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Farmers Building
up Resistance
Close to
all of Humanity*
‘Global economy’
is another name for imperialism, and imperialism is a transnational form
of capitalism. The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities
and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead,
gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many.
The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a
desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and
armed force.
But every empire, triumphant in that heartless way, plants
the seeds of its own destruction. The more successful its ruling class in
devouring the wealth and resources of this and other lands is, the more it
undermines the base upon which it depends. Like some mythological beast that
devours itself, the empire devours the republic, its human labor, and its
natural environment. Alas, in this epoch, the self-ravagement is of such
a magnitude that when the collapse comes, it may take down the entire ecosphere
and all of us with it.
The history of imperialism is a history of unspeakable
atrocities, mass slaughters, horrors, deceits, treacheries, and merciless
oppression. It is enough to make one give up hope for the human race, both
for its victims and victimizers. Today, the purveyors of capitalism ring
the welkin with victorious pronouncements about a New World Order. Some of
their faithful ideologues pontificate about ‘the end of history’, concluding
that the age-old struggle between haves and have-nots is being replaced by
a monocentric, consensual, economic globalization. Yet peasants rise up in
Mexico; masses mobilize in South Africa; workers and indigenous peoples organize
in scores of countries to protect their lands and better their lives. [...]
Along with all its horrors and cruelties, the history of
imperialism is a history of resistance and rebellion, coming sometimes in
the most unexpected moments and places. Resistance to the self-devouring
empire is not a chimera but an urgent necessity. Our best hope is that in
times ahead, as in the past, when things look most hopeless, a new cry will
be heard in the land and those who would be our masters are shaken from their
pinnacles.
Not only must we love social justice more than personal
gain, we also must realize that our greatest personal gain comes in the struggle
for social justice. And we are most in touch with our own individual humanity
when we stand close to all of humanity.
* Michael Parenti, Against Empire. San Francisco 1995. ISBN 0-87286-298-4,
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