Wolfi Landstreicher

Submission to domination is enforced not solely, nor even most significantly, through blatant repression, but rather through subtle manipulations worked into the fabric of everyday social relationships. These manipulations — ingrained in the social fabric not because domination is everywhere and nowhere, but because the institutions of domination create rules, laws, mores and customs that enforce such manipulations — create a logic of submission, an often unconscious tendency to justify resignation and subservience in one’s everyday relations in the world.

I am convinced that a revolutionary challenge to the current social order must necessarily be a challenge to the last ten thousand years of institutional development that have created it. In short, revolutionary critique must aim at civilization itself. But what precisely does this mean?

One would think that a political doctrine and system that was propagated by the bourgeoisie in their rise to power, that is promoted world-wide by the Western ruling class and that has only existed in its so-called “pure” form on the backs of slaves, would at least be suspect in the eyes of those who oppose the present social order. But such is not the case.