Don’t Just Do Nothing

Nov

24

2024

comments

From It's Going Down

Original title: "Don’t Just Do Nothing: 20 Things You Can Do to Counter Fascism"

Jewish anarchists weigh-in on how people can organize and act in the changing terrain. For a zine PDF, go here.

You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it. —Pirkei Avot (2:21)

As Christofascism takes the reins of US power, thereby impacting the whole of this continent and the globe, it should be abundantly clear at this point that appealing to the state—any state—is a losing strategy. The world had already lost when the “choice” this November was between two versions of fascism.

We offer up this sampler of ideas, encouraging you to think and act for yourselves, with each other, as precisely the only winning strategy. If each idea here seems not enough on its own—well, it isn’t.

The Pirkei Avot quote, perhaps the most widely known and cited teaching from Jewish text, was penned some two thousand years ago. So many forms of despotism—empires, monarchies, and states—have risen and fallen in that time. We are not alone, as anarchists and Jews, in our ethical imperative to wrestle with every type of authority.

Ancestors throughout human history—people of all colors, genders, and cultures of this earth—have struggled together to resist the imposition of coercive, hierarchical violence. Crucially, people have autonomously organized, defended, and practiced myriad forms of mutual aid, collective care, and self-governance for millennia—what is often called “prefigurative politics.” They haven’t put off the worlds they want to see but instead have directly acted as if they were already free.

As diasporic rebels, our Jewishness teaches us to rely on solidarity beyond all borders. Our teachings compel us to lean on the community of others to live lives worth living, whether we are mourning or celebrating, or grappling time and again with what liberation should and could look like. When we start Shabbat each week—twenty-five hours of practicing “the world to come”—and end it with Havdalah—when we ease ourselves back into this brutal “world as it is”—we do so with braided offerings (bread and a candle, respectively). Such braids, in these times, underscore the imperative for interwovenness, for interrelationality, between each and every one of us, from all walks of life, who want to destroy fascism and bring about liberatory social transformations.

May all freedom-seeking peoples journey side by side toward those aspirations by better loving and caring for each other.

Here are twenty things you can do to counter fascism—yes, you! yes, now! Dream up and put into motion many, many more things too. This is only a beginning.

1. Do doikayt (hereness) within your one-on-one relationships. What would it look like to check in with each of your beloveds based on your current conditions and communicate with love to each other what you envision for the world you want to build? Identify the soil amendments necessary in thought, word, and deed for those seeds to flourish.

2. Make people soup and do not stop inviting them over for soup! Be a reason for living.

3. Build a support network. Join with like-minded people and organize for quality over quantity; a few devoted comrades can go further than a large and dispassionate group. Make art about it. Your support network, the love of your friends and family, can always be broader; build it bigger, with care and intentionality. Make more art about it. Try out new actions: talk to people and ask how they’re feeling, distribute literature, organize a study group, or put up stickers or disperse seed bombs together. With every loving bond we forge, and all the new art we make, we divorce ourselves a little more from the demons that haunt us — hopelessness, irony, and complacency — and find sparks of possibility. Try, fail, and try again and again.

4. Buy, accumulate, or otherwise procure Plan B, and save it for yourself and others in case it’s needed later. Set up a Plan B distro in your community. Do the same with other, potentially soon-hard-to-access supplies related to bodily autonomy.

5. Write letters to people in prison and detention, send them books, and/or do jail support and solidarity for those facing state repression in your communities. Act in ways that thwart carceral logics in your responses to conflict and harm as well as your day-to-day relations with others. Remember, there are no prisons or cops in olam ha-ba (the world to come).

6. Make art and display it in public. Draw, paint, or write a colorful sign about your dreams, your hopes for a better world, or to celebrate something that you love about this one. It doesn’t matter if you don’t think of yourself as an artsy type. If you can, get together with others to do this; share art materials, space, and ideas. Wheat paste (or wallpaper paste or glue) your finished work in public—somewhere you and others will see it when going about your daily lives. You’ve now made a material change to your surroundings. It will make people smile. It will make people feel less alone. It will make visible your resistance as well as visions. It also won’t last forever. Nothing does. You can always make more.

7. Take concrete steps to build relationships beyond borders and strengthen global solidarity with those who share your values. Here are a few starting points. Learn a new language and schedule mutual practice sessions with others studying your language; such skills will likely also prove useful to aid those at increased threat of being targeted. Reach out to other people (or collectives, projects, etc.) in other parts of the world who you share affinity with—Jews and Muslims, dispossessed and displaced people, anarchists and queers, and so on—and see if there’s anything you can collaborate on. Seek out the stories of people who fought or fled authoritarian regimes in the past and present; learn from their experiences, and engage in discussions about our current challenges and a diversity of tactics to address them.

8. Learn new skills, share them, and help others learn new skills toward everything we need and desire — everything for everyone, and what’s more for free. Learn to be a medic, facilitator, birth and death doula, electrician, filmmaker, mediator, writer, researcher to dig up information for your local antifascist crews, and on and on. Learn how to stop bleeds, plant gardens, squat and/or build houses, purify water, craft zines, sew clothing, repair cars, use a chain saw, make composting toilets, or cook for crowds. Learn how to aid folks in finding refuge, calming their nervous systems, setting up digital security, getting hormones, and so much more.

9. Feel your emotions. Do not sublimate them. Feel them and remember that this connects us to everyone who has ever despaired. Feel them with others. Set up peer support networks, a weekend-long emotional care clinic or daylong emotional aid skills share, or something as simple as social spaces where you can find others, sip herbal tea, and reciprocally warm each others’ hearts, even if temporarily.

