Dear Co-operators and friends, all,
In response to:
*********************
----------
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (.brian.)
>Terry Leahy (Chair, Tesco) earned £671,000 in 1998 (Tesco is one of
the UK's largest supermarket chains.)
**************************
I wrote:
**************************
!!!!!!! Earned ??????
Or got ??????
It was the night-shift (and etc) who did the earning.
(And what of the shareholders cut ?? )
**************************
And, then,
Carl wrote as below.:
>>
>miaow! ;-)
>
**************************
And, so:
I now write:
Firstly - thanks to Carl for this prompting.
Secondly, I accept that my comments, above, might appear as The Politics of
Envy.
I hope, however, to take this to deeper places:
a) Ineqality is bad for the physical, mental and spiritual health of *all*
the members of a society (check the first and last paragraphs of Richard
Wilkinson's 'Unhealthy Societies')
b) The (unthinking?) pressure creating inequality is *the* automatic process
of capitalism - what Vaclav Havel calls "auto-totality" - a totalitarianism
where there is no physical dictator (see Sharif Abdullah's, recent,
'Creating
a World Theat Works For All.')
c) This "auto-totality" is, for me, the combination of capitalism's two
linked drivers:
firstly, wealth concentration
and, then,
further use of the profits that, then, flow from ownership of that
concentration
(These form the two components of power concentration) that, *when put
together* is so frightening about
capitalism - the "auto-totality of whic Vaclav Havel speaks.)
Thus, we *must,* as co-operators, work to dissolve away the *two* elements
of
power concentration - the mechanisms by which wealth is concentrated *and*
also
the further use to which those concentrations are put.
In other words, our task is to re-mutualise ownership of land and productive
resources, which we *can do,* peacefully, by returning money to its proper
use
as a *shared* measuring device (see Alan Watts, quoted in the first chapter
- The
Absurdity of it all - in Peter Lang's 'LETs Work: Rebuilding the Local
Economy.')
Thanks, again, Carl !
Co-op-ly hugs, to, for and from, all,
j
********************
BTWs:
The best book I know on power is Ken Galbraith's 'The Anatomy of Power.'
And,
All this is the (??!!) reasoning for our Campaign for Interest-Free
Money,
since taking hold of money's power is *the* route to remutualising the other
two.
More hugs !!
************************
