Vijay Prashad, Talk, 25 September 2019

there's the light now I can read good evening everyone my name is Melanie yahzee I'm an assistant professor in the department's of Native American Studies and American Studies at the University of New Mexico I also recently stepped down as the National chair of the red nation a grassroots organization I co-founded in 2014 that agitates for indigenous liberation in north america and beyond i had held that position kind of as de facto chair for the four years prior to my election last year i say de facto because it wasn't until last year that the red nation had grown large enough to adopt a formal structure of internal governance on august 10th in 2018 our members convened for our first-ever General Assembly to debate and adopt are also first-ever principles of unity a document that now serves as the living governing principles for our organization as part of that General Assembly we democratically created an elected leadership for the first time in the organization's history despite my protests stations my comrades elected me as the first chair of the red nation last year a position that I'm pleased to say is now in the capable hands of my comrade and chad asia cheyenne antonio adonai woman of small stature but powerful will who will I'm sure assured the red nation into its next chapter of anti imperialist solidarity and internationalism that's right I guess I did an okay job as chair because my red nation comrades elected me as the 2019 20-20-20 culture desk at our third General Assembly on September 6th of this year something else happened at that General Assembly we adopted revolutionary socialism as an organization's primary political ideology yes a bunch of rosy red proletariat Indians are socialists this is a big deal and this is my first public appearance as an out socialist representing an out socialist organization that the red nation is a socialist organization matters when it comes to the term culture right I'm culture desk and it's meaning within our work for indigenous liberation to be culture desk doesn't mean I am now in charge of smudging or indigenous spiritual protocol for the organization which are important but I'm not competent enough to do that like many revolutionary organizations prior to it the red nation draws from long traditions of socialist political organization to guide its internal process and interactions with other forces in the fields of political struggle in which we participate and like other organizations culture for us simply means persuasion and this is sometimes what people mean when they use the word propaganda which I'm about to talk about before I realized that was a socialist the word propaganda always made me wince as a child growing up in the United States of the 1980s and 1990s I remember the word propaganda being weaponized in US media to describe the trickery and duplicity of Soviet media later in my life and education I came to understand these u.s. proclamations about propaganda is actually just anti-communist and culture in the US as as not always but often simply anti-communist propaganda in other words culture does not exist outside of the realm of the political as some would want us to believe there's been an interesting somewhat disturbing resurgence of interest in communism and the Soviet Union in the u.s. media today most of which is told through the fuzzy lens of what Russia means for Americans today from the recent emmy-winning HBO miniseries Chernobyl to the recent blockbuster film red Sparrow headlined by Academy award-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence should the imminent threat that Russia I keep using square quotes around Russia because it's like this idea of Russia that I'm not entirely sure people understand materially so it's to the imminent threat that Russia poses to our sacrosanct sacrosanct electoral institutions as well as our values of freedom and security it is clear that Russia is a specter that continues to haunt America well I've been thinking about this and I don't think it's actually Russia that's the specter I think it's communism or in the parlance of contemporary us-based political discussion the socialist alternative that is gaining popularity as a response to the crumbling neoliberal order red pop Red Scare propaganda still sells even 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union and it doesn't just sell it is rewarded with celebration and the highest order of common so to service culture desk for a revolutionary socialist organization based in the so called the United States is to say the least a challenge I start my introductory introductory remarks about dr. Prasad I'm gonna call him Vijay if that's ok with these reflections because I think it's important to mark exactly why I jumped at the chance to serve as his interlocutor this evening first and foremost I acknowledge Vijay as my comrade although I am a mere Padawan to his Jedi Master in the long history of socialist traditions I've struggled throughout the world I looked at EJ as a comrade who inspires me and indeed everyone in the red nation a comrade who keeps us on our toes to sharpen our analysis so that we may direct her intellectual praxis to the building of effective revolutionary struggle which really just means alleviating the suffering that the majority of our relations both human and other than human experience as their daily condition of existence under capitalism as the red nation's new