10. Learn about and begin to practice alternative decision-making structures and group processes that have served those who got shit done in the past. Practice good processes that are cut from the cloth that the Zapatistas refer to as buen gobierno (good governance, or self-governance). Learn about Zapatista autonomous communities, Chéran, Rojava, and many other examples of self-governance, past and present, as inspiration as well as horizons to work toward.

Download Zine PDF

11. Gather and distribute free N95/KN95 masks and COVID tests as a baseline toward building a more generalized harm reduction crew that can gather and distribute, for example, Naloxone, fentanyl test strips, clean needles, condoms, and lube. Normalize COVID, other health protections, and additional ways of taking reciprocal care of each other. Go to outdoor events (or mask up for indoor ones) to table and share pamphlets on collective COVID safety and harm reduction.

12. We have a long history of fighting fascism, states, and policing, including as embodied in a rich tradition of anti-authoritarian Jewish songs. Sing “Daloy Politsey/Polizei” (down with the police) at your next prison noise demo or Palestinian solidarity action. Start a study group and find inspiration in those stories—and then act on them. Join in fascist watches and cop watches, or start them in your neighborhood or city. Prepare forward for community self-defense, which can come in many shapes and sizes.

13. If you care for a child or children, work with one or many other caregivers to create a mutual aid group if there isn’t one already! Distribute multilingual flyers at pickup and drop-off spots for school, day care, or local playgrounds in order to find other caregivers to involve. Plan weekly or biweekly meetups at whatever space kids usually hang out (such as a park), and share needs and resources.

14. Revive the concept and practice of kassi, the mutual aid funds/networks that used to keep neighbors afloat and supported in eastern European shtetls. Borrow from your own ancestral traditions/histories of mutual aid to build real-life community by strengthening relations with your neighbors and comrades for the days and years to come.

15. Take time to mourn your losses and grieve your dead—as inseparable from fighting and organizing for the living; as part and parcel of mending the world and ourselves. Set up temporary and ongoing public altars. Paint murals to honor lost friends and comrades. Lean on the deep wisdom of grief rituals that have sustained life for millennia, such as saying Kaddish for the dead or doing shiva after a loss. Make rituals part of your resistance, queering and self-organizing them in collectivity with others. Take those rituals out into your community—by a river, on a street corner, at a DIY space or radical bookfair, during a forest defense or as a direct action.

16. Feed people for free. Look for a Food Not Bombs or Coffee Not Cops chapter or similar non-hierarchical mutual aid project near you, get in touch, and join in collecting ingredients for, cooking, and/or serving a meal. If there’s nothing in your area, organize a free picnic; put up posters and encourage everybody to come—and optionally, bring a dish. Talking to the people you share the food with is important; do this if you can. Notice the moment when someone comes to understand that food can be good and free and shared without restrictions, obligations, eligibility criteria, or expectations; this means that things don’t have to be the way they are.

17. If a friend or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts and reaches out to you, offer to drop everything and be present with them. Small acts of peer support can make an enormous difference; think of yourself as a “tourniquet” for them when they most need it. You can hold space for them, for instance; don’t make it about you or act scared but instead simply allow them to share feelings, especially without fear of the cops being called. Or keep them company and help look after their basic needs that day. Or let friends and other people you trust know in advance that they can call you in these kinds of situations, and that you’ll take a weapon away from them for as long as needed if they ask.

18. Organize a stoop or porch sale with a few other households, or even a regular stoop or porch sale, and use the funds to cover material needs for solidarity efforts, such as abortion or bail funds, or for gender-affirming surgery or aiding folks during a rent strike. Ask yourself: What time and materials could I easily donate that would have an exponential effect and allow me to meet and organize with friends and neighbors in my community? Rather than a personal responsibility or charity, fundraising becomes a way of building deeper networks of care and connection.

19. Engage in play with others as a gateway to imagining other worlds and experimenting with getting there while cultivating camaraderie and goodwill. Hold game nights. Invent your own versions of group “sports” such as capture the flag, tag, and soccer, and gather folks in a park to make riotously merry. Self-organize a queer Purim spiel or other DIY theatrics, and simply be silly (and/or use your performances to make fun of the social order and dream up ways it might tumble). Add playfulness to your banners, events, organizing, and actions.

20. Slow down. Heed Jewish wisdom: days and hours of rest are sacred. Heed disabled wisdom: your work is completely irrelevant to your worth! Your ancestors began weaving unfucked social fabrics and burning down fucked-up ones before you were a glimmer in their eye. Descendants to come will be weaving and unfucking and burning still. What can we even weave with only weak threads connecting us? Trust takes years. Any faster, and conflict rends our fabric like kri’ah, the Jewish ritual act of tearing cloth in mourning. So come fascism or liberation: weave slow, take sabbaticals, feast on kugel, and sing with your comrades down by the river.

This zine is a communal effort, with advice gleaned from the following Jewish anarchists: alice, asher, cat, chanaleh, cindy, cindy barukh, hannah, jhaavo, lilli, mazel, scarab, simcha, and vicky.

 

Caucasus Feminist Anti-War Movement: Against Azerbaijan’s authoritarianism, COP29, green capitalism, wars and the regional slide into authoritarianism

By Caucasus Feminist Anti-War Movement

Published 22 November, 2024

First published at LeftEast.

