Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Aspiring to Rule the World: US Capital and the Battle for Syria

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

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Aspiring to Rule the World: US Capital and the Battle for Syria

Click here to access article by Stephen Gowans from his blog What's Left.

This article really consists of two essays: 1) an analysis and exposition of what people outside of the US refer to as "bourgeois democracy", and 2) how the latter influences our policies toward Syria. Essay #1 is Gowans' most important contribution. I regard it as a "must read".

Bourgeois democracy can also be described as "capitalist democracy" because the capitalist class created this fake form of democracy after they took control of the US and France during their revolutions and more gradually in Britain. It became the model that all capitalist countries at least aspire to. This form was a product of capitalist class rule disguised as democracy because of the early embryonic capitalist classes need for the support of the lower classes (peasants, laborers, skilled craftsman, etc) to overturn the rule of monarchs and aristocracy. Thus the lower classes were induced to support the capitalist revolutionaries with vague promises of "freedom" and the rule of law celebrated with such slogans as "liberté, égalité, fraternité". What they really seriously advocated was the sanctity of private property.

Gowans essay #1 provides a very concise understanding of how the capitalist class rules the US behind the facade of "democracy".