Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Vincent Gaulin]

One policy/information gathering goal—a Left policy ask—is building a
better measure of grassroots economic status (liberated from GDP, stock
exchanges, and other statistics serving neoliberal ends). Like Brian and
collaborators’ geography of alternative energy, we need a census of skills
and work/labor/socially reproductive experiences. This type of mass
professional interviewing has historically only been carried out by
national militaries as part of “total war” mobilizations, but a better
mobilization has to facilitate collectivized provisioning. A global Left
can then organize a redistribution of material and technological capacity,
identifying “material demand” where skilled/experienced workers are
democratically commissioned by constituent consumers in their local
community. A more egalitarian economy also locates “skill demand” where
underdevelopment persists and democracies commission improvements in
quality of life practices/routines/technologies (“me too” culture miming or
probing experimentally *neo-modernism?) opposing austerity through money by
fiat is important for liberating more popular economic flows, but the Left
must define the *what we want* in fairly granular terms as well as
generalized (culture building/affirming) terms to compete with the too big
to fail elites who will gladly continue to monopolize a more generous
fiscal policy.

On Tue, Jan 19, 2021 at 1:30 PM Brian Holmes 
wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 19, 2021 at 6:51 AM Jean-Noël Montagné 
> wrote:
>
>>
>> I don't see the end of the neoliberal period in the maelstrom which
>> gathers populists/Trump/Qanon activists. They still behave in a
>> conservative way: guns, religion, free-market capitalism, climate change
>> denial, covid harshness denial, cult of the leader, economical
>> colonialism, etc.
>>
>
> Jean, if we simply define neoliberalism as capitalism, then nothing has
> changed. And if we measure the Zeitgeist by the side that just lost, well,
> they don't even think they lost...
>
> It's different if you look at it in political-economy terms. From that
> angle, neoliberalism as a specific doctrine - formerly called "the
> Washington Consensus" - began its decline in 2008, and that decline
> continues. Continuous reduction of trade tariffs, strong currencies bought
> at the price of fiscal austerity, multilateral negotiation on all
> international issues and international military collaboration brought to
> its height by the first Gulf War and patched up in Afghanistan later on -
> these are some of the key traits. All of those have ceased to function as
> they did at their peak. Crucially, the central banks of all major powers
> started to print money after 2008 (Europe finally accepted to do this
> rather recently) and now, in the US, the new administration in the voice of
> the country's most official ever economist, Larry Summers, has declared
> that rising debt does not cause inflation and therefore that essentially
> unlimited money can and will be spent. Goodbye, Washington Consensus! This
> approach will inevitably be taken by all the other countries and blocs
> (which have mostly already started down that road) and the result will be,
> in my best projection, at least as great a sea change in the global economy
> as was experienced in the early 1980s, when the policy package and business
> model of neoliberalism was invented.
>
> The groundswell that Trump rode to power was nationalist and
> anti-neoliberal. As president, Trump stoked the nationalist demand while
> continuing to carry out the neoliberal program through tax cuts,
> deregulation and curtailment of social services. However this contradiction
> at the heart of his presidency is now tearing the Republican party apart,
> and the damage that neoliberalism has done makes further neoliberalization
> impossible for the Democrats, even though they are the ones who brought
> that policy package to its culmination under Clinton (remember the
> Clinton/Shroeder/Blair era). This is not just about the US, but it might be
> safe to say that the decline in US power and prestige is itself a facet of
> the global retreat from neoliberalism. The rising prestige of China, with
> its controlled currency and state-guided economy, is another one (which is
> in the process of becoming a real nightmare under Xi). As yet, no new
> consensus model has appeared, but that may begin happening this year, so be
> alert!
>
> How all this unfolds is not only something to observe, but something to
> fight for. Particularly important is how the financial markets evolve. At
> the outset of the pandemic, as after 2008, the US Treasury made large
> amounts of US dollars available to around fifteen major countries, so they
> could maintain their dollar reserves despite their citizens trying to buy
> all the dollars they could. This was a deliberate effort to preserve
> neoliberal globalization and surely those efforts are not over, so the
> trend lines I am pointing to could still be 

Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[bronac ferran]

The List needs a new Topic

On Tue, 19 Jan 2021 at 20:20, John Young  wrote:

> Dmitry yodelled: "the hand-shake deal I made with Pit and Geert over
> swigs of Advocaat."
>
> Was that imbibery in Berlin?
>
> Neither P or G offered a deal or swig to a red-white-and-blue
> bloodied visitor honoraried and imported to be ignored on a stage
> facing circa 3-5 cell phone gazers in a vast auditorium built by the
> USA to imbribe shrewdest enlighteners of uncontaminated DE minds on
> behalf of the Stasi's BFF.
>
> There are leaked videos and audios and drunk-blind-eye-witnesses.
> None left sober or unleft shaken.
>
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>


-- 
Bronaċ
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Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[John Young]

Dmitry yodelled: "the hand-shake deal I made with Pit and Geert over 
swigs of Advocaat."


