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If you are interested in speaking at this workshop in Toronto on the Far
Right, please send me an abstract in the next 2 weeks or so. Raju (Raju
J Das, York University)
*.............*
*Rethinking United Fronts and the Far Right in the Contemporary World:*
*The Crisis of Bourgeois Rule and the Weakness of Anti-Capitalist Politics*
The ascendance of the Far Right across the world – from the US to India
– is prompting, among other things: a) a concern that fascism, in one
form or another, is returning to political life; and b) inclinations
among those in countries facing such developments to confront, as in the
past, the transformations with united or popular fronts, linking various
progressive movements, parties, and Left political orientations.
Debate has already begun as to the benefits and drawbacks of this
approach, based mostly on history. This day-long workshop, *Rethinking
United Fronts and the Far Right in the Contemporary World,* seeks to
explore both the class character of Far Right movements (both in terms
of the structural conditions of its existence and the class position of
its foot soldiers) as well as the class nature of the political
opposition that is required to confront it. In particular, it will
examine whether and how the factors and the conditions in the
/contemporary/ world bearing on evaluations of united fronts – and
the very possibility and potential nature of such fronts today – are
similar to and are different from those in the past. The workshop will
also ask on what basis might such fronts extend their reach beyond the
struggle against the Far Right and nascent fascism to broad progressive
social and political transformation.
To be held at York University, Toronto,*July 20-21, 2018*, the workshop
(as part of the Augmenting the Left series) will draw together a cohort
of scholars and activists, based in North America, who will speak to
these complex issues that are in urgent need of elaboration. It is
organized by the York research collective, ‘Critical Scholarship and
Social Transformation’ (http://criticaltransformation.blog.yorku.ca/).
BACKGROND
We start from the assumption that the Far Right’s ascendance and opening
toward fascism represents a crisis of world capitalism: the crisis of
democratic-secular politics, and the hegemonic project of the
bourgeoisie as well as the crisis of the bourgeois economic
system, dominated by financial capital. Other attributes include the
failure of social-democratic or other forms of bourgeois-reformist
politics, and the weakness of Left movements, including those on the
communist-revolutionary Left: indeed, the power of Far Right movements
is inversely proportional to the power of the working masses.
As originally conceived by some on the Left earlier in the Twentieth
Century a popular front strategy involved communist organizations
combining their forces with other progressive organizations, including
bourgeois organizations. The united front was a strategy where workers,
belonging to the communist Left, keeping their organizational identity
intact, were meant to combine with social democratic workers to strike
against fascism in a united fashion; this process was seen as an
inevitable part of the fight to establish socialism and would expose the
bourgeois character of social-democratic reformist leadership. The
united front was to be a springboard; a defensive strategy, which was
meant to be ultimately transformed into an offensive strategy against
bourgeois class rule itself.
Revolutionary practice requires revolutionary ideas. The united front is
arguably also an intellectual project - and not just a political one -
that might transform through history. United fronts do not just come
about on their own. They require prior intellectual imagination
demanding answers to serious questions. Seeking unity across various
anti-Rightist forces makes sense to many observers today, but one must
ask: on what terms? One must also ask: with or without the context of
an “exceptional historical conjuncture,” how should various progressive
forces today relate to one another? There is also the question about
what happens after the defeat of the far Right? This implies that
Marxist-oriented thought ought to keep selectively returning to
the critical engagement with non-Marxist thought, something that Marx
himself was committed to as seen in his close study of bourgeois
economists like Ricardo. In his /On the Significance of Militant
Materialism/, Lenin also gave a call for such an engagement, arguing
that revolutions are not made by communist revolutionaries only.
Rather than see this engagement as a diversion from any orthodox or
true Left paths, we can see it as a potential opening towards a
politics of anti-capitalism, where non-socialist orientations are not
dismissed but, where possible, pressed beyond their limited political
and intellectual scope into a struggle over the question of how far –
and where - to go in relation to capitalism and political life; and to
foster a widening and deepening scope of contention (from housing, food,
heath care, education, to nature and the material alteration of our
world). This politics of anti-capitalist contention, in the contemporary
world where anti-capitalist forces are frustratingly fragmented, can
extend to protest and reform movements that are Left-oriented but not
anti-capitalist; or to socialist-labelled political parties that
maintain their long tradition of reformism but which might veer toward
policies beyond reform. What is needed is a commitment from
anti-capitalists to debate and struggle not over the limited nature of
reform or the struggle against the far Right per se but over the
substantial and difficult questions that are located in that in-between
space of transition from reform to anti-capitalism.
As an initial attempt to promote a critical discussion on the Far Right
and the nature of Left politics that will be necessary to fight it, we
would like to invite a selected number of scholars and activists to the
workshop. If you are interested in sharing your ideas, please respond to
the organizers within two weeks of receiving the invitation.
Robert Latham: rlath...@yorku.ca <mailto:rlath...@yorku.ca>.Raju Das:
raju...@yorku.ca <mailto:raju...@yorku.ca>
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