What if God is Calling Us?

So often I hear the despairing words, "Leave it to God! He will bring all to the light!" Yet I wonder, and I cry, "What if we are the light that He is calling and we cannot hear his voice?"

Let the Sixties Go

Mike Ely wrote the following concerning Abbie Hoffman, "And that’s the way you have to understand Abby. He wasn’t so much 'promoting drugs' (though obviously he was), but he was arguing that the new communities of youth and youth culture should actively work to politicize themselves even more — to see themselves as a oppressed by the society and the empire, and should more and more integrate radical activism (and revolutionary goals) into the assumptions of the culture and the communities. (I.e. imagining a revolutionary struggle by a ‘Woodstock Nation” — it wasn’t my politics, but it was the very popular and very radical politics of the Yippies.)"

As a peripheral member of the youth culture of the sixties who has transitioned through many political and spiritual permutations in the intervening years, I have thought much about the Hoffman/Rubin wing of the movement and my current thinking has congealed into a few basic ideas. As Mike Ely indicates, revolution was Abbie's ultimate aim, not drugs. But as Gandhi so often emphasized, the means and the ends of social movements are inextricably intertwined. Abbie represented that current in the youth movement who believed that culture in and of itself could be a revolutionary force. Long hair, drugs, rock music, and sexual liberation were not just fashion statements to him, as they were to most of those influenced by the movement, but embodied a revolutionary potential that he and the other yippies exploited for a "higher" purpose. But as much as I appreciated the culture at the time, I saw it even then as lacking serious revolutionary drive. It was a diversion of the hard work of building a true alternative to the culture of repressive tolerance. Of course, at the time, they would have and did say that it is this very seriousness is part of the same oppressiveness that were rebelling against - "Revolution for the Hell of It!" was the slogan. In many ways, they epitomized (and celebrated) the ephemeral nature of the "youth movement". By the early 70s, the yippies had scattered in a hundred directions. Some joined the religious cults. Jerry Rubin eventually became a "revolutionary" stock broker. Jerry, in fact, was quite open about the fact that he was a trend follower and that his anti-capitalism faded with the sixties. Abbie was different and fought the good fight to the end, but his cocaine adventures were exploited by his enemies to gravely harm organizing activities that could have been much more fruitful.

I agree with Mike Ely that the youth movement was politically defused and defeated, but part of the reason they were unable to defeat US imperialism was the confusion of style and substance that was epitomized by the Yippies. They were defeated by a number of forces, but if you read the autobiographies of some of the leading members - Bill Ayers and Cathy Wilkerson and other Weather Underground members - they clearly recognize that they committed grave tactical and strategic errors and that drugs played a role in these errors.

As we learn so well from Lenin, theory must guide action and many of the most politically active currents of the sixties failed to appreciate this. I think Todd Gitlin's writings on SDS are instructive in demonstrating how the cult of spontaneous action ultimately self destructs. Theory should constantly self-correct through feedback from action, but action alone cannot guide theory. Mike's overall point, though, is one I agree with. We have to be prepared at every moment to see and understand the revolutionary potential inherent in new cultural forms. We should celebrate when these forms have the power to drive revolutionary change, but we should not confuse the form with the substance of that change.

There are many senses in which "shocking and radical" can be taken. In the superficial sense of the sixties and many later movements such as punk rock, it meant "outrageous" in violating sexual taboos or taboos about disciplined support of the system of corporate oppression. Drugs were a way of offending against these taboos and still are. But they can also be used to reinforce corporate oppression by creating an artificial zone of "freedom" that makes submission to domination more tolerable. Religion can play a similar role as the "heart of a heartless world" as Marx expressed it. However, "shocking and radical" can also mean people with the guts to form alternative societies and make them work and that has been exceedingly rare since the sixties.

