Come the Revolution: Are We There Yet?

[CrisisPapers]

l Bernard Weiner l

<i>"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."</i> -- President John F. Kennedy

It may well be time for a kind of revolution. For those too young to remember, or for those who believe history still has much to teach us, here's a primer before we get to our shared 2010 reality:

Back in "The Sixties," as we ratcheted up our protests against the Vietnam War, we activist types saw daily evidence that The System (the financial//political/religious/educational institutions that more or less controlled our lives) was rotten to the core. As we liberals inculcated this evidence and became more radicalized, it was apparent that The System needed to be seriously dealt with.

The "Revolution," we believed, was just around the corner, worldwide. All we young radicals -- be it in Berkeley or Washington or Prague or Paris -- had to do was kick out the traces holding up the corroded System, and the whole thing would come tumbling down. A new, freer, more humane set of institutions and leaders would lead us all to the promised land.

Well, of course, that did not happen. Yes, we were able to do some damage to the destructive institutions and create some counter-institutions of our own, we helped stop the Vietnam War, and we even created an alternative mindset for a number of years. But it turned out that The System had a lot more "give" in it than we'd imagined. And corporations and multi-billionaires, thinking long-term, were willing to spend big to buy up media outlets and to create right-wing think tanks and other agit-prop organizations to help them regain their "divinely-ordained" throne of power. Notably, they also purchased control of the voting-machine industry, and of the proprietary software that these days runs it, thus guaranteeing insecure, easily tampered-with elections that are undetectable.

One way The System had of dealing with our growing revolt  in "The Sixties" was to co-opt its language and thrust by incorporating "revolutionary" catchwords and slogans and visuals into the ongoing rush toward consumerism. "Join the revolution" could refer to anything, from buying a particular make of car to a hairstyle or fashion trend. The result was to dilute and ultimately de-brand the political meaning of "revolution," turning that concept into just another accoutrement of the time.

In addition, the responses of local, state and national governments, and private organizations, to the '60s revolts were much more violent and brutal than we'd imagined they'd be willing to go (because we were their children, after all). The System doesn't like to be mocked and suffer challenges to its legitimacy to rule. And so students and other activists were shot, killed, beaten, indicted and tried and thrown in the slammer, organizations deliberately infiltrated and broken up. The message was delivered: "Don't even think of trying this stuff again! " The liberal/radical left thereupon tended to back off from frontal attacks. (Just ask yourself: Where are the academics, the professors, the students when it comes to political activism in the U.S. today?)

The conclusion: Though the outlines for major social transformation were increasingly visible, the "objective conditions" for true revolution simply did not exist in and immediately after The Sixties. In our desire to implement the radical changes that the country needed, we overestimated our strength and resources (and ability to implement many of our programs), and underestimated what the Establishment/System would do to protect its prerogatives and power.

THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW

But now it's 40 years later, and, for a huge and significant portion of the electorate, The System once again has revealed itself, especially so in the past decade, as truly dysfunctional, reckless, corrupt, consumed by greed, even more colonialist/imperialist, and thus more dangerous, than in the Vietnam War days. Then, the Cold War was in full force and the menacing presence of the other major superpower acted as something of a restraining force. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. government, especially under CheneyBush and their PNAC cohorts, felt no such restraint and went wild abroad, as well as unleashing the dogs of greed domestically.

As the Great Recession began to unfold around 2007-2008 and on, it seemed clear that capitalism was in imminent danger of collapsing due to its excesses and inherent contradictions; unwinnable wars were taking trillions out of the treasury; President Obama continued mangling the Constitution and civil liberties in the manner of his predecessor; Americans lost maybe a third of the value of their retirement funds and value of their homes, etc. etc.

Frustration and anger are building in the citizenry and neo-fascism is on the rise. The center is not holding.

Can it be that the "objective conditions" for a progressive revolution finally are beginning to emerge into public consciousness?

