Re: <nettime> The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Ryan Griffis <ryan.griffis@gmail.com>]

Message: 3
> Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2021 22:56:39 +0100
> From: Dmytri Kleiner <dk@telekommunisten.net>
> 
> The Communist Party of China knows, as do the Communist Parties of 
> India, as does the MST in Brazil, and the movements behind the MAS in 
> Bolovia. NUMSA knows. The left has a strategy, and through struggle and 
> perseverance in the face of defeat, it's winning. It's just hard to tell 
> from behind enemy lines.

I’m sorry, is this a joke, Dmytri?

Was this meant to be an op-ed for Adbusters 15 years ago?

Can you help explain how we should be understanding the MST alongside the CCP, as related strategies of a global left? I guess the CCPs role in the decimation of the lives of both peasants and indigenous peoples in the Brazilian interior for the sake of cheap soybeans is forgivable since the CCP is technically a Communist Party? Maybe that’s the cost of “winning” in your analysis? Does the fact that those soybeans are going to a nominally communist nation make the loss of their lifeways less painful than the same soybeans bound for the EU? Is it all for the bigger cause?
Of course, I’m being rhetorical… the MST has commented on this already. 
"When they got rid of the European empires, their oil still went to them and to the Americans. But a new empire is arriving to exploit their natural resources: China. China is taking everything: coal, trees, mineral resources of all sorts, foodstuff, to sustain its economic growth. Maybe the next anti-imperialist revolt is going to be against China.” (MST leader João Pedro Stédile way back in 2008)

Is that just the MST playing “both sidesism”? Is it possible, maybe, that the landless workers in Brazil understand that the CCP and the Chinese state do not necessarily (or generally) represent Chinese workers or peasants, just as agribusiness in Brazil (whether under Lula or Bolsonaro) is ultimately not in the interests of the various peoples of Brazil who live on the lands being destroyed, whether they are leftist peasants or indigenous Xavante communities? How should the global left respond… should it side with the MST or the CCP here?

Who here is offering to judge, denounce, or decry the accomplishments of Chinese workers? I think I missed that. I thought, however, that it was fairly accepted wisdom that nation states are not synonymous with its people (especially workers). Again, maybe I missed a thread that would have disabused me of such ideas.

But rather than maintain this weird privileging of the geopolitical context, how about discussing the work that various factions of “the left” everywhere have been engaged in, and continue to work through in the present? Does your leftist imagination not include the world in which you, yourself, live? 

For example: Mutual aid groups that have been aligned with BLM and BIPOC/queer social movements in North America (including for housing justice) for years have had a big expansion since the COVID pandemic. Many of them are intersectional coalitions that look like the most promising foundation for (potentially) supporting something like a general strike that I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. When protests in Chicago raged through the summer on various fronts, especially those related to the police murders of Brionna Taylor and George Floyd, various forms of these groups from across the city mobilized to both support the protests and those that were arrested during them. Leftist community spaces (including many art spaces) and even some small businesses served as gathering spaces for supplies and information. * It always has to be said when discussing this work: the groundwork for this has been done by mostly queer and femme-identified BIPOC organizers. It’s just that more white folks have finally recognized their leadership in an expanded time of crisis.
This work also aligns with and comes out of service-sector union efforts (Fight for 15, etc) and housing/economic justice work, arguably *the* most visible expression of class struggle in North America.

I’m really not interested in some snarky back-and-forth, but your assumption that many here don't know what strategies exist on the left because they “are not involved" is just patronizing and unproductive. What’s a more privileged position than leveling criticisms about global ideological alignments while basically letting yourself off the hook by claiming that "none of us in the imperial core will actually join the global left, even when we would want to, we are resident here and this limits our ability to be involved”?

Come on, take a walk with Freire and McAlevey and actually grapple with your relationship to the oppressions around you. I promise you, like them, you won’t find a way out in the embrace of a state.

Take care,
Ryan

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