There are two models. One is the Zapatista struggle in southern Mexico and the other one is the Piqueteros in Argentina that emerged at the turn of the century in the early 21st century. And this view is that you do not need, and of course I'm making simplifications here, that you do not need political organizations and revolutionary political parties in order to bring about change from below. In fact by change, by and in favor of the poor majority. You simply need to struggle at the local level and gain local autonomy and to not bother challenging the states, trying to take state power. You don't need political organizations and political parties. And I have rejected both of those, both Vanguardism, that bankrupts 20th century model and I've rejected horizontalism. And the reason I reject horizontalism, which I don't want your listeners to confuse what I'm saying, we do need autonomous communities that struggle and autonomous social movements that do not do whatever political says they need to do. Absolutely we need that. But that doesn't mean that we can ignore the state and state power because the state is hovering over us as a repressive apparatus.
Just ask anyone facing the police force in the United States anywhere and its brutality and mayhem. And so we absolutely need to confront the state, we absolutely need to overthrow the capitalist state. I'm not recommending violence here, I mean that could be by electoral means, by peaceful struggle. It could be by violence against a dictatorship in Africa or Latin America. But we need to think about taking state power, about workers and poor people taking state power and for that we need to also think about political organizations. Political organizations are absolutely essential. And so we need to reject assumptions of Vanguardism that you just have a revolutionary political party that everyone just adheres to. And we need to reject the assumptions of horizontalism in the sense that you don't need political organizations, that you don't need to confront the state and take state power. We need to find a balance or a combination of those two.
Some of the examples coming out of South America are very helpful. And one example is in Bolivia. Now of course there's all kinds of problems there but look what's happened there. The model is that you have a revolutionary political party or certainly a popular poor people's political movement, the movement towards socialism which is Evo Morales party in Bolivia. And that party has done some really good things for the poor indigenous and working class majority. But it's also done some things in cahoots with transnational capital which have damaged local communities. And so that's the political side and state side. And on the popular social movement side you have mass social movements of indigenous, you have of course the workers and the trade unions which are some of the most militant in South America. The environmental organizations and so forth. Across the board you have densely organized civil society and these mass social movements from below. And every time Evo Morales and his government has done something which they don't agree with, they protest and they struggle, against the very state you know which says to represent their interests. So you sort of have a model where you have to have autonomous powerful social movements constantly pressuring and struggling from below. Independently. And at the same time we also need to have organizations that we create, revolutionary relations here, I'm not talking for instance the United States about the democratic party I think we should forget that. But revolutionary and radical and poor people's political organizations that would also support and through our mass pressure from below, keep on the right track. So I mean of course this is all very simplified but that's some of my thinking on that matter.
Rob: One of my favorite quotes is from Buckminster Fuller, "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." What's your take on that?
WR: Yeah absolutely. And there's nothing wrong with dreaming about utopias. And I'll quote someone else who normally is pretty mainstream classical sociologist, European, German sociologist. But he said something which is, I could not more strongly agree with. He said we have to, he said in response to those that said you have to just be pragmatic. He said well we will never, we have to struggle for the possible but we will never know what is possible to achieve in our struggles if we don't reach out and struggle for the impossible.
Rob: Who said that?
WR: Sorry, I didn't say his name, Max Weber. Max Weber is a very mainstream, even conservative German sociologist. Died in 1919. But he did say something that very very powerful comment that I like. I think it's very relevant to us today in 2015.
Rob: Say it one more time, we have to struggle for the possible but--
WR: Right well he was responding to those that said you have to be pragmatic in your political struggles. You only should struggle for what's possible to achieve. And he said well, if that's true, if we have can only achieve what's possible, we will never know what is possible if we don't struggle for the impossible.
Rob: Okay, well we're coming to the end of interview here. Anything that we haven't covered that you'd like to. I have another hours' worth of notes or things to talk about but I want to make sure we get this in.
WR: Oh gosh we've barely scratched the surface. And very low on time. Maybe if I had one more minute I might point out one of many other things we can mention. And another structural, because we were talking earlier in the interview it might be a good way to end maybe with this point. We were talking earlier about what, how is capitalism different in the 21st century, than it has been earlier. And another thing that we're seeing is the rise of what I call this vast surplus humanity. Surplus humanity, inhabiting a planet of slums. Some 30-40-50% of humanity no longer participates by being super exploited in the global economy but has rather been structurally marginalized.
I mentioned that with regard to African Americans but here we can see at world wide level, up to in some countries half or more humanity is simply thrown into the margins and marginalized and increasingly occupy the mega-slums of our planets mega cities. And so this sector of the population has, is emerging its own forms of struggle. How do you struggle when you're not being super exploited but rather marginalized? And so another thing we really need to think about new ways of imagining struggles, of workers that are super exploited together with and linked with struggles of surplus humanity that is structurally marginalized. And of course the system imposes these complex social control systems on both these categorizes. The super exploited and also the structurally marginalized. So we need to think about, you know about both surplus humanity and the global exploited working class and how these two come together in our mass struggles. I probably just introduced more than I possibly explained but that's just another talking point for getting a grasp on where we are today in the world.
Rob: Okay, this is the Rob Kall Bottom Up radio show, sponsored by opednews.com If you picked this up at the end you can go probably by tomorrow to iTunes or Stitcher for opednews.com/podcast to access the full recording of this and we will have it transcribed within a couple weeks at the least. I've been speaking with William I Robinson professor of Global Capitalism at UC Santa Barbara the Author of Crisis of Humanity. Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity.
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