Re: <nettime> The Left Needs a New Strategy

How about a strategy that goes through and beyond the envelopes of the states?

Capitalism has been great at breaking barriers imposed by states in the name of commodified production and profit, creating a global economic system which calls itself "free" when it actually facilitates overdeveloped countries in maintaining their power over underdeveloped ones and exploit their natural and human resources.

Meanwhile, the so-called left of the overdeveloped democratic countries is mostly bargaining within the state to get their working classes a bigger share of the pie. The fact that wealth is better redistributed, in those countries, serves the purpose of keeping the working classes in check as they come to partly share the interests of the ruling classes. Yet, it doesn't change the fact that this metaphorical pie is made of abuses, exploitation, over-industrialization, useless production, pollution. It doesn't change the fact that inequality is on the rise: the pie is getting bigger and bigger while our share is getting smaller.

Do we want to stop our planet being ripped apart?

Do we want multinational corporations to really pay their taxes? And the surplus they produce to be really redistributed?

These are problems that are never gonna be solved within state politics, we need to find ways to organise on a global scale, outside the boundaries of states and our oppressive economic systems. Merge local interests of the producing classes of the whole world. Dispel the myth of economic growth as a goal, rather than just the byproduct of a healthy society.

Ok but how do we do that? Well, that's the hard part. It's gonna be a long process and, if it's even gonna start, I think decentralized technologies will play a big role in it as they enable us to build systems that cannot be siezed and controlled by any single entity. Many aspects of our lives are controlled by algorithms, and many more will be in the future; they decide what news we will see (or will not see), they decide which people we are more compatible with, they make economic choices for us. We need to make sure that more and more of those algorithms, as well as the data they crunch, are decentralized and open. Otherwise we will just be in the hands of what McKenzie Wark calls vectorialists, the new ruling class capitalizing on the amassment of information and the control of how it's distributed.

I don't want to live in a world where whoever owns Twitter or Facebook gets to decide what has to be censored for the good of the public. Let's make the next Twitter or Facebook decentralized so that each one of us can decide what is worth our attention or not. Let's create an economy controlled by open and fair algorithms rather than fraudulent banks that are "too big to fail". This will require a collective perspective shift, the formation of a new sensibility towards technology, one where it's not just seen as a commodity but as a common good that serves the public rather than the particular economic interests of a few privileged actors. It might sound too idealistic but I believe this future is within our reach, it just takes some collective struggle.

Giovanni Caniato

Il giorno gio 14 gen 2021 alle ore 08:54 Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com> ha scritto:

Perhaps this thing called the Left exists in a world where actions have consequences. That would be a good reason to have a strategy.

Many situations today require it.

Consider a New York Times article datemarked Jan. 8, by a German woman named Anna Sauerbrey, under the title "Far-Right Protesters Stormed Germany’s Parliament. What Can America Learn?"

The Reichstag wasn't really stormed, it turns out, but Sauerbrey claims that QAnon and similar practices are on a threatening rise in Germany. According to her we should learn that you can't negotiate with a fringe that has gone aggressively nuts. Instead you have to crack down with force. Apparently the German secret services are now tracking AfD members personally and they've got an eye on people organizing anti-mask movements too. She puts it on the level of friend or enemy:

"Of course, attempts to win voters back, to wrestle them from the grip of the cult, must never stop. But there are no policies and no recognition politics we could offer people who adhere to a cult. Instead, to protect our democracies, we must watch them, contain them, and take away their guns."*

So, this is exactly like the police repression of the German 1960s -- except the target today would be the extreme right at the very moment when it's threatening bloody murder.

I don't know anything about it, and I'd love to hear German people tell more. Here in the US, a majority of liberals and leftists have suddenly gotten the brilliant idea that it might be necessary to do something collective about gangs of delusionary racist dudes with guns. In terms of defense, Antifa has been fantastic so far, but, uh, what if some more former marines go into serious action? Does the example of the 1930s offer any guidance? What exactly should we do right now?

Answering questions like this is crazy, when they are suddenly asked point blank, as they are today, constantly. You can't answer without a strategy.

I support impeachment, closure of media channels to hate groups, imprisonment of seditionists and seizure of arms stockpiles. I've written many times that far right uprisings are a clear and present danger. The Left can help develop a collective will in society. It would be insane to let fascists take over as a point of anti-state pride.

At the same time, friend-enemy relationships are intrinsically deadly. You don't want to become either the State or its Enemy. Life is elsewhere. You have to oppose fascism collectively - I mean nationally, in a broad consensus - and deviate *at the same time*. You have to fight back with institutional power and at the same time, turn away toward social creativity. It would be so interesting to hear more from people about that. I think that as an individual, you can only do such things if you know who you are and what you're on board with. You have to have a sharable strategy.

There is an obscene reaction in the US because of the massive unstoppable revolution coming from people of color and the young, who've had it with the system. The only way to get out of the death spiral we're in now is to shift the rules of the game, invent a new economy, change the relationship to nature and above all to each other. People are starting to see that even if doing this takes a whole lotta time, there is no alternative. The world is too damn precarious. I think the pandemic has brought a root-level realization of these ideas. At the same time it has revealed the extraordinary intersection of all sectors of society, and shown how much we all depend on others. Something quite good could come out of this moment -

If we could ever develop a strategy, a shareable strategy.

BH
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