Recent polls, for example, have revealed a startling statistic. More than 40% of the American population no longer considers "socialism" an economic system to be feared.

TARRING WITH EPITHETS

How to explain this turnaround? For nearly a century, one of the worst political labels you could hang on someone was to denounce them as "pro-socialist." I grew up in the 1950s when you could be denounced as a "socialist" or "communist" because you liked to listen to world music, or thought racial segregation was a disgraceful hangover from the Civil War, or wanted to buy this new thing called a "condominium." I'm serious. Numerous professors were hounded out of their college teaching jobs for the sin of engaging in nothing more than innocuous liberalism, or for teaching their students to think for themselves.

One explanation for the new acceptance of socialism by so many Americans can also be traced to the Hard Right of the Republican Party. They call anything and everything "socialist" that they don't like, and many of those initiatives (public health care, regulation of avaricious corporations, saving the manufacturing base by temporarily propping it up, firm pollution controls, etc.) are quite popular with a majority of the citizenry. If those proposals are called "socialist," the popular thinking goes, then maybe this "socialist" scare stuff is just a partisan Republican tactic. The bogeyman behind the curtain is just P.R. spin. In point of fact, even though the good name of "liberalism" has been tarred badly, recent polls show that Americans generally favor liberal programs; in short, the U.S. actually supports center-left policies, and, as mentioned above, a growing body of opinion is no longer afraid of the socialist label.

On the other hand, as was the case in the aftermath of the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the catacysmic social upheavals of "The Sixties," capitalism is a shape-shifter extraordinaire. To save its prerogatives, its wealth, its power, it'll do anything to preserve and extend itself -- including accepting "socialist" reforms. As we saw in the run-up to the Health Care Reform Act, and the Financial Reform bill, it'll even accept a few minor hits in legislation in order to maintain the fiction that something major is being done. That way, its lasting control of American $ociety remains in place.

A DIFFERENT OBAMA EMERGED

Plus, let us not forget, that the president we thought we had elected in 2008 -- one who promised to confront the greedy corporations, end the wars, respect civil liberties and eschew torture, demand transparency and accountability -- is the same one who wouldn't fight for true health care reform (no public option), who spent billiions in tax dollars bailing out the major Wall Street predators (and continues to let them do their thing), swallowed whole the CheneyBush policies on imperial wars and torture renditions and warrantless surveillance, has set up a rigged commission to weaken Social Security, etc. etc., ad nauseum.

In short, Obama talks the talk (or at least talked the talk) but won't walk the walk, beholden to the same greed and power centers that have ruled the social-political roost for decades.

At one time, Obama seemed eager to be a transformational president, in the mold of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR, a patrician, realized that the Great Depression was a warning that had to be heeded, that unfettered capitalism could not be permitted to run roughshod over the citizenry. The results of that unregulated economic system were nearly apocalyptic in their gross damage.

FDR understood that socialism was a strong political force in the U.S. and abroad, and a social/economic revolution was indeed possible in this country, given the anger and frustration of a destitute, frightened populace. If capitalism was to be saved -- i.e., the best aspects of capitalism: its entrepreneurial spirit, its emphasis on innovation, its ability to spread the wealth around more -- it would have to be transformed, leavened with socialist reforms. These New Deal initiatives were not merely nice-sounding, incremental reforms, but real groundbreaking changes.

DEALING WITH "THE CRAZY"

And here we are nearly 80 years later and the Republicans, afflicted with a bad case of the crazy, are still trying to undo those popular reforms. Up until recently, they've somewhat disguised their desire to tear down the New Deal. But just listen to leading GOP office-holders, and candidates for midterm election slots in the Senate and House: Do away with governmental regulation on banks, insurance companies, mining companies, energy corporations, oil drillers -- basically, any business. The "free market," they maintain, will provide all the regulation the country needs.

