Greetings Economists,
On May 14, 2008, at 6:39 AM, Jim Devine wrote:
Doyle's suggestion that a "cultural revolution" is needed
begs another question: where is that cult. rev. going to come from?
from above, as under Mao? from some centralized agency?
Doyle,
First off I'm considering where organizing might happen. What roots
would stimulate drastic change? Two world level forces; globalism,
and climate change push toward two aspects of cultural change; unity
of human kind, radical re-orientation of living standards. Truly
there is no automatic move to the left because we recognize forces
that will shape the coming century.
Secondly, a shift like this offers an organizational alternative to
typical left tactics of how to assert power. I.e. Directly shaping
the community itself in radical egalitarian directions. Not that that
excludes other leftist methods, just that it opens the door for a new
mode of left.
To answer your question, a global left has no centralized authority to
assert a cultural revolution. So, this idea and many ideas right now
ought to be considered if not taken literally has only a grassroots
potential amongst other untested guesses. A cultural revolution is
often nebulous/foggy sort of fashion change in a given national
location. But we could say that re-building the living standards of
people has opportunities for addressing say segregation as a political
problem for globalization, for energy distribution, for knowledge
production etc. And I think address the problem as if all people are
part of the left, I mean see the global aspects as opposed to a
professional cadre of left ideologues as the source of change. In
that sense like Mao, one asks what is socialist culture? Not just
workers cooperatives, but more broadly how do we live socially that
reflects everyone having a right to a certain standard of living?
A global response to global warming seems like the only feasible path
to ameliorate climate change, but there is no guarantee even a little
shift is going to happen. I would think a lot of people can feel a
part of wanting to do something. And that is a potent source of
organizing. The only global scale of addressing that is everyone
literally live in a radically shifted pattern. A workers culture,
basically a united egalitarian culture is to me somewhat different
from say German efforts (not state sponsored change where communist
had the say so) after WWI. To me knowledge production, global
communications offers ways to unite all over the world rather than in
a neighborhood of apartment living units. But faces the great hurdles
of language, and group identity. So a workers culture on a global
scale is quite interesting way to look at the present problem of
organizing.
Thanks,
Doyle Saylor
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