Liberation from Wealth

"For this revolution is not, in fact, concerned with liberating us from our poverty and misery, but rather from our wealth and our totally excessive prosperity. It is not a liberation from what we lack, but from our consumerism in which we are ultimately consuming our very selves. It is not a liberation from our state of oppression, but from the untransformed praxis of our own wishes and desires. It is not a liberation from our powerlessness, but from our own form of predominance. It frees us, not from the state of being dominated, but from that of dominating; not from our suffering, but from our apathy; not from our guilt, but from our innocence, or rather from that delusion of innocence which the life of domination has long since spread out in our souls." - Johann Baptist Metz, "Christians and Jews After Auschwitz"

The disease that Matt Taibbi diagnoses in "Will Goldman Sachs Prove Greed is God?" is far deeper than he imagines. It is a sickness in the social soul which all of us share and which can only be healed through the revolution which Metz envisions for us. The "prosperity" which is the unquestioned goal of virtually every conscious decision made is precisely the sickness that is destroying us, beginning with the corruption of reason into a pure instrument of acquisition. Mother Earth cries out in compassion for her lost children who are unable to understand the sacrifices required for life to flourish. We have turned ourselves into machines fueled by other men's greed and only by embracing poverty of spirit can we be saved.

Our false wishes and desires cry out for transformation. In some secret room in our soul, we know that the current direction of our society is an evolutionary and spiritual dead end, yet we cannot bear to pull the emergency cord on this train hurtling into the abyss. Instead, we heighten the illusions that nourish our decay and demand miracles of the God of our imagination. In doing this, we continually contribute to the true catastrophe, the one "which consists in the fact that everything goes on as before" - Walter Benjamin.

The word that best characterizes this revolution is conversion, but not the purely privatized conversion presented by Christianity Incorporated, that wholly owned subsidiary of the transnational corporations. A private conversion that has no social ramifications is a pure fiction for those who inhabit an inescapably political landscape of domination and subjugation. Such is the delusion of innocence that rots our souls with idealistic fetishes presented as true salvation in the mega-churchs, those mega-malls of spiritual consumerism. Jesus should once more overturn the stalls of these buyers and sellers of spiritual fraud. The prayer that God will gladly hear is the one that crucifies our false prosperity built on the exploitation of those little ones whose deaths we casually encompass for the sake of our SUVs.

The concept of a purely private conversion is the bubble within which our delusional innocence can be preserved. It is the bubble that must be pricked so that all the decayed myths can be drained away and we can begin to find a true innocence through the acceptance of our guilt - our silence in the face of the slaughter in the Middle East wholly financed by our dollars, our secret cheering at the triumph of those who are "really, really good at making money", and how we worshipers of science cannot hear the voices of those telling us that we are destroying the basis of life on this planet.

This indeed is the conversion for which we long. This conversion is like an electrical shock which reaches deep down into the direction our lives are taking, that "damages and disrupts our immediate self-interest" (Metz). This is the revolutionary "bread of life" for which we hope. We can embrace this conversion only when we are able to break the chain of immediate self-interest, the chain which Goldman Sachs gleefully wraps around itself and the government it pretends to obey. This sickness eats into our reason to the point that Goldman Sachs executives declare that, "The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest." - Matt Taibbi. This was said precisely in the context of defrauding an entire country of its budget and plunging it into social chaos.

God calls to us to shed this false wealth that makes us lackeys of financial domination, of that world of "greed without limit" that is casting its shadow over us and to which we must succumb if we cannot change our hearts and the heart of our society.

Coffee Party - A Caffeinated Fantasy

We need the courage to make a break with the current U.S. political system. However, I have sympathy with Dennis Kucinich, who seems trapped, as many of us are, by choices made at an earlier time when conditions were less barbaric than now. When Dennis started his political career, unions were still strong and a liberal could take on powerful corporations and actually win, as Dennis did long ago. But few followed his example and we have gradually drifted into the current situation which borders on classical fascism.

Should Dennis have the courage and vision to step out of the graveyard of progressivism which is the Democratic Party today? I think so, but I also sympathize with his belief that he would be a less powerful force for change outside the party - in effect he is one of the last voices for sanity in the current Congress. Without him, one of the last strong progressive voices would be silenced in the seat of American power.

