Sunday, February 09, 2014

Beyond the Call - Time to Act

Another worthwhile read on the Truth-Out website. It is an extract from a up-coming book by Max Haiven called Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power

It is yet another exploration into the subject of the Commons.

He describes the belief in the power of the market:
“We are told that the value of the atmosphere itself is best imagined though 'carbon credits', that the value of individuals is best imagined through the price of their time in the form of wages, or that the value of schools, universities and other public institutions is to be measured in the fiscal 'return on investment' they afford their 'customers'. Everywhere, money becomes the measure of the imagination, the means by which we comprehend and act upon the world that we share. And, ultimately, the crises we now face (the ecological crisis; the economic crisis of global markets; the political crisis of austerity; the social crisis of alienation; the cultural crisis of dislocation; the food crisis; the water crisis; the crisis of education; the crisis of incarceration) are all crises of value, where the pathological value of the market is diametrically opposed to the plural values of humanity.”

We too in the Socialist Party have described this fetish of money, offering up the magical powers of money and the market system to solve problems.

Haiven argues in his book that:
“capitalism relies not only on the brutal repression of workers in factories and fields; it also relies on conscripting our imaginations. On a basic level, it relies on each of us imagining ourselves as essentially isolated, lonely, competitive economic agents. It relies on us imagining that the system is the natural expression of human nature, or that it is too powerful to be changed, or that no other system could ever be desirable.”

Again we too in the World Socialist Movement explain that what keeps us shackled in the chains of wage-slavery are the ideas transmitted to us by the prevailing ideology and our inability so far to reach the realisation that there is indeed another way of living that is viable.

As we often encounter when we discover  those expressing views similar to our own, there arises a gap when it comes to solutions. The Socialist Party takes to the political field to end what we consider the cause of the world’s social problems. We demand revolutionary change.  Haiven, in contrast, believes in a form of gradual stages, of what was once described as the hollowing out of capitalism, of building the new society in the shell of the old world. Over the past centuries such a strategy has been advanced in a variety of forms but whenever and wherever implemented they have all failed, either being defeated by the dominance of capitalists and their control of the State, or they have been absorbed, co-opted, adapted and integrated into the capitalist system.

We welcome Haiven’s critique of capitalist society. We welcome his contribution to how a future society could be and should be like. What we do find lacking is his proposed means to achieve it (some of the protest movements he cites as positive developments we see as questionable, such as the those currently taking place in Thailand and Ukraine.)

Nevertheless the article should be read in full, as should his book when it becomes available. Perhaps from the book we may find that our differences are not so great after all.

AJJ

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