We CAN Change the World shows that the revolutionary transformation of modern society is not only necessary: it is also possible. The key to a new revolutionary movement is a new view of people.
This book argues that capitalism and communism are based upon the same view of people and society, in which economic development is the basis of human development, and most people are seen as the victims or beneficiaries of the actions of elites in a history driven by economic forces beyond human control. It is impossible to create democracy on the basis of this view of human beings.
Stratman shows that revolution is possible because most people in their everyday lives are already engaged in a struggle to create a better world. The logic of the competitive culture of capitalism is that this world should be a loveless and savage place. But most people, in the little piece of the world that they think they can control--with their wife or husband or children or students or co-workers--struggle against this culture to create relationships based on love and trust and mutual respect and commitment. This is the real force driving history which makes a new world possible.
Revolutions occur when people gain sufficient confidence in their own view of human life and in themselves as the makers of history to shape all of society with their vision.
We CAN Change the World is based on the author's experiences during the Boston busing crisis of the 1970s, interviews with striking British coal miners and Hormel meatpackers, and his work as a consultant to teacher unions. It includes analysis of the failure of Marxism as a revolutionary theory, the current corporate attack on working people and the collapse of Communism, and outlines the basis for a new revolutionary movement
David Stratman is a consultant to education organizations and school districts. He is the former Washington Director of the National Parent-Teacher Association (1977-79), and he directed the National Coalition for Public Education in its defeat of the Tuition Tax Credit Act in the 95th Congress (1978). Stratman has been an Education Policy Fellow in the U.S. Office of Education in Washington, D.C. (1976-77), and has also taught at colleges in Maine and Massachusetts. He edits New Democracy, a bimonthly newsletter devoted to democratic revolution. Stratman earned a Ph. D. in English in 1970 from the University of North Carolina, where he studied as a National Defense Fellow. He lives in Boston with his wife of 33 years. His two children graduated from the Boston Public Schools, where his daughter now teaches.
