The Decadent Worker

PROPERTY AND PRIVILEGE

“Property is theft.” — P.-J. Proudhon
“Property is liberty.” — P.-J. Proudhon
“Property is impossible.” — P.-J. Proudhon

…Proudhon, by piling up his contradictions this way, was not merely being French; he was trying to indicate that the abstraction ‘property’ covers a variety of phenomena, some pernicious and some beneficial. Let us borrow a device from the semanticists and examine his triad with subscripts attached for maximum clarity.

‘Property(1) is theft’ means that property(1), created by the artificial laws of feudal, capitalist and other authoritarian societies, is based on armed robbery. Land titles, for instance, are clear examples of property(1); swords and shot were the original coins of transaction.

‘Property(2) is liberty’ means that property(2), that which will be voluntarily honored in a voluntary (anarchist) society, is the foundation of the liberty in that society. The more people’s interests are commingled and confused, as in collectivism, the more they will be stepping on each other’s toes; only when the rules of the game declare clearly ‘This is mine and this is thine,’ and the game is voluntarily accepted as worthwhile by all parties to it, can true independence be achieved.

‘Property(3) is impossible’ means that property(3) (= property(1))creates so much conflict of interest that society is in perpetual undeclared civil war and must eventually devour itself (and properties (1) and (3) as well). In short, Proudhon, in his own way, foresaw the Snafu Principle. He also foresaw that communism would only perpetuate and aggravate the conflicts, and that anarchy is the only viable alternative to chaos.

It is not averred, of course, that property(2) will come into existence only in a totally voluntary society; many forms of it already exist. The error of most alleged libertarians — especially the followers(!) of the egregious Ayn Rand — is to assume that all property(1) is property(2)/. The distinction can be made by any IQ above 70 and is absurdly simple. The test is to ask, of any title of ownership you are asked to accept or which you ask others to accept, ‘Would this be honored in a free society of rationalists, or does it require the armed might of a State to force people to honor it?’ If it be the former, it is property(2) and represents liberty; if it be the latter, it is property(1) and represents theft. — Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, Leviathan, Part III of the Illuminatus! Trilogy, Appendix Zain

Former guests include Eugene V. Debs and Alexander Berkman. Recently scene of an instance of spontaneous combustion, these historic accommodations are now back to business as usual. Debs maintained he could not himself be free as long as anyone else was in prison. Berkman said: “I had to leave.”

“As we shall see, secret societies did play a far more important role than is commonly realized in the life of Karl Marx as well as in the birth of communism generally,” says David Tame in “Secret Societies in the Life of Karl Marx,” Critique #25. Marx seems to have belonged to so many secret societies that the problem is determining which, if any of them, were relevant.

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“The state, then, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies that did without it, that had no idea of the state and state power. At a certain stage of economic development, which necessarily involve the split of society into classes, the state became necessary because of this split. We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production. They will fall just as inevitably as they arose at an earlier stage. Along with them the state will inevitably fall. Society, which will reorganize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong — into the museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.” — Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, p. 210

To listen to the critics of Natural Law, you would think that we go out into the wilderness, count the rings in tree stumps and maybe observe aborigines mating, and then return to civilization, like Moses, with a list of commandments — insisting that if they are not obeyed, Nature will punish us. That’s called Ecology.

Marx took Proudhon’s term, Natural Law, and changed it to Historical Necessity. Perhaps it would make great sense to speak of Necessary Law, or indispensable custom, and Necessary Rights. An idea of Historical Necessity in action is illustrated by Engels.

Social customs, like all inventions, become more and more efficient — all other things being equal — as knowledge accumulates.

Marx and Spencer, each in his own way, improved on Proudhon and others Proudhon benefited from and refined upon Thomas Paine and John Locke, et. al. Among the most valuable contrbutions to Natural Law theory was that of Benjamin Tucker whose book, Instead of a Book, is in the Atlanta Public Library.

