| Dmytri Kleiner on Tue, 19 Jan 2021 15:50:34 +0100 (CET) |
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| Re: <nettime> The Left Needs a New Strategy |
On 2021-01-19 14:27, Bruce Robinson wrote:
I agree with Andreas. It is a far better example of Dmytri's much vaunted 'proletarian internationalism' to support those in China, and that the moment particularly Hong Kong, fighting for their rights against the repressive and anti-working class regime.
The core idea in proletarian internationalism is to turn your weapons against the class enemy at home, so unless you are in Hong Kong, I'm not sure how that is an example of it.
If you are not in Hong Kong, you also have no agency there, so your support can only be heard by your local government, so what is you hope to achieve? Aggression by our governments towards China? What specific support do you want to give?
I cannot see any reason why the Chinese Communist Party should be considered part of an international left, assuming that being on the left has something to do with democracy, socialism and working class self emancipation.
The party needs to be held to account by the mobilized working class, like any instrument, it is the Chinese workers that make up a part of the international left, and from everything we know, their demands are being met by their government and the party, but, as the Harvard Study also notes, that will only be true so long as the government and the party continues to deliver on the people's demands.
As for the functioning of the Chinese Government, I once again recommend Daniel A Bell's work, this video, introduced by Canadian cringelord Moses Znaimer, is a good starter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30OGjUCbiDY
Dmytri will no doubt denounce this as 'third way'. I would describe myself as a Third Camp socialist as these are the only criteria by which to measure regimes and movements against the aims that I see as fundamental to any kind of real human liberation.
I suggest that human development figures and approval rates are probably the best way we have to measure human liberation.
On that basis I reject having to choose between US and Chinese imperialisms.
You don't need to chose anything, the imperialism of your own government is on you, as you have the agency to do something about it. If you chose not, you are not rejecting it, you are enabling it.
(There has been a recent wave of arrests in Hong Kong including many of the leaders of the independent trade union movement. There is a meeting on January 30th with speakers from the UK labour movement and HK unions here: https://www.facebook.com/events/247169266771050/)
I would suggest that the Labour movement in the UK has some pressing issues at home to address, and it's unclear to me what sort of strategy could be undertaken by them that would improve the conditions of workers in Honk Kong, or why I would expect the former colonial master, under a brutal Conservative regime, with no recourse to any strategy except aggression, to play a helpful role here.
If there is some strategy with which UK labour could help HK workers, without heightening aggression, let me know what that is.
Meanwhile, UK labour has been bamboozled by Brexit, gutted by weaponized bad faith charges of antisemitism and watches helplessly as immiseration in the UK grows.
Workers everywhere have struggles to attend to.A strategy where workers everywhere directly intervene in all struggles everywhere is not a viable strategy. A strategy where workers everywhere focus on their local struggles, while confronting their own governments aggression against workers abroad is viable, and this is what proletarian internationalism calls for.
I am not in favour of ending this discussion bureaucratically. But what I find hard to take is the 'live and let live' attitude towards Dmytri's contributions by some who have responded. His positions are something the real left needs to fight against.
My positions are also those of groups like Vijay Prashad's Tricontental Institute, do these groups also need to banished from left in your view?
"Rather than tackle the great social and economic challenges within the US, its ruling class has taken refuge in anti-Chinese rhetoric." -- The Country Where Liberty Is a Statue, Vijay Prashad.
[1] https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/2-united-states-democracy/
-- Dmytri Kleiner @dmytri # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: