![]() | The Cavalier daily Wednesday, March 17, 1971 | ![]() |
II
I do not see how anyone who
seriously undertakes to look at our
present society can proceed
without first addressing himself to
the problem of advanced monopoly
capitalism and its relationship to
the impoverished majority of the
world. The facts speak louder than
the ideology.
In nation after nation, America's
"allies" are the classes who enjoy a
monopoly of wealth and power;
our "enemies" are those groups in
these same countries who aspire to
a more just economic system for all
the people. If we are to cease being
an enemy to the aspirations of
people everywhere, we must reject a
system based on profits, expansion,
nationalism and power.
Nor can we usefully consider
our present system without
confronting the consequences of
capitalism within our individual
selves. Corroding competition ("the
pursuit of loneliness," in Philip
Slater's words), the repression of
women, of true masculine identity,
and of the artistic, spiritual and
feeling elements in all of us, all
derive from our alienated concepts
of work, from the obsession that
we must brutalize ourselves and one
another lest all motivation lapse.
A third fact of American life
that must be faced is the incredible
contradiction between our
purported democratic faith and the
systematic and overpowering use of
propaganda to impose false
consciousness. Public schools, the
mass media, advertising and the
public relations style of politics are
all blatant efforts to manage people
by manipulating knowledge. Surely
it is pointless to talk about a
renewed democracy unless we can
prevent the possession of our
minds.
The first affirmative
requirement of a new society is a
system of planning, allocation and
design. Today there is no control
over what any organization may
invest, produce, use up, distribute.
The need for planning has been
obvious since before the New Deal,
but we have refused to see it. It is
time for us to grow up to
acknowledge that the great forces
of technology cannot be left the
playthings of corporate
expansionism and personal
ambition.
But planning cannot be left to
the planners. That is the mistake
that produces the suffocating
rigidity of some Communist
societies and the inhumanity of our
public welfare and housing.
Planning is a tool, not an end, and
its goals must come from outside
the process. Only a renewed
democracy can supply them. In a
complex society, it is foolish to
pretend that democracy is satisfied
by a once-a-year election day.
People must be able to "vote"
every day by expressing their values
on the job, as newly aware
consumers, in many kinds of groups
and organizations, and in a variety
of public hearings. Democracy must
become as multifaceted and
pervasive in daily life as government
is now. Planning could then
respond, not dictate.
To provide continuity and
universality to the values generated
by a renewed democracy, a new
society must be predicated upon
law. Such law would be an
expression of lasting values, such as
autonomy, privacy, freedom of
expression, the right to adequate
income, the right to one's natural
environment. Such law would not
operate primarily against man, but
against technology, organizations,
and power from whatever source.
And it would speak in terms
sufficiently universal to provide a
channel of communication and
community so that hardhat,
student and professional could
recognize a value like autonomy as
one they all share. Planning,
directed by democracy and guided
by law, is the means by which
technology can be brought to the
service of man.
If this is the struggle that lies
ahead, why are expressions of joy
and optimism appropriate? The
question is asked by those who
think of pain and struggle as
incompatible with joy. But the true
opposite of joy is not pain but
numbness, apathy, lack of feelings
or caring. Many new consciousness
people already realize, and the rest
will discover, that changing one's
life involves incredible struggle,
vulnerability, suffering and pain, as
John Lennon has recently told us.
The source of optimism is the
discovery of new possibilities where
all seemed dead, the finding of new
space in the human mind, the
knowledge that man still has within
him the sources of renewal.
There is a personal struggle, and
there is a social struggle, and it is
long past time to stop evading them
both and begin, as a nation, to face
the great issues of our times. For in
the meantime, day and night, the
bombs continue their war against
mankind.
![]() | The Cavalier daily Wednesday, March 17, 1971 | ![]() |