I am going to attempt to make an overall
political philosophy… but as with any attempt,
I have to lay out what I am working with…
Most of my concepts are pretty basic and have
a long history within both philosophy and political philosophy…
but one word does not, and I will have to work that out,
and that word is ‘‘Self-Own’’…and the bottom line there
is simple, do we ‘‘own’’ ourselves or is our person owned by
another… for example, in a religious context, Catholicism,
for example, it is quite clear in reading about religions
and specifically, Catholicism, we are ‘‘owned’’ by god,
and the basis for this ‘‘ownage’’ is the old idea that both
the children of a man and his wife, are ‘‘owned’’ by the man…
both children and the wife/wives, are seen as property,
and have been since for as long as there have been human
beings… women and children as property, was a given
in early American history… and it was considered to be true,
even as late as the 1970’s… recall that women were not
allowed to have independent credit or credit cards unless they
were co-signed by a man…and this is within my own lifetime…
the specific bill was the Equal credit opportunity Act of 1974…
if one is considered to be property, they are not considered
to be ‘‘self-owned’’… and this is a very important fact to keep
in mind as we go along…
What is the bottom line with human beings?
the fact is that human beings, along with all life,
have needs, both physical and psychological needs…
among the human needs are the physical needs, bodily needs,
and among them are the need for food, water, shelter, health
care, education, and love… and love is also psychological
need, along with a sense of belonging, safety/security,
both self-esteem and esteem from others… and if we human
beings don’t get these needs fulfill, either the bodily needs
or the psychological needs, we become unhappy, dissatisfied,
suffer from a malaise that is hard both to diagnose and fulfill…
as we have had this sort of malaise since before the 1900’s,
but why?
Virtually every physical need of ours has been met…
today, I live better than the great Kings of yesteryear…
and we are merely middle class people…
So, our current malaise, one which has been around for
over 150 years, despite our immense economic wealth,
clearly has some other reason for existing…
and what is that reason? and what of solutions?
as I have suggested that despite our immense increase
in both personal and public wealth, we are unhappy
and in despair… and does an increase in wealth or
property, something that has dramatically increased
over the last 150 years, if we are still unhappy and
suffering from a malaise, then an increase in wealth
or property will not suddenly help us get ‘‘better’’…
in terms of our mental health or psychological help…
our malaise, such as it is, is not dependent on
our accumulation of wealth or property…
it has other causes and cures…
One of the other things to be aware of is the nature
of our existence… our world, for better or worse, is
a liberal one… both the declaration of independence
and the Constitution are Enlightenment documents…
the very idea of a democracy is a liberal one,
the other political ideas, such as dictatorship or
monarchies, are not liberal ideals… but Kropotkin,
what about ideas like Communism… and here is
where we begin to go wrong… communism is not
a political ideal but an economic one…and we see
why the Soviet Union failed… it tried to take an
economic idea like Communism and turn it into
a political ideal… ( and we can begin to see the failure
of the west here… it has taken an economic idea like
capitalism and built a political structure around it, it does
not and will not ever, work as a political ideal… much
of our failure in our modern age comes from being unable
to tell the difference between an economic idea and
a political idea…a political problem requires a political
solution, and an economic problem requires an economic
solution)
So, the question begins, how do we meet our needs,
both our physical and our psychological needs?