Caucasus Feminist Anti-War Movement (C-FAM) is an emerging movement of feminist and anti-war/peace activists from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Unified in our defiance, C-FAM originated from a powerful solidarity action to confront the greenwashing practices at COP29 taking place in Azerbaijan on November 2024, one of the largest events in our region in recent times. Our movement embodies the principles of feminism, anti-militarism, anti-war, anti-authoritarianism, anti-nationalism, and anti-capitalism, opposing oppressive systems that perpetuate inequality and violence.

We advocate for the radical decolonization of the South Caucasus, rejecting the oppressive binary imposed by Western and Russian influences, which fractures our region and suppresses its true potential. C-FAM is committed to dismantling the pervasive nationalist and patriarchal structures that fuel conflict and exploitation in our homelands.

Our activism is rooted in intersectionality, recognizing that the liberation of one is inextricably linked to the liberation of all. We strive to forge a new geopolitical consciousness that prioritizes local voices and sustainable, community-led development over foreign intervention and corporate agendas.

C-FAM calls for transformative change through direct action, educational outreach, and international solidarity. We aim to re-envision our region’s future free from the shackles of neo-colonialism, militarization, and authoritarian rule, fostering a culture of peace and egalitarianism. We fight to create a South Caucasus that is autonomous, resilient, and grounded in the values of freedom and equity for all its peoples.

Together, we reject the false dichotomy between the West and Russia, advocating for a third path — one that is crafted by and for the people of the South Caucasus, reclaiming our region’s agency and redefining its place in the world. We believe peace is not merely the absence of war, but the presence of justice.

Our protest in Georgia during the opening day of the COP29 summit on 11th of November 2024 is a testament to our shared resistance and the growing demand for a just future. We come together to expose the devastating impacts of authoritarianism, green capitalism, and the entrenchment of oppressive regimes across the region. As a coalition of feminist anti-war voices from across the Caucasus, we are challenging the narrative that seeks to isolate our struggles from global movements for justice. We reject the complicity of both local and international powers in maintaining systems of exploitation and demand an end to the erasure of our experiences and the voices of those most affected.

Below, we share our full statement, outlining the core demands and messages of our movement. We hope it resonates with those who share our vision for a world that prioritizes freedom, equality, and sustainability over profit and oppression.

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Collective statement by Caucasus Feminist Anti-War Movement: Against Azerbaijan’s authoritarianism, COP29, green capitalism, wars and the regional slide into authoritarianism

In the face of oppression, we raise our voices for those silenced. In the wake of greenwashing, we tear down the mask of exploitation. In the shadow of war, we demand justice for the people of the Caucasus: Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Talysh, Lezgins, Avars, Tats, Kurds, Chechens, Kabardins, Tatars, Abkhazians, Ossetians, Cherkess, in total more than 50 ethnic groups that inhabit our homeland.

Today, we stand united—Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Georgian activists, along with allies around the world—demanding an end to the systems of oppression that devastate our lands and communities.

We, a coalition of activists, came together to let our voices be heard and deliver several messages to the World.

Together, we declare:

1. Stop Azerbaijan: A COP29 host that masks authoritarianism with greenwashing

The Azerbaijani regime has captured people into an open-air prison. It’s land borders are closed for four years since 2020 under the pretext of the COVID pandemic. The regime wants to have full control over our bodies and our minds. It imprisons the ones who think differently, it exiles the ones who are declared to be ethnic and political others, it prevents the ones who are in the country to leave and find refuge elsewhere, it drowns people in poverty and oppresses dissent by taking the loved ones of those dissenting as hostages.

Those who speak out — journalists, activists, feminists, or the brave souls without labels in villages like Söyüdlü and Nardaran — are met with police brutality, imprisonment, and, in some cases, risk of disappearance without even an illusion of a trial. This isn’t just political persecution; it is the systematic erasure of voices who dare envision a freer Azerbaijan. But as we see today, the regime fails to silence us all as we are among the people who refuse to surrender their existence and thus, continue to resist.

We stand here for our friends and comrades in Azerbaijani prisons:

For Sevinj Vagifqizi

For Nargiz Absalamova

For Elnara Gasimova

For Bahruz Samadov

For Igbal Abilov

For Farid Mehralizada

For Gubad Ibadoghlu

For Afiyaddin Mammadov

For Fazil Gasimov

For Aykhan Israfilov

For Elvin Mustafayev

For Mahammad Kekalov

For Ulvi Hasanli

For Hafiz Babali

and the other 300 political prisoners.

As these political prisoners languish behind bars, tortured in silence, the world looks away. For decades, the world has looked away and tolerated a dictator who oppresses its own people. These powers have not only tolerated a dictator but made his very reign possible by pumping his clan with oil money. It is only in the moment when this dictatorship has become dangerous for neighboring countries that some are opening their eyes. Aliyev failed to resolve this conflict for almost 20 years in power. His way was to start a war with Armenia and ethnically cleanse Armenians. However, even then we see how profit can make the those who have a voice indifferent again.

Today, we say: No more. Authoritarianism cannot be “greenwashed.” The hypocrisy must end. We call on COP29 attendees to demand the release of political prisoners in Azerbaijan and reject all forms of complicity in Aliyev’s oppression. Environmental justice must mean freedom, not oppression masquerading as sustainability.

