or even better, do away with the damn thing, since no one understands it, having been written with the intention that it cannot be understood in the first place.

also a protest, no matter how strong, may not change the army, cia, fbi, msm, medical profession, entertainment industry, advertising, education, etc.
which means that after protests finally end and political ‘promises’ had been given, once again back to same square.

however, a political party stays doggedly on in spite of adversity and set backs. A political party is more difficult to be infiltrated by gov’t agents.
so i vote for a party. however, i am not an american. Best luck! tnx

Here is a great article about the option that we have in USA: Socialism or Mad Max Scenario of Barbarism:

ACCORDING TO THE SOCIALIST-PHILOSOPHER IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN, IF THE WORLD DOESN’T BECOME SOCIALIST, WE MIGHT SEE A MAD MAX FEUDALISM SCENARIO LIKE MEL GIBSON’S MAD MAX MOVIE !!

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090323/wallerstein

I have not studied Wallerstein, so I’m curious about his “socialism or barbarism” view — what does he mean by a worse system?

I understand worst-case scenarios, like an inter-imperialist war going nuclear or biological leading to a kind of ‘Mad Max’ feudalism, but worst-cases are rare and not much to base your theory on. In the last 100 years we’ve seen some major crises and world wars that lead to new rounds of accumulation. How are things significantly different today?

As I see it, there are two new factors in play here: resource and environmental exhaustion, which can only be overcome by large-scale planning, and the widespread IT infrastructure, which makes possible economic planning beyond the dreams of the 1930s. Both of those tend toward socialist solutions.

I don’t really understand how a large-scale break down of accumulation leads to something which is exploitative and hierarchical and not capitalist and not socialist, unless he’s talking about the “Mad Max” scenario. Even that would seem to lead back to capitalism.

Wallerstein is not saying that socialism is inevitable which was the position of mechanical marxist predictions in the past about the demise of capitalism. The Second and Third International prophecies about the end of capitalism tied together the thesis of the “inevitable end of capitalism” with the thesis of the “inevitable emergence of socialism.”

The latter was deterministically thought as a result of the former. In Wallerstein we have the thesis of the “inevitable end of capitalism” without the “inevitable emergence of socialism.”

As a matter of fact, Wallerstein is very insistent on the problem that the new historical system that emerge might be worst than capitalism and that all will depend on our agency and political struggles in the next decades. The thesis of the inevitable end of capitalism as a historical system that have lasted 500 years, is very well argued by Wallerstein not in THE NATION essay but in his books

Immanuel Wallerstein sees capitalism like other historical systems in the past: they rise and demise, they have a beginning and they have an end. The Roman Empire was a particular form of world-system that Wallerstein calls World-Empire and that lasted one-thousand years.

The Modern World-System is a particular form of world-system that he calls a capitalist world-economy and that so far have lasted more than 500 years. He explains in detail how historical systems end out of its own systemic contradictions.

In his recent books, Wallerstein has analyzed at length in what consist the contradictions that are going to lead to the end the present capitalist world-system (read his work to find out more about his analysis because it is impossible to summarize here).

However, there are important epistemological issues involved here. Wallerstein’s perspective represents a revolution in the social sciences because of his challenges to the analytical TIME/SPACE unit that informs most of social scientists today.

If you think about capitalism as many traditional social scientists, that is, from a nation-state unit of analysis, the argument Wallerstein is making does not make any sense. But if you take the global system, or as he says, the world-system as the unit of analysis with its large scale and long-term structures, then his argument is very coherent and easier to understand.

One of the points made by Avakian in his so-called new synthesis is about internationalism. He claims that the international system is decisive over the national context. Well, I find dishonest that Avakian does not acknowledge here the contribution and influence of Wallerstein on this point.

This is a point developed by Wallerstein in many of his historical sociological works since the 1970s. However, Avakian takes ideas and just cite the “founding fathers” or himself and never acknowledges the influence of contemporary marxists and neo-marxists in his perspective.

But coming back to the question of Wallerstein, I think that it merits a profound consideration because he is not only arguing about how capitalism is coming to an end but also about how if the global left does not create a new historical system that is better, the transnational capitalist elites will create for us a new and worst world-system than the present capitalist system in order to protect and defend their own privileges.

This is Wallerstein’s historical sociological thesis of what happened in the 15th century with the demise of feudalism in Europe. The feudal aristocracy created a new historical system to preserve their wealth. They created the capitalist world-system by going global and expanding to the Americas. This is what is called in history the European colonial expansion that created the world market and a new international division of labor. One of the many points raised by Wallerstein is that something like this could happen today but that nothing is guaranteed. There are no apriori outcomes for the coming struggles for the formation of a new world-system….

Class and race privileges still reign among the “white” left and this is why solidarity is extremely retarded in the U.S. And let’s not forget the power of Zionism that has confused and diffused the Left

x

ere are the backers of one of the Force More Powerful site’s exemplar of democratic revolutions in the former Soviet Union – the Ukraine, the Republic of Georgia etc.

Not my cup of tea, but who knows. Maybe these Republican, Bush crew groups have changed.

U.S. money has helped opposition in Ukraine

By Matt Kelley
ASSOCIATED PRESS

December 11, 2004

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration has spent more than $65 million in the past two years to aid political organizations in Ukraine, paying to bring opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to meet U.S. leaders and helping to underwrite an exit poll indicating he won last month’s disputed runoff election.

U.S. officials say the activities don’t amount to interference in Ukraine’s election, as Russian President Vladimir Putin alleges, but are part of the $1 billion the State Department spends each year trying to build democracy worldwide.

No U.S. money was sent directly to Ukrainian political parties, the officials say. In most cases, it was funneled through organizations such as the Eurasia Foundation or through groups aligned with Republicans and Democrats that organized election training, with human rights forums or with independent news outlets.

and more affiliates funding that “revololution:

Anarchogeek

As is to be expected, it’s the same folks who were busy funding democracy movements in Venezuela. In this case a lot of the money was routed through the Eurasia Foundation, the Centre for Political and Legal Reforms, the International Republican Institute, many NED funded organizations such as American Center for International Labor Solidarity, Center for International Private Enterprise, the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, the Europe XXI Foundation, the Open Society Foundation – Ukraine, the National Democartic Institute For International Affairs, the Ukrainian Legal Foundation, the Ukrainian Center for Economic and Political Research (Razumkov Center), and others….

Many of the groups such as Center for Ukrainian Reform Education were specifically producing pro-market tv and radio programs as well as creating school materials and holding workshops for journalists. Another funded group is the International Centre for Policy Studies which actually has Mr Orange himself, Yushchenko, on its supervisory board.

It applies to almost ANY so-called ‘elected’ body. And,if I could pick who should get the swine flu … the swine in congress would be first on the list.

Sadly, they would only be replaced by more of the same!

Now, was that a terrorist threat?

So damned what … I for one am not interested in acting like every little event is going to be the end of the freakin’ world. Though, if homo sapiens (actually plumeus) were to disappear, that would be OK by me. (And yes, that does include me.)

RG the LG