Appendices,
Index, New Model of Citizenship…
Valls,
Sylvia María : 06/1991 evaluation
of FTA re: migratory policy: pp 15-18
Tofflers,
The Third Wave of Civilization, Energy, the Caribbean: pp 19-23
Portes,
Bach et al.
On migration, labor policies, Latin Journey:
pp. 23-24
Berry, Wendell. ´´Six Fallacies of Agriculture,´´ Home Economics:
pp. 24-26
Weil, Simone…Obligations, means and ends, political parties pp. 26-31
Catherine Austin Fitts…What is a solari: pp 31-33
Valls, Sylvia María…A Political Alternative for Our Times:
W.Berry, Ivan Illich, and Simone Weil
pp. 33-43
Valls, Sylvia M. ON THE FREE
TRADE AGREEMENT IN RELATION TO MIGRATORY POLICY [Text dates from June 1991
and was published in Argos magazine, Miami,1992, in Spanish
translation, after The Miami Herald had declined to do put it anywhere in
their pages, in either English or Spanish.
One of many, many case of ´´inability´´ they said to publish what I
had to say …]
THE
OBVIOUS FALLACY hardly ever mentioned is this :
"wealth" can not depend upon "increasing exports" or
upon becoming "competitive in the world market".
It ought to seem quite clear by now that the positive balance of payments
accrued in the past to some countries has of necessity created a negative
balance for others; wealth accumulation through dominion over markets by
powerful groups has ruined entire continents in the past.
If we want to be able to export what we can't ourselves consume of our
own production we then need to make sure that fair trade policies
will ensure that there'll be someone there able to make good use of our
products, that they are useful and of good quality – and that those who help
us bring them to our table or put it in our closet or garage will themselves be
able to benefit from their existence. (Has
our society forgotten Mr. Ford's best ideas and concentrated on remembering only
his worst ones?)
Of course, today, those economic units we got used to thinking about as
we grew up and which have been part of economic thinking since the dawn of
"mercantilism" and the consolidation of our modern national states,
have become inoperative: it has
become most difficult, indeed, to know who owns what and where, if anywhere, an
increasingly intangible "profit" is most apt to show up.
Such a state of affairs accounts for the unprecedented unaccountability
of the managerial class --which includes politicians across the globe regardless
of the type of "system" to which they may find it convenient to lend
lip service…
If what the Free Trade Agreement means is that international capital will
be able to take advantage of a labor force imprisoned by national frontiers and
by the difficulties and dangers inherent in "alienhood" (with its toll
of extraordinary exploitation even in cases when one has managed to avoid the
most dreadful condition of being a "illegal alien")
then we must ask who will be left to buy the products of that labor?
I, for one, do not see the advantage of ruining our own potential markets
so we can better "compete" with the Europeans and the Japanese for the
few markets still left with some capacity to buy what we are able, or will be
able, to produce as a result of taking advantage of people rendered impotent to
protect themselves from wanton abuse. If in order to beat their prices we
need to ruin everyone concerned, I think it is obvious that it is high time we
find less self‑defeating policies.
North Americans generally (Canadians, "Americans" – the group
of Americans who have no other name to call themselves- Mexicans, Jamaicans,
Cuban, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Venezuelans, salvadoreños etc…
the peoples of the Caribbean who are a mixture of every possible race
flowing East to West North to South and back and forth) : all those who,
together, should integrate the North American Free Trade Zone as a first step
toward a Hemispheric Inter-municipal Network of all discernible
bio‑regions in our part of the globe, must very rapidly come to an
awareness of what our true interests are both in the short term and in the long
run. Not as opposed to anybody
else, but speaking in terms of congruency, in relation to one another and to the
rest of the globe. Only if we are
all, each and everyone of us, protected from extreme exploitation can our
societies North and South, East and West survive.
A certain limit has already been reached and the entire machinery is
coming apart ‑‑ it has already jammed and blown to pieces as Simone
Weil warned already half a century ago that it was bound to do:
"The only chance of saving
ourselves would come from a methodical collaboration by all, the powerful and
the weak, with a view toward a progressive decentralization of social life;
but the absurdity of such an idea immediately jumps before our eyes. Such
cooperation can not be imagined even in dreams in a society that relies upon
rivalry, strife and above all upon war. Without
such cooperation it is impossible to stop the blind tendency of the social
machinery toward an increased centralization that will eventually cause it to
jam up and blow apart." (From her 1934 essay, Oppression et liberté,
Gallimard, editeur.)
