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Imperialism and the working class in the Global North

A response to Joseph Choonara’s talk on the relationship of Global North workers to imperialism


03/11/2024

The British communist newspaper the Daily Worker exposing British atrocities during the Malayan Emergency, 1952. Author unknown, Wikimedia Commons. Gore censored.

This article is meant to act as a response to Joseph Choonara’s series of talks on whether or not workers in the Global North benefit from imperialism in the Global South. While different variants of this talk have been presented to a number of leftist groups in London and Berlin, I am responding to the version of the talk presented at the Socialist Workers Party’s Marxism festival in London. In this article, I briefly summarise Choonara’s main positions, some of which I agree with, and then proceed by responding to those that I take issue with.

Global North workers

Choonara begins his talk by discussing the gravity of his theory, in light of the hundreds of thousands of British workers pouring out onto the streets in solidarity with Gaza. If he is wrong, he claims, then the only reason these people are protesting is because of morality; their material interests are tied to imperialism, and therefore to Israel.

He then states that he is not claiming that living standards for British workers are somehow lower than or even equivalent to living standards for workers in Global South countries like Bangladesh or Chad. He also does not debate that imperialism has ravaged the world, and helped birth capital, which (quoting Marx) “comes dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt”. Having said that, he takes objection to dependency theory, which states that there is a flow of value from the Global South to the North, and the theory of a labour aristocracy, which states that the interests of workers in the North lie with capital, due to how relatively well-compensated they are.

His issues with dependency theory lie in that it allegedly replaces the ideas of exploitation on the basis of class with ideas of exploitation on the basis of nations. This leads to a core of nations (the capitalist class) and a periphery (the working class), together with a semi-periphery (the middle class). He claims that this obscures class divisions within nation-states, and, more importantly, obscures the mechanisms through which value flows. The birth of capitalism in Britain was due to the specificity of exploitation as a form of labour under capitalism. The same mechanisms that benefited from the slave trade and colonialism, through the processes of primitive accumulation, transformed British farmers into a doubly-free worker: free to sell their labour, free of the ability to reproduce themselves. Dependency theory, by decentering exploitation, obscures its novelty and effectiveness as a mechanism of accumulation.

Moving onto slavery and colonialism, he says that slavery ended due to slave revolts; colonialism in broad swathes of Africa and Asia came to an end after the Second World War, partially because the United States wished for the more capitalist subjugation of these markets. Colonies became less critical to profits, and were left in a state of malign neglect; Northern capitalists attempted to substitute Southern resources with domestic alternatives, oil being an exception. His explanation for the perennial underdevelopment of the South is that capital is directed towards where profits can be generated. This is where one finds clusters of highly educated workforces, large amounts of fixed capital, functional infrastructure, and so on: the global North.

China, he claims, is rather exceptional. China’s meteoric economic rise to being the world’s production hub cannot be explained by dependency theorists. The people that derive their wealth from Chinese growth are exclusively capitalists (who are egalitarian, in that they only care about profit). China, too, has seen the birth of a colossal domestic bourgeoisie, and the rise of massive inequality. Yet, capital remains predominantly focused on Northern Europe, North America and Japan.

Finally, Choonara ends with two problems that dependency theory turns up. First: how do we mobilise British workers if capitalism works in their interests? Second: do we tell Global South workers to strike deals with their own domestic capitalists?

***

If I had to hazard a guess, there are three historic motivations for Choonara’s position. The first of these is that import substitute industrialisation—the idea that the South needed to shut off imports from the more developed North to fuel internal industrialisation—has tended to fail where it has been attempted. The second is that the Global South bourgeoisie does tend to view colonialism as some sort of balance sheet, cynically using the most absurd market valuations of “colonial plunder” to further their own political careers. Finally, the bourgeoisie in the Global South have indeed often succeeded at using postcolonial nationalist fervour to rally “their” workers for “their” cause. For instance, the recent outpourings of grief in India after the death of the industrial capitalist Ratan Tata exemplifies how real this absurd phenomenon is.

Motivation aside, however, Choonara’s interpretation is rather blind to how profits are made and redistributed in the contemporary economy, which is the focus of this article. I shall begin by addressing how Northern capital benefits from imperialism; I shall then follow up with how these advantages are absorbed by Northern labour.

Capital

Choonara is correct that exploitation is the source of surplus value and capitalist growth. However, as theorists since Rosa Luxemburg have been pointing out, capital is subject to frequent crises of profitability, or barriers to its own expanded reproduction. This forces it to rely on spheres of the economy located outside capitalism to offset these crises, such as gendered labour, or racialised labour in the global South. Particularly in the colonial context, these crises were partially offset through cheap resource inputs from the colonies. In Britain, for instance, this included sugarcane from the Caribbean, cotton from American plantations, and later, oil from Iran (p. 94). They have also been offset by turning colonies into (non-competitive) markets, allowing for the expansion of capital located mostly in the core, often mediated via capital in the periphery. This was India’s primary role within the British Empire. Balance-sheet analyses of “how much money was drained from colonies” can actually end up obfuscating these mechanisms, and validating vulgar economism: resources expropriated from the colonies were undervalued by design.

These periodic crises also serve as an explanation for China’s rise. Choonara is correct that China cannot be explained by dependency theory: Dengist reforms and the rapid integration of Chinese Special Economic Zones (SEZs) into the world economy was the exact opposite of what many dependency theorists recommended. Deng’s reforms instead created a Chinese bourgeoisie who drew massive profits from the exploitation of Chinese workers, but also drove colossal economic growth for decades, effectively turning China into a microcosm of capitalism itself. But China also represents a bit of a problem for Choonara’s framing. His claim that “capital clusters in the North because profits are higher there” fails to explain why industrial capital moved to China in the first place. A popular analysis of this shift has involved ascribing it to the relative collapse in the rate of profit in the global North’s industrial sector, due to rising productivity and growing wages through organised workers’ movements. Under these readings, this collapse in profitability is what first sparked American industry’s shift to Germany and Japan, followed by South Korea and Taiwan; and finally, two decades ago, to China. Choonara’s repeated insistence that China is an exception is rather iffy. As critics of the winners of this year’s economics Nobel have pointed out: if China or India are exceptions to your model, you need a new model.