culture desk I look to be Jay as an example of a principled comrade who wields written and visual narrative in a way that does exactly this with wit and brilliance surely but also with genuine compassion and optimism it is in fact from Vijay's writing that I learned that optimism the insistence on imagining and organizing alternatives into existence is a distinguishing feature of socialist intellectual and cultural production it is from Vijay and possibly Lenin to then I learned our vocation as revolutionaries is also to be permanent persuaders to produce narratives that persuade the wretched and humble people of the earth to rise up and reclaim our place in history I could have introduced Vijay through listing as many achievements as an academic which are many and definitely worthy of note however this type of introduction does not to me seem appropriate Vijay like myself may accuse her in petty bourgeois class position right as an intellectual because of academic pedigree or guild training in the academy but I see him as a comrade because he's and he is an intellectual force who produces knowledge towards the end of struggle and dare I say towards the ends of revolution whereas the academic typically works to uphold her own class interests the socialist intellectual seeks to undermine the ruling class instead aligning herself with the interests of the global dispossessed laboring to produce narratives that instill confidence in her people an offer language to imagine and build alternatives to capitalism while anti-intellectualism is often rife within lefty spaces in the United States the key role of the socialist intellectual and building vibrant and successful mass movements cannot be understated we need and deserve more of these courageous and unflinching thinkers our planet and indeed our future depends upon it please join me in welcoming one such thinker and my comrade Vijay Prashad good evening nice to be here with you I want to start by saying I'm very grateful to the Landon Foundation for letting me come to New Mexico this is in many ways the first time I've been here it's also something very special for me because one of my great friends teachers was a friend of the Landon foundation and that's Eduardo galeano and I very much miss Eduardo because you know he had a lyrical way of attacking a world that's gone crazy and at the same time allowing us to believe that we are capable of becoming human beings before he died maybe a few years before he died he said something so very significant and I felt I you know wanted to start somewhere somewhere in the vicinity of what he said he said scientists erroneously believe that human beings are made of atoms now just before I go ahead with what Eduardo said I recognize that we're in very dangerous territory now it's very I think dangerous to attack science so please understand that my friend our friend Eduardo galeano was a shapeshifter and this comment of his is not exactly as you might read it so let me start again he said scientists erroneous erroneously believed that human beings are made of atoms he said they're wrong because human beings are actually made of stories it's a very moving line for me because it tells you so much about the human predicament the importance of stories to us I spent all day today an exhausting day from dawn to now in front of a microphone the whole day was spent in that way communicating with somebody or lots of people far away not being able to see their faces in fact I can't even see your faces now but really the human predicament is trying to reach people it's trying to see your face trying to become human together there was an 18th century poet from the region where I spent most of my life who said add meta but image kill say in Sanwa add meta very much can say in Sanwa we were people with great difficulty we became human it's very hard to be a human being my lecture tonight is dedicated to Eduardo galeano my friend our friend a shape-shifter [Applause] those who are against fascism without being against capitalism are willing to eat the calf but they are against the sight of blood they are easily satisfied if the butcher washes his hands before weighing the meat they are not against the property relations which engender barbarism they are only against barbarism itself Berthold Brecht 1935 terrible is the mood of the planet two of the largest carbon sinks on the planet the Amazon and Papua are in dire threat from land speculators and miners the land torn from those who live on it forced to produce for profit and then burning a flame there is anger in the forest but also anger from the people who live in the forest this is old anger in 1971 the pop one point John Cassidy Walla wrote words that could only be written in capital letters reluctant flame open your volcano take your pulse and your fuel burn burn burn burn burn this is climate change on steroids this is capitalist greed that sets aside the people of the land converts complex ecosystems into parking lots of production whether they pour concrete or soya you have already begun to burn burn burn burn burn part one earth Marcelo Rivera an anti mining activist from San Isidro El Salvador was murdered on 18 June 2009 his fingernails and his hair had been plucked out his trachea broken his thumb fixed inside his mouth his body hogtied then thrown into a well he was a member of the FMLN the Farah Bundy Marti National Liberation Front which fought against the oligarchy and US