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, August 18, 2011

Driving People into Rebellion

Click here to access article by Stephen Harper from Dissident Voice.
These events are not simply a response to the ‘neoliberalism’ which it is fashionable for left-liberals like to denounce (subtext: if only we could ditch those nasty Tories and install a more clement, democratic system of exploitation, then everything would be alright). Rather, they represent the death throes of the moribund system of capitalism. As the signs of social decomposition become harder to ignore, we should be very clear that the future offers, as Rosa Luxemburg postulated, only two possibilities: socialism or barbarism. The anti-social aspects of these riots, and the response to them by right-wing ‘vigilante’ groups, give us a glimpse of what that second possibility might look like: a Hobbesian war of each against all, fueled by racism and nationalism and leading to what Marx and Engels, in one of their gloomier moments, called the ‘mutual ruination of the contending classes’.
I think the big question is: will we allow the capitalist system to degrade society into barbarism, or will we act in an intelligent, organized fashion to destroy the system and replace it with a system that sustains societies?
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