We Need Concerted Social Action
When we look at middle-class patterns, it’s important to consider why we who are middle class have them and where they have come from. Otherwise, we can end up assuming it is somehow our fault that we have them and if we would only discharge them, everything would be better. This assumption can easily creep into our minds, but it is not accurate. And if we base our actions on inaccurate assumptions, our strategies will inevitably be distorted and ineffective.
Today’s class divisions were created by our class-based economic system in which a tiny percentage of the population grows wealthier while the rest of us are threatened with the potentially devastating consequences of economic inequality, oppression, wars, and the climate crisis.
We who are middle class didn’t create this capitalist economic system. And our middle-class patterns are the result, not the cause, of the roles we have been trained, forced, and bribed into playing to keep the system running. We do need to discharge the patterns, but even if we could free ourselves from them right now, the oppressive society would still exist until we organized to change the whole economic system. It is that system that created the middle class and installed the patterns in our minds so that we would play the roles we do that facilitate a system that generates huge profits for the ruling class.
Capitalism has left all of us with distresses we will have to discharge to be able to work together to challenge and transform the system. But discharge alone is not sufficient to bring about the transformation we need. Wherever we find ourselves in the class structure, we need to engage in concerted social action to build a movement that can take control of society away from those who are determined to keep it on its current disastrous course.
A key step for each of us is to use the resources we have to engage in a movement that unites poor, working-class, and middle-class people to transform the system. The road to building this movement is not well marked. It also has numerous branches, and it’s not always clear which ones will lead to our destination.
If we pursue the various branches, keeping clearly in mind our goal of transforming the system, we can learn from our efforts while we discharge on our patterns and wrong turns. Then we’ll have interesting lives and the best chance of building the society we want.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of wide world change
(Present Time 205, October 2021)