A crusty New England Yankee with no respect for authority, an unsentimental skeptic — a Nihilist Egoist, in fact, with unstinting praise for Max Stirner and Michael Bakunin — Benjamin Tucker shows that Natural Law needs neither mystical faith nor metaphysical speculation to make its point. Invasion, he wrote, is all society need forbid. (Coercion, fraud, technological snooping and manipulation and organized persecution can all be defined as invasive.) How invasion is to be abolished is, strictly speaking, outside the realm of Natural Law and Rights; enforcement is a matter of political science; Natural Law seeks only to discover what laws or customs or social norms are indispensable, while Natural Rights seeks to determine which are intolerable, as in, “Congress shall make no law…”

Tucker rejected Natural Rights and Aleister Crowley rejected Natural Law, insisting, however, that “Man has the right…” to certain freedoms — and both men reached very similar conclusions. Indeed, taken together they are redundant, but by the same token one discipline exists without the other in words alone. Both also begin with the same premise: society exists for the individual, not the individual for society. (c) Kerry Thornley

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“Sex is not like eating a ham sandwich.” — Ronald Reagan

For young people who have not been kept by the Reagan Administration from finding out anything else about sex, it is far more like watching a televised commercial for ham sandwiches — or Snickers candy bars, Ford motor cars, Revlon cosmetics, etc. In the venacular of Madison Avenue such ads epitomize the sex sell.

Capitalism promites plasticism for that purpose, a process radical social sociology calls sex-scarcity or stroke-scarcity economics.

The hornier and more emotionally starved people are and the sexier and softer the tone of advertising is, the more attention commercial messages receive — and the more superfluous merchandise is sold.

In The Making of a Counter Culture Theodore Roszak says: “To liberate sexuality would be to create a society in which technocratic discipline would be impossible. But to thwart sexuality outright would create a widespread, explosive resentment that required constant policing; and, besides, this would associate the technocracy with various puritanical traditions that enlightened men cannot but regard as superstitious. The strategy chosen, therefore, is not harsh repression, but rather the Playboy version of total permissiveness which now imposes its image upon us in every slick movie and posh magazine that comes along. In the affluent society, we have sex and sex galore — or so we are to believe. But when we look more closely we see that this sybaritic promiscuity wears a special coloring. It has been assimilated to an income level and social status available only to our well-heeled junior executives and the jet set… Real sex, we are led to believe, is something that goes with the best scotch, twenty-seven-dollar sunglasses, and platinum-tipped shoelaces. Anything less is a shabby substitute… It is the reward that goes to reliable, politically safe henchmen of the status quo. Before our would-be playboy can be an assembly-line seducer, he must be a loyal employee.

“…As with sexuality, so with every other aspect of life. The business of inventing and flourishing treacherous parodies of freedom, joy, and fulfillment becomes an indispensable form of social control under the technocracy.” pp. 14-15

In the late sixties when the effects of the make-love-not-war strategy of the Love Generation began eroding its bulwarks, the technocracy began a campaign to sex-sell the whole capitalist ideology. Under a sudden surge of Stalinist leadership, the left fell over itself to cooperate ith the capitalist image makers; all at once everything sexy is labeled by feminists and sour radicals as, for one reason or another, reactionary. Just one more clue in the riddle of caviar Communist conservatism. So these days the left is drab, joyless, cruelly homophobic and ludicrously prissy, in order, we are tempted to conclude, that the right may appear all the more festive, ecstatic, tolerant and seductive.

In the intelligence community things are the same — only worse. Being assigned a mate is called “going home.” (Note the manipulative connotations of that term in view of stroke-scarcity economics.) Until or unless you espouse acceptable opinions you are actively isolated and cannot “go home.” In my experience the only acceptable opinions are endorsement of landlordism and/or agreement with Marx/Leninism; and, since I am neither a sadist nor a masochist — and therefore unwilling to applaud either the starvation of children or the persecution of anarchists — I was for many years not given permission to “go home.” I am also as loath to sanction the incredibly arrogant notion that anyone may presume to give, and therefore to withhold, permission regarding anything so personal as I am reluctant to raise my hand in order to request permission to go to the bathroom now that I am a big boy. So I still have not “gone home.”

