<<<< Basically I believe their is a "moral We" that we address ourselves to in matters of education, self-education, etc. This is a group of people that I think, hope beyond hope, does not believe that the U.S . government should fund, for example "death squads" in Central America. But the materialistic "We", the "We" of social relations is a matter of constant organization, mobilization and education. This is a solidaristic "We." I believe, in the long run, that this solidaristic we must be based on the potential for power of working class institutions. In the short run it depends upon where and when we can organize ourselves, at work, in our neighborhoods, etc.... It has been possible to mobilize in the past. People in other countries organize and mobilize. Sectors of the U.S. population have mobilized in the past -- against slavery, for unions, against the Vietnam War, and against intervention in Central America. I still believe that in the long run any lasting institutional power for this kind of mobilization will be from the "working class." To begin with you just organize the people who agree with you and get to work.
I disagree with you about gunboats, tanks, and fighter planes. Of course you are partially correct. But consider what is happening in the world now. If this was the 1950s the U.S. would simply draft more people into the Army and get on with its projects. One reason why Rumsfeld was so shocked when some army general asked for a huge increase in U.S. occupation forces in Iraq, is that he knew he couldn't do it without the draft. The reality was that a proper occupation takes more boots on the ground. The U.S.G. was not able to mount a proper occupation of Iraq because the U.S. rulers were afraid to reintroduce the draft, even after 9/11. They were not able to reintroduce the draft because of the so-called "Vietnam Syndrome", i.e. "unorganized" popular opposition to imperial adventures. Note also that the limits that the U.S. population has imposed upon its rulers has also given Latin American room to breath in this period. >>>
WS: I know, that is the standard position of the Left. It is built on the good Marxist assumption that it is the people who are the producers, elites merely appropriate what other produce - so the elites are utlimately dependent of the people and their consent to a particular superstructure. I am afraid, however, that this assumption - while true in the past - no longer holds. I think that today, thanks to their command of organization and technology, elites can pretty much get what they want without support or consent of the people.
The military is a good example. In the pas,t elites depended on conscript armies which ultimately depended on people's consent to serve. Therefore, the elites had to give something back to the people in exchange for cannon fodder. But that is no loger true. Today, the elites rely exclusively on a mercenary army, which they hire and control without asking for popular consent. The same holds for economic policy - elites can use taxes to subsidize any business or practice they want and how they want it without popular consent or even against it - e.g. when people boycott a firm. Even the good old "throwing sand into the gears," as advocated by various militants on right and left, no longer matters (as if it ever did) - it merely becomes the acceptable cost of operating the machine
We live in a new brave world in which popular consent no longer matters - at least not as much as it used to. The elites, the Bushes, the Berlusconis and Co., can get what they want without popular consent, or manufacture such consent virtually at will if needed. This is not defeatism but the acknowledgement of facts. I am not suggesting that people should resign to their fate, but that the old methods of "speking truth to the power" do not work anymore because the power can get by without having to listen to the people. I do not know what alternative methods are (I wish I did) - but I do know that the old ones aint' working anymore. If they did, we would not be where we are.
Wojtek