NOT originally written by snakeappletree!
The only way to overcome the power of money is regain our courage and solidarity. Here's how to do that.
Many Americans know that the United States is not a democracy but a
"corporatocracy," in which we are ruled by a partnership of giant
corporations, the extremely wealthy elite and corporate-collaborator
government officials. However, the truth of such tyranny is not enough
to set most of us free to take action. Too many of us have become
pacified by corporatocracy-created institutions and culture.
Some activists insist that this political passivity problem is caused by
Americans' ignorance due to corporate media propaganda, and others
claim that political passivity is caused by the inability to organize
due to a lack of money. However, polls show that on the important issues
of our day - from senseless wars, to Wall Street bailouts, to corporate
tax-dodging, to health insurance rip-offs - the majority of Americans
are not ignorant to the reality that they are being screwed. And
American history is replete with organizational examples - from the
Underground Railroad, to the Great Populist Revolt, to the Flint
sit-down strike, to large wildcat strikes a generation ago - of
successful rebels who had little money but lots of guts and solidarity.
The elite spend their lives stockpiling money and have the financial
clout to bribe, divide and conquer the rest of us. The only way to
overcome the power of money is with the power of courage and solidarity.
When we regain our guts and solidarity, we can then more wisely select
from - and implement - time-honored strategies and tactics that
oppressed peoples have long used to defeat the elite. So, how do we
regain our guts and solidarity?
1. Create the Cultural and Psychological "Building Blocks" for Democratic Movements
Historian Lawrence Goodwyn has studied democratic movements such as
Solidarity in Poland, and he has written extensively about the populist
movement in the United States that occurred during the end of the 19th
century (what he calls "the largest democratic mass movement in American
history"). Goodwyn concludes that democratic movements are initiated by
people who are neither resigned to the status quo nor intimidated by
established powers.
For Goodwyn, the cultural and
psychological building blocks of democratic movements are individual
self-respect and collective self-confidence. Without individual
self-respect, we do not believe that we are worthy of power or capable
of utilizing power wisely, and we accept as our role being a subject of
power. Without collective self-confidence, we do not believe that we can
succeed in wresting away power from our rulers.
Thus, it is
the job of all of us - from parents, to students, to teachers, to
journalists, to clergy, to psychologists, to artists and EVERYBODY who
gives a damn about genuine democracy - to create individual self-respect
and collective self-confidence.
2. Confront and Transform ALL Institutions that Have Destroyed Individual Self-Respect and Collective Self-Confidence
In "Get Up, Stand Up, " I detail 12 major institutional and cultural
areas that have broken people's sprit of resistance, and all are
"battlefields for democracy" in which we can fight to regain our
individual self-respect and collective self confidence:
• Television
• Isolation and bureaucratization
• "Fundamentalist consumerism" and advertising/propaganda
• Student loan debt and indentured servitude
• Surveillance
• The decline of unions/solidarity among working people
• Greed and a "money-centric" culture
• Fear-based schools that teach obedience
• Psychopathologizing noncompliance
• Elitism via professional training
• The corporate media
• The US electoral system
As Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, "All our things are right and wrong
together. The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike."
3. Side Each Day in Every Way With Anti-Authoritarians
We can recover our self-respect and strength by regaining our
integrity. This process requires a personal transformation to overcome
our sense of powerlessness and fight for what we believe in. Integrity
includes acts of courage resisting all illegitimate authorities. We must
recognize that in virtually every aspect of our life in every day, we
can either be on the side of authoritarianism and the corporatocracy or
on the side of anti-authoritarianism and democracy.
Specifically, we can question the legitimacy of government, media,
religious, educational and other authorities in our lives, and if we
establish that an authority is not legitimate, we can resist it. And we
can support others who are resisting illegitimate authorities. A huge
part of solidarity comes from supporting others who are resisting the
illegitimate authorities in their lives. Walt Whitman had it right:
"Resist much, obey little. Once unquestioning obedience, once fully
enslaved."
