Revolution (20 page)

“From a technological standpoint,” writes DeGraw, “we are ready for ‘Liquid Democracy’; with Liquid Democracy you can designate your vote on any issue to any person of your choice. For example, if there is an economic policy that is coming up for a vote, but you don’t understand the policy that well, you can give your vote to someone you trust who does understand the policy. With the level of technology that we now have, that’s a common-sense sensible political system that would provide a vibrant democracy and legitimately reflect the will of the people.”

Liquid Democracy, then, is a form of direct, electronic, participatory democracy that acknowledges that a lot of people won’t vote on a tedious issue like planning permission for a new sewage system. Which inadvertently implies that the liquid in this Liquid Democracy is fecal. Nonetheless, in a devolved, collectivized, participatory democracy, a small, self-determined constituency can nominate an accountable figure to act on their behalf. As we’ve said before in relation to Dave Graeber’s input, democracy would be good, but democracy ain’t what we’ve got. An empowered, involved civil society who see their collective will delivered is now a possibility.

Adam Curtis has insisted with a tenacity and fervor that truly only belongs in cage-fighting that I point out that social media like Facebook and Twitter are of no use when it comes to bringing about radical change; he regards these arriviste communicative tools
as useful only for “clicktivisn” and loose social ties, not the ardent bonds required to get people to risk their lives confronting authority. I think that as new ideologies are nurtured and deployed, new social tools like these mentioned will be as useful as anything else in connecting people and conveying information. As long as Facebook doesn’t at the behest of the FBI stick up a load of moody info designed to put you on a massive downer.

Switzerland is already cracking on with direct democracy, with results which are impeded I think by the context in which they occur: Switzerland. Have you ever been there? It’s peaceful, it’s clean, the chocolate is delicious, but the Swiss people are dependent upon the same sources of information that everywhere else is, so their state of limited electronic referenda reflects that.

Anyone in Switzerland can get a bill voted on if they get 50,000 signatories. Some interesting referenda have been held:

They voted against it.

They voted against it.

They voted for it.

Now, I am not about to claim, as we approach the midpoint of this book, to be a social scientist; there is too much dependence on anecdotal evidence, too much faith in the mystical, and too much radicalism for that. Plus zero education in that field—you almost certainly require A-levels; fuck that. My point is that the outcomes of these referenda are suspiciously concordant with the will of the elites that typically exert their power through more easily manipulated dual-party democracy. Why is that? According to Dave DeGraw:

“The first step toward evolution and freedom is to get a conscious understanding of the mental prison that we are all bred into. Our consciousness is conditioned from cradle to grave. As the ghost of Goethe whispers in the wind …‘None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.’ ”

What the results of direct democracy in Switzerland indicate is that even measures that seem to put power directly into the hands of the people are redundant if we are not given access to reliable information. We need a media that isn’t governed by the same ideology as the big businesses for whom our governments administrate. Dave uses this illustrative Guy Debord quote to help us understand the information we are fed through the media and the function of that information:

“ ‘For what is communicated are orders … those who give them are also those who tell us what they think of them.’ ”

Debord, who was a clever old stick and as French as adultery, was a “situationist,” this was a gang of avant-garde artists, political theorists, and smart-arses who thought that Marxism was basically alright but a bit too strict—what with the gulags and murders and bullying.

That, though, didn’t detract from the irrefutable fact that capitalism, in spite of providing us with lovely tellies and an apparently
enhanced standard of living, was eroding the essential experience of being human. The situationists thought that it led to social alienation—us lot all feeling lonely, detached from each other, our environment and our own nature—plus commodity fetishization.

I like the word “fetish”—you’ve probably noticed; I keep using it. “Fetish” was originally used to describe an object of religious devotion—like a relic sold by an archaeologist trickster. “This is Saint Bernadette’s finger—it’s yours for a fiver.” You could then stare at the dubious digit and think a bunch of holy stuff, the object providing a visual focus for devotional mental activity.

These days when we hear the word—when I first heard the word—it was in regard to sexual fetish; “Frank’s got a foot fetish,” you might hear these days. This is where poor ol’ Frank has got himself into such a palaver about how’s yer father that he can no longer express himself through straightforward coital activity, which, due to his childhood or whatever, he regards as a dumb mechanical thrust of flesh pistons and clutching, mucus-covered valves.

His only way back to enjoyment of erotic activity is via a manageable deviation from the pure source, like a lovely well-pedicured tootsie, with violet-lacquered nails, like his Auntie Val used to have when she rocked him on her lap and he felt free from the clammy tyranny of Mummy’s arms and the clattering exasperation of Daddy’s tobacconated sigh. That’s Frank for ya, the poor bugger.

Commodity fetishism is the application of fulfillment to an object that can be acquired through the market. We know, don’t we, in our little hearts, in our clearer, truer selves, that a Ferrari—whilst superficially, geometrically pleasing and aesthetically titillating, with its curves and pulsating scarlet haunches—is just a bloody dumb lump of potential travel. A swift little electronic cart.

We know, don’t we, in the place in our hearts where we felt connected to our first friend, or first noticed that the grass in the garden was beautiful to touch or smell, that a pair of calf-high, Cuban-heeled, pointy-toed, zip-up, black Dior boots are just clods to plod the pavement with. We know, don’t we—do we, Russell?—that they cannot, will not, shall not give us relief or sanctuary or love.

Do we really want to end our lives without discarding these lies?
Do we want to hunker down into our earthy cradle, never having been released from the grip of the anxious mind, the ridiculous lie that material things can provide solutions, instead of the sublime?

