Systems need to be put into place that can take the place of the failing government that society's most defenseless member have come to depend on. Alternatives to the very concept of "jobs" and "employment" can be created too. Why beg for slavery when we can build a free society, ruled from the bottom up instead of from the top down?
Even with capitalism and the free market undisturbed, the spirit of voluntary cooperation and communal efforts at survival can compete. With the element of greed removed from the picture, and self interest defined in a new way, a genuine "counter-culture" can emerge as a significant political and economic force.
Huge and anti-human totalitarian structures have come to dominate not only the economy and government, but the very motions and emotions, eating and sleeping, dreaming and waking of all who must earn and spend. This cultural and economic reality is still packaged and marketed as "freedom." Yet the demands made by these cultural and economic institutions have the commonality of self-sacrifice and ultimately self-annihilation.
We need a system of small, fast-moving and flexible cooperatives, to compete with existing providers of basic services. We need more neighborhood food banks and food co-ops, community gardens for food production, and to slowly find ways to provide much of what the corporate/governmental oligopoly currently produces, better and cheaper. People might be more inclined to "bite the hand that feeds them,' if there are other, gentler hands ready to feed nearby.
There is no need for "self-sacrifice" here; what is called for is an end to sacrifice; the demand placed on each individual born into any level of the servant classes to "be a productive member of society." Responsibility is presently defined as ability to pay, and willingness to work for any pay. When things don't make sense, we are expected to trust in "the deciders;" after all "they have good reasons for what they do."
A Declaration of Class War is a Declaration of Refusal, regardless of the cost and social stigma, to participate in the obscene; to take part in the rituals of human sacrifice or wave banners in support of those who carry these rituals out. Above all cast not votes for men who regardless of their party affiliation or campaign speeches will, by necessity, order that the killing continue. A president's single greatest power is the power to make war, and at this point in history, there will be no man elected to this office who is unwilling to continue the business at hand.
The "Occupation of Wall Street," although undertaken by a just a handful of idealists who are for the most part very young, can have meaning and effect if is taken as a signal, a "first shot" fired in a Class War that while non-violent, will by necessity be a confrontation of power, by power, speaking the language of money and power. If used as a starting point for a sustained effort at building a counter-economic culture to break the government/corporate stranglehold on life's necessities, this occupation will not have been in vain.
REFERENCES:
*The "History repeats itself-- quote is attributed to Karl Marx, although debate still goes on as to exactly what he meant in context.
** Marx, Karl : The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte translated by Saul K. Padover from the German edition of 1869
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
