Twelve Steps From Capitalism to Wellness

How's about this:

The following is a Draft reworking of the original twelve steps as might be applied to capitalism.

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From Capitalism to Wellness

1)  We admit that we thought that we were powerless as regards capitalism—that our lives had become unmanageable, but that 'There Is No Alternative'.

2)  However, we have came to consider that a power greater than ourselves individually, but not collectively, could restore us to sanity.

3)  We have, therefore, made a decision to turn our attention and our lives over to the care of the created planet and all its inhabitants, rather than to expoit what-ever there is for Rent, Interest, Profit and as much lucre as we can get from paid work, aided, collectively, by what-ever force for goodness and wholeness we find, whether we name that as God, The Creator, The Divine Spark, or what-ever.

4)  We have made a searching and fearless moral inventory of capitalism. We have admitted to God, or only, to ourselves, and to our friends and comrades, as to the nature of capitalism's evil and consequential wrongs.

5)  We are entirely ready to have, with God's help, or otherwise, the opportunity to pledge ourselves to help remove all aspects of capitalism.

6)  And we joyfully take up that opportunity.

7)  We humbly, therefore, ask our friends, comrades and, if appropriate 'Him', to help us remove capitalism.

8)  We could attempt to make a list of all persons capitalism has harmed, but we recognise that capitalism harms everyone and everything: most particularly those who imagine that capitalism has any beneficial aspects.

9)  Accordingly we, without attempting the impossible task of making amends to generations of all living creatures,  past and present, that have been so harmed, we pledge ourselves to help create a better world for all.

10)  We, therefore, while Annually continuing to assess our progress, and also Annually celebrating our success, will assess our shorycomings and, when we were tardy in our efforts, or downright wrong, promptly attend to them.

11)  Thus, through through action, self- and collective, co-operative education, prayer and meditation as and when appropriately led, to improve our conscious contact with the plan for wellness known at present as 'the living plan for Co-operative Socialism', and when appropriate,  pray for help and knowledge of 'His' will for us and the power to carry that out.

12)  Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we will try to carry this message to all who are presently addicted to capitalism, or despair, 'That There Is No Alternative', and to practice the Co-operative Values and Principles, including the new concept of Co-operative Careship in all our affairs.

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Original Twelve step wording, as relating to alcoholism,  is in Wikipedia.

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For more on Co-operative Socialism, please see Youtube videos and radio interview and, underconstruction, www.co-operativesocialism.org

How The Lunatics Are Elected to Rule Us

Tom Peckham asked about levels of madness and sanitu.

I offered:

The four-type Personality Tests, such as the True Colors variant (their questionaitre is, I think, in my photos section) gives the proportion of rationality (their 'Green' score) in any individual, along with scores for the other three quadrants.

These four quadrants seem, according to anthropologist Helen Fisher's work, to relate to differing levels of four neurocstive substances, dopamine, serotonin, testosyerone and the (three) estrogens.

And, presumably, their brain receptor sites.

Michael Adams' Environics work suggest that the 'Personality Centre-of-Gravity' for cohorts is/can be altered over time (see his books, 'Fire and Ice' and 'Sex In The Snow').

Now, given that stress produces so-called stress hormones, and one of these, cortisol, is on the same biochemical pathways as the two steroidal neuroactive molecules (the sex hormones, testosterone and the estrogens), I've no doubt that levels of rationality (the Green qudrant Personality type: thst associated with testosterone) is/can be manipulated by various means.

Epidemiologically, as Richard Wilkinson, Kate Pickett and Michael Marmot have shown (eg www.equalitytrust.org.uk) that increased inequality leads to increased levels of mental ill-health and madness; and, presumably their correlate, lesser levels of rationality.

This, incidentally, is why our plan for greater equality, the plan for Co-operative Socialism, was, in part, designed.

Now, the CIA, Mossad, etc doubtless know this and, very likely use psychological manipulation of populations to further their funders' objectives: the continuation of capitalism and, particularly, Zionism.

As, quite likely used in the recent US, UK, Australian and Canadian elections that have caused blatant lunatics like the Ford brothers in Canada to be 'elected'.

Of course, the degradation of Universities into capitalist-funded Monoversities has ended appropriate scholarly, open-published work relevant to these speculations and preliminary evidences.

