Our current system is extremely effective in achieving its aims. It doesn’t sit still in devising new methods to achieve them. Through a constant evolution of its strategy it can be said to be progressive – it does not do what it has always done.
With all the tools of Government and gigantic amounts of capital available to it, this machine goes swiftly and creatively about its business to secure its main and clearly apparent objectives – to concentrate wealth and power. To anyone with an eye for justice and equality, its aims may be regressive. But the methods invented to secure them are progressive.
It is now robotising labour. No bad thing if we all shared the proceeds. But instead it merely renders people into redundancy. With the stroke of a pen it has ended free education, slashed access to free medical care, sold off public land and utilities, and is now in the process of abolishing rights to protest.
By contrast, the main focus of people’s efforts to push back against the iniquities of the current system is an essentially conservative operation.
We use the same tools that we have done for the last century – marches, strikes and riots – to voice our discontent. Only the means by which we communicate has changed. Instead of doorstep chats we have Snapchat.
But it isn’t working.
Is wealth becoming more evenly distributed? Is child poverty falling? Is the Planet recovering? Are wages and conditions improving? Is housing becoming more affordable?
Without gallant resistance our defeat would certainly be more swift. But as we slowly lose the battle against the forces of domination, is there something else that we could do to advance our cause? Can we build our strategy?
Beyond the idea that the current system needs to be opposed, we hear people occasionally voice the idea that a new system is required to replace it.
And beyond that idea I am listening to see if I can hear anyone asking the questions that logically proceed from that idea … What is that new system? What does a new system look like? How does it work? And most importantly, how do we form it? How do we bring it into being?
It is rare to hear such creative conversations taking place. And it is much, much rarer still for genuine solutions to emerge. However, I did enjoy a lazy afternoon with friends many years ago when we decided to set up an independent republic in our tenement block. The first law agreed by the Provisional Government amidst much laughter was that a person should only be able to own as much land as they can eat.
But in the meantime, people return to their traditional forms of protest, always doing what they’ve always done. But each time hoping for, rather than expecting, a different result. As we can observe from the general direction of travel, hard fought victories are quickly overtaken by further erosion of freedoms.
Alongside our exhausting efforts to fight the massive number of daily injustices generated by the current system, it is time to focus seriously on the idea of a new system – or even a very old one. It is time for those of us who are looking for the world to progress to now ourselves act progressively.
The experience of resistance is a little like being dragged by our leash to the edge of the precipice. While we struggle against the leash, surely the point is to undo it so that we can walk away from the edge??
We struggle in vain against the current system. While we expend vast amounts of energy losing the battle to oppose it we must devote time to replacing it.