Blowing leaves

At this season of the year, when the leaves fall from the trees, it is possible to observe in leafy suburban areas one of the more curious customs of this society -- leaf blowing.

In ones or small groups, men wander the streets with specially manufactured leaf-blowing machines strapped to their backs. (There seems to be some taboo against women engaging in this custom.) When switched on, these machines blow gusts of air through an attached tube. The operator guides the tube to blow leaves, as well as dust and other debris, off the ground in certain areas (the so-called "clear areas") until they settle in certain other areas (the "target areas").

People who are unfamiliar with the leaf-blowing custom often wonder how the location and boundaries of these clear and target areas are determined. My investigation has revealed that "clear areas" consist of yards, drives, and stretches of sidewalk adjacent to buildings whose owners, residents or users have agreed to pay the leaf blowers or their employers to clear away leaves. Conversely, "target areas" are adjacent to buildings whose owners, residents or users have refused to pay for said service, despite repeated opportunities to do so.

Why, however, is leaf clearing regarded as a valuable service? Why is reluctance to clear leaves regarded as a sin to be punished? After all, leaves are often beautiful. Dry they make a pleasant crunchy sound when trodden underfoot. They protect and enrich the soil as compost. One might therefore have expected people to pay to have leaves moved onto rather than away from their property. So far I have failed to clarify this mystery.

Leaf moving has very unpleasant effects for the passerby. The dust blown into the air gets in your face and makes you cough and sputter, while the mechanical noise intrudes for a considerable distance, drowning out birdsong and other more pleasurable sounds. It must be incomparably worse for the leaf blowers themselves, whose exposure to the dust and noise is almost continuous and who wear no protective devices. The total waste of labor and energy in this flagrantly irrational activity must be quite significant.

So why do they do it? However harmful and irrational it may be in terms of the social interest, it is a way of making some money for men who would otherwise be unemployed and without means of livelihood. This makes it a rational activity in their eyes. If they can get someone to pay them for doing it, that is sufficient justification and they do not feel the need to inquire further. On the contrary, when I tried to explain to a leaf blower the harm that he was doing, he made motions with his finger that I interpreted as meaning that I was insane.

The plight of public schools in Florida (from Joe Hopkins)

Joe Hopkins, a correspondent from Florida, has provided the following update on the plight of public schools in that state. SDS

The clock is ticking for Florida public schools

The clock is ticking down on Florida's Liberty County School District. Liberty School District has had their $9 million budget chopped by more than $3 million since the 2007-2008 school year.

The 1300 student liberty district has been labelled "failing" under George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB). NCLB is the law that requires students to study for standardized tests in Math & Reading which reduces "learning activity" to institutionalized "operational activity"; programmed teaching - the result is that student creativity (real learning activity) is banished to the dustbin. "When learning is carried out at the level of operations, the child follows in the teacher's footsteps, very much like a puppet." [1]

Jack Jennings, former General Counsel for the House Education Committee said this is the worst environment for education funding since Ronald Reagan proposed abolishing the U.S. Department of Education in the 1980s.

Even Arne Duncan, current Education Secretary, says NCLB, which requires all students to pass standardized tests in Reading & Math encourages schools to dumb down their curriculum because it judges them on a rigid pass-fail system.

"Duncan estimates that about 80 per cent of schools - including those that are generally high-performing - are in danger of being labelled failing because of the system's rigidity." [2] Liberty School District is considered a high-quality district of Florida but NCLB seems designed to fail most public schools in the country to open up Public Education to market forces through management or ownership of schools by private, for-profit corporations. In the market, cost of production must be reduced in the extreme to be competitive (A profit must be made to stay in business.) - This leads to a good looking balance sheet . . . . and stupid kids. Pupils and students are transformed into market commodities that perform low-paying low-level chores in the workplace.

The dominant and monied class, with their long established business and political connexions, send their children off to elementary and secondary schools that have a student teacher ratio of 5:1 in their effort to reproduce themselves and maintain the conditions of the status quo.

There is, and has been, a class war going on in the United States since the U.S. Constitution was drafted. It was transported here from England. It's been going on for so long the class war has become concealed behind the veil of normalcy - it's hidden in plain sight. It's just the way things are to the dominated class of workers.

What Is To Be Done?