imperialism so that the Salvadorian people might breathe marchello opposed a mine in his hometown this was a mine being built by a Canadian firm named Pacific Rim marchello feared environmental destruction he was killed for his fears and his actions the earth is no longer the metabolism the interchange between humans and nature the complex dance that sustains life no social system has been as ravenous as capitalism as fiercely productive in the manufacture of commodities and as destructive to humans and nature nothing is safe from the process of commodification not the minerals and condensed carbon hidden inside the earth nor the air itself not even such abstract concepts as time and space our time is commodified leisure is a gift a space is commodities housing is not guaranteed anything that lives that dies that was never to be born can be transformed into a commodity something to buy and sell something to hasten the accumulation of capital by those who own property nothing is safe from them there is a very high correlation between the lands that mining companies want and that loggers want and the lands that are barely controlled by indigenous communities this is the case from Chile to Guatemala from Canada to Papua New Guinea Canada's Kumiko the world's largest uranium company will begin to mine in the lands of the Tidwell community and Aboriginal people in Western Australia protests upon protest has not awakened the Australian public to the dangers posed to the digital community nor has this stopped the hand of the Australian government they are determined to mine for profit Becky Abdallah a teacher a leader tells us that the mine will ruin mother earth AB the last comment is an echo of the Andean concept of Pachamama mother earth an idea that is so important to international indigenous movements from one end of the planet to the other it is a direct echo of the mother earth accord signed by First Nation Chiefs in Canada with all concerned parties around the issue of the TransCanada pipeline Canada plays an outsized role in this mayhem this is despite the fact that one believes always that Canada is a better place now that we've seen pictures of Justin Trudeau the obligatory blackface you might have a different opinion but nonetheless Canada plays an outsized role in this mayhem if you look closely at the data as our researchers did a tri continental Institute for Social Research you will find that 60% of the world's mining cap companies are based in Canada and that most of the scandals around indigenous lands are linked either to Canadian or Australian mining companies Canada's long in negative history regarding the first nations inside the Canadian territory has over the course of the past several decades spilled over into the American hemisphere and outwards in our first briefing document called 10 Canadian mining companies my financial details and violations with document 10 of the most important Canadian mining disasters collectively we write Canadian mining companies display a depraved indifference to human life and this indifference is considered to be just a natural unnecessary side-effect to economic growth Canada is not alone add to it as I said Australia China South Africa the United Kingdom and of course the United States all major mining powerhouses but Canada the old settler colony is a league apart a briefing document opens with barek one of Canada's largest and most influential mining companies we detailed barracks role in the rape violence and arson at the North Mara mine in Tanzania at the Durban rue de port deep mine in South Africa and at the poor Jarrah gold mine in Papua New Guinea poor Zara in Papua New Guinea is a little-known front line in the fight to defend the human nature metabolism the Akali Tanguay association set up by survivors of the mining companies and - themselves has been documenting routine violence the chemical attacks on the population the violence of the company guards the destruction of their community McGeehan Robert Aparri one of the leaders of the Akali Tanguay Association told me we have tried to reach for assistance to air our grievances for everyone to know what a Canadian mining company the Barrick Gold Corporation does to the indigenous communities here in perjurer but he says their appeal falls on deaf ears there is too much profit barrick gold has total assets worth twenty three billion proven reserves of 63 million ounces of gold its founder Peter monk called Venezuela's Hugo Chavez a dictator and an autocratic demagogue because Chavez in line with Venezuelan law tried to get his people a better deal from the foreign companies like barrack companies that mined for gold to fight for a better deal in the eyes of people like Peter Munk his terrorism his dictatorship when Montezuma sent his own voice to Cortes with gold they returned with this report their bodies fatten on the gold and they hunger violently for it they crave gold like hungry swine in fact worse than what Montezuma heard since companies like barracks seem to crave gold like a Mexican rattlesnake who hasn't eaten a rodent in weeks we have turned our faces away from a series of criminal acts tragedies for the people multiplying as the indifference of capitalism runs roughshod over their hopes decades ago John bata a poet from Papua New Guinea wrote song of an old woman on Bougainville we we let us weep weep weep let us weep we thought it was merely a stone we thought it was merely a stone but it carried