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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.

The post-election challenge in France

Interview with John Mullen by Tempest magazine


16/10/2024

What do you understand to be the main lessons from the summer’s electoral process? Given Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) won the greatest number of votes (more than 10 million) in each round of the election, despite failing to win a majority of parliamentary seats, do you consider the outcome of the second round a defeat for the forces of the far right?

You have to look at the dynamic of the situation. What looked like the unstoppable rise to government of the fascists was pushed back by the biggest mobilization against them for decades.

The second round was an important tactical victory for the Left and for the working class. Consistent polls predicted that the RN would win more seats than any other group, and might even secure an overall majority in parliament, but they ended up in third place. However, the far right will only remain on the back foot for a short period.

Four parties of the Left formed a coalition—the Nouveau Front Populaire, the New Popular Front (NPF), comprised of the Communists, Socialists, Greens, and La France Insoumise (France in Revolt)—and agreed on a fairly radical minimum program for government in record time. They were, it is true, under tremendous pressure from below (outside the building where negotiations happened, hundreds had gathered to chant slogans of unity). The result is that we do not have a fascist government.

Those political groups who were (and are) opposed to the coalition, one must imagine, consider that it changes little or nothing who is in government. Given that Marine Le Pen’s party has declared it wants the hijab to be banned in all public places, social housing to be reserved to French nationals, and certain public sector jobs to be forbidden even to people with dual nationality, one can imagine there are few Muslims or people from ethnic minorities in France who are quite so relaxed about this prospect. Even a minority government controls the police and the schools, and fascist ministers in charge of these domains would be a demoralizing nightmare for our class.

The reason I speak of a tactical victory is that the fascists remain very strong. They have 140 or so MPs (several dozen more than before) and they garnered ten million votes. The need for a mass anti-fascist movement to go onto the offensive against them is clear.

For the moment, the National Rally is very weak indeed on the ground. In many towns they have practically no party structure, and they have not organized a street demonstration of more than 10,000 people for decades. At its annual conference the NR leadership noted that, in addition to continuing the long march through the institutions and their obsession with respectability, they absolutely must build locally. It would be quite possible for antifascists to stop them with broad campaigns of education and harassment.

Because the NR has concentrated on a parliamentary strategy, hoping to win power in the institutions to then permit a mass of street fighters, it is particularly the wrong time to argue that elections have no importance.

Earlier this month, President Emmanuel Macron, himself a figure of authoritarian neoliberalism, ignored historical precedent in overseeing the creation of the new government after the election. Macron facilitated the creation of a new government led by a prime minister (Michel Barnier) from the traditional center-right party, The Republicans,which had come in fourth place. In doing so, Macron refused to allow the NFP, with the largest number of parliamentary seats, to seek to form a government. How do you assess the stability of this government and the role that now has to be played by the NFP, La France Insoumise, and the forces of the revolutionary left, respectively? What has been the response of the Left, as well as the working-class, to Macron’s decision?

Although the present crisis is a slow-burning one, it is the deepest in the country since 1968. The constitution forbids repeat parliamentary elections until next June, so we will see weak minority governments, rapidly changing alliances, and significant space for extraparliamentary revolt.

Barnier’s government is stuffed with reactionaries who are copying ideas from the RN. But Macron would have preferred a more stable left-right coalition, and is unhappy that (so far) the left coalition, the New Popular Front, has held.

Every political organization and political alliance in the country is fragile, including the Barnier government. It took a long time for him to choose ministers, and apparently he had to threaten to resign to make Macron accept his list. The ministers are already bickering publicly about whether RN is a legitimate democratic party or not.

The NFP has reacted by insisting that Macron is in contempt of democracy and that Lucie Castets, the agreed NFP candidate for prime minister, should have been appointed. Nevertheless, nearly half the Socialist Party National Committee wanted to break the left alliance, and voted to support a compromise PM, Bernard Cazeneuve.

It seems to me essential that the whole of the Left should defend the very limited democracy we have under capitalism. It does matter whether Macron respects elections or not. La France Insoumise (but not the rest of the NFP) is campaigning for Macron to be impeached for not respecting democracy. This is a healthy, popular demand. The reactions of the revolutionaries have varied, but sadly almost none of the groups have supported the campaign for impeachment.

On other important questions of strategy, the far left organizations are very far from unanimous. One of the bigger groups, Le Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste—The New Anticapitalist Party (NPA), has joined the NFP as a minor player. Others are busy denouncing it.

At very short notice, the NFP was able to build an electoral coalition, one that mobilized broadly across the Left, and within working-class, immigrant, and Arab and Muslim communities, to win the largest plurality of seats. What, if any, is the ongoing impact of these mobilizations in the face of the right-wing government? Can this coalition be the basis for ongoing struggle against the Right?

To some extent. On September 7, demonstrations led by youth organizations and La France Insoumise, and looked on favorably by the leadership of the main left trade union confederation, the Confédération Générale du Travail—General Confederation of Labour (CGT), took place in some 150 towns across France. The Green party and the Communists called for people to get on the streets, but the Socialist Party did not. On September 21, there was a similar mobilization, but it was considerably smaller. La France Insoumise is at the center of this dynamic, with other parts of the NFP sometimes agreeing to join in.

It is impossible to say what will come out of a situation which sees both dynamic mass activism and plenty of discouragement on the Left. No doubt the key result on the ground is the 60,000 new people who have asked to get involved with La France Insoumise and the many hundreds who have joined the different revolutionary organizations.

The more parliament is paralyzed, the more mass action outside parliament is crucial.

There is a lot of criticism and skepticism of the NFP from sections of the revolutionary left based on the participation of the historically social liberal, and pro-NATO Socialist Party. How do you respond to this line of criticism? And how do you understand the balance of forces within the NFP between its constituent parts? How stable do you expect it to be in the face of the Barnier government?

