Reclaiming democracy in a Corporatist society

[marmar]

"One shouldn't underestimate how hard this will be. Reclaiming the ability to engage market society, reclaiming the right to have rights, is difficult work. To begin with, it means regaining an appetite for conflict. It means understanding that some entities in the private sector are structurally part of the problem, not part of the solution, and that they need to be successfully challenged. Every philosophy of social change has had an understanding of enmity. Gandhian philosophy isn't, as some have reconstructed it, a big tent of beads and incense. Although it's nonviolent, it involves opposition and conflict - tender opposition no doubt, but opposition nonetheless. Movements around the world have developed the psychological tools to deal with conflict, guided by principles of equality and a desire to control the terms of inclusion.

Of course, this threatens the status quo, which is why many of the movements I've discussed - from peasants to shackdwellers - have been branded criminals and hooligans. Turning dissenters into criminals doesn't happen by magic - it happens because today's market society has an ideology in which those who challenge the fragile consensus around the role of the market cannot be tolerated. The activist Abbie Hoffman once observed, "You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not by the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." By that metric, there's not much democracy around.

- from Raj Patel's The Value of Nothing

[Scuba]

1. How about this???

The platform of the people, by the people and FOR the people...

1. America has been highjacked by special interests, corporations having "free speech" rights, etc.

2. We can take America back, without bloodshed or great human suffering simply by applying the Constitution.

3. Our candidates will take an Oath that a) we'll ban "corporate free speech" and b) we'll pass term limit and other anti-corruption legislation to hold future elected officials accountable.

[azul]

3. Good luck with that until the media is read the riot act, and the voting

process is fixed.

Try something maybe simpler for a platform like:

Corporate influence out of government.


The real change must come from Democratic populists taking back control of the democratic party, or from starting a 3rd party: Democratic Populists. ??

[Scuba]

5. Democratic Populist. I like that...

... or just go with Progressive. We can cite Fightin' Bob LaFollette kinda like they shout Reagan.

[azul]

6. "Progressive" has been demonized to a threatening boogeyman

term by conservatives and authoritarians that fear change, as has "Socialists".

"Populist" make the plain case and distinction of natural people, as spelled-out in the constitution, or corporate persons, as born in legal fiction.

[Scuba]

10. Maybe we could go with "Jesus's Desciples"? ....

... nah, they'd just demonize that too, saying it was obviously a Mexican drug cartel.

[laughingliberal]

2. Very good post.

The quote by Abbie Hoffman is really timeless and and just as relevant today as when he said it.

[ixion]

4. It is by far easier to give up rights, than it is to claim them.

we've made a nasty bed, and face a difficult struggle because of our willingness to give up liberties.

[Peace Patriot]

7. Get practical, like they have in Latin America. Demand TRANSPARENT VOTE COUNTING!

One of the main keys to the leftist democracy movement in Latin America has been their long hard work on honest, aboveboard, transparent election systems. Here, our votes are now counted largely by ONE, far rightwing-connected corporation (ES&S, which just bought out Diebold), using 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls, all over the U.S.A.

I mean, WHAT DO YOU EXPECT with the loss of THE most fundamental requirement of democracy: transparent vote counting.

A political analysis pertinent to the U.S. that doesn't mention this fact is whistling in the dark. We cannot verify the election of ANY official in this country. And until we take back our vote counting system, and restore vote counting that everyone can see and understand, we cannot even begin to enact the reforms that are so critically and obviously needed.

Control over voting systems still resides at the state/local level, where ordinary people still have potential influence. And for all the corruption around the fast-tracking of 'TRADE SECRET' voting systems, these expensive, NON-TRANSPARENT, PRIVATELY CONTROLLED electronic voting systems as NOT required by federal law. They are still a choice. We can change that choice--but it will take a big and widespread citizen movement.

I don't like vague, lamenting-type political analysis. (Gee, how bad is it? Well, yeah, it's REALLY, REALLY bad.) What to DO about it, is what I want to see people thinking about, analyzing, debating and making action decisions about.

"To begin with, it means regaining an appetite for conflict."

That's not incisive enough--strategic enough, pointed enough. And, furthermore, what good is it, in a country in which protest has been ritualized and marginalized? Conflict itself is useless without CHOOSING THE RIGHT CONFLICT--the one that will resonate--and that comes from deep commitment to certain principles. First you believe in democracy and fairness, then you identify the sources of tyranny and unfairness--as Gandhi did, for instance, with his cloth and salt campaigns--then you hit the oppressors where it hurts, in their power.

In this country--now, today--the power over our vote counting is key. Transparent vote counting is the essence of democracy and fairness, and these non-transparent vote counting systems are the latest and most egregious mechanism of control by our corporate overlords. Furthermore, basic fairness and transparency hit deep chords in the American psyche. That is why this subject has been black-holed by the corpo-fascist press. It is SO unfair and SO anti-democratic that it cannot bear scrutiny.

I'm also reminded of the civil rights struggle here in the 1950s-1970s. It was focused on VOTING--basic fairness. A vague analyst would have said, First, you have to eliminate bigotry. As with "an appetite for conflict," you can't call that up out of nowhere. And you can't really eliminate it. What you CAN do is make it ILLEGAL as to basic fairness issues--voting, education, housing--and work, long term, through softer means, on eliminating stereotypes and making racial bigotry socially unacceptable. If Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King had set out to eliminate bigotry, they would have gotten exactly nowhere. They set about PRACTICAL, STRATEGIC goals--eliminating racist practices on public busses through a bus boycott, organizing, marching and going to jail for the right to vote. The "taste for conflict" will arise naturally out of identification and action on the most resonant instances of unfairness.

I am not familiar with Raj Patel's book (is it a book?), "The Value of Nothing." Just this snippet indicates that he may indeed discuss practical applications of people power--particular instances where peoples' movements have identified unfairness and have taken practical, strategic action to change it. He is talking in these cited paragraphs about one of the obstacles to change--"that some entities in the private sector are structurally part of the problem, not part of the solution, and that they need to be successfully challenged" (I'm thinking of big time non-profit groups for the disabled, and indeed the Democratic Party itself, who have aided and abetted the loss of voting transparency). Having read only these two paragraphs, I can't say that Patel fails on the whole to be specific, practical and strategic. I am just urging specific, practical and strategic thinking for those who truly want change. If you correctly identify the problem, in practical, strategic, power terms, the motivation and the psychology will follow. "Regaining an appetite for conflict" does not come first. It comes last.

[marmar]

8. "I don't like vague, lamenting-type political analysis"

Then you probably need to read the whole book, n'est-ce pas?

[glitch]

9. How could anyone imagine spending millions to rig elections to gain power to redistribute trillions

and reset the course of the most powerful nation on Earth?