21st Centuary Socialism

We need a World Unity Socialist (unfortunately that spells WUS, hey we've been called worse) Party (WUSP?);-)

The ten key values of the Green Party are important as are the seven basic principles of the International Cooperative Alliance, the Earth Charter, Jeremy Rifkin's Declaration of Interdepedence, the Belem Declarartion,...

Suggestions for others?

We need to commit to communalism and do more work along the lines of what the folks at the People for Alternative Regionalisms (PAAR) are trying to initiate. Hugo Chavez and his ALBA Movement, his "Bank" of the South, and their African Alliance "BancASA" are heading in the right direction, though we need to get the word bank out of our lexicon because it connotes an elite investor class, people who will not be welcome in our union if they cling to a right to maintain such a position of privilege and competitive advantage.

Anyways, in this union and this political party there are no dues, because we all are always paying our dues and when we see appropriate ways and means to allocate our limited personal funds, we will know it and we will do it.

In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA
www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com
wiserunion@earthlink.net
(541) 343-3808

Dear Mike

Thank you for your interesting post.

The left has diversified in the face of the forces of globalisation. These forces are of course, the products of global capitalism and its economic markets, without frontiers. On the onehand, the process of the disintegration of the Left has led to a philosophical debate within the Left, that was missing in the old order. This has been compounded by the collapse of the USSR and the morphing of Chinese Communism into Capitalism. And on the other hand, this very lack of unity has led to a virtual 'ineffectiveness' in the face of the Rightwing onslaught.

As I write, the Postal Workers are on strike in the UK. The British media are depicting the stikers as the enemy of the common people - and many people are behaving as if this were true. The relatively minor inconvenience of not receiving post for a day or two, is being used to blind the common people to the real issue at hand, namely that if action is not taken now, the postal service will be changed beyond recognition, which will have a negative effect upon the common people. The middle class media keeps the mind of the common people firmly enchained to bourgeios values.

And one of these central values, reflected in the legal codes of centrist and rightwing parties in power in Europe, is that the common people should not be allowed to congregate together. And if they do, to be treated with suspicion by the State, and persecuted and hounded out of unified existence. This is why the left can not unite effectively and confront the rightwing at the present time.

In the light of this, the teachings of Antonion Granmsci (1891-1937), and his theory of the taking of hegemony away from the ruling elite, is interesting. The idea that the existing structures of social and political power can be effectively infiltrated, and transformed toward a leftwing tendency. In this way, a revolution occurs from the inside out, with no violence whatsoever.

This method was tried during the Paris Commune (1871), whereby the workers seized power by converting the existing power structures of the State for their own ends - with even the police force being redefined as representing the good of the common people, and not the interests of the middle classes. However, at this time, the German Army had invaded France, and crushed the badly prepared French Army. Both armies ended-up surrounding Paris, and through the request of the French government, the French and German Armies combined forces to attack and destroy the Commune, with the deaths of thousands. This led Karl Marx to declare that for a revolution to work, the established structures of bourgeios government, must be thoroughly smashed, and new one developed in their place.

The postmodern condition offers the Left an intellectual challenge, and one that is to met by the ordinary people. As ordinary people, we must strive to educate ourselves in everyway.