Armenia’s Place In Contemporary World

This is an excerpt from the platform of ПРОРЫВ (Breakthrough) Autonomous Action in Yerevan.  It has not been seen for 3 years. Fortunately we had a printout in Russian and translated it (with minor modifications) for our readers: 

The petty-bourgeois social order, which has been inflicted on Armenian people by the global Capital, already suggests that Armenia is not an independent self-determining country.  And it is this condition of Global Capitalism that makes prospects of true democracy in Armenia remote.  It is just a small rotary in the giant machine which processes and launders billions and trillions of world’s capital.  If in a feudal society the exploitation was “direct” (the workers and the people could easily identify who is the oppressor, rebel against the exploiters, kill him, expropriate the feudal land and other properties), then today we have a much more indirect and complex schema of exploitation which realises itself on the level of global capitalism, G8, the State, local class of oppressors, media, cinema, pop-culture, thought-control and the Society of the Spectacle. 

Nevertheless, though the structure of exploitation has altered, the methods of its realisation remain similar.  Just as the feudal gradually would drag the worker into a monetary dependence and eventually into a total submission, similarly, the global Capital behaves in this manner toward the weak and purposefully weakened countries.  

Furthermore it is not only the government that has been subjugated, but also the traditional Armenian Church.  The religious propaganda is being utilised to the full extent for the purposes of pacification – for the purposes of redirecting the masses away from the real causes of their everyday problems, while being effectively financed by the “wealthy trans-national Power-Elite”.  Thousands of preachers, “soul hunters” are scattered across the globe and spread the propaganda about “afterlife” and against the traditional forms of belief and church. 

In the meanwhile, the conditions of ordinary people, who find themselves at the lowest level of social hierarchy, worsens and worsens.  People are becoming increasingly alienated and separated by those very problems which were caused by Capitalism in the first place (eg family problems, disintegration of social fabric).  The social sphere and social communication are becoming increasingly eroded, while people are being denigrated and undignified.  Major national industries are destroyed, while being replaced by hundreds of tiny offices that feed off various grants and credits; and this weakens the workers’ and country’s economic and political power and makes it increasingly dependent on Global Capital.  The Global Capital knows exactly who presents the utmost danger to its survival, and that is why it allocates a number of meaningless grants and credits in a broader plan to prevent the spread of large workers’ collectives, to erode the proletarian culture of self-organization in the countries where it is well established, to keep the workers disunited and people alienated and separated, and the social fabric eroded.  In accordance to a similar scenario the religious propaganda system operates, thus destroying traditional forms of church and keeping believers separated in various sects.

While facing no effective resistance, the largest capitalist states are not squeamish to use any methods possible to reach their goals, and they do it in an increasingly audacious and open manner.  What place is then allocated to a person who is honest, thinking freely and artistically?  What place is given to a human being, a human being who does not constrain himself/herself in life but by his own interests – one who doesn’t think of himself/herself as a clone and a part of this giant animalistic system?

* * * Our Aim – to unite such individuals and creation of autonomous societies, in which the problems of everyday life would be solved in Direct-Democratic manner through interaction by people themselves, in which the decisions would be taken independent of state-politics; societies which would work toward creation of an integrated and harmoniously developed individual, which would facilitate the conditions for the realisation of Creative, Artistic and Cultural potentials.  We believe that the current system of education and upbringing, traditionally carried from one generation to the next, is in conflict with laws of existence and nature, is generally unhealthy for the individual and is detrimental for our planet.  We believe that the most important knowledge for the individual is the knowledge of laws of nature and of one’s place in it, while the most important type of upbringing is the upbringing of the self.  Nevertheless an individual cannot exist outside of society and that is why we stand for unification of the masses and creation of autonomous social self-governments, which would serve as the foundation for the resistance against the current hierarchical regime.