Posted by NJD on October 24, 2008 at 11:36:34:
October 24,2008
Citizens of Falmouth are appreciative of the Enterprise's sponsorship of the Presidents Candidacy Meeting, but, to the chagrin of many who were there, your reporter’s coverage of the Oct. Presidential meeting in Falmouth’s Public Library, did not measure up to the Enterprise’s usual objective reporting of events.
Enterprise readers who were not in attendance, were not duly informed of the tenor of the meeting which enabled citizens to learn of the several minority political programs, as well as the well known the popular major party platforms,
I know, because I was the presenter for People for a New Society.
My presentation included the "dire" conditions of our society, but it also included the necessary positive steps to overcome our present social and economic meltdowns. It was centered on one undeniable fact. which is … , We need a new way, a new system to service our society because today's government and economic organizations lack the Democracy we need to have necessary institutions in which we work to give back, reward us equitably with our needs and wants.
We all know our national government is disconnected from our local problems. Exclusive attention is devoted by OUR elected Congressional representatives to the needs of the privately owned industrial and financial corporations whose primary interests are in the necessary profit takings upon which their businesses stay alive ..., and certainly not in the building, maintenance and serving of a peaceful and prosperous nation….,but to use our industries to produce profits. Our privately owned necessary industries has created that ONE percent of the capital investors..., people who own 90 % of society's wealth without actually doing any of the heavy lifting, which is required from the rest of us.
Curiously, your reporter was quick to highlight one presenter's challenge for me to present some new ideas which will address the undemocratic relationship We, the People, now endure in this present system…, but he never bothered to report my replies.
My call included a clearly repeated advocacy for “social,” rather than “private” ownership of our nation’s needed and wanted industries and services in which We, the People, can democratically operate our technology for the good of all the people, rather than for the small minority of the richest capital investors whose primary private profit demands have brought us to this present financial meltdown.
Today, millions face more unemployment…, worker retirement plans in jeopardy…, and our future has been predicted to be filled with anxieties due to the workings of this present system of private capitalist ownership of our necessary social institutions.
The giant, privately owned corporations, exercise market control over all the goods and services we need to operate our local businesses, small manufacturing plants…,as well as our contracting and jobber occupations…We depend on our industrial technology for all the things we need and want.
In this system, unless private profits are to be gained, , we are deprived of our needs, despite the fact that it is our ordinary, everyday working citizens who produce all corporate controlled goods and services. . We, the People, do all the producing, but this system limits access to our own production! Makes no sense.
Simple idea… We need democracy in both our government and in our needed industries. Civic and work place democracy is the only answer to the conditions we today endure…, conditions which this system has inflicted on every generation…over and over , since the advent of the Industrial Revolution.
The Free Market system, which is a softer way of naming capitalism in order to disguise its dangerous and divisive anti social contradictions…, cannot escape its essential flaw… which is in the process of making goods and services for society’s needs and wants. Here’s how it works.
First and foremost, the system depends on wage workers to produce its profit driven commodities. The market demands corporate competition which produces winners and losers. The corporate losers are then forced to reduce costs (to benefit private investors) and LABOR costs are the first to go…, workers jobless…, and the same jobless workers then no longer are the “good” consumers, and so the “buying” pool is diminished…, , which means more corporations will lose business…, which means more joblessness…, and the DEPRESSION grows and grows… This is a systemic, social contradiction which is built into, and, cannot be removed from capitalism. This system itself has to be replaced with an economic democracy! We can do it! Here’s how.
The Constitution's Amendment Clause is OUR political avenue by which we can transform capitalism, legally and peacefully, from its autocratic corporate grip on our lives to an economic democracy in which We, the People have a direct voice and vote in all matters which affect out lives... , a grassroots economic democracy. Organization for its successful implementation is the only way. Sooner or later this is bound to happen because we are not a suicide-prone, self- destruct people… Sooner is better than later.
Is there anybody?
Social ownership of our needed industries, democratically operated in the interests of society, …, is the BIG IDEA which was clearly and often articulated during the Presidential Candidates meeting.
Unfortunately for your readers, who were not at the meeting, your Enterprise reporter missed it.