On Thu, 15 Jan 1998, Richard K. Moore wrote:
> (f) Only a major political revolution which changes the basis of
> leadership and power on a global scale can shift the direction of global
> society. In order for such a revolution to succeed, the USA must either be
> in the forefront or not far behind: it single-handedly has the power and
> influence to make or break the revolution, as its geopolitical track record
> over the past 50 years has amply demonstrated.
Most of your post looks fine to me, but I wonder about this point.
This may have been true in the Cold War era, but nowadays, the USA is a
small, declining economy amidst a very large world-system. The EU is a
bigger market, and Japan and the East Asian countries haven't exactly been
resting on their laurels since 1989 (though of course now they have to
deal with an Eastern European-style meltdown of their peripheries). Put it
another way: reaction in the USA has put the hurt on many Latin
American Left projects, but our control over the world-system has,
thankfully, declined considerably since the Eighties. Nowadays, when
economic crises break out in the Czech Republic or South Korea, it's Japan
and the EU which seem to be doing the bailouts. This suggests that a canny
resistance movement might find new, post-American sources of leverage in
the decades to come.
> (b) The very process by which the movement can be built up is the
> same process by which it can be dynamically maintained: mediation among a
> growing circle of constituencies, promotion of mutual education and
> understanding across constituency boundaries, the establishment of
> consensus agendas, and the negotiation of coordinated programs of policy
> and action. So as to maximize grass-roots responsiveness and minimize
> bureaucratic self-aggrandizing tendencies, the coalition itself should
> remain an umbrella organization of constituencies - a lean mediating
> agency, not a power brokerage nor an "institution". Checks-and-balances
> mechanisms will be necessary to guarantee on-going grass-roots orientation
> in coalition operations.
Very much like the ideal (if not the practice) of the Greens. What's your
impression of the Green movement generally, and especially the
well-organized German Green Party? What can and should the Greens in less
organized, Anglo-Saxon countries be doing to generate these kinds of
radical umbrella groups?
-- Dennis