The Great Debate: Revolution or Reform?

Occupy is based on a few basic principles of economic, social and environmental justice. But some of us want to tweak the system while others want more sweeping change. This week we ask: do we need a revolution, or should we follow the path of systemic reform?

 

FOR REFORM/ KIT MARSTERS

 

Revolutions tend to be messy. It’s tempting to think a group of intelligent and sensible people can steer a revolution down the right path and bring beneficial change to a country, but sooner or later it will spiral out of control. Some people will always have an agenda of their own.

 

Revolutions tend to be chaotic and can easily lead to bloodshed. When chaos breaks out, civility is the first casualty. Looting, burning buildings and fights are regular occurrences during revolution. The damage done could make people lose their homes and livelihoods.

 

Sometimes the citizens of a country are left with no other alternative: Revolution becomes the final option when all other measures have proven to be ineffective. Yet the loss of even one life would mean that the people starting the revolution have blood on their hands. This is not to be taken lightly. It should be avoided at all cost.

 

Reforming the system will be difficult. It’s true that there will be resistance from the ones who benefit from the current set-up, and the big corporations and individuals who pull the strings are powerful. True reform won’t come easy, but it can be achieved if the right approach is taken.

 

The structure for a fair society is there. It is buried underneath an Orwellian surveillance state, media propaganda affecting people’s daily lives and corruption that has become increasingly evident with every investigation of the halls of power. Yet there are gems that could be preserved – the NHS, for example, and the basics of justice.

 

Beneficial reform needs to start by changing hearts and minds. The current system has split the nation into the ‘deserving’ and the ‘undeserving’, the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’. It has made it acceptable to see others as disposable and unwelcome, and it has alienated humans from the world around them.

 

The British people are shackled through fear – fear of others, fear of change and fear of the unknown. The media feed this fear through a daily drip of overblown scaremongering. This can only be fought by opening our minds to new ideas. Change doesn’t necessarily lead to setback. In fact, life could be healthier, happier and far more rewarding if change were welcomed. We can live in harmony with the environment and with the other.

 

People aren’t powerless. There is always a choice. Whilst the actions of an individual may seem futile, there is strength in numbers, and a single voice can turn into a mighty roar when more join in. If British citizens wake up to this fact and see that they can reject the system one deed at the time – refuse to buy from greedy companies, oppose measures they feel are immoral, write to their papers, their MPs, and, above all, shed the ridiculous idea that the only options they have in an election are Labour, the Tories or the Lib Dems, reform can start to take place.

 

We don’t need a revolution on the streets. We need a revolution of the mind.

 

FOR REVOLUTION/ JACOB RICHARDSON

 

Societal and economic reform is inherently revolutionary. This applies to whatever reform the Occupy movement might argue for, and however the movement may seek to see it realised.

 

Being revolutionary does not merely indicate a wish for drastic action for its own sake.  The principle of standing for revolutionary reform can be a response to political, social and economic hierarchies that offend basic human decency. The injustices that currently occur are examples of these hierarchies. And the coalition government under David Cameron seems intent on causing further destruction to the welfare state until at least 2015. It will pursue an irreversible institutionalisation of neoliberal ideology.

 

Like Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution or Ukraine’s (unsuccessful) Orange Revolution, we have reached a clear consensus that our political establishment is almost wholly corrupt and illegitimate. This is not mere populism: More than fifty per cent of the population voted with their feet in the last election and did not even bother turning up to cast their vote. Contrast the general apathy with the democratic appeal that has been expressed through the Occupy movement in the past months!

 

A revolution is a matter of immediacy. If we rely upon electoral “democracy”, how privatised will our National Health Service be before real change occurs? How many more children will be forced into poverty? How many more elderly or disabled people will die as a consequence of welfare cuts? How many young people will be condemned to the status of debtor wage slavery? How much more untenable damage and endangerment to the natural environment will occur? How much more corporatism will implement its domination of our communities and lives?

 

These inhuman injustices are happening right now. The choice we have is to either tolerate them while looking forward to a slightly less worse “Labour “ government, or to call for fundamental and therefore radical political reform.

 

A revolutionary movement would coordinate itself in the same way the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions did: Through mutual cooperation between trade unions and dissidents, through direct action, through citizen journalism and general strikes. Consider the metaphor of someone drowning: Should we dive straight in to rescue them from death, or should we wait until we can take a poll to decide which ineffective lifeguard can rescue them? It would be the same lifeguards who attached chains to their limbs.

