Dancing in the Streets

Considering all the people protesting economic conditions around the world it seems interesting to me that people don't start taking the logical step from dissatisfaction to resistance. I am not insinuating that they need to man the barricades  and break out the guillotine, such action has consistently proven to be a short cut to social change that leads in the opposite direction. What I see as the only logical step would be to stop complaining and start systematically setting up an alternative system. If you can not change something, change the way you think about it.

It seems to me that many people in the wealthy world have forgotten that this whole social/economic system is voluntary. The global dominance of the bourgeoisie comes from their ability to set cultural norms and establish a psychological hegemony. It doesn't matter if people embrace it or bitch about it, just as long as they keep spending money and breeding. Ergo the answer is clearly to stop doing one of those two things, and considering how much people love breeding it must be the former. This could take the form of a consumption strike in the developed world, which will do more than any amount of nonviolent protesting. Or it could take the form of these people forming syndicates in order to have their basic needs met without having to be dependent on some sort of bureaucracy that apparently must inevitably turn pernicious. 

I fully accept that what I am proposing is infinitely harder than protesting within the liberal democratic system and requires a level of effort that most people in the West are surely unwilling to engage in. But what about that vast majority of the world that isn't enjoying a high standard of living? They are equally vital to the system and have a much greater need for it to be changed because their immediate existence is threatened. It would be much easier than revolution because all they would have to do is stop working and focus on producing food and medicine. By far the best option however would be for both groups to work together and start accepting that as long as the bourgeoisie maintains its ascendancy we must accept living in a violent, unjust and environmentally unsustainable system. 

One can understand peoples frustration and the feeling of solidarity that one gets from protesting with people of a like mind. If protesting in a developed society truly changed anything I promise you it would be outlawed. There is a very good reason why people in the Middle East are shot for protesting and those in the West are not. The fact is that in our world of omnipresent capitalism protest is absolutely useless in terms of making a world in which the value of life transcends the value of profit and material possessions. It is no different than peasants going hat in hand before a crown to beg some alms except that sometimes a monarch was capable of compassion.