If you point out that that kind of thinking is precisely what has taken us into our own era's Grand Depression -- where corporations and the rich are doing quite well, while 15 million ordinary Americans can't find work -- they deflect the argument and instead direct fevered attention to their hand-picked villain: the CommunistMuslimNaziAfrican guy in the White House.

And it's not just the New Deal the HardRight is out to destroy, but also the major reforms of LBJ's later Great Society. The Republican rightists are not only advocating "privatizing" (read: effectively eliminating) Social Security, but also getting rid of Medicare, the popular program added in the mid-'60s.

So many in charge of the Republican Party are eager and openly willing to re-fight that social-economic war, and the gains of the New Deal/Great Society, and some (mostly in the South) are even threatening to re-fight the Civil War by urging state nullification of federal law or calling for secession from the Union.

THE COSTS OF A GOP VICTORY

That's where we are in 2010. There is no center, no moderating influence in the GOP; that may have been true a decade ago but now the party has morphed into extremism as the new Republican normal. The HardRight is now the center. On the other side of the aisle, there is virtually no powerful organized Left. To get anything done, or so Obama and Reid would have us believe, requires constant accommodation to that new center. Thus, it's not surprising that Obama hovers around a triangulating mode of operation.

To protect what incremental reforms Obama has been able to engineer, the progressive base of the Democratic Party feels it has to support the President. This is especially the case with regard to the 2012 election, where the unorganized left is hostage to its fear of the possible alternative: a President Gingrich or Palin or Romney or Cheney (Liz) or Bush (Jeb), since the damage they could, and would, do is incalcuable. After eight years of wrack and ruin under CheneyBush, where the Constitution's Bill of Rights was essentially eviscerated, one doesn't even want to think about putting the Republicans back in charge.

A GOP victory would mean disaster abroad, more wars and mayhem, loss of U.S. prestige, the decimation of the American treasury, and the decline of the American middle class would accelerate. Studies show that the top 1% of Americans have doubled their income since Reagan, and that 20% of the people own 85% of the nation's wealth. That leaves 15% of the wealth for the wage and salary earners, and there has been precious little real middle-class income increase since 1973. And now we're in a recession that is projected to last for years and years for the less well-off. The major income and tax breaks are designed to flow upwards to the already-wealthy. If the poor and middle class too loudly object, the rich shout "class warfare!", as if that's a dirty term. If the wealthy get all the breaks, that's just the way it's supposed to be. Nothing to see here, just move along.

IS "REVOLUTION" POSSIBLE?

The coalition that brought Obama into power with such activism and hope for major structural reforms is debilitated by disappointment that the standard-bearer for true change has turned out to be little more than a typical politician, willing to sell out his principles (along with his support base) whenever it's convenient to do so.

The rightwing activists are beginning slowly to mobilize; the Tea Party movements (deliberately plural, since they're currently fighting among themselves for control) are a harbinger, along with resurgent nativist militias and various white-power groups. They openly talk about use of weapons, and they encourage violence in their hyperbolic rhetoric.

Their leaders want control of the levers of power; they preach "small government" until they run the government, then it's an open invitation for the corporatists and ideologues to take what they want while they stomp out the opposition.

Will the angry, frustrated, muttering progressive left begin to coalesce into a movement for genuine change, heading in the direction of a "revolution"? Our program does not want to take over power for power's sake -- thus just aping the rightwing fanatics -- but to devise a more democratic way of redistributing power. It's not a violent revolution we seek, but a non-violent, systemic overhaul of the socio-economic-political structures.

It's not certain there's enough momentum at the moment for that kind of revolt -- the kind JFK seemed to be talking about -- but the outlines of the "objective conditions" for revolution are increasingly visible and should be utilized for organization and momentum. If the Republicans were to regain power, we might not get another avenue for major structural change for a long, long time.

