A Language Older Than Words - Derrick Jensen [121]
A Turning Over
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." Abraham Lincoln
I JUST GOT OFF the telephone with an old friend. We first met in church when we were teens, and stayed in close contact until I left Montana. Since then, our paths have diverged. He has a family, and I do not. He has a wage job, and I do not. He has had to place his art—he's an extraordinary flautist—on the periphery, and daily my art and activism move closer to the center of my life. We only talk a few times a year, but I realized speaking to him that, from different paths, we have arrived at many of the same places.
Dave said to me, "People never get paid for anything of value. I don't get paid for loving Beth, or the children, and I don't get paid for playing the flute."
I didn't say anything. He continued, "I'm tired, Derrick. I work three jobs and I can't get ahead. Beth still works retail, and because she stands all day she needs a foot operation."
A deep breath, and then he said, "I don't know where we'll get the money. I just quit a job that had health benefits, but you know what? Whenever we made a claim, our problem wasn't covered. It all looks so good on paper, but it never works out. I was sorting packages on that job, and carrying them. It was so mind-numbing. I thought I would go crazy. But the other jobs are no better. Remember when I was a courier for the bank? I'll bet I've driven a half-million miles these past ten years. That's 10,000 hours. Or more. And what do I have to show for them?"
I asked what he wanted to do. "I would love to have access to some land, where Beth and I and the kids could just live. But I don't think that's going to happen."
Another long pause, and he said, "Beth's not happy." "With you, or the job?"
"I don't think she's going to bail. But she's just unhappy. She hates her job, and it spills over."
I wanted to give him a hug over the phone. We had not talked for so long. He said, "I don't know what I'm going to do, Derrick. I don't know what I'm going to do."
For many years I've been trying to figure out why revolutionary movements almost always fail to materially and permanently help the poor. This is true for armed revolutions such as the Russian Revolution, revolutions of the heart such as the teachings of Jesus, and revolutions that attempt to combine the two. When the revolution is over, the new boss—whether he's St. Augustine, Luther, Washington, or Lenin—is inevitably, as the rock band The Who suggested, the same as the old boss.
At first I thought the problem was primarily psychological, that having overturned the old social order, revolutionary leaders were unable to release their newfound power to the people. This means, of course, that the supposed revolutionaries never overturned the old social order at all, but merely inserted new names and possibly new mechanisms for the same old dominance and exploitation. At best they may have instituted social programs and nationalized industries, as Castro did in Cuba, but the repression ultimately remains. I say this not to diminish the importance of instituting social programs, but to point out the tenacity of the repression. It is also true that in many cases the revolutionaries—I'm thinking especially of the founding fathers of the United States and the Bolsheviks, but it's just as true for many so-called anarchists, like Michael Bakunin—never intended to break down the hierarchies, but used the language of