Was that imbibery in Berlin?

Neither P or G offered a deal or swig to a red-white-and-blue 
bloodied visitor honoraried and imported to be ignored on a stage 
facing circa 3-5 cell phone gazers in a vast auditorium built by the 
USA to imbribe shrewdest enlighteners of uncontaminated DE minds on 
behalf of the Stasi's BFF.


There are leaked videos and audios and drunk-blind-eye-witnesses. 
None left sober or unleft shaken.


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Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Brian Holmes]

On Tue, Jan 19, 2021 at 6:51 AM Jean-Noël Montagné 
wrote:

>
> I don't see the end of the neoliberal period in the maelstrom which
> gathers populists/Trump/Qanon activists. They still behave in a
> conservative way: guns, religion, free-market capitalism, climate change
> denial, covid harshness denial, cult of the leader, economical
> colonialism, etc.
>

Jean, if we simply define neoliberalism as capitalism, then nothing has
changed. And if we measure the Zeitgeist by the side that just lost, well,
they don't even think they lost...

It's different if you look at it in political-economy terms. From that
angle, neoliberalism as a specific doctrine - formerly called "the
Washington Consensus" - began its decline in 2008, and that decline
continues. Continuous reduction of trade tariffs, strong currencies bought
at the price of fiscal austerity, multilateral negotiation on all
international issues and international military collaboration brought to
its height by the first Gulf War and patched up in Afghanistan later on -
these are some of the key traits. All of those have ceased to function as
they did at their peak. Crucially, the central banks of all major powers
started to print money after 2008 (Europe finally accepted to do this
rather recently) and now, in the US, the new administration in the voice of
the country's most official ever economist, Larry Summers, has declared
that rising debt does not cause inflation and therefore that essentially
unlimited money can and will be spent. Goodbye, Washington Consensus! This
approach will inevitably be taken by all the other countries and blocs
(which have mostly already started down that road) and the result will be,
in my best projection, at least as great a sea change in the global economy
as was experienced in the early 1980s, when the policy package and business
model of neoliberalism was invented.

The groundswell that Trump rode to power was nationalist and
anti-neoliberal. As president, Trump stoked the nationalist demand while
continuing to carry out the neoliberal program through tax cuts,
deregulation and curtailment of social services. However this contradiction
at the heart of his presidency is now tearing the Republican party apart,
and the damage that neoliberalism has done makes further neoliberalization
impossible for the Democrats, even though they are the ones who brought
that policy package to its culmination under Clinton (remember the
Clinton/Shroeder/Blair era). This is not just about the US, but it might be
safe to say that the decline in US power and prestige is itself a facet of
the global retreat from neoliberalism. The rising prestige of China, with
its controlled currency and state-guided economy, is another one (which is
in the process of becoming a real nightmare under Xi). As yet, no new
consensus model has appeared, but that may begin happening this year, so be
alert!

How all this unfolds is not only something to observe, but something to
fight for. Particularly important is how the financial markets evolve. At
the outset of the pandemic, as after 2008, the US Treasury made large
amounts of US dollars available to around fifteen major countries, so they
could maintain their dollar reserves despite their citizens trying to buy
all the dollars they could. This was a deliberate effort to preserve
neoliberal globalization and surely those efforts are not over, so the
trend lines I am pointing to could still be reversed. So far, one of the
outstanding contradictions of the new regime is that socialized national
money props up a thoroughly privatized, stateless circulation system
accessible only to elites. In short, the battle over the future of the
money-form is underway.

>
> As a nettime reader, interested by net and digital culture, I have
> studied the power of social networks algorithms on the sudden emergence
> of Gilets Jaunes in France. Gilets Jaunes movement is almost identically
> composed by the same items we see in US, apart from some national
> cultural particularities: distrust of the political class, feeling of
> social downgrading, feeling of territorial abandonment, decline in
> purchasing power, specially for working class and low/middle class,
> ideas mixed with all fake news and comploting theories.
>
> This is totally interesting and I would like to know more. I share your
analysis, except for me it's just an opinion, a feeling. I also have the
impression that there is a lot more intermixing between the Gilets Jaunes
and the far left/anarchist sectors than here, but anyway, it's all a result
of the plunder that elites and the upper middle classes have carried out
over the last four decades, no wonder the people revolt. Europeans really
need to understand these similarities. Merkel is holding the lid on the pot
in Germany...


