Always historicize! | openDemocracy - 0 views
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The Left has always been prone to self-flagellation: what’s wrong with us? Why can’t we get our act together? Why can’t we convince the masses to join us? Such self-criticisms are understandable and, to some extent, justified. The history of the Left and the labour movement in the United States is nauseatingly full of the leadership's cowardice, opportunism, bureaucratism, and cooptation by the corporatist state. There is much to criticize.
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Given this ‘logic’ of history, what have we to look forward to and what lessons can we learn from the past? One lesson, I think, pertains to how activists should conceptualize their activism. There is a tendency, common among every group from centrist liberals through to Leninists and anarchists, to interpret activism in very un-Marxian and unsophisticated ‘voluntaristic’ terms.
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For example, it is hopelessly benighted to think that an international revival of the centralized welfare state (even in an 'updated' form) and of twentieth-century social democracy is possible. Those social formations were appropriate to a time of industrial unionism and limited international mobility of capital, very different from the present. They have been dying for 40 years (starting in the US and UK), and no such magical incantation as “We propose a new anti-austerity coalition” can call them back to life. Coalitions of that sort are desperately needed, and their targets should be at every level of government, but their outcome will not be a new and improved manifestation of twentieth-century social democracy.
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Don't move, Occupy! Social movement vs social arrest | ROAR Magazine - 0 views
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While notable exceptions exist, the overall tendency of most accounts has been to compartmentalize and classify. Middle-Eastern resistance to dictatorship, Northern Mediterranean unrest against externally enforced austerity measures, and an Anglo-American revolt against the tyranny of the financial sector, have been analyzed as discrete cases each with their own structural and contingent dynamics. The results of this compartmentalization are all too predictable. Two years on, instead of a single image of global rebellion, we are left with fractured portraits of localized discontent.
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Rather than view these uprisings within the recently sanitized history of revolution and an increasingly ineffectual grammar of social movements, it is high time to call the global occupations of public space what they are: social arrests.
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The uprisings against authoritarian rule in Tunisia, Libya, Syria, and Egypt were uniformly proclaimed as “expressing the will of the people”, while the strikingly similar manifestations of their Spanish, Greek, and American counterparts were all but ignored. This bifurcation in Western responses, one equally evident in governments and the mainstream media, is indicative of how we have come to perceive the role of mass political protest in the first decade of the 21st century. In the tradition of the French Revolution, uprisings against authoritarian rule are signified as acts of popular sovereignty — legitimate manifestations of a people unable to express their will through alternate channels — whereas similar protests within liberal representative democracies are marginalized as the acts of a raucous minority.
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Zimbabwe, South Africa, and the Power Politics of Bourgeois Democracy - Monthly Review - 0 views
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Standards of living had crashed during the 1990s, the state withdrew—or priced at prohibitive levels—many social services, and the economy deindustrialized. State and private sector corruption were rife. In response, various urban labor and social movements—trade unions, human rights advocates, ghetto residents’ groups, militant students, church and Jubilee anti-debt campaigners, women’s organizations, community health workers, and many others—began to offer opposition.
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Once he had permitted and nurtured the land invasions in the wake of the shocking February 2000 defeat, Mugabe came to rely upon the war veterans and their followers as a paramilitary force. And yet notwithstanding the resurgence of populist rhetoric and a few material concessions from the state, poor and working people saw their incomes—and even their ability to gain access to the staple food, maize—under unprecedented threat by the time of the recent (March 9–10, 2002) presidential election.
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Geopolitical pressure on Mugabe is mediated primarily through these suspect sources. But for all the Western hypocrisy, the Mugabe victory was nonetheless the product of brutal force. And the division between the observer missions did not break down cleanly along North-South, national, racial, or class lines.
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Congo Siasa: Why legislation on mineral trade is a good thing - 0 views
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I think the reason there has been such a backlash against "conflict minerals" advocacy has been due to the way these voices depict the violence. As I have said before, militias in the Congo do not rape women just because they want to get their hands on minerals. Most minerals in cell phones do not come from the eastern Congo. The war did not begin as a conflict over minerals. And so on. I find a lot of this kind of lobbying distasteful - we do not need to tweak the facts to get attention, it's bad enough already, just present the facts.
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I think the advocacy groups have really shot themselves in the foot by misrepresenting this issue. So yes, I agree with you there. It will not bring an end to the conflict in the Kivus, but it will make it more attractive for FDLR to go back to Rwanda and for Mai-Mai groups to enter demobilization programs (which also have a ton of problems, as you know). If constructed properly (it currently isnt) to include abusive units within the Congolese army, the regulations could also provide incentives to improve performance and accountability of the Congolese army. Finally, if applied correctly (difficult) they could get rid of some of their more flagrant patronage and collusion between businessmen and soldiers, such as ex-CNDP units and businessmen in Kigali and FARDC units and guys in Kinshasa, Bukavu and Goma.
