Basics
I attended Planning School at the U. of MA in Amherst in Fall 1975, after studying Environmental Studies on the undergraduate level. It was a mostly misguided program of studies, as are all planning curricula in the United States. Older students "turned me on" to Robert Goodman's "After the Planners" and Benton MacKaye's "The New Exploration", I met William Morris Davis' grandson (a protégé of MacKaye) who reinforced my strong impression that they were teaching bullshit. I dropped out and started studying with the Society of Friends and that gave me the basic direction (having read and agreed with the Communist Manifesto when I was 16 years old) that I have pursued since.
After working construction, real estate appraisal, in a lumber yard, I returned to get the world's famous indoctrination of Radical Economics at UMass in 1980. I got it. The W.E.B. DuBois Library may very well be the best Library in the world, especially if pursuing Radical approaches to Economics. Networking in the old fashioned ways, we were laying out plans for a new society, a better society with the energy of the innocent, the mostly naive, the definitely inexperienced. Then Reagan got elected. Approximately at the turning point that Richard Wolff alludes to...
Wage slaving the whole time, doing a lot of blue-collar drudge and hard labor, I got tired of being poor and eventually pulled up roots and went to Arkansas (the U. of A. in Fayetteville) and enrolled in Business School. Worked my way through. "Professional" work ensued, a hard labor, a drudge of another sort, Systems Analysis and Programming work, Utilization and Cost Report Development and Analysis, and Managed Care Contracting for various Health Care Finance firms. With respect to health care reform, I studied the "industry" and they do call it that and got many experiences of how not to do it, but sufficient insight into how it could be done. But I digress.
While changing trains in Boston's famous Green Line Haymarket Station (not as infamous as Chicago's), I met a couple of "brothers" who were reading Kiplinger's Business Letter. "What are you reading that shit for?"
"Yeah, you're right, it is shit. We studied Radical Economics at UMass, now we can't do anything with it".
"No promises, but I'm working on it".
Wolff and the other Radical Economists at UMass are lost in the comfort of their Ivory Towers. The answer lies in building a conceptual bridge between the Planning Department and the Business School via the Radical Economics Department.
The answer lies in the radical reorganization of the economy, bypassing the chains of the Capitalist Plutocracy, bypassing the sham Democracy of "the Administration" and "the Congress" , bypassing the Bank of England's successor, the Federal Reserve System, and taking direct control of the Treasuries and allocating funds directly to workers (in the form of a small guaranteed income) and to Community Betterment Organizations related to community, inter-community, regional, inter-regional, and world around solidarity and cooperation in an ecological economic redevelopment paradigm based on human needs and founded on the mission/principles of inclusion, humanity, equity, economic democracy, altruism, well-being and sufficiency, fecundity, and the solidarity of effort to bring the basic costs of production and trade back to earth, where they severely left with the institution of Reaganomics/Supply Side Economics.
Now, maybe I'm wasting my time, but I feel committed to the youth and children of the planet. I have been blessed (in a rather bizarre ways and means) with the opportunity to work on my life's mission full time for the past fifteen years.
Those of you who have not seen my detailed, but very concise, proposals, please feel free to contact me with an e-mail address so that I can send you about 15 pages of attachments.
I've had some dealings with Rick Wolff. He is a very intelligent Academician. His Silicon Valley example of workers democracy is ridiculously bourgeois and does not deal with huge issues such as how resources are allocated to and within communities and within and among economic sectors.
There are answers to the very serious problems that we as a species face. We are running out of time for "getting it together" and committing to and working towards the fundamental paradigm shift necessary in all communities on the planet.
Take heed.
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,
Mike Morin
Showing posts with label this author's history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label this author's history. Show all posts
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Monday, June 1, 2009
Letter to Fred Goldstein (author of "Low Wage Capitalism")
Fred,
Wondering how you are, because I got an invitation to join a subscription group called "My Life" in your name. I didn't join because, they tried to trick me into paying a subscription fee (they were not upfront, portraying it as a free service).
I was excited about the possibility of making the connection with you and extending the socialist network. I understand the dilemma about being a socialist writer who has to function within the dictates of the Capitalist system.
I bought your book (Low-Wage Capitalism) and started reading it. I read the first 30 pages or so... I was very much impressed with your ability to write and think logically and present real world examples and apply Marxist and other socialist thought.
Your book reminded me very much of David Korten's book When Corporations Rule the World which I read about ten years ago. Your book is quite similar, but from a socialist perspective (which I prefer). I have read all of David Korten's sequels, but they are very weak attempts to propose an alternative to the Capitalist (he vilifies Corporations, quite rightly, but not the Capitalist system) system, simply because David is either not a socialist and/or was told that a socialist prescription/alternative would not be acceptable in the Capitalist Press and/or marketplace.
My work since reading all of Kortens' and many many other of the treatises that sneak out of the Capitalist Press under the target market that I would describe as "the disenchanted" or "the "protest segment", has been to try to develop that practical socialist alternative to the genocidal, ecocidal, suicidal Capitalist economic system.
