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  • Transitioning Away from Animal Exploitation

    Transitioning Away from Animal Exploitation

    An ecologist, engineer, and science writer, Spencer Roberts exposes corporate science propaganda and greenwashing. His degrees from University of Colorado Boulder are in Ecology & Evolution and Atmospheric & Ocean Science. Several of his essays for Wired, Jacobin, Current Affairs, and The Ecologist scrutinize the animal agriculture and seafood industries. In this interview, I asked Roberts about the connections between veganism, decolonization, and socialism. Even if you disagree with certain points (for example, I take a more precautionary approach toward biotechnology and am more hopeful about scaling up veganic agroecology), you may find much value, as I did, in Roberts’s arguments for a socially just transition away from animal agriculture and wildlife extraction.

     

    Daniel Fischer: You sometimes publish as “Unpopular Science.” Explain.

    Spencer Roberts: Unpopular Science is what I call my blog and twitter. It’s sort of like an antidote to pop science, which in my opinion has done a lot of damage to science communication. Pop science is all about inside jokes, reprimanding skeptics, sometimes even promoting products. I like to write about unpopular truths, science corruption, greenwashing.

    DF: Abolishing animal agriculture would liberate some three-quarters of agricultural land, which could then be returned to Indigenous peoples and used for carbon sequestration and ecological restoration. Why, then, do many leftists push back against veganism and animal liberation?

    SR: Cognitive dissonance, of course. It’s not as if all of those solutions would take shape simply by virtue of transitioning away from animal agriculture, but it’s also not as if they could occur at meaningful scale without doing so. It’s important to understand that animal agriculture exists in a context of many other intertwined systems of oppression. While animal rights advocates may oversimplify this at times, deflecting or attacking them for such is a coping mechanism to avoid examining our behavior toward other animals. I don’t think it needs to be psychoanalyzed beyond that.

    DF: What are some of the social reasons for the spread of zoonotic disease, and what’s the role of animal agriculture specifically?

    SR: Zoonotic disease emergence is driven by two main factors: habitat destruction and intensive animal breeding. Given that animal farming is a primary driver of global habitat destruction (occupying more than three quarters of agricultural land), it is safe to say that animal agriculture is the primary root cause of zoonotic epidemics. A lot of attention was given to wildlife markets after the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, but when we consider the fact that the proximity to capture bats and pangolins was made in large part by burning or clear-cutting forests for pasture or feed crops, we understand the bigger picture. We invest all this money in pandemic preparedness and we should invest more, but ultimately it’s self-defeating unless we stop investing money in subsidizing animal agriculture.

    DF: How can leftists support animal agriculture’s human victims such as slaughterhouse workers and communities directly suffering from the industry’s pollution and land grabs?

    SR: Campaign and vote for policies that protect migrant workers, reform land ownership, and reallocate agricultural subsidies. Donate to litigation and direct action campaigns against agricultural development and labor exploitation. Follow your local UFCW or other meatpacker union chapter and pay attention to the struggles slaughterhouse workers are facing so you can step up when there’s an opportunity. Support projects like Transfarmation and Rancher Advocacy Program that help people transition from animal to plant farming. And of course, you get a choice whether to financially support the industries that exploit them every day. Choose to take collective action and join the boycott. The profits these companies make off your purchases do not affect workers’ wages. If anything, the lower the line speeds, the safer their job is.

    DF: How widespread is support for veganism and animal liberation in the Global South and in the North’s communities of color?

    SR: In the United States, surveys indicate that people of color are three times more likely to be vegan or vegetarian than white people and that meat consumption rates are steeply correlated with income. On a global scale, the rift between meat consumption rates in low and high-income countries is vast. There is this myth in the Global North that boycotting animal products is expensive and it doesn’t help that food corporations price gauge new meat substitutes. The reality, however, is that meat and dairy are luxury commodities. There are hundreds of millions of people in the world who don’t eat animals, the vast majority of them in the Global South. In many cultures, in addition to health, environmental, and animal rights concerns, veganism also has a decolonial aspect. Haiti, for instance, is the place where Columbus brought the first cattle to the Western Hemisphere. The use of traditional crops like yams and maize instead of steak and dairy is a very intentional facet of Caribbean and Mayan practices of veganism. White vegans get a lot of media coverage due to the dominance of US media, but the truth is that the animal rights movement was started by Jain monks more than 25 centuries ago.

    DF: What is “regenerative ranching,” and why do you consider it a false solution to climate change?

    SR: Regenerative ranching is the idea that cattle farming can be conducted in a way that results in negative emissions. The overwhelming majority of ecologists and soil scientists does not believe this. There are many reasons (soil variability, microbial decomposition, etc.), but the bottom line is that soil systems have a carbon capacity. So while there are cases where degraded land can recover soil carbon for a time while being ranched, this cannot occur indefinitely. The sequestration of atmospheric carbon by the soil slows and eventually stops, typically within a decade or two. After that gas exchange equilibrium is achieved between the atmosphere and soil, there is effectively no carbon drawdown and the farm continues to generate emissions. What’s worse about regenerative ranching is that it draws focus off the ecosystem as a whole, posturing soil carbon gains as regeneration, whereas actually regenerating intact ecosystems has the potential to draw down more carbon by orders of magnitude.

    DF: The Ecologist removed your article “Regenerative Ranching Racket” after pressure from ranching supporters. Please describe the article, the reactions, and your response.

    SR: Essentially what happened is that I wrote this article with a focus on the professional histories of a selection of celebrity regenerative ranchers (which involved wage theft, worker abuse, and war crimes), but the thing that upset people more than anything was that my wife and I made a fake farm and got it on a regenerative farm map curated by an NGO called Regeneration International. We did this because I asked them during a press launch for the map what the criteria were to get on it and they dismissed my question, so this gave us an honest answer (there are none).

    The NGO was furious. They wrote the publisher, rallied supporters to do the same, and filed a complaint with the media regulator. Obviously nothing came of that because everything in the article is 100% true, but based on the editor’s communication with me, it sounded like they threatened to sue him. Considering The Ecologist is a publication with 1.5 staff members that doesn’t even pay writers and Regeneration International is an enormous well-connected nonprofit corporation, the pressure was apparently too much to bear and he caved, which was extremely disappointing, to put it lightly. So now it’s on Medium—just search “The Regenerative Ranching Racket”. 

    DF: What is veganic agroecology, and do you see it as a feasible climate solution?

    SR: Well, I don’t know if I’ve used those words, but I’d generally agree. As I understand, veganic essentially distinguishes crop farming using plant or fungus fertilizer as opposed to manure and agroecology refers to farming techniques that mitigate environmental impacts and incorporate ecological functions. Agroecology has very different connotations depending who you’re talking to, however, as it’s originally a campesino village-scale food system that incorporates coevolutionary relationships between native flora and fauna, yet it’s often co-opted by commercial interests and carnists in general into this ideology that replaces those native fauna with domestic species and then calls the farm an ecosystem simply because it has animals.

    I wouldn’t say agroecology is a climate solution so much as a means of mitigating the environmental impact of agriculture, which of course includes climate implications. However, I’m not convinced it can or should be scaled to meet our total agricultural demand. I think it should be supplemented with the types of centrally-planned organic hydroponic systems used in the Netherlands, which is among the world’s top food exporters, despite having hardly any land. In my opinion, an ecological approach to agriculture should involve manipulating or sacrificing as few ecosystems as possible. Concentrating agriculture, which can be done without the waste and toxicity inherent to the US model, leaves more room for ecosystems.

     DF: In “Red Vegans against Green Peasants,” Max Ajl and Rob Wallace warned that abolishing animal agriculture would amount to a mass dispossession of peasants. What would a socially just transition look like for small farmers and communities that rely on livestock for food and income?

    SR: To draw from an essay:

    “Visions of future food systems must articulate pathways for the reintegration of working class people who have been edged out of the agricultural economy by consolidation and automation. They must include reparations to Black farmers and First Nations. They must establish equitable models, such as co-operatives and land trusts, that can be scaled up to meet the challenge of ending hunger. They must envision a Green New Deal of careers in public service for rural folk, including not only building housing, health care, education, and clean energy infrastructure, but also reseeding endangered flora, reintroducing endemic grazers, and regenerating wildlife habitat on formerly farmed land.”

    To achieve this future, it’s imperative to respect the sovereignty of native nations. This requires liberating land and water from the animal agricultural complex. By industry, animal agriculture is the single greatest occupier of land in the world. Commercial fishing is the single greatest killer of wildlife. When an argument casts vegans and conservationists as the great global threat to tribal sovereignty and glosses over the genocidal nature of animal agriculture and wildlife extraction industries, it runs cover for them. It’s one thing to write a critique of first-world veganism from the perspective of pastoral peoples, but to misrepresent so many people so egregiously and to recite meat industry talking points—downplaying methane, regenerative ranching, this idea that cattle mimic the ecological role of bison—is tokenizing. I encourage anyone looking for a critical perspective on white veganism and animal rights from the perspective of someone from an Indigenous pastoral culture to follow Abdourahamane @fulanivegan.

    DF: Why do you also support boycotting seafood? Should vegans ally with small fishers against industrial fishing?

    SR: Seafood is just a euphemism for practices that we call wildlife trafficking when they target terrestrial species. Marine wildlife trafficking has become a system of industrial ecocide conducted by modern armadas and human trafficking syndicates. Thousands of species are threatened with extinction by fishing, surpassing all other threats to marine life. Up to a quarter of the global fishing fleet has enslaved workers on its decks. Millions of people whose subsistence relies on fishing are threatened with starvation by industrial marine life extraction. The animal liberation and conservation movements absolutely must ally with these people to succeed. They are the human voices of these ecosystems. We are not strong enough without them. We must not allow apologists for industries that commit genocide against Indigenous peoples to posture as their allies against the animal rights movement.

    DF: You criticize biotechnology and specifically genetically modified organisms. As a scientist and socialist, what is your take on these technologies? What is your position on lab-grown meat?

    SR: It’s not genetic engineering technology itself that we should be concerned with, but rather how it’s used. As far as we understand, GE does not have inherent side-effects, but it could have potential for purposes like fortification, adaptation, and even albedo engineering using reflective trichomes. However, what it’s overwhelmingly used for today is selling pesticide. Whether it’s programming plants to build pesticidal proteins or imbuing them with herbicide resistance so fields can be sprayed indiscriminately, major agrochemical giants like Bayer and Dupont are as much chemical manufacturers as they are agricultural producers (if not more). They’re also extremely socially and politically organized, with lobbyists essentially running the EPA, ghost-writers publishing articles and legislation, and even lawyers using GE as a pretext to patent and privatize genetic material itself. I’m not religious, but that strikes me as blasphemy.

    Cellular agriculture has enormous potential to feed more people using less resources. Popular discourse is extremely polarized around the question of lab meat without even realizing how deeply this technology has already disrupted the production of things like medicine, dairy, and ironically, animal feed. It can also be used to make things like palm oil, which could have a remarkably positive global environmental and climate impact. My biggest concern with cellular agriculture is that we’ve almost entirely neglected to fund it, essentially surrendering the development trajectory of this technology to the private sector. As with any technology, if we want to develop it quickly and use it for public good, we have to invest public funds in research and development.

    DF: How long have you been a vegan, and how does your diet relate to your overall politics?

    SR: I’ve been vegan for around five years now, was vegetarian for five before that. I see it as a reflection of my political beliefs rather than the other way around—same thing with science. Sometimes people accuse me of selectively interpreting the science because I’m vegan. It’s the opposite. I began to stop eating animals when I began to study the science.

     

     

  • Biden’s Legislation Whittled Down by “Moderate” Democrats, Progressives Trapped

    Biden’s Legislation Whittled Down by “Moderate” Democrats, Progressives Trapped

    This article was written for L’Anticapitaliste, the weekly newspaper of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) of France.

    Four months ago, President Joseph Biden put forward a proposal for a two-part $4.1 trillion-dollar legislative proposal that included both $2.3 trillion for infrastructure investment and $1.8 trillion to aid American families. The program was larger than both Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, the most expensive and far-reaching reform legislation in American history with many new elements such as clean energy proposals, paid family and medical leave, free universal pre-school and two years free education at a public community college.

    “It’s about a country once again that inspires and leads the world in the opportunities we provide, the technology we discover, the technologies we pioneer and the industries we create. And the nation that lead the world in combating the existential threat of climate change,” said Biden in July. He also argued that his plan would “put us in a position to win the global competition with China in the upcoming years.”

    The real forces driving Biden’s proposals were America’s continuing crises of both health and the economy and the impetus given to demands for reform by social movements such as Occupy Wall Street in 2011, the enormous Black Lives Matter protests against racism and police violence in 2020, and Bernie Sanders’ two campaigns for the presidency in 2016 and 2020 where he made many of the proposals subsequently taken up by Biden.

    While Republicans generally supported the infrastructure bill, they unanimously opposed all of the social programs. Democrats would need all 50 votes in the Senate, plus the vote of the presiding vice-president Kamal Harris, and nearly all votes in the House of Representatives to pass Biden’s legislation. But in the last several weeks, two so-called moderate Democratic Senators have been able to force Biden to cut his proposal to less than half the original amount, eliminating many of the innovative social programs.

    Biden originally proposed to pay for his enormous spending bill by raising the corporate tax rate from 21 to 28 percent, partially restoring the taxes that been cut by President Donald Trump from 35 percent to 21 percent. The Republicans, of course, rejected the tax hike, but so too did the Democrats’ “moderates,” arguing that the party should find other sources of revenue.

    The two senators who have paralyzed Biden’s legislative agenda are not moderates, but actually conservatives whose views are more in line with the Republican Party. Senator Joe Manchin represents West Virginia, a state known for its coal mines. Manchin himself receives $500,000 a year in dividends from coal company stock, putting his own interests at odds with his party’s clean energy program. Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, once a leftist Green Party activist, did a complete flip, becoming a voice for business. She has received almost a million dollars in campaign contributions from groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers. These two senators have been able to hold the Democratic Party hostage and force Biden to back down.

    Consequently, Biden has been forced to reduce his plan to $1.7 trillion—less than half of the original proposal—and to throw out many progressive programs. Free community college will be eliminated. Paid family leave, originally proposed for 12 weeks, was reduced to four, and it now seems that it will be cut it altogether. Dental and vision care will reportedly be removed from the Medicare plan. The corporate tax rate will not be raised.

    The progressives in Congress, including a few members of the Democratic Socialists of America, have fought for a better bill, but in the end, they will have little choice but to accept whatever deal Biden and the Democratic Party leaders agree to. While this may still be the biggest such reform package in American history, it is a disappointment for working people.

  • “That’s So F**king Imperialistic”: Responding to a Supporter of Cuba’s Government

    “That’s So F**king Imperialistic”: Responding to a Supporter of Cuba’s Government

    Following Cuba’s July 11th protests, University of Houston professor Bob Buzzanco posted on social media a strongly worded attack on New Politics, to which Lois Weiner and I responded with September’s “NP on Cuba: Consistent Opposition to US Imperialism and Support of Democratic Rights.” Buzanco’s subsequent critique titled “Doing Miami’s Dirty Work (Wittingly or Not): Responding to ‘New Politics’” asked the following questions of us anti-authoritarian and Third Camp leftists: “What will Left criticism of Cuba accomplish? How will it benefit the people in the streets of Cuba protesting? Where’s your solidarity?” These are fair questions, and they should be mainly asked to Cubans on the island. As a non-Cuban who hasn’t experienced Cuba’s everyday realities, I will respond with humility and with attention to local voices.

    While Buzzanco claims that criticizing Havana aids Miami, a consistent defense of democratic rights actually makes our anti-imperialist movements more credible and strengthens our case for ending the unconscionable blockade. As critical leftists, we can provide a credible socialist alternative, both to the state-capitalist regime and to the neoliberal tendencies trying to co-opt the Cuban opposition. We can argue that respecting Cuba’s self-determination will not only improve the humanitarian situation but will also strengthen Cuba’s democratic dissidents by removing President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s ability to blame all his failures on Washington.

    I actually agree with many of Buzzanco’s points, including his acknowledgement of Cuba’s accomplishments in ecology and health care. But I have my own questions for people like Buzzanco who stand fully behind the Cuban government. What is your message for Cubans who are becoming increasingly disillusioned with their leaders? What do you offer them beyond the bleak, Orwellian view that they should not protest until the U.S. blockade is lifted? Here is what he writes:

    “[A]ny protest inside Cuba, no matter the intention, was going to have U.S. and Miami fingerprints on it and serve the interests of the Miami mafia and the American ‘National Security’ establishment […]

    [A]ny disaffection in Cuba is generally engineered and absolutely and inevitably exploited by Calle 8 [8th Street in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood]”

    I know that if I were Cuban, I would not take kindly to such condescending statements coming from a U.S. professor. I sent Buzzanco’s article to an Anarchist contact in Havana, and here was his response:

    “That’s so fucking imperialistic in a pretty twisted way. We Cubans don’t owe shit to anyone. Not in Miami, not in Beijing, or in some office in Havana.”

    Whatever a genuinely anti-imperialist approach toward Cuba might look like, it cannot be to rally behind a regime that denies Cubans some of their most basic rights. The most strategic way to build a socialist world, in fact the only way, is through critical though unwavering solidarity with the world’s oppressed. In consultation with Cuban leftists, we should explore what solidarity must mean when applied to a population that is suffering, firstly, from more than a century of U.S. imperialism, and secondly, from an authoritarian bureaucracy.

    A Repressive State

    If you’re not convinced by the consensus of human rights groups that Cuba is a highly repressive state, the same consensus that condemns the U.S. blockade, then you can ask Cubans themselves. I wrote to a Havana-based Anarchist collective called Taller Libertario Alfredo López (Alfredo López Libertarian Workshop). Here’s what they told me, originally in Spanish:

    “You can’t lose sight in this analysis that today who represents the Cuban people in the government is a military mafia that has kidnapped the revolution. The two blockades experienced by the Cuban people must be denounced: that of Yankee imperialism and that of the Cuban Stalinist military bureaucracy.”

    They identified the country’s largest business conglomerate GAESA (Grupo de Administración Empresarial SA), which is military-controlled, as central to the country’s power structure. GAESA controls much of Cuba’s hospitality, real estate, finance, shipping, transportation, construction, and retail industries. Its head, Arturo López-Callejas, is an adviser to Díaz-Canel.

    It was against the authoritarian bureaucracy that thousands of Cubans protested in about fifty municipalities on July 11th, nationwide. If you still don’t believe that Cuba is a repressive state, you can listen to Díaz-Canel calling for “revolutionaries” to “fight” the still-peaceful protesters on the afternoon of July 11th, and you can watch the videos of violent government crackdowns against demonstrators. You can read that, months later, hundreds of protesters remain in prison, where many claim that authorities have physically and emotionally abused them.

    Rather than criticizing such repression, Buzzanco resorts to whataboutism, pointing to the greater police brutality in the United States. Does he think a greater police state makes the lesser one okay, or that it’s impossible to oppose both simultaneously? He accuses New Politics of “equivalency,” even though the magazine covers U.S. police violence far more frequently than it discusses Cuban authoritarianism. While context and perspective are important, choosing one or another geopolitical “camp” will not help abolish an interconnected global security state which often transcends such alliances. We see China financing American wars, American companies (including one owned by Blackwater’s mercenary Erik Prince) profiting from Chinese repression, Israel selling drones that Russia uses in Syria, and, as discussed below, Cuban authorities extraditing a wanted environmental activist to the United States. Given the globalization of repression, a coherent opposition must be consistent.

    Who Were the Protesters?

    Although Buzzanco follows the mainstream global Left in condemning the July 11th protests as being orchestrated by Miami, the evidence suggests otherwise. The Cuba-based Comunistas Editorial Board reports that the “overwhelming majority of protesters” consisted of “the working class demanding that the government improve their living conditions.” Taller Libertario similarly notes, “the poorest sectors of the population carried out the majority of the protests.” The protesters came disproportionately from Cuba’s Black communities, who suffer from deep racial inequalities. White Cubans control 98% of businesses and are five times more likely than Black Cubans to open a bank account.

    In short, the protests truly were organic and spontaneous. Matanzas-based historian Alina Barbara López Hernández has summarized: “No political leadership was seen in the protests, neither from individuals nor from organizations. They had a disorganized character, even anarchic if you will, like all spontaneous outbursts. They were mostly peaceful, although there were acts of vandalism and violence.”

    The relatively minor role of right-wing instigators, and the more significant role of right-wing co-option should of course be acknowledged and are addressed by Comunistas: “Although this was not the main factor that triggered the protests, it is undeniable that a strong right-wing campaign was orchestrated from the United States.” “Most of the protesters,” they explain, “were not linked to counter-revolutionary organizations, nor were the protests led by counterrevolutionary organizations.”

    From these Cubans’ accounts, the protests included members of the Left and the Right but were overall ill-defined beyond generic demands for basic needs such as food and medicine, and for civil liberties and democratization. These were demands that the global Left could have supported.

    Claiming that the Cuban protests were orchestrated by the imperialism of Miami and Washington, Buzzanco cites numerous articles, but it appears that none have a Cuban author. One article is by Manolo De Los Santos, founding director of the People’s Forum, and Vijay Prashad, director of the Tricontinental Institute. Combined, the People’s Forum and Tricontinental Institute have received some $24.5 million in dark money through Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund, about half to each organization. Clearly, there is a huge divide between someone like De Los Santos and the thousands of working-class Cubans who took to the streets.

    Pro-government propaganda would have one believe, as De Los Santos and Prashad argue, that the U.S. blockade, combined with COVID-19, ultimately caused the economic problems afflicting Cuba. Although decades of the U.S. blockade have indeed cost Cuba significantly, totaling over $1 trillion by Al Jazeera’s estimate, it is irresponsible to ignore the central role of Cuban authorities in causing the shortages leading up to July’s demonstrations. One would not learn from De Los Santos’s one-sided report that the government helped starve the Cuban people by investing far more in tourism than in agriculture. Nor would one learn of the government’s austerity plan known as the “Ordering Task” which raised the prices of basic necessities and made them largely unattainable to ordinary Cubans. One would not learn that the Cuban government exacerbated the island’s COVID-19 crisis by delaying vaccinations and by exporting even more doctors instead of using their medical services domestically.

    And while one wouldn’t know it from such uncritical sources, even Díaz-Canel has admitted to making mistakes contributing to the unrest. He said in a televised address, “We also have to carry out a critical analysis of our problems in order to act and overcome, and avoid their repetition.”

    A Model for the Less-Developed World?

    Although Buzzanco claims “the people at New Politics and elsewhere offered little nuance in their condemnations,” it is his optimistic assessment of Cuba that lacks nuance. You would not know from Buzzanco’s presentation that Cuba is a one-party dictatorship lacking freedom of expression. Yes, we should acknowledge Cuba’s accomplishments in sustainability, medicine, and support for national liberation struggles. It is no small thing that Cuba has, with limited resources and despite the blockade, reached the top of the Sustainable Development Index, reportedly having the world’s best ratio of social development to ecological footprint. That doesn’t mean we should refrain from scrutinizing these accomplishments, and it certainly doesn’t mean we should use them to excuse Cuba’s ongoing human rights violations.

    Yes, Cuba has made many accomplishments in sustainability, spreading agroecological techniques to dramatically improve small farms’ productivity both per hectare and per farmer. The post-1988 spread of agroecology, which began out of necessity with the loss of Soviet oil shipments, was accomplished mainly by grassroots efforts and especially the campesino-a-campesino (farmer-to-farmer) movement of knowledge transmission. By contrast, the Cuban government continues to promote an all-of-the-above strategy combining such techniques with conventional monoculture. Moreover, the government’s inefficient distribution methods lead to high levels of food waste, and contribute to a situation where, despite abundant harvests, Cuba has to import more than half of its food and the vast majority of its staples.

    Ecological accomplishments, moreover, certainly cannot excuse the Cuban government’s act of kidnapping and torturing former Earth Liberation Front activist Joseph Dibee and extraditing him to the United States in 2018. Dibee says he was kept for more than two days without water or shade to escape the Caribbean sunlight coming through the window. Interrogators threatened him with “all sorts of tools” and warned they might throw him into the ocean to drown. It should be remembered that Dibee and the ELF have not been accused of committing violence against a human being.

    It’s true that Cuba’s healthcare system has achieved similar results to the United States’ with a small fraction of the per-capita budget. This record strengthens the case for socialized health care here in the United States. Nonetheless, Cuba’s system should be criticized for, among other things, exploiting doctors and forbidding them from independently organizing. Those doctors sent abroad are unable to bring their families, have 75% or more of their salaries taken by the state, are surveilled by security officials, and are threatened with an 8-year travel ban as punishment for deserting the program.

    Yes, Cuba admirably assisted several national liberation struggles, including in Angola and South Africa, but its foreign policy was far from consistently liberatory and anti-imperialist. Cuba’s government allied with fascistic and dictatorial regimes including those of Spain’s Franco, Mexico’s PRI, Uganda’s Idi Amin, Equatorial Guinea’s Nguema Macias, and Ethiopia’s Mengistu. Havana supported Soviet imperialist intervention in Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.

    Buzzanco writes, “Cuba, with all its problems, is a model for the less-developed world.” I would not go so far. Although Cuba does offer some positive lessons in agroecology and health care, there is nothing worth emulating in the one-party state, the kafkaesque bureaucracy, or the ban on independent organizing. The state of Costa Rica, ranking first in the Happy Planet Index and second in the Sustainable Development Index, shows that Cuba’s strong social and ecological rankings do not require a dictatorship. Costa Rica’s economy, however, should be criticized, for its inequality and its reliance on destructive hydroelectric dams. I would argue that better models can be found in Latin America’s horizontalist and anti-authoritarian movements such as Mexico’s neo-Zapatistas (which have provided health and education services and kept out organized crime), Bolivia’s Federation of Neighborhood Councils, and Mexico’s Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca-Ricardo Flores Magón. 

    Perhaps such anti-authoritiarian forces do not register in Buzzanco’s apparently binaristic worldview which sees the world in terms of geopolitics rather than global class struggle. Buzzanco refers repeatedly to “the empire,” sometimes capitalized as “the Empire,” referring to U.S. imperialism, overlooking that Russia and China are also imperialist powers. Buzzanco concludes by asking “Which Side Are You On?,” implying that we have to choose between Havana and Washington. Of course, he is referencing the classic United Mine Workers song about working-class solidarity. Why appropriate a union song in order to rally behind a government that doesn’t allow independent unions?

    “Where’s Your Solidarity?”

    With only the global Right offering a modicum of solidarity, many disaffected Cubans will understandably be tempted to drift rightward toward support for privatization and deregulation. We see this self-fulfilling prophecy happening in Cuba in real time, as the upcoming November 15th (15N) protests have lost the spontaneity of July 11th and will be largely dominated by the Council for Democratic Transition whose president also heads the right-wing Patriotic Union of Cuba. It will be Cubans, of course, who have the hard work of organizing class struggle to reverse such trends. The Taller Libertario member I spoke to warned me that in addition to resisting Washington/Miami and Havana, Cubans will need to be critical of an emerging third trend:

    “I think that it’s most coherent to criticize the Yankee blockade, the blockade of the Cuban military oligarchy, and also the new steps of Cuban liberals sacrificing the social question in order to prioritize the electoral agenda and the formation of new candidates to govern Cuba.”

    Criticizing the protests’ potential rightward drift should not stop us from recognizing that the Cuban regime has also adopted increasingly right-wing economic policies, which Cuban-American socialist Sam Farber describes as “a greater opening to capital.” 

    Buzzanco seems confused when on one hand he dismisses New Politics as “insignificant” and on the other hand warns that the magazine’s words are influential and dangerous. Although I would not go so far as to call the magazine insignificant, I think Buzzanco way overstates its influence when he suggests that the U.S. corporate media pays attention to it: “[Miami Cubans] can advocate for even more sanctions and an even harsher embargo because the U.S. media has featured alleged Leftists who have supported the protests.”

    Anti-imperialists should wish that New Politics’ coverage of Cuba would be featured in the U.S. corporate media, given that any representative reporting of NP’s views would include mention of the magazine’s very strong opposition to the U.S. blockade and military intervention. U.S. citizens would see a truly principled, democratic form of solidarity with the Cuban people. Dissident Cubans, those who have Internet access, would see that they have support among the U.S. Left, whereas currently they could very well get the impression that their natural allies are on the Right.

    “Where’s your solidarity?” Buzzanco asked. I think it’s clear that Cuban critical leftists are seeking help piercing the binaristic worldview that demands you support either either Díaz-Canel or Biden. I would like to know Buzzanco’s message to the Cubans who took to the streets and to the many more who supported them. He might invite Taller Libertario or Comunistas or other critical socialist Cubans, perhaps LGBTQ activists fighting the government’s queerphobia, onto the podcast sometime and then decide if he still considers them to be unwitting stooges of the empire.

     

  • An Especially Shameful Episode in Zionist History

    An Especially Shameful Episode in Zionist History

    I recently came across an awful article printed in 2018 on the Israeli news site Ynet. The article defended — actually glorified — a shameful period in Zionist history.  It’s a story about a “coin” created in 1934 in Germany, supposedly a rare and breathtaking find.  On one side there’s a six-pointed Jewish star.  On the other a Nazi swastika!  It had been created by the German Nazi government to memorialize a six-month trip by a Nazi leader to the British Mandate of Palestine to observe Jewish settlements. 

    Does the article’s writer, Itay Ilnai, react with revulsion to the juxtaposition of these images?  He does not.  Instead he uses his skills to try to justify this abomination.  The fateful trip came about when German Zionists enabled the SS officer in charge of the “Jewish Desk,” Leopold Itz von Mildenstein, to come to Palestine and see how well things were going there. The Zionists saw the emergence of the Nazis as an opportunity for Palestine. That’s the view of respected Israeli historian Tom Segev in his The Seventh Million.1 The invitation to von Mildenstein was part of a strategy to convince the Nazis to fully cooperate in the plan to make Palestine a Jewish state.

    Why bring all this up now? Because Zionists react to any criticism of their movement with self-righteous hysteria, lashing out with cries of “antisemitism.”  Case in point: the treatment of the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone.  In 2016, during an interview in which he defended a Labour MP colleague from an antisemitism charge, Livingstone said that in the early ’30s Hitler “was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”  Livingstone was inexact.  The Nazis never supported the idea of creating a Jewish state in Palestine.  They wanted to expel all Jews from Germany, but they were willing to support Zionist projects and institutions if that would help them force Jews out of Germany.  However, Zionists didn’t try to set the record straight.  Instead, they started screaming that Livingstone was a “Hitler apologist” and got him suspended and later forced out of the Labour Party.

    The Nazis and Zionists were indeed working together in the early and mid-1930’s.  They both thought they could use each other.  Here’s a quote from Alfred Rosenberg, infamous Nazi “theorist” and Hitler favorite.  Back in 1920 he wrote: “Zionism must be actively supported so as to enable us annually to transport a specific number of Jews to Palestine, or in any case, across our borders.”2  One could object that those were just words, but on March 25, 1933, German Zionist leaders told the Nazis they would try to stop an anti-Nazi rally in New York scheduled for later that month.3 That convinced the Nazis to work with them and with the Zionist leaders in Palestine.4  The Nazis promoted the German Zionists to the position of spokesmen for all German Jews.  They concluded a “Transfer Agreement” with the Zionists of Palestine that would allow richer German Jews to emigrate to the British colony of Palestine with more of their assets.  Historian Edwin Black, a fervent Zionist by the way, concluded in his study The Transfer Agreement, that the $30 to $100 million brought to the Jewish economy in Palestine through the agreement saved the whole wobbling Zionist project.5 That sounds like a whole lot of support to me.

