[When asked what he thought about western civilization, Gandhi replied, "I think it would be a good idea." Suggesting that civilization is not civilized may sound like a funny joke; in fact it contains a world of truth.

"Civilization" never "civilizes" "uncivilized" populations in the sense of creating a culture in which people can embrace their own humanity, expect justice and equality to prevail, and therefore enjoy long periods of peace. This, or some equivalent notion, is the propaganda of civilization - necessary for its continuation and spread, but not to be confused with the real effects, which are very nearly the opposite for the majority of humanity living under the banner.

Corporate executives, presidents, generals, religious leaders and the like routinely believe and promote the propaganda of civilization while ignoring its devastating effects - precisely why they are elevated to positions of power and influence. Regardless of the costs or consequences to people and the environment, their job is to justify and defend the absurdly complex, unsustainable superstructure of interlocking social systems (economic, political, military, religious) known as civilization, also referred to as "our way of life."

Based on its propaganda one might guess that the word derives from some root connoting peace, progress or community. In fact it derives from the Indo-European root, kei-, meaning to lie in the sense to lie down, sit back, recline. The key to understanding what appears to be a nonsensical derivation is this: the ruling elite in Greco-Roman society ate while reclining on cushions, as they were served and attended to by slaves.

Embedded as a fossil in the root meaning of a word that evokes so much emotion and maudlin sentimentality lies a very ancient and egregious crime: that civilization, as we know and live it, emerged from the division of humanity into two groups, broadly speaking, destined to become unequal in many ways: a very large group to toil and serve, and by its work and sacrifice, to create the wealth and leisure of the world; and a very small group to claim and control that wealth and leisure, and by the seizure thereof and its unstinting use of violence, to increase its power and enjoyment despite the world. [1]

Following the fitful course of western civilization back to its origins in Greco-Roman culture reveals that politically it was little concerned with the lives of ordinary people, the majority of humanity, the same then as they are today – working-class people, except that the working classes of antiquity were defined as slaves.

Modern Labor must never forget that its counterparts on the other side of time are all the nameless slaves of antiquity – male, female, old, young, diverse in color and ethnicity – the overwhelming majority of the population who did the work that produced the wealth and leisure enjoyed by a small fraction of flesh-and-bone at the top. For this service they were completely disenfranchised, given no political or human rights, held in contempt and reviled, tortured for legal testimony and often worked to death in mines and quarries.

The idea that those with the power to do so might write laws to improve and protect the lives of slaves would have been laughed to scorn. Human psychology requires as a rule that perpetrators of great injustice cultivate great antipathy for the victims of their crimes. It often further requires that the irrational hatred and prejudice not be acknowledged (as fish pay no mind to the water they swim in); or if so, then rationalized and celebrated as a virtue. The odious psychology inundates the dominant culture, which is de facto the culture of a perpetrator. The younger generation marinates in the poison, and the torch of oppression is passed on.

In what sense did the political entity of the ancient city-state exist for the slaves who lived in it? In no sense, because they had no political rights. From the slave’s perspective the state was an exclusive club of slave- and property-owners, in whose world he was allowed to survive, so long as he produced wealth for their class. The origin of the state, as a political entity in the West, cannot be traced to any concern for the well-being of humanity. It emerges rather from the pathological desires of ancient men, who controlled slave-created wealth, to formalize a system of parasitic economic injustice.

In what sense does the United States exist for the overwhelming majority of the population, i.e. working-class people? Of course the working class has some political rights, so we cannot say there is no sense in which it exists. What is true, beyond all doubt, is that the US does not (and never did) exist for working-class people. Indeed the Labor politics of Washington is to return Labor as close as possible to the ancient standard – that is to create a state which has no meaning for the majority of the population, for working-class people, but which tolerates their lives, so long as they produce wealth for powerful corporations (the functional equivalent of slave-owners).

In a project with historical roots and still unfolding, the ruling elite is scrambling to recreate the state as a club of privately owned corporations, and to ground the new framework in law by giving to them rights, powers and privileges similarly accorded to slave-owners when they were masters of the state. [2] Aside from the vastly greater potential for concentrating wealth and power in the hands of the few, a state of-by-and-for corporations has an advantage yet more priceless over a state of-by-and-for slave-owners: it conceals and protects with fortress-like security the pathological desires of men who grow fat from blood-meal in a world of parasitic economic injustice.

