After the revolution, then what?

[serene]

So those of you who have been reading me on Usenet and LJ/DW lo, these many years, have often heard me say "Ted Rall is a god," and less often, "Wow, Ted Rall may be a god, but sometimes he's also a dick." Anyway, he's Kickstarting a book about what to do *after* the revolution; that is, if the 99% succeed in dismantling the current corrupt system and a people-centered system takes its place, what then? What does one do to ensure that that system succeeds in its aims: redistribution of wealth, safety/security, etc. He plans to travel to countries that have survived recent revolutions and do some research, and some of what he says will make lots of sense to me, if history is any guide, and other things will not.

I'm a child of my society; I have doubts that revolution will succeed when so much of the dominant power structure is set up to make sure it fails. Still, I'm in favor of a radical change in the way power is held in this country, and I'm especially interested in talking and thinking about what comes AFTER. I had a Marxist boyfriend for a short while, and we always got as far as me asking, "Yes, but THEN what?" and he would say, "Oh, I don't know. But we need a revolution!" I am hoping Rall's Kickstarter gets funded so it can contribute some "then what" to the dialogue.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tedrall/congratulations-you-have-overthrown-the-us-governm

Comments

[redbird]

I don't have a good answer for "after the revolution, then what?" but I hope I would take it as the invitation to brainstorming, rather than "I don't know. But we need a revolution." (I'm not a Marxist, because I don't buy historical inevitability, but I am a feminist socialist, so of course I want a revolution.")

[necturus]

I'm a child of my society; I have doubts that revolution will succeed when so much of the dominant power structure is set up to make sure it fails.

The revolution, or metamorphosis as I prefer to call it, will succeed when the dominant power structure has grown so rotten that it can no longer continue to function.

A new structure must then be built upon the ruins of the old, spearheaded my a movement of, by, and for the working class, or "the 99%" as it is now fashionable to call it. This movement must be what Lenin would call a revolutionary vanguard, but it must learn from Lenin's mistakes and those of his colleagues. There must be neither a Stalin in our future nor another corrupt self-serving elite.

We are probably still decades away from that point, I think.

[firecat]

Thanks for the signal boost.

I didn't like that about my Marxist boyfriends (and my own studies in Marxism) either.

[ljgeoff]

The problem with world politics is that physics isn't going to wait for the world to get it's shit together. Physics doesn't care. The arctic will be ice free in a couple of more years and with out a lot of planning (which, we're not planning anything at all at the moment) we'll have food riots here in the US not long after that. On top of that, the petroleum industry has stated that gasoline will cost about $10/gal by 2020.

It will be interesting to see how the US handles $10/gal gas and food riots in 2020.

It looks like Lovelock nailed it when he said that it'd be 2025 when the shit would hit the fan.