Today we no longer have any
alternative left but to lay the foundation for such a collaboration.
We have the necessary technology. What
has been lacking is audacity, imagination, and a will to come to terms with the
problems. What we have had in
excess is a laissez- aller, ´´let it pass,´´ attitude that passes
itself off as "realism" and which reeks of just plain laziness and/or
a kind of self‑serving nihilism allowing one to remain totally passive :
"Well, what can I possibly do?
Surely you don't mean that either you or I can really do anything about
`it' (whatever that specific "it" happens to be).
Sure, that's a great idea; I
would be all for it, except it's never gonna happen..."
In my worst moments, some of that attitude creeps into my actions. That's
when I delay, postpone, fail to mail the letter or the article, after it's
already written and signed. Fine.
Thank God it's only in my worst moments.
Thank God after so much indifference from the "world",
insensitivity, callousness, and just plain cruelty (after so many lies!) one can
still quite miraculously, I think, switch on that computer and begin to go at it
again. But of course, I've just mentioned the magic word, our marvelous
machines waiting for the right programs
to be spilled into them like a prayer, like some unquenchable hope
streaming out, a rosary of Hail Maries‑ full‑of‑ grace.
(For Simone Weil, the Virgin was the symbol of obedience to nature, a
difficult yet very fertile idea, indeed...She used to be called the "Red
Virgin" in her day because of her great compassion for the oppressed, for
those in "affliction"; I
have renamed her the "Green Virgin" instead because all of her
conceptions, her social analyses, seem so very
right‑down‑the‑line with our more recent global awareness: it
is not surprising, hence, that she should find in Roger Bacon's dictum, that
"man commands nature by obeying her", a principle of conduct
which might well suffice for all cultures, in all times, as a sort of ´´one‑liner´´
Bible of universal value. [In passing, we are most thankful to the University of
Georgia Press for the 1989 published translation, from the Italian, of Angella
Fiori's authoritative and very complete Simone Weil : An Intellectual
Biography.])
I am persuaded that the single, most important thing that we can do right
now in order to alleviate our growing misery across the globe is to create the
socio‑economic and political restructuring that will permit labor ‑‑ human beings, I should say, whatever their talents or
professions (or even lack of them) to move safely from one community to another;
not chaotically as is today the case ‑‑ as will go on
being the case as long as central governments continue to be entitled to
impose quotas and all sorts of non‑sensical requirements on people's lives‑‑
but with the kind of order, instead, that people's networks, aided by our
communications technology, alone can guarantee.
[How family networks function to help people make their transitions from
one society to another and to prosper is an enlightening aspect of migration
research by scholars such as Victor Zuñiga at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte
in Mexico and by Alejandro Portes and Robert L. Bach in their
Latin Journey documenting the itineraries of Northbound Cubans and
Mexicans from their respective
countries. See related Appendix: Portes et al.]
In the absence of relief from the present chaos or of adequate protection
to the human person from the kinds of exploitation that accompany the great
difficulties encountered in obtaining one's fullest rights as a citizen (along
with the customary obligations, or with those rights and obligations as they
stand to be redefined today in terms of the new model of citizenship that may
now be considered), the Free
Trade Agreement can not result in a general increase in anyone's standard of
living: it will conspire,
instead, to continue to impoverish the masses, to poison the atmosphere and to
kill us all over the next few years.
But a Free Trade Agreement that treats human beings as if they really
mattered,
that will allow the labor force in all echelons
of human endeavor, to move from South to North as much as from North to South,
from East to West and vice‑versa, through an Inter-municipalist or
inter-local network documenting everyone efficiently and effectively as members
of interconnecting "families" (extended families, schools,
corporations, companies, associations, churches etc...) subscribing to regional,
continental, and intercontinental leagues, unions, or federations, can
become an arrangement able to protect most people from the pitfalls of our past
and present excesses. All
that can be expected, otherwise, is more of the same of what has put us into the
present quandary, only at an accelerated rate : the ruin of communities,
the ruin of agriculture; vast, chaotic displacements of refugees, continued
waste in the form of war, destruction, of inefficient distribution of food‑‑
idle hands that seek to make themselves useful while other people go
crazy from too much work (you can go nuts from both extremes, from not enough
time or from too much).