A system designed to answer a bad question invariably produces a bad outcome. The form of civilization we’ve inherited results from a question that never should have been asked: who shall serve whom? Who shall be free and who shall be slaves? Instead of falling heir to burgeoning models of cooperation, solidarity and sharing, we’ve been bequeathed the desolate contours of competition, betrayal and violence. These odious features, and their many related forms, result from the original division of humanity into free and not free. Indeed these features must be practised, perfected and strenuously defended to maintain a superstructure of gross injustice and inequality. Despite all the complexity, variation and technological advance of modern civilization, competition, betrayal and violence are still its bread, butter and soup. [3]

At the dawn of civilization, as it were, Labor suffers the catastrophic defeat of being enslaved to the gathering forces of wealth and power. Surely no coincidence; for Labor’s bondage, more than anything else, creates the “civilization” we’ve received, and keeps it going. Aristotle’s defense of slavery as the natural condition of certain people is but one example of a single type of betrayal in the history of the West. I use it here to show how the abhorrent behavior in society works and how devastating it can be: “Therefore those people who are as different from others as body is from soul or beast from human, and people whose task, that is to say, the best thing to come from them, is to use their bodies are in this condition – those people are natural slaves.” [4]

The so-called doctrine of natural slavery rests on a patently false dichotomy and a glaring omission of reality. The false dichotomy is that between mind or soul on the one hand, and body on the other. The glaring omission is that social institutions vigorously create very different opportunities for people of different classes. These simple observations reduce the doctrine to drivel. But who thinks for himself? Who is honest and who cares? The doctrine supports the status-quo and was spoken by authority. In 1550 Juan Ginés Sepúlveda, theologian, jurist, scholar, uses it to argue before Emperor Charles V that God intended the peoples of the New World to be slaves and the Spanish to be their masters.

Arguing from falsehood for a category of natural slaves, Aristotle betrays the overwhelming majority of humanity in his own day and for centuries to come – the very people who made it possible for him to live a life of intellectual pursuits. In making this point I argue not against “intellectual pursuits” per se, but against the prejudice and betrayal these pursuits historically have had for working-class people. I hasten also to note that those who use their “minds” to make a living are often very stupid, while those who use their “bodies,” though they may lack formal education, are often quite smart.

Truth be told, slavery is a state of mind with no connection to the nature or circumstances of one’s work. It may exist in any human being working in any profession at any level of society. Forcing people to work under threat of violence, on penalty of death, starvation or homelessness does not in fact make them slaves. The mimed behavior of socialized betrayal turns people into slaves. This is the chief characteristic to look for in oneself and others when trying to discern the free from the craven. Have I and others been socialized to betray? For a slave betrays either himself or others or the ecology of the Earth. Often all three are betrayed at once.

By this definition Aristotle was possessed of slave mentality, which should not be surprising, since cultures of slavery affect all who live under them. Instead of using the legendary powers of his intellect to critique a thoroughly corrupt institution, he explains and defends it in bogus philosophical terms. Of course to do otherwise would have been dangerous at the time, and still is, which further proves how fundamentally abhorrent the system is, and how insidiously it succeeds in making slaves of even the greatest icons.

Re-evaluating Aristotle in these terms hardly diminishes his astonishing contributions across a wide range of disciplines. That is not the point. The point is to show that slave mentality vitiates the core of Western civilization; it insinuates itself into and permeates all levels of operation; especially significant is that it dominates invisibly at the highest levels. As easily as it breathes, the ruling elite, and those who do its bidding, must be able to betray, because betrayal (the mark of a true slave) is what makes possible the subjugation of labor (slavery by circumstance) and the savage exploitation of the Earth (ecocide). Betrayal is the linchpin in a system that allows deeply ignorant and violent men to seize control of and allocate to themselves the wealth and resources of the world. That they have no idea who they are or what they are doing at the deepest levels of reality is certain.

Presidents, prime ministers, members of cabinet and congress, judges high and low, corporate executives, generals, religious leaders, mercenary scientists, researchers and academics – with few exceptions they are the fools of the world and true slaves of history. Whether propelled by the propaganda of their own training, driven by personal pathologies or aping the abhorrent traditions of centuries, they betray humanity and the Earth every day in countless ways by participating in a spectrum of transcendent crimes against world.

In ancient times it may not have been so clear that profound injustice and inequality, if not addressed, might one day destabilize the species and destroy the ability of the planet to host it. Yet that is the impasse we have reached. The great crimes of the past have hardly been addressed. They have transmogrified, multiplied and deepened with assistance from an array of highly invasive, destructive and unregulated technologies. And the free-wheeling leaders at the top are the same slaves they’ve always been.]

