Matrix & Transformation: Chapter 2

From: richard-at-cyberjournal.org

Date: 16 Nov 2004

Subject: Matrix & Transformation: Chapter 2

To: newslog-at-cyberjournal.org

Copyright 2004 Richard K. Moore

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CHAPTER 2:   We the People AND THE TRANSFORMATIONAL IMPERATIVE

* Civilization in crisis

Civilization, and humanity, are now facing the most severe

crisis of survival that either has ever faced. The unbridled

exploitation and waste of resources, required by capitalism's

growth imperative, is destroying the bio-infrastructure upon

which future human life depends. The pace of this devastation

is ever increasing, as corporations must seek each quarter to

achieve greater growth than the quarter before. In many ways,

civilization has already passed the point of no return. So

much carbon dioxide has already been released into the

atmosphere, for example, that the effects of global warming

will continue to worsen even if we were to somehow stop

burning fossil fuels immediately and totally. Huge tracts of

agricultural land have been irreversibly turned into barren

desert, many fishing stocks are near extinction levels, and

the global population is already so large that feeding

everyone -- even under some ideal system of agriculture and

distribution -- would be a major challenge.

If we look at this situation from an objective point of view,

as an outside observer, it makes no sense at all. Humanity as

a species is behaving insanely, like lemmings jumping over a

cliff. Given finite resources, the only sensible strategy for

humanity is to carefully manage the resources that remain, to

help the environment begin healing, and to transform our

economies and cultures so that we are able to survive

sustainably using renewable resources. And the sooner such a

transformation begins, the better -- the longer we continue on

our current path, the fewer resources will be left to manage

and survive on. There is no natural law or dictate of the gods

that requires us to continue on our ill-fated course. If the

societal will existed, we could readily scale down our

industrial operations and re-purpose them toward producing the

the technologies and products which can be used to build

sustainable societies. When the will exists, as we have often

seen under the pressure of war, societies are capable of great

creativity and resourcefulness.

Some people believe that it is already too late to save most

of humanity -- there are just too many of us. This may serve

as a rationalization to acquiesce in the status quo, but it is

largely a myth. India, for example, could end its own

starvation problem if it simply diverted 5% of its food

exports to feed its own hungry. Although population levels do

present a significant problem, it is not population per se

that accounts for widespread poverty and the rapid depletion

of our resources. The causes of both are the wasteful and

reckless manner in which resources are exploited, and the

excessive consumption that characterizes the richest

societies. The USA for example, with 5% of the world's

population, uses 20% (?) of the world's energy.

As long as there were new lands to conquer and plenty of room

to grow, humanity could operate -- even if unwisely and

unjustly -- under an economy based on the paradigm of growth

and development. Such a paradigm was never sustainable, not in

the long run, but the long run always seemed far away -- and

the visible benefits of 'progress' were seductive.

Unfortunately for those of us alive today, the long run has

finally arrived and the visible benefits are declining as

well. Either we somehow wake up as a species and deal with

this crisis, or else civilization will continue down the

slippery slope to mass die offs, perhaps the collapse of civil

order, and in any case a very dismal future for our

grandchildren and future generations.

* We the People

      "If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with       changed minds, people with a new vision. It will not be saved

      by people with the old vision but new programs."        - Daniel Quinn, "The Story of B"

If civilization is in dire crisis, and if only a radical

transformation of our economic and governance systems can

provide a lasting and favorable outcome to that crisis, then

we must inquire into what means might be available to bring

about that kind of radical transformation. Changes in society

are usually initiated from the top, by elites acting through

their various hierarchical institutions. In those cases where

change has been initiated from the grassroots, by elements of

'We the People', that change has always come by the efforts of

a social movement. 'Social movements' is a broad category,

including everything from polite reform organizations to armed

insurrections, from labor unions to anti-globalization

protests. In general, a social movement is an attempt to give

voice to popular sentiment, to provide a vehicle that enables

the members of the movement to act as a whole, to be a

collective 'actor' in society, to have a coherent effect on

society.

Quite clearly the kind of transformation we are seeking will

not be initiated by the elite establishment. If such a

transformation is to be achieved, the initiative will need to

come from We the People in the form of a social movement that

is suitable to that task. That social movement might be quite

unlike previous movements, as its objectives are uniquely

radical. But by examining various existing and historical

movements, we can gain some insight as to the kind of movement

that would be suitable for our needs.

