[WSF-Discuss] Fwd: Follow Brazil's Example

Wed Mar 25 07:56:02 UCT 2009

Dear Jai,

thank you for this. A quick line of comment on this: As many in the
WSF believe/practice, NEVER is either one or the other. Such obtusely
radical dualism (any dialectics comrade wallerstein?) polarises, does
not explain and does not develop any robust theory/practice of change.
but of course i guess that's just a snippet of W's article which i
read and found mostly interesting if a little "predictable"

Best
g

2009/3/25 Jai Sen <jai.sen at cacim.net>:
> Wednesday, March 25, 2009
>
> Here’s an article that I think all on this list would want to read – since
> the author, Immanuel Wallerstein, looking at the world situation today in
> the short, medium, and long term, says :
>
> What can we do? First of all, we must be clear what the battle is about. It
> is the battle between the spirit of Davos (for a new system that is not
> capitalism but is nonetheless hierarchical, exploitative and polarizing) and
> the spirit of Porto Alegre (a new system that is relatively democratic and
> relatively egalitarian). No lesser evil here. It's one or the other.
>
>             Any comments ?
>
>             JS
>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: CyberBrook <Brook at CALIFORNIA.COM>
> Date:  March 24 2009 6:37:44 PM GMT+05:30
> To: SOCIAL-MOVEMENTS at LISTSERV.HEANET.IE
> Subject: Follow Brazil's Example
> Reply-To: International forum for discussion and information on social
> movements <SOCIAL-MOVEMENTS at LISTSERV.HEANET.IE>
> Here's a short article by Immanuel Wallerstein from a special section of The
> Nation on "reimagining socialism". There are other worthy contributions to
> this topic there as well.
> http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090323/wallerstein
> Any comments or suggestions?---Dan
>
> Eco-Eating: Eating as if the Earth Matters
> www.brook.com/veg
>
>
>
> Follow Brazil's Example
>
> Immanuel Wallerstein
>
> On : Reimagining Socialism: A Nation Forum
>
> http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090323/wallerstein
> This article appeared in the March 23, 2009 edition of The Nation.
>
>
> March 4, 2009
>
> There seem to me to be two occasions, which require two plans for the world
> left, and in particular for the US left. The first occasion is in the short
> run. The world is in a deep depression, which will only get worse for at
> least the next one or two years. The immediate short run is what concerns
> most people who are facing joblessness, seriously lowered income and in many
> cases homelessness. If left movements have no plan for this short run, they
> cannot connect in any meaningful way with most people.
>
> The second occasion is the structural crisis of capitalism as a world
> system, which is facing, in my opinion, its certain demise in the next
> twenty to forty years. This is the middle run. And if the left has no plan
> for this middle run, what replaces capitalism as a world system will be
> something worse, probably far worse, than the terrible system in which we
> have been living for the past five centuries.
>
> The two occasions require different, but combined, tactics. What is our
> short-run situation? The United States has elected a centrist president,
> whose inclinations are somewhat left of center. The left, or most of it,
> voted for him for two reasons. The alternative was worse, indeed far worse.
> So we voted for the lesser evil. The second reason is that we thought
> Obama's election would open up space for left social movements.
>
> The problem the left faces is nothing new. Such situations are standard
> fare. Roosevelt in 1933, Attlee in 1945, Mitterrand in 1981, Mandela in
> 1994, Lula in 2002 were all the Obamas of their place and time. And the list
> could be infinitely expanded. What does the left do when these figures
> "disappoint", as they all must do, since they are all centrists, even if
> left of center?
>
> In my view, the only sensible attitude is that taken by the large, powerful
> and militant Landless Workers' Movement (MST) in Brazil. The MST supported
> Lula in 2002, and despite all he failed to do that he had promised, they
> supported his re-election in 2006. They did it in full cognizance of the
> limitations of his government, because the alternative was clearly worse.
> What they also did, however, was to maintain constant pressure on the
> government--meeting with it, denouncing it publicly when it deserved it and
> organizing on the ground against its failures.
>
> The MST would be a good model for the US left, if we had anything comparable
> in terms of a strong social movement. We don't, but that shouldn't stop us
> from trying to patch one together as best we can and do as the MST
> does--press Obama openly, publicly and hard--all the time, and of course
> cheering him on when he does the right thing. What we want from Obama is not
> social transformation. He neither wishes to, nor is able to, offer us that.
> We want from him measures that will minimize the pain and suffering of most
> people right now. That he can do, and that is where pressure on him may make
> a difference.
>
> The middle run is quite different. And here Obama is irrelevant, as are all
> the other left-of-center governments. What is going on is the disintegration
> of capitalism as a world system, not because it can't guarantee welfare for
> the vast majority (it never could do that) but because it can no longer
> ensure that capitalists will have the endless accumulation of capital that
> is their raison d'être. We have arrived at a moment in which neither
> farsighted capitalists nor their opponents (us) are trying to preserve the
> system. We are both trying to establish a new system, but of course we have
> very different, indeed radically opposed, ideas about the nature of such a
> system.
>
> Because the system has moved very far from equilibrium, it has become
> chaotic. We are seeing wild fluctuations in all the usual economic
> indicators--the prices of commodities, the relative value of currencies, the
> real levels of taxation, the quantity of items produced and traded. Since no
> one really knows, practically from day to day, where these indicators will
> shift, no one can sensibly plan anything.
>
> In such a situation, no one is sure what measures will be best, whatever
> their politics. This practical intellectual confusion lends itself to
> frantic demagoguery of all kinds. The system is bifurcating, which means
> that in twenty to forty years there will be some new system, which will
> create order out of chaos. But we don't know what that system will be.
>
> What can we do? First of all, we must be clear what the battle is about. It
> is the battle between the spirit of Davos (for a new system that is not
> capitalism but is nonetheless hierarchical, exploitative and polarizing) and
> the spirit of Porto Alegre (a new system that is relatively democratic and
> relatively egalitarian). No lesser evil here. It's one or the other.
>
> What must the left do? Promote intellectual clarity about the fundamental
> choice. Then organize at a thousand levels and in a thousand ways to push
> things in the right direction. The primary thing to do is to encourage the
> decommodification of as much as we can decommodify. The second is to
> experiment with all kinds of new structures that make better sense in terms
> of global justice and ecological sanity. And the third thing we must do is
> to encourage sober optimism. Victory is far from certain. But it is
> possible.
>
> So, to resume: work in the short run to minimize pain, and in the middle run
> to ensure that the new system that will emerge will be a better one and not
> a worse one. But do the latter without triumphalism, and knowing that the
> struggle will be tremendously difficult.
>
>
> ______________________________
>
> Jai Sen
> jai.sen at cacim.net
> CACIM, A-3 Defence Colony, New Delhi 110 024, India
> www.cacim.net
> Ph : +91-11-4155 1521, +91-98189 11325 - PLEASE NOTE NEW SECOND NUMBER !
>
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