You form coalitions with people you do not agree with. If the La France Insoumise leadership had said, “We will not ally with the social-liberals,” there would be a fascist-led government in France today. Every day gives good reason to mistrust most of the leadership of the Socialist Party (as well as the Communist Party), but it is critical that their leaders were pressured from below to sign on  to a radical program to block a fascist government.

Like every political force in France today, the coalition is unstable and the right-wing of the Socialist Party are getting organized in case the alliance falls apart. Among other crises, a small group of four or five La France Insoumise members of parliament has split off to its right, accompanied by acres of joyful newsprint from the right-wing media. Some of the less right-wing of Macron’s MPs have left his grouping, and the Greens are also having fierce internal debates.

The good news is that Macron’s plan A and plan B both failed. Plan A was the lightning speed election which was supposed to knock out a divided left and leave Macron as “our only defense against fascism.” Plan B was to split the left alliance and set up a “national unity” government with the Right and with sections of the Left outside La France Insoumise.

The huge movement of strikes and street mobilizations, which is necessary and likely, stands more chance against this weak Barnier government.

Insofar as the forces of the far right, led by Marine Le Pen’s RN—which won the greatest number of votes in each round of the election—are essentially giving support to the Barnier government, how do you assess the impact of the new government on the growth of the far right?

This support could be very temporary indeed. But obviously the fascists are hoping to advance in the crisis. Firstly, they want to gain respectability outside their own electorate, particularly in upper-middle-class circles. Secondly, they want to pretend they are the realistic alternative to discredited Macronism. Lastly, they need to encourage their fascist core with red meat racist rhetoric. It’s a difficult balance. In addition, they want to build local party structures everywhere. So, they have real strengths, but lots of weak points that antifascists can attack. There are some signs of antifascist activity increasing around the country, including in La France Insoumise.

Given the role that La France Insoumise has been playing, and its undisputed mass support within left-wing and antifacist sections of the working-class and immigrant and Arab and muslim communities, it seems clear that revolutionary socialists should relate to this in some way. At the same time, there is some criticism of its inability or failure to create a “democratic membership organization.” In what ways can the revolutionary left relate to LFI?

I was a member of revolutionary organizations in France for more than 30 years. If I am no longer a member now, it is because I think they are wrong on crucial questions and their attitudes to the French new left is at the center of this.

The emergence of La France Insoumise over the last eight years represents a remarkable success for mass left reformism, which must be clearly understood if revolutionaries are to react appropriately.

This is an organization that secured more than 7.5 million votes in 2022 and that speaks of “a citizen’s revolution.” Its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, calls it “an anticapitalist force, aiming at ecological planning of the economy.” Tens of thousands of people have flocked to the movement over the last couple of months. La France Insoumise organized a summer school with 116 meetings and more than 5,000 people in August 2024. It has set up regular educational courses for activists, including “Introduction to Marxism” classes, and is taking the accumulation of cadre seriously.

La France Insoumise was the driving force behind the coalition that pushed back the fascists—and it is the force attracting the best young activists now. The organization has succeeded in transforming public debate and breaking the reigning “there is no alternative to neoliberalism” atmosphere. It has brought opposition to islamophobia into the mainstream of left politics, from where it had been absent for several decades (even though both La France Insoumise and the revolutionary left in France have some distance still to go on this question).

The organization is organizationally independent of the old reformist left (unlike, say, mass Corbynism in the United Kingdom). It now publishes books, organizes weekend schools and lectures, and seems to be becoming hegemonic on the radical left.

In sharp contrast to left reformist groups in several other countries, La France Insoumise’s leadership has held firm on the two issues on which the establishment pressure has been strongest: Palestine and police violence. Two of its leaders, Mathilde Panot and Rima Hassan, were called into the police station, accused of the crime of “supporting terrorism.”

Mélenchon had an official police complaint lodged against him by the Ministry of Higher Education because he criticized the disgusting attitude of the Chancellor of Lille University who banned the group’s lecture on the genocide in Gaza. A far-right police trade union organized a demonstration in front of La France Insoumise’s headquarters some time back. In short, La France Insoumise is the center of gravity of radical left politics.

Its emergence is the result of two phenomena. Firstly there is the generalization of political class consciousness in France after the mass political strikes of 1995, 2006, 2010, 2013, 2019, and 2023 (against attacks on pensions or on labor protection legislation) and the popular revolts of 2005, 2018, and 2023 (against police violence or rural poverty). Secondly, there was the weakness and division of the revolutionary left, which we would have liked to have become hegemonic. The result is a mass left reformism, seen as an open-ended determination to rethink the whole of society.

It would be disastrous for revolutionaries to primarily see this new force as unwelcome competition. Seeing tens of thousands of new activists flood in to defend a “citizens’ revolution” and “spectacular change” should delight every Marxist. “Debate, debate, debate” should be the priority—not “denounce, denounce, denounce!” It is essential to take as a starting point what the relation is between La France Insoumise and workers’ interests, not to start with what effect the rise of the FI will have on our small organizations.

It is easy to read online what the main newspapers of the French revolutionary left have written about La France Insoumise in the last few years. The organization is almost never mentioned, except to denounce selected actions, tactics, or slogans. You find almost no debates with its representatives, nor do you find fraternal in-depth articles explaining agreements and disagreements. I think these two kinds of articles should have been present in every issue of every publication.

Mélenchon has written seven books in the last ten years. I have been unable to find a review of any of them in the main far left publications in France.

This tendency to assess other parties of the Left in a sectarian manner has led to some serious mistakes, cutting the far left off from the most promising new masses of activists. I will mention three examples.

