Human rights: Food for a thought that dares us ‘HR and countering the current political narrative’
HRR 778
[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about positioning ourselves to challenge current left, right and center politics in our struggle for HR. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
A bird’s eye view of how contemporary politics evolved historically (Guy Standing)
1. Since the onset of de-industralization and the neoliberal economics revolution of the 1970s and 80s, the Left has floundered, alternating between trying to resurrect social democracy and compromising with neoliberalism. They abandoned grassroots class-based politics, and focused on ‘poverty reduction’ instead. This enabled social democrats to be occasionally in office, but not in power while the neoliberal political right replenished itself. Meanwhile, Capitalism changed: It created a new globalized class structure to continue to be on top –and class influence is what the ‘underclass’ needs, not only to stay alive, but to turn the tables. (A. Antonosky)
This is how things evolved:
2. After World War II, the politics of ‘re-embeddedness’ was social democratic, purportedly based on the needs and aspirations of the proletariat, with protective labor regulations, progressive income taxes and labor-based social security. Social democracy thus was a class alliance between the professional salariat and the proletariat.
3. The 1970s, took the world into the ‘dis-embedded’ phase of the Left during what was a global transformation; it participated in the ascendance of a globalized economic system. Those who dominated it preached ‘free markets’ and ‘deregulation’. The key developments were:
- domination by finance and a huge strengthening of intellectual property rights (e.g., in 1994, TRIPS globalized them). Today, there are over 16 million patents in force, each one giving their owners a guaranteed monopoly for 20 years –that is not a free market!;
- provision of vast subsidies to wealthy corporations and individuals; and
- corporate giants taking advantage of economies of scale that helped them to weaken anti-trust legislation and regulators.
4. This led to remorseless shifts of income and wealth to varied forms of rent seeking so that the share of income going to those performing labor shrunk and the share going to owners of financial, physical and intellectual property jumped.
5. Governments reacted to financial crises by pursuing ‘austerity’, cutting social spending to offset tax cuts designed to make their economies more attractive for investors. As said, the outcome was a new globalized class structure, in which a plutocracy has gained incredible wealth and power, while the new working class has become the ‘precariat’. Social democrats failed to curb the plutocracy –they actually surrendered to it– and failed to understand or respond to the needs and aspirations of the precariat. The Far Right took advantage hoping the Left would/will continue doing just what it has been doing –namely demonizing and disenfranchising the ‘Nostalgics’– while knowing that the mainstream Left was not appealing to any part of the precariat. At that point, rose the tilt and sway towards fascism. (G. Standing)
The contemporary face of Far Right authoritarianism disguised as popular will (Eva Maldonado)
6. The Far Right has ceased to be a political anomaly and has become a structural force with growing influence in many regions of the world. Its rise responds to a profound deterioration of the link between citizens and institutions, as well as to an effective use of collective emotions, fear, resentment and nostalgia to articulate exclusionary and profoundly authoritarian discourses.* If Far Right politicians cannot convince, they confuse. In all cases, the narrative is similar: a) a ‘people in danger’, b) a corrupt elite that betrays it and c) a series of ‘enemies’ that embody this supposed decline, i.e., migrants, feminists, LGTBI collectives, environmentalists, the independent press, or even judges.
* “We have the money, have the power; we dictate the written and unwritten laws –and we use women for the benefit of the system”. (Leonardo Padura, Decent People)
7. These right-wing movements present themselves as alternatives to the system, reconfiguring democracy from within to make it exclusive, vertical and obedient. Populist language serves to hide deeply conservative policies that include: a) cuts in public services, b) restrictions on political and civil rights, c) ignoring economic, social and cultural rights, d) attacks on education and culture, e) delegitimization of international organizations and f) concentration of power in strong, charismatic and polarizing figures.
8. In the face of the prevailing political orphanhood, the Far Right offers more than a program: it offers meaning, identity, belonging, destiny –all packaged in simple narratives, where there are winners and losers, heroes and traitors, order and chaos. The battle is cultural, political and symbolic –and it cannot be won just by denouncing the excesses of the extreme right, but must offer a real, credible and hopeful alternative; a policy that again speaks of social justice, of human rights, of community, of protection against the market and against fear. In short, a policy that understands diversity not as a threat, but as a wealth that must be cared for. Reclaiming the public sphere, strengthening the social fabric, guaranteeing rights and redistributing power are urgent tasks to halt this reactionary advance.** Otherwise, the democracies we have known will survive only in their form, but not in their spirit. (E. Maldonado)
**: The number of autocracies (91) has just surpassed democracies (88). Therefore, for the first time in two decades, nearly three-quarters of humans now live in an autocracy –where one person has unconstrained power– the highest rate in five decades! (Stephen Bezruchka)
[Mind you: Totalitartian regimes may occasionally achieve progress in social policies; this does not make them less totalitarian!].
Countering the reactionary advance
–“He hurt us. He did us a lot of damage. The guy knew how to conjugate verbs and to speak better than anyone else; he knew about techniques, but he never learned how to conjugate empathy with justice, freedom with solidarity”. (Jimmy Calla Colano)
9. A new space for the powerless cannot be created by mainstream economists, development planners, legislators, employment specialists or other outsiders (mostly with a paternalistic attitude). To place the future of the disempowered in the hands of such individuals is to maintain the webs of power that are currently restraining and overpowering the powerless. Rather, empowerment emerges through ordinary people’s day-to-day resistance to exploitation, to human rights violations and to opression and through their efforts to regain the mutual support, the responsibility and the trust that can better sustain their lives.*** Ergo, the pillage brought about by transnational corporations, international bureaucracies and national governments cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. (The Ecologist)
***But beware: We wear ourselves out in bullshit, in regionalism, in seeking domination. As always, we screw each other more than fighting the enemy. (L. Padura, op cit)
10. Claim holders need to set up fences and guardrails that prevent public harm by pushing the state to do the same. For this, above all, we need activists and leftwing politicians to step up and act, to demand new rules for a better future. (Stuart Gillespie)
11. A couple of quick aside reminders (in the form of one-liners)
- The state is a political unit; the nation is a historical unit; the fatherland is a spiritual unit. (Albino Gomez) Without a state, all politics is only a project and becomes an ethic devoid of a root.
- In politics, the great ones commit great crimes; the insignificant, commit wretched petty thefts. (Politika)
- Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. (Voltaire)
- We have a problem when the current blitz advance of technology outpaces our political imagination –and we are, at best, reacting, not acting proactively.
- Politics does not win elections; the internet (and money) does. (Anita Gurumuthi)
- The political system gives the vote to the many; the economic system gives bread to the few. Something is wrong when voting is a human right and bread is a privilege of the few. (Julius Nyerere)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
Postscript/Marginalia
—Who is it that we imitate and learn from? Usually it is important people in our lives, like family and friends, and leaders in various fields whom we trust as role models, and nowadays media also has a powerful role (think violent computer games or even the nightly TV news). Take also, for instance, highly placed politicians (including perhaps the president of the USA?**** You wonder who would ever emulate him…). But I am as surprized as you. How can such ignorance, malevolence and criminality be tolerated at the highest levels of decision making the world over? (David Zakus)
****: Hurricane Trump is about to shatter the human rights house –only states can save it