tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-180305412024-03-25T06:09:43.506+00:00After CapitalismDada Maheshvarananda's Blog concerning PROUT, the Progressive Utilisation TheoryDada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.comBlogger69125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-3661190440490398792019-06-12T00:11:00.001+00:002019-06-12T00:11:41.212+00:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Book Review: Eva Golinger, <i>Confidante of ‘Tyrants’: The Inside
Story of the American Woman Trusted by the US’s Biggest Enemies.
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">Oxford: New Internationalist,
2018.</span></div>
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Don’t let the
title put you off. Eva Golinger is a very smart, hard-working, and
courageous woman. She pioneered investigation into the intense
efforts of the United States government to overthrow the
democratically-elected government of Venezuela. I certainly agree
with Noam Chomsky that this book is “a unique and informative
perspective on some of the most intriguing events of current
history.”</div>
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Golinger points out
the extreme hypocrisy of the U.S. government: it brazenly attempts to
win so-called “regime change” in other countries by funding
opposition political parties, protest movements, and journalists,
while at the same time strictly prohibiting any other country or
noncitizen from contributing to a candidate or party in any U.S.
election. What a double standard!</div>
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In this memoir,
Golinger is brutally honest. She served as a foreign policy
consultant to the Hugo Chávez government from 2004 to 2012 without
salary, and accompanied him as he met many other heads of state. Even
as the president trusted her, other Chavistas tried to block or
sabotage her efforts. Now is openly critical of his mistakes. The
corruption that he tolerated among some of his supporters grew to
epic proportions.</div>
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Disclaimer: I lived
and worked in Venezuela from 2006 to 2016 and had the honor to meet
Eva Golinger on several occasions. I share her opinion that President
Chávez had a great love for the Venezuelan people and used petroleum
revenue to achieve great advances in social welfare: education,
health care, food, housing, culture. I agree with her that the messy
process of empowering communities in participatory budgeting was very
significant. She says Chávez “gave his life for his country and
his fellow citizens.” I also share her opinion that the mistakes he
made, especially the economic ones, have now come back to ruin the
Bolivarian Revolution, resulting in pain and tragedy for the people.
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Golinger says that
Chávez “had no hate in his heart that I ever saw.” I would
disagree, because he regularly insulted the opposition, always
calling them “squalids.” (The word is an adjective, not a noun,
in Spanish as well as in English, yet it is obviously an insult). If
you insult those who disagree with you, you’ll never win them over
to your side. He also imprisoned opponents accused of corruption,
while most of his supporters who were corrupt were immune from
punishment. She points out that “Chávez’s habit of choosing
loyalty over competence was a fatal mistake.”</div>
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She admits her
mistakes, including her distribution in November 2007 of a purported
CIA memo that was a sloppy forgery created by the Venezuelan
political police (SEBIN)<span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">—</span>she
was “spammed” she says. After Chávez died, she continued to
support his chosen successor, President Nicolas Maduro, for two years
until: “I saw up close and personal what I considered to be severe
corruption and criminal activity inside his government. And when I
informed him of those activities, instead of initiating
investigations against the people involved, he rewarded them.”
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I recommend the book
to anyone who wants to see the dramatic changes in Venezuela “up
close and personal.”</div>
<br />Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-22566090691803509582017-02-23T00:16:00.001+00:002017-02-23T00:16:11.325+00:00Foreword by Bill Ayers for new book Cooperative Games for a Cooperative World <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaXdFgG3QD_uNp9BvpnamTXmm-NTOnbLqNuLFPOuZEtwfZaOQCRQ1cotOjcZEYJtc9KzLoHO0QsMHJ30zRrNE68kIY2XEJk-1t6cQT95O7v4pIs4nR4IN7meRq5lOqtnkYfm3q/s1600/3+FOREWORD+Bill+Ayers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaXdFgG3QD_uNp9BvpnamTXmm-NTOnbLqNuLFPOuZEtwfZaOQCRQ1cotOjcZEYJtc9KzLoHO0QsMHJ30zRrNE68kIY2XEJk-1t6cQT95O7v4pIs4nR4IN7meRq5lOqtnkYfm3q/s320/3+FOREWORD+Bill+Ayers.jpg" width="320" height="240" /></a></div>Dada Maheshvarananda is an activist with a poet’s mind, a dreamer and a doer, a love warrior. At our first encounter years ago, I felt myself in the presence of someone who was both fierce and gentle, ecstatic and burdened, transcendent and unremarkably material. In other words, I saw a person a lot like you and me—a three-dimensional being with a mind and a heart, a body and a spirit, living his life smack in the middle of things, a mass of human contradictions, tensions, ambiguities, and incompleteness. He lives simply and yet seems determined to squeeze the most out of every moment, and he clearly chooses to live with one foot firmly planted in the mud and muck of the world as it is, while the other foot is stretched toward a world that could be, but is not yet—a place of harmony, peace, joy, and justice.
<p>
In <i>Cooperative Games for a Cooperative World</i>, Dada Maheshvarananda offers an accessible, hands-on practice to reach toward that possible world. It’s an easy book to plunge into head first, and it’s a book that allows each and all of us to prepare for that more harmonious place. Think of it as a book of cooperative calisthenics, little exercises to prepare us for the huge changes that are essential to our survival on this earth.
<p>
What does it mean to be human today? Where are we on the clock of the universe? What does this political and social moment demand of us? How shall we live?
<p>
These are the substantial questions that are illuminated through the small activities and joyful games on display here. Dada Maheshvarananda does not run from the big issues facing us; rather, he engages them every day. His is the view from a grain of sand, the universe illuminated in a single moment of a child’s laughter. He simply shows up and begins, and it becomes quickly and dazzlingly clear that we belong together, that we are one another’s bounty, and we are one another’s responsibility.
<p>
Dada Maheshvarananda invites readers to play games, but these games unlock the magnitude: we begin to imagine the future we would like for the generations to come; we unleash our spiritual and social imaginations. We are playing games, and so we turn to the children and grandchildren, and we think of the grandchildren’s grandchildren. We note that a co-invented and dramatically extended family, at its evolving best, can be a small-scale model of a mini-society driven by norms of equality and reciprocity, a sense of shared community in which people care about and for one another. Mutual respect, recognition of differences, including distinct capacities and interests and needs, shared wealth, cooperation, attempts to account for and correct all chance/accidental disadvantages, and so on—from each according to what he or she is capable of, and to each according to need. Everybody in, nobody out.
<p>
In our pursuit of a world powered by love and reaching toward joy and justice, we find that imagination is our most formidable and unyielding ally—our common asset, an endowment to each one of us and the indispensable weapon of the powerless. Yes, the powerful—the casino capitalists and the predatory financiers, the banksters and their hedge-fund homies—control the massive military-industrial complex, the sophisticated surveillance systems, the prison cells, and the organized propaganda. These are on constant display as if to remind us every minute that there is no hope of a world without the instruments of death and oppression, while we have only our minds, our desires, our dreams—and one another. And, yes, in a traditional conflict we are finished before we start. But it’s also true that there’s no power on earth stronger than the imagination unleashed and the collective human soul on fire. Imagination is indispensable because it “ignites the slow fuse of possibility,” as Emily Dickinson wrote. More process than product, more stance than conclusion, engaging the imagination involves the dynamic work of igniting that fuse, mapping the world as it really is, and then purposely stepping outside and leaning toward a possible world. In an irregular struggle that pits our free imaginations against the stillborn and stunted imaginations of the war-makers and the mercenaries, we can win.
<p>
When we choose life, we leap into the whirlwind with courage and hope. Hope is a choice, after all—our collective antidote to cynicism and despair. It’s the capacity to notice or invent alternatives, and then to do something about it, to get busy in projects of repair. Choosing hopefulness is holding out the possibility of change. Hope is never a matter of sitting down and waiting patiently; hope is nourished in action, and it assumes that we are—each and all of us—incomplete as human beings. We have things to do, mountains to climb, problems to solve, injuries to heal. We can choose to see life as infused with the capacity to cherish happiness, to respect evidence and argument and reason, to uphold integrity, to share and cooperate, and to imagine a world more loving, more peaceful, more joyous, and more just than the one we were given—and we should. Of course we live in dark times, and some of us inhabit even darker places, and, yes, we act mostly in the dark. But we are never freer than when we shake ourselves and refuse to see the situation or the world before us as the absolute end of the matter.
<p>
We must announce through our lives and our work and our play that a new world is in the making. We can create a community of agitators and transform this corner of the world into a place that we want to inhabit. We can identify ourselves as citizens of a country that does not yet exist and has no map, and become that new nation’s pioneers and cartographers—and through our cooperative actions bring a more assertive and vibrant public into being.
<p>
Turn out all the lights and ignite a small candle in any corner of the room. That little light held aloft anywhere challenges the darkness everywhere. One candle. We can always do something, and something is where we begin. The tools are everywhere—humor and art, games and stories, protest and spectacle, the quiet, patient intervention and the angry, urgent thrust—and the rhythm is always the same: we open our eyes and look unblinkingly at the immense and dynamic world we find before us; we allow ourselves to be astonished by the beauty and horrified at the suffering all around us; we organize ourselves, link hands with others, dive in, speak up, and act out. We doubt that our efforts have made the important difference we’d hoped for, and so we rethink, recalibrate, look again, and dive in once more.
<p>
Start playing cooperative games!
<p>
...<i></i>
<p>
<b>
Bill Ayers</b> is a social justice organizer and activist, a teacher and former Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author or editor of 30 books about teaching, social justice, urban school reform, and children in trouble with the law. He has published two memoirs, <i>Fugitive Days</i> and <i>Public Enemy</i>, and his most recent book is <i>Demand the Impossible! A Radical Manifesto</i>.Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-88865718116098280792017-02-23T00:05:00.001+00:002017-02-23T00:06:27.015+00:00Cooperative Games workshop in Los Angeles, CA<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXPnzKM1pGYFrDWDSYKbVw2JXQC9UUGQR5Rg-FPHPxVWv1HsR5LUKD9nU2J6pAmmHuZDezpzExEg1H6Q_Ft697a28fsdSu46kEc5hRGxh78udu1bW74d6dOw0Ogb7z9o5T1hNe/s1600/Dada+LA+Flier.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXPnzKM1pGYFrDWDSYKbVw2JXQC9UUGQR5Rg-FPHPxVWv1HsR5LUKD9nU2J6pAmmHuZDezpzExEg1H6Q_Ft697a28fsdSu46kEc5hRGxh78udu1bW74d6dOw0Ogb7z9o5T1hNe/s400/Dada+LA+Flier.jpg" width="309" height="400" /></a>Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-12645517585820285262015-03-26T18:29:00.000+00:002015-03-27T02:11:04.751+00:00Hugo Chávez Rewrote the Textbook for Social Change: Activists should learn from both his successes and failuresby Dada Maheshvarananda<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjvN1k6Tm7heQljK8tJrIUQ1ZsqX7x-wcttBXhwUue2-P9i71Xo67O4lC2hdfe00TaiUL7o0mL370V-_NvcV5Wdv-c-HTonAijmDWya65ojmJLDZjurywfS9q1WisQkWeK7hoy/s1600/Hugo_Rafael_Ch%C3%A1vez_Fr%C3%ADas.jpeg.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjvN1k6Tm7heQljK8tJrIUQ1ZsqX7x-wcttBXhwUue2-P9i71Xo67O4lC2hdfe00TaiUL7o0mL370V-_NvcV5Wdv-c-HTonAijmDWya65ojmJLDZjurywfS9q1WisQkWeK7hoy/s320/Hugo_Rafael_Ch%C3%A1vez_Fr%C3%ADas.jpeg.jpeg" /></a></div>
<p>
From an impoverished family, Hugo Chávez joined the army for a chance to play baseball, but soon came to love the service that gave the opportunity for advancement to anyone based on hard work and performance. Disgusted by the corruption, censorship and human rights abuses of the Venezuelan government, the young officer started a secret organization in the military, the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement-200 (MBR-200), to overthrow the dictatorship. As one of the most popular teachers in the Venezuelan Military Academy, he recruited young officers for ten years. Caught red-handed twice and brought before a tribunal for subversion, Chávez managed to brazenly talk his way out of the charges both times. He was so successful that by the time he led a coup d’état in 1992 to overthrow President Carlos Andrés Pérez, he had 130 officers and nearly 900 soldiers under his command, approximately ten percent of the Venezuelan military.
<p>
Though the rebels came within a few meters of capturing Pérez, they failed. The military high command arrested Chávez and ordered him to tell the rest of his men to lay down their arms. Wearing his military uniform and red paratrooper beret, this unknown lieutenant-colonel was put in front of live television cameras for 72 seconds so that he could order all his men to surrender. What he said electrified the nation. Invoking the liberation hero Simón Bolívar, Chávez assumed full responsibility for the failure, which almost no Venezuelan leader had ever done before. Then he said that the objectives of this movement were not achieved "for now". As he went to prison, he had suddenly become a national hero to millions who realized that these soldiers were not hungry for power, rather they were risking their lives to save their country. A group of 62 retired generals ran full-page advertisements in newspapers attacking the government and supporting the coup leaders. In his cell Chávez began receiving hundreds of letters a week from supporters.
