THE TOTAL MARKET

by marc batko



The total market


pretends to be absolute and without alternative,


a natural law like gravity and the seasons,


an invisible hand for production and distribution,


a self-healing panacea


aiding those with better starting conditions,


where crises, catastrophes and wars


are repressed and off-budget.

As violence is not only military


but also economic and structural,


totalitarianism is not only explicit


but implicit, soft and invisible

where the land of unlimited possibilities


becomes a steamroller and


qualitative growth in a polyphonic world


is repressed by quantitative growth.

As humility and interconnectedness strengthen,


false consciousness prevails


where self-criticism and prophetic criticism


are dismissed as the ranting of dreamers,


where signs of estrangement,


the cries of violated nature and


ethical standards are decried as irrelevant


amid the dominant myths of productivity.

Language and community are threatened


where teaching is denatured to marketing,


where the meaning of work and


humanization of work are trivialized,


where future generations are forgotten.


where the poor are made invisible,


immigrants are stylized as threats,


and the homeless are criminalized.

The unsustainable present threatens


the open dynamic future


where only the powerful define development,


where growth is undifferentiated and


potatoes rank lower than arms exports


destabilizing the world,


defacing the meaning of productivity


and demoralizing actors and victims.

The system has already failed


where growth, competition and productivity


are everything.


where politics is reduced


to protecting investments,


where the media set


entertainment above information and


where hope and truth are annoying to the total market.




HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

By marc batko



Historical consciousness and utopias

do not become discredited

when little Bart

comes home all muddy and twisted.

Prejudice and inertia are steppingstones to understanding.

The ego must die for the self to be born.

Myopia, parochialism, homophobia, ethnocentrism

are only bitter fruits of self-righteousness,

the grand delusion born of anthropomorphism.

when one only has a hammer,

everything appears as a nail,

nature, women and the third world.

America, corrupted by wealth


where full employment only occurs through wars,


is the pioneer of speculation and misfortune.


Capitalism and the last superpower


are above the law.


where our footprint is too great


and wasteful use of energy is challenged.


we use the Creole trick


describing ourselves as victims


or divert attention with non sequitors


to avoid humility and self-criticism:


Do you want to live in Rumania?

Only repression artists could manage this

where nonstop consumerism

and limitless nature,

myths of a culture of excess,

are stylized as economic laws.

People on the fifth floor

often only talk with and congratulate

others on the fifth floor.

The powerful never make mistakes;

everything is only a learning experience.

The dominant immunize themselves

so bankruptcies are natural events.

Right-wing propaganda threatens!

Idolizing the nation or the belt-buckle,

scapegoating the weak.

the immigrants who make hardly any demands

on our social security systems,

make buffoons of triumphant America,

the “indispensable nation”

whose prosperity

when not the result of credit and GDP distortions

is based on weapons exports,

bottom-top redistribution

and exploitation of the global south.

Can we create an anti-authoritarian Plan B,

where life is a gift, not a possession,

where children and nature have rights,

where persons are processes and not things,

corn used up or ladders for others.

where we mend our own pockets and

treat our own hemorrhages,

where our gifts and visions are encouraged

not steamrolled in the quest for higher profits?

The future is not extrapolated from the present

but anticipated and protect ed in the present

unless we become buffoons of the megamachine!