i finished reading communist manifesto last night. reading it makes me realize i'm not as optimistic as i thought i was. so, i guess that means i'd been overly optimistic about my optimism.

the stuff about the bourgeois frightens me, because it's so dead on it's unreal. but the sections about the proletariat and the uprising of the working class just don't seem like they would work. wouldn't the power struggle that exists between those who have money and those who work for those who have money just manifest itself in different ways? like addressing self-esteem issues in schools by issuing uniforms and finding the students have started judging each other by their shoes, it seems that removing the monetary advantages of the bourgeois class won't get rid of the power issues that exist there. if the working class overthrows the upper class there will be members of the working class that will seek to be the individuals that replace the bourgeois class which then necessitates only more revolutions. there's a selflessness that must go along with marx's proletariat revolution that i'm just not confident could happen (without, as my dad points out, some sort of universal christian acceptance of what it means to be good.)

when i was in uganda and all that nastiness happened, having the women strike was my first idea. i thought it was genius. the women show up and refuse to give sarah any more baskets or necklaces until they are paid in full for the previous weeks. but there were multiple problems: some of the women have more to lose than others, some would rather try to keep on sarah's good side in hopes of reaping benefits from that relationship, some don't get along with others in the group, and some don't have the skills necessary to make their demand something that sarah really would regret losing. the common goal for the betterment of the whole group wasn't something that could be achieved, even just within this group of 15-25 women. and in order to get to a place where we could have conversations about common goals, we would have had to meet with these women in secret, which would have put them all in danger of losing not only their jobs, but the school fees the organization was often paying for their children and in some cases ARVs that the organization was providing as part of their AIDS outreach. in other words, it wasn't such a genius idea.

so how can it work? how can you truly reorganize 'the way things work'? it does have to be revolutionary, but how do you come to that common understanding of how people should be treated and what the meaning of equality is? how do you keep people in power from overstretching their power? the corruptibility of power won't go away with a working class revolution.

so many questions.... especially for a 40 page book.