In the presidential elections in 2022, two separate Trotskyist candidates stood against Melenchon, obtaining 0.56 and 0.77 percent of the vote (as against Mélenchon’s 21.95 percent). What is more, the campaign of the least unpopular, Philippe Poutou, mostly spoke of radical reforms, not of revolution.

Then, two months ago, a few La France Insoumise MPs split off from the party, after having prepared a new organization (L’Après—L’Association pour la République écologique et sociale). It is becoming clear that this formation will, in fact, be less left-wing. Much of the far left supported the split and continues to support the small organization born from it, citing worries about democracy within La France Insoumise.

And, third, the far left has refused, with occasional honorable exceptions, to contradict and fight against the horrific smear campaigns against Mélenchon and other La France Insoumise leaders, which are similar to those run against Corbyn in the United Kingdom a few years ago, that he is an antisemite and “friend of Vladimir Putin” and so on.

Concerning the kind of organization La France Insoumise is building: unimpressed with the results of traditional radical left parties in France, which are frequently bogged down in endless faction fighting, its leadership wanted to try something different. The party has no formal membership, no one can be expelled, representatives at national delegate meetings are chosen by lottery, and local action groups are very much autonomous. The program is meant to hold the organization together.

Revolutionaries may agree or disagree with these methods (though no one is asking our opinion, to be clear), but they give rise to a situation that has advantages for Marxists. You can be an activist in La France Insoumise and a member of another organization. You can openly publish your own paper and have your own meetings.

Personally, I can’t see why revolutionaries won’t work openly inside La France Insoumise. Two or three Trotskyist groups do, keeping their independent voice. But even groups that prefer to stay outside should be ten times more interested than they are in debating with La France Insoumise people on the many crucial questions thrown up by the present crisis.

Despite its important work building up movements, the revolutionary left is a small player, and needs to recognize this. Mostly, what we have to offer is ideas, analysis, history.

Many debates are in progress inside La France Insoumise. How should we understand women’s oppression? How can a radical program be implemented? What should we think of the animal rights movements, privilege theory, the crisis of imperialism, or left patriotism? Marxists have a huge contribution to make to these discussions.

There are also numerous serious disagreements between Marxists and the leadership of La France Insoumise over French imperialism, the role of parliament, the potential for constitutional reform, and so on.

But in La France Insoumise, we have an attractive, dynamic mass organization looking for a “citizens’ revolution.” We Marxists want a workers’ revolution. But in a situation in which 90 percent of the working class do not see a clear difference between the two, it’s better to be inside the hall discussing the way forward than standing in the bus shelter across the road, searching through lists of tactical decisions by La France Insoumise looking for one to denounce.

This interview first appeared on the Tempest website. Reproduced with permission.

Wolt Claims to be Apolitical but its Actions Suggest Otherwise

Wolt is funnelling money to Israeli businesses and menacing anyone who disagrees.


06/07/2024

The Left Berlin interviewed an employee at Wolt about the company’s support of Israel. The employee wishes to remain anonymous.

What happened at Wolt that made you want to speak out?

Israel is one of the biggest markets for Wolt, I think it is the third biggest market. After the 7th of October and everything that happened in Gaza, so around I think November, I heard from colleagues that there were some problems on Slack, like our communication platform regarding this incident, regarding the 7th of October. And that the CEO was involved in that discussion. And the people who told me were pretty disappointed. They are for Palestine and they were disappointed by the reaction of the CEO. So I was really interested in what was happening. One of them sent me the the link of the conversation. So I went there and checked. Apparently in Israel, some colleagues there, some employees involved, they created a link to support the Israeli small businesses, merchants, restaurants and so on, where anyone around the world can go to that link and make a normal purchase. And instead of just sending donations, they will make a normal purchase. So the people there, they make this food and they will donate it.

So when I read everything, I was like yeah, okay. Whatever they can do whatever they want to support anyone. Although no one there needs any support – we will get to that point. So I read something like there was a deleted comment in the conversation. Under this deleted comment, there were a lot of emojis. We use a lot of emojis in Slack and Wolt is famous for using emojis, but all the emojis were very highly disrespectful. Like discussing everything using the middle finger, the shit, and the comments under that deleted comment we’re amazingly bad language. And then there’s the comment from the CEO himself commenting on that comment that work is not a place for discussing politics. And the deleted one was made by someone whose name is Mohammed.

The CEO said go back to work, targeting Mohammed directly. I don’t know where Mohammed works. I don’t know which country he’s in. So Mohammed commented on the CEO’s comment again saying okay, I’m sorry for the political comment. But can we please make the same initiative for the people in Gaza? Then the CEO commented again, repeating his words, I’m telling you, is not the place nor the time to discuss this subject. Go back to work. So first thing came to my mind was, why it is the time and place for Israelis to do such an initiative, but not for other people? So I started to tell everyone around me because there are a lot of pro-Palestinian people working there.

And just a couple of days after that, the management in Finland was bombarded with emails. Because they immediately tried to do something and it was disgusting what they did. They shut down any one who is pro-Palestinian and just let all the pro-Israelis talk in the public channels to everyone and post whatever they want. At the same time deleting anything else that is pro-Palestinian. At first of all, they sent an email apologizing for what happened. And all of the emails they sent, they never mentioned what Mohammed said. What was the deleted comment? I couldn’t find the deleted comment and they didn’t mention what it is. They just said it’s political. But what Mohamed said, no one knows.

They also don’t want to stop this initiative, and at the same time, they don’t want to create a new initiative for Palestine at the moment. And they said, we’re going to find a solution. Just wait. So it took them around a week or two. I don’t remember exactly, but they came up with the solution or what they thought was a solution. What is the solution? The solution was that they going to donate, with DoorDash, $1 million to both parties. To both sides. The Israeli and the Palestinian. But still not creating this initiative to donate for Gaza.

