don't you know
they're talkin' bout a revolution
it sounds like a whisper…
don't you know
they're talkin' about a revolution
it sounds like a whisper…
they're talkin' bout a revolution
it sounds like a whisper…
don't you know
they're talkin' about a revolution
it sounds like a whisper…
when Tracy
Chapman first sang those
words it was 1988, and very few people were in the mood for global revolution
- especially in the West - despite the sprouting seeds of growing inequalities,
environmental concerns and corporate interests coopting democracy. flash-forward
25 years and what then might have sounded like a whisper is now a world-wide
chorus of screams we can’t possibly ignore. and they really are talkin’ bout a
revolution now, even when it’s couched in friendlier language like ‘transition’
or ‘shift’ or ‘occupy’. we use those lighter words because when we hear
‘revolution’ we think guillotines and Jacobins in 1789 France or the decades-long
Islamic Revolution in Afghanistan whose violent aftermath persists today. we
hear revolution and we’re scared of what it might entail: will we have to die
so that others might live in justice and freedom? what will the new system look
like and how do we know it won’t be worse than the one we’ve got? god forbid,
will we have to change the ways we live and exist in the world to accommodate
more sustainable ways of living?
we forget that
revolution need not be violent or even abrupt as it has been in the past;
instead, we might conceive of our present revolution as a steady change now
decades in the making, finally coming to the fore as global citizens unite
against oppressive power imbalances, taking a stand versus corporations running
politics to the detriment of people everywhere, and demanding a reversal of the
destructive pillaging of the Earth on which all life depends. but the
revolution we’re experiencing today isn’t just ‘against’ the powers that be
with no direction on where we go from here, akin to a short-sighted protest
lacking vision or purpose. no, our current revolution is both deconstructive of
injustice and creative in innovation at the same time, offering tangible
examples of what kind of world comes next while concomitantly destroying the
old order through resistance movements and withdrawal of consent to oppression
and exploitation. when we recognize our revolution for what it is – the dismantling
of the old and the simultaneous creation of the new – it need not be terrifying,
but rather inspiring that a fundamental change in power relations,
socioeconomic structures and governing institutions is indeed on the horizon. and
that our many interventions, be they minor or grandiose, are contributing to
this change in ways we might not even recognize or understand.
we all have a
unique role in supporting the change: fighters, writers, farmers, artists,
activists, eco-socialists, community leaders, spiritual gurus, filmmakers,
academics; young, old, rich, poor, North, South, East, West. we all have
something to contribute; and more and more, these interventions are coming to
be seen not just as choices we make in support of a sustainable and just
future, but as moral
obligations of the global countermovement to build new realities and to rise
up against the system and its increasingly illegitimate institutions controlled
by corporate interests:
the legitimacy of
both states and international institutions is now contaminated by corruption,
usurpation, and bias. it is therefore the obligation of the people – in this
case the people of the world – to “alter or abolish them.” given such an
obligation, there must also be a right to take the action necessary to fulfill
it. further, institutional structures, practices, and purported laws that block
or punish such action are inherently illegitimate and unconstitutional. they
represent little more than lawless force and violence. these concepts
legitimate a withdrawal of consent of the kind that… provides the underlying
power of social movements.[i]
with governments
unresponsive to citizen demands for socio-structural change, it’s less about rallying
for piecemeal legislation within unworkable political frameworks and more about
entire system transformations aligned with new-paradigm thinking and a complete
overhaul of the global economic model at the heart of hegemonic oppression and
exploitation; for in the words of Audre Lorde, “the Master’s tools will never
dismantle the Master’s house”. in that sense, our revolution is disassembling
the global capitalist system and its instruments of control by way of building
new-paradigm approaches to social and economic relations and institutions based
on collectivity, cooperation and shared solutions to common challenges. as we
are seeing in the growing presence of social movements and protests in major
cities around the world, global society is ready for change and our systems are
ripe for revolution; now it’s just a matter of when and how.
in the circle I
had a vision of a buffalo skull and it said: ‘now is the time to rise up; we
can’t wait any longer.’