No-one should be surprised that I and the rest of, perhaps, the most rational scholarly group, the Physical Organic Chemists were made unemployed, and scattered to the winds of misfortune by capitalist governments such as those of Thatcher, Reagan, the Bushes, Mulrooney, Harper and so on.

You heard it, here first!

A Little Big History

It is little recognised that we, the 88% in the United Kingdom (ie, we the Worked Class) have been struggling against a Colonial imposition for a thousand years. At least.

In 1066, The Norman Yoke was pushed, brutally, onto our shoulders, when William of Normany and his fellow 'Northmen', along with his Rouen bankers pushed aside the Saxon Yoke of the Godwins. Who, themselves took over when the Romans went home, leaving the Roman Yoke in tatters.

Five hundred years' later, The City of London's usurers added their Yoke of Usury to our shoulders, when they managed to get Usury legalised, for the first time in England, by the Eighth King called Henry (he of the Welsh land robbers, The Tudors), in 1545.

(The Italian Kings of Usury, the Medicis had previously done the same across Europe, on behalf of their bankers, The Vatican: one of their family was the Chief anti-Christ, The Pope.)

So, to the Yoke of The Landlords (Money Rent and Feudal Serivce, The Yoke of Usury (ie, debt plus interest) was added.

(This was reinforced, with global intent when the European Usurers, based in Amsterdam, Antwerp and Bruges, took over the City of London with their invasion, and Seventeenth Century imposition, expelling the Scots bankers' nominees, The Stuarts; replacing The Stuarts with the Ornge Order, William and Mary.

So, the twin meat grinders of Rent and Usury caused money to accumulate, land-theft (land-'holdings') by enclosure and expulsion of us, the 88%, to increase.

But what to do with us, the by-now vagrants?

Answer: lay the third of four Yokes upon our backs and families: The Yoke of Wage Slavery, which provides yet more money, in the form of Profits, for the Rent+Usury Thieves, The Norman land-owners and European Bank-owners.

Thus was born The Industrial Revolution, with all the poverty and pollution that entailed.

Finally, by the Nineteenth Century, the three Yokes of Rent, Interest and Profit (hence: RIP Capitalism) needed yet another Yoke to be applied: The Yoke of Inescapable Tax.

The latter was necessary so that the 2% (The Norman Landowners and European Bankers and Capitalist Business 'Owners') could pay their Praetorian Guard (the 10%, with salaries and pensions higher-then-us) in order to 'keep us in order': their hierarchical order! Of obedience! Oddly, those Praetorian Guard jobs very often have titles beginning with the letter P (Police, Prison Guards, Politicians, Publicists, Professors, Pimps and so on) leaving us, the 88%, with the D-jobs (the Dirty, Dangerous, Dispiriting, Drudgery, etc jobs). Grrr!

So, here we are now.

With the realisation that fighting the Four Yokes doesn't work and that the alternative (Economic, Social and Ecological Co-operation) does work (despite capitalism's efforts to co-opt it . . . Even with Vegan Running Shoes by Reebok. Oh dear!).

What to do?

I suggest:

A) Join Labour Action for Peace and, so,

B) Support the True Co-operative Alternative, Co-operative Socialism, and,

C) Encourage your local Labour Party, Co-operative Party, Trades' Council, Woodcraft Folk, Co-operative Womens' Guild, Peace Council, Pensioners and Students' groups, to press our Labour and Co-operative Movement leaders, like Jeremy and John, Ian Lavery, et al, to use our Parliamentary Opposition Day time to kick-start a  UK-wide, Planet-wide debate, education, implementation of the true replacement for capitalism: True, Living, Co-operative Socialism.

Capitalism RIP!

(RIP = Rent, Interest and Profits)

Let's get RID of capitalism

(RID = Rent, Interext and Dividends to Capitalist Shareholders)

No more TRIP-Up

(Theft, Rent, Interest, Profits and Unequal-pay for work).

Please share!

And give!

Thank-you!

bit of bio

Yes Cicely Courtneidge was married to Jack Hulbert.

I believe that her father was Robert Courtneidge, a Scots actor/impressario.