> The first struggle to build in my opinion, is the struggle against
> social networks, and at the same time, the promotion of the use and
> build of other alternatives ( existing or 

Fellowships in Human Rights and the Arts

[Thomas Keenan]

We are now welcoming applications for two fellowships at the new Open
Society University Network Center for Human RIghts and the Arts, based
at Bard College in New York.

We are searching for two one-year research and teaching fellows. The
positions are open to individuals working in a variety of fields where
human rights and the arts intersect, including artists, curators,
researchers, scholars, writers, filmmakers, advocates and activists.
The Center will award one Fellowship to a practitioner (artistic or
activist/advocate), and one to a researcher or scholar.  We recognize
that these categories are often blurry and encourage applications from
those who cannot in advance specify to which group they belong.

The fellowships cover a period of one year, i.e. two academic
semesters, from July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2022, and are supported
by a full-time salary and health benefits. The positions are based at
Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.  All materials must be received
by Friday, February 26, 2021.

More details are available at:

https://www.bard.edu/employment/descriptions/?id=4170236

https://jobs.chronicle.com/job/310935/osun-human-rights-and-the-arts-fellowships-for-ay-2021-2022-/

- Tom Keenan
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Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Lunenfeld, Peter B.]

Is calling someone a “maosplainer” a symptom of white rage?
Asking for a frenemy.
Peter

On Jan 18, 2021, at 11:18 AM, Dmytri Kleiner 
mailto:d...@telekommunisten.net>> wrote:

On 2021-01-18 19:11, John Young wrote:

"iterate forward" is promisingly constructive action.

"Discover the truth through practice, and again through practice verify and 
develop the truth. Start from perceptual knowledge and actively develop it into 
rational knowledge; then start from rational knowledge and actively guide 
revolutionary practice to change both the subjective and the objective world. 
Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge. This form repeats 
itself in endless cycles, and with each cycle the content of practice and 
knowledge rises to a higher level. Such is the whole of the 
dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge, and such is the 
dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowing and doing." -- Mao, On 
Practice, 1937

Indeed, there is no other way.


Not so much name-callingly destructive "sinomane telecommunist."

The white ragers here feel justified in this kind of behaviour, just like the 
other white ragers of #AllLivesMatter and #NotAllMen fame. The very accusation 
of bias or chauvinism is treated as insult; how very dare you say that of me!! 
And so this justifies random unhinged insults in return, as we see here. It's 
very import for them to portray me as bad person, possibly crazy, rather than 
engage in the difficult process of confronting their own chauvinism and bias.

And of course, there cognitive dissonance means they can't hear what is 
actually being argued; dialectic materialism and proletarian internationalism. 
They instead pepper their responses with fallacious absurdum barely above 
calling me a chink-lover, and weak-minded strawmen about "party lines" and "out 
of date" bad think, all expressed with the most cornball hollywood tropes.

Demanding moderators to regulate is hardly insightful, more inciteful,
downright spiteful.

I'm confident the hand-shake deal I made with Pit and Geert over swigs of 
Advocaat while taking shelter beneath the ruins of the Telegrafenamt as we 
fought in the trenches with the resistance in The Second Browser Wars. I'm 
entitled to shock and awe nettime once every decade, and neither Ted nor Felix 
will risk relegation to the tickle gulag.

However, I never resist moderation.



--
Dmytri Kleiner
@dmytri
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Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[mp]

On 19/01/2021 17:29, Joseph Rabie wrote:
> Here is a "guerrilla" tactic that might put an end to this.
> 
> As many people as possible post to the thread. They mention words such
> as "China", "Stalin", "Hong Kong", "Gulag", "Uyghur" in a vaguely
> litigious manner. Since Dmytri apparently feels obliged to reply
> (verbosely and repetitively) to every perceived slight, he will go into
> literary overdrive, and at some point, drop with exhaustion.

What's the fuzz?

Ignore or enjoy the details. Never mind the form or style. Check the
content and the references, some of it seems useful to me. If not to
you, simply refer to "ignore", use a filter, whatever.

 And, yes, the left needs a new strategy if it is becoming a
deplatforming, censorship apparatus that is more uptight and sensitive
than my old, Tory aunt.