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space [5],

where you’re madder than anyone

who’s mad about something.

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space,

where the air is so rare,

it makes me feel very strange.

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space,

where we shadow-dance with the shades

of Rosa, Emma, Proudhon, Bakunin.

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space,

where every day is a Herculean struggle

with a Hydra of cannibal ‘isms’:

globalism, capitalism, imperialism,

fascism, corporatism, militarism,

nationalism, fanaticism, jingoism,

colonialism, despotism, racism,

fundamentalism, nihilism, sadism,

exceptionalism, classism, sexism,

commercialism, materialism, consumerism,

authoritarianism, elitism, careerism,

egoism, atomism, defeatism.

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space,

where laughter is louder than a panoplied

ensemble of drunk deities at banquet.

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space,

where we are comrade writers

of radical word-processing.

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space,

where the state of the world is in crisis,

and root causes routinely buried by the press.

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space,

where the mind-body dichotomy is exploded -

a cheap fiction in support of hierarchical structures.

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space,

where we meditate, expand,

imbibe the tea of sacred herbs

interpreting the night.

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space,

where we satirize the absurdities of a nation gone nuts.

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space,

where you keep writing and writing

on the walls: if we don’t band together,

reclaim our work and take back the wealth,

the devil will win this war of attrition.

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space,

where you hammer home on denim drum

in pedestrian rhythm: the human being

is sacrosanct, inviolable – the lowest

and highest of all common denominators.

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space,

where not even electroshock therapy

can blot out the vision of people over-

turning corporate propaganda, securing

all rights for the unincorporated person.

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space,

where there’s no smog and it’s very clear:

spin-doctors of media, academia,

the bar are goose-stepping to the notes

of corporate pied-pipers, deepening

the crime against working-class people.

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space,

where the sky is wide open,

free of god, ideology and all;

and all is saved or unsaved

between grey clouds and dirt.

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space,

where hundreds of millions are singing

songs of solidarity, fortitude,

resolve, and no one is betrayed.

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space,

where we cuddle and coddle effigies

of Republicans, Democrats, Republicrats -

and then throw up.

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space,

where at last we wake from the nightmare

of a long and fitful sleep, terrorized

by ideologies of power, capital,

conquest, to a chorus of true voices;

where we journey into the ruined labyrinth

of language buried under centuries

of debris and violence; where we retrieve

the soiled, adust but still potent seeds

of Love, and plant the seeds that will bear the fruit

of new a language so subtle, whole volumes

can be written in a single cell; so expansive,

one word can encompass the universe.

Labor, my savior, I’m with you in Z space,

for trapped in a world where profit is king,

and permanent war devours the heart

of what we call civ. – every day, every day,

every day, I wake up and wake up and wake up,

lonely and cold and collapsed,

on the steps to the door of unhappiness.

little big pine

july 2010

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Endnotes

1. The charge of anachronism against those who call ancient slavery a crime is absurd and fraudulent. As surely as some forms of human behavior are only crimes relative to the culture and epoch they occur in, other forms are crimes no matter what culture or epoch they occur in. These are transcendent crimes. Wars of aggression, torture, slavery, the subjugation of women, ecocide are transcendent crimes. That custom and culture sanctioned these features of ancient life as normal or legal does not exonerate our ancestors. Neither will it exonerate us. Indeed it underscores how terrible the legacy of civilization has been, and how daunting the challenge to overcome it.

2. John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the US, said “those who own the country ought to govern it.” Those who own the country now are corporations. In making the laws of land safe for corporate domination the Roberts court is a chip of the old block.

3. Competition and betrayal function almost invisibly in western society as an organizing technique and operating principle: meaning that people are socialized to accept these negative values as default settings in personal and professional life. Violence and the threat of violence serve as society’s enforcement mechanism to maintain structural inequalities. Though men typically do the enforcing, both genders are socialized to accept violence as a supporting pillar of western civilization, if not its very foundation, which does much to render it invisible.

4. Aristotle, Politics 1254b16-19 (fourth century BCE), trans. C.D.C. Reeve (US: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998), 8-9.

5. Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl, Part III” informs and inspires this poem. “Z space” is a celluloid allusion to the 1969 film Z directed by Costa Gavras (based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Vassilis Vassilikos).

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Little Big Pine: citizen, patriot, poet; may be reached at littlebigpine@gmail.com.

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