<p>
After two years all the coup leaders received amnesty, and Chávez started a four-year electoral campaign for president. He ignored the existing political parties and formed his own. Until voting day, he was discounted by political analysts because everyone they polled lived in the rich parts of Caracas; they didn't grasp that Chávez was effectively campaigning in the poor barrios and villages, organizing the silent masses that had always been ignored. When he assumed office at the beginning of 1999, he formed a commission to write a new constitution that was open to all suggestions; a group of Proutists also submitted our proposals. The new constitution, approved in a national referendum, is one of the most progressive in the world, guaranteeing many more human rights, including free education up to tertiary level, free quality health care, access to a clean environment, and the right of indigenous peoples and other minorities to uphold their traditional cultures, religions, and languages.
<p>
The "Dutch Disease" is a term used by economists to describe how manufacturing and agriculture fall if a country gets a huge influx of money from petroleum sales, resulting in a stronger currency due to the exchange rate. For fifty years oil has made Venezuela the richest country in Latin America, but the poor people saw very little of that wealth. Chávez coined a slogan, “Venezuela now is for everyone,” that symbolized his use of petroleum wealth to help the poor. Many social welfare missions were begun, including subsidized food stores and free kitchens, free health care, educational programs, and the building of more than 700,000 houses for the homeless.
<p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2aYTAbhv6N1ARrESc2593mjn-qb4k3rlad9IIQs3VjLX86YBpTppnDUd7zaeF0TYVsBi8W05GfQ30FbiWGYw1iiwJLvBpMCVoFA1-s8BhrI66d4kflEGufHnAEA8hRjfmyKhP/s1600/Venezuela+de+todos+logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2aYTAbhv6N1ARrESc2593mjn-qb4k3rlad9IIQs3VjLX86YBpTppnDUd7zaeF0TYVsBi8W05GfQ30FbiWGYw1iiwJLvBpMCVoFA1-s8BhrI66d4kflEGufHnAEA8hRjfmyKhP/s320/Venezuela+de+todos+logo.jpg" /></a></div>
The gains in social justice have been dramatic. During the last decade, the percentage of households in poverty was reduced by 39 percent, and extreme poverty by more than half. Inequality, as measured by the Gini index, fell substantially, from 48.1 in 2003 to 39.0 in 2011.
<p>
The number of primary care physicians in the public sector increased 12-fold from 1999-2007, providing health care to millions of Venezuelans who previously did not have access. The mortality rate for children under five years of age, which according to the World Health Organization is one of the best indicators of overall health in society, has fallen by 33 percent in Venezuela since 1999 (from 22.1 to 14.9 deaths per thousand live births in 2013).
<p>
There have been great advances in education from 1999 to the present. Pre-school enrollment rose from 43.4 to 70.7 percent; primary attendance from 85 to 92.2 percent; and secondary from 47.7 to 75.1 percent. Meanwhile higher education enrollment has increased from under 900,000 students to almost 2.5 million; UNESCO now ranks Venezuela 5th highest in the world in university matriculation rate.
<p>
These and more social programs won the hearts of the masses, so that by December, 2012, his coalition had won 16 out of 17 national elections due to successful consciousness-raising and politicization among the masses.
<p>
Unfortunately, while Chávez successfully redistributed wealth and reduced inequality, his economic policies caused the productive sectors of the economy to decline. Though there was a big imbalance in the economy even before he was elected, with petroleum emphasized at the expense of everything else, this trend increased during the Chávez presidency.
<p>
Some of the major policy mistakes were:
<p>
1. Maintaining strict currency controls that led to an overvalued currency. While this was done to insure that goods were cheap, and it worked for some time, it made imported goods much cheaper than anything that could be produced locally. These currency controls were probably the most damaging mistake, because they destroyed the foundation of the local economy, hurting both industry and agriculture. Oil money was used to import even essential food products.
<p>
2. Strict currency controls created opportunities for high level corruption. As the official exchange rate was always lower than the parallel market rate, importation permits became an invitation to make a huge profit from the difference. Government officials who granted these permits could make enormous amounts in bribes. Whereas corruption is an old problem throughout Latin America and the world, it has spread in all areas of government, and become one of the biggest problems of the country. This year, a report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found that Venezuelans were among the top Swiss clients of HSBC, holding more than $14.8 billion in secret accounts, more than any other country except Switzerland and the UK.
<p>
3. The government subsidizes gasoline, selling it for only US$0.02 per liter. Since this is significantly less than the actual cost of extraction, refining and transport, the government is paying for every liter that is sold. More than 40 percent the gasoline sold in Venezuela is smuggled to neighboring countries, creating another very lucrative source of corruption.
<p>
4. Following the Marxist model of rigid price controls for all essential items has meant that neither Venezuelan private businesses nor even cooperatives can afford to produce basic necessities. With inflation at more than 60 percent per year, fixed price controls have forced many manufacturers and retail businesses into crisis and, in many cases, failure. Chávez took over companies that he considered were making excess profits, but the newly nationalized enterprises were not managed effectively. As a result many of the nationalized companies became liabilities to the government rather than assets.
<p>
5. From 2002 to 2006, the government actively promoted cooperatives. However, due to a lack of training in managerial skills and insufficient access to finance, as well as the very difficult business climate, more than two-thirds of the more than 200,000 registered co-ops failed. After that Chávez withdrew support for them, and instead promoted “socialist enterprises” that the government owned and controlled.
<p>
These economic failures provided the opposition with an opportunity to attack the social and redistributive policies of Chávez, when in fact they were not to blame for the failure. Had the proper economic policies been put in place, Chávez’s social reforms would have worked well.
<p>
The capitalist-led opposition attempted a military overthrow of Chávez in 2002 with U.S. government knowledge and support; two days later the masses and the military united and brought him back from the island naval base where he was held prisoner. After that, Chávez became much more strident in his rhetoric about class warfare against the oligarchy, calling them “squalids.” He announced that he was committed to “the elimination of capitalism” and to “socialism for the twenty-first century.” Socialist and military values have influenced the masses to a great extent in terms of participatory democracy, grassroots communal councils, frequent military parades, the new national police force and other initiatives.
<p>
The U.S. press regularly condemns "human rights abuses" and "the corruption of democracy" in Venezuela. However, none of the incidents are comparable to Mexico, where human rights workers and journalists are regularly murdered, or to Colombia where more trade unionists are killed than anywhere else; still the United States gives both these countries huge amounts of financial aid, including military and police funding and weapons. The Carter Center, after observing several elections in Venezuela, along with delegations from the European Union and the Organization of American States, has publicly declared that the country has the "freest and fairest elections in the Americas."
<p>
On March 9, 2015 President Barak Obama declared “a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela.” What threat could Venezuela possibly hold for the greatest military power on earth?
<p>
It is the threat of a good example. If a country replaces free market capitalism with a socialist economic system, and people’s living standards improve, it would send a signal all over the world that an alternative exists to the economic, political and military domination of the United States.
<p>
U.S. corporations have been making tremendous profits from their business in Venezuela for decades; now, according to Reuters, 40 of them, all members of the S&P 500, together face a total loss of at least $11 billion due to currency restrictions and the devaluation of the Venezuelan currency.
<p>
The U.S. government has openly funded $90 million to Venezuelan opposition parties since 2000 with the pretext of "promoting democracy". Of course the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has also covertly funded strikes and economic sabotage, armed proxy armies, and assassinated heads of state. The list of U.S. interventions includes Guatemala, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Congo, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Nicaragua, Granada, Chile, Panama, Brazil, Ghana, Greece, Uruguay, Angola, Jamaica, the Philippines, Honduras, Fiji, Surinam, Guyana, South Yemen, Chad, Bolivia, Peru, Algeria, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti.
<p>
What are the lessons that Hugo Chávez taught us about social change? First that a radical anti-capitalist message can resonate with the poor even though it may alienate the rich―the radical parties Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece have succeeded with this approach. Second, that after 500 years of European descendants heading all the governments of Latin American, it is possible for people of color like Chávez, Lula de Silva of Brazil, and Evo Morales of Bolívia, to usher in Leftist governments. Third, that it is possible to mobilize the poor to win elections, and by creating social programs that benefit them, to do it again and again. Fourth, that by strengthening ties with other countries of the Global South, it is possible to forge new alliances and new institutions independent of the United States, such as Telesur TV, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) and the Bank of the South. Fifth, these new alliances can provide enough strength to successfully stand up to the might of the United States and win.
<p>
We should learn from Chávez’s mistakes as well. Good political policies and poverty reduction are not substitutes for sound economic policies. Both are necessary to have a long term impact.
<p>
Chávez also failed to effectively tackle corruption; violent crime rose to dangerous levels during his rule, as well. In his constant preoccupation with votes, he turned a blind eye to evidence of corruption by some influential party leaders; if he had courageously launched popular educational campaigns about ethics in every level of school and in the popular media, and if he had denounced and punished wrongdoers, ending impunity, he would have actually strengthened the Bolivarian Revolution.
<p>
Another disappointment is that Chávez did not encourage constructive criticism by his followers, nor did he open channels for respectful dialogue and listening to complaints with members of the opposition; a more inclusive stand, like the Occupy slogan, “We are the 99 percent,” could have won the allegiance of many good people among the middle class.
<p>
Otto van Bismarck said, “Politics is the art of the possible.” For activists around the world, Hugo Chávez dramatically showed the possibilities of changing a society within a short period. Activists have a lot to learn from Hugo Chávez, both from what he got right and from what he got wrong.
<p>
<p>
Dada Maheshvarananda is yogic monk, activist and writer. He is the director of the Prout Research Institute of Venezuela. He can be reached at maheshvarananda@prout.org.ve, and website www.priven.org.Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-23869979005550270652014-11-17T11:57:00.001+00:002014-11-17T11:57:36.548+00:00The Hero's Journey and the Spiritual Path<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrOS13KMg-e2wGTeADTVWtMTVOx-KNeik08tuHnZH86CZB3oRMqQlAqaGRikPv5sN8p27HWdNs7uZAPYhzjhEZJ1ZybUWSGw7Q1Qi4AkOUAAKXrKOM0JO2mJj2ixng-iJc_F07/s1600/398px-Heroesjourney.svg+-+copia.2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrOS13KMg-e2wGTeADTVWtMTVOx-KNeik08tuHnZH86CZB3oRMqQlAqaGRikPv5sN8p27HWdNs7uZAPYhzjhEZJ1ZybUWSGw7Q1Qi4AkOUAAKXrKOM0JO2mJj2ixng-iJc_F07/s320/398px-Heroesjourney.svg+-+copia.2.png" /></a></div>
The spiritual path is in one sense very rational and scientific. We encourage everyone to meditate and improve their health with a natural lifestyle, and there is an ever growing mountain of scientific papers and mainstream media programs supporting the value of these techniques in reducing stress. At the same time, often hidden from the public view, there is tremendous fierceness, magic, and mystery on the spiritual path. I would like to point out the power of these mysteries by comparing them to the work of American historian Joseph Campbell.
<p>
Campbell (1904-1987) studied myths, religions, and narratives from around the world. His famous advice, “Follow your bliss”, came from the phrase satcitananda in the ancient Upanishads, which translates as “being, consciousness, bliss”, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence. Campbell said he wasn’t sure about “being” and “consciousness”, but he could understand “bliss”! He taught many years at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York, at that time an all-women’s institution. He always told his graduating students, “Whatever you do, don’t do what Daddy says, because he is only interested in your security. If you bargain away your life for security now, you will never find your bliss.”
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<a href="http://themyrobalanseed.wordpress.com/2014/11/07/the-heros-journey-and-the-spiritual-path/">Read more:</a>Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-53715031972609849622014-07-08T16:29:00.001+00:002014-11-17T11:50:07.656+00:00Letter to Korean Readers of "After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action", to be published this month<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsnJhW2V8yTcEtfJEJYE9CIUCGI829HfRrRO-Eq2MwxOU_gJz7_VlvUOgSvQm2cS4AjyW4YQQiFFVsrBxLRdw0eNDm-sGbQi-pZ-ILXk2sRaE6GI9WoGNjOkwvnbUpDKMlS2TK/s1600/ac_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsnJhW2V8yTcEtfJEJYE9CIUCGI829HfRrRO-Eq2MwxOU_gJz7_VlvUOgSvQm2cS4AjyW4YQQiFFVsrBxLRdw0eNDm-sGbQi-pZ-ILXk2sRaE6GI9WoGNjOkwvnbUpDKMlS2TK/s320/ac_1.jpg" /></a></div>It is an honor to have this opportunity, through the kindness of the publisher, Hansalim (Mosim and Salim Institute), and the translator, my good friend Dada Cittarainjanananda, to have this opportunity to write to you directly.
<p>
In recent history the Korean people have suffered terribly from the effects of three ideologies: fascist imperialism, communism and capitalism. Whereas the effects of the first two are obvious, the third, capitalism, is a little more insidious. You live in what many would consider to be a very successful society, the world's 12th largest economy. And yet, consumerism, selfishness and greed are clearly infecting every society including Korea. According to Forbes magazine, at the time of this writing, South Korea has 27 billionaires, each with a wealth ranging from 1 to 13 billion dollars, and 10 of the world's largest 500 corporations. Sadly, poverty and inequality continue to plague Korea. Capitalism works well for some people, but not for everyone.