I turned to the Coffee Party web site with hope, but what I find there looks like the typical American "feel good" political event. The underlying theme in the videos is the one so insistently promoted by the news media - that partisan bickering is the real problem in Washington, that government is broken because of it, and that we need to just get along with each other and everything will fix itself. Behind this notion is the unquestioned assumption that the American form of representative government and capitalist economics is fundamentally sound, but that corporations have gained too much power and the people need to take that power back.

This narrative is so ingrained in today's culture that it is considered simply "common sense." Any "movement" based on these sentiments cannot possibly have a real impact on political power relations. The typical American allergic reaction to "ideology" dominates these gatherings, reflecting the unquestioned ideology that no fundamental change is needed. One hears the phrase "make government work" over and over without any attempt to define what "works" actually means.

In fact, most of the people at these gatherings remind me of Kucinich who remains committed to the current form of government because the alternatives appear to be wildly impractical and, in effect, a surrender of power to the dominant elites. Unfortunately, no political progress is possible without a rigorous analysis of the realities of power. Democracy in the form imagined by the founding fathers has never ruled America. The people can't "take back" the power from the corporations because they never had it in the first place. Whenever I hear criticism of "corporate power" I long to ask the denouncers what company they work for. Obviously, many of the Coffee Party members are in the very corporations whose profits send the lobbyists to Washington.

Once again, we are treated to an edifying spectacle, similar to the Obama campaign, that says in effect, "We can make the American system work. All we need is a dose of common sense and decency that the politicians have lost and everything can be right again." This, I'm afraid, is as delusional as the fantasies of Sarah Palin.

The Fierce Urgency of Now

Raya Dunayevskaya - the founder of Marxist Humanism and a guiding light for those who dream of a rational and humane world.

Our intention is to help build a revolutionary movement that will end the current corporatist domination of all aspects of modern life. In particular, the government's role as handmaid to the corporate agenda must end. There are many current models that we can look toward for inspiration and guidance. Venezuela is one such model where the principles of social control of production are being implemented with great success. On the theoretical side, thinkers such as Micheal Albert are establishing a set of realistic, practical principles for participatory economics and democracy (see http://www.zcommunications.org/znet for some easy to understand articles on this philosophy). Many others could be named as well.

These voices are rarely heard on Common Dreams or most other liberal blogs such as the Daily Kos or truthdig. The reason is, I believe, that they remain dedicated to the job of restoring the original vision of American democracy. The American Revolution was a great vision and one that I believe in, but it overlooked certain elements without which it could never succeed. Specifically, the founding fathers did not understand that private control over the means of production would eventually lead us to the situation we see today in which democracy is effectively neutered. We are living in a "managed democracy" to use Sheldon Wolin's term (check out his book Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism ). Essentially, this means that while corporations purport to honor democracy, they so corrupt and manipulate the levers of power as to make democracy impossible.

Most of the authors that appear on these web sites would strongly agree with the latter sentiment. Where I differ from some of them is that I don't see a solution within the current system. I don't think there is a legislative solution, for instance. FDR passed strong legislation in the 1930s that put controls on the unmitigated greed that led to the Great Depression, but today virtually all of those regulations have been either rescinded or openly ignored because of corporate power. Notice that Obama isn't even trying to bring them back. In this, he may be wiser than some of his Democratic critics. As I've often posted on CD, Obama has a very realistic sense of power relations. He understands what his corporate masters want and how far he can go in deviating from those guidelines. The sad answer is not much.

With a few exceptions such as Chris Hedges, the liberal writers on these sites call for surface modifications of the old society instead of taking a stand for the establishment of a new society. They ask the powers that be to reform capitalism so that it is more humane, while remaining lucrative for the few. Such a project is futile. In the words of Frederick Douglass, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." Their vision doesn't go far enough - they want to get rid of the abuses of capitalism without getting rid of capitalism itself. Capitalism will always revert to savagery because that is the nature of this beast.

