Dear friends, Those of you who are subscribed to BOTH cj & rn have been getting 'duplicate' copies of my postings. That's because I've been posting to both lists. Don't fret, just DELETE one of them. There is an old saying that 'REFORM IS THE ENEMY OF REVOLUTION'. When I first heard that, I did not agree. I figured it was some kind of one-upsmanship going on - something like "I'm more radical than thou". But since then what I've learned is that much of what has been called reform over the years and decades has really been co-option. That is, whenever people get it together and rise up together to demand their rights, then the establishment yields just enough to defuse the movement. Then after a period of time the reforms are taken away again. I got this message from Jan, which is similar to some I received from others... ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2000 14:36:29 -0400 To: •••@••.••• From: •••@••.••• (Jan Slakov) Subject: I think you misunderstood Dear Richard, I just read the Korten message & your intro. I think you must have understood Korten to be advocating regulating corporations when he actually clearly says that will not work and that we must abolish corporations/limited liability. Did you misunderstand or what? ------------------------------------------------------------ As a matter of fact I _did misread Korten. Korten set out a list of proposals, headed by the sentence: With these characteristics in mind, let's review some frequently suggested responses to corporate rule. I missed this sentence and I thought the 'responses' were Korten's. In fact, he thought most of the responses did not get to the root of the problem - and I agree. He agreed with the following, and so do I: * Realign economic structures in ways that bring economic relationships into a more natural alignment with the public interest. This requires replacing the present system of unaccountable rule by a corporate and financial elite with a system of political and economic democracy -- a project comparable to the human project of eliminating monarchy... I see this as a strong revolutionary statement. From there, I would go on to talk about decentralization, locally-based democracy, and end to competing political parties, multiple economic models, and a number of other things at a similar revolutionary level. When Korten goes on to say things like: * Radical campaign finance reform * Public financing of elections * Free air time for candidates Then he's brought us out the revolutionary framework and back into pointless and hopeless reform. For example, "Free air time for candidates" presumes the mass-media continues to be privately owned. And public-financing of elections presumes we still have competitive factional politics. Such reforms are temporary and non-lasting. And they are every bit as difficult to achieve as what we really need, which is a revolutionary new world system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Richard K Moore Wexford, Irleand Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance email: •••@••.••• http://cyberjournal.org http://members.xoom.com/centrexnews/ Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world, indeed it's the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead Permission for non-commercial republishing hereby granted - BUT include and observe all restrictions, copyrights, credits, and notices - including this one.