[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about how Left/Right politics have failed and hamper HR progress. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
1. Leftist governments only have the possibility of being successful and dignified if they achieve substantive progress in ending extreme inequality and redistributing national wealth more fairly, as well tackling human rights (HR) violations. The way they are managed to consolidate their democracy must address real improvement of salaries, the accelerated construction of popular housing, as well as real advances in access to health and education as inalienable HR. It is also necessary for progressive governments to carry out these tasks with the support of an organized, active and mobilized people.
2. It is definitely not in legislative compromises that any real change can be derived from*, nor will change be derived from the intentional complacency of the powerful media (that serve the powerful entities that finance them) to block information diversity and seek to confuse ignorant and passive citizens. (Juan Pablo Cardenas)
*: So many parties of the Left have lost the clear horizon of the society they want, and have established a transit of continuity with neoliberal policies. (revista Primera Piedra) Is this to be called a politics of shamelessness…?
3. We use the word ‘change’ so much that for scores of people it means nothing. The term was emptied of content as it was used as a recurrent slogan in each electoral dispute. Both sides, Left and Right, evoke ‘change’ in order to seduce a dissatisfied electorate. However, then, when the moment of truth arrives, that of governing, the promised change is deflated –and everything remains a Lampedusian change, that is to say, nothing changes. (Alfredo Serrano Mancilla)
So, what is the difference between a right-wing and a left-wing government?
-Right is authoritarianism and Left is democracy and respect for HR?? [I give you 10 years to find the answer…].
4. From the moment ‘the rationality of the markets‘ was imposed as the only recipe for managing the economy, the democratic opinion of the citizenship is of no use. Both bow respectfully to big capital. In the world trend called ‘globalization’ or, better, ‘neoliberal global restructuring’, the economic disasters that we see all over the world do not even make the neoliberals blush. When will neoliberals recognize that they caused the worst economic stagnation in two centuries? (Louis Casado)
5. It is so much the disenchantment provoked everywhere by Left or Right governments not fulfilling what they promised in their electoral campaigns that it seems preferable to be in the opposition to fight for our political and HR ideas.
6. Progressive leaders who have achieved great transformations or revolutions are counted on the fingers of one hand. In the last twenty or thirty years there have been many failed experiences that have ended up totally unraveling their beautiful emancipatory and libertarian ideas. Dramatic cases of leftist leaders have too often practically buried the promises of change, moral integrity and popular redemption. It is the denatured democracy we have that achieves the prodigy that it is preferable to be defeated in the elections rather than to constitute a majority and comply with the sovereign mandate. (J. P. Cardenas)
Power is not lost, it is spread around
-Whenever the powers-that-be rouse political, religious and nationalist fanaticism, at some point, it will ignite the spark that can provoke a social explosion. (Leonardo Padura, La Transparencia del Tiempo)
-In the exercise of power, the strength of dictatorships is to make an unholy pact with the hopelessness of the people. (adapted from George Bernanos)
7. We are all (I am sure) uneasy about any great power. I do not defend any kind of exploitation. But today, I refuse to take seriously the endless parade of accusations against other countries before having thoroughly denounced what the West/North continues to do (on an incomparably larger scale). We must denounce our own imperialism first. And not just because it is incomparably larger than any other one, but because it is our prime responsibility. Many dictatorships were installed, supported/maintained by USA et al. I can no longer see the world in terms of ‘dictatorships’ and ‘democracies’, because the great dictator in this world is still the USA et al (not the American people, but the capitalist élites of USA, Europe and other nations in the North).** I may be simplifying, but not much. Every leader in the South who has attempted to escape from Northern imperialism is qualified as a dictator. It is the non-aligned movement that, I think, is addressing precisely our concerns here. Refusing alliances with imperial powers, it is, I believe, the major force against imperialism and neocolonialism with the new international economic order (NIEO), as a central pillar. Revival of the NIEO is well overdue. I can only welcome and support it. The non-aligned movement opposes ‘blocks and their zones of influence’ around the world. Surely, a fundamental stand in terms of real emancipation is needed. (Alison Katz)
**: I would finally add that the ‘single man theory’ of history, to me, is foolish. No single man determines these appalling outcomes!
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com
Postscript/Marginalia
Whose problem is it anyway? India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar recently said in an interview that “Europe must stop thinking that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems and start thinking that the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems“. The world of the Global South faces a number of challenges that the West has not prioritized beyond rhetorical exuberance, be it pandemic consequences, foreign debt interest, climate crisis impacts, poverty, food shortages, drought and high energy prices. But for decades (if not centuries) the West has unilaterally imposed its rules, arrogating to itself the privilege of declaring them universal, while reserving the right to suspend and violate them whenever it sees fit (HR?). The memory of the countries of the Global South is not as short as Western diplomats think. Many of these countries were subject to European colonialism, which, throughout the 20th century, almost always depended on the complicity and support of the United States. (Boaventura de Sousa Santos).