these words
linger in my ears and brain crevices now, months after they were spoken by a
sister at the moon dance, finding deep resonance in the sense of urgency we’re
experiencing in the seemingly imminent need for change NOW, not tomorrow or the
next day but right this very instant. and it seems that more and more people
are being called to the causes that irk their heartstrings and make their souls
sing: climate change, poverty and famine, labor rights, sustainable
development, social equality, economic and environmental justice. and while our
motivations differ, our objectives are one and the same: a radical
transformation in the current global order toward equality, justice and peace
for all of humanity in harmony with nature. it might not be about a grand scale plan, since grassroots change and
local solutions are proving powerful in driving global change from the
bottom-up. but no matter how local the effort, the interconnected nature of our
transition networks is strong through solidarity and shared ideals of the new
paradigm. we
know what we don’t want, and we’re now in the seemingly chaotic reorganization
phase of defining what we do want, yet we’re still not all the way sure how
we’re going to get there or what it’s going to look like when we do:
“never in history have there been prepared alternatives. when feudalism
disappeared and capitalism arrived, no one announced that at 12 o’clock one would
end and at 12:01 the other would begin” (El
Diario Interview with Arcadi Oliveres, Professor of Applied Economics at
the Autonomous University of Barcelona and President of NGO Justicia y Pau
(Justice and Peace), May 11, 2013; translation
mine).
our new type of living social
system has to evolve; it can’t be invented and assembled, but rather it will
always be a surprise based on trial and error given the previously unknown
capabilities of new systems.[ii]
but we are clear on one thing, and that is that we can’t wait any longer. and
while we might be scared of the unknown, we are even more scared of maintaining
a status quo that condemns the lives of billions to subservience, oppression
and marginal existence. doing nothing is no longer an option. for in doing
nothing, in being content to live our day-to-day lives blind to the suffering
of our brothers and sisters and our life-giving Mother Earth, we give consent
by way of complacency to the injustice of elite power dominance over humanity
and nature. and once we open our eyes to that reality, it is no longer a choice
or an uncomfortable burden to our conscience, but a clear and irrefutable
obligation to act. and to act now.
so what are we gonna do and how is
this whole thing gonna go down? is violence our only option as dominant power
interests hold tight to their reins in the face of resistance movements whose
window for peaceful means of change grows increasingly narrow? many in the
countermovement would say yes, that lacking traditional or democratic mechanisms
for dismantling global capitalism without resorting to violence, we must meet
force with force. i’m realistic enough to concede that at this stage in the
game, they may unfortunately be right, and we may very well see the situation
get worse before it gets better. however, i for one am hopefully (and
practically) optimistic in aligning with a peaceful trajectory for nonviolent eco-socialist
revolution. and it’s messy and uncomfortable and it forces us to be
surreptitiously creative and outspoken when we’d otherwise cow to social
pressure to conform because it’s easier. but we can, and we must, so we will.
withdrawing consent through civil resistance
“my life amounts to no more than
one drop in a limitless ocean. yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of
drops?” ― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
since the durability of power
relies on the consent of the governed, particularly in democratic regimes where
government is supposedly a representation of the desires of the people, the
most important component of revolution is the withdrawal of that consent as a
process of delegitimizing power. while seemingly obvious, this crucial step is
perhaps the most difficult to catalyze given modern capitalism’s far-reaching
tentacles and subtle tools of social control, including media, pop culture and
consumerism, whereby the internalization of capitalist values by the majority
is the most powerful form of consent, and the hardest to overcome. as David
Harvey explains, the constructed consent of the majority of people is what
allows the injustice and exploitation of the capitalist system to persist,
requiring “the construction of political consent across a sufficiently large
spectrum of the population”, centered around what Gramsci calls ‘common sense’,
or ‘the sense held in common’, which is itself “constructed out of
long-standing practices of cultural socialization often rooted in regional or
national traditions”.[iii]
so while people everywhere are being fed images of glamorous modern lifestyles
espousing the accumulation of wealth and materialism as social aspirations, the
revolution seeks to undermine such practices by drawing awareness to the
fallacy that these lifestyles are even attainable let alone desirable given
finite natural resources and income’s diminishing returns to happiness as
discussed in the previous posts of this series. the Occupy Movement has been
perhaps the most successful in this process, using the simple imagery of the 1%
versus the 99% to single-handedly turn capitalism on its head and into a four-letter
word by drawing attention to structural inequalities inherent in the system. social
movements can continue this important work of deconstructing consent by
propagating similar images in mainstream culture through social media, magazine
articles, blogs and documentaries to raise consciousness as to why a complete
overhaul of the system is necessary.
