Could the Global Meltdown Spark a Great
Revolution?
* By Ben Protess
Christian Science Monitor, via Alternet, Aug 4, 2009
For the first time in generations, people are challenging the view that
a free-market order -- the system that dominates the globe today -- is
the destiny of all nations. The free market's uncanny ability to enrich
the elite, coupled with its inability to soften the sharp experiences of
staggering poverty, has pushed inequality to the breaking point.
As a result, we live at an important historical juncture -- one where
alternatives to the world's neoliberal capitalism could emerge. Thus, it
is a particularly apt time to examine revolutionary movements that have
periodically challenged dominant state and imperial power structures
over the past 500 years.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which laid the
foundation for liberal democratic elections and the expansion of the
free-market system throughout the world, revolution and protest seemed
to lose some of their potency.
Leading historians believed that a new age had appeared in which
revolutionary movements would no longer challenge the status quo.
Defenders of the contemporary system were suspicious of nearly all forms
of popular expression and contestation for power outside the electoral
arena. But remarkably, this entire discourse sidestepped the major
impulses of human emancipation of the past 500 years -- equality,
democracy, and social rights.
Proponents of neoliberalism are indifferent to this history and dismiss
the notion that "another world is possible" that could alleviate
grinding misery and poverty around the world. But in opposition to the
contemporary individualistic system of capitalism, evidence of a new
global movement dedicated to social justice and human rights has sprung
from the ashes of the past. Just in the past decade, we have witnessed
the expansion of worker insurgencies, peasant and indigenous uprisings,
ecological protests, and democracy movements.
Historians frequently view revolutions as extraordinary and
unanticipated interruptions of state social regulation of everyday life.
This isn't the case.
In my work as editor of a new encyclopedia of revolution and protest,
I've reviewed 500 years' worth of revolutionary actions. And the
surprising pattern I've found is the regularity of volatile and
explosive conflicts, commonly revealed as waves of protest from within
civil society to confront persistent inequality and oppression. While
historians cannot forecast the time and place of revolutions, the past
has a sustained, if disjointed, record of popular resistance to
injustice.
History shows that revolutions must have political movement and a
socially compelling goal, with strategic and charismatic leadership that
inspires majorities to challenge a perception of fundamental injustice
and inequality. A necessary feature is the development of a political
ideology rooted in a narrative that legitimates mass collective action,
which is indispensable to forcing dominant groups to address social
grievances -- or to overturning those dominant groups altogether.
Unresponsive rulers risk possible overthrow of their governments. For
example, the vision and struggle of a multiracial South Africa was a
guiding principle that put an end to the entrenched white-dominated
apartheid system.
A second essential element is what Italian philosopher Antonio Negri
calls constituent power, the expression of the popular will for
democracy -- a common theme in nearly all revolutions -- through what he
calls the multitude.
A look at mass protests during the past 500
years reveals surprising clues.
Mr. Negri counterpoises the concepts of constituent power and
constituted power to demonstrate the oppositional forces in society.
Thus, following the American Revolution, the ruling elite created a
second Constitution establishing a national government with fewer
democratic safeguards.
In response to challenges from popular movements, modern states have
concentrated power in constitutions and centralized authority structures
to suppress mass demands for democracy and equality. Few democratic
revolutionary movements have gained popular power as new states almost
always consolidate control, often resorting to repression of the masses
that initially brought them to power. Still, virtually all revolutions
during the past 500 years have created enduring consequences that, in
evolving form, remain forces for justice to this day.
Revolutionary movements must recognize the durability and overwhelming
inertia of state power. They must acknowledge that they are highly
unlikely to seize power from unjust regimes, even when their objectives
have moral force and are deeply popular among the masses. And yet,
history is full of exceptions to this rule, so we must conclude that
while revolutionary transformation is improbable, it is always a
possibility.
At a lecture to Young Socialists in Zurich just one month before the
February 1917 Revolution, Vladimir Lenin said: "We of the older
generation may not live to see the decisive battles of this coming
revolution." Less than a year later, Lenin and the Bolsheviks gained
power over the Soviet state with the initial support of workers,
peasants, and most of the military.
In the last century, the opponents of the failed bureaucratic statism in
the Soviet sphere and free-market capitalism in the West have struggled
to find a discourse of resistance. While democratic opponents defeated
Soviet Russia in the early 1990s, opponents of free-market capitalism
have yet to gain traction, in part due to the general consensus among
global rulers in defense of neoliberalism. As such, revolutionary
movements have had to redefine themselves outside territorial borders as
powerful tools of the global collective to petition for human rights and
social justice for all.
People are inherently cautious and take extraordinary action only when
they have little to lose and something to gain. The current economic
crisis has pushed more people into poverty and despair than at any time
since the early 20th century, to the point where alternatives to the
current system can be considered.
Today, throughout the world, peasants, workers, indigenous peoples, and
students are galvanized into movements that are challenging state power
rooted in global norms of neoliberalism. New movements have gained
greater traction with the legitimacy and strength of a global collective
behind them, rather than as isolated protests. The oppressed are framing
new narratives of liberation to contest power on a state and
international level: whether peasants in Latin America or India
struggling for land reform; indigenous peoples mobilizing resistance for
official recognition of their rights; or workers and students throughout
the world waging unauthorized strikes and sit-ins, and taking to the
streets in support of democracy and equality.
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