Be Thankful

Be thankful that technical inventiveness has always been part of the human condition. While Adam plowed the earth from which he was taken, his mind plowed the earth's mind, his ploughshare timshel.

Be thankful that the army of labor savers, evolving through your help (tax money) and up to now freely given to corporate enterprise can now save you labor-- be made clean, ecologically sound, and use abundant energy sources.

Be thankful that though as yet this army does not serve and protect our lives and freedom, what stands in the way of its doing so is "weightless"-- it's not the guns of the super-rich, but an idea in our heads of what contribution means, of our social roles, of the meaning of work.

Be thankful for the Chinese idea of Rectification of Names-- such as Socialism, which propaganda and regimes the opposite of socialism has sullied.

And for offers like "deep democracy." I would offer "bread and butter basic democracy"--a democracy set up to guarantee the basics-- food, clothing, shelter-- not jobs-- jobs are an idea.

Be thankful that your ancestors and mine supplied the world at last with the means to feed, clothe, and shelter the world without having to give your life over to labor.

Be thankful that your labor power can now return to you from masters, owners, bosses of every kind.

Be thankful for the great thinkers who concocted the idea of democracy albeit in the leisure-beaker supported by slavery-- be thankful that there exists openly upon the world the "engineeringly demonstrable" way to end all forms of mass overt slavery, including the last form, wage-slavery, be thankful so many are no longer needed for production.

Be thankful for the transition phase called industrial capitalism, forcing us all to build the new superstructure inadvertently, to be liberated from wage-slavery inadvertently, and now to see that as progressively liberating. Be thankful to the right-wing forces forcing the old way into a vessel too small, ripening the time.