💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › wayne-price-crisis-and-revolt.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 14:48:23. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: Crisis and Revolt
Author: Wayne Price
Date: September 28, 2014
Language: en
Topics: crisis, revolt
Source: http://anarkismo.net/article/27414

Wayne Price

Crisis and Revolt

When I discuss politics with liberal friends and relatives, they usually

argue that people with decent values must support the Democrats. (I do

not try to persuade them not to spend 15 minutes a year voting for

Democrats. Rather, I am arguing against their continuing support for the

Democratic Party. I am also arguing against the strategy of big

progressive forces, such as unions and communities of color, which

provide major resources to the Democrats.) They say that, whatever the

failings of the Democratic Party and its politicians (and liberals admit

many), surely they are much better than the Republlicans, who are cruel

and ignorant.

I answer than we are using different criteria to judge political

groupings. These liberals are asking which of the groups of politicians

are better than the other. I agree that the Democrats are generally the

“better” party. in the sense that they are, at least, the “lesser evil.”

For example, the Democrats at least admit that there is a problem with

the global climate, even if they do not do anything about it.

But my criterion is different: given the objective problems we face

politically, economically, ecologically (in the climate, energy, and

pollution), militarily (wars and the continuing threat of a nuclear war

so long as these atomic “weapons” exist), and in a number of other

ways—who can prevent our social destruction? Who has a solution to the

crises? What program can save us and who fights for that program? By

this objective yardstick, Democrats as well as Republicans—liberals,

moderates, conservatives, and crazed reactionaries—the full spectrum of

US politics—all fall short. It is like choosing between two doctors, one

a total quack and the other who is incompetent (whether he or she means

well), when you are facing a severe illness.

Predictions of Disaster

Consider some book reviews which recently appeared in the New York Times

(I live in New York City). There was a review of Martin Wolf’s “The

Shifts and the Shocks” by Felix Salmon (2014). The author, Martin Wolf,

is the chief economics commentator for “The Financial Times”—perhaps the

world’s leading business journal. He “is extremely influential” among

“finance ministers and central bank governors” (p. 1). As the reviewer

summarizes, Wolf claims that, following the Great Recession of 2007-9,

the inadequate “global policy response…all but ensures that we will have

an even worse crisis down the road, and that unless we start

implementing extreme measures today, we will be running headlong into

catastrophe….As Wolf puts it, ‘No industry should have the capacity to

inflict economic costs that may even surpass those of a world war’….This

book is…a wonkish eschatology of how the global economy, and Europe’s in

particular, is doomed. If Wolf’s prescriptions aren’t followed, he says,

‘further crises seem certain,’ erupting again and again, ‘until

governments are no longer able to prevent some kind of fiscal or

monetary collapse….Our open world economy could end in the fire’ ” (p.

27).

I will not go into his proposed solutions, as given in the review. They

seem too radical to be carried out by existing governments and central

banks, while simultaneously too mild to be effective, since he continues

to support the capitalist world financial system.

Several books on climate change were reviewed by Nathaniel Rich (2014).

One, by historians of science, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, has the

grisly title, “The Collapse of Western Civilization; A View from the

Future.” The reviewer summarizes, “It is possible that by the end of the

century, the populations of Africa and Australia will be wiped out, New

York and most other coastal cities will be accessible only to scuba

divers, 70 percent of all species will go extinct, a second Black Death

will kill off half of Europe, 1.5 billion people will be displaced, and,

as soon as 2050, the United States government will declare martial law

to prevent food riots” (p. D5).

The predictions by the economist Wolf and the historians Oreskes and

Conway may seem to be alarmist (Oreskes and Conway say their book is

“fiction,” after all, “a view from the future”). No one can make

absolute predictions of an inevitable future. But it is clear that these

are real threats which reasonable people should take seriously.

Of course, it is not news that there are also many bourgeois economists

and historical writers who say that everything will be okay, with a

little effort and luck. But it is (or should be) news when a prominent

economist (who had previously supported the financial-liberalization and

austerity measures of Thatcher and Reagan) admits to having been wrong

and makes dire predictions. Nor is he the only one; there are many

leading economists who have made similar statements, although the media

and politicians do no emphasize them.

As for the catastrophism of the science historians, the reviewer Rich

also looks at Diane Ackerman’s “The Human Age.” Ackerman, he writes,

points out environmental dangers but believes that the intelligent use

of technology could keep them under control. “I’m enormously hopeful,”

she writes. The book, writes Rich, “is rarely grim and the overwhelming

spirit is one of relentless optimism.”

However it is not enough to invent technology which can help with

climate change. Social institutions must also be invented which will

properly use this technology. Rich asks, “Why has our civilization been

unable to take the most basic steps to prevent a future that could

include mass starvation, [population] displacement and pestilence?”

Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate” is

also reviewed by Rich. Apparently, she believes that climate catastrophe

is avoidable, but only if people takes steps toward socialism. The

review summarizes, “Change must come quickly. By 2013, she writes, we

will be lucky to restrict the ultimate rise in global temperature to an

average of four degrees Celsius or seven Fahrenheit. Four degrees

warming, as it turns out, is the premise for the nightmarish future

described by Dr. Oreskes and Dr. Conway.” In his opinion, this makes

their book, of the three he reviews, actually “the one furthest from

fiction.”

