Home from the Dark Side of Utopia

by Clifton Ross

  Bolivarian socialism on the Left and neoliberalism on the Right have both expressed their aim to remake humanity and the world and force us all into their respective gulags or jail cells they define as “utopia.” As a “hybrid regime” Venezuela is part of a bloc of nations with governments of both the Left and the Right that lean toward authoritarianism, but with democratic forms.19 While the US ranks in last place as a “full democracy,”20 it increasingly has the characteristics of a national security state, or what David Unger calls the “emergency state.”21 Even though political scientists might be able to draw fine lines between a socialist hybrid regime tipping toward authoritarianism and a neoliberal democracy tipping toward a national security state, both seem to me to be headed the same direction and looking more and more alike. And while Venezuela, thanks to Chávez and Maduro, has a head start down that road to dystopia, the US isn’t too very far behind. Both increasingly rely on militarizing the police who target low-income and immigrant communities in particular;22 imposing strict “anti-terrorist” legislation and extending powers of surveillance; silencing whistle-blowers with threats and imprisonment; censoring the press to the greatest degree possible; and imposing restrictions on liberal rights to dissent, peaceful assembly and protest. All this, we’re told, is necessary to create, and protect, the great project of remaking humanity and the world.

  It appears that John Gray may be right, that some sort of revolutionary utopianism seems to “migrate”—or perhaps “careen” is a better word—from Left to Right, and back again. Under governments of the Left and the Right, we on the bottom live increasingly insecure and marginal lives, while the elites, who have stepped into power on our backs, enrich themselves with no apparent limit or consequence. Who now, we ask, will save us from our saviors? They keep us mesmerized with promises of utopia that will come from “socialism,” or from a “self-regulating market,” but while the spectacle of the imagined destination has frequently been spellbinding, we have to wake up to the dark side of this often beautiful lie. We have to come to our senses, enter our own lives and try to find our way home, back to earth. After all, as the story goes, that’s where the real treasure awaits us.

  Endnotes

  Introduction

  1 Manichaeanism is a third century A.D. “heresy” of Manichaios Manes with roots in the Zoroastrianism of Persia. It proposes a dualistic conception of the world in which Good and Evil are two forces in a war of equals. Zoroastrianism was the source of what became known as the “apocalypticism” of Judaism and Christianity. See Norman Cohn, Cosmos Chaos and the World to Come (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).

  2 John Gray, Black Mass: How Religion Led the World into Crisis (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 6.

  3 There’s an enormous body of literature on the apocalyptic ideas of Jesus, including Bart Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

  4 See, for instance, Norman Cohn, Cosmos Chaos and the World to Come.

  5 “The Book of Revelation” or “The Apocalypse of John,” “apocalypse” from Greek apocalypsis, meaning “revelation.”

  6 For more on these Medieval apocalyptic and millenarian movements, see the classic work by Norman Cohn, In Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, Revised ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970).

  7 Judith Shulevitz, “When Cosmologies Collide,” http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/books/review/22shule.html?ref=design.

  8 Ernest Lee Tuveson, Millennium and Utopia: A Study in the Background of the Idea of Progress (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 133.

  9 Nathan Hatch, The Sacred Cause of Liberty (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1977).

  10 Ruth H. Bloch, Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought, 1756–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

  11 Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press Midway Reprint, 1980), 12.

  12 Charles L. Sanford, The Quest for Paradise (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1961).

  13 See, for instance, Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Harvard, 1994).

  14 See John Gray, Black Mass.

  15 Friedrich Engels, The Peasant War in Germany (New York: International Publishers, 1976), 56.

  16 See George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Company, 1969), 381–383. Woodcock compares the Spanish anarchists to the “radical sects of the Reformation.”

  17 Quoted in E.J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1965), 83.

  18 William McCants, The Isis Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State (New York: St. Martins Press, 2015).

  19 See Jean-Pierre Filiu, Apocalypse in Islam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011) and David Cook, Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005).

  Chapter One

  1 Some Evangelical Christians believe that history is divided into distinct periods during which God had distinct “covenants” or dispensations set by agreements with humanity. During early Judaism, for instance, God was seen as requiring animal sacrifice, which changed under later Judaism and Christianity.

  Chapter Two

  1 Many Evangelicals believe that Jesus will return to earth and take Christians, living and dead, to heaven. This has come to be known as the “Rapture.”

  2 The cult was led by the late “Moses” David Berg and continues under his wife Karen Zerby.

  3 The album was comprised of devotional Hindu temple music, chants and religious songs to Krisna and other deities.

  4 John Nelson Darby was the 19th century Plymouth Brethren theologian responsible for the development of dispensationalism, premillennialism (the belief that Jesus would return to earth before reigning for a millennium on earth) and a “futuristic” reading of the biblical Book of Revelation.

  Chapter Three

  1 I recognize that “the Movement” often refers to the Civil Rights Movement, but in the 1970s, as that movement converged with other movements, such as the Third World Liberation Movement, the Anti-War Movement, the Gay Liberation Movement, the Feminist Movement, etc. all of these collectively became known by many as “The Movement.”

