Open Integral

I’m sure you’ve heard Rand Paul’s statements about the Civil Rights Act? Rand Paul, the Rep. candidate for Senate in KY, confirmed his long-held views that private business should not be regulated to prevent discrimination, that the rights of private property and capital are supreme. Even to the point that business should not be required to accommodate people with disabilities. Here you go, Ayn Rand-style laissez-faire capitalism at its best.

All of which supports the basic tenet of capitalism, private ownership and operation of business. Which of course works magically for the benefit of everyone because everyone has equal opportunity to enter into the business relationship, to say no. Yep, a business person can say “no” to serve you if you are black, and the black can go shop somewhere else and everyone will be the better for it. Never mind that the black had to shop at places with higher prices because all the white-only businesses had all the capital investment to buy in such bulk to set lower prices with which smaller, black-owned businesses could not compete. Yep, that’s the mutual benefit of all from those “conscious” decisions of the hoarders of private capital.

Paul’s faux pas was more that he openly admitted it, not that he held such views. Most conservatives have exactly the same view but cannot publicly admit it. It’s the strong undercurrent of corporate capitalism, what makes for such astounding profits for the capitalists while the workers get nothing by comparison. And the latter are made to eat the slop they are given and be grateful for it. Yes, Paul only brought to light what conservatives and capitalists have always supported, and it makes them look like the vultures and sharks that they are. And they know it. That’s why they are running from Paul’s statements, not because they disagree with them.

And this is what the likes of some integralites promote with their support of capitalism. Like it or not, THEY are capitalists. I am not.

More in comments.

Edward Berge

As some of you know, I am boycotting the Integral Conference because of I-I’s unabashed promulgation of global capitalism. (See for example our prevous discussion on Integral Capitalism.) In that regard see Daniel Gustav Anderson’s “Sweet science: A proposal for integral macropolitics,” Integral Review, 6:1, March 2010, pp. 10 – 62. An excerpt:

“I will retell Wilber’s ontology…in order to demonstrate the political significance…which coincide with the particular social regime (or in Wilber’s terms, the “telos”) it expresses, integrated global capital (Guattari, 2000). My purpose is not to explicate the flaws in Wilber’s logic or demonstrate his misreadings of particular texts; such exegesis has been taken up elsewhere; it is instead to suggest ways in which Wilber’s holarchy flickers or mechanically reproduces in the field of metaphysics and spiritual aspiration the social and political structures of late capital, which are not integral at all. Further, because Wilber’s holonography reproduces the present political order and forecloses any legitimized means of transforming its problematic terms of exchange, the unevenness of its development (as I will show), one may plausibly claim that it is not a transformative model but a conservative one in the last analysis, where conservatism is understood as an attempt to maintain the status quo for its own sake” (23-4).

See more in comments, including responses by Sean Hargens.

The title of the above is a book written by Gar Alperovitz, a University of Maryland political economist and president of the National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives. This is an extension of an earlier thread here called “Emerging economic structures.” I think it’s a vital project to explore, promote and develop a political-economic expression of an evolving consciousness. The following is from a review of the above book in dollars & sense: The Magazine of Economic Justice

The schematic model outlined here is termed a “Pluralist Commonwealth”—”pluralist” to emphasize the priority given to democratic diversity and individual liberty; “commonwealth” to underscore the centrality of new public and quasi-public wealth-holding institutions.

At the heart of this model is a robust vision of community democracy as the necessary foundation for a renewal of democracy in general. The model prioritizes a variety of strategies to undergird local economies, thereby creating conditions favorable to the growth of local civil society associations and an increase in the power of local government to make meaningful decisions.

The model also projects the development over time of new ownership institutions, including locally anchored worker-owned and other community-benefiting firms, on the one hand, and various national wealth-holding bodies, on the other. These ultimately take the place of current elite and corporate ownership of the preponderance of large-scale capital.

At the national level, a major new institution—call it a “Public Trust”—is projected to oversee the investment of stock on behalf of the public as state and other pension boards commonly do today. The proceeds could flow to individuals, to states, to municipalities, to the federal treasury—or perhaps to fund such basic public services as education or medical care for the elderly.

A fundamental shift in the ownership of wealth over time slowly moves the nation toward greater equality: directly, for instance, through worker-owned enterprises, and also indirectly, through a flow of funds from the large-scale public investments. (Capital would likely be assembled both by the taxation of elite income and wealth and through new loan guarantee strategies to finance the broadened public ownership of new investments.) Over time, these flows of funds are allocated to finance a reduction in the work week so as to permit more free time, which in turn bolsters both individual liberty and democratic participation. In addition, ownership structures and strategies that stabilize the local economy strengthen the traditional entrepreneurial foundations of liberty while also enhancing individual job security.

Finally, the emerging model implicitly moves in the direction of, and ultimately projects, a radical long-term devolution of the national political system to some form of regional reorganization and decentralization. The region is the most logical locus for economic planning aimed at securing jobs in particular communities and for handling ecological, transportation, and other issues in a rational and democratic fashion.