Difficult to tell who and what the Stalinists are these days..

"...Well, I try my best
To be just like I am,
But everybody wants you
To be just like them.."
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Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Joseph Rabie]

Here is a "guerrilla" tactic that might put an end to this.

As many people as possible post to the thread. They mention words such as 
"China", "Stalin", "Hong Kong", "Gulag", "Uyghur" in a vaguely litigious 
manner. Since Dmytri apparently feels obliged to reply (verbosely and 
repetitively) to every perceived slight, he will go into literary overdrive, 
and at some point, drop with exhaustion.

Joe.



> On 19/01/2021 13:01, Dmytri Kleiner wrote:
>> On 2021-01-19 07:16, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:
>> 
 However, as we all know, the government of China enjoys broad support
 from it's people.
>> 
 After all, by every measure they are doing better
 than we are in terms of getting what they want from their government.
>> 
>>> I'm not in the "we" group of your first statement, and I doubt the
>>> second.
>> 
>> "since the start of the survey in 2003, Chinese citizen satisfaction with 
>> government has increased virtually across the board. From the impact of 
>> broad national policies to the conduct of local town officials, Chinese 
>> citizens rate the government as more capable and effective than ever before. 
>> Interestingly, more marginalized groups in poorer, inland regions are 
>> actually comparatively more likely to report increases in satisfaction"
>> 
>> -- Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard University 
>> [1]
>> 
>> This is widely known, confirmed by many studies such as this one from 
>> Harvard.



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Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Roman Seidl]

But yes, it sure would be great if over 50% of society would believe 
stuff like healthcare should be free, housing is a right, education 
should be available to all, etc.


But wait! Billions of people already do, yeah some in the US, but 
billions in the global left, in China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, 
quite a few in Bolivia and Venezuala, and millions more in movements 
like MST and unions like NUMSA, they already believe what you want to 
convince people of! What's more, they have even won power and put much 
if it into practice. This is why the liberal and progressive sections 
of the US left are trained to hate and denounce them.


These messages make feel like we are in the 1980s again. This must be 
what it felt to hear the messages of the communist parties in Western 
Europe when they reported about the great achievements in the 
"socialist" brotherlands.


I can hardly find any match between these narratives and anything people 
I trust who used to live or live in countries like China tell me. Even 
simple questions like how the healthcare system work in China seem to be 
blured by "alternative facts".


This is all too bizarre. Maybe there ist now a post-stalinist or maoist 
bubble emerging out of the dynamics of social media madness. Who knows.


Roman


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Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Ian Alan Paul]

Dmytri's position boils down to an absolute deference to "authentically
oppressed peoples" (or the chinese state, which is curiously synonymous
with the chinese people in his analysis) at the cost of unthinkingly eschewing
all of those other bothersome and inconvenient oppressed peoples (Uyghurs,
Tibetans, dissidents, etc.) which complicate and ultimately disprove his
manichean reductions, essentialisms, and simplifications.

It is possible, afterall, to develop an understanding of how the chinese
state has lifted so many out of poverty, while also understanding that it
obstructs emancipation with its own economic and political contradictions,
internal struggles, and recuperative/repressive apparatuses.

A lot would be gained here by just learning to count higher than two
(us/them, oppressor/oppressed, core/periphery), which might help us all
have a more meaningful understanding of the world, how it works, and how it
might be changed.

-i


On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 5:18 PM Dmytri Kleiner 
wrote:

