The Struggle For Independence Continues

Many of us gathered today with loved ones to celebrate our independence from our former colonial masters. Unfortunately, the struggle for independence and freedom continues today, both here and across the globe. The struggles range from the very small effort of farmers in South Central Los Angeles trying to maintain their urban far to the much larger struggle of Iraqis and Palestinians attempting to free themselves from the yoke of occupation. It's seen in the struggles of workers in this country and beyond struggling for basic rights and freedoms in the work place to the more radical democritization of resource use as seen in Bolivia and Venezuela.

To get a better idea of the struggles we face in this country, I'm including the closing statements of Noam Chomsky at a talk he gave at the New York Poetry Center in New York in 1970. His evaulation of this nation and where it's heading as well as the challenge for those of us who want a more just and democratic society are just as timely as ever. I hope you enjoy it. And when you get done celebrating, why not join us?

In many ways American society is very open and liberal ideas are preserved. However, as poor people, black people, and other ethnic minorities know very well the liberal veneer is pretty thin. Mark Twain once wrote, "That is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakable things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence to never practice either of them. Those who lack the prudence may well pay the cost.

Roughly speaking I think it's accurate to say a corporate elite of managers and owners governs the economy and the political system in very strong measure. The people so-called do exercise an occasional choice among those who Marx once called "the rival factions and adventurers of the ruling class."

Now those who find this characterization too harsh may favor the formulations of a modern democratic theorists like Joseph Shumpater who describes modern political democracy--favorably-- as a system in which the deciding of issues by the electorate is secondary to the election of the men who will do the deciding. A political party he says, accurately, is a group whose members propose to act in concert in the competitive struggle for political power.

If that were not so it would be impossible for different party's to adopt exactly or almost exactly the same program. That's all the advantages of political democracy, as he sees it. This program that both partys adopt more or less exactly, and the individuals who compete for power, they express a narrow conservative ideology. Basically the interests of one or more elements in the corporate elite with some modifications. Now this is obviously no conspiracy. I think its simply implicit in the system of corporate capitalism.

These people and the institutions they represent are in effect in power, and their interests are the national interests. It's this interest that is served primarily and overwhelmingly by the over seas empire, and the growing system of millitary state capitalism at home. If we were to withdraw the consent of the governed, as I think we should, we're withdrawing our consent to have these men and the interests they represent govern and manage American society and impose their concept of world order and their criteria for legitimate political and economic development for much of the world. Although an immense effort of propaganda and mystification is carried on to conceal these facts,nontheless, facts they remain.

We have today the technical and material resources to meet man's material needs. We have not developed the cultural and moral resources or the democratic forms of social organization that make possible the humane and rational use of our material wealth and power. Conceivably the classical liberal ideals as expressed and developed in their libertarian socialist form are achievable but if so only by a popular revolutionary movement rooted in wide strata of the population and committed to the elimination of repressive and authoritarian institutions, state and private.

To create such a movement is the challenge we face and must meet if we are to escape contemporary barbarism.

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