away all our wealth part to waste capitalism is an illogical system that produces an enormous number of commodities firms compete against one another to make profits by the production of low-cost commodities which are gem sold to consumers but there is an internal flaw in the system the lower the cost of production especially labour costs the less likely the product can find a consumer since the consumer is a worker whose lowered compensation is what produced the cheap and goods to cover the gap between low wages and high demand for goods the capitalists offer credit this credit is absorbed by the workers who is consumers by necessary goods that they likely cannot afford then it gets worse ordinary people carry trillions of dollars of debt on their shoulders money that hangs over them like a shroud that is ugly debt sucks up the purchasing power of consumers who have to service debt rather than buy goods economies contract tax revenues shrink government's divert funds that should go to public expenditure to keep bondholders serviced everything smells like a crisis not only is the crisis of capitalism permanent but it is fueled by enormous volumes of waste there are eight point three billion metric tons of plastic waste that form a noose around the planet of them a hundred and fifty million tons are thrown into the ocean most seventy-eight percent of the plastic waste from the United States goes to countries that burn it waste poses a serious problem a World Bank report estimates that humans produce over 2 billion metric tons of trash per year by 2050 that figure will rise by 70% to 3.4 billion metric tons of this trash only 13.5 percent is recycled while only five point five percent is composted thus 81 percent of this trash is discarded in landfills or incinerated or thrown into the ocean if we continue at our current pace of producing trash we will need new planets as landfills we will need new planets of trees and new planets of landfills it is not precise to say that humans produce trash certain humans produce more trash than others now you know where this is going certain humans kill the American audience the United States with 5% of the world's population I mean this is an extraordinary statistic if you don't remember anything else of what I say today and I admit it's pretty depressing the talk is called despair and hope there'll be a lot more despair than hope until Melanie comes back on the stage this statistic is something I'd like you to remember the United States with 5% of the world's population produces 40% of the world's garbage 40% of the world's garbage in 1991 the World Bank Larry Summers very familiar character US Treasury Secretary Harvard president and so on in 1991 Larry Summers was the world bank's chief economist he wrote a memorandum which made the following elegant point the West has a surplus of money and a surplus of trash while the poorer nations have a deficit of money and a deficit of trash why not therefore allow the poorer nations to be paid to take American trash the scale of garbage production geometrically higher than it was in pre-capitalist times has resulted in the commodification of trash major global businesses are formed to dispose of the trash including through the export of this trash from one part of the world the West particularly the United States to other parts of the world the poorer nations summers memorandum came at a time when the countries of Asia Africa and Latin America had started to ban the import of trash in 1988 the organization of African Unity called for a ban which came into effect in 1991 with the Bamako convention 69 countries of Africa the Caribbean and the Pacific had already been wasting ports with the LeMay Convention of 1989 it was to this tide against the trade in trash that Somers responded with his racist and deeply anxious memorandum you mind the earth create a big hole in it and then want to fill that hole with trash the chain of production consumption and waste starts and ends in the same place the same land of the oppressed whose land is important for its minerals and for its whole for whose lives are not relevant otherwise to capitalism the United Nations environmental program set up in 1972 has as part of its mandate the surveillance of trans boundary traffic in garbage multinational corporations that trade in chemical and waste have hampered its work greenpeace took up the issue of the garbage trade with vigor in the 1980s forcing it onto the agenda which resulted in the Basel convention on the control of trans boundary movement of hazardous waste and their disposal this treaty was adopted in 1992 in 1994 at the second Conference of parties to the Basel convention the g77 States the third world bloc were joined by the a peon Union to ban the trade of hazardous waste from the countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development which comprises the West and Japan to non-oecd countries Australia Canada and the United States lobbied hard against this ban in January 2018 China banned all imports of garbage between Frederick Engels condition of the working class in England 1844 and Rachel's Carson's Silent Spring in 1962 there's been widespread awareness of the toxic side of capitalist development but workers in peasants didn't need angles or Carson's analysis to explain the nasty affluence from factories or the terrible violence of chemical pesticides and fertilizers the garbage that rots on the surface of the earth is the