Category Archives: Zeitgeist Movement

The writer is a sociologist based in Karachi.

PAKISTANI liberals and conservatives are politically more alike than they think. In their respective journeys to claim the high moral perch, both groups are easily outraged by sex, religion and politics. Both are on a rescue mission to save the nation, democracy and Islam. In their competitive tussles, the most invaluable capital for both is womens rights the zeitgeist of modernity, cultural purity, international image and the nations progress.

On International Womens Day, this political contest plays itself out through public celebrations, seminars and well-funded chatter. The liberals say, we want womens freedoms (relative but not absolute). Similarly, the religio-culturalists say, We respect womens rights (not to be free but differently equal). They recall the discrimination and tyranny observed by imperial powers but only in the form of Islamophobia not sexism, racism, homophobia.

Then, in the midst of their talk-shops in hotels and many gigabytes of selfies, both groups respectively cut a cake, missing the proverbial irony of eating cake while bemoaning how the masses have no bread. A day marked for the struggles of women workers for fair wage and gender rights on the factory floor has become a narcissistic love-fest. To promote womens causes on all occasions is to be commended and supported. To reduce this opportunity to birthday-like celebrations with repetitive content and empty slogans is just a wasted opportunity.

Neither groups challenge or scrutinise the economic conditions of women in any substantive way. The dependency of liberal womens groups on international funding has limited their activism within a neoliberal framing. At best, they support some income-generation schemes for women. There is no national campaign to lobby for laws and policies to tackle womens unemployment or the hazards and insecurities experienced by women in the informal sector. There is no sustained movement for equal wages or to support a surge from home-based work to the market. In light of the national obsession with CPEC, activists do not even ask, whats in it for women?

Multinational firms and corporations shamelessly peddle womens causes for publicity. Yes, women should promote their cause on all platforms but feminist activists have become incidental guests to sex up these events, rather than organisers and drivers of its content. Sponsored festivals are designed for repetitive, anecdotal discussion and entertainment, instead of relevant, radical or strategic purposes. Womens groups must reject such imposters who masquerade as supporters of womens rights.

Womens empowerment, development, and upliftment are vague, diluted concepts that are no longer objectionable to anyone. Religiously-inspired NGOs now compete for donor funds from the same Western sources that Islamists used to deride. Even the corporate sector has learned to commodify womens religious needs and developed corresponding products to meet such demands. The market is profitable, the message is compelling: buy halal.

International Womens Day needs revision and reframing. It should be an opportunity to discuss the stabilising of womens economic categories, radically restructuring the informal sector beyond safety nets and cash handouts and, for recommending an emergency policy for women agricultural workers. This largest womens labour force needs critical attention.

Anti-imperialists cry hoarse against the horrors of Americas anti-migration policies but are silent on the poverty-inducing burden of internal migration on women agricultural workers. No one cares about the irony of not knowing how to apply the sexual harassment law for this largest group of female labour in the country.

Similarly, the widespread practice of trafficking of women is a straightforward economic issue.

The Benazir Income Support Programme has empowered women in unexpected ways. But protective policies need to be replaced by proactive economic incentives and subsidies of services for working women in the informal sector (transportation vouchers, daycare services, skill improvement). The office of the ombudsmen for sexual harassment at the workplace could be supported by additional mechanisms to deal with complaints by women who face discrimination in wages, promotions and gratuity in the formal sector.

Womens movements should aim to revolutionise womens economic integration. We need to ensure a carefully gendered census. We need a plan that prioritises women agricultural workers, Fatas tribal women, women in the informal sector and which prevents the trafficking of women. Research and strategic thinking, radical policies and activism must break the mould of producing repeat studies and advocacy efforts and centralise the economic agenda, now. Then, women can cut their own cakes if they want.

The writer is a sociologist based in Karachi.

Published in Dawn, March 8th, 2017

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The cake can wait - DAWN.com

Universal basic income (or UBI), an unconditional payment to all citizens, has become part of the economic zeitgeist in recent times, embraced by advocates on both the Left and the Right as a solution to the symptoms and sores of the crisis-ridden capitalist system.

John McDonnell, the veteran Labour left and Shadow Chancellor, has announced recently that he and his team are exploring the idea as a centrepiece of Labours economic programme. Across the Channel, Benot Hamon, the so-called French Corbyn and Socialist Party presidential candidate, has promised a UBI if elected. Meanwhile, the possibility of a UBI has even gained traction in India, where the policy has been seriously suggested as a simple alternative to the complex web of welfare provisions currently on offer.

But what would be the real impact of UBI? Why has it suddenly risen to prominence as a demand in the past few years? And, most importantly, who is actually raising the proposal and in whose interest?

An apocryphal tale is told about Henry Ford II showing Walter Reuther, the veteran leader of the United Automobile Workers, around a newly automated car plant.

Walter, how are you going to get those robots to pay your union dues, gibed the boss of Ford Motor Company.

Without skipping a beat, Reuther replied, Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars? (The Economist, 4th November 2011)

The story recounted above is likely fictional. Nevertheless, it draws upon and highlights a very real and grave concern amongst the more far-sighted bourgeois commentators today: the threat of technological unemployment the so-called race against the machine.

Far from welcoming the advances in modern technology and the vast potential for liberating humanity that automation offers, the rapid pace of technological development today is seen as a dangerous and uncontrollable force that could make vast swathes of the working and even middle class obsolete in the not-too-distant future.

Who, in this scenario, the above anecdote asks, will buy all the plethora of commodities that the world economys vast productive forces continue to churn out?

Above all, this question of automation and machinery has begun to shine a light upon the contradictions of the capitalist system, exposing the rank hypocrisy of those politicians who demand austerity and attacks on ordinary people, whilst in the same breathe venerating the billionaire entrepreneurs who, between just eight of them, control as much wealth as half the worlds population put together.

It is becoming increasingly clear to those who have eyes to see that an army of robots has helped to create a reserve army of labour, as Marx described it: a mass of unemployed whose presence puts a downward pressure on wages for those in work. Those replaced by new technology are not retrained and re-educated in order to give them the skills required to keep up with this ever-accelerating treadmill of capitalism; instead they are thrown onto the scrapheap and forced into the rapidly expanding gig economy a shadowy netherworld of bogus self-employment, insecure work, and zero-hour contracts.

The result is that, despite the array of automation and technology deployed in production, the growth in productivity across the economy has actually stalled; it is cheaper, from the point of view of the parasitic profiteering capitalist, to recruit from the ranks of the precariat desperately looking for a job than to invest in machinery that actually reduces the need for labour. From the perspective of capitalism, then, there is both too much automation in terms of technological unemployment and, simultaneously, too little, with the stagnation of productivity.

It is this context of a broken economic engine that we see the emergence of the demand for a universal basic income, or UBI: a uniform payment given to all in society, regardless of wealth or needs.

The idea behind the UBI, in theory, is that it would break the link between work and pay, providing on the one hand workers who have been made redundant by robots a safety net that prevents them from getting stuck in low-paid, precarious jobs, whilst also allowing them to transition from obsolete industries into new, more productive sectors. And on the other hand enabling the capitalists to invest in automation and new technology without the moral anxiety (or, more importantly, the practical concern) of adding to societys legion of the unemployed. Et voil! The wheels of capitalism are well and truly greased: investment goes up; productivity increases; the economy grows and meanwhile workers are able to smoothly move from one job to another for the rest of their lives.

