Letters.

• Position: Letter to the editor

Dear Synthesis/Regeneration,

As a new reader, I keep hoping that more articles will appear that follow up to the well-done critiques of all the problems we daily endure. The work of environmentalists, scientists, agricultural experts, health professionals and good solid journalists doing factual research and reporting on the failures and ills we suffer is important of course! But another area needs far more work and I have always hoped this magazine could provide that: giving a clearer picture of a new society that we can build, based on full and true democracy. The picture includes working politically towards real change and social ownership and full participation in the governance of that society, every day, in the community and at the work-site.

We need help to move--not in circles--but in a new direction. Only an actual democratic economy in which the people who do the work, create the real social wealth, imagine the solutions--and participate democratically in making all social decisions--can be an answer to the problems so often raised.

I think we all agree that people's real needs and talents and happiness should be the basis for what a society looks like, what it values, and how it behaves. But my experience tells me we can never have that unless we live in a society in which profit, competition and market are put aside as detrimental and destructive.

Every diverse topic your writers rightly criticize has its basis in one common arena: the capitalist system, which is one of ever greater exploitation and production for profit. Yet, while endless outrage, studies and statistics may make for 2 or 3 more generations of topics, no fundamental improvements can be implemented because they contradict the system's goals--profit for the very few, increased exploitation of people and nature, domination of resources. And the ultimately foolhardy decisions we are stuck with.

I think we can agree that the knowledge, information and ideas are out there, they are just not helping. Why? The problem so many of us refuse to admit is it's not good or bad people, good or bad laws or not enough information. It certainly isn't "The Demopublicans." The better ideas are already decades old. No, it's the system. Simply, it's the system.

I always appreciate Don Fitz's editorials and articles and the implicit call for change. But I always hope for other articles about the goal of a new future without capitalism's baggage holding us back. About how we can start to build a political movement with a single goal of replacing (one seat in Congress at a time, if need be) this system with democratic socialism. The ballot is still available; the election process still focuses attention on our societal problems.

The idea of a democratic transformation of the planet can begin to take shape with articles and letters. Think of Tom Paine. All change in history has started small and "impossible." Thinking about starting and supporting parties and candidates based on a wholly new system means forming third, fourth, fifth parties to initiate dialogue and hope from the voters--we, the people.

The Greens' Ten Key Values should be part of that movement, but we need to hear more about vision and goals and honest change from the system that we all pick away at. We already know what's wrong. What we need to concentrate on now is beginning a path towards what will be right for us to survive and thrive. The time has come for that next step.

Thank you,

L.D. Frantin

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S/R,

I've just read your article: "Consume, Consume, Consume" (Don Fitz, S/R 44, pp. 8-13). Lots of wise points made. The most important point made--well made--came and went in one paragraph:

The most important difficulty for EE [energy efficiency] is the market economy, which corporate environmentalists love so much and understand so little. Corporations do not compete to make less money. They compete...