There is also something called “going to the park,” where sometimes they let you get laid, though not very often, in return for coincidental agreement with them in one or another situation about lesser matters. So as not to let them compare with the reward for total surrender, however, these affairs are cramped, stiffling and usually of brief duration.

I am only guessing, but the whole thing looks to me like a white slavery racket to conscript agents for Dutch Royal Petroleum and/or the KGB — as whoever you wind up with when you do finally get to “go home” is doubtlessly an agent.

Note that I have twice used the and/or phrase. Having only heard of Revisionist Marxism, Stalinist Marxism, Marxist Humanism, Trotskyism, Titoism and Eurocommunism it may surprise you to learn there is any such thing as Feudalist Marxism — although we no doubt should have suspected as much all along. A messsage I have encountered more than once, though, says I could “go home” if I would sanction both landlordism and Communism.

Even were that not the case, the revelation that Marx-Leninist organizations acquire members by hassling them for disagreement and bribing them for expressing no-doubt hypocritical orthodox views explains much — France 1968, Spain after the civil war, the betrayal of anarchists at Kronstadt and in the Ukraine during the early days. Their intimidating self-righteousness is, then, only a mask for apathy of individuals who never wanted revolution in the first place.

Among secret societies there is one called the Earth, which is supposed to be against landlordism and the energy cover-up much the way Communism is supposed to be against capitalistm. Again there is a temptation to suspect the actual purpose is to behave so brutally and irrationally that the opposition will eventually seem the preferable alternative. I am told that among the fronts for the Earth is the Urantia Foundation — which not only is just staggeringly rich, but has also been around since the fifties; Earth has not yet blown the energy cover-up. Moreover the Earth, with whom the notorious munitioner Sam Cummings is allegedly involved, is reputedly the facility through which the Permanent Universal Rent Strike is being suppressed. Supposedly the energy cover-up is to be blown first, making fossil fuels and uranium obsolete, then the P.U.R.S. will occur. Meanwhile a child under five starves every two seconds and the Earth’s reputation for homophobia and puritanism in general surpasses that of the Spartans, Cromwellians and Stalinists all. Wilhelm Reich believed that love of nature was a sublimation caused by orgasmic impotency and the Earth, at least, appears sincere about ecology.

Ham sandwiches, anyone?

They’re biodegradable.

LANGUAGE IS THEFT / Jesuit: One who lives in the imitation of Satan in order to make life miserable for those who fail to live in the imitation of Christ. — Ho Chi Zen

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“As teleologues, the liberals, Marxists and anarchists thought that all the trappings of modernity — technology, democracy, humanism, etc. — came as a set. To their bewilderment, the New Right has mounted a massive high-tech propaganda campaign (anticipated, to be sure, by Goebbels) successfully promoting the most absurd and vicious misogynist, sadistic and irrational notions.” — Bob Black, “Let us prey! Smash the state!” (Summer ‘86) Anarchy, Box 380, Columbia, MO 65205

“Hillman Holcomb got in trouble with the early Technocrats, because he got wise to the fact that the program of the Technocrats was in the Bible (they did not believe in politics) so got thrown out.

“So he founded the ‘Christian Technocrats’ and managed to get about 37 members world wide in 20 plus years.