Would that it were so simple. The reality is that productive investment today is at an all-time low, not because of any principled apprehension about the fate of sacked workers, but because of the enormous levels of overproduction or excess capacity as the bourgeois like to euphemistically describe it that hang like an albatross around the neck of the global economy. The capitalists invest, not to provide jobs, meet needs, or develop the productive forces, but to make profits. If goods cannot be sold because ordinary families do not have the money to buy them, then industry will be mothballed. And if the bosses can get more profit out of ten exploited workers than from one shiny new machine, then the workers will stay in place and productivity will remain sluggish.

Indeed, the relationship between work and pay has already been broken but not in any positive sense. In all countries both in the advanced capitalist countries and the so-called emerging economies the share of wealth going to labour has decreased, with real wages remaining stagnant despite an increase in GDP. The working week grows longer, and yet take-home pay stays the same.

Despite being raised on the basis of fundamentally false premises, the call for a UBI has nevertheless found an echo in this epoch of eye-watering inequality. Already, social and economic experiments involving UBIs are underway in a variety of countries, including Canada, Finland, and Holland. In Switzerland, a proposal for a SFr30,000 per annum (around 24,000 per year) UBI was rejected by 77% to 23% in a referendum on 5th June 2016. In Britain, meanwhile, the demand for a UBI has been raised by the leaderships of both the Labour Party and the Green Party.

For those on the Left, the UBI is proposed as a progressive demand: a reinforced safety net, beyond the sticking plaster of the current welfare state, funded through increased taxation on big business and the rich. Raised in such a manner, it is clearly a demand like any genuine reform that should be supported and fought for.

UBI, however, is not an inherently left-wing or progressive measure. The idea of a universal payment, in fact, has many advocates on the libertarian right. Indeed, even prominent bourgeois economists such as Milton Friedman have made similar proposals in the past, with his idea for a negative income tax.

For these respectable ladies and gentlemen, the concept of a UBI has great appeal as an extremely streamlined version of or, worse still, replacement for the welfare state. In one fell swoop, these small government zealots suggest, one could simplify (read: slash) vast swathes of the taxation and benefits system, eliminating bureaucracy and reducing market interference.

At the same time, one can clearly see the attraction of the UBI to the Schumpeterian liberals who preach the virtues of the invisible hand and the powerful transformative forces of creative destruction. Provide a primitive safety net, eradicate barriers to job creation such as the minimum wage, and give the anarchy of the market a free hand to destroy industries and jobs, without any planning or provision of education and retraining. Its a libertarians dream and a nightmare for the working class.

Some free-market fanatics, meanwhile, have even advocated the idea of a relatively large UBI payment, but (and heres the catch) only on the proviso that pesky public services such as healthcare and education are scrapped, i.e. privatised, and opened up to profit.

Far from strengthening the conquests made by previous generations, therefore, one can see how the demand for a UBI can equally be raised by those looking to roll back and destroy such gains. Rather than increasing the welfare state in a progressive way by redistributing societys colossal wealth, a UBI could instead become a deeply regressive fig leaf for a wholesale attack on and privatisation of public services, bolstering the capitalist market instead of weakening it.

Marxists will fight for any reform that genuinely improves the living standards of workers and the poor. But in order to ascertain whether we can support this-or-that demand, we must first ask: is it really a reform that is being proposed, or in fact a counter-reform?

In this respect, the call for a UBI in the abstract is meaningless. The devil is in the detail. Above all, it is necessary to analyse the question from a class point of view and look at who is raising the demand, and most importantly in whose (class) interest.

As with all such reforms, the most pertinent question is: who pays? Where, one must ask, would the money come from? Indeed, it is this key point that right-wing opponents to UBI highlight.

In the case of the Swiss referendum last year, the government came out against the 24,000 per year that was being proposed on the grounds of this amount being unaffordable (to put the proposed level in perspective, however, bear in mind that the cost of living in Switzerland is painfully high, and average salaries are around twice this suggested UBI amount). In places such as Finland, the more reasonable UBI suggested is the miserable sum of approximately 5,700 per year a value that would be small change to the millionaires receiving it (dont forget, it is an unconditional universal payment, after all), but that would actually leave the poorest who currently rely on the provision of means-tested benefits worse off.

In order to provide a UBI payment better than what is currently on offer through the welfare state, some fairly significant tax increases would be required, as the Economist highlights with some hypothetical estimates:

Setting up a basic income would be no easy matter. To pay every adult and child an income of about $10,000 per year, a country as rich as America would need to raise the share of GDP collected in tax by nearly 10 percentage points and cannibalise most non-health social-spending programmes. More generous programmes would require bigger tax increases still.

Before continuing, let us make one thing crystal clear: the money clearly does exist to provide a decent UBI payment to all and at levels far beyond $10,000. As has already been noted, according to the recent Oxfam report on global inequality, just eight billionaires own as much wealth as the poorest half of the worlds population. Meanwhile, big business in the USA sits on an idle cash pile of around $1.9 trillion dollars.

The problem, however, is not economic, but political. To implement a genuinely progressive UBI would constitute the most ambitious and radical shake up of the redistributive taxation system since the cradle-to-grave welfare state was introduced in the post-war period. And yet, at a time when all these gains of the past are under attack from austerity, we see various well-meaning left-wingers calling for the UBI and proposing a titanic challenge to capital, with huge tax increases on the rich and corporations.

Everywhere we look, social democracy and reformism is in retreat as a result of the crisis of capitalism. Elected left governments, such as Syriza in Greece and Hollandes Socialists in France, far from carrying out progressive programmes of tax-and-spend, have been forced by the dictatorship of the banks to implement cuts and counter-reforms. But never mind all that: double or nothing!

In this respect, the demand for a UBI is only the latest utopian proposal from a nave layer of the left who imagine that austerity is ideological, and that we can somehow, surely persuade the rich and wealthy to kindly and quietly pass over the money for the good of society. This, at root, is what the advocates of UBI are relying on and hoping for: the benevolence and philanthropy of the capitalists and the establishment politicians who represent them.

Whilst the occasional multi-billionaire such as Bill Gates might well part with a small portion of their vast fortune voluntarily for charitable causes (and even then, often only as a cynical PR stunt), the capitalist class as a whole in the final analysis are in business to make a profit. And they do not and never have appreciated having their private wealth forcibly taken from them to fund the rest of society; hence the almost farcical tax-dodging schemes that the worlds biggest businesses are scandalously embroiled in. As Warren Buffett, the renowned billionaire investor, stated emphatically after pointing out that he pays less tax than his receptionist: theres class warfare, all right but its my class, the rich class, thats making war, and were winning!

Again, we should stress that the wealth is most definitely there in society to fund a genuinely progressive UBI system. But the only way such a reform would ever actually be introduced in any meaningful way is if the capitalists felt threatened to the point that they feared losing everything; that is, if the class struggle reached such intense and heightened levels that the ruling elites offered reforms from above to prevent revolution from below. And even then, in such a situation, the demand would have to be not for UBI, but for socialist revolution!

