Ten Aspects of a
Revolutionary Praxis for the
21st Century
Selected from Chapter Fourteen
Of
Millennium Dawn
The Philosophy of Planetary Crisis and Human Liberation
By
Glen T. Martin
(1) Promote and develop truly critical
thinking.
Think and live as a
revolutionary heir of
the philosophers of
human liberation.
Expose the
hidden premises of
class society in every
way possible and in
every possible
forum.
“All the news that’s fit to print”
 Learn to read the mass media, the manifestations of
culture, the symbols of the dominant system, and
the pronouncements of government critically, with
insight into their ideological cover-up of the system
of injustice and death from which they benefit.
Think “Ruling Class”
 Use a “class analysis” and
an analysis of the
“territorial nation-state”
to understand the
workings of governments,
corporations, the media,
and the other dominant
institutions of the world.
 Right: In the San Francisco
financial district:
Monument to the
Working Classes
(2) Delegitimize the system of territorial nationstates and global capitalism in every way possible
and on every occasion possible.
 Work to expose the illegitimacy of the institutions
claiming to be the only legitimate ones in a world in
which there exist no other alternatives.
 We must make clear everywhere the inadequacies and
injustices of the system of nation-states and of the global
capitalism with which it is intertwined.
 Show the interdependent complicities in this system of
domination over education, communications media,
culture, charity, business, the arts, and politics.
The state and the ruling class:

“Since World War II, the U.S. government has given over $200 billion in
military aid to train, equip, and subsidize more than 2.3 million troops and internal
security forces in some eighty countries, the purpose being not to defend them
from outside invasions but to protect ruling oligarchs and multinational corporate
investors from the dangers of anticapitalist insurgency….

“U.S. leaders profess a dedication to democracy. Yet over the past five decades,
democratically elected reformist governments in Guatemala, Guyana, the
Dominican Republic, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Syria, Indonesia (under Sukarno),
Greece, Argentina, Bolivia, Haiti, and numerous other nations were overthrown by
pro-capitalist militaries that were funded and aided by the U.S. national security
state.

“The U.S. national security state has participated in covert actions or proxy
mercenary wars against revolutionary governments in Cuba, Angola, Mozambique,
Ethiopia, Portugal, Nicaragua, Cambodia, East Timor, Western Sahara, and
elsewhere, usually with dreadful devastation and loss of life for the indigenous
populations. Hostile actions also have been directed against reformist
governments in Egypt, Lebanon, Peru, Iran, Syria, Zaire, Jamaica, South Yemen, the
Fiji Islands, and elsewhere.

