“The body that says ‘I,’ in truth says ‘We’.”

—Tiqqun, Introduction to Civil War.

We have been pushed to our limits. The world has pushed us to our limits. Capitalism has pushed us to our limits. And in a way, that’s a good thing.

It’s a natural stage of human progression: Feudalism, Capitalism and then Whatever’s Next. In the cover story, Professor John MacKay GRD ’98 says: “Increasingly, one sees proposals for change … we’re in the midst of the most serious ideological crises capitalism has experienced for at least thirty years.”

But the fact that Capitalism has pushed us to our limits, the fact that it is failing shows that our analysis works. It shows us that the millions who died in imperialist wars of aggression over the past two or three centuries did not die in vain. It shows us that we have the power to change things.

The change will not come with one man; we share the frustration of the woman asking our President why change has not come. We’re “exhausted,” too, not just by the recession, but also by a world of continuous and sustained oppression. When Mayor DeStefano addresses the people of this City like naughty school-children while advocating the placing of armed police on every corner, we cannot stand idly by and watch the state take every inch of our freedom. We must know that now is the time to act.

It is now that we can say that a hierarchy pervades our very being and soul. The bred instinct against resistant and towards alien structures that remain, like a nightmare, must be recognized as itself alien. But analysis should not prevent action or resistance against that which seeks to inhabit us, move between our very actions and interactions, and, like a deranged puppeteer, pull the strings of humanity. We refer, of course, to money, the system by which a few are given the chance to bathe in luxury while billions suffer. We must not blame a single unit, therefore, for the crisis, the horrors of modernity, we must blame a multiplicity that includes ourselves.

But there is a solution: work actively for change. Do not blame anyone, but rather bring to the system its antithesis; peace to violence, charity to greed and many-ness to selfishness. We must all work for change, total change. We must move out of this system like we would evacuate a building that is infected, continue the long march through the corridors of power until we can exit the house.

And the end is in sight. We are already many and we are already working, though these last steps through the global catastrophe are the most difficult. Whether you’re organizing peaceful resistance, publishing to raise awareness for issues like the need to improve mental health care at Yale or organizing in any way, you are not alone.

We are resisting and resistance is making sure that the things you know are wrong don’t happen any more.