So...If not now, when? --BW

First posted by The Crisis Papers
>> www.crisispapers.org/essays10w/revolution.htm <<

[LongTomH]

1. Proud to be the first to K & R

:kick:

IMHO we're overdue for a revolution.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. And I gave it #5. A thought occurs to me concerning the vitiating

of a word's meaning, particularly its connotations. The OP points out, correctly, the way in which the word "revolution" got co-opted and lost its meaning, becoming nothing more than a meaningless, fuzzy advertising space filler. I think the same thing can be made to happen to "socialism." Where the word has carried with it connotations of repressive, Kafkaesque evil, it is beginning to lose its potency so that those who seek to use it to stigmatize progressive policies will soon be met with a yawn from the general public.

[socialist_n_TN]

16. The stigmatizing of the word "socialism" is losing

it's power, ironically, BECAUSE of the right wing attacks.

As the OP pointed out and as I've believed for the last 4 or 5 years, if you listen to the RW EVERYTHING they don't like is "socialism". And as YOU pointed out, Jackpine, a LOT of those things that are labeled "socialist" ARE POPULAR PROGRAMS. In addition, according to the Republicans, at least one half of the population in the last 20+ years are "socialists" simply BECAUSE they've voted for the Dems in Presidential elections.

Now, the trick is to make sure that people know what a REAL socialist agenda is, and educate people about that. I actually think that if most people actually know what socialism actually IS, they'll like it. What's not to like? But job one is to destigmatize the actual word and, thanks to the right wing, it's starting to happen.

[old mark]

3. Rec. I recall the "revolution" of the '70's deteriorated in to slogans for

car commercials and disco tune lyrics...but some of the ideas seem to have remained alive even today, and some tiny progress has been made.
I wish today's young people the energy we had, and the will to succeed we lost somewhere along the way.


mark

[jotsy]

4. The reasons we're not 'there', where perhaps we might be.

The concepts of exceptionalism and authoritarianism put forth on a public as common practice at the hands of a PTB with a couple of generations to wait for just the proper conditions. The work of Stanley Milgram and the DOD coined phrase 'perception management' are the meat and potatoes of the mainstream media's corporate owned mirage of mantras. An integral piece of programming in place to prime the masses for what the message of the moment is, whether it's selling fear or burying the would be lead with the fluff of celebrity stuff.

The depth of knowledge a basic public education provides has been dismantled and diminished. A continual discontinuing of programs for peripheral studies that IMO help define us as individuals. Cuts in arts, sports, drama and physical education activities have left but slivers of all there is to truly facilitate learning. As reading, writing and calculating are now the only parts of education that go on to benefit the needs of a demanding corporate employment market, those skills are all we are taught.

The economic conditions are as stilted in obstructing the average citizen's progress. Richard Wolff, a professor from UMASS illustrated well in his 'Capitalism Hits the Fan' video how beginning in the early 80's wages leveled off. That's when the availability of credit crept in, sold to fill the void between earnings and rising costs, and ultimately enslave a society to its elite demanding interest rates that would make any mobster blush for the nerve of it. When I stop to consider the notion that a number of these same companies profiting so wildly for said interest likely took their gains and actively participated in creating the next wave of this too perfect a storm by financing the relocation of a great many jobs.

Decades have been invested in the making of this vulnerable America, home to the milked, the misinformed and the manipulated. We've engaged in the apathy of complacency, and now must flex through the atrophy if we are to have a chance to survive the fate planned for us by the PTB who I believe welcome the idea of a revolting rabble at this point. Between the police state, the unaccountable affluent and the desperate masses who see viability held like a carrot for the carted horse, always just out of reach, we are being herded to an enraging.

I've stated what I hope we have the wisdom to do is stage a bloodless coup. A revolution based on an insistence for order through the rule of law. The EQUAL application and enforcement of the law is a cause I find the hardest for establishment to criticize or paint as threatening. According to the organization for the unemployed, aka U-cubed, there are 31 million jobless workers. I'd love to see groups of folks regularly visit satellite offices of the justice departments in their areas, or at the local DA in groups of four or five, following Vincent Bugliosi's advice in his book 'The Prosecution of George W. Bush'. I'm sure parallel laws applying to financial services firms exist as well.