<p>
Capitalism has permitted chaebol to dominate the economy while giving little power to common people. The heavy concentration of population and resources in greater Seoul weakens the rest of the country. Greed has engendered cronyism and patronage.
<p>
A recent book in English by my friend, activist and scholar George Katsiaficas (assisted by his recently deceased wife, Shin Eun-jung), "Asia's Unknown Uprisings Volume 1: South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century" (“May Spring” will publish the book in Korean in May 2015) explores the impact protest movements fighting dictatorships have had on Korea's society. From the Tonghak uprising, independence movement and anti-Japanese resistance, to the overthrow of Syngman Rhee, resistance to Park Chung-hee and Jeon Du-hwan, as well as student, labor, and feminist movements, these have all made profound changes in the collective consciousness.
<p>
The Gwangju Uprising, from May 18 to 27, 1980, is especially significant, as an example of how first students, and then hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life, could unite in solidarity, compassion and cooperation.
<p>
This spirit of solidarity and cooperation symbolizes the way forward for Korea. And I believe that the Progressive Utilization Theory (Prout) is a socio-economic model that can improve the quality of life for all Koreans. As a practical alternative to both communism and capitalism, I believe it has the potential to reunite the tragic political division of the Korean people.
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The history of the cooperative movement in Korea has an inspiring list of accomplishments that we can learn from: the Poolmoo school's incubation of co-operatives starting in 1959, Blue Cross Medical Co-op, the Yangseo Co-op, the consumer cooperative movement (with a total membership today of half a million). The new “Framework law on cooperatives”, passed in 2011 with support from all political parties and government, is a significant step forward, allowing as few as five persons to easily form a co-op with legal protection. I am especially honored that this book is published by Hansalim, the largest grass-roots co-op in Korea with half a million members.
<p>
You have great treasures that are also great tools in this struggle: your beautiful language, culture and landscape. As I explain in this book, "our culture is our strength", for it unites people and gives them the strength to overcome the greatest obstacles. For example, your expression, "uri nara" (which means "our country"), is significant, because in Korean, unlike most other languages, the emphasis is on "our" and not "my" country. Your land, your society, belongs to everyone. And this is a fundamental idea of Prout: that the resources, the land, the water, the air belongs to everyone and we need to share it, not privatize it, for the welfare of all.
<p>
Though I do not speak Korean, I would be happy to hear your critical feedback and suggestions. Please write to me in English at maheshvarananda@prout.org.ve or in Korean via my translator and friend, Dada Cittarainjanananda at dadacitananda@gmail.com.Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-83911105013267359042014-03-17T17:23:00.001+00:002014-03-17T17:29:44.394+00:00Irish Trade Union magazine "Liberty" reviews "After Capitalism" from a Marxist perspective<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYHj4g4YR1JBmUnCGhY8W7Pi8MiJgfjgUeuvrH-T-S9fbZKwuHF_9r0fF0zf0KPHsX5I3sM2lsWVgdQ8IgUaRJFtvWEg7MvoUQk0Y05S26l2awqG0XrFGayUkxL6oGkr3yu0ll/s1600/Liberty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYHj4g4YR1JBmUnCGhY8W7Pi8MiJgfjgUeuvrH-T-S9fbZKwuHF_9r0fF0zf0KPHsX5I3sM2lsWVgdQ8IgUaRJFtvWEg7MvoUQk0Y05S26l2awqG0XrFGayUkxL6oGkr3yu0ll/s320/Liberty.jpg" /></a></div><i></i>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPkWIjYeSpl21GMwH2HW5lD6nLBBf7bxdwEHJmWuV7BtkdofOzrElMn1PdTQzQdyMxpgSdXJnSLzSzYLSJN2J9gG89RdPc6nY6jxQ30vqDTpPBaZD1K2bdKxSZX5rzRZxh8Ir4/s1600/LibertyMarch2014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPkWIjYeSpl21GMwH2HW5lD6nLBBf7bxdwEHJmWuV7BtkdofOzrElMn1PdTQzQdyMxpgSdXJnSLzSzYLSJN2J9gG89RdPc6nY6jxQ30vqDTpPBaZD1K2bdKxSZX5rzRZxh8Ir4/s640/LibertyMarch2014.jpg" /></a></div>Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-42147293625326031362014-02-19T21:30:00.001+00:002014-02-19T22:01:50.268+00:00Speaking Tour of USAIt was a magical week in Ireland. After meeting the president and visiting beautiful <a href="http://www.sunrisefarmireland.org/">Sunrise Farm Master Unit</a>, I gave a presentation about Prout in downtown Dublin to 45 participants. One wrote, "Your powerful presentation and the discussions it catalyzed were a lovely reminder of the hope, potential and compassion that exists here in Ireland."
<p>
I'm now starting a four-week tour of the United States. My cellphone is: 336-567-6912. I'd love to meet or talk with you.
<p>
Fri 21 Feb Dudley, MA, Nichols College 3:45pm talk <a href="http://www.golocalworcester.com/politics/nichols-college-to-host-lecture-on-economic-democracy-this-friday/">"Economic Democracy in Latin America and USA"</a><p>
Sun 23 Feb New Brunswick, New Jersey, wedding of Ananda Mayii and Brahmadeva<p>
Mon 24 Feb Washington, DC 8:55am and 10:20am American University yoga classes, Bethesda, MD 7pm Shanti Yoga Ashram presentation in Spanish "Democracia Económica en América Latina y EE.UU."<p>
Tue 25 Feb Maryland, BCC High School Peace Studies classes at 7:25am, 8:30am, at Wilson High School 9:25am, at 1:10pm American University class<p>
Wed 26 Feb Asheville, NC Warren Wilson College 7pm Cooperative Games workshop<p>
Thu 27 Feb Asheville, NC, 4pm radio interview, 7pm talk at Skyland/Sth Buncombe Co. Library<p>
Fri 28 Feb Asheville, NC 10am "Intro to Peace and Justice Studies" Warren Wilson College<p>
Sat 1 Mar Asheville, NC 9am-5pm <a href="http://pramainstitute.org/blog/break-free-from-the-competitive-paradigm-become-a-cooperative-leader-march-1st-2014/">Cooperative Leadership Development seminar</a> with Satya Tanner at Co-luminate, 69A Biltmore Ave<p>
Sun 2 Mar Asheville, NC 3pm collective meditation<p>
Mon 3 Mar Virgi college tour with Clark Webb<p>
Tue 4 Mar Radford Universityudent Center (Bonnie Hall) 7-9pm "Using Meditation to Build a Cooperative World"<p>
Wed 5 Mar Virginia colletour with Clark Webb<p>
Th6 Mar Virginia college tour with Clark Webb<p>
Fri 7 Mar Blacksburg, VA Virginia Tech 10 AM radio interview<p>
Sat Mar Blacksburg, VA 10am-4pm SeminAkke's Yoga Place "Usineditation to Build a Corative World"<p>
Sun 9 Mar Blacksburg, VA<p>
Wed 12 Mar Chicago, 6pm Open invitation dinner party at the hoof <a href="http://www.billayers.org/">Bill Ayers</a> & Bernardine Dohrn, 1329 E. 50tt.<p>
Thu 13 Mar Chicago, public talk<p>
Fri 14 Mar Madison, WI<p>
Sat 15 Madison, WI<p>
Sun 16 Mar Terre Haute, IN Unitarian Church, evening talk on "Meditation & Yoga: Practicing Social Justice"<p>
Mon 17 Mar Terre Haute, 6pm Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College<p>
Tue 18 Mar Terre Haute, Indiana State University <a href="http://www.indstate.edu/hrd/presenters.htm">Human Rights Day speaker</a> <p>
Wed 19 Mar fly home to VenezuelaDada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-54713382392693004942014-02-16T18:26:00.002+00:002014-02-16T18:28:30.179+00:00Meeting with the President of Ireland<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBZ6d0WoPNE0O-2-FZ89Xp94Zek8gwihA-9LRK-lEBnp6JWD0lP7UJm2CTpDNUuALfNIY23wMLO4LeEmioCqNAnEMB5a6n5ujnE4Eohr0EdeaImJsdqOGFQB3TYgZHzVME10aM/s1600/IMG_2082.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBZ6d0WoPNE0O-2-FZ89Xp94Zek8gwihA-9LRK-lEBnp6JWD0lP7UJm2CTpDNUuALfNIY23wMLO4LeEmioCqNAnEMB5a6n5ujnE4Eohr0EdeaImJsdqOGFQB3TYgZHzVME10aM/s320/IMG_2082.JPG" /></a></div>
<b>Meeting with President Michael D. Higgins of Ireland in Áras an Uachtaráin, the president's official residence, Dublin, on February 12, 2014</b>
<p>
The military attache who showed us into the beautiful historic reception room set up with tea and coffee explained where I should stand and greet the president when he entered. When Niall asked him how long the meeting would last he said, "That completely depends on the president, but I would expect between 10-20 minutes." In fact the meeting lasted almost an hour.
<p>
The president had invited Ruairí McKiernan, a young social entrepreneur and self-described community troublemaker who had organized the Dalai Lama's visit to Ireland, to attend. After the photos were taken, the president asked the reception assistants to bring orange juice for me, and his attache to bring in his Prout books. The copy of <i>After Capitalism</i> that Niall had mailed him had several book markers.
<p>
He said, "I've marked up my copy a lot. I know Marcos Arruda who wrote the preface to <i>After Capitalism</i>. We met during the Earth Summit in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro when I was minister for the environment. We made a documentary together."
<p>
President Higgins repeated several times, "This book is remarkable. It needs wide circulation." He expressed his gratitude to "this wonderful person, Niall," who had sent it to him. He explained that he had tried to find Niall's telephone but it wasn't listed, so I joked that he wasn't as "efficient" as the NSA. Then he suddenly asked Niall, "Why haven't you made this book available to the public?" The president then suggested various publishers and trade union leaders that we should approach this week while I am here in Ireland.
<p>
The president opened his copy of the book and read to us one paragraph: "The International Monetary Fund in 2009 estimated the total value of the world’s economy to be US$70.21 trillion. And yet the total world derivatives market in the second half of 2009 has been estimated at about US$615 trillion, more than eight times the size of the entire global economy!" And now it is even more than that, he emphasized.
<p>
He felt the second Prout book that Niall had sent him, "Principles of a Balanced Economy" by Roar Bjonnes is also very good, but it's more a handbook for cooperativists.
<p>
He talked about the discourse on language, how it has been subverted by the neo-liberal agenda. He said that the media throughout Europe now talks about "the tax burden" as though it should be avoided completely, not that it is part of our social responsibility. He asked me, how to change the discourse of institutions? How to get this into the discourse?
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His experiences in Nicaragua, and El Salvador, with international human rights delegations. He said he knew one woman who was killed. He later stood with the woman's grandmother at the Monument to Memory and Truth in El Salvador that has the names of 47,000 names of people who lost their lives during The Salvadoran Civil War (1979–1992). Sadly, he said, the children who were refugees always made drawings of helicopters.
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He said at the World Economic Forum that takes place each year in Davos, Switzerland, all the people "have ashes in their mouths". The politicians keep going, but they keep mouthing the same thing because they haven't got any vision.
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I gave President Higgins a copy of "Notes and Recommendations on the Irish Economy" by the Institute for New Economic Futures (INEF -- see <a href="http://www.beyondtheeurocrisis.org/">www.beyondtheeurocrisis.org</a>). I explained that seven Proutist economists in different countries had contributed to this 13-page proposal how to make the Ireland more self-reliant and resilient to global financial crises. That 400,000 Irish, mostly young people, have left the country since the 2008 crisis looking for work in other countries is a tragedy.
<p>
He feels there is a great misunderstanding in Europe about Latin America.
<p>
He talked about the different religions that depend on their holy book and about the fatalism of India. I agreed that there are dogmas in both the West and the East that are divisive, and how spirituality, on the other hand, is all-inclusive.
<p>
He was very impressed about Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar and said, "Anyone who can fast for five years on only two cups of yoghurt a day must be very strong!"
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After the hour passed with this charming conversation, President Higgins graciously apologized for taking so much of my time. When we said farewell, he embraced me. Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-22262921115357942412014-02-05T19:58:00.002+00:002014-02-05T20:00:39.758+00:00Radio Interview with Greg Moffitt on his Show "Legalize Freedom"A one-hour interview on Greg Moffitt's radio show, "Legalize Freedom": <a href="http://legalise-freedom.com/radio/dada-maheshvarananda-after-capitalism-economic-democracy-in-action/">Listen to show</a>...