But they never said anything or explained how these donations are going to be sent, through which kind of organization. So the only way that they’re going to send donations is that they’re going to send it to Israel. So that will never reach Gaza whatsoever. And then after that, no one talked about this again. And whatever you say, whatever you send them, they answer we are sorry. We’re working to have better communications. The only thing they did is to delete the emojis. The hurtful emojis under Mohammed’s comment. This is everything they did. 

Does this fit with your experience at the company?

The management, they’re trying to to avoid any political discussion whatsoever. Like before the 7th of October. So nothing was political in any kind of communications inside the company. I will give it to them. Like in this case, they were really professional, until this happened. After this happened, they showed exactly that they are pro-Israeli. But at the same time, while trying their best to keep it apolitical. They keep sending apologies to everyone. We are sorry, we know we are not doing enough, please bear with us, it’s complicated, we don’t know what to do right now, we didn’t face these kind of situations before, etc. So they always have this type of communication. So they tried to not show that they are political in any way.

But supporting Israel was an exception to this?

Yeah. And they are sharing, and they are proud of it, how many millions they collected and so on. I went back to the same channel, to the same discussion. And I saw how much they are proud of, the millions they are collecting. Especially coming back to the subject where I told you that they don’t even need any donations in Israel. The market in Israel is still booming. It’s still going up. It’s like nothing is happening. This is what’s scary. The market in Israel is still doing great. That’s why it’s like, why all these donations? They don’t even need any donations! They are still working. People are still buying. Number are still going higher and higher every day. 

Why do you feel this Israel initiative wasn’t justified?

The point is: Why are we allowing such an initiative to happen and trying everything to prevent the same initiative to happen for Palestinians? Like why these double standards? Like you are not political, okay, I’ll give it to you, but why then are you fighting against any initiative to help the other side.

And how does the initiative in Israel work?

The ones who created the initiative were asking people to take the link and share it with their family and friends. This is how they share the link. It’s not something like when you go online, you can see that Wolt stands with Ukraine and these kind of things. So you give businesses in Israel the money and the businesses just take it as normal business. But they make purchases and they give it to people. So you’re donating to people through the businesses. 

They [Wolt] are open with it. They’re doing it in front of everyone. But as I said, the point is this reaction towards any request to do something for the other side. And the solution they came up with, which is actually disappointing and pathetic.

We’re talking months after the 7th of October, and they are doing really good. So why do they need donations? Why? They’re still doing good. They are showing on TV that it’s a disaster. But everything is still going normally. 

How do others feel about the situation?

When we talk, we are highly disappointed. No one likes the decision they came up with. Everyone criticizes them, but no one publicly could do anything. Like, even the ones who contacted the management, they never wrote anything publicly on Slack. Because every one of us is just afraid that we’re going to lose our jobs. And especially after merging with DoorDash. Then it became very easy for you to be laid off. Because the first layoff, the big one happened exactly after merging. And it came actually from DoorDash, that decision. And 1,500 employees only in Wolt, not DoorDash, were laid off. From all of Wolt worldwide, of course, not only in Germany, but still it’s a big number. In Berlin alone, 15 people were laid off. And the layoffs were not just for anyone. Just like three of the 15 were maybe in their probation, where you can say like, okay, it’s probation, maybe the company don’t need that, or they didn’t reach any agreement, but the rest, around 12 of them were from the best employees. People who helped the company to grow in Germany. They are highly competent. They have great experience. They did a lot. And all of them surprisingly.

Why are people worried for their jobs?

Until now, they have mentioned the layoffs only once. One general meeting someone wrote this anonymous question – I still don’t know if it’s anonymous, to be honest – but someone wrote something about why we don’t have a Betriebsrat (workers council). And they just went crazy and called in the general manager immediately. And then in the meeting she took like 15 minutes just to explain how amazing we are doing and we don’t need Betriebsrat. How safe the employees are, and then sending emails and like talking again in different meetings. They’re trying really hard to show people like, no, no, no, we don’t need it. You are really safe here, while at the same time this was happening, the whole discussion about the Betriebsrat we had no HR. There were zero HR employees. I think we at the time we had only three employees and all of them were on vacation at the same time. So there is no one to solve your problem. Anything you need it has to go to Finland. And from Finland they don’t see anything in front of them. For them, everything is just numbers. They’re just requests coming from strange people. They don’t know even the pictures.

 

Here is one of the websites through which people could donate food to Israelis. You can read more about Wolt’s initiative in Israel here. 

Bloque Latinoamericano Manifesto, Part 2

As part of an ongoing transformation, Bloque Latinoamericano are publicising their political manifesto.


15/06/2024

This manifesto is from the Bloque Latinoamericano, which has been translated by The Left Berlin team. We will be publishing it in three parts; this is part 2.

Political-Ideological Perspectives

In this chapter, we will try to condense how we understand ourselves in terms of being a migrant organization and how we understand our fundamental axes of intervention. These axes include migrant self-organization in Berlin, political and solidarity work with Latin America (Abya Yala), and how all these dimensions are crossed by a transfeminist vision of our political work. We also outline how we could think about a transformation of our society and how we understand ourselves as part of a broader movement in this territory.

The Migrant Perspective

Migration is a reality that has existed since the beginning of humanity. Although the reasons for migration are many and varied, we know that in the majority of cases, people migrate to improve their living conditions (to escape precariousness, wars, dispossession, and so on). For this reason, we believe that there should be conditions to migrate freely and with dignity.

This reality is shaped by the global division of economic-military power, where there is a world center that, through the dispossession of the periphery, has accumulated enough wealth to guarantee its hegemonic position, and the dependence of other territories. This same global division of power is also sustained by the racist structuring of societies. For this reason, when we migrate, we often find ourselves in an economically precarious situation and are more acutely confronted with racism.