    The “coin” — really a medallion; it couldn’t be used to buy anything — was given to those Germans who bought a subscription to Der Angriff (The Attack), the magazine of one of the most notorious propagandists in history, Joseph Goebbels.  On the medallion (in German) are the words “A Nazi goes to Palestine and writes about it for The Angriff.”  This “hateful alliance,” as Edward Black called it, lasted in some respects all the way until 1939.  The Jewish-star-swastika embossed brass medallion symbolizes the whole period. 

    That Moment in History

    The subheadline of the article in Ynet is “the forgotten moment in history when it might have still been possible to save the Jews of Europe from extermination.”  Amazing.  Ilnai isn’t embarrassed by what Zionist leaders did in the ’30’s.  Instead, he ends his article quoting someone who claims that if only the world embraced the Zionist inter-war strategy all European Jews could have been saved.

    This notion is utter bosh.  Had all the Jews and Leftists who were protesting Hitler’s outrages instead followed the Zionists and stopped boycotting Germany, and urged all Jews to leave Germany, what would have happened?  Would the Palestinians of Palestine have cheerfully allowed their homeland to become overwhelmingly Jewish?  Would Britain have allowed 500,000 German Jews into their Mandate? Would the German Jews have voluntarily gone? Ilnai in the Ynet article starts one sentence, “In the beginning of the Nazi rule in Germany, way before anyone could have imagined the horrors that would be committed by the German people…” So if the mass murder of Jews was unimaginable in those years why would anyone expect hundreds of thousands of German Jews to flee to Palestine?

    Here’s a heresy.  Did the Zionists of Palestine even want mass emigration of Europe’s Jews during the ’30s?  Sure, they wanted a Jewish state, but they wanted a slow buildup of Palestine.  Talking about Polish Jews, top Zionist leaders like David Ben Gurion “feared that a ‘torrent’ of Polish Jews coming to Palestine could overwhelm the Zionist project.” Tom Segev wrote that the British colonial government let the Jewish Agency decide to whom to give the immigration certificates.  He says within the Jewish Agency “there were frequent protests about the preference given to German Jews.”6 The Agency had a strategy for immigration.  It “preferred healthy young Zionists, ideally with agricultural training.”7

    It needs to be noted that if you didn’t meet Zionist standards, Zionist Palestine didn’t want you.  In an article written in Haaretz in 2019, Segev writes about the Jewish Agency’s actions toward the unwanted. “There were those who were in effect forced to leave, including old people and people with chronic disease. They were considered a burden on the community. To get rid of them, they were threatened with the loss of official support, including medical services. At most a few hundred people were affected, apparently, but the practice shows the Zionist movement’s willingness to be cruel toward those who did not contribute to its national goals.” Segev says emigrants were sent sometimes to “Austria or even Germany, even in the first years of the Nazi regime.”

    An incident in 1939 shows more of the attitude of Zionist leaders in Palestine towards the threatened Jews of Europe.  It concerns the Jews of the ill-fated voyage of The St. Louis.  It’s well-known that in 1939 the ship left Hamburg with 934 German Jews.  It made it to Cuba, but only a few people with visas were allowed to disembark.   Attempts to land in the United States were not allowed.  The ship had to turn back. All the passengers went back to Europe, most to the continent and some to Britain.  What Tom Segev reveals in The Seventh Million is that the Jewish Agency didn’t want them to come to Palestine!  He writes, “The Joint Distribution Committee asked the Jewish Agency to allot the passengers several hundred immigration certificates from the quota.  The Jewish Agency refused.”8

    At any rate by 1936 von Mildenstein and the Nazis who favored helping put Jews in a country of their own had lost favor in the party. Von Mildenstein got into an argument with his boss Reinhard Heydrich about Palestine.  An up-and-coming Nazi star, Adolph Eichmann, wrote a pamphlet warning about “the dangers of a strong Jewish state in the Middle East.” Von Mildenstein was transferred to the Foreign Ministry. Nazi measures against Jews grew ever worse.  Hitler made it known he wanted Jews not only out of Germany, but out of all of Europe. Two years later the Nazis launched Kristallnacht.

     An Alternative Vision

    The fantasy that the Nazis would purposely help create a Jewish state was idiotic and dangerous, but there is truth to the notion that the early 1930s were a time when things might have been utterly different.  In the first few years of his Reich Hitler was weak.  He had a tiny army and an economy in chaos.  A significant boycott of German goods was underway.  Poland and Czechoslovakia, knowing of Hitler’s plans for them, talked about a preventive invasion.  (France had occupied part of Germany just a few years earlier for non-payment of debts.) If the Zionists had passionately opposed Hitler, if Stalin had more quickly ended his absurd go-it-alone “Third Period,” and if liberals and conservatives like Roosevelt and Chamberlain had realized how utterly dangerous Hitler was, an international anti-fascist alliance might have destroyed the Nazi Reich in 1935 rather than in 1945. 

    It’s a lot of “if’s,” I know, but certainly the Zionist policy of appeasing Hitler and giving up on the Jews of Germany (and Europe) without a fight was the very worst course of action. And the utter hypocrisy of the British and Israeli Zionists condemning Livingstone’s words while not mentioning that their movement grandparents actually made deals with the Nazis that undermined the fight against Hitler?  That’s deserving of contempt.

    There is one thing in Ilani’s article that I found interesting.  He wrote, “Even before Adolf Hitler was named chancellor, the Federation decided to contact Nazi Party officials who they thought might support the Zionist goal.”  This I did not know. So, while the Left was fighting the Nazis in the streets and desperately trying to prevent them from coming to power, the Zionists were already bargaining with the Nazis.  Utterly despicable.

    Again all this is important to remember and understand. We need to know all this history and lots more about Zionist leaders’ dealings with Jew haters so we can immediately confront and neutralize Zionist slander the next time they falsely cry “antisemitism.”

    1.  Tom Segev, The Seventh Million (New York, Henry Holt and Co., 1991; Owl Edition, 2000). See, for example, p. 18.

    2.  Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement (Washington, D.C., Dialog Press, 2009), p. 173.

    3.  Black, The Transfer Agreement, p. 173. 

    4.  Black, The Transfer Agreement, p. 173.

    5. Black, The Transfer Agreement, p. 379.

    6.  Segev, The Seventh Million, p. 45.

    7. Segev,  The Seventh Million, p. 42.

    8.  Segev, The Seventh Million, p. 44n. See also Robert N. Rosen, Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust (New York: 2006).

  • School Board Meetings Become Violent as Republicans Fight Over Health and Race

    School Board Meetings Become Violent as Republicans Fight Over Health and Race

    This article was written for L’Anticapitaliste, the weekly newspaper of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) of France.

    Local school board meetings in the United States have for the last three months become the site of intense arguments and even violence as parents fight—sometimes with their fists—over both health policies and teaching about race. This wave of fighting began when schools opened in late August or early September as rightwing parents mobilized against vaccine mandates, mask requirements, and the teaching of critical race theory. In some cases, police had to be called to restore order. In late September, the National School Boards Association asked that President Joseph Biden intervene to protect school board members, and Biden’s Attorney General has said he will use the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other agencies to prevent violence.

    Where Republican governors have issued orders prohibiting mask mandates, progressive parents have gone to the school board meetings to advocate for vaccination, masks, or in other cases to keep education about race and racism in the curriculum.  Republican and those on the far right—who are responsible for most of the violence—oppose those policies and use the meetings to promote a rightwing agenda and to mobilize with an eye toward the next national election in November 2022 when 34 Senate seats and all 435 House seats will be up for reelection. The rightwing activists, often behaving riotously, shouting and disrupting, create chaos as some parents come to blows.

    School board meetings have in the past usually been rather quiet affairs. The United States does not have a national educational system; rather, each of the 50 states is responsible for its own educational policies. Within the states some 13,800 local school district boards implement state policies and administer the schools and have a great deal of power vis-à-vis teachers and students. Most school boards are dominated by local business with members who come from a major corporation with its headquarters in the city, a small business owner, a local dentist or lawyer, and sometimes the teachers unions run or back candidates. Within that context school board meetings have historically been pretty democratic, with board members, teachers, and parents debating important issues of finances and policies.

    Now, school boards are battlefields. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommended that masks be worn by teachers, staff and students in all schools. But Republican governors like Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida, have issued orders forbidding school districts from issuing mask mandates. The Republican argument is that parents should have the freedom to decide whether or not they want their children to be vaccinated or wear a mask. Among of the Republican parents are also Q-Anon supporters, who believe that the Democrats, the deep state, and global elites are satanic pedophiles whose call for COVID vaccine is a diabolical plot that is poisoning the American people. Others believe that Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates put microchips in the vaccine to control people’s behavior. Q-Anon has called upon Republicans to take control of local school boards as part of a broader political strategy to fight the Satanists.

    The Republicans have also mobilized white parents to demand that teachers be prohibited from teaching critical race theory (an analysis of structural racism) or teaching about race at all, arguing that teachers are accusing all whites of being racist. Eight states have already banned the teaching of critical race theory, while another dozen state legislatures are considering such a ban. Many black parents and progressives have argued that the teaching of the history of race and racism, and role of structural racism in society is an essential part of education.

    The school board battles could play a role in determining the 2022 congressional elections and the possible return of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2024.

  • Politics, Not Prosecution, Is the Answer to Antisemitism

    Politics, Not Prosecution, Is the Answer to Antisemitism

    Nearly a year to the day before his untimely death, renowned anarchist anthropologist David Graeber wrote a provocative article which began, “I am 58 years old, and for the first time in my life, I am frightened to be Jewish.”

    The global re-emergence of right-wing political antisemitism was of course part of the impetus for Graeber’s article; but ultimately, his concern was rooted in the United Kingdom and the repeated high-profile accusations of antisemitism within the Labour Party. Jews make up less than one half of one percent of the British population; but “between 15 June 2015 and 31 March 2019, the UK’s national press published five and a half thousand articles about antisemitism in the Labour Party,” and the Labour Party investigated more than 10,000 instances of allegedly antisemitic conduct, mostly following accusations from the Party’s anti-Corbynite right (Renton). Graeber’s article pleaded for caution: such a disproportionate, factional response to antisemitism could never be good for the Jews.

    Two years later, Corbyn has been defeated, and British Jews have very little to show for it. Documents leaked last year show that right-wing members of the Labour Party bureaucracy had knowingly interfered with investigations of antisemitism in order to deepen the crisis facing the left-wing leadership. The handful of Party members who were expelled for antisemitic language under Corbyn have kept hold of substantial followings, with large sections of the Labour left — including the pro-Corbyn Jewish Voice for Labour — maintaining that the expulsions were evidence not of antisemitism, but of a right-wing, anti-Corbyn witchhunt. And all the while, Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who publishes self-described “antisemites” and writes novels about powerful “Jewish oligarchs” and greedy, proud-nosed Jewish misers, has managed to seize the moral high ground on antisemitism in the media narrative. It is in this context of confusion and resolute defeat for both the organized left and the genuine struggle for Jewish liberation that David Renton’s new book attempts to excavate the ugly truth of the crisis: that “the campaign [against alleged Labour antisemitism] could not have lasted had it not been for the reality that the press, and Labour supporters, were repeatedly able to find instances of behaviour which was either antisemitic or within touching distance of it.” Renton enters a field of left-wing literature about the crisis which refuses on principle to take concerns about antisemitism seriously given that they mostly originated from the antisemitic right, and he takes a different tack. Renton writes, “There are many passages of this book where I criticise the right, the centre right, the leaders of mainstream Jewish institutions and the press…. But the focus of this book is ultimately on what the left got wrong.” His commitment to breaking down defensiveness and engaging with the political substance of the crisis, the hypocrisy of the right notwithstanding, is what makes his book special.

    Renton’s work is equal parts autopsy and work of optimism. He convincingly diagnoses the failure of the left to identify and respond to antisemitism as a reliance on procedure to resolve an essentially political problem — namely, the widespread presence on the left of opinions ranging from the openly antisemitic to a casual disregard of Jewish opinion. As accusations of rampant antisemitism in the Labour Party proliferated, much of the left attempted to deflect from the issue with appeals to the old refrain that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, even in cases where the conduct in question had absolutely nothing to do with Zionism. Such was the case when pro-Corbyn leftists defended the Labour leader from criticism during the scandal over his perfunctory support for a mural by Mear One that included antisemitic imagery. Corbyn’s defenders declared, “The Zionists are playing a dangerous game when they conflate anti-Zionism and condemnation of Israel with antisemitism.” Renton responds: “‘The Zionists’ – really? Because the subject of the mural was not Israel or Palestine. The image expressed old-style anti-Jewish racism.”

    These sorts of deflections constituted part of the political problem that faced the left. The proceduralist response came when the left turned to legalistic disciplinary processes to insulate themselves. When, for example, Shami Chakrabarti was tasked in 2016 with investigating antisemitism within the Labour Party, her recommendations included statutes of limitations on investigations of uncomradely conduct and the creation of a standing panel of lawyers to assist with disciplinary decisions. Renton summarizes that the report fell “into the trap of thinking that the panels made bad decisions because they lacked technical expertise, when what they lacked was rather the political good sense to do right without deferring to factional interest.” The Chakrabarti report, like many good-faith attempts to right the Labour ship, could not fully grasp that the conflict had long ceased to be about uprooting antisemitism, and was instead infested with attempts to “weaponize antisemitism” for or against some factional interest. Despite the airtime that this phenomenon lent to the topic of anti-Jewish racism, as Graeber points out, it was a profoundly harmful trend toward the prospects of Jewish freedom from antisemitism.

    Antisemitism need not, as Barnaby Raine argues, “always be a conscious hatred of the kind exhibited in Nazi propaganda.” It is “a structure of feeling,” “potentially subconscious,” “ideological.” By the time those on the Labour left were attempting to root out antisemites — or defend them, as the case may be — they were already operating within the bounds of antisemitic ideology. Thus, when Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Livingstone, and Jackie Walker each came under fire in turn for antisemitic comments, each was defended, in part, by emphasizing all of the other anti-racist actions they had taken. Naturally, this did little to sway Labour’s Jewish critics, who rightly countered that such deflections were themselves anti-Jewish. Furthermore, these accusations were dismissed as preposterous in the face of such blatant racism from the right — as though the political motivation behind certain accusations made them false a priori. It is no surprise, given that all three members were eventually suspended, that the weakest parts of their defenses were those dealing with the actual antisemitic comments themselves.

    Ultimately, while Renton critiques Labour for responding to the crisis with defensiveness, the turn to legalistic prosecutions of antisemitism demonstrated precisely the political weakness that would yield slippages into antisemitism by otherwise anti-racist socialists. The Corbynites routinely conceived of the problem as one of aberrant, anachronistic bigotry, rather than pernicious ideology, and this meant that the left was remarkably ill-equipped to parse through subtler cases of potential slippage into antisemitism, or otherwise latent tendencies toward antisemitic thought. Renton recounts friends “who are finely attuned to other forms of discrimination, shar[ing] defences of antisemitic images which were themselves cut and pasted from [notable antisemite] David Icke’s website.” Such political transformations were possible because of a fundamental failure to take antisemitism seriously as an ideology rather than a set of anachronistic bigotries.

    Early in the book, Renton examines a 2015 YouGov poll showing relatively even support for a number of antisemitic stances (between 10 and 20%) across party lines — except for UKIP voters, who were substantially more antisemitic. “Supporters of Corbyn’s leadership used such polls to prove that antisemitism went as deep in the Conservatives as it did in Labour,” Renton writes, “Yet what it really showed was that in Britain as a whole, antisemitic ideas were commonplace. If you were thinking of the Corbyn-era Labour Party, with its half a million members by summer 2016, there must have been tens of thousands of people holding these views.” Two things were always true: the right’s crusade against antisemitism within Labour was disingenuous, cynical, and anti-Jewish; and attempts to suggest that there was not an antisemitism problem in Labour were bound to fail under the weight of the absolute scope of anti-Jewish racism within the Party. Antisemitism did not need to be a problem particular to Corbyn’s Labour Party for it to constitute a genuine political problem for a movement seeking collective liberation. But proceduralist thinking and a knee-jerk self-assuredness in the face of the sheer unfairness of the campaign against Labour won out over the concrete political needs facing the socialist movement. For many of the Corbynites, hypocrisy was the real problem, not antisemitism; and this approach, unsurprisingly, failed to curry much favor among self-conscious Jews or their well-meaning, anti-racist allies.

    Renton’s optimism emanates from his commitment that political problems have political solutions. While the book takes an expansive view of antisemitism with Renton suggesting to his readers that “wherever you locate yourself on the political spectrum, antisemitism is always closer at hand than you think,” it also rejects a fatalistic view: “the supply of antisemitic stories and stereotypes can at times be relatively full or relatively empty.” An empty “reservoir” of antisemitic discourses is possible.

    It is optimistic, contra the embattled perspectives of much of Labour’s left, that the faltering of Jewish support for Labour is a reaction to Labour’s failures with respect to anti-Jewish racism, and not the inevitable consequence of a community assimilating into privilege. As Renton reminds us, Jews are a group that, “like every other ethnic group in Britain, includes any number of middle class as well as working class and vulnerable people.” This commonsense position, disturbingly rare in the left’s response to the crisis, is key for building a politics of genuine collective liberation inclusive of not only Jews, but all those who seek to fight with their Jewish neighbors against oppression.

    And most importantly, Renton reframes the problem of exorcising antisemitism from the left as one of encouraging political growth and development — not simply rebuking and isolating offenders. Labour’s legalistic and defensive turn assumed that the Party’s programmatic anti-antisemitism was sufficient for inoculating itself against anti-Jewish racism — and that individual endorsements of antisemitic ideology constituted a moral failing of those individuals. But Renton asks what would have happened “if for example in 2012, when Corbyn expressed his initial cautious and questioning support for Mear One, his left-wing admirers had challenged him.” Could the crisis have been averted by a proactive, expansive political challenge to antisemitism when the first signs of its re-emergence started to surface? What political opportunities would open if, rather than a simple rebuke, those found to be practicing antisemitism within Labour were engaged politically?

    Renton’s book doesn’t have all the answers. His at times rosy optimism that what Labourites like Livingstone and Walker needed was a comrade in their ear, and not a boot out the door, is more a philosophy of changing hearts and minds than a strategy. Still, it is a philosophy that is despairingly rare on a left that has responded to repeated calls for accountability, from #MeToo to efforts addressing racial harm in left-wing spaces, first and foremost with the same kind of legalism and defensiveness at play in the antisemitism crisis. Labour’s Antisemitism Crisis points activists in a new, transformative direction for the next struggle.

    Jonah ben Avraham is a Columbus-based writer and activist. He is a participant in DSA Jews and a member of the Tempest Collective.

     

  • The Great Resignation: A Workers’ Movement in America

    The Great Resignation: A Workers’ Movement in America

    This article was written for L’Anticapitaliste, the weekly newspaper of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) of France.

    The United States is experiencing one of the biggest worker movements in decades. While it is not organized by the labor unions, involves no strikes, and has had little fanfare, it is a common action–if not exactly a conscious collective action–being taken by millions. Over the last several months, millions of American workers have quit their jobs: about four million every month since spring. And the trend of saying, “I quit!” goes on. It has been suggested that one might think of this as an “unofficial general strike.” While that would be an exaggeration, still there is something to it.

    Workers are quitting because their wages are too low, because their working conditions are unsafe, or simply because they want a different life, a better life. They want to be happy.

    The cause of this Great Resignation, as it has been called, was the COVID depression of 2020 as the economy contracted by 32 percent and official unemployment reached 15 percent, though it may have been as high as 20 percent. Those who still had jobs sometimes worked in unhealthy conditions, without proper personal protective equipment or social distancing, while others worked from home often surrounded by the school-age child at her own computer, the needy child who wanted attention, the crying baby. Some workers in areas where there was high demand, whether high tech or delivery workers, simply burned out and quit. Others sick of their jobs, retired early. Some working remotely and no longer tied to the office, moved out of the cities and into the suburbs or to distant states. When employers called workers back to the office, they quit.

    For several months, some unemployed workers received their state unemployment benefits and federal assistance that sometimes amounted to as much or more than their low wages had been. And so, a first for some, they had a paid vacation. In the United States, there is no national law governing vacations. Typically, workers must work one year to earn one week’s vacation. After, say, three years they may get two weeks, after perhaps after ten years they may get three weeks, and sometime after that, at 15 or 20 years, four weeks. Some workers have no sick-days and so use their limited vacation days when they or their children are sick. So, terrible as it was, the COVID recession and the state and federal unemployment benefits gave some workers their first real vacations ever, a taste of freedom.

    For millions of U.S. workers, wages are notoriously low. For several years some unions engaged in a fight for $15 an hour. The demands made on the bosses at particular companies were accompanied by campaigns for legislation to raise the legal minimum wage to $15 or more in some states and cities, several of which were successful. Still, low wages have been a major source of dissatisfaction leading workers to quit their job.

    Who quit? Prior to the pandemic, it was typically young workers in their twenties who quit, but in 2020 and 2021, the 30- to 45-year-old workers have seen a 20 percent increase in voluntary resignations. Resignations have been high in technology, in health care, and in hotels and restaurants, clearly for quite different reasons. Everywhere one goes, one sees “Help Wanted” signs.

    The biggest result of the Great Resignation has been the rise in wages as employers try to entice workers. Wages reached an average of $31 an hour in August, a yearly 4.3% increase and an all-time high. For twenty-five years, employers would not raise wages, but now from McDonald’s to Bank of America they are.

    COVID has transformed the American work culture in many ways, and all of the ramifications of remain to be seen. The end of federal assistance programs and maybe one day the end of COVID may transform it again. For now, workers are quitting because they want to be happier at work. Perhaps nothing is more radical, if that desire can be transformed into more conscious, more collective mass action.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • France’s Union: Between Dead Ends and Renewal

    France’s Union: Between Dead Ends and Renewal

    The national day of strikes and demonstrations organized in France on 5 October, called by the unions CGT, FO, FSU and Solidaires, will not go down in history; it was not a failure, but the mobilization was average in terms of demonstrations and weak in terms of strikes. Part of the “trade union left” refers to “the widespread apathy of the trade union leaderships”. Apart from the point of discussion about the notion of “leadership” for a trade union organization, isn’t there a risk of simplifying a more complex situation? Does our problem really come from a supposed apathy of leaders Philippe Martinez, Yves Veyrier, Benoit Teste, Simon Duteil, Murielle Guilbert[1]? We fear not. Certainly, we could have hoped that the inter-union meeting organised on the evening of 11 October would have produced a new united appeal. But if this had been the case, would it have been enough to make it carry more weight than 5 October in the balance of power?

    This date of 5 October had been discussed in militant circles since July; it was made public on 30 August: during all these weeks, how many trade union tours, trade union offices, trade union information meetings in workplaces, preparatory general assemblies in the trade unions, etc.? Where were attempts made to bring the trade union unity of the national appeal to life, through inter-union initiatives on the ground? In how many companies did the trade union sections take care to make the national day of 5 October known to the staff of the company, to colleagues in subcontracting companies, to employees of surrounding companies? Asking these questions is not a criticism of the grassroots union teams: it is simply an attempt to point out the elements that made the day an average success. If these shortcomings explain, in part, our difficulties, then we need to get on with the job, to see how we can do better in the future. This will be more useful than radicalism in words.

    There are Social Struggles!

    In all professional sectors and all regions, there are struggles, strikes, walkouts, rallies. Including in the private sector, contrary to what trade unionists, not necessarily trade unionists, often say. Aldi in Burgundy, Bergams in Essonne, Knorr in Alsace, Arc en ciel in Paris-Jussieu, Transdev in Seine-et-Marne… This last one is significant: it has been going on since the beginning of September, it concerns working conditions and wages, denounces the system of calls for tender which organises, for the bosses, ever more exploitation of employees during each contract renewal. You can support the strikers financially: www.cotizup.com/mec-grevistes

    Building local and national unitary campaigns?

    The last CGT Confederal Executive Committee, like the recent national congress of the Union Syndicale Solidaires, decided on two priority campaigns: for the reduction of working time to 32 hours a week and for an increase in wages and pensions. This is the basis for common claims, by professional sector and at the inter-professional level; but also to vivify trade union campaigns on the ground and see them succeed. Company by company, department by department, site by site, how many jobs does the 32 hours mean? What contacts and claims initiatives should be taken with the organizations and collectives of the unemployed? Isn’t it time to abandon the symbolic “hiring desks” and return to the requisitioning of jobs through the direct collective action of workers, those who have a job together with those who don’t? On wages, the annual compulsory negotiations are a good time for trade union action on the subject, but without doubt we need to go beyond that, to take up the offensive to recover a greater share of what the capitalists are stealing from us, whether it be wages, retirement pensions or unemployment benefits.

    What prospects?

    For a part of the social forces, including trade unions, we take refuge behind the traditional “necessary political outlet”. As if the actors in the struggles were not themselves constructing this outlet, in the light of the emancipatory collective struggles they have waged! For these comrades, the “political outlet” can only come from the Party, from their party, not from others, or from institutional elections. In any case, it is only approached in the form of the seizure of state power, by delegating it to the parties. From the perspective of a self-managing society, this deserves another look.

    On the occasion of 5 October, the secretary general of the FSU (union of teachers) summed up very well what these political currents carry: “The workers remain convinced of the importance of mobilising in the present period but lack political perspectives. This means that many have passed on their turn today”. As far as perspectives are concerned, this hardly offers any!

    Trade unionism is political. It brings together those who decide to organise themselves on the sole basis of belonging to the same social class. Together, they act to defend their immediate demands and work for a radical transformation of society. The oppression linked to the capitalist system, the economic oppression resulting from the relations of production and the right of ownership, is common to all those “from below”. This is where the class confrontation is played out: if that isn’t political! This does not prevent us from considering that there are other forms of oppression, which should not be ranked in order of importance, neither among themselves nor in relation to economic oppression. Feminist struggles, anti-racist struggles, struggles against oppression and for equality, freedom, against police violence, environmentalist struggles, etc., are also political.

    The division of roles that says that the party is in charge of politics and trade unionism is in charge of social issues is a dead end. While the unions are, or at least should be, the tool for autonomous organisation of the working class, it confines them to a minor function, denying them the capacity to act to change society. Conversely, it pushes political organisations to consider that this task is their exclusive one and therefore disconnected from social movements.

    Redefining the Trade Union Space

    A large number of associations play a considerable role in the social movement. Almost all of them were set up because trade unionism abandoned fields of struggle or ignored them and, in fact, they do “trade unionism” as defined here: associations for the unemployed, for the right to housing, for the defence of undocumented workers, coordination of precarious workers, etc. Others intervene on subjects that are fully within the trade union field: they are feminist, anti-racist, and have a strong social dimension. Others intervene on issues that are fully within the trade union field: they are feminist, anti-racist, environmentalist, anti-fascist, anti-sexist, etc. There is also the question of the link with the workers of the land. There are also anti-colonialist movements, claiming the right of peoples to self-determination, anti-militarist, pacifist, etc. All of this concerns the interests and the future of our social class and it is from this point of view that we must deal with them.

    If we highlight the social movements, it is because they are the ones who organize the struggles, the direct action of the workers. Among these movements, trade unionism has an essential particularity: as we said earlier, it brings people together on the sole basis of belonging to the same social class. This is fundamental. A trade unionism of struggle of course, but also a trade unionism that dares to break with what exists in order to move forward. The question of unity, even unification, is important. It is also a question of redefining the contours of the trade union organization, so that it takes into account the diversities described here. But all this should be neither “experts” reflections from outside the trade union and social movement nor treated independently of the concrete issues mentioned more in terms of trade union campaigning, presence where the workers are more than with the bosses, trade union priorities decided and implemented collectively.

    [1] Respectively general secretaries of the CGT, FO, FSU and co-spokesperson of Solidaires.

  • It’s Easier to Imagine a Mark Fisher Meme than the End of Platform Capitalism

    It’s Easier to Imagine a Mark Fisher Meme than the End of Platform Capitalism

    Editor’s note: A constellation of events has thrown left wing memes into the mainstream, leading to a confirmation of the late Mark Fisher’s thesis that countercultural trends tend to be co-opted by capitalist media. The viral spread of AOCs ‘”Tax the rich” dress and of Grimes’ ostentatious public walkabout reading Marx’s Communist Manifesto have coincided with an explosion of memes featuring the late British theorist, Mark Fisher himself—subjecting one of our era’s most powerful critics of capitalism to the whims of internet algorithms. Eudald Espluga examines these trends in the light of the publication of Mike Watson’s The Memeing of Mark Fisher (Zero Books) in which the author analyses the paradox of Mark Fisher and his book “Capitalist Realism” becoming a viral trend. This article was originally published in Spanish in El Salto Diario, 25th September 2021. Mike Watson has translated it for us.

    Last month a meme circulated comprising a photo of the dress that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wore to the Met Gala, bearing the words ‘TAX THE RICH’ across its back, and a Wikipedia text about Mark Fisher arguing that, under the logic of capitalist realism, anti-capitalist expressions were not an antithesis of the system but a way of reinforcing its dynamics. The image was placed at the center of a heated debate over whether the US congresswoman’s gesture was revolutionary or hypocritical. That is, whether it served to foster class consciousness and strengthen the fight against inequality or was merely the latest fuss made by an identitarian left who think about likes more than people’s material problems.

    However, within a few hours, the meme had already mutated: someone had superimposed the template of the meme Two Soyjaks pointing, in which two overexcited men are seen pointing at an image, thus ridiculing the moral and intellectual superiority of those who had earlier used Mark Fisher’s words to criticize Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Though, as if often the case with memes, things did not end here. The meme cycle was accompanied by a discussion between journalists, artists and cultural critics about what Mark Fisher would have made of AOC’s “TAX THE RICH” dress.

    The writer Owen Hatherley was among the first to intervene, arguing that Fisher would have been enthused, even imagining the title of the article that Fisher would have written on his blog: “Ultra-libidinal socdem glam kontinuum”. Matt Colquhoun, a writer and photographer who has worked on and edited some of Fisher’s work, tweeted in response a photo of a scarf bearing text that read “Mark Fisher would have loved Cardi B,” thereby demonstrating that posthumous discussions of Fisher’s views have become common.

    It is perhaps no coincidence that much of the AOC dress debate occurred through Mark Fisher memes. Although seemingly absurd and baroque, the controversy pointed to some of the fundamental ongoing tensions of the left on the internet. And in fact, this very week the writer and art critic Mike Watson has published The Memeing of Mark Fisher (Zero Books), a book in which he argues that popular culture – memes included – can serve as a barrier to the depressive effects of neoliberalism, helping to break with the demobilizing idea that “there is no alternative” and opening fissures for the political imagination: “The sickness caused by capitalism may be necessary or useful to the cure. Somehow, as will be argued here, our depressive refusal to abide capitalism’s perversity might lead us away from it.”

    Watson refers to the paradoxical fact that Mark Fisher and his book Capitalist Realism (Zero books, 2009) have become a meme in themselves, this being seen as the ultimate confirmation of his thesis on the difficulty of imagining a post-capitalist society. Just type “Mark Fisher” in the Instagram search engine to see the sheer number of meme pages dedicated exclusively to him. The resulting images take on widely varying forms from pure shitposting, such as a photo of a duvet featuring the cover of Capitalist Realism, to elaborate posts with quotes from Fisher’s texts, to photomontages of public figures holding Fisher’s books.

