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We Can Make a Non-Exploitative Society Work

We working-class people are the humanity of the future.

Societies divided into classes are no longer workable. They are collapsing in almost every aspect of their functioning. They are still producing billionaires at an accelerating rate, but they are . . . producing starving and homeless populations at an even greater rate. They are cooperating to keep small “wars” in progress on the basis of long out-of-date nationalisms, “religious differences,” and ridiculous claims that security lies in production of more arms.

These class societies are facing populations, however, that have shown they will no longer tolerate world wars. They are facing populations to whom the debris left by several generations of Cold War activities is now plainly visible as a long-term fraudulent manipulation of the world’s people.

. . . The oppressive class societies can at present seem to only repeat the less and less believable inanities of past propagandas.

The collapsing class societies can, perhaps, for a while longer, go on piling up larger accumulations of the valuable capital produced by the workers of the past and the present, which was looted from them and is still being looted from them at the present. The collapsing class societies have, up to now, been able to manipulate the populations during most elections. They have been able until now to see that the voters are only offered choices between . . . stark right-wing dodo [stupid] candidates and pretentious “liberals.” . . . When such “liberals” are allowed to win elections, they are never allowed by the real masters of the economy (who paid for their elections) to do more than demonstrate their own lack of courage, lack of real principles, and general ineptitude. This, of course, is intended to conveniently pave the way for the return of the right-wing dodos in the next farcical election.

Can the working class simply wait for the oppressive society to collapse of its own contradictions? I think it would be most unwise of us to do so. Enormous suffering by the finest people and the most innocent people in the world could take place while we waited.

It has taken hundreds of millions of years for the tremendous, precious variety of living things we share the planet with to evolve, yet most of them are in danger of being wiped out [destroyed] in a few years by the . . . rapacity of the oppressive society’s system of profiteering exploitation.

The oceans, the lakes and streams, the atmos­phere, the soil, the forests, all can be ruined if we allow the present society to stagger on. If we continue to operate within the patterns that have been placed upon us, we give free reign to the patterns that have been placed upon the owning class.

Our lives are demeaned and distorted by timidity, submissiveness, tolerance of alcohol and drugs, willingness to be distracted by “shopping,” sports loyalties and enthusiasms, and sensational journalism. “Religious” pronouncements and “patriotic” appeals will be used to distract us from our clear responsibility as the great majority of the population of our planet to take charge of things and see that intelligence operates in human affairs. . . .

I do not think there is any question that intelligent people can make a non-exploitative society work, and work extremely well.

 

Harvey Jackins

From pages 153 to 156 of “The Present Situation for Working-Class People,” in The Kind, Friendly Universe

(Present Time 192, July 2018)


Last modified: 2022-12-25 10:17:04+00