Surviving Capitalism (Not) : 'Jordan reform has no real content' [7:49m video and transcript]

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, June 16, 2011

'Jordan reform has no real content' [7:49m video and transcript]

Click here to access video interview by Press TV with Ralph Schoenman.

It seems to me that reports of Jordan's spring uprisings has largely escaped even alternative media.

This Berkeley professor comments on the King's announcement about democratic reforms in the offing for Jordon. And guess what? It's form without substance. This has been the strategy of all class based regimes especially since the American and French revolutions of the 18th century that tapped into the universal yearning for a genuine participatory democracy. Unfortunately, these revolutions resulted only in capitalist aristocracies taking power away from the feudal aristocracies. Nowadays, autocratic ruling classes always opt for a fake democracy, just like we have in capitalist "democracies", when their rule is threatened.

I doubt very much that any genuine democracy will ever be handed to ordinary people by people who rule over and exploit them. Ordinary working people must create this for themselves.