keeping Going

You may reasonably ask, 'Why am I writing this piece?'

Well, the short answer is that, as with everything I write, I'm trying to help. Not harm.

So I never write fiction, with the risk of an unpleasant surprise at each page turn.

Nor am I writing as an act of self-indulgence. Rather I'm either writing to analyse a circumstance or, as best I can, report a circumstance.

So, what am I saying this time?

Put briefly: this pandemic of isolation and boredom will have, is having, a deeply depressive effect on the entire population.

I know this because for twenty-two years of my working-age life, I was unemployed. And for the past four years of my retirement life I've had to live a solitary, and, increasingly lonely life.

And that has driven me, day by day, closer to suicide.

Not that I have ever attempted suicide, nor do I expect to do so, despite my scientists' knowledge that that possibility exists.

No, my writing this is an attempt to offer my survival-strategy experience.

It, of course, is unique to me, because we are all a different mix of four personality types and, along with that mix, each of us is a blend of extravert (social-needing) and intravert (solitary-needing) personalities as well (that gives us eight possibilities: the Meyers-Briggs Personality typing even doubles this up to sixteen personality possibilities, but I consider that the science of this is still in its infancy, so let's just say that, despite our common needs, our detailed personalities are all different).

So, how have I survived twent-six years of loneliness and inactivity? To say nothing of the shunning that the unemployed and other low-income people face. And, yes, other forms of shunning, too.

Again, put briefly, my security has come from two sources: a) I know that this suffering is deliberate, it's a necessary, designed-in, monitored and managed part of capitalism; capitalism needs unemployment as 'A price worth paying' in order to keep those who are employed in paid-work 'under the thumb', or 'under The Iron Heel'.

Secondly, b), I know that 'better is possible'.

Because I'm a Quaker and a Christian (defined on my terms), I rejoice in the possibility of 'Thy Will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven'.

But we are not going to jump, I don't think, in one bound from The Kingdom of The Devil, as capitalusm is properly termed, into The Kingdom of Heaven.

Rather, we can move from capitalism to a better place by implementing a better alternative: the plan I call 'Co-operative Socialism'.

Now, that will elicit push-back.

Not only from the fans of capitalism, but, as Edward Pease' 'History of The Fabian Society' points out, from people who also call themselves socialists.

It's odd that the human tendence to say, 'Yes, but' is so ardently developed among socialists. So much so that the frustration of eternal 'Yes, but' or, even, 'No, and' leads to Authoritarianism and, so, back to that same Kingdom of The Devil.

So, for me, my survival strategy, during nearly thirty years as a shut-out, rather than shut-in, has been to always, every day, promote that better alternative.

Hard as that has been.

But necessary!

All Profits Are Theft

And, thus, we come to the letter P in the TRIP-Up aide-memoire for the five mechanisms that capitalism uses to kill people and trash the planet.

Recall that T stood for Theft (of economic resources), R for Rent (from the Theft of the Land), I for Interest on debt (from the Theft of The Law) and, now, P.

P stands for Profit: sometimes referred to a Dividends* since Dividends are Profits distributed to Capitalists-as-shareholders ie Thieves.

*(as in 'Capitalism RIP' = Capitalism Rent, Interest, Profits, Rest in Peace or 'Let's get RID of Capitalism = Rent, Interest, Dividends).

So, if the Theft of land provides Rent and of The Law, Interest, what is stolen to provide Profits?

I suggest that the answer is the smorgasborg called (by The Theives) 'Intellectual Property': things like Patents, Business 'Know-how', Proprietry Knowledge, etc.

And now Data on Consumers . . .

This, last, observation related to a succession that I've mused on before:

Data - Information - Knowledge - Understanding - Wisdom

As in:

   Drowning in Data

   Inundated with Information

   Bereft of Knowledge

   Desperate for Understanding

   Seeking Wisdom

So, capitalism allows the Theft of what God knows and which we seek to dis-cover: Truth.

That intangible (not holdable) reality, Truth, is appropriated (Stolen) by capitalism in order to generate Profits: to the inevitable weakening of The Common Good.

Even to the bizarre extent that life-forms can be Patented (for Profit).

Bizarre!

In a true Co-operative Commonweal, all knowledge is freely given: just as was the case when I was a research chemist and (by invitation: what an honour!) to be a peer-review referee for academic papers submitted to the various Journals of The Chemical Society (later, in a dispicable despoilation, renamed as 'The Royal Society of Chemistry': yuk! A clear case of the words written by the 'winning' side: grrr!).

So, next, the 'Up' part of TRIP-Up.