    Perhaps the most significant memes, in terms of their massive circulation, are those that use the figure of the “doomer”, the portrait of a young nihilist who must deal with political, economic and climatic crises. In one viral meme we see this young man breathing from an oxygen cylinder with the cover of Capitalist Realism stamped on it.

    “The memes go faster and faster,” explains Mike Watson to El Salto, “this speed makes it hard for us to discern any sense in Mark Fisher memes. This is a great irony, which is both sad and funny. Ultimately Mark Fisher memes co-opt Fisher’s anti-capitalist message, leading him feed into the algorithms, making money for internet giants but also weakening his message.” As an indication of this, this weekend the AOC meme has been superseded by memes appropriating images of artist and musician Grimes reading The Communist Manifesto ostentatiously in public.

    For Watson, this speed is inseparable from the structure of social media platforms, which are designed to favor antagonisms and ideological polarization. He argues that the digital infrastructure governing our internet use is by definition reactionary and that is why far-right memes appear to predominate, defining the frameworks for any possible debate. Yet in the data driven economy and its algorithms, even left memes tend towards a reinforcement of right wing economic values, often turning the left against itself. “Given that Fisher identified the tendency of elements on the left to do the work of capitalism for it,” Watson continues, “the way that Fisher’s memes often distort or misrepresent his theory is both ironic and disturbing, as well as amusing. However, there is another aspect, which is more positive. Fisher’s memes clearly encourage people to explore Fisher’s theory. We have this problem in which the internet offers enormous potential in terms of spreading class consciousness, but in blocking it”.

    As such, Watson argues that we need to hold on to the positive aspects of the internet, as he did in his previous book, Can the Left Learn to Meme? (Zero Books, 2019), presenting the possibility of a movement of “slow memes” that takes advantage and reappropriates the tools offered by the internet to challenge platform capitalism, creating communities that can also function ‘in real life’. For him, in material terms, memes are a type of cultural production like any other, and he resorts to the aesthetic theories of Adorno and Benjamin to argue that memes can also be opposed to the mercantilist logics of the present, in the same way that modernist art and avant-garde movements once were. “I think a sense of abstraction created collectively through memes can destabilize things and allow a ray of light to break through to an otherwise grim capitalist existence.”

    To achieve this, Watson believes that it is not enough to break with the accelerating rhythms of the platforms and reject the trend towards monetization, but that memetic production has to be both challenging and disruptive. Following the thinkers of the Frankfurt School, Watson points out in The Memeing of Mark Fisher that “only the most opaque, dark and unfathomable artistic productions can escape these forces.” For Watson it is important that these memes serve to channel social unrest towards organized discontent and not towards outbursts of anger and frustration. “We can use the internet’s infrastructure to try to slow down our consumption, creating thoughtful works. In the book I refer to Benjamin’s use of flaneurism and the possibility of making constellations of memes and other online objects in the hope of better understanding what resides beneath them. In this way we may catch glimpses of the underlying class and economic structure that has led to today’s online culture.”

    The fact of seeing memes – and, in particular, Mark Fisher memes – as part of a collective work of theorizing about the material conditions of digital subjects is especially interesting insofar as it invites us to demolish certain academic prejudices about the political function of cultural theory and criticism. The debate about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s dress and the ensuing memes might also be understood from this perspective: in the face of the virality of the image of the dress, and the transgression involved in wearing it to the Met Gala, Fisher’s words were brandished as a mode of superior knowledge situated beyond all practice. However, the common practice of using Capitalist Realism as a nihilistic and demobilizing scourge not only goes against the ideas of the book, but also contributes to making Mark Fisher the academic springboard from which to judge the alleged hypocrisy of any form of political action that does not culminate in the total and radical suppression of capitalism.

    In fact, this authoritarian use of Mark Fisher’s thought in the form of a moralistic scolding has become possible because in recent years the mass reception of his work has made him “an editorial corpse”: far from being perceived as a former member of the CCRU (the Cyber ​​Culture Research Unit), who bet on anonymity and institutional independence, or as a worker who was exiled from the academy to end up publishing principally on his blog, today we see Fisher cloaked in the aura of the Authorial figure, consuming his work as a registered trademark. And what’s even worse: as Pepe Tesoro has pointed out, is that this fetishist approach has ended up making Fisher something like the last prophet of anti-capitalism, a mythical figure we turn to with longing and impotence.

    With a bit of luck, the memeization of his figure can serve to break with the nostalgic veneration that has ended up turning him into the Francis Fukuyama of the doomer generation. And in fact, the announcement of the publication of The Memeing of Mark Fisher – the cover bearing a meme featuring Adorno and Fisher himself – was initially received and mistaken for a memetic joke, only to later come under severe criticism for ostensibly trivializing his figure and degrading his ideas. But as Watson reminds us, not only did Fisher not dislike memes, but in 2015 he mounted the “Summer is coming” meme campaign in support of Corbyn, and even created a Facebook page – which he subsequently deleted when it started to be successful – called “Boring Dystopia”, in which he collected images of the banality and dysfunctionality of late capitalism, with a special predilection for broken vending machines.

    Thus, although “the Memeing of Mark Fisher himself indicates the tendency of capitalism to neutralize all opposition,” as Watson argues, this contradiction warrants exploration in an attempt to develop new uses for digital infrastructure and cultural production on the internet. The Memeing of Mark Fisher suggests that given the impossibility of imagining the end of capitalism, perhaps making memes of Mark Fisher is not such a bad option. At least if we approach them as an attempt to create, both on and offline, politicized communities that combat resignation, nostalgia and frustration. As Watson concludes: “If nothing is to be found outside of the dark madness of capitalism, the doomers among us will have to make our sickness into a credible protest movement.”

  • Beyond Tragedy: Postscript on Kronstadt at 100

    Beyond Tragedy: Postscript on Kronstadt at 100

    [On the 100th anniversary of the Kronstadt events, New Politics is hosting a symposium on the historic tragedy, its meaning and significance, and its implications for today’s socialists. We are posting articles by Alexei Gusev, Samuel Clarke, Paul Le Blanc, Daniel Fischer, and Tom Harrison. We welcome further responses. -Eds.]

    Red Army troops attack Kronstadt.

    Any honest socialist must admit that the repression of the March 1921 Kronstadt uprising in Soviet Russia, a century ago, does not rank among the Bolshevik Party’s finest moments. “You will be shot down like grouse,” warned the Red Army’s leaflets dropped by plane over the Kronstadt naval base. Despite approving the assault, Lenin described it at the time as “our own Thermidor,” meaning counterrevolution. “We must liquidate Kronstadt in the next few days at any cost,” Trotsky ordered and reportedly added, “Don’t spare the bullets.”1 He even went so far as to approve the use of chemical weapons against the rebels, and, historian Paul Avrich explains, “if Kronstadt had resisted much longer, a plan to launch a gas attack with shells and balloons, devised by cadets of the Higher Military Chemical School, would have been carried out.”2

     

    Despite Bolshevik propagandists’ slander that the Kronstadt rebellion was led by a Tsarist general and orchestrated by foreign powers, the government’s internal documents would, when revealed years later, prove the contrary. A 5 April 1921 report commissioned by the Cheka found the “uprising was entirely spontaneous in origin.” Moreover, “the investigation failed to show the outbreak of the mutiny was preceded by the activity of any counter-revolutionary organisation at work among the fortresses’ command or that it was the work of agents of the entente.”3

     

    The rebels’ demands were clearly leftist and democratic: free elections of soviets (councils of workers, peasants, and soldiers and sailors), freedom of expression, release of leftist political prisoners, equal rations for all, peasants’ autonomy from “war-communist” exploitation.4 In fact, their program closely resembled several of the guarantees provided by the Constitution adopted at the Fifth All-Russia Congress of Soviets held in 1918. As Russian Anarchist Ida Mett emphasized, “The central demand of the Kronstadt insurrection — all power to the Soviets and not to the Party — was in fact based on an article of the Constitution. This proclaimed that all central and local power would henceforth be precisely in the hands of the soviets!”5

     

    Before the government attacked Kronstadt, Anarchists including Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman approached the Bolsheviks with an offer to mediate a peaceful resolution.6 Lenin and Trotsky rejected the offer,7 choosing the path of bloodshed and planting seeds for Stalin’s later “harvests of sorrows.”8

     

    We at New Politics discussed how to commemorate the Kronstadt tragedy’s centennial. Despite frequently being mislabeled as “Trotskyist,” our editorial board has sharply divergent opinions on Trotsky and on Kronstadt. You can find in our pages, on the one hand, Stephen Shalom condemning the Kronstadt repression as a sign of the Soviet Union becoming unambiguously repressive, and on the other hand, Tom Harrison defending the Bolshevik policy on the grounds that “Conceding to the sailors’ demands would mean relinquishing power at a moment when (a) workers’ revolution in Europe was still a real possibility, and (b) there was no other organized political force in Russia capable of preventing a bloody triumph of the counter-revolution.”9 For this symposium, we decided to solicit different perspectives, inviting contributors to go beyond rehashing the century-old debate. We were impressed with the articles we received from Alexei Gusev, Samuel Clarke, and Paul Le Blanc, which offered fresh perspectives based on newly available, previously obscure, and Russian-language sources.

     

    Gusev, in “The Kronstadt Revolt of 1921 as a part of the Great Russian Revolution,” positions the Kronstadt revolt within a broader, and potentially successful, “revolutionary situation.” Pointing to many uprisings across Russia in early 1921—generally in alignment with the Makhnovist movement’s demand of “Land for the Peasants and Factories for the Workers”10—Gusev describes a spontaneous coalition of rebellious peasants, industrial workers, soldiers, and sailors. Had it not been for Bolshevik repression, and had the rebellion persisted or waited until the ice around the naval base melted,11 there might have been a viable chance of achieving what the rebels declared a “third revolution, striking the last fetters from the laboring masses and opening a broad new road for socialist creativity.”

     

    Clarke, in “Kronstadt, A Tragic Necessity?,” addresses Trotsky’s famous contention that “what the Soviet government did reluctantly at Kronstadt was a tragic necessity.”12 Clarke argues that the repression was only made necessary by the imperatives of centralized revolutionary methods. His conclusion echoes Emma Goldman’s 1924 reflection that “[n]o revolution can ever succeed as a factor of liberation unless the MEANS used to further it be identical in spirit and tendency with the PURPOSES to be achieved.”13

     

    Le Blanc in “Beyond Kronstadt,” warns that an excessive focus on the Russian Revolution’s repressive side can easily from “an excuse to become reconciled to the status quo.” Le Blanc describes Kronstadt as being among many “mistakes and tragedies” of the Bolshevik project, although not the only one nor a fully discrediting one. Without shying away from criticizing the Red Terror and the “violation of inner-party democracy,” LeBlanc urges a focus on objective factors such as continental isolation and imperialist encirclement. He approvingly quotes American Marxist Max Shachtman:

     

    “Why did the proletariat lose power and, therewith, lose the indispensable instrument for constructing socialism? Exactly ninety-nine percent of the critics of Bolshevism answer the question in this way, at bottom: The Russian workers lost power because they took power […] Exactly ninety-nine of the revolutionary Marxists answer the question in this way at bottom: The Russian workers lost power because the workers of other countries failed to take power.”

     

    Juxtaposing these three analyses reveals both tensions and overlaps. Partially corroborating Gusev’s assertion of widespread revolt, LeBlanc quotes the Bolshevik thinker Victor Serge that “in European Russia alone there were at least fifty centers of peasant insurrection.” However, while Gusev convincingly attributes a liberatory quality to the peasant uprisings, including Tambov’s Green movement that had popular peasant support and collaborated with Left-Social Revolutionaries and Anarchists,14 Le Blanc further quotes Serge denouncing the Tambov uprising as a reactionary “Vendée.”

     

    At the risk of committing multiple heresies, I want to propose a synthesis of the rebels’ “third revolution” and Trotsky’s “permanent revolution,” combining the former’s anti-authoritarianism and the latter’s transnationalism.15 Such a project, drawing on unorthodox Marxist and Anarchist traditions, might be something that the Kronstadt rebels themselves would support. With all the rebels’ vitriol against the Bolshevik government, they did not advocate, as Bolsheviks alleged, “Soviets without Communists.” In fact, Communists comprised the fortress’s largest pro-uprising tendency, outnumbering the Mensheviks, Maximalists, or Anarchists.16

     

    If we agree that France’s enragés were justified in demanding a “third revolution” after the incomplete successes of 1789 and 1792, then we could likewise sympathize with the Kronstadt rebels’ demand for a third revolution after the first and second revolutions in February and October 1917.17 The Bolsheviks’ very willingness to suppress the Kronstadt uprising, rather than pursue Goldman and Berkman’s offer to attempt a peaceful negotiation, pointed to the necessity for a radical democratization in Russia in 1921. Besides being morally justified, the uprising had an actual chance of sparking a liberatory transformation. As Gusev reminds us, even the high-ranking Chekist Vasilii Sevei acknowledged that the sailors “could well form the basis for a possible third revolution.”

     

    Yet, there is also much power in Trotsky’s assertion, contained in his theory of “permanent revolution,” and subsequently proven by the USSR’s disastrous trajectory, that “[t]he completion of the socialist revolution within national limits is unthinkable.” A “permanent revolution,” for Trotsky, would push a struggle for liberal democracy into a struggle for socialism, and would spread a nationwide revolution into other countries.18 Kronstadt’s sailors shared aspects of this internationalism when they issued a broadcast “To the Workers of the World,” declaring, “Comrades, we need your moral support. Protest against the oppressor commissarocrats.”19 However, in addition to moral support, a successful third revolution would have needed material support from workers abroad. LeBlanc’s Shachtman quote, then, becomes very relevant: “The Russian workers lost power because the workers of other countries failed to take power.”

     

    We can debate what it means to “take power,” whether it necessarily means taking state power or whether it can mean establishing local control by workers and communities. We should also scrutinize the specifics of Trotsky’s theory and reject his condescending assertion that peasants must follow the leadership of the proletariat.20 Moreover, we can argue that Trotsky betrayed his professed internationalism when he approved the 1918 Brest-Litovsk Treaty which abandoned Ukraine’s peasants to the German and Austrian empires and, as Rosa Luxemburg argued, “signified an enormous strengthening of the imperialist Pan-German policy and thus a lessening of the chances for a revolutionary rising in Germany.”21

     

    Still, Trotsky’s worldwide focus offers an important emphasis that was sometimes missing from the anti-authoritarian elements. Avrich notes of the Kronstadt rebels, “Although self-proclaimed internationalists, the sailors showed little concern for the worldwide revolutionary movement.” Moreover, in contrast to Trotsky’s militant opposition to antisemitism and conspiracy theories, a number of the rebels succumbed to such parochialism: “Although the rebels, in the same breath, denied any anti-Semitic prejudice, there is no question that feelings against the Jews ran high among the Baltic sailors, many of whom came from the Ukraine and the western borderlands, the classic regions of virulent anti-Semitism in Russia.”22

     

    With an aim to synthesize insights from both the “permanent” and “third” revolutionary concepts, we could conclude with the Russian Anarchist writer Voline that while a transnational revolutionary spread was necessary, the Bolshevik leaders deserve much of the responsibility for its failure: “[T]he weakness of the foreign workers and the spreading of the reaction were, to a large extent, the natural consequences of the false route on which they themselves had put the Revolution.”23 Had the Bolsheviks allowed soviet democracy, as the rebels demanded, they might have avoided the Kronstadt bloodshed and strengthened prospects for world socialism. Yes, it would have meant sharing power with the other pro-soviet factions that helped launch the October revolution, if such a prospect were still possible after Brest-Litovsk wrecked relations between the Bolsheviks and Left Social Revolutionaries. It was a highly necessary and justified risk. Even if, as Bolsheviks warned at the time, sharing power with other tendencies would have destabilized the revolution, the results were very unlikely to be worse than what actually followed. The Soviet Union’s descent into Stalinism, going far beyond Lenin’s existing authoritarianism, would lead to the slaughter of millions and would discredit socialist revolution until the present day.

     

    Avoiding a repeat of the twentieth century’s tragedies will require a commitment to the mutually reinforcing principles of radical democracy and transnational solidarity, and to supporting revolutionary processes and leftist dissidents worldwide. In turn, organizing along these lines will necessitate, as Howard Zinn advocated, avoiding the burying of historical atrocities (emphasis added):

     

    “[T]he easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all)–that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth.”24

     

    A Left that buries the history of Kronstadt, that refuses to reckon with its uncomfortable lessons for the present, will also bury today’s repression by so-called “anti-imperialist” and “Communist” governments. In chilling echoes of 1921’s Red Army propaganda, we see much of 2021’s mainstream Left defending massacres in Syria and mass incarceration in China based on oft-misleading claims that the victims are foreign-backed reactionaries. This year, New Politics has proudly been a venue for combating such apologetics, for example by hosting the English-language version of “Erasing People through Disinformation: Syria and the ‘Anti-Imperialism’ of Fools,” and publishing criticisms of self-declared Left parties in Cuba, Ecuador, China, and elsewhere.

     

    Socialists committed to moving beyond tragedy will need to unbury Kronstadt and address its causes, its impact, and its suppression from the local to transnational levels. An open-minded reading of the symposium’s diverse contributions may help us build a non-sectarian Left that will, as Le Blanc suggests, learn from the “mistakes and the tragedies of comrades who came before us, with a commitment to do better.” To avoid repeating the Kronstadt tragedy, and to build toward principled world revolution, we can commit to organizing transnational solidarity and speaking out against all forms of authoritarian repression.

     

    1Kronstadt Izvestia #4, 6 March 1921, trans. Scott Zenkatsu Parker; Israel Getzler, “The Communist leaders’ role in the kronstadt tragedy of 1921 in the light of recently published archival documents in the kronstadt tragedy of 1921 in the light of recently published archival documents,” Revolutionary Russia 15 (2002): 22-44; Kronstadt Izvestia #5, 7 March 1921, trans. Scott Zenkatsu Parker; Victor Serge, “Kronstadt ‘21,” 1945.

    2Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 1921 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1970), 211-212.

    4The demand for peasants’ control of land was more leftist than both the Bolsheviks’ later market-oriented “New Economic Policy” and the existing “war communism” which Lenin described in the following terms, quoted by Avrich, Kronstadt, 9: “The essence of ‘War Communism,’ was that we actually took from the peasant all his surpluses and sometimes not only the surpluses but part of the grain the peasant needed for food. We took this in order to meet the requirements of the army and to sustain the workers.”

    5Ida Mett, “The Kronstadt Commune,” 1938.

    6Emma Goldman, My Further Disillusionment in Russia (Garden City: Doubleday, 1924), ch. 6.

    7Michael Löwy reasonably contends that responsibility for the Kronstadt tragedy “lies with the Bolsheviks, by their refusal of the mediation proposal put forward by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.” “Sans révolte, la politique devient vide de sens,” Ballast, 29 December 2014.

    8 Such harvests were not limited to the Holodomor genocide that is the subject of the Robert Conquest’s 1986 book of this title.

    9Bennett Muraskin, Norman Epstein, and Thomas Harrison, “Russian Revolution,” New Politics 17, no. 2 (2019).

    10Murray Bookchin, The Third Revolution, Volume Three (London: Cassell, 2004), 315.

    11Waiting for the ice to melt would have given the sailors an important military advantage. The fact that the sailors didn’t wait confirms the rebellion’s spontaneity.

    12Trotsky, “A Tragic Necessity” in Kronstadt, ed. Barbara Mutnick (New York: Pathfinder, 1979), 127.

    13Goldman, My Further Disillusionment in Russia, ch. 12.

    14See Nick Heath, “The third revolution? Peasant resistance to the Bolshevik government,” Libcom, 21 October 2005.

    15I build here on previous anti-authoritarian concepts of permanent revolution. Ron Tabor, “In Defense of Anarchism,” 1996; Javier Sethness and Daniel Fischer, “Revolution in Permanence, in Syria After the Uprisings,” Transnational Solidarity Network, 15 March 2020.

    16Andrey Kalyonov, “Who Were the Kronstadt Rebels?,” Crimethinc, 16 March 2021.

    17In The Third Revolution, Volume One (London: Cassell, 1996), Murray Bookchin asserts that the Kronstadt rebels were not familiar with the French revolutionaries’ use of the term, and they remarkably recreated the concept on their own.

    18Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution (1931), chs. 8, 10.

    19Kronstadt Izvestia #11, 13 March 1921, trans. Scott Zenkatsu Parker.

    20His condescension toward peasants manifested itself in the crackdown against the Makhnovshchina, and later, the Greens.

    21Rosa Luxemburg, “The Russia Tragedy,” 1918.

    22Avrich, Kronstadt, 173, 179; Enzo Traverso, “Trotsky and the ‘Jewish Question,’” 1 July 1990, Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières.

    24Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 1492-Present (New York: HarperPerennial, 2003), 9.

  • What is Left in the Neoliberal University?

    What is Left in the Neoliberal University?

    The neoliberal university exploits intellectual labor under a veneer of liberal-humanist values — a false consciousness which the emerging working-class academics must overcome.

    ***

    The role of intellectuals in class struggle has been a key topic in the history of left thought. Most famously perhaps, this topic was discussed by the iconic Italian Marxist philosopher and educator Antonio Gramsci.

    Gramsci rejected the idea that intellectuals are mere observers in the class war. Whether they are conscious of it or not, he argued, intellectuals contribute either to the capitalist class or to the working class.

    Gramsci also dispensed with the idea that the working people need to be led by an intellectual vanguard elite, trained in academic philosophy and theory. A union activist, for instance, is in its Gramscian sense an “intellectual” of the working class, in that her organizing work produces “counter-hegemony” and advances the social struggle against the ruling class.

    Thus, Gramsci differentiated between what he called “traditional intellectuals,” who falsely consider their intellectual pursuit as independent from any social class, and “organic intellectuals” of the working class, who consider their work as inherently tied to class struggle.

    Historically, the university has been a bastion of “traditional intellectuals.” Scholarly work has been, and is still often, understood as “objective,” “detached,” and “disinterested.” Accordingly, academic professionals tend to consider their work as a sacred practice, a “vocation,” free from any bonds to the interests of a particular social group.

    Although academics often understand their work to be “disinterested,” the underlying assumption in doing scholarly work has been always that it somehow advances “the collective good.” This liberal-humanist assumption continues to shape academic workers’ self-image, even though the neoliberal university relies increasingly on “working-class academics.”

    What is a working-class academic?

    For many, the phrase “working-class academics” is synonymous with “academics from a working-class background.” This is for good reason.

    Pursuing an academic job these days requires a graduate degree. Graduate programs are expensive, and hence less accessible to students from working-class backgrounds. As a result, working-class students are less likely to end up in academic jobs.

    For decades, activists have tried to make higher education more accessible to the working class. Under public pressure, some institutions of higher education have tried to incentivize students from a working-class background to pursue an academic career by introducing quotas, just as they have tried to create incentive for minority groups.

    It is indeed immensely important to continue fighting for a more accessible higher education. But to organize for systemic change in higher education, we must go beyond considering class as only a matter of “diversity” and embrace a broader definition of “working-class academics.”

    In the past two decades academic labor has been increasingly carried out by contractors and gig workers. According to a 2020 report from the National Center for Education Statistic, about one in every two academics in the US works on a part-time contract, graduate student employees not included. These workers often live in precarious conditions. A survey from the American Federation of Teachers found out that 40 percent of adjunct faculty struggle with covering basic household expenses.

    The precarious condition of adjunct faculty as well as graduate student workers is by no means limited to the United States. A study by the University and College Union found that more than half of all academic staff in the UK are employed on insecure contracts. Or in Germany, which is more of a welfare state, about eight in every ten academic workers are employed on a fixed-term contract, according to a survey from the German Trade Union Confederation. Of the junior academics surveyed, about 80 percent work on average 10 hours per week more than what is stipulated in their contracts.

    These precarious workers in academia, contingent faculty members and graduate student workers, are what I take to be “working-class academics.”

    This proposition may raise an objection: Isn’t the phrase “working-class academic” a contradiction in terms? How can academics as “professionals” be classed with the so-called “unskilled” workers? To answer this objection, we need to take a step back and look at the very concept of “class.”

    “Class” is a notoriously difficult concept to define. Class is an objective economic category, a tool of sociological analysis, but also a matter of culture and identity, and of political organization.

    In its broadest definition, the working class includes those who do not own the means of production; those who must sell their labor in exchange for a wage. In our twenty-first-century capitalist economy, there is a wide variety of people with extremely different occupations who fit this definition: a construction worker with no higher education, an artist who sells his work on Etsy, a social media content moderator with college education whose workplace is her home, an auto industry worker who provides for a household of five, a culture worker who has to work part-time as an Uber driver — all of these people sell their labor to survive.

    The extreme heterogeneity among the working class is a serious obstacle to the development of class-consciousness, the first step towards building social movements. This problem was anticipated by Marx.

    In his article for Jacobin, Matt Vidal shows that one of Marx’s concerns in his mature writings was how “the fragmentation of the working class along lines of skill and authority” impedes the formation of a class-conscious proletariat: “Rather than seeing a universal process of deskilling resulting in a homogeneous, unskilled working class, as is commonly attributed to Marx, he argued that capitalism would require a complex division of labor including unskilled workers, skilled workers, and a hierarchy of managers to coordinate it all.”

    In order to overcome the fragmentation of the working class, we must go beyond the stereotypical image of the blue-collar worker. Identities associated with the working class must be inclusive of all the diverse social groups who actually belong to the working class.

    A graduate student worker or an adjunct faculty member who earns little more than the minimum wage and a university service worker belong to the same class — and they should be able to perceive themselves as such. By valorizing academic labor as “vocation,” however, the neoliberal university mystifies the employer-employee relationship between itself and the working-class academics.

    Valorization of academic labor

    While the class war is moving ever so irrefutably inside the walls of academia, the managerial elite of the neoliberal university, as well as academics complicit with them, continue to hide behind a liberal-humanist façade.

    Here is an example. Before assuming the prestigious office of the President of Harvard University, Lawrence Bacow was president of Tufts University. At Tufts, Bacow had opposed graduate students’ unionization. As reported in The Tufts Daily, Bacow had argued that “The relationship between faculty member to graduate student is not one of employer to employee,” emphasizing that his opposition to graduate student unionization was not a matter of ideology.

    Interestingly, Bacow’s argument here is in fact purely ideological. He is drawing upon the valorized notion that there is something sacred in the relationship between teachers and students, as if a university professor who sees two hundred faces in a lecture hall every other day can relate to their students like Plato did to Socrates, or Scipio to his circle.

    If the graduate students at Tufts had said that, through collective bargaining, they intend to determine their grades, then one could indeed object that they were trying to change a longstanding relationship between students and teachers. But it is the university — not the graduate students — that has changed the student-teacher relationship by employing them to fill its teaching needs.

    Here is another example. A few years ago, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago sent a letter to graduate students in his department who were trying to organize a union, answering a public letter that the graduate students had written in support of unionization. Here is part of his email:

    “… I found your co-signed letter to be naive, unconvincing, and, quite frankly, kind of offensive. It is naive in that you seem to really think a union would not change relationships between graduate students and the faculty. I don’t know if either of you have ever been members of a union or worked in a unionized environment, but unions inevitably alter the relationships between union members and the people they interact with, be they management, clients, customers, or what not. The formalization of such relationships is, in fact, the central goal of a union ….”

    Again, the supposedly sanctified relationship between students and teachers is used to “justify” the argument that academic workers should not unionize.

    Neoliberalism has thus turned university into a profit-oriented organization, devoid of any meaning, that yet continues to sell its economic, instrumental values as liberal-humanistic ones: efficiency as “dedication”; polished CVs as “rounded characters”; specialization as “passion”; interdisciplinarity as “liberal education”; and ruthless, luck-based competition as “meritocracy.”

    But the problem is not just the managerial class or those faculty members who are clearly complicit with them. Most academic workers have at one point accepted a false image of their profession, the very image which is used to exploit them.

    Since its inception, the modern university was an institution designed to sustain a set of liberal-humanist values. It is difficult to get into this system, as a student, a teacher, or a researcher, without to some extent internalizing these values — most importantly, the notion that knowledge on its own can save humanity.

    Many academics, especially in the humanities and social sciences, are often under the impression that since they study the injustices of the world, they are by virtue of what they study the most “progressive” stratum of the society. But the truth is that academic careerism will not save the world.

    The idealization of what academics do as a profession, therefore, stands in the way of addressing the unjust hierarchies within the university itself.

    What is to be done?

    I opened this piece with a reference to Gramsci. Thinking of Gramsci, we may recall Joseph Buttigieg, a respected professor of English at the University of Notre Dame and a translator of Gramsci’s work, as well as father to the former South Bend Mayor and democratic presidential hopeful known as “Mayor Pete.” It is of course folly to say “Like father, like son.” Every individual is responsible only for their own actions. Yet, we can still ask: what happens that one of the most vapid politicians in recent US history was raised by a man who made his living by teaching and researching Gramsci? This is either very tragic, or it tells us something about the limits of upper-middle class academic life.

    The university might well be beyond saving, unless a larger social movement addresses the root causes of economic injustice. But there is surely something “left” to do in the university.

    As working-class academics are becoming the new faculty majority, the university, the natural habitat of what Gramsci called “traditional intellectuals,” can for the first time be conquered by “organic intellectuals” of the working class. If this happens, the university can play a key role in the next larger social movement for economic and social justice — not as a leader, however, but by joining the rest of the working class.

    For this to happen, working-class academics must fight the false consciousness that what they do is “inherently” valuable, and like the rest of the working class, they must organize and fight back the ruling class.

    We do not study and teach leftist theorists for “upward mobility,” to become part of “the elite,” and then bring about a top-down change. If you have good intentions, start by organizing for academic labor now, when you belong to the working class. And if, against all odds, you succeed in becoming part of the salariat, you can still be in solidarity with the working class. Remain committed to working at smaller universities which are more accessible to the working class and have a more equitable culture of research and teaching, rather than pursuing and glorifying “prestigious” universities. Many academics with a working-class background have already done that.

    As much as academia pushes for narratives of individuality and success, only by working together can we achieve meaningful change. Helping your adjunct faculty colleagues to unionize could well be more virtuous an act than writing a state-of-the-art paper on Foucault.

  • Biden Focuses U.S. Foreign Policy on Challenging China

    Biden Focuses U.S. Foreign Policy on Challenging China

    The Belt-and-Road Initiative gives an impression of China’s economic imperial ambitions

    This article was written for L’Anticapitaliste, the weekly newspaper of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) of France.

    President Joseph Biden has refocused U.S. foreign policy and military strategy on America’s two great power imperial rivals: Russia and China, particularly the latter. With the world’s second largest economy, still growing phenomenally at almost 8 percent per year, with it’s multi-trillion dollar belt-and-road initiative expanding its economic reach through Asia and to Europe and Africa, and with its leader Xi Jimping’s promise to make his country a “world class” military power being gradually realized, China is at the center of U.S. policy and strategy. China’s aggressive actions in constructing islands in the South China Sea and its threatening military maneuvers near Taiwan, have made its ambitions clear.

    Former president Donald Trump challenged China in his typically erratic manner. As candidate, Trump frequently criticized China in Tweets and speeches, accusing China of currency manipulation, of intellectual property theft, of government subsidies of exports, and of creating the enormous trade imbalance. “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country,” he said. Trump’s harangues about China played well to his base of small business owners and rustbelt workers.

    As president, Trump launched a tariff war with China, as each country imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods. But that led to a slowing of the U.S. economy. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs were lost, many U.S. farmers went bankrupt—and still the trade deficit grew. Yet his base remained loyal.

