[Marxism] Animal Farm

[Jay Andrew Allen]

On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 9:55 AM, Ruthless Critic of All that Exists <
ok.president+marxml at gmail.com <ok.president%2Bmarxml at gmail.com>> wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 12:32 PM, Jay Andrew Allen
> <jay at jayandrewallen.net> wrote:
>
> > As he saw it, people will come to love their
> > oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to
> think.
>
> In which case, what future is there for Marxism?
>
> When people start loving their oppression, the class struggle no longer
> exists.
>

Yeah. The ending of BRAVE NEW WORLD isn't exactly what you'd call
"uplifting."

I don't have many insights. I'm new here, and am still coming to grips with
all of this myself; I'm sure others can offer more educated stratagems. In
terms of the US and breaking the love of oppression, I think you engage in
good ol'-fashioned propaganda (in the neutral sense of that term) and
organization. Wake people up to the true human and environmental cost of
capitalism. Show them the imperialist bias of the Western media, and make
alternative sources of information readily available. That has to be
combined with the positive future vision offered by Marxism - not just as
Adbusters-style movement that points up the injustice, but offers no relief.
Part of this work involves agitating against our own government's
imperialism - especially as it aims to undermine the Latin American
socialist revolutions, the Maoist government of Nepal, and the Indian
Naxalite movement.

The hitch is not just waking people up from the love of oppression; it's
waking them up to the right solutions. Even the most "radical" element of
the Democratic Party in the US is mired in electoralism and gradualism. I
don't see change coming about through any democratic means in this country -
at least not in the current context. The two-party system, coupled with the
money monopoly, would seem to make this impossible. People need to see that
voting in the current system doesn't solve anything - that it is (again,
quoting Postman) "the last refuge of the politically impotent." If people
want TRUE political, power, they need to take it back.

The left's obsession with bourgeois solutions is an obstacle that must be
addressed at every turn. There's potential in the local economies and local
food movements for citizens to initiate grass roots change by building local
economic systems that are bound by community, and not capital
considerations. However, these movements generally tend to be socially
stratified in the US, and are often the province of well-off communities
with plenty of disposable time and income. Many of the political movements
on the left suffer from the same elitism. It's appalling to know that a
large contingent of this country's liberals believe they'll solve problems
of class oppression and American imperialism by taking a $4,000 cruise to
the Caribbean (http://www.nationcruise.com/).

-J-

-- 
Jay Andrew Allen
http://www.jayandrewallen.net/ - Articles
http://www.jayandrewallen.net/blog/ - Out-Loud Brainwaves

"Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks
differently." - Rosa Luxemburg