Revolutionary Sanity or the Future Impossible?
by Maraina Rivrera address: www.aporrea.org phone: www.rebelion.org
 alegriacomunista@yahoo.com

I am sick of anti-war protests and anti-war protesters who don’t have a vision, a plan or a desire to communicate. As long as we let political moderates side-track us from the real war with these immature tantrums against Bush and his hobby-war we will always be on the wrong side of the barricades. What is the real war? It is the materialist culture of the US. It is not attacking the sickness of the US which is killing millions around the world every month – YOUR apathy! And YOUR brainwashing! These are the real wars.

THE US IS THE LARGEST CONSUMER OF DRUGS, GUNS AND OIL. IT IS THE MOST ADDICTED AND IT IS THE NATION MOST DEPENDENT ON THESE DESTRUCTIVE PRODUCTS. THE US SELLS HALF OF THE WORLDs WEAPONS AND SPENDS HALF THE WORLDS MILITARY BUDGET. THE US AND UK COMBINED ARE LESS THAN 5 PERCENT OF WORLD POPULATION.

THE TWO COROLLARIES TO THE THREE TRUTHS:

THE MEGA-CONSPIRACY OF THE US MILITARY, LARGE CORPORATIONS, DRUG LORDS, DEATH SQUADS, MEDIA BILLIONAIRES AND INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES DOMINATES THE WORLD: CULTURALLY, MILITARILY, AND THROUGH FEAR, COMMERCE AND BLACKMAIL.

ADDICTS ARE UNPREDICTABLE AND OFTEN VIOLENT AND DANGEROUS.

US citizens spend over $100 billion a year on alcohol, $80 billion on cigarettes, $105
Billion on illegal drugs and $ 200 billion on pharmaceuticals ( http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/drugfact/american_users_spend/section1.html). The US is such a sick society it has to lockup 2 million of its citizens and put another 5 million on parole, probation and other correctional programs. Without Prozac, Zantrac and other mood drugs half the people in the US would go crazy from the stress and the evil that they know they are a big part of. And with a population of 4 percent of the world the US consumes almost 27 percent of the petroleum. The Bush energy plan seeks to increase all of these problems.

Time runs out, for real this time. We have to unify now, adopt a common front program of resistance and social rebuilding and prepare for battles in the streets around the US and the world. Stick out your necks and stretch your imagination - whats to lose? Only your noose and your false eyelash consciousness!

We have tried to get any kind of real debate going in this and other countries for many years in many venues. And we have watched as so many opportunities went down the drain: SDS/Weathermen, Sandinista Solidarity, Cuban Organic Farming and Public Health Successes, the Colombian demilitarized zone public meetings, the German and US green movements (ruined by green (sic) parties), etc. Thank God, Trotsky and Che for the living example of Venezuela and its amazing people; a people who dont need any education, media or historical readings to lead them.

Popular Voices have to tie together all of the issues of the Drug War, the war against the Environment by Corporations and a failed growth policy, the Trade and Domination wars over trade and free trade, Neoliberalism, the fraud of representative democracy, the FTAA, the WTO, and the kind of world that people really want. These are all really the same issues & the same struggle.

FOR COMMUNITY: A SOCIALISM of COMMUNTIES
A NEW ECONOMICS - WITH PEOPLE AT THE CENTER:
Yes to markets! No to CAPITALISMO!

Many of us have written about alternative forms of economics: from socio economic democracy to green economics and agrarian based development. While we talked and dreamed the elite in the US built an empire of imperialism and war. Now the system is crumbling, the ecology is ruined and our choices are few and urgent. Trade and the global economy will soon not exist as we have known them because once the engine of growth slows down enough it all stops making sense & it grinds to a halt under its own contradictions and profit losses. The response of the oligarchs is always war!

The idea say for Brazil to become a social democracy with some state control, some worker control and some free market sounds good and it would have worked if done sooner and with some national and international support. With the wealthy countries in turmoil and prices falling, that potential for a social democracy model may still exist but it will not be easy to sustain. People everywhere are confused by many words in the radical vocabulary: socialism, worker control, democratic planning etc...

It is urgently required that the revolutionary forces put forth practical alternatives for the people to believe in and to counter the elite call for a new fascism of order and control.

Socialismo de Communidades is our response and our hope. For us socialism means that through collective power and decisions things happen that would not otherwise happen as well for the masses. For example schools; if the people collectively decide that schools are a priority and their childrens education is important then they can come together or pay money to build a school and to hire teachers who will teach a radical pedagogy. If this were not done collectively then schools might still happen, but they might cost a lot of money or use curriculums that do not educate for the kind of world that we want.

