Democracy, the greatest and noblest of all human ambitions, is today as rare on Earth as it’s ever been...
Democracy, the greatest and noblest
From the moment the concept was theorised and practiced in limited proportions by the ancient Greeks it became the pinnacle of all human endeavours – considered by our most developed minds to be both utopian in scope and achievable in practice. Yet, for all its promise, rarely throughout history has it emerged in any manner resembling its truest form.
Of course, it would be a mistake to assume that this were somehow due to some inability of humans to properly foment democracy. It would be more accurate to say that the existing political powers (from any given period) smothered democracy wherever it sprouted, maintaining a status quo that favoured them - and calling that democracy.
So what is it? Why does it mean so much to us? And why, for instance, have we come to use it as the mother of all justifications for committing atrocities?
An Australian perspective.
Democracy is entirely alien to us, yet at every moment we feel we are surrounded by it – cocooned by it in a comfortable, conceited way. Everything that happens to us inside this country and everything this country does internationally on our behalf is called democracy. No matter that our system spawns the worst social inequalities and hypocrisies, if we think they’re natural outcomes of ‘democracy’ then it’s as good as it gets.
This perception is so entrenched that not only has our idea of ‘democracy’ been twisted, but also our idea of ‘freedom’ – which we now consider some weird synonym for capitalism – as Tony Abbott once said: ‘Capitalism is just a fancy word for freedom!’
The freedom to do what?
In truth, democracy represents a level of development that is the pinnacle of conscious life. Implicit in its purpose is the democratisation of power for the purpose of negating power itself. This level of advancement relies on an equality that goes beyond the shallow beliefs we hold – towards something that can only be fostered by a social model that actively provides the sustenance needed for people to make pertinent use of their wishes through the democratic conduit, all for the benefit of society as a whole. Social inequalities are totally hostile to what any democracy should be.
It is essential that for the democratic ‘plug’ to interface correctly with society and become an _expression of its collective desires, the people themselves must have their collective interests in mind when practicing democracy.
In Australia we can say that the primitive outcomes of capitalism are reflected in what our ‘democracy’ produces. As such, it can hardly be described as democratic when our collective desires amount to no more than what’s best for ‘me’. What we’ve developed, quite consciously, is a degenerate plutocracy – where the most selfish, the most ‘aspirational’ as we like to say, use their wealth to ‘earn’ a superior level of ‘equality’ – and hence, disproportionate play in our ‘democracy’.
It is naive in the extreme to think Mrs Average Citizen has as equal an influence on our democratic processes as Mr Rupert Murdoch – average citizen (of a foreign country no less). Yet, in the eyes of our system that’s exactly what they are – equals.
We quickly discover that capitalism, wherever it’s found, conflicts with everything that makes democracy meaningful.
I once wrote that “…on the one hand, capitalism needs democracy to assert as virtuous the degenerate nature of business and on the other, democracy requires capitalism to supply it with a sustenance that will minimally prove its freedoms, thus maintaining its perceivable moral worth. The insane reality is that capitalism enslaves democracy as its liberator then portrays itself as its equal. Subsequently, it proceeds to assume democratic qualities as its own, vigorously promoting and marketing them globally.”
Basically, capitalism needs a minimal degree of ‘freedom and democracy’ to exist. And capitalists say that you can’t have freedom or democracy without capitalism - that capitalism makes freedom and democracy what they are. So we’re led to believe that we need capitalism like we need ‘freedom and democracy’.
But the only thing needed for freedom and democracy to exist is true equality – something completely foreign to the basic spirit of capitalism, which encourages ‘development’ through property ownership and property ownership through ‘aspirational’ endeavours, resulting in a grotesquely unequal society.
It’s understood that you can satisfy your needs, but you can never really satisfy your wants. And when the two are deliberately confused and constantly ‘aroused’ by marketers, you end-up with more than you need but always less than you want – all at the expense of those who only want what they need – and a society in a state of psychosis – where massive inequalities exist in terms democratic influence.
For instance; how ‘free’ do you think you are? Let’s just say you were to go into the street and walk a straight line for 50 metres, in any direction. How far do you think you’d get before finding yourself on hostile ground, where your freedom is subordinated to the purchased ‘freedom’ of the property owner?
So the more property you possess, the greater your area of freedom and your capacity achieve other freedoms.