It is beyond time to put right what has gone awry, we are poised to pivot from pitfall to progress and if we don't keep a foot in the door with the cool of our heads, we're likely to swing back to peril.

Rec'd.

[katty]

5. it will take a massive revolt to just begin to throw off the yokes

of crushing corporatism and a gigantic, festering corrupt federal government that works for and is controlled by insatiable corporate greed that permeates (sooner or later) every sector of human society. The 60's and 70's are over-that phase is done. The intense corp cuisinart grinding down the last bits of reasonable and humane societal interaction has ramped up its pace-from 2010 and beyond this steamroller will hardly take a breath to reflect on its relentless destruction. A revolution starts with a revolt that grows in its appeal to the masses-not just groups of people that are angry with only ONE aspect of the larger problem-there has to be large scale concensus that things are NOT RIGHT ANYWHERE and PEOPLE ARE SUFFERING ALOT-I don't see that in America-yet.

[OKDem08]

6. You're talking about taking on an adversary

with nuclear weapons.

[felix_numinous]

7. We are the ones we are waiting for.

I haven't totally lost hope in the government, but I do not see them able(or willing?) to help all the pollution, homelessness, education and other local problems we have, on time to help most people make it through these coming years. I think that has become obvious to all of us.

Where does change begin? I think one key is to ask the right questions:

What would my life look like if I embodied the change I want to see in the world? What am I capable of doing? If I had to pick, what project would satisfy my need to make a difference? Is it pollution, homelessness, building a community garden so everyone has enough to eat? Gathering people together who want to get off the grid? Encouraging people to use biofuels, and converting to a sustainable community? The ideas are endless. Yet, in the beginning ideas have to come out. Not everyone is going to be able to help, many people really need help.

There is a lot of organizing going on in this country, some of it concerns me since it is very fear (Armageddon) based. It really needs to be countered by people who want to build another kind of world. One where we trust each other, build alliances and are loyal to each other, and treat each other with respect. OK this is my idea, but we have to start somewhere. They ridicule socialism as if it is a foreign idea, but this is just another tactic to keep all the diverse people from getting help--screw that.

I like this website, there are tens of thousands of people who share a great view of the world. We can manifest our vision, but it takes transforming all of our anger, disgust, repulsion, need for justice and love of the land into action.

We have to stop listening to all the people who say this cannot be done, we really have no choice now. We have to pick our battles, as individuals, and start small. One of the most effective psyche outs is the message that the powers of the world are way too big, the problems are too many, of such epic scale that they cannot be solved. We have no choice now but to start somewhere--and the first thing to do is to recognize this psyche out. It comes from movies, TV, friends, games, news--all made to make us feel small, helpless and DISTRACTED!

Everyone is waiting for someone else to do something, pointing fingers at wrong moves, watching the news, watching disasters. We have to break out of our voyeurism, recognize this habit as a way we are being derailed from action.

How many people do we know who feel the same way we do? Online, at work (or used to work with)?

These are just my ideas. I love this place, that this discussion is even happening. So many cool people here.

Love and Peace to everyone.

[nashville_brook]

8. Big k n r

[RevStPatrick]

9. I don't think we need a Revolution.

I think we need an Evolution.

All my life I've heard the phrase "Worker's Revolution."
I think what we need now is a "Consumer's Evolution."

It's all about, all of it and everything, about making and selling "stuff," and some of the profits work their way up the hierarchy. Eventually, some of that money makes its way into the political system. As an obvious example, if you drink a Coors beer tonight after work, some of that money will be used to support right-wing causes and candidates. I think the answer is to make sure that one only buys stuff that is made and sold by people who do not use some of the profits to support right-wing causes and candidates.

