowed migration across the continent’s desert, some humans left Africa, initiating the diaspora that led eventually to human occupation of every habitable location on the planet.

Throughout the millions of years of human evolution (up to about 10,000 years ago), human clans were matrilineal. This was because the father of a woman’s child was typically uncertain so all children were the responsibility of their mothers who resided in clans with their own mothers, aunts and sisters. All humans – male and female alike – were raised in female-dominated cultures in which the needs of women and children were center stage. When girls reached the age of menarche and boys reached manhood, a young woman might choose mates within her clan or find mates in other clans, but any offspring were the woman’s responsibility. A presumed male parent either moved in with a woman’s clan (if she wished), or (if not) matrilineal culture guided women to raise their offspring with support of their female relatives, without a father’s participation. Further, because all pre-agricultural human societies relied on hunting and gathering, women’s gathering work (along with men’s hunting endeavors) was critical to clan survival. Research shows that in today’s few remaining hunter-gatherer societies, women gather about 60 percent of a clan’s caloric intake while men hunt down about 40 percent. Because our female ancestors were so much in charge of the future of life (production and reproduction), they exercised decisive control over social mores within their clans. Men simply enforced rules made by women, and disrespecting males were banished from the clan.

After a few million years of evolution along these lines, the natural character of gender relations was firmly established, but 10,000 years ago, an ecological crisis suddenly gave men the upper hand, creating a social catastrophe in the process. How did that happen?

Conditions for this retrograde transformation began building up after our homo sapien ancestors first left Africa 100,000 years ago. After that departure, the global climate warmed, and the desert returned across the top of Africa, once again barring migration out of the continent. In effect, humans lived, then, in two centers, one below the Sahara in Africa and another above the desert in today’s Middle East. In both regions, ongoing population growth was steady, but outside Africa, as increased hunting (necessary to support the expanding population) depleted big game animals, some humans simply moved on to adjacent regions where the game remained plentiful (this was the drive that eventually led humans to occupy all of the planet’s habitable regions). Below the Sahara, however, such migration was foreclosed. Here, as population slowly expanded and big game was killed off, human survival became increasingly difficult.

Then, about 10,000 years ago, another cool period triggered another Saharan transformation. As the desert reopened for migration, many struggling humans in Africa sought escape to the north. Suddenly, the Middle East, its forests already depleted after 90,000 years of human occupation, was crowded with new waves of desperate people.

In the space of what likely was just a few generations, the Middle East’s remaining forests and game animals were decimated, rendering hunting ineffective and creating a survival crisis for all humans in the region. Desperate for a new way to live, men abandoned hunting and devoted themselves, full time, to assisting women in their rudimentary practice of sowing and harvesting plant food, using some of it to domesticate animals. Success was immediate and bountiful. It quickly was obvious to all that such refocused efforts by men were vital to everyone’s survival, and, no doubt, women welcomed and encouraged male efforts to be more productive.

Once men abandoned hunting for full-time farm work, their greater physical strength, coupled with never bearing or rearing children, allowed them to assume ever-greater responsibilities (relative to women) in production. This led to a leap in each clan’s productive capacity and the end of the survival crisis in the region. Indeed, data show that agriculture eventually supported a 40-fold increase in human population in the Middle East. Thus, while women remained overwhelmingly responsible in reproduction, male labor became indispensible in overall production.

Critically, inheritance now became an important corollary in clan survival. Wealth was all but meaningless during the millions of years of hunting and gathering because, then, there was really nothing to pass from a dying elder to his or her next-youngers. All hunted and gathered food perished if not consumed rather quickly, and, for the most part, every man or woman made his or her own spears, arrows, hoes, pots or leather goods. Nothing of real value was around for inheritance. But, agriculture changed all that because farmland and animal stock had real value – indeed, vital value – for future generations. Once agriculture established itself as the foundation of human civilization, a means to pass ownership of land and animals to the next generation was essential.