Now, let’s say you were to go into the street again to exercise that important right to ‘freedom of speech’ by yelling whatever you please at the top of your lungs. What would that change? What difference could you affect beyond a call from your neighbour to the nearest mental asylum?
But if you were a media mogul on the other hand, every hint, right down to the post-it notes you write to your editors, can potentially influence the outcome of elections, sway public opinion and manipulate the very structure of society.
The idea of ‘free-speech’ then, is an illusion when its influence in our society is apportioned according to ones wealth, which in ample quantities, can obviously buy the ‘freedom’ to communicate and make the content of ones speech relevant. Joe Blow yelling in the street is of no threat to anyone. He’s irrelevant.
So in a capitalist society, the only freedoms you can have are the freedoms you can buy, which of course are dependent on your wealth and hence, the success of your ‘aspirational endeavours’ driven as they are by all those extremely selfish (sorry, noble) motivations.
In 2003, a million people on Australia’s streets yelling ‘no war’ had far less effect in fact, than the musings of Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch, echoed as they were around the world by their media and other business interests. This is what we’ve come to consider as ‘free speech’ in our ‘democracy’.
What we must never forget is that ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ have nothing whatsoever to do with capitalism, only that capitalism needs them in limited doses to survive.
The proponents of capitalism insist that somehow they’re the same. They’re not. If capitalism could make do without ‘freedom’ or ‘democracy’, even in a minimal sense, it would. But it can’t because free enterprise cannot exist without limited freedoms and capitalism can’t stand without the minimal designs of democracy to legitimise its inherent hardships. This is why capitalists not only monopolise the notions of ‘freedom and democracy’ but also attach them firmly to the meaning of capitalism.
It’s a truism that in the end, democracy can’t exist without freedom - and freedom can’t exist without equality. But a better world is only possible without capitalism.
Participation
Democracy too, is not a concept that magically exists regardless of a society’s commitment to democratic principles. Democracy is never a manifest outcome of natural human behaviour. There’s no ‘invisible hand’ wonderfully steering democracy in the right direction, as is popularly believed to be steering markets under capitalism.[1]
Democracy is not something that happens around you. It’s something you do. Something you consciously practice.
How many of us can honestly say we practice democracy?
Voting every few years does not a democracy make. In fact, I’d hazard to say that for Australians voting is a nuisance. If it wasn’t compulsory, many of us wouldn’t bother (much like our US counterparts).
So, fundamental to the true functioning of any democracy is the participation within it by those who claim to possess it. One cannot call any social structure ‘democratic’ unless it encourages participation and provides the fundamental tools with which to participate. These tools are basic Human Rights (but unlike those championed by ‘democracies’ like the United States - where communication, education, healthcare, housing, employment, clean water and air etc. are considered ‘products and services’).
In order for a democracy to function properly, basic human rights like education must be apportioned equally to all citizens.
An advanced education, for instance, imparted only to those who can afford one (as is the case in capitalist economies) alienates from relevant democratic participation many who find it unaffordable. It is vital to any true democracy that education at all levels not only be free but also encouraged to the fullest. The present and quite disastrous road we’ve taken where education is slowly but surely becoming a privilege, not a right, is catastrophic for the future prospects of democracy in Australia. This is not an understatement. We will reap what we sew - the proof will be evident in the state of our democracy in the coming decades.
But why is education in particular so important? I’ll make two points:
* A person cannot formulate proper opinions about anything political when they are uneducated. They simply do not possess the tools with which to make proper sense of political goings-on. This tends to discourage participation in politics, resulting in voting which may not be consistent with true intentions but which is always, of course, immutable.
* Ignorant societies are easily deceived by governments and other groups who use tactics to influence opinions and ultimately votes. An educated citizen, on the other hand, is not easily influenced, and must be convinced of a particular position before adopting it.
As if it weren’t unfaithful enough to democracy that education be commodified, now the content of that education is increasingly determined by the ‘rationalities’ of our economic system. What’s relevant in terms of what’s taught is what’s relevant in terms of what’s useful to capitalism, leading many of our mindless politicians to ask: Why should society pay for an individual’s education when that education is exploited mainly for the benefit of that individual?
At this point we’ve gone full circle, because the answer to that question will always be to further commodify education which, once bought and paid for, becomes a private possession for personal use. A person ‘investing’ in knowledge, often (and increasingly) with rented money, will want to see a quick return on that investment. Gone are the days when a society educated its citizens to improve the general health of society - It’s now people buying an education as a ‘venture’ solely for their own profit.
