Cracking the 'Tough Nut' to Remove the Rich from Power
Until we do it, we'll never remove the rich from power
I'd like to share my thoughts with you about what I'm calling "the tough nut we need to crack" to remove the rich from power.
To begin with, I fully support the many good things that people are doing such as exposing the wrong-doing of our rulers, talking about how a better—egalitarian—world is possible, clarifying the CLASS nature of the fundamental conflict in society, and so forth, by various means such as the great radio show Un-controlled Opposition and advertised meet-ups about egalitarianism at one’s local library (that my friend is doing in Portland, OR) and other methods. This is all useful, for sure.
But it doesn’t crack the tough nut, a nut that we must crack in order to remove the rich from power.
By “cracking the tough nut,” I mean this.
I mean figuring out how to persuade the hundreds of millions of Americans (and others elsewhere) who ALREADY would love to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor (read here the proof that they do already want this) to begin acting like the vast majority they really are, with the confidence that comes from KNOWING they are the vast majority, to begin building a massive egalitarian revolutionary movement large enough and determined enough to truly remove the rich from power as I discuss here.
The reason we need to crack this tough nut is because removing the rich from power can only happen when literally hundreds of millions of people in the United States (and likewise elsewhere) have joined the egalitarian revolutionary movement with that explicit aim. When this happens I am quite sure that most of the people in this movement will be people who had not earlier been political activists; they will be people who did not know that the CIA killed JFK, people who did not subscribe to many or even any so-called “conspiracy theories,” people who voted for Trump1 and people who did not, people who supported DEI and people who did not, people who supported ICE and people who did not, people who were glad to have received the Covid mRNA vaccinations and people who refused, people who wore a Covid mask sometimes and people who never did, and so on.
The one thing that these hundreds of millions of people will, however, know with confidence, based on their personal experience, is what I call the Big Truth: that the rich treat the have-nots like dirt and that this is wrong and must be ended by removing the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor.
Cracking the ‘tough nut’ does NOT mean persuading people about things such as who killed JFK or whether the mRNA vaccines are good or evil.
Cracking the ‘tough nut’ means persuading people who already want to remove the rich from power to believe that this is a possible goal—even if it may only be achievable after our own lifetimes—because it is in fact (despite the rich using censorship to hide the fact) what most people already would love. It means persuading the hundreds of millions of people who are currently NOT radical political activists or even activists of any sort to become egalitarian revolutionary activists intending to ‘start the ball rolling’ to build the egalitarian revolutionary movement that one day—who knows when?—can remove the rich from power.
As Murray Bookchin wrote about, the anarchist movement in Spain, which really did remove the rich from power in about a quarter of Spain in 1936-9, developed (over decades) from illiterate peasants having people who could read read to them from books such as Kropotkin's Conquest of Bread (the book that inspired the late Dave Stratman and me to write "Thinking about Revolution"). These illiterate peasants were essentially just typical peasants, not a small set of "activist" peasants who were different from most peasants. Additionally, there were countless little anarchist publications that were widely read and discussed. This is why the movement in Spain became a truly MASS movement, capable of inspiring enough people to join the Durruti Column (and similar militias) to drive the big landlords out of about a quarter of Spain and to keep (the fascist) General Franco's army out for three years at least. (See my "What Killed the Spanish Revolution?" for why only three years.)
As I see it, the people at the entrance to my local CVS drugstore in Brighton, MA, are the equivalent or analog of the ordinary peasants who formed the anarchist movement in Spain. They represent--are typical of--the vast majority of people, a vast majority who, when they hear the egalitarian revolutionary idea, say (as I have reported on here and more recently here) "Yes!" and "Perfect" and "I agree" and “Amen to that!”
If there is ever going to be a MASS egalitarian revolutionary movement it will be ONLY when MOST (not a select few, but MOST) of the people just like the ones I encounter at my CVS drugstore work to build that movement in one way or another.
The "tough nut we need to crack" is therefore to persuade these pro-egalitarian-revolutionary people (the people I encounter at the CVS, etc.) to become active builders of the egalitarian revolutionary movement.
I do not know how to crack this ‘tough nut’ yet. I am trying to figure it out. I'm using trial and error. I'm asking people at the CVS questions to help me figure it out. I am devoting my limited time and energy to trying to figure out how to crack the tough nut. For example, I'm asking people at the CVS who love the sticker2 I hand out to take extra stickers to give to friends and co-workers and relatives, and to ask these people if they think what the sticker calls for is a good idea or a bad idea (which is very different from whether they think it is possible or not.) I want people to discover this way that they are surrounded by friends and neighbors and relatives who agree with them about wanting to remove the rich from power, no matter for whom they may have voted.
I have asked people who love the sticker to give me their email address to stay in touch (so far 50 people have done so), and I have been sending them occasional emails (which you can read here.) I have heard people at the CVS tell me they like receiving my emails; but they almost never reply to them. I have told these people I want to arrange for at least some of them to meet each other face-to-face, and when I talk to them on the street (I run into many of them over and over again) they say they’d like to do that; but I haven’t made it happen yet. Making it happen is the first step towards these people starting to be an organized egalitarian revolutionary movement, even if initially very small.
I have been learning, through my conversations with people at the CVS drugstore, what are the obstacles to cracking the tough nut, and this is the first step towards figuring out how to crack it. I have a lot yet to learn.
What I do know is that until we figure out how to crack this tough nut, then whatever else we do, no matter how useful it may be, is insufficient to remove the rich from power. I hope others will join me in trying to figure out how to crack this tough nut. If we avoid cracking this tough nut, then the rich will remain in power.
What do you think?
Here’s the sticker:
The bottom line is that if we don't talk about the proposition, normalize the idea that the rich could, and should be removed from power; then it ain't gonna happen. We are in an era, an interregnum, and society must choose; just like the European republicans accepted the proposition that the king should be removed from power, and as the abolitionists accepted that slavery would end, so do we the people need to accept that the rich have got to go. Talk about the intention and build a movement. What else can one do? https://greenlibertycaucus.org/technocracy-or-egalitarianism/