Chris

Currently, I'm trying to finish up my master's degree in history. It looks like I will present my thesis to my distinguished committee in late July. If that committee, most specifically my committee chair, accepts the thesis and I finish up my Spanish classes in the Summer with an adequate grade in the last course, I will get my Master's degree. One of my fellow grad students read a draft of my thesis in late May and declared that if two-thirds of it had been as good as the other third,"it might have been a much better thesis." In any case I have made very extensive revisions, adding all sorts of new material to it, and personally think that it is a really quite freaking interesting piece of work.

I have gaudy visions of entering a PhD program in History. However all five of the programs that I applied to in the 2006-07 school year rejected me, probably because my writing sample was not good and the topic I wanted to research at their programs was too vague or they didn't have professors interested in the topic. I will try again in 2007-08 and be in a stronger position because my MA program will be complete.

However I've come to the conclusion that in the past two years I've let myself get a little carried away with academia. I dislike using theory in my writing, apart from maybe some Marxist variants. Historians these days love theory. The way they use theory these days it often ends up making historical writing less intelligible than it ought to be. My colleague who read my thesis critizied me for not using a theory. I don't do theories. I just rear back and tell you a goddam story, making sure to cite my sources, and tell you in my introduction what I'm gonna write about and survey some of the stuff on the topic that has been written by jackasses other than myself. The thesis committee chair of one of my colleagues is a lady who loves the use of jargon in graduate writing. The more recondite and dull a piece of writing is, it seems, the more she is attracted to it. She is a nice lady though, i took two classes from her and received a B plus each time. All of my seminar grades have been A minuses or B pluses. I've really had to exert myself to get those grades, because I'm a naturally lazy fellow and some of the assignments requiring writing about dull books are quite a strain to get through(though some assignments are interesting enough).

There's also the fact that I'm a radical leftist and such persons are not heavy in academia in spite of the belief to the contrary of our intelligent, rational right wing brothers and sisters. In an academic setting and being a dissident, one has to face negative reactions from students, fellow faculty, chapters of right wing groups on campus, the public, the Board of Trustees, business funders of the campus, etc. There is however some space available for faculty and students who don't subscribe to officially sanctioned doctrine regarding economics, foreign and social policy and so on and this drives the right wingers crazy

Another reason I might not go into academia is that it has very low turnover. There are only so many positions available and some professors stay in in their jobs for 40 years or more. There are a great many newly minted Phds in the social sciences who can't find jobs.

I don't know what i'm going to do this next year. It would be nice if maybe I could get a modelling job for plus sized men or something. I like Bellingham a great deal though I will probably be forced to leave it. There seems to be a slight but burgeoning prostitution business in Bellingham, and so I may have to end up being a gigalo.

Late in my Junior High years, I decided I was going to become an independent and self-respecting person in a way very different from that of my peers. Very soon after I ended high school, I discovered the writings of Noam Chomsky and my dissident ways were firmly set.

The course I've taken has often been difficult. Sometimes I've unfairly placed people in negative sterotypes I hold. Other times certain health problems which still afflict me have disrupted my relationship with particular people. However I think that as Nietzsche once said, no price is too high to own yourself. If you try to be friendly with people who think you are inferior to themselves, or try to kiss the butts of people just because they are good looking and popular or whatever, then you, if you are intelligent, are always going to hate yourself next morning. If I've ever had any conflict with another person, I think most of the time, the majority of the problem is because the other person is a conventional minded idiot who is jealous of my spectacular abs, beautiful buttocks, pectorals, low body fat, gorgeous eyes, etc

I'm a radical leftist, an anarchist but one who certainly respects a number of Marxist thinkers. I'm really incredibly hardcore. I don't think you devils realize just how hard I am. Putting aside the fact that I not uncommonly eat corporate fast food (the healthier varieties), shop at corporate chains in all industries, play fantasy baseball, watch Sportscenter, enjoy watching bad TV shows and movies that are diverting but have no redeeming social value, have occasionally purchased softcore "gentleman's' magazines (to speak Marxist, the material conditions of society act are such that I cannot fully extinguish sexism from myself), listen to rap music that expresses regressive values, and some other things, I'm probably the hardest leftist in the United States. I'm so hard sometimes I'm not able to walk in public

I believe in libertarian socialism or left wing anarchism or left wing libertarianism or Libertarian communism or whatever you want to call it. Different varieties of such methods have worked in practice for brief periods in the past before being destroyed by more powerful forces. Two examples of anarchism or Libertarian Socialism in practice are in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and in the Ukraine with Nestor Makhno's movement in the early years of the Bolshevik Revolution. Another example are the Soviets that were set up after the Bolshevik Revolution of Novemeber 1917 and showed great promise until the Bolsheviks stripped them of all real power. The Communards in Paris in 1871 were going in the Libertarian socialist direction until they were all massacred. The Solidarity trade Unionists in Poland in the early eighties had a libertarian socialist blueprint for Polish society until its leadership got co-opted into selling out the workers to Western capitalists. I believe in human beings reaching a state of freedom where they can maximally develop their own intellectual and other human capacities. Neither American or Western European capitalism nor Leninism or Stalinism or Maoism or even Trotskyism can fullfill such things