“All 37 were Nazis. Funny, hey?” — Co-man Ra (4/18/76 letter to Kerry Thornley)

“Freedom of speech has never been right. We’ve never had freedom of speech in this country and we never should have.” — Rich Anquin, Moral Majority

“There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that sanctifies the separation of church and state.” — Pat Robertson

“Not only is the homosexual worthy of death, but (perhaps) also those who approve of homosexuality.” — Jimmy Swaggart

“Israel…must not only be held for the West, but must also be Christianized. This may perhaps best be achieved by the intensive evangelization of Israel’s financial bulwark, viz, American Jewry.” — Francis Nigel Lee, The Christian Manifesto of 1984 (”A victory blueprint for world take-over by A.D. 2000 by Christian conquerers”)

“The secret source of the left’s impotence in the face of the upsurge of the recrudescent right is this: they have too much in common… The left has never jettisoned the humanist moralism it took from Christianity. From Rousseau to Lenin (to say nothing of small fry from Bob Avakian to Mario Cuomo) it preaches guilt, renunciation, martyrdom, self-effacement, obedience, work — in a word, religion. Moralism means sacrifice of real, tangible individuals and their face-to-face passional groups to abstract extrinsic ’causes’ and pseudo-communities (the State, the Party, the Proletariat, la Raza, Sisterhood, etc. ad nauseum). If God is dead, moralism is the Doomsday Machine which he spitefully bequested us.

“The craving for community, for the sensation of a sensibility transcending the sterile, calculating reason of the engineers and bookkeepers and planners cannot be satiated by a demeaning religiosity which alls short of full-blooded practical reason; but only by a surrational leap which includes but exceeds it. ‘Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy’ (Blake), not the ultimate cop-like Categorical Imperative. Reversing Freud: Where Ego was, Id will be too.” — Bob Black, Ibid.

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To understate matters, my parents were not intellectuals. So when in the early fifties they sat me down to “talk politics” I was surprised. Very soon those discussions always settled on my opinions about “Red China.” Unfortunately, in my early teens I was an advocate of all-out preventive nuclear war against China. I wanted to defeat them before they got the Bomb. My understanding of politics was of course not very enlightened. Finally, at the end of one of these conversations my father asked me if I would be willing to fight in such a war. “Of course,” I answered. “Well,” he said reluctantly, “that’s good enough for me; if you’d be willing to sacrifice your life–” Both my mother and I corrected him: “I would be willing to risk my life.” (These last two lines were repeated almost verbatim ten years later in an exchange about fighting totalitarianism in this country in my conversations with Brother-in-law.)

Recently, I heard the following rumor: my parents were under the gun when these discussions happened. Living two doors down from us on Morella Avenue in North Hollywood at that time were people alleged to have been Maoist agents. My hunch is that our family was not unique among those involved in secret German organizations — particularly the Vril — in becoming involved with the Chinese. Mao was nearly as such a Bakuninst and Kropotkinist as Marxist and was therefore a particularly effective enemy of imperialism, for which reason there would have been added incentive for infiltration — besides the Vril view of the Chinese as the “master race” of Asia.

Harry Truman said the worst mistake he ever made was his 1952 signing of the National Security Agency charter. Unlike the CIA charter, the NSA charter is classified information. Interestingly, the word, “charter,” signifies in intelligence community cant, “death.”

When I was attending Sun Valley Junior High School — it appears in retrospect — there was in operation among the teachers and pupils an extension of the Goebbels “well-camouflaged German propaganda network” early in the fifties. I have been told that this project was by then being sponsored by the National Security Agency.

So, without knowing it — long before I joined the Marines and met Oswald, and very long before I discussed killing JFK with the man I call Brother-in-law — I seem to have already been up to my ass in conspiracies.

Nor was Brother-in-law the first person to mention sources of energy other than fossil fuels to me. My dad had been saying as much ever since I could remember, adding also that oil majors were covering them up — although he never argued the matter at length and I was not particularly convinced.

My purpose in publishing this account that has appeared in Kultcha #42 and Decadent Workers #1, #3, #5, #7, #9 and #11 has been to explain my theorietical views of why I became involved in events that culminated in the JFK assassination. In short, I think I was brought into this world as a result of a Vril Society breeding experiment and that my whole extended family was active in Nazi intelligence during WWII and that after the war their activities were forced by the momentum of the situation to include further foreign intelligence work. How witting or unwitting they were of the exact nature of their involvement I’m unprepared to guess.

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