Moreover, because men, now, were the primary gender in production (and the ones with actual knowledge of a clan’s specific land and animals), their wealth had to pass to their male next-youngers who could maintain its productivity. Pressed by these inheritance necessities, clans were forced to certify who, actually, were the offspring (and, thus, the inheritors) of the men who managed the land and animals. And to be certain of male parentage, women were coerced into accepting strict monogamy. For the first time ever, men acquired the right to choose mates, and, henceforth, chosen women were required to leave the clan of their mothers for the clan of their husbands. Women lost control of culture, now increasingly defined and restricted by male prerogative. Rather than allowing women to manage the daily life of human societies, as nature intended, the “dawn of civilization” relegated women to subordinate status, a rift still undermining human life all these millennia later.

Once agriculture was adopted in the Middle East, it spread by example or conquest to virtually every human community worldwide. In essence, the natural balance of gender relations in social and family life gave way to a dysfunctional, male-based authority that diminished women's and children’s necessities while unleashing the arrogant, combative, wasteful, force-oriented domination of men.

It’s been that way ever since, though the advent of industrial society about 500 years ago diversified social and class realities and enabled gains by some women in some areas (ability to work and partially support herself and her children; the right to divorce; etc.). Since the 1950s arrival and global proliferation of service-based production – a kind of production that, unlike agriculture and industry, is oriented to niche and nuance rather than brute strength – women have been rapidly regaining independence and power in production. Indeed, in most regards, women’s aptitudes, skills, instincts and perspective are more crucial to service production than much of what men bring to the table. Reversing the effect of agriculture on women’s power, the service economy – including its non-profit, NGO sector – is now rapidly empowering women, even as it remains constrained by the archaic, male-dominated structures (banks, corporations, governments) of the Industrial Age.

Hence, we witness today’s sharply antagonistic struggle of women to rid themselves and civilization of the long-outdated, now completely regressive culture of male hegemony and power. While women, like men, cannot do without corporations and governments (though new forms are necessary and inevitable), they are now beginning to revolutionize these structures by outing male oppressors and forcing their resignation from public power. As a feminine majority begins to replace the old boys’ club in government and business (worldwide), a foundation is being laid for the creation and implementation of civilization-wide policies that genuinely advance the interests of women and children. Once these programs take hold, patriarchy, finally, will be defeated, and civilization can reinvent, for these times and for our future, the natural balance of gender relations in which women can lead and thrive, pulling all of us in their wake.

Patriarchy remains in power, but its time is over. It is an odd and wonderful thing to be present at such a monumental transformation in human culture. It is exciting to think about the possibilities ahead.

[Steve Clark]

Women are This Revolution’s Foot Soldiers

Back in 1997, when Bill Strauss and Neil Howe wrote about fourth turnings – those eras, roughly 80 years apart, when the generational gestalt propels transformative political action – they noted that these times are always characterized by tightening morality.

Twenty years later, with #MeToo now remediating gender power not only in business and culture but also, specifically, in political office, we see just how insightful Strauss and Howe really were. Right now, a new morality is being imposed, and it is going to root out all politicians who can’t, won’t or don’t meet the new standard.

Today, via the microcosm of the US 2017 Virginia election and the outing of Senators Franken and Conyers, we see women liberating themselves and institutionalizing a new balance of gender power in which their concerns and interests will predominate.

Woe to Silent and Boomer generation men who failed to learn the meaning of “male chauvinist pig” back in the Sixties. Your public life is done. Not due to anger or righteousness (though both are justified), you’ve simply become, just now, historically passé. Henceforth, sex and gender transgressions doom political careers. An epoch is over.

From the point of view of social and political change, this cultural shift is going to be thoroughly revolutionary. Most fundamentally, this is because the practical interests of women in their children’s and their families’ future require (in today’s realities) a struggle to bring corporate power back under human command. To stop gun violence and war, to ensure health and education, to ensure full employment and security in old age, to restore the environment...all these things necessitate a reckoning with corporate authority, with the ceaseless drive of corporations to pursue profit no matter what the harm to people, our civilization and our planet.