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That said, I wondered what your thoughts are on the second criticism you mentioned (DRC minerals being collectively labeled as being tainted, and therefore damaging the DRC's economy)? Cabot does plenty of advertising on the simple platform that it does not deal in coltan from the DRC period, not just 'conflict coltan'. I also noted that the price of tantalum is going up...
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Should you support the "conflict minerals" movement? - Chris Blattman - 0 views
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Sometimes the correct message is complicated, and doesn’t sell well in the New York Times or Congress. Fair enough. People at Enough know a lot more about marketing than me. I think they’d argue that it’s more important to get attention than to get the message exactly right. Let’s say they’re right (a point I don’t necessarily concede). Here’s my advice: If you’re going to run a vulgar campaign, have the nuanced message in your back pocket for the people in the field who actually have to take action.
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As I have previously said to Chris, it deeply saddens me to have read his post today and now your comment, Laura. You deride the Enough Project without understanding the complexity and depth of their work and the very committed and wonderful John Prendergast without ever having met him. How can you possibly find that fair. How do you see that helping the people of Congo. For two professors to behave in such a cruel and immature fashion is distressing and hurtful. I realize that you are not cognizant of this, but you are truly hurting yourselves in the process
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Ultimately, I don’t envy the Enough Project’s position. It’s very hard to push policy on one side, while fending off allies who want you to do more on the other. I’d be willing to bet they do have that “nuanced message in the back pocket” that Chris wants, but their job isn’t to spread the nuanced message. That’s the job of academics and implementers. The Enough Project’s job is to make policy change happen. All that said, please keep criticizing them and pushing them to do better. But in the end, if you disagree with their strategic choices, you should leave academia and launch your own advocacy campaign: pick up the phone, raise the money, knock on the doors, and prove to them that a nuanced narrative can sell.
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Sometimes the correct message is complicated, and doesn't sell well in the New York Times or Congress. Fair enough. People at Enough know a lot more about marketing than me. I think they'd argue that it's more important to get attention than to get the message exactly right. Let's say they're right (a point I don't necessarily concede). Here's my advice: If you're going to run a vulgar campaign, have the nuanced message in your back pocket for the people in the field who actually have to take action.
Saul Alinsky: A Complicated Rebel - Article - National Review Online - 0 views
Progressive Lessons and the Tea-Party Takeover - Article - National Review Online - 0 views
Pambazuka - Championing the transformation of African society - 0 views
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The majority of the educated Africans who called themselves ‘evolved’, ‘civilised’, or ‘assimilated’ are the vectors of alienation and intellectual subservience to imperial forces.
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It is not by accident that xenophobia and negative ideas about ethnicity, religion, and regionalism have been the tools to entrap the people in supporting their own oppression. The supreme example of this has been in the struggle for liberation in South Africa, where the workers are instigated to turn against their brothers and sisters from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Somalia, Nigeria, Mozambique and other parts of Africa.
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When in 1999 African women issued the Zanzibar Declaration for a Culture of Peace, it was a signal that the grassroots Pan-African women were taking the lead in the struggle for the peaceful transformation of Africa. It is not by accident that Pambazuka came out of the same intellectual and ideological infrastructure that produced the Zanzibar declaration
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The majority of the educated Africans who called themselves 'evolved', 'civilised', or 'assimilated' are the vectors of alienation and intellectual subservience to imperial forces. This alienation robs them of their ability to grasp the full impact of their complicity in the dehumanisation of Africans.
Transnational Institute | Pachakuti: Indigenous perspectives, degrowth and ecosocialism - 0 views
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To enter this dialogue with respect, we need an introduction to this movement, which some call the “Pachakuti”, a term taken from the Quechua “pacha”, meaning time and space or the world, and “kuti”, meaning upheaval or revolution.[1] Put together, Pachakuti can be interpreted to symbolize a re-balancing of the world through a tumultuous turn of events that could be a catastrophe or a renovation.[2] The main form that this indigenous perspective seems to be taking is the presentation of a “model” called “Live well, but not better”: Vivir Bien or Buen Vivir in Spanish, Sumak Kawsay in Quechua and Suma Qamaña in Aymara.
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We have depleted some three hundred million years of accumulated solar energy flows in the form of plant based fossil fuel stocks in less than 300 years of the industrial era. Indigenous culture and knowledge of and respect for planetary flows and cycles could be crucial to our survival. This does not mean a return to the cave as some have argued. Democratically negotiated syntheses with elements of western knowledge and science can complement indigenous knowledge in new pluralist paradigms which stop destructive western over consumption and accumulation while redistributing sustainable “income” to the heretofore exploited global south.[7]
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However, convincing northern consumers of the need for a new paradigm and new lifestyles, given the impossibility of endless growth on a limited planet, will not be an easy task.[8] A synthesis, of elements of sometimes overly holistic indigenous wisdom and of excessively compartmentalized western science, seems to me the a fruitful combination to provide guidance for a way out of the current crises which threaten the planet, our Mother Earth.