Choonara is correct when he says that capital is attracted to where the most productive workers lie. Following the deindustrialisation of the Global North, Northern labour has flooded into the service sector. Britain today produces very few goods: manufacturing accounts for around 8% of both GDP and employment. The majority of British workers are employed in the tertiary sector, which includes fields as diverse as finance, IT, fundamental research, medicine, care work, etc. Some of these roles are intrinsically resilient to real subsumption, and lack clear notions of productivity: a barista or a schoolteacher are equally productive all over the globe (if not more productive in the Global South). Other roles, particularly those that employ highly skilled workers, do generate massive profits. This is where the third volume of Capital becomes relevant. The distribution of profits and rents in the economy, Marx is clear to point out, need not necessarily align to the generation of surplus value itself. As Caffentzis puts it, profits are more of a “field variable” (p. 119), a result of a transformation process applied to societal surplus value. It is precisely this phenomenon that dependency theorists have concerned themselves with: the global North’s use of political power to redirect the surplus value generated in the South towards the North. This does not in any fashion preclude domination by class being the primary mechanism of accumulation, as Choonara would claim it does.

In a contemporary economy, the profits generated by much high-end labour are not necessarily generated through expansions in productivity and output, but rather through their ability to enable this redistribution of surplus value. This is done through a broad range of mechanisms that I shall briefly touch upon.

One of these mechanisms is financial capital, which works to maintain expropriative tendencies in the Global South. This is done through organisations like the IMF, that tether the productive forces of the Global South to Northern credit lines, destroying state capacity through forcing endless reforms. This helps spawn a domestic bourgeoisie, and is also why leftist strategy should not involve pushing citizens of the global South to compromise with their capitalists. First, this class is tiny: it is unclear that a labour-capital compromise in the South would do much to raise living standards. Second, this class often ends up acting as a comprador class, raking in profits while shuffling even larger profits higher up the value chain, mostly to Northern firms. An examination of H&M’s value chain ought to illustrate this perfectly: no Bangladeshi mill-owner will ever approach even a fraction of the wealth of the Persson family.

Yet another mechanism includes the generation of intellectual property, maintained through diverse, shifting mechanisms, such as patents or data holdings. Global North states are able to leverage their highly educated populations to attract both highly educated workers in the South, as well as actual surplus value generated in the South. This is ensured through the creation and the enforcement of ownership over these artificially scarce assets, protected by international law and enforced via treaties like TRIPS. Similar mechanisms increasingly permeate into industrial manufacturing, in countries like Germany or the United States (or critically, Taiwan): patents that protect high-tech manufacturing ensure continual surplus drain from countries that lack the capacity to generate IP at scale.

Often, these processes are accompanied by attempts to shut down Southern productivity where it does exist, forcing payments up the value chain. An example of this is the decades-long battle to force the Indian pharmaceutical industry — which supplies most of the Global South with generic drugs — to recognise intellectual property rights (India presently retains the legal right to ignore international drug patents if there is a major public need for a drug). More recently, the utility of user data in contemporary capitalism has led to Northern corporations actively lobbying for monopoly positions in data extraction: see, for instance, Meta’s Free Basics scandal in Africa.

Labour

One might argue, at this point, that the search for profits benefits capitalists and not labour, whose interests lie in the abolition of capital. But labour has another, more immediate interest than the abolition of capital: it is the consumption of use-values. Being a worker is universally alienating, but alienation is a lot less bad when you only have to work 36 hours a week, mostly at a desk job, and when you can afford to buy a lot of commodities with your wage. Northern states have the capacity to ensure precisely this compromise, to ensure its smooth functioning and reproduction. States aid capital in creating and enforcing the legal mechanisms that allow for the smooth appropriation of surplus value; in exchange, capital transfers part of this appropriated surplus to states, allowing them to retain the capacity to create enough of a welfare state that domestic dissent is quelled. The ability that Northern states have to tax and redistribute surplus value (often generated elsewhere, often through the use of resources expropriated from elsewhere) is what quells domestic workers’ movements. Capitalists have framed the welfare state as a compromise between domestic capital and labour. They are correct.

This is precisely the argument that many dependency theorists have made; to accuse them of “replacing class with nation” is a colossal misrepresentation. Yes, exploitation and expropriation do exist in the Global North. But the former is often offset through the receipt of wages higher than the surplus value generated by the worker. The latter falls squarely onto a range of insecure populations: such as migrants, held captive to migration regimes that kill their capacity to organise, and allow capital to treat them as entirely disposable workers through the very enforceable threat of deportation. To address Choonara’s question about mobilising British workers: capitalism is not going to be overthrown by British workers. It is in the interests of workers in the Global North to retain their reformist sensibilities and struggle for a restoration of the welfare state. This will not change without mass movements in the Global South that de-link both their resources and their labour from the North, redirecting their productive capacities towards instead producing domestic use-values, rather than luxury goods for Northern citizens.

To ignore this is to ignore reality. The Northern working class fully recognises their position, which is simultaneously both privileged and precarious. The desire to maintain this and to win some compromise explains the massive popularity of anti-migration reformists like Sahra Wagenknecht, or of MAGA communism across the pond. As long as Northern states retain their ability to mediate bargains between global capital and domestic labour, this progression is inevitable.

Compromise

Today, the mechanisms of expropriation and of the transfer of surplus value from the Global South as profits and rent towards the North appear to be increasingly turning inwards. This is neoliberalism manifest: the same processes of subjugation forced upon the Global South have been granted increased freedom, in the wake of profitability crises, to inflict the same horrors upon Northern citizens. This has been particularly true in the aftermath of 2008, where quantitative easing (QE) has resulted in extraordinary freedom for capital, and these processes of commodification have accelerated all over the globe. Financial capital, for instance, has embarked upon a program for the rapid privatisation of assets previously held by the state, such as public transport, housing and even healthcare. This follows market principles: these commodities are affordable, but for high-wage workers that enter the hallowed halls of finance and tech. Ultimately, this growing wage gap has sparked growing polarisation in Western economies, and is potentially the cause of the renewal of radical politics beyond the end of history.

