Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Is Russell Brand right, do we need a revolution?

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, December 11, 2014

Is Russell Brand right, do we need a revolution?

Click here to access article by Dan Poulton from CounterFire (Britain).

I was pleasantly surprised to find this in a British website which I've always regarded as politically soft left-wing. Maybe its an encouraging sign that "the times they are a changin'".

If we want to end a system based on violence, the capitalist system, we need to organise the struggle on a mass basis and never surrender our self-activity in the name of 'peace', 'law and order' and all the other false friends of progress. To throw away the gains of a revolution because of a moral injunction against violence would be in itself immoral.

Russell Brand is unique in that here is a celebrity who openly proselytizes for system change.

Poulton notes that views like this "...explains the otherwise baffling fury and derision with which Brand is met, even from the liberal media like the Guardian and the Independent."