[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader presents a critical analysis of left-wing politics and its implications for human rights. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text].
-The difference between what exists and what is here proposed by the author is such that we are faced with the need to reinvent the Left. Above all, he refers to the forms of organization in ten theses. [Only minimally edited for this Reader].
1. There aren’t any depoliticized citizens; there are insecure citizens who do not feel mobilized by the dominant political organizations, be they parties or organized civil society movements
- The vast majority of citizens are not affiliated with parties, do not participate in social movements and do not take to the streets to raise their voices, But a good part of them feel excluded, abandoned and hopeless-that-democracy-will-meet-their-expectations. The pandemic has exacerbated this existential insecurity. Far-Right forces were the first to identify their opportunity to thrive there.
- After centuries of colonialism (racism, xenophobia, land and natural resources grabbing) and of hetero-patriarchy (sexism, gender violence, femicide, homophobia, transphobia) and after more than forty years of neoliberal capitalism (scandalous concentration of wealth, overexploitation of labor, erosion of social and economic rights, as well as destruction of nature), social uprisings, when they occur, tend to take political parties and civil society organizations and social movements by surprise. They are often spontaneous movements with a collective presence in the streets.
2. There is no democracy without parties, but there are parties without democracy.
- Liberal representative democracy considers parties as an exclusive form of political action. But parties are internally less and less democratic. They live and reproduce themselves in isolation from the turbulence and complexity of social dynamics.
- This democratic deficit of the parties translates into the inability to capture and correctly interpret the yearnings, insecurities and aspirations of citizens increasingly trapped in the dominant ideology, without having the conditions to be effectively autonomous and outspoken. As entrepreneurs, wage earners, self-employed workers, they feel in the paradoxical situation of having the right to have no rights.
- This dissonance is particularly pronounced among young people, the impoverished and vulnerable social classes –those for whose defense left-wing parties were created.
3. The parties of the future will be party-movements
- The traditional parties of the Left have exhausted their historical time. The solution is to transform parties into more democratic entities. The parties of the future must combine representative democracy with participatory democracy in the way they organize themselves, how they define their programs, how they elect their leaders, how they make important political decisions, how they affirm transparency.
- Citizen participation in parties cannot be based only on the exercise of the right to vote every four years or so. It will be exercised during the term of office of elected representatives, and not only when the term ends. This participation cannot be reduced to receiving periodic information. They must be based on: the constitution of militant and sympathizing citizen circles, organized by place of residence or by type of occupation, with deliberative and not only consultative capacity. This political vigilance and co-creation is particularly decisive.
- The politics of proximity is the key to the politics of the future. This proximity cannot simply be a virtual artifact.
- The tradition of Marxism-Leninism had its merit in its time, but it is now questioned given contemporary conditions. Anti-democratic vigilance must consider divergent views. Failure to consider differences is incompatible with a citizens’ vision of democratic deliberation.
4. Left party-movements do not need to be invented from scratch; they must know and value their origins
- The Left was born in coexistence with excluded social classes and groups. They helped to reduce exclusion and silencing, not only by giving voice to their demands, but also by promoting their self-esteem through education and popular culture. The Left has to return to its origins, to the coexistence of proximity with the excluded, discriminated and impoverished social groups. Paradoxically, these groups are the ones who suffer most from the dominant ideology and who are most easily seduced by it. The partisan Left no longer lives where its voters live, no longer socializes or converses with them, except when it visits them to ask them to vote. Those who live today and talk to the most excluded social groups are often evangelical churches …when it is not organized crime. Militant leftist activism seems to be limited to participate in party meetings to make (almost always listen to those who do) an analysis of the conjuncture. As they exist today, parties in the left are not able to speak with voices that the excluded understand. To change that, the Left must reinvent itself.
5. There is no democracy, there is democratization
- The Left now serves liberal democracy. Liberal representative democracy has always been afraid of social majorities. But in the last sixty years it has gone through periods in which it has governed for the benefit of the majorities.
- Today, liberal democracy is increasingly captured by powerful economic interests and is now often a regime of minority rule for the benefit of minorities. In many countries, right-wing political forces are increasingly dependent on powerful economic interests. To serve them, they cannot serve democracy; they simply use it. Left-wing political forces must break with the internal organizational logic and set-up typical of right-wing parties.
- Politically ‘democratic’ societies are often societies in which the majorities cannot live democratically, because they are exposed to daily authoritarianism. The democratic struggle must also exist in the space of the family, of the community, of production and social relations, of relations with nature and of international relations. Each space calls for a specific type of democracy.
6. Movement-parties must fight against the fundamentalism of an exclusivity of representation
- Conventional parties take positions against civil society and social movements. They consider that they have a monopoly on political representation and that this monopoly is legitimate, precisely because social organizations are not quantitatively representative. Therefore, the only means of articulating with them is co-optation. This fundamentalism of the exclusivity of representation and what derives from it leads to delegitimize civil society organizations, to subject them to partisan logics to the detriment of the real interests of their associates.