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSLHDCmGwGTSQNJOmhffzotpFHI1uKY5l72iqlPQih78LtSoSNOee6mHRW3RBmOlQcv_OOJEafD2pxRibCnWcU9lazmJVdMHVyj054Fixpyzi6463VLpDAFORo-A6DqQDRALnF/s1600/Greg_Moffitt.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSLHDCmGwGTSQNJOmhffzotpFHI1uKY5l72iqlPQih78LtSoSNOee6mHRW3RBmOlQcv_OOJEafD2pxRibCnWcU9lazmJVdMHVyj054Fixpyzi6463VLpDAFORo-A6DqQDRALnF/s320/Greg_Moffitt.jpg" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8fzclsxBGdaBsnmL1ckQgOMSe6lw4ZJhMibyuE-VD9WW-NnCQjaKZLHrAGqvM6GGKOe4WdpfH_PIKC7IXfvPP2psdkAJ8lLanpGkzfKJ_SSObK4DyvzN9gGaqLNj0b6NybXph/s1600/Legalize+Freedom.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8fzclsxBGdaBsnmL1ckQgOMSe6lw4ZJhMibyuE-VD9WW-NnCQjaKZLHrAGqvM6GGKOe4WdpfH_PIKC7IXfvPP2psdkAJ8lLanpGkzfKJ_SSObK4DyvzN9gGaqLNj0b6NybXph/s320/Legalize+Freedom.jpg" /></a>Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-13544940616341546402013-12-01T13:09:00.000+00:002013-12-01T13:22:59.215+00:00Review of After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action - Monthly Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZJP_ppKs771uS6alnuceSK1ZAsHwn_eNKrVwka24F6g_imV28nZ4CvUYfk0hFR1FqZBdAhu-ml2v5n50pg6FKsUgFK3Ku_CeX-b7a-S5T-po_L8Nl82atiJ50YwjABJGKRLtw/s1600/mr1113cvr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZJP_ppKs771uS6alnuceSK1ZAsHwn_eNKrVwka24F6g_imV28nZ4CvUYfk0hFR1FqZBdAhu-ml2v5n50pg6FKsUgFK3Ku_CeX-b7a-S5T-po_L8Nl82atiJ50YwjABJGKRLtw/s400/mr1113cvr.jpg" /></a></div>
<a href="http://monthlyreview.org/2013/11/01/its-the-system-stupid">
<b>It’s the System Stupid: Structural Crises and the Need for Alternatives to Capitalism :: <i>Monthly Review</a></i></b>
<p>
by <b>Hans G. Despain</b>, who teaches political economy at Nichols College, where he is the Chair of the Department of Economics.
<p>
On Thursday, December 13, 2012, <i>The Guardian</i> announced Queen Elizabeth finally received an answer to her question—“Did nobody see this coming?”—about the 2008 financial crisis.1 While she was touring the Bank of England, Sujit Kapadia, one of the bank’s economists, informed Her Majesty that financial crises are a bit like earthquakes and flu pandemics: rare and difficult to predict. An impressive answer indeed. Brilliant for its vagueness, spuriousness, and obtuseness.
<p>
However, Kapadia is simply wrong not to have explained that many economists, financiers, and regulators anticipated and predicted the financial collapse.2 Additionally, metaphors of natural disasters are highly misleading. Financial crises are not inevitable occurrences, but historical, human-created, and contingent phenomena.
<p>
Her Majesty had asked: “Did nobody see this coming?” Perhaps she could have also asked three more questions: Does nobody see the suffering and socioeconomic injustices of oligopolistic-finance capitalism? Does no one see that the problems are structural and systemic? And is there no alternative to a system that generates continuous “quadruple crises”—the socioeconomic, political, environmental, and personal/psychological?3
<p>
The conventional wisdom is “There Is No Alternative,” or TINA. For this reason most Americans simply acquiesce to capitalistic social relations and, like Sisyphus, are resigned to performing eternal tasks while enduring the “endless” quadruple crises generated by a pathological system.
<p>
The most extraordinary aspect concerning the absence of an alternative is that it is fallacious. The capitalistic system itself must be transformed. To put it into a slogan: Capitalism Is No Alternative, or CINA.
<p>
Four recent books provide radical and practical alternative visions for both the workplace and the economy more generally. Rick Wolff’s <i>Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism</i> (2012), David Schweickart’s <i>After Capitalism</i> (2011), Gar Alperovitz’s <i>America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy</i> (2011), and Dada Maheshvarananda’s <i>After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action</i> (2012). One important aspect shared by each of these books is that each was either written, or expanded and reissued, in reaction to the crisis of 2008 and the Occupy movement of 2011. All four books provide highly practical calls to action which are capable of transforming the economy and democratizing the workplace.
<p>
Before describing this exciting and inspiring work, two points should be underscored. First, these four books are merely the tip of the alternative-society iceberg, and focusing on them specifically is merely a way to put at rest the misconception of TINA and the correctness of CINA. Second, CINA literature has always involved disagreement and debate, but unfortunately, none of the four authors provided other alternative models to CINA besides their preferred one. The intention here is to provide an overview for the existence of highly innovative and practical responses to the economic collapse and ensuing protests. These turbulent last four years are only a beginning to a revolutionary era of transformation away from capitalism. Each of these books is very well-written, well-reasoned, and well-argued, and all of them offer practical models to CINA.
<p>
Alperovitz underscores the fact that in capitalism there is a “democratic deficit.”4 In the United States it is proclaimed that there is a democracy in the political realm. But once an individual enters the economic realm—when we enter the typical workplace—democracy is abandoned and totalitarianism runs supreme. Even within the political realm, oligopolization and political lobbying have put at peril any sense of a democratic process, and citizens have almost no say in government.5Wolff reminds us that democracy is inconsistent with the production of surplus-value in capitalism and the profit motive.6Schweickart and Maheshvarananda both maintain that democracy is not possible in capitalistic labor relations, or in financial markets under the hegemony of oligopolistic financial enterprises.7 Thus, there is not only a “democratic deficit” but a “democratic contradiction” within the capitalistic mode of production.
<p>
All these authors also underscore the social pathologies generated by capitalism. For example, in the United States one in four workers are employed in low-wage work with no benefits, no health care, no retirement, and no paid sick days or leave for family caregiving. One in two workers make less than $25,000 per year.
<p>
Each of these authors point out that the processes of concentration and centralization generate not only massive inequality in income and wealth, but also in opportunity, education, and quality of life. Furthermore, economic inequality has generated political inequality, and has given rise to noxious levels and forms of political lobbying, business predation, venomous forms of rent-seeking, and the emergence of the Predator State.8
<p>
Most investments in contemporary capitalism are highly speculative and short-term, rather than productive and long-term. Debt is ubiquitous. Furthermore, there is a strong tendency in capitalistic production to either ignore or exploit the natural environment.
<p>
Wolff, Schweickart, Alperovitz, and Maheshvarananda each present practical and detailed blueprints for democratizing the U.S. workplace. They each provide alternative models to socioeconomic pathologies that constitute the ontology of capitalism. These four alternative models are not incompatible with each other, but rather highly complementary.
<p>
In parts 1 and 2 of his book, Wolff details the perpetual historical crises of capitalistic development, and the contradictory action of the government in wake of the crisis of 2008. In the third part, Wolff argues the “cure” is worker’s self-directed enterprises (WSDE). Wolff describes how these enterprises will work internally, and fit within market economies in particular, and in modern society in general. He explains how they extend democracy and give workers far more control, self-efficacy, and responsibility for their lives. Finally, he offers a very practical policy strategy to help brings these enterprises into being.
<p>
Schweickart’s book may be the most impressive in its combination of practicality, critique of TINA, argument for CINA, and accessibility to the layperson. According to Schweickart, because of the failures of capitalism (i.e., CINA), “counterprojects” are always present as a “challenge to capitalism.”9
<p>
Schweickart offers a moral and ethical critique of capitalism, along with presenting the negative socioeconomic effects the dynamics and (law-like) tendencies produce on human beings within the system in the form of inequality, unemployment, overwork, poverty, economic instability, and environmental degradation. Schweickart argues that his alternative model to CINA constitutes “Economic Democracy,” supports workplaces that are “worker self-managed,” offers social control of investment with socialist savings and loan associations, and sees the government as the “Employer-of-Last-Resort.”
<p>
Schweickart maintains his model is fully capable of overcoming the moral and ethical problems of capitalism, as well as the negative economic effects of its dynamics. For Schweickart the historical “counterprojects” of capitalism are historical proof of capitalistic failure. In the last several pages, Schweickart demonstrates that his “counterproject” is not utopian but a practical historical result of the failures of capitalism and CINA.
<p>
Alperovitz understands capitalism, as well as the “too big to fail” and “too big to succeed” oligopolies, as inadequate for the needs of most people. For him, CINA is the social reality for the majority of people. However, he is less interested than Wolff and Schweickart in detailing the historical facts of capitalistic failure, and far more interested in demonstrating how Americans are reacting to the failure. Alperovitz believes that given the political impasse, whereby the system neither “reforms” nor “collapses” in crisis, there is a (potential) economic revolution underway, in the emergence of “worker-owned firms.” He considers the economic impact and political capacity of these endeavors, and explains how these worker-owned firms change the lives of workers, democratize communities, improve the environment, and promote ecological sustainability.
<p>
The United States has 29,000 cooperatives, and the National Cooperative Business Association says they employ over 2 million people, own more than $3 trillion dollars in assets, generate $500 billion in revenue, and pay $75 billion in wages and benefits. There are also hundreds of worker-owned firms, analogous to the Mondragon Corporation of Spain, emerging as viable alternatives to hierarchical, undemocratic, oligopolistically dominated, capitalist enterprises.
<p>
Alperovitz urges that we embrace and nurture these enterprises and help to “rebuild” a “pluralistic commonwealth” on the basis of smaller and more human-orientated, worker-owned firms. He maintains that they have the potential to renew a sense of community, and believes they demonstrate that the production process and activity of “business” can be beneficial to workers and community. Finally, worker-owned firms generate values of cooperation, communal responsibility, and social ethics, in addition to personal pride, achievement, and worth.
<p>
Maheshvarananda’s book outlines the failures and pathologies of “multinational corporate” capitalism. He argues that Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar’s PROgressive Utilization Theory, or PROUT economics, already exists as a well-developed alternative to both capitalism and state socialism. PROUT has important similarities with both Marxism and Participatory Economics, but its real philosophical basis is in Tantra Yoga, with influences from Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism (especially Zen).
<p>
PROUT’s economic principles are that: (1) all citizens deserve the minimum requirements of life of food, shelter, clothing, medical care, and education; (2) employment is guaranteed; (3) the progressive use of science and technology and a federal institution geared toward research and development should be promoted; (4) the federal political system must include decentralized planning at the level of the local economy, with balanced development of what is needed by local citizens; (5) a three-tier economic system that supports privately owned small businesses, cooperatively owned medium and large businesses, and government-run large industries must be created; (6) “decentralized self-sufficient” local economies should be maximized; and, (7) crucial to PROUT, are the cooperatively owned businesses.
<p>
The cooperatively owned businesses referred to must be locally owned and run. They are meant to replace the above socioeconomic pathologies, and would be the largest part of a Proutian economy. According to Maheshvarananda, they will radically transform class relations, class struggle, and generate new perspectives on class.
<p>
Maheshvarananda, much like Wolff, Schweickart, and Alperovitz, believes that the activity needed for the democratization of the workplace and economy is already underway. Maheshvarananda offers many existing examples of Proutian enterprises. Most of these are the same discussed by Schweickart and Alperovitz, including the Mondragon cooperative in Spain and Evergreen in Cleveland. However, Maheshvarananda also offers extensive details of cooperatives in Venezuela, where he has founded a PROUT research institute.
<p>
In addition to mending the social pathologies of capitalism, he explains how Proutianism promotes leisure, spirituality, and a new humanistic ethic. He also insists that a transformation away from capitalism is urgently needed for environmental production and a new Agrarian Revolution to save the planet and human life. In this sense, Maheshvarananda is far more ambitious than Wolff, Schweickart, and Alperovitz, and is sure to be far more controversial for left-wing theorists and activists.
<p>
Wolff, Schweickart, and Alperovitz have developed models of WSDE, economic democracy, and worker-owned firms as emergent realities, but have given less thought toward the longer term goals. Maheshvarananda has in mind a very long-term alternative to capitalism. It requires not only transformation in the workplace, but transformations in the political dimension. On the one hand, it could be argued his vision is far more remote, while on the other hand, once the transformation within the workplace begins, the ripple effect could be massive and sudden. For this reason Maheshvarananda’s perspective can be understood in highly practical terms and can be seen as complementary to the works of the other three. Indeed Maheshvarananda’s second to last chapter is titled “A Call to Action: Strategies for Implementing Prout.” In his last chapter, “A Conversation with Noam Chomsky,” they discuss the importance of the Occupy Movement, raising consciousness of resistance, extending democracy and cooperatives, and limiting wealth accumulation within North and South America.
<p>
Clearly all four of these revolutionary thinkers believe the time to transform society is now, the time to democratize the workplace is now, the time to recognize CINA and finally absent capitalism from existence is now. These books are a call to, and for, action. Their call to action is radically consistent with systemic theories of capitalism, and with the understanding of capitalism’s normal state as stagnation, periodic financial collapse, and individual worker hardship. Although there is certain to be disagreement as to explanations of the quadruple crises of global capitalism and in the models of alternative societies to today’s failed system or CINA, there is no room to claim TINA!
<p>
Notes<p>
1. Rupert Neate , “Queen Finally Finds Out Why No One Saw the Financial Crisis Coming,” Guardian, December 13, 2012, <a href="http://theguardian.com">http://theguardian.com</a>; Sam Greenhill, “‘It’s Awful–Why Did Nobody See It Coming?’: The Queen Gives Her Verdict on Global Credit Crunch,” MailOnline, November 5, 2008, <a href="http://dailymail.co.uk">http://dailymail.co.uk</a>.
<p>
2. For a list, although incomplete, see Tracy Alloway, “Who Saw It Coming and the Primacy of Accounting,” FT Alphaville, July 13, 2009; Hans G. Despain “Book Review of Foster and Magdoff, The Great Financial Crisis,” <i>Journal of Economic Issues</i> 42, no. 4 (December 2009): 1075–77.
<p>
3. The “political” crisis includes wars, terror, and protests. See Hans G. Despain, “Economic Policy and the Rise of Global Violence and Terrorism,” <i>The Humanist: A Magazine for Critical Inquiry and Social Concern</i>, July 2004, 26–30.
<p>
4. Gar Alperovitz, <i>America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy</i> (Takoma Park, MD: Democracy Collaborative Press, 2011), 50.
<p>
5. Joseph E. Stiglitz, <i>The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future</i> (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012); James K. Galbraith, <i>The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too</i> (New York: Free Press, 2008).
<p>
6. Richard D. Wolff, <i>Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism</i> (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012), 149.
<p>
7. David Schweickart, <i>After Capitalism</i> (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 152, 105; Dada Maheshvarananda, <i>After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action</i> (San Germán, Puerto Rico: InnerWorld Publications, 2012), 80.
<p>
8. On political inequality, see Stiglitz, <i>The Price of Inequality</i>. Also for an even more sustained argument see Larry M. Bartels, <i>Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age</i> (New York: Princeton University Press, 2008). The main thesis of Stiglitz, <i>The Price of Inequality</i>, is rent-seeking; see chapter 2. Also see Barry C. Lynn, <i>Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction</i> (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011) for dozens and dozens examples of how oligopolistic firms supersede the constraints of the market and use their sheer size, vast resources, and endless political power to control and direct virtually every industry in the United States, effectively reinstituting the monopoly power of sixteenth-century feudalism. For the “predator state,” see Galbraith, <i>The Predator State</i>.
<p>
9. ↩David Schweickart, <i>After Capitalism</i> (New York: Rowman & Littlefield,2011), 5.
Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-84754834443578418842013-06-30T20:14:00.002+00:002013-06-30T21:26:08.032+00:00Centro Madre Banner<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxjyOB7fN-IHzpbZ1JneuCycGO-Ze01Nq4QPed8wPvFGUOqQYdn1xNJ30z1tbh0RgVCHhiD5eOlYc3NINqQbyYZowdaYIVZ9ip3aY7XI7yziQiGsPOwHBckQS5AnjvVLi4NM6S/s756/Pendone+Centro+Madre-20x26.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxjyOB7fN-IHzpbZ1JneuCycGO-Ze01Nq4QPed8wPvFGUOqQYdn1xNJ30z1tbh0RgVCHhiD5eOlYc3NINqQbyYZowdaYIVZ9ip3aY7XI7yziQiGsPOwHBckQS5AnjvVLi4NM6S/s756/Pendone+Centro+Madre-20x26.jpg" /></a>Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-29244306972595792102013-05-24T02:53:00.001+00:002013-05-24T02:53:25.317+00:00My talk in BaltimoreStephen Roblin is a Baltimore-based activist and writer. He is a member of the Indypendent Reader collective and the International Organization for a Participation Society (IOPS). He recorded the talk I gave at Red Emma's collective bookstore in Baltimore on April 16, 2013. <a href="http://indyreader.org/content/dada-maheshvarananda-presents-after-capitalism">Watch it here.<a href="http://indyreader.org/content/dada-maheshvarananda-presents-after-capitalism"></a></a> Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-42510812138402104232013-05-01T15:48:00.000+00:002013-05-01T16:00:07.353+00:00Stumping for Economic Democracy and ProutWhat an incredible trip! During 30 days I gave 31 talks in 26 cities in the Eastern United States. The usual theme was <b>"Economic Democracy in Latin America and the United States."</b> I am deeply grateful that the Supreme kept my 60-year-old body going on all the bus and train rides, carting heavy books in my bags.<br /><br />
I got the chance to speak on <b>10 college campuses</b>: Washington and Lee University, Lynchburg College, Radford University, Virginia Tech, Warren Wilson College, University of Delaware, Washington University, University of Maine, New York University and the State University of New York at Geneseo. The students filled me with hope. At the end I asked what their "take-aways" were from the presentation. Common replies were:<br />
"I didn't know all the positive things that are happening in Venezuela..."<br />
"I learned how successful cooperatives are in Venezuela and the United States..."<br />
"I liked Sarkar's three ways to respond to injustice: silence, reform and revolution..."<br />
"The connection between spirituality and social change seems very important..."<br />
"Now I'm inspired to meditate regularly..."<br /><br />
I also spoke at six and a half <b>co-ops</b>: Roanoke Natural Foods Co-op, the Richmond Food Co-op (just starting up), Newark Bike Project, Down to Earth Food Co-op, Circle Yoga Studio, <a href="http://www.redemmas.org/event/3100/">Red Emma's Cooperative Bookstore</a> and <a href="https://www.google.com/calendar/render?eid=bGhnanFjZml2OW8ybnZpb2xxOXZpNDNlYzggdDhxbWl2ZTYzbjI3bWRqN2d0MDNudGMydThAZw&ctz=America/New_York&sf=true&output=xml">Wooden Shoe Books</a>.<br /><br />
The same message about economic democracy I broadcast in five <b>radio interviews</b>: with Clark Webb on Sunny Gardner's "<a href="http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/67754">Lightly on the Ground</a>" in Richmond (WRIR), with Mirra Price on Jeff Messer's "<a href="http://priven.org/radio-interview-of-dada-maheshvarananda-and-mirra-price/">The Revolution</a>" in Asheville (880AM), on "<a href="http://prn.fm/category/archives/occupied-territory-america/#axzz2PctfmWtp">Occupied Territories</a>" with Mike Fedder (PRN.FM), and on WGXC in Hudson, (both in English and in <a href="http://wgxc.org/archives/6233">Spanish</a>).<br /><br />
<b>Three articles were published</b> during the tour:<br />
1) the War Resisters League <i>WIN Magazine</i> featured a <a href="http://www.warresisters.org/content/after-capitalism-economic-democracy-action">long review</a> of <i>After Capitlalism</i> in their Spring issue, along with my reply.<br />
2) An <a href="http://www.rutartan.com/wordpress/?p=5423">in depth interview</a> with <i>The Tartan</i>, Radford University's student-run newspaper.<br />
3) "Latin America Notes and Sister City News" of Blacksburg, VA.<br /><br />
I had a <b>LOT</b> of fun leading five <b>cooperative games workshops</b>: in Asheville, Rockville, at the Peace House in Washington DC, at Washington University, and at the new Master Unit in Cairo, NY. I was able to try out some new activities for the next book I'm writing about Cooperative Games.<br /><br />
<b>What were my personal highlights?</b> Screaming my head off while sledding in the Radford snow, swinging on the Warren Wilson College campus, cooking and bottling maple syrup on Germantown Community Farm, sharing my passion for Prout and economic democracy with young and old, recruiting volunteers who want to come to Venezuela, watching the faces of seven individuals who learned a personal meditation mantra, seeing old friends, making many new ones, spending quality time with my traveling companions Clark Webb (first week) and Brian Landever, a former PRIVEN intern (last week).<br /><br />
<b>What were the hardest things for me?</b> Receiving no income some days because college students almost never buy books or make donations. Traveling almost every day. Long waits in Greyhound bus terminals at night. Of course, none of these were as bad as I feared.<br /><br />
<b>How you can help?</b><br />
Buy books or make a donation at <a href="http://www.aftercapitalism.org">www.aftercapitalism.org</a>.<br />
Volunteer at the <a href="http://priven.org/">Prout Research Institute of Venezuela</a>!<br />
Write a short or long review of "After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action" and post it online at <a href="http://www.amazon.com/After-Capitalism-Economic-Democracy-Action/dp/1881717143/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367410274&sr=8-1&keywords=after+capitalism+economic+democracy+in+action">Amazon</a>, <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/after-capitalism-dada-maheshvarananda/1112334441?ean=9781881717140">Barnes & Noble</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16028720-after-capitalism">Goodreads</a>, <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/13233876">LibraryThing</a> or any other site.<br />
Contact a radio station and set up a telephone interview for me. (I can send a list of potential questions, and you can tell the station that I can phone them from Venezuela, so they don't have to make an international call.)<br /><br />
What are my future plans? Typing up the several hundred emails of people who want to stay connected. Designing exciting Prout courses. Publishing my book in Spanish. Writing a book on cooperative games.<br /><br />
I would like to express <b>my heartfelt gratitude</b> to many friends who helped organize programs and who opened their homes to me: Clark Webb & Phyllis Albritton, Alan McRae & Maggie Barton, Debi Ratliff of the Goshen Public Library, James McCullum, Tyler Dickovick, Richmond Friends' Meetinghouse, Roanoke Natural Foods Co-op, Glen Martin & Phyllis Turk, Janaka & Kasturi Casper, Jeshua Pacifici, Laura George of the Oracle Institute, Mirra Price, Anirvan & Uma, Leah Lekich, James Steen, Vishvamitra, John Gross, Felicia Katsilis, Alan Rosen, Dr. Steve Landau, Tapan & Deepa Mallik, Vyasa and the Shanti Yoga community, Dada Vishvarupananda, Randy Goldberg, Nadine Bloch, Andrew Batcher, Feriha Ka, the Peace House community, Annie Mahon, Bette Hoover, Red Emma's staff, Michael Fox, Prakash & Devanistha Laufer, Jonathan McCullum, Audrey Maddox, Fred & Dayabati Wirth, Alex Hall, Kyle Barron, the NACLA staff, Diego & Luciana Esteche, Wiley of Philadelphia, Wooden Shoe Books staff, Brian Landever, Lars Mazolla & Jane Morse, Michael & Loret Steinberg, Briana Gilmore and the Social Justice Center of Albany, Bruce McEwen, Cory Hoffman-Fischer, Sarah Falkner and Dada Rainjitananda.<br /><br />
I concluded every talk and interview with the need for a revolution based on love, and the advice to "follow your bliss." May true happiness and peace be always with you.<br /><br />
Brotherly,<br />
Dada MaheshvaranandaDada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-17126526602284020062013-03-23T02:57:00.001+00:002013-04-17T04:12:45.578+00:00April Tour of Eastern and Northeastern USA<b>"Economic Democracy in Latin America and the United States"</b><br />
For 30 days I will do a speaking tour of 24 cities in Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Maine, Pennsylvania and New York. If you live in any of those states, I'd love to see you! My cellphone during this month will be 336-567-6912.<br /><br />
Wed, Mar 27 Fly from Venezuela<br />
Thur, Mar 28 <b>Goshen, VA</b> 7pm Goshen Public Library, 1124 Virginia Ave<br />
Fri, Mar 29 <b>Lexington, VA</b> Washington and Lee University two morning classes, 4pm public talk at Stackhouse Theater<br />
Sat, Mar 30 <b>Lexington, VA</b> yoga/meditation club<br />
Sun, Mar 31 <b>Lexington, VA</b> <br />
Mon, April 1 <b>Richmond, VA</b> 7pm talk at Friends Meeting House, 4500 Kensington Ave<br />
Tues, April 2 <b>Lynchburg, VA</b> 7pm talk at Lynchburg College, Schewel #214.<br />
Wed, April 3 <b>Roanoke, VA</b> 7pm talk at Roanoke Food Co-op, 1319 Grandin Rd SW<br />
Thur, April 4 <b>Radford, VA</b> 3:30pm Radford University Reed #201, 7pm talk at Bonnie #249<br />
Fri, April 5 <b>Blacksburg, VA</b> 12:30pm Virginia Tech Surge Space Center #104B<br />
7pm talk at Blacksburg Public Library<br />
Sat, April 6 <b>Floyd, VA</b> 11am Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library<br />
1pm Booksigning at NoteBooks, 117 S Locust Street, Floyd<br />
<b>Blacksburg, VA</b> 5:00pm Group Meditation at Center for Creative Change, 205 Washington Street (former location of the Meta-Physical Chapel)<br />
Sun, April 7 <b>Marshall, NC</b> 5pm Collective meditation at <a href="http://pramainstitute.org/">Prama Institute</a>, 310 Panhandle Rd.<br />
Mon, April 8 <b>Asheville, NC</b> Warren Wilson College speak to three classes, 6.30pm public talk in Canon Lounge<br />
Tues, April 9 <b>Asheville, NC</b> Warren Wilson College speak to three classes<br />
Wed, April 10 <b>Asheville, NC</b> 4pm radio interview on <a href="http://www.880therevolution.com/pages/jeffmesser.html">"The Jeff Messer Show"</a> on 880AM “The Revolution: Asheville's Progressive Talk”<br />
Thur, April 11 <b>Greensboro, NC</b> 7pm Benjamin Branch Library, 1530 Benjamin Parkway<br />
Fri, April 12 <b>Carrboro, NC</b><br />
<b>Raleigh, NC</b> 8pm Wade Edwards Learning Lab, 714 St Marys St.<br />
Sat, April 13 <b>Newark, DE</b> Newark Bike Project, 7 S. Main St. <br />
Sun, April 14 <b>Bethesda, MD</b> 11:30am panel on Economic Democracy at Shanti Yoga, 4217 East West Highway.<br />
<b>Rockville, MD</b> 7:30pm Cooperative Games Workshop, 2502 Lindley Terrace<br />
Mon, April 15 <b>Washington, DC</b> 2-5pm Cooperative games at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/occupypeacehouse">Peace House</a>, 1233 12th St. NW (Convention Center metro)<br />
"Mindfulness and Economics", 7pm meditation, followed by talk at <a href="http://circleyoga.com/">Circle Yoga</a>, 3838 Northampton Street NW.<br />
Tue, April 16 <b>Baltimore, MD</b> 7pm <a href="http://www.redemmas.org/event/3100/">Red Emma's Bookstore Coffeehouse</a>, at 800 St. Paul Street <br />
Wed, April 17 Personal visits<br />
Thu, April 18 Personal visits<br />
Fri, April 19 travel<br />
Sat, April 20 <b>Orono, Maine</b> “Spirituality and Activism Workshop” University of Maine<br />
Sun, April 21 <b>Orono, Maine</b> <br />
Mon, April 22 <b>New York, NY</b> 4pm <a href="https://nacla.org/">NACLA </a>talk at King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center (KJCC), 53 Washington Square South, NYU on globalization and the environment<br />
Tue, April 23 <b>Philadelphia, PA</b> 6-8pm <a href="http://www.woodenshoebooks.com/home.html">Wooden Shoe Books</a>, 704 South St.<br />
Wed, April 24 <b>Geneseo, NY</b> 2:30pm SUNY, Newton 204<br />
Thu, April 25 <b>Albany, NY</b> 6-8pm Social Justice Center, 33 Central Avenue<br />
Fri, April 26 <b>Hudson, NY</b> 7:30-9pm "Spiritual and Economic Democracy in Latin America and the United States", Sadhana Yoga, 403 Warren St. 3rd floor<br />
Sat, April 27 <b>Cairo, NY</b> Introductory yoga/meditation retreat<br />
Sun, April 28 <b>Cairo, NY</b> Introductory yoga/meditation retreat<br />
Mon, April 29 Fly home to VenezuelaDada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-35372246782996299382013-03-08T10:49:00.000+00:002013-03-08T10:49:27.221+00:00Evaluating the Legacy of President Hugo Chávez Using the Progressive Utilization Theory (Prout)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-YCyGCS4Nr7xDmBTnoOCirtWeiJMz6j2lF_0R1Pglv-CIJ7kDPsH_XjNS59jJPDTvkE8aJoPl48vyp3zSUAr3a_MT5ZsyumxqZ6n2AeBlPfn7ctXhfRMPeAkHeiJf5eGr4kg3/s1600/Giving+book+to+Chavez.JPG" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-YCyGCS4Nr7xDmBTnoOCirtWeiJMz6j2lF_0R1Pglv-CIJ7kDPsH_XjNS59jJPDTvkE8aJoPl48vyp3zSUAr3a_MT5ZsyumxqZ6n2AeBlPfn7ctXhfRMPeAkHeiJf5eGr4kg3/s320/Giving+book+to+Chavez.JPG" /></a>President Hugo Chávez dedicated his life to the poor people of Venezuela. He transformed their lives and transformed their country. <br />
<br />
On March 6, the day after his death, I spent 11 hours waiting with friends to pay my respects as his body was slowly transported through the city. It took much longer than expected, as hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets and the giant stadium where the procession ended to get a glimpse of the passing casket. The crowds sang and clapped along with popular songs about “El Comandante”, shouting: "Chávez lives, the struggle continues!" "The people united will never be defeated!" “I am Chávez!” When the body finally arrived at night in the National Military Academy for viewing, the line of people waiting was almost two kilometers (one mile) long!<br />
<br />
Why did so many people go? Why were they willing to wait so long? And instead of being a somber occasion with everyone dressed in black, why did so many wear bright red T-shirts, or headbands with the national colors, and why were they singing and shouting slogans?<br />
<br />
Venezuela is an example of a country that seems to have undergone a class change through a nonviolent electoral process. Lieutenant-Colonel Hugo Chávez, a career military officer, organized 130 officers and nearly 900 soldiers, approximately ten percent of the Venezuelan military, to attempt a military rebellion in 1992 to overthrow dictator President Carlos Andrés Pérez and end his reign of corruption, censorship and abuse of human rights. Though they failed, Chávez became a popular hero. After two years in prison he received amnesty, starting an electoral campaign among the poor that won him the presidency at the end of 1998. As of December 2012, his coalition has won 16 out of 17 national elections due to his successful consciousness-raising and politicization among the masses.<br />
<br />
The capitalist-led opposition attempted a military overthrow of Chávez in 2002 with U.S. government knowledge and support; yet two days later the masses and the military united and brought him back from the island naval base where he was held prisoner. After that, Chávez became much more strident in his rhetoric about class warfare against the oligarchy, calling them “squalids.” Socialist and military values have influenced the masses to a great extent in terms of participatory democracy, grassroots communal councils, the new national police force and other initiatives.<br />
<br />
The heads of the Venezuelan Central Bank and economic ministry are not bankers, but revolutionaries, orchestrating government buyouts of key industries at an accelerating rate, with more than 200 expropriations of private enterprises in 2010 alone. Chávez has announced that he is committed to “the elimination of capitalism”. Government-owned and community media influence the masses with values of solidarity, people’s power and socialism for the twenty-first century. Many capitalists have fled to Miami and elsewhere, and while others remain, they are frustrated and nervous because they are no longer in power.<br />
<br />
For the first time in the history of Venezuela, a president used the profits from the country's petroleum sales to fund social programs, such as building schools and hiring teachers so every child would go to school, starting free universities, building hospitals and health clinics in every barrio and country village that have saved thousands of lives each year. <br />
<br />
In the hills of Vargas, a group of rural women told me how in the past when someone in their village got sick and died, it would take them two days to carry the body down to the cemetery for burial, and when they returned, sometimes there was another dead body waiting for them, because there was no clinic they could go to. Now there are clinics everywhere. With the help of the Women's Bank, they have formed successful agricultural cooperatives that give them all a steady income. They swore they would never go back to the terrible poverty they suffered before Hugo Chávez changed their lives.<br />
<br />
Chávez pioneered barter trade, signing bilateral barter agreements with developing countries, swapping Venezuelan oil for other products or services the country needed, including 50,000 Cuban doctors and dentists who provide free medical care in city slums and remote rural villages.<br />
<br />
Chávez put the condition of the poor people on the national agenda. Voter registration has dramatically increased, and polling places have increased. More than 80 percent of eligible voters went to the polls in the 2012 presidential election (compared to less than 59 percent of voters in the United States who cast their ballot that year). Today even the anti-Chávez candidates say that if elected they, too, will continue the social projects in order to try to win the majority of voters. In 1998, when Chávez was first elected, all the houses in the villages of Barlovento in Miranda, were made of mud and in very bad condition due to regular flooding. The state governor, Henrique Capriles, who ran against Chávez in 2012, made significant loans to the poor people so that now nearly all the houses in the villages are built with cement blocks. <br />
<br />
Ten years ago, on June 1, 2003, I was invited to meet Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on his weekly television show to present the Spanish edition of my first Prout book, which was published in Caracas. I told him that I was inspired by the words of Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, the founder of Prout, at the end of his 1979 visit to Caracas, in which he said, “Venezuela needs good spiritual political leaders. If Venezuela can produce spiritual political leaders, it will not only be the leader of Latin America, it will also be the leader of the planet. Venezuela is a blessed country.”<br />
<br />
President Chávez said, “Dada Maheshvarananda has given us a book that we appreciate very much. Your visit has come at such an opportune moment.... Thank you very much, brother, and let’s continue with spirituality, spirit, good faith, morality, and the mystical force that moves the world. Dada Maheshvarananda and other citizens of the world are welcome to visit, especially those who come in good faith and offer their ideas, their spirit and their moral flame to the Bolivarian Revolution. This has attracted the attention of the whole world, especially those that struggle and dream of a better world, just as it says in After Capitalism: Prout’s Vision for a New World.”<br />
<br />
In December 2003 and again in 2005 the national petroleum company of Venezuela (PDVSA) contracted for me and other Proutists to give a series of training courses and lectures about the Prout model. Then in 2007 we founded the Prout Research Institute of Venezuela in Caracas as an independent, not-for-profit foundation. A major reason we did this was because of how closely the goals of Prout's socio-economic model were shared by the Bolivarian Revolution initiated by President Chávez. <br />
<br />
Prout asserts that the first priority of any economy should be to guarantee the minimum requirements of life (food, clothing, housing, education and medical care), the right to live, to all people. Subsidized food staples are sold very cheaply in government supermarkets throughout the country, and public schools now provide free lunches to all students, both of which significantly reduce the money spent by poor people to feed their families. Free education and health care for all has been achieved, too, with college enrollment doubling. During 2012 the government built more than 200,000 houses and gave them to needy families, and it plans to build a total of two million homes by 2018. His government reduced poverty by half and extreme poverty by 70 percent. Eligibility for public pensions tripled. As someone who has spent his life working with the poor, I am deeply grateful for these very impressive accomplishments – so are the masses who poured out to the streets yesterday.<br />
<br />
Community empowerment is another key component of Prout's economic democracy; Chávez initiated the system of communal councils with cooperative banks that decide for themselves which local projects they will fund – 33,000 are now running throughout the country.<br />
<br />
Though many complaints have been made in the world media about how Chávez has “destroyed” the Venezuelan economy, economic growth actually increased to 5.6 percent in 2012. The conservative International Monetary Fund calculates the country’s gross public debt last year at 51.3 percent of GDP, but Europe has more than 90 percent! The foreign part of this debt was only 4.1 percent of Venezuela’s export earnings. Inflation is high, but lower than before he came to office.<br />
<br />
Food sovereignty, to produce enough food to feed the entire population, has not yet been achieved, but it is another goal common to both the Bolivarian government and Prout.<br />
<br />
Chávez wanted to transform the profit-oriented capitalist economy into one oriented towards endogenous and sustainable social development by involving those who had been marginalized or excluded. From 2002 he inspired the phenomenal creation of 262,904 registered cooperatives by the end of 2008, but many of these never became active or collapsed. The national cooperative supervision institute, SUNACOOP, recognizes about 70,000 as functioning, which is still the highest total for any country after China. <br />
<br />
The majority of Venezuelan cooperatives have few members who are unskilled. Because of the high rate of failure among the registered cooperatives, in 2005 the president shifted the government’s support from cooperatives to socialist enterprises and worker takeovers of factories. In this way, the government pays the salaries, but keeps the ownership. Prout, on the other hand, supports cooperatives that are worker-owned as well as worker-managed.<br />
<br />
Of course there are problems in Venezuela; a couple of them are very serious. Corruption and crime hurt everyone. Their causes are many; to solve these problems requires the help of all the people – for this a major consciousness-raising campaign is required in every level of education, through the mass media and in every government office. Consciousness-raising and popular education are also key to reducing pollution and protecting the environment, another serious problem. <br />
<br />
If the impact of these problems was reduced, many more people of the middle class could be inspired to support this revolution. Unfortunately the revolutionary rhetoric of Chávez was often insulting towards his opponents – listening sincerely to valid complaints is necessary to open dialog and build bridges so that an ever greater majority of Venezuelans participate constructively in the Bolivarian project.<br />
<br />
Hugo Chávez was a very strong man who led his people through a tremendous social transformation. He has died, but his vision of a more just and more democratic society continues to inspire the masses of Venezuela and remains very much alive. Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-19914418549561456022013-03-03T20:05:00.001+00:002013-03-03T21:25:33.874+00:00GRATITUDE FOR SOMEONE WHO HAS HELPED SO MUCH<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFUcf7jdm09Y1a5syTcV6br4cnsJuNXZDRSm-gfYk_trESDtg-zr57Ci-gxkn3BrcNhA68DHvcpw83jaXEvqFDAuiNoFN28UDQFLJfA531UxgctpX3IbWkW2tP5Ji6Le8B29S4/s1600/Mirra.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFUcf7jdm09Y1a5syTcV6br4cnsJuNXZDRSm-gfYk_trESDtg-zr57Ci-gxkn3BrcNhA68DHvcpw83jaXEvqFDAuiNoFN28UDQFLJfA531UxgctpX3IbWkW2tP5Ji6Le8B29S4/s320/Mirra.jpg" /></a> <b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/mirra.price?group_id=0">Miira Price</a></b>, also known by her spiritual name “Miirabai”, has been an invaluable colleague in my work for Prout during the last year and a half. She and I co-led the Media Team for the <a href="http://economicdemocracyconference.org/">Economic Democracy Conference</a> for about eight months – she was always the more responsible and sincere in that organizing work than I. She arranged more than a dozen interviews with different speakers from the Economic Democracy Conference, including me, on Doug Cunningham's People's Mic radio show, plus a couple interviews on cable TV. She worked with <a href="http://dedokwaminadezign.com/">Dedo Kwamina</a> to design a logo and flyer for the conference, and a flyer for my tour. We collaborated in the writing of the media toolkit and several of the talking points, and I included a good amount of that text in my book.<br /><br />
She helped considerably with writing and researching the section, “The Exploitation of Women Throughout History and Today”. She then served as copyeditor for my <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Capitalism:_Economic_Democracy_in_Action">book</a>, painstakingly correcting my mistakes and patiently trying to teach me correct grammar. The book is much better because of her sacrifice. <br /><br />
Miira also served as my publicist from July to September 2012, and from December to January 2013. She arranged <a href="http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012309090042">an interview with Rob Neufeld</a> that was published in the Asheville Citizen-Times, and successful talks for me at the Firestorm Cooperative Café and at Malaprop's Bookstore in Asheville, and at the Lucy Parsons Center Bookstore in Boston. She also fixed an interview for me at "<a href="http://www.coopradio.org/station/archives/34">Conscious Living</a>" Jan. 30 program on the Co-op Radio station in Vancouver, BC. <br /><br />
