Susan's blog

Whose Property?

by Susan Rosenthal

Private property is the foundation of capitalism. It is therefore very confusing when a self-proclaimed Communist country like China enshrines private property in its constitution. How could this be? The answer lies in a deeper understanding of private property.

Human history dates back more than 150,000 years. For most of that time, no one owned the land and its resources or the knowledge that was handed down through the generations. 

The original inhabitants of North America lived in sharing societies where they took care of one another and decided matters together. This pre-industrial communism was alien to the European conquerors who came from class-divided, non-sharing societies. They seized control of the land and declared it to be their private property, for their exclusive use.

More and more resources have become private property including ideas, methods and machines. Seeds, plants, animals and even genes have been patented. Nations claim ownership of water and air space. There are even disputes over who owns the moon. Only the national debt is collectively owned.

Because most of the world’s wealth is now owned or controlled by a tiny capitalist class, everyone else must scramble to survive. One in five people lives on less than one dollar a day; one billion people do not have adequate shelter; more than two billion people do not have proper sanitation; and more than one billion people lack safe drinking water.

As inequality grows, the pressure increases to return private property to common control. The State was created to prevent this from happening.

The State enforces a legal system that upholds the "right" of property owners to dictate what happens to "their" property. Police and armies are employed to protect private property, and the penal system maintains this unjust social arrangement.

Force alone is not enough, because the have-nots far outnumber the have-lots. So an army of propagandists is paid to praise the private property system and attack all who criticize it.

Personal property is not private property

Private property should not be confused with personal property. People have always had personal-use items (homes, clothes, toys, tools, etc.) that they kept, shared or traded, and they will always have them, regardless of the type of social system. The important question is who owns the natural resources, tools and technology that people need to survive.

To promote loyalty to the system of private property, ordinary folks are encouraged to view their personal possessions as "private property." In reality, private property consumes personal property. The Supreme Court recently ruled that cities can seize and demolish people’s homes to make way for shopping malls and other businesses.

Public property is private property that is owned by the State. Because the State claims to represent all the people, State or public property is assumed to be commonly owned. It is not. Common ownership means that common people are in control. Public ownership means that State officials are in control. And under capitalism, the State serves the capitalist class.

State capitalism

There are no socialist or communist economies in the world today, no nations where ordinary people share control of society. No, not any — not even close

In 1917, the working class took power in Russia but wasn’t strong enough to hold onto it. In the 1920s, Russian capitalism was restored in the form of State capitalism. The State controlled production, and everyone worked for the State.

The Cold War was not a conflict between American Democracy and Russian Communism, but a power struggle between two capitalist super-powers to determine which would rule the world. Democracy had nothing to do with it and neither did communism. The State was heavily invested in both economies, and neither nation exposed its top decision-makers to the risk of popular elections.

Portraying the United States as democratic and Russia as communist served both forms of capitalism. Because conditions for Russian workers were so oppressive, Washington could claim that capitalism was better, despite racism and inequality in America. Because conditions for American workers were so oppressive, Moscow could claim that communism was better, despite mass oppression in Russia.

If State control makes a nation communist, then the U.S. is just as communist as China, because both States control an estimated 30 percent of their economies. China’s shift from public (State-controlled) property to private property is simply a change in the form of capitalism. Russian capitalism made the same shift during the 1990s.

Genuine socialism would transform all private property into shared or common "property," which is not property at all because no one would own it. People would continue to own personal-use items; however, no one would be allowed to own the means of survival and thereby gain power over others.

Abolishing private property will end the class division of humanity and all the problems it creates. Humanity’s greatest strength has always been our ability to cooperate. By sharing life’s ups and downs, the good and the bad, we can solve life’s problems together.

For more on this subject read POWER and Powerlessness, Chapter 14, "Seize the Power." Available at www.powerandpowerlessness.com

Alienation and Dissociation: The Two Sides of Powerlessness

by Susan Rosenthal

Alienation and dissociation reinforce each other to create a cycle of social powerlessness. In The Hidden Injuries of Class, a worker ponders this dilemma.

"The more a person is on the receiving end of orders, the more the person’s got to think he or she is really somewhere else in order to keep up self-respect. And yet it’s at work that you’re supposed to ‘make something’ of yourself, so if you’re not really there, how are you going to make something of yourself?"

