“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
One of my tasks here at The R-Word is to conceptually, factually and imaginatively flesh out a space of politics which is neither strictly "public politics" (structured and dominated by the state) nor mere "private politics" -- such as making decisions about what happens in a private club or group in a political culture utterly shaped by the presence of the state and the social and cultural habits of politics which derive from living in a state-dominated society.
To my knowledge, this "third sphere" (with the original two spheres being public and private) just isn't being acknowledged as "a thing" by sociologists, anthropologists, historians, political theorists... or anyone with a university post or published book. So you can see I have my work cut out for me.
Is the what is politics channel yours? Not just you, I/we have our work cut out for us. Very much in agreement with the R2 ideas. This resonates not just politically and sociologically but with my own spiritual philosophy as well.
A great big question to me is how to establish nonviolent reimagining of societies during periods of scarcity. Do you expect that people still need to protect themselves from opportunistic violence? Does R2 see that violence as a primary means for change is simply not viable, while allowing for self defense?
I know that's an ancient question that's not been answered as far as I know. We have examples like the Shaolin temple, where there are monks dedicated to absolute pacifism, and warrior monks dedicated to defensive arts as a means of spiritual development. The two groups live together in synergy.
It seems like an obstacle to embracing love and mutual aid is having a tangible answer to protection of adherents.
No, the What Is Politics channel is not mine. It's done by some guy up in Canada. I'm down here in Santa Fe, New Mexico (USA). For some reason, the channel owner at What Is Politics is choosing to be un-named. I don't know why. But I like the channel, overall.
"A great big question to me is how to establish nonviolent reimagining of societies during periods of scarcity. Do you expect that people still need to protect themselves from opportunistic violence? Does R2 see that violence as a primary means for change is simply not viable, while allowing for self defense?"
My principal answer to this question is that we need to organize communities of mutuality, care, response-ability, compassion, kindness... love... at the neighborhood scale in towns and cities, at the village scale within villages... but at the scale at which neighbors in close proximity embody the ethos of loving-kindness, caring, sharing, cooperating at the immediate local scale. This is how we can begin to empower one another to take response-ability for our communities. I can think of no other way to do it! But I don't mean we ought to neglect the scales up from the immediate local. I simply mean that routine face-to-face human connections are the space in which we can best serve our mutualistic and egalitarian ethos in social life.
It's also the key to addressing the problem of the potentials of violence, I think. We really need to know and love our immediate neighbors. We need to know one another's stories and persons. We need to share, give, cooperate... in all the ways we can. Culture begins just outside our front doors.
I'm a strong advocate for what I call "community-oriented permaculture" practice at the neighborhood scale. This is not an easy thing to do in the dominant culture, as the dominant culture discourages us from even knowing our neighbors. In my view, creating community gardens and community food forests in commoning land is key to the process we need to engage to heal our broken relations with one another and with the natural world.
Yea, I couldn't agree more with the perspectives advanced here. I've been trying to balance work at a startup with breaking out of the post pandemic work-from-home marathon shutin to get out and involved in the local community again. We've got a neighborhood ice cream social coming that I am looking forward to. The online community boards like nextdoor are somewhat useful, but I am a big believer in time present togegher in healing trust and fostering cooperation and evolving ideas as situations change.
I'd like to start volunteering to help neighbors with their gardens too, maybe find some other younger folks with energy to do the work and pair them up with older and more experienced growers who may have more area to grow and money to fund it, but no longer the physical endurance to bring it to fruition.
"A great big question to me is how to establish nonviolent reimagining of societies during periods of scarcity."
There has always been scarcity for some. And, yes, likely there will be scarcity for many more (a larger proportion of people) as anthropogenic climate disruption continues to wreck havoc on agriculture and such. I feel that the most crucial preparatory response would be to facilitate connection and belonging within the neighborhood scale of social life. Neighbors need to talk with and also collaborate with neighbors in various ways, so that there is a genuine feeling and experience of immediate local community. To the extent that this is happening folks will have greater resiliency within communities and will be better prepared to work together to solve problems of every kind. Honestly, I believe community oriented permaculture is an ideal way to facilitate these neighborhood conditions. That would involve creating community gardens and food forests collaboratively as neighborhoods, while also advocating for personal and family permaculture practice where possible at home. This would help with food security in times of food scarcity, but it would also help connect people with direct experiences of natural processes, which I believe is crucial to our well-being both individually and collectively. I'll try to write an article or essay on community oriented permaculture in The R-Word soon-ish.