> On 2021-01-12 00:43, Flick Harrison wrote:
>
> > Dmitry is really swinging a wrecking ball today!  Representing the
> > Left wing of the Global Authoritarian Detente.  And here we thought it
> > was only the far right that would be gasllighting us this week.
>
> So you categorize me with we cartoonish cold war pejorative and envoke
> Trumo, and yet think you are the one being gasslighted? Well, I guess
> you are, but not by me, rather by anti-communism.
>
> > You dismiss his life experience living in one of the regimes you
> > worship
> >
> >> "I lived in east Germany, blah blah,”
>
> "Worship" here is obviously deployed as a strawman, meaning an
> ackowledgement is "worship" when it comes to "official enemies"
>
> But this clever usage of "lived experience" is a great innovation! I
> mean, normally, rejecting lived experience would mean ignoring or
> denying what people are saying about how given experiences form their
> view, but as Frank said nothing about east germany at all, your version
> means that making any declaration of being a person and having been born
> somewhere means your views must be accepted!
>
> I'll give this a try!
>
> Next time my wife of 20 years, born in east germany, the former
> territory of which we live, and who along with her family has been
> publishing about east germany for decades, disagrees with me, on
> anything at all, I'll say "But I was raised in Canada, Don't deny my
> lived Experience!" and if she says, "OK, what specifically is it about
> having been raised in Canada that informs this topic, and why should I
> expect other who where also raised in Canada to have the same view?" I
> will just shout "but I was born in the USSR!" and she will then
> certainly concede to my lived experience!
>
>
> > ... even as you later demand that those living outside these regimes
> > have no right to so much as comment on them.
>
> No, I said they are not entitled to judge them and denounce and deny
> their accomplishment. Comment is good, it's part of dialog.
>
>
> > You are using
> > hypocritical doublespeak.  And to be clear:  insulting him.  Your
> > response to him is NOT respectful.  If you think otherwise, you need
> > some therapy.
>
> I'm a bad person, possibly crazy. Noted.
>
>
> > And of course, you can cry “tone policing” as an excuse for your
> > behaviour, because you’ve appropriated a few key catchphrases to
> > stay one step ahead of the people who call you out.
>
> I have no language other that what I've appropriated, and I only write
> here to excuse my behavior, because I'm bad person. Possibly crazy.
> Noted.
>
>
> > I hesitate to join a war of words with someone who seems to buy ink by
> > the barrel, but Dmitry’s whole argument is sophistic and wrong.
>
> OMG, just used the same ink by the barrel line in my response to Brian
> before reading this. I even appropriate language before I read it. I
> think you are really on to something here.
>
> I don't, by the way, buy ink by the barrel. This thread here requires
> effort I wont sustain for long.
>
>
> > He tells us that the CCP is doing the will of the Chinese worker but
> > then tells us we have no right or ability to analyze the very topic
> > he’s making such bold assertions about.  It’s Prima Facie
> > nonsense.  Doublespeak.
>
> You have every right to "analyze" if that is what you think you do, you
> are not entitled to judge, and the strategy of denying and denouncing is
> a bad one for the US left.
>
> Your analysis should start with a measure of democratic outcomes, such
> as human development, approval rates, etc, rather than doctrinaire
> idealism and the framing and stories of the imperial intellegence
> aparatice.
>
> Here's that lived experience thing again, perhaps its a good idea to
> check out what the Chinese worker's believe, and I don't mean
> cherry-picked examples that have cherry-picked and weaponized.
>
>
> > Bullying people with long diatribes that explicitly deny their right
> > to any 

Re: Unsubscribe

[John Young]

Unsubscribing is not available on Nettime, ever, grin and bear logorrhea.

At 10:39 AM 1/19/2021, you wrote:



Richard Grusin
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Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[giovanni caniato]

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

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

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

Do we want to stop our planet being ripped apart?
Do we want multinational corporations to really pay their taxes? And the
surplus they produce to be really redistributed?
These are problems that are never gonna be solved within state politics, we
need to find ways to organise on a global scale, outside the boundaries of
states and our oppressive economic systems. Merge local interests of the
producing classes of the whole world. Dispel the myth of economic growth as
a goal, rather than just the byproduct of a healthy society.

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

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

Giovanni Caniato


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

> Perhaps this thing called the Left exists in a world where actions have
> consequences. That would be a good reason to have a strategy.
>
> Many situations today require it.
>
> Consider a New York Times article datemarked Jan. 8, by a German woman
> named Anna Sauerbrey, under the title "Far-Right Protesters Stormed
> Germany’s Parliament. What Can America Learn?"
>
> The Reichstag wasn't really stormed, it turns out, but Sauerbrey claims
> that QAnon and similar practices are on a threatening rise in Germany.
> According to her we should learn that you can't negotiate with a fringe
> that has gone aggressively nuts. Instead you have to crack down with force.
> Apparently the German secret services are now tracking AfD members
> personally and they've got an eye on people organizing anti-mask movements
> too. She puts it on the level of friend or enemy:
>
> "Of course, attempts to win voters back, to wrestle them from the grip of
> the cult, must never stop. But there are no policies and no recognition
> politics we could offer people who adhere to a cult. Instead, to protect
> our democracies, we must watch them, contain them, and take away their
> guns."*
>
> So, this is exactly like the police repression of the German 1960s --
> except the target today would be the extreme right at the very moment when
> it's threatening bloody murder.
>
> I don't know anything about it, and I'd love to hear German people tell
> more. Here in the US, a majority of liberals and leftists have suddenly
> gotten the brilliant idea that it might be necessary to do something
> collective about gangs of delusionary racist dudes with guns. In terms of
> defense, Antifa has been fantastic so far, but, uh, 

Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Dmytri Kleiner]

On 2021-01-19 14:27, Bruce Robinson wrote:


I agree with Andreas.  It is a far better example of Dmytri's much
vaunted 'proletarian internationalism' to support those in China, and
that the moment particularly Hong Kong, fighting for their rights
against the repressive and anti-working class regime.