appearance of the problem the essence of the problem is the requirements of our socio-economic system to endlessly sell commodities then decrease their lifespan so that more commodities are bought to replace them and so that the discarded commodity joins its brethren in the mountains of trash on land and the islands of trash in the oceans in 1955 the Journal of retailing noted that the system required that things be consumed burned up worn out replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing pace we need to have people eat drink dress ride live with ever more complicated and therefore more expensive consumption this is what Vance Packard in the wastes makers of 1960 called planned obsolescence we make good products Picard wrote we induce people to buy them and then next year we deliberately introduce something that will make those products old-fashioned outdated obsolete iPhone 11 if you go to the website of the Tri Continental we have a new report on the rate of exploitation of iPhone workers I very much recommend you go and have a look we found that iPhone workers of the 21st century at 25 times more exploited than 19th century English Trek textile workers I very much recommend you go and have a look at this garbage from the standpoint of capitalism is an externality capitalist firms plunder nature for resources and dump waste back into the earth the cost of this plunder and this waste are not factored into the balance sheets of the firm's these are considered to be external costs the velocity of the production of commodities as part of the necessity for endless accumulation of profit generates theories such as planned obsolescence setting in motion the creation of trash in the West computers used to last for seven years phones for five now computers are replaced every two years phones every 22 months procedures to diminish the volume of trash by reuse and by recycling a minimal social life encrusted with commodification and consumerism cannot be easily pivoted to new forms prognosis for less growth when there is tremendous waste is low there is meanwhile already pressure on spaces of deprivation that are receiving rather than producing the majority of the world's waste do not produce trash this is like the debate over climate mitigation the poor are being told to tighten their belts while the rich continue to spew carbon into the atmosphere the 1987 UN World Commission on Environment and development the Brundtland Commission defined the concept sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs certainly now and from overuse the term sustainable development has the tincture of meaninglessness but when it was coined it did mean something it meant that development pathways should be conceptualized that allow the deprived to access more than basic needs while the privileged should lessen their footprint on the planet that meaning contrary to the logic of capitalism returns to our debates part three society in the early 1980s Margaret Thatcher would often use the phrase there is no alternative which was then refashion as Deena she meant that there was no alternative to the policy slate we now call neoliberalism Thatcher also said less descriptively and more as a threat there is no such thing as society the policies that Thatcher and Ronald Reagan pushed have crushed society life for the vast majority of people around the world continues to deteriorate commute times to work have increased precariousness around jobs remain steady wages are stagnant and state benefits have declined to perilous levels the institutions of social life have been damaged sometimes beyond repair with time to spend with each other much declined there was something called society the policy of neoliberalism has broken it for 40 years governments of various political tendencies followed the policy framework known as neoliberalism neoliberalism score achievement was the destruction of the institutions of society the first tenets of neoliberalism was to undermine institutions that regulate capitalist firms and to allow the bourgeoisie to sequester vast sums of wealth away from taxation and into their personal accounts this led to widening inequality and to a drought for the budgets of governments the bourgeoisie has in essence been on a tax strike for these past several years they have hidden at least 32 trillion dollars in tax havens that's an amount almost five times the total value of all gold ever mined to raise money to cover the government budgets the ruling class had two options to print and borrow money deficit financing or to sell government assets privatization balanced budget amendments and IMF policy forced governments of a variety of political orientations to not do deficit financing and thereby tie one hand behind their backs the other hand that remained privatization drove the neoliberal policy government sold public assets at fire sale prices and commodified areas of social life education water and so on that had previously been socially controlled neoliberalism not only increased the class control of governments by the bourgeoisie but it brutalized society and drove increasing numbers of people to despair lack of investment toward social production resulted in underemployment and unemployment and a lack of income for households resulted in enormous quantities of debt this debt and despair shaped the social world of the planet the complicity of the main political parties in the establishment of this social desert