"Do you expect that people still need to protect themselves from opportunistic violence? Does R2 see that violence as a primary means for change is simply not viable, while allowing for self defense?"
Defensive violence is sometimes necessary. But violence should never be used in service to political aims. (I do not equate vandalism and property damage with violence.)
The more actual community (belonging, connection, mutuality, care, love...) we have in our neighborhoods (human scale), the less necessary and likely violence will become, but also the most resiliently responsive neighborhoods and local communities will be should defensive violence become a necessity, as in the case of various possible collapse scenarios.
I like this also, James... as someone who has been in what gets called a "civil war"... there was nothing civil about it...I'd value a face to face conversation with you, James. I understand why the Canadian doing "What Is Politics" wants to remain "under the radar" and, at the same time, I have friends who are "out" hosting "Disruptive Conversations". Canada is its own very different case from the US.. A conversation around where we are in terms of the need for united and wide spread non violent confrontation, occupation of public spaces, take over of public spaces for community gardens, revolutionary art and creativity in all modalities .. that might be fun! You could record it and then we could discuss how to edit it!
I appreciate this post and your perspective, James. I was always more about 'evolution' rather than 'revolution' (whatever/however you perceive it to be). Dropping the 'r' freed me into deeper kinship with all of the living world and patterned myself more closely to it. Do the dandelions revolt? Maybe. Do they undertake revolution? If the answer is yes, it feels to be on such a scale and with such grace that I could only refer to it as evolution. Collective evolution. That softness of graduation I feel is one path we could take - us human kin - towards unraveling our inner malevolent entanglements such that their outer expressions soften, go to nourishing rot, and sprout us collectively anew. One loving shoot at a time.
I think it would be wonderful if we could liberate the word 'revolution' from certain habitual connotations and associations -- most especially the connotation and association with violence and insurrection. So you and I seem to me to be on much the same page. But I want the energy in the word 'revolution' -- but without the violence. Revolutions have a certain urgency and pace about them which we need and are yet presently lacking.
Urgency and need of slowing down - slow down fast - slow down now. I do feel that urgency and pace is what got us into this 'mess' in the first place. What if the 'slow' was the revolution? I'm seeing snails at the frontline, sloths by their side, giant tortoises carrying the flag... and humanity behind them squirming and gnashing as they learn to relax and be present, noticing their impact on each other and the world. Revolutionary stillness. I'm in :-)
You are reminding me of Bayo Akomolafe, who is somewhat famous for saying, "The Times are Urgent, Let Us Slow Down." But notice, he acknowledged the urgency in the times. And the times do call for changes including and beyond merely slowing down. But yes, I'm all for revolutionary slowing down! I'm also for picking up the pace of doing the things that desperately need to be done -- like creating much more functional systems to replace the dysfunctional ones. Like organically organizing local communities at the neighborhood scale to implement (e.g.) community-oriented permaculture practice, and bioregional economic relocalization). All of this can be done slowly, provided it is done. Otherwise, a time will come and we'll not be prepared for what is suddenly forcing us to do these things in a damned awful hurry. I want to slow down now so we don't have to race to catch up later.
Humans are remarkably good at organizing when 'needs must' - and I hear you - truly I do - and agree that the need has been present for a very long time and it is only growing... We've never been particularly good at proactive organization as a species, not to say we couldn't start now... However I'm not sure how we can begin (effectively) when under such tension and strain (both inner and outer). That's really the root of my desire for slowing down. I've seen people deeply magnetized towards change when their nervous systems are regulated and safety is present for them.
A trauma therapist once mentioned to me 'that which we resist, grows' and it seems to me our human kin have been deeply resistant to change. It is hard and scary for so many - yet - small, meaningful changes made by all of us (my take is healing and connection) might just yield the result we seek.
I believe you (and Bayo) make crucially important points. Times are indeed urgent, and we ought to slow down. AND (perhaps paradoxically?) we also need to get to work. There is a lot of work worth doing which isn't being done. And the pace at which the work needs doing is To Begin. Not to rush. But to begin. To begin again and again, and to have long, reflective pauses having begun.