American workers need to be informed
("Detroit, Michigan," I'm thinking, where I have roots that grew so
deep over a period of fifteen years of my life) – to realize: that their
talents and/or those of their children would in fact find expanded horizons and
opportunities across an entire NORTH/SOUTH American Continent that needs
them. This model of citizenship
addresses itself eminently to the problem of creating mechanisms that will
diminish the extreme disparities of living conditions, while creating
unprecedented social benefits few people can even begin to imagine (as would
be, for example, a more balanced age distribution from North to South in the
years to come). It addresses
itself to the portentous ecological problems that issue from both extremes of
poverty and wealth.
Beneficently, it will act in such a way so as to force bankers (are there
any worse culprits for our present misery) to become less exploitative, not to
say less lazy in laying out
their investment schemes. It will
also allow them to gather better information and oblige them to act accordingly
so that their activity will result in added value and not merely in further
accumulation of wealth in the pockets of the most inefficient, who also
happen to be the most corrupt. I
am talking about making it impossible for banks to use money in such reckless,
speculative ways, not to say merciless . . . in ways that amount to
another instance of a nefarious inversion between the ends and the means:
in the case of money, what happens is that the means is taken at one and the
same time as means and as end‑in‑itself; i.e.,
the object of a transaction is to make more money by buying and selling the very
instrument or means of exchange. The
disastrous consequence is that money increasingly loses its capacity to
function effectively as an instrument for the exchange of things other than
itself...its original purpose thus frustrated.
The medieval intolerance for usury stands to be rekindled, methinks,
certainly a sin far more serious than suicide or abortion which
both entail the dubious logic of the "sacredness of life"
in contrast to the sacredness of life's purpose: another instance
of the terrible consequences that ensue from confusing the means (in this
case ´´life´´) with its purpose (or ultimate end) which is
the
realization of the human person's potential for awareness and transcendence, for
beauty and justice (for fairness),
for what is good...
So
far Mr. Bush's plan only guarantees that the failures of Big Business will
continue to be financed by the middle and lower income groups ‑‑
precisely by those sectors whose
tax burden is greatest, relatively speaking,
even as it is they that stand to be most strenuously hit as a
result of the uprooting effects of seeing
their communities violently laid waste by uncontrollable forces unthinkingly set
in motion; industry and
agribusiness will, for the time being, reap whatever benefits they can extract
from exploiting workers on both sides of the border, while those already hardest
hit by the failures of the civilization of the "second wave" (Alvin
Toffler's expression referring to the three to four hundred year span of history
dominated by the centralizing tendencies of mass‑ production, the
separation between producers and consumers, and the empire of heavy industry)
will go on footing the bill for the lack of courage and imagination of the
managerial elite. Do we really need
to ask for an encore! [2002 comment:
But we sure got it, even without asking… with W at
the
helm!]
Briefly stated, free trade can not be expected to enhance our lives on
either side of the border until such a time as migratory laws have fully taken
into account the "earthly needs of the body and the soul" (See Appendix, Simone Weil). Only then may we
begin to expect some protection from our ruinous rapacity.
Revised
and reissued with minor stylistic corrections, Mexico, Sept. 2002
TOFFLER, THE THIRD WAVE
[from A. Martin's Spanish
translation]
In relation to what we mean by
"MARKET" (55‑59, Plaza y Janes):
. . .the market has been so
narrowly identified with only one of its many variants (the one consisting of
private property based on profit, in which prices are the result of supply and
demand), that there is not even a word in the conventional vocabulary of
economics to express the multiplicity of its forms . . . when the producer and
the consumer separate, it is necessary for some mechanism to mediate between
them.
. . .Karl Polanyi's history of economics has shown us how the market,
which in primitive societies was subordinated to social or cultural and
religious objectives, went on to determine the objectives of industrial society.
Most people were absorbed by the money economy. Commercial values became central
to society, economic development (measured by the size of the market) became the
fundamental objective of governments, whether capitalist or socialist.
. . . The Marxist
emphasis upon the class struggle has obscured the more profound and wider
conflict which surfaced between the demands
of producers (laborers and entrepreneurs alike) for higher wages and profits and
the counter-demands by consumers (including the very same people) for lower
prices. . . . Personal relations, family ties, love, friendship, neighborly and
community ties, everything became tainted and corrupted by
commercial gain.