“Since World War II, U.S. forces have directly invaded or launched aerial attacks
against Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, North Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon,
Grenada, Panama, Libya, Iraq, and Somalia, sowing varying degrees of death and
destruction.”
From Michael Parenti, Against Empire, 1995, pp. 37-38
(3) Commit to solidarity with the poor and the oppressed.
Mothers and children in the giant garbage dump where they live in Indonesia.
Ethical life in action:
Engage in organized struggle for liberation from all
poverty and oppression.
Commitment to the poor is not an external
addition to the fullness of life. It is integral to a
full and fulfilling way of existing, for unity-indiversity with its concomitant awakening to the
ethical dimension that recognizes persons as endsin-themselves is at the heart of existence.
Some people happen to have been born into these
circumstances, with this hunger and malnutrition,
with this lack of opportunity for education or
health care. I could just as well have been born
there and be experiencing these horrible
sufferings and deprivations.
(4) Educate for human and
planetary liberation.
Everywhere and in every situation, strive
to educate others, with sensitivity and
thoughtfulness, about the possibilities
and processes and necessity of human
and planetary liberation.
Educational praxis:
 Show the interconnections between the political and
the spiritual and between humanity and nature.
 Apply the process of education to yourself as well as to
others, since education is truly a life-long process and is
never finished.
 Emphasize the inseparability of authentic education
and truly critical thought.
 Think always in terms of the ways, the means, and the
possibilities available for human liberation and the
creation of a decent future for our children and the
precious Earth on which we dwell.
(5) Become a planetary citizen:
think both globally and locally,
and act both globally and locally.
A Pledge of Allegiance to the Constitution of Earth
I pledge allegiance to the Constitution for the Federation of Earth,
and to the Republic of free world citizens for which it stands,
One Earth Federation, protecting by law the rich diversity of the
Earth’s citizens,
One Earth Federation, protecting the precious ecology of our
planet.
I pledge allegiance to the World Parliament representing all nations
and peoples,
and to the democratic processes by which it proceeds,
One law for the Earth, with freedom and equality for all,
One standard of justice, with a bill of rights protecting each.
I pledge allegiance to the future generations protected by the Earth
Constitution,
And to the unity, integrity, and beauty of humankind,
living in harmony on the Earth,
Home
Home
 Explore the connections; recognize that
the only solution to many local problems
will be planetary. Understand that it is
not “globalization” in itself that provides
an answer (since capitalism has been
doing this for centuries) but rather a
planetary solution based on a founded
society, a global non-military democratic
world government.
 Distinguish critically between the
misleading ideology of “global
governance” or “new world order” in
which nothing substantial has changed
and a founded, planetary society in which
human liberation has been substantially
institutionalized.
Home
Home
 Transfer your primary loyalty to the Earth
and its inhabitants. Be a citizen of the
Earth before all else, for only then can we
become truly good citizens of the local
communities of which we are a part.
(6) Organize and resist; organize for
political and economic effectiveness, and
resist through nonviolent direct action.
Critical Theory, Compassion, and Nonviolence:
 Use the inseparability of critical theory, compassion, and
active nonviolence as the basis for action as well as the
theoretical framing of a new social order.
 Active nonviolence includes speaking out, editorial
writing, voting, organizing, strikes, boycotts, protesting,
street theater, revolutionary music, wall murals,
disrupting the system, conferences, educating, teach-ins,
and refusal to participate (for example, in paying war
taxes, military registration, corporate military contracts,
corporate exploitation of the third-world poor, and so
on).
 It includes expressions and actions of solidarity with
others in their revolutionary struggles, whether these be
environmental defense actions, labor movements, or
third-world struggles of liberation. Be very clear that
none of the struggles by themselves can lead to a just
world order without democratic world government.
(7) Practice meditation and
mindfulness.
Perpetual growth in awareness:
Meditate: set time radically apart, free from all
interruptions, to quiet the mind, and practice
mindfulness in daily activities.
The emergent evolutionary history of humanity is
precisely the history of transformations of
consciousness, often linked with the material
conditions of existence.
A person imbued with revolutionary ideology who
is not self-aware and lacks sensitivity to others and
to the fullness of the present moment is likely to be
an incomplete revolutionary.
The process of living itself is inseparable from a
perpetual growth of awareness, a growth requiring
effort, discipline, and conscious choice.
(8) Cultivate
compassionate
solidarity; think
and live
compassionately
Right: Kuan-yin,
Goddess of Mercy,
Interreligious Park
of the World Peace
Envoy, Thailand
Compassion is awareness:
 The word “compassion” is used here as a symbol for a
spiritual awakening to the inseparable unity-indiversity of all things that is the source of our
revolutionary solidarity with the poor and oppressed.
 As such, the realization of compassion is the
inseparable compliment of social revolution and a
fundamental dimension of revolutionary praxis.
 As the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, insists in
his writings, compassion does not need to come in a
blinding light of something called “enlightenment” for
those who follow the Buddhist path.
(9) Think and live with an awareness of the
silence encompassing our lives:
be apart from all the world.
Silence:
 Such awareness is simultaneously to be at the heart of the world, living
from the depths of silence in the fullness of the present moment.
 But it gives us the non-attachment, the objectivity, and the critical
relationship to our own subjectivity that are essential requirements for
effective revolutionary praxis.
 This awareness is also linked to other aspects of praxis: to the meditation,
mindfulness, compassion, and ethical awareness discussed at many
places in this book.
 But it must be emphasized in its own right, for ultimately the process of
realizing this silence, available to us as the background to all our
experiences, leads to the transcendence of the compulsive and fractured
ego so fundamental to capitalism and nationalism.
 The silence is transforming, so we become revolutionaries not only in our
actions and commitments, but also through being transformed and
awakened persons ourselves.
(10) Think and live eschatologically,
and cultivate the utopian imagination.
Miskito Indians: northern Nicaragua
Togo,
West Africa
Celebrate daily the new time of human
fulfillment being born in the present, or the
realization of Buddha nature in all things, or
the coming of the kingdom of God, or the
coming and ever-present pleroma, or the
realization of the messianic age, or the
cosmogonic birth of the Omega Point, or the
new era of peace and prosperity beginning in
the here and now.
The eschatological present-future informs the fullness of
the absolute present and points to the wondrous,
transformative depths at the heart of reality.
The imagination is the key:
The End
Transformative
Praxis to all
beings