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important, informative and necessary for getting a picture of how things happen, have happened and the stage capitalism and the world is at at the moment.
Petras fails however to discover where the alternative lies in current reality. he does not detect it in traditional corners and areas of social life but those areas are dead, past and gone with time. Petras of all people should see this and to lok in non traditional corners for that which is progressive and now alternative to systematic decline, portends a progrssive future in other words.
so never fear, a progressive alternative is there. there must be! there is never a fact of existence without its alternative alongside and alive as well, evebn if that alternative is not ye perceived.
what is certain is that capitalism is dead and the options are Brave new world or the statism that is the retreat of the failed capitalists and their hangers on...or revolutionary democracy by the people fpor the people.
what Petra fails to se that at the momet the people do not need the traditonal and familair organs of organisation that formerly presented itself in vanguard political parties agitiating for political change, left wing news papers and publications leading the revolution and so on...websites, left groups of this or that sort, marxists here and there etc...the alternative that Petras has in mind, presenting the case for social change in the face of the ebject failure of the capitalist system.
there is still some of that but nothing to compare to the domination of the intellectual superstructure by the right side of the ideological spectrum that currently exists.
but the revolution does not need any such organised alternative currently as they may have been needed in the past. and that is a doubtful porposition in that we know the failure such an organised vanguard- alternative was, once power was achieved in the nations that that achieved a revoluton. they beaucratized, became a parasitic state aparatus as bad as the capitalists..indeed morphed with the capitalists against the people... and presto we were back again where we started.
the alternative walks with the people as long as the currnet dumbing down of the people is not complete. the education amnd the media have been arranged to miseducate and dumb the people down and that has had some serious negative effects already. this was the establishemnts response to the natural education of the people that was taking place as a matter of course in the developed world.
with the spread of information in modern society the education of the people is a natural process that needs no specfic schooling. it just happens in the expansion of things, in the workplace, the struggle between owners and employees, in the schools, through immigration and the mixing of peoples an on and on and on.....
the people get to know and understand society and how it functions and develo a natural antipathy to the status quo. the people come to perceive their clas interst clear as seprate and distinct from the establishment and know whom they must fight!
so a dumbing down process was conceived of, developed and implimenated. but it is not complete and as the capitalist crisis has bust upon us it may never be completed for the eucation of the people by the clear failure of the capitalist, now there bare-faced and open rip off of the peole to save themselves is more than enuf education to make the people aware and keep the potential revlutution safe and capable of happeneing at an time.
and if the revoltuon takes place without the benefit of an organised left establishment it can go much further this time for there would be no reaction at its head to worry about in time. and if one emerges which is bound to happen it is know what they arem who they will be and what form they will take. and as that would be known, if it shapes up, it would be recognised and eliminated immediately