The Therese Defarge school of Social evo

History for those engaged in creating it. Comprehensive activism and applied memetics.

I left off my recounting of Natlfed noting my participation in Organizing the informational picket lines on the Trenton commons, done at first under the auspicious of the Temporary worker information service (TWIC). I believe it was shortly before the scheduled date of the third line that the organizing drive progressed to the creation of TWOC Temporary Workers Organizing Community. On the evening of the line TWOC was contacted by the office of the attorney general of the state of new jersey agreeing to meet with TWOC over their concerns including the blacklisting of temporary workers by agencies. The informational line was canceled and those scheduled to attend the line where invited to a briefing on the call and what could happen next. Their was some potential for a legal case that would effect the regulatory powers of the state of New Jersey until such time as the legal status of temporary workers where resolved. Their was also some potential of this being the bases of challenging the National Labor relations act, potentially dismantling the National Labor relations board. This strategy is one that goes beyond the understanding of folks whose knowledge of labor organizing is defined only by modern labor laws, many AFL-CIO officials might see the dismantling of these laws as a major set back for Labor. My uncle, my mothers brother, was an official with the AFL-CIO and I had extensive talks with him about this strategy. My Uncle's experience in the union predated the law, after his father had been murdered in a labor related railroad bombing his family was reduced to poverty that would kill all but him and my mother. They survived the winter by his going around the coal mines and collecting little scraps of coal that collected outside the mines. He ended up becoming a primary organizer of a railroad signalman's union and would be it's president for some 30 years. In his last term as president he held a prominent place in a general strike of transportation workers during the Reagan administration. He was quite aware of how much the labor laws sabotaged the unions, and at the same time was afraid of the consequences of bringing the unions outside the law. At the time of our discussions the Unions had been steadily losing strength for almost a decade targeted as one of the causes for the double digit inflation of the Carter presidency.

With so little real history available on the Vietnam war itself it is not surprising that so little is available about it's aftermath on the US economy. To be honest I still don't see it as extensive an analysis by any source outside of the Party or those influenced by it's educational system. As I will be going a little more extensively on first hand recollection I want to first speak more about my position in the organization, my political history before being involved in the organization, and my limited understanding of the political orientation of organization today.

My initial sponsors into the party had been the New Brunswick Operations manager Tim who had co-authored the Essential Organizer with Gino, and Rich who was a wonderfully skilled grass roots organizer who came to Trenton to set up a community health center. Sponsors were experienced cadre who provided on the run political education and advice to new cadre. Shortly after my first meeting with him Tim was expelled from the party for reasons I don't now wish to comment on at this point. Within my first year I was suborned into politburo to work as a submerged cadre with struggling entities in order to improve their discipline and moral as well as to identify conflicting political tendencies or ideologies that might be held by senior cadre. My work with this resulted in one cadre leaving on good term after a short exit interview with the then associate national political commissar, a full cadre being place on probation (ie returned to provisional member status for one year, although returning to his place in seniority afterwards) during which time he received so political training at national, and a regional political commissar leaving on bad term, with at least one cadre suggesting I had pressured the PC out of the organization. This was not the extent of my work with difficult entities, my responsibilities included enhancing recruitment rates and improving basic logistical functions around transportation, office and housing space as well as meal plans. What was defined as my primary job description was in facilitating others in succeeding within their revolutionary work and assignments. I eventually became involved with co-ordinating the development of additional arenas within the closed sections of the organization, always maintaining a high level of responsibility to the internal security of the organization. This led me to be aware that coshad had split the lion share of west coast operations from NOC's central authority in the mid 80's. I participating along side Polly at the debriefing of her brother who had been at Coshad during the split, and my understanding is that the current natlfed leadership is representative of the political tendency that took control of coshad during this period of time. My understanding from Gino (modified with observations and information from other former cadre) was that he intended the west coast to take over after he was dead, this is based on a briefing I will discuss at a future date but I really should go to the economic history in the aftermath of the vietnam war rather than spend more time on this now.