Even though he was able to identify this dehumanization of interpersonal
relations, Marx made a mistake when he attributed it to capitalism.
Naturally, he wrote at a time when the only industrial society that he
was able to study was capitalist.
For the obsessive preoccupation with money, with assets and with things
does not reflect capitalism or socialism per se but is, rather, the result of
the industrial mode of production, a consequence of the central role played by
the market in all societies in which production is distanced from
consumption, in which everyone depends on the market, more than on his
own productive capacities, in order to satisfy life's needs.
The gulf between these two functions ‑‑ producer and consumer
‑‑ created at the same time a dual personality.
[The constant, schizoid message : Be
patriotic and save / Be patriotic and spend...(SMV ]
On POLITICAL PARTIES (p. 502 of Spanish edition):
Democrats and Republicans,
Conservatives as well as Laborites, Christian Democrats and Gaullists, Liberals
and Socialists, Communists or Conservatives, all belong ‑‑ in spite
of their differences‑‑ to parties of the second wave.
All of them, while struggling to conquer power, basically find themselves
bent upon preserving the agonizing industrial order.
FORCES OF THE SECOND AND OF THE
THIRD WAVE (p. 503 of Sp. Translation, Plaza y Janés.):
Typically, the proponents of the second wave struggle
against the power of minorities; they scorn direct democracy as
"populism" ; they oppose decentralization, regionalism and diversity;
they combat all efforts to demassify the schools; they are bent on
preserving an outmoded energy resources system, they deify the nuclear family,
they laugh at ecological concerns, they preach the traditional nationalism of
the industrial age and
are against moving in the
direction of a more fair world economic order.
Contrary to the latter, the forces of the third wave show themselves
favorable to a democracy in which minorities share power ; they propose a
trans-nationalism and a fundamental delegation
of power. They demand a dismantling
of the great bureaucracies and a renewable energy resources system that is less
centralized. They seek legitimate
options to the nuclear family.
They want less uniformity and more individualized learning in schools.
They concede a high priority to environmental problems.
They recognize the need to restructure the world economy so that there
will be a more just balance.
Above
all, while the proponents of the second wave follow the conventional rules of
the political game, those who belong to the third wave are weary of all
candidates and political parties (even the new ones) and perceive that the
crucial decisions upon which our survival depends can not be taken within the
existing political framework.
BRIEF SYNTHESIS OF THE TRAITS OF THE "THREE WAVES" :
Civilization of the "1rst
wave" :
Agriculture its dominant trait,
home based or local
production ‑‑ rural life rather than
urban; the producer blends with the consumer (prosumer) or
they remain within each other's proximity.
More individualized
consumption as pertains to manufactures ; a predominance of the
extended family and of a renewable energy system.
Civilization of the ´´2nd
wave´´: Heavy industry and
its requirements dominate
the era ‑‑ urbanization and centralization in just about
everything, "massification" of products and of culture and
separation of the producer
and the consumer; weakened local government, nuclear family (not extended) and
breakdown of the family, workplace away from home, school created to support
factory regime (compartmentalization, rigid work schedules, uniformity).
A predominance of non‑renewable energy resources.
Civilization of the "3rd wave" : Knowledge
factor and speed of
communication dominant force ‑‑
heading towards decentralization and demassification,
work finding its way back to the home front, towards more appropriate
scales of production, consumer goods more individualized, with consumers and
producers coming closer again (greater participation of the consumer in the
production of what he consumes), a falling away from the great urban
conglomerates ; a greater reliance
on the extended family, moving towards the strengthening of local government and
away from compartmentalization (greater integration of separate units that make
up an enterprise), more flexible schedules and more individualized products.
It seeks to substitute renewable energy sources for the un-renewable
ones.
AS MAY BE SEEN,
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SECOND WAVE ARE IN TENSION WITH THOSE OF THE FIRST
AND THIRD WAVES, WHEREAS THOSE OF THE THIRD WAVE AND THOSE OF THE FIRST ARE
QUITE CONGRUENT.
