10 Ways to Subvert Legality

“I haven’t done anything illegal.” – So runs the riposte of many confronted with evidence of wrongdoing.

Admittedly it would be arbitrary to punish people without reference to any objective code of law, but the law itself would sink into arbitrariness if it could be twisted to serve the interests of a few against the common good.

Slave owners were able to defend their business as legal until abolitionists managed to change the law to put an end to their repugnant enterprise. Exploiters of child labour persisted until statutory restrictions were introduced to stop their callous practice. But alas, laws can be undone. Worse still, they can be constructed, not to curtail unethical deeds, but boost them.

Modern plutocracy has opted to buy the law as one of its key operational assets. Here are ten of its favourite tactics:

1. Donate vast sums to political parties and politicians who are more likely to change the laws to suit the wealthy few at the expense of the majority of people.
2. Buy and maintain control over media outlets and promise support for politicians who will bring in or abolish laws that will favour them.
3. Ensure those who have taken control of government with their financial backing do little to restrict campaign funding from the wealthy elite while clamping down on similar funding from organisations representing ordinary workers.
4. Arrange exclusive meetings with their political stooges to remind them what laws should be changed to enhance their market share and profits.
5. Put forward international trading agreements to enable big corporations to sue governments that are not in their pocket and daring to pass laws that get in the way of their harmful profit-making.
6. Move their senior staff into government positions (on a short-term secondment basis or a ‘permanent’ role before returning to the corporate sector) to ‘advise’ on how various laws are to be changed, and acquire expertise on what loopholes can be exploited when those staff are back with their long term employers.
7. Obtain subsidies, contracts, tax breaks, bailouts etc by threatening to cut jobs or wreck the economy if public funds were not forthcoming.
8. Deploy the best lawyers money can buy to contest any charges based on laws they have not yet been able to change.
9. Hide the benefits they gain, taxes they avoid, and bribes/donations they make by using offshore accounts that will continue to be protected by the politicians they have influence over.
10. Demonstrate the long term returns for politicians who help them by offering those politicians lucrative speaker fees, jobs and non-executive board positions after they have left public office (but have importantly retained useful links with others still in government).

All politicians trying to play the ‘Anti-Establishment’ card by superficially distancing themselves from Westminster or Washington, should be pressed to say what detailed plans they have to tackle the ten devious manoeuvres listed above. If all they can say is that they will make their country ‘great’ again, or they are the champions of ‘traditional’ values, and they have nothing to offer to end the plutocratic subversion of the rule of law, then know them for the charlatans they really are.

Only Fools & Porsches

Every year, millions of people are duped into supporting politicians whose real concerns are with helping the superrich elite expand their many mansions and off-shore accounts, not to mention their fleet of yachts, jets, and Porsches.

That is the ultimate indictment of political illiteracy.

All too many people believe that if workers are made ever more powerless, the bosses will be free to make more money that will “trickle down” to everyone; when in reality the bosses will just pay themselves even more and workers are left with greater hardship and insecurity.

All too many people think that if public goods and services are cut and privatised, taxes will be lowered and everyone will be better off; when in fact most of them will lose vital support wherever they turn, while the wealthy few make substantial gains.

All too many people echo claims that if foreigners, minorities, and women will just do as they are told, their country will be great again; when the targeting of scapegoats is callous, and only helps to deflect attention from the exploitation most people have had to endure.

So what should be done?

First of all, we must end the delusion that political education can ever be “neutral” in the face of propaganda and deception. If medical education were only ever to be taken forward when its contents had been approved by quacks and snake-oil salesmen, it would be utterly useless. We cannot raise political understanding if we are not prepared to criticise hollow arguments and expose shameless lies. We will be accused of being biased, but integrity comes, not through retreating from the quacks, but through confronting them.

Secondly, while encouraging people to vote is laudable, it must be backed by explanations of electoral procedures, tactical options and corresponding implications. Some candidates may look pleasant enough on the doorstep, but if elected, they will back their party’s vicious policies in the legislative chamber. The advice ‘Just vote for the candidate you like best’ is as sound as ‘Just take the medicine that strikes you as powerful’. However appealing a particular medication may appear to be, we have to take into account the overall circumstances and how it may work, if we are to find the most appropriate prescription and get better.

Last but not least, we must steer people away from the trap of tantrum politics. It can be tempting to vent one’s anger and frustration by supporting some campaign of ‘tough action’, even though there is no indication of what real improvements it would bring. Demagogues know all too well how to exploit the masses by goading them into thoughtless and aggressive outbursts, when it’s all designed solely for their own aggrandisement. People should be given instead the chance to work constructively to find desirable alternatives through collaborative projects that help each other.

