Beyon Ideology - Onto Doing Somethin

 “Globalisation based on exclusion could only lead to violence and death. A commitment to social justice is the only response. The Christian response to poverty is solidarity,” said Cardinal Oscar Rodriquez Archbishop of Tegucigalpa as he described the plight of coffee producers in Honduras, where the price for their produce had halved in the past twelve months and was below the cost of production.
- www.cafod.org.uk

For a long time I thought that ideology was important. I thought that if we had a clear understanding of the problems we fight against and a clear understanding of the bright future that we fight for, that we would be a strong movement. We would have cohesion of goals and viewpoint and this would help us learn how to fight. This has not happened in North America and its minor successes in Europe only highlight the difficulties encountered with real change and the failure of Europe to inspire wider participation.

No one except Hugo Chavez seems poised to move forward in addressing global problems and with long run US hostility to international institutions and rising commodity prices creating wars, rapid global change will not happen -  or not as we might hope.

The tragedy of the commons – the planet! Global institutions are dead. Life boat ethics don't help when the crises will be widespread from severe climate change and invasive species decimating wrecked habitats. Compounding problems will arise to increase disease and economic problems. Social evolution is a little studied and poorly understood phenomenon…

Even trying to deconstruct or define the meaning of these complex problems of human development has become a problem. How can anyone understand the interactions and volatility loose upon the world today? Imperialism, overpopulation, women's rights, fake US-democracy enforcement, globalization, aids, poverty terrorism/insurgency, drug abuse and urbanization are interacting and the market forces set loose by the USA and WTO are driving consumption and expectations to new heights worldwide.

With so many problems ideology seems less necessary: one need not fully describe a terrible mess in order to decide to act. We will have to more than transform societies, we will have to leap ahead in social evolution and learn to be simple, community oriented and cooperative very soon if we are to survive.

With such a magnitude of changes required, people should not argue over whether to have large redistributions of wealth and land, but how big. Increases in participation and an economic structure that provides for communities to shape themselves are all givens, and yet many resist describing what makes sense. What hidden agendas are lurking? All you really need to know about the world is that the problems are so wrapped around our whole system of production, distribution and waste that it all has to be reduced, reused and recycled.

Our long term goals should be to find cooperative and socially just ways to have a reasonable standard of living without taking risks or endangering the environment. It is also true that these goals will be hard won and the victory will determine what we are able to do afterwards. All groups from environmentalists to communists, socialists, indigenous and even eco-village techno utopians should unite because they have nothing to gain by being isolated and weak.

Revisionism

Now let us assume that describing global problems is not necessary; the long run goal is indeterminable but not restrictive; and so all we are left with is to decide what to fight first and how. In Latin America, Hugo Chavez calls upon the working class to lead the way. With solidaritry between indigenous groups and workers, students, urban poor and organized labor leftist candidates are winning in every country and this momentum is building space for more radical voices such as Chavez and Castro to speak openly to enthusiastic crowds.

To make organizing and political action more forceful and united we should agree on the outlines of the type of social and economic policies that new states should pursue. This can be accomplished with simple opinion polls of the various positions and planks of the World Social Forum Calls, the Porto Alegre Consensus, and other proposals. General approval of the economic program of Venezuela, ALBA, and a social economy can also be polled on. The idea is to agree upon a general outline so that we can move on to organizing and building resistance to capitalism and ...  globalization’s social, military and extortionist aspects.

And then there is journalism - I think that it too is obsolete - or of no use today - There cannot be any such thing as objectiveness - If journalists want to exist out side of denial and evil - then they have troi state their biases and the perspective they fight for.