A Green State of Mind

In this day and age when political centrists are falsely accused of being socialists, it becomes vital to explicitly describe the nature of various ideologies such as anarchism, socialism, and communism and place them into their proper practical context in order to have a public discussion based on truth.

For the past two years the American people have been besieged by a barrage of accusations leveled at the present government. One of the most prevalent accusations, and one of the most patently false, is the idea that the Obama administration is socialist. If one were to just look at the policies advocated by the president both during his election campaign and while in office, citizens would see that clearly the administration is nowhere near a socialist government. Wall Street and corporations have nothing to fear from the economic approach of the president or his advisors, most of whom come from financial or corporate backgrounds. The bank bailout, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the insurance mandate as the center of the healthcare law, and the use of Cap And Trade to make money for energy corporations rather than reduce carbon levels are all policies that would never be considered, much less proposed, by a socialist government. These examples each serve the interests of big corporations rather than empower the people or shift the ownership of the means of production to workers. Simply through direct experience, voters can tell that there is no overt or hidden radicalism in the government, to such a degree that many true socialists and other leftists are calling this “Bush’s third term”. However, this direct experience is being distorted by rightwing ideology where lie after lie is promulgated to such a wide degree that everyday people are unable to see what is directly in front of them. That is the inherent power of ideology as a structuring of meaning, specifically for conservative political purposes. If a public discussion is based on lies, then it becomes next to impossible for true leftists to articulate a real alternative to the status quo, an alternative that reveals how president Obama is a servant to the status quo through his many compromises and appeals to centrism. In this case, centrism acts as a tool for the rightwing to shift the overall debate toward their agenda, marginalizing any other viewpoint. At this time there is a great need to have other viewpoints that represent the interests of the marginalized.

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The economic theories of both Binary Economics and Social Credit offer a solution to the gap between labor and capital that is the inherent flaw of capitalism, while each theory addresses the problem from a different perspective.

Binary Economics and Social Credit both seek the convergence of production and consumption, recognizing that producers in one section of the economy are also consumers in another section. Binary Economics proposes widespread capital distribution through various structures such as Employee Stock Ownership Plans and Community Investment Corporations to expand capital ownership. The problem that is addressed is the fact that labor and capital both produce value, but capital has the ability to overshadow the power of labor in capitalism. As ownership of human labor fails to provide for human needs, there is the need to expand capital ownership where workers, consumers, and residents would be voting shareholders of economic enterprises and be the recipient of dividends from those capital assets. This capital distribution would begin with interest-free loans that would develop the various mechanisms such as ESOPs, and the loans would be paid off from the initial dividend payments. Binary Economics understands that the economic sphere is the equivalence of labor and capital in order to function, and that capital distribution is the method for their convergence. This convergence of labor and capital acts as a supplement to production.

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The breaking up of the social field is one of the most important side effects of the overreliance on the market structure in capitalism, and requires an indepth analysis of its nature.

The current state of economics that humans find themselves in can be called late capitalism or, more accurately, neoliberalism. Neoliberalism can be described as the active implementation of the logic of the market toward all aspects of the society and enforced by a set of political techniques that goes beyond the traditional actions of the state. Everyone must act as market actors and also must internalize market discipline in their everyday choices and social interactions. The clear result of such a rationality is the breaking up of the social as a separate sphere of human action that would in fact precede any economic system. The transition from the society to the market in neoliberalism creates a drastic shift in human experiences and existence. It therefore begs the question as to whether this taking apart of the social field is necessary or truly warranted.

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