But who is going to make any of this happen?

Educators from schools, through universities, to lifelong learning, should play their part. Community organisations concerned with promoting shared interests and local improvements should integrate political awareness raising into their everyday activities. Businesses should help fund political education as a key part of their corporate social responsibility, and trade unions should encourage all workers to take part. Above all, groups and institutions with a declared interest in increasing political understanding and democratic participation should review their activities and ensure they take on board the advice set out above.

Moral Relativism & the Empathy Scale

Ethics is about what kind of people we ought to be and how we should accordingly behave in relation to each other. Many doctrines have tried to set out a definitive guide, but every one of them is contested by rival proponents. There are not only different religions and schools of philosophy, but within each we have further divisions with incompatible views. Even when there are attempts to bridge diverse faiths and beliefs to find common ground, these are in turn rejected by those who are adamant that there are vital differences that fundamentally distinguish their ‘true’ notions from the ‘false’ views of others.

So beyond recognising that some will dismiss everyone else as utterly wrong, while others will concede that all are somehow equally right, is there anything worth exploring further? Revealingly, when we put them alongside each other – ‘think only of oneself’; ‘care for a just few deemed worthy’; ‘be concerned with those who possess certain characteristics’; ‘respect and reciprocate one’s fellow human beings in general’ – a progression along the empathy scale is evident.

Moral doctrines at the high end of the empathy scale ask us to view others as fellow human beings deserving of respect. We should appreciate that other people would like to be treated in a thoughtful and reasonable manner just as we would like to be treated similarly by others in return. If others behave in a way not to our liking, we should seek to understand if there are extenuating circumstances – just as we would like others to understand us if we acted in a way we truly regretted. However, if upon closer inspection, we discover that someone is exploitative or aggressive because of his/her malignant disposition, we should protect ourselves and respond in a proportionate manner to prevent the person from doing more harm.

But for those who subscribe to doctrines that command them to cut off their empathy for various categories (people with the ‘wrong’ skin colour, religious affiliation, family background, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, income level, attachment to certain customs), the concerns and feelings of anyone in those categories are regarded as irrelevant. At the lowest end of the scale we have the shameless egoists who may use power or deception to get away with their self-centred behaviour, but who never care at all about anyone else.

Often those with a low capacity for empathy will gravitate towards doctrines (faiths, ideologies, political parties) that not only validate, but also celebrate, the exclusion of many types of people from respect and concern. This tends to make them feel vindicated in neglecting, hating, despising, or blaming people who have never done anything to hurt them. By contrast, those with high empathy will be drawn to ecumenical, inter-faith, or universalist-humanist tendencies that look beyond insignificant differences to embrace the golden rule of treating others as one would like others to treat oneself.

Since people’s capacity for empathy may not be as easily constrained as required by the moral doctrines they for whatever reason (family upbringing, encounter with a charismatic preacher/teacher, peer pressure) have ‘adopted’, they may develop a broader conscience and experience revulsion towards the ‘exclusionary’ doctrines they have been hitherto tied to. Furthermore, a person’s empathic reach can be nurtured to widen its engagement with the emotional connections between actions and consequences, and extend its appreciation of how others may feel without necessarily sharing their physical or cultural characteristics. This means that moral development is conceptually possible and empirically feasible.

Of course, such nurturing would be frowned upon by those whose mission in life is to promote opposition to extending mutual respect and understanding to ‘excluded’ people. But instead of shrugging our shoulders with another round of “well, they are entitled to their views”, we should recognise the importance of countering all doctrines that aim to delimit our human empathy. As educators, there is no greater task than cultivating the capacity for empathy and promoting inclusive moral doctrines that are grounded on its growth and realisation.

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Note: Empathy changes can also go in the opposite direction. There are documented cases where some individuals with brain damages became deficient in their empathy and stopped to care about other people’s feelings as much as they did before. Traumatic experiences such as childhood abuse may also under certain circumstances have similarly harmful psychological effects. But it is noteworthy that amongst people with a healthy brain and no severe trauma, the general tendency would be to retain or improve their empathic capacity, but very few would aspire to become less empathic. And the essence of the sociopath is that however well he/she may fake emotional connections with other people, that individual does not care about what happens to those they come across or indeed hurt.

