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The Evolution of Revolution

by Timbre Wolf - Open-Publishing - Thursday 25 June 2015
2 comments

A Brief Exerpt From Heges Interview With Wolin on The Real News Network

Ed. note: Edited for brevity and clarity. And, while I (personally), would like nothing more than for you to "bring me their heads on staves" - this interview excerpt is cause for pause.

CHRIS HEDGES, PULITZER-PRIZE WINNING JOURNALIST: Is it time to talk about revolution when you have, as we do today, a system of inverted totalitarianism? Especially given that they have:

1) Fragmented and destroyed the notion of the public,

2) Created institutions that define themselves as democratic and yet have abandoned civic virtue and the common good,

3) Harnessed their authority and their power to the interests of corporations to create neo-feudalism,

4) Created a security and surveillance state,

5) Enriched only a small, global oligarchic elite,and

6) Created a superpower which defines itself primarily through military prowess.

Is this a point at which we should begin to discuss revolution?

SHELDON WOLIN, PROF. EMERITUS POLITICS, PRINCETON: I think that we should be discussing it carefully, that is to say, not timidly, but carefully. We would be breaking new ground. It is a challenge because the military/corporate government has a lot of power.
We’ve got to be very sure, because of the interlocked character of modern society, that we don’t act prematurely and don’t do more damage than is justifiable. (This was the flaw of the Occupy movement).

We have to find a synonym for revolution that would capture the idea of significant, radical, change but a definition which manages to discard the notions physical overthrow and violence.

The word revolution simply has too much baggage. The overtones and implications are not welcome to the modern ear. We have to start striving for a new kind of vocabulary that would help us express what we mean by radical change without tying ourselves to previous notions of revolution.

The contemporary condition is quite without precedent because capitalist power and the state are in bed together. It’s always been there but now we’re talking about aggregates of power - the likes of which the world has never seen.

We have to know when we’re being trapped by our own language. We need to hold up that language for scrutiny and say, "Maybe it needs to be rethought in a different direction," or "It needs to be modified in a serious way," so that we’re really making contact with what the world actually is.

[Ed.] What we have to “sell” is a vision.

Forum posts

  • this seems yet another talky, time-wasting, intellectually self-indulgent detour (blind alley?) on semantics — rather than on actionable next steps.

    what needed instead is action plan to inform and energize vast majority of US citizens (99%+ of electorate) as to what their actual economic self interest is, and how they are being deceived by self-serving oligarchs (and what this has already cost them over past 40 years).

    in asia they used traveling bands of shadow puppeteers, musicians, actors and speakers to educate/inform rural (and urban) villagers about why (and how) to overthrow western colonialism

    could do the same (against western colonialism) in rural and urban red-state America if informed people would stop just talking semantics (& shoes, ships, cabbages and kings), roll up their sleeves and get down to practical business of achieving progress — one village and one villager at a time.

    sure it could be a Long March (multi-generational?), but plurality begins with accumulating a single additional vote at a time. merely debating semantics (and waving arms and tongues in the air) ain’t going to get it done; time to put up and shut up.

    • Gosh, I didn’t think about that. I bet your IQ is higher than both these guys put together, no?