The corporate class has commandeered the Charter School Project to their advantage. The good idea behind Charter Schools at its inception was to allow concerned groups - teachers, communities, social organizations - to start their own schools with the boost of public funding. This aspect of Charter Schools has for the most part (to the general population) fallen from view and died out because of lack of attention and knowledge.

When groups of interested and dedicated people know something positive is possible that particular "something" becomes site and stake in the struggle. All world history is a chain of social struggles and it behooves us not to allow history to die from lack of participation.

Talk to each other about Charter Schools being in the hands of community organizers, in the hands of teachers themselves - with the added input and participation of the students themselves. Talk about organizing with an emphasis on the struggle against the Goliath and then organize.

Incite insight. It must be done. If we don't do it - who will? Organize - Organize - Organize!

[1] V.V. Repkin, Learning Activity, Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, (M.E. Sharpe, 2003), 18 (V.V. Repkin is Vice President of the International Association for Developmental Teaching).

[2] Bloomberg Businessweek, (July 11-July 17, 2011), 29.

Reflections on the firing of a CEO

The press has given extensive coverage to the recent firing of Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo. To be precise, not to the firing as such -- a common enough event even for CEOs -- but to Ms. Bartz' open admission, in an e-mail to all Yahoo employees, that "I've just been fired over the phone by Yahoo's chairman of the board." This breach of etiquette earned her a rebuke from Jennifer Chatman, professor of corporate management at the University of California, Berkeley.

Another commentator, Alexander Chancellor (Guardian Weekly, 9.16.11), is more sympathetic. His protest too is not aimed at the firing itself, which for him is clearly no big deal ("I've been fired lots of times"), but at the "insult" of its delivery by phone rather than face to face.

Whether CEOs should be considered members of the working class is a moot point for socialists. Although they are employees and as such can be fired by their employers like any other employees, their high earnings (including business expenses, bonuses and stock options) enable them to accumulate enough wealth to climb out of the working class by reaching the point where they no longer NEED to find employment in order to satisfy their needs. Unless, I suppose, the extravagance of their lifestyle matches their earnings.

I suspect that the emphasis on HOW one is fired is a way of avoiding the main issue. Being fired is bound to feel humiliating, however politely it may be done. Especially for a high-level manager who identifies with the company and is used to being treated as a colleague in an enterprise of which he or she is part. Even if a CEO has saved enough not to have to worry about making ends meet for the rest of his or her life, the experience of being fired is a shock that dispels long-cultivated illusions and suddenly reveals the stark reality of the underlying power relationship. Like all the lesser employees that YOU have fired (on behalf of the boss), you too are no more than a dispensable tool in someone else's hand.

Surely at some level the CEO must have been fully aware all along that this is so. But it is not legitimate to object to being fired as such, as that would be tantamount to objecting to the employment relationship itself -- that is, to capitalism. It is an essential prerogative of the employer to hire and fire. So anger at the humiliation of being fired is diverted to side issues.

Socialists are opposed on principle to employment ("jobs") as an inherently oppressive and humiliating institution. We do not demand that the government create new jobs, nor do we proclaim that having a job is a right. We demand the right to a livelihood and the opportunity to do useful work for society without having to get a job. That is, without having to put ourselves in a situation that exposes us to the risk of some employer subjecting us to the humiliation of being fired.

Здравствуйте, друзья!

Я хочу поверить, можно ли писать блог по русски?

Record temperatures and global heating

I've been looking at media reports of record summer temperatures in various parts of the world. For example, this July has been the warmest in Moscow since records began to be kept 130 years ago, with the thermometer reaching 100 degrees F. for the first time in that city. People in northern India has been suffering badly, especially from the accompanying water shortage.

But much more frightening than what these reports say is what they are careful NOT to say -- about the connection between these record temperatures and the planetary process that they reflect, that is, global heating (a more expressive term than the gentler "global warming"). Reports either fail to mention the broader planetary situation at all, or else they quote some scientist remarking that temperatures in any particular year are not direct evidence of global warming. Quite likely, the scientist goes on to say something more definite about the trend over a run of years, but that part is omitted. So it is still the policy of the media owners to conceal the planetary situation from their audiences, despite the assurances from some of them that their policy has changed.

Eventually more and more people will manage to work out what is happening. Then complacency will give way to hysteria. Quite unwarranted hysteria, of course. Our marvelous civilization will surely survive for a few more years in the Arctic region, where the plutocrats can continue extracting their favorite beverage, OIL, until the temporary survivors, including the plutocrats themselves, finally croak in the methane-saturated atmosphere.