But times change, and political economy with it. The Western world appears to have begun an orderly exit from neoliberalism, precisely now that capital accumulation outside the core has accelerated. There have been signs of this reversal for decades: already in the 2000s, Brazilian and Indian capitalists had begun suing the United States for its anti-competitive agricultural subsidies. QE might have extended neoliberalism’s longevity somewhat, but perceived Chinese belligerence and the COVID supply chains crisis have led to de-risking becoming an increasingly consensus position in the US. Europe remains more split, partially due to German economic imbecility. German capitalists dream of selling cars to the Chinese middle class, and appear to take some perverse pleasure in impoverishing Greeks; at this point, this fetish goes against the better judgement of even orthodox establishment economists like Mario Draghi.

This has the potential to lead to a grand restoration of labour movements in the global North. Now that essential production is less inclined to move to China or Vietnam, labour could win back its fading ability to compromise with capital by asserting control over their own states through labour movements, just as they did in the past. Whatever revolutionary fervour exists in the Global North can be quelled: the labour-capital compromise is, at the cost of the Global South, something that can be attained. Congolese tantalum will continue to enter Chinese suicide-proof factories for consumer electronics; the productive forces of Bangladesh will remain devoted to spinning yarn for Northern luxury brands as their own country disappears into the Indian Ocean; the deforestation of the Amazon and the Indonesian rainforest will continue so Northern consumers retain easy access to the finest hazelnut chocolate spreads. Smaller, wealthier European nation-states are a template for this paradigm. Their economies tend to consist of highly-educated service workers engaged in generating intellectual property. High taxation, and union-driven wage negotiation ensures both that the proceeds of capital are distributed to workers, and that rapidly growing wage discrepancies do not upset domestic markets. This is accompanied by rigid migration systems (such as in Denmark): ensuring, in practice, a system that works mostly exclusively for highly-skilled workers that will join the IP/patent-generating masses.

***

I would like to raise a counter-problem to the challenges that Choonara has raised. In light of the fallout from 2008, many Southern countries have fallen deeper and deeper into economic stagnation and an active de-development that rivals the colonial period. This is increasingly impossible to ignore. At this point, the extractive tendencies of Northern capital are clear to most heterodox economists, and even a subsection of the orthodoxy. The average early-20s liberal activist is fully aware of the conditions in which their chocolate and coffee are grown, or their 118 items of clothing are produced (what they choose to do with this knowledge is, of course, a different story).

Someone who has grown up in a Global South country integrated into the world economy has likely either experienced or witnessed gruelling labour conditions, and is fully aware of how they end up generating profits for Northern firms. For the lucky few that end up moving to the North, what they see is a crumbling but still intact welfare state, with leisure time and a bountiful surplus of commodities and services, many of which are subsidised by precarious labour in their home countries. In the absence of a movement that genuinely acknowledges the role imperialism plays in subsidising Northern lifestyles, many of these workers will be driven to reaction, driven more by a desire to “discipline” the “lazy” than to actually collectively liberate humanity from exploitation.

When all is said and done, Choonara and other developmentalist-Marxists are perfectly entitled to their own analysis of things. What is rather poor form, however, is to present these analyses as if they were established fact: as if Marxian analyses of the utility of colonialism were fringe tankie opinions, and critical analyses of the welfare state were revisionist heresy, tearing apart the unity of the workers of the world. This goes beyond being merely poor form, and becomes actively harmful when presented to an audience of newly radicalised Northern citizens, as an invitation to participate in some sort of collective moral redemption, but in a leftist fashion.

***

Finally, a few finishing notes. Choonara refers to Saudi Arabia (and presumably other petrostates, like the UAE and Qatar) as “Global South” nations. This is quite a strange usage of the term. The Gulf features some of the highest incomes for citizens in the world; they feature extensive welfare states, near-0% taxation, and require very little labour from citizens. The labour forces in these countries tend to be migrants with no pathway to permanent residence, let alone citizenship. Many of them work in non-free conditions akin to slavery, with routine passport confiscations through the kafala system. But more importantly, these nations are very much part of the informal American empire. Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar are major non-NATO allies; Saudi is frequently referred to as an American client state, with good reason. The sole exception in the Gulf is Iran, a country that has been wrecked by sanctions since the Revolution.

Next, the planet. At this point it is abundantly clear to everyone that there are planetary limits to consumption, and that consumption patterns simply cannot be extended to the entire world. This provides an almost trivial counterargument to Choonara’s claims: the consumption power of the Northern (particularly American) worker, in an egalitarian world, must necessarily collapse. This is definitionally against their interests.

Finally, concerning Israel. It seems to me to be rather uncharitable to refuse to credit British workers with even a shred of morality and camaraderie. Yes, these workers benefit from imperialism; this does not mean that they will blindly support imperialism’s absolute worst excesses, especially not if they are workers whose ethnic or religious identity emphasises solidarity with Palestine. This wasn’t true during the colonial period, when abolitionism and Home Rule societies thrived in England, and there is no reason it should be true today. And it would do us good to remember that not all forms of imperialism serve the same purpose or are equally useful. The establishment of the State of Israel may have been in the interests of Western capital, but at this point, it is unclear what anyone in the West gains from Israel’s expanding, genocidal campaign. At this point, the Western world appears to be lumbering towards slow political suicide, under no force other than its own sheer inertia.

Good. The sooner it dies, the better.

What lurks beneath Israel’s right to defend itself?

No, bombing schools and hospitals is not legitimate self-defence


02/11/2024

The other day I heard Bernie Sanders proclaim that “Israel has a right to defend itself”, as he made the case for a Harris presidency. He spoke in his trademark gruff manner, a tone whose charm has long faded since it has been co-opted to the service of empire—of making the empire marginally more progressive.

“…but”, he went on to deliver a call for moderation and limits to Israel’s violence. And then to insist we should still vote for politicians who enable genocide and glory in the lies that justify it. I’m not here to debate whether or not someone should vote. This is a morally and strategically complex issue that is mostly inconsequential to the mad trajectory our planet is spinning along.

What interests me more is the construction of the oath: “Israel has a right to defend itself”, that Bernie and others feel the need to recite before delivering any critique of Israel’s war on Palestine. Curiously, it is the same line used by Biden and Harris to justify sending the weapons that are doing the killing that Sanders claims to find abhorrent. And it is used by the genocidaires themselves, Netanyahu and others, along with their cheerleaders. This should be enough to make us pause and consider what this supposedly self-evident truth says and does not say.

So, once again: “Israel has a right to defend itself.”

