[discuss-dan] Escaping the Matrix (One of the best analogies I've ever heard)

["Doug Bohm" <doug@denverradio.org>]

Escaping the Matrix
What if consensus reality is a fabricated illusion? Are you ready for the
red pill? 
By Richard K. Moore
(Whole Earth Summer 2000)

Richard K. Moore is an expatriate software programmer from Silicon Valley
who has lived for the past six years in rural Ireland. However, capitalizing
on one of the better side effects of globalization, he and Canadian
collaborator Jan Slakov have coordinated Internet discussions about new
economic and political paradigms among hundreds of people worldwide, via
e-mail lists and the Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance Web site. This
article is a distillation of Moore's book-in-progress, which can be found in
fuller form at http://cyberjournal.org. Richard can be reached at
richard@cyberjournal.org. 
		The defining dramatic moment in the film The Matrix [Warner
Bros., 1999] occurs just after Morpheus invites Neo to choose between a red
pill and a blue pill. The red pill promises "the truth, nothing more." Neo
takes the red pill and awakes to reality—something utterly different from
anything Neo, or the audience, could have expected. What Neo had assumed to
be reality turns out to be only a collective illusion, fabricated by the
Matrix and fed to a population that is asleep, cocooned in grotesque
embryonic pods. In Plato's famous parable about the shadows on the walls of
the cave, true reality is at least reflected in perceived reality. In the
Matrix world, true reality and perceived reality exist on entirely different
planes. 
		The story is intended as metaphor, and the parallels that
drew my attention had to do with political reality. This article offers a
particular perspective on what's going on in the world—and how things got to
be that way—in this era of globalization. From that red-pill perspective,
everyday media-consensus reality—like the Matrix in the film—is seen to be a
fabricated collective illusion. Like Neo, I didn't know what I was looking
for when my investigation began, but I knew that what I was being told
didn't make sense. I read scores of histories and biographies, observing
connections between them, and began to develop my own theories about roots
of various historical events. 
		I found myself largely in agreement with writers like Noam
Chomsky and Michael Parenti, but I also perceived important patterns that
others seemed to have missed. When I started tracing historical forces, and
began to interpret present-day events from a historical perspective, I could
see the same old dynamics at work and found a meaning in unfolding events
far different from what official pronouncements proclaimed. Such
pronouncements are, after all, public relations fare, given out by
politicians who want to look good to the voters. Most of us expect rhetoric
from politicians, and take what they say with a grain of salt. But as my own
picture of present reality came into focus, "grain of salt" no longer worked
as a metaphor. I began to see that consensus reality—as generated by
official rhetoric and amplified by mass media—bears very little relationship
to actual reality. "The matrix" was a metaphor I was ready for. 
		In consensus reality (the blue-pill perspective) "left" and
"right" are the two ends of the political spectrum. Politics is a tug-of-war
between competing factions, carried out by political parties and elected
representatives. Society gets pulled this way and that within the political
spectrum, reflecting the interests of whichever party won the last election.
The left and right are therefore political enemies. Each side is convinced
that it knows how to make society better; each believes the other enjoys
undue influence; and each blames the other for the political stalemate that
apparently prevents society from dealing effectively with its problems. 
		This perspective on the political process, and on the roles
of left and right, is very far from reality. It is a fabricated collective
illusion. Morpheus tells Neo that the Matrix is "the world that was pulled
over your eyes to hide you from the truth....As long as the Matrix exists,
humanity cannot be free." Consensus political reality is precisely such a
matrix. Later we will take a fresh look at the role of left and right, and
at national politics. But first we must develop our red-pill historical
perspective. I've had to condense the arguments to bare essentials; please
see the annotated sources at the end for more thorough treatments of
particular topics. 