Request for clarification

From: Planetary Residents Liaison Department, Galactic Central

To: Resident on Planet Sol 849615-3

We are somewhat perturbed by the emotional tenor of your latest communication and concerned for your mental stability. If you feel the need to return temporarily or permanently to your home world, this can be arranged at short notice. A competent successor for your position is available.

We do not question your assessment of the ironically self-styled simian species Homo sapiens as a potential threat to galactic security in view of its rapidly expanding technological capacity in conjunction with chronic social atavism. However, as you know, a quarantine is already in place and we remain unconvinced that further action is required at this time.

The type of "messianic" intervention that you urge is extremely difficult under the planetary conditions that you describe so forcefully. It is also quite demanding in terms of scarce specialized resources. And, of course, success is by no means assured, as earlier attempts demonstrate all too clearly. You are welcome to submit a more specific and thoroughly substantiated proposal.

Under the circumstances, a sanitary operation would seem more expedient and cost-effective. A proposal along these lines will certainly receive favorable consideration.

Reflections on giving blood

The gift of blood

I lived the early part of my life in Britain, emigrating to the U.S. when I was about 40. While in Britain I regularly donated blood. When I came to the U.S. I continued giving blood, but after two or three donations decided to stop. The experience was no longer a source of satisfaction to me. I’d like to explain why.

In The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy (1970, reissued 1997), Richard Titmuss described the voluntary donation of blood as “institutionalized altruism”: “[It] represents the relationship of giving between human beings in its purest form, because people give without the expectation that they will necessarily be given to in return.”

However, the concept of “altruism” does not quite capture the appeal of giving blood – at least, not for me. The altruist, unlike the egoist, gains satisfaction from giving to others. But the altruist still perceives those “others” as separate from his or her self, and consequently experiences giving as a loss. In these respects, the altruist and the egoist are alike. The only difference between them is that the altruist gains sufficient moral satisfaction from the giving to outweigh the loss, so that on balance the experience is a rewarding one.

For me, the essence of giving blood in the context of the British National Health Service was not altruism but the sense of participating in a community. Members of a community give not to “others” -- perceived as separate from the self – but to the community, perceived as an overarching entity that encompasses both self and others. In that sense, they give to another, broader aspect of the self, and do not experience the giving as a loss. Nor, for that matter, do they experience it as a gain, but rather as a transfer from one aspect of the self to another. Giving to the community is experienced more as egoism (of a special kind) than as altruism.

Whenever I gave blood in Britain, I was brought to sit and rest afterward with other donors in a special area where nurses gave us all biscuits and tea, to replace the lost fluid, and made sure that each of us felt well before leaving. When I gave blood in the U.S. there was none of this. True, we were free to continue lying down for a while after the blood was extracted, but no one asked how we felt or offered us anything to eat and drink. And this was why I stopped giving blood.

Of course, I could easily have solved the practical problem by taking a beverage with me and finding a spot nearby to drink it. However, it was not the practical problem that prompted my decision. Rather, the indifference shown to our welfare as donors brought home to me the fact that here in the U.S., where there is no health service for everyone, I was no longer participating in a community by giving blood. In Britain, I had given my blood without payment in the knowledge that a patient who needed it would likewise receive it without payment. Here, although I was giving my blood for free, the patient would still have to pay for it. That made of me a sucker, seduced into contributing to the profits of some medical business.

From a very informative article by Joel Schwartz [see reference], I learn that it is in fact common practice in the U.S. to offer blood donors fruit juice and cookies. I suppose I was just unlucky in that respect. The author also suggests that the fruit juice and cookies might be regarded as a sort of “payment” given in exchange for the blood.

For blood given in the context of a community, this is an absurd interpretation. Giving blood to the community weakens you, so you then receive sustenance from the community until your strength is restored. In the first instance you give, in the second you receive, but there is no exchange involved whatsoever. You are helping to look after others, but at the same time you are being looked after – as a matter of course, because you are part of the community. After all, if you need sustenance for a reason that has nothing to do with an act of giving on your part, you will still receive it. Giving and receiving arise not in response to one another, but out of participation in the community.

Reference. “Blood and altruism – Richard M. Titmuss’ criticism on the commercialization of blood,” Public Interest, Summer 1999

(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0377/is_136/ai_55174702).