If the demand for UBI is to be posed and fought for by the Left, then it cannot be done so in a manner divorced from the question of class struggle. We cannot rely on the altruism of the rich and the compassion of the capitalist state, the essence of which as Engels explained and Lenin underlined consists of special bodies of armed men in defence of the property and interests of the ruling class.

Particularly at a time when governments everywhere are prostrating themselves before the invisible hand of the market, therefore, it is pure utopianism to suggest that the capitalists will happily and calmly agree to hand over their wealth to fund a decent UBI, or that the bourgeois state would ever be willing to begin on undertaking such a task.

The main limit of the call for a progressive UBI, as with all reformist demands, is that it fails to pose the question from a class perspective that is, to analyse who actually owns and controls the wealth and technology in society, and, most importantly, how they have come to have such control in the first place.

The problem with the UBI (and reformist policies in general), in other words, arises from its almost exclusive focus on the issue of distribution, rather than production. As Marx comments in his Critique of the Gotha Programme (a similarly reformist and utopian programme put forward by Marxs socialist peers, the Lassalleans):

Quite apart from the analysis so far given, it was in general a mistake to make a fuss about so-called distribution and put the principal stress on it.

Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of non-workers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labour power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one.

Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After the real relation has long been made clear, why retrogress again? (our emphasis)

These words ring even more true today. By focussing on the question of taxation and redistribution, the modern leaders of the labour movement actually end up aiming their fire at the wrong people, alienating the middle classes with talk of taxes on incomes and personal property, rather than attacking the super-rich of the capitalist class, whose wealth is tied up in profits and capital often far beyond the reaches of the states tax collectors.

The emphasis for socialists, therefore, as Marx stresses, should not be on redistributing the wealth that has already been created in society (through taxation and welfare, etc.), but rather on having collective and democratic control over the means by which new wealth is created that is, the means of production. If such a rational plan of production was implemented, then questions of taxation, inheritance, redistribution, welfare, and so on, would quickly disappear.

For Marxists, the question of inequality, whilst important, is secondary. At root, our criticism of capitalism lies primarily not with these symptoms of the senile system, but with its fundamental disease: the laws of capitalism itself; the barriers of private ownership, competition, and production for profit, which stand in the way of the development of the productive forces of industry and science, technology and technique, and art and culture. As Leon Trotsky, the great Russian revolutionary and theoretician, commented in his Marxist masterpiece Revolution Betrayed,

The fundamental evil of the capitalist system is not the extravagance of the possessing classes, however disgusting that may be in itself, but the fact that in order to guarantee its right to extravagance the bourgeoisie maintains its private ownership of the means of production, thus condemning the economic system to anarchy and decay. (Leon Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed, chapter 1)

Today we see this fundamental evil of anarchy and decay vividly displayed by the contradiction of enormous cash piles in the hands of the big business alongside historically low levels of investment and stagnant productivity growth; by the absurdity of the potential for mass automation alongside fears of technological unemployment; by the concerns over forced idleness for millions, instead of the realisation of voluntary leisure for all.

UBI, for all its attempts to paper over the cracks, does nothing to stop this anarchy of the market and resolve the crisis of overproduction that has led society to this impasse. Indeed, as Marxists have always emphasised, no amount of reforms can unravel these fundamental contradictions of capitalism. Only the revolutionary transformation of society can cut through this Gordian knot.

Notably, there are also feminist advocates of UBI who support the demand on the grounds that a payment of this nature would challenge present notions about work, demonstrating the value of currently unpaid but socially necessary labour, such as housework. But the associated call of wages for housework is not a socialist demand. Marxists do not wish for women (or men) to be compensated monetarily for their domestic labour that is, to create wage labourers in the home alongside wage labourers in the workplace.

Instead, Marxists wish to do away with the concept of domestic work altogether: to take these currently privately performed tasks out of the hands of individual families out of the walls of isolated homes and to organise these socially necessary tasks in a social manner, as part of a rational plan of production. Only by socialising the question of childcare and domestic tasks, and removing this burden of labour off the shoulders of working class women, can we expect to achieve genuine gender equality in society.

As Engels remarks in Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State:

The emancipation of woman will only be possible when woman can take part in production on a large, social scale, and domestic work no longer claims anything but an insignificant amount of her time. And only now has that become possible through modern large-scale industry, which does not merely permit of the employment of female labour over a wide range, but positively demands it, while it also tends towards ending private domestic labour by changing it more and more into a public industry. (Frederick Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, chapter 9)

The only way to instigate real, permanent change in society, therefore, is not to pay women for their domestic work, but to take domestic, unwaged labour outside of the individual home altogether; to make this labour a social task that is the responsibility of society as a whole; and ultimately to invest in new machinery and technology that allows for us to abolish this work altogether.

The invention of household machines such as the microwave, the dishwasher, and the washing machine have helped to massively reduce the time needed for domestic duties. The challenge now is to take this technology and put it under public and democratic control; to socialise these tasks as part of a socialist plan of production; and thus to liberate both working women and working men from the scourge of domestic labour.

Within modern capitalism, where the working class has managed to secure for itself through struggle publicly-funded services, such as the NHS, and a welfare state, the income a worker receives is effectively split into two parts: a wage paid by the employer in exchange for labour-power; and a social wage of publicly-provided benefits and services that are free at the point of use and provided on the basis of need, without any money being handed over.

Under socialism, the ratio between these two components would shift dramatically towards the latter. The unseen social wage would vastly increase, whilst the wage paid in exchange for labour-power would be diminished (in relative terms the total would of course increase as societys wealth grows). Instead of just receiving healthcare without any monetary transaction required, transport, housing, electricity, food, clothes, etc.: all of these, and even things currently considered luxury items, could be provided without any exchange as part of a socialist plan of production. The concept of value would gradually become meaningless and the money system would wither away.

With UBI, however, a third income variant is introduced: alongside the paid wage and social wage, we now have also the unconditional monetary payment of the UBI. For those on the libertarian right who are in favour of UBI, the introduction of this universal payment acts not to strengthen the socialist element of the social wage, but to weaken it, (as discussed earlier) by using the UBI as a pretext for opening up public services to privatisation.

Similarly, the introduction of UBI might also be used to justify the elimination of important reforms such as the minimum wage, putting workers on the back foot in the battle against the bosses. Far from eroding the power of money and the market, then, the UBI could serve to consolidate and bolster these forces.

Those on the Left who most enthusiastically and unthinkingly call for a UBI must therefore be careful what they wish for. Again, rather than embracing the ambiguous and dubious demand of UBI, the leaders of the labour movement should be pushing the call for nationalisation and workers control back to the fore.

The greatest irony regarding UBI is that those on the Left calling for it openly recognise all the glaring contradictions present in capitalist society, but then choose to turn the problem on its head, suggesting everything but the solution itself. They see the irrationality of mass unemployment alongside overwork; of inequality increasing whilst technology advances; of automation that enslaves us rather than liberates us: and yet they accept these irrationalities as a given fact admitting to capitalisms failings, but refusing to recognise capitalism as the root of the problem.