There is a connection between the threat of ecological/climate

catastrophes and the threat of economic meltdown. After World War II,

the world did not return to the conditions of the Great Depression (as

most economists, pro-capitalist as well as Marxist, expected). There

were several causes for the surprising post-war prosperity, which lasted

from the late forties to about 1970. These include the enormous

expansion of military spending in the USA. Another cause was the looting

of the environment. A whole industrial society was built on petroleum

oil, for production, transportation, agriculture (artificial fertilizers

and pesticides), and everything we use plastics for. Petroleum was

treated as a “cheap” resource, instead of including in its price the

need for putting money by—for cleaning up the global ecology, creating

new sources of renewable energy, and developing the poor nations in

nonpolluting ways. Rationally, wealth from the production and use of

petroleum and other carbon-based fuels should have gone for these

purposes. Instead, these needs were ignored and most of oil wealth was

counted as profit. Some was used to artificially and temporarily raise

the standard of living of a part of the working class. Sooner or later

the bills were bound to come due.

Now the capitalist class complains that it cannot afford to rebuild the

world economy on a sustainable and balanced basis! This would indicate

the need for a different way to organize the world economy—and a

different class managing society (the international working class, with

its allies among the oppressed) until a classless society can be

completed.

I could also discuss other threats to the survival of “Western

civilization,” such as it is. Wars continue around the world. Talk by

the Democrats that they would move toward world nuclear disarmament has

remained just talk; in fact the U.S. state currently plans to spend a

trillion dollars to upgrade its nuclear armaments. Meanwhile other

national states still have their own genocide-threatening,

world-ecology-destroying, nuclear bombs. And there are many other

problems, such as immigration, racial oppression, attacks on rights for

women, etc., which do not rise to the level of threatening the existence

of civilization or life on earth. Yet they are bad enough and are not

being addressed by governments or politicians.

Popular Struggle against both the Lesser and the Greater Evils

In brief, the Democrats may be the “lesser evil,” but that still makes

them an evil. Just as do the Republicans, the Democrats support

capitalism and the national state, which are the causes of the

nightmarish threats. The “greater evil” cannot be defeated by using the

“lesser evil.” In practice, progressive forces (such as labor unions,

the African-American community, organized feminism, environmentalists,

and so on) have supported Democrats over Republicans for decades now,

since, say, the end of World War II. What has been the empirical result?

Have not both parties moved more and more to the right? The Democrats

are now where the Republicans used to be and the Republicans are

entirely far-right, including even semi-fascists.

Electoral politics are no answer. The reviewer Rich notes Naomi Klein’s

program for a “Great Transition” to a better, safer, world. She raises

proposals for expanding the public sector, taxing the extremely rich,

investing in infrastructure, and so on (proposals which would also, I

might add, decrease the danger or impact of a new Depression). Rich does

not criticize the program, but comments that this “reads like a campaign

book for a candidate who would have exactly zero chance of winning the

American presidency” (p. D5). However, the goal is not to elect a

president but to prevent world-wide disaster and immense human

suffering. If the US political system cannot accommodate that, then to

hell with the US political system. As Rosa Luxemberg wrote during World

War I, the only real alternatives are “socialism or barbarism”—or, as

Murray Bookchin updated the phrase, “anarchism or annihilation.”

Most great advances in US society came about through non-electoral

means, outside of the ballot box. In the thirties, the rights of unions

were won through massive strikes, including occupations of factories in

key industries. In the sixties, African-Americans won the end of legal

segregation through large-scale civil disobedience. Anti-discrimination

laws were won through urban rebellions (so-called riots). The Vietnamese

war was limited by big demonstrations, civil disobedience, campus

strikes, and the breakdown of the US army. Such rebellions and

expressions of discontent will be needed to change society from the rule

of the capitalist exploiters and their agents in the two mainstream

political parties. (Some radicals advocate creating a new party. This

would be still working within the framework of the capitalist class and

its governmental set-up.)

Right now most US people more-or-less accept this social system. In the

recent past, many (white) people have been relatively comfortable. Now

the system is facing serious difficulties. These are beginning to shake

up lots of people. There is a great deal of dissatisfaction bubbling

under the surface, breaking out now and again in mass demonstrations on

various issues, and in other signs of popular unrest. There is no

guarantee, but enough people may become dissatisfied to really threaten

the rule of the corporate rich and their national state. Whether this

will happen soon enough cannot be known, but the possibility is real—and

growing.

Paul Goodman was the most well-known anarchist of the sixties. In an

article criticizing electoralism as a strategy, he referred to

deTocqueville and lessons from the French Revolution:

“It will be said that there is no time. Yes, probably. But let me cite a

remark of Tocqueville. In his last work, ‘L’Ancien Regime,’ he notes

‘with terror,’ as he says, how throughout the eighteenth century writer

after writer and expert after expert pointed out that this and that

detail of the Old Regime was unviable and could not possibly survive;

added up, they proved that the entire Old Regime was doomed and must

soon collapse; and yet there was not a single [person] who foretold that

there would be a mighty revolution” (in Stoehr 2011; p. 75).

References

Rich, Nathaniel (2014). “Nature in the Balance.” The New York Times,

9/23/14; p.D5.

Salmon, Felix (2014). “The Dismal Science.” The New York Times Book

Review, 9/28/14; pp. 1, 27.

Stoehr, Taylor (ed.) (2011). The Paul Goodman Reader. Oakland CA: PM

Press.