Let’s start with the “Israel” part. In what sense does the identity of being Israel constitute a set of rights? Is it that Israel, as a nation-state, has a right to defend itself, because, apparently, nation-states have a right to self-defence?

A lot of legal minds don’t think international law supports what Israel has done to Gaza. In any case, I doubt that many people are weighing the UN charter in their heads when someone is droning on about Israel’s righteous violence. They are more likely to reach for whatever commonplace ideas of fairness they have accumulated in their everyday lives.

For instance, the way I typically understand self-defence is that, when someone is attacking me, I have the right to use violence to repel their violence. So if someone comes into my house and strikes me with a baseball bat, I can use the counter-violence of my cast iron wok or electric fly swatter until they stop, and preferably leave. The right to self-defence does not endorse finding out where my attacker lives and blowing up their house, killing them, their families and their neighbours as well.

This is obviously not a perfect analogy for many reasons. Individuals and nation-states are different kinds of entities, and also, the Hamas attacks on October 7 took place in the context of Israel’s long genocidal campaign against Palestine. It is not some random home invasion.

I make the analogy to show that even if we were to agree that nation-states have a right to use violence to make themselves safe, in the case of Israel, this right applied only when Hamas was attacking the rave, kibbutzim and military bases along the borders of the Gaza concentration camp. Once Hamas left, that licence expired.

What about the rockets? Given that they have caused very few civilian casualties, the right to self-defence does not extend to obliterating apartment buildings, schools, universities and hospitals on the faintest whiff of conjecture that someone is hiding a rocket launcher in an MRI machine.

Perhaps Israel does understand self-defence to mean that when someone attacks you, you have an unlimited right to strike back with no consideration of proportionality. An eye for an eye doctrine, or at the latest count 250 eyes for an eye, according to the Lancet journal (and not just eyes, but arms, legs, jaws, skin–hundreds of thousands of human lives obliterated).

If this is the case, then the right to violence extends in all directions—physical, temporal—and to all actors in the bloody drama of human existence. Israel justifies its violent war on Gaza based on the October 7 attack. Fine. But in this infinite regress, Hamas can then say the October 7 attack was justified by, for instance, Israeli snipers shooting out the knees of peaceful protesters. Or the kid you pushed around when you were 13 can show up at your work and break your legs, so you can never ever bully them again. This concept of self-defence bloats and degenerates to the point where it can justify virtually any act of violence, by anyone, committed anywhere—because there will always be some act of violence preceding it.

I don’t think that’s what Israel or its defenders want to imply. In fact, I see the outlines of something much more ominous lurking beneath the surface.

Let’s circle back to the question of what “Israel” signifies. Perhaps they are saying that Israel has a right to defend itself not as any old nation-state, but because it is Israel. What then is the elusive quality of “being Israel” that grants it special rights to use violence against its perceived enemies?

The way I see it, Israel’s right to self-defence is not about the October 7 attacks or the fleeting barrages of rockets that disturb the sky over Tel Aviv. Rather, it is coiled with a desire to repress the memory that Israel was created very recently on lands upon which others lived and who were violently expelled. The Nakba haunts the lands upon which the nation-state of Israel stands.

So it is the mere existence of Palestinians at all that constitutes a psychic and existential threat to the state of Israel, against which Israel feels emboldened to unleash unending waves of slaughter until those they perceive as a threat escape into permanent exile or turn into dust. This would go a long way to explain why so many fading empires and settler-colonies are backing Israel’s genocide with moral support and military aid. Also, why Israel’s war on Palestine has no end in sight; why parents carry their children home from school as bags of meat; why Gaza sometimes looks less like a city under siege and more like the cratered surface of the moon.

However you interpret it, none of the many implications of the dirge that “Israel has a right to defend itself” withstand scrutiny—unless you are inclined to partake in a nihilistic orgy of retributive violence, or you think that certain ethnic enclaves possess special rights to commit genocide.

So we should just stop saying it.

“This appears to be an orchestrated campaign”

The right wing loses a vote at the Berlin Die Linke party conference and accuses others of “destroying the party”. A discussion with Ramsy Kilani


29/10/2024

Federal party conference 'Die Linke' 2022 in Erfurt. Steffen Prößdorf (24/06/2022), Wikimedia Commons.

At the Berlin Die Linke party conference the debate about the motion “Against all antisemitism – defend emancipation and universal human rights” raised a lot of excitement. You and other delegates were accused by the people who proposed the motion of “destroying the party. How do you think that this came to happen?

The “Realo” wing around the parliamentarians Katina Schubert, Klaus Lederer and Elke Breitenbach went onto the offensive with a resolution at the party conference. The resolution was nominally against antisemitism, and foresaw the “use of constitutional means”.

The resolution also accused Hamas and Hisbollah of “eliminatory antisemitism”. The left wing of the party called for this phrase to be deleted, because it has been developed in relation to the Holocaust. Calling on the authoritarian state during increasing repression was rejected by a majority.

After a break, the people who proposed the motion said that they were withdrawing it. Because of the accusation of relativising the Holocaust, they would not stay at the conference any longer. This right-wing group then stormed out of the conference hall making wild calls and insults. One parliamentarian stuck up her middle finger at a female comrade.

What is the accusation that you and others want to “destroy” the party about?

Nothing. The resolution, leaving the Conference, and the media campaign appear to me to be an orchestrated campaign by the party right. Despite the accusations, I wasn’t even part of the intervention at the Conference, even though I see myself as part of the left wing and welcome the outcome.

In the current times of imperialist escalation and the growth of the AfD, an anti-capitalist voice is necessary. I and other comrades have been passionately building the party Die Linke with this aim over years. I wouldn’t consider a decline of Die Linke to be a step forward for the German Left as a whole if there is no alternative.

What are your perspectives?

At the moment, Die Linke is barely capable of showing a pole of hope. The orientation on parliament and joining governments has weakened the connection with extra-parliamentary movements and workers’ struggles, and has led to passivity in most base structures.

The politics of Die Linke in local governments does not oppose social cuts, deportations and climate crisis. In open debate, Die Linke is no longer noticeable as a system-critical opposition against capitalism. It acts like a colourless, established party.