I think part of the problem Americans have in remembering the “60's” is that their history is suborned to fashionable understanding. By an interesting coincidence I happen to have known two separate marines, one who had arrived on the first plane bringing U.S. military personnel into vietnam under the Eisenhower administration in the 50's, the other was an MP (military police) was was on the last helicopter to leave Saigon in '75, a little over a year after Nixon resigned in '74. In 1976 I became one of the first 18 year olds to vote for President as a direct result of the war. The high school I had dropped out of, having been a new school first built in the 60', had had more riot's than Graduating class'. In my freshman year an explosion ripped a drinking fountain off the wall flooding a stairwell and forcing the school to shut down class' scheduled on the top two floors for three days. This was not really that unusual, I remember as far back as third grade schools being shut down or their opening delayed because of bombing or threats of bombings. By 5^th Grade I remember plans for pipe bombs being pretty common stuff, although with two brothers rapidly approaching draft age for a war that had started before I was born, what was more being studied was how to flunk the physical. The way the draft worked was a lottery for all the boys who turned 18 that year. The lottery was based on the day of birth, 365 in all but leap years, so say in one year Febuary 14^th might be 1st, and July 17^th 2^nd maybe Septermber 12^th would be 361. They would start induction at one and then keep going until they got the troops they needed for that year. If a boy was headed into college they could get a deferment of some kind but if they had a low number they had military service waiting for them after they graduated or more significantly if they got thrown out or elected to drop out. A comment on people like Dan Quayle and George Bush who were in the national guard, only people with a lot of money and a lot of connections could possible get into the national guard, it was way easy to get into West Point than it was to get into the guard when the guard was the only way out of the draft. The National Guard and reserve forces where restructured after the war because the draft and selective service registration had ended. After the mass pull out of troops and Nixon's resignation things cooled off quite a bit but the war did not really end until half way through the 70's.

Paradoxically it did not really begin until then either. A major issue during during the war was that neither the republican administration of Richard Nixon or the Democratic administration of Lyndon Johnson before him acknowledge a war was going on. The war started with a handful of support troops sent in under Eisenhower theoretically as advices and support technicians, such as my friend who fired ground to ground missiles. As US involvement expanded under Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, no attempt was made to declare war through congress. The official line was that this was a policing action, which is were the concept of the US being the world police was first grandly promoted. This meant that Vietnam war veterans did not exist in the eyes of the government until the Carter administration, until then they had none of the economic protections vets or suppose to have. If you graduated high school and you “won” the lottery the prize included not just the war but falling behind economically as your class mates began their careers. If you had a job before you were drafted you had no job protection that insured you got your job back when you came home. There may have been a handful of hippies that spit on returning soldiers, although the leadership of the anti-war movement addressed this issue fast and it's made a bigger issue now than it ever was then. THEN the issue was that the pro-war politicians were severally screwing returning vets by not legally recognizing their status and leaving them vulnerable to economic disasters.

Vietnam, and the US defeat in vietnam, was not the only defeat, or the first, for US imperialism. The successful survival of the Cuban revolution and the growing struggles in latin america, The successful resistance to the US backed take over of Angola, and the growing self determination of the oil producing third world all meant that it was getting harder for US corporations to exploit abroad. OPEC began their oil embargoes and started to demand a higher cost per barrel, but for each dollar the oil producing countries raised oil the US oil companies raised it 3. The result of this during the Carter administration was double digit inflation. What double digit inflation means is that the rate of increase is 10% (two digits) or more instead of 3 or 4%, what this meant was that peoples real incomes were dropping drastically. My first minimum wage jobs. Minimum wage at that time was $2.50 an hour , but that 2 dollars and fifty cents was worth far more then than now or even more than it would be worth a few months after I started working. If we assume that an inflation of 13% was in effect the raise in the cost of goods that cost $2.50 when I started working would raise in cost to about $2.82, meaning that my bying power dropped 32 cents an hour. Weekly this works out to an effective pay drop of 5 – 10 dollars depending on half or full time work. Throughout Carters administration Working poor and lower middle class Americans were effectively receiving regular pay reductions every quarter. Carter attempt at reform was based on regulating prize increases without reducing the amount of power and control american corporations had were predictable in effective, because carter was in no more mind to fundamentally change the power structure that facilitated the oppression at the core of surface problem of double digit inflation. American Corporations sought then as they do now, to maintain a steady Growth of profits despite what political, social and economic set backs faced the humanity involved.

When OPEC began raising oil prises and limited the western consumption, it was in part a sound economic strategy to be able to make more money on a rapidly depleting resource over a longer period of time. The limited power opec was able to achieve over oil prises and production rates would not have been possible without the solidarity of oppressed peoples in asia africa and latin america. Reducing the amount of oil produced while increasing the cost for which it is sold was in this case an adjustment in what was, and is, an unfair disparity based on western military and economic force. Seeing that they would have less gas to sell and it would cost them more to buy the oil corporations salvaged their profits by raising the cost of gas, not just to pass on the loss of profits in what it was costing them to buy the oil from the producing nations but also to pass on the loss of profits from the fuel they were not allowed to buy because of reductions in production.

I am finding myself far behind in posting this and not finding a good stopping point. I am going to post what I have and post the rest later this week, perhaps today.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 14:04 | link | comments |
gino parente, natlfed, twoc, temporary workers organizing com

 

More on Rome and western civilization.