Unlike women, men have a propensity to settle problems directly by force so they pay only secondary attention to collaborative problem-solving. Relying on force options (since the rise of patriarchy some 10,000 years ago), men – mostly, the wealthiest men and their male subordinates – created credit systems and states, waged wars, conquered nations and enslaved people in a constant drive to exploit nature and human labor. Women suffered horribly, losing their natural right to chose their own mates and, henceforth, enduring the domestic slavery of marriage and debt servitude. One enduring vestige of this setback is the sexual aggression routinely deployed by men who have economic and social power over certain women.

But, now, after millennia of economic and social development, civilization has matured into a single, global complex of social interactions upon which everyone is mutually dependent. In this context, that is, in today’s global market, the inherent drive of corporations to command labor and deplete nature for the private accumulations of a relative few creditors (lenders and investors) is socially and ecologically counter-productive. Today, the owners of the civilization’s massive debts are a handful of financial corporations that manage credit and money supply in American (dollar), British (pound), European/German (euro), Japanese (yen) and Chinese (renminbi) markets. These few global financial corporations exercise a near monopoly in the creation of money and debt, relentlessly “earning” superprofits from interest, fees and collateral confiscations. Meanwhile, they invest heavily in politics to exercise effective control of the policies and arsenals of the world’s biggest states (the US first among them). This means that women, to achieve their objectives, find themselves face-to-face with corporate power in politics.

Meanwhile, as a world system, corporate capitalism (aka, the global market) is in crisis, unable to support civilization’s population while, nevertheless, destroying our climate, polluting our seas and decimating the planet’s biological diversity. Worldwide, the corporate system fails to adequately support or employ almost half of all people, and most are Millennials and GenXers. While the labor and creativity of these people are just what the world needs to repair civilization’s social and ecological catastrophe, corporate finance – because there is no money to be made in lending to non-profit projects – has no incentive to get involved.

Women know these stark realities, deep in their souls. When women finish their work of taking power and begin directing social rectification, they will ignore calls to violence and seek other ways to address concerns. First among them, the most obvious other option, is holding the corporate system to account. It created this mess, and it can clean its mess up – under popular (women’s!) direction. Indeed, if not the corporations, who is going to pay to put everyone to work tackling this world’s cascading crisis?

Men aren’t women so, inevitably, we see reality with a different lens and different blinders, too. I’m excited to see how fast women will go.

We can't be sure that Alabamans will take Roy Moore down, but if they do, it will be because suburban Millennial and GenX women, who voted for Trump (and other conservatives) in 2016, desert the rightwing ship of their elders. Necessity is firm guidance, and, always, it is young women (as opposed to older women and all men) who change first. But, even if Moore survives this round in Alabama, his further exposure and the erosion of his support is inevitable. Franken did his best to apologize; perhaps, he had an epiphany and is sincerely horrified by himself (one can only hope). But now, he has to resign.

This unfolding tidal wave was made evident in the Virginia elections. The state’s elections are a year ahead of the national cycle, and Republicans already controlled the Virginia legislature when Trump ran and won election in 2016. Thus, many of the state’s male legislators had the opportunity to react to Trump’s Access Hollywood revelations and, later, to the outpouring of women’s power demonstrations right after he took office. Unfortunately for several of them, they not only defended Trump, they also took the opportunity to make sexist remarks about his feminine critics. This behavior directly provoked a number of GenX and Millennial women – including a transgender woman – to run against and defeat these jokesters. Indeed, with three seats still to be recounted, Democrats have the potential to swing 16 seats their way and take majority control of the Virginia House of Delegates! Totally unexpected thrashing. And of the 16 winners, 12 were women (several, women of color).