 

FOR REFORM/ WILLIAM WALLACE

 

Nearly every activist has a place for revolution in his or her political toolbox. Some treasure it as their most precious tool, constantly polishing it up and yearning for the day when it can be put to good use; others hide it away at the bottom of the deepest drawers and instead choose to use strikes, lobbying or legislative change to achieve their ends.

 

The appeal of revolution is obvious: We can dream of smashing the system, destroying the structures that confine us and rebuilding our society for the betterment of all its members. Yet revolution is an unwieldy tool and indiscriminate in its manner. As Godwin said, “Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.”

 

One might also suggest that for a revolution to provide a satisfactory result for all would require a level of unity and common purpose that is not usually found in human societies. It might be possible to unite the masses to depose a brutal dictator or an unfair policy, but when they come together afterwards to define the new state the dream can too easily be destroyed by factionalism and ego.

 

In Australia there is not much of a culture of revolution: the few incidents that resemble anything close to revolution (the Rum Rebellion and the Eureka Stockade) came early in our history and are only celebrated and remembered by descendants of the original participants or those who view them as the stuff of legend. This is not to say that there haven’t been struggles or that Australians are totally apathetic; we have a long history of dissent and protest. Instead what it means is that we have found reform a more accessible and effective tool for effecting change.

 

Reform is a slow and painstaking process – but the small steps it takes can help to direct cultural changes that will, in turn, drive further reform. Reform is useful for those who want to effect change because the process of gradual reform softens the blow of change – this is something the Right knows and has put to great use to support the 1%. The Big Four banks (the major Australian banks) are also employing reform as a technique to trick consumers into accepting their extortionate business practices. It is clear that the Big Four are enjoying a lot of success in this endeavour.

 

For reform to be effective for the progressive cause we must take the reins and direct it in favour of the most disadvantaged and disaffected, rather than the 1%. We can make major reforms to address serious and immediate problems and we can chip away with smaller reform; either way we need to utilise the cultural change inspired by the Occupy movement to help the 99%.

 

FOR REVOLUTION/ LUKE SHORE

 

The system is fundamentally broken. At its heart lies the concept of private profit, an all powerful nation-state and continuous growth (which subsequently necessitates continuously increasing production and therefore consumption). These systemic facts create wage slavery and cultural hegemony, while rampant consumerism destroys the very planet that sustains our existence. Our system of representative ‘democracy’ may try and make small adjustments and improvements here and there in an attempt to make the system ‘fairer’ – but small patches cannot fix a system that is corrupt at its core.

 

The current structure of social organisation manipulates our priorities to the process of accumulating objects and the capital to purchase them with little regard for the needs of others. The financial crash of 2008 demonstrated the ubiquitous cupidity and rampant egotism that drives so many at the heart of modern capitalism.

 

Even if we label it so, the system of political organisation in our society is not a democracy. Real democracy belongs to the people (demos = people, krátos = power), so government is comprised of every one of us. To abdicate our democratic responsibilities to a tiny minority every five years makes our system of governance little more than an elective dictatorship. This is further exacerbated by the influence corporations and other financial powers exercise over the decisions of elected representatives for their own financial ends.

 

As the Democracia Real Ya movement stated in its manifesto in May 2011, the inalienable truths that we should abide by in our society include “the right to housing, employment, culture, health, education, political participation [and] free personal development”. Yet all of these are thrown aside by our society in the pursuit of material gain. As human beings we must prize these basic rights and cultivate them as crucial concepts that comprise our humanity.

 

What we need is a complete change of course, a radical transformation, an ethical revolution. If we aspire to be free, we must come up with another way to try and reconcile our society and system of political organisation with individual freedom, free of the malign influence of markets.

 

Occupy encampments across the world have created a meeting place for minds and ideas where we may come together to think, debate and discuss. A forum where we may build and develop social, ecological, and democratic alternatives in an effort to guarantee fundamental rights and freedoms for all. Through a system of inclusive, horizontal consensus-based decision making and participatory democracy we should conceive, develop and implement radically new, freer, more equal systems to organise ourselves as human beings that guarantee fundamental rights for all.

 

By Kit Marsters, Jacob Richardson, William Wallace and Luke Shore