Click here to access article by Kali Ma from The Hampton Institute.
The contribution of this author lies with her arguments for the necessity of critical thinking so that we can face reality and imagine new ways of living. The glaring weakness is that she can only identify the problem as being the "hierarchical system". This is especially discouraging coming from a website that bills itself as "A Working Class Think Tank".
If you read the literature from or about the Populist Movement of the late 19th century (e.g. Democratic Promise by Lawrence Goodwyn), early 20th century literature related to socialism and anarchism (Eugene Debs, Upton Sinclair, etc), the history and literature of the 1930s activists, you would view this article as rather naive politically. The power of the indoctrination agencies which she elaborates on is also illustrated by her total inability to identify the system which drives these agencies--capitalism. Hierarchy, like indoctrination, is only another method used by the capitalist ruling class to maintain control of working people and of society.
It has become clear to me that WWII and its aftermath which featured ruling class attacks on radicals and labor unions was incredibly successful in wiping out this heritage of critical political thought in the US.
