The problem with 'ideologies" is that they are blanket solutions to complex layered problems. There are instances where democracy is a very preferable system for decision making. There are other choices that do not lend themselves so much to the same process. It requires a proper situation, a mentality amongst the people that lends itself to cooperative endeavors where advocacy for one's rights or rights of those close to you is not mutually exclusive with the rights of all collectively. For example, political opposition to pollution controls make no sense in any way except as a narrow advocacy of a special interest which is influential beyond the scope of it's actual actions due to accumulated excess value traded on the market and earmarked for that corporate person to extend itself in it's one or two dimensional way into politics. It automatically and adversely reacts to changing the business model out of fear. Direct democracy or anarcho-syndicalism even could not be relied on to enforce a different set of mores if the livelihood of those involved was questioned or jeopardized. It could be expected that if such a progressive model worked it's way into power that there might be a different conventional understanding of interrelationships such as pollution to the greater well being of the people and ecosystems happening in and around it. However, there is no defacto a priori reason precluding the present status quo form being more convenient and thus the rational choice.
In the same sense anarchism applies to being an ideal we should strive for in many ways. But human nature being what it is, what is there to preclude a place with fascist culture from acting the way everyone there felt they were born to act and invading their peaceful neighbors? The biggest problem with the total lack of power is that it must be an cultivated and ingrained cultural philosophy much in the same way democracy needs certain planning and reasoning skills to be a norm in order to function for the needs of it's participants.
That said, we see a very unusual version of socialism rearing its grotesque head as the american experiment attempts to bail itself out of the next great depression, the same logic spouting forth from some very conservative (or assumed to be) minds. Here is where the political system starts to unravel. To look towards the point of this bailout is to perceive the silhouette of the beast called capital attempting to be resuscitated by any means available to its keepers. There is nothing they will not do to try to maximize the life and reach of this horrible expression of human ingenuity which has wrecked the planet's ecosystems, and created massive problems no one has the tools to solve (or the will to use them if they did).
That said, here we have a time for nihilism. Destroy all of the illusions! We must. It's more than mere iconoclasty, this requires a revision of what our options are as human beings with conscious free agency. If this wretched system is taken off the table, well then what is there to replace it that is not as bad or worse? Every day is another choice to continue to participate. We choose to accept money for our meager share of responsibility in eco-cide, the genocide of indigenous cultures still outside of the wicked machine, the repression of each other not simply by having a universal system of representational valuation e.g. money, but by it's extremely gross mal-distribution, leading to poverty, chaos, intensely horrific living conditions and a whole host of malefic wraiths caused by excess and deprivation still lingering in the rotting forms of past prejudices.
This line of reasoning appeared to me earlier today as a vision of the future.
I foresaw a TV news program, perhaps many programs, with the regular talking heads saying the opposite of what they used to preach.
The scenario is the extreme devaluation of
An erogenous zone of sorts will be passing by, boosting exports, but alas….
We’ve spent the past five decades eroding all of our manufacturing capacity,
and all we can make
and sell anymore are
autos nobody wants or can afford,
weapons nobody should wish upon even their enemies, and
drugs which are technically legal only because we control the entire process outright to the point where we can force them on the unwilling(e.g. vaccines and certain psychotropics in some circumstances).
Remember that these talking heads reversing themselves is necessary for the continuity as they are like beloved characters from TV shows with whom we are taught to identify as recipients of perpetual one way discourse. They have been given authority by virtue of us being forced to look at them, listen to them and refute their terrible nonsensical illogic.
They are perpetual distraction, and even if you can avoid them you can't avoid others tainted by their exposure to emotional based logic who are vulnerable to being sold a bill of goods.
During the hyper inflation,
you will hear about the recovery over and over again,
with the fake-it-till-you-make-it crowd being given the bullhorn trying to coerce battered people who’ve already been hoodwinked by the outward logic of the system to believe things are fundamentally restored.
Things are fundamentally retarded as far as the economy goes,
no offense intended to those with physiological based developmental issues please,
but it is an exact descriptive of the system and it's effects on human development.
Conventional logic dictates that then "they" can take the money out of their mattresses and
bring it back to the casino for the professional gambling addicts on wall street to play with.
However, hark, what have we here: no one is buying debt, still even though we’ve stayed so faithful to the exact reason and logic that caused this incredibly unbalanced system to lose its balance and fail.