At the same time there is rage against the consequences of neoliberal politics of war and impoverishment. The climate movement and the Palestine movement against Israel’s genocide in Gaza are confronted with state repression. Resentment against German militarism is growing, the rise of the AfD is making determined counter-mobilisation necessary. These are starting points into which a left party of movements could breathe life.

What does that mean for your engagement in the party?

At the end of the week, there is the party conference in Halle [this interview was published on 17th October]. We believe that this is the time for decisions. Die Linke will have no future with formal compromises. A left party which cannot call a genocide a genocide makes itself irrelevant.

At the same time, the problems are deeper than just Palestine solidarity. The engagement in building an opposition party which is a voice against war and crisis will continue to be central for me. I value many activists in Die Linke.

Nonetheless, a decision for stagnation would mean that the former MP Christine Buchholz [back in the party leadership since 2022], I and other members of Sozialismus von Unten [Socialism from Below, a left-wing organisation of which Ramsy and Christine are members] will change our priorities to building the movement and our organisation. Our work in Die Linke was always connected with building a revolutionary core in the fight for reforms.

Ramsy Kilani is an activist with “Sozialismus von unten” and a member of Die Linke.

Yaro Allisat is a freelance journalist and active in the climate justice movement and at the Refugee Law Clinic Leipzig as a consultant for asylum and residence rights.

This interview was first published in the junge Welt. Reproduced with permission.

Tanuki, Territory, and Capital

Marxism and the fight against urban expansion in Pom Poko


28/10/2024

Rewatching Studio Isao Takahata’s Pom Poko on its 30th anniversary leaves behind a nostalgia idiosyncratic to 90’s Japanese animation. It shares a political and philosophical narrative seen in many Ghibli productions. Pom Poko takes us back to the 1960s, during a period of rapid urban expansion to tell a story about nature’s native populations and their struggle against capitalism and land theft, with the Tanuki (racoons) serving as political subjects resisting the consequences of consolidated industrialisation. 

The Tanuki live in the Tama Hills on the outskirts of Tokyo. The Hills are threatened urban sprawl. The Tanuki’s habitat and homes are being destroyed to make way for construction, causing resource scarcity and forcing them to venture into the city where they scavenge in the trash and around fast-food outlets. The Tanuki possess magical abilities that allow them to shapeshift into objects, people, animals and mystical creatures. Rooted in Japanese folklore, this magical realism plays a central role in depicting the deep connection between the natural and supernatural, creating a world in which animals can tap into hidden knowledge normally out of reach for urbanised humans (a recurring theme in Ghibli films). Using this magic, the Tanuki fight back through a series of campaigns involving direct action, peaceful protests, human sabotage and shape-shifting performance. Their societay is deeply communal, one in which elders hold leadership while younger Tanuki possess the drive and initiative needed to turn theory into practice and stop the construction-site development in their forest. 

It’s no coincidence that, six years after Pom Poko, Paul Crutzen globalised the idea of the ‘Anthropocene’, identifying a new geological epoch marked by human-driven intervention on Earth’s geological strata. While the idea had circulated in scientific circles before, it wasn’t until 2000 that Crutzen’s framing of human activity as a potentially hazardous force gained widespread recognition. Understanding this requires analysis of the production relationships that serve as primers for the emergence of the Anthropocene. Global industrialization not only spurred urban expansionism but also defined an international working class.  So, what does this have to do with Pom Poko and how can we use Marx’s theory of alienation to understand the struggles posed by the Tanuki which frame humans against nature?

As Dan Swain points out, in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts Marx opens a conversation on the relationship between humans and nature and humans and labour. In his words, ‘our alienation from the products of labour means that we also become alienated from the natural world in which we live and work’. The bulldozing of Tama Hills represents the disconnect between the worker’s environment and the rest of the ecosystem, including all other species (such as the Tanuki). This tension pushes the workers to identify with a faceless construction company instead of allying with the Tanuki; an alliance that would not only free them of their alienation from nature but would also allow them to demand better working conditions and ultimately,  self-emancipation, just like the Tanuki aspire to. 

The workers live on-site, with their boss promising meager pay raises as a means to keep them working through precarious conditions. During the post-war period rural populations had little choice but to migrate to cities in search of employment. This led to an influx of rural labour in urban centres, a trend driven by land reforms and mechanisation of agriculture. Many country farmers and labourers were pushed off their land, just like the Tanuki. There is an imperative to point out the similarities in both as exploited subjects—the material conditions leading to the exploitation of nature and the exploitation of workers are rooted in the same production relations. 

Another shared aspect which Marx wrote regarding alienation in nature has to do with the industrial process of soil erosion, described by Dan Swain as, ‘eroding soil by extracting nutrients from it which were never replaced but rather dumped as waste in the cities’. This exact issue is shown in Pom Poko when a different community of Tanuki who live in another section of Tokyo’s urban sprawl reach out for help. Their suffering is caused by soil and debris from the construction site in Tama Hills being dumped directly onto their territory, destroying their home and displacing them. Marx notes that, ‘Capitalist production…causes the growing population to achieve an ever-growing preponderance…it disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the Earth, i.e., it prevents the return to the soil of its constitutive elements…All progress in capitalist production is a progress in the art of, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil.” As a result, both human and non-human populations find themselves at the mercy of capitalist production.

The Tanuki communities unite to resist this land dispossession by holding a series of conferences and general assemblies. In preparation, they summon Tanuki shape-shifting masters from nearby islands to teach them advanced transformation techniques. During the debates, tensions arise as differences in ideology lead to a split. Gonta, a fierce and militant Tanuki, takes on a leadership role within a small faction of tanuki who advocate for direct action and the killing of humans. This group, frustrated by the limitations of peaceful protests and negotiations, believes that the only way to reclaim their land is through lethal tactics, even at the expense of their own lives. Gonta’s splinter group isolates from the main Tanuki community, who prefer the shape-shifting approaches. Lacking the majority’s support, this Gonta and his group launch a desperate, kamikaze charge in a dramatic, last-ditch confrontation with riot police at the edge of the city. Tragically, the mission proves fruitless. The bodies of Gonta’s comrades pile up, killed by police forces. His strength spent, Gonta is run over by a truck in the middle of the city. The isolating nature of physical confrontation without a real force correlation (that is, the support of the whole Tanuki community) leads to failure. No matter how committed Gonta and his comrades were to the cause, they needed the rest of the Tanuki to succeed. 