The question
that Toffler was asking ten years ago is the one that we are concerned with and
the one for which a positive answer may be found with the advent of a different
model of citizenship : Is it not
possible for a people to reduce infant mortality and extend life, improve
instruction, nutrition and the general quality of life, without at the same time
renouncing its religion or its values, or having necessarily to embrace that
kind of western materialism that accompanies immersion into the civilization
of the second wave ? (p. 393 of Spanish translation.)
About ENERGY,
Toffler noted in his 1980 title, the extraordinary importance for the less
industrialized countries of investing in decentralized sources in the
countryside instead of in the cities. He
refers to the work of Amulya Kumar N. Reddy (ibid., p. 394) showing "that
the needs of a village can be easily satisfied by a small, inexpensive
installation of biogas that consumes human and animal wastes proceeding from the
very same village or town; [and] that a great number of such units would be much
more useful, economic and economically valid than a few centralized high-powered
installations". [Just
before sitting to this revision, a friend confided in his ´´discovery´´ or
´´invention´´ --a bit of each—that it is possible to generate electricity
from the elements found in good old mother earth¼How to get this invention accepted and used will
be far more difficult than anything
my friend’s been through in order to obtain such a great asset from just
plain, good old (mother) earth! This
´´bit of news´´ comes after I just managed
to save myself an operation by applying earth and herbs to my shattered
ankle! So I´m cheering more than
ever for that awesome ´´entelechy´´ that Gaia is!]
For the
CARIBBEAN, the options that could be gleaned were :
1.
SUGAR CANE >
2. ETHANOL (AUTO COMBUSTION) >
3. PAPER > 4. CATTLEFEED > 5. HUMAN CONSUMPTION
6.
FECES + FECES
= 7. BIOGAS
8.
COMPU-TECH < ELECTRICITY <
SOLAR ENERGY
9. PSYCHOSPHERE = + "PROSUMERISM"
The scheme ´´sugar
cane´´ > ethanol for cars, paper, cattle feed, human consumption > feces
> biogas > solar energy > electricity > computer technology >
psychosphere = + ´´prosumerism´´ DESCRIBES A PROCESS OF ENERGY RECYCLING
THAT GOES HAND IN HAND WITH LABOR INTENSIVE, SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE which,
instead of discarding human beings or packing them into urban squalor,
REINTEGRATES THEM TO THE VERY PROCESSES OF THE EARTH IN A DYNAMICS OF CONSTANT
REGENRATION THAT PROPELS AND FEEDS A THIRD WAVE CIVILIZATION ABLE TO TEND
TO THE REAL, AUTHENTIC, EARTHLY
NEEDS OF THE BODY AND THE SOUL.
The ´´psychosphere´´ --the sphere of knowledge, of technology, of
information, of our memory—enhances the possibility of eliminating
overproduction and mad distribution, reuniting, in different ways, producer and
consumers. The life of the
agriculturalist of the third wave, like that of the city dweller, of course
would be a radically improved life in relation to what it has been in the past.
They would be less differentiated one from the other:
for both, alternatives of cultural expansion in every sense—for it
would be a civilization able to take the countryside into the city and the city
into the countryside, promote gregariousness [I now prefer to use the term that
the great Ivan Illich has favored, conviviality] and to respect privacy,
to reunite the generations, eliminate the bottlenecking of capital, of services,
of products, of ages, attaining to a better distribution of wealth which, in the
midst of the horrors of the era we are enduring, would be the only way to ´´grow´´
without stifling one another even more in the
miasma that our excesses have created.
Consider, again, that the extremes of wealth and of poverty constitute
our worst source of pollution, of destabilization
in everything –nature, the social pact, our physical and mental health.
What we seek is a civilization able to ensure continuity along with
innovation and diversity.
Portes and Bach, Latin Journey
"Primary"
(oligopolistic) and "secondary" (competitive) markets refer to the
"dual economy" or "dual labor market situation" as commented
upon by Alejandro Portes and Robert L. Bach in Latin Journey: Cuban and
Mexican Immigrants in the U.S., Un. of Calif. Press, 1985:
The core of this dual economy
thesis is the observation that advanced economies have generated an
oligopolistic segment in which control of the different facets of production and
commercialization is far more extensive than among typical earlier capitalist
firms.
The emergence of oligopolies in different segments of the economy is a
process common to all the industrialized capitalist countries.
These firms control a significant portion of their
respective markets, rely on capital intensive technology to enhance
productivity, and are able to pass on part or all of the increases in the wage
bill to consumers through their control of markets.