Knowledge, once commodified, is monopolised by those who can afford it. That hoarding is encouraged primarily by the ‘invisible hand’ of the market.
At this point, a question we must all ask is how any society can truly expect valid outcomes from ‘democracy’ when it’s practiced disproportionately by its citizens. When the iniquitous economic structure usually bracketed to democracy forces citizens to centre on themselves and forfeit what remains of their political input to debauched politicians (as ‘representatives’) who believe that the principles of capitalism are those of democracy. Politicians who use egocentric, invisible-hand methods to ‘invisibly’ run a country like a business.
In the end I believe, the biggest tragedy of all is not that we don’t have a democracy.
It’s that we think we do.
‘Exporting’ Democracy.
Democracy can only be transmuted when it’s considered as an example of something better - and then only as something that’s adopted independently, not delivered by B-52’s. Of course, this ‘example’ can only relate to a truly functioning democracy. For the reasons outlined earlier, the United States of America, the worlds ‘greatest democracy’ as it affectionately calls itself, will never definitively spread its ‘democracy’ anywhere. It doesn’t have one to spread in the first place.
The fact is that its murderous adventures have nothing at all to do with freedom and democracy, and everything to do with the neo-liberal brand of capitalism. But you cannot invade a country and slaughter its population to bring it Dunkin-Donuts and deregulated markets can you? No, at least not so brazenly. Call it ‘freedom and democracy’ on the other hand - and its bombs away.
We notice that the venerable traits that capitalism encounters with limited democracy become useful pretexts, or catch-cries, not for scattering democracy, but for scattering capitalism.
Imperialism in this way is perpetuated by way of ‘democracy’, something we refuse to acknowledge. To be sure, imperialism is defined as “the policy of extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political hegemony over other nations”. But why can’t we accept its happening in our name? Simply because this isn’t a democratic notion. It’s not natural for a true democracy to impose itself on other cultures or political traditions.
To say that capitalism, on the other hand, is imperialist by design would be a dazzling understatement. It is vicious. The ‘invisible hand’ of the market simultaneously guides what is and isn’t produced by economies and the joystick controls of B-2 stealth bombers as they drop their payload.
We must understand that democracy can only ever be transmuted by example, and then only by being practiced earnestly. It cannot be imposed. That is simply not called democracy.
On a global scale.
It is the hight of hypocrisy when countries like the United States advocate vigorous democratic change for the world, yet happily accept the strictly undemocratic design of the United Nations Security Council.
It would indeed be infinitely more democratic if the General Assembly of the United Nations were the authority on world matters - where every country on Earth has an equal vote. The worlds developed countries, however, treat the GA with contempt.
We notice again that inequality amongst nation citizens at the UN is manifest in the veto held by powerful countries who abuse it for their own objectives, at the expense of all the worlds’ nations. Majority views are expressed in the General Assembly but are irrelevant to what action is taken. Power in the global arena, far from being democratic (and hence negated to an extent) is monopolised and abused.
It’s my very plain belief that that participatory democracy at the UN is a pre-condition to democracy development in independent nations around the world.
Final thoughts.
If we surmise that the purpose of true democracy is to negate abuses of power, we are basically admitting that human consciousness has not evolved beyond the primitive competitive instincts that lead to such abuses. However, human consciousness has developed enough to recognise this predicament – which is why strong efforts to build participatory democracy are so important.
By encouraging the equal involvement of all in their governance, we develop altruistic societies, where everyone’s potential is cultivated to the fullest and for the benefit of all - where disputes are no longer settled by violence and where theories for improved societies can be explored freely without threat to selfish social systems, but as fruit of truth and of justice.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] It amazes me that modern-day economists still consider as relevant the concept of Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ to social development, as if ‘the hand’ remains invisible once recognized and understood!?
Related:
New Strategy for an Autonomous Politics
My aim in this article is to present some hypotheses on issues of strategy for anti-capitalist emancipatory movements. The idea is to rethink the conditions for an effective politics, with the capacity to radically change the society we live in. Even if I will not have the space to analyze concrete cases, these reflections are not a purely "theoretical" endeavor, but spring from the observation of a series of movements I had the chance to be part of -the movement of neighbor's assemblies in Argentina, some processes of the World Social Forum, and other global networks- or that I followed closely in the past years -the piquetero (unemployed) movement also in Argentina, and the Zapatistas in Mexico.
http://southafrica.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/10503.php
2nd Renaissance - Beyond Industrial Capitalism and Nation States
Go forward in peace. And always remember the line from Gravity's Rainbow: "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/115092.php
Of course, it would be a mistake to assume that this were somehow due to some inability of humans to properly foment democracy. It would be more accurate to say that the existing political powers (from any given period) smothered democracy wherever it sprouted, maintaining a status quo that favoured them - and calling that democracy.
