A short notice about the Anti-Empire report

William Blum sent out the newest of his Anti-Empire reports. Over the years he has published 150 reports and they are all worth reading. Blum wrote also several important and informative books. Please visit his site

https://williamblum.org/aer/read/150

In response of his report, I wrote this email to him:

Please keep going as long as you can, but if you want to take it easy, be assured that your readers will have you in their minds and will continue your work for peace, fairness, equality. You’ve certainly done your duty!

A comment to your report:

Ecological problems will not automatically be solved if capitalism ends. Socialism may have answers to some of the problems humanity faces, but it has no remedy against overpopulation, resource depletion, the poisoning of the biosphere by human industrial activity.

A social contract, an economic system, a culture is defined by many variables: competitive versus cooperative, individual versus collective, private versus public, central versus local, task-sharing and interdependent versus self sufficient and independent, hierarchical versus equal, democratic versus meritocratic or technocratic. Not to forget: Violent, merciless, rigid versus peaceful, forgiving, flexible.

The fine-tuning of these variables will be done by the realities on the ground (the ecological and economic limits) and, to a lesser extent, by a universal compromise reached after painful and exhausting struggles. One can only hope that the groups and individuals prevail who aim to alleviate suffering and who work for a harmonic and sustainable integration of humans into the natural world.

Social, cultural heritage and the “popular mind” will shape the system, regardless of the organizational structures a ruling elite, an outside victorious power, or a democratic process may impose. Abandoning old habits, changing the minds of people, and erasing collective memories, fears, mental blockages will take a long time even with the most intense efforts of informing, convincing, persuading, (re)educating, indoctrinating, brainwashing.

After all this is factored in, is it still conceivable that a new social order could resemble socialism? Maybe, and I hope so. In the end it is just a matter of definition.

My ideal would be Muammar Gaddafi’s Jamahiriya, an example, an alternative model of a society that was so frightening to the moneyed elites that it had to be destroyed in a bloody air war. 

Gaddafi will not be forgotten and others will follow his lead and will work tirelessly and undeterred to establish more humane, equal, just, peaceful societies.

My best wishes!