[TLDR (too long didn’t read): This Reader is about the positions of the Left and the Right vis-à-vis human rights. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text].
-The formation of our respective political identity is ultimately a lot more complicated than what is implied in the oft-assumed trajectory from youthful (transcendental?) idealism to hard-headed (less transcendental?) maturity. (Luke Savage)
Left or Right?: The ideology
1. Ethical principles have been at the base of the history of the politics of the Left –human rights (HR) supposedly right in there… But, at present, a sector of the Left has proposed accommodating, abandoning many of these principles in favor of a proposition its proponents call ‘pragmatic’; they abandon the defense and struggle for dignity and for distributional justice. It is better to stay silent, they say. So there is no will to forcefully demand social and political responsibilities. The result is disastrous: it leaves the forces of the Right with an open invitation to criticize by grabbing ethical values that never belonged to them in the first place. The Right does not miss the opportunity to remind us of these values; it lashes out mercilessly.
2. If we abandon ethical values, what do we have left? (no pun intended). What will then be the difference between being on the Left or on the Right? Without principles, there is no chance to win. Keeping quiet, covering-for and justifying corrupt, repressive, autocratic governments –if (or because) they are ‘one of ours’– weakens the Left morally beyond repair. When these principles are relativized, the ideological justification of the Left crumbles. Bottom line, not everybody that struggles against a dictatorship and against neoliberalism can call him/herself a member of the Left, of being anti-capitalist, or being democratic and/or being a HR advocate/activist… Examples abound. (Marcos Roitman)
Left or Right?: The parties and the social movements
3. Twelve theses about political parties and social movements(adapted from Boaventura de Sousa Santos)
i) There are no depoliticized citizens; there are citizens that do not let themselves being politicized. Citizens are not fed up with politics, they are fed up with this politics; they are full of rage…
ii) There is no democracy without political parties, but there are parties without democracy. Parties are not the exclusive entities of political agency; internally, parties are progressively less democratic; the traditional structure of the party has exhausted its historical time; the future lies in participative democracy where HR have a better chance.
iii) Being on the Left is a point of arrival, not a point of departure. The Left has to revert to working with excluded social groups, the ones whose rights it has forgotten for too long; the Left has forgotten how to talk to the most excluded; the parties of the Left do not dialogue with the silenced voices in the periphery; they must thus reinvent themselves.
iv) Being a member of the active political class is always transitory. Elected parliamentarians neither invent the key topics nor do they take permanent positions towards them: they transmit (ought to…) what originates in discussions at the base; party politics has to project a face, but is not made up of multiple faces; transparency and accountability must be all encompassing; if absent, party members do not deserve being reelected.
v) The political party/social movement contradiction has to cease. Conventional parties consider they have a monopoly in political representation and that this monopoly is legitimate, precisely because social movements are not representative; on the other hand, social movements consider that collaboration with parties always ends up in attempts to cooptation –with HR and the demands of claim holders falling through the cracks; If things continue this way, it will not be possible to link representative and participative democracy. It is a must to link both.
vi) The ‘party-movement’ combines institutional and extra-institutional action. Traditional parties favor institutional action within the margins of the law; social movements often use direct action and protests in defense of their legitimate rights; the complementarity between both must be built with patience; opportunities are missed for sectarian and dogmatic reasons; the peaceful practices of social movements often have to move back and forth between the legal and the illegal; the dominant classes have always interpreted legality and illegality to their advantage and convenience.(a)
vii) The electronic information revolution and social networks are not always favorable to the emergence of a participative democracy. On the contrary, they can contribute to manipulate the public opinion; exercising participative democracy requires getting together and discussing face-to-face; we have to reinvent the tradition of citizens circles (the problem is that participation is enthusiastic at the beginning and then wanes off); sustaining social mobilization for HR is a great challenge.
