Radical
Change is Taking Place Whether We Like It Or Not
“We
visualize it, imagine it, and think that it’s not going to happen, and it’s
happening.” Yoko Ono
Capitol’s
apologists are paradoxically joined by many of its critics in seeming unity of
belief that there is no chance or need for change. Driven by despair, many
assume that either the end is near or that it will await their demise before
things get so bad they can’t get worse. This is understandable as we experience
an almost endless loop of bad news about everything, along with a political
system that offers a choice between polio or cancer every election day with no
seeming hope for ending the disease. Luckily, there are more who see change as
not only inevitable but absolutely necessary for survival and they are doing
all they can to bring it about, no matter how our ruling minority’s media and
political servants act to the contrary or some left critics insist it’s
ineffective or even hopeless.
As
America enters the early stages of a presidential campaign to reduce thoughtful
people to more weeping and gnashing of teeth than biblical believers can
imagine, other nations are moving from our form of political hypocrisy to a
real experience of political democracy. And even some in the USA are responding
to the need for substantial change, with citizen movements toward taking
control from minority wealth to make majority rule a reality.
While
nations like Greece and Spain take new party action in the face of brutally
imposed austerity and greater inequality than ever, cities in the USA like
Richmond, California vote for progressives despite millions spent against them
by fossil fuel fundamentalism and Seattle elects a radical socialist to its
city council. And there is already a socialist contesting the coronation of
another Clinton in the Democratic primary. This is hardly a revolution, but
it’s far more potential reform than the nation has seen in more than a
generation.
Meanwhile,
despair is fed by the U.S. owner minority’s government and media as more unrest
is promised in propaganda wars against Russia and China that could turn into
military action if the slack jawed warlords in Washington continue manipulating
a dwindling congregation of true believers among their captive public. And the total
lack of confidence in and growing criticism of the government is also coming
from a resurgent right conservative wing which is sometimes more irrational
than what it criticizes but often makes some of what passes for a left seem
moderate and even irrelevant by comparison.
While
the danger to humanity is greater than ever, so are the possibilities for
success that remain less visible on the global stage due to the source of that
danger; the stage is owned, controlled and the actors directed by capital’s
forces of economic and environmental destruction that benefit most from
everyone else’s loss.
Renewed
efforts to socially democratize instead of ending capitalism, whether in
Greece, Spain, Scotland, Seattle, Richmond or hundreds of other places, should
be seen as positive and not simply negated by those who’ve experienced such
efforts before and understand they are not enough. They should also understand
that what went before also wasn’t enough. This time, the efforts are much
broader, involve greater numbers of people, and even if seemingly not visible
in some locales are global as much as national. And these efforts, whether to
raise taxes on the rich, pay higher minimum wages, open the electoral process
to new parties, free Palestinians from colonial domination or create public
banks, to name only a few, are not exclusively aimed at the effects of private
capital control but also at the cause of those effects. They are politically
democratizing steps in seemingly isolated places that represent humanity’s
march toward a far more social economy to replace the anti-social profiteering
that makes a minority rich beyond belief while impoverishing and destroying
more of the world each day.
And
real democracy will be needed to end the environmental fanaticism that is being
confronted by citizens, some of whom may be in capitalism denial while accusing
others of climate change denial, but are still battling against a major menace
to humanity and taking us all in the direction of salvation and away from destruction.
Still
lacking a solidarity that crosses lines of reductionist, identitarian and
forced minority action, there is need for united political organization in the
scattered movements for change that are more numerous and militant that at any
time since the sixties and in many cases far more conscious of global rather
than simply local problems. But whether they are moves for separatism in
Scotland or Black lives Matter in the USA or indigenous people’s demands for
protection of Mother Earth everywhere, there are signs of growth in not just
the numbers but the consciousness of single issue groups that offer strong
possibility that awareness of humanity’s common condition will overwhelm
falsely created divisions in ethnicity, religion, culture, or worst and dumbest
of all, race.
And
what’s most important to remember, especially for those who criticize and sell
the new movement short, is that for all the alleged past successes, they were
all simply social democratic and never did a thing to really change capitalism.
And with military “advisors” being sent to Iraq, military patrols in the South
China Sea insisting China has no right to be there and NATO puppets lining up
to screech in unison that Russia is threatening the USA by resisting warrior
states on its border, the mental capacity of the profiteers is becoming very
much like that of rats on a sinking ship. Unity among advocates of radical
change was never more vitally needed and while constructive criticism is always
necessary, destructive carping about theory can only lead to more of the
defeated practice of the past. Wake up and smell the present reforms, people;
they are numerous enough to suggest revolution, but it will need constructive
criticism, not the other kind.