    Trump’s messages were mixed. He lauded Chinese head of state Xi Jimping for his leadership, calling him a “friend” and an “incredible guy.” He praised Xi’s handling of the Hong Kong protests, as the Chinese central government strangled the democratic movement there; and Trump declined to speak out on the million Uyghurs held in concentration camps in Xinjiang province. (Though his cabinet members did.) Trump tightened export and investment controls, and China did eventually sign an agreement promising to stop currency devaluation and intellectual property theft.

    Trump initially praised Xi’s handling of the corona virus in China, but then later when the virus spread in the United States, he accused China of being responsible for the COVID pandemic, which he called the “Kung Flu,” ginning up anti-China sentiment and anti-Asian racism. Trump demanded hundreds of billions of dollar in damages and threatened to punish China one way or another, but that was largely a charade. Trump’s focus on economic issues and then on COVID meant that he tended to ignore China’s geopolitical role.

    Biden plans to build in the Quad, the alliance of the United States, Australia, Japan, and India, to resist China.

    Biden’s approach to the China challenge is altogether different. First, it is focused principally on geopolitics and military strategy. This was clearly demonstrated by the Biden administration’s signing of a deal with Australia to provide it with nuclear submarines. Building on the Quad—a lose alliance of the United States, India, Japan and Australia—Biden hopes to build a stronger coalition to contain China.

    Second, Biden wants to renegotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an economic alliance, negotiated with more than a dozen Pacific Rim countries in 2016 by President Barack Obama. Trump withdrew the United States from the TPP on his first day in office. Biden’s renegotiation of TPP would lay a strong economic basis for countering China.

    Opposition to China is popular in the United States. The proportion of Americans who see China as the country’s greatest enemy has doubled in the past year, from 22% to 45%. The U.S. left, with no strong anti-war movement, has little capacity to resist the growing militarism. And some U.S. leftists, apparently blind to its authoritarian regime at home and imperial ambitions abroad, support China. We on the left have a big job ahead, to explain the existence of multiple imperial powers and to build a movement to resist U.S. imperialism, while also opposing Russia and China.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Beyond Kronstadt

    Beyond Kronstadt

    Trotsky, Lenin, and Kamenev.

    [On the 100th anniversary of the Kronstadt events, New Politics is hosting a symposium on the historic tragedy, its meaning and significance, and its implications for today’s socialists. We are posting articles by Alexei Gusev, Samuel Clarke, Paul Le Blanc, Daniel Fischer, and Tom Harrison. -Eds.]

    One must go beyond Kronstadt to understand Kronstadt. One must grasp, first of all, the struggle for human liberation and the hope of Communism.i

    From revolutionary Russia in October 1917, John Reed, sent a cable back to his socialist comrades in the United States: “The rank and file of the Workmen’s, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Councils are in control, with Lenin and Trotsky leading. Their program is to give the land to the peasants, to socialize natural resources and industry and for an armistice and democratic peace conference…. No one is with the Bolsheviki except the proletariat, but that is solidly with them. All the bourgeoisie and appendages are relentlessly hostile.” Two years later, Reed’s classic account Ten Days That Shook the World explained: “The only reason for Bolshevik success lay in their accomplishing the vast and simple desires of the most profound strata of the people, calling them to the work of tearing down and destroying the old, and afterward, in the smoke of falling ruins, cooperating with them to erect the frame-work of the new.”ii

    The Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Leon Trotsky, was only one component within the revolutionary movement that had been struggling against the oppressive Tsarist autocracy. They contended in the Marxist RSDLP with rivals of the more moderate Menshevik wing. Also on the scene was the peasant-focused Socialist-Revolutionary Party (similarly divided between Left SRs and Right SRs), as well as a rich variety of anarchist groups, plus pro-capitalist liberals, the Constitutional Democrats (dubbed Cadets).

    But it was the Bolsheviks – soon to self-identify as Communists – that Reed, and a majority of Russia’s insurgent working class took most seriously in 1917. This was also true of the great Polish-German Marxist, Rosa Luxemburg, as she crafted her critical analysis The Russian Revolution, shortly before being murdered in that abortive revolutionary upsurge of 1918-1919. “The Bolsheviks have shown that they are capable of everything that a genuine revolutionary party can contribute within the limits of the historical possibilities,” she concluded, adding: “In the present period, when we face decisive final struggles in all the world, the most important problem of socialism was and is the burning question of our time. It is not a matter of this or that secondary question of tactics, but of the capacity for action of the proletariat, the strength to act, the will to power of socialism as such. In this, Lenin and Trotsky and their friends were the first, those who went ahead as an example to the proletariat of the world.”iii

    The revolutionary-democratic hopes associated with the heroic insurgency of early Communism eventually culminated in the opposite of what the revolutionaries had been reaching for. A sharp question about whether this was as inevitable as many claim is raised by the fact that there was a vital and life-giving interlude. After the “war communism” and Red Terror of the horrific Russian Civil War (1918-1921) there were multiple improvements in the quality of life in the Soviet Republic, with an expansion of human rights reflected in a significant degree of cultural freedom and innovation, during the New Economic Policy of 1921-1928. Yet all of this gave way, with the consolidation of the regime of Joseph Stalin, to one of the worst dictatorships in human history, with which Communism became associated in the minds of millions.iv

    Symbol and Reality

    I first learned about Kronstadt in my early teens, when I read Louis Fischer’s contribution to the anti-Communist classic of 1949, The God That Failed, a collection of ex-Communist memoirs. This was “must reading” (certainly in the United States) during the decades-long global power struggle between U.S. capitalism and Communist Russia. The way Fischer described it, Kronstadt was symbolic of whichever turning-point transformed someone from a supporter of Communism into an anti-Communist. To ask “what was your Kronstadt” meant: which Communist atrocity finally transformed Communism, in your mind and heart, from an idealistic dream into a horrific tyranny?v

    The “first Kronstadt” of 1921, involved a majority of the sailors and workers at a key naval base outside of Petrograd—impatient with economic shortages and dictatorial restrictions—rising up, arms in hand, calling on the workers and peasants of Russia to carry out a new revolution that would reestablish soviet democracy, which some interpreted as “soviets without Communists.” In an appeal to “the laboring masses of the East and of the West,” the Kronstadt rebels declared there was “no middle ground in the struggle against the Communists and the new serfdom that they have erected,” elaborating: “Here is raised the banner of rebellion against the three-year-old violence and oppression of Communist rule, which has put in the shade the three-hundred-year yoke of monarchism. Here in Kronstadt has been laid the first stone of the third revolution, striking the last fetters from the laboring masses and opening a broad new road for socialist creativity.”

    The Kronstadt rebels were able to count on Menshevik, Socialist Revolutionary, and anarchist support—and far more conservative anti-Communist forces and governments watched expectantly from abroad. The uprising was brutally suppressed by the Bolshevik regime. This would not have been possible without a substantial residue of loyalty to that regime among the workers, peasants, and others — soldiers, sailors, civilians — who went into battle against the Kronstadt rebels: about fifty thousand participated in the assault on Kronstadt, of whom an estimated ten thousand were killed or wounded.vi

    One eyewitness who was sympathetic to the rebels, Victor Serge, explained why he and others like him finally supported the Bolshevik side in this tragic dispute:

    If the Bolshevik dictatorship fell, it was only a short step to chaos, and through chaos to a peasant rising, the massacre of the Communists, the return of the émigrés, and in the end, through the sheer force of events, another dictatorship, this time anti-proletarian. Dispatches from Stockholm and Tallinn testified that the émigrés had these very perspectives in mind; dispatches which, incidentally, strengthened the Bolshevik leaders’ intention of subduing Kronstadt speedily and at whatever cost. We were not reasoning in the abstract. We knew that in European Russia alone there were at least fifty centers of peasant insurrection. To the south of Moscow, in the region of Tambov, Antonov, the Right Social-Revolutionary school-teacher, who proclaimed the abolition of the Soviet system and the re-establishment of the Constituent Assembly, had under his command a superbly organized peasant army, numbering several tens of thousands. He had conducted negotiations with the Whites. (Tukhachevsky [famed Red Army general] suppressed this Vendée around the middle of 1921.)vii

    Serge’s account corresponds with perceptions articulated by Menshevik leader Julius Martov, a militant anti-Bolshevik who nonetheless commented, some months after the Kronstadt repression, “history had made the Bolshevik party the defender of the foundations of the revolution against the armed forces of the domestic and foreign counter-revolution.”viii

    Working Class and Revolutionary Struggle

    If we are to understand the class realities of this period, there is another key point that must be grasped. The Russian working class was a multifaceted and diverse reality. “There will always be a number of different demands and disagreements within the working class,” scholar Mary McAuley tells us. “At times they may cluster together to create a relatively unified set. In October [1917], with its program of a Soviet government, an end to war, an attack on privilege and wealth, the Bolshevik party did express just such a set.” The working class in its great majority cohered into a powerful force to make the Bolshevik revolution. But with the profound change in the political, social, and economic realities, “the [working-class] demands no longer formed the same set as they had in October.”ix

    In fact, there tended to be different “sets” for different fractions and layers. “Throughout 1917–1920, worker activists in the factories differed significantly from ordinary workers,” observes historian William Husband. “Even among the most advanced workers of Petrograd, those who served on the factory committees and held trade union offices were more sophisticated politically than the worker on the factory floor.” He adds that “outside Petrograd and in industries in which unskilled workers predominated, this gap became critical” under changing conditions. (Husband goes on to make the interesting point that while many of the more skilled and politically confident “conscious workers” of Petrograd may have desired less centralized forms of workers’ control, which would give them greater authority, other layers of the working class—lacking such expertise and confidence – preferred greater centralization, for which the state and party provided direction.)x

    The cadres who assumed responsibility in the Bolshevik regime were in many cases the kind of worker activists Husband describes. At what point can we decide that they were no longer part of the working class? Perhaps such people, after a period of enjoying privilege and power in a stabilized and consolidated new social order, could be said to have become transformed from dedicated worker activists into a social layer of ex-workers who have risen above their class. But we are dealing, in 1920–21, with an intense and incredibly fluid situation, in which what is ostensibly a proletarian state is fighting for its life, in which the mobilization of working-class support is crucial for its survival, and in which the “worker activists” in question — still fired by socialist ideals and revolutionary enthusiasm, and not more than three years away from the workbench — are themselves making great sacrifices and often taking incredible risks. This doesn’t mean that all of them are necessarily free from narrowness, arrogance, pettiness, selfishness, and various other faults that crop up in human groups (whether workers, capitalists, bureaucrats, or whatever). But it is still too soon in 1921 to decide that they have passed, as a group, from the ranks of the proletariat to the ranks of a self-interested bureaucracy. In fact, it was from this layer of worker activists that many prominent members of the Workers’ Opposition arose. Other such worker activists disagreed with that opposition—and among these, some would evolve into bureaucrats while others would evolve into opponents of bureaucratic privilege.

    It is hardly the case that Kronstadt represented the Russian working class and the Russian Communist Party turning against each other. Closer to the truth is the perception that members of a decimated, fragmented, demoralized working class were swept into a violent conflict with each other over the question of whether the existence of the Bolshevik regime continued to be in their interests. The evaporation of the proletarian unity of 1917 ended what one historian termed the “historic partnership” of the working class as a whole with the Bolshevik Party. In what remained of the Russian working class in 1921, however, enough men and women were prepared to accept the Bolshevik regime (and enough were prepared even to fight and die for it) that its survival was ensured. Over the next few years, as the country recovered from the triple curse of civil war, foreign hostilities, and economic collapse, the regime was able to bring important benefits to the reviving working class, and “the historic alliance began to re-form on a tentative basis.”xi

    Isaac Deutscher offers a striking imagery of oppositional Bolsheviks of the 1920s as they increasingly “clashed with the party ‘apparatus’ as the apparatus grew independent of the party and subjected party and state to itself.” He emphasizes a growing cleavage between “the power and the dream”—and the deepening contradiction felt by the Bolsheviks who had created a machine of power to make the dream a reality. “They could not dispense with power if they were to strive for the fulfillment of their ideals; but now their power came to oppress and overshadow their ideals.”xii

    “Why did the proletariat lose power and, therewith, lose the indispensable instrument for constructing socialism?” asked Max Shachtman in the same year that The God That Failed was published. “Exactly ninety-nine percent of the critics of Bolshevism answer the question in this way, at bottom: The Russian workers lost power because they took power. Stalinism (the destruction of workers’ power) followed ineluctably from the seizure of power by the proletariat and Lenin’s refusal to surrender this power to the bourgeois democracy.” That is certainly the way a majority of readers understood the meaning of “Kronstadt” in The God That Failed. But the Shachtman of 1949 pushed back: “Exactly ninety-nine percent of the revolutionary Marxists answer the question in this way at bottom: The Russian workers lost power because the workers of other countries failed to take power.”xiii

    This is precisely the conclusion drawn by Rosa Luxemburg in her sharp yet comradely criticisms of the Bolsheviks. Confiding to co-thinker Julian Marchlewski as early as 1918 that the Red Terror of Lenin and Trotsky created a “disastrous situation” that “only discredits socialism,” she emphasized that “being caught in the pincers of imperialist powers from all sides” created a situation in which “neither socialism nor the dictatorship of the proletariat can become a reality, but at most a caricature of both.” In the same period, she wrote to another comrade, Adolf Warski, that “the use of terror indicates great weakness, certainly, but it is directed against internal enemies who base their hopes on the existence of capitalism outside of Russia, receiving support and encouragement from it.” She reasoned that with “the coming of the European revolution, the Russian counter-revolutionaries will lose not only support [from abroad] but also – what’s more important – their courage. Thus the Bolshevik use of terror is above all an expression of the weakness of the European proletariat.” The problem could be overcome only through the spread of socialist revolution in the more industrially advanced regions of Europe. She added hopefully: “It is coming!”xiv

    Victor Serge, like Luxemburg, could not close his eyes to “mistakes and abuses,” yet also insisted: “the Bolshevik Party is at present the supremely organized, intelligent, and stable force that, despite everything, deserves our confidence. The Revolution has no other mainstay, and is no longer capable of any thorough-going regeneration.”xv

    Beyond Kronstadt

    One must go beyond Kronstadt to make sense of Kronstadt – for it has, as a symbol, been given an inflated importance when compared to the violence and terror that became inseparable from revolutionary Bolshevism well before the 1921 events. It was a significant incident, but hardly the most salient, in a tragic panorama explored in Arno J. Mayer’s truly magisterial study, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions.

    Mayer’s apt comment that of all the parties on the scene in 1917, “the Bolshevik party was by far the best organized and disciplined, as well as the most adaptable,” is balanced by his observation that “the Bolshevik project was an inconstant amalgam of ideology and circumstance, of intention and improvisation, of necessity and choice, of fate and chance.” He emphasizes that “the way the Bolsheviks took power was consistent with their credo of direct and defiant action, and their authoritarian rule following Red October was bound to provoke resistances which they were, of course, determined to counter and repress.” Their initial intention was to help lead the way to socialist revolution, anticipating partnership with other political forces on the working-class and peasant left prepared to follow this course — though some (certainly Lenin) were prepared to go it alone if need be. The fact remains, however, that Lenin’s Bolsheviks were not prepared (perhaps no party could have been prepared) for the tidal waves that would hit them. As Mayer puts it, “Just as they were unprepared for the enormity of the crisis, so they were caught unawares by its Furies, which they were not alone to quicken.”xvi

    That Red Terror was largely generated in reaction to White Terror, however, cannot blind us to the fact that it overflowed class boundaries, impacting on workers well before 1921, and certainly afterward – which included the violation of inner-party democracy and systematic undermining of a variety of oppositional groups that were absolutely loyal to the ideals of October 1917 described so eloquently by John Reed. With an unrelenting firmness born of profound insecurity in these frightening times, Lenin, Trotsky and other Bolshevik leaders moved to intimidate, persecute, and silence the dissidents of the Workers Opposition, the Democratic Centralists, and others. The leader of the Workers Opposition, Alexander

    Shlyapnikov, warned: “Do not go too far in the direction of struggle with us. Here, perhaps, you will suppress and smash us, but from this you will only lose.” That these oppositionists had been vanquished, demoralized and dispersed by the early 1920s made it more difficult for Lenin, Trotsky and others to be effective when they themselves sought to push back against the bureaucratic-authoritarianism that was eroding the revolution.xvii

    There is much more to be said, independently of the Kronstadt tragedy, about the tragic, often horrific, sometimes criminal mistakes made by revolutionaries overwhelmed by the tidal waves and immense undertows that came in the wake of October 1917. Too often ignored – but of far greater weight than what happened at Kronstadt – are problematical policies and often brutal conflicts regarding the great majority of people in the Russian Empire, the peasantry.xviii

    All such things have been used by weary and despairing activists as an excuse to become reconciled to the status quo. One can overtly abandon the revolutionary cause, or maintain a revolutionary posture while simply restricting one’s self to study and discussion.

    If one remains committed to the revolutionary Marxist project of actually building organizations, movements, and struggles that can change the world for the better, then to “go beyond Kronstadt” will have an additional meaning: learning from the accomplishments, the mistakes and the tragedies of comrades who came before us, with a commitment to do better in advancing and winning the struggle for a better world.

     

    i This is adapted from my study October Song: Bolshevik Triumph, Communist Tragedy, 1917-1924 (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017).

    ii John Reed, “The First Proletarian Republic Greets American Workers,” New York Call, November 22, 1917, reprinted in Philip S. Foner,ed., The Bolshevik Revolution: Its Impact on American Radicals, Liberals and Labor, A Documentary Study (New York: International Publishers, 1967), p. 54; John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World, in The Collected Works of John Reed (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p 834.

    iii Socialism or Barbarism: The Selected Writings of Rosa Luxemburg, ed. by Paul Le Blanc and Helen C. Scott (London: Pluto Press, 2010), p. 237.

    iv This is discussed at length in October Song, particularly on pp. 293-326.

    v Richard Crossman, ed., The God That Failed (New York: Bantam Books, 1959), pp. 183-185, 191, 197, 199-202.

    vi Paul Avrich, Kronstadt, 1921 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1974), pp. 202, 211, 242, 243.

    vii Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (New York: New York Review of Books, 2012), pp. 150-151. Avrich’s scholarship lends credence to this analysis, as does that in Samuel Farber, Before Stalinism: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy (London: Verso, 1990), pp. 184, 189-195.

    viii Quoted in Max Shachtman, In Defense of Bolshevism, ed. by Sean Matgamna (London: Phoenix Press, 2018), p. 175.

    ix Mary McAuley, “Party and Society in Petrograd during the Civil War,” SBONIK: Study

    Group on the Russian Revolution, no. 10 (1984), p. 53.

    x William Husband, Workers’ Control and Centralization in the Russian Revolution: The Textile Industry of the Central Industrial Region, 1917–1920 (Pittsburgh: The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and Eastern European Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 1985), p. 8.

    xi William J. Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State: Labor and Life in Moscow, 1918-1929 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), pp. 294-297.

    xii Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky 1921-1929 (New York: Vintage Books, 1965), pp. 53, 73.

    xiii Shachtman, 177.

    xiv The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, ed. by George Adler, Peter Hudis and Annelies Laschitza (London: Verso, 2011), pp. 474-474, 484-485.

    xv Serge, p. 151.

    xvi Arno J. Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 230-231.

    xvii Barbara C. Allen, Alexander Shlyapnikov 1885-1937: Life of an Old Bolshevik (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016), p. 183. Also see Simon Pirani, The Russian Revolution in Retreat, 1920-1924: Soviet Workers and the New Communist Elite (London: Routledge, 2008).

    xviii This is discussed at length in October Song, particularly on pp. 255-292.

  • The Many Faces of the Left in Ecuador

    The Many Faces of the Left in Ecuador

    [This article, originally published in Spanish by desInformémonos, was translated by Global Justice Ecology Project. Steven Johnson coordinated the translation and wrote the following introduction for publication by New Politics.]

    The elections in Ecuador earlier this year continue to inspire international debate among competing left currents over lessons to be learned and may serve as a revealing window through which to analyze the class interests of Latin American progressive movements stemming from the “Pink Tide.” The article challenges a widely circulated interpretation of the events (see, e.g., this DSA-sponsored forum), and will inform ongoing debates in North America and elsewhere over the meaning of “solidarity” and with whom and how that should be expressed. While the narrated episode concerns the candidacy of the Indigenous leader Yaku Pérez, the article is not an assessment of that candidate’s merits or demerits (indeed, the article concludes by directing focus away from electoral politics), but uses the lens of these events, particularly, the progressives’ desperate attacks against Pérez between the first and second rounds of the elections, to shine penetrating light into the nature of the Correist movement and their progressive allies worldwide and their fateful actions in alienating and persecuting the Indigenous movements that first brought them to power.

    It is striking the fury with which defenders of the South American progressive governments, from different countries, devoted themselves to biased criticism and mudslinging against an Indigenous presidential candidate during a critical moment of the Ecuadorian election process earlier this year. In the first round of the Ecuadorian elections that took place on February 7, 2021, Yaku Pérez, of the Quechua-Cañari people, with a long history in the defense of water against mining projects in his region, and a leader of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and of the Confederation of Peoples of Kichwa Nationality (ECUARUNARI), received 1,800,000 votes (exceeding 19%) and fell short of second place by just a few thousand votes. The result, which meant that the banker Guillermo Lasso, rather than Pérez, would face Andrés Arauz, the candidate of Rafael Correa, who is exiled in Belgium, in the runoff election of April 11, was contested without success in the courts.

    This episode can be read as emblematic for understanding the limits and dilemmas of a politically weakened progressivism that needs to face up to the costs of the kind of politics it implemented.The social media campaigns against Yaku Pérez came into play while the vote count from the first round was being determined and for several days the Indigenous candidate remained in second place. When the count was concluded, the banker Guillermo Lasso, of the political party CREO, Creando Oportunidad (Creating Opportunity), reached second place. This was thought to be a more favorable result for the Correist candidate, Andrés Arauz, of the political party UNES, Unión por la Esperanza (Union for Hope), who had received the most votes, 32%, in the first round.Yaku Pérez is an attorney and has earned advanced degrees in the management of watershed basins, environmental law, Indigenous justice, and criminal law, and resigned his position as prefect of Azuay Province in order to run for president. He was also jailed several times in connection with water defense struggles, was kidnapped by a Chinese mining company, and suffered the expulsion of his partner, of foreign nationality, also an activist, after a mobilization during the time of Correa’s government.

    Juan Carlos Monedero, a politician from the Spanish political party Podemos with political ties to Latin American progressivism, participated in the February 7th elections in Ecuador as an election observer. In an interview with teleSUR the day after the election, Monedero set the tone for what would be heard for several days. He considered Pérez’s candidacy to have been manufactured in a lab, financed from abroad. He spoke of a “false candidate” and “fake Indigenous people”, while he defended Arauz as the candidate who would enable Ecuador to “take its rightful place in the world again”. This distrust concerning Yaku Pérez’s Indigenous identity and his candidacy arises from Monedero’s notion that the adoption of an Indigenous name could only be intended to deceive, and out of ignorance of the Indigenous world he compares it to adopting a new name when entering a Catholic religious order. For an aggrieved Monedero the anti-mining struggle is not genuine either, and he denied that Yaku Pérez has any collective support or a plan for the country.

    Monedero warned on TV of a plot to prevent the election of Andrés Arauz. This plot consisted of seeking to replace Guillermo Lasso with Yaku Pérez in the runoff election since the latter was thought to have greater possibilities of defeating Arauz, the candidate who replaced Correa, who could not run for either president or vice president due to his conviction on corruption charges. The operation would be supported by the United States and carried out by means of favorable coverage in the media. It is strange to see this analysis coming from one of the founders of Podemos, which became a phenomenon in Spanish politics exactly in this way, with extensive media coverage of a candidate who would create a space beyond the prevailing tradition of polarized politics. Within a few days progressive analysts and political actors would carry out a smear campaign against Yaku Pérez, which they only dropped once the banker Lasso came out ahead of the Indigenous candidate in the vote count, and there was no longer the threat of a difficult race against Pérez. Another Spaniard close to the South American progressive governments, Alfredo Serrano, of the Latin American Strategic Center of Geopolitics (CELAG), declared, “We can say that Yaku is a non-progressive candidate who managed to get part of the progressive and Indigenous vote“, and also denied that the votes really reflected support for Pérez himself. Downplaying Pérez’s own strength as a candidate, he wrote that these votes could have been for any other Indigenous leader who ran, while failing to apply the same line of reasoning to the Correist candidate.

    For some days the goal was to to deconstruct Pérez’s candidacy, whether to prepare for a runoff race against him or to stop the electoral results from being questioned.The high number of votes for the Pachakutik Plurinational Unity Movement (MUPP), the political arm, founded in 1995, of the now-divided Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), is explained by the growth of the Indigenous movement in the Amazon and mountain regions of the country, and undoubtedly reflects the political impact left by the eleven days of blockades and protests in October 2019. Begun in protest against an increase in fuel prices ordered by President Lenín Moreno, with a decisive role played by CONAIE, the protests voiced the concerns and discontent which was also manifested by a million spoiled ballots. In the October uprising CONAIE had made clear that its rejection of the government of Lenín Moreno would not mean a rapprochement with Correa, who during his time in office criminalized hundreds of Indigenous leaders, and that opposition which extends across the Correa/anti-Correa divide was expressed in its choice of Yaku Pérez.

    These first-round election results were a defeat for President Lenín Moreno, who after breaking politically with Correa, to whom he was vice president and the successor candidate, ended up on the sidelines due to pressure from the streets. But it was also a disappointing result for the Correists, who had hoped to win in the first round, capitalizing on the disrepute of the current government. The traditional right, in a front headed by Lasso, was also weakened, affected by the mishandling of the pandemic in Guayaquil. For Pachakutik it was a victory which allowed them to take up the October 2019 anti-neoliberal struggle again, as well as advance its anti-extractivist agenda that seeks to give rise to a different model of development for the country.Alicia Castro, whose background is in the Peronist renewal union movement of the 1990s and who was formerly the Kirchnerist ambassador to Venezuela and the United Kingdom, joined the smear campaign against Yaku Pérez and asked, via Twitter, “Who is the candidate @yakuperez who wants to upset the elections in #Ecuador, allied with @Almagro_OEA2015; he can confuse some misinformed people as an ‘environmentalist’, ‘Indigenist’, or ‘New Left’. But he is a fraud. Nothing new under the sun, since La Malinche.” 

    Questioning people’s self-identification as Indigenous is a common part of the usual strategies of colonial dispossession. The argument of “fake Indians” is used to promote expansion of the agricultural frontier into Indigenous territories all over South America, and to defend development projects that threaten their water and ways of life. Allied with the power of agribusiness and large-scale mining interests, the Correists know that Yaku Pérez and CONAIE are an obstacle to the predatory model with which they govern. The election attacks, with charges of plots that proved to be groundless, should be understood, then, as a continuation of the strong repression and harassment against Indigenous organizations and territories that took place in the Correa years.

    Persecution by progressive South American governments against leaders of Indigenous movements and environmental struggles is nothing new on the continent. Nor is the greater comfort that progressives feel in running against right-wing candidates, as they wage dirty campaigns against possible alternative candidates in the first round of a presidential election. But that an Indigenous candidate would challenge a progressive candidate from the left is a new phenomenon in Ecuador as well as in the rest of Latin America. The new parliamentary left that looks for institutional space in the region also participated in the campaign against Yaku Pérez. This kind of left which brings together dissidents, “critical support”, new leaders that run in presidential elections in Chile and Peru, typically stays under the wing of the political influence of progressives or leftists who were in or remain in government, thus reinforcing its political influence and resistance to change. Timid criticism of a dependent model that makes life unviable is only made behind closed doors and serves to portray the economic model and the consensus views of those in power as the only alternative.

    The hope that Pachakutik would reach second place unified a divided Indigenous movement. Conflicting leaderships and visions were divided over to what degree class should be emphasized, openness to alliances with the mestizo sectors, willingness to engage in confrontation in the streets, and which individual leaders to support. At this juncture, however, they set out to mobilize in defense of the vote, while still maintaining their political differences. Facing a weak right wing, and a progressivism whose support had eroded and that is unable to raise a debate over the model of development in the whole region, the various tendencies of the Indigenous movement and of the critical non-developmentalist left display tendencies, contradictions, and agreements which truly matter as a possible step forward in South American politics. In these debates some proposals of Yaku Pérez are criticized by Leónidas Iza, who played a leading role in the October uprising, and other leaders. It is a necessary debate in which progressives did not take part, as they threw themselves into a campaign marked by a logic of electioneering and of polarization with the right that would leave no room for anything else.

    The Pérez campaign challenged the election results with technical data, asking for a recount of 20,050 observed voting records (out of a total of 39,000). The Electoral Court only agreed to review 31 voting records, which was later reduced to 28, and with which the Pachakutik vote was increased by 612 votes, confirming that votes had been wrongly attributed in the initial count to candidates who were below third place. Based on this discrepancy there were mobilizations, and an appeal was presented which was not heard in the Court and was subsequently also denied by the Electoral Commission. Alarms were sounded among the progressives when, with the vote count undetermined, a meeting was held with Lasso to jointly request a recount in some provinces, a meeting which did not end up settling the matter. It was Lasso who abandoned the recount request once his slight advantage was established.

    Yaku Pérez denounced fraud aimed at keeping him out of the runoff election, presenting indications of irregularities. Progressives considered this claim to be part of another fraud, one against Arauz, and that risked causing a constitutional crisis, discrediting Pérez once again, whose presence in the game would be merely a maneuver by the right and the United States to stop the Correists. As progressives from other countries also enter the fray, a certain short-circuiting manifests between legalistic, militant, and fake news lines of argument and state authoritarianism: First they used their own power to criminalize leaders or militarize Indigenous territories to impose mining projects, as in the Shuar and Sarayaku cases, and later we see them trying to raise public sympathy for themselves in South America as the victims of “lawfare”.

    If, following the CLACSO researchers Adoración Guamán and Soledad Stoessel, we understand “lawfare” as “a widely used tool that combines media manipulation of public opinion, physical and legal repression, imprisonment and criminalization of the political opposition”, we see that this is exactly the situation that the Indigenous movement faced with Correa in the defense of their territories, and also Yaku Pérez in the smear campaign that denied his Indigenous identity and the legitimacy of his struggle and election to high office. But the researchers are applying the concept to the persecution of Correa and are even joining the wave of suspicion against Yaku Pérez by using another common argument in the media deconstruction that the candidate suffered, that depicts him as isolated from an Indigenous movement that the progressives imagine to be aligned with the Correists.

    The dirty campaign also denied his environmentalism and linked him to the right and to imperialism, accusing him of being a channel of U.S. interventionism. In the days after the election, progressive militants prepared to denounce a coup, as they did in Bolivia in 2019 and in Brazil in 2016. Latin American progressives saw Yaku Pérez as an ally of Luis Almagro, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), which played a part in tipping the scale toward the resignation of Evo Morales in 2019 when it recommended that the elections be held again after being invited by Morales himself to observe the elections. The philosopher Luciana Cadahia, a Correist sympathizer, denounced in a public Facebook post a pact between Yaku Pérez and the banker Lasso that would be a “little Hegelian trick” orchestrated by Almagro, and with the help of the press, in which the “supposed” Indigenous movement, acting out of an accord with the oligarchs, would find a sophisticated way to defeat Arauz by forming an alliance between the second and third place candidates in the election, while avoiding the “high price” that Almagro had to pay for his involvement in the Bolivian crisis.