Capitalism alienates the majority from control over the decision-making process, putting most people "on the receiving end of orders." Dissociation is a psychological defense against feeling powerless; the worker goes "somewhere else" to preserve self-respect. However, dissociation keeps the worker in his alienated condition, "so if you’re not really there, how are you going to make something of yourself?"

Alienation and dissociation re-enforce each other in countless ways. Workers who must function like cogs in the social machine have dissociated relationships with the other cogs. There is no direct and conscious sharing of the creative, productive process.

Instead of relating to each other as fellow producers, directly exchanging what they want and need, workers relate to each other as dissociated consumers, you pay my boss for what I made and I pay your boss for what you made.

Consequently, despite living, working, commuting and shopping together, most people feel estranged from one another. We talk about what we can’t control (sports, the weather) to avoid discussing what we aren’t allowed to control (our work, the world).

Capitalism alienates humanity from the environment by dissociating the past and the future from the present. Only the sale is important. Every year, tons of industrial chemicals, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals enter the market as commodities with no consideration for what happens after they are sold. Once used, these products are thrown away, washed away and excreted from human and animal bodies, entering rivers, streams and lakes, returning to us in the form of contaminated food and water.

Alienation and dissociation reach their pinnacle in war. When people feel helpless to stop the madness, they must dissociate from the brutality or go mad themselves.

People who feel powerless have been compared to laboratory animals who resign themselves to unavoidable electrical shocks. Even after their cage doors are opened, they do not escape. This phenomenon is called "learned helplessness," where the familiar, no matter how terrible, seems preferable to the unknown, no matter how promising.

People without hope do feel powerlessness. However, animals have limited ways to extract themselves from harmful situations, unlike human beings who are creative and resourceful problem-solvers. And while individuals have a limited ability to solve problems, there is virtually no limit to the problems that people can solve together.

To maintain their stranglehold over society, the people-in-power use divide-and-rule strategies that keep the majority feeling isolated, fearful, and powerless. Nevertheless, the criminal behavior of the ruling class compels ordinary people to organize in self-defense.

Cooperation counters the downward cycle of alienation and dissociation. Cooperation elicits feelings of strength and hope, so people work harder to find solutions, thereby increasing their chances of success. Cooperation and hope re-enforce each other to increase social power.

Whether we feel hopeless or hopeful, powerless or powerful depends on whether we work alone or together. Alone, we can’t protect ourselves from environmental pollution, ruthless bosses, corrupt corporations and war-mongering governments. As an organized force, we have the power to change the world.

For more on alienation and dissociation read Power and Powerlessness, Chapter 5. "Seize the Surplus." Available at www.powerandpowerlessness.com

War and Dissociation

by Susan Rosenthal

When Tina Turner sang, "Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken," we all knew what she meant. In a world filled with pain, nature provides a defense against suffering — dissociation.

Dissociation provides a mental escape when there is no physical escape. Experiences that are too horrible to be integrated into our understanding of the world are split off from conscious awareness.

Dissociation separates contradictory experiences to avoid internal conflict, making it possible to love our own children and support wars that kill other people’s children; to want freedom and support wars that deny others their freedom. To feel outrage at being robbed and support wars that rob the people of other lands.

When thinking brings pain, dissociation helps people to move through life without thinking; we shut out the world or imagine it to be much safer than it really is. By numbing fear, anger and pain, dissociation creates a false sense of safety, reducing our motivation to remove the dangers that threaten us.

Severe dissociation numbs compassion and empathy, making it possible for people to do cruel and monstrous things that they would never do in a non-dissociated state.

An unthinkable war

The barbarism of the Iraq war is creating mass dissociation in Iraq and America. Iraqis are going out of their minds with suffering. So are their tormentors, the American soldiers who are themselves tormented by what they have seen and done.

Ordinary Americans must also dissociate in order to live "normal" lives while a horrific war looms menacingly in the background. Such dissociation provides temporary comfort, while allowing the war to continue.

The media encourage mass dissociation, presenting sanitized coverage of the war and sedating commentary that drips with lies. "Doublespeak" promotes dissociation to make the unacceptable acceptable. Invasion is defense; civilian deaths are collateral damage; a freedom fighter is a terrorist working for us; and a terrorist is a freedom fighter working for them.

Politicians revel in doublespeak. On Independence Day, President Bush equated the U.S. war to dominate Iraq with America’s fight against British domination. Such upside-down distortions encourage people to dissociate from the fact that their government is conducting mass murder in their name.