Some might think this is too pessimistic, but I don't agree. There is actually a hidden core of optimism in this idea that I believe could lead to a second American Revolution. But before I get to that, let me explain further why I don't believe that capitalism can be reformed. The fundamental purpose of a corporation is to make profit and to do it in a way that allows it to gain an advantage over its rivals. Executives who fail to make the ruthless decisions required to make more profit no matter what the social or moral cost, will be replaced by others who don't have such quibbles. The simple reason for this is that they will bring more profit to their shareholders. This is not a hidden conspiracy, but a universally acknowledged fact.

The inherent dynamic of the corporation is to accumulate more and more capital without limit. This is what keeps the system alive. Without this constant forward motion, the system starts to weaken and die. While pundits rail about individual greed such as Bernie Madoff's, they will never acknowledge that such greed is actually the grease that keeps the system lubricated and efficient. Members of our economic system are greedy not because of eternal human nature, but because we live within an economic system that requires greed to stay healthy. The distinction that many writers make between Main Street and Wall Street, the productive economy and the parasites that bleed it dry, is a false one designed to legitimize the whole system. Greed, excessive consumerism, and privatizing profit while socializing loss is part of what it makes it work.

So, is that it? With no hope for reform, are we doomed to inverted totalitarianism? Not at all. Mankind finds itself in a spiritual and material cul-de-sac, as it has in the past. This time we are facing the absolute limits of the material nature on which our life depends. There is an inherent contradiction between ever-expanding accumulation and the fragile ecologies that provide us with everything necessary for life. Scientists of the highest reputation now agree that global warming is caused by human-based emissions and that the planet's ability to sustain life is rapidly eroding. We are now in the midst of an irreversible ecological crisis that will force a material change on the current economic system. Our job is to transform that material change into a demand for a new kind of society.

While capitalism appears all powerful today, it is actually a deeply flawed system that is currently displaying fatal weaknesses. Even on its own terms of promoting prosperity for the many, it has failed miserably. Far from being efficient, capitalism is the most wasteful system the world has ever seen. It destroys resources, both natural and human, without any regard for moral or even material values in the case of its insane destruction of the forests that produce the air we breathe. Billions of creative and intelligent people find their whole lives wasted with unemployment or jobs that use a tiny fraction of their real potential. Billions also starve, die from preventable diseases and live in violence and squalor while rich countries throw away 40% of all food produced.

Paradoxically, the monopolization of the capitalist system may be creating the most favorable opportunity in generations to expropriate it. Back in the 1960s, when the inherent monopolistic tendency of capitalism was held in check to some extent, you would have had to take over thousands of companies in order to plan the economy. Today, a takeover of the top 150 companies would suffice to control the vast majority of the world's resources. Thus, the corporate monsters that have seized control over so much human and natural wealth have set the stage for their own demise.

The same scientific planning which already takes place inside these corporations could be applied to the entire publicly owned economy. The results would be epic. There would be full employment with decent wages for every single human being on the planet, with much left over to reduce labor time and inaugurate a renaissance of humanistic values. Without the waste inherent to capitalist production, the cost of production would be cut and the price of goods dramatically reduced. Affordable housing, free healthcare and education could be provided for all. And that would only be the beginning.

So we see that stepping outside a failed system is far from a pessimistic stand, but the only basis for a real optimism. I hope you'll join us."

The Power Elite

One of the most widespread illusions propagated by media left and right is that politicians have a great deal of actual power to make changes. This illusion serves many useful purposes. It hides, however, the truth that at the very least several decades, politicians, including Presidents, have become mid-level functionaries in the power elite, essentially go-fers, not go-tos for that elite.

It's also important to understand that this is not a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories are a distraction from the study of the real power relations that exist in this country. Pointing out the class nature of American society is not equivalent to a "conspiracy theory." The inability to distinguish the two concepts is part of the stupidity which David Michael Green points out so ably in his recent article, "Just Gimme Some Truth.

"The rise of the elite, as we have already made clear, was not and could not have been caused by a plot; and the tenability of the conception does not rest upon the existence of any secret or any publicly known organization." - C. Wright Mills

However, mass stupidity doesn't just happen by chance. Green seems to think that if only we could get back to good old liberalism of FDR and Obama could throw a few punches like Harry Truman that we would be on the road to recovery. His astonishment at Obama's slow learning curve could be quickly overcome if he would drop the illusion of democracy and realize that we live in a managed democracy, as Sheldon Wolin put it. The sickness is much deeper than he suspects.