  2 David R. Swartz, Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).

  3 While Quakers, emphatically, are not Christian, they emerged from that faith.

  4 See Harlan Douglas Anthony Stelmach, unpublished thesis entitled “The Cult of Liberation: The Berkeley Free Church and the Radical Church Movement 1967–1972” online at https://archive.org/details/cultofliberation00stelrich.

  5 Email sent from Anthony Nugent, August 4, 2015.

  6 Stelmach, “The Cult of Liberation,” 373.

  7 See Max Elbaum, Revolution in the Air (New York: Verso, 2002).

  8 Swartz, Moral Minority, 93.

  9 “Anabaptist” simply means “baptized again” and it was used as a term to refer to a very diverse group of late Medieval radical Christians who split from the Catholic Church and believed in returning to the faith of Jesus, the right of believers to read the Bible for themselves, and a believer’s baptism after conversion, hence, “ana-baptist” since they had already been “christened” in the Catholic church.

  10 John Howard Yoder was a Mennonite pacifist theologian and author of the book, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), among others.

  11 Cohn, In Pursuit of the Millenium, 286.

  12 Francis Schaeffer was an Evangelical intellectual and rationalist critic of modern secular culture. In his dozen or so books he analyzed, and introduced many Evangelicals to, secular arts, culture and philosophy, albeit through the distorted lens of Evangelicalism.
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  13 See William D. Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement (New York: Image Books, 1974).

  14 Nicolas Berdyaev, Towards a New Epoch (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1949), 87.

  15 Introduction, “Poems of the Third Epoch,” A supplement to the May/June 1980 issue of Radix Magazine, (Berkeley, CA: Carmarthen Oak Press, 1980).

  16 John Gray, Black Mass, 9; also in Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt (New York: Vintage, 1992), in “State Terror and Rational Terror” he demonstrates the common utopian roots in Christianity of the great revolutionary Karl Marx and the reactionary Joseph de Maistre.

  17 See John Gray’s, Black Mass.

  Chapter Four

  1 People’s Temple, a cult organized around the Reverend Jim Jones, drew in many progressive and Left Christians with its ethnic and class diversity and Jones’s radical politics. It came to a tragic end after the community moved headquarters to Guyana and later faced a US Congressional investigation that culminated in Jones ordering the suicide, or murder, of all members. Only a few escaped, but 918 died in “Jonestown” on November 18, 1978.

  2 Rosa Luxemburg, Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (New York: Pathfinder Books, 1970), 132.

  3 Camilo Torres, Revolutionary Priest (New York: Random House, 1971), 350–351.

  4 Camilo Torres, Camilo Torres, His Life and His Message (Springfield, Il: Templegate, 1968), 74.

  5 Jose P. Miranda, Communism in the Bible (Baltimore: Orbis Books, 1981).

  6 Frederick Engels, The Peasant War in Germany, 61.

  7 It should be said that the situation of Christians in East Germany under communism was relatively better than the situation of their fellow-believers in the USSR.

  8 Dorothee Sölle, “Reflections on Christians for Socialism,” Radical Religion Vol. IV #3–4.

  Chapter Five

  1 “Contra” meaning “Counter” as in “Contra-revolucionario” or “counterrevolutionary.”

  2 Claribel Alegría is a Nicaraguan poet, journalist, novelist and essayist who has published numerous books, including oral histories, written in collaboration with her late husband, Daniel Flakoll.

  Chapter Seven

  1 Clifton Ross, The Light the Shadow Casts (Devon, UK: Stride Publications, 1996).

  2 Published in The Americas Review, Spring–Summer 1997, Vol. 24, Nos.1–2.

  Chapter Eight

  1 Ben Clarke and Clifton Ross, eds, Voice of Fire: Communiqués and Interviews from the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Berkeley: New Earth Press, 1994), 19.

  2 Ibid, 43–44.

  3 The Palmer Raids took place in the context of the “Red Scare” after World War One, under President Woodrow Wilson and carried out by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer from late 1919 to early 1920. Over five hundred labor, anarchist and communist activists were arrested and/or deported and many organizations were crushed, including the IWW, which never really recuperated its former strength or numbers.

  4 Clifton Ross, Venezuela: Revolution from the Inside Out DVD (Oakland: PM Press, 2008).

  5 Here I’m using the terms “worker cooperatives,” “worker-­controlled collectives,” and “worker-run enterprises or businesses” interchangeably to designate a business that is owned and controlled by the workers themselves, as distinguished from Employee Stock Ownership Plans, ESOPs, in which workers own shares of the company, but do not technically own or control it.

  6 Sharryn Kasmir, The Myth of Mondragon: Cooperatives, Politics, and Working-Class Life in a Basque Town (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1996), 108–110.

  7 Raúl Zibechi, Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements, trans. Ramor Ryan (Oakland: AK Press, 2012), 253–257.

  8 I find James Scott’s perspective on the “petty bourgeoisie” so refreshing in this context, and it’s also a great look at anarchism: James C. Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play, especially Chapter Four, “Two Cheers for the Petty Bourgeoisie” (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012).

