The struggles of our brothers and sisters in the Middle East, in Spain , Ireland and Iceland and in Greece and Chile
There are those, many in fact, who claim that these uprisings are third world occurrences. The Global uprising has no bearing on the world’s beacon of democracy except in that we are their role models. What arrogance! These reactionary talking heads are the same who believed the peoples of the Middle East United States of America US
Participation vs. Spectator Democracy
A common misconception is that democracy simply comes from voting, that the act of ratifying decisions by electing the representatives who make them ultimately gives the final say to the people. This is simply inconsistent with reality; any American who pays attention can recall an instance of the contrary. True democracy - it literally meaning “government by the people” - requires active participation by the people. If legitimate power derives from a mandate from the masses, it is not unreasonable to deduct that decisions made without the consent of the governed are not acts of legitimate power. Without constant ratification by the populace, the assurance of consent with every action, a political structure becomes an entity separate from the people, working “for the people” in name only.
Our current political body is such an entity, making decisions as a group separate from the people, justifying itself with the occasional election in which we are allowed to decide who among a wider group of oligarchs may make our decisions for us. Our participation in this “government by the people” is limited to control over minute details within a limited scope of ideas, instead of being the basis for all its workings. What have resulted are plutocracy, corruption, and the limiting of civic participation to something as cumbersome, pointless and apathy breeding as voting.
The separate entity, democratic only in name, works for its own benefit, and for the benefit of the upper class its members come from. In the summer of 2011, American Republicans and Democrats deliberated endlessly over what should be done about the country’s debt. The Republicans, so concerned with gaining control during the 2012 election, almost made it their strategy to let the economy crumble so it would be blamed on the democrats; this at the detriment of hundreds of thousands of citizens. While millions of Americans were without health care, Democrats caved to pressure from lobbyists and Republicans and allowed what could have been exceptional reform to become a Frankenstein’s monster designed by lobbyists. Joe Lieberman, the Democrat (now independent) who filibustered the only progressive measure in the bill happened to be the biggest recipient of PAC money from Insurance companies in all of congress; this, all while the majority of Americans wanted, or needed, something done about health costs.
Plutocratic Sabotage
The greatest saboteur of democratic fairness is the influence of money. Concentrated wealth is power without accountability. Nobody votes for who holds the most money, and yet the influence of their power writes legislation and decides what we may or may not see in the news. It also gives strong advantages in the ability to further their power through profits – profits often gained through gambling with people’s livelihoods, mass layoffs and exploitation of impoverished people. The goal of business is profit; and, as it turns out, doing what is best for the public is not profitable. Getting the most labor for the smallest wages, not having to bow to safety standards made to protect the public, and making the public pay for crises they didn’t cause are profitable. Ultimately, having no accountability to the people whose lives are impacted by the relentless pursuit of profits is just good business.
Good business is influencing political systems to act on your behalf, whether or not it is to the detriment of those whose best interest that political system is supposed to represent. There is no conscience, or rationality; only the blind pursuit of financial gain at whatever cost. Currently mobs of “Tea Partiers” funded by Koch Industries and the ghosts of the John Birch Society are relentlessly campaigning for the benefit of massive corporations under the guise of a populist grassroots movement. They have a great deal of money supporting their cause, and are willing to eradicate the entire middle class (through ending of collective bargaining, de-funding of education, extermination of social safety nets and programs people rely on, etc.) for the benefit of the economic elite. They, and thousands of lobbyists, work endlessly so that the very financial industry that caused our current economic crisis does not have to pay a penny to save it, despite having paid their Executives’ bonuses with out tax money. Instead, we pay for their crisis through our Pell grants, social security, retirement funds, Medicare, Medicaid and our right to collectively bargain.
More than just shirking responsibility to maximize profits, economic power influences government in other ways detrimental to the public. Private prisons, for instance, make a profit from every human being thrown into jail. They lobby to perpetuate harmful drug laws that put non-violent offenders in prison, and even help write racist anti-immigration laws that would arbitrarily put foreign workers into prisons. Private contractors, building war machines or sending mercenaries to fight, profit exorbitantly from frivolous war mongering and wasteful defense spending, as does a plethora of energy conglomerates that profit from newly formed puppet nations and the seizing of foreign resources. These actions and decisions are rarely questioned, yet they harm always.
Currently less than half a dozen corporations own all of the mainstream media outlets available to us. While some claim to be “fair and balanced” compared to the rest of the “liberal media,” rest assured that there is no liberal media. More importantly than omitting inconvenient stories and facts, corporate controlled media limits the scope of acceptable thought; the “liberal” news stations are only as liberal as is acceptable to corporate interests, and what fits snugly within the status quo. Opinions that are too challenging are never spoken; facts and stories that contradict what our understanding of the world is supposed to be are never aired. It’s called the “manufacture of consent;” it makes it safe to give us freedom of thought, because any thought which challenges the status quo beyond safe parameters is taboo and “crazy” if its existence is acknowledged at all. All the while, the narrative that other media outlets have “liberal bias” gives stations that very obviously advocate for plutocratic control and religious dominance a strong viewership.
