Bernie vs. Hillary: the Real “Clash of Civilizations”?
by PATRICK WALKER
If I’m an ardent fan of Bernie Sanders’ call for political revolution, it’s because I’m an equally ardent fan of Naomi Klein’s climate justice vision. That vision, which Klein convincingly argues for in This Changes Everything, entails a program of coordinated policies—essentially progressive ones—that nations must implement worldwide as preconditions for tackling humanity’s climate emergency. In depicting a world of peace, vastly greater economic equality, transparent, accountable government, democratic elections, and equitably shared responsibilities and benefits, Klein essentially provides the blueprint for a new and desperately needed global civilization—perhaps the first one to truly deserve the name.
Unfortunately, the road to Klein’s “brave new world” must begin in our bad old one. Klein herself is very aware of that fact. This Changes Everything amply laments humanity’s misfortune in having a neo-liberal “magic of markets” ideology enshrined in our planet’s seats of power when what’s urgently needed is a progressive ideology stressing democratic governments’ active intervention in markets for sake of the common good. Market solutions alone are clearly no more than a Band-Aid on our planet’s gaping climate hemorrhage, and as celebrated French economist Thomas Piketty convincingly shows in his book Capital, the natural, uncorrected tendency of capitalism is toward vast concentrations of wealth and plutocratic domination of government. Exactly the kind riding roughshod over democracy now, both domestically and globally.
But government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich must soon perish from the earth—or the climate perishes first.
And the necessary vehicle for dislodging the rich from unjust monopolization of power is and has always been revolution—an overthrow of the existing order. Now, nothing decrees that such an overthrow need be violent; England’s “Glorious Revolution” was dubbed glorious precisely because it was peaceful. But in calling for a political revolution (which he clearly intends to be peaceful), Bernie Sanders—alone among U.S. presidential candidates—has embraced the right diagnosis and remedy.
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http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/01/bernie-vs-hillary-the-real-clash-of-civilizations/
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