Oaxaca, Thursday, November 11, 2003

Friends:

      When I first went to live in Boston in 1964 I got a pair of Madre boots, made by Fabbiano in Italy. Although I already had heavy duty mountain boots, good for rough rocky terrain and ice fields in the Colorado Rockies; the lighter weight Madres were for winter walking in the snow, slush and ice of Boston. I’ve had them resoled (vibram, of course) several times by an old Italian shoemaker on Commonwealth Avenue. I used to wear sneakers a lot for running and walking, low-cut tennis shoes, don’t remember the name - all white with a tiny blue rectangle at the back. My friend, his skilled leathery hands burnished like the heavy cowhide he crafted, saw them in silence. America, he knew, wasn’t his native Calabria. Once, a decade or two after New Balance became famous among the running cognoscente (I’ve always been behind the times) I came to his shop with my “new style running shoes” needing a bit of repair. He shook his head resignedly, rejected them, knowing he couldn’t repair them properly, and thinking, I’m sure, that’s not what people should put on their feet. I still wear New Balance (made in New England) and, for the past five years, Tevas, made in China by the leading pool (the largest number and the most ill-paid) of wage-slaves in the world.

      The Madres are here with me in Oaxaca, my choice of footwear for trips up into the northern sierras to visit one or another indigenous towns. Next year they’ll be 40 years old. Not bad -- that’s leather!

      So I was thinking the other day how eager so many people are to get rid of George Bush Jr next year. Aaron Hawley at the University of Vermont posted an article titled “The [Howard] Dean Deception”, which unmasks Dean, on the Science for the People discussion list. Several responses followed in short order. The last one that day, by long-time Science for the People member Herb Fox, speaking of people’s growing alienation from the political process, concluded, “No, I do not know how to promote the alternative, but I do know that promoting one of the ‘leading contenders’ for the Democratic nomination will only deepen the alienation.” Herb’s right of course. What to do?

      Well, here’s the ‘old shoemaker’ with his notion of the best shoes for our feet so we can walk solidly on the ground towards the better world we want. We must become disillusioned, literally thoroughly, totally disillusioned, in the sense that Chomsky strives for -- that is, by ridding ourselves of all illusions. I’ll list them in order, from the easiest to discard to those most deeply and tenaciously imbedded in our consciousness.

   1. At least with Democrats, bad though all the ‘high-placed’ ones are, we can have significant influence on the political process. False!
   2. Sure, the Democrats as a group are no good either, though not so vicious as the current regime. What we really need is an honest third party. False!
   3. It ought to be possible to make the electoral system work, to have decent, honest, representative democracy. Progressives can help build an independent base, whether working to elect a Democrat or a third party candidate, while at the same time operating independently, consciously and visibly. False!
   4. The basic problem lies in the political system, because it is totally corrupted by money interests. We need to correct this with adequate regulatory controls on both campaign contributions and mass media misinformation. False!
   5. It is not capitalism that corrupts the political system, but human nature itself, which is fundamentally why all political systems have become corrupted over time. False!
   6. Finally, money in and of itself is not bad. There have always been systems of measured exchange, whether the currency was beads, shells, or whatever. Trade, the exchange of goods and services, is essential, and as long as it is equitable exchange, it is a social good. False!

      Many people are quite ready to at least think about whether maybe assumptions 1 through 4 are not justified by experience. But, not seeing other alternatives, their tendency is to ‘stick with something we know rather than try something we don’t know.’ So, their inclination is to continue to function within the framework of those assumptions. It’s 5 and 6 -- capitalism and money -- that present the really tough challenge. Those of us born into U.S. society are, from our very early childhood years, inundated with the entire value system spawned by and supported by (and supportive of) capitalism. For example, if we are hungry and see a piece of bread in a shop,we 'know -- are indoctrinated to believe' that it’s wrong to just take it to eat. We must buy it. When we buy it it is no longer the private property of the shopkeeper, but our private property, and then it’s all right to eat it. Such values are absolutely pervasive in the U.S., and in many, indeed most other countries.

      I advocated elsewhere the desirability of working towards a social order that is not based upon measured exchange but on mutual aid, e.g. in the article, “Mutual Aid and Mutual Trust”, one of a series of essays on building a global grassroots infrastructure. On a small scale, I am trying to contribute towards that effort by setting up a trust to which I irrevocably deeded what had previously been “my house” -- my private property -- as described in another one of those essays.

      In practical terms, what do these ‘theoretical ideas’ say about the upcoming presidential election next year?

      The way I see it, yes of course, try to get rid of the Bush gang. But I wouldn’t pour a lot of energy into figuring out the best strategy, into contesting others who also despise the neo-fascist incumbents, or into political campaigns. As a convinced and committed anarchist, I ‘know’ that so-called representative democracy (in which we elect other people to go, most often far away, and represent our interests) is fundamentally fraudulent and unworkable, yielding always and everywhere neither true representation nor true democracy. Nevertheless, if I’m in Cambridge next November I’ll most likely vote -- an expression of the revulsion I feel for Bush Jr et al. But I’ll do it with mixed feelings, knowing that the very act of participating in the fraudulent process tends to lend it a gloss of undeserved legitimacy. It’s one of the many minor contradictions I live with.

      What I advocate is that we minimize our involvement in electoral politics, accept as reality that we may not be able to ‘win’ in the short term, and that even if we could ‘win’ by ousting the ‘full-throttle neo-fascists’ next November, our ‘victory’ would be significant only in that a different set of slimebags would be promoting U.S. global conquest in support of global capitalism. Yes, they would likely be a lot slicker (how could they not be?), like lying ‘Bill’ Clinton, and they would perhaps make some cosmetic changes in the Patriot Act, and so on. Some euphoric liberals would believe the political climate had undergone an improvement of near-revolutionary scale. They’d be wrong but happy. Of course, happiness is not to be sneered at.

      Instead of pissing our lives away in the prescribed ‘game’ of party politics (It’s the only game in town, they’d like us to believe), we’d do better to work towards long-term fundamental changes in the entire social fabric of our lives. That starts with our own efforts to educate ourselves and each other about the realities of the world in which we are currently forced to live. And to do that we need, first and foremost, honest information. That’s why I think the top priority ought to be building the communications part of the global grassroots infrastructure, all the components of the emerging grassroots authentic journalism movement. Saving the Pacifica network, still under attack, reviving Al Giordano’s NarcoNews, getting the information out about grassroots Israeli and Palestinian efforts to build true peace with dignity for everyone -- I believe these kinds of efforts are worth our time, energy and resources. We don’t want to play tiddly winks with the dominating power structure; we want to get our hands around its jugular.

      Well, time to put on my Madres and go for a hike.

In solidarity,
George

P.S. For the latest, go to http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/ and, near the top, click on *** Latest postings on current struggles ***. That’s where this note will be when I get it posted.

contact: <george.salzman@umb.edu>