Two scenarios: neo-feudal exterminalism or participatory democratic awakening

“It must be continually stressed that we really are dealing with a tiny percentage of the population. Even if you include their minions in the security apparatus it’s still less than 1%. The Stasi in East Germany were the most feared security service in the world; they commanded about half-a-million informants; yet they were overthrown in a matter of days. At heart, authoritarians are cowards. If and a when a large enough group of people decide the game is up, the game will be up. It may be a bloodbath, or it may be a mass awakening, or it may be both.”

Excerpted from Scott Noble:

(Scott Noble is the maker of the film “Rise Like Lions” charts the history of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The quote is from an interview conducted by Karolo Lesiak.)

power_principle_film“It is tempting to view the ruling class as simply sadistic. In the case of the hysterical response to Occupy, however, I think they are mostly acting out of fear. It’s like the old adage of a wild animal being more afraid of you than you are of it. Elites are afraid of equality, they are afraid of real democracy, and they are afraid of justice. I don’t see the righteous anger of the people dissipating any time soon. All signs point not to “recovery” but an increasingly catastrophic set of events – social, financial, environmental – even a WWIII scenario. Truncheons may work in the short term, but they won’t put out the fire. The boys in blue are just spreading the sparks around a little.

The next question is whether the fire will be one that illuminates or merely destroys. In “The Spirit of Revolt”, the great anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin wrote, “The direction which the revolution will take depends, no doubt, upon the sum total of the various circumstances that determine the coming of the cataclysm. But it can be predicted in advance, according to the vigor of revolutionary action displayed in the preparatory period by the different progressive parties.”

Right now we are in the preparatory period, though few realize it yet. Obama signed the NDAA on New Year’s Eve when everyone was drunk. A fitting metaphor. We’re seeing the introduction of new “less-lethal” weapons, surveillance technologies, fascistic laws, resource-grabs and so forth; meanwhile, a minority of the public is trying establish some semblance of (r)evolutionary vigor.

The goal, as I understand it, is actual participation by the people in the running of our affairs, including the work place. In other words, real, participatory democracy.

You have at least one-third of the population living in la-la land. They are either oblivious to the scale of the problem, or they sublimate their anger onto irrelevant scapegoats. The latter group consists of people who supplicate themselves before power while directing their rage against perceived “lowers” in the social hierarchy. Neo-fascism is on the rise both in Europe and North America.

You also have a sizeable percentage of the population consumed by hopelessness and various defense mechanisms.

Then you have Occupy, and related movements in other countries. There seems to be a concerted push by the transnational ruling class toward a sort of neo-feudal society worldwide. Even in Canada – the country with the greatest storehouse of natural resources on the planet – we see “austerity” measures being implemented. This is class war on a global scale.

If we wait for our “leaders” to solve our problems we’re in big, big trouble. In “A Short History of Progress”, Ronald Wright examined the response by elites to past system collapses: Easter Island, Rome, Sumer, the Mayans and so forth. As each society began to implode, elites did not acknowledge the error of their ways and change course – even though they had ample opportunity to do so – instead, they dug in; they engaged in increasingly extravagant consumption, more wars, and more repression of domestic populations.

If we place our trust in the ruling class, the human species will almost certainly go extinct in the near future. I don’t consider that statement hyperbole. Just pick a fact off the shelf. For instance, in the past 60 years, 40% of all phytoplankton has died. Phytoplankton is an absolutely essential part of our planetary life support system. Simply put, the parasitic ruling class is killing its host – us – as well as most other life forms on Earth.

This is not a life supporting system; it’s a death supporting system. Eric Fromm used the term “necrophilous: “the passionate attraction to all that is dead, decayed, putrid, sickly…the passion to transform that which is alive into something unalive…to destroy for the sake of destruction…the exclusive interest in all that is purely mechanical.”

It’s not just a few bad apples at Goldman Sachs. In “The Penal Colony”, Franz Kafka compared the modern system of governance to a machine to which everyone, including the commanders of the colony, must ultimately sacrifice themselves.

No one benefits from this system, not even members of the ruling class; they are consigning their grandchildren to a horrific fate.

“Regular” people, for our part, are becoming increasingly desperate. There was a time when workers referred to wage labor as “wage slavery”; we rightly considered it a gross insult to our dignity to have to sell our labor to a “boss” who would order us around for most of our waking hours. Now, we consider ourselves lucky to even have a job.

We have a daunting task ahead of us. But it may not be as hopeless as it seems.

In many ways, the American power structure – like all hierarchical power structures – is a paper tiger. It relies to a great extent on what Etienne de la Boetie called “voluntary servitude”.

I don’t want to overstate the point. In the US, specifically, there will soon be thousands of drones patrolling the “homeland”; thousands of drone-like humans work diligently for the FBI, Homeland Security and similar agencies; the current American President is little more than a drone-in-chief; Biometrics and other surveillance technologies are being rolled out across the country; and unfortunately, the empire is unlikely to relinquish power in the manner of the Soviet Union during Glasnost and Perestroika.

At the same time, it must be continually stressed that we really are dealing with a tiny percentage of the population. Even if you include their minions in the security apparatus it’s still less than 1%. The Stasi in East Germany were the most feared security service in the world; they commanded about half-a-million informants; yet they were overthrown in a matter of days. At heart, authoritarians are cowards.

If and a when a large enough group of people decide the game is up, the game will be up.

It may be a bloodbath, or it may be a mass awakening, or it may be both. If nothing else, the Occupy movement has the potential to educate people before it’s too late.”

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