I recently finished reading Russell Brands famous book Revolution and I must confess to being very much uplifted after reading the book.
Russell explains his early life in Gray,s Essex and his eventual stardom. This brought to him sex and drug addiction and a celebrity life style. Russell managed to overcome his drug addiction and then started to reassess his earlier lifestyle and this brought with it the more interesting political activist Russell.
He started to realise that he and the whole world needed to adopt a more compassionate lifestyle based on sharing and caring for each other. Also people need to adopt a less material attitude to life and also a more spiritual approach.
In his book Revolution he advocates basically a non violent peaceful anarchist revolution which is allied to personal spirituality. He is in favour of an egalitarian society based on decentralised power and workers co-operatives.
Interestingly Russell states in the book that he has never voted in his life and that he never intends to. To a certain extent I can see where he is coming from with this point of view. So he is in favour of building the new society by peaceful direct action from below. Russell could perhaps be compared to Pierre Proudhon the nineteenth century non violent French anarchist. Although unlike Russell he rejected spirituality.
Interestingly history may perhaps be on Russell,s side. According to the American economist Jeremy Rifkin in his book The Zero Marginal Cost Society the capitalist system will largely come to the end by the mid 21st century. This is because zero marginal costs of products will make them largely available for free. This allied to 3D printing will mean the end of the division of labour and will enable people to establish their own co-operatives.
In conclusion in this present cruel heartless unfair world Russell Brands,s book Revolution presents a message of hope. Read it.
kevinclarion 