Economic Power and Democracy
Economic power is not democratic power; it dominates our lives whether we like it or not. Wealth is accumulated through owning some resource or productive property with the potential to provide things people need, and the selling of those things at the highest price people would be willing to pay for it before they would rather starve. If we want to live in a house, have a car or retire, we must go through a bank. If we want to get an education we must take out a student loan and spend most of our working lives paying it off. If we wish to eat to survive, we must work for a wage and purchase things that literally grow on trees from those who own the trees. Even sources of energy or sources of water are the property of someone who we must buy from if we would like to be warm in the winter or would like to hydrate ourselves. In a purely socio-anthropological sense, wealth comes from depriving people of the things they need.
Of course, in most cases, a bit of work is required to turn property with productive potential into something usable by the average person – like growing seeds onto crops, putting crops into cans, turning wood into a home or turning steel into a car. Suffice to say, without labor the original resource is worthless; and yet, the owners of these resources accumulate many times the wealth that the workers do. If workers accumulated wealth proportionate to their contribution to the creaton of a product, the owner could not make a profit, he would break even. In fact, if each owner got back the same percentage of what they put in as each worker receives for what work they put in, the owners would lose money.
In special cases, one’s capital invested in creation of a product is the result of saving up wages or the accumulation of wealth created from one’s own work. Usually these are our small business owners, however, and very rarely do these individuals amass enough economic power to exploit entire populations or sabotage political systems. In fact, those who amass large, influential amounts of economic power most often do so much more easily than others due to pre-existing economic privileges. Even in cases of “self-made men,” there are always unfair advantages over others less physically, economically, mentally or socially able to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” that come into play.
Economic power is power derived from coercive forces rather than through consent and participation. Even when voting occurs within a corporation, it excludes the workers and consumers most affected by the actions of the corporation, includes only those who stand to profit at the detriment of the rest, and the weight of each person’s vote is determined by how much economic power that individual has. Wealth always wins; economic power functions by the prehistoric notion that “might is right.” We must conclude that economic power and democracy are incompatible. Tyranny through property is not somehow freer than tyranny through government power. To economic power, freedom is just another commodity to be bought and sold. The profit motive unchecked by the public interest is tyranny. There is no conscience, there is no justice.
Fairness and Freedom
It has been long debated whether or not Democracy is not in itself a form of tyranny. It is, they say, akin to two wolves and a lamb voting on what’s for dinner. It is important that the rights of minorities are always recognized and protected, of course, but it is also important to note how reactionary this analogy is meant to be. It would be worth making a bet that whoever originated that saying, or at least those who most often use it, were less referring to the rights of People of Color, Transgender and queer folk, Gays, Lesbians or the disabled, and more referring to the so called rights of business men to act without accountability to the “tyranny of the majority.”
Obviously precedent should be put into place to protect those marginalized by the majority. It still stands to reason, however, that while people are organized or governed, the freest and fairest way for them to be so is democratically. If people are to live in societies and communities, and not isolated from one another entirely, it is democratic organization that that prevents the corruption and tyranny of concentrated power.
Even in stateless societies, as we are long past the isolated pioneer days, it is rudimentary de-facto democratic organization that would prevent communities from being usurped by demagogues who would exploit the power vacuum and rule with their economic power. Freedom is most often taken away by concentrated wealth and concentrated political power; the horizontal orientation of proper democracy, then, best protects it, as it allows the people to protect it themselves, collectively.
In a sense, freedom is free, and democracy is the tool we use to keep it that way.
Democracy is not only the freest structure we’ve ever conceived, but the most just. To the dismay of some who look only at a country’s GDP and the profits of the rich, the quality of a society is best judged by how well-off the worst-off of that society are. Indeed, putting power into as many hands as possible ensures as many people as possible are satisfied. Society, after all, is a means of collective survival; it comes from recognizing the benefits that come from cooperation and mutual aid. Human beings are a social species akin to ants or bees, but with the gift and beauty of consciousness and personal individuality. It has been our consciousness and ingenuity, along with our natural capacity to organize that has allowed us to survive as a species. In fact, studies have shownthat acts of mutual aid and altruism trigger reward responses in the brain, even in cases when one acts against one’s self interest. Not only is cooperation moral, it is natural, and so the society which fosters it is the most moral, and most just.
The Case for Dissent
The idea that civilization is a biologically determined means of collective survival explains and is proven by our species’ rich history of dissent. Since the days when agriculture created productive property and division of labor, and gave way to the hierarchies, economic power and eventually lordship, “divine right” and government, structures that have put the self actualization needs of the power hungry ahead of the physiological needs of the rest have been met with the dissent of the masses. The outcomes of their actions have been limited only by their imaginations, and the extent of sabotage by demagogues. Indeed, if civilization is meant to benefit the whole of society, and justice and freedom are both natural and moral, then dissent is the noblest sentiment our species can comprehend – and we can comprehend quite a lot.