As with all reformist demands, the advocates of UBI are willing to propose the most extraordinary and utopian measures, as long as these do not challenge the one right that they consider to be the most inviolable and sacrosanct of all: that of private property. Indeed, it has even been suggested that UBI could be a capitalist road to communism that is, to Marxs maxim, from each according to their ability; to each according to their needs.

For such venerable ladies and gentlemen, competition and the pursuit of profit may be responsible for the scourge of inequality, unemployment, and economic crisis that blights society but to suggest abolishing the anarchy of the market is pure blasphemy. After all, as we revolutionaries are so frequently reminded we must be realistic!

Indeed, for some, as Thomas Paine the English-American Enlightenment political philosopher and one of the Founding Father of the United States argued, a form of UBI would be a tit-for-tat entitlement to all citizens conditional on them accepting the very existence of private property. As the Economist notes:

Thomas Paine would have relished such a prospect. His case for a basic income justified it as a quid pro quo for the existence of private property. Before the advent of private property, he believed, all men had been able to support themselves through hunting and forage. When that resort is taken from them, they should be compensated by means of a natural inheritance of 15 to be paid to all men every year, financed from a ground rent charged to property owners.

The ultimate limits of the UBI, however, are succinctly outlined by Shannon Ikebe of the Jacobin in an article entitled The Wrong Kind of UBI:

The fundamental dilemma of a basic income is that the more achievable [achievable] version in which basic needs go unmet without supplementary paid employment leaves out what makes it potentially emancipatory in the first place. Indeed, many commentaries cite basic income experiments to argue it does not significantly reduce work incentives.

This contradiction is directly tied to the fact that a basic income only addresses the question of distribution, while ignoring that of production. The kind of freedom from work or freedom through work, which becomes lifes prime want that an LBI [liveable basic income] envisions is, in all likelihood, not compatible with capitalisms requirements of profitability.

The dramatic strengthening of working-class power under a robust LBI would sooner or later lead to capital disinvestment and flight, since capital can only make profits through exploitation and wont invest unless it can make a profit. But slowing production would undermine the material basis of an LBI.

The only way out is to continue producing even if one cant make a profit. Thus, an LBI would sooner or later force onto the stage the age-old question of the ownership of means of production.

At best, then, the call for a UBI would be a transitional demand: a reform proposed to improve living conditions, but used to expose the irrationalities, absurdities, and contradictions of capitalism; a demand linked to the fight for the nationalisation of the key levers of the economy and the question of workers power.

The concerns over technological unemployment and the proposed palliative of UBI clearly highlight a ludicrous paradox whereby advances in automation and societys ability to produce more wealth with less work are seen not as progress, but as peril.

At the same time, to lay these contradictions bare also highlights the potential for a genuine socialist society, where mankind and machine exist in harmony: a society of superabundance; of fully automated luxury communism, where the motto from each according to their ability; to each according to their need can finally be realised in practice.

In his speech In Defence of October, Leon Trotsky, explaining the historic gains of the Russian Revolution, the centenary of which we celebrate this year, pointed the way forward for humanity:

Technical science liberated man from the tyranny of the old elements earth, water, fire and air only to subject him to its own tyranny. Man ceased to be a slave to nature to become a slave to the machine, and, still worse, a slave to supply and demand.

The present world crisis testifies in especially tragic fashion how man, who dives to the bottom of the ocean, who rise up to the stratosphere, who converses on invisible waves from the Antipodes, how this proud and daring ruler of nature remains a slave to the blind forces of his own economy.

The historical task of our epoch consists in replacing the uncontrolled play of the market by reasonable planning, in disciplining the forces of production, compelling them to work together in harmony and obediently serve the needs of mankind.

Only on this new social basis will man be able to stretch his weary limbs and every man and every woman, not only a selected few become a citizen with full power in the realm of thought

Once he has done with the anarchic forces of his own society man will set to work on himself, in the pestle and retort of the chemist. For the first time mankind will regard itself as raw material, or at best as a physical and psychic semi-finished product. Socialism will mean a leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom in this sense also, that the man of today, with all his contradictions and lack of harmony, will open the road for a new and happier race.

See more here:

Universal basic income: utopian dream or libertarian nightmare? - Figthback Canada (blog)

The Anschlag Berlin Poster Design from Berlin exhibition, organized by the Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC), will open at the Tap Seac Gallery on Tuesday at 6.30 p.m. and feature a total of 70 posters by 35 designers from several Berlin-based design studios.

To complement the exhibition, the Cultural Affairs Bureau will organize a seminar entitled From Berlin to Macau: Designers stage.

With its rich historical background and cultural uniqueness, Berlin provides an environment for designers to enhance their creativity by allowing the coexistence of multiple design ideas. The posters featured in this exhibition are works inspired by the Zeitgeist Movement and contemporary Berlin, created by designers from renowned Berlin-based design studios, including Cyan, LSD, HeSign, EPS51, Ruddigkeit, Ariane Spanier, Fons Hickmann m23, and Surface, among others.

The exhibition includes posters relating to art exhibitions, festivals, concerts, performances and social issues. By sharing works that blend art and design, IC hopes to provide Macanese design professionals with a source of inspiration and an opportunity to exchange ideas. To allow for a more in-depth understanding of this exhibition and Berlins graphic design world, IC will also organize a seminar titled From Berlin to Macau: Designers stage, which will be held on March 15 from 6:30pm to 9.30 p.m. at the Tap Seac Gallery. The seminar will be conducted in English with simultaneous translation into Cantonese.

See more here:

'Poster Design from Berlin' exhibition to open soon - Macau Daily Times

New Wolverine spinoff movie Logan has enjoyed above-average reviews for a superhero action blockbuster and has generated over $250 million since it opened at the beginning of the month.

You would have thought that the neo-western, which stars Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart, would be a big enough deal for the media as it is.

But no. Donald Trump has to feature front and center of coverage about the latest X-Men spinoff. You see at the beginning of the film there is a fleeting shot of an imposing wall along the Texas-Mexico border. Logan also featuresa group of Mexican-American children trying to cross a border.

NEWS ALERT! The border in the movie has no full wallandno character in Logan remotely resembles President Trump.

But in the eyes of many, its a dystopian movie for these dystopian times in which a wall is glimpsed, so lets go to town with the Trump comparisons, however misplaced.

Its worth pointing out the specious political comparison are not being driven byLogans director, James Mangold, and star Jackman. In fact Jackman told the BBCs Andrew Marr Show: I want to be really clear. All those things about the wall were all written into our script before all this stuff started to happen.

Interviewing James Mangold, New York magazines Vulturewebsite headlined their piece: Logan Director James Mangold on Trumps Influence, the Films Last Line, and the Biggest Problem With Superhero Movies.

Its [the plot] kind of a run from border to border, like a Huck Finn run in reverse, Mangold explained to Vulture writer Abraham Riseman. That seemed really logical to me. I didnt anticipate that Trump would win the presidency. So no influence at all from Trump then

The urlfor theDaily Beastarticle about the movie reads: In Logan Hugh Jackmans Wolverine battles a Trump-esque deportation force. Aware that in fact actually he doesnt, there is no mention of Trump in the article by Melissa Leon.

The X-Men characters have always possessed a knack for tapping into the zeitgeist (the comic book was an allegory for the civil rights movement). While they remain ahead of the curveborder issues and deportation are a big deal right nowhow canLoganbe an anti-Trump movie when it was written and filmed before he came to political prominence?