Simplistic, I know. But it is SHOCKING to me how many supposed Progressives leave their principles outside the door when they enter the marketplace. Awareness of where every penny you spend goes is the beginning of the "Consumer Evolution." It's difficult, but what worthwhile cause isn't?

[russspeakeasy]

10. Please understand this: We have people in this country who have

accumulated enough wealth to purchase other nations. That's
goddamn scary.
A well run drug cartel can tell you..first you buy the police,
then you buy the politicians.. then you buy the  media, then
you can have ALL the wealth and the influence and power that
goes with it....politically, where do you think we are in this
cycle??????????????????.......

[Demeter]

14. Very Good Point

and that's where the FRSP comes into play.

[Auggie]

11. Revolution needs a leader, doesn't it?

Who can, will, or is capable to lead?

[Demeter]

15. A revolution needs followers

the American Revolution had a participatory leadership:

"Our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor"

They meant what they said. We have leaders today. That's why the media suppresses as much news as possible. To keep the lid on.

If anything, we need a Thomas Paine. A publicist.

[Overseas]

12. K&R! //nt

[Demeter]

13. Getting Closer Every Day

I think Social Security Deform will be the tipping point....

[TBF]

17. Agreed -

I don't know if we'll get to revolution, but I definitely expect to see folks in the street when Obama starts cutting social security.

[Amonester]

18. A massive, nation-wide HUNGER strike for 3 or 4 weeks would...

DO it.

The Evil system would PANIC about the idea of not being able to sustain itself at the expense of the citizenry any longer.

But... No. Too many distractions. Absent a charismatic Leader (m/f) who's got the stomach...

Three weeks, four max.

[citizen477]

19. Latent Intolerance

Very insightful.

What I am noticing is a rise in the bare-facedness of racism, sexism and classicism. It has always been alive and well on the Internet, but lately I've been experiencing things locally. On the express bus the other day, this older, professional African-American woman that was sitting beside me made a very distressing remark. You see, a young Black-American girl boarded the bus with two, beautiful children. The young girl looked very young. She must have been in her teens. The lady sitting beside me scoffed and said, "I can't believe my tax dollars are paying for that." So, I said, "Excuse me?" And, yes, she had the audacity to repeat her statement and almost pointed at the young woman. I shook my head and said, "I didn't realize that you knew this young woman personally." She shut up and went back to reading the paper. I know that was anecdotal, but there is this uncomfortable racial/classist frustration. I don't like it at all. I hate to seem sensationalist, here, but I wonder if this is what it felt like leading up to the Nazis taking over Germany?

I'm also seeing a lack of tolerance for people who "look" different. Yes, I know this has always been the case, but those who don't like it seem to be getting more vocal about it. Another anecdote: My colleague (who is Cuban-American) who was voluntold to sit on a hiring committee was so blase and comfortable in telling me in not so many words that she was, "...glad they didn't chose the guy with the dreads..." When I asked why, she said something along the lines of, "...Well, you just don't apply for a job with dreads on your head... No matter how intelligent you sound and what your resume looks like, nobody hires people who look like that..." I asked her if that's how she really felt, and if she felt that that was an ethical thing to say, and she shrugged and said that that's the way things are or something like that. I stopped listening at that point.

Has anyone else been experiencing stuff like this? If so? What's going on?

[midnight]

20. "you could be denounced as a "socialist" or "communist" because you liked to listen to world music"

I grew up in the 1950s when you could be denounced as a "socialist" or "communist" because you liked to listen to world music, or thought racial segregation was a disgraceful hangover from the Civil War, or wanted to buy this new thing called a "condominium." I'm serious. Numerous professors were hounded out of their college teaching jobs for the sin of engaging in nothing more than innocuous liberalism, or for teaching their students to think for themselves.

Now you can't take out a house loan unless you tell the lender you are not a terrorist. Communism has been replaced by terrorism.