So what is it? Why does it mean so much to us? And why, for instance, have we come to use it as the mother of all justifications for committing atrocities?
An Australian perspective.
Democracy is entirely alien to us, yet at every moment we feel we are surrounded by it – cocooned by it in a comfortable, conceited way. Everything that happens to us inside this country and everything this country does internationally on our behalf is called democracy. No matter that our system spawns the worst social inequalities and hypocrisies, if we think they’re natural outcomes of ‘democracy’ then it’s as good as it gets.
This perception is so entrenched that not only has our idea of ‘democracy’ been twisted, but also our idea of ‘freedom’ – which we now consider some weird synonym for capitalism – as Tony Abbott once said: ‘Capitalism is just a fancy word for freedom!’
The freedom to do what?
In truth, democracy represents a level of development that is the pinnacle of conscious life. Implicit in its purpose is the democratisation of power for the purpose of negating power itself. This level of advancement relies on an equality that goes beyond the shallow beliefs we hold – towards something that can only be fostered by a social model that actively provides the sustenance needed for people to make pertinent use of their wishes through the democratic conduit, all for the benefit of society as a whole. Social inequalities are totally hostile to what any democracy should be.
It is essential that for the democratic ‘plug’ to interface correctly with society and become an _expression of its collective desires, the people themselves must have their collective interests in mind when practicing democracy.
In Australia we can say that the primitive outcomes of capitalism are reflected in what our ‘democracy’ produces. As such, it can hardly be described as democratic when our collective desires amount to no more than what’s best for ‘me’. What we’ve developed, quite consciously, is a degenerate plutocracy – where the most selfish, the most ‘aspirational’ as we like to say, use their wealth to ‘earn’ a superior level of ‘equality’ – and hence, disproportionate play in our ‘democracy’.
It is naive in the extreme to think Mrs Average Citizen has as equal an influence on our democratic processes as Mr Rupert Murdoch – average citizen (of a foreign country no less). Yet, in the eyes of our system that’s exactly what they are – equals.
We quickly discover that capitalism, wherever it’s found, conflicts with everything that makes democracy meaningful.
I once wrote that “…on the one hand, capitalism needs democracy to assert as virtuous the degenerate nature of business and on the other, democracy requires capitalism to supply it with a sustenance that will minimally prove its freedoms, thus maintaining its perceivable moral worth. The insane reality is that capitalism enslaves democracy as its liberator then portrays itself as its equal. Subsequently, it proceeds to assume democratic qualities as its own, vigorously promoting and marketing them globally.”
Basically, capitalism needs a minimal degree of ‘freedom and democracy’ to exist. And capitalists say that you can’t have freedom or democracy without capitalism - that capitalism makes freedom and democracy what they are. So we’re led to believe that we need capitalism like we need ‘freedom and democracy’.
But the only thing needed for freedom and democracy to exist is true equality – something completely foreign to the basic spirit of capitalism, which encourages ‘development’ through property ownership and property ownership through ‘aspirational’ endeavours, resulting in a grotesquely unequal society.
It’s understood that you can satisfy your needs, but you can never really satisfy your wants. And when the two are deliberately confused and constantly ‘aroused’ by marketers, you end-up with more than you need but always less than you want – all at the expense of those who only want what they need – and a society in a state of psychosis – where massive inequalities exist in terms democratic influence.
For instance; how ‘free’ do you think you are? Let’s just say you were to go into the street and walk a straight line for 50 metres, in any direction. How far do you think you’d get before finding yourself on hostile ground, where your freedom is subordinated to the purchased ‘freedom’ of the property owner?
So the more property you possess, the greater your area of freedom and your capacity achieve other freedoms.
Now, let’s say you were to go into the street again to exercise that important right to ‘freedom of speech’ by yelling whatever you please at the top of your lungs. What would that change? What difference could you affect beyond a call from your neighbour to the nearest mental asylum?
