Are We Really Taking “The Seven Steps to Revolution”?

Also at Stop Me Before I Vote Again (going a little further back), a post linking to an article in Campaign for America’s Future (a blog that defines itself as “the strategy center for the progressive movement”) about how present conditions are leading us down The Seven Steps To Revoluton.   According to a key passage in this article:

There’s something implacable, earnest, and righteously angry in the air.  And it raises all kinds of questions for burned-out Boomers and jaded Gen Xers who’ve been ground down to the stump by the mostly losing battles of the past 30 years.  Can it be - at long last - that Americans have, simply, had enough?  Are we, finally, stepping out to take back our government - and with it, control of our own future?  Is this simply a shifting political season - the kind we get every 20 to 30 years - or is there something deeper going on here?  Do we dare to raise our hopes that this time, we’re going to finally win a few?  Just how ready is this country for big, serious, forward-looking change?

Recently, I came across a pocket of sociological research that suggested a tantalizing answer to these questions - and also that America may be far more ready for far more change than anyone really believes is possible at this moment.  In fact, according to some sociologists, we’ve already lined up all the preconditions that have historically set the stage for full-fledged violent revolution.

Personally speaking, though, I’ve seen that speculation a few too many times already, at different stages of our unmistakable decline over the years.  Hence, I wonder if it might be a bit too optimistic.

Some people have accused me of being a bit too optimistic when I somewhat endorsed theories about the decline or decay of capitalism.  I do think there is a real systemic decline in capitalism (internationally) that goes well beyond business cycles and capital’s seemingly endless ability to recuperate.  And there is some comfort, I admit, in the belief that the system is really going down for good, rather than just becoming harsher and harsher for so many people of the world (while the ruling capitalists in the long run continue to thrive).  But that comfort is very thin, because a decline in the system does not automatically mean the birth of a new and better system to replace it (e.g., real communism or socialism).  As I’ve also said before (repeating the ideas of people who’ve been much more articulate in discussing these ideas than I am), we really could just continue sinking into barbarism.

If we are to hope for a revolution, we should make a distinction between that and the liberal notion that we will “take back our government.”  While I’ll gladly support many of the policies of people who say that we should “take back our government” (hence I’ll gladly support something like the Nader campaign, for the issues that it might bring to the public forum, and therefore the extreme limits of the major-party candidates that it might illuminate just a little), the whole idea that we can “take back” our government or “our country” conveys a perspective that is not very revolutionary.  If we want a revolution, it’s not because we want to return to some mythical better days (especially not days under the present system), but because we want to move forward into a system that is better than ours has been all along.  And one problem with our system all along is that we never really had “our government” or America to take back.  We may have had a worsening of conditions in the Bush years, but in many ways, that has simply been in an increase in tendencies that have existed for a much, much longer time. 

Put more succinctly,  a revolution would not be ”taking back” things that we thought we once had but lost recently (because of those evil Republicans, etc.); it would be finally taking things that we never had.

And will our country ever be on the road such a revolutionary change?  (Or, a better question might be, will the world be ready? - since “revolution in one country” is an idea that has been discredited somewhat over the years.)   It’s hard to say, but I’m not feeling optimistic.  I don’t see the consciousness and awareness out there.  There might be a lot of mounting dissatisfaction, which will make it more difficult for our political and economic rulers to carry out their policies with any appearance of public consent.  That’s kind of like a silver lining in some very thick clouds.  (Though even that tendency could be set back, in the short term, by widespread illusions about some corporate-controlled, politically “centrist” leader (which means a very conservative leader on the world spectrum) who talks a lot about “change.”  Albeit, it looks less likely that those illusions will take hold the way they seemed to be doing a month or two ago.)  But I think any talk about how we’re following these historic steps to revolution might be awfully premature.  I wouldn’t say I’m certain about that - revolutions historically have happened when many people least expected them.  But based on what I see and know myself, I certainly wouldn’t predict it right now.