We believe that the experience of migration allows for a critique of the current world order, and requires us to think about different ways of relating to each other and to organize in order to achieve this. Although migration does not necessarily imply that people want to fight for a better world, it generates a common and collective experience of oppression that has the potential to be politicized. Migration is a global reality, therefore, resolving the injustices that surround it is a task of structural transformation for all those who fight for social transformation, not just for those who migrate.

The Latin American Perspective

The migratory experience and the experiences of struggle in Latin America-Abya Yala constitute the place of enunciation of the Bloque as a political organization. In other words, although not all of our members have migrated or participated actively in Latin American social movements, this is the perspective from which we analyze the reality we live in today and seek alternatives to build a new system. 

We understand ourselves as children of the resistance of a colonized territory. Ever since the ruling European classes established their dominion over our territory with a system based on slavery, we have experienced incessant political and military interventions in the development of our lives. Migratory processes are entirely intersected by the violence that US imperialism – in complicity with the European Union – which unceasingly installs in our bodies and in our territories. 

In this sense, Bloque Latinoamericano tries to make a political synthesis that will help us transform the reality of the here and now, with our feet on the ground we stand on, but without forgetting where we came from and how we can rethink and understand ourselves in a broader movement that is trying to transform this unjust reality.

How we understand solidarity with Latin America – Abya Yala

We see solidarity with Latin America-Abya Yala as a political driving force in our daily work. It is active and stems from the conviction that we all deserve to live a life without exploitation of our bodies/territories.

Unlike charity, solidarity arises from a horizontal consciousness that takes the form of support for the struggles of workers, of indigenous peoples,* of racialized people, of the defense of territory, of women and sexual dissidents.

* In different Latin American territories, “indigenous peoples” or “native peoples” are used to refer to the communities of origin in the American territory – survivors of the European colonizing genocide and white-nationalist extermination.

Our solidarity is politicized and comes from a commitment with the territorial struggles of Latin America, understanding its global complexity in the current framework of economical interactions between states, and their colonial and imperial heritage – the latter in order to understand the governing geopolitical logic that is at the root of the problems with which we stand in solidarity. 

As a migrant collective, we seek to develop our own vision of the issues we address, and to be a voice on the local German scene that not only amplifies Latin American voices, but also contributes to the intertwined struggles of both continents. This implies being active participants in the discussions taking place in Germany with a voice that comes from our collective experiences.

We also recognize the importance of developing political ties with organizations in Latin America-Abya Yala in order to materialize solidarity in actions that either improve visibility or help to foster the exchange of contacts, alliances, and resources. This way, we can approach social processes that have the potential to mobilize people, both migrants and non-migrants, maximizing our capacity for impact. However, it is essential for us to move away from the paternalistic logic of “North-South” aid, as well as from academic readings and interventions that treat struggle abstract, distancing it from its materiality by focusing only on the rhetorical dimension without corresponding action.

How we understand the struggle against the precarization of life

We believe that politicizing our precariousness means understanding it in the context of a broader system, namely the neoliberal capitalist system that drives many of us to migrate and turns us into cheap labor in Germany.

To speak of capitalism is also to think of its historical dimension: in the past, capitalism used to exploit us fundamentally by appropriating our hours of work, so it could be accumulated by a few who concentrated wealth. Today, capitalism not only takes over our work (waged or unwaged), but also exploits all levels of our lives in order to continue reproducing itself: our housing, our education, our health, our body, our thoughts, and our desires. This translates into a shift from the exploitation of workers mainly in their formal workplaces and reproductive labor to a capitalism that is rooted in all the social ties of our existence.

The precarization of life, meaning the advance of capital over life, is a global phenomenon that affects the working classes all over the world. However, this phenomenon affects those of us who migrate to the countries of the center in a particularly strong way. Numerous bureaucratic obstacles, legal limitations on residence permits, language difficulties, lack of family and support networks, discrimination, racialization, illegalization and criminalization aggravate our situation and expose us to greater precariousness. This translates into greater obstacles, difficulties and injustices when looking for work and housing, or in trying to access health and education. This is how we are pushed to live a life that we often didn’t choose, but which we end up accepting because we are no longer in our countries of origin.

Through the Bloque Latinoamericano, we want to reclaim our right to fight against the precariousness of our lives and our inalienable right to organize ourselves politically against this system. We see this as a struggle for a fairer world in which we can all choose the life we want to live. It is the struggle for a dignified life, free from exploitation, against inequalities and injustices in all dimensions of life, and against the production of wealth for a few at the expense of our basic rights. 

How we understand the anti-patriarchal, queer, feminist struggle

Adding the anti-patriarchal perspective to the migrant dimension allows us to see that the realities of women and sexual dissidents are even more aggravated, and that is why we are firmly committed to our fight for the abolition of the cishetero-patriarchal system. We analyze, think, and act politically by centralizing the power in the hands of the oppressed. We also understand that there are different levels of oppression. As well as recognizing the specific oppressions that migrants and racialized people face, we highlight the oppression of those who do not align with cishetero-centrist logic.

We can only enjoy a life free from oppression if in every daily political practice we focus our work on defending the rights and lives of women, of trans people, and of the entire LGBTQI+ community, who are not only fighting for more rights, but also for the defense of our own lives. Our diverse experiences, both in Latin America and in Germany, have shown us that there is no possibility of creating a “safe space” if we don’t first fight consistently to end daily femicides, if we don’t denounce the fact that globally, the average age of a trans person is 37 years old, if we don’t fight for equal marriage, for comprehensive sex education and legal, safe, and free abortion in every corner of the world. 

We are convinced that it is the feminism of the popular majorities that has the strength to overthrow the political regime of western cisheterosexuality, and introduce a world where our lives are worth more than the profits of the capitalist system, and where children are truly free. Every 8 of March, 25 of November, and at the Alternative Pride demonstrations, we take the streets to celebrate our identities and to fight against the systemic violation of human rights. We believe that it is only from the perspective of a popular, queer, migrant, ecologist, anti-racist and anti-colonial transfeminism, that we are able to fight, day after day, the battle to achieve the revolution we are aiming for.

