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Fighting Oppression and Injustice - Defeating Capitalism

H. Some Ideas for An Anti-Capitalist Manefesto | 23.09.2004 23:26

In 1990‘s, darling of the neo-conservatives, Francis Fukuyama famously predicted the 'End of History', with the triumph of liberal democracy. This idea has already been discredited, but the inability of the US to create a liberal democracy in Iraq will turn this on its head, and would probably precipitate a decline in the power of the US and neo-liberal democracy generally.

There is so much at stake in Iraq that the US will not withdrawer. How can we challenge this raw power? Does it have an Achilles Heel? What we do know is capitalism has contradictions, and consequently neo-liberalism (an advanced stage of capitalism) does too. Freedom and liberty are necessarily transformed into injustice and oppression. So we have to fight all forms of oppression and injustice in Iraq, but equally at home, for moral reasons and also for strategic reasons. This will choke the beast.


The best we can do is support the resistance and carry on challenging the consequent ‘revolution’ that is taking place at home where freedom is being eroded, and capitalism is becoming a bigger and much more uncontrollable beast. This is a revolution that began with Thatcher in Britain and continued more recklessly with Blair. I want to look at just one aspect of oppression, I contend an extremely important one, the Police.

Why do you protesters fight the police, it puts people off , they say. And those like George Monbiot, Ken Livingston, join the Sun and Daily Mail in choruses of ‘mindless yobs‘, and ‘criminal thugs.’ The reason is not because these people or papers are ignorant, it’s because they are fully signed up to neo-liberalism.

I'd say it was the police fighting with us, rather than us them, although sometimes you have to stand your ground if the numbers and tactics allow, primarily for psychological reasons - to show them they don’t have complete mind and body control. But police, or policing, is probably capitalism‘s most important institution. I am not talking about murders and rapist here, they have to be dealt with in some way.

The reliance on policing becomes more important as capitalism becomes a more dominant, fatter and more unstable beast: more laws, more police, more prisons, more violence, and consequently less freedom.

You might say it was crazy to call these small but irreversible steps towards a fascism. And it would be hysterical, surely, to predict that the whole country would be convinced by government propaganda to believe in some universal myth like there are those out there who want to destroy our way of life, who are conducting a terror war against us. Of course not, that would be getting to close to fascism for comfort.

After the US dismantled the Iraqi state, and began to build a neo-liberal democracy, what was the first institution it tried to build: the police force, which has, in turn, became the primary target for the resistance. Without tight control over the population there can be neo-liberal democracy. The Iraqi resistance is being quite sophisticated in resisting the imposition of a US controlled, neo-liberal state - I must drop the word democracy it is too gross a crime against the English language to carry on using it.

I don’t know when we stop using the word democracy about Britain. Some have already begun to do so because the population no longer has control over the way government uses power. And what choice is there.

Capitalism is built on policed oppression, and the threat of violence. Internationally that violence becomes war - unjustified illegal war. The capitalist Police force, in all its manifestations, will have to be dissolved at some point to create another world. It can be debated whether

H. Some Ideas for An Anti-Capitalist Manefesto

Comments

Display the following 3 comments

  1. .... zzzzzzzzzzzzz ... time for sleep — H.
  2. Oh dear Hegel .... — J Derrida and the Telelogical Tricksters
  3. Yes, this article's unworthy. — H.
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