-Caveat Lector-
In a message dated 99-09-13 18:43:50 EDT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>Revolution with guns is self defeating, they would just love that.
>A recipe for self destruction. This is 1999 not 1799.
Agreed. But remember, for Russians, 1909 to 1917 wasn't 1709 to 1717 EITHER
...
Nor was it for the more modern European satellites of the USSR just over a
decade ago, when, as the Berlin Wall came down, Communist officials were
dragged out of their legislatures and literally torn to pieces by their newly
"capitalist" subjects. I have to wonder if the same savage spectacle will
repeat itself when World Capitalism falls.
When the pinball game of Society goes TILT, people stop thinking of what
"practical" goals are to be accomplished by "revolution" and what constitutes
its victory or defeat.
Imagine "road rage" multiplied by the millions, "Falling Down" occurring not
only in the workplace, directed toward petty-tyrant bosses and the
bureaucracies closest at hand, but toward all institutions similar in
character, across the board, constraining people's lives. I'm not talking
about anything RATIONAL here, much less anything with concrete programs for
social change or defined by some ideological dogma. Which is why I've
deliberately invoked the image of the French Revolution, rather than, say,
the Russian Revolution. A populist mass-revolt against the overcentralized,
militarized power of the State in America would, in my opinion, likely be an
NIHILIST-ANARCHIST repudiation of "legitimate" authority in ALL its forms, by
ordinary people rather than by intellectuals, because, in the common man's
experience here, even the very concept of "authority" has been discredited
--can no longer be trusted-- and the realm of the "rational" as we experience
it --all its buzzwords, slogans, "ideals," promises, and platforms, all just
WORDS (opposed to ACTION for significant change) employed HYPOCRITICALLY, to
DECEIVE and MISDIRECT the popular will-- has by now become every bit as
suspect.
The whole structure of governance, high and low, has become so corrupt that
it makes more sense to DESTROY it, in toto, than attempt somehow to "repair"
it, piecemeal, at a snail's pace, in the face of its apparent momentum toward
ultimate totalitarian evil -- and in that sense, there's an unacknowledged
purposefulness in apparently "random" acts of individual destructiveness --
in the common man's frustration come to a boil, in free-floating "rage
against the machine" at last overwhelming the tinselly "rational" ego which
has failed us --betrayed us-- through its sheeplike clinging to safety and
security and its fear of danger, pain, or sacrifice, blind to the "laws of
the jungle" in effect all around it. Such a sea-change in collective
behavior may not seem "logical" or "rational" to "intellectuals" such as you
or me, but it may indeed make "sense" in the opposing mode of dealing with
reality, the EMOTIONAL, dominant in the other 95% of humanity.
In fact, it's possibly a SANER response than OURS, which is merely to
nit-pick, weigh and analyze, judge and categorize (words, words, words!), in
our splendid ivory-tower isolation from the more common world of SURVIVAL
instincts, wherein blood, sweat and tears are the rule, lacking the luxury of
"philosophizing" about human suffering.
Like it or not, we "intellectuals" are nothing but "back seat drivers" in
times of change. It's the PEOPLE --wisely or foolishly-- who MAKE history,
meandering where they will, whether at a trot toward greener pastures,
turning tail at the smell of predators, or when kicking down manmade
(=mind-made) fences with their hooves, in order to remain wild and free, in
expression of their god-given nature, following instincts sounder than ours.
The world, on our scale, is still a Newtonian one, driven by "forces of
nature" -- and the force of a thousand angry men acting in sympathy (even if
unknown to each other) is still more effective than any force exerted by the
words of a thinker, just "observing."
Revolutions are non-rational -- that fact is fundamental. A revolution is
basically a riot writ large, with a riot's violence and looting. Its
purpose, initially, is to break through all restraints imposed on frustrated
desires and impulses (including HIGHER desires and impulses, i.e., SOCIAL
needs) by a structure of ideas and a system of enforcing them through
"authority" which has become intolerably oppressive -- i.e., more inimical
than protective, evoking increasing outrage rather than our assent and
willing participation. A revolt-become-revolution is an entirely sensible
effort to break those bonds that persist only as chains and destroy the walls
of what most people experience only as a prison.
And since no societal structure exists purely in the abstract --without
flesh-and-blood human beings whose WILLS make it real in practice-- a
revolution demands personal hand-to-hand combat against all those among one's
fellow men who are committed to DEFENDING those chains, that prison, with
their very LIVES. Slaves in a revolt to be FREE (including "wage slaves,"
the new indentured servants) know that there will be no relief from the
suffering of slavery until all slave-masters GREAT and SMALL --everyone
personally identified with the "legitimate authority" which SUPPORTS the
institution of slavery-- are finally DIS-empowered -- "won over" at best, or
KILLED at worst -- because power is not easily renounced and will yield
itself up only to superior force, in a "war."
In other words, a fight for IDEALS (such as "rights") usually becomes a
literal WAR of man against man --"affirmers" versus "deniers" of those
rights-- involving BLOODSHED.
