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Most Americans are lazy and selfish, just fine with the status quo.
Stereotype, much? The opposite is true: many Americans WANT change. What has been proven by Occupy Wall Street is that one can only reform the system so far from below however, while from within, the government will only change so many of it's inner workings.
True reform, true change isn't possible as if the Occupy Movement got everything that it wanted, then it would require a total overhaul of the "system," I.E. free-market capitalism.
Karl Marx once addressed the issue of government reform in a critique of an article entitled "The King of Prussia and Social Reform" in 1844:
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The state will never discover the source of social evils in the “state and the organization of society,” as the Prussian expects of his King. Wherever there are political parties each party will attribute every defect of society to the fact that its rival is at the helm of the state instead of itself...
from:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/08/07.htmIn 2012, the same holds true in the U.S. Depending on which of the two main parties is running the show, each will blame the other for societal defects. The state, in a blind act of trying to protect itself, is incapable of realizing that it is the system that perpetuates militarism, war, poverty-in-a-land-of-plenty, etc.
It's why Obama was unable to offer "change" to voters. Even if he was sincere and wanted to offer real change, he soon found out when in office that when working within the narrow confines of the system, certain "socialist" policies of his could only go so far.
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...That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...
When this famous statement was penned in the Declaration of Independence, many inside the government and in the colonies figured that just be freeing themselves from the British crown, they could usher in a wave of equality.
The opposite proved to be true. By the late 1700's/early 1800's, a form of "true capitalism" was practiced, with zero intervention from the government. Mill workers, most of them female, spearheaded reforms to the system from below to allow the right to form trade unions. Companies considered trade unions as"conspiratorial, illegal combinations" against the employer. Even when strikes by mill workers routinely got put down(striking was illegal) and became increasingly militant, the government did nothing to stop the employer(s) from cracking down in the interest of preserving the equality the founding fathers had supposedly achieved for the American people by forging a republic.
The female mill workers proved themselves to be at the vanguard of early American labor struggles, eventually winning the right to strike and to form labor unions, and in Marxist terms would have been considered part of the advanced section of a new class known as the proletariat.
in "The Principals of Communism," Engels wrote concerning the spontaneous rise of this new class in a reply to a question concerning whether or not they ever had existed before:
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No. There have always been poor and working classes; and the working class have mostly been poor. But there have not always been workers and poor people living under conditions as they are today; in other words, there have not always been proletarians, any more than there has always been free unbridled competitions.
from:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htmRegardless, capitalists and the state that increasingly supported them continued to put down the working poor through a variety of repressive means throughout the entirety of the 19th century. Following the fall of the 1871 Paris Commune, New York City police actually crushed a peaceful demonstration in the heart of the city for fear that workers would rise up and form a "New York Commune." I'm dead serious.
source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tompkins_Square_Riot_%281874%29The American state proved itself time and time again to be against reform, and as it hardened itself following every minor or major economic crisis it served only to protect itself from any uprising of the popular masses, insulating itself from further reform.
The founding fathers had, IMHO, failed in their mission to create an equal society, as well as to protect the American people from it's own government.
In 2012, there is no way the state would let itself be overthrown from below; no old, frail scrap of paper will prevent them from unleashing it's full power upon a rebellious American people.
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The more defined the leadership structure is, the better it's chances at success as well as it's chances of instituting a better form of government, rather than pure mob rule
Past attempts by revolutionaries to usher in centralized, iron-disciplined organization into a movement in order to overthrow governments had only ended in the creation of new, equally oppressive-if not more oppressive-left-wing states as a replacement to right-wing states.
There's a fine line between too much organization, and too little organization in a movement.
19 May 2011, 5:44 am
Yeah I heard that america would be the worst country to try and invade became the cillivians are armed with alsorts of guns.
Afghanistan is NOT militarily invincible nor is it unconquerable! Tamerlane's Afghan campaign was astoundingly successful as he dealt the Afghans a humiliating defeat and then proceeded to colonize and civilize Afghanistan. I think that Afghans are people who are incapable of ruling themselves and that's why America's war effort there is failing.