Sorry for the delay in continuing. As we left off with the Assassination of Tiberius and his brother Gaius and how this did not resolve the underlying friction of the restratification of the landed farmer class into a landless population that was disqualified for military service. Reform came not though an agrarian program introduced by either the senate or the council of plebs but by the recruitment measures taken by Roman general and council Marius. Jugurtha had driven the Romans out of Numidia and Marius needed troops but at this point had no population to legally recruit them from. Marius dropped the requirement to own land going into the Roman army and began a practice of Roman generals advocating to insure land entitlements to troops after they leave the army. While there is every indication that Marius did this as a needed, and as well as he could manage it fair, solution to the difficulty of suppling Roman troops while in some ways addressing the difficulties of land reform. It is comparable to programs like home owner loans to veterans in modern military forces today and is unjust only in the condition that denies access to the land to large enough numbers of people that the reward of land to soldiers seems a just compensation for long term military service.

The result of Marius reforms were quite long reaching. First off Marius himself was reelected council more than anyone else in Roman history. Without political resolutions around land reform the hope of land through the success of Generals connected the personal interest of the Roman soldier with their generals and not with the state as manifested in the elite Roman senate. Most historians see the brake down of the Roman republic in the Assassination Of Tiberius and Gaius followed up by the military reforms of Marius, but beneath the surface of both is the restratification of the smaller holder into a landless class in order to promote the further accumulation of wealth by the wealthy.

The point of all this is how a comparison to the steps toward an industrial society such as england before the industrial revolution and it's own imperial era. The social changes that proceed an industrial revolution start with the removal of free peasants and small holders from the land and the development of large underemployed urban populations. The proletariat did not exist in roman times, but the roman military was moving toward the type of organization you would see in a modern military drawn largely from a proletarian population. It could be argued that the Lumpen Proletarian existed within the urban population, something we will see more of in discussing Byzantium. We can also see that what is driving these social problems is the accumulation of wealth by both the senatorial and equestrian classes.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 12:49 | link | comments |

Rome and western Civilization

Awhile back I talked about western civilization as defined by the archon of Athens and Greece as being on the western boundary of the fertile crescent civilizations such as Sumer and Persia. I want now to speak of Western civilization as it is define by the legacy of Rome. The historical importance of rome is often misunderstood in how it effects our world today. Numerous silly concepts built up with little historical research confuse the reality with stories of lead poisoning and inbreeding bringing the empire down. It is a little bit more accurate when the reorganization of the army to a mercenary force is sighted but even this does not really look at significant historical influences.

Rome was without question one of the largest and longest lived empires in human history. It in fact never really disappeared as The Catholic and orthodox churches and many Islamic institutions are contentious bureaucratic institutions that date back to the empire sans the censor of the antiquarian era. Keep in mind that the official historical line within determining the end of the Roman empire for high school historians remains consistence with the determination that when the romans began to speak greek they lost their Roman virtue, and it was in the period of late antiquity that the Ecumanical councils at Chalcedon define much of what is now called the Bible. It was during this period also that the confession of Arius became popular with the German mercenaries serving the empire which is eluded to by hitler and the skin heads when they identify themselves as the Aryan race. This escapes many people attention in that the germatic tribes are not Aryan by linguistic definition, but as Arius felt that Jesus was of similar but not the same essence as God Hitler invoked the legacy of the German tribes embracing this confession as consistent with Nietzsche's rejection of the principle of compassion. It was during this time that the concept of political parties developed. If you do not leave out this period of roman history the concept of the dark ages fade and a clear transition of state institutions from the Roman to the medieval period begins to be defined. What I am concerned with today is the evolution of the Roman military into what could be seen as a transition from the free farmer soldier into a military of landless peasant and in some case prototypical of the future proletarian nature.

It is important to remember that early Roman civilization started out with the same essential yeoman military structure seen in Greece that focused on the affluent farmer who could supply themselves with the gear needed for heavy infantry. The political patterns that evolve from this is a familiar one to those who study ancient history. Societies whose military are dependent on cavalry develop into societies with an aristocratic equestrian class. Agrarian cultures dependent on heavy infantry develop an oligarchy of affluent farmers, while Athens dependent on a navy moved to democracy. Early in it's history Rome began an aggressive policy of military expansion that would lead to it's dominance of the Italian peninsula. It had a unique political history as it went through the internal social strife of an emerging city-state, including at least two general strike of it's plebeian class and the sending of a delegation to Athens to study the constitution of Solon as a step in defining their own republic. Although the Roman republic did not define class based on wealth it did define social and political powers of different classes of citizenship. This included most significantly various levels of citizenship rights granted to cities and rural provinces within the Roman sphere of influence, along with the military obligations to help fuel yearly roman military campaigns. This History is worth learning beyond what time I have to cover it right now, but this led Roman growth successfully to the point where in was a major regional power with diplomatic ties with both Carthage and Egypt when war with the former led Rome into a struggle that would eventually determine what power would dominate the Mediterranean world.

