To my friend Fabian Girolet

“The son is emancipated to be like his father, to become what he already was;

The slave is freed, to be in a new world in which he never was.”

Enrique Dussel

… Europe and the United States do not represent the good. Neither do Russia and China represent evil. Israel is not a democracy. The Palestinians are not terrorists. Iran does not belong to the “axis of evil” -as George W. Bush pretended- simply because the “axis of evil” does not exist. We call this expression “propaganda”, and discuss the problem in other terms.

Capitalism is not the best economic system that has ever existed and will exist forever and ever. Feminism is not an immoral plot. Immigrants arriving in pateras are not invading us.

Peronism is not responsible for Argentina’s decline, nor is Cuba a murderous regime that deserves international isolation (after all, Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship and its leaders walk on red carpets; and the United States is the most criminal state agency on the planet, even though it presents itself to us as a land of heroes in the service of humanity).

The far-right did not emerge yesterday. Progressivism is not the ultimate truth about the whole. The rich do not deserve privilege. And wealth is not necessarily the fruit of labor.

A meritocratic system does not promote the most worthy and valuable, but punishes the freedom and genuine creativity in us. Innovation or change is not good in itself. Nor is it good for things to remain what they are.

The statue of liberty is a dangerous myth. Why not a statue to fraternity? Environmental destruction is not a myth. The words “colonialism” and “imperialism” are not antiquarian objects.

Marx’s analyses are more valid than ever. Wage labor is definitely theft. The appropriation of common resources is definitely a crime against humanity. Exclusion is definitely proof of the failure of the existing order.

Meditation and other contemplative disciplines are not revolutionary, (despite what the “postmodern spiritualists” and conservative scientists promote), but it is true that a revolutionary should be able to sit down to meditate or retire happily when it is time, proving that his political activism is not an excuse to satiate his personal passion.

We need a fraternal revolution to confront the revolution of hatred and discrimination promoted by the extreme right. But it is no longer enough to remain with the promise of “evolutions” within the order that sustains the myth of capitalist modernity.

Now, if it is true that we are not ready for revolution, the task is to prepare for it, even if we need decades, centuries or even millennia to complete the task.

Now, if it is true that we are not ready for revolution, the task is to prepare for it, even if we need decades, centuries or even millennia to complete the task. New traditions must be created, to educate revolutionaries who will invent and inhabit “a new world we have never been in.”