Revolutionary Love: A Political Manifesto to Heal and Transform the World by Michael Lerner

Author:Michael Lerner
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: Philosophy, Comparative Politics, Psychology, Peace, Emotions, Political Science, Ethics & Moral Philosophy
ISBN: 9780520304505
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2019-10-14T22:00:00+00:00

Many of us in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, while excited by the possibilities of liberation, yet having failed to use political instruments like elections to translate our huge popular support into legislative and union victories to change the societies of the West in the years between 1964 and 1976, retreated into what European New Leftists called “the Long March through the institutions of society.” Unfortunately, most who took up this challenge lacked the organizational skills and theoretical orientation as well as the psychological or spiritual skills that would help them recognize and resist the co-optive power of the capitalist system. Lacking any larger transformative movement in which they could strategize together, get allies to join them, assess their accomplishments, or analyze their defeats, this became for most a very individualistic enterprise. Seeking power by working within the system to change it took so much energy that it was hard for many to keep their eyes focused on the liberation that had initially inspired that long march. Too many of these young activists ended up being more changed by the institutions they were marching through than changing the core values and practices of those institutions. Still exhilarated by the anarchistic elements of the years of rebellion, they refused to join organizations like the New American Movement that I had helped create in the 1970s, which might have provided a place for them to reflect on the specific challenges and unite their efforts with others in different workplaces that shared their values. Those who recognized the need for organization and coordination often joined Maoist-oriented groups that refused to acknowledge how antidemocratic and suppressive of liberatory creativity Mao’s “cultural revolution” had turned out to be in China.

Serving the old bottom line, which was necessary for working in the existing institutions of capitalist society, became the newest idolatry, and even those who had momentarily rebelled against it began to tell themselves that if they just played along with the ethos of the capitalist order, they would someday get into a position where they could change things. Like Clark Kent, they told themselves, when the moment was right they would remove their façade of conformity and become Superman. Yet the mask became the face, and a great many people became the very servants of capitalist self-interest that they had previously sought to escape. Those who did not often ended up in deep depression and isolation.

As you’ll see in this chapter, the first step for a liberatory movement is to create love-teams of people who are trained in prophetic empathy and who understand the need to spread a spirit of kindness and generosity, undermining self-blaming while also working together to develop the skills to popularize a new bottom line.

Ever since President Reagan made clear that the goal of Republicans was to dismantle government as much as possible except for those parts that provided support for large corporations and money for defense industries, his political successors have

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.