		Imperialism and the Matrix 
		From the time of Columbus to 1945, world affairs were
largely dominated by competition among Western nations (primarily western
Europe, later joined by the United States) seeking to stake out spheres of
influence, control sea lanes, and exploit colonial empires. Each Western
power became the core of an imperialist economy whose periphery was managed
for the benefit of the core nation. Military might determined the scope of
an empire; wars were initiated when a core nation felt it had sufficient
power to expand its periphery at the expense of a competitor. Economies and
societies in the periphery were kept backward—to keep their populations
under control, to provide cheap labor, and to guarantee markets for goods
manufactured in the core. Imperialism robbed the periphery not only of
wealth but also of its ability to develop its own societies, cultures, and
economies in a natural way for local benefit. 
		The driving force behind Western imperialism has always been
the pursuit of economic gain, ever since Isabella commissioned Columbus on
his first entrepreneurial voyage. The rhetoric of empire concerning wars,
however, has typically been about other things—the White Man's Burden,
bringing true religion to the heathens, Manifest Destiny, defeating the
Yellow Peril or the Hun, seeking lebensraum, or making the world safe for
democracy. Any fabricated motivation for war or empire would do, as long as
it appealed to the collective consciousness of the population at the time.
The propaganda lies of yesterday were recorded and became consensus
history—the fabric of the matrix. 
		While the costs of territorial empire (fleets, colonial
administrations, etc.) were borne by Western taxpayers generally, the
profits of imperialism were enjoyed primarily by private corporations and
investors. Government and corporate elites were partners in the business of
imperialism: Empires gave government leaders power and prestige, and gave
corporate leaders power and wealth. Corporations ran the real business of
empire while government leaders fabricated noble excuses for the wars that
were required to keep that business going. Matrix reality was about
patriotism, national honor, and heroic causes; true reality was on another
plane altogether: that of economics. 
		Industrialization, beginning in the late 1700s, created a
demand for new markets and increased raw materials. Both demands spurred
accelerated expansion of empire. Wealthy investors amassed fortunes by
setting up large-scale industrial and trading operations, leading to the
emergence of an influential capitalist elite. Like any other elite,
capitalists used their wealth and influence to further their own interests
however they could. And the interests of capitalism always come down to
economic growth; investors must reap more than they sow or the whole system
comes to a grinding halt. 
		Thus capitalism, industrialization, nationalism, warfare,
imperialism—and the matrix—coevolved. Industrial-ized weapon production
provided the muscle of modern warfare, and capitalism provided the appetite
to use that muscle. Government leaders pursued the policies necessary to
expand empire while creating a rhetorical matrix, around nationalism, to
justify those policies. Capitalist growth depended on empire, which in turn
depended on a strong and stable core nation to defend it. National interests
and capitalist interests were inextricably linked—or so it seemed for more
than two centuries. 

		World War II and the Pax Americana 
		1945 will be remembered as the year World War II ended and
the bond of the atomic nucleus was broken. But 1945 also marked another
momentous fission—breaking of the bond between national and capitalist
interests. After every previous war, and in many cases after severe
devastation, European nations had always picked themselves back up and
resumed their competition over empire. But after World War II, a Pax
Americana was established. The US began to manage all the Western
peripheries on behalf of capitalism generally, while preventing the
communist powers from interfering in the game. Capitalist powers no longer
needed to fight over investment realms, and competitive imperialism was
replaced by collective imperialism. Opportunities for capital growth were no
longer linked to the military power of nations, apart from the power of
America. In his Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since
World War II, William Blum chronicles hundreds of significant covert and
overt interventions, showing exactly how the US carried out its imperial
management role. 
		In the postwar years, matrix reality diverged ever further
from actual reality. In the postwar matrix world, imperialism had been
abandoned and the world was being "democratized"; in the real world,
imperialism had become better organized and more efficient. In the matrix
world, the US "restored order," or "came to the assistance" of nations that
were being "undermined by Soviet influence"; in the real world, the
periphery was being systematically suppressed and exploited. In the matrix
world, the benefit was going to the periphery in the form of countless aid
programs; in the real world, immense wealth was being extracted from the
periphery. 