Do you want those boots if the true cost is God? If the true cost is family? If the true cost is that most American of dreams, freedom?

Well, Guy Debord and his clever-clog chums thought it had to go. They cooked up this idea called “the Spectacle” to help us understand what was going on, a philosophical tool that provided a story to deliver to our pickled brains the troubling truth that we were now experiencing a secondhand, approximate reality.

They demonstrated this by creating “situations” that exposed the absurdity of our reality—the unquestioned reality which we all accept. The movement was inherently political, and people still use it to make a point—like by nicking some valuable paintings from a museum and using them on barricades in a neighborhood where there’s a lot of argy-bargy—to demonstrate that the authorities, when reclaiming the artworks, are more concerned about the preservation of heirlooms than about people.

Dom Joly, Sacha Baron Cohen, and
Jackass
in a way do stuff derived from this tradition, because their crazy public antics make us question the nature of customary, consensual behavior. Mostly for a laugh, though. At its inception, situationism was politically motivated.

These ideas were influential in the uprisings that took place all over the world in the sixties, particularly in Paris; as you know, the French are never truly happy unless chopping someone’s head off or having it off with someone else’s missus. I suppose the perfect scenario would be to have some petrified aristo genuflecting at the altar of the guillotine God while, just out of sight, Jacques (or whatever) carries on with his wife. But let’s not get bogged down in senseless xenophobia. The point is that fetishism, whether religious, sexual, or commercial, is a diversion from the source.

This idea is not dissimilar to Radhanath Swami’s observation that “All desire is the inappropriate substitute for the desire to be at one with God” or the desire to live in harmony with the whole, in union with truth.

The truth. The truth is: there is on this frequency, from our human perspective, a planet, some beings, some resources; would it not be sensible to employ systems that benefit the planet, the beings, and the resources?

Not needlessly revere artificial constructs that benefit only a few people? Dave now, the beatnik rabble-rouser that he is, explains some of the economic dimensions to our current absurd situation.

“Distribution and profits are at an all-time high. Instead of this dramatic increase in wealth creation delivering a healthier standard of living to everyone, it has been consolidated within a mere fraction of the global population.

“In the United States, 95 percent of income gains since the recession began have gone to the top 1 percent.”

Phew, I’m glad to find a statistic about extreme wealth that doesn’t include me. As you know, one of the techniques to negate the ideas in this book, or the stuff I say, is to harp on about the fact that I’ve made a load of wedge. Well, I’m not in that problematic 1 percent, so that’s good. Also, I’m not averse to giving up wealth in circumstances determined by the collective will.

To contra-paraphrase New Labour architect and vandal of British socialism, Peter Mandelson, I’m “seriously comfortable with society getting extremely equal.”

Now let’s give Dave back the cudgel to browbeat us into supplicant acceptance of his version of contemporary finances:

“In the U.S., the 400 richest people have as much as 185 million people, over 60 percent of the population. As absurd as that is, on a global scale, the richest 85 people have as much as 3.5 billion people, half of humanity!”

We are well aware of the fun-bus statistic, but it’s nice to hear it from a variety of sources; it’s the sort of information that ought be more prominent, promoted ahead of Kim and Kanye or even football. The more we think about this statistic, the more likely that we’ll be moved to act on the peaceful establishment of a fair global alternative, some of the tenets of which are becoming apparent to us: self-governance, decentralization of power, cancelation of unfair debt, removal of corrupt global trade agreements, a return to
local responsible agriculture, the removal of the physical and psychological tools of the powerful, and portraits of me in every living room. I added the last one for a laugh.

Dave reckons, a bit like economist Thomas Piketty (French of course), that this is not a glitch, a blip, or a hiccup; this is the intended result of our economic system.

“This is not happening by mistake or inevitability. During the bailout of Wall Street, $30 trillion in support and subsidies went to the most powerful players on Wall Street. That was the greatest theft of wealth in history. Throughout the entire world, the Federal Reserve, IMF, World Bank, ECB, and BIS carry out genocidal economic policies. Just because that sounds hyperbolic and incredibly harsh doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

I don’t recognize a lot of those acronyms. I know IMF—International Monetary Fund—but ECB and BIS are a mystery to me.…“Russell, you could google them in the time it took to write this sentence.” No, I couldn’t. I turn the Internet off when I write; otherwise I get distracted looking at pointless balderdash, trying to claim it’s research.

Furthermore, it’s bloody obvious that they’re international financial institutions that were set up to deregulate trade conditions for global conglomerates and make it easier for marauding corporations to subjugate the rest of us into weary compliance.

Look it up yourself or ask a grown-up. I’ve got to write 100,000 words here, and all so that at the end of it I get a ten-second warm consolatory glow—“Ooh, I got shit GCSEs, but, look, I’ve done a book”—then a bunch of cunts telling me I’m a hypocrite because I’m in love with a member of the aristocracy, who happens to be an extremely high-caliber individual, then probably someone’ll go through this book with a fine-tooth comb, find an example of me being a bit sexist or something, and try and dismiss the broader argument. You look it up, we’re all in this together and trying to get past the old ideas of exalted individuals solving problems.

Here’s some more terrifying jargon from Dave.

“In the last year, the Federal Reserve handed out another trillion dollars through their ‘Quantitative Easing’ (QE) program. Most all
of that money, like the trillions during the bailout, went to the big six banks so they could dish out all-time record-breaking bonuses.”

Let’s break this one minor Fed program down: With the trillion dollars they most recently handed out, you can give every unemployed person in America a $50,000-per-year job.