Ten reasons to expect revolution - MWR

1. As Marie Antoinette found to her cost, any ruling oligarchy can only take the piss so much. Right now they may be sitting on a socially explosive time bomb.

2. In the past people have been bought off by different politicians, but today as dissatisfaction spreads nobody is voting, joining or selling papers, the party’s over. We know that the Bolsheviks led to the gulag, the National Socialists led to the holocaust and the Labour Party led us up the garden path. No more illusions, no more compromises, no more leaders. This time we’re going to do things ourselves.

3. Revolutionary epochs are times when history speeds up, nobody ever sees them coming.

4. Capitalism’s traditional justification, that it leads to an increase of total wealth, is increasingly inadequate as it becomes obvious that our problem is not a shortage of wealth but that our wealth is not shared equally. The promise of endless economic growth is unsustainable and, since it is us who have to make all the extra stuff, undesirable.

5. In desperation capitalist politicians have invented another justification- that capitalism guarantees freedom. From their perspective this is a very dangerous claim since capitalism has always ultimately rested on violence. Simultaneously, we see an increase in public awareness of US foreign policy, or, the policing of global capital. The protest movement against the invasion of Iraq was the biggest the world has ever seen. The invasion of Iraq was a very bad thing but it cannot be said to have been worse than other US exploits in Chile or Guatemala, for example. In an age of global communications and increasing public awareness of the role our governments perform in the world, slaughters on behalf of the economy will become less and less palatable. There is no reason to think capitalism can survive without them in the future.

6. Every generation believes that their socio-economic situation is somehow natural and inevitable. Every generation believes they stand at the end of history. Capitalism will fall like the Eastern Bloc, like feudalism and all that came before it. We are in the waning days of Babylon.

7. Everywhere today we see an increase in repression and a rise of nationalism and fascism. This can only mean one thing; capitalism as we know it has got problems.

8. It may seem absurd to talk about revolution but all the alternatives assume the continuation of the present situation, and that is even more absurd.

9. “If the workers take a notion, they can stop all speeding trains; every ship upon the ocean they can tie with mighty chains. Every wheel in the creation, every mine and every mill, fleets and armies of the nation, will at their command stand still.”- Joe Hill

10. None of this means our emancipation is inevitable. So the most important reason to look forward to a brighter future is that we are here and we are going to concentrate our efforts of heart and arm and brain, to democratise and collectivise our world.