left them without any credibility it is not enough to continue neoliberal policies and hold out entrepreneurship and skill retraining as a panacea for distress the utter collapse of the social democratic and liberal agenda toward distress alongside the general weakness of the left open space for the most wretched political forces to appear these are the neo-fascists from Donald Trump at one end to Brazil's Yael Belson ro at the other but these neo-fascists are not mirror images of the old fascists the context for their emergence is different their political character and project is not identical the old fascist went after the strength of the left and the weakness of minority populations those were their targets national self Gras racial glorification was their means the neo-fascists have a more amorphous problem the collapse of social democracy has left large numbers of people in different stages of despair social institutions including the family have been worn to the bone with immense pressure on women to absorb the decline of social welfare through the older familial and social institutions of care community organizations often bolstered by state and municipal funds and now a shadow of their previous incarnation while worker and peasant organizations such as unions are not able to drive the kind of cultural dynamic that was once so key to the communities of the workers gangs and militia groups as well as were various piety movements from Pentecostalism suitably Jejomar defined the terms of social interaction when to coastal ISM is of course what you see in the West in India you see groups like Radha Soami satsang when these are taking over the spaces of workers in the peasantry biasness is offered as the antidote to social collapse the piety groups and the gangs provide modest social services and psychosocial services food distribution education and health care as well as community gatherings around religious services there is food distributed but also quite heavy doses of patriarchy and homophobia the father stands in for Authority a cliched hierarchy that mimics the strong man of society piety movements and the gangs have in many places substituted for society while the left was fighting a rearguard action to defend social institutions against the cannibalism of neoliberal policy the piety movements built their own religious schools their religious hospitals and their religious evenings to lift the spirits and the gangs tightened their grip on working-class neighborhoods through patron patron client relations over the illegal economy and through the delivery of services into these areas it is on this terrain that the neo-fascists developed their attitude toward social disorder harsh policing is one sphere of the fascists who deepen the already well-developed policing methodologies of the neoliberals but the other sphere is the one that is most deadly it is the attitude of the neo-fascists toward the socially vulnerable those who despair without hope of an alternative the panacea of privatization and job training in a fast-paced economy is not credible most people are overworked and underpaid precariously employed and socially exhausted majorities of people sit at the edge of social and economic bankruptcy it is here that they meet the neo-fascists who repackaged the old ideas of social toxicity into new phrases the word immigrant for instance taking the place of Jew socially liberal populations are blamed for the collapse of society migrants gays and lesbians women religious minorities it is the migrant who is blamed for job loss and it is the gays and lesbians who are blamed for the malignant social order anyone weak is to be blamed for the immense damage done to society by neoliberal policy the general thesis of the neo-fascist is this blame someone who does not control the world for even if you can't improve your life you can feel bigger and better than them this process was enshrined in the words of Thatcher there is no alternative things are not so far now during the aftermath of the credit crisis of 2007-2008 when it's appeared as if faith in capitalism with erode and alternatives were taken seriously Germany's Angela Merkel announced alterna alternative laws a world without alternatives stay the course head down money must be protected all else can be weathered burn burn burn burn burn send in the fire extinguishers or better he had bombed the forests for the power of money must not be touched part 4 happiness but there are alternatives these can be found in the contradictions for instance the emergence of the women led workers of the care economy who demand a better world from the Anganwadi or child care workers of India to the women workers in Chile part of the neoliberal project was to dismantle state support for health care education and elder care the breakdown of these crows crucial support services has put the burden of the care economy largely on women no invisible hand takes care of this in our families it is the invisible heart as UMass economist Nancy Fahlberg put it that often does the work it is not the invisible hand it is the invisible heart if not for the economy of care it is likely that our entire family structure would have been far more of a wreck the union's of care workers have maintained militancy is in the United States the nurses have maintained militancy in the otherwise dormant trade union culture one of the great downsides of our current inflation of atrocities is the sense