It’s worth mentioning the role of ‘Inugami Gyobu’, a fox from Tama Hills who also possesses shape-shifting abilities (in accordance with Japanese folklore). Along with a small cohort of other foxes, he has adapted to human society, learning to blend in and thrive by leveraging human systems rather than opposing them. He embodies the danger of social movements being co-opted, assimilated, or ‘bought out’ by capitalism. In proposing a plan to the Tanuki, he tries to convince them to abandon their cause and finally blend in with the humans adopting a shape-shifting form forever. His acceptance of defeat implies that resistance is futile. By choosing self-preservation over resistance, he sends a message to the Tanuki that adapting to urban life and abandoning their existence is the only viable option. His plan divides the Tanuki, creating another ideological split between those with the capacity to assimilate and those who would continue to resist (it is also imperative to mention, that like the foxes, not all Tanuki possess shape-shifting abilities, meaning some would be left behind to fend for themselves or, like the non-magical foxes, die out entirely). 

When Marx identifies the breakdown in the relationship between humans and nature due to capitalist industrial modes of production, he suggests, ‘not returning to a lost country life but to abolish the distinction between town and country’. Marx’s perspective on nature is rooted not in mysticism but in practical concerns, particularly of human health, especially for the working class who, like the Tanuki, are suffering the consequences of urban pollution and highly concentrated human populations. He argues that to survive as human and non-human species, a total re-organisation of society is necessary, and requires ‘exerting conscious collective control over the relationships of production’. This is a relevant counter-argument to some environmentalist positions regarding individual behaviour or ‘reducing your carbon footprint’ as a potential solution. As Swain says, ‘One of the most popular solutions proposed for climate change is ‘‘carbon trading’’ whereby companies can continue to pollute on one side of the world in exchange for investing in renewable energy or planting trees on the other side. This could not be a clearer example of commodity fetishism, where even Co2 molecules are understood as commodities which can be traded off against one another’.

Pom Poko ends on a bittersweet note. After all their efforts to resist urban development fail, the Tanuki are ultimately forced to integrate into human society to survive. Many take on permanent human forms, blending into city life and adopting human jobs. A few tanuki manage to maintain a small foothold in the remaining green spaces, where they can still live freely, but these areas are scarce and shrinking, making them long for the world they lost, painfully aware of the displacement and loss of identity that urban expansion has imposed on them and becoming estranged from their own cultural practices and traditions, forced into roles that have no connection to their identity or heritage. 

Nevertheless, despite the profound loss, the ending scene conveys another side of the story showing Tanuki who continue to live by their traditions, gathering food, playing, and carrying on their natural lives. Although most Tanuki have scattered, the ones who remain in small green spaces keep a communal spirit alive. They portray how solidarity and shared traditions are still possible beyond alienation. Through a Marxist lens, this communal existence is rooted in the belief that people could freely develop and express themselves if freed from capitalism and exploitation.

“For those of you who feel the same way as we do, those who feel lost and unsure in this new world, please remember, you can still find us, if you know where to look. We’ll be here, living as tanuki, in the last patches of green.”

-Shoukichi (Tama Hills Tanuki)

How we Honoured the Children of Gaza in Berlin

Report from an Immersed observer


26/10/2024

It’s a windy Sunday on Unter den Linden. Yet, an eclectic gathering of people – 600 in total over the day – is standing still on the pavement next to a heap of used children’s shoes outside Berlin’s Neue Wache, the city’s memorial for the “Victims of War and Tyranny.” Every four minutes, one of them walks up to a microphone and reads one page of 42-45 Arabic names, surrounded by more kids’ shoes. There are women dressed in giant white wings among the listeners. No speeches, no music. Not a political slogan in sight. 

“We’re reading the names of the children killed in Gaza,” I tell a German tour guide, obviously struggling to explain the scene to her bemused flock. The giant English sign reading “HONOURING THE CHILDREN OF GAZA” doesn’t seem to help. Neither does the eclectic collection of people of all ages, ethnicities, and appearances. Except maybe for the odd keffiyeh, this is a crowd that doesn’t easily give itself away. “Ah, a pop-up for English people,” she concludes before fleeing the scene, her 17 tourists in tow. 

Anyone who’s done it knows what it feels like to speak those names aloud. On that Sunday, the emotion and dignity we all felt were humbling.

It’s October 13, and Israel’s war on Gaza has claimed the lives of at least 17,000 children. In June, we’d already “honoured” 8,000 of them over a 15-hour marathon reading. We didn’t think that just five months later, we’d be here again. This time we only have 10 hours and we already know we won’t even get close to getting through the next batch of 8,000 names we have prepared. But the emotion is the same. Anyone who’s done it knows what it feels like to speak those names aloud. On that Sunday, the emotion and dignity we all felt were humbling.

Meet the Readers: a snapshot of Berlin‘s International Palästina Solidarity 

By 8pm we’re slowly packing up as an 11-year-old keeps on reading names – many of the names she reads are her age or younger – with undeterred determination. Before her, 128 people have read one page each. Despite the wind and the damp cold, an uninterrupted flow of volunteers has flocked to the Neue Wache. They’ve come alone, with partners, children, friends, or dogs. From 1pm the waiting time for a reading slot was about 40 minutes, but even when the rain started, no one thought of complaining. A Palestinian woman asked if her mum could read her own list – they have (had?) family in Gaza. A man insists on reading a second and a third time. When not at the mic, he stood by with an open notebook covered in colourful childish letters, which reads: “Wir können nicht schweigen, unsere Kinder werden getötet” (“We cannot be silent, our children are being killed”). 

Our readers reflect both Berlin’s multinational demographics and the world’s politics: they’re from Mexico or Russia, India, Japan, Egypt, or Lebanon to name a few I talked to. And there are many Irish Berliners, like Cara who’s come with three boxes of beautiful home-printed stickers of our trademark poppies. Judging by today’s turnout, Irish Berliners are in step with their country’s strong empathy for the Palestinian liberation fight. “We had our share of colonial oppression, scars are still there,” says a young woman from Dublin. “Solidarity for us isn’t just words, we feel it in our guts.” If I was familiar with Ireland’s inclinations (the country formally recognised the state of Palestine in May), I knew little about Latvian politics until a tourist from Riga walked up to us with great excitement. “In my city they ban protests in support of Palestinians,” he explained, making it sound like things couldn’t possibly be worse elsewhere. He’s obviously very moved by our event.