Sooner or later parts of the liberal media will have to resolve portraying Trump as the most evil being on earth while relying on him as an unstoppable clickbait machine.

Not even Logan in his prime could square that circle for them.

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X-Cruciating! Why is Liberal Media So Keen to Link Hit Blockbuster 'Logan' to Trump? - Heat Street

Visa has today launched its first long format digital film on #KindnessIsCashless, a movement created in December 2016 following the Indian Governments Demonetization drive. The campaign, launched as the nation was going through a cashless transformation, is built on the key consumer insight small acts of kindness.

Amidst the challenges faced by people, the campaign captures a highly empathetic human response - the younger generation helping hesitant elders to go cashless. The campaign started with print, outdoor, social and digital channels, and now features a new long format digital film.

Watch the spot here:

Frederique Covington, senior vice president of marketing Asia Pacific at Visa, said, Great marketing transcends functional messages and manages to capture the zeitgeist of the moment. Our goal with the Visa #KindnessIsCashless campaign was to tap into a cultural movement we saw emerging in India. We wanted to celebrate the goodness from demonetization rather than the pain points. At the heart of our work is a simple and powerful insight that the younger generation is teaching their elders how to go cashless. Our campaign aims at celebrating, and encouraging all the people creating the new Digital India.

The film is a highly emotional story of Role Reversal that captures a slice of life between a young student and his older professor, to show how through role reversal, the younger generation is teaching their elders how to go cashless. The film then invites consumers to share their stories on the Visa India Facebook page using #KindnessIsCashless.

Josy Paul, chairman, chief creative officer of BBDO India said, Everybody was talking about demonetization. But in this disruptive transformational time, something very profound was taking place. We noticed more and more people stepping forward to help. Strangers helping strangers. It was a new kind of volunteerism A unique explosion of kindness. Thats how we created the platform #KindnessIsCashless. Our film is one such evocative story.

Hemant Shringy, executive creative director of BBDO India said, We know people want to help. All they need sometimes is a small act that can make a big difference. Thats what this film is about. Making digital payments comes naturally to us, #KindnessIsCashless encourages millennials to reach out and teach someone how to go cashless.

Ajai Jhala, CEO, BBDO India said, #KindnessIsCashless is borne out of the fusion of three forces - a massive national social context (Demonetization), brave and inspirational clients who inspired us to break from the past, and an amazing agency team that challenged the category codes and captured the zeitgeist of millennials stepping forward with little acts of kindness to do their bit for society and the nation. No force can stop a juggernaut of an idea birthed from such a potent combination.

Campaign credits:

Client: Visa India Creative Agency: BBDO, Mumbai Chairman & Chief Creative Officer: Josy Paul CEO: Ajai Jhala Executive Creative Director: Hemant Shringy and Sandeep Sawant EVP Planning Rajat Mendhi Sr. Creative Director: Balakrishna Gajelli Copywriter: Hemant Shringy, Yash Modi Account Director: Shrutika Sinha Account Executive: Shonali Hazari Agency Producer: KV Krishna Director: Shimit Amin Producer: Gary Grewal Production House: Red Ice

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Visa shows you how #KindnessIsCashless via their latest ad campaign - ETBrandEquity.com

Toronto's new ad shows the views from the city -- a seemingly inclusive kaleidoscope of colours and cultures. ( YouTube )

Torontos new tourism ad released Monday has some marketers raving, with some calling it one of the best ads theyve ever seen for a city.

I put a spell on you, coos singer Bethany Lee in the Toronto Tourism ad that takes viewers on a whirlwind tour of the city it dubs Canadas downtown.

It runs for 71 seconds and features vignettes of Toronto ballet dancers on the TTC, Jose Bautistas iconic bat flip, the electricity of a rooftop pool bar, the citys architecture and skyline, food, a Drake performance and the Caribbean Carnival.

The views are different here, reads the fast-paced ad that captures Torontos zeitgeist, created by J. Walter Thompson Canada.

This ad is really good because it reflects sort of the energy, the diversity and also the swagger of Toronto and I think theres something in the ad for everyone and it really makes Toronto look like an appealing place to visit, said David Soberman, marketing professor at Rotman School of Management and the Canadian national chair of strategic marketing.

The quick movement through the many vignettes reduces the chances of wear out, Soberman said.

There are so many different things in it every time you watch it youll see something different, Soberman said.

Richard Powers, an associate professor at the Rotman School of Management, thought the ad was one of the best he has seen and thinks it will have a huge impact.

I think the ads going to go viral. It is that good, he said. It portrayed Toronto as a very cool destination spot: friendly, welcoming and safe. When I saw that ad, I was really proud of Toronto.

The ad also highlights a second view of Toronto its inclusivity and progressive values through vignettes of the annual Pride Parade, a same sex couple together and through phrases like Love is love is love and In this city its ok to let your guard down superimposed on scenes.

Although the ad may seem like a direct response to Donald Trumps America, the chief creative officer at J. Walter Thompson Canada says it isnt.

Even before Trump, you could feel the creep of sort of different values starting to resonate even more and I like how this campaign pushes off that not only in terms of the sort of mental views, if you will, but also the physical views, Ryan Spelliscy said. We liked this notion that this city is more than the sites, its also an incredible collection of progressive views and values.

Andrew Weir, the chief marketing officer at Tourism Toronto, said this is what Toronto is.

The views are different here and were now being confident enough to say it and I think Toronto wants to say it, Weir said. I think the people of Toronto are showing a sense of civic pride that we havent seen in years here.

Last year marked another record year for tourism in the city, said Weir, who called the growth remarkable.

There was more than a 10 per cent increase of tourists from U.S. and overseas markets from the previous year, Weir added, driven largely by visitors flying in, rather than driving.

The ad was funded by a partnership with the Greater Toronto Hotel Association and the Ontario Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sports and didnt use tax dollars, said Weir.

It will run in major U.S. cities including Boston, Washington, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and New York City, primarily on YouTube, said Spelliscy.

There will be three more follow-up videos coming out in April that will focus on Torontos food and nightlife, arts and culture and progressive views that will run for 30 seconds each online.

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

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Inclusive, 'cool' Toronto shown in new tourism ad - Toronto Star

OURMISSION

The Zeitgeist Movement is an internationalsustainability advocacy organization focused on educating the public about the many socioeconomic problems inherent to the global market economy, and proposes the adoption of an entirely new, sustainable model known as a Natural-Law Resource-Based Economy.

TZM has no allegiance to any country or political party. The movement recognizes the Earth as an interconnected system,and our species asone human familywhich must learn to share resources & ideas if we expect to survive in the long run.

Sustainability requires a mass value shiftfrom our traditional & cultural way of thinking to a more science-based "train-of-thought". Therefore, TZM advocates the application of the Scientific Method for social concern, problem solving & governance. Decisions of the future will not be "made" by popular opinion. Rather, they will bearrived at through the careful study of data and the latest science & technology.

There are many things one can do to support this worldwide grassroots movement. TZM Chapters hold regularly scheduled meetings and engage the general public through educational projects, annual events, media expressions, non-violent activism, and charity work.