The systems which presently allow us to eat and have shelter and etc. will not be lasting much longer. They are coming to their ends, and this is why we must begin now and not later. And pause a lot. Thanks for the reminder. We need lots and lots of pauses... and stillness, and quiet. And rest. And as I begin and continue I shall breathe and pause a lot. Times are urgent. Time to pause.
Bayo is a beautiful human and I hear his words. My perspective has come from sitting with trees and listening to bees... and the wisdom of my blood ancestors who lived closely to the land. The non-human natural world has more answers than I have questions for. Wishing you wellness in your pauses and smiles as you continue your work.
Revolutionary in loving connecting, Regenerative in all the soils contaminated... education, public policy, governance, art-making, design, public entertainment, spirituality... and in our Earth's soil at multiple levels, Resilient and resistant, never conforming to the cages of interwoven oppressions that keep us caged even when the door is open... s/Self sovereign, knowing that each small one of us is Spirit living a human life not humans living a spiritual life
Omigod! You're not a Neo-Hippy are you ? "We distribute our charisma, our charm, our joy, our love, our revolutionary inspiration. We scatter it everywhere we can like flower petals or pollen." You're like the clean, non-violent version of Just Stop Oil, everywhere and nowhere. Sure, sure, it's all good, we need positive people without a political agenda to grind, they make life bearable. But at this point, in whichever country it takes place, the Revolution needs discipline, hierarchy and the angst that comes with doing what generations have shirked. Put down the Peace Pipe for a bit and take a look at the countries in Africa trying to free themselves from French domination. Their backs are against the wall and they're making it happen. Top regards from Continental Riffs.
"But at this point, in whichever country it takes place, the Revolution needs discipline, hierarchy and the angst that comes with doing what generations have shirked."
Discipline and hierarchy are apparently necessary for a successful military or violent revolution, as for example was being forced upon the people of Paris at the time of the Paris Commune (1871). The Paris commune was badly defeated in a military contest.
But I'm not proposing that kind of a revolution -- at least not in the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. That's not the sort of medicine we need in these places at this time. What we require is a non-violent, non-insurrectionary form of revolution. But this is very diffucult for us to imagine. And we have to be able to imagine it -- and talk about it -- for it to happen.
Sure. Your response is good natured, historically inaccurate (nothing was 'forced upon' the people of Paris in 70-71, they were well aware of the odds) and you presume a good deal - that I'm proposing a violent affair. I didn't say that. It's rather you who should be on the defensive. The Progressive class has been selling this non-hierarchical, leaderless, 'no insurrection' medicine since at least the 90s - to zero effect. You may not be to blame for the current state of affairs but you've contributed. Cultural uprising follows closely on the heels of political strife, and the latter can't be avoided. One of the remarkable things about the Comune was the sheer number of brilliant, committed personalities who responded to the moment. We could use a few now.
Yes, James, something was forced upon the people of the Paris commune in those years. A violent confrontation was forced upon them. They didn't go looking for that violent confrontation. It came to them. Did they expect such a confrontation? I suspect they did. And they were not prepared for it in the least.
It's clear that you don't like the idea of non-violent, non-insurrectionary revolution. And that's fine. But a strong point of my argument for it is that it's the only kind in which the revolutionaries can win. If it comes down to arms, the revolutionaries will obviously lose in most places, and particularly here in the USA, where I live.
My point was that discipline and hierarchy are necessary for winning military battles against a military force which has discipline and hierarchy -- a.k.a., a command structure in which there is a hierarchy with some giving orders and others expected to simply follow orders.
That's not necessary for the kind of revolution I think can actually succeed now in most places where a revolution is required.
Well, by all means let us know when you hoist your rebel flag from the organic garden. We'll see if you get that Big Win that you seem to feel is historically determinate of any movement. Your version of the Commune is not only bent out of shape but more importantly leaves out everything interesting about those events. But they lost - so off with them ! Cheers from the rebel continent.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
One of my tasks here at The R-Word is to conceptually, factually and imaginatively flesh out a space of politics which is neither strictly "public politics" (structured and dominated by the state) nor mere "private politics" -- such as making decisions about what happens in a private club or group in a political culture utterly shaped by the presence of the state and the social and cultural habits of politics which derive from living in a state-dominated society.