    Faced with the strength of the Yaku Pérez campaign, another approach would have been to open up a political dialogue about the model of development and the agenda of October 2019. In an about-face to the dirty campaign, and showing how unfair the questioning of Yaku Pérez’s left and Indigenous credentials was, after the election Andrés Arauz himself stressed on his Twitter account: “Progressivism + Plurinational Unity + Social Democracy = 70%. On February 7th, the Ecuadorian people already won”, adding together the Correist votes with those of Yaku Pérez and also those of the fourth-place candidate, Xavier Hervas of the Democratic Left Party. Far from denying the anti-neoliberal stance of his opponents, and even drawing near to them to gain their voters and presenting the banker Lasso as the principal opposition to Correism. But it is doubtful to what extent, beyond elections, anti-neoliberal and environmentalist agendas could be advanced by the progressives.

    The ambiguous nature of this game stands out as different faces of progressivism are displayed, on different occasions, to achieve the objectives of what is, nevertheless, one and the same movement. Before the election the Correist movement was focused on defending against an attack that involved the Attorney General’s Office of Colombia, which claimed that evidence had been found on the cell phone of a captured soldier of the Army of National Liberation (ELN, by its initials in Spanish) showing that the Colombian guerrilla organization had funded the Arauz campaign. The damaging press coverage that followed incited the mobilization of institutional progressive networks in response. The Puebla Group, which brings together ex-presidents, academics, and legal experts (among others, Andrés Arauz and Rafael Correa) and participated as election observers, denounced an attack on democracy.

    With the signatures of Axel Kicillof, Guilherme Boulos, Daniel Jadué, Gustavo Petro, Pablo Iglesias, and Verónika Mendoza, the “Espacio Futuro” (Future Space) forum, which forms the nucleus of a younger generation of progressive leaders, issued a declaration opposing any change in the dates of the elections, thus joining the campaign that dismissed, without knowledge, the charges of irregularities that the Indigenous candidate was bringing before the Ecuadorian Electoral Court and Commission. In a political game in which they appeal to the rule of law when it serves their purposes and cast themselves as observers of the elections to protect democracy, they did not pay the least attention to the evidence of irregularities that was presented. The tactic is to use academically prestigious cadres to broadcast talk of a coup, which has, in many cases, justly defended progressivism, but then maintain a partisan silence concerning similar practices within their own camp.

    Against the Indigenous movement a very different face appears, involving criminalization, pursued not by democratic legal argumentation under the rule of law, but involving persecution by police and legal harassment, not to mention the very assaults on territories against which Yaku Pérez and CONAIE resisted. The campaign against Yaku Pérez, which is reminiscent of Correa’s defamatory TV broadcasts against the Indigenous leader and his partner, Manuela Picq, also an activist, spread over social media when Pérez appeared to be headed to the runoff election and the progressive movement imagined a new version of a “new kind of coup”. Fears already awakened by the machinations of the right (which indeed exist) mobilized a media machine that, arrogantly and rapidly ceased to distinguish its institutional mandate as a media organization from a project of power that, in the name of the people’s interests, and faithful to the style of the statist authoritarian left, is unable to cope with differences.

    Correa’s Citizen Revolution carries tensions and ambiguities that are expressed, as in the MAS party in Bolivia and other places, by the international alliances that support them. In contrast to the claims of lawfare that unite Correa and Cristina Kirchner to the legalist defense with which the Workers Party (PT, by its initials in Portuguese) responded to the political trial of Dilma, the very different accusations against Yaku Pérez coming from media associated with Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela tend to allege collaboration with imperialism or the right.

    Against this narrative that painted Yaku Pérez as a supporter of South American coups, and as a potential instrument of a U.S.-backed coup against Correa, stands the fact that on June 12, 2019 Yaku Pérez declared his support for Lula da Silva as a representative of the Andean Coordination of Indigenous Organizations (CAOI, by its initials in Spanish). In the vigil held across from where the ex-president was detained pursuant to a warrant issued in connection with Operation “Lava Jato”, he declared, “I am here to support you, Lula. We are with you, and we will not rest, we will be in resistance.” Concerning international investment, Pérez complained about the aggressive attitude of China in connection with extractivism and human rights violations. Concerning the United States, however, he said that “the hawk is a hawk”, but spoke positively about some policies of Biden.

    The automatic alignment of South American progressives against an Indigenous candidate is quite striking if we look at the positions that the Correists are defending, not only concerning socio-environmental issues. Three days before the elections, at the close of Correa’s campaigning efforts from exile, he appealed to conservative voters by criticizing Yaku Pérez for his position approving abortions up to three or four months of pregnancy, referring to the position in terms of “hedonistic abortion” and “because I carelessly dedicated myself to a frenzied sexual activity, I can just get rid of the child without meeting any requirement.” Rafael Correa went so far as to threaten to resign in 2013 if the legislature approved abortion, and proposed expelling the women who supported this position from the party. His conservatism goes beyond the war that was declared against Indigenous peoples for their natural resources and can also be seen in the push for the Family Plan, whose recommendation for sex education was “abstinence and values”. 

    A tweet by Yaku Pérez from November 2016, recirculated by Correa and others when Pérez was contending for second place, evidenced Pérez’s anti-corruption stance, saying: “#Corrupción is what brought down the governments of Dilma and Cristina; now what’s left is for @MashiRafael and Maduro to fall. It’s only a matter of time.” Naturally, those today who criticize the lawfare against Cristina Kirchner or against Correa himself, or who see the fall of Dilma and Evo as operations orchestrated from Washington to impose right-wing governments, will be inclined to distrust Peréz.

    But anti-corruption stances, however liberal they may seem, are not just banners used by the right against progressives. It is almost mandatory for any new left, as it was for Podemos in Spain, which despite political ties stopped defending governments like those of Maduro and Ortega, or new lefts in Chile and Peru, when progressivism came to power. Nor is opposition to Dilma Rousseff unusual, given that she approved anti-terrorism laws, criminalized activists, and allied herself with conservative pastors, agribusiness leaders, banks, and large mining interests, even ceding government ministries to these sectors. Like the highway in TIPNIS in Bolivia, and the petroleum in Yasuní National Park in Ecuador, Dilma is paying the political cost of having authorized Belo Monte, a mammoth and badly conceived dam, whose incalculable harms are already being seen, which financed her campaign and is emblematic of the environmental and ethnocidal destruction that is taking place in the Amazon region. In a recent video, referring to the popular June 2013 protests in Brazil, Dilma Rousseff referred to talks with Putin and Erdogan in which her political downfall was interpreted as, more than a coup or lawfare, a hybrid war promoted by the North American power.

    Only out of complete ignorance of the dynamics of Indigenous organizations of the last decades is it possible to characterize NGOs as being able to manipulate Indigenous peoples into mobilizing to oppose projects that, in fact, leave their territories polluted with cyanide or without water. A dirty campaign can be spoken of because its promoters are well aware of the history of the Indigenous organizations (with which progressives were allied) as well as the role of Yaku Pérez and CONAIE. The discourse about NGOs influencing Indigenous groups to attack national sovereignty is nothing more than a campaign to defend economic and political interests, favorable to large-scale mining and unrestrained oil exploration. It is exactly the same discourse used by Bolsonaro and the Peruvian or Colombian right wings to encroach on the Amazon.

    On the other hand, tweets of little impact from years ago were recirculated in an effort to undermine a candidacy, denouncing a coup. But in reality, this shows how worried they were to face a more competitive candidate in the second round who knew how to put his finger in the wounds of progressivism’s shortcomings and who directly represented the social movements. What remains ignored is the political debate that has been taking place ever since the progressives made clear their developmentalist agenda and went on the offensive against the historic Indigenous organizations throughout the region. A more Bolivarian line of deconstruction of Pérez’s candidacy, even by movements aligned with the Chinese government, is seen through an article published in the website of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST, by its initials in Portuguese) of Brazil, summarizing an article by the North American journalist Ben Norton, signed by the editors, with the title “The Ecosocialist Candidate of Ecuador: Indigenous and a Supporter of Coups d’état in Latin America”. From the Bonifacio Foundation, tied to Aldo Rebelo, ex-minister of Lula and Dilma from the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB, by its initials in Portuguese), it was affirmed that Yaku Pérez was a trojan horse of foreign powers. The article states that foreign interests are being defended under identity, environmentalist, and Indigenist banners, by means of contact with NGOs. In the Cubadebate portal, Atilio Borón would take the same approach, declaring that the Indigenous candidate’s Indigenous and left discourse was nothing more than a ploy to serve imperialist interests.

    On Kawsachin News, an English-language news service of the federations of coca producers of Chapare, Ollie Vargas accused Yaku Pérez of using fake news to incite crimes against Venezuelan migrants in Ecuador. The Indigenous candidate had referred to allegations of intervention by “Venezuelan brothers” in a conversation that went viral, without us being able to know the context, in a short video which associates him with the anti-Venezuelan and xenophobic discourse of Lenín Moreno. The popular Brazilian YouTuber Jones Manoel associated Yaku Pérez with Ernesto Araújo, Bolsanaro’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, of the extreme conservative right wing, and other political figures in Brazil. The attacks, slanders, and fake news that circulated concerning Yaku Pérez reflect the position of the recent revisionist wave of Stalin. Accordingly, José Correa Leite has likened them to the Stalinist operations of “amalgam” in the 1950s. Progressives who are in government or who are struggling to return employ every kind of resource, with a wide spectrum of politics and discursive styles.

    This line of accusation, which must be understood in the framework of a heated communications war in which imperialism, Communism, and Nazism are common currency, was based on the tendentious construction of Ben Norton, who in his blog criticizes postmodernism and anarchist, environmentalist, and primitivist currents, and depicted the Indigenous candidate as a coup supporter backed by the United States. A photo with the United States ambassador taken while carrying out official functions as Prefect of Azuay Province, the tweets concerning displaced South American leaders, and a curious combination of arguments about the Pachakutik Party and the Indigenous movement. It is striking how, on the one hand, Yaku Pérez is depicted as a leader who is isolated from the rest of the movement, while, on the other hand, funds of Third World aid from North American foundations sent to the Indigenous movement are presented as proof of his role in service to the United States, without specifying any details about these funds or showing any direct link to Yaku Pérez.

    An open letter criticizing Norton’s article and another article from The Jacobin magazine, signed by academics and intellectuals such as Isabelle Stengers, Arturo Escobar, Miriam Lang, and Alberto Acosta, “Stop Racist and Misogynist Attacks on the Emergent Indigenous, Eco-Feminist Left in Latin America, and Address the Crisis in Today’s Ecuador”, led to the immediate removal of Ben Norton’s article by the North American left publication Monthly Review. The progressives’ double game short-circuits as their institutional behavior and rhetoric contradict: In the most recent electoral contests in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, and now Ecuador, in order to avoid problems with the justice system and opposing votes, they have chosen to back moderate and liberal candidates (Haddad, Fernández, Arce, and Arauz). But when it comes to these social media quarrels and not actual governing, they strike a more radical Bolivarian, Leninist, and nationalist tone.

    The letter, signed by dozens seeking redress, rightly seeks to defend Yaku Pérez and his partner against the misleading attacks by framing the discussion in its real terms: state-developmentalist progressives, who combine populist and liberal faces, seeking to attack an anti-extractivist left that expresses the Indigenous position in the conflicts of the Correist years, as well as the position of other progressive banners such as women’s, plurinational, and LGBT rights which the Correists either did not know how to represent or abandoned. But for Ben Norton in his article, environmentalist criticisms against progressives are just marketing spin. With reports from Venezuela and Nicaragua, as well as Ecuador, the article depicts the United States as “desperate” to avoid the “socialist wave” that spread through Latin America in the first decade of the 21st Century, and found in Yaku Pérez a “perfect tool”.

    In another letter, the Indigenous leader is presented as a candidate who “fights against the neoliberal offensive while breaking from the vices of caudillismo and the systemic corruption of the old authoritarian left, and challenges, in the name of life and land, the serious limitations of the extractivist development model”. This letter denounced the misleading and abusive social media campaign and was signed by Marina Silva, who experienced a severe dirty campaign herself when she ran against Dilma Rousseff in the 2010 and 2014 elections. Latin American intellectuals who suffered media lynchings for their criticism of the Bolivian and Venezuelan governments, such as Rita Segato and Maristella Svampa, also signed the letter.

    In one of Yaku Pérez’s tweets quoted by his detractors, he compared the policy of intervention by Correa in CONAIE Indigenous organizations with Evo Morales’s treatment of CONAMAQ, the Confederation of Allyus and Marqas of Qullasuyo. In both cases organization headquarters were invaded, and efforts were made to create parallel organizations in favor of projects of territorial destruction, with co-optation or buying-off of leaders with state benefits. The tweet also compared the case of Yasuní in Ecuador with that of TIPNIS in Bolivia.  In the case of the former, Correa opened up oil exploitation in the Yasuní National Park after a failed appeal to the world for money to protect the park from such exploitation, which Correa initially argued would be harmful. It was in this spirit that Article 71 of the Constitution approved in 2008 introduced the legal framework of the Rights of Nature, and although attempts are made to disguise the fact, Correa’s break with this agenda is undeniable.

    TIPNIS was a turning point in Bolivia, in 2011, when the government of the MAS party pushed a campaign and political move to build a highway that would run through the largest national park and Indigenous territory of the country, with opposition from the historic Indigenous movement that was brutally repressed. In February 2021, as campaign manager for the regional elections, Evo Morales offered to continue the construction of the highway in exchange for votes for his candidate in the Department of Beni. In his tweet, Yaku Pérez compared Correa with Evo Morales with respect to several common characteristics: “Both ran for re-election, authoritarianism, machismo, extractivism, and populists.” These stances are consistent with the position of the Indigenous movement in the continent and are not a position taken with elections in mind.

    In a similar dispute, García Linera spearheaded the Bolivian government’s criticism of the Indigenous movement and the NGOs that accompanied the Indigenous struggles that brought the MAS party to power and in which he himself had been an advisor. The line of argumentation that converges with that of the military and the Latin American conservative right, in saying that the Indigenous are playing for foreign interests, dishonestly mixed foundations tied to the North American power establishment with NGOs which provide militant and legal support to Indigenous people. As we see in the government of Bolsonaro, presenting Indigenous people in favor of agribusiness or creating pro-government Indigenous organizations, like in Bolivia. One of the accusations that Ben Norton made against Manuela Picq was precisely to mention that she denounced the ecocide of the Bolivian forest fires of 2019. According to Norton, she thereby helped to pave the way for the coup. In reality, she helped to denounce how, with decrees in favor of forest burning, obtained by powerful agribusiness interests allied with the MAS party, the government was incentivizing deforestation, just as it happened in Brazil where this was criticized by progressives.

    On the one hand, the Puebla Group, Espacio Futuro, and the Progressive International, with social-democratic or progressive heads of state and other political actors, reject maneuvers like those of the Colombian attorney general, with sensitivity to the disputes that took place in the Electoral Court, and sought to prevent the recounting of votes. On the other hand, the campaign of character assassination against positions which in reality ought to be debated; media lynchings and personal attacks like those which the MAS party carried out against Gualberto Cusi, the Aymara judge who won the most votes in the 2011 direct election to the high courts and was dismissed under pressure from the government; as Rafael Correa routinely defended extractive exploitation, framing protests as a negative phenomenon by means of anti-terrorism laws, as did Bachelet with the Mapuche.

    There is no way to correct or soften these maneuvers that are carried out frequently at different scales, and they are indispensable elements of a type of political construction that should raise concerns among their honest supporters. Against the eternal patience of the “critical left”, one wonders how many outrages are necessary to understand that the defense of extractivism is a top political priority, even though it involves violating rights and breaking with Indigenous peoples. In the end, the calculation that considers it strategic to maintain popular support through state policies that are detrimental to respect for Indigenous territories always prevails. It is also by this logic that the February 7th elections worried progressives. The rivers of oil money for public policies during the Correist years, and the marketing campaigns with much more money than the Indigenous movement, were not sufficient to allow electoral victory by an ample majority that would give legitimacy to the policies of this political project. It is there that the strength of an uprising such as that of October 2019 should be considered.

    Raúl Zibechi is right when he says that “popular insurrections do not fit in the ballot box”, observing how, even as much as the October uprising was a watershed moment in recent history, expressing the resistance of rural communities and medium-sized cities, the ballot boxes do not change the balance of forces of a parliament dominated by support for extractivism and that does not question the neoliberal model. In her Facebook profile, Alejandra Santillana assesses after the elections that, “The streets and the construction of organized social fabric continue to be a determining path for what happens on the electoral plane. Imagining a feminist, popular, Plurinational, peasant project continues to be a pending matter that will not be resolved solely by dialogue with the state, our entry into it, or institutional reforms”.

    Once the matter of the need to reject a dirty campaign is clear, it is pertinent to discuss the differences concerning Yaku Pérez’s proposals that generated internal opposition within the CONAIE Indigenous movement, and the different strategies of confrontation and dialogue that also created differences during the government of Lenín Moreno. The protests experienced in several Latin American countries before the pandemic remain latent and open up a debate that does not fit within the restricted parameters of the right vs. the progressives.

    Criticism of the legal harassment of progressive leaders, and the advance of the right in the region, should not mean ignoring the contradictions and the conflicts of anti-neoliberal, Indigenous territorial, and class struggle that will mark the period that is emerging, beyond the limits of progressivism. The extreme right is growing in the region, in fact, because the progressive governments joined the political class which the majority see as disconnected power elites. Leftists of order, who fit comfortably in the realm of an authoritarian state, cannot propose another model of development even if, on some level, they understand the legitimacy of the Indigenous struggles.

    As a supporter of the Correists, Valeria Coronel acknowledges that “Arauz would have to be much more emphatic that his agenda is that of the October protests, would have to get closer to the Indigenous movement and break down the barriers that were established at some point between Correa and the Indigenous movement”. This does not seem possible, and in the different countries there were many efforts on the part of the State to get closer to the Indigenous leaders. In the aforementioned text by Guamán and Stoessel it is stated that, “The Ecuador that today is expressed in the ballot boxes has shown its willingness to overcome said polarization [Lasso/Correa]. This reveals the urgency of renewing public agendas with a more progressive element in the area of rights (sexual, reproductive, associative, union, and citizen participation) and concerning the ecological question.” But is that really possible for the Correists who persecuted and imprisoned Indigenous leaders, and who seek to reach conservative and religious audiences with talk of hedonistic abortion just a few days before the election?

    In an overview of current Latin American politics, Claudio Katz distinguishes between moderate and radical progressives, the moderates in the Brazil of the PT and in the “latecomer progressivisms” of Mexico and Argentina today, and the radicals in Bolivia and Venezuela, though there are questions concerning the successors of Chávez and Morales. Katz advocated voting for Arauz, as the only alternative that the Indigenous movement should get behind in the runoff election. He admits that the statements of Yaku Pérez in the 2017 elections, in which he declared, “I prefer a banker over a dictator,” and which from a binary logic is read as supporting neoliberalism, is a consequence of the “very intense conflict”, with the government insisting on expanding mining extraction, and that included more than 500 prosecutions against Indigenous leaders. But he returns to the lap of progressivism whose radical and moderate faces appear to be two moments of one and the same classic rhetorical game in the nationalisms of the 20th Century, always closing ranks with the defense of order of a single project of power. This position flows out of his characterization of the Indigenous movement in two aspects, one that is oriented to class, which could converge with the Correists, and the other that is “ethnicist”, of Yaku Pérez, with corporate demands, suspect links to NGOs, and echoes of neoliberal ideology. Katz also suggests that the ethnicist current could bring bloody ethnic conflicts like those of the Balkans, the Middle East, or Africa to Latin America, citing analysis along these lines by José Antonio Figueroa.

    Together with progressives that use legalistic denunciation and make accusations of collaboration with imperialism, “critical” progressives close ranks under the impossible hope of a rapprochement with those actors whom they persecute and seek to destroy through media attacks. The solution of Katz and others points to Bolivia, where “the leaders of the MAS party introduced the plurinational State, respect for the languages and customs of the communities, and the proud recognition of the Indigenist tradition”. For them it is the incorporation of the Indigenous agenda in order to be able to continue with the agenda of development. When followed up with political actions, this incorporation can only mean intervention of the State in the Indigenous movement in order to divide it. It means clearing the path of elements of resistance and struggle against the extractivist model, while conceding merely cosmetic reforms, and continuing to pursue the model of private or state-run businesses exploiting natural resources, while lacking the strength and hegemonic legitimacy that progressives in Latin America today know they have lost.

    In the end, the Correists’ strategy of mud-slinging and co-optation proved unable to return them to power, because the Indigenous movement resisted it, calling for voters to cast spoiled ballots in protest. Between the first and second rounds, the Correists engaged in a fierce campaign to divide the Indigenous movement and to win the support of what leaders it could. After the congress of CONAIE approved a call to cast spoiled ballots, its president issued a statement supporting the Correist candidate. The Indigenous movement was thus divided into two positions: spoil the ballots (the majority position, backed by the movement’s collective decisions), and vote for Arauz. Though falling short of the majority needed to legally invalidate the elections, the number of spoiled ballots was the highest in the nation’s history, 16%. This contributed significantly to the banker Lasso’s upset victory over the candidate of Correa on April 11, which, in turn, has inflamed renewed Correist resentment towards the Indigenous movement, which they blame, rather than their own long history of betrayal, co-optation, and persecution against the Indigenous movement, for their candidate’s defeat.

    The Correist stances were echoed in social media by progressive militants throughout Latin America. The dirty campaign of the first round of the elections quickly gave way in the second round to traditional progressive rhetoric against neoliberalism, banks, imperialism, etc., framed in terms of the age-old struggle of Good vs. Evil. But the ferocious attacks against an indispensable critique of extractivism, carried out by “good” progressives, which were a root cause of the split between the Indigenous movement and Correism, should move us to think beyond the elections. When electoral representation and language are the dominant focus, it is hard to transcend the media wars that prevent substantive discussion of the social model’s functioning at its roots. The rebuilding of the Indigenous movement’s unity and strength in resisting assaults on territories will also need to take place beyond the electoral realm.

  • Kronstadt, an Unavoidable Tragedy?

    Kronstadt, an Unavoidable Tragedy?

    [On the 100th anniversary of the Kronstadt events, New Politics is hosting a symposium on the historic tragedy, its meaning and significance, and its implications for today’s socialists. We are posting articles by Alexei Gusev, Samuel Clarke, Paul Le Blanc, Daniel Fischer, and Tom Harrison. -Eds.]

    In March 1921, a commune of sailors known as the “pride and glory” of the Russian Revolution, turned against the Bolsheviks they had helped into power some four years earlier. Despite having only lasted 16 days before being crushed quite easily by the Red Army, their defeat has had an enduring legacy. In the ensuing debates over that legacy, two primary questions come to the fore:

    “Were the sailors right to rebel against Bolshevik rule?’

    And:

    “Were the Bolsheviks right to suppress the sailors in order to maintain order?”

    My controversial answer to both questions is yes. Not because of any moral considerations, but a consideration of the group-interest of both sides of the conflict, and the material relations which govern that interest. As the historian of the Kronstadt rebellion Paul Avrich puts it:

    “Throughout the conflict each side behaved in accordance with its own particular goals and aspirations. To say this is not to deny the necessity of moral judgement. Yet Kronstadt presents a situation in which the historian can sympathize with the rebels and still concede that the Bolsheviks were justified in subduing them. To recognize this, indeed, is to grasp the full tragedy of Kronstadt.”i

    Kronstadt should not be seen as Lenin’s tragedy, nor Trotsky’s or the sailors’. No, it should be seen as a tragedy of the revolution itself and the hierarchical relations that it created. It is a tragedy of structures and systems of power, not one of individuals and personalities. The same relations that beset any centralized structure or state, and which make suppression of some kind inevitable when people dissent, and especially in times of war or hardship.

    In this article, I will place Kronstadt within the context of revolt in the Soviet Union’s early days before outlining the decisions that led the Bolsheviks to suppress them. I will then pose that, as socialists, we must devise forms of organization than can capably handle dissent and revolt without collapsing or resorting to suppression. If we do not and decide to continue statist and centralized attempts at revolution, then we are condemned to repeat the tragedy of Kronstadt in the future.

    Discontent Spilling Over into Rebellion

    Rather than viewing the Kronstadt rebellion as an isolated incident, it is best to place it within the context of Russia in 1921, and of the general resistance to the Bolshevik’s “war communism,” a period during the civil war in which the State heavily interfered with economic life and the “organs of active, collective democracy”ii present in the 1917 Soviets. Suffering from unemployment and shortages caused by the general collapse of the nation’s economy, the Bolsheviks were threatened with open revolt, strikes, and peasant uprisingsiii. Some of these movements were held in solidarity with Kronstadt, whilst others simply expressed discontentment with Bolshevik rule – usually due to poor rationing. In the summer of 1920, tram workers held the largest strike in Moscow until managers were instructed to isolate and fire ‘counterrevolutionary persons’iv. In the textile industry around the countryside of the same city, large-scale strikes totaling 4500 workers led to 15 soviet-official sanctioned arrestsv. In October 1920, workers at the Gustav List factory in Moscow staged a sit-in after two of their fellow workers were arrested by the Cheka under claims of counterrevolution. In Petrograd in 1921, a month before the Kronstadt revolt, a serious wave of industrial action broke out and developed into political opposition against the Government. The Bolsheviks reacted by denouncing them as being controlled by the Mensheviks before the workers were broken by lockouts and military forcevi. In mentioning such incidents of worker revolt in key Bolshevik cities, I wish to highlight the general feeling of resentment at the time. Kronstadt was not an isolated movement.

    It was however, a more politically direct one. Though, as mentioned, direct action against the Bolsheviks had been taking in support of Kronstadt, in general it was directed towards achieving economic concessions and had varying political influences. In Kronstadt this same discontentment for the economic state of the nation fueled a direct challenge to Bolshevik rule. The crew of the battleship Petropavlovsk, who had spent the last four years serving the Bolsheviks, passed a resolution demanding fresh elections to the soviets. One of the movement’s leaders commented:

    “If the soviets are re-elected on the basis of the constitution, i.e, by secret ballot, then, we believe, the Communists will fail to come through and the conquest of the October Revolution will triumph.”vii

    Note the distinction that this speaker draws between the Communists, to mean the Bolsheviks, and the October Revolution, whose principles they believe the Bolsheviks had violated. Thus, Lenin and his party were faced with a revolt in the ranks of their “pride and glory,” who, dissatisfied as they were with restrictions to their political freedom and livelihoods, stood at the forefront of a growing mass rebellion. Soviet Russia of the 1920s was young, weak, and beset by war and economic crises. This is an environment that will face any revolutionary movement, and is very likely to cause confusion, discontentment, and ultimately dissent amongst its participants. The popular promise of “peace, land, and bread,” was not being wholly achieved.

    The details of Kronstadt itself have not been discussed here. This is because Kronstadt serves better as a frame for discussion, as a symbol of the wider social crisis leading out of war communism and into the New Economic Policyviii. This latter stage will be discussed in the next segment.

    So, were the sailors right to rebel against Soviet rule? Well, let’s rephrase that question: “Are those who suffer hardship outside of their control right to rebel against the political forces that do control it?” If this were any other scenario, the answer would be yes, and the case is the same here.

    State Panic and Political Suppression

    As has already been expressed, the Soviet State of the civil war was not the leviathan that it would come to be seen as in later decadesix. Economic crisis spurred on by war had an effect of the wellbeing of the people, leading to unrest. This is to be expected. But what should also be expected is the political crisis in the center caused by this mixture of war, lack of resources, and discontent amongst the population. If you are at the center of commanding not just a potentially deteriorating state but are responsible for guiding it through a destructive war, then your decisions are going to be less concerned with the individual wellbeing of the population than they are the health of the state as a whole.

    This is the problem which faced Lenin and the Bolsheviks during the Kronstadt rebellion. From their perspective, the Soviet State was faced with a revolt in a key strategic location: Kronstadt, which was not just a key naval base, but one which held the key to the West. If the sailors were to switch sides to the Whites, then that same base could become a staging ground and supply route for their enemiesx. This presented two options, either to grant political and economic concessions to the sailors in the hopes that they may stay on side, or to suppress them. By this time, however, Moscow was not only too disconnected from Kronstadt to understand the sailors’ intentions, but had adopted a bureaucratized, centralized, government, for which devolving power to them would be a blow to its authorityxi. To immediately denounce the movement as counterrevolutionary may seem harsh, but it is not wholly surprising. As Lenin himself noted, Kronstadt “lit up reality better than anything else,” turning a broad resistance to economic hardship into a political demandxii. A well-trained, well-fortified revolt arising as the State verged on mass rebellion triggered expected anxieties. As the Bolshevik’s power threatened to waiver, it is no surprise that such an urgent suppression was enacted. Panic can do many things.

    What came after was a mixture of political suppression and economic concession. Convinced by the possible political fallout of the rebellion, the 10th Party Congress in March 1921 instituted a series of economic measures known as the NEP, or the New Economic Policy. This policy reintroduced money back into the economy in 1922, and returned most agriculture, retail trade, and small-scale light industry back into private ownership. The peasantry, who formed a considerable part of the rebellions during war communism, were then allowed to own and cultivate their own land. Though only viewed as a temporary measure (and later dissolved in 1931), the NEP was introduced to help alleviate the damage caused to the economy during the warxiii. In the political sphere, Lenin used Kronstadt to justify the stamping out of opposition in government, claiming that “the time has come to put an end to opposition, to put the lid on it, we have had enough opposition”xiv. Not a single demand of the Kronstadt sailors had been fulfilled, instead, the ranks were closed, and freedom of speech, press, and assembly continued to be controlled. Furthermore, socialist and anarchist opposition who had been imprisoned for their political crimes were going to stay imprisonedxv.

    The Inevitability of Coercion in a State

    In the two sections above I have written very little about the actual events of Kronstadt and its suppression. This was purposeful, as I am highlighting not the moments themselves but the social relations of power in which they exist in and are molded by. We shouldn’t view Kronstadt as the result of heroic or evil deeds, but rather a predictable set of factors. The rebellion was the result of popular discontent and economic hardship faced with a political system that afforded the rebels little autonomy to change either of those things, and the suppression the result of civil war, growing unrest, and a political system which relied on centralized authority and command.

    The harshest critics of the USSR might try to paint Lenin as a devil figure, but what is really the cause of tragedy here is not his individual convictions, but the revolution of which he (as one figure) helped create. Various authors have commented upon Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ insistence on centralized rule. Gregory Claeys in his book Marx and Marxism, for example, shows how on multiple occasions they emphasized the necessity of centralized, even dictatorial power, in the facilitation of a revolution. Such as in a 1903 conference in Brussels in which he stated that the party must embrace “as much centralism as possible,” giving the central committee of said party the ability to override local autonomyxvi. On another occasion in March 1918, much closer to the revolution, he made it clear that he saw “absolutely no contradiction” “between Soviet democratism and the use of dictatorial power by single individuals.” The strictest unity necessary for revolution can only be achieved, in his mind, “by the subordination of the will of thousands to the will of one”xvii. In his famed State and Revolution, written in 1917, Lenin stated that the “socialist revolution” needs “people who cannot dispense with subordination” and control, just that, in a revolutionary society, that subordination will be to “the armed vanguard of all the exploded and working people”xviii. Or in other words, the party. This means retaining parts of the old bureaucratic machine to maintain the subordination of the people to the needs of the vanguard.

