Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Viva La Revolucion

Declaration-of-independence-broadside-croppedImage via Wikipedia

We are now living in postmodern capitalism, a world of fake and constant free choice, the choice between Wal-Mart and Target, Starbucks or Dukin' Donuts. It is a hedonistic world of perpetual desire, a world of multi-lateral, multi-national, multi-cultural exploitation.

A world where exploitation has been almost entirely exported to Third World countries while we live in middle-class here. While antagonisms continue to fester here, we have seen what the new breed of capitalism will be. The bailout was only one example of how capitalism will have to reinvent socialism in order to survive. Big corporations do not want a free-market, they want a government that minimizes their investment and venture risk, a government that is focused on protecting the property of the few. Corporations are the new face of muli-cultural perspective, globalization the harbinger of the free-movement of property and the enslavement of people.

The corporations of this country fear the fundamentalist right-wing, though they have been their tools for all these years. That is why the face of the bailout was that of the Democratic Party, those poor, boring scapegoats on which the basic function of our society now relies. If fundamentalists were to have their way, how would companies secure bailouts should their risky investment schemes fail, how would they maintain the steady, cheap labor of illegal immigrants, how would they avoid the protectionism of global trade?

They have thus turned to the liberals of this country, the sorry excuse for a left wing-representation. The liberals, as opposed to left-wingers, have become the new pillar upon which global capitalism stands. Through self-described intellectualism, liberals have cynically recognized that a truly egalitarian society is impossible and so they pay lip service to these ideals as they allow for “necessary exceptions” and bailouts to occur. This new constituency has given rise bullshit terms like “fair trade coffee beans” and biodegradable smoothie cups. Starbucks, the new liberal commercial spin still participates is the most brutal anti-union action of any American country and companies like Wal-Mart exploit the welfare-to-work programs of this country to secure indentured slaves to do subsidized work. No, we don’t live in a purely and clearly fascist society. We live in the new bastard child of neo-liberal socialism.

Socialism has been co-opted, we must examine the root of the problem, which is the coercion of labor by holding our survival as individuals for ransom and the idea of private property. We must not simply abandon capitalism and socialism, but begin the war of symbolic violence against property while practicing non-violence towards humans. Yes, blow up corporate art, deface corporate property, and trespass on corporate land. Do not enact your symbolic violence of the private property of the ones around you. Demonstrate the illusion of the private to them by destroying the belongings of corporations, entities of pure property and no humanity. This will radically reverse the trend of the modern world which will sacrifice humanity for the sake of property.

The revolution will be psychological. We must refuse to be victims of the psychological “disavowal”, where we accept these problems as the truth as a means of saying “That is enough now let me live my life.” We must not use the disavowal to rhetorically recognize the structural violence of this system as a means of justifying our passive existence in a consumerist life. We must force ourselves to recognize the harsh Real, the reality of the death and suffering that we are complicit with. We must see that we are murderers and feel this guilt, to launch us into action. We must firmly recognize our Symbolic relationship with this Real violence, so as to stand firm in the face of the usurpation capitalism (like the manufacture of Che Guevara t-shirts by Banana Republic), and use this new strength to crush the Imaginary of the American Dream.

This is a call to the left. Wake up. The time has come to radicalize, to embrace and reclaim the roots of our country, the revolutionary traditions that are the blessing of democracy. We must reclaim our history, reclaim the Constitution and radically transform it. We must write a new Declaration of Independence. Yes, most of the Founding Fathers were rich land owners, bent on protecting their own property. Remember the ideas. When ask what he thought of Western Civilization, Gandhi replied “I think it’s a good idea”. Liberals/democrats/independents, you are fast becoming the new tools of global capitalism, even as you point and make fun at FOX news and the Tea Party. Look to them with fear, they are the Black Shirts, Stormtroopers. It took only two years for Hitler to take power. We face two futures: reactionary revolution and fascism, or the complete victory of neo-liberal capitalism and fascism. Let us envision another. Do not be content with buying your coffee from companies that practice exploitation Lite, to vote for vague campaign promises of “hope” and rhetorical liberal ideals like “change”. Fight for revolution, the only change worthy of humanity. The left wing of the country must spite the new-emerging Red Scare of Glenn Beck and proudly name themselves radicals, not liberals. Don’t fear the name “communist”. Wear it with pride, in the face of propaganda. Do not be afraid to begin from the beginning, as Lenin wrote in On Climbing a High Mountain, follow no dogmatic road. But do not be afraid of “conformity”. Anti-conformity is not valuable in itself, it is infinitely regressive and equally as blind as conformity. It is a vital tool against injustice and must be used as such. This is a call to the liberals of this country to stop, set down their double whipped whappachino moacha with peppermint, put down Newsweek and think. Are you really standing up for what you believe in?

It will not be a mission of moral relativity but a time to finally take the ethical stance of “No, I will not live at the cost of human suffering, imperialism in the Middle East, dictatorships in Latin America, utter enslavement in Africa, and the death of industrial workers in Virginia and the Gulf of Mexico etc. No, I will not live at the cost of future generations as the world in which I live is sucked bare of all natural beauty and resource. No, I will not be a person who would rather ask the question of ‘What do I want?’ than ‘What is right?’ No, and I will not do so with a passive statement of my opinion. I will act. ” We must refuse to be affected by the psychological disavowal of the harsh Real, so as to live a more peaceful life, and recognize the fact that we are all murderers for the lives that we live. The revolution begins in you.




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