- Civil society organizations, and especially social movements, often resort to direct action, street protests and demonstrations, the dissemination of agendas through art (artivism)… The fundamentalism of exclusivity tends to devalue these important forms of social mobilization and to encourage the temptation to instrumentalize them. Parties tend to homogenize their social bases (one is a socialist, communist, conservative, Christian Democrat). On the contrary, social organizations and movements focus on more specific thematic allegiances: housing, immigration, police violence, racism and sexism, cultural diversity, sexual difference, ecology, territory, regionalism, popular economy, etc. They work with languages and concepts different from those used by the parties. This diversity enriches democratic coexistence.
- Trade unions, for example, have a remarkable experience in the struggle against private actors: employers and companies. That is why neoliberalism has attacked them. Civil society organized in associations, social movements and trade unions is now marked by a very negative experience: leftist parties often fail to fulfill their electoral promises when they come to power. This failure leads to the delegitimization of trade unions. If the parties of the democratic movement do not regain democratic legitimacy, the anti-democratic and ultra-right parties find fertile ground there to prosper. In general, they present a right-wing anti-system.
7. The electronic information revolution and social networks are not in themselves an instrument unconditionally favorable to the development of participatory democracy
- On the contrary, social networks can help manipulate public opinion to such an extent that the democratic process can be fatally disfigured (the world of fake news and hate speech). Today more than ever, the exercise of participatory democracy requires face-to-face meetings and face-to-face debates. We must reinvent the tradition of party cells, of citizen circles, of cultural circles, of basic ecclesial communities. There is no participatory democracy without proximity interaction. The pandemic has hindered proximity politics, but it must be resumed as soon as possible.
8. Left party-movements are open to join forces with other left parties based on the principle of depolarized pluralities
- Traditionally, leftist political forces have been victims of factionalism and opportunism. In both cases, these deviations were due to the distance they created with their social bases. In the case of the forces of socialist tradition, the most frequent deviation was that of opportunism, the ideological eclecticism that made it easier to form a coalition with right-wing forces than with other left-wing forces. Both factionalism and opportunism contribute to disarming left forces and frustrating their social foundations. This is particularly worrisome in a context of the growth of extreme right-wing forces, committed to using democracy to come to power, but willing to discard it as fast as possible.
- Internal differences are only depolarized when needed concessions are reciprocal, when negotiation processes and results are transparent and the social bases of the participating organizations consider them beneficial after due and adequate consultation. This is the first key to agreements between left-wing parties.
- Socialism cannot stay in the drawer forever, but neither can it be achieved tomorrow. We have to think of transition periods, in which reforms must be measured by the ability to consolidate progress without opening the door to abrupt reversals. Neoliberalism has made the transfer of wealth from the poor and middle classes to the rich so evident and serious that the traditional right-wing forces now live more on the opportunities that the left gives them for the mistakes they make than on their own merits.
9. Popular culture and education are one of the keys to sustaining democracy and slowing the advance of authoritarianism
- The most effective means to fight old/new fascism and authoritarianism are culture and education. Culture is the practice of democratic diversity and imagination par excellence. Education (particularly human rights learning) is essential to promote the spread of democratic coexistence. New forms of popular political education include: conversation circles, citizenship circles, popular universities, theater of the oppressed, slam poetry and hip-hop culture, with a view to creating an ecology of knowledge that enhances political participation in which the participatory democracy of the future must be shaped: participatory budgets, popular consultations, social councils or public policy management, especially in the areas of health and education.
- The past was a past of struggles where there were winners and there were losers. For obvious reasons, the ruling classes prefer the history of the winners told by the winners (their predecessors). On the contrary, leftist political forces must promote the dissemination of the history of the losers as told by the losers (the predecessors of the social groups they intend to defend). A society that does not know its past is condemned to have only the future of others.
10. We live in a period of defensive struggles
- The ideology that there-is-no-alternative-to-Capitalism has ended up being internalized by a large part of leftist thought. Neoliberalism has been able to combine the supposedly peaceful end of history with the idea of permanent crisis (for example, the financial crisis, the ecological crisis and, more recently, the health crisis). That is why today we live under the domination of the short term. Their demands must be met, because those who go hungry or are victims of human rights violations and of police or gender-based violence cannot wait for socialism to allow them to eat or to liberate them.
- While making the short term a maximum emergency, the pandemic has created the opportunity to think that there are alternatives to life and that, if we do not want to enter a period of intermittent pandemic, we must heed the warnings that nature is giving us. If we do not change our ways of producing, consuming and living, we will enter a pandemic hell.
- At a time when ultra-right forces are getting closer and closer to power, when they are already in power, one of the most important struggles is the struggle for democracy. Liberal representative democracy purports to be a relatively democratic island in an archipelago of social, economic and cultural despotisms. Therefore, it does not know how to defend itself effectively against anti-democratic forces.
- Liberal representative democracy is a starting point, but it cannot be the point of arrival. The point of arrival is a profound articulation with representative democracy and participatory and deliberative democracy. In this moment of defensive struggles, it is particularly important to defend liberal and representative democracy, to neutralize the fascists and from there, to radicalize the democratization of society and of politics as a whole. The left-wing political forces must be particularly conscious, because they know that they will be the first victims of fascist violence.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
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