Dear rn,
I've received two primary criticisms regarding the
'Manifesto for global transformation', which was posted on
19 Jan. The first was about 'decentralization'. Most people
seem to be afraid of that idea, due I suggest to our long
confinement in hierarchical cages. Nonetheless, that fear
is there, and in response the Guidebook will approach that
material in quite a different way, showing more respect and
understanding for how people feel about these issues.
The other criticism was about the vagueness of the program
offered in the Manifesto. For this, a special section seems
warranted (below). I'm eager to find out you, our rn
activist community, respond to these ideas.
fire away,
rkm
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b. A movement without a program?
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"The first step is to penetrate the clouds of deceit and
distortion and learn the truth about the world, then to
organise and act to change it. That's never been impossible
and never been easy."
- Noam Chomsky
I have suggested that we - the global community - need to find a
way to come together, develop a common vision of what kind of world
we want to create, and build together a movement to bring that
world into existence. Before proceeding with these ideas, I must
acknowledge that this is a very unusual proposal for how to build a
movement. Most movements start with an identified 'problem' - and a
specific idea for a 'solution'. The movement then grows by rallying
people around awareness of that problem and support for that
solution. Environmental activists, having identified 'environmental
destruction' as the problem, then built a movement around 'legal
protections globally' and 'right-action locally' as the solution.
In our case, without such a concrete solution, how can we expect to
draw people to our movement? Why do I think a 'solutionless'
movement can succeed? And why do I advocate this approach in
preference to any other kind of movement?
The answer to these questions begins with the nature of the
'problem' that our movement is intended to address. That problem is
a very broad one indeed - the entire world system, from bottom to
top, needs to be fundamentally transformed. For our movement to
offer a concrete 'solution', that solution would need to provide an
entire plan for a new society. It would need to show exactly how
our economies can become sustainable, how they could provide an
acceptable level of prosperity, and how we are to deal with the
over-population problem. The plan would need to show how
governments can be made responsive to the needs and wishes of
people - and how the rise of new elites could be prevented.
The organizers of the movement would need to come up with a
'comprehensive design for society' and then hope the people of the
world would adopt it. In some sense, the organizers would be
following in the tradition of utopian thinkers like Plato with his
'Republic', or Marx with his 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.
Such efforts have either been universally ignored by societies, or
else when implemented they have turned out quite differently than
the vision predicted.
I simply do not believe that some person or group is going to
succeed in designing a plan which is so complete and so appealing
that most of the world's people will be willing to adopt it - and
forsake the system they're familiar with. And even if this
happened, there would always be a question we'd ask with our
fingers crossed: "Have our designers thought of everything? Might
there be a fatal bug somewhere in the system that will come back to
haunt us?"
Another reason our movement can't offer a concrete plan is because
of the immense diversity of societies in the world. How can any one
concrete 'design for society' be appropriate for Manhattan Island,
the Indians of Peru, and New Zealand sheep ranchers? The plan would
need multiple versions, suitable for different cultures and
different conditions. If utopian efforts have failed historically,
how could we hope to come up with a dozen successful utopian
variants all at once?
Furthermore, consider the immense diversity of values, customs,
world views, and religions throughout the world. If the plan
aligned its perspective with any of these ideological factions,
then that would tend to alienate the others. On the other hand, if
the plan attempted to be 'value free', that might create problems
of its own. One would need _some foundation on which to base the
new design, and a reference to _some kind of values in order to
prefer one policy over another.
In fact there are literally hundreds of individuals and groups
advocating one or another plan for society. Some call for universal
adoption of a new nature-based spiritual path; others continue to
seek a worker's revolution and world socialism; still others seek
global adoption of some strategic reform measure, such as the Tobin
Tax. In this way potential energy in support of fundamental change
is dissipated into myriad competing initiatives, none of which will
ever be able to muster a dominant constituency.
For all of these reasons, I believe that no prepackaged 'plan for
society' can be the basis for building a successful global movement
for fundamental change. We must find some other means of rallying a
movement together, and then the movement itself must take
responsibility for developing its program, or programs, for
society. If the movement is to be the vehicle by which the people
of the world find their common voice, then it is entirely suitable
that the movement also be the vehicle by which they reach a common
understanding of what kind of world they want to create.
rkm
http://cyberjournal.org
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