2. End our region being a battleground for capitalist and imperial interests

Since the first wells of oil were drilled in Azerbaijan, our region has suffered under the yoke of imperial forces. Today, both Russia and the West, and regional powers like Turkey exploit our region for profit and control, deepening divisions among our people. Under the guise of “green energy,” the West seeks new extractive markets, while Russia and Turkey cling to their imperial ambitions. Our countries are used as pawns — sites of conflict and profit, torn apart by outside interests. Nothing much has changed over a century: colonial and imperial logic of “divide and rule” continues.

Yet today it has a new mask- a “green and sustainable” one. Under the name of green energy – a new brand for extractivism cloaked in sustainability rhetoric and entrenched in profit – Allies in the Global North aim to profit from the transit of green energy and goods from the Global East. But for “in-between” empires like Russia – we are only an asset and an ex-colony – the periphery of Empire, that it can’t lose.

Being on the crossroads of empires and world capital means bloodshed, war and enormous grief to us – indigenous peoples of these lands. Our national elites are in the same club with colonial powers and capital and will never be on our side. They will never hesitate to impose war and devastation upon us to hold their power. This is what the Azerbaijani regime did in 2020 by waging a war, and later in 2023, by ethnically cleansing Armenians from their homes. Let us be clear: Azerbaijan’s plans to transform Nagorno-Karabakh into a so-called “Green Zone” is an exploitation agenda built on ethnic displacement, raw material extraction and resource monopolization.

To the profiteers: our region’s “green transition” must not come at the expense of our people, nor should it deepen inequality or exploit our resources. We demand a transition that serves the people, not global corporations or empires.

3. Keep the local tyrants accountable

Imperialism screws us over, but that doesn’t make our homegrown dictators any better. These so-called leaders only bring devastation, insecurity, and poverty. After more than 20 years of Aliyev’s rule — following the 30-year reign of his father — the people of Azerbaijan have only endured suffering: lacking decent food, healthcare, jobs, education, and freedom.

In Georgia, it’s been over a decade of suffering under the rule of the Georgian Dream and Ivanishvili. The people have faced broken healthcare, precarious jobs, and a neoliberal economy that offers nothing but misery. Now, Ivanishvili wants to strip away freedom of speech and assembly, hiding behind the excuse of a “Global War Party” conspiracy, which conveniently lets Russia elude any responsibility for its war in Ukraine and its chaos in our region.

These wannabe monarchs hold a massive chunk of our economies in their pockets. Ivanishvili alone controls a third of Georgia’s GDP, while Aliyev and his family, let alone his daughters, sit on an estimated $13 billion — almost half of Azerbaijan’s national budget.

To our so-called leaders, we say: The people deserve dignity, not dictators.

4. Stand with the Caucasus: Not isolated, but an essential part of global struggle

South Caucasus countries—Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia—are not in isolation and very much depend on world politics, but it is not a one-way street.

Today, the Azerbaijani regime is desperate and thus, claiming regional power. They try to host COP29, influence elections in Georgia, actively engage in politics in Turkey, have a stronghold in Central Asia, buy off European politicians, engage in illegal lobbying in the USA, and of course, force Armenia into political submission after the defeat in 2020. What is most vile is its ongoing role in and support for the genocide in Gaza by supplying Israel’s oil and gas. More than 40,000 people are massacred by the Israeli regime with the support of the Azerbaijani regime, and its State Oil Company – SOCAR – is shamefully complicit in this.

We are not separate from global politics, from what is happening in the rest of the world. We feel the chaos and turbulence of international relations more than people in the metropoles.

We, the people of the Caucasus, reject the greed, violence, and hypocrisy of our elites and their global allies.

Our Call to Action

We call upon all people, movements, and leaders to recognize that Azerbaijan’s regime is the antithesis of justice. Let us join together to expose these crimes, to amplify the voices of the silenced, and to reclaim our discourse of social justice. Only a world that prioritizes freedom and equality over profit, and community resilience over capitalist growth, can sustain life on this planet.

To those who try to divide us, we say:

We will not choose between genocidal and non-genocidal fascism.

We will not choose between Russia and The West.

We will not choose between starvation and a false freedom.

We will not choose between your imposed traditional values and your “civilized” values.

We reject these false dichotomies. We say: A plague o’ both of your houses.

Our struggle is global, our solidarity unbreakable, our commitment unyielding. No more silence. No more complicity.

Trump’s Victory and Collapse of Liberal Centre

Prabhat Patnaik | 16 Nov 2024

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The roots of the ubiquitous collapse of the political liberal Centre lie in the fact that it remains tied to economic neo-liberalism which itself has run into a crisis.

Donald Trump’s victory in the US Presidential election conforms to a pattern presently observable across the world, namely a collapse of the liberal Centre and a growth in support either for the Left, or for the extreme Right, the neo-fascists, in situations in which the Left is absent or weak. This was visible in France where Emmanuel Macron’s party lost substantially, and the ascendancy of neo-fascism was prevented only by a hastily-formed Left alliance. This is also evident in our own neighbourhood, in Sri Lanka, where a Left candidate emerged as president through a sudden and substantial increase in his vote share, defeating the incumbent president who belonged to the liberal Centre.

This ubiquitous collapse of the liberal Centre, indicative of a crisis of liberalism, is the most striking phenomenon of contemporary times. Its roots lie in the fact that political liberalism today remains tied to economic neoliberalism which itself has run into a crisis.

The political philosophy of classical liberalism, which provided the basis for liberal political praxis, was sustained by a long tradition of bourgeois economic thought, straddling both classical political economy and neo-classical economics. Both these strands believed, notwithstanding significant differences between them, in the virtues of the free market, whose shackling by State interference had to be removed on a priority basis.