Real Change

David Michael Green's recent article "How to Squander the Presidency in One Year" portrayed Obama as follows: "It's almost as if he were a Republican sleeper politician in some party politics version of the Manchurian Candidate, planted to arise on cue and destroy the Democratic Party from within."

The truth is that there was no need for a Manchurian candidate - the Democratic Party had already been destroyed from within. We voted for Obama because we wanted to believe that the possibilities that once seemed so real were still alive. Obama skillfully packaged this longing while being savvy enough to know whom he actually served. We progressives, on the other hand, chose to cling to our illusions that genuine social change was possible under the current power structure and the shattering of our illusions accounts for the bitterness of DMG's articles.

I also agree with the likelihood of his future scenario. It feels like we're locked in our seats on a train flying like a bullet toward a new age of slavery and superstition. If the only political options were the ones recognized by the American political system, then perhaps the despair shown by DMG would be justified. But I don't believe it is.

There are alternative political possibilities, but to realize them the first step is to abandon the obsessive focus on Obama. DMG says he no longer cares about Obama, but he obviously does or else he wouldn't blame the failure of an entire political system on him. The roots of this crisis go a lot deeper than the lack of leadership of one man, even the President.

The assumption seems to be that the American system is not so sick that one man in the right position of power could change it. Unfortunately, it is, but we'll never get a chance to truly test out the theory because the system is set up so that such a man or woman could never get close to the Presidency.

The focus on the failures of the Democratic Party masks a continued faith in the American system. Some of us believe that the American people are great enough to reinvent their system of government and that is exactly what's currently needed: to recognize that the system of government founded 200 years ago was flawed in ways that can no longer be fixed and to accept the challenge of creating a new system of government based on fulfilling human needs and recreating a flourishing human and natural ecology.

Before we can understand what needs to be done to achieve this new government, we need to analyze the roots of our current impotent political psychology. In the words of Paulo Friere, "The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility. Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibility. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion." - Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

In other words, the root of our passivity is our internalization of the oppressor. The media constantly paints images on our imagination with the colors of power, beauty, wealth and happiness, but these images are images of oppression. They represent a psychological infiltration that plants the oppressor within us, with whom we wish to identify because it is the only image we have of powerful and free human existence. We want to be like the dominator because of our longing to live according the standards of real humanity which we secretly nourish behind a facade of resigned cynicism.

But as Friere says, "Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift." Alienated forms of religion often play their traditional role here, promising a magical solution to our longing for a life suited to our actual human capabilities, virtually all of which are wasted by a social system blind to anything but exchange value. By promising such a life in the afterworld, these religions endorse the reign of the current order. They teach us that we must accept this world with all its injustices. Though we may add a ray of hope here and there, the message is "Here we have no abiding home. We are sojourners in this world of darkness, citizens of a heavenly world that will one day sweep this one away ..."

Thus the order of oppression is blessed by God who encourages us to flee this world and all its wiles. But something in our conscience can't let us rest in this cowardly heaven. Something tells us that real humanity doesn't close its eyes in the face of human suffering and flee into imaginary solace. Real humanity has something to do with struggling toward freedom, but the only culturally acceptable images of freedom are those of wealth and power. So we consent internally to the oppressor within and seek to realize our humanity in the only socially acceptable way.

So the path to freedom begins with taking a risk for freedom. That begins the process of building the psychological resilience necessary for freedom. Taking a risk means speaking up for justice when you fear that those you are speaking to will treat you as a fanatic or a fool. You can already hear their cynical laughter, but you speak anyway, not afraid of losing their esteem. It means speaking up for the insights and moral beauties that you have been given the privilege to witness in yourself or others. It means accepting the silence of those who wish to continue in their cynical acceptance of the "real world" which has no place for your insights.

You know that you are moving toward freedom when you can say with Gandhi "Truth is God" and you can serve him even in total solitude, perhaps all the way to death.