we have been stuck in concepts of representative democracy,
Who wants to be equal to these guys?
we have to be thinking much more profoundly.
“All that is sacred is profaned, all that is solid melts into air, and men and women are forced to face with sober senses our conditions of life and our relations with our kind.” We’re at that sort of turning point in human history.
what happened in 2001 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, when people gathered to say another world is necessary, another world is possible, and another world is happening,
I think that that’s what’s happening.
the
way
is by taking care of one another, by recreating our relationships to one another,
evolved as human beings.
advocacy of a radical revolution of values of Martin Luther King in 1967
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Excerpts below. The full interview is here:
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/17/philosopher_grace_lee_boggs_and_sociologist
Philosopher Grace Lee Boggs and Sociologist, Monthly Review Editor John Bellamy Foster on the Financial Meltdown, Social Change and Redefining Democracy
While Wall Street appears to be recovering from the financial meltdown, Main Street has not. We speak to two guests who for decades have advocated for a radical rethinking of how the nation’s economy is structured: Grace Lee Boggs, a ninety-four-year-old Detroit-based philosopher and activist involved with the civil rights, black power, labor, environmental justice, and feminist movements for the past seven decades; and John Bellamy Foster, editor of the socialist journal Monthly Review and a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. [includes rush transcript]
Guests:
Grace Lee Boggs, 94-year-old philosopher and activist based in Detroit. She has been involved with the civil rights, black power, labor, environmental justice, and feminist movements over the past seven decades. Her autobiography Living for Change was published in 1998. Monthly Review Press has just republished two books by her late husband Jimmy Boggs with new introductions written by Grace.
John Bellamy Foster, Editor of the journal Monthly Review and a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. He is the author of several books, including The Great Financial Crisis and The Ecological Evolution: Making Peace with the Planet.
...GRACE LEE BOGGS: Well, I think we’re in a time of great hope and great danger. I think that the danger is largely underestimated. I think that at a time when thousands of people descend on Washington saying we want our country back and calling, denouncing Obama as a socialist, that it has become very important for us not to talk about a recovery, but to talk about how do we create a new society of hope.
And I think that’s why Monthly Review is so important, because it’s been for six years trying to create an independent approach to socialism that is not bogged down in ideas that come from the nineteenth century or from the 1917 revolution.
And I think that the only answer to the counterrevolution, which Bertha Lewis and others are trying to defend ourselves against, is to begin creating a new concept of hope, not to talk about recovery. We don’t need to go back to a society that is concentrated on economic growth, that dehumanizes us, that makes us consumers only and is threatening all life on this planet. We need to be thinking about something new.
And we need to have a deeper appreciation of the witch hunts that are taking place, and that—Van Jones and Bertha Lewis, and understand that these are taking place at a time of great danger to the powers that be, that the powers that be have lost two wars, that the situation is much more comparable to that of Germany in the ’30s than to anything that the American people have experienced up to now.
...
GRACE LEE BOGGS: Well, I think it’s fortunate that we have Obama in power, not because he’s going to do very much. I think the contradiction between his rhetoric and his practice is very profound. I think it’s very tied into his personality. But what he does is, by virtue of his—actually, in the White House, carrying on the policies, essentially, of the previous administration, especially with regard to war, is that he’s forcing us really to go beyond him to understand his limitations. He’s—in a sense, he’s an opportunity; he’s also a danger, as every crisis is.
...GRACE LEE BOGGS: ... I think to go back to the ’30s and expect comparable uprisings or demonstrations or protest is a mistake. I think in the ’30s production machinery was still intact. I think that the population was very different. It was recently come from the country; it was not an urbanized population. I think that the—you know, I know the United States was not yet a superpower, let alone a waning superpower. I mean, conditions—the World War II was still ahead of us, was the means by which Roosevelt tried to solve the Depression and bring back full employment. And to think that we’re going to—that we can expect that sort of thing today, I think, is a historical mistake.
...GRACE LEE BOGGS: Well, I would say that we’ve got to redefine democracy, that we have been stuck in concepts of representative democracy, that we believe that it’s getting other people to do things for us that we progress. And I think that we’ve reached the point now where we’re stuck with a whole lot of concepts, so that when Michael Moore speaks about the number of people who make all this money and other people who don’t, it sounds as if we’re struggling for equality with them. Who wants to be equal to these guys? I think we have to be thinking much more profoundly.
Actually, if you go back to what Marx said in The Communist Manifesto over a hundred years ago, when in talking about the constant revolutions in technology, he ended that paragraph by saying, “All that is sacred is profaned, all that is solid melts into air, and men and women are forced to face with sober senses our conditions of life and our relations with our kind.” We’re at that sort of turning point in human history.
And I think that, talking about recovery, talking about democracy, we too easily get sucked into old notions of what we want. And when I—so we’re expecting protest. I’m not expecting so many protests. I don’t mind protests, and I encourage them at times. But what happened in 2001 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, when people gathered to say another world is necessary, another world is possible, and another world is happening,
I think that that’s what’s happening.
In Detroit, in particular, we—people are beginning to say the only way to survive is by taking care of one another, by recreating our relationships to one another, that we have created a society, over the last period, in particular, where each of us is pursuing self-interest. We have devolved as human beings.
advocacy of a radical revolution of values of Martin Luther King in 1967
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