The vacuity of this entire line of reasoning was exposed by the First World War (whose economic roots belied all claims relating to the virtues of the market) and even more blatantly of course by the Great Depression.

Keynes showed that laissez faire capitalism, leaving aside “brief periods of excitement”, systematically kept large numbers of workers involuntarily unemployed, that the free market, far from being the ideal institution it was portrayed to be, was so flawed that it exposed capitalism to the danger of being overthrown by the rising tide of socialism.

But being a liberal, and apprehensive about the socialist threat if the system was not rectified, Keynes proposed a new version of liberalism (which he called “new liberalism”) that was to be characterised by perennial State intervention to boost aggregate demand and to achieve high employment, rather than an avoidance of it that had been the hallmark of classical liberalism.

Keynesianism, however, was never accepted by finance capital. Keynes himself was intrigued by this and attributed it to a lack of understanding of his theory. The real cause, however, lay deeper, in the fear that any systematic State intervention would delegitimise the social role of the capitalists, especially of that section of capitalists which was engaged in the sphere of finance and whom Keynes had called “functionless investors”; this is a persistent fear and remains to this day.

Keynesianism became State policy only after the war, since the war had weakened finance capital and had led to the ascendancy of social democracy, which had embraced Keynesianism.

The post-war boom in advanced capitalist countries saw a consolidation of finance capital and an expansion in its size to a point where it became increasingly international. At the same time post-war capitalism, even though supplemented by State intervention, ran into a different kind of crisis, not one caused by inadequate aggregate demand but one that consisted in an inflationary upsurge that occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

This crisis was rooted in the twin phenomena that characterised post-war capitalism: high employment that diminished the reserve army of labour and removed its “stabilising influence” in a capitalist economy, and decolonisation that removed the mechanism for compressing third world demand to keep primary commodity prices low. It allowed the new international finance capital to discredit the regime of Keynesian demand management (aided and abetted by a revival of apologetic bourgeois economics re-propagating the virtues of the free market) and to promote neoliberal economic regimes everywhere.

Since in the new situation, retaining the “confidence of the investors” (that is, preventing capital flight by kow-towing to the demands of international finance capital) was the overriding concern of State policy, Keynes’ “new liberalism” had to be jettisoned; the liberal Centre, much of social democracy and even certain sections of the Left, lined up behind neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism, however, brought immense suffering to the working class in advanced capitalist countries and still greater suffering to the working people in the Third World, even before it had run into a crisis; and the suffering increased greatly when it did run into a crisis.

The growth rate of the world economy slowed down significantly in the neoliberal era compared with the dirigiste period; and it slowed further in the period after 2008 when the last of the US asset price bubbles burst.

This crisis, a result of inadequate aggregate demand caused by the massive increase in income inequality under neoliberalism (which invariably produces a tendency toward over-production) had only been delayed by the US asset price bubbles that had kept up world aggregate demand through a wealth effect; the crisis manifested itself with the bursting of the bubble.

The crisis cannot be overcome within the bounds of neoliberalism, because neoliberalism eliminates the scope for Keynesian demand management; and a new bubble that could mitigate somewhat its intensity, is ruled out by the very experience of the previous ones that have made people more circumspect. In fact, monetary policy aimed at stimulating a new bubble has only succeeded in stimulating inflation through higher profit-markups even in the midst of stagnant demand, which only aggravates the crisis even further.

Contemporary liberalism, in short, committed as it is to the neoliberal order, does little, and indeed can do little, to alleviate the people’s distress. Not surprisingly, the people are turning away from it toward other political formations to the Right and to the Left.

The Right, too, can do little to alleviate the people’s distress: its pre-election rhetoric is invariably at variance with its post-election policy which is neoliberal, as Giorgia Meloni in Italy has shown, and as Marine Le Pen’s prime ministerial candidate, Jordan Bardella, was beginning to show even before the elections in France through a shift in his party’s stand vis-à-vis international finance capital.

But the Right whips up rhetoric against the “other”, typically some minority religious or ethnic group, or immigrants, to produce a semblance of some sort of activism in the face of the crisis, while the liberal Centre barely acknowledges the existence of the crisis. Monopoly capital in this situation shifts its support toward the Right, or the neo-fascists, in order to maintain its hegemony in the face of the crisis, which is another reason for the weakening of the liberal Centre and the crisis of liberalism.

Trump, it may be argued, does have an economic agenda, of protecting the US economy against imports not just from China but even from the European Union. He cannot be accused of merely adhering to the old neoliberal script like Meloni. But several points must be noted here: first, even while moving away from liberal trade to protectionism, Trump has never mentioned putting restrictions on the free cross-border flow of international finance capital, so that the crux of the neoliberal arrangement remains unchallenged by him even in his pre-election rhetoric. 

Second, protectionism is not Trump’s original idea; it had begun even under Barack Obama. Besides, protectionism alone would not revive the US economy; it can at best encourage domestic production at the expense of imports from competing economies, but it cannot per se expand the size of the domestic market, for which an expansion of State expenditure, financed either through a fiscal deficit or through taxes on the rich, is essential.

But with his penchant for corporate tax-cuts revealed from his last presidency, Trump will not resort to higher State spending, so that at best, after a temporary blip caused by greater protection, the US economy will settle back into stagnation and crisis.

While Trump’s victory was, therefore, expected, being in conformity with the globally-observed phenomenon of a collapse of the liberal Centre, it does show that the people have not seen through his economic agenda, of adherence to the basic tenets of neoliberalism (other than introducing greater protectionism which can at best produce a temporary increase in jobs while worsening the inflationary situation because of the absence of cheap imports).

