From Mongolia to Florida, the Revolutions Have Begun

This protest sounds like it could erupt in any nation on Earth at any moment.

Jacobin: In Mongolia, Protesters With Empty Stomachs Are Denouncing Empty Promises

What originated as an anti-inflation protest also happened to coincide with the Mongolian Economic Forum, which one protester’s sign referred to as “Mongolia’s Disaster Forum.” Together with the prime minister’s empty promises, the economic forum — which showcased the administration’s “New Recovery Policy” to kickstart the economy, in front of representatives from government, foreign embassies, and the private sector — appeared totally disconnected from people’s ordinary lives. Some protesters even held up signs that read “If only I could live like a Parliament member” and “3 million Mongolians [should] eat together,” while others brought and held up everyday items, such as a half loaf of bread, a small piece of meat, a handful of potatoes, and empty plastic bags. The demonstration became a protest against empty stomachs, empty promises, and an empty government palace. While everyone was voicing different aspirations and discontents, there was also a shared feeling of euphoria and solidarity organized around the imperative: we want to live.

...Unlike the empty promises of politicians, the protesters’ slogans had a visceral dimension. There is something haunting about the line “Since I can’t die, I must live” and seeing a teenager holding a poster with the message “I would like to live.” Although the demand “to live” seems like the most basic and self-explanatory of human rights, there is nothing simple about it. It implies the question: to live what kind of life? On one level, the protesters associated this demand with the right to afford the basic necessities of daily life and its reproduction. To be able to afford bread? Of course. But life is about more than biological survival. To be able to live without crushing debt? To be able to trust in the public institutions and infrastructures that organize social life? It is impossible to separate these two. The demand to live, and to live well, is a collective problem experienced as individual privation.

...Mongolians’ anger at the state comes from the overwhelming sense that politicians live in their own bubbles sheltered from the lives of ordinary people. Despite more than three decades of democracy, most Mongolians feel powerless. It was notable that Mongolian youth, who have largely abstained from participating in elections, took to the streets to make their voices heard. A driving factor of the global phenomenon of “democratic disillusionment” is the depoliticization of policy-making, which paradoxically takes place under the mantle of democratic process.

Yellow vests in France, truckers in Canada, January 6 and BLM in the USA...it's a global phenomena. What comes next will be something entirely new though. Jacobin are living in the past:

It does not help matters that the ruling Mongolian People’s Party was carved out of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, which ruled Mongolia during its seventy-year socialist history. Many people see politicians’ corruption, bureaucratic inflexibility, and hollow phraseology as the long tail of Mongolia’s socialist past, rather than as the creatures of electoral competition and market incentives. For most Mongolians, socialism is a failure of the past, which makes the idea that socialism could be something new, democratic, and capacious unavailable to the political imagination. As a result, political discourse is stuck in the dreary cliché of plucky democratic youth versus communist mummies — obscuring the reality that both the ruling party and the opposition are ruthlessly capitalist.

Socialism fused the state and the corporation. The failure of anti-market socialism became obvious, thus socialism adopted market forces. Where the left fails is where it looks to the past, towards retreads like Bernie Sanders in the USA.

China and the USA look similar because they took similar paths to the current destination, but went in a different order. China went from full communism to adopting market forces within a socialist system. The U.S. went from full capitalism to adopting socialist controls on society, including corporations. The concentration of power, including economic, results in both countries' ruling classes behaving in similar manners. The only main differences being two. The CCP is sovereign. It is clearly in charge. This give it far greater police power for removing enemies, while the Western ruling class must rely on corporations and cancel culture. The Western ruling class pretends as if there is freedom and that private companies are behaving independently when they destroy any competing companies or individuals with different political views. Similarly to how they are now claiming taking an mRNA shot was optional, despite using all manner of coercive policies via government and corporations to pressure people into taking them. 

The other difference is that because it is clearly in power, many CCP policies are aimed at bettering the lives of ordinary Chinese citizens. Whereas in the nominally democratic West, the ruling class pretends it is an aggrieved victim of some nebulous forces such as "system racism" or various "phobias." Its grip on power is also tenuous because the West has an electoral system for peaceful, wholesale revolution. The Western elite are therefore at war with their own citizens, morally justifying their predatory behavior with their victim narratives.

What Follows

There is no escape via "the left" as it has existed because that left got us here. The leftists of the 1960s became the CEOs and politicians of the 1990s and 2000s. They birthed the next generation that is unleashing totalitarian controls today. The left won, and doesn't recognize its vision for society is flawed, impossible because it is doomed by man's nature. If the left wins, things might improve for a generation because of a new class of rulers will be less predatory, but history tells us predators are attracted to power concentration the way a moth is attracted to a flame. A victory by the left will beget a worse situation down the road.

There 's no escape via "the right" either. It is still captured by platitudes about markets and capitalism, failing to recognize that a corporation can be as effective, even more so, at implementing authoritarian policies. Power in all forms including corporate power is an enemy of the people.

There was a major sign of change this week though. Florida has gone to war with one of its largest companies, Disney: Florida lawmakers have stripped Disney of special tax status. If you're not American or not attuned to politics, this might not seem like a big deal, but this event shatters every assumption about politics going back 50+ years. Disney is exactly the type of company that Florida politicians, especially right-wing politicians, would have been guaranteed to defend the past 50 years. Even two years ago, it would be crazy to think of Florida going after Disney. The right is also talking about abolishing the FBI and CIA, among other government agencies. That Florida went after Disney signals these aren't idle wishes of Internet essayists, but something that could become a serious political agenda faster than most realize.

The policies of the past two years revealed that the ruling class hates the people, that politicians hate their voters and corporations hate their customers. The form of revolution will be different everywhere, but as long as inflation is high, the people will be motivated to action against their rulers. From Mongolia to Florida, the revolutions have begun.