On our perspective on social transformation

In order to dismantle the heterocispatriarchal system that makes life precarious in every way, we must join forces to achieve the social, economic and political transformations that we so urgently need. Based on the path we have wandered, we affirm that, in the midst of the neoliberal liquidity that sometimes blinds us, only constructing solid organizations with collective memory allows us to develop tools for the struggle that makes possible the society we dream of. To achieve that, we need to combine self-organization and mobilization, so that we achieve improvements in living conditions, while knowing that the only horizon is a radical transformation that will put an end to the capitalist system. We know that we cannot achieve these objectives alone, which is why we articulate and build together with different political organizations, made up of social sectors from different backgrounds, in order to nurture our network and enrich our paths towards liberation.

The collective construction of a world without exploitation is the horizon that drives us on our daily journey. However, we don’t believe that we should wait until the capitalist system has been overthrown to start new ways of being united. For this reason, we work to ensure that the way we relate with each other, and the way we inhabit our spaces of organization are aligned with the world we fight for, simultaneously accumulating forces for transformation. In other words, we try to ensure that the practices we develop in our assemblies, meetings, and projects are prefigurative of the system we want to build. By doing so, we aim to transform everyday life into moments of liberation and construction of an alternative power led by the subaltern sectors, in other words, the construction of popular power.

In our quest to build a different society, we do so in three levels: the objective conditions, the global world system and the subjectivities.

By objective conditions we mean the economic, political, and cultural factors that make up the context or environment in which we have to develop our life and militancy. These are the variables that, although created by humanity, do not depend on anyone’s concrete willpower to exist. We think about them at the regional, national and local levels, and the transformations we seek daily are applied to these levels.

When we talk about a world system, we are referring to the global aspect of capitalism and its global division of labor. We believe that we cannot think of social changes in any single country, without taking into consideration the geopolitical aspects, specifically how the world’s center and periphery relate to each other. The transformations we will achieve in the countries we inhabit must necessarily be thought of within the framework of reigning imperialism. The subjective component is key to developing ways of relating to each other and of inhabiting spaces that resemble the ones we want to live in the society of the future. Transformations at this level, through debate, training, criticism, and self-criticism, are key components in thinking about long-term transformations.

Our characterization and our role in the German left 

We consider ourselves part of the popular struggles and social social movements in Germany, even if we often have to fight for our voices to be heard. 

We particularly highlight the struggles for the right to housing and climate justice as two of the social movements that have been the most dynamic in recent years and which have also had a strong impact on our lives, both here and in Latin American territories. We also see ourselves as part of longer traditions of struggle, which link us, for example, to the the resistance of migrant workers in the 70s.

We are currently observing a discussion within the left that emerges as a result of the post-autonomist strategy experiences in recent years, focused mainly on interventions in the public discourse. Post-autonomism has made a fundamental contribution by generating mobilizations and by breaking the relative isolation of the autonomist left, which focused on creating and defending autonomous and prefigurative spaces, rejecting everything associated with normativity.

Currently, the post-autonomous left seems to be showing certain signs of exhaustion and an absence of tools to accumulate forces and process experiences of mobilization, which constitute qualitative leaps in the struggle. In this context, another strategy that increases the importance of grassroots work and appealing to popular sectors is gaining strength, with a strong criticism of the autonomist left for its isolation, and of post-autonomism for its lack of focus on class struggle. We believe that the dichotomy between these perspectives is false and should be resolved by combining different approaches, achieving a left that is anchored in the popular sectors, capable of self-managing spaces and at the same time capable of building broad alliances for mobilization and of achieving demands.

In this context, we consider that our contribution to the left in Germany focuses on three points. On one hand, we consider the importance of political organization, which is responsible for processing the experience, gathering forces and learning, and giving continuity to struggles over time. On the other hand, we support the anti-imperialist and internationalist position, which, in the context of an imperialist center like Germany, is sometimes neglected or simplified. Finally, we develop ways of integrating emotions into political work, as means of intertwining transfeminist and anti-racist struggles into our political work. By doing so, we want to achieve a political practice that emerges from collective desire.

Bloque Latinoamericano Manifesto, Part 1

As part of an ongoing transformation, Bloque Latinoamericano are publicising their political manifesto.


26/05/2024

This manifesto is from the Bloque Latinoamericano, which has been translated by theleftberlin team. We will be publishing it in three parts – this is part 1.

Introduction

Our organization has changed over time, based on the needs, wishes and experiences of its active members in relation to the social context in which we live. These needs arise from the double anchoring of the Bloque Latinoamericano as part of a bridge of historical and political connections between the territory from which most of us come or to which we are politically and/or emotionally connected, Latin America, and the territory in which we currently live, Berlin.

This process of collective construction has led us to to reflect and make decisions regarding our organizational structure and decisions, as well as in terms of how we can advance the political goals we have set ourselves. We accept these transformations as something necessary, because we as a collective are a living organism, in constant movement, and can change our structure if necessary.

This gave rise to the need to systematize our organizational experiences in a document that would convey the changes, assurances, commonalities, routes of struggle and analyses that move us. A document that helps to understand our current process, both retrospectively and with a view to the future.

The purpose of this document is to explain where we come from, what we do and what we, in the framework of our political goals, seek in order to achieve a profound and revolutionary transformation of society, the society in which we live and which lives within us. This document allows us to look at the traces of the journey we have traveled. It allows us to understand the process that we have have gone through in almost five years of collective life, thanks to the many comrades who have contributed their perspectives, their passion, their ideas and their work to our organization and continue to do so.

