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

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

There is Nothing Great about War

Click here to access article by Kim Petersen from Dissident Voice

In this review of a new book entitled The Great Class War 1914-1918, you can ignore Petersen's gratuitous moralism about "great" as used as an adjective in reference to wars. Instead focus on the author's use of the word "great", connoting "major" as applied to class war. As such the book appears to offer an alternative and accurate way to view the history of this war as a class war instead of obscuring this reality by presenting it as various nations gloriously clashing for dominance that one gets in conventional histories. The book appears to offer an antidote to the usual brainwashing we experience while treading through capitalist ideological muck of conventional ideological institutions, especially education.
Pauwels presents the assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand as a pretext for war. However, the war was launched by elitists1 who feared the hoi polloi eating into profits by forming unions and demanding higher wages, and demanding greater democracy. There was also competition among nation states to grab colonies and gain economic advantage. The elitists believed that a war would crush revolutionary zeal, aspirations for democracy, and replace socialism with nationalism.