Or take public water supply as an example; if the community comes together to build or pool money to build a good well and a distribution system then plentiful water of good quality can be available to all at low or zero price. If the community does not act collectively then there may be water for some and not for others, or the price may be too high for some and so they suffer to find cheaper water or they are forced to drink bad water and perhaps spread disease or else they are not very productive because of the costs, time or sickness caused by a lack of cheap water.

And a Socialismo of Communities would reject most trade, most toxic chemicals and most high technology. None of these things are necessary and they only lead to complexity, confusion and a loss of local control.

Often socialism is associated with the government (the State) controlling everything or the commanding heights of the economy, industry and resources. The state does away with markets and proceeds to plan the economy as if it knew what was best for everyone. Better models of this sort have been tried and even some aspects of Soviet central planning were effective in providing health care, education and housing, but these are not the sort of models that we mean when we say a Socialismo of Communities.

In our system the state at the national level would not do very much except oversee research, planning and allocation to poverty stricken regions. The State would be a referee to assure that no region was violating the constitution or the norms which the whole nation had agreed to.

In the model of Socialismo de Communidades power would reside primarily in local assemblies of a few hundred delegates representing a few thousand people. For example in a town of a sector of a city with 2000 to 4000 people a hundred or two hundred delegates selected by their neighborhoods would take the issues and votes of their people to these larger assemblies where priorities would be established according the peoples wishes.

The Goal: Alegria Comunista (Comunal Hapiness!); Less Inequality, More Sustainability, A Popular Democratic Economics of Localization Where People are at the Center & Not Profits. Another world is NECESSARY because the current world is impossible! The word for this world is Socialismo de Communidades instead of Socialized Fascist US Global Corporate Dominance. Two choices stand before the world: A World dominated by corporate Mega-Cities, high technology and a Culture of Advertising Slogans –OR- a culture of sustainable farming, regionality and diversity.

This new model combines a locally controlled economy with social democracy and clearly socialist national governments who set general guidelines and protections for labor, the environment and civil rights. People everywhere agree on a proritization schedule of Peace, Education, Health, the environment, sustainability, equality/equity among people and nations and participation AND all in that order profits and growth come in last place on this list. A decentrailist-oriented socialist federal government has a small budget because most government, services, decisions and budgeting is at the local level of town councils and conventions of popular assemblies.

Development of these concepts requires your input; several articles are forthcoming; meanwhile see: Culture and the challenges of the contemporary world
James PetrasRebelión  http://www.rebelion.org/petras/english/petras290103.htm
"We will never build a communist conscience with a dollar sign in the minds and hearts of men." = Fidel Castro

www.Bluegreenearth.com/site/archive/article/2002/idels6.html, A World of Possible Transitons: Mega Cities v. Agrarain Based Localization;

There are 5 major challenges facing the great majority of humanity:
1- U.S. imperialist drive for world domination through the Bush doctrine of "permanent wars"・in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq・North Korea, Iran and the Arab East・Colombia ・uba and the support for a military coup in Venezuela. 2- The recolonization of Latin America via the imposition of ALCA [FTAA] and the transfer of sovereignty to a U.S. controlled ALCA commission. Washington's application of the doctrine of "extra-territoriality", which asserts the right of the U.S. to override international and national laws. The rejection by the U.S. of the International Criminal Court in order to allow its military forces to commit crimes with impunity. The U.S. has assumed the "right" for its military and intelligence agents to commit homicide - to assassinate - political adversaries within the frontiers of any country.
3- The pillage of the Third World - particularly Latin America- leading to the reversion to earlier more retrograde forms of exploitation including white slavery, economic pillage, the appropriation of all the major sectors of the economy and the de- industrialization of Latin American economies via free trade while retaining protective barriers and export subsidies.
4- U.S. hegemony over the political class, from the electoral parties of the center-left to the far right, leading to accommodation to the imperialist project and perpetuation of the system of pillage and re-colonization.
5- The uneven growth of powerful socio-political movements throughout the world・ James Petras www.rebelion.org/petras/english/petras290103.htm

The US is always on the side of violence. The US is violence. From Iraq to the drug war violence against the ecology and people of Colombia and Ecuador; from Teddy Roosevelts Big Stick to the mining of the Nicaraguan harbors in 1983, violence is the natural choice of Imperialism and arrogance. The rightwing think tanks of the US and its corporate empire are the architects of global violence. They create novel forms of imperialism like the genetically Modified free trade neoliberalism, also known as Globalization, the WTO and the War Against Terror...in a word these are Imperialismo.
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