The Authoritarian Playbook

Trump is following an Old playbook.

The Dictator's playbook is old. This list is inspired by an article in "Raw Story," but it is a list I already had so this is my version. I've been writing on this for a long time. So this post is a place to put related posts.

1. Lie Often, Lie Big.
2. Target, Challenge and Coopt Institutions that Enforce Accountability.
3. Consolidate power by putting sychophants in key positions (military and law enforcement).
4. Target, Attack and Control the Press.
5. Target & Scapegoat minority groups, rivals and foreigners.
6. Target, Vilify as Enemies and bad people, protesters, minorities and scapegoats.
7. Find and Recruit the Angry, dogmatic, disaffected, ignorant and fearful.
8. Rile up the Mob, but exclude anyone not onboard.
9. Play on Religious, Ethnic, Racial and cultural prejudice.
10. Enforce identity of the movement and leader.
11. Enforce Personal loyalty in key institutions.
12. Indoctrinate thru Repetition belief in alternative facts over facts.
13. Relentlessly go after disloyalty and criticism.
14. Instigate and use violence to beat down opposition verbally and physically.

That "Muddle Head [Marx]" David Ellerman and Henry George on Marx

One thing that both David Ellerman in the present age and Henry George in the 19th Century, both have cogent criticisms of Marxism from the left, from a Human Rights/fundamental rights point of view. Henry George Considered Marx a "muddle-head". Ernst Wigforss made corrections to Marxism that made it effective in Scandinavia based on similar critiques to those of George. Ellerman explans why. These critiques explain both why Marxism doesn't work as advertised, and why even when it works as promised it fails.

This post follows on the post titled "The Fraud of Rented Labor"

http://www.cooperative-individualism.org/holmes-john_henry-george-and-karl-marx-1947-159.pdf

Ellerman explains how Marx, Lenin, and the Russian Revolution have set back the Left for over a century. More like a century and a half.

“As if the central question was whether people should be publicly or privately rented–with the Great Capitalism-Communism Debate and Cold War being like a ‘Peloponnesian War’ over whether slaves should be publicly owned (Sparta) or privately owned (Athens).”

To summarize:

Marx:

“brought a knife to a gun fight.”[Ellerman]

“He brought a value theory to a property-theoretic fight.”[Ellerman]

Both Ellerman and Henry George believed that:

“His “labor theory of value and exploitation” is inherently superficial” and Ellerman adds "and thus the favorite foil in economics.”[Ellerman]

“But that is not worst of it.”[Ellerman]

“By misunderstanding the basis for the employer’s appropriation (i.e., the human rental contract), he ended up attacking the idea of private property!”[Ellerman]

“This allowed the employers (“capitalists”), who are the beneficiaries of the whole fraudulent human rental system, to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of other people’s labor by “renting” them; and to parade as the defenders of private property that is supposed to rest on the principle of people getting the fruits of their labor!”[Ellerman]

Thus: “How screwed up is a so-called “critique”” that:

“allows those who violate human rights (to the fruits of your labor or to self-government)”

“to parade as the “defenders of human rights”!” [Ellerman]

“The conclusions of these arguments is that, contrary to Marx”

the Left should be arguing for the abolition (not nationalization) of the whole system of renting human beings:”[Ellerman]

“In the name of inalienable rights (no renting of human beings);”[Ellerman]

“In the name of private property (getting the fruits of one’s labor);”

and In the name of democracy (in the workplace).”[Ellerman]

This argument draws on the Swedish thinker Ernst Wiggforss for much of it's inspiration. But it also, unconsciously draws on Henry George.

For a Detailed discussion continue:

The Fraud of "Renting Labor."

Some currently "legal" tropes are in-fact logically unjust. With things like exploiting labor, "renting" labor, and binding laborers to abusive contracts, most folks recognize their innate injustice. Unfortunately, as displayed in the corrupt SCOTUS decision announced just 12 days after I first drafted this post (5/21/2018), stealing wages is perfectly legal under the sophist arguments of "right to contract" having primacy over a right to own oneself, the fraud of "renting labor" is a perfectly legal fraud.

See:Supreme Court upholds Employers Right to Require Arbitration

David Ellerman and related historians and economists offers better arguments than the raw emotional ones offered by many activists. His arguments, founded in the arguments of the enlightenment and the abolitionist movement apply the logic of inalienable human rights. Listening to them could drive a paradigm shift in understanding the legal rights and wrongs of our system; and a framework for righting them. But of course only if we can upend the corruption in our electoral and legal system.

This post is intended to be a follow on to the post: “Justice, Injustice And "Legal Fictions" = Fraud” Ellerman explains why the "rental of labor" is a legal fraud and a tool for wage slavery and inequality.