To my knowledge, this "third sphere" (with the original two spheres being public and private) just isn't being acknowledged as "a thing" by sociologists, anthropologists, historians, political theorists... or anyone with a university post or published book. So you can see I have my work cut out for me.
About politics, public and private:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQjcmDGY2vA&list=PLU4FEuj4v9eDFFfwwAcTPMQGuEZxLhtzj&index=15&t=978s
Is the what is politics channel yours? Not just you, I/we have our work cut out for us. Very much in agreement with the R2 ideas. This resonates not just politically and sociologically but with my own spiritual philosophy as well.
A great big question to me is how to establish nonviolent reimagining of societies during periods of scarcity. Do you expect that people still need to protect themselves from opportunistic violence? Does R2 see that violence as a primary means for change is simply not viable, while allowing for self defense?
I know that's an ancient question that's not been answered as far as I know. We have examples like the Shaolin temple, where there are monks dedicated to absolute pacifism, and warrior monks dedicated to defensive arts as a means of spiritual development. The two groups live together in synergy.
It seems like an obstacle to embracing love and mutual aid is having a tangible answer to protection of adherents.
cutroot -
No, the What Is Politics channel is not mine. It's done by some guy up in Canada. I'm down here in Santa Fe, New Mexico (USA). For some reason, the channel owner at What Is Politics is choosing to be un-named. I don't know why. But I like the channel, overall.
"A great big question to me is how to establish nonviolent reimagining of societies during periods of scarcity. Do you expect that people still need to protect themselves from opportunistic violence? Does R2 see that violence as a primary means for change is simply not viable, while allowing for self defense?"
My principal answer to this question is that we need to organize communities of mutuality, care, response-ability, compassion, kindness... love... at the neighborhood scale in towns and cities, at the village scale within villages... but at the scale at which neighbors in close proximity embody the ethos of loving-kindness, caring, sharing, cooperating at the immediate local scale. This is how we can begin to empower one another to take response-ability for our communities. I can think of no other way to do it! But I don't mean we ought to neglect the scales up from the immediate local. I simply mean that routine face-to-face human connections are the space in which we can best serve our mutualistic and egalitarian ethos in social life.
It's also the key to addressing the problem of the potentials of violence, I think. We really need to know and love our immediate neighbors. We need to know one another's stories and persons. We need to share, give, cooperate... in all the ways we can. Culture begins just outside our front doors.
I'm a strong advocate for what I call "community-oriented permaculture" practice at the neighborhood scale. This is not an easy thing to do in the dominant culture, as the dominant culture discourages us from even knowing our neighbors. In my view, creating community gardens and community food forests in commoning land is key to the process we need to engage to heal our broken relations with one another and with the natural world.
Yea, I couldn't agree more with the perspectives advanced here. I've been trying to balance work at a startup with breaking out of the post pandemic work-from-home marathon shutin to get out and involved in the local community again. We've got a neighborhood ice cream social coming that I am looking forward to. The online community boards like nextdoor are somewhat useful, but I am a big believer in time present togegher in healing trust and fostering cooperation and evolving ideas as situations change.
I'd like to start volunteering to help neighbors with their gardens too, maybe find some other younger folks with energy to do the work and pair them up with older and more experienced growers who may have more area to grow and money to fund it, but no longer the physical endurance to bring it to fruition.
cutroot -
"A great big question to me is how to establish nonviolent reimagining of societies during periods of scarcity."
There has always been scarcity for some. And, yes, likely there will be scarcity for many more (a larger proportion of people) as anthropogenic climate disruption continues to wreck havoc on agriculture and such. I feel that the most crucial preparatory response would be to facilitate connection and belonging within the neighborhood scale of social life. Neighbors need to talk with and also collaborate with neighbors in various ways, so that there is a genuine feeling and experience of immediate local community. To the extent that this is happening folks will have greater resiliency within communities and will be better prepared to work together to solve problems of every kind. Honestly, I believe community oriented permaculture is an ideal way to facilitate these neighborhood conditions. That would involve creating community gardens and food forests collaboratively as neighborhoods, while also advocating for personal and family permaculture practice where possible at home. This would help with food security in times of food scarcity, but it would also help connect people with direct experiences of natural processes, which I believe is crucial to our well-being both individually and collectively. I'll try to write an article or essay on community oriented permaculture in The R-Word soon-ish.