Similar outcomes were evident in New Jersey and the wide range of local races in this off-year expression of electorate trends.

Just imagine that the Virginia trend ripples through the 2018 Congressional and statehouse elections nationwide. Suddenly, we could find strong grassroots women holding office and pursuing change all across the country. (Indeed, a startlingly similar trend is unfolding in Britain, too.) Imagine breaking the Republican monopoly of Congressional power with a host of new, nominally Democratic but independent-minded Congresswomen. The march into the 2020 Presidential campaign is clearly delineated.

I am heartened by remarks that Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) made in the aftermath of the Virginia results. Clearly buoyed, he expressed confidence for the movement seeking to hold billionaires and corporations to account, and he urged the Democratic Party to open all state primaries for participation by independents (as candidates and as voters). Sound talking points. At this time, Sanders seems the best positioned of Americans who might rise to the status of Gray Champion in this Fourth Turning.

In any case, IMO, we are now at the revolutionary juncture we Boomers have awaited our entire political lives. The issues that animated our youthful, Sixties rebellion – war, racism, sexism and the Earth – are coming full circle. Our generation’s “rendezvous with destiny” is now. Clearly, the window is open in the US for progressive forces to take the Congress and Presidency through the 2018-20 election cycle. Other nations are on similar trajectories. These successes will reset the global stage for the final showdown in civilization’s epic struggle to subordinate corporate finance to human needs.

Boomers know our children. The GenXers among them are just about at their wits end, and the Millennials seem not to have a real chance at even proving themselves. All are enlightened; they see the world as it is. They’ve got no choice but to stand up, at least to listen to the candidates and vote…and as the turnout in Virginia and New Jersey showed, turnout they will. They’ll also volunteer, donate money and run for office. In history, at all fourth turnings, the rising generations always tighten morality and make fundamental change.

This time will be no exception, and it is women who are turning the tide.

[Steve Clark]

Trump the Neoliberal?

I find Trump’s “Russiagate” crisis both intriguing and instructive. It's starting to look like this dark hole opens a new horizon for him in 2020...

My starting point is the 2016 election. Initially, it was going to be Hillary Clinton versus Jeb Bush (meaning, whoever won, a continuation of the same neoliberal politics that have governed the nation since at least 1988). But the dreariness of this possibility (against the backdrop of increasing social and economic polarization) aroused widespread popular resistance and brought forth two anti-establishment (yet, wildly different) candidates, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

The Clinton machine managed to block Sanders in the primaries, but the Republican Party is a fragmented conglomeration of retro political trends (including the neoliberal Bushes) and could not unite in opposition to Trump. Libertarians, social (Christian) conservatives, corporate nationalists (Koch brother-types), Zionists, white supremacists and homophobes found enough slivers of common ground with Trump’s “populism” to sidestep outright rejection.

Trump is not a corporate or financial capitalist (one reason that Republican neoliberals – Bush, Cheney, Romney, McCain, Graham – were wary). Rather, he is a celebrity businessman, his wealth rooted in the private speculation and deal-making of property development. Apparently, his real world “empire” has been an up-and-down affair masked for the public by his positioning in mass and social media but obvious to corporate lenders who endured his bankruptcies and other escapes.

Long before his decision to run for President and, certainly, after the 2008 financial crisis greatly tightened access to bank financing in the US, Britain and Europe, Trump apparently courted alternative financing through relations with Russian bank oligarchs and Putin’s Kremlin. Additionally, such relations served as a means to launder revenue and avoid taxes. His Russian connections were just expedient, prosperous, happy deal-making until Trump launched his run for President. Then, without a substantial political agenda of his own yet committed to an outsider campaign, Trump began imagining that his relations with Russia might provide some new kind of governing framework if he managed to win the election. Accordingly, he surrounded himself with others also dipping into Kremlin funds. Upon winning, yet naïve to the power of the neoliberal bureaucracy, Trump set about formulating and pursuing an agenda that might somehow bridge Russian and conservative American interests.