So, people will get hurt or die, on both sides, even before the nature of
that battlefield is rationally definable -- before the "ideals" fought for
(and against) become intelligible in abstract terms, travelling the HARD way
from the people's GUT finally to their MINDS.
Innocent people will get hurt or die -- because there is no "innocence" on a
battlefield,
there is only "friend" or "foe." Is revolt or revolution any LESS "rational"
than WAR?
Every revolution, of course, is a CIVIL WAR -- and the authorities realize
that full well, holding (as they do) a COERCIVE unity --a wholly FALSE
consensus, upon which the "legitimate" power of the State (and the power of
the MINORITY "ruling" us) depends-- more valuable than coping with the REAL
DIVISIONS which IT has created, through its betrayal of fundamental
principles that would have made VOLUNTARY unity possible.
The truth is ... the repressive FASCIST behavior of the State is NEVER a
"necessary" RESPONSE to "civil disorder" (manifesting in revolts or
revolution) but is the CAUSE of the latter -- a state of "national emergency"
is what incipient totalitarianism CAUSES, and repression of "random" popular
violence by *oganized* STATE violence is a purely OPPORTUNISTIC strategy --
the only means whereby the systematic, institutionalized injustice that
characterizes a now-illegitimate, self-serving, and terminally corrupt ruling
class can be DEFENDED against its victims, once victims constitute the
majority.
When small-scale riots come often , when "road sage" soars and "senseless"
violence becomes common in the workplace, when even youngsters --who, having
more of a stake in the FUTURE than their over-the-hill elders-- feel they
must choose between savagery or suicide ... complete social anarchy is
INEVITABLE. A "culture" does not change significantly, unless FORCED to
change. The State does NOT yield to such change "naturally." To the
contrary, every State defends the "status quo" --however inequitable-- to the
DEATH, if necessary -- the death of its OWN citizenry!
When moral rot has reached the bone, and when the cancer of political
corruption has metastasized to the degree it already has, there's nowhere
left to go but to a crossroads where a choice MUST and WILL be made -- either
a REVOLUTION, with its irrational
and life-threatening frenzies and, even after much bloodshed, never any
guarantee of a happy outcome, or else FASCISM, a COERCIVE and EQUALLY
bloodthirsty state of "law and order," which, however, only POSTPONES the
need to find a real solution to fundamental social problems temporarily held
in check through SUPPRESSION, and which can only promise, if not WAR (as a
"safety valve"), ANOTHER revolution later ...
At that point, there's no room left for "middle ground" and no more safety in
indecision, because anarchy as it progresses polarizes people to extremes,
and anyone failing to "take sides" is treated as an enemy by BOTH extremes,
attacked equally by the two.
The first casualties of any revolution are "innocent bystanders," caught in
the middle, just as noncombatants with unclear loyalties join the body count
in occupied territory.
In revolution, just as in war, the imperative for SURVIVAL is simple: KILL or
BE killed.
Those unready to KILL for THEIR cause usually DIE, killed for someone ELSE's
cause
The only question to be answered, then, is this: Are you willing to kill your
fellow man for THE STATE, as an agent of totalitarian tyranny, or are you
willing to kill your fellow man for THE PEOPLE, for the sake of greater
liberty for future generations? That's the bad news. The good news is, if
we ARE willing to do so, that resolve alone MIGHT be enough to turn the tide
in favor of a LESS violent change in the social order, since the State's
self-confidence in its power depends largely on its MONOPOLY of the means of
coercion -- its realizable threat of physical pain, injury, and ultimately
death, which is USUALLY all that is needed to guarantee the nonresistance of
its "sheeple."
Timing is everything. The longer a serious inequity persists without
solution, the more disastrous are the consequences when, too late in the
process, the balance of power finally changes in society. A ready example of
this axiom is the case of South Africa.
Decades ago, apartheid COULD have been ended "gradually," in a long-range
program
that would have allowed ill-will to dissipate slowly through time. But no,
the injustice of apartheid was defended, tooth and nail --by means even
crueler than apartheid itself-- to the bitter end, only exacerbating the
misery of its victims. Then, when the system was finally abolished, the rage
of those at last liberated from it could be released only in the most brutal
revenge, in retaliation against everyone who had benefitted from apartheid
even if not an active defender of it. "Innocent bystanders" were murdered
for INACTION, in far greater numbers than those who were executed for
exerting oppressive power.
In short, the longer an evil is allowed to endure, the deeper will be the
wounding of the collective soul it causes, and the blinder and more brutal
the retribution that purges it.
If what we are seeing today is any omen, the time for any RATIONAL solution
to the ills of everyday life in America may have already passed. It may be
too late for anything but the worst case scenario, as described above.
Whether people like it or not --whether we "intellectuals" understand or
approve-- the cumulative predations of the Powers That Be and the cowardice
and amoral self-interest of our "petit bourgeois" citizenry, profiting from
their complicity, if only by default, may have bred a Beast which now cannot
be so easily held in check by any "rational" considerations. "Things fall
apart / the center does not hold," as the widening gyre stirs up a hellstorm
-- a fate beyond our control.
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