as part of this strategy, transforming
patterns of production and consumption are coming to define the
countermovement, whereby economic localization and individuals’ voluntary withdrawal from
consumer culture have become important means of resistance to corporate control
of what and how we live, relate, produce and consume. by opting out of
the global economy and saying ‘no’ to the modern consumer lifestyle by buying
(minimally) and producing locally, creating non-capitalist mechanisms of
exchange and barter, and swapping previously-owned goods for other
previously-owned goods instead of buying new things, we are leading by example
and weakening the influence of mass production and its mantra of ‘buy-buy-buy’
to support corporations and the economic growth mechanism fundamental to global
capitalism. at the same time, opting out of the debt-cycle money system is
another way of withdrawing consent by limiting the power of banks to enrich
themselves and their executives at the expense of the working class, while
simultaneously reversing the power relationship between people and
moneylenders. this entails students saying no to repaying outstanding student
debt, families opting against taking out a loan or mortgage to buy a house, and
small-business entrepreneurs finding alternative means of financing outside the
banking system. while these processes may be slow to catch on given the
socially ingrained lifestyle practices of modernity and the internalization of
the values behind the American Dream, they are specific and tangible steps with
potentially powerful and wide-reaching implications when more and more people
join in the fun.
similarly, nonviolent protest in
the form of civil resistance has been increasingly powerful in the withdrawal
of consent despite mainstream media’s minimal coverage of mass protests in
cities around the world. disobeying illegitimate laws, showing up for protests
at all levels, sitting or standing
in silence as a form of resistance, and impeding construction efforts for
environmentally destructive energy projects all fall under the category of
nonviolent civil resistance, and their impact is broad yet subtle. undermining
state power in stealthy ways is one method of saying ‘no’ to social control and
injustice, and the more of us who are willing to risk the consequences, the greater
our chances of making unjust laws a thing of the past.
i have been accused of political posturing and criticized as too radical by proposing things like abstention in US elections, but i write these things as a challenge to all of us to consider our role in perpetuating global injustice, violence and war by legitimizing otherwise illegitimate policies; we do this by exercising our supposed democratic right to vote and elect our leaders and policymakers, and taking it a step further, by funding the wars and economic practices we claim to oppose by continuing to pay taxes, fueling the machines of war and contributing to the loss of innocent lives to protect what we are told are our ‘national interests’. we are beginning to recognize that those national interests are in fact not ours but rather those of a teeny-tiny majority at odds with the needs and lives of billions around the world, yet we continue to offer our consent by doing things like voting and paying taxes. at what point do our leaders and representatives’ actions become illegitimate if we are the ones tacitly offering our consent in the democratic system of which we are a part? when it stops being about ‘we the people’ versus ‘them the leaders we elected but whose policies we don’t agree with’, we cannot ignore our role in this great big mess we call democracy – WE ARE THEM AND WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR POLICIES because we legitimize them through continuing to play the game of democracy, thereby supporting murder, exploitation and environmental destruction in the process. the overt withdrawal of these forms of consent is what is ultimately required by us as individuals propelling the revolution as the means of delegitimizing our corporation-controlled governments. we may worry that our singular acts of resistance are futile against the overwhelming power of dominant interests and the state apparatuses of control, but with all of our individual actions taken together as a multitude of drops in the countermovement ocean, we are not alone, and we are powerful indeed. and there aren’t enough jail cells to house us all anyway. :)
strengthening the global countermovement for peaceful revolution
…fear not, fellow
revolutionaries: our time is now.
another, more positive reality,
however, is that much of the global countermovement is not centered in the Global
North, whose hesitance to disobey is slowing the revolutionary process. instead,
many of the revolutionary epicenters are in the cities and communities of the Global
South, where people are no longer waiting for change to come to them; on the
contrary, resistance and socioeconomic alternatives are emerging organically
and powerfully by the people of the South in the form of new social movements,
political parties and local strategies to design communities and government
institutions in the best interest of people and the planet, rendering
mainstream systems of dominance and control increasingly irrelevant. Raj Patel writes
of this phenomenon as the countermovement
and contends that “the people leading such movements are the poor, the
dispossessed, the marginalized, the people on whose shoulders the externalities
of the rich often fall, the world’s least free people who are discovering that
they are The Change They’ve Been Waiting For”[iv].