that nothing other than this nightmare is possible alternatives cannot be imagined mockery pushes aside thinking about a different future when these are attempted as they always are by resilient humans those in power strive to snuff them out it is better for the powerful and the propertied to see that no model of an alternative is allowed to flourish it would call into question the claim that what governs the world now is eternal that history has ended what are the challenges before us to organize the people against the intractable system here are five challenges although there are many more number one aspirations over the course of the past five decades the capitalist media and the advertising industry have created a set of aspirations that have broken the culture of the working class and the peasantry as well as the traditional cultural world of the poor young people now expect more from life which is to the good but these expectations are less social and more individual with the individual hopes of an attached to commodities of one kind or another to be free is to buy to buy is to be alive that is the motto of the capitalist system but those who cannot afford to buy and who go into debt for their aspirations are also constantly disappointed it is this disappointment that the authoritarians and neo-fascists channel toward hatred can the left movement channel this disappointment into productive hope second atomization state cuts of social services the increased privatization of social life and the astronomical increase of interaction with the digital world has increased atomization of humans where people had previously exchanged ideas and goods helped each other and inspired each other now there are less and less venues for such face-to-face society the fragmentation of society and the exhaustion of people to find survival has made it harder for the left to bring people together to create social change television and social media now dominate the world of communication these are venues that are owned by monopoly capitalist firms the left has always relied upon institutions of society to be its transmitters as these social linkages linkages fragment the left dissolves can the left movement help rebuild these institutions and processes this society that is its basis number three outsider the authoritarian sections and the neo-fascists point their finger at the outsider the social minorities migrants refugees and anyone who is socially powerless its against these people that the far-right is able to build its strength they can mean no left resurgence without a firm and complete defense of the outsider a total rejection of the fascistic ideas of hatred and biology that saturates society it is harder to build a politics of love than to build a politics of hate can the left movement develop a politics of love that attracts masses of people number four confidence politics of the people is rooted in confidence if the people do not feel confident in their activity to either reform or to change the system then they will not be active waves of unrest often lead to increased confidence but even here the point of emphasis is not the last person to join the protest but the first few people who built the network to build the process social decay leads to a lack of confidence to make political change particularly when the aspirational Society suggests that the only necessary change is for everyone to become a consumer can the left produce the sensibility that a future is possible and to engender confidence amongst people to fight to build that future finally number 5 democracy without democracy in societies where there is no democracy this problem is not immediate in such places the immediate task is to win the fullest democracy in those societies where democracy is the main form the oligarchy and imperialism have used many methods to undermine democracy to dominate society without suspending democracy the methods used are sophisticated including to delay demise the institutions of the state to disparage elections to use money to corrupt the electoral process to use social media and advertising to destroy opposition candidates and to utilize the least democratic institutions in a democracy such as an unelected judiciary to erode the power of elected officials can the left defend the idea of democracy from this attrition without allowing democracy to come to mean merely elections the electoral system the challenges before us are many we come to them with no illusions tell no lies said amilcar cabral claim no easy victories but we are resolute if we do not struggle to build strong left movements we deliver humanity into the arms of atomization and hate into a torrid arianism and neo-fascism that is the direction in which we are going toward hate and the destruction of the planet only the left is against this orientation the left must rush to build an antidote to alienation social healing a way to heal a metabolism a damaged psycho social consciousness a social order what is our alternative to the piety movements what is the cultural world we want to create our task is simple either we organize people and form a socialist world or the planet itself will perish heal heal heal heal heal thank you very much you you

Channel: Lannan Foundation

Views: 5,566

Rating: 4.9038463 out of 5

Keywords: social change, Marx, social research

Id: N8_3MQHIqtA

Length: 48min 42sec (2922 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 28 2019