David Harvey has written about a “co-revolutionary theory” of change. In this theory Harvey argues that anti-capitalist movements today must address “mental conceptions;” uses and abuses of nature; how to build real communities; workers relations to bosses; exploitation, oppression, and racism; and the relations between capital and the state. While a tall order, the co-revolutionary theory suggests the breadth of struggles that need to be embraced to bring about real revolution.
Harvey’s
work mirrors many analysts who address the deepening crises of capitalism and
the spread of human misery everywhere. It is increasingly clear to vast
majorities of people, despite media mystification, that the primary engine of
destruction is global finance capitalism and political institutions that have
increasingly become its instrumentality. Harvey’s work parallels the insights
of Naomi Klein, Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Reich, Noam Chomsky, and a broad array
of economists, historians, trade unionists, peace and justice activists and
thousands of bloggers and Facebook commentators.
Of
course, these theorists could not have known the ways in which the connections
between the co-revolutionary theory and practice would unfold. Most agreed that
we are living through a global economic crisis in which wealth and power is
increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands (creating a global ruling class).
Human misery, from joblessness, to hunger, to disease, to environmental
devastation, to state violence, is spreading. And as events since Ferguson have
pointed out, the links between class exploitation, structural racism, and
patriarchy are inseparable.
But
history has shown that such misery can survive for long periods of time with
little active resistance. Even though activists in labor, in communities of
color, in anti-colonial/anti-neo-colonial settings are always organizing, their
campaigns usually create little traction. Not so since 2011. Tunisians rose up
against their oppressive government. Larger mobilizations occurred in Egypt.
Protests spread to Yemen, Algeria, Oman, Bahrain, and Libya.
Assuming
that working people, youth, women, and various professional groups would remain
quiescent in the United States, right-wing politicians saw the opportunity to
radically transform American society by destroying public institutions and
thereby shifting qualitatively more wealth from the majority to the minority.
In North Carolina, Wisconsin, and later in Ohio, Indiana, and around the
country a broad array of people began to publicly say “no, enough is enough.”
Even those with criticisms of President Obama continued their mobilization to
secure his reelection and the defeat of the right-wing. Youth, particularly
African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans, have risen
up angry all across the United States, increasingly deepening their
understanding of and demands for fundamental institutional changes.
The
resistance in the Middle East launched in 2011 was about jobs, redistribution
of wealth, limiting foreign financial penetration, and democracy. In the United
States the issues have been even more varied: the right of workers to
collectively bargain, Right-To-Work laws, defending public education, free
access to health care including the defense of reproductive rights, and
greater, not less, provision of jobs, livable wages, and secure retirement benefits.
Police accountability, mass incarceration, and an end of the “schools to prison
pipeline” have been increasingly prioritized in mass movements.
Where
do progressives go from here? I think “co-revolutionary theory” would answer
“everywhere”. Marxists are right to see the lives of people as anchored in
their ability to produce and reproduce themselves, their families, and their
communities. The right to a job at a living wage remains central to all the
ferment. But in the twenty-first century this basic motivator for consciousness
and action is more comprehensively and intimately connected to rebuilding trade
unions, opposition to racism and sexism, and support for education, health care,
sustainable environments, and peace. All these motivations are part of the same
struggle.
It is
fascinating to observe that the reaction to the efforts of the economic ruling
class and political elite to turn back the clock on reforms gained over the
last 75 years have sparked resistance and mobilization from across an array of
movements and campaigns. And activists are beginning to make the connections
between the struggles.
It is too early to tell
whether this round of ferment will lead to victories for the people, even
reformist ones. But as Harvey suggests, “An anti-capitalist political movement
can start anywhere…The trick is to keep the political movement moving from one
moment to another in mutually reinforcing ways.”
