Re: Venture Communism

[Waistline2]

In a message dated 7/17/2004 6:48:01 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:   >This is why venture communism attempts to subvert the system by sharing profit equally, instead of making surplus value into private accumulation, it makes into shared wealth.   We are losing the revolution. The capitalists are accumulating more, and we are left with less. When do you imagine this upsurge will change that?<   Reply   Cooperative movements - local and those with nationwide scope, are not new in American society. To a large degree the Amish, Mormons and even the Nation of Islam are more than less cooperative movements, with the Nation of Islam commanding a pool of financial capital and labor resources. Millions of people in our country take part in all kinds of co-opts and group themselves together into investment co-opts seeking to maintain or improve their quality of life.   Then there is the shadow economy or the illegal economy or the black market . . . whose working is in fact another form of cooperation to escape the price structures of the legal economy . . . by laboring and exchange "off the books."  People never "do nothing" but respond to the pressure of bourgeois society in millions of different ways. There have been venture capital funds for women . . . blacks . . . Mexicans . . . gentlemen clubs . . . upper middle class circles . . . big capitalists and virtually every kind of association possible.   There are millions of ways to blunt the sharp edge of the "absoluteness" of the general law of capitalist accumulation. This general law basically states that wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of capitalists in direct proportion to the increase of poverty amongst the people. Speculators and owners at one pole commanding billions upon billions of dollars and billions of people at the other end of the pole unable to acquire the means to enter exchange in a way to take care of themselves and their family. This is a law of capital accumulation in the same way that "water runs downstream" expresses a general law of gravity. I am not against building canals and irrigation systems to harness water under the impact of the law of gravity . . . but I am aware than no amount of human will can change the law of gravity.   We are not losing the revolution and political revolution is absolute inevitable in our country. The social revolution comes about as the result of changes in the material power of production . . . that compels society to leap to a new political and economic (exchange) basis. We work in different fields and areas and it is important that we always fight to explain to every larger sections of the people of America what is taking place so that they can develop the understanding of why our society is undergoing social revolution.   Abe Lincoln had a plan to gradually abolish slavery . . . ending it in 1940. The military and radical political leaders would not accept Lincoln's plan . . . so he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Perhaps 25 maybe 30 years ago some of us pondered Lincoln targeting 1940 as a buy out date for the slave oligarchy because it was precisely 1940 when the mechanization of agriculture took off in our country and ended an increasingly obsolete form of agricultural laboring called the sharecropping system. Elements of the Southern ruling class sought to create a modern infrastructure connected to the plantation system but it was something amongst the dominate section of the Slave oligarchy that made war a necessity. This "something" is bound up with the fact that Jeff Davis was the largest slave holder and riches man in America at the time and his vision was that he and the system he represented was the pinnacle of civilization.   In a similar manner almost a hundred years earlier George Washington was the largest slave holder and riches man in America. Class is a dry category on paper but human behavior in real life.   In speaking of an upsurge of the people of America, one is not talking about everyone running in the streets or a massive general strike . . . although people are going to protest to improve their lot in life. The upsurge is in process and manifest itself in a million and one different ways . . . for instant the impact of Moore's Fahrenheit 911 movie and it altering and consolidating the social consciousness of people. This has profound impact on the body politic in America. Over the past 48 months a couple of small rebellions against police violence has erupted and their will be more to come.   Upsurge is speaking of the social process not unlike the old Civil Rights Movement. When and how events are going to take place I cannot say. No one could predict Montgomery Alabama . . . the defeat in Albany Georgia . . . the rebellion in Birmingham Alabama in 1963 or Watts 1965 and Detroit 1967 going over the nodal point of politics . . . as they had existed in America at that time.   It is not as if I sit around the home with soda bottles filled with gasoline. Rather people are going to fight back and strike out against their conditions even when they cannot win. And yes it is proper to fight on ever conceivable front of struggle.   However for many of us a Venture Communism Fund is not the strategic outlook or immediate tactic to be deployed . . . but rather the long tedious task of education our diverse peoples. Everyone in America knows that the rich get richer and the "haves" tend to become "have more" and the poor get poorer. Our diverse peoples do not know why other than old money eventually becomes ruler by becoming new money.   Many communist workers such as I, . . . deeply believe that education on the basis of our class acquiring new experiences is the key to the social process. This makes it difficult to rally us on the basis of a financial fun no matter how noble.   See . . . equally shared profit will only produce inequality because one women has a husband and four kids and the other women has two kids and no husband and another has no kids and a husband. The goal of modern communism is not to slice a large pie into equal shares but rather to meet the socially necessary needs of society outside the structure of money - labor exchange and the remaining inequality will not be based on or driven by the absoluteness of the general law of capital accumulation.   Sure . . . the bourgeoisie should be offered the chance to exit history gracefully. I am not interested in their mansions . . . which they can retain for all I care. The problem is that these large mansions require a labor force to maintain and when people are given real freedom many will choose not to work there. Then what? Class factors are really involved as thinking and behavior. Why not craft a : "Letter to the Bourgeoisie" stating our peaceful intentions and openly allowing them to maintain much of their privileges for several generations?   Seems to me the absoluteness of the general law of capital accumulation is hardwired into the synaptic juncture of the capitalist as a class.   Social revolution is already underway and the political revolution is consolidating and will find its legs to stand on with our help.   Peace . . . but not at any cost.   Melvin P.