Instantly, he aroused hostility among the neoliberal elite (who began the search for evidence that he had stolen the election with Russia’s help), and his dalliance with extremists of all stripes (his immigration bans, Charlottesville remarks) deeply undermined his popularity within America’s essentially tolerant mainstream. Meanwhile, the patchworked opportunists of the Republican Congress demonstrated their inability to govern, failing to repeal Obamacare or enact meaningful legislation of any sort.

It’s probably no accident that it was monster hurricane Harvey in Texas that finally brought Trump to his senses. Against such destruction, fiscal conservatism had no answer. Trump knew he was going to have to spend and spend big. He knew this precluded building his farcical Wall as well as any fiscal showdown with Democrats over the federal deficit. Further, he knew that immigrant labor was vital to any real effort to rebuild so deportations had to be reigned in. And behind Harvey came Irma. Nature imposed her will on politics because Trump’s popularity – not only as a politician but, more important to him, as a cultural icon – was at stake.

Moreover, behind the scenes, the neoliberal-spawned investigation into Russian meddling has been proving Trump’s and his family’s connections to Russian money. Yet, in his mind, his flirtation is no worse than Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta and others who used Russian avenues for financial gain. Still, for him, impeachment would be the ultimate crash of his celebrity status, and, for safety’s sake, he’s steadily axed the people around him (Flynn, Bannon, Manafort) who went too far, invited too much scrutiny and could not be defended. Nevertheless, the squeeze on him continues.

Thus, a crossroads has arrived. Feeling the noose around his neck and seeing the abject failure of Republican governance, Trump has switched tracks, going over to neoliberalism by embracing Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. He is hoping that, with their help, a deal can be struck to avoid impeachment and the fatal notoriety of a traitorous Presidency.

It remains to be seen whether Bob Mueller is truly independent or merely a tool of the neoliberal elites and their state. If he is the latter, his investigation, perhaps, will be headed off at the pass, before Trump’s complete public exposure. Or, if he is truly independent, Trump – on the basis of some public mea culpa, his embrace of the Democrats’ agenda (DOCA/immigration reform, climate change, global policing and “free trade”) and an expedient blessing from Pelosi/Schumer – can retain the Presidency despite Mueller’s exposé. One way or the other, Trump hopes to retain office and become a President that the American mainstream can tolerate and, eventually, come to respect and love.

Of course, after Clinton-Bush-Obama, neoliberalism is a dead end in US politics, but Trump, despite his solid, 2016 instinct to oppose it, now finds it immensely powerful and meaningful relative to his life’s fundamental necessity: placating his narcissism. It now appears possible that Trump, if he can collar Pelosi and Schumer to deflect Mueller, might not only avoid impeachment but even run for re-election in 2020 as neoliberalism’s candidate, possibly as head of the Democratic Party or, if the Sanders wing gains the upper hand, some other “national unity” party the three of them might create.

The bottom line: (1) neoliberalism needs a candidate to oppose Sanders (or his next-in-line) in 2020, and (2) Trump needs to avoid cultural oblivion. Two devils seeking a deal.

[Steve Clark]

The Future of Globalism Reviewed

Unless you’ve been giving thought to how the world might be better governed (as opposed, say, to how to make the world’s nation-states better instruments of government), you’ll probably find the Globalist’s seven-part series on The Future of Globalism by Dirk Holbing a bit esoteric. I say that not to discourage a quick read – each part is short and to-the-point – but to say I realize that restructuring civilization’s means of self-governance isn’t even a blip in today’s politics. It’s just not yet a practical political concern.

But, IMO, it should be…and soon will be, for all the reasons Part I articulates:

Faced with climate change, financial, economic and spending crisis, mass migration, terrorism, wars and cyber threats, it appears we are very close to global emergency. Given this state of affairs, we are running out of time to fix the problems of our planet. The lives of billions of people are at risk…

By now it is obvious that all traditional problem-solving approaches have failed to work. Therefore, we need new ways of participatory decision-making as well as new designs of the monetary, financial and economic system.

