Some of the larger problems of our planet is the destruction of eco-systems for the profits of the capitalist class who’ll do anything to keep their profits rising. They are despoiling the land and poisoning the rivers and seas for the benefit of their investment returns. Why aren’t people doing something about it? Surely, most people on our planet want a hopeful future for their children and their children’s children. Of course, challenging the way things are is scary. But we must know that capitalism doesn’t work, because everybody is fending for themselves to try and survive, regardless of the damage it conflicts upon others and upon nature and the society as a whole. Profit margins and stock exchange values prove more important than consequences for people, nature and the planet. It is clear is that the small minority of capitalists are willing to lie, cheat, manipulate all others for power and wealth. Everything is commodified, which means if you don’t increase profit to the system you are a “burden” to society.
Changing leaders will change little. When politicians are replaced, others take their place and nothing really changes. So don’t expect any new president or prime minister to be any solution. We can assume that political leaders are aware of the problems which plague capitalism yet clearly they are powerless to eliminate those problems. If leaders were successful, each one would be part of a progress towards a safer, abundant, stable world. In truth, each new leader is confronted with the same mess as their predecessors. It is not to state the obvious — because to most people it is not obvious — to say that leaders exist only by virtue of their followers. They exist because the overwhelming majority of the working class shrink from recognising their own knowledge and experience of society, preferring to put their faith in others who, it is assumed, have some special knowledge and ability. Capitalism cannot exist without its inevitable problems; it traps its leaders just as surely as it does those who are led. Even if a leader may wish to be different, to stand out for some apparently novel policy, they are similarly ensnared and quickly exposed for their inability also to escape the trap. Because people are cooperative and collaborative on the whole they assume what others promise them is to be trusted. But we quickly learn not all promises are in our interest. We are sold cures that only heal some the effects of the system, but never really remedy the root of the trouble. Environmentalists protest pollution, charities help the unfortunate. Neither address the real cause. Let's focus on eliminating the system.
All of us who struggle for a better world are disheartened that so many advances of the 20th century have been lost but sadly we weren’t surprised in the slightest. The crises of the environment and the global economy are unmistakably moving humanity toward the cliff’s edge. And yet social movements, for all the victories here and there, fail again and again. Resistance has stopped short of revolution. Although there exists a multitude of grassroots movements, there is no one unified movement toward a better society. Knowledge exists within the people but it is through the fusion of this knowledge which brings a mass socialist organization. People can only solve their problems by freely discussing them, without coercion or manipulation, and then freely acting through coordinated activity based on the results of their discussion. In turn, there must be a larger organization that connect the many particular struggles into a broad movement, one that enables activists to see the links and commonalities between these struggles and the common enemy that they face. Discussion of the socialist alternative to capitalism must become more serious, free from the forms of thinking imposed by capitalist ideology. We must go beyond simple demands for economic and social reforms. We need to start seriously discussing how we are going to build an effective movement for a post-capitalist world.
As the world’s resources are wasted to almost depletion, the environment destroyed almost beyond repair and ever more people are thrown into despair and desperation, the path of humanity will be towards barbarism in the future. If that is not the future we want, we’ll have to change it ourselves.
None of us possess a blueprint on how to build an effective mass movement. But one thing that ought to be clear, yet often isn’t, is that simply replicating the models of the past is a dead end.
http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/goodbye-democracy-and-capitalism/
No comments:
Post a Comment