As in June, many Jews, expat Israelis, and Germans with Jewish roots have joined in – like the violinist Michael Barenboim, who rushed from Hauptbahnhof to make his 12:30 slot. The son of legendary Jewish peace-building conductor Daniel Barenboim, Michael is one of Germany’s few prominent voices to have protested the war in Gaza in any media that would hear it. His outspokenness, humble availability (he’s also a co-initiator of the Kilmé Palestinian talks series), and his natural eloquence (“It’s not the Palestinians’ fault that Germany murdered six million Jews”) have made him a hero among Berlin’s thriving pro-Palestine milieus. Despite a packed schedule that week, and a concert in Marburg the previous night, he insisted on reading with us again. “I was already here in June, and I thought this event, mourning together, was a really moving and powerful way to show solidarity. You stand here at the mic, with one page of this thick book filled with lists of names. You read the name and then you read the age – so many of them are under one, or two, or five… It’s just heartbreaking.”  I also recognise Mehmed König among the crowd. This time around, the Berlin SPDMP isn’t reading. He, his husband and their dog Oscar have come simply to show their support. 

Meet the Germans: much shame and more guilt

More surprisingly for people familiar with the political context here, many white Germans have made their way to the Neue Wache. They all talk about the collective shame they feel at their country’s “unconditional” support of Israel, and the bitter feeling of being “on the wrong side of history again.”  Cornelia, who’s travelled all the way from the South of Germany to read, is deeply emotional about the topic. “I think that as Germans, especially because of your country’s history, you have a responsibility to speak up for the Palestinians as well as for the Jews. A double responsibility, because without the Holocaust, the massive immigration of the 1930s, and the Nakba, the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland in 1948, we wouldn’t be where we are now.”  Her paternal grandparents were Jewish musicians from Hungary. “If it weren’t for one brave man who, in the hell of the Holocaust, rescued the lives of over 100,000 Jews in Budapest, I probably wouldn’t be here today. So I think it’s important to stand up for humanity, and now we live in a democracy, it’s our duty to do so.” 

Although she’s a German citizen and spent most of her life in Baden-Württemberg, Cornelia won’t say “we” when speaking about Germany. She also won’t associate with “her” Green Party anymore – not when a Green foreign minister’s support for “Israel’s right to self-defence” means excusing and abetting the killing of over 42,000 civilians. This tireless peace advocate struggles with her natural mildness when referring to Baerbock’s speech in the Bundestag a few days earlier, when the minister condoned the targeting of hospitals and schools (In Baerbock’s words, “I made clear that civilian sites could lose their protected status if terrorists abuse this status. That’s what Germany stands for.”). 

There are many former East Germans here too, like Katja, who grew up in Dresden and is angry with her fellow citizens. “How can you go demonstrating for diversity, equality, against the AfD, but fall silent when faced with this slaughter committed by a far-right government?” Katja is the initiator of Stimmen aus Gaza, a group of 20 women (and one man!) who, since February, have been reading poetry and diaries from Gaza on streets and squares around Berlin. Their small pop-ups are often met with indifference and sometimes verbal abuse. “But some people do stop and listen, and it means a lot.” For Katja, speaking out is key. “In my circle, I sense a terrible fear of coming into contact with the issue.” 

Today, Claire has joined in with a 16-strong bevy of Grieving Doves . Since last October, they’ve been a regular sight at Berlin pro-Palestine demos and self-organised mourning convoys across the city –  carrying spectacular wings made out of the names of Gaza victims,  which they handwrite on pieces of cloth at monthly workshops. Doves and Stimmen have been natural matches for an event aiming to promote grieving as a way of breaking the silence. 

Beyond denial?

“It’s good you’re doing it for the children – they are innocent victims,” concedes a neighbour who only came after I explained there would be no political slogans, no speeches. She was especially concerned with being seen next to a banner with “From the river to the Sea,” a slogan that was ruled to be a crime by a Berlin judge. 

German minds may be out of reach, but their hearts aren’t. At least this is the bet we made. 

I like to joke that with HTCOG we created a space for Germans to break the silence, without having to speak out. The idea? Shaking off apathy by means of empathy, and winning over a few bystanders, by helping them out of their comfortable denial zone.  Sami Khatib, a scholar who doesn’t mince his words about “Germany’s Palestinian problem,” was sceptical of my theory, arguing that, yes, even if they come and feel sorry those kids, they may still share the widespread idea in Germany that if those children have died, it’s the Palestinians’ own fault – for wanting to fight Israel, or having Hamas  “hide behind civilians”(2). I take the point, but I still would defend that mourning Gaza’s children is one step out of the kind of dehumanisation that underlies any genocide. German minds may be out of reach, but their hearts aren’t. At least this is the bet we made. 

I’ve since realised that even an event mourning children can be viewed with suspicion, after a former friend and colleague accused me of spreading “hatred of Jews in Germany.”

I’ve since realised that even an event mourning children can be viewed with suspicion, after a former friend and colleague accused me of spreading “hatred of Jews in Germany.” I had invited her to come and read the list of the 37 victims under 18 killed by Hamas on October 7. (They were mostly Jewish, but include six Bedouins.) She declined, arguing that she “would not expose herself to being beaten to death.” Since then she’s been sending me material “debunking Palestinian lies,” including a 6-minute video “proving the Gaza death toll is faked” – making our HTCOG event part of a massive Jew-hating propaganda effort. 

Let’s face it:  most of us who’ve gathered at the Neue Wache would be “antisemites” not only according to my friend, but also by German State standards. whose blurry IHRA definition of antisemitism tends to extend to critics of Israel. 

But I knew we’d struck a chord in the last instalment of HTCOG when my German ex-Stiefmutter agreed to join in and read last June. In a moving video, she spoke about the trauma of her post-Holocaust generation. “We, the perpetrators’ children” struggle to break the silence, the unbearable realisation that “nothing, no one, could undo what had been done.” Now, her uneasiness seeing fellow Germans turning their eyes and hearts away from the extermination of so many Palestinians. She didn’t come this time. I put it on the weather. 

Interestingly, white men were the missing demographics on both of our events, unless they were Jewish or of “Migrationshintergrund.” 