The so-called Communist states and some varieties of capitalism often provide decent material benefits for relatively large numbers of people; however they don't fullfill the basic human need for total freedom because they are all based on top down control over essential matters in the economic and political spheres. Of course, in the dictatorships of the Communist states, top-down control in all spheres of life often has lead to horrors. However, people in the Soviet block often lived better than their counterparts in the capitalist third world. Take say, in 1985 the average person in Brazil or Indonesia or the Dominican Republic or El Salvador and compare their standard of living with that of the average person living in the stagnation of Brezhnevite Russia or Zhivkov's Bulgaria. The Soviet block model often produced a relatively rapid development in the standard of living of average citizens, along with suppression of dissent, gulags, slave labor, etc. Compare the standard of living of the average peson in countries that had a similar level standard of living in 1925, say Brazil and Bulgaria, and see the differences in their respective standard of living in 1985. This is not to the credit of the Soviet system, it simply shows how neoliberal capitalism has ruined the lives of so many in the third world. The devolpment of capitalism in the first world wasn't exactly a model of human rights either, with racism, slavery, extermination of native Americans, slave labor, horrendous slums, horrendous sweatshops, Mine workers in the United States in the early part of the twentieth century, extracting from the ground the wealth that would make their bosses many tens of millions, died on the job at rates 3 or 4 times the numbers of their counterparts in France and Germany. The basis for a rising standard of living amongst the masses of people in this country was laid by laws granting union rights and workplace safety that workers won by applying pressure on politicians, beginning in the 1930's extending to the 1970's when the right wing attack on workers began its really serious operations

Workers should directly control their own workplaces and communities--the people who administer such institutions shoud be directly appointed by the workers to implement collectively agreed plans of the workers and citizens. Such administrators should not be bosses and should be able to be fired at any time. The radio and TV airwaves would also be turned over from corporations to the control of local communities to run it themselves.

Perhaps the ususal criticisms of libertarian socialism have some validity to them i.e. "it's against human nature," "capitalism is the best of the worst,"etc. Of course, it is really quite irrational to assume that all alternatives to capitalism will fail no matter how different they are from the Soviet model, just because the latter failed

We actually know very little that is scientifically verifiable about human nature. However it is certainly difficult to contemplate the task of building a libertarian socialist society in this country at this point of time. There is so much comformity, excess devotion to trivial things like sports and the values of the corporate pop culture, so much vulnerability to corporate and government mass marketing, so much irrationality, apathy, violence, racism, sexism, and general imbecility. All too many Americans are vulnerable to demagogues stirring up fear and hatred of immigrants, the French, blacks, Arabs, whomever. Excersing one's brain power can sometimes be dangerous for one's well-being in this country. A Libertarian socialist revolution will probably not come about peacefully--of course, a large majority of the American people would have to understand and support its principles in the first place before a revolution could be launched. Fascism has infinitely higher prospects in this country, with Islamic terrorism, as well as illegal immigration, providing more than a handy issue for demagogues to stir up the people. The modern so-called Conservative movement is not conservative at all--it is imbibed with a deep totalitarian, statist spirit

The future holds some rough times for ordinary people in this country. Productive investment in this country has shrunk while the economy has become increasingly reliant on periods of stock market speculation and fraud encouraged by deregulation (as in the 90's) or the accumulation of unsustainable household debt that has financed a precarious speculative bubble in the house housing industry (as now). The economy is being kept from sinking under its massive trade deficit by foriegn investments in American securities. Meanwhile, with the exception of the late 90's, in the last 30 years, workers wages have been declining or stagnating while productivity thrives from American workers working the longest amount of hours in the advanced industrialized world. In large part because of corporate outsourcing and the attack on union power begun in 1981 by the Reaganites, worker's jobs from the blue collar to the white collar, have become extremely insecure. Living wage jobs have been rapidly decreasing. In 1991 the CEO to worker pay ratio was 113:1; by 2001 it was 449 to 1. According to 2001 figures, if the minimum wage had risen at the same rate as American business profits since 1968, it would be $13.80 in 2001. If the average salary for production workers had risen at the same rate as CEO pay since 1990, in 2001 dollars it would have been $124,491 instead of $24, 668. If the minimum wage had risen at the same rate as CEO pay since 1990, it would have been $25.50 in 2001 dollars. Yet, we are supposed to be thankful to the Democrats for wanting to raise the national minimum wage to $7.25 an hour?