"Do you expect that people still need to protect themselves from opportunistic violence? Does R2 see that violence as a primary means for change is simply not viable, while allowing for self defense?"
Defensive violence is sometimes necessary. But violence should never be used in service to political aims. (I do not equate vandalism and property damage with violence.)
The more actual community (belonging, connection, mutuality, care, love...) we have in our neighborhoods (human scale), the less necessary and likely violence will become, but also the most resiliently responsive neighborhoods and local communities will be should defensive violence become a necessity, as in the case of various possible collapse scenarios.
I like this also, James... as someone who has been in what gets called a "civil war"... there was nothing civil about it...I'd value a face to face conversation with you, James. I understand why the Canadian doing "What Is Politics" wants to remain "under the radar" and, at the same time, I have friends who are "out" hosting "Disruptive Conversations". Canada is its own very different case from the US.. A conversation around where we are in terms of the need for united and wide spread non violent confrontation, occupation of public spaces, take over of public spaces for community gardens, revolutionary art and creativity in all modalities .. that might be fun! You could record it and then we could discuss how to edit it!
I appreciate this post and your perspective, James. I was always more about 'evolution' rather than 'revolution' (whatever/however you perceive it to be). Dropping the 'r' freed me into deeper kinship with all of the living world and patterned myself more closely to it. Do the dandelions revolt? Maybe. Do they undertake revolution? If the answer is yes, it feels to be on such a scale and with such grace that I could only refer to it as evolution. Collective evolution. That softness of graduation I feel is one path we could take - us human kin - towards unraveling our inner malevolent entanglements such that their outer expressions soften, go to nourishing rot, and sprout us collectively anew. One loving shoot at a time.
Thanks Heather.
I think it would be wonderful if we could liberate the word 'revolution' from certain habitual connotations and associations -- most especially the connotation and association with violence and insurrection. So you and I seem to me to be on much the same page. But I want the energy in the word 'revolution' -- but without the violence. Revolutions have a certain urgency and pace about them which we need and are yet presently lacking.
Urgency and need of slowing down - slow down fast - slow down now. I do feel that urgency and pace is what got us into this 'mess' in the first place. What if the 'slow' was the revolution? I'm seeing snails at the frontline, sloths by their side, giant tortoises carrying the flag... and humanity behind them squirming and gnashing as they learn to relax and be present, noticing their impact on each other and the world. Revolutionary stillness. I'm in :-)
Heather,
You are reminding me of Bayo Akomolafe, who is somewhat famous for saying, "The Times are Urgent, Let Us Slow Down." But notice, he acknowledged the urgency in the times. And the times do call for changes including and beyond merely slowing down. But yes, I'm all for revolutionary slowing down! I'm also for picking up the pace of doing the things that desperately need to be done -- like creating much more functional systems to replace the dysfunctional ones. Like organically organizing local communities at the neighborhood scale to implement (e.g.) community-oriented permaculture practice, and bioregional economic relocalization). All of this can be done slowly, provided it is done. Otherwise, a time will come and we'll not be prepared for what is suddenly forcing us to do these things in a damned awful hurry. I want to slow down now so we don't have to race to catch up later.
Humans are remarkably good at organizing when 'needs must' - and I hear you - truly I do - and agree that the need has been present for a very long time and it is only growing... We've never been particularly good at proactive organization as a species, not to say we couldn't start now... However I'm not sure how we can begin (effectively) when under such tension and strain (both inner and outer). That's really the root of my desire for slowing down. I've seen people deeply magnetized towards change when their nervous systems are regulated and safety is present for them.
A trauma therapist once mentioned to me 'that which we resist, grows' and it seems to me our human kin have been deeply resistant to change. It is hard and scary for so many - yet - small, meaningful changes made by all of us (my take is healing and connection) might just yield the result we seek.
Onward, together.
