Velikaya Oktyabr'skaya
sotsialisticheskaya revolyutsiya, commonly referred to as Red
October, was the October
Uprising or Bolshevik
Revolution, the seizure of power within the larger Russian
Revolution of 1917. As most of the world knows by now, the Soviet experiment
was a failed one. But over the life span of an average human being, the Soviet Union sure gave the other world superpower a run
for its money.
The irony behind the blood-rich symbolism found in Soviet history is that the Union was brought down by
a red bottom line: the empire essentially went bankrupt. An Italian friend
of mine once commented, as we both watched the literal teardown of the Berlin
Wall, it is unfortunate that the Soviets were more concerned with control than
with authentic socialist wellbeing. In his opinion, from that milestone moment on, US
style capitalism would go unchallenged. The good, the bad, and the Black Thursday.
For those not familiar with the origin of the term, Black Friday refers to retail businesses going from red ink to black ink on their ledgers – in other words, profitable. To go out on a limb, the “Black” in Black Thursday / Black
Friday is not where the ugliness lies. At least not until someone steps up as the leading, post-Soviet
challenger to the American way of life. Many believe China, another “red state”
of sorts, has been trying to fill the Soviet shoes. With its own Great Wall
full of symbolic cracks and ready to come down any decade now, China has ironically
been busily producing some of the stuff that Black Friday is made of. Not as
much as Americans think, less than 10% in all categories, but a sufficiently
ominous portion nonetheless. So instead
of aiming its nuclear arsenal at us, China is attacking the leading superpower with… stuffed toys.
This would seem like a Disney-esque plot in a world power conflict, if it weren’t
for one unfunny complication: merchandise coming from China is manufactured in
great part by a labor force that would not be legally allowed to exist in
America. We are, after all, “better” than that.
That would seem like enough of a
conscience-tugging problem for the US. But wait, there’s more: the US has not merely offshored labor that it does not stomach on its own soil, it continues to rely on hyper consumption as its
structural foundation. A consumption-based economy, within reason, is technically
sustainable. Cyclical recessions are simply the price to pay. But hyper-consumption, consuming at a rate
higher than income, savings or investments, is not sustainable. In hyper mode,
it in fact becomes a pyramid scheme – an approach that in great part explains the 1% controversy.
According
to a US News Money report, the US middle class peaked in 1969. That’s 45 years
ago, in case some of us have lost track. An entire generation was born,
graduated from high school, college if they figured out a way to pay for it,
started a work career, and found themselves… worse off than their parents in one too-many cases. Of course “worse off”
is a relative term, and it shouldn’t just be measured by economics. But a shrinking middle class is not exactly the direction a
system that professes to be better than socialism should take. Five republican
presidents and three democratic ones have presided since 1969. This is not a
partisan issue – it is a systemic breakdown. It is a crack in our very own Wall Street.
I have
always been a fairly skeptical person. I don’t believe in most conspiracy
theories, and I am put off by agenda-driven exaggerations. Having said that, I
recognize I have committed mistakes in judgment, personally, economically, and
politically. Yet as we all know, learning from those mistakes is its own
reward. With that in mind, it seems to me that every year the average American keeps making the same mistake: Black Friday typically comes at the expense of
Red Saturday. There's a fundamental reason the great American middle class is shrinking – it is consuming more than it produces. Wall Street's perennial hunt for Black December may just take
the American system to its own version of Red October.
I blogged
about the Occupy Wall Street movement a few years ago, my conclusion was that
our obsession with Wall Street was not the answer. I do agree that the systemic
damage being inflicted by the 1% is outweighing its “trickle-down” contributions.
It’s the proverbial “taking more than you give” dysfunction. And yet, obsessing
about what fat cats are or are not doing is not where the answer lies. I
believed then as I still do today, every time the fat cats put cheese in the mousetraps,
we only have ourselves to blame if we keep falling for the same impulse. The American middle
class has in fact become addicted to consumption.
A few years ago I made a promise to myself: do not criticize without offering a solution. With that in mind, I am increasingly in
search of post-capitalist – not anti-capitalist – movements to support in one
way or another. Create one if I have what it takes.
One such
example is the “Landfill Harmonic” project, born out of a trash landfill in
one of the poorest countries in the world (watch the three-minute preview of
the project below, I am confident you will be inspired by it). This project is
a wonderful example of how change can happen, not by continuing the blame game
against the 1%, but by curing our addiction to what they are selling. This particular project may or may not survive, but that's hardly the point: none of us do in the long run. That's where the beauty of change comes in. Change
does not have to always stem from pain and fear. Smart change needs to
increasingly come from inspiration.