It was historian and civil rights advocate Howard Zinn who said that “Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy, it is absolutely essential to it.” The men who founded this country shared his sentiment, believing that a people had the right to take and re-structure or replace their government as it would be necessary to maintain democratic principles and liberty. Thinkers like Thoreau knew it was necessary to revoke consent from a government if it was unjust. The suffragettes who won the right to vote, the civil rights champions who ended segregation, the industrial workers responsible for lessening the exploitation of the lower classes and the countless other people whose struggles failed and whom history has ignored, all knew that to further justice and liberty, action was required – action in defiance of the establishment whose power stood in the way of their liberation because it benefitted from their oppression.
If legitimate power is built on a mandate from the people, the truest and purest expression of democracy is to protest when that power betrays the people, to revoke consent when that power carries out injustices in their name, and to dismantle that power when it acts toward it’s own ends or to those of a ruling elite at the detriment of the people.
The
Now is a crucial time. Global corporations dominate our lives and hold silver-spoon-fed politicians on puppet strings. The unions who brought us our weekends, pensions, overtime pay and rights in the workplace are being demonized and broken. Armies, mercenaries and jackals maintain global occupation – empowering despots and killing civilians - to line the pockets of oil companies and weapons contractors while telling us they are spreading democracy. Taxes are cut or nonexistent for banks and companies, but a grim reality for working people. They say “no taxes” but raise them for workers. They say “corporations are people too” but call unions corrupt. They crash markets, foreclose on homes, lay off workers and make record profits while they tell us lies about “shared sacrifice” when bringing our safety nets, wages, rights and education to the guillotine.
No more. The goals of the youth are simple – they’ve been cried out endlessly but muffled by background noises and ignored by those who find them inconvenient. We want democracy, not plutocracy; people before profits. We want:
1. To eliminate the stranglehold of corporate power over our political system, and minimize as the role of money in political deliberation.
2. To maximize participation and control by the people, and put all power – economic and political – in a position of direct accountability to the public interest.
3. To prioritize the well being of the country as a whole over the profits of plutocrats, and maximize the rights of ordinary people.
We cannot wait for these things. We cannot put them aside in the hopes that our children will see them come to fruition. We need them now. We will get them, and the longer we have to wait for them, the more our ends will justify our means. The start of the path toward greater democracy, liberty and equality can start with a few basic objectives:
1. Repeal Citizens United and end corporate personhood.
2. Close capital gains loopholes and tax havens. Increase income taxes for the top 2% of “earners” to pre-Bush levels.
3. End or drastically decrease subsidies for corporations.
4. Implement public campaign financing.
5. Create a comprehensive public health service or single-payer health care program.
6. Withdraw troops from the Middle East
7. Diminish the role of the Federal Reserve or remove it. If diminishing it, ensure it is heavily monitored by and directly accountable to the public.
8. Diminish or remove the Electoral College.
9. Prioritize maximum civil liberties.
These demands are intended to ensure that money never stands in the way of democracy. Corporate personhood affords corporate entities the same rights as human beings, despite their not having the same legal accountability. Tax loopholes and cuts exacerbate the national debt, and put the burden of fixing problems caused by rampant financial markets on working families. Corporate subsidies are a tragic waste of public funds that could otherwise be used to benefit the citizenry as a whole. The status quo of campaign finance leaves the capacity of a candidate to campaign subject to how much they bow to corporate interests, thus preventing any and all non-establishment candidates from getting attention, and leaving candidate in debt to whomever they might now owe a favor. Public health care ensures the health of the populace, putting their well being ahead, where it should be. Our current wars, which have meant countless American casualties and even more civilian casualties, are not only a multi-trillion dollar waste of taxpayer funds but are primarily neo-colonial quagmires conducted for the benefit of the military-industrial complex. The Federal Reserve enables market gambling and financial corruption, and acts as a private for-profit entity instead of serving the public. The Electoral College is a dinosaur fossil of the days of literacy tests and poll taxes, and prevents everyone’s votes from being counted. Finally, there are still laws in place that discriminate against and take away the rights of many people, especially the gay and lesbian communities, and disproportionally penalize poor people and minorities for activities that are entirely victimless, like recreational drug use.
Our Call to Action
Our demands alone are not enough to silence us. Nothing will silence us. These demands are far less important than our vision. These demands are far less potent than our love for justice and liberty and they are far less potentially dangerous than our anger.
The youth of the world have risen. Tyrants are falling, old systems of oppression are being challenged, people are beginning to finally question their governments, they are finally beginning to question global economic domination and they are finally seeing that their interests lie in true democracy, and are at odds with the interests of bankers, stockholders and CEOs. The oligarchs know this, and they are clinging desperately to the old myths that justified their power, and screaming them to whomever remain among those blind enough to believe them. Their panic is betrayed by their increasingly obvious contempt for democracy, and the popular revolts in Egypt Tunisia Spain Greece Chile Iceland
Now is the time to mobilize. Now is the time for all who value liberty, equality and justice stand with our brothers across the world. Today is the day we stop asking for change and start taking it.
