Maybe this really is the "end of history"
Turns out you can kill a Revolutionary, a Revolution... and if the trend continues humankind as well
"Systematic battle by force and the gavel/Just enough freedom to reduce the rabble”
It’s a line from a verse I wrote as a younger man as a guest vocalist on my dad’s song “Change”. Since I am always learning, and more knowledgable since I wrote those words, I am only recently realizing the unsettling truth of the line. My former-self wrote it because I knew, subconsciously at the very least, that it was vaguely true. Years later it’s mostly frightening to really dive in to what the line means.
Despite the looming catastrophes such as the climate crisis, economic inequality, a political drift trending toward anti-democracy right wing authoritarianism, the potential for nuclear war (that could be exacerbated by aforementioned crises), etc. myself and basically everyone I know do not have any actual interest in starting a Revolution (read: a social/economic order that replaces capitalism with a system that places humanity and environment as the destination for humankind rather than endless profit/growth) anytime soon. This is basically because we have just enough freedom to remain pacified - whether it’s our communities, goodies, distractions, entertainment, or simply the basic necessities including friends and family, despite the scores of issues and impending humanitarian crisis, it is just good enough in this country.
Even when we’re made aware of the misery - the families mourning their child who was shot and killed in a school shooting, women who will now be forced to carry to term a dead fetus, refugees fleeing war-torn countries (sadly often destabilized by our own tax dollars), people dying due to heat waves caused by the climate crisis - it’s never quite bad enough, and no one is quite courageous (or would it just be stupidity and recklessness at this point? more on this later) enough, to really do anything about it. By “do anything” to be clear in this context, I mean genuinely organizing a complete overthrow of this social order by any means necessary, which I will speculate momentarily is essentially impossible all things considered. Even if you’re hyper-aware and steadfast in your beliefs that things most certainly need to change if humankind is to survive and thrive in any dignified and decent sense of the words, you’re still not going to dare to try to overthrow the train wreck that is capitalism and western “democracy” because it’s clearly highly improbable and it’s just good enough in the here and now. And if you are someone who doesn’t even have the goodies and pacification, and are truly struggling in abject poverty and misery every single day, as sadly is the case for many in America, though you know better than anyone this country isn’t as great as the powers that be say it is, you are worried about basic survival, not Revolution.
Even if you do have the uncanny, unprecedented skills and ability to potentially ignite a Revolution, or hell even just sweeping social change within the boundaries of the legal frameworks, to replace this hierarchal social order and economic system that ideologues for centuries have enslaved and slaughtered human beings to preserve, there’s historically been no real path in America for the people to gain control - even in the nation’s founding, which was just rich Americans gaining independence out of pure self-interest from the British Empire. It doesn’t matter if you’re really excellent at organizing and rebel rousing, whether peaceful (yet radical) like Martin Luther King Jr., or say it’s the bullet over the ballot like Malcolm X, or are a truly excellent place in-between like my favorite American of all time Fred Hampton; the American government in service of capital interests (and white supremacy) will snuff you out if you’re a threat (in Hampton’s case, at age 21, drugged and shot dead by the FBI as he slept next to his pregnant girlfriend). At this point, even if you sue a gigantic oil company for poisoning people like Steven Donziger, or make the public aware of war crimes like Chelsea Manning, or dare to publish material adversarial to power like Julian Assange, you will be made a harsh example by the system that places “people” known as corporations above actual people.
Even “pragmatists” (whether genuine or lying to themselves) like Obama, a man who at least at one point talked the talk, even in holding power was afraid to walk the walk. Retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern said of Obama, “He’s afraid of what happened to Martin Luther King Jr. And I know from a good friend who was there when it happened, that at a small dinner with progressive supporters – after these progressive supporters were banging on Obama before the election, Why don’t you do the things we thought you stood for? Obama turned sharply and said, ‘Don’t you remember what happened to Martin Luther King Jr.?’ That’s a quote, and that’s a very revealing quote.” I myself have it on reliable word that in a boardroom of a large undisclosed oil company, the higher-ups openly and genuinely discussed the possibility of assassinating Obama - a man who eventually ended up bragging about the amount of oil his administration procured domestically. Though I don’t think highly enough of Obama to believe he had the fortitude to shake things up for the greater good, perhaps his theory about MLK Jr. was founded - considering the vicious and wildly dishonest attacks Bernie Sanders received just for not-even-winning the Democratic Primary, I’d say it checks out.
Considering the amount of firepower that the US government has along with the amount of guns right wing adjacent people have, coupled with a massive surveillance apparatus, I believe there is absolutely no path of force. But even when there are massive movements abroad, the American state in service of capital leaves no room for Revolution. Even if the stars align in other countries and leftists gain control, or so much as nationalize their resources and means of production, the American project is so powerful it will overthrow democratically-elected governments (as it has done dozens of times) just to install brutal right wing dictators, or slap economic sanctions on the country to severely neuter any type of socialist project, sadly and unbelievably in the name of “democracy” no less.