    As much as this might paint a picture of the Soviet Union as uniquely despotic, it is simply following the logic which plagues all states. Even western nations, which are pitted as pariahs of freedom by liberal commentators, subordinate people to the will of the state through coercive apparatuses, and each have histories of violently suppressing rebellions. Take, for example, the Haymarket affair of 1886, or Thatcher’s police putting down miners’ strikes in the 1980s. When Max Weber famously defined the state as a ‘monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’xix, he highlighted the dependence the state has on coercion to maintain control. Without police, prisons, armies, and borders, states would simply fall apart. No ideological control can realistically manufacture consent without being able to utilize force when ideology is not suitable. How is it, otherwise, that the centralized apparatus of the state can maintain control of a population that will at times harbor deep resentment for it.

    For the Soviet Union, dissent caused by economic hardship threatened what we might call the “ideology of revolution,” or the revolutionary spirit that drove people during the revolution. Growing discontent problematized communist values and created unrest, threatening the rule of the center which, as has been established, was deemed vital for the success of the revolutionaries’ efforts. The Bolsheviks therefore did what any state would do when met with armed revolt: it suppressed it. This is the method through which states retain their grip on power when all else fails.

    A Lesson?

    Krontstadt is not a tragedy resulting from evil, but from the inevitable practices of states and hierarchical leadership structures, insofar as the state must maintain its own order if its central governance system is to survive. In the capitalist states and the so-called communist states, we see how this manifests itself: in systems of control such as the police, prisons, borders, and regulations on worker’s rights and political organizing.

    What is important here, and what causes these tragedies when people challenge order, is the lack of autonomy and free association. Expressed in the simplest of ways, autonomy is ‘the freedom to make decisions, and then act out those decisions without asking permission from a higher power.’xx Anarchists make heavy use of the word when communicating their own definition of freedom, a freedom unlike the one espoused by liberals which usually assumes some connection to bourgeois property rights. Instead, it is the individual or the collective’s freedom to participate in bottom-up forms of decision making which gives them control over their own livesxxi. This is integral to the anarchist vision of socialism, and was not achieved by the Soviet Union, reliant as it was on top-down command.

    Free association, meanwhile, is tied up with autonomy but has a different meaning. In both the Marxist and anarchist literature, free association appears as a central component of a future anarchist society. In Marx’s The German Ideology, he states that:

    “The reality, which communism is creating, is precisely the true basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals, insofar as reality is only a produce of the preceding intercourse of individuals themselves.”xxii

    In short, Marx is stating that communism will fully realize the individual as a part of the collective process, thereby giving them the autonomy to freely associate with other individuals as they find it necessary to do so. This is opposed to treating the individual as subordinate to the collective process and overriding their autonomy. In anarchist theory, free association gives the individual the full right to start a collective and join others should they desire to. This is unlike any society we see today. We are born into states which take our obedience to laws for granted and throw up borders that do not let people in or out. This was also the case in the Soviet Union, whose own members, although originally participating in Soviets which better embodied this ideal, were bound into the authority of the newly formed state. So, when discontent brewed in Kronstadt, as elsewhere, rebellion became the only suitable form of resistance when autonomy was taken away from them, and when they could not freely leave the union without facing repercussion. The Kronstadt demand to re-elect the soviets and return their political control was their way of trying to reestablish their autonomy in the system.

    We must therefore strive to reestablish autonomy and free association as a central tenet of our organizing principles, something which can only be realistically achieved outside of the state and through decentralized organizations. This means, in turn, utilizing our principles from the beginning and making them a part of our wider political strategy. As discussed, the morality of the individual actors is not cause of the tragic event, but the process of social relations leading up to it. Therefore, we cannot expect to achieve an autonomous way of life when the very nature of our revolution reproduces hierarchical social relations through centralized systems. We need a synthesis of the means and ends, to accept that only by reforging social relations in the lead up to revolution can we secure a proper future after it. As Zoe Baker stated in her article “Means and Ends”:

    “in order to achieve a communist society the majority of the population has to engage in activities during the struggle against capitalism itself that transform them into people who want to and are able to self-direct their lives and community through local councils and federations of councils.”xxiii

    This is what would otherwise be called prefigurative politics, the act of experimenting with revolutionary forms of practice as a part of the revolution itself. In this case, it would entail the development and experimentation with forms of commune and council-based structures that we can create prior to revolution and which can be utilized during it. As Thomas Swann puts it:

    “If we want to create, for instance, a future society governed through some form of participatory democracy in which everyone can have a fair say in decision making, then the organizations we build to achieve this should be structured so as to enact that end goal, reflecting it.”xxiv

    Now the Soviet Union did indeed create a movement on the back of democratic organization, the Soviets, but its intention (as made clear by Lenin’s own statements) was not to maintain their autonomy or decentralized freedom. Instead, the Soviets were subjected to party and bureaucratic rule. This act of centralization simply forced the Soviets into a state structure and made the maintenance of central command a top priority. A decentralized network of communes, meanwhile, must command no authority but that which is genuinely granted at the behest of its members through consensus-making and participatory democratic systems.

    In practical terms, this means looking at our own organizations and changing them to better reflect the future that we wish to create. It means maximizing the autonomy and free association amongst our members and reducing hierarchical relations. It means making space for dissenting opinion within our own morality but within the systems that we are creating. It means looking at participatory democracy, consensus-building, transformative justice, all these ways of changing the way human beings relate to one another. At the center of all of this, the commune, a word so poignant in the radical world, autonomy and free association will thrive. Not immediately, but with time, experimentation, and hope.

    When examining modern attempts at socialism, it is therefore integral to be critical of their organizational structure and how they handle dissent. Recent events in Cuba, for example, alongside the coercive suppression of dissent in countries like China and Vietnam, throw up further questions about how systems handle protest. As is the case with Cuba, it is vital to understand the wider global context (such as imperialism), and not jump onto the imperialists’ bandwagon in supporting regime changes that serve their ends. However, it is too simple and shortsighted to simply claim dissidents are counter revolutionary. Dissent is a constant reality in a state system, it is a form of protest inflamed when political participation cannot fully address people’s concerns. When our solution to it involves coercive apparatus, such as police or prisons, we are heading in a dangerous direction.

    Kronstadt was truly an unavoidable tragedy, a course of events set in place by the dynamics of a centralized revolution and a state at war. If we are to learn our lesson, we will build a social system that can incorporate dissent, and one which can function with decentralized command. And if we are to truly learn our lesson, we will get to it right now.

    i Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 2021, (New York: Norton Library, 1974), p.6.

    ii Simon Pirani, The Russian Revolution in Retreat, 1920-24: Soviet Works and the New Communist Elite, (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp.8-9

    iii Robert V. Daniels, ‘The Kronstadt Rebellion of 1921: A study in the Dynamics of Revolution’, in The American Slavic and East European Review, Vol. X, pp.241-254.

    iv Pirani, pp.32-3.

    v Pirani, p.43.

    vi Daniels, p.241.

    vii Daniels, p.242.

    viii Avrich, p.228.

    ix Avrich, p.4.

    x Avrich, p.5.

    xi Daniels, p.246.

    xii Avrich, p.221-2.

    xiii Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘New Economic Policy,’ Available at: https://www.britannica.com/event/New-Economic-Policy-Soviet-history.

    xiv Avrich, p.227.

    xv Avrich, p.225-6.

    xvi Gregory Claeys, Marx and Marxism, (London: Pelican, 2018), p.307.

    xvii Claeys, p.312.

    xviii Vladimir Lenin, State and Revolution, Lenin Internet Archive. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/.

    xix Max Weber, ‘Politics as a Vocation’, (1918).

    xx Sub.media (2016), ‘What is Autonomy?’, Available at: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/sub-media-what-is-autonomy.

    xxi Sub.media.

    xxii Karl Marx (1845), The German Ideology, Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01d.htm.

    xxiii Zoe Baker (2019), Means and Ends, The Anarchist Critique of Seizing State Power, Available at: https://usa.anarchistlibraries.net/library/anarchopac-means-and-ends.

    xxiv Thomas Swann, Anarchist Cybernetics: Control and Communication in Radical Politics, (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2020, p.69.

  • Contingent Faculty Activism Pushes Legislation into Congressional Budget Reconciliation

    Contingent Faculty Activism Pushes Legislation into Congressional Budget Reconciliation

    The rising movement among contingent faculty has pushed bills onto CA Gov. Newsom’s desk and into the budget reconciliation process in Congress.  California’s State Assembly Bill 375  would lift  “the 67% law, affecting thousands of community college (CC) faculty, 70-75% of the total CC faculty workforce.  The “67% law” limits faculty hired in this way to teaching no more than two thirds of a full load. Lifting it would only adjust one pressure point in the work-lives of these faculty, but it would allow the them to consolidate their assignments and perhaps teach at one or two different institutions instead of two, three or more. It’s a tweak, but it would help pay the bills. Not surprisingly, this low-wage tier of workers, mostly without benefits, hired as precarious workers without job security, is disproportionately women and people of color.

    You can urge Newsom to sign AB375 by going to https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov40mail/  But more important than this particular bill is the national movement behind it that pushed it onto Governor Newsom’s desk.  This movement has been coming for the last 25 years. Contingent (the current term for adjuncts, part-timers, precarious) faculty have formed unions and self-organized into a broad activist network of conferences, publications, social media platforms, non-profit formations, coalitions and caucuses. Then when COVID hit, contingent faculty turned out to be throwaway workers. Higher ed, which has become a profit-seeking industry, took advantage of the fear and chaos to apply the shock doctrine of disaster capitalism. Public colleges and universities responded with cutbacks and layoffs. Many small private colleges and universities folded or were purchased by larger entities. The traditional protections for full-time faculty, such as tenure, were slashed wherever possible. This galvanized the movement.

    What came to the forefront of public attention during the run up to the 2020 election were stories about student debt. The Bernie Sanders campaign incorporated the debt issue under the flag of “Free College,” a phrase known in California because of the way City College of San Francisco, celebrating its fightback against a hostile and unfair accreditor, tried to recover enrollment that had been lost during that fight by guaranteeing grants to cover tuition to city residents. “Free College” became a watchword of the Sanders campaign. Among the young people who were working on the Sanders campaign were many graduate student employees, people who were carrying debt themselves.  Many of them were also doing effective union organizing across the country and anticipating job-hunting in higher ed.  For them, it was not just about debt; it was about the pay and working conditions of their industry. Some of their arguments, like more tenure line jobs, made it into the Free College platform.

    Then came the November 2020 election, followed by the agony of the Trump attempted coup, and the movement actually gathered strength. The organizing terrains ranged from very local groups coming together to caucuses at the national union level to the formation of new national groups. In July 2021 a grouping calling itself The Higher Education Labor Summit met, sponsored by Scholars for a New Deal for Higher Education. Its stated purpose was to intervene in the “College for All” bill (Sanders and Jayapal), to ensure labor conditions for all higher ed workers, not just faculty – especially the majority precarious faculty – were improved, and to write a vision statement clarifying what those labor conditions should look like.

    Therefore at this moment (October 2021) the tip of the spear for contingent faculty at the national level is a group that emerged from that summit, Higher Ed Labor United (HELU). “National” is worth repeating because the spear itself is made up of efforts, even by small groupings of faculty who have not yet formed a union, at the local level.

    HELU’s vision statement has gone through a number of revisions and debates about transitioning some contingent faculty into tenure line jobs, whether that is worth fighting for in comparison to fighting for equality on other fronts like wages, continuity of employment, etc.  HELU’s sudden rise to visibility is evidence of this being not just a single fight, but an actual movement with contingent faculty at the core. AB 375 is one part of that fight. As of this writing, organizations representing well over half of all faculty, and many higher ed staff, including the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor (COCAL), the unions at the University of California, the California State University system, and many community colleges, have affiliated with HELU. The real action on these issues is now in the budget reconciliation process, where Bernie Sanders, as Chair of the Senate Budget Committee, is trying to work it through.

    These fights are not isolated bursts of energy. They are linked to a bottom-up, self-organized contingent faculty movement that is expressing itself at different levels all over the country. They all part of a bigger fight for a free, accessible higher ed system like we once had under the 1960s California Master Plan. “Building Back Better” should also include taxing the rich for this common good and a higher education system staffed by people with living wages and benefits and job security that allows them to speak the truth as they see it. To find a way to help, go to https://higheredlaborunited.org.

  • The Kronstadt Revolt of 1921 as a part of the Great Russian Revolution

    The Kronstadt Revolt of 1921 as a part of the Great Russian Revolution

    [On the 100th anniversary of the Kronstadt events, New Politics is hosting a symposium on the historic tragedy, its meaning and significance, and its implications for today’s socialists. We are posting articles by Alexei Gusev, Samuel Clarke, Paul Le Blanc, Daniel Fischer, and Tom Harrison. -Eds.]

    On March 8th 1921 “Izvestia of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Kronstadt’s sailors, Red Army soldiers and workers” published the declaration “What we are fighting for?”, where the nature of Kronstadt revolt against Communist party dictatorship was defined in the following way: “Here in Kronstadt has been laid the first stone of the third revolution, striking the last fetters from the laboring masses and opening a broad new road for socialist creativity. This new revolution will also rouse the laboring masses of the East and of the West, by serving as an example of the new socialist construction as opposed to the bureaucratic Communist ‘creativity’1. Thus, the March revolution of 1921, initiated by “Red Kronstadt”, had to complete the cause of the February and October revolutions of 1917.

    But not only rebels used the notion of the “third revolution”. A day before, on March 7th, a representative of the opposite side, Plenipotentiary of the Special Section of the All-Russian Cheka Vasilii Sevei reported to War Commissar Leon Trotsky: “These sailors [of the Baltic Fleet] were and still are professional revolutionaries and could well form the basis for a possible third revolution”2.

    Was the “third revolution” just a rhetorical phrase, or had any real foundations in 1921?

    If revolution is understood as a process of social transformations developing under an influence of mass popular actions and involving changes of political regimes, then events from 1917 to 1921 constitute the Great Russian revolution that consisted of several phases. It was caused by the objective need to resolve a number of key problems and contradictions of social modernization in Russia – mainly, two most important ones: the land question (meaning redistribution of agricultural land from big landowners to peasants) and the political question (democratization of the state). This was expressed in the most popular slogan of the Russian revolutionary movement: Land and Freedom! The revolution – including confrontation of various social and political forces in the form of civil war – continued after the downfall of Tsarist regime till stabilization of the new, Bolshevik political regime on the basis of the partial resolution of the land question and cessation of the mass popular struggles.

    In this context, the Kronstadt revolt of 1921 appears as an integral part of the revolutionary process that took several years. In order to define its historical place and significance, it is necessary to describe the main phases of the Great Russian revolution.

    During the first, February-March 1917 phase the Tsarist autocracy was destroyed, and systemic social transformation began. However, main question of the revolution had not been solved: peasants did not receive land, and a democratic political system was not consolidated, since the Provisional government delayed a convocation of the Constituent Assembly.

    The second phase lasted from Summer 1917 to the beginning of 1918. It was a time of the new upsurge of the mass social movements – both urban and countryside. Growing disillusionment in the Provisional government led masses to rely on Soviets as a basis of a new political system. This created conditions for the taking power by the Bolshevik party in October 1917. Though Bolsheviks had not popular majority support, they also at first did not face mass resistance. The principal content of this “October phase” was agrarian revolution in the countryside, so called “black repartition” of land among peasants sanctioned by the new authorities.

    The third phase – from Summer 1918 to the end of 1920 – was a period of the large-scale civil war. The pre-condition of it became mass disillusionment in Bolsheviks, who also proved unable to resolve main questions of the revolution: in place of Soviet power they established an authoritarian Communist party rule, in place of freedom for peasantry came the “food dictatorship”, system of grain requisitions. This enabled consolidation of the anti-Bolshevik right-wing, counter-revolutionary forces – the White movement with its large armies, supported by foreign states. During the large-scale military confrontation between Reds and Whites the popular mass movement for land and freedom manifested itself mostly in the form of resistance to both dictatorships, local uprisings, guerilla warfare, and so on. In general, this stage can be called the “defensive phase” of the revolution. Under its conditions, popular movements had to act carefully, since struggle against one of the combatting dictatorships could play to the hands of the other. But finally Whites, with their restorationist aspirations, proved to be worse for majority of the population than Reds, and that explains defeat of the former by the end of 1920. However, the main questions of the revolution still remained unresolved, leading to the new rise of popular struggles – the fourth phase of the revolutionary process’ development.

    This period of the new revolutionary upsurge lasted from the end of 1920 to March 1921. And one of its most important episodes became the revolt of Kronstadt sailors. It should be seen in the closest relation with the other events of this phase. Firstly, the Winter of 1920-1921 marked the highest point of the Peasant war in Russia – mass peasant uprisings engulfed all grain-producing regions; at least 165 large insurgent detachments with more than one hundred thousand fighters operated in the country. In Tambov region “United guerilla army” led by a Socialist Revolutionary Alexander Antonov counted about 50000. The same number of insurgents fought in “popular armies” of Western Siberia, that under the slogan “Down with Communism! Long live Soviets!” took several towns3. Most of the countryside territory all over the country went out of control of the Moscow government.

    Secondly, there was an upsurge of the industrial workers protest movement everywhere. In all main industrial centers of Russia workers went on strikes, that very often involved putting forward political demands. In Petrograd the protest movement had reached by the end of February 1921 such a scale that Bolshevik authorities called it “mutiny at factories” and declared martial law in the city4. It was the February mighty strike wave in both capitals, Petrograd and Moscow, that directly provoked the Kronstadt revolt.

    Thirdly, a whole series of protest actions, including armed rebellions, took place in the Red Army, that consisted of the same peasants and workers. In the Volga region, the rebellious division commander Alexander Sapozhkov formed “The 1st Red Army of Truth”. In Ukraine, rebelled a commander of cavalry brigade Grigoriy Maslakov, who with his men joined “Revolutionary Insurgent Army” led by anarchist Nestor Makhno. And there were others.

    From the standpoint of political theory, the situation of the early 1921 could be described as a revolutionary situation. This notion was introduced by Vladimir Lenin, but before him a set of conditions for beginning of revolutions have been characterized by such historians as Adolphe Thiers and Francois Mignet. They also identified these conditions in the episodes of revolutionary process’ activization in the framework of the Great French revolution of 1789-1795.

    Another French historian, Alexis de Toqueville looking at the situations of revolutionary upsurges, noted that they develop when masses feel their growing expectations for improvements betrayed. It was exactly the case after the defeat of the last large White Army of Peter Wrangel in November 1920. The civil war front came to an end, and people hoped for the liquidation of War Communism – the regime of prodrazvyorstka (food requisitioning), suppression of trade, militarization of economy and compulsory labor. The policy of War Communism obviously came to a deadlock blocking any development of ruined economy and generating hunger. But the Communist authorities, instead of abandoning this policy, tried to tighten screws of War Communism more and more. This caused a rise in protest activities, stimulated by popular understanding that there was no more direct threat of armed White counter-revolution that could use such actions for its advantage.

    Lenin defined a revolutionary situation as a situation of general crisis, when “the suffering and want” of the masses “have grown more acute than usual”, and they considerably increase their activity. In other words, the principal factor leading to a revolution is that “the lower classes do not want to live in the old way”.

    The modern theories of revolution, developed by such authors as Olivier Filleieule, Michel Dobry and others, concretize this property of the revolutionary situation by identifying its three characteristics:

    1. Active protests involved a significant percentage of the population. As we have seen, this feature was present in Russia in early 1921.

    2. Large inter-class coalitions are formed which lead to the spread of the protest movement. In the case of Russia 1921, there was a spontaneous forming coalition between insurgent peasants, striking workers and rebelling soldiers and sailors.

    3. Universalization of basic demands of the protesting masses. In 1921 such common demands put forwards in protests of all social groups were “three freedoms”: of labor, of trade and political freedom. People demanded free disposal of their labor power, free trade unions, free exchange between cities and countryside, free speech, press, meetings and associations. They wanted free elections of workers, peasants and soldiers’ Soviets, that from the mid-1918 had been tightly controlled by the ruling Communist party that determined their results. In the Leninist conception of “proletarian dictatorship”, that equated it with the dictatorship of Communist party, Soviets (as well as unions and other public organizations) were seen as nothing but mere “transmission belts” from the ruling party to masses. Their independence or possibility of oppositional behavior was totally excluded. As Leon Kamenev declared in 1920, commenting on the results of elections to Moscow Soviet over which he presided, the Socialist political opposition (he meant Mensheviks in particular) would not be allowed to get even “a particle of power”5. As Lenin himself put it, no “slightest shift of power” from Bolsheviks was tolerable6. But many workers and peasants did not forget that the October 1917 Bolshevik slogan was “All power to Soviets!”, not “All power to the Bolshevik party!” – and demanded practical fulfillment of that principle. The “15-point resolution” adopted on March 1st 1921 by the general meeting of sailors and workers of Kronstadt, just summarized the above-mentioned common political, social and economic popular demands – and became the beginning of the rebellion7.

    The next property of a revolutionary situation is a crisis “of the tops”, among ruling elite. In Lenin’s words, “the upper classes should be unable to rule in the old way”. In the language of contemporary political science: “divisions or defections within the central bodies of the state; divisions or defections within security forces”8.

    In 1921 the ruling Bolshevik party experienced a profound crisis – both on the leadership and rank-and-file levels. Attempts to find a way out of the dead-end of war communism led to the bitter “discussion on trade unions” that divided even Central Committee and Politbureau of theRussian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), or RCP(b), into rival factions. The “Workers Opposition” and “Democratic Centralism Group” attacked the party tops for being out of touch with the proletarian masses9.

    The factional struggle engulfed also Communist party organization of the Baltic Fleet. Petrograd party leaders around Grigory Zinoviev and Fleet’s political commissar Nikolay Kuzmin, who supported Lenin’s faction, came against the Fleet’s commander Theodor Raskolnikov, who belonged to Trotsky’s faction and had to resign. Party leaders’ credibility among communist sailors diminished, there were talks about possible formation of the new opposition grouping – “the fleet opposition”. Influence of the fleet’s party cells had fallen, sailors were leaving the RCP(b) en masse: before the rebellion the Kronstadt party organization lost about 40% of its members.

    In the course of rebellion itself, only one third of Kronstadt communists came out it, one third supported it, and one third stood neutral. The newly elected Provisional Bureau of Kronstadt organization of the RCP(b) called for co-operation with the rebels’ Revolutionary Committee (its members had to be shot by Cheka). And a number of rebellion’s leaders, including head of the Revolutionary Committee Stepan Petrichenko, were former Communist party members themselves. They understood their struggle as the struggle for the case of October 1917 with its proclaimed, but not realized goals.

    Later, Rafail Abramovich, Menshevik leader in emigration, characterized Kronstadt rebellion as an uprising against Bolshevik dictatorship “by a part of the Bolshevism itself”. It is not an accident that the leading role at the beginning of uprising was played by old sailors from battleships “Sebastopol” and “Petropavlovsk”, many of whom participated in revolutionary events of 1917, when Kronstadt served as a main stronghold of Bolshevism. These old sailors were joined by younger conscripts from Southern Russia and Ukraine with fresh experiences of War Communism and the associated repressions.

    The outcome of the Kronstadt rebellion proved once again that not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution. But had the 1921 uprising any chances to win?

    Two and a half years earlier quite similar events took place not far away from Kronstadt – in German Baltic Sea port Kiel. In November 1918 sailors revolt there led to formation of the soldiers and workers council, similar to the Kronstadt Provisional Revolutionary Committee. The Council adopted the “14-point resolution”, the first paragraphs of which resembled those in the “15-point resolution” of Kronstadt: demands of freedom of speech, press and release of political prisoners10. German government troops tried to suppress Kiel sailors, but failed. Rebels were joined by other soldiers and supported by workers. The movement spread to other cities all over the country – and that sparked a victorious November 1918 democratic revolution in Germany.

    As in Kiel in 1918, Kronstadt rebels in 1921 had widespread sympathies among Petrograd workers and sailors. And Communist leaders understood a grave danger that workers-sailors coalition constituted for their rule. Nikolay Bukharin even told delegates of the Xth Party congress that the mutiny in Kronstadt was not so dangerous in comparison with workers’ protests in Petrograd and Moscow, where “petty-bourgeois virus infected a part of the working class with gangrene”. On March 5th Trotsky wrote: “Only seizure of Kronstadt would end political crisis in Petrograd”. Zinoviev sent panic letters to Moscow saying that the only reliable forces in Petrograd were five thousand military cadets and armed communists. On March 10th Michail Tukhachevsky, commander of the 7th army directed against Kronstadt, also urged about a possible workers uprising in Petrograd and stressed a necessity to move more troops into Northern capital to prevent it.

    Many Red army soldiers refused to fight against the Kronstadt rebels. It was the main reason why the first assault on Kronstadt on March 8th failed. Some units, such as the 561st Regiment, did not obey orders to attack; others, as it was reported, stopped when they saw red flags over Kronstadt (communist propaganda told that the naval base was in the hands of counter-revolutionaries, White generals and Black hundreds11).

    Then the military command brought against rebels one of the best rifle divisions of the Red Army – the 27th Omsk division. It distinguished itself as a force that played an important role in defeating White army of Alexander Kolchak in Siberia. But now this veteran unit proved to be unreliable: several of its regiments adopted resolutions stating that they would not “go against our brothers in Kronstadt”. These units have been disarmed, those who protested arrested. “Extraordinary Troikas” (courts of three judges) were formed to issue death sentences for those who refused to attack Kronstadt. Only in two days, March 14th and 15th, about 80 Red Army soldiers were shot by decisions of this troikas. During the Great Terror of the 1930s this institute of “troika” was used on mass scale by Stalin. So, Wendelin Thomas, who in November 1918 took part in the sailors’ revolt in Germany and in 1937 participated in the international “Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials”, had good reasons to point at the link between Kronstadt’s suppression and the development of the Stalinist regime’s repressive practices.

    Thus, in March 1921 it was very difficult to prevent spreading the uprising out of Kronstadt. And the soon expected melting of ice around Kronstadt could have make it an impregnable fortress12. Linking together with Baltic Fleet sailors, striking workers and insurgent peasants could have transformed the political regime in Russia. Their victory would have meant democratization of the country’s political system and giving peasants “full freedom of action in regard to their land”, as the “15-point resolution” put it. That would have meant final resolution of both main questions of the Great Russian revolution – agrarian and political.

    But that did not happen – the Kronstadt revolt of 1921 suffered defeat. Several factors contributed into such outcome. Among them the spontaneous character of the rebellion, that had not been organizationally or politically prepared in advance, and mostly defensive tactics of rebels, who for too long time believed in a possibility of peaceful compromise with the Communist party leaders. At the same time, political forces that could have supported sailors’ rebellion in Petrograd, were neutralized by the pre-emptive repression: literally a couple of days before the beginning of the revolt, several hundreds of members of Socialist parties and activists of the independent workers movement had been arrested by Petrograd Cheka.

    However, the Kronstadt revolt, though defeated, played an important role – together with other popular uprisings and protests – by forcing Bolsheviks to put an end to War Communism and introduce the New Economic Policy (NEP) in March 1921. Concessions to peasants (transition from food requisitioning to tax system, restoration of trade, etc.) and general loosening of government control over economy improved the economic situation in the country and led to decline in mass protest activity. The revolutionary process in Russia entered its final, downward phase. In Summer 1921 all main centers of peasant insurgency – in Volga region, Western Siberia and Ukraine – were finally suppressed. At the same time, a scale of industrial workers struggles diminished. This signified the end of the Great Russian revolution of 1917-1921. Its objective tasks had been resolved only partially. Peasant majority of the population got real social achievements, but with no political guaranties. The revolution totally failed in its political, democratic aspect, leading to the consolidation of new, “red” form of authoritarianism. Simultaneously with certain economic liberalization, political regime of the Communist party rule hardened. Communist leaders were threatened by what they called a “spirit of Kronstadt”, which could have led to new rebellions. Therefore by 1922 they not only purged all Soviets of tiny remnants of legal non-Communist opposition (Mensheviks, Maximalists, Anarchists) but outlawed factions and “unbusinesslike and factional criticism” inside the ruling Communist party itself13. Lenin said that 1921 marked “self-Thermidorization” of the Bolshevik regime14. If Thermidor is understood as a combination of relative economic liberalization with consolidation of oligarchic rule and final suppression of popular movements, he had a point.

    The 1921 Kronstadt revolt, with its revolutionary democratic aspirations, was in fact a last serious attempt to revive initial program and slogans of October 1917. Its failure opened a historically known road from Thermidor to Bonapartism, that in the XXth Century took a form of totalitarianism. As Ante Ciliga, active participant of the left anti-Stalinist resistance and Soviet political prisoner in the 1930s, wrote in 1936: “everything that happened after [the suppression of Kronstadt and workers’ strikes movement in 1921] was, from the social point of view, no more than evolution, movement from step to step down”15. Victor Serge, who had more positive view of Lenin and Trotsky, tended to see in the suppression of Kronstadt revolt a tragic necessity and argued about it with Ciliga, nevertheless admitted: “It is the Kronstadt tragedy that we have to look at in order to see how the revolution’s image changed. Kronstadt meant the first bloody victory of the bureaucratic state over laboring masses. This state was still led by great Bolsheviks, ardent and far-sighted Socialists; but in fact, the machine has already overpowered them, and a habit of unlimited rule, without democratic control, changed their mentality”16.

    The fate of defeated Kronstadt was sad: more than 2000 people were shot and more than 6000 imprisoned, and the remaining population (“kronmutineers and their families”) deported. But Bolshevik “victors” fared not much better: Zinoviev and Kamenev were shot by Stalin in 1936, Tukhachevsky in 1937, Kuzmin and Bukharin in 1938. Raskolnikov was in 1938 declared “enemy of people”, refused to return from France to the USSR and a year later died under suspicious circumstances. Trotsky was in 1940 assassinated in Mexican exile by Stalin’s agent. By that time, Trotsky, who in 1921 led military suppression of sailors’ revolt, has put forward a program, that, as Ciliga pointed out, “in fact reproduced, though in timid form, main demands of Kronstadt”17. All of these leading Communists eventually became victims of their own 1921 victory that proved to be Pyrrhic. History once again demonstrated: those who attempt to defend or develop revolution by betraying its basic principles of self-liberation could only bury the revolutionary project – and often share its fate too.

    1 Izvestiya Vremennogo revolyucionnogo komiteta matrosov, krasnoarmejcev i rabochih goroda Kronshtadta. No.6. 8 March 1921.

    2 Cited in: Getzler I. The Communist Leaders’ Role in the Kronstadt Tragedy of 1921 in the Light of Recently Published Archival Documents// Revolutionary Russia. 2002. Vol.15. No.1. P. 32-33.

    3 Fates of Russian peasantry [Sud’by rossijskogo krest’yanstva] M., 1996. P. 142; Shishkin V.I. For Soviets without Communists: peasant revolt in Tyumen region 1921 [ Za sovety bez kommunistov: krest’yanskoe vosstanie v Tyumenskoj gubernii 1921] Novosibirsk, 2000. P. 324 et al.

    4 Kronstadt 1921. Documents on events in Kronstadt in Spring 1921 [Kronshtadt 1921. Dokumenty o sobytiyah v Kronshtadte vesnoj 1921 goda] М., 1997. P. 8, 32.

    5 Central State Archive of Moscow Region [Central’nyj gosudarstvennyj arhiv Moskovskoj oblasti], fond 66, opis 14, delo 26, list 7.

    6 Protocols of the Xth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) [Protokoly X s”ezda RKP(b)]. M.,1933. P.35-36.

    7 Kronstadt 1921. Documents on events in Kronstadt in Spring 1921 P. 50-51.

    8 Bennani-Chraïbi M., Filleieule O. Towards a sociology of revolutionary situations. Reflections on the Arab uprising // Revue Francaise de science politique (English). 2012. Vol. 62. No 5-6. P. 14.