A Strategy for Cooperators

Co-operative enterprises, commons advocates, communitarian writers, have all been making the case that the prevalence of exploitative appropriation in society should and could be displaced by inclusive alternatives that respect mutuality and rest on participatory decision-making.

Instead of a powerful elite enclosing ever more resources for their own profit, taking more from the revenue generated by collective efforts, and steering those in government to privilege their personal gains at the expense of everyone else, people should be able to share what nature offers everyone and what they join forces to create on equitable terms.

There are many examples that this can be done, and done well. Cooperative firms have grown in numbers in the UK when the overall economy stalled as a result of the financial crisis brought about by the corporate banking sector; the Mondragon Corporation has over fifty years become the tenth largest company in Spain; the WIR Bank (formerly Swiss Economic Circle) has provided an alternative to established credit systems and now holds 885 billion Swiss Francs in assets; Semco in Brazil has demonstrated how an extensive worker-led approach leads to one of the most successful businesses in the world; and local landbank-based housing projects and community renewable initiatives have appeared in many countries. Yet despite the many positive stories, plutocratic corporations and oligarchs continue to dominate socio-economic life with the support of governments across the globe.

Why is that happening?

Compared with the endless bombardment of adverts from elite-centric corporations and reports from media outlets bought to serve their plutocrat owners, there is but a trickle of information about the alternatives offered by cooperators. When the few who have heard about these alternatives do want to become part of them, they rarely spot an opportunity to sign up to something that will engage them in a meaningful and active manner. And where we have new members managing to join in the work of cooperators, the task of developing and sustaining that work in the face of challenges backed by the vast financial clout, PR propaganda, and political leverage of the corporate establishment, the odds of overturning the latter’s hegemony are far from favourable.

So can anything be done to even out such odds, and turn the repeatedly frustrated hope of advancing towards utopia into a practical synetopia of everyday cooperation?

Here’s a simple strategy for cooperators to consider:

1. Set up a Cooperators’ Franchise Network (CF-Net). Individual cooperator organisations (Co-Orgs) pool their resources through a membership fee to support their CF-Net to do more effectively what they cannot manage on their own. The franchise network will provide: quality/integrity assurance for the franchise’s members; promote the added value offered by genuine cooperator organisations; campaign for pro-cooperator policies with the public and politicians; support the development of existing and new cooperator organisations within the franchise; and offer help to non-cooperator organisations to reform their cultures and systems in line with the cooperator’s ethos). Many cooperatives already belong to their own network, but that still leaves many other cooperator organisations out there without broader support. There is no reason for there to be just one CF-Net. In fact, for the sake of diversity and learning from contrasting approaches, it is better to have a number of robust CF-Nets.

2. The CF-Nets are to collaborate in establishing and funding a Global Cooperators Federation (GC-Fed). The GC-Fed’s key roles will include: agreeing and enforcing rules to promote common assets and guard against demutualisation; developing and marketing a shared cooperators’ brand to raise interest globally; attracting investment on cooperators’ terms to support the long term development of the CF-Nets; and coordinating with other NGOs in securing a level playing field for cooperator organisations.

3. Each cooperator organisation (Co-Org) as part of being a member of its franchise is to commit to continuous improvement in accordance with the core aims of the franchise, and actively promote participation opportunities to their local communities and relevant sectors. Co-Orgs will play an informed part in guiding the work of their respective CF-Net; provide education and training to help those interested in participating in their work as members; and engage all their members in planning and carrying out their activities.

Unless a strategy resembling the one outlined above is taken forward, it is likely that cooperator organisations will remain marginalised and fragmented, never making anything more than a tiny dent in the plutocratic economy. Cooperators all work on the key premise that only by joining forces can we achieve what we are unable to manage separately. Our willingness to pursue the strategy of comprehensive cooperation will be the ultimate test of our commitment.

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For more on how the case for democratic cooperation can be made through a number of political education resources, see ‘Synetopia: why, what & how’.

There’s Something About Capitalism

What is capitalism? At one level it is no more than a system wherein some can accumulate wealth to purchase natural, human, and man-made resources so that these will produce whatever returns their owners can extract from them. The owners may get rental income from properties they let, payment from machines and plants they lease out, interests from money they lend, or revenue from the work of people they have hired. Without the accumulation by a few and the incentive to make more money out of the accumulation, it is argued, there just would not be sufficient concentration of wealth or motivation to fund the endless variety of useful – as well as useless – things we seek out.