How we came to be the organisation we are

The Bloque Latinoamericano was born in November 2018 as an alliance space between collectives and individuals linked to the political processes of different territories of Latin America-Abya Yala. It emerged from the need to develop a policy of active solidarity with our territories and to organize the resistance of migrants in Germany in the face of the advance of the right on both sides of the ocean.

Over the course of time, we developed our own political goals and defined tasks to achieve these goals, which led to a change in dynamics, toward practices common to a collective. We therefore decided to focus our efforts on two fundamental axes: migrant self-organization and solidarity as well as political work with Latin America-Abya Yala, with trans-feminism and anti-racism as the overarching perspectives of all of our political work. The context of the pandemic was an opportunity to, more than ever, open up and politicize the discussion about collective care in political work, which became another central axis for the development of our collective.

Today we define ourselves as a political organization in which we, the members, share political goals and are joined together in tackling political practice in a way that’s common to all of us. As we recognize that many of our goals, especially the short-term ones, are shared by other organizations, we actively participate in networks and alliances and help to build them. In order to make our demands visible, we take part in campaigns, which we see as important tools for political struggles in various areas of society. Through our political practice, we have understood that these three levels complement each other and are necessary for social change. Without organization, the networks, alliances and campaigns that we can build have no body to give them continuity over time. It is political organization that provides us with the tools to build networks and alliances with those who think differently from us, and more importantly, to mutualize the tools for even more effective and more powerful campaigns.

Important concepts to understand this document

Although we make an effort to use language that is as simple as possible and to remind ourselves how we spoke and thought before we started moving in political spaces, we are aware that this text uses some political concepts that may not be understood by everyone in the same way. This is due to the fact that this text connects diverse social experiences from different Latin American countries with the language and political traditions of Germany, which also enrich us as a collective.

For this reason, in the following paragraphs we briefly clarify what we mean when we use some specific terms. Because we also believe that it is part of our political task as a political tradition. We believe that all of these terms can be transformed. Even if they serve us today as a magnifying glass with which we view our present, they can be transformed or discarded at any point in time, according to our needs.

In this document we talk about the construction of people’s power. This concept, which is widespread in the Latin American social movements, is hardly mentioned in the perspectives of the left in Germany. The building of people’s power means organizing from below, starting from the oppressed who, through their prevailing normal state can succeed in break through mobilization, that creates spaces of their own power that are autonomous and subversive to the dominant social order. Countervailing power consists of transforming the places of life (of work, study, recreation) into an alternative social power; into spaces that allow us a glimpse into other forms of the organization of society. This power can be local, communal or regional, until it manages to become a second territorially anchored power at the national level, which questions the legitimacy and monopoly of the state itself.

People’s power presupposes a political subject: the people (el pueblo). For us, el pueblo is the collective identity that makes so much sense in Latin America when it comes to talking about a of a political subject of transformation. The idea of el pueblo unites all the people who suffer at different levels under the violence of this imperialist system. We are all part of the people – all of us who experience this violence and who, through this identity, seek a response of solidarity based on love for others and the possibility of building an alternative society.

In the following pages, the concept of imperialism plays an important role. If one speaks of imperialism from the perspective of Latin American territories, it is not an academic discussion, as is the case for many people in Europe. We have experienced imperialist policies on our territories in Latin America during all the genocidal coups d’état of the 1970s, during which  the US government used Plan Condor to kill an entire generation of people who were fighting for the construction of socialism, and thus turned our continent into a neoliberal laboratory. The imperialist policy is also present in the economic economic and political blockade of Cuba that has existed for more than 60 years. And it was also evident in the attempted coups d’état in Venezuela in 2002 and in Bolivia in 2019, which were supported and promoted by organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS). This imperialist system has centers, i.e. countries where the extractive wealth, generated by their sponsored policies, is accumulated, and peripheries, which have a strong economic dependence on these central countries. A clear example of this dependence is the foreign public debt, which is almost always illegitimate and in some cases even illegal.

We use the double term Latin America-Abya Yala. The term Abya Yala refers to the name that was used for the area we now call Latin America before its colonization. We believe that the reuse of this term is also an attempt to recognize ourselves in a history of resistance against the workings of colonization.

We see ourselves as a collective that combines different elements of organization from political, social and common interest groups. When we say that we are a political organization, we mean that we are a collective that sets itself long-term and short-term political goals in order to change reality. This means projecting ourselves into the future and building an organization that is able to integrate the experiences of different generations, struggles and movements. When we speak of common interest organizations, we mean, for example, trade unions or student centers. That means, organizations that fight against economic or institutional actors for the improvement of the conditions that affect their members in a particular area of life such as work, study or, in our case, migration. When we talk about social organization, we rely on the concept of the social movement, which is used in Latin America to refer to organizational processes that take place in resistance to neoliberalism, in struggles for access to education, housing, work or culture. The movements are often characterized by the fact that they identify with their expropriation (landlessness, unemployment, homelessness) or the threat to the logic of communal life (community movements, assemblies) and emerge in the geographical or social peripheries and penetrate the centers. The precise way in which these different elements are combined is an open question to which we will find answers through political praxis, i.e. through the combination of practice to transform reality in our context and of reflection on that very practice.

The first chapter of this document contains our political-ideological perspectives. This designation combines two elements that although different, work together in our daily practice. By political practice we mean a concrete debate that attempts to change reality. Ideology has to do with the paradigms that guide us. They are the lenses through which we read reality in order to work on the construction of a new system, a system based on new values and desires within the framework of a project of a world without oppressors and oppressed. Within the political ideological practice, we identify tactical elements that aim to achieve an immediate goal and strategic elements aimed at achieving long-term goals.