. . . A prime goal... is stability in labor relations [accomplished
through bureaucratization, by adhering to impersonal rules, and the creation of so‑called internal markets with
the division of work into finely graded job ladders.
Hiring is generally at the bottom, and access to higher positions
...through internal promotion rather than external recruitment. . .]
. .
.Oligopolistic corporations are
able to create internal markets because of their size and because they can
compensate for increases in labor costs with increases in productivity, higher
prices for the final product, or both. Wages in this sector of the economy are
thus higher and fringe benefits and work conditions are more desirable.
A second segment of the economy is formed by those smaller competitive
enterprises that more faithfully reflect the structural conditions under early
industrial capitalism. Such firms operate in an environment of considerable
economic uncertainty. Their markets
are usually local or regional, do not generate their own technology, and
frequently rely on labor‑intensive processes of production.
Firms in this sector do not have internal markets.
Because they also lack a monopoly position, they face greater
difficulties in passing on increases in their wage bill.
The conditions of production in this sector thus lead to a downward
pressure on
wages.
Control over workers cannot depend on the incentives attached
to job ladders or be based on impersonal rules.
Instead, discipline is imposed directly, and is often harsh.
Firing is a permanent threat and a common practice since most labor
employed by these firms can be easily replaced.
Wages are not only lower
than in the oligopolistic sector, seniority is not a guarantee of higher income
or job security. High labor turnover in these firms is a joint consequence of
employer dismissals and of worker dissatisfaction.
For competitive capital, the viability of these relationships
of production depends on the presence of a labor force that is both abundant and
powerless. Otherwise, labor costs
would go up and the existence of firms, as presently structured, would be
threatened. For labor, these
conditions are acceptable only in the absence of any other alternative."
(Op. cit., pp. 16‑18).
In this book, Portes and Bach have shown the advantages for migrant
populations in adhering to economic enclaves of their own ethnic group instead
of falling into the assimilationist trap. They
stress the importance of social networks: "It is through networks that the economic opportunities
of migration are often realized. .
. . Once in place, these structures stabilize such movements by adapting to
shifting economic conditions and by generating new opportunities, apart from the
original incentives." (op. cit., p.10)
The apparent theoretical fragmentation in the field of
immigration, according to these investigators, conceals marked affinities :
"Immigration emerges from this analysis as an integral component of the
struggle between labor and capital and as evidence that this struggle is not
confined by national borders."
BERRY,
Wendell. From HOME ECONOMICS : FOURTEEN ESSAYS,
North Point Press, San Francisco, 1987.
"Six
fallacies of agriculture." (Synthesis after my Sp. trans.)
l. "That agriculture can be understood and managed as if
it were an industry." [It
can't be, Berry argues, because it depends upon living organism and hence it can
not escape for a very long time criteria of quality; the limited life of a factory sets it apart from the
potential for renewal that land properly used can enjoy; what motivates one is
not what has traditionally motivated the other :
the farmer's place of work is also his home.] "Industrial economy is
dedicated to . . . extraction : it
takes, makes, uses, and throws away; it progresses . . . from exhaustion to
pollution. Agriculture . . .
rightfully belongs to an economy based on restitution, which takes, makes, uses
and restores." When the latter fails to be the case, the productive part of
the land is destroyed with use.
2. "That
a sensible agricultural economy can depend upon the requirements of an export
market."
[Berry notes what we should know by heart already :
that any foreign market for food products is temporary and by definition
insecure; can charity consider a
hungry people a market, he asks us.] "Commercial
farming should never be separated from subsistence farming;
the farmer and his family should live from what they can grow on their
land. / The principle of
subsistence must operate at all levels of the agricultural system." [Benefits : it would diversify production, reduce costs of
transportation, increase
the level of local employment. But, surplus production
meant for exportation instead of for local consumption has a legitimate place in
agricultural planning in view of the ever present threat of disasters caused by
the weather etc...]
3. "That
a free market can preserve agriculture."