The international context, it follows, is favourable for the ascendancy of the Left, which alone can bring an end to the ongoing crisis by bringing an end to neoliberalism, and which alone can bring about an end to the wars that are currently going on (and for which the liberal centre is culpable, a matter to be discussed on a later occasion). The Left, however, has to be prepared for this task.

Prabhat Patnaik is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The views are personal.

 

Geopolitical conflicts, anti-imperialism and internationalism in times of ‘reactionary acceleration’

By Jaime Pastor

Published 21 November, 2024

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First published in Spanish at Viento Sur. Translation from Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières.

Within the general framework of the multidimensional crisis in which we find ourselves, now aggravated by the stimulus that Trump’s recent electoral victory represents for the rise of an extreme right on a global scale, it seems even more evident that we are witnessing a profound crisis of the international geopolitical (dis)order, as well as of the basic rules of International Law that have been established since the end of the Second World War. The most tragic manifestation of this crisis (which calls into question even the future of the UN) is found in the genocidal war against Gaza (Awad, 2024), to which are currently added around 56 wars across the planet.

In this context, the imperialist hierarchical system based on US hegemony is openly questioned and challenged by other major powers, such as China and Russia, as well as by others on a regional scale, such as Iran. This global geopolitical competition is clearly evident in certain war conflicts, the evolution of which will determine a new configuration of the balance of power within this system, as well as of the blocks present or in formation, such as the BRICS. In light of this new scenario, in this article I will focus on a summary description of the current panorama, then characterise the different positions that appear within the left in this new phase and insist on the need to build an internationalist left that is opposed to all imperialisms (main or secondary) and in solidarity with the struggles of the attacked peoples.

Polycrisis and authoritarian neoliberalisms

There is broad consensus on the left regarding the diagnosis we can make of the global crisis that the world is currently going through, with the eco-social and climate crisis as a backdrop. A polycrisis that we can define with Pierre Rousset as “multifaceted, the result of the combination of multiple specific crises. So we are not facing a simple sum of crises, but their interaction, which multiplies their dynamics, fueling a death spiral for the human species (and for a large part of living species)” (Pastor, 2024).

A situation that is closely related to the exhaustion of the neoliberal capitalist accumulation regime that began in the mid-1970s, which, after the fall of the bloc dominated by the USSR, took a leap forward towards its expansion on a global scale. A process that led to the Great Recession that began in 2008 (aggravated by austerity policies, the consequences of the pandemic crisis and the war in Ukraine), which ended up frustrating the expectations of social advancement and political stability that the promised happy globalization had generated, mainly among significant sectors of the new middle classes.

A globalization, it must be remembered, that was expanded under the new neoliberal cycle that throughout its different phases: combative, normative and punitive (Davies, 2016), has been building a new transnational economic constitutionalism at the service of global corporate tyranny and the destruction of the structural, associative and social power of the working class. And, what is more serious, it has turned into common sense the “ market civilization” as the only possible one, although this whole process has acquired different variants and forms of political regimes, generally based on strong States immune to democratic pressure (Gill, 2022; Slobodian, 2021). A neoliberalism that, however, is today showing its inability to offer a horizon of improvement for the majority of humanity on an increasingly inhospitable planet.

We are therefore in a period, both at the state and interstate level, full of uncertainties, under a financialized, digital, extractivist and rentier capitalism that makes our lives precarious and seeks at all costs to lay the foundations for a new stage of growth with an increasingly active role of the States at its service. To do so, it resorts to new forms of political domination functional to this project that, increasingly, tend to come into conflict not only with freedoms and rights won after long popular struggles, but also with liberal democracy. In this way, an increasingly authoritarian neoliberalism is spreading, not only in the South but increasingly in the North, with the threat of a “reactionary acceleration” (Castellani, 2024). A process now stimulated by a Trumpism that is becoming the master discursive framework of a rising far right, willing to constitute itself as an alternative to the crisis of global governance and the decomposition of the old political elites (Urbán, 2024; Camargo, 2024).

The imperialist hierarchical system in dispute

Within this context, succinctly explained here, we are witnessing a crisis of the imperialist hierarchical system that has predominated since the fall of the Soviet bloc, facilitated precisely by the effects generated by a process of globalization that has led to the displacement of the center of gravity of the world economy from the North Atlantic (Europe-USA) to the Pacific (USA, East and Southeast Asia).

Indeed, following the Great Recession that began in 2007-2008 and the subsequent crisis of neoliberal globalization, a new phase has begun in which a reconfiguration of the global geopolitical order is taking place, tending to be multipolar but at the same time asymmetrical, in which the United States remains the great hegemonic power (monetary, military and geopolitical), but is weakened and challenged by China, the great rising power, and Russia, as well as by other sub-imperial or secondary powers in different regions of the planet. Meanwhile, in many countries of the South, faced with the plundering of their resources, the increase in sovereign debt and popular revolts and wars of different kinds, the end of development as a goal to be achieved is giving way to reactionary populisms in the name of order and security.

Thus, global and regional geopolitical competition is being accentuated by the different competing interests, not only on the economic and technological level, but also on the military and values level, with the consequent rise of state ethno-nationalisms against presumed internal and external enemies.