viii) Social movements only thrive when constantly struggling against inertia. Overcoming all inertia and/or stagnation is the greatest challenge for the building up of our HR movement. Social movements know that different forms of oppression come from either the state or from other powerful economic actors; trade unions, for instance, have great experience in fighting private sector actors; the losing of control over the political agenda can only be reversed by social movements provided they do negotiate with selected established political parties and with their grassroots constituencies.
ix) Popular political (and HR) education is the key to sustain any social movement. New forms of political education are needed, i.e., discussion groups, workshops within the movement, HR learning campaigns, discussion of potential interventions (e.g., participatory budgets, popular soundings off of popular proposition or plebiscites, social councils, people’s tribunals or popular management of public policies). Until now, experiences are mostly from the local level; now movements have to go to the national and global level –and HR have to move more to center stage.
x) The party-movement unity goes further than the coordination between party and social movement. On top of the existing formally organized social movements, it is necessary to bring-in spontaneous movements that have been active in the public square; we cannot neglect this, and offer solidarity to their demands, without trying to bring them in.
xi) We live in a time of defensive struggles. Social movements must not only do that, but also engage in offensive struggles. The idea that there isno alternative to Capitalism (actually to Capitalism, colonialism, racism, patriarchy and sexism) ended up being interiorized by a big chunk of the Left; but those who are hungry, are victims of gender violence or any other HR violation cannot wait until socialism arrives for them to eat or to get rid of the violence…
xii) Defend liberal democracy as a starting point and not as an end point. At a time when the Extreme Right(b) is closer and closer to the corridors of power, one of the most important struggles is the defense of democracy; given the circumstances, today, liberal democracy is a good starting point to fight-for but, as said not our end goal; the end point must be a representative, participatory and deliberative democracy. During these days of defensive struggles, it is key to neutralize fascist forces so as to build the democracy we want.
(a): The reality that many, for long, have been trying to kill is still alive. Take, for instance, state constitutions. They are still there; nobody has derogated them. But reality seriously contradicts what these constitutions mandate …so reality has become ‘magic realism’ (like in One Hundred Years of Solitude).? (Sergio Ramirez) [In a 1911 article, legendary socialist Eugene Debs excoriated the US Constitution as an ‘autocratic and reactionary document‘ written by aristocrats and ‘in every sense a denial of democracy’].
(b): The Extreme-right has become a political religion, a totalitarian ritual. (Albino Gomez).
Left or Right?: The actors
-All power abuses and corrupts.
4. Politicians and TV communicators say anything with impunity (anything goes… even some niceties about HR…). They do not know that, already in the middle ages, the philosopher William of Ockham said that he who speaks with impunity also acts with impunity. (A. Gomez) The moral here is that even decency is revolutionary for some politicians. (Louis Casado)
5. You see? Some politician are neither from the Left nor from the Right. They are from where circumstances and convenience puts them; the bad thing is that they do not (or pretend not to) even realize it… (L. Casado)
6. So it is this convenience that too often drives a system of domination(c) that, deceivingly, does not use the power-of-domination, but instead a smart power-of-seduction that succeeds in citizens subjecting themselves to the enticements of the domination. (Byung-Chul Han)
(c): Virginity and confidence in the current dominant political system have in common that you lose them only once and you never recuperate them again. (L. Casado)
Left or Right?: The protesters
7. Fed up political rioters do not know for sure where they are going although they clearly know what injustices and HR violations they can no longer take. The street and their voting –and no longer just campaigning against the government in the social media– are now the spaces the budding popular process will have to occupy and control. Only then will HR be respected by revitalizing democracy from below. Because of this, this budding process has become dangerous for the neoliberal-ideologues-that-once-were-democrats. This because, now, the street and the voting question the validity of a neoliberal destiny/destination. We are witnessing the crumbling of political Neoliberalism (i.e., Capitalism) that, as it is losing hegemony, redoubles its repressive violence and is prepared to pact with the devil and with all the scary anti-democratic, anti-immigration, racist, xenophobic, forces to defend a political project gone sour. (Álvaro García Linera)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com