"‑‑the free play of economic
forces‑‑is not good for agriculture because it is not able to assign
a value to things of which agriculture requires... The `free market' puts a
value upon production at the expense of everything else, and this exclusive
emphasis upon production, as pertains to agriculture, inevitably causes
overproduction." [The surplus,
as we know, only leads to
low prices...] "...agricultural productivity lacks
any direct or stable relation with value..." [The surplus is used as a
weapon against the producer in service of a `policy of cheap food products' or
in such a way that the product will obtain a competitive price in the world
market.] "The offer should be
adjusted to the anticipated demand, and these needs should always include
surpluses that can be used in case there is a failure in the harvest." "The
`free market' is an economic Darwinism. . . it justifies the poverty of the poor
by the wealth of the rich."
Two human laws of economics, very different from those that
govern the "free market" (inhuman and not
very natural) must be observed :
A. Money should not lie about value. It should not, through
inflation or usury, ill represent the value of work or of goods
that are necessary.
These values should not, through any
mechanism of the markets or of the banks, find themselves
subjected to monetary manipulation.
B. There should be a decent balance between what people earn and
what they pay, and this can not be accomplished except through
a control exercised over production. When
farmers have to sell in a depressed market and buy in an inflated one, this
means the death of peasants, the death of rural communities, the death of the
land, and (in urban terms) the death of the food supply.
4. "That productivity is a sufficient criterion of
excellence in production."
"The costs [of
agro-industry] are to be found in soil depletion, in soil and water pollution,
in food pollution, in the decadence of rural population and communities, and in
the growing vulnerability of the system of food supply.
Production statistics by themselves can not show these costs."
[He stresses that it is more important to speak of "frugality"
than of
production and that our economy leads to such
extravagance that we say that `we can't afford to maintain things';
the criterion of productivity does not allow us to see that there is a
value in continuity.] "An economy directed towards production can certainly
live that way, but only for as long as production lasts."
5. "That
there are too many farmers." "...it's easy to say, if one is not a farmer."
"Immigration from the countryside to the city has obviously produced
certain advantages for corporate economy. The
absent farmer has had to be replaced by machinery, oil, chemicals, credit, and
other expensive goods and services of the economics of `agroindustry' (which
should not be confused with the economics of what used to be known as
agriculture). [Notes the erosion of lands accelerated as a result of the great
migrations to the cities where farmers get to be classified as members of the
"permanently unemployable".
Soil erosion exceeds five times the weight of the grain that is
harvested.]
6. "That
labor with one's hands is a bad thing."
[Criticizes Jane Jacob's statement when she says "without even
blinking" that it is preferable to pick cotton with a machine than by
hand...He relays Wes Jackson's opinion at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas,
that what determines whether agricultural labor is pleasant or unpleasant
depends a great deal upon the scale of the work; also who the owner is, the expectations, ability and
quality of the work...] "any type of agricultural
work is miserable . . . if it is an economically desperate activity – if it
does not secure for the laborer a nexus with the land in which he toils that is
stable, decent, remunerative. We
can say that work in a small field owned by the worker, who can expect a decent
economic return is probably less miserable than mechanized work in a vast field
that does not belong to him. We can
assume with some confidence, what is more, that work done by hand in the company
of family and of neighbors could be less miserable than work performed alone
under the constant noise of machinery. . . a considerable amount of manual work
could remain necessary, besides, for reasons other than those of economy...the
best agriculture will continue to depend upon the degree of attention and of
particularity that accompanies the use of hands [as is the case with] animals. .
. and much of the work involved in restoring the soil.
[A cure for obesity, as well, he says...] "...the greatest source of
unexploited energy that we could use may well be that which human bodies keep in
store."
[Finis, 6 FA]
SIMONE WEIL (1909-1943). OBLIGATIONS and EARTHLY NEEDS (24-28)
POLITICAL
PARTIES (p. 28)
ON THE FUNDAMENTALS OF OUR OBLIGATIONS TOWARDS HUMAN
BEINGS. Listing of the TRUE
EARTHLY NEEDS OF THE BODY AND THE SOUL, followed by an abridged analysis of the
nefarious role paid by POLITACAL PARTIES as of the destructive results ensuing
from the tragic and self-serving INVERSION OF THE MEANS AND ENDS.
[From her "Study for a
Declaration of Human Obligations", subtitle of The Need for Roots
[L’ENRACINEMENT] and title of one of her last essays written in
London before her death on Aug. 24, 1943. Gallimard HAS now published her
complete works. Complete text in
English appears among Sir Richard Rees' translations of her selected essays and
elsewhere. Visit the American Weil Society site for more current information on
availability of her work in English.)