It’s not failure. It’s a logical sequence.
As it gains steam and becomes oppressively obvious that the old ways are not going to ever work again, just when people would be ripe to consider creating a world of possibilities unshackled from the boundaries of scandalous acquisition being sanctified by lobbyists, lawyers, politicians and courts; this call will go out. “We need to redevelop our national industries outside of the pressures of the international markets telling us what we can do, where we can do it, and how we can do it.” This will be the resurgence of american protectionism. The ugly twin of the neo-liberal globalization, a twin because it serves the immediate needs of it's one true master: those whose existence and needs trump all the rest of ours because? They worked the system. They exploited the opportunities. They worked their way to the top. They inherited it from long lines of blue blood. The point? They are better, worth more even though in death they will share a fate with everyone else who ever existed, with every living creature. Maybe, maybe not, but that's how the system acts on their behalf.
There will be increasingly nationalistic bleating about jobs, and a new anti-free trade tack may even be welcomed at first blush by those of us opposed to its monstrosity as it currently plays out.
Unfortunately this will be the sign on the road to fascism that we've reached the suburbs and we're almost there. The refrigerated leftover ethos of the "war on terror" will be turned over to the "war to save the economy", since that is what it has always been about. They will make it's fate tied tightly to yours in as far as they can.
Another ploy to act ostensibly in the interests of the masses, while it is really about protecting the position of power of the ruling class.
It will be a way where they will be able to mitigate the full impact of having worthless currency that equals money losing meaning as a prime motivator for human behavior. Maybe the borders will even be sealed.
I’m not saying what replaces it will be any better should the system fail haphazardly. I'm sure it would be a wide spectrum of things in different places , or even many different things in the same location (or near location).
It could be better, but only if we accept possibility and think forward logically from that point. ( my feeling of total decay being inevitable puts me on a fringe I’m willing to occupy).
Without any planning it will surely be worse, but since people are always planning, it will depend a lot on who is planning what and where they are.
IMHO, the best ideas for dealing with this stuff, unfortunately for most centrists, it’s an old bogeyman they have long been taught to fear in the self interest of their masters. A thing called libertarian socialism.
It was developed to deal with serious class inequalities that inevitably are generated by unfettered wealth accumulation models when they stop being able to function due to fundamental flaws. Like accumulating so much wealth at the top it dries up the consumer spending model it lives on. SUPRISE!!!
Good riddance I say, consumer spending only exacerbates eco-cide, and without it, only make the next world more likely before more eco-cide has occurred. So hurry up and bungle it already, but be sure to bungle it right so it loses credibility forever and the weirdo future fascists can deify and fetishize this modern world as their sociopathic dystopian ideal already.
Cooperative models can't work without a reconventionalization of notions of property for the benefit of most people, a redistribution for excess holdings to equitable distribution. Don't think of it as taking away from grandma, unless she is super wealthy, more likely it will be guaranteeing your grandma will never go without ever again. Anybody coming down off their high horses is probably somewhat culpable, needs a dose of reality pills and should consider themselves lucky if they get off better than your peers from the French Revolution. I'm not saying I'm for it, it just happens to be what they deserve.
Fixing the current system almost inevitably will be able to do nothing but promote current inequitable situations, albeit with another bandage solution to a mortal wound.
The banks should fail. The markets should fail. There should be crises that reflect reality. Only through debt elimination and equitable redistribution can we face and deal with the root causes of social malaise. Only through a new community where basic needs are guaranteed as is the ability to contribute towards the world meeting those needs can we evolve beyond this current dystopic status quo which is strangling the world in social and ecological ruin.
Imagine your debts are illusions, scarcity can be overcome if enough people decide they can cooperate to help each other meet their basic needs. This could be the purifying fire that should presage a better world, but like all things much sacrafice should be expected. When society's demands grow to absurd proportions, then we must all(or maybe just enough of us) refuse. In anticipating this moment, people everywhere should develop the tools needed to cooperate through the stress of that breaking point, only us supporting each other can yeild a bearable world in the end. Go ahead meet yourt neighbors. If you don't like them meet the next group of people who live slightly further away. If they don't work either maybe consider your interpersonal skills as a revolutionary weapon and talk to yourself in the mirror or something.
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