But the problem with allowing a few to amass concentrated wealth and power long predates capitalism. History has shown that for thousands of years human societies that succumb to a few having vastly more wealth than others will end up being exploited by the dominant few. It’s the nature of power dynamics. The few who can practically call all the shots will make the rest bow down to them. Money can buy one-sided bargaining, intimidation, threats of hunger (and withholding of healthcare), and rewriting of the laws where necessary. Against this backdrop, the Communist attempts to overthrow capitalism clearly miss the point completely. An unchallengeable party taking control of virtually all capital is obviously no better, but far worse, than hundreds of rich business owners sharing that control, for the simple reason that the greater the concentration of wealth and power, the more unaccountable and oppressive will become those who wield that concentrated power.

Ironically the failure of totalitarian communism has taught naïve champions of ‘capitalism’ nothing. After the fall of Berlin Wall, neoliberals pretend that the collapse of the Soviet regime confirms that capitalism is unassailable. The real lesson is that the relentless concentration of power in an unaccountable few is dangerous and unsustainable. Sooner or later, the oppression will reach boiling point and something will have to give.

Of course there is no guarantee what it will give way to. At present, a few anti-neoliberal commentators are adding the declining yield of capital from decreasing purchasing and mounting debt, to the emergence of the low marginal-cost sharing economy, and ending up with hyper-utopian predictions about a “post-capitalist” future that will bring justice, abundance, and happiness for all.

I have no doubt that when capitalism continues to degenerate into a form where a few sit on vast concentrations of wealth, while others keep getting paid less in real terms and weighed down by borrowing (because they are not paid enough to buy the things they help to produce), serious problems will erupt. Unfortunately, unless democracy reawakens and wrestles government institutions from the plutocrats, the problems will be ‘solved’ by sacrificing those on middling and low income.

As for the dreams of a landscape filled with universally accessible machines that are ready made to generate or replicate anything people want – energy, food, transport, homes, entertainment, medicine, etc – at no marginal cost, while the raw materials needed are themselves recycled also at no cost, they are not only far fetched, but they divert vital attention from the need to recapture state power, to a fantasy that a new utopian world is coming soon and all will be well.

This is not to say that new technology for recycling, renewable energy, digital sharing, low cost manufacturing, coupled with cooperative working, commons ownership of certain resources, cannot deliver better quality of life for some people. But it will only happen on a large scale, and benefit more than a minority of the population, if new ways of working where power-sharing is at the heart of all operations become the norm.

And for that to happen, there has to be a substantial shift of power from the elite atop organisations and society to others. This is not about equalising wealth, but about sharing out power to consider how production can be better managed and more resources generated for the many, not just the few. Worker cooperatives do not reject pay differentials. They discuss amongst themselves and experiment in reaching the most productive differentials so some are paid more than others, but only in so far as that is really helpful to maximise the positive impact of their enterprise. As writers and advocates, we can help to make the case. But ultimately, if those with concentrated power are not willing to change, only a sovereign government can bring in new rules and practices – not necessarily to put an end to capitalism, certainly not to bring in communism, but to facilitate the extensive development of cooperativism. We are not talking about an impossible utopia, but the dawn of synetopia.

The Politics of Anti-Rationality

As a philosopher, John Stuart Mill produced highly influential works that explain how arbitrary beliefs should be displaced by systematic, experimental reasoning. As an elected Member of Parliament, he turned his attention to politicians who deliberately exploited foolishness and prejudice as a means to win support for their self-centred agenda which was actually detrimental to the public. When asked if he was maligning the Conservative Party as dim-witted, he explained thus:

“What I stated was, that the Conservative party was, by the law of its constitution, necessarily the stupidest party. ... Now, I do not retract this assertion; but I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. ... And I do not see why honourable Gentlemen should feel that position at all offensive to them; for it ensures their always being an extremely powerful party. ... There is a dense solid force in sheer stupidity – such, that a few able men, with that force pressing behind them, are assured of victory in many a struggle; and many a
victory the Conservative party have owed to that force.”

It may be argued that rationality is a matter of degree, and everybody has different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to what we know (or not). But as Socrates pointed out, while we are all ignorant about various matters, those who know about what they lack knowledge of are wise, but those who think they know when they are in fact quite ignorant of the subject in question are fools. And what makes Mill object to his political antagonists is that they build their platform on the exploitation of irrationality. Far from trying to help people reason and understand, they encourage them to despise the pursuit of knowledge, they endorse the display of blind hate and twisted prejudice, and they deride those who seek deeper understanding as feeble.