However, one must not forget the high degree of economic, energy and technological interdependence that has been developing across the planet in the context of neoliberal globalisation, as was clearly highlighted both during the global pandemic crisis and the lack of an effective energy blockade against Russia despite the agreed sanctions. Added to this are two new fundamental factors: on the one hand, the current possession of nuclear weapons by major powers (there are currently four nuclear hotspots: one in the Middle East (Israel) and three in Eurasia (Ukraine, India-Pakistan and the Korean peninsula); and, on the other, the climate, energy and materials crisis (we are in overtime!), which substantially differentiate this situation from that before 1914. These factors condition the geopolitical and economic transition underway, setting limits to a deglobalisation that is probably partial and which, of course, does not promise to be happy for the great majority of humanity. At the same time, these factors also warn of the increased risk of escalation in armed conflicts in which powers with nuclear weapons are directly or indirectly involved, as is the case in Ukraine or Palestine.

This specificity of the current historical stage leads us, according to Promise Li, to consider that the relationship between the main great powers (especially if we refer to that between the USA and China) is given through an unstable balance between an “antagonistic cooperation” and a growing “inter-imperialist rivalry”. A balance that could be broken in favour of the latter, but that could also be normalised within the common search for a way out of the secular stagnation of a global capitalism in which China (Rousset, 2021) and Russia (Serfati, 2022) have now been inserted, although with very different evolutions. A process, therefore, full of contradictions, which is extensible to other powers, such as India, which are part of the BRICS, in which the governments of its member countries have not so far questioned the central role of organizations such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund, which remain under US hegemony (Fuentes, 2023; Toussaint, 2024).

However, it is clear that the geopolitical weakening of the United States — especially after its total fiasco in Iraq and Afghanistan and, now, the crisis of legitimacy that is being caused by its unconditional support for the genocidal State of Israel — is allowing a greater potential margin of manoeuvre on the part of different global or regional powers, in particular those with nuclear weapons. For this reason I agree with Pierre Rousset’s description:

The relative decline of the United States and the incomplete rise of China have opened up a space in which secondary powers can play a significant role, at least in their own region (Russia, Turkey, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, etc.), although the limits of the BRICS are clear. In this situation, Russia has not failed to present China with a series of faits accomplis on Europe’s eastern borders. Acting in concert, Moscow and Beijing were largely the masters of the game on the Eurasian continent. However, there was no coordination between the invasion of Ukraine and an actual attack on Taiwan (Pastor, 2024).

This, undoubtedly facilitated by the greater or lesser weight of other factors related to the polycrisis, explains the outbreak of conflicts and wars in very different parts of the planet, but in particular those that occur in three very relevant current epicentres: Ukraine, Palestine and, although for now in terms of the cold war, Taiwan.

Against this backdrop, we have seen how the US took advantage of Russia’s unjust invasion of Ukraine as an excuse to relaunch the expansion of a NATO in crisis towards other countries in Eastern and Northern Europe. An objective closely associated with the reformulation of NATO’s “new strategic concept”, as we were able to see at the summit that this organisation held in Madrid in July 2022 (Pastor, 2022) and more recently at the one held in Washington in July of this year. At the latter, this strategy was reaffirmed, as well as the consideration of China as the main strategic competitor, while any criticism of the State of Israel was avoided. The latter is what is showing the double standards (Achcar, 2024) of the Western bloc with regard to its involvement in the war in Ukraine, on the one hand, and its complicity with the genocide that the colonial State of Israel is committing against the Palestinian people, on the other.

Again, we have also seen NATO’s growing interest in the Southern flank in order to pursue its racist necropolitics against illegal immigration while continuing to aspire to compete for control of basic resources in countries of the South, especially in Africa, where French and American imperialisms are losing weight against China and Russia.

In this way, the strategy of the Western bloc has been redefined, within which US hegemony has been strengthened on the military level (thanks, above all, to the Russian invasion of Ukraine) and to which a more divided European Union with its old German engine weakened is clearly subordinated. However, after Trump’s victory, the European Union seems determined to reinforce its military power in the name of the search for a false strategic autonomy, since it will continue to be linked to the framework of NATO. Meanwhile, many countries in the South are distancing themselves from this bloc, although with different interests among them, which differentiates the possible alliances that may be formed from the one that in the past characterized the Non-Aligned Movement.

In any case, it is likely that after his electoral victory, Donald Trump will make a significant shift in US foreign policy in order to implement his MAGA (Make America Great Again) project beyond the geoeconomic level (intensifying his competition with China and, although at a different level, with the EU), especially in relation to the three epicentres of conflicts mentioned above: with regard to Ukraine, by substantially reducing economic and military aid and seeking some form of agreement with Putin, at least on a ceasefire; with regard to Israel, by reinforcing his support for Netanyahu’s total war; and finally by reducing his military commitment to Taiwan.

What anti-imperialist internationalism from the left?

In this context of the rise of an authoritarian neoliberalism (in its different versions: the reactionary one of the extreme right and that of the extreme centre, mainly) and of various geopolitical conflicts, the great challenge for the left is how to reconstruct antagonistic social and political forces anchored in the working class and capable of forging an anti-imperialism and a solidarity internationalism that is not subordinated to one or another great power or regional capitalist bloc.

A task that will not be easy, because in the current phase we are witnessing deep divisions within the left in relation to the position to maintain in the face of some of the aforementioned conflicts. Trying to synthesize, with Ashley Smith (2024), we could distinguish four positions:

The first would be the one that aligns itself with the Western imperial bloc in the common defense of alleged democratic values against Russia, or with the State of Israel in its unjustifiable right to self-defense, as has been stated by a majority sector of the social-liberal left. A position that hides the true imperialist interests of that bloc, does not denounce its double standards and ignores the increasingly de-democratizing and racist drift that Western regimes are experiencing, as well as the colonial and occupying character of the Israeli State.

