Thanks for your message, and for sharing your post. Please allow me to extend my congratulations for having allowed some important learning to take place. I mean that quite sincerely; it’s not easy to let our perspectives shift with new evidence, but it sounds like you did exactly that. To me, there’s no need to eat crow when you’ve done yourself the favor of moving forward. Well done (no pun intended).

It sounds like you are starting to get the hang of our new President. He is not an easy man to read, and it requires attention to both what he says and what he does not say to figure out his true intentions. I, too, have the distinct impression that he is prepared to do some truly revolutionary things. It’s going to be fascinating to see how this plays out.

Best regards,
Sue

What a difference a few days make: having followed the unfolding budget controversy from its beginning — especially having read/listened to Obama’s fireside chat last Saturday (28 February) — I am now ready to acknowledge I was probably wrong in my estimate of the President’s intentions, and that those of you who have had faith in him from the very beginning are probably right.

This does not change my condemnation of the United States as a nation that during the past 46 years has been reduced to nothing more than the executive-action agency for the propagation of capitalism and the protection of its ruling class, but it is a 180-degree turn in my sense of what the President is about.

Indeed his defiant assertion on Saturday — “The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long, but I don’t. I work for the American people” — is in context quite possibly the most revolutionary statement ever uttered by a U.S. President.

Finally convinced President Obama’s true purpose is to lead us — that is, the working class — in taking our country back, I am now publicly eating crow, for which see in particular the discussion at http://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/16467

(I prefer those birds well done, if you please.)

Thanks for your comments. The link you shared to Jo Freeman’s article on the dark side of political movements, in particular the women’s movement, is an excellent example of the damage that can be done when we are not mindful of psychological factors at play among the participants – pressures for conformity, personality conflicts, unrealistic expectations, dishonest communication, etc. Often, participants come to political involvement hoping for the “new” rules promised by the movement to relieve them of the need to contend skillfully with interpersonal matters, or they ask the movement to assuage past hurts in that domain. But of course, how we treat one another as individual people is an inescapable element in determining the fate of any group. Unfortunately, this is often learned the hard way.

The need for greater integrity and more skillful communication is an ongoing concern of mine regarding progressives. It is a topic that will surely get more attention here at CPW.

I agree that the road to political liberation and personal liberation are quite different, but I do not see them as opposed. Historical context notwithstanding, if we consider Buddhist meditative practice, for example, as a technique rather than an ideology, it can be very helpful in developing the kind of internal and interpersonal capabilities that can contribute to creating a more psychologically informed kind of activism.

While I agree that much of the “New Age” movement seems disinterested in or dismissive of politics, this is not always the case, or necessarily the case. Just as there are Buddhist sects that are politically active and those that are not, both are legitimate interpretations of the same set of beliefs, but differ according to what the individual is ready to take on. It is entirely possible for one to start out as internally focused and end up incorporating more fully the concerns of the “outside” world.

Most likely, this will not happen for most people. But thankfully, it doesn’t need to. As Margaret Mead once stated, it only takes a small cadre of people to make the difference.

Regards,
Sue

The fate of feminism is meanwhile disturbingly instructive. What is now called Second Wave Feminism originated as a logical subset of Marxian analysis and retained its Marxian consciousness until the movement’s co-optation c. 1970 and its subsequent reduction into (yet another) means of propagating capitalism, protecting the capitalist ruling class and subjugating all the rest of us. How this happened is too complex a matter to discuss in this space, but the result — the fatal metastases of bourgeois values throughout the movement — is vividly described here: http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/trashing.htm .

Another pitfall is the failure to distinguish between the individual act of self-liberation (as in Zen) and the collective act of liberating ourselves (as in political transformation). The two are not only radically different processes but may be antithetical, a conclusion strongly suggested by the fact Zen Buddhism arose in (and perhaps as compensation for) two of the most tyrannical cultures in history, feudal China and feudal Japan, and by encouraging escape to inner space did absolutely nothing to combat the savagery outside. Likewise, in the present-day United States, note the notorious hostility of personal transformation movements to politics.

If we are to become our own liberators, these are the very sorts of pitfall we must somehow learn to avoid.

Thank you for your interest in my article. Many thanks for your kind comments regarding my insights. It is good to hear that you understand the importance of the psychological dimension in political revolution. Indeed, ignoring it has brought down many a well-intentioned movement in the past, including the Russian Revolution, as you mentioned.

(For our readers, please note that some of my comments below are in response to a longer version of Loren’s reply to my article, that has since been edited for brevity.)

