I regret recently that I came off as a punk when I attacked the idea of revolt. I would like to revisit the idea of revolt. The word revolt, taken broadly, is necessary to upend the status quo and reform our unjust system. The question is what form this revolt should take. I will do my best to define what the core problems are that plague US civilization. I will also try to explain that a populist revolution would not solve these problems. In fact, I believe history bears out that hitherto successful and unsuccessful revolutions have "tightened the spiral" and increased the tempo of repression, disenfranchisement, and disassociation that serve as hallmarks of our modern empire.

 I will put this bluntly: the core problem of the western world is capitalism. Capitalism has managed to become the de facto religion and primary social engineering tool for our lives. The presevation of commodity value has overtaken ethical and cultural concerns. Society is bent towards this purpose above all others. This is because capitalism is founded on surplus value. A thing made has to be exchanged at greater value than the cost of manufacture. Therefore, capitalism is maintained by two separate but equally destructive impulses. The first is the creation of artificial demand through the manipulation of desire. The second is the reduction of cost through the manipulation of expectation. The bottom line is that the world increasingly demands more goods but expects less means. One can bear witness to this enantiodromia over all aspects of our lives. Just look at our nation's holidays and note that they are appropriated by capitalist intent. In my opinion, we have sublimated our cultural rituals and traditions to capitalism.

In order for modern corporations to run at a profit in the United States, the government must run at a deficit. That is because the gap of production is being filled by cheap consumption powered by our hegemonic control of petroleum. The bottom line is that we are borrowing from future generations to fill today's manufacturing gap. There is a second underlying problem that is even worse: derivatives and default swaps. This game of investments procured from a derived value and insurance against the derived default is an artificial financial construct that can only survive under conditions of perpetual value inflation. In my opinion, derivatives and swaps are a symptom of capitalism failing in its essential purpose. Our financial wizards are creating implied surplus value in order to magnify dwindling assets... like placing a piece of gold between two mirrors and calling yourself rich.

Given that our lives are devoted to capitalism from our birth to our funeral, I think it is safe to say that capitalism is our religion, or perhaps more correctly our spiritual state. Our calendar and clock are attuned to the needs of capitalism, so it is as natural for us to live by capitalism's intent than any other system. I believe it is safe to say that we can fantasize about a life apart from capitalism but have no concrete ideas about how to make the fantasy concrete.

And what is the signature creation of capitalism? The corporation. They are golems, beings created by words and numbers. I believe that corporations are artificial intelligence. They have rights of personhood magnified by the power of monetary speech to spread the gospel of capitalism. The wars in the Middle East are a new crusade that pays debts instead of indulging sins. We are imposing capitalist doctrine on a collectivist region through force of arms. I was personally trained to represent the MAAWS doctrine--Money As a Weapons System. This doctrine was central to the so-called Sunni Awakening in the Anbar province. This once more shows that the government is beholden to corporate entities that exist by legislative fiat.

Revolt poses a special problem due to the acceptance by the vast majority of citizens of the divine right of capital. For many, it is a full-throated acceptance, for many others it is like the caged tiger: there is no other way they know how to live. A violent or non-violent overthrow would not overcome the prejudices about capital and surplus value that are cultural norm. Every successful revolution has been due to a new form of government and ecoomics that replaces the old. But each of these revolutions has resulted in a calcified power structure that favors the exclusive party of the revolutionaries and power is handed down via nepotism. Our own revolution bears this out.

The assumptions that create the disparities of privilege and power persist in spite of the intent to remove them via revolt. Instead, we witness the rise of a new aristocracy that sustains their existence via the new philosophy. For all the best intentions of the enlightenment, the disparities between rich and power are even more vast and enforced by more advanced apparatuses of security and jurisprudence. My belief is that the suddenness of revolution does not allow for the time necessary to inculcate values commensurate to the reforms. Therefore, our revolutionary leaders are often the worst character types for change. They have the philosophy in hand, but their assumptions are entrenched in the culture they rebel from. All of the noble philsophy in the world can not overcome incidental value judgments.

The greatest and lasting positive changes to society stem from movements. The civil rights movements that dotted the landscape throughout the twentieth century, from women's suffrage to gay rights, has created the deepest and most lasting progressive impact. It is not a revolt, but the open practice of a belief system in public arena. This practice shifts the perception of the surrounding citizens and alters the culture without creating a vacuum in the existing power structure. When done long and enough and with patience. The practice of movements wears away at crystallised structures that foment inequality like water on rocks.

In conclusion, I would like to stress the importance of searching for arguments against capitalism. The commodification of life has created a world where individuals are beholden to commandments of the marketplace. The current rightwing Potemkin Revolt is based on furthering extreme neoliberal capitalism and solidifying the power of evangelical serf communities. The strongest argument against this debilitating movement is a philosophy without the trappings of capitalism whatsoever. Even modern progressives are promoting a system that is inherently autocratic/oligarchic in intent. It is more than emulating the European model and inching our way towards social democracy... it should be the complete philsophical break from a system that preaches the miracle of perpetual motion when our world is fast coming to terms with entropic breakdown.

I would invite the TPM Cafe community to have a discussion about what best to do and how to do it. I owe the bulk of this blog to the ideas of Adorno, Lacan, Foucault, Lukacs, and Fuller. I hope that I phrased a few of their incredible ideas in a manner that can spark a dialogue.