4. Regain Morale by Thinking More Critically About Our Critical Thinking
While we need critical thinking to effectively question and challenge
illegitimate authority - and to wisely select the best strategies and
tactics to defeat the elite - critical thinking can reveal some ugly
truths about reality, which can result in defeatism. Thus, critical
thinkers must also think critically about their defeatism, and realize
that it can cripple the will and destroy motivation, thus perpetuating
the status quo.
William James (1842–1910), the psychologist,
philosopher, and occasional political activist (member of the
Anti-Imperialist League who, during the Spanish-American War, said, "God
damn the US for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles!") had a
history of pessimism and severe depression, which helped fuel some of
his greatest wisdom on how to overcome immobilization. James, a critical
thinker, had little stomach for what we now call "positive thinking,"
but he also came to understand how losing belief in a possible outcome
can guarantee its defeat. Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), an Italian
political theorist and Marxist activist who was imprisoned by Mussolini,
came to the same conclusions. Gramsci's phrase "pessimism of the
intellect, optimism of the will" has inspired many critical thinkers,
including Noam Chomsky, to maintain their efforts in the face of
difficult challenges.
5. Restore Courage in Young People
The corporatocracy has not only decimated America's labor union
movement, it has almost totally broken the spirit of resistance among
young Americans - an even more frightening achievement. Historically,
young people without family responsibilities have felt most freed up to
challenge illegitimate authority. But America's education system creates
fear, shame and debt - all killers of the spirit of resistance. No
Child Left Behind, Race to the Top and standardized testing tyranny
results in the kind of fear that crushes curiosity, critical thinking
and the capacity to constructively resist illegitimate authority.
Rebel teachers, parents, and students - in a variety of overt and
covert ways - have already stopped complying with corporatocracy
schooling. We must also stop shaming intelligent young people who reject
college, and we must instead recreate an economy that respects all
kinds of intelligence and education. While the corporatocracy exploits
student loan debt to both rake in easy money and break young people's
spirit of resistance, the rest of us need to rebel against student loan
debt and indentured servitude. And parents and mental health
professionals need to stop behavior-modifying and medicating young
people who are resisting illegitimate authority.
6. Focus on Democracy Battlefields Where the Corporate Elite Don't Have Such a Large Financial Advantage
The emphasis of many activists is on electoral politics, but the elite
have a huge advantage in this battlefield, where money controls the US
electoral process.
By focusing exclusively on electoral
politics at the expense of everything else, we: (1) give away power when
we focus only on getting leaders elected and become dependent on them;
(2) buy into the elite notion that democracy is all about elections; (3)
lose sight of the fact that democracy means having influence over all
aspects of our lives; and (4) forget that if we have no power in our
workplace, in our education and in all our institutions, then there will
never be democracy worthy of the name.
Thus, we should focus
our fight more on the daily institutions we experience. As Wendell Berry
said, "If you can control a people's economy, you don't need to worry
about its politics; its politics have become irrelevant."
7. Heal from "Corporatocracy Abuse" and "Battered People's Syndrome" to Gain Strength
Activists routinely become frustrated when truths about lies,
victimization and oppression don't set people free to take action. But
when we human beings eat crap for too long, we gradually lose our
self-respect to the point that we become psychologically too weak to
take action. Many Americans are embarrassed to accept that, after years
of corporatocracy subjugation, we have developed "battered people's
syndrome" and what Bob Marley called "mental slavery." To emancipate
ourselves and others, we must:
• Move out of denial and accept that we are a subjugated people.
• Admit that we have bought into many lies. There is a dignity,
humility, and strength in facing the fact that, while we may have once
bought into some lies, we no longer do so.
• Forgive
ourselves and others for accepting the abuser's lies. Remember the liars
we face are often quite good at lying.
• Maintain a sense
of humor. Victims of horrific abuse, including those in concentration
camps and slave plantations, have discovered that pain can either
immobilize us or be transformed by humor into energy.
• Stop
beating ourselves up for having been in an abusive relationship. The
energy we have is better spent on healing and then working to change
the abusive system; this provides more energy, and when we use this
energy to provide respect and confidence for others, everybody gets
energized.
