there's this whole gramscian view that we uphold the system because we're taught to. from this perspective, it's impossible to do this "the revolution starts inside" bit until we're able to abolish the institutions that put the bit of the oppressor inside of us. but, we'd need to transcend the condition in the first place. and around in circles we go, tracing out an infinite series....
the only way to break this is to acknowledge a vanguard or what could be called an anti-vanguard. i think vanguard politics are discredited, myself. the anti-vanguard takes us into post-leftist thinking. temporary autonomous zones. but this assumes real revolution is impossible. that sounds defeatist, but is it merely realism?
the expanded pyramid you put up is worth dwelling upon. i think that, existing in the middle of the pyramid, we lack the ability to really change anything - largely because we can't adjust to a system that we neither have the right to tear down nor the right to reconstruct. the best we can really do is stand in solidarity with the people at the bottom of the pyramid, in helping them reassert their autonomy, the meaning of which changes from situation to situation. it's only once we can start talking about labour rights in china or land-use rights in brazil that we can understand how we can adjust to a fairer globe.
in the mean time, it probably means that post-leftism is realism rather than defeatism. that's a level of humility that inhabitants of the heart of the empire are going to find difficult to adjust to. perhaps that humility is in truth the real necessary first step.
i mean, i think the expanded pyramid sort of obscures the controlling aspect. you see a pyramid like that and you think that each level is dominant over the next, but is it really so? there's little doubt that "debt slaves" in the advanced industrial world are heavily reliant on production outside of it, but it's worth pointing out that that's a situation that keeps them in place rather than one that empowers them. we're increasingly seeing a situation of structural high unemployment in the developed world that's a reaction to unionization and is directly caused by outsourcing the labour that would alleviate the unemployment; while the unemployed may end up consuming foreign products with what amounts to debt, that doesn't put them in a less dependent position, or in any kind of a position of control. the pyramid presentation is consequently somewhat inaccurate. but, it's inaccurate at the higher levels, as well - this absolutely ordered hierarchy is a gloss any way you look at it. we used to think of this the other way around - we used to think of colonial areas as places to dump goods, in order to enrich the colonizing powers. switching the relationship doesn't construct a power relationship so much as it exposes the underlying economic mechanism. that is, it's more accurate to think in terms of two ends of a market. in order to make money, you need to be able to produce goods cheaply and have a place to sell them. if you take either end point out, the whole thing collapses. it's not entirely fair to suggest that the consuming side of this is as well off as the producing side of it. but it is perhaps instructive to point out that the entire purpose of the new world order (if it's defined as advancing neo-liberalism in the post-soviet era) is to slowly place them on an equal footing. i'm going to agree that if you ask the factory worker in china what the nwo is, they'll tell you it's the consumer base in america. but, if you ask the mass of unemployed workers in spain, they'll tell you it's the absence of economic opportunity created by the globalization of labour. and, maybe they're both right. that takes away a lot of our own agency. and, again, i think that's even more frightening. but i think it's very true.