These tendencies can be seen from ancient emperors and monarchs pretending that they speak for the gods, while encouraging superstitions amongst the masses so that it was all the easier to trick them into accepting raw deals in this life. They can be seen in religious charlatans through the ages as they prey upon the minds of dupes and would-be fanatics. And they are all too visible amongst contemporary neo-conservative politicians who extol the god-like virtues of the corporate elite, dismiss criticisms of oppressive business practices as mere jibes made by ‘know all’s, and champion every vicious prejudice as a great traditional value.

Like the philosophers of the Enlightenment who came before him, Mill hoped that education would enable more and more people to reason, discuss and explore what would be better ways to shape their lives and organise society. But like many progressive politicians who came after him, he was concerned that the power of education might not always be a match for the deceit and propaganda deployed by those who would glorify prejudices for the sake of turning the gullible into legions of diehard supporters for exploitative regimes (see, ‘Convert or Con Victim’).

The enemies of mutual respect and rational cooperation will always have the edge in any process for allocating political power if there is nothing in place to expose their lies and misdirection. Some have concluded from this that the devil cannot be beaten and henceforth they too would try to win votes by pandering to people’s prejudices – whether these take the form of anti-immigrants, anti-internationalism, anti-science, anti-welfare, anti-equality in any sphere, or anti-diversity in every context.

But there is a different conclusion that can be drawn from this conundrum – and that is, we must be resolute in exposing lies and misdirection. We must use every means at our disposal, and develop new tools and networks to question those in power, challenge prejudices, and help those with unreasonable views to reflect on the implications of their beliefs and rethink what they may have hitherto held to be indubitable. It is commonplace these days to maintain that there is no guaranteed march of reason and progress. Indeed, irrationality not only resurfaces, but goaded by unscrupulous politicians, can even spread alarmingly. But history has shown that where the citadels of dogmas and bigotry are relentlessly and imaginatively challenged, truth and understanding can prevail (see the short history, Against Power Inequalities)

Flag, Freedom, & Family …

Think about ‘Flag’, ‘Freedom’, ‘Family’, not to mention, ‘God’, ‘Enterprise’, and ‘Traditional Values’. In many contexts, they conjure up positive associations for millions of people. The pride one takes in the success of one’s country. The freedom to defy tyranny. The nurturing support of one’s family. The boundless love encapsulated in the ideal of God. The ingenuity of business enterprise in meeting one’s needs. The moral anchor offered by traditional values.

Yet all these notions have been hijacked by manipulators to trick people into believing that ill treatment of scapegoats and exploitation of the vulnerable are glorious endeavours. The ‘Flag’ is waved to cover up unjustifiable aggression. ‘Freedom’ for the elite is invoked to subjugate the many. Interference with people’s own family life is instigated on the basis of an alleged respect for the ‘Family’. ‘God’ becomes a label endorsing every act of oppression. The belittling of workers, pollution of the environment, shortchanging of customers are all glossed over as a small price to pay for allowing ‘Enterprise’ to flourish. And hateful prejudices are fanned by the rhetoric of ‘Traditional Values’.

The last thing we should do is to concede to the hijackers and let them keep hold of these terms and abuse them. We have a duty to remind our fellow citizens that precisely because such terms can be contested, we need to rethink which version should be embraced.

The flag of one’s country is rightly a matter of pride, and we should celebrate when it is hoisted by a conscientious leader who will leave no one behind, but not if it is being waved by a treacherous demagogue. Freedom is a condition we all seek, and everyone should be granted it so long as it does not infringe on the freedom of others, which is why we would just become less free if we allow the powerful elite to keep gambling away our money, making people addicted to their harmful products, or imposing contracts on others courtesy of their superior bargaining position. The family should be cherished for the love and security it provides, and society indeed has no business with how people go about forming their families, except in cases where one or more malignant members embark on abusing and terrorising others.

God embodies the highest ideal, but any claim about what God commands is nonetheless made by mere mortals who are fallible, and these include the delusional as well as the deceptive. Any business enterprise that is run by creative minds to add value to the lives of others deserve help with its growth and expansion, but anti-social enterprise that is concerned with exploiting others for its own gain must be reined in. And traditional values must evolve over time; and the inclination to differentiate between what is to be preserved and what is to be phased out in the light of experience, rather than dogmatic adherence, has itself become one of the most treasured traditions.

People with an enlightened and progressive outlook should not surrender the aforementioned notions and many other emotionally significant words. Instead of dismissing them, and end up appearing disdainful of the potential good they stand for, it is essential they are respectfully unpacked, with false and malicious interpretations exposed, and their proper applications restored.