The Have-Nots Vastly Outnumber the Haves, So Why Haven't We Taken Power Away From the Haves Yet?
It's not because the have-nots are happy campers. Why then?
Let’s make this happen in the United States too!
As readers of my earlier Substack posts know, I want the have-nots to make what I call an egalitarian revolution. I want the have-nots to remove the rich from power, to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor. I call people who have this goal egalitarians, whether they’ve ever heard that word or not. And I want the have-nots to create local assemblies of egalitarians that are of, by and for egalitarians and the egalitarian goal, and that are the sovereign power in their local community (which I think of as being more or less the size of a United States zip code.)
But just because I want this to happen, and call for it to happen, doesn’t mean it will happen, obviously. Clearly it is not happening presently in the United States. I will shortly discuss why it is not happening, but first I want to point out that it has happened elsewhere in the past, so it’s not an impossibility.
It happened in 2016 in the Mexican town of Cherán. To learn about this event, watch the video here and also a different one on Facebook here and read a BBC report on it here.
It happened on a much larger scale in Spain in 1936. Read about this here.
It apparently happened around 300 AD in the part of Mexico where, later, the Aztec civilization emerged. Read about this here.
But it’s not happening now in the United States. Why not?
I think the explanation is this. It happens when the vast majority of the have-nots are confident that they can make it happen. This confidence is key, as I discuss here. (And also here, based on my personal experience in 1969.) But it does not happen when this confidence is absent, and in the United States this confidence is indeed absent.
Why is this confidence absent in the United States?
I think this confidence is absent in the United States because the haves—the ruling billionaire plutocracy—have been successful in preventing it from happening. The rulers have done this by destroying the solidarity of the have-nots, which solidarity is the basis of confidence. When left to themselves, the have-nots of the world develop solidarity because most people (as I discuss here) have a natural respect for the Golden Rule, which is the basis of solidarity. But when subjected to sufficient manipulation and lies, the haves can undermine solidarity among the have-nots sufficiently to prevent them having the confidence required to make an egalitarian revolution like the people of the Mexican town of Cherán did.
In the United States, beginning even before the American Revolution won independence of the Colonies from British rule, the upper class learned how to destroy working class solidarity with racial discrimination, as I discuss here. This has been an extremely effective means of divide-and-rule, which the ruling class has made more sophisticated in the 21st century, as I discuss here and here and as Martin Luther King, Jr. famously explained here.
An indication of how successful the ruling class has been in using racial discrimination for divide-and-rule is this. Most people today do not know what MLK, Jr. tried so hard to explain: that racial discrimination against non-whites HARMS, not benefits white have-nots. The false ruling class propaganda to the contrary—i.e., its replacing the phrase “racial discrimination,” which points the accusing finger at the person or institution doing the discriminating, with the new phrase, “white privilege,” which points the accusing finger at ordinary white people despite the fact that ordinary white people are HARMED by the destruction of working class solidarity by racial discrimination—has been very successful in making people believe that racial discrimination against non-whites BENEFITS ordinary white people. (Has this propaganda even convinced YOU, dear reader? It has unfortunately convinced most people, including those who think of themselves as being “anti-racism.”)
Additionally, the ruling class has developed a host of sophisticated methods of divide-and-rule in the 21st century, which I discuss here. All the hot-button “social issues” have been essentially created and made ultra-divisive by the ruling class censoring the corresponding unifying views and only allowing the dis-unifying views on these topics to be heard in public discourse. The resulting bitter divisiveness among the have-nots has prevented the solidarity, and hence confidence, that is required for the have-nots to seriously think about doing the kind of thing that the Mexicans in the town of Cherán did, or what the Spaniards did in 1936.
The Moral of the Story
The moral of this story is that while it is an excellent idea to talk about and advocate egalitarian revolution, just doing that does not make it happen. What is required to make it happen is to refute—on a huge scale—the ruling class’s divide-and-rule lies and to expose the purpose of the things it does to make those lies seem credible.
This requires serious work!
We must refute the lies PERSUASIVELY. This means doing the necessary homework. For example, take the lie that you must be either pro-Palestine or pro-Israel. This is an extremely divisive lie currently inside the United States. I persuasively prove that it is a lie in my article here. But writing articles like this one takes work. And getting them read by lots of people takes even more work (because the ruling class works hard to prevent that from happening, as I discuss here.)
We need to learn how to take on the divisive hot-button “social issues” and, instead of simply dismissing them as “distractions,” persuasively refute the phony frameworks for public discourse of these issues that the ruling class foists on us. We need to figure out what is the view on each such topic that the vast majority of people would think is reasonable, and then articulate it and explain why the ruling class censors it. This takes work! Here’s an example of doing that with the trans “bathroom” issue.
The Truth Movement
False flag attacks such as 9/11 are ways that the ruling class manipulates one section of the have-nots into fearing (hating) another section. Creating a bogeyman enemy is, as I discuss here, a time-honored way of oppressors to control their own have-nots. The Cold War was a giant scheme to make Americans fear a Soviet Union bogeyman enemy—Communism, as I wrote about here. The state crime of assassinating JFK was done in order to keep the Cold War going. The state crimes of assassinating MLK, Jr. and Malcolm X (which I write about here) were for the purpose of preventing from developing the solidarity between non-white and white have-nots that these two leaders were making happen.
The point is that exposing the truth about state crimes such as these is important not merely because truth in the abstract is valuable (which it is) but because these particular truths are what people need to know in order to be immune to the lies the ruling class uses to destroy the solidarity—and hence confidence—of the have-nots.
Sad but true…
Sadly, very few people, despite very much wanting an egalitarian revolution (most people want one, as I prove here), are working to persuasively refute the ruling class lies that prevent people from making an egalitarian revolution. Why is this?
I think one big reason is this. People don’t understand the cause of the current lack of solidarity among the have-nots. They think it comes from innate faults in one large section of the have-nots or another. “Those people are just a bunch of racists.” “Those people are all arrogant self-righteous elitists.” Not understanding the cause of the divisiveness, they don’t take appropriate steps to end it. They even use the divisiveness as an excuse for counter-productive acts of frustration, such as this and this.