George Monbiot

In The Age of Consent - A Manifesto for a New World Order, the British journalist George Monbiot rails passionately against the manifest inequity of the present world order.

Moreover, he early on dismisses the anarchistic naivety that the anticapitalist movement can rid the world of its horrors without taking power:

"We must harness the power of globalisation, and, pursuing its inexorable development, overthrow its institutions and replace them with our own."

But what Monbiot proposes is strictly limited to reforms. His four proposals are: a democratically elected world parliament, a democratised UN General assembly with the powers of the Security Council, an International Clearing Union to discharge trade deficits and prevent debt, and a Fair Trade Organisation to "restrain the rich" while emancipating the poor.

Upon examination of the "practical" detail, it becomes clear that it would be easier to overthrow capitalism in its entirety than to implement a single one of Monbiot's demands.

First, the world parliament. Every even partially democratic form in history - from the Third Estate to the Paris Commune - has first emerged as a result of an oppressed class organising to struggle against its rulers. To achieve a global institution of representative democracy capable of reorganising society in the interests of the majority, our point of departure must be the struggle of the world's poor, of the working class, unemployed and peasantry.

In the course of resistance, they must establish organs of their own power, overthrow the national capitalist states that hold them down, and by extending their social revolution, federate their new democratic institutions so as to co-ordinate global production and distribution in a sustainable, equitable and non-exploitative manner. This is no scheme...

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