David Korten: The Next American Revolution?

[marmar]

from YES! Magazine:



The Next American Revolution?
What America's current movement against corporate power can learn from that time we overthrew a king.

by David Korten
posted Jun 28, 2011


The parallels between the independence movement that liberated thirteen colonies on the east coast of what is now the United States and the emerging independence from Wall Street movement are both revealing and instructive.

Taking on the king:
As I wrote in Agenda for a New Economy:

As the economies of Britain’s thirteen colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America began to grow in their production of real wealth, their prosperity attracted the attention of the British Crown, which sought to increase its take through new taxes and the grant of a tea monopoly to the East India Company, in which the king held a financial interest.

Taking on Wall Street:
More than a century and a half later, in the years following World War II, the policies of the Roosevelt New Deal created a prosperous middle class and flourishing Main Street businesses growing the real wealth of their local communities. Main Street’s prosperity attracted the attention of Wall Street, which used its political and economic power to assume the role of colonial overlord and increase its take by charging interest rates and fees; asserting monopoly control of intellectual property rights, markets, and resources; and accelerating its creation of phantom wealth financial assets to expand its claims against the real wealth produced by others.

Taking on the king:

As the threat to their liberty and prosperity became evident, the colonists mobilized in resistance to the British Crown. Some colonists formed local resistance groups, with names such as Sons of Liberty, Regulators, Associators, and Liberty Boys, to engage in acts of non-cooperation such as refusing to purchase and use the tax stamps that the Crown demanded be applied to all colonial commercial and legal papers, newspapers, pamphlets, and almanacs.

The New England merchant class—given to slave trading and piracy—had no reservations about evading import taxes by adding smuggling to their business portfolios. When the Crown decided to assert its authority over the Massachusetts Supreme Court by paying its judges directly from the royal treasury, the people responded by refusing to serve as jurors under the judges.

Other colonists formed Committees of Correspondence, groups of citizens engaged in sharing ideas and information through regularized exchanges of letters carried by ship and horseback. These committees linked elements of diverse citizen movements in common cause across the colonial borders that had long kept them divided.

Taking on Wall Street:
As the Wall Street threat to their liberty and prosperity became clear, the people began mobilizing in resistance. They formed organizations with names like Art and Revolution, Direct Action Network, the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, the International Forum on Globalization, National Farm Workers Association, Public Citizen, Rainforest Action Network, the Ruckus Society, and United for a Fair Economy. They created Internet forums to share ideas and information and to unite movements in common cause, reached out even across the national borders that had long kept them divided. In alliance with similar groups in other nations, they mobilized millions in global demonstrations that regularly disrupted the international meetings in which the rich and powerful gathered to circumvent democracy, rewrite the rules of commerce to remove restrictions on the consolidation of corporate power, and negotiate their division of the spoils. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten/the-next-american-revolution

[bemildred]

1. Devolution seems more likely to me ...

"Things fall apart, the center cannot hold ..."

[jwirr]

3. I agree with you. As we move into the era of crisis in oil depletion,

corporatism and climate change things will fall to pieces. The challenge will be to recreate our local communities into units of survival without pitting one group against another. Was talking to a friend about this and he said "but that will mean anarchy". What I am hoping for is local government to restore rule of law as soon as possible around our area. We are a mixed racial community and I am hoping we can work together. Our greatest hope is in local unity.

[bemildred]

4. "Anarchy" is just local self-governance.

When the national government is impotent or perverse, as ours is, local self-governance starts to look pretty good.

[swilton]

5. A couple of points from observations that seem to support

your thesis:

Our national government seems incapable of dealing with the nation's world's most critical problems - global warming and climate change; peace; social-economic justice

Having just moved from the 'center' - Washington DC metro area to New England, the difference in governance and the strength of local governance is striking...with the city/county government being much stronger here in my New England community than it was in one of the DC area's Maryland suburbs...I don't know if this is a phenomena of New England and goes back to its history or if this is a nation-wide thing.

[Hydra]

2. The problem was motive

Shay's rebellion was about gov't aiding banks in (illegally) foreclosing on people's property. Sound familiar?

We didn't start clean, and I suspect as Orwell suggested that any revolution will be merely to set up a new set of bosses under a dictatorship.

Maybe the above poster has the better idea? Devolution.

[bhikkhu]

6. The first blockquote could use a little rewriting

The primary English motive to lean on the colonies for more revenue was the crushing debt that the crown had taken on in fighting the Seven Years War, fighting over North American territories against the French.

The sentence given - "As the economies of Britain’s thirteen colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America began to grow in their production of real wealth, their prosperity attracted the attention of the British Crown, which sought to increase its take through new taxes and the grant of a tea monopoly to the East India Company, in which the king held a financial interest." - ignores the actual motive (which is abundantly clear in all the Parliamentary debates), as well as ignoring the immediate and complex backdrop of conflicts that led to the Revolutionary War.