The core idea in proletarian internationalism is to turn your weapons 
against the class enemy at home, so unless you are in Hong Kong, I'm not 
sure how that is an example of it.


If you are not in Hong Kong, you also have no agency there, so your 
support can only be heard by your local government, so what is you hope 
to achieve? Aggression by our governments towards China? What specific 
support do you want to give?




I cannot see
any reason why the Chinese Communist Party should be considered part
of an international left, assuming that being on the left has
something to do with democracy, socialism and working class self
emancipation.


The party needs to be held to account by the mobilized working class, 
like any instrument, it is the Chinese workers that make up a part of 
the international left, and from everything we know, their demands are 
being met by their government and the party, but, as the Harvard Study 
also notes, that will only be true so long as the government and the 
party continues to deliver on the people's demands.


As for the functioning of the Chinese Government, I once again recommend 
Daniel A Bell's work, this video, introduced by Canadian cringelord 
Moses Znaimer, is a good starter: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30OGjUCbiDY




Dmytri will no doubt denounce this as 'third way'. I
would describe myself as a Third Camp socialist as these are the only
criteria by which to measure regimes and movements against the aims
that I see as fundamental to any kind of real human liberation.


I suggest that human development figures and approval rates are probably 
the best way we have to measure human liberation.




On that basis I reject having to choose between US and Chinese
imperialisms.


You don't need to chose anything, the imperialism of your own government 
is on you, as you have the agency to do something about it. If you chose 
not, you are not rejecting it, you are enabling it.




(There has been a recent wave of arrests in Hong Kong including many
of the leaders of the independent trade union movement. There is a
meeting on January 30th with speakers from the UK labour movement and 
HK unions here: https://www.facebook.com/events/247169266771050/)


I would suggest that the Labour movement in the UK has some pressing 
issues at home to address, and it's unclear to me what sort of strategy 
could be undertaken by them that would improve the conditions of workers 
in Honk Kong, or why I would expect the former colonial master, under a 
brutal Conservative regime, with no recourse to any strategy except 
aggression, to play a helpful role here.


If there is some strategy with which UK labour could help HK workers, 
without heightening aggression, let me know what that is.


Meanwhile, UK labour has been bamboozled by Brexit, gutted by weaponized 
bad faith charges of antisemitism and watches helplessly as immiseration 
in the UK grows.


Workers everywhere have struggles to attend to.

A strategy where workers everywhere directly intervene in all struggles 
everywhere is not a viable strategy. A strategy where workers everywhere 
focus on their local struggles, while confronting their own governments 
aggression against workers abroad is viable, and this is what 
proletarian internationalism calls for.




I am not in favour of ending this discussion bureaucratically. But
what I find hard to take is the 'live and let live' attitude towards
Dmytri's contributions by some who have responded. His positions are
something the real left needs to fight against.


My positions are also those of groups like Vijay Prashad's Tricontental 
Institute, do these groups also need to banished from left in your view?


"Rather than tackle the great social and economic challenges within the 
US, its ruling class has taken refuge in anti-Chinese rhetoric." -- The 
Country Where Liberty Is a Statue, Vijay Prashad.





[1] 
https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/2-united-states-democracy/


--
Dmytri Kleiner
@dmytri
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Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Bruce Robinson]

I agree with Andreas.  It is a far better example of Dmytri's much 
vaunted 'proletarian internationalism' to support those in China, and 
that the moment particularly Hong Kong, fighting for their rights 
against the repressive and anti-working class regime.  I cannot see any 
reason why the Chinese Communist Party should be considered part of an 
international left, assuming that being on the left has something to do 
with democracy, socialism and working class self emancipation. Dmytri 
will no doubt denounce this as 'third way'. I would describe myself as a 
Third Camp socialist as these are the only criteria by which to measure 
regimes and movements against the aims that I see as fundamental to any 
kind of real human liberation. On that basis I reject having to choose 
between US and Chinese imperialisms.