Are other German men lacking a wife, balls, or empathy?

So when a tall German in a suit and tie walks up to the mic, he causes a bit of a sensation. I then realise he’s come with his young Iranian wife and her mother to read. Cherchez la femme. Are other German men lacking a wife, balls, or empathy?

Meet the elusive journalists 

It’s not yet noon when a reporter from Turkish TRT World shows up, a cameraman in tow. They were already here last time – probably the only local outlet to report on “pro-Palestinian”  events in this country. To be fair, a few German colleagues did cover the June event, like Daniel Baiz and Charlotte Wiedemann, who both wrote about us in taz – notable exceptions for a paper that won’t dare criticise Israel despite their supposed left-wing, progressive and (until Ukraine) pacifist, credentials.

One French journalist has made the round trip from Paris to read his page of names. He’s a retired celebrity of French public television, from back when TV news journalists were fearless front-line reporters, and their faces familiar to every household. “Most media in France seem indifferent to the number of people killed every day in Gaza,” he says “Reading their names is a great idea.” Like many press veterans of his generation, he laments the failure of big Western media, staffed by what he calls “content-makers” rather than reporters.  Today, he mostly relies on Al-Jazeera and social media to know “what’s really going on” in Palestine. “But I’ve heard the situation is a lot worse with German media. Is it true?”

Why honour the Children of Gaza in Berlin?

Where to start? The natural distress any human would/should feel when faced with the live-streamed spectacle of so many butchered innocent souls? “Souls,” not numbers, not disposable bodies in the way of the IDF’s war rampage. 

Then the indignation we felt when Berlin, our city, home to Europe’s largest Palestinian diaspora, banned and repressed expressions of mourning and solidarity for Gaza victims. Judith Butler’s division of populations into grievable and ungrievable lives had never felt so close to home. According to German society, Palestinian children were obviously not as grievable as Israeli ones. Certainly not as grievable as our own white ones. 

This was of course exacerbated by the frustration of living in a country where criticism of Israel was inaudible, unacceptable and often labelled as “antisemitic,” Where your progressive friends would hide behind abstract concepts (“Staatsräson” anyone?) and plead “overcomplexity” to excuse appalling ignorance and political passivity. A country where media silence made ignorance excusable and mass murder something that could simply be overlooked. In the words of Charlotte Wiedemann, “a special German right not to know – not to know what exactly is going on in Israel, in Gaza or in the West Bank because knowing would be too difficult.” 

A whole nation’s support for a genocide* in the name of atoning for a past one? (*I leave the semantic debate to specialists – let’s just point out that the ICJ ruled “genocide” as “plausible”). The moral flaw of this reasoning is so obvious that the German blindness to recognise it – even when challenged by Jews – reveals an Erinnerungskultur that has been completely warped. 

By tying atonement to its support for a foreign state supposed to represent its former victims, Germany, the great perpetrator, is turning its “Nie wieder” commitment into a political catechism, not a moral principle. Insightful minds have described a perverse expiation mechanism by which Germany had “subcontracted blame” to the Palestinians – they were now paying the German debt.

Meanwhile, the entire German media apparatus has succumbed to a baffling travesty of journalism by which context has been erased, facts redacted, and sources selected, so as to perpetuate a narrative in step with “Staatsräson.” Individual colleagues complained to me about “the pressure” but very few dared to dissent. I got a taste of the situation already last November, when taz asked me to write an opinion  piece about my “outsider’s perspective,” which they ultimately did not publish after weeks of procrastination. “I agree with everything you write,” said one editor. But? “Timing,” she replied. The piece was entitled, “Why won’t my German friends and colleagues speak out against Israel’s war crimes in Gaza?”

By early April, some 10,000 children had already died in Gaza, but Germany was turning its eyes away: Politicians were busy fulfilling Staaträson with more weapons shipments to Israel and the disbanding of a Berlin-Palestinian symposium, while the German media were working hard reporting on secret Hamas tunnels in Gaza and outing hidden antisemites at home. That’s when Lucie, a Frenchwoman who owns a café-grocery store in my neighbourhood told me about a bunch of enterprising Dutch people who had displayed shoes on Utrecht’s city square and read the names of the children of Gaza. When she asked me if I would be up for organising something similar here, I immediately jumped on board. We contacted the Dutch organisation who agreed to send us all the names they had received from the Gaza Health Ministry and translated into a bilingual script. (1)

Who are we?

We often laugh when people ask about the “organisation behind this” – considering we started as a trio and continued as a pair of French Berlinerinnen, using the label “independent initiative.” Lucie’s husband is Palestinian, and her three daughters have grandparents in the West Bank. Nouma, who helped us organise the June event, has an Algerian dad. I’m not Jewish (many friends as well as my mum’s partner are). I’m not Arabic or even Muslim (some old friends are). I’m not German either (my daughter is). I’m a journalist who once spent 10 days seeing another tragic war (2001, Chechnya). There, I witnessed what it means to lose everything – a home and loved ones, and the grief of one particular mother never left my heart. Those 10 days in war-torn Chechnya taught me that no political goal can ever justify the killing of a single child. That wars are mostly decided by people who don’t fight in them. That civilians never win them. 

And so we took action, and tried to enrol some “bystanders.” Between June and October, up to 900 people dropped by the Neue Wache to honour the children of Gaza. Strangely, neither Lucie nor I read. Why? “Not my thing,” says Lucie, whose quiet, collected mompreneur facade (she cares for a two-shop business and three daughters) hides great shyness and a big heart. I can relate. I’d tried, alone in my living room, as I needed to time how quickly one could read a page. After a few names, the words got stuck in my throat, and I was overwhelmed by a deep emotion, the same emotion I saw again and again outside the Neue Wache that Sunday.

Notes

(1) COUNTING THE DEAD According to official counts, between 16,500 and 17,000 children have been killed in Gaza alone, since October 2023. Serious experts say it’s a lot more than that. We know from previous experience that numbers end up being 3 to 15 times higher once you include unreported and indirect deaths (Lancet)

(2) We now know from American doctors who reported to the NYT “what they saw in Gaza,” that many children don’t die as “collateral damage” during airstrikes – but murdered in cold blood, shot in the head. 

 

Photo Gallery from the Event by Cherry Adam

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos by Nadja Vancauwenberghe

 

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