Preliminary explanation : For Simone Weil (born in
Paris, Feb. 3, 1909), regardless of all else,
we owe respect to human beings because there is in each of us a point
that belongs to the realm of the impersonal, the best way she found to refer to
what we call God. That point has
the weight of what is "infinitely small yet trans-finitely
great"‑‑ God's specific mode of action, the only way [he]
permits
[him]self to intervene in human affairs, since God's love limits his
omnipotence that human beings may be free to reciprocate, freedom appearing thus
as a necessary condition for love, for truth and for justice to flourish
‑‑ those ends that are identifiable with the good, which is
"God" and which should not be
confused with the means. (We will be dealing, that is, with the
often ignored problem of the confusion between means and ends,
rather than with the more generally referred to problem of ´´the end
justifying the means.´´) She
stresses the importance of developing attention as the central preoccupation of
school studies. It is this faculty
that allows human beings to transcend radically the relations of force that
dominate the kingdom of this world, where we increasingly (have) adore(d) the
Great Beast (Plato) in the form of the state ‑‑our false god (the
state resembles God for being at
one and the same time ´´us´´ and ´´greater than´´ us...). The state as an ersatz of God.
Because of the impersonal
point that ties each of us to the true God, we each deserve respect. But the only way of demonstrating that respect is through
acts that have as their object the well being, both physical and spiritual, of
human beings. This respect for the
impersonal element in each of us seeks to create conditions that will enhance
the human person's chances to become rooted in this world in ways that will help
one to satisfy one's basic aspiration towards justice, truth, love and beauty.
What is most compelling in
this thought of hers is this: that
while, paradoxically, being uprooted can just as easily provide human beings
with the experiences that will allow them to become "de-created" to
the point where the soul is wrested from the forces of gravity and attains to
communion in God, our obligations towards ourselves and others involve the will
to help one another to transcend our limitations as creatures through joyful
contemplation of the beauty of this world; through loving, meaningful work that
enhances rootedness in a variety of nourishing milieus conducive to helping us
establish that nexus "between God and God" ‑‑between God
and the element of the impersonal that is in each of us : to know, attain to
what may properly be called grace.
OBLIGATIONS,
says Simone Weil, depend THE
EARTHLY NEEDS OF THE BODY AND THE SOUL...
"Human beings are in need above all of food, warmth, sleep,
hygiene, rest, exercise, fresh air."
Neither more nor less and as simple as all that.
The needs of the soul, however, appear to be somewhat more complex and
even harder to satisfy. Thus:
"The
needs of the soul can for the most part be ordered in pairs
that
balance and complement each other."
"The soul needs equality and hierarchy."
[She notes that what harms our aspiration towards equality is not the
existence of hierarchies but of illegitimate hierarchies; elsewhere she
explains that when a human being occupies the exact place that is rightfully his
in the ladder of responsibilities, he becomes in that position, no matter how
insignificant his place, a source of justice and harmony, of balance; of course, each human being within a given society is apt to
serve in a number of hierarchies ‑‑ what is important is that in
each case he occupy the proper place that rightfully belongs to him according to
the task at hand.
It seems to me that the
repugnance that many libertarian spirits display towards the existence of
hierarchies, as I detect in Toffler, for example, is the result of a lack of
clear perception of this truth which, once enunciated, seems so obvious :
the
problem we are facing is not so much that there need to be hierarchies in many
areas of human endeavor but the fact that the way we go
about distributing responsibility is so bad. Illegitimate hierarchies –which, we must
add, only in the human species make their presence felt—are what give a
bad reputation to the notion of hierarchy itself, while it should be noted that
legitimate hierarchies never fail to occur quite naturally in other species.
[I attribute the situation that we are living in –finding ourselves
governed, in almost every kind of (dis)order,
by illegitimate hierarchies—to the almost
infinite possibilities for lies to proliferate, which is, in first place
and above all else, a matter of words and of their dishonest, deviate use¼]
". . . consented obedience and freedom."
[The soul accepts obedience when authority is legitimate, something which
is not possible when the government comes about as result of a coup d’état,
or in relation to an economic order founded upon money. There are however,
legitimate limitations to freedom. Thus,
no order will be possible outside a
context of respect for a legitimately established law, that is recognized as
such.]
". . . truth and freedom of expression."