The second is what is often described as campism, which would align itself with states such as Russia or China, which it considers allies against US imperialism because it considers the latter to be the main enemy, ignoring the expansionist geopolitical interests of these two powers. A position that reminds us of the one that many communist parties held in the past during the Cold War in relation to the USSR, but which now becomes a caricature considering both the reactionary nature of Putin’s regime and the persistent state-bureaucratic despotism in China.

The third is that of a geopolitical reductionism , which is now reflected in the war in Ukraine, limiting itself to considering it to be only an inter-imperialist conflict. This attitude, adopted by a sector of pacifism and the left, implies denying the legitimacy of the dimension of national struggle against the occupying power that the Ukrainian resistance has, without ceasing to criticize the neoliberal and pro-Atlanticist character of the government that heads it.

Finally, there is the one that is against all imperialisms (whether major or minor) and against all double standards, showing itself ready to stand in solidarity with all attacked peoples, even if they may have the support of one or another imperial power (such as the US and the EU in relation to Ukraine) or regional power (such as Iran in relation to Hamas in Palestine). This is a position that does not accept respect for the spheres of influence that the various major powers aspire to protect or expand, and that stands in solidarity with the peoples who fight against foreign occupation and for the right to decide their future (in particular, with the leftist forces in these countries that are betting on an alternative to neoliberalism), and is not aligned with any political-military bloc.

This last position is the one that I consider to be the most coherent from an anti-capitalist left. In fact, keeping in mind the historical distance and recognizing the need to analyze the specificity of each case, it coincides with the criteria that Lenin tried to apply when analyzing the centrality that the struggle against national and colonial oppression was acquiring in the imperialist phase of the early twentieth century. This was reflected, in relation to conflicts that broke out then, in several of his articles such as, for example, in “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination,” written in January-February 1916, where he maintained that:

The fact that the struggle for national freedom against an imperialist power can be exploited, under certain conditions, by another ’great’ power to achieve equally imperialist ends cannot force social democracy to renounce recognizing the right of nations to self-determination, just as the repeated cases of the use of republican slogans by the bourgeoisie for the purposes of political fraud and financial plunder (for example, in Latin countries) cannot force social democrats to renounce their republicanism (Lenin, 1976).

An internationalist position that must be accompanied by mobilisation against the remilitarisation process underway by NATO and the EU, but also against that of other powers such as Russia or China. And which must commit to putting the fight for unilateral nuclear disarmament and the dissolution of military blocs back at the centre of the agenda, taking up the baton of the powerful peace movement that developed in Europe during the 1980s, with the feminist activists of Greenham Common and intellectuals such as Edward P. Thompson at the forefront. An orientation that must obviously be inserted within a global eco-socialist, feminist, anti-racist and anti-colonial project.

References

Achcar, Gilbert (2024) “Anti-fascism and the Fall of Atlantic Liberalism”, Viento Sur, 19/08/24.

Awad, Nada (2024) “International Law and Israeli Exceptionalism”, Viento Sur, 193, pp. 19-27.

Camargo, Laura (2024) Discursive Trumpism . Madrid: Verbum (in press).

Castellani, Lorenzo (2024) “With Trump, the Age of Reactionary Acceleration”, Le Grand Continent, 11/08/24.

Davies, William (2016) “Neoliberalism 3.0”, New Left Review , 101, pp. 129-143.

Fuentes, Federico (2023) “Interview with Promise Li: US-China Rivalry, ’Antagonistic Cooperation’ and Anti-Imperialism”, Viento Sur, 191, 5-18. Available in English at https://links.org.au/us-china-rivalry-antagonistic-cooperation-and-anti-imperialism-21st-century-interview-promise-li

Gill, Stephen (2002) “Globalization, Market Civilization and Disciplinary Neoliberalism”. In Hovden, E. and Keene, E. (Eds.) The Globalization of Liberalism. London: Millennium. Palgrave Macmillan.

Lenin, Vladimir (1976) “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination”, Selected Works, Volume V, pp. 349-363. Moscow: Progreso.

Pastor, Jaime (2022) “NATO’s New Strategic Concept. Towards a New Permanent Global War?”, Viento Sur, 07/02/22. Available in English at https://links.org.au/towards-new-permanent-global-war-natos-new-strategic-concept

— (2024) “Interview with Pierre Rousset: World Crisis and Wars: What Internationalism for the 21st Century?”, Viento Sur, 04/16/24. Available in English at https://links.org.au/global-crisis-conflict-and-war-what-internationalism-21st-century

Rousset, Pierre (2021) “China, the New Emerging Imperialism”, Viento Sur, 10/16/21. 

Serfati, Claude (2022) “The Age of Imperialism Continues: Putin Proves It”, Viento Sur, 04/21/22. 

Slobodian, Quinn (2021) Globalists. Madrid: Capitán Swing. 

Smith, Ashley (2024) “Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism Today”, Viento Sur, 06/04/24. Available in English at https://links.org.au/imperialism-and-anti-imperialism-today

Toussaint, Eric (2024) “The BRICS Summit in Russia Offered No Alternative”, Viento Sur, 10/30/24. 

Urbán, Miguel (2024) Trumpisms. Neoliberals and Authoritarians . Barcelona: Verso.