In this text, we will use the terms political activism and militancy as synonyms. While in some contexts the word militancy refers exclusively to the willingness to use violence in political struggle, in other contexts it is a generic term that encompasses political activism. In this text we use the term in this second sense.

We have decided to use non-binary language throughout the text. This means that we amend words that presuppose the gender identity of a person so that this is no longer the case. We do not believe neither that the construction of a male ‘we’ in this patriarchal society includes women and others, nor that a generalized feminine includes identities that feel outside the gender binary. For this reason, and because language also has the power to change reality, we believe it is important to neutralize gender in our linguistic practice.

About our internal operating principles

In this chapter, we describe the internal dynamics, or the organic life, of our collective. The following sections condense our understanding of the tools we have had to acquire in order to create an organization that provides space for diversity in ideological positions and perspectives but achieves unity in action and facilitates reflection on our own practice and the human relationships we build around them. These are imperfect tools that are constantly being revised.

Decision making

In the Bloque Latinoamericano there are various spaces in which decisions are made: The plenums for evaluation and projection, the monthly meetings and the meetings of the working groups.

The plenums take place once or twice a year and serve to evaluate the work performed and the (re)definition of the organization’s strategic objectives as well as the projection of specific goals and lines of work for the next period. The meetings take place once a month and discuss topics that affect the organization as a whole. These may arise from the political situation or from the work of the working groups. The meetings have a consultative character and decide on the the routes that the organization should take with regard to the the topics discussed. This space is reserved for reserved for political discussions. An attempt is made to keep organizational or operational debates to a minimum.

The working groups implement the political goals defined in the plenums and assemblies and have relative autonomy to make decisions about their specific work and address issues arising from their interventions in grassroots movements or in processes of processes of political struggle and mobilization.

During the debates in the three decision-making bodies we endeavor to reach a consensus, giving all participants the time they need to understand the discussions and participate. If a consensus is not possible, we make decisions by majority vote. We are of the opinion that this is the most democratic way to, on one hand, avoid giving individuals the power of veto and, on the other hand, to ensure that minority positions are aired and taken into account when evaluating the decisions made. Debates can be resumed in any of the instances if it is believed that more time is needed for the discussion.

Criticism and self-criticism as tools of reflection

We fundamentally assume that growth comes from criticism. This can apply to ourselves, to our projects, to our comrades, and to the organization of which we are a part. In order to be an instructive tool, we believe it is fundamental that critique is practiced in organic spaces of the collective and not in informal spaces. It is important to understand that a critique of an action of the Bloque, no matter from which comrade it came, is ultimately a critique of ourselves. In this way, criticism is depersonalized and becomes a political tool to improve our collective practice.

Sometimes it becomes necessary to practice critique of certain comrades. Explicit criticism is always better than rumors, intrigues, and comments made behind their backs. In this case, we try to keep in mind that the mistakes that comrades make in their political actions are made with the intention of working on improving our collective. It is likely that the more criticism we receive the the more we do. This can sometimes be a sign of personal and collective growth. But even taking on tasks cannot be a justification for not wanting to review our ways and behaviors, if they have caused our comrades to criticize us.

For criticism to be constructive, it must be accompanied by a suggestive proposition. This means that, as much as possible, an attempt should be made to formulate alternatives to improve what is being criticized. It is desirable that this proposal is  collectively formulated and a debate about how we can become better arises, and not simply that the criticized behavior is simply dismissed or completely devalued.

It is important to engage with criticism of the Bloque from people or groups outside of it, even if we do not agree with it. This means that we must take the time to reflect on it and identify the relevant elements contained in this criticism, address them and work to incorporate them into our effors for transformation. In this way, we transform any criticism from the outside, whether constructive or destructive, into an opportunity to develop further.

Collective care and conflict resolution

The creation of spaces in which we feel comfortable and in which there is affection is part of our transformational horizon for society. Even if it is not possible to create spaces that are completely safe in the sense that they are free from all violence, our obligation is to make all spaces in the Bloque as safe as possible and, above all, to equip ourselves with tools to eliminate all forms of violence that we reproduce step by step.

In this way, we want to build the society that we are fighting for in the here and now.

The Bloque Latinoamericano has a group and a guide for collective care and conflict resolution, in which the aim is to support comrades who need it in the search for a solution to a conflict that cannot be addressed or resolved between the people involved. The aim of the group is to mediate, intervene and create spaces to resolve conflicts that may arise between comrades.

In addition to the actions of the group, we collectively reflect on the ways in which emotions permeate our political practice, and we try, through political education and reflection on our practice to identify and eliminate the forms of violence that we reproduce. Every member of the Bloque Latinoamericano must have a deep commitment to the fight against transphobia, misogyny, racism and classism.

We do not envision a society without problems and conflicts, but we envision a society in which there are more and more tools that enable us to forge bonds of solidarity and understanding. That is the goal we are working towards.

The process for participating in the Bloque Latinoamericano

Our collective has an open structure, i.e., all those who agree with the with the political goals and working methods of the Bloque can join. The process for participating in takes place gradually, as we are a multi-level structure that one has to get to know and understand bit by bit. The first way in which everyone who is interested in our collective can participate is attending into our grassroot groups or the open meetings of the working groups. These take place regularly and everyone is welcome. Participation in internal group meetings and assemblies is intended for those who are involved in working on the political goals of the organization and are interested in contributing to maintaining its structure by taking on internal tasks. 

At regular intervals, we organize events where interested people have the opportunity to to get to know us, to learn how the Bloque Latinoamericano came about, what it does and how one can join. The character of these meetings can be different (it can be an informational event, painting banners together or a picnic), the important thing is that we create spaces to get to know each other and exchange ideas. Other than that, we also see it as the task of all those who have been in the collective for a while to accompany the newcomers. We know that entering into a new space can cause doubt and confusion, and we consider it fundamental to build up empathy and understanding.