and here begins the history of both our economic
and political structures… the single longest lasting
economic ‘‘policy’’ ever devised by Human beings is the
very first one, hunter-gatherer, it lasted over a million
years… compare that with the economic ‘‘policy’’
of capitalism. Which has existed, as an economic
policy for more than 200 years… Adam Smith
published his ‘‘Wealth of Nations’’ in 1776… So,
capitalism as a theory, as existed as long as America has…
and the American experiment, is a political one, not an economic one…
and this is important to note…and what is the bottom line
in our American experiment? That we own ourselves…
voting for our own vested interests, that says we own ourselves…
which brings us to our next point, if we have ownership of
our choices, then we are self-own… that is the entire
point of a democracy… that we are the creators of
policy, not the wealthy or powerful, we ordinary people
self-own our policies… if we do not own our policies, if
they are dictated to us, we no longer self-own our political
policies… they are dictated to us… to self-own requires
us to have the freedom of choice… if we have no choice,
if we have no freedom, then we are nothing more than property…
to do what we are told is the political goal… which is
to say, that we have no choices, no freedom, then we
are living within a dictatorship, a monarchy, or an oligarchy…
if we have no freedom of choice, we are owned
by others… it is that simple…for property has
no choice… it must do and go, where it is told to go…
and one of the things about being property, to have no choice/
freedom is to know that our needs, whatever they are, are
not our choice, we are given our needs in whatever
order and how they are dictated to us… we have no freedom
in choosing the need we need to met… that is the thing
about living in a dictatorship, monarchy, oligarchy…
our needs are dictated to us, not freely chosen by us…
As this is true for us politically, it is also true for us
economically… If I am told what I can use my money for,
that is denying me my freedom/my choice… I am, once again,
property if I have no choice… if at work, I have no choice,
then I am nothing more than property at work…
and this is another point, that we have no choices
within the economic sphere… we are told by management,
what to wear, where to stand, what to say, how to
react and approach customers, for the goal is not
to meet the needs of the workers, whatever they maybe,
but to meet the needs of the company, which is to make
profits… profits before people… and in every single mission
statement by a corporation, making money/profits is listed
as the avowed goal of that corporation…
and where does the worker stand in all of this? The
expendable person who actually makes the profits,
for corporate wealth is entirely dependent on workers…
you pay said worker, for explanation purposes:
you pay 5.00 per hour worth of effort, and the worker
creates $10.00 of effort which you sell,
that $5.00 beyond their creation of money,
that is profits, the only way to make profits, is to pay the workers
less than their work effort…this is why true wealth,
the wealth of the modern age, which is fabulously
wealthier than any other age, exists because of the
exploitation of the workers in the modern age…
the vast wealth of the last 150 years comes from
the vast exploitation of workers… no workers,
no wealth… it is as simple as that… stealing profits
from the workers is how our modern age got so wealthy…
Millions of workers, millions/billions/trillions of dollars of
wealth created by millions of workers…and how much
choice do you have in the creation of that wealth?
if you must work to have health care and you must work
to meet your basic needs of food, water, shelter, health care,
education, then you have no choice, no freedom of choice
in the matter…
In the economic sphere, we are not free, we are owned
by others, as we have no choice or freedoms to act, do or
say in the economic policies of the world… we are nothing
more than slaves, property owned by the corporations/companies
of the world if we have no choice, no freedom of speech or actions
within the corporations…(I was working in one store in a city,
and I was transferred to another store without any discussion with
me, it was done and I had no say/choice about it, this is a very
common action taken within business, you are told what to do,
and given no choice in the matter, as I was… I was
treated as property, nothing more, I am not self-owned,
in this instance, as I lacked any choice or freedom in
this matter)
and this being property of the corporations, that has, in part,
has created this malaise that we suffer from… how can one
be happy if one is a slave or have no choice/freedoms at
work? But this is an economic question, not a political question…
and let us return to our political nature…
the ways the laws are written, is that we have no economic
choice, for example, legally, our health insurance for example,
is not done via politically, but through our having a job, we
can only get health care if we have a job… that becomes
a political matter…this is done for the benefit of the
corporations… it forces people to work if they want health care
or to even feed themselves… and if we have no choice/no freedom
then we are not self-owned, we are property… forcing people
to have health care only if they work, that is not freedom of
choice… a political decision forces people into making
economic choices…
In other words, the Soviet Union fell because it extended
the economic into the political, we are taking exact
same path… and the ongoing political problems of
today, stem from this mixing and maxing the economic
with the political… turning the two separate policies,
into one, what is political, must remain political, and
what is economic, must remain the economic…or does it?
So far, we only have questions, no answers…
let us see if we can find answers in our next post…
what policies can we follow that allows us to
have choices, to have freedom?
Kropotkin