  9 See Henri Pirenne’s fascinating, dated, but classic, work, Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1937), available in reprinted editions; also his Medieval Cities: Their Origin and the Revival of Trade (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969). Both are a good starting point for an understanding of the origins of capitalism.

  10 Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play, 84–100.

  11 Hilary Abell, Pathways to Scale (Takoma Pk, MD: The Democracy Collaborative, 2014).

  12 Georgeanne Artz and Younjun Kim, “Business Ownership by Workers: Are Worker Cooperatives a Viable Option?” http://institute.coop/sites/default/files/resources/businessownership.pdf, 9.

  13 Peter Schnall and Erin Wigger, “The Mondragon Corporation: Criticisms—Part 3 of 3,” http://unhealthyworkblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-mondragon-corporation-criticisms.html.

  14 See Tobias Buck, “A fine balance between solidarity and survival,” http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/26740e3e-2aee-11

  e5-acfb-cbd2e1c81cca.html#axzz3xdcVyyaI. This figure is contested. According to Vincent Navarro, the wage differential is 6.5 to one. See http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/30/the-case-of-mondragon/.

  15 Norwegian Business School Business Review, http://www.bi.edu/bizreview/articles/News-2011/A-culture-of-smaller-wage-differences-/.

  16 Kasmir, The Myth of Mondragon, 110–118.

  17 For a look at the difference between worker-owned and controlled workplaces and ESOPs, go to http://www.cdi.coop/coop-cathy-worker-coops-esops-difference/.

  18 Kasmir, The Myth of Mondragon, 197.

  19 Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001).

  Chapter Nine

  1 Plan Puebla Panama, now known as the Mesoamerica Project, is a controversial development and infrastructure improvement plan that will tie into the Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America (IIRSA). For more on IIRSA, see the section of the book with the interview with Lusbi Portillo of Zulia, Venezuela.

  2 One of Cardenal’s essays, perhaps the one I read, but certainly representative of his thinking at the time, is archived at http://www.casa.cult.cu/publicaciones/revistacasa/235/cardenal.htm.

  3 See Brian A. Nelson, The Silence and the Scorpion (NY: Nation Books, 2009), 265 and the footnote on page 367 about how the crew of this film manipulated the facts around the killings carried out from the Llaguno Overpass on April 11, 2002, and colluded with the Chávez government in making, and distributing the film. See X-Ray of a Lie on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtDl7SuHRkM.

  4 This seems to be a fairly straightforward, non-­controversial statement. For the unconvinced, see http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/06/yes-bush-v-gore-did-steal-the-­election.html about Florida, and http://www.michaelparenti.org/stolenelections.html. http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/2004votefraud.html or do your own research.

  5 Barbara Koslowski, Theory and Evidence: The Development of Scientific Reasoning (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 57.

  Chapter Ten

  1 Most of my articles from this period are archived at www.dissidentvoice.org, and some, where they were published or reposted at www.counterpunch.org, www.venezuelanalysis.com and www.upsidedownworld.org.

  2 I was attacked in 2007 by Dozthor Zurlent for using Venezuela as a “source of income” after I criticized Heinz Dieterich’s version of “Twenty-First Century Socialism.” I found the response nothing more than ad hominem but the reader may find it amusing: http://www.aporrea.org/ideologia/a38675.html.

  3 This problem is explored in depth by the late Fernando Coronil in his classic work, The Magical State: Nature, Money and Modernity in Venezuela (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997).

  4 Dorothy J. Kronick, “The Kingd
om of Darkness,” https://new

  republic.com/article/62656/the-kingdom-darkness.

  5 Clifton Ross, The Map or the Territory: Notes on Imperialism, Solidarity and Latin America in the New Millennium (Berkeley, CA: New Earth Publications, 2014, revised 2015), 42.

  6 Rafael Uzcátegui, Venezuela: Revolution as Spectacle (Tucson: See Sharp Press, 2010), 184

  7 Ibid., 183

  8 This interview was translated and almost in its entirety in the book I co-edited with Marcy Rein, Until the Rulers Obey: Voices from Latin American Social Movements (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2014).

  9 I wrote, directed, edited and produced Venezuela: Revolution from the Inside Out. I was a “protagonist” in Marc Villá’s documentary, Yo Soy El Otro (2008, Villa del Cine).

  10 Clifton Ross and Marcy Rein, eds, Until the Rulers Obey.

  11 COPEI, Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente, “Independent Political Electoral Organization Committee,” a social Christian party, one of the two parties ruling in Venezuela before the accession of Chávez.

  Chapter Eleven

  1 The Telegraph, “Honduras’s Zelaya and coup leaders both broke law, says truth commission,” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/honduras/8624691/Hondurass-Zelaya-and-coup-leaders-both-broke-law-says-truth-commission.html.

  2 Roger Miranda and William Ratliff, The Civil War in Nicaragua: Inside the Sandinistas (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1993), 51.

  3 Ibid, 87. Bayardo Arce was speaking in a “‘secret speech’ to the Nicaraguan Socialist Party, 1984.