What is not often understood about this is that Roman military demands required a full time professional military. How a society conducts war is in vary practical means tied to the nature of it's economy. In a hunter gathering society were most people have a significant amount of leisure time but whose livelihood requires minimum labor each week to survive war is limited to what can occur within the order of a days travel, more often within less than a half day so that the warriors would return home that evening. Farmers have periods of intensive labor, such as planting and harvest between which there are 1,2 or 3 months period were much less labor is needed and were seasonal campaigns were profitable endeavors. As the lines blurred between defensive and offensive military campaigns once wealthy farmers were faced not only with risk of their lives but the economic hardships of being continuously called from their fields. Even though the available farmland was increasing as lands were conquered, the farmers themselves were loosing land, in most cases moving to the city as an urban mob. It should be noted that this urban mob was important and growing in importances, as a part of the social political balance of the empire. It should be noted that the role played by the mob was important enough that when Constantine founded his new Rome in Byzantium an urban mob was recruited to survive on the cities social infrastructure. In comparison with the development of modern industrial revolution and succeeding imperial movements, in England and Germany; industrialization occurred first by displacing the free peasants and stripping them of access to the land to drive into the cities as the future proletariat. In England this was associated with the displacement of farmland that supported human population with runs for sheep for the purpose of export for profit. The estates into which Italian farmlands were being consolidated were also producing for profit, in the form of wine and Olive oil, within centuries this would lead Rome to the same need to dominate the bread basket of Egypt as the Greek faced earlier. Although the steam engine was not employed to create an industrial society the forced urbanization of the population occurred and was managed by those who planned society mostly for the benefit of the higher classes.

The difficult within the Army was not unnoticed. Particularly by a man named Tiberius Gracchus and his younger brother Gaius. To give an idea of where Tiberius stood on things he first came into political notoriety when he engineered a treaty in order to save a Roman Army and the lives that comprised it at the cost of some prestige on the part of Rome and it's leadership. At the motion of Scipio Aemilianus the senate refused to ratify the treaty and was highly critical of Tiberius efforts to save loyal Roman soldier/citizens whose plight, in the case of lost farms or lost lives, the senate displayed an arrogant indifference to.

There is also a story of Tiberius traveling through the country side to Rome as a young officer and seeing no small holdings, just large sprawling estates owned by the great wealthy upper class and worked by Slaves and questioning himself how the Roman army can exist without the Free farmer who was it's base? These stories are often told as either or as if they come from conflicting places. It is suggested that it was bitterness at the criticisms of Scipio that led Tiberius into the oppositional faction built around land reform when the connection to the issues being the human population involved and the plight to which Scipio and other representatives of the greedy were directly involved in producing. Tiberius led an effort of land reform by developing his base of political support within the plebeian class and the council of plebs in a way that by passed the Senate. It is important to remember that the senate was not just an institution but a class and the elite were quick in retaliating with political violence assassinating first Tiberius and later his Brother Gaius who followed in his footsteps.

Many people have heard the phrase, you can kill the resistor but you can't kill the resistance. This is a fine example of how this is not just a slogan but a manifestation of physical law. Oppression breeds resistance, because oppression is a violence against a class. Oppression is when, for the benefit of other classes, a class of people is exploited beyond the reasonable limit of their survival. Middle class liberals have created a smoke screen around oppression and it is important to understand that while those in the middle may still be exploited, while even some on the top may indirectly be harmed by the system, those who are profoundly oppressed live with their basic needs being an open question. That the pride of Scipio and the senate was worth to the senatorial class more than the lives of an army, and that this same elite class supported policies that endangered the continued existence of these soldiers ancestral farms are the redistribution of land to those who became landless. These people where being restratified, moving from one position of relative privileged as a Free, landowning farmer, to landless urban unemployed, essentially proletarian class. Killing Tiberius and his brother did not solve the genuine systemic difficulty in meeting roman military demands, while economically undermining the population base that military is drawn from. I want to note here that by imperial standards Roman military demands were minor. The hight of her empire, from Egypt to Britain to Jerusalem, control was sustained with only from 250,000,000 to 375,000 troops, numbers that could perhaps have been sustained by the landed farmers if the wealthy were not after their land.

I am going to brake off here and finish this post tomorrow.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba   8 August 2005

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 20:06 | link | comments |

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