8. Unite Populists by Rejecting Corporate Media's Political Divisions
The corporate media routinely divides Americans as "liberals,"
"conservatives" and "moderates," a useful division for the
corporatocracy, because no matter which of these groups is the current
electoral winner, the corporatocracy retains power. In order to defeat
the corporatocracy, it's more useful to divide people in terms of
authoritarians versus anti-authoritarians, elitists versus populists and
corporatists versus anticorporatists.
Both left
anti-authoritarians and libertarian anti-authoritarians passionately
oppose current US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Wall Street bailout,
the PATRIOT Act, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the
so-called "war on drugs" and several other corporatocracy policies.
There are differences between anti-authoritarians but, as Ralph Nader
and Ron Paul have together recently publicly discussed, we can form
coalitions and alliances on these important power-money issues.
One example of an anti-authoritarian democratic movement (which I am
involved in) is the mental health treatment reform movement, comprised
of left anti-authoritarians and libertarians. We all share distrust of
Big Pharma and contempt for pseudoscience, and we believe that people
deserve truly informed choice regarding treatment. We respect Erich
Fromm, the democratic-socialist psychoanalyst, along with Thomas Szasz,
the libertarian psychiatrist, both passionate anti-authoritarians who
have confronted mental health professionals for using dogma to coerce
people.
9. Unite "Comfortable Anti-Authoritarians" and "Afflicted Anti-Authoritarians
This "comfortable-afflicted" continuum is based on the magnitude of
pain that one has simply getting through the day. The term comfortable
anti-authoritarian is not a pejorative one, but refers to those
anti-authoritarians lucky enough to have decent paying and maybe even
meaningful jobs, or platforms through which their voices are heard or
social supports in their lives.
Many of these comfortable
anti-authoritarians may know that there are millions of Americans
working mindless jobs in order to hold on to their health insurance, or
hustling two low-wage jobs to pay college loans, rent and a car payment,
or who may be unable to find even a poorly paying, mindless job and are
instead helplessly watching eviction or foreclosure and bankruptcy
close in on them. However, unless these comfortable anti-authoritarians
have once been part of that afflicted class - and remember what it feels
like - they may not be able to fully respect the afflicted's emotional
state.
The afflicted need to recognize that human beings often
become passive because they are overwhelmed by pain (not because they
are ignorant, stupid, or lazy), and in order to function at all, they
often shut down or distract themselves from this pain. Some comfortable
anti-authoritarians assume that people's inactions are caused by
ignorance. This not only sounds and smells like elitism, it creates
resentment for many in the afflicted class who lack the energy to be
engaged in any activism. Respect, resources and anything that concretely
reduces their level of pain is likely to be far more energizing than a
scolding lecture. That's the lesson of many democratic movements,
including the Great Populist Revolt.
10. Do Not Let Debate Divide Anti-Authoritarians
Spirited debate is what democracy is all about, but when debate turns
to mutual antipathy and divides anti-authoritarians, it plays into the
hands of the elite. One such divide among anti-elitists is over the
magnitude of change that should be worked for and celebrated. On one
extreme are people who think that anything is better than nothing at
all. At the other extreme are people who reject any incremental change
and hold out for total transformation.
We can better unite by asking these questions:
Does the change increase individual self-respect and collective
self-confidence, and increase one's energy level to pursue even greater
democracy? Or does it feel like a sellout that decreases individual
self-respect and collective self-confidence, and de-energizes us?
Utilizing the criteria of increased self-respect and collective
self-confidence, those of us who believe in genuine democracy can more
constructively debate whether the change is going to increase strength
to gain democracy or is going to take the steam out of a democratic
movement. Respecting both sides of this debate makes for greater
solidarity and better decisions.
To summarize, democracy will
not be won without guts and solidarity. Risk-free green actions - such
as shopping from independents, buying local, recycling, composting,
consuming less, not watching television and so on - can certainly help
counter a dehumanizing world.
However, revolutions that truly
transform fundamental power inequities and enable us to feel like men
and women rather than children and slaves require risk, guts and
solidarity.
http://www.alternet.org/story/151018/10_steps_to_defeat_the_corporatocracy?paging=off