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The Zeitgeist Movement | New York City Chapter - Home

Soon after Donald Trump joined the presidential race, a professional dominatrix named Tara Indiana announced her plans to follow suit. If a carnival barker like Donald Trump can run for president, why not a dominatrix? she said during an interview with GQ. Her slogan? Whipping America back into shape, one middle aged white man at a time.

Her platform included decriminalizing all consensual sex acts between adults, funding scientific research to show that S&M is a sexual orientation and adding kink into laws dealing with discrimination. She also favored the idea of the prohibitioning of middle-aged white men from holding office without permission from their Mistress, and requiring men to carry purses so they can look after their own belongings.

The women in my field, we dont live as victims. When we want to make change, we make changes, says professional dominatrix and sex educator Sandra LaMorgese. When we want to influence the world around us, we take action.

Women are feeling a little powerless right now, she notes. And shes right. In the weeks following election, sex therapist Kimberly Resnick Anderson noticed a steady decline in sex drive among her female clients. They appeared irritable and easily annoyed. Often, it was the men in their lives that bore the brunt of these developments. Anderson dubbed the phenomenon The Donald Trump Bedroom Backlash. The misogyny displayed by Trump throughout his entire presidential bid. . . has undermined the hard-fought progress to de-objectify women, she wrote in a think piece on the subject. This general malaise can easily zap libido and ruin your sex drive.

But there are those in the sex-o-sphere who havent abandoned their prowess. Instead, theyre using it to get even.

In an interview with Vice, Indiana explained, Ive noticed being in the scene for over 25 years, that fetishes and kinks come in trends, just like fashion, music, et cetera. And these trends tend to be reactions to the social and political zeitgeist.

When I got into the business in 1989 your garden variety slave was into foot worship, and cross dressing. I see this as a reaction to changing gender roles and a need to work through those issues. Then when AIDS started to affect the straight community, things like heavy medical, blood sports, and scat became popular. People were tired of safe sex they wanted to do things that were dangerous and risky.

In the world of sex, theres only one equal and opposite reaction to an apparent uptick in female devaluation: complete female domination.

Any time that we express empowerment during sex, that will trickle into other areas of our life, says LaMorgese. Its the transmutation of energy. Everything you do influences everything else. If you can be more aggressive, and dominant and powerful, sexually, it gives you a sort of moxie. It gives you some swagger.

And its not just women pushing the trend. After the election results came in, submissive guys started posting ads on Craigslist in search of women looking to relieve some stress. One guy from New York wrote, This is not a solution, but maybe a small, fun, cathartic escape. Take out your anger by putting me over your knee and giving me a hard spanking!

In the week that Trump was elected, I saw such a shift in people reaching out to me for sessions, LaMorgese revealed. Her clients, overwhelmingly male and financially successful, fall on either end of the political spectrum. Still, the requests were more or less the same. These clients were not looking for passive sessions, they were looking corporal punishment. They were looking for very intense sessions.

Its like they were in shock, she says. When youre doing BDSM, you have to be present. You really have to be aware of whats happening. Maybe thats why the clients are asking for more intensity. Its almost like it can get them out of shock.

Donald Trump is not sexy. But sex tends to follow the trends, and for the moment, Trump is it. His unlikely climb to power has given us great porn parodies like Donald Tramp and Make America Gape Again. Its also inspired some terrific pieces of erotic literature, like Humpin Trump and of course, President Trumps Gay Hairpiece and the Revenge of the Were-Water Buffalo. These days, those who chose to take their creativity into the bedroom might just find themselves somewhere between a whip and a hard place.

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Donald and the Dominatrix: How the White House Inspired a BDSM Movement - Salon

Donald Trumps likening of false claims his office was bugged by the White House to McCarthyism is not just ridiculous, its laced with deep irony, writes Claire Connelly.

In Aaron Sorkins West Wing, fictional President Bartlet is in an argument with his speech writer and communications director Toby Ziegler over his writing a speech. Zeigler is condemning Hollywood for its gratuitous use of sex & violence in entertainment. Bartlett says, Do I look like Joe McCarthy to you?, to which Ziegler replies Nobody ever looks like Joe McCarthy, Mr President. Thats how they get in the door in the first place.

[Thank you to awesome word nerd @HowPeculeah for making me this gif special for the story]. Well, on Saturday morning at around 3am, the world got a reminder of just how that may occur when the very real President Donald Trump sank to a new low, claiming that President Obama had tapped the phones at Trump Towers during last years election campaign. In the explosive tweet, he captioned the event without the slightest hint of irony McCarthyism alluding to the Cold War anti-Communist sentiment.

And he should know. Trump was trained by McCarthys right hand man, Roy Cohn, who is perhaps the strongest link between these two eras. He may have died in 1986, but Cohns legacy lives on in the bloated orange buffoon that occupies the oval office (Ill get to this momentarily).

Lets put to one side momentarily that Trump confused McCarthyism with Watergate: only a Federal Judge can authorise a tap on the grounds the subject was an agent of a foreign power (there are a few exceptions to this, I wont get into here. You can read about it here, here and here).

For those not born before the mid-70s and who were not alive to remember a time when people were actually against and afraid of government blacklists, surveillance, censorship and, you know, Communism (shoutout to Pauline Hanson)

allow me to refresh your memory:

McCarthyism is what spurred the (second) reds beneath the bed scare of the 1940s and 50s, during which time employees of the White House, the public service, private sector and even the military were subject to mass firings and investigations for communist sympathies under a host of government panels set up by Senator Joseph McCarthy. And all under the approving eye of President Harry Truman.

The press was subject to intense scrutiny, and in more than one case news outlets were forced to fire journalists, reporters, radio hosts even comedians on the demand of the government.

President Truman required all public servants be screened for loyalty or sympathy for communism, fascism or other isms deemed a threat to the continued dominance of the American dream.

Hundreds if not thousands of people lost their jobs, economics textbooks were suppressed, economics teachers intimidated, and the direction of the whole discipline changed (one could argue the same thing is happening across university campuses right now, though I dont think its fair to put that development at Trumps feet. Thats a topic for another essay).

While we sit in the eye of the storm, on the brink of a rapidly changing economic system, its hard not to recognise the similarities.

Much like the ongoing war in the Middle East, the gaping power struggle that beset the globe following the devastation of WWII created the perfect power-struggle between the Soviet Union, America, China, North and South Korea, Greece, Turkey and of course all of their relevant allies, (Gday).

In 1949, the White House was drawn into a national security and PR disaster when Attorney General, Alger Hiss was convicted of espionage and perjury by the House of Un-American Activities Committee (shout out to Jeff Sessions).

In 1950, the Korean War pitted America, backed by the United Nations and South Korea, against North Korea and China. Russia upped its espionage activities.

Emil Julius Klaus Fuchs, a German theoretical physicist and Soviet spy involved in the creation of the worlds first nuclear weapon, was convicted of leaking information about the US, UK and Canadian Manhattan Project to Russia. And the infamous Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for stealing atomic bomb secrets and selling them to the Soviets, after a widely publicised trial which made the nuclear threat ever more real for the general public.

This backdrop, and the economic devastation caused by the war, created the perfect set of social and international and intercultural tensions for the Red Scare.