		Glitches in the Matrix, Popular Rebellion, and Neoliberalism

		Growing glitches in the matrix weren't noticed by most
people in the West, because the postwar years brought unprecedented levels
of Western prosperity and social progress. The rhetoric claimed progress
would come to all, and Westerners could see it being realized in their own
towns and cities. The West became the collective core of a global empire,
and exploitative development led to prosperity for Western populations,
while generating immense riches for corporations, banks, and wealthy capital
investors. 
		The parallel agenda of Third World exploitation and Western
prosperity worked effectively for the first two postwar decades. But in the
1960s, large numbers of Westerners, particularly the young and well
educated, began to notice glitches in the matrix. In Vietnam, imperialism
was too naked to be successfully masked as something else. A major split in
American public consciousness occurred as millions of antiwar protestors and
civil rights activists punctured the fabricated consensus of the 1950s and
declared the reality of exploitation and suppression both at home and
abroad. The environmental movement arose, challenging even the exploitation
of the natural world. In Europe, 1968 joined 1848 as a landmark year of
popular protest. 
		These developments disturbed elite planners. The postwar
regime's stability was being challenged from within the core—and the formula
of Western prosperity no longer guaranteed public passivity. A report
published in 1975, the Report of the Trilateral Task Force on Governability
of Democracies, provides a glimpse into the thinking of elite circles. Alan
Wolfe discusses this report in Holly Sklar's eye-opening Trilateralism.
Wolfe focuses especially on the analysis Harvard professor Samuel P.
Huntington presented in a section of the report entitled "The Crisis of
Democracy." Huntington is an articulate promoter of elite policy shifts, and
contributes pivotal articles to publications such as the Council on Foreign
Relations's Foreign Affairs. 
		Huntington tells us that democratic societies "cannot work"
unless the citizenry is "passive." The "democratic surge of the 1960s"
represented an "excess of democracy," which must be reduced if governments
are to carry out their traditional domestic and foreign policies.
Huntington's notion of "traditional policies" is expressed in a passage from
the report: 
		To the extent that the United States was governed by anyone
during the decades after World War II, it was governed by the President
acting with the support and cooperation of key individuals and groups in the
executive office, the federal bureaucracy, Congress, and the more important
businesses, banks, law firms, foundations, and media, which constitute the
private sector's "Establishment." 
		In these few words, Huntington spells out the reality that
electoral democracy has little to do with how America is run, and summarizes
the kind of people who are included within the elite planning community. Who
needs conspiracy theories when elite machinations are clearly described in
public documents like these? 
		Besides failing to deliver popular passivity, the policy of
prosperity for Western populations had another downside, having to do with
Japan's economic success. Under the Pax Americana umbrella, Japan had been
able to industrialize and become an imperial player—the prohibition on
Japanese rearmament had become irrelevant. With Japan's lower postwar living
standards, Japanese producers could undercut prevailing prices and steal
market share from Western producers. Western capital needed to find a way to
become more competitive on world markets, and Western prosperity was
standing in the way. Elite strategists, as Huntington showed, were fully
capable of understanding these considerations, and the requirements of
corporate growth created a strong motivation to make the needed
adjustments—in both reality and rhetoric. 
		If popular prosperity could be sacrificed, there were many
obvious ways Western capital could be made more competitive. Production
could be moved overseas to low-wage areas, allowing domestic unemployment to
rise. Unions could be attacked and wages forced down, and people could be
pushed into temporary and part-time jobs without benefits. Regulations
governing corporate behavior could be removed, corporate and capital-gains
taxes could be reduced, and the revenue losses could be taken out of
public-service budgets. Public infrastructures could be privatized, the
services reduced to cut costs, and then they could be milked for easy
profits while they deteriorated from neglect. 
		These are the very policies and programs launched during the
Reagan-Thatcher years in the US and Britain. They represent a systematic
project of increasing corporate growth at the expense of popular prosperity
and welfare. Such a real agenda would have been unpopular, and a
corresponding matrix reality was fabricated for public consumption. The
matrix reality used real terms like "deregulation," "reduced taxes," and
"privatization," but around them was woven an economic mythology. The old,
failed laissez-faire doctrine of the 1800s was reintroduced with the help of
Milton Friedman's Chicago School of economics, and "less government" became
the proud "modern" theme in America and Britain. Sensible regulations had
restored financial stability after the Great Depression, and had broken up
anti-competitive monopolies such as the Rockefeller trust and AT&T. But in
the new matrix reality, all regulations were considered bureaucratic
interference. Reagan and Thatcher preached the virtues of individualism, and
promised to "get government off people's backs." The implication was that
everyday individuals were to get more money and freedom, but in reality the
primary benefits would go to corporations and wealthy investors. 
		The academic term for laissez-faire economics is "economic
liberalism," and hence the Reagan-Thatcher revolution has come to be known
as the "neoliberal revolution." It brought a radical change in actual
reality by returning to the economic philosophy that led to sweatshops,
corruption, and robber-baron monopolies in the nineteenth century. It
brought an equally radical change in matrix reality—a complete reversal in
the attitude that was projected regarding government. Government policies
had always been criticized in the media, but the institution of government
had always been respected—reflecting the traditional bond between capitalism
and nationalism. With Reagan, we had a sitting president telling us that
government itself was a bad thing. Many of us may have agreed with him, but
such a sentiment had never before found official favor. Soon, British and
American populations were beginning to applaud the destruction of the very
democratic institutions that provided their only hope of participation in
the political process. 