No more TRIP-Up!

Love, instead!

Human Needs: Weal-th not Ill-th!

Our friend, Gregory Mocsary asked me to explain why capitalism produces poverty.

Let me start by asking if we agree that poverty exists?

And, if a reasonable definition of poverty is that condition when an human being's needs are not met.

Not necessarily wants and dreams but needs.

I've listed, from the Four Needs essay (in the papers' section at www.interestfreemoney.org) what those four need sets are:

Two 'Selfish Need' sets:

   1) Clean air and water and a sufficiency of nutricious, varied food, and,

   2) Appropriate, warm clothing and shelter.

And two 'Social Need' sets:

   3) Our 'Intimacy Needs': Love, Sex, Romance, Friendship. And,

   4) A constructive activity.

The two terms, 'Selfish Needs' and 'Social Needs' warrant a few comments before we move on.

First, I use the term 'Selfish Needs' to denote the physical needs to sustain 'the self': the individual body in wihich the individual resides.

It is a challenging term, but one that bears the point which will follow after a note on the other term, 'Social Needs'.

Clearly, our 'Intimacy Needs' are social, but the 'Constructive Needs' at first sight, doesn't appear to be, necessarily, 'Social'. I suggest, however, that all Activities, be they Constructive or Destructive, are Social in that they all occur in a context that is, inherently, environmental and, that, that environment, again inherently, contains other individual humans and other individual life forms (to say nothing of The Creator present within The Creation, if we are to include matters religious and spiritual).

Now, to add that linking comment: at first sight, and if we glance at Maslow's Hierarchical Theory of Needs (or of Motivations, as sometimes so-termed), it might be thought that we 'need' to be Selfish (in order to survive) *before* we are social. I suggest not so.

To survive, or better yet, to be fully human, we must have all our needs met, or, to repeat, we live in poverty. 'And are that poverty', to repeat the observation of others.

So, since 'No-one loves a selfish git', we *all* must willfully, put our Social-selves as more important than our Selfish-selves.

And, hence, my abhorrence of, and repudiation of, capitalism.

Now, all the analytical-above collapses into two actual observations: first, as the evidence in 'The Spirit Level' unequivocally demonstrates, our needs are only met when we live in a state of economic equality: specifically, income equality.

Secondly, that, as above, all Wellness is Socially-produced: our needs are met in society, in other words, 'All Wealth is created socially', as is All Ill-th (see the science of epidemiology, upon which 'The Spirit Level' is based, for the truth of that: Spanish Flu, War, the Ecocide, SARS, Foot-and-Mouth Disease, Corona Virus, Crime, Child Sexual Abuse, Poverty, etc, etc).

So, to round this out, one diagram from 'The Spirit Level'.

This shows that human economic activity, or 'Wealth Production', even if measured only crudely by Gross Domestic Product, must occur for Human Needs to be met: foid must be grown or gathered, shelter must be built and furnished and so on.

But, once a sufficient amount to human activity ('Wealth Creation') occurs, more activity contributes nothing to human well-being (as this diagram shows). Rather, it adds only to ill-th: to the generation of ecological pollution (as we already observe) and to the paramount anti-social ill-th, economic inequality: specifically, income inequality.

Hence the plan for wellness: the plan for true Co-operative Socialism.

Or, put plainly, Socialism.

So, Gregory, the present economic system, capitalism produces ill-th, including poverty *for us all*.

As Robert Owen, 'The Father of Co-operation', observed and demonstrated practically, even if paternally, at New Lanark: man's condition is created for him. The task is for man to create his condition by him.

Or us.

Co-operatively!

Socially!

Money, banking and finance, Income policy, too.

Simon Andrew kindly asked about first steps for an incoming Labour and Co-operative Socialist government.

Here's what I offered:

Money, banking and finance and incomes policy are two parts of the plan for Co-operative Socialism.

So, when a Party, or Parties, are elected to implement that plan, three things need to happen.

First exchange controls need to be reintroduced.

Secondly, the law permitting usury needs to be repealed and replaced by one that transforms the money, banking and finance system into one that is interest- and charges-free and which operates on a non-profit motive basis.

The best model for that is the Public Library, Public Education and NHS model: ie, Community-provided, Free-at-the-point-of-use.

The third immediate action is to institute a process whereby, at the end of the first year (at the very latest) of the new Government's term of office a guaranteed, not-mean(s) tested 'Living Income for Everyone' will be introduced.

These steps are outlined in the CCPA Reader on Co-operative Socialism, available as a free PDF in the papers' section at www.interestfreemoney.org