We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, August 19, 2011

The Insurrection of the English Underclass [post of the week]

Click here to access article by Takis Fotopoulostakis from The Int. Journal of Inclusive Democracy.
The insurrection of the British underclass was seen by the entire British establishment and their followers – the bourgeois class and, particularly, the petty bourgeoisie – as a case of ‘pure criminality’. In other words, the real criminals of the political, economic and cultural elites have condemned the victims of their own criminality and have been both demanding and taking the worst kind of revenge on them for revolting against a system which has been destroying their lives since the day they were born. Of course, this is not surprising considering that, throughout History, the ruling elites and the privileged social groups have labelled the people who have revolted against them as criminals, from the French and Russian revolutions to the Spanish and Greek civil wars.
The author argues a very different proposition:
...the underclass implicitly realise that the overthrow of capitalist neoliberal globalisation is not a matter of overthrowing some evil conspirators and their catastrophic policies which, supposedly, simply reflect some criminal “dogma” based on a new capitalist “strategy”, but it is actually a matter of overthrowing the very same system of the market economy, whose dynamics have inevitably led to the present globalisation!
He very aptly identifies the British insurrectionists as the new "Les Miserables"! 

However, I must take issue with what I find as weaknesses in the Inclusive Democracy project. As the author and founder of this project, Fotopoulostakis spends far too much time on his favorite target, the "degenerate left", and especially on particular people who he identifies as such. This reminds me too much of inter-sectarian wars of the past. Also, as a Greek citizen I would expect him to have much more insights on, and contributions toward, strategies for change in his native country as well as other advanced Western countries where insurrections have taken place. All he can contribute is this important, but overly broad strategy:
The obvious conclusion is that the first step towards such a society is the breaking of each country’s economic links with the internationalised market economy and the creation of the preconditions for a self-reliant...economy.... 
(Please note the rebuttal from an Inclusive Democracy spokesperson in the comments section.)