Two examples have led me to the conclusion expressed in the title of this blogpost. The first example is Marx's promotion of the Proletariat Dictatorship. Marx firmly believed that the proletariat had to be liberated from the bourgeoisie. To be liberated, the proletariat had to replace the bourgeoisie at both the workplace and government. And what would eventually follow, according to Marx, was a utopia.
The second example involve my experiences with Occupy Wall Street (OWS). I have fond memories of OWS and the Global Justice Working Group of which I was a part. I still miss meeting with those people. I had originally signed up with the Washington D.C. version, which initially had a different name, but found myself participating more with OWS in NYC. I remember the declaration that was written for the occupation of New York City (click here for a copy of that declaration). The declaration was almost flawless. All of the accusations made against the 1% made in that declaration have been proven to be true, and yet there was one flaw. The flaw was that with the charges we presented, we were asking the public to punish the 1%. Instead, we should have asked the 1% to join the rest of us in terms of sharing power and having to live under the same laws we live under--especially in terms of financial laws. In other words, we were asking for the 99% to replace the 1%.
Today's protests also operate on that principle of replacing a threat or enemy. The tearing down of the statues, the calls by some to abolish the police, and CHOP (the Capital Hill project in Seattle) are all attempts at replacing parts of the status quo.
And though there is good reason to have certain statues be pulled down and significant police reforms to be made, the revolutionary call to replace parts of the status quo are the order of the day. And it is easy for members of the undecided public to feel threatened, or at least insecure by the call to replace. And if they feel insecure, imagine how defenders of the status quo and counterrevolutionaries feel. One feeling they have is that they feel left out of any future decision making process. And that could very well be true for the police when laws that attempt to reform how the police work are discussed and passed. For those municipalities who did little to nothing to let the police have a say in police reform, the replacement principle is being practiced.
In fact, if we remember the torch-lit protest that occurred in Charlottesville, Va., what was one of the chants uttered by the neo nazi, white supremacist groups? Wasn't it about claiming that they will not be replaced?
See, what we need today is a new kind of revolution. A revolution that is not based on exclusive claims for power, but inclusion. We need a revolution that is not looking to replace people, but is looking to create new structures so that people of different races, economic classes, and ideologies must work together to solve problems.
See, we don't need a proletariat to replace the bourgeoisie, we need the bourgeoisie and the proletariat to work together as equal partners so that they learn how to look out for, not just their own interests, but the interests of others.
See, we don't need for society to punish and give the 1% a time out from influencing government, we need the1% and the 99% to collaborate as equals so that the threats to justice and the environment cited in the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City can be thwarted.
See, we don't need idealists to restructure our police forces and leave all of the decisions in their hands. We need neighborhood representatives, government officials, and representatives of the police to work together to eliminate police abuse and racism in law enforcement.
We don't need rightly angered mobs to tear down monuments and statues at their discretion. We need a structure where city officials meet with representatives of all parts of the public to determine which monuments and statues must be torn down and what ones can remain. Who are we going to replace our nation's past heroes with?
And finally, we don't need a two-party system that gives the illusion that conservatives are battling liberals and vice-versa in an eternal king-of-the-hill for control of the political system. We need conservatives, liberals, and leftists--we actually have no leftists in government--working together because they can admit that no one ideology has all of the answers to address our problems.
While it seems that all previous revolutions look to replace the privileged class with the marginalized class(es), we need revolutions that include, not exclude, both the privileged and the marginalized and redistribute the power so the privileged and the marginalized have equal power. Hopefully that means that they will work together to advance each other's interests.
We need to change our revolutions from being based on exclusion to being based on inclusion of both previously marginalized groups with oppressive groups. We need revolutions that replace practices without eliminating people. We need revolutions that are based on getting different groups to collaborate rather than to replace and discard.
Our survival as society and nation depends if we can conduct a new kind of revolution than what was practiced before.
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