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In its efforts to exert some political influence on solutions to the current world financial and climate crises the nascent international ecosocialist movement should direct some attention to a synthesis of the western ecosocialist discourse with the growing Latin American indigenous discourse that is making exciting progress, albeit in fits and starts, toward an international charter for the protection of the planet, Mother Earth, and all forms of life on it.
Pambazuka - When the poor become powerful outside of state control - 0 views
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The more of us that stand together the more our humanity is fulfilled. The power of the poor becomes evident when the poor are able to organise ourselves for ourselves. When we begin to achieve this it is always a moment of great promise and great danger. Frederick Douglass, the great hero of one of the greatest American struggles, the struggle against slavery, said: ‘Power concedes nothing without a demand.’ This is why a collective demand, a demand backed by organisation, determination and courage is a moment of great promise.
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The state has many strategies to silence the poor. Leaders are offered money and jobs. There is quiet diplomacy through which the movement is given some acknowledgment. There are meetings that lead into all kinds of technical debates and away from the simple politic of our demand for land and housing. There is intimidation. But when all these efforts by the state to silence the poor fail they send in the police. The police do not come, as we have asked, to protect the poor but to beat us, arrest us and even shoot us. We have braved all that and survived brutal attacks. Our popular activism in action has made our movement grow rapidly despite repression
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But as we kept building a strong movement the state was busy preparing itself to destroy our movement. On the 26 and 27 September 2009 a group of about 40 armed men violently attacked our head quarters in the Kennedy Road settlement. The police failed to protect us.
What Obama Can Learn from the Social Movements That Changed the World | News & Politics... - 0 views
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Progressives all over the country sat back for 18 months without pushing him to guard those terms of debate, namely those of equality, fairness, decency, and a society that must depend on the state to protect the poor and the vulnerable.
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During his presidency, FDR confided to unions and progressive activists that they had to “force” him to do things that would be politically unacceptable.
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History reminds us that any social movement that changes the terms of debate will eventually change the national conversation.
Pambazuka - Capitalism in crisis: An obsolete system - 0 views
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Until now, the plunder of natural resources of Africa continues. But I think there will be growing resistance, not only of the people, but also of the ruling classes and therefore the state-power systems. Because there is possibly an alternative to that plunder, which is the rapprochement – let's call it a Bandung 2 – that is, the rebuilding of a solidarity of African and Asian nations and peoples against the plunder of imperialism. And now the possibility of the African nations getting back the control of those resources and supported by emerging countries like China, like India, like Brazil, who do need some of those resources for their own development, but who are in a position to negotiate with and give opportunity to African states to negotiate the conditions of access which are not negotiated usually with imperialists who ask for a complete capitulation.
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It is the responsibility first of activists in the grassroots movements to see that however legitimate their action, it's efficiency is limited by the fact that it doesn't move beyond a fragmented struggle here or there. But it is also the responsibility of the intellectuals. I don't mean by that the academics, but those thinkers and the political people operating in politics to consider that they will have no possibility of changing the balance of powers without integrating in their movement, but not absorbing them to dominate them, but integrating the social movements on the grassroots into their political strategy of change.
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Until now, the plunder of natural resources of Africa continues. But I think there will be growing resistance, not only of the people, but also of the ruling classes and therefore the state-power systems. Because there is possibly an alternative to that plunder, which is the rapprochement - let's call it a Bandung 2 - that is, the rebuilding of a solidarity of African and Asian nations and peoples against the plunder of imperialism. And now the possibility of the African nations getting back the control of those resources and supported by emerging countries like China, like India, like Brazil, who do need some of those resources for their own development, but who are in a position to negotiate with and give opportunity to African states to negotiate the conditions of access which are not negotiated usually with imperialists who ask for a complete capitulation.
COLOMBIA: Increasingly Broad Social Movements Fight Mining - IPS ipsnews.net - 0 views
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Colombia is one of the world's biggest per capita polluters with mercury, in the artisanal mining sector, with an average of between 50 and 100 tons a year lost during the gold extraction process, according to a report by UNIDO, which points out that artisanal mining has expanded fast as gold prices have risen.
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The broad social movement in Santander has added its voice to the long-time struggle by environmentalists in Cajamarca, in the central province of Tolima, against the South African company AngloGold Ashanti.
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Protests have also been held to the south of Bogotá against polluting activities in quarries run by the army on the grounds of the Artillery School, and by the Catholic diocese of Bogotá's Fundación San Antonio, Mexico's Cemex company and the Swiss firm Holcim.
I cite: This is becoming more than just a fight over collective bargaining rights. - De... - 0 views
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Without anti-trust laws you end up with single parties controlling multiple industries. And controlling whatever parts of our lives depend on those industries. That is not freedom for us. Without estate taxes you end up with dynasties stretching over generations and controlling more and more wealth and power. Power over the little guy. That is not freedom for us.
Tina Louise: Fragmented People, Coagulating - 0 views
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Naïve, optimistic and blinkered by rose coloured shades? Sure it is likely to get a lot bloodier before we tidy the place but in my heart, it truly feels like we have let something escape and that it is refusing to be contained again. It feels also like, that something - is us.
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