Citing (in Part II) “an increasing amount of evidence that more energy-efficient or environmentally-friendly solutions have often been suppressed by established industries in attempts to maintain their ‘cash cows,’” the Globalist calls for a “new social contract” (in Part III).

So far, so good. But, now, Holbing begins to wander (Parts IV and V), calling, vaguely, for “new currencies” and “a universal right to benefit from money creation.” He advocates for “full transparency” and a global ban on lobbying while proposing replacement of the UN with “a World Council” in which 1,000-person chambers of four constituencies – regional representatives, elite (business sector) reps, leading scientists and smart citizens – would “harness collective intelligence.”

Despite the fantasy involved in imagining that nation-states – the agencies that created the federated UN in their own image and interest – would abolish it in favor of any kind of global democracy, I found Holbing’s elaboration (Part VI) of how “digital democracy” might work edifying (as I have often suggested, without really knowing how, that newly designed platforms in social media can enable effective, global, popular decision-making). Holbing is a professor of Computational Social Science, which, if you think about the title, suggests he may know something about how this can be done. He writes:

Constructive forms of massive open online deliberation (MOOD) require new kinds of participatory platforms, which allow people affected by a problem to contribute arguments, ideas and concerns to the related debate. Once the different arguments and perspectives are clear and possible solutions have been suggested, one should start a round table with key representatives of the different perspectives to work out integrated solutions in an innovative deliberation process. A vote by the affected people on a “best of” list of integrated solutions should then decide which of the integrated solutions fits the needs of the people in the respective region best. It should then be implemented there.

I like to think he could go further along this line and that people like him can construct a perfecting system of online, participatory problem-solution analysis and evaluation that can vastly improve upon the decision-making process of today’s nation-states.

Part VII is devoted to a 12-point set of “Guiding Principles for a Golden Age of Prosperity and Peace.” I can’t argue with the principles, but I do know that the Globalist’s failure to identify and fight enemies – while, instead, focusing solely on positive initiatives – will never effectively rally mass support. Oppression is real; it breeds resistance and demands justice. By appealing to the best instincts of the most enlightened and sacrificing elites, the Globalist apparently hopes to leap over the seething jungle of popular revolt, an impossibility in today’s desperate and difficult times.

Still, by acknowledging today’s civilizational crisis and making an effort to define the direction forward, the Globalist lends its credibility to the revolutionary cause. Sooner or later, as the world’s people challenge the domination of corporate power, we must find (in lieu of today’s nation-states) new, global mechanisms of our own administration. Indeed, the first outlines of such mechanisms are bound to arise from the struggle against corporate authority, itself, including the nation-states they control. In that regard, Holbing’s sketch is a useful tool for reflection, correction, further elaboration and, eventually, practical revolutionary organizing.

[Steve Clark]

“Socialism” or Another Name…Only Possible Remedy is Global

The effort of John Judis (The Socialism America Needs Now) to assess the meaning of socialism in today’s context is a worthy one, and its Facebook posting by Mark Rudd (Aug 28) aroused useful commentary, including Rudd’s own sleepless-night questions of “what would Black Lives Matter say about the Judis piece” and “how do we deal with the fact that the military and the corporations feeding off it have had complete reign for almost 80 years and now have found a pot of gold in the Trump administration?”

Good questions.

The corporate system and military might are historically evolved and synergistic, as Rudd – and Reverend Barber’s North Carolina Poor People's Campaign (touted by Rudd) – suggests, but they are not unique to the US. The corporate system operates worldwide, not nation-by-nation, and virtually all states exert force to the extent necessary and possible (given their means) in collaboration with or opposition to the world’s remaining military superpower, the US.