My grandfather Courtneidge, as I understand it moved from Leatherhead in Surrey to Walworth in metropolitan Surrey sometime pre or post WWI.

Cicely Courtneidge lived in Herfordshire and, when I was the Chair of the Hertford and Stortford Constituency Labour Party and, also to my honour, Vice Chair of The Hertfordshire County Labour Party and (not satisfactorily in my view) Secretary of The Hertfordshire Co-operative Party, the Chair of the Broxbourne CLP (adjacent to H&S CLP and north of Enfield, Edmonton and Tottenham and a *very* white, angry BNP stronghold was a woman with, also, Courtneidge as her family name: a relative of Cicely perhaps.

Ps, when I was an active, employed research chemist, Science Citations listed only, as I recall, one other Courtneidge: a woman biologist, I think, in the US.

All happy, if difficult times!

Globalisation

Very many thanks, Steven.  Your encapsulation of the dominant (and dominating) system, capitalism is quite right.

There is, at least, one other globalised (in the geographical use oof that term) economic system: the Co-operative Alternative. While I berate those elements within it as being 'Co-operative Capitalism' (Mutuals, some Worker Co-ops, Most, probably, of the Agricultural Marketing Co-ops, as such examples) there are millions, likely some Billions of indivual True Co-operators who work diligently for this globalised alternative to capitalism.

Other aspects to which I was alluding was in other aspects of the term 'globalisation' include the global mobility, now, of people (through all of the migration routes: holidays, family visits, economic and refugee migrations) and the globalised nature of things like Facebook.

Yes, capitalism seems hegemenous (if my poor understanding of thst term is remotely correct) but it is an *immensely unstable* hegemony.

As The City knows all too well!

Again, my very great thanks for your very useful posts and for this very civilised conversation!

Very best wishes,

John

let us build, Co-operatively!, a Micro-telescope

A microscope is something that brings to tiny *into* the here-and-now that is of a size that we can so.

A telescope is something that brings, *to* the here-and-now, something is far away, tiny to us now, but that is of normal, or, even greater-than-normal size.

So a micro-telescope combines both: to bring to us something that seems to be far away and seems to be tiny into the here-and-now.

And, into the fore-see-able.

If we are prepared to building the boat to get us there.

The vision, then, is of a global Co-operative Commonweal.

Ie, The Wellness of all, in The Wrllness of All.

Co-operatively and, thus, equally.

A diversitu of local and national Co-operative Commonwealths.

Brought about, we suggest for the ptesent, by the adoption and implementation, followed by Annual Audit and Celebration, of a living plan.

For True, living,  Co-operative Socialism.

Ie, True Socialism

Art Is

And, I offer, that Art is:

The Presentation, or the Re-Presentation, of something that Is,

Or Is-Becoming,

Or Is-Possible-but-not-Yet,

Or, even, that is Not-yet, and, Not-Possible,

And, Thus, A Fantasy.

Better, stronger together! The advantages of a strong United Kingdom

Better, stronger together!
The advantages of a strong United Kingdom

A questioner elsewhere asks why I favour the Continuation of the United Kingdom. I offered:

Many thanks, Linaire McRae for your question. Since 1979, under the New Labour, Neoliberal Conservative, Fif&Con and Con&DUP governments, *no-one* in the Union has benefitted: anywhere in the United Kingdom and Northrrn Ireland.

That is because inequality right across the Union has been increased. And maintained at a hugely harmful level (see 'The Spirit Level' book and www.equalitytrust.org.uk for the evidence that inequality -income inequality - is harmful to everyone in an unequal society).

But my certainty that we are better together is not based on a self-interested national-, personal- or family-, self- interest.

Rather, it has to do with our shared historic mission to abolish capitalism and all forms of opptession. Peacefully through the Parliamentary process.

To do that we need the vibrancy of an nonviolent culture that is articulated in the English language: one that is as well-heard, globally, as is the Military-Banking-Capitalist brain-bashing American-English (anti)cultural voice that emanates from Hollywood, Madison Avenue and the US Ivy-league Monoversities (Universities-not).

The cultural tradition developed on these islands (and I include the entire island of Ireland in this regard) have, variously and diversely added to that historic mission.

And are invaluable in that ongoing mission.

