We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Global Capitalist Crisis and Trump’s War Drive [a must-read]

Click here to access article by William I. Robinson from TeleSur

This is the most accurate general appraisal of the transnational capitalist class (TCC) that is the driving force behind so many wars and economic attacks on workers throughout the world that I've seen in some time. This professor of sociology backs up his observations with links to solid sources. I only differ with his conclusion.
... behind the Trump regime and the Pentagon, the TCC seeks to sustain global accumulation through expanding militarization, conflict, and repression. This gives a built-in war drive to the current course of capitalist globalization. Only a worldwide push back from below, and ultimately a program to redistribute wealth and power downward, can counter the upward spiral of international conflagration.
This very mild conclusion is not supported by the excellent content he provides. I suspect that he is compromising himself here because he must not antagonize the agents of the ruling class in California if he wants to continue his career as sociology professor at UC-Santa Barbara. I don't fault him for this because we all must make compromises to powerful figures in the ruling class to survive, and in his case, to thrive by exposing the oppressive capitalist regime that affects us all.

There will be no redistribution of "wealth and power downward" like we (or our parents and grandparents) saw to a very limited extent in the Great Depression of the 1930s. And then restoration of the economy was not due to FDR's policies, but to WWII. (Even my very uneducated mother knew and told me this in 1946 when I was 10 years old.) And we are likely headed for another conflagration which promises to be far worse, if not terminal for humans.

No, only a revolutionary movement capable of ridding ourselves of these capitalist monsters, their upper-middle class collaborators, and their hideous self-serving system of capitalism can save us.