Let's first take a look at the anti-globalization movement, a

movement whose sentiments are largely in harmony with the kind

of transformation we have been discussing. The

anti-globalization movement understands that unbridled

capitalism is destroying the world, and the movement seeks a

radical shift towards democracy, justice, and sustainability.

The movement also has many thousands of committed supporters

worldwide, who are willing to participate in movement events

at considerable expense and risk to themselves. Is the

anti-globalization movement an appropriate vehicle for

achieving global transformation?

Unfortunately, this movement has not proven to be particularly

effective. It's heart is in the right place and it's

supporters show commitment, but it has no clear vision of a

transformed society, no strategy to bring about change, and no

program to expand its constituency. It is in the amorphous

mold of the protest movements of the 1960s, and those kinds of

movements can no longer be effective in this post-neoliberal

age. Neoliberalism brought the economic abandonment of the

middle classes, and elites no longer see any need to maintain

an illusion of popular consensus. In the 1960s governments

were concerned when masses of people protested, and they

responded with a Civil Rights Bill, a Freedom of Information

Act, and an Environmental Protection Agency. Today's

neoliberal elites respond to protests by suppressing them or

ignoring them, and then simply carry on with business as

usual. One of the things leaders are taught at globalist

gatherings is to avoid being distracted by popular

'sentimentality'.

About a century ago, just prior to 1900 in the U.S., there was

a movement which provides a closer model for the kind of

movement that might bring about transformation today. Its

goals were not nearly as radical as what we are considering,

but they were radical, and they did represent a challenge to

the ascendency of monopoly capitalism. This movement did have

a vision of a transformed system, a strategy for bringing

about change, and an effective program for expanding its

constituency. It began as the Farmers Alliance, was later

known as the Populist Movement and the Peoples Party, and it

became a very significant actor in society. In 1890, for

example, Georgia and Texas elected Alliance Governors, and

thirty-eight Alliance members were elected to the U.S.

Congress.

The Farmers Alliance began in 1877 as a self-help movement in

Texas, organizing cooperatives for buying supplies and selling

crops. The cooperatives improved the farmers' economic

situation, and the movement began to spread throughout the

Midwest and the South. By 1889, there were 400,000 members.

This was a thinking movement as well as an action movement.

Howard Zinn, in "A People's History of the United States",

writes, "The Populist movement also also made a remarkable

attempt to create a new and independent culture for the

country's farmers. The Alliance Lecture Bureau reached all

over the country; it had 35,000 lecturers. The Populists

poured out books and pamphlets from their printing

presses...". Zinn goes on to cite from another source, "One

gathers from yellowed pamphlets that the agrarian ideologists

undertook to re-educate their countrymen from the ground up.

Dismissing 'history as taught in our schools' [ie., The

Matrix] as 'practically valueless', they undertook to write it

over -- formidable columns of it, from the Greek down. With no

more compunction they turned all hands to the revision of

economics, political theory, law, and government." And from

another source, "...no other political movement -- not that of

1776, nor that of 1860-1861 -- ever altered Southern life so

profoundly."

There is much here that makes sense for a transformational

democratic movement. Our current systems are supported by

cultural mythologies, and "writing it over" is a good

description of what needs to be done if the illusions of the

old culture are to be exposed and the culture of a new society

is to be developed. The emphasis on education of the

membership shows a respect for popular intelligence, and it

builds a shared cultural perspective that enables a movement

to act with increasing unity and coherence. The emphasis on

outreach and recruitment is necessary if a movement hopes to

grow large enough to bring about significant changes.

The Populist Movement arose due to economic problems that were

being faced by farmers, and the movement set out to find

practical ways to solve those problems. I suggest that such a

problem-solving emphasis is appropriate to a democratic

transformational movement. If a movement makes demands, then

it is affirming that power resides elsewhere -- in that person

or agency which is the target of the demands. If a movement

creates solutions, then it is asserting its own empowerment,

it is taking responsibility for its own welfare. Furthermore,

problem solving ability in general is necessary for any

movement which intends to achieve radical goals. Such a

movement is bound to encounter all sorts of challenges and

barriers along the way, and it will need to be able to respond

creatively and effectively to them. The emphasis on economics

in particular is also appropriate to a transformational

movement. Economics is the basis of most social activity, and

it is in the realm of economics that solutions can be found to

our social and environmental malaise.