I wrote and self-published a book called Who is George Fox and Why Should I Care? finishing it about twelve years ago (before I read Korten). I was very happy with the end product, but could not get a Capitalist Publisher to put it "on the market". I self-published 250 copies and either sold or gave away all but one, expressly telling all to share my work as widely as possible. I wrote a second book, The Balderloki Shamanism, but admittedly it was a relatively weak follow-up to the first book which I wrote primarily in case the "George Fox" book got published and became popular. The "Balderloki" has been lost to blank empty space and lost diskettes (I've had to move many times), except for that which remains in my brain.
Anyway, that Socialist alternative can be found, in a somewhat yet to be organized layout at my web log http://www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com/ . My organizing work, however that manifests itself, is waiting to find a market (and an underwriter if it were to become a book). But publishing a book is not my primary goal. My intention in life is to affect positive socialist change particularly as it concerns equity, inclusion, quality of life, peace, and sustainability in a world that is well past its midnight hour.
How did your book tour go? Whereas, I would hope for a warm reception and a maximum of sales for your work, I sense an increasing irrational madness and a fierce sense of hopelessness about and among the people (and for good reason). I don't sense that socialism has recovered much since the fall of the Soviet Union and the propaganda? of the backsliding of the Peoples' Republic into State Capitalism. I hope that I am wrong and that Fidel, Hugo, WSM, Workers' World Party, and ISO and others that I contact, are not as obscure and perceived as irrelevant and uninterested, as I am afrayed that they are...
I have no illusions that my work to advance a socialist alternative is eutopian (Lewis Mumford explains that such a spelling from the Greek actually means "good place") in a Capitalist world that is approaching outopian ("no place") especially for the progeny.
Anyway, I hope that you are well and that your work is being successful.
Please write when you get the chance.
Wondering how you are, because I got an invitation to join a subscription group called "My Life" in your name. I didn't join because, they tried to trick me into paying a subscription fee (they were not upfront, portraying it as a free service).
I was excited about the possibility of making the connection with you and extending the socialist network. I understand the dilemma about being a socialist writer who has to function within the dictates of the Capitalist system.
I bought your book (Low-Wage Capitalism) and started reading it. I read the first 30 pages or so... I was very much impressed with your ability to write and think logically and present real world examples and apply Marxist and other socialist thought.
Your book reminded me very much of David Korten's book When Corporations Rule the World which I read about ten years ago. Your book is quite similar, but from a socialist perspective (which I prefer). I have read all of David Korten's sequels, but they are very weak attempts to propose an alternative to the Capitalist (he vilifies Corporations, quite rightly, but not the Capitalist system) system, simply because David is either not a socialist and/or was told that a socialist prescription/alternative would not be acceptable in the Capitalist Press and/or marketplace.
My work since reading all of Kortens' and many many other of the treatises that sneak out of the Capitalist Press under the target market that I would describe as "the disenchanted" or "the "protest segment", has been to try to develop that practical socialist alternative to the genocidal, ecocidal, suicidal Capitalist economic system.
I wrote and self-published a book called Who is George Fox and Why Should I Care? finishing it about twelve years ago (before I read Korten). I was very happy with the end product, but could not get a Capitalist Publisher to put it "on the market". I self-published 250 copies and either sold or gave away all but one, expressly telling all to share my work as widely as possible. I wrote a second book, The Balderloki Shamanism, but admittedly it was a relatively weak follow-up to the first book which I wrote primarily in case the "George Fox" book got published and became popular. The "Balderloki" has been lost to blank empty space and lost diskettes (I've had to move many times), except for that which remains in my brain.
Anyway, that Socialist alternative can be found, in a somewhat yet to be organized layout at my web log http://www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com/ . My organizing work, however that manifests itself, is waiting to find a market (and an underwriter if it were to become a book). But publishing a book is not my primary goal. My intention in life is to affect positive socialist change particularly as it concerns equity, inclusion, quality of life, peace, and sustainability in a world that is well past its midnight hour.
How did your book tour go? Whereas, I would hope for a warm reception and a maximum of sales for your work, I sense an increasing irrational madness and a fierce sense of hopelessness about and among the people (and for good reason). I don't sense that socialism has recovered much since the fall of the Soviet Union and the propaganda? of the backsliding of the Peoples' Republic into State Capitalism. I hope that I am wrong and that Fidel, Hugo, WSM, Workers' World Party, and ISO and others that I contact, are not as obscure and perceived as irrelevant and uninterested, as I am afrayed that they are...
I have no illusions that my work to advance a socialist alternative is eutopian (Lewis Mumford explains that such a spelling from the Greek actually means "good place") in a Capitalist world that is approaching outopian ("no place") especially for the progeny.
Anyway, I hope that you are well and that your work is being successful.
Please write when you get the chance.
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