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, October 17, 2017

[Russian Revolution, part 9 of ?] October 1917: an echo from the future

Click here to access article by Sally Campbell from Socialist Review (Britain). 
...attempts to reform it [capitalism] through parliaments haven’t worked. In the past century a whole number of left wing governments have been elected in various places, and while many have been able to temporarily ameliorate some of its worst effects, none has been able to legislate away the basic, brutal truth of capitalism: that it is a system based upon the exploitation of the vast majority by the extreme minority who own and control the means of creating wealth.

The Russian Revolution, and specifically the October Revolution, confronted this truth head-on, and for a period it showed how it might be possible to run society differently.

This did not come from the heads of Lenin and the Bolsheviks bestowing their knowledge upon the masses; rather it came from an intense period of workers’ self-activity. This self-activity didn’t only extend to the workplace — it also tackled forms of oppression and political grievances which had shackled Russian workers and peasants for decades.
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