Reform became a term to be feared as civil rights, industrial relations, child labor laws, and womens suffrage were quickly rhetorically associated with the secret Communist plot to overthrow America. Anyone considered to be remotely progressive or vaguely Eastern European or Jewish looking was quickly dubbed an un-American traitor, to be feared, scorned and to always be the subject of scrutiny and suspicion.

Enter Joseph McCarthy, the United States Senator from Wisconsin. On February 9th, 1950 he gave a speech to the Republican Womens Club of Wheeling in West Virginia in which he claimed to be in possession of a list of known Communists working for the State Department. The speech pretty much made him the informal leader of the movement which would soon come to bear his name.

The result was the rapid establishment of government sanctioned committees, panels, departments, loyalty review boards and portfolios across all levels of government, not to mention the proliferation of private agencies to do the dirty work government wasnt legally allowed to do itself to protect America from those pesky Reds out to convert America to their way of life.

Companies were required to conduct investigations for Communists employed amongst their workforce.

Of course, in progressive Hollywood, many executives, writers, directors, actors and producers accused of having Communist sympathies were blacklisted from working in the industry. Careers were ruined. Many never worked again.

Interestingly, the provision of public health services was one of the tenets of McCarthyism, where things like vaccination, mental health care services and fluoride were considered to be part of some Communist plot to poison or brainwash Americans. Under the instruction of J Edgar Hoover, the FBI distributed propaganda flyers under the guise of various experts or research claiming as much. Much of the language had a distinctly anti-Semitic tone and was often cased in moralistic terms.

Back to Roy Cohn, described by the New York Times as McCarthys red-baiting consigliere, the attorney was instrumental in sending Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair, helped elect Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and also mentored Trump for 13 years. His client included FBI director J Edgar Hoover and mafia boss Fat Tony Salerno.

Cohn helped deliver some of Trumps signature construction deals, was involved in his suit against the NFL for conspiring against him, and countersued the federal government for more than $100 million for defaming the Trump name.

He was central in Trumps long-running discriminatory rental feud where Trump and his father were accused of refusing to rent to black tenants.

Cohn would eventually, in 1964, after many failed attempts, be charged with bribery, conspiracy, and fraud by the US government, including coercing a dying millionaire client to amend his will from his hospital death bed making Cohn executor of his estate.

Cohn was subsequently disbarred for unethical, unprofessional and particularly reprehensible conduct. Trump claims they only got him because he was so sick (Rohn had been suffering from AIDS).

Unsurprisingly, and much like the current zeitgeist, Cohn and McCarthys policy agenda had majority public support. Both McCarthy and Trump are examples of lunatics of who overreach. One quickly became a public joke and died shortly after. Weve yet to see the outcome of the Trump era, and though there may be public consensus that he may be one sugar granule short of a fruit-loop, there also seems to be consensus across the political divide that Trump is what the system needs, whatever the cost.

Im not denying the economic system is broken. And Im not saying it doesnt need a massive overhaul. But Im not prepared for millions of people to suffer for that to happen. Weve seen what occurs when we allow that kind of thinking to permeate public policy.

The country I was raised in, the education system I was taught in, it told me, it told all of us, why it wasnt worth it. Today, as rising white supremacy, and socially and domestically acceptable casual racism rears its ugly head, Im not sure so many people would agree.

Just yesterday Pauline Hanson endorsed Vladimir Putin. For McCarthy it would take a comedian and a stand-off between the President and the US military to bring him down. What is it going to take to get rid of Trump? And what fresh hell follows forth?

McCarthyism was brought to an abrupt halt during the spring of 1954 after he unsuccessfully picked a fight with the US Army, subjecting it to a three-month long nationally televised spectacle in which members of the military were interrogated for alleged communist sympathies.

The buck stopped with Joseph Nye Welch, chief counsel for the US Army, who, during the hearings, infamously coined the six words which would end McCarthys career: Have you no sense of decency.

On national television Welch berated the Senator: Until this moment, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness, he said. When McCarthy tried to intervene Welch interrupted, Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?

The trial was seen as a significant turning point in the publics attitude towards McCarthyism.

The US government suddenly turned on McCarthy. And the same party which gave rise to Trump tossed him under the bus at its earliest convenience.

On December 2nd, 1964, McCarthy was censured by the Senate, ostracised by both parties and eviscerated in the press. He would die three years later at the age of 48.

Meanwhile, in 1957 NBC radio talkback host and comedian John Henry Faulk sued AWARE, the agency which investigated him for his alleged Communist sympathies and won. Ultimately it was a financial, not moral imperative that did it, though arguably the press coverage the trial brought at the time might support an argument to the contrary. Knowing they could now be held legally and financially liable for the professional and financial losses caused by their firings, companies began to knock it off.

McCarthyism would soon after faded into history, burned into the public consciousness as the time where, for a brief moment, America lost its damn mind. Were at that point again. And its not clear what it will take for this terrifying new chapter to come to a close.

Historian and Senior Lecturer at Adelaide University, Dr Tom Buchanan says that though they may have been mentored and guided by the same man, it would be a long bow to draw between Trump and McCarthy, but certainly they both were instrumental in leading moral panics to serve a greater agenda.

Trump has the country whipped into a panic about womens modern roles, gay rights, minority criminals, immigrants, job stealers, and Islam, he said. The 1950s had discrimination against all these too but they were folded into the larger Communist Panic, (here mostly with homosexuals, though single people unmoored from family life were at risk too as being susceptible to spy seduction).

There was of course concern about women and minorities who strayed from their proper roles, but nothing like today where women and minorities are being depicted by many in government and the peanut gallery as having taken control via weird liberal programmes like affirmative action. There were panics in both times, but there were differences too.

Dr Buchanan told New Matilda that McCarthyism was a way to target various groups under the accusation that they were not fully American.

Its a moral panic, he said. In the same way the Islamaphobia we are seeing today is very similar.

Most distinctly, he said, it is the distinct consensus of opinion between Democrats and Republicans against Islam in todays zeitgeist that resembles the very same moral panic of the 1940s, simply replacing the label Communist with Muslim.

Let it be clear, McCarthy was not the reason for Trump, anymore than Trump is the reason for the state of moral panic and the escalating social tensions occurring the world over hes the symptom of the holy war being waged between left and right, black and white, men and women and the LGBTQI communities, workers against employers, voters against the government.

He is the symptom of a system which appoints deranged lunatics to whip the public into a moral panic to distract them from the financialisation, deregulation and privatisation of an economic model designed to deliberately and systematically manipulate the market in favour of the few, and to the detriment of the majority.

Dr Buchanan says the irony is that Trumps whole movement is predicated on a return to the 1950s, which he now uses as an example of his persecution. Even though the 1950s was actually a time of great fear and persecution of many to the social and economic advantage of the few.

He imagines a return to the racial/gender/middle class privileges of that time for his supporters, Dr Buchanan says. The idea of victimhood (however twisted the logic) resonates very strongly with them because of the changes of the last 40 years.

Trumps McCarthy style persecution only highlights the imagined promise land a return to power in which the hierarchies of old can be resurrected.

And they can be the hunters again.