		Globalization and World Government 
		The essential bond between capitalism and nationalism was
broken in 1945, but it took some time for elite planners to recognize this
new condition and to begin bringing the world system into alignment with it.
The strong Western nation-state had been the bulwark of capitalism for
centuries, and initial postwar policies were based on the assumption that
this would continue indefinitely. The Bretton Woods financial system (the
IMF, the World Bank, and a system of fixed exchange rates among major
currencies) was set up to stabilize national economies, and popular
prosperity was encouraged to provide political stability. Neoliberalism in
the US and Britain represented the first serious break with this policy
framework—and brought the first visible signs of the fission of the
nation-capital bond. 
		The neoliberal project was economically profitable in the US
and Britain, and the public accepted the matrix economic mythology.
Meanwhile, the integrated global economy gave rise to a new generation of
transnational corporations, and corporate leaders began to realize that
corporate growth was not dependent on strong core nation-states. Indeed,
Western nations—with their environmental laws, consumer-protection measures,
and other forms of regulatory "interference"—were a burden on corporate
growth. Having been successfully field-tested in the two oldest
"democracies," the neoliberal project moved onto the global stage. The
Bretton Woods system of fixed rates of currency exchange was weakened, and
the international financial system became destabilizing, instead of
stabilizing, for national economies. The radical free-trade project was
launched, leading eventually to the World Trade Organization. The fission
that had begun in 1945 was finally manifesting as an explosive change in the
world system. 
		The objective of neoliberal free-trade treaties is to remove
all political controls over domestic and international trade and commerce.
Corporations have free rein to maximize profits, heedless of environmental
consequences and safety risks. Instead of governments regulating
corporations, the WTO now sets rules for governments, telling them what kind
of beef they must import, whether or not they can ban asbestos, and what
additives they must permit in petroleum products. So far, in every case
where the WTO has been asked to review a health, safety, or environmental
regulation, the regulation has been overturned. 
		Most of the world has been turned into a periphery; the
imperial core has been boiled down to the capitalist elite themselves,
represented by their bureaucratic, unrepresentative, WTO world government.
The burden of accelerated imperialism falls hardest outside the West, where
loans are used as a lever by the IMF to compel debtor nations such as Rwanda
and South Korea to accept suicidal "reform" packages. In the 1800s, genocide
was employed to clear North America and Australia of their native
populations, creating room for growth. Today, a similar program of genocide
has apparently been unleashed against sub-Saharan Africa. The IMF destroys
the economies, the CIA trains militias and stirs up tribal conflicts, and
the West sells weapons to all sides. Famine and genocidal civil wars are the
predictable and inevitable result. Meanwhile, AIDS runs rampant while the
WTO and the US government use trade laws to prevent medicines from reaching
the victims. 
		As in the past, Western military force will be required to
control the non-Western periphery and make adjustments to local political
arrangements when considered necessary by elite planners. The Pentagon
continues to provide the primary policing power, with NATO playing an
ever-increasing role. Resentment against the West and against neoliberalism
is growing in the Third World, and the frequency of military interventions
is bound to increase. All of this needs to be made acceptable to Western
minds, adding a new dimension to the matrix. 
		In the latest matrix reality, the West is called the
"international community," whose goal is to serve "humanitarian" causes.
Bill Clinton made it explicit with his "Clinton Doctrine," in which (as
quoted in the Washington Post) he solemnly promised, "If somebody comes
after innocent civilians and tries to kill them en masse because of their
race, their ethnic background or their religion and it is within our power
stop it, we will stop it." This matrix fabrication is very effective indeed;
who opposes prevention of genocide? Only outside the matrix does one see
that genocide is caused by the West in the first place, that the worst cases
of genocide are continuing, that "assistance" usually makes things worse (as
in the Balkans), and that Clinton's handy doctrine enables him to intervene
when and where he chooses. Since dictators and the stirring of ethnic
rivalries are standard tools used in managing the periphery, a US president
can always find "innocent civilians" wherever elite plans call for an
intervention. 
		In matrix reality, globalization is not a project but rather
the inevitable result of beneficial market forces; genocide in Africa is no
fault of the West's, but is due to ancient tribal rivalries; every measure
demanded by globalization is referred to as "reform" (the word is never used
with irony). "Democracy" and "reform" are frequently used together, always
leaving the subtle impression that one has something to do with the other.
The illusion is presented that all economic boats are rising, and if yours
isn't, it must be your own fault: you aren't "competitive" enough. Economic
failures are explained away as "temporary adjustments," or else the victim
(as in South Korea or Russia) is blamed for not being sufficiently
neoliberal. "Investor confidence" is referred to with the same awe and
reverence that earlier societies might have expressed toward the "will of
the gods." 
		Western quality of life continues to decline, while the WTO
establishes legal precedents ensuring that its authority will not be
challenged when its decisions become more draconian. Things will get much
worse in the West; this was anticipated in elite circles when the neoliberal
project was still on the drawing board, as is illustrated in Samuel
Huntington's "The Crisis of Democracy" report discussed earlier. 