Indeed, the corporate system and its military-industrial complex is really a global system, and no corner of today’s civilization avoids its devastating impacts. Most prominently, these include ecological destruction and socioeconomic polarization, both global in scope despite a vast array of local and national particularities.

Today’s crisis is truly a global crisis, and a failure to find a global remedy will produce a dark age worldwide. I agree with Rudd, “We’re all in this together and time is short.”

Unfortunately, however, Rudd (like Judis and Barber) falls prey to the inevitable tendency to see things more narrowly than they actually are, that is, to see things in local and national terms rather than global. While, of course, we must encourage cross-cultural unity in our fight-back and we must fight on every immediate front, until we also unite and fight globally for a practical program to subordinate corporate power to human necessity, we cannot prevent civilization’s impending collapse.

It is an illusion that the tattered and now-dysfunctional social contract under which we Westerners all grew up is purely national in character. Yes, in the US it had its own name (New Deal), but it was essentially the same as that adopted throughout Europe (social democracy). This social contract and its global financial arrangements were codified in the establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at Bretton Woods in 1945. The West’s former colonies had no choice but to accept their dependent role in this institutionalization. And, further, since the end of the Cold War circa 1990, the social contract in Russia and China, known as socialism, has fallen into the same strait. Civilization has one social contract, not hundreds, and the one we have is failing us all.

The answer is a new social contract, one commiserate with our time (and the future), not some redo or update of the old contract, especially, not some illusory (imaginary) reform of the corporate system via nation-by-nation politics (that are already dominated by corporations). The new social contract must be between the global masses and the corporate elite, themselves, not between each nation’s people and their state (though, of course, local and national political reform is one element of the overall struggle). How do we take the struggle to the corporate elite and enforce our demands in a new, global social contract? That is the real question of our time.

Our civilization has grave social and ecological problems that demand extensive and immediate attention, yet without much profit to be made, corporations pay no heed. Meanwhile, roughly 40 percent of the world’s people are underemployed (or worse). With a new social contract (and corresponding financial system), full employment, social stability and ecological restoration can be had, but only if the corporate system pays the freight. We should aim action at the IMF, the Institute of International Finance (the IIF, the global trade association of corporate finance) and the G-20 finance ministers, demanding a new social contract with a permanent tax on corporate commerce (a bank tax on corporate electronic fund transfers) to finance sustained expansion of the non-profit, NGO, problem-solving, full-employment economy worldwide and to support a new arm of popular, online, financial decision-making.

Call it “new socialism,” or find another name, but this is the practical way to subordinate corporate power and enable human potential at this critical juncture in civilization’s history.

Let’s unite on this and engage all our diverse struggles as components of the global fight for the social contract to save ourselves and our planet.

[Steve Clark]

Corbyn and Imperialism. Any Answers Here?

My question is directed to friends, progressives, MMTers, activists, and socialists in the pound-denominated currency zone known as Britain (dollar-zone Americans will see the relevance...):

I like Jeremy Corbyn’s chances of becoming the next British Prime Minister. With inept Conservative Theresa May (like Trump over here) ready to topple at any moment, Corbyn is far closer to actual power than Bernie Sanders ever got in 2016, nor is today. Indeed, Corbyn likely will become Prime Minister while Trump remains in office (or his term is completed by Spence or Ryan).

That conflict of values may serve as a crucible for the formulation of the so-far-elusive, yet vital foreign policy alternative to traditional Western corporate exploitation enforced by the US-based, military-industrial complex. After centuries serving extraction of the Middle East's wealth and its concentration the hands of British corporations, what ought the British government – once under the leadership of Corbyn and Labour – do to remedy the social and ecological tragedy it (in alliance with US imperialism) has made there (and worldwide)?