But if you were a media mogul on the other hand, every hint, right down to the post-it notes you write to your editors, can potentially influence the outcome of elections, sway public opinion and manipulate the very structure of society.
The idea of ‘free-speech’ then, is an illusion when its influence in our society is apportioned according to ones wealth, which in ample quantities, can obviously buy the ‘freedom’ to communicate and make the content of ones speech relevant. Joe Blow yelling in the street is of no threat to anyone. He’s irrelevant.
So in a capitalist society, the only freedoms you can have are the freedoms you can buy, which of course are dependent on your wealth and hence, the success of your ‘aspirational endeavours’ driven as they are by all those extremely selfish (sorry, noble) motivations.
In 2003, a million people on Australia’s streets yelling ‘no war’ had far less effect in fact, than the musings of Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch, echoed as they were around the world by their media and other business interests. This is what we’ve come to consider as ‘free speech’ in our ‘democracy’.
What we must never forget is that ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ have nothing whatsoever to do with capitalism, only that capitalism needs them in limited doses to survive.
The proponents of capitalism insist that somehow they’re the same. They’re not. If capitalism could make do without ‘freedom’ or ‘democracy’, even in a minimal sense, it would. But it can’t because free enterprise cannot exist without limited freedoms and capitalism can’t stand without the minimal designs of democracy to legitimise its inherent hardships. This is why capitalists not only monopolise the notions of ‘freedom and democracy’ but also attach them firmly to the meaning of capitalism.
It’s a truism that in the end, democracy can’t exist without freedom - and freedom can’t exist without equality. But a better world is only possible without capitalism.
Participation
Democracy too, is not a concept that magically exists regardless of a society’s commitment to democratic principles. Democracy is never a manifest outcome of natural human behaviour. There’s no ‘invisible hand’ wonderfully steering democracy in the right direction, as is popularly believed to be steering markets under capitalism.[1]
Democracy is not something that happens around you. It’s something you do. Something you consciously practice.
How many of us can honestly say we practice democracy?
Voting every few years does not a democracy make. In fact, I’d hazard to say that for Australians voting is a nuisance. If it wasn’t compulsory, many of us wouldn’t bother (much like our US counterparts).
So, fundamental to the true functioning of any democracy is the participation within it by those who claim to possess it. One cannot call any social structure ‘democratic’ unless it encourages participation and provides the fundamental tools with which to participate. These tools are basic Human Rights (but unlike those championed by ‘democracies’ like the United States - where communication, education, healthcare, housing, employment, clean water and air etc. are considered ‘products and services’).
In order for a democracy to function properly, basic human rights like education must be apportioned equally to all citizens.
An advanced education, for instance, imparted only to those who can afford one (as is the case in capitalist economies) alienates from relevant democratic participation many who find it unaffordable. It is vital to any true democracy that education at all levels not only be free but also encouraged to the fullest. The present and quite disastrous road we’ve taken where education is slowly but surely becoming a privilege, not a right, is catastrophic for the future prospects of democracy in Australia. This is not an understatement. We will reap what we sew - the proof will be evident in the state of our democracy in the coming decades.
But why is education in particular so important? I’ll make two points:
* A person cannot formulate proper opinions about anything political when they are uneducated. They simply do not possess the tools with which to make proper sense of political goings-on. This tends to discourage participation in politics, resulting in voting which may not be consistent with true intentions but which is always, of course, immutable.
* Ignorant societies are easily deceived by governments and other groups who use tactics to influence opinions and ultimately votes. An educated citizen, on the other hand, is not easily influenced, and must be convinced of a particular position before adopting it.
As if it weren’t unfaithful enough to democracy that education be commodified, now the content of that education is increasingly determined by the ‘rationalities’ of our economic system. What’s relevant in terms of what’s taught is what’s relevant in terms of what’s useful to capitalism, leading many of our mindless politicians to ask: Why should society pay for an individual’s education when that education is exploited mainly for the benefit of that individual?
At this point we’ve gone full circle, because the answer to that question will always be to further commodify education which, once bought and paid for, becomes a private possession for personal use. A person ‘investing’ in knowledge, often (and increasingly) with rented money, will want to see a quick return on that investment. Gone are the days when a society educated its citizens to improve the general health of society - It’s now people buying an education as a ‘venture’ solely for their own profit.
Knowledge, once commodified, is monopolised by those who can afford it. That hoarding is encouraged primarily by the ‘invisible hand’ of the market.