The Populists, being largely farmers, were closely connected

to place, and their movement was in part an expression of

localism. The movement built up its constituency region by

region, rather than by seeking isolated members spread

throughout the society, as do modern reform organizations like

the Sierra Club. To use a military metaphor, the movement

'captured territory' and then 'consolidated that territory'

through education and by implementing its solutions in that

'territory' -- and by winning elections there and gaining some

degree of official political power. Such a territorial

emphasis is very appropriate to a transformational movement.

Within a 'captured territory' -- a region in which people

generally have become part of the movement -- the vision and

culture of the movement has an opportunity to flower and to

find expression in ordinary conversation among people. The

culture has a place to take root and grow, and people's sense

of empowerment is reinforced by being in the daily company of

those who share an evolving vision, and who are in effect

collaborators in a shared project.

The Populist Movement was also an expression of localism in

another way. At the core of the Populist political agenda was

a set of economic reforms. Those reforms represented an

attempt to stem the ascendency of centralized big-money

capitalism -- and reassert the interests of locally-based

farms and small businesses. The Populists were calling for

fundamental reform of the financial system, the debt system,

and currency policies. They wanted to give local communities

and regions enough economic viability to be able to take

responsibility for their own welfare.

In their relationship to the political process, the Populists

again had much to teach a transformational movement. They

began as a grassroots organization oriented around self-help,

not as a movement attempting to influence the political

machine. They were successful at their self-help endeavors,

and they expanded their focus to recruitment and territorial

expansion. Only when they had achieved overwhelming success at

the grassroots level did they turn their attention to the

ballot box. In this way they were able to achieve some measure

of political power without compromising their objectives in

the horse-trading that characterizes competitive politics.

They were able to integrate politics into their tactical

portfolio and also retain their integrity as a grassroots

movement.

But ultimately the Populists faltered and collapsed, and we

have as much to learn from that experience as from their

earlier successes. They ran up against an unavoidable barrier,

one that all radical movements must run up against eventually,

and that is the limit on how much can be accomplished in the

face of establishment opposition. In order to promote their

economic reform agenda, and encouraged by their electoral

successes, they decided to commit their movement

wholeheartedly to the political process. They joined forces

with the Democratic Party and backed William Jennings Bryan in

the election of 1896. The Populists had then placed themselves

in a no-win situation. If the Democrats lost, the movement

would be defeated and shattered; if the Democrats won, the

movement would be swallowed up in the horse-trading of

Democratic politics.

The reactionary capitalist establishment responded vigorously

to this opportunity to put a final end to the upstart Populist

movement. Corporations and the elite-owned media threw their

support to the Republican candidate, William McKinley, in what

Zinn calls "the first massive use of money in an an election

campaign." Bryan was defeated, and the Populist movement fell

apart. The establishment was taking no chances: even diluted

within the Democratic party, the Populists represented too

much of a threat from below, they were too successful at

providing a voice for We the People. Democracy had raised its

ugly head, and elites chopped it off at their earliest

opportunity.

Any transformational movement that wants to go the distance

must be prepared to resist the seductive siren call of

electoral politics -- a siren whose voice becomes even more

appealing after the movement has made some significant

progress. As the Populists' earlier experience showed,

politics can be used successfully to consolidate gains made on

the ground, particularly if the expansion program employs a

territorial strategy. But when electoral politics is allowed

to dominate movement strategy -- before the territory of the

movement encompasses the entire electorate -- then the hope of

ultimate success has been lost. Either the movement will be

destroyed abruptly, or it will die a slow drowning death in

the quicksand of factional politics.

Any transformational movement must also eventually run up

against the barrier of establishment opposition. Like the

Populists, it makes good sense for a transformational movement

to focus initially on what people can collectively do for

themselves, without confrontation and within the constraints

of the existing system. This is how the movement can be built,

and how a culture can be fostered based on common-sense

analysis, creative problem solving, self-reliance, and

democratic empowerment. But the movement's self-help progress

will eventually be frustrated by the economic and political

constraints of the establishment's system, and that's when the

movement needs to decide what it's really about.