I am well aware of the presence of fascist leanings in American governance and corporate capitalism, and, more importantly, its impact on people abroad and domestically. The Bush 2 administration was as close to actual fascist rule as we have seen in this country, and was dangerously close to being able to declare domestic martial law if they saw fit. Sadly, I agree with your take on the intent of Wall Street and the American ruling class dating back to the mid-20th century. I would even argue that these same self-serving economic forces have been present and even dominant in our country since the late 18th century, with the beginning of industrial capitalism, the expansion of the railroads into Native territory, and the conquest of the Phillipines (to name just a few of many possible examples). Your rendition of how the capitalist system creates “winners” and “losers”, and defines them in accordance with its own greed-driven values, is aptly stated.

I think where we differ is in terms of understanding that the human experience can be understood by more than one framework at once, and that those frameworks can operate on different levels simultaneously. From within the sociopolitical perspective you delineated, and that I largely agree with, it seems unlikely that working class people – or perhaps any people – can ever break free of the system. On the other hand, from the psychological perspective, self-liberation and social liberation (i.e., a collection of self-liberated individuals acting as the basis of new social norms) are attainable possibilities. Not easily attainable, but reality-based long-term goals that are admissible in that system of thinking.

The ghost in the machine is that people are both political and psychological. If we cannot find the means to be free of our oppressors by working outwardly in the political world (and I’m not sure I agree it is quite that absolutely bleak), we can attain internal freedom that we, in turn, can use as the basis for building a better world, one person at a time. From a psychological perspective, social change happens from the inside out on an individual level, and then only in very small groups at first on a social level, before a meme, and eventually a new norm for that group, is established.

I have no doubt that the trajectory for doing this on a societal level is one that would need to span generations and could seem interminably long. But we would do well to realize that we are living in a time of unprecedented volatility and challenges for the survival of the species that presents unique opportunities. When individuals experience such times in their lives, extraordinary changes can take place more quickly than could be reasonably predicted. There is no reason to assume that a large group of people encountering such a moment in their lives collectively could have any less dramatic an opportunity for change. If this seems to you like “magical thinking”, so be it (although I can assure you that I have no such clinical disorder). In my view, it is simply hope that is grounded in what I have witnessed to date.

Sue

People elsewhere increasingly recognize the sole function of the United States is the propagation of capitalism and the protection of its ruling class. Objective analysis, a cause-and-effect process commonly employed abroad but suppressed here in fear of its disclosures, demonstrates such a core motive is the only rational explanation for the Nazi-like savagery of U.S. foreign policy.

The same conclusion results when objective analysis is applied to U.S. domestic policy. It demonstrates how elected officials, bureaucrats and the associated institutions of governance, commerce, culture and acculturation (whether federal, state or local and especially public schools, the workplace and Big Business media) function to facilitate the selfsame goals: the propagation of capitalism and the protection of its ruling class.

Less acknowledged in the U.S. is the third aspect of propagating capitalism and protecting its ruling class: the control and subjugation of the non-ruling-class population. Elsewhere this is achieved by terror. Here the public schools, the workplace and Big Media build a conceptual prison that is effectively inescapable.

The result, camouflaged by the cacophony of partisan labels, is the solidarity of conditioned reflex that defines a one-party nation. Thus the contempt and hatred for anyone defined as a “loser” — that is, no longer exploitable for profit. Thus too the ongoing denial of health care to elderly, disabled, impoverished or unemployed persons: euthanasia by neglect and abandonment. (Here are two links that explore related issues in some detail: a Paul Krugman essay, http://www.pkarchive.org/column/091905.html, and a hotly debated AlterNet thread, http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/126726/is_breeding_a_sin/ ; scroll down to “This Thread Proves Why Fascism Won the U.S.” for my own relevant comments.)

All of which shows how the transformation Ms. Kerbel imagines is rendered psychologically impossible by the national mindset. There has been no “change we can believe in”; progressives are not “victorious.” Obama’s presidency was financed by the greatest ruling-class political expenditure ever — assurance its only “changes” will be in the identities of our oppressors and the euphemisms for oppression. The propagation of capitalism, the protection of its ruling class and the subjugation of all the rest of us continues unabated.

It is critical to me that we now move into the position of positive changes agents. It is important that we do this as leaders, and also in a collaborative vein in order to promote change that is sustainable.

Thanks for the reminder that we will need some processing and collective relief first if this is to be sincere.

Pam Dell Fitzgerald