During this year and a half, I have regularly sought her ideas, suggestions and feedback in my articles, correspondence and publicity. She is a deeply dedicated Proutist and the main organizer of the <a href="http://www.proutwomen.org/">Women Proutists of North America</a>. It is an honor to work with her.Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-39357132939542078392013-02-27T12:09:00.000+00:002013-02-27T12:09:10.583+00:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_4XhASkm5Onxvl77GCvGDYu5msVbUTLYrdju2pNLh1_8jkZOGZM0NfM9wDTzkOOSmCK16hIks7YFqZHWfNfpBTqvhY0-VgD6ygRpxXEsdt216K6zMLPxw2XDCxfU_db-0Ianf/s1600/Znet.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_4XhASkm5Onxvl77GCvGDYu5msVbUTLYrdju2pNLh1_8jkZOGZM0NfM9wDTzkOOSmCK16hIks7YFqZHWfNfpBTqvhY0-VgD6ygRpxXEsdt216K6zMLPxw2XDCxfU_db-0Ianf/s320/Znet.jpg" /></a>
<b>"Bringing Balance: The Proutist Alternative"</b> by Andy Douglas on Znet:
“Balance” is a word you would be hard-pressed to use to describe today’s global economy. Wealth inequality and exploitation, market manipulation and the financialization of investment have created a situation which can only be described as extremely unbalanced, with a lot of suffering in its wake. Many argue that capitalism as it exists is unsustainable, that it cannot, and more importantly should not, survive. <a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/bringing-balance-the-proutist-alternative-by-andy-douglas">Read the full review on Znet</a>: Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-48933989670607155562013-01-16T13:38:00.000+00:002013-01-22T19:18:52.265+00:00Trudge Toward Freedom: A Review of “After Capitalism” by Bill Ayers in "Left Eye on Books"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Dada Maheshvarananda is a monk and a social activist, an engaged intellectual and a writer whose powerful new book, <i>After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action</i>, provides a comprehensive critique of the economic system that grips the planet and suffocates our lives, names the contemporary political moment we’re facing with astonishing clarity, and illustrates with concrete cases and specific examples the practical steps needed to build a radical movement toward joy and justice, peace and love, sanity and balance. It’s a broad and ambitious book to be sure. In just a few pages I felt the brotherly embrace of a comrade-in-arms, a soul-mate, and a companion; further along his fierce intelligence and original insights challenged me to make new connections; by the end I was inspired to re-imagine next steps in my own efforts at movement-making. This is an essential book created by a gentle warrior.<br /><br />
The questions that animate Dada Maheshvarananda’s work are the same ones I saw recently scrawled across a sprawling panorama created by the tormented painter <a href="http://0.tqn.com/d/arthistory/1/0/Y/V/ambrvoll_13.jpg">Paul Gauguin</a>—in 1897, after months of illness and suicidal despair, Gauguin produced on a huge piece of jute sacking an image of unfathomable figures amid scenery that might have been the twisted groves of a tropical island or a marvelously wild Garden of Eden; worshippers and gods; cats, birds, a quiet goat; a great idol with a peaceful expression and uplifted hands; a central figure plucking fruit; a depiction of Eve not as a voluptuous innocent like some other women in Gauguin’s work but as a shrunken hag with an intense eye.<br /><br />
Gauguin wrote the title of the work in bold on top of the image; translated into English it reads:<br /><br />
<i><b>Where do we come from?<br />
What are we?<br />
Where are we going?</b></i><br /><br />
These are questions—horrifying for Gauguin, inspiring for Dada Maheshvarananda—that rumble in the background on every page of <i>After Capitalism</i>. How can we see ourselves and our problems/challenges/potentials holistically? How can we connect our personal and spiritual seeking with the practical search for a better world for all? How can we live with one foot in the mud and muck of the world as it is while the other foot stretches toward a world that could be but is not yet? How can we transform ourselves to be worthy of the profound social transformations we desire and need? And how can we build within ourselves the thoughtfulness, compassion, and courage to dive into the wreckage on a mission of repair? We begin by opening our eyes:<br /><br />
<i>Look!</i> says the pilgrim.<br />
I can’t look…<br />
<i>Look at it! Open your eyes for once, for God’s sake, have the courage to at least look, will you?</i><br />
I can’t look…I’m going to be sick…<br />
<i>You mean you won’t look, don’t you? You can look, but you won’t. It might upset you, it might mess your outfit—or it might ruin your whole day. You refuse to look. Admit that at the very least.</i><br />
I won’t… I can’t… What’s the difference?<br />
<i>The difference is this: willful blindness is a form of cowardice and indifference, and the opposite of moral is not immoral; the opposite of moral is indifferent.</i><br /><br />
Wide awake it’s clear that planet earth has enough resources to meet everyone’s basic needs <i>if we share</i>; on the other hand if we hoard we are in for famine, pestilence, war, and mayhem. It’s equally clear that both tendencies live deep within every human being: selfishness and selflessness, me and we, individualism and collectivity. The question at the heart of this book is this: Where do we go from here, socialism or barbarism, chaos or community?<br /><br />
The practical and theoretical work of Dada Maheshvarananda and his comrades is the fight for economic justice, and on the side of sharing. One of the great deceptions of our time is the sham that meaningful political democracy is possible in the absence of economic democracy. “Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice,” wrote Mikhail Bakunin (adding that “socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality”) and it is self-evidently so: there can be no real freedom where huge differences in wealth and access make any voluntary exchange or contract little more than legal larceny and authorized plunder. The traffic in human beings, modern-day slavery, the market for body parts, international adoption—all bear the mark of privilege, exploitation, global injustice, and structural violence. And so do the sanitized schemes of the bankers, the financial wizards, and the ruling class generally.<br /><br />
Economic democracy requires popular control, wide participation, and decentralized decision-making, and it insists that the minimum requirements of life must be guaranteed—food, housing, clothing, education, and health-care. Life is the birthright that transcends borders, and the most straight-forward gauge of the degree of justice available in any society is how power responds to that basic right.<br /><br />
Our struggle is for more participation, more equality, more recognition of human agency, and more transparency as we lean toward revolution. We must rouse ourselves, shake ourselves awake and perhaps shock ourselves into new awarenesses.<br /><br />
But it’s often hard to look, and obstacles spring up everywhere: when we feel ourselves shackled, bound, and gagged or when we are badly beaten down, struggling just to survive, living with dust in our mouths, the horizons of our hope can become lowered, sometimes fatally, and our eyes, then, dim. What kind of world do we want to inhabit? When no alternatives are apparent or available, action becomes pointless.<br /><br />
When privilege obstructs our vision it acts as an anesthetic, putting us to sleep; we must then call upon the aesthetic—the world of the imagination—to combat the numbing power of the sedative.<br /><br />
We all live in our time and place, immersed in what is, and imagining a social scene different from what’s immediately before us requires a combination of <b>somethings</b>: seeds, surely; desire, yes; necessity and desperation at times; and, at other times a willingness to dance out on a limb without a safety net—no guarantees.<br /><br />
Imagination is essential, more process than product, more “stance” than “thing,” imagination involves the dynamic work of mapping the world as such, and then leaning toward a world that might be but is not yet. Most of us most of the time accept our lot-in-life as inevitable—for decades, generations, even centuries; when a revolution is in reach, when a lovelier life heaves into view, or when a possible world becomes somehow visible, the status quo becomes suddenly unendurable. We then reject the fixed and the stable, and begin to look at the world as if it could be otherwise, and we begin the important work of reweaving our shared world.<br /><br />
Choice and confidence is a necessary politics. I don’t want to minimize the horror, but neither do I want to get stuck in its thrall. Hope is an antidote to cynicism and despair; it is the capacity to notice or invent alternatives; it is nourishing the sense that standing directly against the world as such is a world that could be, or should be. Without that vital sense of possible worlds, doors close, curtains drop, and we become stranded: we cannot adequately oppose injustice; we cannot act freely; we cannot inhabit the most vigorous moral spaces. We are never freer, all of us and each of us, than when we refuse the situation before us as settled and certain and determined and break the chains that entangle us.<br /><br />
The tools are everywhere—humor and art, protest and spectacle, the quiet, patient intervention and the angry and urgent thrust—and the rhythm of and recipe for activism is always the same: we open our eyes and look unblinkingly at the world as we find it; we are astonished by the beauty and horrified at the suffering all around us; we act on what the known demands and we also doubt that our efforts made enough difference, and so we rethink, recalibrate, look again, and dive in once more. If we never doubt we get lost in self-righteousness and political narcissism—been there—but if we only doubt we vanish into cynicism and despair. Awake/Act/Doubt! Repeat! Repeat! Repeat for a lifetime.<br /><br />
Revolution is still possible, democracy and socialism, possible, but barbarism is possible as well. Our expansive and expanding dreams are not realized, of course, not yet, but neither are they dimmed or diminished. Every revolution is, after all, impossible before it happens; afterwards it feels inevitable.<br /><br />
The work, of course, is never done. Democracy and freedom are dynamic, a community always in the making. We continue the difficult task of constructing and reinvigorating a public. We must love our own lives enough to take care of friends, children, loved ones and elders, to marvel at the sunset and enjoy a good meal, to run on the beach and dive into the surf, to make love for breakfast and again at noon and wake up in wonder; we must love the world enough to never look away, to never give up and never give in, and to add our weight to history’s wheel.<br /><br />
Dada Maheshvarananda is an extraordinary and sweet revolutionary not because he has a fully worked-out and internally consistent argument as well as a set of concrete action steps that will take us from here to there—there being some vibrant and viable future characterized by peace and love and joy and justice—but because he lives with the necessary sense of perpetual uncertainty that accompanies social learning while at the same time trying to make a purposeful life battling to upend the system of oppression and exploitation, opening spaces for more participatory democracy, more peace, and more fair-dealing in large and small matters. These are revolutionary times, and Dada can explain why and how to join the revolution.<br /><br />
“Excess of joy weeps,” writes William Blake in a possible epigraph for this book…and for us. “Excess of sorrow”—and Lord do we have that excess right now—“laughs.”<br /><br />
W.H. Auden provides another: We must love one another or die.<br /><br />
Bill Ayers is the author of several books on education, as well as a memoir, <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/9780807032770?p_ti&PID=35362">“Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War Activist,”</a> and the forthcoming “Public Enemy: Memoirs of Dissident Days.”Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-58478653117216570352013-01-11T01:57:00.000+00:002013-01-27T23:12:18.289+00:00KGNU Interviews with Dada Maheshvarananda about Prout<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Two radio interviews of Dada Maheshvarananda with Maeve Conran of KGNU Independent Community Radio in Boulder, Colorado, Dec. 11 and Dec. 13, 2012. Listen <a href="http://www.youmicro.com/listen/song/6849/interview-dada-maheshvarananda-kgnu-community-radio-in-boulder-colorado-dec-11">here</a> and <a href="http://www.youmicro.com/listen/song/6850/2nd-interview-dada-maheshvarananda-kgnu-community-radio-in-boulder-colorado-dec-13">here</a>.<br /><br />
The questions included: <br />
Part 1: Is Prout taking place in any country? Can Prout function in a developed country like the United States? How do we get there from here, how do we establish economic democracy? <br /><br />
Part 2: What is Prout? What are the fundamental differences between capitalism and Prout? Was there ever a time in United States history when there was more egalitarianism? Was there particular moment when the United States turned towards corporate power? When the financial crisis happened in 2007-2008 there was a lot of opportunity for change, and yet, except for the Occupy Movement, nothing happened? Can you give us an example here in the United States of people who are living out this new egalitarian vision? What are your thoughts on the Occupy Movement and its future? Does Prout have more in Venezuela? Talk a little about food access and how that is a security issue? Can you talk about the worker takeovers that have taken place in Argentina? With our current laws is that possible here? In a recent posting you talked about what you called a myth that the rich countries, companies and people are smarter and work harder -- talk about that. How does that attitude affect the debate about the fiscal cliff -- can you connect the dots? Prout has a spiritual dimension, so it should appeal to faith-based communities -- why is it that these communities have not spoken out about the hoarding of wealth? Do you see change coming from the political class? Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-91113630060837202292013-01-07T20:32:00.000+00:002013-01-07T20:32:08.376+00:00How to Organize a Conference on Economic DemocracyOn behalf of the Steering Committee of the Madison, Wisconsin Economic Democracy Conference, and with their input and cooperation, I wrote a 4-page document about how to organize an Economic Democracy Conference. You can <a href="http://economicdemocracyconference.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/How-to-organize-EDC.pdf">download as pdf here</a>.
