Revolutionize the Reformist

Non-violent resistance, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott under the brilliant leadership of a young Martin Luther King, (promulgated to the fore in the act of one Rosa Parks, though hardly the first to have refused to give up a seat), can achieve astounding reforms under the very system that gives rise to their necessity, within it—giving way to “Capital with a human face”, a version not so dominated by the overt remnants of chattel slavery and also what was disastrously and ironically called “reconstruction”. 

Today, we have overt signifiers of the innate repression that exists for us in the west (This will perhaps require an inquiry into what constitutes "west"). In the developments of the previous century, after it was outlawed, “wage slavery” was outsourced. Widespread, globalized, hegemonic, invariably a product of forced coercion by multi-national corporate interest, and by the state-apparatus institutions which exist to look after said interest, namely all those that follow the Washington Consensus: the World Trade Organization (formerly known as GATT), the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank—all more-or-less representative to the rights of corporate plunder. Let's not forget USAID, either. Let’s not forget the rule of law! someone will say. Right, the rule of law. Though, as presently and legally defined, the rule of law tends to always comes from above, not below. 

Those who wield great power are frightened of democracy both in the strike of the boycott and that of the organized guerrilla movement. It is in their favor to keep society as loosely organized as possible for as long as possible. Except for themselves of course. (The capitalists are very well organized, better than any other group in fact. That is the tactic of our class enemy.) The boycott is the worse for them in an open, pluralistic, and civil society. It remains to be seen what we are; to what degree we are civil and barbaric. Our barbarity is indirect, or, if we were apologizing for the "liberal" establishment media, we would use words like, “misdirected”, “unwise”, “imprudent”, so on. It is dehumanized, for certain; culturally obscured, and illegitimate to the core. Like Gandhi said—when asked what he thought of Westernized democracy—“I think it’s a very good idea.”

The law does not come from above. It comes from below, invariably, emanating and germinating from the thrust of democratic values, which historically have root in the enlightenment and liberation of those who produce society’s existing resources, whether technological or spiritual. The elite in society are de facto (and perhaps by definition) spiritually bankrupt and technologically un-innovative when it comes to constructive momentum. As political scientist and media commentator, Dr. Michael Parenti, pointed out with blunted eloquence, (I paraphrase) these are the ones we can thank for the atom bomb, its being dropped upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Not to mention the horrors of Southeast Asia, and the Middle East—genocidal campaigns all directly state-sanctioned. The havoc unleashed for half a century and longer upon Latin America, Teddy Roosevelt to Nixon to Bush, Jr.--and in Africa the neo-colonial conditions and comprador capitalism which agonize the people en masse. Lest we forget our own direct American legacy, the most ferocious structural campaign within all of recorded history, resulting in residual endangerment to outright extinction, or genocidal removal to a prescribed territory. Our Native America. Just look for the Oklahoma license plate.

We live in the age and inside the belly of an imperial tyranny, with mass-murder and genocide on-scale with Orwell’s prophetic totalitarian vision of a future under surveillance, oblivious to its own history. We are very close to fulfilling this vision in the west. The poison is coming home, or as Malcolm X, characteristically provocative, said of the President Kennedy assassination, "I think it's a matter of the chickens coming home to roost." 

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PS: Let’s rehash some basic definitions for ourselves. Here are some from my end:

Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie  =  democratic, parliamentary avenues for those without 

economic power; meanwhile, all economic power is structurally restricted to the hands of the few who already “possess” it—what Madison referred to as the “opulent minority.”

Dictatorship of the Proletariat  =  otherwise democratic, besides the initial coercion, forced or negotiated, of said “opulent” minority’s right and ability to monopolize and coerce the remainder of society, personally benefiting from others’ expropriated labor (Also known as the “moneyed” or “business class.”)--by the economic majority, being those who do the actual work and suffer under the very capital they collectively produce, but currently have no personal or collective legal rights to. The principal sufferers and systemic burden-bearers under Capitalism--not to mention disenfranchised investors--having invested blood and desperate generations of old.