(There has been a recent wave of arrests in Hong Kong including many of 
the leaders of the independent trade union movement. There is a meeting 
on January 30th with speakers from the UK labour movement and  HK unions 
here: https://www.facebook.com/events/247169266771050/)


I am not in favour of ending this discussion bureaucratically. But what 
I find hard to take is the 'live and let live' attitude towards Dmytri's 
contributions by some who have responded. His positions are something 
the real left needs to fight against.


Bruce Robinson

On 19/01/2021 13:01, Dmytri Kleiner wrote:

On 2021-01-19 07:16, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:


However, as we all know, the government of China enjoys broad support
from it's people.



After all, by every measure they are doing better
than we are in terms of getting what they want from their government.



I'm not in the "we" group of your first statement, and I doubt the
second.


"since the start of the survey in 2003, Chinese citizen satisfaction 
with government has increased virtually across the board. From the 
impact of broad national policies to the conduct of local town 
officials, Chinese citizens rate the government as more capable and 
effective than ever before. Interestingly, more marginalized groups in 
poorer, inland regions are actually comparatively more likely to 
report increases in satisfaction"


-- Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard 
University [1]


This is widely known, confirmed by many studies such as this one from 
Harvard.




(It's strange that you decline to know enough about prisoners,
but this you are sure enough of for all of us, readers.)


It's not that I decline to know, it's that I decline the white man's 
burden and support the self-determination of the Chinese people, and 
since I also oppose imperialism, I feel our duty is to prevent our own 
countries from promoting insecurity in China by way of aggression.


Thus, the strategy I have proposed is that we trust the people of 
China to improve their own situation, while we do the same hare and 
focus on preventing our own governments from doing harm.


This is the strategy known as proletarian internationalism.


For someone who complains so much about people around him shouting 
(even if they

aren't),


Where I have made such complaints?



you shout a lot...


There is no shouting happening here.



The self-declared Stalinists of the
Marxistische Gruppe at my university in the 1980s sounded like this;
and they were also always right, and kept on shouting until everybody
was exhausted and the lecture was declared over. I always thought that
Western Stalinists were people hopping between denial, apology, and
assertion (at that time, with regard to the USSR, but exactly at the
pitch you also choose to singsing).


I'm sorry about your experience in the 80s with white western 
leftists, but it has nothing to do with the discussion here.



If this was a conversation, I might ask what, in your view, is 
"Stalinism".


"Stalinism" was not introduced here by me, it was introduced as a 
bargain-bin pejorative by Brian, which you are now making rollmops of 
as a red herring.


If this was a conversation you would address the topic, namely the 
questions of left strategy that have been discussed.





[1] 
https://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/final_policy_brief_7.6.2020.pdf



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Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Dmytri Kleiner]

On 2021-01-19 07:16, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:


However, as we all know, the government of China enjoys broad support
from it's people.



After all, by every measure they are doing better
than we are in terms of getting what they want from their government.



I'm not in the "we" group of your first statement, and I doubt the
second.


"since the start of the survey in 2003, Chinese citizen satisfaction 
with government has increased virtually across the board. From the 
impact of broad national policies to the conduct of local town 
officials, Chinese citizens rate the government as more capable and 
effective than ever before. Interestingly, more marginalized groups in 
poorer, inland regions are actually comparatively more likely to report 
increases in satisfaction"


-- Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard 
University [1]


This is widely known, confirmed by many studies such as this one from 
Harvard.




(It's strange that you decline to know enough about prisoners,
but this you are sure enough of for all of us, readers.)


It's not that I decline to know, it's that I decline the white man's 
burden and support the self-determination of the Chinese people, and 
since I also oppose imperialism, I feel our duty is to prevent our own 
countries from promoting insecurity in China by way of aggression.


Thus, the strategy I have proposed is that we trust the people of China 
to improve their own situation, while we do the same hare and focus on 
preventing our own governments from doing harm.


This is the strategy known as proletarian internationalism.


For someone who complains so much about people around him shouting 
(even if they

aren't),


Where I have made such complaints?



you shout a lot...


There is no shouting happening here.



The self-declared Stalinists of the
Marxistische Gruppe at my university in the 1980s sounded like this;
and they were also always right, and kept on shouting until everybody
was exhausted and the lecture was declared over. I always thought that
Western Stalinists were people hopping between denial, apology, and
assertion (at that time, with regard to the USSR, but exactly at the
pitch you also choose to singsing).


I'm sorry about your experience in the 80s with white western leftists, 
but it has nothing to do with the discussion here.



If this was a conversation, I might ask what, in your view, is 
"Stalinism".


