are thus small in number, and spirit. And maybe our goals are too small.
My goal is freedom. Especially from tyrants (a better word than greedy capitalist, I think) who take the opportunity we produce and stick it in their pockets. Even with the people who are paid directly or indirectly to do their bidding there are only a few hundred thousand of them, lets say a million. But they steal opportunity from over 300 million who serve to provide them with comfort, profit, and power at the expense of our own and our kid's lives abroad and at home, our education, medical care, our future.
I know which team I'm on if my neighbors, us, decide we don't wanna serve Mr. Charlie any longer.
The piece at the following link was written nearly 500 years ago, so we have the advantage of seeing what happened after, comparing it across time and people in different places, but with the same struggle.
"From all these indignities, such as the very beasts of the field would not endure, you can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces"
The rest is
here. Make coffee first.
They can't take our output without cooperation. 300 million servants for their causes. You can look over the past few hundred years and see people become angry at their conditions, and sometimes pull out the guillotine or guns or ballots, try and fight against the tyrant. But the nasty little buggers always come back. Which is why I consider it busy work to deal with tyrants. It might be better investing your time to figure out how to work with your brothers and sisters in the struggle for freedom so we no longer need ask anything.
If, instead, the 300 million would just quit cooperating with the tyrants they immediately obtain their freedom. Translated to today that probably means decades to organize and build. (The tyrants got serious again after the civil war, were slowed for awhile in FDR's time, but came back. So it's not going to be a quick fix). We find out if minds can be opened to the possibility of freedom again, build structures for our future, retrain people It means we acquire (buy) whatever the means of production will be for our future and operate it ourselves, competing in the global market we are being prevented from competing in today. Do what used to be done FOR us by and at the discretion of Mr. or Mrs. Charlie (a generic name for the Master).
We need to quit giving them the products of our labor. and begging and protesting to get it back.
You asked for help, and that is possibly not what you had in mind. I don't mean that in the meantime people shouldn't go after raises, or more food stamps, or extended benefits, etc, but we shouldn't fool ourselves. As long as we are asking for our own money back we are not equal, and thus not free. Especially not if we are being told too much is going to the tyrant, so there is none left for us. And for damn sure if we are told that they must take more from us for the long-term good of the tyrant.
We do the best we can with what we have, however. Maybe we organize while doing what we can to get the tyrants to do something now, while we undermine their power by looking for like-minded people. Maybe we start cooperatives and figure out how hard it is to go from valuing individual competition to cooperating with each other so we can compete with other nations that are beating on us? That's something for us to determine as a group.
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