Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Don’t Feed the Snakes

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

Friday, September 2, 2016

Don’t Feed the Snakes

Click here to access article by Rejane Carolina Hoeveler from Jacobin.

This examines some lessons that can be learned from the right-wing takeover of the left government in Brazil.

Once again we see in South America, as we've seen elsewhere, that there can be no compromises with the capitalist class. Reformers (liberals) within left parties can easily be bribed with offices and power to make such compromises with the snakes of capitalism. But slowly the latter will grow into large snakes that will devour those who thought they could tame them. Only devoutly revolutionary parties that are held to their goal of building a new social structure by bottom-up power arrangements within their movement can succeed in starving the snakes of capitalism.