CONTENTS:
Brief review of Madison conference;
Steering committee and decision-making;
Working teams;
Web page;
Finalizing the dates and finding the place;
Deciding prices for participants;
Budget and Fund-raising;
Social media;
Media;
Program – choosing and inviting keynote speakers;
Afternoon workshops and workshop tracks;
Posters and flyers;
Outreach;
Networking;
Marketing;
Cultural program;
Organizational tables/stands;
Volunteers;
Photographing, recording, filming the event;
Action summit;
Evaluation forms;
For questions and advice contact.
Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-51814997002302518522012-12-16T18:07:00.000+00:002012-12-16T18:28:58.674+00:00There IS a maximum wage in USA and most countries??!!Because the physical resources of the planet are limited, the hoarding wealth or using it for speculation rather than productive investment reduces the opportunities of other people and causes poverty. A fundamental principle of Prout is to limit the accumulation of wealth and create a maximum salary that is tied to the minimum wage.<br />
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In the United States, all government federal employees have a starting annual salary of US$17,803 (General Schedule grade 1). With education, experience and promotions, the highest pay scale for a president or general or judge is US$179,700 (Senior Executive Service), just ten times higher. Similar pay scales exist for all state and municipal government employees.<br />
<br />
By comparison, the lowest salary for a Norwegian government employee in 2010 was twice as high, US$36,000 annually (207,900 kroner, wage level 1), while the highest was US$192,000 (1,106,400 kroner, level 98), only 5.3 times more than the starting salary.<br />
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Prout recommends an adequate “living wage” for every worker, and that all earnings in the private sector should also be capped at reasonable maximum levels. The difference between the minimum wage and the maximum salary helps to motivate people to be productive and contribute to society, but they should be fair and appropriate. As the quality of life for everyone increases, the gap will have to be gradually decreased; however, it should never be reduced to zero.<br />
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excerpted from <i>After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action</i> by Dada Maheshvarananda (Puerto Rico: Innerworld Publications, 2012).
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Source: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Schedule_(US_civil_service_pay_scale)">Wikipedia</a>
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Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-1430920608837002632012-12-14T02:03:00.004+00:002012-12-14T02:03:53.066+00:00GRATITUDEI am very humbled by all the wonderful friends, both old and new, that I met during my 10-week tour of 33 cities in the United States and the tremendous help they gave me. They opened their homes to me, they fed me, they organized talks and media interviews, they bought extra copies of my book to give to their friends and clients, they gave me donations; most of all, they renewed my spirits again and again. Here are a few of them:<br />
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MIAMI, FLORIDA: Ron Baseman and his family for hosting me, Lawrence Huff for organizing a talk for me at NPTI Technical Institute and to his yoga class at the public library, and for lending me his car.<br />
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ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA: Mirra Price for driving me, organizing an interview with Rob Neufeld published in the <i>Asheville Citizen-Times</i>, and a talk for me at the Firestorm Cooperative Cafe (40 people came) and a reading at Malaprops Bookstore (46 people came). Donald Moore and his brother Pat for hosting me.<br />
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GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA: John Gross for hosting me.<br />
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CHAPEL HILL, NORTH CAROLINA: Allan Rosen for organizing 2 meetings and a talk for me (10 came).<br />
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RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA: Dr. Steve Landau for hosting me.<br />
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ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND: Dada Vishvarupananda for hosting me.<br />
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FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA: Randy Goldberg for organizing a talk for me at Apurva Wellness (9 came).<br />
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BETHESDA, MARYLAND: Victor Vyasa Landa and Shanti Yoga for organizing a talk for me (25 came) and hosting me.<br />
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK: Consul General Carol Delgado and her husband Greg Wilpert for organizing a great talk for me at the Venezuelan Consulate (45 came). Diego Esteche and his family for hosting me.<br />
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BOSTON, MASSACHUSSETTS: Thanks to Lucy Parsons Center for giving me their space to hold a talk, and to Michael Romani and Dinali Abeysekera for hosting me. <br />
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NORTHAMPTON, MASSACHUSSETTS: Prakash and Devanistha Laufer for hosting me and for bringing me to the Path of Bliss retreat at Earthdance where I spoke (60 participants). <br />
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CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: David Scheickart for hosting me and organizing a talk for me at The Heartland Café sponsored by Portaluz and Venezuelan Consul General Jesús Rodriguez (45 came). Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn for driving me. Candrashekhar for hosting me.<br />
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CHAMPAIGN-URBANA, ILLINOIS: Dada Vedaprajinananda for hosting me and organizing a talk for me at the Urbana Free Library (20 came).<br />
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CARBONDALE, ILLINOIS: Chuck Paprocki (Citsvarupa) and all the loving members of the Sufi Community for hosting me, giving me a wonderful tour of all their projects, and organizing a talk for me at Southern Illinois University (20 came).<br />
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SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURI: Dada Shamitananda for hosting me.<br />
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IOWA CITY, IOWA: Andy Douglas (Alok) for hosting me, organizing a talk for me at the public library -- (25 came) and publishing a review of my book in the <i>Iowa Press Citizen</i> newspaper.<br />
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MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA: David Griffin for hosting me.<br />
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MANKATO, MINNESOTA: Mark Friedman and Jane Dow for hosting me, organizing a talk for me at South Central College Global Connections Conference (25 students came) and driving me to Madison.<br />
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MADISON, WISCONSIN: Beth Wortzel and the Economic Democracy Alliance for organizing the Economic Democracy Conference from October 11-14 (more than 220 participants came). Bill Ayers for co-leading a workshop with me, "The Ethical Need for Revolutionary Change." Rashad for driving and helping me. <br />
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AUSTIN, TEXAS: Peter and Yamuna Fleury and their family for hosting me and organizing a talk at University of Texas (20 came) and at Monkeywrench Books (30 came). Apekshit and Kalyanii for driving all the way from Dallas to meet me and discuss Prout with the Austin group.<br />
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SAN CARLOS, TEXAS: Ray Guthrey for driving me and organizing a talk at the San Carlos Public Library.<br />
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EL PASO, TEXAS: A for driving me 8 hours from Austin. Claudia Ortega for organizing a talk for me at 'Life Force Consciousness' event (35 came). Rubi Orozco and Roberto for hosting me.
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ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO: Matt Oppenheim (Mayajiit) and Kanako for hosting me and organizing a talk for me at Central New Mexico Community College Montoya Campus (45 students came). (Aditi) for organizing a talk for me to the New Mexico Health Equity Working Group (12 health professionals came).<br />
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LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Vaekunta and his family for hosting me. Ammadevi for organizing a talk at her home. Dr. Manuel Yara for organizing a talk (20 came).<br />
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LOS ALTOS HILLS, CALIFORNIA: Dada Nabhaniilananda for hosting me. The Conscious Living Collective, a student club at Univesity of California at Berkeley, for inviting me to speak at their lovely meditation retreat (30 came).<br />
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SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA: Consul General Tibisay Lugo and her wonderful staff at the Venezuealan Consulate who organized a talk for me.<br />
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SANTA ROSA, CALIFORNIA: Satya Tanner and Abraham Heisler for driving me to the beautiful home of Kevin Rossey and Jill Lawless who hosted me. <br />
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EUGENE, OREGON: Amara East for driving me up from Berkeley. Kamala Quale for hosting me. Wayland Secrest and Carin for hosting me and organizing a talk for me (20 people came). Ravi Logan, Madhulika and Jason Shreiner for hosting me and organizing a talk (20 people came) and a tour of the Prout Institute, and for driving me to a beautiful old growth forest.<br />
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PORTLAND, OREGON: Maetri for hosting me and organizing a talk at the Kailash Ecovillage (12 people came), and for showing me around New Day School.
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OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON: Lori Blewett organized an interview with me on the Evergreen State College TV station. John Regan and Professor Anne Fischel organized a talk for me at the Olympia Center (40 people came). Professor Peter Bohmer hosted me and organized a talk for me at Evergreen State College, with Professors Michale Vavrus, Karen Gaul and Therese Saliba (135 students crammed into the hall for an hour!).
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SEATTLE, WASHINGTON: Doris Olivers for hosting me and driving me around. Steve at East West Books for bravely organizing a book reading just 24 hours before the event!
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BOULDER, COLORADO: Maeve Conran for interviewing me twice on KGNU Community Radio. Doug Reichlin and Carolyn organized a talk for me at the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, and Joe Richey, producer for David Barsamian's Alternative Radio program, who recorded it. <br />
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DENVER, COLORADO: Ed and MJ Glassman for hosting me, setting up a talk (8 people), and lovingly sending me on my way home to Caracas!Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-12258124655184423242012-11-06T01:11:00.001+00:002012-11-06T01:11:09.865+00:00USA Book Tour, Part 2: Nov. 6 - Dec. 6, 2012Dear friends, How do I feel? <b>Nervous</b>, of course! Tomorrow morning I fly from Caracas to Austin, Texas to start the second half of my speaking tour to launch my new book, <i>After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action</i> -- four weeks across the Southwest and up the Pacific coast. I love meeting people, so every presentation is an exciting opportunity to interact, listen and grow. But in some places nothing is planned. If you're in any of these places I'd love to see you. If not, please give me a call on my cellphone: 336-567-6912.<br />
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Wed, Nov 7, Austin, TX: 7pm talk "After Capitalism", University of Texas, RLM 7.104.<br />
Thu, Nov 8, Austin, TX: 7pm talk at MonkeyWrench Books, 110 E. North Loop.<br />
Fri, Nov 9, San Marcos, TX: 1pm talk at San Marcos Public Library, 625 E Hopkins St.<br />
Sat, Nov 10, bus to El Paso<br />
Sun, Nov 11, El Paso, TX: 1pm talk at 'Life Force Consciousness' event at corner of Texas St. and Campbell St.<br />
Mon, Nov 12, Albuquerque, NM: 4:30pm talk at Central New Mexico Community College Montoya Campus, Room H126.<br />
Tue, Nov 13, Albuquerque, NM: 1:30pm talk to NM Health Equity Working Group, at Parents Reaching Out, 1920 B Columbia Dr. SE.<br />
Wed, 14 Nov, train to Los Angeles<br />
Thur-Fri, Nov 15-16: Los Angeles, CA.<br />
Sat, Nov 17, North Hills, CA: Talk after collective meditation at 8555 Haskell Ave.<br />
Sun, Nov 18, Los Altos Hills, CA: beginners' meditation retreat at 27160 Moody Rd.<br />
Mon-Wed, Nov 19-21, San Francisco Bay Area<br />
Thu, Nov 22: bus to Eugene, OR<br />
Fri, Nov 23, Eugene, OR: Ananda Marga, 510 West 27th Ave.<br />
Sat-Sun, Nov 24-25, Eugene, OR: Prout Institute, 356 Horn Lane.<br />
Mon, Nov 26, Portland, OR: 4311 SE 37th Ave.<br />
Tue, Nov 27, Olympia, WA: evening talk at Orca Books, 509 E. 4th Ave.<br />
Wed, Nov 28, Olympia, WA: 12pm talk at Evergreen State College, Sustainability and Justice symposium<br />
Thu-Sun, Nov 29-Dec 2: Seattle, WA<br />
Mon, Dec 3: Fly to Denver, CO<br />
Tue-Wed, Dec 4-5: Denver, CO<br />
Thu, Dec 6, Fly to Caracas<br />Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18030541.post-38659590503336392112012-09-25T01:55:00.000+00:002012-09-25T01:55:20.052+00:00MYTH: Rich people, companies and countries became rich because they were smarter and worked harder.This unspoken, unverified belief is not only widespread among the rich, but, sadly, many middle class, poor and uneducated people in the world also share it. Everyone who shares this belief will logically also believe that poor countries remain poor because their people are not as smart and do not work as hard.<br />
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The reality is quite different. For hundreds of years, the rich countries have stolen the wealth of and exploited people in the rest of the world. Imperialism, colonialism and slavery brought incredible riches to the countries that executed these.<br />
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Small-scale free enterprise encourages invention, innovation and diversity, and contributes to local communities. The economics faculties of most Western universities highlight these benefits of a transparent market in which many small firms are fully competitive. Unfortunately, since 1600 when the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company were formed, multinational corporations have played by different rules. Fabulously lucrative, they inspired future generations of capitalists to invent ingenious strategies to turn their corporations into the most wealthy and powerful entities on the planet.<br />
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Huge multinationals have tremendous capital on hand to pour into new endeavors, a resource that can’t be matched by smaller competitors. They can produce enormous quantities of goods at lower costs, and even sell at a loss to bankrupt the competition. In most Western countries predatory pricing and other actions intended to bankrupt a competitor are illegal, but these are difficult to prove and rarely prosecuted. Even when they are prosecuted, it’s almost always too late to prevent the harm. By the time Microsoft was brought to trial for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act, it had already effectively destroyed Netscape, once the most widely used web browser.<br />
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Of course there are smart, hard-working people who are rich. There are also millions of smart, hard-working people who are poor. Capitalism works well for some people, but not for everyone. What the world needs today is economic democracy, the empowerment of people to make economic decisions that directly shape their lives and communities through locally-owned, small-scale private enterprises, worker-owned cooperatives, and publicly-managed utilities. It decentralizes decision-making and gives citizens the right to choose how their local economy should be run. <br />
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excerpted from <i>After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action</i> by Dada Maheshvarananda (Puerto Rico: Innerworld Publications, 2012).Dada Maheshvaranandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13144716444434365897noreply@blogger.com0