A fresh start

Thank heavens the holidays are over. Perhaps something important may happen this year. I would like to begin the year going back to some basics:

"It is with the help of the commodity concept that the mechanism of the market is geared to the various elements of industrial life. Commodities are here empirically defined as objects produced for sale on the market...
"The crucial point is this: labor, land, and money are essential elements of industry; they also must be organized in markets...But labor, land, and money are obviously not commodities; the postulate that anything that is bought and sold must have been produced for sale is emphatically untrue in regard to them...Labor is only another name for a human activity which goes with life itself, which in its turn is not produced for sale but for entirely different reasons, nor can that activity be detached from the rest of life, be stored or mobilized; land is only another name for nature which is not produced by man; actual money, finally, is merely a token of purchasing power which, as a rule, is not produced at all, but comes into being through the mechanism of banking or state finance. None of them is produced for sale. The commodity description of labor, land, and money is entirely fictitious."
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation

Thus the operation of a "free market system" over time, subject to no rules or restraints, would eventually self destruct, because inevitably the labor (people) and the land (environment) would be slowly destroyed and money would become irrelevant. A few enlightened countries, such as Norway and Sweden, for example, understand this and regulate the market so as to protect both their people and the environment. But in other countries, such as the U.S., for example, those in charge of regulating the market, being interested only in power and profit, regulate to insure only these interests and the people and environment suffer. Is this not exactly what has been happening over time in the U.S.? Here they even want to commodify (privatize) our water and air!

Eventually, in a system like this, when conditions begin to be unbearable for the people and their environment, they revolt and demand controls on the market that will benefit them rather than the corporations. Is this not precisely what has been happening in Venezuela, Bolivia, and other South American countries? Is it not what happened in the 1920's and 30's in the United States? It is not happening here in the U.S. yet again, but it inevitably will if the existing conditions being dictated by the wealthy and the corporations do not change. And, of course, they are exceedingly resistant to change and will do anything to stop change from happening. Hence the secrecy, the lies, the spying, the violations of civil liberties, the nonsensical main stream "news," the deliberate "dumbing down" of the electorate, the utter stupidity of TV programming, and so on.

The American Democracy we have been so proud of in the past is under attack by the current Bush/Cheney administration. Now they are claiming dictatorial powers that are not supported by our Constitution or our laws. They must not be allowed to get away with it. Let us make sure that we do indeed have a Happy New Year and not a repeat of last year.