At this point, a question we must all ask is how any society can truly expect valid outcomes from ‘democracy’ when it’s practiced disproportionately by its citizens. When the iniquitous economic structure usually bracketed to democracy forces citizens to centre on themselves and forfeit what remains of their political input to debauched politicians (as ‘representatives’) who believe that the principles of capitalism are those of democracy. Politicians who use egocentric, invisible-hand methods to ‘invisibly’ run a country like a business.
In the end I believe, the biggest tragedy of all is not that we don’t have a democracy.
It’s that we think we do.
‘Exporting’ Democracy.
Democracy can only be transmuted when it’s considered as an example of something better - and then only as something that’s adopted independently, not delivered by B-52’s. Of course, this ‘example’ can only relate to a truly functioning democracy. For the reasons outlined earlier, the United States of America, the worlds ‘greatest democracy’ as it affectionately calls itself, will never definitively spread its ‘democracy’ anywhere. It doesn’t have one to spread in the first place.
The fact is that its murderous adventures have nothing at all to do with freedom and democracy, and everything to do with the neo-liberal brand of capitalism. But you cannot invade a country and slaughter its population to bring it Dunkin-Donuts and deregulated markets can you? No, at least not so brazenly. Call it ‘freedom and democracy’ on the other hand - and its bombs away.
We notice that the venerable traits that capitalism encounters with limited democracy become useful pretexts, or catch-cries, not for scattering democracy, but for scattering capitalism.
Imperialism in this way is perpetuated by way of ‘democracy’, something we refuse to acknowledge. To be sure, imperialism is defined as “the policy of extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political hegemony over other nations”. But why can’t we accept its happening in our name? Simply because this isn’t a democratic notion. It’s not natural for a true democracy to impose itself on other cultures or political traditions.
To say that capitalism, on the other hand, is imperialist by design would be a dazzling understatement. It is vicious. The ‘invisible hand’ of the market simultaneously guides what is and isn’t produced by economies and the joystick controls of B-2 stealth bombers as they drop their payload.
We must understand that democracy can only ever be transmuted by example, and then only by being practiced earnestly. It cannot be imposed. That is simply not called democracy.
On a global scale.
It is the hight of hypocrisy when countries like the United States advocate vigorous democratic change for the world, yet happily accept the strictly undemocratic design of the United Nations Security Council.
It would indeed be infinitely more democratic if the General Assembly of the United Nations were the authority on world matters - where every country on Earth has an equal vote. The worlds developed countries, however, treat the GA with contempt.
We notice again that inequality amongst nation citizens at the UN is manifest in the veto held by powerful countries who abuse it for their own objectives, at the expense of all the worlds’ nations. Majority views are expressed in the General Assembly but are irrelevant to what action is taken. Power in the global arena, far from being democratic (and hence negated to an extent) is monopolised and abused.
It’s my very plain belief that that participatory democracy at the UN is a pre-condition to democracy development in independent nations around the world.
Final thoughts.
If we surmise that the purpose of true democracy is to negate abuses of power, we are basically admitting that human consciousness has not evolved beyond the primitive competitive instincts that lead to such abuses. However, human consciousness has developed enough to recognise this predicament – which is why strong efforts to build participatory democracy are so important.
By encouraging the equal involvement of all in their governance, we develop altruistic societies, where everyone’s potential is cultivated to the fullest and for the benefit of all - where disputes are no longer settled by violence and where theories for improved societies can be explored freely without threat to selfish social systems, but as fruit of truth and of justice.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] It amazes me that modern-day economists still consider as relevant the concept of Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ to social development, as if ‘the hand’ remains invisible once recognized and understood!?
Related:
New Strategy for an Autonomous Politics
My aim in this article is to present some hypotheses on issues of strategy for anti-capitalist emancipatory movements. The idea is to rethink the conditions for an effective politics, with the capacity to radically change the society we live in. Even if I will not have the space to analyze concrete cases, these reflections are not a purely "theoretical" endeavor, but spring from the observation of a series of movements I had the chance to be part of -the movement of neighbor's assemblies in Argentina, some processes of the World Social Forum, and other global networks- or that I followed closely in the past years -the piquetero (unemployed) movement also in Argentina, and the Zapatistas in Mexico.
http://southafrica.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/10503.php 2nd Renaissance - Beyond Industrial Capitalism and Nation States
Go forward in peace. And always remember the line from Gravity's Rainbow: "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/115092.php