"Stalinism" was not introduced here by me, it was introduced as a 
bargain-bin pejorative by Brian, which you are now making rollmops of as 
a red herring.


If this was a conversation you would address the topic, namely the 
questions of left strategy that have been discussed.





[1] 
https://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/final_policy_brief_7.6.2020.pdf


--
Dmytri Kleiner
@dmytri
#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
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Re: The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Jean-Noël Montagné]

Le 10/01/2021 à 06:15, Brian Holmes a écrit :

The end of the neoliberal period has coincided with a symbolic reversal in
politics: the torch of the partisan has passed from the insurgent Left of
1968 to the Qanon nationalists of today. This is a gigantic historical
shift.

[...]

As the old neoliberal
order crumbles we've seen that movement in reverse: a new disruptive force
of social activism has arisen on the right, overtaking a territory of
activism that was held almost entirely by the left just a decade ago.


I don't see the end of the neoliberal period in the maelstrom which 
gathers populists/Trump/Qanon activists. They still behave in a 
conservative way: guns, religion, free-market capitalism, climate change 
denial, covid harshness denial, cult of the leader, economical 
colonialism, etc.
About economy, they have endorsed Trump desire about USA products 
consuming, but in a complete blindness of the dependencies to economical 
globalization for each consuming act. Globalization is the  essence of 
neoliberalism and we cannot escape it unless there is a radical change.


[...]


A leaderless revolution can be fostered and unleashed from the top in a bid to 
change the system.
The combination of organized hierarchy and molecular energy characterizes
the networked fascism.


As a nettime reader, interested by net and digital culture, I have 
studied the power of social networks algorithms on the sudden emergence 
of Gilets Jaunes in France. Gilets Jaunes movement is almost identically 
composed by the same items we see in US, apart from some national 
cultural particularities: distrust of the political class, feeling of 
social downgrading, feeling of territorial abandonment, decline in 
purchasing power, specially for working class and low/middle class, 
ideas mixed with all fake news and comploting theories.


The rapid mobilisation of people in protests are generated by the huge 
power of gathering of the social networks. French Polytechnique 
university analysts have counted that more than 1.5 million Gilets 
Jaunes where only linked by Facebook.


One could think that recent populists protests are the fruit of a new 
sentiment of collectivity, ou new revolutionary ideology, but in my 
opinion, this is the contrary. Social media algorithms destroy real 
social links. Theese different artificial entities are unable to build 
organised struggles or movements.


By selecting, spreading and promoting primarily controversial contents 
(excessive, fake, provocative, extravagant, buzz,) in user's incoming 
fluxus, by locking up their users in cognitive bubbles, they create 
artificial micro-ideologies with protest content.


They don't unite us on common values, "the Left", for exemple, but they 
unite around digitally aggregated small particularities, small-scale 
based.  Theese thousands artificial "communities" are unable to build 
organised struggles or movements. They are unable to carry large-scale 
common struggles around common values, but they are able to rally, in 
US, around someone like Trump, who is open to all this comedy.




The popular activism of the Left was historically based on the knowledge 
of common political ideologies and strategies. This time is over. Young 
generations have no idea of the big political theories of the last 
centuries. In my country, France, the Left has exploded. Socialist party 
is around 6 to 8%. Communist party is around 3 to 5%. Other "left" 
newly-based parties are around 6 to 8%. The total of the "original" left 
is around 25 to 30%, depending of the type of elections. Ecologists have 
more, around 18/20%, but it's not an ecology driven by a real knowledge, 
or real ideology. It's still an informal protest movement.





Years ago, without giving up any of my fundamental choices, I decided to
drop the old leftist toolkit of surprise and disruption, and try some
exploratory research. The first really original thing that emerged was the
chance to collaborate with a newly radicalized sector: earth system
scientists. I thought by looking around in an area where actual change was
sure to happen, more tangible possibilities would open. Now that people
speak of the Pyrocene rather than "climate change," I want to go for much
more immediate issues: environmental justice. Society can be materially
transformed on that terrain. This is just one strategic place that anyone
can occupy, within a larger "Great Transformation" type strategy that is
increasingly coming together, in the face of incipient breakdowns both
social and ecological.

I think we need a constructive strategy, not a disruptive one. If we can't
put something together, the alternative is apocalyptic.


Yes, I agree, this is the way to follow. But it's still driven by a very 
small minority, wich has no access to mainstream media or social network 
algorithms.


The first struggle to build in my opinion, is the struggle against 
social networks, and at the same time, the promotion of the use