		The Management of Discontented Societies 
		The postwar years, especially in the United States, were
characterized by consensus politics. Most people shared a common
understanding of how society worked, and generally approved of how things
were going. Prosperity was real and the matrix version of reality was
reassuring. Most people believed in it. Those beliefs became a shared
consensus, and the government could then carry out its plans as it intended,
"responding" to the programmed public will. 
		The "excess democracy" of the 1960s and 1970s attacked this
consensus from below, and neoliberal planners decided from above that
ongoing consensus wasn't worth paying for. They accepted that segments of
society would persist in disbelieving various parts of the matrix. Activism
and protest were to be expected. New means of social control would be needed
to deal with activist movements and with growing discontent, as
neoliberalism gradually tightened the economic screws. Such means of control
were identified and have since been largely implemented, particularly in the
United States. In many ways, America sets the pace of globalization;
innovations can often be observed there before they occur elsewhere. This is
particularly true in the case of social-control techniques. 
		The most obvious means of social control, in a discontented
society, is a strong, semi-militarized police force. Most of the periphery
has been managed by such means for centuries. This was obvious to elite
planners in the West, was adopted as policy, and has now been largely
implemented. Urban and suburban ghettos—where the adverse consequences of
neoliberalism are currently most concentrated—have literally become occupied
territories, where police beatings and unjustified shootings are
commonplace. 
		So that the beefed-up police force could maintain control in
conditions of mass unrest, elite planners also realized that much of the
Bill of Rights would need to be neutralized. (This is not surprising, given
that the Bill's authors had just lived through a revolution and were seeking
to ensure that future generations would have the means to organize and
overthrow any oppressive future government.) The rights-neutralization
project has been largely implemented, as exemplified by armed midnight
raids, outrageous search-and-seizure practices, overly broad conspiracy
laws, wholesale invasion of privacy, massive incarceration, and the rise of
prison slave labor. The Rubicon has been crossed—the techniques of
oppression long common in the empire's periphery are being imported to the
core. 
		In the matrix, the genre of the TV or movie police drama has
served to create a reality in which "rights" are a joke, the accused are
despicable sociopaths, and no criminal is ever brought to justice until some
noble cop or prosecutor bends the rules a bit. Government officials bolster
the construct by declaring "wars" on crime and drugs; the noble cops are
fighting a war out there in the streets—and you can't win a war without
using your enemy's dirty tricks. The CIA plays its role by managing the
international drug trade and making sure that ghetto drug dealers are well
supplied. In this way, the American public has been led to accept the means
of its own suppression. 
		The mechanisms of the police state are in place. They will
be used when necessary—as we see in ghettos and skyrocketing prison
populations, as we saw on the streets of Seattle and Washington, D.C. during
recent demonstrations against the WTO, IMF, and World Bank, and as is
suggested by executive orders that enable the president to suspend the
Constitution and declare martial law whenever he deems it necessary. But raw
force is only the last line of defense for the elite regime. Neoliberal
planners introduced more subtle defenses into the matrix; looking at these
will bring us back to our discussion of the left and right. 
		Divide and rule is one of the oldest means of mass
control—standard practice since at least the Roman Empire. This is applied
at the level of modern imperialism, where each small nation competes with
others for capital investments. Within societies it works this way: If each
social group can be convinced that some other group is the source of its
discontent, then the population's energy will be spent in inter-group
struggles. The regime can sit on the sidelines, intervening covertly to stir
things up or to guide them in desired directions. In this way, most
discontent can be neutralized, and force can be reserved for exceptional
cases. In the prosperous postwar years, consensus politics served to manage
the population. Under neoliberalism, programmed factionalism has become the
front-line defense—the matrix version of divide and rule. 
		The covert guiding of various social movements has proven to
be one of the most effective means of programming factions and stirring them
against one another. Fundamentalist religious movements have been
particularly useful. They have been used not only within the US, but also to
maximize divisiveness in the Middle East and for other purposes throughout
the empire. The collective energy and dedication of "true believers" makes
them a potent political weapon that movement leaders can readily aim where
needed. In the US that weapon has been used to promote censorship on the
Internet, to attack the women's movement, to support repressive legislation,
and generally to bolster the ranks of what is called in the matrix the
"right wing." 
		In the matrix, the various factions believe that their
competition with each other is the process that determines society's
political agenda. Politicians want votes, and hence the biggest and
best-organized factions should have the most influence, and their agendas
should get the most political attention. In reality there is only one
significant political agenda these days: the maximization of capital growth
through the dismantling of society, the continuing implementation of
neoliberalism, and the management of empire. Clinton's liberal rhetoric and
his playing around with health care and gay rights are not the result of
liberal pressure. They are rather the means by which Clinton is sold to
liberal voters, so that he can proceed with real business: getting NAFTA
through Congress, promoting the WTO, giving away the public airwaves,
justifying military interventions, and so forth. Issues of genuine
importance are never raised in campaign politics—this is a major glitch in
the matrix for those who have eyes to see it. 