I believe you (and Bayo) make crucially important points. Times are indeed urgent, and we ought to slow down. AND (perhaps paradoxically?) we also need to get to work. There is a lot of work worth doing which isn't being done. And the pace at which the work needs doing is To Begin. Not to rush. But to begin. To begin again and again, and to have long, reflective pauses having begun.
The systems which presently allow us to eat and have shelter and etc. will not be lasting much longer. They are coming to their ends, and this is why we must begin now and not later. And pause a lot. Thanks for the reminder. We need lots and lots of pauses... and stillness, and quiet. And rest. And as I begin and continue I shall breathe and pause a lot. Times are urgent. Time to pause.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qWaWGHNvy0
Bayo is a beautiful human and I hear his words. My perspective has come from sitting with trees and listening to bees... and the wisdom of my blood ancestors who lived closely to the land. The non-human natural world has more answers than I have questions for. Wishing you wellness in your pauses and smiles as you continue your work.
Liked Revolution 2.0!
Revolutionary in loving connecting, Regenerative in all the soils contaminated... education, public policy, governance, art-making, design, public entertainment, spirituality... and in our Earth's soil at multiple levels, Resilient and resistant, never conforming to the cages of interwoven oppressions that keep us caged even when the door is open... s/Self sovereign, knowing that each small one of us is Spirit living a human life not humans living a spiritual life
Omigod! You're not a Neo-Hippy are you ? "We distribute our charisma, our charm, our joy, our love, our revolutionary inspiration. We scatter it everywhere we can like flower petals or pollen." You're like the clean, non-violent version of Just Stop Oil, everywhere and nowhere. Sure, sure, it's all good, we need positive people without a political agenda to grind, they make life bearable. But at this point, in whichever country it takes place, the Revolution needs discipline, hierarchy and the angst that comes with doing what generations have shirked. Put down the Peace Pipe for a bit and take a look at the countries in Africa trying to free themselves from French domination. Their backs are against the wall and they're making it happen. Top regards from Continental Riffs.
"But at this point, in whichever country it takes place, the Revolution needs discipline, hierarchy and the angst that comes with doing what generations have shirked."
Discipline and hierarchy are apparently necessary for a successful military or violent revolution, as for example was being forced upon the people of Paris at the time of the Paris Commune (1871). The Paris commune was badly defeated in a military contest.
But I'm not proposing that kind of a revolution -- at least not in the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. That's not the sort of medicine we need in these places at this time. What we require is a non-violent, non-insurrectionary form of revolution. But this is very diffucult for us to imagine. And we have to be able to imagine it -- and talk about it -- for it to happen.
Sure. Your response is good natured, historically inaccurate (nothing was 'forced upon' the people of Paris in 70-71, they were well aware of the odds) and you presume a good deal - that I'm proposing a violent affair. I didn't say that. It's rather you who should be on the defensive. The Progressive class has been selling this non-hierarchical, leaderless, 'no insurrection' medicine since at least the 90s - to zero effect. You may not be to blame for the current state of affairs but you've contributed. Cultural uprising follows closely on the heels of political strife, and the latter can't be avoided. One of the remarkable things about the Comune was the sheer number of brilliant, committed personalities who responded to the moment. We could use a few now.
Yes, James, something was forced upon the people of the Paris commune in those years. A violent confrontation was forced upon them. They didn't go looking for that violent confrontation. It came to them. Did they expect such a confrontation? I suspect they did. And they were not prepared for it in the least.
It's clear that you don't like the idea of non-violent, non-insurrectionary revolution. And that's fine. But a strong point of my argument for it is that it's the only kind in which the revolutionaries can win. If it comes down to arms, the revolutionaries will obviously lose in most places, and particularly here in the USA, where I live.
My point was that discipline and hierarchy are necessary for winning military battles against a military force which has discipline and hierarchy -- a.k.a., a command structure in which there is a hierarchy with some giving orders and others expected to simply follow orders.
That's not necessary for the kind of revolution I think can actually succeed now in most places where a revolution is required.
Well, by all means let us know when you hoist your rebel flag from the organic garden. We'll see if you get that Big Win that you seem to feel is historically determinate of any movement. Your version of the Commune is not only bent out of shape but more importantly leaves out everything interesting about those events. But they lost - so off with them ! Cheers from the rebel continent.