Philip Smith and Manfred Max-Neef refer
to this flow of people-power energy as “an unstoppable underground movement of
civil society”:
what we have is two parallel worlds. one concerned with politics,
competition, greed and power, which seems to have everything under its control;
and another concerned with equity, well-being, respect for life and solidarity,
which doesn’t control anything, but grows and expands as an unstoppable
underground movement of civil society…. the latter, because of its dispersion,
its diversity, its fierce independence and its chaotic structure, cannot be
beheaded nor can it collapse…. the need
for radical change of the dominant economic model underlies all the components
of the movement”[v] [italics
mine].
this movement of civil society is
making its presence felt in societies of both the Global North and South as a
reaction to the harms of modern lifestyles of overconsumption and
profit-seeking plundering and exploitation. citizens in the North have begun
expressing their desires to escape the ills of modernity, to ‘un-develop’ for
greater sustainability, sufficiency and a return to the ‘human home’: “accepting
and living by sufficiency rather than excess offers a return to what is,
culturally speaking, the human home: to the ancient order of family, community,
good work, and good life; to a reverence for skill, creativity and creation…;
to communities worth spending a lifetime in; and to local places pregnant with
the memories of generations”[vi].
as Fritjof Capra notes poignantly,
it is this connection between civil society in the South and sympathetic
Northerners with power that is finally tipping the scales in the direction of revolution,
creating a global social movement promoting people-centered approaches and
democratic, participatory political processes[vii].
we see these trends emerging in the annual World
Social Forum, the International Forum on Globalization’s seminal report on “Alternatives to Economic
Globalization”, ongoing meetings of the Group of 77 (G-77), now
comprised of 132 developing countries united within the UN system to support
collective economic interests and strengthen negotiating power, and most recently
with 350.org’s Global Power
Shift – all coming to define the revolutionary processes of ‘globalization
from below’[viii]
to counter increasingly discredited institutions like the United Nations, World
Trade Organization, World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
the unity in solidarity we are
seeing in these new movements is not merely a coincidental convergence of
similar yet unrelated calls for individual and social change, but rather an
early reflection of what Morris Berman calls ‘the waning of the modern ages’:
“the dual process of the disintegration of capitalism and the concomitant
emergence of an alternative socioeconomic formation”; what is to be “the
central story of the rest of the century”[ix].
as alternative socioeconomic formations continue taking shape, we move closer
to satisfying Lindner’s requirements for the transition to a ‘dignity economy’,
which:
requires a multi-thronged approach with two core moves…. it must be a
hybrid bottom-up and top-down approach. a simple combination of bottom-up and
top-down would not suffice, because we cannot wait for the majority of the world’s
citizens to become Mandelas from the bottom up. we can also not wait for the
politicians of our time to implement necessary changes from the top down.”[x]
as the interests of social
movements, civil society, grassroots community organizations, and select
policymakers conjoin within the global countermovement, we find hope in
envisioning a peaceful transition toward new alternatives to support the full
realization of human potentialities, meaningful community livelihoods and
relevant ways of living in harmony with nature – outside the confines of the
global economic order and its international instruments of domination,
exploitation and oppression. in building the new, the countermovement undermines the power of the old by making it both unnecessary and irrelevant.
while this post helps us get a clearer understanding of what
the revolution looks and feels like on the individual, national and global
levels, the following and final installment of this 5-part series will get into
the meat of what comes after the revolution as a guide for where we’re headed
next: post-capitalist alternatives and people ‘doing utopia’ in communities
around the world.
[i]
Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello, & Brendan Smith, Globalization from Below: The Power of Solidarity (Cambridge: South
End Press, 2000): 45.
[ii]
Graeme Taylor, Evolution’s Edge: The
Coming Collapse and Transforming of Our World. (Gabriola Island: New
Society Publishers, 2008).
[iii]
David Harvey, A Brief History of
Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005): 39.
[iv]
Raj Patel, The Value of Nothing: How to
Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy (New York: Picador, 2009):
108.
[v]
Philip B. Smith and Manfred Max-Neef, Economics
Unmasked: From Power and Greed to Compassion and the Common Good (UK: Green
Books, 2011): 173-174.
[vi]
Alan Thein Durning, “Are We Happy Yet?” Ecopsychology
(San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1995): 76.
[vii] Fritjof
Capra, The Hidden Connections: A Science
for Sustainable Living. (New York: Anchor Books, 2002).
[viii]
Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello, & Brendan Smith, Globalization from Below: The Power of Solidarity (Cambridge: South
End Press, 2000).
[ix]
Morris Berman, “The Waning of the Modern Ages,” Counterpunch (September 20, 2012).
www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/20/the-waning-of-the-modern-ages/
[x] Evelin
Lindner, A Dignity Economy: Creating an
Economy that Serves Human Dignity and Preserves Our Planet (Oregon: World
Dignity University Press, 2011).
