Home truths

Alright, world. It is time we come to terms with some home truths.

Capitalism is not the only means by which democracy can be achieved.

And contrary to popular opinion, free trade does not prevent war.

In fact free-trade has largely been achieved through war.

Free-trade has a long and violent history, almost more violent than all the worker’s revolutions put together.

From Chile to Brazil, Portugal, Nicaragua, the former Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Uruguay, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras, The Philippines, Vietnam, China, Japan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, there are few countries in the world that haven’t been invaded for the sake of free trade.

Upton Sinclair once said: ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.’

Today’s political crisis is the culmination of the 35-year long-fiction about money and history. Perhaps longer, even.

Unless we come to terms with how both operate, the victor of this ideological spectre will not be those with the best policies or intentions, but those who are best able to perpetuate these long mythologies.

Please understand that the right to self-determination has almost always been a violent, bloody fight against the establishment.

The French and Russian revolutions were some of the bloodiest in history.

What little progress workers have achieved over the last half-century is not the inevitable result of a system designed to support our interests, but an exception made possible by key individuals who defied the status quo and who were almost always punished for it.

And boy, did they pick the wrong guy. Tired of being “a gangster for capitalism”, Butler blew the whistle on the entire plot, culminating in a Congressional investigation and trial.

Small gains were made over time, that suited the interests of working people, but those who stuck their neck out for us almost always lost theirs, mostly — but not always — in the proverbial sense.

Political and union leaders weren’t the only people who suffered for justice.

The system is not and was never designed to support workers, who have forever been a thorn in the side of the capitalist class.

What little progress the working man has made throughout history is in spite of a system rigged heavily against workers, thanks to the intervention of individuals who intervened to try to achieve some semblance of financial independence for the population, without which we’d still be living in feudalism.

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