At that point the movement can either take the 'blue pill',

and settle for temporary reformist gains within the elite's

political circus, or it can take the 'red pill' and face the

challenges of the real world -- of power and engagement. As

much as we may be enamored of a win-win, love-your-enemy

approach to the universe, we must face the fact that the

currently entrenched regime is ruthless in its tactics,

determined to stay in power, and resourceful in its

application of its many means of suppression, subversion, and

co-option. Though we may carry universal love in our hearts,

the strategic thinking of the movement must at some point

focus on the principles of effective engagement. The Populists

have little to offer us here. A better model for this phase

would be the non-violent grassroots movement against British

rule in India, led and inspired by Mahatma Gandhi.

Gandhi is most renown for his non-violence and for his

universal empathy for all people, including even the British

oppressors. Those are wise principles for any transformational

movement that must engage an armed establishment and that

seeks to create a just and democratic society. But Gandhi

should be equally renown for his strategic acumen, and we can

learn much from that aspect of his work. Like a skillful Go

player, he was able to set up situations where the British

felt compelled to respond, yet any response they chose would

undermine their position. They had to choose between yielding

ground to the movement, or else engaging in suppressive

measures which could only serve to build greater sympathy and

support for the movement. The point is not necessarily that a

movement should emulate Gandhi's tactics, but rather that

flexible and creative strategic thinking is absolutely

essential to successful engagement.

Gandhi's movement did succeed in its immediate objective of

ousting the British occupiers, but it failed to achieve

Gandhi's deeper goals for a new kind of harmonious and

democratic society. The leadership of the movement was

concentrated too much in him personally and after his

assassination his followers reverted to traditional political

patterns. His movement was in the final analysis a

hierarchical movement. A successful transformational movement

-- which seeks to establish a democratic, non-hierarchical

society -- would be best served by taking a non-hierarchical

approach from the very beginning. Goals and strategy should be

developed at the grassroots level, and the movement culture

should facilitate the exchange of ideas and solutions, thus

building a self-reliant and holographically led movement --

and a movement which is not vulnerable to death by leadership

decapitation.

The Populist Movement too had a hierarchical leadership

structure, and this limited its transformational potential in

several ways. In the long run hierarchy is the bane of

democracy, so in that sense the Populists were from the

beginning not pursuing a path toward a transformed democratic

society. And by monopolizing strategic thinking, the wisdom of

the movement was limited by the cultural perspective and

prejudices of the relatively small leadership cadre. In

particular the rural, farmer-based leadership limited the

growth of the movement to what we might in some fairness call

'their own kind of people'. Although movement activists

sympathized with urban industrial workers, and expressed

support for their strikes and boycotts, the culture of the

Populist leadership did not lead them to bring urban workers

into their constituency, to make them part of the Populist

family. From an objective strategic perspective, it is clear

that this was a fatal error of omission. There was a natural

alignment of interests, based on mutual exploitation by

monopoly capitalism, and an effective joining of forces would

have propelled the expanded movement onto a new and much

higher plateau of political significance.

Any movement which aims to create a transformed and democratic

society needs to keep this in mind: when the new world is

created, everyone will be in it -- not just the people we

agree with or the people we normally associate with. Certainly

any particular movement is likely to attract certain kinds of

people before others, and that must inevitably give a certain

flavor to the emerging movement -- but a movement must aim to

be all inclusive if it seeks to create a democratic society

that is all inclusive. Is there anyone you would leave behind,

or relegate to second class citizenship? If not, then you

should be willing to welcome to the movement anyone who shares

the goal of creating that new world.

* The transformational imperative

We the People have found our identity and common purpose many

times in the past: on the fields of Lexington and Concord, at

the gates of the Czar's palace and the Bastille, and in

movements like the Populists. We have a tradition to learn

from, and there are many wrong turns we must avoid. Martin

Luther King used a phrase that sums up one of the most

important lessons we need to take to heart, "Keep your eyes on

the prize." If we want a world which is democratic, and which

is sustainable both economically and politically, then we must

stay true to that vision. We must anticipate that the devil --

the elite regime -- is likely to offer us enticing

distractions when we show up on their radar. But only a

thorough and radical transformation can rid us of the dynamics

of hierarchy, exploitation, and elite rule.

There is no one out there, no actor on the stage of society,

who can or will bring about the radical transformation

required to save humanity and the world -- no one that is

except We the People. Not we the electorate, nor we the

public, but we who are members of the intelligent and aware

human species. We who are capable of thinking for ourselves,

and envisioning a better world, and working together with

others in pursuit of our common visions. There is no one else

who will do it for us, and it is a job that must be done.

This is our transformational imperative.

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