    9 Democratic Centralists, in particular, stated that the Party’s Central Committee “persists with policy of bureaucratic centralization, bureaucratic secrecy, disdain for local organizations, resulting in aggravation of moral corruption,weakening of party and Soviet apparatuses, gangrene of formalism”. They demanded to abandon “unrestrained movement to bureaucratic autocracy”. (Political parties and movements of Russia. Documents and materials. Vol. II. The Communist party (1917-1985). Part 1. [Politicheskie partii i dvizheniya Rossii. Dokumenty i materialy. T. 2. Kommunisticheskaya partiya (1917-1985). Kniga 1.] M., 2008. P. 156-157)

    10 Lutz R.H. The German Revolution, 1918-1919. Stanford, California, 1922. P. 31.

    11 Kronstadt 1921. Documents on events in Kronstadt in Spring 1921 P. 59-60.

    12 On 10 March Trotsky wrote to Politbureau: “Kronstadt could be seized only before thaw begins. As soon as the bay opens for navigation, Kronstadt would establish connections with abroad. At the same time, the island would become inaccessible for us […] It is necessary to liquidate Kronstadt at any cost in the next few days” (Kronstadt tragedy of 1921. Documents [Kronshtadtskaya tragediya 1921 goda. Dokumenty] Vol. 1. M., 1999. P. 349).

    13 Resolution on Party Unity, adopted by the Xth Congress of the RCP(B) on 16 March 1921// Protocols of the Xth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). P. 586.

    14 Izvestia. 1 February 1924.

    15 Ciliga A. La Révolution russe et les raisons de sa degenerescence // La Révolution prolétarienne: revue mensuelle syndicaliste communiste. 1936. No. 235. P. 16 (364).

    16 Victor Serge. Le souvenir de Cronstadt 1921 // La Wallonie. 1 Avril 1940.

    17 Ciliga A. L’insurrection de Cronstadt et la destinée de la Révolution russe // La Révolution prolétarienne: revue mensuelle syndicaliste communiste. 1938. No. 278. P. 2 (274).

  • Tens of Thousands of Women March for Abortion Rights

    Tens of Thousands of Women March for Abortion Rights

    This article was written for L’Anticapitaliste, the weekly newspaper of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) of France.

    In 650 cities and towns across the United States tens of thousands of women rallied and marched for women’s reproductive rights on Saturday, October 2. This fifth annual women’s march since 2017 took place in reaction to the state of Texas passing a law recently that bans virtually all abortions and it occurred on the eve of the U.S. Supreme Court taking up cases that might lead it to overturn the Roe v. Wade, the case that in 1973 gave women abortion rights. Some participants saw the march as a way to re-launch a militant mass women’s movement.

    Many women feel their rights and their futures threatened. As Alexis McGill Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood, explained to a crowd. in Washington, D.C, “This year alone we have seen nearly 600 restrictions in 47 states. So no matter where you live, no matter where you are, this fight is at your doorstep.”

    Sponsored by over 200 women’s rights and liberal organizations such as Planned Parenthood, the National Organization for Women, and the American Civil Liberties Union, but also mobilizing scores of smaller local groups, in big cities and small towns women of all ages and their male and other gender allies chanted, “My body, my choice.” Demonstrators displayed signs that with wit and sarcasm expressed their frustration. One sign read, “If men got pregnant, abortion would be legal everywhere.” Another said, “Mandatory vasectomies. Come on guys, let’s save lives.” And another mocking biblical language, “He who hath no vagina should just STFU [shut the fuck up].

    Politicians or candidates for the 2022 elections were speakers at rallies around the country talked about the need to elect more progressive Democrats to Congress to defend abortion rights. New York Governor Kathy Hochul speaking in Albany, the state capital, told a crowd, “As your first female governor ever in the State of New York, I will protect those rights.” She added, “together we’ll send a message across this nation—you come to New York, we’ll protect your abortion rights every single day of the week.” Rana Abdelhamid, the child of Egyptian Muslim immigrants and progressive candidate for Congress from New York City, told the rally there of her support for abortion rights especially for immigrants.

    In New York City where my wife and I marched, the rally began with demonstrators chanting, “Black Lives Matter.” Rose Baseil Massa, an organizer for March for Abortion Justice, told the crowd, “We know that Brown and Black people, Hispanic and Latinx populations and indigenous populations, they are all disproportionately affected by abortion bans. So it’s really important for us to stand here in solidarity.” The notion of solidarity with people of color was a central theme, though the protest n New York City, where whites are a minority, was overwhelmingly white, with few Black women present.

    Women made up 70 percent of the participants in New York City, some of them veterans of the women’s movement of the 1960s and 70s, but mostly younger women, some new to the movement. The politics of the march in NYC were progressive, with a strong presence of Democratic organizations, such as Indivisible and several independent Democratic clubs. Some women carried signs such as, “RBG sent me,” a reference to the recently deceased liberal Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. There were a couple of leftist organizations present, Maoist and Trotskyist, but they represented a tiny minority. The Democratic Socialists of America, the country’s largest group, had no visible presence here.

    In Asheville, North Carolina Tessa Paul, local DSA co-chair, told a rally, “We are gathered here today because there is a war being waged. This is a war against women’s reproductive rights, against trans and nonbinary people, against Black and Brown people, against indigenous, queer, disabled, displaced and abused people.” There is a war, but women have begun to fight back and we stand with them.

    [All photos here taken at the NYC march by the author.]

  • The Political Creativity of Sylvia Pankhurst

    The Political Creativity of Sylvia Pankhurst

    A review of Sylvia Pankhurst: Sexual Politics and Political Activism, Barbara Winslow, re-issued edition published by Verso Press, 2021.

    In 2021 we are witnessing an assault on voting rights, an attack on women’s right to abortion, and economic and social threats to the American working class, primarily due to the Covid 19 pandemic.  So it is fortuitous that Barbara Winslow’s unique analysis of Sylvia Pankhurst, whose life was devoted to suffrage, women’s rights and working class issues, should be reissued at just this time. (1)  Socialists and feminists (and socialist feminists) can profoundly benefit from the legacy of Sylvia Pankhurst who is equally deserving of the contemporary attention given to Rosa Luxemburg and Alexandra Kollontai.

    There have been several books about Sylvia Pankhurst, including the most recent bloated 900 plus page book by Rachel Holmes (2).  But history can be written in many ways. Most of these books provide hagiographic and conventional views of Sylvia Pankhurst that see her origins as a suffragette as separate from her radicalism and socialism. Winslow’s small but mighty 193-page book offers us a history written with an appreciation of the political integrity of Sylvia’s life and work, connecting her early women’s suffrage work to her later revolutionary socialism, emphasizing Pankhurst’s commitment to rank and file movements, and her belief in the importance of democracy in all political efforts.  It is this connection that provides readers the opportunity to consider the nature of our own politics, and the nature of the socialism we envision.  Both Winslow and Sheila Rowbotham, who wrote the book’s introduction, point out that Sylvia Pankhurst’s story raises issues about the relation of gender and class, about the meaning of socialist feminism and about the persistence of male chauvinism in the socialist left.  I believe this book raises further issues about the tactics we use, about the relation of socialists and the electoral process, and about what socialism “from below” means today.

    Her Life and Times  

    The broad outlines of Sylvia Pankhurst’s life are fairly well known.  She was born into a progressive Victorian home.  This was a time that saw the partial enfranchisement of the working-class male, the rise of industrialism and urbanization with concomitant rises in urban poverty and the development of slums.  Women’s colleges were opening, and the Labour Party grew.  Both of Sylvia’s parents, Emmeline and Richard were suffragists, and supporters of the Labour Party, but ultimately joined the more radical Independent Labour Party (ILP) They supported home rule for the Irish, independence for India, women’s suffrage, abolition of slavery.  The home Sylvia grew up in was a meeting place for intellectuals, writers, socialists—including Keir Hardie, Louise Michel, William Morris and Harriet Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  Many of the people she met during her childhood had great influence on the evolution of her own politics, particularly Keir Hardie and William Morris. Emmeline and two of her daughters, Christobel and Sylvia, were firm suffragists, and Emmeline and Christobel later founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU).

    Around 1911 or 12, Sylvia Pankhurst moved to the East End of London, to commit herself to the needs of working-class women in that community and to build a socialist women’s movement. She eventually formed the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS) as a branch of the WSPU.  By 1913, however, she  broke with her mother and sister, Emmeline and Christobel, and their organization, the WSPU, over the issues of a) the importance of class in the suffragist movement, rejecting the middle-class predominance of the WSPU, b) the WSPU’s rejection of working with trade unions, and its unwillingness to work with men at all, and c) the WSPU’s support of the first world war.  Sylvia remained estranged from her mother and sister for the rest of her life.

    The independent ELFS was a radical and militant working-class organization which saw itself as part of the labor movement.  The organization worked for the unionization of working women, childcare, equal pay and greater participation of working women in society. Symbolic of the increasing militancy of the East End women were its name changes. In 1916 ELFS became the Workers Suffrage Federation, and in 1918, the Workers’ Socialist Federation. The newspaper which Sylvia had created, The Women’s Dreadnaught, became The Workers’ Dreadnaught. (3) The Workers’ Dreadnaught published the writing of women from the East End community, but also articles from socialists both in Britain and internationally, such as James Connolly, Clara Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Leibnecht, Alexandra Kollontai, Antonio Gramsci , Amadeo  Bordiga,  Herman Gorter and Anton Pannekoek.

     An Ultra-Leftist?

    For some traditional Marxists, Sylvia Pankhurst is known only from Lenin’s attack on her abstentionist position regarding participation of socialists in parliament and trade unions in his 1920 book, Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder.  Winslow’s book allows us to look at Pankhurst’s abstentionist position and the controversy with Lenin from a more historical perspective.

    Winslow shows that Pankhurst went beyond rebellion to become a revolutionary with a vision of socialism that came from her direct experience as an activist among the working-class women of London’s East End; as such she believed in a transformative process which would enable working women to participate in creating a socialist society.  Pankhurst wrote in the executive minutes of the ELFS, “We must get members to work for themselves and let them feel they are working for their own emancipation.” Pankhurst wrote in her book, The Suffragette Movement, that she wanted working women “to be fighters on their own account…demanding for themselves and their families a full share of the benefits of civilization and progress.” As Winslow puts it, “Pankhurst interpreted socialism as working-class self emancipation.” (4)

    Pankhurst was not always an abstentionist. But while working with the East End organization and strengthening her belief in workers’ control and in localized forms of socialism, Pankhurst came up against the intransigent opposition of Parliament and of the Trade Union leadership on multiple occasions.  In 1913 a “Women’s May Day” was declared, drawing thousands of women into the streets. Despite the turnout and the passionate speeches, the women were met only with more government oppression, and the banning of suffragette meetings. The ELFS and trade union groups protested council acts to refuse the use of public halls for suffragette meetings. They asked for a deputation for the council to hear the issues.  The Council met with the women but refused to alter the policy.

    In 1914 women again requested a deputation in protest of the inhumane conditions of arrested suffragettes. They met with Herbert Asquith, the Liberal Prime Minister. Asquith promised to give women’s suffrage “most careful and mature consideration,” but never drafted a women’s suffrage bill.  Later that year, as England entered the war, the government passed the Defense of Realm Act (DORA), making it illegal to spread information that might alarm anyone in the general population or in the military.  This act allowed arrests without warrant and the power to search homes.  The National Register Act made it compulsory for all citizens to supply the government with details of their lives and the type of work they did.   ELFS again protested DORA and the registration act, with no effect on government. A 1917 anti-war picket of the Labour Party was met with verbal abuse from Labour Party members.

    All this first-hand negative experience with the government and the Labour Party convinced Pankhurst of the futility of working with them.  Further, the 1917 Russian Revolution had a profound effect on Pankhurst, who, like many socialists in Western European countries, was inspired by the power of the soviets.   By 1918 Pankhurst and the Worker’s Socialist Federation took an anti-electoral, anti-parliamentary, abstentionist position, and opposed leadership of the trade unions, advocating instead a form of soviets, or worker’s committees, to establish workers’ control.   Pankhurst wrote in the Workers’ Dreadnaught, “trade union officialdom is becoming a mere parasite on the workers’ movement.” These positions were held by many Western European socialists, such as Gramsci and Bordiga in Italy, and Herman Gorter and Anton Pannekoek in the Netherlands. This group, supporting workshop committees with control of production and policy, became known as the Council Communists. (5) (6)

    Sylvia Pankhurst’s own vision of worker’s control took the form of “Social Soviets”, a way to integrate feminism and communism, something none of the other Council Communists had considered: “These are the workshop committees of the mothers, for the streets and the houses they live and work in are their workshops.  The women must organize themselves and their families and to help in the general struggle of the working class to conquer the power of government.” (Workers’ Dreadnaught)

    The social soviets were to support daycare centers, better housing, public restaurants, medical care, communal laundries, and equal pay for equal work, all issues which most socialists had ignored. Winslow notes limits to Pankhurst’s vision, in that Sylvia Pankhurst did not grapple with the issue of the sexual division of labor, which was not to be discussed for 40 or 50 more years.  Nevertheless, one can see in the social soviets early intimations of what would become the wages for housework movement, promoted by Selma James and others, in the 1970’s (7).  Pankhurst’s insistence on the importance of women in the working class also prefigures Nancy Fraser’s work on women’s work as part of the creation of surplus value: “Wage labour could not exist in the absence of housework, child-raising, schooling, affective care and a host of other activities which help to produce new generations of workers and replenish existing ones.” (8)

    Lenin strongly disagreed with the anti-parliamentary, abstentionist stance taken by Pankhurst and others.  Pankhurst wrote a letter to Lenin, explaining the British political conditions which made parliamentary activity a poor tactic for British socialists: “The Labour movement in England is being ruined under my eyes by parliamentary and municipal politics…they totally suppress all socialist propaganda in order not to frighten the electors.” (9).  The real work, she said, was amongst rank-and-file workers. (10)  Despite her letter, Lenin categorized Pankhurst and others as “ultra-leftists”.  In Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, Lenin said, with unmistakable condescension, that the ultra-leftists showed a lack of political experience.  The Russians, he said, “who have lived through two great revolutions in the twentieth century are well aware what importance parliamentarism can have and actually does have during a revolutionary period.” This work has become accepted by mainstream and traditional Marxist-Leninists, who have thereby missed the creative and imaginative contributions made by Pankhurst and other council communists.

    At the time there were several responses to Left Wing Communism. In a footnote, Winslow mentions Harry McShane, a Scottish revolutionary, who disagreed, and felt that Lenin relied too much on the position of the British Socialist Party (BSP). “Many of the people in the BSP,”McShane said, “were not very good.”  Winslow also mentions perhaps the most comprehensive response, which came from Herman Gorter, a Dutch communist, who wrote an “Open Letter to Comrade Lenin: A Reply to Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder.” (11) The gist of the counters to Left Wing Communism was that Lenin did not appreciate the significant differences in the historical, social and political conditions which were present in the Western European countries, primarily the historical entrenchment of capitalism, the lack of a large class of mobilized peasantry to support a revolution, and the political bankruptcy of the large trade bureaucracies. Gorter wrote, “You…wish to compel us to use bad weapons here in Western Europe…Where we want to organize the revolution on the shop floor, and on a shop floor basis, you wish to force the miserable Trade Unions on us.” Lenin discounted the work among rank-and-file workers that Pankhurst and others did and failed to recognize, or chose not to recognize, the social forces and actual observations which led to the abstentionist position. He certainly did not  appreciate the power of Sylvia Pankhurst’s concepts of Social Soviets, which was an entirely original approach to revolutionary activity, and was the result of her life’s activities in working class organizing.

    The rest, as they say, is history. Sylvia Pankhurst supported the Worker’s Opposition–the entire manifesto of which was published in the Workers’ Dreadnaught.  Pankhurst was expelled from the British Communist Party in 1921.  But Winslow notes that by 1924, Pankhurst became politically isolated during working-class retreat. Pankhurst remained active in the anti-fascist and anti-colonial movements, she denounced the 1935 Moscow trials, and later opposed Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia.  She supported Haile Selassie and died in 1960 in Addis Ababa.

    Her legacy 

    Winslow’s book is important in its revelation of Pankhurst’s significant contributions to the integration of socialism and feminism using tactics that encouraged the self-activity of working women.  Although Winslow writes that both Pankhurst’s socialism and feminism were unorthodox, “It was more utopian than scientific; she read more Morris than Marx,” still, the book reveals Pankhurst’s independence of thought and creative approach to organizing, and the prescience of many of her ideas.

    Today we are still struggling over many of the issues Sylvia Pankhurst faced. We have not yet satisfactorily resolved the integration of feminism and socialism, or the relation of gender and class. We still aim for a socialism that adequately addresses cultural and social issues beyond merely the economic and political. We are still discussing the relationship of socialism and electoral politics, without any real resolution.  However, from the Sylvia Pankhurst we come to know from Winslow’s book, I can only believe that she would have thrilled to the election of Bernadette Devlin to Parliament in 1969, and in the election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Congress.  Pankhurst’s ideas about “social soviets” can inspire us to look at rank and file organizing in new and creative ways, looking to communities as well as the shop floor.  As we see how people (not necessarily all in unions) are responding to the threats of economic depression and the violation of voting and abortions rights, we can renew and re-evaluate what socialism “from below” may mean in the 21st century.

    Notes

    1. By way of disclaimer, in 1970 I met Barbara Winslow in London, when she was just beginning work on her study of Sylvia Pankhurst.
    2. Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel, Rachel Holmes, Bloomsbury Publishing, Dec. 2020.
    3. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes from the Dreadnaught or Workers’ Dreadnaught are referenced in Winslow’s book. All other unreferenced quotes are also referenced in the book itself.
    4. Pankhurst was a trained and talented artist, and her focus on the working class was also evident in her art, which portrays women workers not as an economic category, a mass, but rather as real women in the course of their daily lives. A quick search on Google reveals some of Pankhurst’s paintings displayed at the Tate.   These watercolor paintings document the working and living conditions of women mill workers, and we can see that Pankhurst’s art  focused on seeing working people as thinking and feeling individuals, showing in their faces the humanity beneath the processes of production.
    5. The worker’s committees and shop floor organizing supported by these council communists bring to mind the Informal Work Groups, experienced and written about by Stan Weir, in Rank and File: Personal Histories by Working Class Organizers, Alice and Staughton Lynd, eds.
    6. Non-Leninist Marxism: Writings on the Worker’s Councils, Red and Black Publishers, St Petersburg, Fla, 2007.
    7. “The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community”, Selma James and Mariarosa Dalla Costs, 1972.
    8. “Behind Marx’s Hidden Abode”, Nancy Fraser, New Left Review, March-April, 2014.
    9. Published in Communist International, 1919)
    10. Interestingly, in the US Eugene Debs took a similar position. In his 1918 Canton Speech he said of electoral politics: “In the Democratic and Republican parties you of the common herd are not expected to think…They do the thinking, and you do the voting.”
    11. Published in Workers’ Dreadnaught, March 12, 1921.
  • Are Tankie Politics Racist?

    Are Tankie Politics Racist?

    On the podcast Where’s My Jetpack?, Ani White and Gayaal Iddamalgoda argue that so-called “tankie” politics, meaning support for “actually-existing socialist” and “anti-imperialist” states, erase struggles in the Global South. White and Iddamalgoda (a unionist and migrant rights advocate) discuss the history of popular movements and uprisings in Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Syria. The discussion took place in January and was recently transcribed by John Smith. -Eds.

     

    Ani White: Kia ora, hello comrades. Welcome to Where’s My Jetpack?!, a politics and pop culture podcast with sci-fi and socialist leanings. I’m Ani White and today we’re interviewing trade unionist, socialist and migrants’ rights advocate Gayaal Iddamalgoda. Earlier [in 2020] we interviewed Gayaal on migrant and refugee rights in the age of Covid and now we’re talking about the Tankie revival and how rubbish it is.

    Welcome to the show.

    Gayaal Iddamalgoda: Kia ora, thank you Ani.

    Ani White: Good to have you. So, to start off a bit of historical context. Ten years ago you could argue Stalinists were irrelevant in the West.

    Gayaal Iddamalgoda: Yes, absolutely. At the time I was in a third-camp International Socialist Organisation and you were in the multi-tendency Workers’ Party, and the leadership of my organisation, the ISO, took great delight in accusing the Workers’ Party and pretty much any radical socialist organisation of being Stalinists and it was very polemical. It was pretty much a mainstay of my experience of radical politics at least in the early times, and at the time of course it didn’t have much substance to it, and it was pretty much just a polemical device to denounce supposedly rival organisations.

    Ani White: Yeah, we sort of had this Maoist lineage but honestly we were probably a lot more Trotskyist. But the two of us, along with a lot of the younger comrades of both organisations, we developed a stronger relationship in spite of the leadership of both organisations. You had this interesting generational split where the leadership were very polemical about each other but the younger comrades developed more of a relationship. At the time I argued Stalinism was irrelevant in the 21st century and that was a pretty common perspective in the Workers’ Party at the time, that Stalinism just wasn’t worth opposing. You know, it was bad but it didn’t really matter that much. But whether or not we were right at the time and I’m not sure about that, whether or not we were right at the time that has changed with this kind of strange neo-Tankie revival through the internet. So, there are a lot more Stalinists around in the movement now than there were about ten years ago. It used to be kind of Joe down the road and his one person Communist Party. That would be the Stalinists, whereas now there’s a lot more young people who actually believe in it. So I kind of joke that this is not the socialist revival we wanted but the socialist revival we deserved.

    The new features of this Stalinist revival are – meme culture and a mingling with strange forms of identity politics, where people argue the only way to be anti-racist is to support states like Iran or what have you. In some ways this revival doesn’t sit well with the history of Stalinism which has been pretty gender normative and, as we’re going to argue, pretty racist. I know this is something the right likes to say but, honestly, a lot of Stalinists wouldn’t feel well in a Stalinist space. Neo-Tankism is just dismissed as just an internet phenomenon and it’s true, there are no mass Stalinist parties in the West, particularly in the Anglosphere. But then the Alt-right were previously just an internet phenomenon as well and internet politics are a part of real world politics and digital media have become the main context for communication. The concept of a Tankie, it’s not actually new, it’s seen as an internet meme but it actually goes back to the crushing of the Hungary and Prague democracy movements by literal Russian tanks. The term Tankie can be found in Communist Party of Great Britain, C.P.G.B., documents from decades ago so it’s not so much new as it’s been revived along with other zombies of the 20th century.

    Tankie, just to define it, refers broadly to supporting so-called actually existing socialist states such as China and also so-called anti-imperialist states like Iran. It’s a kind of degeneration of socialist politics that prioritises solidarity with states over solidarity with people. And the central claim of Tankie politics is it’s the best way of defending socialism in the face of imperialism. It’s probably the most coherent theory or defence they have. In practice that empties out all of the radical content of socialism. So, as seen at the inception of Stalinist politics in the 1930s when Stalin purged, executed or exiled most remaining members of the 1917 Central Committee. So it sort of defends and wins while emptying out all of the radical content of socialism.

    We’re going to be talking more about one of the central claims of contemporary Tankism, which is that it’s the politics of the third world, unlike anarchy or Trotskyism. We argue that’s actually erasing struggles of the majority world. So to go into one example Gayaal’s going to talk about the history of Trotskyism in Sri Lanka.

    Gayaal Iddamalgoda: Yes. You made a very good point Ani. Many Tankies, many socialists, wouldn’t fare well in the so-called actually existing states or the anti-imperialist states that they support. And what I hope to convey through giving a very brief overview of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, which is the first Trotskyist organisation in Sri Lanka – in fact it was the first political party in Sri Lanka – is that when you say things like that you’re implicitly accepting that people of colour, people who are not in the Anglosphere, their version of liberation or their version of human dignity or their version of workers’ struggle should be limited, should be abridged and essentially they should – and this is of course not explicitly stated – but essentially they should accept brutal regimes. They should accept torture. They should accept curtailment of their liberties and freedoms. And they should accept inequality because the best that they can hope for is a supposedly anti-imperialist regime to rule over them. I think hopefully at the end of this show people will be able to consider why that is obviously racist and why, as you said, it actually erases the vibrant struggle of people in the third world, or working class people in the third world I should say more explicitly, because they are every bit as capable of contesting their political, social and economic rights as working class people anywhere else in the world. They should not have to settle for any less than what people would expect in the Anglosphere.

    Just getting into this history of Trotskyism in Sri Lanka – first of all I should say that it’s quite a personally significant history for me. because members of my family have been very conspicuous supporters of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, or the Trotskyist party that was instrumental in the struggle for independence against Imperialist Britain in Sri Lanka. In fact I think I may have told you this Ani. but one of my relatives was a member of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, very prominent, and some reactionaries took revenge upon the family by plastering my great grandparents’ tombs, or I should say tarring, my great grandparents tombs with the symbol of the hammer and sickle. So that tar has been chipped off but if you visit my great grandparents tombs even today you will see the outline of a hammer and sickle, and that is in my mind forever a testament to politically something to be proud of in my family history. With that personal anecdote I’ll get into some of the actual details of the Trotskyist movement in Sri Lanka.

    As I said, Trotskyism in Sri Lanka started in the ’30s and in the ’40s and it had its formation during the anti-imperialist struggle of the Sri Lankan working class and the attempts of the Sri Lankan working class to rid themselves of colonial Britain. If you know anything about Sri Lankan politics today, what should stick out to anyone who studies the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, is the complete rejection, at least in the early days, of communal and ethnic chauvinism. This was an organisation of workers that was committed to uniting Tamil, Sinhalese and migrant Tamil workers in the struggle against imperialism. They really earned their stripes from the early ’30s onwards when they were organising the Lanka tea estate workers – the name of the union was the Lanka Estate Workers’ Union – in a series of mass strikes in the ’30s and ’40s that were designed to break the back of the colonial economy. The interesting thing about the workers in those tea plantations was they were overwhelmingly migrant origin Tamil workers, and the struggles that the Lanka Sama Samaja Party was leading them to were working class struggles that prioritised the interests of working class people, regardless of whether they were Sinhalese or Tamil. There was a famous strike in 1933, one of the first strikes that they organised. One of the largest spinning mills in Sri Lanka at the time, so mostly women, two-thirds of the workers, 1,500 workers, two-thirds of them were Tamils, one-third of them were Sinhalese. The Lanka Sama Samaja Party lead an extremely high-profile and successful strike, one of the earliest strikes. So this ethnic solidarity has always been a hallmark of genuine workers struggle in Sri Lanka.

    Another hallmark of the struggle lead by the Lanka Sama Samaja Party was staunch anti-imperialism. The 1930s and 1940s was actually a time when many communist parties around the world were telling workers to prioritise the Allied struggle against Germany and the Axis Powers and to put aside the more immediate issues with the capitalist, imperialist regimes that they lived under. But the Sri Lankan Trotskyists made a very clear stance that they would not prioritise the interests of Britain over the interests of Sri Lankan workers, and as far as they were concerned Sri Lanka was an occupied state, was an occupied nation. The Sinhalese and Tamil workers were in no way going to put their struggle for independence on hold while Britain pursued its war. This was a very radical and very staunch anti-imperialist stance that they took. They of course stood very firmly against fascism but they were also very particular to say that the Sri Lankan workers were an oppressed people and they could not be called upon to shed blood for the benefit of their imperialist overlords.

    So because of this Sri Lanka has a very interesting history during World War II. Sri Lanka was, I understand, the only part of the commonwealth where rationing wasn’t vigorously imposed, because the agitation of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party was such that the British imperialists were afraid to do anything to upset the Sri Lankan populous; the Sri Lankan working class. A beautiful illustration of the power that these Trotskyists were able to harness in the working class in Sri Lanka: the only troop mutiny on the Allied side during World War II were a group of Sri Lankan workers who were deployed – not workers, I should say soldiers. There was very little, there was no conscription during World War II and there was a small contingent of Sri Lankan soldiers sent to the Cocos Islands in Australia, and they mutinied and attempted to dubiously hand over the island to Japanese Imperialist powers. But it was certainly those soldiers who cited the Lanka Sama Samaja Party as the reason for their refusal to cooperate with the imperialist agendas. So I think that’s another hallmark of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party.

    After the 1947 general election, so after Sri Lanka attained independence there was a general election, and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party was in fact the main opposition party and this was a tremendous political gain for the Sri Lankan working class, both Sinhalese and Tamil. Now the thing about Sri Lanka, as you might know, the British when they left the country they made sure that as much power remained in the hands of Anglicised Sinhalese and Tamil elites. These elites were desperately trying to appeal to ethnic Sinhalese elites, in particular desperately trying to appeal to ethnic chauvinism in order to relate to the people they were ruling. Like, ‘we’re wealthy and we run everything but at least we’re Sinhalese’ essentially. The tried and true strategy of using racism to divide the working class. But the Lanka Sama Samaja Party was a powerful and effective counter to that and in the ’50s and ’60s they continued with wave after wave of strike. Again very, very successfully organising Tamil workers and Sinhalese workers together. I think that’s essentially what the reactionary forces in Sri Lankan politics started to target; was this unity. Their game was to sow ethnic hatred and one of the main things they did was they passed the act of constitution in 1948. This ostensibly was to establish a constitution of an independent Sri Lanka, or Ceylon as it was called then. But the effect of it was to disenfranchise thousands and thousands of Tamil workers who had lived in Sri Lanka for generations, and who worked on those plantations that the Lanka Sama Samaja Party organised. It was an attempt to break the back of the working class struggle, or the most radical section of the working class, that was based on these colonial plantations. The other thing that happened was in 1956 the Sinhalese chauvinists in power, they passed the Sinhala Only Act which made Sinhalese the only official language in Sri Lanka and essentially targeted, at that time, 30% of the population that spoke Tamil and marginalised them. It was very much calculated to destroy that unity of the working class that the Lanka Sama Samaja Party was able to command. In fact they came out staunchly and strongly in opposition to that. There was a famous speech given by a Sri Lankan Trotskyist, [Colvin R. de Silva] – it’s quite a long speech, so I won’t read out the whole thing – but he said:

    “Do we want one Ceylon or do we want two? And above all, do we want an independent Ceylon which must necessarily be united and single and single Ceylon, or two bleeding halves of Ceylon which can be gobbled up by every ravaging imperialist monster that may happen to range the Indian ocean?”

    So, in no uncertain terms this organisation was able to call out communal politics and say that it was detrimental to the working class. I think this is the thing Tankies should understand – Brown people, people in the third world, they are able to figure out what’s best for them. Their political traditions are rich, they’re vibrant, their traditions of struggle are rich and vibrant, they are contested spaces, right? So I think it’s a huge mistake to look at them and say, ‘no, all that they’re fit for is repression, ethnic chauvinism and perhaps, say, a broadly anti-imperialist state to rule over them.’ I think that’s, at the very least, extremely very narrow minded. I think the Sri Lankan Trotskyists are an object lesson of how Stalinism and statism isn’t the organic choice of the working class in the third world. It doesn’t have to be. It isn’t. And, of course, these other traditions have been stifled, have been attacked and stifled. I think genuine solidarity with workers in the third world would mean that we should reach out to those other traditions, understand those traditions and understand the nuances instead of making assumptions about what’s good for workers in the third world.