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It's Not McCarthyism, Stupid - New Matilda

MARCH 5, 2017

TWO WEEKS BEFORE he stepped down from office, Barack Obama published an essay on criminal justice reform in the Harvard Law Review, the journal of his old law school. It is a cause for which he campaigned throughout his presidency, but with fewer victories than he had hoped for.

We should all be able to agree that our resources are better put toward underfunded schools than overfilled jails, the former president writes, and that many of those in our criminal justice system would be better and more humanely served by drug treatment programs and the receipt of mental health care.

But Obama has it wrong, according to Locked In, a new critique of the causes and myths of mass incarceration. In the book, Pfaff, a professor at Fordham University School of Law, argues that reformers emphasis on drug crimes, while laudable in principle, has only distracted from the real drivers of the United Statess prison boom.

[R]eformers still dont understand the root causes of mass incarceration, he writes, so many reforms will be ineffective, if not outright failures.

While drug offenders make up almost half of the federal prison system and were responsible for a large increase in the federal prison boom that began in the 1970s, most (about 87 percent) of the prisoners in the United States are held within the state system. Here only about 16 percent of the population are locked up for drug charges, and about six percent for nonviolent drug offenses, Pfaff points out. If you release every single person charged with these crimes, you still do not alter the fundamental fact of mass incarceration.

The United States would still have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, the book notes. It was not always like this. In 1972, there were 200,000 inmates in US prisons; by 2014, there were 1.56 million.

In recent years, bipartisan criticism of this prison boom has begun to gather momentum. Many on the right see mass incarceration as an ineffective use of taxpayer money and an inefficient way to reduce crime. On the left, people consider it to have unacceptable social collateral costs, removing people from their families and communities rather than targeting root causes of crime.

Obama, like many advocates for change, focused his efforts on people incarcerated for drug offenses, who make easy targets for prison reform. In July 2015, he visited El Reno prison in Oklahoma, where he met with a group of nonviolent drug offenders and reiterated his views on the injustice of sending people to prison for these crimes. A primary driver of this mass incarceration phenomenon is our drug laws, he said. Academics have also bolstered this assertion. The uncomfortable reality is that convictions for drug offenses not violent crime are the single most important cause of the prison boom in the United States, writes Michelle Alexander, a law professor at Ohio State University, inThe New Jim Crow, which has become a canonical criticism of the US prison system.

Pfaff seeks a correction to what he considers a myth behind Alexanders and Obamas charges. The movement against mass incarceration had no option but to start where it did, focusing on drugs and other nonviolent crimes, Pfaff writes,

That movement is nearly a decade old now, however, and it is important to pause and acknowledge that the gains have not been great [] Total prison populations outside of California are down by less than 2 percent since 2010 (and by barely 4 percent when we include California).

If not drugs, then, where should reformers focus their efforts? The answers are both politically toxic and likely an impossible sell to an electorate who punish at the polls for perceived increases in crime. The real issue, Pfaff says, is that most of the people locked up more than half in the state system are there for violent crimes. This group also explains two-thirds of the growth in prison populations since 1990. Until we accept that meaningful prison reform means changing how we punish violent crimes, true reform will not be possible, he writes.

But this increased propensity toward the imprisonment of violent offenders at the state level was not the result of an increase in crime or even the result of intentional policy changes. Rather, prison growth in recent decades continued even as crime has fallen. It was driven by local decisions among individual prosecutors.

This is Pfaffs most counterintuitive finding, with profound implications for how to tackle reform. In the early 1990s, violent crime began to fall dramatically; since 1991, it has fallen by 51 percent, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. But prison expansion continued apace. And most of this was because of prosecutors pushing for felony charges with increasing frequency, according to Pfaff. Holding all other factors constant, he shows that the chance of an arrestee being charged with a felony doubled after 1994, which was the driver of an almost 40 percent increase in the US prison population between 1994 and 1998. While arrests fell, the number of felony cases rose, and steeply, he explains. Fewer and fewer people were entering the criminal justice system, but more and more were facing the risk of felony conviction and thus prison. Many of these cases are decided in backroom plea bargains, where clients are inadequately represented by time poor and underfunded public lawyers. Short of increased funding for indigent defense, only a change in attitude among prosecutors and the public who elect them will reverse this trend of filing felony charges.

A tilt toward less-punitive measures for violent crimes seems fanciful in the current political climate. Suggestions such as releasing those charged with violent crimes early or making sentencing guidelines for such crimes more lenient would doubtless be dismissed outright by the Trump Administration. Besides promising to lock up his opponent, Donald Trump campaigned on a platform to give greater power to law enforcement agencies and clamp down on violent crime. We must maintain law and order at the highest levels, or we will cease to have a country, 100 percent, he said last July.

The book, however, offers another, more sanguine, reading of this elections implications for prison reform. Despite Trumps tough on crime rhetoric, Pfaff sees a series of micro-victories for prison reform across the country. Most reform decisions are controlled not by the federal government, but by states, counties, and districts. The same forces that prevented Obama from achieving widespread decarceration will also prevent Trump from doubling down on incarceration unless local politics consents, so goes the argument. And many of the same people who voted for Trump simultaneously supported prison reform at the local level. Oklahoma, which Pfaff cites as an example, gave 65.3 percent of its vote to Trump. On the same day, the state passed State Questions 780 and 781, measures reclassifying certain nonviolent drug offenses and petty thefts as misdemeanors and redirecting savings to mental health and drug treatment instead of prison. Yet, to bring Pfaffs argument full circle, measures such as this might curb unfair drug sentencing, but will not lead to significant changes in incarceration patterns.

In the end, success by Pfaffs metrics depends on what reformers, and the public, actually want. Is the aim to bring down the prison population as an end in and of itself or only to stop sending people to prison for misdemeanors and nonviolent crimes? Pfaffs argument assumes that the publics qualm with mass incarceration should be with the absolute number of people locked up.

But it is also possible thatmany reformers would be happy with a small reduction in the prison population, if they felt that the people who remained in prison deserved to be there. In other words, the book demands much more than tinkering at the edges with the current model of incarceration. It advocates for a cultural shift among prosecutors and the public, to view prisoners not only as criminals, but also as people who have impulsively and regrettably committed crimes. As people who should be helped rather than merely warehoused and incapacitated. It reads more as a clarion call toward what might one day be than a set of policy formulations that could be easily enacted.

It may be that some reforms are justifiable even if they do lead to more crime, Pfaff writes,

Its true that crime is costly but so, too, is punishment, especially prison. The real costs are much higher than the $80 billion we spend each year on prisons and jails: they include a host of financial, physical, emotional, and social costs to inmates, their families and communities. Maybe reducing these costs justifies some rises in crime.

This is the books most difficult sell. Pfaff admits that he is doubtful leaders will embrace the argument in the short run. It is less politically risky for people to be kept in prison for too long than released too early or not sent to prison in the first place. But whether the zeitgeist on this issue shifts or not, to those asking why the United States imprisons so many of its people, the answers and hints of possible reform are here. Changing this reality will need much more than emptying prisons of drug offenders.

Josh Jacobs is a writer based in New Haven, Connecticut. He has been published in, among other places, theFinancial Times, Haaretz,Reuters, and the Huffington Post.

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In the Joint - lareviewofbooks