The pure insurmountable power that capitalism has over the world and the ways in which it entrenches itself is right out of Orwell’s 1984 - a force that perhaps cannot be overthrown. Orwell knew that the way to continue to compound power was to obscure the truth and neutralize dissent, and also knew that a violent overthrow risked replacing one monstrous system with another. What he didn’t anticipate was that the future isn’t necessarily “a boot stamping on a human face forever”, but rather a long day of work capped off with a dopamine screen in the human face - not “forever” -but until the climate is destroyed, civil unrest destroys society, or nuclear winter occurs. This system, of course, most certainly can’t go on “forever”.
Capitalism produces the impression that human beings are inherently selfish and greedy because the hierarchal system inherently ushers in sociopaths (the Clintons, Trumps, CEOs, Wall Street donors, etc.) to come into power and dictate what happens to the world. Mike Davis succinctly said of this small group of emotionally and psychologically damaged people, who are completely detached from reality in their quest for profit for profit’s sake, “have more concentrated power over the human future than ever before in human history, and they have no vision, no strategy, no plan."
The idea this is all “human nature” is merely another illusion of capitalism. Most people are not damaged sociopaths - it just seems that way within an economic system that runs on profit and individualism. Because the most powerful people with the biggest bank accounts (and voices) are most certainly profit-hungry individualists, who I believe most often have zero sense of awareness as to how many people they are standing on to live their lavish lifestyles, we hear the “human nature is selfishness” explanation that serves not to actually explain human behavior but to justify the power of people who hold power.
I relate to the Antonio Gramsci quote, “the old is dying and the new cannot be born” for a variety of reasons - lack of political education and imagination, a certain level of just enough contentment in the minds of just enough people, and, like it or not, a brutal state-capitalism apparatus that, barring an unprecedentedly massive movement or substantial discomfort and unrest among the masses, simply won’t allow “the new to be born”. If Revolution is to happen in this country, it will either be due to a massive political awakening or after things get a whole lot worse for the few that do survive.
Perhaps Francis Fukayama was correct about this being “the end of history” because, if left in the driver’s seat, capitalism really will end humankind as know it. We all feel it constantly that this path we’re on is unsustainable, destructive, and creeping into worse places every day. We are already in a place where comfort and quality of life is actually worse now than in previous generations. For our children and their children to enjoy decency rather than outright misery and catastrophe, we need to significantly alter our course. I am terrified there is no path out of this decline we all feel, because as long as we feel just a bit better than our neighbor, rather than fully empathize with what our neighbor is going through, and correspondingly stand up with them and demand something change to better their - and really ultimately everyone’s - situation, then we are only going to further descend into fatal decay.
So I tried to do my small part and wrote a book about educating high school students politically. When I look at the emphasis that past revolutionaries have placed in political education, I think it might be possible to teach the masses to understand and act on their self interests as working class people and members of a larger community called “humanity”. I am under no irrational delusions; I know even if it works on some level, if teachers around the country start teaching their students to become meaningfully aware politically and empathetic to their neighbor regardless of skin color, sexual preference, country of origin, or other minor, yet overblown, differences, it could take decades to feel any meaningful effects. I can’t help but worry even if it works it’ll be too late for my two-year-old son to enjoy the same sort of life I have enjoyed to this point. Though there was an increase after the lowest birthrate in 2020 since 1930, I imagine I am not the only one who has had a similar thought or feeling - then again, maybe it’s the PFAS chemicals contributing to infertility. Hey, at least those corporations saved some money and the economy grew.
In closing, I sincerely hope that I really am just being hysterical, reminding myself that history is full of tumultuous points the human race has trudged through. But with an issue like the climate crisis creeping in mixed with the objective slide to right wing authoritarianism coupled with stockpiles of nuclear weapons, not to mention a mass media that has in no way depicted the urgency these many issues deserve and state institutions in America that are gutted and quickly losing public faith, I am extremely worried. I fear we’re in for a sort of “Children of Men” scenario, that ends with war, refugees stuffed into camps by authoritarian states, as even the authoritarian states where a decent existence will linger longer, will inevitably decay into turmoil and unrest. The saddest scene in that movie is when the soldiers cease fire amidst a horrific battle when they see the first baby in 18 years has finally been born just to start shooting again moments later. The scene shows that the thing they are fighting for is not the youth, the future, or the continuation of humankind, but for some other unknown inherently irrelevant and foolish purpose because the conditions they live in have gotten that bad, and malleable human minds that far gone. In that fictitious world, the people clearly missed the part where they had to reinvent society. This attitude of placing warped ideological values (profit being the greatest example in our world) above human well-being and life on this planet, if you pay any attention at all, rings true constantly. The options in avoiding the extinction of human civilization appear to be either staying on this objectively disastrous course until meaningful societal change is recognized by the ruling elite as an absolute necessity or changing minds before such a dire situation happens. I wish I was, but I don’t think this is hysterical.
I am left only to imagine what the world would look like if the overlords acknowledged their incompetence and banality and allowed the people to reimagine the world and have their Revolution. Though my intellect tells me it may be impossible to improve upon this level of “freedom”, my optimism is kept alive by knowing in my heart that human beings are capable of so much more if only the current and continued well-being of human beings - family, friends, community - and life in the natural world were prioritized ahead of profit and impossible infinite growth just to enrich a handful of accidentally-powerful ghouls.