As an American looking in on the British elections (and thinking ahead to the stance that revolutionaries should adopt in the US elections in 2018 and 2020), I wonder what will be the cornerstone of Corbyn foreign policy with regard to the legacy and reality of late industrial age corporate capitalism: its monopolization, its nationalism and militarization, its outright seizure of the industry and markets of other people, and its permanent subjugation of their lives and livelihoods to credit from British (and other) corporate banks. What does Corbyn propose to right imperialism’s global devastation?

Having the relative political advantage of not being (like the US government) the actual engine of military aggression in today’s world, a Corbyn government will certainly have wider latitude in scratching around for sound, post-imperial policy than would a new American Administration. In charge of our civilization’s largest and most deployed arsenal, a progressive American President will be on an immediate hot seat, with every interest group anywhere on earth – especially, dollar-denominated corporate forces – hailing any action as either defense of traditional US foreign policy or the delineation of an unsketched and uncertain alternative. What if such a President, following a British example, announced an end to US military action in the Middle East, and the West's house of cards begins to collapse? From Day One, the US President’s agenda will count, and he will be tested and held accountable; crippling misjudgments and mistakes are possible. Prime Minister Corbyn, perhaps, has a bit more room and time for manoeuver.

Certainly, he would cease Britain’s military participation in imperial war in the Middle East (in particular) and elsewhere. That sends a powerful message (and it’s actual execution will foster existential resistance and require rigorous supervision to succeed...all the more in a disengaging US Administration). But, by itself, ending military aggression does nothing to end the region’s exploitation by western corporations, in particular, by British (and US) finance corporations that have grown wealthy beyond imagination from credit extended in (and wealth extracted from) the Middle East over the past century, yet have left the region’s people in catastrophic straits. This extraction is called imperialism, and until it is both ended and repaired, it will continue to flame resentment, rebellion and violence against British interests in the Middle East and at home.

Corbyn will have to have an answer for this, or, despite his progressive values, he and the on-going government of Britain will be seen by the world’s suffering masses as still part of the problem…and, thus, still worthy of attack. The US, of course, is the most hated target of all among the world’s dissatisfied people, so whoever follows Trump will face an even more daunting reimagining task in every region of the world. In charting a new course in world affairs, American progressives have much to ponder.

The question of imperialism – the population acceleration, poverty, social polarization, displacement, violence and ecological destruction corporate capitalism has imposed on civilization over the last 150 years – is the central issue of today’s worldwide, generational rebellion. The right and practice of corporations to exploit civilization and nature for their own sake -- a right advanced by Big Five currency zone states and backed by US war machinery -- is the underlying and unifying target of today's generational, civilization-wide uprising. Until the alternative to imperial oppression is found and embraced, civilization’s tattered social contract cannot be rewritten, and our slide into social and ecological disaster (aka, a new dark age) cannot be reversed.

When he becomes Prime Minister, Corbyn will have the first shot at articulating the remedy to imperialism in today’s world. Not that Britain, alone, can make it happen (of course, it can’t), but he will be the first elected progressive in an imperial state to confront what must be done to end imperialism, repair its desperate legacy and restore peace and collaboration as the heart and soul of human civilization. It is an opportunity awesome with potential, and it is with great anticipation that I await Corbyn’s wrestle with this world-historic challenge.

How might such a challenge be tackled? Not an easy answer. As an American progressive thinking ahead, I’m partial to a practical, if revolutionary premise and approach: (1) establish sustainable, full employment worldwide through (2) expansive, NGO-led job growth in social and ecological services (3) financed with credit advanced via a new, popular currency that is (4) backed by a permanent revenue stream of IMF-imposed fees on corporate bank transactions and (5) administered through a new, online system of popular discussion and decision-making on behalf of global problem-solving.

Call it:
People Power over Corporate Power – the Only Way Out of the Mess They Made!

Or constructively:
To put ourselves to work solving our problems, we need our own credit and demand a corporate bank tax to fund it.

Or confrontationally:
Attn: IMF, IIF, BIS, and G-20. Time for a new Social Contract!

[Steve Clark]