    For someone from my generation of Sri Lankan people, the idea that there was a time when that kind of solidarity between Sinhalese and Tamil workers existed just seems so foreign, so alien and so distant. But it did exist and it was destroyed by reactionary intervention. I think that’s something that is a real testament to the achievement of the Trotskyists in Sri Lanka and even today because of their struggle against British imperialism, Sri Lanka is officially called the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. That’s what it’s called on paper. Obviously it’s not a democratic socialist republic but because of the tremendous hand that Trotskyists had in founding independent Sri Lanka that’s what it’s called. Until this day Sri Lanka has free education all the way up to university, it has free healthcare, it has one of the highest literacy rates in the world. Because it was supposedly founded on democratic socialist values. That is owed to the Sri Lankan Trotskyists and something that Sri Lankan Trotskyists should be very proud of.

    Ani White: Thanks for that Gayaal, that was very informative and interesting. I mean, I have read bits and pieces but that laid it out and covered a lot of stuff that I wasn’t aware of. I understand they made an electoral alliance that didn’t work out. Do you have any comments on that?

    Gayaal Iddamalgoda: This is in the ’70s. They made an electoral alliance, I believe, with the S.L.F.P. (Sri Lanka Freedom Party) which had very strong reactionary elements. And also in the ’70s they had a lot of splits within the Trotskyist communist movement. Many of them became associated with Moscow and with Stalinism, right? And I think those splits were really detrimental. But of course, that’s not organic, that was an intervention from the outside. It wasn’t an organic development within the class politics of Sri Lanka. In the 1970s as a result of those splits, I would say, and also as a result of them trying to find an accommodation with some of these chauvinist bourgeois parties, they lost all their seats. So in the general election which I think was in 1974, they essentially lost all of their seats, and ever since they haven’t been able to regain because the communalist politics of the bourgeoisie gained greater and greater ascendancy.

    Ani White: Yeah, and the ’70s was a pretty bad time for a lot of the left internationally. Also, I’ve had some interest in Fourth International which backed that party and part of their account is about the collapse of that alliance. But certainly, Stalinist parties made those sort of alliances very early on, like right from the ’30s. I mean, we can probably grant that Sri Lanka was a relatively unusual case in terms of the scale of the Trotskyist movement. In a lot of cases, either in the West or in the majority world, Stalinist parties were the largest, and the Trotskyist parties began as a breakaway from that. So it’s hard to re-establish the same kind of mass base that Stalinists had at that time which they ultimately squandered. But even if we acknowledge that Stalinist parties have generally been the largest historically, that certainly doesn’t mean they’re the only radical currents in the majority world and making that claim, as we’ve said, it homogenises majority world struggle. The way that it’s kind of “one socialism for us, the core countries, and another socialism for people in the majority world”, that forms of oppression we wouldn’t accept here ‘we’ can accept there. When I say ‘we’ I am referring to Tankies.

    Another reason Trotskyists and anarchists couldn’t get a foothold is that Stalinists outright massacred them in a lot of cases. So it can be hard-

    Gayaal Iddamalgoda: Absolutely. Like in Vietnam, for example.

    Ani White: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Also in parts of Latin America; Peru, and all of that.

    Gayaal Iddamalgoda: Mmm.

    Ani White: Another country whose radical history is erased by these kind of Stalinist claims is the Philippines, where really the international voice of the left for the Philippines is generally the Communist Party. Even though that’s far from the only current of radical, progressive, or socialist politics in the Philippines – and it’s certainly true that the Communist Party of the Philippines, the C.P.P., has had a significant impact on Filipino radical history – but to claim that Maoism is the radical current of the Philippines, sort of the only radical current, and that other currents are just Trotskyism or are just a foreign imposition, they actually erase the work of many Philippino activists and organisers. As I’m going to talk about, I paid a visit to the Philippines for a socialist seminar where I learnt about some amazing work that people were doing who were from a breakaway group from the C.P.P.. The C.P.P. has, as I said, a near-monopoly on recent accounts, Western Communist accounts of the Philippines, even though there are other groups which have broken with it, or challenged it, or were never aligned with it who are rarely acknowledged in English-language accounts.

    This gets particularly problematic when you have something like the C.P.P. endorsing a fascist like Duterte and having their international mouthpieces echo that and then six months later claim it never happened. So, for a concrete account of the C.P.P.’s relationship with Duterte I’d recommend the work of Joseph Scalice. We’ll link a YouTube lecture by him in the description. One thing I’ve found is it’s pretty much gaslighting. So people will claim that they never supported Duterte, that it’s slander, and you can go back and find explicitly they’re campaigning for Duterte to be elected. They’re at rallies alongside him but now there reaches a point of denial where you do genuinely wonder if you’re crazy or you’re exaggerating. And the useful thing about Scalice’s work is he actually documents the atlliance. So it’s like, ‘oh yeah that did actually happen, they were actually supporting Duterte.’

    One of the reasons that the anti-imperialists initially supported Duterte was because he made gestures towards opposing the U.S. Military, which don’t seem to have really followed through. But opposing the U.S. doesn’t have to mean supporting terrible figures like Duterte or Putin, Xi Jinping or Assad and there’s another aspect to it which I can understand, which is that the C.P.P. was in peace negotiations with Duterte. But, you know, you don’t actually have to campaign for the person you’re in peace negotiations with – that’s not really how that works. It was a decision they made to support him that goes beyond being in peace negotiations. There’s a lot of peace negotiations where the two sides will certainly not endorse the other side. But often when you point out the counter-revolutionary violence of these various strongman figures – so less so Duterte now because it’s been acknowledged that he’s terrible – but say with Xi Jinping or Assad, people respond that the U.S. does bad things. To which we kind of respond, ‘well, yeah, obviously the U.S. does bad things, U.S. imperialism is bad.’ So we have protested outside the Russian embassy, for example, and been asked ‘why aren’t you protesting outside the U.S. embassy’ and we have. So you can oppose the U.S. and also oppose Duterte when he makes moves towards challenging them and I think that’s a situation of whoever wins, we lose. So rather than supporting geopolitical camps, we support democracy movements regardless of what side of geopolitical line they’re on.

    So getting back to the Philippines – that was a bit of a tangent – but in June 2019 I visited the Philippines for the Asia Pacific Regional Seminar of the International Institute for Research in Education, or IIRE, an organisation which is broadly affiliated with the [Fourth] International and the Revolutionary Worker’s Party of Mindanao, RPM-M. As I’ve mentioned on the podcast before, this seminar was easily the most stimulating socialist educational event I’ve ever attended, and I’ve attended quite a lot. With comrades from Fourth International sections or semi-affiliated organisations, because some are directly in the Fourth International and some are sort of at arms length. But with comrades from every continent but Antarctica really. So you had comrades from Brazil, from Pakistan, from Japan and sharing those experiences and ideas was very stimulating and the style of education was genuinely participatory. So, for example, you could have people discussing the different situations for gender and sexuality struggles in different countries where, for example, in the Philippines, and this does actually include the Communist Party but also other sections of the left have been pretty good in terms of LGBT struggles, so they were conducting gay marriages before the state was. Whereas Pakistan, there were comrades there who were saying, ‘we want to support these struggles but we don’t really know about them’.

    Comrades in the Philippines seminar did emphasise generally in my experience, that for the RPM-M, the political is primary over the military struggle, whereas for the CPP, the military is primary over the political. So for the CPP it’s primarily a guerilla war and that is how they conceive of their strategy. Whereas for the Mindanao section, primary is the struggle around issues like peasants’ rights, workers’ rights, LGBT rights and their military section is only used for self-defence. So it’s only used to defend its section and not as their sort of primary, strategic orientation.

    For the remainder I’m going to quote another piece in-full, outlining the history of the RPM-M and as usual you can find a link to the full article in the description:

    “A country plundered of its natural resources, its tropical forests decimated: simmering armed conflicts: a corrupt state, carrying a debt of billions, incapable and unwilling to ease the daily suffering and hunger of its citizens: millions forced to work abroad…The Philippines is a textbook example of the effects of neoliberal globalization.

    For years the Revolutionary Workers Party of Mindanao (RPM-M) and its predecessors have been trying to organise the poor and oppressed of Mindanao, the large island in the south of the Philippines archipelago, to struggle for change. The party, since 2003 a section of the Fourth International, has its roots in the Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).

    In the 1970s and 1980s the CPP and its allies in the National-Democratic movement had complete hegemony over the left in the Philippines. The fall of the corrupt regime of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, however, turned out to be a defeat in victory for the CPP. The organisation that had made such great sacrifices to wear down the dictatorship found itself isolated from the mass movement because of its insistence on the primary role of armed struggle in the countryside and the boycott of elections.”

    Ani White: Which by the way – a side note – [the CPP have] since reversed that position; they do participate in elections now without at any point saying they were wrong. So they purged people for advocating for a position and then have since adopted that perspective which is very typical Stalinist party stuff.

    But returning to the article:

    “Members of the CCP or “the old party”, as it is referred to by former members, still cling to the interpretation of Maoism it started out with in the 1960s. For them the current regime of president…”

    Ani White: …okay, this is the previous president…

    “…[Gloria Macapagal] Arroyo is not really different from that of Marcos. They see the country as still “semi-feudal and semi-colonial”.

    Certainly the official democracy is a sham. Since 2001 more than 1,000 social justice and human rights activists have been murdered or “disappeared”. Nobody has been convicted for these crimes, even though it is an open secret that the murderers and torturers are to be found in the military, the police and the many private armies.

    At least after the monopoly on power by Marcos and his cronies competition between factions of the ruling elite has opened up some political space, something the National-Democrats also implicitly admit by participating in the elections with their own electoral formations. Since the fall of Marcos, the Philippines has become more and more integrated into the global economy. Big landlords are still powerful but the export of raw materials and cheap labour have become more important and the role of capital in agriculture has increased. A growing part of the population lives in the cities.

    The RPM-M and its predecessors had been in contact with the Fourth International since the 1990s, trying to orient themselves in the new situation. Harry Tubongbanwa, once a CPP leader in Mindanao and now a leading RPM-M activist, explains: ‘We consider our struggle to be a fight against imperialism that must be part of an international struggle of progressive and socialist organisations’. His party sees a need to fight for basic democratic fights and now gives more attention to legal mass campaigns…

    For the RPM-M democracy and self-determination are integral parts of the struggle for revolutionary change. Mass movements are the key: arms are necessary to protect movements and activists but do not guarantee victory.

    Members of the party’s armed wing, the Revolutionary Peoples’ Army, secure party gatherings in the mountains of Mindanao and protect villages sympathetic to the party from criminals and private armies. Other tasks involve training self-defence groups of indigenous people that resist the destruction of their native lands by mining companies, and also helping peasants with harvesting and planting.

    In 2005 the RPM-M negotiated a ceasefire with the national government. In return the party demanded that the government install running water and electricity for dozens of isolated, impoverished villages in Mindanao. …

    Tragically, the most recent clashes involving RPA fighters were with the New People’s Army of the CPP. The CPP has denounced every left group that does not follow the National-Democratic framework as traitors and counter-revolutionaries. Numerous left-wing activists, including several RPM-M members, have been murdered by the Maoists. …

    Mindanao is a troubled part of the country. Since the 1970s, the national army has been fighting the CPP and also separatist Islamic movements, a conflict that sometimes became a full-scale civil war. Anti-war campaigning and relief work for the war-victims are priorities in for socialists in Mindanao. Their work shows a very practical interpretation of anti-imperialism and the struggle against poverty, and foreign and Filipino capital.

    The RPM-M is now a growing organisation of some 2,500 members and for the first time is expanding its work beyond Mindanao, all the time undergoing deep changes. For example women’s liberation is an integral element in all the work and the party has organised a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender group.”

    Ani White: So, if you want to learn more about the Philippines section of the Fourth International we’ll link their English language website in the description. But again, groups like the RPM-M are erased when people claim that Maoism is the radical politics of the third world or that other currents are non-existent or somehow imposed. The irony is that the Fourth International is often treated as a joke because its Western sections are small, but their more significant sections in the majority world have been forgotten and ignored.

    Gayaal Iddamalgoda: It’s really interesting, Ani, some of the things that you mentioned in your spiel about the Philippines. I think the issue with Tankism and with Stalinism is a rejection of genuine internationalism. and I think replacing genuine internationalism or international workers’ struggle with this dogmatic idea that every society or every country has a form of socialism that’s tailor-made for it or a form of anti-imperialism that’s tailor-made for it, for its organic qualities of the people who live there, which is all completely reductionist and essentialist nonsense. The way this plays out can be quite dangerous, that’s the thing. When you do see movements or people in the majority world contesting their rights and claiming that they don’t want to live under any form of oppression, functioning as the revolutionary class that they are, many Tankies, because of their dogmatic position about anti-imperialism or statism, they’ll actually aggressively oppose those movements. They will not see them for what they are; which is the natural resistance of the mass of the working class.

    I think in Wellington we have had some issues with some Tankies or one Tankie in particular who was very, very pro-China and believed that that was the genuinely socialist position. In New Zealand this person would obviously support all sorts of progressive politics positions; on gender equality, on queer activism, all that kind of thing. But when it came to activists in China contesting a regime that denies them these things, they immediately took the side of the repressive regime because dogmatically China is an anti-imperialist so-called “existing socialist state”. This person, during the Hong Kong protests, actually surveilled, took pictures of, Hong Kong protesters, students from Hong Kong who are protesting in New Zealand and actually, presumably handed them over to the Chinese embassy here. This is not only completely misguided, it is actually dangerous. You have someone here who is so committed to this position that China is an actually-existing socialist state and that has to be protected at all costs, even from its own working class, that they’re actually willing to expose the families of these students who are protesting to danger.

    Ani White: I saw people respond to this person as a LARPer and that was their response to this whole situation, and say that we shouldn’t care about it, which I think was pretty appalling. Because whether or not they were actually acting as a cop – in other words, whether or not they actually handed those pictures over – it was obviously an intimidation tactic and, as you say, playing on people’s fears of things happening to their family or being deported or what have you. This is behaving as a cop, essentially, so that’s the point where Tankism goes from LARPing into being a cop, really.

    Gayaal Iddamalgoda: It’s not LARPing at all. If only it was that innocuous. It’s extremely dangerous and completely disconnected from a genuine perspective on class struggle. I think you mentioned also in what you were saying earlier about Assadism. Again I see a lot of parallels between what people say about Sri Lanka and the kind of society that Sri Lanka is; mired in ethnic conflict and in need of the strong man to keep all of these crazy people in the hot place together – people on the left say that about Assad. They say, ‘well, yes, there is sectarianism and yes, he does stoke some of the worst elements of sectarianism in society but you know, he’s all they have. That’s all that we have to principally support him at all costs.’ That is complete rubbish and is frankly insulting to the Syrian people who have expressed their desire for freedom in very unequivocal ways. They want to live in a society that is not a dictatorship. They want to live in a democracy where everyone is equal. These currents exist, but Tankies are incapable of actually recognising these currents for what they are because of their dogmatic stance. I think, also, this has always been a problem with Stalinism. As you said, the origin of the word Tankie – people who supported the crushing of pro-democracy activism in Hungary with tanks were call Tankies. Well nowadays you have Tankies doing such absurd, abhorrent things as denying the genocide and the ethnic cleansing of the Uighurs in East Turkmenistan by the Chinese state. This is surely in our generation one of the most tragic and despicable positions that the radical left could take. Ignoring the call for Uighur self-determination and actually completely denying what is actually happening to this group in China. We’re not going to be taken seriously on the radical left if this is the kind of thing that is expressed. I think the radical left has a strong duty to call it out and to actually acknowledge the oppression that’s going on and show solidarity with oppressed people everywhere.

    Ani White: Yeah, with the Uighur struggle as well as outright denial, you also see arguments that would not be accepted when it comes to oppression in the West. So you see people saying, ‘this is radical Islamic terrorists’, and that makes it okay to police an entire community. Certainly for these people and correctly, it would not be accepted if it was the Australian or the U.S. state saying that, ‘well, because there are radical Muslims therefore criminalising an entire community is acceptable’. I like to say: ‘Fascists are consistently reactionary. Tankies are inconsistently reactionary’. They’re reactionary on some questions; usually when it comes to the third world or anything seen to oppose the U.S. and are not so reactionary when it comes to their own struggles essentially.

    Tankies oppose prisons in the West but support them in China. They accuse people of being cops when they act like cops. They accuse people of racism while erasing the struggles of actual people of colour and one of the claims of Tankies is that criticism of the Chinese state is Orientalist or Sinophobic. Granted, there is a history of Sinophobia and Yellow Peril discourse in Australasia and elsewhere. We’ve recently seen this bizarre war between Australia and China, where my take on it is ‘whoever wins, we lose’. But the solution is a class line – so it’s not romanticising the Chinese state as a way of countering Sinophobia. So, in the case of China we back Chinese workers, not the Chinese state or capital – just as we would anywhere. So, tens of thousands of Chinese workers have gone on strike in recent years. According to China Labour Bulletin strikes increased 13 fold over five years – so that’s where our sympathy lies. It’s not Orientalist to support the same struggles internationally as we would support here.

    Recently we’ve seen drum-beating from the Australia and U.S. governments against China. Neither side supports democracy or self-determination. So another way to put this is, neither Washington nor Beijing but international socialism.

    I’m sure this line of criticism, as we’ve found often in New Zealand and you see it on social media, it’ll upset not just Tankies but those who are obsessed with left unity and say, ‘we disagree with the Tankies but you can’t criticise them’. But unity needs a principled basis, it needs a common goal and I’m not sure I share a common goal with those who support capital and state against workers. So with this critique in mind, what is to be done?

    Gayaal Iddamalgoda: I’ll put it this way. It’s not Sinophobic to support workers in China who are joining trade unions or workers in China who are taking to the streets to demand the rights and freedoms that workers in Australia and New Zealand have and have fought for. That is not Sinophobia. It’s Sinophobic to say that these people need to accept anything less, because they live in China or because they’re of Chinese origin. That’s the issue, that’s where the racism lies. As you said very eloquently, we would not tolerate the kind of repression that the Chinese government metes out to people living in China if it were meted out against the working class in Australia or New Zealand or the U.K. or America. I think that’s the simple point and if you realise that, we can begin to built solidarity with genuine workers’ movements around the world. This is based on internationalism; the understanding that the workers’ struggle is an international struggle. It is a struggle of solidarity between workers in every state and every country. On that basis, every socialist on a principled political basis should support democracy movements everywhere, should support anti-racism everywhere and should celebrate it, and support and reach out to workers self-organisations, instead of fetishising states and leaders.

    I think if you actually look at the history of class struggle in the third world without taking a reductionist and essentialist view – which is Orientalist, right? That is the Orientalist thing to do – if you actually look at them you will see that they are capable, they are more than capable of producing their own organic struggles and of pursuing their rights fully as working class people. Organic leaders may emerge from time to time, but as is always the case, leaders should be accountable to the class that elevates them. They should be accountable to the working class and the movement of the working class is what must always come first. This is true anywhere, this is true in the West, this is true in Russia, this is true in Australia, it’s true in New Zealand, it’s true in China, it’s true in Sri Lanka. And I think if anyone wants to delve into this a bit more; it’s fascinating. The history of the majority world struggles is truly fascinating. I’ve spoken a little bit about Sri Lanka, but on Sri Lanka alone there’s huge amounts of information out there about the Sri Lankan Trotskyists and Sri Lankan socialism in general. I would encourage anyone to do their own study into it. I promise you you won’t find it boring at all.

    Ani White: A key recent example of this struggle for self-determination is the transnational uprising of 2011 across the Middle East and North Africa, and even inspiring the Occupy movement in the imperialist core, as well as obviously Indignados in Spain. The legacy of 2011 is a living legacy and it will keep reverberating the way 1917 or 1968 do. And again. the fight for democracy is fundamental and it’s an inspiring moment when it breaks out after decades of repression and passivity. Yet Tankies choose what struggles they’ll support based on geo-political camps, on what’s supposedly bad for the U.S. and good for Russia or China, rather than paying attention to struggles on the ground. So one way I put it is – solidarity with people, not with states. The Syrian revolution is a key example of this sort of betrayal. The Communist Party in Syria supported the dictator Assad, against the popular uprising and Tankies internationally have echoed that perspective. This was really a struggle for democracy and if you look into material on the outbreak of 2011, it was non-sectarian, it was democratic, it crossed different communities. Unfortunately, since then it’s kind of been polarised where it’s seen as a Sunni struggle and not as an Alawi struggle or a struggle of minorities or Christians or Shiites. But if you look at 2011 they had slogans like, ‘Sunis and Alawis are one’ and ‘Syria is One’. It was an anti-sectarian and democratic uprising, and one of the real victories of the Assad regime has been to essentially turn it into a sectarian struggle. So they released Salafists from prison at the same time as they were imprisoning democracy activists, for example. The fact that it’s now perceived as a struggle between Assad and ISIS, when ISIS only entered the struggle a few years later in 2014, as really an occupying force coming from Iraq, the fact that it’s now seen as a struggle between Assad and ISIS, I think in itself is a real victory for Assad. That the democratic nature of the 2011 uprising has been completely forgotten and erased, and I really think we need to bring up that history and remind people of it.

    One claim we hear whenever that perspective is advanced – really whenever a non-Tankie perspective is advanced on these Christians  – is that international politics shouldn’t matter for us in places like New Zealand. But this is messed up on many levels. In the case of the Syrian struggle, the Syrian diaspora is everywhere, it’s the largest refugee community in a generation, at least. So it affects everyone. The idea that we would say that the struggles of the largest refugee community in the world don’t really matter, because if we talk about them we might divide the left, I just think really shows poor priorities. We have Russian embassies on the soil of most countries, just like we have U.S. embassies. International politics are interconnected. There’s a claim some people make that ‘the left doesn’t matter so it has no international influence’. For one thing, that doesn’t mean we can’t show practical solidarity. For example, there’s a radio channel, Radio Fresh in Idlib. It’s a revolutionary radio station, it opposes the Assad regime, but they’ve also been attacked by some of the Islamists for having women as hosts. So they’re a principled democratic group and there was a fund raising campaign for that. You wouldn’t get support for that from a lot of the left groups because of the position on Syria. The point is, even when we’re small we can show practical solidarity with something like that, where you can donate or you can promote it. If we ever aim to be relevant, if we’re not aiming to just be a small milieu of students or what have you, then we’re kind of going to have to work these questions out. You have people who talk of developing a mass socialist party without taking any positions on international questions. which is kind of a nonsense. Ultimately this anti-internationalism, the line that ‘international questions don’t matter and don’t need to be debated’, it’s an unprincipled talking point masking either terrible politics, or fetish for unity for the sake of unity rather than unity for a common goal. And as we’ve said, it’s also just denying and erasing actual struggles in the majority world.

    We can learn a lot from these recent, living revolutions. You see it once you delve into the history, that’s absolutely true but even just delving into what’s easily available on struggles in the last few years can be fascinating and you see a lot of leftists doing that, not learning about something like Syria. So we don’t just learn from Russia in 1917, we can learn from Syria 2011. Sure, not all of the lessons from the Syrian Revolution are positive. For example, we have to reckon with the sectarian hijacking, but that’s equally true of Russia 1917 or any other real revolution – there are positive lessons and negative lessons of any revolution. There are tensions and contradictions in any revolution. But in my view if you are a radical, progressive, leftist, whatever you want to call yourself, socialist, you should be reading the work of Syrian revolutionaries in particular in this context, because I think that’s some really important work.

    So in that vein I’m just going to suggest a short reading list, so three essential texts on the Syrian revolution because obviously I barely scratched the surface and there’s really a lot that people should know about that struggle. There’s a book called Burning County: Syrians in Revolution and War by Leila Al-Shami and Robin Yassin-Kassab. This book is based on extensive interviews with Syrian revolutionaries and it offers a sort of useful, on-the-ground narrative of the various stages of the conflict.

    Another one, The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy, which is by Yassin Al-Haj Saleh. Whereas Burning Country operates at the ground-level with these interviews, The Impossible Revolution offers more of a macro level analysis. It’s a collection of essays by Yassin Al-Haj Saleh, starting in 2011 during the revolution and with essays through to 2014. Saleh is an intellectual who was imprisoned by the Assad regime for ten years, for his membership in a Communist Party breakaway which emphasised the struggle for democracy. Nowadays he’s known as the conscience of the revolution. These essays go into depth on the class character of Syrian society; they have a kind of breakdown of the classes in Syrian society, which is honestly much more perceptive than a lot of left writing I’ve read in some time, in terms of actually concretely trying to understand how class works in a given society. It talks about the basis of the revolution; so one of his arguments is that two of the key elements were the dispossessed Sunni majority but also the urban intellectuals. But he goes into various aspects of this. He also goes into the degeneration into sectarianism. The last chapter is about the most insightful thing I’ve read on sectarianism, where he talks about it as a kind of Islamic nihilism, and that as you come to see the world as essentially corrupted, this nihilism is a withdrawal from the world. It’s really something that’s happened in a lot of places that have just been demolished, whether it’s by U.S. bombs or in this case primarily by Assad and Russia’s bombs. In any case, there’s a kind of traumatised withdrawal from the world which is associated with this kind of Islamic nihilism. So, yeah that’s a book that’s very much worth reading and very insightful.

    There’s a shorter article that was put up by Spectre magazine and also associated with the alliance of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) socialists. This was written by Frieda Afary and Lara al-Kateb and it is called ‘What is Holding Back the Formation of a Global Prison Abolitionist Movement to Fight COVID-19 and Capitalism?’ So, quote:

    “In the Middle East and North Africa region, Syria has the highest number of political prisoners with roughly 100,000 people. A letter signed by 43 human rights groups calls for the immediate release of all prisoners from detention centres and jails and prisons inside Syria. …

    [T]here is a tendency among some on the global left to ignore or defend authoritarian rulers who claim to be against US imperialism. This selective anti-imperialism refuses to defend political prisoners in countries such as Syria, Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua even if they oppose all imperialist powers and religious fundamentalism. Of the over 100,000 political prisoners in the brutal Assad regime’s dungeons, the majority are not jihadists – they are youth, Kurdish, labour, and feminist activists who dared to participate in the uprising against the Assad regime in 2011 and after. The millions of Syrian refugees who are being bombed by the Assad regime and their Russia and Iranian allies suffer in refugee camps in the region.”

    Ani White: So again, it’s this opposing prisons in the minority world or the West, and supporting or denying the existence of prisons in the majority world. As I say, I think there’s a lot to learn from the Syrian revolution,, and a lot that we’ll be learning for a long time, unless people shut their minds off on the basis that Assad is an opponent of U.S. imperialism. Which he really isn’t. One thing I found really funny was a Trotskyist who was saying, ‘I celebrate every time Assad’s soldiers kill U.S. soldiers’ and the only possible response was ‘they’re not doing that.’ Like, there is not a ground war between Assad and the U.S.. So this was a fiction that he had in mind. Maybe a slogan borrowed from Vietnam or something, and he’d obviously just not paid attention to the basics of the actual situation. So yeah, if you’ve got those kind of mental blockers you’re obviously not going to learn.

    Are there any other points you want to make?

    Gayaal Iddamalgoda: No, that’s a really brilliant reading list, Ani. I think we have, as you said, a lot to learn from the 2011 Arab Spring because it was an object lesson as to why the politics of Stalinists is wrong when it’s applied to the third world. It was an object lesson in how the working class in the Middle East, which has constantly been maligned in the West as being backward, sectarian, unable to understand democracy, when they came out en masse and said things like, ‘Sunnis and Alawis are one’, ‘Copts and Muslims are one’ in Egypt. These were the slogans that were coming organically from the working class, and I think it is really sad if people cannot see the class for what it is and for what it’s capable of. So I think socialists need to understand and need to keep their focus on class struggle and not give in to narrow-minded and racist dogmas.

    Ani White: Yeah, ultimately it comes down to a lack of faith in the class and sort of giving up on that and saying, ‘states are the safeguard’. The two of us were involved in Syria solidarity organising in Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington, and we organised, for example, a demonstration at the Russian embassy. You had the Syrian community coming out and young men took over the mic and were chanting Syrian Arabic chants and it was really nice to just let these young Syrian men take over the event and graffiti the Russian embassy and everything. We were criticised for protesting outside the Russian embassy and as mentioned earlier, it was like, ‘why don’t you protest outside the U.S. embassy?’ To which the response is, ‘we have, many times.’ It’s a matter of consistent solidarity, that we stand with oppressed and exploited people everywhere.

    Thanks for coming on the show Gayaal.

    Gayaal Iddamalgoda: Thank you, Ani. It’s been a real pleasure.

    Ani White: And solidarity, comrades. Goodnight and good luck.

  • Protests Against Biden’s Immigration Policy and Treatment of Haitians

    Protests Against Biden’s Immigration Policy and Treatment of Haitians

    This article was written for L’Anticapitaliste, the weekly newspaper of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) of France.

    Photographs and videos of U.S. Border Patrol agents using their horses and what appeared to be whips against would-be Haitian immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border led last week to outrage, widespread condemnation, and to protests against President Joseph Biden, including from leaders of his own Democratic Party who accuse the administration of inhumane and racist policies. There had already been protests against Biden keeping in place a Trump era Rule 42 that used COVID as an excuse for denying entry to asylum seekers, but the scenes of black migrants held in chaotic, dangerous, and filthy conditions in Del Rio, Texas and then of Border Patrol agents riding their horses into the migrants, their reins looking like whips, sparked indignation. The whip is an America symbol of the slavery in which Black Americans were once held.

    The Haitian migrant situation is extraordinary. Haiti, already the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere has recently suffered the assassination of its president, a powerful tropical storm that left a wake of destruction, and a 7.2-magnitude earthquake that added to the disaster. Thousands have sought refuge in other countries. Yet the United States, in violation of its own laws and of international agreements on asylum, used former President Donald Trump’s Rule 42 to exclude the Haitians because of the COVID crisis in the United States and then deported them back to Haiti where COVID is rampant and the vaccination rate low.

    Then last week suddenly 15,000 Haitians appeared at the sister cities of Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, Mexico and Del Rio, Texas. Living in squalid conditions under a highway bridge in Mexico, the Haitians attempted to cross into the United States where Border Patrol agents stopped them.

    The Biden administration’s subsequent handling of the Haitians in Del Rio seems arbitrary. Thousands were put on planes and flown back to Haiti, thousands were admitted into the United States temporarily, and others remain in Mexico.

    Biden ran for president as the Black community’s candidate and as a proponent of immigration reform. The fact that the Haitians are Black migrants, not Latinos, has shifted the national debate and divided Biden’s party.

    Senate Majority leader Charles Schumer stated, “I urge President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas to immediately put a stop to these expulsions and to end this Title 42 policy at our southern border. We cannot continue these hateful and xenophobic Trump policies that disregard our refugee laws. We must allow asylum seekers to present their claims at our ports of entry and be afforded due process.” A U.S. Federal Court in fact declared Rule 42 illegal at about the same time.

    The Congressional Black Caucus met with White House officials to express their concern. Representative Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, called on the administration to stop deportation flights to Haiti.

    Derrick Johnson, president of the National Association for the Advancement Colored People, the historic black organization, issued a statement reading, “This cruelty is utterly sickening. The events that took place today are all too familiar to those that are aware of America’s ugly history. The actions we witnessed today were inhumane under the last administration, and that sentiment remains. No person fleeing poverty and hunger should be treated in this egregious manner. For far too long, the Haitian community has endured mistreatment at the hands of our nation.”

    In addition to the politicians and human rights organizations, hundred of Americans protested the treatment of the Haitians in demonstrations in San Francisco, Houston, Boston, Miami and other cities.

    Democratic Party proposals for immigration reform are stalled in Congress and not likely to pass. The Democratic Socialists of America and others in the far left call for abolishing immigration police and opening the border, though such demands have little support.