Dissociation in the face of terrible injustice is mistakenly seen as a lack of caring instead of what it really is, a psychological defense against feeling powerless.

Polls consistently show that Americans are very concerned about the war, and most want it to end. Yet, they see no way forward. The Democrats consistently betray the anti-war movement, and liberal leaders of the social movements tail the Democrats. Last week’s vote to withdraw most American combat troops from Iraq next April is just another sham.

All troops must come home now, combat and occupation forces, because Iraq belongs to the Iraqis. Delaying the pullout only compounds the misery and gives politicians time to change their minds.

While the powers-that-be promote war as necessary for peace, prosperity and security, peace never comes, only the wealthy prosper and life becomes increasingly insecure. The ordinary American, the American soldier and the people they are supposed to hate, all are victimized by the rich and powerful who feed off their suffering.

Americans don’t need to care more about the war, they need an uncompromising anti-war movement that can organize them into a force powerful enough to end it.

For more on dissociation, read POWER and Powerlessness, Chapter 3. "Who Need a Heart When a Heart Can Be Broken." Available at www.powerandpowerlessness.com

A Time of Transition

by Susan Rosenthal

Times of transition are very difficult.

In good times, people are more open to new ideas and more willing to organize. The fight for civil rights of the 1950s fed the anti-war movement of the 1960s. Both fueled movements for workers’ rights and for women’s, gay and Black liberation. As millions of people moved into struggle, there was widespread belief that we could change the world.

In the 1970s, the capitalist class launched a counter-offensive to reverse the gains of the 1960s. They were so successful that, today, most Americans believe that real change is not possible. An entire generation has known only setbacks and defeats. Many have swallowed the lie that there is not enough to go around, that we must lower our expectations, that the only choice is the lesser evil. In such bad times, people hunker down to survive and can’t bear to think about anything else.

We are currently in a time of transition, which is the most difficult of all because growing discontent is not matched by a corresponding rise in struggle. There is enough struggle to raise people’s hopes, but not enough to win significant gains.

The anti-globalization movement of the late 1990s raised hopes for change. So did the massive anti-war demonstrations that preceded America’s invasion of the Middle East. When the U.S. began bombing Baghdad, many people became deeply discouraged and retreated from activity.

In the spring of 2006, the largest demonstration in American history raised the demand for immigrants rights. Demoralization followed as Washington escalated its campaign of intimidation, arrests and deportations. Immigrants rights organizations were thrown into conflict over how to proceed, and momentum was lost.

Hopes were raised again when the Republicans were swept out of Congress and dashed again when the Democrats voted more funding for the war.

This roller coaster of struggle is hard to take. Pessimism can seem protective. Why get your hopes up only to be disappointed? However, pessimism provides no real refuge and blocks us from seizing opportunities that continue to appear.

America is seething with discontent over the war, environmental crisis, falling living standards, government corruption, and the abysmal state of the medical system. The episodic eruptions of the past decade have the potential to coalesce into a generalized rebellion against the system. The ruling class is concerned about this.

In May, Congress threw the working class a bone by raising the minimum wage. This move marks a shift from the unrelenting attacks of the past few decades. The confidence of the capitalist class has been shaken by their inability to win the war and by their failure to create a workable immigration policy. Their faltering provides an opening for us to step up our demands. To do this, we must fight against pessimism and passivity.

Billions of people live in unnecessary misery, filling all of us with pain. Because human beings are such a social species, our brains are constructed to feel the pain of others as if it were our own. Such compassion is critical to safeguard the common interest. However, when there seems to be no solution, this pain can be overwhelming — it can be difficult to know where our pain ends and that of others begins.

The medical system treats social pain as a personal problem or affliction. As a result, most people mistakenly consider their pain to be a sign of personal inadequacy. When they see no fight-back, they feel even more discouraged, and some surrender to despair.

Every year more than 30,000 Americans kill themselves and half a million are treated in emergency rooms for self-inflicted wounds. This is just the tip of a massive iceberg of social pain.

There is only one remedy for the soul sickness that capitalism creates — a socialist society where ordinary people pull together to solve our common problems. No hero is coming to save the day. It’s up to us to save ourselves by organizing ourselves.

In the past, wars have led to revolutions. The 1960s provided a glimpse of what we can achieve. This time, we must go all the way.

We cannot give in to pessimism. Our survival depends on it.

For more on this topic, read POWER and Powerlessness. Available at www.powerandpowerlessness.com