		Escaping the Matrix 
		The matrix cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
Under the onslaught of globalization, the glitches are becoming ever more
difficult to conceal—as earlier, with the Vietnam War. November's
anti-establishment demonstrations in Seattle, the largest in decades, were
aimed directly at globalization and the WTO. Even more important, Seattle
saw the coming together of factions that the matrix had programmed to fight
one another, such as left-leaning environmentalists and socially
conservative union members. 
		Seattle represented the tip of an iceberg. A mass movement
against globalization and elite rule is ready to ignite, like a brush fire
on a dry, scorching day. The establishment has been expecting such a
movement and has a variety of defenses at its command, including those used
effectively against the movements of the 1960s and 1970s. In order to
prevail against what seem like overwhelming odds, the movement must escape
entirely from the matrix, and it must bring the rest of society with it. As
long as the matrix exists, humanity cannot be free. The whole truth must be
faced: Globalization is centralized tyranny; capitalism has outlasted its
sell-by date; matrix "democracy" is elite rule; and "market forces" are
imperialism. Left and right are enemies only in the matrix. In reality we
are all in this together, and each of us has a contribution to make toward a
better world. 
		Marx may have failed as a social visionary, but he had
capitalism figured out. It is based not on productivity or social benefit,
but on the pursuit of capital growth through exploiting everything in its
path. The job of elite planners is to create new spaces for capital to grow
in. Competitive imperialism provided growth for centuries; collective
imperialism was invented when still more growth was needed; and then
neoliberalism took over. Like a cancer, capitalism consumes its host and is
never satisfied. The capital pool must always grow, more and more,
forever—until the host dies or capitalism is replaced. 
		The matrix equates capitalism with free enterprise, and
defines centralized-state-planning socialism as the only alternative to
capitalism. In reality, capitalism didn't amount to much of a force until
the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution of the late 1700s—and we
certainly cannot characterize all prior societies as socialist. Free
enterprise, private property, commerce, banking, international trade,
economic specialization—all of these had existed for millennia before
capitalism. Capitalism claims credit for modern prosperity, but credit would
be better given to developments in science and technology. 
		Before capitalism, Western nations were generally run by
aristocratic classes. The aristocratic attitude toward wealth focused on
management and maintenance. With capitalism, the focus is always on growth
and development; whatever one has is but the prelude to building a still
greater fortune. In fact, there are infinite alternatives to capitalism, and
different societies can choose different systems, once they are free to do
so. As Morpheus put it: "Outside the Matrix everything is possible, and
there are no limits." 
		The matrix defines "democracy" as competitive party
politics, because that is a game wealthy elites have long since learned to
corrupt and manipulate. Even in the days of the Roman Republic, the
techniques were well understood. Real-world democracy is possible only if
the people themselves participate in setting society's direction. An elected
official can truly represent a constituency only after that constituency 
		has worked out its positions—from the local to the global—on
the issues of the day. For that to happen, the interests of different
societal factions must be harmonized through interaction and discussion.
Collaboration, not competition, is what leads to effective harmonization. 
		The movement to end elite rule and establish livable
societies, if it is to succeed, will need to evolve a democratic process,
and to use that process to develop a program of consensus reform that
harmonizes the interests of its constituencies. In order to be politically
victorious, it will need to reach out to all segments of society and become
a majority movement. By such means, the democratic process of the movement
can become the democratic process of a newly empowered civil society. There
is no adequate theory of democracy at present, although there is much to be
learned from history and from theory. The movement will need to develop a
democratic process as it goes along, and that objective must be pursued as
diligently as victory itself. Otherwise, some new tyranny will eventually
replace the old. 


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