The Democrats and Republicans share a basic committment to big business rule and social inequality and supporting Israel and funding death squads in places like Colombia; and propping up tyranical regimes in Uzbekistan, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates,etc. so that third world workers will be terrorized against challenging sweatshop conditions and corporate looting and polution of their countries. A Democratic administration in the White House would slightly take the burden off working people. A few Democratic politicians would be good enough for me to send money to, if I had any, in re-election campaigns where they demonstrate a clear progressive alternative to the Republicans. However hange is not going to come about by following around Dennis Kucinich, to say nothing of bogus progressives such as Howard Dean and Barack Obama and letting oneself get taken in by their pretty words. One of the great gifts of the American system in maintaining its class rule is to funnel mass discontent into the electoral campaign of some politician running for president, senate or whatever. Even if the progressive politician wins, the latter usually spends all the time trying play by the rules of the Democratic party and the Congress and making all sorts of compromises and trying to pretend that one is not disagreeable to the status quo by adopting the usual used car salesmen mannerisms of the politician. Such politicians deliver some things but not much. The late Senator Wellstone is a prime example of this. Politicians, even those who have the right policies, will not get the courage to seriously fight for them unless there is very widespread discontent backing them up

The long-term structural problems of this country, greatly exacerbated by the Bush administration, will not be solved by the Democrats. The Democratic party supports too many of the really harmful policies that are also a centerpiece of the Bush administration i.e. so-called free trade agreements, unrestricted flow of currency throughout the world, stock market deregulation. The country's infrastructure continues to crumble with the complicity of both parties, the Democrats being somewhat more willing to spend more on domestic needs, but still obssessed with balanced budgets. The country's elites, Democrat and Republican, demand balanced budgets and slash programs for the poor while they keep the military budget at levels higher than the budgets of all the rest of the world combined. Both parties are committed to destroying threats to America's imperial hegemony and maintaining our wasteful defense budget. Our capitalist system wont become more stable unless our elites take a dramatically different approach e.g. going back somewhere close to the Bretton Woods Keynesian framework of the pre-1970's era.

The truth is that the most successful economies the world has seen have explicitly violated free market principles. The U.S. government has always been heavily involved in funding research into economic innovations. From the system of interchangable parts developed at the Springfield armory in 1800, to crucial funding provided by congress to make the telegraph workable in the early 1840's, to subsidies and land giveways to railroads, to heavy tarrifs to help American cotton and steel develop without foreign competition; from the perfection of the radio in U.S. army labs during World War One; from the development by the Pentagon of the computer from the 1940's until it was commercially viable and then handed off to IBM whose model was later improved improved upon by Bill Gates; to the protection of U.S. semi-conductors and supercomputers by tarrifs from Japanese competition in the 80's. It's the same thing with the internet, which was developed in the Pentagon's research agency DARPA from the late 60's until it was mysteriously handed off to the private sector in the mid-90's. The wealth of the country was substantially built up by slave labor and the robbery of land and near extermination of the Native Americans. Often the government is there to use taxpayers money to bail out rich people and corporations when their gambling and corruption get themselves into troubles as in the S&L bailouts at the end of the 80's and Clinton's bailout of U.S. investors in 1994 after the Mexican stock bubble burst. Other examples include the attempt to bailout the Long Term Capital Management hedge fund in 1997 to the bailout of airlines in 2001. During the Reagan years, the economy was stimualted by the hi-tech sectors, linked to the greatly increased military budget; the rest of the economy floundered and real productive investment stagnated.The other genuinely successful economies in the world: Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc, have built up their economies in very similar ways. It was when the Asian "tigers" loosened regulations on flows of money in and out of their countries in the 1990's, that they enabled stock and currency market speculators to ruin their economies. In the case of the British, they gained much of their wealth from piracy by people like Francis Drake and drug dealing (i.e. the Opium War of 1839-42 to force China to open its doors to Indian opium). The European powers enslaved indiginous peoples and stole their resources. Talk about entrepeneurial ingenuity and lectures about the genius and benefits of free market economics is for right wing talk radio hosts, University of Chicago economists and other such imbeciles but it has nothing to do with the real world.Corporations only support "free trade" when they are certain that they can overwhelm competition in other countries. This was definitely the case with NAFTA. After that agreement came into affect, since Florida tomato growers were losing out in competition in U.S. markets to Mexican tomato growers, Clinton slapped tarrifs on the Mexican growers. Since NAFTA was enacted in 1993, illegal immigration from Mexico to the U.S. has doubled. Hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers have been pushed off the land because they can't compete with U.S government funded agribusiness. When Newt Gingrich represented Cobb County Georgia in Congress, by the mid-90's, while heroically denouncing welfare mothers and talking about self reliance, he had managed to secure enough pork and federal contracts for the county to make it the third most subsidized country in the country. Cobb County Georgia is the home of Lockheed Martin, one of Gingrich's chief sponsors in Congress, which would have bankrupted long ago if not for continual government bailouts. The most important pharmaceutical drugs were substantially developed in government labs during their reseach and development phase, including AIDS drugs, and then mysteriously handed off to the pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical companies justify not providing AIDS drugand antibiotics at affordable prices to African countries on the ground that they need to make enough money to support R&D, which is a lie since the government pretty much does it all for them. What they do spend on R&D is vastly outstripped by the amount of money they spend on marketing.

I oppose virtually all American military and political interventions into the affairs of other nations and the military activities of American imperialist clients like Israel, with their concomitant war crimes and crushing of worker and basic human rights and so on.