The Tangled Hands of the System

Hearing on the radio moments ago that a recent coup in Yemen has ousted the prime minister and rebels ‘effectively’ control the country; that the US has made some contact with rebels.

Before that the left Syriza Party has won elections in Greece promising anti-austerity policies.

The system is so complicatedly structured, mainstream media messages so inundating & misleading, it can be difficult to relate diverging events in the world, but also very simple.

The “US-dominated,” freemarket financial-ordered, “capitalist” world system engenders resistance to that very system: the Syriza Party rising in Greece & the Houthi coup in Yemen exist as challenges to the same system, the same order.

The movements have different characters & objectives. Nevertheless both arise as reactions to the same overt, far-reaching system[1] of oppression & domination.

The system elicits reactions in varying ways, but there is one overt, oppressive & dominating system– confused, blurred, and obscured as this may be. It has many names, and faces: (commonly) international capitalism, the United States-dominated world order[2], the profit system, neoliberalism, (the World Bank and IMF), (money itself?), not to mention innumerable smaller & more localized expressions. There exists a ‘status quo’: those who benefit, and many more who suffer.[3]

This oppressive system is widely reaching, and attempts to impose its order and control throughout the world.

In doing so it breeds challenges to its domination, and perhaps the very instruments of its destruction. This is possibly true in no greater way than the ongoing ravaging of and consequential disturbances to the environment, the medium to long-term implications of which are predictably dire and continue to be more presently evident in the world, and exist as perhaps the most potent consequence of and challenge to the capitalist and profit system on the earth.

Ruptures, disturbances in the system should not be feared for instability, but ought to be recognized as the inevitable products of a dysfunctional and oppressive system, and when appropriate embraced as challenges to a failed way of doing things; they serve at the very least as a demonstration of the deeply flawed order of the world.

 

Notes.

[1] (in today’s hyper-integrated, electronic-as-ever world: financial)

[2] Though the United States’ preeminence appears to be changing

[3] Those who benefit may benefit only in an ideological, material, ego-oriented sense– as humans they undoubtedly suffer, and are victims of the system as well. (See Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed). Moreover, complexities in international relations confuse the essence of this reality– for instance in the present relationship between the West and Russia.

Will Solomon writes a newsletter, Nor’easter, on climate and environment in the Northeast US. He can be found on Twitter and elsewhere at @wsolol.