To take one example.

Of the so-named 'Auxilliaries' in the Co-operative Movement, the Co-operative Womens' Guild in England has been unilaterally closed down. But its sister Guild in Scotland, thankfully, continues.

For evidence of the importance of this, reflect that our whole-Union NHS and National Insurance provision was considerably inspired by our Guildswomen: across the Union.

More-over, it was the Guildswomen that invented the White Poppy.

Not as a symbol, as now usefully used, of the harm done to noncombatants in war (by the Peace Pledge Union and others) but, rather, as a symbol of the peaceful , beneficial alternative to capitalism: The Co-operative Commonwealth (see the book photograph attached).

So, yes, better, stronger, more diversely creative, better to be heard, together.

I hope this helps,

Very best wishes,

John Courtneidge

Darkness and light

In the darkness, I reached out to find the wall.

But discovered that my arm was half-way through the open door.

My friend turned on the light.

So I, safely, found my way back to bed.

Thanks be!

Queens Speech response draft

Queens Speech response draft

Three markers:

   A) The Tories have not won a majority: the nonvoters have.

   B) The WASPI Women, the DPAC Activists and XR Activists, Homeless ex-Service Personnel shoulld camp out on Boris' front lawn (not the gates of  Number10, which The Praetorian Guard control).

Literally: his front garden

   C) Jeremy should stay on as Leader for, at least, twelve months at The Despatch Box.

His opening speech should begin with:

   "We are a Party of Democratic Socialists. Along with our sister Party, The Co-operative Party, which is a Party of Democratic Co-operative Socialists, we will hold this *CRUEL AND INEPT* Government to account.

    We will explain in this House *OUR VISION* of a Co-operative Socialist Commonwealth and Commonweal.

     Once this *CRUEL AND INEPT* Government has completed its Brexit Plan, we challenge it to hold another General Election so that the UK Electorate can choose between Capitalism, more Debt and more Taxes or *OUR VISION* of a True Co-operative Socialist Commonwealth and Commonweal.

    By Tuesday!"

For all,

For The Common Good!

The Best,

Equally!

John Courtneidge

A December 2019 Election, final week, Statement

A December 2019, election week Statement.

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We are Members of two Parties of Democratic and Co-operative Socialism.

When elected to government - by 2024 or well before! - we will convert capitalism in this Country into true socialism: True Co-operative Socialism.

In so doing, everyone will receive, as a benefit of residency, a guaranteed Living Income, socially-determined, and, thus, the certainty of a guaranteed Living Income: including when working as students, apprentices, artists or community contributors: in good health and not.

For those who wish to receive an adfitional income from paid work, that income will be work-place determined up to a socially-determined paid-work maximum. And, thus, tax-free.

Since Rent, Interest and Profits-to-shareholders will be abolished, financial surpluses from workshops will flow back to The Common Purse: managed by a not-for-profit, interest-free money, banking and finance system.

That system will provide interest-free financing to workplaces (which we expect will in all probability, be organised as appropriate co-operatives and which, in fidelity to the Seventh Co-operative Principle, will, naturally, be operating For The Global Common Good.

Eventually, we expect that the use of money for any purpose will fade away, as more and more human needs are Community-provided, Free-at-the-point-of-use.

In so doing, because of this Equality Dividend, wellness-not-illness will become the norm, with Co-operative Careship of economic resources replacing Ownership And Exploitation of the same.

In do doing, our generation will be contributing to global wellness: a global Co-operative Commonweal of local and National Co-operative Commonwealths.

A world where we respond enthusiastically and creatively to the question, 'What can I, what can we,  give?'

Rather than capitalisms's selfishness: 'What can I, what can we, get?'

For all, the best!

Equally!

Signed by the following members of our Labour and Co-operative Parties:

John Courtneidge

And:

Tax and incomes in a Co-operative Socialist Commonwealth

Tax and incomes in a Co-operative Socialist Commonwealth

I/we propose:

- a *socially-determined* £-level for the Living Income for Everyone,

- a *socially-determined* paid-work income cap,

-  the consequential abolition-of-personal tax-as-unnecessary, and,

-  the abolition of Rent, Interest and Profits-to-shareholders-as-harmful.

Very best wishes,

John